Alternately: Review: Seagate Barracuda 3TB
My hard disk failed [a time ago]. The one I used to store games and media and such. Sucks, right? Yeah. The drive presented with fast declining performance, which soon progressed to CRC errors and general unresponsiveness. I got what was important to me off before the end, though [porn joke here haha]. And now it’s been replaced by a new and shiny Seagate BarraCuda, the 3TB model (ST3000MD008). I kinda wanted a WD Black drive but, well, I couldn’t come to grips with their prices. And the benchmarks I was looking at showed these BarraCuda’s were outperforming the WD Blacks (the sub-4TB ones) on read speeds anyway, which are more important to me (for things like game loading times and what-not).
Oooh!! Barracuda.
So, in case you’re interested, I figured I’d run a couple benchmark tests on this one, to see how it measures up.
Research finished! It took ’em years, but Blizzard has finally made good on delivering a long-anticipated full-feature movie with Warcraft. Does it sail on gryphon wings or plummet to the depths of the naga?
Or perhaps an entirely different sort of animal?
Cor, is November nearly done already? Indeed it seems so, what with darkened Fridays and the tentative appearances of holiday decorations… I hadn’t planned it but turns out today’s post is a book review. See, when I’d finished splashing the book-related text on the screen I realised I had enough wordy bits there to make a whole post with so I figured I’d go with it. So, without further ado…
Don’t you just love that glare?
A little while back, I mentioned I’d been playing this. Well, I finally finished it this last week and figured a review might make a nice post.
Shadowrun Returns is an isometric, turn-based, role-playing affair. The player has dominion over a character who can be specced to specialise in in all sorts of wonderfully different proficiencies, thanks to being set in a fantasy world of elves, dwarves, orcs, trolls, and humans all eking out their survival in a corporation-controlled future. Shamanistic and wizardly magic have returned to the world, alongside the emergence of metahumans, while technology has advanced much like we want it to and brought Deus Ex prosthetics, Matrix-inspired virtual-world hacking, and little drones to do our fighting for us while we control them with our minds from behind cover.
MAN MEETS MAGIC & MACHINE.
What? A movie review? New territory ahead, captain! Yeah, I haven’t done one of these before. Should be fun, right?
SPOILER WARNING: hyphens.
So the wonderful random-comment-picker over at NAG Online saw fit to randomly pick me to go watch an early screening of Pixels, this season’s Adam Sandler romp of WTF. So I roped a guest in (double tickets, don’t you know) and went over to check it out at Ster-Kinerkor’s Cine Prestige at Sandton City just this last evening.
This started out as one of those, “another month, another post” kind of posts. Then I made the mistake of “I’ll just put some words down about my GTA V experience,” and now we have this. Basically a review. Except I never meant to review it so there are no screenshots to do the picture things. Once I play the thing again (The Witcher has me right now), I’ll snap some shots. I had meant to write about GTA V, NAG magazine stopping production (though I guess I did that in their comments), The Witcher (still on number one, even though I went and pre-ordered three…), perhaps The Smashing Pumpkins’ new album (I like it – not Siamese Dream or Machina love it, but like it), maybe Star Citizen’s recent developments (or rather this mini game), and generally waste your time. But now you have this. So, there you are.
[picture goes here?]
ONWARD!
So, I’ve been smashing words together to write this review for about two months. It’s been mostly complete for at least 6 weeks of those two months, but I haven’t posted because… reasons, or something. So here it is, presented to the internether (that’s internet/ether, you with “but that’s not a word” shut up), no more screwing about.
Max Payne was modern gaming innovation incarnate. The noir story and gritty, graphic novel presentation, coupled with solid over-the-shoulder shooter mechanics and oh-so-awesome bullet time, won Max Payne a place in the heart of many a gamer. The sequel, Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne, expanded on the series and earned a proud place beside the first. Years later, a very different Max Payne is released to a much changed gaming world…
See, different.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution was an unexpected pleasure for me. I didn’t play the original Deus Ex games, though they’d always been intriguing to me, and I gave Human Revolution a miss on release because I was wary of all the brouhaha surrounding the boss fights. Then along came the Steam Holiday Sale of ’13, and the next thing I knew Human Revolution’s Director’s Cut, with it’s “new and improved Boss Fights” and included DLC, had snuck through a credit vent into my library. I fired it up, and what followed was some 80 hours of brilliantly engrossing stealth and exploration, cloaked in a plot of revenge, global conspiracy, and a spectrum of ethically grey corporate interests. And Adam Jensen, one of the coolest protagonists I can recall.
