Good things can come for free Part 3

As well as various commercial free games, open source provides a large range of free games of all genres. All though these games vary in quality and support, many enjoyable and commercial grade games a released open source. Some of the most popular open source FPS include Alien Arena, America's Army, Cube, Cube 2, Assault Cube, Nexuiz, Open Frag and many more. There is also a great deal of Free or Open source MMORPG's and a few RTS.

http://www.economicalgamer.com/ has a list of recommended games which it claims is of retail quality. I don't really need to say much more, however if you still need help I recommend that you click here.

Medal of Honor: Heroes 2

I was quite excited when I got this for my 13^th birthday after playing Medal of Honor: Heroes. Even though it had fewer levels, I was looking forward to using it for multiplayer usage, and it didn’t fail to disappoint. For about three days.

Comparing the two MOH:H games, I was slightly disappointed with the interface, taking on a rather 1950’s style look, but that is definitely not the biggest of my worries (read on). Actually playing the game, I was also disappointed with the reduction of more than half of the levels compared to the first MOH:H (15 down to 7 levels), but the length of these levels almost makes up for up, with the player having to go through up to four sections on the same level. While it was slightly lengthy, it helped to bring the value up slightly. The controls were extremely similar as well, with you moving with the analogue stick and shooting with the right shoulder button, and a myriad of other controls.

The same as MOH:H, the game has an easy difficulty, medium difficulty and a hard difficulty, and again you play as an OSS operative. The wide array of stage designs included everything from a beach to a train station to an underground sewer, which made the game a lot more interesting. Playing the game was also exciting most of the time, and I particularly liked looking for all the hidden secondary objectives, as well as using the wide array of weapons at your disposal (they kept the Bazooka and Panzerschreck- yes!) For the stage difficulties, the stages themselves start off easy then get brutally hard, particularly the final level, which requires you to, near the end, open up a series of gates to escape the nuke bomb factory which, as you have planted bombs, is about to collapse. The 5-minute time limit is certainly quite small, and the floods of Nazis coming to try and kill you all 300 seconds of this stage actually caused me to nearly break out in a sweat (I made it with 5 seconds left). And that was on Easy difficulty. I can’t imagine what Hard would be like (I didn’t play Medium or Hard- read on…).

After completing Easy difficulty in just four days, I decided to try out multiplayer when I went to my cousin’s place- and I was actually shocked (not kidding) when I found out quite possibly a conspiracy (!). While the game certainly had ad-hoc multiplayer, because I had an Australian version, there was no infrastructure multiplayer!!! I later found out that only games from Europe could use infrastructure, so apparently, even the USA misses out as well! What a rip-off. In fact, the game didn’t even have a Skirmish mode, which pits you up against up to 16 ‘bots’ in a level of your choice. What a super-rip-off. I actually got rid of it (it was recently on EBay).

All in all, the sequel to the fantastic MOH:H easily and convincingly fails to impress. Unless you happen to be from Europe, multiplayer is basically non-existent, and the severe shortage, and at times superhuman-difficulty, of levels just made it worse. It is certainly enjoyable, but only for a short amount of time. So, unless you happen to have five or six mates who have MOH:H2, the excitement of the game fizzled out like a packet of fizz lollies in lemonade. (Oh, and if anyone comes up with a hack so you can play multiplayer infrastructure, please tell me.)

GAMEPLAY: 7/10

GRAPHICS: 6.5/10

SOUND: 8/10

DIFFICULTY: 6/10

MULTIPLAYER: 3/10

LEVEL DESIGN: 9/10

GAME EXTRAS: 5/10

OVERALL: 6.35/10

This review was by josh

Review-PSP-Game-Metal Gear Solid:Portable Ops +

I'd say this game is far too under-appreciated by the critics. It is my first MGS game, and it left absolutely brilliant first impressions in my mind.

Highly addictive multiplayer is what makes it for me, along with its superb graphics and lovely level design. Although the game does not have an actual story-line, it has a lengthy, enjoyable, and rewarding single player 'Infinity Mission', which I have been playing for 10+ hours. The difficulty levels are perfect ie: easy is easy, hard is hard, etc. The whole idea of this single player, is to train and recruit new soldiers, which you split into squads for multi player use.

One thing that I did not see coming when I started the multiplayer, was the fact that you can lose your soldiers obtained in single player, if captured by the enemy team, if the server mode is RC (Real Combat). There is also standard VR mode, where you cannot lose your soldiers.

Another surprising aspect of the game was the included Boss-Rush mode, where you can challenge all of the bosses from the original MGS: PO, with no risk of losing obtained soldiers. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the American version, you must import a game save from the original MGS: PO to unlock this feature, whereas the Australian copies (mine) come with it included.

Altogether, an addictive multiplayer game, a nifty little (yet challenging) single player addition, and with superb graphics, amazing sound effects and a heap (68) of characters make up for a great portable gaming experience.

This review was by Aydan from Handheld game reviews and is avaliable on that site.

All scores out of 10:

Graphics -8
Sound -8.5
Gameplay -9

Overall Score -8.5
Go to www.megarocketgamesandvideo.webs.com
for portable game reviews go to www.xanga.com/handheldgamereviews

Good things can come for free part 2

Steam have recently put up a free game offer for both Nvidia and ATi Users. Even though it requires a card for either of those companies these games would require a dedicated card for play anyway. For Nvidia users you can get Half-life 2 Deathmatch, Half-life 2 Lost coast, Peggle Extreme and Portal First Slice a demo which features the first 13 levels. For ATi Users you only get the first 2. Half-life 2 Deathmatch offers the most gameplay as it is a multiplayer deathmatch game. It is also a lot of fun too.

This game offers two main gameplay types. Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch. Which you find more fun is up to you. I find that Team Deathmatch is more fun, but for those that like everything at the fastest possible pace then you gotta love plain old deathmatch. The Weapons and character models are directly of Half-life 2 and the maps have the same sort of feel and look quite similar to some of the areas in the game. 

Blog Smarter & Faster

Using a dedicated blogging tool for your blog instead of using an online blog editor that is part of your blogging service can bring great benefits including extra functionality or easier access to extra options and more freedom in where and the way you blog.        

I'm using Windows Live Writer to type up this blog but many other tools are available for typing up your blogs including Post2Blog, Blogdesk and Scribefire (this is a Firefox extension). Although I am typing this on my laptop at home connected to the Internet, with anyone of these blog editing packages you can edit your posts where ever you are whether or not you are connected to Internet giving you more freedom to edit your blogs.

I may later post a review on these tools.

Go to www.megarocketgamesandvideo.webs.com
for portable game reviews go to www.xanga.com/handheldgamereviews

Good things can come for free

EA are soon to release their new play 4 free, cartoon shooter Battlefield: Heroes.
Instead of purchasing the game, you download it straight from their website for free. How can it come for free ? This game is supported by ads and micro payments for extra customizations to your game character.

It is a third person shooter with cartoon graphics and modest system requirements from what we can see so far. It is designed so that you may even be able to run this on certain integrated gfx solutions. It is expected to come with 2 or 3 maps included and they may make more after release.

It also will include a matchmaking system meaning that noobs and eight ( or eighty ) year olds play with each other while people who can play may actually get a challenge.

Many people are looking forward to this game and cannot wait for it's release ( I for one being one of those people). It has received positive anticipation from many critics and is one that the general public looks forward to.

Go to www.megarocketgamesandvideo.webs.com
for portable game reviews go to www.xanga.com/handheldgamereviews

Killzone : Liberation PSP

OK, so this game plays great, with a generally stable frame-rate, however, it may become a little choppy during major action, and sometimes general connection lag in online play. One of the things that surprised me, was that this game has a top-down, third-person perspective of the action, unlike its PS2 counterpart (first person view) which makes the play pretty interesting, as you know when to pop your head up and let of a round whilst behind cover. A great aspect of the game is, as just slightly mentioned, the cover system. OK, so here's a scenario: Two Hellghast (the enemy race for those of you unfamiliar with the series) are shooting at you, about 20 metres ahead of you. There is a supply crate in front of you. Ideally, in a game, you go up to the box, and manually crouch, then pop up and shoot, crouch then pop up and shoot and so on. But in this game, with the default control scheme, you run up behind the box, hold the R button (crouch) then, while still holding the R button, press and hold SQUARE to pop up and shoot. when you release SQUARE, assuming you are still holing the R button, you will automatically return to the crouch cover position. Genius! There are also a few realistic features, such as explosive barrels, that you manually shoot to damage nearby enemies. As you would expect in life, a bullet would go straight through a wooden box, but this does not happen in most games. Killzone Liberation is an exception. With a few shots, the wooden box is destroyed, usually revealing some ammo or health, and it is now no longer cover. Overall, the game play is really good, with a few hidden features: in every level you find bonus 'Vektan Dollars' in random briefcases, which are situated in the wooden boxes throughout the map. Collecting these is well rewarded, upgrading you weapons and unlocking new, more powerful ones. Now to the graphics. Although slightly fuzzy on the edges, these graphics are lovely. They are generally smooth, with easy-on-the-eyes textures and very, very good looking blood effects. One of the major, neat surprises I found in this game was the Havok 2.0 graphics engine, which employs rag-doll physics into the death animations. It looks absolutely awesome when you shoot an explosive barrel and you see Hellghast flying across the screen, arms flinging everywhere, and then landing and rolling over a few times, before the slide of the of a bridge to a watery death. Muahahaha. Sound is also a good aspect of the game, especially if you can be bothered to plug them into speakers. You hear the typical enemy grunt, along with the occasional 'get him' and sometimes even a string of cussing. One of the funnier comments made by a Helghast was 'I'll tear you a new one', if you play the game and hear that, trust me, in the context and pace of what's happening, hearing something like that will make you laugh. Yes, a great game, but it is fairly short. You'd get a good 15-20 hours out of it, assuming you download the later mentioned Chapter 5, achieve all unlocks, and complete all challenge games, but if your just in it for the play, and not the real in-depth features, this is not really the way to go. This game has 4 in built chapters with 4 relatively short missions in each. As you complete each chapter, that chapter's set of challenge games is unlocked. These range from target practice, to obstacle course-like games, where you shoot all of the targets on the way to get more points. The whole idea of these challenge games is to get points, and then unlock abilities, for use in single-player. These abilities include carrying extra grenades, unlimited ammo, having extra health, and so on. In the online side of single-player, you can download an additional 'Chapter 5', which includes another four missions and the challenge games. This chapter also reveals a major story-line plot twist, which I will not reveal here. (There are spoilers all over the internet). Another rewarding factor of the game is the unlockable characters. There is a character for about every mode, from getting golds on all challenges, to getting 10 wins in multi-player. You cannot achieve 100% complete without these unlocks. Now I'll move on to the offline multi-player. There are two main modes, one with submodes. The first I will mention is co-op story mode, which I'm sure most multi-player gamers are familiar with. It consists of you and a friend, playing through the Campaign. (In regular single-player, you have an AI buddy in which you can command, instead of your friend as the team-mate). You can also play co-op chapter 5, providing you both have it. You also unlock new characters for multi-player by completing the co-op mode. Also incorporated in the offline multi-player is what is known as Combat Zone (standard head to head battle). There are several typical modes in this feature (Death-Match, Team Death-Match, Capture the Flag, Sabotage (known as Assault) and thats about it. In the online multi-player, each of these modes is also included, and you battle up to something like 12 players across the internet. This is enjoyable and rewarding, as you rank up from 1 bronze star, to 5 gold stars. This online play works well, with minimum lag, unless your wireless is slow, and enjoyable competitive game play. This game is one of the best action games for the system, with superb graphics, realistic sound and extremely enjoyable game play online, and off, and although this game may not have been long enough, every other great feature compensates for this.

All scores out of 10

Graphics – 8.7
Sound – 8.9
Gameplay – 9.0

Overall Score – 8.86

This review was originally published on http://www.xanga.com/handheldgamereviews
by Aydan.

Go to www.megarocketgamesandvideo.webs.com
for portable game reviews go to www.xanga.com/handheldgamereviews

Building a new system

Are you building a new system ?
If you are why don't you check out http://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/?tag=rmp_sg_whirlpoolpcs_boxes
Although this is Australian with Aussie prices but may still be useful in other parts of the world.

Game Review: Age of The Empires: The Age of Kings

This game is really fun to play. You can play as one of five factions being either the Britons, Franks, Mongols, Saracens or Japanese. Each army have their unique hero’s and the campaigns are based around the stories of these heroes with a lot of historical accuracy. For example you can play as Joan of Arc saving the Franks from the British invaders. Or you can play as Genghis Kahn going around and conquering the Middle East.

This game is a turn based strategy but maintains the same feel of it’s P.C counterparts. Instead of being quite quick with your keyboard and mouse trying to keep up with everything you can go about it in a more sluggish matter making the best decisions and thinking everything through, a bit like and advance game of chess. One thing about this game is that it isn’t short. With a 25 – 30 hour campaign mode and extensive skirmish and multiplayer mode there is plenty to do. Plus as you complete campaign levels you gain points which can be used to get extras like special units and extra skirmish maps further increasing this games longevity. This game features an excellent multiplayer system although no internet play. If you have friends with this game you can play turn to turn via wifi on everyone’s consoles. But what I really like is the fact that you have a hot seat mode. You can have 4 people playing on one console and being turn based passing the console around really doesn’t effect the game play ( unless you forget to end the day and everyone sees what you have done ).

Another great point of this game is the visuals. It is played from an isometric view point like many great strategy games and the graphics are nice. On the bottom screen you can control your armies using either the touch screen or button controls. On the top screen you can view unit, structure or terrain information and when your units come to battle you can view the battle sequence. The battle sequences have a nice 3-D graphical style and in despite the fact that they often have minor but noticeable errors add quite a lot to the game.

One of the points which isn’t so positive is that it can get quite slow. Whether that the A.I can get a bit slow to make up its mind when there are 3 or 4 players or that moving around is a bit slow there is a lot about this game that is slow. Overall this is a great game with high marks from most reviews and high marks all around with me.

Fried Smash Weasel (Pierce)

Check out www.megarocketgamesandvideo.webs.com

This Review is also available at along with other reviews for portable gaming at
http://www.xanga.com/handheldgamereviews

Scores (Out of 10)

Graphics – 9.0

Sound – 8.0

Gameplay – 8.5

Overall – 8.5

I have started working on my linux machine !

This is my first post to do with the my Linux system project. I have installed Red Hat Linux 9. Even though this is an old version I am using it simply because that was what I have available.
I have borrowed it along with Red Hat Linux 9 Bible.

Installing Red Hat Linux 9 ( This is a tutorial )

What Hardware is required:
The requirements of a graphical installation (gui)
- a 400 mhz p2 class cpu or better
- 1.7 gigs of space for personal desktop or 2.1 gigs for workstation ( More space is highly recommended
-128 mb of ram ( 196 is recommended)
-a CD-ROM Drive
- A VGA or better monitor
- Keyboard ( Mouse is recommended for a graphical environment
Sorry this image isn't of high quality as it was taken off my phone.
If you wish to boot off CD then you might need to go into the bios and modify the boot sequence.
Here is a tutorial on doing this http://www.hiren.info/pages/bios-boot-cdrom.If your system meets all of the requirements and your bios is set to boot off the CD-ROM drive then your ready to go.

Ok so make sure that disk 1 is in the drive and boot up the computer.
If your computer is setup correctly then you should see the installation screen appear.
Then a media check screen will appear, if you haven't checked the disks do so now or if you have then it should be safe to skip. Next choose your language. After that a screen will request information about your mouse. Next you choose to either upgrade or perform a fresh install. For most people you will be installing for the first time so select a new installation. Next you can choose how you want to partition your hard drive. If you are novice or have no need to use the more advance features of disk druid then just select automatic. Next it will ask you about the boot loader. For most people G.R.U.B (the default ) will serve just fine. After that you will need to setup your network configurations (LAN). You can automatically get your addresses using DHCP or set it up yourself.

Next we have setting up the firewall. For general use ie. using it as a personal computer you should set it to high. However if you are running a server you may need to select medium firewall security or you may want to use your own custom settings. Now that you have set this you will need to select any additional language support, the time zone and the root password. Remember to write this down and keep it in a safe place as it may be hard for a novice to recover/ change the password. Once this is done your can select to use any encrypted or shadow passwords.

Now all you have to do is select the packages which you want to install and confirm that you wish to install. Remember nothing has been written to the disk yet. Once you click next the disk is formated and the installation begins. This process will take between 20 and 60 minutes and you may be asked to insert other disks. After it is installed you are given the option to create a boot disk. This is now the end of the installation. Remove any disks and restart the computer.

Okay this is the end of my tutorial for installing Red Hat 9.
Feeling like playing a game, go to http://www.megarocketgamesandvideo.webs.com/
or want to check out some portable gaming reviews. Then check out !
http://www.xanga.com/handheldgamereviews

Earn Money With Cash Crate ! ( I know a bit off the topic of the blog )

I know this a bit off topic.
But an easy way you may be able to
earn money is with cash crate.
Simply click on http://cashcrate.com/601053
and you can start making money.

Help ping problems in css

Go to this website to see a noob guide to help lowering latency in css.
http://www.fishtankclan.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.44
These may seam obvious but some people often forget simple things like:
Turn off msn and other chat programs
Turn off antivirus
Turn off other programs that use the internet or
that maybe effecting performance.

I also recommend using a program called TCP optimizer from speedguide.net
The basic instructions for this program are
1. Select your advertised maximum speed from the "connection speed" slider bar. (the maximum available bandwidth, in kilobits per second).
2. Choose your Network Adapter, or check to "Modify All Network Adapters".
3. Choose the "Optimal settings" radio-button near the bottom of the program.
4. Click "Apply changes", and reboot when prompted by the program.

More in depth instructions that cover custom tweaking are available for the website.

First Post

Welcome,
This first post is a bit brief
I am just explaining that this blog
is about my PC adventures experimenting with computers
and games basically. I am looking forward to posting soon
about my new Linux project teaching myself Redhat Linux.

Looking Forward to posting soon
Fried Smash Weasel