Mostly about my amusement

Tag: FPS (page 4 of 4)

Crysis for Christmas

One of my Christmas gifts was the PC video game Crysis. Ah yes, holiday cheer, therapeutic beating the bad guys… life is good 🙂 .

Crysis launch window

The installation was weird. It was as if my DVD drive had problems reading the DVD. After the game installed I checked for updates and was directed to this URL: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940105. Looks like Microsoft identified a problem with GPU’s and virtual address space usage. When I get the chance I’ll fire up Halo 2 and see if it works better. Or works at all: I kind of gave up on Halo 2 on the PC.

Crysis is the kind of FPS I like. It’s like Far Cry in that you can wander around and try different ways of getting to the target. You gather ammo and weapons and try to avoid the enemy. And just like Far Cry, Crysis is the current way of measuring up your PC. This game is graphically intense and eats system resources. I have two PCIe Geforce 7800s with 512 MB in SLI and I can’t run the game in high resolution or much anti-aliasing. The play is good so I don’t mind.

You are on an island that has been taken over by the KPA. You and your team of other specialists are wandering around on missions and on the way you encounter squads of enemies. You can fight or you can navigate around them. Your suit can switch from maximum armor, maximum strenghth, speed, etc. There is a cloak setting but it so far does not last long enough to really get the jump on the enemy.

The KPA took over the island after a team of archaeologists woke up some ancient alien technology. One of these things is killing the KPA as well as your teammates. It’s a nice touch and adds a sci-fi horror feel to it. It’s not F.E.A.R. but it’s good so far.

I’ll probably finish the game next week. I’ll see how I like it afterwards.

Back to Max Payne 2

Max Payne 2I saw a commercial for Kane and Lynch: Dead Men and I had to get out my copy of “Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne” and install it.

This game came out in 2003 and I still like playing it. It’s like Humphrey Bogart directed by John Woo. Very cool. I’ve only just started the game but so far I get to the cut scene right before I receive enough damage to kill me.

It’s the easiest level. How did I ever complete this game? The last scene I have to dodge a nut job tossing dynamite at me while trying to shoot out some wooden pegs. Oh and not fall through the floor in the just blown up holes.

I can’t wait till I get to the fun house scene…

What is very strange to me is installing a game that does not require an activation code. It does check the CD drive to make sure I have the game (that’s easy to defeat but why bother?). Also this game actually works unlike some games *cough* Halo 2 *cough*.

Nice to see how the game industry has improved in the last few years.

Halo 2 on Vista

Halo 2 for Vista screenshotMicrosoft could have done better for a Vista only game.

Two weeks ago I was at my in-laws house. My nephew has an old Xbox (not the 360) and was playing Halo. It was a little retro compared with Gears of War but it looked okay. So for $20 at Best Buy I picked up the original Halo Combat Evolved for my PC. I completed it quickly enough and had some fun.

Plasma grenades sticking onto the bad guys was fun; sometimes the little grunts would shout “Not again!”

Halo 2 for Vista came out and I picked it up too. It’s okay. It’s not as visually entertaining as Unreal Tournament 2004, and the Marines have already run me over in a Warthog.

Just like an original Xbox game, it feels a little retro but displayed in wide screen. So far the game play is acceptable, just not anything to get excited about. It plays better than the original Halo but there is nothing that I can see that justifies it being a Vista only game.

Microsoft should have gone with a port of Gears of War, now THAT would have been very cool.

Screenshot taken from Microsoft’s Halo 2 for Vista website.

Gears of War

Gears of War from gearsofwar.comI’m slow on getting the latest games. A few weeks ago my pal told me he got Gears of War for his Xbox 360 and loved it.

He and his son completed it on coop play. He described it as having fantastic graphics and great game play. The fact that if you don’t get cover, you’re dead was a nice touch.

I told him I’d get the game this weekend. I picked it up last night. I moved the Xbox 360 into the bed room so the kids would not get woken up by the carnage.

Except for Call of Duty 2 on the PC I’ve never seen a game where cover was required. And even on CoD2 ducking for cover is not done well. GOW handles getting cover and poking out from behind cover amazingly well. When the game started I opted for the tougher way to get out of the building. I picked up a couple of weapons and hit the game.

This game is done so well that I’m not sure a keyboard and mouse would make the play better. And the graphics were amazing. This game shows off the Xbox 360 so well that if I had gotten this game before I picked up the PS3, I might not have bought the PS3 at all. The shooting from cover is amazingly fun. You dart from cover to cover trying not to get shot.

What makes the game more fun is that the enemy does the exact same thing.

If it were not late and Lily did not remind me that today we have lots to do, I’d have played for a few hours.

Just Cause PC Game

Just-Cause-PCI am on vacation this week and besides

  • Chasing the kids
  • Shopping
  • Building from my pile of Gunpla
  • Blog entries

I also play PC based video games. I just picked up Just Cause and started playing. You play Rico Rodriguez and run around shooting people, stealing cars, and helping la revolucion.

Rico Rodriguez is a cousin of Max Payne; the action is right over his shoulder. So far Max Payne 2 plays better (probably just the atmosphere, Max Payne 2’s cut scenes and music really make the game), but the same point of view is maintained in the game. Rico even gets stunt moves which I have not yet figured out why. Although parachuting into a gun fight right at the beginning was very 007. It’s a fun game and so far not as hard as Max Payne.

If you have a wide screen monitor see this solution to getting the resolution to 16:10 versus 4:3. I installed the fix before I played the game so I have no before and after to compare. But the screen layout works so I am happy.