Terror And Destruction

Ladies and gentlemen…

It’s finally here!

Update: So after al the hubbub and after having watched both the trailer (see above) and the 19-minute long gameplay demonstration, what do we really know about Diablo III ?

• Graphically, it’s a whole new world. The game looks great, the physics previously demonstrated in Starcraft II are present here as well and really increase the immersion of the game world. Most importantly though, the game retains the isometric perspective of Diablo II ensuring that this will be more than just a WoW clone.
• Gameplay-wise we have of course the different classes of which Blizzard has announced two: an old favorite, the Barbarian and a newcomer, the Witchdocter. The skilltree appears to be a mix of memorable old skills and fun new ones.
• Old and new friends make their appearance with Deckard Cain at the forefront. How that old geezer is still alive after all this time is a mystery to me but at least it will once again give us a chance to “stay a while and listen”. An unknown person called “Leah” is also mentioned.
• A somewhat revised health system will make it’s debut. While healing skills and potions still exist, players will be able to use red “orbs” left by fallen groups of enemies to quickly heal themselves. Blizzard claims this streamlines the gameplay. I will reserve my judgment until I can get my hands on the game.
• The interface has also received an overhaul. The familiar health and mana orbs are still there but the potions bar has been replaced by a WoW-style skill bar. The minimap, previously a full screen overlay, has been replaced by a minimap in the corner
• Players will be able to select the gender of every class.
• Players will visit old (like Tristram) and new locations (like Caldeum) in the land of Sanctuary.
• The Arreat Summit no longer exists. The only thing that survived the confrontation with Baal and the destruction of the Worldstone is a giant crater and the Dreadlands. The Barbarian people appear to be all but wiped out.

I’m probably forgetting dozens of things (like have you noticed how Blizzard has incorporated the Battle.Net Secret Gem into the Diablo II website ?) but these seem to be the most important.

With the disappointment that was Hellgate London and the many clones (Sacred, Titan Quest, etc) falling short, it seems only Blizzard will be able to outdo themselves. All I know is I can’t wait to see the results.

Daddy’s got a new toy.

I made a small addition to my dual-monitor setup today. Let me show you.

Let me give you a few specs on the bad boy to the left: It’s the Samsung 245B plus.

• 24 inches
• 1920*1200 Resolution
• 8000:1 Contrast ratio (that’s what the ‘plus’ in the product apparently stands for)
• 5ms Response Time
• 400 cd/m² brightness.
• Fully HDCP Compliant
• DVI-D and VGA inputs
• Height Adjustable & Swivel & Tilt

This is the best monitor I have ever owned! Found it on sale at 50€ less than the regular price. I just had to snap it up. What else was I going to spend that money on? An iPhone? Yeah right, like that’s ever coming out here.

Typically Belgian

So how was the WWDC keynote for you? Did you too suffer through the boring app presentations? Were you too filled with a sensation of euphoria when the worst kept secret in tech history was announced? Did you too cheer when you saw your country among the list of 22 chosen ones? I’m betting you’re going to answer each of these questions with a resounding “Yes!”. But when I ask you if the next day you received the equivalent of being stabbed in the back, your answer wouldn’t be that clear cut now would it?

Yes, it’s true. My sad little country has done it again. Our government has taken a long vacation this past year, our economy is tumbling down the abyss, our language disputes have reached their highest level ever and to top it all off we won’t be seeing the iPhone on July 11th. In all probability we won’t even see the iPhone on July 17th. Quite frankly, we’ll be lucky if we even reach September.

A lot of people are probably to blame and although shoving blame on people usually doesn’t really amount to much, I’m going to do it anyway because quite honestly, I am mad as hell. Not only do we get the iPhone a year later, but on the day that we finally find out when it will be launched in our country, our expectations are killed and replaced with feelings of uncertainty and blind rage.

The most obvious culprit would be Apple, but for once I’m going to spare the rod. Apple would never, EVER have Steve Jobs announcing the various countries and sell dates on stage at WWDC without knowing damn well sure that all of them would be a reality. As far as I know Apple fully expected to sell the iPhone on July 11th in Belgium.

By knocking Apple out of the picture we come to the first real culprit, namely Mobistar. Ignore the fact that their main competitor has a far better 3G network in place, ignore the fact that they were damn lucky to even get the iPhone deal in the first place. The least you could expect is for them to not f*ck it up first chance they get. I’m currently not a Mobistar customer, but I (like many others I assume) was ready to switch, right there and then. Now because of their stupidity, my first impression of them has already reached rock bottom.

But let’s not have Mobistar be the only moronic organisation in this affair. Their little “communications error” wasn’t the only problem, there was also the matter of regulation. Even after taking the Belgian tying laws out of the equation, you can pretty much shift a decent part of the blame on our government. A government that has been living in limbo for more than a full year. A government that has practically made it public policy to do nothing but procrastinate and lie. Sure, delaying the iPhone seems to be but a trivial matter to most people, but in reality it’s just one of the innumerable symptoms of the sheer incompetence of our government.

I’m still going to buy one, if and when it inevitably ships. It’s the phone I’ve always wanted. It’s the phone that should have been launched a year ago. It’s the first Apple product I’ve ever wanted to buy. Too bad that from day one, it’s entry into the Belgian market has already been dragged through the mud.

(Note: I was inspired by this blog post to write this completely subjective and rage-induced rant)

iPhone 3G

Yes, I believe I will buy that

(EDIT: Strike that. Instead let me say that I want to buy it but once again can’t. Screw you Mobistar)

Computex Taipei 2008

Although due to finals my blogging has been reduced to zero, one musn’t ignore the outside world.

Today is the first day of Computex 2008. Bit-tech.net has an early preview and I’m sure we can expect a lot more information coming from Taipei in the coming week. i will be updating this blogpost accordingly.

Computex 2008: Pre-show Impressions

Computex 2008 Starts Today

Eee PCâ„¢ 901, 1000 and 1000(H) Unveiled at Computex 2008

Nvidia intros Tegra for MIDs and smartphones

ASUS prepping WiMAX USB dongle, base stations

Computex awash in Atom-based netbooks, VIA’s Nano a no-show

First VIA Nano-based netbook spotted

NVIDIA gets official with GeForce 9M series of laptop GPUs

Canonical makes Ubuntu Netbook Remix official at Computex

More Details & First Impressions On Acer Aspire One

8.9-inch MSI Wind shows up at Computex

Computex 2008: Antec Skeleton

Have, well, tons of stuff in your car

NZXT takes on Zalman and Antec with new cases

Cyberlink has PowerCinema for Eee PC and Edge TV

OCZ Fatal1ty memory, new flash drives, keyboards

Asus Rampage Extreme – Niche New Features

Silverstone presents The Raven case

Computex 2008: Zotac Display Port 9600GT and Patriot SSD

Computex 2008: Broadcom Unveils New Media PC Technology for UMPCs

AMD announces Puma at Computex

Computex 2008: Asus Eee developments & Xonar HDAV1.3 a/v combo card

Intel says video encoding belongs on the CPU

Asus Demos 22in DisplayLink Monitors

Maloney Talks About The Real Mobile Internet

Asus has GeForce 9400 Hybrid SLI Intel mobo

Thermalright Xbox 360 heatsink spotted at Computex?

Computex 2008: Day 2 - Moving onward

Computex 2008: Day 3 - The man with the hammer

Noctua already offers Nehalem coolers

Plenty of Nehalem boards on show

AMD’s new 790GX and SB750 pictured

J&W 780G mini-ITX has niche HTPC features

Gigabyte G45 board plays HD movies over VGA

SSDs: blindingly expensive for a while yet

Intel releases 4-series chipsets

Computex 2008 Content Index

(Btw: try typing in the word ‘Computex’ in Google image search. You won’t be dissapointed )

Price of succes?

Apparently Twitter has recently been replaced by this webpage.

Don’t really get the marketing effort behind this one but hey, it’s their business .

Commies FTW

It’s a great time to be a gamer.

Screw the Next-Gen.

For all of you who are worried that Microsoft made a bad choice by sticking to DVD-9 in the XBOX 360 instead of choosing a next-gen disc format (like HD-DVD and Blu-Ray), here’s a great (albeit somewhat old) article that should put those worries to rest.

An excerpt:

Much debate has gone into whether or not the DVD9 format is too small for next generation titles. Looking over the data, it’s fairly evident that in fact DVD9 is not too small for next generation games as much as it was too big for the last generation’s. Very few games on the original Xbox came close to pushing the limits of the DVD9 format, leaving plenty of room for growth for the Xbox 360.

Undoubtedly, games will grow. However, technology designed to keep them small and compact will grow as well. In many ways, the debate over Microsoft’s handling of the DVD9 and HDDVD formats is simply a matter of a red herring. People see it and worry about it, but there is little data to suggest there will actually be a problem with it.

The PS3 will be able to store more data with their blu-ray discs, but that won’t necessarily mean that they’ll be any less limited in their creativity. It might simply give developers more room to be sloppy in their programing.

No compromises.

Sheer brilliance

Rant featuring GTA IV

So I’m guessing everyone is enjoying the bliss that is GTA IV. Having fun? Well I’m not, my XBOX 360 blew up the other day. So my copy of GTA IV is just sitting there twiddling it’s thumbs, feeling neglected.

Until now, I took the RRoD with a grain of salt. It’s like cancer, you don’t think it will really happen to you…until it does. Screw you Microsoft. Would it have killed you to have released the 360 a month or so later and have it’s inherent design flaws at least looked into? It’s already cost you over a billion dollars. So much for your vaunted headstart.

It’s sad too, because GTA IV is the only GTA game (except for the perfect gem that is Vice City) that I bought on a console. GTA III, I played at a friend’s house, but with me not having a PS2 at the time I was more than happy to pick it up for the PC a couple of months later. Vice City has long been the lone oddity. That was the game that made me buy a PS2. The second I heard “GTA” “80’s” “Miami Vice” and “Scarface” in one sentence, I went gaga. I even bought the PC version a couple of months later. San Andreas was once again greeted with a thoroughly ambiguous “meh”. I detest rappers, and the thought of playing a gangbanger was not the most appealing thing in the world to me. After giving it the benefit of the doubt though, I did pick it up for the PC and thoroughly enjoyed it.

You see, for me, a game that comes out (be it simultaneously or a few months later) both on PC and the consoles, has to give me a lot of valid arguments to choose the console version over the PC version. I truly believe in the superiority of the PC as a gaming platform. Graphics will always be better, controls will always be smoother, online play (excepting MMORPG’s) will always be free and the game itself will almost always be played forever. Consoles grow old and die. PC’s endure in one form or another. I’m still playing games that were released 12 years ago. Most consoles (I’m looking at you Microsoft) don’t last that long. That also explains why I skipped Liberty City and Vice City Stories when they came out on the PS2

GTA IV, for me, had enough of those valid arguments. The Xbox achievements are one of the coolest contributions Microsoft has made to gaming and I really enjoy fullfilling them. Graphically, the current generation of consoles will probably remain on par with the PC for a lot longer than the last one. The console controls have been overhauled in GTA IV, implementing a cover system and fixing the crappy targeting of previous games. Downloadable content was another huge incentive (unless they release it for free on PC like Bioware)

So basically, screw you Microsoft. Screw you for once again putting your business interests ahead of your customers.*

*They do have excellent customer service though