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Last report the demo was pretty unplayable on my system. Well, I dropped the resolution to a tasty 1024×680 and dropped almost all the sliders to low and managed to get enough FPS to make it passable as a game and not a slideslow. I cranked through the demo pretty easily after that.

I must say, as a game the things looks awesome. The atmosphere, the music, the environmental audio cues, the voicing, it’s all top notch sound work. The graphics I can’t really judge given my low-end system, but what I could see looked very very nice. I can’t imagine the game on an SLI Vista system with DirectX 10 — the shaders have to be downright amazing.

I’m probably going to buy the game, likely on Steam, but not until I have some time to play it. I’m concerned about playing it on the low end system I have today — I may wait for a system upgrade to give it another shot. Several have reported that it does well on a MacBook Pro with the 8600 GT so that might be my out come October when Leopard is released. I’m in no rush, it’s a single player campaign so no big deal there. Plus, I plan to get the Orange Box as well (on Steam, of course) for TeamFortress 2 — a game that demands a mouse/keyboard for the best action.

Oh, on that note, Steam has a new video “The Soldier” available to watch. It’s pretty hilarious. I can’t wait for Team Fortress 2 — it’s been so long and the gameplay looks awesome so far!

I downloaded and played the BioShock PC Demo last night. I have to say, on my GeForce 6800 Ultra the game is pretty much unplayabled. Looking around the game looks awesome, clear graphics and wonderful color saturation. The mood is downright eerie and it feels just right.

But even with the settings really gimped, it’s just not playable. I managed to get through some of the assisted tutorial sections without much trouble but any turning around or moving quickly is just a lag fest waiting for the hardware to catch up. I found a review at AMDZone talking about performance on high-end hardware and it is no surprise why my system can’t keep up.  If the current top of the line cards struggle with it, I’m just not going to get anywhere with it.

Beautiful game though. I can’t imagine the image quality will come through on DX9 7xxxx series hardware like is found in the XBOX360 though. My guess is it will look the best on the PC but likely sell the most copies on the 360.

The new Guitar Hero installment arrived today!

I fired up the new game, got a chuckle at the CGA color scheme, and jumped into career mode at medium difficulty. Knocked out enough songs on each tier to unlock the encore and next level, got 5 stars on almost every song I played, and finished out medium in just over two hours!

So is the game over? Not even close. Once I finish out the remaining songs on medium that I skipped (you only need 3 out of 4 tracks for each level except the last one), I’ll make sure they’re all 5-star and unlock some extra guitar (I already unlocked the coffin and PRO Face-Off Mode).

Then it’s down to business, hard in Career mode. I knocked out a few tracks on Hard, and the songs play a lot faster than they do in medium, so they changed the song tempo between medium and hard in this installment of the game. Very tricky indeed. Some of the riffs are really fast, so it’s going to take some time to complete hard mode I’m sure.

Overall, the game is a great addition of new songs that should keep me busy until:

• Guitar Hero III
• BioShock
• Unreal Tournament 3
• Team Fortress 2 (part of HL2: Orange Box)
• Quake Wars
• Gears of War for Windows

Why does it seem like the PC gaming market completely exploded this year compared to the non-stop barrage of Call of Duty, Battlefield, and other war simulations? E307 was insane for Windows games this year, and the XBOX Live to Windows Games tie in is going to be a sweet deal as well.

Game on!

With the media hype of E307 pretty much done, I figured I would offer my glimpse into what is coming soon that I think is cool.

Windows Gaming is definitely on the way back to popular. With the launch of Games for Windows Live, Microsoft is taking what they know well (XBOX Live) and making it available for PC Games. Very cool (and about damn time if you ask me). Anyone remember DirectPlay? What a joke. Being able to load up your GamerTag into Windows games (and in some cases even play between platforms in the same game) should be pretty cool if game companies are willing to pay for the privilege.

Single player titles are always popular, and BioShock looks to be the best single-player MDK (murder-death-kill) title. The story is always the same (how did I get here, I’m super human, I’ve got a big ol’ gun, and now I need to kill everything that moves to survive), but the style, the graphics, the atmosphere if you will, is downright stunning. With no multiplayer, however, chalk up another play and pitch title for Windows.

Half Life 2: Episode 2, and more importantly Team Fortress 2 is making way for release as early as September. And if the trailer videos are anything to support it, this games looks like it is the real deal. The real Team Fortress that I used to love and play daily making its way into a new game engine. TFC on the original Half Life was crap IMHO, it completely lost of the feel of the original game. This new version with the new engine and graphics looks stunning. I’m glad they went the Pixar route of character animation instead of the trademark Half-Life realism. TF is about fun, who cares about the graphics if the physics and gameplay are crap. Let’s hope the orange box does not disappoint. All this talk almost makes me want to fire up glQuake and the original TF just for old times sake. 1,492 FPS anyone?

HALO 3 looks like a turd, only pure fans of the genre would want to play this crap — again. It’s such a dated genre, like playing DOOM 2 and still thinking it is cool. Go away!

Guitar Hero III will obviously join my collection in what I consider one of the best games to hit the consoles ever. More songs will add to the playlist of the awesome game, along with new multiplayer action-game style power ups to disrupt your opponent while trying to bang out the hardest parts of Pearl Jam, Guns and Roses, and more. Wikipedia has the known song list, so check it for updated info.

While I trash HALO 3, I’m actually looking forward to Unreal Tournament 3. For some reason, Unreal was always way-so-much-cooler than the DOOM line of games. The first version, while plagued with enormous maps and insufficient network bandwidth, was still gorgeous to watch while playing. UT2004 is a game I still play off and on when I want some pure one-on-one kill action. While I’m not sure I’ll actually buy this title, I may buy it when I get a MacBook Pro, just to support gaming on the platform. It uses Cider to emulate Win32 on the Mac, but early testers say the performance is equal to Windows with the same hardware. We shall see.

Rockband, while I’ll give it chops for being a complete multiplayer experience, I’m going to have to pass. I rarely have time to hook up three friends to cover the backup parts to my serious guitar wailing, I can’t sing (ask my wife), and I don’t need to play fake drums to hear noise (I have kids for that). So while I’m sure there will be some party playability with this title, the up-front requirements are probably more than I care to invest for a once a quarter experience.

I didn’t see a whole lot of driving titles out there that really got me excited. The eventual GT5 might be cool, if it ever ships. I’m wondering if the Logitech G25 is just waiting for a game like that to come around to hit critical mass. So far, LFS with a mouse seems to cure my racing bug when it hits, but the STI takes care of most of it just during the morning commute.

Did I miss anything?

The official release date for this title is now July 24th. I’ve got my pre-order in at Amazon Prime, and hopefully it will show up on time or close enough to it.

Looking forward to some sweet new songs! So far, the confirmed list includes:

1. Opening Licks

• “Holy Diver” – Dio
• “We Got the Beat” – The Go-Go’s
• “No One Like You” – Scorpions
• “Metal Health” – Quiet Riot (Encore)

2. Amp Warmers

• “Nothin’ But a Good Time” – Poison
• “I Wanna Rock” – Twisted Sister
• “Turning Japanese” – The Vapors
• “Hold on Loosely” – 38 Special (Encore)

3. String Snappers

• “Lonely is the Night” – Billy Squier
• “Synchronicity II” – The Police
• “Heat of the Moment” – Asia
• “Shakin’” – Eddie Money
• “Bathroom Wall” – Faster Pussycat (Encore)

4. Return of the Shred

• “Round and Round” – Ratt
• “Wrathchild” – Iron Maiden
• “I Ran (So Far Away)” – A Flock of Seagulls
• “What I Like About You” – The Romantics (Encore)

5. Relentless Riffs

• “Radar Love” – White Lion
• “Play With Me” – Extreme
• “The Warrior” – Scandal
• “Balls to the Wall” – Accept
• “Caught in a Mosh” – Anthrax (Encore)

6. Furious Fretwork

• “Seventeen” – Winger
• “18 and Life” – Skid Row
• “Only a Lad” – Oingo Boingo
• “Ballroom Blitz” – Krokus (Encore)

Looking good so far!

Looks like another installment of the great Guitar Hero franchise is coming next month!

Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80′s

It’s only for the PS2, but I would bet the XBOX 360 version gets the option to buy the songs as downloads over XBOX LIVE.

I guess I never mentioned this before, maybe I thought I would go back sometime, but EQ2 is dead to me.

I quit playing really around September/October of 2006. I tried out the expansion, but it was weak and I had zero time to play the game. I finally canceled my account and called it quits for good. Aimelia was fun to play. From the start to 50, then to 60, then to 70, the game was great. 50-70 was really the best, joining Mob Squad and taking down some of the hardest encounters in the game was pure joy.

While there are new games (Vanguard: SOH, World of Warcraft), I just can’t justify another grind just for the same thing again. EQ2 had some magic and I enjoyed it far more than EQ1. I just can’t see doing that again, at least not at this point in my life.

I’ll keep the signature generator going (if it even still works) as long as it isn’t broken but if it breaks again, it’s likely to be removed. Sony has their own now anyway.

So long and farewell SOE, I assure you my wife hasn’t missed you one bit.

Based on the inventory this past weekend (even yesterday) and the complete lack of quality software, I’m going to have to declare the PS3 the turd of 2006. Yes, it gets the Turd of the Year award for a totally flubbed product launch. Quality control issues, zero availability, lame software releases, and lack of innovation are the likely suspects on this unpolished turd.

I went into Best Buy yesterday and there was a stack of 60GB units, just sitting there. A guy was guarding them, but looked really bored. Nobody was buying them, zero interest on the floor. I asked if they had any Wiis in stock — nope. So much for the PS3 and the overhyped launch. I guess people are still happy with their PS2 console (I know we played ours over the weekend).

Maybe they’ll get it right in a couple of years, or maybe they will just end up eating a lot of expense to make it a usable system. Right now, I see zero attraction to get one and I really wanted one when I heard about it. Now I’m just like, meh, what’s the use.