sedition2

Played the demo for the first HAWX and, to be honest, thought it was pretty terrible. The enhanced reality system, if used at all, makes the game a little too... concrete? Like it just gives you a set guideline to follow, instead you being forced to make your own tactics and decisions. I also thought that the third person perspective (forget what it's called, something about some performance inhibitor I think) was incredibly difficult to use, since it's near impossible to keep your bearings in 3 dimensions when the camera shifts around. I don't have much experience with aircraft games, but it just seems like Ace Combat 6 is infinitely better at making this genre of game entertaining.

People honestly paid 25 dollars for a single piece of dowloadable content that was almost entirely cosmetic? Jesus christ, World of Warcraft is even more... far more pathetic than I thought. I can't believe so many people would throw away that kind of money for something so utterly worthless. Then again, they're doing pretty much the same thing simply by playing the game in the first place. So why stop wasting money at the monthly subscription fee? just keep throwing money at Blizzard, they won't mind.

Oh I forgot about WinDirStat. It's a great program for managing your hard drive space. It shows you what files are taking up space visually by displaying your hard drive as a bunch of different colored squares. Each square is a different file, the bigger the square the more space it takes up. And the squares are color coded by file type. So at a glance you can see that "oh, videos are taking up like half of my disk space" So it comes in really handy.

" Media Player Classic. "

If you're roaming the forums of Giantbomb, chances are, you know a thing or two about computers; and some of you, like me, have probably put a lot of time into customizing your machine to suit your needs and conveniences, whether it be gaming, web surfing, media playing, or anything else you can do on a computer. And the wonderful thing about the internet is that it offers a vast multitude of software you can use to get you machine to do exactly what you want it to, and some of this software, for the more frugal of us, is totally free. At least for me personally, I've found that the majority of software I use everyday is freeware, and it's truly impressive how helpful these programs are. That is why I'm dedicating this thread to freeware. Here I hope that, those that are so inclined, share a list of their favorite, totally (and legally) free programs, along with a brief description of what exactly these programs accomplish. By doing this I hope that other readers can discover new, helpful, and free software that can make their lives easier as well. Here is my current list of favorites:
 
Launchy -- This tiny little program makes file navigation and launching programs a snap. Simply press a button combination (mine is alt + space) and a text box appears. Type the name of a program you want to launch and Launchy, well... it launches it. The included Runner utility allows you to link specific file paths to certain words you type in, allowing you to even pull up often used folders and directories. This tiny utility is also surprisingly good at recognizing programs even when you misspell them.
 
Firefox -- Everyone's favorite web browser is truly impressive for it's vast amount of add-ons. In all honesty, these add-ons should probably have a thread of their own, but here are my favorites that, in my opinion make Firefox awesome. Stylish is a program that alters the style of web pages. You can go to it's support site and download user created styles and, for example, turn Facebook black, or if you're so inclined, give it a style with giant pink hearts (I prefer black btw). Fireshot is also a great utility that allows you to save entire web pages as image files for later viewing. FoxyProxy makes it quick and easy to use and change proxy servers on the fly. Fast Video Download provides an easy to use button for downloading most streaming videos. The list goes on.
 
Winamp -- Winamp has all the capability of Windows Media Player but does it with style. It's highly customizable which, for a person like me, is a huge plus. Also, it's organization is much more efficient, allowing you to view all you songs by artist, album, and title at the same time, while still maintaining a taskbar allowing easy access to playlists. Although not the best for syncing music to portable devices, when it comes to listening to music on your PC and organizing your library, it does a damn good job... and does it in style. 
 
Gimp -- Not everyone is a digital artist, and I myself am not either. However, it is a fun hobby of mine to create digital art, and Gimp does an incredibly good job. Gimp does most of the same things Photoshop does, but Gimp does it totally free, instead of the hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars it costs for photoshop. Having used Photoshop a little myself, I can honestly say that photoshop does create better looking images (but only by a little). And more importantly, it seems to me that Gimp's UI is infinitely easier to handle than Photoshop, making it easy and efficient to use. 
 
Wallpaper Master -- This freeware does something quite simple but still pretty cool. Quite simply, it runs in the background and changes your wallpaper. You can add image files to it and even create "playlists" of images that it will switch through. You can adjust the interval of the switch and even adjust the images to fit your screen better. 
 
Vista Shortcut Manager -- Gets rid of those annoying arrows at the bottom of your shortcuts. Not that impressive until you realize that, to do it by hand, requires a bunch of complicated registry edits and downloading still more files from the internet. Basically just makes your desktop look better. It's free, so why not?
 
AbiWord -- For those of you that have expired versions of Microsoft Word, AbiWord is a nice solution. Although much more basic than Word, it does all the important stuff, and looks quite the same. If you're just taking notes, writing and essay, or writing up a full blown chemistry lab, it gets the job done nicely. 
 
Rainmeter -- Pretty cool utility that allows your desktop to display real time info about your computer, from network traffic to processor speed. You can literally make you desktop look like a HUD with this freeware (although I have to admit I stopped using it recently for fear that it was slowing down my PC).

Definitely on the fence here. It seems like they're making the multiplayer alot more complicated. Really don't like the idea there because Halo 2, one of the greatest multiplayer experiences of all time, was so great because it was relatively basic. When you have identical character models, spawning with identical weapons and having identical traits, it makes the game much more competitive because the game isn't decided by rank, or loadout, but by sheer skill. The less random variables there are, the better the experience in my opinion. However, a game can be complicated without being random. Shadowrun is an excellent example. But I know Bungie won't put half of the thought and time into their multiplayer that (the late) Fasa Studios did for Shadowrun. Halo 3's multiplayer was pretty bad (again in my opinion) but if Bungie can take the randomness out of their game, they could create a much more competitive and intense experience. Here's hoping that's precisely what they do.

In defense of Left 4 Dead, the 4 isn't just an abbreviation. It's an emphasis on the 4 player teamwork that's so important to survival.