This weekend, I was converting one of the CD Audio books that I legally own into MP3, for my own personal use, and I was a little bored.

Since I was using up too much CPU time to play a game, and was being interrupted too often to write anything, I was in the perfect zone to watch some Internet video on my computer.

That’s when I ran across a Team Fortress 2 Tournament on Gamespot’s Tournament TV.

The Tournament had actually taken place on March 14th, but it was still available to watch. The tournament was called Uber Destruction, and was for the Xbox 360 version of Team Fortress 2.

This was actually the first tournament I had seen on Gamespot, but I’ll have to tune in and see when they have others. It was really great to see how others play, and the hosts of the show were pretty funny. Although to be honest, I’m a little peeved because I couldn’t imagine much of a better gig.

Anyway, it actually got me pretty pumped up to play some more Team Fortress 2. I love the game, but I haven’t played in awhile.

If you’re into gaming, you should tune into Tournament TV, looks like the next one is going to be for Call of Duty 4, with $4000 in prizes.

Posted in FPS, Games, Internet TV, Team Fortress 2 Comments »

I went to a LAN Party on Saturday, and boy was that a blast. I was thinking today that I need to spruce up my desktop again, I rarely see my background, so I keep forgetting to change the wallpaper, or to have a wallpaper at all.

Anyway, I found Warvan’s Flickr page, and wow, there are some really great wallpapers there. I grabbed the screenshot to the left real quick, but he also has a ton of Team Fortress 2 wallpapers, and you have to look at the Call of Duty 4 wallpapers. Some really great looking stuff to give your desktop a new look.

I’m generally not all that big on customizing the look of my desktop, aside from what icons are there. I don’t usually change the color scheme either. I’m usually more of a function over form type of guy.

Considering how much time I spend on a computer, which is a whole lot, I should make it look a little nicer.

I Hope you enjoy these wallpapers, and please feel free to send me any of your favorite wallpaper sites.

Posted in FPS, Games, Personal-Computing, Team Fortress, Wallpapers No Comments »

I wanted to give a brief explanation of what has been sucking every spare moment out of my life lately.

For the last several years, I really hadn’t played any computer games. Then I bought Half Life 2 just before Fortress Forever came out, and The Orange Box (Amazon Link)so that I could play Team Fortress 2.

So Team Fortress 2 has been eating up a bit of my time since.

Then, along comes Civilization 4 (Amazon Link). If you haven’t played any of the Civilization Series, let me just say that you are missing out. If you have played them, then you may be able to write a paper on addiction.

Civilization is a terrific strategy game where you are responsible for, you guessed it, a Civilization. You determine what technologies you are going to pursue, you found your cities, build improvements, and military units.

You also deal with other civilizations, trade technology and resources, and wage war.

These games are just so much fun because of the millions of ways that a game can go. You can play online, you can play with your wife or significant other over the LAN, or you can even play by email.

The game is a steal at $35.00, you’ll be playing forever. I skipped right over Civ 3, because about every 9 months to a year, we’ll break out Civ 2, install it, and play like crazy for a few months. I didn’t even realize there was a Civ 4 until recently. I bought a copy for my wife, then I became hooked again, and I bought a second copy for me. I’m seriously hooked now.

Seriously, I wake up in the morning and check my email to see if any of my email games have come in. If they have, I play them and send them off. After the kids go to bed, I play it all night, until I can force myself to turn it off. Then I lay in bed thinking about Civ.

I know, it’s sick. I’ll get through it though.

I need to put myself on a Civ Diet.

Did You Need Any More Reasons to Buy It?

Civilization is one of those gateway games that you can use to get your non-game playing spouse into, and then turn them onto other games. My wife never played any computer games before we were married, but I introduced her to Civilization (I think the original), and that’s all she wrote. Give it some thought. Today it’s Civ 4, Tomorrow it’s Quake 8.

OK, maybe not Quake, but how about Starcraft 2?

Posted in Games 10 Comments »

It looks like Steam has some new community features, which were actually made live on August 6th, but these were new to me.

Each steam account gets their own web page, just like any other social networking site, and it shows your rating for the entire world to see.

The picture that you see at the beginning of the was my rating before I started played much last night. From what I have been reading, the rating is based on how many hours you have played steam games, not how many frags you have, or anything like that.

Back when I was playing Team Fortress for Quake, there was a server in Utah that kept stats, you gained more points by fragging higher ranked players than you did for lower ranked players. You also lost more points for being fragged by lower ranked players than you did for higher ranked players.

You can see my stats, and all that good stuff, on the Port 16 Steam ID Page.

I love Fortress Forever. Great job guys!

More later.

Posted in FPS, Games, Steam, Uncategorized 2 Comments »

Here is the download link from File Planet - The file is about 555M. If you don’t want to register with File Planet, use one of these ids.

Fortress Forever is a Half Life 2 Mod, for Team Fortress Play. Now, if you are pretty new to first person shooters, Team Fortress is, in my opinion, the best game modification in the history of time.

Players choose a “class” of player, such as sniper, medic, etc. Each class has strengths and weaknesses, and every player usually has their own preference.

The game play is usually a capture the flag scenario, with some players defending their base, while others attack the enemy’s base.

The team with the highest score wins. If there is no score, or a tie, usually the team with the highest number of kills wins.

Half Life 2, Episode 2 is supposed to include the much waited for Team Fortress 2, which will look more like a cartoon than the original’s dark and gritty feel. Personally I think I’ll like Fortress Forever better, since I am such a big fan of the original.

Right now I am waiting on File Planet’s FTP servers, and I think I am going to be waiting for awhile.

If I am ever able to download it, I would love to play it tonight. I would be willing to bet that the servers will be just crammed for at least a few days.

Update: The wait wasn’t too bad. But don’t try to refresh that window, or you’ll end up starting over.

References:

Fortress Forever Site

Posted in Foretress Forever, FPS, Games, Half Life 2, Team Fortress 4 Comments »