Well, I played a version of the leaked Wolfenstein beta tonight. As I expected, it ran smoothly, and the gameplay was fun. I didn’t play very much because playing by yourself on a server is quite boring. I did get some valuable information out of it though.

  Gameplay is VERY similar to that of the Call of Duty series. It’s rates of fire, weapon spreads, and base gameplay are almost exactly the same. Movement, aiming, and switching weapons, however, are all much better, faster, and more fun. There are a couple of new features, like the “Veil” element. I’m not really sure what it’s for, all I know is that it turns the screen blue! It looks really cool, and I can see myself using it as a sort of night vision element… I must say, I LOVE the melee system. Much, much better than the knives in Call of Duty.

  Users of Vista should beware. Apparently, the Beta doesn’t seem to want to run on my PC with Vista on it. This isn’t too big of a worry considering that the release will be out in about two weeks anyway so it hardly matters..

  I cannot stand the menu, though. Choosing classes and weapons just feels claustriphobic and unconfortable.. I hope that is simply a beta error. Grenades, health packs, C4, et cetera are all incomplete renders though, which makes me think it isn’t quite done. So that gives me hopes about the menu.

  Rumors about grenades, C4, and med packs being thrown WAY too far are true, and it’s HILARIOUS to watch. Seriously, I haven’t been able to throw a grenade that far since Return To Castle Wolfenstein!

  I look forward to this game, but I hope that they fix some of the annoying gameplay elements.I don’t really plan to buy it for PC, but I do plan to play it on the Xbox 360. …A lot.

  All right! So this will be my first post in a good while. My apologies, I’ve just been quite busy. Finishing school, re-painting, re-modeling, and re-decorating the house. ….I’ve also had too much fun playing with the things I want to review rather than review them.

  This time, however, I’ll be reviewing something a little different. This game is called Evony. It’s a massively-multiplayer-browser-based-real-time-city-building-war game. …That’s a mouth full, isn’t it? It’s based in a fictional middle-aged world with a couple of different continents to choose from and a number of servers to play on. As of now, there are well over 500,000 people playing and even more coming in and trying it.

  To most people the game itself is something of much confusion. You must build, maintain, and protect your city, or cities (You may have up to ten per account depending on your rank). Maintenance of your city is done through a simple, but very interesting, materials system. Building your city, troops, and keeping your people happy are all centered around food, iron, lumber, and stone count. Materials increase every hour, on the hour, in real time even when you’re not playing. Troops require a certain amount of food every hour to survive, and if your food count goes to low, people begin to leave your city.

  Depending on the amount of people in your city determines your rank in the game, or “prestige”. Your prestige determines your rank on the leader-boards. Prestige, like gamerscore in the Xbox-Live system, is a competitive and fun way to keep up with your social gaming status. Like I mentioned earlier though, if your food count drops, you lose people. If you lose people, your prestige drops. I think it is a very fair thing to do.

  You can also increase the amount of everything you gain, and the strength of your city by leveling up your buildings, town halls, and the walls around your city. Research is another way to increase everything. All of these things can go up to level nine. After level nine, however, it requires an item called a “Michelangelo’s Script” to level things, except research which only goes to ten, to ten and above.

  Like any other game, Evony has special items that can increase the production rate of materials or strengthen your troops. Most of which only last for twenty-four hours. As one would expect, you have to pay for these items: or win them in the “Wheel of Fortune”. Sadly, it rarely gives anything of use. Personally I refer to it as the “Wheel of Perpetual Disappointment”. Many people, who take the game far too seriously, are willing to spend a lot of money on these items, and of course, use them to their advantage.

  To protect yourself from these inevitable invasions, you are permitted to join an alliance in Evony. There is a large number of alliances, some powerful, some weak. Whatever the terms, joining one is usually the best thing to do after hitting around ten thousand prestige to protect yourself. It makes the game much more enjoyable, too. Instead of sitting there, watching your buildings build, it becomes more like a chatroom with things to do while you talk to friends.

  Other than pummeling each other in deathmatches for the sake of your city, you can always attack NPC cities or valleys. Valleys are small areas of land on the map that are conquerable after only one victory, and increase the production of your materials by a nice little percentage depending on the level. Beware, you get to keep them as long as you like; but other players can take them from you. That being said, it’s not a good idea to leave your troops in the valleys, because they require twice as much food every hour. Valleys are expendable, so take advantage of them.

  All of this fighting, scouting, and conquering is done through a simple message system. Every time you get attacked, scouted, or plundered, it sends you a message instantly. It sounds boring, but it does allow you to decide how to counteract in a tactical manner.

  Evony is free to play and a great thing to run in the background. It’s very addictive, because it’s just so interesting to see your city rise above those around it and conquer the people who attack you. Like any other video game, it does have it’s downsides.

  It most definitely isn’t for everyone. If you don’t like slow-paced games and have nothing else to do while playing this, then you won’t enjoy it very much. Especially if you can’t join an alliance, you’re also particularly weak for a good amount of time until your city gets stronger. Even then, if you’re not in an alliance, most people (Myself included…) will probably still attack you without worrying about it.

  Evony’s servers are also not of the highest quality. They tend to lag out a lot, and can be quite slow at times. This can get extremely frustrating when you’re in a rush to do something, like retaliate to an attack before another wave strikes.

  Building times are also, of course, a subject of much argument. Long waits make it much more realistic, and more fair for the people who are higher level. It’s reasonable that higher level things take much longer than lower level because if that wasn’t in effect the lower level players would be completely drowned out. However, the building times can make the game boring to a lot of people, and even abysmal to others. It really boils down to a simple matter of opinion and what you think is fair.

  If you can look past the building times, somewhat laggy servers, regular system maintenance, and the jerks who take advantage of new players and try to join an alliance as soon as possible, like to watch your city get stronger and stronger, and like a multiplayer game with a huge and friendly community, Evony is definitely a game you’d at least want to check out.

  I mean come on, it’s free!

Overall Rating: 8.6/10

Title: Call of Duty: World at War
Release Date: November 11, 2008
Platform(s): Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii, Playstation 2, Playstation 3, PC, Xbox 360
Publisher(s): Activision
Developer(s): Treyarch, Certain Affinity
Genre: First Person Shooter

  Call of Duty: World at war is the latest installment of the well known first person shooter video game series. It runs on the same engine as Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and brings back many of the game play features that made it’s predecessor great. Featuring both single player and multiplayer modes (including a new Nazi Zombies mini game) to enjoy, World at War was expected to be the next best release for war video game fans.

  Unfortunately for many, including myself, the game was a huge disappointment. Graphical glitches, weapon issues, multiplayer lag, and a ludicrous spawn system are merely a few of the problems plaguing this release. Most people blame Treyarch for taking over where Infinity Ward left off. I have to say that I agree with many of the complaints people have brought forward about that point.

  Once again, the single player campaign throws you into the World War II battlefields. You play a number of soldiers going through certain parts of the war, and completing a number of objects while tearing through waves of Nazis. Sounds familiar, right? It’s campaign would have been much better if it would have given gamers something new to expect rather than just another WWII simulation. That was cool back in the day, but now most people are looking for something a little more refreshing.

  Throughout the campaign, you learn to use many essential parts of the gaming engine including the new flamethrowers and tanks that were hugely advertised in the teasers. Artificial intelligence in World at War is minimal and the only real challenge of the single player is the sheer numbers of enemies. You can shoot down a couple of Japanese infantry without a problem, but shooting down a small army all within one small area is effectively more difficult. Unfortunately it also makes it much more annoying. Running through mission after mission is fairly simple and extremely linear. Offering little to no challenge for experienced gamers, the campaign is a huge disappointment.

  Graphics and sound in World at War are, however, impressive. Voice acting throughout the campaign and even the multiplayer is terrific. Emotions from all of the characters sound real and heartfelt, and the screams of pain are quite realistic too. Video games are meaningless now days if the world around you doesn’t look good, though. Thankfully, Call of Duty: World at War was kind enough to give us a beautiful, well crafted world in which to fight off armies of Nazis. Character movement from the A.I., as simple as they may be, is quite realistic and can surprise you if you’re not watching the game play around you.

  Achievements throughout the game are actually pretty difficult to obtain. They’re mostly single player based and you can only get a majority of them during a solo campaign. Multiplayer achievements are few and far between and I have yet to actually achieve one despite the number of challenges I’ve unlocked. Personally, I think it would be more fair to earn achievements as you unlock challenges; but they must have decided that the challenges themselves were enough.

  In most people’s opinions, mine included, the multiplayer is the best part of the game. It is also the buggiest, though. Matchmaking is as simple and quick as that of the Halo series, and the party system works as well as one could expect. There are the same variety of game types we’ve all seen from previous Call of Duty games. Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Search and Destroy, and Headquarters are the most familiar to the long time players; and there are even a few new games like War to interest newcomers. All of the game types are based on the same point system from Modern Warfare. Ten points to a kill and two, six, or eight for an assist. It’s an effective and entertaining system that makes you feel better when you come out of a game with four or so kills than in most other deathmatch based multiplayer games. This system also allows people who gain assists throughout a match to actually achieve something from them, which is an excellent addition to gaming from Modern Warfare.

  Ranking up is just as simple as it ever was in Modern Warfare too. After each match, the experience you gained from all of the kills and assists you achieved coupled with a match bonus at the end adds to your total experience. You also gain experience from calling in your recon plane (radar), air strikes, and attack dogs. This all makes ranking up quicker than many games and much more fun. It’s also a lot easier to keep track of over time considering each level has a certain level of experience necessary to move up; and it’s all shown at the end of a match by a progressing bar. After maxing out your level, World at War allows you to go into a “Prestige Mode”. There are multiple times you can prestige. After each though, though, you must start completely over with all of your guns and perks. That all seems absymal considering all it really does is add a special marker beside your name, and increases the number of classes you can create.

  Personalization is a huge part of the “new Call of Duty” era. You can create a certain number of classes, each with it’s own specifications. Your number of classes is based on whether or not you decided to go into Prestige Mode after you max out your level. Within these classes you can choose from a large list of guns and varying perks that change the way your gun fires, how much health you have, give you land mines, or give you an extra chance at being revived or killing someone after your apparent death. These are all useful in their own respects; but many of them are over used and buggy at times, making them a painful addition at times.

  Unfortunately, World at War’s multiplayer is extremely buggy. There is a major issue with the spawn system, for instance. You can spawn directly in front of a large group of enemies and not even get a chance to turn and run before you’re mowed down by an MP-44 sub machine gun. Another huge issue is the dog A.I. in multiplayer. You can call in attack dogs to kill your enemies for you that last for sixty seconds after achieving a seven kill streak. Said dog’s hitboxes are flawed, causing many players to become frustrated after unloading several rounds into one little quadruped only to be pounced and bitten in the neck. These, combined with many other small graphical, sound, and weapon glitches are the cause of many frustrating and unfair deaths in a match, making the multiplayer thoroughly unenjoyable most of the time.

  Finally, Call of Duty: World at War is in many aspects a simple and buggy version of Modern Warfare set in a standard World War II setting. It’s multiplayer is the best part of the game, and even that is quite disappointing. World at War is most certainly not worth the current shelf price, and I would not recommend buying it if you already own, or are trying to decide between this and Modern Warfare.

Single Player Campaign: 4.8/10
Multiplayer: 7.0/10
Graphics: 9.6/10
Voice Acting: 8.8/10
Overall Value: 5/10

Title: F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin
Release Date: February 10, 2009
Platform(s): Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Windows PC
Publisher: Warner Bros. Interactive
Developers: Monolith Productions
Genre: First Person Shooter, Horror

  F.E.A.R. 2 is now one of my personal favorite games on the Xbox 360, if not of all time. Why? Because it’s loud, violent, spooky, and has a multiplayer that can keep you entertained for hours upon hours. It’s not revolutionary by any means; but it is an excellent and fun game that takes the best things from the first F.E.A.R. game and adds some new things that make it a fresh experience. Combining spooky and dark, but excellent and crisp graphics along with a great story and loads of fun achievements, F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin certainly deserves praise.

  Single player campaign was the first thing I was looking forward to. I thoroughly enjoyed the story of the original F.E.A.R., so I had high hopes for it’s sequel. The story places the player (Micheal Beckett, a Delta Force operator) in a war between opposing armies. He has a strange connection between the F.E.A.R. poster girl, Alma. Throughout the game the connection begins to grow for various reasons, causing the disturbances from Alma to become more violent and detailed. He is essentially the usual “best of the best” protagonist; but who really minds that?

  It isn’t the longest, most detailed story I’ve seen in a video game. Although it’s somewhat short, it’s quite enjoyable. Alma’s random encounters with the player are fun to watch and sometimes can make you jump out of your skin if you’re not careful. F.E.A.R. being a first person shooter and horror title, I really never expected the deepest of storyline anyway. Voice acting is terrific in my opinion, though. No real complaints here except that I wish it were a longer story. Knowing more about Alma and the player’s relationship would have been nice; and the cliffhanger at the end makes it ever so tempting to purchase a third game if it’s ever to be released.

  The gameplay in F.E.A.R 2 is excellent. Fighting is quick, smooth, and of course, violent. There are a lot of cool elements that make the action unique. For example, you can slow down time and roundhouse kick and enemy to death. Or you can slide tackle them and then do a jumping kick to take out their teammate. These moves take a little getting used to and sometimes can mess up if you’re not accurate with your button pressing; but they’re overall simple to use. Aiming is as sharp and true as any other first person shooter on the market (E.G. If you shoot a person in the head, the head explodes just like it should.).

  Smart and threatening artificial intelligence is another important element that many games lack. Fortunately, Project Origin gives the player a challenge when fighting enemies. The enemy A.I. is quite intelligent and will kill you before you can even turn around if you don’t keep your eyes open. Of course, if you play on a lower difficulty setting, the A.I. is going to dumb down; but on harder difficulties it becomes a much larger challenge to take on four or five soldiers at once. Enemies will barrel roll, throw down cover, throw grenades and work together to take you out as quickly as possible. They still don’t compare to real players in multiplayer, of course; but they will most certainly kill you at the first chance they get.

  Realism is one of the biggest things in F.E.A.R. 2 that made me enjoy it so much. Climbing, falling, kicking, shooting, and strafing all feel like you’re really in the scary, little world that Project Origin places the character in. Moving around feels far more realistic than it does in Call of Duty or Halo 3; and so does the shooting. When you mow down an enemy with your submachine gun and he explodes into pieces, you will probably find yourself laughing or shouting at the screen the first couple of times. It really does feel like you’re taking down the soldiers in single player and the enemies in multiplayer.

  I was very curious about how F.E.A.R. 2 would work with multiplayer. I had never even really thought about playing the original game’s multiplayer because I had games like Quake 3: Arena and Call of Duty to keep me entertained at the time that I played it. Now that I look back, I kind of wish I would have at least checked it out. Online play for F.E.A.R. 2 is extremely fun and just as violent and satisfying as the campaign. Most of the game modes are stereotypical first person shooter games. Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, and Search and Destroy are all present. With different titles and a few little twists, they are somewhat different; but they remain the same basic games you see in something like Unreal Tournament. Although they have the same games doesn’t mean that they aren’t as good; if not better.

  You can either play simple, unranked matches in Player matches, or you can build up your experience level and gain achievements in the Ranked matches. Achievements can only be gained in the ranked mode, which is a little disappointing; but it doesn’t make that much of a difference anyway. There is no real party system like in Halo or Call of Duty, however. This makes playing with friends more difficult because you can’t just join up and go play together in a Player match. You can, however, host ranked matches, and your friends can search the criteria in the Custom Match menu. This Custom Match menu allows you to search for specific games based on whatever game mode and map you want to play. Combining this along with the Host feature allows you and your friends to rank up on any game mode, map, and with any number of people (with a minimum of usually four and up, depending on the game type). This makes it a far more personal and versatile multiplayer experience than Halo 3 or Call of Duty.

  Like Call of Duty, you can customize your player with three “Loadouts”. Loadouts allow you to choose what armor and weapons your player is equipped with during online matches. These are managed by a simple, but effective, point allocation system. You can choose from three basic sets of armor, an array of weapons and grenades, and whether or not to carry a health pack. All of these cost points, and you can always go back to edit the Loadouts to use the points on something else. These custom classes also work in any game mod on either ranked or player matches.

  Achievements are a very nice addition to the game and most aren’t too terribly difficult to obtain. This makes the game feel like you’re working towards something even after you’ve completed the campaign, which adds much replay value to it. They’re not few and far between like some games; but they also don’t just hand them to you on a silver platter. I would have liked to have seen maybe a few more difficult ones; but for the most part, the achievements are challenging and fun to obtain.

  Overall, F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin is an extremely fun game. It’s not groundbreaking, but it does have it’s own original perks and tweaks that make it more fun and versatile than many other first person shooters on the market. It’s quite creepy, but not as scary as something like Doom 3 so you don’t have to worry about screaming in the middle of the night while you’re playing at three A.M. Although, I don’t recommend doing that because you might get nightmares from all the gore…

Single Player Campaign: 7.8/10
Multiplayer: 9.2/10
Graphics: 9.8/10
Voice Aciting: 9.0/10
Overall Value: 9.8/10

  Have you ever went to look at the screensavers in Windows Vista and been extremely disappointed like I was? Well, at first thought the best fix would be “Oh well, I’ll just search Google for a new screensaver!”. Sadly, Microsoft decided to take that little bit of freedom that you had in Windows XP. Sounds like something our dear friend Bill Gates would do.

  Luckily, there’s a fix for it! A combination of a tiny amount of courage with the Windows Registry Editor and the will to take five minutes to memorize some numbers, your screensavers will look infinitely better.

  With this tutorial I’ll cover only the Ribbons screensaver, but the same general hacks can be applied with any saver from Vista. This tutorial is all over the internet, but I’ve seen a lot that don’t really explain it all that well; and for people with limited knowledge and courage, that can be quite foreboding.

Before.

After.

  Go ahead and go to your desktop, open the start menu. In the search bar at the bottom, type in “Regedit” and hit enter.

  Now, once you have the Registry Editor open, find the software tab, and click it to open the drop down tabs. Skim through these to find Microsoft, and then Windows. Click on Current Version, and find the Screensavers tab near the bottom. Open it, and find the Ribbons tab. Once you find it, don’t click the Screen 1 and Screen 2 tabs. You won’t be needing those in this tutorial.

  This is where the fun starts. First, go to Edit (in the menu bar) and hover over New, and then click DWORD. This will simply bring up a new item in the screen. You can’t name it just anything, however. Name it “Numribbons”, without the quotes. Once you’re finished with that, right click on Numribbons, and click “Modify”. Once a pop up shows, click the “Decimal” orb under Hexadecimal. Typing in this increases, or if you want it to, decreases the amount of ribbons. Set it anywhere between 1 and 100. I like mine to be set at 100 just because I think it looks really cool.

  Repeat the process of creating the DWORD twice. Name the two new ones Blur and Ribbonwidth. It’s relatively obvious what Ribbonwidth does: it determines the width of the ribbons. I set mine at 50 for a cool effect. Blur defines the amount the ribbons blur into one another (E.G. If you set this to 0, the ribbons simply pile on top of one another until the screen turns white.)

  Now that you’ve finished everything, simply close the Registry Editor to save it and preview it by right clicking on your desktop and clicking personalization and clicking the Screensaver button.

  Everything in this guide is easily reversible if you don’t like the changes; and they’re all completely editable.

I am not responsible for any mistakes you make, or damage done to you’re computer.

  Thanks for reading this tutorial! Don’t hesitate to comment and subscribe if you liked it!

Note: This works perfectly in Windows Seven, also.

Thanks to CraZy18gurl (zn3twork.) for all of this. All of the credit goes to her for setting things up for me!
Thank you, my craZy kinky friend!

  ”Hello world!” said the new blog, excited and thrilled to finally be in the daylight. So am I! I’ve been planning this for a while, and thanks to my friend craZy18gurl (the owner of the webspace), it’s done. I had no idea where to begin, to be honest. My experience with webhosting and moderating was limited to about five forums spread across the internet that barely recieved any attention due to my lack of inspiration.

  This however will be quite different. This is now my personal blog where I will post my reviews, tutorials, and other thoughts on everything tech from software to gaming. Suggestions are always welcome, and I’m completely open to new software or hardware.

  Indeed, this is replacement for my Blogger page, Squeaky Toy (Squeaky Toy). I may migrate a few articles from that blog to this one; but most will remain there. I want this to be a fresh start for my blogging experience, and I want it to be as comfortable and personal as possible.

  I hope some of you who read my blog gain something out of it. Whether it’s learning something, some sort of inspiration, or just a cure for boredom. After all, what’s a blog without readers? A journal? Diary? A…Blurgiary? I don’t know. The point is, I hope everyone enjoys my posts as much as I enjoy posting them!

  Remember, don’t hesitate to leave comments, whether angry, encouraging, or critical. Just no flaming or trolling. Comments like that will only be deleted.

Take it easy!
-Veggie