June 16, 2011

Crysis 2 Gone From Steam

Steam recently removed Cry­sis 2 from it’s online store.  This is rather supris­ing con­sid­er­ing that Cry­sis 2 is one of it’s top sell­ing titles.  The game was appar­ently removed a few days ago when some steam users who fre­quent the site real­ized that it was no longer avail­able for sale. 

EA released a state­ment saying ”

It’s unfor­tu­nate that Steam has removed Cry­sis II from their ser­vice. This was not an EA deci­sion or the result of any action by EA.

Steam has imposed a set of busi­ness terms for devel­op­ers hop­ing to sell con­tent on that ser­vice — many of which are not imposed by other online game ser­vices. Unfor­tu­nately, Cry­tek has an agree­ment with another down­load ser­vice which vio­lates the new rules from Steam and resulted in its expul­sion of Cry­sis II from Steam.

Cry­sis II con­tin­ues to be avail­able on sev­eral other down­load ser­vices includ­ing Ama­zon, GameStop and Origin.com.”

It’s inter­est­ing that Cry­sis 2 is also listed as an Ori­gin exclu­sive even though it is still avail­able on other DD ser­vices.  Recently EA has been push­ing their new Ori­gin ser­vice, Ori­gin, and for those of you who don’t know what that is it is a dig­i­tal dis­tri­b­u­tion ser­vice just like steam.  Whats most inter­est­ing is that not all EA titles were removed from Steams cat­a­log, only Cry­sis 2 was removed from the Steam catalog. 

Steam is by far the most pop­u­lar online dig­i­tal dis­tri­b­u­tion provider today.  With over 33 mil­lion accounts and ris­ing it has the largest user base and the largest num­ber of games cur­rently avail­able for down­load.  It’s the biggest rival to EA’s new ori­gin ser­vice which has very few titles avail­able to it.

Con­trary to EA’s state­ment this seems like a ploy to pull users from it’s biggest com­pe­ti­tior over to it’s Ori­gin ser­vice.  Using it’s top title such as Cry­sis 2 gives credit to that the­ory.  It will be inter­est­ing to see what they do with the next 2 biggest releases Bat­tle­field 3 and Mass Effect 3.  I sus­pect these will be Ori­gin exclu­sives as well because of a “undis­closed” Steam pol­icy.  What do you guys think? Do you think remov­ing their title from Steam was a good busi­ness deci­sion or a bad one?

June 6, 2011

E3 2011 — Ubisoft

Next on the list was Ubisoft’s event. Before I start can I just say 1. just give us the info, you’re not funny and 2. hire peo­ple who speak eng­lish or make them learn it bet­ter. I can’t under­stand half of what you just said about Track Mania…not that I cared but I digress…Here is what Ubisoft had to offer:

Ray­man Ori­gins — This live demo showed some co-op and brought me back to the SNES and Sega days. It had a old school feel­ing with it’s well ani­mated 2D side scrolling action. The game will sup­port a 4 player co-op.

Dri­ver San Fan­cisco — Noth­ing spe­cial unfor­tu­natley. Dri­ver will have a mul­ti­player fea­ture though.

Far­cry 3 — This actu­ally looked decent. Got a lit­tle sneak peak of game­play and seemed to have a mix­ture of stealth and regualr cap bust­ing. The dia­log was a bit rough because they cen­sors had a field day with the “beep” button.

Broth­ers in Arms: Furi­ous Four — 2012  - This is another squad based shooter set in WW2. A mix­ture of funny char­ac­ters and over the top style action and humor may make this game one of the bet­ter BiA titles.

Adven­tures of  TinTin — Adven­ture style game.…they didn’t have much to say hon­estly. Peter Jack­son and Steven Spiel­berg just talked about how good it was. Other than that I don’t really know much.

Ghost Recon: Future Sol­dier — Showed off some great look­ing game­play. Showed the 4 player co-op on a mis­sion to secure a VIP. It had good graph­ics and really smooth move­ment and shoot­ing. It looked like a blast to me.

Ghost Recon Online — This will be a free to play PC game. It will also sup­port the achieve­ments you earn in Future Soldier

Track Mania 2 — This is part of Mania Planet which is a hub for other online games for PC. Basi­cally it’s Mod Nation Rac­ers with realism.

Rav­ing Rab­bids — Kinect — Nov 8 — The party game comes to Kinect.….wooo.…..

Just Dance 3 — Oct 2011 — This is wear I took a restroom break.….

Rock­smith — Oct 2011 — Yet another Rock Band/ Gui­tar Hero –ish game. Rock­smith is sup­posed to be more real­is­tic than the other gui­tar games out there as well as being able to teach you how to play real guitar.…we’ll see

Assas­sins Creed Rev­e­la­tions — Nov 2011 — First they showed a cin­e­matic trailer which was great then they gave us a look at game­play. The cut scenes looked nice but the graph­ics don’t look much dif­fer­ent then the last one. We did get a chance to see a smoke bomb in action with the com­bi­na­tion of eagle vision to take out three ene­mies. Then we saw Ezio run­ning through a crazy course of burning/ explod­ing ships in the har­bor. Looked pretty good.

I didn’t think Ubisoft had that strong of a lineup out­side of Assas­sins Creed and Ghost Recon, but we will just have to see how it pans out.

June 6, 2011

E3 2011 — EA’s Game Changers

EA just fin­ished their press event and heres what they showed us:

Mass Effect 3 — March 6, 2012 — The live demo showed some great graph­ics and really showed off a much larger scale for the action and fight­ing. It was also said that if you played the pre­vi­ous Mass Effect games that your deci­sions in them would all come together in this installment.

Need for Speed: The Run — This new NFS title will be a race across the USA. They have added the auto log fea­ture to this one and it will also fea­ture action out of the car as well. The live demo showed this fea­ture to be a sim­ple but­ton tim­ing excer­cise but it will be an inter­est­ing fea­ture. With stolen police cars, fight­ing, and heli­copter chases this NFS seems like it will up the action element.

Star Wars the Old Repub­lic — Giant dis­ap­point­ment. No release date and the trailer that was shown was the pre­vi­ous two trail­ers mixed together along with only a few new scenes. Like is said, disappointed.

SSX — Jan 2012 — SSX will have three modes: Race, Trick, and Sur­vive. You will be able to hit the slopes on any major moun­tain range in the world.

Fifa 12 — It will have bet­ter defense sys­tems, ball con­trol, and a new impact engine for tack­ling. Fifa will also get Foot­ball Club. It’s a social hub for stats, leader­boards, and chal­lenges at no extra cost.

Mad­den 12 — Aug 30 — As with every year, new AI, new col­li­sion sys­tem, and new player per­for­mance sys­tem. It’s Mad­den peo­ple. You play one, you’ve played them all.

Sims Social — Sims on Facebook.….yea.….

Reck­on­ing — 2012 — This is a 3^rd per­son fantasy/ action rpg style game. It has your typ­i­cal magic and regualr fight­ing sys­tem. Can’t say it really was any­thing great.

Over Strike — Set in the near future, Over Strike has you play as one of four mer­ce­nar­ies in a group with futur­is­tic style weapons and tech. If this turns out to be a four player Co-op, this could be a fun one.

Bat­tle­field 3 — Beta in Sept — Full game Oct 25 — BF showed off the new Frost­bite 2 engine with a few scenes which looked great. There was a mul­ti­player trailer but it was very quick and didn’t really show much. Like the Auto Log for Need for Speed, Bat­tle­field will intro­duce the Bat­tle Log which is their social hub for stats and leader­boards etc. They showed a live demo from the PC ver­sion which looked nice but it was all in a tank. Never showed any­thing on foot. It was an open field tank bat­tle that even­tu­ally turned into a small base assault with the tanks.

All in all EA showed some inter­est­ing things. More to come from E3!

June 3, 2011

Electronic Entertainment Expo!!!

The biggest gam­ing event of the year is just a few days away! All the big play­ers com­ing together to show us want we can expect to see in the com­ing year. Can’t go? Can’t watch it live? How will I get my E3 fix?? No wor­ries The Gamers Blog has you cov­ered. CABXYZ and yours tru­ely will be bring­ing you daily updates for ALL your E3 cov­er­age. We will have all the info hot off the press con­fer­ence floor as we get it. I will also be post­ing a spe­cial Gamer Rant : E3 edi­tion. Daily updates, spe­cial posts, and maybe if your good a few suprises, what else could you ask for? You say another give­away? Sure why not! Check us out dur­ing our E3 cov­er­age for details on another give­away. What are you hop­ing to see this year at E3? C’mon Star Wars Old Repub­lic! Fin­gers crossed.

May 31, 2011

Hands-on Preview: Dungeon Siege 3…..

I wasn’t always a fan of RPGs or ARPGs, but that has been chang­ing as of late. I have enjoyed Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance and its sequel, all of the Bethesda games (Elder Scrolls (start­ing with Mor­rowind), Fall­out 3), the Fable series if you want to call them RPGs of some sort, Torch­light (which I may start my sec­ond play through here shortly) and of course any­thing that comes from that great place in the sky called Bioware as of late (yes, I am still cur­rently enjoy­ing Dragon Age 2). Nor­mally my key gen­res of choice are action/adventure, rac­ing, FPS, and some sports titles here and there to round it my gam­ing port­fo­lio. As I grow older though, dun­geon crawl­ing, gath­er­ing large amounts of loot like swag at a con­ven­tion, and stat and skill track­ing are becom­ing more and more sat­is­fy­ing. I feel I am keener on these ele­ments because I feel like I am get­ting more out of my game and build­ing char­ac­ters instead of tak­ing on pre­de­ter­mined avatar. Enough about me already lets to the game.

Dun­geon Siege 3 marks the first DS game to be pub­lished by Squa­reEnix and to be devel­oped by Obsid­ian Enter­tain­ment. To get this out of the way because I heard quite a bit of groan­ing when I men­tioned Obsid­ian, always know for great ideas but failed exe­cu­tion and QA, this game is com­ing along quite well  and from the demo I played, fears can be put aside. Now, that is not to say that there are some gripes I had, but the demo of DS3 was less buggy than all of Fall­out: New Vegas (zing!). It’s your typ­i­cal hack and slash with loot and char­ac­ter build­ing abound, and enough lens flairs to make J.J. Abrams jeal­ous. The com­bat sys­tem is close in com­par­i­son with Dragon Age 2s sys­tem, (mind you I played this on the 360 early this morn­ing) A would be your typ­i­cal attack but­ton and X, Y, B would be your skills that you would acquire from lev­el­ing. The Left trig­ger blocks while acti­vat­ing a new tray of traits mapped to the three but­tons pre­vi­ously men­tioned; the left bumper switches between attack styles. I played as Lucas Mont­baron, one of only two char­ac­ters avail­able in the demo, which plays like a typ­i­cal war­rior class. Lucas has two load outs, one using a sword and shield, the other using a larger two handed weapon. While equip­ping each weapon type your pow­ers tray loads with cus­tom attacks and spells for each type. The right bumper is used as an action but­ton and to pick up loot and is by far the best idea to come from this game. Play­ing a lot of Bor­der­lands recently, I can’t stand hav­ing X pick things up, reload­ing, and open­ing crates at the same time, this small con­cept works won­ders in this game. While whal­ing away at an enemy just a tap of the bumper and just like that nab some loot while not doing some­thing stu­pid amongst a hec­tic bat­tle. The cam­era pans out and makes the game look rem­i­nis­cent of Baldur’s Gate or you can have it up close via Dragon Age. This obser­va­tion was tak­ing dur­ing my time with the game alone. I have yet to try the co-op and have no idea if the cam­era is sta­tic with more peo­ple to con­cen­trate on. The action is solid, there is lit­tle I have to gripe about in the com­bat depart­ment, my main gripes come from the menus; there are just TOO MANY DAMN MENUS! I know it is a RPG at heart but has stream­lin­ing menus ever hurt any­one? There is a main page, then a page for armor and weapons with around 8 to 10 tabs on that page, a page for upgrades and those have tabs on them as well. I know the game wants to be deep but make it acces­si­ble with­out a learn­ing curve for your menu sys­tem. The only other real gripe I have and this is just a per­sonal one, new armor you acquire does not change your appear­ance. I know this is stu­pid to com­plain about but damn it, if I pick up a dragon helm, I want it to look dif­fer­ent than the turkey I am wear­ing. All of the weapons have a dif­fer­ent aes­thetic approach to them but really? Is armor that hard to con­jure up?

I really like the game other than my few gripes I had, I am going to give it another shot later today and hope­fully can get some friends to join the loot hunt as well. I was look­ing for a good action RPG to play with some friends over the long sum­mer months and this may be the one I choose, Dag­gerdale was in the run­ning for this until I got my hands on that unpol­ished turd. Dun­geon Siege 3 releases for the Xbox 360, PlaySta­tion 3, and PC on June 21^st and the demo is out now on Xbox 360 and will be avail­able for the PS3 and PC come June 7^th.   

May 25, 2011

Gamer Chat? Nope, This is Gamer Rant!

Ok so Gamer Rant is going to be my lit­tle out­let to unleash the frus­tra­tion in the gam­ing world. This rant is about good ol’ Call of Duty. First things first. When I played Call of Duty 4: Mod­ern War­fare I was blown away. That game raised the bar and set a new stan­dard for first per­son shoot­ers and it was a fan­tas­tic game. There I said some­thing nice. We fast for­ward to now and we have Mod­ern War­fare 3 on the hori­zon. Here is the prob­lem, with the excep­tion of zom­bies (great idea) what exactly is new about the next Call of Duty titles? You get a new story right? Run through maps shoot­ing every­thing and blow stuff up. Mul­ti­player is dif­fer­ent? No…you pay for a glo­ri­fied map pack really. My point is since Call of Duty hit gold with the first Mod­ern War­fare, they haven’t shown us any­thing new or dif­fer­ent since. Yes zom­bies was a good thing, but now Black Ops gave us a shop­ping style lev­el­ing process. Ohh I get to buy things now. They gave us play­er­cards so kids can make a rough image of a penis next to their name. Ohh the cre­ativ­ity! Still not with me on this? Ok try some­thing for me. I am sure every­one has seen the newest MW3 trailer because it plays on TV every 10 mins. Step one: watch the trailer. Step two: take out any­thing that says 3. Step three: real­ize that trailer could be used for any other CoD game because its noth­ing new! “That wouldn’t work for World at War because it was set in WW2.” Abso­lut­ley correct.….I see my argu­ment has failed mis­er­ably. Now don’t get me wrong this is a prob­lem for all shoot­ers alike. I only use MW3 because its what they are try­ing to shove down our throats this time. I really hope with a new game will come some­thing more inter­est­ing than the usual dis­mal repeat of the pre­vi­ous year. I want to see what Bat­tle­field 3 is going to do. I as a gamer, just want some­thing new. I don’t want to pay $60 for a new video game case.

May 25, 2011

Portal 2 Review Part 1: Single Player

^MC Escher and Por­tal. Both hand-in-hand with mind-blowingness.

This game is so huge, I’m going to have to split the review into two arti­cles. Now, I know I’m quite late on the scene here, but this isn’t a review for peo­ple who wanted to know whether the game was buyable instantly. Rather, this is my opin­ion on the game as some­one who was hes­i­tant and forced to wait, and it goes out to oth­ers who were also hes­i­tant and/or forced to wait. So, here it goes.

Graph­ics: Shame on you for even inquir­ing about this. Graph­ics, in my opin­ion, really bear no per­ti­nence to game qual­ity. How­ever, I must say that Por­tal 2 is beau­ti­ful. The atmos­phere of the story in every area is per­fectly matched by the col­ors and tex­tures of your sur­round­ings. Even on low res­o­lu­tions and graphic set­tings, the game is still pretty. When cranked up, it’s amazing.

^It looks nice even in places that are sup­posed to be ugly.

Sound: The voice act­ing in this game is also superb. Ellen McLain returns as GLaDOS, and two new fre­quent voices (I won’t spoil it for those of you who are sav­ing the plot­line) by Stephen Mer­chant and J.K. Sim­mons also per­fectly fit their roles. The ambi­ent music and sounds work together to cre­ate an amaz­ing atmos­phere. If you’re still not sold, how about the fact that Jonathan Coul­ton (my absolute favorite white boy musi­cian) returns for the final song?

^This lady is GLaDOS. And the tur­rets. And the announcer in TF2. And the Com­bine Over­watch Announcer in the Half Life 2 games. And she sings opera.

Game­play: Por­tal 2 is the per­fect sequel to Por­tal. All the physics-bending you love is still there, along with all sorts of new mod­i­fiers, includ­ing three dif­fer­ent col­ored gels that mod­ify any ground or walls they touch, cubes that redi­rect lasers, and many more fun new toys. The game starts off fairly easy, but the head-scratchers come quickly. By Chap­ter 6, you feel like a genius every time you solve a sin­gle cham­ber. It’s smooth and doesn’t really lag, and any sort of dam­age you take is bal­anced enough. If you’re unfa­mil­iar with Por­tal, close this win­dow right now, open up Steam (down­load Steam and set up an account if you haven’t already done so), and pur­chase Por­tal. Por­tal is beyond worth the money, runs on most com­put­ers, and you can fin­ish it in about four hours. I’ll wait.

—-

Wel­come back. I’ll let you wait another four hours to de-blow your mind.

—

Yeah. Now, Por­tal 2 is just like that. Only BETTER.

The Story: Holy. Balls. This is the best story I’ve got­ten out of any game in over a year. I’m not going to spoil any of it for you, so just trust me on this. You will not be dis­ap­pointed with Por­tal 2’s sin­gle player story. It’s truly amaz­ing. The whole sin­gle player story is just per­fect. I have not a sin­gle com­plaint. It’s per­fect. The humor is there, and it’s darker and fun­nier than before. Creepy semi-hidden areas? Check. Other ran­dom creepi­ness that really adds to the whole game? Check. It’s just unex­plain­able. Play it.

^Cake. Descrip­tion. Recipe.

Now, so far, I’ve done noth­ing but praise Por­tal 2. The whole game itself is per­fect. The only prob­lem I have with it is the price tag. I haven’t fin­ished the Co-op mode yet (expect a review by next Tues­day), but the game is still too short to deserve the full $60 price tag. I’d draw the line at about $40. Even­tu­ally, there will be a sale, and you’ll be able to get Por­tal 2 for a more appro­pri­ate price. I’d advise wait­ing until then, unless you’re deathly afraid of spoil­ing the plot­line. In that case, go ahead and buy it. Play it through a cou­ple times; there are quite a few inter­est­ing quirks you might not notice on your first runthrough.

Over­priced­ness aside, this game is amaz­ing. Were I using a numer­i­cal scale, I’d give it a 42/42. Why 42? Because, it’s the answer to life, the uni­verse, and everything.

May 24, 2011

The Witcher 2: The Review

Back in Octo­ber 2007 rel­a­tively unknown devel­oper, CD Pro­jekt with Atari released The Witcher.   The orig­i­nal pro­vided one of the most authen­tic, orig­i­nal and cap­ti­vat­ing RPG expe­ri­ences ever to land on the PC or any plat­form for that mat­ter.  The game was not with­out its prob­lems how­ever as it con­tained many graph­i­cal glitches, extremely long load­ing times between sequences and a cen­sored ver­sion released in North Amer­ica.  The com­pany responded to these issues by not only releas­ing an updated ver­sion of the game but adding in new quests, graph­i­cal enhance­ments and reduced load­ing times but pro­vid­ing it free to cus­tomers who had already pur­chased the game.  In fact CD Pro­jekt spent over 1 mil­lion dol­lars resolv­ing the issues its cus­tomers pre­sented to them.   Ever since The Witcher was released fans have been anx­iously await­ing a con­tin­u­a­tion of the epic story which was The Witcher. 

The wait is finally over and The Witcher 2 has arrived and the ques­tion on every­ones mind is “is it worth the wait”.  The answer to that is most def­i­nitely yes.  The Witcher 2 picks up imme­di­ately where the first left off and we take up our role as Ger­alt of Rivia as he trav­els the lands attempt­ing to clear his name after he is wrongly accused for the assas­si­na­tion of King Foltest. 

Before we begin let’s get the bad, and yes there is some, out of the way.  The biggest issue this game suf­fers from is the abil­ity to break quests.   You can do things in such a way that you will actu­ally break key part of the quest to where you will have to reload the game and start over.  Remem­ber the gamers mon­tra “save often and love it”.  This can be incred­i­bly aggra­vat­ing when you have spent 45 min­utes doing things around the world only to find out that you have to repeat them.  I actu­ally found myself hav­ing to do this.   The dif­fi­culty in the game seems to be… off.  Even on nor­mal I found myself get­ting trashed early on in the game to the point where I had to switch the dif­fi­culty to easy just to pass a cer­tain stage.  We also have the prob­lem that ATI/AMD own­ers have run into where there are numer­ous graph­ics prob­lems abound.  Most of these issues, assum­ing the com­pany fol­lows its trend, should be fixed shortly in an upcom­ing patch this week. 

Sorry Cry­sis 2, step aside, you are not the graph­ics king on the PC.  With the pos­si­ble excep­tion of Metro 2033, The Witcher 2 is prob­a­bly the best look­ing game on the PC or any other plat­form for that mat­ter.  Some of the long dis­tance visu­als you encounter dur­ing your trav­els will leave you breath­less.  The sun fil­ter­ing through the for­est tree tops will make you stop and admire the visu­als.  The burn­ing fires you will see while you move through the game looks freak­ishly like the real thing.  The Witcher 2 steps up the graph­ics across the board.  PC enthu­si­asts will be in for a treat as The Witcher 2 offers a wide range of graph­i­cal set­tings that you can tweak and set to your heart’s content. 

The story as with the orig­i­nal is top notch and the deci­sions you make are just as impor­tant as they were in the first game if not more so.  The story is so cap­ti­vat­ing that you will find that you have been play­ing for 5 hours and not even real­ize it.  The game has mul­ti­ple begin­nings, ways to progress and over 16 dif­fer­ent end­ings depend­ing on how you play the game.  The Witcher 2 does not have good or bad choices like your stan­dard RPG and it can make some of the deci­sions that you make incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult and in some cases you may regret them *remem­ber the gamers mon­tra*.  The deci­sions you make not only affect the imme­di­ate sit­u­a­tion but changes the way the entire game plays out.  RPG fans will not be dis­ap­pointed with this. 

You are able to import your pre­vi­ous save game, how­ever if you are like me you prob­a­bly don’t have it any­more since you’ve prob­a­bly upgraded or changed com­put­ers since them. 

The biggest stand­out in this game for me was the voice act­ing.  It’s top notch all the way through the game.  From the passer by com­ments you hear while walk­ing down the street to the scream on the bat­tle­field the voice act­ing is superb and that com­bined with the supe­rior graph­ics and top notch story The Witcher 2 offers a really cap­ti­vat­ing and immer­sive world for you to get lost in and trust me you will get lost in it. 

The Witcher 2 improves upon every­thing that made The Witcher 2 and in my opin­ion is a bet­ter game than the orig­i­nal in many ways.  Any­one who is on the edge about buy­ing The Witcher or The Witcher 2 I would urge you to do your­self a favor and pick them both up as you will not be dis­ap­pointed.  The Witcher 2 is a fan­tas­tic game that should not be missed and it is one of the best games on the PC plat­form.  I should also note that this is a PC exclu­sive release and that is rare these days.  If you are look­ing for an excuse to build a new com­puter then The Witcher 2 is that excuse.  So tell your girl­friend good­bye, drop out of your classes and say good­bye to your social life as The Witcher 2 whisks you away to another world.

I should note that this is NOT a kid friendly game.  If you are a par­ent and con­sid­er­ing to get this for your child I would urge you to not  as this game is bru­tal and vio­lent and has sev­eral sex­u­ally explicit scenes through­out the game. 

May 19, 2011

Dont miss out on your chance to save the galaxy with your FREE STEAM COPY OF MASS EFFECT.

Do you feel down about the state of the galaxy? Do you wish you had the com­mand­ing author­ity of a super badass bent on erad­i­cat­ing evil while at the same time being dash­ingly awe­some or ter­ri­fy­ingly douchy? Well wish no more!!! Now is your chance to win a FREE steam copy of MASS EFFECT. Its your turn to travel the galaxy kickin in doors and nut sacks, sav­ing the day and get­ting the freak­ishly hot alien chick.

Ill keep it sim­ple. All you have to do is share your thoughts with TGB. You MUST post 1 com­ment under this arti­cle and then post 5 com­ments under any arti­cle (all 5 com­ments do not have to be under the same arti­cle) and let us know whats on your mind. Post­ing 1 com­ment here and then 5 com­ments any­where else will enter you into this con­test, and you must be a reg­is­tered user to par­tic­i­pate. The pro­mo­tion will run for a week and end next Thurs­day 5/26/2011 at 12pm (noon). TGB staff are not eli­gi­ble for the promotion.

This is a Steam game and will require steam to down­load and play, if you dont have steam heres a link to get it, http://store.steampowered.com/about/, its free and quick and easy to set up. Who­ever wins the game will either have to add me as a friend in steam or give me their email address so that I can deliver the game to you. If there are any ques­tions feel free to post them here or con­tact me at pimpmasterf@thegamersblog.com.

Sys­tem Requirements:

Sup­ported OS: Microsoft Win­dows® XP with SP2 or Win­dows Vista*
Proces­sor: Intel P4 2.4 Ghz or faster / AMD 2.0 Ghz
Mem­ory: 1.0 GB RAM or more (2.0 GB for Vista)
Graph­ics: DirectX 9.0c com­pat­i­ble, ATI X1300 XT or greater (ATI X1300, X1300 Pro, X1600 Pro, Radeon 2600 HD, and HD 2400 are below min­i­mum sys­tem require­ments); NVidia GeForce 6800 or greater (7300, 7600 GS, 8500 are below min­i­mum sys­tem require­ments)
Hard Drive: 12.0 GB or more free hard drive space
Sound: DirectX 9.0c com­pat­i­ble
DirectX®: 9.0c

* WINDOWS VISTA OR WINDOWS 7 USERS: Launch­ing “Mass Effect” from Steam requires the set­ting “Run as Admin­is­tra­tor”. If the User Account Con­trol fea­ture of Win­dows Vista is enabled, launch­ing “Mass Effect” from Steam will result in fail­ure. For users with User Account Con­trol enabled, launch Steam using the “Run as Admin­is­tra­tor” option or launch from the win­dows shortcut.

May 16, 2011

The Witcher Comes: Final Countdown

I don’t very often do pre­views because, well, every­one else on the planet and their mother does them but on this occa­sion I am going to make an excep­tion for a game that blew my mind the first time I played it.  That game is The Witcher 2 and we are approach­ing the 12 hour count­down before it is avail­able on steam to down­load.  You can bet your hard earned money that I will be down­load­ing this the minute it is released so I can play it when I get home from work.

The Witcher is one of the last few PC exclu­sives if not the last so it will be inter­est­ing to see how the game sells com­pared to it’s con­sole brethren.  This is also an RPG and not a quick pick me up FPS that every­one is used to.  The pre­vi­ous install­ment sold over 1 mil­lion copies which is good by any stan­dards.  The biggest thing this game has going for it now is it’s name.  The orig­i­nal witcher showed up on the mar­ket rather unan­nounced or at least it did for me.  Very few peo­ple had heard of or knew what it was or what it was about. 

For those of you who don’t know what “The Witcher” is about or what the fuss is, here is a gen­eral syn­op­sis.  The Witcher is based off pol­ish mythol­ogy which makes it incred­i­bly orig­i­nal and refresh­ing com­pared to other sim­i­lar titles that usu­ally just rehash the tried and true For­got­ten Realms sto­ry­lines.  While those aren’t bad, it is nice to get a new take on the Medieval/Fantasy world from a dif­fer­ent pespec­tive.  The Witcher fol­lows Ger­alt, a mon­ster slayer, a genet­i­cally mod­i­fied human who tends to get mixed up with the prob­lems of the day and all the while attempt­ing to remain neutral. 

If you have not played the orig­i­nal I sug­gest you pick it up on steam for $19.99.  The game ranks in at about 40 hours depend­ing on how you play through it and you could prob­a­bly put in another 40 if you decided to play the game through numer­ous sto­ry­lines that can be unlocked depend­ing on how you play.  To not play The Witcher, espe­cially if your are a fan of the RPG genre, would be doing your­self a great injus­tice.   Those of you who have already played The Witcher and are eagarly await­ing the sec­ond install­ment here is a col­lec­tion of images and videos to get your pumped for the release.