Well tomorrow starts a week long holiday. Well, technically I get 2 days off and then Friday, the weekend and Monday and Tuesday are University closure dates so I get them off anyhow…
However, this gives me some time off to do some stuff and catch up with some gaming, reading and painting. I have got planned a trip to York possibly on the Friday/Saturday. However this still leave s a good portion to catch up with various things.
Books
I have a good number of books to read currently. I have Roadside Picnic to read which will be interesting as it’s the basis of STALKER (both the game and the film). I also have a good number of Warhammer 40,000 books to read (Faith & Fire, Lords of the Night, Salamander, Star of Damocles amongst a few others)
The aim is to get through at least one of these during the week. I read very quickly so in theory I could read a book a day with doing nothing else. However this leads to my next point – computer games…
Games
I now have a fair few games to start playing through. At the weekend, I bought the excellent Bioshock 2 and have briefly played a level of this. I also have the following games to play through and complete.
Dawn of War 2 – Chaos Rising – I’ve barely played this yet because the difficulty level has increased and it isn’t as easy (a challenge I like but to much makes it not that fun…). I’ll give this another go now I’ve started the game from a slightly lower difficulty level.
Bioshock 2 – This game is more of the same from the original from what I’ve seen but it is very god from the littel I have played – This will probably end up priority 1.
Sins of a Solar Empire – A strategy game that has intrigued me for a while and when I saw it in Game this weekend for £1.98 in the sale (Bioshock 2 was also in the sale), I thought it would be well worth a short at that price.
Borderlands – I have to continue with this game – it’s great fun and I love the guns etc. This will probably provide some needed distraction through the week as well.
I also have a few other games I’ve barely touched – Titanquest and Blazing Angels come to mind.
Painting
I also have my Warhammer 40K to paint as well. The Vendetta as I mentioned in a previous post needs to be painted up as well. Therefore I’ll be working on this as and when this week as well.
Anyhow, tomorrow’s day will be filled with gaming. But the holiday starts this evening with comedy with Dave Gorman.
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.
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.
