Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Holiday Gaming Selection

Which games deserve your holiday money?

After playing every major release this year, these are some of the ones I enjoyed the most and definitely deserve a buy:

Space Pirates and Zombies
Driver: San Fransicso  - (I know, I know, I couldn't believe it either!)
The Witcher 2
Portal 2
Skyrim
Serious Sam 3


Of those, only Skyrim and SS3 could be considered in time for "Holiday" games.  They are both excellent games and are highly deserving of your hard earned dollars, therefore I recommend whichever one suits your style of gaming (or both!)

Friday, December 16, 2011

Serious Sam 3 - Rating - EXCELLENT


I will update this with a review soon, but for now a few tips:

- To change the FOV, lower the console (tilde key) and type plr_fFOVOverride = 85
- The Pistol has unlimited ammo - the rest of your weapons do not!
- The Sledgehammer can kill nearly any enemy in only one hit - great way to save ammo!
- Press 'R' with the Sledgehammer equipped to do a 360-Spin-attack with it


Also note that this game is like Modern Warfare 3 in that it can render to a lower resolution rendertarget, then stretch it to your screen size for performance reasons.  So if the game's looking excessivly pixellated, check the "Performance" menu (not graphics!)


And finally, here's a few short videos of me playing the game, for you to get a feel for it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP0hj8GswFM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JYXDgUUx3c&list=UUnHiZ-zWxMV_UOJ7GkDwoTg&index=2&feature=plcp

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Update: This is the game Duke Nukem *SHOULD HAVE* been.  This game rekindles the spirit of playing Doom and Doom II in the old days, it is some of the most fun I've had playing a first person shooter in years. Add to that the absolutely massive list of graphics options the developers give you to endlessly tweak (even including supersampling!), means you need to BUY THIS GAME NOW.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Earth Defense Force Insect Armageddon

Rating: Not so good.

Description:
  It started as soon as I loaded the game - the mouse movement in the menu is incredibly jerky and laggy which signaled to me right away I probably wouldn't like the game.  I decided to give it a chance, however, so I navigated to the Video Options menu first (like we all do), where the first thing I noticed is that the only AA option seems to be a type of post-processing (like FXAA, for example).

The Anti-Aliasing options:
 - only give you a checkbox for On/Off
 - doesn't give you a description of the AA type
 - doesn't let you select "real" antialiasing like MSAA

After finally getting into the game (with the Fake-AA disabled since I don't particularly enjoy blurred textures), I noticed the environment.  It was not very detailed by today's standards, especially the lighting - it looks incredibly flat and boring.

Now for the absolute deal-breaker: ALL of the previous problems I've mentioned could have been glossed over if not for this little gem - THE GAME IS CAPPED AT THIRTY FRAMES PER SECOND!

"Thirty?" you ask... "seriously?"

YES, THIRTY.

My overclocked GTX570 was being heavily used at .... 20% load.
What a waste.  What a waste of GPU power.  What a waste of display power (120hz monitor).  What a waste of a game.