Mashing buttons since 1984
… about the Carnival of Gamers #4!
The Place: Cathode Tan
The Host: Josh of Cathode Tan
The Submission Email: carniegrue AT gmail dot com
Make sure you get your entries to Josh ASAP! I’ve got something I’m working on but I’m not sure it will be ready for the Carnival, so I may have to comb through the archives for something this time around.
Hopefully everyone in the good old US of A had a great Fourth of July! I took a little break from video games this weekend, it was rather nice. But it’s back to the old grind tomorrow (both at work and in Guild Wars).
Wouldn’t it be great if Independence Day was actually Independence Week?! Man that would be flippin’ sweet.
I’m always about two weeks behind on my Penny-Arcade reading, so I just came across this one tonight:
Absolutely hilarious. So my golf fantasies have come full-circle: I checked my Yahoo Fantasy Golf League (yes, Virginia, there is Fantasy Golf), played a round of Shot-Online, got my Penny-Arcade golf comic fix, and in about six and a half hours, I’ll be hitting the links with some friends (and fellow-buttonmashers) for a round of early morning golf. I should be asleep right now but I’m too giddy with anticipation.
Golf is life!
I may be going out on a limb saying this, but I would imagine the majority of you readers are not playing Shot-Online, the greatest Golf MMORPG EVAR. That being said, if by some chance you are playing (or have played in the past) Shot-Online, then you’ll be pleased to know that “Season 2” has launched. The website has been redesigned and there’s a whole new client to download. I downloaded and played a round of golf but I didn’t notice too many changes.
The game is still free, but you can always throw PayPal money (it’s fake, like Monopoly money, right?) at them and buy in-game items from the store. I’m all for them trying to make their money this way, but I’d rather earn my items the old-fashioned way — grinding through hundreds of rounds of golf. Call me a glutton for cyber-punishment, but if I can’t grind, I ain’t playing.
So far I haven’t played a round of golf with other players yet. I’m still a lowly level 6 golfer with no game to speak of. It’s depressing to have my all-time longest drive be 207 yards. And that’s when it was sunny and a 10 MPH wind at my back. I figure once I get up around level 10 or so I’m going to give the whole multiplayer thing a try. But for now, I still think Shot-Online is a pretty fun game, especially the free part.
If you are, and you’re a console gamer, you need to know about this. You may have to register to access this. In a nutshell, there’s a huge list of games that will be on sale ($9.99 a pop) next week at Circuit City. If I can beat the hoarders to my local CCs, there’s a couple games I’d like to get my hands on (Baten Kaitos, F Zero, Riddick)
Want to know how to make a little square piece of silicon absolutely worthless? Process it to contain 63 million transistors (say, to be a GeForce 4 Ti 4200 core), each pumping electrons to-and-fro, allow this switching to heat up the silicon really hot and then make sure the fan on the heatsink is broken. This should ruin all those submicron oxide layers and other tiny features and make your GPU a piece of worthless silicon. Which is what exactly happened to my trusty ASUS VT9280. It was quite a workhorse, even though it was at the low-end of the GeForce 4 cards. It served me well for almost 3 years, so I can’t complain too much. The little fan pumped as much as it could but lately I had noticed it was sounding a bit louder than normal. Then last night it went ka-put, dying a horrible, sizzling death. It has shaded its last pixel and verticed its last vertex. A moment of silence, if you please.
Thank you.
I guess I should see this as somewhat of a boon. This gives me a chance to upgrade to a better card and not feel guilty (or feel the proverbial heat from the buttonWife, since she uses the PC, too). I decided not to go all out on the new card, but I didn’t skimp either. I’m still an nVidia guy, so I’m sticking with the family with a new EVGA e-GeForce 6600 GT. The card is a bit old but I think it will suffice just fine. I’m not running DOOM3 at insane resolutions, I just want to get back to some Guild Wars. I’m going through withdrawls and I need a fix. Lucky for me, I snagged a good deal on the card and I’m excited about my new hardware. It’s like my birthday or something.
I didn’t get around to installing it tonight but hopefully this time tomorrow I’ll be running around Ascalon, powered by my new trusty 6600 GT.
Went and saw Batman Begins tonight and I must agree with the consesus — it’s GOOD. It takes a while to get going but it really hums once the movie finds its pace. I was a little wary of Christian Bale being cast as the next Batman, and at first I thought he looked a little off, but seeing him in the mask, he just looked right. Keaton looked right. Kilmer and Clooney did not (certainly not Clooney).
The casting was great. Gary Oldman is one of my favorite actors and he plays his part so well. Freeman and Caine were great. Neeson was a bit of a stretch, but that is forgivable. People are panning Katie Holmes but I thought there was just enough of her – that is to say not a lot. The guy that plays the Scarecrow was pretty creepy.
I give it a thumbs up. Action was fast and chaotic, not mechanical and choreographed. Nothing felt hokey, it felt real. It was a great movie and a great foundation to who Batman is. Now there is depth to Bruce Wayne’s past, but I’m a little confused. I don’t know the whole Batman mythos but it was my understanding that Jack Napier (aka The Joker) killed Bruce’s parents. Well, that appears to not be the case in Batman Begins. I’m so confused… can anyone clear this up?
Update: Wikipedia sheds some light on the Joe Chill/Jack Napier issue. (Thanks, Amit!)
This news of AMD taking Intel to court is getting lots of air-time everywhere. I’m personally an AMD guy, I’ve used them in all my PC builds (Full Disclosure: I also own AMD stock) so I’m excited and nervous about this news. Excited, because I’d love to see AMD continue to grow. It’d be great to see a Dell without an “Intel Inside” sticker on it. I’d love to see the company I have a vested interest in succeed on a larger scale. But this makes me nervous because AMD may alienate the people it wants future business from.
Nevertheless, reading some of this case does make it look like something is amiss with Intel’s “practices”:
AMD’s complaint lists examples of what it characterizes as bribes, threats or intimidation by Intel involving 12 computer makers, nine distributors and 17 retailers.
One example noted that Gateway paid a hefty price for its limited dealings with AMD, with its executives conceding that Intel “had beaten them into guacamole.”
and
In discussions about buying from AMD, “Dell executives have frankly conceded that they must financially account for Intel retribution in negotiating pricing from AMD,” the suit alleges.
This will be interesting to watch because the ramifications are huge.
One thing that should be pointed out is that this AMD/Intel bickering has been going on for a while, here in the US and overseas. Intel may already be trouble in Japan, and possibly the EU, too. The case here in the States isn’t something that just happened out of the blue.
I hope AMD has a solid, legitimate case. Crying “Intel isn’t playing fair!” because they feel they are losing ground is something I hope they’re not doing. Life, especially in a free market, isn’t fair. But, and that’s a big but, if Intel isn’t “playing fair” they should be held responsible, within the bounds of the law.
Everyone has that “Why didn’t I think of that” moment when they see someone have unbelievable success with an obvious invention or turn something sweet and simple into a business model. I actually thought about doing something similar to what Replacement Docs is doing. This site is a boon for anyone who’s rented a game from Blockbuster or Hollywood Video and had to mash buttons (something I’m a fan of) just to figure out the jump or the attack button. Well, mash buttons no more!
I still rememeber renting Super Nintendo games at the local video store and they’d include either the real instruction manual or a photo copy of it. That is almost non-existent now. My grocery store has a video store attached and they include the manuals to their game rentals, but this is a rare occurence now. I know so many games now have pretty extensive tutorials at the beginning of the game, so you get the idea of the controls anyway but I still like having the physical manual. Simple things like the art work and the little details enhance the experience far more than you can get from an in-game tutorial or GameFAQs (which is still a great resource, too). Even though Replacement Docs offers PDF files it’s still are great find.
I really appreciate sites that take the time to support the gaming community like these. They deserve our support in return.
Shot-Online – I’ve been hearing about this Golf MMORPG (Golf?!) out of Korea a bunch lately (I read about it first at Wonderland months ago) so I decided to download it and give it a try. It’s laughably translated but looks decent and it’s Golf RPG, what more do I need to say? I haven’t played a full round yet but I’m been playing with the practice options and I’m liking it so far.
Up Next:
Fate – I’ve been hearing so many good things about Fate that I decided to give it a try. It’s sitting on my hard drive right now but I’ll be getting around to it soon.