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August 24 PC updateJust a quick update on how the PC is running.
Well I finally got my Vists 64bit disk from MS, so thats all been installed & set up. I truely hate having to do an OS install, it takes so long to get everything re-installed & updated. but now its all set up its running like a dream.
I did a few small mods to my case after all, lol. The back vent where the 120mm fan is attatched has had the grill cut out. This basically leaves a huge hole in the back of the case & means there is nothing restricting the out-flowing air. I also completely dis-assembled my PC & strayed the inside black. Looks much better now too. I do have a grill that may fit the back & not restrict the air flow too much. Just need to have a play around & see if I can get it to fit.
Also had a play around with the fans & managed to scrouungeup another fan for the front of th case. Fan layout is now, 2 front fans set as intakes, side pannel & top fan also as intakes. These are all on the case speed controller & set between low & medium depending on what I'm doing/abient temps in room. The rear fan stayed the same, so that is now sucking out all of the air in the case.
I've gone back to using my old CRT monitor on my PC. the missus is now dual screening her PC & she doesn't have room for the CRT. So I let her have my LCD back.
Run some stress testing software on the PC & everything is a go for overclocking. The system is totally stable at stock speeds & the load temps are well within normal levels, giving me plenty of room to run it hotter as it gets clocked. I just need to actually pluck up the bottle to try clocking it further, last thing I want to do is cock it up.
Biggest news for the PC is I now have managed to get hold of another Sapphire HD 3650 card, identical to the one I already have. So that has been installed & both cards have been set up in CrossFire. This was surprisingly easy to get setup & has lead to a decent performance improvement in the games I've tried so far. Lost planet got a boost of 15-20 fps, Crysis will actually run with decent settings & Age of conan runs with the same fps but I have doubled the view distance.
Haven't had much chance to play with it though as I only got the other card this afternoon & we have been out to see Hellboy 2 tonight. Excellent film btw, go see it.
So thats all for now really. Will try & get some new pics of y modded PC case up & will also try & tidy up a bit for some games room photos July 26 PC Building - the blog part 3This will be the last instalment of my PC building adventures.
So the fan re-organisation is next, But before I get on to that I thinks its worth going through my motherboard troubles.
The driver disk that comes with my motherboard came with a BIOS upgrade tool. All you need to do is download the latest BIOS files from the Abit website & run the program, apparently. Unfortunately when I did this it completely bricked my board. Wouldn't get past the first stage of the POST process, no access to the BIOS setup screen etc. So had to RMA it with overclockers. So that took a week out of the time I have had with the PC. This also lead to me having to practically rebuild the PC. It was during this time I re-organised the fans. Thankfully I had access to the missus PC so could still get online late at night when she was in bed.
My case has the capability to handle the following fans,
! rear mounted fan, can be 90, 100 or 120mm.
side mounted 90mm fan
top mounted 90mm fan
2 front mounted 90mm fans. These mounts are at the bottom of the front side by side.
As previously mentioned the case has its own fan control system, which has the capacity for 5 fans to be linked in.
The system already has fans on the CPU, PSU & GPU & I had 3 90mm fans (2 blue LEDs & 1 plain black) & 1 120mm fan. The 120mm fan needed some work as this was scavenged out of an old Dell pc & had an odd 4 pin connector on it. I managed to get help to convert it to a 3 pin connector that would plug into the system fan slot on the MB. The other 3 fit the cases manual controller.
Due to wanting to cool my graphics card a bit more I had to rework the side pannel of PC. This entailed removing the clear plasic side from the frame, flipping it 180 degrees & remounting it. The only problem being that I would have to remount it from the outside, this meant I had to do some chopping with the screw mounts. This wasn't as hard as I had originally thought & took a lot less time to do. I was taking a bit of a gamble with this though as the edge o the clear pannel was now on the outside of the case & looked a little untidy. I was gambling that once the system was switched on the LED fan that was being mounted would spred its light through the side pannel & light the edges. Not only did this gamble pay off, but it looks a lot better than I originally thought it would.
So with the mod of the side pannel done, I fixed one of the LED fans as an intake fan. This also had a dust filter fitted to stop it dragging in all the airbourne crap floating about. I managed to make some neat little bits of cable management for the fan cable from a couple of bits of masking tap.These hold the cable to the screw points for the clear side & stop the cable poping up.
Next I mounted the 120mm fan as an out-take fan on the back of the case. This was a no brainer really as it was the only place in the case that this fan would fit. Making it an out-take fan was a given too, it sits directly behind the CPU cooler, which is blowing air in that direction already. this gives it a little boost. This fan is a bit on the noisey side, so it took a fair bit of tweeking with the BIOS settings to get the fan to run at something other than full whack. The photo below was taken during the re-build & I hadn't refitted the PCI cards yet.
Next fan to be fitted was the case top fan. As this lead directly to a whole in the top of the case the second LEd fan was being placed here an an out-take fan. Due to the fairly big distance from any components & the ones that are closest are my memory sticks I decided I would add the duct that was removed from the side pannel. this would make the fan draw the air from directly above the mem sticks, hopefully reducing their temp.
The added bonus of this is the duct is made from the same clear blue plastic as the fans, so the light from the fan should travel down a bit.
Only Fan left is the plain black fan. This was mounted on the front as an intake fan. This would blow air in over the hard drives & towards the graphics card.
So the fans are all fitted, the replacement motherboard is in & everything is connected. Get the side pannels on (remembering to connect the pannel mounted fan in to the manual loop of course) & this is what you get
Spectacular.
So Jobs done & its a good 'un, right?????
Well not exactly. I currently have a Vista 64 bit disk on order from MS. Its taken them over a month to deliver it so far & I'm annoyed as hell that I don't have it yet.
In further mods to come I'm planning on drilling out the outer cover for the rear fan. This should improve air flow a little & also reduce the noise from the fan. In a slightly more radical mod, I'm planning at some point in the future on completely disassembling the whole thing & painting the inside of the case black. I've seen pics of a PC with simalar blue lighting that has had this done. the black helps the blue glow & makes the cas elook neater.
But I'm in no hurry to get any further modding done. The same with overclocking really. the step up from my old PC was such a big one that I don't need to overclock at the moment. Well the graphics card has been overclocked using the CCC software, but thats just a case of clicking a few buttons & letting it run.
So thats it, the story of my PC upgrade. Hopefully someone fopund it interesting, possiblky even inspired to something simalar. If so then please visit www.overclockers.co.uk for your parts (no this isn't a referal link either - hate them). They were very helpful when had aproblem, the original order was delivered quickly & the forum community is one of the most helpful I have seen on the web.
new pics of how the games room is layed out will be forth coming over the next few days. I just need to have a tidy up first July 25 PC Building - the blog part 2So were was I????
Ah yes, Bugger, first problem.
The damn motherboard plate won't actually fit in to the case with the CPU fan fitted. Feck, Feck, Feck, Feck. I spent ages fiddling round with the cable for the CPU fan, got it neatly cable tied to the fan mounts to stop it flapping around. So off comes the fan, although I leave the cable ties in place & just hold the fan in one hand. So with one arm reaching through the case I use the other hand to move the plate into place & slot it all in. I then lay the case on its side so I can sit the fan in place & fit the retaining bracket. I now realise just how much dexterity I've lost in my fingers as this takes ages & involves lots of swearing, a gash next to my nail on my right thumb (caught it on one of the fan fins) & a coffee & smoke break.
Next job is to fit all the motherboard cables. I start with the case attachments (power button, HDD light etc) as these tend to be the most fiddly, or so I thought. Yep, could not have been more wrong about that, the hardest to fit was actually the CPU power connector. Fitting inbetween the back of the case & the CPU fan this proved to be a complete arse to plug in. When I finally got that connected I took a few moments to take stock of everything. AT this point I discovered the gash I had managed to put in the back of my left hand (those damn CPU fan fins again!!!).
I fitted the cables for the disk drives & then remembered to put in the screw that holds the motherboard plate in. Ironically I could have made the job of fitting the CPU power connector so much easier if I had just moved the plate along by 1/2cm. A bit of cable tidying later & this is what my PC now looked like
Well ok thats close enough to how it looked. This photo was actually re-taken when I fitted my replacement motherboard so there are a few things in there that I haven't mentioned so far. Namely the big ass black fan on the left hand side. originally there was a Blue LED fan fitted there. Also the big blue vent dut in the top right wasn't there either. This was originally on the side pannel, but I'll get to that later.
Anywho, I was quite pleased with how it was all coming together, the cables were tidy (well tidyish anyway) & there wasn't much left to do. Well so I thought..........
next came the fitting of the various cards. I have a habbit of starting at the bottom & working my way up, so in goes the TV tuner card, followed by a spare network port. Graphincs card goes in next, the cards are all screwed in place & cover strips are mounted over any gaps left over. So now the PC looks like this
& a picture of the drives all fitted
All thats left to do is fit the side back on & boot it up.Well that was the theory anyway & how wrong it was. Upon attempting to fit the side cover with the window in it & encounter a small problem. The air vent duct slaps straight into my CPU cooler. Its obviously designd to sit directly over a normal sized cooler & draw the heat straight out of the case. So out comes the screw driver & the duct is removed. Now I have a new problem, a great big hole in the side of my case. So pondering the solution to this problem I pop off for a smoke, armed with a couple of sheets of paper & a pencil. A few minutes later with a fresh cup of coffee in hand (Thanks to Violet for that) & return with a few rough scetches in hand.
What I had to work with in the case was 2 90mm fans, both of which contain blue LEDS. these are not plgged in to the motherboard, but are instead linked to a little dial on the front of the case. This allows me to manually control the speed of these 2 fans. The case also has a temp sensor, which I attatched close to the CPU (see pic below), & on the front pannel there is a small screen with the temp readout.
The temp sensor is the little plastic tube with the green wire leading out the bottom. Incidentally this has since been remounted between the CPU fan & the blue heat sink you can see at the bottom left of the pic. This pretty much puts it in the middle of the PC.
So anyway, back to the fans. I left the top mounted fan & removed the one from the back of my case. I used this to plug the hole left in the side when I removed the duct. A quick test fit, little bit of rewiring to get the cables tidy & jobs done. Time to boot it up.
The first thing I notice is how quiet the thing is. It makes almost no noise, turning up the manual contrl on the fans generates some noise, but even then its still quieter than my old dell system. A quick play with the BIOS settings & off we go with the windows install. Now its worth mentioning that if there is one thing I loathe, its installing Windows from scratch. Well no, thats not true, what I hate is the hours spent once its installed getting all the updates on there. Once this is out of the way, the first thing I do is get Age of Conan installed, which takes over an hour with the patches too. then its off to marvel at just how damn pretyt the world of Hyboria looks compared to my old system.
Over the next couple of days I get some more games installed, dawn of war, halo 2 etc & test them all out. During this time I decide to move my desk around a bit which entails a quick bit of DIY to extend a shelf for the PC to sit on. I also speak to some friends & get some advise about fan placement etc. I also manage to scavenge a couple of fans from old PCS, one of which is the big 120mm fan now at the back of my case.
I was of course monitoring the various temps within the PC as I was runnig various programs. I was advised that my CPU was running at very cool temps, but my graphics card was a little hot. nothing major, but it would be happier if it was a little cooler. Having already decided that I wanted to use the GPU overclocking feature in CCC I decided to have a little re-organisation of the fans etc
(last part to follow on Friday night) July 24 PC Building - the blog part 1Ok, here goes. the blog about my ups & downs designing & building my new PC. This will most likely end up being a long blog so forgive me & feel free to just stop reading if you get bored.
Anyway, The Begining.
Not being a big PC gamer I had survived for a few years now with a Dell media centre PC. Truely average in specs, only cost £400ish when I bought it. But with some great games coming out on PC over the last few months & a fair few on the horizon I decided I should see if there was anything I could do to beef up my PC a bit.
First upgrade was a Graphics card. Went from an old ATI with only 128Mb RAm to a RADEON HD 3650 made by Saphire. Granted not the best card out there, but it was cheap & certainly better than what I had before.
Next was a RAM upgrade, from 1GB to 3GB.
But then I hit a wall. My motherboard was so old I couldn't get a new CPU for it. Well I could, but for a few £££ extra I could have got myself a cheap dual core.
Now at this point I hit the age old problem of £££. Where was I going to get the cash to pay for anymore PC bits? Bah, minor details like this don't stop me. I worked out what sort of bonus I could expect from work for the next 2 quarters (taking me up to xmas) & planned my upgrade around that. My logic being, if I do all the research about the components now, come bonus time I could just do a little tweeking around the price changes & order away.
The next couple of weeks were spent browsing forums, review sites & online stores looking at what was currently available.
now way back when I used to work for a PC manufacturer I always had a love of all things AMD. A quick look at some prices, comparing intel to AMD & I found that I could get a decent quad core AMD chip for the same price as an Intel core-duo. Biggest problem solved, I now knew which CPU manufacturer I wanted to go with. This then allowed me to set about choosing my motherboard. Once that was done I could decide on a case, then look at PSU's if needed.
Totaling things all up, I had a bit of cash left over from my budget, so I opted to get a slightly better CPU than I planned & an after-market CPU cooling fan. This would allow me a bit more play for overclocking in the future if I decide to go down that route.
Anywho, the final part list I had plannd from OCUK was
AMD Phenom 9600 Black Edition
Asus Silent Knight AL CPU Cooler
OCZ GameXStream 700W PSU
Abit AX-78 motherboard
Apevia X-Plorer tower case
Microsoft Sidewinder gaming mouse (ok this last one was pure indulgence, I could have got a cheaper mouse, but this one is so pretty)
Add in the parts I kept over from my old system
3GB DDR2 RAM
Saphire RADEON HD3650 graphics card
2 X 160GB SATA Hard Drives
DVD Re-Writable drive
TV Tuner Card
Network Crds (have 3 spare if I need them)
Monitor
Z-Board keyboard
So Thats pretty much a new system designed. no chance of me getting it anytime soon I thought, but I had had some fun designing it. Met a few new people on forums I had signed up for to ask advise etc, so its all good.
Then Friday june 27th rolls around. My Birthday, had a great day, good laugh with the missus. Then on the evening as we have just finished eating, she tells me to total up how much my PC will cost & send her the links to the parts so she can have a look. The bonus of planning this upgrade was that I would put exactly the same parts in the missus PC when we come to upgrade that. I just thought she wanted to have a look at what I had settled on in the end.
The links were being an arse to send over, MSN wasn't playing ball, hotmail was being crap so we gave up on that idea. She then told me to order the stuff. A bit shocked she explained where the £££ was coming from to pay for it all (hey I ain't disclosing our £££ agreement here though). So off I toddle & get to ordering.
Everything is in stock, always a bonus & delivery was set for the following tuesday. Great as I was on holiday that week.
Tuesday comes around far too slowly in some respects. I had a great weekend with the missus, but when left to my own devises all I could think about was all the new shiney toys coming (big kid at heart, but you knew that already). The stuff is delivered just after mid-day, I've barely shut the door before I'm tearing into the boxes. One quick smoke later, & a chance to calm down a little I set about checking things off the invoice & making sure its all intact.
The components all layed out. There are a few things missing from the photo though, hard drives etc, but they were in plain brown boxes & the piccie looked a bit crap with them in, lol. So I set about starting the build.
& where should all PC builds begin????? anyone................. no! well I'll tell you. The case is where it should all begin. no good sorting out the motherboard if you don't have the case ready to bolt it too. So I set about unboxing the case, taking the side pannels off & planning what will go where in terms of the drives. I had put the sid pannels back in the box to keep them safe, paying no attention to them. I consider this a leason learnt, but I'll get to that later.
Having planned what drives would go where, I set about fixing the motherboard to the mounting plate, which is thankfully removeable in this case. I had already been warned about sorting out the CPU cooler mounting bracket before fixing the MB to anything, so this was the first MB task. So now I have a MB mounted to the backplate, with the CPU installed & the mounting bracket fitted. Time to test fit it to the case & see how the cabling will match up to the drive placement. Everything looks good, so Iset about installing the RAM & CPU Cooler. Next job is to go back to the case & fit the drives & PSU. IMPORTANT, this is done before the motherboard is actually fitted into the case. I've had bad experiences before where you couldn't get to the drive bays properly with the MB fitted, so all drives go in first. That quick job done, time to fit the motherboard. Bugger, first major snag is now hit. ..........................................
(I'm tired & going to bed, will finish this Thursday night) July 22 PC Sneak PeakJust thought I would give you a little sneak peak at my up comming blog on my recent PC upgrade.
Here is a pic of all the new components that went into my PC
As you can probably tell there are a few key components missing, such as hard drives & optical drives. I kept the ones from my old PC as there is nothing wrong with them.
& here is a pic of the completed thing switched on
As you can see its very blue. When I get chance I'll take a photo of it so you see the lengths I went to in the name of cable management. Having the window in the side made me think a bit more about how all the cables are routed etc, I wanted it to look as neat as possible & having all the cables out the way helps the air flow inside.
Anyway thats enough for now. The building blog will probably go up on wednesday as it gives me dsomething to do whilst the missus is off playing city of heroes/villans I'm back onlineMy new motherboard came this afternoon, yay
Just finished getting everything re-built & just in the process of running some tests to make sure its all working etc. So far so good. Although my hand still hurts like hell, the swelling is starting to go down a little. Its still swolen so much its actually displaced my little finger slightly, meaning I can't close my hand into a fist properly. Shouldn't be any perminent damage though (I hope)
So alls good PC wise, all I need to do now is catch up on all the forums etc July 20 Ooooowwwwwwwthis is going to be a short blog. Mainly because its bloody agony to type.
Fell off my bike on the way to work yersterday morning & landed on my right hand pretty hard. So now my hand is swollen from my little finger down to my wrist.
Can't play any games as I can't hold a controller or move a mouse about very well. Can't really do anything as I'm right handed.
On the plus side though I have a replacement motherboard being delivered on tuesday so hopefully I'll be able to finish re-building my pc. July 18 buggertried updating my BIOS on my PC at the weekend. Unfortunately the bloody thing seems to have corrupted & rendered my motherboard completely uselessw.
So I'm in the process of getting it returned to overclockers & replaced (well now just waiting for the bloody royal mail to deliver it to them). So not around much at the moment on anything other than xbox live.
I do manage to get on the PC for a couple of hours a night when the missus goes to bed though, so its not a total loss. Hopefully it won't take too long to get sorted.
In some good news, MS have finally got round to shipping my vist 64bit disk off to me. so when I do get my new motherboard I can get a complete re-install with new OS version, hopefully improving my PC's performance in a few areas (AoC being the main one lol) July 01 PC HeavenOMG
So today I had all the new parts for my PC delivered. Thats a new motherboard, processor, Huge cooling fan for the processor, power supply, case & mouse.
Spent over 4 hours this afternoon assembling it all & this evening getting vista, drivers & bits & peices installed. I'm currently just waiting for the patches for age of conan to download so I can give it a try. Just about to pop on to the xfire website & update my gaming rig info on there is anyone is interested in looking at what I have now got.
I will do a better blog about it, including some photos (you'll see why when posted) by the end of the week June 26 Birthday BluesOk so I haven't actually got the blues yet, but there is plenty of time.
Its my birthday on Friday, which is why I'm currently on holiday from work. Never, ever work my birthday. Can't be dealing with all that crap about having to bring in cakes for people as its your birthday shite. I mean what the hell, its my birthday & I have to buy cakes!!!! whats all that about??????
So to avoid having to buy cakes for people I just plain don't like I've always booked it as holiday. This year I have 2 weeks off as Hazel couldn't get this week off work, so she is off next week. I have no idea if we are doing anything for my birthday next week, I'm leaving that all up to Haze.
So this year I'll be 32, which isn't so bad. Its not a milestone birthday, so nothing special, nothing to worry about. Should all pass without incident, unless I get titanically drunk on frday & make acomplete idiot out of myself (or just throw up everywhere). Not much planned for friday as Haze is working, will most likely just have afew drinks & see if anyone is online for a laugh.
Unfortunately I've managed to completely screw up my sleep patterns this week, so at some point I've got to keep myself awake for a long timeb to try & reset my body clock. Trying to quit smoking is starting to grate on me a little too. Got myself down from 15 a day to 4/5 a day. Will be trying to go without any on friday possibly. These are what are going to give me the blues most likely (well there is a couple of other things, but I try & limit the personal shit I post on the interwebs these days ).
So fun times ahead. June 25 PC HellOver the last couple of days my PC has taken me to hell & back.
Ok It may have been my fault for messing with settings that I know nothing about (leason learned there me hopes), So I ended up having to do a complete re-install.
Dear God it was such an arse. I'm running an upgrade version of Vista 32 bit. So first order of business is to get XP installed. Then you have to upgrade to service pack 1 (could be 2 I don't pay that much attention tbh). Once that is all done in goes the vista disk & your away.
Well you would be if it wasn't for the fact that everytime I tried to get service pack 1 installed on vista I gto an error message. Ran through all the troubleshooting etc etc & still wouldn't work. Gave up & tried something different. Installed XP, fully installed all drivers, all windows updates etc etc. Then installed the vista upgrade. Same damn problem.
now I wouldn't be worrying too much about this except for 2 reasons.
1/ Age of Conan requires Vista service pack 1 to run.
2/ Warhammer Mark of Chaos isn't what you would cal vista compatable & to get it to work you have to upgrade from XP (clean vista install won't work, so I thought).
So after several hours wasted I decided that I would just have to live without warhammer for now & just used the vista upgrade option of a clean install.
Sorted, all the vista updates installed first time, drivers & programs & games installed first time & got all the patches with minimal fuss. So I decided to give inbstalling warhammer a go. Spoke to a couple of IT peeps in the know about this game & was given some pointers that would work in getting the single player to work.
Spent a bit of time getting the system ready (grabbing file paths from the missus PC). Installed the game, got the update, although that proved a little tricky as the auto-updater just wouldn't work. SO 1 manual patch download later I'm sat at the main screen for warhammer. Yay, jobs a good un.
Thought I would be adverterous & at least give the multiplayer a try. & it bloody well works. Ok so I had to download a little tool off the web to get it working, but it works.
so alls well that ends well.
Oh & I've also learnt the leason of double checking that I have back ups of all important game saves, drivers etc before you blank off the OS (files are all on seperate hard drives so they are always safe) Taken me ages to get all the custom layouts for my ZBoard programed back in damn it. June 18 long time no blogDear God its been ages since I last blogged.
TBH I did think about blogging a few times over the last couple of months, but then I thought frak it. Most people Know how to get in touch with me if they want a chat.
So where have I been etc etc.
Well as of 1st June I have been promoted at work to Assistant Manager. Oh Hell yeah I finally have the authority to get them lazy douches to do some work. Some of my fellow workers are cool with it, others aren't. Tough shite for them really in all honesty.
Gaming wise I have been playing a hell of a lot of PC games lately
 . I know I'm meant to be a hardcore XBox fanboy, but hey I have finally got a decent graphics card & some extra RAM in my PC so I can run Age of conan. Which is one of the best games I've played for ages. Ok there are loads of bugs & lots of people pissing & moaning.But I have hardly had any problems & those that I have had went away with a little tweeking of my system. Even managed to surprise a few people whilst helping some to get the game running well on their PC. Most people don't know I pent a few years as a PC technician & can build PC's from scratch. So this Xbox fanboy got the attention of a few PC tech-heads.Also been playing a bit of unreal tournie 3 & a lot of dawn of war. DoW because it fuels my urge to play GW games without having to actually get my lazy ass down to a GW store (granted work makes this dificult too). I have 2 of the 3 expansions for DoW & also have warhammer mark of chaos to play through.
Not really big in the whole online gaming for PC, apart from Age of Conan (which is a MMORPG by the way, costs £10 per month). But have made a load of cool friends on Age that are all up for having a laugh. Few are either getting back on xbox live sson or will be getting hold of xbox 360's in the near future which is cool. I ahve lost track of a few friends on xbox live lately. Just doens't feel the same anymore tbh. Xbox.com forums are just full of clan recruitments & trolls, clans & other communities have gone.
Ah well there are plenty of friends that I may not speak to for ages, but when we do get together its always a good laugh.
Ok so for the rest of tonight I'm either watching a naff looking horror film (the deaths of Ian Stone) or I'm cleaning out violets PC & replacing the thermal compound on all the hotspots.
Ah the agony of choice, lol
P.S.
I'm on holiday from work for 2 weeks starting on monday & to keep me busy I'm in the Beta for Tom Clancy's Endwar. How cool is that March 11 Limited/Special/Collectors editionsI've seen several posts on various forums on the subject of special edition games.
Asking questions such as do people want them? what makes a good special edition?
Both me & the missus prefer getting the special editions of games where possible. That basically boils down to if Blockbuster are selling them or not (staff discount rules).
I know One of violets favourite Limited edition games is the collectors edition of Oblivion on XB360. She got that one on release. Hell she even got the collectors edition of halo 3 when that came out.
I don't mind paying a little extra for the special edition, as long as its actually got something extra in it. Just coming in a seel book box doesn't really make it that special. Granted, thanks to BB pricing policy I have most of the games that are nothing more than a different case as they cost me the same as the standard edition would have.
But to me, a special edition really shines when the devs actually put some effort into making it special. The most recent one I bought was Frontlines Fuel of War. This came in a steel book, included a code for an extra single player level & had the sound track CD too. That to me is worth a little more than the standard version, although thanks to a lovely twist of fate it was actually the same price, lol.
My top 5 favourite special editions for the Xb360 would have to be
5/ Frontlines Fuel of war (steel book, bonus content & soundtrack CD)
4/ Forza Motorsport 2 (Huge book full of dev info, driving & setup tips some exclusive cars)
3/ Gears of War (art book, bonus DVD inc dev diaries)
2/ Mass Effect (art book, bonus disk with themes, gamerpics & dev diaries)
1/ Halo 3 Legendary Edition (bonus disks including making of, dev diaries, & a big spartan helmet)
The other thing I like about launch promotions is the rare occasion we get some faceplates to give away with the game. I ahve a nice little collection of faceplates going at the moment. Assassins Creed being my current favourite. March 10 dead risingWell thats dead rising done & dusted, well until I decide to scorewhore on it anyway.
The one thing I hate about that agme though is the final boss. He is so annoying to fight. You spend all your time using the really cool weapons, getting the special books so that the weapons are even better etc etc etc. Then what do you have do for the last boss??? Yep fight him with no weapons!!!
What is it with capcom & totally changing the game play on the very last level???? Anyone completed lost planet? You acually end up flying around for the last level of that. Don't get me wrong, I love lost planet, but the last level is just nuts.
Just rememmbered there was something else I wanted to blog about, but I'll do a seperate blog about that March 09 Game CompletionEvening all,
Just finihed the story mode on Ace Combat 6. What a great game, so glad I finally got round to finishing it.
But it has got me thinking. Looking at my games collection I have an aweful lot o games that I just haven't finished for some reason. Reasons include; I'm stuck, I'm crap at the game, I completed it on my old GT & lots of others. But basically they are just excuses.
So I'm going to make a concious effort to try & complete more of my games. I'm not talking about maxing the acheivements, just actually finishing off the story modes.
So now I've got Ace Combat finished I'm just trying to decide what game I'm going for next. Darkness? Armoured Core? Orange Box? Metroid Prime 3?
Going to try & get Overtime mode on dead rising done tonight, then after that it will most likely be one of the above games. March 08 set up photos (finally)they are a bit naff tbh, but here are the first lot of photos of the current incarnation ofmy gaming room
The main desk
Shelf above desk, includes my halo 3 legendary ed & 2 wall ounted full size predator masks
The shelves with my games collection & steel battalion controller.
I'm planning on knocking up some galleries of my Games Workshop stuff too.
March 07 rant-tacularI am so uterly sick to death of people ranting & raving about stuff they know bugger all about.
My main annoyance at the moment is all the people bitching about Xbox Live. There just seem to be hundreds of them at the moment. The rants usually follow one of the following
1/ I get lag on xbox live, when are MS going to patch it?
2/ Xbox live is broken, I get booted from match making on whatever game
3/ why do I pay for xbox live? the dedicated servers suck.
why do things like this annoy me? well the answer is easy, I'll just put up answers to the above points
1/ its either your or the hosts connection. Bog all to do with Live its a p2p network for 99% of games
2/ this is to do with the net code for the particular game. Again bog all to do with the live system.
3/ the only games that run on dedicated servers are, battlefield: modern combat, Final Fantasy online, phantasy star universe & now frontlines: fuel of war. (some one correct me if I've missed one). MS doesn't actually host any of these servers, so if they suck its down to the game developers NOT MS.
Is xbox live perfect? Hell no. there is always room for improvement, new functions to add, upgrades for existing functions & so on. But its well worth the £££ for a gold sub.
& why the frack do the people who try & inform the people bitching of the correct info get accused of being fanboys etc?
Sweet zombie jesus, I'm so bloody cynical I'm the first to jump down the throat of Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo the minute they make some stupid mistake, so how the hellI'ma fanboy is beyond me. March 01 Frontlines: Fuel of War single player quick reviewStarted playing this on Thursday (thanks to a pre-release rental from work) & picked up theSteel tin version today.
So far I'm very impressed with the single player. The graphics aren't the best out there but they are by no means terrible. But the big thing for me with the graphics is the frame rate. So far I've had 3 enemy tanks, about 10 soldiers & a huge explosion (along with the customary scenery) all on screen at one & there was not a single bit of slowdown.
Looking at a few up coming games, destructability of the environment is going to be one of the next big things. Frontlins has a huge ammount of stuff you can drestroy in the levels. Fuel tanks, vehicles, baracades & walls can be destroyed if you have the right weapon.
The forumla of the levels is quite simple, move up from objective to objective, capturing them along the way. As you capture specific objectives you will usually get rewarded with a new weapon/drone/vehicle. Most f the time you are presented with 2-3 objectives at a time & you can decide which order you will take them in. Simple stuff, but it is great fun to play despite it not being the most original idea.
The AI isn't fantastic, but it isn't as bad as I have seen in some recent games either. Your squad mates do have a habbit of running infront of you when you are shooting, but the enemies have a habbit of sprinting for cover & moving around alot. Which is good as it makes them harder targets.
There are various chracter classes you can use, but tbh I ahve only used the basic soldier one so far so can't comment on them yet.
The drones are a great touch. There are several types, Gun turrets, helicopters & one that is basically a bomb on wheels. The gun turrets come in various weapon configs & look like a bomb disposal robot with a gun on top. Helicopters again come in a few varieties performing different battlefield roles. They are great fun to play about with, adding another tactical play to the game. The drones are balanced out by the limited range of control, so you will have to keep yourself fairly close to the action & risk having an enemy sneak up on you whilst distracted.
Overall so far (i'm only half way through the single player & haven't tried online yet) I'd give this a score of 8.5 out of 10.
I'll post a full review up next week when I've had a chance to play the online & hopefully finished the single player February 22 Feeling illugh
been feeling under the weather for over a week now. Nothing serious, just a bit of a cold. But for the last couple of days it has been horrible. the cold (or what ever it is) has got to my joints & made the ache. Shouldn't be a problem, but as I have problems with my knees anyway its hurting like hell.
Feeling like my head has been stuffed with cotton wool doen't help either, lol. spent most of yesterday in bed but have decided I'm going to at least try & remain concious today.
So armed with my trusty cup of honey & lemon I'm watching season 1 of transformers & browsing the web. When I'm a bit more awake I'll hopefully do some tidying up then I can start getting some photos done.
Not much else been going on lately tbh. Work is ticking along nicely, xbox live has been a bit quiet due to a few single player games coming out (dmc4 etc). Have just found some downloads of a few remakes of really old amiga games, rick dangerous, gods, magic pockets & chaos engine. will post up my thoughts when I play them, if they work
Going to give quitting smoking another try when I'm on holiday from work in a couple of weeks, so be prepared for either no blogs or some pretty eratic ones. January 20 well frack me sidewaysJust finished watching season 3 of Battlestar Galactica.
When the series first started I (along with lots of people) just hated the idea of it. I mean come on, starbuck is now a woman!!!! the viper design has been replaced etc etc. So in all honesty I never bothered giving the series a chance.
Then last year I picked up the original mini series cheap at HMV. Its was one of the `spend £20 or more get a selected DVD for £5` deal things (at least I think it was, lol). I eventually got round to watching it & was surprisingly impressed. But due to not having the ££££ to buy the seasons on DVD & havinga crap memory for remembering when things are on the TV that I want to watch I never caugght up with the full blow series.
One of the staff perks when you work at blockbusters is you get free rentals. there are restrictions, but not many. so I have been renting the seasons over the last couple of months.
I'm a huge fan of the original series. As a kid I always prefered it to star trek. the vipers were so cool, the big bad cylons were so much more menacing than anything in the original star trek series. Its one of my top 10 all time TV shows, a list I may well blog in the future (hint, some one remind me to do it)
So anyway, back to the new series. In reality, the new vipers don't actually feature that much tbh. they do work in a way to have the old style vipers (very simalar to the original vipers) as the main fighter. The fact that they have changed the characters is so not important. They didn't just remake the old series, they just took the esence of the show & re-wrote it for todays audience. The fact that they kept the names the same should just be viewed as a nice little homage to the original series.
The show is different than a lot of people expect in that it doesn't just deal with the fight against the cylons. It deals with how the humans in the surviving fleet deal with everything from polotics to just the day to day thinsg such as food water, somewhere to sleep. There are complex stories running over not just several episodes, but cross seasons. You can't just have this show on in the background. you need to pay attention all the time. Because of this I should in reality hate it. Anyone that knows me will know that I hate being in a quiet room. I always have to have something on, be it the TV, music etc etc.
So most of the films & TV shows I watch are in reality just background noise to stop me going insane. Its rare that a TV show can hold my attention for the duration. Of all the TV shows recently made I can think of only 3 that can do this. Firefly, Torchwood & Battlestar Galactica.
The plot twists & turns have kept me guessing who will turn out to be the next cylon. In case you didn't know, they look like us now. Well 12 of them do, but there are multiple verions of each of the 12 models. well I think there is, not quite sure as we have only seen 11 of the models & the last 4 that were revealed was part of the season 3 cliffhanger (OMG I can't belive who they are).
So in short I love this show. Just ask the other half how upset I was when one of the main characters died. I won't post up which one as I don't want to spoil anything for anyone who is still working their way through the series.
anyway, its late, I'm waffling so just trust me. If you like good plot twists, some good sci-fi (with top notch special effects), a great cast who all do an outstanding job please check out the series. If you aren't hooked by the 4th episode of the first full blown season you need help.
PS the frack of this blog title is from BSG. I'm sure you can work out what word they are getting at. |
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