Apocalypso's Atomic Arcade

3 Years Running!

2012-01-24T21:19:00.001+02:00

Apocalypso’s Atomic Arcade is my first ever blog.

After writing on HubPages for a few months, I went about learning the ins and outs of Blogger/Blogspot. AAA was a guinea pig of sorts where I tested things out. Every conceivable widget out there was added in to this blog, and I had nothing but copy and paste stories mainly from other gaming blogs and websites, before finally settling on writing more original content, which actually worked a bit more in my favour as it turns out.

AAA is a place where I can publish all my weird and wacky observations about games, gaming, and other such things. I’ll likely never shut it down as long as I live. Over the past while I’ve slowly been taking a look at my blog and getting rid of superfluous crap that isn’t needed and sort of starting from scratch; tidying things up a bit. I actually prefer going for a more minimalist approach nowadays to having a lot of space taken up by rubbish.

So maybe in the near future we’ll see an unpolluted AAA, near as can be to being new and fresh again.

Hopefully this year is going to be a good one. I need to give it my all. I’ve got various projects on the go – some have been dormant for a while and need to be resurrected, and others actually have yet to be brought to life finally. More and more websites out there beckon my attention as a self-proclaimed “online adventurer”; publisher; supposed freelancer.

I mean, after all, 2012 might be my last year to get all of this done, if the end-is-nigh predictions are anything to go by. It also just so happens as it is that January 24 is D-Day for this SOPA and PIPA business – whether it is put in to motion or not.

RoboDuke: The Story of RoboCop and Duke Nukem

2012-01-22T21:23:00.001+02:00

When Duke Nukem II came out in 1993 when 2D sidescrollers were being quickly replaced by pseudo-3D shooters like Doom, we saw Duke Nukem in a firing range taking shots at a target. This was a scene that was in homage to RoboCop so they say – a film and character not often associated with Duke Nukem along with all his other pop culture references and inspirations.

Joe Siegler did the voice for the character who uttered the phrase: “I’m back!” which is obviously a reference to Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

Duke Nukem’s name is often said to have been used in the first game and later changed to Duke Nukum later on after it was discovered that there was an action figure with the same name. But it was found out later that this character’s name was not trademarked and so Apogee went back to using the name Nukem instead.

But where did they get the name Nukem in the first place? RoboCop. If you’ve seen the film and watched through you’ve have noticed a scene where a TV commercial is seen, which depicts a family playing a modernised boardgame of sorts. This game turned out to be called “Nukem”. And the font used was similar to how it would appear in the early Duke Nukem games. Probably later, Duke was used because it’s not only a cool sounding name, but it rhymes with the surname too.

So this is just an interesting thing I thought I would bring to your attention. Hell, it could even be argued that Duke even looked a bit like Alex J. Murphy in the film. Maybe that’s why he started wearing the sunglasses.

Classic Game Collecting: Diablo II Gold

2011-12-13T21:33:00.001+02:00

I’ve been looking at all the brochures that come with the newspapers just lately, seeing as it’s Christmas soon. I also went online to view several retail websites, too. Why? to see all the games on offer, of course.

One thing caught my eye though: Diablo II Gold. In preparation for the release of Diablo III, Blizzard seems to have re-released a lot of their classics, but in some killer bundles. In addition to Diablo II, there’s StarCraft Gold and WarCraft III Gold – and these all come with the available expansions for said games.

Then it was off to the actual stores to take a look. At most places, such as Musica, CNA, and Look & Listen, I mainly spotted the expansion pack, Lords of Destruction, and the price was usually around R99.

Eventually I had to ask a salesperson if they had the Gold edition I was looking for in stock. It wasn’t even on the shelves. They’d been hiding copies in the back room. But I managed to get one for R99. And to think that on the shelves, they had either Diablo II or the expansion pack both going for the same price, separately. One wonders if they intentionally try to screw you over, sometimes. So instead of getting both for R198 and upwards, Diablo II Gold is at least half price.

Score. Now I’m going to play this old classic along with all the mods and unofficial expansions that have been made over the years. Like I always say, sometimes it pays to wait – in this case more than a decade.

2011: Full of Video Game Anniversaries

2011-12-06T21:05:00.001+02:00

In the latest issue of NAG magazine, I had a rare read of Miktar’s column. In addition to being a columnist and overseas correspondent (East coast of the USA), he is also a former moderator on the NAG Online forum – although was shunted out of the job, probably because he was a massive troll, according to some. It was bad for business.

But he brought up an interesting conversation piece. 2011 is chock full of anniversaries relating to video games. Landmark, revolutionary titles that paved the way for all the games you play today.

Let’s have a look at those he listed:

30th Anniversary: Ultima, Castle Wolfenstein, Frogger, Ms. Pacman

25th Anniversary: The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Castelvania

20th Anniversary: Street Fighter II, Sonic the Hedgehog, Civilization

15th Anniversary: Resident Evil, Pokémon, Diablo, Tomb Raider, Crash Bandicoot

10th Anniversary: Grand Theft Auto III, Halo, Devil May Cry

The ones I care about most here are probably Castle Wolfenstein (without it we wouldn’t have had Wolf 3D, RTCW, and every other game that followed in that series); Frogger (played it a hell of a lot as a child); Street Fighter II (hailed as one of the best fighting games of all time – the measuring stick to which all other fighters to this day are compared); Sonic the Hedgehog (come on…); Resident Evil (made survival horror the popular genre that it is – or was, anyway); Tomb Raider (without it, you probably wouldn’t have Uncharted, maybe even Assassin’s Creed either); Crash Bandicoot (played this a lot as a kid, too); Grand Theft Auto III (one of the best games ever).

But suspiciously there were a few left off the list at some point. I think most of the games he mentioned were released in November or December (I know because I looked them up). So there was some sort of trend he was adhering to.

I’d add in Duke Nukem 3D. It’s the last truly great game in that series, which even DNF failed to topple this year. Released at a time when people still used the term “Doom Clone”, it proved that it wasn’t just another rip-off title – it was THE rip-off title; the undisputed king of rip-offs, taking “inspiration” from several films and other games, as well as pop culture. But it had enough going for it to make it pound for pound the best FPS I’ve played to date, honestly.

Quake wasn’t brought up either. Major oversight there. Also released in 1996 like DN3D, it was the first fully 3D FPS, and debuted the Quake engine. Without this engine, we might not have had every other id Tech engine released to date, and probably every other id game released to date, either. Every Doom, Quake, and even Wolfenstein title to follow used a version of the id Tech engine. Many, many games from other developers to date have used id Tech engines as well. You wouldn’t even have Call of Duty, seeing as all CoD games to date have used snippets of id Tech code in the engines that power them.

Final Doom. All right, so it was a glorified double expansion pack for Doom II: Hell on Earth – but what expansion packs at that!

The Plutonia Experiment was particularly challenging. Created by the Casali brothers, it made Doom and Doom II seem like child’s play for the most part. TNT: Evilution wasn’t that spectacular, but it did see one of the most beloved guys at id get hired – and that man is Tim Willits, who still serves as creative director at id today. He started off as just a mapper, and fan of the original games.

If anything, Final Doom showed that fans could make a decent game, filled with challenging maps and maybe tad innovation that impressed developers so much that they hired them and put them on the payroll. This trend has continued to this day, with modders and mappers being picked from the modding community and given jobs. You often see this with companies such as Valve – Valve is predominantly made of former modders.

So anyway, 2011: what a year – for new games and old!

400th Episode of The Verge, The Verge Turns 3

2011-11-22T20:53:00.001+02:00

If you haven’t heard of or seen The Verge before, it’s a show about video gaming on DSTV, channel 123 (Vuzu). It’s been running for nearly the past 3 years, since late 2008. Wednesday the 23rd of November, 2011 marks the 400th episode of this show.

Yes, 400 episodes of news; trailers; reviews; looking at Pippa and her various “interesting” hairstyles; changing timeslots; putting up with Mo (and more recently Thomas), and even the odd bit of the old mockery from Lala – odd coming from a show whose target audience happens to be gamers.

The 400th episode will have reviews on Rage, Battlefield 3, and will feature Pippa’s top 5 iPhone games.
December 1st marks the show’s 3rd birthday – but there likely won’t be an episode of either The Verge or PlayR on that night, seeing as Dec 1 is a Thursday, and neither show airs any episodes on a Thursday.

Source: The Verge

New Review Published: Stealth Bastard

2011-11-17T21:54:00.001+02:00

The latest and biggest thing to hit the indie PC game scene is Stealth Bastard. You’ve read about it; you’ve heard of it; you’ve played it. Yes, you have. It’s free. That’s how I know you know about it.

To summarise, it’s a freeware 2D platforming title developed by London-based developer, Curve Studios. It’s similar to Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell in theme, but more like Abuse (that old game for MS-DOS) or even Oddworld: Abe’s Odyssey in the way that it plays. There’s stealth, death, and that sort of thing, but much more fast-paced than any stealthy FPS title.

Anyway, I downloaded it recently and gave it a go, and managed to actually write a 1500 word review on it. Don’t quite know how, though. You can go through to the piece on HP, if you care.

Dead Cyborg Episode 2: Halfway To Release

2011-11-09T21:06:00.001+02:00

I was taking a look through my bookmarks and saw on Dead Cyborg’s Twitter account that Episode 2 of this free-to-play beggarware title is getting a little closer to being released. It’s halfway there to be exact – as far as donations go. Endre, the one-man developer behind the project, claims that the donation meter is 50% full.

The actual development on Episode 2 is coming along too. There was a trailer of it released not too long ago, and it’s looking pretty good. This time, the player ascends to the surface and sees first hand the aftermath of the apocalyptic war that took place, and drove people down in to bunkers in the first place.

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Source: Dead Cyborg on Twitter

Random Madness: Micro Doom

2011-11-01T21:00:00.001+02:00

This post marks the return of Random Madness here on AAA. I had some inspiration recently.

Windows XP has been around for a long time. I was just reading on Joystiq the other day in an article where it was said that it is in fact ten years old as of last month. After so many years of using Windows XP myself, I recently made the jump to using another version of Windows. On the laptop I acquired recently, I have installed on it Windows Vista. True, it’s not the latest Windows, or the best. Some call it the black sheep in the family.

Anyway, I had read about a feature that was first introduced in Vista that obviously wasn’t in any previous Windows that we know of: User Account Control, or UAC. Basically it ensures that programs run only when you want them to and that any sort of malware that attacks your system doesn’t have full control over what goes on, even if you’re running an administrator account.

Now the gamer in me instantly thought of something else when I read that acronym. The UAC is instrumental in the storyline of the Doom series. It stands for Union Aerospace Corporation. Now while the UAC’s background was only really expanded upon in Doom 3, it existed all ready in the original games in the early-mid 90’s.

Now knowing my inquisitive mind like I do, my thoughts started to wander if there was some sort of link or is it just coincidence? This wouldn’t be the only time there was a possible link between id Software’s Doom and Microsoft. More than a decade and a half ago, Bill Gates promoted Windows 95 by superimposing himself in to Doom and blasting some zombies. Doom was originally programmed to work in MS-DOS when released in 1993, but was still massively popular even years later.

Maybe this UAC feature was an homage of sorts to Doom. Windows UAC tries to limit malware attacks, much like Doom’s UAC tried in all Doom games to date to prevent the demonic invasion from hell – ultimately (get it? The Ultimate Doom?) it failed every time.

But seriously, don’t quote me on this. It’s all rubbish. Interesting to think of, though.

I’ve Become an Advisor at ShopSquad.com

2011-10-24T21:56:00.001+02:00

I received an email last month which looked like it had gotten through the spam filter. It talked about something called Shopsquad.com. I had apparently been invited to join this website.

So I thought I might join and see what it’s all about; maybe report back on progress in some time. So far I’ve written a couple of articles over at HubPages on the subject. There’s an introduction as well as tips on how to succeed using the tools provided for you at ShopSquad.

So come and chat to me over at ShopSquad.com under the nick “Andr01d” (same handle as my profile on HubPages). You never know – I might actually know a thing or two about video games. I’ve been playing them long enough. Otherwise I also deal in categories such as electronics, computers, etc.

Dead Cyborg Version 002 Released

2011-10-04T22:09:00.001+02:00

Dead Cyborg is a sci-fi title strictly focused on adventure and exploration – with no fighting, shooting, or any of that sort of thing. The first version of this freeware title was released a little while back, this year. The game had its faults, chief of which was the fact that it lacked mouse control. During development, this feature existed, but it was taken out somewhere down the line for some reason. The browser-based version of the game still has support for the mouse.

But as of just this month, there’s a new version of DC’s episode 1 available. Version 002 for Windows now has support for the mouse as well as the AZERTY keys, instead of using the directional keys next to the enter key – which have been gathering more dust than just about any other part of the keyboard, apart from the numpad, anyway.

If you haven’t given Dead Cyborg a try yet – do so. It’s not too bad – especially considering that it’s a one-man project. By the way, this game is what one might call beggarware. To ever have any hope of seeing episode 2 (about 50% complete right now), you have to donate – and Endre, the guy who makes this game, wants $4000 dollars total for it. That amount sounds more like he’s holding the game hostage!

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Sources:

http://www.deadcyborg.com/

http://www.deadcyborg.com/download_page.html

http://www.twitter.com/deadcyborg

Duke Nukem 3D: Reloaded Put on Hold

2011-10-01T10:01:00.000+02:00

This month there’s been a sudden slowdown in progress on the project formerly known as “DN3D: Next-Gen”, that began its life a year ago or so. For you who might have forgotten, it’s a standalone game using Unreal Engine 3, which is supposed to give Duke Nukem Forever a run for its money, not only in the looks department, but gameplay-wise too, hopefully. We all know that DN3D is still a better game than DNF! And to top if off, it has official backing by Gearbox Software – the new owners of the DN IP.

But September brings some bad news, as just over the weekend it was revealed by the team in charge of the project -Interceptor Entertainment, headed by Fresch AKA Frederick Schreiber- that DN3D: Reloaded is being put on hold until further notice. Reasons why this is happening weren’t made entirely clear from looking at the blog post on the official website, or the Facebook wall, but from visiting the thread on the forums it seems as though this ambitious project -which was originally conceived by just one man- has run in to licence issues – big surprise. We all knew it was too good to be true.

The last status update seems to indicate that the team was “around 90% finished with the multiplayer version” and was “in the final phase of the game, slowly starting the Beta phase”. In August they even took the game to Gearbox Software, and have had a “big media package, in-game trailer, and a Behind the Scenes documentary ready for some time but it’s not available for public viewing yet. But if what they say is anything to go by, it’s gonna be good if we ever get to see it, anyway.

It looks like the Duke Nukem curse was passed on from DNF, and is still alive and well.

NAG October 2011 Issue Out This Week

2011-09-29T23:36:00.001+02:00

The new NAG is on the shelf today. But the local 711 (now Friendly 711) near where I live says that it won’t be in on Thursdays from now on – they can only manage Fridays, maybe Saturday.

Maybe I’ve mentioned this before, but I read in the NAG years back that to get the NAG on Monday is impossible; Tuesday is rare; Wednesday is uncommon; Thursday is common; Friday is definite; and Saturday or Sunday means that you should try buying the magazine elsewhere in the future. I didn’t ever think I would fall in to the last category. But I have. I should really consider subscribing after all these years. You think I would have learned by now.

Anyway, this NAG has some special stuff in it. There’s a big Borderlands 2 feature – and if you know NAG, you’ll know they’re massive Borderlands fanboys, the lot of them.

There’s some “impressions” or a preview of StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, Darksiders II and The Darkness II (try not to get confused). There’s reviews of some worthwhile games for a change. Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Resistance 3, F.E.A.R. 3 – some good solid games there.

Unfortunately for the DVD, it seems that NAG has gone back to putting whatever they like on the DVD again, as for the life of me I can’t see a new DVD Suggestion thread on the forum – it used to be a sticky at the top of the “gaming” section. There was a lack of one last month, and this month it’s the same. It was mostly rubbish that was posted there anyway. People were asked to post direct links and they didn’t. Nobody reads anymore.

But I don’t even need the DVD anymore, seeing as I’ve still got that Cell C 5 GB p/m deal for the next several months – and I’m putting it to good use. I wonder why I just don’t stop buying the NAG altogether. You think I would have learned by now.

The DVD has the usual trailers, plus some new Pop Fiction videos – which I look forward to. There’s also the some Rage teaser clips and mp3s showing all of those who didn’t go just what they missed out on. Living in Cape Town sucks if you’re a gamer. Barely any LANs; no expos like Rage; full of jocks – this is starting to sound like that column from an issue or two ago. Stop it.
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http://www.nag.co.za/
http://www.nag.co.za/forums/showthread.php?17607-NAG-October-2011-issue

The Dark Mod Halloween Competition is now on

2011-09-21T02:24:00.001+02:00

It’s been dry over at The Dark Mod HQ for months now. The version 1.06 update was in June, and the last fan mission released was in July. And it finally happened: I finished almost all of the TDM missions out there, save for a few, which I didn’t like.

But I happened to check the main page yesterday, and noticed that there’s a new competition on. It’s the Halloween Speed Build Contest of 2011! I’ll be lazy and quote the text from the website, which explains it all perfectly:

“A new Halloween speed-build contest is underway! There are at least half a dozen mappers participating, including heavyweights Melan and Bikerdude.

The mission must have at least one element that evokes Halloween. Scary missions will be preferred but things like: playing tricks, finding candy, fall decoration (Gourds, Pumpkins, etc), Pagan harvest festivals, etc ... are all acceptable ways to evoke the holiday. Missions must be completed by October 31th.”

The “Halloween Speed Build Contest 2011” is the 4th contest hosted by the TDM team. The others in chronological order were “Grand Christmas Contest ‘09”, “Summer Vertical Contest ‘10”, and “Seasons Contest Spring ‘11” (which took place earlier this year).

At least this means that we’ll get some more good missions by the end of next month, and I have a reason to fire up TDM again! Like I said, I’ve finished most of them, even replaying them on different difficult levels, but I soon tire of doing the same mission again and again. My replays of Thief or Thief II were at least a year or two apart, until I discovered the FMs for T2, of which I’ve played a few.

Source:

TDM - TDM Halloween speed-build contest forum thread

NAG September 2011 Issue Out Now

2011-08-30T21:34:00.001+02:00

I went to the local convenience store On Thursday last week to pick up the NAG, and lo and behold, it wasn’t there. Friday I returned and it still wasn’t bloody there. Saturday I went back and finally, I managed to get it. So instead of doing anything constructive on a Saturday afternoon, I sat there watching all the trailers on the DVD. Don’t judge me.

And to add to all this, it wasn’t until later on in the week that they even got a post up on the main website’s blog, or on the forum about the September issue. Tsk tsk.

Still, I’ll tell you if this issue has anything worthwhile in it, if you haven’t bought it by now. There’s a feature on 10 games that changed the industry, as well as Diablo III – the fellas at NAG go mad over anything Blizzard. Then again, a lot of people do.

There’s a preview on Bodycount – a game that I sometimes confuse with Epic’s Bulletstorm, or maybe Brink. I think it’s the titles of these games. There’s a few lacklustre reviews on games such as Call of Juarez: The Cartel, which I knew was going to suck as it made a complete departure from the series theme. Then there’s Harry Potter: The Deathly Hallows: Part II – like the reviewer states: at least it’s the last one. The Sims 3: Generations doesn’t look like it ads much to the original game, unlike its previous expansions.

The DVD has a few good things on it. There’s the Cheatbook database 2011; There’s a few demos, including a demo of Harry Potter: The Deathly Hallows: Part II so you can try it out for yourself and see if it’s that terrible; there’s several free games too, and a soundtrack to be had, in addition to the usual trailers. If you’re looking for graphics card drivers for Windows XP, you won’t find them here. So you’ve gotta download ‘em yourself, seeing as NAG only does Vista and Windows 7 now.

Can anyone say “boycott”?

Check out the links below to get to NAG’s website and the forum thread dedicated to this issue. Highlights from the September issue thread: an off-topic argument that spans 2 or 3 pages, and has nothing to do with “what did you think of this issue?”.

By the way, the DVD suggestion thread for October isn’t up yet, as of publishing this post.

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NAG September 2011 issue

[NAG] September 2011 issue

New Review Published: Dead Cyborg

2011-08-22T21:40:00.001+02:00

Just this week I got my act together and published a new review, which has been sitting around for a week or two, practically finished.

It’s a review of Dead Cyborg, which was released late last month. I managed to play through it thoroughly over a couple of days recently.

Dead Cyborg is a donation based freeware title. How this works is the first episode of the game is released for free, as a teaser or demo of sorts. From there on, the next episode will only be made available once the donation meter fills up. And currently, Endre is looking to make $4000 dollars before releasing the second episode! That’s rather ambitious although he is all ready a third of the way there. I just wonder if I’ll ever get to review the second episode and beyond, though, with demands like that.

Dead Cyborg is a mix of old school text-based adventures, point ‘n click adventures and more modern sci-fi titles, such as the aforementioned System Shock games, BioShock, Fallout, etc. You can see several similarities in theme throughout the episode.

Anyway, head over to HubPages to check it out. I was going to publish this as one of my Thrifty Thursday pieces, but I much prefer HP for reviews because the layout is more customizable.

HubPages Turns 5 Years Old

2011-08-15T22:40:00.001+02:00

August is a special month to me for two reasons. Firstly, it’s the month that HubPages was originally founded back in 2006, and the content publishing, revenue sharing website turned 5 years old just the other day. August is also the month when I joined HubPages back in 2008, and I received a notification email in my inbox the other day telling me that I’d been a member for 3 years now. I can hardly believe it!

I’m not as active on there as I was back in say 2008 or 2009, but I’ve been gradually trying to get back in to publishing hubs. I’m also revising, editing, and updating a lot of my old articles, too. After the subdomain switch the other day, I began this process, and I’ve been adding photos and other content to existing articles that are two or three years old. And it’s worked – I’m seeing a slight increase in traffic to hubs, overall. So it’s good to see that the effort is rewarded.

I don’t make it a point to cover every HubPages story out there, but I certainly do still read the weekly HubPages newsletters, the blog, and of course I log in to my account from time to time, and occasionally post in the forum. I just thought that this month is reason to celebrate for at least two reasons, as I mentioned above.

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Source: HubPages’ 5th Birthday & The 2011 Hubbie Award Winners [HubPages blog]

Finally! Pippa has come back to The Verge!

2011-08-04T21:17:00.001+02:00

If you didn’t get it, that was supposed to be a reference -quote-wise- to The Rock, Dwayne Johnson.

Yes, it’s true. Pippa Tshabalala left The Verge for a few months, for reasons still unknown to me. In her place, Thomas Gumede hosted the show right from about January this year until now. That was a gruelling six months or so. Pippa still appeared on the show in some form doing some retro reviews of old gaming series, technology and the like, but wasn’t physically there in person, as far as I could tell. Likely just taped.

But on Monday and Wednesday night’s live episode of The Verge, I was actually pleased to see that Pippa is back! Never again will I complain about… practically everything about her. She’s nothing compared to Thomas anyway. Thomas is a special, one-of-a-kind person*.

Welcome back!

On a related note, Pippa now also writes for NAG magazine as a columnist and has been doing so for the past few months during her break from hosting The Verge.

* Sarcasm

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The Verge on Facebook

The Verge on Twitter

New Review Published: The Dark Mod

2011-07-30T21:23:00.001+02:00

You didn’t really think that verbose series of posts about this mod was the end, did you? Shame. You wanted a review; “ask and ye shall receive”. This will be the last time for the foreseeable future I post about this mod. Promise… until the next version of it comes out, anyway.

After playing Duke Nukem Forever last month, I decided it might be time to play something a little more intelligent – perhaps even subtle. What could be further from in-your-face, all-out action than a Thief title?

But The Dark Mod isn’t a Thief title – not officially. But it’s damn near the closest thing available out there for the time being, next to playing one of the original games or the numerous FMs for them, anyway.

Despite being released originally nearly two years ago in October 2009, I’ve only just played the mod - really a total conversion for Doom 3 – in the past month. This was version 1.06, released on June 19, 2011.

After spending some time getting reacquainted with sneaking through a place instead of shooting everything up, I set about writing a review of it over the past while, and assembling everything on HubPages just recently before publishing it. I’ve now got the piece up if you’d like to have a look – some of you all ready have. ;)

The Dark Mod Experience: Part II

2011-07-26T20:14:00.001+02:00

After the reformat, I obviously had to get everything in working order on my system. After some trouble with some programs, including the ATi drivers for my graphics card (I eventually had to roll back to a previous version), I was about ready to install Doom 3, and then after that, put TDM on my HDD. So after about half an hour or so, I had it all set up, and then ran the TDM launcher. I was at the main menu of this mod, which had eluded me for nearly two years since its release – and I’d craved to play it for about twice as long.

The only game I’d wanted longer than this was Duke Nukem Forever, which I also managed to play last month – and if you were wondering, sort of inspired this two-part series in a way. Yatta over at duke4.net wrote a series called “The DNF Experience”.

But there were problems once I tried to actually play the game. After installing one of the FMs and attempting to play it, the screen froze once the game was restarted, and I also noted that the Doom 3 intro screen flashed in front of me at one point. So I had to hit alt+ctrl+del and go back to the desktop. I tried firing up the launcher again, but then I ended up with a blank screen.

After this, I ran Doom 3 itself, and tried loading the mod from there, but that was also a no-go. I couldn’t figure out what to do.

I perused the TDM forum online to see if anyone else had the same problem, and came across some similar ones, and there were several suggestions thrown out – some pertaining to ATi drivers and other similar issues.

I really need to get rid of this graphics card and go back to nVidia. I rarely had any problems back then.

But I thought that since I’m only running v 1.3, I should really update it to v 1.6 to see if that would fix the error – I’d read of others having fixed problems this way. So I waited nearly another month.

A month later; I hadn’t played any games for weeks and I was starting to feel the strain. I needed a break from reality. I had just under half of my data left, so I took TDM off my HDD and put a clean version on there in the Doom 3 directory and ran the updater. It was so slow; it would have taken hours to get the process done. Even though I’ve since learned that the updater can resume downloads, I didn’t know that at the time. So I cancelled, and instead waited until the next day.

On the Monday, I ran the updater, and it was much faster. I was able to get all of 340 MB down and installed within an hour and a half. It only took longer than that, because while I was in the bath that evening (it’s winter here now – I don’t shower this time of year), my firewall started blocking the TDM updater’s access to the web. After allowing it through, it finished up, did a bit of housecleaning and patching, and it was done.

I then backed up the full v 1.6 and all the FMs I had at that point (about 35+). I wasn’t too sure if this would fix the problems I had with it, and instead of trying it, I left it for that night, instead opting to play some DNF.

Then the following night I had the courage to fire up the TDM launcher, and got to the main menu again. It had been weeks since I’d last been here. I installed just the included training mission, without loading in all the FMs to the appropriate folder, and TDM restarted. I was anticipating yet another blank screen or something. Then I saw a loading screen for the first time.

“I haven’t got this far yet,” I thought.

I crossed my fingers and waited. Bloody long loading times.

To my amazement, it happened - I was in the game. I was in the training mission – in the room with doors all around me. I couldn’t believe that running the updater actually worked! I thought I’d at least have to try the torrent again, or perhaps run the updater and grab the full 2 GB of TDM that way – which I hear is the most painless way of going about it.

I played the training mission a bit, and exited. I wanted to see if I could get back to the main menu again and not see a blank screen. I could.

It was working just fine.

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I always find that when I’m so eager to play a game or mod, then it’s like life chucks everything in front of me, not allowing me to have any fun. Whereas all the games I’m not so amped about work fine. Murphy’s, or Sod’s Law, I guess: if something can go wrong, it will.

But now I don’t play TDM. It sits there on my HDD. At first I didn’t want to play it or install any more FMs because I might’ve broken something, and I’d have to reinstall and it wouldn't work… again.

From the screenshots, you can obviously tell that I have played the mod, and at least several of the missions. But now I have TDM and all the FMs out there, and everything’s working – I’m not interested anymore. I spent nearly two years trying to get the mod - jumping through all sorts of hoops, getting around tons of obstacles.

The chase is better than the catch, as they say.

The Dark Mod Experience: Part I

2011-07-21T21:04:00.001+02:00

I finally played The Dark Mod the other night.

I first spied The Dark Mod as an interesting project back in 2007, after visiting Thief-The-Circle, which is part of the TTLG network of sites. But the project started way back in 2004, after the somewhat disappointing Thief: Deadly Shadows was released the same year.

I immediately began downloading all of the screenshots and videos that were made available, and viewed them continually for months.

Years passed, and in 2009 the first beta release was out, after approximately five years of work. I wanted it - but at the time, here in the third world, I still had a dial-up connection, which meant it would take at least a full month of downloading to get this mod – and the only way you could get this mod was by running one of those online updaters, which have to run while you’re online, obviously. It would have taken days.

So I had to put it on the backburner for a while.

At about the same time however, I started using data bundles with my Smartphone. I thought about how much it would cost to buy a 2GB data bundle to get the mod. I could easily afford it, but the only thing is that data bundles, with the network I was on at the time, had to last 60 days (it used to be 30). So after downloading the mod (which I think was about 1.2 – 1.5 GB at the time), I’d have to be very frugal with the rest of the data. I could have done it - barely - in hindsight, but chose not to.

Instead, I tried petitioning (or nagging) to get the mod on the Cover DVD of NAG – a local gaming magazine. The DVD is usually full of rubbish including mainly trailers and videos and the like. I thought they’d be thrilled to put something on the DVD. But no – it was the same excuse: “It’s in the queue”. I even tried to get NAG to do a preview of TDM before that, but there was absolutely no interest whatsoever.

If you were to dig around on this blog, you would see that I’ve written about all my frustrations in trying to nab it several times in the past. I do know for a fact that the TDM community stops by here every now and again. Even a TDM developer of sorts caught on and went over to the NAG forums, promising to get a proper direct download package up and running – even with some FMs. That still hasn’t happened.

Would you care for some screenshots, young thief?

Fast forward to 2011, and I was using 1 Day uncapped broadband bundles with my 3G provider. I found that not only do you have an option to run the updater to download everything, but you can also download the torrent. I gave that a try. Hell, it was slow – it was barely any faster than my dial-up connection – partly because the network I was on throttles you after using only 150 MB of bandwidth. It said it would take 20+ hours to download. I had 24 hours until the data bundle expired. I gave it a try, but barely got half-way before calling it quits. I wasn’t going to get it done. When I bought another 1 Day uncapped data bundle and tried to resume that download, I couldn’t because version 1.5 was out, and the torrent I tried to download was v 1.4. The torrent was taken down or something, by the look of it.

It was this year that my dial-up deal was coming to an end, and I had to look elsewhere for options. I spotted a Wi-Fi deal that gives you a modem and 5GB of data per month. I thought that would be ideal seeing as I would be able to use up half through the month, and then have enough to download The Dark Mod as well as all the FMs available, which stood at about 40+ at that time.

I tried the torrent, but once again it said that I would have to wait about 20 hours or more to get the thing. There were barely any people seeding it, and no peers. It initially ran at about 100 KB/s, but dropped to half that, and less, in no time.

“Why can’t they put a direct download up somewhere for Chr*st’s sake?” I thought. Then I actually checked, just out of curiosity, to see if there really is such a thing. I saw that some people had uploaded versions of the mod to Rapidshare and MegaUpload and so on. But I spotted something even better: there was a download available at Gamefront through the Dark Mod’s ModDB page.

I downloaded that instead. It wasn’t the full version 1.5 (at the time), but it was v 1.3, which was close enough. I figured I’d just run the updater later and get it up to v 1.5. Anyway, the download took 4 hours instead of 20, which made me happy. The modem held up under a storm outside which lasted the entire time. I was on edge that afternoon because I wasn’t sure if the server supported download resume. If the connection was dropped, then I might have to start over. Luckily that didn’t happen by some miracle. That modem usually drops under even a hint of bad weather.

I downloaded about 30 of the FMs, until my data reset – it was the end of the month. I left it until the last bloody minute to do all this. I immediately set about backing up all the files, in case something happened to them. I was damned if I was ever going to do all that again.

I ended up making two or three discs with the mod on it. One or two of those discs had some sort of write failure, because there was an internet security program interfering with Nero. I uninstalled the interfering program, and then I managed to get one successful write out of three.

After that I reformatted my HDD, which I’d been planning for some time, after just getting fed up with all the issues I’d been plagued with.

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End of Part I – look out for Part II soon.

New Article: Duke Nukem Forever Review

2011-07-05T19:07:00.001+02:00

Recently I played the one and only ‘unshippable’ game: Duke Nukem Forever. I started late last month and finished it over a period of days, with several play sessions. I decided I would try my hand at getting back into the game reviewing… game. I haven’t done any for some time now, unless you count the odd few I’ve posted on this blog, and so I started a review and published it on my HubPages account.

In case you’re wondering why I’ve got these screens here as well as over at the review – it’s because I can’t seem to upload pics to HP for some reason, so I uploaded them here, and I’ve then imported them via URL to that hub.

NAG July 2011 Issue Out This Week

2011-06-29T21:48:00.000+02:00

I didn’t post about the last issue coming out last month due to the aforementioned complication which I’m sure I blogged about not too long ago.

I suddenly realised that it’s the last Thursday of the month this week, and that means that the latest NAG will be out. Looking at the contents PDF, I can see that there’s two interesting features this time round: one on Battlefield 3, and another on “The Top 8 developers who fell from grace”. I can only imagine that 3D Realms is in that list somewhere. If not, it bloody well should have been.

Speaking of which, believe it or not, Duke Nukem Forever was released earlier this month. I’m busy playing it as we speak (or as I type anyway), and I’m liking it quite a bit. The reviews out on the web suggest that a lot of people don’t, and I’m looking forward to seeing what NAG’s take on the game is, seeing there’s a review on it in the magazine. The fellas on the NAG Online forum seem to enjoy it.

Other reviews include one on LA Noire, Brink, and Operation Flashpoint: Red River.

As for the Cover DVD, there’s a new edition of the NAG CD Database, new graphics card drivers, and something from Musica. There’s the usual trailers and video, including the return of the popular Pop-Fiction series to the DVD.

And lastly, the new August Cover DVD Suggestion thread is open now, so head over there and put down your recommendations.
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NAG July 2011 issue

[NAG] July 2011 issue

[DVD] August DVD suggestion thread

The Backloggery is Back!

2011-06-19T22:03:00.000+02:00

If there’s one website I’ve been looking to sign up on for nearly a year, it’s Backloggery. Here, once registered, you can enter in all the games you’ve ever played, and divide them up into sections such as: ones you’ve beaten (or clocked); ones you haven’t finished; and ones you’ve completed to 100%, or mastered entirely.

Last year I wanted to join, but the webmaster talked about having some sort of arm injury and the site has been down for nearly a year. Then there were other issues this year like an underactive thyroid that plagued him too. Real life – figures.

But June 3rd marked the return of Backloggery, and I joined on pretty much the first day it was back online. I had other issues to deal with on my end though, like reformatting my HDD, so I’m only just now getting stuck into the whole affair of entering in all the games I have.

There’s been several improvements to the website, including a total makeover, if you’ve followed the Backloggery blog (Changeloggery) and public registration is now open once again to all. There were some server issues and the like for several months, and public registration was closed, but there was definitely talk of registration by invite at one point.

So I for instance can take my big list of games and go about entering them all into the appropriate categories – why, because I like filling things out like surveys and that sort of thing. But also because I love playing video games.

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Source: Registration will open: June 3 (Changeloggery)

The Web’s Worthy Downloads #4 [Guide to Goodness]

2011-05-16T21:44:00.000+02:00

This is a new feature that I’ve decided to put on the blog. Here every now and again, I will put down all the stuff on the web that’s been released lately (and sometimes not) which is worth downloading. It could be games; music; programs – you name it.

I might do this weekly, biweekly, or even monthly. I’ll see how it goes. But one things for sure – everything you read about here is free, and therefore, very likely legal to download and play or use.

Let’s start off this issue with something different. Yes, there’s the usual plethora of game demos out there on the web, some of which will be featured here.

But just check this out: Epic recently released the Bulletstorm soundtrack… for free. Now even though they host the thing over at the main website for you to grab, you can also get it in other locations, naturally – and I’d try one of these, personally.

I haven’t played the game, personally, but I’ve read it’s not bad at all, and worth a try. And besides, how often do you see game soundtracks released gratis?

Next on the list is Anomaly: Warzone Earth. I know my brother has been dying to get a hold of this for some reason or another. I was reading a piece over at Big Download (which is now no more, alas) about it, and it’s similar to a tower defence strategy title, except this time it’s the reverse: tower attacking. It’s by an indie studio called 11 Bit, and seems to have garnered some praise.

There’s a demo of the game online, which you can download too, for less than 400 MB.

You might also like this next one. I know I’m excited about it. The latest version 5.0 of the Duke Nukem 3D HRP is out! After a long wait it’s finally here - weighing in at more than half a gigabyte. There’s all sorts of new additions this time around, and you can check out duke4.net for more info and screenshots and the like.

In short, this version debuts the official integration of Polymer (AKA “shiny”). Polymer is the new renderer, instead of the old Polymost used originally with Duke Nukem 3D and its Build engine. Other than that, new models and textures and so on mean that this is the biggest release since, well version 4. You’ll need a beast of a machine to run Polymer, the HRP and all the bells and whistles turned on, though. In fact, the recommended specs for Duke Nukem Forever are probably more forgiving than this.

But looking at what this game looks like 15 years later, since it was first released in 1996 - it’s just astronomical how much effort has gone in to this project.

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Anomaly: Warzone Earth Demo (395 MB)

Bulletstorm soundtrack (100 MB)

Duke Nukem 3D High Resolution Pack v5 (550 MB)

Got my new Cell C Speed Stick!

2011-05-03T15:45:00.000+02:00

Recently, the deal with my existing ISP had run its course. After nearly five years of being with them, ChaosNET shut up shop, and I had to find another solution quickly.

On Saturday I went down to my local Cell C store and purchased the 5 GB a month Speed Stick promotion for R2999 up front; prepaid. You get a 21.6 mbps USB modem, and of course 5 GB a month, for a year. It roughly works out to R250 a month – cheaper than buying it on contract (R300 a month; R3600 a year), and probably a lot cheaper than a lot of deals out there.
Yes, ISPs say they only charge so much per GB, but that doesn’t include installation fees, line rental, and other costs.

I wanted to avoid going with Telkom, and having lines put it after being on a waiting list and so on – in fact I don’t even think I can get an ADSL line brought in. Until now I’ve been using ChaosNET dialup (eeeek!) with MTN data bundles to help me do everything I do online. This is the first proper broadband solution I’ve had.
Looking back, perhaps the 2 GB would have been enough, but I was lead to believe that it isn’t. But I look at it this way: at least I can grab The Dark Mod, finally, among other things!

The speeds here in Cape Town aren’t all that good – you’ll be lucky if you get a quarter of the advertised speeds for the moment (the highest is probably half). But it’s still faster than what I’ve been using up until this point, for sure… when I actually get a signal anyway, weather and other conditions permitting.

Cell C: http://cellc.co.za
Data deal: http://cellc.co.za/deals/get-it/21.6mbps-usb-speed-stick1