Silver Lining

Yeah, so Hunted: The demon's forge is not a very good game at all.  The good news is that Duke Nukem forever is so skull fuckingly horrible that I can actual play Hunted and get some value out of it now.

Hunted is a dreary slog utterly devoid of charm and two of the worst, most hackneyed characters imaginable, but compared to the utter garbage that is Duke Nukem Forever, it's a godsend.

I still can't fathom how it came out THAT BAD.  Sure I expected it to be garbage, but not as bad as it is.  Between the tiny uninspired levels, the unbearable load times, the soul-less monotonous combat, dated last gen graphics, and dialogue that would've embarrassed me as an eight year old, I just couldn't bear to finish it, which says a lot because I finished Wall-E.

Hunted kind of reminds me of "Dark Sector", just not anywhere close to as fun with forced co-op jammed in, and godawful fantasy instead of generic sci fi.

Forced Co-op wasn't a good idea in resident evil 5 either....or army of two.  Granted in that last one the ridiculous co-op was its only selling point.

A better question would be why I'm playing any of this shit when I have a stack of legitimately great games sitting on my desk waiting to be finished.  Who fucking knows.

Also Dungeon Defenders is fucking rad.

Bastion

Just making a quick post to say that Bastion was one of the most memorable, touching and unique game experiences I've had in such a long time. I feel truly blessed to have had a chance to play it and the soundtrack will probably haunt me for months. Such a simple game and yet so much more soul than anything that has come out recently.

it's like the creepers know I nerfed their block damage on my server! I swear to god the little fuckers are waiting around every corner trying to kill me now in revenge.

Edit: Y'know, now that I've made them damage blocks again and started a new hard survival server they don't seem nearly as troublesome.  Maybe it's just because I'm always on the lookout for them.

Fresh new heat pipes!

Note to system builders: The thermaltake frio CPU cooler is a hellish monstrosity, but it does its job amazingly well. So much better than the stock cooler my CPU came with that it's almost as if I wasn't using anything before by comparison.

I've gone from 30 degrees C idling to anywhere from 50-60 at full load to 24 idling and 35 full load. Literally the best I could get was 24 in a room with windows open to the winter air, now it hovers at that while I type this in a pleasantly heated room.

I think I may have applied the thermal grease improperly however, as it was literally cemented to the CPU when I disassembled my system, scared the shit out of me when I pulled the heat sink up and the CPU came with it. I'm assuming my Arctic silver went bad, because a little google searching suggests that they have a shelf life of 18 months before it begins to settle, and mine was...shit...five or more years old? The thermaltake grease will do fine for now, not really concerned about that, just glad my new girl is up and running much cooler now.

That and the stock cooler was just...god awful. But they always are, they're meant to do just enough to get by under the best of conditions.

Oh, also, on full load it runs quieter than my case fans, which isn't saying much because those things are hellish monstrosities as well.

Seriously, measure your case before you buy this thing, it's literally the size of a chihuahua.

Hal

Fresh new pipes!

My first post on a new internet connection. Well my first post in a long time. I've only had AT&T DSL running for a few hours now, but already I've noticed an amazing connection quality difference. Considering the bandwidth is technically much lower than my former Broadstripe connection I'm not even sure how that is possible. My only regret so far is not switching way back when Millenium first decided to change to Broadstripe and "upgrade" their systems. My connection has gotten worse and worse since that day. The icing on the cake is that by the time my promotional pricing is over, the savings over Broadstripe will pay for the modem cost a hundred times over. Well not really, but $65 with broadstripe versus $25 with AT&T is still $480 dollars in savings in that first promotional year, and then $240 every year after that when AT&T goes back up to the standard $45 for the elite dsl without phone service.

And despite what I've heard, the customer service is way better. Hell the fact that they didn't just drill a fucking hole into my wall to pipe in the cable line is a huge step in the right direction, but I had all my connection issues sorted out in 15 minutes over the phone, which is amazing. After dealing with Microsoft over the phone earlier in the year I expected the worst.

I say that the bandwidth is lower, but you can never really be sure with cable, I could range anywhere from 10-4 mb/s down 0.1-1 mb/s up over a day, with DSL it's a constant 5 down-0.7 up, and I sort of appreciate that.

But enough with the add campaign, I'm sorry about that. I'm just really happy to not only have an internet provider that doesn't blow chunks, but a cheaper provider to boot.

I'm trying to get myself back on track after some trying issues, will report more frequently in the future.

Hal

Windows performance index?

See, this is why WPI is kind of silly. If my computer could score a 5.5 out of 7.9 with two gigs of first generation DDR, something must be seriously wrong with the grading scale. I mean honestly, what could be worse that could actually run windows 7?

I'm a little surprised that my processor scored the worst honestly. I expected my ancient tiny hard drives would be the deal breaker.

Windows 7 is both awesome and bittersweet, it's beautiful and all but it marks the retirement of good old AzureShadow. I'll post the new one when I get it put together, and y'know, think of a name for it. hahaha.

Edit: Not bad

pfft

Price hike for xbox live? A service which literally does nothing that isn't available for free everywhere else? No thanks. I think I'll start putting my money back into my computer instead.