Of Unknown Enemies

Evenin'!

X-COM: Enemy Unknown. I played it. It's not bad - I would even go so far as to say it's a good game. Nowhere near great though.
Why, you could be asking your screen right now - and I shall provide the answer.

Enemy Unknown is a re-imagining of the first game in the franchise, named X-COM: UFO Defense, released back in 1994. The basic mechanics are pretty similar to the original, with exceptions for the most frustrating and/or random events the game threw in your face. It improved, compared with the original, almost all aspects of the game (unless you count being unbalanced, massively unfair and bonebreakingly hard as an aspect). BUT! One thing hasn't improved.
Performance.
Now, my Laptop isn't exactly bursting of power, but it's decent enough to play most games at highest resolution(1920x1080), with the really intense options lowered or disabled (looking at you, AA) to reach somewhat stable 60 FPS. Enemy Unknown isn't the prettiest of games - certainly no Crisis. But it still runs like the proverbial ass, with 30 Frames AT MOST, at 1280x720, without most fancy graphics-stuff disabled. There is absolutely _no_ reason for it to be this hungry. I'd compare it, in terms of graphical fidelity, to Prey, the Shooter from 2007 (Good game by the way. Play it if you haven't.). I still soldiered through it, and got a very rewarding experience. Tough, punishes mistakes, but fair at it's core, with rare occurrences of leveldesign-BS. I had tons of fun while playing it! The ending wasn't very good, but I didn't really expect them to have great writing.
I did try to play the expansion as well (X-COM: Enemy Within).
And got, with the same settings I used for Enemy Unknown, 22 Frames.
What the flux compensator.
Uninstalled it after that, and resumed playing League of Legends.
~160 Frames.

At least someone knows how to optimize their engine. :D

Farewell, for now!

Here I am again, look at me again, here I am again, on my own!

Avast ye!

Alright, back on track. Vacation time is over! I'm back to a regular schedule, and with this, regular blogposts will also resume. Promise. Time to talk about some stuff and roll up loose ends!

Star Wars:

The Campaign died a short and painful death, because one of the players decided that I didn't like his character and announced that he would leave. After I threw a fit and made him realize that he could have ASKED me about it before deciding my opinion of his character for himself, he said that he would give me one last chance – which made me even angrier, but sure, let's play the session "next week" – for two weeks, total silence. Then, he suddenly announced that he was now playing a different game with a different group, because the Star Wars-one "is dead anyways". So I decided that he is now dead to me, short and simple. Since no one else showed any interest, I shrugged and threw it in the bin.

Minecraft: Playing on a Server now, whenever I feel like it. It's Modpack(Vanilla Minecraft is boring) is called "Monster" – because of it's monstrous size and loading time, I would assume. It takes my Laptop about 2-3 Minutes starting it. Remember: Minecraft. So it's basically a massive memory-hog that also eats performance for breakfast. Still fun to figure out all the different mods, and get them running in some convoluted machinery that fills an entire room just to make you coffee. The not-fun-at-all part for me: Lots of kids, almost no one to talk to in a civil matter.

I've even been to their Teamspeak-server a couple of times – there's just not a single person there to talk to, most of the time. Well, actually, there is one person there, almost always. But she just listens and never talks herself. So all of my visits have ended in me either talking to myself(which is a thing I do, but I don't need TS for that), or trying to talk to the random stranger that just appeared, only to realize they barely speak english and sound like they are talking with a washing machine on their head.

Theme for my next entry: X-Com: Enemy Unknown. Be excited!

Or don't. Your choice.

Arrivederci!

P.S.: Title: Iron Maiden - 2AM