Day: August 24, 2008

The Beast looks meaner…

D'Arque Bishop1 Comment

I have to say it’s been something of an uneventful weekend.

About the only thing of real note I’ve done this weekend (other than play Team Fortress 2) was take the Beast (aka, my black 2008 Dodge Avenger) in to Spring Chrysler/Jeep/Dodge to have some work done. It was time for the car’s 21k mile service, and I had also decided to have its windows tinted. Houston summers tend to be pretty brutal, and while it’s kind of late in the year for the tinting to do much good, I figure it’ll be good for next year. In retrospect, I should have left the car there while they did the work, as I didn’t expect them to take four hours. I alternated between working on my laptop and taking a look at the Vipers and Challengers in the showroom. I have to say that while they look nice, I would not get either car. The Challenger is a bit more expensive than I’m willing to pay, and has crap gas mileage. The Viper has no cargo room, and, well… I can’t afford $100k on a car. :-)

Still, in the end, the Beast looks nicer. There’s just something about tinted windows on a black car that makes it look nicer. Also, admittedly, current model Dodges tend to look like mean cars. The Beast is no exception, and the tint only makes it look meaner. :-)

Otherwise, it’s been a pretty quiet weekend, all told. I watched a movie (Resident Evil: Extinction) this morning, but otherwise it’s been uneventful. This week should hopefully be quiet as well… but I don’t expect it to be. About the only good thing I’m looking forward to is a party at a friend’s house at the end of the week… which, coincidentally, will be part of a three day weekend. We’ll see how it goes. :-)

The final PC game (for me, at least)…

D'Arque Bishop

Late Friday night, my friend Josh alerted me to the fact that Team Fortress 2 was available to play for free through Steam this weekend. I hadn’t taken the time to play it before, so I went ahead and downloaded it. Last night, after consulting with Josh on a couple of servers to try, I went ahead and played it for a couple of hours.

Damn, that was fun.

The end result was that this afternoon I bit the bullet and bought the game off Steam. It definitely makes for a good game for releasing pent-up frustration. I have to say that this may end up being my PC game of choice for a while, as well as Quake Live… as soon as that one is released, that is. (I signed up for the beta and didn’t get accepted. Damn.)

However, Team Fortress 2 may very well be my final PC game purchase. I had also considered purchasing Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, as I know Sinc will likely get it and would be playing it online. However, I was looking at the released technical specs for the Windows version of the game, and on the ATI side of video cards, the minimum card supported is the X1800. My main PC has an X800. In other words, I would need to upgrade the video card in order to play the game on my PC.

I’m not doing that again. I have an Xbox 360, and the game is coming out for it as well. I’m tired of the constant upgrade cycle needed for a PC to be, well, competitive in the gaming scene. It’s sad but true: consoles have a slower cycle time and cost less to boot. Not only that, my 360 is on a better gaming setup, so to speak: I have it plugged into a 27″ LCD HDTV and a Dolby 5.1 surround sound system. I’d rather play on that than on the PC’s 19″ LCD monitor and 2.1 speaker setup.

So, here I am. I used to do PC gaming, but I’ve pretty much migrated over to console gaming. I knew this day would come, but I’m not really feeling bad about it. In the long run it’ll cost me less and be less headache. By less headache, I mean dealing with building and upgrading machines. It’s a pain in the ass and I’m happy to be done with it… if only until such time as I do need to rebuild a machine. Being able to play the latest games isn’t a “need” situation.

We’ll see how it goes.