Month: October 2005

Yet another icon from my gaming youth may go the way of the dodo. There are reports that EBGames.com will likely be merged into Gamestop.com under the Gamestop banner.

I purchased Q4 based on a work friend’s undying devotion to the series and promises that her husband would be hosting on their home game server. Nothing like wishing the person in the cube next to you a “good morning” along with a “I told you I hit what I aim at”, I thought. Turns out that they, like myself, were quite turned off by the finished product. I played the original Quake, but none of the followup releases until the current one. Also, I haven’t done many FPS’s these days, I’m more into tactical shooters. All I can say is that Q4 is certainly nothing new, has too many chippy levels in the single player game, and if I wanted to play a Raven-developed game, I’d be playing one of the Jedi Knight series. Multiplayer might be good fragging fun, but this one’s just not for me.

I’ll be exchanging today for Call of Duty 2. Give me a BAR over a nail gun any day, and I hear that COD2 has real smoke effects, including smoke grenades.

Georgia beat Florida in my game, that is strange enough, but not the actual bug I came across today. I have had little time to fire up the PS2 of late, so when the opportunity presented itself (kids at mom’s house, and wife taking a nap) I had to dig the game out. While running a hurry up offense late in the 2nd quarter, a CPU controlled CB lined up facing my team, but on my side of the ball, several yards behind the WR he should have been covering resulting in an offsides penalty. I guess the developers had to do something to ensure there would be some penalties called. Strange stuffs.

Hopefully Texas will make a comeback and take care of the Cowboys, and I can only assume that Vince will have another amazing game. As I sit here and write this entry (CG is still down due to bandwidth issues), Texas just pulled to within 9 (28-19) early in the 3rd quarter. Vince Young is incredible – how could anyone not put him at the front of the Heisman chase? It would be a travesty if Young does not receive the award (assuming he keeps on keeping on).

It looks like we busted our allotted bandwidth for October. I did not think we were getting that much traffic, but last month we almost exceeded our bandwidth, and now the site is down until tech-support decides to turn the governor off. I told Chris that a lot of folks must love him – something like that anyway.

I am going to be real disappointed if I find out that we are getting hit by spam bots instead of Chris’ fan club. Thanks for the support, I think.

Three things happened while I was in London that potentially spoiled me to the local Columbus, GA cuisine for many (many) weeks to come. First, I had the best Chinese food ever – today’s take out from one of Tonya’s favorite places paled in comparison. Second, pizza will never be the same thanks to the Dickens Inn (near the Tower). Finally the beer – oh, the wonderfully delicious beer; the sheer variety of beer on tap in London is amazing.

Every once in a while I like diving into a cheap beer or two just to see what is what. I mean, I have kids to feed and all, so I have to be a cheap ass from time to time. To drown away my sorrows from today’s UGA loss, I picked up a six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. [No I did not really drown away my sorrows, but it sounds like a good line.]

Typical American light lager, best served cold. Honestly not too bad, but certainly not that wonderful. Did you expect more for about $0.60 a pop top? Not much flavor to be had, but I do like this better than my other two cheap beer mainstays – SouthPaw Light and Natty Light (beer flavored water to coin a phrase of a co-worker). OK, PBR is certainly not in the same league with Amstel (the full-body version, not the light stuff) or Stella Artois, but PBR is refreshingly cheap.

To each their own, I suppose.

Going into the season I had low expectations, but it is funny how quickly hope changes after Georgia put together a nice string of victories. Then DJ goes done, and today the dreaded Gators managed to take care of business 14-10 in Jacksonville, FL.

I guess I will look at the box score tomorrow morning and play the “what if” game. What if, DJ was not hurt? What if the defense was health? What if we made one of the two missed field goals – and what if the 52-yarder off the right goal post was six more inches to the left? What if Georgia’s receivers did not drop so many freaking passes (I counted at least 3 drops, including a ridiculously easy one on the opening drive).

Hats off to Florida; they did what they do best – beat Georgia. Damn this one sucks.

The annual Strat-O-Matic sale has begun. From their web site:

“Our annual $10, 3 for $25 sale is here and will run through 12/31/05. For more info on which card sets are on sale please go to the Products section.”

My Civilization IV installation was smooth as silk. No problems to report. I am running the game at 1600×1200 and my 6800GT isn’t missing a beat. People are reporting all sorts of problems installing and running Civ IV. I am not one of them.

However, the install and play CDs are mislabeled.

There’s chatter over at the Grey Dog Software forums that Joe Stallings, former head of .400 Software Studios, is somehow involved with EA Sports’ new football management sim. I had no business dealings with Mr. Stallings, but he seemed like a decent fellow during my interactions with him. He and the other co-founders of .400 Software Studios had a pretty ugly falling out.

Here’s a news bit from Sports Interactive:

“SEGA Europe Ltd and Sports Interactive are delighted to confirm that last Friday’s UK launch of Football Manager™ 2006 has netted retail sales of over 100,000 units during its first weekend of release according to Chart-Track retail estimates. Football Manager™ 2006 is now the 2nd fastest-selling PC game of all time in the UK, according to Chart-Track (sales within a 7 day period).”

Yup, the genre is dead.

Folks with ATI video cards – good luck installing Civilization IV. The game is crashing and it isn’t clear if (a) DirectX or (b) the screen resolution is the culprit. Throw in the incorrectly labeled CDs and the French tech tree snafu to a less then impressive release. The game itself is getting a thumbs up when finally up and running, so keep hope alive!

There are reports floating around the internet that some lucky pre-release Civilization IV purchasers in the USA received a free version of the tech tree in…French. Don’t know if this is a mistake or if there are a lot of people at Take 2 laughing very hard right now.

There are many stories written about Iraq, but the stories like this are the ones that really get to me.

For those keeping score, FM 2006 was shipped, or “dispatched” as our UK friends say, to me yesterday. Should arrive sometime next week. I also got notification that Civilization IV was shipped today and I should get that on Thursday.

It just baffles me that people actually think PC gaming is dead or near death. I’m convinced that the folks who believe this aren’t playing PC games. They hop from one game to the next like humming birds looking for nectar. Since you can’t hop as many times in PC gaming as you can in console-land, suddenly the genre is headed for a downfall.

I cannot and will not be able to play all of the quality PC games that are out there.

I believe that many of the crappy PC games and their crappy ideas are going the way of the dinosaur rather than the genre itself. Everyone thinks back to the 90s when PC games were all over the shelves, but how many of those games were really worth playing? Not a whole lot. I remember as a grad student (and master of my free time) wandering through Best Buy one summer looking for any, ANY, PC game worth purchasing. There was one good football game then – Front Page Sports Football – and many bad football games. The number of bad football games is much less in 2005, but there is still only one decent football game.

Here are the games that are sitting on my shelf that I will never load in my computer or are off the play list and on my computer – the entire Rainbow Six series, Halo (started it, but only for a bit), Half Life 2 (loaded it, but haven’t had time), Battlefield 2, the entire Splinter Cell series, and the latest Tiger Woods golf game.

These are the games that I struggle to play – rFactor (setting up my wheel is a pain), PureSim, and NHL Eastside Hockey Manager. Games that are out that I would purchase, but I would never find time to play include Age of Empires 3, X3, and Space Rangers.

I’m a slave to World of Warcraft and Out of the Park Baseball. I will cram in FM 2006 and Civilization IV. Keep in mind that Civilization was the first game that I spent an entire day and night playing.

How in the world someone can play two or three online massive multiplayer games like City of Heroes and Everquest is beyond my comprehension. I’d love to check out CoH again, but zero minutes available.

So my gaming day is filled with PC games. I don’t have time for any console games even if I wanted to play them. I just wish the PC genre was this dead back in college when I had time to actually play all of these games.