PC Gamer?

So I think I may have a problem. I think I'm becoming a PC gamer! *crowd gasp!* Yeah, I know what you're all thinking, I cannot be saved and I cannot be spared the torment of hours upon hours of tweaking, modding, hacking, upgrading, patching, threading, *gasp wheeze.* Truly, these torturous tortures are my fate, and alas, I am not strong enough to resist the thorough lashings of it all.

Honestly though, I am enamored by the PC gaming world. How does it put up with itself? Sure, I'm a lightweight only about 2 years of full fledged PC gaming experience (more if you count the dark years of Diablo II) and wonder why anyone deals with the idea that they won't be playing a new game at its optimum level out of the box, ever. I have had problems with just about every PC game I have ever bought, from Gears of War's save files deleting on their own, to Bioshock having no sound, to the worst problems in Knights of the Old Republic 2 having every PC game problem imaginable.

But you know what? I revel in these problems. I spend hours searching forums for solutions, chatting with others on what works and what doesn't. Searching newegg for the latest and greatest PC parts. Learning what makes a PC tick. Overclocking faq's and FRAPS programs abound! Honestly, I get bored with a PC game now if I've solved how to get it to run. It's kinda sad really. Or maybe it's like working on a used car and getting it to hum just the way you like it.

I am here to help my fellow man though. Below I have a list of the top ten signs you are becoming a PC gamer.

1. You wave your hand in front of your face trying to determine how many frames per second it's going.
2. When opening a bag of marshmellows you wonder to yourself just how far you have to go to make the inside of your computer optimal for making smores.
3. You think the Matrix has you.
4. Things aren't going right so you believe you have to create more men to mine crystals.
5. Honestly believing that sleeping is a form of putting your brain in hibernate mode.
6. First person shooters rarely show your feet, and never show your midsection, you freak out every time you see your sternum.
7. Looking at your shadow, you wonder what shader effects are turned on and what more could be done.
8. Why doesn't grass appear out of nowhere as you walk?
9. You accidentally play a graphics card in a Yu-gi-oh! match.
10. Worst of all, you start buying PC games just to see how well your system can run it.

My friends, if you have any of the above problems please go to your nearest Gamestop and buy a console game, you'll be glad you did. It works right away, always. You'll spend more time playing it than tweaking it, unless you're a tard and put the disc in upside-down.

*A 250ww power supply is not enough to sustain a Nivida 8600GT graphics card, lesson learned*

Game I would like to see (1)

Politics: The Sweet Science

Into politics? Love and hate them? Want to see your favorite politicians duke it out? Well look no further than Politics: The Sweet Science.

Game play for Politics: The Sweet Science goes like so. As many Americans know our politicians like to spat at each other with words, not fists. Politics: The Sweet Science will pay homage to that ideal. Simply put the game play is a blend of ‘speed’ and ‘scrabble’. Two players enter their politician and are given a health bar and seven letters. As fast as they can they must come up with words. The longer the word the more damage is inflicted on the opponent. Obviously as you make words you are given more letters. First politician to string together the most words and eliminate the other politician wins. It will take roughly 20 four letter words to down an opponent.

Sounds simple right? Well of course there are bonuses and combos that can be done. Let’s list them.

1. Combos are allotted if you create 2 or more words before the opponent can come up with 1 word. This gives you a health bonus depending on the size of the words strung together.

2. Just like in scrabble word bonuses are in effect. Different from scrabble though, certain letters are assigned to double and triple word scores instead of spaces (since there are none).

3. Each politician has their own Political Power which can only be used once per fight. For instance, one can slow the speed of the opponent; one has gradual heal and so on.

4. Creating a word that does not exist will actually damage yourself that amount, so spelling counts!

Animation: The top portion of the screen will handle all the animation of the politicians battling it out. The bottom will have your letters, and the middle of the screen is where you place your letters to confirm a word. Far left and far right will have your health bar listed vertically along with your Political Power.

Game Modes: Regular VS mode, Online VS mode, Rise to the White House which is the single player campaign in which you ‘debeat’ other politicians for political supremacy, and Filibuster which is a survival mode essentially seeing how long you can last against an infinite amount of politicians.

This game should be fast paced and hectic fun despite the relatively boring context.

*I have a bad feeling about this*

SPoor!

Ok, the game isn't out and I haven't played it. But reading early reviews of the game has reassured my initial impressions of the game. Through all its charm and intricacy Spore gives us routinely simplistic game play elements not meant for your average gamer, and certainly not your average PC gamer.

Spore may have creativity in spades but what it appears to lack judging from early reviews is game play elements worth its salt. Starting off as bacteria Spore is at its simplest (which should come as no surprise) as you set out running away from larger bacteria and eating smaller ones to then get out of the primordial soup.

From here you reach land and interact with other species really just trying to keep things level. With only one or two game play options talking and eating Spore continues to be simple.

You then get to the tribal stage where your new goal is to ally or destroy other tribes around you. This is RTS at its most basic with only one resource to gather and two options of ally or attack. Snore!

The games next stage is the civilization stage which, really is just another way of saying tribal stage with a prettier city-scape.

Lastly, you reach the space stage where you can travel to distant galaxies destroying or creating where you see fit. Your only real options here are terrifying a planet, taking it over, or inhabiting it freely, or destroying it. This last stage is what I predicted to be the most boring of all, but actually gives you the most options other than the creature creator of course. But my hopes overall were destroyed when I learned this was not an online experience.

When I first heard that we could travel to other planets I thought we'd be interacting with other online users at the same time. I couldn't have been more wrong. The other creatures that inhabit these planets are ones that are downloaded in the Spore system or ones that are pre-made. So essentially you're still dealing with the computer AI.

So that's it. The game completes here and then you are given the option to start over at any of the stages mentioned above. Bacteria, harvest?, Tribal, Civilization, and Space.

Spore appears to be exactly what I thought it would be. The charm in it is how well the creature designer works, and then you essentially get to watch your little dude walk around and do stuff for a while. Not really a game by any standard in my mind. Not really entertaining either. The limited options this game gives the user screams 'casual gamer.'

*Evolve this @#$%!*

Star Wars: Force Unleashed (demo) a Porter Perspective

Yay, another Star Wars game! After the countless awful games that Lucas Arts has thrown at us since Rouge Squadron III: Rebel Garbage we get another potential box with "Star Wars" labeled on it to add to our 'Tower of Useless Fanboy cash-ins.' And please don't email me with a better title for our tower, I like em' long and juicy.

However, if things go the way of this demo...*insert cliche'd Star Wars gushy praiseful phrase here*

The demo beings with a riviting cutscene with Darth Faker (voice isn't actually James Earl Jones) telling his never before mentioned apprentice how he should go about vanquishing the remaining Jedi that Vader was too mutilated (Obi beat down yall!) to take down. He also encourages him to kill off all things that may bear witness to the coming onslaught. As far as covert Jedi missions go, Vader sure didn't plan things well. I mean I can understand not wanting anyone to know you have an apprentice who wields the power of 1,000 mighty vagabonds (we'll get to that) but to send him to highly populated empireal complexes that apparently harbors a Jedi Vader missed just seems a tad....lazy?

Anyway, plot descrepecies aside letting us slay stormtroopers whether forced or not I guess isn't a bad thing. To get to the game, you control the apprentice who despite his odd if even mentally retarted way of holding a lightsabre is perhaps more powerful that Goku in Dragon Ball Z. Don't get me wrong, the way he holds the lightsabre is COOL but realistically borderline retarded and makes me wonder why Darth Vader didn't force bitch slap him for that filthy habit in Young Sith Training class.

Despite this, as the apprentice you can force bitch slap everyone with varing powers right from the get go. The basics are there, force pull, push, force explode? and force lightning. As far as I played it everything felt smooth as butter with minor annoyances. The lock on system concerning what you want to lift is obviously lacking. But actually thinking about it I can't think how they could improve it other than freezing the game in a super bullet time and letting you select any item you see to then start the action up again. It really isn't all bad and what you end up force holding can come into use on the fly whether you meant for it to or not. Force lightning is probably by far the easist to use since you just press it and things die.

The lightsabre portions are also free and easy. You won't find an inordinate of amount of combos like you would in Devil May Cry or God of War, but it's still fun none the less and I don't see it getting too stale since you combine force powers with 70% of what you're doing anyway.

The demo has you going down hallway after hallway killing off stormtroopers and slamming things into this or that. There weren't any puzzle elements to speak of unless you count using the force to unlock a door by moving the joysticks up and down as the game TELLS you to do so.

And the demo wraps up with you fighting a chicken walker (reference understood by Star Wars fans, if you don't get it then serves you right for reading something about Star Wars!). This battle is rather lackluster as you spam lighting and lightsabre at it until its hitpoints reach a certian amount to which you then "Simon says" your way to victory. By that I mean if you've played God of War it's the same thing where a button displays and you react by pressing it when prompted to see a pretty attack that you would otherwise be too stupid to do if the developers gave you the button sequence to do it normally....feel the force of my disdain!

The major flaw I see in the game so far stem from the enemies mainly. I've heard a lot of flack about the controls but I really didn't have that problem. The enemies on the other hand are extremely stupid, though maybe on purpose paying homage to stormtrooper I.Q's everywhere. Never the less, I was annoyed at how simplistic they were. They stand in one spot shooting at you awating you to either throw something at them or stab them relentlessly. They don't seem to work together or come up with uniqe ideas of dealing with a demi-god, but still I would have liked to see something more here.

Conclusion: I'll probably buy it.

*may the force be kickin' it real dawg, peace!*

Forgot this Existed

So I'm thumbing through google under the search of 'Acefondu' because I am indeed that vain, and stumble across this little ditty of a website. Yes I am indeed aware that I am associated with Start Button News no matter how zealously I deny the claims. Google generously links me to the one and only post I have sent to this relatively barren wasteland of a blog submitted back in 2006. How fortuitous for me that I have now discovered a way to mitigate my boredom by wielding the might of the 26 letter alphabet (checks to ensure Cuba hasn't added that sensual 27th letter....good).

So without further ado or do-do if you're 5 years old, I shall type up a review of the Star Wars: Forced Unleashed demo and a few other things if I have time.

*search 'acefondu' on google. You'll get 10 pages of my gaming insights on various websites, you know better ones than this...haha.*