I finally received my copy of Unreal Tournament 3 today from Play.com after waiting years for it’s release. And I must say I am impressed, more than I thought I would be.
Drupal Association Member
Nov200721
Are current FPS trends ruining PC gaming?
With a large amount of first person shooters reaching stores around the world for the Winter sales, I can’t help but think that the vast majority of the current fps games are generic and all feel roughly the same. By genre they should be similar but they all seem to have that same soft of feel with none of the games really standing out because of it’s gameplay.
Of course some games are getting stark reviews for their graphics by reviewers. Most people will realise that I am refering to games such as Gears of War, Unreal Tournament 3, Timeshift and of course Crysis. Yes, these games are graphically stunning especially Crysis, but what I haven’t seen in the vast majority of reviews of these games is that they do take very high end equipment to run at a respectable speed the graphics options turned up. The most I see usually is a comment in the Cons section of the review which usually states ‘high end PC required for top graphics settings’. That is fair enough to a degree, but hardware from a year ago should be able to play games with a highish degree of playability with high settings, not max, but high.
Crysis which I will pick out on is the worst of the group I have listed. It is good looking, on high to very high settings. Now play Crysis on a 6-series or a 7-series Nvidia card and all of a sudden you are playing Crysis on medium settings with stuttering performance with a game that doesn’t really look all that much better than the current Source engine that Half Life 2 Episode 2 is running on.
How many of the current first person shooters have had you wanting to play more because of the gameplay? I have to say none of the above. Perhaps my taste in fps games is changing but the last game that I felt compelled to finish was Portal. It was genuinely interesting and humourous.
Crysis
Graphically stunning, but doesn’t have a lot over any other first person shooter except for the suit. The suit gives an actual reason for not dying from more than 2 shots from an enemy AK-47, although they are called something different in the game as it is from the future, yet the cars and boats seem to have been taken out of a 1998 catalogue. From what I have played of Crysis you don’t have a whole lot of freedom with the game. It is still linear like all other FPS’s but it has to be. Even Postal was linear with the jobs you had to do, but like Crysis you could go around and do other things inbetween.
Gears of War
On the Unreal 3 engine it does look good, but the feel just isn’t right for the PC. I played it on the 360 when it was first released and didn’t really like it, mainly due to the controls. But I find myself wishing I was using the 360 controller again as the game was somewhat easier to play.
The only thing that seperates Gears of War with any other FPS seems to be that it isn’t an FPS, but has similarities with all other FPS’s. Over the shoulder camera angle makes this game a nuisance and I would recommend it to be avoided unless you can rent it for the 360.
Unreal Tournament 3
A game that I have been looking forward to for years. But alas after playing the “beta demo” I was moderately impressed, but also dissappointed. The demo was released with only the low-medium textures, but even so the game did look incredible and one can only hope that AA is included in the graphics options for the full game which I should be recieving my copy very very soon, so yes that does mean I bought it. The game felt like 2004 with some nice shiney paint and polished to give that better look. The action is still fast paced and full of action, but it does seem darker, more evil… that is not to say that Unreal Tournament 2004 wasn’t a good game. Far from it. It was an excellent game and still has a huge fan base but Unreal Tournament 3 gives no extras except for graphics in my eyes.
TimeShift
Well the timeshifting ability seemed good at the start but after a while got very boring and was the only difference from all other games. The graphics were good and it ran OK, but was very linear and didn’t even give a feel of any freedom. Although saying that it ran very well on max settings with a medium-high end PC.
Call of Duty 4
A game I am genuinely interested in. I am now pretty much addicted to the multiplayer part of the game and have found the single player shortcut not being used. I have done the first couple of missions and the game seems to be what GRAW should have been but better and faster.
It seems Infinity Ward listened to the people that actually play the game rather than telling the gamers what they “want”. It was also good to see them release 2 patches with a couple of days within each other to try to make the game as fair as possible fixing a glitch in the game. Fair play to them, I believe it is a first I have said anything nice about IW.
Nov200704
Fifa 2008 – The woes continue
As well as the previous problems with Fifa 2008, the game continues to piss me off as I try to play it a bit more.
I tried, and that’s that. The game is not accurate at all and is inconsistent to say the least. The game seems to randomly decide whether players run through each other or tackle the other play, and when they do tackle the player there are only 2 outcomes. One being the player tackling falls over leaving the attacking player with the ball through on goal, the other being the playing tackling wins the ball but doesn’t control the ball because it would be too much to ask for him not to be a complete twat with 2 left feet.
Nov200703
Timeshift
Timeshift is a science fiction first person shooter for PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. The game has already been released for PC and Xbox but the release for Playstation 3 is scheduled for December.
Timeshift is not completely revolutionary but it is somewhat different to a lot of the generic FPS’s that have been coming out recently.
Nov200703
Need For Speed: Pro Street Demo Preview – PC vs Xbox 360
I have played the demo on both the Xbox 360 and the PC and without a doubt in my mind the Xbox 360 version is a hell of a lot better.
Read the rest of this entry »
Oct200728
FIFA 08 – Dear O Dear
This is not a review as I haven’t played any of the other recent FIFA titles or played any Pro Evolution Soccer either. This is more of my nightmare playing FIFA 08.
The list pretty much grows everytime I play it, and I guess I should stop playing it but I played for it so I should play it and enjoy not that that has ever happened in my 5 hours or so of playing FIFA 08 since receiving the game.
I will start off with actual in game problems that I have constantly.
Oct200727
Crysis Demo Review
Right, this is my first review so I will type it up how I like to read reviews. If you don’t care about all the minor details skip to the end for my conclusive opinion.
Oct200726
Crysis Demo Fiasco
Well EA know how to screw with people don’t they.
The long awaited demo for Crysis was set to be released today with no information saying otherwise.
Many are aware that the demo was due out on the 26th September but was held back a month, with no reason given. There were beta releases through EA and FilePlanet during that time, so they were either trying to get the game up to demo standard as they were still running behind or they wanted to squeeze money out of gamers by using hype to get them to sign up to FilePlanet.
But that was a month ago. EA announced that gamers would see the Crysis demo on the 26th October. It turns out that this was purely for those that pre-ordered the game through the EA Store. If you bought the game through the EA Store you get to play the demo 24 hours before everyone else. The price in the EA Store in the UK is £34.99.
Recent comments