Tag Archives: pc games

Arma 2:The only PC Game to push it to the limits?

arma2-03Arma 2 seems to me to be the only PC Game at the moment that really pushes a PC’s gaming performance to the max.The game is amazing when its in full detail but is a total nightmare to get any kind of decent performance from. I still have yet to finish the game as i just cant play it on the normal settings as it looks terrable however cranking up the detail slows the framerate down and your left chasing the Frame Rate Vs Visual Quality.

Its not been since Crysis or maybe Flight Sim 10 that its been hard to get a game running right and look its best. In Arma 2’s case it seems that im not alone in getting bad performance from the game. I was reading many posts on the Bohemia Arma 2 forums about Arma 2 and most people have the same issues i have.

The game seems to have huge problems loading textures and other stuff on the screen when you play, which leaves you looking a trees suddenly apearing and grass just loading before your eyes which totaly ruins any emersion or reailty when your playing the game. There is general theory that Arma 2 is just not optimised properly for the PC which seems to be true from what ive read.

I read a post on the BIS forums from somebody who had a brand new ATI 5870 (Best GFX Card you can buy at the moment) and the game was still running poorly.

Which is just shocking, however there seems to be a theory going round the Arma2 forums that the game is having problems loading data from the hard disk and thus the “poping” or “slowdown” occuring.

My own PC Specs:
AMD Phenom 9850 BE quadcore
4 gig DDR 2 Ram
ATI Radeon 4870 512mb
Windows Vista 64 bit

Here’s how I got ARMA2 to perform smoothly (high fps, no stutter, no LOD trashing)
A thread discussing possable solutions to improve Arma 2’s performance.

ArmA 2 I/O analysis results
How Arma 2 manages loading and saving Data to the hard drive.

FIFA 10: Horrible graphics but also playable on aged PCs

fifa11Interesting article on EA didnt bother to update the PC version’s graphics this time around.
Every fall, the gaming market is hit with updated versions of the football classics FIFA and PES. Since FIFA 10 will be released about three weeks earlier than PES 2010 it has to pass our graphics and performance test first.
EA presents its annual update of the popular football game FIFA 10. It has already been known that the PC version of FIFA 10 will have the same graphics as FIFA 09 whereas the console version gets visually updated. EA justifies this step with the unbalanced performances of different PCs. This statement in mind we cannot expect worldshaking graphics. How FIFA looks like and on which PCs FIFA 10 is playable will be shown below.

World of Warcraft – Comic – Void Reaver Aggro Problem

comic2 finalBack in the days when World of Warcraft was great i.e The Burning Crusade when i was in a guild as a gnome warlock called “Chuckie” we were on the Boss “VoidReaver” which was a  25 player raid and reasonably easy.

However one of our shadow priests was having great problems with “Aggro” on this boss and i decided to make a “Comic” in photoshop about it. Bear in mind its 2 years old now (how time flies) and was funny at the time.

Team Fortress 2 – Is Awesome

team-fortress-2Since i got bored of World of Warcraft after the last huge patch, (well i logged in and seen there was nothing do really apart from one new confusing Battleground) ive been playing Valves Superb Team Fortress 2.

Its a lot of fun with great choice of classes and maps. Ive been mainly playing the one map however CTF_2FORT on the same server for the last couple of months. Now anyone that knows that map knows its a very small compact map that doest give a lot of room to hide or run around especially when the server is a 32 player server.

Ive had some great games on that server and met some great people and some complete assholes of course. Most of the time im an “Engineer” building up my sentry gun and fixing other peoples. Nowadays im anything but an “Engineer”, been playing “Spy” quite a bit at the moment which is great fun if you get lucky and do it right.

Valves Steam Game Prices – A Rip off or Buyer Beware?

My Previous post singing the praises of steam may have been a little early. I was looking around the play.com website at game prices and my jaw dropped on the huge price difference between buying the game via play.com and getting a physical copy of the game in your hand and buying it via steam and getting a download version.

As i write this post im kinda discusted at the pricing on Steam it seems greed has taken hold over Games Publishers. Two examples of this price difference are the games;

Age of Conan:

Stalker – Clear Sky:

Thats quite a difference really on average its €12 more expensive on steam. Of course this not be Valves doing, Valve has to make a profit too so who knows the overhead of selling games via Steam. I cant quite understand this, Digital Downloads are suppose to at least be in line with the retail price and certainly not mroe expensive due to the fact that you dont get a Physical copy of the game

(Prices Correct as of 6-oct-2008)