Warning: if you've got no interest in reading about games, skip the first two paragraphs and jump straight to the third. Uhh... and don't count this as a paragraph.
Recently, I've been doing most of my gaming on my three consoles. On the PS3, I've played through Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, and played lots of demos, including the new demo of Echochrome, which is actually very cool. Linda got herself hooked on Fl0w, the one PSN game I've actually purchased. I also just got a copy of Assassins Creed, although I haven't yet started playing it. On the Wii, I've reached a stopping point near the end of Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles and No More Heroes where I just can't seem to advance. I'm having a lot of trouble beating Jeane. I'm giving up on Resident Evil, but I'm gonna keep trying to get Jeane in No More Heroes. I'm also stopped at 95 stars in Super Mario Galaxy, although I've technically beaten the game. My goal is to get to 100 stars. I'll also probably pick up Mario Kart Wii this week.
Probably the game I've played most recently is Final Fantasy XII on the Playstation 2. It's actually pretty amazing how much content they've managed to cram onto that one disc. Just the amount of high-quality movie content is amazing. I'm something like 30 hours into the game, and I'm probably not even halfway through.
In any event, I've been doing close to no gaming on my home PC. This is because the top fan in the PC had developed a squeal that had gotten louder and louder until it had become a loud screech that I could hear from across the house. No lie. And I found that the back fan in the PC had stopped entirely. Not good.
Up until recently, the most involved work I'd ever done on a PC hardware-wise was dusting out the case, replacing a graphics or network card, or installing new memory. But after talking to some folks at work, I became convinced that I could do it. So I checked the model numbers on my fan and ordered two fans on NewEgg. When they arrived, I spent an evening unscrewing the old ones, cutting zip ties with a kitchen knife, and praying that I didn't accidentally cut anything else. It took quite a while, since a lot of the connections were buried under other parts, but I eventually got everything connected. I plugged everything back in, threw the switch, and... nothing. No power at all. It was late, so I hit the sack and took another look the next day. After cracking open the case again, there was a fairly obvious cord unplugged that I must've bumped or something. Plugged that one in and voila! All is well. The new fans work great, and it's fantastic to be able to hear myself think while I'm on the PC.
Honestly, most of the PC games I want to play aren't playable on my current machine. I was originally going to buy a new machine in May, but since my old one is now running better, I may be able to wait. My deadline is now the release of Starcraft 2, although I'd like to have a new machine by the time Fallout 3 comes out on October 7th.
So I've got time to research and think about what to get in a new machine. Intel just dropped the price of their Q6750 chips by about half. I've also been wondering whether I should get XP or Vista on a new machine, so I called up the PC Gamer Podcast and asked them. here follows a transcript of that call:
Hey guys, this is Greg from Colorado. I'm gonna be looking to get a new machine soon with my economic stimulus check, and I'm trying to figure out what operating system to put on the machine. I've been reading number of articles recently about how with XP, pretty much everything runs faster, and how the framerates on games are gonna be a lot better. But then on the other hand, Windows Vista has got DirectX10, and so there's obviously a tradeoff there. Given all these things, what do you think is a better option for the OS to put on a new machine?
There's mitigating circumstances here. Stimulus checks come out in July, right? Will they still be selling XP on machines at that time? Microsoft claimed that they were gonna stop selling licenses, which would mean - it's not like they would take boxes off the shelves, but they were just gonna stop distributing it. Now they're rethinking it, because just like this guy, a lot of people are saying "I don't know that I want to go Vista". Now as everyone here who reads PC Gamer knows, we pushed Vista pretty hard back when it was launched. We really backed up behind it, we loved the story that Microsoft had about pushing Games For Windows as a platform, however, since then we've been pretty disappointed at the follow-up. Even with SP1, framerates continue to lag behind XP, which is a really disappointing thing when you spend as much money as you do for Vista, and you do spend a lot of money even with the recent price cuts. I would have to put it like this at this point, this is - sorry Microsoft - I'm saying unless you really really really really want DirectX10 and you've seen Crysis doing everything it can do and you've seen the water effects in Bioshock and you think "Wow, I just can't live without that", I might stick with XP for now, especially with SP3 just on the verge of coming out. Service Pack 3 for XP should be released within... what do you think Norm, a week or so? Very soon. Let's put it that way. And I think... you can expect a framerate bump there as well. Vista, you can always upgrade later if you want. It's not that difficult. We did a how-to on it not too long ago. You always have time to upgrade. Downgrading is a different story altogether.
Unless you're gonna buy a completely built machine, which I doubt for six hundred bucks. If you're just upgrading, I might say stick with XP for now, because I don't see that much value in Vista anymore, and I don't see them building on the foundation of what they launched over a year ago.
If you feel like hearing the whole five minutes of conversation, you can get the mp3 here. Listen from 49:50 to 54:45. I know that since I called in the question on my cell phone, the audio quality was just horrible. For that, I must apologize. I think next time, I'll be recording a mp3 at home and emailing it.
And they assumed I was going to be buying a $600 PC, which is also not the case. Between Linda and myself, and Lia, we're getting a bit more. And beyond that, I might be sinking a few of my own dollars into the PC, but I'd really like to keep it well under $2000.
Lastly, I've been having some network trouble at home this weekend that I think may be router-related. I've power cycled the router many times, and that always seems to restore the connection, but even when it's on, it generally crawls. When the connection goes down, I can't even see the router from my PC, so it's definitely local. And the connection is so bad that I can no longer stream music from my server to my Tivo or PS3. Do you think I need a new router?
I downloaded Echochrome for the PSP last Friday was well, what a fun little demo. Definitely one of those Portal type games that pushes you to think around corners (literally). I'm still working on God of War for PS2, thank you for the recommendation, and we bought Mario Kart for the Wii last night. The game is a blast and the graphics are great, but this is definitely the most cutthroat MK game I've ever played. The computer is ruthless and 1st place is never easily won.
I think once I finish Crisis Core: FFVII I'm going to replay the original FFVII on my PSP, then move onto FFX and FFXII on the PS2. All while finishing God of War, Mario Kart and mastering Hard level songs on Guitar Hero III.
Sleep, who needs it!