Battlefield 3 is Above and Beyond the Call… of Duty!

I’m a big first person shooter (FPS) fan. It was the original Doom on the PC that got me into this genre of game. Other games took me into new worlds and let my imagination explore what lie before me, but Doom actually put me into a fluid three dimensional world with ominous sounds and evil creatures that charge at me… I know that Castle Wolfenstein did the same thing, but I never got the same excitement as I did with Doom. Just knowing that there might be something ahead, in the dark, made me cringe while I moved forward using the keyboard and mouse.

I’m always excited to see what new innovative features are released with each generation of shooters. Doom was just a bunch of flat characters, with choppy animations, that attacked on a flat alien space station. At the time, it was amazing, but to see it now just reminds me of how far technology has progressed. Quake and Unreal introduced us to 3D polygon characters. They moved more fluid through worlds that now had stairs, ladders, hills, and cliffs. No more flat worlds. Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64 added better artificial intelligence to the characters. They ducked behind cover when being shot at. You could also shoot them in the leg or arm and see them react differently. Halo on the original Xbox brought us new wide open worlds to explore and battle across. They felt more alive with foliage and life. Characters looked more lifelike and less blocky. It really showed us what could be done using the technology of the time.

DC Universe Online – First Impressions

DC Universe Online came out January 11th and I picked up for the Sony PS3 a week later. I had been playing World of Warcraft (WoW), just getting my Night Elf Druid up to level 73. I’m wanting to get into the latest WoW Cataclysm expansion but the grinding through levels really wears on me… yes I do dungeons, but at this level, there isn’t much variety. Well, enough of WoW, this is about DC Universe Online (DCUO). It is a game that is going to have many comparisons to WoW. Having played WoW, I can explain the differences from a non-biased perspective. I’m a console gamer at heart but understand the keyboard and mouse controls of a PC. This is my first impression of DCUO since I’ve only played it a week. I picked up the PS3 version because I prefer the controller over the mouse/keyboard and love to sit on my couch and play the game on a big HDTV. I will try to include more updates later.

Computers – “I can remember the day when…”

The first Atari 800 hooked to a 13" color television.

I love computers. I grew up with computers. I feel I was around during the start of the home computers. I’m a big Mac fan at home but have always used PCs at work. There are just some days where we get those water cooler conversations about how much computers have advanced, how they have changed from the old days, or how we can’t even imagine living without them. I may get into some geek techno babble here (you may need a babel fish! ;-p ), but those of you who understand will enjoy it.

The first computer I ever used was an Apple II+. I was in 10th grade at the time and instantly fell in love. It may have only had a black and white display, using characters like $ and @ in place of graphics, but I knew that I wanted to make a living with computers. I thought then that computers were the way of the way of the future. For this article I want to refer to my favorite computer, the Atari 800. You can probably stick your first computer in here too.

I got my Atari 800 back in the days when it first came out. It was a powerhouse at the time with 48K of memory (upgraded from 16K), an 88K disk drive for storage (much-needed after using the cassette tape storage), and it displayed 16 colors at 320×192 pixels on my 13″ TV. I dabbled in some programming on the Atari and also enjoyed some early computer games. Hey, that was about all there was to do on a computer.