PC PC GAMES

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:55:09 — 26.4MB)

Blame James, since he requested that we reminisce about some games we played in the past and still enjoy. That turned into a giant love fest for such classics as C&C Generals, Diablo II and Starcraft. We do have some great experiences and friendships we formed because of PC Gaming. So don’t mock it, it’s what makes our time on this earth fun! And here is what else we talked about:

• The play-list
• Ruse
• Ubi DRM server failure
• Infinit Ward Saga Continues
• On-Live
• Old Games we love, play and recommend
• Quote of the week: Hindsight has unlimited polygons
• The Cyberman II
• Old school game memories
• Bad Company Issues
• EA Servers
• DLC Talk
  • Mass Effect 2
  • Dragon Age
  • Modern Warfare 2
• StarTrek online
• Global Agenda
• Gabe Newell on DRM
• Metro 2033
• StarWars Old Republic

The wind wisps by as distressed dogs moan from out of the darkness. It’s midnight and I cannot see more than a few feet in front of me. My flashlight sways back and forth as I run, paranoia setting in. I can hear guttural growls but can’t see a thing. A voice comes out of my radio notifying me, with a thick Russian accent, that an emission is coming. I need to find cover desperately. I open my PDA, which has a vague topographical map, to try and find the nearest refuge. I spot what looks like arusted barge and make for an oddly placed wooden door in the side of it. As I reach for the knob I hear a shotgun blast and the door flies open. A man screams out at me from inside. Even though I’ve visited with him before he has no idea who I am. His mutated pet dog growls at me as I shut the door. Though he seems hostile he is actually quite harmless. I pace inside for about five minutes as the screen throbs red. The point of view camera sways as though I drank too much vodka and the sound of the emission is immense. After a few moments the kindly voice comes through my radio to notify me that the emission has passes. I have survived yet another one.

Ukrainian developer GSC World Publishing brings us their third installment of the Stalker franchise and it is quite an accomplishment. This installment picks up shortly after the events of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. You assume the role of Alexander Degtyarev, a military agent who is tasked with the investigation of a failed attempt to penetrate the center of the ‘zone’. Unlike the previous games, CoP had a very smooth launch, avoiding a lot of the bugs that hindered the previous two releases. The only thing I noticed was the occasional frame-rate drop when objects were being loaded in certain areas. After playing a while I didn’t notice it anymore. The tone of the game is truly eastern European. It’s a bleak, desperate existence where the world’s inhabitants are struggling to survive in a world where wealth is not easily attained and your diet consists of sausage, canned meat, bread, and vodka.

Like any Stalker game I started out confused and overwhelmed. I was not sure where to go or what to do exactly. After a short while I began to figure things out and was noticing nice changes from the previous games. The story this time around is much more coherent than the original. The missions are similar to the other Stalkers but they seem to guide you along better. The original game would give me missions and no map marker for them, or the marker would be wrong. That caused many frustrating hours. I played through the majority of the new missions without any problems at all. It was quite a relief.

The inventory system has been overhauled. It is a much cleaner interface and your weapons and armor are upgradeable. Also there are onscreen notifications if your weapons or armor start to wear down. Unlike the first two games you are able to repair items in CoP. The health system functions the same way, with bleeding and ruptures. You can also find and use many artifacts that give you certain bonuses as well as a nice dose of radiation. Though the artifacts were not nearly as prevalent as they were in the first two games.

A lot of the same enemies make their way back into this sequel but are deadlier. The most memorable occurrence was my first bloodsucker encounter. It actually grabbed a hold of me and began to drain my blood. A truly frightening experience when it is pitch dark and the creature moves around invisible.

The Stalker series is definitely not for every one. It is dark, gritty, and can sometimes be anxiety inducing. Yet I would still recommend it to anyone interested in shooters with some rpg elements. Once you get over the sleight learning curve it is truly a satisfying experience.

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By Gamers for Gamers is our most important motto. So, what would you guys like to see on the website? What would you like to hear us talk about in the podcast? Give us some feedback!

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And a regular size of Ruse Gameplay

You know the worst sort of love? The disappointed and rejected kind is the worst love.

I am an RTS fan-boy. I love planning my strategy, amass my armies and crush the opposition with my forces. That was what was great about Supreme Commander. The huge Armies, the different ways you could approach things. What in the world was Chris Taylor thinking with this “sequel”?

So we talked about this in the last podcast. If you want to know my feelings just listen to episode 11. This game is at best a bad console port and at worst just a bad product. One would think you could expect more from a sequel, but as the Matrix trilogy or the Transformer movie has taught us episode 2 or 3 are not guranted a better thing. (Congratulations to Transformers 2 for winning worst picture of 2009!) And I think the votes are in Supreme Commander 2, seems already a shoe in for winner as worst RTS game of 2010.

Don’t forget to spring forward this Sunday, or you may be late to church that morning and late to work on Monday.

We lose one hour of gaming and/or sleep…YAWN!!!

It’s hard not to say it… especially when so true… but we told you so! As reported over at The Escapist:

Ubisoft’s new DRM scheme is already causing problems, as the servers required to authenticate games went down today.

When Ubisoft announced its new DRM system, that required PC gamers to be connected to the Ubisoft servers at all times while playing, one of the biggest concerns that gamers had is what would happen if the servers went down.

Well, as it turns out, when the Ubioft severs go down, no one can play their games and Ubisoft customers get very upset. At around 8am GMT, people began to complain in the Assassin’s Creed 2 forum that they couldn’t access the Ubisoft servers and were unable to play their games. Fast forward ten hours and it seems that the problem still hasn’t been resolved, despite the assurances from a Ubisoft representative that the servers were ‘constantly monitored’

“I don’t have any clear information on what the issue is … but clearly the extended downtime and lengthy login issues are unacceptable, particularly as I’ve been told these servers are constantly monitored,” said ‘Ubi.Vigil’, adding, “I’ll do what I can to get more information on what the issue is here first thing tomorrow and push for a resolution and assurance this won’t happen in the future.”

It’s unclear whether this is a worldwide problem, or just a European one, but gamers are understandably frustrated. This is a disaster that everyone saw coming, but probably didn’t expect to see quite so soon.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:29:26 — 20.5MB)

As you look forward to something being released you are setting yourself and the publisher up for some disappointment or pleasant surprise. And so it was this week. You will hear us talk about these issues:

• The Playlist
• Battlefield Bad Company 2 WIN
• Just Cause 2 DEMO WIN
• StarCraft II Beta Multiplayer FAIL
• STEAM Game releases FAIL
• Battlefield Bad Company 2 FAIL
• Newegg FAIL
• NVIDIA Driver FAIL
• StarTrek Online Marketing FAIL
• StarCraft II the second
• Activision / Infinity Ward FAIL
• UBI DRM HUGE FAIL
• TIM History FAIL
• Joe Laptop WIN
• XBOX360 FAIL / FAIL / FAIL / Working (yes 3 times)
• STEAM Apple Win

Here are all the links we were viewing during the podcast. Have fun doing some extra reading about some the topics that we covered.

Is NVIDIA dead? (UPDATED)

Warhammer 40K MMOG debuting at E3 2010

Ubisoft backing off strict PC DRM

Activision/Infinity Ward court documents detail ex-studio heads’ many, many complaints

WARNING! NVIDIA 196.75 drivers can kill your graphics card

Newegg Selling Fake Intel CPUs

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising is a game about a fictitious conflict on one of the Sakhalin islands, a conflict that is in danger of erupting onto a global scale. The player takes the role of a US soldier, part of the allied force fighting against outnumbering Chinese forces vying for control of the island. The game centres on a campaign narrative that gives the player a variety of roles in the allied forces ranging from a Marine Infantry, tank commander, Special Forces and helicopter captain. The game has an incredible realistic depiction of war with careful attention to the detail of the weapons, equipment and tactics of the armed forces. The action is varied from intense fire fights through to slower pace tactical decision making on how to best tackle the mission objectives.

For under $10 it is worth buying!

Today had it all. First the frustration. Supreme Commander, according to steam, was now available…. but didn’t work when you tried to start it. Fast forward nearly 15-16 hours and they finaly fixed it IF you did another file verify. And no… that didn’t work before.

Another Supreme Commander fail was that while preloaded it started a whole new download after the file verify. I am on a big pipe, but I don’t even want to imagine what someone would think that is on a much slower connection and went through the trouble of pre-loading.

And then there was the pre-load for Battlefield Bad Company 2… well there was one announced but never did it show up. So everyone to the races once the game hit the open market. Once you got it… well lucky you if you where able to play. Because neither EA or DICE aperantly knew that they would have a hit. So people getting stuck on login, stuck on joining servers or once you did make it into a server get kicked because of PunkBuster.

Can someone please just plan a little ahead and maybe rent some extra servers for release day? How hard can that be to ramp up with 130% and than scale the servers after the first month?

Last but not least Supreme Commander 2 is not really Supreme Commander and so far a disappointment. Gone are all the things that made SubCom great and it seems dumbed down and bland. I don’t want to write it off quite yet, but so far I wished I would have saved my money. TOO BAD!!! ;(

A quote on steam says this and it says it about all:

It’s pretty, and smooth, but incredibly simple. It feels more like Demigod than SupCom. But worse than that, it just feels lame. Playing Aeon I got a total of about 6 ground units, plus 4 more experimentals.

SupCom2 feels like a game is designed to last 1/5 as long. Try Seton’s Clutch or Fields of Isis and you’ll see what I mean.

We talked about it in the podcast. Games for Windows Live is having a sale for the month of March. Batman was 75% off, so we are hoping that this will continue with some great deals the next couple weeks.

Here is the GWL SALE site.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:39:02 — 22.7MB)

With a full house of fellow PC gaming friends there was much to talk about this week. Battlefield is just around the corner, Starcraft2 Beta is in full swing and Supreme Commander released a DEMO for your or our preview pleasure. So hardly anything  to complain about this week!  

Here is the list:

• Borderlands DLC
• StarCraft2 Beta
• Supreme Commander 2
• Metro 2033
• Battlefield Bad Company 2
• Civilization V
• Natural Selection 2
• Nvidia 400 Series
• StarTrek Online
• AvP
• Ubisoft DRM
• Steam Beta Client
• Mail Call
• Old school DRM
• Games for Windows Live Sale
• Other DRM
• Gratuitous Space Battles (GSB) DLC
• Duke Nukem 3D
• Lan Party 2010