Rise of the Tomb Raider et al

Ok, so QTE aside (it’s minimal) they really stepped up the tech.  It doesn’t quite look as smooth as it could, snow vs Assassins Creed III, as an example, but there were multiple times I was in awe.  It played less like an interactive movie, and more like a book I couldn’t put down.  It was all I could do to stop after the obligatory flash back sequence.  I can only hope it’s at least as long as the first one.  I purposely read very little about games now a days. Prior to that it was 3D Mark, a brief…

The other side of Elder Scrolls Online

Horses and catapults and castles. It’s always been my dream since I was little. I had Legos to build the castles and countless battles on their walls. Entire stories would unfold on that coffee table. It is only now why I realize it couldn’t just stay set up there all the time. I have enjoyed the knights and castles games of previous yore, experienced the endless grind of WoW and played anything that smelled of questing. Oblivion won me over with it’s expanse, it’s lore. The story is told nowhere else other than though the game, many games, which all…

ICEnhancer 2.1 1.0.4.0 Final

icenhancer 2.1 1040 has been released! [Download] ICELaGlacE Official Site More to come… [ screenshots ] Nothing too impressive yet – just updated smaa to fxaa, we’ll see if there’s an obvious difference. There was a major need for some sort of aliasing, made all the more apparent by the light. Night is pretty in its own right, but don’t lose your headlights. Make sure to catch the sunrise over the beach!

GTA – Are you ready for The updated ICE?

He’s been hard at work, and the installer is ready to go. The updated version of iCE. Enhancer for GTA4 will be out next week. One again we visit what you’ll need. I am prepared. I have GTA reinstalled fresh. Here’s what you need to do the same: Do a new install if you have an old one hanging around (this includes the RSSC), then get your system ready with the 1.04 patch. You may also want to add some fresh car models (see below) and I highly recommend this realistic handling by killatomate and reVO, you shouldn’t need to…

Review: Max Payne 3

Whew. That’s a rush. I just got done playing through my first hour of Max Payne 3 and I feel… stimulated, enthralled, and defeated. I had to stop playing though. There is only so many times you can replay the same section after repeatedly accidentally bullet-time-ing off the side of a building. I’ll revisit another night. I’m sad that I didn’t get any good screenshots or video, however. I must say it plays brilliantly – there wasn’t a skip a start, a stutter at max settings. The people are well modeled, move realistically (the trailers made them look a little…

Review: Dirt Showdown

Dirt started as a rally racing game, hence the name. It had a really good model… no turbo, relatively realistic driving physics, and decent graphics. They kept expanding into the other genres, such as Gymkhana, stadium, and others. Dirt 2 was a pretty good success, and Dirt 3 came out relatively quietly – most received their copy as an afterthought when buying a new ATI video card. I thought they’ve been good the whole way, they really didn’t add too much craziness, which is refreshing. Simulation racing is hard to come by, and Shift 2 didn’t do it any favors.…

Review: Call of Juarez: The Cartel

It’s really as bad as you’ve heard. From the very first screen you are alerted to its crappiness. The text itself is circa Mortal Kombat – giant and pixellated. It looks so dated. It really feels like a modern Sega CD – it hardly even looks 3D. I barely got through the first level. I bought it for $5 – shipped from the UK for the amazing price of $2.49 – gotta love Amazon. I figured there must be at least SOME saving grace, story, anything. From what i saw the story tries really hard to be in depth (remember,…

My 3D Aventure in Digitopia

I was accused of trolling for posting what I found while testing a few games with 3D Vision. I don’t take umbrage but it reminded me that this is the first time round for some people. The History Before I address the fad aspect of 3D let me say I am no stranger. It has come a long way since the geForce 3 I had about 10 years ago. It worked, and I guess it never went away, even the test screen for the glasses is the same today as it used to be with a couple extra dynamic lights…

Grand Theft Auto 4 mods – ICEnhancer+

So ICEnhancer 2.0 was recently released, and to celebrate here is everything you need to get started modding Grand Theft Auto to look better then god ever intended. Behold the power of Grayskull: Patches: You’ll need 1.0.4.0 or 1.0.7.0 to apply these properly. 1.0.4.0 is advised as it’s most compatible. Install the original version, then you only need this one to get to 1.0.4.0. Graphics, Textures, and Lighting: ICEnhancer 2.0 Brightness and contrast most gamers prefer ICEnhancer 2.0N Natural Lighting (coming soon) Add Ons: Traffic Load V3 (ASI) – Sick of seeing the same old cars all over the place?…

Review: Driver San Francisco

Ok, I loved the original driver. It was an entirely new genre at the time. Sure you had a driving around car game, but once GTA III hit anything where you drove and crashed was “just another GTA”. They’ve always been one to spin a story but this latest one is entirely out of the box. It was not what I expected at all. Sure, plainclothes policeman in a muscle car, but there’s a big twist to this one. After a crash attempting to apprehend an escaped convict you’re jumping from body to body. Think Quantum leap meets Messiah (if…

LA Noire PC – Review

Video: It’s a port, a straight port but with an extra tidbit or two of settings and smoothing for the graphics. You have ansiotropic settings, and FXAA (x1, 2, or 3). The textures do appear scaled, as in they look as good at 2560×1600 as I remember them being on PS3 but many of the facial textures appear a bit more blurry. The view distance is still very low – you see the fog and blur on anything further then a block away so you don’t quite get the full immersive city feel as GTA. I like the time period…

Batman: Arkham City – Review

initial impressions – very smooth animation. More then anything else I was amazed at how fluid the animation is – when he’s climbing, soaring, or fighting with handcuffs on… it’s fabulous to watch. The graphics are very nice as well, the lighting is a huge improvement, and ambient occlusion is especially apparent with all the dark shadows around. I’m still not 100% sure on the story, there is a lot going on, and it’s all very compartmentalized into a single building for a single purpose, no more so then Asylum was, but it’s more noticeable due to the open nature…

Video Review: NFS The Run

Here is the intro / first levels of gameplay. It’s interesting because (like many NFS games) it’s nothing like its predecessor. Cars control more realistically. It’s still not a simulation feeling, and you’re restricted to bumper, hood, and behind view. I prefer far behind or windshield view (a la SHIFT) but the hood works well enough. 360 controller worked out of the box. It controlled more like the older games, which is a good thing compared to the latest Hot Pursuit. You can’t go full speed into the corner counting on a powerslide to save you, but it’s still nowhere…

Elder Scrolls Skyrim: Review, Screenshots, Gameplay Video

I wasn’t expecting too much from the latest Elder Scrolls: V Skyrim (Sky-rim) and I was pleasantly surprised. At first I noticed a big degredation in quality… as in half the textures were up to par for the full resolution of 2560×1600 – many were not, most notibly the objects and inner textures. I swear they took some right from oblivion (Elder Scrolls: IV). However, if you put on 8X AA it fixes it. 2X and even 4X was stretching it, and FAXX didn’t seem to do much at all, shadows and transparent textures (fences, brush and greenery) were the…

Battlefield 3 Review

…impressions at this point, I’ll elaborate further but here are some goodies: Gameplay Video: Screenshots: things to note: things breaking (not servers), animation, jump / prone slides, vehicle sounds, directional audio, graphics, comparison to beta things breaking (servers) – c’mon, first day! Performance – Ultra, full, 2560×1600 – +60fps dips below 60 under pressure, but hardly

Dead Island – Not Just Another Zombie Game – PC

Dead Island immediately draws you in, from the opening cinematic you’re the guy (or girl). It’s all first person, boozing and abusing, falling down drunk and groping… finally passing out in your room… amongst some odd attacks and blood splattering around you. When you finally wake you’re in your room, but everything outside is in shambles. At first I thought there was a little too much collecting – suitcases all over have a couple bucks here and there, alchohol, med packs, and random bits of seemingly useful objects (rubber hosing, glue) are scattered all around. It’s fairly easy to collect,…

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

My initial impression: Looks ok. It seems like another Duke Nukem where the idea and gameplay were ported from their 90s originals, but their roots are showing in these sequels. There is lots of details (papers, coffee mugs, detailed computer screens, interaction with faucets, etc) so far in the first level but I notice a different level of textures between objects, people, and the surroundings which breaks the otherwise immersiveness of the story and camera work. The “cover” is awful so far, but I think that’s primarily due to defaults conflicting with my mouse configuration but I never seem to…

The Witcher 2

Some screenshots to start. Things I want to get into – graphical glitches (patch 1.3) – control / camera – why can’t I jump on this stump? There are two pictures of the puddle. I’m not really seeing it in the screenshots but his foot went through a 2D puddle and I could see his foot clearly underneath the puddle on the ground… not a big deal, but make sure all the ground around something is higher then the plane of the puddle. To be fair it’s at the start of the game, so hopefully they got better with the…

Crysis 2 – More Screenshots and Video

Here’s some more screenshots I took as well as my latest video. I’m splitting my time up between all the games, I like a nice spread out game experience. I ended up resuming the current spot after a single death. I figured it was time to go to sleep. As it turned out it was a fabulous place to pick back up, tons of action in about an hour’s worth of playtime.