Metro 2033 review

So I have finally set up my new PC and gotten used to it. Might publish my worklog on how I built it at some point if I get around to it. Anyhow, I built it as a gaming system, so I thought I will do some game reviews as play them. Can't promise timely reviews, but I will do what I can.

One of the top games on my Steam library that I was eager to play was Metro 2033. It promised S.T.A.L.K.E.R. like atmosphere and much more story driven gameplay. Overall I was not dissapointed as got what I was expecting.

I will start of with graphics. Can't say they were bad, but I was expecting something more. Maybe it just me, not being able to play on full graphics at high resolution for so long I was expecting bigger leap. Especially seeing all the videos on small Flash player windows makes it look so much better. I suppose the biggest gripe was with the look of NPCs and how they interacted with level design. Sceneary was quite nice though, especially surfice level ones.

That said, you have very limited options to explore it all. The game is packed with invisble walls and small fences or other structures that restrict your path. While at times it is nice and needed in a story driven game to provide the expected narrative, there were times that it was limiting. Most notably I felt limited around (currently or once) populated areas. For example, there was a second floor to which you could not get to in couple of stations. If you are an explorer then enduringing restrictions in already restriced and enclosed space is not something you would expect.

I did not experience any of the AI glitches I heave read about, and for the most part combat was great. I played on Ranger mode - easy, but that is by far not an easy difficulty. In every combat I had to make every shot count as had no spare bullets. Especially towards the end of the game when enemies took more then one to take down. I did like how it added more tension to the game.

Weapon management for me was a bust as well. I really wanted to use one of the pump action guns, but they took the slot of shotgun of which I had the most ammo. In addition it was the best close combat weapon. This is something they should think about for the sequel.

Turns out the game had an alternative ending as well, but it was not something I was going for. I really enjojed the game and would recomend it to anyone, especially if you like FPS games. While the ending was interesting it left me with a huge question burning at the beck of my head... how is he going to get back? (you will know what I am talking about if you finish the game!)

The Christams Graphics Fight

According to Fudzilla, Nvidia is working on a refresh for it high end chip.

I have always thought that the 480 is a big behemoth of a chip that runs hot and power hungry. Something that I personally do not want in my PC. 460 on the other hand was something that turned a leave for Nvidia. Considering that is the same architecture, then they should be able to apply all the benefits to the next refresh. While the outcome might not be that much more appealing to me in terms of power and termals I believe it could really push the performance envelope for Nvidia.

ATI has been doing good for now but it seems that they are about to do even better. The Christams time is heating up as mainstream perfomance specs of the new 6000 series have leaked so we can expect the top end single chip card from them to be even better. This really looks to be exciting time for cutomers because closer the perfomance will be cheaper the prices should be as well. Given the ATI chip history this might be something that they could win at. They tend to have smaller die size, and hence lower costs, so we will have to wait and see how this pans out. At the same time, they will try to milk it for as long as Nvidia hasen't launched the refresh.

Source (Nvidia)
Source (ATI specs)

Wireless display, Nvidia, Intel fight

Nvidia has announced that they are working a wireless display technology. Something that Intel has been doing for some time as well. Unlike Intel there is nothing specific yet or a working sample shown to the press, but considering the ambition I am sure that one thing they will push for is 1080p transfers. AFAIK Intel can only push 720p. In the end, once it hits the 1080p the fight will start on price and latency in high end. The mainstream market should be OK with a small lag, where as gamers will want lower lag. If this is done right small nettops might have a serious competition, as the Wireless Dispaly should be cheaper and should allow more options as the machine powering it will be more capable. This is really exciting technology.

Given a second thought, I think the fight will be won not necessarily by the best tech, but the best salesman where it counts, the TV manufacturers. If the TVs start coming out supporting one standard, that will be huge boost. Why would you buy another box if you really can be wires free!

Is PhsiX going open market (proper CPU support)?

Nvidia have announced that they will enable CUDA on CPU. Even though the reasoning behind this move is more aimed at data centers, I cannot wonder what it will do to the PhysX market. Reviews have shown that running PhysX of CPU at the moment results in a significant frame rate drop. But that has a lot to do on the the bad implementation of the PhysX on CPU. As it uses CUDA, which is coming to CPU I would expect the CUDA implementation to improve where as the implementation of PhysX should therefore be better implemented for use on CPU. If the load could be balanced on all cores, then it should result in lower frame rate hit for no Nvidia gamers which is good news for gaming market in general as PhysX might make its way to more games. :)

Sources:
TC magazine
TomsHardware

Acer looking to conquer home media crown

Acer has announced the latest offering in its Revo product group, namely Revo View. From all that we can see I would have to say that the Revo product range are shaping up to be great option for home media hub. Whether you want more versatility with Revo nettops or just a plain media player with View, the options are there.

Revo 2

The new Revo offers something of a great package, with size and performace, but there is one thing that makes it stand out and should position it as an incredible option for media PC. The Revo Pad, that will replace mouse and keyboard in a nice and handy package that will not spoil the look of your coffee table. Windows Embedded might be a turnoff for some but I think it looks and works great for a media PC that connected to TV.

RL100 and Revo 3700

Are more mainstream machines and should arrive in shops in near future. They will be and act as the regular PC, however they should also offer great home media centre options. To an extent they could be more than just a box that lets you watch TV and movies. While 3700 offers updated Atom experience of true and tested nettop, RL100 will show of in AMD flavours. And that is not all that will distinguish it as that should also laucnch with RevoPad!

Revo View

View seems to be a competitor of WD Live series and similar, but with optional? HDD and really attractive price point seems like a great offer. As long as they get the interface right and flawless playback of 1080p it should be a great package. As it notes it will have spare USB ports and network LAN connection as well as optional WiFi (there is me hoping for an internal solution and n flavor). It would be great if the internal HDD could be managed from the main PC through the network. That indeed would make it an outstanding package.

Sources:
Engadget (Revo 2)
NetBookNews (Revo 3700)
NetBookNews (RL100)
We Got Served (View)

a touchy feeling

Windows Mobile 7 is around the corner and UI videos have been emerging.

But watching them all I somehow feel that the interface and functionality is all flash and not much more. I can't say that it looks bad, heck no, it looks amazing. But is it usable. I really wonder how much testing have been done with the end user for extended usage periods?
I will not lie and say that I love the iOS, but I see the appeal as it is clean and very simple to use. One of the things Apple advocates is that it just works and is simple. No setup or anything is needed. Android on the other hand has completely customizable home screens which enables user to have exactly experiece that he/she wishes.
I have hard time seeing where exactly WM7 tiles fit in there. And more importantly how will they succeed at targeting people that are more of the social grid.

HTC Desire impressions

I have had my Desire for over a month now and I thought it is time to write up a little review and my impressions of the phone. I should note that I am not really a power user or a connected person. By that I mean that I do not use Facebook and Twitter as much, but we'll get to that.

The Hardware

My impressions of the hardware are good overall. It has a powerful internals that drive the performance. The build is good. There is nothing falling of or sticking out where it shouldn't. It is not metal, of course, so it does feel less rugged. I do feel that the cover, even though it feels rubbery, does not offer enough grip at times. I have never dropped it but it makes holding it uncomfortable at times. Taking off back cover reveals that it is not that sturdy and do offer much support on its own. Every time I take of (peal of) the back cover I have a feeling that I will snap of few of the 'legs' that hold it in place and will not be able to fit it back again. Luckily that has not happened yet.

The screen is definitely not scratch resistant. In less then a month I noticed small scratches on the screen. So I recommend getting a screen protector along with the phone. HTC's screen protector fits great on the screen and has cutouts for the sensors on the screen to make sure they function correct. I failed to put it on correctly and now I have a small bubble between one of the holes and the edge. The weirdest thing is that they made a hole for notification light in the screen protector. There might be some sensor there but it does seem strange. I should note that the protector I got is a huge fingerprint magnet. But that is not something that bothers me.

The Software

The software is a broad field, and very much down to individual preferences and usage patterns. Overall I am very happy with the use of it. It goes back to what I said about not being a power user. The phone comes with HTC Sense interface, that I have grown accustomed to by now and find it hard to switch. Even though Sense does a good job of offering great deal of user friendlyness out of the box, I found that Android Marketplace will have to be your friend to make the phone work for you. There are some thing which many might look at as basic that are not available out of the box, and sometimes are only available after the root access is gained. The biggest annoyance for me was the inability to remove preinstalled applications. As I said earlier I do not use Facebook and Twitter much so I would have loved the option to get rid of these applications among many others.

I found SlideScreen to be a great app, but after removing all the unneeded slides, I was left with only few Slides and half of the screen unused. Another home screen alternative I tired was LauncherPro, which was great to the point that I was already too used to Sense. I kept looking for things that were not there. I have not given up on it yet, as I might try it again at a latter stage, especially because it let's me hide all the apps that I do not use.

Valve's three secrets

According to various Gaming news portals Valve's Gabe have said that we can expect three big surprises from them within next 12 months.
It has brought up lot of speculation and so on, but in the end the big question is - does this include HL2 - ep3?

One one had everyone expects them to release it in near future anyway so when they announce it it more likely be a sigh of relieve then surprise.
On other hand the fact that they announce the game will be surprise, as I am starting to give up hope that it will get released.

Personally I would like to see them update the engine. It has served well over the years and is a scalable engine, but it is still DX9 and DX11 looks like something that might stick or at least have brought enough to the table to warrant an update.

On some sick level I have a feeling that one of the surprises will be HL3. Essentially that the EP3 has taken so long because it have actually turned into HL3.

I would really like to see them announce another big new IP. Portal was great, L4D is good, but I still want more.. :D But we should not forget that adding another IP to the mix will mean that it will take even longer till next HL. It is a tough world we live in!

DLC vs episodic gaming

It has been a long long time.. Even too long.

Either way, I was thinking about the DLC as that seems the fad of the year or even the last couple of years. All the big games need to have one. At some point people were talking that episodic gaming might be it and only Valve really ended up doing it and burning bad doing so. I am not going to repeat the old news, but 4 years on and we are still waiting for just ep3. Sure Valve puts in the effort and delivers great experience at the end, but this is time frame I would like to wait for a full retail game.

Now looking at DLC I see all the unfulfilled expectations from episodic content realized in these DLC packs. Or at times just lazy developing (or eager publisher). Borderlands seams to be a good example to the former, as the game was one would expect out of a retail game and some of the first DLC packs improved and extended it to some lengths, while the best is that we see a pack year after the game launched. And let's not forget that all the newcomers to the game will have to buy the full retail game which should be cheaper by now so this is a great way to stimulate the second sales wave of the game.

On the other hand something that really gets in my pants are modern multiplayer FPS games. While the games are great and so forth, they come with choice of 3 weapons, and 3 maps. A week or month later, whenever you get tired of the choices, you get a DLC that gives you that little extra to keep you playing and paying. I miss the day when games came with multitude of options. Also, I do not want to say that the mod community has died down, but the developers really should embrace this by offering more community maps in these updates.