I turned on the PC and soon after I heard a grinding noise.  I recognized the noise instantly, and knew it was my video card.  A few weeks after getting the card, the grinding noise would appear now and then.  It sounded like something was hitting the fan.  I took the card out and checked for any obstructions, but saw nothing.  I then did what any sensible person would do and blew on the card, put it back in the system, and powered back on.  The noise disappeared for about a month, until I heard it again the other night.

Once again, I took out the card, checked for obstructions, saw nothing, and put it back in the PC.  This time, after turning the PC back on, the noise was worse than ever.  It’s now a constant grinding noise which begins at system start up, and doesn’t stop.  I’m not going to lie, there was much cursing that ensued.  I just wanted to play a quick game, my chances to do so having become ever so rare, and my video card decided to annoy me.

That now leaves my gaming PC out of commission for however long it takes the RMA process to occur on the video card.  Sometimes I really hate computers.

I sat down to do some gaming the other night but was unsure of what to play.  Nothing was jumping out at me, but dammit, I wanted to play something!  I looked over at my little row of neatly stacked game boxes and my eyes settled on Titan Quest.  It had been a while since I played it so what the hell, I threw it in.

Every time I come back to that game (once every blue moon) I’m reminded of how fun it is.  At least I seem to enjoy it.  There’s just something about it though that keeps me from obsessively playing it through to completion.  Perhaps it’s best enjoyed in short bursts.  I wonder if I’ll ever finish it…

There was a time where I finished just about every single game I played.  This magical time has long passed.  At least I’ve stopped buying so many games.

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?

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?

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.

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.

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!

The Stolen Throne is not typical of the books I read, and to be honest, I didn’t really expect it to be any good.  I picked it up on a lark, thinking it’d be interesting to get some more background info on the lore of Dragon Age.  The reader reviews on Amazon were surprisingly positive however, so my hopes began to elevate a little.

I finished the book over the Christmas holidays and quite frankly, it’s kind of bad and I had to push myself to continue reading it.  I will not be reading the follow-up novel.

There are a lot of problems with the book, but my biggest issue was the over-use of tired, old, fantasy clichés.  There’s the prophesizing witch that lives in the mysterious foggy forest, the over-the-top evil guy, and the young, naive prince who rises to heroic stature seemingly overnight.  I kept thinking that the book felt like the final project of a “How to Write Fantasy in 21 Steps” course.

I really hope that the game does a better job than the novel at providing a sense of scale to the world.  In the novel, it apparently doesn’t take any time at all to travel from one edge of the map to the other, as the characters in the book end up criss-crossing the map seemingly at random.

Fortunately, the book has not dampened my enthusiasm for the game.  Like I said, I bought the book thinking it’d probably be bad, and it lived up to those expectations.

My Mage, pictured above standing outside the city of Varanas in the free to play MMO Runes of Magic, hit level ten last night after questing in the Howling Mountains region.

This game has been a pleasant surprise for me thus far, perhaps due in no small part to the complete lack of expectations I had for it.  The first ten levels have been fairly standard as far as MMOs go.  I’ve killed various creatures for their various parts for whoever wanted them for whatever reason.  No new ground has been broken here, but still, I’m enjoying it.

One of the more unique aspects to Runes of Magic is the dual class system.  When you reach level 10, you can choose a secondary class which will give you access to certain skills and spells from that class in addition to all of your primary class skills.

As it stands right now, that’s about all I know of the dual class system.  Because I jumped into this game blind, not knowing much about it, I need to research the mechanics of it a little more in depth.  I’m not entirely sure which class I’ll choose for my secondary.  I’m leaning towards Priest at this point, but that may very well change after I do some reading.  Aside from the dual class system I’m not sure if I’ve been making good choices with my skill progression upon level up.  With each level increase you receive talent points that can be spent on upgrading your skills.  So far I’ve just been maxing out all of my existing skills, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there are probably skills that don’t need to be maxed.

After ten levels in the game there are a few things that stand out for me.  I really like the graphics and it performs well on my aging computer.  The server population seems quite healthy too, as I was running into people all night.  I’m not going to go crazy and suggest that this game can replace one of the triple-A titles out there, such as WoW, but as far as free to play MMOs go however, Runes of Magic looks like a gem.

For the past week or so I’ve been feeling a pull back to MMOs and with all the talk of the random dungeon LFG tool introduced to World of Warcraft, I’m getting dangerously close to re-subscribing.  The problem with that is I don’t want to re-subscribe.  Not yet, not until Cataclysm comes out.

I’ve found it to be quite liberating not having an active subscription to a game.  By “liberating” I don’t mean that I’ve finally freed myself to work on that novel I’ve had brewing in my head, nor am I doing anything else remotely productive.  Rest assured, the “liberating” that I’ve felt simply means I’ve found time to enjoy other video games, so let’s not get crazy and start thinking that I’m actually doing something productive.

I recently finished Fallout 3, which never would have happened were I subscribed to an MMO, and I’ve also cracked open a bunch of other games I had bought and never played.  It’s been nice, although my time wastage is now spread out among all these different things, and sometimes I think I’d prefer to have all my wasted time directed at one focal point, which is just a long and stupid way of saying that I’m feeling a pull back to MMOs.

In an attempt to scratch that itch I decided to check out Runes of Magic.  It’s free, it looks good, and it’s an MMO.  I’m seven levels in right now, playing as a mage.  From what I’ve seen so far it feels very much like WoW, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see that it doesn’t hit you over the head with all the stuff you can buy for real money.

I like it.  Let’s see how long it lasts.