My Blogverse

Hi

It`s been a few months my wife was thinking about getting a new tattoo on her foot. Two week ago we went to local Tattoo Shop and after couple of sessions about how it should look she finally got one....it hurt a lot. I could see it on her face. I even got bitten by her once...it took only 30-40 minutes. Now she is all happy. It shows her parents signatures....and you know what?....it made them cry.
Now it`s my turn.....auch

Since this is the first blog in this group I would like to talk about one of the most , if not the most, talked about game called Crysis. I have chosen this title because of above mentioned reason and also because I have being playing this game since it came out.

We all remember how anxious we were about this game and how we were all waiting for this piece to be released. We being given little portions of this game for last couple of years, We saw screenshots and videos and we were praying to be able to run this game, since we have all seen how good this thing looks. After the release almost all gamers were shocked how demanding this game is.
There were only too options how to solve this problem. Buying a new PC (or upgrading) or lowering the game graphical setting. I bought myself a new PC and here I want to share some of my own impressions from this game.

First of all I have to say that I liked the game a lot. Just like anybody else after the installation I started the game and set all details to very high (4x anti aliasing) and resolution to 1920x 1200. I had just bought my new high end machine with two 8800 GTX graphic cards so I was pretty confident about my new PC's performance. It was not a total disaster I was getting around 15 FPS but games are not playable with this rate. So I lowered the resolution to 1600x1200 and anti aliasing to 2x but it still wasn't it. Then I started searching on the Internet for some help or tweaks. I found a tweak that allowed me to play under DX9 at settings set to very high and then it was finally smooth enough to play the game and also have nice graphics.

So I started playing and the first level, as usual, was there just to warm me up before it got ugly. I really enjoyed jungle environment in Far Cry but this was something different. The jungle here feels like it's really alive. Lightning is just amazing along with foliage that is very detailed. You can meet few animal species, but they are only on the beach (except frogs and butterflies). Water got closer to real water again. Explosion effects are jaw dropping and sound is also the top. I specially liked the sound of my foot steps and environment sounds while struggling through the jungle. All this with fog hanging in the air and sunbeams piercing through the tree-tops make this game very atmospheric.

Gameplay itself was very variable but I expected little bit more freedom as I was used to in Far Cry. Maps were big enough though, and the nanosuit was making it even more fun. I also did not like the second half of the game with aliens because it become very linear and going from tactics and playing around with KPA in the jungle to mind numbing shooting was a little bit disappointing. I was using all nanosuit functions and I liked the cloak mode the best. I always liked stealth elements in video games which allowed you to temporize and have a little time before your next step. Difficulty could be higher and even on delta it was not a challenge. I will maybe try to play without the cloak mode.

Crysis is for me already a legend and only time will show whether I was right or wrong. For now we have to wait for what will bring the next chapter in this epic story.

End

Hello

This is my first blog ever and English is not my first language so be kind:)
First I want to say that I`m a gamer. My favorite platform is PC. Some people are complaining that when you want to play PC games you have to buy new computer every 1-2 years to be able to play new games. I admit that`s true but PC gives us thousands of options for us to do. Internet (I know, PSP, PS3 have internet also but...), all kinds of software, tunning, tweaking, programming and first of all, you can play games that is very hard to play on console like strategies or FPS.Recently I played(and still playing)S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl and I must say that I absolutely love this game. The atmosphere, look and design of this game is just amazing. After almost 6 years of waiting THQ and GSC Game World finally finished this huge project.

As I said, this game is very well done. The level of details is just overwhelming. As you are advancing from level to level the game makes you to explore every building and trust me, you won`t find two houses that look the same. The world is big and you can explore it as you like just with few limits because of the story. The best thing about this game is its atmosphere. You can feel destruction, desperateness, fear and death from every inch of the Zone. Strange things are happening there and you will meet even stranger mutants and anomalies on your way trough.

The purpose of this blog is to react on posts and reviews that were focused on bugs and mistakes in this game. Yes there is some bugs that should be solved soon but none of them make this game unplayable. Lately I noticed that game reviews are focus on these bugs and not on good side of many games that are out there. I prefer playing FPS games because of their simplicity and they don`t usually consume so much time, rather then strategies or RPGs. You can just turn it off and come back later and all you have to do is start shooting or find a switch to open the door....but when you play strategy game and you leave in the middle you may forget your tactics or plans.
People please, give them a break(literally). Every time I play game like Doom 3, Far Cry or Half Life I feel respect for people who created these games. It involves lot of planning, modeling, texturing, animating, programing, testing to make game like this. I have some experiences with Photoshop and 3DS Max and I can tell that is not easy to do it. Also this studio is from Ukraine and I really don`t know how they managed to create such a big time game. Generally we consider Russia as a really poor country and here we are. I red somewhere that development of Half Life 2 cost 40 million dollars. I guess that these Ukrainian guys have some sponsors but I doubt that they had budget like that. Even though they managed to make it and I don`t care that it took such a long time. It was absolutely worth it. There is so many sh...y games out there from big studios where they want to make game in less than a year or so and then it`s not worth even trying. This
game has very made-from-heart feel. When you play Stalker you just can`t believe how much work these guys must have done.
Many people write about games things like, it`s too simple, it` too hard, there not enough of this and that, they want perfect sound, perfect graphic, no or short loading times and so on. Just look how big and complex are levels in todays games and you have to understand that to make the "perfect" game is probably impossible. Maybe in 10 or 20 years will have machines strong enough to create photo realistic living worlds with complex AI and behavior. For now we should focus on good games and good things about these games. I know that people that write review are usually trying to be objective and fair but sometimes it looks like they just want to point out
bad things.

All and all I want to thank to all the people that make games, write reviews and specially for gamers from all over the world for playing games.

End of log...

Links

http://www.stalker-game.com/
http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2007/02/07/stalker_preview/1.html
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/stalker/review.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=gssummary&tag=summary;score
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=74255&page=1
http://pc.ign.com/objects/480/480467.html