Beware of Raj

Hello 2012

January 1st, 2012 No Comments

If you know me, then you know I think New Years resolutions are for the weak and petty, but if I did have any, it would probably be to blog more and finish the singleplayer games I haven’t completed I don’t know why, but I feel like 2011 was a good year for me, for two main reasons. First of all, I landed a really good job. I enjoy the work I do and I feel like I’m making a difference. My boss wants to talk to me about a raise when I go back on Tuesday and he’s even mentioned maybe making me a full time salaried employee, so things are looking great for me on that front.

The second thing that made this year great was gaming. This year was amazing for gaming, especially if you’re a PC gamer. I felt like the last two years were awful, and I even bought some awful games too, mainly because there was hardly anything else. Talks of the death of PC gaming were starting up again, but as usual, it was nonsense! The year started off a bit slow, but ended really well. Here’s my take on the ups and downs of gaming in 2011:

January was a slow month, but that’s normal. Dead Space 2 was released, which seemed like a good game, though I never got around to finishing it. I’ll have to give it another shot when I get the time.

February gave us

Test Drive Unlimited 2 - I looked forward to this game because I liked the concept. I didn’t like the first game because the driving model was awful. I got in to the private beta for this game and unfortunately, the same thing as the first – great concept, awful driving model.
Bulletstorm - Before this game came out, the developers made a fake game, mocking how Call of Duty is just another run and gun corridor shooter without any thought. They said that Bulletstorm would be different and of course I was interested. Unfortunately the game ended up being an immature disappointment and just like the Call of Duty series it mocked, another corridor shooter. Normally I don’t mind simple shooters, after all, why mess with something that works? But they tried to make the game feel different and failed miserably. It just felt like a Halo game with magic tricks.

March actually had some promising titles. Some were disappointments and some were better than expected.

Dragon Age II - first off, I’d like to mention I haven’t actually played this game and I never finished the first one because I never had the time to. When I finish the first game, I’d like to try Dragon Age II but I’ve heard many fans of the original express their disappointment (how many times will I use this word in this post?) with the sequel.
Homefront - I was skeptical about this game because I was still salty about Black Ops being a terrible game after it promised so much. And that was BEFORE I take into consideration the performance bug that they took 4 months to fix. Unfortunately Homefront wasn’t that great either. The multiplayer looked fun, but I didn’t want to spend my money. The singleplayer was terrible. I felt like the game treated me like a baby all the way until the end. I can only image they were trying to instill a feeling of teamwork, but they failed at pulling that off.
Crysis 2 - I enjoyed the singleplayer of this game. I think the multiplayer tried to rip off Call of Duty a bit, but it seemed fun anyway. But the singleplayer was the best part for me. It was one of those fun shooters where you get from A to B and kill everything in your way. I like originality, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes sticking to a fun formula is just as good.
Need for Speed Shift 2: Unleashed - The original Shift wasn’t that bad. It had better graphics than Forza 3 and a slightly more realistic driving model. The same applies to Shift 2. The graphics are nice (important for a simulation) and the driving model leaned more towards realistic, as opposed to arcade-y. Overall I probably wouldn’t recommend it to a casual racer or a hardcore sim racer, but somewhere in between.

The only game worth mentioning in April is Portal 2. Can you believe this game came out in April? It feels like only yesterday. If you liked Portal 1 you’ll like the second one. For some reason I felt Portal 2 was the perfect length. I got tired of it towards the end, no idea why, but it ended just as I was about to say “I can’t be bothered”. Strange.

In May the most disappointing game was Brink… I know I wrote a good review on it, but I think I wrote it too soon. The game was very promising, I loved the movement system and it seemed fun… Except it was lame. The maps didn’t make any use of the movement system, the A.I. was horrible, no one played it online, the weapons all felt the same… The list goes on. If I’m allowed to take back one review per year, I’ll take back this one. The Witcher 2: Assasins of Kings came out as well, and it seems like a great game, but the controls and the way it teaches you to play sucked. I still want to finish it though, it looks like a deep RPG experience with a great storyline, which is always appealing to me.

June brought Alice: Madness Returns (looks fun, but I never spent the time to finish it) and F.E.A.R. 3 (boring and short). But of course, in the spotlight was Duke Nukem Forever. It finally came out and I know it wasn’t going to be the greatest shooter of all time. In fact, I had pretty low expectations of it – I just wanted it to be a fun corridor shooter. Couldn’t even pull that off. The game was awful, with poor level design, weak feeling weapons and stupid A.I.

July didn’t have anything that interested me, so on to August where the most important game (for me) this year was released. Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I actually had high expectations for this game. I mean, if you’re going to make a Deus Ex game, why bother unless you’re going to do it properly? I was a bit worried that it would be ruined because they wanted to make it for all platforms, which meant pleasing those console kiddies, but in the end, the game turned out fantastic! My only two complaints were that the boss fights were unnecessary and lame and all four “endings” were awful. Otherwise the game stays true to the original in both story and gameplay.

In September we had:

Dead Island - I was skeptical at first, but I’m glad I bought this. First off, don’t compare this to the Left 4 Dead series. Second, the game isn’t that much fun without friends, so get some friends. After about 2 hours of gameplay, I didn’t really care about the story and the game was a bit buggy at first. But you learn to love this game anyway because it’s actually a lot of fun to play, despite its flaws. I have to admit this was one of the pleasant surprises of this year.
Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad - I never played the original much, but I knew what I was getting in to if I were to buy this game. It’s a challenging tactical shooter that I wish I spent more time on, but I didn’t purely because of college, work and another multiplayer game that I’ll mention later (though I know you know what it is).

October and the rest of the quarter was really good. Here’s what stood out for me October:

Rage - I don’t know why some people are disappointed with this game. I didn’t expect much from it and I really enjoyed playing through it. I could see areas where it could of been improved, such as graphics and it’s open world concept, but honestly, it wasn’t that bad.
Forza Motorsport 4 - I’m sorry, but as the owner of both, any argument as what is the better game between this and Gran Turismo 5 has been decided. Forza 4 I feel is the better game, I always feel compelled to play it, it feels like a much more complete experience and anyone who likes cars can pick it up. I love GT5 but it feels like it’s missing that ‘spark’. I’d be friends with GT5, but Forza 4 has a much more varied personality and she looks great too, which is why I’d be in a relationship with her. (Sorry, but if you’ve made it this far in this post you deserved that).
Battlefield 3 - This is the reason I’m not playing any other multiplayer game. I can’t get enough of it and despite my hate for Origin, EA’s greed and the way Battlelog works, this game is amazing. The singleplayer and co-op seem ‘meh’ but the multiplayer is why you buy this game. After the pile of crap called Bad Company 2 I was worried this would end up being terrible as well. Fortunately, it ended up being a real PC game and dare I say it, it might even be my Counter-Strike replacement.

November was hit and miss for me. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (or, if it were an Apple product, Modern Warfare 2S) was one that I didn’t bother with and won’t be missed. You have to be a real pubeless fanboy to buy this game at full price and then say it’s good. They made no effort at all to make this game any different. Skyrim was a hit for me. I finished the main story but there are still so many side quests to complete. My only complaints about this game is the combat feels clunky, the interface sucks (on all platforms) and it seems a bit repetitive at times.

I also played Need for Speed: The Run. I think it took me about 4 hours to complete. So yeah, don’t get that. Serious Sam 3: BFE I got for around $25. It was the worst Serious Sam game ever made, but playing the co-op with friends was still fun. Definitely worth $25, but I don’t think I could play it more than once. The game didn’t have that many enemies in the beginning and a lot of times we were running around trying to find where to go next, which isn’t really Sam’s style. Also didn’t get any cool weapons until later in the game.

December didn’t have anything new but that’s okay because the rest of the year had some great titles and gave me loads more games that I need to finish. Overall I’m happy with the way everything turned out. Of course I didn’t mention every game that came out, you can find a list on Wikipedia, I only mentioned the titles important to me. With that being said, I think 2012 has it’s work cut out. I’ll be amazed if 2012 ends up being another great year in gaming. I can’t think of anything that I’m looking forward to except Guild Wars 2 but I don’t even know if that will be released this year. Either way, I have enough to keep me occupied for the rest of the year anyway.

If you made it to the end of this post, then happy new year to you

Evo 3D Review

July 2nd, 2011 1 Comment

Scroll down to the bottom for the tl;dr and a link to download some sample 3D images. Evo 3D full specs.

I’ve had my Evo 3D for a week now. I decided to upgrade from my Nexus One as Sprint was offering $125 service credit if I switched. I thought I’d take advantage and get a dual core phone. My Nexus One was the benchmark for me as far as superphones/Android superphones go, at least when I got it. It had the latest version of Android and for a whole year, I never felt the need to root it and install any custom ROMS because, quite frankly, within hardware limitations it did everything every other phone did. Rooting it simply added even more functionality, I had no reason to get anything else.

Now, as I switched to Sprint, the 3D had not been released yet so I temporarily had an Evo 4G. I picked this phone as it would be the closest thing to the 3D. In comparison to my Nexus One it wasn’t that impressive. I liked the bigger screen and Sprint’s WiMax 4G is actually pretty fast. Aside from that, the front facing camera and HTC’s Sense were the main differences between the 4G and the Nexus One. I enjoyed using all of them, except Sense.

You may be wondering what this has to do with the 3D. Well, as I mentioned earlier, I thought the 4G would be the closest comparison to the 3D and since I was getting the 3D, I thought it would help me get used to the new phone a little easier. I was wrong…

The biggest surprise for me is Sense. I expected it to be lame and gimmicky, it isn’t. I don’t like the dock at the bottom, I wish you could customize it more, and I don’t like how certain notifications display on the lock screen, I’d like my privacy. But apart from that, I like everything else! My favorite feature is the new lock screen, which by the way, if you use a pin or pattern unlock you can still take advantage of this awesome lock screen. You can have your lock screen display different things on it, I have the current weather in an animation and it looks beautiful. You can also have a “friend stream” which displays a social networking time line, a photo album or you could just stick with a plain lock screen! Another thing on the lock screen is widgets. You have four spaces to place four app icons of your choice. This is another thing I appreciated as it makes opening your frequently used apps a lot more efficient. The only thing that would make this better is if it had icons for apps that had new notifications, at the moment you can only have four fixed apps.

The notification bar has also been modified in 3.0. As well as displaying your notifications, it also displays a row of icons at the top for your eight recently opened apps. Essentially the same thing that would be displayed if you long pressed the home button. This feature I use occasionally, but I’m already used to using the home button. Still though, Android is all about choice, so it’s nice that HTC included this.

The feature of the notification pull down I like the most though, was access to “quick settings”, a tab at the bottom. This replaces the widgets that used to be on the home screens to toggle certain settings. I loved that they are now neatly tucked away in the notifications pull down, it reminds me of the notification widgets that Cyanogen MOD had. Speaking of which, Cyanogen had a way to swipe away notifications to dismiss them without opening them. Add this feature to Sense and the notification pull down would be perfect!

The dock, like before had the ‘all apps’ button to bring up the app drawer (more on that later), the giant “phone” button (who makes calls anymore? :p) and instead of the “+” button, there is a paintbrush button to access the “personalize” screen. Tap this button from any home screen to customize the lock screen, wallpaper, widgets, add app icons and folders to your home screens and change your HTC Sense “scene”. You can also change sounds for your ringtone, alarm and default notification sound. It’s a really nice and convenient place to do all these things and in my opinion a welcome addition to the phone’s interface. The personalize screen can also be accessed by long pressing an empty space on any home screen.

Sense 3.0 also contains a few new widgets, which look great! HTC includes an app called “HTC Hub” which is like a central place to get new widgets, scenes and wallpapers. At the moment there isn’t too much on there, but I suspect this will change over time as Sense 3 is on more phones.

The app drawer is also different now. It has buttons at the bottom to view all apps, downloaded apps (ones that didn’t come with the phone) and frequently used apps (useful). The apps display in pages now, not the continuous flowing way, however, if you’d like such functionality back you can change the view to “list view”. This makes the app drawer look like how apps are listed when you go to uninstall them. Not as pretty, but functional and flowing.

There have been quite a few changes and additions to Sense that make the phone a pleasure to use, but I can’t list all of them here, there are articles on blogs out there that go over everything. I’ve talked about most of the major changes, all of which make using your phone a much more positive experience. As mentioned above, I only have a few small complaints about Sense, none of which take away from the experience as a whole. I used to think I was a die hard stock Android only person until I used Sense 3. If you were like me, Sense 3 isn’t that bad, in fact it makes using the phone a real pleasure. However, if you want to go back to stock Android and have a myriad of customizations, I’m sure the home screen replacements in the Android market still work, and at the time of writing, the Android developers have figured out a way to get root, so custom ROM’s and mods should appear soon.

The next thing that surprised me was… 3D! I thought it would be gimmicky and I wouldn’t care for it at all! However, the combination of nice looking stock 3D images, as well as the camera being able to take some good quality 3D stills itself, the camera is such a pleasure to use! I miss having a dedicated camera button (my G1 had one) so I thought that it was great they put one on the 3D. However, it’s not just a button you simply press, it’s a two stage affair. Once you open the camera app (by either using the app icon or holding down the camera button) you press down lightly to focus and then all the way down to take the picture. I know there are a lot of actual cameras that do this, but it’s wonderfully simple an intuitive I feel like taking photos all day with it! I hope HTC includes this button on all their future models! As for switching between 2D and 3D photos and video, it’s a simple slider switch on the side next to the camera button. You can also convert 3D images to 2D jpegs for sharing with those who don’t have a glasses free 3D screen.

The phone comes preloaded with a Spiderman 3D game which was fun and ‘The Green Hornet’ in 3D. I haven’t watched the whole film, but that’s because I’m not too interested in the film itself. The 3D looked good though. I really hope this phone becomes popular and developers take advantage of 3D, I think it has the potential to make some really cool and creative apps and less of a gimmick. I haven’t stared at the 3D for too long, I’ve heard it can give you headaches if you do stare for too long, so I thought I’d mention that.

Battery life is well… Android. It does have a dual core and Sense has a really nice looking interface, but it has a bigger battery than the old Evo 4G and Nexus One. As a heavy user, I get the same amount of battery life as I did with the Nexus One and Evo 4G. I NEED to have a charger at work otherwise I won’t make the day, but again, I am a heavy user, plus I get a 4G connection at work, so the 4G radio is on all day. I’d say I get about 4 – 5 hours before it runs down to about 10%. I believe with light to moderate use you can easily last 8 – 9 hours.

Oh, and about that dual core. It’s fast. Everything is quick and snappy and there is no lag at all! Uninstalling apps that would normally take maybe ten seconds is now done in an instant! I feel like opening a bunch of apps to see if I can slow it down, but I don’t think anything will work. And it does all this whilst running the latest version of Sense. I’m quite impressed with the performance and even though some people may say that, whilst true, a 1Ghz single core is good enough, having a dual core does make a difference.

Speaking of speed, the 4G is great. I get about 4 – 10Mb down and I’ve gotten up to 1Mb up if I remember correctly when I did a Speakeasy.net speed test. This is great for browsing and watching HD YouTube videos, everything loads pretty quickly. My only complaint is that the radio signal seems a bit weaker than the Evo 4G. It’s pretty rare that the signal drops though so it’s not a big issue. The qHD screen is a larger resolution and looks okay, but still is nowhere near as good as the AMOLED display on the Samsung Galaxy S phones. You also need to turn the screen brightness up for decent viewing in direct sunlight. I think this is a problem on a lot of phones, except the Samsung ones, so HTC, please fix this!

Another issue is the capacitative buttons are a little too sensitive. I had this problem on the Evo 4G, but not the Nexus One. Especially if I use one hand it’s all to easy for my palms to accidentally press the home or search button. This is fixed somewhat because I have an Otterbox case on, which makes the phone a little easier to hold, but the problem is still there. Speaking of which, the phone feels thinner than the Evo 4G and lot easier to hold. The thickness may be about the same, but the width is slightly smaller and makes one handed use a lot easier. The speakers don’t seem to be too loud either. They are good enough for ring tones and notifications but for listening to music and maybe watching YouTube videos, you may want a pair of earphones.

Speaking of watching YouTube videos, for the brief amount of time I had the 4G I enjoyed using the kick stand at the back. This is gone with the 3D, not quite sure why, there’s room for it. It would have been nice if they had included the kick stand from the Thunderbolt, as the Thunderbolt’s stand can be used in portrait as well as landscape. Though there are cases that have stands on them. Another thing I miss is a trackball like I had on the Nexus One. The trackball is so much better than having to use the on screen controls to navigate input text, it just feels more intuitive and easy. This isn’t really a big issue, but it’s weird the compromises that HTC makes as they evolve (no pun intended) their phones. Don’t know why they wouldn’t include a trackball or trackpad.

There are a lot of apps preloaded by Sprint on the 3D as well. Thankfully Sprint/HTC now allow you to pretty much uninstall ALL of these bloatware apps. If you’re like me, you will find this a blessing. I don’t know about you, but when I get a new laptop, the first thing I do is uninstall all the trials, demo programs and other bloatware that comes with it. With the exception of Sprint Zone for account management, I don’t really need any of the other Sprint apps. The phone has 1GB of memory for app storage also, which is quite a bit. You should be able to fit enough apps on the internal storage without having to move them to the SD card. The phone comes with an 8GB SD card, which isn’t really that big, especially considering you can record 720p videos, but of course, this is a cheap upgrade to get up to 32GB’s of storage, SD cards aren’t that expensive.

It comes with the latest version of Android on it, Gingerbread 2.3.3. Well actually 2.3.4 is the latest version for phones, but that is only a minor upgrade which I’m sure will be available in the future. HTC is probably the best manufacturer for getting updates out in a somewhat timely manner and there is absolutely no way with a dual core and 4GB ROM that they wouldn’t keep this phone updated. It will be able to handle anything! I thought I’d briefly mention that I didn’t really like the stock keyboard that the phone comes with. It also comes with Swype too though, however this is Android, so you always have a choice. I am actually using the SwiftKey X beta and I love it.

It seems odd to leave this so near the end of the review, but remember this is actually a phone and it DOES make phone calls! Call quality was good and I have not received a dropped call yet, so that’s also good. I don’t know how I sound on the other end, but I don’t think this phone has a noise cancelling mic. Still though I’ve had no complaints so I’m assuming it’s fine.

Overall the build quality of this phone feels incredibly solid. HTC’s build quality has always been superb for me and this is no exception. It feels nicely weighted, although heavier now that I have an Otterbox case on. I will say it still looks like a generic HTC phone, which bothers me a bit. I wish it looked a little more unique. In fact, if it was white instead of black, that would do the trick! Such a simple change would make this look like a completely different phone compared to all the other HTC Evo clones out there.

I had my Nexus One for a year before I decided to root it and MOD it. Within hardware limitations there wasn’t anything it couldn’t do. So when my contract was up, I waited patiently for a phone that would be a worthy successor for the Nexus. The 3D, as it turns out fits the bill. I was mostly expecting a faster, smoother experience with Android, I really got this phone because I wanted 4G and a dual core, but I feel like I got more than what I expected. I got the extra speed from 4G and the dual core, both of which are great, but I was surprised at how great Sense 3 is to use and impressed with the 3D features. The downsides however, is that with heavy use the battery life isn’t good and I wish the screen looked a bit nicer. Other than that, unless you happen to be upgrading from another dual core phone, this phone is amazing and worth every penny. I would not hesitate to recommend it.

I’d give the Evo 3D an 8/10.

tl;dr:

Good:

3D is actually really cool, hopefully developers will make more 3D related apps.
Sense 3.0 is amazing (this coming from a stock Android lover) and really makes the phone a pleasure to use!
Dual core and 1GB memory means everything is super fast, absolutely no hiccups or lag in performance whilst I was using it!
Truly the best dedicated camera button I have ever seen on a phone, all phones should have a button like this!
4G coverage in my area at work and at home is good. 4G speeds are fast and make browsing the web, tweeting and watching HD YouTube videos as good an experience as if I was at a computer with a dedicated broadband connection.
Feels thinner than the Evo 4G and much easier to use with one hand, screen size is perfect.
Latest version of Android.

Meh:

Battery life still isn’t good enough for a heavy user! This has been a problem for me on every Android phone with a stock battery that I’ve had!
Screen looks good, but still nowhere near as good as the AMOLED on Samsung Galaxy S phones.

Sample 3D Images

Download 3D.rar

Above is the link to download a rar file with .mpo files in them. These can only be viewed on 3D capable displays. If you have an nVidia card that supports steroscopic 3D, they can also be viewed on a regular monitor with the red and blue 3D glasses. If you have the nVidia control panel installed, simply double-click one of the .mpo files and it will automatically launch a set up wizard for you.

Brink Review

May 16th, 2011 No Comments

*Obligatory I know I haven’t posted in a while intro*

Now that that’s out of the way, on to the review. I normally don’t review games this quickly, but I feel I have played enough of Brink to write about it. So here goes. As usual, the review will be on my Amazon reviews as well.

My first issue with the game, was before it was released. There were multiple DLC’s for preorder that were exclusive to certain retailers and you got a different one depending where you preordered from. If it was something cosmetic, like the skins, then that would be fine. But some DLC’s also had weapons, which affect gameplay. I don’t like this new trend in the gaming industry, but it’s not like any of the publishers will listen to I guess I’ll have to live with it.

Brink is actually a multiplayer game with co op. The fact that the game has co op might suggest that there is a singleplayer campaign. There is, sort of. It’s not a scripted story based campaign, it’s just you versus bots. This isn’t too bad as the cool thing is, you can open the game up to the public, or to friends, and people can join to replace the bots on your team. This is really nice, in fact I’d say it’s the preferred method of going through the campaign. The AI in Brink is absolutely awful! It’s pretty much all up to you to do the objectives and, depending on what point you are on the level, the enemy AI can either be too easy or too hard.

This is a game that must be played with other people and thankfully, you can have human players on both sides, thanks to the free play mode. Free play lets you create or join a custom match. The levels are the same ones in the campaign, except there are humans, instead of bots on either side. The bots can fill in for humans until the server fills up. In free play, you can also set custom match settings, in case you want to mix things up a little.

Another reason to play with humans is the team play aspect of the game. Whilst you can easily head to a command post, change to the required class (more on classes later) to complete the main objective, you can’t do it on your own, especially not with a team of bots. Usually only one class is needed to complete the main objective, but without a medic, you’d be dying all the time, or without a solider you’ll run out of ammo a lot. There isn’t much room for tactics, though, it mostly just involves grouping up and storming an area together. Whilst this may seem dull, there is plenty of action going on and no one is ever bored, not even medics as there’s always something to do. The game lets you set objectives for yourself via an objective wheel, it’s a really slick and smooth interface that’s done really well. My only gripe with this, is that the objectives aren’t always clear. For example, the objective might say “guard the door”, but what it really should say is “plant explosives on the door” or “guard the soldier who plants explosives on the door”. Fixing that, would make it perfect.

The classes. There are four of them; Soldier – refills ammo for themselves and team mates, can also plant explosives on objectives. Medic – pretty obvious, this guy buffs themselves and team mates health. The medic can also heal and revive team mates and do the same for the VIP in “Escort” missions. The Covert Ops can disguise as enemies, just like the spy in Team Fortress 2. The covert ops guy places “hack boxes” on objectives and must be protected whilst he hacks the objective. Finally, there is the Engineer. This guy can plant mines and turrets and buffs weapon damage for themselves and team mates. For objectives, the Engineer can disarm explosives planted by enemy soldiers, and disarm enemy mines spotted by Covert Ops. Only Covert Ops can see enemy mines. The Engineer also heals vehicles (non-drivable) in Escort missions. When you start the game, you make a character (that can play all of these classes) to level up and customize.

Customization seems limitless. There are countless ways to configure your appearance, weapons and abilities. There are 20 levels in the game and each one grants you one point to spend on your abilities. Abilities can upgrade the skills of each class as well as skills for all classes. Your appearance can also be customized with different clothing and the game, cleverly uses the players’ character models in the cutscenes, which I thought was pretty cool. Weapon attachments can be unlocked from the challenge mode. Challenge mode doesn’t take long however, so you’ll end up having all of the weapon attachments in no time. I have no issue with that either, but you end up finding attachments you like and putting almost the same ones on all your guns. All the guns in the game can be customized and you select a default one (one that you will spawn with) for a primary and secondary weapon. You can change your weapons at any time from a command post. There are also three different body types that determine what weapons you can use and how you move. The fast body type has low health and can only carry light weapons, but moves and climbs really quickly. The medium, my personal favorite, has medium health, can move almost anywhere and can carry light and medium weapons. The heavy body is the opposite of the light. Lots of health, but fat and slow, however, he can carry heavy weapons.

Back to the movement – something I’m sort of impressed with, but not. I’m impressed with the way it works, it’s so smooth and it feels natural when vaulting over a something or climbing up onto things… But I’m disappointed that they did not make good use of it in the game. The three things that make Brink stand out from the crowd are; myriad of customizations for your character and weapons, team play and the movement system. The movement system is nice, but I was a bit let down, that most of the maps play almost like any other shooter. I was hoping the movement system would spice it up a little.

The presentation of Brink is good too. The menu system is clean and crisp and very simple and easy to use. The in game objective wheel is also incredibly simple. The story in Brink, is that the city, “The Ark” is getting overcrowded and there is a plague spreading throughout the city. Or something like that. Truth it, not only is the story unimportant in this game, when you play the levels, especially the one with the shopping mall, it doesn’t seem like such a bad place! Still though the graphics look decent, a cross between the colorfulness of Team Fortress 2, mixed with the grim reality of a war. Not that you’d notice, the pace of the game can be pretty quick some times, but this is generally the case with most shooters.

Despite having quite a selection of guns a lot of them feel the game. All the pistols feel the same, all the SMG’s feel the same etc. I wish there was a little more variety. Having said that, this is counter-balanced by the attachments that really let you make a weapon your own. I’ve already mentioned the customization that’s possible for the guns, using them though, is just as good. They pack solid punches, even the pistols, but don’t expect too much variety, despite how much you can modify each one. Also don’t expect anything new here, there’s no “super cool” weapon. Whilst the guns may not be based on anything real, you have your standard shooter arsenal here, save for rocket launchers.

In conclusion, after 2010, I was skeptical about preordering a shooter, since all of them seem to be console ports these days. In the end, I’m glad I bought Brink, it’s well worth it. It’s biggest flaw is the awful AI, but that is remedied by playing with humans. I’ve seen some people complain that the scoreboard does not show kills/deaths, just XP earned and some people have complained about this. I personally don’t care, for once! I really feel compelled to be a team member in this game rather than trying to rack up the most kills. After all, the game is designed in such a way, that that’s the only way to win. There is a section in the game for DLC, and as of the time of writing there isn’t any yet, but hopefully they will add new levels. What I’m hoping for are levels designed to make better use of the movement system, if they did this, then that would be the icing on the cake. But in it’s current state, and despite the AI, which doesn’t really ruin the experience, the game is a lot of fun and has restored my faith in not only FPS games on PC, but PC gaming in general. Just a little. If you haven’t already, buy this game!

I’d give this game a 9/10.

CES 2011

January 9th, 2011 No Comments

I’ve been following CES 2011, sort of. Not everything, mostly phones and a few tablets. I am especially interested in the phones that were shown as my contract is up in February. I don’t wish to stick with T-Mobile which means I’d also have to give up my Nexus One. Which is sad as it’s still a great phone. I’ve decided to make a post on some of the things that I thought were cool or interesting and some items that I might consider getting.

Motorola Atrix 4G

I thought this was pretty cool. This definitely seems like the future of true mobile computing, being able to carry your data and programs anywhere on a small device. Then being able to plug it into anything and the OS will instantly change to reflect whatever input and output devices it’s connected to. It’s almost as if bringing back “dumb terminals” lol!

The only downside to this, is that it’s on AT&T. Otherwise I might of considered getting this one.

Tegra 2 Gaming on Motorola Atrix 4G and LG Optimus 2X

Both these phones have some impressive specs – including dual cores. But the main point here is nVidia’s Tegra 2 graphics. As you can see, the frame rate is incredibly smooth. But that’s not the only impressive thing. With these phones, you can play multiplayer games cross platform! So if I’m on my Android phone, bored in the doctor’s waiting room, I can play against my friend on PS3! I’ve been waiting a while for cross platform multiplayer gaming, but I never knew it would start with mobile phones. I hope this develops further and we get to see many more games released.

Motorola Xoom

Nothing special about the tablet itself. What makes it great is that it’s the first tablet running Android 3.0, aka Honeycomb. The OS made just for tablets. I have to say, it’s a slick looking interface and I’m very tempted to buy one. But I know I don’t need one. Here’s a video that would make anyone drool:

Honorable mention: BlackBerry Playbook

I can’t find the video right now, but there was one on Engadget where they had the Playbook running Quake 3 (demo mode), a 1080p video, a picture slideshow and some music playing all at the same time with no slowdown! I found this impressive. They showed all four apps running side by side and all of them were running smoothly. It got a little choppy when they were trying to open each app, but hey, this would even be impressive on a desktop PC! Of course, it being a tablet I still won’t buy it. That, and BlackBerry is quite lacking in apps compared to other platforms. But still, a very competitive product RIM has here.

Phones I Might Get: Droid Bionic or HTC Thunderbolt

First of all, I’d like to mention that these aren’t the only two phones I would buy that were at CES. The other two that I’d consider are the Motorola Atrix 4G and the LG Optimus 2X. Both have Tegra 2, dual cores, 4G and great specs, but unfortunately both will be on AT&T. AT&T isn’t the best network here and with all the iPhones on the network slowing it down even more I doubt I’ll have a great experience. Which brings me to my next point, I might switch to Verizon.

I’ve heard good things from about Verizon from friends, co-workers and general opinions on the web. With the iPhone coming to Verizon, I’m a little worried about network bandwidth being eaten up, as I know a lot of iPhone users are only on AT&T simply because it was the only choice. But on to the actual phones. Both the Bionic and the Thunderbolt have 1GHz CPU’s… Which is plenty of speed now, but with 1.2Ghz CPU’s and dual cores coming out, I feel like by the end of the year I’d be behind. Having said that, the 1GHz in my Nexus one is incredibly quick and snappy and I don’t do a whole lot of gaming on it anyway. I still haven’t decided which of these two phones I’d like, so I guess I’ll have to wait until they are released and can get a hands on try.

One final note – the two carriers I was planning on switching to were Verizon and Sprint. I would have preferred Sprint, but the only new phone they introduced was basically a baby Evo 4G with a slide out keyboard. Not enough new stuff for me to really want to switch.

Anyway, here is some info and pictures on both the Droid Bionic and the HTC Thunderbolt. Both of which will be on Verizon’s 4G LTE network. Can’t wait!

Gaming in 2010

December 30th, 2010 No Comments

This year sucked for me, since I’m a PC gamer. There weren’t many games that came out that I really liked and very few will stick around for next year. I thought I’d mention some games (good and bad) and what I think of them. I was also going to write what I’d like to see to improve PC gaming, but I’ll put that in another post later as it would make this one too long. So, the games:

Bad Company 2

This game wasn’t so bad when it came out, I’ve forgotten it’s technical issues because they have mostly been fixed. It feels like this game has been around for a while but believe it or not, it came out early this year. For an FPS it lacks the smooth movement and controls that I’d like for a foot soldier, but vehicle combat is great. The DLC’s for this game were awful except for Vietnam which was worth the $15. The guns sound and feel better to use and the levels are well designed. The one thing that would sway me towards a more favourable opinion of this game would be if it had MOD support. It’s sad to see a Battlefield game without community content.

Civilization 5

I’d never played a Civ game before but my God I regret it. Civ 5 is very addictive and I found it surprisingly fun! It’s a complicated game but well worth putting in the effort to learn it.

Medal of Honor

This game will never be remembered for anything. It will be in the bargain bin at Gamestop one day and some kid will be say “they made a modern themed Medal of Honor?” This is an awful end to a great franchise, the game itself was pathetic. But at least we won’t remember it, since this game added nothing new to the genre, gaming or the series.

Call of Duty: Black Ops

This was another awful release this year. The stuttering issues that plagued it upon release was pathetic. It just goes to show how important testing really is. All of this could have been avoided if they had bothered to make a quality product that actually worked. Not only that, but it seemed only the PC version had issues which just proves that more developers are shunning the PC gaming community. Though I haven’t done my review of this game yet, here is a preview of what I’m going to say:

“Somehow managed to beat Medal of Honor as the worst game release for 2010. Another CoD console game clone for pubeless kids. I regret this purchase.”

This is yet another decent franchise Activision has managed to ruin and unless the next CoD game has a demo they won’t get a chance to get my money.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit

For me, this is the biggest pleasant surprise of the year. I was expecting another lame console game added to the series. Instead I got a fun arcade racer that goes back to the roots of the franchise. Social elements in games are quickly becoming a fad but it’s done so well in this game to breed competition and fun at the same time. If GT5 was delayed again, I would not have cared if I had this game.

Gran Turismo 5

Oh boy. The big question has been answered: was it worth it? Well, yes and no…

If you had something to feed your racing game addiction, especially if it was Forza 3 or Shift, you may find GT5 not as amazing as the development time would suggest. On the other hand, if this is all you’ve been waiting for and don’t know of anything else, the game is really good.

Don’t get me wrong, let me say to you, ditch the gamepad and get a wheel. The driving model is fantastic and definitely the best racing sim on any console. Because 90% of a racing game is the driving experience (in most cases, Forza 3 I would say 80ish) this game is still worth buying. Unfortunately the game doesn’t feel as polished as it ought to be.

What’s wrong with it? The AI sucks. There isn’t any. They are glued to a rail track. Your car is made of rubber and theirs is made of rock so if you hit them or vice versa, you bounce off them and maybe spin out. They don’t even notice you’re there.

The car list isn’t that great. Forza 3 and Shift have much more variety. GT5 is padded with Skylines and Vettes. Oh and no Porsche.

Whilst we’re on the subject of the cars, they only bothered to model about 20% of them as “premium” cars. That equates to about 200 out of the 1000+ in the game, which in my honest opinion is quite pathetic. The premium models look amazing, the standard models look okay, but when you pay close attention to detail you’ll notice they aren’t as of high quality. For a game where you’d be moving faster than running pace, you probably won’t notice it and it won’t bother you as much. The same applies to the track environments, but this is less important. Overall it won’t detract from the game experience, but considering the development time I’d ask for a higher standard. Graphics play quite a large role in realistic games as they help to make the experience more believable. I wish Polyphony Digital realised this.

Fallout New Vegas

This was basically Fallout 3 but with a different story, characters weapons and location… And it was brilliant! Fallout 3 was good and New Vegas was just as good, if not better. This was one of my favourite games this year.

Final Fantasy XIII

This was another surprise. I’ve never really played a Final Fantasy game properly before so this is kinda my first one. I actually liked it, it has a complex story and gameplay has a bit of a learning curve, but it teaches you in easy to digest stages. I’ve had a lot of fun with this game but I still haven’t finished it. I think it’s going to be a long game and right now I am playing GT5, but I can’t wait to get back into this game again and will definitely play through all of it.

Despite a few good games released, as a PC gamer and an FPS fan, I felt disappointed this year. Times are really tough when developers forget about PC gamers. There are a few games I am looking forward to next year but I’m still very skeptical, but here’s hoping that 2011 will spawn some games that I’d like.

Going To Review Black Ops Soon

November 24th, 2010 No Comments

I’ve been told to wait until they fix the technical issues that have plagued the game, but I think it’s been long enough and I feel like I should write a review. However, with GT5 arriving soon, I might get distracted, long enough to put off writing the review. I’m still affected by Black Ops “stuttering” problem.

Now, I don’t know if I should mention this in my review or not, it certainly has affected my enjoyment of the game so far, but I’m sure it will be fixed in the future. It’s so sad that games are released unfinished and untested these days. But I don’t think it’s fair, especially with the state of the economy right now that developers and publishers are almost stealing money from us! I’m amazed at how gaming websites like IGN and Gamespot can rate some of these awful games so high. Gametrailers.com, a site I usually trust gave Black Ops 9.3! It’s nowhere near worth a 9! Black Ops was truly the Windows Vista [Me/95/insert buggy Windows release here] of game releases.

With that said, my collectors edition GT5 has been shipped. I hope this game is more enjoyable than the other crap games that were released with year. Though looking at EA and Activision’s catalog, that won’t be hard to achieve.

Don’t Use Amazon’s Release Date Delivery If You Want Your Game Now!

November 9th, 2010 No Comments

As an Amazon Prime customer I get free release date delivery for preorders, I think it’s a perk for Prime customers. Anyway, don’t use it. It’s almost 4PM right now and I still haven’t got my copy of Black Ops. If I had bought it through Steam or Direct2Drive, or even walked into a Gamestop I could be playing right now. What a fail.

I Can Wait For GT5

October 24th, 2010 No Comments

If you don’t know already, Gran Turismo 5 (GT5) has been delayed once again. To fans and those looking forward to the game, this is old news. In fact, Polyphony Digital has delayed the release many times, reason being, they want to create the best possible experience. I can understand this, and quite frankly it’s a welcome approach, considering certain games that have been released recently.

Bad Company 2, Modern Warfare 2, Medal of Honor… All these games have one thing in common – they were released too early and they’re cookie cutter games. Generics. All of them have, when they were first released, had bugs that should have been fixed before release. Another thing they have in common – they made their projected release date. It seems that with any game being published by a large corporation such as EA or Activision, the developers are just trying to make the release date, instead of delivering a quality product.

Of course, I’m not asking for another Duke Nukem, though it’s unfair to say that, since the game isn’t even released yet. But I would rather wait for a quality release than something that’s released on time. So to Polyphony Digital, please try to ignore the upset fans, they’ll buy your game anyway, just make sure you deliver an excellent product.

Modern Warfare 2 Review

October 6th, 2010 No Comments

I know it’s been a year since this game came out, I’m only posting this because I also wrote this as a product review on Amazon. I also know that I’ve written a few things about it when it first came out, but now that I’ve put in over 700+ hours into the multiplayer alone, I think it’s fair to say I’m familiar with the game now. So here’s the review:

FPS games were made for the PC. If you go on any reputable gaming site and find a top 10 list of FPS games of all time, I guarantee the majority of the games will be made for PC. There is a reason for this – they have features in them that have been perfected over the years since the original Doom and Wolfenstein 3D. Over these years the FPS genre has evolved and standards have been set. These are like “unwritten rules” for FPS development. I can understand wanting change, after all, change can be good. For this reason, I must give IW (Infinity Ward, the developers of this game) some credit.

You see, they decided to experiment with Modern Warfare 2 and try to make it more like a console game. Before the game was released, many PC gamers rejected it because of lack of dedicated servers. Dedicated servers have been in FPS games forever and until home users can buy epically fast Internet connections there’s no reason to have games hosted on individual player’s computers/systems. This is why every FPS game has dedicated servers. Many PC gamers, via Twitter, forums etc tried to tell Infinity Ward this, but unfortunately they didn’t listen. As a result, 4 out of 5 games you get into whilst playing the multiplayer for this game, you will either experience lag or hackers or even both. If this game had dedicated servers, lag would significantly be reduced, servers admins would be able to ban cheaters. It’s also worth noting that this game uses VAC instead of PunkBuster. PunkBuster is a much better anti-cheat system when implemented properly. So thank you to Infinity Ward for reminding us that dedicated servers are better than peer to peer hosting. I hope other game developers learn from this.

If you do end up playing the multiplayer, the best way to get kills is to be as lame as possible. For example, the tubes. I wouldn’t mind tubes if the damage they did was reduced. It’s too easy too use them, hence why they are nicknamed “n00b tubes”. All you do is simply point in the direction of your enemy and click. You don’t need skill to use them. You don’t need skill to knife either. In many FPS games, the knife or similar melee attack is a backup weapon, for when you are in a pinch, can’t reload or have no ammo left. In Modern Warfare 2, it’s role is a primary weapon, which isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. Why spend time aiming for someone’s head, when you can just press one button and get an instant kill? This game does NOT reward skill at all!

The game is also somewhat schizophrenic in that it can’t decided if it wants to be a realistic military shooter or an arcade game. I realize it can be hard to strike a balance between realism and fun, but MW2 tries to mix two extremes together and fails. For example, for realism you’d hold your breath to steady your scope. This is fine, especially if the game was slower paced, but then it turns around and includes things like “perks”. Perks are similar to power ups, some enhance your weapons and others make you sprint for longer etc. Power ups belong in games like Quake 3, Unreal Tournament etc, not a realistic shooter.

Movement is also an essential part of the game. The movement feels clunky and it takes too long to do things. For example, if you swing your knife and then try to shoot, it takes forever to finally pull your gun back out and shoot. If you are new to FPS games, you probably won’t notice the delay, but it’s incredibly frustrating and pointless. It’s not real, it’s a game and it should feel like one. Another reason to believe this was made for console/casual gamers is that you have to climb over a wall. 99% of FPS gamers, unless they are severely disabled or are using a gamepad know how to crouch jump. I don’t need the game to tell me to press space, then put my gun away for two seconds whilst I have no control over my character as he climbs over a wall. I can jump myself!

There are so many things wrong with the multiplayer it would be too long to list them all here. There are (if only a few) good things about this game. The XP and leveling system is great. It rewards you trying out different weapons and items and this makes for a great way to learn your favorites. The weapons are also good too, each one has a different feel to them and they all have their own characteristics that make them unique. They also have many attachments which guarantee that you’ll find some combination’s you’ll like.

The singleplayer isn’t that great either. The singleplayer involves you getting from point A to B whilst the game spawns waves and waves and waves of enemies at you. The only way to stop this, is to find a break in the action, move up to the next point where, once again, the game will spawn more waves and waves and waves of enemies. This is mind numbingly repetitive and designed to impress little console kiddies with too much Kool-Aid in their system.

The Co-Op however is a slightly different story. It’s actually a lot of fun to go through it with a friend and is probably the better part of the game. It’s a shame there aren’t many more levels for this. Speaking of which, the add-on content isn’t great either. I don’t just mean the DLC (which you have to pay for, not worth it). I’m also referring to the lack of MOD support. It’s been almost a year since MW2 came out and already it’s going to be replaced by many (that can afford to, of course) by the next game in the series, Black Ops. Why will MW2 be boring and outdated in about a month’s time? Black Ops? New Medal of Honor? No. The reason is lack of MOD support or map making tools. This is one of the reasons games like Half Life, Counter Strike, Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament last longer than a year. These games are platforms for bedroom nerds and small game studios to experiment and bring something meaningful to the community. Instead, IW and Activision opted for a cash cow.

Considering everything I just said, if you are considering buying this game, my advice to you is don’t. There are much better games coming out soon and this game will soon be forgotten or regarded as “just another FPS”. You will NEVER see this game in a top 10 FPS games of all time list on ANY gaming site. Even as a fan of this genre, I’d have to give this game a 6.5/10.

Updated My Blog!

September 24th, 2010 No Comments

I’ve made some changes to my blog, some of which you will have noticed already! In the typical nerdy fashion I will list all the changes, so you don’t have to hunt

Portfolio page added!

FINALLY I have added my portfolio page! It only has two sites, including this blog, but at least it’s a start! This is probably the biggest change/update for me. As a side note and something I want to mention, that image gallery is made with something called “jQuery”. It’s a JavaScript library and the reason I’m mentioning it is because I wish I knew it. I wish I knew it because my teacher for class had a job opportunity that seemed interesting – a WordPress developer, but it required jQuery knowledge. So I looked it up and have found it’s quite simple to use! I’m hoping I don’t get distracted by anything so I can learn it.

Header/Logo changed

It’s not exactly flashy, but it’s better than just plain text! I’m not that great with Photoshop and I never think of any creative ideas This will have to do for now, but that’s not to say it looks really bad.

Twitter Feed in the sidebar

I’ve updated the Twitter feed in the sidebar to something that looks a little nicer. Again, this is made using jQuery! I’m really liking this language/library

I also intend to add a contact page and update the “About” page too, otherwise, that’s all for now.

Hello 2012

Evo 3D Review