so the blogs?

Haven't blogged in months, which is awfully bad of me, not uploaded to youtube in months either, looking to change that over the short term, looking at building a dedicated capture rig so I don;t have to deal with the bad frame rates when software recording, gonna be costly, likely won't do it till after the new year, but should allow me to put up alot more content alot more often. Looking at continuing my PS2 series, some good changed to PS2 have come about recently, especially on the performance side, I am finding SOE have finally optimized the game its actually running at 60 frames even with the gfx settings set to high, previously I struggled to run the game in low/medium, I have made no hardware changes, so GG SOE you have finally got it right only took a year!

Youtube is 60 FPS now, and I want to ensure all my content is 60FPS ready, to do this I have to invest in some better hardware, and my way of doing this is with a dedicated streaming/ capturing box, another bonus to doing it this way is I can still use my other computer while I am rendering video as well.

Games I wanna stream include Train fever, I been playing a bit of that and at launch it had some serious performance issues so bad it was unplayable even before trying to record it, I have not checked it out recently reading patch notes theres been performance overhauls, so I might start a series before I get my new set up, we will see just how much better it is! Without the performance issues its a great game, and I would love to show it off, unfortunately said performance hitches are gamebreaking.

I am not going to pretend to have the best computer in the world, my current specs are AMD 6300 clocked at 4.0ghz, I will likely overclock this a bit more I currently peak at 70c in prime 95 so there a bit of room to prehapse go up to 4.3~, got an R9270x with a slight overclock, and 8gigs of ddr3 ram, its not amazingly powerful but at the same time it should run most games on medium/ high with a solid framerate, when I can't run a game well, its usually due to poor optimization. I looked at upgrading as I build this capture box prehapse swap out processor, If I do I will prob go with something like a FX 9370, however I read it runs really hot and needs some beefy cooling which just adds £60 to whats already a £160 processor at todays prices, will just have to see how xmas goes, id likely end up bottlenecked by my GPU anyway, a more sensible choice would be a 8320 for the capture rig and just keep my existing 6300 in my main gaming rig.

See how things go between now and jan, prices might change.






GB.

E3 day 01,

After many hours of conference, E3 has been rather laid back this year, with no shock announcements. I was sort of expecting Sony to be more on the VR stuff, but they didn't do much more than mention it. PS Now was also mentioned, but didn't go much into this either. Microsoft focused entirely on Games showing off a new Forza, a new Halo. Obviously Microsoft kicked off with a New COD. Yawn, and went on to go on about how the Xbox was getting the DLC first ETC, I wonder how much Microsoft pays for that!

New game Evolve, which is from X Left 4 dead devs, and it kinda looked a little bit like Left 4 Dead versus mode, just with the monster being a single player and much bigger and more powerful, could be an interesting one. The New Assassins creed was shown, my big beef with this one is its set in France during the French revolution yet everyone speaks English, I would prefer they spoke French with English subtitles, make it feel a bit more real.

Sunset Overdrive. its colorful, and looks obnoxious to me! IMO it looked like a game aimed at 13 year olds, defo getting a miss from me. A new Fable game was shown which included Co op gameplay, its been a single player game I believe up till now, another cool twist is someone in your party could be a bad guy who is pulling strings, and sending enemy at you. Sneaky, a cool twist, be interesting see how that works.

A big one from Microsoft was the Halo Master collection, which includes Halo 1, 2, 3 and 4, although only 1 and 2 are remastered. Poor old Halo 3 might be looking a little old compared to the first 2 heh! All the MP maps are included, and will be running in there original engines, so they play and feel the same as the original. Over 100 MP maps will be at your leisure, you know this sort of thing makes me want to buy an Xbox one, but, no... not going to do it. heh! Theres a new Halo game too, couldn't care less about the new Halo game, I thought 4 sucked!

Both Microsoft and Sony made sure Indies where in there shows, and rightly so, Sony have sort of been seen to be supporting Indie devs with a very open platform approach, compared to microsoft where we still hear storys of indie devs being forced to make there games Xbox exclusive if they want to publish on the console, whether true is another story.

A new Laura croft game was teased in an odd way at the MS conference, with a young Laura talking to a psychiatrist. Then she runs through the jungle, jumps down a ravine, and then head shots some guy in the head with her iconic bow, heh. Scale bound, a new IP from Platinum Games was a surprise, revealing an XBone exclusive, Dragon sort of killing game, didn't like the look of it if I am honest, maybe future trailers will win me around, Its Xbox one exclusive anyway so, Pff.

EAs big announcement was obviously a sort of Battlefield Spin off, cops vs robbers style game in which 1 team has to rob a bank and escape the cops. Built in the Battlefield Engine, it likely looks and plays like a Battlefield game, obviously we had the iconic destructible environments with a giant crane falling, taking some skyscraper down with it. EA in there conference also announced the Battlefield Hardline Beta started today (well yesterday now) the surge of people going on PSN briefly caused the entire PSN to crash. I applied from PC beta, didn't get in, I believe it was favoring people who own BF3 and BF4 I own neither. so. pff.

Rainbow Six Siege, which was shown as a team based, good guys vs bad guys style of game. The good guys have to secure and rescue a Hostage from the bad guys within a time limit, the Bad guys can barricade doors and windows, where as the good guys can use a whole host of different routes to break into the house/ building to secure the victim and kill the bad guys. There are small drones that can be used to scout out the building before entering, see which doors are barricaded and where the hostage is being held. Looked very very cool.

Sonys conference showed off many games too, but they did a bad and focused a bit too much on TV announcing also a ratchet and Clank movie. The Teamspeak server I was in chatting about this event in was basically just 15 mins of, "nobody cares, nobody cares, fuck off get back to games" A Far Cry 4 trailer was shown, throughout I was saying, this is Just Cause 2! You will see what I mean if you give it a watch. 

No mans Sky, the Indie game that looks incredible.

I WANT THIS.

Made this post too long already. Also worth checking out is the new Batman trailer, and if your an Uncharted fan, they teased a very short new Uncharted trailer to finish off the Conference. Roll on Nintendo.

1 Week to go.

1 week till E3 and under 6 days to the main conferences. Interesting see what comes out of it this year, hopefully a decent show, with games starting to make use of the new console hardware.


UTC and GMT are the same.
People living on BST add +1 hour to the GMT time. 



DAY: Monday 09th June.
Microsoft:
9Am PT/ 4pm GMT
EA:
11.30Am PT/ 6.30pm GMT
Ubisoft
2.30pm PT/ 9.30pm GMT
Sony
5.30Pm PT/
DAY:
Tuesday 10th June
0.30am GMT
Nintendo

8.30am PT/ 3.30pm GMT

Watching Dogs.

its almost 24 hours since watch dogs (officially) launched, I know some of you where a bit naughty and acquired it one way or the other early, but as we gauge the reaction to the launch from commentators, media, and reviews alike, does watch dogs live up to the hype.

Now I have no played it yet, and from what I have seen I am gonna wait anyway. I love a game that pushes boundaries, where the developers go to great lengths to make a large, open world game, with a twist on the traditional GTA style of game, new and interesting mechanics. But I feel Ubi have sort of shot em selves in the foot with this one. I mean its good, don't get me wrong, some of the twitch streams ive seen, and videos online show some really great MP, with the hack your friend, and find them, the police chase stuff, looks cool would be fun but

graphically, and yes I am talking graphically, its not as good as it was all hyped up to be, there are performance issues PC and console. Considering it was delayed, along with alot of launch titles for the new systems, we have the PS4 and Xbox One, but so many delayed games, and the games that have been released like Battlefield 4 riddled with bugs, poor performance and problems. Hard to believe that with the last generation lasting so long that the games on this generation, run worse than the last and are being delayed, Maybe its just teething issues with the new hardware, getting used to new dev kits, hopefully games will improve as time goes on. 

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/wat...iew,9.html

Planetside 2 on PC, still not very well optimized, it still runs like shit even on top spec machines, sure it gets a bit better with every update, it will be interesting to see how well the PS4 version runs, hopefully it gets the elusive 60 frame rate because in a FPS 60 fps is very important, makes for a better experience, Was MAG 720 60?, I can't remember! 

Total Biscuit mentioned quoted in his v review to say the game looks no better than Sleeping dogs, click text for 1080p image. Although that may be because of the realistic look of the city rather than the colourful look of Hong Kong in SD, If you have not played sleeping dogs btw, make sure you do, very cool game. 

Watchdogs, didn't score as high as GTA V did, 


IGN gave
Watch dogs 8.4
GTA V 10.0

Eurogamer 
Watchdogs 7.0
GTA V 9.0

Playstation Universe
Watch dogs: Review Pending
GTA V 10.0

CVG
Watchdogs 9.0
GTA V 10.

so I am comparing GTA to Watchdogs, I mean afterall its a GTA clone right, well no, its not I mean it holds its own with its original story, the ways you can interact with the world, but its open world shooter, 

but GTA was last gen, watch dogs was this gen, and not quite hit the mark IMO, the review scores are close I mean its above a 6 right now, and won't know the true metacritic rating for a while but I mean reviews are not always everything, just numbers. If you have watch dogs, are you enjoying it? The people I have spoken too have, its just I got board of GTA, and regretted paying full retail for it, I am pretty sure I would get board of Watch dogs too. Will wait for a lower price point.

GTA was good tho, don't get me wrong. Just Last gen let it down, with the low framerate, frame drops, long loading times, and GTA has always had long loading times, and reading some watch dogs reviews apparently long (initial, after boot up) loading times are a feature, I thank ubi for making sure to get that one in, once the game has loaded up its pretty fluid, GTA online was hellish for its loading times, really off putting.


I don't see Watchdogs getting GoTY. But it certainly is not overhyped nonsense, thats too far, its sort of in the middle. 



its like I reviewed watchdogs without even playing it, you can sort of get away with that thanks to twitch, youtube and reading a few good old fashioned reviews.

M$, Ubisoft, and Age of Mythology

Xbox 180

Lot of news came out today, starting with M$. Who have U turned on the whole Kinect xbox One requirements. Yep there selling the Xbone without the Kinect now, its going to be around $100 cheaper than the cheapest xbox bundle that comes with it. There are not that many great kinect games, the voice features are great, but there are not that many good games that use it, so its pretty pointless, serving asa $100 microphone! So good news for consumers that want the Xbone.

Also announced was that you will no longer need gold to use apps like Netflix. Hurray, finally microsoft we are getting somewhere! It was a stupid restriction anyway!

Watching dogs.

So watch dogs was original slated as being 1080 60 (I mean 1080p full hd resolution, with a frame rate of 60,) however Ubisoft ninja removed that statement from listings of the PS4 version of the game, shortly after they announce the Xbox one version will be running at 792 30 with the PS4 version running at a slightly higher 900p but still locked at 30 frames. What a load of rubbish, they delayed the game 5 months and still where not able to optimize it to run @ at least 60 frames. A smooth 30 frames is going to look better than an unstable fluctuating frame rate that moved between say 45 and 60.

You know when I am recording PS2, my recording software being Software heavy it actually looks better if I lock PS2 to 30 frames, because if I don't it jump between 30 and 60 which is noticeable to me. But not to you, as youtube is locked at 30 frames anyway so me recording a game at anything higher than 30 is a waste of time. UNLESS I wanna use slow motion, slow motion footage would obviously benefit from a higher frame rate but ive not come across any footage I would want to slow down.

So yea a SOLID 60 frames looks better than a solid 30 frames, but if they were not able to optimize it to run @ 60 then fine lock it to 30, its just a poor show on what has been from its Announcement at E3 a few years back, marketed as the "next gen game" or game that will represent the next gen experience

Welcome to next generation gaming guys, where we still can't get a game running @ 792 60 let alone 1080 60! There where 1080p games coming out on the PS3 at launch... and yet its a STEP DOWN with this new generation, its like WHAT!

And you what, as a PC gamer, this worries me, Its fucking ubisoft who have released notoriously badly optimized games, is it gonna run like shit on my machine. I expect yes, so I think I am going to give it a miss, I am going to wait for launch, read some reviews, see some forums, see if its actually worth buying. PC was lead platform, so it should be well optimized, so I might get it, see I am mixed, its only £25 which is a good price so... I dunno.

On to AOM

So I got my first AOM EE video out, I've not played today unfortunately just the news, editing that 10 min PS video, and some other stuff I have done today didn't get a chance to play any, tommorow my new cooler should be arriving, yea getting a new CPU cooler when royal mail redeliver it so i am prob gonna be configuring that, gonna try and overclock my CPU to a stable level of course but I hope I can get 20-25% maybe more, who knows, I mean its a sort mid spec cooler so I am not expecting magic, but will see what I can do with it. I usually aim to keep the temps below 75c when on max load so will see how high we can clock it will post what I get here no doubt.

here is the AOM video:

And yea today as I said I did a PS2 video!

rest of this week and beyond.

Whelp I am going home again this weekend, so no gaming for me, however tomorrow is the launch of AOMEE so will try and get a few matches of that in, get some videos done to put up over the weekend, and hopefully end up back on Monday. I tweet now. Yea as some of you know I had a falling out with my twitter, my old account sending out spam, and twitter support not really doing anything about it, despite me changing passwords, restricting my account so no apps could use it ETC, ive closed my old account and set up a new one under the same name so it should all be good now in theory.

We are just over a month away from E3 which is always exciting, hoping for some big new title releases. Leading up to and during that, even closer is the launch of Watch dogs still not preordered that dunno if I wanna go day one, will see how my finance's are looking closer to launch (and when some reviewers have got there hands on it so we know its not a pile of shit)

Ive set up some automated ifttt recipes. So when I post a blog post here, or Upload a youtube video it will auto tweet it, don't wanna piss my followers off tho, if its annoying let me know! Will prob blog again before weekend.

Bring on UT4, AOMEE,

Epic are set to announce something about the unreal series and this tweet pretty much confirms its going to be a new release.

Get on the hype train? (choo choo)

I wonder if development has already started, will they have something to show, not that I am fussed any news is good news, UT3 was not the biggest success although I enjoyed playing it, UT2004 prob being the best, if not the original. 

AOMEE is out this week!!! And its out on Thursday, which is great as I have an exam that day, so exam, then AoM EE all weekend, I will be recording all my matches so expect some more videos from me when it launches!

The game is 20% off if you pre order. http://store.steampowered.com/app/266840/?snr=1_4_4__105_1