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…
5 minute Grand Theft Auto V highway pileup/explosion. – YouTube
Shamelessly swiped directly from Kotaku. Google Now suggested it, otherwise I’ve given up on the ENTIRE Gawker family. The binary lords help anyone who ventures there through a social media site as you will be barraged by the barragiest of barrages. Anyhow… phenominal GTA V video here – not only does the AI make some really great choices, it’s in first person — can’t do that on console, let alone without reaching the “vehicle limit”. Enjoy! (GIF here – Video after break)
First Look: Crysis 3
I don’t know what this guy is thinking: Crysis 3: The Kotaku Review. Instead, Crysis 3 is a finely tuned luxury automobile that’s not, as it turns out, all that finely tuned. You sit, revving the engine, hoping that weird sound will go away, but it doesn’t. It gets louder. You lower the driver’s-side window; it gets stuck halfway. You pull down the sun-visor; it comes off in your hand. Perplexed, you turn the visor over and examine the underside, wondering if it’s supposed to come off. Maybe this is a feature? You look up, pause, sniff. Sniff again to…
Video: I Miss Bad Company 2! BC2 Gameplay/Commentary
I agree with several of the points he makes in this video. Jungle setting, destructible buildings… those points are primarily level based. The games take place in different environments entirely. You may not be able to take down a whole block in BF3, and there’s not so much fighting going on in jungles right now, and BF3 is all about what’s happening “now”. I would like to see more stationary machine guns, there really is something great about taking down a heli with machine gun fire and it would be strategic since they’re not often worried about the ground fire,…
Mech Games – The Next Generation
The closest mechs came to making a comeback was Steel Battalion. That didn’t seem to help. The controller was huge, and many thought it a titch unnecessary. however, if you’re driving a mech — you’ve got a cockpit ready to go. It was exactly what enthusiasts wanted. It’s been a long time since Mech Warrior was purchased by Microsoft, and even longer since it was popular. The laser designation and light-saber lines merging on your target from either side of the cockpit just never felt that visceral. MechWarrior Online – Death's Knell – YouTube. HAWKEN – Story Teaser – YouTube.…
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…
Back On The Trail
It felt good to get back on the bike today. It wasn’t the first time but it was the first real ride this season, in several seasons, really. Last week some time I had hooked up the bike trailer for the kid and we drove around a bit but we stuck to the pavement (for the most part) and apparently it was still “real bumpy”. So today I did an honest to goodness trek through the woods. Eased into the water drinking (I tend to get carried away and go too much / too cold too soon) regulated that well…
EA Finds Yet Another Way to Squeeze More Money (BF3)
So it did not seem feasab.e that EA would get me to go “Premium”. As much as I love the series, even this game in particular, my hatred for EA overrules all. I wish someone else could own it, but who knows what a non superstar budget would do to the series. In any case, here is the deal with Premium: You pay up front to get a special asterisk on your name online “exclusive” dog tags and some extras assignments. They were introduced with Back to Karkland and I really enjoyed the extra challenge of trying to hit the…
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.…
Sum Sum Summa Time
It is days like this that remind me that summer is just as much a gaming season as winter. I avoid the polarization and increase my gaming repertoire. There are several new titles as of late, and I have played a few of them. Here are my general impressions: Diablo III – Yes, you’ve heard it bandied about. It’s set the record and beyond. If you don’t have it, a friend does – 3.5 million on the first day and that does NOT include the 1.2 million Blizzard drummed up with their WoW promotion, NOR the millions in the Korean…
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,…
My 3D Aventure in Digitopia
I was accused of trolling for posting what I found while testing a few games with 3D Vision. I don’t take umbrage but it reminded me that this is the first time round for some people. The History Before I address the fad aspect of 3D let me say I am no stranger. It has come a long way since the geForce 3 I had about 10 years ago. It worked, and I guess it never went away, even the test screen for the glasses is the same today as it used to be with a couple extra dynamic lights…
The Viking Kittens Return!
Ok, so maybe they were only just sleeping but here they are: This is an oldie. I remember this being one of the first “viral” media pieces out there. Before shockwave/flash there wasn’t much for embedable media. There was a picture here or there, but high density media was avoided to prevent isolating users with slower computers. Flash changed that and allowed everyone to see the same thing at the same time (upon visiting the site). In any case I had sucked this down a while back and recently found it again while cleaning up the FTP. I hope you enjoy…
I found this from Feb 2008
It was topical at the time, apparently I wrote it up into a txt file and then just uploaded to my server. I recently found it. —————————————- [Feb 2008] —————————————- Everything I’ve looked up on the internet says there is no meaning to Clutch’s song 10001110101. Even the singer says it means nothing in an interview, that some people are disappointed – like they’re looking for some secret code or something. In any case I think it’s a secret plug because of what I found. I was curious because right after he says 10001110101 is “periodic table”. That got me…
EA… Realy?!!
I signed on today for some battlefield 3 and went to check out the patch notes and noticed something else… “shortcuts” yes, for only $6.95 you too can have a whole set of unlocks that others spent hours and hours. The whole point is you would carefully choose what you tried to unlock or try to hone several similar skills to align your goals and unlock as much as you could at once. It is like giving rookies keys to the cruiser.
Review: Jurassic Park (2011)
Wow, it’s pretty impressive how lame they were able to make this game. If they made it a traditional first person puzzle / battle game that would have been ideal… but they didn’t. Everything is WASD on PC and I’m sure ABYX on XBOX. They turned a promising concept into a lame press the button at the right time, twitchy, too slow? die” lump of blech. I’m very disappointed in this title. I see a ton of blocky translucent vegitation, medium detail character models – blocky with giant eyes. The dinosaurs look good, until they move… which apparently the running…
Video: Dubstep Violin- Lindsey Stirling- Crystallize – YouTube
Dubstep Violin- Lindsey Stirling- Crystallize – YouTube.
Why I Will Never Play Mass Effect 3
I most likely won’t play, and certainly won’t buy Mass Effect 3. It’s not that I don’t want to, I really do. I just do not have what it takes to play the game. I have failed countless times at the original. I just recently went back to it after a push by my friend who is a big fan of the series. I resumed my last game from January 2011, my first save game date? November 2008. I don’t think there’s any danger of spoilers so here goes: I’m a Spectre, Captain of the Normandy – went right to…
Grand Theft Auto 4 mods – ICEnhancer+
So ICEnhancer 2.0 was recently released, and to celebrate here is everything you need to get started modding Grand Theft Auto to look better then god ever intended. Behold the power of Grayskull: Patches: You’ll need 1.0.4.0 or 1.0.7.0 to apply these properly. 1.0.4.0 is advised as it’s most compatible. Install the original version, then you only need this one to get to 1.0.4.0. Graphics, Textures, and Lighting: ICEnhancer 2.0 Brightness and contrast most gamers prefer ICEnhancer 2.0N Natural Lighting (coming soon) Add Ons: Traffic Load V3 (ASI) – Sick of seeing the same old cars all over the place?…
Review: FlatOut3 Chaos and Destruction… of a Francise
Video: Video has Bloom turned off, motion blur turned off First impression: ugh. I am shaking my head in disappointment. I would have put the first and second FlatOut as two of my favorite games. I’m a huge racing fan, and a bigger car crashing fan. This game really was the best of both worlds. However number 3 is Jack’s utter lack of surprise. They’ve taken well made race tracks, nicely finished cars and damage models, impressive AI and boiled it down to an impossible arcade fiery mess. Not to say it’s difficult, it’s just bad; a blurry, cluttered mess. Monster trucks,…
Video: Portal 2 Opening
Cleaning out my video directory to free some space. Here’s the beginning to Portal 2 – pretty amusing even if you’re not familiar.
Review: Mafia II
Screenshots: Video: I had originally played this on Onlive, I gave it the 30 minute trial. I don’t exactly remember it starting how it did. I seemed to be going through many more story points then before, but I bet I skipped them in the interest of time the first time around. I was really pleasantly surprised. I got this game after all the holiday game download sale hooplah. I had seen it on Steam, Onlive, Amazon – all had it on major sale, but saw them come and go. However, upon checking up on it on Amazon, the price…
Video: Games of 2011
A great summary of the games this past year: Get More: GameTrailers.com, Game of the Year Awards 2011 – Game of the Year, PC Games, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Review: Driver San Francisco
Ok, I loved the original driver. It was an entirely new genre at the time. Sure you had a driving around car game, but once GTA III hit anything where you drove and crashed was “just another GTA”. They’ve always been one to spin a story but this latest one is entirely out of the box. It was not what I expected at all. Sure, plainclothes policeman in a muscle car, but there’s a big twist to this one. After a crash attempting to apprehend an escaped convict you’re jumping from body to body. Think Quantum leap meets Messiah (if…