Absensual

I'd say my posts have been lacking in, oh, EXISTENCE lately. This is due, of course, to several different phenomena:

--Classes have begun. This leads to an extreme inability to [verb].
--Every time I begin to blog, I end up feeling guilty over typing something that is unrelated to classes.
--A decreased interest in reading (as imposed by some absolutely terrible books in my Humanities 550 course) leads to a decreased interest in writing.
--Team Fortress 2, then Call of Duty 4, then Crysis, then Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst (NERDALERT)
--I kind of forgot I even had one of these. Ron keeps reminding me.
--Sorry, video games. Alison is cooler than you.

Crysis is a terrible game for me. It makes me deeply want to play it, alas, it laughs at my single core. It asks me jokingly what I'm doing with that Doom 3 era piece. It begs alteration of an autoexec.cfg file. And then it finally resolves with a, "Try again when you have a real processor."

But it's a great game.

In the first segment of the game, it is quite possible to do just about anything that a twisted, Metal Gear Solid fanatic can imagine. But MGS never gave me this many options. I've seen the future of first-person shooters in the physics engine of Crysis. Now, I thought shooting trees and watching them splinter and eventually break and fall was cool. But the first time I tossed a frag grenade on the roof of a shack, I was amazed. It caved in, crushing the soldiers inside. (Rest assured that they are evil, evil men, and the ceiling brought nothing short of vicious justice.) I've seen destructible environments. I've seen buildings explode. But I've never seen a tin roof shack cave in.

At that point, I finally realized why one core is not enough.

The final straw, the boiling point, and the realization of the futility in continuing to play Crysis (until I have a better processor) came when I went to one of my favorite sites, Tweak Guides. I created a system.cfg file. I took hours and filled it with command variables. I effectively discovered every way to make this game look like crap. Using the various benchmarking tools, I discovered a terrible thing: I had not actually gained anything in terms of framerate. When I moved the system.cfg file to a different directory and launched the game without it, I found that using the in-game settings, within 1 or 2 FPS, I was getting the same bloody framerate.

FAIL.

But no matter. I will be back, Crysis. And I will crush many a soldier beneath their tin roof shacks. And Jack Thompson will roll over in his grave.

Oh, he's not dead yet? Shame. He had better hurry it up.