There's not many games today that I truly get excited over. I can actually say I was looking forward to downloading, installing and playing F.E.A.R. 2 today.

F.E.A.R. 2 is your typical first-person shooter with a demonic twist. It's not exactly original as far as demonic first-person shooters go, but you can't help but be drawn in by the creepy factor here. This game is dark, to say the least and there is plenty going on to scare you several times over. After an interesting opening cinematic, you're greeted almost instantly by Alma (our demonic stalker-like little girlfriend). You're down on your luck it seems as you start out in the middle of some kind of chaos. From what we're told of the plot and overall story, it seems F.E.A.R was investigating more paranormal activity when Alma decided to go nuclear on everyone. This is where your story picks up.

Controls are a bit backwards, in my opinion. They aren't as bad as the original F.E.A.R.'s default key-mapping, but melee on right-click button and zoom on left-shift? Come now. After fixing the key-mapping issues, I didn't really need to touch much else. I did notice the mouse sensitivity was higher than most FPS games will default to, but that's not a selling point to be worried over. The interface flows much better than the original F.E.A.R. and feels nice and polished and ready for RTM (release to manufacturing). Overall, the HUD is similar to that of the original F.E.A.R., but is improved upon in many aspects. It's good to note that your flashlight is no longer time limited; once you turn it on, you can keep it on (well, that is, if Alma lets you keep it on). Alma likes to play with your flashlight and the lighting all around you, so don't be surprised if your flashlight's only good use at times is for fueling sweet rave parties.

Game play is just as good as the first F.E.A.R. if not better. The control feel smoother and the game just plays out better overall. I was happy to place myself into a mech-warrior type vehicle with both machine guns and rockets. The mech was really fun to use and looked and felt bad-ass. Weapons this time around work well. There's still your standard arsenal of automatic weponry in addition to your shot gun, grenade launcher, sniper rifle, and laser gun. Yes, that's right, a laser gun. You can only carry 4 weapons at a time, plus grenades, but you're able to freely pick and swap guns when the time and need arises. A bit of a tip for the masses: if game gives you the opportunity to take a high-powered weapon, chances are you're going to need it. AI seemed pretty good. The clone army still knows how to use cover and flanking. I played the game on easy, but that's just the wussy-man in me speaking loud and clear. You should be expecting the same level of AI from the previous game and hopefully some moments where the AI takes you by surprise.

The graphics are sensational. The first scene of actual playable game content sets the overall picture of graphic detail and complexity. Textures are top-notch and unlike the original F.E.A.R., things look far less plastic and far more real. This is not a DirectX 10 enabled game. To be honest, you won't even care because you just wet yourself. One thing I keep looking for in games is flashlights that actually throw shadows, but sadly that is not a part of F.E.A.R. 2. If I recall correctly, that type of shadowing requires DirectX 10. A shame, but I digress. You will not be disappointed by the visuals this game has to offer. There's something creepy, cool, sick, twisted, insane, shocking, etc around every corner.

To wrap this up: download the demo now. For you console people, the demo is available for PS3 owners and Gold Subscription XBL players. Silver subscribers should get this demo before the game is released, but there is no set date.

Turn out the lights, turn up the sound, get yourself a box of depends, and get ready for yet another great survival horror FPS.

Laptop gaming. I know that's more common today than it was maybe 3-5 years ago, but laptops have come a long way as far as mobile gaming goes. I bought my first Alienware in 2004. It was a massive 17", 10 pound "mobile desktop replacement", as alienware called it. It was a Pentium 4 processor with HT technology, it had a 6000 series mobile NVidia graphics card, 1 gig of ram, 40 or 50 GB hard drive and 7.1 sound capability. It was a pretty sweet setup outside of the whole 10 pounds thing. The laptop was impressive for that generation of gaming. The laptop out-performed my desktop computer.

Now we have laptops that put desktops to shame and their cost keeps coming down. I paid $2,800 for my first Alienware. I paid $1,600 for my second one and while it doesn't beat my desktop this time around, it's Intel Dual Core can out-calculate my desktop when it comes to things like rendering scenes in Cinema4D and rendering shadows in games.

Overall, it's amazing to see how much progress laptops have made in just a few years. My current Alienware is starting to show its age and I think I might need to do myself a favor and get a new one in the next year or so.

I almost got away free and clear with this server installation. Windows Vista managed to install itself on the wrong partition and you can't just go in and fix it using the Computer Management Admin tool. I had to download a LiveCD partition resizer. It's been painstakingly resizing the partitions for several hours now. Since it's a RAID array, I would have hoped that the LiveCD I'm running would have respected the RAID setup and treated both hard drives as one. It didn't, so I had to make sure both hard drives got partitioned correctly.

I've got my fingers crossed that all will go well. I've never run into a problem resizing partitions in the past, but who knows what will happen in a raid array.

Looks like it's got about 15 minutes to go until the second big resize is done.