Taking a Break and Going Retro

Recently I decided to tinker with my desktop system and upgrade it to Vista. Now I already work with Vista at work and my new laptop also is running Vista. Needless to say I kind of like it. Unfortunately I had to do a complete re-install and not an upgrade (not big loss, I did back up the important bits first.) Though I am running into a bit of a snag. For some reason I have yet to get the OS to see that I now have 4 GB of memory. It only shows 2GB.

On top of that, I just got a pair of Mini-Dachshund puppies. (One is mine, the other is my GF's) So for now the desktop system is turned off and I will work on it later when I don't have to keep an eagle eye over two very active puppies.

This means I am on my laptop for gaming. I can sit in the living room and watch the puppies while on the computer. As it turns out, my laptop, which I just bought, is at least as good as my desktop system for gaming. I just don't like being cramped up on the keyboard.

Now I have a nice 32" LCD HDTV. So I was thinking of getting a console system for the living room. But with the recent laptop purchase and new puppies, I need to conserve cash for a bit. But wait! New laptop has HDMI out and I have a spare cable. Plug-Plug, Click-Click and suddenly I had a 32" monitor on my laptop. Unfortunately the couch is further away then the cable can reach.

So a quick run to Best Buy and I get myself a wireless XBox controller. Plug-Plug, Click-Click and now I have a hacked together XBox. I have a few games in my stash that were cross released to PC and XBox, like Oblivion. However my Oblivion DVD is scratched so I can not load the game on the laptop.

Quick aside: Even if the game was cross developed for XBox and PC it does not mean the PC version will natively support an XBox Controller. So you will need a intermediate program. So far I like the Pinnacle Game Profiler.

So now I am going into the bargain bin and see what I can find. A while back I got a subscription to Fileplanet (long before the Conan Beta) and it turns out I qualified for a few free games though their HitPoints system . So I downloaded a few to give them a whirl.

The first was Sherlock Holmes: The Awakening. This is a fairly simple puzzle adventure game. Nice to play and I was able to get my Xbox Controller to work with it. It was good to getting used to moving with the controller. However I miss creating my own character.

Next up is Deus Ex: Invisible War. I played most of the original Deus Ex when it first came out. I liked the mix of FPS and RPG. It was also a good story and should kept me interested for a while. It took awhile to get running on Vista since it was made a while back, but it was just setting up permissions and compatibilities. Though I need to tune the controller a bit more.

Lastly, I got Myst III, but I will save that till later. Much like Sherlock Holmes, I know that it is a puzzle/adventure game. I would need to have a walkthough handy when I get frustrated with a puzzle.

There are a few games on my Radar as well. First is Mass Effect from Bioware. A XBox to PC conversion. But Bioware makes very fun CRPGs. And later this year....Fallout 3. I fell in love with Fallout 1 and 2. So I hope it lives up to the hype. Granted it is a completely different set of developers, but so far it looks good.

So time to curl up on the couch. Wrangle puppies and play some old fashion CRPGs and Adventure games.