Oh god. Why?
So yesterday I decided to take a look at DICE's new game - Battlefield 3
It's no secret at all how I felt about Battlefield : Bad Company 2. It was, put simply, the finest feat of FPS/warfare gaming ever. When compared to Modern Warfare 2 in single player there was no comparisson.
This is something I would like my viewers to understand. I don't do competitive multiplayer gaming because, quite frankly, I am shit at it. I could probably be better at it if I knew how to hold my temper and channel my frustration, but I don't and I can't. Many pads have met the wall during a gaming session vs a friend and I become irate and annoyed very quickly, especially when poked at for being a noob.
So when I buy or play a game I do so with the basis that I want to play it either alone or in co op mode. Co op mode is very nice because it channels more positive energy. You work with people, not against them. So I like games like Left 4 Dead very much. The anticipation of a hoarde, the working together to cover all areas. This is constructive to me.
So when I compare Modern Warfare 2 to Battlefield : Bad company 2 the differences are night and day.
MW2 is a multiplayer game with a sperm stain on the mattress afterthought of a single player campaign. They did take the time to add the stupid shock value level (the airport one) to bolster sales, but for the most part you can walk through it with your eyes closed in five hours.
Bad Company 2 however? Well it takes much longer than that. It is meaner, bigger, badder and bolder. It also looks stunning.
So imagine my excitement at all of the BF3 commercials on the TV. Then, imagine my dissapointment when I load up a game that has totally forgotten what made itself so good, and instead rips off and tries to "Out COD" COD. From the moment you begin the game feels like a rolling sort of interactive Hollywood movie. You (well not you, it's all done for you) leap onto the roof of a moving train and from there you basically play "Simon" for a while, pressing the button that comes up and flashes.
Now whilst this may "look" good, it doesn't pan into a game. Infact, it kind of reminds me of something like a point a click adventure at the beginning. Assuring myself that I was wrong I decided to look around and see how the game was scoring in reviews. It's not terrible, but it's not great. I see 7-8 scores typically. I see lots of mixed reviews. I see a lot of people saying "Hey, it's very similar to MW2/Black Ops !".
This simply isn't good enough. It's a lame cop out.
Sigh. Oh well, at least there's still Skyrim to come this year, and my money will most certainly be spent on that.
Wednesday, 26 October 2011
Monday, 24 October 2011
Call me a snob - I don't fucking care.
So the time came. I finally own an Xbox 360.
It's probably very early for me to be typing this up, but I don't even know if I will ever use it again. There is a small backstory with this. Basically the last gaming console I owned that actually got used was a Nintendo Game cube. This was many moons ago, and I clearly remember camping outside of Walmart all night in my ex wife's Ford Taurus only to find that no one really wanted any so the shelves were piled high with them.
And that was it. For years after that I either had a PC that could run games or simply didn't bother.
For years people have tried to convince me that consoles are (to name a few of the quotes)
Just as good as a PC graphics !
Not loaded with problems and bugs !
Easy sit down gaming without the hassle !
And so on. Now not at any point did I actually believe any of this but recently the opportunity came along for me to own an Xbox 360 and I thought fuck it, why not? Well, there are many reasons why not, and my eyes are the main one of those reasons.
I do look around me and I have had a good look at many comparisson video and screenshot on the net. Of course the PC always looks better but I will admit that recently the 360 games look pretty much identical. Well, today I found out that it just isn't true.
Finally I was perfectly armed to compare the two systems head to head, face to face. Infact, better still I was even able to do so using exactly the same implement to display the picture !
I have my Xbox connected into the HDMI input of my 1080p monitor, and my PC connected to the DVI input of my 1080p monitor. Now I know that most comparissons will basically butter up the differences, but they never quite explain them in the way I would. I decided to compare the game Fallout New Vegas across both formats, switching inputs as I went. The first thing that struck me was that the graphics on the Xbox 360 are very sparse. The games do resemble one another of course (given that they are like, the same game) but the 360 is so terribly inferior that I simply could not bear to play it for more than 30 minutes without feeling rather ill. Why? Well, it goes a little something like this.
The 360 has absolutely and utterly no anti aliasing. So what is anti aliasing? well, it's basically (to put it very crudely) - blur. On the PC you get levels of anti aliasing that you can set to smooth things over. The thing is, it doesn't just smooth things over it smooths them out completely. So some will say I am being anal or being an idiot? not so. Within thirty minutes of playing the game I had to switch off. You see, on Fallout New Vegas there is a huge expansive world in front of you. This world is made up of layered scenery like rocks, buildings, wells, abandoned cars and so on. Now what I did not realise was that when not anti aliased each one of these objects looks sharp. Worse still, though, the edges of them sort of 'glisten' and before long my eyes were shooting all over the place to try and decipher the images in front of my eyes. It was like trying to watch an old grainy movie and before long I began to feel like my eyes were crossing, straining them, and causing me to feel rather dizzy.
Now I admit I do have a problem with my eyes (and I can also tell the difference between 30 FPS and 60 FPS, thanks) but to me it isn't something I am prepared to continue to do to my eyes. The reason I wear glasses is because of gaming. Between the ages of 8 and 17 I was a heavy, heavy console gamer. By the time I was 18 I needed glasses.
So, that pretty much rules me out of the console race before I have even gotten started.
To conclude, then, the 360 is not a fucking patch on a decent gaming PC. Sorry, it just is fucking not. It never was (discovered from a comparisson when it first came out) and it never fucking will be. It's a raw, cut down, cheapened gaming PC with shit graphics and expensive games.
Sorry to burst your bubbles, like.
It's probably very early for me to be typing this up, but I don't even know if I will ever use it again. There is a small backstory with this. Basically the last gaming console I owned that actually got used was a Nintendo Game cube. This was many moons ago, and I clearly remember camping outside of Walmart all night in my ex wife's Ford Taurus only to find that no one really wanted any so the shelves were piled high with them.
And that was it. For years after that I either had a PC that could run games or simply didn't bother.
For years people have tried to convince me that consoles are (to name a few of the quotes)
Just as good as a PC graphics !
Not loaded with problems and bugs !
Easy sit down gaming without the hassle !
And so on. Now not at any point did I actually believe any of this but recently the opportunity came along for me to own an Xbox 360 and I thought fuck it, why not? Well, there are many reasons why not, and my eyes are the main one of those reasons.
I do look around me and I have had a good look at many comparisson video and screenshot on the net. Of course the PC always looks better but I will admit that recently the 360 games look pretty much identical. Well, today I found out that it just isn't true.
Finally I was perfectly armed to compare the two systems head to head, face to face. Infact, better still I was even able to do so using exactly the same implement to display the picture !
I have my Xbox connected into the HDMI input of my 1080p monitor, and my PC connected to the DVI input of my 1080p monitor. Now I know that most comparissons will basically butter up the differences, but they never quite explain them in the way I would. I decided to compare the game Fallout New Vegas across both formats, switching inputs as I went. The first thing that struck me was that the graphics on the Xbox 360 are very sparse. The games do resemble one another of course (given that they are like, the same game) but the 360 is so terribly inferior that I simply could not bear to play it for more than 30 minutes without feeling rather ill. Why? Well, it goes a little something like this.
The 360 has absolutely and utterly no anti aliasing. So what is anti aliasing? well, it's basically (to put it very crudely) - blur. On the PC you get levels of anti aliasing that you can set to smooth things over. The thing is, it doesn't just smooth things over it smooths them out completely. So some will say I am being anal or being an idiot? not so. Within thirty minutes of playing the game I had to switch off. You see, on Fallout New Vegas there is a huge expansive world in front of you. This world is made up of layered scenery like rocks, buildings, wells, abandoned cars and so on. Now what I did not realise was that when not anti aliased each one of these objects looks sharp. Worse still, though, the edges of them sort of 'glisten' and before long my eyes were shooting all over the place to try and decipher the images in front of my eyes. It was like trying to watch an old grainy movie and before long I began to feel like my eyes were crossing, straining them, and causing me to feel rather dizzy.
Now I admit I do have a problem with my eyes (and I can also tell the difference between 30 FPS and 60 FPS, thanks) but to me it isn't something I am prepared to continue to do to my eyes. The reason I wear glasses is because of gaming. Between the ages of 8 and 17 I was a heavy, heavy console gamer. By the time I was 18 I needed glasses.
So, that pretty much rules me out of the console race before I have even gotten started.
To conclude, then, the 360 is not a fucking patch on a decent gaming PC. Sorry, it just is fucking not. It never was (discovered from a comparisson when it first came out) and it never fucking will be. It's a raw, cut down, cheapened gaming PC with shit graphics and expensive games.
Sorry to burst your bubbles, like.
Thursday, 6 October 2011
Ipad VS Android? Sort of.
Before I begin this I want to express my heartfelt sadness at the passing of Steve Jobs. Such an innovative genius of a man who will be sadly missed. It's a very sad goodbye to an icon of my life.
I'm really in a tough position here. Either way I go about this I am either a U-turning cunt, or, I hate my own product.
Recently as some of you (IE - none) would have read, I got an Android tablet. The particular model was a Hannspree Hannspad and that will be sort of important as I go on. Any way, I dropped said Hannspad breaking it irrepairably in a completely freak accident. That then spelled the end of that and I was left with the most vile and horrid withdrawl symptons imaginable. Loss of sleep, boredom and sadness to name but a few. It was like losing a personal friend, because that is what it had become in its short life. So it was time to consider either leaving the idea completely or getting another one. I decided on the latter.
At least my £145 and Ryan's £8 hadn't completely gone to waste. Usually when I buy something along these lines it's either hit or miss and very quickly I end up with something that just sits there gathering dust. A Wii and numerous other items over the past couple of years failed to make the grade and I am now stuck with them. I know I could sell them but Ebay isn't an option with Paypal's stoic treating of those who sell things on Ebay. Inanimate objects I have had no problem with but electronics are a nightmare. Phones, computer parts, Ipads ; you name it. Basically I am sad to confess that our world is full of nasty greedy cunts who will fuck you over in a heartbeat to use your product to repair theirs and then use Paypal to force you to refund them, even if they have broken the law.
Paypal are a law unto themselves, who brag about your money being safe with them and insured actually offer no such service. Basically as a friend of mine found out recently (when he got ripped off and a bricked phone returned to him) there is no insurance. Paypal will first try and perform a snatch refund from your account (if you verified it) and if you didn't they will simply put your account at -£ amount and then send a bailiff after you to recover their money. They lose nothing, they leave that down to the seller to do.
So, it's quite obvious to see why I refuse to sell electrical items on there, and why I end up stuck with them unless I find a friend of family member looking for said item. This is all caused by my owning three personal computers that are so powerful and able to perform pretty much every life function that I simply don't need anything else. Pop over to my recent write up about tablets and you will see why I find them necessary.
Any way, let's get into this now shall we?
Firstly the Ipad is better than my Hannspad. That is going to be blatantly obvious because it is a superior product in every way. However, before you accuse me of an unfair and unbalanced bashing of said Hannspad let me just mention that it is also superior to the Motorola Xoom Android tablet also. When Ryan was here his tablet weapon of choice was said Motorola Xoom and I can now say it is inferior due to said reasons.
The Xoom is heavy. Very, very heavy. Infact it was heavier than my Hannspad, making prolonged use very uncomforable. The screen viewing angles on both Android tablets (both the Xoom and Hannspad) were terrible and if you wanted to show a buddy what you were up to (show off that new app or background) you literally had to hold it right in their face. This is somewhat a good idea, because these tablets are a personal device so you wouldn't want prying eyes peering into what you are doing in public, but a real annoyance when watching, say, a video in bed. Trying to hold it in the perfect position to see it properly is a chore.
Now I didn't use the Xoom too much so I can't really offer opinion on the touch part itself, but what I do know is that the Ipad is better in everyway when it comes to interracting with the screen. Ryan will tell you himself how much I growled and became annoyed at the clunkiness of the Hannspad's screen. It required quite a lot of force to get it to do what you wanted it to, so you couldn't prop it up and use both hands to type on it with. You had to hold it in one whilst poking at it quite roughly. The Ipad is also about half the weight yet doesn't creek and feels rather sturdy.
So that's the hardware part out of the way. Let's look at what is important - the GUI or OS.
There are a few things I don't like about either, but I will put across the good and the bad on both. Let's start with the OS used on many tablets -
Android 3.X Honeycomb
My first harsh criticism is the Google Appstore itself. Something it did made me very fucking angry indeed. When I set up my tablet I signed up for a Google account using my Zen ISP email address. I was browsing the store and saw Worms for 69p. I thought "hey, fucking bargain I will buy that" so I clicked buy. At which point a message came up thanking me for my purchase. FUCKING WHAT? where did it get the money from?
After a lot of panic and worry I realised that about a year ago I used Google checkout when making a purchase online (for a computer fan). Somehow Google had stored my credit card information for that long and then synced it with my Appstore account with no warning or even a mention of where it was getting the money from. I could have gone fucking overdrawn - NOT COOL.
Not only that but every time I opened up the store I could just download willy nilly and it asked for nothing. What would happen if you lost the device? well some cunt could simply clean your bank account buying apps.
The actual system of Android is very good though, but the flakey security and way it stores your details are just totally fucking whack.
Apps on Honeycomb are very good, with lots of amateurish stuff on there. I particularly liked an erotic storybook I downloaded free that was full of filthy stories. I'm into that kind of stuff, see. I like how it is laid out and it works rather well, though I did have some issues with apps not working. I also noted that older apps not designed for the Tegra chip it was running did not work very well and were prone to crashing. I guess this is the price you pay on a device that will constantly change and evolve.
Apple Ios
Is better. Sorry, it really is as simple as that. What sucks though is that to create an account for it (and download anything) you must register a credit card. What is annoying about this is that it takes £2.40 from that card to make sure it's genuine (even though it uses Verisign !) and my card of choice did not have £2.40 on so it kept rejecting it. In the end I got there, though.
The OS itself is more dumbed down in appearance, but that's fine. This is, after all, a dumbed down computer so I really don't want piles of stuff to tweak. It runs smoother, apps run perfectly (due to the hardware being the same across the board) and the Apple store itself is very nice. It is missing all of the third party stuff though, and that definitely goes against it. However, as usual Apple really do know how to make an operating system and this is no exception on the Ipad. I have owned several Apple computers, and each one was bought literally for the operating system. Clean, simple to use, no fuss and most importantly it works - unlike Windows.
It also allows for theft reporting, which then nukes the Ios and all of your precious data. This is absolutely crucial on a device like this IMO. It also asks for your password every time you download anything (even if it's free !) and so I must admit I feel far safer in the hands of Apple.
So that pretty much sums it up folks. I prefer my Ipad in every way. Not just because it looks nicer than any Android tablet I have experienced, nor that it is lighter and better quality, nor that the screen is incredible or the sound is fantastic, or that the software is better.
But simply because it is better. Not from a fan boy stance, not from a "I own this so it's better ner ner ner" but simply because in the cold light of day it is a superior product in every way.
This doesn't mean that Android devices are redundant, because they are wonderful things (if you can get over Google stalking the shit out of you) and in most cases they can be considerably cheaper than an Ipad. But the cold fact is that the Ipad is better.
I'm really in a tough position here. Either way I go about this I am either a U-turning cunt, or, I hate my own product.
Recently as some of you (IE - none) would have read, I got an Android tablet. The particular model was a Hannspree Hannspad and that will be sort of important as I go on. Any way, I dropped said Hannspad breaking it irrepairably in a completely freak accident. That then spelled the end of that and I was left with the most vile and horrid withdrawl symptons imaginable. Loss of sleep, boredom and sadness to name but a few. It was like losing a personal friend, because that is what it had become in its short life. So it was time to consider either leaving the idea completely or getting another one. I decided on the latter.
At least my £145 and Ryan's £8 hadn't completely gone to waste. Usually when I buy something along these lines it's either hit or miss and very quickly I end up with something that just sits there gathering dust. A Wii and numerous other items over the past couple of years failed to make the grade and I am now stuck with them. I know I could sell them but Ebay isn't an option with Paypal's stoic treating of those who sell things on Ebay. Inanimate objects I have had no problem with but electronics are a nightmare. Phones, computer parts, Ipads ; you name it. Basically I am sad to confess that our world is full of nasty greedy cunts who will fuck you over in a heartbeat to use your product to repair theirs and then use Paypal to force you to refund them, even if they have broken the law.
Paypal are a law unto themselves, who brag about your money being safe with them and insured actually offer no such service. Basically as a friend of mine found out recently (when he got ripped off and a bricked phone returned to him) there is no insurance. Paypal will first try and perform a snatch refund from your account (if you verified it) and if you didn't they will simply put your account at -£ amount and then send a bailiff after you to recover their money. They lose nothing, they leave that down to the seller to do.
So, it's quite obvious to see why I refuse to sell electrical items on there, and why I end up stuck with them unless I find a friend of family member looking for said item. This is all caused by my owning three personal computers that are so powerful and able to perform pretty much every life function that I simply don't need anything else. Pop over to my recent write up about tablets and you will see why I find them necessary.
Any way, let's get into this now shall we?
Firstly the Ipad is better than my Hannspad. That is going to be blatantly obvious because it is a superior product in every way. However, before you accuse me of an unfair and unbalanced bashing of said Hannspad let me just mention that it is also superior to the Motorola Xoom Android tablet also. When Ryan was here his tablet weapon of choice was said Motorola Xoom and I can now say it is inferior due to said reasons.
The Xoom is heavy. Very, very heavy. Infact it was heavier than my Hannspad, making prolonged use very uncomforable. The screen viewing angles on both Android tablets (both the Xoom and Hannspad) were terrible and if you wanted to show a buddy what you were up to (show off that new app or background) you literally had to hold it right in their face. This is somewhat a good idea, because these tablets are a personal device so you wouldn't want prying eyes peering into what you are doing in public, but a real annoyance when watching, say, a video in bed. Trying to hold it in the perfect position to see it properly is a chore.
Now I didn't use the Xoom too much so I can't really offer opinion on the touch part itself, but what I do know is that the Ipad is better in everyway when it comes to interracting with the screen. Ryan will tell you himself how much I growled and became annoyed at the clunkiness of the Hannspad's screen. It required quite a lot of force to get it to do what you wanted it to, so you couldn't prop it up and use both hands to type on it with. You had to hold it in one whilst poking at it quite roughly. The Ipad is also about half the weight yet doesn't creek and feels rather sturdy.
So that's the hardware part out of the way. Let's look at what is important - the GUI or OS.
There are a few things I don't like about either, but I will put across the good and the bad on both. Let's start with the OS used on many tablets -
Android 3.X Honeycomb
My first harsh criticism is the Google Appstore itself. Something it did made me very fucking angry indeed. When I set up my tablet I signed up for a Google account using my Zen ISP email address. I was browsing the store and saw Worms for 69p. I thought "hey, fucking bargain I will buy that" so I clicked buy. At which point a message came up thanking me for my purchase. FUCKING WHAT? where did it get the money from?
After a lot of panic and worry I realised that about a year ago I used Google checkout when making a purchase online (for a computer fan). Somehow Google had stored my credit card information for that long and then synced it with my Appstore account with no warning or even a mention of where it was getting the money from. I could have gone fucking overdrawn - NOT COOL.
Not only that but every time I opened up the store I could just download willy nilly and it asked for nothing. What would happen if you lost the device? well some cunt could simply clean your bank account buying apps.
The actual system of Android is very good though, but the flakey security and way it stores your details are just totally fucking whack.
Apps on Honeycomb are very good, with lots of amateurish stuff on there. I particularly liked an erotic storybook I downloaded free that was full of filthy stories. I'm into that kind of stuff, see. I like how it is laid out and it works rather well, though I did have some issues with apps not working. I also noted that older apps not designed for the Tegra chip it was running did not work very well and were prone to crashing. I guess this is the price you pay on a device that will constantly change and evolve.
Apple Ios
Is better. Sorry, it really is as simple as that. What sucks though is that to create an account for it (and download anything) you must register a credit card. What is annoying about this is that it takes £2.40 from that card to make sure it's genuine (even though it uses Verisign !) and my card of choice did not have £2.40 on so it kept rejecting it. In the end I got there, though.
The OS itself is more dumbed down in appearance, but that's fine. This is, after all, a dumbed down computer so I really don't want piles of stuff to tweak. It runs smoother, apps run perfectly (due to the hardware being the same across the board) and the Apple store itself is very nice. It is missing all of the third party stuff though, and that definitely goes against it. However, as usual Apple really do know how to make an operating system and this is no exception on the Ipad. I have owned several Apple computers, and each one was bought literally for the operating system. Clean, simple to use, no fuss and most importantly it works - unlike Windows.
It also allows for theft reporting, which then nukes the Ios and all of your precious data. This is absolutely crucial on a device like this IMO. It also asks for your password every time you download anything (even if it's free !) and so I must admit I feel far safer in the hands of Apple.
So that pretty much sums it up folks. I prefer my Ipad in every way. Not just because it looks nicer than any Android tablet I have experienced, nor that it is lighter and better quality, nor that the screen is incredible or the sound is fantastic, or that the software is better.
But simply because it is better. Not from a fan boy stance, not from a "I own this so it's better ner ner ner" but simply because in the cold light of day it is a superior product in every way.
This doesn't mean that Android devices are redundant, because they are wonderful things (if you can get over Google stalking the shit out of you) and in most cases they can be considerably cheaper than an Ipad. But the cold fact is that the Ipad is better.
Monday, 26 September 2011
Tablets - One touch, just one touch.
Excuse the cheesy title. It's something that popped into my head whilst thinking about a cheesy song. I don't know which song, but I'm sure I heard one once that said One touch, just one touch. If I didn't then excuse me for being a pervert for thinking such things. Any way, where was I? oh yes ! the touchpaddy thing revolution.
One thing my readers really ought to know about is how late I enter things (fnarr). I'm not really up on the latest trends and fashions as I don't listen to the radio nor watch much of the in things on the T.V. Therefore, then, I usually wait until my friends begin to mention this stuff on Facebook or forums I frequent.
I was fully aware of the Ipad (thanks) but was also aware of the price and the fact that it doesn't do flash. Considering many sites are now based around Flash this was not something I really wanted to entertain, nor pay five hundred or so pounds for. I am a big PC gamer, and for five hundred pounds (using my l33t 5k11l5) I could build a pretty savage gaming PC, mostly based around a GTX 295 (the flavour of the year here at MMB HQ). So yes, £500 fuck right off. £300 fuck off. £200 erm, fuck. However, after something that happened a few months ago I was becoming quite interested in these gadgets. The thing is ladies and gents is I am really not into gadgets. Most of them are ludicrously priced and I don't really need anything they have to offer. I don't need reminders, I don't need a calendar and I don't bother with mobile phones. So why spend out hundreds of pounds on what would turn out to be a dead weight?
However, something changed that a couple of months ago. I have a pal in the U.S called Ryan. You may have heard me mention him in a couple of my blogs, as he is who I do most of my gaming with over Steam. He is also a PC gamer, but does reserve some of his interest for console gaming (unlike myself). Back in January we built him a gaming PC (over Skype with my l33t but quite terrible assistance as I have no patience at all) and he bought me a gift. It was an Archos MP3/4 player with a miniscule 1.5" screen. Never before have I seen the need for such a device, but I soon began putting it to good use. I am a smoker of about 15 a day. That means continued trips outside to smoke as smoking in the house is filthy and smelly. I don't like smoking but I find myself unable to pack it up after numerous attempts. Any way, I find my cigarette a lot more enjoyable when accompanied by music. The video side was also useful for when I am in my reading room (the toilet) but I found the screen to be rather small. Sadly after a couple of weeks it packed up. This didn't really come as a surprise as it cost a whopping $16 or so. I did have a pair of very nice earbud like headphones (Creative branded Sennheissers, SIC) but always hated them as I have an earwax problem (sorry about that but it's just true). However, I was becoming interested in tablet PCs for a good few reaosns. My reasoning was as follows.
* I run an incredibly powerful gaming PC. Infact no, I run two incredibly powerful gaming PCs. These eat quite a large amount of power from the sockets they are plugged into and are rather restrictive when it comes to portability. Infact that's a lie, they are not portable at all. I do have wireless headphones for one, but they are not chargable and my memory span means they always fucking run out leaving me without mobile audio for a day at least. They have now sat uncharged for over a month.
* My computers which are both heavily loaded with top end gaming components are quite loud (one of them being obnoxiously so) and get hot. In summer sitting in the MMB HQ could be compared to sitting in a sauna. This is all well and good, but by the time I want to sleep the room is so hot that it won't cool down enough to sleep well and comfortably, and I am sick of getting spots. I look like a fifteen year old for fuck sake. They also consume vast amounts of power. This is all well and good when they're thumping out shit hot games like Ryan Howard thumps home runs, but for general use (IE - 80% of what I use my computer for) this is wasted power and waste heat. Both of which fucking annoy me given that I am quite green.
* I have begun to travel more. I need something to take away the arse healing over agony of spending four hours on a coach or a train. I get fidgetty and quite frustrated. I am due to make a journey to Manchester in early December and it involes at least five and a half hours of travel. Watching the motorway is only fun for so long, then it becomes depressing. I know this only too well having had to take a coach to Holyhead once that took over eight hours. It was fucking awful.
So whilst all of the above could be deemed as pathetic excuses for needing one it does at least explain why I want one (something I am very able to seperate in life. Thus, when the opportunity came up to own one I couldn't resist. I was looking at el shitto japcrap tablets (they're actually chinese knockoffs, so please don't be offended if you are from the wonderful Japan, it's just a figure of speech !) because they are cheap. I don't want this thing to lick my fucking bellend or dress in sexy underwear, I want it for a few basic functions. These are, but are no longer limited to (as I get more and more used to it)
* Looking on Facebook. I admit I am an incredibly sad cunt because I really like Facebook. Mostly because it allows me to stay in touch and interract with lots of marvelous people from my American past.
* Looking at my emails and messengers without having to strap myself to this desk and rocket like PC whilst feeling the sweat drip down my tummy.
* Watching videos (flash)
* Watching lots of porn so I have a free hand to wank with. (O.K that one is not very true as nothing beats HD porn on a 25" HDMI screen but you get the joke I hope.. No honestly it was a joke !)
* Listening to music through my earbuds, which I have now finally become quite accustomed to, even if they do clog up with earwax.
* Hopefully using it for Skype so I don't have to be strapped to said PC or wear my very heavy and rather uncomfortable headset.
All of which could well be worth a sum of money, but how much was I looking at?
Well, those Taiwanese tinfoil tablets cost in the region of £120. They have a 10" touchscreen (I did not want anything less due to having shit eyesight) and run Android 2.1. It would have been more than good enough to perform the above uses (I think, as I never did find out) and would allow me to break free of the PC. How far would one of these tablets allow me to break free from my PC? Read on to find out !
So after having a bit of a result selling my old wedding ring (that I thought I had tossed into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean on the way home from the U.S.A) I now had a whopping ninety notes in my sky rocket. Determined to put this to good use I asked my friend Ryan (he was here for a week) for some advice, given that he makes his living from selling and studying Android devices. Android is apparently a mobile operating system made by Google, but all it really is is a flavour of Linux for small things. I had a poke at the device on a low level and realised this when I found out it roots and the usb needs to be mounted. Also the dev part, classic Linux. So Ryan explains to me that whilst 2.x Android will suffice the one you really want is Android Honeycomb. I was learning... We had a look around and sadly the cheapest Honeycomb sporting tablet was over £250. This was a shame, as I had played with his Motorola Xoom briefly and quite liked the front end.
After much research we discovered a tablet called the Hannspree Hannstab that for some odd reason was £144 delivered from Ebuyer. But why? Well, we had a good look through the specs and it seemed to match up to tablets costing double or more, so that wasn't the reason for its rock bottom price. I also know how good Hannspree shit is because I own a 24" HDMI gaming monitor by them, and have done for two years. It's been awesome with no apparent reason for it being so affordable. Then we delved into what it runs, and found out why the rock bottom price.
You see, the Hannstab runs Droid 2.2. Which is fine, but for some very peculier reason it does not sport the Marketplace, crucial for downloading lots of shit (mostly free, I add). This was rather depressing, but with the tablet only costing £25 more than a pile of shit, fully warrantied (and not by some dodgy Chinese person carrying a suitcase) and specced very well I decided to get one any way. I wasn't in a major hurry to order it however, as there seemed to be a few of them (eleven if memory serves) but I was put into a frenzied panic to get it when I found out what I found out next.
Apparently there is another tablet that is very close to the Hannspad in specs. It costs over two hundred pounds, however, but apparently some very clever chappies on a forum have managed to pinch the boot rom (the operating system) from it and compile their own kernel* to get it running on the Hannspad. This meant that with a few naughty steps following some quite clear instructions you could turn it into a £144 tablet, with decent parts and quality, that will run Honeycomb (though 3.0 but who fucking cares at this price?).
* A kernel is basically, in short, the basis for an operating system. An architecture if you will. X86 was the 32 bit kernel used by Windows. X64 was the 64 bit one, and so on.
So, with a panic in my head and sweat on my palms I ordered it. Ryan, being the very decent chap that he is, decided to pay the £8 extra for AM next day delivery and the excitement began.
I won't bang on and on about the tablet itself, but let's say I am incredibly pleased with it, the speed of it, and the quality of it.
The things you can do with it are quite frankly marvellous. It runs games (and good ones too, go and download Angry Birds completely free !) plays music, films, Youtube and the full internet itself including Facebook forums and news sites. The Marketplace is quite frankly brilliant and I am really loving how much free shit they tend to give away on there. I have found many excellent apps including Google earth and maps, as well as Skype (which works beautifully) and all kinds of news apps that deliver scores and god knows what else to the tips of your fingers.
Honeycomb is a delight to work with (even if it takes time to get used to) and so far my computer has been on for four hours over the past nine days. Now obviously it is a little tricky to type on, and I certainly wouldn't want to use it to type my blogs, but it is completely functional and offers a great deal for very little. Due to Android being a flavour of Linux it is also very snappy and responsive, given that it doesn't need herculean hardware in order to shift. The only thing really missing from the Hannspree is a camera, but I didn't really want one.
Overall a massive U-turn from me, but this thing really is fucking marvellous. I'm already listing things I want for it on Amazon (a full on 10" laptop bag, capacative pen, micro SD card and screen protectors) and feel that this is the beginning of what will turn out to be a long lasting love affair.
Hurrah !
One thing my readers really ought to know about is how late I enter things (fnarr). I'm not really up on the latest trends and fashions as I don't listen to the radio nor watch much of the in things on the T.V. Therefore, then, I usually wait until my friends begin to mention this stuff on Facebook or forums I frequent.
I was fully aware of the Ipad (thanks) but was also aware of the price and the fact that it doesn't do flash. Considering many sites are now based around Flash this was not something I really wanted to entertain, nor pay five hundred or so pounds for. I am a big PC gamer, and for five hundred pounds (using my l33t 5k11l5) I could build a pretty savage gaming PC, mostly based around a GTX 295 (the flavour of the year here at MMB HQ). So yes, £500 fuck right off. £300 fuck off. £200 erm, fuck. However, after something that happened a few months ago I was becoming quite interested in these gadgets. The thing is ladies and gents is I am really not into gadgets. Most of them are ludicrously priced and I don't really need anything they have to offer. I don't need reminders, I don't need a calendar and I don't bother with mobile phones. So why spend out hundreds of pounds on what would turn out to be a dead weight?
However, something changed that a couple of months ago. I have a pal in the U.S called Ryan. You may have heard me mention him in a couple of my blogs, as he is who I do most of my gaming with over Steam. He is also a PC gamer, but does reserve some of his interest for console gaming (unlike myself). Back in January we built him a gaming PC (over Skype with my l33t but quite terrible assistance as I have no patience at all) and he bought me a gift. It was an Archos MP3/4 player with a miniscule 1.5" screen. Never before have I seen the need for such a device, but I soon began putting it to good use. I am a smoker of about 15 a day. That means continued trips outside to smoke as smoking in the house is filthy and smelly. I don't like smoking but I find myself unable to pack it up after numerous attempts. Any way, I find my cigarette a lot more enjoyable when accompanied by music. The video side was also useful for when I am in my reading room (the toilet) but I found the screen to be rather small. Sadly after a couple of weeks it packed up. This didn't really come as a surprise as it cost a whopping $16 or so. I did have a pair of very nice earbud like headphones (Creative branded Sennheissers, SIC) but always hated them as I have an earwax problem (sorry about that but it's just true). However, I was becoming interested in tablet PCs for a good few reaosns. My reasoning was as follows.
* I run an incredibly powerful gaming PC. Infact no, I run two incredibly powerful gaming PCs. These eat quite a large amount of power from the sockets they are plugged into and are rather restrictive when it comes to portability. Infact that's a lie, they are not portable at all. I do have wireless headphones for one, but they are not chargable and my memory span means they always fucking run out leaving me without mobile audio for a day at least. They have now sat uncharged for over a month.
* My computers which are both heavily loaded with top end gaming components are quite loud (one of them being obnoxiously so) and get hot. In summer sitting in the MMB HQ could be compared to sitting in a sauna. This is all well and good, but by the time I want to sleep the room is so hot that it won't cool down enough to sleep well and comfortably, and I am sick of getting spots. I look like a fifteen year old for fuck sake. They also consume vast amounts of power. This is all well and good when they're thumping out shit hot games like Ryan Howard thumps home runs, but for general use (IE - 80% of what I use my computer for) this is wasted power and waste heat. Both of which fucking annoy me given that I am quite green.
* I have begun to travel more. I need something to take away the arse healing over agony of spending four hours on a coach or a train. I get fidgetty and quite frustrated. I am due to make a journey to Manchester in early December and it involes at least five and a half hours of travel. Watching the motorway is only fun for so long, then it becomes depressing. I know this only too well having had to take a coach to Holyhead once that took over eight hours. It was fucking awful.
So whilst all of the above could be deemed as pathetic excuses for needing one it does at least explain why I want one (something I am very able to seperate in life. Thus, when the opportunity came up to own one I couldn't resist. I was looking at el shitto japcrap tablets (they're actually chinese knockoffs, so please don't be offended if you are from the wonderful Japan, it's just a figure of speech !) because they are cheap. I don't want this thing to lick my fucking bellend or dress in sexy underwear, I want it for a few basic functions. These are, but are no longer limited to (as I get more and more used to it)
* Looking on Facebook. I admit I am an incredibly sad cunt because I really like Facebook. Mostly because it allows me to stay in touch and interract with lots of marvelous people from my American past.
* Looking at my emails and messengers without having to strap myself to this desk and rocket like PC whilst feeling the sweat drip down my tummy.
* Watching videos (flash)
* Watching lots of porn so I have a free hand to wank with. (O.K that one is not very true as nothing beats HD porn on a 25" HDMI screen but you get the joke I hope.. No honestly it was a joke !)
* Listening to music through my earbuds, which I have now finally become quite accustomed to, even if they do clog up with earwax.
* Hopefully using it for Skype so I don't have to be strapped to said PC or wear my very heavy and rather uncomfortable headset.
All of which could well be worth a sum of money, but how much was I looking at?
Well, those Taiwanese tinfoil tablets cost in the region of £120. They have a 10" touchscreen (I did not want anything less due to having shit eyesight) and run Android 2.1. It would have been more than good enough to perform the above uses (I think, as I never did find out) and would allow me to break free of the PC. How far would one of these tablets allow me to break free from my PC? Read on to find out !
So after having a bit of a result selling my old wedding ring (that I thought I had tossed into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean on the way home from the U.S.A) I now had a whopping ninety notes in my sky rocket. Determined to put this to good use I asked my friend Ryan (he was here for a week) for some advice, given that he makes his living from selling and studying Android devices. Android is apparently a mobile operating system made by Google, but all it really is is a flavour of Linux for small things. I had a poke at the device on a low level and realised this when I found out it roots and the usb needs to be mounted. Also the dev part, classic Linux. So Ryan explains to me that whilst 2.x Android will suffice the one you really want is Android Honeycomb. I was learning... We had a look around and sadly the cheapest Honeycomb sporting tablet was over £250. This was a shame, as I had played with his Motorola Xoom briefly and quite liked the front end.
After much research we discovered a tablet called the Hannspree Hannstab that for some odd reason was £144 delivered from Ebuyer. But why? Well, we had a good look through the specs and it seemed to match up to tablets costing double or more, so that wasn't the reason for its rock bottom price. I also know how good Hannspree shit is because I own a 24" HDMI gaming monitor by them, and have done for two years. It's been awesome with no apparent reason for it being so affordable. Then we delved into what it runs, and found out why the rock bottom price.
You see, the Hannstab runs Droid 2.2. Which is fine, but for some very peculier reason it does not sport the Marketplace, crucial for downloading lots of shit (mostly free, I add). This was rather depressing, but with the tablet only costing £25 more than a pile of shit, fully warrantied (and not by some dodgy Chinese person carrying a suitcase) and specced very well I decided to get one any way. I wasn't in a major hurry to order it however, as there seemed to be a few of them (eleven if memory serves) but I was put into a frenzied panic to get it when I found out what I found out next.
Apparently there is another tablet that is very close to the Hannspad in specs. It costs over two hundred pounds, however, but apparently some very clever chappies on a forum have managed to pinch the boot rom (the operating system) from it and compile their own kernel* to get it running on the Hannspad. This meant that with a few naughty steps following some quite clear instructions you could turn it into a £144 tablet, with decent parts and quality, that will run Honeycomb (though 3.0 but who fucking cares at this price?).
* A kernel is basically, in short, the basis for an operating system. An architecture if you will. X86 was the 32 bit kernel used by Windows. X64 was the 64 bit one, and so on.
So, with a panic in my head and sweat on my palms I ordered it. Ryan, being the very decent chap that he is, decided to pay the £8 extra for AM next day delivery and the excitement began.
I won't bang on and on about the tablet itself, but let's say I am incredibly pleased with it, the speed of it, and the quality of it.
The things you can do with it are quite frankly marvellous. It runs games (and good ones too, go and download Angry Birds completely free !) plays music, films, Youtube and the full internet itself including Facebook forums and news sites. The Marketplace is quite frankly brilliant and I am really loving how much free shit they tend to give away on there. I have found many excellent apps including Google earth and maps, as well as Skype (which works beautifully) and all kinds of news apps that deliver scores and god knows what else to the tips of your fingers.
Honeycomb is a delight to work with (even if it takes time to get used to) and so far my computer has been on for four hours over the past nine days. Now obviously it is a little tricky to type on, and I certainly wouldn't want to use it to type my blogs, but it is completely functional and offers a great deal for very little. Due to Android being a flavour of Linux it is also very snappy and responsive, given that it doesn't need herculean hardware in order to shift. The only thing really missing from the Hannspree is a camera, but I didn't really want one.
Overall a massive U-turn from me, but this thing really is fucking marvellous. I'm already listing things I want for it on Amazon (a full on 10" laptop bag, capacative pen, micro SD card and screen protectors) and feel that this is the beginning of what will turn out to be a long lasting love affair.
Hurrah !
The great Fallout DLC roundup.
Some of this will seem rather late. The truth is that I really couldn't be arsed to do this before. At least by waiting for all of them to come out and get at least one playthrough I can do it properly. I shall begin with the incredible Fallout 3 before moving onto the second best Fallout : New Vegas, that way there should still be something to read even if you want to avoid the spoilers of the more recent FONV.
Incase you were wondering what these games are let me give you a brief synopsis.
Fallout 3 is a three dimensional remake? of the earlier Fallout series. These included Fallout, Fallout 2 and a really shitty (according to myth) Brotherhood of steel one. In a nutshell Fallout is an RPG crossed with a FPS. The RPG element comes by way of moral choices mixed with dialogue and quests and the FPS comes from being able to shoot things in first person. It isn't a very strong FPS mind as you're far better off using the game's targetting system called VATS. Any way both games are very similar barring the fact that Fallout 3 takes place across Washington DC and Maryland and Fallout : New Vegas plays out on the west coast over the Mojave desert and what is supposed to be Las Vegas (known as New Vegas in the game having been rebuilt after a nuclear war).
During the lifespan of both of these titles numerous DLC was released (downloadable content) which added more to both games continuing their stories. Today I will be rounding them all up briefly. This roundup assumes you are familiar with / like / love the games and so I wouldn't read it otherwise.
First up then it's Fallout 3.
Operation Anchorage.
If you played through Fallout 3 then you will be aware that the great nuclear war was sparked between the U.S.A and China. You will also remember the part of the game called Tranquility lane which was a simulation. Couple the two together (in a kind of strange way) and you get Operation Anchorage. Basically you are the star in a simulation of war in Anchorage in Alaska. It's so so, with the most standout thing being the lovely icey cold visuals. Other than that it's rather yawnsome.
6/10
The Pitt
This one takes you to Pittsburgh Pennsylvania and has you walking in as a slave. You then do a bit of sniffing around before siding with the slaves (and helping them free themselves from the opression) or the opression itself, a bunch of nasty cunts who like having slaves. The slaves are put to use to rebuild Pittsburgh (AKA the Pitt) but they aren't treated very nicely. Lots of moral decisions, bland graphics and linearity mean that The Pitt really isn't any better than Operation Anchorage. Infact, on the second playthrough I thought it was considerably worse.
5/10
Broken Steel
In honesty this one isn't really a DLC. It's like the last quarter of the game that was held back to make you want to buy it and make Bethesda more money. You see, when you complete Fallout 3 that's it. You get the ending (which is rather good IMO) and then you have to rewind your save game if you want to finish up all the loose ends. Broken Steel continues the story of Fallout 3 and brings it to a rather epic conclusion, allowing you to complete the game, then go through it (Broken Steel) and then once you are done that you can go back to free roam. The only bit of Broken Steel that I found odd was why the fuck it was released third in the lineup. That part makes no logical sense at all. Broken Steel, as I pointed out, was the last part of Fallout 3 that really needed to be there in order to make the game complete. I don't really appreciate that if I am honest, as it's kind of like one of those movies you pay £15 to go and see and then come to find that what you paid for is actually half of a four hour long film cut in half to force you into paying another £15 to see what happens. I went to see a Matrix film once and it was just that. I swore to all that was fucking holy that I would never go and watch another film like that, and didn't. That's fucking shitty.
I'm not saying I had the rights to demand Broken Steel for free, but Bethesda should have released it as the first DLC. It also allowed you to level up higher, meaning that all of the XP you could have been putting to good use in Anchorage and The Pitt were spunked down the fucking drain. Due to that I offer Bethesda, for Broken Steel
7/10
Point Lookout
The absolute best of the DLC for Fallout 3. It really is super. Point Lookout sees you climbing aboard a riverboat and making your way off to a place that I believe to be based around the real Point Lookout which is situated in Maryland. Hilariously I drove straight past Point Lookout (the real one) numerous times when crossing to and fro from Ohio to visit my pal Ryan. You get off the boat to find a deserted seaside town with a big wheel in it and then make your way off to find the quests that Point Lookout has in store for you. There are a lot of them and they are like, totally fun dude (stupid mode off). You can begin pretty much anywhere, but the general consensus is to go off and find the rather eccentric English ghoul and then become his hired hand. There is, however, far more to Point Lookout than just a few quests. There are a metric ton of sidequests, an enormous slab of new ground to discover, all new enemies, new weapons and some of the coolest stuff to discover yet in the series. There are some quite odd parts, but they all make sense in the end.
9/10
Mothership Zeta
Is fucking shit and makes no sense to me whatsoever. I did hear that in the original games (which I haven't played as I missed the boat by too many years) that there were references to aliens but Zeta is just fucking stupid. It has you boarding an alien spaceship and then completing the most boring fucking quests I have ever done in either of the games (NV and 3). It really is utterly utterly awful and the bollock twangingly frustrating thing is that once you start it you can not get back. Which wouldn't be a terrible thing if like, you know? it was any fucking good, but it isn't. I fucking hated it.
1/10 and the only reason it got a 1 was for the weapons you get.
So basically rather than bringing Fallout 3 to an end with a loud bang Bethesda decided instead to take it out with a whimper. What a terrible shame. I have played through Fallout 3 in every guise and scenario you can play it in (good, bad, male and female) yet I have only played through Zeta twice out of those four or five playthroughs. I have a final playthrough sitting there with everything done apart from Zeta. It really is awful. Any way, onward and upwards, and this time it's the roundup of the DLC released for Fallout : New Vegas.
Dead Money
I first played through this a good while ago now as one of my early playthroughs. If memory serves I completed this one using my first save game. After that I decided to play through it again as I now knew the ropes and wanted to do better, learning from my original mistakes. At that time I really didn't like Dead Money at all. It was odd and contained like, new things. I should have liked this but instead I hated it. HOW DARE THEY ADD NEW THINGS THAT CHANGE HOW YOU PLAY !. I managed to scrape through it and swore I would not do it again. Don't get me wrong there were numerous things I found very attractive with it, but it was just very odd and very hard.
It starts you out by giving you a message from the Sierra Madre casino. The Sierra Madre was built by this guy (who you don't know from Adam) but was never opened to the public. They did have a grand opening lined up, but for some reason it just didn't occur. It's now up to you, detective *insert name here* to go off and find out why. The first thing that strikes you about the Sierra Madre is just how incredible it looks. It stands proudly atop a big hill looking rather inviting yet eery at the same time. I found this rather warming, as I have a great interest in creepy things. You then realise that some cunt has strapped a bomb to your neck and you must become his bitch for a while in order to get to the casino. This is where the game changes. You now have to be very careful not to walk the wrong way as this will blow your head clean from your shoulders. I found this incredibly restrictive at first and indeed very frustrating. It stops the free roam element of the Fallout series and makes you follow an exact path. It then decides to fucking gas you too, making it even more difficult. If you manage to get past that you then have to round up a posse of strangers and complete lots of tasks before entering the casino itself.
Once there it becomes rather interesting as you discover what has (and has not) happened there, and eventually (if you know how to perform the correct moves) you land up in a vault full of gold bullion that you can (with great difficulty) load up your pockets with and walk away with. In the Fallout games (the last two recent ones) you can only carry so much. However, Dead Money offers you a perk add on that allows you to fast travel whilst over the weight limit. This, coupled with some serious throught (and a Stealth Boy that makes you invisible) will allow you to walk free of the Sierra Madre with riches beyond your wildest dreams. And those riches will come in essential when you get around to playing Lonesome Road. Brief description - Lonesome Road is the last of the DLC for New Vegas and has some ridiculously priced add ons for the weapons you find there. Without the gold I can't see how you could possibly afford them in honesty.
Any way, without going on any more I will round this up. I wasn't a fan of Dead Money the first time I went through it. On the second trip there, however, I became hooked and really enjoyed it.
9/10
Honest Hearts
Was fucking shit. Honestly (huzzah !) it really was quite awful. Now I know that New Vegas as a game is based around deserts and primitive native American landscapes, but that doesn't mean we should be fucked over with a primitive DLC. What makes it even worse is that it attempts to pull off some native American themes and just totally fucks them up, making them completely laughable. You get this Indian (as it's shorter than typing Native American, so don't accuse me of being racist) as a guide but it's just wrong. He continually spouts off one liners such as "Let it give you great strength, like the buffalo" and continued shit of that ilk. It's cheesy. So very, very cheesy and becomes about as aggravting as having a handful of wet sand in your underwear whilst doing a ten mile walk. It's also very boring. So boring, infact, that I did most of it with my eyes half closed. Fuck even knows what Obsidian were thinking. Seriously, I was beginning to think that the wonder of Dead Money was a fluke for fuck sake.
1/10 - Even the weapons are fucking shit.
Old World Blues
At first I really didn't like this one too much either. It's very odd. I honestly have no idea who comes up with the ideas for the DLC, but they do come up with some crap. Any way, eventually it does dawn on you how good this DLC is. It's quite big, varied, throws up some new enemies and offers a pretty darn good side story. There are also some really good aspects to it, such as the stealth armour which allows you to stroll straight past enemies without bending your brains from using a Stealth Boy. Very good IMO, I quite enjoyed it in the end after I got my head around it.
8/10
Lonsome Road
So here it is. The climax, the last DLC for New Vegas that was touted to bring it to an end, explaining what was going on. You see, Fallout 3 does not hide anything. Right from thre very beginning you realise you are in a vault due to a nuclear war, why you are there, what happened and what is going to happen. Fallout New Vegas on the other hand starts you off as a courier who delivers things. However, the courier was shot in the head and buried alive before being rescued by a doctor. When you come to you have absolutely no idea what happened and nor does it tell you because you have completely lost your memory. You then go off trying to find out what happened with the entire premise being heavily based around that. I mean sure, the game is awesome and there are other things to distract you from wondering who the fuck you are and where you came from, but the underlying subject is basically a case of "What happened?".
Lonesome Road apparently takes care of all of this, and apparently explains to you the events leading up to the start of Fallout New Vegas. Only, it doesn't. Nothing in it is explained very well other than how your little robot pal E-DE (which you also find out is prounounced Eddie, rather than the E d E that I thought it would be) came to be and you really do get a fantastic story about his entire being. That part was fucking great. Sadly when it comes to Ulysses (who tries his best to perform the role of Eamon Andrews (This is y our life) but failing) he is rather odd. He speaks in rhymes and doesn't really make much sense.
From what I could gather (excuse me for being fucking thick if I interpreted it wrong !) you used to live in and around this Lonesome Road place, but you delivered a parcel to some cunt who then detonated a load of ballistic warheads there fucking it up for you and all of the other poor sods there. Apparently the NCR were there, as were the Legion (Caesar's). When the IBM warheads went off they all became ghouls and then hunted one another (and now you) as a sport. There are also numerous Deathclaws there among these annoying fuckers that live below the ground like worms. Apparently this is why Ulysses hates you so much and wants to make your life as miserable as fucking possible, but it still isn't clear as he just waffles endless bullshit. Coming to a conclusion was something I was desperate for, but it's still not very clear. By the time you are done (which won't be very fucking long !) you will just be glad to be out of there.
There are some rather cool elements to it (the way it looks is very Fallout 3ish) but there really isn't that much on offer. There is an area that perked my interest called The Courier's Mile (which I figured would be where you used to walk before some cunt blew it up) but even though it's fiercely difficult, full of radiation and populated by Deathclaws is very small. I desperately tried to find lots to like in Lonesome Road but really ended up finding fuck all. There is also something that really pisses me off now that it's finished. On the main map of the Mojave Desert there is an area called The Mojave Outpost. If you walk to the end of the area there is a locked gate that says This requires a key to open. Any avid explorer such as myself wants to open it and see what is on the other side ! and I assumed that after completing all of the DLC it would either open, or, be a part of the DLC. It wasn't, which is rather fucking annoying. It seems to me that Obsidian have left many things unsaid in Fallout New Vegas, and apparently they are going to remain that way as they are apparently now done with it for good.
Shame.
3/10
Incase you were wondering what these games are let me give you a brief synopsis.
Fallout 3 is a three dimensional remake? of the earlier Fallout series. These included Fallout, Fallout 2 and a really shitty (according to myth) Brotherhood of steel one. In a nutshell Fallout is an RPG crossed with a FPS. The RPG element comes by way of moral choices mixed with dialogue and quests and the FPS comes from being able to shoot things in first person. It isn't a very strong FPS mind as you're far better off using the game's targetting system called VATS. Any way both games are very similar barring the fact that Fallout 3 takes place across Washington DC and Maryland and Fallout : New Vegas plays out on the west coast over the Mojave desert and what is supposed to be Las Vegas (known as New Vegas in the game having been rebuilt after a nuclear war).
During the lifespan of both of these titles numerous DLC was released (downloadable content) which added more to both games continuing their stories. Today I will be rounding them all up briefly. This roundup assumes you are familiar with / like / love the games and so I wouldn't read it otherwise.
First up then it's Fallout 3.
Operation Anchorage.
If you played through Fallout 3 then you will be aware that the great nuclear war was sparked between the U.S.A and China. You will also remember the part of the game called Tranquility lane which was a simulation. Couple the two together (in a kind of strange way) and you get Operation Anchorage. Basically you are the star in a simulation of war in Anchorage in Alaska. It's so so, with the most standout thing being the lovely icey cold visuals. Other than that it's rather yawnsome.
6/10
The Pitt
This one takes you to Pittsburgh Pennsylvania and has you walking in as a slave. You then do a bit of sniffing around before siding with the slaves (and helping them free themselves from the opression) or the opression itself, a bunch of nasty cunts who like having slaves. The slaves are put to use to rebuild Pittsburgh (AKA the Pitt) but they aren't treated very nicely. Lots of moral decisions, bland graphics and linearity mean that The Pitt really isn't any better than Operation Anchorage. Infact, on the second playthrough I thought it was considerably worse.
5/10
Broken Steel
In honesty this one isn't really a DLC. It's like the last quarter of the game that was held back to make you want to buy it and make Bethesda more money. You see, when you complete Fallout 3 that's it. You get the ending (which is rather good IMO) and then you have to rewind your save game if you want to finish up all the loose ends. Broken Steel continues the story of Fallout 3 and brings it to a rather epic conclusion, allowing you to complete the game, then go through it (Broken Steel) and then once you are done that you can go back to free roam. The only bit of Broken Steel that I found odd was why the fuck it was released third in the lineup. That part makes no logical sense at all. Broken Steel, as I pointed out, was the last part of Fallout 3 that really needed to be there in order to make the game complete. I don't really appreciate that if I am honest, as it's kind of like one of those movies you pay £15 to go and see and then come to find that what you paid for is actually half of a four hour long film cut in half to force you into paying another £15 to see what happens. I went to see a Matrix film once and it was just that. I swore to all that was fucking holy that I would never go and watch another film like that, and didn't. That's fucking shitty.
I'm not saying I had the rights to demand Broken Steel for free, but Bethesda should have released it as the first DLC. It also allowed you to level up higher, meaning that all of the XP you could have been putting to good use in Anchorage and The Pitt were spunked down the fucking drain. Due to that I offer Bethesda, for Broken Steel
7/10
Point Lookout
The absolute best of the DLC for Fallout 3. It really is super. Point Lookout sees you climbing aboard a riverboat and making your way off to a place that I believe to be based around the real Point Lookout which is situated in Maryland. Hilariously I drove straight past Point Lookout (the real one) numerous times when crossing to and fro from Ohio to visit my pal Ryan. You get off the boat to find a deserted seaside town with a big wheel in it and then make your way off to find the quests that Point Lookout has in store for you. There are a lot of them and they are like, totally fun dude (stupid mode off). You can begin pretty much anywhere, but the general consensus is to go off and find the rather eccentric English ghoul and then become his hired hand. There is, however, far more to Point Lookout than just a few quests. There are a metric ton of sidequests, an enormous slab of new ground to discover, all new enemies, new weapons and some of the coolest stuff to discover yet in the series. There are some quite odd parts, but they all make sense in the end.
9/10
Mothership Zeta
Is fucking shit and makes no sense to me whatsoever. I did hear that in the original games (which I haven't played as I missed the boat by too many years) that there were references to aliens but Zeta is just fucking stupid. It has you boarding an alien spaceship and then completing the most boring fucking quests I have ever done in either of the games (NV and 3). It really is utterly utterly awful and the bollock twangingly frustrating thing is that once you start it you can not get back. Which wouldn't be a terrible thing if like, you know? it was any fucking good, but it isn't. I fucking hated it.
1/10 and the only reason it got a 1 was for the weapons you get.
So basically rather than bringing Fallout 3 to an end with a loud bang Bethesda decided instead to take it out with a whimper. What a terrible shame. I have played through Fallout 3 in every guise and scenario you can play it in (good, bad, male and female) yet I have only played through Zeta twice out of those four or five playthroughs. I have a final playthrough sitting there with everything done apart from Zeta. It really is awful. Any way, onward and upwards, and this time it's the roundup of the DLC released for Fallout : New Vegas.
Dead Money
I first played through this a good while ago now as one of my early playthroughs. If memory serves I completed this one using my first save game. After that I decided to play through it again as I now knew the ropes and wanted to do better, learning from my original mistakes. At that time I really didn't like Dead Money at all. It was odd and contained like, new things. I should have liked this but instead I hated it. HOW DARE THEY ADD NEW THINGS THAT CHANGE HOW YOU PLAY !. I managed to scrape through it and swore I would not do it again. Don't get me wrong there were numerous things I found very attractive with it, but it was just very odd and very hard.
It starts you out by giving you a message from the Sierra Madre casino. The Sierra Madre was built by this guy (who you don't know from Adam) but was never opened to the public. They did have a grand opening lined up, but for some reason it just didn't occur. It's now up to you, detective *insert name here* to go off and find out why. The first thing that strikes you about the Sierra Madre is just how incredible it looks. It stands proudly atop a big hill looking rather inviting yet eery at the same time. I found this rather warming, as I have a great interest in creepy things. You then realise that some cunt has strapped a bomb to your neck and you must become his bitch for a while in order to get to the casino. This is where the game changes. You now have to be very careful not to walk the wrong way as this will blow your head clean from your shoulders. I found this incredibly restrictive at first and indeed very frustrating. It stops the free roam element of the Fallout series and makes you follow an exact path. It then decides to fucking gas you too, making it even more difficult. If you manage to get past that you then have to round up a posse of strangers and complete lots of tasks before entering the casino itself.
Once there it becomes rather interesting as you discover what has (and has not) happened there, and eventually (if you know how to perform the correct moves) you land up in a vault full of gold bullion that you can (with great difficulty) load up your pockets with and walk away with. In the Fallout games (the last two recent ones) you can only carry so much. However, Dead Money offers you a perk add on that allows you to fast travel whilst over the weight limit. This, coupled with some serious throught (and a Stealth Boy that makes you invisible) will allow you to walk free of the Sierra Madre with riches beyond your wildest dreams. And those riches will come in essential when you get around to playing Lonesome Road. Brief description - Lonesome Road is the last of the DLC for New Vegas and has some ridiculously priced add ons for the weapons you find there. Without the gold I can't see how you could possibly afford them in honesty.
Any way, without going on any more I will round this up. I wasn't a fan of Dead Money the first time I went through it. On the second trip there, however, I became hooked and really enjoyed it.
9/10
Honest Hearts
Was fucking shit. Honestly (huzzah !) it really was quite awful. Now I know that New Vegas as a game is based around deserts and primitive native American landscapes, but that doesn't mean we should be fucked over with a primitive DLC. What makes it even worse is that it attempts to pull off some native American themes and just totally fucks them up, making them completely laughable. You get this Indian (as it's shorter than typing Native American, so don't accuse me of being racist) as a guide but it's just wrong. He continually spouts off one liners such as "Let it give you great strength, like the buffalo" and continued shit of that ilk. It's cheesy. So very, very cheesy and becomes about as aggravting as having a handful of wet sand in your underwear whilst doing a ten mile walk. It's also very boring. So boring, infact, that I did most of it with my eyes half closed. Fuck even knows what Obsidian were thinking. Seriously, I was beginning to think that the wonder of Dead Money was a fluke for fuck sake.
1/10 - Even the weapons are fucking shit.
Old World Blues
At first I really didn't like this one too much either. It's very odd. I honestly have no idea who comes up with the ideas for the DLC, but they do come up with some crap. Any way, eventually it does dawn on you how good this DLC is. It's quite big, varied, throws up some new enemies and offers a pretty darn good side story. There are also some really good aspects to it, such as the stealth armour which allows you to stroll straight past enemies without bending your brains from using a Stealth Boy. Very good IMO, I quite enjoyed it in the end after I got my head around it.
8/10
Lonsome Road
So here it is. The climax, the last DLC for New Vegas that was touted to bring it to an end, explaining what was going on. You see, Fallout 3 does not hide anything. Right from thre very beginning you realise you are in a vault due to a nuclear war, why you are there, what happened and what is going to happen. Fallout New Vegas on the other hand starts you off as a courier who delivers things. However, the courier was shot in the head and buried alive before being rescued by a doctor. When you come to you have absolutely no idea what happened and nor does it tell you because you have completely lost your memory. You then go off trying to find out what happened with the entire premise being heavily based around that. I mean sure, the game is awesome and there are other things to distract you from wondering who the fuck you are and where you came from, but the underlying subject is basically a case of "What happened?".
Lonesome Road apparently takes care of all of this, and apparently explains to you the events leading up to the start of Fallout New Vegas. Only, it doesn't. Nothing in it is explained very well other than how your little robot pal E-DE (which you also find out is prounounced Eddie, rather than the E d E that I thought it would be) came to be and you really do get a fantastic story about his entire being. That part was fucking great. Sadly when it comes to Ulysses (who tries his best to perform the role of Eamon Andrews (This is y our life) but failing) he is rather odd. He speaks in rhymes and doesn't really make much sense.
From what I could gather (excuse me for being fucking thick if I interpreted it wrong !) you used to live in and around this Lonesome Road place, but you delivered a parcel to some cunt who then detonated a load of ballistic warheads there fucking it up for you and all of the other poor sods there. Apparently the NCR were there, as were the Legion (Caesar's). When the IBM warheads went off they all became ghouls and then hunted one another (and now you) as a sport. There are also numerous Deathclaws there among these annoying fuckers that live below the ground like worms. Apparently this is why Ulysses hates you so much and wants to make your life as miserable as fucking possible, but it still isn't clear as he just waffles endless bullshit. Coming to a conclusion was something I was desperate for, but it's still not very clear. By the time you are done (which won't be very fucking long !) you will just be glad to be out of there.
There are some rather cool elements to it (the way it looks is very Fallout 3ish) but there really isn't that much on offer. There is an area that perked my interest called The Courier's Mile (which I figured would be where you used to walk before some cunt blew it up) but even though it's fiercely difficult, full of radiation and populated by Deathclaws is very small. I desperately tried to find lots to like in Lonesome Road but really ended up finding fuck all. There is also something that really pisses me off now that it's finished. On the main map of the Mojave Desert there is an area called The Mojave Outpost. If you walk to the end of the area there is a locked gate that says This requires a key to open. Any avid explorer such as myself wants to open it and see what is on the other side ! and I assumed that after completing all of the DLC it would either open, or, be a part of the DLC. It wasn't, which is rather fucking annoying. It seems to me that Obsidian have left many things unsaid in Fallout New Vegas, and apparently they are going to remain that way as they are apparently now done with it for good.
Shame.
3/10
Saturday, 17 September 2011
Lookback - Mirror's Edge - You can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man !
OK so here we go with another load of waffle (you may offer me beans and an egg !) about a game I rate tremendously highly. I don't often play older games but in this case I was way too late. It doesn't matter though, because it's akin to finding a really nice cake in your cupboard that you didn't realise you had, is still within its eatable date and you have fuck all else nice to eat in the house.
And that, chums, is what you get with Mirror's Edge. Mirror's Edge is a game that dares to take on something that we have yearned for for so long, but no one else has had the minerals to code. It assumes the role of first person platforming. Now I don't know if this genre has ever been attempted before, but if it has I can assure you it was probably shit because I haven't played it. (you will soon learn, readers, that anything I don't have is automatically deemed shit, so there).
The game itself is almost cell shaded but not quite. It is almost very detailed but not quite. I don't know if it was the intention of the people who coded it for it to be completely different in every way but it sure manages to pull off just that. I doff my cap to any one who dares to be different, but this game is so radical in so many ways that it commands a fucking oscar (or at least a good olde fashioned salad toss).
You start out as a very pretty Anime styled woman called Faith. Her name comes as no surprise, because a good sixty percent of the game relies on Faith (not the woman).
The game begins with you standing atop a very intimidating rooftop. It is here that you will learn the ins and outs of playing a platform game in first person perspective, but you will need to don your rubber pants as even the training is fucking pant pissingly hard. If memory serves I must have quit trying to get through the training course about five times, and each time it was usually met with - Cunt fucking motherfucker GOD DAMMIT I HATE THIS FUCKING GAME. Why is it so fucking STUPID motherfucker cocksucker ARGH.
Had it not been for M Lynch I would have easily just put it away never to see light of day again, or, snapped the fucking DVD in half. The learning curve really is that steep.
Now actually I have just remembered exactly where I kept failing. There is a part of the training that involes you leaping over a fence. However, this fence is just slightly too high to land normally from, so you need to press the right trigger on a control pad (don't even go there with a KBM) and this will send Grace into a roll to take the impact out of the fall. I forget what this move is called now, but I have see Bear Grylls pull it on his show, where he basically teaches you how to die (seriously that is one of the dumbest fucking shows EVER. He says he will teach you how to survive, then uses his incredible talents to scale fucking mountains. None of which is achievable by normal human beings). Any way, Bear will use this technique when nearing the ground in a parachute, rolling as he hits the deck. Sod it, you get the idea and if you don't then fuck it, I'm not going to waste more time trying to explain it.
It was here, born from my frustration and FUUUUUURIOUS ANGER (Samuel Jackson) that I had my first taste of success. and boy is it a massive taste. It's kinda like going to a michelin restraunt. When you pull a move in this game it is immensely satisfying, because it is immensely difficult to gain that satisfaction, so when you do you end up licking your lips.
Once through the training mission you are then thrown in at the deep end. You are then alone, mostly running for your life. This game differs because combat is not generally encouraged. You're better off taking the role of Forrest Gump - Run Forrest, run !. This method demands pinpoint accuracy and, shows one of the reasons why the first person platform game was not done before. Unless you stop to look at your feet you never quite know how close you are to the edge of a wall or balcony. This will lead to MDS (multiple death syndrome) and again that Everest sized learning curve will beat you about the face. The thing is, with that comes the immense satisfaction. Now I believe this sort of thing (though on a lesser scale) is actually performed by some mad frogs, and they call it Jack Jumping. Either way it's a fucking psychotic sport, with one slip taking your life.
As you progress you are taught new moves. Slides, double wall jumps, wall rides and so on. When you combine this lot together the shit you can pull is just other worldy. You can run along a balcony, jump into a wall sideways and run along it for a brief period of time before landing on another balcony. You can slide down steep slopes and basically run run run. The part that will get your heart thumping and the adrenaline pumping though is that for the most part you are not just doing high rise gymnastics, but more running for your fucking life. Enemies with big guns are often right behind you, and because you are in a first person perspective you never quite know how close they are. So, you just run and jump and swing and wall run as fast as you can to get away from them. Looking back means stopping and stopping means certain death.
Actually as I wrote the above and had a wonderful flashback of this game I remembered that at times I compared it to Killer Instinct. For those of you who can remember (and are old enough) Killer Instinct was an arcade fighting machine by Rare and Nintendo that involved massive combos. Pulling off these combos was amazingly satisfying, failing one means death. Mirror's Edge is basically combos of running, jumping and leaping coupled with swinging, wall running and so on. There is no room for error, as you are usually atop a twenty storey building, so mistake means death. Even the way you die will send a surge of adrenaline pumping through your vains. You begin to whoosh to the ground, things start to blur and you hear this horrible noise before you splat. And the thing that makes it all the more hard is that during a run you can not make a single mistake. There is no room for error, and it is incredibly unforgiving. You are usually running very fast and running for your literal life. And this, chums, is what makes this game so incredible.
When you finally reach the safety point for one of these runs you can take a break. You can slow down, take a look around at the beautiful scenery and then take a slow walk through a building, giving you just enough respite to calm your nerves and heart rate before the game picks you up and stuffs you out on a limb again.
And this is something the game manages to balance absolutely perfectly. The most difficult of the sections do allow you to take your time and look down at your feet in order to set them correctly before taking the next leap. The balance of this is just so perfect that it's incredibly hard to put into words. All of this can be easily missed and an experience lost if you do not force yourself to persevere. It would seem that many reviewers missed this also, which is a shame.
The only shame here is that the experience is a little short. Once you get good at it you will get really good at it, and once you get really good at it it does become a little bit easier. Now obviously the game does get harder as you progress, but if you managed to make it through the titanium like hard training level then you will have enough skill to climb anything in front of you.
But none of this matters. In honesty this game could have lasted an hour, because it is more about the experiences it provides. You won't have ever experienced them before, and you won't have since. It seems the platform game has been lost and forgotten in recent years with only Nintendo really bothering to bother with them. Sadly even Nintendo are guilty of re-releases of their platformers, so only Super Mario Galaxy (and sequel) really stand out as new ones in recent years. Sadly we have all turned rather belligerent over recent years, demanding shit Call of duty sequel after shit Call of duty sequel. And that is a crying shame, because of course video gaming is now all about money and when game producers look around them to see what is making the most money they will then make a game to capitalise on that money. And this is why I truly believe that the gaming world has gone rather stale and has begun to grow bits of green mold, rendering them only good enough to be scraped a bit and put in the toaster.
Thankfully there are a few quite inventive titles around, but not enough.
Not only does Mirror's Edge walk the walk, it also talks the talk. This is one of the few games to fully implement Nvidia's incredible Physx. Incase you weren't aware Physx is kind of like fucking when you are married. It doesn't happen very often, but when it does? boy oh boy oh boy, it's quite simply super. Physx is a PPU processor that can handle things like particles, wavey cloth, smashing small pieces and so on. In Mirror's Edge it really is used to the fullest and does make a huge difference. Now I do know that graphics do not usually matter but Physx in Mirror's Edge doesn't just add graphics. It adds another dimension.
Let me use a quick example. At one point in the game you have to run through an office with a glass partition wall whilst being shot at. As you run like the clappers past this glass partition it is shot out and with Physx beating the glass shatters into tiny pieces and rains down on you. With Phsyx disabled (on and ATI card, pew pew) it just isn't the same experience. Physx can go past looks and offer a complete new dimension. Sadly Physx is like fucking when you are married. *sigh*. As a second example of this there are certain levels where there are tarpaulin sheets. These flap around in the wind and you can rip through them. There are also clear rubbery ones that you can run through that will distort your vision slighty and you will be haplessly flapping your pad like a fucking idiot trying to brush them away from your face. And it just goes on, and on, and on.
So with all that said I will bring this to a conclusion.
I liked -
The graphics, the Phsyx, the way that this game made me produce more adrenaline and serontonin than any other game before. The fact that it is completely unique. The main Character Faith was as cool as dipping your bollocks into a chest freezer. The scariness, the horror movie like "he's behind you !!!". The way that this game can dish out sheer elation over and over and over.
I didn't like -
The learning curve. The way it made me really angry.
Other than that this game really is too good for words, so like one of those trick tests at school ignore all of the above and put your pen down and laugh at the stupid cunts who read it and are now drawing silly shapes on a piece of paper.
And that, chums, is what you get with Mirror's Edge. Mirror's Edge is a game that dares to take on something that we have yearned for for so long, but no one else has had the minerals to code. It assumes the role of first person platforming. Now I don't know if this genre has ever been attempted before, but if it has I can assure you it was probably shit because I haven't played it. (you will soon learn, readers, that anything I don't have is automatically deemed shit, so there).
The game itself is almost cell shaded but not quite. It is almost very detailed but not quite. I don't know if it was the intention of the people who coded it for it to be completely different in every way but it sure manages to pull off just that. I doff my cap to any one who dares to be different, but this game is so radical in so many ways that it commands a fucking oscar (or at least a good olde fashioned salad toss).
You start out as a very pretty Anime styled woman called Faith. Her name comes as no surprise, because a good sixty percent of the game relies on Faith (not the woman).
The game begins with you standing atop a very intimidating rooftop. It is here that you will learn the ins and outs of playing a platform game in first person perspective, but you will need to don your rubber pants as even the training is fucking pant pissingly hard. If memory serves I must have quit trying to get through the training course about five times, and each time it was usually met with - Cunt fucking motherfucker GOD DAMMIT I HATE THIS FUCKING GAME. Why is it so fucking STUPID motherfucker cocksucker ARGH.
Had it not been for M Lynch I would have easily just put it away never to see light of day again, or, snapped the fucking DVD in half. The learning curve really is that steep.
Now actually I have just remembered exactly where I kept failing. There is a part of the training that involes you leaping over a fence. However, this fence is just slightly too high to land normally from, so you need to press the right trigger on a control pad (don't even go there with a KBM) and this will send Grace into a roll to take the impact out of the fall. I forget what this move is called now, but I have see Bear Grylls pull it on his show, where he basically teaches you how to die (seriously that is one of the dumbest fucking shows EVER. He says he will teach you how to survive, then uses his incredible talents to scale fucking mountains. None of which is achievable by normal human beings). Any way, Bear will use this technique when nearing the ground in a parachute, rolling as he hits the deck. Sod it, you get the idea and if you don't then fuck it, I'm not going to waste more time trying to explain it.
It was here, born from my frustration and FUUUUUURIOUS ANGER (Samuel Jackson) that I had my first taste of success. and boy is it a massive taste. It's kinda like going to a michelin restraunt. When you pull a move in this game it is immensely satisfying, because it is immensely difficult to gain that satisfaction, so when you do you end up licking your lips.
Once through the training mission you are then thrown in at the deep end. You are then alone, mostly running for your life. This game differs because combat is not generally encouraged. You're better off taking the role of Forrest Gump - Run Forrest, run !. This method demands pinpoint accuracy and, shows one of the reasons why the first person platform game was not done before. Unless you stop to look at your feet you never quite know how close you are to the edge of a wall or balcony. This will lead to MDS (multiple death syndrome) and again that Everest sized learning curve will beat you about the face. The thing is, with that comes the immense satisfaction. Now I believe this sort of thing (though on a lesser scale) is actually performed by some mad frogs, and they call it Jack Jumping. Either way it's a fucking psychotic sport, with one slip taking your life.
As you progress you are taught new moves. Slides, double wall jumps, wall rides and so on. When you combine this lot together the shit you can pull is just other worldy. You can run along a balcony, jump into a wall sideways and run along it for a brief period of time before landing on another balcony. You can slide down steep slopes and basically run run run. The part that will get your heart thumping and the adrenaline pumping though is that for the most part you are not just doing high rise gymnastics, but more running for your fucking life. Enemies with big guns are often right behind you, and because you are in a first person perspective you never quite know how close they are. So, you just run and jump and swing and wall run as fast as you can to get away from them. Looking back means stopping and stopping means certain death.
Actually as I wrote the above and had a wonderful flashback of this game I remembered that at times I compared it to Killer Instinct. For those of you who can remember (and are old enough) Killer Instinct was an arcade fighting machine by Rare and Nintendo that involved massive combos. Pulling off these combos was amazingly satisfying, failing one means death. Mirror's Edge is basically combos of running, jumping and leaping coupled with swinging, wall running and so on. There is no room for error, as you are usually atop a twenty storey building, so mistake means death. Even the way you die will send a surge of adrenaline pumping through your vains. You begin to whoosh to the ground, things start to blur and you hear this horrible noise before you splat. And the thing that makes it all the more hard is that during a run you can not make a single mistake. There is no room for error, and it is incredibly unforgiving. You are usually running very fast and running for your literal life. And this, chums, is what makes this game so incredible.
When you finally reach the safety point for one of these runs you can take a break. You can slow down, take a look around at the beautiful scenery and then take a slow walk through a building, giving you just enough respite to calm your nerves and heart rate before the game picks you up and stuffs you out on a limb again.
And this is something the game manages to balance absolutely perfectly. The most difficult of the sections do allow you to take your time and look down at your feet in order to set them correctly before taking the next leap. The balance of this is just so perfect that it's incredibly hard to put into words. All of this can be easily missed and an experience lost if you do not force yourself to persevere. It would seem that many reviewers missed this also, which is a shame.
The only shame here is that the experience is a little short. Once you get good at it you will get really good at it, and once you get really good at it it does become a little bit easier. Now obviously the game does get harder as you progress, but if you managed to make it through the titanium like hard training level then you will have enough skill to climb anything in front of you.
But none of this matters. In honesty this game could have lasted an hour, because it is more about the experiences it provides. You won't have ever experienced them before, and you won't have since. It seems the platform game has been lost and forgotten in recent years with only Nintendo really bothering to bother with them. Sadly even Nintendo are guilty of re-releases of their platformers, so only Super Mario Galaxy (and sequel) really stand out as new ones in recent years. Sadly we have all turned rather belligerent over recent years, demanding shit Call of duty sequel after shit Call of duty sequel. And that is a crying shame, because of course video gaming is now all about money and when game producers look around them to see what is making the most money they will then make a game to capitalise on that money. And this is why I truly believe that the gaming world has gone rather stale and has begun to grow bits of green mold, rendering them only good enough to be scraped a bit and put in the toaster.
Thankfully there are a few quite inventive titles around, but not enough.
Not only does Mirror's Edge walk the walk, it also talks the talk. This is one of the few games to fully implement Nvidia's incredible Physx. Incase you weren't aware Physx is kind of like fucking when you are married. It doesn't happen very often, but when it does? boy oh boy oh boy, it's quite simply super. Physx is a PPU processor that can handle things like particles, wavey cloth, smashing small pieces and so on. In Mirror's Edge it really is used to the fullest and does make a huge difference. Now I do know that graphics do not usually matter but Physx in Mirror's Edge doesn't just add graphics. It adds another dimension.
Let me use a quick example. At one point in the game you have to run through an office with a glass partition wall whilst being shot at. As you run like the clappers past this glass partition it is shot out and with Physx beating the glass shatters into tiny pieces and rains down on you. With Phsyx disabled (on and ATI card, pew pew) it just isn't the same experience. Physx can go past looks and offer a complete new dimension. Sadly Physx is like fucking when you are married. *sigh*. As a second example of this there are certain levels where there are tarpaulin sheets. These flap around in the wind and you can rip through them. There are also clear rubbery ones that you can run through that will distort your vision slighty and you will be haplessly flapping your pad like a fucking idiot trying to brush them away from your face. And it just goes on, and on, and on.
So with all that said I will bring this to a conclusion.
I liked -
The graphics, the Phsyx, the way that this game made me produce more adrenaline and serontonin than any other game before. The fact that it is completely unique. The main Character Faith was as cool as dipping your bollocks into a chest freezer. The scariness, the horror movie like "he's behind you !!!". The way that this game can dish out sheer elation over and over and over.
I didn't like -
The learning curve. The way it made me really angry.
Other than that this game really is too good for words, so like one of those trick tests at school ignore all of the above and put your pen down and laugh at the stupid cunts who read it and are now drawing silly shapes on a piece of paper.
Friday, 16 September 2011
DX9 vs DX11. My SNES is better than your Megadrive !
Oh dear. I really, really hate to post this as it is mostly a confession of wrong, but here goes..
Over the past couple of months I have been 'privileged' enough to finally play some DX11 games. I had played a couple before but only one was a true DX11 title. I will do a rundown on them in just a moment, but before I do that I will confess that DX11 is rather shit really.
As with some others (silly money wasting people like myself) I fell for the hype when DX11 was announced. Now I should have realised that such hyperbole should be taken with a large dose of sodium chloride but when DX11 released it was early in the year and the weather was shit. I know I know, you don't have to tell me, weather shouldn't really count for wasting money on computer parts. The thing is I am fortunate (depending on personality or whether you like dodging knives) to live where I do but winter here is cold and carries plenty of gusty winds ready to slice you in half. I guess it could be likened to living in London and running from a crazed fifteen year old but I still prefer the cold wind. Any way, during that time of year I become rather bored and tend to fall in love with updating my computer again.
It's not such a bad thing as at least it keeps my computer up to date and speed, and hey, I can't exactly go and stand on a beach in such inclement conditions so I really need something to occupy my tiny mind.
Thus, I tend to focus on getting my computer all sorted for another year of Facebook and the odd game.
Last year (man this year has gone so fast !) it consisted of an I7 950 with X58 goodness wrapped in a cheap Alienware crispy coated shell. A couple of years ago it was a Phenom II. Repeat ad nauseum.
However I have been a good boy this year. I haven't bought a single computer part nor messed around with my current configuration since April which is somewhat of a milestone for me.
Any way, where was I? At the time DX11 was released I had a GTX 280. It packed up and when I returned it I found that Nvidia were having a few dark months and were not providing any new cards. The ones that XFX did have did not last very long (given that the 280 was a shit card and got way too hot for it to be reliable) and so I had to take a Radeon 5770. I then decided to add another one to the mix as a single card was simply not fast enough, and DX11 was got.
The first game I got was the only one available at the time - Dirt 2. I deliberately enabled and disabled DX11 and concluded that the differences when hurtling through the woods at 110mph were not huge, but they were there. The lighting in particular was far less of a bright white glow and was actually quite warming to the face. I was happy, as this was the first true DX11 game (not counting the numerous patched games after it) and was very excited at the prospect of what was to come.
And quite frankly it just hasn't fucking happened. PAH.
The next title to grace my PC carrying DX11 natively was Alien VS Predator. Sadly Alien VS Predator was fucking shit and I played it for less than an hour before giving up. I had tried multiplayer with my pal D (thanks to him for giving me the motivation to write this blog, btw) and we concluded that it was more simple than a pot of play dough, only less entertaining.
So what has happened since? fuck all really.
Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas proved to me (especially the former running the HD Cinematic pack) that DX11 was still very much in its infancy. And not much has happened since to convince me otherwise. Sure, Dirt 2 is still a stunning game but it's not really enough is it? Thankfully the replacement for my 5770 Crossfire (because it was riddled with problems, the most unforgivable being the drivers and micro stutter) was far better. A GTX 470, in October of 2010, was £170. Which at the time was a complete steal and any way I needed something to take my mind off of cracking sounds and burning enamel that were emanating from my mouth (heavy dental work). I fitted a custom cooler on it and it has been happy days since. A very impressive card that even nearly a year later still offers all of the performance for the money I paid. That's very impressive for any computer component, much less a graphics card.
So games for DX11 have been very thin on the ground, but lately we have been 'treated' to quite a few of them. So how do they stack up? let's round them up.
I won't count in Battlefield : Bad Company 2 because it was a patch that made no difference (but admittedly also made no difference to the performance) but I will include Crysis 2.
First up then would be Dirt 3, as I am trying to do this chronologically. Dirt 3 IMO wasn't even as pretty as Dirt 2. I know, that sounds completely absurd but it was overhauled (apparently) to include rain and snow. Now the snow levels (providing they were at night, with snow falling, with the headlights on) were rather beautiful. This was emphasised by the fact that in most of those races you were allowed to drive the Audi Quattro, which was akin to hurtling down a hillside strapped to a fucking rocket. The problem of course is that I now owned a system based around the herculean GTX 295 (still around the fourth fastest graphics processor on the market) and I couldn't see any fucking difference at all, unlike Dirt 2. I don't even know if DX11 was in Dirt 3 but I am certain I read that it was.
Moving on - Crysis 2. Some said that Crytek deliberately held back DX11 to produce a second burst of sales. Some said that they were still working on it, I say - horse fucking apples. When I heard that Crysis 2 was patched for DX11 I became quite aroused and felt a stirring in my loins. Sadly when I read about what you needed to get it running at an acceptable level (a minimum 30fps) I found that it would need at least a GTX 590. If you didn't know what a GTX 590 is then I urge you to input the model into Google and sit down, as you will need to. The GTX 590 costs £650 and you're about as likely to find one as you are to get a dribbly blowjob from the queen. They are and were made in such short numbers that like the 5970 that preceded them they have reached rocking horse shit status. So basically Crysis 2 is playable on two cards, one of which being quite shit, too hot and completely uneconomical (the Radeon 6990).
So that rules out Crysis 2 then, and tbh apart from deeper track marks from vehicles that have passed over it and deeper pointing in brickwork it made fuck all difference. So what as next up? F3AR.
F3AR was a shit game. Please take a look at what I thought of it. Infact, it was so bad that I couldn't even fucking bring myself to say anything nice about it at all. It does, however, have DX11 and it does weigh in at a sensible gigabyte amount. Sadly DX11 made no difference at all other than a few jagged lights falling and a serious performance hit. A game that will not run on an I7 system with a 30% overclocked GTX 470 is simply not good enough. The performance problem was now beginning to become a problem. When these cards were released they were heralded as Next generation Direct X 11 graphics cards, capable of adding tesselation, new lighting effects and so on. Please see - Hyperbole, Sodium Chloride. The thing is that it is now becoming apparent that all of the cards sold before the GTX 580 (very expensive) are either not going to cut it to run these actual DX11 titles or, by the time they can they will be woefully out of fucking date. I'm pretty certain that these peformance problems are because DX11 is still in its early days (even though it's been out for nearly two fucking years) and could possily improve over time, but it does mean that any one who spent a considerable amount of money on nothing but promises have been hard done by.
Moving on then we have the next title - Deus Ex Human Revolution.
This is another game that when it is in DX11 mode suffers the exact same problems as F3AR does. I can only imagine that they are running on the same engine, because they both suffer the same fate. Micro stutters and slowdown seriously hamper the experience, but DXHR has other problems all its own. It's not exactly a fantastic game (fuck off telling me it is, it's not even as good as DNF) and feels very neanderthal like. I mean, to a fan (I never played any of the ones before it) it's probably a dream as the mechanics feel like they were written in 2001, but to some one like me it offers nothing new and feels rather boxy and clumsy. See, this is where I take exception to people who slagged off DNF because under the dated visuals DNF was a fucking good game with a good mechanic and a very long experience for your hard earned beans. Any way, sorry about that, as you can tell I quite like DNF. So any way, going back to DXHR. The DX11 has been implemented very, very poorly. First of all the dynamic shadows and lighting are very very jagged and some have reported that they fall all wrong. By that I mean they fall in the wrong direction, losing any feel of reality. Personally I didn't notice it, as all I did notice was that they looked slapped on and garish.
Now due to the performance issues (the stutter and lag and clumsiness) I decided to disable DX11 and revert back to DX9. However, when I did so I got the following - Deus Ex has encountered a problem and will be closed. Along with the message in my task bar that popped up in a small speech bubble "Nvidia driver crashed but has now recovered". I tried, in vain, for about an hour to resolve this (by hacking the registry and INF file) but to no avail. It seems that when installed DXHR detects your hardware and then forces you to play it accordingly. I could have put this problem down to bugs in the game itself but thankfully I do have a second gaming PC. The second one runs a Core 2 Duo with 2gb of ram, which you may think is laughable. Laughably (do you see what I did there? reverse psychology FTW !) even though it is based on three year old technology the star of the show is the massive, god like GTX 295. This card simply picked the game up and threw it around like a fucking ragdoll. Now I did notice that there were chunks of lighting missing, and I did notice that there were hardly anywhere near as many shadows, but to me it looked better. There were no jagged shadows and there were no jagged patches of light. So, I concluded that sometimes less is actually more.
I now play that game (when I can be bothered and am not playing Dead Island) on the GTX 295 PC.
Now, let us bring this to a close. A couple of days ago I played the absolutely fucking brilliant Hard Reset. The reason I liked this game so much is because it cuts the crap and gets into what counts very quickly. See also - Duke Nukem Forever. Story is not important here (phew) but what is is hard fucking core shooting and splatting, coupled with a good few explosions and bolts of electricity flying around. Hard Reset takes a lump of meat on the bone and gnaws through all of the meat, cutting the game down to the bone and giving you exactly what is says on the tin - a FPS. Gone are all of the stories that are just fucking terrible (look, games trying to be Hollywood just don't fucking work, so save your money and time trying to implement them and give us what we fucking want) and replacing it is a lovely, fast paced, stunning FPS.
Wait, did I just use the word stunning? Yes, I fucking did. Hard Reset looks incredible. Infact, apart from Battlefield : Bad Company 2 it is the best looking FPS I have played, erm, ever. BFBC2 was a stunning stunning game. Infact, so hypnotised by it was I that I once found myself staring at it fondly whilst fondling my penis (OK that didn't really happen, but I do like a bit of dramatic effect). But since BFBC2 we have been given the same regurgitated game engines over and over and over.
Most of these engines are based around the Unreal 3 engine which is really beginning to show its age. This will very probably change when I.D release RAGE later in the year, but for the here and now mostCUNTS wonderful companies such as Cactivision Activision and Electronic Farts Electronic Arts are simply using the same engines over and over, whilst adding like, one new gun and then charging another £50 for them. I.D may not have a great track record for producing a game with great gameplay (see also - Doom 3 and Quake 4) but fuck me do they know how to code a game engine.
So, in summation DX11 is a complete waste of time. Don't get me wrong, you should buy a DX11 card (tbh you ain't got much fucking choice now as they are all DX11 based) but don't buy one for DX11. Buy it because these new cards are very fast indeed and can run DX9 titles very well. I have actually seen people consider buying a GTX 590 just to be able to play Crysis 2 at an acceptable level, but these people deserve to be set of fire and then pissed on. They only want to do it for bragging rights, and their seemlessly endless levels of stupidity will actually allow them to spend the same sort of money on a graphics card that could be used to get a very good gaming PC.
Thanks to Denver for giving me the motivation to type this blog. Cheers !
Over the past couple of months I have been 'privileged' enough to finally play some DX11 games. I had played a couple before but only one was a true DX11 title. I will do a rundown on them in just a moment, but before I do that I will confess that DX11 is rather shit really.
As with some others (silly money wasting people like myself) I fell for the hype when DX11 was announced. Now I should have realised that such hyperbole should be taken with a large dose of sodium chloride but when DX11 released it was early in the year and the weather was shit. I know I know, you don't have to tell me, weather shouldn't really count for wasting money on computer parts. The thing is I am fortunate (depending on personality or whether you like dodging knives) to live where I do but winter here is cold and carries plenty of gusty winds ready to slice you in half. I guess it could be likened to living in London and running from a crazed fifteen year old but I still prefer the cold wind. Any way, during that time of year I become rather bored and tend to fall in love with updating my computer again.
It's not such a bad thing as at least it keeps my computer up to date and speed, and hey, I can't exactly go and stand on a beach in such inclement conditions so I really need something to occupy my tiny mind.
Thus, I tend to focus on getting my computer all sorted for another year of Facebook and the odd game.
Last year (man this year has gone so fast !) it consisted of an I7 950 with X58 goodness wrapped in a cheap Alienware crispy coated shell. A couple of years ago it was a Phenom II. Repeat ad nauseum.
However I have been a good boy this year. I haven't bought a single computer part nor messed around with my current configuration since April which is somewhat of a milestone for me.
Any way, where was I? At the time DX11 was released I had a GTX 280. It packed up and when I returned it I found that Nvidia were having a few dark months and were not providing any new cards. The ones that XFX did have did not last very long (given that the 280 was a shit card and got way too hot for it to be reliable) and so I had to take a Radeon 5770. I then decided to add another one to the mix as a single card was simply not fast enough, and DX11 was got.
The first game I got was the only one available at the time - Dirt 2. I deliberately enabled and disabled DX11 and concluded that the differences when hurtling through the woods at 110mph were not huge, but they were there. The lighting in particular was far less of a bright white glow and was actually quite warming to the face. I was happy, as this was the first true DX11 game (not counting the numerous patched games after it) and was very excited at the prospect of what was to come.
And quite frankly it just hasn't fucking happened. PAH.
The next title to grace my PC carrying DX11 natively was Alien VS Predator. Sadly Alien VS Predator was fucking shit and I played it for less than an hour before giving up. I had tried multiplayer with my pal D (thanks to him for giving me the motivation to write this blog, btw) and we concluded that it was more simple than a pot of play dough, only less entertaining.
So what has happened since? fuck all really.
Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas proved to me (especially the former running the HD Cinematic pack) that DX11 was still very much in its infancy. And not much has happened since to convince me otherwise. Sure, Dirt 2 is still a stunning game but it's not really enough is it? Thankfully the replacement for my 5770 Crossfire (because it was riddled with problems, the most unforgivable being the drivers and micro stutter) was far better. A GTX 470, in October of 2010, was £170. Which at the time was a complete steal and any way I needed something to take my mind off of cracking sounds and burning enamel that were emanating from my mouth (heavy dental work). I fitted a custom cooler on it and it has been happy days since. A very impressive card that even nearly a year later still offers all of the performance for the money I paid. That's very impressive for any computer component, much less a graphics card.
So games for DX11 have been very thin on the ground, but lately we have been 'treated' to quite a few of them. So how do they stack up? let's round them up.
I won't count in Battlefield : Bad Company 2 because it was a patch that made no difference (but admittedly also made no difference to the performance) but I will include Crysis 2.
First up then would be Dirt 3, as I am trying to do this chronologically. Dirt 3 IMO wasn't even as pretty as Dirt 2. I know, that sounds completely absurd but it was overhauled (apparently) to include rain and snow. Now the snow levels (providing they were at night, with snow falling, with the headlights on) were rather beautiful. This was emphasised by the fact that in most of those races you were allowed to drive the Audi Quattro, which was akin to hurtling down a hillside strapped to a fucking rocket. The problem of course is that I now owned a system based around the herculean GTX 295 (still around the fourth fastest graphics processor on the market) and I couldn't see any fucking difference at all, unlike Dirt 2. I don't even know if DX11 was in Dirt 3 but I am certain I read that it was.
Moving on - Crysis 2. Some said that Crytek deliberately held back DX11 to produce a second burst of sales. Some said that they were still working on it, I say - horse fucking apples. When I heard that Crysis 2 was patched for DX11 I became quite aroused and felt a stirring in my loins. Sadly when I read about what you needed to get it running at an acceptable level (a minimum 30fps) I found that it would need at least a GTX 590. If you didn't know what a GTX 590 is then I urge you to input the model into Google and sit down, as you will need to. The GTX 590 costs £650 and you're about as likely to find one as you are to get a dribbly blowjob from the queen. They are and were made in such short numbers that like the 5970 that preceded them they have reached rocking horse shit status. So basically Crysis 2 is playable on two cards, one of which being quite shit, too hot and completely uneconomical (the Radeon 6990).
So that rules out Crysis 2 then, and tbh apart from deeper track marks from vehicles that have passed over it and deeper pointing in brickwork it made fuck all difference. So what as next up? F3AR.
F3AR was a shit game. Please take a look at what I thought of it. Infact, it was so bad that I couldn't even fucking bring myself to say anything nice about it at all. It does, however, have DX11 and it does weigh in at a sensible gigabyte amount. Sadly DX11 made no difference at all other than a few jagged lights falling and a serious performance hit. A game that will not run on an I7 system with a 30% overclocked GTX 470 is simply not good enough. The performance problem was now beginning to become a problem. When these cards were released they were heralded as Next generation Direct X 11 graphics cards, capable of adding tesselation, new lighting effects and so on. Please see - Hyperbole, Sodium Chloride. The thing is that it is now becoming apparent that all of the cards sold before the GTX 580 (very expensive) are either not going to cut it to run these actual DX11 titles or, by the time they can they will be woefully out of fucking date. I'm pretty certain that these peformance problems are because DX11 is still in its early days (even though it's been out for nearly two fucking years) and could possily improve over time, but it does mean that any one who spent a considerable amount of money on nothing but promises have been hard done by.
Moving on then we have the next title - Deus Ex Human Revolution.
This is another game that when it is in DX11 mode suffers the exact same problems as F3AR does. I can only imagine that they are running on the same engine, because they both suffer the same fate. Micro stutters and slowdown seriously hamper the experience, but DXHR has other problems all its own. It's not exactly a fantastic game (fuck off telling me it is, it's not even as good as DNF) and feels very neanderthal like. I mean, to a fan (I never played any of the ones before it) it's probably a dream as the mechanics feel like they were written in 2001, but to some one like me it offers nothing new and feels rather boxy and clumsy. See, this is where I take exception to people who slagged off DNF because under the dated visuals DNF was a fucking good game with a good mechanic and a very long experience for your hard earned beans. Any way, sorry about that, as you can tell I quite like DNF. So any way, going back to DXHR. The DX11 has been implemented very, very poorly. First of all the dynamic shadows and lighting are very very jagged and some have reported that they fall all wrong. By that I mean they fall in the wrong direction, losing any feel of reality. Personally I didn't notice it, as all I did notice was that they looked slapped on and garish.
Now due to the performance issues (the stutter and lag and clumsiness) I decided to disable DX11 and revert back to DX9. However, when I did so I got the following - Deus Ex has encountered a problem and will be closed. Along with the message in my task bar that popped up in a small speech bubble "Nvidia driver crashed but has now recovered". I tried, in vain, for about an hour to resolve this (by hacking the registry and INF file) but to no avail. It seems that when installed DXHR detects your hardware and then forces you to play it accordingly. I could have put this problem down to bugs in the game itself but thankfully I do have a second gaming PC. The second one runs a Core 2 Duo with 2gb of ram, which you may think is laughable. Laughably (do you see what I did there? reverse psychology FTW !) even though it is based on three year old technology the star of the show is the massive, god like GTX 295. This card simply picked the game up and threw it around like a fucking ragdoll. Now I did notice that there were chunks of lighting missing, and I did notice that there were hardly anywhere near as many shadows, but to me it looked better. There were no jagged shadows and there were no jagged patches of light. So, I concluded that sometimes less is actually more.
I now play that game (when I can be bothered and am not playing Dead Island) on the GTX 295 PC.
Now, let us bring this to a close. A couple of days ago I played the absolutely fucking brilliant Hard Reset. The reason I liked this game so much is because it cuts the crap and gets into what counts very quickly. See also - Duke Nukem Forever. Story is not important here (phew) but what is is hard fucking core shooting and splatting, coupled with a good few explosions and bolts of electricity flying around. Hard Reset takes a lump of meat on the bone and gnaws through all of the meat, cutting the game down to the bone and giving you exactly what is says on the tin - a FPS. Gone are all of the stories that are just fucking terrible (look, games trying to be Hollywood just don't fucking work, so save your money and time trying to implement them and give us what we fucking want) and replacing it is a lovely, fast paced, stunning FPS.
Wait, did I just use the word stunning? Yes, I fucking did. Hard Reset looks incredible. Infact, apart from Battlefield : Bad Company 2 it is the best looking FPS I have played, erm, ever. BFBC2 was a stunning stunning game. Infact, so hypnotised by it was I that I once found myself staring at it fondly whilst fondling my penis (OK that didn't really happen, but I do like a bit of dramatic effect). But since BFBC2 we have been given the same regurgitated game engines over and over and over.
Most of these engines are based around the Unreal 3 engine which is really beginning to show its age. This will very probably change when I.D release RAGE later in the year, but for the here and now most
So, in summation DX11 is a complete waste of time. Don't get me wrong, you should buy a DX11 card (tbh you ain't got much fucking choice now as they are all DX11 based) but don't buy one for DX11. Buy it because these new cards are very fast indeed and can run DX9 titles very well. I have actually seen people consider buying a GTX 590 just to be able to play Crysis 2 at an acceptable level, but these people deserve to be set of fire and then pissed on. They only want to do it for bragging rights, and their seemlessly endless levels of stupidity will actually allow them to spend the same sort of money on a graphics card that could be used to get a very good gaming PC.
Thanks to Denver for giving me the motivation to type this blog. Cheers !
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