Last Week of March gaming news

[Ruslan74]

Seeing i was a bit absent from the WrG forums herewith is a few of the recent happenings :

Game demo's galore!

Blazing Angels Demo (http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/699/699379p1.html)
Ubisoft has released a playable pc demo for Blazing Angels Squadrons of WW2 which comes in at 466 megs.

Condemned : Criminal Origins (http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/699/699325p1.html)
If you dug F.E.A.R., check out this demo of Monolith's other 2005 title, Condemned: Criminal Origins.

Galactic Civilizations II Demo (http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/699/699306p1.html)
Now available is a short sampler of Stardock's most-excellent Galactic Civilizations II.

A few reviews of the ever popular mega-RPG Oblivion :


Gameplaymonthly Review 9.1/10 (http://www.gameplaymonthly.com/reviews/oblivion-pc.php)
Hooked Gamers Review 9/10 (http://www.hookedgamers.com/forwarder.html?http://www.hookedgamers.com/reviews/2006/3/elder_scrolls_iv_oblivion/)


A couple of hardware reviews of the latest video cards out in the market :

PC Authority's review of the MSI 7900GTX card (http://www.pcauthority.com.au/review.aspx?CIaRID=2894)

Guru 3D's Review of the ATI X1900XT card (http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/332/)

Phew...

[TG]

EDIT:

Quick review of the game blazing angels, based on the demo...

a) The setup program tries to access the net. (denied!)
b) The settings program tries to access the net (denied!)
c) When you run the game for the first time, it says it needs to install copy protection dll's. (sigh) Why does a demo have copy protection???
d) Something called BACheck.exe kept trying to access the net. (denied!)

The default joystick controls SUCK!
It doesn't pick up my Logitech's throttle at all. For some reason by default it selects the Z axis (the twist) as the throttle. I changed that to buttons 7 and 9.
Primary and secondary fire buttons are configured to some funky joystick buttons - I had to set it to 1 and 2. It picks up the Z-axis as 'slider left' and 'slider right', so it thinks that that is the throttle. You could probably fix all that with the logitech software, tho I wasn't gonna be bothered.
Another important thing they seem to have gotten cockeyed...
They seem to have mixed 'turn left' and 'turn right' with 'roll left' and 'roll right'. I had extreme difficulty controlling the plane until I set the 'turn left' and 'turn right' to the twist, and the 'roll left' and 'roll right' to the X axis. Flying changed from 'irritating' to 'fun' then.

I basically had to reconfigure the joystick settings completely.

The game itself:

I ran it at 1600x1200, 4X aa, avanced settings on high, everything switched on.

It looks VERY pretty, and it runs very smoothly - the only thing I had an issue with was a brief pause every time the mission objectives changed.

The initial training run was really frikkin' annoying, cuz the voice repeats the instruction every 3 seconds or so until you figure out wtf it's on about.
And then sometimes it doesn't pick up that you've flown over point 'x' and you have to do it again.

Flying is incredibly easy (being arcade) - didn't crash once, considering some of the incredible manuevers I pulled. I'm not sure that you CAN crash. I did accidentally hit a church steeple once, which set me on fire, but that was about it.

The downside is that there is only 1 camera view, which is chase plane. I would've liked to have a cockpit view.

Looking through the settings in registry, there were some key assignments for multiplayer related things, so it looks like the full game will have multiplayer capabilities.

I'm not sure if I'll get this game. I'll have to think about it.

[rainy]

Which game are we talking about? Blazing Angels?

Ubisoft is famous for putting copy protection into their demos. It is not so much to protect the demo from being copied, but ti make it harder for crackers to crack the full game's protection. If the demo wasnt protected, they would most likely just have to swop out the game's main exe files.

Not that I condone that, and since Ubisoft seems to prefer Star Force, it is an additional pest. But that's unfortunately how it is. As long as companies don't realize that a copy protection does in no way hinder anyone with the right knowledge (be it how to crack it or just where to find a crack once other did the dirty work) from copying the game while too often affecting the honest user, things won't change.

[Ruslan74]

Blazing Angels is suffering from its console port format... sadly its not a proper flightsim and more of a shoot-them-up in the air type of flight sim.

maybe its console bias is worth only on the console itself. :(

i downloaded the Condemned and Rise of Legends demos over the weekend, will try them out tonight if i get a chance...

[Ruslan74]

Condemned Demo :

Using the FEAR engine to great effect this violent, dark and kinda creepy game has what it takes to make you jump a couple of times and graciously swipe a fire axe at bad guys. A mix of minor CSI forensic duties and exploring for clues makes it stand out from the current crop of FPS games out there.

Rise of Legends demo :

To anybody who has played the previous Rise of Nations game this futuristic RTS has some nice aspects that could make it a winner when its out. It was kinda weird to see fantasy like units on the field of battle, but after a few minutes you get to know their strenghts and weaknesses.

Overall presentation of both demos is very nice and i didnt detect any Starforce or equivalent being installed.

Now i just need to get the new Tomb Raider demo too...