Right, well it’s been three weeks since I’ve last blogged. Looking at this month it appears that I haven’t posted for longer, but rest assured, it’s only three weeks.

So, over the past three weeks I have:

• Had two new IT staff start at work.
• Had ten days off from work (including weekends).
• Played an awful lot of Neverwinter Nights 2.
• Eaten at the Box Hill Kimchi Grandma with Trav and Ange.
• Eaten at Coyote Cafe with Trav and Ange.
• Gone on a day trip with Justine to Healesville Sanctuary (some photos are on Flickr).
• Spent an afternoon with Dad and Cheryl where we ate roast chicken and cake (not at the same time).
• and probably more that I forget.

I hope this satisfies everyone’s need to know what I have been doing in this apparent time of idleness. Should you wish to know more about any topic in depth, please click the “Comment on…” link and ask.

For the past year or so, many of the games I have been playing on my PC have been set to the minimum settings and the lowest resolutions just to make sure they run fine.

Battlefield 2, in particular, I’ve been playing for eight or nine months, and it’s been on the minimum settings from the outset, though it runs at a playable frame rate (probably about 20-25). The game is one of the prettiest games recently, but on my computer you’d never know it — it looks like a game from three or four years ago.

With a few new games coming out this year that I want to play — such as Neverwinter Nights 2 — I knew I’d have to perform some sort of upgrade to my computer this year.

Well, the last straw was when I fired up The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. I’d expected I’d need the settings to be on minimum — after all, it’s a pretty hefty game — but even at those settings it ran pathetically slow; after a little bit of browsing the game’s forums I found that my GeForce FX5600 which is listed on the “minimum requirements” webpage is not actually supported as part of the minimum requirements. What gives? I managed to get the game running under the minimum settings but even then it chugged a bit.

I’d been hoping to wait another eight months before upgrading my computer since I wanted to get a lot of new bits, but my plans have since changed and I decided to buy an interim upgrade, which will hopefully last twelve to eighteen months (though I don’t expect it will make eighteen).

I bought an XFX GeForce 6800GS which is about the best card available for ye olde AGP systems nowadays — it’s all PCIe (or PCX, depending on how you want to write it; to me that’s a graphics format, though). And after a lot of trouble getting it running, it runs mostly smoothly; most importantly, I am able to run games at medium (even high, in a few cases!) so things actually look pretty again.

I would have preferred not to spend the money, but being a PC gamer can be a very expensive hobby.

Over the weekend, I acquired the second half of the reason that I bought an Xbox, Jade Empire.

I managed to squeeze a few hours of play in, and at this point, I feel that the game seems pretty much like “Knights of the Old Republic, in Asia”. The main difference — besides the completely different setting, story, characters and so on — is that the combat is real-time, action combat. Once I’d gotten used to the control scheme and figured out the best way to defeat the evil minions of whoever-is-sending-them, I’ve found most of the battles aren’t too difficult. I have still ‘died’ a few times since but overall they’re not too taxing.

Unlike Fable, which I was a bit disappointed with, Jade Empire has been pretty good so far. BioWare has a history of releasing quality video games, and this game is no exception (their reputation isn’t quite as solid as Blizzard’s, who — in the eyes of many gamers — could release a game where you control a grain of dirt through the sea and it would still sell millions of copies).

As usual, I am finding that my character is a good-guy, but so far I fully intend to return to the game and be an evil character again — it depends on whether I feel it’s worth playing through again.

The next game I’m waiting for is Forza Motorsport, which is being developed by Microsoft and touted as a contender for more realistic driving ‘game’. BioWare should be releasing Neverwinter Nights 2 next year, which should also be a big release.