LAN Centers
There's nothing better than being able to reach to play a video game with someone and be able to reach over a few feet and punch them in the arm when they kill you at your spawn point five times in a row. Hold that thought, I just though of something better. Being able to punch the opponent in the arm while you are surrounding by other gamers, all the mainstream gaming consoles, neon green lighting, and techno music. Yep, punching the opponent in the arm just got better. That's why I love LAN centers! Over the weekend I paid a visit to my local game center, Crazy Penguins, and had a blast. Played everything from Call of Duty to Mario Party on the Wii. So, if your tired of gaming alone, look up your local LAN center and pay them a visit!
R.U.S.E. beta free on Steam!
Looking for an RTS that plays like a mix between Risk and Command and Conquer? Log onto your Steam account now and download the free beta version of R.U.S.E. I spent several hours playing last night and I think this is going to shape up to be a sweet game. Here's a few things that I liked..
- The battlefield is a miniature model set in the center of a command room. When you zoom out you see life size people, or you can zoom in to see your units on the field.
- You only have to worry about generating one resource, cash, to purchase your units and buildings.
- The game plays at the right pace, not too fast to be a micromanagement battle, and not too slow to put you to sleep.
- The game has 'ruse' cards that can be played throughout the match to add interesting effects!
Check the game out now! Head here!
Video Games that echo an eternity
Last night I was a bit bored, so I hopped onto good old fashioned Counter-Strike 1.6. I played for a little over an hour. It was a lot of fun, what I don't understand is how can a game so old be better than many many games that have come out after it. I guess it's the same reason why I still have fun playing Starcraft or Warcraft 3. The games are just done right. The developers didn't get caught up in having the best graphics, like so many do, instead they worried about the game play.
Why do I still play the game Chess? The same reason I still play CS 1.6, because it's a good game! So, if you happen to be a game developer, worry about the game play! I'd be happy with cartoon graphics if the game is solid!
TeraCopy
Have you ever noticed that Windows isn't the best at copying large files or a large number of files at the same time? Windows Explorer, the default application that handles the copies, really just isn't the greatest. It bugs out on occasion, generally takes a long time, and can plague you with annoying error messages. TeraCopy is a great alternative to explorer that you can pick up for the low low price of free. Here's why I like it..
- If TeraCopy encounters an error while copying it will continue with the copy
- You can Pause/Resume copies
- It seems to copy faster than explorer
- If there is an error while copying, TeraCopy will automatically try again to fix it
- It works on Windows 7 64-bit!
If you are interested in getting your copy on, head over to TeraCopy's web-site.
ZScreen very sweet screen capture!
Recently I've been using the Windows 7 screen clipping tool to get what I need off of my screen and into an image file. This is kind of a tedious and repetitive method of getting things done. Today, I've started using ZScreen to get these things done for me more efficiently. It has all the hotkey configurations that you would expect from a screen capture tool; capture full screen, capture current window, and free select capture. It also let's you select the destination of your screen shot from the clipboard to automatically uploading it to the web and putting the URL in your 'paste' area. There are some other more advanced features that I will probably make use of. One thing I do like is the built in jump menu in Windows 7. Head here to grab this program hosted by Google code!
