Finished The Darkness and Gears of War 2

Today I finished The Darkness and Gears of War 2, both are games that i'd put on hold right at the end of the game. Gears of War 2 I only had two chapters to go, that's like an hour or so of gameplay! I dont' know why I hadn't finished this earlier. Gears of War 2 was brilliant and ten shades more epic than the original which was pretty epic in itself. Whether you were inside the belly of a giant worm, flying a reaver or riding a brumak Gears of War 2 had tons of unexpected action that I loved. Wish I had someone to play it co-op with though, i'll have to playthrough it on Insane with Jalexster if he has it. I finished Gears of War 2 on Insane, wasn't really as hard as I thought it'd be though.

I finished The Darkness on Normal difficulty and missed a ton of achievements so i'll have to play through that again at some point. It was a really creepy game with a pretty sad ending and storyline so it's definitely not a game for everybody but the darkness powers in it are cool and the confusing transportation to inside The Darkness where you are in a sort of World War 2 that nobody can die in. Anyway, the game is really cool aside from the fact you move pretty slow which can get really annoying and that when I was playing a quest bugged so that I couldn't complete it and get the achievement for being helpful :(

I liked both of these games a hell of a lot and recommend them to anyone.

Finished Prince of Persia (360)

Prince of Persia has an amazing ending sequence, the last boss presentation is extremely unique and cool too (although it doesn't change game mechanics in any way).

I found Prince of Persia to be a really cool game although incredibly easy as you can't die in it. The game is mostly about puzzles and platforming although there are a few fights in it (mostly bosses) the combat system is really cool but still easy as you can't die.

I'm going to keep playing it even though I've finished it to try and collect all the light seeds (damned things :P) and get the race achievements.

Sands of Time Skins (Farah and Classic Prince) (360/PS3/PC)

At the Choose Skin Manager, Enter Passcode 525858542

Altair (PC)

At the Choose Skin Manager, Enter Passcode 13372805

Prototype Prince & Elika Skins (PC)

Collect all 1001 light seeds and defeat the final boss

Altair (360/PS3)

To gain access to the Altair skin, you'll need to register (for free) at Ubisoft.com. Once you have a copy of Prince of Persia, link your Ubi account to your Xbox 360 Gamertag or PSN screen name from the Prince of Persia main menu to access the Altair skin. Once linked you can switch skins from the main menu. This is Altair, but rendered in POP's slick art style. Via IGN.com

Combat Specialist Achievement (360)

You get an achievement for doing every combo in the game, I have made up a spreadsheet so you can check them off as you do them here:

http://www.rememberteh.name/PrinceofPersiaComboChecklist.xls

What I HATE about Steam.

While I love Steam for the great service it provides to gamers there are a few things that I hate about it.

Here are some of them (Will update later as I think of them)

• Games won't download/update while you are in-game - Say you just bought S.T.A.L.K.E.R. cause it was on sale for $3.74 (like I just did :P), it's 5gb so it's a fair download. You think "Hey this is gonna take 3hrs to download" (according to the steam estimated time) so you decide you'll play some Half-Life 2 (keeping in mind this game is singleplayer only!) After playing Half-Life 2 for a few hours you conclude "Surely S.T.A.L.K.E.R. must be downloaded by now!" so you quit Half-Life 2 all ready to play and what the - lo and behold Steam has decided that it would pause your download because you were in-game! A singleplayer game!!! This applies to LAN games too of course, even if I was on a net game I wouldn't mind Steam just limiting the download to 10kb/s less than max or so to stop me maxing my connection and having a smooth gameplay experience.
• Games Updating in the Launch Window Restart When You Close it - If you try to launch a game, and it starts updating, if you close that window, instead of updating in the background, it starts over in the background. This means all the time and bandwidth used goes to waste. It should continue updating from what it had already downloaded. (Josh pointed this one out) 
  
• If you copy GCFs over Steam will complain you don't have enough space when that's irrelevant - If you have Steam open and you have 10gb free and you copy over someones 7gb of Team Fortress 2 gcfs then Steam will not automatically pickup that you have it, you have to go to Team Fortress 2 in the Store and click "Install". Steam will then complain you don't have 7gb free space even though that's irrelevant as you already have the files and refuse to go any further, it should check to see if you actually have the GCFs already or not before it complains at you.

Default File Formats in Office 2007

Does anyone else hate that when you install Office 2007 it defaults to the new format in all the programs? This small registry fix will set the defaults to Office 2003 compatible files so users on older versions of office, office alternatives and other operating systems can view your files.


http://www.rememberteh.name/DefaultOffice2007.reg

This registry will change the defaults for the following programs:
Microsoft Access 2007
Microsoft Excel 2007
Microsoft Powerpoint 2007
Microsoft Word 2007

Be sure none of them are running when you run the registry file or the default format for the app you have running won't be changed.

Wrath of Lich King for Free

Follow the old guide to install WoW Burning Crusade 2.4.3 and after you have it:

Make a copy of your WoW folder:



Rename it to "WoW Lich King" (or whatever):


Open up regedit from start - run and navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Blizzard Entertainment\World of Warcraft

Change the install path to the folder you just made.

Now install Lich King from CD/DVD or from Internode:
World of Warcraft: Wrath of The Lich King Client.

You will need to patch to v3.0.2 for private servers, here is the patch process:

World of Warcraft v3.0.1 to v3.0.2 US/Aus Patch
then
World of Warcraft v3.0.2 to v3.0.3 US/Aus Patch


You will now be patched to version 3.0.3 which is what private servers for lich king currently run on.

The server I am playing Lich King on is an Australian one which was actually the very first WoW private server I played on, amazingly it's not only still around but has a domain name and a flashy website now!

Head over to WoC Server to register for it.

Now the last thing you need to do is set your realm list.
1) Go to your Lich King directory.
2) Go into the folder Data
3) Go into the folder enUS
4) Open up the file named "realmlist.wtf"
(Note: You can open it with any default text editor, I recommend Notepad)
Replace the entire data in it with the following data:


set realmlist realm.wocserver.org


3) Run World of Warcraft and start playing!

World of Warcraft for Free

Since i'm in Australia the links will be best for Australians (yay internode) but overseas people may wish to visit Fileshack or something, I don't know.

Get WoW 2.0.0 here:
World of Warcraft US/AUS Trial Client 2.0.0

Then get Burning Crusade (The WoW expansion) here:
World of Warcraft US/AUS Trial Client 2.0.0 -> The Burning Crusade

Now get the following patches and install them in order:

World of Warcraft 2.3.0 US/AUS Patch

World of Warcraft 2.3.0 to 2.3.2 US/AUS Patch

World of Warcraft 2.3.2 to 2.3.3 US/AUS Patch

World of Warcraft 2.3.3 to 2.4.0 US/AUS 'Fury of the Sunwell' Patch

World of Warcraft v2.4.0 to v2.4.1 US/AUS Patch

World of Warcraft v2.4.1 to v2.4.2 US/Aus Patch

World of Warcraft v2.4.2 to v2.4.3 US/Aus Patch

You will now be at v2.4.3 which is what you need to play on WoWScape, the largest free WoW server network.

Register for an account at http://account.scapegaming.com/register.php

Now the last thing you need to do is set your realm list.

1) Go to your World of Warcraft directory.

The default directory is (C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft)
(Note : You may have installed it in another directory depending on your preferences)

2) Open up the file named "realmlist.wtf"
(Note: You can open it with any default text editor, I recommend Notepad)
Replace the entire data in it with the following data:


set realmlist logon.wowscape.net


3) Run World of Warcraft and start playing!


Update: Now I have a guide to play Wrath of Lich King for free also :)

New Games

Just recently i've gotten:
The Sacred 2 Demo - A Diablo-esqe Action RPG,
World of Goo - A cool puzzle game where you have to build structures out of blobs,
Peggle Nights - The sequel to Peggle,
On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode One - The Penny Arcade action adventure game,
Trials 2: Second Edition - A fun motorbike game with over the top physics, sort of a 3D version of Elastomania without the elastic joints
and
Crazy Machines 2 - A sort of 3D version of The Incredible Machine.

An interesting collection of games to play no doubt.

Far Cry 2, Left 4 Dead, Fallout 3, Fable II, Gears of War 2 & Mirrors Edge are coming out within the next month.
Should be interesting.
Oh, and GTA IV comes out on PC next month.

Ubuntu "Fun"

Ok well I have installed Ubuntu 8.04 64-bit on my desktop (disc courtesy of Bucci).
First thing I did when I installed it was install the restricted ATI driver from the restricted driver manager, easy stuff.

Then I went ahead and edited the /etc/apt/sources.list to include all the commented out sources for non-free packages and whatnot, then I did:
sudo apt-get update
To update the list of all the packages, then:
sudo apt-get install wine
To install wine
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras
To install Flash, Java, MP3 Playback and all that fun jazz.

Now that I have MP3 playback I really wanted a good audio player, so I decided to get BMP which is basically an Amarok clone for Gnome:
sudo apt-get install bmpx
Once you install bmpx you need to go into it and tell it to use PulseAudio or it'll crash every time you try and play music (not exactly what you want it to do :P) so the menu you want is:
BMP -> Preferences then from the Audio System dropdown pick PulseAudio then click apply in the bottom right, now that's all good :D

To gain access to the "Advanced Desktop Effects Settings" go:
sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

Now that you have those, to enable Expose for the top right goto:
System->Preferences->Advanced Desktop Effects Settings->Window Management Section-> Scale->Bindings Tab
Look for a setting called "Initiate Window Picker For All Windows" and assign it to the top right :)

I wanted Task Manager to be setup like Windows, so I found this:
gconftool-2 -t str --set /apps/metacity/keybinding_commands/command_9 "gnome-system-monitor"
gconftool-2 -t str --set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/run_command_9 "Delete"
Now when you press ALT+DEL task manager will open :D

What a Great Night

I had the best night that i've had in ages, tonight I went out to Leigh's place since he's home from Canberra until Monday.

Andrew Brett, Camo, Shan, Stephen Taylor & Jessie Walton were there. I spoke to Andrew, Camo & Shan for ages and ages and we just hung out like we used to in school. It seems none of us have hung out with people from school much and we all agreed we need to hangout more. We spoke for ages and it was like 1:30 when Andrew went home, then Ash Smith rocked up cause he had just finished work. Leighs brother Glen was there too, obviously ;). He had two friends that I hadn't met before there too, Tim from Warrnambool and some other guy who I haven't heard of before. They were both pretty cool guys, all of us just sat around and talked for the night and it was damn fun. At about 3:30 we decided to call it quits and I took Shannon and Camo to Mc Donalds and then home. Shan lives right near where Lexx used to live which I found to be a pretty strange co-incidence, I wouldn't have known if I hadn't got lost trying to get out of his damn street. We went up 'Cameron Rs' (We figured it was a sign) and then I saw the milk bar near her old house and I knew how to get home, ftw!

Shan, Camo & Me sat around and watched the end of Miami Vice (looks like a bad movie :P), then the news which I learnt that the US stock market is 10 trillion in debt from. Shan kept saying "it's worth more than the US stock market" about everything. The news also had some thing about a house that was given away free on eBay, I wonder why they did that. Surely the land is worth something.

I found out that Camo is working at the place my mum told me to apply for work at (Snappers in greensy), would be awesome if I got the job and had shifts with him. Shan works at McDonalds in Diamo and said he can get me free stuff if he's on :o

It was a hell good night and Ash said he's going to get us to come out with him sometime soon so i'm looking forward to it :)

School Holidays Update

Lexx is going to be with me second week after all, so the new plans for the holidays are:
* Look for a job
* Take the A+ exam (don't know about money or if i'm even ready for it)

Yesterday I was playing Halo 3 on Live! and kicking some ass, I do approve of that game when Australians are playing. Unfortunately it went back to it's old ways and connected me to a USA game so I had to put up with terrible lag for one of my matches, the rest were all good though (aside from the huge amount of time it takes Match Making to put you into a new game). I've only just discovered that Bungie are making a new campaign for Halo 3 called Mythic, I wonder what it's about. Jack speculated that it may be about the remaining spartans and judging from the trailer it seems to be set on earth so that would make sense. I was planning on playing some more Halo this week but that's alright, got plenty of other commitments.

I've watched the new episodes of Heroes, Supernatural & Smallville and I must say they're all off to good starts for the new seasons. Supernatural especially :O

I've had a good weekend- no stress, no people relying on me to do things, I could just kick back and relax and do absolutely nothing lol - no commitments ftw

The things i'm looking forward to most are: Fable 2, next weeks TV shows & surprisingly, getting a job so I can get some damned money :P

Blog Updated

Ok I felt like starting up my blog again so I've given it a modern Blogger template so now posts have titles and you can make comments on them. Previously there was a service that hosted comments for the blog offsite but that has since been discontinued and all comments made on my previous posts are gone forever.

I've just gone through all my posts and given them titles so the archive menu is now able to be navigated properly.

I do plan on posting more now but things don't always goto plan :P

Consult http://agret.tumblr.com/ for random crap I find :)

Also, subscribe to the RSS for this blog.

Thanks,
Andrew

School Holidays

First week of the school holidays are over, i've spent the majority of my time with Lexx. We've just been hanging out at my house being stupid and whatnot. Josh's sister got married this week :D perfect weather for it too, he said the wedding was pretty good (he was bestman, lucky guy :P). This week sometime I plan on going on a trip with Nakkari & Cabel which should be pretty exciting (yay roadtrip!). Only problem is that i've been tasked with organizing when and where we go and i'm pretty crap at organizing things, no less organizing a trip somewhere. I've never really looked into places to go or accommodation or anything so that should be an interesting thing to do, especially trying to find accommodation at short notice. A friend suggested that maybe we can go camping, although I don't have a terrible amount of space in my car lol

Things I planned for these holidays:
* Chill at Aaron/Reubens place (need to see you guys more :P)
* Learn reverse engineering (bah, i'll never get around to that one)
* Roadtrip (decisions, decisions)
* Look for a job
* Take the A+ exam (don't know about money or if i'm even ready for it)
* Catchup with some people I don't normally see (doesn't look like I have time, oh well :P)

I think I had some other stuff in mind but I can't remember any of it so, whatever.

To elaborate on some of those points, Reverse engineering has always seemed pretty interesting to me but i've never bothered to get to it as it seems time consuming and heavily math based and i'm no good at math so I always procrastinate it and say i'll do it on the holidays :P

Taking the A+ exam is somewhat vital to my future employment but I believe there are 2 exams you need to sit to get it and they each cost $300 to take so I wouldn't want to fail one and have to pay more :x

Looking for a job is something i've been meaning to do but keep putting off because I don't really know what I want to do. It's kind of got to the stage where it doesn't matter what i'm doing, as long as they pay me though so i'll just take anything I can get accepted into.