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.