What’s Command & Conquer without Kane? Within the Tiberium universe, Kane is Command & Conquer. Having a Tiberium war without Kane is like Red Alert without Tanya, Einstein and the Chronosphere! Oh wait… There probably won’t be Einstein and any Chronosphere in Red Alert 3…

But whatever, Kane is the only C&C icon to be somehow related to every of the series installation (except Generals, but personally, I don’t see Generals as a C&C game) from the very first Red Alert, where Kane was influencing (and eventually assassinating) Stalin from the shadows up to Tiberian Dawn, Tiberian Sun and Firestorm.

And there can only be one Kane… Joseph Kucan.

While Joe Kucan has always been excellent in portraying the prophet of doom, his performance was somewhat… lacking in Tiberium Wars. He probably wasn’t satisfied with it either, and started threatening to send in his legions of Black Hand to storm EA’s HQ unless they do something about it. The result – Kane’s Wrath.

That’s 100% Kane goodness there.

And Kane is good. And he’s pissed.

“Who took my crackerjack box!”

Very pissed.

You can really tell that Joe Kucan is having the time of his life getting into the character. An absolute mad man and evil genius wrapped in one immortal package, Kane is finally letting his emotions fly, which is oh so fun to watch over and over again. In the first mission where Kane finally reappeared from within the tubes seen in CABAL’s core at the end of Firestorm, Kane found that all that was left was himself, and you, LEGION.

As he explained what happened to Slavik (FINALLY!) Kane went into a fit of rage, spit flying out and all. He actually looked scary, especially with half his face looking like a cyborg. Which brings me to my next question, what’s with that cyborg mask anyway. That’s rather significant, since Kane is usually calm and collected. A few missions later, Kane revealed his perfectly undamaged face. My only speculation is that the mask serves to heal whatever wounds that are left after Kane emerged from the tubes. At least, thats what his logs seems to suggest.

“See, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with my gorgeous face.”

Kane’s Wrath can be considered the true sequel for Tiberian Sun: Firestorm as it ties up the loose ends before the third tiberium war even began. Not only that, Kane’s Wrath also wraps up unanswered questions from Tiberium Wars, such as who really attacked Temple Prime in Killian’s guise which ultimately shows her as a traitor to the brotherhood.

But enough of all that and let’s get back to what really matters here. Yes, Kane still lives! And will continue to live for as long as Tiberium remains on Earth, and on Ichor for that matter. The messiah took whatever that CABAL has left behind and finally obtained the truth within the Tacitus. Unfortunately, that truth has yet to be fully revealed with Kane’s Wrath cliffhanger ending. Disappointing, yes, but at the same exciting as it can only mean that we’ll be seeing more of Kane and the Tiberium Universe.

Apparently, Kane had already foreseen CABAL going berserk and prepared a backup. A top secret project that no one knew, which turns out to be LEGION. You, LEGION, is Kane’s newest toy, an AI which would have even Cabal pale in comparison. The only irony here is that LEGION’s core system seems to be that of CABAL, and CABAL still lives on. Now one has to wonder if Kane is still hiding something. He always appears to know more than he is letting on. Much, much more.

“You’ll never get rid of me, nyeh nyeh!”

Perhaps, Kane will once again return with yet another expansion?

I am practically giving PC fanboys a free ticket to come whoop my ass for being a “so-called” console fanboy. Actually I do prefer consoles over PC but in terms gaming only. Back then (or even nowadays) you can still see flame wars between the two counterparts. PC guys will argue saying that you can do a lot of stuff such as downloading porns, illegal softwares, free anime as compared to a console which does nothing but play games or watch DVD. Those kind of arguments might be valid back in the Playstation 2 era but today, you can do a lot of multimedia activity on the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and even the Nintendo Wii. Heck I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft suddenly adds Office into Xbox Live Marketplace.

A good reason to tell your boss that you need Xbox 360 in the office

Anyway the real reason I wrote this post is not to bash PC gamers but merely a satisfaction for my own purposes. You see, a lot of good games came out for the PC recently (Crysis, Call of Duty 4, Unreal Tournament 3, Gears of War) but I can’t play any of them. Although my laptop is pretty powerful in terms of application usage, it really sucks when it comes to gaming. The ATI x1600 barely runs most of todays game at 1024 x 768 @ low detail and I’m the kind of gamer who settles nothing less than medium settings (at least). Some of you may say “gameplay over graphics” (likewise the NDS and Wii), but sad to say I can’t do that when it comes to PC games.

Hmm I can see it in your mind now, I know what you are thinking … You are thinking …

“What kind of an idiot gamer would use a laptop to play games?! DUH!”

Was I close?

To end your curiosity, I chose laptop over desktop was mainly because I wanted to get my work done anywhere especially since I need to move around quite frequently. Can’t possibly carry a desktop no?

Anyway ….

The points I am about to present is base on me, myself and I only. Those factors may include my lifestyle, my habits, my attitude etc. What applies to me doesn’t necessary applies to the general public. So sit tight, grab some popcorn and enjoy my rants.

I Save More Money!
Buying consoles is actually cheaper than buying a PC. Let’s use the Xbox 360 as a comparison. A USD$399 price tag vs USD$900+ price tag for a mid range gaming PC. Of course it will dumb to compare price per se as both are made out of different components (generally the PC will have more), but look at it from a different perspective, in terms of lifespan. A console lifespan is average between 4 to 5 years as compared to a PC which last to an average between 6 months to a year (depending on your hardware). You may be playing a game at max settings today but after 6 months, you will probably need to tone down the settings. I quoted this from my cousin “After you have experience gaming at max settings, it’s pretty hard to settle for anything less”. I find that statement to be true.

Would you settle for anything less?

To be honest it’s pretty costly to keep up with the PC technology. The developing speed is going way too fast and we see new hardwares coming out in every few months. Your PC will be outdated even before you can even say “I need a new PC!“. Alright that may seem a bit too dramatic but reality, thats the problem faced by midrange PC gamers (like myself before). Any game that comes out after 6 months from your date of purchase will start giving your PC a hard time. You will start to wonder “Why I can’t I set ‘High’ for this setting” or “Why this game lags??”. Thus thats why I feel spending $399 that last for 4 to 5 years is hell lot better than spending $900 on a PC that only last for 6 months, no?

I don’t feel screwed!
One of the best things about console is that everyone shares the same ups and downs. If a game looks good and performs well, it will be the same for everyone else and vice versa. For PC, graphic quality and performance differs from one another base on their hardware. The difference could be as bad as comparing the graphics between Playstation 3 and Playstation 2 (sometimes Playstation 1).

Just imagine if a ‘new’ Resident Evil came to the PC
Picture A would be my comp, Picture B my cousin’s comp

Taking a trip over to my cousin’s place “killed” me off. With his PC, you can run current games at gorgeous mouth watering graphics with great performance. 6 months ago he was using Intel Dual Core with SLI 7900GT. Now he’s running Quad Core with 8800GTS. Talk about major upgrade within a few months. If it was me, I would probably be using an old Nvidia 6800 I bought ‘last century’.

I don’t know about you but I will lose my mood in playing a game after seeing how well it runs on a friend’s hardware. It sounds lame (yea I know) but that’s just my bad nature. I’m not trying to be ‘kiasu’ (scared to lose) but I just want my games to run at a smooth rate too. Most of the time, they ran like crap.

I can still remember the time I went over to Neko’s place back in the year 2000. He just bought a new PC, equipped with 500mhz Intel Pentium III processor and was testing out Command & Conquer Tiberian Sun. I can assure you that you can see a “W-T-F” expression on my face. A harvester, a unit that is suppose to be one of the slowest in the game, was moving like as if Michael Schumacher needed to pee desperately during a F1 race.

Trust me, getting a console solve that problem instantly. Spare yourself the pain and agony you have to suffer (if you are like me).

I get less problems!
There’s nothing worse than getting home with a new game only to find out that you have gotten an unknown error, which was caused by a corrupted directX file and after you that you find out that you had insufficient spaceandyouneedtoclearsomefilesbutthosefilesareimportantandafteryouclear
yougetsomestupidsounderrorfromyoursoundcardandyouendedupreformatingeve
rythingandthenthepchangandbluescreensappearand…………..

Man look at the problems PC gamers have to face! With consoles, no worries! Just pop in the disc and you are good to go. No sound card error crap, no insufficient space problem, no drivers crashing yada yada. The less stress you feel, the healthier you get! That reduces your blood pressure too!

“Oh f*ck …..” – Shin Asuka (Gundam Seed Destiny)

Alright I think I rant enough crap in this post. The bottom line is, I’m just jealous of people who has high end PC Consoles actually has more advantages than PCs. You spend less and suffer less! What more can you ask for huh?

Once again, this ain’t a REAL flame war between PC and consoles. This is just a post from someone who is bored …