Krehbiel Tech

Inspired by the recent episode of South Park, and being bored with FlatOut2, I finally installed my trial version of World of Warcraft yesterday, which I'd gotten with a video card about a year ago I think. I've been trying to stay away from MMORPGs because, as South Park indicated, you really can't play them competitively unless you're willing to join some kind of guild and give up your life, and really, what's the point in playing a game if not to win? :) But I've heard repeatedly that WoW was particularly good for so-called "casual gamers" and people who liked solo adventuring, so I gave it a shot.

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Addendum: So I go to login to WoW last night to see how many levels I can acheive with a 14-day trial account, and it says the server is full and I have to wait in a queue for some 30 minutes to get in! You have got to be kidding me. That seals the deal. There is no way I'm going to pay $15/month for the privilege of not being able to get on the freakin' server! That is just about the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of. I'd much rather play in severe lag than not be able to get in at all.

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I broke down and played some Counter-Strike: Source last night. This was the first time I've ever played Counter-Strike (CS) in all the seven years or so it's been out. I figured it was time to assimilate since it's like the most popular online game in the world, and runs on 6 bazillion servers, and has 7 gajillion people playing it every day. (As opposed to the handful of people playing Quake 4 on 37 servers.) The server I chose was running what amounted to a team deathmatch game on some Middle Eastern desert town map. I don't know if it was "pure" Counter-Strike or some mod variation -- I guess it was a mod because you respawned immediately after you died.

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I played two maps of Half-Life 2: Deathmatch this past weekend (about 30 minutes worth), so I feel qualified to write a comprehensive review of it now.

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I've basically finished with FlatOut2... won all the races except the one at the very end, and that's just a bunch of derbies. The game pretty much ruled until I got bored from racing on the same tracks over and over again and, well, from winning all the time. :) I give it 5... out of 5.

Two quick game reviews.

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I finished Doom 3 yesterday. Overall, I liked it a lot. It was a very satisfying single-player experience. (I haven't tried multi-player.) I wrote before that Quake 4 was dark, but I really had no idea what a dark game was. Doom 3 is the undisputed King of Darkness. And again I don't mean ambiance-wise, I mean lighting-wise. There were plenty of areas where the screen was pitch black and you could only see using your flashlight. (No amount of gamma or brightness adjustment fixed this, either.) And guess what? You can't hold a gun and a flashlight at the same time. So guess what? If you need to actually shoot something in the darkness, the game screen becomes... you guessed it... pitch black. Very disorienting and not a particularly fun aspect of the game for me.

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PROS

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So I'm playing Quake 4 now that I finally got my new computer put together. (What was the first thing I installed after Windows? Yup. Quake 4.) I think I can give it a completely fair and balanced review now that I've played it for a couple of hours.

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