• Republic Commando game review

What can I say about this game? It's one of the better shooters I've played in a long time. Some FPS games team with with a 'squad' that fights along with you. For some games these guys are pretty useless. They don't do much damage to enemies and frequently get in your way and then bitch and moan when you accidently blast them. For Republic Commando, your squad IS the game.

You play as Delta Squad, and you play the Squad leader. He's voiced by Temuera Morrison, the guy who played Jango Fett--and thus, the face and voice of every clone trooper and Boba Fett. Your squad consists of yourself and 3 other people. Each of the three have their own specialties but any trooper can perform any task. You can give standard orders during combat (form up, defend, etc...) but at certain locations (like a good covering spot, for example) you can order them to cover you, launch grenade attacks, launch sniping attacks, or heal themselves.

The orders are given by running your crosshairs over these 'hotspots' until you see a little holo-outline of the trooper performing the task. Clicking makes the trooper perform this action. It's a pretty innovative function, I thought. You can also make some small decisions like going through a door by slicing it (hacking into the controls silently) or performing a door breach, much like SWAT teams do now.

I really enjoyed this game. It didn't seem very long, mostly because it's pretty difficult to actually 'die'. If you go down in battle you can order one of your squad to bring a Star Warsian defibrilator to revive you. Same goes if one of them goes down. You only really die if the whole squad dies. I thought it was an interesting choice that you do not take command of another member of your squad if you die. It's a little more 'realistic' this way I guess.

Gameplay was fun. Another bit of 'realism' it had was the fact that you can only carry 2 weapons at once, along with your sidearm. Unlike some games where you can half about a half-dozen heavy weapons...you have to wonder how in the hell they can all be carried. At least the Star Trek Elite Force games can claim they use a mini-replicator or something.

This doesn't really touch on the prequel films at all...you do take on some of General Greivous's bodyguards at one point, and you do see the General himself from a distance. Also, you can fight alongside the Wookiee Tarful on Kashyyyk...so I guess it's kind of the start of the battle that they show in Episode III. A lot of the battling is against battledroids and trandoshan slavers. You do have a mission in a damaged Republic Star Destroyer that's pretty neat.

I would have preferred a level or two where you fight alongside a Jedi, but this game was mostly based on the importance of the squad itself, so I can see why that was not included.

All in all, a great game, and one I do not regret paying full price for. That's always nice.

• New computer possibilities (it's a new Cold War, baby!)

While I was in Canada last week my new computer parts arrived. I spent Friday night and Saturday building it. I had to go out and buy a new power supply because my mobo has a 24-pin (BTX or EATX I guess) connection and I only had a 20-pin (ATX) connection. I then pieced my system together. The heatsink (cooling system and fan on top of CPU) didn't really fit onto the CPU the first time and in putting it on I thought I might have damaged the stock thermal material that was on the bottom of the hetasink. This material has to be on there perfectly so it allows the heat to pass through from the CPU to the heatsink. A mistake here could lead to a destroyed CPU, and that's costly. I removed the stock material with a Q-ip and then put some arctic silver thermal conducting grease between the heatsink and the CPU.

I got to power it on...and it it looks like it powers up for a half-second and then does nothing. I then turn it off and on at that point and nothing happens. I disconnect power cables and turn off master switch on PSU, then reconnect everything and turn it back on and the loop repeats itself starting with the half-second of power.

I checked the power switch/mobo connections and it seems they were connected correctly. Also, there was no tell-tale (thankfully) smell of burnt electronics at any time.

I thought it might be an issue with the new power supply, that is, it not being powerful enough to power my system. There aren't many components to power, as I only have a gfx card as a slotted card. Also, two HDs and a CD drive along with 3 internal fans.

I tried removing my new (lighted) round IDE cables in hopes that they were drawing too much power, but that wasn't the case. Even with regular gray-ribbon IDE cables it did not power up. I posted to the Raven boards and usenet with my problem...the advice was to bare-bones the system and see if that helped. It did. Everything powered on fine. I was happy to see the CPU powered up normally and didn't smoke, whine, or explode. That's always nice. I added things back into the system one by one, until I came upon the blue lighted case fan that I have. No dice. Remove it, fine. Add it back in, no dice. It's possible the fan has a short of some sort, I don't know. I replaced it with a normal fan I had to spare and it worked fine.

System is up and running now. The new mobo has a bunch of USB ports and 5.1 outputs. Might be time for some new speakers in the future. System is performing very nicely. All data is migrated over from the old computer. My 250GB drive, which wasn't reporting it's full size because the Western Digital software utility I had to enable that wouldn't do it since the drive was the system drive (drive windows is installed on). That drive is now my 'storage' drive and a drive I got back from Western Digital to replace a failed drive is now my system drive. I had a problem with reboots yesterday (due to a drive conflict of some kind) but it seems that is cleared up now after installing what I assume was a malfunctioning software package.

I ran the 3D benchmarks to see what my score would be. While it's not as high as Arnold's it's still a great deal higher than my previous machine did. I had originally meant for this machine to have two video cards, but I had ordered the wrong cards from newegg and I'll have to return them. I went to CompUSA on Saturday to get the correct cards but only got one since it was $100 more than the ones I'd gotten from newegg. I'll buy a second in the coming months when we figure out what's going on with buying a new car and house.

• Arizonification

We went to Arizona for Beth and George's wedding. A good time was had by all, I think. The hotel and church were very nice. While we did not get to see Beth & George's new house or Uncle Bruce & Aunt Angie's new house, we will some time in the future. B&A left for Arizona the other day and arrived yesterday. They close on their new house tomorrow. While I know it was tough on the family for them to leave (and tough on them as well) I wish them the best in Arizona. I know it is hard to move cross-country away from your family and friends. They will have Beth and George (with a baby on the way!) there with them, so that's good. Their new house does look very nice. I just can't imagine their old house in IL (which I practically grew up in) empty of their things and them themselves. It's very strange and sad. Good luck to them.