Law of Consumer Economics
If the shoe fits, it's ugly. If it's good, they discontinue it.



I guess that I was wrong. Made wrong, rather, with regard to the previous post.
So I have deleted it, so as not to invite any more criticism regarding that. In its place, I am going to post something, which had really happened.

Me playing Doom III



Only for gamers

But it does not mean that others should not read it


It started as an innocuous link in the UT Direct, an online portal to all University services, announcing for a DOOM III multiplayer tournament at the University sponsored LANCAVE; a rig of superfast systems (clocked at > 3Ghz), with ridiculous amounts of RAM (512 MB 400MHZ DDR) and an obscene graphics card (An ATi Radeon 9800 Pro, costing more than 200$ per card)
That was the setup for the DOOM III tournament.



So, me, an innocent guy in the world of DOOM III gaming, started off for that place. Arriving just in time, I started looking at other more experience people playing that. So, I was interested. I actually expected some hardcore junkies around here, but I was surprised. It had a better atmosphere than the local bar, and I reasoned that it was because, it was in the basement of the largest dorm of UT.
And I signed up for the tournament, and to be a member of the LANCAVE. (At 3$ an hour at this place, with these FRIGGIN comps like these... neeed I say more?)



So I started off at around 8:30pm. (Oh yes, it slipped my mind, it was scheduled on a Sunday nite, from 8pm to midnite)



The first guy who I played with, was a pro, having already completed the game, and me just starting with my first map.
So I ended up losing, but not without a good fight. At 5 kills vs 9, in 10 minutes, it was a good game, atleast for me.



Thats not the end of it.
They put us up in the losers bracket. Just another parallel set of tournaments.



So, in the first match in the losers bracket, I played against a newbie to multiplayer gaming itself, and so I obviously, *schmuck* won at 17 to 1. And hence I advanced to the next stage.


But luck was not with me.
I was put up with an even better pro, who ended up in the loser's bracket solely because he had come late to the event.
And I lost terribly. I am not even revealing the stats.



So with about 2 hours to kill, what did I do. I started playing the single player version of it. And this is when I describe the graphical aspects of the game.
It starts off simply as a Marine posted to a place in Mars, in the far future. And suddenly, the whole station is over-run by some shockwave that converts everybody (except u and a few others) into mindless zombies, intent on killing you.
And thats where the fun begins.



You start shooting anything that moves, or anything that you can see moving. And thats the story. I ended up finishing only 3 levels in the 2 hours, and leaving the console with a lot of trembling and numb hands, and heartbeat which I bet others could have heard. I had to leave then, to avoid having zombies in my dreams.



The reason why it made me so scary - was the amazing lighting. Ultra-realistic dynamic lighting lighting, superb bump-mapping, and extremely fluid body contour movements makes this game.


Picturise this. (Not for claustrophobes)
You are walking in this pipe-lined corridor, with flickering lights that hardly make your day. Blood trails on the tiled floor make you hesitate whether you should be there. A broken pipe venting steam suddenly partly muddles you vision. Suddenly, a shadow darts past very fast and you get disoriented. While you regain control, a fireball notches its way towards you, straight at your face. And while you again lose vision because of it, that creature which caused it, is no longer there.
Then, Boom. It appears in front of you. 2 shots from your shotgun. And this monstrosity melts away in fire.



Back to reality.
Gives me the creeps.

All this put to-gether, makes a very seriously frightening game. And this also results in a very heavy demanding game, that a regular system can NEVER run. Even with the PCs mentioned above, it gave a frame rate of 25 - 30 fps (for lay(wo)men - it means that it is just playable) at a resolution of 640 by 480 (for comparision, the normal screen resolution is 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768).



DOOM III apart, there are a lot of other extremely good games.

1. Unreal Tournament 2004, released only 5 months back, and already making huge waves in the gaming industry. For those interested in furthur details of the unreal engine, do see Unreal 3 engine page. It is undoubtedly one of the best graphics engines that I have seen.
   
2. Age of Mythology, a game which I have been playing for quite a while.
   
3. Halo, a demo of which I have played, and I have found to be extremely addictive. Watch out for Halo 2
   
4. Call of Duty
   
5. Simcity 4000

and a whole lot of other games.



This LANCAVE gives me enough reason not to buy a desktop, but rather go for a laptop.
And now you know where I am going to be every Sunday nite. ;)