Sunday 26 October 2014

TOM CLANCY'S GHOST RECON PHANTOMS

OK, I will admit it. I have played the above title a great deal. I played in and got into it in a big way, though I have to admit to using it mainly to get my mind of a health problem. One that has been doggedly stubborn for a few months, like hell on Earth of late and may turn out to be something serious.

So yeah when the pain was too bad no computer but inbetween these bouts while waiting for paramedics and Doctors and the like I used it as a distraction.

It was sson to become a frustration thought this is no fault to the game or the players...err, mostly!

First of all, just in case any that visit here are gamers that ended up in games with me, sorry but I have only logged several hours. So I do not know the system or the maps just yet and only appear to be three of them currently.

Second of all, for those I fought alongside who might have become frustrated at times due to my low score at the end, not really my fault. I noted that as I got used to the system, controls, play and buttons my scores in a match grew pretty rapidly. One guy noticed that by puitting me in his clan and making me an officer in my first night! However as I levelled up I had to be more the professional making use of cover and such. But I noticed two things here ... one is that sometimes I did poorly things were a little confusing...like I was explaining to a brother on the phone earlier into games that sometimes I would fire off a load of bullets toi keep someone pinned down who would pop up just after I went back into cover, ergo by releasing the space bar. Nice idea that release the space bar and your back in cover. Only thing is that quite often after I did I would then die?!

So let go of the space bar, back in crouching behind a wall where I should be safe but then getting shot somehow through a three foot wall?!

Oddly I thought when the game was running smoothly this meant my connection was fine. It seems not and I can only put this down to a lag problem.

Still after playing for two and a bit evenings I am at level 17 Recon. So getting there. Slowly.

Also I have noticed many other people have a hell of a lot of nice....toys and the prices they charge are silly. Though I would rather not play like this myself and do it all from skill and nothing more.

I noticed looking around that this game used to be called, or so it appears, Ghost Recon Online.

I have been able to start up my own clan but this is the first time I have really played an online game, lately anyway and I do not count that very bried interlude with Dead Island Riptide because it was extremely brief!

So not sure yet what conclusions I am going to come to over this and whether or not gaming online can be reliably good on a mobile broadband connection.

I kept the Ghost Recon Phantoms as I was interested to see what my connection could manage. Yes years ago I played Quake 3 Arena against a single solitary player, of the young oik variety, who was running around killing me and I could not even see him in the room! This turned out to be down to the differences in our connections with his being the fast, at the time, 128k DSL and mine being a mere 56k dial up!

Unfortunately there still exists today huge differences in the size of your connection and thisd is really not fair, wqell that is if 2MB, 8MB and higher will make differences in online gaming that is unfair. That is thie part I am not sure about just yet.

My name on the Ghost Recon Phantoms is allnights, just in case any come wandering onto here that play this title.

Also I am waiting for a slot to appear while I am typing this out which reminds me that sometimes I can be slotted into games on some nights one after the other. But other nights I end up not finding games and this goes on for an unsuially long time! As I picked up my copy, or indeed without a copy, in the Game Store here in the UK you would be forgiven for thinking that there are loads of players, even locally.

I have no idea whatsoever if there is a feature to find out about this.

Wednesday 22 October 2014

AMD AND THE ARM CHAIR ZEN EXPERTS

Well I am now reading one hand if the news I was electing the lady couple of months from AMD. Jim Keller returned to the fold to design the next generation architecture a little after Bulldozer was first released.

Sorry air the pun in the title but there were snippets of info regarding their combined x86 and ARM chip along with the sole x86 design code named 'Zen' at AMD.

Zen? What a cool name, they should use that!

First of the first Bulldozer chips were a little disappointing but all the hate was way over the top. I liked a remark made recently in a webpage, think it was WCCFTECH but maybe PC Games, that something like 'Oh finally, AMD can now make a chip that runs ten year old games at decent frame rates!'

Oh how I roared at that one, simply classic and to the point. I sad all along that to much was made out of all this and it was utter rubbish most of the time. There is someone trolling AMD in the link below and I am sure it is the same old one that guess over the top while making no arguments whatsoever?

Yes I originally wanted an FX8150 when it was about to come out but put it off. Waiting was not really under my control anyway and two architecture updates later and I build a PC. I skipped Bulldozer and piledriver and ended up with Steamroller in the Kaveri APU. Yes they dropped the clock frequency but, well you can change that and I did. I word have preferred 6 cores and a little higher frequency in both halves out of the box but it does a commendable job and the fact is all on one slither of silicon with 4 CPU cores and 8 GPU cores is simply stunning and that  is what I like to buy into. Thinking outside the box not resting on your laurels with one fat cow parked in front of you is what I like to see, it's why AMD broke away from Intel in the first place. Umm you do know your silicon history, right? Lol.

Interestingly is that it mentions an expected date in 2016?! That is far away but more importantly is that it is very unusual for AMD to be so calm about next architecture news and so upfront about what went before. For something that we are not going to see for over a year from now is very out of character for them.

This is good and I was worried about how they acted, and a certain JF-AMD who was claiming things he fluid not back up being the wrong thing to do.

People want to discover for themselves what they think and not be told to think the way a corporation wants them too. Is this attitude why we have so many fanboys out there and why they act the way they do. The funniest thing is their site of naivety at some of the things they cling to no matter what. They think that because a generation and their updates have not overtaken their rivals this means they are generations behind and always will be? No, you cannot possibly know this. Staying this is nothing more than edging your bets based on a tiny window in the history of the silicon chip.

Often the creators and manufactured simply do not know until all testing had been done. So anyone that stars otherwise is a native idiot. Always. Besides that they are not a million light years behind as some would have you believe and Intel has the jump on the lithography anyway.

Lastly I cannot see AMD having nothing new between now and 2016, leaving my A10-7850K being their flagship APU? Especially as the litigating mentioned was going from 16nm to 14nm I think it stated and no mention of 20nm or 22nm.

Also the next Radeon cards must be mere weeks away from having details and benchmarks released? An Excavator APU with a significant jump in clock frequency, two more cores on either half withe have me altering my next purchases. A six CPU core APU with a GPU that would go dual graphics with a Radeon R9-260 or even R9-270? Now that would be cool! Very cool. Still it will be merely a year before the Zen lands and I feel this time around a bigger difference will be made?

After spending twenty years plus scoffing at others, including conker science degree students, due remarks like you won't need that much power, 1Ghz Pentium, or that big a hard drive at 4GB I now find myself ten years after lady hearing this line asking myself the same question.

Oculus Rifts and 4K is about the top end you can go short of having 3 4K monitors at 50 inches each? At 1080p there was only a loss in screen quality going from around 40 inch to 50 and higher. A 55 or 65 inch 4K monitor would look far sharper than my old Samsung Series 5 LCD TV.

The point is that with a lithography of 16nm even an increase in core counts and better architecture might have me wondering where it goes next?

I anyways stated that the obvious next stage one resolution limits the eye cannot detect any longer is reached is holograms. I stated that at university back in 1998 and I stand by it. I now wonder if I am just a coyote of years away from seeing the vision I had that events featured in films like Minority Report and Iron Man?

Ooh uber cool!

I better look out for nan coated waterproof motherboards? Well ask that drooling I will end up doing as there week bound to be some fetching, clever and impressive demos doing the rounds when the time comes?

Can't bloody wait.

http://wccftech.com/breaking-amds-gen-x86-high-performance-core-code-named-zen-debut-k12/

THE NUMPTIES OF THE WORLD

Well would you Adam and Eve it?

I posted about a title I bought called Ghost Recon Phantoms a few days back? Well due to a lingering illness, and my Fibrofog yesterday where I left the house without it, I still have not returned the offending item to the Game Store.

Last night, a few hours before I had my illness, don't ask as I don't know, returned like an F5 Tornado I ended up trying to download the game again. That was around... hmm 10pm and this time around it seems to have downloaded it.... IN PART!

Yes it is around 75% done after 14 hours. I have downloaded games twice that size in an hour. I should really add on a good day? Lol. But even a game twice the size of Phantoms would not take half this long on a bad day. That is my point and it is not finished yet.

The reason why I decided to have another go is because it seems, read 'seems', that people are split down the middle over this title? Some, sounding rather like me on a frustrating, painful and pissed off day, rage about it being a 'Pay To Win' game from an AAA publisher. Others that defend it state you do not have to pay to win at all one individual stating an impressively high level without 'paying a penny'.

Do you know what I thought? "Point one way to find out who is right and whether these fans are just a huge pile of steaming fanboys I start as much as pay2win. Because it's thoughtless and mindless driven who have no concept of what sport is about. A bit like the murderer who complained that a Brazilian athlete that beat him complained his... 'blades' were better than his! This is a man who wanted to be accepted into the races with people without these 'blades'?! Who managed to convince a massive judge that having three bullets lodged your dead girlfriend from your gun in a flecking toilet is an accident.

A little tip here as I cover this in depth on my corruption blog, if you use two different tools one will always be better than the other. However using a tool that replaces half your legs at a fraction, literally, of the weight with far greater flexibility is the actual comparison that is not fair!

Another example of a man that I knew had some very serious personality issues right here at the London Olympics. I was barely coming to terms with the fact that this bladerunner was going to be there, let alone want to compete with normal athletes and complain about tools used by a Brazilian rival. I did not even watch the damned Olympics, though I did secretly help thousands of people who attended. A fact they are musky none the wiser of to this day. Another blog, Man!

What?! I never said it was Oscar Pestorius! Oops! Lol.

Anyway, I digress to try and make lighter of a miscarriage of justice that took place on a global stage. Yup he still has idiots as supporters! The mind boggles!

Which brings me nearly around to this Pay To Win fiasco. Sorry but it's stupid, naive, shows nothing but contempt for your consumers and waltz around like they can rip you off and there is no comeback?! Well yes that's why I call fanboys idiots. I wound simply as at which point do they decide to draw the line? If I ask ten thousand people I wound get ten thousand different answers. In other words it is not fair.

Or to put this another way, I do not want to run around in a game I have ploughed £10 into only to be beaten marginally by a ten year old whose parents ploughed four times or more the amount in that I did! It's FUCKING stupid! THE END!

If you walk into a store and buy an Massive Multi Player Online game or just any online game you all pay the same money and start on an equal footing, or near as. Imagine getting into a game two years late when others have ploughed hundreds into theirs? Well I suggest buying a closing device if you have one on offer as short of immediately ploughing in a couple hundred nicker in one go your gonna spend the day getting annoyed at being canon fodder.

There are also a number of other issues like this I shall briefly explain before I point out a little BBC news report I linked to on another site. YES the corruption one! Lol.

This attitude started out, as far as I can tell, on mobile phone apps. Gotten away with by targeting their incessant greed at the new wave of ever younger kids acquiring mobile phones no doubt? I complained to others about this and simply stunned that they wound attempt this. Granted those earlier ones were not of the Electronic Arts of this world but it was bound to catch on. I know who are firmly to blame for this, take your pick from the only two candidates of Apple and Google. I also realised that surely they were so brazen about this it was only a matter of time before this infection affected the biggest and best loved  titles? Not content with a monthly subscription fee you have to pay over the top to purchase the game and now post for guns that wound not surprise me of some cost more than the real McCoy?!

However an online game is a different animal to a sticker player game for the most part. I like the idea of co-op but what worries me is that your launched into a game populated with 8 year olds boasting everything in sight rather randomly? Then I saw pictures of Elder Scrolls Online! Lol. Oooh dear. Then there are the maps and a large open world could be tricky, unless of course your World Of Warcraft. But then that's a bit long in the tooth graphics wise these days and we are in the verge of the next, next, next generation and if you have seen Star Citizen then on PC it is more next, next, next, next generation! So enjoyable gaming online will come down at least in part to map design. Except even when I was last into gaming, until very recently, was when Half Life 2 was released, YES the first time and Quake and Doom befite that, it was obvious everyone wanted to go multi player. Quake 3 Arena being the first big name multi player title out. I hated that. But even then I did not stop to think... how many games can you have pulling this off?

You can only reasonably have a couple of titles of FPS's, RPG's, Car Racing titles and everyone else will have a tough time breaking into this elite group. That is creativity gone out the window then? Lol?!

Cannot help but think that this is the reason some old forgotten names are back into have creation too?

Funny then that after being out of pc gaming for a fair few years that this new... direction... bad direction is going a bit awry? Also amusing is how Electronic Arts,.... umm and the other ones lol have all bit wanted to hand over publishing rights to Valve and their Steam idea, an idea I did not like then and still do not like today. But I do not dislike it as much as I did. Because no matter what anyone says and my fellow students from my computer science degree will testify to us that they were shocked that in a split debate I was in the camp in favour of tangible things! This is because of the existence of fans, not fanboys who are the same but lacking in intelligence, resort to name calling after initially provoking an argument ergo the original trolls. True fans of literature, music, films and games want something they can... feel! I like Pink Floyd and Radiohead among others books on various sciences (not novels unfortunately as the are many I would love to read) and now RPG's like Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Kingdoms of Amulur, Mass Effect, Borderlands and others and will likely get added to? No way would I rather pay, especially as it is often more, for a digital download only. I have a hard back to copy on an optical disc and hopefully with some nice booklets and a map?

See?

I have been at this post for a while now. Dare I wonder whether Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Phantoms finally ceases to be a.... ghost? Phantom? Sorry you can all groan now. Do I dare wonder if I will manage to start the game and live longer than sixty seconds before setting a picture of my grey matter on a nearby wall before collapsing realising it is not some ruffian graffiti artist?! Lol.

I may. For a little while. Before I wonder if it is safe to move without creating an almighty mess before reaching the computer?

Friday 17 October 2014

TOM CLANCY'S TOSS WARE

I cannot quite believe I am going to type out this post!

I also cannot quite believe some of the things I am going to type about and am shaking my head right at this minute while wanting to remove my teeth from my head one by one with the use of a set of pliers?!

Today I ended up with something I did not expect. Something I had been considering for a while but did not expect. I bought something on a whim and it is extremely likely that I will return it and ... oooh boy do I have some things to say to them when I do!

I bought a game... a Tom Clancy title I have been familar with for years but it was many years ago I last played a title. I had been wondering for a while now what they are like these days, only have been put off by them as despite the number of titles they get slated, read ripped to shreds, a fair deal by gamers.

Now before I explain what has happened ... or rather NOT happened I will explain that in my Amazon wishlist of PC Games is the Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Trilogy. Remember that!

I wandered into my local Game store today. This store has become annoying as a year ago they always had several titles, often budget priced too, that I wanted to purchase but could not. Due to the lack of graphical grunt in my laptop. But this year and now I have a PC capable of playing all titles, regardless of what Custom PC (ooh that reminds me) and now err PC Gamer say which is completely wrong, see last paragraph. I spotted a chunky black box on the PC Games shelf which has been devoid of a while list of titles I would have purchased all year! My Bethesda games, 3 of them, all came from Game. When I looked at the chunky black box it was Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon special edition. It was £15.99 and took iit to the counter. I asked, to be certain, if this was a single player game and not an online only game.

Now this bit you need to realise as they said "No its single player and they normally state clearly on the box if its online only and it says nothing" after checking it over.

Now follow the following points very carefully...

1 It IS an online only game!

2 It is ALSO a FREE GAME, yes you read that correctly this is a free game!!

3 The special part of this box is a single useless hardback book of just pictures of the outfits?!?!

4 Not a single line of code to the game is on the DVD disc and I am afraid it gets worse, a lot worse as ...

5 After two hours of downloading the bar had not moved and it still stated that there was 59 minutes left which is what it did when I ran the fecking game!!!

6 After investigation on the internet there is feck all on the UBI Soft forums, they are always useless anyway, and where I discovered that the game was a free title I also discover that not only is there no code to the game on the DVD, so why a fucking DVD yuou bloody morons, but that it is not on their fucking severs either and your downloading it from ... errr OTHER PLAYERS!!!

7 Almost last but not least is that there are a humungous number of gamers that have the exact same issues and cannot download the game let alone installing it! Not much in the way of answers and the only smart one used the word "Torrents". Jesus Christ!!

8 Best of all is that it turns out that this is an AAA title of game belonging to that which I not only absolutely detest with every fibrte of my being and believe the creators and publishers should be locked up in a burning prison cell for all eternity because it is a PAY TO WIN TITLE!! SPECIAL FUCKING EDITION?! ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!

Phew! Got that lot out of the way!

To add insuklt to injury my connection is bloody crap tonight. Or so I thought but then realised that it is being doggedly slow since I attempted to download and install this Tom Clancy Ghost Recon title and I just realised I forgot a point above...

9 The graphics are dated and for gamers to say that we cannot be talking 2 years old, ergo Skyrim, or even three. In fact some stated that this was first generation consoles?! They were likely being over the top sarcastic but even so...second generation consoles?!

I would NOT, repeat NOT buy a title regardless of how little it costs if it was released before 2007, that is my absolute limit and even then only if gamers absolutely rave about a title. Like Dragon Age of Kingdoms of Amulur.

So there you go...I simply cannot believe the absolutely dreadful experience I have had with a UBISOFT game of one of the Tom Clancy titles!

I have noticed that the box has the Steam logo on it as well as the UPlay logo? I am currently lookiung to see if I can download it off Steam instead?

I cannot believe not just how utterly abysmal this was handled by all involved but also that this atrocity was a free to play title placed in a box and put on a shelf to look like it was something special?! Bugger me even if it was in a standard DVD case it would have been taking the piss!

Oh now will you look at that?! Immediately the title is downloading on Steam and at around 200k/s or more! God knows what it was on UPlay but it was not even a quarter of that if it downloaded anything at all.

Now the question is I am supposed to get something for free with this specia edition, oh in a free play but pay to win title to get you into it of course there is free stuff!! LMAO!!

Now I am going to play Alien Isolation for an hour and then see what the percentage of the download is? I can tell you that in just a couple of minutes it has downloaded 60MB and yet using their own launcher it downloaded 130MB but took two hours to do that?!

Oh..MY...GOD! I will make doubley sure in future that if ANY GAME so much as hints at downloading it all from them or worse still other players you will not see my arse for DUST!!

I certainly wont feel guilty anymore when I am checking out details of something on the Internet on my smartphone!

Tuesday 14 October 2014

SONY STILL THE FONY

Oh dear!

I was looking around to see if there were any decently made and reliable racing wheels in case I need to replace mine, annoyingly had just bought a damn stand for it when it played up.

While looking around I found this mad website that stated that the Playstation 4 has a chip inside it so that you have to buy new peripherals with a security chip inside to work?!

What the bloody hell?!

They give some excuse about polling rate but that is complete bullshit I am afraid, especially on new hardware, what are they incompetent?!

They just never change! Bloody glad I never bought one I would be furious! So if you have an expensive device you was using on your PS3 then it won't work on the PS4?!

It states that some, I imagine many, owners have not been too pleased and who could blame them?!

Apparently this was discovered with the release of PS4 and I think someone tried to use a Logitech G27 Wheel? Oh they were only over £220 to buy in the UK and the ones available to use are two low quality Thrustmaster models no one likes!

I don't even know what happened to Thrustmaster?! They have fallen so far from grace it is unbelievable and instead of only looking at Thrustmaster I look at everything else but Thrustmaster now!

It is funny as the last generation was so over hyped but absolute shite it's not true, I am now reading developers statements about how crap and difficult it was to code for the PS3 yet is cell chip was supposed to be the bees knees?! Then there were three people buying second hand ones and trusting Sony by allowing updates only to discover their Blu-Ray drives not working and then that Sony uploaded software to their machine that detected it s previously jailbroken and wrecked the drive in an extremely childish and underhanded manner and obviously only see your hard earned cash you have them as RENT for the privilege of using their substandard hardware?!

Now they are at it all over again and once again rather incompetently, or don't care and do it because they can, placed hardware inside akin to posting a big sign saying "Screw You?! We are about to!!"

Going at things longer than Apple, Sony remind me why a brand I loved so much a long time ago have fallen out of favour with me. It is a shame that gamers do not have more scruples and will power to not give them money to teach them a lesson?!

I would have bought a Sony 4K TV in 2015 but I think I will go elsewhere? Panasonic maybe this time? Possibly with the camera too? Hmm I will see if and when the time comes. There is a Lumix camera I like with a 63x zoom I think it was?

They just cannot help themselves can they these companies? They start of small and humble and moaning about being bullied by the big companies and yet once they attain a certain size they themselves turn into another devil incarnate!

Probably why we have stagnated in the last decade or two.

http://www.ps4mouse.com/tag/sony/

Monday 13 October 2014

THE RESOLUTION GATE

Well I had to do a post about this after now reading about it enough times to know that is not just someone's mad rambling if bullshit!

It would appear that, as mentioned in my last post, Alien Isolation is reported by some to look good on what is now officially previous generation games consoles? Bizarre.

That paragraph had to be included because of the odd situation that has arisen regarding a couple of titles and one I am waiting for,  Dragon Age Inquisition, only being at a resolution of 900 pixels vertically on the Xerox One as opposed to 1080p on the PS4?!

This is odd. Sorry but very odd for a number of reasons...

1 Only vertical resolution is mentioned
2 It is being made a big thing of but...
3 It is only 180 pixels which would hardly be noticeable wick makes it...
4 Very odd that they had to do it as it is minimal as I said and...
5 Not checked but may be restricted to a particular game engine?
6 Why not just reduce about something else and bit resolution?!
7 Staggering that 1080p is an issue on next gen!
8 Kinect can't be helping matters?

Weird. It is all very bizarre. I cannot remember what the first title was I read about?

At the end of the day is only a few pixels in height. You would laugh at a mobile phone, cellphone of your American, that had 100x100 pixels. I dare say that throughout 2015 it probably won't occur anymore. Or a more efficient and prettier 3D engine would be created.

This is something that many posters on forums, especially fan boys committing themselves to a name calling spat, should remember. Is all code. Just because it looks pretty and plays well does not mean that it is programmed well! The same can be said the other way around. If a game is redheaded with a fault, yes it's a pain in the arse but does not mean the coding is crap. Like DriveClub, I think it's called. Online play falls down when there are a lot of cars on one track. Now I don't know what the numbers are but I thought what do you do if it's 50 players? What if it's going to take 100 players or 500?! How do you test for that? This must be hard to impossible so mistakes will occur.

Granted of its something stupid and it has not been corrected after the first month and especially if you pay a subscription this needs to be... dealt with. In the case of the aforementioned game they are and are apologetic.

However what I despise are the labels that act like God with some divine right and don't give a crap about players that I cannot stand.

I don't like it when companies, public services and others are quick to use the Internet to make more money but then decide to refuse to use completely free and immediate form of communication of emails.

Ooh good God man, do I hate that! Made worse if they want to direct you to idiots on forums who like to feel important but work for the company for free! Lol.

You have taken people's money, frustrated them, failed them or worse you can at least have something in place to answer their concerns?!

I have a list of names for those that are aloof in this way but I could not type that list here! There might be children present?! Lmao!

In the meantime there are a list of titles I am keen to read the reviews of and play...

Dragon Age Inquisition
Homefront The Revolution
Mass Effect 4
Star Citizen
Elite Dangerous... error...
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter
The Order 1866
The Witcher 3
FarCry 4 (perhaps but read decent reviews first on Amazon/PC Gamer)
Project Cars and any other car games

Maybe by then you can add

Fallout 4 and Elder Scrolls VI to the list?!

Maybe a much longer lasting Dishonoured 2? Sorry but I did enjoy the first until it rather abruptly ended and the DLCs not up to much.

I also really must attach my Thrustmaster Ferrari GT Experience, sharp images of breath, and undertake the drivers and see if there is a problem with it?!

About the time I discovered my Windows 7 was not genuine the racing wheel developed a fault! Annoying as I hadn't used it from new and I don't exist that of Thrustmaster! But then it's PC World so probably refurbished like the dented Corsair K70 Vengeance Keyboard they sold me?!

Annoyingly add the price of the wheels rise the quality died not appear to get any better?! Well that is until you reach about 220 quid and lasso across to old favourite Logitech and their G27 wheel! But a bit expensive compared to 40 quid for current Thrustmaster but even at a tenner useless if it's not going to last five minutes!

Technically PC World owe me a bloody teaching wheel and it gets worse still! The Advent Tegra Note I am typing on right now has had another one of the three I bought returned fur refusing to charge?!

So to recap... bought three tablet pc's and...

Two of them have been returned TWICE and this one... once!

All but one which refused to read perfectly good SD CARD were all for failing batteries. This also reminds me...

PC Gamer which I have read on and off from issue one disappointed me in recent reviews of the new version of this Tablet the nVidia Shield as well as my AMD A10-7850K KAVERI APU.

The former used no mention of the issues on the previous model, favoring nVidia unfairly...

The latter they stated is not a gaming chip and not to be considered at all for a gaming PC?! For a bunch of people that look like computer nerds in their pictures they understand very little about computer hardware!

Not only was that statement way, WAY off base but once again unfairly favors nVidia to a degree and Intel a great deal.

This is even more surprising when you factor in that the architecture is used in the next gen consoles or that future games and software can utilise not just the four integer cores but also the eight GPU cores.

That last point is also odd when you consider that a big thing had been made of using GPU cores to general computing but now that something guard thinking and usable is here is run down and ignored?! Despite the fact that Adobe's Photoshop can utilise them ashtray madness it all the more bizarre.

Remember this is architecture that sits inside all the game consoles and they state that is not to be considered for gaming! So can we take it that both the next gen consoles cannot be considered for gaming either?!

There is no reason that I could add in a Radeon R9-280, or R9-380, and future titles use the APU's GPU cores due other things?!  I feel sure that this will be the way things will turn out which is why I decided to take a punt at this APU.

Of course the next APU could just drop in and have 6 CPU cores and 10 GPU cores? Perhaps and if I both wanted and needed to go that route?

Interested in the lithography drop to the 20nm node from the current 28nm. This is particularly interesting for both the GPU's, R9-380? As well as the APU's, Carrizo/Excavator, and possibly even the FX CPU's if they end up revisiting this avenue?

A GAME MOST ALIEN

OWell it's been awhile... AGAIN, since I posted on here. Been busy building up to a number of things and... rebroke a rib! Myself! Squeezing my chest too hard from pain one 4am a few nights ago and... SNAP! ARRRRRG!

BUMMER!

Anyway I acquired a new game rather surprisingly from an unexpected source. A brother!

I attended a birthday party recently of my youngest brother's girlfriend and my family also attended. When I walked into the rather plush flat they lived in the brother in question ushered me to a bedroom telling me he had something to show me. As I turned the corner I was presented with a PC case turned sideways on with a large window. I spun in a circle saying "I don't believe it!" Then I stated to spot some familiar labels bearing the word Corsair before reposting my statement. I studied something and then glanced at the front of the case and uttered the statement again.

He looked puzzled and said... "what?"

His eyes widened in surprise and he smiled as I explained I had also just built a PC. I told him that I had narrowed down my choice of case to one of two Corsair models. The one he had chosen is still in my Amazon wishlist and I chose the Carbide 230T! Now in shock I them pointed at the CPU cooler and said "... and that is a Corsair... H80 or H100? Which is also in my wishlist but had ended up with a fan cooler for now."

I said I suspected he had done like most people and got an Intel CPU and he surprised me by adding it was a six core AMD. "Oh FX-6300?" I said and he smiled and said "yes!"

We then compared notes and he said "git!" with a shocked face when I pointed out I had Crucial MX100 SSDs. He knew I had only recently built it as those drives are new.

Later he came over to me in a room filled with dancing bodies and says he had something for me and that tonight I would very much envoy it. I should have guessed because as a young kid he was very big on a number of things and two in particular. One was the films of Predator and the other was Aliens.

He disappeared and returned with a copy of the only just released Alien Isolation and was shocked. Turned out Amazon screwed up the delivery, go figure, and he had no patience to wait and acquired it by other means. Well I did say he was big into these things?! I could not believe that a game I was only reading a preview of in my last PC Gamer magazine was sitting in my bag! The review copy of PC Gamer is not even on sale yet!

On my Kaveri A10-7850K I have now played the game for the last 48 hours nearly, on 1080p with ultra settings and with... err 8 or 16 x Anti-Aliasing and it is smooth as silk!

What I have found odd is that they claim this is next gen but I also read it looks like it does on my PC on the PS3 also?! Impressive if true! But hardly next generation.

However the game is extremely good for the most part and looks this too. They have recreated the style and feel of the Nostromo even though it is not, it's a space station called the Sevastapol. If I have to admit it is a little too much like the film! Readers may now be thinking me bonkers but... there is a slight graininess that I am sure was deliberate to make it look like the grainy seventies first movie? I don't care though. Also the computers still appear to have CRT screens which wet now know is silly. Space ships are big on weight saving and the early movie should have realised that super light flat LCD, LED screens would be all the thing.

Oh and it is hard. Very hard.

But at this point I must highlight some very bad reviewing of others where this game is concerned. Like only one scripted alien appearance and then after that is like a real thinking being? Err well I saw it three times! Only the second time, the first time around, I missed it. But in the room where the revolver was and after dying and returning to the room I saw a body doubt against the glass. It was extremely quick and the first time, like I said, I failed to see that.

It is also scary but not as much as they make it out to be. In fact it was for the first few hours and mostly not even the xenomorph! In fact after returning back to the top of the stairs where some people are being systematically despatched by the lethal hunter I then got killed several times. Oh OK yes a bloody lot! Being killed by said alien was not as gruesome or as scary as I thought it was going to be. After this out ceased to be scary.

However the moments your listening intently for the slightest sound to hopefully work out where the alien is in the roof  vents are intense. Very intense! Crammed up against a wall behind some boxes and crouched where I had just sprinted to while Mr Morph was chowing down the alien had leapt into the ceiling. I inched forwards bit by bit only to hear the alien thinking is way through the vents getting every louder as it was obviously closing in on my location. Whoops!

It's flecking hard! Did I mention that?

I got past this but by doing what they said you cannot do... outrun the alien! Oh yeah well I had the help of a button, does and elevator yes but still!

I then thought that the whole game would now be this inch by inch process but then I was in a level with those creepy androids and no alien! That's not a bad thing! Except for the fact that they are near impossible to kill! You start wondering what the point of a revolver with extra chunkiness like a hand canon is for.

I am also probably missing something but it's hard to work out where your supposed to go next. Yes I have the motion tracker and it does give you the general direction you need to do. But you end up staying to wonder if you missed something you needed earlier in the game? In the sections the Xenomorph now patrols with its super senses making you not want to return to check!

I find myself doing several sessions of around an hour and not progressing very far. Well not progressing at all. But where some have bemoaned to reviewers on youtube that it is "boring" based purely on the video review and sounding like ten year olds it is not. Not yet and not playing the parts they watched. It may become so before long but I am sure it will remain installed on my system and at the worst get revisited from time to time to get past the difficult bits with a new idea?

It has way more going for it remaining installed than Dead Island Riptide which I thought was so bad I will not go anywhere near the second installment. It has also got more of my attention since installed than Kingdoms of Amalur, surprised me, but not for long as I am sure the two titles will get most of my attention until Dragon Age Inquisition is out? Or I install Mass Effect 3?

If you don't like puzzles or stealth you won't like this. If you have to have guns, bows, swords or machetes then you definitely won't like this.

If your a fan of the Alien films in anyway... well then you should buy this!

Oh and for the record.. this copy is the Ripley Edition which comes with two DLCs, so you have to download them. Is not listed on Amazon but there appears to be A Nostromo Edition too. Not sure what the differences to the editions are. You can play the Sigourney Weaver character on one of the DLCs and all the original characters appear to be there?

Oh and you might find it refuses to disengage from the rewiring of power sections? Mine has a few times, annoyingly.