Today’s GGF headline has been usurped by the Goonfather because he insisted on announcing his new ultimate gaming machine.

And then, while I was putting the article together, he told me I can’t call it “ultimate” because it’s not, ultimately, ultimate.

Instead, he wants it to be called “The gamer’s choice, for gamers by gamers”. His exact words.

I told him I can’t call it that because it doesn’t say anything. It could mean a game or a peripheral. Or a t-shirt.

He ignored me and walked away from his MSN, presumably for tea break.

DUH.

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Table of Contents

1. The Goonfather’s dream gaming PC
2. Time Wasters by Swordplay
3. Babes at New Era Games Day
4. Velvet Assasin
5. X-Men Origins: Wolverine
6. Xbox Achievement Contest
7. Results of last week’s contest
8. Win a Saitek mini optical wireless mouse!!

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The Goonfather’s dream gaming PC

Just last weekend, the Goonfather put together an affordable dream gaming machine, with the intention of renewing his EverQuest II account and then going to The Poet’s Palace for a raid with max graphics.

After spending just under $3,000 and taking two nights to set everything up nicely, he suddenly felt a little stingy and didn’t want to pay $22 for an EQ2 subscription.

So he ended up playing Civony and Travian, both web browser games, on his almost-ultimate dream gaming machine.

His purchases before unboxing:

The shoping list:

• i7 920 2.66ghz on Asus P6T Deluxe V2
• OCZ 6GB DDR3 1600Mhz Plat
• Palit GTX285 2GB
• 3 X 500GB WD Black Caviar @ Raid 5
• Asus 22X DVD-RW
• Cooler Master Real Power 450watts
• Cooler Master CM690 Casing
• Microsoft Windows Vista64 Home
• Microsoft X6 Sidewinder keyboard
• Razer DeathAdder mouse

The sidewinder keyboard is really, cool, with a red backlight. And it has two detachable sides so you can make it into a compact keyboard for very small tables.

The Goonfather doesn’t have a computer monitor, so he hooks his PC up on our 42″ Full-HD TV.

Which means that when I’m doing my Xbox LIVE duty, he can’t use his computer! Hahaha!

The CPU casing:

Once done with that, he spent the next two nights overclocking and running 3DMARK tests.

For those who understand (I don’t), here are the scores.

Benchmark score based on stock settings:

Click to view details

CPU overclocked to 4.0Ghz:

Click to view details

Benchmark score on 4.0Ghz overclock:

Click to view details

Yeah, very impressive and all.

Next!

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Time Wasters by Swordplay

Swordplay is my pesky li’l bro who spends all his time playing time-wasting games. To make him a little bit more useful, I’m sitting on him and making him recommend one fun and simple web-based game each week.

Today’s recommendation: Hero’s Arms

Apparently, it’s so fun that Swordplay stayed up for two whole nights to complete the game, something I rarely hear him do.

I could only afford two minutes to check this game out, and I think it shows some promise. At the very least, it has a sense of humour.

I suppose you can see for yourself that it’s an RPG, killing monsters, questing, finding treasure, that kind of thing. It looks pretty primitive, but who can claim that primitive games can’t be good?

Why not try it out and tell me if you like it?

You can press Space any time during the game to save and quit, so that should help people who don’t want to be crazy like Swordplay and stay up all night playing.

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Babes at New Era Games Day

I know you people. Photos of babes at a gaming event will interest you a lot more than the games at the actual event itself.

So, here are photos to bring a weekend smile to your face! These photos were taken at the New Era Games Day, a quarterly event to showcase upcoming games in the next few months.

At the end of the games presentation, these cuties helped to conduct a quiz for the attendees to win prizes. Here are individual shots of them!

The reason I only have one solo photo of the New Era girl is because she was asking the question for the grand prize and I wanted to answer it.

I won a set of Saitek 2.1 speakers!

Nobody told us that we had funny lights on our faces. O_o

And I’m not short, okay. I just wasn’t wearing high heels! Haha. And the New Era girl is exceptionally tall, I guess.

By the way, after the quiz, there was a lucky draw for three prizes. I won one of them, can you believe it? In fact, I won the lucky draw prize right after I won my quiz prize. LOL.

My lucky draw prize was a Thrustmaster Rumble Force game pad.

Cooool!

I had to take a cab home, with all this extra weight, especially since I was already carrying “gold bars” in my bag (my netbook, etc).

I used the speakers box as a table for my netbook in the cab. Haha!

Traffic was really slow, so I decided to play some Civony in the cab.

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Velvet Assasin

Velvet Assasin looks kind of cool. If I get it free I’d play it.

Haha. Well, it’s a stealth action game and I’m not really good at such games, so I wouldn’t spend money on something I’m not good at. (Unless I had some kind of reason to go into training.)

Releasing on May 8, 2009 for the Xbox 360 and PC, the game follows the adventures of Violette Summer, a beautiful female spy sent to infiltrate Nazi camps during World War II.

The game’s protagonist is based on an actual WW2 British secret agent by the name of Violette Szabo.

Here’s a trailer!

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X-Men Origins: Wolverine

I’m a huge Wolverine fan!

Or maybe I’m just a Hugh Jackman fan. I really don’t know. Either way, I like Wolverine because of Hugh Jackman and I like Hugh Jackman because of Wolverine. I just can’t quite figure out which came first.

Anyway, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the game, will be released on May 1, 2009 on basically all the platforms there are, including the Nintendo DS. How cool is that?!

See trailer!

It’s so so so so awesome. I want this game. But then, where am I going to find the time to play it?

Maybe I’ll go watch the movie first.

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Xbox Achievement Contest

Just wanted to highlight the fact that I’m running a contest at my Xbox blog. It’s going to end soon, but there’s still time to participate!

You need to play one or more of four games to earn achievement points by the end of Saturday. Be one of the top five scorers to win Microsoft points or movie tickets!

Application is free, so just enter lah. You never know! ;)

This contest is to prepare gamers for the XXZ League, which is starting this weekend. Sign ups are still possible.

Details here.

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Results of last week’s contest

Yoiyoiyoiyoiyoi!

What a lucky boy Yoi is!

Mr Randomiser picked Yoi to win the FIFA Online 2 Kickoff Pack!

Congratulations, Yoi!

Gimme some time and I’ll kick the prize to you. Cross your fingers and hope that my aim is good! Yah?

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Win a Saitek mini optical wireless mouse!!

I received this as a door gift at the New Era Games Day event.

Now I’m giving it away!

To win this, you must buy me dinner!

No, I’m just kidding.

You just need to post a comment, okay? But in your comment, you need to answer the following questions:

1. What gaming platforms do you play? Name all.
2. What are your favourite game genres? Name up to 3.
3. Name one weird thing about you.
4. What annoys you the most?

You won’t be judged on your answers. It’s just for my own amusement. Entries will be randomised to pick a winner, as usual.

Closing date: April 30, 2009, 11:59 pm (Singapore time).

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Whee! It’s dinner time! And I’m going to post this issue without proofreading just this time because I WANT TO EAT! (Proofreading and corrections usually take me upwards of an hour.)

So, I’ll do that later. If I have time.

If you find mistakes in this issue, you may eat them for dinner.

KTHXBYE.