Disclaimer : Neither this post nor podcast are yet officially endorsed by Jeff Gerstmann. Hey Duders! Back a few months ago I was talking a lot to user SodiumCyclops ( Pat) outside the site and eventually he asked me about a project him and Hirashin ( David) were working on. They had gone through a ton of crazy stuff (you can ask them more about it, who knows what they'll answer), but eventually they wanted to make a video game website, very much inspired by GiantBomb. Really, it was upon hearing the name of the site, BonusEXP, that I figured these guys might actually have some idea of what they're doing.
The past month or so has been contributed to site design & art (mostly David), audio design (mostly Pat), and loafing (me, Andy). Well, actually I've researched most of the news (something I like to do anyways), and I plan on being the main writer guy (and editor?) for the site. We all plan to participate in a weekly podcast (barring any horrible accidents), and we've been practicing for a while now.
So anyways, today created our first 'official' podcast, and we've put up some reviews. We plan on updating the site regularly, but I expect things will be naturally slow at first. David actually accidentally wiped a lot of our older work so now we're making backups :P All 3 of us have pretty different takes on gaming in general, but for now we're keeping most of our throat slashing of each other out of the podcast (we'll see how that turns out months down the road).
Anyways, you can check out our site or directly download a MP3 of our first 'official' cast here. Pat and David are linking up the stuff with Itunes but I personally have no idea how any of that works, so don't ask me anything about it. We'd greatly appreciate you duders check out our cast and tell us what you think. You can post here or send us emails through the site or whatever you feel comfortable with!
BTW, we're recording this over Skype as I'm in PA, David is in Maine and Pat is in New Zealand! I think the sound quality has turned out well but tell us what you think on that as well!
I really hope to make something interesting out of this site long term and I'm sure David and Pat feel the same way. Anyways thanks again for reading all this and thanks in advance for checking out the cast!
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I started off this year buying Bayonetta at release and picking up an old copy of Pinball Hall of Fame William's Collection for Xbox 360 on the cheap (which I owned on Wii). Now I'm finally playing through Phoenix Wright Justice For All on DS (and I plan to move on to the 3rd game afterward). If I see a good deal on an older game I never picked up, or a new major title releases I'll be playing those.
A few weeks ago I asked if anyone wanted to see old video of Quakeworld I recorded back in the day and generally about nostalgic gaming recording, and got some positive replies. Last night I copied my Quakeworld VHS tapes onto DVDs and surprisingly the video was already formatted well for Youtube so I uploaded a bit.
I always enjoyed making a record of my gaming, and I'd watch it over and over (usually in the background to other gaming). I never had a camcorder until recently, but I would use VHS or audiocassettes to record my game playing. These videos are obviously more valuable to me than other people, when I watch any of these I get a flood of memories and emotions.
Early internet gaming, especially Quakeworld - because it was my first internet videogame, is especially powerfully nostalgic to me. At the time of this recording I had a really ratty gaming PC, but I had just gotten a 3dfx graphics card which doubled my framerate in Quake, uppded the resolution to 640x480, increased graphics quality substantially, and generally made the game much more playable. In early 1998 I got a more powerful PC. I also played a good deal of the original Team Fortress during this time but sadly never recorded it.
At the time of this recording I had been on the net for about a year and was still getting into the groove with it, the net was absolutely fascinating to me. I bought a very good book on TCP/IP networking and learned a lot over time. I would spend some of my spare time on Palace chat (a really old chat program), and Geocities chat (RIP Geocities :( ). I also had all the consoles, and I was probably most interested in Sega Saturn because that's the last one I got. I got the 3DFX card about a month after Goldeneye for N64 came out, so that helps me figure out when abouts this video would have been taken.
If people are interested I can upload more videos in the future, there's quite a few more parts where this one came from. I can totally understand if people aren't interested though. I'd be interested to see other Giant Bomb users videos if they'd be willing to upload them.
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I don't have a facebook account, I think facebook is for dumb people.
I don't use twitter, it's only good for stalking celebrities.
last.fm? Well I haven't ever bothered with the site, I mostly listen to MP3s, and I've put a lot of my favorite songs on my 360's HDD. You can't listen to last.fm on the 360 in games, so it's almost completely useless.
All things considered, it's the most worthless 360 update yet.
Not going to post this to the forums, unless I make some horrible mistake. The reason for this is self evident by whom I am about to quote. This is from the main page at Penny Arcade today, here's what Tycho had to say about the MW2 dedicated server crisis :
"Everywhere the discussion is takes hold, the conversation surrounding Infinity Ward's decision to forego dedicated servers is an absolute fuckfest. I understand why this would be. It's an aggressive assertion that the universe is not as they claim.
On Four Zero Two, Robert Bowling's clearing house for Infinity Ward PR, the thread quickly reached one hundred and nineteen pages. The petition at the core of the conversation, entitled "Dedicated Servers for CoD:MW2," has (at the time of this writing) reached 143,991 signatures.
To read such lamentations, you'd get the impression that PC gamers still think they are the focus of the industry, when that hasn't been true for awhile. Indeed, hardcore gamers in general - and the dedicated PC enthusiast, which is a subset - haven't been the object of their desire for some time. I was under the impression this was well known, but it does require a willingness to perceive factual information, which is not a universal trait among cultists. Maybe if you had just put out, instead of becoming a signatories to a vow of consumer chastity, the old twinkle might return to his eye."
Forza 3 Modern Warfare 2 Halo 3 ODST Uncharted 2 Tekken 6 Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 Brutal Legend Assassin's Creed 2 (not necessarily absolute must own, I may skip it, but right now I have it preordered) Ballad of Gay Tony
Demon's Souls is coming out soon in the US, but I imported it, but it'd be a must own for me if I hadn't.
A good half of ALL the best games are download only these days. Bionic Commando Rearmed, Braid, Shatter, WipEout HD, Super Stardust HD, Pixeljunk Monsters, Trine, Trials HD, PacMan CE, Castle Crashers, just to name a few.
I worry about being able to play these games in the future, but for now the prices are fair enough.
Obviously it'd be hard to imagine getting these to work as a product in retail. Castle Crashers on a disk for $30? Probably would be the most likely outcome.
My 6800GT gave up the ghost the other day. I had occasional really messed up glitches displaying simple things like the Windows startup and its fan was making horrific noises so I removed it from my PC to give it a thorough dusting with my typical level of care, slapped it back in, dead. I had installed a NVSilencer on it a few years ago, the thing only made the videocard quieter and cooler for about 3 months and the last year or so had been bad.
So I popped in my 5900 which is in barely better shape, but at least I can use Windows as I have no onboard video. I modded the 5900's firmware back in 2003, and the thing never ran correctly when clocked fully, but right now I'm running without any hardware acceleration at all. I used safe mode driver cleaners and still no dice on getting any Nvidia drivers to work right with the thing.
Between the fact that this PC is over 5 years old and the HDDs first started clicking about 2 years ago (they're older than the PC itself), and many other issues I gave in and I'm buying a new PC. I built my last PC, and between accidentally killing my X-Fi and now my 6800GT I decided it was best to let someone else build it for me. I don't think I could handle the stress of a RMA or bad build. I'm ordering over AVADirect for the first time, so I'll tell you what I think of it when I recieve the computer.
The specs are as follows :
CPU : Intel E8400 (Core 2 Duo) case : Antec 300 mobo :Gigabyte P45-UD3L (no use for RAID or crossfire) RAM : G. Skill 4GB CAS4 HDD : WD 500GB Cavier Black PSU : Corsair 550W GPU : EVGA GTX260 core 216
just a typical Lite On DVD drive, but I'm also ordering Vista (don't have a copy yet)
I wanted to balance cost with efficiency, and not feel like I spent too much or too little. Figured I might as well be able to play the latest PC games well, seeing how my computer even before the 6800GT died couldn't run TF2 anywhere near max details comfortably. The price difference between a low end PC and gaming class PC wasn't big enough for me to comfortably go with a 'no games' build. Anyways, I probably won't be posting so much on Giant Bomb until I get my new PC because right now this computer is running like shit.
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