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Cooler Master Cosmos II: A customer’s insight

2012-02-15T09:32:00.002-08:00

Here’s the thing: The PC case I used to have, was getting worse, and worse and worse every day. And when the power button suddenly broke off so it doesn’t say *click* when I press it anymore, I had enough. So I decided to go look for a new PC case and my search started at the Steam Forums. After getting some recommendations from the users there, I stumbled upon the Cooler Master Cosmos II Ultra Tower. Needless to say, it was like love at first sight.

Although it was expensive and really, really big, I decided to buy it. And this is my first impressions/overview of the case. Or at least, that’s what I’ll try to do. I’m not an expert, but there’s so little information about the case out there as of now, a little insight from my side couldn’t hurt, could it?

But to get back to the case, let’s start with the size. This case is not big, it’s not huge, it’s not enormous; it’s a gigantic behemoth of a case. No, really. It’s so big it doesn’t even fit under my desk. My desk is a standard 72 cm tall table, with maybe 2-2.5 cm desk thickness, so the free area below my desk is around 69-70 cm. This case has a total height of 70.4 cm so it’s off by a centimeter or two. But I’m not complaining. My room needed a good cleanup anyway, so I used most of my Sunday afternoon cleaning out the corners of my room where I keep all the random stuff. The case then got a nice spot next to my table and it’s looking good.

I knew it was big when I ordered it, but I was still blown away by the size of the box it came in. It was big enough to cause us trouble transporting it around, but we managed to get it home to me. So after unpacking it and putting it up on the kitchen table, I could only admire its majestic beauty. And if you’ve seen pictures of it, promotion videos or even seen it for real, I’m pretty sure you can agree, that’s it’s one fine looking piece of hardware. But of course looks isn’t everything. It’s the functionality of the case that matters and I’ll get right to that in a minute.

My experiences with the case so far have been great. There’s plenty of room to work on, on the inside, there are lots of holes in the mother board tray for cable management, and most of them are covered with rubber grommets.

The back side of the mother board tray is also very open so you can hide almost all cables behind your mother board tray so there are no cables visible in the main chamber.

Mounting stuff in the case is also child’s play. Hard drive bays can slide in and out and have an easy-to-use locking mechanism. The same goes for optical drives. You remove the 5½” drive front cover, slide the drive into place and press a big fat button on the inside and the optical drive stays put. There are also two hot-swap drive bays on the front with key locks. This is quite handy if you’re one that switches a lot of hard drives around, for whatever reason that might be. Mounting the mother board itself was quite easy. With the case comes a little plastic bag full of screws and extenders so everything you might need is already in the case. The expansion slots on the back are held in place with thumb screws so there’s no need for tools when you have to install or switch out graphics cards, sound cards, etc. I would recommend a screwdriver for the first time though, as they’re screwed in really hard from the manufacturer.

The case comes with five ventilation fans, one 200 mm fan on the front, one 140 mm fan in the back, two 120 mm fans on the side and one 120 mm fan on the top. There is room for another two 120 mm fans on the top, two 120 mm fans on the side and one 120 mm fan right behind the front fan. So there is potential for ten fans in this case. The “control panel” on the front allows for LED and fan speed control. This is done by wiring all the power through the panel out to the fans through a series of 3-pin connectors. If the fans you have installed supports LED lighting (the front fan does), there are also ten connectors that look like small dragon heads that control the LEDs as well.

There are four buttons that control fan speed: “TOP” “FRONT” “HDD” and “GPU”. Depending on how you’ve wired the power, you should be able to control the individual fans with each of these buttons. It should be said though, that the fan on the back of the case is not controllable by default (unless you rewire it to be). There are three preset fan speeds; low, med and high. These are indicated though special lighting on the front panel. Blue is low, purple is med and red is high. When you press any of the front panel buttons, it makes a loud “beep!” sound, and when activating the “high” speed option it makes three beeps.

Staying with the front panel, the power and reset button are also located at the fan speed buttons. All of these buttons can be hidden by a sliding cover. Beneath these buttons are a bunch of ports and access points. There are 4 USB 2.0 ports, 2 USB 3.0 ports, one microphone jack, one head phone jack and one e-SATA port. The USB 2.0 ports can be connected to the motherboard with the standard 10-pin connector, the USB 3.0 ports are connected with a 20-pin connector and the mic jack, headphone jack and e-SATA ports are connected the standard way.

(USB 3.0 20-pin connector)

This case does support HD audio but also comes with a AC’97 connection, if one prefers that.

The case supports up to thirteen hard drives (including the two hot-swap drives), but it begs to question how many mother boards can support this amount of hard drive capacity, let alone finding a power supply that can muster enough connectors to feed them all with power. This brings me to the power supply mounting. This was a bit tricky for me, as I had trouble fitting my power supply into the hole on the back of the case. It did fit, but it wasn’t easy getting it in. After that came the mounting, and this was difficult as my power supply had somehow managed to bend the mounting piece out of shape so it didn’t fit. But with some trouble I managed to put it in its place and it was all good. There are dust filters on all the openings so dust shouldn’t be much of a problem. They’re also easy to dismount so cleaning them is a snap.
I live in a relatively small room so when I switched my components over in their new home I worked under some poor conditions. I used my bed as a table and had to twist and turn both the cases around a lot, so I can say it’s not ideal to work with this case in a small room. It’s big, it’s heavy, it’s expensive, but in the end it’s all worth the trouble.

So, is the Cooler Master Cosmos II the ultimate case any enthusiast gamer/PC hardware geek should have? Depends on how much you want to spend on it and how much space you have in your house. If you have your setup in a relatively open room without much clutter, and you have some good income, I’d say go for it. If you don’t have your setup in an open room, like me, but still have a few extra bucks to spare? If you can make room for the case, go for it. If you don’t have your setup in an open room and don’t want to spend too much, go for a cheaper case like the Storm Trooper or the HAF X. They’re also nice cases and can fit under tables. That’s a plus.

Lastly, if you want to see more images of my setup, all the images shown above and more can be found in this album:

Cooler Master Cosmos II Album.

Battlefield 3 vs. Modern Warfare 3 – my two cents.

2011-11-27T07:04:00.000-08:00

If you play video games, you’ve probably heard about this battle before. Ever since Modern Warfare 2 was released, I’ve been a part of this fight as well and in this blog entry I will give my reason to why Battlefield 3 is better than Modern Warfare 3.

Now, I’m very well aware that both games have different styles of play and feel different overall, but since the publishers (Activision and EA) decided to make this personal, I’d figure I jump the bandwagon as well. So I’ll set up my comparison in a few, but thorough steps, discussing various topics involving both games. So here we go!
First I’d like to talk about the similarities both games have. If you ask a MW3 fan or a BF3 fan, you’d no doubt get something like this: "Those games are nothing alike. [My game] is much better than [the other game]!", but even though they are quite different, they also have many things in common. First and foremost, both games are first person military shooters set in a near future. They have guns from the real world; they are both very popular AAA titles and both have a theme of a worldwide war between the US and Russia. They are built up on the same recipe to some extent, but this is also where the similarities end. Let’s start out by examining the graphics and the audio from both games. If you’re a MW3 fan, you’ll no doubt start to think; "Oh no, not this again. We know BF3 is better looking, but there’s so much more to a game than graphics!", and you’re right. There is much more to a game than graphics, but bear with me here. As you all probably know, Battlefield 3 is the first game to utilize the brand new Frostbite 2 engine from DICE. If you still haven’t gotten a full grasp on how amazing it is, you can go check out the Tech Demo video here. Compare this immense new graphics engine to the visuals of Modern Warfare 3. Let me give you a heads up what is behind the graphics of MW3. The graphics engine of the Modern Warfare games is called the IW Engine, which is a heavily modified Quake III engine. Quake III was released back in 1999, making this game engine almost 12 years old, if it hadn’t been for the tweaking over the years. The first usage of the IW Engine was in Call of Duty 2 back in 2005, but since then, it hasn’t grown much bigger or better. A developer on Sledgehammer Games has issued a statement claiming that “The IW engine is like a Porsche. It’s ‘clean’ and ‘easy to upgrade’”. However, if you look at the improvements made from MW2 to MW3 and compare that to Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 3, you will see an enormous difference. One cannot argue that most of the graphics in MW3 is simply copy/pasted from previous entries in the franchise. The sounds, the lighting, the animations, the gameplay and loads more is simply "borrowed" from previous games because the developers seemingly are too lazy to actually make something new and interesting. I’m sure some of you reading this have heard of the infamous “house” in one of the maps, and if you haven’t, you can get the story here. If you still claim this isn’t copy-pasta, your head is so far up your ass that you can’t be talked into sense anymore. Moving from the graphics, let’s talk about the audio. If you didn’t already know, DICE are famous for their sound systems. They have been praised with every game they’ve ever released for their sounds, and that tradition is not neglected in Battlefield 3 either. If you heard some of the explosions, the gun fire, the echoes and realistic sound delays you can hear in the far distance, you know you have experienced something special. If I should describe Battlefield 3’s sound system in one word, it would probably be “ear-gasm”. If you compare this sound system to the sound system of MW3, you’ll almost immediately know which one is the superior version. From all the game play I’ve seen of MW3 so far, I can only say that it sounds dull, flat, and not at all interesting. Again they’ve recycled sounds from previous entries; one of the most obvious is the default assault rifle. On one of the YouTube videos, a user went as far to say it was “the trademark sound” of MW games. If it’s that obvious, maybe you should start to rethink your planning Infinity Ward…

The next thing I want to talk about is the Single Player campaign. So if you still want to play Battlefield 3, and don’t want the story spoiled, skip this part.
The single player campaign in Battlefield 3 is without question the game’s weakest link. It’s heavily scripted, linear, full of Quick-Time events and it feels like the corridor shooting you’d otherwise find in smaller budget games like Singularity and the new Wolfenstein. The story itself is also somewhat shallow and doesn’t really feel like it knows where it wants to go. But with that said, it’s still an engaging campaign. The game is built up as an interrogation scene where Sergeant Blackburn is being questioned for his accusation that New York will get nuked within a couple of hours, and you need to link the individual events together to clear up the mystery. All the gameplay is presented as the reports Blackburn gives to his interrogators.
Sound familiar? It’s the same basic structure as it is in Call of Duty: Black Ops, and that is not something I’m keen of admitting. Why DICE thought this was a good idea, I don’t know, and I probably never will, but fortunately they didn’t also copy the gameplay. I’ll now tell you one thing that Battlefield 3 does better than Modern Warfare 3 in its campaign: VEHICLES!!! More specifically, the tank mission. Oh boy, oh boy was that an awesome level. You play as another soldier than Blackburn and you get to drive around in a tank across the desert fighting enemy tanks in close quarter combat, and after that, you drive through the city, smashing through shopping malls and run over enemies. It was a great level. But what comes after that level is probably something I’m going to remember for a long time. When you reach your end destination, your tank is disabled by enemy fire, and you’re captured. After that, you wake up bound to a chair with a camera in front of you, and a couple of terrorists to your sides. One of them is Solomon, the main villain of the game. He stands there, playing with your son’s toy you brought with you to Iran. He rants about heroism, and finally throws the toy to the ground. The camera starts running and you can only sit there and helplessly watch as Solomon draws a knife, holds it close to your face and then lowers it to your throat. You hear the sound of the knife cutting through your flesh and the screen goes dark. Just sitting there, experiencing the hopelessness and helplessness of these terrorist hostages being executed on camera, it was probably one of the most eerie experiences I’ve ever had in a video game. Not even the Dead Space games had that kind of effect on me. I’ve seen some of the actual real-world footage of these kinds of executions, on the news and places, and the screen went black when the execution started so we were spared the gruesome images. But just imagining sitting there not being able to do anything and your fate is in the hands of those psychopaths, it wasn’t possible for me. That part gave me a somewhat similar experience I imagine, but it’ll of course never be the same.

I’ll honestly admit that I’ve never played any of the Modern Warfare campaigns, but based on what I’ve seen and heard, it is this Hollywood Block Buster type of campaign with huge scenery being blown to bits, and major scale battles and whatnot. I can understand that people like this kind of campaign. It’s fast, it’s filled with action, it has the hero who must save everyone and it has the villain who is a prick and must be stopped at all costs. This is all fine and well, and I appreciate that. Also, lots of people prefer the campaign of the Modern Warfare series over the campaign of the Battlefield series (be it Bad Company or Battlefield 3). It certainly has to say something when even the opposition says something good about it. I however, cannot say anything because I haven’t played it. But I still want to point one thing out; The Eifel Tower scene in MW3. People have been talking about this particular scene so much I have not been able to avoid it. And yes, I’ve seen it and it looks good. The spectacle is brilliant and it looks like a Michael Bay film. But people claiming that BF3’s campaign can’t hold up to it, are dead wrong. There are quite a few parts in it that I feel are way more thrilling than simply the Eifel Tower toppling. Also, I think BF3 took the Eifel Tower thing as a challenge, because they nuke the entire city as a response.

Last but not least, we are going to talk about the multi player aspect of both games. Battlefield has always been about large maps, lots of players and vehicles. That is a recipe that has always been a success among hundreds of thousands of people who have played Battlefield over the years. With the Bad Company series, a new feature has been introduced that has come to stay; destructible environments. Something I’ve yet to see in any other major shooter. And this new feature brings for some interesting new gameplay. Not only can you counter snipers by blowing up their cover or just blow a hole in the wall to make a new route to the objective, you can also topple buildings on top of the enemy troops, use jeeps as battering rams and my favorite; cover a wall with C4 right behind an important objective, just to see the enemy’s face when he is blown to bits when trying to capture it. If anyone here has played the map Damavand Peak in Rush, the first area, MCOM A, you will know what I’m talking about.
The gameplay in Battlefield is slower than in Modern Warfare 3, but that isn’t to say that it is actually slow. It’s quite fast paced actually, and if you play the more infantry oriented maps like Operation Metro, Seine Crossing and Grand Bazaar, you’ll see that the game can be just as hectic and fast paced as Modern Warfare 3. The gameplay in Battlefield 3 is also more focus on team play. Something that MW3 definitely has not. It rewards individuals more than it does teamwork; it rewards more for kills than it does objectives. That is where I need to put my foot in the ground and say stop. When you play multi player, you more often than not, play in teams. And teams demand teamwork. MW3 is more lone-wolf oriented in both its design and its reward system.
That’s another thing I want to talk about: The reward system. Modern Warfare 3 has a reward system that could be described with the Danish phrase “Gaveregn” directly translated as “present rain” or “gift rain”. You get rewarded constantly in Modern Warfare games, and that can eventually lead to becoming quite stale over time. In Battlefield games however, the reward system is much slower and rewards team play more than it does individual skill. Doing the objective your squad leader has pointed out gives you more points. Giving med kits and ammo kits to your team and squad mates earn you more points. Suppression fire gives you bonuses, kill assists give you points for how much you’ve helped, and not a predetermined +20 as it is the case with MW3. You earn just as many points by reviving your team mates as you do by killing people, so be the bigger man and don’t think about your K/D ratio and help your mates. Repairing friendly vehicles earn you points as well, and you team mates will be thankful for you doing so.
So as you can see, Battlefield’s gameplay is much more oriented on teamwork rather than lone-wolfing. It therefore also requires some good communication skills, tactical skill and what have you. Modern Warfare 3 on the other hand is much more infantry oriented as they have no such thing as destructible environments, vehicles, or larger than 400 m2 maps. It’s more of an arena type game if anything. It doesn’t have the same kind of thrill you get when you dive down towards the battlefield in a jet and spraying the enemy tanks full of lead, then pulling up, turning around and then mowing down the survivors. Battlefield 3’s supporters has a catchphrase; “MW3 lets you call an airstrike, Battlefield 3 lets you BE the airstrike!”, and I couldn’t agree more.

All in all, the multi player aspect of both games are quite different from one another. Battlefield 3 is a massive-scale vehicle and teamwork oriented style of play, and Modern Warfare 3 is more of an arena–sized, instantly rewarding, lone-wolf oriented style of play. And my preference is without a question the former.

IGN held a voting competition between Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3 not too long ago on YouTube, and it was about the three categories I’ve also covered in this blog; Graphics, Single Player and Multi Player. The vote ended up with Battlefield 3 winning all three categories, something that has apparently sent all MW3 fans into denialism. If you visited the comments on the Results video and on this Facebook status, you will no doubt be unable to count the times this phrase: "BF3 just got more because MW3 players were still playing the game" is uttered. In fact, it’s been uttered so often that I start to doubt the intelligence of said players. If what you claim is true, then why are you there commenting in the first place? Using the tiny bit of psychology I know, I’d say they’re in denial because they didn’t win, even though they outnumber BF3 players by a large margin.

One last thing before I end this rather long blog entry. There is another reason I can’t stand the Modern Warfare games. And that is their neglect of the PC market. I’m a PC gamer, always have been, always will be, so I demand that the things that make the PC the superior platform are kept in a game. It all started with Modern Warfare 2 and their sudden decision of dropping modding support, dedicated servers and advanced graphical changes. I was furious to see that they simply shat on the very platform they got big on, just to grab the quick cash on the console market. It was a decision that would forever change my opinion on the Call of Duty franchise. The greedy black-suits at Activision trampled on the good word of CoD and has since then become a thorn in my eye. I cannot stand their business models, their abuse of people’s loyalty to a franchise and their ignorance for grabbing the cheap buck. You do not pay $60 for a copy-paste job and you do not pay another $15 for a few recycled maps from previous games. That is just absolutely beyond stupid.

This is DarthSatoris, back from the grave.

Humans: The stupidest creature on Earth.

2011-03-06T11:39:00.001-08:00

I know, the title alone is very provocative, but I want you to read it all, and think about what I have to say.

Humanity is arguably the most influential animal species on Earth. We've come very far since our initial spawn in the African wilderness. We've wandered thousands of miles, crossed oceans and habited areas that seemed completely ridiculous to settle down in. We've built up large societies and have made vast technological progress. We are the result of hundreds of thousands of years of persistence and dedication to our survival.

It is good. No, it is great. We as a species have come far and will get much farther than any other species from Earth ever will. Then why am I accusing us for being the stupidest creature on our small blue globe?

Think of it in a broader perspective. We are the only species that slowly kills itself. We wage wars against each other over trivial matters like territory, power, moral values and what invisible man in the sky we worship. We also deliberately try to screw each other over all the time, with pricing products too high, selling unnecessary products, or broken products to each other for profit. The other animals don't do that. Sure, I've heard of chimpanzees waging wars against each other, but you have to remember that they are our closest relatives in the animal kingdom. We just do it on a much larger scale.

You also have to look at the culture we have as a species today. Over the past few decades, technology has developed at an exploding rate, and our culture has changed with it. Not in the right direction though! The more we get exposed to the internet, online communities and the like, the more dependent we get. Today we are extremely dependent on electronic devices and vehicles, in order for our day to function. 30 years ago a cell phone was a rarity. Everyone is wired up to the global network in some way or another, and we could not dream of living in a world where these technologies are nonexistent. This dependency could become the downfall of our existence, if this development continues to progress.

In order for these technologies to work, they need power. And where do they get these powers? By burning fossil fuels and harnessing sun and wind powers. But let's focus on the fossil fuels: We drain the Earth from this natural resource so quickly, that it is impossible for the Earth to keep up with the demand. For millions of years, no animal even thought of using fossil fuels for anything… and then humans came along. We are idiotic and stupid not to grasp the consequences for the complete drainage of fossil fuels, and we are not focusing enough on sustainable energy that could save us from the inevitable depletion of oil.

It is also apparent that we, as a global society, have failed. I say this because of the massive poverty and misery in Africa, Middle East, Eastern Europe and Serbia. We also haven't been successful in bringing forth scientific theories like the theory of evolution, because religion still has its large grip in humanity. Religion is a huge problem regarding science and technology, because science contradicts religion on so many levels. Yet human culture is built up from religion, so it's a conflict between knowledge and tradition. What do we choose then? As sorry as I am to realize this, humans are creatures of habit. We let religion rule our world and keep the science away because it is difficult to understand and doesn't fit in with what we already "know".

We're in constant conflict. We're always arguing, hating and discriminating. We can't care for our brethren in the third world. We can't neglect religion and focus on more important things like science. We stay in our personal bubbles, we ignore the things we don't like and do not think about the broader consequences of our actions.

We are… the stupidest creature on Earth.

(This blog entry might not be entirely accurate as it is based on my current knowledge and view on the mentioned topics.)

Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion.

2011-02-13T17:18:00.001-08:00

First of all, forgive me for writing about an anime series two times in a row, but this is something I just have to write about.

What do expect when you sit down and prepare to watch an anime you've only heard good things about? Do you want to sit through it, try to nitpick it to death to prove everyone wrong? Do you want to watch it so you can say "I've seen that one, good anime"? Or do you do something completely different? What do you do?

Personally, when I started to watch Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion (a.k.a. Code Geass) I didn't expect much. I heard good things about it and that it was a more mature anime than what I usually watch, so I figured I could need some more serious anime going on. What I did expect was a mature anime about mechas (yeah, it's anoter mecha anime, but mechas are not the main plot drive in the end) and corruption, what I definitely didn't expect was an anime that was this complex and fantastic. Just like Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Code Geass has a very lot of topics flying around all the time, but Code Geass isso much more serious about than the aforementioned anime. Greed, corruption, romance, technology, insanity, mind control, the fight for freedom, internal conflicts and the necessary evil are all topics that are experienced in Code Geass.

Code Geass is set in an alternative universe where three super powers; The Holy Britannian Empire, The Chinese Federation and E.U. (Euro Universe) have shared the world among them. The latest addition to the Britannian Empire is Japan, renamed as Area 11. Discrimination, poverty, corruption and sorrow has broken out among the Japanese people, now known as "elevens", and no one can really do anything about it. Until one day when a Britannian student, Lelouch Lamberogue stumbles upon a mysterious woman who grants him the power to give commands to anyone he meets and they are carried out without hesitation. Even suicide. This has, according to himself, vastly fast forwarded his plans of destroying the Britannian Empire once and for all. What follows is a series of events where he gains power among the people, gets equipment and soldiers, tricks one enemy after another and almost destroys the Britannian part of Tokyo. I will not spoil anything from this point, as it would ruin the entire anime if I did. I would like you to go and watch it yourself at some point in your life, even if you're not a fan of anime.

It is parted in two separate animes, Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion and Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion R2. The first part is about the uprising of the Japanese people and the second one is about Lelouch's personal quest of gaining the means to destroy the Britannian Empire. Both have to be seen consecutively, as they don't make much sense seen separately.

Code Geass is without a doubt one of the best animes I've seen, from the start till the very end. If you're into a mature, complex, philosophical, action packed, suspenseful mecha anime, I would advise you to check out Code Geass.

I promise that my next topic won't be about another anime, but I will not say that it'll be my last either. Peace Out!!!

Tengen Toppa GURREN LAGANNNNNNNNN!!!!!!

2011-02-06T15:43:00.001-08:00

I have no idea how to start this blog. I really don't. I really want to write about this anime, but the impact it made on me makes it hard to do anything. It is so to speak an indescribable anime… or something, I DON'T KNOW!!!

This anime… is unlike any other anime I've ever seen, and when I say something like that, it means a lot. As I read above, I don't know how to begin this blog, so I guess I'll start by explaining what it actually is about.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (otherwise known as Gurren Lagann outside Japan) is an anime about a young boy who lives underground in a colony, blissfully unaware that a world on the surface exists. However, another colonist, another boy he regards as his brother, although they are not related, persistently tells everyone that there is a world much greater and far less dangerous than the one they are in now, but no one believes him. That is, until a monstrous mecha breaks through the colony's roof, revealing the surface world. The young boy, named Simon (pronounced "Seemon") and his 'Bro' Kamina both team up with a smoking hot girl (whose name is Yoko), who crashed through the roof as well on the hunt for this mecha. Together they defeat it and head out for the surface world. Here they meet similar mecha, called Ganmen or Gunmen, depending on who you ask, and they face greater dangers on their journey to bring all humans back to the surface.

Persistent and determined, they conquer these Ganmen from the Beastmen who control them, and make their way to destroy their main base. Anything further explained would be considered a spoiler so I won't go into more detail than that, but I can say that this journey brings them beyond the stars and they ultimately fight a battle on a galactic scale. And that has to be taken literally. The final battle is between two Ganmen standing ontop of a freaking galaxy, throwing other galaxies at each other!!!

The Endeavour from a hole in the ground to dropkicking the greatest threat to biological life directly in its ugly face is one that is indeed unexplainable and it has to be seen in order to be understood fully. There's no denying it, if you see this anime, you'll be left speech- and breathless at the finale. It is something completely out of this world and definitely has to be experienced.

There's so much going on at the same time and there are so many genres in one that it can't really be called by any specific genre other than the general Science Fiction. There are mecha, evolution, parallel universes, space battles, the end of the world, technology progression, brotherhood and death, all in one big pot of awesome.

Holy cow, I found it, the word to describe this anime. The one word that has the power to manifest this anime's entirety in a single written line of symbols:

AWESOME! Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is awesome and there's nothing that will be able to tell me otherwise.

So many things are "awesome" today, but if we look into the very word itself and see its actual meaning and potential, it is the true word to describe this anime. You may think; "awesome is a nice word but it's kinda lost its 'oompf' effect because of overuse", and I have to agree with you. However, the literal meaning of awe; "Awe is an emotion comparable to wonder but less joyous, and more fearful or respectful. In general awe is directed at objects considered to be more powerful than the subject, such as the breaking of huge waves on the base of a rocky cliff, or the thundering roar of a massive waterfall" – Wikipedia, we can see that its meaning is something that is beyond our own grasp of power. We can't control the waves and we can't suppress the waterfall, we can only stand beside it and wonder, respect it and perhaps fear it. Take this into account when I describe this anime as awesome because it's that exact interpretation that I wish you to hear.

If you're on the search for something out of this world to entertain you and fill you with a feeling of having witnessed something unique, I suggest you fuck the hell off to find the nearest copy of the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann anime series and I will guarantee you, there is no way in hell you will ever regret it, EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dead Space 2… supposed to be scary?

2011-02-02T13:56:00.001-08:00

By the title you might already think; Oh no, not another blog about scary games not being scary… and yes, you are absolutely right. Not that I'm complaining about it, it's actually better that way for me. You see, I've never liked the horror genre, and I don't really know why. So it was a leap of faith when I bought Dead Space back in October, and to my delight, the game wasn't as scary as I had feared it to be. The sequel "suffers" from the same mistake.

I think the reason because I don't think the Dead Space games are scary is that whatever you do; you're in a favorable position. Unlike horror movies where the fate of the protagonists is unclear, in a game the protagonist is bound to survive through the entire game. Also, in most other horror media, be it books or movies, there's usually nothing for the protagonists to protect themselves with. In Dead Space, we have a whole arsenal of deadly cutting tools and weapons that can seriously fuck stuff up. That adds to the "safety factor", and makes the game less scary, as you're able to defend yourself. Should you be unlucky enough to fall for the necromorphs, the death scenes aren't scary either. Just gory as hell. And as far as I see it, gore does not equal scary.

There's another thing Dead Space does, and that is startling you. Where a monitor suddenly turns on with a loud *BBFFFFT* or where a corpse falls on top of Isaac. Sure, it caught me off guard 3 or 4 times during my entire playthrough, but that isn't enough for a 10+ hour game. Also, startle doesn't equal scary as well. But it's a part of the term scare, true.

Eerie music is played throughout the game, and it builds atmosphere. But for some unexplainable reason (I can't find an explanation at least), I do not find the eerie music scary in Dead Space. Probably because I have control over the protagonist and can make rational decisions like check all corners around me before progressing or actually check if my weapons are loaded, unlike people in a movie that makes the same mistakes, time and time and time again.

So Dead Space and Dead Space 2 are not scary, Extraction isn't either, and that's an on-the-rails shooter where the scary stuff is timed perfectly to scare the crap out of you… not me.

I guess I've rambled enough about the scare factor (or the absence thereof) in Dead Space games, let's talk about the actual game; Dead Space 2. What do I think about it, what were my expectations, did I get what I paid for and is it worth your time?

Dead Space 2 is a great game. It reeks of good quality and you can feel that the developers have spent a lot of time and money in this game to make it a worthwhile experience. I expected a good story, some good gameplay, likable characters and a lot of gore. The gore part wasn't really something I wished for but I expected it nonetheless. As a matter of fact, I am glad for this purchase. I got exactly what I paid for, and that's the best purchase you can make. The game is worth the money, and anyone saying they don't want to spend 50 € on this are cheating themselves of a great experience. It is without a doubt worth your time if you want a good story and nice gameplay. Not to mention that the game looks very nice as well.

It gets my recommendation, if it matters, and I will see you soon in my next entry. Peace out!

Considering closing down DarthSatorisVloggen

2011-01-18T11:33:00.001-08:00

I should be doing homework right now, but I'm in a phase where homework can go suck it, so instead I'm using the time constructively (you can argue if a blog entry is constructive use of time, but that's another story) to write about the consideration of closing down the YouTube channel "DarthSatorisVloggen". If you don't know already, DarthSatorisVloggen is/was an experiment of mine where I tried to talk in front a camera to practice my English and give out my opinion on stuff going on. Unfortunately, I have not had the willpower to maintain a steady video upload rate, and the latest entry was 7 months ago.

It has also come to my mind that the brief popularity I had among my class mates wasn't because they liked what they saw; they took amusement at the expense of my self-humiliation, or something in that matter. Honestly, all the stuff that is on the channel right now is kind of embarrassing and I see no further reason keeping it up. Sure, it is nice having two channels for different things, and I see the point, but as it is right now, there's no reason for me to have two channels and DarthSatorisVloggen is the least used one. I will still think about this, but the pros for closing it heavily outweighs the pros for keeping it, so it might not take me long to figure it out.

This entry has been relatively short, but not every blog entry needs to be an entire novel to be good. I'm signing off for now, peace out!

In Review – TRON: Legacy

2010-12-17T08:49:00.001-08:00

Last night I decided to go watch the new TRON movie with a friend of mine, and I asked him if he wanted to. He said yes, so the deal was set. I picked him up at his place and we drove to the theaters to go see the film. When we arrived there was a massive chaos because apparently this day was also the premiere of another movie in Danish Cinema: "Klovn: The Movie". As I have yet to see the appeal in the series I didn't figure this out until it was a bit too late and we had to find a parking spot far away from the entrance. How awesome…

Anyways, after getting through the ticket booth and past the snack shop (that was so overfilled that we didn't have time for buying snacks anyway), we finally managed to place ourselves in the theatre that would show TRON: Legacy. It was in 3D so we had our glasses on and jokes around before the movie actually started.

Enough with the initial text, let's get down to the review.

When I first saw the trailers for this movie I didn't know what to say. I knew very little about the first TRON movie, only that it was the first movie ever that used CGI and that it was back from 1982. So when I saw this sequel I thought: "Hey, maybe this would be a great catalyst for me to get into the franchise" and decided to give it a try. So when the title appeared on the front screen I felt I was getting into something big.

TRON: Legacy starts out in the real world where Kevin Flynn, multimillionaire, visionary and CEO of ENCOM, suddenly disappears and no one knows where. He leaves his 7 year old son behind as well as the Encom Empire. 20 years later, a good friend of Kevin Flynn gets a page from an old disconnected number that once belonged to Kevin and tells it to his now 27 year old son, Sam Flynn. Sam Flynn of course investigates this and unfortunately gets sucked into the digital world called "The Grid". From this point on, the entire movie gets more intense and we get right into the action from the start.

The whole world of TRON, "The Grid", is a very artistically and visually stunning piece of art. Most of the world is kept in this very dim and dark atmosphere, and the outlines of buildings, people and vehicles are illuminated in recognizable colors. Every normal "program" is illuminated in blue, whereas the police are illuminated in red and the main villain sports a fancy yellow/orange color. The main villain is, as some TRON fans might've already guessed, a program called Clu, and he was created by Kevin in his image to create the perfect system. There's a longer story I won't spoil as of why he went corrupt, but he is destined to get his hands on Kevin and his companions and he uses every method he can to get the job done.

The rest of the film is the three main characters, consisting of Kevin, Sam and a program called Quorra (Olivia Wilde), trying to escape to the portal that Sam opened when he first entered the world. And in these parts we get the character development done. The acting is great and very convincing although Quorra sometimes seems a little too enthusiastic. Jeff Bridges (playing Kevin Flynn and Clu) does a fantastic job in playing both a villain and a good guy, and the scenes where they stand face to face are incredibly good. You won't believe or even consider that it is the same person playing both roles, as the timing, the acting and the effects are so realistic and well done.

The music is made by Daft Punk, and if you don't know who they are, I only have one question for you: "Have you been living under a rock in the last 20 years?" as you certainly haven't been in a seemingly normal life in the 21^st century. Go look them up if you don't know about them already. But anyways, Daft Punk have done a great job with the soundtrack for this movie, as it catches the "techno" scenery very well. It certainly doesn't feel misplaced at any point and there are a lot of gems among the tracks that can be heard outside the context of TRON and still sound great. Some YouTube commenters have said that they wanted to go see the movie for the music alone, and after I've seen it, I can't blame them. The music is indeed good, and emphasizes the movie in its whole.

The story in itself isn't something new, but it doesn't feel old either. It feels right in its own sense, but doesn't come up with anything extraordinary or fancy. But even if it's something we've seen before, that doesn't mean it's bad. Old stories can be retold in different ways and still keep the spark, and that's what TRON: Legacy is doing.

Finally, I can only say that if you want to see a movie with stunning visuals, a presentation of a new and fantastic world, a good cast and a decent story, I say go for it, but if you're the guy that sees a movie solely for moral messages, complex character development and a deep undertaking in the human mind, this isn't really a movie for you.

I enjoyed it greatly, and if you're just as geeky as I am about computers and worlds beyond the bonds of our own physics, you will too, I guarantee that.

10/10

Anime…

2010-12-13T08:14:00.001-08:00

One of my main hobbies (besides video gaming) is watching Anime. Now, if you're not familiar with the term "Anime", I can tell you that it is the Japanese cartoons that sport big eyes and feisty battles. The reason? Why should I have a reason? I just watch it because I think it is fun, it is exciting, and even though my Japanese skills are just as bad as they were 4 years ago when I started watching it in actual Japanese, I still find the culture and the language intriguing.

As I mentioned before, I started watching Japanese voiced anime around 4 years ago, but I've been watching it since fifth grade. But none of it has ever been watched in Danish. Preposterous you say, but no! Have you ever heard any of the Danish dubs? The lack of commitment alone renders the anime unbearable to watch for me so I've always resorted to German or Japanese. Therefore I started out with German, at a time where I had no idea how to interpret the German language. I still remember the very first day. I got home, started the TV and scrolled through some channels in order to find something interesting that could satisfy a fifth graders rather simple mind. I stumbled upon the channel "RTL II" that was currently showing an episode of Dragonball or Dragonball Z. Can't fully remember, but it had the Son Goku guy in it. Something about a fight in a demon toilet or something. I can't fully remember the details but it was interesting enough for me to hang around that channel every day when I got home from school. In the later years more animes were added to the list, and animes like Yu-Gi-Oh!, Pokemon, Digimon Frontier, Detective Conan, Megaman, Beyblade, One Piece and many more got a nice spot on the channel. And as you can guess, that's how I was officially introduced to anime. It's also the reason why I'm so good at German today, but that's another story.

When Naruto started airing on RTL II, I figured it wasn't something for me until episode 49-50 where the character Rock Lee had his moment of fame. I don't know what happened but after that, I got hooked. When RTL II then started to rerun the show, I decided to continue the series on YouTube which quite frankly got me pretty far. It was in Japanese as the German dub studios hadn't finished the work on the German version yet, but what really caught my mind was the massive increase in violence. The Japanese version had buckets of blood where the German version had next to none. I then tried to look up some of the German episodes and saw that they had all been censored heavily. What didn't make sense in the German version suddenly made sense in the Japanese one. A shocking revelation, to say the least. Ultimately, the act of viewing the episodes on YouTube got too much of a hassle and I decided to go look for the series elsewhere.

When RTL II then stopped showing One Piece I got mad, because that show was one of my favorite shows. I decided to look it up on the Internet and realized that the anime was almost a hundred episodes ahead. I immediately started to catch up with the story and ditch RTL II for good as it at a time like this decided only to show the censored version of Naruto, Pokemon and other random small-time animes. Not really my taste anymore.

Today I mainly watch One Piece as it is far from over and I want to see how it ends. It is currently at episode 476, and they're probably half way by now. So I have many years of One Piece ahead of me, which I won't complain about. Other animes I watch regularly are the installments of the "To Aru Majutsu no Index" anime and its spinoff; "To Aru Kagaku no Railgun". Season two of Index started about 10 weeks ago and I've been following up on that season since I only discovered that it had started again a few days ago. So far, this season seems just as good as the first one, and I finally have something to look forward to every Saturday morning. One Piece airs a new episode every Sunday night so that day's already covered.

I have given up on Naruto as the Shippuuden episodes get more and more confusing every time a new one is aired. Sure, it may seem to be one of the most popular animes in Japan but it's no longer an anime that speaks to my taste. The thing is, that instead of these larger ongoing animes, I tend to watch the smaller ones that have a set amount of episodes (usually around 24), because they're better at getting some action done right here and now, and not starting every fight with several episodes of flashbacks that are ultimately just delaying the actual combat. I'm looking at you, Naruto! *evil glare*

Oh well, my passion for anime is a bag of mixed feelings. Although I would love to watch many different animes, my fear is that I might not be able to tell them apart if I watch too many at a time. Also, the Danish society's view on anime is a bit mixed as well. Some find it good, many find it weird. And even though I'm the type that absolutely loathes the majority's opinion, I still do not want to be left out in the cold. It can be very hurtful to your social life, so I tend not to talk about anime in my everyday life.

How do I end this before it gets too stretched out? I guess I'll just end it right here.

My view on religion.

2010-12-05T07:17:00.001-08:00

What comes to your mind when I say the word 'religion'? Surely, something like the Bible, God, Jesus and the ten commandments might jump into your mind, and that is just Christianity we're talking about. Should we think further than just one religion, more things like Allah, Mohammed, Shiva, Buddha, Krishna, the Torah, the Qur'an and even more items and deities considered highly valuable in entire cultures could be discussed.

So why am I asking this question, you might ask. See, for some time now, I've been subscribed to a YouTube channel called "The Thinking Atheist" that provides us with very fantastic and very professional videos that explains why religion shouldn't be such a large part of our lives anymore, and why it would be foolish to think otherwise. The Thinking Atheist has a long history in Christianity, so he knows what he's talking about when he makes these videos, and it's far from one-sided propaganda.

The reason I'm bringing up this matter is because of his latest video, "The Center Of All Things", that makes one think, how it was like at the "dawn of humankind". What is was like to perceive the world differently than in the previous evolutionary steps before us. What was lightning? Earth quakes? What was in the sky at night? What was the moon and sun? Was the Earth flat or did it continue forever? Why do we perceive the world differently? Why are we here? What is our purpose in life? What happens when we die?

All these questions were not possible to answer at that time, so my theory is that at that point when someone decided to give an answer to all of this, he or they decided to try and give an explanation through the powers of imagination. He created the deity we all know today as "God", he made up the reason why we are here (Adam and Eve), he solved the question about an afterlife with Heaven and Hell, he fixed the question of, why we speak so many different languages (The tower of Babel), he had an answer to the rich animal life we had (God made the world in 7 days, etc.) and when he had success in releasing the all time bestseller called "The Bible", people sort of accepted these answers to their questions as they couldn't be explained otherwise… Until now!

The past 3 centuries have been very important for humankind as we have started to question the credibility of the answers provided by the Christian religion, and any other religion for that matter. Galileo Galilei was an Italian astronomer that came up with the idea that maybe the Earth wasn't the center of our solar system, but the sun the was the center, and Earth was circling it, not the other way around. Of course, free thinkers and skeptics of religion were cast as "unclean" and "unworthy of this world", but Galileo was good friends with the pope and was spared the tragic fate of being burnt alive on the bonfire. He was the start of a new age of reason, and many other free thinkers followed after him. Ever since the beginning of the 20^th century, our technological progress has accelerated at dwindling speeds. We have been able to conquer the sky with airplanes and space rockets; we have much better travelling vehicles like fuel cars; we have invented the computer and we have made the discovery of medicine. All of this would have been impossible if we were still under the rule of the church, as anyone claiming what was told in the bible was falsifiable nonsense would be shunned and possibly killed. No one dared to do it then but luckily it's not the case anymore.

Religion today has been degraded into something we only care about when we get baptized, confirmed, married or buried. At least in Denmark. I've read somewhere that the rate of atheists in Denmark is close to 80 %, even though the majority still is member of the Protestant church. And look where we are today. We have the best networked readiness index in the world, we have been announced as the happiest country on Earth, and more information about the greatness of Denmark can be found here. Maybe not because of the fact that we're atheist, but I know it's one of the key points.

"The Center of All Things" among many others videos created by The Thinking Atheist are bound to attract religious people and non-religious people and it is almost impossible not to have them start long and tedious conversations about what is right and what is wrong. I've been in some of these conversations myself, and believe me when I say, that extremists will never listen to anything you have to say. You can provide them with 400 different proofs of evolution and they would still shrug it off as "nonsense" and "false information". You could question them about the inconsistencies in the Bible and they would simply disregard the question or come up with a wild and crazy explanation that didn't have anything to do with the original question to begin with. They won't listen to reason; they refuse to accept factual evidence, they are on a never ending quest to convert people into the faulty, holed and incoherent nonsense that is religion.

I'm atheist of mind but still member of the Protestant Church. I still want to be buried in a graveyard you know?

Steam Halloween Sale and Dead Space

2010-10-31T08:49:00.001-07:00

Okay, today I want to talk about various things regarding halloween, Steam, games, and specifically the genre 'horror'. It is so that I've always been a massive pansy when it comes to the horror genre, especially the 'gore fest' or 'torture porn' kind. But also the eerie, tension building kind where you always sit on the tip of the seat, constantly hearing that eerie music and not knowing what is around the corner.

That is why it was a bit of a challenge for me to decide to buy Dead Space in the Steam Halloween Sale, as I know it's been praised to be one of the scariest games in newer times, and it should be a game full of blood, dismembered limbs, mutant alien creep and whatever that could slice the protagonist open in the most brutal ways. After downloading the game and playing it for a couple of hours, I have to say, that if you get scared of this game, you're a goddamn pussy! The entire game is not even that scary, and I've set the brightness to the absolute lowest possible, making the cold, grey corridors dark as the night, yet it still doesn't manage to scare me. Playing it in the middle of the night with headphones on didn't add to the effect either, so I don't really see why this is praised as a scary game.

The reason is maybe because of the way it is trying to scare you. It bases its whole scaring concept on the startling effect, having random sounds come from the roof, vent shafts and corridors next to you, shadows here and there and having enemies jump out in front of you. In the starts it's nice, but after an hour or so it gets repetitive, predictable and boring. And I thought I was easy to scare. Yeah right…

Nothing is left to your imagination when you fight enemies, as they can't seem to get enough of the spotlight. They show themselves more than Christians in front of an abortion clinic could even dream of, and sure, they are ugly as shit, but that's also something you get used to. Dying in the game is perhaps one of the few things that can make me feel kind of uneasy as you see how violently Isaac dies. The Hunter's attack is especially gruesome, first stabbing Isaac several times through the chest, then slicing his legs and left arm of, looking at him like a sadistic maniac and then decapitating him and chopping the rest of him in half. Bloody, gory stuff and it looks disgusting, I have to give them that. But that's about it, really. I haven't played the game to the end, so perhaps it has something up its sleeves but for now, I'm not impressed.

The game is still good though, no doubt about that. It's intense, the action is good, the weapons are nice, the puzzles are okay and the story is decent. Voice acting is also top notch and the setting is plausible. You get very involved in the story and you follow Isaac around in his quest of finding his girlfriend and getting out of the nightmare ship 'Ishimura' alive.

Enough about Dead Space, let's talk Halloween. Team Fortress 2 has recently had an update dubbed the "Scream Fortress" Halloween event update. It has added new hats, maps, game mechanics and weapons to the game. Personally I'm almost done with collecting all there is to collect (I just need 4 more masks, then I'm done) and I have been eagerly trying to play as much as I could. At first I thought it would be somewhat scary, but who am I kidding? This is Team Fortress 2, the whacky multiplayer shooter where people beat each other with fish, boxing gloves and booze bottles and where one of the main objectives is to push a fatman on a little mining rail. It's not scary, it's fun! It's more fun than I've had in a long time, and it sure has cost me a lot of time that I could have used more constructively to make homework or get a girlfriend…

In the event of Halloween, Team Fortress 2 has a sale on 50%, making it only 10 €, which is around 76 DKK if you live in Denmark. It is bound to add more TF2 players, something I like to call "fresh meat". More players = bigger community and that's a good thing. The Halloween sale also included Dead Space along with Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 and many other "scary" games. I suggest you go look at it, as the sale ends Monday.

Other than that, I don't really have much else to say, so I just want to wish you a Happy Halloween.

DarthSatoris

Success!

2010-10-24T15:51:00.000-07:00

Finally! After almost 1.5 years of work, it has finally paid off.
I’m quite sure you have no idea of what I’m talking about, and you probably won’t understand my explanation either if you haven’t played Team Fortress 2 for some time.

It is so, that I am an avid TF2 player, and everyone I know can state that. I have already spent over 620 hours in the game. 620 hours I only needed to pay $30 for, which is quite a bargain. But ever since I fired it up for the first time I’ve always loathed the Danish translation of the game. It was, to say it mildly, utter shit! Never had I seen such horrible spelling errors, grammar errors, and some of it made absolutely no sense at all. So one day I decided to put an end to the translation’s misery. I started to write down the most visible mistakes, and then tried to translate them the best I could myself. After my initial work was done, I decided to upload it on FPSBanana.com, a site that mainly handles community created content such as skins, maps, sprays, more skins, GUI’s, particle effects and much, much more for almost a hundred different games. Calling it “Proper Danish Translation”, I immediately received lots of compliments and praise by other Danish members of the site. It was at that point I met my now good friend Lasse, also known as Cross in-game as he had had contact with the head of the translation department of Valve. After Cross got us together in a little chat, the translation department boss (known as Torsten from now on) and I got in agreement that my work on FPSBanana would get partially implemented in the game over time, and I got some secret information on an upcoming project of his.

This is where the story starts to get interesting.

The secret information was about a project called “Steam Translation Server”, and it would be a world widely accessible server where people could go in and suggest better translations for some of the things in many different games. I asked Torsten if I could become a moderator on the server, and Torsten agreed, saying that my contributions were good enough proof that I could handle the job. Time went by and the project slowly progressed. When I asked Torsten about how far it was, he said they started Beta testing and I was immediately invited inside as a moderator. It didn’t take long for me to grind through all the horrendous translations, and it was soon up to the others to evaluate my suggestions and make them public. When you start on the server, you only get 10 free suggestions to translate with, but as you make more and more correct translations that get accepted, you earn more free suggestions. It didn’t take long for me to get to 1000 free suggestions, and Team Fortress 2 started to look like a decently translated game.

Jump forward to 23rd October 2010 and you now see me running around with my brand new, shiny and highly valued “Community Wrench” for the Engineer class in Team Fortress 2. For those that do not know what community weapons are, you can read the official team fortress wiki page about it here. But if you can’t be bothered, I’ll tell you here. Community weapons are given to valuable community contributors that have made or done something good for the sake of Team Fortress 2. I got my lovely wrench for helping with the Danish translation in the Steam Translation Server, and I am very proud of it. My one and a half year of work has finally paid off in the sense that I got something that is considered ultra rare and very hard to obtain in a game that I love, and I would certainly do it again anytime I see fit.

For proof, here’s my backpack, here’s my profile (for groups), here’s the list of community weapons owners and once again, the official community weapons wiki page (also with my name).

See ya next time, DarthSatoris out!

The First 1000

2010-09-03T00:13:00.001-07:00

The title has two meanings: I finally drove over the 1000 km mark in my Smart, and I recently got above 1000 achievement points in StarCraft II. So let’s talk about both:

My smart car:

The smart is a great car. I have driven 1000 km in it by now, and I can now say that I’ve gotten used to it. The fact that it is unlike any other car I know of makes it a car that has a very special driving experience. With no clutch alongside the brake and accelerator, there’s one pedal less to think about, and the gear shift is also very different from normal cars. It’s not a problem though; it’s just a question about adaptation.
Most of the kilometers have been to and from school. There are around 18 km between those two destinations, and that makes almost 200 km per week. It has been a great experience to drive yourself to school every morning as it gives you this feeling of independence and freedom. I can travel to wherever I want, and get there relatively fast as well.
The Smart itself is, of course, small. It’s one of the major selling points of the car. But this also brings some problems along with it. Because it is so small, the car can get “floaty” when driving very fast (I talk 130 km/h or more). It also gets floaty if the wind is stronger than normal, leaving you and the car in a tricky situation whenever it’s windy and you drive on the highway. If you’re not careful, the wind takes the overhand and throws you head first in the ditch. Other than that, I’ve yet to find any complaint about the car at all. It travels 30 km per liter, and runs on diesel, bringing down the fuel costs excessively. My smart has almost all the additional equipment that is not found in the downgraded version, like the RPM meter, an analogue watch, CD holders, cup holders, also a radio with USB. The radio with USB is one of my major reasons to pick the smart over the other two cars we have when I have to travel elsewhere by myself. Not only does it save me from the junk played on the radio stations, I can also pick what music I want to listen to wherever and whenever. My USB flash drive has 19 albums from different bands, and I’m sure I’ll have more albums on it once I run bored of the stuff I listen to now.

Now it’s about StarCraft II:

I got over 1000 achievement points in StarCraft II not long ago as well, and thought I might give you my personal experience with it as of now.
It is a great game, no doubt about that. I have been waiting for it for a loooooooong time by now (ever since it was announced back in 2007), and since I’ve played it long enough to actually get a better feeling about the game, I can now say that it’s one of the most addicting games I’ve played in newer times. The gameplay is great, the single player is a fantastic journey through the next chapter in the StarCraft saga, and the multiplayer is fun too. Just don’t lose 4 or 5 times in a row or it becomes a boring experience. I mean, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, REALLY boring.

The matchmaker in StarCraft seems broken, as I’ve only encountered people MUCH worse than me, or people beating the snot out of me with a bazillion units, before I get up a decent defense. The AI is no different. Medium seems tough enough, Hard is almost impossible to beat. You can say I’m scared of the Insane mode… :)

Achievement hunting in single player is great, as it gets you thinking about your actions and trains you in becoming better at your microing and macroing skills. I’m still not very good at it, but I almost have all the achievements by now. I still need around 20 or so, but I’ll get there eventually.

Lastly, we have the soundtrack. And boy oh boy is that a good soundtrack. If I haven’t mentioned it before, I’ll do it now: I love classical music. Epic symphonies in particular. And StarCraft II is full with it. From the introduction screen to the rolling credits, you experience one epic symphony after another, mostly in the CGI cut scenes, but still. Music is an important part of every game and StarCraft II executes this wonderfully.

And before you start asking: My favorite race is Protoss. It might change in the future, but for now, I love hacking and slashing into the enemy base with my army of Zealots, frying my opponents with my Colossi, and melt the rest away with my Void Rays.

See ya next time!

So close.... FFFFUUUUUUUUU-

2010-08-23T14:04:00.000-07:00

I'm so damn close to finishing the StarCraft II campaign. I'm on the last level, all previous levels have been completed, and yet I struggle to get through the last 2-3%. It's so damn frustrating, and it pains me. I have successfully gotten through all these levels on Hard, all 28 levels, and that b*tch to Kerrigan keeps screwing up my defenses when there's only 5 or 10 minutes left.

Blizzard sure knows how to make a good finale, your skills are really put to the test. I've had to rearrange my troops countless times, change strategy, and have had to learn all my units in and out to make it through, and it STILL isn't enough.

That level has cost me 2 whole days of my life, and I refuse to go down to playing on normal. Why, you ask? Well, there's a simple reason for that. THIS is the reason. The reward "Arcturus Mengsk", obtainable by completing all 20 campaign missions on Hard difficulty. I've strived for that thing ever since I saw it, and I won't stop until I have it!

You may call me a sucker, you may call me illogical, you may call me what you want, but I want my Mengsk avatar and I'll get my Mengsk avatar, "no matter the cost"!

Real Time Strategy and me!

2010-08-13T14:00:00.000-07:00

Today I purchased the very famous and hyped up game; StarCraft II, which is already in good use.

To start off, I'm a huge fan of the StarCraft franchise. Having played the first game back when I was a mere sprawl, I instantly grew attached to the gameplay. But if it wasn't for one of my very good friends, I might've never heard about StarCraft then. Sadly, our connection since then has been minimal, but at least I know he's still alive. I owe him a lot of my personality and gaming behavior. If you'll ever read this, you know who you are. :)

Back to the topic, RTS games. I have a lot of RTS games installed on my PC. Some of them might sound familiar: Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War (along with all its expansions) and Dawn of War II, as well as Company of Heroes and Universe at War. Sadly however, none of these games have really managed to catch on, and now they're just sitting there, collecting cyber dust. It's a shame really, as I know they're loved by many, and they smell of good quality. But for some reason, StarCraft II has caught on immediately. Probably because it is so familiar to the old one I've played and loved so much.

But what exactly is it that StarCraft does right, that the others don't? I have no real idea. Perhaps it's the three very different races you can play. Perhaps it's the story/setting (I've always had a soft spot for sci-fi stories). Perhaps it's the core gameplay, the music, the humor, I don't really know. It's all so well made that I can't decide or distinguish that part.

Although I've already enjoyed the beta for multiplayer, playing the single player part is always the most interesting for me in RTS games. Because I always get my ass kicked in multiplayer. In single player it usually goes my way, the slow-paced way. In multiplayer, if I don't get a million units up running in less than 30 seconds, my poor base gets overrun by millions and millions of their units. I hate it.

StarCraft is a great franchise. A very great one indeed. I loved the old game and its expansion and I'm sure I'll love to finish StarCraft II too.

I got a car!

2010-08-08T12:43:00.000-07:00

I know that by now, too few people read this blog. It might even be close to zero, but I don't care. I want to write my shit here anyways. I just want to let you all know that last Thursday (5th August) I got my very own car.

Or, I didn't really get it. It's more of a lent car from my parents but it was indeed intended to be mine. I just can't afford the thing as I have no job and my income is minimal. Nonetheless, I think my life just got a whole lot easier.

Now you're probably thinking: "What car did you get, then?" and my answer is: A smart fortwo! I know, it's not a car to brag about, but it's a fine little ride that has everything a studying young man like me needs. Comfy seats, nice big cockpit, easy handling, semi-auto gears, a radio with USB input (what can I say? I'm a nerd!), and a lot more features that I absolutely adore by this ride!

And it was fairly cheap too. With the insurance being the smallest one we've yet heard about and the car itself being under the 100,000 DKK mark, I'd say it's a Win/win situation for everyone (maybe except my parents' wallet).

The Steam Summer Sale... Oh Boy!

2010-07-07T13:22:00.000-07:00

To start off, I'd like to say that I've had a great use of the Steam Summer Sale. With prices cut up to 90 % on some of the games, almost all of the offers were incredibly tempting. So tempting in fact, that I had to decide what NOT to buy. In the end though, I got a lot of new games added to my library, some of them better than others.

Some of the stuff I purchased was:

The Unreal Deal Pack, which contained Unreal Gold, Unreal II: The Awakening, Unreal Tournament, Unreal Tournament 2004 and Unreal Tournament III.

All those games for just 13.60 €.

Then I purchased the Oddworld Pack which contained Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee and Oddworld: Abe's Exodus. Both for just 2.50 €.

Then I purchased Osmos for 2.24 €.

Then Bioshock for 4.99 €, Bionic Commando and Bionic Commando Rearmed for 10.74 € and lastly Just Cause 2 along with all the DLC for a price of 24.99 € for the game and 3.94 € for the DLC.

However, outside of the sales I've also purchased the game Singularity, which I couldn't get my hands on myself, but had a friend in the US to gift it to me. It's so that the Steam edition of the game is only available for US citizens, but can be gifted to people outside the US, and I figured that if my friend is on vacation in the US, why not have him gift it to me while he's over there? Needless to say, we agreed on a deal, and he made the purchase for me. It cost me $50 but I'm okay with that.

After having thrown my money around like that, I'm left with a ton of promising games that I've been playing with great pleasure over the past few days. I've finished Singularity already, since it was the most exciting of them all (in my opinion that is), yet it could only entertain me for about 8 hours. Then I was done with the game. But those 8 hours were some really interesting and exciting ones as the game has a very nice story evolving time manipulation and the dramatic effects it can have on the future. Bioshock has also entertained me for quite some time now, although I'm not done with it yet. At first I was kind of skeptical because RPG isn't really my taste, and since Bioshock is considered an RPG FPS, I couldn't help but think it might've been a lost cause. Luckily it wasn't. Osmos is also great, albeit being a little short, and tough as #$&@!!! It's advertised as a calming and ambient game, and even then it can sometimes be a b****!

The Bionic Commando games have not yet been played through more than the first couple of levels. They both have great potential, that's for sure, but I simply haven't had the time for them.

As of now, I'm currently exploring the enormous world of Panau, the island in Just Cause 2, and boy oh boy, that game is freakin' HUGE!!! So much land to explore, so many pick-up items to find and so much s*** to blow up!!! :D It's unbelievable that all this is fit down into only 5 GB of data.

I think I've written enough for this time, see you around!

Blur...

2010-06-04T13:09:00.000-07:00

Video 1, video 2, video 3, video 4 and video 5.

The main reason I bought Blur in the first place was because of split screen. I mean, today, very very very few games have split screen, and don't get me started on the PC. So far I've only encountered 5 or 6 games in my games library that actually has some kind of co-op/split screen multiplayer, and 2 of them are from Indie developers.

Anyways, I bought two Xbox 360 controllers for multiplayer, I got Blur, started it up and my first instinct was the split screen part. I called out my siblings, and we started gaming like there was no tomorrow. It was awesome. I haven't had a time that great for a long time and it was a relief to finally do something with my brothers that wasn't fighting, bullying or stopping them from ripping each other's head off.

Blur is definitely a great game, and when I found out that Xfire, the free game client that is somewhat equivalent to Steam, could actually record videos for free (suck it Fraps!), I went ahead and downloaded it, installed it and fired up Blur.

Boy oh boy, that sure as hell was a nightmare after the recording was over. Standing there with an uncompressed 12 GB big file I had to boil down, I started to find some tutorials that showed me some nice free programs that was actually able to cook down the colossal files to a bearable file size and quality. VirtualDub, you nice compressor, you are my savior. Getting the file down from 11.4 GB to 600 MB is awesome. Just a shame it takes for ever to get done.

Sony Vegas Pro 8.0 is also a bitch to get done too, and it's not because of my PC, that's kickass enough to render, it's the codec itself. Problem is, they're the only codecs that can make a file small enough for YouTube to accept them.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanyways, enjoy the videos.

Controllers and split screen on the PC

2010-05-29T15:53:00.000-07:00

Related video, please watch that first!

First of all, let me tell you that I had a really great time playing Dark Carnival this way. It was amazingly fun and since I'm the only one in my household having a decent PC and the actual game, it's kind of hard to play LAN if I/we want to game together.

My co-op mate in the video was actualy my 10-year-old brother (gasp!), but honestly, he's seen much worse and after all, he was under adult supervision all the time (me!). We both agreed on him keeping his mouth shut while we were recording so I wouldn't get massive complaints about underage gaming, because, we both know (my brother and I) that people hate young kids in mature games, so it was for the best for all parts that he kept quiet.

That being said, the setup wasn't as hard as I had feared it to be. It was in fact rather easy, and I only had to fiddle around with one script, and 2 or 3 command lines. That was it! Full tutorial on that here. Left 4 Dead 2 is a fun social game (somehow) and with Valve implementing this feature in the game (albeit a little hidden) it just became even more awesome in my book! If you have some 360 controllers lying around and you have a decent PC, you should definitely try that s*** out!

Apropos controllers, I bought 2 of the wired Xbox 360 controllers because I figured that racing games are so much more fun with controllers, and racing games with split screen could be hellishly fun. Sadly however, I've yet to stumble upon a great racing game with split screen multi player for the PC. Games like SEGA's Allstars Racing and Blur have been under my radar, but I'm so skeptical on their quality and if they're even worth it. Tell me in the comments if you know a great split screen multi player racing game for the PC I could play (Don't say ToCA Racer driver 3, I have it and it's boring!).

The controllers have been to great use in other games than racers, mainly Indie arcade games like Beat Hazard, Shatter and in single player racing games like Pure and DiRT 2. My performance has greatly improved upon my usual keyboard and mouse setup, simply because racing games are so ridiculous to control with a keyboard. It's amazing that the cars/ATV's/bikes are even controllable with that setup, and I'm now a more happy man that I could've hoped to be, thanks to the controllers.

Also, if you know some games where two players can sit and play at the same time, not necessarily split screen, but still play at the same time, please, for God's sake, tell me about them!

The first blog entry...

2010-05-24T04:45:00.000-07:00

It's always hard to start something new, and a blog is no exception. However, I've blogged for a little over a year now on another site, but that is Danish only and it's located on a game site. It's limited what I'm capable of doing there, and with this new blog site I can finally get to write internationally and come out to as many people as possible.

My YouTube vlog, located here, is an ongoing project where I talk about my life in front of a live camera in order to train my English competences. It is also a vlog where I talk about my life so don't sweat it if you think my English is horrible at this point.

This blog os going to be about me and my actions on the Internet, my opinions of whatever, and what's been going on about my life that didn't get into my vlogs.

Since this is my first blog entry to this super fresh new account, I have no followers or readers and I need to get some attention for this blog to actually be to some use.

If you read this, congratulations that you even got this far. I hope I'll be seeing more people here in the future, but for now, peace out!

DarthSatoris