Sunday, October 02, 2005
Too bloody slow!
Damned if I know why, but the Call of Duty 2 demo sucks. Oh, I can describe the symptoms alright, but there's a fundamental problem there that eludes me. Why would a sequel that's seemingly based off of the same (extremely good) codebase as its predecessor not be able to compete in visuals and performance with two year-old games?

Now don't get me wrong, I'm as big a sucker for visuals as the next guy (if not more so), but although the CoD2 screenshots look pretty sweet there's nothing there to take the visual acuity crown from either of the games I mentioned above. There's certainly nothing to justify a former hi-end machine - AthlonXP 2800+, 1GB RAM, Radeon 9800XT - grinding to unplayable framerates at low resolutions (about 20 frame per second at 640x480 with most everything turned either off or low) or having decimal-point framerates at high resolutions (0.2-0.5 frames per second at 1024x768 with medium-high details and no antialiasing). The same machine plays Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 at 1024x768 with x4 AA and crunches frames like there's no tomorrow. To reiterate, both games look considerably better than CoD2.

On a radically different note, I managed to miss the fact that the Serious Sam II demo is out. I'm downloading it and will report when I get the chance to play it. Indigo Prophecy is out too, so I guess my current playlist reads something like:

Guess I gotta get some spare time on my hands...

Gaming
Sunday, October 02, 2005 1:23:04 PM (Jerusalem Standard Time, UTC+02:00)  #    Comments [2]  |  Related posts:
Steaming Pile of Crap
This is, by and large, the trippiest game I've ever played
Best review for worst computer game ever
System Shock 2: You know you want to
Cool online game
Newest pet project: Pocket Nuclear War
Sunday, October 02, 2005 11:23:15 PM (Jerusalem Standard Time, UTC+02:00)
While we're on the subject of gaming, check this out:
http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?id=10839365 - "20 minute 720p gameplay presentation of Oblivion for Xbox 360 [note that there's a PC version as well]"

Although I wasn't a big fan of Bethesda's previous offering (Morrowind), this still looks to be a promising title.
I wonder if the same engine powers their other project, Fallout 3 :)


btw, Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy) is an amazing game.
Its unique storytelling style & gameplay mechanics (although a bit misguided at times; you'll see what I mean when you're a few hours in) have made this game one of the most memorable games I've played in years.

I couldn't really get into Fable. While it has a lot of nice touches (of which I'm sure you're already well-aware of), it just failed to grab me.
From the time I've spent with it (a few hours at best), one of the things that really bothered me was the "boolean" decision making mechanism (you can either do good or evil; there's no gray area in-between), which really made the game feel like a watered-down KOTOR/Planescape: Torment.

Maybe I should give it another shot sometime. Right now I need to finish playing Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines :)
Tal
Monday, October 03, 2005 2:10:49 PM (Jerusalem Standard Time, UTC+02:00)
Yeah, Vampire and KOTOR are on my list, although further down. I find that with age (?!) I have less and less patience for overly complex/complicated games.
Tomer Gabel | tomergAT NOSPAMbigmail dot co dot il
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