WSAD

Things are going well in Age of Conan with plenty of new content on the horizon.
I went back into Entropia.....I must admit the graphic upgrades are pretty impressive but now with all the changes the game has a very "beta" flavor. I may jump in for time to time but I don't see playing this one for a great deal of time on the horizon.

Borderlands was a great time....the Grafix were a unique change and the co op game play was a blast. There are several additions on the horizon but i just do see this one as holding me too long, it was allot of fun..but it was easy to slide right back into a repetitive rut.

I am still having fun in L4D and I hear L4D2 is on its way. My impression is it's just new maps and players but basically the same game.

I caught up on some cool Demos this past weekend.

Time to head back to TF2 for a bit, this is a free weekend, and a huge new update is out, new item drops and some other cool changes. check it out here
This is the Sniper v/s spy update so I imagine it has all the new unlocks for those classes.
Hit a few new demos this long weekend as well, more on those later...

World of GOO has been around for a bit, its a wonderful game. Developed by 2D Boy, world of Goo is a puzzle building physics game. It has a whiff of lemmings about it as you attempt to get your quirky, funny little balls of goo from A to B. I installed it on both my sons computers, they are 5 and 7 years old. I can see their little brains grow as the doors to problem solving skills open up before my eyes. They sit and ponder their next move giggling and mimicking the goo's funny language. Its easy to learn to play, and hard enough to keep you engaged, you will laugh, and bang your fist on the desk a little as well! The graphics are great and the Physics of the game are amazing.
You can get it off steam, or go to the World of Goo site- buy it and support these guys!

Borderlands, a sci-fi FPS in development by Gearbox looks very interesting. With 4-player co-op I'm already interested . It has RPG elements and they claim to have half a million weapons. Visual cues inform you on the type and use, you kill a bad guy take his gun, that is cool. There is no release date, but you can check them out here. And in PCGamer.
One of the things that I find most interesting are the graphics. They have the look and feel of a graphic novel. I cant wait to see this one.

Well, that was the last 24 years. Its now may of 2009. I have a new job and things are going well. I currently play Age of Conan, with a small amount of time in GRAW2 , L4D and Team fortress. I rarely play Entropia or Rappelz. We are currently evaluating what direction we want to go in AOC guild wise so I am also exploring all the new stuff coming out.
The gaming world keeps on putting out some great product. It also churns out it's share of junk.
I have a few rules I like to adhere to when it comes to games;

1. Don’t buy at release if possible. It will be cheaper in 2 months.
2. Demo. If it does not have a trial or demo, ill wait till it hits the bargain bin.
3. Read the reviews, from everywhere.

I find Steam to be a great source for checking out new games, its easy to install demos and they have a huge catalog to choose from, including mods and indie games.
No company embraces mods and indies like Valve. I also watch Gamespot and read PCGammer and Maximum PC. Lately my interest has gone toward the indie games. My sons are 5 and 7 now and like to play on the computer, mostly reader rabbit and noggin games, but I'm finding quite a few free demos that are appropriate for their age as well.
For now, that’s what I want to focus on. A quick glimpse at some great free software all gamers should try, and the new things out on the horizon…

Left for Dead….. A new zombie shooter from Valve was a nice stocking stuffer that fit right into my play style at the time. It had a slim single player, but this game was designed for multi-play and co-op.
It was perfect. I was in AOC with War$ and that's all I had time to do with my ongoing job search. L4D verses mode was 4v4 zombie v/s survivors, fast passed short games you can jump in and out of for a diversion when you have free time. It was a nice way to spend a little time outside of AOC and was a well made shooter. Killing Zombies is ALWAYS fun.

heading into the fall of 2008 I was playing AOC and COD4 most of the time, with a little BFME and rappelez on the side as well. I was very happy in AOC, COD4 was getting a little old. In the real world I was about to end a 24 year career in the U.S. Navy and lived in Northern Ohio with my Wife and 2 sons. I needed to focus on a new career search and limited my gaming to AOC and a little TF2 for the time being. My friends in JSA were still in Rappelz, but had also moved into Anarchy online. Needless to say I wasn't playing much with either group, so in September I went inactive in JSA and in November inactive from DaDs.
I do not know if I will ever be full force active in DaDs or Jsa again but I do keep in touch via the JSA forum and play with a few Dads on STEAM.

I dove into Age of Conan head first, War$ and I both pre-ordered. I got the Rhino he got the Mammoth, and on the 20th of May we started to play. Our first month or two was on the PvE server OMM. We had a great time! There were a heap of complaints about AOC’s launch. All i can say is, if you want to ruin your game experience visit the official forum.
Were there bugs? Yes. We still had a great time and were never without something to do solo or together. A new ruleset was announced on the Bane PvP server Called "culture pvp", based on avatars race. We headed over and rolled avatars on Bane and stayed there until the server was merged with Cimmeria. We were in various guilds and still play today, I will comment on aoc in future posts. AOC will always be one of my favorites with its wonderful environments, quests, and unique combat system. Updates continue to come and things keep getting better.

I was spending less time in Rappelz, it was a good game but PvP was looked on as some sort of criminal activity there, and AOC's 12$ a month for all features was a nice change. Mac from JSA played for a bit, but his tastes leaned more toward the science fiction realms and he headed back to Anarchy online.

Basically every game I have played up until Entropia and Rappelez revolved around player vs player. What I have found in every mmo there is a percentage of the population that are in game purely for the social aspects, and some monster hunting/crafting non-conflict type activity. They look at PvP as either some evil thing or something you do in a rig sometimes. The amount of stress and bitching you hear from the ranks of the non pvp types is truly amazing. AOC's pvp servers are not for those people. There is nothing wrong with Pve, it is why I like single player and co-op missions as well. Open world PVP is great and I love it. This style of game will be on my plate for many years to come...... or at least two

After a year in entropia it was time to find something new. I had some great times with the JSA crew hunting, hosting events, and just basically doing what friends do, having a good time. I was still playing COD4 with the DaDs Army and TF2 and Battle for middle earth with Rob And War$ 3 nights a week as well.
War$ and I had been playing online together for about 6 years now, its funny one of my closest friends is a person I have never met in person, but we both know more about each other than most people do about their neighbor they see everyday.
The relationships with my friends in JSA, specifically Star are similar. When you spend 3 or 4 hours at a time playing you tend to get to know a person. This is just another amazing aspect of online gaming.
WarS and I got wind of 2 new MMO's that were coming out in the spring/summer of 08, Warhammer online and Age of Conan. After a week or two of research it looked like Conan was the one to look out for. We both were getting tired of the shooter world for a bit, I think War$ was into Starwars galaxies at the time but I didn't try it out.
I started looking a free MMO's, after sorting through about 30 of them I decided to try Rappelez. It was an Korean port fantasy mmo and it was pretty fun. My friends from JAS hoped on board and we dove into Rappelz head first. For the next 4 months or so we had a blast, of course it wasnt free. Like many others it had an item shop so there was money to be spent, and it slowly became clear that like Entropia this was a money sink as well, but not as much or as often.
I decided to try out a pay to play MMO before Age of Conan came out, luckily Lord of the rings was offering a free trial.
I have been a fan of Tolkien for about 30 years now, LOTR looked good, it was ok to play but just didn't feel right to me. Ther was an almost too scripted feel to it, and seemed limiting on where you could go as well. I hear now it is dooning quite well and has many thing for the community to enjoy. I dumped it after a week, but I may go back to check it out some day.
By February of 2008 I hardly played Entropia at all and Rappelz and COD4 were the games I played the most, it was time to streamline my play list further and find something new.

2007
For some time now we had all been waiting for the next installment of Half Life 2, just before Christmas it came. The Orange box shipped as a bundle of 5 games HL2, HL2 episode one and two, Team fortress 2 and Portal.


The new episode of Half life was fantastic, I only wish it was longer and we didn't have to wait so damn long. Its almost year now and the next "mini" episode still is not on the horizon. HL2 still continues to be an amazing game.
Team Fortress 2 with its fast paced team game play is a fantastic game I still play every week. Valve changed a few things from Team fortress (no nades...yea!!) and a nice face lift with the source engine. I believe they hit a near perfect level of balance. They continue to update the game and now have an achievement system in place to extend the life and fun nature of the game play. I play a Pryo or Engineer mostly, tagged as OH10. Try the HK or Doorman servers.
Bundling these games together was brilliant. Valve continues to impress with both its products and the game delivery system, STEAM.
From one interface you can play, buy, download, patch, create, and keep in contact with your friends and join them in whatever game they are currently playing with a click of the mouse. If the voice chat were a little better it would be a standalone system for all gaming needs. For now steam combined with Ventrillo is about all you need.
The Orange Box shipped with a 5th game, Portal.....

The Entropia Universe is an MMO with a real cash economy. It is a huge planet with plenty of places to explore, and for the first few months that's exactly what I did. The environments are very unique as are the various creatures you encounter. You can Hunt, Mine, Craft, and develop a variety of other skills. I could develop a whole blog about this game, this is just a brief description of my time there.
About 6 months in playing I began a dialog with a Mod on the forum. She was a very well known player and member of the community her name is Mindstar9, We became great friends. After a time I joined up with her guild JSA - Jet Star Alliance - Named after her and her Brother Jet boy. Along with Oddbunny, Mac, Bloodmoon, and Jackfree the majority of my gaming time was spent here for about 8 months. We had some great times. I could spend an entire blog on this topic, but that is just not what this is about.
Entropia can get expensive, some players actually make a living "playing". People own/operate game businesses ect, once I had reached a certain level in skill the game just became too expensive to play. Some Players win a ton of cash in game- this is rare and make no mistake this is a business designed to make you spend cash.
I started look for alternatives. Meanwhile some new shooters came along..

Call of duty 2 was out and I was really enjoying the game play. Mid 2005 I went active in DaDs again. COD2 had a great story line and the multi play was pretty damn good. We played almost a full year before things started to go stale. There are many people who can stick to a game for more than 2 years, but it had better be good, an MMO maybe but not a shooter, sure I will go back to TF2 or Recon now and again but I have yet to find the shooter that will hold me for 3+ years.

Ea games came out with Lord of the rings Battle for middle earth, a RTS game. This was a nice diversion from the nightly fight v/s the nazis, and elves are just as fun to kill as any other foe.
Several of the maps were from the books and movies. Playing out Helms deep and battles at the black gate were a blast. There was a strong community and several user maps to choose from, War$ Robb, and I truly had a blast fighting the AI and a few or other players along the way.

Word also came out the next COD would be a modern warfare version, could it be the end of the WWII shooter?

Another great game in 05 was F.E.A.R. , by Monolith, who made Blood back in 97 so I had to try it out. It was fantastic, a horror shooter with some of the best AI I have ever come against. The single player was freaky scary and had me jumping in my seat a few times.
We Launched a DaDs server for a short while as well, the multi player was fast and fun, but the melee was a little too over-powered. It kind of reminded me of my old Quake II days.

Toward the end of the year I started looking at free and indie games, I had been into making and modding maps for 3 years now, and there was so much stuff out there to sample you could never keep up with it all. The mods for half life alone cold easily occupy most of your time.
I stumbled on a "free" game, another mmo called Entropia in November of 2006, mmo games had come along way, and this one looked very interesting.

Awesome.
Hands down the best single player experience I had experienced so far. This is one of those games that everyone should play. The new source engine was also applied to counterstrike as well. This was about the time a few of us took a leave of absence from the DaDs (War$, Ingo, Dude, Maniacal) and started playing CS:S. Wars and I still played Ghost recon as well. The change of pace to modern combat was a nice addition to our game experience, as was the futuristic setting of HL2.


Around 2005 Call of duty 2 came out, back to fighting the Nazis. I went back to being an active member of the DaDs and paid a visit to a new RTS as well as a few mmo's...

They are called Massive Multiplayer online role playing games, and for some people its all they play - which is sad - there is somuch more out there to try. They can be allot of fun, and there are huge social aspects to the game, which is both the best and the worst thing about them. Playing with your friends is cool, Playing with some of the others, is not.
Everquest, or Evercrack as some call it because of the addictive nature, was the first mmo I took a look at. I escaped its addictive clutches because imho, it .....sucked. Lets run about killing rats and snakes. The grafix were poor, the peopel were rude, I was on dial up and it just didn't do it for me.
Many people obviously enjoy this game, it was just not my cup of tea.
I didn't try another one for several years and I do like a few of them now. There are may snobbish elitist players in an mmo, they rant and rave on the the never ending struggle of player v/s developer, or the "unseemly" members of the "community" aka PvPers, or wax romantic about that other game, where everyone was happy and the developers loved the players, and it was a perfect world.... If you want to ruin your gaming experience in any mmo just go to the official forums. I learned that long after everquest- I never made it to the forums. On the flip side in an MMO you can have a great time and meet some great people, try to keep the attitude thats it is a game, and not everyone plays in the same style as you do. Try not to place too much stress on others and enjoy yourself. Anyways, this or and MMO was just not the game(s) for me at the time.

Blizzard software came out with a great game called Diablo. It was 3rd person view, had a cool story line and yo could also play online with friends. I have a great time with Diablo, and then Diablo II. They were role playing games and had a cooperative online mode that was allot of fun.
Key word here is cooperative or Co-op, and we will talk about that more soon.
I also played one of the best RTS games, Starcraft- a scifi strategy game which some will say changed the face of the rts game forever, it was prety awsome.
So, up through 99 these games, along with Tribes online made up the bulk of my game play.
I did try out one other...Everquest, for a very short time- ill give that its own post.

While I was in Okinawa, Computers, electronics and Games took a big leap forward.
Cell phones were becoming common place, Bulletin boards were replaced with web pages, email was catching on and online gaming was becoming very popular. Dial up was the way we connected, I had a kick ass 1400 modem lol. Now it was time to play online.
Quake 2 was one game I played allot, also by Id software. The quake series was fps king,for quite sometime, it had over 30 single player levels and a great soundtrack as well.
I have always liked games with a horror theme, so when Blood hit the streets it was my new number one - it took game gore and violence to a new level. Kicking heads around the floor, dual wield weapons and a spooky soundtrack. A mirror, never seen that before, and a whole level on a moving train. It was a fantastic game.
I now had a PC in the 400mhz range and my first video card- a voodoo2 by 3dFX.
Along Came Starsiege Tribes, the first online only game with no single player levels. This was the game for me for the better part of 2 years. Quake had become rife with hacks and this new game was a riot - a si-fi rocket-pack on your back shooter.
Two other games filled out my roster, Xfing v/s Tie fighter - hands down the best Star wars flight game ever made, and Command and conquer red alert, one of the best rts I have ever played.
There were many other games, but as I said before I wanted to touch on those i found the most enjoyable. New games and new game developers were coming out every week, EA and Blizzard were 2 who had some cool stuff, now they are huge.
I am a big fantasy fan from way back, and as I began to spend more time looking for games I stumbled on a few that were great....

Oh my... and I thought Wolf 3d was cool. My time in Okinawa was the beginning of my computer training both at home and work. We have a few well trained tech's on staff and they taught me about my own PC as well as all the new options that were coming available.
First upgrade was a sound card, a sound blaster, and hooked up to my stereo in the barracks gave a whole new meaning to playing Doom.
Doom was the most violent, bloody thing out there and it was awesome. Fighting aliens with a variety of weapons, and a Chainsaw. The music was leaps beyond any game I had played so far. Two other games occupied my time in Okinawa, a real time strategy game called Space Hulk, one of the first PC games in the Warhammer 40,000 universe (which is going strong today), and Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe - a Truly enjoyable WWII flying sim. Now the question was which of the 3 RTS, Flight sim or FPS would dominate my available time? In 1997 I moved back to the states for recruiting duty in Cleveland, in case you don't remember, 97/98 in video games was like 1980 for heavy metal.........that's when British Steel and Back in Black came out. If you don't understand that well, guess you had to have been there.

The new Shareware game was ID software's wolfenstein 3d, the beginning of my love for the "first person shooter". So now my 15 year + battle against the Nazi's had begun. We played the game several times, then mapped each level on graf paper in the evening after work. The Game had all the elements you see today, objective based missions, big boss fights, and a catchy soundtrack. This was a huge leap in games for me and it was a godsend at sea to combat the the boredom of down time. I came back home and went out to the exchange within a week to buy my first PC - If i remember correctly is was an IBM 386 DX66 with a monster 30mb hard drive.
Enough for 688, wolfenstein, and gato. There was this thing called the Internet that people were going to as well.. have to check that out also.
3 months later and I'm packing out to go to Okinawa for 3 years- with PC in tow. It was around 1995 and there were all kinds of new goodies to check out. Being at sea and traveling had me almost 2 years behind the power curve game wise, there was this game "Doom" that was supposedly way better than wolf...

In 91/92 I went back to sea before I had a chance to buy a PC, we were heading out to the Red Sea in support of desert shield, searching ships to enforce U.N. sanctions on Iraq. As a helicopter crew our job was to provide cover for the boarding teams, it was hot as hell with long workdays. We had little contact with home and allot of down time. Our det had a PC in the hangar shop and one of the pilots installed a cool little game called "Scorched Earth", it was a riot! a turn based artillery sim for up to 8 players. You earned money to purchase weapons and could ply v/s the pc or your friends. This game was a much needed and welcome diversion.While working on the helicopter we would take turns on the game. I remember console games were now showing up all over the ship as well and they were a Little ahead of the Pc game wise. Word was the "The Mother of all Games" slogan came after Saddam declared that if the U.S. invaded iraq it would be the mother of all wars....it was not. While deployed, one of the ships did find a cargo vessel smuggling the huge barrels to a super gun Saddam wanted to build, that was pretty cool. Half way through the journey we received a disk in the mail, it was a "shareware" game from id software, and it changed everything.

In 1988 I transferred to Cubi point, Philippines. I worked in an operations center, briefing crews on various long range patrol missions. The compound I worked in was loaded with computers, and we had plenty of down time. The last 4 years had seen a major leap in computers and PC Games. Working in the Navy my interests leaned to Navy combat simulations, fortunately there were some great games in that category.

The first game for me was Gato. As the captain of a U.S. diesel sub, you were tasked with various mission's on a randomly generated area of the south pacific. On the highest difficulty, your mission was delivered to you in Morse code.

While my interest was peaked in 84, a computer was not a common item by any means. Once I enlisted in the Navy, the next 4 years held little time for games.
I attended Aircrew candidates school, Rescue swimmer school and then went on for anti-submarine warfare training as a helicopter crewman.
I mention this because it had a huge impact on my gaming taste. From 84 to 88 I was either in training or at sea. I operated SONAR, RADAR, FLIR, and a M-60 door gun. I literally went around the world, tracking Soviet subs, Iranian patrol boats and pirates in the South China Sea and Africa. (hmm... those are still the bad guys 20 years later as well.) Top that off with jumping from a low flying helicopter into the ocean. I wasn't playing games, but it felt like I was living them.
Fortunately, I wasn't causing death and destruction as I did in my future game play, its more fun in-game vice real life anyway.

My PC gaming world, that is.
Over the next few posts I am going to archive the games I enjoyed most over the past 20 years. This list will not contain all the games I have played, but it will hit on the major games that shaped my play style and gaming preference.
I graduated High school in 1984, and enlisted in the U.S. Navy shortly after, prior to that I played the average number and type of games for kids my age.
"Home Gaming" Started with pong, and a standalone two person tank game. Fireball was my favorite pinball game and I spent allot of time playing Tempest and Missile Command, but this blog will be about PC gaming.
I remember being at my friend Paul's house in 1983. He had a Computer at home, which was a rare thing to see. I have no idea what it was, it had a green screen and he played a game that consisted of little squares and triangles that represented Skeletons and Goblins. A combination of text selections and random rolls indicated the outcome of your encounters. It was my first exposure to a PC Game and it was fascinating.