Herbert1405241469

Another annoyance is the fact that, unlike the GTA series or even the Elder Scrolls series Oblivion, etc, you can't keep playing when you beat the main mission... Granted, you 're tired of playing by the time you get to that point, but still, it would be nice if someone modded a way to let you get back into the game after the credits just because you have everything unlocked and you'd be able to keep playing with all your firepower, rather than having to start over and watch that long-*bottom* into cinematic...Multiplayer is probably dying as well, I haven't played it since I got GTA 4 and now Fallout 3. Great game, but many bugs that discourages a fulfilling gameplay experience..

Well, I've had my eye on Fallout 3 for a couple months now... Made by Bethesda, makers of Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, Fallout 3 just looked awesome. I saw some gameplay footage, though, and it looked to be combat more like Knights of the Old Republic, and I just wasn't in the mood for that sort of combat... (Playing it, I've learned that it's not what I thought it was).So I picked up Far Cry 2 instead, because I just thought it had more to offer.... Well Far Cry 2 was a disappointment in the "gore" department, because there were no bullet wounds or anything of that nature (no limbs being blown off of people, etc...)... Decent game and fun experience, but eventually got boring. Then I picked up Grand Theft Auto 4, which I am still working on beating, and I'm having a blast (both literally and figuratively ha) with the game... But last night I went to Best Buy and decided to go get Fallout 3. I've heard good things about it, and I'm finally back in the RPG/FPS mood again.Most people generalize this game as "Oblivion with Guns set after the apocalypse," which is a fair generalization... I even recognize some of the old voice actors from Oblivion making appearances as characters in the Fallout world, which is sort of odd, hearing an old guy in Washington D.C. speaking with the same voice as the Guard from medieval Anvil :rolleyes:First impressions... I've been playing this game for about 4-6 hours now, and first impressions are a hell of a lot better than any of the abovementioned games. The game does not have a long, annoying set of videos you are forced to watch each time the game starts... The graphics can be set on HIGH and there are no performance issues. The game runs smooth and actually feels like they TESTED it before they launched it. Graphics are very good, as are sounds. The controls are smooth and feel right. Some games, you have to screw around with the mouse sensitivity for an hour before it feels right, where this game just gets it right out of the box.Gameplay... I must say, this is the first time I was there at the birth of my character... The game starts off right after being born from your mother, and your dad is a doctor delivering you. everything is in first person, and you don't actually see anything "nasty" in that scene, so no worries there! He starts talking to you and this is where you enter your character's name, and some basic character info. The game progresses by a series of instances where it fast forwards to parts of your life where you add in more character data as you play. First scene is you at 1 year old walking for the first time, where you pick out personality and traits... Then later it goes to your 10th birthday where you interact with several characters you are growing up with... Then 16 for your occupational job testing, and finally 19 when the game picks up as where you will continue to play out.Your character lives in Vault 101. People who are born in the vault, die in the vault. No one ever enters or leaves. You were born there, and you will die there.... Well if that were true, this game would be awfully short, eh? hehe. So without spoiling the sequence of events, you get to leave the vault, into the wastelands that are post-apocalyptic Washington D.C.Seeing the world for the first time is breathtaking. The game developers were strategic in putting the entrance to vault 101 up on a hill so when you leave, you get a grand look at the landscape and ruins below. My computer didn't even flinch, the FPS was high and there was no lag. Thank you Bethesda for actually OPTIMIZING your game!! It's sad how GTA 4 couldn't have done this, as it would have made it just that much better.Moving around, your only objective is to head to a town to learn about where your dad went, who apparently left the vault right before you. Here you will feel like you are back in Oblivion, as character interaction and side-quests develop almost as soon as you enter a "town" which is just a crater in the ground with makeshift houses made from old decommissioned airplanes. Voice acting is all very well done. The "Karma" system is somewhat ... I don't know. It reminds me of light side, dark side points you get from Knights of the Old Republic, but it's not just the way you talk to people and the choices you make, it comes down to taking karma away if you steal something or hack a computer instead of doing a side quest... Every choice you make has consequences... Now I usually always start out with the "nice guy" character, going for good points... So when I hacked a computer to find out info from a "tavern" owner, instead of completing one of his stupid quests, I lost karma points... Not a lot, but the idea just irked me because the guy was basically blackmailing me and being a ****.I guess the ending you get depends on your karma and other end-game choices... So it'll be interesting to see how that plays out. I hear the game itself is much better than actually getting to the ending, so I will have to keep you updated as to if the ending is worth playing the game... I hate it when you get a kickass game, that gets ruined by a crappy ending... Sort of puts a damper on the whole thing.Overall a good game experience, so if you liked Oblivion you will have a good feeling as to what to expect.

Despite all of the bad first impressions, I am still playing GTA 4. Under all the controversy about DRM and whatnot, they have once again succeeded in creating a GTA Universe that you really can dig yourself deep into. It's amazing how much detail they really did put into this game, right down to a parody of CraigsList you can look around in PC net cafes. Dialog and cut scenes are superb. Niko is definitely my favorite protagonist in the GTA series. I can really relate to him and how he handles situations. If you play violently and run over hobos, his attitude makes him come out looking like an ice cold bastard.... Where if you play by avoiding crime and do your best to be "good," his same attitude can be interpreted as less harsh... It's hard to explain :PSan Andreas used to be my favorite but now GTA 4 is definitely top on my list. I've tried a bit of multiplayer, and it's a rich experience, though I wish there was voice chat built in... I haven't seen it yet. But I guess if I wanted teamwork, I'll go play Left 4 Dead :rolleyes:The only bad thing still that I am experiencing is the computer hangups after playing for awhile... I have my Nvidia control panel set to "Performance" quality, so the anti-aliasing is off and the quality is lower, but I get a better framerate... But once I start driving around the city, my computer seems to run out of ram and switches to the hard drive's page file, as it keeps accessing the hard drive after a certain point. I know quad core processors are supposed to be best for this game, but I have my e6850 Core 2 Duo @3ghz, overclocked it to 3.2ghz. It helped a little, but my real bottleneck is probably the ram because it's cheaper. Still, it shouldn't bog down after being perfect in the start... I'm thinking some sort of memory leak where it isn't unloading old stuff I'm not near and whatnot... I dunno, either way I need a motherboard upgrade!

Ok, well I was definitely overrun by spyware and trojans, I completely wiped my hard drive and installed Windows Vista (I had been running XP before).After a clean install, and updated everything, I installed GTA 4 again, only then realizing that I didn't have my savegames, and had to start the game from the beginning. At least now I'm cruising through it much faster now, but it's still annoying to have to go through all the little tutorial missions again.Several things to note. Installing it again, I am not getting trojan warnings from my antivirus, so I'm hoping that was all a major coincidence.... But I'm taking nothing for granted.Second, the game is less buggy in Vista. In XP, sometimes it didn't show me how much ammo I had in my gun, and car damage wasn't great. It seems that a lot of little bugs have been worked out.I have been experiencing a stutter as I play for an hour but I think that's due to using all my ram and starting to use the page file which is much slower. I really need to upgrade that :\Overall a much smoother experience, though the game could be optimized just a bit more...Other notes, the voice acting is great.

I've purchased all of the PC games the Grand Theft Auto series since the first Sprite-based one was released. Every time they released a new one, it was better than the one before it. Vice City introduced motorcycles, San Andreas was massive, and you could swim.... Now with the latest and hottest GTA game just released for the PC (FINALLY!) I was expecting no less than perfection... The box art shows very clearly that they updated the crappy low-poly models they used to use, and now the characters have a next-gen look to them, which is awesome. The car's damage systems are much more accurate and realistic looking.... Liberty City is dense and rich with a feeling of life... And they screwed it all up.Yes, I did play the game, but I forgot to mention all the crap I had to go through to get to that point. First off, the biggest complaint that everyone has about this game is the inclusion of DRM in the form of SecuROM. Now, I've never really had any trouble with this before, since I do not run any virtual drives or Daemon Tools type programs... I purchase all my games and don't use cracks or anything since they crack down so hard nowadays and I don't feel like getting caught up in that BS.Well, I heard the same crap about DRM for Far Cry 2, and I bought it and had no problems installing it or anything... But they did something... different, or maybe Far Cry 2 didn't have SecuROM or whatever, but the fact of the matter is once I had the game installed, and registered an account for Windows LIVE, and registered an account for ROCKSTAR Social Club (yeah, they make you register to play if you want to save your freaking game)...Once I log into Windows LIVE, I start getting tons of warnings from my antivirus (I have both Symantec, and AVAST, and both were going crazy with TROJANS). YES that's right. TROJANS. MALWARE. I don't know if it's Rockstar's Club program, or Windows LIVE, but someone figured out how to either hack it, or *gasp* the game publishers are trying to install trojan horse files on our computers.OK, trojan files aside, my antivirus blocks them. SO I attempt to log into my Rockstar Club account, and PLAY the game I just purchased for $50, and BOOM, I get some sort of Fatal Error. I looked this error up online and apparently, Rockstar is having problems with their servers... Which means that MULTIPLAYER IS UNAVAILABLE. I can log into my Windows LIVE account to save my game and play single player, but then I get trojan horse alerts from AVAST.So after an hour or so, I finally get the game running (though now my computer takes twice as long to boot up).The game itself... Well here's the thing. They have better visuals, but the graphics suck in terms of anti-aliasing... Stuff that is far away is pixilated, rather than blended in a way to make it look nicer. I can run Far Cry 2 and Crysis with no problem on the higher settings (Far Cry 2 I had maxed with no frame rate loss) but GTA IV just doesn't seem as optimized. I get a lower framerate than I'd like, but meh, moving on to gameplay.Gameplay... Controls are different than what they've used in the past. I can no longer bind the ENTER key, which I don't use WASD, I use the arrow keys, so I always use the ENTER key to enter vehicles... But not anymore, I have to hit F or something, which totally ruins the flow. Speaking of driving, they also seem to have gotten rid of the follow camera... Now, you have to constantly have one hand on the mouse in order to rotate it around the camera or else when you turn, you will be looking at the side of your car, rather than in front of you.... It's a pain in the *bottom* to get used to, but not bad. Cars feel very light and hard to maneuver. I can't make a quick turn without having to use the hand brake, and it just seems a lot touchier than I remember San Andreas being... It's just not quite... right.The game has a tutorial system that after an hour and a half of playing is still giving me tips, just because the game is really that big. Dating is now a lot more involved. I went on a first date with a girl I met in-game, and for bowling, you actually have a bowling mini-game that takes up about 5 minutes... Sheesh. I would skip dating altogether for the time investment, but they unlock guns and bombs and useful things like that if you get to know them better. The female models are a hell of an improvement over their older GTA counterparts! They still put red and blue stars over nipples so you'll see boobs, but no nips. Which is odd, because it leads back to the argument of how weird America is about nudity versus violence and swearing... You hear the word "f*ck" on the radio, from characters, on TV (YES you can watch TV now haha, Rockstar humor has never been better!!!)Yet they get flack if they show low-res nipples in the game. They do push the envelope whenever they can though..... Just going to the bowling alley, you'll notice the two bowling balls next to the pin representing a certain male organ. Anyway, still playing.Right now I say hold off on buying the game, just because there is so much **** attached to it. It's sad, because people will buy the console versions to avoid the SecuROM... which will decrease PC Sales, which is probably what they want to do since Consoles are easier to program for.... meaning the Death of the PC market The whole thing stinks of conspiracy.Definitely do not buy it on Steam. For the same price, buying it in the store, you get the manuals filled with Rockstar humor, along with a giant map and poster in the case that you probably don't get by downloading it through Steam. I mean if you're going to pay $50 for a game, why not get a box and manual to put it in, eh?

I never understood what the big deal was with Resident Evil... The first one for PS had horrible voice acting and choppy graphics (which was the norm for the time, but still...)It was only when they came out with the on-the-rails Wii game Umbrella Chronicles when I could play it more as it was meant to be played, in tight corridors in First Person... Even Resident Evil 4 with the more intuitive over the shoulder camera is awkward with the Wiimote in most cases, and the voice acting still lacks in most cases.With Left 4 Dead, you not only deal with hoards of undead, but you get to do it with a team of strangers (as you play online, you'll get to play with people you've never met, enhancing the experience) making it feel more like you're actually in a zombie movie... Each of the characters has something like a hundred random lines of conversation, and the voice acting is superb. It's gorey and limbs explode as they should, and the environments are creepy as hell. The pace of the game is perfect where you are walking along, listening for sound cues letting you know what's ahead, and then having a swarm of undead running straight at you full speed... And then it dies off again so you have time to refocus.There are people who like RE, and people who don't... I think RE and L4D are mutually exclusive, as they are set apart for different gameplay and camera and controls and whatnot... People that like RE are generally console gamers, where people who play HL2 and traditional PC FPS games will like Left 4 Dead. It's hard to aim right with a console in this type of game, but it's beautiful in the PC.One other thing I'd like to add... Moving the mouse isn't jittery... I don't know how to explain it. Like Far Cry 2, I had to turn off blur and adjust the mouse sensitivity to make it so I didn't get sick to play it, but Left 4 Dead's mouse movement is sleek and smooth. They did a great job of polishing the game...But it just goes to show you how differently 2 games can be welcomed depending on the final polished feel of a game... Far Cry 2 had MUCH MORE varied gameplay, and features... But Left 4 Dead just FEELS better to play, thanks to a lack of annoying bugs, stupid annoying gameplay mechanics, or anything else that detracts from feeling like you're in the game.

Finished the game tonight... I don't know how I feel. The overall game experience and game world was very engrossing, yet as people have been complaining, it does get repetitive. I was glad to be finished with the game, and will now probably shelve it, as the multiplayer isn't really holding my interest as much as Left 4 Dead is right now. I'm sure I'll go back to it eventually. I like the weapons and want to increase my rank online, but I've had enough for now.The ending *(no spoilers)* wasn't great. All the choices you make throughout the game basically bottlenecks you into one ending no matter what you do. You can take 2 actions at the end, but they result in the exact same cutscene, which isn't long enough to make up for the length of the game... Then they treat us to a text-based epilogue, which reminded me of how frustrating old NES games were when you actually managed to beat one that took you months, and were thanked by a crappy text based ending.They (the game developers) tried very hard, but somehow it just missed the mark. It promised much and it delivered on most, but they left out some cool gameplay elements that they should have put back in (or created in the first place) such as more stealth... Because once an enemy spots you, pretty much the whole camp knows where you are.Overall I'd say wait to pick up this title till the price dips below $30, as you will get at least 30 hours gameplay out of it, though it's not as satisfying to beat as it should have been.

I agree, the game was ahead of its time. I still hope for the day when someone can successfully port it and even System Shock 2 into more modern game engines.People had started, but most total conversion mods fail due to lack of time and manpower on the part of the modders.It's sad that Hollywood can remake movies over and over, yet we can't get remakes of these classic games

I was debating on whether or not to pick this game up yet, as I have not yet beaten Far Cry 2, but on a whim, I decided to go for it just because it's getting such positive feedback...Man, I wish I would have bought stock in Valve... They are great at finding a nitch, and owning the market on it with a quality product. ... Half Life and Half Life 2 set things in motion, but more recently with Portal, and now Left 4 Dead, I would assume that despite the crappy economy, these guys have no worries about staying in business!Left 4 Dead is a must have for anyone who has always wanted a FPS zombie shooter, bar none. Play "Stubbs the Zombie" and feel like something is lacking? Well let me tell you what it might have been.... The absolute rush of adrenaline your dead heart gets when pouncing on a helpless survivor, while ripping their chest apart. You can tell that Valve does extensive testing of their games... The only bugs I've encountered were some hangs, but no crashes, and that might have been due to an overheated Graphics Card.... Not only that, the GAMEPLAY is fine tuned to a point that you actually have no problems with the game... For example, Far Cry 2 has a multiplayer side, but everyone complains about it because it just doesn't feel polished. Left 4 Dead follows the same sort of gameplay mechanics that Battlefield 2 does, where there is no "single player" story mode, but rather a formula that can be applied more towards multiplayer, but also can be played alone if needed. The games actually have a "campaign" mode, which is a series of levels stitched together to form a small segment of a story... where you and 3 other people are escaping to an evacuation point. This can be a rooftop via helicopter, a river boat, etc. Gameplay is well paced, and zombies come out at you in waves, sort of like a building symphony where you'll have brief blowouts against a hoard, and then a moment of eerie silence as you regroup and rearm yourselves, and then more zombies... Graphics are well done, and zombie parts explode when you shoot them. The zombies themselves are exquisite, and well done. In losing all of your health, you don't die right away, you are stuck on the ground while you can still shoot, until another player picks you up. You can fall three times, but then it's fatal. By the time you die, things are usually pretty bad, and your team is soon to follow, and if you are DEAD then you can watch them in a third person camera following them, and you can see them either winning or getting killed. If you reach a safehouse (ie, level transition) players come back to life that had died.Sounds are a perfect 10. The zombies have creepy as hell voices and gurgle noises... The survivors have literally a hundred or so different sayings and you rarely hear the same thing twice, unless it's something standard like "RELOADING!" or "Cover me! I'm healing!" Type of things.In versus mode you can go online and actually play as a zombie, and work on killing the survivors. This reminds me of Perfect Dark's Counter-Op mode... which can be difficult as hell.Overall a great game so far. The only thing that is slightly disappointing is that there are no "unlockables" that i know of... There are "achievements" but since they also made this for the xbox360 AND PC, the PC gamers get screwed again, and really don't get anything for unlocking achievements.Overall well worth it. A fun game and I can't wait for people to start coming up with mods for it

Yeah, the game looks great in the trailers, but there's just something ...off about it? I don't know how to explain it. I still have to find time to go see the movie in the theater and read some reviews before I go ahead and see if this game is worth picking up.

Still playing Far Cry 2. It's been going well, though I've finished all the side missions available to me at this time, so I'm back on the main story, but sadly I don't feel like I'm getting any closer to my objective, to kill the arms dealer, the Jackal. With open world games like Oblivion and STALKER, you were playing the main mission, and always felt like you were getting closer to your goal, where Far Cry 2, it's all "Hey Merc, go blow this up and kill everyone." The only actual thing currently connecting me more to my objective are random tape recorders laying around that a reporter lost after making an interview with the infamous Jackal. The guy reminds me of the main guy in ... oh I think it was Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.... The guy has his own way of rationalizing why he's an arms dealer and just generally a philosopher with a touch of madness, which actually starts to make sense the more you hear him talk.Very much like the Heart of Darkness.Working in this world you make "buddies" which just is wrong connotation for this type of game... You have 1 main buddy that works with you on missions, and another one that will be available if you get majorly wounded (die) in battle that will pull you out to safety and watch your back. They can die at any time (if they are in the game world, if they are in a safehouse, you cannot draw a gun and kill them) and you can kill them in the field yourself if you're tired of them, but if you do that, you'll eventually have to find a new buddy, and there is a reputation/history you build everytime you work with a buddy, so I don't know if that affects the game later, but I'm sure you want a buddy to live as long as possible... I've heard things about the buddies, but didn't want to spoil it, so I'm trying to avoid any of that info till I beat the game.Sadly, I also hear that you don't have free play after you beat the game, which sucks because it means there will be no reason to keep playing if you don't keep the guns you unlocked :\ I'm hoping they release a mod or patch for that, as it takes too damn long to play the game as-is without beating it and basically having to start over.I've been playing more multiplayer. It's different, sometimes it takes a whole clip to kill a guy, which makes me think there are armor upgrades I haven't received yet. Playing on Ranked servers gets you diamonds that you can use to buy new guns and upgrades. The closest thing I can compare it to is Call of Duty 4, for run and gun gameplay. The game modes are rather boring, but the maps are high quality which make up for it.I'm still playing the game, which means it must be good. I'm having fun driving around and shooting up stuff, but I'm also getting to a point where I just want to beat the damn thing and be done with it. I'm weird like that, even if a game is somewhat sucky I will want to beat it just to have that closure at beating it.Not to say that this is a sucky game, actually it's very fun, but needs some more TLC and polishing.I see Fallout 3 is getting mixed reviews, so I don't feel as bad that I didn't go with that one instead. I need to do more reading.

From what I've heard, Far Cry 2 can be handled decently by older computers if you turn down the video options.Granted, you'll want to look into your system specs first, but consoles are always an option. I just hope they come up with some cool mods for the game. It needs some.They did release a patch, but only for minor bugs and nothing to do with respawn rates or anything the fans suggested

Ok, a couple of side notes I forgot to mention and new things I'd like to add. The new beta drivers from nVidia customized for this game work well. I now can turn everything onto the highest graphical settings with no stutters, and it's even more sleek looking than before. So definitely look into that. Here's a site that has the drivers: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Despite all the bad hype the game is getting, I really am having a lot of fun. I do hope they come out with mods or at least a decent patch. I just watched gameplay footage for Fallout 3, and saw all the gore and wished we could get that for farcry 2 Heads blowing off, etc. I mean come on! We need it! That's all for now, I will probably get in screen shots at some point, but I'm going on a business trip for a week so until then....

Far Cry 2.... I'd heard it was coming out, but never really followed it unless they had a video preview on ActionTrip... Well I was at Best Buy with my girlfriend and saw it, and did a quick search at the Verizon kiosk they had in there (connected to the internet) and saw it was getting really good reviews, so I picked it up.Never buy a game based on the reviews on Best Buy's website I'll start with the "bad news" first... This game doesn't bring to the table everything that was originally promised. They said everything was going to be highly destructable, and whatnot... basically Crysis but better. Well, in this review, you are going to see how it compares to Crysis as well as many other games. I'm not going to get into the DRM like everyone is complaining about. I've had no problems.Some good news before I begin... This game is FUN.On with the review:Getting home with my new game, I did another quick lookup on Amazon to see what other people said, and found that 99% of the people hate the game due to many different annoyances.... I will cover most of these.Let's cover graphics.:Graphics:Far Cry 2 is visually stunning with all the display options turned up on Ultra. Environmentally, the game makes you feel like you are right in the middle of Africa, to the forest areas to the dry sandy desert... there's never been a game that's done an environment like this before. The map is huge, and comparable to Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. Why is Far Cry 2 better? No loading when entering buildings... No loading at all unless you are using the "bus" or sleeping (or, of course, loading your savegame).... Yes, none of that annoying jitteryness, the game runs smoooth.Why is Far Cry 2 better than Crysis? I can run Far Cry 2 on full Ultra and my computer doesn't cry Seriously, of all things, I am most impressed by the fact that this game actually runs well on the PC. I picked up STALKER: Clear Sky and absolutely could NOT run it until I found tweaks online and turned off all the graphics.... Far Cry 2 runs great out of the box, and the view distance causes no slowdowns at all. Very steady framerate.:Audio:Far Cry 2 has excellent audio. The ambient bugs and wind and animal noises make you feel like you are there. The guns have distinct sounds and seem realistic and solid. The one thing I am not nuts about is the music. It seems like anytime you are spotted, the same fast paced music picks up and it is getting annoying... BUT if it weren't for that music, I would have been dead sooo many times just because you never hear them coming most of the time unless they shout out something (the enemies, that is). People say that there is something wrong with the voice acting being too fast, but I haven't really had that problem, or if I do, it's not noticable. Don't know what's up with that, but it's fine to me.:Gameplay:Ah, this is where the people start to complain. First off, the biggest complaint right now that I can see is the fact that guards respawn almost within minutes of killing everyone. You go in, wipe out an entire airfield, and you go back 2 minutes later (sometimes they spawned right in front of my eyes, which SUCKS) and the are all back like nothing happened. Nothing is permanent. Oblivion is better because if you drop a book on the ground, and go back there 20 days later, the book is still there (might not be totally realistic, but....). With Far Cry 2, you are basically just always on your toes because guards are constantly spawning around you... Even traveling on the road, a random patrol will come up from virtually nowhere and if you don't get out of the way, they will spot you and attack...Which leads to another thing... Other than the center city area, everyone and their grandmother is trying to kill you. It's like playing Hitman 2 while running, they must hate the sight of your character for some reason... Now with protected areas, I can understand shooting first and asking questions later, but it seems like in every town and checkpoint, they just want you dead, while leaving everyone else alone....Now I don't feel so bad about shooting people and stealing their cars... Yes, this game is like playing GTA in Africa haha. There are piece of crap cars parked all around that are free for the taking. Or if you're wandering in the desert and see a random patrol, you can snipe or otherwise kill the driver of a very nice Jeep and drive off with it. Damage of vehicles sucks. Rather than wonderful location based damage they had in Crysis or GTA or any other modern day game with cars, they have a general "health" of the vehicle, dictated by smoke coming out of the radiator... How do you fix your car? Go to the hood, and hit the action key to "wind it up" and it's as good as new... So you basically take a socket wrench and screw something, and suddenly the fact that you just smashed your new (stolen) jeep into a tree suddenly doesn't matter anymore!To be fair, that's more realistic than standing next to the vehicle with a wrench waving it in the air like in Battlefield 2, and having it get repaired, but I expected more from this game...Another thing that irks me is that there is no "gore" on people... When you shoot them, you see a cartoonish spray of blood, but no bullet wounds or cuts if you whack them with a machete :\As far as missions go... they follow suit of any Open World games, where you have the main mission you can follow, and also side quests.... The side quests remind me of the side quests from Assassin's Creed. There are many different types, but they are all the same... For instance: if you get a mission from a gun dealer, it's always to blow up a transport truck... That's it. It's in a different location, but it's always the same convoy you have to blow up. Likewise, if you go to these radio towers to get your mission, it's always an assassination of the same character model (a guy in a business suit... it's never different).One good thing is the way the map is set up, where you never take a pause to look at a map, but rather it comes up in your hand with a GPS location device. Really handy. The GPS comes with a green light that blinks when a suitcase of diamonds is nearby... There are something like 268 diamond cases in the game, so it's a bit like collecting the horseshoes in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Diamonds are the currency in the world, and are rather "rare." Each diamond briefcase has at least 1 or at most 3 diamonds in it. So for 7-10 cases you find, you can buy a gun, though there are guns all over the savanna. The difference, though, is that when you buy guns, they are brand new and not prone to breaking or locking up... When you steal an enemy gun, it's usually old and rusty, and prone to breaking... And after awhile it will literally explode on you and you'll have to find another one.Vehicles.... There are cars, military trucks, boats, and a glider from what I can see... The cars drive too much like remote controlled cars... If you brake, it comes to a stop instantly, rather than an actual car would.... They drive like they have no shocks installed when you're driving on rocky terrain. They have no location based damage... Overall, the vehicles could have been done a lot better.I haven't gotten far in the main mission yet. The first part is just a tutorial, and after you get to a point it basically lets you loose in the world to do whatever you want.I had a hell of a time getting on multiplayer...-----------------------------FOR PEOPLE HAVING TROUBLE GETTING ON MULTIPLAYER-----------------------------I would try connecting to a server and getting a "cannot join this server at this time. Please try again later." error... I found that I had virtual networking locations that were in My Network Places from installing VMWare, and also a second Network Local connection that I disabled.... To fix the multiplayer problems, eliminate all but 1 working internet connection. That's what solved it for me.Multiplayer is still something I think a lot of people are getting used to. It's similar to Call of Duty 4, but the spaces are more open, and it's cool that you can create and download custom maps.I have not yet tried a "Ranked" server yet, just because I hear you lose EXP. Points if you leave early before a round ends, but in playing regular servers, I have been kicked and booted each time where I would be totally screwed if I had been on a ranked server.Multiplayer is good. It will add to the replay value once I beat the game. The only downside though is that you don't permanently unlock special weapons... From what I can tell, if you quit and come back, none of your unlocked guns are saved, just EXP points if you are on a ranked server... I played several rounds on one server, and got a lot of EXP points, and they didn't count because it wasn't ranked *sigh* Good practice, but little motivation to play on anyone's server unless they have kickass custom maps. So here's the conclusion:PROs:-Massive gameworld that is fun to just walk around in-Lots of guns to play with-Beautiful scenery-Realistic, but fun and not over-done-Multiplayer adds replay valueCONs:-You can't destroy everything like they originally claimed-Guards respawn too fast-Multiplayer is broken if the computer setup is not PERFECTLY and takes some work to get on-No bullet wounds or slash wounds on enemies when you hit them-Hard to play stealthy, night is not dark enough, and enemies can see you if you can see themOverall I would say it's worth probably $39.99, but certainly it needs some heavy duty patches and fan mods to ship it into better shape.A lot of this stuff is just tweaking anyway... Like respawn rates and adding back in the ability to blow up trees. WTF, that's why PC versions are better. Once the game is out, we can MOD MOD MOD!

Hmm, my first experience must have been around the end of high school. Back then, most of my hardware wasn't recognized, and messing up on the installation meant starting from scratch because the monitor wasn't set at a supported resolution or wrong driver.Getting Ubuntu and its live CD, I think, has the potential to get Linux into the mainstream market, just because it's much more user friendly and awesome for its ease of installation and use

Sometimes we use slicing to make an email newsletter, though I'm starting to suspect that our clients aren't receiving it because the text to image ratio is causing spam filters to catch it :\Yes definitely go with CSS or PHP or some level like that. You'll have more fun learning it in the long run, and it will look better.

Could you provide more info as to what you are looking for and such? I'm sure more people would 'bite' if you had something in mind for them to go off of.

Does anyone have any idea when the PC version of GTA IV comes out?Sweet, I hadn't heard about the PC version having any multiplayer maps. I'm pretty psyched about it

Well, after getting pretty much stuck in Agroprom without health kits and surrounded by radioactive mutants and fire anomolies, I've decided to take a break from the game.Sadly I don't know when I'll be picking it back up, though I do want to see how it ends. This game is a hell of a lot harder than the first one, and there are moments that you are forced to get "robbed" so saving money for any reason is essentially futile unless you hold off from the main quest until you can afford that awesome suit or gun... So now I'm wandering around the Zone with a broken suit that provides 0 protection because I got "robbed" and now I can't pay someone to repair my suit :\Plus the mutants....Plus the fire...Yeah, life in the zone ain't no picnic haha.I've opted for dusting off my copy of Battlefield 2 and kicking *bottom* on a pistols only server

Well as far as story goes, video games are generally very liberal when it comes to adapting movies... Game makers often throw in "inspired" levels to make the gameplay last longer (there's no real market for a $50 game if it only lasts 1 and a half hours like its movie).There are some decent movie to game adaptations... Die Hard, for instance... Now the game engine wasn't the greatest, and some of the levels were kind of stupid, and the voice acting was so-so.... you know maybe it wasn't as great as I thought hahaha. But either way, I would say they did a decent job recreating the movie in a game as you can relive "moments" that stand out... Now if anyone were to re-do the game, I would hope they made it more free-form where you could literally crawl all over the building and do whatever you wanted (though they'd have to make it a stealth/shooter due to the fact that the Germans would tear you apart easily to prevent you from taking down the 12 of them in a half hour ;)It's the balance they need between making the game faithful to the movie, while adding in required gameplay that makes it enjoyable as a game itself. I think the reason why Goldeneye did so well for the N64 was because it gave you the objectives you needed to get through the level, while keeping close to the plot of the movie and having all the recognizable characters available.What is cool about Quantum of Solace is that they actually got the actors (the guy who plays bond) to actually use their faces in the game... which is always a good thing. I just don't like it when they can't get the right people and have "generic" heros that are "supposed" to be "that" guy I will have to see how the game gets reviewed before purchasing it. Story is mucho important to me, and hopefully they did a good job.Ah, one thing I remembered... Another problem with movie-games is that they are stuck being sooo darned linear, because they are stuck moving at the pace of the movie. That's another reason why Goldeneye did well, because the multiplayer characters and levels added a new dimension to the game, and tons of replayability. With Quantum of Solace, I do hope they have a way to motivate players to go through the solo campaign multiple times, as well as any additional "gimmicks" that make the game worth playing. I was never one for multiplayer in games, because I've always been a solo gamer by nature, but the best value I've ever gotten was Battlefield 2, just because I've clocked in over 128 hours in it in multiplayer.... And for $9.99 (or $30 if you get all the expansions) that's the best purchase I've ever made haha.Anyway, as far as the graphics flicker goes, try turning vsync OFF.... or see if the forums for the game have any tweaks available... Ugh, I love PC games over consoles, but I hate how we get shafted on poorly-optimized games... though the demo for Quantum of Solace seemed to play really well for me, so no complaints there ^.^.

I had no real noticable problems like this flicker thing you are talking about. Maybe your refresh rate needs to be adjusted. I know V-Sync gets rid of some flicker.What kind of graphics card do you have?

Just downloaded the demo for the newest James Bond game that's coming out soon. As the previous Bond installments on the PC have been not very good from what I could tell, I was enthusiastic to see that this new one looked very promising. The demo weighed in over 600 megs, and luckily didn't take long to download. Installed it and got the main menu, which featured Daniel Craig as Bond, and not some generic looking guy which has happened in the past when they couldn't get the licenses straightened out.Configured the controls, and just left the graphics at default.First impressions: the camera pans up on Bond standing in what appears to be a sewer. The models are very realistic, though there are some hard edges where they ought to be softer, like I couldn't see his eyeball because his lower eyelid area sort of outcropped and looked very odd, though the angle I was at, it sort of makes sense, but that just bugged me for some reason.The textures are done very well, as they should be for this generation of games. The frame rate was smooth, though I had to turn down the mouse sensitivity because it was WAYYY too fast. Overall the feel of the shooter reminded me very much of Timeshift for some reason.... Don't know why.Apparently the objective in this demo level is to chase some guy that killed an MI-6 agent... Which, I have to say personally, I hate chasing people through scripted and linear events... Because even though I shoot them very plainly, I am forced to keep moving and chasing them. As it was here. I distinctly put in half a dozen bullets into the guy from far away, but since the whole thing is very linear and scripted, I had to keep chasing him, and taking down random bad guys in the process... Though the level literally was 100% linear (a stretch of corridor very briefly opening up to a large area, though with only 1 exit directly ahead), the environment was very intense in a good way. Stuff is blowing up while you chase this guy, and when you do get to the area where it opens up, it lends itself for some strategic placement behind pillars where you can duck behind and switch from 1st person to 3rd person and shoot from behind cover... But to really get a good shot, you have to aim, which makes you vulnerable while doing so, but your shots are more accurate.The level itself probably took 5 minutes to run through, which surprised the hell out of me. Generally, demos are meant to showcase the novelty or highlights of the game, and/or show off the first level of the game to hook you into buying it.... What we got with this demo is like foreplay without the orgasm. You get to the end of one corridor and suddenly the demo is over and they show you a video with some clips from the upcoming game, which looks pretty sweet, though you don't really get to experience any of it.One thing that was sort of annoying was the controls. To switch weapons, they suggest the 1 and 2 buttons, and picking up new weapons is awkward since you're running at such a fast pace.I'd like to see what people say about this when it comes out. It's got a lot of promise, but the demo doesn't really show off what it can do...

I never liked First person shooters on a console (with the exception of Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, of course)I guess I am just used to using the mouse to fine tune my shots rather than getting a general location and having the game auto target for me Yes the single player was just a series of adrenaline rushes and not a whole ton of story, though there are MOMENTS in the game that just stick with you. But it's like a decent movie, I'm probably not going to play it again

Call of Duty 4 is definitely more fun to play online if you're into a fast paced FPS experience. I like the game modes available. There's the one where you can only die once and the last person standing wins... that REALLY makes peopel more careful, as they are no longer running and gunning, but rather trying to sneak and it gives the game a nice new spin... Also, head shots are a lot nicer... I know in Battlefield 2, you can stand there pumping a whole clip into someone and they either kill you first, or you barely kill them before you have to reload.Getting points in Battlefield 2 takes sooo much longer too. I mean the only unlocks you get are the guns, which is OK, but it takes for freaking ever to unlock a new gun after you've been playing for a long time with a high rank. The new guns you unlock do not balance out with how long it takes to unlock a new gun.OH well, it's two different games, and it's fun to play them both in their own right

I loved Vampire Bloodlines hehe. Thank God for modding communities to come out with some amazing things. Pirate of the Caribbean (bethesda software's game that came out right before the first POTC movie came out) was crap out of the box and buggy, but there are 200 meg mods around out there that make the game very kick *bottom* Back to Clear Sky... I found some tweaks to get the game running at a sweet framerate, though the graphics qualities are next to zero now because of it, but I'm an old school NES gamer, so bad graphics aren't really an issue if the game play is good.I finally made it out of the swamps after defeating a bunch of bandits.... and found myself in front of a military base as the objective icon indicated I should follow.... And it's literally pitch black, I can't see anything, and I have my flash light off so no one *supposedly* could see me (like in the original Stalker, you could hide very well in the dark if you were quiet and didn't show a light). Well next thing I hear is the loudspeaker system going off "STALKER DETECTED. OPEN FIRE" and this guy in a crows nest somewhere 200 meters away starts blasting me with a mounted machine gun, which seems to be able to blow right through trees.I spent about 20 minutes trying to figure out if there was some sort of pattern or certain trees I could duck behind, but I kept getting blown away, because if you get shot while running, you stop running, and are basically toast. I finally went onto Gamefaqs to figure out what the hell I was doing wrong and they basically said to turn around, and go back through the swamps, and enter the Cordon through another exit.... Ugh, what a waste of time.... SO I get through the other exit, and I find myself in VERY familiar territory, which is the same as the last game, the Cordon. But the guy I'm supposed to meet is beyond a bridge guarded by STALKERS who threaten to shoot if I try passing... I attempt at talking to one and get a quest to find a detector that he "threw into an anomaly" which is located in a highly radioactive location, and I have yet to find the damn thing.So I'm looking for breaks in the fence to get over to the other side to meet the guy, and literally am walking around for maybe 30 minutes before I finally talk to one of the guys who can take me over to his village for 100 dollars. Which I do, and finally meet the guy and go on with my new missions from there...Impressions to date... I am not disliking this game. So far it's been less horror-based, but that might just be because I haven't gotten too far into the missions. There is less of a feeling of "I'm alone in the world and fighting to survive" now that you can fight for specific factions and basically do grunt work for people and kill their enemies to gain their respect. I guess it's nice to have allies, though. Just getting used to it. I guess.It's rough being a merc instead of a STALKER. The STALKERS I have come to know and love in the first game are all jerks to me now because I am not one of them and have to gain their trust. It's weird seeing groups of people standing guard in places that other factions are guarding in the first STALKER game. It will be interesting to see where the story goes and how they tie it in to the game.I'd say at this point, unless you have a hell of a rig, hold off on this game for just a bit longer till either the price goes down, or they start coming out with hellofagood mods, because this game needs to be optimized one way or another. I miss not being able to have kickass lighting effects and whatnot. They'll probably come out with another patch that makes my savegames useless anyway, so I will just press on till the end. Which I will report on whether or not the ending / story sucks, because there's nothing worse than a kickass game with a crappy ending!