ShadowReality

Well all my new components came for my new computer upgrade in their new shiny boxes, even the motherboard box was decorated in funky holograms (too pristine for a mobo box in my opinion). It felt like Christmas opening up all the boxes, filled with “new” smells, instruction manuals, installation manuals, Driver CDs and all manner of cables.

The new graphics card has a beast of a heatsink on it to keep it cool so if that is anything to go by I’m sure it’s going to be pretty fast, i’m not sure which game I am going to test with it first, then I opened up the Power Supply only to find it was in a very strange bag.. another over packaged piece of electronics equipment in my mind.

I don’t know when they decided to add all this unnecessary snazzy packaging, I feel i somehow could of bought these things cheaper without the sock bag.
In any case I went about installing it all bit by bit, held my breath and hit that power button and it surged into life, a single short beep of the internal speaker tells me I havn’t fucked up and i go about installing the OS only to find the new hardrive just will not format.

After messing around for several hours afterwards I finally came to the sad truth of the matter that I would have to send back the hardrive for a replacement thus putting me off having my new system complete for a couple of days, drat!

My new PC upgrade parts are arriving soon, and so I thought I would document this process so I know how annoying it is to do to discourage me from potentially doing this in the future. So.. Old PC, Motherboard is DEAD, upgrading, lets get it ready.

How not to remove a motherboard.

First off I had to remove all the PCI cards, that’s easily enough my case is pretty screw-less and everything clips out easily. These included:

Nvidia 5500 AGP card - it was having memory problems so that’s being replaced
56k modem card - i don’t think I’ll be re-installing that
Sound blaster Audigy 2 ZX sound card - which I will more than likely be re-installing due to the digital inputs and surround sound.
A strange extra port that plugs direct into the motherboard, looks like a joystick port.

Next up, I removed all the motherboard screw.. or at least tried to. Unfortunately there is always 1 bastard that refuses to come lose, so after several minutes of trying to get this out instead I opt for finding something to eat.. perhaps I’m just lacking the nourishment to get this screw out, yep i’m sure that’s what it is.

Back again, this time armed with some needle nosed pliers I attack my new adversary, however it has equipped itself with a defense, and that is a pure circular circumference, +0 DMG from pliers, DAMN YOU SCREW… I try the screwdriver once more as if the screw had somehow changed.. it had not.

So thus i reached the conclusion, since the motherboard is dead and of no use to anyone anymore, why not just rip it out, so using brute force and a hammer I went about freeing the motherboard from the evil screw who held it hostage, however this screw is above average as just as i thought it was coming loose it killed my old crappy hammer. CRITICAL HIT!
Bah I needed a new hammer anyway, but mark my words screw.. your going down..

While all this was going down, the onlooker seemed alarmed that I might be going crazy. Fear not, I eventually got the motherboard out.

And so finally the case has been emptied, and dusted and ready for the new bits.. so a cautionary tale for anyone doing this sort of thing, make sure you have the right tools.

Around a couple months back my main motherboard snap, crackled and popped its way into the afterlife, and this week the temporary PC I am using has really been kicking up a fuss and feels like it’s about to bite the big one too, so I have been looking into getting my upgrade done ASAP.

I Intend to go for a nice Intel Core 2 Duo E2180, should be a nice improvement over my last one but the whole process of picking out components has been rather annoying since pc tech has recently made quite a leap forward little did I know.

On many of the new motherboards the double IDE slots are now being replaced by 4 SATA slots for improved performance and speed (1 IDE port remains), so where as before i had 2 DVD drives and a Hardrive, i would now need to either drop a DVD or go for a new HDD (which I indeed went for due to thier low cost and greatly improved speeds).

Not only that but AGP slots are also on the way out making way for the PCI-Express instead, so I can’t make do with my old gfx card, a new one must be obtained (still deciding on that).

All this makes me very sad, but I have really been squeezing in some good components at the lowest price.. and leaving an option to later either overclock or upgrade to better very easily.

Ok, so maybe Tremulous didn’t get your attention but this one might as well. And i know what you’re thinking. Oooooo, I have css and cod4, why the hell do i need this! Well, to tell you the truth, i really have no idea but here it goes.

Urban Terror is yet another mod gone standalone game built with the Quake 3 arena engine. The basic idea of the game is much similar to any other FPS. Game modes are literally just TD and CTF. What’s really cool is that at the beginning of the round(of course you can select your guns)you get to get a lot of cool equipment for yourself such as a silencer for your weapons, tactical goggles to see in the dark as well as spot enemies, a laser sight, or simply just some extra ammunition. The gameplay is really fun too. There are a lot of neat tricks you can do in the game. You can slide across the floor, walljump, and you can climb up a ledge thats higher than where you are standing.

Some negative points about the game is the actual fps gameplay. It is extremely easy to get kills in this game. There is extremely low recoil so every shot is going to be spot-on and shooting while moving is accurate also. Now this might sound cool because, “Ooh now i can pwn some noobzors” but “pwning some noobzors” isn’t really all that fun when you do it every darn game.

Other than that, Urban Terror is a pretty fun game, and if you’ve been bored with your other FPS’s recently, this is definetly the #1 pick.

Download Link: http://www.urbanterror.net/

As of right now my Gamerscore is 9988, and I’m pretty psyched about passing the 10,000 barrier. But there’s just one stain on my record, no not king king.. it goes my the name of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3.

Most games generally give achievements ending in a zero or five, however UKM3 gives it in 11s , or 12s, and since I havn’t beaten the game yet I am 12 points off my target, well no more I say! Next month i’m going to work on getting that stain off my record, i’m going to train like Rocky and kick ass like the Karate Kid, and then I will win.. CUE THE MUSIC!!

So I have not yet decided on what achievement will push me over the barrier, but I won’t make it something cheap like undertow, I’m stil plowing through Call Of Duty 4 on veteran, and just past one of the hardest parts (”One Shot, One Kill” at the ferris wheel) so it might be that.

Already 2008 seems to be blistering past, and I’m really enjoying playing all the games from last year still, however I feel Easter and the months after are going to bring some great games so I am trying my hardest to get some of the older ones out of the way. The main one being Mass Effect, I still haven’t played more than 8 hours into it and with CoD4 distracting me it has been tough (on my 4th Prestige now).

Too make things worse I have been getting rather excited about the new variety map pack coming out for it this spring featuring 4 new multilayer maps Creek Hill, Killhouse, Chinatown and Broadcast. So i have decided to cancel my rental service next month and get my older games completed, another incentive is that I’m really close to getting past the 10,000 gamerscore which is going to be a nice feeling.

Anyway, I am off to have a quick game of Call of Duty 4..

Yay there’s another one!

Recently I picked up N+ on XBLA and have been playing it a whole lot, so much in fact I wrote a review of the the game over at NooBTooB which you can read here.

Whilst I am yet to complete the 250 single player levels, the co-op aspect is really great, and especially given the fact that they have included in a level editor so you can share your level creations online and play them with your friends.

Hopefully this is the start of user shared content over XBox Live, and I hope to see more games feature things like level editors as it brings so much more fun to the table.

N+ is a successor to N, a flash based game. Whilst it is not as feature packed as N+ , it is however free and you can go download this game right now.

Tremulous is an open source, free fps based on the Quake III Arena engine. It is completely stand-alone and does not require the original game to play. What’s even more interesting is that this game plays much like the HL1 mod, Natural Selection in the way that there are humans on one team, alien bug-like creatures on the other, and structures can be built. The developers also do a very good job of providing excellent balance between the two teams. Even though the aliens are extremely fast, they still have very weak armor and will fall to even the smallest of guns. The humans have projectile weapons but hitting the fast moving aliens requires a bit of work especially against the cockroach aliens which can barely be seen. I played this game a while back and it’s really fun and you should give it a try. Especially Smokey cuz he’s been having crappy pc problems and he should have something to play.

http://www.tremulous.net/