SpawnPoint

On Christmas Eve, it is my family's tradition to get together and hand out our gifts to each other.  I got about $100.  I also got Crysis and COD:4 :)  Now all I want for Christmas is a SP COD4 server.

Anyways, me and my G-pa are crazy about computers and I was complaining about my case size and what not.  So he told me he has an old server case with Raid and Scuzzy drives incorporated already.  So I am getting a mega tower with that stuff for free :)  I am jazzed and will post more tomorrow

Wow...I wake up this morning after getting out the shower.  Check my e-mail, and I have gotten two responses from SpawnPoint.  Both were in form of a  newsletter.   Looks great for one of the earlier stages of e-mail blasts to be sent out.  I have to say it is very pleasing to the eyes. 

Today is the 12th and my brother has turned into a teenager over night!  From 12 to 13.   I am gonna go wake him up and tell him "Wakey wakey hands off your snakey!" 

OOOJERRY Out (Notice Ryan Seacrest reference)

Conditioning most of you know what this means.  Athletic training.  I am not looking forward to getting my rear back into shape.  Being a runner, I should be running consistently.  Ignoring this, I have a lot of catching up to do.  I need to get back in form for track and more specifically sprints.  It is a godsend that I live in Southern California.  It is always somewhat warm year round.  Last Thursday at the coast it reached 90°.

On a tangent, I am rocking out at one in the morning listening to Basshunter's newest release "LOL".  It is pretty good.  The guy is a complete and utter nerd.  One of his songs is about sitting in Ventrilo and playing Dota.  Another is about a remote access admin whose name is Anna.  He sings about Anna kicking and banning people so hard.  I get a good belly laugh when I hear this song playing.  When I first heard Basshunter was in June when he released LOL and it was something that was between PWND members...And someone screwed up and it got out to my track team...Then for the Senior Sendoff assembly Vi sitter här i venten och spelar was playing.  Which is the song about Ventrilo and Dota.  I was cracking up because me, Duckey, and Vudoo actually knew the meaning of this song while everyone else is like this is cool music.  Anyways, they joined the darkside of gaming!

Back to conditioning.  I have been playing baseball since June and haven't been on a run since July.  I don't really have the endurance to run a 400m in a minute.  If I am lucky when I start running I'll  be at about 64-66 seconds for the 400m.  And be able to reproduce these results with only short rest intervals.  My goal is the common motto, "Bigger, faster, stronger."  That motto encompasses the goal of a true athlete.  To become bigger as in muscle mass, faster is pretty obvious, and stronger to push your self to your limits.

My iPod (as some of you guys have seen in the forums) is getting replaced by American Express!  They have a year of American Express warranty after the end of a manufacturer's warranty.  So it falls within the three years because I bought the extended warranty and they are gonna give me between $215-320 for my old crappy iPod.  So when I get that I'm getting one of those new 80gb classics!  w00t!

    The question everyone in the gaming community has been pondering, "Is Crysis™ worth it?"  The gaming community finally received access to the pre-release demo on October 26th.  The day of its release, I downloaded it.  I sat there in anticipation to see if the game would be up to par with my expectations.  1.77GB later I was running the .exe and installing the Crysis™ Single Player Demo.
    I opened it up.  The interface began to look as if it came out of Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell™.  I spent a couple of minutes browsing through the controls and through system settings.  I tried to run the game on medium with my specifications (see bottom of document), but I was getting a good amount of hardware lag so I turned it down to low.  Even with running Crysis™ at low the game was breathtaking.
    In the opening scene I was surprised by the detail with the engines of the plane producing the various colors of the spectrum being spewed from the exhaust.  You then very quickly learn why Crysis™ was rated Mature by ESRB®.  You are a part of a tactical unit in a mission to find missing civilians.
    You and your unit jump out of the back of the plane and begin a freefall descent towards the island.  Then, your parachute does not open correctly and you are plunging at terminal velocity into the Pacific Ocean.  Thankfully your high-tech nano suit saves you from your death.  You are separated from your unit and you must find your way to their location.  You land on the beach and you must covertly neutralize three North Korean soldiers to reach your destination.   This is where Crysis’™ unique Adapt to Survive gameplay and the CryENGINE2™ come into play.  You can add a silencer and tactical sight to your weaponry to quickly dispatch of your targets, but if you miss they can fire back toward you.  If you are hiding in the trees and they shoot a tree, the tree can be split and will begin to fall removing any possible cover.
    As you learn how to play the game as a covert unit, you learn how to use many of the features of your “nano suit”.  Your suit has the ability to give you super-strength, super-speed, invisibility, increased armor strength, and the ability to change gun attachments and options on the run.  Another way how to increase your ability to be a stealth force is your binoculars.  Yes, you think that the only useful thing on your binoculars is to scout enemy positions-think again.  Not only can you scout enemy positions, your suit’s GPS keeps a track at all times where that enemy is located.
    Driving is something you do not often see in new-age FPS games.  But in Crysis™ you can use driving to your advantage.  You can pick off a gunner out of a jeep, get in the jeep and take off and drive while providing yourself with cover fire from the turret located on top of the jeep.  As you the game continues you receive access to weapons such as a North Korean tank making yourself an indestructible fortress.
    An amazing feature that I have never seen in any game to this date is Crysis’™ grenade tracking system.  If you or your enemy throws a grenade towards you, your suit picks up the approximate location of the grenade in a distance of meters.  A neat effect with Crysis™ is that if a grenade blows up in front of your character mud and dirt “fly” onto your screen and eventually begins to fade away, thus simulating the effect of a real wartime situation.  
    Crysis™ in my opinion is definitely worth a shot of downloading it.  Some may fight that the game is too graphics intensive for your computer so it is always best to try the demo before you go out and buy the game.  With the pre-release demo only being one level it was amazing.  It left me wanting more.  I am drooling over this game being released even though my specifications are not that great.    This is something that should be on any hardcore gamers’ wish list.  
    Crysis™ is one of those games where the pros outweigh the cons.  The CryENGINE2™ is what feeds the monster of Crysis™ and leaves us wanting more.  The only downsides to Crysis™ are that it is a system hog and is graphics intensive.  You have to have a computer built within the past two or three years to really experience Crysis™.  You also have to have at least a “middle-of-the-road” graphics card.  I thought that my graphics card was pretty good to run FPS, MMORPGs, and other games, but Crysis’™ graphics are on another level.  They require you to have a good machine.  

My System:
CPU: Intel Pentium D CPU 2.80 GHz
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS
RAM: 2GB Kingston (PC-5400)
HDD: 120 GB Free; 108 GB Used
Internet:  768k (384 upstream)
Optical Drive: Phillips DVD-ROM; TSST DVD+/-RW, CD-RW, DVD-ROM, CD-ROM
Software: DX9.0c with Windows XP Media Center 2005

Minimum Requirements:
CPU: Athlon 64 3000+/Intel 2.8GHz
Graphics: NVIDIA 6600/X800GTO (SM 2.0)
RAM: 768MB/1GB
HDD: 6GB
Internet: 256k+
Optical Drive: DVD
Software: DX9.0c with Windows XP

Recommended Requirements:
CPU: Dual-core CPU (Athlon X2/Pentium D)
Graphics: Nvidia 7800GTX/ATI X1800XT (SM 3.0) or DX10 equivalent
RAM: 1.5GB
HDD: 6GB
Internet: 512k+ (128k+ upstream)
Optical Drive: DVD
Software: DX10 with Windows Vista

All screenshots by Jerry Lipinski