Irrational Geek

Razer Onza TE

2011-10-20T15:38:00.000-07:00

So after a shipping delay my Razer Onza Tournament Edition is here, played with it for a few minutes and noticed a few things right off the bat and thought I'd post about it.

First off the XYAB buttons feel awesome with the mechanical switches and the back lighting is superb, Jury is still out on the adjustable tension on the joysticks.

The digital pad is nicely seperated into 4 buttons however they feel a bit..stiff but we'll see how they work when worn in a bit.

Over all the feel of the controller is good except there is some sharp bits around the edges in a few places that irritate the skin and I really don't think that is reasonable.

But that's just the first few minutes of use I will likely post again after a couple days or if anything I dislike or feel needs posting comes up.

APB Reloaded, The Rich and the Poor.

2011-05-26T04:37:00.001-07:00

As many people probably already know All Points Bulletin Reloaded has gone into Open beta, if you never played or heard of the original you might check out this on wikipedia, Reloaded is a relaunch of the original game as a Free to play game.

The new dev says there will be a lot of changes to it, many of these changes can already been in the game such as improved handling of cars (vehicles no longer make me sea sick but still handle like boats) however there has been some negative changes as well, such as overly steep restrictions on free users meant to make getting the premium package more attractive but the premium package itself offers almost nothing for those who are less interested or less skilled in the customization side of the game.

A much worse issue is the near total lack of proper match making which brings me to the title of this entry, missions in APB R have fostered a "Rich get richer and poor get poorer" situation only its skilled vs unskilled or new, when you form a group you are seemingly randomly matched against anyone from the opposing faction regardless of their rank, while higher level enemies does increase rewards it often leads to grinding losses to get even faction or money to get what you want to buy anything.

If you even think of playing with out a full party expect to be outnumbered, some times there is a backup option that will grab random players to help you but like pick up groups in almost all games this does not work out well and is often not available, backup is almost never available if you happen to be on your own as well and it will frequently match you against 2 or 3 man teams again with no backup option.

There is also some minor balance or design problems in the missions which lead to overly long stalemates which are usually ended by whatever team is on the defensive after the mission timer runs out.

On the other side of things the graphics are pretty decent and once you get stuff unlocked the customization is great and out right dizzying if you have premium and when the parties do work the game can be quite fun and even with the issue above with driving it is still fun as well.

In closing, I payed for an played the original game for about a week but giving up due to many of the problems that are still there and mostly noted above, I hope they can fix things that I've mentioned as the game really does have promise and I'd love to play a "Finished" game.

Portal 2 Spoiler free review

2011-04-19T17:12:00.000-07:00

First off this will contain no spoilers that includes the comments which I will monitor, second I have not finished the entire game as of yet and will likely update this after I have.

First off let me say that while the graphics are not a lot better then the original portal or half life 2 they are actually a lot more atmospheric.

New to the games puzzles are redirect-able lasers, blocks to redirect said lasers, light bridges that can go through portals, faith plates (think catapult) and last unless I forgot something but absolutely not least three different kinds of gel which I will get more into in a moment.

The puzzles themselves are quite fun, and due to the additions noted above refreshingly different but still familiar for Portal fans, I've not yet encountered any puzzles I felt were challenging from a skill stand point so much as mentally however those did not really come into the original until near the end so we'll see.

So I mentioned the three different kinds of gel and I'll now I'll get into that, there is orange, blue, white and water, the orange increases your speed or makes objects coated with it slide, the blue makes makes objects and areas covered in it bouncy and the white allows you to place portals in any location coated properly with it, water is merely used to clean the gels off things you don't want them on, they are fun additions that really liven up the puzzles.

To summarize if you like the original Portal, physics games or having to use your brain then you will almost certainly enjoy this wonderful game, the single player is fantastic and while I've not played the co op yet it look pretty fun as well.

Crysis 2 - Further opinions

2011-03-26T03:05:00.000-07:00

So I talked about how much I was enjoying Crysis 2 in the last post but as seems to happen often these days about mid way through the game it all goes to shit and becomes a "How many enemies can we put in one space?" situation where most of your weapons also have either limited use or are largely ineffective, also note that the further you get into the game the worse the performance gets.

Crysis 2 Extreme Settings.

2011-03-24T16:30:00.001-07:00

I'll do a more complete review later I imagine but here is what I think so far after a couple hours of playing Crysis 2.

First off the game is absolutely beautiful and unlike its predecessor it runs quite well, it defaulted to extreme for my rig and only in a few spots did it ever drop below 40 fps and even then it was just quick drops and then back up.

the game play so far is quite fun and surprisingly smart, you unlike the original where it felt like the stealth was too much of a gimick to actually work its quite smooth this time around, there is also tactical suggestions made by the hud and binoc but I found them hard to make sense of in some locations and usually just either rambo'd it or used stealth.

overall I am really enjoying the game, and I do recommend it to others with medium or highend machines, you can see what I use to play in one of the boxes on the right of the blog.

Rift, all is not right in paradise.

2011-03-17T10:39:00.000-07:00

OK so lets get a few things straight right off the bat, I love rift, I love the class system in rift, I love the graphics in rift and I love the people I play rift with.

Now that thats out of the way onto my current issue with Rift, I get bored really easily when I play the same thing for long periods so early in Rift I swapped characters a lot and the primary people who play the times I do out leveled me, and whats worse is even when they made alts it continued to happen.

Now I realize thats my fault and not the fault of the game exactly, it does cause another thing to come to light, in Rift you spend a lot of time in each zone, which is another thing that bores me, I like to see new places, new enemies and etc and so to keep myself interested I tend to have to leave zones a bit earlier then is suggested which makes soloing fairly difficult.

Combine the difficulty in soloing with the previous problem of not always having some one to level with and my leveling speed which is already low is lowered further still... I just do not know how to handle it honestly... I have to keep myself entertained but the measures I take in order to do so cause me even more bordem.

Hollywood undead

2010-12-27T02:58:00.000-08:00

I don't usually talk about music much but I felt like it tonight, I've enjoyed Hollywood Undead since their debut album Swan Songs, they are releasing their new album sometime in 2011 and the first single sounds really good, I prefered the original singer which they apparently kicked for unknown reasons but the new guys not bad at all. (a tiny bit screamo but not bad)

I feel the need, the need for speed!

2010-11-04T21:06:00.000-07:00

So the new Need for Speed named Hot Pursuit (actually the third by this title) is due to be released on the 10th and I got a chance to play the demo on my 360 and I must say its a work of art, its fast beautiful and fun, I have not enjoyed a NFS this much since Hot Pursuit 2 for the PS2 (not to be confused with HP2 on other systems which was done by another part of EA and sucked)

It also has a social networking feature like facebook but for racing, it tracks your times and accomplishments as well as those of people on your friends list and puts them on a leader board of sorts, you can also issue challenges to your friends and gain new friends through your friends who have friends who own the game as well, very cool stuff much better then a book to the face.

I will be buying it as soon as possible.

Even More Vindictus

2010-09-25T10:13:00.001-07:00

So I thought I'd post some more thoughts on the game Vindictus that I am currently beta testing.

First off I should note that the game is Peer to Peer so usually the only thing that matters are the players connections, especially in the case of the host as everyones connection is relative to his (if he has a slow connection your packets sent to him will be received and responded to slowly creating lag) The reason I mention this is because atm there is a nasty bug where everyone regardless of connection cant get a decent connection to other peers (or players) so everyone but the host is always laggy, hopefully they will fix that soon.

also even when your not lagging the movement in the game can be a little slow to respond I find (even when you're hosting which should be almost the same speed as offline with basicly zero lag) which makes some of the more intense fights very irritating as I find that I have to dodge before and enemy attack even starts, this combined with the rising elitist attitude players who've adapted to it have taken a liking to really detracts from the game.

More Vindictus Screenshots

2010-09-24T12:38:00.001-07:00

Vindictus

2010-09-24T01:16:00.000-07:00

anyone who's read my blog over the last while knows I have been obsessing over this game and just recently I got into the Early Access portion of what will eventually be open beta so I thought I'd post some impressions of the game along with some screen shots.

first off the graphics are quite decent, the texture details on both the models and levels can be a bit low res but they are pretty detailed and the models themselves are motion captured and some of the best I've seen, performance on my machine is a bit low in heavy battles but otherwise it runs mostly max, will be better when my new hardware is ready and i'll update on this then.

the gameplay is very different from other mmos (even most korean mmos for which Nexon is known for) in that its very action based, in fact the combat plays out more like a 3d fighter such as Street Fighter 4 or etc and I enjoy this interesting change of pace from the slower pace of games such as World of Warcraft and with out being overly cumbersome like Age of Conan was.

The progression is very korean, which means lots of grinding the same bosses and not many changes in your surroundings but we're told there will be more locations in full open beta and release versions of the game.

as for equipment you craft almost everything and what YOU dont craft some one else usually has, there is a few quest rewards early on but most everything is crafted its not a bad idea although some times it can be a bit rough to get the materials needed and some of the better armor sets require locations we cant yet goto.

also the some of the armor sets themselves are a bit meh, one of the best sets in the game looks like the hide of a red gnoll (seen in the screenshot above)

I'll try to post more about the game as time goes on.

Final Fantasy XIV Open Beta Part 2

2010-09-03T08:53:00.000-07:00

OK so I got in and was met with a reasonably nice character generation system, lovely graphics and animation but a horrible frame rate once in the game, tried everything and even at the lowest settings (incidentally same FPS as at the default which were pretty high) it was sub 20 fps frequently if ANYONE was around.

I feel the low overall performance totally ruined any fun I might have otherwise had, also the "tutorial" is actually not very well done at all, in fact I did not realize there was one until 20 or minutes into the game and even that consisted of a pointless kill quest that taught me almost nothing, overall it has good gfx and probably a great story so all the new fanboys will rush to it, but it seems in my admittedly small experience to lack any redeeming game play and runs horribly slow even on relatively decent hardware.

Now I realize it IS a beta, so it remains to be seen if the performance will get better (doubt it) and I do expect that down the road they will most likely have a more comprehensive tutorial for newer players.

Final Fantasy XIV Open Beta

2010-09-03T05:32:00.001-07:00

I wanted to hold off posting about this till I got through the crap SE is calling registration, which has been the single worst open beta process I've ever experienced and considering most of the games I've tested have been either REALLY huge or f2p korean games is a little surprising, I say a little because SE is known for dropping their servers every time they put out an expansion.

Either way I'll update with some screen shots and initial impressions a little later if I can make this work.

StarCraft 2

2010-07-28T13:15:00.000-07:00

So StarCraft 2 relased at 12:01am in north america on the 27th, there was a ton of cool launch parties on the net at stores and other places, personally I watched the stream for Day9's launch party from beginning to end (12 hours) some awesome matches throughout and some really cool other videos and etc.

Sadly my copy of SC2 has not yet arrived due to a small mistake on my part (did not take express for some reason) but it should be here soon.

A friend of mine gave me a guest pass which gives 7 hours of seemingly unrestricted play, I used all 7 hours in 1 sitting but I got to try the single player for a bit and then spent like 6 hours playing practice and AI coop matches with the same friend, it was a blast and I can't wait for my copy to arrive.

New Hardware

2010-07-22T06:28:00.000-07:00

I ordered a Razer DeathAdder 3500 and a Razer Lycosa Gaming Ultrapolling Keyboard as well as a Razer Goliathus Fragged Omega Mouse Pad yesterday and it should arrive this morning, this is a great upgrade for me as I'm using a very used dell keyboard and a very worn Logitech G5.

End of the Starcraft II Beta, King of the Beta and Countdown Party

2010-07-19T16:28:00.000-07:00

I hear tonight the beta will end, the beta has been a neat experience for me and other fans of the game and I suspect a good source of testing for Blizzard, many of our concerns were taken into consideration during the course of the beta and that combined with Blizzards constant work has turned Starcraft II into a pretty balanced and fun product.

currently Sean "Day[9]" Plott is casting the "King of the Beta" tournament with some of the best SC2 beta players from all around the world. (live at 7 PST each night) until the 26th at which time he will kick off Day[9]'s Starcraft 2 Countdown Party in Los Angeles where he will cast the finals for the King of the Beta and many other games, there will also be a ton of other stuff going on most of which will be streamed live on Day's ustream ending in the launch of Starcraft II on the 27th, if you're a fan of the game or gaming at all its sure to be an incredible experience.

Starcraft 2 Beta Phase 1

2010-06-09T12:47:00.000-07:00

SC2s first beta phase had ended with the second (and last) phase to begin some weeks before the release date (July 27th)

Overall I feel the SC2 beta was very interesting, it allowed players to get a real feel for the future of the game before its even on shelves and it let players be active in helping mold SC2 into the best game it can be.

There is still some problems I hope blizzard will work out especially in regards to Battle.net 2.0, but also with Zerg endgame vs Terran, a lot of other balance issues still but nothing I feel as major as that.

I actually play terran and while I feel there is still some obvious balance problems that give terrans issues even I can see that the zerg endgame vs terran mech armies just does not work.

New CPU and Viagra

2010-06-03T22:22:00.000-07:00

wow talk about misleading titles, ment to post sooner but I've been busy and no thats not why Viagra is in the title, so far most of my games have run noticably faster however I've also noticed I'm still being held back (combo of slow DDR2 and having put off replacing my Sata drive and still using the backup IDE drive)

As for viagra, I was just watching an ad for it or cialus whatever, and I had a thought I think you will all enjoy call it free comedy, every time you see a viagra/cialus ad imagine a child running into the ad and kicking/punching the man right in the pecker and I swear to god it will make your day just try it.

New hardware

2010-05-25T00:02:00.000-07:00

today I ordered this and this not the fastest gpu but if you look in the box on the right my current gpu isint exactly new, and the new one while not amazing should be pretty close to twice as fast where it matters, as for the headset it should allow me to game later at night with better sound and less damage to the top of my head (headset crease bad) and I should even be able to use vent or XBL voice chats with much less disconfort (current headset presses on my ears)

RIP Dio

2010-05-17T02:50:00.000-07:00

Metal has lost one of its greatest voices, and I mourne its loss heavily.

Source

Message from Wendy Dio

Today my heart is broken, Ronnie passed away at 7:45am 16th May. Many, many friends and family were able to say their private good-byes before he peacefully passed away. Ronnie knew how much he was loved by all. We so appreciate the love and support that you have all given us. Please give us a few days of privacy to deal with this terrible loss. Please know he loved you all and his music will live on forever.

- Wendy Dio

SC2 Beta Ladder

2010-05-11T13:38:00.001-07:00

I wanted to talk a little about Starcraft 2's ladder system during beta, basicly if you've played any RTS games or anything in the Diablo serious you should have a pretty good idea what ladder play is, basicly you play competitive matches against other players to raise up the rankings ladder gaining points for winning and losing points for losing.

In SC2 Beta you gain and lose points according to how favored you or you're opponent is to win, the ladder in SC2 Beta is also split up in many ways to make it more accessible to all skill levels, first you have the metal rankings which are Copper, Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum, also I've heard they intend to implement a Pro league later, you play five placement matches at the start of multiplayer play that decide what league you are in.

The ladder also has divisions inside of the different leagues mentioned above, I believe each league is limited to 100 players so each division is sort of a mini ladder in of itself.

All this works very well on paper but during the beta the lack of players (compared to anticipated launch numbers anyway) does cause some slight problems in this system, for example I have never been terribly good at RTS games so I actually placed copper and expected to fight reletively low level players, except due to the afor mentioned small player base the game continually has trouble finding other copper players to match me against so it ends up matching me with players of higher leagues sometimes even platinum, while this usually leaves me in a pretty bad place at least I usually lose no rank as they are generally heavily favored to win, but it does mean I rarely have a chance to really have a good fair match.

I also wanted to mention that I intentionally placed myself in copper as I know that is about where I am in skill, I did so by either losing the match in a funny fashion or even just leaving when it started, this is due to the fact that if an opponent lags out of the game you win, also its very easy to rush even decent players and win games you otherwise might not have and its all too easy with only five placement matches to end up in a league you cannot win in and end up having to just lose all your matches till you either get good enough to start winning or get demoted to a league you can play in.

I think its a good concept and I'm interested to see how it will work with more players of diverse skill levels, I do however think they should have more placement matches to stop cheap or lag wins from determining your rank.

Playstation 3

2010-05-11T13:32:00.000-07:00

my stepdad picked up a ps3 the other day and so I've been playing around with that a fair bit lately, I picked up Uncharted (first one) and Neir Square-Enix's new action RPG.

Uncharted has been surprisingly good, great visuals for three years ago, fun and engaging gameplay and fantastic voice acting, however I've felt that so far the vehicle segments feel forced and just are not really fun.

As for Neir the graphics are pretty good, but they could be better, the art style slightly reminiscent of Shadow of the Colossus, I have not played it nearly as much as uncharted yet as it just has not grabbed me the way Uncharted has, but I see potential and I imagine I'll have more to say soon.

Rushing and Defense

2010-05-07T10:25:00.000-07:00

So one of the most popular tactics in any RTS (Real Time Strategy) game is to rush your opponent early on when hes not prepared and usually with something he cannot counter yet, the only real skill required in this is knowing what unit will be most effective for this tactic, there are generally two conditions the player has to take into considering if it will be effective.

1. How long will it take to make, which includes research and unit building time?
2. How easy is it to counter by your opponents either current or common early units?

For example in Starcraft 2 as protoss Zealots are surprisingly effective if you build two gateways right off the bat as opposed to say a gateway and a forge, chrono boosting said gateways also increases the speed of the unit warp in and is largely essential.

But at the same time if your opponent walls off the entrance to his base with buildings and you cannot get in then your zealots are going to have a hard time breaking in before your opponent can build a counter force and because you used double gateways he might even have upgrades to even the odds in favor of his potentially smaller army.

Which is where air rushes come in, as I play protoss mostly I'll use them as an example again, teching straight for stargates and making 1 or 2 chrono boosted Void Rays is often effective if the player has not scouted you or does not know the proper counter as they can do a lot of damage relatively untouched if you do not have anti air, which brings us to the next point.

Scouting, the idea generally being to take one of your workers and moving it to your enemies base while he cannot kill it in the early game even before a possible rush, this allows you to see what he is building so you then have a rough idea or in some cases a very good idea of what he intends to do rush or otherwise.

Scouting is not only good but essential for both rushing and rush defense, you obviously don't want to send zealots to your enemy base if hes fast tech'd to void rays or they can just wipe you out, or just kill your base before you can kill theirs, by the same token scouting may allow you to setup defenses that are effective against the rush unit your opponent has chosen.

As an example as protoss stalkers are to my knowlage a decent counter for the above mentioned void rays or even zealots if your base is actually walled in. (best idea being to wall in all but a 1 space path through into your base and then block it with a zealot on hold position so he does not run off to attack)

There is plenty of info on what counters what especially in regards to rushes on the web so I'll not go too into that and I hope this was helpful even if probably obvious. ^^ +1 for stopping myself from ranting like I planned to do.

SC2 Replays

2010-05-06T23:51:00.000-07:00

Trying to work out a method of uploading some replays of me playing SC2 but having a lot of trouble, probably related to this old IDE drive I had to use when my sata drive failed, I should really get around to replacing it.

New layout

2010-05-06T23:49:00.000-07:00

apparently some people were having trouble with the old layout so I modified another of the default ones a tiny bit, hopefully this works better, comment if you have any problems.

Testing email posting

2010-05-06T18:46:00.001-07:00

Figured I'd test out posting on my blog here via email.
Edit: well that does indeed work flawlessly.

Release date and Beta

2010-05-03T20:46:00.000-07:00

Blizzard made the release date for Starcraft 2 official today, it will release on July 27th, also Blizzard also confirmed that the friend and family beta for World of Warcrafts Cataclysm expansion started today.

2010-05-03T17:34:00.000-07:00

Just pre ordered the Starcraft II Collectors edition, comes with a lot of great stuff including a 2gb flash key shaped like Raynors dog tags with the original Starcraft and Broodwar on it.

Accidents Happen

2010-05-02T13:55:00.000-07:00

OK so I did my placement games in SC2 beta today and I won 2 matches straight off the bat with Void Ray rushes (air to ground unit) 3rd match my enemy lags out giving me a win, I then lose a base race (we both left our bases defenseless and attacked each other) and he just BARELY won, then my final match the guy lags and poof I'm in gold, I'm going to get slaughtered.

Starcraft 2 Beta part 2

2010-05-01T22:07:00.000-07:00

SO I got access to the Starcraft 2 beta tonight, I did one of the 5 initial practice matches and a few matches against AI, I actually lost my first match against a player, but I destroyed the AI on very easy, the intention being to get familier with a build and the keybinds.

I'll probably fight some stronger computers and work on some starting builds and work on knowing more about what units counter what.

On the note of performance the game seems to run reletively well on my some mediumish pc even on Ultra, feels slightly sluggish but nothing serious, however I'll probably reduce the settings just alittle, it does however look very very good.

Starcraft 2 Beta

2010-05-01T14:20:00.001-07:00

There is a chance I may have some access to the Starcraft 2 beta via a friend if I do I'll try to write about my opinions and experiences in it here. =D

FFXIII

2010-04-24T17:49:00.000-07:00

So I picked up FFXIII the other day, been playing alot of it, its not as good as earlier titles such as 6 or 7 but after X X-2 and 12 its still a move in the right direction, I'm playing the 360 version which is not as pretty as the PS3 version but its a decent looking game.

The combat system is fairly simple but can lead to some surprisingly complex interections, the game uses what it calls paradigms, which are preset classes for each member of your party and other then your character your party acts on its own based on these and even your actions are restricted to things from that paradigm, however there is no real delay between switching paradigms so it can be really simple when your in the one you need but often you'll end up switching every few seconds to get the best damage while keeping your party alive via tanking debuffs and buffs.

the game tends to be surprisingly difficult for an FF game and only gets harder when you encounter a boss battle, often frustratingly so, I've had to shut the game off and lose progress more then a few times to keep from losing my temper.

the voice acting for some of the characters is pretty decent but two characters in paticular make me want to vomit, that being Hope and Vanille who I believe are the youngest playable characters in the game.

As I said before, they've done better but they've also done much worse and if you're a fan of the genre its worth picking up.

Wow UI

2010-04-24T16:56:00.000-07:00

Yes I still play world of warcraft, and I figured I'd try to update this blog more, and what better way to start then with a shot of my WoW UI?

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Borderlands

2009-11-30T22:03:00.000-08:00

so finally got around to trying borderlands, my opinion of the game can be summed up very easily.

Meh graphics, poor performance, incredibly addictive gameplay and HORRIBLE difficulty spikes.

RPG or not I don't feel I should need to grind levels in a first person shooter, Borderlands forces just that, atleast it did with my siren, the graphics while not horrible are not great either and the game runs FAR too badly for said graphics, I honestly expected more from gearbox giving the history they have.

Dragon Age: Origins

2009-11-05T06:08:00.000-08:00

So I had heard a lot of terrible things about this game, but I decided with it being Bioware I would ignore them, boy am I glad I did, I have not had this much fun in ages, finally something to get me away from the thrall of endless MMO diarrhea.

Lets see where to start, why don't I comment on the bad things I've heard and my take on them.

First alot of people are talking about how bad the graphics are and how high the requirements are, first off considering the number of enemies and how vast the draw distance needs to be to make a game like this work the graphics are not bad at all in my opinion.

As for the requirements beyond what I already mentioned I feel a lot of the problems are solved by having a quad core cpu and a decent amount of ram, again this game deals with a lot of things going on at once.

And I hear a lot of "But I don't have a quad core cpu and they are expensive" but I really don't feel that anyone valid excuse to not maintain either a working PC at an appropriate level of performance or at least a decent console, especially with the drop in console prices and AMD's new 620s.

Now I do admit the game does seem to have a nasty memory leak on the PC version, but Bioware assures us they are looking into it and from past experience I believe them.

Another thing I do see a a lot of complaints about is pre order and promotion code woes, but most of those people either ordered a digital version and/or seem to suggest that its it might be a PEBKAC or ID10T sort of situation, please people check that your email is valid and not filtering your codes to a spam folder or that your email is even valid.

As for actual game play I intend to completely avoid spoilers here, the combat system seems nearly flawless to me and flows very well, as is standard in this style of game you can pause the action to issue commands at any time, there is a tactical section for all characters (including the PC) which allows you to dictate how the character will act in a given situation, you start with a limited supply of slots for these tactics but can gain more as your party members level.

The graphics while not upto par with the big hitter like Crysis Warhead or other highend games, the atmosphere is very very good and while slightly low res the textures are still very well done and fitting to the area they are in, although the game did have issues with me and my 3870 forcing Anisotropic filtering which presented itself in a sort of grid between the textures on the ground occasionally, I have not had a chance as of yet to test on any other systems though.

The game has tons and tons of side quests, and I hear Bioware intends to release a lot of download-able content or DLC, infact they launched the game with two DLCs right away, one of which came with most versions of the game.

As a closing comment, I don't generally write reviews as I am not generally very good at it so you will have to excuse me if this is horrible but I just felt like throwing out my opinion on the subject.

WoW Haters

2009-09-24T21:07:00.000-07:00

Made a post on my other blog about wow haters felt like linking it here.

Stupid bike

2009-06-26T13:47:00.000-07:00

that nice bike is actually mostly crap, obviously i did not know what to look for, hopefully it can be fixed up enough to be worth the price but if not I guess I will try to return it.

New Bike

2009-06-21T10:59:00.000-07:00

Found a nice bike on sale so I did a raincheck and I'm hoping to grab it mid next week, I'll toss up a few picks when I get it.

ThinkGeek

2009-06-16T10:30:00.001-07:00

I think I want this

ChickenFoot

2009-06-15T12:45:00.000-07:00

To quote Wikipedia

Chickenfoot is a hard rock band, supergroup featuring vocalist Sammy Hagar (ex-Van Halen and Montrose), bassist Michael Anthony (ex-Van Halen), guitarist Joe Satriani and drummer Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers).

Now I've seen alot of people talking down Chickenfoot for many reasons, the primary seemes to be that none of the artists really push themselves....since when has music been about pushing yourself? then again most peoples idea of music in this day is either glorified rhyming (not hating) or so filtered you don't even need to voice for it....

The fact of the matter is Chickenfoot is still one of the best Rock bands to see the light of day in a very long time if you ask me, and you are here so you did.

I will stop with a link to one of the songs

Revival

2009-06-15T11:44:00.001-07:00

I've decided to revive my old blog here, gives me a place to BS that does not force other people to endure it. ^_^

1rr@ti0nalG33|<

2007-12-11T13:39:00.000-08:00

My friend says I need more "l33tness" or whatever so apparently I'm the "1rr@ti0nalG33|<" now...Lol

Prepairing for UT3

2007-12-11T13:03:00.000-08:00

anyone who knows this geek knows I have a big softspot for unreal games, which is odd because I do not REALLY enjoy competitive online gaming, just some thing about the perfect combo of senseless WAY over the top violence combined with what is usually a perfect control scheme.

Today I should hopefully get my hands on the latest installment in the unreal series, Unreal Tournament 3, very interested to see how it runs on my new computer, the dated video card I expect will create some issues but it SHOULD be better then Crysis which I can run at the very minimum settings. (although it is still pretty nice looking at that level and playable)

New PC up and running. *Screen!"

2007-12-10T21:06:00.000-08:00

So the new PC is running, the video card, case and powersupply are both borrowed and will hopefully be replaced before too long, took a shot of it all running, nothing special, ill do more when I get my own case.

New Computer

2007-11-22T20:33:00.001-08:00

Hopefully sometime around the 27th I should be able to order the ram for my new PC, when that ram arrives I should be able to gather everything to get this thing running in whats basicly a first face, as I intend to replace most everything in it. (beginning with things ill be borrowing) it should prove to be an interesting experience for me as the last time I built a PC for myself was roughly 4 years ago and I did not get much of a chance to upgrade it at all. (still using it infact)

On another note, when I get the new PC running i'm gifting the old one to my brother, he does not have a computer and I so like to give to the needy. :P

Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition

2007-11-15T12:38:00.000-08:00

Oh boy where do I start? traditionally when new core versions are released (such as when 3.0 was released) you have to buy all new core books and sometimes these books were even hard to get a hold of, then you had 3.5 not long later which had new core books AGAIN, now price aside this means even more books to store and maintain and more rules to learn.

Fast track to the coming 4th edition or D 4e as most seem to be calling it, this will still have all the books and etc for those who like that but it seems you can access the content online for a small subscription fee....whoa wait? I have to pay to play D&D? No its completely optional apparently, but what this may mean you do not need ALL the books on hand.

To top this off, apparently the primary goal of this online content is to allow people to actually play D&D Online (not the MMO) with friends or even people they have not met before, which is really good if you're like me and you live in a small town with out alot of D&D action.

To sum it up, I am geeking out of this big time and hoping it works out nicely.

Paranoia

2007-11-14T16:23:00.001-08:00

Am I paranoid if they are actually out to get me?

Beginning of the end.

2007-11-13T04:15:00.000-08:00

So with the help of a friend I recently completed "Normal Mode" for Hellgate: London.

I did it with a Marksman and now have the option of taking that Marksman to "Nightmare Mode" Should be fun, got some friends who will party with me in Nightmare so I look forward to that.

Now as for "Normal Mode" I still have many quests I did not do and there is always other classes, not to mention friends that play in normal still, as a whole normal mode was pretty fun even if fairly repetitive, I look forward to doing it again with my new computer when that comes together as my current computer is pretty dated and had some performance issues in the game.

EA Store, EA Download Manager.

2007-11-07T23:06:00.000-08:00

Let me start off by saying it....What a peice of junk...

OK so my local store did not have a copy of Hellgate: London when I wanted it so against my better judgement I got it through Electronic Arts online store or EA Store, in order to use there download option I have to use a problem called EA Download Manager or EADM, what a poorly done program...the download speed were good which initially gave me some hope but after it finally finished the first time it absolutely would not install, it kept telling me I needed to log in to prove ownership....I logged into download it in the first place, and was still logged in, but I tried logging out, restarting etc etc, needless to say none of this worked, I finally got it to install multiplayer although I do not exactly remember how, but the single player never worked.

Now a few days later I get an update from EA about it and they say they have fixed it...and it installs now...but the single player does not work, and I ontop of that i had to uninstall my working MP and wait like 10 hours for the 6gb download just to be left in the same spot....

Does anyone else miss the days when companies actually understood Customer care? I sure as hell do.

First Post!

2007-11-07T07:14:00.000-08:00

OK so where to start, I am for the time being referring to myself as the Irrational Geek, largely because it struck me as amusing, I will let you be the judge of its truthfulness.

I am an out of work gamer, I spend a very large amount of time behind this poor screen, it is not exactly the dream life for most people but it makes me very happy and being happy IS what counts is it not?

for now I intend to use this for random ramblings of all sorts and possibly my experiences in games I am playing or have played I do not know if many or any people will read this but I think just writing it will be Therapeutic.

Currently I am playing a gem of a game known as Hellgate: London, its very buggy but it WAS just released on Halloween, its a highly addictive although often repetitive 1st/3rd person RPG by Flagship Studios, which is headlined by former Blizzard North guru Bill Roper, and others from blizzard north, the game has REAL potential if they can crush some of the problems with it now.

I play a Marksman and a Guardian mostly at the moment but I've subscribed for the game and so have 24 character slots, its worth noting that this game has no respec for skills or attributes so if you're not careful you can really screw you're self over.

More about that later, but right now I feel like playing it for a little bit, oh my character names are Krynis for my guardian and Tatsu(Japanese for Dragon) for my Marksman hit me up in the game if you like.

PS.
Despite English being my first (And Only) language my grammar and spelling is not exactly awesome.