Skip to main content
A lovely meal and another convert to Mount and Blade

We had friends around for dinner this evening. Fair dues to my lovely other half - she cooked us a knockout meal. I can bask in some reflected glory though because I did the shopping! Our guests are a family just like us and the father a PC gamer who like me should be old enough to know better. We spent a couple of hours lingering over a lovely meal and then the gentlemen retired to the games room while the kids ran riot around the house and the ladies stayed at table and chatted. Kind of like Victorian times only the ladies and gents have reversed roles.

It is funny being an older gamer. It is not something I can normally discuss among my peers. Most of my friends (particularly female friends) seem to think it is bizarre that a man in his forties actually plays games!!! You can imagine how refreshing it is to talk with someone my own age who actually shares my hobby.

My friend is into shooters and strategy games so I showed him Guild Wars for a change. Amazingly he had never played a computer role playing game either online or offline so he was rightly impressed with Guild Wars. This is even more amazing considering this individual actually played real life Dungeons and Dragons quite seriously when he was younger. That is a level of nerdiness that I never even reached so I do hope I haven't started something he will grow to regret. I warned him solemnly never ever to start playing World of Warcraft. I don't want to have the break-up of a family on my conscience.

Then I showed him Mount and Blade and that really hooked him. His wife had to drag him away from the keyboard at going home time. For those who have never played it Mount and Blade is an as yet unfinished game being produced by a Turkish Husband and Wife team. The best way to describe the game in its current state is that it is a paper thin first person role playing game tacked on to the most sublimely awesome combat experience of any game around today. The thrill of riding around like a knight of old cleaving heads from shoulders is tremenduous. You can actually run enemies through with a couched lance - how cool is that?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

My First Gaming Mouse: Logitech G300

I bought a gaming mouse yesterday a Logitech G300, here my initial thoughts. What is a gaming mouse?  There are a wide variety of devices available classified as gaming mice but a few features  seem common: 1. Wired rather than wireless: Although some high end models are wireless wired connections are just better and faster than wireless so most gaming mice stick with wired. As a bonus wired mice don't need batteries so the mouse is lighter.  2. High response rate: 1 to 2ms response rate so the mouse immediately responds to input.  2. High DPI. Gaming mice invariable boast high DPI numbers from 2,000 DPI upwards. This makes the device very responsive to the smallest movements.   3. Adjustable DPI . High DPI improves responsiveness but reduces precision so gaming mice generally allow you to adjust the DPI down for precise work such as pulling off headshots in sniper mode. Generally the mouse allows dpi to be changed on the fly by pressing a button.  4. Extr

Android Tip 3: Sharing a Folder between multiple users of an Android device

Android has allowed multiple user logins for quite a while now. This is can be very useful for tablets which are shared by family members. Normally Android erects strict Chinese walls between users preventing them from using each others apps and viewing each others files. This is a useful security feature and ensures your kids don't mess up your work spreadsheets when screwing around on the tablet and should also prevent them from buying €1,000 worth of Clash of Candy coins on your account. Sometimes however you really do want to share stuff with other users and this can prove surprisingly difficult. For example on a recent holiday I realised that I wanted to share a folder full of travel documents with my wife. Here are some ways to achieve this. 1. If you have guaranteed internet access  then you can create a shared folder on either Dropbox or Google drive. Either of these has the great advantage of being able to access the files on any device and the great disadvantage of bein

Portal 2 two screen coop on one PC.

I mentioned before that I intended to try Portal 2 in "unofficial split screen co-op mode. Well split screen on a small computer monitor is a recipe for a headache especially when the game defies gravity as much as portal. However a minor bit of extra fiddling allowed us to drive two seperate screens from one PC. The Steam forums describes a complicated method of doing this that I couldn't get working so this simpler method which worked for me might be of use to someone. 1. First I followed the instructions in this post to get split screen multi-player working: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1847904 A minor issue not mentioned is that you need to enable the console from the keyboard/mouse options menu I am using keyboard and one wired Xbox360 controller as suggested. Getting the controller to switch to channel 2 was tricky at first but as Chameleon8 mentions plugging it out and in again during loading works. The trick for me was to do the plug / p