Anyone who's actually followed my blog knows that waaaay back in like October my gaming desktop kicked the bucket. I really wanted to fix it but could never motivate myself to because I have my xbox 360 and laptop to sate my needs. Well finally I got it fixed and god damn how did I live with out it?! Unfortunately the old motherboard and HDD are basically gone, but in their place I have an even faster motherboard and a 1TB HDD, which is a sexy amount of data.

I'm honestly not sure how I can use that much, I mean I game a lot but really I can't actually see myself using all of 1TB. I mean even if every game I ever play is ten gigabytes, a ridiculous exaggeration,that's still over ninety games. Rad. The new motherboard is nice too. It's been playing all my games just as fast as the last one, which includes Crysis maxed a 1680x1050, no AA, at around an average of 30-40 fps depending on the locale. I mean it's almost 2 years old now so I'm definitely not going to knock it if it stutters a tiny bit on those ridiculously huge Crysis locales at max, and it never dips to unplayable. Also this board supports HD audio, faster internet connections, and even more RAM, though I already am running 8 gigs of DDR2 so really I can't see that being a big deal for quite a while.

It's really nice to get back into all those games my laptop couldn't run, or at least run well enough to make it worth it. This basically includes games like Crysis, TF2, World in Conflict. Not that TF2 is the best looking game ever but playing online with 32 people made it run like a slideshow. Even Dragon Age was crawling on it at all low settings. Of course on the desktop it yawns and runs Dragon Age maxed at a solid 60 fps. That game really does look much much nicer, though like I said way back in my last blog post, it's still no looker.

So lets see, I've played a lot of games since my last blog post, I'll just go over each briefly, starting with Mass Effect 2. God it was great. The main story felt a little quick, but theyadded morecompelling characters and dialogue, fixed menu systems, gunplay that was so much better, and it suffers from much less technical issues. It's by no means perfect but damn it was quite a ride. I got into a lot of debate with people on whether or not it ME2 is in fact an RPG.I can at least understand that opinion, as it is much more focused on the gunplay than the last game. However I feel it has really succeeded at what the first set out to do: be a shooter/RPG hybrid. In ME1 gunplay didn't really feel very strong, because your guns did relatively little damage and there was really no effect for hitting anyone in a specific body part. It's largely been resolved in this game, and it keeps enough of it's RPG elements to still qualify as an RPG. Especially of course in the traditional sense, where you are really Role-Playing.

Before that I played Bayonetta and Darksiders. Bayonetta was a hilariously good time. This game is so epicly cheesy I can't get enough of it. Plus there's a ton of replayability and unlockables and even more difficulties to play. The one thing I didn't like was the last chunk of story, when the game suddenly starts taking the story seriously, even though it's crazier than a banana sandwich. The gameplay is a blast and I can just skip those melodramatic moments anyway so it's not much of a complaint.

Darksiders was definitely a great game too, though it really bothered me that they ripped off so much from other games. Everyone pretty much knows that already by now though. For what it's worth, I still enjoyed it, and found it's story interesting enough to get into, even if War tries his best to be unlikeable the whole game. The game felt short though, for a Zelda-esque experience at least. I managed about 14 hours and I think I found most of the unlockables. Overall it's still a great game but really it's just something to tide us over until more Zelda comes out.

I've been recently playing a lot of Bad Company 2 and I must say this is a great game. The graphics for starters, are really good. The jungles especially feel realistic, very believable canopy and foliage is where this game shines. The one thing I thought was hilariously bad though were water effects. The standing water looks decent enough but rain and waterfalls look downright ugly. I did play the 360 version so I'm not sure if it's any better on PC. The story's about as generic as they come too, but really it's still a battlefield game and battlefield is all about multiplayer. Just as a quick reference point, it's basically what Modern Warfare 2 should have been. The gameplay is far more balanced, the leveling system isn't as inherently broken, though it still sucks in my opinion, and there are way less bugs and exploits. I've only played about 3 hours of MW2 online and that's about all I need to. It was very disappointing compared to the first, much like Gears 1 to Gears 2 was multiplayer-wise. I hope Battlefield 3 comes out soon but any fan of the series will love BC2.

And lastly I caved and bought Pokemon Heartgold. As a complete fan of the original blue and red, I was skeptical of the original gold, but I bought it and was pleasantly surprised. I didn't want any of the other ones though, because pretty much after the original 250, design just started getting lazy. I mean take pokemon like Pikachu for example. It looks like a cute bunny/mouse that shoots electricity. It's a great design, great enough that pikachu is basically the icon of the franchise. Conversely, can anyone seriously tell me with a straight face the pokemon Arceus is memorable, beside the fact that it's supposedly pokemon god? Or Giratina? Or any of those newer dragon types?Can anybody even tell me just what the **** Bronzor is supposed to be?I feel like the creators have basically run out of ideas, and are just slapping any random shapes to eyes and calling it the next pokemon, just to have more. Now so far I'm really enjoying Heartgold, I just got past the elite 4 (really 5). I'm starting to get into the newer pokemon areas in Kanto though, and so far I am not especially pleased with the truly messed up pokemon I am seeing.

Anyone want to recommend another PC game to play? I've been dying for a new game ever since I got it fixed. Let me know.

TL; DR

fixed computer, played some games, recommend me a newer PC game.