New PC Build - MONTHS LATE!

Hey everyone! I was going through my camera's memory card and ran across a few pics from my PC build I did in early October. I wanted to post them up and write a little post about it since I don't update this thing pretty much at all anymore! So...here we go!

The goods. Ready to be mounted and bench tested.

I've been using the came computer since January of 2009, and it was definitely time for an upgrade. I built this computer with the next wave of PC games in mind and decided to get the latest (not neccessarilly greatest) bits for the build.

My New PC Bits:

Intel 4670 (not a K, not going to OC this thing)

MSi Z87-G45 mobo

8gb Corsair Memory (DDR3)

EVGA GTX 770

Kingston 120gb SSD

5 year old PSU that is still kicking ass, seriously.

I run Windows 8, I like it.

The case with the goods!

 I knew going into the build that I wasn't interested in overclocking, so I didn't get a K series chip. Overclocking is for some people, but not for me. I wanted to get a stable machine that I didn't have to worry about keeping cool with the extra juice.

CPU mounted to the mobo, low profile RAM slapped in this badboy. Looking SLICK!

 As far as the GPU was concerned, I wanted to go 780 but didn't want to spend the extra $200-300 for the damn thing. I chose the 770 based on several reviews and the price point. It was fairly steep at $400, but I am 100% pleased with the performance. I get 70+ fps on Battlefield 4 with settings on ultra across the board. It runs great and looks fantastic. Every other game I have is slayed by this card, and I run a fully modded Skyrim at over 100 fps (looks amazing).

Bench tested, bench approved. It works! The beast lives!

 The case I have is the case I bought for my last build. It's a HUGE case with enough room for another for a bunch of shit, and I plan on slapping more drives in those bays so I can keep my Steam library fully installed (it's huge). The power supply is also sticking around from my previous build since it's solid as a rock and offers more than enough power for my entire rig.

The completed rig. I still want to put a few lighted fans in here before LANFest so my PC looks crunk.

The last addition to the machine was an SSD, which is all the rage right now and with good reason. The single greatest upgrade for this machine was the addition of the SSD, as it's increased performance by an incredible margin. It used to take a few minutes to fully boot Windows 8 (it even booted faster than Vista), but now boots in under 10 seconds. Seriously. BF4 maps load in a matter of seconds, I'm always one of the first few people to load into a map for a match. WoW also loads in seconds, when it used to take minutes. I recommended an SSD to my friend for his most recent build I helped him put together and he was super pumped on how fast the damn thing was. I can't recommend one of these enough.

So far I am very pleased with my build, and looking forward to some upcoming titles (such as Titanfall). The performance I get out of this thing exceeded my expectations and I am super pumped everytime I boot into a BF4 match or fire up Hawken to shoot some bots. I couldn't be happier with my PC build.

I'll be traveling to the Intel Winter LANFest at the Sheraton on January 3rd to once again partake in the festivities. I'll try to take the camera and get a few pictures to post on the DontCritMe blog in Jaunary. If you are in Atlanta and enjoy a good LAN, then you should hit up LANFest for 2 days of non-stop LAN action. I plan on getting a few people into some old school RATS matches in Half-Life. STOKED!

That one time I almost bought an Atari Jaguar.

So the Atari Jaguar has been on my radar for about 20 years now. I first wanted the console, obviously, when it was announced back in the 90's. I followed the games industry from a young age, always staying on top of the latest announcements. The Jaguar was no different.

I've always wanted a Jaguar, but have yet to acquire one. I've eyed them on eBay for years, but never bit. Aside from being brand new at retail years, and years ago, I've never seen one in the wild ready to be purchased. I've bought my SegaCD/32x and 3DO out in the wild at game shops around Gwinnett, but I never saw a Jaguar pop up. Until a few weeks ago.

The game shop Derek and I frequent finally had it and the CD attachment for sale. I wanted to just rip the thing out of the display and make a mad dash for the register. I refrained, as the previous weekend I had made a substantial purchase of a new DSLR camera and didn't want to commit to a fairly large purchase quite yet. I said to myself that I would wait a week and see if it was still around.

The subsequent weekends, I ended up not going back to the game shop. I ended up not going for a two weeks, until tonight. I waltz in the front door, only to find that he has sold the Jaguar. It didn't really bother me, as I considered the savings of $150 to be a victory for my wallet and proceeded to pick up a copy of Sonic CD to celebrate my savings.

We decided to go check out a game shop we had just recently heard about called Wizard's in Gainseville, GA. After my failed attempts to figure out how to get there, we arrived 20 minutes prior to their closing. We enter the store to be greeted with wall to wall games, which pleases us greatly. We quickly search the store for the retro section and make our way to see what the hub-bub is about. That is when I see it.

Sitting in the console case is the mythical beast, The Jaguar. I ask the guy behind the counter how much, and he responds "One hundred." I am literally stunned by this revelation as he continues to tell me that it includes a game and the two controllers. I immediately respond "I'll take it," to which he seems stunned. Someone has come into his game shop and asked to buy the Jaguar, which has been sitting in his case for ages.

This is great news for me, because his price is a whole $50 cheaper than the shop we frequent and it comes with an extra controller and a game. Talk about a deal. I can't really recall the last time I saw that great of a deal on the console, even on eBay! Generally the systems go for $100+, sometimes below $100 on occasion. Either way, $100 is a steal.

He gets the console up on the counter and can't quite seem to locate the AV and power cables to he calls his co-worked on the phone to inquire as to it's whereabouts. We wait around for about 15 minutes for his cohort to arrive to unfurl this great puzzle, only to find they lost the cables! No worries, as it simply uses an SNES RF switch and a power supply easily stolen from another console.

This is where the story takes it's tragic turn. As it turns out, the RF switch he has selected is correct, but the power supply may have been a bit too beefy for the poor old Jaguar. Upon pressing the power button, a mysterious odor poured from the console as a faint wisp of smoke wafted out from around the power button.

"That looks like smoke around the power button!" I said in horror.

"Oh shit!" he replied.

He yanked the power plug out of the console but it was too late, the console was toast. At this point the smoke was pouring out of every vent in the console and the odor of roasted electronics was everywhere. The stench of my defeat was great as I bowed my head and accepted my failure at acquiring the console of my dreams.

There is always next time, and hopefully the next time isn't years away. I'm not sure exactly why I want this console, but I just know that I do. There is something about owning these unique flops that gives me great joy. I smile everytime I look at my 3DO and say "When the fuck am I actually going to use this thing?"

I really like Professor Layton games.

I've played every Professor Layton game, and I have to say it's probably one of my favorite game franchises ever. I have never had a bad experience with any of the games, and have really enjoyed them all for different reasons. Sadly, I hear the next release will be the final game in the series, so I guess I'll just have to keep playing the games I've already got. Maybe we'll get that Professor Layton/Phoenix Wright game here in the states.

The most recent Professor Layton game is called 'Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask,' and was released late last year. I really enjoyed the game, although I've played it in sporadic spurts since it came out. As a whole I really enjoyed the game, although there were some parts I wasn't too fond of, but I'll get to that later.

The game uses a brand new gameplay system, in which you use the touchpad to move a magnifying glass around to search for clues. In the past games you'd just tap around on the bottom screen to find stuff. The new system works great, and allows you to see the world on the 3D screen. I quite enjoy looking at Monte d'Or with the 3D effect.

The characters are also now rendered using 3d character models as opposed to 2d anime sprites. This sort of kills the aesthetic of the series, but the full motion animation sequences are still intact and as great as ever. While I feel the 3d models sort of kill the vibe, they are well done and growing on me. I expect them to make a return in the final game.

You can tell Level-5 is trying to change up the series a bit with this game, as they introduced a few bits which totally break away from the previous established game design. Early in the game you play a horse riding mini-game right after you encounter the Masked Gentleman (you can play a similar game later on), that tests your reflexes as opposed to your brain. It's a fun little mini-game, but to me the series is all about the puzzles and this was just simply a reflexive mini game.

Another section of the game has you navigating ruins as a young Hershel Layton, and this section took a while to grow on me. It's shown in an overhead view, and you manually move Layton around using the d-pad to solve maze-like puzzles. At first I didn't like it at all, and it took quite a while for me to grow accustomed to the style. In the end I quite enjoyed it, but the mazes got old, as they were the same thing with just varying degrees of difficulty.

The story in the game is pretty good, but you can pretty much guess who the Masked Gentleman is from the get-go and in the end it didn't really bother me. There is a twist that is pretty much "what?," but it's not a deal breaker. The ending of the game does set up for the final game, which is odd for a Layton release. Typically each game stands on it's own, usually only borrowing a few characters from previous games.

I think if you are into games that are great, you should give Professor Layton games a whirl. It's fun to play from the beginning, but I'd have to say my favorite is a toss up between 'Diabolical Box' and 'Unwound Future.' I lean a lot towards 'Unwound Future,' because it's incredibly great and the ending is so freakin emotional. Either way, if you have a DS or 3DS and have never played any games, do yourself a favor and pick any one of them up.

This post is about 16 years in the making!

FINALLY. Although I'm pretty sure this menu was lifted from the release version.

Back in 1996, I was obsessed with Resident Evil. I got the game the week it came out and played it pretty much non-stop until the sequel finally dropped about two years later. In between sessions of whippin zombies asses, I learned how to make websites and built a fan page for Resident Evil 2. Although it wasn't the Resident Evil 2 we all know and love, it was what the world has deemed "Resident Evil 1.5." I never thought I'd be able to give it a whirl, until today.

Resident Evil 1.5 is the preliminary work Capcom did on Resident Evil 2, the planned follow-up to the smash hit game. The very first screenshots ever seen of Resident Evil 2 are from this version of the game, which was eventually scrapped to pursue the direction of the game that was released. Was this a bad thing? Absolutely not, Resident Evil 2 is probably the best game in the entire franchise and I don't think anything going on in this alpha build was going to change that.

I am pretty sure this image was on my website when I was 14. I actually think I had every picture on the web for RE2 hosted on my site at the time.

I've been tracking this thing for a very, very, very, very long time. It's been on the radar for years, but no one ever let the thing slip out into the public. A few people had copies of this primitive build, and a group of people got together to try to resurrect it into a playable form. The word on the street is someone got greedy, so they decided to just let the thing loose on the public. The closest I ever got was a bum ISO of the game that didn't boot. This one does, and I just played it.

To say I played it would be sort of a stretch, because there really isn't much to do beyond explore. You can select a character and walk around the RPD building. Some of the doors don't work, and some of the doors you go in don't necessarily take you back to where you were. Luckily there is a debug menu which allows you to teleport around the game, so you can explore every room.

The first most noticeable change between this version and release is the other character in the game: Elza. She was a young motorcycle racer, who was stranded in town. This character was eventually reworked and turned into Claire Redfield, overall a good choice for the series in my opinion. I believe they wanted to tie the two games together, and Claire was that link to Chris.

Elza, pretty much Claire version 1.

Other than Elza, the game is pretty much the exact same. Some of the environments are reused in the final game, but with a few tweaks. Leon's character model looks almost the same, and I'm pretty sure his animations were already done at this point. I could only find one box of bullets in the game, so I only shot a few zombies too. Felt about the same.

It's pretty fair to say that they were pretty much on the right path with this build, but decided to go in a different direction in terms of environments. This build looks quite a bit less detailed than the final release, which is A-OK with me. I never expected it to work, so getting to actually walk around and see the game I posted pictures and wrote fan pages for 16 years ago.

If you are interested in checking it out, you can find the ISO file on NeoGAF and run it on ePSXe. Getting ePSXe to run takes a minute to get everything set up, but once it fires up you just load the ISO and get cracking. Be warned you will encounter some wacky shit and it will crash on you. It's a fairly stable build, but it's prone to crashing. Some of the rooms are also fairly jacked up, so don't expect it to be anywhere near finished. It's a very cool peek into the past of this epic franchise.

ALSO, beware when you walk into Brian Iron's office, he does some freaky shit and it will crash your game. It's really creepy.

NeoGAF - ISO image:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=513896

ePSXe - emulator:
http://www.epsxe.com/download.php

Pete's OpenGL plugins:
http://www.pbernert.com/html/gpu.htm

PSX Bios file here:
http://www.emuparadise.me/biosfiles/bios.html

I just got Windows 8!

This is a video game blog, so writing about Windows 8 seems kinda weird. However, I think there may be some hesitation for some people to make the jump the new hotness, and I'd just like to give my side of the story. Fear not, this post involves mostly game related crap.

I've used Windows for a very long time. I had Windows 3.1 back when I was a wee lad, when you could actually EXIT WINDOWS. Command prompt wasn't just a window that opened up, it was fuckin MS-DOS. Since those days I've used pretty much ever iteration of Windows, from 95 all the way up to 8. So far, I'm enjoying 8.

I installed it on Melissa's computer about three months ago, and I was fairly impressed with it from the get-go. From what I can tell it's fairly light on the resources and adds a few aesthetic features borrowed heavily from the tablet/smart phone world. The new 'dashboard,' as I call it, is a tile-based GUI which allows you to add some visual flair to an otherwise dull landscape of your desktop. You can, however, skip this feature entirely and operate completely from the classic desktop view.

Navigating takes a minute to get used to, but it's fairly intuitive. Since it's optimized for tablets and touchscreens (which will be common place in every home in the next few years) you use semi-touch controls to use the 'apps,' which are simply regular computer programs with a fancy short-hand name for applications.  Any 'classic' program (which is pretty much anything you don't get from the Microsoft Store) functions exactly like a windows-esque GUI functions. X still closes and the - minimizes. Pretty easy.

I had concerns that my hardware wouldn't work (it's about 3 years old), but it is working flawlessly. I will warn that if you use nVidia cards, reboot your machine after you start Windows up for the first time. Windows automatically installs graphics drivers (however, they are not the most current by a revision or two) and if you don't reboot before you install the newest, you get a driver conflict which is fairly annoying. On a positive note, Windows 8 installed all the proper drivers for my hardware. Sweet.

When it comes to running games, all seems to be well. I bought Portal 2 TWO YEARS ago, and have only been allowed to actually play it today. It had some ridiculous crashing error on the first load screen, rendering the game completely unplayable. I played it for the first time today, it's good. The new OS also remedied my connection problems I was having with Borderlands 2 and Hawken, both games now functioning perfectly. I still haven't checked if Monkey Islands works yet, but I will probably do that as soon as I post this.

So far I am really enjoying Windows 8, it does what I need it to. I was very hesitant to keep current with Windows, but the pricing on Windows 8 is just incredible. I think Microsoft has figured out that people don't want to shell out $300 for an OS and I applaud them for it. Hopefully I continue to keep a positive attitude for Windows, and it won't start doing some weird ass crap. So far, however, so good.

Spec Ops: The Line is a weird game

So I've been wanting to play this game since I played the demo earlier this year. It was a pretty fun shooter game, with an interesting style. I finally picked it up on sale on Steam last week and got around to playing it this evening. It's a very short game, as I managed to beat it in one night. It's also a very weird game.

I'll start off by saying the game is overall pretty good. It's got great visuals, and a very cool soundtrack. I've never really gotten into music with lyrics as the backdrop to action in films and games, but it works really well in this. The gameplay mechanics are 100% straightforward military 3rd person shooter faire, so it's nothing to write home about. It feels solid, plays solid, same old-same old.

Where this game strays from the beaten path is how the game plays out. I read a little blurb on Kotaku that summed it up pretty well (and I generally do not like Kotaku's articles):

"At the end of it all, you didn't feel all-powerful or even like you always did the right thing. You just felt wrung out. A lot more like real war-and real life-than other action games."

At times in the game, I didn't like what I was doing. There were some decisions you have to make that are tough to make and I didn't like the outcome of either. I understand why this game does what it does, and that is to give a glimpse at what actual war is like. I also understand that it is impossible to capture what actual war is like within a video game, but I'm fairly sure that war isn't fun and at the end of it you definitely don't feel like celebrating.

I suggest you give this game a whirl, though. It's not too terribly difficult, and only takes a few hours to complete. It's full of some memorable moments, but be warned there are some fucked up things you do in the game and like I said previously I wasn't comfortable with a lot of it. But that is the feeling the game is supposed to invoke and I believe it's worth it just to experience the game for what it is: an experience.

Gaming Resolutions 2013

I've compiled a list of my gaming resolutions for 2013. These include playing or beating games I haven't played or beaten, to increasing the size of my collection.

1.) Beat Final Fantasy III - I have this weird thing where I don't like playing ports of games, and classic RPGs are a genre I prefer on their original consoles. I've had FF3 for quite a while for my SNES, I just never got around to playing it. Well to be fair I got about 15 hours into the game and for whatever reason I just stopped playing.

2.) Actually Play Resident Evil 6 - I bought this game to play with my friend Bryan, and we just haven't had a chance to play it together yet. The newer generation of RE games are multiplayer-centric games, so it's best to play with a friend. I'm not sure if I will like the game, so we shall see. As I've mentioned before, RE is my absolute favorite game franchise so I hold each games to a very high standard.

3.) Resist breaking the Halo 4 disc - I need to beat this fucking game. I am playing on Legendary and I am too stubborn to knock it down a peg to Heroic. I'm stuck on a part that is just absolutely insane, and I'm not really stoked about it. Multiplayer is pretty fuckin' fun when Ier am on a roll.

4.) Finally play Max Payne 3 - I've never actually played the first Max Payne game, but I beat Max Payne 2 and loved it. I've been waiting for this game for a long while, and finally nabbed it for $15 on Steam. Can't wait to dig into this thing!

5.) Fear Alma a third time in FEAR 3 / F3AR / F34R /Whatever - I loved  the first two Fear games, and I was waiting for this game to be had for peanuts on Steam and I grabbed it for $5. Hopefully it's as good as the first two, because I really liked both of those games.

6.) Break my mouse clicking shit in Torchligh II - I need to actually finish this thing! TII is an incredibly fun 'click-on-stuff-til-it-dies' game that I can't recommend enough! I am quite a ways into it, I just need to hunker down and do the damn thing!

7.) Beat Skyrim...eventually - I still haven't completed this thing yet, and it is old! It really hasn't hit me as much as Oblivion and I don't really know why I am so indifferent to beating it at this point. Still need to see it through. I did scoop up Morrowind for like $4 on Steam recently, and I want to give it a whirl. I need to look up some mods for it.

8.) Get level 50 in Borderlands 2 - I fucking love this game. I beat it tonight, well I completed the Story and unlocked True Vault Hunter mode. I'm level 33 right now, but I really want to get level 50 and get the DLC. BL2 is such a solid fucking game, I don't really have any qualms with it. It's challenging and a boat load of fun. Things get incredibly hard at some points, but you just hunker down, blast some bandits and have a ball. Can't wait to play through the DLCs.

9.) Not cry about the lack of future Professor Layton games - I won't be able to pull this one off.

10.) Get a Super Famicom - So I can play Shutokou Battle 94. That is seriously the only reason I really want one. Oh yeah and Japanese Super Metroid.

11.) Get an Atari or Intellivision - I need to get into collecting for vintage consoles, the oldest system I collect for is the NES.

12.) Figure out how to make YouTube videos without looking like a tool - Still have no idea what sort of format to make video game videos. I definitely want to do it.

That's really all I got so far. Right now I'm really looking forward to more Borderlands 2 and finally getting a crack at Final Fantasy 3.