The Atari 2600 has some fond memories for me, I spent entire summers in front my TV basking in it's cathode-ray goodness. Rudimentary though the games may have been, it's the imagination and thus creativity that their crude graphics sparked within my pre-pubescent brain. The cover art for those black plastic bricks of awesome promised so much more than the paltry 4k rom could ever deliver. I suppose coming from a background of table-top Dungeons and Dragons probably had much to do with this. Module covers promising so much action and adventure within one still image that you bristled with excitement waiting for your friends to show up so you could play. Video games became an extension of this imagination and that small block on the screen waiting silently for your input became a simple avatar for you to build up within your mind. The blue lines became crevice-encrusted walls, slick with the blood of those who died before you and that simple arrow now a Dragon-slaying +5 Sword of F**k-Ya.

Adventure is probably one of the most remembered games for the 2600 and it had, arguably, some of the most basic graphics available on the system. What brought so many to drink from it's low res, flickering pool is random chance and the unknown. You had no idea what items did what and they were never in the same place. Monsters appeared randomly and didn't care if you hadn't found the sword yet, hardcore experiences by today's standards. Just when you thought you had it figured out, you could bump up the difficulty and add whole new layers over what had come before. The cartridge is ingenious when you break it down, vastly far ahead of it's time and the games available today could learn a lot from it's 4k design.

Having finally got a hold of Dark Souls for the PC, I have been quickly introduced, or re-introduced, to the concept of dying repeatedly and not rage quitting. Something years of video game evolution has tried to eradicate through tutorials, on-screen prompts and general dumbing down of gameplay. Dark Souls spends it's time unabashedly trying to kill you, unfairly if it can, and doesn't give a damn how you feel about it. This by itself is refreshing in this day and age of hand-holdy gaming but what really gets my bun in a twist is the level and graphic design. Everything in this game feels hand-placed, by someone who actually cares and is not just trying to get on to the next level. It feels, natural, real, and most of all it looks like how I imagined Adventure to be in may ways.

Then

...and how I imagined it

Then

...and how I imagined it

Then

...and ya.

Although there have been many games attempting to do just this, Dark Souls (and obviously Demon Souls) seems to be the one that got it right. Just Google some screenshots and over and over you will find scenes that look like they belong in a Monster Manual somewhere - fantasy incarnate. There are many guides available for the game due to the many options and choices that affect it in ways that would be unknown to anyone without one. So many unknowns that make you want to replay the game once you understand them. This is true replayability, not a cheap easy mode item for completing the game but a desire to use your new found knowledge. The feeling of adventure and trepidation as you move forward, or backwards, or via some previously unknown path is palpable and each new monster is ripe with experimentation as you probe it's weaknesses. You are expected to use cheap tactics like kiting, bad AI pathing and spamming arrows from long distances to win, just like the the games of old. It's worth exploring the nooks and crannies because you may find more than just a chest, you may find a whole new path to explore. The love and care that went into this game is visible everywhere, the people involved in it's creation are serious fans of the genre and best of all, understand what makes it great.

This to me is Adventure for the new generation, the game that will live on beyond it's console lifetime and go down as one of the defining titles.

Continue reading

PCWorld has a nice, sedate and condom-wrapped version of ten factors to take into consideration when choosing a new PC. I have read and heard many of these "Helping Hand" stories, from sources that I trust even, and they simply don't give you the reality you need to hear - IT'S NOT CHEAP!

Oh, many sources really want you to believe the opposite, it's healthy for the PC industry. Don't scare away the new users with horror stories of $2000 rigs just to get a good frame rate in Battlefield 3 when they can just run back to their $150 consoles and play it there instead. TUFF! Forums everywhere are littered with reams and reams of hate posts from doorknobs (technical term) who are upset that their $125 netbook won't play Battlefield 3. Idiots (also technical) who complain about the $2 sound codec on their $50 motherboard not playing in 7.1 Hi-Fidelity and sounding like static on their $5 discount speakers. Best of all are the morons (not a religious term) who have never used anti-malware/anti-virus software and spend all night clicking OK to "Give me faster porn" popups. This has to stop, you are lying to these Luddites and their pent up anger is only serving to push game makers away from the PC due to the boatload of f**ktards (RvsB term) bombarding them with self-inflicted problems that they have to at least TRY to solve. You are chumming the waters with these bottom-feeders who are in all likelihood just pirating the game and looking for free tech support, McD's don't pay much you know and weed is expensive.

Maybe I'm painting this all wrong, maybe what we need is a REAL look at these top ten factors. Knowledge is power... to teach a man to fish... and tell you no lies... and other smart sounding proverbs - whatever. Here is MY take on their top ten factors:

1. Budget
Simple, take whatever you were going to spend and double or triple it. Thinking laptop? Don't! They are overpriced and offer no upgradability. Buy a real computer for home and a cheap netbook later for surfing on the go.

2. What Do You Play?
Don't worry about that as tastes change with opportunity and having a rig capable of running more than Facebook games gives you that opportunity.

3. Graphics: Consider Your Display
Actual display, as in screen on which you are looking? Just get a TV, it's big, cheap and you'll get the 1080p resolution that consoles can't play games at. Want crisper and better graphics? A sweet 30" at 2560x1600 for a mere $1300 would be killer if you didn't need a three-way SLI/Crossfire to power it maxed at a good framerate. A nice three monitor solution for a truly immersive experience? Nice, and stupid pricey for the sparse and high-maintenance game support you'll get. How about 3D? Just don't, it's equally demanding, gives terrible framerate in the most ideal of scenarios and is already dead but just doesn't know it yet. If you really want this option, get a passive TV with a built-in 2D to 3D converter - same basic job for the short time you'll use it (think Wii), cheaper and no speed costs. Best to stop into a real computer store where they actually have machines set up for a hands-on look, a quick play around will give you an idea of what to really expect.

Now Video Cards - this is where the bulk of your money will go. One third? Try half or better if you are doing it right. The latest, greatest generation, one-step down from the top tier is where you are aiming at. The roof is always overpriced and generally, you can SLI/Crossfire a step or two below for less money and more horsepower. Triple SLI/Crossfire is a waste unless you are doing that 30", three monitor or 3D setup, it's money best spent elsewhere. You are doing this now to save you money in the long run - see upgrades.

4. CPU and Cooling
Intel, full stop - AMD is cheaper/was better - NO! The AMD chipsets are janky and just too far behind to catch up - they own the budget arena for a reason. Again, latest and greatest generation but scale to your cash. Six cores? Don't bother unless you plan on doing some serious computing, like rendering (not converting) video. Gaming is barely taking advantage of four cores thanks to the console world and chances are you will upgrade long before that changes.

Never use stock cooling, period. A decent cooler with a large and quiet fan is a pittance and can save you from frying your machine when you don't game inside a refrigerator.

5. Memory
Max it out using your boards top speed/next to top speed rating, it's cheap and you will use it even when not gaming.

6. Storage
Thinking solid state? Think again! SSDs are way overpriced and WILL fail - it's a fact - and you'll get no warning before it happens. With all the compromises and adjustments you have to go through just to make good use of them, it's a waste. Two 2TB drives are cheap as chips and using RAID technology costs zero bucks, 10 seconds versus 30 seconds is not that big of a deal.

7. Power
If it's not branded by a company that anyone would recognize as a computer power supply maker, just don't. The gentleman/woman behind the counter at the computer store with the full tilt setups for you to try will know what you need.

8. Motherboard and Cases
Motherboard - latest generation of non-conservative chipsets is what you want. Intel's I5 came out after Core I7 but was actually a cheaper version of the I7 with some new tricks to make it suck less. This takes a little research to check into but hardcore hardware sites can give you the information you need. Do not be fooled into the whole "hard-core, best overclocking gamers motherboard" path, you want rock steady stability. I don't care what they tell you about performance vs cost, it's just not worth the price. Frying or at the very least shortening the life of your equipment for a lousy 5-10fps is ridiculous. Also many games are overclock sensitive and will crash or not run at all when enabled. Buying new tech gives you the luxury of not having to do that as everything runs great at stock speeds.

Cases - fans. Fans, fans, fans. If you are going water cooled, and the maintenance is not worth it unless you are dedicated, you need something that will hold all your cooling gear. Again, your friendly neighbourhood shop guy/gal will have the answers. If not, then you need fans. Not one, not two, several and in various areas for best results. It will get stinking hot in your case and parts will slowly fry themselves if not cooled properly. This means you will have to dust your case regularly, with air, thoroughly and preferably outside. Twenty minutes powered-off cool down before cleaning, twenty minutes waiting for parts to return to room temperature before powering on. Don't be lazy and miss the filters or the heatsinks, it's important for the gobs of money you've spent. Space inside is important and proper cabling is a must, don't get little Jimmy down the street to build your pricey system to save you a few bucks, get someone (read: a professional) who knows how to do it for you.

9. Input and Control
Don't waste money on "gaming" peripherals. Get what is comfortable for you, those gaming mice and keyboards come at a speed and resource cost of sometimes a dozen of background processes running and examining everything for a measurement to display on a tiny screen that you will look at for a week and never use again. High DPI mice are nice if you want to go through the pains of setting them up properly, but I'll take comfort over extra options any day.

10. Audio and Communications
Onboard audio is crap, period. Don't buy into any of the tales you will hear about it, if you are gaming - it's crap. You want a dedicated gaming audio card, and if you are not spending over $100 on it then it too will leave you wanting. Audiophile cards and gaming cards are not the same thing, if the first recognizable bullet point is about Blu-Ray playback or music recording you are likely in the wrong area. $50-$70 cards are usually targeted at movie boxes with Optical 7.1 output and dedicated hardware decoders for non-audiophile movie and music playback. They are usually better than onboard for gaming, but for slightly more you can have much better sound. Do not waste this fantastic audio on headphones or crappy $10 speakers, treat it like your surround sound movie experience and buy accordingly.

Voice communication - you want a headset with a dedicated USB audio chip so it's separated from your audio card. Yes, that fancy card will handle it just fine but you want to completely separate your voice communication for a number of reasons such as latency. A dedicated voice line will not tax your gaming in any measurable way on today's hardware and your gaming will not interfere with communication no mater how terribly it's ported. Plus you can use external programs like Ventrilo or TeamSpeak without fear of a game taking control of the audio inputs and outputs for it's own means.

Some mentions should be made to your internet connection. I would use a dedicated network card unless your motherboard's Lan has no CPU offload liabilities. You want the best speeds and lowest ping available and a Lan card that tries to offload processes to your CPU is not giving you that. You don't need a Bigfoot Killer NIC but having a card that takes care of all it's own processes is desirable for performance. Wireless is a lost cause in this regard, if you have to go wireless, dedicated hardware is of little benefit.

11. Upgrades
Yes, you will have to upgrade. No there is no final purchase for all time you can make no matter how much you are willing to spend. The key here is time before upgrade. Purchasing the latest and greatest gives you more options for upgrades later: If you had to buy a less powerful CPU, those prices will have come down quite a bit over a year or so and a beefy upgrade will be far less then buying all new hardware. That video card you purchased could go SLI at a fraction of the cost it was when you bought it after less time than that. You can get five years out of a high end purchase and still be running ninety percent of what's available then at full details.

Conclusion
This guide is meant for those who want max settings on their games, at a good framerate and a respectable resolution. Having to reduce the quality of my gaming for the sake of speed is not something I do easily. Call me a graphics w**re, call me elitist but you won't call me compromising. It's those shiny screenshots companies show you that you fall in love with, not the watered-down blurry and sparsely populated facsimile in banded 16bit that those forums complain about.

Telling people that they can get into PC Gaming for cheap is hugely misleading and the only person you are hurting is every PC Gamer in the world. Gamers don't want compromise, they want flash and glitz; realism and fast response. Getting their money now may boost PC sales for this year but in the long run it's just going to bite us in the ass. Game makers will get sick of the extended development time and constant patching to cover low end garbage hardware and simply jump over to the latest console generation in frustration. PC Gaming will once again be dominated by six month to a year wait times for what little will be coming our way.

Continue reading

A Linux gaming blog post that I have since lost track of alerted me to an indie game in development called Dead Cyborg. Being a devout System Shock fanboy, this name immediately piqued my interest and was lead by said blog post to a teaser trailer. What struck me first about the trailer was that it touted itself as a first-person, text-based, Sci-Fi adventure game. To my mind, this said an Infocom adventure set in a System Shock-type universe that moved like a first-person shooter.

That's an innovative concept and I could only assume that, like all interesting concepts, it would be: a) Dumbed down for the masses or b) Never be released. Well, episode one is now available for download but it's c) You misunderstood, that wins.

Dead Cyborg tries hard to be old school with it's keyboard-only driven interface, it's password-based save system and it's text-only narrative, but it's all superlative and comes across as lazy. Firstly the "text-based" is not parser, it simply means no voice acting. Secondly the keyboard-only interface is WASD movement and arrow keys to look with space as interaction, no mouse support whatsoever. Lastly, the password-based save system is simply a new password for each level, there is no carry over from previous levels either narratively or objectively. It all comes across like a quick out in development rather than design choice.

Text-only narrative is fine but good God man, make it interesting. Messages like "I'm a Robot, I'm Happy" is not narrative, atmospheric or even respectful. The text is large and the box to contain it will fit two lines at best, this is an adventure game and as such it needs story. Since there are no cutscenes or voice acting, one and a half lines of text is simply not going to cut it unless you are clever. "I'm a Robot, I'm Happy" is not clever.

Marginally better than, "It's not Important!" I guess.

The game is a pain to play in it's native state, the amount of searching required to advance the story is tedious and requiring that I use the keyboard to do so is inexcusable. Play-testing of any kind involving new players would have brought this to light. I played suffered through my first run of System Shock using only the keyboard but there is no excuse to punish people like that in this day and age. The author even acknowledges this via the FAQ by suggesting using a third-party app to employ a gamepad.

With such fastidious exploration, the level password save mechanic is further a kick in the gratuities requiring that I either write everything down, keep a walkthrough handy or play it again before my short-term memory expires. The amount of objects required for each level is not large, just hard to find and a save option should be simple enough to implement. Refusing to do so is not a nod to old school games as much as a reminder of how much better things are today.

The graphics engine performs pretty decently but will not play properly in full screen. Messing around with the batch file that runs the game will merit you some more graphic options but a config tool should have been present and would be quick to program. The art itself is serviceable but for a game with a name like Dead Cyborg, it's lacking ambiance and atmosphere. It would serve the game better to have had a darker, more serious graphical tone; require a flashlight, robots that don't look like kids toys, something that would pull you into the game like the story doesn't. I realize this is episode one and the next episode looks to improve on this, but that assumes that players will bother.

Outside and open... corridors.

The payment option is generous but obtuse, giving you the option to pay whatever you like and if enough is collected, the next installment will be released. There is a percentage bar indicating how close the amount collected is currently at, but no reference to how much 100% is. If I like the game and pay $10 towards the next installment, will it even be a drop in the bucket?

Based on the level of polish here, I would guess the developer doesn't expect this title to go anywhere and is therefore placing little effort into anything but the core of the project. If this is meant to be a jumping point to bigger and better things, the all-around quality and effort have to be pumped up. Something may be better than nothing but something done haphazard is something better to have not done at all.

Although I sound down on this game I really just want it to be more. Part of my discontent is that I was expecting something with innovation. A first-person text adventure sounded pretty amazing, engaging my imagination on how such a premise would work. This suggestion also coerced a much more interesting story to go with this innovative idea and thus far, Dead Cyborg has done little to appease.

I support indie developers whenever I can, but give me a reason to do so.

Continue reading

Back before the ESRB rating system we had this simple solution called "common sense" in which we looked at what we were buying and decided if it was suitable to our tastes. If the game was called Toon Racing 7 and depicted cartoon rabbits and wolves driving go karts down a track, it was safe to assume little Timmy would enjoy it. Never once did it occur to me that a ratings system was required or should be implemented to even suggest what age group a game was targeted at. Ok, maybe once, when I made my first kill in Manhunt...

I'm not a squeamish individual, fictional blood and guts don't bother me, but something about the visceral brutality in this game made me pause for thought. Offering various levels of violence depending on how long you stalked your opponent was offering a reward via gratuity. I felt "dirty" playing this game, regardless of the fact that my imaginary victims would do the same to me given the chance. While I ultimately came to acclimatize and enjoy gameplay over gruesome, I was left thinking "should this game really be on the market?"

To give some perspective, the savage kills on display were nowhere to be found in media. They were on a whole new level of depravity that we wouldn't see in the mainstream until the first Saw movie and more directly, Hostel. While these things most likely went on in the world's seedy underbelly, the media kept it detail-free and certainly didn't put in on public display. Video game or not, it bothered me that the torture and suffering of another was a carrot, meant to be an enjoyable experience.

So in steps the ESRB system, touting games like Manhunt as a primary motivator and, not surprisingly, finds a foothold for it's placement within entertainment. Manhunt seemingly becomes Rockstar's red-headed stepchild and is quietly placed in the background. The developers of Manhunt 2 are shut down and M2's future is up in the air for a year before being announced for the PSP, PS2 and the Wii.

While I had been hesitant on the original, time and Saw sequels inspired want of a PC version. Surely Rockstar had expanded the concept from Torture Porn to something with substance. Well... no, the submitted version of M2 to the ESRB returned an Adults Only rating. This is death to any game as no retail chain will carry it. To pacify the ratings board after some legal shenanigans, the brutality scenes were given a heavy filter that obscured the violence to mere silhouettes, thus castrating the the whole draw of the game.

A year later a PC version is announced; uncut, uncensored and ultimately, nowhere to be found. Rockstar takes pre-orders but other than a few rumored press giveaways, you will be hard-pressed to find one. Direct2Drive takes up the challenge and releases it digitally to very little fanfare, digital distribution is still a tiny piece of the market and D2D is but a sliver of that. I pass on it and two years later D2D drops M2 after the Gamefly acquisition and it's stance on AO games. Manhunt 2 can no longer be purchased anywhere on PC.

For a brief time, GamersGate had M2 in their catalog for purchase. There and then gone inexplicably and I kicked myself for only adding it to my wishlist. Twenty bucks seemed a little steep and it would come down eventually or at the very least be on sale sometime. An email to GG returned that they apparently did not have the rights securely in place yet so had to remove it until further notice. Time passes and it seems M2 will have to be acquired illegally if I want to play it at all.

Yesterday brought a new GamersGate with it, the site is completely revamped and looking much cleaner and easier to navigate. On page one is none other than Manhunt 2, still rocking it's $20 price tag but it's available and I immediately purchase it for fear of it's sudden departure. I finally own the damned thing, uncensored and as brutal as concepted.

Sure hope it's a good game...

Continue reading

I had beaten this game years ago and did not really walk away with the "wow" factor that is heaped upon this title. Now, in anticipation of the new Deus Ex: Human Revolution coming I decided to travel back and test my current brain plaque level.

It takes some messing about to get it to work (and look a little better) on Win 7 x64 and the Steam forums have a great how-to to help you along. What worked for me was the DxFix (still required), DX10 renderer v24 as v25 has problems, the HDTP texture pack, the New Vision texture pack and the unmentioned Maps Patch that fixes some game-ruining bugs.

Personally, I had thought the much besmirched Invisible War was a superior game. The graphics were far better of course, the level design much more interesting and the debauchery and double-crossing were unsurpassed. Agreeing to kill a defaulter, only to agree to rob the creditor and then killing the defaulter after getting paid for the theft, taking the creditor's money and following it up by turning the him in to the police for a bounty is elaborate to say the least. It also had many great characters that you could miss completely such as meeting the real NG Resonance who, befittingly, is a complete snob. I took great pleasure in shotgun blasting her in the face and air-juggling her corpse with said death machine for a good ten minutes. The joys of an open game world.

Story, story, story - That's all I hear when it comes to DEx. Having beat it once already, I struggled to remember anything beyond "cyberpunk", "dystopian" and chunky buildings. Every time I had a recollection of something great, it turned out to be from Invisible War - How memorable can it be? The answer: It's... good. It follows a plot line that you have seen in a dozen movies; Huge conglomerate is toppled by rebel upstarts utilizing one of the conglomerate's star pupils. The characters are nicely interesting for such an early game, well acted and well scripted for the most part (Tom Hall is a little flat but he created the Dopefish, so he gets a pass). The conversations are mostly one-sided, with you offering little in response but again, it's what's said that makes it good.

The other flag that is waved in DEx's favor is choice. While you are given multiple avenues on how to approach a situation, it really affects very little; kill the terrorist leader, let your partner kill him, kill your partner instead, block the door so no one can kill anybody. In the end, other than a possible appearance by said survivor(s), slight conversation changes and/or maybe a bonus item, it makes no difference to the plot. Try to escape or kill Gunther after the subway mission, you can't - even with cheats. You still continue the same course with the endgame changing based on how you decide to finish. That's not choice, it's the end of the game so the outcome is moot as it won't continue. If you want a real lesson in choice vs consequence, I suggest you try The Witcher 2.

No I am not cutting steaks from your sacred cow, I never said I didn't like the game. In fact, I'm enjoying the hell out of it and will definitely see the credits a second time. What I am saying is that it's not the incredible treasure trove of choice and story that you remember it as. It was great for it's time, absolutely amazing, but holding it up to today's offerings is wishful thinking. Trying to get the perspective DEx3 player to go back and "witness the awesome" that is DEx will win almost no one over, you had to be there the first time.

Continue reading

Now that's what I would have called the collector's edition. I purchased my copy yesterday at a Future Shop because they were offering the only enhanced edition in North America. When I say enhanced, I mean a steelbook cover. A steelbook cover they weren't going to give me because I purchased the PC version instead of the console counterpart. Duke not on the PC? Puh-leese! After some seriously bitter words and a threat to spend my $100 next door at Wal-Mart (purchased Alice: Madness Returns as well), they pulled their collective heads out of their asses and relented.

Now I knew, and blogged about the fact that every critic and reviewer on the planet would slam this game into oblivion simply because no game could possibly measure up to 12 years of hype. Having previously purchased Borderlands and therefore allowed access to the early demo, I felt their derision may be justified. On one hand it played very much like the Duke of 15 years ago and on the other hand, it played very much like the Duke of 15 years ago.

I played and enjoyed the hell out of the original Duke and for the time it was evolutionary to the FPS genre. The DNF demo seemed more like an updated engine containing some missing levels from that 15 year old game. I could point and say that Gearbox has brilliantly blended the levels and spirit that 12 years of development have dumped into a junk drawer, or I could say that it's an updated engine containing some missing levels from a 15 year old game. Then I installed the full version...

I don't ever remember a demo doing more to ruin a game than the DNF demo has. Within the first 30 minutes of gameplay I have laughed out loud more than any game, aside from the brilliant Portal 2, in recent memory. I continue to play and laugh well into the night and decide before I go to bed for the less than four hours of sleep I will be getting, to check on the forums and reviews. Sure enough, everyone is lambasting the game for everything from Poo Achievements to cigarette brands.

First argument from, oh, everyone, is the growingly infamous Turd Burglar achievement. The reviews start with the 'peeing in the urinal' opening to immediately talk about how you have to grab feces from a toilet bowl and throw it at walls. No, o' clueless cudgel of the hopelessly jaded, if not for the trailer showing this very thing, you would have likely never even known it was there. You have to go and look through a wall of toilets to find said fecal matter and press a button to pick it up. Never instructed to, never suggested, you went and looked for it yourself.

Next up is the misogynistic, outdated, testosterone-fueled one liners and should-never-have-been-released, rampant disregard for anything Politically Correct - South Park says hi. I find this humor to be refreshing to the 'friendly' comic trope of today - It's funny because it's not PC, not because I feel it's accurate. Being offended by what is obviously comedy not directed at your sense of humor is your own fault for not finding something else to entertain yourself with. I'm offended by the various 'reality' shows that profit on the misery and injury of real people (not video game characters) and promote apathy towards human suffering, but I don't complain about your ability to watch it.

The game succeeds beautifully at what it started out to do - be a Duke Nukem game. The levels and design can be old school and it may not be the prettiest, graphically speaking, but it's entertaining to that early Schwarzenegger and Evil Dead movie-loving group of 'mens men' that enjoy that certain brand of humor that will obviously be buried one day like they and their outdated DVD library.

Continue reading

Say what you like, Crysis 2 is consolified - straight fact. I'm not saying it was developed on the consoles and ported to the PC, rather I am saying it was developed with the console limitations in mind. Gone are the sprawling landscapes with densely covered grass, plants and trees with realistic physics and in it's place we get a linear, indestructible cityscape with short levels for small memory requirements. Gone also are the huge system requirements that would have pushed the hardware industry forward and we are left with a game with lower requirements than even the original Crysis.

Crytek may have taken the flak it received for the monster it created a little too close to heart and tried to keep it lean this time but taking in the DX11 support that isn't coming and you are left feeling unloved. Even the settings page has been dumbed down completely to simple presets. Granted, you probably won't have to tweak things to death just to get a few more FPS, but having to resort to a 3rd party app to make any advanced adjustments to things like FOV or disabling mouse acceleration is simple neglect.

In some ways C2 is head and shoulders above C1: The missions are focused, the gameplay is tight and the controls have been optimized to be much more useful. In the original Crysis I hardly ever used half of the suits abilities due to the time required to switch and the almost useless duration time. C2 fixes that and adds an upgradability factor to the suit requiring nanites left behind by the alien enemy - You spec the suit to how you want to use it. The levels are well designed and feel real, connected and varied in the context of the game considering it takes place in an environment we pass through every day.

Regardless of requirements or tech level, C2 looks fantastic and plays buttery smooth on the highest settings on my GTX470 SLI rig. I'm simply let down by the high water mark that could have been. Here we are, nine years after DX9 was introduced and the PC's greatest-push-it-till-it-bleeds developer takes a step backwards to play nice with six year old hardware.

Continue reading

Operation Payback is an initiative to fight back on the continued push from the RIAA/MPAA/etc for more copy protection and rights removal on purchased entertainment. The site styles their motivation as Robin Hoods of the electronic frontier and while I agree with some of it's gripes concerning entertainment usage and consumer rights, their actions are not a positive movement.

What the site proposes is an organized, distributed DDoS attack on certain sites in order to protest whatever flippant remark the sites owner may have made towards DRM or even the movement itself. To participate, you install a client which will add your computer to a hive-mind enabled bot-net meant to bring down a target and redirect it's traffic to The Pirate Bay. It is important to point out that the people behind this are not affiliated with TPB and have gone to multiple lengths to say so, the truth is subjective as crossover is obvious.

I agree with the idea that I should have first sale rights to whatever media I purchase, I agree that I shouldn't be forced to submit to a worse customer experience than the pirates do via draconian DRM techniques. I don't agree with the idea that defacing a website will do anything positive for the loosening of DRM measures and I certainly don't agree with their alignment to the "poor" and especially to college education.

The "poor" don't need entertainment, they need better jobs. Entertainment is just a way to escape the unhappiness of everyday life - you know, teach a man to fish... Entertainment is cheap everywhere, libraries have books and video that can be borrowed for free. Used book stores and video shops also carry very cheap entertainment. The idea that the companies OPB is targeting want to destroy this venue is ridiculous, no court will allow any company or faction to destroy the library, and hence the educational system, over some greedy precedent. Video, especially educational video in libraries, would also fall into this category. College students are not going to run the risk of not being able to purchase second-hand books, just second-hand software. Software that college students require are sold at an educational price, are given a student loan based on their needs. Their desire for a gaming laptop instead of Office and CAD is their priority issue, not a DRM issue.

The problem is, the "poor" don't want educational videos, they want junk food mainstream garbage. The students don't want to spend money on needs, they want to spend it on wants. We are a selfish and indulgent species and will take whatever opportunity we can to get what we want, regardless of income. The problem is not a lack of money, it's the greed of wanting more than can be afforded. If OPB want's my vote, remove the greed, pride and childish tantrums from their actions and learn to fight on a field that will make a difference.

Continue reading

In 2007 I went looking to upgrade my rig. I wanted to go with 2 Nvidia 8800GTX's because it was the fastest thing available at the moment and I like to extend upgrade points as long as possible. Due to architecture changes I had to upgrade everything not involving storage; a new motherboard, ram, cpu, case, power supply and an X-Fi for good measure. My initial reason for choosing EVGA was the lifetime warranty and because of that I chose the EVGA 680i SLI motherboard as well for the best compatibility. I never regretted that purchase, never had an issue with the board or the cards and they all still run fine today.

Since then I have always chose EVGA and the only issue I've ever had just happened after purchasing a GTX 470 SC (second one coming soon). The card itself works flawlessly, even faster than the two GTX 280 SC's it replaced in most cases, my problem was with the promotions that EVGA was advertising.

I knew from experience that after registering my card at EVGA within 30 days of purchase, a step that is necessary for the lifetime warranty, that some downloadable goodies would be available from EVGA since they no longer include them in the box. Imagine my surprise when I logged in to find a StarCraft 2 trial code and a Metro 2033 promotion that I would get after I uploaded a scan of my receipt (this last part being a new wrinkle in their policy). After some searching I found a scanner I could use and uploaded the required digital copy for the few days verification process. Days later I find the Metro 2033 promotion info removed and no email consisting of my free key.

I email tech support via their webpage and received a reply the same day from a gentleman by the name of Shane stating that the game codes ran out and the promotion was over. But it was there when I uploaded the receipt I reply, surely something can be done. Shane is kind enough to dig out a Mafia II code and asks if that would be an acceptable alternative? Sure would I say, if I didn't own it already, is there an alternative? Not only did Shane come back with a newly purchased Metro 2033 code for me, but they had purchased a bunch for the other buyers in the same predicament.

They didn't have to appease me, they could have just said promo's over, have fun with the StarCraft 2 trial but they didn't. Sure you could say it's just smart business on their part but I've had dealings with other companies over much larger issues. They wanted my business as well and made absolutely no effort to show it. This is the attention to customers I'd hoped for in 2007 and part of the reason I will choose EVGA in the future.

Continue reading

I managed to finagle access to the beta of a new online game this week. It's not an extensive beta, just a few maps to play on but I tried it out anyway. I was summarily assaulted with all the reasons why I hate multiplayer games. Spawn kills, insta-death from pretty much anywhere on the map, one shot kills for everyone but you, omnipresence that gods would envy and always managing to be on the noob team.

"Maybe you should try sucking less?", is the generic response to this frustration but an honest response would be "Have you tried cheating?". I loathe cheaters, cheating, and the bs posturing that it entails. Everyone is a god in the game and you just suck, get used to it and pad my stats n00b! Well I decided, after some internal turmoil, that since there was no anti-cheat measures within said game that I would walk into the darkness to see how the other side lives.

Finding a cheat wasn't too hard and there are plenty of cheats available; wallhack, aimbots and full-fledged automation that requires you to only move around while it headshots you to the top. Morals got the better of me and I opted for a simple wallhack, the cheat would only show positions of enemies on-screen similar to how it shows where your team is. You would think that this would easily put you to the top of the charts, and I'm sure it would, if it wasn't for the fact that practically everyone else was cheating as well.

Don't start with your "no, I'm just that good speech", I've heard it and you are more than likely cheating as well. You don't realize who is cheating until you can cheat yourself, then the actions of those around you make it clear.

First off, the guy at the top of the charts with 15x your score after cheating, is cheating. Simply math, nobody is that good, period. Next, that guy who is blindly shooting at a wall just hasn't gotten used to how the hack works, you know there is an enemy on the other side because you are cheating as well. Then there is the group of enemies who change direction the moment you do, you take one path and they automagically know which direction you are going. That guy you missed with a sniper rifle from across the map while in cover who one shots you with a pistol on the run? Cheating. That room of allies who manage to avoid everything while you seem to be a bullet magnet? Cheating.

These things all show pretty unanimously in my testing that at least 75% of people on any server were using cheats. Granted this example has no anti-cheat tech built in, but you can find cheats easily if you know where to look, or if you are really unsavory you can pay for a sub to a cheat maker. Yes, they exist and are likely making good money off of the bottom dwellers that couldn't make the first rung in a lan party.

The bottom line is if you feel your skill has suddenly zeroed inexplicably, chances are it hasn't. Grab a cheat and try playing on a non-secured server. You will get zero points for it, but you will quickly be able to spot cheater habbits and can then switch severs when it becomes cheater-centric.

Continue reading

I succumbed to the Modern Warfare 2 craze after making the fatal mistake of playing the last free weekend that had come by. Now, I almost never play multiplayer. Usually the hacks and the no-life amazing players drive me to drink and hate everything about it in my stupor. MW2 has managed to lull that down though with the skill match system they have employed, but it's not exactly what you'd call fair - just fair-er. You'll still find 5 level 70 players against noobs too often, but your second or third random matchup is generally better.

This brought me back to the good old CoD days...

A Ladder-Clan leader and good friend of mine regularly tried to indoctrinate me into the fold. In clan practice I could do ok, but against another clan I got my ass handed to me enough to simply make it not fun to play. I'd play on and off with them for fun, but nothing on the books. My foray into the MW2 universe made me want to go back for nostalgia reasons as well as see if I'd gotten any better in those inaugural Calls of Duty.

Ok, confession time; No I never owned the originals. I played the single player and used various hacks and utilities to get a multiplayer game going. I just couldn't afford it at the time, no BS - Welfare is just not an extra cash income situation. So I made the best out of it and, shortly after, gave up on CoD.

A short while ago the 10th Anniversary Edition of Medal of Honor came out giving me the chance to buy the games I (mostly) didn't own but had played to completion. This in turn brought me back to Call of Duty and the fact that I (mostly) owned that series as well. I've been slowly trying to purchase the games of my yesteryear that I had pirated in some half-assed attempt at redemption. Both for my peace of mind and for the health of the PC industry. The original Call of Duty series, as in the Warchest Edition as it is called, was always on my radar but low enough to spend my $30 elsewhere or wait for a deal. My purchase and playing of MW2 bumped that up suddenly to have to get, period.

You may wonder how CoD fairs in this day and age and the answer is: pretty damn good! Yes, the graphics are sparse, blocky and lack lighting and texture effects in two out of three cases but what still impresses is the gameplay. The action is fast, tense and, for the time, innovative. You can easily see where MW2's spectacular set pieces and action sequences got their start. It almost feels like a mobile or Wii port in this day and age, maintaining the feel you love with the graphics that are available to the platform.

You may also be surprised at the fact that there is still not only multiplayer servers available, but people actually playing on them as well. I went hours in team deathmatch with some skilled but friendly players that not only didn't use cheats, but preferred a more vanilla experience. Such a refreshing change from the racial/sexually explicit voice chats that you can't mute fast enough.

It was a blast and I suggest to anyone owning the originals to check it out for a few hours of relaxed intensity.

Continue reading

Ok maybe I'm late to the table here, but having just purchased this little item I'm still in new toy mode. Coupled with my Logitech G9X, I've rediscovered what a good mouse and keyboard can do for your score and enjoyment. The Merc comes with a dedicated gaming section of "gaming terrain keys" (their term, not mine) that change on the fly depending on what game is running. The utility autoupdates with new profiles, but it seems to have stopped some time ago by what games are supported natively.

Luckily it allows you to program the keys yourself and export if you wish for others to download. This would be fantastic if it weren't for the fact that the community forums are dead and buried and there seems to be no fan-based alternative. Am I the only one who likes this little gem? Sure it has it's growing pains, muscle memory is not easy to reprogram, but it's worth it in my book. A quick play of Stalker Call of Pripyat using a strictly copy-and-pasted profile from Shadows of Chernobyl worked fantastic once I set the game to use the default keys. Everything was handily accessible, like a gamepad with more buttons.

Do I have to create my own section of profiles for this little marvel? Would anyone visit it?

Continue reading

I came across a website with an idea that at first sounds like some geezer trying to relive the 80's. It's not exactly a novel idea, nor is it particularly creative. No offense to Andy and the immense amount of work that went into it's creation, but when you hear about someone mashing together sounds from a dozen arcade game just to relive the feelings of being in one you think - why?

I was there, I can attest to the cacophony of noise that was associated with arcades. That acrid smell of smoke, sweat and occasionally french fries hanging in the air as you watched the pool players waiting for your quarter to be up. Do these hour long mp3 files take you back to those times? Most definitely, all that's missing is the jabbering, swearing and banging on machines when people lost. Yes, I'm there. I can pick out every game in the noise by name, I lived in arcades and if high scores were uploaded to some global master server somewhere my initials would still be on a few top 5's. I could beat Space Ace at the hardest difficulty on one quarter with one life and smile at the wide-eyed onlookers - it was fabulous.

These ambient sounds do the job nicely and it's nice to remember and wish, in a small way, to be able to visit that place again. Don't worry, I'm not about to expunge on how the simpler games of the 80's are superior to the latest video entertainment offerings. I wouldn't trade my Mass Effect 2 experience for an original Dragon's Lair cabinet with overhead monitor on any day of the week, but I do long for something else from that era - the staggering creativity that new-born technology brings.

Back then I believed I could single-handedly release a game on my own written on a 3.5 kb Vic-20, yes that's KILOBYTE, not Gigabyte, not even Megabyte. Nothing was there to tell me I couldn't, no wall of oppressive smash-hit titles that required hundreds of people and years of programming. I could sit down one night and plunk out a hit title by morning, ship it off to a company for consideration and be published next month. It's the dream that many gamers have today right before they realize that not a chance in hell will it happen.

Some defy logic and reasoning and plod ahead anyway, despite the obvious slim-to-none chance for success. We call these patently insane fellows Indie programmers and they persist in trying to instruct the powers that be about these creative ideas that drove the industry so long ago. Few listen so the Indies move to platforms that can support a single programmer as a team, the iPhone and browser-based gaming is where you will find some of the most innovative gameplay that can still turn a buck. The rest simply do it for fun and don't care for your money.

So I thank Andy and his labor of love that will serve as background music for my Mame excursions. I thank him for helping to remind the world, myself included, that creativity is not hindered by the laws of what will sell, what already exists out there, or what some other person thinks is useful.

Continue reading

Over the Steam Holiday Sale Event I bought a game I would not have otherwise - Shattered Horizon. I'd seen video and screen caps of the game and thought, quite frankly, that it wasn't worth a look and overpriced to boot. Yet another MultiPlayer shooter with the standard multiplayer options that have bored everyone for years, what's the point? Zero G and Jetpacks will not make this significantly different than a Zero G mod for any given game in the FPS genre.

That was until I played it.

What this game does is get multiplayer right, as in caters to all of the best ideas from other games. That may seem like a criticism but it isn't, FutureMark has paid close attention to what players like from other shooters and incorporated it with their own twist.

To start off with there is no perk system, everybody has the same abilities, weapons and armor. There is a ranking and achievement system that does not affect your game experience, it's just for bragging rights. Your rank also appears in the team select window, showing you when vets are team-ganging the n00bs. There is AI on the servers part forcing teams to be more equal that seems to extend to some kind of rank calculation as well, but that may be my imagination.

Next we have the anti-camper system where snipers are forced to "ground" themselves to a surface and stop moving in order to steady the rifle in scope mode, making them a stationary target. The ability to snipe while floating or walking exists, it's just near impossible to aim that way. You can ground yourself to nearly any surface, in any direction and your regular fire mode is also more accurate when doing so.

Another addition is your HUD that not only displays team colors, but also brackets enemies in a red box (even behind cover) whenever they are shot or come close enough. The box will fade when hits are avoided for a few seconds or the enemy goes into silent mode. You could call it a wallhack with a conscience.

Grenades are a selected secondary fire mode and consist of Ice (smoke) which hides you (or enemies) from the HUD, MPR (frag) which is self explanatory and EMP which momentarily disables any suit in the explosion but allows gunfire with hindered look movement. The grenades have a "cook" mode, the longer you hold them the farther they fire before detonation. This is Zero G though and getting the timing right takes some practice.

Finally you have the ability to "stealth" yourself by going into silent running mode and turning off your suit. This hides you from enemies (and teammates) HUD but it also disables your own, including voice messages. You can still be seen, there is just no HUD identification, suit color is the only reference. Movement in this mode is also slow, so again the trade-off is balanced.

Some finer points of gameplay feature total roaming. That's not just a bullet-point on a box, having more vectors of escape really adds to the fight. There is also a limited burst thrust for quick dodging that slowly refills, similar in idea to sprinting with an endurance cap. You have a melee attack that is really more insulting than useful to me as you rarely ever get that close. Also there are two points of weakness on every suit: the faceplate of the helmet and the oxygen tank on your back - Both can be targeted for quicker or even instant kills.

Now to address the arguments against:

Many would argue that a perk system is important and extends the life of a game. Yes it does, but only for those who get in on the ground floor and aren't prone to Rage-Quit. There is nothing more daunting and detrimental to new players than knowing that you'll be using the worst weapons, have the worst armor, no abilities and will be nothing but n00b fodder for the next week straight. No one wants a 40-1 death/kill ratio to overcome and so they simple don't buy and/or move on to another game.

Another complaint is SH has only one weapon. Not really, it's actually five weapons with no switching, eliminating the inevitable gun dance of death. The primary firing mode is a machine gun which not only caters to the spray-and-prey n00bs but allows tight bursts for the higher accuracy vets. Using the scope puts the weapon into sniper mode which fires ten shots at once, and the three grenade types account for the final three weapons. All of which are easily accessible, even in the default keyboard layout.

The last complaints are not really gameplay related. Firstly is related to content, as in there isn't much. Well, that's hard to argue at the moment as there are few maps, four to be exact. There is a free "Moonrise" map pack coming which will add another four and if you bought early you could be beta testing them right now. For the rest of us, we hope the content comes soon as, yes, four maps is small and no SDK is forthcoming. The second problem is the DX10 issue. XP users are left behind as well as "casual" PC gamers which would in fact expand the user base, but this is FutureMark after all. You know, the makers of the 3DMark Vantage benchmark tool? It would be remiss not to want your product to push the envelope in those shoes, no?

Shattered Horizon creates a level playing field and every facet has it's checks and balances - Rock, Paper, Scissors. The additions don't give you an advantage, they just make the game more interesting and fair. It's these reasons that make it the best multiplayer design I have seen yet and game designers should take a page from this book.

Steam has generously given three Guest Passes for each purchase (but not with the four pack for some reason) so if you have a friend that purchased it and your rig lives up to the requirements, bug him for one.

Continue reading

Despite the plenty of bad to mediocre reviews of Force Unleashed, I'd have to call it the best of the non-rpg titles under the umbrella. Now on my second play through, I'm having an even better time with it knowing where to put my powerups and having mastered the combat system. It's also fun to go through a level as C-3P0, Darth Maul or one of the more bad-assed looking characters within the game lore.

All is not roses and champaign within the game though, the targeting system needs tweaking, the rendering needs fixing plus the 30fps bar removed, and the boss battles need balancing. Having an end fight with a Jedi was a toss up between reasonable and a brick wall where nothing you did passed through. All of this could be fixed within a patch as it is simple tweaking, but the chances of this happening are far from likely - I don't believe this game is selling well on the PC. Another niggling factor here is the save game setup. Yes, it's a console checkpoint system but the real problem is finishing the game. Once you do, you can't continue game and make another choice to see the alternate ending. You are forced to option select your way to the final mission and work your way through the entire setting again.

The story here is the star and would have been fantastic all Beowulf'd up in a CG movie. A few fictional choices made make for an exciting idea on paper, but within the lore it cheapens the established view. I won't elaborate more for fear of spoiling the story, but rest assured it is still well worth your time investment.

With Force Unleashed II announced, I'm hopeful I will be playing it on the PC again. I really resent putting coins in the coffers of the opposing side of the industry and thusly promoting the demise of my platform of choice.

Continue reading

I have purposely avoided reading or talking about MW2 for a few reasons. One, I didn't want spoilers, and two I wanted to give Infinity Ward a chance to make good on the PC version. Well, the cat is out of the bag.

Without rehashing the hate and anger towards IW over MW2, I will simply say this: It's a way to get Activision to skip MW3 on the PC. IW obviously didn't want to do it as can be attested to by their absolute hate for the PC Gaming community. The PC version was purposely gimped to hurt sales and thus become a clearer non-viable option for Activision (or whatever publisher) in the future. The massive sales that this title will bring funds the throwaway PC version and paves the way for them to stop PC development completely.

Capping player counts, killing dedicated servers, and disallowing any kind of real customization is a strike at the very heart of PC gaming and a sure fire way to cause the controversy IW needs to quell their PC development all together. The reason COD:MW became the juggernaut it is was thanks to the clans, ladders and general hardcore player base that gamed the hell out it and COD1/2 on the PC. Consoles don't allow that kind of customization and standard gameplay types simply ware out interest before long, driving higher the desire to pay for those map packs of course.

Hacks are an unfortunate staple of PC gaming and this is why dedicated servers and player kicking is required. Banning keys/users/IPs is the only way to stop it and that requires the players input, not some 3rd party guesswork. IWNet is meant to address this but as the above link shows, it's obviously just a content pipe for those map packs that IW may or may not be providing for PC users.

Piracy is of course the root of all evil and had I cared to, I could have played MW2 on my 360 a week before release. I wanted it on PC, wanted to pay for it on PC and when a hack to raise player caps, have dedicated servers and make simple changes like FOV arrives, I may purchase it yet. In the meantime, I will stay the course in Dragon Age and Resident Evil 5 where developers don't hate me for owning a PC.

Continue reading

I was very hesitant when I held the collector's edition of Dragon Age in my hands. I have Balder's Gate 1 & 2 plus the addon, Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2 plus all the addons, installed and played every one. Looking down at the screens on the back of that package, coupled with the in-game video's I've seen, I felt this was going to be Neverwinter Nights 3. Taking my Bioware purchases into account I should be ecstatic but I'm not, I have a confession to make: I've only beaten Hordes of the UnderDark.

That's a second life of playtime wasting away on my shelf that I will likely never get around to. Why can't I finish these games, I wonder. High scores abound, they drip with praise by virtually everyone but I just never get to that endgame. I try to think back to the gameplay and it occurs to me; I can't remember a single significant encounter. Fetch quests, assassinate quests, reams of dialog to be squinting at in a twitter sized window - I remember having to do such things, but not a compelling reason why. In fact the only thing I remember is the fantastic banter between characters in the first Balder's Gate coupled with the rich personalities. It could have carried the game through for me if not for all that dull wandering and meaningless questing nonsense.

So I purchase Dragon Age and bring it home. I leave it unopened for days, spending that time watching every trailer, reading and listening to every review, waiting to hear those words "It's Neverwinter Nights 3" so I can return it and buy Borderlands instead.

It doesn't happen.

Exhausting all the media I could find, I read the back of the box for the gazillionth time and realize the bonus DVD is all that remains. I give in, crack the game open and watch the entire DVD. Within the second chapter of the bonus media I'm hooked; Yes it's Neverwinter Nights 3 but with a change that is significant to my plight - I give a damn about what is happening. The characters and quests seem meaningful, the dialog is not cut and dry good or evil, but most importantly; the game doesn't look anywhere near as bad as the videos make it appear. The Neverwinter engine is painful to look at in this day and age, The Witcher not withstanding, and the small blocks of traversable areas that you clicked your way through was abysmal. None of this is found in DA, you can actually WASD and mouse look your way through larger and prettier levels in decent 3rd person style.

Coupled with this is the Bioware Social Network that DA will communicate with and update your character progress for anyone to look at. This is a gimmick that I would normally shun and avoid being the antisocial reprobate that I am, but like Arcade Games of old and those blasted 360 achievements, you really want that high score for other players to see. Screenshots of your progress are automatically uploaded and you can snap your own screens for uploading later to a maximum of 20MB.

Best of all, that banter that I remember so fondly has returned. I've yet to meet any larger than life personalities such as Minsc and his hamster Boo, but then I haven't reached Shale yet. I'm in 4 hours deep, past my origins story, and I'm torn between continuing my quest and starting 5 more characters to see the other origin stories. Dragon Age has grabbed me in a way that I've long forgotten, I spend my day at work wanting to go home get back to the quest.

I just might finish a second Bioware Gothic adventure yet.

Continue reading

GamingBolt has a BlogPost on the once-again death of PC gaming. It's selective hivemind hyperbole like this, sprinkled with single-minded facts, that perpetrate this nonsense. Let's take a closer look at the FUD shall we?

"the PC gaming market has thrived over the past few years, and showing no signs of letting up. However, it has come to the attention of many that the naysayers may finally be right."

Can we pick a side here? If the PC Gaming market is thriving, the naysayers can't be right.

"it is cheaper and easier for them if they focus on the masses; console owners."

The console owners are not the masses. There are more PC's in use around the world than the 3 leading consoles combined. Old, new, schools, offices, government facilities, the list goes on. Companies gravitate toward the consoles for two reasons: fixed hardware and less piracy.

"PC games require mod support, dedicated servers and both off-the-shelf hard copies and downloads."

No, these are pluses in the PC Gaming court. They don't require mod support, they allow mod support - free community created and supported mods. Even games that don't support mods get modded due to the PC Gamer's generally more adept technical skills. Dedicated servers are also a plus; no PC gamer wants strictly vanilla server access, we rent, mod and serve custom games that are too varied for a single entity to encompass. Finally the distribution model, specifically digital distribution, is the future. PC Games (and console games for that matter) will be available less and less in retail boxes - it's cheaper and more secure (a.k.a. less piracy) to distribute through a download service.

"Is anyone else beginning to realise how games are coming out unfinished and buggy as hell these days? It’s almost like there is no point buying a game on the day of release, because there is bound to be some major issue or hardware compatibility error."

Are you kidding me? Console games are patched constantly and it's a closed and fixed hardware platform, how could you overlook a compatibility issue? Also you will find that the issues that PC Game Developers face most is on-board hardware. Crap video card and/or sound card chips that were cheap to include don't do the job that hard core (a.k.a. not casual) games demand. Simply not supporting this garbage and adding a single line "Requires Dedicated Hardware - See Back for Details" on the box would go far to eliminate patching.

"Of course, it’s not all bad. We still have Valve, who have created (and are still creating) some of the best PC games ever. And Blizzard. And BioWare. But how long will they stay as loyal PC developers?"

I'll vote forever. Console games are still developed on a PC and I'll lay good money that these developers don't go home and play around on their consoles. The PC is a breeding ground for budding developers to jump into coding through Modding, Flash, ClickTeam and even RPG Maker. Many will one day make the jump to the commercial scene and what platform do you think will be close to their heart? The same one that thrives in the developers of the above companies.

What this article completely ignores and what will truly place the PC into serious running with even the next generation of consoles is services like OnLive. When the owners of those laptops and outdated desktops can simply log in to a service to play the latest games without having to spend a dime on hardware, the tides will change dramatically - both on the developer and consumer side.

Until that time, I'll give you a very simple measuring stick for the death of PC Gaming: Steam recommends you backup your purchases due to their eminent termination of service.

Continue reading

I had researched this time and time again but couldn't get the answers I was looking for. Switching out my 24" for an LCD TV sounded tempting but I was concerned about image quality. Yes, LCD's look fantastic watching movies in 1080p or playing console games that were designed for such devices, but how would web pages and documents look? Would the text be clear or too crisp, would the colors be uneven? No one could tell me this, I would instead get a routine of how great my movies and games would look, well duh-uh!

Walmart had an LG 42" LF11 for a reasonable sum and right next to it was a Vizio 42" at 120hz for the same price. The image quality on the LG was better but knowing what hz is (refresh rate) and why it's important (more Frames Per Second), the Vizio looked more appealing so I did some research on 120/240hz LCD's.

It's all marketing BS.

That's correct, the LCD's do not display at 120/240hz as one would expect. It is instead a smoothing technology that takes lower frame output such as Movies and interpolates in-between frames to make the video look smoother. Anything not running at 60fps (a.k.a 60hz) will appear smoother but it's not true 120/240hz. This leaves the LG as the winner and I go purchase said TV, running home like a fat kid to the candy store.

Hooking it up was easy enough with a DVI-HDMI cable and Windows 7 detected it as an LG TV, no specific driver could be found on the LG website. On first boot the image was overblown and text was impossible to read clearly, but simply switching profiles solved the problem. One of the things I liked about the LG was the extensive custom settings which allows for a wide color adjustment gamut. I checked TweakTV (again) for a calibration profile, but none was to be found so I settled for the built in optimizer which does a decent job.

So to answer my question for any concerned: Yes, an LCD TV is a viable alternative for a monitor. Not surprisingly, gaming is magnificent and 1080p video manages to look even better - I will have to investigate buying a Blu-Ray drive for my PC. Now if I could only find a desk with 6' of depth between me and the screen...

Continue reading

Ok, that title's a little misleading. I love Mass Effect, it was a fantastic game that really pulled you into the story with it's approach to NPC involvement and dialog design. You could alter (side) stories and even get a crew member killed. Replayability is not something everybody wants from an RPG but ME begs to be played again, even if just to be an asshole to the entire universe.

So how has that ruined RPG's you ask? A new mod for Knights of the Old Republic II was released which prompted me to install the first game so I could finish it and go on to the second game. I wasn't prepared for what awaited me: First the graphics have not aged well but I expected that and can get over it. Next came the stiff animations and then the cardboard backgrounds and sparse accessories. But what killed it for me was the dialog. I was on the Wookie planet (no I won't go lookup the name for nerdcred) heading in to chat up the head furball when it happened. Static text taking up a third of the screen while a low res model grunted in three whole variations that took forever to wait for. Then a list of answers that stated exactly what I would say followed by my character saying exactly what I had just read.

Done.

You may argue that it's an old game, but RPG's released today still do exactly this. Adventure is a part of an RPG which includes discovery, and discovering what my character would say only when he said it makes the otherwise de-immersive system of dialog interesting. I find it arduous to wade through page after page of dialog in RPG's with nothing to look at but a static image and maybe synchronized lip movements when the character is close enough. If it's going to be a long story make it a cutscene with some flair, make me want to watch all this blah-blah-blah. Mass Effect avoided the need by making the dialog both interesting and seemingly plot-altering while giving you only the basic idea of your possible responses.

Maybe I'm just spoiled by all the flair that games now have the space and technology to lavish upon me but I want to be immersed, I don't want something to remind me that I'm playing a game. I'm here to have fun and fall into this story before me, not work to enjoy myself.

Curse you Mass Effect, I will never get to see that mod content now.

Continue reading