Yesterday I bought Crysis, and World in Conflict for that matter - half price from GameStation woowee! But in this post I'm focusing on Crysis.

I refer to stevenscott14's recent blog when I say I agree that I thought this game would be bland and uninteresting. Every single video I watched of it put me off due to the rubbish frame rate, but I now realise why all the videos play at 5fps, even the world's fastest computer will struggle to render all the lush scenery and record a fraps video of what's happening on screen.

So down to my first impressions.

I feel like I'm repeating myself now, seeing as I just wrote a blog about it (here), so I'll try and make this one slightly different. Well first I'll say I've been playing the demo for the past week and messing with the settings to get the best frame rate to gameplay ratio, if that's what you'd call it. I can use all the hacked DX10 settings without slow down apart from the Shaders, which I have to play on medium. The very high shader settings do work mind you, though only at a lowly 4fps.

I'm going through it on the Delta difficulty setting as that's the only fun way in my eyes. The Koreans are good enemies, I've been killed by them many many times so far, but they haven't made me bored yet. I enjoy the 'sandbox shooter' as I like to replay the different situations in different ways. I must admit I sometimes bypass entire sections, though to my credit only when I've had my fill of unsuccessfully blowing up 17 Koreans with a rocket launcher only to see them all turn around and shoot me in the head.

The rest of the time (when I'm not experimenting with rocket launchers and Koreans) I tend to wander aimlessly through the jungles, checking out the scenery and occasionally chuckin' the very high detail shaders on so I can take a few piccies. I've uploaded a few of them to my flickr album if you'd like to take a look.

I can't really say much more, I'm only on the 3rd level, and I've been playing it for 5 hours, so I can't reveal my experiences with the ice levels or fighting against the alien buggers cos I just ain't that far in.

Здравствуйте!

Long time no blog. Yes, I decided I'd try learning some русский (Russian). Found a rather awesome web based language teacher at TryMango.com. May come in handy with learning French as I'll be holidayin' it large to Eastern Canada next year... Driving through Ontario & Québec, 13 days, should be wootin.

Been playing some Supreme Commander, I'm rubbish at it. BioShock, was awesome for the first 2 thirds, slightly disappointed by the last bit and the boss fight at the end. Maybe due to annoyances caused by regular crashing, crashes which happened only when I played with High Detail shaders switched on, the game looked so bland without them so I had to put up with the crashing. I'll have another play through on hard mode when that issue is fixed, I know a few others have been experiencing that problem. Here are a few piccies I took of my Big Daddy.

Also been 360in it large on Crackdoon and Worms with the other half of the wombat, which ended in much hilarity.

До свиданиа!

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Some nice pointless links have been added at the top there, woot!
Oh, and here's a lovely picture of a watermelon flavoured Dr. Breen.

Explosion One
Explosion Two
Explosion Three
xD

Just thought it was time to update my profile banner thingy wotsit and my avatar pictues with some lovely zombies. Taken from this picture.

The reason for this is that I'm currently reading The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z both by Max Brooks. Most awesome indeed. I also read the first installment of The Walking Dead graphic novel by Robert Kirkman which is also pretty damn good.

So yeah, zombies bloody rule.

Tata!

Technical difficulties, what's with all these technical difficulties...

So you may recall from my previous blog post that I bought a VGA HD cable to plug my 360 into my uber pc monitor. And as I said, the picture looked awesome but I couldn't get the sound to work properly.

Well, that is still the case. I've tried everything... without going into detail, I've bought 2 adapters, tried plugging into lots of different inputs, and messed with the settings on the 360 dashboard a lot. The outcome is always the same - the sound comes out my left speaker but sounds cack.

I've posted on the 360 forums [click] wiith no real resolution, also I've phoned a bunch of technical helplines, who keep saying "faulty cable". And now I'm thinking I can't be bothered to replace it because it is kind of annoying having to switch cables on my monitor everytime i want to do a bit of gaming (and potentially damaging it by doing so). So I'm now thinking of getting a little HDTV to replace the one in my bedroom as I can't bear going back to standard definition gaming after seeing it all in HD.

So to the gaming side of things, I'm loving Double Agent, I got to the arctic level whilst playing it on my SDTV which looked glorious even on that. I'd love to see it (and hear it) in HD xD

I just bought a VGA HD AV Cable for my 360, meaning I can plug the 360 into my PC monitor for some HD gaming. I tried Dead Rising on it and wow, I can actually read the text on it! It does look great, though the colours could be a little sharper. I guess it'd look better if using a DVI HD cable which isn't available yet.

One problem is that I can't get the sound to work through my computer's speakers. I should be able to get an adapter and I'm just about to go out and find one.

Oh, and apologies to anyone who thought I was giving away a free HDTV.

Time for an update, as I haven't written one of these in about 2 months.

So a few weeks ago my internet was cut off due to lack of bills being paid, because of there being absolutely no money to spare. I have just been paid £600 by my insurance company because of a car crash I had about a month ago, some complete noob drove into the back of me, totally not my fault. My car was irrepairable, because it would mean replacing half of the actual body work. That would have cost around £1200. My insurance company gave me the choice of either repairing it or giving me £600 compensation, I took the second option as my car is still drivable, it just has an ugly dent in the rear.

I decided a week ago that I was gonna get an xbox360, so I took my PS2 with 17 games over to my local Gamestation and they bought it all off me for £108.50, not bad really. I got the 360 on a pay monthly deal (which I will pay off fully if I get another insurance payout for my injuries from the accident (nothing major by the way, just whiplash and some back pains)) and bought Dead Rising, Just Cause and NHL2k6 second hand with the money from my PS2. Yesterday I bought Amped3 as I found it on sale for £13, I also signed up for Xbox Live last night and downloaded Geometry Wars because it's bloody awesome.

So now I've got all that to play, plus Dark Messiah and Company of Heroes for the PC, when I'm not playing DEFCON or watching the tons of DVD's I'm trying to finish at the moment...

I should also add that my Xbox Live gamertag is indeed ntwrock. Add me if you wish.

Right, I've just uploaded my version of the BlackOwl website as I wanted to give ezra a little preview. Yep, that means it's not finished yet, and so it is a little bare. The layout is done, which took forever, but most of the pages still need the content adding to.

BKO website

So I will get to work on the remaining pages, shouldn't take too long, but I'm going out right now so they'll be up tonight I guess. So tell me what you think of it and what could do with changing.

And as for that Gmod video which I promised a while ago (UFO's From Outer Space!!!), I've kind of run out of ideas for it. I was thinking though, Garry's Mod 10 is out soon, you can put in cameras and attach them to things and therefore get some really cool camera angles. There's tons more features which could improve this UFO movie. I might revive the project when that gets released.

Just wanted to show off my new monitor. I had to buy a new one because a few weeks ago I somehow managed to knock my other (brand new) monitor over. It fell into one of my speakers and cracked, as you can see.

I had to claim off my house insurance, they gave me some money and said I could upgrade if I was willing to pay the remaining fee.

So I went to PC World earlier and found this LG 20.1" Widescreen.

Click for bigger



I also received these two Half-Life 2 Posters from the Valve Store today. :D


Don't say anything about my desk, I know it's tiny. My next purchase will indeed be a nice big desk.

Oh and the UFO video which I advertised earlier this week is coming. I will finish it this weekend.