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…
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.
Playstation Network (PSN) is Down
Things started on Thursday – I had just received my copy of Portal 2 from Amazon so it was especially inconvenient. I’ve since gotten many an achievement… who knows if they’ll show up on my account once it’s back online. It also means I can’t do multiplayer, which is just as well because my buddy Jay finished his single player campaign yesterday. I’ve got another 4 Chapters, and fairly stuck right now. So back to the actual outage – here’s what’s going down: Sony initially had some weird error popping up, they said online the servers were down for maintenance.…
Novint is up to something new
http://m.gizmodo.com/5794323/turn-your-body-into-a-first+person+shooter-controller
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,…
YouTube Video Test
My Shift 2 Video (Replay) – I’ve yet to make a video with “actual” gameplay because the game is so damn hard *2012 04 24* ~ test post, there are actually much better ways to do this.
>An Open Letter to EA About PC Games
>Stub for letter to ea games. [there are the points – I shall flush out the letter henceforth to forthwith, vis a vie.] So I was very excited for two new recent game releases for PC. Both happened to be sequels and both were Electronic Arts (EA). I have never been a fan of companies that get so large they depend on formulas, plans, and financials to fuel their game decisions rather then ideals. I had seen it happen before, but couldn’t directly relate an actual example when prompted. No longer need I search — Crysis 2 and NFS Shift…
>Crysis 2 Review (PC)
>I got my hands on Crysis 2 for PC yesterday. I was very excited having seen it and played it on multiple machines at PAX East several weekends ago. It came on one disk, which was good in regards to time to install, but I’m still impressed by GTA IVs 2 DVDs / 18G worth of textures and data. I started it up and it was 4:3 by default… no one plays in 4:3 anymore, so straight to the options I went. The first thing I noticed was the lack of settings, though with some further reading I have heard…
Windows 7 Game Explorer Manual Customization How To
Windows 7 Games Explorer Manual Customization How ToWindows 7 has removed the ability from Games Explorer to Customize out of the box. It’s not impossible to do, however – it just takes some finangling and registry knowledge. All of your Games Explorer shortcuts are stored here:%localappdata%\Microsoft\Windows\GameExplorer If you have games installed you should see several folders with very long names that start with {######…}Each of these is the unique game ID used by Windows to synch the icons and commands that appear in the Games Explorer to the actual EXE that runs the game. These numbers correspond to the values…
>Battlefield 1942 Is the Worst Game for PC
> I had downloaded Battlefield 1942 for the PS3 a while back, shelled out the $15 and it’s relatively good. Destructable environments basic gameplay on what Battlefield should be (not Bad Company) and decent graphics for a console. I was especially excited about the prospect of battling cross-platform. PS3, XBOX, and PC all in the same realm? Sign me up to scalp them with my mouse! In any case the PC version was still forthcoming, but after trying the demo I am abhorred by what they provided for the PC version. No widescreen resolutions, vile texture quality, simplistic scenes, it’s…
>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/…
>GTA Screenshots – Vista vs Win7 Performance Increase
>Here are some pics of GTA before and after. Both are playable at 40 to 45fps. Vista is overclocked video chip / mem ~ 745mhz / 1265mhzWin7 is stock video chip / mem ~ 705mhz / 1215mhz Vista .5———————–Vista 1Win7 1———————–Vista 2Win7 2———————–Vista 3Win7 3———————–Vista 4Win7 4
>Windows 7 Initial Performance Review
>6 installations later I have a working copy of Windows 7 with valid RAID, SATA, Chipset, Video, and Sound drivers. I was very careful this time, doing only one thing at a time and restarting after a change to confirm. I was a bit more cavileer when I was under the impression my errors could be undone. The restore feature was not able to handle the driver change for vital components so keep that in mind when you’re upgrading. Vista had similar problems, I wasn’t able to install it until SP1. My first step once getting SLi working was to…
Windows 7 – Don’t Rush It.
Windows 7 – Don’t Rush It. That’s a cautionary statement, a metaphor, and a realization. I had a LOT of issues with this installation and I’m not even at a point where I can benchmark. 3… maybe 4 installations at this point and I think I’ve finally got it. I put in another HD so I could avoid RAID issues and I still run into them. My motherboard has 10 SATA ports 4 on one SATA controller, 6 on nVidia SATA RAID. I avoided trying to bring over the RAID right away, instead having a single HD on the ontroller…
>Batman – Arkham Asylum DEMO
>Batman Arkham Asylum DEMO doesn’t launch correctly on 64 bit versions of Windows. You get an int32 error when launching which appears to be a misdeclared variable in the HTTP based launcher. The developers are aware of it but if you’re looking to play the DEMO now here’s a work around: You may need to change your INI files around a bit, I tried to crank it with a 10 for the quality and a 5 for the effects, I don’t like too much motion blur, I appreciate the cinematic effects but also like to see what’s going on even…
EVGA 295 GTX Co-Op Review
I received my EVGA 295 GTX Co-Op today and here are the results! 17:45 – Card installed, powered on18:00 – Drivers Updated, restarted21:06 – done with benchmarking Initial observations:Compared to the 280 GTX:– same length– feels heavier– a tad thinner Hardware installation included 2 devices (GTX 295)I left a 280 in there for strictly PhysX for now but going to do try benchmarks both with and without it on both cards. Test: -/+ for decreased / increased performance 3DMark Vantage (Ambient Occlusion: ON | PhysX: ON): +Score: 16209CPU: 33477Graphics: 13831 3DMark 2006 (Ambient Occlusion: ON | PhysX: ON): =Score: 13260SM…
>Peggle – for iPod!
>You may have played “Peggle” on PopCap before, but now you can get it on your iPod – I just found Peggle on iTunes for $4.99
First Look: BioShock 2 Takes Bold Trip Back to
Who can wait?! read more | digg story *2012 04 24* The game was disappointing. Sure it brought you back but it felt the same… I’d rate it as a glorified DLC.
>GTA: Lost & Damn It!
>I had my main system drive in RAID striping (no data protection) and sure enough one of the drives went screwy. I had a system backup that I made with Vista Ultimate so I wasn’t that wary of reinstalling. I could pop in the new drive, insert the windows disk and restore, one of the bennefits of Ultimate! It wasn’t like that, not at all – in order to restore off of one of those Windows Image Backups you need to have the same drive configuration as before. My drives were different – so no go. I finally reinstalled fresh…