With a week off, there is much to talk about like Sony Vs. GeoHot, Crysis 2 Roundup and Steam Sales. Ready? Lets go!
Left Field:
Sony Vs. GeoHot:
Most of you know that hacker GeoHot broke the PS3's DRM wide open. He then released it to the internet and was kind of a douche about it. He also did the same with the iPhone. The only difference? Sony came down hard and sued him. Now i'm all for jailbreaking your products iPhone's, Android phones, Wii, PS3's, Xbox you name it, lets crack it wide open and see what it can do. So did he really need to be sued over this? In my own opinion, no. Sure, he released the code and yes it did hurt online gaming but that wasn't his doing. It was everyone else that made online cheating and glitching rampant. Did he have a hand in it? Sure, he was part of it but to blame everything on him is way outta proportion. What really grinds my gears is how Sony handled the whole thing. Asking for IP addresses that visted his site, etc. This is what happens when big, large mega company thinks it can do. For this reason and this alone, Sony has lost me as a customer for life. This whole debacle stink of the backdoor that Sony put in some of it's CD's back in 2005 and we all remember how that turned out for Sony. However you feel about this one thing needs to be clear. Once we purchase out device, no matter what it is, we own it. We can smash it, burn it, whatever we want to do with it, it's ours. I gotta give credit where credits due and Microsoft I think is doing it right. If you hack your Xbox and go online with it you can be banned, either by a Console ban or an Gamertag ban. It wants to protect it's online service and they have a right to do so. Sony needs to do the same thing. Hack your PS3 and take it online? Get banned. That way there are people still in the "Hacking" community that can do their thing and let the online gamers do theirs.
I was really hesitant to put this up this week but I thought it needed to be talked about. You can be on one side of the fence or the other. But what we all need to understand is that we have a choice to hack our devices and that it shouldn't be illegal, hands down.
Crysis 2:
Well I have finished Crysis 2. There were a few hiccups along the way with the framerates but that was figured out with the Beta 270.51 drivers. Huge improvements were gained in several departments. Nvidia Surround was terrible at launch, we were talking 20fps with SLi'ed 580's. Now? A much more respectable 40-50fps at 5980x1080.
First off, this game's story is not its strong point. Its just a sloppy mess strewn together that doesn't make any sense. You are fighting an Alien invasion in New York City and 99% of the time I had no idea what I was doing or why I was doing it. What this game does do right is hold your attention with all the details. Every arena that you enter you can run and gun, sit back and snipe or go stealth using your cloak ability. Using all of the guns and ability's that Prophet/Alcatraz has is where the game really shines. Everything and I mean everything looks stunning. The game made me feel like I was actually in New York City. The wide array of guns also helped out along with being able to upgrade your Nanosuit. I was saving my credits for the big upgrades in the end but I never did use them. I ended up with around 30,000 credits. Looking back now I probably should of spent them as soon as I could.
Being a big fan of Crysis and Crysis:Warhead I would call myself a fan of Crysis 2. Sure, the story isn't worth a damn but neither was the first games or the expansions. But dollar per hour of fun Crysis 2 is worth every penny. I had a great time throughout the game. I had a bit over 9 hours in the single player campaign. Wanted to give you an idea on how long the game was.
As for multiplayer I haven't even touched it. I tried to play the multiplayer for the first game and it really wasn't that fun. Having the cloak ability ruins the game for me. Not saying that i'll never play it, but as of now I haven't.
Steam:
What a week for deals on Steam. First you have the 4 Days Of 2K Games Sales. As of Today 4/13/2011 Bioshock and Bioshock 2 are 75% off for a total of $10 for both games. If you haven't played these you need to get your butt into gear and put some time into them. The stories that are told in both of the games is excellent. These two games are in my Top 10 list.
Also on sale is the Magicka Complete Pack. Get Magicka, Magicka:Wizard's Survival Kit and Magicka:Vietnam for $7.99. That's 1/2 off the original retail price, yea, that was alittle price is right for ya.
Also on sale, again this week is the Potato Sack for $38.72. This includes 13 awesome indie hit games including my favorite Defense Grid. Please, play Defense Grid. I have over 35 hours in this Tower Defense style game and I love it. It has super simple gameplay that is easy to learn but hard to master. Also, if you have all of these games already or if you buy the pack you will get a Potato Hat for Team Fortress 2! Pick it up today.
LanOC V8.0:
Its time again for our community to get together for our semi annual LanOC LAN's. Hopefully you have already paid and picked out your seat. If you missed what the games list was that can be found here. If you need hotel accomidations that info can be found here. By going over our last few LAN's this is going to be the best one yet. Make sure that you have all of your stuff aka PC components clean and ready to go, no one likes a dirty PC. Have all your games updated and everything ready to go. See you guys this weekend. Also, be on the lookout for the Staff taking pictures. I know I will be going around taking pics all weekend.