Back On Bioshock

Yeah yeah I know I’m really late. Bioshock was released almost a year ago. They have even removed the install limit back in June!

Now I’m only just starting to get into it.

The reason why I stopped Bioshock last year, was that there was a slew of games released at the time – COD4, Crysis, Bioshock etc. Since Bioshock is a RPG I thought I should stop it for awhile and play COD4 or Crysis since they’d be shorter games than an “RPG”. I just never got back to Bioshock till now, sigh.

Since I’m reinstalling (reformatted my PC early on this year), I took the time to also download the latest patches for Bioshock. I was pleasantly surprised they removed the install limit (was 5 installs if I remember right) back in June 2008.

Anyway, somehow this time around it feels “easier”. Previously, I remembered that I shudder whenever I think about taking down a Big Daddy. Now, I don’t. Also, my recent “upgrade” by cleaning out the CPU heatsink and fan might have helped. Now I don’t get jerks in Bioshock anymore. I remember in the past I used to get slight 1 second freezes whenever the action gets heavy. This time around, they’re smooth! Amazing!

What is even more amazing is that in the past, whenever I tried to use Xfire to capture video, my framerates will plummet. After the CPU heatsink cleanup, it seems to have helped this too! The clip below is captured using Xfire, and there’s very little drop in the framerates. Certainly nothing that is obvious actually.

Yes it’s a very short clip, and you can see that the framerates are pretty much smooth (except I might suck a little at taking the Big Daddy down). No jerking, no freezing. If anybody’s interested in my 5 yr old gaming rig configurations, look to the right side of this page in the sidebars – it’s listed there.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted in FPS, RPG | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Burnout!

For anyone that’s actually following my Xfire Profile (and thus, my gaming hours and habits), you’ll notice that I’ve been spending a lot of time on Mass Effect. In fact, the amount of time I spend in it surprises even me. Normally I’d complete ONE playthrough of an RPG, and that’s it. It’s very rare that I play it again, and only a handful of titles have that honour – Morrowind, Oblivion, Neverwinter Nights (1 and 2).

The common denominator among the titles listed above is just this – depth. They all have a nice storyline, they have rich and interesting background of the world. That will prompt me to make an “alt” (in MMO-speak, an “alt” is an alternate character) and play through it again. In the cases of Morrowind and Oblivion, I’d probably run into other sidequests that I’ve missed with the first run through on the “main”.

In Neverwinter Nights though, the draw was the multiplayer. It’s very close to being an MMO if you join a “persistent world“.

Mass Effect, however, doesn’t exactly fall into this catergory. While the story is nice, and depth is pretty average, I spend alot of time making “alts” in this game, and I have no idea why.

So much so, that this is my 7th run-through, and I’m starting to feel burned out. Same feeling I get in an MMO when I’ve already hit level 50/60/70 and making alts to play with fellow guildies who are lower level than me. This time, the game is not an MMO and not multiplayer, but just me re-runnning through it with yet another character.

Gamers talk about “replayability”. We want to be able to play a game again. I think Mass Effect has achieved this quite nicely.  However, there’s always a limit to “replayability” if the game isn’t multiplayer, or at least, online-capable. Mass Effect should have included a multiplayer option, for people to have deathmatches or capture-the-flag games while waiting for the sequels to appear.

Right now though, I’m getting kinda burned out on Mass Effect. My current character is a Sentinel (finally!) and I’m playing him on Hardcore setting. So far it doesn’t feel any different from “Veteran” or “Normal”. Once I complete the story with this guy, I guess I’m putting Mass Effect aside till Mass Effect 2 comes out.

Yeah I’m starting to burn out on Mass Effect.

Zemanta Pixie
Posted in Personal, RPG | Tagged | Leave a comment

Mass Effect – Fixing Mira Up

On a couple of occasions, I have been asked how to solve the puzzle that is presented to you when trying to get Mira (the station VI) back online when you’re on Noveria.

Actually this puzzle is pretty old. I first heard of this back in the early 1980’s, and it was called “Towers of Hanoi“. If you google it, you can probably find it. For the benefit of you readers, I’ll outline the rules here.

In the puzzle, you have a “tower” of progressively smaller blocks towards the top. The aim is to move these blocks from one place to another, using 2 other locations. The rule is simple – a smaller sized block can be placed on a bigger sized one, but not the other way around. You can only move one block at a time. In the original game, the aim was to move the blocks in the fewest steps possible to reconstruct the original tower in a new location. In Mass Effect, there’s no such restrictions.

I made a video clip of this puzzle to show the solution, and I hope you benefit from it.

As you can see, it’s actually pretty straightforward.

Hope you guys enjoyed the video!

(I’m on my 6th playthrough the game now, and trying every combination of “classes” of characters).

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted in Puzzle, RPG | Tagged , | 2 Comments