Salintheus

Australian Game Charts:

Top 10 PC Games (over A$20)
1. The Sims 2
2. The Sims 2: Bon Voyage
3. The Sims 2: Ikea Stuff
4. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
5. The Sims 2: Seasons
6. The Sims 2: Open for Business
7. World of Warcraft
8. The Sims 2: Pets
9. World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade
10. World of Warcraft: Battlechest

HAHAHA.

Well, its been just over a week since I built my computer and so far it is going swimmingly.  No major errors or crashes, just a couple of programs misbehave.
My Dell 24″ screen arrived a couple of days ago and it is brilliant. I recommend you all buy one!

I have also become slightly addicted to Steam and have bought 5 games off of it now. Luckily it doesn’t count to our internet limit because that is very low for the amount of time left in the billing month. The only problem with Steam is that it needs many many more games! But I shall never cease buying the physical products of games because I seem to keep finding many bargains at the moment. I found the limited edition version of Tabula Rasa for $20AU (I also found the ZBoard keyset for it for $15AU!!) and I also found Blue Dragon for $20. I love bargain games!! I think I also got AoE3 for $15AU.

I actually finished F.E.A.R a couple of nights ago. The ending is a tad cheesy and predictable but still awesome. I’ve started on the expansion, Extraction Point, but haven’t played it too much but so far its rather fun, more scarey but also more cheesy.
One of the games I bought off Steam was Painkiller. I downloaded the demo just before the game was released but never played it but $9.99AU for it and the expansion was too hard to pass up. Mindless shooters are so much fun…..and mindless!!
Stepping away from shooters I installed Supreme Commander. This on full bore graphics at 1920 x 1200 is the most amazing looking RTS ever. Pity I suck at it Just need to play it some more and stop leaving the game speed at +10.

(HA, just did two Mac shortcuts in a row that didn’t do anything!)

The last game here is Lord Of The Rings: Shadows Of Angmar. I finally got around to trying it after I saw that game cards were $10AU a month. Seems like a reasonable price for an MMO. So, I downloaded it and created a trial account. My friend had warned me that it was a terrible MMO but I wanted to prove him wrong. I couldn’t. It is just.so.very.boring! That is all I shall say on the matter. Luckily this friend found UT3 boring as well and so gave me his copy! Much joy was had!

If you are wondering about why I’m playing quite a few old games, its because I have to catch up. I stopped gaming for a few years and now I want to catch up on what I missed out on. Simple. Shit, still got to finish Doom 3.

I have Mass Effect and CoD4 on their way in the post. Both PC versions of course

Branching away from gaming now, onto applications. Firstly, after 4 days of iTunes on this computer, I got sick of it and looked for alternatives. My favourite is the badly named aTunes. It runs better then iTunes, plays ALL formats and is skinnable. Whats not to like?

I have also got myself into streaming TV. I have been playing around with Miro, Adobe Media Player and a couple of sites. Although I much rather prefer to download whole episodes over torrent, this is a quick(er) and less bandwidth consuming option. The main reason I have been doing this is because my brother asked me if it was possible to view streaming Internet TV via a 360. To this I responded no but then my curiosity got the better of me. I found one program, Orb, which seems to do that job albeit with a very low success rate. Tversity is supposed to do it also but that has failed. Overall, its not really worth trying to stream Internet TV with your 360.

Ahh yes, in other news, the night after I had finished my computer, my Macbook Pro died. Well, it didn’t die in the traditional sense but it hangs at boot on a black screen. Power on the logic board may be screwed me thinks. Kind of annoying, I have a lot of stuff on there that I really need to access including 5 years worth of songs I have written. Lets hope Apple aren’t pricks about this.

Music now. While writing this I was listening to Daylight Dies’ “Lost To The Living” album. Pretty good doom. One band you should check out is Vehementer Nos. They are French black metal that kicks some arse. Also they are somewhat progressive by having massive acoustic passages.

Well, this was one massive post. I can’t be bothered tagging it and its something past 2AM.

Well, I finally got around to buying and building my new computer.
The parts are a lot different to what I said they would but oh so much better.

The biggest change:  My bandwagon switch from Nvidia to ATi.  But it was totally worth it.

Specs:

Asus Rampage Formula Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450
Corsair 4GB 1066Mhz PC-8500 DDR2
Powercolor ATi HD4870
OCZ GameXStream 850W PSU
Samsung 750GB 7200RPM HDD
LG DVD-RW SATA
Coolermaster Stacker 830SE

ZBoard
Logitech MX Revolution
Logitech Z-2300 THX Speakers

Thats pretty much it.  So far no problems and it is no super loud like I thought it was going to be.
HOORAY!

Edvard Grieg:
His final words were “Well, if it must be so.”
He was buried: In a tomb in the side of a mountain!

And then all of a sudden, I finished Eternal Sonata.
But as per usual, I got barely of the acheivements.

I’m kind of saddened that I’ve finished it because you generate such a liking to the characters throughout. Oh well, maybe I should play it all again on New Game + mode.