In case you have been hiding under a technological rock, a Mac is a computer system that is proprietorially owned by the Apple Corporation. You've probably seen them in your nearest Apple Store - shiny, white computers, coupled together with handhelds such as the iPhone.
Macs are stylish and powerful. Of course, they were also expensive. Possessing a Mac will usually cause you to be the envy of your neighborhood, well at least, to the part of the neighborhood who actually cares about computers.
But as much as I have loved computers in my lifetime, I just don't like using a Mac. It feels like I'm restricted to do some things like change deep system settings or have a diverse range of applications. Here's a more detailed list of reasons why I don't like a Mac:
1. They are proprietary machines of Apple, which means they own all parts of it. Now, who would want to buy a computer, and be told that, "This computer is not yours. This is ours. We're only allowing you to keep and use it because you paid us"? Unlike a Windows computer, you do not have much freedom on a Mac. You're stuck with all the products that are "Built for the Mac" and those products don't grow on trees.
2. There are little applications there that I want, even if it has everything I need. Ok. So it's powerful. And it freezes and crashes less often than Windows. And I don't have to worry about viruses since Macs rarely have them. But the downside of being different from everybody else is that you don't get the good stuff they have. A good example are video games. Video game developers and publishers have long noted that Macs compromise only a small fraction of the computer population, so they don't bother porting it to that system. Thus, most games are built for the PC, only a handful of them are built for the Mac. And no matter how many programs and plugins are created to force the Mac to run a PC game, it will never be the same.
3. It's expensive. I'm not rich. Really. I'm not. If I were rich I shouldn't be living in the Philippines and instead sitting on a chateau somewhere in a French plain. Sure, I've spent a lot building PCs, buying components, etc., but these computers, which costed me a bit like $800, can do a lot more than a $999 MacBook. And most people who have known me personally knew that I don't trade aesthetics for performance.
So, Apple fanboys, here you go. Three reasons why I don't like Macs. Feel free to bash me and drop f-bombs on me in the comments below.
I don't like Macs, but that doesn't mean I hate Apple. I have an iPod Classic 5th Gen and an iPod Nano 3rd Gen, and I love both. My dad uses and iPhone 3G, which I enjoy "borrowing" from him. So in general, I don't have any hate against Apple in whole, but I really dislike their computers.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Sunday, April 18, 2010
New Laptop: Lenovo Thinkpad x60s
Well, folks, here it is, my new laptop. Although technically more on the refurbished than the new side, nevertheless, it works quite well. It's an old Thinkpad, provided free of charge by the PLDT when my father signed up for mobile broadband internet. It was a little shitty before I refurbished it.
It's pretty small, smaller than my old HP-Compaq Presario M2000, as my new laptop has a 11" something screen while the former had a 15" LCD. Of course, weight is drastically reduced if you compare it to my old laptop. I'm guessing the x60s I'm carrying right now weighs a less than two and a half pounds, while my Presario M2000 weighs in at more than seven pounds. Seriously, it's difficult to walk around carrying that monster. Yes, the x60s is small, but it's no netbook. It's just an ultraportable.
Here's the specs of my laptop before and after I upgraded some shit:
Old
Intel Pentium Dual Core L2400 @ 1.66Ghz
1.25GB of RAM
50GB HDD
Windows XP Professional
New
Intel Pentium Dual Core L2400 @ 1.66Ghz
1.25GB of RAM
250GB HDD
Windows 7 Home Premium
As you can see, one unlucky trait this laptop came with when it was shipped to us was its incredibly tiny HDD. Sure, it was big enough during 2005, but this is 10 years later and two 32GB SD cards can easily overtake this shitty Serial ATA. I bought a new one, a 250GB one, since according to a bunch of people that's as large as this laptop can carry and to my father, as large as his wallet can carry.
Here's a general review of important parts in my notebook:
Processor
The processor itself is double the power of my old one, as they share the same clock, but my new one has two cores, so that's a plus. I experience less freezes, and the only moments I feel freezing is when the app I'm running was written by someone who alternates playing CoD:MW2 with coding.
Memory
The RAM inside my laptop is sufficient enough for not-so-powerful computing, and it's good enough since I'll just be using this for coding in college. 1.25GB of RAM is a bonus from the PLDT, since stock X60s's come only with 512MB of RAM. I'll plan to upgrade it to 2GB in the future though.
HDD
The HDD was downgraded to 50GB from the original 80GB by PLDT to compensate for the free huge RAM (huge during the time). Now 50GB seems ample enough for 2004, but these days, you can already buy a 32GB SD card for a not really high price nowadays. That's why I bought a new HDD, a 250GB Serial ATA to replace the HDD. It seems that replacing it was a breeze. I just had to unscrew the lid, and pull out the disk through its two rubber grips. Then the rest was easy.
Operating System
As a bonus, I bought myself a genuine copy of Windows 7 Home Premium, since my dad think we're building ourselves a "new" computer and trying out one of history's overhyped operating systems wouldn't hurt. So after installing a new, clean, and bigger HDD into the notebook, I inserted the Win7 HP 32-bit DVD into my notebook's external optical drive (it did not come with an internal drive, which is good).
While installing Windows 7, I was immediately impressed by the simplicity of the installation process. Microsoft has been true about their claims that even a Neanderthal can install Windows 7 on his computer. The setup was easily navigatable, and it contained useful guides on what the hell this button does, and what the hell that button does, etc.
After installing, and my computer was good to go for me to play with, I met all those overhyped "features" Windows fanboys acclaimed, like the Super Taskbar, the improved Aero, improved speed, improved everything, and whatnot.
Keyboard
Unfortunately, to compensate for the notebook's ultraportability, I was given a small keyboard, in fact, one of the smallest I've ever seen. The keys aren't really small, they're just as big as regular non-membrane keys, but their layout was confusing. I was used to the big spaces of my old laptop's keyboard, now it seems that the keys are more packed in than usual and there's the red trackpoint mouse protruding through the middle of the keyboard like a sore, red nipple. The backspace key was as small as any other key on the keyboard, and the only keys getting the "bigger than usual" treatment was the enter, tab, Caps Lock, Shift, and most importantly, the Spacebar key. I took a small typing test course to familiarize myself with the keyboard, and, after typing out a relatively long children's tale, I even managed to top my accuracy and typing speed from my previous record, the previous record being done on my old laptop. My old record was (by average) 88 WPM, 96% accuracy, while my new record was 90WPM, 97% accuracy.
Battery
The only thing holding out this laptop from being awesome is its battery. Since it's pretty old and the battery has been through a lot of discharges and recharges during its duty, it's capacity was reduced to 48%. I manged to do a couple of battery maintenances and calibrations, and managed to ante up the actual capacity to 58%. Still, 58% actual maximum capacity still qualifies as "poor", so I may need to replace the battery soon if I were to take full use of my laptop's ultraportability.
Overall
This is awesome. Good power and ultraportability, all in one package. This will probably live for me in about three more years before it dies out and make me decide that some poor fool in the Philippines will need it. Or I could just throw it in front of a moving train, which to me is more environmentally-friendly, and the laptop will find its way to a better place than in the hands of an illiterate who thinks CRT screens are better than LCDs.
It's pretty small, smaller than my old HP-Compaq Presario M2000, as my new laptop has a 11" something screen while the former had a 15" LCD. Of course, weight is drastically reduced if you compare it to my old laptop. I'm guessing the x60s I'm carrying right now weighs a less than two and a half pounds, while my Presario M2000 weighs in at more than seven pounds. Seriously, it's difficult to walk around carrying that monster. Yes, the x60s is small, but it's no netbook. It's just an ultraportable.
Here's the specs of my laptop before and after I upgraded some shit:
Old
Intel Pentium Dual Core L2400 @ 1.66Ghz
1.25GB of RAM
50GB HDD
Windows XP Professional
New
Intel Pentium Dual Core L2400 @ 1.66Ghz
1.25GB of RAM
250GB HDD
Windows 7 Home Premium
As you can see, one unlucky trait this laptop came with when it was shipped to us was its incredibly tiny HDD. Sure, it was big enough during 2005, but this is 10 years later and two 32GB SD cards can easily overtake this shitty Serial ATA. I bought a new one, a 250GB one, since according to a bunch of people that's as large as this laptop can carry and to my father, as large as his wallet can carry.
Here's a general review of important parts in my notebook:
Processor
The processor itself is double the power of my old one, as they share the same clock, but my new one has two cores, so that's a plus. I experience less freezes, and the only moments I feel freezing is when the app I'm running was written by someone who alternates playing CoD:MW2 with coding.
Memory
The RAM inside my laptop is sufficient enough for not-so-powerful computing, and it's good enough since I'll just be using this for coding in college. 1.25GB of RAM is a bonus from the PLDT, since stock X60s's come only with 512MB of RAM. I'll plan to upgrade it to 2GB in the future though.
HDD
The HDD was downgraded to 50GB from the original 80GB by PLDT to compensate for the free huge RAM (huge during the time). Now 50GB seems ample enough for 2004, but these days, you can already buy a 32GB SD card for a not really high price nowadays. That's why I bought a new HDD, a 250GB Serial ATA to replace the HDD. It seems that replacing it was a breeze. I just had to unscrew the lid, and pull out the disk through its two rubber grips. Then the rest was easy.
Operating System
As a bonus, I bought myself a genuine copy of Windows 7 Home Premium, since my dad think we're building ourselves a "new" computer and trying out one of history's overhyped operating systems wouldn't hurt. So after installing a new, clean, and bigger HDD into the notebook, I inserted the Win7 HP 32-bit DVD into my notebook's external optical drive (it did not come with an internal drive, which is good).
While installing Windows 7, I was immediately impressed by the simplicity of the installation process. Microsoft has been true about their claims that even a Neanderthal can install Windows 7 on his computer. The setup was easily navigatable, and it contained useful guides on what the hell this button does, and what the hell that button does, etc.
After installing, and my computer was good to go for me to play with, I met all those overhyped "features" Windows fanboys acclaimed, like the Super Taskbar, the improved Aero, improved speed, improved everything, and whatnot.
Keyboard
Unfortunately, to compensate for the notebook's ultraportability, I was given a small keyboard, in fact, one of the smallest I've ever seen. The keys aren't really small, they're just as big as regular non-membrane keys, but their layout was confusing. I was used to the big spaces of my old laptop's keyboard, now it seems that the keys are more packed in than usual and there's the red trackpoint mouse protruding through the middle of the keyboard like a sore, red nipple. The backspace key was as small as any other key on the keyboard, and the only keys getting the "bigger than usual" treatment was the enter, tab, Caps Lock, Shift, and most importantly, the Spacebar key. I took a small typing test course to familiarize myself with the keyboard, and, after typing out a relatively long children's tale, I even managed to top my accuracy and typing speed from my previous record, the previous record being done on my old laptop. My old record was (by average) 88 WPM, 96% accuracy, while my new record was 90WPM, 97% accuracy.
Battery
The only thing holding out this laptop from being awesome is its battery. Since it's pretty old and the battery has been through a lot of discharges and recharges during its duty, it's capacity was reduced to 48%. I manged to do a couple of battery maintenances and calibrations, and managed to ante up the actual capacity to 58%. Still, 58% actual maximum capacity still qualifies as "poor", so I may need to replace the battery soon if I were to take full use of my laptop's ultraportability.
Overall
This is awesome. Good power and ultraportability, all in one package. This will probably live for me in about three more years before it dies out and make me decide that some poor fool in the Philippines will need it. Or I could just throw it in front of a moving train, which to me is more environmentally-friendly, and the laptop will find its way to a better place than in the hands of an illiterate who thinks CRT screens are better than LCDs.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Top 10 FPS games (for me)
FPS (First Person Shooter) games have been the staple genre of the modern gaming world. For non-gamers, a FPS is a game wherein you directly control a character and see through his/her/its vision and fire projectiles at targets. Usually FPS games lets you take control of a bipedal creature wielding some sort of weapon, but in some instances, like first person space shooters, you take control of something else, such as space fighters.
Many people have been arguing about what are the top 10 FPS games from the past, and today. So I've made this short list of the top 10 FPS games, according to my own honest opinion. But don't worry. If you want to share your own, you are free to do so in the comments section of this post.
Please note that these ten games are not arranged in ascending or descending order according to rank, but rather, they fulfilled a certain criteria that landed them on this list.
10. Best Graphics (Crysis)
When Crysis was released in 2007, it was quickly acclaimed for its amazing graphics, however, not everyone had the same reaction since computers were shitty during the time. But when I built myself a new computer sometime in 2009 and played Crysis on it, I was immediately mesmerized by the sheer awesomeness of the graphics. The small, isolated island in the Philippines was so beautifully rendered that it made me believe that it's just a prerendered video playing. Of course, those assumptions were called off, as my computer struggled to keep the game running at a steady flow of 39fps, even without any anti-aliasing at High. Even after three years, Crysis is still popular among those gamers who burns money, and is a standard benchmarking platform for those who create the most powerful of gaming computers.
It's awesome because, since I have been playing games with shitty graphics that look nothing more than half the real world for a long time, that I realized soon technology would render near perfect graphics, if not the best or the smoothest.
9. Best Cinematics (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 1 and 2)
The three first Call of Duty games were, to be honest, stale and boring. Of course, it's historically accurate, but the drama of the WWII was just not captured during the first three games. The Modern Warfare series, however, changed the boring set of the first three games by moving the story into the future and adding exemplary cinematic effects into cutscenes, making the fictional plot more dramatic and realistic.
Another striking feature of the game, and the whole series itself, is that you always play with some sort of superior in the single player campaign who tells you to do everything while he sits back and pretends he's shooting at the bad guys. Not really much in the old CoD games, but in Modern Warfare, it's been there for a long time.
8. Best FPS bots (Quake III)
When I bought Quake III sometime in 2001, I became so addicted to the game that I finished my first gaming marathon (playing eight hours straight). It's not the gameplay that mattered during the game (although sometimes it did), but the simple, but powerful bots that are built in with the game. The same bots whom you'll bash with the words "cheater" and "hax0r" whenever they snipe you from the other end of the map with a rocket launcher. These bots are just so amazing that, it's quite impossible to find replacement bots on the Internet, and if there are, they're not really worth it.
7. Best FPS Storyline (Bioshock 1 and 2)
Bioshock takes us to the deep abyss of the Atlantic Ocean, where the fictional underwater city of Rapture, the metropolis of the free-minded people, crumbles and slowly dies. A man (whom you control in the game) apparently crashes into the ocean, and finds a bathysphere which takes him into an adventure to find out what is Rapture and what happened to the city. I won't go into any more details here, as it will spoil the plot, but if you happen to play or have played this game, you must understand that its originality, flow, and drama is more powerful than any other FPS game out there. It's like watching a movie.
6. Best puzzle FPS (Portal)
Portal is, by far, the shortest single player FPS game I have ever played. In my first playthrough of the game, I managed to finish it in about five hours, which isn't bad for someone who just begun playing it. The puzzles were somehow difficult, but is very rewarding once you finish them. And you won't get bored with the gameplay, as you can stick portals anywhere you like - provided that it's not somewhere metallic, or places you just shouldn't fire at.
5. Best FPS Series (Half-Life)
The Half-Life series takes us to the story of Gordon Freeman, a silent, and perhaps the only non-nerdy (who can explain his ability to climb ladders extremely fast?) physicist who works in Black Mesa, a fictional government science facility in New Mexico. Now suddenly something goes wrong and aliens start occupying the facility, and you must now escape and reach the Lambda Lab for help. The series itself has spawned forth other notable titles such as Counter Strike and Team Fortress, most of them popular through many years. The sequel to Half-Life, Half-Life 2, made the series better through the introduction of the Source engine, which gave us better graphics, AI, and added functionality of a full physics engine. Sure, the engine itself is dated, but it is one of the most versatile engines today, also one of the most stable.
4. Best multiplayer (Left 4 Dead)
Left 4 Dead is a Valve zombie game, and like most other modern games of Valve, it runs on the Source engine. But unlike other Valve and other zombie games, Left 4 Dead was one of those that are most centered towards multiplayer gameplay. It also introduced the AI Director, a full-fledged AI that controls different aspects of the gameplay, such as how many zombies will be spawned, where weapons will be found, etc. The game was such a success that it nearly overtook other famous Valve titles such as Team Fortress 2. Left 4 Dead's sequel added more weaponry, enemies, and levels to play in, but for me, the original was the best, as I had so much fun with it online in Garena. Sadly, my game friends moved on to Steam and left me in a desert hell full of Chinese people who can't speak English.
3. Most Freedom in an FPS game (Garry's Mod)
Garry's Mod is a mod of Half-Life 2 that allows you to do...well...almost anything you could ever imagine. Want to go on a headcrab shooting spree? Or build guided missiles? How about drive a wagon car with boosters to boot? You can do all three, and much, much more. Garry's Mod uses the Source engine to power itself, which means you also have cool physics to play with as well. You can also pose ragdolls, which is excellent for wacky photos or epic machinima. You can even just join in custom deathmatches, and even roleplay. It's also one of the best deals for a good FPS out there, just shell out $9.95 at Steam, and you already get near unlimited hours of fun with this game.
2. Best Action FPS (Duke Nukem 3D)
Duke Nukem 3D is the oldest game you'll find on this list. To be exact, it's just about two years younger than me, yet I enjoy it even now. But how did I discover this game? I salvaged through old CD collections and found this game alongside other games, and when I played it, it was hell lot of awesome. Sure, the graphics is incredibly shitty, but remember that in 1996, full 3D games with multiple floors were as rare, and FPS games with full 3D capabilities rarer.
Of course, Duke Nukem 3D did not deliver full 3D, only a full-3D environment. The enemies, pickups, and you were just pixely 2D sprites, augmented with bloody particles that were very gory and realistic during their time.
But what makes Duke Nukem 3D my best action FPS? The fast-paced gameplay, the awesome explosions, the hilarity of kicking aliens in the face, and the voice of a dude who speaks of nothing but kicking the asses of anything that's not a human female while going medieval on their asses and chewing bubblegum. Duke Nukem himself was a legend, a forgotten one, to be exact. And now that Duke Nukem Forever is officially dumped, there's no hint of what will be the future of the very badass Duke of Nukem.
1. First FPS (Quake 2)
I'm sure you're shocked. You might be saying, "Now hold on just a minute, Sulatang Tapunan, but Quake 2 isn't the first FPS. It's , and you're wrong. Sulatang Tapunan reader, in case you have forgotten, this list is based on me, and since you are probably years older than me, you immediately had those words in hand.
Quake 2 is, to be honest, the first FPS, and more importantly, the first video game I have ever played. My dad personally bought it for himself, since he had no idea what Quake 2 is. He even let me play the game, since those small squares of red that pop out of Strogg when you shoot them with a machinegun don't even look like blood. Or the gibs when you blast them with a rocket launcher looks more like mashed potatoes filled with ketchup than body parts.
But most importantly, it taught me composure, and the common-sense that everything in the video game world isn't real. It's a fantasy world. I had no thoughts, ever, in my life that video games are dangerous for children, the elderly, or anybody else for that matter. It's the awkward parenting and guidance that misled children, not the game itself. Quake II helped me become mature, logical, and open-minded. Sure, it glued me to the computer and gave birth to the nerd in me, but at least I didn't grow up the pussy way: children playing Hello Kitty Island and Mickey Mouse games because Mario depicts a plumber with a moustache stepping on turtles and shit.
It made me calm, and made me badass, because even if somebody told me that there's a serial killer-slash-pedophile is on the loose kidnapping, raping, eating, mutilating, and displaying dead bodies of children in plain view, I don't fret. So what if it's a little blood?
Special Mentions: Borderlands (most diverse), Counter-Strike (most frustrating yet addictive), Left 4 Dead 2, Call of Duty 1
Got something to say? Want to share a list of your own? Want to bitch the writer about changing the list above to your preferences (hopefully you don't)? The comments section is below.
Many people have been arguing about what are the top 10 FPS games from the past, and today. So I've made this short list of the top 10 FPS games, according to my own honest opinion. But don't worry. If you want to share your own, you are free to do so in the comments section of this post.
Please note that these ten games are not arranged in ascending or descending order according to rank, but rather, they fulfilled a certain criteria that landed them on this list.
10. Best Graphics (Crysis)
When Crysis was released in 2007, it was quickly acclaimed for its amazing graphics, however, not everyone had the same reaction since computers were shitty during the time. But when I built myself a new computer sometime in 2009 and played Crysis on it, I was immediately mesmerized by the sheer awesomeness of the graphics. The small, isolated island in the Philippines was so beautifully rendered that it made me believe that it's just a prerendered video playing. Of course, those assumptions were called off, as my computer struggled to keep the game running at a steady flow of 39fps, even without any anti-aliasing at High. Even after three years, Crysis is still popular among those gamers who burns money, and is a standard benchmarking platform for those who create the most powerful of gaming computers.
It's awesome because, since I have been playing games with shitty graphics that look nothing more than half the real world for a long time, that I realized soon technology would render near perfect graphics, if not the best or the smoothest.
Brings a tear to my eye.
9. Best Cinematics (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 1 and 2)
The three first Call of Duty games were, to be honest, stale and boring. Of course, it's historically accurate, but the drama of the WWII was just not captured during the first three games. The Modern Warfare series, however, changed the boring set of the first three games by moving the story into the future and adding exemplary cinematic effects into cutscenes, making the fictional plot more dramatic and realistic.
Another striking feature of the game, and the whole series itself, is that you always play with some sort of superior in the single player campaign who tells you to do everything while he sits back and pretends he's shooting at the bad guys. Not really much in the old CoD games, but in Modern Warfare, it's been there for a long time.
8. Best FPS bots (Quake III)
When I bought Quake III sometime in 2001, I became so addicted to the game that I finished my first gaming marathon (playing eight hours straight). It's not the gameplay that mattered during the game (although sometimes it did), but the simple, but powerful bots that are built in with the game. The same bots whom you'll bash with the words "cheater" and "hax0r" whenever they snipe you from the other end of the map with a rocket launcher. These bots are just so amazing that, it's quite impossible to find replacement bots on the Internet, and if there are, they're not really worth it.
7. Best FPS Storyline (Bioshock 1 and 2)
Bioshock takes us to the deep abyss of the Atlantic Ocean, where the fictional underwater city of Rapture, the metropolis of the free-minded people, crumbles and slowly dies. A man (whom you control in the game) apparently crashes into the ocean, and finds a bathysphere which takes him into an adventure to find out what is Rapture and what happened to the city. I won't go into any more details here, as it will spoil the plot, but if you happen to play or have played this game, you must understand that its originality, flow, and drama is more powerful than any other FPS game out there. It's like watching a movie.
6. Best puzzle FPS (Portal)
Portal is, by far, the shortest single player FPS game I have ever played. In my first playthrough of the game, I managed to finish it in about five hours, which isn't bad for someone who just begun playing it. The puzzles were somehow difficult, but is very rewarding once you finish them. And you won't get bored with the gameplay, as you can stick portals anywhere you like - provided that it's not somewhere metallic, or places you just shouldn't fire at.
5. Best FPS Series (Half-Life)
The Half-Life series takes us to the story of Gordon Freeman, a silent, and perhaps the only non-nerdy (who can explain his ability to climb ladders extremely fast?) physicist who works in Black Mesa, a fictional government science facility in New Mexico. Now suddenly something goes wrong and aliens start occupying the facility, and you must now escape and reach the Lambda Lab for help. The series itself has spawned forth other notable titles such as Counter Strike and Team Fortress, most of them popular through many years. The sequel to Half-Life, Half-Life 2, made the series better through the introduction of the Source engine, which gave us better graphics, AI, and added functionality of a full physics engine. Sure, the engine itself is dated, but it is one of the most versatile engines today, also one of the most stable.
4. Best multiplayer (Left 4 Dead)
Left 4 Dead is a Valve zombie game, and like most other modern games of Valve, it runs on the Source engine. But unlike other Valve and other zombie games, Left 4 Dead was one of those that are most centered towards multiplayer gameplay. It also introduced the AI Director, a full-fledged AI that controls different aspects of the gameplay, such as how many zombies will be spawned, where weapons will be found, etc. The game was such a success that it nearly overtook other famous Valve titles such as Team Fortress 2. Left 4 Dead's sequel added more weaponry, enemies, and levels to play in, but for me, the original was the best, as I had so much fun with it online in Garena. Sadly, my game friends moved on to Steam and left me in a desert hell full of Chinese people who can't speak English.
3. Most Freedom in an FPS game (Garry's Mod)
Garry's Mod is a mod of Half-Life 2 that allows you to do...well...almost anything you could ever imagine. Want to go on a headcrab shooting spree? Or build guided missiles? How about drive a wagon car with boosters to boot? You can do all three, and much, much more. Garry's Mod uses the Source engine to power itself, which means you also have cool physics to play with as well. You can also pose ragdolls, which is excellent for wacky photos or epic machinima. You can even just join in custom deathmatches, and even roleplay. It's also one of the best deals for a good FPS out there, just shell out $9.95 at Steam, and you already get near unlimited hours of fun with this game.
2. Best Action FPS (Duke Nukem 3D)
Duke Nukem 3D is the oldest game you'll find on this list. To be exact, it's just about two years younger than me, yet I enjoy it even now. But how did I discover this game? I salvaged through old CD collections and found this game alongside other games, and when I played it, it was hell lot of awesome. Sure, the graphics is incredibly shitty, but remember that in 1996, full 3D games with multiple floors were as rare, and FPS games with full 3D capabilities rarer.
Of course, Duke Nukem 3D did not deliver full 3D, only a full-3D environment. The enemies, pickups, and you were just pixely 2D sprites, augmented with bloody particles that were very gory and realistic during their time.
But what makes Duke Nukem 3D my best action FPS? The fast-paced gameplay, the awesome explosions, the hilarity of kicking aliens in the face, and the voice of a dude who speaks of nothing but kicking the asses of anything that's not a human female while going medieval on their asses and chewing bubblegum. Duke Nukem himself was a legend, a forgotten one, to be exact. And now that Duke Nukem Forever is officially dumped, there's no hint of what will be the future of the very badass Duke of Nukem.
1. First FPS (Quake 2)
I'm sure you're shocked. You might be saying, "Now hold on just a minute, Sulatang Tapunan, but Quake 2 isn't the first FPS. It's , and you're wrong. Sulatang Tapunan reader, in case you have forgotten, this list is based on me, and since you are probably years older than me, you immediately had those words in hand.
Quake 2 is, to be honest, the first FPS, and more importantly, the first video game I have ever played. My dad personally bought it for himself, since he had no idea what Quake 2 is. He even let me play the game, since those small squares of red that pop out of Strogg when you shoot them with a machinegun don't even look like blood. Or the gibs when you blast them with a rocket launcher looks more like mashed potatoes filled with ketchup than body parts.
But most importantly, it taught me composure, and the common-sense that everything in the video game world isn't real. It's a fantasy world. I had no thoughts, ever, in my life that video games are dangerous for children, the elderly, or anybody else for that matter. It's the awkward parenting and guidance that misled children, not the game itself. Quake II helped me become mature, logical, and open-minded. Sure, it glued me to the computer and gave birth to the nerd in me, but at least I didn't grow up the pussy way: children playing Hello Kitty Island and Mickey Mouse games because Mario depicts a plumber with a moustache stepping on turtles and shit.
It made me calm, and made me badass, because even if somebody told me that there's a serial killer-slash-pedophile is on the loose kidnapping, raping, eating, mutilating, and displaying dead bodies of children in plain view, I don't fret. So what if it's a little blood?
Special Mentions: Borderlands (most diverse), Counter-Strike (most frustrating yet addictive), Left 4 Dead 2, Call of Duty 1
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)