Whew. That’s a rush. I just got done playing through my first hour of Max Payne 3 and I feel… stimulated, enthralled, and defeated. I had to stop playing though. There is only so many times you can replay the same section after repeatedly accidentally bullet-time-ing off the side of a building. I’ll revisit another night. I’m sad that I didn’t get any good screenshots or video, however. I must say it plays brilliantly – there wasn’t a skip a start, a stutter at max settings. The people are well modeled, move realistically (the trailers made them look a little…
Back On The Trail
It felt good to get back on the bike today. It wasn’t the first time but it was the first real ride this season, in several seasons, really. Last week some time I had hooked up the bike trailer for the kid and we drove around a bit but we stuck to the pavement (for the most part) and apparently it was still “real bumpy”. So today I did an honest to goodness trek through the woods. Eased into the water drinking (I tend to get carried away and go too much / too cold too soon) regulated that well…
EA Finds Yet Another Way to Squeeze More Money (BF3)
So it did not seem feasab.e that EA would get me to go “Premium”. As much as I love the series, even this game in particular, my hatred for EA overrules all. I wish someone else could own it, but who knows what a non superstar budget would do to the series. In any case, here is the deal with Premium: You pay up front to get a special asterisk on your name online “exclusive” dog tags and some extras assignments. They were introduced with Back to Karkland and I really enjoyed the extra challenge of trying to hit the…
Review: Dirt Showdown
Dirt started as a rally racing game, hence the name. It had a really good model… no turbo, relatively realistic driving physics, and decent graphics. They kept expanding into the other genres, such as Gymkhana, stadium, and others. Dirt 2 was a pretty good success, and Dirt 3 came out relatively quietly – most received their copy as an afterthought when buying a new ATI video card. I thought they’ve been good the whole way, they really didn’t add too much craziness, which is refreshing. Simulation racing is hard to come by, and Shift 2 didn’t do it any favors.…
Dead Island – Not Just Another Zombie Game – PC
Dead Island immediately draws you in, from the opening cinematic you’re the guy (or girl). It’s all first person, boozing and abusing, falling down drunk and groping… finally passing out in your room… amongst some odd attacks and blood splattering around you. When you finally wake you’re in your room, but everything outside is in shambles. At first I thought there was a little too much collecting – suitcases all over have a couple bucks here and there, alchohol, med packs, and random bits of seemingly useful objects (rubber hosing, glue) are scattered all around. It’s fairly easy to collect,…
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
My initial impression: Looks ok. It seems like another Duke Nukem where the idea and gameplay were ported from their 90s originals, but their roots are showing in these sequels. There is lots of details (papers, coffee mugs, detailed computer screens, interaction with faucets, etc) so far in the first level but I notice a different level of textures between objects, people, and the surroundings which breaks the otherwise immersiveness of the story and camera work. The “cover” is awful so far, but I think that’s primarily due to defaults conflicting with my mouse configuration but I never seem to…
SplitSecond PC – It’s Almost Too Exciting
My initial impression of the game was that it was way too arcade for my tastes. I saw things blowing up, and a bunch of sliding around the “racetrack”. My first impressions weren’t too far from that. It’s an arcade racer, there’s no denying that. You can’t really focus very well on driving well when stuff is blowing up all around you. You end up veering left and right and taking your chances with spinning out to avoid the explosions of which will get you… if you’re close enough, so you just try and stay far enough away even if…
iCE for Grand Theft Auto IV and Episodes from Liberty City – Up Your Realism
I am a big fan of Grand Theft Auto. I’ve had every one since the original top view on PC. It’s not that I like stomping on babies… I just love crashing cars. I like demolition derby games too, so the added story and other tasks just make it all the better and with GTA III onward, I love the real word feel to it. You can just as easily drive along with traffic as weave through it trading paint with all the cars along the way. It’s always the best test of new hardware, and when a new one…
La Casita Azteka Menu – Easthampton MA – #WesternMA
We love La Casita Azteka in Easthampton MA – it’s great food, but we didn’t really feel like going out with our son, it was already late and we had entertainment plans for company. We decided to do takeout but don’t know enough about mexican food to know what we wanted without looking at a menu. I took to the internet but there was none to be found. I took it upon myself to make it available to my fellow Western MA ers. So behold: straight from my 8mp cell, even with the glare they should be high enough quality…
Pandora RSS Feeds
I’m going to be adding my Pandora stuff to the Music page. I need to set up a separate template for it so it uses a different set of widgets: Now Playing: http://feeds.pandora.com/feeds/people/josh2159/nowplaying.xml My Stations http://feeds.pandora.com/feeds/people/josh2159/stations.xml?max=10 My Bookmarked Artists: http://feeds.pandora.com/feeds/people/josh2159/favoriteartists.xml?max=100
Dirt 3
If you’re a fan of racing games I highly recommend Dirt 3. I had a ton of fun with Dirt 2 – and it gets better (for the most part) with 3. Plus: + Graphics + Level Design + Better AI then Dirt 2 + Better Reward / XP System then Dirt 2 + Integrated YouTube to upload replays Minus: – The control feels a little looser then Dirt 2 – More arcade feeling IE: If you lose a tire, you should not be able to go another 3 laps and finish 3rd Overall I’d recommend it, but don’t pay…
Get Yourself An N-Control Avenger
Check out the N-Control-Avenger On Facebook, like them to win one this weekend! http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-N-Control-Avenger/162468090457709 It’s an amazing controller add on for your 360, also works when using a 360 on Windows since it’s actual hardware appurtenant. They’re giving away 2 controllers for Facebook fans if they make 2500 likes by midnight on Sunday! If they get 500 followers on Twitter they’ll be giving away 2 to their twitter followers as well. Sign up on both for a chance to win twice! Also they’re running a Black Ops Annihilation DLC contest. Best voted video of the Avenger being used in game!…
Video: Receipt Racer
For when you absolutely, positively want to analogally digitally waste paper! Maybe you could cut them into a notebook after? receipt racer from d_effekt on Vimeo.
Now THAT’s Entertainment
Yesterday was a blockbuster Tuesday, if only for the release of the highly touted, much ballyhooed game, the shoe-in for best return from vaporware by a major motion video game. Yes, that’s right – Duke Nukem Forever (cleverly acronymn’d DNF – aka Did Not Finish) was released to the public. You may also have heard (meh, who am I kidding – no you haven’t) about Alice: Madness Returns which ALSO came out yesterday. If you remember playing the original back in 2000 – this is the effective sequel. American McGee has stayed true, and this updated title only complements the…
Celebrity Soft Spot
Never knew how much I looked like David Bekham eh? MyHeritage: Celebrity Morph – Family tree research – Geneology
Google Music Beta
I’m enjoying google music so far. I’ve been using Amazon Cloud in paralell for comparison and Google Music is already better – primarily because they’ve yet to mention a storage limit. I installed the music uploader and it has both iTunes and WMPlayer integration – which appears to pull from the music library, I’m still not sure if it’s pulling it in my sort order of the playlist in iTunes or alphabetical, or other. The first couple tracks it added were all recently added to iTunes – but then it’s grabbing them seemingly from all over the library. I am…
i7 Video Upgrade
I had built a system for a friend about 6 months ago. It was ready to roar, minus the video card as the rest of it was expensive enough. It did the trick for the time being, but he was ready to go bigger so I ordered him some video cards. They just came in, so I’m doing some before and after benchmarks. Current Stats: Intel i7 (4 core) @ 3.4ghz 6mb DDR3 @ 1333mhz Tri-Channel Configuration (3 x 2G) 2 x 1TB Hard Drives Bluray / DVD Writer Combo Drive ATI Radeon HD 5450 DX11 New cards: EVGA nVidia…
Boston.com
http://mobile.boston.com/news/weather/articles/2011/06/04/devastating_tornadoes_leave_benign_paper_trail/?camp=misc%253Aon%253Ashare%253Aarticle
#Tornados in #WesternMA
This is where I should start compiling all the videos and pictures and everything I’ve come accross in the past few days. I purchased The Republican EXTRA, and will certainly note this time. I’d like to have it to show my son when he’s a bit older. “We were right near this, your mother watched it from blocks away as you were safe several towns away – and we all made it through safely but it could have been closer.” I’m concerned some video might go away, so I plan on slurping it up with Real Player – who knew…
Crysis 2 – More Screenshots and Video
Here’s some more screenshots I took as well as my latest video. I’m splitting my time up between all the games, I like a nice spread out game experience. I ended up resuming the current spot after a single death. I figured it was time to go to sleep. As it turned out it was a fabulous place to pick back up, tons of action in about an hour’s worth of playtime.
DroidDemos Twitter Shoutout
@DroidDemos seems to be following me now and they appear to show some relative nonspam info, so show them some love
Novint is up to something new
http://m.gizmodo.com/5794323/turn-your-body-into-a-first+person+shooter-controller
Crystal Lite Pure Fitness Not Bad At All
I recently got some of this at Walmart at the suggestion of my wife. I hadn’t heard of it but she said it was free of artificial sweeteners, my biggest bane. I don’t often like to drink much water, so this seemed a good solution. It tasted good, and not overly sweet. I highly recommend it for anyone who needs to drink more water, doesn’t necessarily like straight water, and needs something cheaper then traditional tea/juice drinks. The Kiwi Strawberry that I had was slightly tart, slightly sweet, much like as if tasting a lightly ripened or just under-ripened strawberry……