wingless
03-04-08, 12:42 PM
I bought this game yesterday on Steam and got it tax free for $49.99. It was expensive as booty so it better be a damn good game, right? Well it actually is. If you're a fan of Battlefield 2142, Quake Wars, or Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2, then this game is your type of game. The online play is a mix of all these games rolled into one. The single player is too. Ok, the game doesn't add much to this genre besides the UAV and UGV (unmanned ground vehicle?) gameplay. They are badass additions though. What this game does add is TECHNOLOGY.
Its coded for use with 64-bit, multi-core systems and is a much better implementation of the Unreal 3 engine than UT3 itself! It also puts my expensive X-Fi to good use too. Basically, this is the first game to really push my system to it's limits and use ALL of the hardware. I run WinXP Pro 64-bit along with the system in my sig and it feels good to know its all being used. Both my cores are pegged at 100% during gameplay too. My lowly 2900XT tears through Unreal 3 powered games and I was pleasantly surprised when I maxed EVERYTHING out (except foliage, theres a bug) and it ran the same as it did on medium. I have to load up FRAPS and test it out because I think it may be framerate capped like UT3. Either way it has amazingly beautiful graphics, fun gameplay (not like COD4, but just as fun) and up-to-date hardware support.
It also features a seamless PhysX implementation. Bodies, objects, and debris go flying when you blast them. Some buildings and walls are destructible so you can shoot noobs hiding behind walls. This is by far the best PhysX implementation I've seen that doesn't require that gay ass PPU. Dual core or more CPUs eat this game up. Also for you Nvidia boys, PhysX will one day work on your G80 and newer GPUs which makes PhysX games so much more sexier. I'm torn between going back to Nvidia for that, or sticking with ATI for their F@H GPU client coming at the end of March. Either way, PhysX doesn't slow the game down one tick.
Now all of this doesn't come without a cost. This game is buggier than Battlefield 2142 when it first came out. They patched it on it's release date and fixed some MAJOR issues, but it seems Windows Vista users are having issues. The first bug is Steam's fault. The algorithm to calculate when the download is finished is messed up and when it reaches 100%, its actually more like 85% so you have to let it keep going. After you get over that hurdle, the game itself has quite a few bugs that cause it to crash. Under the Video options, FOLIAGE has to be set as low as it can go. Also, the game randomly crashes to desktop every now and then. This may be caused by my overclock or my buggy ass Creative Labs X-Fi drivers. I have yet to determine the cause but other players have reported crashes too. The last thing I noticed was in the first section of the Single Player campaign it crashes when your next objective is about to begin. The way around this is to reload the game and load the level at the next objective's save point. After I did this I had no more graphical artifacts or crashes. Along with that, it seems to play better on my 2900XT with EVERYTHING maxed out (except for the foliage slider) and stopped crashing altogether. The game sure does look sexy.
I recommend picking it up if you play any of the above mentioned games, or if youre a CS:S player that wants more than 2 objectives. The game devs are aware of the bugs and a new patch is on the way so I'm sure it will get very solid in the next few months.
"I love getting headshots and seeing caps and helmets fly off as the body goes limp and makes a thud against the ground..."
Its coded for use with 64-bit, multi-core systems and is a much better implementation of the Unreal 3 engine than UT3 itself! It also puts my expensive X-Fi to good use too. Basically, this is the first game to really push my system to it's limits and use ALL of the hardware. I run WinXP Pro 64-bit along with the system in my sig and it feels good to know its all being used. Both my cores are pegged at 100% during gameplay too. My lowly 2900XT tears through Unreal 3 powered games and I was pleasantly surprised when I maxed EVERYTHING out (except foliage, theres a bug) and it ran the same as it did on medium. I have to load up FRAPS and test it out because I think it may be framerate capped like UT3. Either way it has amazingly beautiful graphics, fun gameplay (not like COD4, but just as fun) and up-to-date hardware support.
It also features a seamless PhysX implementation. Bodies, objects, and debris go flying when you blast them. Some buildings and walls are destructible so you can shoot noobs hiding behind walls. This is by far the best PhysX implementation I've seen that doesn't require that gay ass PPU. Dual core or more CPUs eat this game up. Also for you Nvidia boys, PhysX will one day work on your G80 and newer GPUs which makes PhysX games so much more sexier. I'm torn between going back to Nvidia for that, or sticking with ATI for their F@H GPU client coming at the end of March. Either way, PhysX doesn't slow the game down one tick.
Now all of this doesn't come without a cost. This game is buggier than Battlefield 2142 when it first came out. They patched it on it's release date and fixed some MAJOR issues, but it seems Windows Vista users are having issues. The first bug is Steam's fault. The algorithm to calculate when the download is finished is messed up and when it reaches 100%, its actually more like 85% so you have to let it keep going. After you get over that hurdle, the game itself has quite a few bugs that cause it to crash. Under the Video options, FOLIAGE has to be set as low as it can go. Also, the game randomly crashes to desktop every now and then. This may be caused by my overclock or my buggy ass Creative Labs X-Fi drivers. I have yet to determine the cause but other players have reported crashes too. The last thing I noticed was in the first section of the Single Player campaign it crashes when your next objective is about to begin. The way around this is to reload the game and load the level at the next objective's save point. After I did this I had no more graphical artifacts or crashes. Along with that, it seems to play better on my 2900XT with EVERYTHING maxed out (except for the foliage slider) and stopped crashing altogether. The game sure does look sexy.
I recommend picking it up if you play any of the above mentioned games, or if youre a CS:S player that wants more than 2 objectives. The game devs are aware of the bugs and a new patch is on the way so I'm sure it will get very solid in the next few months.
"I love getting headshots and seeing caps and helmets fly off as the body goes limp and makes a thud against the ground..."