PHOTON SWAMPED STAR CITIZENS

OK let's do this.

Right from the get go ..

I have been around gaming a long time, despite what some butt hurts would have you believe who have probably played games for like two or three years?

I played all the Chris Roberts games from years ago and the other games from the original, Origin .. ahem, group. The Wing Commanders, Freelancer .. the damn flight sim I cannot recall the name of and others.

If you do not know I have a degree in software engineering and even had an interview with Pivotal Games years back to be a games programmer.

I have followed the hardware and software for a long time and I see a lot of fighting going on, fanboyism going on and a lot of false claims.

When he first announced Star Citizen I was blown away .. because he reappeared out of nowhere and was about to bring my old love affair back to life.

I have followed and followed and followed this and after they missed the predicted launch date I thought .. uh-oh!

Then the first disappointed people started to leave and it grew .. currently it seems to be around 55% disappointed to 45% fanboys from what I can work out.

I also hear a lot of utter shite, over the top fanboying from actual YouTubers praising the game, if I can call it that, that makes me want to reach for a bucket.

Tonight I was watching a video from Failure To Report, FTR, who sound pretty sensible and I was amazed at the experts quoting time frames for the game. Wrong time frames and the reasoning was well off. Funny as Chris Roberts got it way, way wrong but these guys seem to know what it is all about.

Right .. just because the graphics and textures look twice as good as other games does not equate to twice as long .. OK?

The modelling does not take 8 years .. OK?

Better textures require batter cameras and the textures are simply applied to a 3D model .. OK? It does not take twice as long to produce a hi-res picture nor does it take any longer to map it.

I will tell you what does take longer ..

• Creating the 3D engine .. oh but they did not
• Making bigger maps
• Filling those maps
• Longer story line, though again not 8 years .. 
• Imagine it taking 8 years to write the next Star Wars or Star Trek movie before even starting to film it?! Lol.
• Adding more side quests
• Adding more objects to the bigger map
• Artificial Intelligence .. provided it is an advancement from what has gone before in the first place?
• Adding any new content .. like new creatures

What has already been done and what may have already been done ..

• Models previously made only need slight additions
• Characters previously done only require slight improvements
• Creatures if ant only need slight improvements
• 3D Engine in most instances
• MMO's have been done to death .. they somehow screw this up though from time to time

In the future and someone did ask if they could ever bring the production time down? Well yes ..

You see 3D Engines wont need to be improved any more once you reach a point.

The modelling wont need improving any longer once you reach a point.

Meaning any previous models stored can be reused or altered a little in any follow up game.

Artificial Intelligence probably wont be far behind with having to require improvements.

Already where probably going to reach stages where the maps wont require to get much bigger .. from what Bethesda have been using. For example Elder Scrolls 6 might be there or damn close to not needing to be any bigger. Perhaps?

And to the idiot that stated that 8 years is "mid range" for game development? LMFAO .. no .. just .. no!

They also use the excuses of production costs and with Star Citizen itself this is very difficult to comment on .. because I am sure it has all been done badly, do not need to be Stephen Hawking to see that. But how much so is impossible to figure out.

Do not even think of commenting and claiming there were no screw-ups or major screw-ups because there is one fecking huge one staring everyone in the face! And that is with me doing no effing research and only looking in now and then for an eternity to see where it is at .. which has constantly been bloody nowhere.

In all honesty I have not been able to believe it for the last few years and it has gone over the line of being ridiculous, as have the fanboys .. which always has me shaking my head in disbelief.

I just hope it happens one day ..

Anyone out there fro the age of ten to 14 might want to remember to get prepared on its release to not getting into any major epic space battles by using the lavatory first. Because getting to the loo and back using your zimmer-frames is going to take time and might cost you the war? Lol.

I also heard that mining had just been introduced and I was like "What the fuck?!" Eight fucking years and they have only now introduced mining?! Jesus Christ!

Then I heard that you had to pay .. was it $150? I was like "WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!" That is a fucking piss-take.

You know what the thing is about piss-takes? Once someone does a piss-take after awhile they do even bigger piss-takes and as they get away with it, it continues on.

That is the nature of the beast baby and I see this absolutely everywhere.

Ohh bu the costs, I hear people cry? Yeah .. does not seem to be a problem for CD Project Red?!

Yeah that is why the spend 5 years or so making a game .. because they only earn fifty quid, bucks, when they are done. Oh I have heard this bullshit regarding all this pay monthly and pay to win bullshit .. from people that have nothing to do with the actual game development. EA, UBI Soft, Activision and others. Fuck .. off.

I told UBI Soft once they were greedy fuckers, were patronising and did not know what the fuck they were doing, were also liars and told them to fuck off. They banned me for several days?! Go figure! Lol,

Worst part about all this is I was only interested in Squadron 42, what IS with these shite names? That did not even get talked about for a few years and I still hear nothing about it!

Yeah so try and think before you start shouting your fanboy bullshit and do not get angry with people because they have gotten sick of waiting. Your a complete idiot to get annoyed with others for getting annoyed with an incredibly long period of time. Made worse by the fact that it is way beyond the promised time. Way, way beyond and you do not even have a fecking light at the end of this tunnel!

It is a shame really because fanboys in everything make everything worse. They take time because they know your gullible. They know most wont complain.

Intel are learning now that they should not have done that.

Bethesda are only know beginning to learn, or maybe Zenimax, that they should not have done this.

Did you see the Starfield and Elder Scrolls 6 trailers? What the actual fuck was that? They were nothing. Nothing. These were only shown because they were going after the pay to win MMO crap and the audience was not impressed with Fallout 76. I bet they kept those two short clips to the back and someone said ..

"Yeah .. if they look like they are lacking enthusiasm for Fallout 76 play those fecking clips!"

I was excited for Starfield's trailer until it ended and when they moved on to Elder Scrolls 6 HammerfuckedOff I thought "Starfield was nothing and this will be less than nothing!" Fog and mountains and that music ... oooooooooohhhh!

Yeah so Fallout 4 was average because of Fallout 76 which they were obviously also working or focusing on. Yeah and so Starfield will be 2020 and Elder Scrolls 6 around 2023. Hmm wont that be ten years after Skyrim? Lol.

Also said no more Obsidian Fallout? Morons! Best Fallout game ever but wont repeat it?! Riiight!

Gaming has become twisted, perverted gambling aimed at children .. as has now been judged exactly as I expected it would. Just do not know why it took them so long.

It will go back.

On and streaming boxes? Yeeeaaaah .. no!

PROJECT CARS CANNOT PROJECT CARS

I am having a serious graphical problem with Project Cars that is driving me around the ... ahem, bend! Sorry for the pun!

Since the Catalyst drivers updated to 15.7 Project Cars is broken! Well almost all of the time!

Once on track I get these green lines everywhere at eye level that blinds you. You simply cannot go at any decent speed as you cannot, I mean CANNOT, navigate bends.

Also I noticed some very iffy things with the physics of other cars in a race whereby I always got hit on the first bend and the other drivers were driving like idiots, so there to all those harping on about things like 'true race sim' and 'realistic physics and AI'. Your simply brain dead!

I saw one web page of one guy bitching about why others were complaining about it ... I mean, really?! Your really going to ask why people are unhappy with a game ... or any bloody product for that matter?! How very bizarre. On the site someone answers that its usually 'fanboys'?!

Umm, care to elaborate?

To state 'fanboys' means there is something else that they wont have anything negative said about ...well on the PC there is nothing else. Not since either the last Need For Speed or the little known Assetto Corsa. So ... HUH?! Lol!

There are some interesting, along with the confusing, things said here ...

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/799997-project-cars/71950871

Project Cars also got caned in another review here ... like 4/10!

http://axiostech.uk/gaming/project-cars-a-disappointment/

Make sure you watch the video on this page of some of the completely impossible and brain dead things the other cars do when the green light gets lit!

Now I was under the impression that the idea of going through these crowd funded sites was to create the games the coders wanted that the publishers would not let due to money and time constraints?

Well there have only been three of these crowd funded games that I have any interest in and that is, or indeed was with this one, Project Cars, Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen.

Those first two are not only as shallow as a paddling pool but missing many things upon release and that last one is always two years from being released!

I wonder how many feel as I do in that in the beginning I thought that this crowd-funding idea could give us some real classics in gaming but that little niggling doubt is now telling you it told you so and that it is all about to go wrong. Well I am sure that gamers will band together and cause a bloody riot if these people do not stop being greedy and taking money for broken and faulty goods?!

Ooh no, wait a minute? Almost all the electrical retailers in the UK have not only been doing this but been doing it for years and no one seems to say anything, do anything or give a damn about it and they just keep on selling you inferior rubbish.

Here is my graphical glitch ...

This stopped only one time in the last few days when I turned post processing on. But then it came back and before morons start spouting "Raptr ..." don't bother, no difference!

Considering my Logitech G27 is bolted to a stand and heavy and I have to do contortionist motions to get it in place you can imagine how effing annoying these sudden glitches are?

I have now had this something like 12 out of 13 starts when I am trying to beat this following time ... (err I already did but Raptr was not running! lol) ..

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/

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?

THE BUZZ AROUND E3 2015

I simply had to do a post about the upcoming E3 in this year of 2015.

This is partly because there has been a great deal of talk and a mountain of rumours the likes of which I have never seen before.

There is so much talk about hardware that this alone is exciting what with virtual reality so close to being finalised as well as Microsoft and this Holo Lens gadget they have been working on that looks cool. Finally something similar to that seen in Iron Man films and The Minority Report.

Then there are the games rumours!

I have had trouble keeping track of everything and I seem to be finding out about something new every few days to a week.

I have stated before that I am excited over Star Citizen and that I have been around long enough in gaming, almost worked for Pivotal Games at one point, that I played the Wing Commander games and Freelancer.

I could honestly say that seeing Chris Roberts video about what he had been up to actually provoked me into building a new rig for the first time in quite awhile!

Frustrating that it is so far away from release.

I was also excited about Elite Dangerous but then started worrying about their announcement of no single player campaign and reviews by players static its galaxy wide and three inches deep, or something to that effect. Wanting to buy it to fill time until I go away over a humongous court case which will shock the nation I ended up buying Dying Light instead. Recommended by a brother who was always into consoles but made the jump to a PC.

As well as those two space sims there is also No Man's Sky which looks interesting but not too sure about. Now I find out about one more!

Starfighter Inc.

Here is the link to the Kickstarter page for StarFighter Inc. ...

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/impellerstudios/starfighter-inc

It is another Kickstarter project but this one has huge kudos behind it because its largely made up of the team that worked on the X-Wing and Tie Fighter series. A couple of guys also that worked on Crysis, Homefront, FarCry and a few others.

About bloody time some space sims got made and as well as them being missing there has been no flight sims for years either, the latter being what made me get into computers in the first place because I was obsessed with fighter aircraft, wanted to be one when I was a kid and had a famous great grandfather who was a test pilot. He worked for Avro and the RAF and was testing an aircraft called the Avro Manchester which they tried several engines with but it crashed and he died. They added two more engines after this fatality and the Avro Lancaster was born.

But I like a great deal of games and was obsessed with 3D also and owned one of the early Voodoo cards. I went through two if I remember correctly.

There are many games I love and fond of, despite some driving me nuts at times and I wondered what the designers where thinking of ... or smoking in some areas.

Some seem to be almost perfect but missing vital things. Like when I played Dead Island Riptide, and now Dying Light. I will now always remember Kick Zombie ... sorry I mean Riptide because I did not understand the game, frustrated the hell out of me and I left it alone for months. Then one day I went back to it and realised it was not just a game where you pick up a slightly better gun every now and then and you had to make cash and build weapons. Weapons that were mostly hand to hand close range stuff in a melee fashion. This to me was kinda knew and once I realised how it worked the game was transformed into something bloody fun.

The not so large map, well I did play Elder Scrolls Skyrim before this, looked pretty good and it made me wonder about how the next generation version would look. However it did feel like it was missing something to make it feel like a living breathing place to roam around. Something you get in Skyrim and Fallout ... animals. Wildlife. Ooh I just remembered I did see fish in Dying Light, lol.

As well as being surprised and falling in love with Bethesda and their two biggest properties in Elder Scrolls and Fallout I also loved Deus Ex Human Revolution but another one I was confused how to play to begin with. I did also like The Witcher but this was the most frustrating of all the games with some pretty horrible boss fights along with regularly being confused about what to do next and where to go. Some things being seeming impossible to find.

I also liked Need For Speed Hot Pursuit and noted there was nothing really about. I was interested in Project Cars but wanted something more open world. I also liked Dishonoured but in all honesty and even though I bought the game of the year edition with all DLC I thought it was way, way too short and with very small maps.

After the free running of Dying Light I am not interested in the Mirror's Edge series, lol.

Here is a list of things I have heard are coming at E3 or otherwise ...

Fallout 4 (I am betting game play)
Elder Scrolls 6 (I am betting cinematic rumour behind closed doors)
Deus Ex Mankind Divided (oh man am I excited over this)
Homefront: The Revolution (looks and sounds cool)
Star Citizen (looks and sounds the coolest)
Starfighter Inc. (could be surprise hit and BE the coolest?)
Dishonoured 2 (large open world map and plenty side quests and could be great)
Mirror's Edge 2 (sounds cool)
Mass Effect 4 (whats this? Oh just my heart stopping!)
New Need For Speed (Good one would be super cool especially if open world maps)
Cyberpunk 2077 (sounds cool but Witcher drove me nuts)
New Splinter Cell (as above lol, have blacklist and its BAD in places but super cool the rest of the time!)

I have included the unlikely title of Elder Scrolls 6 because it might not be that unlikely. I would have imagined that after the success of the last two Fallouts and the Elder Scrolls that Bethesda may have been able to expand their capabilities. There team, so to speak. Or pulled in other software houses that they may have previously worked with?

Like music label companies the publishing houses would be dead keen to get up to date versions of both of the two biggest and most popular properties out of the door and onto the shelves. You can bet your sweet arse that they would have been pushing for this and to achieve that you would need a bigger team or working with another software house.

I am sure you wont see anything more than some screen shots or some artwork or title, if that. But it may not be so long after Fallout 4 that you see the next Elder Scrolls released. Just my guess.

You just need to look at BioWare. Dragon Age Inquisition is still a new game but we know that Mass Effect 4 is coming and will likely see at at the E3 event. I would imagine that Bethesda is a bigger team now than BioWare and with them doing the old one-two with their two properties it simply is not implausible that Bethesda will do the same.

They also have that little event they announced that takes place a couple of days before E3 itself starts and this intrigues me no end. Yes an announcement of a Fallout 4 would be pretty big news but this in itself warranting a standalone event? No. Also makes it more unlikely when you hear about the fact that they have invited a bunch of people to see some stuff behind closed doors.

Fallout 4, they say it is that they are showing and not in game footage. Hmm ... yes quite bizarre. No I wonder if the surprise might turn out to be that the showing behind closed doors of not in game footage may well be something else. I think Fallout 4 will take centre stage and not shown behind closed doors. It is its own standalone event after all.

So a cinematic piece for what then, I wonder? Maybe that little thing behind closed doors might just be an Elder Scrolls 6 peak? I think its possible, as apparently it has happened before I read somewhere, that Fallout 4 is more or less done and the release will be sooner than expected and at the same time announce that Elder Scrolls is well on its way too and not far behind?

Bah! Maybe its just wishful thinking? Lol.

I do like to try to deduce little puzzles and am normally quite good at it. However much of that energy has gone into dozens and dozens of other areas all of which I allowed no margin for error. This will become extremely clear on my corruption blog and oddly enough within the next couple of weeks!

It is also about time we saw a load of stuff in the next generation of graphics and are long overdue it in my opinion. So it seems both likely and quite exciting that a Tsunami of announcements is upon us.

My head is spinning looking at that list alone and all I keep thinking is that most of that is likely to appear and a few things that were unexpected too?

In just three weeks we will find out and oddly I have my own exciting things going on that may lead me to head out of town for ... well an unknown length of time that could be ... well long.

I will still post about things and still be keeping an eye on events at E3.

However if I hear of a new decent flight simulator or two based on F22's, F35's or EFA along with maybe Apaches or Comanches I may not be able to post due to heart failure?!

STAR CITIZEN WITH THE MOST WONGA

I have probably stated before but I like gaming and in particular PC Gaming.

I have never bought nor owned a console, we used to call them slabs of plastic in the PC industry, but I do enjoy their existence if that makes sense? Sort of! Well I tend to think PC Games would be a lot more worse off if not for the consoles, but that could be wrong?! It also may now be about to be proved quite correct?!

The new generations of consoles are very similar to PCs in their build and design. So much so that 'porting' titles from either console to the PC should soon become a thing of the past?! In said past this would result in very crap looking graphics when on consoles it looked better and any one that knows there stuff would know that the PC has always been more powerful. This might not be strictly true with my curent PC right at this very moment but when said titles come out I have two empty graphics card slots because the graphics I am currently using to play the lstest titles in built onto my AMD A10-7850K processor that have been refered to as APUs and not CPUs by AMD for a couple of years now.

Or in other words I canb plug in one slightly more powerful graphics card for a little over £100 or a very powerful one for a little under double that amount?! But then agin the titles that require this additional power, leaving alone those willng to spend thousands so the frame rates state 90 instead of 50 for this post, have not emerged just yet. So I have the added luxury of waiting, while still having a grewat PC to do other work with, until the pricing comes down in a couple of months time?! Now tell me thats nnot very cool?!

Bottle your arse!

Now one thing I have noted of late is that an old title, that has never been released on consoles previously, has started to re-emerge with a much greater view to ambition. Again, if I am right on that one, it wont or cannot be released on consoles and reading that is why I held off on the graphics card! Now one other thing I forgot to mention is that for around £60 I can get a graphics card that will work in conjunction, dual graphics, with the graphics built into the APU. This would give a 80% average boost in power, which is not shabby I am sure you will agree. However not everything works great with dual graphics and it does vary. Or to put it another way only of benefit to current titles and I only have one installed right now that would benefit and one not installed that would. These are Thief and Crysis 3 and I am not sure that either of them are worth the outlay?

If next gen titles do not scale well with dual graphics then its pointless having it! Buying one single card thats powerful enough removes this problem entirely, however. So I would rather wait until they are released.

This particular title I am referring to is Star Citizen and created by Chris Roberts who was behind the old PC titles called Wing Commander. He was orginally part of an outfit called ... erm Origin and they also did the RPG's called Ultima. Hmm now those coming back would be rather cool too!

Anyhoo I did not realise it was him until I looked up his site and realised that his name seemed familiar and then I remembered. I also read that to help develop the game he started a Kickstarter fund raising ... err project and since its inception it has raised a huge amount of money. In fact there was an article on the PC Gamer website about how the figure rasied had surpassed $50 Million! Yes I kid you not here!

Fifty Million Dollars! Or about £30 Million. Yikes!

Now I have been patiently waiting for a release date since I heard about this title a year ago or so. I then heard another favourite title was coming with Elite Dangerous! Very cool indeed! But despite patiently waiting I have not heard a projected release date and thought I would in this article?

Now the point is that in the comments section someone complains about the exact same thing, though I am not at the complaining stage yet and not likely to be for 6 months yet lol! Then someone else also complains that you get access to certain things for 'X' amount of money and that they were charging funders $350, 0r around £275, for just a certain ship?!

Well despite the fact this was defended I was aghast at this figure! Bit worrying to think that they are going to turn into something that I believe they should bring back flogging for and I am not joking about that, pay to win!!

Never in my life have I seen anything not only so utterly stupid and a complete opposite to the very notion of 'gaming' but also so utterly and obviously pure greed!

I hope that is not what they are doing here?!

Anyway that got me to thinking about this fund raising thing and I think to myself at which point does it become too much? At what point should they stop? Who makes the rules on thigs like this? Suddenly I am thinking abouyt how green with envy that the UK's useless and main three political parties must be at those figures?! Lol!

Then I started to wonder at what point do doners think they have not had their moneys worth? Or feel that they did not receive something worthy of the figures donated?

Now I have this sneaky suspicion that before much longer the house of cards may come falling down? Now those that defended the developers were not thinking clearly as they seem to feel asssured that everyone felt as they did? Do they? Can you, those that defend the developers, be absolutely certain that all the people behind that figure of $50 Million and rising all feel as you do?

More to the point can you be certain that you would be correct one year from now?

The trouble is that when a title is nearing completion you normally get release date estimates banded around? Elite Dangerous, a smilar game but with only 10% of the money that Star Citizen raised and admittedly I am not aware of the time frames either one as been in existence on Kickstarter, is scheduled for later this year of 2014, November I think? Star Citizen has neenm known about for over a year I believe, maybe two? The only release date I see ever given is 2015, which normally means there is no way its out in the first half of that year! Some commenters have remarked, again silly, that its two years away still.

Now if they, and believe me its a wild guess, are correct with the two years figure I cannot help but wonder what the donated amount would be by then?! I also cannot help but wonder just how many people will be complaining by then?!

LMAO!

Well this Kickstarter fund raising thing is new and with anything new you can always be sure that there are a bunch of people somewhere that just did not think things through enough?!

LOL!

Oddly enough I have an account with Kickstarter and thought about using it to sort of fund my blogs?! I would feel guilty if I received 1% of that which Star Citizen had raised and thought this to be too much?! That, despite spending years already working to collect many tens, hundreds maybe, of gigabytes of secret recordings and videos!

Personally I think what they are doing has sounded very, vewry cool indeed. I just hope to God it does not turn out to be something that is ugly and end up being remembered for all the wrong reasons?!

If you know nothing of this space simulator that has trading, dogfighting and drivel inducing rumours about first person shooting (different planets?!) then do a search on Roberts Space Industries ... oooh bugger it hang on ...

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/about-the-game

In the meantime to be the Star Citizen you have to have the most wonga.

BETHESDA GAMES A GO GO & MORE

I have been playing Fallout New Vegas a great deal of late, to take my mind off other things.

It is interesting because there were several really nice things that I had failed to discover, down to me being away from games too long and off the pulse, so to speak.

I did not realise that The King's robot dog, Rex could become a companion. I had become obsessed with gunning down Deathclaws from afar with the Anti-Material Rifle and gathering as much loot as I could, especially as I realised that there is a place to store it all and that's in the Presidential Suite of the Lucky 38, as this appears to be mine now.

I also got some real shocks too! After a stint in that offshoot err add-on that I am just trying to buy time until I remember what it was called with the chips and the bald and mute lady and that ... ohh damn it. The one where your abducted and put a collar on by that Elijah bloke. Lol! You have to go through that town with those ghost type people but you have to do everything stealthily and at a snails pace.

That is the one thing that stands out as annoying is that walking in their games is extremely frustrating and you fell more like your dragging a leg. Running is OK but walking is a pin in the arse!

Now what I got a real refreshing surprise from was the other two umm oooh NUTS! The Canyon Wreckage one with Hopesville and errrrrrrrrr ummmmmmm that courier chap, I loved that! Way too short in my opinion and should have been much longer but I still loved it. The Divide! Brilliant, lol.

A complete contrast to this and equally as good and just as equally too dman short was the Northern Passage add-on. Or at least I think they were add-ons, lol. The Grand Canyon was beautifully presented but it was a bit light on a few things. Loved the Joshua Graham character and a shame it did not go a bit deeper into his character. I liked that snowchalk, or was it chalkcheese guy the one you meet when you first get there, oooh Zion that was what it was referred to as I remember now, lol. I thought I had done something so very wrong when we suddenly reached Zion and it was not what I expected at all. Everyone gets shot and I am getting ready to hit the reload as I thought I had missed something!

The funny thing was as I was gunning them down with a sniper rifle of some sort I was left with one guy and I knew I hit him and he was still standing?! I kept low and got a bit closer, took aim and shot him again and yet still he stood there?! I remember thinking 'Whoa! Hardly anything can survive a shot from this gun while hidden! That must be one tough mother?!' Turned out to be chalkcheese, Slowchalk or whatever his name was. Man, that was a pretty map whereas the Divide was interesting and menacing.

I must admit to having used Fallout to take up some time and I wanted to leave Skyrim alone for several weeks. Then I wanted to get the expansion disks.

However I was actually paying much closer attention than normal to the games that have been coming out and I did not realise that the graphics had moved on a whole Direct X number from Skyrim?! Mind you on the one hand people now state how old Skyrim is and its engine but not too long ago it was the bee's knees! For me when I saw the screenshots of Skyrim I could not quite believe my eyes! How far the 3D Engines had come since I built my last RIG, notice I said MY last rig as I did sort of build one for someone else a couple years back.

I could not help thinking that Skyrim for me, as I had been out of the gaming world for a few years, looked good on my system. As stated before my system is a Phenom X3 1.8Ghz with a Radeon HD 5450M graphics processor.

I never thought I would be able to play Skyrim on it in a million years and many people in the Internet said no way. All of them were wrong and I realised after first owning Oblivion and then Fallout 3 that the later engines were coded alot more efficiently than previously. Skyrim looks far better and runs a lot smoother than Oblivion on my laptop! Mad as it sounds, it is true.

So I could not help but think each time I played it just how good it would look with the settings on max?! Obviously there was no way that was going to happen on my laptop and I would not even get half way there, that much I knew! Then after I discovered that other titles were not only reported as having better graphics than Skyrim but also with the free roaming world idea I started to wonder even more! Mind you there is no point having a free roaming world unless you have a nice length main plot mission driver with other side plots to actually extend the main plot line!

Personally I hated these done in two days titles of old and I did not like it. Playing Oblivion and then Fallout and Skyrim this seemed to me to be the natural way to go and to extend the longevity of the game was a given and for me seriously needed to happen.

Years ago I was waiting for Half Life 2 with baited breath, do you know I just found the original receipt from PC World for my purchase of Half Life 2?! Yes it was good except for the fact I had completed it in just two days and yet at around that time I had the demo of a Real Time Strategy game Age of Empires II, I think it was, that I had played for around a month?!

I remember thinking how bloody stupid it was that this had occurred, I had paid 'X' amount of money and been forced onto a system, STEAM, I did not like and never thought would work, well it has not really and mostly full of crud lol, that was problematic at best t o play a game that was going to last in the hours and not even days for some.

Fast forward to present day and Bethesda's games are going for bloody weeks, but I would prefer months guys?! Lol!

In all honesty the maps are great and I am all in favour of bigger maps and more areas. Oddly I seem to recall reading somewhere that the Elder Scrolls online game had the entire Tamriel map? Stunning! However from a hort clip I saw the game looked like complete pandemonium and I will be honest here and stating that your charging for the software and then a monthly subscription on top?! Sorry there are absolutely no excuses for that and you will not ever get me paying out that money and those that do? Well your a few sandwiches short of a picnic! Well based on the video I saw and the way people are playing the game anyway they do seem to be minus those sandwiches?!

Why on earth would I pay to go into a game that instead of playing it with an interesting plot and getting together with other in a team or co-op type fair they're just running at each other in some massive drug influenced mad battle the likes of which reality has never seen and Napoleon Bonaparte would turn in his grave over!

These are obviously spotty teenagers that seem to hink that playing a game that way os the cool thing to do? Hmm maybe they should round up the players one at a time and do a psychological evaluation of them?! Lol. If any have dyed theur hair green then lock them up in a padded cell until a psychological evaluation is done.

I am looking arund currently trying to catch up on titles I have missed but that are not too old!

Not worked out FacrCry 3 yet as this gets some good reviews but then I see many are moaning because the plot was very thin and very short? I also here that rather surprisingly FarCry far was about to be, or has been, announced? I wonder if this is because of the things I read? I played the original FarCry and I am sure I got FarCry 2 but seem to remember it crashing and not completing it?

Similar to what I read about FarCry 3 was Thief! Now Thief, which I am most definitely getting, is an odd one because the graphics looked great and I was kinda hoping it was at least some of the original team behind it. I still have several copies, two came with two GeForce 6800GT's I used in my original SLI rig, today of the third instalment Thief III Deadly Shadows and this for me was one of the greatest games ever made! The best part was my sister laughing at me and said a game cannot be frightening so I let her play until cacking her underwear became a major problem as was the leaning to one side like she was going to dive under the kitchen table! I kid you not! She was not a kid either and was in full time work. She said she just never imagined a game could be scary!

Those reading this who played the game would have long since known that it was the asylum and they also would have known I was letting her play the part where you go up the spiral staircase!

But I hear the latest Thief is not all that. Well we will see before long.

Right now though it would be nice to know if there was going to be a Fallout 4 at some point and a Elder Scrolls?! Now what with the recent advancement of graphics and a couple of new graphics APIs of Direct X and Mantle along with HSA and hUMA I for one simply cannot wait!

Now the very idea of a title each of Fallout and Elder Scrolls with these technologies about makes me dribble like a madman! Lol! One thing I do feel sure about and that is that we will here something about BOTH titles before 2014 is through. I think that would give us all something to smile about?!

Now I have regained interest in Dishonoured and am looking for other open ended titles and see what is out there.

On another note I am getting excited about both Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen, though I am sure it wont be called that, maybe STAR COMMANDER? Lol!

On the lookout for forthcoming car racing titles too and that Project Cars sounds good even if the title does not? Hopefully a decent Need for Speed? I love the Need for Speed titles but they have the whole old Star Trek thing going on! One good one and then one or to crap ones, or so they say. Never played a crap one myself but then I missed out on a great deal of titles over the last five years! I do have Hot Pursuit and that is good!

Shall return to Hot Pursuit in the next coupld of weeks!

EYEING UP THE BITS AND PIECES

It seems that the chap I was mentioning before, at least I think I did (Fibrofog) is Jay Z Two Cents or something similar.

Due to the disappearence to the Canadian duo I have now added this chap to my susbscriptions, something I am very choosey about doing. However I liked his frank and funny approach to testing and reviewing things.

I am, I will admit, heavily looking into things right now and ... will be for the next couple of weeks to which after this I am going to be ... taking action regarding a few bits and pieces.

I have also been looking at more up to date games and even purchased a copy of PC Gamer recently. Now I had the first ever copy of that along with a few others. Some of these are no longer in existence and some are.

The titles I have read about have me somewhat excited I must say and I have a driven determination to try and achieve things over the next month!

However I do tend to like single player itles to multi player ones so I will have to check and make sure as to what is what and not make any mistakes in a months time.

But I do love flight Sims and am eager to see more about ...

Star Citizen (read its MMO :( )

Elite Dangerous (read its MMO :( )

Eve Valkyrie (MMO)

I was interested in X Rebirth as I played all the others but my word does it get a panning from people so ... maybe not?!

I also like Role Playing games along with open world games that can last you a long time, several weeks as opposed to several hours.

I love the two titles I have along these lines of

Elder Scrolls V Skyrim 

Fallout New Vegas (played Fallout 3 too)

Deus Ex Human Revolution

None of the follow ups to these have been announced quite unfortunately. Many are stating they are some way off but I whink maybe as not as far off as many think due to the launch of the new consoles of the PS3 and XBone?!

I am interested in ...

Crysis 3

Farcry 3

But I will have to check them out further and was also interested in Metro Last Light.

There are the Wolfenstein and Watch Dog titles too. Dragon Age Inquisition along with Tom Clancy's The Division and Dying Light. Also the H1Z1 sounds interesting thus far. Also Project Cars or any ohter driving game I can find I think will be of major interest?!

I also have a rough list of things that comprise .. umm ... ten things ... ooooh wait no? THIRTEEN things, lol. These are not games!

There are a few others rumoured about that seem interesting however I have lost count of the amount of hype a imminent title has acquired only for it to be a let down upon release for one reason or another. These companies should really not sell themselves out to parent companies who will treat them like musians are treated and rushed something out that is unfinished.

What I also foind surprising is that in this day and age where you can write things to optical disks so easily or provide your own downloadable content that things are still squeezed in this way? Especially now that you have things like Kickstarter too where scores of people go wading through it for projects of interest!

I mean there is very big name in music that got around all this kind of thing and will not pander to the greedy execs wanting money immediately and not content to wait and that of course is Radiohead.

Whatever I do in about one month from now you can bet that my best camera will be at the ready and fully put to work! I am also leaning in a direction I have not done so before and never wanted to before. Yet I am pretty sure that this time around I am going to dive into that area?!

Also I am interested in looking into Dishonoured which I nearly bought when it came out but was not too sure, but now their is talk of Dishonoured 2 and hopefully this will be followed, or preceded, by Fallout 4 (read rumour Boston was scouted for this) and then Elder Scrolls 6?!

I have another blog whereby it always seems that everything I do comes togeether at the same time along with things being released in the media. Maybe this endeavour will follow suit?!

I might have to finally get a hard line?! (:-P)

Fingers crossed!!

One month from now this blog will get a great deal of content along these lines as will my YouTube account!

At long bloody last and should be the first of two, maybe more?!

THE ELDER SCROLLS OFF THE MARK

Oh dear!

I saw this headline that said "5 Reasons why The Elder Scrolls Online is already a failure!" and I thought , oh my god! Can it be?

After reading the piece which I found courtesy of my Flipboard App I must say I am shocked.

I never managed to get around into getting into the whole online MMO thing but I had gained an interest when they announced The Elder Scrolls Online. I am a big sucker for gorgeous graphics it must be said and yes while I agree that the gaming part is just add big I simply show now interest or scratch my head regarding games with crap graphics. After seeing screenshots of Minecraft and reading about it's popularity I wound up add bald as a Coot! Yes maybe playing it may change my mind but for me gaming is about the ultimate escapism and that means realism. I play my copy of Elder Scrolls V Skyrim on a laptop that should not be able to play it! Oddly the last edition of Elder Scrolls actually not only looks worse than my Skyrim on the same laptop but plays very crap! So obviously the choosing in the game engine to Skyrim was far superior to Oblivion, Elder Scrolls IV.

I must say that it is surprising to see that Bethesda, who are God like beings to me after playing two Fallouts and Skyrim, can get an online game so wrong?! I mean it's not like online gaming is some brand new thing and they have been around for awhile now. World of Warcraft sounded interesting but the graphics looked a bit old to me and I must say had I bet my money on Bethesda and The Elder Scrolls Online I would have lost!

But there is another concern for me and gaming and it's the exact same thing that affects everyone who gets into coding. Everyone wants to get into this monthly pay us plan and to me they see this add more lucrative than a single player game. The fact that you have to fork out loads of wonga before you have even signed up to a monthly direct debit scheme is far more worrying! Especially add everyone seems to be taking so long to raise that the money pit is not bottomless! If everyone did this what would happen is you will have petiole trying to juggle and work out what they can do without. It would also mean that anyone new would find great difficulties in breaking into the gaming scene?! This would mean l less innovation in gaming!

Now I do not know how the online version of Elder Scrolls came about but for decades now the money people have been slowly coming and stifling creativity in games. A long time ago a couple of chaps used to go around the computer gaming ships selling a game they created on a set of 3.5 inch floppy disks. You may have heard of these guys add they were the ones behind one of the most popular of the early RPGs Ultima Underworld and eventually the space simulator of the famous Wing Commander series. Those days are long gone and along the way many other types of games and ones that got me into PCs in the first place have also gone, that being flight simulators. Outside of Flight Simulator X and umm that other one oh yeah X-Plane there is nothing much. I long for the return of things like Falcon and Strike Eagle among others! At least Wing Commander, oh I'm sorry Space Citizen is coming along with Elite Dangerous! Those people who were the original pioneers getting back into it probably because they see a gaping hole! Oh yes and X Rebirth is finally out to, I missed that one and recently saw it in my local Have store to my surprise.

I just hippie that Bethesda do not use all their time now fixing The Elder Scrolls Online and that they are not pandering to greedy executives of some patent company or label?! Otherwise it could be eons before we see Elder Scrolls 6 our Fallout 4?!

Good God, perish the thought!

The Elder Scrolls Online: 5 Reasons Why This Game is Already a Failure http://www.vgamerz.com/the-elder-scrolls-online-5-reasons-why-this-game-is-already-a-failure/