Stex Toys

Alan Awoken

Count Stex — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 08:16:01 +0000

I’ve begun my adventure with Alan Wake, the fabled long term development piece which has received much applause since release. It certainly seems to capture the feel of a tense thriller and you spend a lot of the game time on edge waiting for the inevitable attacks.
One problem I have though is that in the daylight scenes there is quite a lot of texture pop going on with the tree lines and distant mountains. It’s something I’ve started noticing more and more in recent titles on the 360. Red Dead Redemption suffers from this also. Is this a sign of the creativity of developers expanding beyond the capabilities of this gens hardware, or just some slightly sloppy coding? Have my recent forays into PC gaming heightened my awareness given the extra power available even to a 2 year old gaming PC?
With the projected life spans of the current console hardware as they are I guess it is something we will start to see more and more. Maybe I should try these titles on the PS3 and see if it’s just as bad there.

Bye Bye Android

Count Stex — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 09:52:48 +0000

My time with Android has been far too brief. I do like Android, a lot. And the hardware I chose was pretty decent, a Samsung Galaxy, however Samesung completely abandoned the hardware once it was in the wild. We never got an update past version 1.5 of the Android OS. 1.6 came and went, then they jumped to 2.0.. still nothing. 2.1 … 2.2 nope and now they have the Galaxy S and lost all interest in looking after those who gave them the money to get where they are. It’s a shame, I have a number of Samsung products but now I have no inclination to buy any more. But I would still be using the Galaxy save for one thing.. I dropped it, as I have a hundred times since I got it, but this time it landed on concrete or more specifically on a small stone on concrete. And that was that, a screen of a thousand pieces. It actually still works, if you don’t mind getting glass fragments in you finger!

So I’m back to my Blackberry Bold, a process which isn’t super straight forward as without a BIS/BES service you have to do a lot of third party apping to get the standard features. But actually, it’s really not that bad! I thought going back to a none touch device with a small screen would be a hard step back. But there is something about the smaller but good resolution screen, and snappiness of the applications that is welcoming. A BlackBerry knows what it can do and does it very well. The hardware keyboard is a welcome addition also, for someone who types a lot on their phone, sending texts, twitters and emails it’s a valuable resource.

Of course I will be going back to Android as soon as I can afford a new phone, the HTC Desire HD is currently in my sights, when it launches. But we’ll have to wait and see how long that takes to achieve.

If you write it, it will change.

Count Stex — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 22:07:25 +0000

So not 24 hours after I wrote my last piece about really not being into gaming at the moment and I had the 360 all booted up and Red Dead Redemption spun up for some Multiplayer! OK, so I could hide behind it being multiplayer with my old School friend Woodoggies, with an offer of some gaming I was unlikely to turn down. But that wouldn’t explain me heading back to New Austin the next day for some story progression, let alone the day after. It seems all I needed was a jumpstart to the engines fuelled by some community incentive and I was right back in.

Sure It’s not been a flood of activity since, but I can feel the ‘need’ to play is back in my soul. I’m seeing the busy work week ahead, with some late night engagements as a challenge to my gaming as opposed to a welcome escape.

Plus I’ve had some reinvigoration thanks to my work for the ever excellent Digital Cowboys as i’ve been setting up a new Facebook page for those listeners and fans who use Facebook to use as a single jumping off point for the podcasts, blog articles, and YouTube vids. It may not be giving anythign new at present, but it will hopefully become a one stop shop for thing DC within the walled gardens of Facebook.

So things are moving along once more. With a wedding coming up next month there is sure to be a considerable amount of strain on so called free time, but I am hopeful gaming will be getting it;s usual large chunk of my time as always.

It’s been over twenty days since my last confession

Count Stex — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 18:26:11 +0000

That being a confession to my XBOX. Or any console for that matter. Oh sure they’ve been switched on to watch a movie or check some trailers but in terms of actually playing a game.. well Red Dead Redemption is showing some play time on the 6th of June and then nothing.

I wasn’t expecting this either. Sometimes you can feel these down times approaching and can wind down correctly, finish off whichever game is currently your favourite spin and settle in for some none gaming activities. But this was not the case this time. If anything excitement was high. Red Dead was proving to be a game I could get lost in, and E3 was coming. E3 which last year, having just fully gotten into console gaming proved to be an invigorating experience that set me up for the next year of gaming greats. And yet this year it seemed to be the death knoll for my interest.

OK so the conferences weren’t aimed at me. They had new hardware to sell, new hardware that opened the doors to forms of gaming I have at best a passing interest in. But there where still a fair few games that should have inspired me. Gotten my thumbs twitching in anticipation. And yet… and yet, this did not happen.

Maybe it wasn’t E3. Maybe my recently rekindled love for World of Warcraft running on my good old faithful PC that had seen its gaming hours slashed over the past 18 months had planted it’s taint on me once more. But I think not. The addiction hasn’t bitten, if I have a night without WoW I feel fine. There’s no longing for the desolate plains of Tanaris or itching to make a quick gold or two on the auction house. Sure I’m enjoying my time in Azeroth once more but it’s a healthy time, one shared with good friends.

Perhaps it’s the signs of a decent summer, the sun shining outside the call of birdsong drawing me away and out into the wilds. A wedding on the horizon, much to plan and do there but with few distractions in my life there is time and more for these things. Double Income No Kids sees availability at a maximum for a responsible adult, and plenty of my contempories with harder jobs and children are still gaming.

Nope, none of these things are a real reason or even an excuse for my lack of gaming. It’s plainly just a drop in interest and these drops have come before and they have passed. It’s just a case of riding with the tide, let it ebb away and then begin its build up once more ready to resurge. I just hope it’s in time for Halo Reach!

The World that involves the Craft that is War.

Count Stex — Wed, 05 May 2010 11:24:03 +0000

Much has been going on on the gaming front over the past few weeks/month. No that you could tell from this blog of course as I keep failing to check in on it! So I’ll post my monthly “Oops I forgot to post anything recently” post here and now
Lets start with the sentence I have denied I would ever say, and also knew I could never avoid. I have returned to World of Warcraft. Yes, yes, I had managed a good two years clean of having it’s toxins coursing through my veins, and yes I remember how bad it can get. But all things said, it is still the best game ever crafted on so many levels and the one catch it has that works better in an MMO than any other genre, community. Because a good experience online is always far more influenced by those you are spending your time with than what is actually occurring in game.
Plus things have moved on since last we played, and I’m not talking just about the improvements in the game itself. The ascension of the likes of Skype make voice chat a very simple task these days. No need for TeamSpeak servers or the like, a small group can make do with a conference call running in the background, and a cheap £25 headset. The difference voice communication can make should not be underestimated, and is the one thing that caught me off guard back in 2008 when that now beloved XBOX 360 dropped into our possession. Now I fully expect to be talking to folks whilst I game except in those rare occasions when I want the story of a game to fully come through without interruption or distraction, such as titles like Heavy Rain.
But all is not lost on the none MMO front, May 1st saw the start of the second Gamerscore challenge of 2010 of the Digital Cowboys Community, so points are being grabbed on as many 360 games as can be squeezed in. I’ve even gone as far, over the past few months, or stocking up on some very cheap sub £5 games to ensure my stock is high. Also this time PenguinGirl is joining in the fun so not only am I competing against the best gamers of the DC Community, but also my own better half!

So all in all there will be plenty of gaming being done, and I’ve not even mentioned having gone to The Gadget Show Live, which I really should do a post on also.. maybe next month

What’s new PC?

Count Stex — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 14:27:01 +0000

There has been somewhat of a resurgence in my PC gaming of late, following just over a year of some solid console gaming. Fear not though, this is not an abandonment of my new found appreciation of all things ‘box, ‘station and Wii, but more a levelling out of my gaming time to encompass all of my children.This was somewhat sparked by the introduction of a new graphics card, I’d been upgrading various part of my PC over the past couple of years as i saw fit however they where all very much centred around creating a nice stable platform on which to actually use my PC for the usual assortment of browsing, social networking and photo editing. In this time my previous graphics card, an ATI X1900XT, had over extended it;s life somewhat, and whist it allowed me to continue to play games I was pretty much reduced to minimal settings in everything recent. Things came to a head when I was trialling the Beta of Star Trek Online, an MMO and as with MMOs in general minimal graphics requirements where, well, minimal. When my PC even started to produce stuttering frame rates with this, I finally had to give in and upgrade.
Nothing too grand mind, I always set myself a limit of less than £150 for new graphics cards. Anything more and you are usually paying for newness, too much less and you’re buying something with no real future. Thankfully ATIs 5xxx series had recently been introduced, and there is some very tasty DX9 performance to be had from even the lower end of the spectrum of these cards. So it was that I plumped for a 5770 1GB, a little outside of the main gaming cards (58xx) but more than enough power to send my DX9 games screens to my 1920×1280 display with aplomb.

After the usual initial blast of playing every game I had installed for sometimes as much as 10 minutes with the setting all on MAX, I eventually settled down to actually playing some games again, many that I had been holding back on until I could enjoy them in full detailed glory. So it was that some recent classics got themselves reinstalled, as well as some newer titles I’d picked up in Steam sales. Mass Effect is finally getting the play it deserves, the latest instalment of my beloved Dawn of War, that being DoW II is taking everything it can from the new card. Strangely even some older games which aren’t that graphically demanding have found some play time, The Movies being a notable addition here.

I have however taken some inspiration from my consoling ways. A Wireless USB adapted now allows me to use the 360 controller for any games that support it, which for anything recent is a straight drop and play with all controls matching those on the console versions of the game. Also games with Achievements are getting top billing, even if they are just Steam achievements.

All in all it’s good to make a return to PC gaming, and even more so as part of a much wider family that spans all of the current gaming options bar the PSP, for choice.. choice is everything.

Some Karting

Count Stex — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 09:14:38 +0000

Last night saw me back on the Wii for the first time in a long time. However we set ourselves up a Mario Kart night and five of us, from a planned six, took part. The entrants where from our office and are named thusly Steve – that’s me (also sometimes refered to as Dr Jones), Jez – fellow employee of over 12 years and longtime Nintendo owner, Adam – ex employee at our work, Dunc – fellow employee for over 12 years and Rob – longtime fellow employee, but only recently joining us in IS (Information Services)

Due to the lovely friend codes we had to plan this night weeks in advance to ensure we would all be able to play, and there was no voice chat as we didn’t get around to setting up a Skype conference or anything, but maybe next time!

Rob kindly kept track of events and so I present them here as given to me:

For the first minute or two I was so very aware of how blocky the graphics felt, part of this will be watching on a full HD screen of course, however given 60 seconds of actually competitive game play and all that was forgotten as the shells started flying and the pure fun that is Mario Kart burst forth, and even without the voice chat to help arrange track orders and just for general bitching, we still managed to have a totally enjoyable night. Might have to do more of these in 2010, closing such a rich avenue of gaming based purely on the increased difficulty of setting up a game is a poor excuse

Becoming an Android

Count Stex — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:57:38 +0000

So it was once again the end of my 12 month contract and time to see what new shiny toy I could get my hands on. After two BlackBerrys (Pearl 8100, Bold 9000) I thought maybe it was time to join the touch generation, but not the usual iPhone route. Nope, I’ve had my eye on the Android platform for a while now, Google’s purpose built mobile platform that stands out for being open source, and with a market place now full of some really cool apps it’s a rich and engaging community.
o2 are toting the Samsung Galaxy I7500 at their latest Android based hand set, a lovely looking device with an OLED screen for that vivid look, and lower power consumption, so it was this I picked up on an 18 month contract (o2 no longer do 12 months) at £35 a month, plenty of calls and texts and the all important unlimited internet! On top of that I paid just over ninety quid for the device, which is pretty reasonable for a modern day smartphone.

So, what’s it like? Well take a look (Sorry for slightly skewed angle, I was using a desk stand for the camera and couldn’t quite get it parallel to the desk.)

The home screen of this OS 1.5 Cupcake based device has three panes, to the left you see my central default pane. The icons will be as you would expect from other touch based devices giving me quick access to my most used apps such as twitter, facebook, GMail and the browser. But also note the widgets for the calendar and BBC News, those are live updating panes that I can have displayed in amongst the usual application shortcuts. Very nice indeed!

Also, see that switches app icon in the top right? That right there is a very nice shortcut into the power draining features for quick and easy access to the screen shown on the right where they can be turned on and off with a simple press. That’s an example of some of the clever things built in to the phone, however this being an open source platform it’s really encouraged app developers to spend some time and they’ve come up with plenty of fantastic solutions, many of which are completely free, far more in fact than I expected.

Take for example the XBOX Live tracker on the left here that I’ve setup with a few of my live buddies for testing. This gives me both an overview and notifications of my friends activities even when I’m not on the XBOX, perfect! Now I should miss out less on fun when I spot someone has booted up LEFT4DEAD and can go jump right on in. Some of the other free yet brilliant finds so far are Andro Wall, which will scour Flickr for set search terms to find replacement wallpaper for your home screens, which use a single wide shot that slides in parallax with the icons. Compare Everywhere, one of many barcode and search application that are proving popular on the iPhone also. Then there’s the augmented reality app LAYER, which upon firing up displays a live video feed of your surroundings and lays over the top say all Pizza places in 3 miles of your current location. As you hold the phone up infront of you and pan around, you can see the location markers of any results from Google Places right in your view. OK so that’s pretty geeky, but also really cool, the future is here.

Then there’s the apps you don’t mind spending a few dollars on, such as DoggCatcher over there, a podcast management suite which can download, organise, and playback both audio and video podcasts, whilst also providing access to an text based entries within the same feeds. Really nice. And shares many of the features I had become accustomed to on the brilliant BlackBerry app, PodTrapper.

All in all things are looking pretty good on Android, the OS 1.6 is out now and hopefully will be made available to me via o2 or Samsung soon, and 2.0 is already on the horizon, bringing some of the next gen controls you would expect such as multi-touch. For a good read on that head on over to Android Bloke where some of the exciting feature are highlighted.

It’s still pretty new to me, but so far I’m real excited to have such an emergent OS in my hands and have high expectations for the coming 18 months!

What’s the buzz, tell me what’s a happening?

Count Stex — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:34:55 +0000

So things on this blog have been pretty quiet of late. Those who checkup on this site are probably aware why. I’ve been rather busy setting up and keeping a check on the ever growing community over on the Digital Cowboys Forums which has kept me well entertained over the past few weeks.
In fact with all my involvement over on the DC site I’m not entirely sure what to do with this blog now, sure I still have things to talk about that wouldn’t fit well with what I write over there, but really it doesn’t leave all that much! So perhaps I’ll wrap this blog up soon, or merge it with Linda’s blog somehow.. we’ll just have to see how things go.

ODST from the start

Count Stex — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 07:24:36 +0000

My gaming kudos will grow a little this week, as I will be jumping on a Halo release from the start! Having missed out on all the previous iterations by simple not being around the console world, the lure of getting in on the ground floor and indeed the sound of the Firefight mode were too strong to resist. Maybe I’ll see you there?

Persona Magnum

Count Stex — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 09:08:03 +0000

I’ve secured both Persona 3 & 4 from a friend, both of which should be playable on the PS3. I’ve never experienced any Persona before, other than watching a few videos on Giant Bomb so it should be interesting to see if these games can hold my interest. It’s also a first real step in using the backwards compatibility to see some games I never got around to when we had the PS2 setup, and there are a great many PS2 games that are still worth spending some time with I believe.

Judgement Day

Count Stex — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 08:01:15 +0000

Today will be, hopefully, Judgement Day. As I’ve mentioned over and over I’ve only been truly immersed in the console world for a little over 8 months now, so despite my excitement over what I have discovered on the XBOX I would say I am far from being a fanboy. I’m still also a PC gamer, and occasional Wii and DS gamer, not to mention Blackberry, yes we can get Peggle too.
So, as was pointed out to me by one of my good friends, I am quite nicely placed to objectively look at what the PS3 has to offer to a gamer. Only one problem there, in that we don’t own a PS3.
Well with all the hoohar around the price drop and PS3 slim, and having experienced some gameplay at The Digital Cowboys Digital Rodeo, we have made the plunge. And today should be the day a shiny new PS3 finds it’s way into the Thomsen-Jones household.
Well I say shiny new, but this is an ebay purchase of an older 60GB model, which importantly can play PS2 titles, and having a small collection of PS2 games that brings quite a bit to the table. So this shall be our judgement day, or more likely month to give things a good try out. It should be a most interesting time, and I will add a comment with our profile names once we’ve created them so any one interested can add us on.

At What Cost

Count Stex — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 07:46:58 +0000

There’s been the usual blow up and hoo-hah about the new paid for avatar clothing, and anything I’d have to say on the subject has already been said many times over around the net, so I’ll just summarise this with an example.

Tattoos

Can you pay money for someone to put art on your body? Certainly.

Would I ever do so? Probably not .

Will I defend someone’s right to do so (within reason): Absolutely!

That said.. anyone who buys any single item from the avatar marketplace forfeits their right to complain about The Sims Addon Packs!

Poor Housekeeping

Count Stex — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 08:50:11 +0000

Some time ago, last year in fact my PC system started to get a bit flaky on me. You see I’m an OverClocker (See boxout) and as such I like to tweak all my PC’s components to get the most out of them, and given the somewhat aged nature of my graphics card, an HSI ATI X1900XT 512MB, I needed everything I could get. However I started to find the card locking up on me, running at clock speeds I had been running it at for quite some time. It was summer though, and the card was getting on, so I just knocked it down a little and carried on for a couple of weeks, until it once again started to play up. Eventually I found my self underclocking the card to run below even the manufactures default settings.
Overlocking Overclocking is a process by which you tell PC components to run faster than they otherwise would. As you will have seen PC’s will have a speed rating such as 2.5Ghz which define how quickly they can run computations, the higher the number the faster they can get things done. These speeds are not set hard though so you can tell them to run at a higher speed, however the faster something tries to run the more power it requires, so you can only push it so far before you need to send more power (volts) through the component. With power comes heat however, and heat is the enemy of all computer components, so you will often find overclockers replacing the standard cooling elements with more advanced setups designed to excel at heat removal. If you are interested in this subject and would like to learn more, and live in the UK, I highly recommend the monthly publication CustomPC which you can find in any decent newsagents, and also the associated website www.bit-tech.net	I started to get worried, thinking maybe I had just pushed the card so hard for so long it was finally giving out on me. It was at this time that the XBOX 360 came to stay and so I didn’t put much thought into my PC gaming for a while, and the card was fine in Windows/Linux for desktop use so I neglected to do anything about it for some time. Eventually I wanted to return to a little PC gaming, and thinking that maybe what was happening was that the Heastsink and Fan (HSF) had maybe come loose, or the Thermal Interface Material (TIM) had dried out I figured I would give this ageing card one last look over to see what I could salvage. What I found was the result of 2-3 years of neglect of my card. The entire air-flow enclosure was clogged with dust and debris, no wonder this thing couldn’t stay cool the amount of cool air actually getting to the heatsink must have been minimal. While I was in here I figured I would remove the whole structure and apply some new TIM, as I had some spare AKASA Silver-3 lying around.
Putting it all back together and running though some benchmarks, I pushed my card way back up to speeds I hadn’t had in play since the card was new. I was once again able to get some decent frame rates even at my newer monitors 1920×1200 resolution, at least in Vales Source engined games that rely on a lot of CPU grunt, and for other titles I could run at 1280×800 with plenty of AA and AF to keep things looking nice. So have I learnt my lesson? Probably not, but next time things start to play up a good bit of housekeeping will be my first line of defence!

Not so shameful

Count Stex — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 21:53:05 +0000

One of the hidden advantages of becoming so focused on XBOX 360 gaming of late is that I haven’t bought a truly new game for the PC in quite some time now. This has risen to the perfect chance to catch up on some older games I never got around to actually playing much at the time for various reasons, and actually knock some titles of my PC Pile of Shame.

Republic: The Revolution - Tank Defiance

Once such game is Republic: The Revolution. A strategy game of politics set in a fictional ex-Soviet Eastern Bloc country that is now controlled by a corrupt dictator whom you have sworn to overturn. The advantage this game has over a lot of older games, from the point of view of playing it now, is that it’s graphics settings featured a ‘Totality’ setting that was way beyond the capabilities of 99% of PCs available when it was originally released way back in 2003. This allows a modern day play through using graphics which still look decent, if lacking in some of the more whizzy graphical effects, however for a game such as it is they are more than serviceable. What’s amusing is this is pretty much the same thing that happened with Crysis, however there people called the developer out for creating a game so over the top graphically. Maybe they just needed to rename the settings from Ultra, or whatever it was, to ‘Future’.

The game runs on a turn based day, and each of your characters can perform up to three actions each day. Various tasks can be assigned such as Head-hunt, survey, investigate, however each person is only skilled in a couple of these, and indeed these skills can be leveled up as they gain success. My main character in the game always seems to excel in influence which is based on your responses to a series of questions at the start of each game, and I focused my original head hunt on a wealthy number two, leaving me somewhat exposed on the Force front, however hopefully I can make up for that later.

Once you start investigating the areas of the city you will uncover both people who you can attempt to recruit to your cause as well as location that can be useful for various activities just as interviews and rallies. And basically that is as far as i ever got with the game in the past. I had some weird bug on my old system which made the game eventually grind to a halt when in the 3D mode, however having been through 2 PC systems since those days I’m hopefully I might get to actually play the game properly this time, and at least get a real feel for it rather than just a taster.

I’ve always had the feeling i was missing something special with this game, it will be interesting to find out over the coming weeks.

Digital Blocks

Count Stex — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 06:27:45 +0000

Another post up on The Digital Cowboys

This time I’m talking about our shared enjoyment of the Lego games over the years, and how they stand out from a lot of other games that advertise themselves as co-op games.

Further ramblings

Count Stex — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 06:00:00 +0000

As I’ve mentioned some of my musings are now to appear on The Digital Cowboys website. So I was asked to provide a little background on myself to introduce me to the DC audience, and I set out, as Alex and Tony probably expected, to write a couple of sentences on my gaming history. What I ended up with was a pretty all encompassing history over not just a few sentences, but rather quite a lot of paragraphs. I later cut this down to an actual usable size, however the full item is now available over on the DC website for your viewing pleasure.. be sure to be sitting comfortably!

More Games, Less Pay

Count Stex — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 11:24:13 +0000

Finally decided to join swapgame.co.uk after getting a few refrences from friends. The hope is this will curtail some of my impulse buys and provide me somewhere to list them down and try them out first. Will have to see if I can stick to that!
Gone for the basic £3.99 package as a starter, since we have quite a few unfinished games still on the Pile of Shame

Gears of Love

Count Stex — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 09:18:19 +0000

When I knew I was getting an XBOX but as yet couldn’t actually play on it due to it requiring a quick un-red ringing process, I started the process of deciding on which games to get first. Being this was late 2008 I had a fair few years of releases to take into consideration, not to mention a deluge in the month or so prior to the acquirement. I could have gone back to the beginning, and spent some time traversing the time line of the 360, however my recent months on the PC had been limited to older games due to some issues I won’t go into here but I am documenting in a later post. And by issues I mean some stupid mistakes on my part

So I was hungry for a new game that I hoped would truly show to me what the 360 was capable of, and the game I thought would fit the bill in my case was Gears of War 2.
I hadn’t played or even seen anything of the original Gears, and coming from PC shooters I thought it would be a good litmus test for my ability to transfer to console gaming, a kind of best hopes, but worst pitfalls situation. OK I could have picked an RTS if I really wanted to test things, but that would have just been kicking a console in the nuts!

Upon unpacking the 360 from it’s regeneration chamber and hooking up it’s HD capable inards to the trusty Samsung LCD and Yamaha Soundbar it was Gears 2 that I first slipped into the drive tray. Well, after I had played around with this apparently new NXE UI for a few minutes to ground myself. It was clear within the first few minutes playing through the tutorial that what I had on my hands was a very polished product, even my WASD fumbling fingers managed to get Marcus walking in the right direction, and even looking where he was going not to mention actually able to shoot stuff at the same time. I then proceeded to blast my way through the campaign on Normal mode reveling in the visuals, and really loving the chunky weighty movement the game appears to excel at.

It was at this point that Linda showed an interest in playing also, so I put my solo campaign on hold and we kicked off a new save with her taking Marcus and I shifted over to Dom. Here the game took on yet another level of fun as we backed each other up, grabbing each others downed backsides as required and working as a team to take down locust after locust. Admittedly Linda was on easy, whilst I was once again on normal, however we found working in co-op we really had a great time without ever getting stuck for long and success saw us swapping roles to take on the campaign at a higher level.

However we didn’t get far with this attempt. My old school friend who is known around LIVE as Woodoggies introduced us to Horde mode. What followed was an achievement hording run through all the multiplayer maps and modes, followed by quickly snapping up the two map packs and running through the achievements for those too. In fact pretty much anytime we are on at the same time Gears 2 will get rushed into the machine for some Horde experience point grabbing. All quality games are enhanced by a decent online mode, whether thats just a co-op campaign or full blown multiplayer modes, and Gears 2 in Horde mode is probably a perfect setup. The early levels of each of the sets of 10 waves are calm enough to allow you to idly chit chat about what ever whilst the last few require you to knuckle down and concentrate on sticking together and working at taking down the enemy, before again relaxing back for the start or the next set on 10 waves. It’s a great combination of social interaction and some core gaming.

In the meantime, when not playing online, Linda and I even went and picked up the original Gears and have completed the campaign on there twice so far as well. It’s clearly not quite as polished as Gears 2, with the engine several times getting key enemies stuck on graphics forcing us to restart from a check point, but the same underlying love is clear to see.

I can’t be sure if it’s purely that Gears 2 was my first game on a new system or whether it’s that it is such a truly solid triple A title, but it’s certainly eaked out a special place in my gaming history that places it up high amongst the other stand out games that make up the background against which other games are measured.

Out on the Digital Range

Count Stex — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 21:28:51 +0000

For those strange few who frequent my blog and yet not The Digital Cowboys I just thought I’d point out that some of my posts will now be appearing over there. The Digital Cowboys is a podcast I’ve mention before, and which I’m always sure to catch. Alex and Tony, the hosts of the show, put together a real quality production that has grown so much even in the short time I’ve been listening, so it truly is an honor for me to have anything considered for inclusion into their web presence.

So be sure to check out my contribution, which is a republication of my 6 month of XBOX piece from a month or so back. Please hop on over, checkout the article and then subscribe to both the website and the podcast

Why do I listen

Count Stex — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 06:00:11 +0000

Podcasts.. PODcasts…

The very name put me off for years. Not the cast part, which had long been associated with broadcasting, but that first part.. the ‘pod’ It was all so Apple focused, many probably thought the only way you could listen to these downloadable audio bites was on an iPod, and whilst I was well aware of the many and various methods that I could use to enjoy these shows I resisted purely on my dislike of all things fruit based.

Of course the only person I hurt by this was myself. I had cut myself off from the , albeit unknown, joys of downloadable audio content. Something had to give eventually and I believe it all started with Google Reader which I have long used for my RSS subscriptions. At some point I haven’t taken the time to research they added an inline audio player for podcasts, and so I could start to pick up on these programmes without even obtaining any specialist software to do the downloading/streaming for me. It was a small start, but it was enough to get me interested and the usual snowball effect eventually found me paying for an application for my BlackBerry which would download and playback the episodes I had chosen to follow.

However all of this is coincidental. These tools and connections would have been totally overlooked if it wasn’t for one fact: Podcasts are an excellent channel of information. You see things have changed in recent years for all of us. We read far less on printed media than ever before and far more via websites and other forms of screen based media. The problem here is that we are training our brains to skim read most of it due to the huge amount of information available. Anything more than about two screens of text and you are likely to skip on to the next article, or not even start to read it in the first place. The is an excellent read over on The Atlantic entitled ‘Is Google making us stupid’ which I highly recommend reading which ironically is long enough for most people to ignore, but it sums up these thoughts perfectly.

So with text based information becoming a quick read where is one to go for that in depth lengthy discussions on the topics that matter to us most? Well of course you can see where I am going here, else I’ve just raised a very good point in a completely unrelated way! Podcasts have become that ‘unskipable’ form of information for me. I can happily listen to a show for it’s entirely, and most of the shows I listen to are 60 minute plus, without ever feeling like it’s taking too long, or wanting to move on to the next thing. Maybe it helps that my interests lie in the technological arena where the idea of pod casting is far more common place, but over the past few months I’ve managed to find myself some truly great shows which now accompany my every car journey, infrequent work out session or pre sleep chill out.. though that can lead to problems when a topic sparks my mind and I have to get up again to draft up a blog post, which is how this very one all started

So having said all this, what are these unskipable shows that are now enriching my life? Well let me through a few titbits your way.

First up, in the area on video gaming, which is my most avid interest there are a few shows I would like to mention. Top of the choice are The Digital Cowboys A UK based show hosted by Alex and Tony which manages not only to have a solid base format but also brings in some really great guests to give their opinions on the weeks topics and to answer the famous 8 questions.

Secondly a show I found out about via Digital Cowboys, GameHounds which manages to be wonderfully professional and yet totally independent at the same time. The interhost banter is really fun, and they still manage to actually talk about gaming news at the same time.

Finally for gaming, but by no means least Gamers with Jobs is a show I occasionally used to pick up when I only listened via Google Reader, and is actually responsible for pointing me towards Digital Cowboys.. it’s all rather incestuous really I suppose.. or I guess viral to give it a web 2.0 spin.

Outside of gaming I also pick up a few shows that interest me, such as the BBC’s Material World and Friday Night Comedy and recently I’ve even ventured into the world of video based shows such as the excellent CarPool and to return to gaming CO-OP

I can thoroughly recommend any and all of the shows I’ve linked to here, and you’d do well to add them to your listening lineup, or if you are like I was but a few months back and have never even given a podcast a chance, these happy few should soon see you bitten by the listening bug and reimerced into the in depth world.

Windows gaming fails

Count Stex — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 23:12:19 +0000

Well my success with Windows 7 gaming was short lived. The problem in hindsight was with judging it’s usability for my system with Valve games. You see the Source engine is heavily CPU reliant, and not so on the graphics hardware. I can easily run Half-Life 2, Day of Defeat and Portal etc at 1920×1200 at very acceptable frame rates even on my ageing ATI X1900XT graphic card. And all seemed well under these conditions, however the moment I stepped outside of the Source based games, things started to go down hill fast, with low frame rates aplenty. I double checked the obvious, made sure I had the latest drivers installed and all that Jazz, however one thing stood out.. I couldn’t open, or for that matter, even see the ATI CCC applet that lets you control the graphics cards settings, including the essential, given the age of my card, overclocking.
Turns out my graphics card is no longer on the supported list with ATI, and I’ve since checked in XP also and I can only run pre 9.3 release drivers. Therefore I would never be able to get my graphics card to run at the levels required to allow me to play modern games at decent settings despite it being quite capable of this under XP with the older drivers.

This fact cuts deep though, for these are the very problems console gamers have leveled at Windows gaming for years and I have previously fought off and tsk tsked away as frivolous as any one who knew what they were doing could get these games to play well. But when the very things you must rely on to get this level of control are not even available to me then I’m left without a defence. Had my graphics card have been incapable of playing modern games then I could put it down to a lack of investment in my rig as PC’s will always demand a certain amount of continual money sinking to stay on their game, however knowing I can get this to work fine back in XP frustrates me greatly.

What all this means is that Windows 7 is now gone from my PC, not to return until such time as my current graphics hardware either fails or can no longer deliver an acceptable gaming experience and I replace it with the then current £150 option.

In the meantime it’s back to WinXP for my gaming, and for day to day use I’ve made a return to the warm and inviting shores of a Linux desktop courtesy of the extra friendly Ubuntu distro. 20 minutes to download the ISO file and load it to a USB stick, then another 15 to install and I was up and running with a truly modern looking OS that detected my graphics, monitor native resolution and even the on-board sound and network connections without me lifting a finger And I’m even posting this blog entry from newly discovered Drivel, a blogging client for Linux.

Sometime my love for ‘penguins’ is multifold

Gaming 7 Heaven?

Count Stex — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 13:10:23 +0000

I’ve not been giving my PC gaming much love recently so I thought I should readdress that balance slightly, in words if not in action.
For a while now I’ve beenn dual booting between WinXP and Windows 7 (beta and now Release Client) however as often happens when I dual boot I get bored of the rebooting each time I think of something new to do. To that end I spent some time last night uninstalling eighty percent of what I had installed on my XP boot, be that general software or games, and installed Steam onto Window 7. In the end I only had time to test out the simple joys of some Mount & Blade, but queued up Half Life 2 Ep 2, Day of Defeat and Portal to give things a good trial over the next few days, should I be able to forgo some XBOX gamerscore for some Steam achievements!

Following the recent upgrades I made to my machine I’m hopeful it will cope, especially with my graphic card’s new found life, which I still need to blog and will involve some public humiliation, so that should be fun.

PS I’ve blogged this from the BlackBery so forgive any spelling mistakes, I haven’t worked out how to get the spell checker working when in the wordpress web pages yet, should probably just type it up in the memopad and copy paste the thing thinking about it!

Dropping a Giant Bomb on my Games

Count Stex — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 10:03:59 +0000

For a while now I’ve had my XFire and XBOX Gamer cards up in the top right of the Blog to show off what I’ve been playing recently rather than creating repetitive blogs about that.

Recently Giant Bomb added the ability to track your gamer points, and WoW characters for those still infected, on their site with the added feature of having each achievement graded in rarity based on your fellow gamers on the site. (Being a US site meant any points in a ‘soccer’ game fared well )

Now they allow you to track your Steam achievements the same way, which for myself who likes to buy any PC game I can on steam is very nice indeed. So I have now replaced my two separate tags with a single Giant Bomb based graphic which is both cleaner for the site, and nice an joined up.. or mashed to be all web 2.0 about it.

Nice work guys, keep on innovating!

Pile of Shame (XBOX) Updated

Count Stex — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 08:00:21 +0000

Having completely failed to not buy any new games, not the biggest surprise ever, I’ve updated the Pile of Shame page for the XBOX games with the latest edditions. On the plus side at least we’ve been getting a lot of gaming in recently, the project in work went far smoother than anyone expected so weeekends where preserved, and even most nights where on time. Next I should get the Wii games done, even if very little progress is being made on that front