First Impressions: Just Cause 2 (PC)

"Looks good, improves on every aspect compared to the first one."

That's how I'd summarize JC2 for the PC after a few hours' quick bout with it.

The grappling hook isn't the most original idea (Batman: Arkham Asylum or Bionic Commando, anyone), but it works well. It has more freedom than in AA or BC, and it's easier to use than the BC one.

Capturing helicopters brings Mercenaries 2 into my mind.


More later, maybe. ;)

Gaming rig: continued

I've finally settled the new system in and it's actually on the table and all. ;)

I also added a new monitor: a 24" Benq Led display (G2420HBDL). Very satisfied with the price / performance ratio (at 189 euros here); the image is crisp and clear, there's enough brightness (so much so that I toned it down to 25/100 setting) and, what's really important to me, it's a matte panel display. I don't have to look at my own face or the ceiling light while playing. Also, no dead / stuck pixels and nothing else to complain (yet ;) ).


The 5770 was a slight disappointment on the memory side of things; all I could get out of it stable was 1325MHz (1200MHz default). The core is running at 950MHz (850 default) and still seems to have room for more.

With the CPU at default speed the system gives a pretty standard ~11000 3D mark score in Vantage.

New gaming rig: complete

So the final specs of my new Windows 7 (64-bit enterprise) gaming rig were as follows:

- CPU: i5 750 (not yet OCd)
- Motherboard: Asus P7P55D-E (for USB- and SATA-3 support)
- Memory: 2x2GBs of Kingston 1600MHz Hyper-X memory
- Graphics: HIS Radeon HD5770
- Disk: Samsung F3 1TB harddisk (with Samsung 320GB drive for automated backups, etc)
- Cooling & case: CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Plus CPU cooler (120mm fan, with possibility to add another later)
Zegamax Luna case w/3 120mm fans
Silver Power 600W 80+ power supply (Cheap, but good reviews and up to 87% efficiency)

The only hiccup: the 120mm fan on the side is exactly where the Hyper 212's top is, so I had to remove it since even rotating the plex-window didn't allow the side cover to fit... ;)

CPU temps are below 30 degrees C in normal desktop / surfing use, so I should be set for a nice overclock later when I get everything running (just did the cabling yesterday, the case is now really roomy with good airflow).

Power consumption is around 85-95W at surfing use and around 170-190W when playing newest DX11 games. The 5770 is still at normal clocks. The HIS card should have Hynix memory capable of 1500MHz memory clocks, so there should be plenty of OCing room for that too.


All in all, pretty good price / performance ratio at little over 800 euros. A i7 860 CPU would've cost another 100 euros and a 80GB SSD drive another 200 euros - but I'm happy with the F3 for now, at least, and in gaming use the lack of HyperThreading shouldn't be a major performance factor (another thing in synthetic benchmarks or stuff like MPEG compression).

A new gaming rig

I'm having hard time justifying myself a big budget for a new gaming PC since I do most of my gaming on the consoles nowadays, so what I've ended up with is a mid-range, sub 1000 eur, gaming PC consisting of:

• Intel i5 750 CPU w/ Scythe Katana 3 cooler
• Asus P7P55D-E motherboard (the local store is out of the cheaper GigaByte USB/SATA3 boards)
• 4 gigs of DDR3 1333Mhz G.Skill Ripjaw memory
• HIS Radeon HD 5770, 1GB (another to be added later in Crossfire)
• Zegamax Luna case with a 650W Chieftec "Super Series" PSU (can you say "cheap-ass"?)
• Some random 1TB drive (probably a Samsung F3)
   

I'd love to got for an Intel X-25 SSD drive, but my budget would break on the 80GB version and the 40GB seems so tiny - even for a pure OS drive. And in either case I'd still need a 500GB - 1TB drive for the actual "games and stuff".

Also, the 58XX series Radeon's are out of the picture; I could cash out for the 5830, but honestly, the 5fps difference at FullHD isn't just worth the extra 80-90 euros (considering that I can add another 5770 later for around 130 euros).

If I went for an AMD system with Phenom II X4 955BE, I'd probably save another 30-40 euros, and wouldn't lose many (if any) fps in games - but for more intensive reasons like MPEG-compression and working with RARs, I decided on the i5 750 that is basically a i7 860 that has HyperThreading disabled.

I could save even more if I took the chance with a Phenom II X2 and tried to unlock it with a suitable motherboard.

But with my track record of getting good CPUs I decided not to (anyone remember Celeron 300As? Or 366s? I had to go through 5 specimens of the latter to get them to 555MHz and never got lucky with a 300A... ;) ).


Oh, well... Decisions, decisions.

Maybe I'll get that damn cheap Packard Bell i5 430/Radeon 5650 laptop instead - would save me 200 euros and tons of time... :D

Who whoulda thunk it: Ubuntu 9.10 server on P3 hardware

I was pleasantly surprised that Ubuntu 9.10 server edition as a LAMP runs so well (all things considered) on a P3 500Mhz with 640 MB memory.

I even threw in a software RAID1 (mirroring) and Gnome desktop (thought for that I had to ditch the old Matrox Millenium MGA and throw in an AGP GF440MX ;) ).

Of course the WWW-server load is below pitiful (serving a few avatar pictures for couple of boards, etc), but still.


Only one major gripe; why does it ship with 0.9.8 version of the libcrypt and and libssl -libraries when they don't work with Apache2? I had a heck of a headache before I deleted them (forcing Apache & the sshd to use their default libraries)...

Qnd quick Review: Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (PS3)

Few quick words...

Singleplayer is still fun and very much like BF:BC was. Stuff gets blown away and cover is fleeting.
Missions are still very linear, but you have the feeling of freedom and space.

Like in the first one, I find myself drawn to LMGs - mostly because of their extended ammo capacity. A sniper rifle and a LMG is a good combo; you're just a weapon switch away from having long range or "enough ammo for the encounter". And believe me, that AR will run out of ammo after a couple of enemies and then you're just a sitting duck while you slooowly reload.

The single player campaign isn't as polished as MW2's equivalent, and there's not that as much single player, or even co-op stuff to do after you finish the campaign.

Multiplayer, when the servers are up, is pretty damn nice. Well, unless you have 8 recons on your side and 7 of those are crappy shots with the sniper rifle... :P

The hard mode is where it's at - no silly "oh, you shot me in the chest with your sniper rifle - lemme shoot you back" -crap. Much more deadly, much more fun.

There's still a lot of spawn camping (with snipers and helicopters) happening, but if you know what you're doing you can think of that as "well, they won't be protecting the objective" -kinda thing and do your dirty deeds behind the lines.



Score
9/10

iPhone quickie: Tiki Totems, Lion Pride, Textropolis

Ie. "stuff for free" (well, were, at least).

Tiki Totems
... is probably most fun of the bunch. You have a totem that cannot touch the ground, but you have to destroy (by tapping) X number of blocks from underneath it.

Gets a little repetitive but it's still fun.

Graphics are "OK", sound is "there".
Physics are... "iffy". ;)




Lion Pride
... is a pretty boring "drag your finger to aim lions at prey" -game. *Yawn*










Textropolis
... is a fun way to pass time if you like making up words from jumbles of letters (or names of different Cities, in this case).

QnD Review: Dante's Inferno (Xbox 360)

This review is purely based on around hour and a half of gaming, from the start of the game to the Gluttony level of hell (ie. 2nd real game level).
Edit: some updates and the game has been thoroughly played through, and the score of 7.5 is appropriate.


First things first; is DI a God of War clone? Does the bear shit in the woods? Hell yeah - and it doesn't even try to hide it.

You have exp, mana and health fountains (GoW: chests), you have the same kind of ground and aerial combos, you buy skills (good or bad, here) with experience points as you proceed, etc.

Even the combat is pretty much the same; dozens of enemies coming at you at once, small bosses, big bosses, you have quicktime events that you kill small (optional) and big bosses (mandatory) with. Only difference is, usually, that you can either punish or save their souls while you do it (being good, ie. "Holy" will get you more experience, which is kinda silly).

You have your standard variety of lost souls, small, medium and big demons; noting you haven't seen before in a video game about hell (or a dozen other subjects). You also have a 7-layer depiction of hell that ranges from "ho-hum another wall made of souls and guts" to "Wow, those little demons bursting from the big demon's nipples were a nice touch!" -kinda moments.

It all reeks of unoriginality. (But that's fine, it's not like it is an original story either...)


It's not bad, though. The good parts are still good, but the whole lands short of it's clone-father; GoW just does everything slightly better, has a bit more style - and face it: if Dante and Kratos were put in the same room, Kratos would come out the winner, with Dante following him on a leash and wagging his... err... tail. ;)

If you're a 360 owner, this is pretty much as close as you can get to GoW - without the Greek parts, and with a lot more tits and darkness.

Addentum on 8.2.2010:

Now that I've played the game to completion I have to hand it one thing: the pre-rendered cut-scenes between different acts (and especially the one in the end) are nothing short of gorgeous. Of course these are made by a 3rd party studio (Blur) that has shown excellent results in recent games like Dragon Age: Origins, and have little to do with the game itself. In fact, in the last video it's eerie to see a really different looking Satan in the cut-scene from what you just fought on the "pentagram". Nevertheless, they build up the immersion pretty well.

The game itself held together pretty well to the end - being pretty much the same fare than in the earlier levels. No real "ooh, aah" -moments (aside from the cut-scenes), but no real feeling of boredom or insurmountable opposition.


Score 7.5/10

Movie: Moon (2009)

It's a good sci-fi movie in the spirit of 2001 and makes you think thoughts like watching The Blade Runner.

Watch it. Sam Rockwell is good.

iPhone review: iBomber

Price: free (on 1.2.2010), lite version available
Publisher: Cobra Mobile
Release date: 18.7.2009

iBomber is a top-down bombing game where you never actually see your own plane, but rather view the action from the bombing scopes.

The era is WW2 and you're bombing Japanese targets in 14 missions that range from target bombing to escorting a fleet of ships through an archipelago.

Along with your basic, unlimited bombs, you can collect limited power-ups that include "triple bombs" called Blockbusters, black bombs that are more powerful that basic ones and the Grand Slam, or "The Nuke" as I like to call it; a single powerful, but slow moving bomb.

The other power-up is the health booster that will heal you for a small amount (pictured left).

You collect the power-ups by touching them on the screen (luckily you don't have to hit them with bombs, as they stay on the screen only for a short while).

Controls are fairly easy; you turn and control your speed by tilting the device and hit the only button available to drop your bombs (creatively labeled "BOMBS AWAY"). The forward / backward tilt is calibrated in the menu, so you can play at an angle that feels natural to you.

Speed of course affects how far your bombs will land from the initial dropping location, but unlike real bombers, yours will nearly turn "on a dime". All it's really missing is reverse.

Different enemies of course take different amounts of bombs to destroy, from the small mg-placements that only take one bomb to the battleships and carriers that take several (or a well placed "nuke", which is the slowest moving bomb in the game, and which "duds" if you hit the water with it).

You can also hit airplanes with your bombs, of which there are several kinds; small escorts that circle around islands or carriers, bigger bomber types and some US fighters.

Everything on the map is of course committed to killing you (with the exception of command huts, fuel depos, etc stationary targets), so those health power-ups not only come in handy; they are mandatory to your survival.

Your health is shown on the left, right next to your radar that will show enemies as red blimps, allies as green and mission targets as yellow triangles. The radar acts like the real counterpart, only showing the location and heading of the targets for a time after a radar sweep.

Gameplay is mostly fun, and why not; dropping bombs and seeing things explode is a great way to pass the time. Some missions feel a bit long though, and especially the escorting missions tend to take some of the fun away while you're juggling between the protection detail and gathering health-ups to keep yourself alive. In the latter missions, the flaming death spin that drops you from the skies becomes a somewhat a familiar sight.

Graphics are good - you have little trouble distinguishing what is what, and even in this small scale you can tell a destroyer from a battleship, etc.

Sound is mostly nothing to write home about. Its your standard fare of explosions, splashes and flak.

It's free (in early February, at least), so you can't really complain.

Score: 8/10