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This week I have mostly been playing
Topic Started: Apr 2 2006, 06:11 PM (37,799 Views)
Retrovertigo
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Gears 3 looks amazing doesn't it. No screen tearing that I've seen, stable framerate, and some great detail on the characters when you see them up close during cut scenes. I'm a sucker for the whole "dude bro" game design, so it feels good to be playing the next in the series.

I'm still enjoying Dead Island but a couple of niggly problems are annoying. I'm still only around level 12-13 and find myself kicking zombies much more often than I take them out with weapons. Everything breaks a little too easily, or simply becomes no more effective than a good flying kick. And the second problem with having a leveling system in the game - it makes matchmaking difficult. Anyone who joins your game will either be under powered or over powered unless you are very lucky.

I have a couple of mates who have played it much more than me, and so if they join my game, they will take enemies out very easily (as enemies are locked to whatever level the host is) - or I would join their game and find myself too weak, and die almost instantly if attacked. It is a silly addition and the game didn't need it at all to be honest.

Looking forward to F1 2011hopefully arriving tomorrow. But if it ends up being buggy as fuck, I'll go shove it up someone's arse at codies. I shouldn't complain too much, as my aunt bought it for me for house sitting for them for a week. But still....I have standards man :)

Didn't know Ico HD was out.....this week??? - but that will definitely have to take a back seat as I have too much stuff to play. I also wanted to pick up Resi 4now the HD version is out on the 360, but it will also have to be put on the back burner.
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Retrovertigo
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Finished Gears 3 this evening and enjoyed every minute of it :) I seem to have lost my Gears 1 disc as I quite fancied going back and playing through them all back to back. Still have Gears 2 so may have to just play that one again instead.

Mr Diddly, you're more than welcome to join in on my next playthrough of 3 - just wanted to finish off the story tonight as I knew I was half an hour or so from the end and wanted to complete it solo as I'd played it alone from the start. I always like to play them twice though, ramping up the difficulty :)

I received my Onlive console today and was going to play a game on that, but the launch has been a bit of a fuck up to be honest. I'm not alone having set up the micro console and finding the pound offer for the first game has vanished. Getting hold of support is proving to be bloody difficult, and it seems many many people across the net are having the same issues. So not had a chance to try it yet. [/b]
Edited by Retrovertigo, Sep 28 2011, 10:14 PM.
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Diddly
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F1 2011 (360) - Haven't found any stupid bugs (apart from that rear end mechanic's jack glitch) and am really enjoying it. The online racing is amazing, but a bit too intense for these old bones. 3 laps and I'm a quivering wreck, with barely time to recover before the next race... Offline the wet lap 'Time Attack' at Monaco may be the end of me though...

Ico & Shadow of the Colossus HD (PS3) - I zoomed through Ico and loved it all over again, whilst simultaneously thinking "modern gamers won't get this at all, and won't tolerate the dodgy restart points and hours of lost gameplay". SotC is still one of the best/worst games I've ever played. An improved frame rate helps immensely but the aiming cursor for the bow blends in with the background, and the camera, at times, seems to just fuck with you for the fun of it. It is, at its heart just a series of boss battles with a fucking great environment sparsely populated with fruit, lizards, birds, fish and tortoises, only a few of which serve any purpose. And yet it's still utterly brilliant. I don't know what it is, but then, if I did I'd be rich.

4za demo (360) - Well... I was hugely underwhelmed by the Forza 3 demo but this I liked more, more accurate steering and a better in-car view, and a much better track (and variant of) to play on. The game still appears to be a bit at odds with itself at times looks-wise (I think I need to turn the brightness up on it, or the contrast down, and I haven't changed my TV's settings in ages for any game), but the showroom cars are easily on a par with GT5's and in-game they look superb too, with damage unlocked from the start - whooooooo! The "Rivals" things seems to be broken though, as it took me two laps to beat Juz's time and I beat another rival's time by a whopping 3.5 seconds, yet he's still ranked above me.

Battlefield 3 online Beta (360) - fuck me, this has got some of the glitchiest floor mats I've ever seen in any game (you can glitch 'underground' all over the place), but the gameplay is fantastic. Punchy weapons, amazing animation. Shame the demo map is so linear, hope all the new ones aren't like that.

Gears of War 3 (360) - played some more Horde/Beast/TDM/Capture the Leader etc. Jesus this game plays well online, a lot less frustrating than 2, and still has that option to set up any game mode with AI bots to familiarise yourself with the maps/weapons and spawn points. Amazing.
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Retrovertigo
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I've been playing a fair bit of F1 2011 and bugs are aplenty I'm afraid. Firstly the fucking pit stop bug is still there - that or very poor programming. I've gone into the pits in first place and sat and watched as countless cars come and go, while my lollipop man stands there like a fucking idiot and I've rejoined the race in 13,14,15th place :/ it is doubly annoying because the a.i cars zoom in and out of their pitboxes as close as you fancy.

Also there is a bug with DRS where you get the chance to use it despite the fact there are no cars ahead of you - that has happened to me a dozen times or so.

Finally there is a bug where if you set suspension stiffness to 11/11 for front and rear, the car starts to handle like it is glued to the track - this one in particular has been highlighted by many on the F1 forums.

All the above glitches/bugs are happening to many people along with a few others I forget. Considering they had 90% of the assets in place from last year, it is unforgivable. Oh and the freezes the game has............still fucking there.

Forza 4 demo mmmmm, not blown away to be honest. Feels nice enough to drive now, but lacks something still that GT5 has. GT5 a game that improved immeasurably with the many updates, and is in fact due a spec 2 update and DLC finally, late October.

Back to FM4 - the lighting. It looks fantastic in still shots, but in reality it has far too much contrast and blacks get crushed, losing all details, and the dashboards when using the cockpit cam are way too dark. Spoils what is otherwise a lovely looking game - but GT5 still reigns for sheer realism in the looks dept. Of course the flip side is that FM4 has no framerate drops and screen tearing :)
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Diddly
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Quick reminder to anyone who hasn't read about Rage's riiiiiiiiiiiiiiifuckingdiculous lack of checkpoints or autosaves but be sure to save manually EVERY single fucking time you achieve anything, or you'll be sorry.
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Retrovertigo
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Been playing some Crysis on the 360 - at £14.99 it would be rude not to. Plus, if you are like me and hunt around for bargains on MS points, it works out to be even cheaper.

To be honest, while I'm enjoying the game (despite stealthy bollocks not really being my thing) I don't quite see why this game garnered so much hype back in the day. I suppose a lot of it came from the visuals and the fact not many P.C's could run it well at the time - and so this whole aura built up around it.

It does look lovely on the 360 - but suffers horrendous LOD problems at times, just like Crysis 2 did. I was in a speedboat and as I headed toward a rock formation, it loaded in at least half a dozen variations until it finally settled on its final geometry. I know Cryenegine gets a lot of press for its visuals, but I think Modern Warfare (especially as it runs at 60fps) and what I have seen of Rage, blow cryengine 3 away.

Looking forward to Rage appearing today hopefully as well. Luckily I had already read about the saving issue and so had it drummed into my memory to remember to do it.

Edited by Retrovertigo, Oct 7 2011, 08:58 AM.
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Diddly
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Crysis looked completely amazing the first time I saw it running on PC, and no other game has managed to do such a convincing tropical environment before or since. It's kind of naive to even consider that what 3, 4? years down the line they suddenly have the ability to make it run on a console smoothly with no degradation, only a complete ninja rig would run it at the time anywhere near its best with full shadows and water effects. And for fucks sake, comparing Crysis with its large play areas, vehicles, vegetation and physics to Modern Warfare and its narrow linear corridors is like having a weeks shopping at Tescos and saying "it's not as 'crackery' as a Jacobs Cream Cracker" m8.

And you'll soon discover that Rage has its LOD problems ("Level Of Detail" in case ya don't know) too, as well as a few others that make the whole thing appear strangely dated. The environment is remarkably un-explorable, and given the scenario that's just plain daft, I was hoping for something akin to Red Faction Guerrilla, and got Borderlands meets Wacky Races instead. Rage is also strangely gore-free given the amount of killing, almost every FPS/TPS I've played since Gears 1 has had better gore effects than Rage-no wonder it's only a 15 certificate. Also, the enemies are superbly animated but I fucking HATE bodies dissolving quickly into the ground (and weapons too), I think it's

a) Fucking stupid gameplay-wise in a game that's makes you so reliant on ammo, and
b) Fucking lazy coding.

Rage has a very different look from what our Unreal engine-ified eyes are used to, and while it's smooth and at times stunning to look at, at others it all looks a bit too "PC" for my liking. I can also imagine Bethesda dreading a phone call from 2K's lawyers saying that they're suing on behalf of a certain Mr Borderlands, who wants his EVERYTHING back. Add textures, smooth the frame rate, improve the weapons and aiming and take the 4 fabulously different characters, the superb 4-player co-op and all the RPG XP bullcrap away and you have Borderlands 2011 RotY (Ripoff of the Year) Edition. At least it's more interesting than Fallasleep 3.
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Retrovertigo
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Well to counter your Modern Warfare sideswipe, there are countless other games on console with large environments more impressive than Crysis (on consoles). I think Halo Reach for one - big open areas, and certainly more stable graphically. Also Uncharted of course - or rather Uncharted 2 It is nice tech in Crysis, but to hear the devs talk about cryengine 3 you'd think they were running every effect going at 60fps. But there is a price to pay everywhere you look for having plants and shit :)
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Diddly
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You don't have to worry about the plants and shit slowing down Rage :-/ although what sparse vegetation there is moves as you walk through it, they're all of ancient-looking 2D 'always face you' type, except the ones you can actually collect for potions etc. I can't think why they didn't make this co-opable, it might have given it some legs. I'm already bored with it.
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Blakey
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Diddly
Oct 7 2011, 12:42 PM
You don't have to worry about the plants and shit slowing down Rage :-/ although what sparse vegetation there is moves as you walk through it, they're all of ancient-looking 2D 'always face you' type, except the ones you can actually collect for potions etc. I can't think why they didn't make this co-opable, it might have given it some legs. I'm already bored with it.
Ouch!

I stood in the shop for ages at lunchtime today with a copy of Rage in one hand and Dark Souls in another.

I plumped for Rage mainly because I have restricted gaming time and thought Dark Souls would be too testing.

Now thinking I made the wrong call :-/
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Juz
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I think I'll bung both in the rental queue!

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Diddly
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Just had what I expected to be a technically bulletproof game lock up too - as have a few other people I know, on the Mutant Bash TV game; the sound died (though not the menu sounds) and I could complete the game, shoot all the ugly little fuckers and exit, but then when loading the next location it locked up solid. :sigh:

Can't even blame a dirty disk or disk read error either as it's installed. FFS remember to save everywhere you can. I had a m8 play the preamble and get his first ride (a quadbike), take a wrong turn, get hit by a missile and have to "restart from checkpoint" which was the start of the game, intro and all! 20 minutes down the drain. :'(
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Retrovertigo
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I had F1 2011 lock up on me watching a replay. I had just finished the British G.P and watched a couple of laps of the replay and it completely froze on me. I had to switch my 360 off and on. Lost my progress of course and had to do the bloody race again. It is unacceptable for games to be shipping like this.
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Juz
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I tells thee: I keep hearing about the awesome atmos and whoppingness of Dark Souls, and start getting itchy for a purchase...and then I hear about the sheer bastardness of it and I get all scared :o

Any non-hardcore wusses on here playing it?
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Retrovertigo
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Wanted to have a dabble on Dark Souls as I was intrigued. But started reading on gaming forums about it, and seeing posts from guys who had played Demon Souls, and that the first thing they were planning to do was go into "newbies" games and fuck them over.

Online seems integral to the game and so I'd rather play it online. But not if sad twats are going to act like cunts and I can't get near them to give them a fucking good kicking.
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