Alice was creepy. It became even creepier once I realized that I had adjusted to it and wasn't creeped out by the screams in the background any more.

I'm seconding the suggestion of Splinter Cell. Thoroughly awesome game. I'm partway through it on Playstation2.

I don't get the opportunity to play a lot of the cooler PC games, as my decrepit old machine (PIIMMX, believe it or not) really isn't up to it, although I do still enjoy playing Duke Nukem 3-D and ShadowWarrior.

Toad, if you start hosting Ghost Recon multiplayer that may be the incentive to put me over the edge into buying a new 'puter.

I enjoy playing online multiplayer games, which I mostly do when I'm up in Slangsylvania. The game I got hooked on most for both single and multiplayer is Global Operations, however they don't seem to run any sort of punkbuster software on the gameservers, so you end up dead from too far away with the wrong kinds o' weapons (aka "Fuckin' Charging Pistol Guy nailed me again from 100 yds away after I shot his ass with a LAWS rocket".)

America's Army is a lot of fun, as is Wolfenstein multiplayer. I liked the single player version of that as well.

One game that I played recently that I liked, although it was tough as hell was Vietcong. VC kill you longtime! Has reasonably good story elements tying the jungle prowling together, lots of VERY funny stuff too (make sure you interact with all the characters in the firebase. some of the comments are damn funny).

Gun fans should enjoy the multiplayer, because it gives you the option of many different kinds of rifles. And it's the realism: you get shot, you are at least injured and you probably die, unlike just losing "health points".

A buddy of mine wants a game next week at night some time.

If you don't need a new monitor we can build you a new PC for ultra-cheap, ask Syc.

My current monitor is "good enough for now," besides I can always pick one of those up later ...

Cheap is good. We'll have to talk.

Even if it does mean that I will have to enter XP-land (yeah, yeah, I know — RedHat), but my primary objective is to be able to play games. The hottest newest games. The ones that need XP.

Ah, Duke Nukem 3D. Those were the days. Back then I used to do a lot of game tweaking and map building, and enjoyed the hell out of it at the time. You can still Google for "Alan Bellows" and find websites with my levels on them. Seems like a long time ago. I must be getting old.

Did you know that they were going to release a retail add-on to Shadow Warrior called Twin Dragon? They cancelled it when sales of Shadow Warrior didn't meet their expectations. Back in my Duke3d map-building days someone noticed some of my maps (NukeCity and NukeCity2, which also added Duke Bots to the game), so I was hired to work on the Shadow Warrior addon. I designed one of the levels. We got the project done, so it sucked when they cancelled it. Never got paid. Bastards.

But I think I still have the ZIP file for Twin Dragon on my hard drive if you want a copy of it. It has at least one good level in it. ;)

Just bought this the other night, haven't installed it yet though. Had to finish up NOLF2. It was funny, me and the new wife went to Media Play to get the game, I walked out with one game, she walked out with four. Heheh.

Later,

Well there's the rub; I had a spare XP lying around that I wasn't using and I was able to sell to Syc, but it's $93 from newegg otherwise, which bumps up the price of the whole system considerably... by like 25%.

Having witnessed Splinter Cell on 3 platforms, I must say, it's meant to be played on the Xbox. You're doing yourself a disservice by playing it on the PC or PlayStation 2.

You can get it free with an Xbox now, which are $180 now. Good deal.

Holy sh*t, Alan, you made Nuke City? Were you on the Duke-Edit mailing list back then? I was there under the nickname "sven", I was the crazy guy always experimenting with strange things to do with two-way trams :) Ah, the memories...those golden days before every site had a forum and mailing lists wre actually useful :)

Did you ever manage to get Shadow Warrior running unter Win2k? I could never get it to play sounds on my machine...now there's a game I 'd love to play again (but I'm not going to install a Soundblaster and go back to Win95 :) )

Yup, that was me. NukeCity was the one that most people saw, and the Dukebots made me kinda famous, but the better NukeCity2 was the one that got me the job on the Shadow Warrior addon. I was actually pretty pleased with myself once I completed the Shadow Warrior level, I think I did pretty well. And my ego got pretty inflated for a while when the guy from 3DRealms had some heavy critiques for all of the other levels in the addon, but he thought mine was perfect. :) It was nice feeling like I was really good at something, now I just feel like I'm sorta-good at a lot of things.

Yeah, I was on the Duke-edit mailing list for awhile, during the few months where I was doing a lot of level editing. I look back on that stuff as the good ol' days. Of course that doesn't make much sense, since I'm happier now than I've ever been... I just tend to be sentimental.

Never tried it on XP, I haven't had Shadow Warrior installed since I completed work on the addon. I got so burned out on it while testing levels and textures and stuff... playing it over, and over, and over, and over, and over... Did you try making a shortcut to the EXE and setting the compatibility for Windows 95? Might work, I dunno.

It's sad but I have yet to beat the game. I've had it for nearly a year now too. Maybe I'll sit down and beat it someday. I'd do it this weekend but it's my 21st birthday on Sunday so I'm sure I'll be doing other things.

Do you have to resort to XP, or will win2k suffice?

I can deal with the cost of XP ... what's going to kill me is actually having to pay for MSOffice. Damn Bill and his copy protection schemes ... which I still maintain are Bill's revenge for the antitrust suit.

What if there was something 99% compatible that ran on Windows and was free?

My roommate has an Xbox, so I acted as Lambert for him, then I went out and bought it myself for the PC. My wasted 20's playing Quake, Quake 2, and Quake 3 served me well. It looks and plays pretty much the same on the PC or Xbox. I'm so used to the mouse, arrow keys, and edit keys, it was no big deal.

Man, the Georgian presidential palace sucks!

Now that I know how to beat it, I could do it again with no trouble. But the hardest part for me was probably the fucking shootout in the abbatoir. Try doing that with little control sticks, you mouse-using cheater.

Anyone that plays it on the PC hasn't earned the right to complain about how hard it is, 'cause it's simply not nearly as difficult.