For a while now, Onlive has been having $5 Friday promotions that offered the full purchase of a single game every Friday. For example, last month I mentioned that Mafia II was on sale as part of the promotion.
Apparently, they are ending their $5 Friday’s, but not without another $5 promotion. This time, they will be offering a new game every day of the week for this week only.
Today you can pick up Splinter Cell Conviction. You can head on over to www.onlive.com to see the daily deal or checkout their Facebook page at www.facebook.com/onlive.
ComputerAbuser
GoG.com wants to thank everyone for their support in helping them achieve their 6 millionth game download. They are doing this by offering everyone a free copy of Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars (The Director’s Cut).
If you haven’t already played Shadow of the Templars, it’s actually an excellent traditional 2D adventure game from the 90’s that was re-released a few years ago as a Director’s Cut.
You have to hurry though, the offer ends October 1st at 7:59 AM EDT!!!!!
ComputerAbuser
The other day a buddy of mine sent me an e-mail to point out that Sliders was added to Netflix recently. We both used to watch that show so it brings up a bit of nostalgia. There is actually a slew of new shows that I would love to watch that have been added, like Stargate SG1 and Farscape for example.
Anyway, today I logged in and decided to look at some of the member reviews and that’s when I was made aware that several episodes are missing.
Apparently, this is not news if you are a US subscriber. Sliders has been available for streaming in the US for a few years. From what I can tell, there are the occasional episodes missing from many of the TV shows available for streaming. I’ve read that this is due to licensing issues relating to the particular episodes that often center around music (lack of distribution agreements for a particular song for example).
Regardless, it makes it pretty difficult to watch a new show when the pilot is one of the episodes that’s not available. 😡
ComputerAbuser
I originally planed to do up a review of the MSI P67S-C43 (B3) Socket 1155 Motherboard as I ended up purchasing one as part of my Sandy Bridge upgrade and there didn’t appear to be any reviews of this particular model.
On paper, it sounded like a fantastic deal and at the time it was $20 less than the next cheapest P67 board.
I took dozens of pictures while putting it together and was fairly impressed by the design and layout…….
Sadly, the board was defective. 🙁
Continue reading »
This morning I received news that a new Humble Bundle has been released.
The Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle
The bundle is nearly identical to The Humble Frozenbyte Bundle they offered back in April with the addition of Frozen Synapse. I placed an order as a gift for my son. He enjoys playing Trine via Onlive (30 min demo). I figured he might enjoy the full game.
One thing that appears to be different this time around is the stipulation that you pay more than the average purchase price in order to qualify for all of the games. In the last few hours the average purchase price has risen from around $3.70 to $4.40. It will be interesting to see if the price will continue to rise over the next two weeks or if sales will taper off once the average price gets two high.
ComputerAbuser
I tell you, Newegg knows how to get you to spend money. Back in August I bought a small laptop from them (~$300). As a thank you, they sent me a $20 coupon code (when you spend $40).
I was thinking of getting a SSD hard drive but was torn due to concerns that my old motherboard would hamper performance (it doesn’t support AHCI). In the end, I ended up spending almost $500 upgrading my computer to a Sandy Bridge setup. 😯
(Though I should be able to make most of that back by selling off my old components.)
Anyway, I was a little disappointed that my Windows Experience Index – Processor rating dropped. I was previously running an Intel E5300 on an Asus P5K at 3.46GHz with stock voltage. I now have an Intel G620 running on an Asus P8Z68-V. The G620 is not overclockable, so I am stuck at the stock 2.6GHz.
At 3.46GHz, my E5300 gave me a WEI Processor rating of 6.7. I now have 6.5 with the G620. 🙁
Mind you, I no longer need to overclock my CPU to achieve the same performance (not that I have a problem with that). On the plus side, my Memory rating went from 6.7 with 4GB DDR2-1066 to 7.7 with 8GB of DDR3-1600. 😀
ComputerAbuser
When I was at PAX a few weeks ago, I mentioned to one of the guys working the GoG booth that I was waiting for Tex Murphy to go on sale again since I missed it the last time (I was aware of the sale, but didn’t go for it).
I’m sure it’s just a co-incidence but today I received word that the Tex Murphy series of games were indeed on sale again until Monday.
In a way the deal is not as good as last time, since you could buy all 4 for $14.36 (instead of $17.96). The catch was if you didn’t want all 4 the discount dropped to 30%. This time you get 50% off whether you want 1 game or all 4.
I still have my original copies for UAKM, Pandora and Overseer, but UAKM has one or two bad discs and it would be nice to have digital copies that didn’t require disc swaps. Also, I suppose it would be in bad taste to not buy them since I asked for the sale, though I’m sure it’s just a co-incidence. OR IS IT? 😉
ComputerAbuser
I just received word that Onlive has Mafia II on sale for only $5 today. One of their $5 Friday deals.
I’m tempted to give it a go since the reviews for Mafia II are pretty good and I’ve never played it.
I’m really concerned about the latency though. After installing Onlive on my computer I tried out Dirt 2 and it was basically unplayable. Maybe it’s the way I play racing games but I find I do lots of small adjustments while driving. With Onlive I found that by the time my movement registered I had already made several other adjustments. It seriously felt like a 500 ms delay. It was not pretty.
The latency should be less noticeable with a game like Mafia II, shouldn’t it?. A free demo is available, so I guess the best thing to do is try it before I buy it. 😀
ComputerAbuser
So I guess the “Spill Proof” keyboard on my Fujitsu Lifebook S7110 was not so “Spill Proof” after all. 🙁
I was typing away on my keyboard when I bumped my cup of green tea and it splashed all over my keyboard.
I promptly shut it down and did my best to dry it off (I drink my tea straight – no sugar or milk). After letting it dry overnight I was glad to learn that the laptop was still working fine, though several of the keys were not working. It’s odd because there doesn’t seem to be any circuitry within the keyboard other than the track-point which still works fine.
Anyway, I picked up a replacement from Laptops Parts Expert. The price was a little high but it was shipped quickly and works perfectly.
I suppose you could say that although it wasn’t 100% spill proof, the keyboard did it’s job and took one for the team. So long little keyboard, I’m going to miss touching you all over. 😯
ComputerAbuser
In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Guillaume de Fondaumiere (co-CEO and founder of Quantic Dream) expressed his opinion of how used video game sales are damaging to the video game industry.
In particular, he cited sales figures of their hit, PS3 exclusive, video game Heavy Rain. According to Guillaume, Heavy Rain was played on more than 3 million PS3 systems (based on Trophy data). Since they recorded sales of only 2 million copies of the game then he estimates that over 1 million copies were purchased second hand (I assume including rentals & borrowed copies).
To quote Guillaume, “…my calculation is, as Quantic Dream, I lost between €5 and €10 million worth of royalties because of second hand gaming.”
Continue reading »
