New TV!
Monday, December 4th, 2006
Wow! This TV is unbelievable. I just got it today and set it up. The set up was easy with an on-screen set up coming up as soon as you connect it to your cable which prompted me to allow it to scan for channels. The remote is easy to use and the picture is crystal clear – this is considering I have not replaced my rca cables for my Xbox (will get component cables tomorrow) and also using a standard cable box (will look at getting an HD box tomorrow). My previous TV was ok by older standards and had a nice picture and had proven itself very reliable, but it was time to move on. I can now see the scores for sports games in the top corners that had been previous cut off at times. The screen size is ultimate – 42″ may not be the largest overall, but it spans the enter top of my entertainment center and feels like I’m in a theatre (minus the vagrants chattering banalities and showing off their abhorring opinion of cleanliness and social considerations).
Granted, it is still the first day and I am likely to get used to the expectation of viewing all of my geeky shows and such on a large screen, but it is nothing short of spectacular right now. Gaming is phenomenal on it as well. I can now more clearly see even small aspects of the game such as fog, shadows and footprints which were an afterthought before. I would highly recommend moving to the LCD technology. I went with Acer because they really have become solid in LCD technology. I already own a 19″ widescreen monitor for my main system which I have been impressed with since I hooked it up. Cost wise – I found a better deal at Tigerdirect but ended up buying it from The Source due to convenience mostly. I also managed to talk to the salesperson into giving me a comparable deal even though the policy is no price matching. I generally find that The Source has very competitive pricing but this one was $100 more expensive. In the end, I got a good deal and a 3 year extended warranty. Buying it from The Source also means I get in home service if ever required.
It took me a while to pick up this title as I refused to pay the hefty price tag for it when it was new. I managed to grab it for around $20 which is decent. The game is just as fun as other Medieval offerings. Everything that made the other ones successful come out in Resurrection. The graphics and environments are stunning and colorful on the high quality psp widescreen. The voices and sounds are extremely clear and the gameplay has been great including an array of the same characters in its predecessors as well as some new beasts. For anyone who liked any of the previous Medieval games for other consoles and has a psp, this one is worth picking up especially at a discounted price. I also purchased Virtua Tennis – maybe I will actually play it on the psp as I haven’t played it much on the Xbox.
And we are back. The last couple of months we were working on two games: Bloodrayne 2 and Half Life 2. My thoughts were that although Bloodrayne 2 was fun at first, it eventually became a button masher and Half Life 2 was poorly designed in that I was physically ’stuck’ on at least 2 different occasions due to the way the game was designed. So, we are moving to a new game for December.
The reason for the delay in choosing the game this month was because we wanted to make sure we were selecting a game we would enjoy. One thing that I have learned through doing the game of the month is that sometimes the games were not all that enjoyable and then you were stuck with them for the whole month (ie – Ultimate Spiderman and Conker were two games that stand out as not being favorites of our ‘club’). This month we decided to actually play some games for a little while to test them to see if we would want to play them all the way through. We came up with two games: Bloodrayne 2 and Half Life 2. Both were rated well in forums and review sites and seemed like they would be fun to play. We ultimately decided to try somehting different – play both games for the month with no schedule and just see what happens. Bloodrayne 2 is not only a sequel but also has an accompanying picture show – “Bloodrayne” in its series that actually wasn’t bad as long as you know what to expect. The combat is a lot of fun with moves like slicing people up with your twin swords as well as impaling people after you straddle them sucking the life out of them literally. The cinematics are very impressive, in-game graphics are not as impressive as per usual, but still very good. The storyline is easy to follow and the game tends to move you along in the right direction. The only drawback is that the semi-button mashing could get tiresome after a while.
