Leveling Down

Does being good or evil even matter in video games?

I’ve created a new section for Leveling Down called Discussion. In this section we will be posting gaming related discussion that either cmfl3x or I may have from time to time with members of the gaming community or even just between ourselves. In some ways, this isn’t really different from one of us posting an article and the other one commenting on it but we’ve structured it in such a way that we expect the other to sort of reply – at least to have somewhat of a conversation. These posts may be nothing more than idle chit-chat, but I guess this is what aging hardcore gamers chit-chat about. Feel free to jump into the discussion with your comments as well.

This first discussion topic was suggested to me by cmfl3x, as he asked me how I felt about how morality was currently handled in video games.

More »

Command & Conquer 3: Red Alert – cmfl3x and I finally completed the Soviet campaign! Slowly but surely we’re making our way through. Expect my impressions on the game soon.

Infinite Undiscovery – Only about nine hours in and seems like I’ve barely scratched the surface of the game. Annoyed a little bit that you can only save at predesignated spots, so it’s tough to stop until you get to the next one. I guess that’s typical of “old-school” Japanese RPG games though so I’m sort of used to it already.

My new PC – Most of this past week was spent messing around with my new PC. After installing my new graphics card, I started going through and installing all sorts of games that I bought years ago that ran a little sluggishly on my old system: Battlefield 2, Battlefield 2142, Oblivion, Age of Empires III, etc.

With my new machine and graphics card, I’m able to run Battlefield 2 on 1280×1024 at max settings for everything and still rock a 70+ framerate. I decided to be a little more adventurous and download the Crysis demo to see how it would go. Outlook: not good. On 1280×1024, even at its lowest settings, I had a framerate in the teens. The smoothest framerate I could get was about 40 when running in 1024×768 at the lowest graphics settings. Graphics looked kinda blocky at that level. Freaking Crysis. I can’t even run it on medium settings on 1024×768 without it stuttering haha

I also went ahead and re-installed World of Warcraft on my new machine, and my patching is fully caught up now (after several hours of torrenting through all the patch downloads). I want to give the 10 day trial for Wrath of the Lich King a shot, if anything at least to see how the game runs on my rig. Also, since I already have a level 60 I can try out the Death Knight class. I just need to figure out when is the best 10 day time for me…