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Who doesn’t like to fire up a freakin’ awesome computer game every now and then?

Let me cast your mind back to the late 1990’s. There were games released almost on a weekly basis right across the PC, PS1, and N64.
Times were good, and it didn’t matter which system you were on.

Recently, I had been feeling that games weren’t being released, or in as good quality, as they used to be. I guess its an “old” gamers thing, where nothing is as good as it used to be, and in all honstly this past year, for me as a PC gamer, looked bleak.

Then Modern Warfare 2 came along, and the news that the PC version of the game was being gimped. I snapped. I went out and bought a tone of games that had been recommended to me, MANY released in the past 6 months.

It was like my eyes had been opened up. Gaming wasn’t dying, the focus platform had just shifted. I’m not going to say that console gaming is the way of the future, its just where gaming is at, at the moment. Will it come back to the PC? Will it become more focused on mobile platforms? Will there be a new generation of consoles that it will move to? Only time will tell, but I shall ride this games wave now I’ve discovered where it is.

Oh, and for those who go “FPS can only been played on the PC”, that’s wrong, you just have to learn a new technique. Its not better. Its different.

I think it is a common thing that everyone does, listening to music that suits their mood. I would even go as far as saying every human does it at some point.

Music in itself can express many different emotions, and is designed that way. And good music’s meaning is open to interpretation for you to find your own meaning in it, sometimes separate to what the artist/artists were attempting to express. This is a good thing, both from a sales, and an artist getting the most people to experience their art.

For me, the song which has just the most profound energy, and is just always enjoyable to listen to is Rumble by Link Wray. Just the way it sounds and is preformed always brings a smile to my face. And yes, I’ll admit, its close to this.

Strangely for me, I don’t actually listen to sad songs when I’m feeling down. I havn’t found any songs that will be “me”. I guess this is where I’m lucky in that I have the ability to make/play music myself to represent how I’m feeling at the time.

Anger is always distortion for me. Always. Lots of noise and distortion. I don’t care what the lyrics are, but LOUD guitars with quick drums always does the trick for me. Oh, and the volume has to be on 11. Generally that takes me towards the likes of these guys.

Then I have the songs that just make me laugh all the time, regardless of what mood I’m in, if these come on, then I cna’t help but laugh. The Majesty of Rock by Spinal Tap are just a few that can do this to me.

This brings me to the music I have been playing lately my self.
It is all well and fun learning how to play some of my favorite songs on guitar, but in all honesty, its nothing compaired to being able to pick up that piece of wood, and use it to express how I’m feeling at the time.

And I have found that I am often at odds with myself when playing expressively like this. Its both more natural to play, and (generally) requires more concentration from me. I’m happy to use a guitar that’s not exactly in perfect tune, maybe the neck has a bit of a bow after a new string change, or I haven’t set the action yet, but that doesn’t bother me either. When I’m playing expressively I know it shouldn’t be easy, and I’m going to have to battle this thing in my hands. I’ll use techniques I’m not very good at. I’ll strip as many effects away from my playing as possible. And I don’t care if the “noise” I’m making annoys anyone.

Music is for you. Weather you make it your self or listen to it.

Content delivered via a subscription. You would have thought that with the technology, better video streaming and delivery would be what people would seem to want.

With TV, and Video, the Radio started to loose its popularity, but now with iTunes, and RSS feeding of pod casts (both video and audio), it seems that the idea of a radio show is back on the rise again.
The idea of pod casting a radio show after it has been broadcast in the normal sense, has seen a resurrection in the idea of a talk back radio show.
It can be seen plainly when looking at the top downloaded pod casts in iTunes, there usually isn’t any video based ones in the top 5 overall.

The Hamish & Andy show is a brilliant example of this, the popularity of the show has just kept growing since the decision to both broadcast it live, and offer it for pod cast shortly after this airing time. And that popularity has just kept growing. I’d even wager that their odd appearances on Rove didn’t have a great effect on the number of people listening in.

Another brilliant example is the Ricky Gervais show. That’s a pod cast that had minimal advertising, and as of the second season required payment to listen to it, and it still managed to reach the number of downloads and listens that alot of TV shows struggle to attain.

Personally, I welcome this change back to audio only broadcasting, it saves me from having to see poorly edited, shitty, videos on youtube, or people attempting to be funny for a forced 30 minutes on TV.

Now as everyone here knows, for as long as I’ve been around games, I have been a PC gamer. Actually let me correct that, I’ve been a computer gamer. That is I play my games on a computer.

But recently, I’ve made a bit of a change to my gaming life. I’ve moved from playing all my games on the PC to most of my games on the Xbox 360.

Now, I’ve owned the Xbox 360 for quite some time, but I’ve never actualy played any games on it, besides Guitar Hero.
This was mainly because all the games I wanted to play were on the PC.

But recently, a lot of the games that I’ve been waiting for, or excited for, have been either crippled for the PC, poorly ported, or just delayed, and there’s also a bunch of games that just don’t make it to the PC.

So I’ve made the switch, and its been fantastic, I’m not being bored out of my mind with the one release in a blue moon, I’ve got a whole back catalog of games that I have never had access to that I can now play. I’ve been catching up on old titles like Assassins Creed, Prototype, Soul Calber 4, and the Halo series just to name a few (yes I know some of these are on the PC, but seriously, they are poor ports).

I’m also loving the fact that I don’t need Steam, or to enter CD keys, or sign up for a service to play my games. Just push my little X button, whack the DVD in the drive, and away I go.

Now, don’t for a second think that I’m thinking “oh the controller controls the game as good as a mouse and keyboard”. Because I don’t. For FPS the PC controls will always be more accurate. That doesn’t mean that the controller doesn’t work. After a little practice, I’ve found that aiming, and movement can be quite fluid in 360 FPS games (don’t know about PS3, I’d imagine it would be the same).

There’s been some discussion on the AtomicMPC forums about in-game advertising in PC games (for some reason, this doesn’t seem to be an issue in Console gaming).

First of all, yes the screen-shots of in-game adds are from a free game that uses add revenue to keep the servers going. I just wanted to show some in-game adds and Quake Live was the quickest game I had on-hand that had adds. Also, sorry for the low textures, as I said, I was in a hurry so left the details turned down.

I’ll copy and paste my argument FOR in-game advertising, and expand on it a little.

QUOTE (SquallStrife @ Oct 16 2009, 10:40 AM)

QUOTE (DasBok @ Oct 16 2009, 10:57 AM)
Probably.

Maybe I’m ok with it, ’cause I’ve been expecting it for a while, it was always bound to happen, ever since Half Life 2 came out, and was tied into steam, I’ve been expecting it.
And I honestly don’t think its a bad thing. The advertising is generally out of the way, and companies like the TAC can get a message out, but in a way that doesn’t really affect game play.
I know that the revenue probably doesn’t reach the developers, but I’d like to think that a small part of it goes into maintaining servers, and possibly making it into the packages that they use to fund new games. Heck, it probably does go strait to their pockets, but that doesn’t REALLY affect me, so it doesn’t bother me.

I can understand the whole “principal of the matter” argument, but at the end of the day, if your still buying and playing the game, then that argument has no weight, they will keep releasing games in such a way, and I’m really only seeing this argument from PC gamers, I’ve seen in-game advertising, AND advertising on the Xbox360 dashboard, and you pay $80 for Xbox Live. And I’ve never heard a 360 owner complain about adds in a service/game they play for. (Yes, I know that’s a “they are ok with it, so why arn’t we?” argument).

One other thing I’d like to point out, to me, these adds make me feel more immersed in the game, especially if its based in modern times. An add for “coke” or another product, heck maybe even a TAC one if its a racing game, its something I identify with, and it sucks me into the world more.

And I honestly believe that. I believe that in-game adds can be a good thing. I believe they ARE a good thing. They really do help suck me into the virtual world that has been created. For example, in say Modern Warfare 2, if I see an add for some made up fizzy beverage, I know my minds gonna go “hang on, that doesn’t exist, this isn’t real” and the suspension of disbelief is ruined. But if that same billboard has Pepsi, in a way that I’ve seen it whilst driving around in real life, or on TV, then my minds going to go “quick, get behind cover, I DON’T WANA DIE!”

The fact is that adds are a part of our every day lives. We can’t avoid them, even if blind. So why not have some form of advertisements in game worlds that are meant to mimic real life? And at that same time, why not use real products?
Sure someones going to be making money off of it, but if you were the developer, or publisher, or advertiser, are you going to tell me that you REALLY wouldn’t do it?

Also, if in-game adds really annoy you that much, then don’t play games with them. The excuse of “but I still want to play the game” doesn’t hold up, its similar to the argument of “I can pirate games because I can’t afford them”. It helps no-one and doesn’t make a point.

Quake Live has done adds good.

Well, the TAC has.

All the TAC adds for motorcyclist safety have been along the lines of “there’s no re-spawn for motorcyclists” and “Motorcyclists need more Armour” amongst other things.

Really smart idea IMHO.

Check my example at the red Armour on a CTF map.

So last night, me and Nick decided to catchup and play some console games, started out with the awesome Halo 3 ODST, and we got a respectable score on it. My God it is so much fun, both the singe player and the brilliant mod Fire Fight.

Next we moved onto the Wii with the brilliant Mario Kart Wii for some old time gaming. Caitlyn came out and joined us, and it soon degenerated into us yelling at each other and generally making fun of each other like we usually do.
Then Caitlyn started getting into a reminiscence mood, and was trying to remember a level she claimed “might” have been from the original Halo, and after a long time of her failing to describe what the map looked like, and us loading up all three Halo games. She finally went away and drew a few lines on a piece of paper.

You can see this piece of paper down the side here.

Now, how much of a bloody nerd must I be to know exactly what Caitlyn was talking about from a simple drawing like this? And yes, I was right, we loaded the game up, and sure enough, it was the map that we remembered (it wasn’t in Halo).

We also decided it would be cool to every few nights to get a Halo PC game happening, just for fun. If its just us three. Or if any of you want to join, then that would be brilliant.

Oh, and yes, we did also play some Halo 3 in multilayer. Defiantly better than Halo 1 on the Xbox, so much fun. Love doing races in the ATV’s, and some of the new weapons are just awesome fun to try and use. (Single handed playing ftw).

Definitely gonna have to get a Gold subscription for my 360 so I can play Fire Fight, and Halo 3 online.

I should probably make a start of Gears of War, and Perfect Dark as well.

The map was Torlan from UT2k4 btw.

I just want to put this thought out there publicly.

Is the convention of building a computer inside of a computer case out of date for general home users?

Obviously for those who enjoy hording lots of Linux ISO’s, or building ultra huge fast machines (read enthusiasts), its not, and it is still a viable platform, but my main question is, why hasn’t there been a greater push for more consumers PC’s designed similar to HP’s TouchSmart, Dell’s Studio One, or Apple’s iMac?

Personal, for general home users, and even general office workers, I think the idea of having a box that houses your CPU, Hard Drives, DVD drives, motherboard, video card, sound card, etc. is a way of computer building that should have started to die quite a bit ago.
I mean, how many of you have built cheep home computers, and had a huge amount of free space left in the case can just make you feel sad looking at it.

The obvious argument against this, is “we have laptops”, but those machines don’t easily cater to people who want something with a 22″ or bigger screen (22″ seems to be in the process of becoming the current monitor “standard” for size).

I also don’t see why this type of design couldn’t be feasible to the home builder either. I mean, if Dell, HP, and Apple are fitting proper processors into these types of machines currently, and with low and mid-range graphics cards being GENERALLY good enough for most casual gamers, without putting out allot of heat (and this situation is only getting better).

Would it really be that bad, if Monitor “cases” were a standard? I mean, you would only need to replace your case… when you wanted a bigger screen (assuming you are not a normal home user who will simply throw out, and buy new, an entire new computer when one component is out of date)

Obviously, this way of computer building isn’t going to be an overnight change, and I’ve got a feeling that if or when it does come, allot of enthusiasts will fight it.

I really want to hear what everyone thinks to this, I believe its the way forward, do you?

Failing that, as an intrum step: whats your thoughts to USB hubs (already have them) and DVD/Br Burners built into Monitors?

Just gonna quickly run through a few things that I felt were note worthy this post.

First, my Ford Fairmont EB (1992), the gearbox on it died recently, this gives it a Park, no reverse, Nutural acting like Drive, Drive acting like Drive, and 2/1 acting like 2/1.
Obviously this makes it hard to get out of parking spaces, so for now, I’m traveling around in a 1984 VW Transporter, which I have to say, is one of the most fun cars I have ever driven.

Who cares that it takes almost 2 minutes to reach 100km/ph when you can have this much fun driving a car, and its a completely different way to drive. Your sitting on the front wheel, so you have to wait a little before turning (such a weird sensation behind ahead/on the turning point), the car doesn’t sound like its going to epxlode when it hits 4k rpm, and the fact that the body is so light you can just throw it around.

Good fun.

Second, its so funny how dumb people are getting these days. A few days ago, as some will notice, I made a twitter/facebook update, this is the explanation of what I was on about:
At Frankston station, you now have to actualy scan your ticket before the barriers will open, and with AO’s on the platform, you can’t just jump them. Its obvious that some people have been using melbournes public transport without a ticket… ever.

Trying to get onto the platform after a train and pulled in and passengers were disembarking, one young girl, she looked to be about 15 or 16 (fuck school holidays), was trying to get through the ticket barrier from the train. She had clearly NEVER used a ticket before in her life, even with her fried explain “put it in the slot with the arrow facing it”, she just couldn’t get it. I mean, how hard is it, to put the ticket into the slot (which has a picture of a ticket above it showing which way to insert it as well), the correct way around (arrow on the ticket too). She was triyng to put it into the top of the machine, swipe it over the slot, put it in SIDEWAYS (that is the long side of the rectangular ticket).

She eventually got it, but FUCK, how stupid are some people?

Oh, and on the instrument front, I finaly got myself my own guitar amp. A Marshall MG30R.

AND I wana update the 320gb Seagate HDD in my system. Someone recommend me a new HDD thats cheep!

I now have 4 guitars.

Three electric and one acoustic.

Do I really need 4 guitars? Probably not.

The Strat on the left, is a Legacy I bought from cash converters, as I wanted something with single coils, and some form of tremolo.

The Semi-Acoustic on the right, my Greg Bennett RL1, first guitar, has humbuckers, and does rock-and-roll extreamly well, and playing unpluged fairly well as well.

The green and black guitar was custom painted and the electronics re-done in it as a learning exercise on a $29 Catch-Of-The-Day special.

The acoustic I got because I wanted an acoustic.

Do they all get played? Yes. Lots.