Reviews reviews http://forums.sporadic-mind.com/index.php Mon, 06 Sep 2010 18:47:50 +1000 15 Reviews http://forums.sporadic-mind.com/index.php Arma II http://forums.sporadic-mind.com/index.php?showtopic=10655

Does anyone else have any thoughts about this game? Maybe if someone gets the full game at some stage we could have a full review?]]> Wiggy Tony Fri, 26 Jun 2009 01:22:23 +1000 10655 Quake Live http://forums.sporadic-mind.com/index.php?showtopic=10638
First of all this isn't a review. I'll leave this to tony to do.

Quake Live, however is in an open to the public BETA currently. The game is awesome and by far the most fast paced shooter I've played in a long time.

I urge you guys to test it and try it it out, I've uploaded a few screenshots of what the site looks like, but haven't included any in game screenshots (I might add some later)..

http://forums.sporadic-mind.com/index.php?act=attach&type=post&id=37

http://forums.sporadic-mind.com/index.php?act=attach&type=post&id=38

http://forums.sporadic-mind.com/index.php?act=attach&type=post&id=39]]> Jason Jason Mon, 13 Apr 2009 16:01:40 +1000 10638 Burnout Paradise - The Ultimate Box http://forums.sporadic-mind.com/index.php?showtopic=10581 Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: Criterion Games
Internode Content: http://games.on.net/app/2149/Burnout_Paradise

The Review:
Background/First Impression:
As far as I know, Burnout has always been a console game. I have seen random videos of the game that looked quite entertaining but never paid much attention, as I generally dislike consoles. But when this ‘Ultimate Box’ edition of their latest installment, Burnout Paradise, made it to PC I was definitely intrigued. I got my hands on a copy to see what it was all about. I went in not expecting much; the Racing genre has been very disappointing of late on PC, with GRID being the only enjoyable racing game I have come across for a good 2 or 3 years now. Maybe the low expectations meant that any racing game of decent quality would be considered an epic, but Burnout Paradise was brilliant fun. It started off a bit dicey, the cars didn’t seem to handle quite right compared to other enjoyable racing games, seemed too dumbed down; press accelerate and as long as you generally point left or right in a corner you were good. This improved a fair bit as cars got more power, don’t get me wrong it never got to anything you’d consider a racing ‘simulator’ but after a while I realised this game wasn’t meant to be the ultimate racing experience. For me, it’s THE most relaxing and fun game I have ever played.

Gameplay:
Your start the game with a little introductory movie about Paradise City, the location, it gets a bit tedious but it only happens once and then you’re in the game. After this any new game information is ‘broadcast’ to you from a ‘DJ Atomica’ in a sort of radio setup. This works nicely, as you can keep cruising around while you’re essentially going through the tutorial of that particular facet of the game. Now the first thing I noticed about Burnout Paradise was the complete lack of storyline, the second thing I noticed was how much I didn’t care because in the end it’s a Racing game, it’s not meant to rely on storyline to lengthen the game, or to make the game enjoyable, The Racing should be enjoyable. If I think back on some of my favourite racing games like GRID, NFS: Porsche Unleashed and Sports Car GT it occurs to me that none of these games had any real storyline at all. You’re a driver and you drive cars and that’s about it and all the enjoyment in the game comes from enjoyable racing, cool cars and fast paced action. Burnout Paradise returns to this in excellent style. You start off with a given car in the ‘Junk Yard’ it’s all wrecked so you have to get it repaired. This is where you find out how simple all the game mechanics are.

In Burnout Paradise there’s no concept of money at all, it’s all rather arcadish and basically achievement based. If you want to fix your car you drive through a repair station and bam it’s done. There are also petrol stations that refill your ‘boost,’ which is basically NOS, and others that repaint your car random colours. When you advance to the next license you get a car and every so often after a few wins, a car will be ‘released’ onto the roads, and as your free roaming, if you see it, you can take it down and then it’s yours. Each car you get also has an upgraded version that can be attained by completing the stock cars ‘Burning Route’. You unlock races just by finding them, every intersection has some sort of race attached to it, just Burnout at the lights and away you go.

Races come in 4 styles; the first is your standard race other cars from where you are, to one of the 8 finishing points. A point of interest with the races; free-roam rules still apply, you can make your own way, take shortcuts and do what you like, this often ends in some thrilling endings when you meet up with the AI, it’s a small change but goes a long way to making races a bit more then ‘the boring bits I gotta do to get to better types.’ Then there’s Road Rage events, where you basically have a demo derby along the streets of Paradise City, the aim is to take down a certain amount of opposing cars, the amount is based on how many Road Rage’s you’ve done previously. A similar event is called ‘Marked Man’ where a whole host of heavy, fast, black cars try to take you down before you reach your goal. The final event is possibly the most entertaining, the stunt events. You have a set time to reach a score, doing jumps, breaking billboards, doing barrel rolls and the like. So as you can tell, some fun to be had right there, but wait, there’s more. There are a couple of free-roam events, one of which is called Road Rules. Each street has a record time, and you have to try to beat them all. Some can be done while cruising round, others require specific effort. On top of Road Rules you have Showtime, which is very, very unique. Basically you drive into a busy intersection or road and press the correct Key combination and you get flung into the traffic. The boost button bounces you, provided you have enough boost to keep going, and the basic goal is to take out as many cars as you can, with the aim of breaking the ‘cost of damage’ set for that road, much like Road Rules. Then you have your achievement based events, break through 400 shortcut gates, break 120 billboards and jump over 50 super jumps.

As you can see, the game is absolutely PACKED with things to do so the game stays entertaining and never seems overly repetitive. So from just two paragraphs on the lack of storyline and the events, the game already has a lot going for it and there’s still a fair few little things that I loved. For instances the crashes in the game; they’re brilliant, after playing it for 22 hours at this point; I still enjoy the crunching, rolling madness of it all. While participating in a Road Rage, get to a skinny bridge and its goes nuts, often with up to 8 cars getting smashed up, flying all over the place hitting pedestrian cars, jumps, other cars, the works. It really is mayhem, and incredibly enjoyable. Another enjoyable aspect is the heavy Catch Up in place for races. If you fall behind it is very easy to catch up, which is a definite MUST for a demo derby/stunt racing game such as Burnout Paradise, the control over AI like this often leads to thrilling finishes, where you meet them back up after a bit of a detour or whatnot creating some enjoyable endings as mentioned above. The other interesting bit to Burnout Paradise is AI car choice. With games like NFS the opponents cars get better and better and you have to try keep up with them otherwise no amount of skill will help. In Burnout Paradise however, the opponents cars match up similarly to yours, if you pick a tough, slow car, the opponents cars reflect this choice, with other similar specced cars being used. This is great; it means you don’t have to use the upgraded car that you hate; you can use whatever you’re enjoying at the time and still remain competitive.

The only negative I can think of with the game, is the sometimes lacking Physics. The crashes all look great but it’s the handling that seems lacking, it seems a bit simple, even with the most unforgiving cars, it seems quite numbed down. At first this was the only thing I didn’t like about Burnout Paradise, but after playing it I don’t notice it anymore and I’m not sure whether improving this aspect of the game would actually improve the outcome, it may become too difficult or miss the point of what this game is trying to do. Some people may complain about the lack of selectable GPS, but finding your way to a particular event or place makes you learn the game world and this is important and beneficial so I think leaving that out was a good thing. In short, this game is a simple, relaxing incredibly entertaining racing game, you don’t have to pick the right car, you don’t have to upgrade cars, you don’t have to manage money, you just get in and enjoy some carnage and fast paced racing, its brilliant.

Once again, the last note with gameplay is the length, and I’m happy to report that finally it seems we have a game that is a decent length. I ‘finished’ the game in about 15 hours, this was after obtaining my Burnout license, the credits rolled and that was the end of the official game, but after this it keeps going, you have an Elite Burnout license to obtain, tonnes of Road Rules to complete, Showtime events and lots of achievements to get, so far I’ve played the game for 22 hours and am planning on heading back in to play some more once I’ve finished with this review. Also note that this is without any Multiplayer gaming either which could add on a sizeable amount of game time. All-in-all a very solid game play experience.

Controls:
Burnout Paradise was ported over from the console version and often this creates problems with PC control, whether it be with a Board and Mouse or a game controller, but Criterion seems to have done an excellent job on porting this game, as the control is perfect. I didn’t play for long on the Board and Mouse but it seemed fine to me, the keys were not what I was used to but it was easy to change and it all worked fine. The majority of the game I used my Logitech Rumblepad 2 which worked great with the game. I had to change the buttons as the defaults were designed for an X-Box 360 controller but they were easy to change. A notable positive with controllers is the multitude of customisation; you can setup dead zones, sensitivities and change force feedback and vibration levels, a lot of options not found on console ports so a big plus to Criterion for setting the PC version up properly, it all handles brilliantly.

Graphics:
One of the problems I have with the newer Need for Speeds, is all the emphasis on graphics. Yes it has to look good, but there is no need for a racing game to look like Crysis, it’s not what it’s about. The preference for a racing game is game play, not graphics and so when I play a racing game, like some of the new Need for Speeds, that is laggy and stuttery I hate it. It seems to be a running theme in this review, but Burnout Paradise nailed this department as well. The game does look good, quite good, and the crashes are excellent, with brilliant damage effects, but more importantly the game runs like a dream. I’ve played most of it on my Lan computer which only has a 3.2Ghz E4600 and a 320Mb 8800 GTS and its never dropped below 60. I play with everything maxed except AA and feel no need to turn AA on; it’s quite a clean looking game. The only thing left to comment on is the lack of motion blur, thank you Criterion for realising that gamers, for some strange reason, WANT to see where they’re going and leaving this option out completely. Obviously you can always turn it off when it’s included, but it’s nice when it just works. One thing I just realised while writing this, once in the game world you never face a loading screen, it spends 30 seconds loading your game initially and that’s it. I didn’t even notice stuttering while it was loading other bits, very impressive, as most open world games like this either use loading screens at certain points or have noticeable stuttering while the game loads up the next area, to be so fluid with such a large sandbox world is a great achievement and is very nice for the gamer.

Minimum System Requirements:
OS: Windows XP/Vista
Processor: Pentium 4 @ 2.8 GHz (3.2 GHz for Vista)
Memory: 1 GB (1.5 GB for Vista)
Hard Drive: 4 GB Free
Video Memory: 128 MB (Shader Model 3.0+)
As you can see, the requirements are quite low, running on most computers out there today. This is good, racing games shouldn’t need top end hardware, leave that to FPS’s, racing games should be like MMO’s; everyone should be able to run them.

Audio:
The game sounds pretty good. The soundtrack is very good, a lot of popular songs in there, something recent NFS’s have lacked, and of course Paradise City by Guns ‘N’ Roses makes an appearance. The song can be changed with a simple Button/Keypress, which is excellent, enabling you to skip the bad songs or the songs that don’t fit at that time. You can also disable songs from playing permanently in the options menu, so a thumbs up with the background music. Car sounds are equally as good, each car sounds like you would imagine it, some deep and throaty and other high and whiny, the sound is detailed and adds a lot to the atmosphere or ‘coolness’ of the game. There’s not much else to the sound in this game, there are some random ambient noises for pedestrian cars but nothing special, so essentially you got some great songs for background music and some real nice car sounds, sounds good to me, no pun intended.

Multiplayer:
Unfortunately I haven’t been able to play multiplayer of this game, I borrowed my version from a friend and so have only been able to play singleplayer but am hoping to get my own copy soon to give this a test. It seems excellent with most elements form singeplayer available in multiplayer, the only difference is your racing against real opponents.

Stability/Bugs:
There’s not much to say under this bit except it’s very stable, never crashed on me through 22 hours of playing. There aren’t any bugs I can think of, I had a slight problem that I have detailed below under the advice section, but this wasn’t something the game did wrong.

Gameplay: – 9/10 – Sitting here, the only thing I can really fault with the gameplay is the basic handling, while I don’t want a simulator, something that felt like GTA 4 would make it perfect, apart from this though its exactly what a racing game should be, it’s relaxing and fun and the only racing game that comes close in the past 2 or 3 years is GRID.
Controls: – 10/10 – Criterion did an excellent job of porting the control system to PC, there’s nothing I can fault, using the keyboard works fine, changing controls is easing and using the controller is even better, all the options you need to set it up right and the game handles well.
Graphics: – 10/10 – I’m not giving it a 10 because it’s the best looking game I’ve ever seen but because it’s the best combination of graphics and flawless performance I’ve seen since GRID. For a racing game performance comes into play a lot more than in most genre’s and so the fact it runs so flawlessly with absolutely no loading screens or stutter is amazing.
Audio: – 9/10 – There’s nothing really wrong with the audio, but there’s nothing overly special either, the soundtrack is good and the cars sound good but nothing stands out all that much.

My Score: 90/100 - An almost perfect attempt at what it’s trying to do, technically its almost perfect but in the end it’s still a racing game, its meant for some relaxing and cool cars and fast paced racing, it’s not meant to have a whole heap of substance and so while great it’s not going to top an engaging immersive game like Half-Life 2 or FEAR.



Bug Solutions/Game Advice:
I generally include a few solutions to bugs I’ve encountered in my reviews but for anyone trying to find it shuffling through the entire review might be a hassle so here it all is in short easy to find points:

Controller Problem
When I moved my profile to my Lan computer to take to my girlfriend’s, I found the controller would just not work. This was due to some weird configuration settings brought over from my home computer. In the end I got it working by deleting all files except for the Save folder and GameData folder, this kept my save games but enabled the game to reconfigure the rest and fixed the controller problem right up.

General Advice
With pretty much every game out there I turn VSync off, I find that in most games it does funny things to the smoothness of the game, nothing to do with lag, it can be at 60, but the mouse feels a bit laggy and whatnot. I have not been able to figure out why this happens, it may just be me, but if you are having any trouble with smoothness or a laggy mouse or anything, see if that helps.

My Screenshots (MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS): http://www.xfire.com/screenshots/thetones2301/
My Videos (MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS): http://www.xfire.com/profile/thetones2301/videos/

Other Reviews by Me:
FEAR 2 – Project Origin - http://games.on.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=187&t=161364
Mirrors Edge - http://games.on.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=187&t=159994
James Bond - Quantum Of Solace - http://games.on.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=187&t=159988
Rise Of The Argonauts - http://games.on.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=188&t=159627]]> Tony Tony Wed, 04 Mar 2009 23:40:02 +1100 10581 FEAR 2 - Project Origin http://forums.sporadic-mind.com/index.php?showtopic=10580 Producer: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
Developer: Monolith Productions
Internode Content: http://games.on.net/app/2756/F.E.A.R._2_Project_Origin

The Review:
Background/First Impression:
As with many, many gamers out there Friday the 13th was a day to look forward to for me, the release of FEAR 2 - Project Origin. I was a lover of the original FEAR, with a play count of about 5-6 times it’s probably one of my favourite First Person Shooter’s of all time. I loved it all, the gameplay, the graphics, but most of all, the mysterious creepy plot, and thus FEAR 2 was a chance to enjoy some more awesome slow-mo moments, to goggle at gorgeous lighting and particle effects and to finally get some answers on this whole Alma business. Obviously then as soon as that demo hit the web I grabbed it as fast as possible, and that’s where my FEAR 2 experience started. So after hastily setting up the game I cranked through the FEAR 2 demo in what seemed like seconds and came out with a whole heap of positives and a few negatives as well, but so as not to ruin the full game I removed the demo and never played or saw anything to do with the game again. Until I got my own copy, played the first level on my portable LAN computer and thought ‘Wow, I cannot wait to play this more’ and that feeling never really went away, and here we are. So on with the review.

Gameplay:
The gameplay of FEAR 1 was exceptional in my eyes; enjoyable battles, interesting weaponry, fluid combat, challenging AI, the works, so FEAR 2 had a lot to live up to, but this already creates a problem. The initial comparison any gamer will make to this game isn’t to your average FPS, or even to your good enjoyable FPS, it is to FEAR, one of THE best FPS’s made. So this meant that FEAR 2 had a huge handicap to begin with, a lot of hype, lots of expectation, lots of people waiting on this game for a few years now, and in the end after all the positives and negatives have been weighed up, FEAR 2 prevails.

The first game play element you notice in FEAR 2 is the big one, the fear, the scary moments, the intense immersive atmosphere that makes your heart pound and your brain start fearing for its own life. Initially, FEAR 2 delivers in this department, I don’t want to give too much away but the first few levels deliver a very intense scary experience, with one particular moment in mind. Then after a while, it seems to lose it, just a touch. Feels like you’ve done it all before. Now don’t get me wrong there are plenty of intense rooms and scary hallways but it suffers from what I often think of as the Half Life Episode syndrome. Basically because the originals were so successful (Half-Life 2 and FEAR) they were played many times and so the sequels (Episode 1/2 and FEAR 2) have a very limited amount of new things to learn or experience, you know it all, you’ve been through it all. So while the scares and the intense moments are very good and very enjoyable, they don’t have that unique, never done before feel. This being said, on my second play-through the scariness and heart pounding moments are still there. You have to concentrate and think about what’s coming up to not be scared by it, and even then it still gets you a bit, and so often you get sucked back into the game world and it’s like you’re playing for the first time, something pops up or something makes a noise and you jump almost as high and your heart pumps almost as fast, and this in my opinion is a huge accomplishment by Monolith. Unlike my experience with FEAR 1, FEAR 2 continues to be intense after multiple play throughs, which is brilliant.

The next element of FEAR that made it so amazing was the great plot, the mystery; the barely revealing phone messages and the post game think on what could actually be going on. This is all present in a similar way in FEAR 2 although phone messages and the intel laptops aren’t used anymore. All the bonus storyline information is told to you via ‘hidden’ intel drops, which get added to your PDA for you to read on the spot and afterwards. Initially I was a bit disappointed in this, it seemed like a shortcut, a cheap and easy way to convey additional plot information and while that may be true, once getting to the end of the game, you realise it was a good choice because it enabled Monolith to plant many, many more bonus storyline bits then with phone messages. This was great, a lot more information to absorb, and with each one the plot is slightly revealed but slightly thickened as well. Another problem I had with the intel was that it seemed to give information away too easily. While it was great to have a lot of your FEAR 1 questions answered, it seemed to lose a lot of the mystery, but once again as you continue, you realise this is just to get a certain part of the storyline out of the way, to continue on with the deeper more interesting part (although this may differ based on your point of view). The storyline in FEAR 2 isn’t really as good as in FEAR 1, it seems lacking in points and seems to disappear a bit during the mid-game, intel turns a lot more to combat help and less about storyline progression. The storyline finishes well though and so while not quite up to FEAR 1 standards, it’s still very well done. In summary then, this part of FEAR 2 suffers from its direct comparison to FEAR 1, but after the initial negative evaluation, you realise that it’s rarely worse, just different, and this in itself makes it a success to me.

The differences don’t just end with the storyline, but are also noticeable in the combat of FEAR 2. You initially find out that there is no lean anymore, but then you find out that you can knock over things to create cover. Some may prefer one or the other, but that’s not really the point, the important thing to note is that in changing it Monolith has forced us gamers to re-master that part of the game, you can’t sit there and repeat the same tricks from FEAR 1, they have mixed it up a bit and that makes it good, regardless of your preference to lean or cover. The choice of a limited cover system seemed a mistake initially as well, but it encourages some rushing and rampaging and this is where most of the fun is in FEAR 2 combat. Running in after a shock grenade and wiping out entire teams, sprinting out of cover to vaporize (literally) unsuspecting enemies with a shotgun and so on. FEAR 1 seemed to emphasis cover a bit more, especially with the exorbitant about of damage taken at higher levels, but FEAR 2 seems to get you into the carnage more, which is definitely a benefit, and on the note of carnage, the weapons. In short, they are great, all very enjoyable, and all effective in their own way; there are some nostalgic favourites, and some interesting new power weapons. In the end, specifics don’t matter, the guns are great and they all have their uses, and you don’t need much more than that. One of the nicest additions to combat in FEAR 2 is grenade ‘cooking’. For those unfamiliar, cooking a grenade is pulling the pin and holding it for a few seconds so that once released it explodes a lot faster, catching enemies unawares. Again and again I used this feature and again and again I enjoyed the increased destruction enabled by cooking it. It was great, just another way they increased the mayhem and carnage in FEAR 2. The grenade selection has changed also, sticky bombs are out, but a couple of newbie’s are in which easily make up for it. The Slow-mo is obviously still in the game, but nothing special here, a bit of the same old, same old, which is odd considering the comparably vast changes in other aspects to the game. When you think about it though sticking with the slow-mo setup was probably for the best, as there was nothing much you could improve, it was great fun, looked awesome and was easy to execute so still a thumbs up on that one.

Many other things have changed in FEAR 2, health is handled differently, enemies are more advanced, gameplay effects (things like ghost effects, alma ownage, vision blurs etc..) have undergone a huge upgrade and look excellent, guns feel more natural and seem far more enjoyable and I’m sure there’s more I’ve missed. In summary, the gameplay is excellent, its different to FEAR 1, sometimes better, sometimes just different, but rarely worse, which is a great achievement. Don’t forget that this is all just compared to FEAR 1, as I said above, one of the greats of the FPS genre, so when forgetting about FEAR 1 and comparing to other modern day FPS’s, the game comes out even better, a great storyline, very immersive gameplay, and in the end fluid, enjoyable carnage is always a great combat system and THEN you find out about the powered armour, but that one can be left as a nice surprise. tongue.gif

The last note, as always, on gameplay is the length. I finished FEAR 2 in 9 hours on Normal, and that’s about the maximum, that included exploring everywhere I could see, picking up and reading through all intel I could find, doing everything I possibly could to soak up the entire game. The next time, playing it through on hard took only 5 hours so still quite good considering all storyline elements are dodged as much as possible the second time round. The short time on the Hard play-through however brings up the only real negative with FEAR 2, the game isn’t difficult enough, they are missing the Extreme difficulty I enjoyed so much in FEAR 1 which is a pity, but the game is more about the story then a challenge so in the end not a huge problem.

Controls:
The first thought on controls would have to be a negative one, lack of support for extra mouse buttons is quite a big thing these days. Many people bind those to their favourite functions in almost every game, and with gaming mouses becoming so cheap and affordable, many people own one, with one or more extra buttons. So the lack of support for these is frustrating. I myself own a Logitech MX518 and so used the set point drivers to bind the mouse buttons to [ and ], then binding those to functions in the game allowed me to use the mouse buttons anyway but still an odd exclusion. After that shaky start it gets better, the aiming and control is very fluid, there are more commands to bind then FEAR 1 but not overly so, the defaults seemed a bit odd, but it’s not hard to change to your preference. The only special facet to note in this area is the weapon select menu. A very simple menu that pops up when the right key is pressed and you mouse over the grenades you want and the gun you want and let go. It seemed redundant as I never used it, Mouse Wheel for weapons and G for grenades seemed a lot easier, more importantly though it never got in the way, so a plus there.

Graphics:
Initially the graphics in FEAR 2 don’t seem overly special, there’s nothing incredibly flashy or ultra realistic about them. They are indeed very clean and look good but nothing special. Although as you play you notice things, the immense detail in everything, being able to read book spines for instance, and lots of detail in all the tiny objects lying around. Everything is done with very careful attention to detail, which I loved. The game on a whole looked great, guns all looked nice, reload animations were nice, all movement seemed fluid, the effects for ghosts and visions and whatnot were excellent. Calibrating your brightness before playing was a great move by Monolith, it meant the game was seen as it was meant to be, in the right lighting, or lack of. The particle effects are very noticeable, mainly because no other game seems to do it like Monolith, the bullet ricochets and such all look great. The one downside I noticed is the film grain. I hate film grain, I think it’s stupid and just covers over beautiful textures and a very clean game. Now in games like Left 4 Dead turning it off is an option, so that regardless of your preference you could make the game look how you wanted. This definitely should have been in FEAR 2 and it was disappoint to see you couldn’t turn it off. After looking on the net all I could find was some modded file, which was reported to reduce some screen effects. Initially I left this as I wanted the full game experience, and after playing the game through I barely noticed the film grain, it’s there but it’s very light, nothing like Left 4 Dead on default. After initially playing it through I applied the modded file I found and it cleared it up quite nice. It did look nicer, but wasn’t all that noticeable, in many instances I found it hard to notice any difference, so in the end not a huge deal, but there still should’ve been the option. Now, onto efficiency, and this is going to be very short because the game runs great. Can be maxed out 4xAA and all on my 8800 GTS 512/3.5GHz E6300 and barely lags. The one thing I’ve noticed is there is a bit of stuttering as new textures load mid-level, this comes from a CPU bottleneck when loading, it is significantly reduced on my girlfriends 4Ghz E8400 but it is still there. It never really caused any problems and was barely noticed as I continued on with the game.

System Requirements:
Minimum:
*CPU: P4 2.8GHz (3.2GHz Vista)/Athlon 64 3000+ (3200+ Vista)
*GPU: DX9-capable graphics card with 256MB (SM 2.0b). NVidia 6800 or ATI X700.
*RAM: 1GB (1.5GB Vista)
*Hard Drive: 12GB
*OS: Windows XP SP2/Vista SP1
*DirectX: 9.0c
*Sound: DX9.0c compliant

Recommended:
*CPU: Core 2 Duo 2.2GHz processor family/Athlon 64 X2 4400+ (required for MP host)
*GPU: Fully DX9-compliant graphics card with 512MB (SM 3.0). NVidia 8600 GTS or ATI HD 2900 XT.
*Ram: 1.5GB
*Hard Drive: 12GB
*OS: Windows XP SP3/Vista SP1
*DirectX: 9.0c
*Sound: DX9.0c compliant
The smoothness of FEAR 2 is backed up by the very lax system requirements; to be able to run on an old P4 2.8ghz with a 6800 is pretty good.

Audio:
The sound in the game is definitely up to the FEAR standard. They are the majority of the atmosphere, you turn it off and the game loses all immersion and all intensity. They are done very well and sound great. All sounds are planned well to be the as scary as possible and the music builds up the suspense incredibly well. Original FEAR 1 sounds are present, but in very small doses which is just perfect, a bit of nostalgia every now and then but not enough to ruin it, a perfect aural experience.

Multiplayer:
I can’t comment too much on this as I haven’t played it in multiplayer at all. It seems to have some sort of a ranking system and some interesting game modes, at this time I’m still wrapped up in the single player, I often prefer LAN play to online anyway so will report back after it has been given a beating at the next LAN.

Stability/Bugs:
The game is incredibly stable; flawless in fact, the game has not crashed to date. There are only two bugs I can think of. One is present in a section towards the end of the game, I walked through a door and ended up clipping into the ground eventually falling through to my death, I jumped the next time so don’t know if this is a consistent problem or not, either way its easily overcome. The second bug seems to be with audio. Instead of using the Windows Default device it always uses the previous sound device used, a way to overcome this is detailed below in the advice section. A final note; for some reason X-Fire in-game reduces performance in FEAR 2 quite badly, the amazing thing is how hard it is to notice as the game runs so nicely, but after investigating, the menus ran at 600fps with X-Fire in-game off and down to 80fps with it on, so if you having speed problems trying turning X-Fire in-game off.

Gameplay: – 9/10 – Exceptional gameplay, great storyline, great combat, very immersive, it does most things right, the only thing it lacks is a bit of originality (being a sequel) but this has been overcome more than in most sequels so a thumbs up there, it’s a decent length, if a little easy.
Controls: – 8/10 – Nothing special control wise, it is very smooth and aiming is acceleration/problem free, the only negative is the lack of mouse button binding, and the only positive is that new features never get in the way if they are not needed.
Graphics: – 9.5/10 – The only fault in this beautiful game is the Film Grain, you should be able to turn it off, it’s not a big deal and is barely noticeable in most bits, but it still should be in there.
Audio: – 10/10 – The sound in the game could not be more perfect, playing the FEAR 1 nostalgia perfectly and adding so much to the immersion and intensity of the entire game.
The Bottom-Line: – A great game, worth it for most gamers out there, especially so for the FEAR fans, it’s not perfect but gets closer than many games of late.
My Score: 95/100


Bug Solutions/Game Advice:
I generally include a few solutions to bugs I’ve encountered in my reviews but for anyone trying to find it shuffling through the entire review might be a hassle so here it all is in short easy to find points:

Lack Of Extra Mouse Button Support
I used Logitech Set Point drivers to bind my extra mouse buttons to [ and ], then binding these in-game allowed me to use them, this should be doable in most gaming mouse software, else there is a 3rd party app for all mouses that I’ve heard of, a simple google search should get you to that.

Film Grain
There exists a mod floating round that removes the film grain, it is reported to also reduce other screen effects but I never noticed it, it is recommended to only use after you’ve finished the initial campaign but you can use it initially at your own risk.

No Audio/Wrong Device
The only way to fix this is to disable the previously used device; it will then use the current system Default. On Vista it’s as easy as going into your ‘Playback Devices’ (accessible from your system tray volume icon) and pressing the right mouse button on the device FEAR 2 is currently using, pressing disable and off you go. On XP you must go into the device manager, go under ‘Sound, Video and Game Controllers’ section and disable the unneeded device.

Unusually Low Performance/Stuttering
Low performance might be caused by X-Fire in-game, disable that in your X-Fire games menu and it should speed up quite a bit. The stuttering is a bit harder to fix, easiest thing you can do is end all processes that may use CPU time, sidebars should go, object dock, Diskeeper service, as many third party applications as you can bear to play without, for me all that remains is Fraps. Also if it’s not done regularly, a defrag on your FEAR 2 drive might improve things as well.

General Advice
With pretty much every game out there I turn VSync off, I find that in most games it does funny things to the smoothness of the game, nothing to do with lag, it can be at 60, but the mouse feels a bit laggy and whatnot. I have not been able to figure out why this happens, it may just be me, but if you are having any trouble with smoothness or a laggy mouse or anything, see if that helps.

My Screenshots (MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS): http://www.xfire.com/screenshots/thetones2301/
My Videos (MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS): http://www.xfire.com/profile/thetones2301/videos/

Other Reviews by Me:
Rise Of The Argonauts - http://games.on.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=188&t=159627
James Bond - Quantum Of Solace - http://games.on.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=187&t=159988
Mirrors Edge - http://games.on.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=187&t=159994]]> Tony Tony Fri, 27 Feb 2009 23:53:20 +1100 10580 <![CDATA[Mirror's Edge]]> http://forums.sporadic-mind.com/index.php?showtopic=10576 Producer: Electronic Arts
Developer: EA Digital Illusions CE (DICE)
Internode Content: http://games.on.net/app/2621/Mirrors_Edge
More Screenshots: http://www.xfire.com/screenshots/thetones2301/

The Review:
First Impression:
After an hour or so of having this game installed on my computer I hadn’t done as much playing as one would have expected. This was due to a few bugs, which made my first impression a little annoyed and a little hesitant. The bugs are detailed below as a bit of help as well as a new section this game has inspired me to add but once these bugs had been resolved and I could purely enjoy the game I started to really enjoy Mirror’s Edge.

Gameplay:
The gameplay in Mirror’s Edge is rather odd; it feels unique but also ‘done before.’ It’s essentially a free roaming action adventure game, and initially it feels like a very futuristic Assassin’s Creed. Climb anything, jump on anything, as long as it’s with reach you can do it. This is what makes it feel ’done before’, I mean in the end if you want to be bored then Assassin’s Creed has already been made. But Mirror’s Edge has implemented this concept very differently and after finishing the game I have to say, rather successfully.
The first thing you notice is the first person view. This initially seems odd, as it’s never been the preferred view point for this sort of free-roam acrobatic game. But after playing Mirror’s Edge and thinking about it I don’t see why not. Sure things don’t look as cool when you do a fancy move, you can’t say wow that looked awesome because you never see it, but instead you get a more realistic perspective, one that immerses you in the game rather than trying to wow you. This works great, essentially they’ve gone for substance over style, which in the end is always a good option. Yes, you play Assassin’s Creed and initially think ‘kooooool’, and yes you initially play Mirror’s Edge and are struck by an overwhelming sense of averageness. But play the games for even just half an hour each and already the tables will have turned. You’ll all of a sudden get bored of Assassin’s Creed and realise that beyond hurling yourself over anything, what more does the game have? Maybe a few repetitive quests and an interesting story telling dynamic but that’s about it. You play Mirror’s Edge and you feel like you’re living it, you feel like your stomach actually did a full frontal flip, well as close as a game can get you anyways. Below is a screenshot halfway through a frontal roll, giving you some indication of how odd it looks, trying to make heads or tails of it when stopped is hard enough, let alone when playing, really gives you a first hand perspective. So while a seemingly small change it already does wonders to adding substance to this acrobatic free-roaming genre.

The next point doesn’t really hit you til you’ve finished the game, mainly because you’re enjoying the game and not pointing out all the things that annoy you. While there are plenty of expansive roof tops with multitudes of pathways to reach your intended destination, there are also lots of linear bits, plenty of interior areas where there is only one way out, so instead of just randomly running to a dot on your map you’re limited to one path and the game turns into a puzzle game. I entered a stage which reminded me much of Half Life 2, where you stand there thinking about what you could possibly do to get out of what seems like a tiny barren room or, thinking of a few HL 2 moments, into a tiny barred off room lol. This means that you don’t ever get bored of random paths as you do in Assassin’s Creed, there are so many ways to go that none of the ways challenge you and hence an element of action adventure has been lost right there. But on the other hand you’re not always restricted to this linear sequence of rooms and pathways. It’s very much a ‘Best of Both Worlds’ situation where you free-roam to a linear puzzle which leads to another free-roam, never lingering long enough to get sick of it. The screenshots below demonstrate this drastic change in free-roam world to linear, the first shows a massive free-roam roof top 'playground,' then you get a huge internal area where you have to reach the top and finally a tiny room where there's only one way out.

Every so often along this free-roam/linear puzzle ride you’ll be confronted by the ‘Blues,’ or essentially, the police. The interesting thing about these encounters is that you’re not a hardened veteran assassin, or a spontaneously tough courageous soldier you’re a fast nimble light on her feet oriental chick. This brings a very unique aspect to the combat, which comes in to varieties. Your first encounter is of the ‘Get the hell out of here’ variety (as see in the first screenshot below tongue.gif), where your clearly outnumbered and you just have to run, this is a subtle way of adding a time limit to your traveling, so you can’t sit there for ages figuring out a puzzle you have to think on your feet and get out of there. Then the second variety is where the ‘Blues’ are between you and your goal and you have to get through them. Now as a runner you don’t carry around weapons, just your fists and slick moves! You can steal weapons from the ‘Blues’ which you can then use to take out other ‘Blues’ but you only get one round of ammo so combat tends to be rather tactical, you’re weak so you have to plan your moves carefully. Both varieties of confrontation are enjoyable and they never really grow old.

One of the unexpected facets of Mirror’s Edge is that it’s completely story driven. Storyline wise there’s no freedom; you can’t go off doing side missions, you just follow the story wherever it takes you. You start the game getting trained by Celeste, a fellow runner, and during this process you find out that you had been injured and are just now getting back into this ‘running’ business. For the life of me I don’t know what these ‘runners’ do, they seem like a super-committed postal service, but with slightly more interesting cargo then Christmas Card’s and Cookies. To be honest you never really find out why they do it, you never really find out what they are delivering, all you really know is that for some reason the government is bad and all of a sudden they are hunting you down by any means necessary, and this is where we come to the games first fault. The storyline is awful. It never introduces anyone, you really don’t know what’s going on most of the time, so then you never watch any cut scenes and you know even less of what’s going on. It’s not like you’re missing out though because for some reason even though they have a very pretty graphics engine they decide to tell their story using basic ‘stylised’ anime cut scenes, and I think they look terrible. So without going into too much detail the storyline is dreadful, basically nonexistent, all you ever really know is that you’re sister got set up and you spend the entire game trying to fix up her dilemma. But to be honest that’s all you ever need to know, I found playing the game so fun, unique and immersive that I didn’t care, I just enjoyed it for its challenges and its gameplay.

This however brings me to Mirror’s Edge second problem; length. It took me less than 5 hours to finish this game and that’s just not a very long time. Albeit these day’s it seems that maybe that’s about standard. But nonetheless it feel’s short. There are some nice ‘multiplayerish’ features that lengthen the game; these are discussed below but all in all a short game.

Controls:
There are two aspects to the control’s of Mirror’s Edge, due to its console nature there’s a heavy emphasis on a controller, but then obviously keyboard and mouse has it fair share of setup and strangely enough the keyboard and mouse have no problems. I had a random glitch where installing Mirror’s Edge with my controller plugged in caused my mouse and keyboard to not function properly but once that was sorted I had no troubles with the default setup. The mouse control was nice, no smoothing or acceleration and the keyboard configuration seemed fine. There weren’t that many controls so this may have been a major reason why it worked so nicely. The controller support though, surprisingly enough for a console game, was pretty terrible. Given this is an action/adventure game, I initially started playing with my controller. It’s a Logitech Rumblepad, emulates the look and feel of a Playstation 2 controller and I have used it many times and it’s an excellent device. But I just couldn’t use it in Mirror’s Edge. Mirror’s Edge was all set up for an XBox 360 controller (as far as I could gather) which is all good, BUT when it came to setting up my controller it was messed up, buttons seemed unnatural, my forward/backward/strafe left/strafe right analogue pad was inversed, so pushing forward ran you backwards; a lot of problems. But the biggest was that there were no customization options; I could inverse a specific axis (wrong one unfortunately), change the sensitivity and that was it. You could choose different control setups, Left Handed etc.. but no button re-mapping or anything, so it essentially made my controller useless which is never good. It didn’t bother me personally because I always prefer to use mouse and board for anything with aiming but it could be a major problem for some.

Graphics:
The real strong solid point of the game is the graphic’s, this is once again (like I said in my review of Rise of the Argonauts) due to the use of an already established, optimized and setup engine; the Unreal Engine. You can’t really fault the graphics, the buildings are very detailed, at night the lighting and atmosphere looks great. The look of the characters is great, very high detail facial graphics. There isn’t much aliasing; I didn’t feel the need like in many games to try get AA going. The environments kind of ran into each other, all very similar, only the colours really changed, but that seemed to be enough as I never got bored of it, but this once again could be due to the length, or rather lack of, in the game. The game also supported PhysX which I tried out. It looks quite nice, a lot of particle bouncing, fabric dynamics and glass effects. It seemed to work quite nicely with the NVidia GPU PhysX drivers however I only have an 8800GTS 512mb and I hate lag so I decided to keep it off for the majority of the game but it was nice to see some of these new technologies being used effectively and efficiently. Very nice graphic’s engine all round.
Minimum System Requirements:
- Windows XP or Vista
- Processor: Pentium 4 at 2.4Ghz
- RAM: 1GB
- Video: GeForce 6 Series with 256MB VRAM or better
As you can see, these requirements are very low, now the game probably won’t look pretty on a computer that basic but it can run which I think is good; and on any more up to date gaming computer it will run and look very pretty without too much trouble at all.

Audio:
The sound in Mirror’s Edge is nice, I actually noticed it, which means that it is better than most games. The ambient noise sounded brilliant, traffic, crowds, birds the whole works. The wind noises while running at speed sound nice, add to the immersion. The music in the game is very unique and some may not like it, but, it fits the game to a tee and so works very nicely. A very good audio experience.

Multiplayer:
I mentioned above in gameplay that Mirror’s Edge has ‘Multiplayerish’ elements that extend the gameplay. These can basically be reduced to two categories, the Time Trials, and the Speedruns. You can start Time Trials as soon as you start the game, they are courses, laid out where you follow big red waypoints, your timed and your results go onto a big world leaderboard where you can compare to friends or randoms. The freedom in the game works well here, it doesn’t matter how you get to the next checkpoint as long as its quick, this leads to creative thinking and a more puzzle take on your standard Time Trial sort of race.
Speedruns only appear after you have finished the initial storyline. You can basically re-run any of the missions you did in the story and like Time Trials; it’s about doing it as fast as you can. The unique thing about these is it includes the combat elements, taking the enemies down, in whichever way you see fit. This can be thought of as the ‘GTA Race’ of Mirror’s Edge lol. It is also quite enjoyable if you’re into that sort of thing. These game modes are obviously no substitute for a more substantial storyline but they are better than nothing and serve in part as ‘renewable’ gameplay.

Stability:
This is a new section I decided to add to reviews to talk about the games overall stability. Basically all the bugs, problems and hopefully solutions I had with the game. So far I’ve already talked about the controller issue, moral of that story; unplug your controller upon installing Mirror’s Edge. There were a couple of other problems. The first is a regular freeze up problem when PhysX was enabled. I just turned it off but after a moments research I found an update patch that reportedly fixes that problem right up. It’s great to see a fix coming out so soon, so props go to (unusually) EA for that one. The final problem was a few random crashes I had while playing. Akin to the problems I spoke about in Rise of the Argonauts. It wasn’t overly annoying, just a couple of random crashes, and sometimes it wouldn’t start on the first go.

Gameplay: - 7/10 – All the play elements in Mirror’s Edge are excellent and I would love to give it higher but the storyline was terrible and the game was too short so these two factors bring this down a bit.
Controls: – 6/10 – The Mouse and Board controls are fine, nothing wrong with them, but a weird bug when the controller was hooked in and the controller support is atrocious.
Graphics: – 9/10 – I can’t find any faults, they’re no Crysis, but they are definitely pretty, very clean and high detail and the addition of a reasonably efficient PhysX engine is nice.
Audio: – 9/10 – Great ambient sounds, very suitable music and nice wind effects when running at speed, it all fit very well and added to the immersion greatly.

Overall: – 7.75/10 – A fair bit of fun, its short but enjoyable, if you want story then don’t look here but if you want immersive exciting gameplay then this will give that to you, for as long as it can.

Other Reviews by Me:
Rise Of The Argonauts - http://games.on.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=188&t=159627
James Bond - Quantum Of Solace - http://games.on.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=187&t=159988]]> Tony Tony Tue, 27 Jan 2009 12:10:32 +1100 10576 James Bond: Quantum of Solace http://forums.sporadic-mind.com/index.php?showtopic=10575 Publisher: Activision
Developer: Treyarch
Internode Content: http://games.on.net/app/4103/James_Bond_Quantum_of_Solace
More Screenshots: http://www.xfire.com/screenshots/thetones2301/

The Review:
First Impression:
The first time I heard about this game I immediately dismissed it as another one of those money making piles of crap. To be shunned and outcast to the underworld of gaming where it can plot revenge with the likes of Transformers: The Game and the Iron Man game! But after a dry streak of enjoyable fps I decided I should give it a go. I downloaded the demo, loaded it up and well the rest you’ve probably guessed, as here I am writing a review on it! I promptly grabbed myself a copy of it and didn’t stop playing til it was all over.

Gameplay:
Upon loading up the demo I noticed something very familiar. The game was built in the Call Of Duty 4 engine which was a very nice surprise, as I, along with most of the gaming community realise that it’s one of the best game experiences, as a whole, you can get these days. The graphics are pretty, it runs beautifully, its smooth, clean and very enjoyable, in both single player and multiplayer. Quantum of Solace was made by Treyarch which are known for their Call Of Duty 3 flop but with their most recent attempt, Call Of Duty: World At War, they played it a bit safer sticking to the very nice CoD 4 setup and basically creating a new campaign in it and creating historic weapons and maps for this campaign and hence multiplayer. This is also very similar to what they did with Quantum of Solace but this time, they have made quite a few significant changes.

After grabbing a copy of the full game, and starting it up, these changes became apparent very quickly. Now I would be here all day if I gave a detailed explanation of every cool 007 feature in this game, so instead I’ll just give a brief run through of the first level as it introduces you to some of the games new features.
First off there’s the cover system. It’s very similar to Gears of War, fluid, easy and very handy. Then you’re exposed to the hacking mini-game, used to get past certain locked doors. This is quite simple but as you play more, you realise it isn’t used very often so its simplicity never gets old. Then you find out about the ‘Take Down’ a unique addition to melee that involves a little aiming-mini game after which they go down just like when knifed in CoD 4. This is quite nice, a lot more rewarding then in CoD 4 and looks a lot cooler. Later on in the game that same aiming mini game is used in action cut scenes in place of ‘QuickTime’ events, which is again very nice.
You continue on and are instructed to kill multiple enemies at once by destroying explosive canisters, this is quite simple as anything explosive gets slight shimmer, and it looks very cool and is quite handy. Once this is done you’re introduced to your mobile phone. Its initial screen is a mini-map, showing you walls, doors, security cameras and enemies as well as your current objective. It is very handy information when sneaking around. You can then switch to a page showing you your data for the mission. Initially this is just your mission briefing but as you proceed through levels you can pick up phones which have useful pieces of information, security locations, special weapon locations, and hints about certain explosive items that can be used to wipe out enemies. Then the next and final page shows you your live camera feeds, on many of the missions you will have the opportunity, using the phone, to patch into security systems. This is then displayed on this page of your phone, so that no matter where you are you can keep your eye on things, see people sneaking behind you or plan out your silent take down of enemies.

As you can gleam from that one paragraph this isn’t just a simple re-skin of CoD 4, while it uses CoD’s engine it is definitely a game in its own right. There are quite a few more features you use after the first level but let’s leave it at that. In the end though, a game can’t be judged solely on the ‘amount’ of features, because all games have features, unique things that are always hyped as being the greatest thing since sliced bread. But how these all come together is the important thing. The combination of all these things that gives you that feeling of, wow, or yuck, is really what matters in the end. And in this department QoS has it mastered, the more you go through the game the more you feel like you really are the notorious 007. Stealth is probably the highlight in QoS for me, it’s not crazy complex, but still very enjoyable, popping up your phone, using the mini-map and the camera’s to monitor patrols, then putting your plan into action. Running in dodging the security camera to disable it at its power box (another unique game play feature) then sneaking up behind an enemy to take him down, taking cover, then aiming around the corner and taking another patrol down with a silenced headshot, running in and disabling the last security camera. Then standing up to survey your work and thinking “wow, I own,” which is the nicest feeling you can get from playing a game. In summary then, there are lots of different elements to how you play your character, lots of little things, too many to list here but the important point is that all of these culminate to create a brilliant 007 experience.

While the actual playing gives you a brilliant 007 experience, unfortunately, some of the other game play elements of the game aren’t up to such standards. The storyline in the game seems very bland, it follows the movie almost exactly, and half way through Quantum of Solace you play a massive flashback scene which is basically all of Casino Royale. This was great, extra game play is always nice and for people who haven’t seen the movie, it is necessary to find out what happens in Casino Royale to understand Quantum of Solace. But the cut scenes often seem like just a half assed way of joining together all the big fights throughout the two movies. The majority are in the Mi6 computer interface style, as you can see below, with pictures and footage popping up and narration from M and Tanner. These tend to be quite brief, which is better than dragging on, but as stated above, they feel like a half assed way of just joining up big fights. The cut scenes mid level are better, depicting some real James Bond action. Some are done in the game engine and there are a few that aren’t. The ones that are pre-rendered don’t look all that good at all, this shows in the shot of James Bond below, looks nothing like him, whereas the in-game engine version looks spot on. The cars seem to have low detail, movement is awkward and car scenes look ridiculous with unnatural pathing of the cars. It’s not all bad though, the gamer participation in big fights (such as when Bond fight’s Mitchell, the sleeper agent and falls through the glass onto scaffolding etc..) is done with the already mentioned aiming mini-game. This works really well, it’s rewarding and takes skill but isn’t annoying like reactionary QuickTime events used by most other games. This is what keeps the storyline aspect afloat in QoS, you take part in pretty much all of the ‘cool’ 007 scenes, which means that cut scenes are just for the background information or mission reasoning. The only bits you can’t take part in are the car scenes, which as said above are generally all pre-rendered, this is a pity but understandable as the CoD 4 engine has no way of handling this and so the exclusion of this meant more refined first person action!

Just to finish off on the game play, a quick note about the length of the game. It was pretty short, but no shorter then CoD 4 in terms of actual game play. The real difference is in the difficulty, I played it on agent which is equivalent to Cod 4’s hardened in their scheme but it seemed much much easier. This leads to only 5-6 hours of game play which seems short, but keep in mind that CoD 4 on easy is only a 3 hour game. So it’s more about getting the difficulty right, I normally play Cod on hardened, then again on veteran. But with QoS I think the difficulties are all a notch easier so try to adjust for that and you should get more like 9-10 hours out of it.

Controls:
Due to the use of the previously mentioned Cod 4 engine, the games control setup is good. There have just been keys added for the various additions in QoS. These controls all worked well, some may wish to change them, and as expected this is easy and hassle free. The mouse control is great, smooth and nice just like CoD 4. I was never restricted in game play by controls and never died because of unnatural controls so in the end their as good as you’ll ever need.

Graphics:
Once again, due to the use of the CoD 4 engine the graphics are pretty. In QoS you spend more time in houses, or buildings, or boats and are rarely outdoors. This means that some of the graphics look a bit bland, the textures are a bit simple and the effects are simple to. But there’s nothing wrong with that in the end, the game still looks nice, and it runs fully maxed out with ease, with no stuttering at all. Its runs very smoothly which imo is more important that a crazy looking game. The environments are all very varied, I don’t think any map looks the same as any other map which is great; you never ever get bored of it. The detail in the guns is great which is important as you are playing a 007 game in the end. The npc’s in the game look very nice too, not photo realistic but the resemblance to their actors is very good, and in the end, the familiarity is what’s important here and they’ve done that very well. All in all a pretty game that runs very nicely, so no problems there.
System Requirements:
OS: Windows XP/Vista
Processor: Pentium 4 @ 2.4 GHz/AMD Athlon XP 64 2800+/Any Dual Core Processor @ 1.8 GHz
Memory: 512 MB (1 GB for Vista)
Video Memory: 128 MB (nVidia GeForce 6600/ATI Radeon 9800 Pro)
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
DirectX: 9.0c or 10
Keyboard & Mouse
DVD Rom Drive
As you can seen from these system requirements the game can run on any gaming machine out there, and always look good. So a thumbs up on that one!

Audio:
Nothing too special in the audio department, it sounds good, the positional audio is as good as any other game these days. The explosions have a lot of bass which is nice. The voices are good, same voice actors as the films so that’s good, makes it feel much more real to life. The music is also good, not crazy swarms of the James Bond theme, some typical 007 music and then every so often when things heat up you get the typical theme that we all know, which works.

Multiplayer:
Given the huge popularity of CoD 4 on the multiplayer scene I thought I would add a little note about QoS multiplayer. I haven’t played much multiplayer, just a couple of games with my girlfriend so I can’t say much but just a few things I noted. The LAN capabilities are nice, BUT unlike Cod 4 and Cod WaW the ranking system appears to have been removed from LAN. This is a pity as I found the levelling to be one of the best features of CoD 4 mp, the one that made it the most popular game at my little LANs. From what I can gather ranks are still in when played online via Games for Windows Live, but that’s another negative, I don’t really like this whole Games For Windows Live setup, I’ve had to many save game problems and program crashes due to it to like it at this point but nonetheless it’s there. From the look I had with LAN, there seem to be quite a few interesting game modes and quite a few maps, so it looks to have a decent mp component.

Game play: - 9/10 - Would’ve been a perfect score if not for the lacking cut scenes and relatively short game play, but nonetheless excellent game play.
Controls: - 9/10 - Nothing really special here, but the mouse handles well which is more than some games have these days.
Graphics: – 8/10 – It’s quite a pretty game, its runs flawlessly and the levels are incredibly varied.
Audio: – 8/10 – Decent audio quality, good positional audio, nice bass on the explosions, great voice acting and very nice use of the 007 theme.
Multiplayer: – 8/10 – Just as good as CoD 4 when played online, if not better with some interesting game modes, but the lack of ranking in LAN is quite a disappointment for me.

Overall: - 8.4/10 – A very enjoyable game, one of the more enjoyable fps’s I’ve played in a while, has a few flaws but that’s not gonna stop me from opening it up again as soon as I’m done and playing it on 007, probably straight through without getting up again biggrin.gif

Other Reviews by Me:
Rise Of The Argonauts - http://games.on.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=188&t=159627]]> Tony Tony Mon, 26 Jan 2009 19:48:12 +1100 10575 Rise Of The Argonauts http://forums.sporadic-mind.com/index.php?showtopic=10573 Internode Content: http://games.on.net/app/2523/Rise_of_the_Argonauts
My Screenies: http://www.xfire.com/screenshots/thetones2301/

Publisher: Codemasters
Developer: Liquid Entertainment

First Impression:
After hearing about this game and subsequently finding out a bit more about it, looking up trailers/screenshots and articles I was highly interested. Being a fan of the RPG genre I was very much looking forward to the uniqueness this game presented, but also doubtful given how many games promise to be innovative and unique and never are. Then I first tried the game and was a bit ‘Meh’ about it, it seemed that with all the immersion that was talked about the game lacked any complexity at all. But after the opening introductory battling/training the game really came into its own.

Gameplay:
The gameplay in Rise Of The Argonauts is definitely unique, but not so much due to unique features but due the combination of other proven facets from other popular games. The dialogue seemed very reminiscent of Mass Effect which is excellent, as Mass Effects approach to dialogue is top of the field in my opinion. The inventory system seemed akin to Devil May Cry, which is basically nonexistent, you have body armor, a mace, a spear and a sword and every so often through-out the game u get the choice to use new ones, to the point where I think I finished with 5 of each. However, having said this, the game does have a few unique aspects which stand out.

The combat is both simple (much like the new Prince Of Persia) but unlike Prince Of Persia the combat is diverse. You have 3 weapons, each with a standard attack and an execution attack, and then a special attack. Each has a few different combo’s you can do a few standard swings all linked and finish with an execution and other similar setups. On top of this you have your shield which is used to block/power block and shield smash adding yet another element to your combo’s. The end result is very unique, it’s simple so you can pull of awesome moves but diverse enough that it never really gets boring. Then add in the unique abilities the gods imbue on you have one of the best combat systems I’ve experienced in an action RPG.

Now, about these unique abilities, one thing that I wondered about Rise Of The Argonauts was how this game would implement its RPG element, given they wanted it to stay immersive by getting rid of menu’s and removing all numbers from it. The way they did it was kind of like Devil May Cry 4 you just unlock new moves, but without being able to explain definitely why, it seemed to be far more enjoyable in Rise Of The Argonauts. There are your normal abilities that are always in effect, so all you need to do is hit a guy in the back, kill enemies quick enough, not take damage, take lots of damage or whatever the trigger is and you receive the effect. Then there are god powers, you can only bind four of these at any one time and they all share the same cool down before you can use them again. A few examples are a healing one which brings down the light of the gods on you and your companions, and the Rage Of Ares which emits a powerful blast around you knocking back, damaging and destroying the shields of your enemies. These are just a few examples, there are quite a few different powers to choose from.

The way the powers are earned is another unique feature for an Action RPG, as you play the game you complete deeds, much like achievements, at their most basic, Kill X Men, Execute X Men, Kill X Enemies With Your Mace etc... and at their more complex specific deeds to completing storyline elements or side deeds. There are also deeds for making ‘X Dialogue Choices Aligned’ with each of the four gods and many more. Then you can visit alters which are strewn throughout the game and dedicate each of these good deeds to one of four gods to attain Aspect points, (akin to Skill Points) to use in that god’s ‘Skill’ tree. I liked the way it was implemented, better then experience points which have been overdone.

Before I summarise all this up, a mention of the one real negative in the gameplay. At 12 hours playtime I find it to be a little short for an RPG, it is an Action RPG sure but still thought it could be a bit more substantial. Those 12 hours were just about everything I could out of the game all side deeds I could find I followed most dialogue choices and pretty much did everything I could. I’ve heard others say it’s about 20 hours of game time but it seemed a lot shorter for me.

All of these aspects combine to make a VERY immersive game. This is just a few examples of the immersion in the game, damage animation and combo creation are excellent, boss battles play out very cinematically and are all epic. In summary it is very story driven and leaves you feeling like your really playing a part in the epic tale of the Argonauts. The cut scenes and story elements in the game are right on par with the rest of the game, good character development and a killer ending.

Control:
The game falls over a tiny bit here. The main reason for this is it’s a console port and so the controls seem slightly odd, the biggest problem with this is the inability to change them, you can pick from 3 styles of play but no additional customisation is given. This was unfortunate as it would have been an excellent game to whip out the Logitech Rumble pad with but the joystick was inversed and so pressing down made you run forward and given there was no ability to change this I was stuck with the keyboard. I stuck with the initial control setup and while it wasn’t optimum it never got in your way or pissed you off so it’s not a complete failure.

The viewpoint in the game is 3rd person as you’d expect and it seems to be solid. It doesn’t allow for much movement, just left or right around Jason, there are slight up and down movements which in turn bring forth zooming in and out but these are very minor, it’s pretty much a fixed camera where the mouse just rotates it, but it works, it never gets in the way which is all you really want.

Graphics:
The graphics are very very pretty. The game is built on the Unreal Engine so it looks very nice. The scenery is very pretty and the combat graphics look awesome. Not much to say here as the Unreal Engine has been seen in many games such as Unreal Tournament 3, Mass Effect, Gears Of War, Bioshock and Medal Of Honour Airborne. I have many screenshots in my xfire profile if you wish to view them, all showing off the engine. The link for them is at the top of this post!

The greek styling looks terrific, each island you visit is very unique so it never gets boring and the detail in Jason’s items is excellent, which is good as for me that’s a very important thing to have in an RPG. When you get that awesome you wanna go, “Woah, that looks nuts.”

There’s really only one major problem with the graphics engine, it was ported from console. This has been a huge thing lately as the amount of PC only games reduces, especially when such hyped up titles such as Rockstar’s GTA IV suffer severe game ruining problems. Now as far as ports go this one is pretty terrific, it’s the unreal engine so it’s quite optimized for PC. But there are some problems; the game seems to have some hitches as you play. These range from minor random stutters to game crashes. The only time it got annoying was towards the end when I got so involved and immersed I wanted the awesome entertainment to continue! As you can see I run Vista so there may have been some memory issues with the game, it may play flawlessly on Xp. Nonetheless it never was more than a slight annoyance. A great graphics experience all round.

System Requirements:
Minimum System Requirements
OS: Windows XP/Vista
Processor: Pentium 4 @ 2.4 GHz/AMD Athlon XP 2400+
Memory: 1 GB
Hard Drive: 8 GB Free
Video Memory: 128 MB (nVidia GeForce 6 Series/ATI Radeon X1300)
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
DirectX: 9.0c
Keyboard & Mouse
DVD Rom Drive

Recommended System Requirements
OS: Windows XP/Vista
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo /AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+
Memory: 2 GB
Hard Drive: 8 GB Free
Video Memory: 512 MB (nVidia GeForce 7900 GT/ATI Radeon X1900)
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
DirectX: 9.0c or 10
Keyboard & Mouse
DVD Rom Drive

Looking at these requirements they look quite respectable, a very nice looking game for quite low system specs. My experience with the game can confirm this, it rarely dropped below 60 on my system which is a pretty average mainstream system these days. But this brings me to another problem with the graphics engine, given it’s a port, barring resolution there are no graphics options. Nada. The only thing you can do is to run the High detail version or the Low detail. So looking at those requirements it’s probably a case of, if you meet the recommended spec you can run it on high detail, if you don’t then its low detail for you, or a severe drop in resolution. But given how cheaply you can attain Geforce 7900/ATI Radeon X1900 speeds these days this shouldn’t be a problem for most gamers.

Audio:
The audio in the game is brilliant. The combat noises and ambient noises are excellent, the 5.1 positional audio is excellent. It all sounds great, there’s not much more to it than that, all very immersive sound. The soundtrack is also brilliant, works with the cut scenes and storyline perfectly. An excellent aural experience.

Gameplay: 8/10 – Unique, combination of the best aspects of other games with very nice unique additions, great story, great characters, brilliant ending. Only negative is at 12 hours playtime, tis a bit short for an RPG.
Control: 6/10 – Pretty substandard, not having the ability to change controls brings it down alot, it didn’t end up bothering me too much but may annoy others a lot more.
Graphics: 7/10 – I love the unreal engine, and this shows it off beautifully, the only let down is the lack of graphics settings and slight glitches, all due to being a console port.
Audio: 9/10 – Great aural experience as stated above, excellent music, excellent ambient, excellent voice acting very powerful combat sound.

Overall: 7.5/10 – A very worthy game, let down by a few technical problems, all of which arise from it being a console port, so for any console owners out there, purchase it for your console, its more like a 9/10 when you remove the PC negatives.]]> Tony Tony Sat, 17 Jan 2009 18:45:53 +1100 10573 Furry blue pen http://forums.sporadic-mind.com/index.php?showtopic=10077
Having gotten the pen home and attempting to use it for studying (shock!! horror!!) I found that it performed adequately as a pen but was somewhat brittle and flimsy and probably serves best as an interesting desk ornament, which is what I have since been using it for. If, however, I should be unable to find another pen then it would be very handy.

Ha! So now there's actually a post this month! Okay, now can someone please review something better which is actually worth reading?]]> Wiggy Wiggy Sat, 08 Nov 2008 00:58:43 +1100 10077 Rum-Port http://forums.sporadic-mind.com/index.php?showtopic=8672
Availability
Rum-port is available in the port section of some bottle-shops, but not many. For some reason, each store seems to only stock one brand, Dan Murphys has the Rummy Port for around $8 a bottle with the most horrifyingly cheap and nasty label I have ever seen, whilst other places have better looking bottles, but all seem to be under $10.

First Impression
Rum-port is of an approximately similar alcohol volume percentage to regular port, which does make me wonder why you would bother at all. The rum added is presumably a dark variety, as the finished product is almost black and, if poured into a clear glass vessel takes on the appearance of extremely runny motor oil or perhaps a mixed drink with flat coke. It tastes sweeter than port, which seems logical, but it doesn't have a strongly alcoholic taste, which may be deceiving. Savoury snacks help to distract from the sweet taste of the rum-port and make a good partner to it. I would not recommend starting an evening directly on the rum-port, but rather it is wise to warm up with a few beers first.

Conclusion
On the whole I would advise that you spend the extra $5 to buy a nice bottle of port and avoid rum-port entirely, but if you're looking for something different and want to get drunk for about $8, then it is an option. Just be aware that drinking it is likely to label you as the king of all bogans, unless you have someone else around to drink goon and make you look classy by comparison.]]> Wiggy Jarrad Sun, 10 Aug 2008 22:35:29 +1000 8672 Stargate Continuum http://forums.sporadic-mind.com/index.php?showtopic=7665
RevTT Link Stargate.Continuum.2008.DVDRip

Ba'al travels back in time and prevents the Stargate program from being started. SG-1 must somehow restore history.

Watched this last night, and like all the SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis shows and movies, l thouroughly enjoyed it.

]]> WickeD WickeD Sun, 06 Jul 2008 11:22:59 +1000 7665