Battlefield 4 Beta incoming

PSA

You can start preloading the Battlefield 4 Beta. It will be available to play for all beta users on October 1.
Get on Origin and start downloading!

The Sophisticated Nerd's Simple Style Guide - Part 1: The Battleplans

You can spend most of your money on videogames and computer parts, just don't dress like you did.

 Outfit level 99

When you build your PC master race gaming computer, what is the most important factor (aside from the ability to play Crysis) that you consider? In my opinion, that factor is efficiency. You wouldn't pair some SLI Titans with an i3 processor and shitty 7200rpm hard drives and bargain bin ram, would you? You wouldn't build a media center running an AMD APU and stick a 1000w power supply in the case along with it. That's just plain inefficient. 

Now think about what you wore leaving (or not leaving) the house this morning? Did you toss on some baggy carpenter jeans, a t-shirt, an expensive belt buckle with the Thundercats logo, and a pair of boat shoes? Did you wear sweat pants out every day this week? Do you own and still wear a pokemon shirt from the late 90's? If you answered yes to any of those questions then maybe it's time to upgrade.

I'll admit, I like this t-shirt.

The nerd renaissance man should be able to approach building his wardrobe the same way he tackles building out his gaming battlestation. His main concerns should be:

1. Purpose
2. Efficiency
3. Budget

Purpose

The underlying purpose of you putting on clothing in the morning is to cover up your disgraceful birthday suit. I'm going to take a gamble and assume that you're currently not built like an Adonis. That is the most basic purpose of owning clothes. Now, you have to think more specifically about your clothing when you dress. When you are building a computer, you have to think about what it's main use will be. If you're building a computer primarily for gaming in your home, you would tend to lean towards a full tower, spending more on the GPU(s), adequate CPU, enough memory, and a solid state drive to load Crysis faster. You're worried about frames per second, and not as much about portability and mass storage capacity. If you're building a media center, you would probably avoid the SLI setup and possibly opt for a low profile GPU or use an APU. You build your systems out to suit an intended purpose. You should look at your wardrobe the same way. You need to build your wardrobe and outfits out to suit different purposes. You can't wear Chuck Taylor's to a nice restaurant and you don't want to be the only tool at a kegger wearing a cummerbund and bowtie. You have to setup different builds with interchangeable parts in your wardrobe to suit different necessities. Think of it as being "modular".

 Efficiency

Nerds should strive for efficiency. We don't like wasting power in our systems. We don't like doing manual labor when we can automate processes. Some of us don't even like to brew coffee because we can just spray caffeine directly onto our skin and absorb it directly into our blood stream.

We can approach our wardrobes with the same efficiency mindset that we carry in our nerd lives.

You don't need to try on, compare, and buy 15 different types of dress shirts for a few different situations when you can figure out a brand, cut, and fit you like and just buy a few of the same shirt (different colors of course). Once you start figuring out what works and fits best for you, you can efficiently slap your "modules" together and get out the door quickly without looking like you just came from a 10 hour Dungeons and Dragons marathon session.

Budget

This is pretty self explanatory but it still needs to be addressed. You have to purchase what you can reasonably afford. However, don't a suit from Walmart and expect to be ready to impress. When you're purchasing hardware, you already know which products have the best quality for the price because you did your research. Clothing works the same way. When you're dealing with the low end, you have to be reasonable and expect to get what you pay for. When dealing on the high end, you definitely should put some due diligence into research and reviews. Why buy an i7 extreme when the 4770k will work just fine? You don't have to (but you definitely can) blow your money on some expensive boutique clothes, but you can get away with spending much more reasonably.

The Next Level
Now that you have the basics down, the next part of the series will help guide you from lvl 0 to lvl 10 in no time.

To Be Continued....

EA Origin Crazy Sale at Gamefly

Right now at Gamefly you can pickup a bunch of EA games for Origin for up to 75% off.
Some of the notable titles include Crysis 3 for $7.49 and the Command and Conquer Ultimate Collection for $9.99.
Use coupon code GFDSEP20 for an additional 20% off.

Check it out here.

Edit:

You can get it for $7.99 at Gamestop.com right now

2 for $15 Bethesda PC Games right now

Right now you can pick up 2 games from Bethesda, 2K, or ID for $15. I would highly recommend Dishonored and Fallout New Vegas but the overall selection is pretty decent.
Check it out and Get Loaded

Greetings from San Andreas Part 2

Just a trip on my blimp

Ohhhhhh yeaaah

I think I need a jump.

No no, the lighting is all wrong

They see me rollin', they hatin.

You can see part 1 of my San Andreas photo journey here

I Didn't Like Dark Souls At All

Though Metacritic may not agree with me, I'm going to come right out and say it. I absolutely despised Dark Souls. It was too damn hard and frustrating. I didn't find it rewarding at all and I rage quit more times playing that damn game than anything else in my entire life. I found absolutely no joy in that game. I didn't understand why in the beginning of the game they would let me stumble into an area at with level 99 skeletons who would absolutely demolish my anus on sight. I didn't understand why they would give absolutely no direction or indicating on how to defeat some wandering ghosts who are just waiting for me at the story progression chokepoint. I hate having to google solutions to small, seemingly inconsequential battles. I hate having to google any kind of gameplay tip.
Maybe I'm not a glutton for punishment. Maybe I've been spoiled over the years with games like Fable, Devil May Cry, and even Ninja Gaiden. Hell, I loved the Ninja Gaiden for the original XBOX and I found it to actually be challenging and rewarding. Dark Souls, on the other hand, was just this tedious, twitch reflex requiring nightmare for me. I felt like I should have been hopped up on Vivanse just to keep up with the level of planning and dexterity that this game required. I really hated this game.

 This meme sums it up nicely.

Now, the question really is, am I just another lazy gamer?  Am I just a whiner? Am I part of the coddled Call of Duty generation? Did the checkpoint systems of Halo and Grand Theft Auto lower the challenge level bar for me permanently? I would have to say no. I played and beat Contra on the NES without cheating. I played through Ninja Gaiden without a strategy guide and finished the "special world" in Super Mario World. I have no problem with a fun challenge. Dark Souls to me, is not fun at all. I really tried hard to like it. I owned it on the PS3 and sold it after a few weeks to prevent myself from cracking the box by chucking it at my wall. I own the Prepare to Die edition on Steam which I gave another go before right clicking it and pressing "delete local content". I really can't like this game at all. I'm just not into masochism. With that said, I'm going to go back to taking more GTA V selfies tonight.

Tropico Bundle on IndieGala

Right now on IndieGala you can pick up the Tropico Bundle for Steam. If you beat the average (it's something like $5.00 as of this posting time) you also get Tropico 4 Special edition for Steam.

I have dumped hundreds of hours into Tropico 3 and Tropico 4 and I would definitely recommend this bundle to all of the aspiring dictators out there. Be forewarned, the music is slightly annoying/addicting and you'll find yourself singing along and blurting out "saxaphone" every so often.
You should go pick up the Tropico Bundle and see some "accidents" happen to your political detractors.

Greetings From San Andreas Pt.1

I did some sight seeing around San Andreas.

 

Too bad Franklin doesn't like swimming.

Just got my learner's permit.

Donuts.

Moar Donuts.

Drank too much.

Michael has a foot fetish.

This guy wasn't happy with my photography.

You shouldn't smoke while pumping gas.

We were playing hide and seek.

Always the rebel.

He wanted the donuts more.

Chop leaving skid marks.

sammich

At rehab.

A Revolution is Coming: SteamOS

Valve has just announced its new operating system: SteamOS.

At this moment, only a few details regarding the release have been announced on the Steam site, however some interesting points to note are:

• In home streaming: stream games from your windows/mac box to your steam os machine
• integrated media services (music, netflix, etc)
• family sharing (yes, the same kind of sharing that they implemented in the last steam release)
• optimized "graphics processing", your games *may* look better on Steam OS.

That's all we've got right now but we will post more as information becomes available.

Bioshock Infinite for $14.99

Today on greenmangaming.com you can pick up Bioshock Infinite for $14.99.

Grab it here and use promo GMG25-J4B0D-FLH8M to get it for $14.99

Open the register and give me all your selfies

He didn't want me to tag him on this selfie so I asked him to put all the money in a plastic bag instead.

Cedar Point: The Nerd Review Part 1: The Rides

This past weekend we took a trip to Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio. For the uninitiated, Cedar Point is the largest amusement park in the midwest.

It is pretty damn big.

As a nerd and avid fan of rollercoaster tech and amusement parks I will not try to hide the fact that I was absolutely thrilled to be going to the rollercoaster capital of America. I will also say that I was not disappointed.

The Review

The Rides

Currently Cedar Point has 16 rollercoasters. I have tried all of them in my lifetime and during this last trip I rode 8 of them (all level 5 "thrill rating"). In my opinion, the "must-ride" coasters would be the Millennium Force, Top Thrill Dragster, and the Magnum XL-200.

 Millennium Force

• The Millennium Force was the tallest coaster in the world when it first debuted, and it still has the ability to scare the living crap out of me today, over a decade after I first rode it. You're hurled up the first hill quite quickly on a very quick lift. I thought it would ruin the anticipation I usually get when I'm slowly climbing a roller coaster hill but it actually added to my anticipation. The first drop falls at an 80 degree angle at 90mph, which is one of the best drops in the entire park. In my opinion, it is the best steel coaster I have ever been on. 10/10 must ride. 
• The Top Thrill Dragster is one of the scariest things I have ever rode, hands down. Being accelerated to 120mph in under 4 seconds is one of the craziest feelings I've ever experienced. It felt like I was making a warp jump on the Enterprise. The sheer force from acceleration almost made me poop a little bit of funnel cake. Just don't put your hands up because you might get hurt when it shoots you forward (and also because the ride won't take off if your hands are up). 
• The Magnum XL-200 is one of the original gangster roller coasters at Cedar Point. For a 24 year old coaster, it still manages to amaze and scare me to this day. It was the first "hypercoaster" ever built, and has held up very well through the passage of time. The carts are kind of old and their aesthetics are a bit dated, but if you like nostalgia and dig the 80's vibe, you will definitely enjoy their looks.

The rides at Cedar Point are second to none. It puts every Six Flags I have ever been to shame. The amount of rides and the sheer scale of the park would definitely warrant a 2 day trip to the park. I don't have that kind of stamina anymore, but 13 year old gerbil definitely wished he was able to go for another day. The placement of the rides facilitated the experience, as one could just walk along a set path and ride every single coaster in the park. It flowed very nicely and didn't confuse me as other parks often did. They did have a lot of those spinny rides that I hate. Spinning is the bane of my amusement park existence because I get motion sickness from spinning really easily. That said, Cedar Point has some really awesome spinning rides that I would never ever ride. The "Raptor" made me super dizzy but that's my fault for riding a ride with a lot of crazy spirals and loops first. Whoops.
I also got the chance to ride their newest coaster "Gatekeeper" which is currently the longest and fastest "winged coaster" in the world.

Nice and thick.

Gatekeeper was pretty interesting and quite fun and it didn't give me the same motion sick feeling that other steel coasters with plenty of spirals and loops did. It felt more like flying or gliding rather than being hurled through loops and spirals at break neck speeds a la Raptor. 

Rides TL;DR 

If you want to go to the amusement parks with the best rides, you have to go to Cedar Point. 10/10 must ride.

Mechwarrior Online: A Blast from the Past?

Just a heads up to all of the Mechwarrior fans out there, Mechwarrior online has just been released as is free to play! I'm downloading it right now and I'll have a review as soon as I put some time into it.
Check it out at mwomercs.com

Yarrrrg, Let me see your booty

Steam is running a sale for National Talk Like a Pirate Day, matey.

Talk Like A Pirate Sale

The only game on this list that I have played was S.P.A.Z. , which I found mildly entertaining. I never really got into it (Steam says I logged in 100 minutes) but I think that is because I didn't have the patience to put up with the long ramp up time and intro levels. I heard a lot of good things about it from other gamers, so it could very well be worth the $2.49 cost of admission.