Friday, June 8, 2007

Memory and BF2142

So I plunked some more memory into my box a few days ago, upgrading from 1GB to 2GB. I'd like to take BF2142 out for a spin and see if I can run it in something higher than the absolute lowest settings possible. I've seen vids (e.g. Squadplay which has some great fun fraps of casual but organized play) which show how gorgeous the game can look, and I've heard memory is one of the big sticking points (anything under 2GB gives it problems). So I dug around for my disk and loaded it up.

The good news is I can run it in significantly higher resolutions, the bad news is the patch process crapped out, so while it, for the most part, runs, it registers as a modded version of the game, so I can't log into any of my old regular servers. So I think I'll have to do a full reinstall to get it working, which means I might just hold out until I move the system to Vista (what the memory was actually for, honest).

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Recap

As everyone needs to come from somewhere, here's the brief history of what I've been up to for the last year or so gaming-wise.

About a year ago I started to put down Guild Wars which I'd been playing for at least a year or so. While I enjoyed it, and I still think it's one of the better looking mmo's about, a less than active guild, limited pve content, end game that's pretty much limited to HoH (at least when I played), and a number of choices in the mechanics of Factions that really annoyed me made it hard to keep slogging away. (If they hadn't forced you to find a group before you joined a faction battle, that alone might have kept me)

Around the same time I also tried WoW during the bundled one month period as I was going to be on the road for a month or two away from home but with internet access and a low workload (it was a lame duck period at my old firm, still getting paid but not much getting done), which is kind of the gaming equivalent of trying crack cocaine because you're having a dull weekend.

Also around the same period I worked my way through Dreamfall, the sequel to The Longest Journey. While not quite as ridiculously good as the first, it's a good game for the most part, with the two caveats that a) the fights suck and feel shoehorned in, and b) it's very much part two of a three part story (much more than TLJ felt like part one of three). I'm willing to get over that if they get around to putting out part three pretty darn soon.

With a couple server hops (Malorne (lag/server issues) to Zuluhed (server pop death) to Altar of Storms) and toon changes (shaman shaman mage priest) I settled down with WoW and finally got past the 30s, put down GW pretty much for good, and completed Dreamfall. That took me through til late 05 and a new laptop. Then, full of myself and my new hardware I picked up BF2142 and NWN2.

I'm not really a huge fps type, I was an awful twitch gamer growing up, but they've grown on me, and I think BF2142 was the thing I'd been looking for for a while. Nice setting, unlocks to keep you occupied, squads, different roles, objectives, and non-instant respawns, I was sold. Finding a good server makes all the difference, but I found the Tactical Gamer server at just the right time.

NWN2 was a different story. I liked the original, a lot. Modules kept it alive for me long after it should have lost all interest. NWN2 however is a shockingly badly made piece of software, and runs appallingly. Combined with some issues on my hardware end of things meant I got maybe 30m into the game before I mothballed it. I'm hoping to go back to it at some point, but I'm not hopeful.

BF2142 and WoW took me through until the WoW x-pack release, at which point a reroll to shaman on alliance side meant a 70 level grind to catch up to guildmates which eat what time was going to BF. Also in the meantime I'd gone from nubby loner with occasional pvp urges, to regular raider, to class officer, to full officer, with occasional stops off in raid leader positions. Full MC and BWL clears, Twin Emps kills, 7 Naxx bosses, and some BC server firsts all followed, along with various server and guild dramas.

So now I'm here, working on Serpentshrine, and one of the holdouts in a increasingly embattled class (It's not QQ all the time, but let's be honest, playing a shaman these days is mostly about adjusting for the latest set of class nerfs) . I'm almost sure I'm one of two raiding shams on our server that don't run resto.

I'm looking into Vista upgrades both to try to sort out some chronic problems with the graphics on my machine, and to get myself ready for the Vista only Shadowrun (which gets double points for being an innovative shooter of the kind I like, and catering to the inner tabletop geek in me), I just hope the (reportedly) craptacular Live for Windows doesn't burn me. I'm also looking ahead at Bioshock, Fallout 3, and Tabula Rasa (which I'd like to see do well, but suspect might disappear quietly into the night), and personally suspecting to be underwhelmed by the performance of Warhammer and AoC.

So now that's out of the way, I should probably start talking about more recent stuff.