A place for things and stuff
The San Diego Comic Con starts today! I hope we get lots of new geeky movie and video game news, and of course some cool new comic books. I am sure we will hear a lot about the Marvel movies and shows, Star Wars, DC’s TV show empire, and the Justice League movies, but I am hoping that this year’s show will still have a few surprises for us. A new Green Lantern movie perhaps?
We shall see! Is there anything you are hoping for out of this year’s Con?
So the Destiny Beta came out a day early for us Xbox users, and I thought I would give some quick thoughts.
People have been saying this game is a cross between Halo and Borderlands, and they are not far off, but for me due to the online public cities it seems more like Hellgate: London. Though if they can make a non-glitchy Helllgate, I am all in. That game was like a year away from being something special. Though I do find it odd that the cities take you from first person to third person.
The graphics are pretty good, especially the environments, but the enemy character models can look a little cartoony. You don’t notice it a lot when you are fighting for your life, but when it is just you and a couple of them standing around they look a little off.
The AI is hit and miss. The Fallen like to hide against walls, even if those walls are facing you. Sure that makes them easy to kill, but it is just kind of odd to see them peering around a corner away from you even though they were just looking right at you.
If you had any doubts about the shooting or gameplay mechanics, don’t. The people at Bungie haven’t forgotten how to make an FPS. The controls are tight, and they feel a little like Halo mixed with Call of Duty, so console FPS players should be right at home.
So far Destiny has been fun, and I can’t wait to play it more. It is going to give Borderlands a run for its money in the Co-operative First Person Looter space. Still, I think there is more than enough room for both of them. I will let you all know if my first impression about this game change at all. However since it is in free beta now, my advice would be to find a download key and try it yourself!
My friends know that I am not really in to sniping in games very much. It makes me angry when I line up that perfect shot, and then all of the sudden the guy’s head moves. However, when I got my new video card it came with Sniper Elite 3 by Rebellion Developments for free, so I had to give it a spin.
You play as Karl Fairburne sniping his way through Northern Africa during World War 2. There is a little more to the story then that, but it is told in such a disjointed way that it hard to care, so it pretty much boils down to that there are people to kill, and they sure aren’t going to kill themselves. Well maybe some of them will. The AI is a little daft at times.
When I first got in to this game, I thought I was only going to be lining up my shots and taking guys out, but it turns out that this game is more like the Hitman franchise. You have to enter an open area without being seen, and then complete objectives like kill the General, or destroy some vans. Which generally involves strangling a lot of guys from behind, hiding their bodies, and planting explosives. Oh yeah, you will probably snipe some dudes too. If you want. It generally isn’t required.
The sniping has a few fun features, for one if you hit the hold breath button time slows down, and your gun stops moving around, so it is easier to hit your target. They have also added a “sound” feature. Shooting a high powered sniper rifle attracts attention, especially when people start dying, so to mask the sound you can sabotage generators and stuff to make a lot of “normal” noise, and then you can go about killing whomever you wish.
The feature that has been gaining a lot of attention is the “Kill Cam”. It is just as crazy as you have heard. You watch a slow motion bullet leave your gun and travel to your target, and then you watch as it slowly makes its way through your victims body with X-Ray vision. It kind of does it at random, but it is a really cool effect that makes you feel like you are a super soldier.
The graphics in the game are hit and miss. Some things like the main character models look great, and there are some really good textures, but sometimes things don’t line up right, or objects have an odd look or are in a weird spot. The graphics just have that “good enough” feel. They are not great, but they are not distractingly bad.
The whole game has that “good enough” feel. The AI is spotty but serviceable, there is a story of some sort, as I said the graphics are ok, and the gameplay mechanics mostly work. The game has the feel of those old summer budget titles from the 90s. They weren’t great, but they were good enough to get you through summer and in to the AAA games of fall. Sniper Elite 3 is a fun, but mostly just OK game that is a perfect cheap pickup. I don’t know that I would pay full price for it, but if you found it for twenty bucks, I would say go for it. It will at least tide you over until the next Hitman game comes out.
So according to GreenArrowTV.com Geoff Johns confirmed what I had been hearing for awhile now, and that is that the DC Movie Universe and the DC TV Universe will not be crossing over with each other at all. It kind of makes sense because it frees both groups up to do what they want with the characters, but I can’t help but be disappointed. It would have been so much fun to have the superheroes on TV interacting with the ones on the big screen.
I guess the one upside of all this is that even if the movie is trash it will not affect the good work the TV people are doing. It is just a shame we will not see the Oliver Queen we have all come to know and love up on the big screen kicking but and taking names. Though maybe that means we will get some more mainline comic book characters getting their own shows in the future! (Shmee crosses his fingers for a Stargril show!)
I got the last major piece of my computer upgrade, a new video card! I got an Asus Radeon R9 280 DirectCU II (say that three times fast). This thing is a beast. It runs all my games on Ultra at over 60 frames per second, though full disclosure my monitor’s resolution only goes up to 1680 x 1050, so it is not a full 1080p. It is also massive! It is like a foot long by half a foot tall. If you are going to get this card measure your case first because it barely fit in mine. It only had a couple millimeters to spare.
It is also very quiet. When this card is running flat out it barely makes a sound, which is a big step up from the card I was barrowing from my brother that sounded like a jet engine. It is amazing that it can be that quiet while keeping my card nice and cool at under 70 degrees Celsius.
Like I was saying before my games run great. I get over 80 frames per second on Ultra in Sniper Elite 3, Bioshock Infinite, and The Witcher 2. I get 45-60 in Crysis 2. It is just crazy how much better the games look with a good video card. I can’t wait to see how it handles other games!
The card is already overclocked from the stock 933MHz to 980MHz, but the Asus GPU Tweak utility makes it really easy to take the card well over 1000MHz to get those extra few frames. Since I don’t have a totally HD monitor (maybe something to save for, but I really can’t tell the difference anyway), I don’t need to do it, but it was fun to play with. Plus then you get to say you have an overclocked video card, so all the kids will think you are cool. All that power makes it very thirsty. It needs an eight pin power connector and a six pin power connector, so make sure you have a big enough power supply. I would say at least one over 550 watts.
If you haven’t guessed. I love this card, and I think if you are building a new rig or upgrading an old one, you will love it too. I use Asus in all my builds, and due to the quality of this card I will continue to do so. Time to go play more games!