“Man, can we do something else now? These 1v1s are stressing me out, I need to relax…”

It is no coincidence that it is almost purely newcomers that express this complaint. The question is why? I will provide you with some actual context, in which a reddit user asked:

“I know its just a game, and whether I win/lose doesn’t make a difference. I’m not a top tier player, but playing ranked matches drain me mentally. I get very tense, anxious, and practically stressed out. I can play 2 or 3 ranked matches in a row tops, before I have to play some UMS games to calm down. Is there a way to overcome this, aside from just playing more?”

There’s actually nothing odd about getting tired from playing lots of StarCraft. It’s an intense strategy game so naturally your brain is on full-throttle for 15 to 40 minutes at a time. Getting anxious, tense and practically stressed out however, is not so natural. Certainly not at the newcomer level anyway, and there have been times where I’ve been anxious or tense before a match, but that’s usually just in tournaments, which is where competitive psychological fortitude comes in (another blog post entirely!).

In the particular context of the reddit post I quoted, I actually think the player understands his flaw more than he would allow himself to confess. He doesn’t want to admit that though; notice how he starts his query by ensuring you that he most definitely knows it’s just a game! He knows it is not important if he wins or loses, and concedes to the fact that he isn’t top tier. All these things are correct and good-on him for acknowledging it, but it does beg the question though; if he knows these things, why are ranked matches stressing him out?

Well, there’s a diffrence in being able to ‘follow’ the logic, and ‘coming to terms’ with the logic. It seems to me that this guy, and many newcomers just like him, fully understand that losing the game isn’t the end of the world, but just can’t seem to help themselves but get worked up as they see the countdown timer reach zero before the game. Regardless of the fact that they acknowledge that a loss doesn’t matter, they still regard it as important to themselves.

The gamer with this mentality needs to take a hard look at themselves and realise just how little a fish they are, and just how big the pond is. The vast fans of StarCraft care as much about your StarCraft ability as fans of Baseball care about my ability in baseball. Until I’m at the top, nobody knows I exist. And nobody knows you exist either. Or if they do, you’re just another guy. At least for now. If you make a micro blunder, nobody will care. You will care, and that’s good, but there’s nothing to be self-conscious about.

I think one of the biggest problems is the goals the user is setting for themself; winning. Obviously you want to win, but let’s have winning be a ‘result’ of our more tangible, sensible goals. Really, winning isn’t the kind of goal where you can say “Oh! Of course, winning! I’ll just do some of that!” and so as expected, it rarely works. As a newcomer, I would start with some goals that you know are demonstrated by high level players.

I remember when I started trying to get decent at StarCraft, I liked to watch replays of the pros. Seeing their strategies was really cool of course, but not really that helpful. There is just so much scaffolding underneath those high-level strategies that the newcomer just hasn’t set up for themselves yet. This is what the newcomer needs to work on. Things I would notice about good players is all the little things that you know you need to do, but are often a bit too lazy to do. Perhaps you’re just not fast enough? Well, you’ll only get there by practising it.

This is where setting sensible, tangible goals comes into play. Goals like “I will not let my barracks idle at any point this game!” or “I will not miss a MULE calldown this game!” or “I will definitely send some units to help that probe expand!”. These goals are awesome because you know they are going to help you win, and you know what is required of you and how to achieve it.

I think this takes the focus off of winning and gives you something to judge yourself on other than how noob you are going to look if you lose. You have goals you feel like you’re in control of.

Perhaps part of the reason why people have this attitude is the general elitist vibe that exists in competitive gaming. StarCraft is easily the most successful eSports in the world and a lot of people want to be good at it, and a lot of people are happy to dish out insults to people who aren’t as good as themselves which is why I think it’s important to find mature, focused practice partners.

You need a practice partner who will work with you and suggest tweaks in your build order or micro, and you and your practice partner(s) need to actively want to help each other out. The more you do this, the more the exercise becomes about problem solving and having fun while you are at it.

Ultimately, you need to stop caring about losing and the best way to make this happen is to do it a lot. Lose a lot and submit to the fact that it’s going to happen, because you have to lose a lot before you win a lot. Many players who I trained in Proxiteam are now as good as me or better and I like to think a big reason for that is that I got them in the habit of mass-gaming regardless of the outcome.

(Thanks go out to Daniel for help with this blog post)

The way ladders worked in StarCraft is you would have a rating – a number of points earned by winning and lost by losing (basically). There was a single ladder, with everybody in it. If you were #1, you were #1. If you were #480 you were #480.

The problem with that is this…. Mmmm, yeah hold on, it’s actually pretty straight forward and awesome. If I’m awesome, I can see that I’m awesome! If I suck, I can see that I suck! And the last thing I want is to be awesome and feel like I suck, or suck and think that I’m awesome, when I’m not.

Then came along Battle.net 2.0 and things have changed (as you would expect from a new system!). Except it’s changed for the worse! Blizzard, in all their minds of magic and rooms full of treasure, decided players actually want to be told they’re awesome, even if they suck worse at StarCraft than Bill O’Reilly sucks at engaging in coherent discussion.

So, to ease the mind Blizzard decided to assist them in their reality distortion by creating the concept of leagues (Bronze through Platinum) and divisions (1 through N per league). Now, leagues are OK. I think they’re analogous to the way ICCup gave its players a D- through A+ as a very general indicator of skill. But they brought in divisions for an odd reason. They want the players to have goals more meaningful to them. They believe a player is going to be a lot more motivated about climbing his way from 30th to 10th in his division compared to climbing from 8293rd in the ladder to 6345th in the ladder. Here’s the problem; you can actually get to a place in the ladder where you have no further to go, but you’re not the best. Wow, that’s awesome! For all intents and purposes, you now have bragging rights; “I am #1!”.

Hold it, wait a second. Let’s not leave out important information here. Yes, you’re #1, but #1 in what? Oh, what’s that? Division 801? Hmm, seems there are at least 800 people just like you! And you’re special, why exactly? Are you #801 or #1 out of those 801 people? It’s all very foggy.

Reaching the top of Platinum League should've felt awesome. It didn't. See Division 47?

Blizzard is being condescending toward the gamer if they think he’s not going to look at divisions in the same way as above. Sure, there is a subset of people out there who will gladly accept this assisted delusion and use it to proclaim their e-peen to those none-the-wiser, but are these the people we want to appease all while taking away the clarity of original ladder setups from those who actually want to know where they stand?

By all means Blizzard, find a way to tell people who suck that they are actually a god, but can we do it in a way that people who don’t want to volunteer themselves to the delusion can actually know where they stand? When someone lacks self esteem because they are at the bottom of a ladder, the problem is not the ladder. You don’t make them feel better by lying to them about it. You tell them to suck it up. Being good requires effort, it does not require the game to tell you what isn’t so.

Getting past the ladder, I’d like to talk about their omission of Battle.net 1.0 IRC-like channels. I know, I know. They’ve said time and time again that channels simply won’t make it to retail release but will be added later. This is good, but their motive strikes me as odd. They say they want to re-design the way channels work. Apparently the way they worked in Battle.net 1.0 isn’t good. Their reason for saying this has something to do with spambots filling up channels making them useless. This only happened in public channels though, like the ones you get chucked in when you log on. I couldn’t care less about public channels. What made channels great for me was the ability to create one for my team, and have all my team mates hang out there.

Currently all they’ve given us is a very click-intensive MSN-like IM system. In StarCraft 1, I would log on, immediately join my team’s channel and be instantly talking to everyone I give a damn about. I am chucked (voluntarily) into an environment that is positively bursting with activity. It’s like walking through the door when you arrive at a party and everyone’s having a good time. In StarCraft 2, I will log on and … Nothing. A vacuum. I get to see Tychus Findlay’s ugly face and a bunch of out-of-date news items in the Battle.net news feed which I don’t really care about at all.

If I want to just dump myself into a situation where I can absorb conversation, I cannot. I have to be invited by someone, or check my friends list and manually try to build a party with all the people with which I wish to converse. Most of the time these people are in the middle of a game or already in a party. See how much less fun this is? It’s like rocking up at a party, you walk through the door, you’re the first one to arrive. Then the phone calls start coming in from your friends saying they actually can’t make it (because they ditched the party for a different one).

The way they have described the new (post-release) channels is that each channel will be pre-set and revolve around a particular topic. What if I don’t like any of the topics? Can I create my own channels? It doesn’t sound like it, as this would interfere with their idea of a topic-focused channel. Battle.net 2.0 just seems like a very socially cold place. Which inevitably leads me to get a bit bored. Additionally, there’s no way to globally message my friends in game, or message a specific friend. I mean, I could use the interface they included where I click the button, scroll through the long list, and double click the friend I want to talk to.

But remember, I’m playing a game, do I have time to micro-manage my friends list? No. I am micro-managing my marines. I want to type /w [playername] [message] which is orders of magnitude more efficient. Why can’t I do what was possible before? It feels like such a backward step.

The next thing I’m here to complain about is the regional segregation. If you’re in the US, you play only on the US server. If you’re in EU, you play only on the EU server. If you’re in Asia, you play only on the Asia server. The problem with this might not be obvious at first. Allow me to explain.

Firstly, it compounds the problem with divisions mentioned earlier in this post. You might know you’re around the top level on your ladder, but how do you compare to players in the rest of the world? Nobody knows. This was not the case in the original Battle.net, so why is it the case now?

Most definitely the worst part about this segregation is its effect on teams. I have run a StarCraft team since 2004 and over the years we’ve grown and grown into a family of gamers from all over the globe. What happens now? Am I now forced to just stop playing with 50% of my team mates? This is getting beyond the joke! Not only am I losing features I previously had, but friends I previously had too! Blizzard, how much are you going to take from me?

I could almost bear the thought of it, knowing that Australians are playing on the US server and most of our internationals are from the US. But it gets worse. They are planning to introduce an oceanic server for players in Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Malaysia etc. This is good because it solves ping related problems for players in those countries. But all of a sudden, not only am I prevented from playing with my EU and Asia team mates, but now I cannot play with my US team mates. What am I left with? Australians. Don’t get me wrong, I love having my Australian team mates, but Australia is tiny. The auto match-making system won’t be as reliable with such a smaller pool to pick players from, and my team has just stripped itself of over 70% of its players. Wow.

Just give us the option to log into other servers like we could with the original game. Please, stop removing functionality!

The last thing I want to talk about is LAN play. The reasons for omitting LAN are obvious and don’t need to be talked about. But the point I want to get to is the fact that Blizzard’s comment on the issue was “when you get your hands on the new Battle.net, you won’t need or want LAN!”. Well here I am, months down the track, and if anything, both my desire and need for LAN seem to have increased, rather than decreased.

To summarise, in moving to the new Battle.net, the user has to:

• Sacrifice chatting to friends during a game
• Sacrifice knowing where they stand globally
• Sacrifice being able to chat in an open environment
• Sacrifice being able to talk with everyone on their friends list at once, easily
• Sacrifice lots of life-long friends and team mates
• Sacrifice international tournaments
• Sacrifice LAN play

The above points, for me, seem to translate into “Sacrifice fun”. Obviously I’ve focused on mentioning all the bad things, which I guess isn’t fair, since there are many good things about the new Battle.net. For example, the bonus pool gives players who don’t play as often an avenue to maintain a decent position in the ladder. The auto match-making system keeps all your games interesting and challenging without being a walkover for either player, and… Well, that’s about it. Those good things are definitely good things, but the bad things are both numerous and severe, and need urgent addressing.

So it’s been 4 years since I entered the PSD. I’ve got lots to talk about. I picked the Bachelor of Science (Professional Software Development) at the end of 2005 because it seemed like the most hardcore programming course I could find. On open day the convenors of the course explained that the PSD course had been created because graduates coming out of computer science degrees couldn’t actually DO anything. They didn’t know what versioning was, they couldn’t communciate, they couldn’t self-teach, and more. As far as I remember the PSD was supposed to address this.

And I think it was pretty successful.

I think it’s easiest to bullet-point the good things and the bad, so here goes:

The good things:

• Entry level. I had done relatively little programming before entering the PSD course. A fair bit of Visual Basic 6.0 actually, but I hadn’t done much past the point of forms. Students start out learning the basics of programming with Pascal in Algorithmic Problem Solving. This language was really nice to learn with. The subject also taught us how to read a language definition which further enabled us to teach ourselves other languages when we needed to. This came in very useful when we had to learn C# and Java on our own in preparation for Object Oriented Programming.
• The lecturers. Most of the subjects in the PSD, particularly the programming subjects, are taken by lecturers who have something to do with the course. They are a stakeholder if you will. They put in a huge amount of effort to maket the content accessible to the students no matter how complex it might be (within the bounds of the pre-requisites of course). These same lecturers also seem to be the ones with an uncanny nack for making lectures entertaining, too.
• Well structured. Students are given a good sense of direction from the moment they begin the course. The streams are well described and it took very little effort to figure out exactly how this course works. I know of students in other courses who aren’t really sure what their options are when it comes to majors and minors etc.
• Industry Based Learning. This was without a doubt the most benificial part of the course. Obviously this isn’t a PSD-specific feature but it’s pretty awesome. I was able to gain a year’s experience in a commercial environment writing enterprise applications in .NET and secure a job for the future. This was thanks to a pretty decent ‘careers in the curriculum’ subject which at first glance seemed a waste of time but lead to me writing a pretty good resume resulting in the aforementioned job.
• Andrew Cain. It’s one thing to know a lot about a subject. It’s another to actually care about the way you deliver that knowledge to a collection of students. I have really enjoyed Andrew’s new take on assessment of students using his Portfolio concept which entails a student to present their learnings at the end of the unit rather than sit an exam. This requires a significant level of pro-active learning on the student’s behalf, but Andrew’s view is that lecturers are mistaken in assuming students aren’t capable of this level of pro-active learning. I’ve only done two units in the portfolio method (actually I’m still not finished with the second), but I think the portfolio method is significantly more appropriate to the 21st century and I hope other lecturers take an interest in adopting it in their own subjects.
• Exposure to a wide variety of software development topics. The course subjects vary from way over on the management side to the code-monkey subjects like object-oriented programming and other programming-intensive electives that are available.
• Big-team project experience. In final year I worked on a team of ten in a competitive project to produce a complex piece of software for a real-world, multinational corporation. This provides loads of necessary experience for those who need to work on their communication skills. It also forces the student to use tools they might not have previously been familiar with, further preparing them for industry. The feeling of handing in a finished product that solves a problem for a big company is a really good feeling.
• Interested course convenors and lecturers. The key players behind the PSD are all very keen about the course and are often organising ways to bring members of the course together to talk about any issues with the course or just to catch up and get to know each other better. I don’t know of any other course which receives this kind of interest.

The bad things:

• Work load. Yeah, another student complaining about too much work. But seriously, there needs to be someone overlooking the amount of work students are given as a result of each of the concurrent subjects in the course. It gets to the point where even the course’s most studious scholar has no way to get HDs in all their subjects purely because of a time constraint. I could understand a student not getting all HDs because of a lack in motivation, or skill, or something naturally binding them from that outcome. But the restriction should never be purely chronological. That is an indication that there really is too much work. Re-writing limewire with our own protocol layer was indeed fun, but something which took so many ridiculous hours for an assignment which was only worth 10% is not my idea of smart.
• Maths. We do some maths and logic work in Computer & Logic Essentials which is definitely an awesome subject. But we need something which covers plain ol’ mathematics. The entry requirements for the PSD only specify two units of general maths. As a result, you end up with students which are undoubtedly competent programmers but which lack the mathematical capacity to turn mathematical problems into code. This became a problem in our final year project when our architect had to go back and teach himself quite a bit of mathematics in order to solve a problem. This was the course’s absolute most elite student. I doubt any of the other members would’ve been capable of this. So this begs the question, what happens when graduates get out into the real world and the first thing they need to do is solve a mathematical problem? You can’t just stare at your desk until the problem goes away.
• Honours. Oh boy, I really think the ball was dropped on this one. The way the honours year was portrayed at the beginning of the course was that it would basically be honours but without the ‘crapness’ usually associated with it (crapness being loads of research data and thesis papers etc). It was presented to us in a way that we believed we would be able to work on a big project (of which we got to come up with the idea of what that project is) and just go full steam at it all year. I’m told this actually could’ve happened, but they did not have enough student interest toward the end of the final year. But I think the decision was made prematurely. I don’t think interested students were given enough time to express interest and as a result, the idea of what the honours year was changed, and students were then even less likely to express interest. If they’d just gone full-steam at the original idea, I’m quite confident enough students would’ve participated.
• The course is new. This means I had to endure subjects like Professional Issues in Information Technology, an absolute SHAME of a subject, aswell as Business Information Systems. These subjects contain content that students who even have INTEREST in the PSD course are already going to know. This is not so much an issue for future students of the course, because our feedback generally leads to the replacement of these subjects. However, it’s possible some bad subjects still exist, as the course is still being evolved.

Overall, while there might be quite a few negative points there, the course is pretty awesome. One has to be proud of themselves for making it (though maybe I’m speaking too soon, not quite done yet!) through such a gauntlet of a course that is the PSD. One thing is for sure, with the kinds of developers I’m seeing come out of the PSD, the industry had better get ready because there’s some seriously talented developers graduating this year.

If there’s anything I should have mentioned in this blog and you think I should talk about it, let me know!

However, I’m not sure providing food is really the right way to go about the problem. Food is a finite resource and as such helps control population. A population generally won’t grow beyond the extent that the food in that geographic vacinity supports, or at least, if that does happen, it very quickly shrinks back to a size that the food supply does support (it has to…)

This in mind, I think it could actually be harmful in the big scope of things to be bringing food from elsewhere into the affected area. It allows otherwise impossible reproduction to occur and in the end you get twice as many hungry people. On a forum I read a good analogy which is, throwing litres of gasoline onto a house fire in hope that the fire will be happy to feed on the gasoline instead of your house. The more people that throw food at this problem, the more food we will need in the future.

This problem needs a more elegant solution. I am not here to give that solution. I’ve dumbed down the problem significantly in order to spin this view on it so any solution I could come up with would probably be too shallow. I just thought it’s an interesting topic and this is an interesting perspective to take.

Just when you thought you’d knocked him down for the last time, Diablo is back. I’m not sure how they’re saying he’s managed to come back, but he has. And really, do we even care? The point is, he’s back, and it’s time to knock him down again.

This time their announcement was in France, at their annual worldwide invitational event, where they showed a tantalizing cinematic teaser and a nice gameplay demo of the Barbarian and Witch-Doctor character classes. I’m sure I’m not the only one who was expecting Diablo III to be a bit of a darker version of WoW. However, pleasantly enough, Diablo III pays perfect tribute to its predecessor Diablo II. The camera angle, the fighting style, everything about it screams Diablo, and it’s sexy.

Additionally, it will play online using the newly revamped Battle.net, bringing light yet again to the question of “will it be free to play?”. Traditionally, Battle.net has always been free to use, but with the enormous increase in popularity that StarCraft II and Diablo III will undoubtedly create, one would have to be somewhat understanding if Blizzard decided to introduce a fee. Personally I think a one-off registration fee of around $20 would be a perfectly reasonable ask. After all, there’s always single player if you can’t afford the $20.

I’m really excited about this game. Just when I thought StarCraft II would be the last game I ever buy, Blizzard has to come and do this to me. How am I ever going to find the time for all this?

Watching the videos put up on diablo3.com have totally got me drooling. Instantly I was reminiscing about the old Diablo II days. It’s just such an awesome game universe. Dark, dank, scummy, filthy, evil lands of chaos. It’s very fun, and has lead me to question why on earth would Blizzard choose the WarCraft universe (which will no doubt fall under severely brutal comparison with LoTR) for their upcoming movie instead of Diablo? I would expect people to take Diablo much more for what it is, than WarCraft.

Anyway, Diablo III is coming, and I can’t wait.

Oh and in honor of this special event, this month’s quote is:

“Stay awhile, and listen!” -Deckard Cain

The first thing I’ll review is the PC I recently built which, if you missed it, was described right here.

Assembly was fairly smooth and I guess should be attributed to the quality of the case, even though there’s a few odd things about the case that annoyed me, like the door opening on the (in my opinion) wrong side, and the USB and HDD/Power LEDs being on the wrong side, as well. Nothing was of any dramatic concern. The motherboard was mounted in a matter of approximately ten minutes. The OCZ 850W power supply was installed in approximately 60 seconds. Four hard drives and an optical drive were dropped into the case and hooked up in a flash. The CPU’s fan and heat-sink assembly was a bit of a chore. You affix four pins through the assembly and into the motherboard just by pure force, which doesn’t really feel good when the PCB starts flexing. The XFX 8800GTS slotted in with about 3cm to spare between the end of it and the HDD cage. The memory which also came with its own fan assembly managed to fit quite nicely, although a tad easy to move around while still assembled (and not really something you’d blame on the case). I think that covers the assembly. Oh another note about the case, it has three 120mm fans, plus three rather small fans on the RAM and the obvious CPU fan. The case, to my surprise, is actually quite acceptably quiet.

Performance was, as expected, quite acceptable. I’ve not yet managed to benchmark it yet (get off my back, it’s been taxing enough spending all my spare time getting all my software installed on it and setting up everything the way I like it, plus gaming!). So anyway, without benchmark figures I can at least give you some frame-rate results. This is also a good time to note that all games were run at 1400×1050 with AAx4, and all possible game-specific graphical settings set to their max. Unreal Tournament 3, while it does have a hard coded upper limit of 60fps, ran at *gasp*, 60fps. Gears of War was exactly the same. Team Fortress 2 gets an average 130-150fps, Portal and Half-Life much the same. You know what, I’ll just make another post with 3DMark results at a later date.

Vista (Ultimate, 64bit). Well, this is probably my favourite bit to review. I can officially say all you people out there jumping on the bandwagon (yes, that’s what you are, a freakin’ bandwagoner!) must be completely stupid and must never have been any good at using Windows XP, much less worthy of bringing your judgement upon Vista. I’ve absolutely loved using Vista.

I’ll take its “printers” functionality for example. In XP I had to print a configuration page from my printer using its onboard control panel and remembered the IP address of it (it’s a laser printer connected to our network by Ethernet). I would then have to create a new printer by clicking add a printer in the printers and faxes control panel, much like Vista. Here’s where it got different. In XP, to add a networked printer, I wouldn’t select the “Network Printer” radio button, but the “Local printer” radio button. Still think XP is an upgrade from Vista? No? Well here’s more. On XP I would then have to specify that I want to create a new port (yes as a software developer I understand this, but my mother is supposed to do that?). I’d have to specify standard TCP/IP port and input the IP, name, etc. Then I’d personally have to specify the make/model of the printer so it knows what drivers to install. There’s NO WAY average Joe can be expected to do that. What about Vista? Oh, vista pretty much hides all that from the user. You simply say that it’s a network printer (because it IS a network printer, and they actually got it right this time). It then scans your network, finds the networked printer (no user input required) and even recommends what driver should be installed for it. All I did was click “ok” and it installed the right drivers, and my printer was ready for use. But remember, XP is an UPGRADE from Vista right? Hah. I chuckle heartily at you technologically confused troglodytes.

Another thing users seem to get all puffed up about is UAC (user account control). “Oh no! Vista has popped up a blinding notification that some application is requesting permissions that could allow it to seriously ruin my shit!” I’m not even going to dignify it with the detailed explanation, so in layman’s terms, if you can’t be bothered clicking a button for the sake of protecting your machine (and you’d whine about lack of security if it wasn’t there), then you’re seriously unable to be impressed, in which case, stop expecting Microsoft to please you and go use a Mac since you’re obviously too trendy for Windows anyway.

In summary, just be warned; if I get you asking me if I have yet ‘upgraded to XP’ (and I’m sure some super intelligent Mac or try-hard-hacker Linux user will have heard the saying and hence feel obliged to pass it on to me as a happy Vista user), I will hurt you. And I don’t mean it in the generic way. I mean it in the way that involves blades, ropes, buckles and chemicals. You’ve been warned.

Wow, the Vista section was long, huh? Felt good though. Now let’s move on; The games! NB: As many of you may know, I’m an avid StarCraft lover and have a tendency to compare the experience of new games with that of StarCraft and, as a result, tend to pass quite harsh judgement on new games. I put in a conscious effort to avoid doing this when playing my new games, and I hope I’ve done a good job.

There are really only four games I’ve been playing much of. Even though I purchased the Valve Complete Pack. These four games are Unreal Tournament 3, Gears of War, Team Fortress 2 and Portal. I’ll start with Unreal Tournament 3.

It’s important to note that the only version of Unreal Tournament I’d played before number three was the original. So I was shocked to see when I first played that the weaponry was completely the same. The game style also the same. At first I thought “did they do anything other than face-lift it?”. But you know, I can completely understand their reasoning for not changing much. The formula they’ve used to define UT3 as the action-packed lightning fast dog-fight that it is, is something that really works and has been proven to do so. It’s the “don’t fix what isn’t broken” philosophy, and I respect them for not folding to public pressure which is constantly asking developers to ‘innovate’. When developers put too much emphasis on new innovations, what happens is you get games with a whole bunch of novel features but a complete lack in depth. Just my observation. So Unreal Tournament 3? 6/10. It’s fun!

Gears of War has been fun to play. Graphically the game is stunning and I’m constantly being faced with some kind of crazy zealous enemy to blow to bits. It’s action-packed and definitely keeps you on your toes. Apart from the graphics and the intensity of it though, nothing really blows me away. The camera work is really good I guess. But I wouldn’t write home about it. It’s hard to say there’s anything wrong with it however, and I also give it a 6/10.

Portal. Now here’s a game that amazes me. Yeah yeah, I know it’s been out for ages now and I have already played it before on someone else’s PC. But since I’m reviewing stuff, here goes. The game looks good, the theme is really attractive with its psych-ward cross laboratory cross space-station setting. You find yourself in various test chambers with a (curiously attractive-sounding) robotic woman’s voice beaming various commands, recommendations, and commendations at you. You have to use Portals to solve spatial problems, which forces you to use your brain and basic physics to your advantage. This is an innovation that has worked really nicely. Good job to Valve on this one (or the original guys Valve snapped up for their idea in the first place?). This is an FPS that makes you forget it’s another FPS. 8/10.

Team Fortress 2. This one is amazingly good. I’ve definitely played it the most. Approximately 16 hours in the past two weeks I’ve had my PC for. Note, 16 isn’t actually that much compared to how much I usually play StarCraft, but consider I’ve been quite busy with other non-gaming related PC stuff. So to fit 16 hours in has been quite an achievement I think. Anyway about the game. I can’t even really describe its style. Its visual style is quite easy to describe. It’s like they’ve taken a cartoon and just added a third dimension whilst adding incredibly sexy gloss and glam to it. But the setting style of the game is really unique. It’s got a ‘Get Smart’esque feeling about it. Kind of old-school, with a funky twist of modern weaponry and kooky abilities. The best thing about it is that they added a level of depth that the FPS genre (in my opinion) was well overdue for. The depth isn’t just distributed on a weaponry level but also a character class level. Each class has different movement-related attributes as well as a different array of weapons. In the big scheme of things it makes for an incredibly dynamic and enjoyable game. It adds a huge amount of longevity with its achievements, which are awarded to players for reaching certain objectives (get 1000 kills for example). I’m super impressed with Team Fortress 2. 8.5/10.

I’m sick of reviewing now. But let me just say that ‘NETGEAR’ routers (not switches, routers) are pathetic. At least that’s what my experiences have taught me. With my old Netcomm, I forwarded port 6112 (StarCraft port) to my computer and it worked. With my NETGEAR (needed to start using it so ADSL2+ would work), I forwarded port 6112 to my computer and StarCraft still didn’t work. I upgraded the firmware. It upgraded fine, but still, StarCraft didn’t work. To further get on my nerves, the firmware is riddled (not just a few, but almost every page) with spelling errors. Suddenly quality assurance teams require their own quality assurance team to assure their quality. Disgusting. Then randomly the router just started crashing when I tried to log into its configuration page. What a mess. Having loved my previous experience with Netcomm, I thought “to hell with NETGEAR” and ordered myself an ADSL2+ Netcomm modem and am using it right now. I’m happy to report that StarCraft works. My Wii connects to it wirelessly and is nicely visible on my home network. All is good in the land of Dwain’s home network.

Oh speaking of the Nintendo Wii; I have a Wii. I won’t go into more reviews about games, but, basically it’s a kick-arse console. It’s super fun and internet connectivity makes it gadgety and awe-worthy. My only disappointment is that Super Smash Bros. Brawl isn’t coming out til some time in May. Why? So it doesn’t steal sales from Mario Kart. How disappointing. It’s been released in America and Canada since early March. Australia cops it from behind yet again. Oh well.

And now that you think I’ve reviewed enough things by now, here comes another one. I recently bought a Nokia 6500, since my previous junk ‘Samsung’ excuse of a communications device wore me just that little bit too thin. The new phone is pretty cool. 3.2 Megapixel ‘Carl Zeiss’ lense, Bluetooth, MP3, Email, Internet, blah blah. Fairly standard phone by today’s standards. I’m quite happy with it. Don’t take my lack of details as an indication that it’s a bad phone, it’s just that I’ve written too much to bother writing much more about anything.

That’s it. I hope someone has put in the time to read this tome of text and can maybe post a comment if they’re feeling generous. Cheers and good night.

The power of accurate observation is often referred to as cynicism by those who do not have it.
George Bernard Shaw

I originally heard this quote from Daniel and it really made me laugh. I don’t think I really need to explain it so I’ll just leave it at that.

That is the intimidating sound that will come from the following once it’s all put together (click image):

So Sean and I (I’d link to Sean’s blog if he actually had one, *glares at Sean*) bought some stuff over the weekend. Quite a bit, really. We’re both building new computers comprised of exactly the same components. So all the parts you see in that photo, there’s a duplicate of them in my lounge. You can probably figure out the specs for yourself, but for the craven (and also because I’m psyched about it) I’ll spell it out for you:

• CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
  (2.40Ghz/Kentsfield/4MBx2/1066FSB/EMT64/XD/Quad Core)
• RAM: Corsair Micro – QUAD2X4069-8500C5DF 4GB (4x XMS2 1GB) PC-8500 (1066MHz) DDR2, Non ECC Unbuffered, 5-5-5-15, Dominator Airflow Fan
• MB: XFX nForce 780i 3-Way SLI, 3x PCIe 16x, 1333FSB, SATA, Dual GBLAN
• GPU: XFX Geforce 8800GTS XXX Edition, 512MB GDDR3, 678/1972Mhz, (might get a 2nd one)
• PSU: OCZ 850W GameXStream PSU, SLI Ready
• OS: Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit
• CASE: Gigabyte 3D Aurora
• HDD: 4x Western Digital Caviar 500GB @ 7200rpm, 16mb SATAII/300

So yeah, pretty excited. The purchase was justified as soon as StarCraft 2 was announced back in August 2007. From that day I vowed to buy a new gaming machine to ensure I can play StarCraft 2 the day it comes out. I know, Blizzard have always released their games with amazingly good scalability options, so maybe rushing out to get such a beast is a bit overkill. But truth be told we still don’t know what the requirements are and I’d rather play it with maximum settings than medium. Also, I’ve never built a gaming machine before, so I figured it was about time. So I’ve got the parts, but why haven’t I assembled it already? Well, we’re waiting for Daniel to come down from Adelaide to share all the pc-building-frenzied fun in about one week. Can’t wait. Stay tuned for a review of the completed system.