tonicbh

Gather round, children, I'm gonna talk about how one little setting made PC gaming a living hell for me for about six months.

Now, I thought my computer was awesome. AMD Athlon 4400+ X2, 2GB RAM, GeForce 8800GT. It was a drastic improvement over my old PC, and even when I swapped out an 8500GT for the 8800GT, it was going through games smooth as butter. Sure, it's not top-of-the-line, but it certainly wasn't bottom of the barrel.

But then, something happened. My computer was no longer awesome. Most Valve games would run at less than 15 frames a second, making games like Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead difficult to play. Even lowering all the settings did nothing. I updated video card drivers, did anti-virus checks, even put the 8500GT back in for a while. But my games were still running like shit. Fallout 3 was always at a steady 10-15 frames even on low settings. It made me migrate to console gaming for a while as I was sick of suffering.

Yesterday, I was telling my dad that I might need a new PC. He said, among other suggestions, to "see if there's a problem with it." So I just start randomly mulling over settings, and decide to check my power settings. Vista has a power settings option in the Control Panel where it would adjust power settings if you wanted to save energy and money and shit. I had it set to "Power Saver," the lowest power setting. So I randomly change it to "High Performance," and immediately boot up Left 4 Dead 2, a game I had just bought that day over Steam.

What was 5 frames a second now was the 30-60 it was supposed to get. That was the problem right there: I was throttling the computer by using a power saver setting, thus making my games lag and chug because they didn't get enough juice. Or something like that, anyway. All my Valve games run at a steady clip. Fallout 3 runs smooth on all High settings now, and the game feels faster because I was playing it at slow frame rates the whole time. This is like getting a new computer part -- hell, even a new computer -- all over again. I have the urge to install random PC games I have and see how they run on this computer now that I stopped gimping my machine.

Moral of the story? Sometimes the issue is not the computer, it's the guy in front of it.

What I was hoping to do: Buy a copy of Guitar Hero: World Tour for the PS3 at the local Goodwill, take it to a GameStop, make mucho store credit, ??? PROFIT!
What I ended up doing: Not buying the game, calling a GameStop and realizing I would've lost $14.50 since the trade value apparently is poor-as-fuck for rhythm game.

Oh well, one day I'll buy the game at $20 new on the 360 anyway.

So I went to the Penny Arcade Expo. I talk about it for fourty minutes.



(Parts Two, Three and Four are available as well.)

Yeah. Sorry I haven't updated this lately. I've been too used to Twitter. It's ruined my journal-writing habits, I swear!

But yeah. In a few days, I am going to the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle. I've only been to Seattle twice in my life, and I don't know the city at all. But at least I get to play recent and upcoming video games before I go back to community college and take some classes in the fall.

I guess I could link to my other blog at Destructoid, where I talked about playing Halo 3: ODST early. It wasn't bad, just wasn't my cup of tea. For some reason, Halo games don't interest me too much outside of the first. I'm not sure why.

Otherwise I have little updates or inspirations to write anything these days. :(

I'd say I'm a big Call of Duty fan, wouldn't you?



Just got Finest Hour (the one on the far left) today for $10. Now I need to get the handheld ones and then I can say I'm a true COD fan. :P

(Was great to hang out with you today, bennetfox. Made my day more fun.)

Extracted from another blog:

I saw somebody wearing a pair of sheepskin boots while I was out and about today. I was this close to complimenting the woman for wearing them, but she got off the bus before I could do.

Then that made me wonder. "Why would you wear those in the summer? Aren't they made for the winter?" So I went and found out that Nordstrom AND a walking shoe store had them in stock. After asking clerks at both stores, it seems it's a popular piece of footwear. (Go figure, I own a pair, so I'm part of the crazy collective) Although, I should've asked the benefits of wearing them in the summer, and I didn't. Argh.

Anybody who actually owns a pair AND wears them in the summer: Why do you wear them in the summer? I'm curious.

I was bored downtown, so I went into a store and tried on a pair of boots. They looked nice, but the ones I tried on seemed a bit big. I should've asked for one size smaller. Not like I could afford them anyway. But hey.

I love Giant Bomb. And if I had an iPod touch, I'd buy their app many times. But last I checked Apple wants like $6,000 for a 16GB one, so fuck that.

My PS3 has been dead for a few days. Well, a crucial part of it has been crippled and kinda prevents me from playing games. It's funny, I thought the 360 would be the first to croak but my 360's still kicking since December.

on Monday, we shipped the coffin to UPS and right now it's in Dallas-Fort Worth. I think the repair center's in Laredo. Either way, I'm out of a PS3 for about 2 weeks. Kinda sucks, as I was playing Bioshock and Burnout Paradise, and I bought PS3 games with the explicit reason to give the PS3 something to be played over the summer.

Instead, I have to tend to my 360. Hell, I had to pull out Lego Indiana Jones just to have something new to play...

"They're gonna make a new Michael Jackson game to pay off the Saudi Arabians for living in their country. And in this one, he dies at the end."

Seriously, when did Michael live in Saudi Arabia and was paying their dictators? And such a comment when he just died, no less. What the fuck.

(Note to self: Hunt down Moonwalker and both Space Channel 5 games.)

So about a week or two back, I bought Rock Band 2 on the 360 for $40. And I really like it, even though I lack the other peripherals needed. Well, my excuses are simple: "I have a terrible voice for singing," "My room cannot fit the Rock Band drum kit without me not being able to move around in my room" and "That shit's too expensive, yo."

I've also learned not to be so leery about downloadable content. Especially when Rock Band gets it right: $1-2 for a song, $5 or so for a whole pack of 3-4 songs, and about $20 for a full album. Comparable to music download stores, although the albums might be a bit pricey (CDs of those same albums are usually $15-18). This is how other developers of non-rhythm games should be pricing their downloadable content. I'd buy those new fancy Call of Duty: World at War map packs if they were like $2.50 instead of $10! I wouldn't have to resort to code contests, pack-ins with the game or waiting for them to be free!

See, I come from a PC background, usually extra DLC we got, be it map packs usually, were free. And while one can go "IN THIS DAY AND AGE YOU CAN'T MAKE THEM FREE BECAUSE IT COSTS MONEY TO MAKE THESE," I say bullshit. Massive amounts of bullshit. Outside of Left 4 Dead 2 (which we don't know everything about yet), Valve has always supported their games post-launch with new content, all for free. Epic Games recently released a "Black edition" of Unreal Tournament 3 which added new content, also free. COD4 and WAW PC player? The map packs that people pay $10 for on console is free to you. Probably because while console sheep are willing to grab ankles and bend over for microtransaction rape, PC owners won't have anything like that.

But where was I? Oh yeah, Rock Band 2. It's good. It's good when you have 80 or so stock songs, 20 free downloadable songs that came in the case, plus two free DLC songs ("Still Alive" and some song Stephen Colbert's fake band made) and purchasing one DLC song (Pearl Jam's "Even Flow," which has a drastically different chart than GH3's version). I think I'm gonna like this.

Not sure if I'll get any other GH game, or even the upcoming Rock Band: Beatles. Maybe I'll get the GH games once they get dirt cheap, that's how I got Guitar Hero: Aerosmith and jump-started my way into the rhythm game cult. $10 game with a free guitar controller? Hell yeah.

Today, I decided to read an old friend's livejournal. Man, even 3 years ago, life was simpler.

Is it normal for a dude to file his fingernails?

These four purchases, three made a few weeks back and this one made yesterday will likely consist of all the video gaming I have set for this summer. That and the 30-other games I haven't finished. But I'm not too bothered!




NOW am I part of the cool kids club? :P

"Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are in talks with each other when it comes to when games & systems are released."
"Sony and Nintendo are working together to go against Microsoft because both companies are Japanese."
While watching footage of Uncharted 2: "I can see the Nintendo influence, though." (referring to earlier)
"I think [Kaz Hirai, CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment and Satoru Iwata, CEO of Nintendo] have dinner 3 nights a month." (again, referring to earlier)

I'd have something substantial to say about the E3 press conferences, but I should be getting back to making stages for my game design class.

Okay, I like GameTrailers.com. I think it is one of the most comprehensive sites for video game footage. I don't have much of a strong attachment with the editorial staff compared to Giant Bomb, Ziff-Davis era 1UP or pre-Gerstmann fiasco GameSpot, but they hold their own. I disagree with them from time to time, including Shane Satterfield's somewhat disdain for PC gaming, but it's only minor slip-ups to a perfectly fine cake.

What bothers me about gamers these days is that with the wonders of the internet, people who were originally closet fanboys who'd praise the PlayStation and bash Sega and Nintendo now found the internet and spout their terribly-written 13-year-old slang-ridden drivel all over message boards how "PS3 is the best and M$ suxxxxxxxxxxxxxx." It's hard to visit a game site's message board because of that, especially GameTrailers's forum. But like a guy who wouldn't deny a sandwich even if I got punched in the face for it, I have a masochistic tendency to visit the forums and see the bile spewed by these teenagers who must defend the $500 purchase their mommy made them. Now, I know there are legitimate PS3 owners who think the system is awesome and probably don't care for a 360 outside of exclusives such as Halo or Gears of War. That's fine, you're welcome to think that about games. It's another thing when you bash the competitor for no reason except to increase your e-penis points.

GameTrailers has been a terrible bastion of criticism from Sony fanboys. The first telltale sign was way back in late 2007 when they put up a comparison video for Assassin's Creed. The PS3 version was shown to be very bright and washed-out looking compared to the more darker and vibrant colors of the 360 version. Then somebody pointed out that they didn't have two settings enabled on the PS3: "RGB Full Range" and "Super-White signals." Both of these really only come into use if you're using HDMI outputs, but sure enough, that person's video showed Assassin's Creed having colors that were now balanced with the other versions. Surprisingly this brought GT to show comparison shots between Component (what they used in the original comparison video) and HDMI by comparing Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. No discernible difference was found. But it is an interesting fact for those who are tech savvy and want to know something about video outputs.

Then nothing controversial happened until June 2008, when Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots was released. The review came out and one small score of 8.7 in the story department. Having played MGS4, I'd agree with the sentiment. The story's too contrived at times and towards the epilogue, it was basically Hideo Kojima trying to mop up a dried-up vomit stain by using Pine Sol. Again, this infuriated some gamers, them saying "GT IS BIASED TOWARDS MICROSOFT" and having forum signatures that compared the story scores of MGS4 to Halo 3 and Assassin's Creed, which is an improper comparison as all three games don't even share the same genre. Basically after a few months it died out and nobody has that in their sigs anymore.

A few months later, a small snafu happened in one of their comparison videos. One clip that was labeled an Xbox 360 clip for the racing game GRID was actually a PlayStation 3 clip. Eventually the video was taken down, but not before people went in arms over it. It got so ridiculous that even Kotaku, a gaming blog I pretty much despise, got in on the act. Shane Satterfield, the Editor-in-Chief at the site pretty much had to play damage control to something that is the equivalent to accidentally saying the F-bomb on live television.

There's more issues but I feel that it's bogging down to my general point. Another comparison snafu happened, this time with X-Men Origins: Wolverine. It seems that the two side-by-side clips were accidentally mislabeled. What was the 360 clip was the PS3 clip, and vice-versa. This was prooved by the 360 button prompts appearing in the PS3 version of the clip. That video got pulled, corrected, and reposted. You think that people would just forgive them for making the mistake, after all it's just human error, right? Nope. Not anywhere close. Again, people went up in arms over a little mistake. These retarded teenagers drool stupid terms such as "EPIC FAIL" that it makes me want to go on a killing spree just to expunge these people from the face of the earth.

Let's put it this way: These fanboys dissect every issue over game sites more than scientists study cancer cells. Any time a mistake is made, people start becoming conspiracy theorists and point fingers at GameTrailers for being owned by Microsoft (lie) and getting money from them (also a lie). Really, it pisses me off that we still have people going over these game sites with a fine-toothed comb. It bothers me that any time there's a disagreement, it just leads to pointless site bashing and e-penis stroking.

I'm going to give advice to these people who continually blame sites for being biased towards Microsoft: Shut up, and grow up. Stop defending your precious system, Sony doesn't care for people like you. This goes double for Microsoft and Nintendo defenders. If you don't like the site, I suggest you do the following steps:

1. Click the "log out" button


2. Delete the bookmark from your web browser


3. Find a new gaming site to roam (I already have one suggestion)


4. ???


5. SUCCESS! (hopefully)

I really can't wait to see this ripped on Invisible Walls (GameTrailers's podcast) next week. I bet Marcus Beer will rip those people more than I just did. Probably with less tact, but hey, sometimes the truth has to hurt in order to accept it.

I found this on my old hard drive while cleaning it out. Still funny about 8-9 years later.

So I'm on the bus on my way to the tutor in one of my college campuses so I can improve a paper. We're required by the instructor to see a tutor, so I go today because it's low-key and nobody's gonna be packing the tutoring center to get their papers critiqued.

While I'm on the bus on my way to PCC, two guys get on the bus, one stop after the next. The first guy seemed like a normal dude with a black leather jacket. The other guy seemed a little mentally handicapped but meant no harm. The two go near the back of the bus, then I hear the first guy start hurling obscenities at the handicapped dude for touching him. Hey, sometimes people don't like that. Eventually the first guy wants to talk to the handicapped dude outside the bus. Eventually I hear F-bombs and the bus driver lets off the two men one stop apart from each other.

I can understand if you have a personal space, but there was no reason to blow up at the guy for touching you. A simple polite request would've gotten the hint. I figured the other guy was handicapped a bit due to his personality. That and he was sniffing a tree after he got off the stop.

Also, Skipper's fish and chips is still delicious.

The teabag protesters are fucking idiots. And FOX News is just as fucking stupid to go on about them.

Especially Glenn Beck and him getting somebody wet with water in a gasoline can. What the hell, man? You're as crazy as O'Reilly or Olbermann sometimes!