Steven St. Clair Blog

The time has come for my urge to continue PC gaming to either continue strong or cease almost completely. Over the past two years I have probably owned six different computers, a mixture of PCs and Macs. My indecisiveness on whether or not my main machine will be a PC or Mac has mainly been based on gaming.

Let me begin when I first moved to Nashville. I came to Nashville back in August of 2006, and my main machine at the time was a custom built gaming PC. From August 2006 to January 2007, I hardly touched my gaming PC, all I used it for was web design and web browsing. All my gaming was done on my Xbox 360. So I ended up selling the gaming PC on craigslist, and I used the money to put towards a brand new 15 Inch Apple MacBook Pro. I had owned Macs in the past and loved them…

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Yeah, so when I first created this blog it started off well as far as updates went, but then my postings suddenly stopped faster than a fat kid running past a Dippin’ Dots stand. Mainly because my free time was filled up spending time with the Wife and attempting to try out Age of Conan, which ended up being ok, but was not as good as I had hoped. Also my kids went to Cali for the summer, so my Wife and I had the house to ourselves, and went on some little adventures around Nashville, not to mention a whitewater rafting trip I took to the Ocoee River. But I will once again attempt to post on here at least once every two weeks.

But anyhow, my Wife and I recently got a new fence for the house which I was happy with, besides the bill, and also my Wife got her much desired Kirby vacuum cleaner. This past weekend she was all over the house vacuuming areas that I didn’t even know could be vacuumed. Besides random family stuff, I am also currently trying to help a friend of mine, Shawn Dones, get a job in Nashville. He’s a CSS Guru like myself and a big advocate of Web-Standards, so if you are reading this, and you know of a position for him, then shoot me an email, AIM message, twitter, and/or carrier pigeon delivery.

Yesterday I ordered Age of Conan from GameStop, which is technically a pre-order, therefore I get to play the game a whole three days earlier than the day it is released which is May 20th. Yea I know whooptee doo, a whole three days, WOW! Well I know that sounds cheesy, but being that I have been waiting for this game to be released for months now, any earlier I can play it, the better, even if it’s only three days.

Anyhow the way this is working is that if you buy the pre-order you get a free War Mammoth mount (which you can use at level 40), and also the Mammoth Traveler’s Bag which gives you an additional eight slots in your inventory. In addition, like I mentioned, you get to play the game three days early, via downloading the game client directly from Funcom.

After I get some good playing time in AoC, I will write up a review along with a Grand Theft Auto IV review, which I am about 30% done with. Stay tuned!

*UPDATE* - Just got the email from Funcom containing the game client download link, so the downloadage will begin tonight!

id Software announced today that they have started production on Doom 4, and have started expanding their team of designers for the project.

“Doom is part of the id Software DNA and demands the greatest talent and brightest minds in the industry to bring the next installment of our flagship franchise to Earth,” said id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead in a release.

You can see on their job openings page, that they are hiring for roles such as producer, lead designer, lead animator, and more. The job listings page indicates that applicable platforms for the positions are PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

id will be hosting the 13th annual QuakeCon convention on July 31. Hopefully more information on Doom 4 will be annouced then.

Microsoft has sorted out the small glitch with Windows XP Service Pack 3, that had to do with compatibility issues between it and the Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System, something none of you should be familiar with unless you work in retail. But it’s fixed now and Microsoft has sent the SP3 update out to the Windows Updater. It’s about a 67MB download, so it’s not too big. The Bad news for us web designers/developers is that SP3 does not include IE7. Enjoy!

Recently from Sony’s PlayStation Day 2008 in London, David Reeves has just announced Killzone 2 will be released in February 2009. This ends rumors that stated that the game would be released later this year in the Fall. An early version of Killzone 2 will be playable at the PlayStation Day 2008 event.

Recently a new trailer for The Dark Knight was released, check it out below, or go here to watch it in it’s full HD glory. Catch the movie in theaters on July 18, 2008.

On launch day I picked up Grand Theft Auto IV for the Xbox 360. So far the game is amazing, and the Multiplayer modes are quite fun. Right now I am about 12% done with the singleplayer portion of the game, when I complete it and get in some good multiplayer game time, I’ll write up a review so you can hear my two cents about it.

Along with GTA IV, I will be writing up a review for Age of Conan, which comes out for the PC on May 20th. I will be picking it up on launch day as well.

On Friday I went to go see Iron Man with a few friends, so I decided to write up a movie review about it. Before I start, I would like to point out that I have been into comic books on and off, but I haven’t read much Iron Man, I think I own maybe three Iron Man comic books total, so I can’t compare and contrast the differences between the comic book and the movie. I will also make sure and warn you before I mention anything that could be considered a spoiler.

From the previews you can tell that this movie is going to be jammed packed with non-stop action, special effects, and witty one liners by Robert Downey Jr., and the movie was just that. From the very beginning the action never stops and you won’t find any dull moments, so make sure you got your popcorn at the ready and you don’t have to run off to take a whiz. Click on the jump to read the rest of the review.

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