The Pirate Bay Raided!

It seems to spread all over the web... so I'm not going to cover the whole story here. If you do not yet know what is going on and want the bones of the tale, check out this article.

Awful news for 'us file sharers', but I suppose this state of affairs will not last forever: a few weeks, maybe a month and they'll be back. It will not be another Suprnova or - even worse - Lokitorrent. Or so I (and Diggnation too) hope.

Edit: their site now states: SITE DOWN - WILL BE UP AND FULLY FUNCTIONAL WITHIN A DAY OR TWO... Sa-weet.

Technorati Tags: News, TPB, Bittorrent.

Game: Hitman Blood Money

Woohoo another game up for review.

I've never actually played any other game from the series, but this one seemed really good so I had to pick it up and try it.

Story-wise I think the game is great. The atmosphere and locations are really cool. And the assignments you have to fullfill are really original too (GTA for grown-ups if you will).

Pros:

• Graphics are nice.
• Story is cool, nice movies and great objectives.
• Music is good but nothing special.

Cons:

• You might not like the genre: not enough action maybe?
• You might not like hitmen...

Technorati Tags: Games, Action, Stealth, Review.

Chop The Head Off

I've changed my header image... I like this one better. Of course, the image was stolen somewhere from the Internet (sorry Internet guy who made this). The title however was added by myself and my mad MSPaintzor skills.

Lots of fun.

Technorati Tags: Personal Blog Design.

Game: Rise Of Nations: Rise Of Legends

I finally got the chance to play a bit Rise Of Legends (ROL) this week. This game had a lot of expectations to it... but was it worth the wait? (This sounds real reviewy doesn't it?)

The answer is yes and no: first, the story... it's not a story that will draw you in from the very beginning. The music is supports the gameplay but does not feel epic or anything.

The graphics and atmosphere however: are great. The combination between fantasy and science fiction works nice in my opinion. The three races are all unique enough to offer an interesting perspective on the game.

If you have played the first RoN games, you will not really be surprised: gameplay and strategy have been polished up here and there, but can still provide amusing and fun game sessions.

To sum the lot up:

Pros:

• Great art design and graphics!
• Balanced and cool gameplay.
• Cool units and tech trees.
• Tactical map in the campaign is nice but not overdone.
• Multiplayer is nice.

Cons:

• Please give us a better soundtrack.
• You will need a fairly bad-ass machine to run it.
• It's not very different from the original or ground-breaking in general.

If you were not a fan of the original games or RTS games in general, you should not pick up this one. If you loved the first games or you like nice art consider it a good choice.

Technorati Tags: Games, RTS, Review.

Game: Heroes Of Might And Magic 5

I must admit that I never played any other game from the HHOMM series before. (Except maybe number two or three at a friends house for a few hours). But I have played another game from the same developer: Etherlords 2, which I liked quite a lot. (Well: I liked to duels.)

HHOMM 5 (notice the Copyright 2005 in the footer) looked like much more of the same, but in fact it is a nice game. Especially recommended if you're a fan of turn-based strategy, tactics and previous HHOMM games.

So again: a quick rundown:

Pros:

• Nice graphics (you need a fairly strong rig to run it).
• Nice gameplay.
• variety in the units.
• Strategic battles.
• Can be very difficult.
• Not your average RTS game.

Cons:

• Not your average RTS game.
• Can be very difficult.
• May get boring after a while.
• You might not like the genre.

P.S.: Remember GTA SA MP? It is not very good. Lags like a bitch. Check out the video's at MTA. Will be much better in my humble opinion.

Technorati Tags: Games, RTS, Review, Turn Based.

SA: MP Out

The first public official version of SA: MP (a multiplayer mod for GTA: San Andreas) has been released. Their website is being digged at the moment but you can download it from a mirror.

I'm going to post about this a little more later. When there are more servers online.

MTA, you have been beaten. How long before these guys release their deathmatch client... shouldn't be long now I recon.

Technorati Tags: Games, Multiplayer, GTA, Software.

VLC 0.8.5 Released

Just saw this on Digg: best media player just got an update.

Technorati Tags: Multimedia Player, Open Source, VLC.

Motherboard Woes

Recenty I added a second Opteron CPU and 2Gb more RAM to my Tyan Thunder motherboard, bringing the total to 4Gb.

Windows however, decided that it would only detect 2,75Gb. While booting, the BIOS nicely displayed 4Gb. What the...?

Booting with Linux live CD: same problem.

Searching a lot with Google: 'memory hole' setting in the 'hammer configuration'. A lot of people are having this problem and proposing various solutions.

What worked for me: (1) flash motherboard to latest version, finding a working Win98 boot disk was a real pain. (2) If your CPU has a stepping 'Cx' ('x' standing for any letter), put 'memory hole' option in BIOS on 'software', otherwise, put it on 'hardware'.

After booting Windows XP Professional: same problem. Trying with an Ubuntu 64 bit live CD... it works! (3) Installing Windows x64. Now it works in Windows too.

So main problem was a 32 bit OS. Bottom line: if you have a 64bit CPU, do not bother to install a 32 bit OS anymore (like I did), even if the emulation is perfect etcetera...

I hope my experience was useful to anyone (I had a much nicer post written out, but due to Internet Explorer popup blocker while spell-checking, I've lost it. Firefox' blocker is much better, it doesn't automatically reloads the page after allowing popups, but silently waits until you try again.)

P.S.: indeed, my Windows x64 came with pre-baked SP2... Damn. Patching TCP half-open connection limit, completely disabling security center. Stupid new Internet Explorer settings... I hate SP2.
I also had to but the 'MAC LAN Bridge' options to 'Enable' in the BIOS for the Windows drivers to detect my ethernet controllers. I had not to do this in Windows XP (32 bit).

Technorati Tags: Motherboard, Troubleshooting, Hardware, Howto.

Game: Dreamfall: The Longest Journey

I've finished Dreamfall yesterday (after a long-night-session). It was great.

I am not going to give any spoilers, but if you like science-fiction, fantasy, adventure games, or even movies (since you will feel you are playing a movie) you should pick up this game and play it until you see the (fantastic) ending.

The graphics are great too. Be warned though that you need a farely recent PC to be able to play it. Various users have reported graphical glitches. I haven't had any problems with it however (running in 1600x1200 in full AA and quality).

The music is amazing too. There might be a soundtrack out soon, but until then I've been ripping the 300Mb worth of MP3 music out of the PAK files (use Dragon Unpacker 5 with Hyperripper).

I have provided a mirror for Zoe's ringtone. (The last 4 hex values were added: the ringtone will loop and play correctly.)

If you want a full, better-written review, check out Greg Kasavin's article.

As you can notice, I've added a small video advertisement on the right, there even is a Spread Dreamfall website, you should help them sell 500 000 copies!

Pros:

• Amazing story, you will play this from beginning to end with awe.
• Beautiful setting and graphics. You will want to live in Casablanca of the future.
• Music is fantastic (some of it by the group Magnet). I've spend the whole afternoon extracting it from the game, and I will certainly buy the soundtrack.
• Finally: another good adventure game.

Cons:

• You may experience graphical glitches.
• You need a lot of space on your main partition (probable C:) if you're running Windows x64, this is a known bug and will probably be patched.
• It's not an action game, it may not be your thing.
• A tad short, alas.
• A lot of questions remain unanswered, so we will have to wait until the third (and probably final) part comes out... the waiting will be hard.

Technorati Tags: Games, Adventure, Review, Dreamfall.