Shmee.Me

August 14, 2015August 14, 2015

I Got An Indie Surprise With DeadCore!

I love getting discounted bundles of games over at HumbleBundle.com. When I got their most recent Bandai Namco Bundle, I thought I was paying $6 for Enslaved, Ace Combat, and Ridge Racer, but it turns out the game that I was really getting a deal on was DeadCore by 5 Bits Games. This game didn’t even show up on my radar when it launched last October, so I had to go to the DeadCore’s Steam page to find out more about it. It turns out it is a First Person Platformer/Shooter. So kind of like Valve’s Portal, but nothing like Portal.

Portal is all about tweaking the physics of things and creating the titular portals, in DeadCore you are running and jumping at precise moments to try and climb higher and higher up a tower. You use your gun to flip switches and temporarily turn off turrets and robots on your way up the tower. I usually hate platformers, but the game’s flow, constantly daring you to go a little bit higher, is perfect.

DeadCore’s creators it seems share my love of Tron. With the game’s art highlighted by clean neon lines. This game will not push your graphics hardware, but it still manages to look great. For a world that is apparently only populated by your character, you never are lacking things to look at. Though you will be too busy perfecting your path through the next obstacle to care. The music is also wonderful. Again they seem to really be pushing the Tron vibe with their cool synth tunes. DeadCore might be worth the purchase just for the music.

You still have a little time to pick this game up for very little money through HumbleBundle.com, but even if you missed out on that deal DeadCore is worth the full price of admission. I just wish I had heard about it sooner. DeadCore is now among my favorite platformers, and I hope I have convinced you to give it a try.

August 13, 2015August 13, 2015

Why All Excitement Over The Non-Announcement Of Warcraft 4?

So RTS (real time strategy) gamers everywhere lost their collective minds when Blizzard said they were open to making a Warcraft 4 once they shipped the third and final installment of StarCraft 2 this fall titled Legacy of the Void. Now don’t get me wrong, the Warcraft games are super influential and they are thought of as some of the best ever made. Plus without them Blizzard wouldn’t have had the universe for World of Warcraft, so I get that a new title in the franchise would be welcome news, but this is Blizzard we are talking about. It has taken them five years to finish the StarCraft 2 expansions, and I shouldn’t even say that since Legacy of the Void hasn’t shipped yet. There is still time for them to announce a delay.

Now to be fair I have never been a big RTS fan. I am just not good at them and there are so many games to play that I never felt like I needed to invest the time to get proficient, so maybe I am just immune to the hype. Still if Blizzard is just saying they are open to making a Warcraft 4 that means even if they do decide to make it, it will not be out for at least ten years, maybe more. That is just the pace that this studio operates. That means maybe my one year old daughter might be old enough to play it “should” it come out in our distant war torn future. If you are excited for Warcraft 4, I don’t mean to rain on your parade, but I would take a deep breath and focus on other games for awhile. Perhaps Total War: Warhammer could tide you over?

July 31, 2015

Watch Ten Minutes Of Orc Destruction With This Total War: Warhammer Gameplay Trailer!

Total War: Warhammer looks great! Real time strategy is usually my least favorite game genre, or almost least, MMORPGs keep that slot locked down, but this game is shaping up to be something special. I still hope that I can customize the look of my armies (pink orcs!), but the way this game is looking, I will probably get it either way.

Oh yeah to all you SysAdmins like myself, Happy SysAdmin Day!

July 30, 2015August 5, 2015

A Tale Of Two Windows 10 Installs!

I celebrated the release of Windows 10 yesterday like most techy people, installing the software on just about every PC I could. Two in particular, my wife’s old laptop, and my mid-range gaming rig.

First up the Gateway T-1424u:

I believe this laptop is like six years old (could be older), and since it is a budget laptop anyway it should be long dead, but I do my best to keep it running. It has an old Athlon 64 X2 dual core processor running at 1.9 GHz, and an integrated Radeon X1270 graphics card. It only has three gigs of RAM, and it is still running on its original hard-drive which is a bit of a minor miracle.

The Windows 10 compatibility test said that it wouldn’t work since Gateway/Acer hasn’t updated their version of the Radeon X1270 video card since for forever, but I went ahead and installed it anyway. For the most part everything worked great except for the aforementioned video card. Luckily I was able to dig around on some forums and find a way to get the Vista x64 driver to work.

The experience on the laptop has been pretty good. Windows 10 has lower system requirements than Windows 7, so it is running a little faster. It is still slow, but it is fast enough that I am thinking of slamming a solid state hard-drive in it and seeing how much longer I can get this machine to last.

Next up my custom gaming rig:

Now if there was ever a PC that was going to upgrade well this was it. All new hardware, and it has processing power to spare. Windows 10 took like fifteen minutes to install, and it was running great. I didn’t run in to any issues until I decided to link it with my Microsoft account.

The problem is that I have like three Microsoft accounts that I am using. Mrs. Shmee’s OneDrive to sync her pictures, my work account for my Office 365, and my personal Microsoft account for my email and Xbox. My personal account wrote over the settings for the other two, and it temporarily locked me out my wife’s pictures and caused my Excel to crash.

I was able to go in and overwrite all the settings for the various programs again, and I got it working the way it was while still having access to the Xbox App (very important), but it was a bit of a struggle. Now that it is running well it makes my fast computer, just slightly faster, so what is not to like?

Should you upgrade?

As you can see from my two computer installs above for the most part everything worked fine, better than most day-one Windows installs. So if you are like me and love the latest and greatest go ahead and download the OS and install it (you probably already have anyway). However if you just want your computer to work, I would hold off. I would still upgrade eventually (especially while it is free), but I would let people like me deal with all the issues for a few months, and write up their solutions to issues on forums. Let Microsoft patch a couple of things, so that way your computer upgrade tale will be a happy one.

July 29, 2015July 29, 2015

Happy Windows 10 Day!

Windows 10 is out today! I have been using it on PC for awhile, and I think it is just dandy. If you want to give it a try just head here. With the Media Tool you will be able to upgrade the computer you just downloaded it on, or create a bootable flash drive or ISO for another computer. Just remember that if you are going to do a clean install to have you Windows 7 or 8 product key at the ready. Other than that have fun with your new OS!