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…
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…
Some Thoughts About Tonight
Tonight on may way through Northampton to pick up my son from daycare I saw a man get hit by a car. It was about 5:00pm, drizzling and generally dark out. I was approaching a crosswalk (on Conz St) when I thought to myself “oh, that guy is crossing, I’m going to need to brake here…” and he was hit by a car coming the other way right in front of me. I immediately stopped, put on my flashers and ran to him. I asked him if he was ok, put my hand on his shoulder through his raindrenched light…
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…
Video Review: NFS The Run
Here is the intro / first levels of gameplay. It’s interesting because (like many NFS games) it’s nothing like its predecessor. Cars control more realistically. It’s still not a simulation feeling, and you’re restricted to bumper, hood, and behind view. I prefer far behind or windshield view (a la SHIFT) but the hood works well enough. 360 controller worked out of the box. It controlled more like the older games, which is a good thing compared to the latest Hot Pursuit. You can’t go full speed into the corner counting on a powerslide to save you, but it’s still nowhere…
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…
Gadget Security – Watch your Back
Your passwords could be stolen remotely – think over the shoulder with a digital recording sniper scope… or off reflections. It’s certainly already been available to government agents for years now, but it’s almost more powerful out int he wild. It is only going to get harder and more inconvenient to access your device given the steps that need sto be taken to protect yourself from something like this. You may think it’s a little far fetched but as these devices hold more and more important / personal / financial information about us, getting full access to them is well…
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…
Clear Channel Spits on the Valley
Clear Channel has once again proven they know how to mismanage into the ground. Back in May – WRNX 100.9 – a progressive rock, adult contemporary station (we’re talking Counting Crows – not Kenny G) was traded to Clear Channel. Nothing much changed at the time but first they fired Denise Mozilla – the news lady. It was replaced by the aptly coined “Robonews” by Steve Cantara, the newer morning man. He was soon to go as well, citing budget and economy concerns. He was one of the greatest morning men I’ve heard. He had true potential but they never…
Comcast Data Usage
So what is the deal with the network data usage meter on customer.comcast.com? Last month I was trying to get the end of month surge to use up the last of my allowed quota. I hopped on like the 29th and it was already to a new month. I checked my billing date and it was the 28th so it appeared it all got reset. However this month I plan for the billing date which starts on the 29th and today I am still racking up data for October! How can I stay under if it’s not predictable. So now…
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
Battlefield 3 Review
…impressions at this point, I’ll elaborate further but here are some goodies: Gameplay Video: Screenshots: things to note: things breaking (not servers), animation, jump / prone slides, vehicle sounds, directional audio, graphics, comparison to beta things breaking (servers) – c’mon, first day! Performance – Ultra, full, 2560×1600 – +60fps dips below 60 under pressure, but hardly