I’m actually really enjoying having the option to play all these indie games but I’m starting to pine for something that will really benchmark my new system. That DiRT 2 demo running quite smoothly (1680×1050 Ultra settings DX11 = 34 FPS) scratched some of that itch but I’m still pining for something long term. Maybe the next Steam sale will throw up some goodies for me to download, something else that I’m really enjoying.

This whole experience has made me realise how much I miss PC gaming. Messing around with a ton of settings I’ll never really understand before playing a game, messing around with patching and reading release details. Some things that are just quintessentially related to PC gaming.

In my two year absence I used to moan about all that, it turns out I missed all that faffing around more than I thought.

I recently purchased the Indie Love Bundle – which the more I think about, the more it feels like stealing – that included Macharinarium, Osmos, And Yet It Moves, Auditorium, Aztaka and Eufloria. The latter two didn’t have Mac versions, but as regular followers will know I’ve recently built a PC.

I haven’t touched Aztaka, I plan to but I haven’t yet, because I’ve spent all my time in Eufloria. If you have a spare second check out their website and eventually buy this weird RTS. Unfortuntely it’s priced at £15 everywhere I can find it, which is quite steep, but if you like your RTS’ to be different then you should at least give the demo ago. I’m still debating whether I should review the game, as it did come out 5 months ago so it wouldn’t exactly be timely.

I probably won’t because, well it came out 5 months ago, but you should support indie games and play Eufloria. Its unique brand of methodical and slow building across planets before engaging in epic fights is more than worth the money I paid for it.

It really does feel like stealing…

Every month or so a release for Rock Band sparks up my interested. Be it a band I like or one that other people might like, I always debate whether I should pony up and buy a few more tracks. The truth is that I always decide against it because this whole weekly download business isn’t working.

I’d be one of the first ones to bemoan the annual releases after EA promising that Rock Band was a platform not a franchise, but I’d also never buy those extra tracks. Obviously during the beginning I downloaded anything I was vaguely aware of but something has happened, either my interest has waned or buzz surrounding the game has waned.

This week The Futureheads – one of the few I’ve seen live – are putting out two tracks. I still know I won’t buy them because Rock Band has lost its appeal. We all knew it wasn’t going to last for ever but it’s definitely petered out quicker than I thought.

I guess the real question is, does anyone care about Rock Band in 2010?

You might have noticed that the last few posts have been about a PC I’ve speced out and bought. Well today, within 3 minutes of each other, my two orders arrived from different couriers and soon I was knee deep in screwdrivers and computer components.

The build didn’t go without a hitch but it never does. Although for what was my first PC build from scratch, I thought I did alright. It would have been flawless if it wasn’t for the flimsiest CPU cooler that snapped and probably won’t support itself if I put the PC up on the side. Otherwise the build went smoothly.

I guess I had some problems while installing Windows 7 because of the default BIOS settings. Windows 7 was looking for a floppy disk drive and instead of telling me it was having problems, it just kept looking for it while showing me nothing. Not a please wait message, not a loading bar, nothing. Google fixes all though.

The entire thing was worth it when I started to play Colin McRae Rally 2.0 on the highest settings. Yes, I know but the only PC games I actually own now are from my retro PC gaming fad of 2007 because at the time that’s all my PC could handle.

Naturally I downloaded Trackmania soon after along with my Steam version of Audiosurf – the only game I own on Steam, something that I look to remedy pretty soon – and ran them at the highest settings. Surprisingly I haven’t done much tweaking and they run at a smooth 30 and 40 frames per second, respectively.

I’m waiting until I can get some serious gaming on though, I’ll get downloading some demos tomorrow. For now, sleep.

For all the six cores, or whatever it has, and for all the powerful graphics chips the Playstation 3 still couldn’t figure out that this year isn’t a leap year. It just makes me laugh that something ridiculously complex, fails worldwide because of something so basic.

For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, today nearly every Playstation 3 woke up and presumed that today would be the 29th of February (In case you were wondering, it isn’t). The firmware knew better but got confused when the internal clock said it was the 29th and rather than just resetting the clock, the system failed meaning people can’t connect to Playstation Network, access downloaded content or even play games.

It’s happening to every Playstation 3, at least the original ones anyway, and nobody knows what will happen tomorrow when the system clock will be showing a legitimate time. We’ve got 30 minutes before we find out…