Niahak's Place

Finished Ogre Battle 64.  Although it’s not at the top of my list, it’s a decent game.  I enjoyed the atmosphere, the epic-yet-realistic storyline, and some of the strategy aspects.  It just has a bit too much micromanagement for my taste.  My Chaos Frame at the end was 94 (in the final scenario I accidentally left a city to be taken by some leaderless enemy unit, then captured it back with a wrong-aligned unit).

I bought Galactic Civilizations 2 about a week ago, and installed it… and I got a bluescreen.  Turns out I need DirectX 9.0c compatibility. Which, of course means that I only need graphics drivers updated in the last year.

My card (a Mobility FireGL 9000)  is made by ATI, but for some ungodly reason they let Compaq take care of the video drivers.  Compaq got bought out by HP the year I got my laptop, and older driver support was left by the wayside.  In other words, the last time new graphics drivers came out for my laptop is 2004.   3 years ago.  So despite the fact that my old desktop computer is now 7 years old, it can actually play a new game.  When my 4-year-old laptop, with double the clock speed and an otherwise-nice setup, can not.  Curse HP.  Looks like I’ll want to get a desktop soon after I start work.

Since, in the wake of the announcement of Starcraft 2, I had a spot or two of nostalgia anyway…  I started the Starcraft campaigns over again.  Bit easy so far, but fun.  I finished the Terran campaign last week and I’m starting the Zerg campaign now.

I also started playing Ys: The Ark of Napishtim last week.  It is a bit simplistic, but fun.  I never really got into the Ys games very much.  Only played the third game on the SNES, and it was rather difficult.  I don’t really even remember the plot.  But judging from Napishtim, I think the whole series would be pretty enjoyable.

Now I have two weeks off in preparation for entering the real world.  We’ll see how it works out.