I’ve been quiet over the last few months due to an operation. Anyhow, I’m back on my feet again and everything seems to be working as it should.
Over the past few months whilst I’ve been recovering, I’ve not airsofted and haven’t really done anything in regards to my kit. I have however, ordered some new kit. Firstly I’ve ordered myself a new gearbox. For some reason my Kalash AK74S has stopped working. No idea why, just died on me whilst I was at a site. I ordered myself a nice new Cyma gearbox. Unfortunately, I’ll have to learn how to solder as the gearbox is wired up for a normal AK74/47 with a full stock (and thus stock mounted battery). I was after a TM gearbox as I like quality and reliability of the TM gearbox but the prices in the UK for a full gearbox are extortion! I could almost purchase a new gun for the cost of a replacement gearbox! Something I almost considered!
My second purchase was a new face mask. I’ll be doing a review of this soon but it will have to wait until I get a proper use out of it. As you can see, it’s a chinese replica of the STALKER mask I posted about here. Hopefully it will provide protection for my teeth in woodland games where I really don’t want to wear a full face mask.
Other Hobbies
My other new hobby has also occupied my time and funds. I’ve recently started cycling again (though I’ve had to stop during the operation recovery period) as I bought a bike to commute to work. Thankfully, I think it was the best purchase I’ve made in the last 12 months! I bought a Carrera Hybrid bike from Halfords. However, I’ve not just stopped at commuting. I always liked cycling as a kid and used to cycle to college. This all stopped when I moved to Leeds for uni. However, it finally became a complete pain to spend 30/40 minutes walking to work everyday when I can do it on a bike in 10 minutes! So after the purchase I started cycling recreationally again, especially in the nice weather we’ve had.
Anyhow, one thing has led to another and now I’m a fully lycra clad cycling fan and have clocked up over 1000Km since I bought the bike (on Easter Sunday) and that’s not including my daily 6Km commutes! However bike gear isn’t cheap so it’s been eating into my airsofting funds!
I’m also moving house (in to a shared house with a mate) which has also taken up funds as obviously a deposit needs to be paid and first months rent overlaps with current house etc etc.
Unfortunately all of this has led to some unwanted kit and I’ve parted with my M23 Pioneer chest rig. Since I’ve had the SMERSH it’s not seen any use and for lightweight games, I’ve been using my sci-fi themed kit (which I have re-bought!). I also want to part with my Flora, however no one seems interested.
Computer Games
After my favourable of APB, I’ve only played it once since then and wasn’t as impressed with it. However I think this was because my team mate I ended up playing with seem more intent with letting his baby play and mess with the controls whilst he was playing (the kid kept coming over the VOIP channel and then he was told off by the parent for interfering).
I’ve picked up Battlefield Bad Company 2 again and been thoroughly enjoying it again. I see that BIG-Ranger has collected all of his award pins (congrats!) and I’m lacking seriously behind in terms of everything lol. I’ve been enjoying using the M136 rocket launcher as a kind of javelin – Firing it up into the air before having it land on a hapless victim.
So yeah, I’m still about, just struggling to post on here currently!
Well this is a game that seems to have crept under a lot of people’s radars. I’ve not really seen many discussions on it on the forums I’m on online and it seems a shame. I like the idea of the game as soon as I saw it previewed. So i took the plunge when the game was released and installed and started playing.
This trailer gives a pretty good indication of the gameplay and the level of customisation.
Initial Impressions
To start with, the game decided I didn’t have the required 2 GB of memory but it installed anyhow (which is good because the PC DOES have 2 GB of memory – it was showing as 1.996 GB in the system requirement checker for some reason but that’s not to much of a concern – I’ve just ordered another 2 GB to max the motherboard out). Install took a while but I guess that’s a given these days.
Starting the game, I had to create an account and link my serial code for the game to this account. At this point, I should point out that the game is a MMO (massively multi player online) game and does require a subscription. However purchasing the game does give you 50 hours free and 100 RTW points (which can be used to subsidise further game time purchases or buy stuff in game – RTW points can also be purchased for real world cash) which is plenty of time for some fun – I got my copy at Game for £16 (after a trade in and Game reward points) so a complete bargain!
On start up I was allowed to create a character – I ended up with my first character as being a member of law and order, rather than a criminal. The level of detailing on the character is fantastic! I was actually able to create a character that actually looks quite similar to me!
I know some people might want to create totally outlandish characters but I blame my current reading list for making me want to create a realistic persona (Snow Crash and Neuromancer). After selecting all I could about my character, I jumped in and played the tutorial.
The tutorial isn’t fantastic. It does explain the basics but there’s not really any help with keys and the like – I recommend reading the manual or the control settings whilst in game!
Gameplay
The game play is third person view, very much like GTA. However this suits it quite nicely and means you get to see your chacter in all it’s glory. And considering the amount of time you can spend customising your characters clothes and body art etc, this makes perfect sense!
Gameplay is split into two districts – the action or social district. The social is where you can purchase and customise cars, clothes, kill music and pretty much anything to do with your character. This doesn’t use any of your APB time so that’s good news for those that might spend ages here. Your APB time is only spent whilst in the action districts.
The action districts consist mainly (of what I can tell so far) of running contracts for contacts. You’re encouraged to join a group and run missions together but otherwise, you cant really interact with other players (well you can happily talk to the and interact but you cant shoot them). The shooting people bit comes from the mission running. Whilst on a mission or driving around the town, you may get an “all points bulletin” telling you that someone is doing a mission nearby and try and it’s your job to try and stop them completing that mission.
In this screenshot, you can see the people with green names above they’re head – they are your group. If the name is red, this means you are free to shoot them. Other players have gray names to show they are neutral to you. And yes, you can shoot out the side of the car whilst someone else drives!
The game play is quite fluid and goes on very nicely. However I wish the missions offers could be displayed for a little longer – they’re only available for 15 seconds which is sometimes a bit quick to see what you’re letting yourself in for!
The amount of guns is quite large but you have to unlock these, along with clothing so it may take a while to get everything unlocked and going. The customisations look like they’ll take a lot of time and effort (if you so wish), otherwise you can buy default gear or buy what someone else has made and is selling in the auction house.
However, the driving (I find) is quite difficult and every car I’ve tried so far seems to under and over steer completely randomly. Game play can be slowed down when trying to view a new item (however this generally occurs when you’re not being shot at so that’s not to bad!) as the program trys to get the image from the servers.
I’ve not really played enough yet to give it a more in depth view but so far, the game is showing a lot of promise.
Recently I noticed that my wireless keyboard has been playing up whilst gaming. For ages it has been fine to game with and normal day to day typing but a few times recently it has lagged and has caused me to lose some men in Dawn of War 2 that I wouldn’t have done if it had sent the orders in time. Now I like my keyboard, so much so, that I bought a wired one for work as after all, I’ll be using a PC daily so it makes sense to spend £30 on a decent keyboard. I use a Logitech Wave and I love the curve to it and the function keys are very helpful and the position of the media keys are also great.
Saitek Commander Game Pad
However the easiest method might have been to move the wired one home and move the wireless one to work. Obvious maybe? But I decided it was time to give the dedicated gaming pads a go and after some looking around, I settled on the Saitek Command Unit. I do have a Saitek Eclispse 2 keyboard already and whilst that is very nice for gaming, I don’t like it as much for day to day work because as I mentioned above, the Logitech Wave has various function buttons that make it easy to open programs and do tasks.
However, I bought the Command Unit off of eBay (brand new) and it arrived promptly. I then decided to test it out properly on Bioshock 2.
First Impressions
The device is solid weight and well built. I plugged the device in and Windows 7 recognised it and I was able to use it as basic keys to start with. However it came with the Saitek Command Unit software that allows you to change the default buttons (for each different setting) and this was installed to provide me with access to changing the keys to what I want. It would also allow me to set up key macros where a press of one button would actually set off a key chain of a few. Nice idea but I’ve not really got the games that would allow me to use this properly (except maybe Guild Wars).
Anyhow, with the gamepad installed and the software installed, I initially spend some time setting the actual pad up. The hat switch and the two buttons on the far right of the bad are adjustable – they can be moved up and down and rotated in a small arc so you can get your hand comfortable. With that done, I moved onto the software and getting it set right.
Software
Cyborg Software
On first looks, the software is simple to use. Well it would be if the software and the device actually told you the same thing. The software is split into the different columns with the rows that let you set the keys for each key on the command unit. It allows you to set the default command and with the shift command button pressed which means you have double the number of buttons on the keypad to press. This is simple and lets you quickly set the keys that you want. The command unit changes colour between the different modes – the unit has red, yellow and green backlights to show what mode it’s in. However the lights do not line up to the colours in the command unit software (which thinks the device has blue, green and red). After some trial and error, I believe that the green on the pad relates to blue on the software, yellow to green and red to red. However I could be wrong. As a result I’ve left the device on the middle setting and just created a keymap for each different game rather than coming a few games into one profile.
Once this is done however, it’s pretty simple to relate a key on the keyboard to the corresponding key on the device. Just click the box you want to change and press the key on the keyboard and then click the done button. That’s how simple it is. Profiles then have to be saved and loaded before you start playing the game. It will revert back to default after every boot so you will need to select the profile before you start the game (though it can be changed in game if you alt-tab out).
I’ve not tried the macro’s out. I’ve set some up but I’m not entirely sure how well they work (I set up the command unit to use some basic key presses that might open programs on my desktop like Win+5 to open my media player – in Windows 7, pressing the Windows key and a number will open that number program that is pinned to the taskbar). This seemed to have mixed results but looking back I might not have saved and loaded the profile and I was also trying to figure out what colour was what in the software.
Performance
I used the device to play though Bioshock 2 (which I’ve now completed) and it worked admirably. Once I’d set the controls, I managed to play through quite nicely and not having to stretch across the keyboard to select my heavier weapons was a blessing. Bioshock does make use of the F1-F8 keys though and I found I didn’t have enough to select these as well as my weapon slots but thankfully Q would cycle through my plasmids so I just had to cycle them to get to the one I wanted rather than pressing F1 or whatever. I believe this wont be an issue in other games as they’ll namely use 1-9 as the weapon keys (and normally I use the mouse button to select what I want).
Once or twice I did notice a sticky key effect where I’d press W to move forwards and I would continue to move forward after removing my hand from W. Not sure if this is the pad itself or the PC misinterpreting the results. It didn’t just happen with the W key though so it might be small issue. Certainly it only happened once or twice, usually in a big fight so I might have overloaded the device with many keypresses but it’s something to keep an eye on.
Overall it was very comfortable and having everything to hand is very nice. I’d recommend gampads in the future but would I recommend this one? Only if your looking for a cheap one I think to give them a try. The niggles are only small but it should give you an idea of if you like using gamepads or not.
I prefer it to a keyboard so I’ll be using it more in the future. Will be interesting to see how it works out in RTS games as I’d love to use the hat switch to scroll.
Well the new PC has performed admirably and whilst it copes very nicely with Dawn of War 2, I wanted a fairly modern game to try and tax my graphics card. Now when I saw that what Steam was running for free this past weekend, I jumped at the chance to try it for free.
Shattered Horizon
Shattered Horizon is an interesting idea for an FPS – rather than the age old “fight in a space station” somewhere, this shooter puts you outside in space. In zero gravity. This obviously gives you a whole 360 degrees of action and movement rather than the rather linear gravity based shooters where everything is essentially on the floor with you.
Not only the gameplay sounds good, but the graphics look fantastic.
However this comes at a cost – it’s a Direct X 11 game only so requires either Windows Vista or Windows 7 to run. No issues here as I’m running Windows 7 Professional (thanks to University discounts) , however readers might not have this.
First Impressions
Loading the game up and starting playing and the game lives up to my expectations. Considering I hadn’t heard of it before, I assumed it was a fairly simple affair and I wasn’t wrong.
There is only one weapon – an assault rifle that has fully auto fire and also a sniper capability. It also has an attached grenade launcher with 3 different grenade types (EMP, Explosive and ICE). Controls are fairly basic and just like in space, when you stop pushing forwards, you wont really stop moving forwards so the controls may take people a slight getting used to.
Gameplay is quite fast and frantic and there are a few different game modes, such as assault (attacking fixed points) and the standard death match. The levels are quite large and open with lots of differing routes around the levels.
After a While…
The space and zero gravity aspect works very nicely – whilst your assault rifle doesn’t have any kick back as such, firing it in sniper mode will send you spinning wildly. Therefore you can land on any scenery an secure yourself to it so you can fire as a sniper quite safely without spinning into a meteor field. With no health or ammo pickups, flying off into spaces isn’t really a great idea!
Ammo seems to be unlimited for the assault rifle but you need to reload after every 60 rounds. You have 3 grenades per life and the different grenades come in handy – you can time them to explode when you want and they can bounce off scenery. The ICE grenades are essentially smoke grenades, they make a large area unnavigable for a while. EMP disables a spacesuits control systems making the player move very slowly and the explosive do as they say!
All the technology you are wearing comes at a a price – the suits radar can detect your team mates and enemy alike. That is until you switch to silent running, where all suit systems are turned off so it’s harder to move, however you don’t appear on enemy radars. Check this video for an example:
However this comes at a cost – it’s a Direct X 11 game only so requires either Windows Vista or Windows 7 to run. No issues here as I’m running Windows 7 Professional (thanks to University discounts) , however readers might not have this.
Conclusions
Shattered Horizons is a simple FPS – for £15 on Steam, you don’t expect massive, genre changing, gaming. Yet Shattered Horizons manages to set itself apart from other FPS games with the addition of the zero gravity element. It all combines everything for a simple to pick up shooter.
Don’t expect deep character development or anything – this is a pure shooter which is pure and simple and addictive. It does feature a stats feed (mine are here), however due to the simple nature of the game, there’s not much to track (unlike Battlefield 2′s award and medal system).
Overall, well worth the money (I paid £7.50 as it was half price this weekend) if you want a shooter that is different to the current offerings.
Rusmil may see a resurgence of PC gaming soon – I treated myself to a new PC as my Atom based desktop was just lacking behind what I needed for it. It’s primarily been built for my work as I use LaTeX for my writing and while this can easily be edited on any PC with a text editor, when you come to compile the code, it requires CPU and the Atom just wasn’t coping. it’ll also mean I can go back to a dual screen setup, making it easier to work as I can view a PDF on one screen and Word or Texmaker on the other.
Therefore I purchased the following:-
Gigabyte GA-73PVM-S2H
ATI HD3850 Radeon GFX
Intel E5300 @ 2.60GHz
320Gb Samsung HD
Kingston 2Gb
OCZ StealthXStream 400W SilentPSU
Cooler Master Elite 335
Coolermaster Hyper TX3 Cooler
Windows 7 Professional
The aim is to over clock this when the TX3 arrives (it’s currently running on the stock Intel cooler) and apparently it should easily reach 3.9GHz but we’ll see what happens. This all came from Aria (except the TX3, which is coming from Play).
Of course, with the power, it can play some games which I intend to use it for at times. I’m eagerly awaiting the new Dawn of War 2 addon, Chaos Rising, that arrives in March. I’m currently going back and playing through the campaign and the new downloadable content, Last Stand, where you have to face multiple waves of enemies until you die.
I also bought Titanquest and it’s add on from Steam a while ago but was unable to play it so I’ll be having a go at that as well – it’s the closest game I’ve seen to Diablo 2 which is a personal favourite so that’ll be played. I also have Blazing Angels but this doesn’t appear to work on Windows 7 with Steam which is a royal pain and I cant get a refund on this without getting Titanquest refunded as well so I’ll stick with it and hope it gets updated.
Just a quick note to say that the excellent Nathan Fillion does the voice for Buck in Halo ODST and I’m a massive fan of his (namely thanks to the very excellent Firefly) and to me he makes the game fantastic!
Me, easily pleased? Yes, quite probably!
EDIT -
Turns out that Adam Baldwin does a voice (Dutch) as well and possibly Alan Turdyk so in fact it could be called Halo: Firefly!!
The next game in the Halo line has been released last night. Halo ODST features you as an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper, rather than the old Master Chief character.
If you like Halo, you’ll like this. In essence it’s more of the same but that’s no bad thing for a winning formula. Small tweaks improve it what is essentially
I’m excited about this game and I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the adverts that really got my attention (check out the attached live action trailer to see what I mean!) or maybe it’s the fact that I can dual wield my favourite guns, the SMG’s but this time, they’re silenced!
I was led to believe the name Tarkov means demon in Russian and that the talking is in Russian but after some more research, I now believe it’s actually Hungarian.
The name game mode is similar to Left 4 Dead but different enough to still be good – espcially as it mixes up the amount of enemies you face, add’s random difficulty multipliers etc. And you can play with 3 mates to make a squad of 4 ODST’s to take on the covenent. Very similiar to the last stand game mode of L4D but slightly less hectic!
Ok, it’s not a thinking man’s FPS like ArmA2 or even Battlefield in some sense, but then Halo was never intended to be this!
I would say the major downside for me is that ODST comes with a multiplayer disc which includes all the downloadeable content for Halo 3, which for those that have already paid for and downloaded it, is a real pain in the backside. Not enough new stuff was included on this disc really to make up for that, however if I’m honest, the multiplayer disc is somewhat extra to the new Firefight online mode and single player/co-op campaign mode on the ODST disc.
Anyhow, I forsee this taking up a reasonable amount of my time until at least COD: Modern Warfare comes out later this year.
As a long time PC gamer, I’ve always mocked consoles for the lack of extras they get and the assorted downsides to them, such as no keyboard and mouse control.
However I swallowed my words whilst at University, getting to play my housemates 360. The games had the downloadable content (ok, not to the same availability of PC mods mind) and were instant plug in and play. This was compounded with the DRM I was facing on my PC and with the cripplingly long install times for games – I want to put the disc in and go. Therefore I recently took the plunge and bought a 360 myself. And glad I did. The gamepad has taken some getting used to but the Live system is so much easier and better for getting mates together for games. It’s like the Xfire system for the PC but not everyone uses that but with Live, you are forced to all use the same system, so joining in game games with mates is as simple as 3 button presses.
One of the games I’ve had for a little while but loving it is Battlefield 1943. Available only to Gold xbox Live members (probably because it’s online only!), it’s a quick download from the Games Marketplace. It’s currently made it’s money back with the time I’ve spent on it.
I cant say I ever played BF1942, I only got into it during BF2. However it remains very true to the BF2 character. Character choices are simple, there’s only 3 classes and no unlocks so everyone in that class will have the same weapon. Don’t let this put you off, the extra weapons aren’t required. The maps are well balanced and it’s nice to see Wake Island (apparently that was a BF1942 map but I only remember it from BF2) appear.
It took some getting used to however last night I managed to get the top score in a server. Which is surprising due to the lack of experience I have with a gamepad and the ability of some of the players on the servers. However the excellent features of BF1942 come into play when playing as a party (Live calls it a party – a group of players who can chat to each other ala Ventrilo on the PC) and playing as a squad (the familiar Battlefield squad). Playing as a squad and with the chat provided by Live, the game really takes off. The best thing about party play is the ability to only speak to your team mates. These means 14 year old kids aren’t spamming the airwaves with crap so there’s clear communication between you. It’s a shame it’s such an effort to do anything similar on the PC. Storming the Mt Surabachi in the Iwo Jima level or the airfield in Wake Island, it’s so much better screaming war crys and tactical information with mates.
It’s what computer gaming was invented for.
Overall Battlefield 1943 is a good game. However it lacks in some respects. It is simple (no bad thing but sometimes a choice of weapons are nice – however thats where Battlefield Bad Company comes in…) and it’s multiplayer only (so there’s no easy way to practice in the aircraft before hitting the online servers). Also, after first purchasing, there did appear to be graphical “artifacts” at the start of each level but these appear to have now been fixed.
However as the game only cost about £8, these downsides can be ignored. It’s just a shame that they’ve already decided that it wont get extra downloadable content.
Here’s an article I found online about a Russian Fallout 3 based airsoft game. Looks very impressive, along the lines of the STALKER themed games I’ve seen.
Right, after my initial impressions – see my post, ArmA2 – Initial Impressions, I’ve managed to get the game working nicely so I can now play the game and I must say I’m fairly impressed.
As you can see in the above picture, I’m in a vehicle with Russians – this is a major plus with ArmA2 – you have the single player campaign, along with the extra scenarios which are good fun.
In addition to the single player campaign and scenarios, you have the armory. Roaming the world with a weapon of choice, with challanges thrown in to unlock the other weapons within the armory – some challanges are hard to achieve! However some of the best ones are the clay pigeon/skeet shooting challanges – espcially when your a BMP-2 gunner or on a mounted DShK machine gun!
The game is huge, I believe this will take up a large portion of time to play, espcially with all the side issues.
As a note, the planes are a real pain to fly!
I seem to have sorted out the issues I’ve hard. I updated to the latest nVidia drivers and I dropped the quality back a tad (even though I hadn’t touched them from the recommended settings) – Now it’s working, I intend to play with the setting so I can get the highest I can with no problems.
