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…
Video: Merry Christmas – Patton Oswalt – Christmas Shoes
This made me laugh a lot – I was just talking about this song with my wife… because it plays every year in recent memory. Bravo Mr Oswalt, bravo!
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…
Batman: Arkham City – Review
initial impressions – very smooth animation. More then anything else I was amazed at how fluid the animation is – when he’s climbing, soaring, or fighting with handcuffs on… it’s fabulous to watch. The graphics are very nice as well, the lighting is a huge improvement, and ambient occlusion is especially apparent with all the dark shadows around. I’m still not 100% sure on the story, there is a lot going on, and it’s all very compartmentalized into a single building for a single purpose, no more so then Asylum was, but it’s more noticeable due to the open nature…
Timelapse Video: Earth From Space
Dig it: Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo. (apologies for the iframe, that’s their default code)
Elder Scrolls Skyrim: Review, Screenshots, Gameplay Video
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…
Live Streaming – Offline: Watch the first snow of the season hit Western MA
Streaming Live by Ustream [update 9:06 EST] All told it’s still snowing. They say about 6 to 12″ overall. The roads were horrible earlier. If they don’t get to plowing and it freezes like this it’s going to be one harrowing ride for many a low riding civic. We took one of the back roads home and many many trees were down the whole way. One stretch had the tree down over power lines, but in all cases the road was passable. Thank goodness but I’ll take mother nature’s dangers over the stupidity of first-snowsnorm-of-the-season drivers, any day. We had…
Video: IGN – Battlefield Tips
I watched this prepared to be all snarky but it had some good info… for people who have never played Battlefield before. It does bring up a good point about not getting in the helis/jets if you don’t know how to fly them. It’s just common courtesy. In any case if you’re wondering why you keep getting kicked, or want to point some noobs in the right direction, check this out: More Battlefield 3 (Limited Edition %2D%2D Physical Warfare Pack) Videos
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)
The Best Drag Race – Quarter Mile with 11 of the top Sports Cars
They turned it up to 11. I was surprised by the results.
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,…
Videos: Lady Sovereign
Been a while since I heard this chick – saw it while scrolling through itunes so looked up the videos: Lady sovereign-love me or hate me (SVCD) by CaMGuY Lady Sovereign – I Got You Dancing (Official… by wonderful-life1989
SplitSecond PC – It’s Almost Too Exciting
My initial impression of the game was that it was way too arcade for my tastes. I saw things blowing up, and a bunch of sliding around the “racetrack”. My first impressions weren’t too far from that. It’s an arcade racer, there’s no denying that. You can’t really focus very well on driving well when stuff is blowing up all around you. You end up veering left and right and taking your chances with spinning out to avoid the explosions of which will get you… if you’re close enough, so you just try and stay far enough away even if…