Saturday, December 27, 2008

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.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

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:

Sunday, December 21, 2008

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.

Wednesday, December 03, 2008

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.