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  Welcome Gamers

05-Jan-08


Gamers Welcome

Welcome gamers to the site. I'd like to take the time to thank you the gamers for what were going to build here. We are on a missiong to build a one stop place for gamers, techies, sports, and music enthusiasts. On this site you will see reviews for games, local band music, downloads for everything, and a little of everything in between.

Even more stuff will be on the forums where content will be uploaded and users can setup clan matches, friendly scrims, get together on the latest MMORPG or get tech support for their computers, consoles, or games. Updates will be there so everyone is up to date with the latest patches for your games.

Also Hiring

We also need Forum Moderators, Site Administrators to help me keep the site up to date, and we are also looking for content managers and uploaders and updaters.

Welcome to the newest online community and please above all else sign up on the forums so we can at least wish you a warm welcome. I know the cupboards look bare now but we've recently started this and with YOU the gamers/techies/friends we'll get this thing going in a direction that we all want.

This site isn't just going to be based on my decisions or just those that run the main aspects, this is a community site where the community members will have a say in what goes on and how it is implemented.

Thank You

Sincerely,
Jeff

  Galactic Civilizations II : Dread Lords

04-Nov-07
Galactic Civilizations II : Dread Lords is a game about a wide array of races including the dreaded Drengin to the Terran Alliance trying to find their niche in the universe. This game is like many other's in its genre in that there are multiple ways to win and victory doesn't necessarily revolve around total domination, although in my experience its much more fun dominating than playing politics with a pesky race full of non-humans.




This game boasts world building along with free form ship design and what reads from the back of the box like some crazy ass space fighting with some planetary invasions as well. So how does this all actually add up? Truth is the free form ship design is nothing but pre-designed structures that can be attached to your ship and they mean NOTHING, you select what size hull you want your ship to have and that determines how many weapons or other structures you can put on it, the actual free form structures do nothing but waste precious space you could be using for weapons or cargo pods. So essentially its useless, and on top of that the structures rarely will go where you want them, you just end up clicking around your ship in a circle until the computer selects a suitable place to stick a piece. So I hope you didn't want matching warp drives or any other symmetrical design because its nearly impossible to do.




As far as the planetary invasions, those are cool right? WRONG. Planetary invasions include you selecting what type of an invasion whether its some kind of espionage or other devious sounding thing but all it really turns out to be is a cartoonish looking screen where odd's of both sides are randomly rolled until you click go in which the odd's lock into place and battle if you can call it that actually begins. The battle consists of some block looking characters who shoot red lasers and make an early Nintendo boinking sound and then disappear. No it doesn't cover the world or anything remotely, its always the same little tiny stretch of land and no you don't have control over even one single soldier....you just click the odds and watch numbers disappear to the sound of a zap gun thingy.




Ok its a space game right so its about space battle correct? Nope, you'd be wrong again and so was I when I bought this game. The space battles are much the same as the planetary invasions. Sometimes it takes you to a real time battle screen where you simply click go again and wait sometimes up to 10 minutes for the ships to spin around like tops or something out of Asteroid and zap each other and then you either declare victory or defeat. Most of the time though the ships simply move up to another ship and you hear the same crappy sound effects you hear on planetary invasions and it shows a little explosion and the ship that lost is just gone. There is no control and no fun in this activity. The ONLY thing enjoyable about this game is that its relatively easy and they have lots of weapons and upgrades you can apparently get although no matter how much I upgraded my ships always made the same sounds and showed the same effects when firing, I guess its just all in the numbers as far as how much damage is produced. To say the least this game is disappointing all the way around, they even managed to get the planetary building wrong. On planets you tell it what you want to construct then you simply wait weeks at a time for it to finish and then nothing, you can't produce anything out of most and it just gives you little things like, commerce boosts. Trust me if your thinking Civilization you'd be wrong, its like a bad twilight duplicate of that system gone terribly wrong. So lets see on the thumb scale how this game actually does:

Final Tally

Ratings	Galactic Civilizations II : Dread Lords
Graphics
Gameplay
Story
Sounds
Overall

This game had all the opportunity to be good, it just didn't happen. It's hard to put your finger on exactly what might have made this game better since seemingly everything went wrong. Hopefully they will either stop making these games or simply listen to someone who's actually played it and make a better one.

Bottom Line:

Don't Buy It.

  Post Surgery Soreness

03-Nov-07



Gall Bladder Removal



Yesterday I had my gall bladder removed via the laprascopic method, which is simply them making four incisions and running a camera in one, a light in one, then what looks like tweezers in one hole, then finally some snips in another. Using all of the tools they light up and find the area then snip it and pull it out. I'm pretty sore, but not as bad as I thought I might be. I can walk and pretty much eat anything I want, which is to say I'm doing much better than I was a week ago when my large amount of gallstones were driving me crazy and causing me all sorts of discomfort. So anyway I'll be working on the page throughout the day to try and keep my mind off of the sore abdomen.

On another note I completely redid the forums and switched from Ikonboard to phpBB because I think they are a little more user friendly and are much easier to work with when it comes to changing styles and other graphical stuff, so feel free to click on the forum link and stop on by.

  Welcome Home

29-Oct-07



Me and my wife


Holden,My mom, Me, Squires

It's been a long year for me. May 2006 I went to basic training, I graduated October 2006. Then I came to Fort Campbell, KY home of the 101st Airborne Division. Shortly after arriving, myself and four others volunteered to go to Baghdad, Iraq. Now that time is over and we are finally home. My experience over there was one that was as unexpected as it was pleasant. While there I came to know many Iraqi's the majority of whom loved us, those who didn't simply ignored us. That 1% tried to ruin it for everyone but the will of our troops and that of the Iraqi people would not let that happen. I remember my first few months there were a daily wakeup to being mortared shot at with rockets. Soon though the "surge" came into effect and I put it to any naysayer to prove to me that it wasn't a complete success. For the last couple of months there I didn't get mortared even 1/10th as much, IED's were at an all-time low since the war began, VBIED's (Car Bombs) were also at an all-time low, even sectarian violence dropped off significantly. In months before the surge the death toll of Iraqi's by death squads averages around 120 a month, but soon after the surge that number dropped to around 60, which is amazing in a city of 7 million people. I can't express my gratitude to the Iraqi people for showing me what true compassion and what true struggle is really like. I only had a few close calls and nothing worth really worrying about, but for just the curious in the next couple of days I will chronicle a little bit of my time there so stay tuned for that and as I get back into the swing of things I'll also begin working on finishing my custom computer building operation and we'll get the battle of the bands going.

Also on another note, I have Gallstones so I may have to have my gall bladder surgically removed in the next coupld of days so that might set me back a week as well on updating this thing. Iraq didn't kill me but fatty foods I guess will.

  Time to Fight

02-Mar-07




When I joined the military it wasn't for glory or for any type of adornment. I joined because I wanted to be one of those people who simply didn't sit back and enjoy the freedom's we take for granted, I wanted to be one of those few people who could actually stand up and say I fought for them. Since I've gotten out of basic training I've volunteered a few times to deploy all met with rejection, so when I volunteered this last time I simply figured it would be another disappointment. Suddenly I found myself accepted along with a few of my friends heading to the middle east in a matter of days, not weeks. Although I can't really give any specific location's or timeframes that I will be there I can say that upon my return I will have a better sense of what the true nature of this war is really like. My brother is also in the fight right now, somewhere in Afghanistan and I hope him the best and that he comes home safe especially with the resurgence of the Taliban in that struggling country.

In the past week I've gotten shot after shot and filled out papers like you wouldn't believe some of which were simply revisions and updates and some extremely terrifying such as a will. It's hard to imagine being 24 (Had a birthday February 27th) and filling out your last will and testament perhaps. The mental anguish that goes into a person when they know they will in fact be leaving and may never look upon their home again is something I can't describe and something I couldn't possibly put into words. As a soldier though, we do what we must and we drive on, so that others can debate and argue over this nation's point of view. We the soldiers simply go and fight, not for our politicians or their policies, but for ourselves and for our families and for this nation's freedom. It is that freedom that we put ourselves on the line for, not for some ridiculous notion or some pat on the back of a politician who has never seen the face of war and sits comfortably behind his desk with his millions wasting time arguing ideologies with one another. While I didn't want this to get extremely political, I do find myself thinking of people such as the ACLU who are suppossed to protect our liberties here on the homefront, but instead impude on my right's daily by making our country tear down our history piece by piece. On the steps of each courthouse across America monuments that have stood for centuries continue to be dragged away while the ACLU preaches about freedom of religion, but to me freedom of religion also means the freedom to express our religious history which is undoubtedly Christian. Our founders believed in the same Christ that many of us believe in and they erected these monuments not just to religion but to history and now the ACLU say's because someone of a different faith might have to pass by this counrthouse it is wholly wrong.

Maybe that isn't the freedom I am fighting for at all. When I strap on the many pounds of equiptment I must carry and prepare to gear up to go fight for this nation, I do fight for all people including the minorities, but at the same time I fight so that I can continue to live in an America which holds its history just as high as its freedom. I fight so I can one day have children and those children can look upon the face of American and know exactly what their father fought for.