I wasn’t expecting too much from the latest Elder Scrolls: V Skyrim (Sky-rim) and I was pleasantly surprised. At first I noticed a big degredation in quality… as in half the textures were up to par for the full resolution of 2560×1600 – many were not, most notibly the objects and inner textures. I swear they took some right from oblivion (Elder Scrolls: IV). However, if you put on 8X AA it fixes it. 2X and even 4X was stretching it, and FAXX didn’t seem to do much at all, shadows and transparent textures (fences, brush and greenery) were the…
iCEnhancer 3.5 for GTA
I had installed EFLC 1.0.7.0 on the new system trying to eek the most out of the updated configuration. It all looked great, but after playing a lot of BF3 and watching the GTA V trailer it’s looking dated. I wondered why the quality didn’t look quite like I remembered… then I realized I hadn’t installed iCE! There is even an updated version 3.5 that appears quite recent, potentially spurred by the announcement of GTA V. In any case I was ready to give it a go, installed it over my 1.0.7.0 version but it didn’t like it, it crashed…
The History of Battlefield #FUEA
My trepidation with EA only extends to the most recent versions published by EA – they exited before them, much like EVERY OTHER fabulous game that has since been snatched up. I’m so glad Rockstar managed to push them off. Here is a history of Battlefield – 45 minutes, a documentary of game footage, history, and the evolution of graphics and gameplay. Thank you Gamerspawn. (oh yeah, F u EA #FUEA – I hate that you control my favorite games)
RAGE – First Impressions and Review
First impressions: Setting – Fallout 3 Story – Fallout 3 Jumpsuit – Fallout 3 Enemies – Fallout 3 Hunters – Fallout 3 Mutants – Fallout 3 Textures – Fallout 3 Wasteland – Fallout 3 Vehicles – a plus FPS Mechanics – a plus Control – a plus So just hopping into it briefly I get much the same feeling as I got with Fallout. Everything is a mess, and there are many reused textures. It’s hard to make a post-apocalyptic world. I don’t deny that. However – the mechanics of the shooting was uniquely id. It felt like no other…
Battlefield 3 PC Beta
Here is some great information about the new engine (Frostbite 2) that powers Battlefield 3. Battlefield 3 Blog: Frostbite 2 Engine Presentation It is very impressive in demos. The Beta does not quite realize the quality of the demos, but there is some clipping and collision that needs to be worked out. You can still lay prone halfway into a wall, for one. There is a small list of fixes already slated but overall it’s very true to the original. I have it running at 2560×1600 max and I’m not seeing anywhere near the quality of the demo videos, though.…
Dead Island – Not Just Another Zombie Game – PC
Dead Island immediately draws you in, from the opening cinematic you’re the guy (or girl). It’s all first person, boozing and abusing, falling down drunk and groping… finally passing out in your room… amongst some odd attacks and blood splattering around you. When you finally wake you’re in your room, but everything outside is in shambles. At first I thought there was a little too much collecting – suitcases all over have a couple bucks here and there, alchohol, med packs, and random bits of seemingly useful objects (rubber hosing, glue) are scattered all around. It’s fairly easy to collect,…
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
My initial impression: Looks ok. It seems like another Duke Nukem where the idea and gameplay were ported from their 90s originals, but their roots are showing in these sequels. There is lots of details (papers, coffee mugs, detailed computer screens, interaction with faucets, etc) so far in the first level but I notice a different level of textures between objects, people, and the surroundings which breaks the otherwise immersiveness of the story and camera work. The “cover” is awful so far, but I think that’s primarily due to defaults conflicting with my mouse configuration but I never seem to…
The Witcher 2
Some screenshots to start. Things I want to get into – graphical glitches (patch 1.3) – control / camera – why can’t I jump on this stump? There are two pictures of the puddle. I’m not really seeing it in the screenshots but his foot went through a 2D puddle and I could see his foot clearly underneath the puddle on the ground… not a big deal, but make sure all the ground around something is higher then the plane of the puddle. To be fair it’s at the start of the game, so hopefully they got better with the…
Dirt 3
If you’re a fan of racing games I highly recommend Dirt 3. I had a ton of fun with Dirt 2 – and it gets better (for the most part) with 3. Plus: + Graphics + Level Design + Better AI then Dirt 2 + Better Reward / XP System then Dirt 2 + Integrated YouTube to upload replays Minus: – The control feels a little looser then Dirt 2 – More arcade feeling IE: If you lose a tire, you should not be able to go another 3 laps and finish 3rd Overall I’d recommend it, but don’t pay…
Crysis 2 DX11 Pack Now Available
Crysis 2 DX11 “Ultra Upgrade” Pack Now Available! From NVidia’s GeForce.com When Crysis 2 hit stores on March 22nd it became Crytek’s first multi-platform game to be developed solely by their studios throughout the world. Because of the level of work required to ensure that all three versions of the game were equally as good, Crytek ultimately ran out of development time, preventing them from implementing planned DirectX 11 features before launch. Post release, the studio’s developers were free to focus only on the PC version of the game, and so for the past few months they have been beavering…
Now THAT’s Entertainment
Yesterday was a blockbuster Tuesday, if only for the release of the highly touted, much ballyhooed game, the shoe-in for best return from vaporware by a major motion video game. Yes, that’s right – Duke Nukem Forever (cleverly acronymn’d DNF – aka Did Not Finish) was released to the public. You may also have heard (meh, who am I kidding – no you haven’t) about Alice: Madness Returns which ALSO came out yesterday. If you remember playing the original back in 2000 – this is the effective sequel. American McGee has stayed true, and this updated title only complements the…
i7 Video Upgrade
I had built a system for a friend about 6 months ago. It was ready to roar, minus the video card as the rest of it was expensive enough. It did the trick for the time being, but he was ready to go bigger so I ordered him some video cards. They just came in, so I’m doing some before and after benchmarks. Current Stats: Intel i7 (4 core) @ 3.4ghz 6mb DDR3 @ 1333mhz Tri-Channel Configuration (3 x 2G) 2 x 1TB Hard Drives Bluray / DVD Writer Combo Drive ATI Radeon HD 5450 DX11 New cards: EVGA nVidia…
The Future of Mobile Graphics
Dynamic Lighting… for one, quad core – and that’s just for processing. There are also 12 GPUs running the graphics but it requires all 4 cores for much of the physics (as you can see in the demo when they drop it down to 2).
Crysis 2 – More Screenshots and Video
Here’s some more screenshots I took as well as my latest video. I’m splitting my time up between all the games, I like a nice spread out game experience. I ended up resuming the current spot after a single death. I figured it was time to go to sleep. As it turned out it was a fabulous place to pick back up, tons of action in about an hour’s worth of playtime.
Video: FLATOUT Ultimate Carnage Gameplay 2560 x 1600
Yes, I do love me some FlatOut. I’ve always been a fan of the demolition racer genre and this franchise has been the only hope I’ve had the last few years. It’s great, just smashing racing, you get nitro for busting up opponents and the various things around the tracks, hit something and you’ll probably bounce off it, hit something dead on and you go through the windshield. It’s a great arcade bash-em-up racer. Oh yeah, and they ALWAYS make a PC version… and I’ve purchased, paid money, moolah, the flimflam… wait… no… given money for all of them so…
Crysis 2 Advanced Graphics Options unlocks higher resolution textures in PC game
Good old gamecopyworld – I found this file to unlock Advanced Graphics Options for Crysis 2 – including extreme textures, aha! It was hiding in there all along. Wow – just took it for a testdrive and I’m amazed. I’m also figuring why they didn’t release this to manufacture as is with the better textures. Here is my theory: They based all the collision code on the lower quality (console) textures, so where I have seen no clipping that I can recall (at least in singleplayer) I saw more in this 5 minute round of multiplayer with the increased textures.…
NFS Shift 2 Gameplay Video (actual gameplay this time)
I did this recording using FRAPs – it’s a Chevy Cobalt (can’t actually turn for shit) with slicks, the best I could upgrade without sending it into the next performance level. It’s one of the first couple tracks available in the game. I was using an XBOX360 controller so I had to turn the control preferences down. I normally run Elite with the wheel but I have to set it on Experienced with the controller, no assists other then ABS – and that ought to be standard anyway. It’s recorded using SHIFT 2 on PC running at Max, normal AA,…
Computer Land
So I’ve spent the weekend… well, I guess that could be extended to the past month, doing computer stuff. I placed the hardware order on December 31st (so I could include it in the business costs for 2008) and received them on the 7th or so. From there on it’s been computers, computers, computers. I upgrade my own to free up a power supply and memory for my new Media PC for the living room. I took all the old stuff I had and got a brand new media pc case for it all. It’s about the size (amazingly close…
New Benchmarks
Latest Benchmark 3DMark06 – 11059 2.0 PCI Ex Motherboard 3DMark06 – 10879 1.0 PCI Ex Motherboard w/ 2 8800 GTX 3DMark06 – 10674 *** authors note 07 07 2012 *** TABLES! Ahhhh! So not HTML 4.0…