Cross Bones Gaming

BioShock - "Welcome to Rapture"

The old science fiction theories of an underwater city come alive along with so many possible problems. You enter the game, set in the 1950s, as Jack a man destined to do great things, according to his parents. While traveling you find yourself (Jack) reminiscing about his family and future, when engine failure occurs and the plane crashes into the ocean.

While trying to escape the wreckage, you find a building that does not seem to have a purpose. As you investigate the area you find a small round contraption that looks somewhat like an elevator. Enter it, and it submerges underwater. The radio next to the door transmits a recording telling those aboard about a man named Andrew Ryan.

Ryan speaks of a time and place where a man could not truly keep what he earned. He describes a city, where there are no rulers, just the people. Ryan speaks of Rapture. A city built for those who wanted to leave the hardships of the surface. Unfortunately you find the moment you get there that Rapture is ruined and decayed. Outside the door you can see an average person bargaining for his life with some creature. The creatures are called Splicers. After reaching Rapture, you are guided by an ally named Atlas, he communicates to you threw the radio you get from the elevator.

Along with the Splicers, your biggest danger are the “Big Daddies.”

Big Daddies guard the “Little Sisters” and they if anyone has seen the commercial ad for the game, the Big Daddies WILL do a lot of damage to you and throw you across the room when necessary. To make matters worse, you need to fight and kill the Big Daddies to “harvest” the Little Sisters. They hold a vital component found in Rapture known as Adam. You use Adam to learn Plasmids that are necessary to efficiently fight your way through the game. There are a good number of weapons in the game and some materials you can use to make special ammunition, like an exploding shotgun shell, or an electrically charged shell.

Lastly you can master the age old form of hacking, hack security robots/cameras/turrets/ hack vending machines and be rewarded with special items and lower prices. Basically the game is a first person shooter with a twist on the plasmids, and a great story line.

The description of the game stats that no two players will ever play the game the same way, and considering the many different Plasmids and weapons, I must agree. I give this game a 9/10.

Game Review Guild Wars: Eye of the North

In this forth and final installment to the Guild Wars games series the new expansion to the three stand alone Guild Wars campaigns shines. The dedicated Guild Wars players like myself have already defeated the Evil Litch behind the Titans and the Charr in Tyria, the ghostly undead villain Shiro and the god of all things dastardly and malevolent Abaddon. Now the player is back in Tyria, the homeland to some, as it is to my number one character a warrior, Persephone Orion. An earthquake as awakened an ancient evil in Tyria, the Destroyers and we must rise up and defeat it for the good of all.

Game play is the same as it ever was with the option of using the hero’s gained in Nightfall in combination with Henchmen, and other real live players. However, instead of missions to complete each section of the campaign it is now dungeons. These are the same as missions with the exception of regularly placed resurrection points throughout. This is great because it removes the frustration of having to start a dungeon from the beginning if your party is killed.

In addition to the dungeons new races have been introduced, the Norn, a very large race of humans that dwell in the far north Shiverpeaks and the Asura, a very small Yoda looking group from deep under the earth that have been driven from their homes by the Destroyers.

The game consists of three small campaigns each a piece of the overall campaign. You must convince the Norn, Asura, and Ebon Vanguard to assist the dwarfs in overthrowing the Destroyers so piece and be restored to the depths of the earth. The Ebon Vanguard who are yet unmentioned are an elite group of warriors who fled Ascalon following the searing who have found refuge in a mountain fortress called the Eye of the North!

Game play in GW:EN is mostly the same, with a few new skills and some added heroes. I loved the new races and move from the Missions style of play to the dungeons, what’s not to love about dungeons. However, you will need one of the stand-alone versions of the original three games to run the Eye of the North Expansion. I give this game a 90 out of 100 for great story line, interesting dungeons and, breathtaking vistas. I can hardly wait to see what Guild Wars 2 has in store.

By. Kungfuhero

RECking Crew LAN September 2007

The REC did a great job putting this LAN together. It was tons of fun. Over 35 people showed with PC’s and additional people came with a N64 for some console action. I was busy most of the night show casing the 4 Cross Bones PC’s and giving test runs to the gamers who wanted a taste of pure Cross Bones Gaming.

The REC held 3 tournaments, UT2K4, Battlefield 2 and Counter Strike Source; I actually found time to participate is the UT tournament and the CSS tournament but turned all the Cross Bones machines over to others for the BF2 showdown. Each of these tournaments went off without a hitch or single complaint from the gamers. The REC recruited 2 additional gaming clans to assist wit this LAN, Desert Reapers (DRC) and Echo Voice.

Check out some awesome pics Click here. This was a great LAN and an awesome location with three, yes three giant projectors for announcement and stats. They even ran the final round of the UT tournament on all three projectors, a genuine California LAN experience for sure. Watch out Tucson gamers here comes the RECking Crew. Learn more about the RECking Crew click here.

I hope to see you all at the CGAA LAN this Saturday. Until then Game on.

By. kungfuhero

Game Review Command and Conquer 3: Welcome back, Commander!

The greatest Real-Time Strategy has returned with the new Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars. C&C 3 will the continue the story of the Global Defense Initiative(GDI) waging war against the followers of Kane known as the Brotherhood of Nod. Just like the first games of this epic series, C&C 3 will not disappoint, the classic style returns and the game play has a few modifications that I think is for the better.

Following the war between GDI and Nod, who have their own beliefs on the infestation known ad Tiberium. Tiberium consumes over 80% of the Earths surface in the year 2047, GDI struggles to protects the 20% of human compatible Earth left from Nod attacks. Nod on the other hand believes that Tiberium is a blessing and essential for the evolution of the human race. While GDI keeps their bases within the “blue zones” of the Earth, Nod camps within Tiberium infested areas to further their research to spread the it throughout the blue zones.

As I mentioned before the game play is great, the traditional base building is always a pleaser. One of the new features is that you can now build more than one building necessary for base advancement making the beginning of all fighting much shorter. Featuring sate of the art, next generation graphics shows you every detail of the battlefield. The full motion cut scenes will quickly throw you right into the story.

And if you like a challenge, go online and test your skills against opponents from around the world, C&C 3 sets the standard for the single player RTS experience. Or if you want to test your skills offline, you can challenge the games new adaptive AI system that will learn all your tactics and wont quit until it bests you every time. This is the defiantly the best game of the series yet. I give this game a firm 10/10.

By Marc Najar

Dungeon Runners

What I can tell you about this game is Wow! What a fun game. This multiplayer online game is free to download and play from www.dungeonrunners.com that is right free to download and play!

While the game is limited in character scope, there are only humans, male and female, which all basically look exactly the same, and three classes Fighter, Ranger, Magic User. There are many dungeons to run through. I have been playing this game for countless hours with the one character allow who happens to be a male fighter.

I take my male fighter named Radius and hack my way through level after level of dungeon packed with some very unusual creatures. Experience is only given for killing these creatures, more experience equals a higher level and better attributes. There are a variety of quests available from basic kill this many of that, or go fetch this item. However, these quests only reward the player with gold and Kings Coins. Kings coin can be traded for unique items from one of the Kings Token Masters.

The game is free to down load and play as I stated above. However, membership to Dungeon Runners can be purchase for $5 a month and awards the member with access to the best items in the game, stackable potions and priority access to servers. In all the time that I have been playing this game I have not yet become a member and while it would be nice to have some of the excellent membership only items I am totally hooked on the free play.

I give this game a 100 out of 100 for being the best free game I have ever played. Heck I have purchase games that are not as good as this one. Try it out, you won’t be disappointed.

By. Kungfuhero

Hardware Review – Viewsonic Optiquest 19” Widescreen LCD Monitor

I have to say this is a choice monitor for the price $189.00! Optiquest is the entry level line of Veiwsonic, and the monitor itself does not say Viewsonic on it anywhere. This monitor has a crystal clear screen which is awesome for watching movies and gaming. This crystal clear view is a byproduct of the 5 ms video response and a native resolution of 1440 x 900. Not bad at all for $200.00!

Right out of the box this monitor looks great and set up is easy by attaching the base to the screen. The necessary power and VGA cable are included with the monitor. The only draw back is the only input is D-Sub, so anyone with a dual DVI video card will need to use the DVI to VGA adapter typically supplied with the video card.

This monitor provided for a great gaming experience. I ran Guild Wars, Counter Strike – Source, and Age of Empires III each at the highest possible graphics settings and 1440 x 900 screen resolution on my ATI Radeon x1950 Pro video card and experienced zero ghosting or screen anomalies.

For the price this is an excellent gaming monitor and is currently available with any Cross Bones Computer purchase for only $189.00! I give this monitor 90 out of 100, with the only points off for no DVI port.

By. Kungfuhero

Lego Star Wars – The Video Game Review.

Lego has a large line of Star Wars kits available, mostly ships, and play sets. Not sure what led the Lego company to create a Star Wars Video game, other than just about anything Star Wars sells like crazy. Being the Star Wars fan that I am I just had to give this game a try!

The game leads the player through the events of the first three films, The Phantom Menace, The Attack of the Clones and The Revenge of the Sith. Through out the game new characters are introduced for play and as non-player characters. I had loads of funny playing as the various Jedi, but the blaster characters such as Queen Ameidla just where not as fun. There is just something about hacking apart enemies into little Lego blocks with a light saber that just cannot be beat.

What I find most annoying about that game on PC is the awkward control interface. Using the mouse is not even an option? I am not sure what the game developers where thinking, perhaps this was a port from console to PC. Further more they have the controls laid out on the keyboard for 2 players. I did not try 2 players but can assure you two people even if they are small; using the same keyboard is cramped.

The game play is surprisingly fun and simple. 90% of all items are made from Lego blocks and when destroy there various parts fly everywhere. Once I was used to the controls I found my self immersed in this Lego version of the Star Wars universe for hours at a time. However, I am a huge fan of both Lego and Star Wars, so what could be better?

Overall I give the game an 80 out of 100 and would Recommend it to anyone who is looking for a simple fun game. I had to knock some points off for the control interface, come on every computer in the world has a mouse now, and someone should tell Lego.

By. Kungfuhero

Headline Phoenix, Arizona
Computer Gaming Association of Arizona

Summer LAN 2007

This LAN took place on July 22, 2007 at the El-Zaribah Shrine in (hotter than the face of the sun) Phoenix, Arizona. I attended this LAN and have to say that my first impression was that it was rocking.

My fellow gamer Mongo and I arrived at the Shrine around 10:30 am and were greeted by friendly person at a registration table. This person promptly took our name and checked the list and discovered we had pre paid the excellent price of $10 for our registration fee. At registration we were given a bag of items from a sponsor, a raffle ticket for door prizes and told to set up anywhere we could find a space.

This LAN was well staffed and well organized from the start, when we arrived there were already several servers up and running Ghost Recon Advanced War Fighter 2 and Unreal Tournament 2004. In addition several games were being hosted by attendees, including Attack on Pearl Harbor and The Call of Juarez (Thanks Millhouse).

There was one snag with the Battlefield 2 server since it was running patch 1.40 and many gamers had already patched to 1.41. This is no fault of the GCA as EA patches BF2 as often as the release date of Unreal Tournament gets pushed back.

Several door prizes were given away including 2 full versions of Office 2007, several Roxio Easy Media Creators 8 & 9, a couple DVD’s and a PNY GForce 8500 Video card. 100% of the proceeds of this LAN went to charity and with 40+ people in attendance that is a good bit of cash for Shriners’ Children’s Charities.

All in all this was a great LAN party and well worth the 2 hour drive from Tucson to get to it. I was very impressed by the host ability to keep the gaming fun without a rigorous schedule of tournaments. The prizes being dolled out by raffle was great leaving the less then perfect gamers a chance to go home with a prize. Thanks CGA for hosting this LAN I am looking forward to the next one.

You can Check out the CGA here and photos from the LAN here. My most awesome Cross Bones custom rig makes an appearance in the CGA provided photos, and I show up in 4 photos. Hey when you have a Cross Bones Computer people take notice.

Frag on gamers.

Kungfuhero

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion,

I grew up with the traditional roll playing games, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, and Robotech and got my first taste of computer roll playing with Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic and soon graduated to Guild Wars. I have now been playing Guild Wars for close to 2 years, and was a part of the closed Beta for the Lord of the Rings Online, so I have some experience with roll playing games in general. This all stems from my lust for adventure that outside the US Special Forces is hard to come by, so I picked up The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

I have heard so many good things about Oblivion being immersed as I am in the gaming community both in my home town of Tucson and the World Wide Web. Amazing graphics, big name voice actors, great story line, open ended game play, the list of features just goes on. So I picked the game up from a friend who has purchased it only to discover his computer did not meet the minimum hardware requirements to play. Unfortunately for you hobby shop computer gamers your moms laptop most likely won’t run Oblivion and if it does you will miss out on the seriously pleasant eye candy the games high end graphics produce.

Graphics and Performance

Minimum system requirements for Oblivion are: Windows XP, 512mb RAM, 2 GHz Pentium 4 or equivalent processor, 128mb Direct3D compatible video card. Recommended system specks are as follows: 3 GHz Pentium 4 or equivalent processor, 1 GB of System RAM, ATI X800 series or higher. My test rig has the following specs: AMD Athlon 4000+ over clocked to 2.6 GHz, 2 GB Patriot Extreme RAM, ATI x1950 Pro 256mb.

I was able to achieve a nice mix of great graphics and smooth game play by manually configuring all of the graphics settings about 75% of max at 1280 x 1024 resolution, which is the maximum my 19” LCD will support. With FRAPS running has an average of 45 frames per second, which is not the best, but still quite pleasing to the human eye. Game play as stated was very smooth and no matter how many Deiadra came at me the game never slowed.

Game Play

Game play is solid and fun. The game begins with character creation, which I found to be long and cumbersome, with over 7 races to choose from, and numerous facial features to tweak to insure a 100% custom character. There is no reason for a 100% unique character is a single player RPG, so why spend 30 minutes making a character that no one else will ever see. I am sure a few gamers will enjoy this feature, however, I like to jump right into the action and adventure and my characters looks don’t mean a great deal to me as I will send the next 20 hours of game playing looking at the back of the characters head. Seems kind of pointless doesn’t it?

Combat is a blast in this game as you control how the character attacks and defends each and every move. The combat system is the best part of Oblivion. I really enjoyed the change from the typical point and click combat style of many RPG’s. I recommend picking up Oblivion if just for this feature.

There is a wide range of things to do in the game to keep you entertained for days on end. The main story line takes 20 – 30 hours to complete depending on your level of skill and game difficulty setting. There are also many side quests and story lines, the Fighters Guild, Thieves Guild and Mages Guild each as a complete story line of its own. Furthermore, the entire world is explore able and is littered with Dungeons, abandoned mines, haunted towns and perils that would make any adventure hungry gamer salivate.

Conclusion

I recommend The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion to any one who enjoys a great RPG, the game has plenty of depth, excellent graphics, and a fun combat system. Not to mention voice acting by Sean Bean (Boromir Lord of the Rings) and Patrick Steward (Captain Picard from Star Trek Next Generation). However, don’t waste time creating a unique looking character as all you see in the game is the back of their head. So quit wasting time here and go play some Oblivion. :D

By. Thadeaus aka: kungfuhero