I just realised my previous post was my 500th post. I have blogged so much crap! May this blog live forever!

I experienced my first hiccup with Vista just now when my Hamachi could not enable the [virtual] network adaptor. Did a fresh reinstall and it worked. There wass a slight lag at the menu when I first opened up Generals, although the game itself was alright. Maybe because I used 800x600 low settings.

Tiberian Sun was the first strategy game I played, introduced to me by my primary school friends [wow there was like, six years back!], and I pretty much enjoyed it. Ever since I had been a CnC fan, hence my email address haha.

I still remember back in those days my mother had rather strict controls on my playing computer games, so I would wake up very early on Saturday and Sunday mornings to play, because she would be out at the market for at least an hour hahaha.

Later the Firestorm expansion came out, and got me all excited. Helped my good friend buy a copy at the *ahem* shop opposite my house [At that time the market rate was $8 for one cd, $15 for two, bought together with my friend, saved 50cents each ha]. At that time the game was rather popular among my classmates, so we spent alot of time talking about it.

Early secondary school days another CnC game came out, Red Alert 2. I remembered wondering why the name Westwood Studios was gone and replaced with EA, but I did not really know the story until I came across Wikipedia. Anyway my gaming experience went up to a new level as my classmates and I would meet at LAN shops to play. Usually we played the map Arctic Circle [because it was the only 8-player map?], and even formed alliances or stategies to gang bang those we don't like first lol. We came up with very interesting rules then, like no one is allowed to use France [because its Grand Cannon was too powerful], and also 30-45 minute truces so we could build up our forces.

I did not play the next game, Generals, because I was still using that Pentium 3 450Mhz then. My first encounter with that game was during a LAN session, and I remembered I was one of the first to be killed, because the gameplay was completely changed and differed from the previous CnC games so much so that I don't know how to play at all.

Along the way we also played first person shooters like Counter-Strike and Battlefield. Then all of the sudden the trend shifted to Warcraft and DotA and MMORPGs, which I don't play at all, so I was immediately ostracised.

Wow I digressed too much. Actually all I wanted to say was that the sequel to Tiberian Sun, Command and Conquer: Tiberium Wars has hit our shores. The launch at Lido was apparently overwhelmingly crowded with hardcore fans eagerly wanting to grab the game plus all the free gifts.

What about me? Well initially when I read about this game was in development [that was last year I think, when I surfed Wikipedia during one of the computing lessons :p] I was very excited about it, simply because I liked Tiberian Sun alot. Its a different developer now, but EA promised to keep the game as close to previous CnC games as possible.

Last month a demo for the game was available for download, so I tried it out. However having played that I find the game only quite alright; somehow I just don't like it as much as previous games. I can't exactly place my finger on any particular aspect, but I suspect its the overall feel of the game. It doesn't bring back the fun I had when playing Sun.

The new game is abit too sophiscated, unlike Tiberian Sun or Red Alert 2 where everything was much simpler.

I think again, maybe its because the game is abit too similar to other games.

Then I think again, maybe its because I am older now. Last time I had alot of friends whom I could talk about the game with, like how to complete a particular mission or which unit was better etc. There is no one I can talk with now.

Then I think again, maybe its because I have played too much games.

I may be too quick to pass the judgement, since I have only played the demo and not the actual one.