• 22Aug 08

  The new Gamespot interface...

  ... It really sucks.

  This site is making my eyes bleed, and it's bloody impossible to find anything on your own page.

  I'm outta here until Gamespot adresses these concerns.

  • Posted Aug 22, 2008 5:54 am GMT
  • Category: Opinion
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• 2Aug 08

  Why I think Id is bogus.

  So, last day Id announced their new engine and upcoming titles, such as Rage, required to be shipped on Multiple discs on the Xbox 360 and/or decrease visual quality. Sure, new engines and new content, much more data? Right? Not really, and this is why I think Id is bogus:

  The new game-engine by Id, called Rage, is making its way to both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and eventually also on the PC out of what I understand. They claim their new engine would consume too much data to fit into the Xbox 360 standard Dual-Layer DVDs at a data-count of around 9,5-12,5GB. They also mentioned it might not even fit into TWO discs. That's up to 25GB of data, around the average BluRay disc (in theory up to 400GB, but those ships for over $120 each, for the disc only). This is simply some either totally crapped out game-engine or some serious business going on with Sony. Have you ever witnessed a application consume even 10GB of data on the PC? Even how much of a terrible engine CryEngine 2 was it only consumed 7GB of data fully installed if we refer to Crysis. How can Id even get close to break that barrier?

  Ofcourse they're insisting the textures are the heavy hit here, with their "Megatextures" which was also a great deal of the QuakeWars specificational weapon. But still the textures were horrifying, plain terrible while consuming alot of data. And when it comes to textures outside the boundaries of data-size alone Microsofts machine has always been the top-performer when it comes to texture filters.

  And with that said Rage doesn't look all that amazing to justify the hype. Id has been a terrible performer in the past couple of years, they delayed Quake Wars with years and yet insisted to ship it broken from the backbone. For consoles I'd like to see Id minding their own business, they're known for making solid pieces of applications for the PC, that's where they're currently needed - an investor putting the PC on the roadmap again. But when it comes to consoles it required too much optimization and strategy to truly fit their business as it is. Id just appears like a bunch of homebrew programmers compared to Epic with their professionalism when it comes to applications and engines. I'm not saying that becuase I'm a Xbox owner and want to justify my investment, but becuase Epic truly stands for much of the progress on the gaming market overall, their Unreal 3 engine is established on both the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 standing proud with unquestionable optimization and overall quality and it's very few times in history they've launched a unfinished game,

  Id should remain on the PC side, to do what they do best. Epic got the console market handeled with their technologies alone.

  • Posted Aug 2, 2008 3:09 pm GMT
  • Category: Rant
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• 30Jul 08

  Halo Wars is shaping up!

  I was one of those extremely sceptic about Halo Wars when it was announced about a year ago, or whenever it was, and having Bungie loosing their otherwise solid focus reminded my much of how the Command & Conquer series lost all charm when money started to talk. Having a strategy game over a game like Halo felt really, really wierd right off the start as it didn't have much of a platform to build on in terms of units or characteristic materials for a strategy game these days without introducing gimmicky alternative units just appearing as cheap rip-offs of the originals. I suppose nobody was at all impressed by the UESC Anti-Air vehicle, in the first gameplay footage aired of the game, a simple modified warthog.

  But after noticing the updates they showed off this E3 it's starting to feel more like a actual and playable game. They still have quite a bit to work in order to impress me personally, but the Co-Op missions and such were a huge deal and also promises to change certain things in the genre by executing the formula in a better way than previous strategy games managed to do this far as Co-Op today isn't new, yet very unestablished.

  Still. There's no doubt Halo Wars is overshadowed by the extremely promising End War which looks both fresh, simple, innovative and relaxed while still appealing as a proffessional production with deph and feelings. But more and more it feels like those games are standing on the same level, but with different focus. While Halo Wars seems to target Co-Op and a more friendly approach next-to Command & Conquer style (the good bits of it) EndWar is focusing alot on challenges, feelings and rewards. By having the units upgradable and gaining rank individually as long as they survive through-out the history it will be a bit of feelings and history behind every veteran unit and the rewards could be as little as making these units survive, to win a battle or perhaps turn a event on the world-map into a success for your faction.

  I'll be following Halo Wars more than ever and I hope they polish things up just like Bungie is known to do, though they're not behind the production it still represents them and the franschise they brought us. I'd like some international BETA to come up and I'll get on it, until then EndWar remains top of the list of priority.

  
  • Posted Jul 30, 2008 2:51 pm GMT
  • Category: Games
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