Archive for the ‘Games’ Category

Starcraft II on Asus 1005HA

Sunday, September 12th, 2010

I saw that someone came to my blog by searching “Starcraft II on Asus 1005HA.” What they found would not have told them anything about running that game on an Asus 1005HA.

For future individuals who happen to stumble onto my blog in search of similar information I will give you this.

about 3 weeks ago I actually did try to install and run Starcraft II on my Asus 1005HA (2gb ram, Atom N280, 6 cell battery). It might even still be installed. What I got was 100% unplayable.

So after it took over an hour to actually install the game I opened it up. Oh also you should know that the audio that plays during the installation was skipping. This should have made me think the game would run like crap, but I soldiered on. The starting animation with Tychus skipped HORRIBLY and was nearly impossible to watch. After getting through that I opened up the mission where you have to hold off the Zerg for 20 minutes. That mission is called Zero Hour I believe.

Anyways, as I looked at the in-game timer I saw that it was going extremely slowly. every time 1 second passed on the in-game timer 3 seconds passed on my watch. Also there was an extremely long delay between when I clicked on a unit and when the unit was actually selected which was quite annoying.

The game performed so horribly on my Asus 1005HA that it told me to close applications to increase performance. Unfortunately all my applications were already closed. I was  just eyeballing it but the game was running at somewhere between 4 and 8fps, if that.

So in closing I would just like to say that it is definitely not worthwhile to try and install starcraft 2 on your asus 1005HA, unless you want to deal with the game time being 1/3rd of normal time and horrible gameplay. On your asus 1005HA just stick to Starcraft 1.

CGI blood… Really Mr. Stallone? oh And Scott Pilgrim too

Sunday, August 15th, 2010

Gah so I have been doing quite a bit of work on this project and I decided that it was time for a break. I saw 3 movies this weekend. Here they are in the order that I saw them:

  1. Eat Pray Love
  2. The Expendables
  3. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Now if I was to order these movies based on my level of enjoyment I would say that it would be:

  1. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
  2. Eat Pray Love
  3. The Expendables

Now Scott Pilgrim vs. The World was just a wonderful piece of art. Eat Pray Love was nice. Even the Expendables was good. But my main beef/gripe is that in the expendables they used CGI blood. You know, the crappy looking effects that they have in movies like Ninja Assasin where the blood is just squirting around everywhere, is obviously CGI and looks extremely horrible?

I will admit that the effects in Ninja Assassins were much blatantly horrible. But there was still CGI Blood squirting everywhere. Also I didn’t like Dolph Lungren’s character. He was the reason I wanted to see the damn movie, and they gave him the crappy character, eh.

But yeah, go see Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. It will  be way better than you could have expected. It’s like an action movie, combined with Romantic Comedy, combined with Superbad, combined with Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Zelda, Mario 64, and Super Mario. AMAZING!

Peace out ya’ll

I’m eating my words…. Starcraft II again

Thursday, August 5th, 2010

So last week I wrote this about my thoughts on the new Starcraft II game.

So anyways, I was at the Pacific Place mall in Downtown Seattle on Saturday and as I walked by the Gamestop in the bottom of the mall I was overtaken by an urge. Before I knew it I was 59.99 + tax poorer and a new owner of a copy of Starcraft II:Wings of Liberty.

I know, I know all the crap I said in that last entry was so anti-Starcraft II but I saw the sign and it had me feeling all nostalgic and I just couldn’t resist. and OMFG the game is AMAZING. This is one impulse buy that I am totally not regretting. I am, however, regretting the lack of sleep trying to get everything done while spending 8 hours a day playing Starcraft while working on this website and doing schoolwork.

Back to the game, Starcraft II heavily emphasizes the story and it is very in depth. 22 missions with full videos after every mission plus deep back stories for most of the characters. I can really see why the game is so expensive and it is worth the money. I will definitely be getting the other two games, or are they expansion packs, when they come out.

As you would have read in that previous entry I am all about the stories! this game was like watching a 20 hour movie it was GREAT!! if I had to rate it I would give it 4.5 stars out of 5. The other day the my comcast internet went out and since Starcraft II requires an internet connection I was screwed. It’s also really annoying when the game constantly pops up with this warning in the lower left corner about connecting to battlenet and turning achievements back on. The worst is when it temporarily loses connection while you are playing. This huge window pops up in the middle of the screen and the game doesn’t stop! Eh, there’s always something…

Oh I almost forgot! Lost Viking is one of the “secrets” of the game I guess. It is pretty easy to find in the corner of the Cantina. It is one of the best top down shooters I have ever played. I wish they had made more levels for it. Basically you play the game, it has three levels, every time you play the game you get the option of starting over at a harder difficulty.  I have only been able to beat the game once. The second time I got b****ed on the third level. No worries if you beat the game and then leave the arcade machine and start over, it repeats at the original difficulty. In my humble opinion the addition of Lost viking is worth an additional 20 dollars at least. In fact, if Blizzard decided to sell this separately with a few more levels added in I wouldn’t think twice about buying it. It is a surprisingly finished product for a secret game within a game.

But anyways, definitely get the game, ignore that other blog entry of mine. Peace out ya’ll.

EDIT:

It seems that I neglected to mention my favorite and least favorite part of the game in this entry. I really LOVE the Lost Viking easter egg in Starcraft 2 I spent hours playing it haha. I even got a bronze achievement for it, yes I know hours to get bronze, I suck. But really it is a treat.

But the most annoying thing is that once you beat the campaign you are instantly punished because you can no longer go back and play lost viking, it’s like after you complete the campaign the Hyperion is gone for good along with the wonderful Lost Viking Arcade machine. So so sad…. luckily I have a save game right before media blitz! haha.

Oh for those of you none Starcraft 2 owners, Media Blitz is the level right before the last 4 missions on Char. No more opportunities to get back to the ship once you land on Char my friends.