Little Bundle of Joy

Do you know what the happy dance looks like?

It looks like this. Let me show you.

See? See? I'm doing the happy dance.

Taking a moment to step back every so often I notice that I'm really excited over finally receiving my new computer. Which is sort of sad because it is, after all, just a computer. A really big, powerful, dream-machine computer, but still... just a PC.

But it's a PC that will be able to play all those games I've been wanting to play. I'll be able to see them with the graphical effects they were intended to deliver and double (or triple) figure frame rates!

I've managed to install all the drivers I needed and get Windows Updates and a few utilities (such as AVG Free Firewall, all the free MapMage applets I use, video codecs, etc.) but I've still got lots to install including a bundle of Firefox plugins, Photoshop, my scanner, my graphics tablet, STEAM, lots of games, and goodness knows what else. Game-wise, so far I've only installed Dark Messiah and Oblivion, and out of those two I've only played Dark Messiah (obsessively). I installed Oblivion to check the graphics. Of course I temporarily forgot that you have to play underground for about twenty minutes before you see the outside world. Still, the game recommended I turn the graphics down to Medium Detail (you best be joking) but I've pumped everything except anti aliasing up to full. I suppose I'll see the effect of this when I get into combat with eight spell-spitting daedra above ground in a blizzard. There was no noticeable slowdown during character creation or walking around my prison cell but it's early days yet. I also increased the graphical detail in Dark Messiah almost to their limit (anisotropic filtering only to x8 and anti aliasing only to x2) and still getting frame rates between 45 and 60 FPS according to FRAPS.

I feel I must comment on Dark Messiah and how much I'm enjoying it. It really is fantastic. Despite the amount of people complaining about bugs, crashes, and incompatibility I've had virtually no problems with it at all. The only thing I noticed was a tiny bit of texture flickering on a tree while I was under the effects of a night-vision spell. I'll be able to post a full rant on how much I enjoy the game once I've completed it. I'm sure I'll want to play it over again after I've finished it.

I do have a single complaint about the PC itself though. Everything is great but the motherboard only has one PCI card slot in addition to the PCI-E slot. And it is currently being used by the sound card. This means my capture card won't be installed in the new machine unless I decide to use the (considerably good) nForce sound on the motherboard and remove the Soundblaster Audigy card to make room.