I know, I know. PC Show 2009 is being held at Expo right now. No reason for me to go though. At the very most, I'd buy an external hard disk there. But I feel like buying a 1TB portable hard drive together with my next desktop in order to get a discount for both. And I'm getting really close to wanting to go to buy the desktop now, just waiting for the last straw.
This is what I have in mind.
AMD Phenom II X4 955 & MSI 790FX-GD70 ~ $674
Kingston ValueRam DDR3-1333MHz 4GB (2X2GB) ~ $98
Palit GTX285 ~ $499
Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB ~ $123 Samsung SATA 22X DVD Rewriter ~ $31
Corsair HX620W PSU ~ $174
Cooler Master CM690 ~ $129
+ random cheap wired keyboard and mouse
+ 24" Samsung LCD monitor
I really don't know about most stuff, but they seem to be pretty good. The actual recommended list includes 1TB of disk space, but everyone I asked told me that it was too much. I don't know if the graphics card is another overkill either, but hell I'd just have to play all my games with the highest possible settings if it is.
And I wonder how much discount I can get if I buy all that plus the 1TB external hard disk. $50 maybe? And they'll probably throw in the mouse and keyboard for free.
Sometimes I laugh at how people complain about players who have high ping because they can't shoot them. High ping hurts both sides - both of us have difficulty shooting each other. Maybe the advantage is on the side of the lagger (because he can get used to shooting ahead of his enemies, while his enemies have to shoot ahead of him and no one else), but it is a small difference. Plus it is actually very hard to predict people's movements, especially when they run in a random zig-zag path.
I frequently play Empires on this European server where I usually get 400ms ping. I'm usually at the bottom half of the team, but I don't care. It's more fun to play on larger servers. Depending on my mood, I sometimes do rise to among the top 5 of the team. This usually happens when I rambo.
You see, many players like to hide behind cover and shoot while crouching next to the walls. The wall covers part the body when they do that. But frequently they feel so secured behind the bullet-proof obstacles that they forget to watch the enemies.
This always happens with the engineers. What happens is that they try to push ahead by running into the crossfire, build a wall and hide behind them. Sometimes they try to shoot at us from there, other times they start to build something (turrets, ammo box or camera which is a radar that only detects infantry).
If they shoot, I wait for them to reload. If they don't shoot, I sprint ahead, jump above or run around their obstacles and spam bullets. It takes about a second for them to realize that I'm there, but it takes less than half a second to kill a non-rifleman (riflemen get increased armour). I always die in the attempt, usually because there are some enemy reinforcements running towards the wall, but if I can take 2 down with me I consider it a fair trade.
Back to my ping. The hardest thing to do with 400ms ping is really to throw sticky grenades properly. Sticky grenades are a specialty of the rifleman class. As the name says, it sticks to whatever I throw it on. Basically I imagine it to be a chunk of C4, mainly because it's very heavy, but it can destroy a lightly armoured tank instantly or severely damage heavy armour. It's the anti-tank solution for the anti-infantry specialist.
But because it's hard to throw, I have to be very close to the tank. Dangerously close. Despite that, I can never seem to get a sticky grenade kill on a moving tank. I've tried throwing straight ahead with my nose rubbing against the tank and I've tried throwing the grenade at a 45 degree angle ahead of the tank at the same distance. Nothing seems to work and I always miss.
Any Tom, Dick and Harry can sticky grenade a stationary tank, but moving tanks are a different story. And it's the only way a rifleman can kill a tank. Engineers can build a missile turrets and de-construct tanks, grenadiers are the anti-tank specialists, and even scouts can either escape from tanks (using the concussion grenade ie flashbang or smoke grenades) or stun them with their own version of sticky grenades aka sticky stun grenades.
The rifleman is naturally disadvantage when he encounters any vehicle and mastering the sticky grenade is the only way to reduce it.
Watched my bro play Prototype just now. It's a brand new action game about a guy who woke up in a morgue in a city where everyone has been infected by a virus, kind of like Resident Evil. The difference is that the protagonist is like Spawn, except without his memories. So it seems like a combination of Spawn and Resident Evil, without the eerie atmosphere.
Not interested. Looks good, but not my type of game.
Finally finished Neverwinter Nights 2 original campaign as a Warlock. Remember my praises for this class some time back? It turns out the Warlock is strong only in the beginning; his spells don't get much more powerful as he levels up. Most of his spells are really modified versions of his original Eldritch Blast, either by adding around 2d6 of some kind of elemental damage or giving it an effect, eg stun or slow.
Simply put, his damage isn't fantastic, especially compared to the Wizard I was using before in my first run. The Wizard was fantastic at the end, spamming Empowered Isaac's Greater Missile Storms like there's no tomorrow. I don't even have to aim! I just click on the general area and BOOM! all the enemies in the vicinity either get badly injured or just die.
The Warlock has no such ability. However, he does get to wear light armour whereas Wizards only wear robes. And Warlocks don't have limits to his spells, so he doesn't run out of ammo the way other spellcasters do. This was very useful in the final dungeon where resting will attract a huge undead mob to attack the party and disrupt sleep.
In my first run, my Wizard quickly ran out of spells before I finished half the dungeon, and was eventually relegated to a minor healing role by using healing kits. In this run, my Wizard actually was quite useful because I gave him the spell that turns him into a very strong demon. I didn't even bother to spam spells - I just used him like a fighter, recasting the shapeshifting spell whenever it wore off.
But in tough fights where mad damage was needed, my Warlock loses big time to the Wizard. As a tank, he really is just above average. As a damage dealer, he also is just average. I know, he has AoE spells, but I turned the difficulty to the max, so I think AoE will hurt my party too.
Now I'm at the Mask of the Betrayer campaign. No longer a Warlock, I'm now using a Paladin/Divine Champion. He's a good tank and he can heal himself once a day for around half his max HP. No complains about him.
But now I find the MotB campaign to be a much better game than the original NWN2 one. It has much better music and a more damatic story. Plus saving doesn't take forever in MotB like it does in the original. The first campaign was long and moderately interesting. No doubt creating such a lengthy plot and keeping it somewhat interesting is already a feat by itself, but making a shorter yet more intriguing tale has its own difficulties too.
If I compare the two campaigns with the average overall quality, I'd say that MotB is the better game. Though the hunger bar does take some getting used to.
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