EA Access – Need For Speed PC Preview

Need for Speed is currently loading, I’m going to give the first 10 hours a shot and see if it’s worth it. I appreciate they allowed it to scale to 4k and supported wheel hardware (assuming force feedback) but really don’t think it’s going to be anything earth shattering. They often go far too arcade. I don’t wish to play Ridge Racer. I want good old Road & Track: The Need for Speed Video is a success! New drivers did the trick. 1080p/60 ** NVidia Driver 364.51+ is a MUST for this game ** [update 3/11/2016 10:46] Attempting 4k resolution……

Rise of the Tomb Raider et al

Ok, so QTE aside (it’s minimal) they really stepped up the tech.  It doesn’t quite look as smooth as it could, snow vs Assassins Creed III, as an example, but there were multiple times I was in awe.  It played less like an interactive movie, and more like a book I couldn’t put down.  It was all I could do to stop after the obligatory flash back sequence.  I can only hope it’s at least as long as the first one.  I purposely read very little about games now a days. Prior to that it was 3D Mark, a brief…

Elder Scrolls Online in 2k

I recently pulled down some new settings in NVidia “Experience” it’s hokey but it’s easy and gives me an idea of what games should run at. It hasn’t not been MAX yet, but there will come a day, I’m sure. I am still running at 1920 x 1080 at least, though @ 120hz. I let go of my 2560 x 1600 for a smoother frame rate, that was limited to 60hz. So I came upon these settings today and had to try it out: Check out the comparison shots after the jump…

The other side of Elder Scrolls Online

Horses and catapults and castles. It’s always been my dream since I was little. I had Legos to build the castles and countless battles on their walls. Entire stories would unfold on that coffee table. It is only now why I realize it couldn’t just stay set up there all the time. I have enjoyed the knights and castles games of previous yore, experienced the endless grind of WoW and played anything that smelled of questing. Oblivion won me over with it’s expanse, it’s lore. The story is told nowhere else other than though the game, many games, which all…

Emulation Nation

I spent much of today scouring the internet (it wasn’t that hard) for ROMs.  I have NES and SNES on lockdown, I believe I have 99% of the NES and maybe 85% of the SNES.  Choice Genesys, 32X and during my last ROM run a few months prior I even found Dreamcast and PSX.  I have all these systems, but they’re in storage, all nicely tucked away not taking up any actual room.  I’ve been wanting to play some older stuff but they’re so low bit being blown up to modern TV size doesn’t really make it any more visible.…

Review: Battlefield 4

I hit up the servers for a little test run before work today. I was able to hop right in thanks to the beta.  It was mostly the full game this time instead of the mess that was Battlefield 3.  They didn’t even save your settings between patches, let alone from the beta to the full.  My settings were all intact from playing a couple weeks ago.  That was a good time investment for that, let alone getting to know the Shanghai map. Here are some screenshots Good.   Bad.   Chopper texture guy… tsk tsk tsk.  I saw a…

Battlefield 3: Armored Kill Review

I guess I should add something here about close quarters as well I’ll have some screenshots and videos with descriptions and general information about the new packs Had to at least get a place holder up… Ok so it’s been a good week or so of good tank combat and I must say it is a good addition to the game. I play on a particular server with B2K and ARK, it is all flight maps and it is so great to have both packs maps in rotation. I have gotten

Review: Max Payne 3

Whew. That’s a rush. I just got done playing through my first hour of Max Payne 3 and I feel… stimulated, enthralled, and defeated. I had to stop playing though. There is only so many times you can replay the same section after repeatedly accidentally bullet-time-ing off the side of a building. I’ll revisit another night. I’m sad that I didn’t get any good screenshots or video, however. I must say it plays brilliantly – there wasn’t a skip a start, a stutter at max settings. The people are well modeled, move realistically (the trailers made them look a little…

Review: Dirt Showdown

Dirt started as a rally racing game, hence the name. It had a really good model… no turbo, relatively realistic driving physics, and decent graphics. They kept expanding into the other genres, such as Gymkhana, stadium, and others. Dirt 2 was a pretty good success, and Dirt 3 came out relatively quietly – most received their copy as an afterthought when buying a new ATI video card. I thought they’ve been good the whole way, they really didn’t add too much craziness, which is refreshing. Simulation racing is hard to come by, and Shift 2 didn’t do it any favors.…

Review: Call of Juarez: The Cartel

It’s really as bad as you’ve heard. From the very first screen you are alerted to its crappiness. The text itself is circa Mortal Kombat – giant and pixellated. It looks so dated. It really feels like a modern Sega CD – it hardly even looks 3D. I barely got through the first level. I bought it for $5 – shipped from the UK for the amazing price of $2.49 – gotta love Amazon. I figured there must be at least SOME saving grace, story, anything. From what i saw the story tries really hard to be in depth (remember,…

>nVidia PhysX Performance using Batman Arkham Asylum

>PhysX has been added to the PC version of Batman with the v1.1 update. It does not ship with PhysX settings out of the box. Once installed you are provided several options for PhysX – Off, Normal, or High with various card recommendations. The nVidia drivers allow you to change the PhysX settings – turning optimization on or off as well as the ability to choose which card handles the PhysX acceleration. I had thought offloading PhysX from my 2 x 285GTX2G cards working in SLi to the built-in 980a/780a would make things faster: However, after applying the v1.1 w/…

>Fallout 3

>Hummina humina – Fallout 3 is fabulous. It’s everything I wanted it to be. It plays similarly to Oblivion with all the awesomeness of Oblivion & Fallout combined. The combat system is your run of the mill point and shoot… until you activate VATS which stops the action and allows you to choose which body part of which target you want to shoot, with a very RPG % likeliness of hitting each body part. You can shoot the gun out of their hand – or blow the arm off completely – and to accompany these shots is an awesome (VERY…

>GTA IV

>GTA IV (as ususal) looks AMAZING Change the number at the end of the url to see other random pics:http://www.rockstargames.com/IV/screens/GTAIV_53.htmlhttp://www.rockstargames.com/IV/screens/GTAIV_17.htmlhttp://www.rockstargames.com/IV/screens/GTAIV_21.htmlhttp://www.rockstargames.com/IV/screens/GTAIV_45.html