I have my new computer, and wow almighty! Computer tech has come a long way since my last computer purchase.

For my previous computer, I specifically looked for something that could play the then latest hot new game: Half-Life 2 (November 2004 — almost exactly 5 years ago). This time, my game benchmark is Modern Warfare 2. So I now have:

Intel Core-2 Duo 3.0 GHz
1333 MHz Front-Side Buss, 6MB Cache
4GB RAM
Video card: NVIDIA GT 220 1G

These numbers amaze me — they’re all around 3-4 times the specs of my previous computer.

I haven’t picked up MW2, yet, (I will this week), so I pulled out my old HL2 game disks and installed them on this slick new hotness. With my old setup, I could run the game with the graphics set to a medium-high level. It looked great, then, but now . . .

I set all the graphics levels to the maximum, even the resolution to 1920×1080. With the 16:9 ratio on my new 21.5″ monitor, the visual quality is magnificent! And framerates are plenty high. I’m amazed at how nice this old game looks with everything cranked up to their max. I can only imagine what something new, like Modern Warfare 2, will look like.

Calfgrit8 was with me on my last computer shopping trip, and he heard me tell the tech that I wanted a system that could run MW2. Afterward, he asked me if he could watch me play the game (like he’s seen World of Warcraft and Portal).

“Um, I don’t know,” I said, “it’s an adult game. I’ll have to look at it first and see. It’s probably pretty violent.” (I know it’s pretty violent.)

“Yeah, I’d like to see it,” he repeated. “It could give me some good ideas.”

“Wh-what?” I stammered. “What kind of ideas?”

“For playing army,” he answered.

Hmm. I don’t think I’m going to even let him find out when I’ve bought the game.

Last night, I did let both boys watch me play through the opening sequence of Half-Life 2. In the opening, there’s no weapons in hand, and there’s no real violence or scary stuff, so they can watch it. All I did was run from the bad guy aliens through an urban landscape while exciting music played. It was thrilling and fun, but once the unarmed opening was done (and I came to the first gun in the game) we stopped.

Afterward, while the boys were in the bathroom (one in the tub, the other on the pot), I overheard them telling how they would deal with the bad guy aliens chasing them.

Calfgrit8: “I’d set up a trap for the aliens chasing me, so when they came after me they’d hit it and fall off the building. Or something would hit them on the head.”

Calfgrit5: “I’d get a gun that shot poop and pee at them.”

Their plans and plots and tricks and traps got weirder — so weird I can’t really think of how to write out the conversations. I’ll just say that if the Half-Life 2 scenario ever plays out for real, (aliens take over world, enslave humanity), my Calfgrits will have a unique place with the Earth resistance. A unique, and probably lonely place.

Bullgrit

I usually keep my geeky side segregated to the Bullgeek part of this site, but I’m doing a little crossover today. (And I’ve sadly kind of let the Bullgeek page atrophy.)

I just discovered this music video (came out August 17): Do You Wanna Date My Avatar by Felicia Day and The Guild. I’ve watched it probably a dozen times over the past couple days or so — it’s fascinating and enthralling, to me, on several levels. This video introduced me to the The Guild web video series, and I’ve watched the first season (10 episodes, each about 4-8 minutes long).

I used to regularly play World of Warcraft, (I’ve only dabbled in it for the past year), and all my gaming buddies are WoW players, so I fully recognize and understand the gaming references in the videos (although the game The Guild plays is not specifically identified as any particular one). I don’t know if non-gamers will get the gags and jokes or caricatures, but for me, this series is absolutely hilarious.

I’m told by someone who has seen more than me that the second season of the show is even better than the first season. If that’s true, I can hardly wait for time to sit and watch the next season. If you’re an online gamer, or you have a good enough sense of humor to laugh at references outside your experience, you should check out The Guild. It’s worth the few minutes per episode for a good time.

Bullgrit

The last time I posted anything on WoW was last December. I played only a time or two after that post, and I let my account expire in early January. I was just finding the game, “meh.”

But then in March, I had the hankerin’ to explore Azeroth again. I reopened my account, played a couple of times over that week, and then let the account expire again.

Now, it’s been another few months since then, without playing WoW, and I’m again feeling the urge to explore a fantasy world. So last night I restarted my account. Unfortunately, I had to download all the updates that have come out since March.

I would like to say that after downloading the updates, I at least got to log in and see my old characters. But the updater was taking so freakin’ long that I just went to bed before it finished.

I think that fact that my regular, real-world, face-to-face, game nights are only once a week — at best, when we don’t have to cancel for one reason or another — that makes me long for the instant gratification of logging into WoW for some adventure.

Will this newest attempt to get back into WoW play stick, or will I again find it lacking the real feel of fantasy-world adventure that I’m looking for?

Bullgrit

(Related to Friday’s post.) At the game store, my boys got interested in some water-sports game on some unknown-to-me console system. But I spotted old-school Super Mario Bros. on another monitor, so I gravitated over to it.

The first few tries I made at the old game showed that I’d lost any skills I once might have had with it. I just right sucked at it. But after a few minutes, and about half a dozen deaths, I managed to make my way in the world. Soon Calfgrit7 (he turned 8 yesterday, but that’s another post, tomorrow) noticed my game and left his little brother to float around in the water game.

CG7 asked to play and I let him. I told him the object of the game and how the controller worked, and he took right into it. It took him less time to get the hang of the game than it did me to get back into the hang. He was stomping Goombas and Koopa Troopas left and right.

Once I saw how impressed he was with the old game, I told him that I had this game at home. He was immediately interested. “Really!? Can we play it!?”

So when we got home that night, after baths were finished and pajamas were on, I took out my old Super Nintendo and plugged it into our TV. I was mistaken when I told CG7 I had Super Mario Bros. I have Super Mario Kart — but that’s even better for our situation. With SMK, both boys can play at the same time instead of waiting for turns.

I explained the game and controls to both boys and let them loose on the first basic race track. They *loved* it! At first, though, CG7 was frustrated with figuring out how to drive the karts on the track. He moaned and complained “Why can’t I get off this wall? Why am I going the wrong way?”

I got him to calm down for a moment and said, “Now think about it for a moment. There’s no hurry for you — Calfgrit4 is just going in circles — so take your time and think about how to work the controls.”

He took a big breath and calmed down. Within a few more seconds he had it figured out and was racing. Of course, he was just racing himself, as CG4 continued his circling the starting line.

I let them play two races — CG7 won both, of course — and then I took over for CG4. I won the next two races, easily, but not without having to try. CG7 knew what he was doing by then, and if I started screwing around on the track, he’d pass me and I had to work to get ahead again.

I gave the controller back to CG4 who again lost a race. But it didn’t matter to him that CG7 was running circles around him, (as he ran circles around himself), he just liked controlling the character on the screen.

By the way, Calfgrit7 likes Donkey Kong, and Calfgrit4 likes Luigi. We all three had a ball with this old game for over half an hour. Afterwards they made me promise we’d play it again sometime soon.

The play of the game holds up well after all this time — originally produced in 1992 — but the graphics are absolutely abysmal by today’s standards. It’s really shocking to go from any modern console or computer game and then watch this thing. It’s amazing what our minds ignore or fill in with the old, simple graphics of the old games.

When I’ve always thought back on these games, I can picture in my mind’s eye, vivid details and smooth colors. Looking at Mario Kart on the Wii doesn’t look different than what I remember, in my mind’s eye, of the Super version. But actually looking at the 1992 graphics, wow, nostalgia paints a much more beautiful and detailed image than reality.

But that’s the technology we had in the day. And still, the game play was and still is superb. I’m looking forward to playing this some more with my boys. By the end of our half hour of play time, I had just started introducing the special abilities — shells, banana peels, speed mushrooms, etc. — so our next races should be even more exciting.

Bullgrit