Shmee.Me

June 11, 2014

Shmee’s Thoughts On Crysis 2!

Since I have been upgrading my computer, I have been playing a few computer games I have had kicking around, and one of those games is Crysis 2 by Cytek and published by EA. I got it during a Steam sale awhile ago, and I just never got around to playing it. It came out three years ago, so you have probably either played it or decided to skip it, but I thought I would my thoughts on it anyway. That is kind of what I do on this site after all.

The plot in Crysis 2 is that you are wearing a super suit that allows you to try and save humanity from aliens, and a group of crazy people are trying cover up the alien invasion, or something like that. Honestly I am not totally sure why I am killing a bunch of humans during an alien invasion, but they are bad, and this is a first person shooter, so they must die.

My problem with this game is that at first you really don’t feel that super. You have to keep finding alien DNA to upgrade your abilities. Which fine, but I want to feel awesome from the get go, and I don’t want to have to hunt down a bunch of aliens to get better. Plus in the first game it was wide open, and I could complete my objectives in any way that I wanted, but in this game I am kind of stuck just moving forward and shooting.

On the plus side the shooting is good, and you can customize your weapons. The graphics also hold up well, and I am sure they would look better if I wasn’t playing the game with a Radeon HD5770. When I get my new graphics card I will have to fire it up again and compare the visuals.

The first Crysis blew me away with its crazy graphics, and cool abilities. It had a wide open world to explore, and it let me choose my path. This game feels like a step back in every department. It is still fun, but I find it lacking anything great that makes me want to keep playing.

June 10, 2014

So It Is E3…

All the big companies kicked off E3 yesterday, and while there were a few cool announcements, for me there was nothing ground breaking. Let me run down what happened: Every major game that sells well got a sequel; If there was a new game announced it looked a lot like games we have played before; Microsoft and Sony are willing to pay a lot of money for timed exclusives, and they both (Sony in particular) announced a few remakes.

The remake thing caught me off guard. I knew, as did the rest of the world, that Microsoft was going to release some sort of upgraded Halo, and they kind of needed to with Halo 5 not due out until next year, but Phantom Dust? That came out of nowhere. Sony went all in with remakes: an upgraded Last of Us, Ratchet and Clank, a timed exclusive of Grim Fandango, and a not at all exclusive GTA 5. GTA 5 came out after the new consoles did, so everyone knew it was going to happen; Grim Fandango makes sense since it is a cult classic that not a lot of people have played, so why not introduce it to a new generation, but The Last of Us seems odd since it just came out, and everyone played it. Oh well if you have a PS4 you are getting another game.

Both Microsoft and PlayStation tried to show that they are hip, and that they are down with the indie dev scene. Sony still seems to have the indie upper hand, but Microsoft is at least starting to get quite a bit of interest in its ID@Xbox platform, so lets see if they can keep it up. I am not sure that indie games are system sellers yet, but they are cheap and bring in fresh ideas to consoles.

The fact that Conker is going to be available for game makers in Project Spark kind of threw me off. Why just Conker? Why not a lot MS owned properties, so people can have Conker and Voodo Vince team up to save Master Chief from the Brute Force guys? Maybe they will in the future, but to make a point of saying that just Conker would be available was strange to me.

After the first day of announcements, some of the games I am interested in are: Tom Clancy’s The Division, Batman: Arkham Knight, Sunset Overdrive, Destiney, The Witcher 3, Bloodborne, Cuphead, and Halo: The Master Chief Collection (It has over 100 multiplayer maps!). Yes I know that list has a few of the sequels and remakes I was talking about earlier, but they do look very good. I just hope that some of the original games being made make it big, so we can get a little more variety in next year’s E3 press conferences.

Anything strike you about this year’s E3 kickoff? What games are getting you all hot and bothered?

June 9, 2014June 9, 2014

Is Dr. Fate In The New Constantine Show?!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8YAlnMVELw

So it looks like there may be some other DC superheroes showing up in NBC’s Constantine. If you watch the trailer above at about the 47 second mark Constantine picks up the helmet of Dr. Fate! Dr. Fate would be a great addition to this show. He is one of DC’s best sorcerers, and he would fit in really well with Constantine’s supernatural vibe. Hopefully this is not just a tease, but they really start adding in some of DC’s heroes to this show.

June 9, 2014June 9, 2014

Computer Hardware Tripple Shot!

I am continuing to slowly upgrade my computer (well actually pretty much replacing it), so the next three components I got, were the motherboard, RAM, and CPU. First up lets talk about the foundation of it all the motherboard:

Asus M5A97 LE R2.0:

After a bad experience with other board makers, I pretty much now only use Asus boards. Their customer service is kind of lame if you ever do need to call them, but their parts are usually so good that you don’t have to anyway. This board had exactly what I wanted: gigabit Ethernet, USB3 ports, a decent sound card, it supported the CPU I wanted, and it was cheap. It ended up being even cheaper thanks to a rebate offer.

It has a great BIOS, which I updated as soon as it started up, that allows for complete control over all your components, and extremely easy overclocking tools. What I liked about this thing is that it just worked the way I wanted it to out of the box. I didn’t need to play with anything, or toggle a setting, it just got my PC up and running.

The only downer is that it didn’t have a USB3 expansion port for the front of my case, but that wasn’t a feature I wanted to spend $20 on. I installed this three weeks ago and it has been rock solid, so if you are looking for a good low-mid level gaming board for AMD processors, you should put this on your short list.

G.SKILL Ares Series 8GB SDRAM DDR3 1866:

I don’t have a lot to say here other then this is some pretty fast RAM. I got the Ares version of the G.SKILL RAM family due to the fact it has low rise heat syncs, so I can put whatever components I want in my computer, and I don’t have to worry about them running in to the giant RAM chips sticking out of my MoBo. Like all DDR3 RAM chips that function above 1333 MHz, I did have select the 1866 MHz speed in my BIOS, but other then that they have been completely trouble free. I have never had problems with G.SKILL RAM, and it looks like that is still the case.

AMD FX8320:

Everyone that builds a mid-range gaming computer these days uses the Intel i5 series processors because they are fast, and they don’t consume a lot of power. I however am an AMD fanboy from way back, so I will take the hit in power costs, and a little hit in single threaded processing power to use an AMD chip. If you don’t care who makes your chips you should probably use an Intel i5, but if you do get an FX-8320 you will still be very happy.

It is fast enough, it has eight cores, and it is unlocked so you can overclock it as much as you feel comfortable with. In just playing around, I got this chip to over 4.1 GHz without too much effort. I didn’t leave it at that speed because I still only have to stock cooler, and didn’t want to burn it up, but when I do get a better cooler I will have this chip clocked well over the 3.5 GHz stock clock speed.

And I will totally be getting a better cooler. The stock cooler is fine when the computer isn’t working hard, but once you start doing something fun it sounds like a hoover vacuum cleaner. I suppose they just throw in a cooler to make it a complete set, but they must know guys like me will not use them for long anyway, so why bother including something good. Still the chip is cheap at under $150, so even with the price of a decent cooler, you still haven’t spent $200 yet, and that is a pretty good deal.

There are my three computer hardware mini reviews, and I hope you found them somewhat useful. I still have a cooler, and a video card to go to finish this computer off, and I will let you all know how it goes!

June 6, 2014June 6, 2014

The Paladin puts Ant-Man under the microscope

…hear him sizzle!

Ant-Man… Marvel superhero with the ability to grow and shrink in size (I had to check Wikipedia for a second just to be sure) and star of the upcoming film Ant-Man. There are several problems with Ants (as like to call him) the foremost being nobody knows who Ant-Man is. Well that’s not true, he has his fan base and he is a founding member of the Avengers. However after umpteen years and who knows how many events in the Marvel universe, does that really matter? The second problem is this film… it has no director. They had originally tapped Cornetto Trilogy director Edgar Wright to write and direct; they had even started filming. Then about a week ago he left and they haven’t been able to replace him (nor should they). The rumor was Disney, who owns Marvel, had a new script written that tore the heart out of the film for Wright.

So that leave us, the potential viewers, wondering if this film should even be made. I’ve liked Wright’s movies, so I’m sad to see him go. I greatly enjoy what Marvel has done with their comic book movies. But Ant-Man doesn’t carry any real weight with me and there is a second, lesser script. I think Ant-Man should go back down… to the ground… to get out of the way for far more interesting characters have their films made (Shmee would probably suggest Power Girl). I don’t see our hero escaping this one!