Thursday 25 June 2015

I'M ... THE FATMAN!

I had forgotten about this.

I had a text from one of my brother who games the other day who has played all the previous Batman games and was eagerly awaiting this one. He text me on the day of release and stated that he had read some really, really bad things about the PC version of Batman Arkham Knight. So much so that he decided not to buy it.

I also failed to remember that there was a reported day one patch of 3.5GB!

I only just remembered this and had a look and ... well, my word! What a shambles!

I've said it and said it over and over, this greed needs to stop!

However, with this there are some peculiar facts no one is picking up on when it comes to deliberate mistakes ...

The problem is with AMD graphics cards only but the game was ported from consoles that all use AMD graphics cards?!

The new generation consoles are also very much like PC's so this sorry of thing was supposed to be a thing of the past?!

What happened? Did Warner Brothers send the code for the XBox 360 or PS3 over to the company porting it by mistake?

As daft as that sounds it's the only reason I can think of that would explain the mess surrounding... no, yet another mess surrounding a PC release.

As I have also stated before statements from devs and publishers dating this is the way things are ... well are bullshit too.

When the first copies of Ultima were sold to shops they were taken around in a carrier bag! No internet. Things just worked.

Today the internet is used to fuck people over. The End!

It's not just the gaming industry either ... quite unfortunately and this I cover in great detail on another blog. One that has a greater number of visitors by a greater amount than a factor of ten! In fact just this morning I heard of something been done that is either deliberate, disguised as a mistake, or incompetence that will be blamed on computers. Except computers don't make mistakes, the people that encode or just operate them do.

If Electronic Arts, UBI Soft (yuck) and the others cannot stop being greedy in this regard them they will go the way of the dinosaurs. Because you can bet that anyone coding games under a contract are looking at sites like Kickstarter with envious eyes.

Back into Ultima, Chris Roberts seems to be doing a good job of showing how much you can do! Thus far. Despite its scale and it's goals I bet Star Citizen won't get released broken?!

Lmao!

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/batman-arkham-knight-pc-problems-reported-update-5/1100-6428392/

Thursday 18 June 2015

DEUS EX MANKIND DIVIDED

Leaving Fallout and Elder Scrolls alone my next favourite IP simply had to be Deus Ex.

In fact it might be a surprise to read that despite me owning two each of the main two Bethesda titles I actually own two Deus Ex titles too. But the only one other than Human Revolution was some time ago and is Deus Ex Invisible War. I am sure I played the first installment too and whenever I see the cover to it I remember it.

Not sure what happened to that case and disk.

I loved Human Revolution despite its flaws. One of these flaws was, as others have stated, the boss battles. But these were only annoying due to the fact that you sometimes needed a particular ability to defeat the boss. If you had no praxxis available and did not have the ability required you simply would not get through it.

The other thing I hated about it was the small maps and the game being short. Not as short as done admittedly but when you get a title you really like playing you want it to last and last.

So I was excited to hear that a follow up to Hunan Revolution was on the way and called Mankind Divided. The demo looked good desire the fact it was not a gameplay demo. Another one popped up at E3 in the early days. No gameplay though.

Tonight I was playing Fallout New Vegas as I reinstalled it to me about with some mods and then realised there was a section I never completed. I was shocked I failed to spot this earlier!

While I was playing a Steam message popped up to state that Square Enix and Eidos had shown a gameplay demo. But I only caught it briefly and thought I had read wrong?

When I realised I had played Fallout to until midnight again I came out the game and looked at my tablet PC while lying on my bed.

Bloody hell! There was a gameplay demo and what a body demo it was?!

Below is a link to the demo I watched on YouTube that lastest around 25 minutes and I watched every second of it! Probably watch it again tomorrow on my main desktop machine.

The graphics and style looked amazing and it appears at first glance like the maps will be bigger. The previous maps looked and felt claustrophobic. It looked like a massive open world but it was not. This looked extremely cool. Uber-cool!

Oddly another tithe I like suffered the same and is also getting a sequel and for that we had back to Bethesda.

Dishonored.

I cannot believe a thought that went through my head as I watched the demo of the next Deus Ex. 'This might actually have a chance at surpassing Fallout 4 as my favourite game?!'

Both Deus Ex and Dishonored I found to be very stylish and with good story lines.

If these two along with Fallout 4 turned out to be bigger than The Witcher 3 the Wild Hunt I still think I've died and gone to heaven!

I also can't help but wonder, though I don't it, if a new IP might pop up between now and 2016 to equal any of these four titles?

To add to such a fantastic set of titles would be fantastic. I might actually doubt this but then I remind myself that three of these four are Bethesda titles. Imagine if each publisher could produce three titles to rival Fallout, Elder Scrolls and Dishonored?

Square Enix now look like they might have one.

Dragon Age was a bit but and miss, good ... even brilliant in places but it just lacked something. Well I think it lacked one thing to make it truly great and equal to Fallout and Elder Scrolls. The loot and weapons.

Will Mass Effect Andromeda rival the Bethesda titles? Could be, we will have to wait and see.

In the meantime this demo of Deus Ex Mankind Divided looks super cool!

https://youtu.be/jh-iX2bxOjI

Wednesday 17 June 2015

THE BLOWING OF MINDS - E3

Well that has been a mind blowing series of revelations ...

What do you mean it is not over yet? Cap'n ... I simply cannae take no more! Lol!

Stunning ...

Hmm now let me see ... wanted to type this out before I leave my house. Now ... notes.

I did not watch the PC Gaming show and I will at some stage, probably tonight or tomorrow, but I did read about it. Someone reported it was a bit slow but to be honest how much more could have actually been revealed that was not already?!

That is exactly what I am thinking about the remainder of the E3 spectacle.

Games

Fallout 4 ... obviously

Dishonoured 2 ... pleasingly surprisingly

Dishonoured Definitive Edition ... eyebrow raisingly

Need For Speed ... promisingly

Mass Effect Andromeda ... looking better than Dragon Age Inquisition surprisingly

Ghost Recon Wildlands ... shockingly double time as it did not really look like Ghost Recon, lol

Star Wars Battlefront ... gorgeously but with a few unsure bits (Tie Fighters and X-Wings)

Rise Of The Tomb Raider ... beautifully and assuming it has to come to PC at some stage

Deus Ex Mankind Divided ... What? Where? Who am I? What am I doing on the floor?!

Call Of Duty Black Ops 3 ... surprisingly

Uncharted 4 ... the most interesting of the console games you hope hits the PC but probably never will!

Assassins Creed Syndicate ... because they finally make a game based in a city that is not America ... err or Paris, Rome ... umm was it Rome? Probably Florence. OK, OK they finally make a games set in London!

Rainbow Six Seige ... looks great but I am turned off currently by on-line only games of battle arenas and co-ops

Hmm now I am sure I am forgetting some ... ahh but then I have a perfect excuse for that.

Now for the ones, the notable ones, that were missing, some of which I strongly suspect will appear at next years E3 ...

Elder Scrolls 6

Splinter Cell

Half Life 3 (I am only going on this repeatedly being mentioned by the gaming community I never expected a third after Steam got going!)

And the rest ...

AMD and their Radeon Fury graphics cards along with that shocking double Radeon Fury gaming system toted as being 'the thing' for 4K gaming?!

OK, this was a shock on a number of levels ...

Just the other day I had the only brother I have that is heavily into gaming. I do have another into gaming but he is more the casual shooter and last I checked was on the PS3, though admittedly that was a while ago and I never even thought about the last Christmas.

One of the topics that we covered was graphics cards and he has a nVidia 970 Strix currently and I explained everything I knew about the Radeon Fury and 300 series cards. I stated that yes the 300's were being panned as rebrands but at least the silcone, or I read this wrong, is improved.

I am assuming, and betting, that there is enough difference of a number to number card to make them quicker while more energy efficient at least.

Then we spoke about 4K gaming and I stated how bad things are reported. I basically said ...

"Look how the magazines and reviewers have raved about the R9-290's and now the nVidia 970 and 980 but then all of a sudden you mention 4K and 4K monitors and it all goes tits-up?! Suddenly these amazingly wonderful cards are not that powerful. Funny as I remember graphics cards generations jumping up a resolution each or every other release"

Back in the days when it was all letters referring to any given resolution. I can remember when gaming at 1600x1200 seemed like a distant or impossible dream.

Now we have had a series of generations all gaming at 1920x1080 and then 4K monitors arrive and it all falls apart.

To read that you need two Radeon Fury GPUs to game at 4K was a shock even for me. Surely not? GPUs that are as fast as most nVidia Titan cards and considerably more powerful that the R9-290s and R9-280s, I have the later as a stop gap, and one on its own cannot cut it?!

That was the biggest shock of the machine they announced, good God I cannot remember if they gave it a name?! Lol!

Still there are some plus points to take from all this ...

Firstly it might not seem to be there but it is almost there and you can bet that some refining of the latest GPUs will take place over the next 6 months to a year?

Secondly and as much as they like to harp on about 4K gaming ... and what it looks like ... sorry but nothing out there or likely to come out in the next 6 months is coded with 4K in mind.

The next step up in resolution allows for much finer detail to be displayed on-screen. The fact that all PC games are 1080p and that the PS4 has only been out a bit over a year, I think it is, and this is 1080p and the Xbox One arguably is then no, they wont be for awhile yet.

In fact it is highly likely that other than PC only titles ... err are there any ... other than Star Citizen that is not out, you would have to wait until the PS5 and XBox TWO before they were mainstream.

As  I think the previous generation consoles were on the market for 7 years before the next generation appeared ... well, that could be a hell of a wait?

Which leads me onto what I said to my brother...these days, quite why anyone would shell out a £1,000 for a graphics card that is way over the top, consumes an incredible amount of energy to give you little or no difference from a card half the price is beyond me.

I wonder if reviewers will continue to rave about each card up until one comes out capable of 4K gaming? LMAO!

Oh yes and I nearly forgot ... there was that remark about the double Fury machine handling the Virtual Reality Headsets?! I am assuming they were speaking about 4K VR Headsets?! LMAO!

Maybe I will wait for the next generation Google Cardboard ... hopefully it will be Google ... Carbon?! LMAO!

Still it is an exciting time and I still am of the belief that now that all three platforms are so similar to code for when it comes to gaming that this means that the PC versions will come out far better looking than there console counterparts? All the extra time coding ... umm porting from old machines can be cut by half and the other half adding graphical extras?

Well the excuses are gone, if nothing else.

It is a shame they did not add a port to the consoles where you could plug in a small graphics card to up the graphics power after a couple of years. After all Sony had a flagship laptop, ohh carbon again, that you plugged in a box to containing a more powerful graphics card into to play games. I seriously wanted that laptop! This feature would have certainly helped the XBox One and the resolution wars.

Still it will be very interesting to see what the next 18 months brings!

I was interested in the building aspect of Fallout 4. The game looks absolutely fine to me and I simply cannot wait! I was in my local game store yesterday when a member of staff asked if I needed help and I said only with the impatience to Fallout 4 coming out. He laughed and said he had ordered the special edition that comes with the Pip-Boy. Lucky bleeder! Lol!

I might look into doing that though it is something I do not normally do, I have to admit.

Nice to know the dog in Fallout 4 will not die every five minutes and I have to go back to a previous saved game to save his arse. Nice to know they are using the same game engine too! Not sure if using a different engine would change it too much so that it did not feel like Fallout any more?

If there are any naysayers left as regards Fallout 4 after E3 ... well ... I simply will not know what to say!

The thing is that what I think is if they are showing you actual gaming footage for something appearing on three separate platforms then your going to see the average look anyway. Now I would imagine that with most games, Fallout and Elder Scrolls especially, will look better than that which they showed when it comes to the PC version.

That is the drawback with being honest, you will have to show the look of the game to be expected across all three platforms...while we as PC gamers will likely get to knock the graphics up a notch or two. Hopefully but then I was OK with the graphics anyway but I would welcome more in the way of settings, sure enough.

So, yeah. I do not understand the naysayers.

Lol.

An interesting 12 months ahead, this is for sure and maybe now I wont have to skip copies of PC Gamer because there simply is not enough in their I want to read about?

Here's hoping.

Monday 15 June 2015

THE TIMES AMAZING

I am going to have a very good year.

In fact I am going to have a few very, very good years!

Not only an I mere weeks away from turning my scenery upside down and inside out for the foreseeable future but a number of cool things are going to happen within this first year of this happening?!

I cannot really go into detail about the humongous scenery change that is going to take place but it won't be too long now.

But what I want to mention that I am excited about are a couple of other things, one briefly and the other in more detail.

The brief thing, because it's not really the subject of this blog, is an upcoming film in the spring of 2016. This is of course the Batman V. Superman Dawn of Justice film.

I might not look like it in the flesh out sound like it but I am a bit of a nerd. Well that's what they seem to call people like me anyway, lol. I was a big comic reader of both Marvel and DC. Loved both Superman and Batman but was a huge collector of the Justice League comic.

The trailer to this film had to be about the best trailer I've ever seen fit a film! I don't say that lightly.

Yes I had a few issues with The Man Of Steel but on the whole I loved it.

Dawn of Justice is, for those I cannot imagine not knowing, leads onto the Justice League movie. I have had some issues with Aquaman ... well not looking like Aquaman in shots I've seen, but it's early days. They seem to have got it right with Ben Affleck as Bruce Wayne so anything is possible.

Very interested in the Marvel movies of Civil War, not big fan of Cap to be honest and still not bought Winter Soldier, but if Spider Man is in it with Iron Man and dive by Marvel then my soul is sold! Lol!

Unfortunately my other favourites have either been ruined consistently or not covered fully or ... merely rumoured. Respectively these are of course X-Men (ruined the greatest story in Marvel Comics), Silver Surfer (ruined by same studio that is ruining Fantastic Four presently but not big fan of FF) and Shazam (keep hearing people mention he is in Justice League).

Leaving the world of amazing movies I now lead into another big form of entertainment. One that like movies has seen spits and starts in recent years but I think now will follow the movie industry in stepping up a gear?

Video games.

I say 'step up a gear' because the rumours seem to have been confirmed after I did something I rarely do. Watch a showcase! I don't even normally see any E3 videos until way after the event ... if at all!

I bloody well did this time around and E3 had not even started officially!

I am speaking about Bethesda's E3 special.

Sorry to fanboys of other titles but nothing had ever grabbed me as much as Elder Scrolls and Fallout. They start the game in such a cool way and I had goosebumps in entering the world for the first time in both titles.

Not only did you get to see some amazing Fallout 4 stuff and gameplay but as I thought the title will be released this year. Added to this you had Doom, which looked amazing, and Dishonoured 2, which also looked amazing!

Not played Doom since the early days and the Quake titles too. But watching the gameplay it removed me of the old days but with better graphics! Cool!

I loved Dishonoured. I purchased the Game Of The Year edition and I only had two complaints with it. The maps were too small and the game was too short! Better graphics, larger open world and longer ... err much longer and I'm in heaven!

What's more is that come November, this year, I will be embroiled with Fallout 4 for months. Not long after will be the Batman V Superman and likely not long after that I would wager Elder Scrolls 6 well be announced, likely at the next E3?!

After all they always start the follow up of a title after finishing the current one. What seems quick to me was playing Fallout 3, Skyrim and New Vegas. The new generation engine is done in Fallout 4 so not a long shot to think a year to 18 months to Elder Scrolls?

How cool is that? How cool is all of that?!

I note think that we are entering a period of the next two to four years of some amazingly cool movies and games. Doctor Strange is another big favourite of mine, though I'm buggered off I can remember details of his stories. The things coming are already so cool it's staggering and then there are ask the little gems that will pop up, or get released even, we did not even hear about?

You just know this is going to happen ... several times over a year to 18 months.

There are other titles, of both recent and distant times, that could get the next gen graphics and open world scenarios of Fallouts/Elder Scrolls/The Witcher 3 that could send us all bonkers?!

Oh my bloody God! I almost forgot Deus Ex Mankind Divided?!

Oh man! Excuse me a moment while I composed myself?! Lmao! Hmm thinking of other titles I really like. Hmm ... ooh Need For Speed! Hour the new one is cool? So need a racer. Oh God ... Star Citizen?! How they come up with better title, lol. Sounds like a Goat Simulator in space! Lol! Still it's about the coolest endeavour out there only rivalled by Fallout 4 for me.

Yeah the driving games did not really do it for me, like Project Cars and umm ... the other one. Elite Dangerous surprisingly did not do it for me either. Oh yes and there is the lack of flight simulators outside of the Eagle Dynamics titles. I'm going way back again here by mentioning Falcon (Rowan), Total Air War (Digital Image Design) and Comanche. I miss titles like that and nothing out there really appeals. Flaming Cliffs 3 did but that took forever ... err probably still is?! Lol!

So yes a cool time and the fact that space sims have and are returning maybe flight sims week too?

This is skirting with the words 'Golden Age' for the next year and maybe ... just maybe it will dive right in?

Wednesday 3 June 2015

FALLOUT 4 OFFICIAL TRAILER

I don't believe it!

I was not existing this!

I thought it was a joke and fake fan video but the first link on Google had a trailer for Fallout 4 and being top was odd. Added to this it stated 'Bethesda Softworks' at the bottom. So I clicked on it.

I just watched a very awesome trailer!

Oddly I had played The Witcher 3 for the first time in several days and managed to get through a boss, though I will warn fanboys now that yet another problem occurred, lol.

Anyway I managed to get through the boss and grab dinner great and get back to a village. Can't remember it's name, the one with the Baron. I saved the game and was lying on my bed with my crappy, big ridden and curiously stuttering Tegra 4 tablet PC and decided to see a search for any Fallout 4 buzz, what with E3 getting ever closer.

Not only does the trailer for Fallout 4 look fabulous they even look like they are not far from a launch date as they are showing the boxes for the platforms of PS4, XBOX ONE and PC!

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2015/06/03/fallout-4-officially-revealed-by-teaser-site

Fantastic!

Now bizarrely there was someone ranting at comments that the graphics were crap?! Were they bloody pisses?!

If any of these are those lunatic The Witcher 3 fanboys who seen to feel like they have to call you names when you do not agree it's the best game in the world, it isn't, and point out faults and complain shot them, found another big one today, I will rip them a new one.

The graphics in The Witcher 3 don't look realistic in any way shape or form, the end. It looks like a water colour painting. It's pretty and colourful but not as good as several other games.

For those that do not know I have a passion for nature from animals to plants and I have several blogs about them and always in forests, swamps, lakes, ponds, dunes and all manner of other things.

I don't feel I'm in a forest ... hmm suddenly I'm trying to think if I saw any trees that actually looked like trees? Lol, well you know, big trees?

Maybe it will change as I venture further in the map but it mostly looks very similar either with water at your feet or not, lol.

Now I'm wondering when Fallout 4 might appear?!

Typical that I have to go away and I'm betting it will appear on the shelves while I am away?

I think I will go and look at that trailer once more!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GE2BkLqMef4