Yes! It is completed.

Posted on 8:50 AM, under , ,

Beautiful end to a beautiful game. I finished "Need for Speed : Most Wanted" last night. For those who don't know what finishing NFS means, NFS has this career mode game play where you have to challenge black list racers by winning qualifying races and milestones. Once you qualify to challenge, you race with the blacklist racer head-to-head. You defeat that guy and then next blacklist racer. There are 15 blacklist racers in all. For complete game story, go to Need for Speed : Most Wanted page at Wikipedia. If you are lazy enough to go there and read everything, here is the story part from there:

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Spoilers
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"In the Career mode storyline, the player is a driver who crosses a bridge into Rockport, looking to build up a reputation by winning races against local street racers, ranked according to a "Blacklist." The player character encounters several racers and beats them all, thanks to his heavily-modified BMW M3 GTR (V8), and eventually runs into a local street racing gang which turns out to be quite unfriendly to new drivers on the scene. The leader of this gang is a young man named Clarence Callahan, also known as "Razor," and he is the #15-ranked street racer on the "Blacklist"—an underground list of the top 15 street racers in Rockport. Razor is also a cheater, and he sabotages the BMW before racing the player, forcing a loss and, in accordance to Blacklist rules, the forfeit of his car. Shortly after, the police arrive as Razor and his gang flee the scene, leading to the player's arrest by Sergeant Cross, one of the most experienced police drivers on the Rockport police force, for street racing.

The player is released because he didn't have a car at the time of his arrest. He is picked up by a mysterious woman named Mia Townsend (Josie Maran), who tells him that Razor has used the player's car to make his way to #1 on the Blacklist, while two of his gang members (Bull and Ronnie) have also taken the Blacklist's two other top spots. With help from Mia, a sympathetic street racer named "Rog," and monetary winnings from his pre-Razor races, the player is able to purchase a new car and slowly work up the Blacklist, with the goal of confronting Razor and reclaiming his BMW. As the game progresses, the player beats each member of the Blacklist in one-on-one races and builds up both cash (which is needed to purchase and upgrade cars) and a sizable reputation. Upon defeating Razor and winning the car back, it is revealed that Mia is actually an undercover police officer who has, with the player character's unwitting help, been working to arrest every member of the Blacklist. Cross dispatches the police in full force in an effort to capture the player (now back behind the wheel of his BMW), but are foiled when Mia develops feelings for the player and shows him an escape route out of the city. The player leaves Rockport for good, and in the end is listed as a fugitive on the nation's most wanted list."
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Spoilers end here.
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I managed to get some screen shots while playing. Hope you will like 'em. Don't miss to click on the images for high resolution versions.

Lamborghini Gallardo. Drove this after Mitsubishi Eclipse (I am seriously thinking of buying eclipse after sometime).

Gallardo jumping within a race

Porsche Carrera. Drove after Gallardo.

I feel Carrera is the best car in Most Wanted. Yes, better than the BMW. :)

Just to begin a race.

Starting a tollbooth race. My favorite race among others like circuit, sprint, drag, lap knockout et'all.

Messing up with cops in a pursuit.

Got busted. Jumped and cops rammed into the car.

After a long pursuit, I evaded to get this screen. If you have played Most Wanted, you know what it means to achieve more than 2.6 million bounty and evade that pursuit.

After defeating 14 blacklists and all qualifying races, this happened just before the final round of races with Razor.

One of the final races.

What do you think the speed will be at this time? :)

Finally, Razor was out in the race but still wanted something. Mia gave him that.

After becoming #1 in blacklist, there is this final pursuit when complete police force is sent after you by Cross. Man, this was difficult. Took me 3 hours and countless tries to complete this. Actually, this can not be completed as all your safe houses and hiding spots are gone. Once you survive for more than 5 mins in this pursuit, Mia leaves a voice mail and tells that only way to evade this pursuit is to leave Rockport city from old bridge. This bridge is broken but the Car can jump and cross the bridge.

Map of the final pursuit. It starts at right bottom where green line starts and ends at top left where red line ends (and thats the old-bridge). Got this from some forum. People say that red boxed area is good to spend time in until Mia leaves the voice mail as in this area cops are not that aggressive. I never went there. Handling aggressive cops is fun. At times it crosses limits when the chopper comes and hits the car if you are running on highway.

Once you jump the old bridge, cops are left stunned.

Best scene of the game. After crossing the bridge, cops couldn't stop and falls into the broken bridge.


I have uploaded the completed game alias file here. Another one when I was blacklist #2 is here. Take this if you just want to enjoy the extreme of the game and that final pursuit.

What next? Already bought and installed Need for Speed : Carbon. And yes, there are other games too (AOE and Company of Heroes) which need some time. :)

Enjoy!

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All your HDD needs!

Posted on 11:21 PM, under ,

As I said earlier (in last post), HDD spinning speed is one of the most important factors to increase PC throughput. But I have experienced that spinning speed is not the only factor when it comes to HDD. I guess there are three most important tasks related to HDD:

1. Preparing the HDD with appropriate partitions. This can be done with windows. But there is one thing which windows cannot do. It cannot resize the partitions with data persistence. So, if you have to resize or split a partition without losing data, you need a specialized app.

2. Backing up the HDD for an unwanted situation when something got messed up and now you have to re-install OS. Believe me on this that the situation will come even if you are playing extra safe because those spy wares and Trojans are one step ahead. By backing up your HDD, you can be back with stable PC within minutes after disaster. I remember those days when every now and then I used to spend nights in re-configuring windows. :(

3. Keeping the HDD de-fragmented. I know people don’t give it a shit but I have seen the results of keeping HDD de-fragmented. The inbuilt de-fragmenting tool in windows sucks and it sucks big time. It’s no different story even in Vista.

So, what are the available options? Well, let’s keep it to the solution instead of comparing products here. Lately, I have being using three applications for each of the tasks mentioned.

1. When it comes to HDD partitioning, Partition Magic is the first thing which comes in mind as it is being used vastly. But I have been using another better app than this, named Acronis Disk Director Suite. The UI is more sophisticated and this allows you to split even the system (read OS) partition.


2. When it comes to HDD backup and imaging, Ghost is the first thing which comes in mind. Here again, Acronis has a way better software than ghost named Acronis True Image. This works seamlessly. Click here if you want see the comparison of these two posted by someone used Ghost extensively.

Both of these applications can either be used from within the Windows, or used as standalone tool without any operating system. The standalone tools are built on top of a compact Linux kernel and provides comprehensive window based UI.

3. And finally, when it comes to HDD de-fragmenting, first and only thing which comes in mind is Diskeeper. This application is amazing. It keeps your HDD healthy by scheduled and background de-fragmentation. So you don't have to remember and run the good for nothing defragmenting tool manually. Don't forget to read the myths about fragmentation on Diskeeper site if you go there.


My experience with all three is excellent. I will highly recommend these. Go grab these super star HDD apps. All of them are $50 each but Newegg will give around 40-50% cheap. Heck, go to torrent sites if you don’t want to pay. Though Acronis apps are as per your needs, Diskeeper is a must have. Your HDD will thank you every time Diskeeper will arrange bits on that platter surface.

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So... the title should give you some idea about what are you going to read. I have been thinking for setting up gaming environment at the apartment for quite some time now. And guess what, this project is accomplished successfully. :)

I'll give you details (configuration + $$$) which you can use if you are going to setup the same environment. Let's start with laptop.

I had this feeling that laptop won't give performance for gaming as I see people are crazy about gaming consoles. But for me it was not only gaming, you know what am talking about here. :) And now I feel so relaxed about this dilema after buying this laptop. As far as the consoles are concerned, believe me when I am saying that you can buy 10 X-Box colsoles, yes you read is correct it's ten, in cost of the setup I have got. I'll come to this later. :)

OK, the configuration for laptop is:
Intel® Core™ Duo 2 processor T7600 (2.33GHz/667MHz/4MB L2)
17 inch UltraSharp TrueLife Wide-screen WUXGA 1920x1200
Black LCD Cover (Dell has this special cover which I guess they copied from Alienware)
2GB DDR2 SDRAM 677MHZ,2 DIMM
512MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 7950 GTX
100GB 7200RPM SATA HARD DRIVE
Three year complete care warranty
Rest common stuff like 8X DVD+/-RW Drive, Vista etc.




Click here to see this at Dell's website.

Two most important thing are CPU and GPU. I think choosing best in class gives you results. Another thing you have to consider while buying a laptop is that HDD. All manufactures (especially sony) just mention the capacity and dont say a single word about spinning speed. Whatever CPU and RAM you get, if the HDD is comsuming all the time in returning data, you are not going to get any perfomamce. I pity Sony. They don't have a single model with 7200 RPM.

After playing AOE III and NFS on this beast, what all I have to say is that this thing rocks. I played these games on full settings and it gave awesome results. I mean playing NFS with all effects on 1600x1200 resolution is amazing. For example I took this screen shot. Look at the details in the game. Come on Amit (my ex-roommate), this thing is calling you out loud buddy. :)



Now the price. I configured this on dell's website and price summed upto $4300. OMG. This is huge. Now you know why I said that X-Box number for this. (basic kit for X-Box is $399).

Wait. Dont drop the idea of buying it due to this price. I didn't. I turned to online forums to see if there is anything which can drop the price. And the response was overwheling. I met couple of guys who sell these new PCs way lower than this price. They get some discount which doesn't make sense to discuss here. The fact of the matter is that I got this machine for $2900, delivered. Yes, thats $1400 saving which is gr8 as now a days you can buy a nice lappy for $1000. :)

So, if you ever think of buying this PC and want to save some big bucks, drop me a note and I can redirect you to the right person. :)


Lets see what we have got in accessories. Yes, I have some recommendations for you here too.


Speaker:


Forget Bose (Logitech and Creative are not in competition) and depending your requirement (2.1 or 5.1) bye Klipsch. You can get same performace in 1/3 of the price Bose asks for. I bought Promedia 2.1A GMX model ($140 from amazon, delivered) and you wont believe it but the bass is so strong that it hits every corner in the living room. And it hits hard. We never go beyong 10-15 % bass otherwise neighbours will start crying. And its not just bass, high and lows are so clear that I hear something in the songs I never heard before.


Mouse


I am using Logitech MX Revolution (bought for $85 but now yours for $65 on buy.com) and its turning out to be a gr8 mouse. Click here to see the thread on NBF for this.




One more thing is the Game Controller. Microsoft is releasing a wireless X-Box controller for Windows in december (wired is already there) and I am going to buy that.

Thats all I have to say now. But I will be posting some intersting game shots as I play them. As of now I am playing AOE, NFS and Company of Heroes. So keep an eye on the blog. And as always, post it in the comments if you feel like saying something. You know you do. :)


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