I’ve made a few purchases lately of things that are probably worth providing a review for, for any others out there intending to buy similar products. I’ll get right into it.

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.