Archive - February, 2009

FEAR 2 Project Origin PC Review

Tuesday, February 17th, 2009

Introduction

Well, apparently I’m very late to reviewing it. I mean seriously, these guys are quick, I noticed there’s already a walkthrough and everything up for FEAR 2. This is the internet however, I realize some people have all the time in the world to play video games, and I’m not a professional video game player.

I’ve read the reviews elsewhere, from sites like IGN and GameSpot. I pretty much agree with the review on IGN, but not the review on GameSpot. It’s also important to note that I am speaking of the PC version, I have not played the console versions at all, and I am running with the maximum resolution and graphics settings. (I do not own an Xbox 360 or PS3)

The Review

Many have said FEAR 2 is not nearly as good as FEAR. I disagree. I have found that FEAR 2 has almost exactly the same structure and gameplay as FEAR with upgraded graphics, weapons, enemies, and environments. I think the cause for worse reviews is because people have already played FEAR, and therefore, seeing Alma isn’t near as shocking. Why do I say this? I have played through FEAR multiple times, six times to be exact. Each time Alma got less and less frightening, however everytime I was scared at least once.

FEAR 2 is pretty scary in my opinion. The environments were very well done, they are enough to scare someone on their own. Alma pops up at various times, but the thing that scared me most were these guys.

fear2-2009-02-17-01-26-54-59

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Something about them, I just really didn’t like. I thought they were replacing an old favorite of mine, but I found out later in the game that they are still there :)

fear2-2009-02-17-01-31-10-71

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Their first appearance. One of them ripping off this guys head :) It was hard for me to get a screen shot, I was just kind of taking video and screen shots while I played with FRAPS.

As with FEAR, I was very confused about the storyline, I’m not going to lie, I never really paid attention to it. I did at one point, but even looking everything up on the internet really didn’t clear things up for me. Many others are just as confused. However, the main idea is clear. Alma is ready to kill everyone, and Fettel is controlling the clone soldiers :)

Action, action, action! There’s so much of it in this game. If you’re a fan of first person shooters in anyway, I highly encourage you to check this game out! I had a blast! (Literally!) You have mechs, you have machine guns, you have lazer guns, you have rocket launchers, sniper rifles, turrets, shotgus, automatic shotguns, and a photon launcher thing. ( I don’t know the name of it right now, sorry :) ) Want to slow down the action? Well you can, there’s slow mo past interval 01. Unarmed attacks? No problem. Right click your mouse.

One level I really enjoyed was the school level. Something about wandering around a school while ghosts, alma, clone soldiers, and other enemies try and kill you. It just makes it that much better :)

Many of the “puzzles” in FEAR 2 remain the same type as FEAR, and a lot of other first person shooters. Just find a switch, a key card, or something else and continue on. Sometimes it takes awhile to complete an objective.

One thing I really did not like however is that the phones are gone. Also, there’s no radio broadcasts. You just pick up intel files that you can read through. I really enjoyed listening to the phones and radio, so this is a major downer for me.

Humor from the developers? (You decide.. )

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fear2thing

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Conclusion

FEAR 2 is a rather short game, however it is quite entertaining, and brings me back to FEAR. Personally I found it was much better than Perseus Mandate and Extraction Point. Those were dull in comparison. However, there is something in me that says FEAR is better, but I’m going to have to say not by much. If you haven’t played FEAR, you should play that before playing FEAR 2, just because FEAR is and always will be a great game. :) If you’re wondering what I would rate FEAR 2 as, I would give it an 8.5/10.

YouTube

I made  a short video from my game play, picked out some parts I thought were cool. Took me awhile to create so give it five stars :P

Find it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQe64rxolWQ

Hamachi Gaming Tutorial

Sunday, February 15th, 2009

hamachiWell, my friend and I wanted to play Tony Hawks Pro Skater 4 online together. Few problems, my friend no longer has a ps2, and even if he did, the servers for this game are long gone. So, we thought for a bit and came to the idea of playing the PC version online. So, we both got the game. We tried setting up a game on GameSpy, it simply wouldn’t work for some reason. I thought for a bit and remembered that people were using Hamachi to setup a virtual type LAN configuration. This would work! We would finally be able to play THPS4 together like we did back when I was 13 years old!

Few more problems, however :) We just thought starting up Hamachi was going to be enough. Not so. You have to make sure Hamachi is the default network adapter so the game uses it. That’s simple enough, right? Here’s a short guide of what we did to do that.

Click start –> Settings –> Control Panel –> Network & Internet Connections –> Network Connections –> Look where File, Edit, etc are located and find Advanced –> Advanced Settings –> Click on the Hamachi adapter and click up.  A reboot will be required.

Now that was done on both of our computers, everything should work, right? Not so. He could ping me, but I could not ping him through Hamachi. We finally narrowed it down to his Anti-Virus program, once he killed that I could ping him.

Now everything should work, right!? No. We couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t see his host in the game. Long story short, you cannot minimize the game while hosting, or else it kills the host. Now I could connect, and we were able to play just like we used to.Very cool.

I hope this helps someone if they’re trying to setup a LAN server through Hamachi for a game. It can be a pain at first. :)

Want to join us? Contact me through e-mail, the forums, or my IRC server. Quite a wide selection :)

Here’s a youtube video showing in game footage

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzrXTKnIkfs

UPDATE: I was able to convince my friend azlesk8er to take a cap of him hitting 26 million. Here is his video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4bFR0VMA9s

Dropping EC? Possibly. Less extreme use of EC? Yes.

Sunday, February 8th, 2009

I’ve been getting tired of the EC dropping, I think I’m going to take it easy from now on and just visit blogs, and drop as I want. I’ll still always drop certain blogs that have been dropping me for quite awhile, but that’s about it.

ExtremeTechie I may drop a little more, maybe 300 for a little while  since it’s just starting out, but I’m not too worried about traffic to this site anymore. I get some from search engines and advertising. Constant dropping of 300 cards a day is tiresome, and it provides very little good traffic to my site. I know a lot of people that now read my site came from EC, but I’m finding it’s just not worth it to stress over dropping all the time.

In due time I may completely drop EC from this site so I can use some other advertising. That might be awhile yet, and like I said I will continue to use EC, but not to the extreme extent I was.

I expect my popularity rating to plumet, but I don’t really care much, popularity rating really doesn’t mean anything.

A bigger reason is that I was finding dropping EC was taking up too much time, time that could have been spent blogging. So, I’m trading EC dropping for more posts on the site.

Small security warning

Saturday, February 7th, 2009

troll_2

Okay, well anyone ever receive links that go like this www.[big site like google].something.something.tld ? Well, in the past I have been able to avoid these links, but yesterday I was pretty tired and randomly clicked a link like that. Never click links that look like that, they are generally shock sites or do something damaging to your computer. Mine was specifically youtube.on.nimp.org/watch?v=Zll_jAKvarw. (DO NOT GO HERE UNLESS YOU ENJOY FIREFOX VIOLENTLY SHAKING AROUND AND GRAPHIC SHOCK IMAGES) It’s the first time I ever fell for that trick, but be advised that these exist. I have had friends IM me about receiving links like this asking me if it’s a virus or similar, so I know not everyone knows about these type of sites, and I just want to get the word out a little more.

Always scan links, no matter what site you’re on, these type of links may be posted and disguised as true links. Hover your mouse over any link you see and check to make sure it is a legitimate link. Internet trolls love to post these kinds of sites. Avoid them.

If you still end up on one of these sites, kill FireFox or whatever browser you’re using with either killall or ctrl-alt-delete end process. (Yes, it works on any OS just so long as you have a vulnerable browser, apparently it has never been fixed by Mozilla)

Want to see some reactions to going to on.nimp? Check this video out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kui6cCu6tfA (This is a real youtube link :) ) I knew exactly what it was so my reaction wasn’t near as interesting. Basically I went to the site, then I killed firefox, with no facial reaction or anything like that.

I kind of laughed at myself afterwards though, even me knowing everything about troll tricks on computers, still ended up getting trolled. Everyone’s human, right?