So, a good friend of mine accidentally gets an Xbox 360. I say “accidentally” because he received it as a gift. If he had his say so, he probably would’ve gotten a new PC; however, he’s pleased with his gift because he has Call of Duty 4, which keeps him more than occupied. Of course, the sad part is that my PC version and his Xbox version won’t play together online, so we’re still stuck either playing at my house on the PC or at his house on the Xbox, either of which devolves into drinks, telling goofy stories and wondering why we both keep getting killed. It also leads to the occasional rant about why the PC and Xbox version of the game aren’t compatible and how this should be patched/fixed/updated, despite the fact that we’re probably members of a group of gamers comprising one-half of one percent of the Call of Duty population.

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No doubt the news that Jack Thompson has been censured by a Florida Court for 27 Bar rule violations will be greeted with a rousing chorus of acclaim by the gaming community. That’s to be expected, as he has been no friend to our community. But we shouldn’t get too excited just yet, as the fight isn’t quite over. While the judge’s decision has been made public, Florida’s Supreme Court still gets their say in the matter before Thompson actually loses the ability to practice law for up to ten years. Given his antics at the latest hearing, not to mention previous sanctions for inappropriate conduct, I suspect the Florida Supreme Court will revoke his ability to practice law.

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So it finally happened a little while ago. My computer, a top of the line custom built rig from four years ago, finally went to the great computer desk in the sky. One too many cords being unplugged and chewed on, and one too many things being dropped on the tower resulted in the death of my computer. I’ll mourn that machine for a long time……….

Okay, mourning time is over.

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Those familiar with my debacle with NetGear Wireless Garbage will no doubt remember the ultimate cause of that technological fiasco and my subsequent invective of discontent: my cat, Iago. Despite his fascination with destroying all cords, all the time, I still love him, much as a parent can love a child who destroys hundreds of dollars in household goods. But I’m not blind to his terrorism of electronic components. He is, after all, the reason for wireless networking, wireless keyboards and wireless mice. If someone would invent a cheap way to rig a monitor as wireless, I’d do that too, although he has some difficulty chewing the monitor cable; it’s a bit thick for his jaws.

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I have a sore spot in my soul for Electronic Arts. Not because of money ill spent or lackluster titles, but because I remember Bullfrog Productions. Bullfrog was the British developer for such ground breaking titles as Populous, Dungeon Keeper, and Syndicate. Those of you who remember will smile as I do when I think back to hours spent sending floods against the worshipers of the opposing deity or of training and disciplining the creatures of my dungeon. The programmers at Bullfrog had a certain synthesis of programming expertise and designing savvy. A generation of gamers on both PC and consoles, whether they know it or not, were influenced by the design decisions of these clever folks.

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Let me preface this blog by thanking MobyGames for all of their high quality screenshots of classic games. Without their hard work and their kind permission to repost the screenshots in question, this post would not have been possible. Thanks a million!

Regulars here at Avault will have recently seen my review of Crysis and the very specific warnings I related about the game’s stiff system requirements. While there’s no denying that trend in PC gaming is always toward programs that utilize more and more processing power, memory and storage space, Crysis bore special mention because its requirements are beyond even those of its contemporaries, in some cases significantly higher. For many hardcore gamers, whose systems easily exceed the minimum requirements for Crysis, I’m betting my warning was merely seen as a justification for their extremely high end systems and then ignored. In fact, I’d be disappointed if anyone with a top of the line Alienware system felt intimidated by my statements.

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As those who have read my bio on Avault might have noticed, I claim to have very little skill in multiplayer. (If you haven’t noticed because you haven’t read my bio on the main blog page, just smile and nod.) While there are probably a thousand reasons why I’m not brilliant at multiplayer, what’s more interesting is that despite my obvious failings when facing humans in mortal combat, I actually do enjoy it. However, I don’t find myself playing against my human friends very often. Instead, we play co-op: two humans, battling together against the forces of [insert currently preferred antagonist here] and triumphing against carefully constructed and measured odds.
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Every once in a while, when problems in the apartment get to be too much, I make rash decisions. And so, it was one fine day, almost a year ago, when my cat Iago was busily chewing on yet another network cable only minutes after he had chewed completely through the mouse cord, that I decided wireless networking was for me. Without checking online for hardware reviews, I jumped in my car, drove to Best Buy and practically ran to the networking section. Much to my delight, NETGEAR products were on sale. For around $100, I walked out of Best Buy with a NETGEAR WGT624SC router and three WPN111 USB wireless networking adapters. It seemed I’d have my apartment networked in about 30 minutes, and this time there would be no cords for Iago to chew upon.

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One of the fascinating things about studying English literature, or any other literature for that matter, is how the literary conventions used by an earlier author are “used and abused” by later writers. Stories of heroic knights in shining armor fighting one another or monsters pervade the Middle Ages; however, by the time Shakespeare writes plays such as 1 Henry IV, characters such as Falstaff denounce such heroism and valor as foolish even as various other characters in the play speak in the language of chivalry. The fact that in the 21st century we gamers find ourselves playing CRPGs which further mutate the tradition of the questing romantic hero indicates that the form and structure of such literature never really goes away. It just gets subverted and used in new ways. I can only imagine what Chaucer or Malory would think of CRPGs such as Oblivion and Neverwinter Nights. The number of magic items even a single character equips would probably flabbergast them.

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