Sodoom's "rig"

So here it is. Now leave me alone Tuza!



From left to right:

Kodak 7 MP digital camera
Speed Stick....for men!
My Crappy house fone.
Dell printer...
Bandana & Shades (for work)
Lil black DS case
Blank media....I mean hell I AM A PIRATE! ARGGG
Logitech wireless mouse AND keyboard.
Sharpie for marking now NON blank media
20 something inch dell widescreen monitor
And the Pièce de résistance my Alienware.

I don't want to go into details about specs, but lets just say that it runs Crysis pretty good.

Game Over,

~Sodoom

Tuza's Rig

So I've been playing with my Blackberry Curve, as you can see in the last post...so I decided to make a rig post. This is my rig...the hardware sucks, but it looks pretty, and does what it has to do. I want to build a new one...but I never have before, and i'll probably wait until I am out of undergraduate college.


From left to right:
MacBook 13 inch (for blogging, tweeting, skyping, and teamspeaking)
pen holder (to hold pens and pencils)
water bottle (to regen mana)
linksys wireless router (to supply my house with internet)
Logitech G15 gaming keyboard (to imput alphanumeric data...orange backlight for comfort!)
LG 22" LCD monitor (to see things)
Logitech webcam (for video podcasts...ever?)
Logitech wireless mouse (the one with the free spinning click wheel...its nuts)
MyHome 250g external HD (for pr0nz)
Sims 2 (for bored times)
Blackberry holster (to conceal my awesome phone)
9/11 commission report (to dig up the dirt on the government while waiting for a raid)

~Tuza

I look sick!

But i'm not! Just blinded by my blackberry flash...damn, it is headache inducing...

Also, testing photobucket.

~Tuza

99 Lives Online Bloggers Both on Twitter!

So Sodoom has known about this online nonsense, and only recently got my attention to it, and no we are both on Twitter. If you have account, start following Sodoom and Tuza99 (I think I also own the original Tuza and just lost my login information). Twitter for the microblogging, Blogspot for the macroblogging...it's almost like you can be us!

~Tuza

Its been while, since I wrote in this blog....it's beeeen awhile...(Stained sucked!)

So yeah. First off Tuza is insane for his "score" of SPORE. Especially since almost all of his complaints were foretold to his Canadian ass! So yeah ^_^, to the talk at hand. I have not wrote in a while for one simple reason. FEAR. I speak not of the game with the same name, but fear itself! My very last blog, check it out..its good, took over 3-4 hours to write. Why? Cuz maybe I don't write that often? I dunno. Maybe writing is not my forte. So like I was saying, for some reason I had this thought in the back of my mind that all blog post would be epic, and take me half a work day to write. I guess that fear is gone now. Thats all for now.

Game over,

~Sodoom

P.S. My thoughts on a few games coming soon. Such ass Bionic Commando: Rearmed, Brothers in Arms: Hells Highway. PEACE!

Don't Piss Off That Shark!

This is what I look for when I am leveling an alt on World of Warcraft. I couldn't help but to post it.

~Tuza

Wrath of the Lich King questline cinematic *SPOILERS*

Watch it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4FEX6YnztA

I was trying to embed, but it wouldn't work... so just click through and enjoy. Pick your jaw up off the floor when it's finished.

~Tuza

Spore (PC) Review

So..the question I left off last week with: Was Spore worth the wait?

I would say no.

Here is why:
It is a cute little game. And it is good at being a cute little game. And I am probably going to buy the retail version of this cute little game when I have the money to buy it. But honestly, the hype was so big, this game didn't live up to it.

The first 4 stages (cell, creature, tribal, and civilization) are all really simple, with having to make a few friends or kill a few cities off in order to progress. I am in the civ stage of my second race, a religous race at the moment. I felt the game was harder with military up until now. I am hoping the space stage is easier with religous, because at the moment, my millitary race gets pwnd as soon as I cannot pay off a rival race. They come and blow up my outposts, and that is it. All that wasted money for nothing.

Also, I thought the tools to resurface and repopulate a planet were perminant things once you learned how to use them. To my dismay, I have to buy an atmosphere generator or buy a meteor shower useage. That is lame. They are not cheap either. You start the space stage with less than 1 atmosphere generators amount of money. That isn't a very good sentence, so i'll quantitate: You start with 100,000, and atmosphere generators are 150,000. At that is just to pump some air in, you may not even get the planet to a habitable state with 1! Exploring the planets for relics and new paints for my planet painter are fun I guess, but the energy supply is pretty short, so I constantly have to go to one of my outposts to pay to refill it. And god forbid I roam into enemy territory...they will pwn my entire race within a few short minutes.

I haven't yet completely delved into space stage. I am waiting to do that with my peaceful race. But at the moment, I am a little put off by how much stronger my enemy is compared to me. Also, since the only way to shoot another spaceship is to click on them, and I play on my laptop with a trackpad, imagine how hard it is to shoot down anything! Another problem I have is that Sodoom graced me with a PC copy, and I run a mac, so I have to play the game on my Windows partition of my mac (MacBook double OS FTW). That being said, I need to do wacky things in order to right click, which is needed quite often in the pc version of the game. It is almost like a finger dance to battle spaceships while also not dying from their lasers.

All in all, on a 1-10 scale I would rate this game a 6. It has it's entertaining moments, but is too simple in the begining, and so far, too hard in the end. I can get to space stage from cell in a few hours if I had the time to do it, and then once in space, I get fucked by every alien out there! Oh well. I'm sure Maxis will put out a million expansions that will really flesh out the game more, but for the archtype game that it is, it could have been better.

Overall: 6
Sound : 8
Graphics: 8
Replay: 7

~Tuza

Is Spore REALLY Worth the Wait?

We will see...because Sodoom totally led me on saying how a copy of the game was going to be in my hands today...then at 5pm I get him on the phone with the "I forgot my phone at home" excuse. OLDEST TRICK IN THE BOOK I SAY! But, Sodoom being the good chap he is said he will come tomorrow and get the copy to me. Yay Sodoom!

I'll let you know tomorrow if this 24 hour blue balled wait was worth it. By the way, I decided to go economic/religous to take over the universe...can anyone say indulgences? RULE WITH THE DOLLAR AND WHISPY MAN IN THE CLOUDS!

~Tuza

SPORE: Was it worth the wait?

In a word.

YES.


Now the real question is this: "does it live up to the hype?". Yes, and no. When I first heard of this game I was not savvy enough on the games creator, Will Wright, to know what he had done in the past yet I still was excited by the whole "Sim everything" aspect of the title. Once I knew that this was the man behind Simcity (one of my all time favorite games on the SNES) I was even more crazy for SPORE. The promise of making a race from microorganism to all conquering space baron was to much to ignore. So the wait began. SPORE was announced over two years ago. Two years. BAH! EA, the games publisher, kept tricking out tid bits of information over the months, a 2-5 minute video here, a screen shot there. It was enough to make poor ol' Sodoom go insane. EA even released about 3-4 months ago the "SPORE creature creator". It was a NOT FREE demo of the games much lauded creature editor. I downloaded it, legally i might add, played it for a nice time. Made a bunch of creatures. I loved it. The bad thing was that instead of easing my appetite it whetted it ten fold. Then the day came.


Sweet SPORE on my hard drive. Ready to go.


Before I even start with the review. Yes I'm one of the assholes that Torrented SPORE. Get over it. Ahem now then.

The title screen is very much the same as the creature creator. Except that in the full SPORE game there are a few planets to chose from. Your starting level if you may. I picked a blueish planet with blood red seas. Its such a beautiful place. On to the start of the game. In case you don't know the game order is like this 1. Cell 2. Creature 3. Tribal
4. Civilization, and finally 5. Space.



I then made my cell dude pretty simple.Just a tee nee tiny KILLING MACHINE. Isn't he lovely?Out of all the eras I must say that the cell phase is the most stylized, it has gorgeous "looking through a micro scope" feel. Its all blurry in the background, you see small particles flying about your organism. In the deep back ground you see large creatures who are more evolved than yourself. Its quite breath taking. This is also the simplest phase. All you do is eat, or be eaten.After you evolved the early semblance of a brain its time to head to land.




On the horizon the darkness came.


Your first task is to grow a pair, or one, of legs. Of course you don't have to, but come on how many predators do you know without legs? On land jerk! Geez. Anyways, I added simple legs to my lil dude. Killed a bunch of others races. Its not like I was going to share Sodoom Prime with these filthy creatures. The killing did have meaning though. In your creature edit menu there are "parts" you can put on your creature. At first its pretty bare there. Only a few things to chose from, but as you find these skeleton things or kill off other creature you earn more, and more parts for your creation. As you gather more, and more parts your brain start getting more advanced as well as your size, and HP.


So I made my guy a little more scary.

And after a bit more murders on planet Sodoom Prime:

And more dead...

Just a little more...

And FINALLY:

Finally my evolution is done.

Tribal is were the heart is.


One thing that I have to warn you is this: "Once you get the option to leave the creature phase YOU CANT EDIT HIS LOOKS ANYMORE" I did not know this, and left on my first game to the tribal phase with a total ****tard of a creature thinking I could edit indefinitely. You can't. Its no big deal tho. As long as you know. Your welcome. In the tribal phase it starts with your race discovering fire. Then the game pulls you away from your race both figuratively and physically. As I mentioned before now you can't edit your creatures bodys, but now you can edit what he wears, more on that later. Also the camera pans away from your tribe. You can zoom in if you wish though. The gameplay now is centered on hunting a gathering, and improving your tools. If your a carnivour as I was you kill, and collect animal flesh for nourishment as well as currency. If you need to build a new structure, or make a new baby/tribe member it would cost X amount of meat. Simple. You have to conqour the other tribes by force or..."or" is there any other way, but by pure brute force? Fine. I'll tell you. If you a tree hugging hippe you can literally win the others over by singing. Yeah thats sooo awesome >_>. Back on target. As you win over the other tribes you get new tech for your tribe. Each tribe has two items to get, such as: fishing hooks, spears for long range attacks, healers, Etc. That's it. The combat is pretty simple target bad guy. Click on what attack to use. Rinse repeat. Don't get me wrong though. I Enjoyed the hunter, gatherer aspect of this phase a lot. Back to the editing. As I mentioned before you can edit what your tribe wears. Each article of cloths gives bonuses to attack, HP, social skill (ppffftt), or gathering skills.



After you murder, kill, and rape...ahem I mean take over the land. Your tribes starts to want to expand. If you had been like me, and destroying everything, and everyone they get the urge to discover atomic power AKA The BOMB.


These huts are too small for our all consuming power.


The first order of business is to design a city hall:




Then a home for your people:





A place to work for there overlord Sodoom:




Lastly a place to relax, and watch some gladiators fight to the death:



The Civ phase is just barely more complex than the other parts. Only because it adds 3 unit types at your control. All of which you have to make with the vehicle editor. Yes! It also has a vehicle editor. Sweet. You need to make a land vehicle:





Then a Sea vehicle:



Lastly a flying vessal of some sort(the first frames of the gif are mess up, sorry):



The goal is almost the same, as a matter of fact it is the same, as the tribal era. Only difference is that instead of taking over the land on which you live you are taking over the entire world. That's it. Its a race for space. You can do the tree hugger way, and offer money, bribes if you will, to the other nations to join you. You can make trade routes, and be an overall nice individual,or..........BLOW THEM SKY HIGH!!!! Guess what route I took? Yup. I ruled with a iron fist. YOU OBEY THE FIST! After you pwn everyone you get to design an interstellar ship:



At this point the game really opens up. This part at first is oh so very intimidating. Its huge. I'm taking John Holmes big. I would say this is my favorite, and at the same time worst part of the game. I'll elaborate. Good new first. When Mr. Wright said you can explore he meant it. There are systems, galaxies, moons to explore. A ton of space faring races to interact with. Its like this is SimSTARTREK. Its nuts. You can terraform the uninhabitable planets afterwars you can plant various forms of vegetation from your own planet, or other if you wish. You can "plant" creatrues from your catalog on said terraformed planet. You scan planets for valuables like rare ores, ancient artifacts, money. Catalog new races from random planets. Beam some of those creatures if you wish to "study" them, so many things.


The Bad thing.

The game forces me to play like a good boy. That really makes no sense what so ever. The main argument people say is that my race is late to the interstella party. Fine. In the real world it makes sense that the last race to space would be behind in tech, skill, size, Etc. But **** that, this is a game. Games are supposed to be fun. If that was the case then the muscle mass of my creature would make no sense given thier small mouth, they would have to be eatting all day to live. Thats not what the game is about. Its about making a race going out to space, and kicking all kinds of butt. This is a small gripe, right? Its the one flaw in this game. I think its an enormous mistake though. I should play the game as I wish. If I like to blow things to kingdom come, I should be able to. I like the space area. I really do. I just hate to have to use cheats to win, since I will not play nice with the other freaks in space, and cheating the only way to play the Sodoom way. You know: "kill 'em all let God sort them out". Well this is all I got. I only played the space for about 2-3 hours. If I change my feeling on this I would write it it here. I'll say this though. The space era problem forces me to take away 1.5 points from my score, if I were to score it. As it stands I give it a 7.5 out of 10.

Here is a closer look at my race:




~Sodoom

Star Wars - The Force Unleashed Preview

Star Wars - The Force Unleashed is coming out on the 16th, which is next week! So what do you need to know in order to be prepared for this new Star Wars title?



First off, this game is introducing 3 new physics technologies to the gaming world. I'm too lazy to actually go look up what they are called, but it pretty much means you can force lift a box, then force lift a stormtrooper, collide them, and they'll move as they would if force lifting were real. Also, that stormtrooper will try and grab onto that box and hold on for dear life, but holding on for dear life is not as strong as force lifts and pulls, so you can rip that stormtrooper off and throw him into a wall or something. The particle physics are also something to be marveled at.

So who is this guy in the video? The story I heard is this: Darth Vader, THE Darth Vader, is chasing after a jedi on some planet. (Yes, this is the first level of the game, and YES WE DO GET TO PLAY AS DARTH VADER!). He corners the jedi, and a little kid comes along. This kid is the main character of the game, and he is actually the son of the jedi. Well, Darth Vader sees potential in the kid, and kills his dad, and takes him has his own personal secret apprentice. That, my friends, is where the main character comes from.

So now you grow up, and your Vader's own personal manservant, but manservanting for Vader is definately a badass thing, so it is okay. You pretty much go from planet to planet, seeking out jedi in hiding, and pwning their asses. Vader tells you to kill anyone in the way, and that includes stormtroopers. I found this odd at first, since, this game takes place between Episodes 3 and 4, which is after the stormtroopers are already on the Empires side. But, since no one knows Vader has a secret apprentice, everyone is a bad guy for you, the player.

From videos I have seen, you have a few ways of going through the game. First off, you can hack and slash through the baddies with your lightsaber, in line with most Star Wars geek fantasies. Or on the flipside of the coin, you can use your force moves in step with solid environment objects like walls, trees, etc, to smash up the bad guys. Who knows, maybe you'll even find a tree you can force lift and throw at a group! Then, for the middle of the road people, you can use both in tandem to mix up the melee action of lightsaber action. Hack, hack, slash then force lift and choke out a stormtrooper for ultimate gradification.

This is a game I am going to pick up. I know Star Wars games are a mixed bag, but from all the videos and hot air about the three new physics engines, I really doubt it will be a big dud. Even if it is, you can always run around and throw stormtroopers, and what is bad about that? Nothing.

Star Wars - The Force Unleashed comes out September 16th, that is this coming Tuesday!

~Tuza

Warhammer Online: 7 days away!

Here is a new cinematic trailer for Warhammer Online. It looks fucking sweet. Enjoy the video, and save up your gold pieces to pick up the game next Thursday (Sept 18th).

~Tuza

PVE to PVP paid character transfers now available in World of Warcraft

So this came out of nowhere: Paid character transfers are now available for characters on PVE servers wanting to transfer to PVP servers. Originally, when paid character transfers first came out, you could transfer from PVE to PVE, PVP to PVP, and PVP to PVE, but never PVE to PVP. This was because people felt they could level a character on a PVE sever and avoid getting ganked, then transfer over at lvl 70 to a PVP server and gank lower characters. Well, I guess blizzard gave up, and will let people do that anyway.

I'm happy. I'll probably be transferring a character over to a PVP server to gank up some low level alliance when I am in a bad mood. I still do not have my account up and working, because I am poor as heck. Soon, though, I will be back in WoW.

In related news, Warhammer Online: Age of Reconing is coming out on the 18th of September. I feel that I will pick it up sooner or later, probably before christmas, in order to get my idea on it. I'll play the free first month and go from there. Since I do not have my PC at school this semester, I am not in any big rush.

Thats all, have fun ganking noobs all you freshly dinged PVE 70's!
~Tuza

Windows XP=Rapist of souls.

So here I am.

Year 1.5 of my bad ass Alienware PC. Its teh shit. Now as for the OS in it...>_I know that a "fresh" install of windows works wonders for said PC, but is just me or does that make about as much sense as an umbrella made of paper?* My PC, and Tuza can verify this, is a monster. This ****er runs Crysis easy peasy. Yet all the TONS of "totally legal" downloads left their mark. Little by little they kept leaving small hidden files that Windows could not delete, or maybe would not delete those fraking files.

So now my PC was acting the foo'! Taking forever to run aps. Taking even longer to boot up. Just taking long time on menial aps. So finally I reinstalled XP, to my HORROR...

...Spore was running at a brisk 20 frames per second @_@. I was like: "Hmmm okay...it ran perfect before the reinstall" Hmmm indeed. I tried re-downloading the lastest drivers for my vid card, a Geforce 8800 GTX if you must know, yet the frame rate still blew all kinds of chunks. WTF!. I knew that my PC can handle liltte ol' Spore. I was at a loss. Then on a subsequent reboot I noticed something that was odd. When the PC was powering up it gave me an option to run Windows XP or Windows XP. WTF? I clicked on the second clone choice, and voila my old XP install was STILL here. So my poor PC was doing double duty...blah! How did this happen? Well.

I realized I had simply clicked yes on all the prompts during the install. Usually this is okay. For some reason this recovery disk had as the first option: "create new partition to install XP". That to me is odd. It should ask first to format HDD, and reinstall XP. Alas the onus fall of poor ol (and not to mention stupid) Sodoom for not be attentive. Well now I was not going to be careless this second time. There is was. I had to press "G" to format, and install XP. Cool BEANS.

Sure it took over 4 hours to format, I guess 750 Gigs is alot to clean :P, but not my PC is runnig smoother than ever. I do mean ever. When I installed XP the right way on the first boot up the PC automaticly connected online, and download, and installed over 37 updates to Windows. Took less than 10 minutes. Impressive I must say. Pre-built PC FTW. Try getting recovery software like that with a self built pc. Pffft. LOL!!!

Warning Rant ahead!....

*My rant about the nessecity of "fresh" Windows installs is this. I SHOULD NOT HAVE TO DO IT!. I mean **** why cant the computer, barring some horrible virus, run fine for the time I own it? As long as I maintain it well by dusting it, defragging, scaning for spyware, scaning for virus's (what plural for virus? Viri? wtf), scaning for disk errors, Etc. It. Should. Be. FINE! Grrr. Alas you still have to do this every year or so. Okay fine you dont have to, but you should. If you want your OS running smooths as a babys bottom.

...End RANT.



~Sodoom

Final Fantasy IV (DS) - Impressions

Hey there. So I haven't finished FFIV yet for the DS, but I feel the game is worth a post.

So far, the game has been great. Granted, I have never played the FFII version of this game on the SNES, so all my impressions of this game come strictly from the presentation given in this revamp.

I think it is awesome. It really is the only DS game that has ever had me gasp at a plot twist. More than once, actually. The story feels fluid and really keeps you guessing as to what will happen next. Some other reviews comment on how the voice acting brings the game down from greatness, but I really enjoy the voice acting. It isn't spectacular, but it isn't any worse than Final Fantasy X's voice work and that game was amazing. The cut scenes with voice acting are few enough that they can really be looked over for their non-awe-inspiring voice work, but they are awesome when it comes to the story telling aspects.

The combat system is pretty standard as far as Final Fantasy games go. This was the game that introduced the active battle system, and it keeps up throughout the game. The only problem I have with this battle system, as I do with all FF's that use this battle system, is the menu sizes. When I'm reeling from some mega boss attack and looking for my curaga on all my healing characters, either put them all in the same place or make the menu's bigger so I don't have to scroll through them as the boss ramps up some sucky physical attack to kill my healers. In this regards, I really liked the battle system in Final Fantasy X, where battle was completely turn based, and you could get up and walk away from the PS2 on your turn if you really had to. I wish that was in more of the titles....sigh.

Another thing that could have been improved was the music. Specifically, I want different kinds. There is one song for dungeons, and since you are in them quite frequently, the song gets old, fast. There are 2 songs for boss battles, and depending on which one you get, you can tell if you're fucked or if you're REALLY fucked. Hard boss fights have the same music, medium boss fights have the same music, but not as scary as the hard fights. A little more diversity would have been great here.

Overall, I would say this game is worth every cent I payed for it. I bought it to keep me busy on a plane trip back to school, and now I am hooked. Right now, I am working on getting the earth crystal back from the asshole dark elf who stole it. And when I get it, I guess I'm going to deal with that asshole Dragoon Kain.

Final Fantasy IV (DS): go pick it up.

~Tuza

Wii Fit Review