Time to introduce you to two new joys in my life. These of course do nothing to replace the current joys, they in fact, add quite a bit to those, but I digress. As you can gather from some of the previous posts (few as they have been) I have picked up a new game, Battlefield 2. The other joy is not new at all but has been around for a while, I just have been late to the game in signing up for it. All-Of-MP3 is a website where you can download Music, Legally! First lets start with the gaming.
Many a moon ago there was Wolfenstein. It was a strange and mysterious castle where lots of Nazi’s bred poorly fed German shepherds and demons, you know, like you do. In this strange castle, you would wander around and shoot these Nazi’s, and their little dogs too (and eat the dog food), you know, like you do. Castle Wolfenstein was one of the first games to revolutionize the First Person Shooter genre of games. It spawned some of our all time favorites like Doom, Quake, and Tribes. Tribes was a personal favorite because it was much more team based and not just a walk through shoot everything sort of game. It was tribes that brought me into the team based competitive gaming society. Trust me when I say that the community that surrounds gaming competition is a lot bigger then you could possibly imagine.
Getting involved in a good team and starting competition led me to a little known online radio station named the Tribes Sportscast Network (Soon to be re-named to Team Sportscast Network). Following my love of radio I jumped in and started working with them to broadcast all of my favorite games, Tribes, Jedi Knight, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and, new at the time, Battlefield 1942. BF1942 brought together some great aspects of multiple games and combined them into a whole new wartime experience. In Tribes you had multiple rolls for team members and to compete well, you really needed a diverse team. In addition to your flag runners and defensive players, you needed engineers and medics. Games like Return to Castle Wolfenstein brought a whole new sort of game with a conquest style, you capture and area and hold it as long as possible. What BF1942 did was to take the game style of a conquest type, combine it with a variety of team members, then throw in tons upon tons of vehicles. If you wanted to drive a tank, you could. Fly a plane? Hop on in! This was an amazing aspect of First Person Shooters. I no longer had to walk over to a flag and sit un-guarded. All of this was set in a World War II environment. The maps were actual locations of important battles for the time.
Now, take the game play of Battlefield 1942, and throw in modern weaponry and a new shiny graphics engine, you get Battlefield 2. Modern vehicles, modern guns, and a few familiar looking maps make this a phenomenal game to immerse yourself in. Nothing I have played lately has given me the fun factor satisfaction of jumping into an F-15 with a friend gunning for me, doing a bombing run over an enemy base and then jumping out to parachute down, hop into an enemy tank and take the base. They also added a whole new aspect to the game with squads and commanders. As a squad leader you can send direction to your squad mates and request support from your commander. As a commander you can use radar and UAV to spot enemy’s, provide direction for your squads, and drop in supplies and artillery. A good commander and turn the game around really quick. The game does have a few faults, of course. The server browser needs a lot of help. Finding friends online is a pain. There is currently no way to save a server as your favorite. Overall it’s a fun game and has really pulled me back into the FPS genre.
So, Moving on. I Love music. I don’t think I could call myself an audiophile or any such like that, I’m not crazy for music to the point that I could tell you when Depeche Mode’s first album came out, but I really enjoy music. I have a very wide variety of CD’s and MP3’s. Many people have commented on my Eclectic tastes when it comes to music. There are very few types of music that I don’t like. The problem is now that the RIAA being the bastards they are have jacked prices of new CD’s through the roof and nearly killed any other means to acquire music. One site in particular is just beyond the RIAA’s grasp and very very in-expensive for music. Plus, since I am actually buying the music, it’s completely legal! The site in question is http://www.allofmp3.com. How they do it is to charge per meg for music, and that’s only a few pennies per meg. I recently purchased 2 full albums and 1 single and only spent $2.80. How awesome is that! I highly suggest that you check them out, they have a very large library to choose from and the formats that you can download in are great!
Back on the home front, I don’t believe we have much planned for this weekend. I think it’s time to buckle down and deep clean some of the house. Most likely this means that I will finalize Andrews room (no longer the evil den will it be called) and do some spring cleaning (yeah, I know I am late). Of course, you know there will also be gaming as well! Have a good weekend everyone!
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