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Arran Ace Yarwood Rants II, this time its personal......

Not to public demand comes this weeks rant from Arran Ace Yarwood. Arran has been flooding my inbox with stuff for page170, and this really is the oddest out of all of them. Arran may become a weekly feature on page170......

Darkly lit room, man sitting in swivel chair at centre stroking cat. The door opens and a shadowy figure dressed in black enters quietly. Without turning the man in the chair says

"We meet again Mr Bond."

The figure replies "You’re not my father!"

Hans Blowfeld turns to face Luke Skywalker. "How did you get in here? Who are you?"

Skywalker lowers sabre, looks at Blowfeld and says "This is the Deathstar, right? I have a meeting with The Emperor and my dad. God damn it, he never has time for us kids: Its always "Sorry Leia this, or not today Luke that…" I dunno, if its not that bloody force, its fighting bloody rebels… Excuse after excuse."

"Well, I’m waiting for my arch nemesis here in my moon-base. My plan is to detonate poisonous canisters over Earth, which will kill only humans, leaving the Earth for those people I consider genetically suitable to ride out the apocalypse here in space…"

"Ohhh… Are you sure this is your space station? My directions were quite clear… Mind you, all these space stations look the same…"

"Yes, you are so right… Especially as I had most of the parts stolen from space shuttles belonging to various nations… Now I only need wait for Mr. Bond to arrive before I can dispose of him in some bizarre yet suitably ironic way."

"Ohhh, Ok, I can see you’re busy, I’ll be going now. How do I get out?"

"Ahhhh… Take the lift." Luke Skywalker enters lift, and the doors close. Blowfeld uses CCTV to watch Luke in the lift: Luke scratches his arse and farts loudly."

"Goodbye Mr. Skywalker."

Blowfeld pushes a button, and the floor of the lift opens, dropping Luke into a pool full of sharks plus a tall man with metal teeth.

"Join the Dark side of the Force..."

Well, I S'pose you wonder what this has to do with digitiser? Answer = Not much.

I will now attempt (And probably fail) to link this to some sort of article...

Ahhh!!! I have it!

I will make a comaparison between four nominal Doom Clones and get flamed by all of their supporters (thereby drawing attention away from the lack of a point to the above section)!!!

Ok, Jedi Knight, Quake2, Duke Nukem 3D and Turok: Dinosaur Hunter.

Well, I must say that Quake2 loses instant points for requiring 460Mb of Hard drive, and an equal amount for being so resource intensive. Beyond that, it has been said that a PhD in computing is required to get it to work in multiplayer mode, and that all the servers Suck...

Result: I hate it!!!

Jedi Knight: Will run on a low spec computer, but to get the most out of it (Hi-res Graphics and sound, etc.) you will require a better computer (Although nowhere near as powerful as a Quake2 Comp...) Until the Zone died on me (@%***£$£@@@ [More abuse] [Even More abuse]) It was simplicity itself to play, and you were always guaranteed of at least one fast game on the go (And you could negotiate with the host to select a map, rather than playing a sucky one on a listen only server.) Requires 180 Mb for complete install.

Result: Hmmm... Nice!

Turok: Dinosaur hunter (PC): Will run on a reasonably low-spec computer (Although demands 3D accelerator.) And uses little hard-drive space (Around 75Mb or less.) Tons o' Guns, pretty, fun, BUT... Main draw back is that it is solo player only... No matter how pretty, solo player = limited life span...

Result: C'mon, We want multi-player

Duke Nukem 3D: Run on a 486, takes less than 40Mb of Hardrive (Although some add-on disks require pentiums), doesn't Require 3D acceleration, not too pretty graphics, VERY funny, lots of lastability, very original (Look at all the inventory items, and the choice of guns.) One of the ONLY Doom clone games to feature "Realistic" landscape (IE: A normal city street.) Super fast multiplayer on Wireplay (Can support tons o' players.)

Result: Still a great game, even though it is ancient.

Quake 1 (Late runner): Runs on an 8Mb Pentium (Wants 16Mb really though,) doesn't take too much hard-drive, but without patches, can be dead boring. My patches bring the total amount of hard-drive used to over 145 Mb (I have more on CD, and will install them once IO get a new hard-drive...) Graphics only slightly better than Duke, and 3D accelerated is VERY buggy... All servers are slow, and ALWAYS playing the WORST maps in the game... Have to Download Client Software (Quake world) to get the game to play on the net with any kind of speed...

Result: Beats me why its so popular....

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