Recently I've been playing around with PCSX2, a Playstation 2 emulator. It's really a neat little program. The Ps2 was notorious back in the day for being difficult to program for due to its complex architecture, so the amount of work that must have gone in to make this emulator even remotely functional must have been immense. It's not perfect by any means, however. There are often little graphical and sound glitches while playing, and you can't just play any game you like on it ( yet ).
According to the website, there are 830 games out of 1912 that are playable on the emulator. Luckily, one of these games is Final Fantasy XII. I never got very far into FFXII when I owned a PS2, despite that fact that it's a great game. But thanks to PCSX2 I'm already a few hours into a new game of it. Another bonus of the emulator is being able to play games in high resolutions with texture filtering and anti-aliasing. I'm playing FFXII at a resolution of 1920 x 1200, as opposed to the PS2's native resolution of 640 x 400. It looks incredible! Seriously, the graphics are so sharp and detailed, with absolutely no aliasing.
Oh, and I'm playing this legally, by the way. I'm using an ISO of FFXII that I ripped myself from my own copy of the game. Legal emulation FTW!
Monday, January 26, 2009
Saturday, January 24, 2009
F.E.A.R 2 Demo
I just played the demo on PC. Impressions? Mmmmmmokay. Lots of cheap scares, a few of which actually got to me, but once I "broke" one of the scares by accidentally standing where Alma ( the scary Japanese horror movie-esque little girl of the game ) was supposed to appear, causing her to clip right through me and spin around wildy beneath me, she kind of lost her power to scare.
The gunplay is as fun as ever, and basically hasn't changed at all from the first game. The enemy A.I seems pretty smart also, but during the short run of the demo they don't really have much of an opportunity to impress. One of the new additions to the game is the ability to push over objects to create cover for you to duck behind, but I must admit I didn't actually use it at all during combat.
The demo ends with a very fun sequence where you hop into some power armour and literally explode enemies with your huge guns and missiles. I get the feeling the demo was created specially and isn't representative of the actual flow of the game, because it would be strange to reward players that early with such a huge weapon. Monolith also did the same thing with the demo for the first F.E.A.R, basically giving you a sampling of various sections of the game all tied together specifically for the demo.
Overall, the demo is not too bad and definitely worth a quick playthrough. I'll be buying the game when it's released, as the orignal game is one of my favourite FPS's ( despite it's repetitive middle section ).
The gunplay is as fun as ever, and basically hasn't changed at all from the first game. The enemy A.I seems pretty smart also, but during the short run of the demo they don't really have much of an opportunity to impress. One of the new additions to the game is the ability to push over objects to create cover for you to duck behind, but I must admit I didn't actually use it at all during combat.
The demo ends with a very fun sequence where you hop into some power armour and literally explode enemies with your huge guns and missiles. I get the feeling the demo was created specially and isn't representative of the actual flow of the game, because it would be strange to reward players that early with such a huge weapon. Monolith also did the same thing with the demo for the first F.E.A.R, basically giving you a sampling of various sections of the game all tied together specifically for the demo.
Overall, the demo is not too bad and definitely worth a quick playthrough. I'll be buying the game when it's released, as the orignal game is one of my favourite FPS's ( despite it's repetitive middle section ).
Thursday, January 15, 2009
2008 GamerTron Retrospecticus 5000
As promised, here's my recap of 2008 in video gaming. I have decided to do it in bullet point style, because I am lazy. Stream of consciousness, here we go!
- Finally reaching rank 55, Commander, in Call of Duty 4 on the PC. It only took me about 35 hours over the space of a year...
- Sitting down and slogging through the remaining few levels of Gears Of War, and Rainbow Six: Vegas over the space of a couple of days. I hated them both by the end, particularly GOW.
- Settling with getting about 25 frames per second average on Crysis on medium detail. The game itself only took about 12 hours to complete, with the last few hours of them being particularly boring.
- Being incredibly addicted to ChronoTrigger on my SNES emulator for about a week, and then losing interest.
- Finally getting Fahrenheit to work on Vista, and then losing interest.
- Completing Syberia after playing it off an on for over a year.
- Being completely blown away by the sheer awesomeness of Mass Effect. Game of the year for me.
- Being completely underwhelmed by Assassin's Creed. Pretty graphics and amazing technology can only mask shallow gameplay for so long.
- Playing both EverQuest II, and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes briefly. Neither managed to hold my interest. My search for a decent MMORPG goes on.
- Completing Myst V: End of Ages, thereby finally completing the entire Myst saga. It really is one of my favourite gaming series of all time.
- Upgrading my computer a couple of times, thanks to the relative cheapness of components in Australia. Mmmmm, 4GB of Ram and GTX 260 video card.
- Being horrendously addicted to TrackMania for a couple of weeks.
- The slight disappointment of S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Clear Sky. Not enough spooky underground bits like in the first game!
- Playing and falling in love with Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis on my SCUMMVM.
- Experiencing the brilliant online joy of Left 4 Dead.
- Being frustrated at living in a country that doesn't have an R18 rating for video games.
- Finally finding Beyond Good and Evil for sale on PC. I downloaded it through Steam.
- Buying a Wii. The initial excitement wore off long ago, and to be honest I haven't even played it for the last few months, but I still think it's a cool little machine.
Okay, that's about it. I can't think of too much more. I'm already in the process of creating some shiny new 2009 memories. Huzzah!
- Finally reaching rank 55, Commander, in Call of Duty 4 on the PC. It only took me about 35 hours over the space of a year...
- Sitting down and slogging through the remaining few levels of Gears Of War, and Rainbow Six: Vegas over the space of a couple of days. I hated them both by the end, particularly GOW.
- Settling with getting about 25 frames per second average on Crysis on medium detail. The game itself only took about 12 hours to complete, with the last few hours of them being particularly boring.
- Being incredibly addicted to ChronoTrigger on my SNES emulator for about a week, and then losing interest.
- Finally getting Fahrenheit to work on Vista, and then losing interest.
- Completing Syberia after playing it off an on for over a year.
- Being completely blown away by the sheer awesomeness of Mass Effect. Game of the year for me.
- Being completely underwhelmed by Assassin's Creed. Pretty graphics and amazing technology can only mask shallow gameplay for so long.
- Playing both EverQuest II, and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes briefly. Neither managed to hold my interest. My search for a decent MMORPG goes on.
- Completing Myst V: End of Ages, thereby finally completing the entire Myst saga. It really is one of my favourite gaming series of all time.
- Upgrading my computer a couple of times, thanks to the relative cheapness of components in Australia. Mmmmm, 4GB of Ram and GTX 260 video card.
- Being horrendously addicted to TrackMania for a couple of weeks.
- The slight disappointment of S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Clear Sky. Not enough spooky underground bits like in the first game!
- Playing and falling in love with Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis on my SCUMMVM.
- Experiencing the brilliant online joy of Left 4 Dead.
- Being frustrated at living in a country that doesn't have an R18 rating for video games.
- Finally finding Beyond Good and Evil for sale on PC. I downloaded it through Steam.
- Buying a Wii. The initial excitement wore off long ago, and to be honest I haven't even played it for the last few months, but I still think it's a cool little machine.
Okay, that's about it. I can't think of too much more. I'm already in the process of creating some shiny new 2009 memories. Huzzah!
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Yay for 2009! Yay for Games!
Seeing as I haven't updated for a while, I was planning to do a 2008 Gaming Retrospective type of post. I will get around to that eventually, but in the meantime here is what I'm playing at the moment:
Grand Theft Auto IV:
This is one hell of a game! I'm playing it on the PC, and other than a truly buggy and terrible launch, I've been really enjoying it. When it was first released on PC, the were a long list of technical problems surrounding the game, unoptimised performance being the main complaint. I've got a pretty powerful computer ( E6600 Dual Core Processor, 4GB Ram, GTX 260 Video Card ) and I was getting about 20 frames per second on medium settings. Luckily a patch was released pretty quickly which improved the performance, and also Nvidia released a new beta driver which helped. Now on slightly above medium settings I'm getting a steady 30 fps.
Anyway, enough about the technical crap, and more about the game itself! I knew the game was going to be impressive, but it really is quite astounding just how in depth and absorbing the whole thing is. I'm only about 30 percent of the way through, but so far I've found the story to be really interesting. The action is tight, and apart from getting stuck on the wrong side of objects occasionally when trying to duck behind cover, the combat system is a lot of fun. The driving physics are really fantastic, and I've had a great time just driving around and trying to pull of jumps and stunts.
A great bonus on the PC version is the inclusion of a video editor. At any time during the game you can just hit F2, and it records roughly the last 30-60 seconds of action that happened in the game. GTA has been crying out for a feature like this. The open world, sandbox nature of the games give rise to some truly unique and incredible moments, and now having the ability to record these moments for posterity is awesome. The editor itself is very user friendly, and I've already put together a handful of videos documenting my exploits, here.
The multiplayer is also a hell of a lot of fun. The only problem I've really encountered is that it's hard to find a decent game with enough people playing. Hopefully that will pick up as more people get over their fear of the initial technical hiccups and purchase the game.
Overall, GTAIV is one of the finest games I've played in recent memory. And I've still got so much of the game to get through!
Dead Space:
I just picked this one up a few days ago from EB for half price. I've already clocked up about 5 hours on the game, and they've been a pretty tense, harrowing 5 hours. The game really is incredibly unoriginal, and is derivative of a handful of other games
( Bioshock, System Shock 2, Resident Evil 4 etc ), but it takes the best elements of those games and polishes them up to a shiny, shiny sheen.
Technically, the game is very impressive. The overall graphical presentation is spot on, and really keeps your eyes glued to the screen. The lighting in particular is very effective, with the crisp, accurate shadows really giving you the creeps sometimes. The sound is brilliant, and I really wish I had my 5.1 setup here in Australia ( I left my 5.1 speakers back in NZ ), as the sound is such a huge part of the game. The music is subtle and fits the mood of the game well, but it's the sound effects that really take the cake. They...are...amazing! The creaks and groans of the ship, the screeches of the Necromorphs, the almost imperceptible whispering coming from the walls of the ship itself. They all add up to a truly terrifying sound scape.
I've completed four of the games chapters so far. I think there's about a dozen, so I've got quite a lot more scary space action until I'm done. That's okay by me, because so far I'm really enjoying it.
Okay, that's about it for now. I'll get around to doing a retrospective soon...hopefully.
Grand Theft Auto IV:
This is one hell of a game! I'm playing it on the PC, and other than a truly buggy and terrible launch, I've been really enjoying it. When it was first released on PC, the were a long list of technical problems surrounding the game, unoptimised performance being the main complaint. I've got a pretty powerful computer ( E6600 Dual Core Processor, 4GB Ram, GTX 260 Video Card ) and I was getting about 20 frames per second on medium settings. Luckily a patch was released pretty quickly which improved the performance, and also Nvidia released a new beta driver which helped. Now on slightly above medium settings I'm getting a steady 30 fps.
Anyway, enough about the technical crap, and more about the game itself! I knew the game was going to be impressive, but it really is quite astounding just how in depth and absorbing the whole thing is. I'm only about 30 percent of the way through, but so far I've found the story to be really interesting. The action is tight, and apart from getting stuck on the wrong side of objects occasionally when trying to duck behind cover, the combat system is a lot of fun. The driving physics are really fantastic, and I've had a great time just driving around and trying to pull of jumps and stunts.
A great bonus on the PC version is the inclusion of a video editor. At any time during the game you can just hit F2, and it records roughly the last 30-60 seconds of action that happened in the game. GTA has been crying out for a feature like this. The open world, sandbox nature of the games give rise to some truly unique and incredible moments, and now having the ability to record these moments for posterity is awesome. The editor itself is very user friendly, and I've already put together a handful of videos documenting my exploits, here.
The multiplayer is also a hell of a lot of fun. The only problem I've really encountered is that it's hard to find a decent game with enough people playing. Hopefully that will pick up as more people get over their fear of the initial technical hiccups and purchase the game.
Overall, GTAIV is one of the finest games I've played in recent memory. And I've still got so much of the game to get through!
Dead Space:
I just picked this one up a few days ago from EB for half price. I've already clocked up about 5 hours on the game, and they've been a pretty tense, harrowing 5 hours. The game really is incredibly unoriginal, and is derivative of a handful of other games
( Bioshock, System Shock 2, Resident Evil 4 etc ), but it takes the best elements of those games and polishes them up to a shiny, shiny sheen.
Technically, the game is very impressive. The overall graphical presentation is spot on, and really keeps your eyes glued to the screen. The lighting in particular is very effective, with the crisp, accurate shadows really giving you the creeps sometimes. The sound is brilliant, and I really wish I had my 5.1 setup here in Australia ( I left my 5.1 speakers back in NZ ), as the sound is such a huge part of the game. The music is subtle and fits the mood of the game well, but it's the sound effects that really take the cake. They...are...amazing! The creaks and groans of the ship, the screeches of the Necromorphs, the almost imperceptible whispering coming from the walls of the ship itself. They all add up to a truly terrifying sound scape.
I've completed four of the games chapters so far. I think there's about a dozen, so I've got quite a lot more scary space action until I'm done. That's okay by me, because so far I'm really enjoying it.
Okay, that's about it for now. I'll get around to doing a retrospective soon...hopefully.
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