Apex's blog

This post is going to be done in two parts.  Those of you socialist liberals who can't stand me ranting about guns can read just the first half, while the freedom loving patriots can take in the full value of this rant.

I recently got to play Battlefield: Bad Company 2.  In many ways it's an amazing game; the visuals are outstanding, the sound design is solid, the voice acting is excellent, and the destruction system is also very satisfying despite seeming much more scripted than some other engines.  However, despite these steps forward it seems that we're still living in a world of perpetual console ports, and even developers that promise the moon only give you a meteorite.Read more

Thanks to local stores breaking the street date of ME2 by several days, I've put about 20 hours into the sequel already.  It's a welcome reprieve from the shit I'm dealing with in the real world, and does a great many things better than its predecessor.  I feel that a lot of the RPG-centric folks will dislike it to a degree because it does lean hard on the side of shooters, doing away with the traditional inventory and being able to individually outfit crew members with armor or upgrades.Read more

The first couple minutes are just amazing.  And then he spawns into the level in a nanosuit and ruins it.

As usual, I never see these things when they're new.  Anyway, this fan-made Meet the Pyro video is extremely well done, and made in the freeware modeling suite Blender which I could never make more than a shaded box with.

Check it out here.

Valve finally released the controversial anti-idler update people have been buzzing with rumors about for a few days now.  It does exactly as advertised: removes items acquired through use of the SteamStats idle program from SourceOP, and adds a super-special moral high-horse halo hat for people who never used the idler.  Valve also mentioned two items of interest in their official blog, namely they're working on a system to "craft" dupes into desired items and they've increased the hat drop rate overall.

Of course the Steampowered boards and everwhere else is caught between "FUCK VALVE FOR TAKING MY ITEMS" and "haha faggots shouldn't have used the idler".  I don't particularly care, since the only item I had removed was the flare gun and a couple dupes from the two times I used the idle app.  Thanks to the Equipment Manager, waiting around to find hats is of no concern.Read more

lol.

Oh and if anyone actually knows what causes this I would be very grateful.  I've been hosting servers a long damned time and this is the first issue to really stump me.