Gaming Bros

As much as I am busy during these few days, I stepped upon this article. It talks about gaming and it’s relation to violence which the article shows that there is no evidence or link that connects both. I am one of those who is totally against the claim of games leading to violence and this new study just proves it.

You can read the article at science daily.

Let me know what you think.

Well, I think it has been now two months since I quit WoW. I thought about sharing my story with this game. It was bought very late after it’s release, around August 2006. Reason I picked the game because I was intrigued to continue on the lore of Warcraft and check out this so called MMO genre. All I knew was that you can create a character and do quests together with other people who are on your side and kill people from the other side.

So I started with a warlock class simply because I saw one controlling the infernals in the intro movie. So I started leveling and slowly I was sucked by this black hole of fun (and addiction). I managed to reach level 60 and get my dreadsteed mount (one of the greatest moments in the game for me) just at around the same time as the release of the Burning Crusade Expansion. Do note it took me about 4-5 months to reach level 60. Reasons were I was trying to complete each quest in each zone I go through and that I fought with my weapons (in which is noobish considering my caster class).

At first, I didn’t want to get the expansion thinking that playing the main game is enough. Though in the end, I went ahead and bought it. Took me about two months to reach level 70 this time (faster but still slow). Then I went ahead and started the dreaded Karazhan attunement quests in which I did in two days. Though I was around another two months trying to get into this raid instance and just as soon as I started experiencing the instance, I got bored and thought to quit. I stayed off for about three months, then I decided to go back but without raiding and just for fun. Though gradually, I started getting back to the addiction. So I started raiding with a friend’s guild. Though the progress was very slow and we hardly went past Gruul. A decision was made by me and that was to leave my current realm, Bladefist, and go for a realm which is more ambitious. I went for Magtheridon, home of Nihilum. There, the standard of raiding is much much higher. I joined a guild who was at the end of Karazhan and Gruul and just starting The Eye and Serpentshrine Cavern.

After some time I moved to another guild (my last guild). In this guild, progress was much better and with a less stressful time schedule. Managed to kill Archimonde with them and reach Bloodboil in Black Temple. I even managed to create and level an alt warrior within THREE weeks to level 70 (Compare to my first character). At that point, I felt I had to stop for good. It was too much time investment. So I stopped at around March 2008! Yes, thats like almost a year and a half of WoW. Though the game was so much fun, the time I took playing it isn’t. I hardly managed to play other games. In addition, I got sick of the Carrot-on-Stick formula.

Now, I managed to experience new games, each different from the other, have more time for family, friends and writing a blog! WoW is a fun and great experience, though you should at some point think, am I getting something worthy for my time and money from this game? If no, then it is time to look for something else, something new and fresh.

Well, I still need to download and install the update. Reason I haven’t done so is out of pure laziness but after reading this topic, there is now a good reason to get SP3. It seems SP3 brings a small performance boost compared to SP2. In addition, after it’s release, I still didn’t find any complaints about the update so it is recommended that everyone gets it installed.

Here is the link to the article.

For the full standalone download, get it here. (316 MB)

EDIT: Ok, I installed the update and seems to be easy and trouble free. I did do a small test to check performance. I loaded fraps and first level of Crysis before and after update. 1 FPS improvement is what I got. Still need to check on other applications but so far so good. Stay tuned.

Ok, I played Crysis after the long wait and all I can say is that it is a great game, period. The graphics are the best you can ever find on any platform, there is no competition in that area for a while. The particles, lighting, textures, animation and the best motion blur effect in a game to date. Ok, after the awe part with the graphics, you will start to feel this is just Far Cry with a nano suit and a different setting, at least for the first half of the game. In that first half, you got your freedom of choice. Go sneaky or go Rambo. Of course it is far better than Far Cry when compared gameplay wise but the impression of “I have been here” is still there if you ever played Far Cry. The second half is a linear game. So straight forward that you have been there before. Again, Crysis still does it very well. Add to both parts: vehicular levels, nice weapon customizations even though they are almost the same across all the weapons and the suit.

As for the AI, am not sure. At times, they are realistic and intelligent. They know how to flank, take cover, and flush you out with grenades. At other times, they don’t do anything and take a long time staring at you while they are getting all the bullets. It is kinda same problem that was in Far Cry except it happens less frequent. Still you will have the occasional weird feeling that there is something wrong with the AI at some points. Now of course am talking about the humans, as for the aliens, they are just the same in any game. As soon as they see you, they will charge at you. They are intelligent enough though to try to dodge your aimed shots. As for the longevity of the game, it is shorter than Far Cry and slightly longer than Call of Duty 4. Though considering the time it took to make this game, you expect the game to last longer.

It was stated that Crysis will be a trilogy (milking the cow anyone!), maybe that might answer why it wasn’t that long.

I would like to go back to the graphics (biggest selling point for this game no doubt). First when we saw the first screenshots of the game, they were so realistic. Though after checking out the game at very high settings, I find it hard to compare it to the first screenshots yet. Even with high settings, the game really sits on the low frame rate figures even when run on a well equipped PC. Now when I compare Crysis (Crytek Engine) to Doom 3 or Unreal 3 engines, it is obvious that it provides superior graphics but at the cost of performance. While both Doom3 and Unreal 3 engines show good graphics with great performance even on high settings. The message is, for a normal gamer, will he be able to differentiate between Gears of War (Unreal 3 engine) and Crysis? He can tell that Crysis is better but will end up wondering why his PC can run GoW at 60 FPS at full settings while Crysis is at 20 FPS (even dipping to single figure digits at some points) at high settings only. Someone might argue that the engines have different applications. As in, unreal is for small areas while Crysis is for outdoor settings. Which might be the reason but then, Far Cry did outdoors and it is a few years old now.

The short story is, Crytek went a bit too far on the engine that it impacted the performance. Both id and Epic know that drawback when trying to go for bleeding cutting edge graphics and hence they maintain balance with their engines. I would prefer they released it later and worked on getting more content into the game while the hardware market matures enough so more people will be able to enjoy this game better.

So there you have it, Crysis is a great game but it didn’t live to the hype that was surrounding it.

Yep, that is one big surprise even to me but it is as real as it gets. Doom 4 has been announced and is being worked on by id itself. This is the first time id is working with two games at the same time: Rage and Doom 4. It seems Doom 4 is response to what the audience thought of Doom 3, as in, either to fix what was supposed to be an awesome remake or continue on what people liked about Doom 3. No clear answer is visible yet but when the time comes, we will sure know.

I myself fully enjoyed Doom 3 regardless of what has been said about the game, it was fun, dark and scary (even though with the many pop scares you get). It was all in the mood and the graphics were nice and ran pretty smoothly on current generation cards (Hint Crysis!).

For the full announcement, you can read it here at shacknews.

Am sure many will be or already at a phase of either upgrading some parts of their PC or buying a new one completely. Thing is, you only (if you ever do so) go on searching and reading up about new PC components reviews, comparisons and prices when you are about to do such an upgrade or purchase. So the issue is, you tend to lose track of what new products that came after you did the upgrade and it gets boring to do the research again. The time frame from your last upgrade and your new one is usually enough to see one to many generations of new products to show up in the market with new features that you know nothing of because you simply already got your upgrade that does what you expected from it.

Now for casual PC users who surf the net and use MS office, they don’t need to worry much as long as their PC can do the usual stuff. Though for gamers, it is a different story. New games always raise the bar a notch or two higher that require existing hardware to play catch up. Ending up at some point to the need of an upgrade or a totally new PC. I usually do my upgrades yearly, which is sufficient for both my gaming needs and budget. Within that 1 year, graphics card makers (AMD and nVidia) release two generations of cards (usually six month time frame). Now apply that to the processor, memory, storage and other computer components and you will end up with doing a lot of reading. Or simply you can visit Sharky Extreme. The site has three sets of PC building guides tailored for gamers depending on their budget. They got the value range (1000$), the high range (2500$) and the extreme range (4000$). They release updated guides every few months depending on the market. The guide doesn’t tell you how to build the PC though. It just points out the PC components that you need to get to meet your budget and end up with a gaming PC. They sometimes provide more than one option on a certain component to get. For example the processor, they tell you to go for a certain Intel version or the equivalent AMD version.

Of course no guide can be followed 100% but these can be used as good starting points and help minimize the headache to look up on each component. There are many sites on the web that provide such guides but through my experience, Sharky Extreme does it very well. Have a look yourself and see what you think.

You can visit the site here. Navigate to the guides tab and look up the latest guides they have.

You might have noticed a few days now without topics and that is because I have been busy with both my work and study. I got a project presentation coming so I need to work on that then a final exam right after it. That doesn’t mean I will stop posting topics until then. I am already compiling a list of ideas to talk about and that are of interest to many. I feel that there are already people interested in reading what I write and that makes me eager to write more. If you have noticed (or not), I am a bit behind on PC gaming. As in, I recently finished Crysis SP, Call of Duty 4 and still on World in Conflict even though they have been released months back. Now I blame WoW for that! (that is another topic coming soon). To put it short, I quit WoW and am back to normal (and healthy) gaming. So will be up to speed with new gaming topics and up to date news.

Stay tuned…

If you go and search on the 3G+ (Also know as HSDPA) technology, you will know why it isn’t suitable for online gaming. The problem is that 3G+ uses the mobile network to transmit and receive data and then the data goes into a data line (Broadband) which takes it to the internet. The problem lies with the mobile transceivers (node) and mainly two major problems that can easily be recognized with such technology when it comes to latency. First is the coverage area. With many mobile devices connecting to a node, the coverage area gets reduced and hence your connection to that node will get worse. Generally, this doesn’t happen a lot since the people connecting have to be on 3G to affect your 3G connection but if happens, it can seriously affect your connection. Secondly, the mobile protocols used for communication have a larger overhead. So in addition to your TCP/IP overhead, you got the mobile overhead which is quite large due to the complexity of mobile communication. So even though you can reach to high bandwidth rates with 3G+, your latency is affected due to at least one of the two mentioned issues plaguing this technology. Especially when you compare it to hardwired connections like ADSL.

Now regarding Nawras 3G+, it gets worse since they don’t have their own internet gateway but rather use Omantel’s backbone, which the latter alone suffers latency issues. Just try calling the hotline and tell them you have a problem with latency, they will just go and refresh your line!

From my personal experience, the Nawras 3G+ connection suffers huge amounts of lag spikes (You will notice that everything is frozen for 5 seconds or so) which is really bad for online play. Omantel ADSL, doesn’t suffer from such an issue even on the lower 512kbps connection (again, latency has nothing to do with bandwidth). So if you plan to game online, you have one option: Omantel. Besides, Omantel’s 1mbps connection is 19RO monthly fee with 2gb free + 1RO per GB vs 39RO monthly with 10GB free + 4RO per extra GB that you get with Nawras (Golden package, the other packages are worse). Only way you can go Nawras is when Omantel tells you that you are far from the ADSL exchange in your area (more than 5km) then you are stuck until Omantel adds a new ADSL exchange closer to you.

Yep, even though the PSP has other great games, the real and only reason to get one is for Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core. The game is the best you can get on a PSP and alone is worth the purchase of the handheld. When you look at the graphics, you just can’t stop thinking that this is all from a handheld. I mean I played many PSP games with nice graphics but Crisis Core does it way way better. It really adds to the wow factor. Add to that the fact that it is one of the best rpgs released on any platform.

The game is a prequel to Final Fantasy VII in which you control Cloud’s friend named Zack. The story shows how things lead to the first Final Fantasy VII and how Zack is related to it. All I can say that this is the best thing that has the FF7 name after the original.

If you want more details about the game, read up Gamespot’s review here.

Well, for those that still use Windows XP (Like me), Microsoft have released the third service pack (and the last). It mainly contains all the updates after SP2 in addition to some new network and security features. I personally haven’t tried it yet but will update when I do. Until now, I haven’t found any major compatibility issues like the ones happened with SP1 and SP2 so it seems it is safe that most your software will be working without issues.

You can download the whole update file here.