Team Fortress 2 Preview

I have been watching Team Fortress 2 for many years! Way back in the day news was being updated at regular intervals, there were hype, fans, and hope. That was until the TF2 web site simply stopped updating its content and everything went completely silent on the news front. Was it dead? What was going on? Well it was a little while ago now that we have heard what TF2 is to become, a toon shaded, exaggerated, television cartoon show style shooter. But we still had no idea what had changed besides the artistic style. Well we now have an inside look at how the game will play and the unique talents of the game’s many classes. Take a look at this preview, its a fairly good read for any TF2 fan.

Test Drive Unlimited

A friend showed me TDU (Test Drive Unlimited) a few days ago, and I was quite impressed. The developers have managed to reproduce the whole island of Honalulu, roads, landmarks and all. When you bring up the map it is possible to zoom out and view the whole island. This is quite impressive!

You start the game with a rental car and are made to purchase a house. After this you are simply dropped outside your house to explore the island as you see fit! North, South, East, West, take your pick and simply head off. Near the start there are a few races to choose from which are quite easy but offer only a small reward. There are also some missions which involve dropping a person off at a destination as quickly as possible without making the rode too bumpy. These missions seem especially cheezy to be because the only reward are vouchers to purchase clothes with!

Earning money from winning races isnt too hard since I played for about one and a half hours and could already afford a mid-range Ferarri, although having a fast car does not really mean all that much because different class card are needed for different races, so it pays to have a few cars.

Another aspect of the game which suffers is the environment which feels kind of “generated”. This is because of the scale of the game. Scenery pops up and loads in front of you. Also the sides of all roads are like a ditch, so whenever you leave the road, even a little bit, its like a little drop off on the side, and you almost always leave the ground while re-entering at speed.

Despite all the negatives, there are some appealing aspects of Test Drive Unlimited! The cars to drive rather nicely and have very unique feelings. I particulatly like the Ferarri range of vehicles.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R – First impressions

I have managed to get my hands on a copy of the long awaited title, Stalker. I have been watching stalker since it was announced about five years ago and have since awaited its (often delayed) release.

First things first! Stalker was supposed to bean open world for the player to explore freely. instead you have access to smaller parts of the zone and kind of warp to the other parts when you head in that direction. Hard to explain.

Another disappointment is the questing system. Its about as intuitive as quantum physics to a toddler and took quite some time to get used to. I cant imagine them going through playtesting without anyone bringing this up as a serious issue! oh well.

There are quite a few bugs too. Quite a few times I have experienced time fast-forwarding where the player is constantly hungry and the weather changes very rapidly. The only way I was able to overcome this is closing the game then starting it.

The AI in stalker is amazing! Creatures all act like real creatures! Its hard to imagine, but the creatures feel real, full of life. The other humanoids also stand up to expectations with their group tactics and warfare skills.

Those are the most important aspects of stalker which have impressed me (both good and bad. Stalker is an amazing game which almost makes it worth the wait, but it could have been more. I wont be soft on that issue just because I am glad to finally be playing it. In the hands of a different team I think we would have gotten a much nicer game, but I am still thrilled at the experience it has given me so far (been playing around six hours all up). The excitement level is on par with Half-Life 2! No that isn’t a typo, I really like the atmosphere and story of stalker

S.T.A.L.K.E.R

Well stalker is just around the corner … E.B. Games recons 15′th and Gametraders recons 23′rd but I dont really care when this month it arrives! I JUST WANT TO FINALLY PLAY IT! Stalker has been a long time in the making, almost comparable to Duke Nukem Forever, except this one actually got made I think it is a combination of some old games that we really loved. the Pc Gamer review says it is a combination of Deus Ex and Operation Flashpoint. I personally think of it as the ultimate version of Fallout!

Gotta Love Vista

Well I have been keeping well away from windows Vista and using my unix machine a little it more … even bought a mac to avoid the upgrade. Well, since Vista’s launch a lot of searches have been hitting my blog entry about removing the xp/vista dual boot. Just yesterday five searches hit my blog, and they all were about just that:

• delete xp vista dual
• remove vista dual boot
• Deleting Windows XP from a dual boot wit
• how to delete XP/Vista dual booting
• removing xp from vista dual boot

poor Vista!

Motorcycle License

For as long as I can remember I have wanted a motorbike! Well I finally just got my license. Before last week I had never been on a motorbike before and went to RideSmart which is a Q-Ride training center. Well I have never had so much fun! Even though going on the highway was a bit scary because we didn’t all have the proper gear, it was a load of fun.

Some Games Just Piss Me Off !

I have been playing “Tony Hawk Project 8″ a lot lately and have been getting rather pissed off about two things..

Firstly, there are “chalk” activities all around the gaming world for you to attempt such as a long grind. These activities have four colour markings for the beginning and the three levels of competence which are placed further and further away. Now sometimes these can be very far away to a point where youre left wondering how the hell youre surposed to figure this out … it makes no sense at all! They could have at least showed the way! Anyways …

Secondly, there are activities where you must follow someone holding a camera and do whatever tricks they call out, which is fine. Imagine you are aiming for the “ultimate” level of competence for this trick, where most of the routine are done from memory and not following the camera persons queue, and you stack off your board … ok so you lose a second or two crom the crash / recovery, not too bad… but for some stupid reason you are put back on your board in the wrong place and facing away from the camera person! but you dont know that until you start skating away and the screen goes a gright wite color like you have been flashbang’ed with a message saying “too far”. CMON! so anyways thats another three or four seconds wasted, before youre telelported near to your camera person, who is normally nowhere near a place where you can do your next trick, which sets you off even more! ffs this is something that SOMEONE must have mentioned during QA testing??

Removing XP / Vista Dual Boot

I have had windows XP installed for ages and when testing Vista just made a little extra space and labeled it “vista”. When Vista installed it replaced my boot information with new (updated) information to allow the user to select the “old” or “new” system. For the inexperienced, here is how to remove Vista and fix your boot information to work with just your plain old Windows XP.

Firstly you need to delete the old partition. Right-click “My Computer” and select “Manage”, then select the “Disk Management” item on the left. You will see a set of controls which represent the partitioning information on the local hard disks. Without going into any detail … delete the one which currently has Vista on it.

Now reboot and load Partition Magic, or whatever tool you use for partitioning. I’m sure The Ultimate Boot CD has something for partitioning.

Next you will need to boot to a Windows XP install disk. Wait for all the drivers to load, then select the option which allows you to get to the “Recovery Console”. When the console loads you will select which XP installation you want to fiddle with, normally just put “1″ and hit enter here. After that you will need to use the “fixboot” command which takes only one argument, the partition letter which has windows installed. For me “fixboot C:” did the job just fine. The operation took a fraction of a second, rebooted and my system was back to the way it originally was.

Viva Pinata … Another Dissapointment

Just like the Crackdown demo, I have recently started playing Viva Pinata which is turning out to be a bit of a dissapointment. Its not a bad game at all, let me say, but there are some things which fustrate the crap out of me.

There are games like, errr, Halo where the development team have play-tested the game and seen ways to improve the customers experience by enhancing areas that need tweaking and basically fixing issues which were overlooked during the initial design phase of the development cycle. This tends to result in a nicely polished game which does not fustrate the customer.

Now the developers of Viva Pinata did no such thing! Oh no! They have thought up a seriously nice game, very very nice indeed, but it is so un-polished that it annoys the crap out of me! For example When I want to “romance” two of my “flutterscotch” species I need to select one then the other.. Simple enough right? Hell no! Good luck finding one. Just because you have four of them doesnt mean you can find any in a hurry … so you find one and select it … finally … now finding another is a serious mission … once you find one you select it only to find the first one has somehow unselected itself … so you go back to find it … its moved … then you find they have all moved back into their little house. Can you get them out of the house? Apparently not!

How hard can it be to add a menu for each species where you simply select “romance” and they will find a partner and do what they need to! Is the fustration of finding two of the same species through all this bullshit surposed to be part of the “fu n”? I hope not.

Crackdown = Crackup

The demo for Crackdown was posted by Microsoft a few days ago, and considering the hype and awsome gameplay that was visible in the many video clips available on the web, it was a serious letdown. Since both Crackdown and Halo are both published by Microsoft, I think that is why they are including the Halo 3 multiplayer beta as part of the retail package, to hopefully make some narrow minded gamers look striaght past the games shortcommings.

I dont like to bash developers like that though, its not a bad game, just nowhere as cool as it could be. For example if Saints Row had gameplay and graphics like that it would be seriously great! What bores me about  Crackdown is how mindless the gameplay is … go here and kill this guy … ooh so you dont even need to aim … wow the druglord is dead and it doesnt even feel like I’ve made a difference … oh and again … wow but that Halo 3 multiplayer beta must be cool … oh are those guys cops ? why are they shooting at me … oh man this is confusing … whats with these pointless racing activities? … you get the point.

About the only really cool things about Crackdown are the artwork and superhuman powers.

If this game was redesigned to be more like GTA / Saints Row and less like a kiddies “killing druglords for dummies” I would actually buy it.