True to its name — and a wonderful combination of physics and artistry. Tonight I played it with a force feedback wheel and it was amazing. It plays wonderfully too, which is more than I can say for Carmageddon but they appear to be holding back so I expect improvements to performance when they roll theirs out. Steam Community: Latest Update (10/02) Announcement
When Next Gen Is Missing the Next
Detail, polygons, shaders… all very important. What I find most important are textures. Artistic and accurate textures can bring life to anything, even simplistic character models and environments. Water looking good — that’s a decent feat, trees with individual leaves, fire, rain, all these things are important little details — like the flipflops flipping in GTA V. They add to the immersion and life of a game. I can not fathom how these next gen consoles are coming out and not supporting 1080p across the board. It seems ludicrous that it wouldn’t be the driving force. My 4 year old…
Article: Six Reasons the PC is winning E3 2013 – PCGamer.com
If you saw the two Battlefield 4 conference demos, you may have noticed the telling little backspace key prompt in the top right corner. They were running on PC. Of course they were. You don’t have to imagine what the next generation will look like. You can see it right now. You can playit right now. Find a gaming PC made in the last couple of years, get Crysis 2, then install the MaLDoHD Texture Pack. Actually, no. The next-gen consoles almost certainly won’t look that good. The next generation isn’t about forging ahead. It’s about catching up.…
Crysis 2 Mod: HD+ Texture Pack – MaLDoHD 4.0 Final version
Crazy texture pack for Crysis 2 skuffaws (skoff/guffaw) the official “HD Texture pack” MaLDo Blog: MaLDoHD 4.0 Final version
Review: BioShock Infinite
The world forms around you. You enter a familiar place but it is still very new, dropped into a preloaded consciousness. You had a job, you knew why you were here, simply follow the instruction and the goal will be complete. You’re lifted into this futuristic utopia high in the clouds, where so many are so happy to go about their day but there is a dark brooding, uneasiness to it all. It can’t be that perfect, a distrust. There are sins too foul to wash away. You explore, hearing much about the status quo and the rebellion trying to gain traction. Rights,…
Battlefield 3: End Game live now for PC!
Motorbikes are fun, shift to pull a wheelie – fly over most things. They’re like the ATVs except you can lean, and jump… so they’re fun. I was about to outmaneuver a heli for 4 missle loads, doing jumps and circles around the flag – so if you’re aware and deft with the fingers you can be quite wily. I do think including 2 of the levels from Aftermath was a bit of a cop-out – but they’re good levels. So far I’ve seen the railyard, snowy pipeline area, and maybe one other capture the flag map. Not bad, though…
Tomb Raider: Review (Kotaku)
I’m excited for Tomb Raider – but it’s unfortunate that I’m almost done playing through Far Cry 3 – it sounds very very similar. Complete with the very real, visceral agony and endurance needed to be an action hero: Tomb Raider: The Kotaku Review.
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,…
Teaching Through Video Games Becomes Blurred
There are no video games for a 3 year old. They have their shapes in the holes and the identifying patters and exploring storybook games, but there are no real 3 year old games. Fun games that send you somewhere else, driving a big truck, piloting a giant mech, or simply driving around a basic city in a car. They make them to entertain adults and they go above and beyond what a 3 year old needs to see, and should see. Outside of the fact that 3 year olds should have plenty of time to play and minimal screen…
ICEnhancer 2.1 1.0.4.0 Final
icenhancer 2.1 1040 has been released! [Download] ICELaGlacE Official Site More to come… [ screenshots ] Nothing too impressive yet – just updated smaa to fxaa, we’ll see if there’s an obvious difference. There was a major need for some sort of aliasing, made all the more apparent by the light. Night is pretty in its own right, but don’t lose your headlights. Make sure to catch the sunrise over the beach!
Stop With the Online!
You’ve read this article before, and you’ve probably experienced some level of frustration at the hands of copy protection at some point, be it music, movies, or games. I don’t know what you’ve been up to either, if you haven’t. This subject is fresh in my mind, and I chose to revisit it because Ubisoft ruined my afternoon. I only get a small window to game with children sometimes, and that window was just wasted in an attempt to play what is among the worst games ever made.
Review: The Sims Medieval
I’ve played Sims 3 in the past. I enjoyed building the character up for a while, establishing relationships and such, but I quickly grew tired of the annoying need to eat, pee and sleep. Of course, I was pregnant with twins at the time, so this was probably more troublesome to me than the average player – too much like reality! So why did I try this game in the first place? Well, honestly because there is an expansion pack called Pirates and Nobles. I’m a sucker for pirates so it caught my interest. Throw in the fact that reviewers…
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…
Diabolical Intentions
So after many hours of gaming, possibly 14 or 15, I finally got to Diablo. It started out with reasonable ghouls and creatures and slowly built. I ran through the first two acts with little issue. I had teamed up with my friend to play so we were a good match. He could toast them all from a distance and I would run right into the mix hacking, slashing, and spinning the rest. We even got through act 3 but for 4 I was on my own, no fault to my friend. He had played when I had a very…
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: 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: The Darkness II on Steam
The Darkness II on Steam. This looks pretty bitchin – much better then the retail trailer on TV: The Darkness II Trailer (FLV)
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?…
World Rally Fever on GOG!
If you were a fan of the original Worms you may have gone to the Team 17 website. On there they had a demo for this game – World Rally Fever. It was interesting because it was very Rad Racer NES type but it had better graphics, and it was more detailed then any game I had played before, especially a racing game. I liked to used to try and hit the sheep. Check it out on Good Old Games (GOG) – Coming soon!
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…
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…
LA Noire PC – Review
Video: It’s a port, a straight port but with an extra tidbit or two of settings and smoothing for the graphics. You have ansiotropic settings, and FXAA (x1, 2, or 3). The textures do appear scaled, as in they look as good at 2560×1600 as I remember them being on PS3 but many of the facial textures appear a bit more blurry. The view distance is still very low – you see the fog and blur on anything further then a block away so you don’t quite get the full immersive city feel as GTA. I like the time period…