Because the internet needs another gaming blog.

I was all set to finally start playing Dragon Age: Origins last night.  There was nothing planned on my schedule, so I figured once my daughter was in bed I’d be able to sneak in a solid two hours of game time, three if I was lucky (and willing to be a little bit tired at work the next day).

Things, of course, didn’t go according to plan.  As usual I spent the evening playing with my daughter and our rousing game of hide-and-seek around the house riled her up a bit too much because she was way too wired to fall asleep after going to bed at 8:00.  It wasn’t until 10:00 that she finally closed her eyes and drifted off to never-never land.  Unfortunately, by the time 10:00 rolls around, I need to start heading off to bed myself, otherwise there’s no way I’d ever hear my alarm go off at 5:00 AM.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d gladly trade any amount of “free time” to play with my daughter, but there are certainly times that I miss the days when I could get home from work, have a quick supper, and then game all night.  It’s incredible to think of all the time I spent playing EverQuest II for instance.  In fact, it outright blows my mind.

This is the big reason I don’t really play MMO’s any more; I just don’t have time.  Games like Braid, my game “du jour”, are perfect.  I can pop in, play for a few minutes, and pop back out.  Brad is even extra cool because it saves your progress in such a way that I launch the game and I’ll be standing exactly where I was when I previously quit.  No load screens, no menu screens, just instant gratification.

I think I may have trouble getting into, and subsequently through, Dragon Age.  There have been times where I’ve had a few minutes of free time but I gather that you can’t really play a game like Dragon Age in twenty minute chunks, so I’ve played something else, or just browsed the web.

Is this what it feels like to be a grown up?

There was a time where I’d buy just about any gaming related magazine off the store shelves, but these days I don’t buy any.  The last one that I read with any sort of regularity was Games For Windows magazine, but that died some time ago.  Before that, PC Gamer was my mag of choice.

I can actually remember picking up the very first issue of PC Gamer, complete with a demo of Theme Park on a floppy disk.  For several years after that, I purchased and read every single issue.  I tried a subscription once but that was a horrible experience.  My issues would show up a solid month or two late.  The following months issue would already be on store shelves before I got my subscription issue for the previous month.  I could understand that if I lived in the North Pole, but I’m in the middle of Canada for crying out loud (insert North Pole joke here).  Needless to say, I didn’t renew and just continued to purchase them off the shelf.

If I had to guess, I’d say it was about five or six years ago when I stopped buying them every month.  I’d still get the occasional issue here or there, but it was mostly restricted to when I was really bored and wanted something simple to read or when I was traveling somewhere.

I would suggest that it was around the time when Greg Vederman left as editor in chief that the quality of the writing took a steep nosedive.  Just a few months ago I picked up an issue on a whim and it was littered with potty jokes and all manner of sophomoric “humour”.  Don’t get me wrong, I love a good poop joke just as much as anybody, but it was pretty bad.  The layout was also terrible, using some ridiculous font which made the whole magazine look completely low budget and ugly.  Finally, the articles themselves were poorly written and extremely short, presumably to make room for all the pretty screen shots.

The point of all this is to say that I’m not surprised to notice that PC Gamer has all but disappeared from all the stores I normally would have bought it from here.  It’s been about two months since I’ve seen one on a shelf in the grocery store I shop at, the local 7-11, or even the bookstores.  It all feels eerily similar to the situation leading up to the close of Games For Windows magazine.  I checked the PC Gamer website and it appears as though the magazine is still operating, having just announced another new editor in chief, but from where I am it looks as though it’s going belly up.  Any word?

I stupidly made some gaming resolutions at the beginning of last year.  The truth is, I was probably desperate to post something to the blog, and resolutions are easy to pronounce.  Living up to them is harder.  Probably the only kind of blog post that’s easier to do is a recap of past resolutions and seeing if you did or did not live up to them.  So in that spirit, here’s my first (of many more to come) lazy post of 2010.

The first resolution I made in 2009 was to cancel World of Warcraft, which I did in July.  I have not been back since time expired on the account, although I have felt a pull now and then.  I’m hoping that playing Runes of Magic can satisfy my MMO urges in the time being to keep me from re-subscribing to WoW.

The second resolution was to become competent with the Source SDK and make some levels.  I got as far as actually downloading the SDK, which really isn’t difficult through Steam, and I may have even launched it one or two times.  That’s it.  Apparently I’d rather play games as opposed to make levels for them.

The third resolution was to learn to program C++ or C#.  I went with C# given its similarities with Java, which I’m already fairly competent in.  I bought a book and everything.  I got a few chapters into the book and have enjoyed it, but it’s stalled somewhat of late due to various other reasons that I can’t think of right now.  I think my biggest problem is that I’ve got too many hobbies.

Finally, I mentioned a few games that I wanted to finish and I managed to achieve a fifty percent score on that, which in my book, is a passing grade.  I finished both Oblivion and Fallout 3, but failed to get through Baldur’s Gate 2 and GTA IV.  I don’t think I even played GTA IV once through the entirety of 2009.  I did start playing BG2, and it was great fun, but like a moth to a flame I was distracted by other newer, shinier games.

As for 2010, I don’t want to make any resolutions.  There, that was easy.

Just to follow up on my last post, I replaced my failed video card (a Radeon x1950 Pro AGP), with a Sapphire Radeon HD 3850.  I didn’t really expect to see any major improvement in gaming performance what with my CPU bottleneck, but I was very happy to see a very noticeable difference.  I loaded up a few different games to check it out, and Call of Duty 4 runs much better (at slightly higher settings too) than it did on the x1950, as well as Oblivion. So far, I’m pleasantly surprised.

I have now bought “the last AGP card I’ll ever need” for a second time.  Yes, I know I need to get a new PC.  The problem is that we’re trying to save money for too many other things that we need.  Which brings me to the title of this post.  The sales on Steam these days are crazy, and I’ve had to show a tremendous amount of restraint to keep from spending every hard earned penny I’ve got on their deals.

I have picked up two titles however, the first being Braid for a completely reasonable $2.50.  I had been meaning to pick this up for a while on Xbox Live but just never got around to it.  I still think I’d prefer to play it on my 360 as opposed to the PC, but I just couldn’t pass it up for $2.50.  It’s a nice little game to play in short bursts (which typically have turned into long bursts), and so far I’ve managed to complete worlds two and three, and I’m half way through four.  There has only been one puzzle so far that has sort of stumped me, but it turns out I had the right idea, just my execution was off.  I eventually got it down after a whole lot of do-overs.  I fully intend on finishing the game without looking up the solutions, no matter how far into insanity it drives me.

The other game I picked up was Trine.  I have heard a lot about this game lately and it was only $4.99 so I picked it up.  I have only gone through the opening tutorial, but so far it seems pretty cool.  It also seems like it’ll be good for short bursts at a time, hopefully acting as nice filler material in between Dragon Age sessions (when I finally get going on that one).

I had to talk myself out of picking up The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind for $4.99.  I was very tempted, because it’s one of my favourite games of all time.  I have it for my original Xbox and actually never finished it, surprise, surprise.  One day, I promise!  The PC version looks so much nicer, but realistically, I doubt I’d ever get around to playing it knowing that I’ve got a bunch of hours sunk into my Xbox save file.

The other game I seriously considered picking up was Torchlight, also for $4.99.  Again though, I had to be realistic; I’ve got un-played games coming out of my wazoo already so I certainly didn’t need to add another one to the pile.  I tell you though, this Steam stuff is tempting, and I know it’ll only lead to trouble.

It’s 2010 now and still no spaceships or hover-boards in sight.  It just doesn’t seem right.

I decided to ring in the new year with some good ol’ fashioned computer game playing.  My daughter was spending the day with the grandparents so I was free to do as I pleased.  I’ve neglected my PC somewhat over the last little while in favour of my Xbox 360.  Approaching six years old now, my PC isn’t quite up to snuff on the newer games, but it still chugs along well enough.  I suspect I’ll be getting a new PC some time this year, but in the mean time, this old beast will need to keep chugging for a little while longer.

Anyway, I fired up Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (received as a Christmas present) and settled in for some shootin’.  About five minutes in my PC froze up and I was left looking at a screen full of oddly coloured artifacts.  After a quick reboot, I re-launched the game.  A few more minutes and another crash.  One more reboot, one more crash.  Damn.

I launched Unreal Tournament III to see if it would run okay, hoping to determine if the crashes were because of Call of Duty or because of the video card, and UTIII crashed in a similar matter.  The difference this time however, was after rebooting, even my desktop was full of graphical artifacts.  The problem was no longer restricted to 3D games.  Crap.

Long story short, my video card is now toast.  The real sucky thing about it is that my PC still uses the AGP bus, which means my options for video cards are very limited at this point.  I’ll be heading out tomorrow to see if I can find a store with an AGP card in stock, and failing that, I guess I’ll have to buy online.  I’m currently looking at either the Radeon HD 4650 or the Radeon HD 3850.  Some quick Internet browsing is telling me that the 3850 is better for games, but really, at this point all I’m looking to do is prolong the life of this PC until I get a new one.  I’m under no delusions that this thing really qualifies as a “gaming PC” any more.

Off to a roaring start to the year!