PeteRoy

Valve has become greedy with Steam

2011-12-20T01:52:00.000-08:00

Steam, Valve's innovative store to buy games for download, during it's inception Valve was invovled in a legal fight with their greedy publisher Sierra owned by Vivendi, at the time Valve appeared as the small developer fighting the big greedy corporation for the right to get their fair share of the profits.

In the beginning of Steam Valve has said it will help small developers sell their games on Steam, finally small developers will have a place to sell their games without having to bare the price of getting involved with a publisher who will take a lot of their profits.

Today it seems Valve has forgetton this philosophy, and once again small developers can't truly get their games on the Steam store.

I know of two examples, S2Games with Heroes of Newerth and Riot with League of Legends, both are free to play games which are on the rise and yet you can't get them on Steam.

Why is that happening? Has Valve become greedy and are blocking uprising developers to compete with Valve's soon to be released Dota 2? Personally I think Heroes of Newerth is a better game than Dota 2, is Valve trying to give Dota 2 an edge to be the only moba game on Steam?

DotA 2 will enjoy Steam large audience and it will be helpful to Dota 2 not to have it's competitors on Steam therefore many players will never know that there are good free alternatives to Dota 2 because many players only know games that are available on Steam.

I made this topic on Steam general discussion and it was deleted after a day without any message to me on why it was deleted.

Valve, Gabe Newell, take a look on what is happening, you have become exactly like Vivendi, doing the same practice they did and also blocking any disucssion about this on your community forums.

Can't get a Dota 2 key? Disappointed in Dota 2? Try HON

2011-12-01T02:37:00.000-08:00

I used to play a lot of DotA, especially the "All Stars" version, it was around 2007, since then I haven't played much this type of games.

I tried League of Legends and never liked it much, when I heard the news about DotA 2 I thought I will give it a try when it comes out.

In September 2011 I heard of Heroes of Newerth, another moba type game that became free to compete with League of Legends, so I downloaded it and I been playing it a lot in the past 3 months.

Heroes of Newerth is a PC only game, and feels like the true successor to the original DotA and it is also a lot better.

I don't like the DotA 2 graphics, it looks too much like a baby cartoon, DotA 2 graphics are very similar to Team Fortress 2 and I never liked TF2 graphics.

Ironically I thought Battlefield 3 will be the game I would spend most of my time playing these months, but BF3 is a huge disappointment.

So, if you are looking for a good game, that requires teamwork, that has VOIP, good graphics, good art, fun gameplay, new content every week, a lot of depth and is PC only (unlike BF3) then try Heroes of Newerth, it's free.

To have a look at the game before downloading you can watch live gameplay video of HON here

If you like HON then you should subscribe to the S2Games YouTube channel, they have hero spotlights videos there which help you learn how to use heroes and introduce new heroes they add.

If you want to see competitve games you then go to http://honcast.com and honcast youtube channel

2011-09-27T09:44:00.000-07:00

POSSIBLE SOLUTION: Run the game in Fullscreen mode instead of Window mode.

Battlefield 3 Open Beta causes my PC to crash in 2-5 minutes into the game, system spec below.
Getting bluescreen error:
STOP: 0x00000116
nvlddmkm.sys
Game: Battlefield 3 Open Beta
Map: Operation Metro
Player: PeteRoy
PC Spec:
CPU: Intel Core i7 920 default speed
RAM: 6GB Triple channel
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 with 285.38 driver
OS: Windows Vista SP2 64-bit

http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/battlefield-3/1430085-beta-computer-crash-2-5-minutes-into-game.html

GTWPS - Modern Warfare 3, Diablo 3 and Rage

2011-09-09T03:42:00.000-07:00

GTWPS = GAMES THAT WILL PROBABLY SUCK

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3, Diablo 3 and Rage are overrated games that will probably suck.

These upcoming games all have in common a big hype, they all come from large companies, Acitivision with Call of Duty, Blizzard with Diablo 3 and Rage from id Software.

Why will Modern Warfare 3 suck?

MW1 and MW2 were made by the developer Infinity Ward, in 2010 Activision fired the 2 heads of Infinity Ward, with them left over 40 developers.
So, to create Modern Warfare 3 Activision has split the work to 3 developers, the new studio Sledgehammer games, Raven Software and whatever was left of Infinity Ward after over 50% of it left the company.

This means Modern Warfare 3 is being developed by people who did not create the past games, and they are also using the already ancient graphic engine that has't change much since 2007.

Also, MW3 looks a bit worse than MW2, the art level is not as good even though it is the same graphic engine.

Why will Diablo 3 suck?

Diablo 3 is also not being made by the original people who created the first 2 games, Blizzard has closed down their "Blizzard North" which created the original 2 games, Diablo 3 was announced in 2008 and even today in 2011 we don't have a release date, the game graphics already look old, Blizzard has also said they dramatically changed how you level up in Diablo 3, you no longer spend attributes and you no longer choose which skill you want to spend points on.

Why will Rage suck?

id Software is creating a game called "Rage" which by name alone sounds weak, the weapons and gameplay are repetitive and boring, the story is weak and has been recycled in games and movies too many times, Rage might have a new id Tech 5 engine but it still doesn't look very good.
While I might be in the minority of people who feel this way, there are others who think the same thing.

Looking at the trailers, all these games look boring and ugly, they all repeat old games, none of them bring new ideas or even impressive new graphics, all these games are being made for the 2006 graphic capabilities of the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 consoles.
Read on:
Why id Software’s RAGE is going to suck
(Supposed) fired Diablo III tester spills beans, calls it "boring"
West, Zampella, EA vs. Activision insight

Livestream videos

2011-08-30T08:28:00.000-07:00

xfire_peteroy on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

Whenever I broadcast using Xfire it will be shown live in the player above.

You can also see past broadcasted videos in this link: http://www.livestream.com/xfire_peteroy/folder

New idea for BF3: Unlisted secret weapons and bases

2011-08-29T08:05:00.000-07:00

I have 2 new ideas for Battlefield 3.

1. "Secret weapons cache", there will be weapons to find and use in unlisted locations on the map, these weapons will not be part of the weapons you can select or unlock before you begin to play.

The weapons will be in an unlisted "secret" location on the map, this location can be randomized so it won't be the same place everytime. In that location you will find a weapons cache with maybe old or rare weapons such as AK47, Galil, Tavor, weapons from WW2, and any other weapon that you cannot use in any other way except to go to that location and pick it up.

2. "Secret bases to capture" in conquest mode, there will be one base or more that are not listed in the map or radar, the only way to find and capture these bases and capture their flag is to find them yourself on foot or vehicle.

Only when you capture the secret base it will appear on the map for the team that captures only, the other team will have to discover that base for themselves.

These bases could contain the "secret weapons cache" and also have vehicles that no other team has, like an old Jet, old tanks, etc. These bases could also be randomized so it won't be in the same place everytime.

Other ideas for Battlefield 3:

Peace negotations
More ideas for Battlefield 3
BF3 has to have a nuke
BF3 must have a commander
BF3 what I want to see

Valve dropped the ball with Counter-Strike

2011-08-27T14:29:00.000-07:00

In 2004 Counter-Strike Source came out with Half-Life 2 source engine, a big visual upgrade from the old Half-Life 1 engine.

Counter-Strike Source was probably the most popular online first person shooter, it had modern weapons and 2 game modes, bomb defuse and hostage rescue.

Since Counter-Strike Source (will call it CSS) came out in 2004 we saw Battlefield 2 and Call of Duty 2 in 2005 which were successful and offered a lot more variety in gameplay compared to CSS, then Call of Duty 4 came out in 2007 and took over CSS as the most popular online FPS game.

Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare is in my opinion where Counter-Strike should have been in 2007 had Valve not dropped the ball and continued to develop it, yet in 2007 Counter-Strike was still stuck with old maps, old visuals, old sound and only 2 game modes. COD4 had everything CSS has and more.

It is easy to judge Valve in hindsight, that they dropped the ball on what could have continued to be the most successful online FPS game, if only had Valve continued to add new content, new game modes, new weapons, they could have been as successful as COD is today, but they let Call of Duty overtake Counter-Strike and now COD is the number 1 selling game.

Now Valve has announced a new game, Counter-Strike Global Offense which will come out in 2012, after looking at the trailer I think that this game will not signal Counter-Strike comeback, Global Offense is using 2004 Source graphic engine, which in 2011 is already dated, also the art level is sub par for todays standards.

Bottom line is, Valve has neglected Counter-Strike and it is not making a comeback with Global Offense in my opinion, it will need to compete with Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3, it doesn't stand a chance.

What's new in Modern Warfare 3?

2011-08-19T08:50:00.000-07:00

I also made a YouTube video

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 is coming out November 2011.

However, despite the fact it been over 4 years since 2007 Call of Duty 4 we are still getting a new game in the COD series that uses a DirectX 9 graphic engine.

To say it simply:

Call of Duty 4 - 2007 - DX9 graphinc engine
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 - 2009 - DX9 graphinc engine
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 - 2011 - DX9 graphinc engine

They all have the same graphics and yet the game price will be 60$ for what is basically the same game with new maps and the continuation of the same story.

One of the problems is of coure the consoles, the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 have the graphic technology from the year 2006.

Let's go through what is new in MW3:

New graphics? No
Large number of players? No
New game modes? No, we get survival (which is exactly the same as zombie).
Vehicles in multiplayer? Probably not (killstreak choppers don't count as usable vehicles).

Also, Infinity Ward, the original developer of Call of Duty is not the same company, most of the people who made the last game have left the company, meaning that Modern Warfare 3 is being made by a developer who has not yet proved it can deliver a good game.

Now compare Modern Warfare 3 to Battlefield 3 which will be released around 2 weeks before MW3 in October 25/27 2011.

Battlefield 3 has:

New graphics? Yes, DirectX 11 graphic engine with destruction
Vehicles? Yes
Large maps? Yes
Large number of players? Yes

Both games haven't come out yet but on paper Battlefield 3 looks like the better choice to spend your time online.

Battlefield 3, 2 new Ideas, Peace and Jet Squad

2011-08-10T17:05:00.000-07:00

1. Peace Negotations

Sometimes for the fun of it, When I played Battlefield 2 as the Commander I would begin to say in chat before the end of the round that everyone should put down their weapons and begin a peace negotiations.

I tried to see if anyone would actually listen and if it is possible to tell all the players in a pub server to just stop everything they are doing and just hold still and stop the war.

I thought one of the problems in accomplishing this is the lack of tool to make it more clear that it is possible to change the course of events in the game.

This is a very similar theory to real wars, would soldiers of both sides during a battle actually be able to stop the fightings and killings and make peace.

Battlefield 3 could use this as a fun easter egg, to have the ability to vote for a peace or a cease fire in the middle of the game if enough players vote yes then the round will end in neither win or loss.

Think out of the box, take Diablo 2 as an example, it had the "Secret Cow Level as an undocumented (at first) easter egg, it also has the Chat Gem in the battle.net chat that when clicked says "gem activated" "gem deactivated"

These kind of little perks help make the game have longer shelf life.

After you have played a game for a long time and have done everything you can in it you will appreciate little jokes and side kicks laughs.

2. Jet Squad

Battlefield already has a good squad structure for infantry, a squad leader and members who can go together, communicate with VOIP and set targets.

Same should be applied to Jets and Helicopters.

The idea is that once you enter a jet you automatically joined to a Jet squad so you can immediately have VOIP with the other Jet pilots and you also get notifications when they are engaged by enemy pilots.

FYI, real airforce never sends a lone aircraft, they always fly in at least a pair of two, a leader and a wing man.

Flying in formation was missing in Battlefield 2, most of the time pilots didn't fly in formation, they didn't watch each other back and didn't bomb together for greater damage.

Hopefully Battlefield 3 will have more than 2 jets per team which will make this even more of a necessity.

Video Gaming 2011

2011-07-30T07:23:00.000-07:00

Found this article that I wanted to share, it says how all recent big video games look and feel the same.

I want to see games like Atlantis The Lost Tales made with the graphics technology of 2011.

GTA 5 must have a First Person view option

2011-06-17T00:40:00.000-07:00

Grand Theft Auto 3 and 4 are great games, both are 3D games that give you the freedom to go anywhere you want in a large city, use many different types of vehicles and different types of weapons and equipment, and even enter certain buildings in the city.

One thing that always felt missing is the ability to do everything from a first person view. GTA has always been a third person only game.

Grand Theft Auto 5 must finally give the player the option to choose to play the game from a first person view including car interiors and iron sights of weapons, first person view will add to the immersion of the player in the game.

Why Internet Explorer 9 is the best browser

2011-06-16T11:12:00.000-07:00

Internet Explorer is losing market share, this is unfortunate especially now that Internet Explorer 9 has come out and people don't even bother to try it because of prejudice.

Internet Explorer 9 is better than all of the other browsers for the following reasons:

1. 64-bit support - Internet Explorer is the ONLY browser to have a 64 bit version. New PC's are usually installed with x64 version of Windows 7, Windows Vista also has 64 version. Now that Adobe Flash has a 64 beta version you can use Internet Explorer 9 64-bit, you will find it is faster than the 32-bit version.

2. Windows Update - With Internet Explorer you get the support of Windows Update, this means you don't need any extra update software running in the background to update your other browser, for example Google Chrome installs GoogleUpdate.exe which ALWAYS runs in the background, this means extra bandwidth and extra memory being used. I prefer to have as least services and software running on my computer.

3. Protected Mode - Internet Explorer in Vista and 7 can run in Protected Mode, which means the browser session will have restricted permissions while other browser might run in Administrator mode, if the browser has administrator permissions it will also have these permissions when a malicious website tries to steal data from you, by having the browser run in restricted permissions you are more protected when a website is trying to write or read certain data.

4. Stock Browser - If you already use Windows, a product of Microsoft, then use the browser that is made by the same company, a browser is just a software to view pages on the Internet, it's not a big of a deal what browser you use. Personally I prefer not to have multiple software of the same application on my computer.

5. Internet Explorer 9 is an excellent browser, GPU accelerated, ActiveX filtering (to block Flash on sites), Tracking Protection (to block ads), Easy to use Zoom (to quickly increase size of pages with small text), You can quickly translate whole pages or selected text, good integration with Windows accessibility, Compatiblity View (to support old sites) and more.

BF3 on E3 2011 - Disappointment

2011-06-08T07:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I watched the live Battlefield 3 on E3 2011 http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/15232665

Battlefield 3 multiplayer as they show it on E3 is not a true sequel to Battlefield 2 and not even a Battlefield game at all in my opinion, here are a few points I have explaining why:

1. INFANTRY ONLY - the map they chose to show us on 2011 E3 is a 8vs8 Infantry only, Battlefield for me is all about the full war experience, ground vehicles, air vehicles, sea vehicles and infantry all out together on the same map, showing infantry only makes Battlefield 3 looks like another Call of Duty clone.

2. RUSH MODE - the game mode in the 2011 E3 is Rush, not conquest, in Battlefield 2 you had conquest only with flags in every strategic location where you had to capture to get the vehicles and spawning point of that base, personally I don't like Rush game mode and I prefer Conquest, the fact they chose to showcase the BF3 on E3 with the Rush mode is a disappointment.

3. NO COMMANDER - I already made a video about BF3 not having a Commander this is a huge step back and now in E3 2011 we see the multiplayer without a Commander, this is a huge step back, the Commader should have increased capabilities in Battlefield 3, they should have updated it with new features, not remove it, having the commander capabilities spread out to the entire team is a wrong decision.

4. ANOTHER COD CLONE - After watching the entire live Battlefield 3 2011 E3 coverage I felt like I was watching another Call of Duty clone, not a game that is suppose to be successor to Battlefield 2, what we saw in Battlefield 3 E3 2011 is a game that has no vechiles, small maps, small amount of players, not conquest mode, how is this game suppose to be a true successor to Battlefield 2? I already have Call of Duty 4, Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops, I don't need Battlefield to be another COD game, I want Battlefield to be more like Battlefield, more vehicles than before, bigger maps than before, more than 64 players, more of everything.

FINAL THOUGHTS - I know that what DICE showed on E3 2011 is only a alpha version of Battlefield 3, but the fact they decided to show a game with infantry only, no vechiles, no jets and rush mode instead of conquest mode can be an indication that DICE focused on Infantry more than than vechiles in the development of the game and is a slap in the face for old BF2 fans like me.

The Master of Dimensions 1996 video game Playthrough on YouTube

2011-05-21T09:35:00.000-07:00

How many of you heard of the game "The Master of Dimensions", it is a quest game from 1996 which didn't succeed very well, the game itself is nice but not so fun to play.

The story is about a kid who finds a Dimensions machine in his grandfather attic, the dimensions machine tells him that earth is about to be destroyed unless Merlin broken staff is reassembled.

I decided to do a full playthrough of the game on YouTube after I saw no one else did it.

Game creator website about this game: http://www.avcom.co.il/mod/

Believe it or not IWnet is part of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 success

2011-05-14T08:43:00.000-07:00

Black Ops is the highest selling Call of Duty game to date, it sold more copies than Modern Warfare 2 did and in the beginning more players played Black Ops than they did Modern Warfare 2, now MW2 is back in the lead

I believe Black Ops success is because Modern Warfare 2 was a very good game both single player and multiplayer, but Black Ops is not as good as MW2, it's single player is boring and the multiplayer is not as polished as MW2 is.

Modern Warfare 2 is now back in the lead and is played more than Black Ops. You can see this in Steam Stats from May 14, 2011 in the above pic

I believe there are 2 reason to this:

1. Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer is actually a better game than Black Ops.
2. It is mainly because of the IWnet matchmaking system which is better than dedicated servers, I'll explain:

IWnet is easier to use, you simply select the game mode you want to play and IWnet automatically matches you up with players with low latency (ping), this is easier than you having to go manually through a server list, trying to find a full server with low ping in the game mode you like.

IWnet also has no admins who change the gameplay experience by forcing stupid rules that kicks players for reasons like "camping" "using grenade launchers" "using martydom" "base raping" "knife/sniper only servers", the gameplay stays as the developer intended and most players prefer it this way, only the vocal minority goes on the forums and complains about grenade launchers and dual Glocks, fact is MW2 has the most players of any COD on the PC.

IWnet also has fixed player size for maps meaning you won't have a situation where there are more players than a map was designed to have meaning the gameplay stays as it was intended and more fun.

Battlefield 3 should have a matchmaking system like this, it can be used to matchmake player into dedicated servers which DICE will force it's own rules on Ranked servers so no one will change how the game is played.

How Microsoft should compete against the iPhone, iPad and iPod

2011-05-03T12:53:00.000-07:00

Microsoft with all it's money power and partners has failed to compete against the iOS devices, Windows Phone 7 is not impressive.

What I think Microsoft should spend their money on is make a normal x86 PC that can run normal Windows 7 on a phone, use their money to get the technology that will be able to run a normal PC in the size of a phone which will be able to run ALL the applications a normal Windows 7 desktop can run.

Think about it, being able to have your regular Windows 7 machine on your phone, all the applications that you can run on your Windows machine will run on your phone, Microsoft should bring the brightest people to come up with ways to make it work, make interfaces that allow you to use with your fingers all the millions of popular applications that PC users use on their regular desktops.

Microsoft should partner with Intel and NVIDIA, spend all their research and development money on making a regular PC with Intel x86 CPU, NVIDIA GPU that runs regular version of Windows on the phone, including PC games, imagine being able to play all Steam games on your phone.

When you come back home, you can connect your Windows phone to a dock that has monitor keyboard mouse and speakers attached to it and it will be like a regular PC, you wouldn't even know it's a phone.

This is what Microsoft should be doing to compete against Apple and their iOS devices.

Petting Machinegun and Alien weapon

2011-05-01T10:48:00.000-07:00

Did Battlefield 2 pay a homage to Half-Life Opposing Force by having the USMC soldier pet his M249 SAW machine gun just like the Marine Adrian Shepherd pets his Spore Launcher alien weapon?
Both Battlefield 2 and Half-Life Opposing Force have the USMC and the M249 SAW Machien gun.

My guess is that one of the developers of Battlefield 2 was either working at Gearbox at the time they made Opposing Force and then joined DICE when they were making BF2 or he just loved Opposing Force and wanted to pay a homage to it by having the Marine in BF2 pet his machine gun the same way.
And now the question is if upcoming Battlefield 3 will pay any tribute to one of Valve's newer Half-Life games.

Is Respawn Entertainment helping DICE making Battlefield 3 Single Player?

2011-04-28T09:57:00.000-07:00

Infinity Ward is the developer who made the first Call of Duty and COD2, and COD 4 Modern Warfare & MW2.
In 2010 Infinity Ward founders had a fight with Activision

Infinity Ward founders left the company with most of their creative employees including game designers, developers and artists and they made a company named "Respawn Entertainment" backed by your truly EA.
All of that happend last year in around March 2010.

Now you know I already made a video comparing BF3 Fault line trailer and Modern Warfare 2 and I am wondering about the possibility that the guys who made Modern Warfare 2 have actually given any advice or help to DICE in the making of the Battlefield 3 single player.
Now that the people who made Call of Duty are working for EA, it is possible that EA CEO said to them: go help DICE create "Battlefield 3 Designed to Take Down Call of Duty"

DICE must have loved Modern Warfare 2 campaign

2011-04-20T15:53:00.000-07:00

Dice must have loved Modern Warfare 2 single player campaign.

After watching the full 12 minutes BF3 video I realized how similar it is to the beginning of Modern Warfare 2 ACT 1 mission "Team Player" where you enter a city in Afghanistan looking for hostiles.

For those of you who have Modern Warfare 2 try this:

1. Watch the BF3 12 minute video
2. Play the ACT 1 mission "Team Player".

Then you will see the similarities, a general/commander giving you orders, following squad leader, snipers and RPG on rooftops, your squad shouting about the situation, changing weapons depending on the situation, and on and on.

Personally it is ok by me because I loved Modern Warfare 2 single player and DICE must have looked how much money it made in 2009 when they were in process of developing BF3 so they copy many elements of that campaign.

Also posted on EA UK Battlefield 3 forum: http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/battlefield-3/1399073-dice-must-have-loved-modern-warfare-2-campaign.html

Solution to "No Digital Data" issue on Logitech Z-5500 Speakers

2011-03-25T03:25:00.000-07:00

Logitech Z-5550 5.1 Digital speakers have a problem with the optical input, the control pod LCD will say "No Digital Data" when there is no sound and this causes you to not hear the beginning of sounds and not hear short sounds at all.

After searching Google and Logitech forums for a solution to this problem I eventually found this topic: http://forums.logitech.com/t5/Speakers/Dolby-Digital-signal-slow-response/m-p/182677

You download this free light application called Continuous Silence which will run on system startup and it will fix this issue.

Download Continuous Silence here: http://zecil.com/index.php?q=node/1

My sound card is onboard Realtek ALC889 integrated DX58SO mainboard with Core i7 920 CPU
OS: Windows Vista 64 SP2 Home Premium
Realtek driver version: 6.0.1.6316
GPU: NVIDIA Geforce GTX 285

Another possible solution: http://blog.rhysgoodwin.com/htpc/spdif-keepalive/
NOTE: I take no credit for this solution, it is made by Zecil Software and I have no responsibility if it doesn't work for you or causes you any kind of trouble.

Also posted on YouTube

Battlefield 3 must have a commander

2011-03-15T16:38:00.000-07:00

Commander mode, one of the exclusive features of the Battlefield franchise will not be in Battlefield 3. How can DICE remove the Commander mode which was unique to Battlefield?

Anyone who is looking to play an FPS that offers more than what Call of Duty has will love to have the ability to play as commander.

I also made a YouTube video about this

If you follow the development of Battlefield 3 you must have heard that Battlefield 3 won’t include Commander feature Dice have said that BF3 will be a true successor to BF2, that can't be true if it won't have a commander.

The Commander role is for a veteran player who has played the game for a long time, a player who already played a lot as infantry, as a tank, as a jet and knows what each one of those need.

For example, with my experience in BF2 I know that infantry need UAV where most of the enemies are.
With my experience playing a tank I know they always want a supply box behind them.
With my experience as a jet pilot I know they always want the commander to spot the other jets
With my experience as a helicopter pilot I know they want the commander to spot the other attack helicopters.
That's why the player with the highest rank will be elected to be the commander, because it is always best to have the most experience player to do this job and to help his team with his experience of what every soldier need.
Also, players who already played a lot of everything enjoy sitting back and just helping the team instead of doing everything they already did again.

Having 1 player be the commander doesnt require the rest of the 31 players in the team to have "high threshold" of "game complexity" like what DICE said about BF3.

Commander is part of the exclusive features of Battlefield, along with huge maps, vehicles and large number of players, it must be in Battlefield 3.

Sign the petition here

Microsoft Security Essentials - My only complaint

2011-03-09T11:31:00.000-08:00

Microsoft Security Essentials is a great software, I found it more useful and powerful than the products of Mcafee Norton and also better than the other free anti virus solutions.

The only little complaint I have is that it spams the definition updates in the Update History of Windows Update, so when you go and have a look at the Update History it is filled up with the everyday definition updates.

Posted on Microsoft forums

Warning to upcoming Battlefield 3, the changes that killed BF2 for me

2011-03-05T10:14:00.000-08:00

Battlefield 3 release date is the end of this year, I loved Battlefield 2 I played it since it was released and have played it many hours. I decided to write a post that reflects on what killed Battlefield 2 for me personally.

Over the years Battlefield 2 saw patches that changed it's gameplay dramatically from where it started when it was released in 2005.

Differences between Battlefield 2 version 1.0 and 1.50

- Jet dogfights, when BF2 was released jets dogfights were a lot harder than how they are in version 1.5, to take down another jet you would have to get very close to the enemy jet to have a successful missile hit, this was a lot more fun than how it is now that jets die within 2 minutes after take off, when jets became easy to kill it was no longer much fun to use them.

- Blackhawk, the Blackhawk used to be a lot more powerful, it wasn't easy to take it down and it's Miniguns were powerful as they are in real life, the Blackhawk used to wreack havoc in the map Mashtuur City and it was a lot of fun.

- Grenade Launcher, the grenade launcher used to be more powerful on BF2 release, now it is very weak and the assault class is useless.

- Squad Joining, in version 1.0 you used to be able to join squads even when you are dead, this was a lot more useful to join a squad leader that is in an important location far away, then in one of the patches they made it so you can only join squads when you are alive. Note: In Bad Company 2 they let you join squads while your dead but they never reversed this change in BF2.

- Passengers caputring flags, in version 1.0 a vehicle driver and the passengers could capture flags while inside the vehicle, a later patch changed it so only the driver can capture the flag, the passengers have to exit the vehicle if they want to help capture the flag and get points for it.

- Medic revives, version 1.0 the medic had unlimited revives, then in later patch it was limited, bad idea.

- Repair, in version 1.0 the repair was quicker when you were repairing helicopters like the Blackhawk, the change in one of the patches to make it slower was a bad idea.

You may agree or disagree about this, but I believe all these changes resulted in Battlefield 2 being a much less fun game to play.

Battlefield 3 should feature the original Battlefield 2 gameplay.

New YouTube 2011 Homepage is a mess

2011-01-29T06:13:00.000-08:00

Click here to get to the YouTube Feedback forum

The new YouTube homepage is a mess, the subscription videos are now shown in a huge list that forces you to scroll down until you find a video you like to see, it is as if YouTube thought it will be a good idea to copy Facebook News feed layout and implement it on YouTube, I disagree, I go into more details about what I don't like in the new homepage in this video I made.
If you also don't like the new YouTube homepage then click the link above to go directly to YouTube Feedback forum and complain.

The video I made

Not expecting Crysis 2 to be a visual leap

2010-11-24T02:40:00.000-08:00

Crysis released in 2007 was a step forward in gaming graphics.

Crysis was only released for the PC because the Playstation 3 released in 2006 and Xbox 360 released in end of 2005 did not have the necessary graphic power to run it smoothly.

Crysis 2 is being developed for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 and the PC, and will be releeased in 2011.

So the question is, how will they make Crysis 2 look better if it is being developed for systems that could not even run Crysis 1? The answer is, it won't look better than Crysis.

Personally the only good thing about Crysis were the graphics, the game itself was weak in story, in gameplay and in multiplayer.

Crysis 2 is going to be a letdown on the graphics department.

This is yet another example of how in 2011 we will still be playing on 2007 graphics technology.

Steam forums moderators are on a power trip

2010-11-22T11:18:00.000-08:00

Valve, you should look into what your Steam forums moderators are doing, they are on a power trip and should not interfere so much with normal discussions.

Many of them are closing threads that shouldn't be closed, some of the threads I made were closed for no good reason.

Example 1
Example 2

There are many more examples, why are these topics closed? How are they violating the forum rules?

One of the moderators even gave me warning, I created a topic which he deleted a minute after I made it, I didn't see the topic so I assumed there was an error, so I created it again and then he gave me a warning about recreating a deleted topic, but I was never told it was deleted in the first place and I didn't understand how it violated the forum rules.

This was also posted on Steam forum and locked as well

Battlefield 3 has to have a nuke

2010-11-22T10:13:00.000-08:00

Battlefield 3 should bring the ultimate weapon to the game.
A nuclear bomb
Dice should find a way to incorporate this weapon like Infinity Ward did with Modern Warfare 2.
Add it to the game so it won't be possible to use in every game, only in extreme situations of excellence.
For example when it is obvious the other team can no longer fight back and when you have total control of the map and the enemy has only 1 base left and they are well defended.

Then the commander will have the option to call in a nuke strike to finish the match.

This post joins my past BF3 ideas and what I want to see

Also posted on EA forums

Geforce GTX 580 and AMD 6 series, for what?

2010-11-12T11:49:00.000-08:00

Once again Nvidia and AMD/ATI release new cards, the Geforce GTX 580 and AMD Radeon 6 series, but the PC gaming is non existent.

All games released today for the PC are actually console games made for the graphic capabilities of the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360, the games are not developed to make maximum use of what the new video cards can do, their not even at the level of what cards like the GTX 280 and ATI 4870 could do.

I have already written about this topic in Nov 2009 and now a year later this is still true.

So what's the point of buying a 500$ video cards in 2010 if the graphics of games today is at the level of Geforce 7800GTX and ATI 2900 Pro from 2006 which is similar spec to the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

Examples of games released in 2010 which have 2006 graphics are Call of Duty Black Ops, this game looks worse than Modern Warfare 2 and yet it has higher system requirements for the PC, how is that possible for a game developed for the same consoles Call of Duty 4 was developed for which was released in 2008.

Nvidia and AMD can keep releasing new video cards but until there are games to make use of them there will be not much point in upgrading, which is a shame because DirectX 11 is capable of life like graphics which would be amazing to see in games.

Maybe we will get to see better looking games on the PC the Playstation 4 will be released in 2012 or 2013.

Modern Warfare 2 vs Black Ops - My first impressions

2010-11-07T14:20:00.000-08:00

I will begin by pointing out at the difference of the cover image, in Modern Warfare 2 the name "Call of Duty" is smaller than the Modern Warfare 2 and in Black Ops it's the opposite.

Call of Duty Black Ops multiplayer looks like it is going to be a surrender to the vocal minorty who didn't like what was actually fun in Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2.
For example, I still think IWnet Matchmaking is better than dedicated servers, it was also easier to play with your friends instead of trying to connect to a full server.

I also think Grenade Launchers, Airstrikes and etc should not be nerfed, they are part of the game that made it fun and interesting.
The game wouldn't be fun if the developer would have listen to everyone's concerns, not every player knows how a game is suppose to be and what makes it fun to play.

From my first impressions of the previews of Call of Duty Black Ops it looks like it is a step down from Modern Warfare 2.
Black Ops might have higher system requirements for the PC than Modern Warfare 2 but graphically it looks worse, the artistic level is much lower and it feels much less talented people are working on Black Ops than the talents behind Modern Warfare 2.

Another thing about Black Ops is the PC system requirements which is higher than the requirements for Modern Warfare 2. This is absurd because Black Ops was developed for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 and their spec hasn't changed. The higher system requirements feels like Intel, Nvidia and AMD must have paid Activision to make higher system requirements which will result in people buying new hardware to play the game.

Last thing is I want to mention is what happend to Infinity Ward which Activision basically killed when they fired the founders which led to the entire team leaving with them.

I don't know all the facts and who's wrong or right but from the way it looks right now it seems like Activision is the bad guy which means I'm not too eager to buy another game from them, I don't plan to buy the game but if I somehow change my mind about it then I will make another post here.

Also posted on Black Ops forum in Steam community

The good thing about the new Macbook Air

2010-11-02T13:34:00.000-07:00

Apple has released 2 new editions of Macbook Air, I am not planning to buy a Macbook Air, however I do want to buy a solid state drive (SSD) in an affordable price.

Now that Apple makes solid state drives the only option for the new Macbook Air it means that more SSD will be made which means prices will go down.

Battlefield 3, new ideas and suggestions

2010-09-28T10:29:00.000-07:00

Almost 3 years ago I wrote what I want to see in Battlefield 3

Now that it is official Battlefield 3 is in development I have more ideas that I can share with you.

1. Commander orders with rewards for success.

The Commander in Battlefield 3 will be able to create missions for his team, there will be predefined mission for the Commander to choose which start from easy missions to harder missions, the reward will be given to the squad leader.

Example for missions:

Easy: Take control over a small base / Reward: Sentry Gun, UAV
Medium: Destroy enemy commander assets / Reward: Airstrike, Predator missile
Hard: Take control over a big base with airstrip / Reward: AC-130, Chopper Gunner

Other ideas for rewards could be a vehicle reward, rewards such as a special tank for taking over a big base, a unique helicopter for destroy enemy assets and etc.
This way the team will have an incentive to accomplish a Commander order.

2. Second in Command

A Commander should have the option to have a Lieutenant, it will work just like a squad leader can invite players to his squad or lock the squad so no one can join.

The Commander will have 1 slot for him to either lock so no one can join, or he can open so anyone can join or he can invite the player he wants to be his second in command, what this Lieutenant will do I'm not sure yet, maybe have access to another scanner, or be able to help the commander spotting enemies on the map.

Dice could probably think of something interesting for him to do.

3. More than 2 Jets per team

To me, The best thing about Battlefield 2 are the Jets, I love the F-15, F-18, Su-30, they are beautiful, powerful and represent the peak of man technology on the Battlefield.
There are not enough games which allow you to fly Jets in a game that also have infantry and ground vehicles.
The Jets in Battlefield 3 should be even more than how they were in BF2.
I want more than 4 jets in a map, I want their full capabilities, speed and function, I want their Head Up Display to be more detailed and have more functionalities and each Jet should have a more unique HUD unlike BF2 where all USMC jets have the same HUD.

I want to see F-22 in all it's glory, I want to fly a B-52 bomber, I want to see players work as a team in an AC-130.

4. Realistic Vehicle entry.

Battlefield 3 should bring a new level of visual realism, when you enter any vehicle I want to see how you open the door and get into the driver seat.

It doesn't have to be too realistic, Battlefield can make it happen faster than it does in real life and you should be able to stop entering a vehicle or exiting anytime during the action.

Americas Army 2 had a Hummer that had this animation when you enter it even as a passenger and even when you switch seats inside the car.

5. The rest of my ideas

In one sentence, it should have more of everything, at least twice as before.
More players, at least 128
More Jets, at least 8 jets, 4 per team or more
Bigger maps, more indoors + outdoor in the same map
Bigger carriers, I want to see carriers bigger with more rooms inside and more vehicles outside
Headquarters, each team should have a building with a special room for the commander to sit in.
More vehicles per map
More vehicles variety, Apache, Cobra, F-15, F-22, F-35, F-18, F-14, and their Russian/Euro counterparts.
More ground vehicles variety plus civilians vehicles such as trucks and cars.
Option to enable day/night cycle in servers that want that as well as the option to disable it for those who prefer just the daylight which is usually more fun to play.
3 Teams or more in one map fighting each other.

5 reasons why Steam is better than Battle.net 2.0

2010-08-15T11:45:00.000-07:00

With Starcraft 2 Blizzard has also released an updated version of Battle.net, the updated features remind me of Steam and Facebook.

I like the new battle.net but I also believe it has a lot to improve upon, here are 5 reasons why I think Steam is better than the new Battle.net

1. International - No region locked, in the new battle.net an EU player can't play, talk or participate in a US game or forum, This is the worst decision Blizzard have made about Starcraft 2. No such thing with Steam servers and it's forums, Blizzard is probably one of the first big companies to seperate the internet games, an EU player can not even add a US friend to his friend list.

2. Nickname - Steam allows you to change your nickname, Battle.net doesn't allow you to change character profile name or even make a new one.

3. Game overlay - Steam has an application that gives you game overlay which can immediately show your friends, conversations, browse the internet and more, In Battle.net your friends list is a window in the game which you have to minimize or close but you can't overlay the game on top of it.

4. User profiles and community groups - Steam allows you to customize your profile, write a message in it, put links, put a personal picture and create a group for your friends. Battle.net 2.0 only allows you to select a picture from rewards you get, you can't write anything in your profile at all and it is all automated based on how you play, you can't make clans or groups.

5. Outside the game - You can talk to your Steam friends even when you don't have any game running, with battle.net you have to run the game if you want to talk to your friends, and because battle.net is using the browser you will have to login again and again everytime the browser deletes old cookies or when battle.net do a site upgrade, with Steam you almost never need to enter your user and password.

Steam also had issues when it first started so Blizzard could improve battle.net a lot more.

PeteRoy's Starcraft 2 Wings of Liberty Review

2010-08-05T13:36:00.000-07:00

Starcraft 2 came out and I bought it despite everything I wrote about it and about the beta before the release of the game. I knew I would buy it no matter what.

And I have to say that the single player is amazing, the graphics is excellent, the artistic level is high and most importantly the story is written extremely well, the single player is deep with details and the voice actors capture you into the Starcraft universe, I loved the way Wings of Liberty ended.

And I agree with the popular site reviews like IGN which gave it score 9 out of 10, Starcraft 2 deserves it.

I feel I want to point out things that some reviews didn't talk about, some negative points about Starcraft 2.

1. The price of the EU version, I live in Israel, I bought the game on the release date and it cost me 87$ USD, the EU version of the game costs 80$ USD or 60 euros, the US version of the game costs 60$.

Why the price different? Is this how Blizzard treats it's European fans? And especially in Israel which it cost more. The average person in Israel doesn't make more money than the average person in the US or the EU.

2. Region locked multiplayer, in Starcraft 2 Blizzard won't allow a European player to play with a US player.

How is this progress? We are in the year of 2010 and in the original Starcraft of 1998 you could play with anyone from anywhere, in the original Starcraft you are allowed to connect to any battle.net server you want.

Why is Blizzard doing this? To keep lag to a minimum? If that's the reason they should at least allow a EU player to add a US player to their friends list and allow them to play together, so this way only the matchmaking system default is to find games based on the bnet region.

3. The Terran technology of the year 2504 is inferior to human technology of the year 2010, here are examples:

- In Starcraft: 2504 Air units are slow, sometimes even slower than land units, In 2010: compare this to an F-22 Raptor or even Apache Helicopter
- In Starcraft: Nuke missile requires a ghost to target it, In 2010: today a missile can be launched from another continent and hit on target.
- In Starcraft: Units cant attack while moving.
- There are many more examples if you take the time to look at what today's weapons is capable of and what you see in Starcraft 2.

I understand that all this is done so the game is balanced but for me today it makes the game feel childish and stupid

4. No LAN support, that's just evil not to support LAN.

5. Battle.net vs Steam

With Starcraft 2 we get the release of Blizzard answer to Valve's Steam digital online store. With the new Battle.net Blizzard is competing with Steam and Facebook, with the new battle.net you can buy games online and download a genuine copy digitally with a cdkey.

But if it is serious about trying to go against Steam then it must make a software client for battle.net, i'll explain why.

With Steam running in the background I can always know which one of my friends is online, Steam has a client that is not taking too many resources when it runs in the background and it allows you to see your friends and what games they play or if they are just online.

With battle.net I have to run Starcraft 2 and login with the password every time I want to know if one of my friends is online, and if I alt+tab I won't be able to talk to them when I just want to use Windows, Steam also always remembers your password, you don't need to login everytime you want to play a game.

Steam has the game overlay which is much better and easier to use than how Blizzard makes you talk to your friends while you play a game,the overlay can be easily accessed with shift+tab and then hidden with shift+tab again.

The chat with friends while playing in Battle.net is much worse, you can either minimize it or use whisper, but if you whisper you have to press TAB to cycle between who you want to talk or if you use the chat windows you have to use the mouse to minimize it or close it, which takes longer to do and hurts your game more than the quick shift+tab to hide the overlay of Steam.

Then there's the name, in Steam you can change your nickname anytime you want how many times you want, with the new battle.net you can only make a character once and that's it, you can't change it anymore.

Offline mode, Starcraft 2 might have an offline mode but it doesn't let you select it when you start the game,you have to login even if you only want to play the single player.

All things considered Starcraft 2 is a good game and I do not regret I bought it for 1 second, but for me the single player is so much better than the multiplayer.

StarCraft 2 Fail: Can't play the game

2010-07-27T08:36:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: Works now, after 2 hours it finally let me make a character, I kept changing passwords and it worked.

I bought a genuine copy Starcraft 2 Wings of Liberty, but I can't even play it, I get this message:

Association Required

This Battle.net account does not include an associated copy of StarCraft II. Please log into Battle.net account management and add the game to your account.
==============

This is the message I get after I installed Starcraft 2, I installed the game, I associated the game cdkey to my battle.net account and it won't let me play, not even the single player campaign.

You can't even post on battle.net starcraft 2 forums because it wants an sc2 character profile, in the forums they suggested changing password and changing communication language, none of those helped.

I paid 330 shekels for this game which is 86 us dollars, and I can't even play it

Game: Starcraft 2 Wings of Liberty
Region: EU
OS: Windows Vista 64 Home Premium
CPU: Intel Core i7 920
GPU: NVIDIA Zotac GTX 285
MB: Intel DX58SO Smackover

The problem with games dedicated servers

2010-07-14T10:59:00.000-07:00

Multiplayer games, usually first person shooters have dedicated servers where players connect to and play with other players.

The problem with many dedicated servers is that they allow themselves to change how the game was originally ment to be played, I will give examples.

1. Counter-Strike Source: A rule that disallow a use of a sniper weapon,

Many servers think the AWP is overpowered and don't allow players to use it even though Counter-Strike is ment to allow all players to use this weapon if they choose.

2. Battlefield 2: A rule that says you must wait in line for a vehicle.

Some servers have this stupid rule that you must wait in line for a vehicle, usually Jets and Attack Helicopters in 64 player servers have many people wanting to use the Jet, so this rule is trying to make it fair for all, but many times it is abused by admin who just kick people when they take his jet after he died.

3. Battlefield 2: No baserape

In BF2 there are bases which have flags that cannot be captured, also called "uncaps", these bases only limitation is that they can't be captured, the game originally allow attacking these bases but there are servers that will ban you for doing so, I rathar play the game the way it was ment to be by the developer who made it.

4. Kick high ping

Many servers have strict anti lag rule that kick players with high pings, I usually support this but sometimes they limit the ping so low that even when you have a reasonable ping you get kicked, this is usually happen to me with Counter-Strike Source when I try to play with a friend from far away, we usually go over 5 servers until we find one that allows reasonable ping.

5. Modded servers

In Counter-Strike and Call of Duty there are many servers that are running custom mods that have annoying sounds or other gameplay changes, I don't like these servers, if you want to make a mod to the game do it on a seperate server list in a new custom mod, don't force it on me when I try to play an original game.

There are many more examples, some rules are good which means the developers didn't do a good job of fixing a gameplay imbalance.

A server should not take liberty at preventing players from playing the game as it was originally ment, no admin knows better than the original game developer, when a game has a problem it should not be the admin who fix the game to make it more fun, the developers should address issues and prevent them from happening by the game itself.

If a game has an issue that is unfair it should be fixed from the root, by the game mechanic itself, not by some admin enforcing a rule that disallow a gameplay feature which is originally allowed by the game.

2 Counter-Strike Source suggestions

2010-07-08T11:40:00.000-07:00

1. I think Valve should make a new sound pack for CSS, especially for the radio, it is annoying hearing "fire in the hole" so many times.
Make a new sound pack and give the player the option to choose which sound pack he like to use.
Then those who love the classic sound can still use the original sound pack which for your information is from CS 1.5 or 1.4 dating back to 1999, CSS never had a new sound pack.

I know there are many custom downloads for this but Valve should take the responsibility by making it available to everyone all the time.

2. When you run CSS in a window and then you switch to another window CSS loses sound.

Should make an option to turn on sound when CSS runs in the background.

Also, when you run in a window and you alt tab to another program CSS becomes choppy and slow, this doesn't happen with other games like Modern Warfare 2 and Bad Company 2.

I like to play in a Window and I would like to know when a round restarts by hearing the sound of it.

This will be useful even when running CSS in full screen and you alt+tab.

DX58SO, No LAN after resume from Sleep / Standby

2010-06-28T12:17:00.000-07:00

===UPDATE=== Solved by updating to the latest BIOS, click here

I have a little problem with the Intel DX58SO motherboard, when you wake it up from Sleep/Standby there will be no LAN until you restart the computer.
It's not a big issue for me since I don't use this feature but I thought it might be worth uploading a video demonstrating the bug.

I been told there is an older BIOS version that doesn't have this problem but I don't mind it that much and I prefer to have the latest BIOS version.

System Specifications:
Mainboard: Intel DX58SO Smackover
BIOS version: SOX5810J.86A.5390.2010.0614.1053
BIOS Date: 06/14/2010
OS: Windows Vista 64 Home Premium SP2
CPU: Intel Core i7 920 at stock speed
GPU: Zotac Geforce GTX 285 stock speed
Also posted at official Intel forum: http://communities.intel.com/message/95065#95065

Multi Benchmarking

2010-06-25T13:41:00.000-07:00

In this video I compare how a benchmark performs when it is tested alone and when it's running with another benchmark at the same time.

All hardware reviews test 1 benchmark at a time, that is good and informative, however I also think it is interesting to see how a machine can perform when running 2 benchmarks together.

In this test I first ran the 2 benchmarks alone and check compare the results to when I run them both together.
In this video I test Counter-Strike Source (2004) and Crysis (2007) benchmarks, both games at high quality patched to their latest version.

Note that the active window game works better than the game running in the background, I tested this with CSS as the active window and Crysis ran at 1 FPS so in this video Crysis is the active window.

Test system:
CPU: Intel Core i7 920 Stock speed
GPU: Zotac Geforce GTX 285 stock speed
MOBO: Intel DX58SO Smackover
RAM: 6GB G SKILL Triple channel DDR3
OS: Windows Vista 64 BIT

PC gaming weak due to conflict of interests

2010-06-20T16:46:00.000-07:00

There have been much discussion about why PC gaming is on the downside in recent years, from blaming piracy to expensive pc gaming hardware and more, all are good points but I have another possible cause.

Conflict of interest, if you look at today's consoles, the Microsoft Xbox 360 and the Sony Playstation 3 you willl find companies that are in the PC business as well as in the gaming console business.

Here I will write what I think could be undermining gaming on the PC.

Microsoft, gaming on the PC has been successful thanks to the popularity of DOS and then Windows which is a porduct of Microsoft, but Microsoft is the maker of the Xbox 360 and this Xbox division is working hard to get games exlucisve to the Xbox 360, so exclusive that even the PC doesn't have a version. Now why Microsoft would shoot it's own foot, PC's have been known for years to be a growing gaming platform, why would Microsoft work to hurt this when they make deals to bring games only to the Xbox 360 and not to the PC?

Nvidia, the maker of PC video cards also provides Sony the GPU for the PS3, so it is Nvidia interest that Sony sells a lot of PS3 because that will give Nvidia a lot of money directly from Sony, this makes Nvidia care less about their PC video card business which might be harder to get stable profits from, Nvidia has a program called "The way it was ment to be played" which Nvidia use to make developers make their titles work best on Nvidia video cards, since the Playstation 3 came out Nvidia has been focusing much less on this program, Nvidia care less about bringing titles for the PC.

ATI, another maker of PC video cards is the company that sells Microsoft the GPU for the Xbox 360, ATI probably gets a nice stable income from every Xbox 360 sold, why should ATI bother trying to bring games for the PC?

Personally, despite all this, I still prefer the PC to a console.

Geforce GTX 280 freeze solution

2010-06-15T12:47:00.000-07:00

If your computer locks up with a discolored picture when you start playing a game or when you run a graphic intensive application then the problem could be the video card.

The problem I experience was that on a cold boot the computer would work fine until I start playing a game like Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 or any game that uses the graphic card.
If I reset the computer it would freeze again, it worked fine after turning it off and back on then it would work fine until the next time start the computer after it been off for few hours.

The cause of this problem was found to be the ASUS Nvidia Geforce GTX 280, the computer store KSP replaced it for me with a Zotac GTX 285 which is running fine now for over a month and the problem didn't happen again.

Thoughts on QuickTime

2010-06-05T01:24:00.000-07:00

Steve Jobs has written his Thought on Flash, about how Flash is not an open standard and is wasting system resources especially on a handheld device such as the iPhone. I agree with everything Steve Jobs said about Flash, this technology has become annoying as much as it was useful, today Flash is being used for many of the annoying advertisements that make a loud noise when the cursor moves over them.

However, everything Steve Jobs wrote about Flash can be said about Quicktime and worse, when you install Quicktime you get tons of software running on your computer that you don't need, it comes with Apple update software that runs all the time in the background wasting memory and bandwidth, then it tries to push the Safari browser.

Quicktime itself is a horrible media player, it is heavy, clumsy media player that wastes a lot of memory and doesn't support a lot of media formats like VLC media player.

I don't have Quicktime installed on my machine and when I go to Apple website I find it funny they require you to install Quicktime if you want to watch their latest ads or why should you switch to a Mac, and I think it's bad that the default format for Hollywood trailers is Quicktime, they need to have high quality version for both Windows Media Player and Quicktime.

So Steve, before you critize Flash, clean up the mess that's called Quicktime, especially on your own apple website where every video requires it, make your website fully HTML 5 and then we'll see if it is as good as you say it is.

Do Minh Le and Jess Cliffe still work at Valve?

2010-05-29T02:33:00.000-07:00

Minh Le and Jess Cliffe are the original creators of Counter-Strike, are they still working at Valve? This new announcement about a beta being developed in a collaboration with Hidden Path Studios made me wonder if they still work at Valve or if they still work on Counter-Strike.

Since Counter-Strike's release many new FPS games like Call of Duty and Battlefield have overtaken Counter-Strike with new features and new graphics, it seems like Counter-Strike has been stuck in the past since 2004 with Counter-Strike Source we haven't really saw anything new in the game.

I personally have lost interest in Counter-Strike since Battlefield 2 came out in 2005. BF2 with it's big maps, vehicles and big infantry weapons made CSS with it's tiny maps and inaccurate graphics look like a joke in my opinion.
If Valve is contracting another company to help update Counter-Strike Source I wonder if that means the original desigers have left the company or work on other projects, Valve has neglected Counter-Strike for a long time and it might be challenging for it now to catch up with new games like Modern Warfare 2 and Bad Company 2.

On a personal note I will say this: Personally I don't care so much about it, today we have more FPS games that we can possibly neeed, I feel saturated by the overwhelming amount of FPS games I have played and I wish to see new fun games with amazing graphics that are not about weapons and shooting and bombing, not that I don't like FPS games, it's just there are so many of them I need something else for a change.

Download movies and music using Steam

2010-05-22T12:20:00.000-07:00

Valve released Steam in around 2003 as the worlds first online service to purchase games online and download them, this way you never need a phyiscal copy of the game and it is still legitimate copy because until then all downloaded games were pirated games.

Today in 2010 Steam turned out to be a success, since it was released more and more developers released their games using Steam and I think that now with today's Steam big user base it should start being a competitor to Apple's Itunes by releasing movies and music as well.

Personally I don't like Apple Itunes, it is a big oversized application that when you install it you also get bloated software that you don't need, it's videos and music default are quicktime media format which is another software I hate.

Steam can be a good alternative to Apple bloated Itunes, especially now that Apple App store is selling games, Steam should start offering movies in high definition same as quality as Blu Ray for purchase.

Notice how Apple has made no press release about Steam becoming available on the Mac, you would think Apple would be happy to have Steam running on Mac OS X after years it been a PC exclusive and I think the reason they don't mention this is because Apple is aware that Steam is a competitor to the iTunes.

I am guessing that Valve might already be in process of doing this very thing and it's difficulty could be the Hollywood studios that are worried about copy protection.

One big monitor is better than 2 small monitors

2010-05-21T06:59:00.000-07:00

Personally I prefer 1 big monitor than 2 smaller monitors in multi display.

If you are on a budget my advice would always be to spend the money on a single, high quality, big monitor than to buy 2 displays, if you need more workspace then buy a large monitor that got high resolution, this way you get bigger workspace and more quality picture.

A single monitor is also better for games, recently ATI released video cards that support 3 or more monitors to act as a single display, that might be cool and useful for some people but personally I would still prefer a 30 inch high quality resolution display than 3 20 inch displays.

With 3 or more displays, you have the monitors phyiscal borders who seperate the image, so you are looking at the screen with bars slicing the picture, I don't like that.

The Ballad of Gay Tony is the weakest Grand Theft Auto

2010-05-19T05:28:00.000-07:00

I have played Grand Theft Auto 3, Vice City, San Andreas and GTA 4, and I recently bought GTA Episodes from Liberty City for the PC because I loved the old GTA games and also because it got great reviews.

I have just finished the story of the Ballad of Gay Tony and I feel I might as well write what I thought of the game.

The story of Lost and the Damned was ok but a bit boring, however the story of The Ballad of Gay Tony was even more boring, the characters are boring, all the dialogs between the missions were very boring to watch, the character you play felt very underwhelming compared to previous GTA protagonists.

The game music is not so good, there are a few new cars which is nice, the missions were ok but nothing new.
The game got very positive reviews in popular gaming websites so I feel I need to say that it doesn't deserve the high praise it got. The game was boring for me to play, it is the weakest GTA title I played and in the end of it I just did the missions and I skipped all the conversations because I couldn't listen to the characters anymore.

I might give a try to the multiplayer now that I finished the single player, maybe the multiplayer is much better than the actual story game.

The bottom line is that I didn't like the game, I loved GTA 4 but I didn't like the GTA Episodes LC, maybe it is not only the game fault though, maybe it is me who has changed.

I have played GTA games since 2001 with GTA 3. I never loved GTA 1 and 2 but GTA3 impressed me to the point I wanted to buy it and play it, today 9 years later I am 26 years old and this type of game could be of less interest to me as it used to be.

Why I still use Internet Explorer only

2010-05-13T12:41:00.000-07:00

It is popular today to think that Internet Explorer is a bad browser and a user who really knows what his/her doing will use an alternative like Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari and etc.

But, Internet Explorer 8 is a fine browser and in the end of it all it's just a web browser, it's a software to browse web pages.

I don't need Google Chrome or Apple Safari to bring in their update software running all the time in my computer, it's enough to have windows update to take care of windows and Internet Explorer.

And this is why on my gaming PC I only use Internet Explorer, because I don't want any sort of update software running in the background all the time, a browser is just a browser, it is not that big of a deal which one it is as long as it supports the latest standards and works reasonably well and updated frequently, all of which Internet Explorer does very well in my opinion.

It's not that I love Microsoft or Internet Explorer, it's because I don't need 3 different browsers installed on my computer, why bother with installing another browser on my computer when I already have one that Microsoft supports, updated regularly and works fine, I don't need anything special, I don't need toolbars or anything like it.

It's the same thing with PDF files, why install Adobe Reader when it brings with it the Adobe updater that runs all the time, today with google docs you can open any PDF file in your browser.
The less unnecessary code that runs on your system, the better it performs, I will try to avoid any software that has stuff in it I don't need.

Atlantis The Lost Tales Playthrough

2010-05-11T15:42:00.000-07:00

I have started playing an old quest game I have from 1997 called Atlantis The Lost Tales and I figured I might as well record it and upload to Youtube.

There is no game like it today, this game has an interesting prespective about life, knowledge and people. Excellent detailed story with interesting characters and their culture. Sure the game is not perfect and has some flaws but all things considered it has something that todays games don't have.

The company that developed this game has went out of business, this sort of games are not successful today for many reasons.
I first played this game when I was 13 back in 1997 and today I am 26 in 2010 and this game is still one of a kind, there are no games like it today and the company who made Atlantis The Lost Tales is out of business.

The animations are played too fast because the CPU is much faster than the game was orgininally designed for, even though I am using a virtual pc, also there are some sound issues and sometimes the game will skip part of the audio but it's not too bad.

Sypnosis: In the game you play a new companion for the Queen name Seth as he come to the city of Atlantis to start his duty.

Game: Atlantis The Lost Tales
Developer: Cryo Entertainment
Year: 1997
Language: English
Resolution: 640x480
Recorder: StudioCam

PC Spec:
Virtual PC 2007
Windows 98
Running on:
CPU: Intel Core i7 920
GPU: Zotac NVIDIA Geforce GTX 285
MOBO: Intel DX58SO Smackover
OS: Windows Vista 64 Home Premium

Video games graphics is stuck

2010-05-08T06:35:00.000-07:00

In 2010 we have a game like Battlefield Bad Company 2 which has graphics that is not much better than 2007 Crysis.

Consoles are the probable cause of this, all new video games still have graphics that is stuck somewhere in 2007-2008.

We continue to buy new PC hardware like new Geforce GTX 480 or Radeon HD 5870 video cards and Core i7 processors but the fact is that video games graphics are not improving.

Also, no new video game has a 64bit version.

I've said this before and I'm saying it again now because it still amazes me.

Also posted on EA UK forum

Reviewing PC hardware video reviewers

2010-05-06T07:59:00.000-07:00

In YouTube I have subscriptions to some PC hardware video reviewers/bloggers and in this blog post I will write my own critic review of them.

This is a personal opinion and I am sure a lot would disagree or agree with me.

This is also a post to help you get to know these reviewers as they can help you make a better PC purchase decision.

3dGameMan - 3dGameMan who is Rodney Reynolds probably has the most video reviews and he also been around the longest I believe, since 1998, before YouTube, he usually reviews power supplies, computer cases, cpu coolers and video cards.

PROS - A lot of video reviews, his case reviews are probably the best and they can really help you decide what case to buy by watching his reviews,

Rodney has become a professional video reviews maker, he probably make more videos a week than anyone else, every CPU cooler review shows you how to install the cooler which is very helpful.

A lot of helpful tips and purchasing advice.

CONS - Repetitive, many reviews feel exactly the same, especially power supply reviews and memory reviews, always hearing about how rails work in a power supply or how DDR memory work can be boring after you watch 2-3 videos about the same product category.

No comparison to the competition, a review about a video card , case or power supply will never be compared to it's competition, for example, you watch a review about a case or a video card, 3dgameman won't tell you how it's price or performance is compared to the competetion.

Every review is like an overview of a single product, no help is given to you about whether this video card is a better buy than the other video card for the same money.

LinusTechTips / NCIXcom - Linus can be seen on his personal channel and the Canadian computer store NCIX YouTube channel.

PROS - Linus is a good presenter, very accessible to the viewer and talking well infront of the camera, in his personal channel you can see a lot unboxing products videos and in NCIX channel you get helpful computer tips tutuorials and guides and sometimes he will even do comparison of HDD vs SDD for example.

CONS - Wish it had more product roundups that compare products seeing which one is best for the money, not enough guides on how to install CPU coolers or Video card coolers.

Maxishine - Maxishine feels like a hobby personal channel that's worth checking out.

PROS - Interesting videos showing water cooling parts, interesting computer setups with multi displays and full computer gear, some video card comparisons, nice setups of the newest hardware, there are also some game reviews.

CONS - Videos are not uploaded often, but that's ok since it's better to have small amout of videos than many videos that are not interesting.

Tjharlow Tjharlow is another "personal" hobby type of video channel showing you cool computer buildings.

PROS - Expert cable management tips, interesting computer builds with high quality computer parts and overclocking tips including an excellent CPU lapping guide for those who don't care about losing their CPU warranty

CONS - Since this channel is only made mostly as a hobby and on spare time there aren't many videos.

Trubritar - Mostly video card and water cooling reviews.

PROS - Professional water cooling video card blocks installation tips, excellent video card comparison tests, interesting Nvidia 2 way and 3 way SLI tests vs ATI Crossfire tests, some overclocking guides.

CONS - Wish there were more parts being reviewed

Tigerdirect official channel of the computer shop TigerDirect

PROS - Many video reviews of interesting products and some buying tips.

CONS - Sicne Logan left I have unsubscribed, the hosts right now aren't that good compared to Logan.

Lockergnome - Another video reviews and computer discussion.

PROS - A lot of videos discussing many comptuer related issues and questions, a lot of people subscribed meaning he appeals to a lot of people.

There are some good computer advice by a knowledgeable compuer guy.

CONS - Personally I don't like this channel, the videos are boring in my opinion and I don't agree with some of his opinions, often the videos feel like the guy over discuss a certain topic, buy hey this is a personal opinion of mine, you could think different and that's fine.

My own YouTube channel is pretty boring, I sometimes upload a boring gameplay of some game I recorded and sometimes I upload a video about some hardware part I have or part I have problems with.

Thought about cheating in PC games

2010-05-06T06:55:00.000-07:00

How long has a cheater been able to play on VAC or Punkbuster servers without getting caught?

If you visit sites like http://www.pbbans.com/ and http://www.vacbanned.com/ you get the sense that a lot of cheating players get caught and banned.

I wonder how long has anyone been able to cheat without getting caught? Could some cheaters use hacks for a year on a certain game and not get caught at all?

With the MD5 tools that anti hacks use how can someone could cheat for so long and not get caught.

I suppose one of the ways could be using private hacks that only minimum people use so they never get passed to the developers of anti cheat programs.

Also posted on Games for Windows forum

Keyboard shortcut for switching monitors

2010-05-05T10:39:00.000-07:00

I have 2 monitors connected to my system, one of them is on the desk for when I am sitting down to use the computer and the second monitor is on the wall infront of my bed so I can watch movies and play games while I am in my bed, I never use both of them at the same time, I either use the one on the desk or the one on the wall, never both.

I wish there was a keyboard shortcut that can switch between the monitors quickly.

Right now in Windows Vista to switch main monitors I have to do this: Go to display settings, select the monitor I want to be primany, and then turn off the monitor I don't want to use, then it gives me 15 seconds to say yes or no about the new display settings.

I wish I could do it quickly with a keyboard shortcut like Windows Key + M or something.

Also posted on Microsoft Windows Vista forum

Apple iPhone OS is a taste of what could have happened to the PC

2010-05-04T13:44:00.000-07:00

Back in the 1980's when the Personal Computer started it's life Apple could have been the market leader with it's 1984 Macintosh thanks to it's graphical user interface and the elegant design, but thakfully they didn't succeed, I will explain why this is good.

Today Apple is the leader in smart phones with the iPhone. And each application for the iPhone has to be approved by Apple first before being released.

In the PC market anyone can write any application and offer it for sale or for free and it doesn't need to be approved by anyone to be available for the public, if it is a bad application it will get bad reviews, if it is spyware it will be detected as such, and if you still want to use it even though it can be bad for you or your computer, then it's your personal fault.

If Apple had the 90% market share in PC operating system it would do the same thing it does on the iPhone.
If Apple had won the PC war of the 1980's and be the dominant PC maker we would have a Mac OS that would need to approve any application or game that runs on it before being available.

Apple would have block any application or game that they dont like based on their own judgement. It could be because the application is competing with them, it could be because they personally dont like this application.

Ironically Apple today is everything they said they are against back when they were competing with IBM, today Apple is the big brother of everyone of their customers, this is something they accused IBM of doing and now they are the worst version of it.

Steam 2010 user interface update review

2010-04-30T04:25:00.000-07:00

The new UI sucks, Bloated inefficient and too complicate.

It takes longer for Steam to load up.

It takes longer and more clicks to start the game you want.

It is unorganized too big complicated mess.

Valve forgot that we use Steam to play games, we don't use Steam just to use Steam itself.

Steam should be a minimal user interface that only serves it's function, to start/download/update pc games, that's it, it shouldn't be a huge app that does things I don't need it to.

Or at least make it possible to choose between a light version of the Steam interface and the new fully loaded interface.

For example a person with an old machine could choose to use the light version to play old games and then when he logs in on a faster machine he can have it use the fully featured version.

How many video cards are failing?

2010-04-25T12:18:00.000-07:00

I just read this topic about baking your video card that can possibly fix your card by letting it sit in an 200C oven for 8 minutes

I just sent my failing GTX 280 video card back to the store after I been having problems with it it was freezing after a cold boot but working fine after a off/on power cycle.

What amazes me most (apart from the fact you can repair a failed video card by baking it in a home oven) is the amount of people with failed video cards.

So many people say they have a failed 8800GTX, 9800GT, 8800GT, 4650, 7950 and more, what is going on with the video cards industry?

These high end cards cost a lot of money. Nvidia, ATI and their partners are making a fortune profit over these and yet they fail and people can't return them to get a replacement?

My ASUS GTX 280 failed after a year and half of good service, I never overclocked it or done anything to it other than updating my drivers regularly and playing games on it, what would I do if it had died after 3 years when my warranty expired? Buy another card for 400$?

My reason for making this rant is the fact that I care about PC gaming and yet with this sort of thing going on you see clearly that part of the reason PC gaming is dying is because companies like Nvidia and ATI are killing it with their over priced video cards that fail after 1-2 years of use.

Why buy a high end card for 400 dollars when you can get an Xbox 360 instead that has more games available?

I know I will keep playing on a PC as long as possible but most people won't and it shows already.

Is there any official statistic that shows the number of video cards that fail each year?
Does anyone keep count?
Do these companies sell us video cards that are not tested enough?
Is a new GTX 480 or Radeon 5870 are also expected to fail?

Also posted on Hardforum and Nvidia forum

Starcraft 2 Beta review - My impressions so far, mostly a boring game

2010-04-23T16:38:00.000-07:00

I got the Starcraft 2 beta invite from Blizzard a week or so ago and I figure I will give my feedback

So far, not enjoying the game.
I admit that I am not a good player but no matter what build order I try I get owned and I lose most of the games I play which really makes me want to quit the game and not even try after 2 or 3 times losing.

Graphics - look pretty good, they look like they got improved since the SC2 announcement videos, I love all the little details of physics and fire effects.

Gameplay - exactly the same as the old Starcraft and I find it a bit boring , I also have 2 points about it.
1. Attacking while moving - I can no longer accept that every unit has to stop to be able to attack, a real life fighter jet or helicopter can attack while it's moving, I would expect Blizzard to find a way to keep the game balanced by now and allow units to attack while moving.
2. I can also not accept the fact the air units are not a lot faster than ground units, today an Apache helicopter or an F-15 is thosand times faster than any ground vehicle and yet in Starcraft they move so slow.

Sound - I love the sound and music in Starcraft 2, I appreciate the quality of the sound and music and I enjoy the way they make the game feel epic, I find myself checking the "Play in background" because the music is good.

Battle.net - much improved over the old Starcraft battle.net, much easier and faster to find games and I believe the new ladder system will help a lot, the only thing missing is the chat. The chat in the old battle.net was the tool that helped me build my clan back when I started playing the old Starcraft.

But the game doesn't seem to bring anything new, it looks like the old Starcraft with new graphics and different unit balance, that's it, I think this is bad because it's pretty boring playing the same old game, it's like playing a new version of NBC or FIFA from EA.

I am 25 years old and I started playing Starcraft when I was 13, I played Starcraft a lot back from 1999 to 2003 which means I played online everyday back then when I was using 56k connection, most of the games I played were on the map Big Game Hunter (BGH) and I my clan called clan CHAOS www.clancas.net started in the game of Starcraft.

Perhaps strategy games are no longer my type and maybe I got too old for this sort of thing.

I am interested in Starcraft 2 because I loved Starcraft Brood War so much and I am looking forward to see how the story unfolds and what happens to the characters.

The bottom line is that I am not enjoying the multiplayer, if the release version of Starcraft 2 will be like this then I don't think I will play a lot of multiplayer like I used to, I am either a different person today or the game is not good enough.

Also posted on Battle.net Starcraft 2 Beta feedback forum
Btw, you might be interested to see what I wrote in August 2009 about what I thought of Starcraft 2 previews

I want Gran Turismo 5 for the PC

2010-04-23T05:09:00.000-07:00

Gran Turismo 5 is a car racing game that will be available to the Playstation 3 only.

The game will have amazing graphics and 1000 cars with many different real world tracks.

I love playing games on the PC more than any other platform and this kind of game should be released to the PC.

I think companies like Intel, Nvidia, ATI and Microsoft should use their power to bring this PS3 exlusive to the PC to help the PC gaming industry.

Are many Geforce GTX 280 cards dying?

2010-04-20T10:51:00.000-07:00

I been having a problem with my ASUS Geforce GTX 280 OC, when I boot my computer after it was turned off for a while, Windows will load up and work fine but when I play a game or start any 3D intensive application the computer will freeze after 2 minutes or so.

I have made a video in YouTube that demonstrate the problem - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKFTKzmccM4

And now I searched Google and NVIDA forums and it seems I am not the only one who experience this kind of problem, here is a collection of threads I found with people reporting the same issue:

nvidia 280gtx crash, video card nvidia 280gtx crash under windows 7 64 bit
Is my GTX 280 dying?
Nvidia 191.07 drivers causing outright hardware failure?
MSI 280GTX dying or something else?
GTX 280 - Coloured Screen Freeze
Computer freezes, colored dots pattern covers screen, Help!

Gaming PC ideology

2010-04-17T16:10:00.000-07:00

If you plan to have a computer that is mostly used for playing video games then you might want to read this:

I am going to divide this post to 2 parts, the first is hardware and the second is software

HARDWARE

Using a computer mostly for playing pc games means you want the best performance out of the machine.

To achieve best gaming performance your money spent on computer parts should be in this priority:

1. Video card, this is the most important part of a gaming PC, before anything else consider spending most of your money on a good video card.

2. CPU, get a good latest series processor, doesn't have to be the most expensive, just something reasonable.

3. Mainboard and RAM, choose a high quality mainbaord that will bring the most out of your Video card and CPU.

4. Case and CPU cooler, get a good silent case and decent CPU cooler to keep your parts chilled and your machine silent.

5. Hard drive or Solid State Drive.

6. SLI or Crossfire is less important in my opinion because you pay double the money and don't get even get close to double performance, only buy a second video card after you are done spending all your budget on the above parts and still want to spend more.

SOFTWARE

A gaming pc should have a Windows operating system that is bare as much as possible, this means installing the least possible software that is not directly related to games.

Therefore any software that comes with Windows should be used instead of installing another one.

Examples:

1. Browser, use Internet Explorer

2. Media player, use Windows Media Player, do not install codec packs, use VLC media player for all other formats that Windows Media Player doesn't support.

3. Anti Virus and Anti Spyware, Install Microsoft Security Essentials or Avast, these are good and they dont consume a lot of resources.

4. Firewall, use Windows own firewall.

5. Documents, do not install Office or any other kind of software for this, you can use Google Docs, it can opean and create Documents like Word, it can create and open Spreadsheets like Excel, and it can also open PDF files so don't install Adobe Reader.

6. Instant Messenger, prefer to install only one instant messenger like Skype which can do Voice and Video conversations and you can get a software like Trillian or many others that can connect to multiple instant messengers, you can also use Gmail to connect to AIM.

Kick-Ass short movie review

2010-04-16T02:13:00.000-07:00

This movie shows you a lot of cruel torture scenes that end up with the victim killed violently.

These scenes made me sick and I had to walk out of the movie because I was so disgusted.

There were cool moments in the movie but they were all destroyed once you see someone being smashed in a car to death or any of the other torture scenes.

Ironically the movie shows you these scenes as something to laugh about, as if seeing someone begging not to die is funny to watch, I didn't appreciate that and I don't want to see it, especially not when I paid money to watch a movie.
Nicolas Cage, I don't enjoy seeing him on screen anymore.

If you don't like seeing cruel anti human scenes then don't waste your time on this movie.

Also posted on imdb

My comment on Nvidia's GeForce GTX 480 and 470 and Intel Core i7 980

2010-03-30T12:12:00.000-07:00

I have been reading some reviews about the paper launch of Nvidia's new cards, the GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470 at Anandtech, Hardocp and Guru3D.

Seeing the benchmarks you understand why this card was delayed, it has more or less the same peformance of ATI top 5x series cards which came out almost 6 months earlier, as bad as that is, it is not what bothers me.

What bothers me is the fact that Nvidia, ATI and Intel are giving us all this incredible hardware, Intel with their new 6 core CPU, Nvidia and ATI with their DX11 cards and Microsoft with Windows 7 and yet the games that come out are being developed for console hardware, which means their graphics is limited to what the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 can support.

I have already wrote about this topic before in my blog and this latest from Nvidia is another proof of my point.

Why get a new card like the GeForce GTX 480 or Radeon 5970 when the games being released to PC are ports from consoles? To get more FPS? To play on higher resolution?

Almost no game uses Directx 11, almost no game uses 64bit and there are more console exclusive games than PC exclusive games.

I think Intel, Nvidia and ATI need to focus their efforts on bringing good console exclusive games to the PC, games like Gran Turismo 5 Alan Wake Heavy Rain and more.

I also think they should make their hardware cheaper, a 1000$ CPU is not going to help PC gaming, same for a 400$ and up video cards.

So what do I think of Nvidia's new GeForce GTX 480 and the big party in they made for the release of the card? The same thing I thought of ATI's 5970, they are both irrevelvant until PC gaming will be more attractive as it can and should be.

Sign petition for Ferrari pack release to the PC and PS3

2010-02-21T13:27:00.000-08:00

Dear Electornics Arts, Microsoft and Ferrari

You have released 10 Ferrari cars for the game Need for Speed Shift to Xbox 360 only despite the fact that Need for Speed Shift has a Personal Computer version as well as Playstation 3 version.

On behalf of the PC and Playstation 3 gamers who love cars and who love Ferrari we ask you to release the Ferrari cars pack of Need for Speed Shift to customers who use a PC and Playstation 3.

We may not ever drive or own a Ferrari in our lives but we do feel that we deserve to have this pack released to the PC and PS3.
Thank you.

Click here to sign

Microsoft neglects Windows gaming

2010-02-17T07:36:00.000-08:00

Microsoft and it's Xbox 360 is hurting Windows.

Recent news about Xbox 360 getting exclusive content such as Alan Wake release on Xbox 360 only when it was obvious it was being designed for the PC as you can see in this video of the developer demonstrating the game on the PC

Also there are news about Xbox 360 getting exclusive Ferrari pack for Need for Speed Shift on the Xbox 360 but not on the PC even though the game has a PC version.

There are many more examples like this and I want to point out the way I see it as a PC gamer.

In my opinion Microsoft is neglecting it's PC audience and forgets that huge part of it's success is thanks to the games that are running on the PC, look at games from companies like Blizzard which only have PC and Mac versions but no console versions and the huge sales they get.

If Microsoft wants it's Windows operating system to continue to be as successful in the future as it is today then it better start realizing that they are hurting the image of Windows as a gaming platform and it could hurt it as a home OS.

Microsoft already made mistakes thinking it's Windows Mobile being fine before the iPhone trashed it, Microsoft has "Games for Windows" but it neglects it.

Windows has a long run of being the dominant operating system for maybe over 2 decades of 90% market share.

This lead Microsoft to be too confident about Windows success and not think that maybe if less games are coming to the PC people will care less about having Windows over a Mac or not feel the need to buy new PC more often because they can just play games on their console instead.

Microsoft should wake up and use it's power to bring more games to the PC before something unexpected happen like it did with the iPhone, Google, Facebook and YouTube.

Some of you might say why care about PC anyway and that it wouldn't matter what system we use to play games.

The reason I think PC is best because PC is the best all in one device. It is the consolidation of everything you want to do in one box, it can play games, surf the web, write documents, create videos and much more all in the latest and fastest hardware.

PC's are not bound to one system specification, they can be made out of the fastest available graphics and cpu's meaning the games you can play on PC can look the best thats the current technology allows them to be and not because they are stuck in console that was created in 2006.

Review of Xfire, the underrated freeware

2010-02-17T04:23:00.000-08:00

With the trend of having so much free services offer to us by the big companies such as Gmail, YouTube, Facebook, and etc it occurs to me that there is one excellent freeware piece of software that doesn't get the gratitude other great services get.

This software is Xfire. Xfire has started as a instant messenger that also displays what game each user is currently playing and with the years they have added so much more to the software that today it's one of the best freeware tools for gamers.

Today the Xfire tool can:

1. Videos, It can Broadcast or Record videos in the games you play and offers you to upload it to your xfire profile.
2. Screenshots, It can capture screenshots and upload them to your profile.
3. Ingame, Xfire supports ingame chat, ingame media player control, ingame browser.
4. Downloads, It can download patches for games automatically.
5. Server browser, It has a very good server browser for any supported game.
6. Clans, It allows you to create and join groups and each group can have it's own page with forum, calender and more.
7. Blog, You can setup a blog.
8. Voice, Xfire supports voice chat with multiple people
9. All of these features are integrated into your Xfire profile which shows how many hours of each game you played, which groups you in, what recent blog posts you posted, your recorded videos and screenshots, what computer spec you have, it can display your World of Warcraft characters, and of course you can choose which things you want to keep private, you can even make your entire profile private.
10. Xfire can connect to Windows Live Messenger and AIM accounts and allow you to message friends on these systems, but not video or voice chat with them

All of these are free and without any bloatware/spyware/interrupting ads

Many of it's features were also copied by big companies such as Valve with Steam and Microsoft with Xbox.

Despite all this it has not got the recognition and popularity it deserves, especially when comparing it to Steam which it's community features are nowhere near what Xfire ofers and now Battle.net 2 is coming soon with Starcraft 2 which also seems like is copying many of the features Xfire already offers today.

In my opinion it is one of the best freeware application, it has no spyware in it, and as long as they keep all things this way and better then you should definitely try it, here is my Xfire profile

Try it now, it's free, small download file: http://www.xfire.com/

YouTube: Volume button vs HD button

2010-02-10T00:31:00.000-08:00

Recent YouTube update changed the user interface and changed the video quality/HD button.

I find this change annoying because most of the times I want to change the video volume I get stuck first with the video quality button, then I have to careful aim the mouse to change volume.

This is a small thing but when you use YouTube a lot it becomes annoying.

The volume button should be right next to the full screen button, the volume button should be on the right side of the screen before all the other buttons including the annotations button.

Also posted on YouTube forums

Battlefield Bad Comapny 2 Beta - Bugs so far

2010-02-03T08:47:00.000-08:00

1. Remove the intro videos of EA, Dice and etc, they are annoying and they become more and more annoying the more you play the game, think of it this way, if you want your players to play this game everyday why force them to watch these videos over and over again.

Infinity Ward lets you get right into the menu with no intro videos.

2. In server browser can't do anything until it completes updating, get stuck at "Waiting for DATA". Can't even tell it to stop, this is bad.

3. Account login has a lot of issues, many times it just won't login and when you wait for it to login you can't stop it or exit the game until it gives you an error message.

4. There is a lot of lag in multiplayers games.

5. Control keys, why change the default from BF2? I have over hours of gameplay on BF2 Why reinvent the wheel and not use the exact same key layout Battlefield 2 had?

This was posted on EA forum

Game mode idea: Commanders should decide

2010-02-02T13:51:00.000-08:00

I have an idea for Battlefield 3 or for any game that imitates the Battlefield series.

I think the Commander should be the one who decide how many of each class he allows the team to have.

So on a team of 32 players the Commander should be able to force no more than 15 medics, 10 assault, 5 anti tank and 2 snipers

This is just an example but then when there are already 2 snipers then players will have to select something else.

This will make the Commander more responsible to a team victory or loss because he decides how many he wants of each class.

This of course should be an extra mode and to still have the normal mode where anyone can be any class they wish just like Battlefield 2.

PeteRoy's Recommended free software for 2010

2010-01-19T11:09:00.001-08:00

I created a video with free applications I recommend to use

I also made a page with the list and links

Call of Duty Domination and Battlefield Conquest game modes

2010-01-07T11:42:00.000-08:00

I love Domination and I wish Battlefield Bad Company 2 and future BF games will have this game mode but not instead of Conquest because Conquest is cool too.

For those of you who don't know the difference between Domination and Conquest I'll explain:

Conquest mode each team starts with 200 tickets, the team that reaches 0 tickets loses. To win the game you need to hold more flags than your enemy OR have more kills, you can hold less flags and still win the game if you kill the enemy more than it kills you, each kill makes the enemy lose 1 ticket, you can speed up the process the enemy loses tickets by also holding most of the flags for most of the time.

Domination works by flags alone, your team has to hold most of the flags most of the time, having more kills has no meaning to victory as long as you hold most of the flags.

Example: If the enemy has no flags it will still lose even if it got more kills

Both modes are fun and refreshing after years of deathmatch and capture the flag

This was also posted on Battlefield Bad Company 2 EA UK forums

IWnet is better than dedicated servers

2010-01-02T05:09:00.000-08:00

There, I said it, I like IWnet more than dedicated servers.

I'm talking about IWnet matchmaking service for Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 which replaces the need for dedicated servers that people have to join.
Sure it has bugs and errors but with time they become rare and less annoying.

Some of IWnet problems for me are:
1. I party with a friend, we start looking for games and suddenly he got into a lobby and im not there, I get message "Server is full" and "Waiting for party leader"
2. Ground War with 18 players can be really long to start playing as you can see in This video I made which shows that it took me over 2 minutes to start a game.
3. Error messages shouldn't stop IWnet keep trying to find you a game, if there is an error it should display it on the side and keep searching for games rathar than ask you to click on the error message.
4. Can't kick hackers, with IWnet you can't kick hackers but as long as VAC keeps the hammer down then this problem can be rare.

But in my opinion these are minor issues which can be fixed, and with time I feel that they become rare and far between.
With all things considered I feel that with IWnet I get to play the game more the way it was intended and what I mean is this:

1. Number of players, you play with the exact number of players a map was designed to have, playing with 40 players in a small map is not really fun.
2. You spend less time trying to find a good server because IWnet does this for you automatically and despite IWnet problems I feel that it usually finds a game faster than I would find a good dedicated server I want to stay in.
3. With IWnet there are no admins making up rules like "no martydom" or no "grenade launcher" rules, if the game has a feature in it then no admin should tell you not to use it.

For example in a game like Battlefield 2 admins started adding annoying rules like "no baserape on uncap" or "wait in line for vehicle" even though the game mechanics allow it and this is annoying because I don't want any admin running a server starting to tell me how to play the game, if the game has a feature in it, no one should prevent it other than the developers themselves.
4. IWnet also always makes sure that if a map should have 12 players in it, then it always makes sure you have 12 players in the game, I almost never get to play in a game that has less than the maximum players for the map like you do on dedicated servers when many times you have to wait until the server fills up.
All of these reasons makes the experience of finding good games quicker and better.

This was also posted on Steam Modern Warfare forum

PeteRoy Video Game Montage

2009-12-25T23:15:00.001-08:00

I have created a montage of modern games

There are 9 different games in this video:

The Sims 3
Grand Theft Auto 4
Need For Speed Shift
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2
Americas Army 3
Counter-Strike Source
Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare
Left 4 Dead
Battlefield 2

Modern Warfare 2 Success Moments

2009-11-27T07:57:00.001-08:00

I have uploaded to Youtube a video of the game Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 on the PC, in the video you can see some funny moments as well as some of the killstreaks awards I have managed to get and use.

I play Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 on the PC using an Intel Core i7 920, NVIDIA Geforce GTX 280 and Intel DX58SO with Windows Vista 64bit SP2.

How to remove Google Update from Windows Services

2009-11-23T11:20:00.001-08:00

I already wrote why I dont install Google Chrome, because of it's annoying Google Update Service that google installs that you can't simply remove in the add/remove programs which led me to create this video guide of how to remove the service and startup item of google update:

This is a guide to completely remove Google Update Service and startup item from registery and from Services list.

WARNING: Deleteting the wrong registery items and the wrong services items can harm your computer and cause it to stop working, I take no responsibility to any damage you might do to your computer

To delete Google Update from the registery you do this: Start, Run, Regedit, HKEY_CURRENT_USER, Software, Microsoft, Windows, CurrentVersion, Run and delete the Google Update entry

To delete Google Update from the Services you do this: Start, Run, Services.msc, Google Update, Copy the service name and then go to: Start, Run, and type: sc delete servicename

This can also work with any service you wish to delete but remember that many services are required for Windows to work properly

Consoles hold back the development progress of computer graphics

2009-11-13T02:40:00.000-08:00

Consoles such as the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 with their fixed hardware peripherals hardware possibily hold back video games graphic development for personal computers.

Today the most success is at games sold to the consoles.
The Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 use hardware that was equivalent to a 2006 top of the line PC.

Which means that even new games in development today are written for 2006 graphics technology even though PC hardware today can devlier much more advance and realistic graphics than what the consoles can.

So even games that are multi platform and come out on the PC as well as on the consoles still don't look as good as they could have been because they were developed mainly for the consoles limiting them to the graphics capabilities of the consoles.

Look at DirectX 10 for example, it came out in 2007 with Windows Vista but still the vast majority of new games coming for the PC are DirectX 9 games.
There is an upside and downside to this fact, the upside is that more people can play games that come out even if they have an relatively old PC, the downside is that we are stuck with graphics that were best in 2006 but could have been improved if were made for more powerful hardware that today's best PC's have, which means we have games that have smaller maps and reduced texture and lightning quality.

Phantasmagoria Carnovasch Estate for The Sims 3

2009-11-01T12:53:00.001-08:00

I built an Estate mansion from the game Phantasmagoria for The Sims 3, also included are Adrienne Delaney and Donald "Don" Gordon"

You can download it from:

http://clancas.net/peteroy/downloads.htm

Online Racing games idea

2009-10-30T06:36:00.000-07:00

All the racing games I play online always use the concept of joining a lobby, you wait for it to fill up with players, you choose a car of the same class as the other players and then the race begins and ends and you return to the lobby. Playing this over and over again can get boring and old.

I have a new idea, have a server that can hold 8 players for example, have a track like the Nurburgring and just allow players to come in and out of the track, there will be no start or finish, the track will always be open, just like the real Nurburgring where you can come with your car and just ride the track while seeing other people with their cars on the track but there would be no official race between them and you are not worried about your car being underpowered compared to other players because your not actually racing them, it's more of a test of the car you used compared to whatever cars are being driven at the moment, it also helps you "showoff" the car you use and what upgrades you made to it.

This kind of racing online will allow more interesting experimenting with car modifications, for example, I just upgraded my Corvette Z06 with a new turbo and I want to check it out casually on an online server, so I join this server that's always open with the the Nurburgring and I drive around the track while other players drive with their cars and I get to see how it matches to a random car that I encounter in the straights in corners without actually racing them to the finish line, more of a on the spot little race on the straights and corners giving you the ability to see how powerful or weak your car is compared to the one you driving near you at the moment.

This idea came to me while playing Need for Speed Shift on my PC, I find myself spend most of the time in the game Lobby waiting for the race to begin while I would wish I could just come in and out of the track while players already on the track and I can just join them, maybe even add the possibility of the car park where you can tell a buddy of yours to meet you and then have the ability to initiate a countdown to begin your own private race on the track even while other players are racing in it, this will be a 1v1 race while you also encounter other cars doing their own rounds not related to you but still make a challenge because you have to over take them and they make your race interesting.

This idea should just be added to the game possibilities, I still enjoy the races where everyone begin together and there are number of laps you have to finish. Having more options to play online in racing games can make racing games last longer.

I have posted this topic in forums:
EA UK NFS SHIFT
Steam
Xfire

Video games I'd like to see Remade

2009-10-28T03:40:00.000-07:00

In the entertainment industry we see a lot of remade movies and music covers of old songs, but we never see an old video game being remade, I have a few games that I love which are old and I think would be a lot of fun playing them again but in a new version using the most recent technologies available and I believe if done right they would sell again.

I have come up with a few games I personally would like to see remade, these are old quest/advanture games I played that have good story and beautiful scenary which would look amazing using modern technology, the games are:

Phantasmagoria, Sanitarium and Atlantis The Lost Tale, I will exaime what I think can be done with each game.

Let's begin with Phantasmagoria
Phantasmagoria is a 1995 Sierra quest thirller game which has a story about an old mansion called "Carnovasch Estate" which have 3 or more floors, many unique rooms, big gearden outside and deep past. The game was made using live actors embedded into 3D model background of the home itself and other places you visit in the game.

Above is a picture of how the original game looks like, I would love to see this game in 3D engine being able to freely walk around and look at everything from first person point of view, I think the original game used a pre rendered 3D model of the mansion and all the rooms so maybe this model exists somewhere and can be used and updated to help remake the game and to keep it as close to the original in terms of unique rooms and the details in them.

I'd like to see Phantasmagoria game remade using todays latest and greatest grpahic engine to make it look as real as possible, and in the remade game I'd like to be able to walk around using first person view, the game will have the same plot, characters, everything the same only using the most modern technology in graphics and audio.
I think this way if done right, Phantasmagoria will be ever more thirlling than the original game and more fun to play. Sanitarium, the game was released in 1998 and it's about a man who lost his memory and through the course of the game is trying to understand who he is, what happened to him and why, the game has a beautiful story and a lot of amazing sets which the character is going through, from a mental tower to a abandoned town, circus and more interesting locations which would be astonishing if brought to a state of the art graphics engine.

This is a screenshot of the first level of Sanitarium, I imagine how this level woud look like in first person view in a high detailed 3D graphics engine.

Atlantis The Lost Tales game from 1997 about the mystic city of Atlantis before it has disappeared, the game takes place at amazing locations such as the city itself, beautiful forest, beaches and more the game has a lot of interesting details and concepts such as the device airplane like called "Flyer" which the people of Atlantis use to fly and fight, the story itself is very good.

This is an ingame screenshot of Atlantis The Lost Tale which still looks beautiful today but could be a lot more beautiful today, also the original game never let you freely walk around to every bit of place you wanted to go so I would love to have this possibility in a remade game of Atlantis.

Atlantis itself had good visuals for the year 1997 and I think it deserves to even get more detailed with todays high definition graphics.

To sum up, I would like to see these games remade into a new game which is exactly based on the old but using todays latest technologies to remake it, which means state of the art graphics and sound and possibily adding new gameplay options such as first person view for games like Sanitarium and Phantasmagoria but keeping the option for the classic gameplay style the original game had. I am sure there are many more old games that are worth remaking with the same principles, the games I wrote about here are my personal favorites that I played many times over.

By the way, if you haven't played one or all of these games consider this my recommendation for you to try them, they are good game if you are interested in story based adventure quest game.

I have posted this idea in gaming forums that I visit.

Battle.net

Steam

EA UK

Anandtech , Anandtech 2

Games for Windows

3dGameMan

Need for Speed Shift Review

2009-10-23T12:51:00.000-07:00

I read a lot of people complain about Need for Speed Shift and I will agree it has many problems, but most of them are small enough compared to the whole game which in my opinion is very good.

I played many racing games in my life, you can look at my xfire profile and even that doesn't show everything I played and I can say that Need for Speed Shift is the best racing game I ever played.

I hope EA updates and fixes Shift small problems and even add more cars like Ferrari if they can that license.

Here are a few annoyances I can point out, this is for the PC version.

- When starting the game, I have to hit Enter 7 times before getting to the menu, it's really annoying and it's not like I can do it fast, I have to wait between each enter a few seconds, it takes more than a minute maybe to just get to the menu:

1. Selecting language > English > Enter
2. Skip intro > Enter
3. Press Enter at title screen > Enter
4. Select saved game. > Enter
5. Load complete message requires > Enter
6. Select online persona > Enter
7. Sign in successful requires > Enter

- After Lobby is locked you can't leave the online game even if you didn't get a chance to select the car you wanted because sometimes you join the lobby just before the race about to begin, this is really annoying because I end up leaving the race after it starts because I would lose anyway with the lalalala car I got as default.

- Cheaters are starting to plague the online games on the PC version at least, if this isn't dealt with online gameplay will be impossible.

- Changing resolutions to low after you played on high is impossible, the game will crash before it reaches the menu, you have to change it manually in the documents graphics files.

- It's a bit annoying that the Spec V GTR is the best 14 rating car, I mean even my 700+ Lambo LP560 can't beat it, I have to use the Spec V GTR like everyone else or you lose.

- Same is annoying with the Zonda R, nothing can beat it, nothing, Koenigsegg can't, Mclaren F1 can't, nothing, annoying.

All these annoyances are small and the game overall is good.

I also posted this review on EA UK NFS Shift forums

List of games that require a CD or not require

2009-09-26T15:26:00.001-07:00

As my ongoing war against the need to have a CD in the drive while you play a PC game I decided to create a list of games that do not require a CD or a DVD in the drive and a list of games that do require a CD in the drive.

Reason is to help people know what games do not require CDs and what do require.

Also, you may help me expand this list by telling me what popular games you know that do not require or do require that I have not listed in that list and you think should be added, you can do this by making a post in my forum or by commenting to this blog article.

To view the list I made of what games do or don't require a CD or DVD click here

How some products are so good and others so bad

2009-09-18T14:59:00.000-07:00

I have a theory about how some products turn out really good and some not. I think that products being made by people who plan to use them themselves turn out really good because the people who make them and want to use them will not let them be released until they are completely pleased about how they turned out.

Take for example the iPhone, this product success and quality comes directly because Steve Jobs himself is the user, he made this product in intention of using it himself everyday, he didn't make this product to fill a gap in the market, he personally cares about it because he uses it and because he uses this product it is has better hardware and software than it's competition phones.

Same is true for television channels and music, for this I can take an example of Simon Cowell, this man only approves of music he himself can enjoy listening to, he doesn't sign an artist who he wouldn't like to hear himself.

Tv stations are sometimes being made by people who don't really watch their own channels and therefore the result is a tv station that shows nothing but a lot of commercials, news and really bad and boring shows and the reason for that is because the people who control that tv station simply don't watch that station themselves, they only care about high ratings and the lowest common attraction factor that can pull the most possible of people to watch their channel.

So my point is that when an idea is being lead by a man or a woman that personally have the uncompromisable enthusiasm to make a product perfect because they know they too will use it, only then you truly see an amazing product. And when you have a product made by a committee who only think of how to make a product that will sell the best even though they personally don't really like it, then you get third grade products and this happens in everything, in food, in cars, in computers, in tv shows, in video games, everything.

Windows Vista update restart reminder "feature" is actually flawed

2009-09-09T11:10:00.001-07:00

I was in a middle of a Xfire instant messenger conversation and while I was typing a message the Restart reminder window popped up and then my computer restarted without me intending to restart.

This is a stupid idea to make this window restart your computer if you press the keyboard because I was in the middle of a fast typing a message and I guess it restarted because I hit a key to confirm the restart when I was writing the message.

Microsoft fix this

GTA 4 Cars

2009-09-07T23:18:00.000-07:00

I will try to make videos of all the cars in Grand Theft Auto 4 and upload to youtube, right now I uploaded Turismo, Infernus and Comet.

Apple Get a Mac ad which favors the PC?

2009-08-29T14:08:00.000-07:00

Watch the Get a Mac ad click here

I just watched this "Get a Mac" ad where actor from Seinfeld Patrick Warburton who played David Puddy appears as "top of the line PC"

I know she prefers the Mac in the end but it doesn't even try to explain or convince us why the Mac "just works" and doesnt have problems.

Patrick Warburton steals the screen and it actually made me think the PC is better than the Mac.

I can't believe Apple actually produced this video because I'm sure many think the PC was better despite what that woman chose in the end because she didn't look like she knows anything about computers.

But there is one success for Apple with me, I have actually helped them advertise this ad.

Here is a topic I made about this in Anadtech forums

Personal site launched

2009-08-28T09:59:00.000-07:00

I decided to make a website that will collect all my activities around the web, including youtube, this blog, my xfire page and possibly more in the future, go check it out.

The site address is: http://clancas.net/peteroy/

Benchmarking Core i7 920 GTX 280 DX58SO

2009-08-26T07:18:00.000-07:00

Benchmarks all games at highest settings res 1920x1200
Quake 3
Doom 3
Counter-Strike Source
Crysis
GTA 4

Test system, not overclocked, all default settings:
CPU: Intel Core i7 920 2666Mhz @ 2800Mhz in Turbo mode
GPU: ASUS GTX 280 OC 1GB GDDR3 512-bit
RAM: 6GB DDR3 G SKILL 1600Mhz @ 1066Mhz
MOBO: Intel DX58SO Smackover socket LGA 1366

PC Games I look forward to

2009-08-23T09:26:00.001-07:00

I decided to make a list of PC games I am looking forward to.

I sort them in order of interest, the first is the game I am most interested and the last is the least interested but still interested enough that there's a good chance I'll buy it.

I link them with trailers I found in YouTube.

Battlefield Bad Company 2 - Battlefield 2 is still the game I play the most at present, Bad Company 1 was for consoles only so I wasn't interested, the only disappointment about Bad Company 2 is that it has no jets and 32 players? Sounds like going backwards instead of forwards but still this is the game I look forward to the most, until official trailer for Battlefield 3 comes out.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 - Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare was a refreshing Counter-Strike Source alternative, it felt like Counter-Strike 2 and already they are making Moder Warfare 2 which from the trailers looks very good

Starcraft 2 - Starcraft story was very interesting to me when I played it at age of 14, I have a feeling I might not feel the same way about it today age 25 but because of that connection it has to my past I have to get it, even though it doesn't look like what I expected it to be, you can read my rant about SC2 here

Diablo 3 - I spent a lot of my life playing Diablo 2 and I had a lot of fun, hopefully Diablo 3 won't disappoint.

Crysis 2 - Crysis 1 is very advance in terms of technology, amazing graphics, supports DX10, supports 64bit, supports Quad Core, it still is the best looking game even though it came out in end of 2007 and today in 2009 no game except for GTA4 looks as good as Crysis.

The downside to Crysis was that despite all of it's good features it still wasn't incredibly enjoyable game like Call of Duty 4 was or Half Life 2 and Crysis story is weak but it makes up for it being so technology advanced and.

So with Crysis 2 I have high expectations for it to be amazing to look at, good fun, more vehicles and more freedom.

Half Life 2 Episode 3 - No official trailer out yet for this game and to be honest Half Life 2 was nice, episode 1 and 2 were nice to play but story wise almost zero progress, I look forward to this game but not extremely excited about it

Operation Flashpoint 2 - The trailer and features are interesting, the original Flashpoint wasn't much fun to play so I am probably wait until I read reviews or try the demo before I even consider buying this game.

The sad thing about this list is that it's all sequels, maybe there are other good games coming out that I don't know about and that's probably because their not popular enough or advertised enough to be known.

My interest in games can also change until they come out, for example in the past I was interested in Enemy Territory Quake Wars but when it actually came out it was such a let down I didn't buy it until I got it as a gift and I still don't play it, same is true to this list, it's like a movie trailer that looks good but when the movie comes out the word to mouth is so bad that you don't go to see immediately or at all.

StarCraft 2 is shaping up to be a bomb

2009-08-06T14:07:00.000-07:00

StarCraft 2 is probably going to sell well, and I am probably going to buy a copy myself but the more news I read about it, the more blows it hit into my disappointment.

The first disappointment is Starcraft 2 graphics, maybe the graphic engine is good, but from the screenshots and videos I've seen it doesn't look good enough for 2009 or 2010, it looks cartoonish, it looks below the art level of Starcraft 1, I am thinking that the Starcraft 1 artists were better than the artists working on Starcraft 2 and I bet Starcraft 2 would look better with the old artists.

The second disappointment is the news about Starcraft 2 being split up to 3 parts it just smells greed, the game will split the single player campign to three different games you have to buy, the first game will only have the Terran campign. You like the story and wants to to play the Zerg or Protoss campaign? Fine, buy a new game. This means you won't get a whole complete game when you buy Starcraft 2, you will have to buy 2 more games after the first release probably at full or close to full price.

The third disappointment is the news about Starcraft 2 not having LAN support, maybe this doesn't matter for most people but for me who have 3 computers at home and that I enjoy having private LAN parties with friends this is a terrible news, dropping LAN support is just another blow of disappointment to this game.
The fourth disappoint is that the game doesn't seem to bring anything new to the game, Starcraft 2 looks like a new FIFA or NBA game that EA releases every year. From the videos and screenshots it looks like exactly the same game as the old Starcraft, only with improved graphics and new story, it doesn't innovate in any way. For example you would expect them to find more possibilities with today computers capabilities, maybe introduce a FPS view of your units or some other brilliant idea that I can't think about.

So unless they keep something in secret until the game is released, the gameplay looks exactly the same. .

I wouldn't be surprised if we discover Starcraft 2 will need a battle.net account that you need to pay money for each months, I already read a blog speading a rumour that Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 will use a subscription based battle.net account, why is this bad? Because part of Starcraft huge success was the free battle.net multiplayer service, taking that away or limiting it is a huge slap in the face for Blizzard fan base.
Starcraft and it's expansion Brood War built for me a huge expectations, and the news and the previews only put those expectations down, as I said the game will probably be a huge success and I would probably buy a copy, but it doesn't look like what I would like it to be.

Update, I got the SC2 beta in April 2010 and I wrote a review of it

Why I don't install Google Chrome or any of Google software

2009-07-17T13:12:00.001-07:00

Google might make great software but the reason I don't install it on my main PC is because I don't like software like a browser or a photo viewer that takes it's liberty to install a service in Windows.

I have enough services running in the background, if I want to update Google Chrome it should do it when I run Google Chrome, not run all the time when I start Windows.

So as long as Google makes software that is only an alternative to what I have that uses no services like IE8 and Firefox then there is no need for it.

If Google are reading this then this is a mesasge to you, at least give the option upon installation to choose not to install update services.

This is by the way the same grunt I have against Adobe, why would a PDF reader need a service in Windows to update itself?

If every little software will start installing pointless services then it will bring even the best machines to a halt.

Grand Theft Auto 4 on the PC videos

2009-07-03T09:48:00.001-07:00

I have uploaded GTA 4 videos I recorded using Xfire to Youtube and I created a playlist for viewing convenience.

Stop CD Check for PC games

2009-06-15T07:20:00.000-07:00

PC games should be like TV channels, you click the icon and the game starts, same as you press the button to switch the channel.

Today there is no need for games on the PC to have a CD or a DVD in the drive while playing the game, the only reason they require a CD in the drive is because it is another step in an attempt to stop piracy.

But, finding a no CD crack for a game is the easiest thing to do, it is a lot easier than getting a legit KEY for the game to play online.

Now the reason why I want games to stop requiring CD in the drives is because when you have a lot of games installed and you come back from work to relax and play games you don't always in the mood to start getting up to the computer and switch CD's every time you want to play a different game.

When I really want to play a game I will switch the CD but sometimes when I want to play a game for just a few minutes I might give up on playing it because I'm too tired or lazy to switch the cd.

That's why I compare it to watching TV, when you are tired and want to relax you will sit on your sofa and switch channels, your not going to start watching movies on your DVD, you will prefer things like VOD (Video on Demand).

I have good examples of some games that do not require the game CD in the drive.

Activisions public Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare and this game doesn't require a CD in the drive and that hasn't stopped it from being the most successful Call of Duty.

Id Software games require no CD in the drives and yet Doom 3 is their best selling game as far as I know.

Take for example Valve with Steam, none of the games on Steam require a CD.

I have an example why it should be very possible for companies like EA to stop requiring CD in the drive, they let games they publish like Crysis to work on Steam which doesnt require a CD and yet for the people who bought Crysis in retail they still are forced to have the Crysis DVD in the drive.

If games like Crysis, GTA4 and others would stop requiring CD in the drive their online activity would increase because I am sure many people who own a legitimate copy will give up on playing the game for small moments because they can run other games instead which dont force them to put a cd in the drive, many times I started playing Call of Duty 4 or Counter-Strike Source because I wanted to play for 10 minutes.

I have 2 monitor setup for my computer, 1 monitor on the desk for when I seriously want to play hard and another 32 inch display when I play games like you would watch TV, I sit back on my bed playing, I am sometimes half asleep when I play at night for fun before I go to sleep.

So, game publishers, if you want more people to play your games on the PC for more of the time you must stop requiring the CD in the drive, there are too many games and were not gonna start switching CD's like a DJ. Games should require no CD, they have to load fast and close fast, and not make us work for them by inserting a CD in the drive.

Update: Since I wrote this post here I decided to extend it in 2 fourms.

I posted about this in Microsoft Games for Windows forum

And in EA UK forums

Battlefield 2 Tip #2: Repair Jets faster on certain maps

2009-05-26T11:43:00.000-07:00

Some maps in Battlefield 2 like Operation Cleansweep and Zatar Wetlands have 2 repair shops, above is a screenshot of them circled in red, most maps have only 1 repair shop but when you have 2 you can fly over both of them in a single pass.

If you fly over both of these repair shops in a single flyby you will repair much faster, now I don't know if it's a exploit or not but I use this when possible.

I made 2 videos from both maps demonstrating how to do this.

Operation Cleansweep

Zatar Wetlands

My BF2 TIP #1 has only a video:

Battlefield 2 Motivational Posters

2009-05-22T12:29:00.000-07:00

A thread on Battlefield 2 EA UK forum inspired me to create 5 posters about Battlefield 2

End CD check in PC games, it must stop!

2009-05-17T12:46:00.000-07:00

PC games need to stop requiring the game cd to be in the drive.

If you play many different games it's starting to be a hassle to keep switching CD's in your drive every time you want to play a different game, for example, I play Battlefield 2 and sometimes I want to play a few minutes of Crysis or GTA4, it may sound silly but sometimes I will give up on the idea because I don't want to start switching cd's right now.

In the past the CD sometimes was necessary because it played the game music or video cut scenes.

Today PC games install all of their data onto the hard drive and the requirement for the CD to be in the drive is another step in attemp to prevent priacy.

Thing is, the most useful tool against priacy is the game key needed to connect to official servers and the CD check is something that can be easly disabled with a crack.

So the only people who suffer from the cd check are legitimate owners who don't want to risk cracking their game with nocd crack.

Valve did well with Steam and non of the games on Steam requrie a CD in the drive and if it can work for Valve with Steam it can work for any game company.

As of writing these words I can specify a few games I play that don't require a CD to play, Call of Duty 4 Multiplayer, All of Valve games (Counter-Strike Source, Half Life 2 and etc) Diablo 2 after new patch, and I hear that soon Battlefield 2 1.5 patch will not require the CD to be in the drive.

A feature Windows Vista should have had

2009-04-13T09:49:00.001-07:00

In Windows Vista Aero interface they improved the taskbar so you can preview the contents of Windows if you have your mouse over them, that's a great feature, but they didn't go far enough with it.

What they should have done is allow you to pin the preview so it will stay even after you move your mouse away, so you can keep seeing the preview even while working on other windows, so it will look something like this:

I am surprised they havent thought to give you this option because they did it brilliantly with Windows Media Player, you can minize it to a toolbar in the taskbar, and when you do that it gives you controls instead of just the name of the program and it gives you the option to keep watching the video in a small Windows, here's a screenshot of that:

So what I want to see is this, I want to have with every program the same functionality Windows Media Player gives you when it's minimized.

For example, when you minimize Internet Explorer it will have buttons to go backward and forwards and still see the contents of the web page, allow program developers the ability to control what their application can do in the taskbar.

And Microsoft, if you take this suggestion, please don't put it in Windows 7 only, allow Vista owners to get this as a free update.

Windows 7 is evil business like Mac OS X

2009-04-07T13:07:00.000-07:00

Apple likes to point out how they have released a lot of operating systems updates since 2002, Tiger, Leopard all of those are still Mac OS X and everytime they released a new version of OS X, they charged full price for the "new" version even though it is only an update and not a new operating system, so basically you are buying an update to your OS X for full price, imagine how people who bought Tiger feel when Leopard comes out and if they want it they have to pay the same price for Leopard.

Microsoft Windows XP have had many updates since it was released, but haven't charged a dime for the updates, Windows XP updates were Service pack 1 and 2, Internet Explorer 7, Windows Media Player updates, Firewall, and a lot more, all for free.

Sadly now it seems that Microsoft is following Apple to a place they shouldn't, they are releasing Windows 7 as a new operating system even though it is Vista underneath with new updates.

I have bought Vista recently and now I feel cheated, I always thought Microsoft wouldn't screw their customers like Apple does, I thought that this is why Microsoft is successful and Apple is not, and now Microsoft is doing the same thing Apple does by releasing Windows 7 as a new operating system instead of a free update for Vista.

2009-03-31T13:19:00.000-07:00

3drealms, the company behind Duke Nukem, have a real bad attitude towards their fans/prospected customers.

You try to make a question in their official forum and immediately they close or delete your thread saying read the FAQ

So I read their FAQ in their forums and they basically say you can't dicuss anything that they don't like to talk about, are they a company with customers or a kid that starts to cry everytime you tell him something he doesn't like to hear?

For example they say about the long development "Let's stop talking about it, ok? There is no new way you can think of to tell us how long the game has taken - we've heard 'em all." and I say that a serious company who cares about their fans should keep them continuously up to date about their game, they should also try to say when it will be completed, give an estimate, tell your fans what you are doing.

I think questions that repeat themselves over time should have new answers, they say "Please don't ask "Will Feature X be in DNF?"why won't you let your fans ask you questions about your game?

And even a question has been asked all the time over and over, so what? It's just a forum, it's there for people to ask questions.
I have a lot more rant so I will just summarize and say that 3drealms are shooting their own foot with this attitude and it will probably show that if these kind of people are behind this game, the game will probably suck too.

No wonder they are still in development, they probably treat their employees in the same disgusting manner they treat their fans which means a lot of quality developers are probably walking away from this company and when they leave it hurts the development big time.

Anti PDF, hate pdf files, most stupid file format ever

2008-09-27T03:34:00.000-07:00

I hate PDF files, I don't get the point of them, why do companies like Intel and Nvidia use PDF files for their online product manuals or release notes?

Why do we even need PDF files? There are a lot of better alternatives that can do a better job than PDF. What can PDF do that HTML can't for example? HTML display abilities are as good as PDF, it is also faster, and you already have a browser to read HTML.

For example, I want to read the manual for my motherboard, I go to Intel's website and into my product page and I have to download the PDF file before I can read about what a certain setting does in the BIOS.

The only company I came across that doesn't force you to open PDF files is Dell, in their support pages you can read ANY manual for ANY of their products in HTML and this saves me a lot of time in my job when I work with Dell laptops, servers and desktops, and no, I don't work for Dell, I just work at a place that uses Dell.

The worst thing about PDF files is the Acrobat Reader, one of the worst applications of all time, it's bloated, takes too long to load and it installs too many things on your computer, it has an autoupdate program that runs everytime you run Windows. It's too big, a program that opens text and pictures shouldn't take the disk size and memory space this program does, also it's updates sizes are too big as well and are too often.

A perfect example the Adobe Acrobat Reader is too bloated and badly written is Foxit Reader. Foxit Reader size is less than 2MB and it can open any pdf file that Adobe Acrobat opens.

I refuse to install Acrobat Reader on my home PC, I use Google Docs to open PDF files I need to read.

Bottom line is, please ditch this format and let it die.

Mac OS X Leopard

2008-04-07T01:54:00.001-07:00

Apple has released Leopard claiming it's much better than Windows Vista. Not that's much to shout about.

Windows Vista itself is garabage and Apple's Mac OS X may had many different versions but the OS itself is the same age of Windows XP.

Apple should stop comparing themselves to Windows and PCs if they want to be taken seriously.

Battlefield 3, what I want to see

2008-01-29T15:34:00.000-08:00

I love Battlefield 2. I love it's gameplay, it's realistic where you want it to to be realistic and it's not realistic where you don't want it, everything looks real. Battlefield 2 stops being real where real starts to be too real and not fun.

I love how I can do things I probably won't do my entire life, fly F-15's, Cobra's, drive tanks, capture bases and I love how all of this happens at the same time in the same map.

Battlefield 2 is not just a game, it's many games all in one package, it's a flight simulator, dogfight, infantry shooter, car simulator, strategy game from commanders point of view, it is genius how they combined all these games into one package and how they all affect one another.

Until Battlefield 2 if you wanted to fly an F-15 you'd have to get a game that only does aircraft's like Jane's F-15 something, if you wanted first person shooter with modern rifles you played Counter-Strike or Americas Army, and there are many more examples.

Thing is, I didn't like Battlefield 2142, it was such a disappointment compared to Battlefield 2, it had smaller maps, weaker weapons, less players, it was more like a toddler kid version of Battlefield 2.

I hope that they will move forward and make Battlefield 3 a great game that stays in modern days and include new weapons like the F-22 and so.

I have thought a lot about what I want in Battlefield 3 and I'm sure Dice can take my ideas and expand them.

What I want to see in Battlefield 3

Bigger maps, maybe even twice as big as the biggest BF2 map such as Daqing Oilfields.

100 players in a server or more, Battlefield 2 was supposed to have 100 players, do it in BF3.

3 armies or more in one map, no FPS game has done this yet, put 3 different teams in one map, you could do 2 small teams against one big team such as MEC and China vs USA or small USA and British vs China. Or free for all.

At least 3 fighter jets and bombers such as B-52, B-2 and so on, give them mission to destroy key enemy buildings, headquarters.

Cargo planes, be able to load other vehicles in planes and to deliver them to other bases, if the maps are big it can be a mission by itself, the enemy could try to destroy these cargo planes while in air, friendly fighter jets could escort these planes and develop dogfights with enemy trying to shoot it down, if you successfully transport you get points.

Aircraft carriers I want to see FULL SIZE aircraft carriers with everything that's in them, I want to see it be able to move in the water.

Underground headquarters, commanders in Battlefield 2 was a great idea, I'd like to see more in that direction in Battlefield 3, maybe even 2 commanders, I'd like to see a special key building for the commander such as an underground bunker, in it war rooms with big screens and more. The enemy could try to penetrate that bunker and get points for killing the commander similar to points gained by destroy UAV.

Bigger detailed bases, uncappable bases in Battlefield 2 should be upgraded to more detailed bases with more buildings that could contain more objectives for the enemy to destroy.

Women FPS games rarely feature any female, I want to see female soldiers in the game.

FPS game without the S (no shooter, non violent)

2008-01-06T07:56:00.000-08:00

I love FPS games, I play them a lot, from Castle Wolfenstein when I first started playing FPS to Battlefield 2 and Call of Duty 4 today, their great.

But, I'd like to see a non violent First person game for a change. It's not that I don't want to play FPS anymore, it's just I want to be able to take a break from the "killing" and still enjoy the first person view mode which I enjoy the most and think is best.

Even MMORPG games like World of Warcraft and Guild Wars are violent when it comes to killing monsters.

Trouble is, there aren't many first person games out there and there are even less that are good.

I would like to see a good game that is using first person prespective and doesn't have violence in it.