DHAJ (Forum) on 24 Jan : 16:50 [thread: Can you run it?] If you've ever wondered if your computer can run a certain game, here's a webpage that will run a couple tests to see if your computer meets the minimum or suggested requirements.Link.
DHAJ (Forum) on 23 Jan : 17:55 [re: Battlefield Heroes] I finally saw your friend request today. It's been a really long time since I played. All the new missions they've added are pretty nice. I had gotten all the easy ones and the ones I had selected ...[more]
jotty (Forum) on 23 Jan : 17:17 [re: Battlefield Heroes] Every once in awhile, when Idont have school work or running to do.
DHAJ (Forum) on 23 Jan : 11:35 [thread: Battlefield Heroes] Anybody still playing BF: Heroes? It's been a while since I played it and I just started downloading it again.
DHAJ (Forum) on 20 Jan : 17:36 [thread: Saitek keyboard owners beware...] I've had two Saitek Eclipse keyboards randomly go bad. The first was the wife's several months ago and mine just died tonight. Both died suddenly and for no reason. Neither one of us had abused the...[more]
WIGID (News) on 05 Jan : 15:00 [ Re: Army of Two: 40th Day ] I can't wait to play this!! The first one was a lot of fun. Especially since there are few good co-op games.
stupidshot4 (Forum) on 05 Jan : 02:47 [re: Killing Floor] ah i c that would probably make it a lot easier but still that still is amazing how you guys did it
DHAJ (Forum) on 04 Jan : 17:14 [re: Killing Floor] Yeah, but more area to cover. We pretty much had to handle our own healing and there wasn't hardly any time for that anyway. I was playing as a firebug so I had a flamethrower after the first leve...[more]
stupidshot4 (Forum) on 04 Jan : 16:38 [re: Killing Floor] im guessing that the reason we all couldnt beat it was because less teamwork and we had to watch more people's backs...where as with 2 there is less backs to cover, so less responsibilities.
Welcome to Christian Gamers Network! CGN is a Christian Gaming Community for anyone looking for a fun, clean place to play games. Most of our members use Xfire, so check out the Member Profiles page. I try to post at least twice a week, but if you have a question or comment feel free to email the admins at admin_cgn@christiangamersnetwork.com.
How do you become a member? Stand up and proclaim, "I want to be a member!" There's not much else to it. You can sign up for an account if you want to be an active community member. To start off with, you can post in the forums and make comments to news posts. Later on, you could be upgraded to another position. Other than that, get Xfire and start playing some games!
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is set to be released this March. No official date yet, just "March". From what I've read, it sounds like the gameplay is going to be just like the Battlefield 2 we grew to love... with the addition of destructible environment. What's that you say? Oh yes, you can destroy the cover your enemy is hiding behind and even take down entire buildings. Unlike all the other PC Battlefields before it, BF:BC2 has a single player campaign. (Note: Bad Company 1 was for console-only and had a single player.) Even though it will probably be fairly short, it should still offer a few hours of enjoyment. I don't believe this will be available for coop, though. Multiplayer will also offer a new gamemode called Squad Rush. In Squad Rush, two squads of 4 players will face off against each other. This is the alternative to a 32-player multiplayer game of conquest. Squads can still be created in the regular multiplayer, though.
My one big problem with all the Battlefield games is you have to play on ranked servers to increase your rank. This means that if we wanted to run our own server, we'd have to pay for it. We could run an un-ranked server (I assume), but that would disable any unlocks anybody has. So that just wouldn't be fun for the players who actually earned the new perks. Currently, if you pre-order from Steam, you get access to 6 unlocks and can play the Beta starting on the 28th of this month. I'd really like to pick this one up. It's $50, which is decent considering most new games are selling for $60 now. But I imagine the pre-order offer will be available for a while.
Army of Two: 40th Day is set to be released on the 14th of this month. That's in a little over week. I really enjoyed the first Army of Two, so I'm really looking forward to this one. It actually got a bad reputation because a lot of people were playing by themselves and relying on the AI to control the second player... which is not how the game was intended to be played. Even on an easy level of difficulty, there's enough stuff going on to keep both players busy. It's been quite a while since I played a shooter on my Xbox, so I need to dust off my skills before trying this one. Hopefully they're not too rusty.
For you fellow coop lovers, Ao2:2 is supposed to have split screen coop... always a plus. It's also supposed to have a 4-player section, but that's only available for online play. Two players are supposed to be able to connect from a single console, though. Obviously, I'll be picking this one up for Xbox. Partly I don't like over-the-shoulder games on PC, but mostly because it's for console only. Like I said, it's supposed to come out in a little over a week... on Xbox 360, PS3, and PSP.
So we finally have internet at our house. It's not super fast, but I'm hoping I can upgrade my package later. When they hooked it up earlier today, it was really fast, but I think they've throttled me down. So hopefully I'll have it taken care of soon.
I'm in the process of preparing a forum post about the up-coming LAN Party. So keep an eye out for that. I'm planning on holding it on or around New Year's, so if you think you're going to have a conflict you'd better let me know as soon as possible. You'll also be able to request certain games, maps, gametypes... all sorts of things. I'd say the post is about 90% ready, so it should be up by the weekend.
If you didn't notice already, there's a new poll. Go ahead and vote if you have an opinion. The results may greatly affect what we do at this next LAN Party.
Still no internet at home. But I still have access while at work and sometimes even plug my cell phone into my computer to get very, very slow access. Enough that I can download email, anyway. We did finally get a couch, so that's one item we can finally cross off our list. It was a bit of an adventure getting it in the house and we've already decided that if we ever sell the place, the couch goes with it. Along with probably all of the appliances.
While I'm making a news post, I thought I'd point out that Steam is doing a 5-day one-day only sale. What this means is they're running a sale for 5 days where each day they have different games for stupidly low prices. Today is day 3 of this sale, so I'm a little behind in alerting everyone. But I'm sure they'll have some good deals in these next few days. Don't forget, Steam also usually puts almost all their games on sale right before Christmas... like 2 or 3 days before. So keep that in mind.
Also, I'm hoping to have a LAN Party around New Year's (or at least after Christmas). So go ahead and check your calendars for conflicts. I'd also like anyone planning on coming to have already signed up for an account on this webpage. In addition to creating an account, you should also post in the forums to at least introduce yourself. Even if it's just a "Hi" thread, that's enough. Later on, I might create a separate forum for introductions, but for now you can use the "General Discussion" topic.
Last weekend, we moved into our brand new house. I say brand new, because... well, I built it. And yes, everything actually works like it's supposed to. We've still got a few things that need to be finished, but nothing that would keep us from living there. But a couple things have made it a little less than ideal. For instance, we don't have internet or satellite TV. But this begs the question... how did we get along without these things 10 years ago? It's been a little over 10 years since I got the internet and it's been a part of my life ever since. It's really strange to go home and have a very powerful computer that isn't able to do much. I can play games in "offline mode", but that only works on single player games. Since my wife also likes to play, we could technically have our own mini-LAN parties. Well, we could starting last night. I only got around to hooking up the network last night after getting home from work. But also, there's the TV. I have a fairly small TV which suited our needs perfectly in our old house, but now that we have a full-sized living room a 19" widescreen LCD just doesn't cut it. I haven't completely decided on what size to get, but it's between 46 and 52". But what's the point of having a super nice TV if there's nothing to watch? We can't get cable, we don't have satellite (yet), and we don't have a TV antenna. We do have a pretty decent DVD collection, so that's what we've been watching. It just really bothers me that I actually feel like there's nothing fun to do at home since we don't have TV and internet. We don't have a couch either.
In all fairness, it's probably a good thing we don't have internet or TV. It motivates me to finish the thousands of things that need to be taken care of.
In case you're unsure, no LAN Party for the day after Thanksgiving. If you're not Black Friday shopping and you want something to do, let me know. We're putting up a large retaining wall in the back of my house and the stones weigh about 120lbs each.
North American Retail and Steam Available Now, Rest of World Follows Later This Week
Nov 17, 2009 - Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Half-Life and Counter-Strike) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced the availability of its zombie thriller, Left 4 Dead 2, at retail outlets across North America (360, PC) and worldwide via Steam (PC). Retail outlets around the world will launch the title later this week.
Exclusively available for the Xbox 360 and PC, L4D2 promises to set a new benchmark for co-operative action games and become one of 2009's marquee titles. The title adds melee combat to enable deeper co-operative gameplay, with items such as a chainsaws, frying pans, axes, baseball bats, and more.
With the AI Director 2.0, L4D's dynamic gameplay is taken to the next level by giving the Director the ability to procedurally change weather effects, world objects, and pathways in addition to tailoring the enemy population, effects, and sounds to match the players' performance. The result is a unique game session custom fitted to provide a satisfying and uniquely challenging experience each time the game is played.
Finally, with new Survivors, boss zombies, weapons, and items, Left 4 Dead 2 offers a much larger game than the original, featuring more co-operative campaigns, more Versus campaigns, new Survival maps, and the new competitive game mode, Scavenge, all available at launch
Hopefully the title got your attention, but don't be alarmed... I plan on hosting LAN Parties for a long time to come. As many of you may have already heard, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was released today for Xbox 360 and PS3. It'll be available for PC gamers this Thursday. Why the two day wait? I have no idea. Activision has bluntly said that the PC version is a direct port from the console version. No dedicated servers, no built-in game recording, and no modifying the game. So what? So since Activision is planning on using a match-making service similar to Xbox Live! and Playstation Network, it not only makes it more difficult for clans and other teams to practice, but it'll make it impossible to have LAN Parties without internet access. Also, not having player-driven dedicated servers would require Activision (or someone) to police the servers and ban cheaters and hackers. CS:S, for example, has several thousand servers in the world. Can a single company successfully administor all those servers at once? Doubtful.
A PC game without mods is like cake without icing... not exciting. Sure, games are fun without mods for a while, but if we didn't have any variety we'd all still be playing Doom on a token ring network. I'm sure this aspect will be broken eventually, but could come at a huge risk since Activision is using Valve Anti-Cheat system (VAC). Ironically enough, you'll have to install Steam in order to play CoD:MW2... which is another thing gamers are upset about. Well, not so much gamers, but other digital rights management companies since they won't get the same rights as Valve.
Personally, I won't be buying Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. I enjoy the multiplayer on the first Modern Warfare and the single player campaign was tons of fun. I was even looking forward to continuing the story. Activision didn't create the Call of Duty series. They bought it. The first Call of Duty game was on PC... not console. The second Call of Duty was on both console and PC... developed on PC and ported to console. From then on, it seems like Activision has been trying to avoid the PC altogether. A few of the Call of Duties were released for console only. But now I'm rambling. I just hope this isn't the start of a terrible trend.
For those who pre-ordered, the Left 4 Dead 2 Demo has been available for around a week. But now, it's available to everyone. The demo consists of a portion of one of the campaigns and is only playable as coop (no versus), supporting 1 to 4 players. If you've never played any of the Left 4 Dead games and are at least willing to try it out, it's worth your time.
You can also pre-order L4D2 at a discounted price, or do like I do and get the 4-pack. This time around, pre-ordering comes with a few perks. First of all, you'll get an American-themed baseball bat (in-game, of course). I'm not sure if this is exclusive access or not. Also, Team Fortress 2 owners will get a "Bill" hat for TF2. It's basically a green beret. Not much, but it's the simple things that make it fun.
Anyway, check out the demo. I'm sure you'll enjoy it.
In my previous post, I mentioned how Windows 7 has basically the same performance as Windows XP. Well that's still true, except Win7 not only takes more memory, it takes A LOT more memory. Not quite as much as Vista, but still a bunch compared to XP. The light at the end of the rainbow is how Win7 is able to manage the amount of memory it has and it does a very good job. When I installed Win7 on my machine, I had 2GB of RAM, which is a solid amount for running Windows XP. In fact, I could only upgrade to a total of 3GB on my Windows XP machine, since it's 32-bit. Because the version of Windows 7 I installed is 64-bit, it supports much higher amounts of memory. Win7 Professional supports up to 192GB of RAM. Waaaay more than anyone will need [for a while]. Anyway, when my computer booted up, it used roughly 600-700MB of RAM. When running most of the programs I keep open all the time, it was closer to 1GB. Now that's half my memory... used for my day-to-day sort of things. And it would go higher depending on how much web surfing I was doing.
And that should beg the question, if half the memory is used for just Windows, how can you play any games? Most older games run fine since they don't need a ton of memory. Those that need close to 1GB are fine. In fact, the operating system scales itself back automatically and quickly enough that a user hardly notices. Now I know that this feature has been available for many versions of Windows, but not so it's very unnoticeable. I did notice some slight jerks and glitches in Left 4 Dead, but when I closed the game and looked at my Task Manager, I saw the memory meter was pegged. Windows had scaled back to around 400MB. I also realized that Outlook and IE (which I had left open while playing) responded very quickly and I had very little indication that memory had been shuffled around.
Since I like a little extra horsepower under the hood on all my computers, I decided to go ahead and upgrade my memory. I knew I could get away with 4GB of RAM, but I decided to go ahead and upgrade to 6GB. This should give me a decent bit of head room. I installed the memory last night and so far no problems (fingers crossed). One thing I noticed is that Win7 realizes it has extra memory and goes ahead and uses it. So now, while my computer is idle with only a few applications running, it's using 1.6GB of RAM when it had been using 800-900MB. I tripled my RAM and now the system has adjusted to using twice as much. I also tried a couple chapters in Left 4 Dead and had no problems.
So in short, if you're looking to upgrade to Windows 7 and plan on staying there for a while, a memory upgrade should be on your mind. It's a simple procedure and takes less than 20 minutes from start to finish. 4GB of DDR2 800 cost me $82 (shipped) but it's got a $20 mail-in rebate. You could get by with 4GB of RAM if you want to save some cash, but that's your choice. I installed the Windows 7 Beta on my personal laptop a while ago and it only has 1GB of RAM. The Win7 part ran ok, but I wasn't able to play games with much speed. I'll test it again here in the next few weeks.
It's finally here (officially)! Windows 7 is officially for sale starting today. I've been able to run the retail version of Windows 7 on my work laptop for a little over a month since my company is a Microsoft Certified Partner. All in all, I haven't really found anything horrible about Windows 7. If you're upgrading from Windows XP, it's a huge difference. Going from Vista to Win7 isn't all that bad, but there are some new and nifty features they've added. My favorite is the window previewing. You can hover your mouse on any icon in the taskbar and it will show you a small preview (like Vista). Unlike Vista, you can then hover your mouse over the small preview and it will show you the actual window. If you move your mouse away, the big preview goes away. If you click, it brings the window to the front. Also, most Vista users will be glad to see that the UAC box can be completely disabled. Anyone who has used Vista for more than 5 minutes has seen this annoying menu. With as little as 3 clicks, this annoyance goes completely away.
Since this is a gaming website, it'd be silly to make a whole newspost about a new Operating System and not mention the gaming aspect. So I installed Windows 7 on my home PC... my main gaming PC. Installing took less than an hour, and it was right about at the hour mark when I finished installing drivers for my system. The setup detected everything (and I mean everything), but I wanted the official nVidia drivers for my motherboard since I'm doing RAID. At any rate, I installed all my games and fired up CS:S. My wife's computer is almost identical to mine so we both ran a video stress test in CS:S. Our scores were extremely close. So going from Windows XP to Windows 7 has no performance loss (at least in CS:S). I've played a couple other games just to see how it handles. I don't really notice any difference except one... my video card temperatures are lower. And I don't mean by a degree or two. My idle temperature has dropped over 10 degrees. I'm not sure if that's an issue with DirectX 9 and DirectX 11 being more efficient, but the driver reports them as running cooler. I actually expected them to idle at a higher temperature since Windows 7 has more graphical stuff when changing windows and opening files and stuff. Like with any other major upgrade, there's the possibility of games and other programs not being compatible. So, if you're curious, here's a list of games that users have tested on Windows 7.
One last thing. If you're a college student, I believe you can get Windows 7 at a discounted price if not for just a few dollars. Check with your university and see. Everybody else can hop on over to Microsoft's webpage and get the Release Candidate if you just want to test it out.
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Army of Two: 40th Day is set to be released on the 14th of this month. That's in a little over week. I really enjoyed the first Army of Two, so I'm really looking forward to this one. It actually got a bad reputation because a lot of people were playing by themselves and relying on the AI to control the second player... which is not how the game was intended to be played. Even on an easy level of difficulty, there's enough stuff going on to keep both players busy. It's been quite a while since I played a shooter on my Xbox, so I need to dust off my skills before trying this one. Hopefully they're not too rusty. 
But I still have access while at work and sometimes even plug my cell phone into my computer to get very, very slow access. Enough that I can download email, anyway. We did finally get a couch, so that's one item we can finally cross off our list. It was a bit of an adventure getting it in the house and we've already decided that if we ever sell the place, the couch goes with it. Along with probably all of the appliances. 
Hopefully the title got your attention, but don't be alarmed... I plan on hosting LAN Parties for a long time to come. 
It's finally here (officially)! 
