da blog

Bioshock 2 has been a real dispointment for me, the huge problems with Games For Windows Live causing crashes when you start the game. This has ruined the game for me.  Spent more time trying to fix the game than play it.

Thats not to say that its a bad game but on the PC is just not the game it should be, too many problems with Games For Windows Live and loading problems make it not work playing.

• The long long long load times.
• Crap support and rubbish patches.
• The graphics look dated or something not as good as you would expect for the PC Version.
• Complete waste of money and time.
• Games for Windows Live keeps crashing the game very common issue

A quick visit to the steam forums and youll see the nightmare this game is get it for the Xbox or PS3 cause the PC Version is a terrable waste of time and money.

Its time to make one of those “Best of Year” lists you always see around this time of year and havng never made one before im going to list my favorite things of 2009.

With all sorts of things included from album,Artist,Song and movie etc. At the moment im just listing possable choices;

Best Film:

• District 9
• Public Enemies
• Star Trek
• In the Loop

Best PC Game:

• Empire Total War
• Arma 2
• Dragons Age:Origins
• Call of Duty  MW2
• Anno 1404 – Dawn of Discovery
• Batman: Arkham Asylum

Best Console Game:

• Assasins Creed 2
• Fifa 10
• Dragons Age:Origins
• Call of Duty  MW2
• Grand Theft Auto 4 DLC’s
• Batman: Arkham Asylum

Best Album:

• Doves:Kingdom of Rust

Best Artist:

• Doves

Best Concert/ Live Performance

• Doves- GMEX, Manchester, 18 Dec
• The Pixies – Dublin Oylmpia 2 oct

Best Song:

• Doves – Winterhill / Kingdom of Rust
• Chicane – Poppiholla
• Paul Van Dyk – home
• John O’Callaghan Ft. Sarah Howells – Find Yourself

Best TV Show:

• The Unit
• Lost
• Prison Break
• 24
• Mad Men

Best Comedy:

• The Thick of it
• The Office
• Family Guy
• South Park
• The Simpsons

If there ever was a case for dedicated servers for Modern Warfare 2 its now, steam has gone on some maintenence update but so what you say well the problem is Call of Duty Modern Warfare on the PC needs the Steam “cloud” to work and so now its imposable to play the game. Now if Modern Warfare 2 was working on Dedicated servers this would  never happen.

So FUCK Infinty Ward,Steam and Activison for fucking up what was a a great game and turning it into a pile of steam shit.

While searching for info about steams rip-off pricing i found this script that you can use to show just how much Steam is ripping you off.  It turns out that steam is pricing some/all games at the rate of 1€ = 1$.

In late 2008 Valve’s Steam online games store implemented a new regional pricing system. Prices had formerly been the same across all regions, and USD was the only currency accepted for payments. After the change, prices were presented in USD, GBP or EUR depending on the user’s geographical region. Steam employed an exchange rate of 1€ = 1$ when setting the new European prices, which compared to the formed USD-only sytem made prices go up by more than 40% in Europe. Many games were now significantly more expensive on Steam than in European retail stores. Wasn’t the whole point of using download stores like Steam that they should be cheaper and more convenient to use?

What does this script do?

This script is meant as a shopping tool for European customers to help avoid being cheated by Steam’s new European prices. It is installed as a user script in the Firefox or Opera web browsers. When visiting Steam’s webshop, prices will be displayed in all three currencies (USD, GBP and EUR), you can also see the percent difference from the North American price. This will enable you to make an informed decision on whether or not the Steam price is acceptable.

Source and Get the script here:

While looking on steam at the price of the new Call of Duty Game Modern Warfare 2 game and being shocked at the price their charging i got an email from play.com telling about how you can pre-order the game and have it on the day of release. When i checked out the two prices it turned out there a huge €15 difference.

Ive posted before about how games on steam are more expensive and its generally known. But how can they justify the charge of €60 for a PC Game? Most PC Games never are more than about €45 in a retail shop on steam however they normally hit €50 or more. So after a little searching i found out that theres are website about this very topic.

So i checked out the prices of 3 new upcoming PC Games and heres the results below;

Call of duty: Modern Warfare 2

• Steam Price €59.99
• Play.com      €45.49
• Direct2Drive.co.uk n/a
• Amazon.co.uk £34.96 / €39
  

Dragons Age of Origin:

• Steam Price            €49.99
• Play.com                 €35.49
• Direct2Drive.co.uk £29.95
• Amazon.co.uk      £24.99 / €27.00
  

Left for Dead 2

• Steam Price €44.49 (with 10% off)
• Play.com  €35.49
• Direct2Drive.co.uk
• Amazon.co.uk £26.99 / €30
  

(prices correct as of 6-nov-09)

Average difference in price is about €12 and this is for a digital download with no DVD, case or manual how on earth can this be justified?  Im going to post the prices of the same against Directtodrive which is another digital download service later.

Heres a site i found exposing the problems with steams service;

steamunpowered.eu

Even if after all that if you still dont believe it check out this artivle from the theinquirer.net which lists even more games and the price rip-off;

Company of Heros: Tales of Valor [Steam = £29.99 / Play.com =£17.99]

Football Manager 2009 [Steam = £29.99 / Play.com =£14.99]

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II [Steam = £34.99 / Play.com =£22.99]

Empire: Total War [Steam = £39.99 / Play.com =£29.99]

Half-Life 2: Orange Box [Steam = £16.99 / Play.com =£14.99]

Call of Duty: World at War [Steam = £29.99 / Play.com =£29.99]

Bioshock [Steam = £13.99 / Play.com =£9.99]

Ton clancy’s: End War [Steam = £34.99 / Play.com =£14.99]

Drakensang [Steam = £29.99 / Play.com =£17.99]

X3: Terran Conflict [Steam = £22.99 / Play.com =£14.99]

Grand Theft Auto IV [Steam = £26.99 / Play.com =£24.99]

Vin Diesel: Wheelman [Steam = £29.99 / Play.com =£17.99]

Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.K. [Steam = £34.99 / Play.com =£17.99]

Fear 2 [Steam = £24.99 / Play.com =£24.99]

Crysis: Maximum Edition [Steam = £32.99 / Play.com =£26.99]

Arma 2 seems to me to be the only PC Game at the moment that really pushes a PC’s gaming performance to the max.The game is amazing when its in full detail but is a total nightmare to get any kind of decent performance from. I still have yet to finish the game as i just cant play it on the normal settings as it looks terrable however cranking up the detail slows the framerate down and your left chasing the Frame Rate Vs Visual Quality.

Its not been since Crysis or maybe Flight Sim 10 that its been hard to get a game running right and look its best. In Arma 2′s case it seems that im not alone in getting bad performance from the game. I was reading many posts on the Bohemia Arma 2 forums about Arma 2 and most people have the same issues i have.

The game seems to have huge problems loading textures and other stuff on the screen when you play, which leaves you looking a trees suddenly apearing and grass just loading before your eyes which totaly ruins any emersion or reailty when your playing the game. There is general theory that Arma 2 is just not optimised properly for the PC which seems to be true from what ive read.

I read a post on the BIS forums from somebody who had a brand new ATI 5870 (Best GFX Card you can buy at the moment) and the game was still running poorly.

Which is just shocking, however there seems to be a theory going round the Arma2 forums that the game is having problems loading data from the hard disk and thus the “poping” or “slowdown” occuring.

My own PC Specs:
AMD Phenom 9850 BE quadcore
4 gig DDR 2 Ram
ATI Radeon 4870 512mb
Windows Vista 64 bit

Here’s how I got ARMA2 to perform smoothly (high fps, no stutter, no LOD trashing)
A thread discussing possable solutions to improve Arma 2′s performance.

ArmA 2 I/O analysis results
How Arma 2 manages loading and saving Data to the hard drive.

Since i got bored of World of Warcraft after the last huge patch, (well i logged in and seen there was nothing do really apart from one new confusing Battleground) ive been playing Valves Superb Team Fortress 2.

Its a lot of fun with great choice of classes and maps. Ive been mainly playing the one map however CTF_2FORT on the same server for the last couple of months. Now anyone that knows that map knows its a very small compact map that doest give a lot of room to hide or run around especially when the server is a 32 player server.

Ive had some great games on that server and met some great people and some complete assholes of course. Most of the time im an “Engineer” building up my sentry gun and fixing other peoples. Nowadays im anything but an “Engineer”, been playing “Spy” quite a bit at the moment which is great fun if you get lucky and do it right.