Videogames....

[DarkReign]

Big controversy at GameSpot over the weekend.

Check out www.joystiq.com (more specifically here)

Summary: The senior editor at GameSpot (Jeff Gerstmann) was allegedly fired over his video review of Kane&Lynch.

Basically, he blasts the game for the piece of that it is. The publisher of K&L, Eidos, is none too pleased that the company they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising with basically scrapped their flagship game on the largest, most viewed website on the net.

GameSpot is owned by CNET, which is rumored to have fired Jeff because Eidos had/has threatened to pull future advertising dollars in lieu of this episode.

Obviously, the journalistic implications are clear. Is it true? Who knows. But Gamespot is mum about the whole situation where a simple explanation to the contrary would clear the whole matter up. Why wouldnt they just say "Eidos had nothing to do with this?"

One could speculate that the reason they havent is because they are in negotiations with Jeff.

My conclusion; Jeff's severance package gets a whooooooole lot sweeter, and he takes one for the team and agrees with whatever bull GS comes up with.

Its a three part victory:
a) Hes paid handsomely for his silence and capitulation
b) Shows prospective employers that hes a true team player
c) Gets the glowing reference from GS on future resume'

What does he gain from confirming the rumors?

A badge of honor from the gaming community. Thats it.

Because the practice that has looooong been in place in any "media review" format of paying/pimping/perking the reviewer is as American as apple pie.

Ahhhh, corporate s win again.

[Ballcox]

^I've always liked the reviews from ign.com

They appear to be very comprehensive and at times are almost too tough in their reviews. One thing for sure, whenever they actually give a review scored at 9.0 or higher the game turns out to be damn good. At least that's been my experience so far.

As for Kayne and Lynch, most all of the reviews for that game have rated the game average at best, with most leaning towards not that good. Can't imagine there would be a such an uproar over a review at Gamespot.

[ATRAIN]

I have been thinking about making a spreadsheet with everyone's gamertag along with thier spurstalk user name for our videogame community. I will be including the games you play on live as well. If you want to be on that list send me a pm if you want to be on there.

anyone else want to add their info for xboxlive send me a PM, I have 3 of us in there now. I know I have some of you guys on my live account, but forget who you are on here so this would help us all organize tournaments and what not.

[stretch]

My X-Box live name:

beenieweenie69

[TDMVPDPOY]

reviews from ign>gamespot

[Mixability]

Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga was pretty kick ass. I had played the original Trilogy, but this one features the prequels too. Alot of collecting, but pretty funny if you're a fan of Star Wars.

[DannyT]

my son loves the demo si I am going to get him the game for x-mas

[bdictjames]

Ok guys, share your computer knowledge

I bought this game. I could not resist it, I was buying NBA Live 08 the other day, got a bargain off it and end up spending less 10 bucks off the original price. So with this money, I decided to buy a PC game since I have not had a PC game for well over two years now, and I figured what the heck. I could not afford Command and Conquer and World of Warcraft sadly at that time, so I bought Dungeon Lords for 10 bucks lol. Now here's the problem

I installed it. I click the link, it opens for 1 second, and closes literally. I dont know what to do, please help. PM would be helpful thanks

[DannyT]

its more then likely your video card but could also be that somehting doesnt meet the minum requirements

[Slinkyman]

Has anyone played Uncharted yet? So far i'm 3 hours in and loving it, although i'm not thrilled with the shooting. Everything else about the game has been great, a must buy for PS3 owners for sure, especially if you liked the newest Tomb Raider or Prince of Persia.

[Hank the Tank]

i hate how the in wii is impossible to find. i want to play some mario galaxy.

[mardigan]

AC isnt playable online?

No it isnt, but its still the . Some of the mini missions get kind of boring, but the boss assasinations are the if you do them right. Pretty cool game

[ATRAIN]

so I was at best buy this weekend and they had a load of Rockband. I was tempted but didnt buy it yet. I wonder if the price will drop after the holidays??

[Mixability]

so I was at best buy this weekend and they had a load of Rockband. I was tempted but didnt buy it yet. I wonder if the price will drop after the holidays??

Yeah right, with all the returns on defective drums and guitars, I'm sure they haven't seen as much profit as they would like, so I couldn't see a price reduction making sense for them.

[ATRAIN]

Yeah right, with all the returns on defective drums and guitars, I'm sure they haven't seen as much profit as they would like, so I couldn't see a price reduction making sense for them.

have there been a lot of defects?

[Mixability]

have there been a lot of defects?

Mine have been fine, but on the boards, I've seen people returning guitars with busted strums and drums with pads that don't respond.

[ATRAIN]

Mine have been fine, but on the boards, I've seen people returning guitars with busted strums and drums with pads that don't respond.

wow, I guess ill wait till after the holidays for sure now.

[jaespur21]

i havent heard of any problems with the drums or guitars. I read a couple boards and i asked my brother which reads, some different boards, and he hasnt heard of that problem with the drums either

[DarkReign]

My basement is finally done, got my rig setup on Saturday.

I played a two day marathon of Crysis. Holy- ing- this game is Amazing!

Just so I dont sound a fanboy, Crysis does not reinvent the FPS genre. Far from actually. Its not cinematic like Call of Duty, its more a sandbox for you to play in. The only game it compares to is FarCry, which by no surprise, was also created and developed by Crytek.

FarCry was a sleeper in its day. A little known company with no real market advertising released the most technologically beautiful game of its day to much fanfare. That game was FarCry. Tropical island, mutants, AI...the works. With no real advertising, the game was made popular quickly by word of mouth. Crytek developed a special engine exclusively for FarCry, they called it (real imaginative here) CryEngine.

Noticing a pattern with the names? yeah, me too....

Anyway, immediately after FarCry was a commercial success, they started working on the second generation engine (out on a limb with this one......CryEngine2). The first (and only game to date) to use this engine is Crysis.

Oh. My. God.

First and foremost, if your system is anything less than a dual-core processor and a nvidia 8000 series GFX card (or Radeon equivalent), dont bother buying the game. I remember when FarCry came out and ALLLLLL the people complaining about how their rig couldnt run it, bla bla bla...at that time, I wasnt running anything special yet it ran smooth.

Now you hear ALLLLLLL the people ing about Crysis, and at this point, they are completely justified. This game...alone, will bring any system to its knees. The GFX companies like nvidia and Radeon havent even released the hardware necessary to run this game at high rez with all the bells and whistles turned on (obviously, if youre running a Quad Core and 4 8800 GTXs in SLi, this may not be true, but youre a rich and no one likes you anyway).

I have never in my years of gaming, had to tweak every ing CVAR in the game to just get it run at 20 fps. And my system is no slouch either (Dual Core 3.0ghz, 4 GB of DDR2 RAM, 2 8800GTS in SLi). It still killed my system.

I have a widescreen monitor so I automatically need every game to support widescreen formats (preferably 16:10). Obviously, Crysis does.....but anything above 1024 x 768 seems to require turning and tuning the bells and whistles off or down to run it anything nearing a normal framerate.

Anyway, after much research and literally hundreds of different threads in multiple forums, I found a nice configuration to run it with 20 fps, modest bells and whistles at 1600 x 1050 (dont quote me, but its widescreen). That took me 3 hours.

Then, I started the game. Whew....

Absolutely amazing. Worth every dead end and bout of frustration and then some.

You play as American special forces equipped with the latest in military hardware and technology. The greatest weapon in the game, bar none, is you....and the suit you wear, the NanoSuit. Its gives you a highly customizable experience in what way YOU want to play the game, not the way the devs want players to play the game.

It has 4 different settings quickly accessed on a radial menu via the middle mouse button. The suit has "X" amount of energy available to run the 4 settings and each uses the available energy in different amounts at different rates. Below are the 4 different modes the NanoSuit can initiate;

1) Armor - self explanatory. When hit by enemy fire, your suit acts as a shield, reducing the available energy of the suit before reducing your health.
2) Speed - increases base run speed at no energy cost, but the real sweetness is when you sprint. You move super, super fast but at great expense to available NanoSuit energy.
3) Strength - the most fun of the 4, though a bit unwieldy to use in combat in my experience. Gives you super strength, allowing you to jump incredibly high, pickup and throw objects (and enemies) incredibly far. Its superman lite.
4) Cloak - self explanatory. Think Predator. This is the most useful of the 4, IMO. Moving in cloak reduces the available energy. If you stand still, the energy drop is minimal. Crouch-walking reduces energy slightly faster, but still manageable. Running reduces energy quickly. Sprinting while in cloak will run you out of energy very quickly.

Using the NanoSuit settings is essential. Crysis is not a corridor shooter. You are literally dropped onto an Asian Pacific island in search of a lost research team. The research team found...something. The North Koreans, by way of geographical convenience, are first on the scene and have locked the island down. You are tasked to infiltrate and extract the research team.

Things obviously go to pretty quickly. I'll leave the rest of the story for those who wish to play it.

If you like FarCry, you'll enjoy Crysis immensely. Its very free roaming. No battle plays the same way twice. Some games say that and its not exactly true, or the difference between the 2 scenarios is negligible at best. Not in Crysis.

It uses a checkpoint save system (although you can opt to save at anytime) and these checkpoints appear to be area effective.

For example, this being only one of many examples I experienced in my 2-day marathon play session, there was a Korean base in a bay of the island. The bay has a very high, steep cliff on one side, and a rolling hill on the other. I just-so-happened to approach the base from the high side in a Jeep. Being a hybrid runner-gunner type player, subtlety isnt my thing. So I jump out of the jeep, shoot the gas tank on the back which means imminent destruction in 4 seconds. Jump in the driver seat, hit the gas and turbo, start to leap off the side of the cliff and juuuuust as I get airborne, I hit a checkpoint, it autosaves ( ing up my timing for jumping out slightly). I ed up and didnt jump out in time, but did happen to land on a giant propane tank which made for a nice exit.

The game re-loads from the last save point, this one being in the midst of my best impression of Evil Knievel Fails at the Grand Canyon. Only this time I jump out before impact, but still too high to survive. The jeep hits the propane tank, blowing up the metal awning that covers it into flakes of metal sheeting approaching bullet speeds. Needless to say, the surrounding troops who werent killed by the explosion, were nailed by the debris. Even still, Im a man-pancake at this point, so I have reload.

Im in the air again, now waiting to jump at the last second...high enough to avoid the blast and debris, but low enough to survive. I get 9 out of 10 for the landing. Jeep MISSES the propane tank this time (wind speed or my inertia from jumping out, I guess), but still manages to blow up because I shot the gas tank...oh, and it fell about 400 ft. So, for posterity, I shoot the propane tank because that beauty just cant stay intact after the BS I went thru. Only I didnt exactly find cover from enemy fire, nor did I account for that damn debris again. Between getting shot and taking a pole to the side of my head, I checked out.

Reload. Midair, I jump out in time again, the Jeep barely hits the propane tank setting off a beautiful pyrotechnic display killing everything in the vicinity. I land with negligible damage only this time I immediately switch to cloak. Stay still, wait for the reinforcements to arrive so I can feed em a grenade or 3. Only they never arrive, must have gotten em all. Dead wrong. I killed everything on the ground, this much is true. What I didnt account for was the snipers in the towers overlooking the bay. They seen my "from the top rope" act and shot up signal flares. The reinforcements werent troops, it was a helicopter...and I am out of rockets. Im big ed. To make matters worse, my Pornos for Pyros routine has leveled the entire area I landed in, so even if there were rockets in one of the buildings, those buildings are currently rubble covered with other rubble. Im being pursued by an attack helicopter with no rockets and no immediate cover in cloak which is making me hard to find, but draining my already depleted energy supply. Im big ed. it, uncloak, goto Armor, sprint for nearest cover and hope the gunner is drunk or cross eyed or both. Torn to shreds before I got 10 feet. Maybe should have tried a speed dash, but Im pretty sure my energy would have run out before I made it to cover. Oh well, reload.

3 more times, 3 completely different variations, sometimes a helicopter, sometimes not. Regardless, I saved that particular game at that particular point (named it Knievel) just so I could play it over and over again until I got it right. I did in fact make it a couple of times, but the fun I was having didnt make me feel good about it. I wanted to die, I wanted to be overwhelmed just to play it again and again.

Anyway, I ended up reloading from an earlier point before I jumped the cliff. This time I drove the jeep to the brink of the edge, shot the gas tank, switched to Strength mode and knocked it off the side of the cliff sans me being in the vehicle and used my binoculars to watch the destruction. Oh, glory days. I then used my sniper rifle to pick off the other snipers before they could flare for backup. I used a super-speed jump to clear the beach and land in the water from about a 400 ft fall, which the nanosuit absorbed with no problems. It wasnt as fun, but it conserved ammo, looked awesome and cleared the area. So I went with it.

Just one of many examples that Crysis offers. So many ways to approach the same situation, over and over, with completely different results from the AI and physics engine. Hahaa...writing this reminds me of my first "Oh !" moment in Crysis. I was busy bringing a helicopter down with rockets, which is normal. But, I guess I didnt account for where the helicopter wreckage was going to land. I was standing on the ground near a large, steep hill full of tall trees. The helicopter was really high (i just jumped from the high hill, so the pilot hadnt lowered his al ude yet). I blew it up with satisfaction, to use a hockey phrase, I was "admiring my pass" when slowly I realized that the mid-air wreckage had fallen in such a way that it skipped off the top of the big trees and started to roll like a log down the side of the hill mowing down the little trees reducing them to splinters. This was really cool to watch but my dumbass didnt see that the wreckage was approaching a jutting rock. The helicopter wreck hit the rock, jumped AWAY from the hill about 30-50 feet and landed....where? Right on my ing head. I wish I had that on video...I'd make it my avatar. Too cool.

If those explanations dont interest you, then dont bother with Crysis. The game is literally, unequivocally FULL of moments like this. Where the world surprises you, where you cant expect things to be the exact same, that "this guy" will run around "this side" of "that building" at "this time". It doesnt work that way. Sure you can time patrols like that, but once the gun fire starts, all bets are off. Notice I never mentioned the sci-fi aspect of Crysis? There is a reason. That part of the game should be experienced, not portrayed. I'll say this much...many people in Hollywood have tried to portray the "foreign" environment. None have pulled it off quite like Crytek did. Its mesmerizing, yet confusing and disorientating at the same time. Which way is up, left, down, you have no idea. Even when its over, you still dont quite understand where you were and how you got out. Its awesome.

Buy the game if your rig can handle it. If your rig cant, wait until it can, then buy the ing game.

Tonight, Crysis Multiplayer.

[Mister Sinister]

So I got my 360 last Friday. I got the 360 Arcade because me=cheap. I also picked up Dynasty Warriors: Gundam like I told myself I would, and it has rocked my ing SOCKS.

[DarkReign]

Didnt play Crysis MP last night, nvidia released new beta drivers that are going for WHQL certification over the weekend.

I dont know if the drivers are the reason, or the fact that I ran the game in DX9 instead of DX10, but a HUUUUUUUGE improvement in framerate.

My FPS didnt dip below 25 no matter what was happening on screen. Im running it at 1920 x 1200 with all settings HIGH.

Im going to use the crack for DX9 to get the most out of the game tonight.

[Mixability]

Didnt play Crysis MP last night, nvidia released new beta drivers that are going for WHQL certification over the weekend.

I dont know if the drivers are the reason, or the fact that I ran the game in DX9 instead of DX10, but a HUUUUUUUGE improvement in framerate.

My FPS didnt dip below 25 no matter what was happening on screen. Im running it at 1920 x 1200 with all settings HIGH.

Im going to use the crack for DX9 to get the most out of the game tonight.

Not to knock on the PC guys again, but I hate that aspect of PC gaming. Having to deal with drivers and patches and stuff like that. No thanks. But I'm sure the graphics are worth the work you put in.

[Pistons < Spurs]

I didn't want to 'quote' it as it was such a long piece, but that was a great write-up DarkReign!

Sadly after playing...or attempting to play, the demo, I realized I'd not be buying or playing Crysis till I get a new rig.

It's a shame too, because other than COD4 that was the one game I was looking forward to.

[jaespur21]

So I got my 360 last Friday. I got the 360 Arcade because me=cheap. I also picked up Dynasty Warriors: Gundam like I told myself I would, and it has rocked my ing SOCKS.

Congratulations. there are many good games for the 360 right now.

[Mister Sinister]

Congratulations. there are many good games for the 360 right now.

That was the other reason that I decided on a 360 over a PS3, besides cost. But honestly, DW:G was my main motivation. It delivered exactly what it promised, and I couldn't be happier with that.