New Features:

• Change language text within Drupal
  Within the admin screen of FPSS you can now add the language text for the slideshow within Drupal which is stored in variables. By default the module has the English text in. If you want the French text, then you will have to open up the french.php file and copy paste each item in to the form and save it.
• Change javascript location
  Within the admin screen as well as being able to turn off the javascript library and optimize the javascript you can now selected if you want the javascript to be inserted in to the footer of the page rather than the header. This is tested and works on a default Drupal installation of 5.12.

Fixes

• Optimize JS and Disable JS both work as expected now and any configuration of the 2 settings should work, although some javascript packages may conflict causing problems.
• Fixed the admin settings access, missing array item in hook_perm.

You can download the fpss for drupal module at the Google Code site and you can view the demo of the Front Page Slideshow for Drupal demo at http://drupal.jamestombs.co.uk.

If you have any problems or find any bugs please submit them on the FPSS for Drupal Issue Queue on the Google Code site. Alternatively leave a comment to this post or email at jtombs1987@gmail.com.

I have played it on PC and Xbox 360 and I would personally say PC is better.

Gameplay

The style of game is arcade, which surprised me as I was expecting a game to compete a bit more against GT5.  But that wasn’t too much of a problem as I prefer arcade driving games such as Need for Speed, although ProStreet was rather annoying.

I find the game is similar to Project Gotham Racing but only better looking.

A very nice feature of the game is something called flashback.  If you crash and write off your car you can use the flashback feature to rewind through the race and pick up from a certain point in which you can avoid the accident.  Not only is it a useful feature for when you crash but it is actually pretty good to use, it acts like replays do in any other game then you press the designated flashback button (F12 for PC, X for 360) and the game will carry on from that point.

Damage is also a very good feature which is a lot better than I thought it was going to be, which by itself puts it ahead of NFS:PS.

Another positive about the game which I haven’t seen used in any other game is in the profile system you can chose your firstname from a list so the computer can actually speak out your name rather than you having a set name like in NFS:PS or having name spoken out like in PGR.  All you do is type your firstname and surname in to the create profile screen and you are then given a list of names to chose from which will automatically select your firstname ready for confirmation if it is in the list.  The game contains male and female names as well as a list of nicknames.

Controls

I played both using the Xbox 360 controller and the controls just seemed a bit more responsive with the PC.  The plus side on the 360 is the fact that all the controls are on the controller.  Even if you use a controller on the PC you have to use the keyboard for some functions such as the flashbacks.

Graphics

Running on an E6750, 3GB ram, 8800GTS 320MB at 1920×1200 with AA set to MSAAx2 the fps stayed above 35fps at all times, staying around 40fps most of the time and graphically at this settings was better than the 360.  The 360 did look a lot better on the loading screens and menus though, I can only assume the PC version had a slightly degraded graphics for the menus and loading screens to make the game work on lower spec PCs.

The smoke from the tyres is very good though, a lot more impressive than NFS.

Conclusion

All in all I think GRID is a very good game.  Not a great game, but a good game. If you are tired of GTA IV or you don’t like GTA IV and no new good games come out then it is worth a purchase.

If you have a good PC with a wired 360 controller I would get the PC version, otherwise get the 360 version or if you don’t have a 360 and a shit PC, but have a PS3, get it for PS3. If you have none, don’t buy it…..

EDIT: I have found out that GameTrailers have done a side by side HD video of the GRID; PS3 vs Xbox 360.  From the video the graphics are almost identical, the only visible difference is that the PS3 colours seem to be a bit washed out in comparison to the 360 version.  You can watch the video here.

Source of image: Far Cry 2 Headquaters

Far Cry 2 is set in the savannah of Africa.  The Far Cry team has moved away from the jungle environment which we basically saw again in Crysis.  The weather is humid and green vegetation is rare in this vast openness.

At the demo we were told that the whole games playable area was 50x50km.  We supposingly only saw less than 1x1km in the demo.

The demo started off showing off some of the basics.  You are in the savannah, you carry 4 weapons, a primary weapon which is a shotgun/rifle or submachine gun, a secondary weapon such as a pistol, the 3rd weapon is a grenade launcher type weapon but we didn’t really see much of that.  The 4th weapon is a trusty machete.

Next we were shown how the wind affects a lot of the game.  You can pick up flame throwers and use them to burn vegetation and buildings, which will spread along vegetation in the direction of the wind.  You can see the direction of the wind by looking at the trees and vegetation and your compass that you have also shows you the wind direction.

At this point the game got in to a bit of action.  AI seemed a bit like the Crysis AI.  We were told they weren’t scripted and would do whatever they want, and that they did.  They didn’t really seem to care that the enemy was around until you started shooting them.

Another interesting point of this game was the way you get health.  You can pick up morphene from around villages etc which you need to inject yourself with when you get low on health.  If you die, you don’t really die.

In the game there are NPC that you can become friends with.  Once you befriend them, all you have to do is talk to them, they will come and assist you in a fight if you die.  Well you don’t really die.  The NPC will drag you away from the firing line and heal you.  You are now in a reasonably safe situation with no weapons apart from a machete and I think you get a pistol too.  If these friends die though, they don’t come back.  So it is best not to use them for fighting as they can be used to get equipment from them.

It was at this point that the guy playing actually did die.  So they had to restart the demo.  On the restart the game was flickering so they had to stop the demo there.

We went on to a short Q&A which revealed a few things.

The game will be released around August/September 2008.  The release will be on PS3, Xbox 360 and PC at the same time.

The level is designed to be seamless and should have no loading screens at all once in game.  Unlike Oblivion on the consoles which had loading screens.

At this point we were asked to leave while they reset all their equipment and to let the 200 waiting people in to view the demo to.

…those 200 people were actually around 30 or 40 max.

The first of many lie’s from the developers I am sure.

Far Cry 2 homepage

Graphics

With the release of the full game we are now able to crank the settings up although I still notice the lack of AA which Epic seems to have forgotten or kept out of the Unreal 3 engine. Although saying that, the game really doesn’t need it if it hasn’t got any but that would surprise me. I can only assume that it has some AA perhaps 2x or 4x turned on permanently and cannot be turned off.

With the demo we were restricted to only the low to medium textures but are now graced by the high textures with the full retail game hiding in the 7.87GB of game data.

Gameplay

Gameplay for me is pretty much identical to Unreal Tournament 2004 but with a little difference that I am unable to put my finger on.

Multiplayer of course is the main focus of the game with the following game types:

• Deathmatch
• Team Deathmatch
• Duel Deathmatch
• Capture the Flag
• Vehicle Capture the Flag
• Warfare

Deathmatch - Free-for-all deathmatch.

Team Deathmatch – Team-based deathmatch

Duel Deathmatch – A one-versus-one test of Deathmatch skill. Whoever wins the round will take on the next spectator watching the carnage.

Capture the Flag – Team-based capture the flag. Invade the opposing team’s base, grab their flag and bring it back to your own to obtain glory.

Vehicle Capture the Flag – Team-based capture the flag with vehicles. Invade the opposing team’s base, grab their flag and bring it back to your own to obtain glory.

Warfare – Link togetherNodes and destroy the enemy Core in this team based mode.

Warfare of course is the old Conquest game mode but has been renamed with a few changes. Warfare is basically Conquest and Assault mixed together, word is some of the maps are 3 times bigger than the old UT2K4 Onslaught maps. There is also an orb which can be used to instantly capture the enemy nodes.

Single Player Story

UT3 introduces a story in to the campaign mode that I quickly tried out. The story is started off with a pre rendered video which is basically a human town getting attacked by the Krall who are the Skaarj from 2K4 which involves the main character, Reaper (you), to get badly injured. You are then healed by another race and aim to fight back but the race that healed you wants to do some jobs for them, which then puts you in a ladder sort of system with battles against AI with your teammates Jester (Repear’s sister), Othello and Bishop.

Other Stuff

A nifty little extra that I wasn’t aware of was the ability to customize your character. You had the option in UT2K4 but it was pretty much limited to set models and gave you the ability to change the colour of it.

You are first asked to chose your faction then you have a choice to edit certain features of your character to adjust it’s physical look by changing the items from the categories which are facemask, helmet, goggles, torso, shoulder pads, arms, thighs and boots.

This is rendered in real time using the game engine which is cool as well as useful.

More extra’s can be unlocked through progression of the game so you can customize your character even further.

Conclusion

UT3 seems like a good buy on my early thoughts and can only hope that the multiplayer is as good as the single player and I am sure will tempt over the Unreal Tournament 2004 players if they have the hardware required to run the game at least at it’s medium settings.

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.

PC

After downloading the demo which was over 100MB bigger than the Xbox 360 counter part, it installed fairly quickly although it had to be extracted from a WinRAR archive which meant that the install time was greatly increased but file size was smaller than it would of been without it.

The game launches with the absolute minimum settings. Resolution is set to 640×480, all graphics settings are either off or on low. The audio setting is set to low rather than high. This also caused a problem with having the settings this low, the game started up extremely slowly and it wasn’t until I put all the settings to maximum that the game ran smoothly so I could actually race.

I first did the Speed Challenge, which is basically going as fast as you can through checkpoints every so often. This is situated on a rough road with cracks surrounded by dust and lots of metal poles (the poles play an important role on PC, I will explain later on).

Graphically the game looks very good, equal to it’s Xbox 360 counterpart at top settings. The 1 thing I did notice was that out of the 4 races that I did, only 1 race smoke came from my wheels. On the Xbox 360 every race started with a screen full of smoke with the brake lights just appearing through.

My first attempt at the Speed Challenge was actually on the Xbox 360, so this is more or less the problems with the PC over the Xbox 360.

First off, I tried with the keyboard. Not too bad, I finished the race and the car pretty much did what I told it to. So I plugged in my Xbox 360 controller to my PC, installed the latest drivers and the problems started.

I will state this first, I have never had a problem with any games on PC and the Xbox 360 controller. The first problem came from the menu system. Pressing up, resulted in going down, pressing down resulted in no response. I pressed every button on the controller only to find none of the buttons were assigned the button to select, so I wasn’t actually able to progress to the race from the menu without resorting the keyboard.

Once getting in to the race, I pressed A which is normally the button to continue, but turns out to be the back or escape button. To which I had to use my keyboard to get back to the race and actually start the race.

I was now at the race screen and reving up the car using the RT button like usual. Finally something worked. It wasn’t until I got to the first slight bend where I found a problem. The sensitivity was off the scale with no visible way to change it (although I didn’t look too hard, because I was already pretty pissed off with EA’s shitty development again). The handling felt arcady all of a sudden. A slight nudge on the analogue stick sent the car going across the road and I ended up drifing most of the race banging in to the metal poles (see I told you) that border the road more or less all the way. I eventually finished the race with my smashed up BMW M3 E92.

Before people start suggesting that it is in fact me that is a bad driver, I disagree. I finished the Speed Challenge without a scratch on the 360 on King level and got 1st place.

The second race that appears on the demo is the Grip Race. A lapped race around an inner city circuit. First across the line wins. Here you are driving the Nissan GT-R, nice car, but makes the race a bit too easy as it is much faster than the other cars in the race.

I didn’t finish a lap on Grip Race on the PC, I just couldn’t use the 360 controller on it. I haven’t got any other controllers to try on NFS ProStreet but I assume they may all suffer the same problem. The popularity of the 360 controller for PC should make it a priority for games developers especially ones that are doing driving games. Who on earth plays driving games with a keyboard?

EA need to pull their finger out and get cracking on the PC version of the game. I have pre-ordered Pro Street, but I have preordered for the Xbox 360 instead, and a wise investment it looks.

Xbox 360

Perfection. Well compared to the PC demo it is anyway. Zero slow downs on 1080p, graphics look the same as max on the PC demo with what looks like only 2xAA, but I may be wrong.  The handling is a lot more realistic and you don’t end up drifting round the tracks.

Conclusion

If you liked the PC one then I advise you to get the 360 version if you have a 360 of course. You will enjoy the game a lot more and there is nothing extra that you will achieve by getting the PC version whereas with the 360 version you will get achievements to make you feel better about yourself while your gamer score increases.

For those who haven’t played the demo yet, you can download it from GamersHell.

Mirrors:

• NFSUnlimited.net FTP 1
• NFSUnlimited.net FTP 2
• FileFront
• FilePlanet

Graphics

First off, the graphics. Crysis has been hyped so much purely due to it’s graphics, and after playing the demo I can see why.

This screenshot is taken on the High setting at 1920×1200 with 0xAA.

The game itself recommends Medium settings for my PC and I can see why. High settings definitely are not playable. Medium suffers slight slowdowns at points but it never seemed to do it through fire fights so my life wasn’t in danger.

My specifiations are so:

• Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 @ 3.2GHz
• 2GB PC6400 DDR2 @ 400MHz
• Nvidia 8800GTS 320MB
• Dell 2407WFP @ 1920×1200

Given the budget of just the PC itself excluding monitor you are looking around £700-800 new which isn’t bad considering it runs Crysis pretty smoothly at such a high resolution.

Gameplay

Well the gameplay is similar to most FPS in that you point your gun and shoot. You have the same sort of layout as Far Cry in the way you have small chapters with checkpoints in it. Although you are told to do certain objectives you can go about them your own way which gives you a little individuality about the game. In my opinion it is still very linear, but linear works so why not have a linear game?

Crysis does offer some neat little tricks that makes it differ from your standard FPS.

Nano Suit

The nano suit is with you from the start although it isn’t mentioned until a slight accident happens in the air when you parachute fails to deploy.

The nano suit is basically a high tech full body suit that integrates itself with the person wearing it and allows them to have special abilities.

• Armour
• Speed
• Strength
• Cloak

Armour is the default setting on the suit and I imagine like myself you will leave it on armour most of the time. Armour gives the suit some extra strength making your defenses against bullets higher. With armour set you also gain health.

Speed gives you insane speed. I haven’t actually used this in the game as a tactical advantage, the few times I did use it was because my car got shot at and the tyres burst so I had to run to the next checkpoint.

Strength increases your strength which means you punch extra hard and also allows you to make higher jumps. This is very useful and has to be used in the rocky environment to get past some large boulders and fallen trees.

Cloak hides your character for a short period of time so your enemies can’t see you. I found this ability the most useful out of the 3 non-default ones as I was able to more or less plant frag grenades at the enemies feet although once the grenade is down they can see the grenade and you are most likely visible as the cloak runs out very quickly.

Weapon Customization

You have the ability to customize weapons on the go such as adding tactical sight, flashlight and silencer etc which is very helpful at times although I don’t like the way the game sort of pauses to allow you time to do it, it isn’t as realistic as it could be.

Breakable Trees

What you saw in the trailers and developer videos is true, you can shoot down trees. After a while you can use it to your advantage to make trees land on the enemy and get some good kills.

Story

Well the story starts off with you in an airplane getting a quick briefing from the regulatory black guy. A science team has gone missing on an Island belonging to North Korea and you are to get the team back. Unfortunately no one has heard from them except for a distress beacon from their boat which isn’t to be seen.

It is at this point that you are to parachute down to the Island with your team to rescue the team with your teammates. At this stage your parachute fails to deploy and you end up hurtling to the ground and in to the water.

You are then instructed to meet up with your team which seems to be scattered across the Island.

You soon find yourself in action against some North Koreans and this pretty much continues with different scenery around you until the story starts to unfold a bit more.

It appears the Koreans issued a complete evacuation of the Island and have locked it down.

Upon further investigation of the Island you find the boat of the science team up in the mountains which is frozen although the Island is nice and sunny…..

End of demo.

Final Thoughts

Overall I am impressed. The game can pause a little bit but that is to be expected with a demo release and early drivers which I am sure will be optimized as time goes on, we all know how good Nvidia are at delivering good driver packages. I am also sure the game will have it’s own patches too not soon after release to fix any problems that people may have, I don’t think EA will have much say patches wise, so I don’t think we should have the usual EA problems.

I think it is well worth the purchase. The demo has done what it should of, show what the game can do and to give you a taste of the story to want more.

I am eagerly waiting the release of the full game in November.

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.

This seems a bit pricey given the fact that most PC games retail for £34.99 in the high street. So I can only assume, the people that pre-ordered are paying for the demo and a small amount for the unlocked vehicle in the multiplayer. Does this mean that only people that pre-order the game through EA can go on servers that have a map with this vehicle on?  Who knows….

As for the price of the game, it can be bought cheaper from elsewhere:

I am not sure how CDWoW are able to offer it so cheap, but after previous experience with their shipping, I would rather pay a little more elsewhere at Play or DVD.co.uk.

The demo should be released worldwide and appear on good old GamersHell at some point mid-afternoon Saturday, although I wouldn’t hold your breathe.

The full game is slated for release on the 14th November but that will not be definite until the demo feedback has come back clear.

It would seem as though certain companies are either trying to improve their new games to remove as many bugs as possible by doing a public beta or saving money by skipping private beta testing.

Who has been the biggest winner?

Probably FilePlanet. They were offering beta keys to subscribers for Crysis. If you don’t know what Crysis is you have probably been living under a rock on the Isle of Man for the past 2 years or so. The beta keys were only available to FilePlanet subscribers which meant you had to pay a subscription fee. A lot of people signed up to FilePlanet purely to get their hands on the beta of Crysis. Crysis has been so overhyped gamers are willing to pay for a beta release of a game. I am sure these will be the same people that complain in a months time that the game costs too much.

Is it so hard to wait 2 months for the whole game to come out? Or even 1 month for the demo which is out on the 26th October, 2 days from now. The demo was supposed to be out last month but was held back a month, I assume this was because EA can pile more shit, I mean a working beta of the game on to users machines while getting a tidy sum from FilePlanet I am sure.

There was also a mysterious release of Unreal Tournament 3 (UT3). With all due respect you either release a beta or a demo. What the fuck is a beta demo supposed to be? Is it a demo that isn’t quite ready to be released? Or is beta supposed to make it seem more exclusive, although under the name it is just a demo. Eitherway UT3 was extremely impressive, it held on to Unreal Tournament 2004 perfectly and has increased the graphics alot.

For those that don’t know; UT3 was released with medium quality textures. Texture levels 3,4 and 5 are all the same. I found it oddly amusing that gamers were ecstatic about playing this new super game on max settings as smooth as medium settings.

The third game that I have seen released lately in a public beta was BlackSite: Area 51. This game hasn’t had as much press, mainly because of Halo 3, Orange Box, Crysis and Unreal Tournament 3 and the fact that after playing it for around 20 mins found out it is just another bog standard first person shooter. Unfortunately I have only had the mispleasure of playing the game on the Xbox 360 as I am sure it will get more advertising through the console market than the PC market.