The Knights That Say Ni

Well as some of you know I changed jobs and had a good pay out and got a new job, this left me with some money to indulge in a bit of spending on childish computer games. Well with two teenagers in the house I do have an excuse, so a new computer was purchased and some games to try and stretch the limits a bit. Vista has annoying habits but I wanted Direct X 10 so I do not have a lot of choice, to be fair it is not bad as such just annoying. To turn the most annoying features off is possible but you always seem to lose some feature you like to rid yourself of the annoyance.

Still onto Games –
Crysis
Now I know I tried the demo and just down this page you will see I did not like it at all, well the demo was the DX9 version and using the half life 2 engine looked like a steam game and compared to FarCry not much of an advance. The DX10 version is absolutely different; it looks for 90% of the game almost real.
The difficulty settings work too, it has to be said as with FarCry they did not go for the lazy option of lowering health or increasing damage and number of enemy, all so often seem in most games today. If you do play on hard there are different things you need to do, your enemy is smarter and do not talk English, yes odd I know but it does matter.
So the games looks good and plays well to a point. This is annoying too but with FarCry most people felt the game was great until the mutants came along, well with crysis everything is more. To be blunt, it is a better game while you fight the Korean army, but then along come some alien race (yawn battlezone story anyone?) and it gets a worse game than FarCry ever got.
I can never understand game companies that must read reviews of the previous release, but then do exactly the same thing again. Another thing worth noting is that in the last part of the game even with two nvidia 8800 cards using SLI I had to turn the settings right down to stop the jerking. This again would be forgivable if it was any good but I honestly thought the game would carry on and maybe get good again.
No!

Unreal Tournament 3–
I never played Unreal Tournament 2004 so I was looking forward to this, but I have to say I was disappointed, if any game shows why consoles are bad for computer games it is this. The graphics are acceptable but only if you didn’t expect anything better than Unreal Tournament 2003, in other words FIVE years old, I guess acceptable if you have handicapped yourself with a console you can’t upgrade.
Forgivable if the game plays well but if anything it has become more “grab that rocket launcher and bunny hop the night away”.
They have removed my old favourite gun, no discs spinning around decapitating with one shot now, maybe the consoles do not cope well with the number of objects on the screen this demanded. I note though that they kept the circular UT badge that came from this hardly the same. The vehicles were new to me , (I never played UT2004) but the loss of assault game type and the gun were not made up for in any way.
Over all a disappointment and hardly surprising that it failed to sell, and not even worth a screenshot.
Grid-
Well after two disappointments I downloaded the demo of this and it looked good enough to try, Yes it is good. You need the patch to stop the Ai cheating some but it looks good plays better though I am typically crap at it (someone from up north well all know beats me every time). Very enjoyable and worth I thing a section of its own so I will leave this short, screenshots are available on my XFIRE profile page

Although I liked what I had seen on the websites, after CoD departed to console land only with the Big Red One and Call of Duty 3, I was worried about the effect that this had on CoD4. After all joypad control and limited fixed graphics are a whole different world to PC games, but on the other hand Cod 4 was still being produced by Infinity Ward who made CoD and CoD2.
In some ways it seems a shame that CoD did not start with WW1 and CoD2 go to WW2 because then maybe CoD4 (as we have to call it) could have been the pacific or even the burma campaign. So Another CoD with the same era weaponry and vehicles were a bit out of the question, but to jump right to modern warfare seems a huge jump and also a final one. That is unless they do a halo/quakewars and go to future warfare.
Now all the past CoD demos have been a fair representation of the game and even in CoD2 the demo was slightly worse than the game itself even though it was a part of a level from the game. This demo is very much the same, as soon as you start you need to run for cover and the shooting never stops, there are people everywhere and a quick look at the headgear is needed to tell friend from foe! Play it and you will see what I mean, the graphics are good it is noisy, though I did not hear any swearing this time around and it works very well indeed.
This was not exactly a covert operation and if there is one thing that disappointed in a way it was the flashing anti-tank rocket appearing just when you need it. I would rather it was a little more realistic, maybe have someone give it to me, if this sounds petty then it might be because I an trying to find something wrong with it and can not.
I have never seen a javelin anti-tank weapon work and admit to not taking an interest in real life weapons, so I was fascinated to see it shoot straight up in the air! A very enjoyable 15 min’s of game play was over far too quickly. The only thing that could spoil this game for me is not enough levels in the whole thing.

This is going to be one game I do pay for.

Two demos downloaded today -
The first Demo I tried was crysis, now I admit I do not keep up with all the latest gaming news anymore but we seem to be waiting for this game for years, not as long as Duke Nukem I admit but long enough. I have seen film clips of people brushing past trees and watched as the branches spring back, seen spectacular explosions and on top of this FarCry was one of my favorite games, so it is fair to say I was eager to try the Demo.
I have to say all I got was disappointment, the cry engine has turned into steam and the whole demo revolves around the suit you are wearing. The demo may not be a full example of the game but the graphics engine itself can not be mistaken. As I said everyone but me probably knew this had happened, but steam is so very old now. My system can just about chug along at the demo`s top setting though you could not play it like that, but even then the graphics were only just acceptable and nothing made you think you had not seen it before.
I remember far cry and every turn gave something new to look at, clouds of blood in the water, waves, barrels and boxes that could be rolled onto people ect. This time if you have played half-life 2 you have seen everything. Under all this there may be a good game but the demo is far too short to show anything off, this I thought was the idea of a demo after all.

Very disappointed

Another console? That was my partners response to the news we were going to town to get a Wii. I am not that bad with consoles under my new TV there is an original xbox and a playstation 2, but as girls generally have little time for games this along with the 2 computers and 1 laptop in the house is excessive.
However the summer has been horrible, no sun, no camping out, not many BBQ’s and on top of this I was at the time visiting hospital every night so the kids were not having much fun. I would guess they would rather I had brought home a Playstation 3 but I feel about sony like some of you feel about microsoft, so a Wii it was.
I knew they had been selling well and was curious to see why anyway, I was surprised though that upon going to the local woolworth’s that I was still getting the last one they had in stock. Apparently this is a regular thing and I know it to be true because I have had other people after me say they had to shop around or go back another day. In the past I had thought it was expensive for what it was, but if you want a playstation 3 you pay and you get one but if you want a Wii the shop may not have one in stock. That is how popular they are.

What you get for about £180 -
Wii console
One WiiMote the wireless controller including batteries (uses bluetooth technology)
One Nunchuk the other half of the controller (plugs into the WiiMote with a wire)
Wii Sports the
demo game (do not be put off by the word demo)

What you will want and what it will cost -
One WiiMote (at least) £30
One Nunchuk (this should be included with above I think) £15

Better get the moan out the way first, the second Nunchuk, it really should be included with the second WiiMote. All the equipment is well made and it does have a built in motion sensor but still annoying. Fair enough you do not need it for around half the games but trust me you will want one. Moan over.
First I have to say the whole Wii console is very nicely boxed and packaged with a lot of little nice touches like stands and pads that you may or may not use depending on how you want to stand it up. It is also tiny, we are talking about the size of a PC DVD drive here in a white plastic case. As I was originally using it on my old TV I used the included AV cables (video-left-right) and not the included scart because the scarts were already occupied on my TV.
I glanced at the instructions and just did what most blokes do put them to one side and plugged it together, after all we are only talking power, TV out and the sensor bar here. Out came the instructions again to see if the sensor bar went under or over the screen, well if you do not know, like me, it can be either. Then it was onto the set up screen, as I found out with the Wii everything works well and relatively easily, setting one up is really a joy to anyone who has installed a single game on a PC!
This is where you start to realize why the Wii sells, it is extremely well made, on top of this nintendo have made a fantastic job of making sure it all works almost perfectly. Setting up looks fairly boring but you go through steps like giving it a name, telling it if the sensor bar is above or below the screen, what ratio the TV is, ect. It even set up itself on the wireless network. Oh yes built in WIFI no one told me that either.
Onto the start up screen, originally this is a few TV shaped boxes and a lot of empty ones these are called channels. If you have set up the wireless settings and you have internet access you will have news, weather, shopping all working in seconds. Along with the disc channel where you start any game you have installed, photo and Mii channels. You will need to go to the shop and download (free) the internet channel, consisting mainly of the opera browser, also the everyone votes channel. The photo channel that I have not used simply plays or messes around with any photos that you have on an SD card (mini or micro SD if you have an adaptor). The Mii channel sounds daft but you will use it, in there you build people to look like yourself and members of your families and friends that may play. News and weather channels do just what they say, I should point out that all channels can be protected by a code so you can restrict the internet ect if you leave it in the hands of children.
There are other things about the console itself I have not used but again nice additions to those that can, hidden under one side panel that can swing open or be removed altogether is 4 sockets for gamecube connectors and 2 slots for gamecube memory cards.

So far so good then, I am pleased. On to the demo game then, let me just say that I have about 20 games for the Wii now but I play 3 of them. Not because the others are bad but because the 3 are so good, 1 of these is the Wii Sports that came with the console, not bad for a demo. All the games I have tried have been ok and the graphics are acceptable not stunning but then that is not the Wii’s strength, the sports game for example uses the Mii’s you created, when you are playing tennis or boxing with your partner or children then that is who is on the screen.
Oh and my partner, she is better than me at bowling and boxing and I can not keep her off it. I know people over 60 that have gone and got a Wii in the last few weeks, this is how they are going out of stock, get round to someone’s house that has one, play Wii sports and you will want one.
Wii Sports is a demo but I am still playing it more than any other and the Wii will be on most nights if only for 10 minutes, that is the way it gets you. It is a family thing not individual, my partner does not need to look at the back of your head when you play, she even enjoys watching people play because of how silly you look. You are involved with the games in a way you are not on a PC, and yes you will sweat too.
The best £200 I ever spent I would say. I still love PC games but keyboard and mouse are definite the second best method of control now.

I know a good many people have been wireless for ages, I had not however for three reasons - 1) I did not need to, my computer is right by my phone socket. 2) I worried about any lag and had read that a lot of WIFI people had problems. 3) It always struck me as expensive.
Well all of these things changed some more than others.
My Computer is still right by my phone socket but only because there is not a electric socket anywhere else yet so one of my wireless cards could still be in the box and originally was and I used the patch lead from my motherboards network socket. I have to admit talking to Perry of Eliteserv was the first step, he played on a wireless network and convinced me it would work. I still had my doubts, more so when I read the reviews the product he was advising me to have. Most of them seemed negative, I since found out that either these people can not read or they do the one thing that causes me problems that is not in the manual (see later). As for the last point, yes originally I was paying for something I did not need but I looked on it as an investment of sorts. Although at first I did not see all the benefits.
Anyway I was convinced, against my judgment into getting a Netgear DG834GT ADSL router at £60 and two Netgear WPN311 rangemax PCI cards at about £32 each. Now if you go straight to the online shops and look at the reviews you will probably see both products slated as bad, but who was I to trust Perry who was offering to help me set it up or some people I have never met leaving messages on the shops web site?
I should point out these products are both 108mbps and this according to netgear’s own site is not supposed to be good enough to play games on, well it is. Skipping ahead a little I went from 28 ping to 36 on the same server steady as a rock, a bit higher yes but not at all noticeable.

One funny episode in getting set up can be avoided by a little foresight I did not have, you see unlike anything else you must install the drivers before you plug the card in, as this is a PCI card this means power down and open case and power back up. Guess what? It worked straight away, fantastic. Trouble was there on the web site was an updated driver, you know - power down, remove card, install new driver, insert card, power up. Next time I will check first!
Updates to the router are a simple matter of downloading an updating via the set up page, one thing I will say is that the web page states that microsoft VISTA only works at 54mbps, what is not clear and I don’t know if this is a feature of VISTA or a failing of the Netgear router.
So features are fine and everything works great, there are however two related problems and I do not know if this is Netgear or all router/modems, my ISP or my setup /windows XP. I say related because I assume it comes down to the same thing and it is turning the thing off. If the router is turned off or the second thing I use the reboot modem from the set up page, for hours and sometimes a day I will keep loosing my connection. Took me some time to work out that if the router is left powered up I can turn on either PC and there you go, connection stable as a rock, but should mrs Hemi unplug it to do some hoovering or we get a power cut then it will just fail every 2 or 3 minutes for a few hours until suddenly it does not. I can not work out what is different the time it holds to the time it does not. This I assume is the problem some of the bad reviewers have, left on it is reliable and once you know what the problem is and leave it on there is not a problem (unless you have a power cut). This problem was supposed to be one of the fixes in the last firmware update, I have installed it but I do not intend to test it out by deliberately upsetting my connection.
As far as security goes it is even better than I thought, as well as needing a password to connect to the network, you can set up an access list that holds all the mac addresses of allowed equipment. Anything not on this list will find the network but fail to connect, worth remembering because you need to have the computer with the setup page turned on when you are setting any new equipment up. Once done this is saved to the router and not required again, you can set times connection is allowed for each mac address as well though. There is also a "net nanny" type system that will block keywords sex, nude, naked for example or specific sites url’s. commercial software like this has a database of sites already though and with this you have to build your own from scratch.
Bostin, as they say around here, all good, but it gets better. When baddy and Clay came for a visit we had 2 laptops and my PC playing on the internet, my PC and Baddies laptop playing BF2142 and the kids doing go knows what on the laptop, no problems. Since them I have added a Wii to the house, this took as long as letting the mac address through the allowed section to set up and works fine, so I get internet and emailing on my new 37" HD TV and online gaming on the Wii. My next toy as I said a while back will be the meccano Spyke robot due out at long last in september (just in time for my birthday). I have no doubt at all that his wifi robot will work straight out the box on my Netgear system too.