Steve Androulakis’ Blog

Is awesome.

I haven’t played a game like this (role playing game) since I was about 12 years old. I love how flexible and open the game world is. I’ve logged 20 hours and have only scratched the surface of what’s available in-game.

Skyrim lets you develop character traits and skills based on your use of them. For instance, I liked the idea of destructive magic (fire/lightning/frost) so I saw my destructive magic skill go through the roof. However, over time I found myself losing interest in the magic-related parts of the game universe and doing thieving quests. Sneaking around, pickpocketing and picking locks. All those skills raised, and soon enough I was seen as the conniving thief I’d become. One adapts to the massive world around them.

I posted this elsewhere in a Battlefield 3 forum:

Anyone playing who is frustrated at their suckage and getting killed 10 seconds after spawning needs to stick with it! I’ve logged about 10 hours now, and while the first 7 or so were awful, things started to click after then and I found myself ‘in the game’ and able to be competitive or even dominate on occasion.

For me it was a matter of getting used to the map, then the new HUD, then getting a grip on the objectives (attack/defend). Playing a month of Bad Company 2 in the leadup did NOT help either, as the engine is obviously significantly different. From there it started to feel natural and I gained a 6th sense on where everyone was in my area.

I’m also here to whine a little about not being able to choose your squads yet. Your success or failure individually can depend a lot on your squad. If I’m placed with complete newbies then it’s often better to spawn at an actual spawn point and spend 30+ seconds running to the battlefield than it is to spawn on a badly positioned noob. For a few games last night, I was paired with someone who knew what they were doing and as a 2-man operation we were able to get quite a lot of damage done. For the record, I’m (only) level 15 now.

Love this game.

With Battlefield 3 on its way in October, I may have accidentally been struck with a bout of nostalgia over my PC gaming, and tech support days. The process of putting together a whole bunch of new, shiny parts, or upgrading a system is something that’s been deprived of me for the last 4 years of exclusive Mac ownership. Macs are great computers. Their laptops can’t be beaten. But their desktop computers are relatively underpowered, and lets face it: gaming on Mac OS X is okay at best, and frustrating or limited as usual.

On the other side of the OS coin, Windows 7 is a rather fine effort by Microsoft. After the initial (pre-service pack) Vista being a disaster, I’m surprised they were able to pick themselves up relatively respectively. Windows 7 still drives me insane in many ways, but so does OS X. And Windows 7 is lightning fast, somehow. I have it installed on this same Apple Macbook Pro and it performs wonderfully.

Even games that are natively supported by OS X (like many of the Steam platform games such as Team Fortress 2) run like a dog on the very same machine compared to their Windows operation. Sorry, OS X gaming still isn’t there yet. I don’t want to wait any longer for it either. And I’m tired of thinking to myself “I’ll play a quick game for 20 minutes!” then proceeding to shut down OS X and sitting there for 5 minutes while the computer restarts into Windows 7. I have to say, I’m also tired of having to turn the graphics settings of all games to their bare minimum so I can play on this laptop. And this is on games that are more than 3 years old. Forget playing anything newer.

I’ve been stunted as a gamer for almost 5 years now! Time to change.

I’ve already received my first order. My current 20 inch LCD monitor is horribly faded. It was a present for my 21st birthday, over 5 years ago (oh gosh I’m getting old). It’s been wonderful, but it had to go!

Enter a Dell 3-day sale and an impulse buy on their new model 24″ Ultrasharp. It has a quality IPS panel too, like the ones graphic designers use because they’re clear and accurately reproduce colour.

Pictured here with my work Macbook.

Some people will know that I intended on holding off getting a new computer. Just a couple of weeks, closer to the release of the aforementioned Battlefield 3. Some people also know that sometimes self-control gets the better of me. As I went to the computer parts site to tally up a total today.. and after seeing a rather nice and affordable total, I threw caution to the wind (yeah, this is as crraaaaazy as I get) and hit the ‘buy’ button.

So what did I get? Non-computer nerds stop reading now.

This case. In white! You can take the Mac-fanatic out of the man..

Corsair Graphite 600T

The best value processor on the market. Don’t need no fancy i7 hyperthreadin’ sir!

Intel Core i5 2500k

Superfast Nvidia graphics.

Gigabyte GTX560 Ti

Again, a GTX570 is available, but not for $120 more thanks! This particular Gigabyte model apparently punches close though, and is more than adequate.

No, I’m not going to post saucy photos of my motherboard or RAM. However, another part of this build highly notable is the Solid State Drive.

Put your Windows 7 and apps on this. Watch the computer boot in 5 seconds flat. Watch apps like Photoshop, and new games load in that long! At 120GB they only supplement your main hard drive, but just like the new Macbook Airs, I’m going to get some serious performance out of this thing.

Corsair Force Series 3

They’re the main parts. I’ll put it together in the next couple of days. I can feel the 100 frames per second in new games, right now. I can also feel myself laughing at this post in 5 years because this stuff will be sub-par at best! But that’s future Steve. Present-Steve is chuffed.

And for anyone who made it this far, the rest of my purchases:
Motherboard: Asus P8P67 PRO V3
RAM: Kingston 8G(2x4G) DDR3
Hard Drive: Western Digital 1TB

Antec Earth Watts 650 Power Supply, LG DVD Burner, Logitech Desktop Mic, Windows 7 Home Premium..