APB Reloaded - Shit or not

It's been two weeks now since I decided to install APB Reloaded, and in those two weeks I've played exactly 0 hours of it. There are a lot of reasons for this: work, family, upcoming holiday season, beer and disinterest. This morning, after an alcohol free evening of watching TV and eating Doritos Burn, I awoke before 7am with a hankering for online GTA-like action (or so I had built it up in my mind) and a mild discomfort in my colon.

After a few moments of registering an account (including a jarring interruption as it dumped me into a browser), 10 minutes sidetracked looking at Facebook Timeline (which is...dull), 5 minutes reading about the best server to play from in Australia and 10 minutes tinkering with the character builder I was finally logging in. And logging in, and logging in. Fuck, this game takes an age to load anything. The first thing I noticed was that I'd forgotten to change my resolution, so it's a mess of crap textures and jaggy edges. The second thing is the looping sound and lack of response. Yep, it hung within 2 seconds of getting into the game.

This was 100% of my APB experience

Not to be deterred, I rebooted - got sidetracked swapping out my wireless card and plugging in a cable - then made my kids breakfast. Then I made a cup of tea and I spoke to my wife for a bit. You can see where this is going, I wasn't particularly excited about APB and a hang at the get-go dampened the already moist tinder of interest. Long story short, I finally sat down again (after looking at the rain for a while and generally wasting time on a gloomy Christmas eve) and re-loaded APB.

Luckily my character was still there, I'd like to say I called him something cool like Franklin McThrustinDuds, but I didn't. Nice training shirt by the way. Back to it, had to watch the tutorial video again which was interesting the first time but the entertainment value of this production is inversely proportional to the number of times you're forced to watch it. And the ESC key does nothing. Plus it hung halfway through. So here we are, on the one hand it hung again, but on the other hand I was spared watching the entire training video from beginning to end.

I'm not saying this is what happened, but I am saying I'm open to interpretation if it gets me some compensation dollars

I'm not a patient man, so the next thing to happen was this:

Actual gameplay screenshots!

So, shit or not? I don't think I'll ever know. Time to wrap presents and refrigerate beer. Merry Christmas loyal following of 4 people, see you next year!

LAN Optimised house

Being still a big fan of the LAN party, yes kids it is more fun to play with your friends in person, this guys efforts struck a chord with me.

LAN Optimised house

Knowing what some of my nerdy friends are like, I would be more inclined just to have the monitors setup.  Nerds love their own rigs, forcing them to use the same hardware might lead to arguments and the throwing of things.

BF3 Ownage

Got to love it when crazy shit comes together. This BF3 air combat video is just uber

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 finally for sale in Australia - Apple now a bunch of cocks AND looking pretty stupid

http://www.news.com.au/technology/smartphones/samsung-win-galaxy-tab-101-legal-battle-against-apple/story-fn6vihic-1226218212403

Because, fuck you Apple and your monopolistic ways.

Of Brink and disappointment

Last night I played Brink and it went...well first let me tell you a story.

Some time ago, Boris sent me a youtube video of a game that included MMO like stuff, shooting, large outdoor areas, cities and interesting looking team options. Being the absent minded professor I am I forgot the name and when I asked him about it later he told me it was Brink, but I was not convinced. A little more time went by and Boris grew quite excited about Brink, Brink this and Brink that he would say. I was too poor at the time to afford it so I thought I'd let him run with it a while and grab a copy when I could.

This was not to be as Boris dropped Brink from his play schedule like a sobering man drops the girl he slept with last night and escapes via the fire escape. The only feedback was that Brink wasn't very good after all. I was saddened and never bothered reading any reviews.

Now back to the recent past and last weekend Steam had Brink on sale for $6- how could I lose? Surely they'd fixed up the bugs and balance issues by now! Fast forward to last night and I finally had an opportunity to play Brink with my friend Raptoralpha. Or did I? Well, no. I didn't. You see, I thought Brink was an MMOFPS in the vein of either Tabula Rasa or Borderlands (which I had recently finished) and the first 30 minutes of character creation bore that out. Then we tried to play it online and completely failed. You see, Brink is more like a poor mans Team Fortress and less like an awesome game than I had supposed. In fact, the most game time I spent was running around a bit while waiting for Raptor to connect (which he never did). In the end we agreed that the best part of the game was making the characters and the worst part was everything else - that ultimately Brink was totally not the game we thought it was. To spin an analogy: after setting out to buy KFC we came home with a couple of servo pies. Golden looking on the outside but lukewarm and suspiciously lacking in what we though it would have on the inside.

Brink is a fail and I still don't know what that other damned game was!


MAJOR EDIT: After a lot of searching and following dead-end leads...I FOUND IT!

Firefall

http://www.firefallthegame.com/

Ok, so it doesn't look as good now I've finished Borderlands (basically looks like a BL variant). Still, might sign up for the beta and report back what I find.

Terraria 1.1 Fuck yeah

Terraria 1.1 has been released. For me all the game really needed was more content, and here it is! Can't wait to lose hours to this game.

Patch notes are here

New PC Time

Hi I am Borris and I am addicted to Technology

Much to the disdain of my fellow posters, I am always upgrading my PC. Always, I am the worst or best kind of consumer depending on which camp you subscribe to. I have recently gone thru a minimalism phase. I set myself the challenge of making my main gaming PC a small mini-itx box that still had enough grunt to drive my 30" monitor.

Spec sheet is below
Zotac Z68ITX-A-E Z68 MINI-ITX WIFI LGA1155
Intel Core i7 2600K Processor LGA1155 3.4GHz CPU
Corsair Vengeance CMZ8GX3M2A1600C8 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3
Antec KUHLER H2O 620 CPU cooler
OCZ 60G Vertex II E Series SSD x2
Gigabyte GTX590 Dual-GPU 3G PCI Express
SilverStone SG07B-W w 600W PSU Mini ITX case

What was the main drive behind this? Well I was sick at looking at a massive clunky tower. And I had recently found myself enjoying the old school lan. So I wanted a machine that was portable.

The next phase of this project is a custom paint job and trying to make it quieter. Hey I don't like noise either!

SE Xperia?

WTF. Where can I get one of these things!

Jumping on a bandwagon

When it comes to Planetside 2, my biggest problem is with the gaming media, gamers in general and the term 'I played this to death back in the day, and therefore I have this opinion that you must listen to <insert idiotic opinion here>'. No, you almost certainly fucking didn't play Planetside in any meaningful way 'back in the day'. If you played Planetside for 10-20 hours, that's about the total time I spent at a terminal weighing up certs. If you played for 6 months, that's about the total time I spent at sanc in a Gal waiting for people to load up. (I suppose in hindsight that this complaint applies to any game that was so awesome you lost a whole swathe of your life to it).

Suddenly, somehow, it became trendy to pretend you played Planetside 'to death', yet the population was never strong enough to support the notion that so many people played Planetside regularly. I know this because I was there for 6 or 7 years and I don't remember any of these people. It's as if the skinny, unpopular guy with glasses grew up to found a very promising tech company and now all the people who stole his lunchbox are pretending they were great mates 'back in the day'. Fuck those people. I almost hope no-one plays PS2, just so I can continue being so elitist about it.

Terraria 1.1 Patch tomorrow and why you should care

If you don't know what Terraria is, I assume you are either retarded or came to this site by mistake. The fact it has been a HUGE success is an understatement. The 1.1 patch drops tomorrow and it almost would be considered an expansion pack in the old days. Or some bigger companies would push it out as DLC. Here is a link to the new features coming in the next patch below is a video preview of the content. I want one of those drills!

PS2 News

Interesting little article over at FPSGuru.  I can understand how people who never played the original planetside  think this all seems new and shiny.  The original planetside gave me gaming experiences that have never been replicated to this day, and that was 8 years ago.  PS was ahead of its time for sure.

http://www.fpsguru.com/game/284/article/1119/How-PlanetSide-2-Might-Change-Gaming.html

F1 2011 made me swear in front of my children

I like racing games, especially since I purchased a Logitech G27, so I thought I'd share my initial reaction to playing F1 2011 last night. After 30 minutes of driving at high speed in Time Trials and one 3 lap race, I think the session could best be described as "OH GOD JESUS MARY JOSEPH AND ALL THE ANGELS THIS IS INSANE!".

I know as I grow comfortable with a new racer that things will settle down and I'll get more of a feel for driving smoothly and consistently, but seriously, this is the first time I've felt as if I'm doing less 'racing' and more 'simply keeping an uncontrollable beast on the track and out of the wall'. I'm not sure I've said "whoooaa shiiiiiitt" more times in a 30 minute session as I did in F1 2011, and I think that's a good thing. Also, my young children learned a few new words - like apex, downforce and fuckdamn.

Since I purchased this in a Steam special I now have Dirt3 to look forward to this evening. Good times.

Planetside 2 Update - NC

File under, no-one cares coz real men played TR anyway. Seriously, why do game companies think this sort of media release shows anything? Woohoo some 3D spin arounds of some models, let me get my top hat and cane and dance in the fucking rain.

Planetside 2 Update

The sequel to the best online multiplayer game I have ever played is coming out .... some time. I was aroused by the following video.

Syndicate Remake

Apparently this is supposed to be a homage to the actual game it is based on.  I call it pissing on the fans and calling it rain

Hello, is it me you're looking for?

Hi, My name is Jim and I'm an even older belligerent than Boris is. I cut my gaming teeth on a Game and Watch fold out Donkey Kong thing and progressed through C64, Amiga, Game Gear, PC and so on. I love PC gaming and almost everything associated with it, but I have almost no interest in consoles - so sorry to all you under 16s that still play the toy game boxes.

As far as I'm concerned, our favorite industry is at a crossroads - buckets of games all samey samey, hardware no longer holding the grip it once did (I've had the same PC for 2 years and it plays the latest games fine), Free To Play games evolving and new technology over the horizon that may change the state of the play forever. It's been some time since I played a game the other review sites fawned over and found myself agreeing with them. While a lot of these games are well made and kinda fun for a while, I usually end up with the feeling that I've played this all before.

Anyway, a topic for another time. Long story short, some like minded people got together and decided to make a website - this website - as a place to let our thoughts and feelings be known. In a nutshell we'll be posting and then discussing the latest announcements and games as well as looking back at some of the classic moments in gaming to decide once and for all (or probably not) whether those games are still awesome, or best left in the land of nostalgia. It's going to get heated and it may even get personal, but we have a passion to bring you multiple opinions of all things gaming - not just one mans say-so (perhaps even one man with a desk full of 'freebies' from the publishers). If we think it sucks, we'll say so. If I think it sucks but Boris thinks it rules, we'll try our best to explain the why and wherefore.

Lastly, we're planning a few cools ideas like the 2 hour test and the Drunk/Sober review, but more info on that another time. For now, Jim out.

Much Ado about nerding

Hi my name is Boris, and I am an older gamer.  A belligerent older gamer, I cut my teeth on games that required you to rewind or fast-forward a tape to load.  I am strongly opinionated on this hobby that has now been taken over by big industry.  I like using colourful language and big words, although I often use the wrong word out of context.

This site will be my and my friends soap box where we yell at each other or yell with each other.  Hopefully you will find it amusing.

B