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Recently I’ve seen an upsurge in free to play games. Especially in the MMORPG arena, but also in other areas. There’s even a free to play FPS game called Uberstrike which gets most of its traffic from facebook.

Now, I won’t lie, I’ve played uberstrike quite a bit, but the thing that astonished me is that I actually ended up paying for some things in game for it. The thing is, the consumer is the one that says whether or not the game has value, and they place their own value on it. For some, it might be worth $10, others it might be worth $30, and yet  a small % may spend hundreds on the game. I looked over the stats on the free to play model and it seems like it’s as successful or more successful than traditional models. Of course, crappy games are probably better off going with the traditional route with consoles since they’re mostly just cash grab games, and if it really is terrible – no one is going to buy in game items except for perhaps a very, very small percent. So your game has to be good, and it has to be addictive in some way, usually with a level system of some sort.

Right now the space isn’t very crowded so small developers have room to breathe. Something tells me this is going to change in the future as big game publishers invest more into this model. Team Fortress 2 has already taken the leap and I expect many more to follow.

So check some of them out but be warned: You may end up spending more on a free to play game than you would on a traditional game. Just depends on how much you like the game.

Recently I did some computer upgrades. First of all, I had a 22″ & 19″ monitor, but I decided since I’m getting an HD5850 I might as well go for 1920×1200 resolution. So that’s what I did. I now have a 24″ LG and 22″ V7 monitor. If you’re wondering, yes there is a large difference from 1680×1050 and 1920×1200. More screen space generally always means more productivity, and with 2 monitors you have even more space. The next major thing I did was buy a 2TB Hitachi drive, I would have gotten a smaller drive, but the price was right since it runs at 7200rpm. I won’t go lower than that on a hard drive. Next I installed Windows 7 on the 2TB drive.

At first, I thought the HD5850 was going to be bottlenecked by my Q6600, after some in game testing, this doesn’t seem to be the case at all. I’m able to run Crysis at the max settings at 1920×1200, and have very playable frame rates. I tested a few other games and the result was just awesome. I probably got more than 2x the performance of my older card, the HD4850 which I bought when it came out. I don’t plan on upgrading the motherboard/cpu until the next gen cards arrive, such as the HD6850 or something, I’m sure by that point the Q6600 will just be too slow to keep up so a full system upgrade is in store around that time

If you’re debating about the HD5870 or the HD5850, 10 – 15% more performance just isn’t worth the extra cost in my opinion, just go with the 5850. Right now, it has the best price/performance ratio out there. I didn’t get all into the benchmarks and stuff yet, I might never get to it this time. Usually I always do when I get a new card and go quite insane with overclocking. I guess I’d rather just game than play with the benchmarks

Oh yea, almost forgot.. I’m extremely impressed with Windows 7, it runs great. I’m always on the computer for work or entertainment so having a good setup is pretty important to me. Below is a pic of my current desktop

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.

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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

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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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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

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

Well, 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