cuál es más homefront? MW3 or BF3

In the race to the bottom of the well of dimishing returns, two competitors run neck and neck this fall: Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3. While the MW franchise stems from a decade long tradition of Call of Duty games that initially featured robust and thrilling single player campaigns, BF has arguable never had a compelling single player experience outside of the Bad Company spin-offs. With the annualization of the COD series, MW3 follows the formula laid out by its's predecessor's and dials everything to 11. Set-pieces, sound design, and narrative are more incomprehensible and bombastic than ever and all within a bite-sized shell. BF3 clamps onto that formula like a lamprey, without ever understanding what originally made it interesting but again serves it up in a bite-sized format.

Lovers to the end: Gears of War 3 (360)--Spoilers

The end of the world is horrible to contemplate, and even more so if one were to do it alone. Marcus Fenix has been the center of the Gears trilogy, a gruff, hard man who began this battle in a jail cell in the original Gears. His constant companion and jail breaker, Dominic Santiago, is also often his protector, moving to Marcus’ side as he falls from enemy fire. Together, they have travelled across and below the surface of planet Sera, watching as their leadership make harder and harder decisions, resulting in the destruction of most of the human population through multiple events.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (360)

I have no idea what MW3 is about.

I know what the plot is, such as it is, and who the characters are, such as they are, but I have no idea what it is about.

Following the tremendously successful Modern Warfare and its sequel Modern Warfare 2, MW3 picks up directly where the plot threads of those games have left off. The world is at war, a war created by the machinations of a single man who has manipulated tensions to drive Russia and the United States into open conflict.

That belongs in a museum: Uncharted 3 (PS3)

Drake stumbled through the sand, dehydrated and exhausted from two days of travel across an endless desert. Cresting a dune, he nearly fell as he slid down its face and into an ancient village. Force of will alone drove him to find something, anything to drink and to keep moving, somehow, because to stop would be to die.

Wherever shall I go; whatever shall I do: Gaming on a budget

Due to the money-sucking leeches I call my wife and kids, the slight distractions a single man takes for granted become gluttonous self-involvements. When Blockbuster Canada introduced a monthly flat fee that allowed 2 rentals out at a time, I immediately became a “try everything” kind of guy. Games would be sampled and returned the next day and for $39.95 a month, I was trying dozens of games. I was also able to hang onto deeper games longer with no penalty of late fees.

I wept openly when the bad business practices of Blockbuster US destroyed the very profitable Blockbuster Canada. In my part of the world, there is literally no alternative.

I will let you in on a secret: $60 to purchase a game is INSANE.

The Importance of discovery: Why my kid ruins games for me

Infamous 2 looks like a great game. It looks like an improved version of Infamous, with beautiful graphics, a spectacular particle and smoke engine (borrowed from Killzone 3, I suspect) and better, more subtle voice acting. I experience these things in snippets and glances as I move through the living room. I know when the game is being played because it has impressive and responsive bass rumbling through my sub-woofer.

I have no interest in playing Infamous 2 but that is no fault of the game. It is because of my step-son.

A 15 year old with no interest in anything but yapping on Skype, online gaming in steam, and gaming on the PS3/360, he dives deep into new games. Genetically unable to not find the most efficient path to maximize return in an upgrade path he grinds games relentlessly. RELENTLESSLY.

He will ignore critical path and story missions until he has leveled up enough to breeze through. He returns to Oblivion constantly in search of exploits to allow his character to grow and change but has never beaten the game.

Like the first game, Infamous 2 has both a morality system and upgrades that are discovered during missions. I know this from watching him play.

I feel like I have come to know everything from the short moments I have watched him play. I have wandered in during pivotal story-moments, I have seen morality choices play out, and I have stumbled across both endings.

I do not begrudge my stepson doing what he digs but I have started enforcing rules about when he gets to play. As a teen with virtually unlimited time, he can tear through a game in a couple of days, and as an adult, I can’t, which is not a bad thing.

It seems petty, but I forbade him from playing Arkham City until I had beaten the story. I will do the same with Uncharted 3.

Infamous has taught me that a game experienced second hand is a game often not worth playing.

Return to Darkness: Arkham City (360)

Arkham City feels like a greatest hits collection of not only everything great about Batman, but everything great ever. The Catwoman free opening (more on that later) reveals itself like Dead Space 2; an unexpected dash through enemy territory that serves not only as a tutorial but as exposition and exploration of character.

Comfortable yet fresh, the melee combat and grappling gun traversal mechanics return from Arkham Asylum. Subtly refined, they serve as the foundation for ever more gadgets to unlock through the story and side mission progression.

It's not the years it's the mileage: Dragon Age Origins (PC)

DA:Origins is an awesome sandwich where the bread is the awesome and a zeppelin of hot air is the meat. Of the 80 hours played the first 10 and the last 10 were the best parts, with tedious and endless side quests filling out the middle 60.

My Soul to Keep:Demon's Souls (PS3)

I lasted less than an hour in Demon's Souls.

Given recent games have taken more than 60 hours of my life to beat (and weren't great) I didn't expect Demon Souls to crush my will to play so quickly. It's not that the game seems bad or broken. It's not that there isn't a kernel of something compelling within it. It's that it is not made for someone like me.

Holy hot damn: Dead Space 2 on PC

1650 x 1080 all setting maxed

50 hours later & all I have to show for it is this lousy power armor: Fallout New Vegas (PC)

Fallout:New Vegas is a slow burn but not in an awesome roast-a-pig-in-a-backyard-firepit kind of way, more a boil-a-frog kind of way. So much time is invested that by the time it's over a beaten down Stockholm Syndrome sets in, goading the player to make it to the pay-off to justify the time investment.


As The Courier (when you are actually one of many couriers) you start the game in a grave, a bullet lodged in your skull. Rescued by a overly friendly robot (that conveniently shows up all over the place), The Courier is mended by a small-town doctor and set out into the world with a single quest-find the man that betrayed him/her.

Return of the glitch: Fallout New Vegas

A travelog in pictures of my adventures in New Vegas, most of the glitches happened early on but were funny nonetheless.

Journey into screenshots: PC Gaming update

All screens 1680 x 1050 unless noted

Aliens VS Predator DX11

Atmosphere!

Never look back: GTA:Episodes from Liberty City (360)

the shooting and driving in GTA:Episodes from Liberty City makes me want to poke out my eyes with a skewer

The Long Walk: Call of Duty Elite

Finally announced at the CODXP event today, the paid service part of Elite contains all DLC including map-packs and celebrity video content delivered weekly for $50/yr. This comes on top of the previously announced free content which includes a Bungie-net style web interface that allows for stat tracking, heat maps and tweaking loadouts while not in-game. Interfaces with mobile apps will allow players to review their gameplay and loadout's as well. DLC will hit subscribers first then roll out a la carte to the rest of the community.

Leaving New Vegas (PC)

After an enternity of wandering the desert wastelands, having passed through a town ravaged and left crucified as a warning to others, I came to Novak. A small town watched over by a tall lizard statue attached to a motel.

Here I found kind people, scraping to survive. Watched over by a pair of former soldiers with sharp eyes and perfect aim, the town was as safe as any. I managed to drag conversation out of Boone, one of the snipers protecting the town and he asked me to help him with a terrible task. Discover which of these kind people was responsible for the loss of his wife to slavers. A cold, dangerous man, Boone only raised his voice when talking of his lost wife. I agreed to help.

I quickly learned she was not well liked by most and often spoke of leaving for the big city. Only one of the residents implied that she may have left on her own, the manager of the motel. She seemed kind.

I picked the lock on the safe in the motel office and found a bill of sale, credits in trade for the woman. Following Boone's instructions I invited her to follow me to the base of the dinosaur and placed his beret on my head. With no reason not to trust, she followed.

With a punt of compressed air, her head exploded into chunks of blood and bone. I paused a moment realizing any person I had asked to follow me, innocent or guilty, could have been taken. I suffered no pang of guilt that this woman who traded the life of another for money was gone.

For a moment though, I staggered, wondering what might had happened if I made the wrong choice.

Activision and the abandonment of PC gaming

Eliminating the Blizzard side of Activision\Blizzard leaves a barren desolate wasteland of half-baked console ports limping their way to PC. The recent news of the exclusion of PC from the public multiplayer beta of Call Of Duty:Elite is one more slap in the face to PC gamers at time where the rest of the industry find innovation everywhere on the platform.

Full Disclosure: I full on hate Activision due to recent profit-mongering and closures of veteran studios that underperformed over a short period of time. They are the best example of the “selling soap” method of corporate management and while I truly respect the ability of the executive team to squeeze ROI for stockholders, the company has a historical reputation of milking IP and then abandoning it.

PC is my platform of choice for FPS. The tight response control given by a mouse and keyboard is vastly superior to even the finest of console games. Generally, PC games offer higher resolutions, better textures and fine-grain control over feature sets to allow the user to manage their experience to the best of their hardware.

Activision will have none of that.

Sampler platter: Games I started and couldn’t be bothered to finish

Despite the financial woes of Blockbuster Canada killing my beloved monthly game deal that allowed 2 games out at a time for a flat fee of $39, I am still trying to try as many games as I can. Gamefly has no presence here, and the only mail-order game service is not well regarded to say the least.

A steam sale took my baby: PC gaming screens

BATMAN ARKHAM ASYLUM 1680x1050 all settings maxed  4X MSAA

A Face for Radio: L.A. Noire (PS3)

By the time the German dame with a bad habit invited me in to feed a different need, I knew I was in trouble. I had returned from the war with a piece of tin on my chest and a hole in my soul.

After fighting WWII in the Pacific, being a cop, doing the right thing, that seemed like the best way to do right for all the things I had done wrong.

Glitches and the men who love them- history in pictures

Below are some of the (mostly) console glitches I have captured in the last year or so, enjoy

Portal 2 on PC:Adventure in pictures (SPOILERS)

I have a 4 year old midrange PC that could use some new hardware but it ran Portal 2 like a champ. A textured, layered atmospheric game, Portal 2 is simply one of the most visually striking games of this year. Replete with the same kind of epic scope Crysis 2 had, Portal 2 is far more painterly in its vision.

The following screens were captured on a 1.8 GHZ dual core, with 6 gigs dual channel DDR2, ATI 3850HD and running Windows 7 64-bit at 1680 x 1050, settings at max with 4x MSAA and 4X AA.

Note the levels of detail on the surfaces, the textures and the lighting

SPOILERS AFTER THE JUMP

Known Unknowns: Crysis 2 (360)

At the point Central Park is held aloft in huge earthly chunks settled atop writhing masses of metal tentacles, Crysis 2 turns to the player and shrugs in exhaustion: “That’s all I got, kid”.

A multiplatform follow-up to the PC-killing original, Crysis 2 makes significant trades in gameplay and environments in order to excel visually on consoles. However, even when using a walled garden approach where most maps are open expanses designed for multiple avenues of attack, Crysis 2 is a metric crap-ton more fun to play than any COD clone, including COD:BLOPS.

A Bridge Too Far: Homefront (360

KAOS Studios’ copy of copy of a COD clone Homefront limps through a heavily scripted, entirely linear and unpolished 4 hour campaign through a near-future dystopia where the US of A has been overrun by pinko commie reunified Koreans.

Following his own playbook as the creator of Red Dawn, John Milius weaves an uninspired and cliché story overwrought with dehumanized enemies and endless brutality.

After a well crafted opening cinematic sets the stage for the North Korean lead invasion, the game begins in a small dirty apartment. As textures load into the scene, a knock on the door leads to a long, Half Life inspired sequence, as the player is pummeled and dragged to a bus. Trundling along a sideshow of cliché war crimes, the player witnesses act upon act of callous barbarism, which of course, makes the killing to come more fun.

Hearts of Darkness: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 1 (Zune HD)

The penultimate film in the Harry Potter saga marks the beginning of the end for the decade old movie series, and is less a self-contained film than the first half of one.

Picking up where Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince left off, DH begins with a literal bang as Harry is spirited away from his familiar home with the Death-eaters giving chase.

Spoiler

Two Harder: Two Worlds II (360)

I am a sucker for things that are so bad they are good. I revel in creative endeavors that are so awkwardly earnest in their ineptitude they become charming, like Anne Hathaway pre-epic hotness.

Two Worlds II is no Anne Hathaway.

Ugly, clunky, and broken, Two Worlds II suffers from some of the worst voice acting and writing to ever plague gaming. Combat is painfully ragged and unintuitive, using both physical & magical weapons to limited effect.

Shot in the dick-tits: Bulletstorm (PS3)

Overstaying its welcome and tonally dysfunctional, Bulletstorm is a brash, crass and colourful shooter. Created by Painkiller developers People Can Fly and executive-produced/published by Epic, Bulletstorm attacks the dour grey-brown colors of modern military shooters with an explosion of environmental palettes. The Unreal 3 engine is used at its best with funnel driven corridors limiting player exploration to long pretty lanes swarming with berserk enemies.

Playing as alcoholic rogue Grayson Hunt, the story swerves from low comedy to “drama” in fits and starts, like a high school play staged by tourettes-laden epileptics. Hunt heads a squad of military assassins, who have be mislead into executing innocent voices of dissent rather than the criminal scourge they had been told. Forced to run, Hunt finds his crew and ship nose to nose with the ship of the man who betrayed them. Suicidally attacking the overwhelming force of the enemy, Hunt brings both ships down on a ravaged resort planet.

Space-nazis are a bitch: Killzone 3

Unlike Killzone 2, the third installment in the exclusive PS3 franchise does not in fact cause bouts of motion sickness and an inability to finish the game. Rock solid in its framerate, KZ 3 is a much-appreciated step in a more colorful direction, leaning away from the brown-grey design tropes that litter the FPS genre.

Picking up moments after the end of KZ 2, KZ 3 is the culmination of the story so far. A massive interstellar civil war between two factions of humanity, the ISA (good guys) and the Helghast (Nazi imagry embracing bad guys) has decimated both sides. The finale of KZ 2 (spoiler) literally ended in a bang, as the Helghast leader detonates a nuclear weapon, fully destroying one of their cities.

Grunts Sev and Rico find themselves driven to escape before the impending retribution while dealing with a military hierachy that doesn't appreciate their can-do rule breaking attitudes. Playing as Sev, KZ 3 jumps the narrative around in a six-month period, varying mission types from on-rails vehicle defense, to a Modern Warfare-esque stealth mission within a colorful and dangerous jungle. The controls are tight and precise, the visuals stunning and the narrative not entirely stupid.

Story nuggets are left untouched as Sev and Rico are reduced to guerilla fighting with dwindling supplies and men, small soliders in a bigger war. The character models are often indistiguishable from Gears of War, which is unfortunate, as the enviroment design has a much larger palette and scope.

At 8-9 hours, the campaign is fun, pushing the player forward through the scenario and rewarding use of the snappy controls. Easily the first FPS I've not struggled with on the PS3, KZ 3 follows closely the tropes of the military shooter genre, replete with soliders going AWOL, barked orders, and cinematic backstabbing.

The ending gave me pause. It involves destruction on an unfathomable scale, and seems unearned. Thrown at the player at the last moment, the game touches on a larger impact of the destruction but does not explore the ramifications, leaving both the player and the characters unresolved.

Killzone 3 is a massive improvement over 2, delivering on the original promise of Killzone 2 as a PS3 launch title.

I so don’t want to go in there: Dead Space 2 (360)

Many, many games make me wish for a “sigh” button, for a variety of reasons. Dead Space 2 makes me wish for a “sigh of despair” button.

Thrown into a startling and thrilling opening sequence, Isaac Clarke returns from Dead Space to once again dismember and destroy necromorphs. Arming himself in a plot-driven and organic way, Isaac also finds his voice, something that was missing in the first game. Spectacularly well written and well-acted, Isaac is no longer a silent avatar for the player, but a fully formed character whose destiny is to be plagued by waking nightmares.

Like a futuristic John Mclane, Isaac finds himself in a horribly familiar situation: running and fighting for his life through an industrial space maze, guided by remote voices. Unlike the errand missions and unending jump scares of the first game, DS 2 makes ironic meat of the first game’s formula with a half-way point reveal that is delicious. Replete with actual mood and atmosphere, DS 2 does have more than its fair share of jump scares, but makes up for it by honing tension to a bright gleaming point.

A few mid-to-late game set pieces tread dangerously close to vomiting all over the concept of over-the-top bad taste, but like any great horror experience makes the viewer squirm.

Caveats are few and far between, but like the overuse of jump-scares, DS 2 does milk its formula too much. Vacillating between random encounters against one or two enemies and endless swarms, DS 2 also swings heavily in difficulty level, especially in the late game. Combat and movement have been tweaked just enough to make the action quick and responsive, unlike the tank controls of the first game. While this makes the game move faster and become slightly more of an action-shooter, it makes the difficulty spikes more egregious as the need for accuracy ramps up beyond the speed of the controls.

Following the first game, DS 2 allows for a New Game+ mode, allowing the player to carry over any upgraded equipment from the 1st playthough, lowering the difficulty and increasing replayibility.

Satisfying in its resolution, DS 2 raises the bar beyond survival horror to become a truly cinematic horror experience and I can’t wait to play it again.

Must Go Faster: Dead Space 2 (360)

I am halfway through and had to make myself stop playing because the tension in my body was becoming painful. My elbows had drawn in and up as I held the controller and unconsciously I was pulling myself tighter and tighter into a ball.

This is no small feat as I am no small man.

After a startling, thrilling spectacle of an opener, Dead Space 2 throws the player in deep and never ever lets up. Even in slow moments (there are no quiet moments as even near silence is punctuated by distant screams, labored breathing, or metal groaning against metal; the audio design is best of class) relentless tension is never completely released. Death is always a corner or a heartbeat away.

Dead Space 2 tweaks or eliminates all of the issues that plagued the first game, including a sly nod to one of the main criticisms turned on its head at or near the mid-point.

I can’t wait to finish this game. So far it is the most complete horror experience on the 360 ever.

Learning to Fly: Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood (360)

Brotherhood is nothing like what I expected it to be when it was announced. I expected a multiplayer tack-on with little or no single-player, basically a glorified expansion pack to test the waters of implementing a unique kind of multiplayer before Assassin's Creed 3 hit shelves.

 

What I got was the story of how a hero becomes a leader.

 

Set directly after the events of Assassin's Creed 2, Brotherhood takes the story and runs, essentially answering most of the criticisms of the ending of the first game within the opening cutscene (including a ridiculous fist fight). While not adding any clarity to the current time story or the enigmatic figures that appear to be the literal genesis of life on Earth, Brotherhood delves deep into its main character Ezio Auditore.

 

Unlike the protagonist of the first AC, Altair, Ezio is more than a petulant puppet fighting to cut his strings. Set first on a mission of revenge during AC 2, Ezio ends that game a master assassin, and in his late 30's to early 40's. Satisfied he has avenged his family and brought justice to the best of his ability he retires to his villa and brings some female companionship. Deliberately low-key, this first set of memories creates a literal calm before the storm, comforting the player and pulling them back into the story.

 

The current time wrap-around story of petulant puppet and assassin to be Desmond Miles leads him and his cohorts Lucy, Shawn, and Rebecca to that same villa 500 years later, on a mission to use Desmond's genetic memories of Ezio to find the mysterious Apple of Eden, a weapon of unspeakable power. These modern day assassin's continue the millennia old battle against the Templars, figures that control and manipulate the people through governments and religion. While not as painful to play as the modern day sequences in AC 1 and more plentiful than those in AC 2, AC:B allows Desmond to grow into his newfound assassin abilities and as a character. Though still a puppet of powers greater than himself, Desmond ends AC:B able to fight back, mirroring the destiny of both Altair and Ezio. AC 3 will likely center much more on Desmond and the present day conflict than the memories of a past ancestor.

 

Through Desmond the player travels back to Ezio's Italy, to find that his lack of definitive action in AC 2 has come back to haunt him. His world destroyed and his family once again torn apart, Ezio works his way into Rome, to complete the job he started against the Borgia family.

 

Stripped of the armor, weapons and abilities gained in AC 2, Ezio is tasked with not only rebuilding himself, but the city of Rome. Dotting the landscape are familiar viewpoints and their "leaps of faith" but they are often tied to Borgian guardposts, which must be removed, freeing the area of the Borgia.

 

Like the upgrading the villa min-game in AC 2, Rome is populated with a variety of shops that add value to the cities economy as they are rebuilt once free of the Borgia. The economy then becomes a never ending faucet of funds that Ezio can dip into and reinvest in the city.

 

Iterating further on reducing the repetition of AC, AC:B is filled to the brim with challenges, side-quests and easter egg hunts along side the main and sub memories. "The Truth" puzzles, based around the enigmatic and very dead Subject 16, return as well but are not mandatory to the completion of the game. They serve only to add to the mystery of the backstory.

 

The titular "Brotherhood" consists of a new kind of mission: recruitment. Engaging the people of Rome as potential assassin's Ezio is then able to send them on missions to upgrade their stats and weapons.  Once recruited, they become an extra tool in the arsenal as Ezio can deploy them at target with a point and whistle. Elegant and lethal, the Assassin recruits become an essential part of the late game, as Ezio earns his place as their leader.

 

Most striking is the growth of Ezio from boy to man in AC 2, and from man to leader in AC:B. Charismatic and conflicted about involving his family in his quest to destroy the Borgia once and for all, Ezio is steadfast in his loyalty but equally willing to do whatever it takes to achieve his goals. It is no small coincidence that like Leonardo da Vinci (who returns) in AC 2, Machiavelli becomes one of Ezio's most trusted confidants, but even he is expendable if the situation requires it.

 

A touching and unexpected aspect of the game is the inclusion of callback memories that take place during the events of AC 2. Charting Ezio's growth from teen to forty year old, these memories explore the choice made between love and duty. Ezio's reminders of the path not taken add a layer of empathy and sadness to his character and are stark indicators of the sacrifices made along the way.

 

While Desmond spends most of the game trapped in the basement of Ezio's villa, the interaction with the team and through email drives more backstory. The resulting spillover of empathy from Ezio's journey creates a desire to see Desmond find his path and grow into his destiny.

 

Shocking and oblique, the modern story ends on an intentionally dark note that reveals nothing and creates more intrigue for the inevitable AC 3. I sat in stunned silence as the credits rolled, confused and a little angry.

 

That is a very good thing.

PORT FORWARD: How Bioshock 2 PC broke my kid’s Christmas

Bioshock 2 is a spectacular game, both visually and as a narrative. While it starts slow, it builds to an exploration of morality and the value of family, with a thrilling non-stop third act.

 

It is also a brutally shitty PC port.

Installed on a rig that currently plays both Borderlands and Left 4 Dead 2 at a native resolution of 1440 x 900, Bioshock 2 can only achieve up to15 fps at 640 x 480 with all settings on low. To complicate matters, it gets the same fps EVEN AT 1400 x 900.

 

WHAT. THE. FUCK.

 

After much basic troubleshooting (new drivers, defragging the hard drive) and moving into more complex analysis, I have come to some conclusions.

 

Bioshock 2 was built for the 360 and ported over with little or no optimization for pc:

The Xbox 360 has a tri core custom PowerPc CPU named Xenon. While the most current console has a smaller cpu die at 45 nm, the actual architecture of the chip has not changed since 2005.

 

The 3 cores run at 3.2 GHz, with 1 MB L2 cache, 512 MB of 700 MHz DDR3 RAM and the Xenos graphics card. ATI designed the Xenos with a 500MHz GPU and 10 MB of eDRAM, making it the semi-equivalent of the ATI X1900 series architecture and even included aspects of the later HD 3000 series.

 

The takeaway is that designing for the 360 as a closed platform necessitates that games leverage the CPU power of the console to the extreme, and use the RAM as a shared resource between the CPU and the GPU as the GPU has no onboard video or texture memory to speak of. 

 

How does this apply to PC gaming and specifically my kids computer?

 

Generally speaking a consumer PC will run a 2GHz single or dual core CPU, 2GHz of DRR2 or DDR3 RAM  and (hopefully) have a discrete video card with it's own GPU clocked around 2 GHz (or higher) as well as onboard memory in excess of 1 GB of GDDR3RAM.

 

360's are unified in design, with the flow of information being handled almost entirely by the CPU's, and graphics streamed to the GPU. PC's are designed to handle multiple general computing tasks, with no dedicated architecture. While this allows the PC to be a multitasking beast, games are inherently designed to dedicate specific tasks to different components of the rig

 

While trying to run Bioshock 2 several things became clear immediately. Sitting on a 2 GHz Athlon 64 cpu with an ATI HD4850 and 2 GB of DDR, Bioshock 2 pins the CPU, which is understandable given it is below the recommended specs.  However, the 4850 has a 2200 MHz GPU and 1 GB of GDRR3 which goes UNTOUCHED.

 

Running ATI Tray Tool allows the user to see granular detail in CPU usage, RAM usage, Video GPU usage and Video Texture Memory usage. Changing the resolution and graphics details from 640 X 480 to 1440 x 900 had no net change in the amount of system RAM, GPU and Texture Memory used, while keeping the CPU pinned to 100%. This indicates that like the 360 build, Bioshock 2 PC is designed to maximize data flow to the CPU(s) with little or no use of the GPU, which is a shame, because Bioshock 2 is a beautiful game.

 

Complicating issues is the integration with Games for Windows Live. Broken at launch GWL is REQUIRED to save single player games.

 

After creating an offline GWL profile for my son, and entirely disabling the in-game menu animations as they are CPU dependant, I was finally able to launch Bioshock 2 and achieved 10-15 FPS NO MATTER WHAT SETTING I used.

 

My next step is to pull the game over via steam onto my dual core system to see if it will run better.

 

           

DEAD AGAIN: Case West DLC DR2

 Case:Zero was a wonderful re-introduction to the world of Dead Rising. Set well into the zombie apocalypse unleashed in Dead Rising, the lead character, star BMX rider Chuck Greene is stranded in a small town. Faced with an in-game 24 hour ticking clock, a daughter that needs a regular dose of Zombrex to keep her from chomping on people, a bike that needs repairing and several hundred walking dead to fight through, Case:Zero was self-contained and satisfying. It retained all of the extraordinarily annoying traits of the original Dead Rising (Bathroom save points) but reduced the pain by adding a wonderful weapon creation system. Rescuing survivors ensured a need for replay in order to get all of the achievements, an impossible task in one play-through, and there is a single insane boss battle.

 

Finished in a few hours, it was a deceptively enjoyable piece of DLC and entirely misrepresentative of the actual game Dead Rising 2. Everything that was charming and fun in a limited setting becomes aggravating in the larger game as the world is very large, the difficult bosses plentiful, and the zombies overwhelming.

 

Case:West has the  difficult challenge of washing away the negative connotation left from the main game, while retaining the bite-sized charm of Case:Zero.

 

Showcasing the return of Frank West, the hero of Dead Rising, and pairing him in co-op with Chuck Greene, Case:West picks up right at the end of DR 2. It quickly moves the pair out of the city and into a remote research facility, where West has a contact with information about the source of the anti-Zombie drug Zombrex. Self-contained but in a much larger environment, West and Greene follow the formula of Case:Zero, killing zombies, combining weapons and rescuing survivors. Unlike the more intimate personal macguffin of Case:Zero where the main driving plot is getting Chuck's daughter zombrex, Case:West is essentially a game of chase the clock as the plot points click by. Neither character is particularily charming or memorable and the prize is the generic "get evidence to clear my name" kind.

 

New and creative weapons lead to spectacularly gory zombie deaths, but the emotional impetus is missing with the entire absence of Chuck's daughter. Some old characters make surprise returns and new villains laugh manically from the shadows but Case:West is essentially an empty exercise in busywork.

Illusion of Life: Disney's Epic Mickey (Wii)

Mickey has never been my favorite cartoon character, even as youngster
growing up on Wonderful World of Disney and you Kurt Russell movies.
Warner Bros. and specifically Chuck Jones suited my tastes far more
clearly, with sarcastic, violent, deliriously funny shorts filling my
weekends. Bugs and Daffy carry multiple layers as characters appealing
to both kids and adults, while the ever more sanitized character of
Mickey abandoned the early rubber armed rapscallion who tormented
Pete. I guess in the end, Mickey specifically has never been funny or
dangerous.

Epic Mickey is a historical exploration of Disney Animation wrapped in
a game. Fantasia era Mickey accidentally spills the Sorcerer's bottle
of paint thinner on a scale model of Disneyland, unaware of the
disastrous results. Flash forward several decades and Mickey is sucked
into a vortex leading to the model, taking only the Sorcerer's magic
paint brush with him.

The brush itself is the main interface to the world, controlled by the
Wii-mote, with character movement controlled by the nun-chuk. It
allows Mickey to spray paint or thinner, creating or destroying this
twisted replica of the Magic Kingdom. Mickey quickly discovers his
thinner accident years earlier has twisted and warped a world created
by Oswald the Rabbit as a refuge for forgotten Disney characters. The
method in which Mickey interacts with the world and its characters
defines how they will later react to Mickey, as he can make friends
using paint or enemies using thinner.

Transitions between areas are playable platformers based on actual
Mickey Mouse cartoons dating back to Steamboat Willy. This is
initially charming, but like so many aspects of the game, the charm is
quickly ground away.

Plagued by camera and control issues, Epic Mickey is endlessly
repetitive, especially in later areas where quests require constant
travel between worlds, so the same cartoon platform is crossed dozens
of times. Devoid of voice other than the incidental and ambient
noises, dialogue is delivered N64 style, as word balloons. Boss
battles show a spectacular lack of imagination, as one battle REQUIRED
the player to run to the left on a circle track around the boss.
Deviation to the right would automatically drive Mickey off the track
and to death. Checkpoints are sporadic, some placed perfectly, and
others so far back in the world as to be useless.

Most damaging is the obvious care and attention given to the character
design and animations. When entering structures, the inside would
revert to a 3D rendered-flat version of a classical cartoon
represented perfectly. The love of the source material is (no pun
intended) painted all over the game other than the mechanics and level
design. The environments are dark and gloomy, which is thematically
appropriate but muddy on the SD resolution of the Wii.

Epic Mickey feels designed by two teams, one art, one tech, that never
communicated their intentions to the other. Lead by Warren Spector
this game deserved to be better and instead is an epic disappointment.

The Sweetest Embrace: Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC

When my blue-skinned lover first hinted she might still be interested
I laughed with pure joy and joked about my alien lesbian tryst in Mass
Effect. My wife was immediately non-plussed at my juvenile joke, but
quickly explained that it was more than that. That she had been there
up until the end, and we had fallen into bed on the eve of a suicide
mission.

 Liara was my Sheppard's first true love, and her brusque rebukes in
Mass Effect 2 stung. It opened opportunity for romances with other
characters and my Sheppard pursued Jacob with vigor, but no real
connection.

The ME 2 DLC Lair of the Shadow Broker changes all that. On its
surface, it is an action-packed, suspenseful thrill ride, reuniting
old flames in a common purpose. At its core, it uses the plot as a
base to repair or destroy the original relationship with Liara.
Ethical dilemmas abound, as do the opportunities to say the wrong
thing at the wrong time throughout the myriad dialogue choices and
snap decisions created by the engine.

My wife watched as Sheppard and Liara rekindled their romance and she
finally understood, she understood why I took joy in these moments.