Posts by Thrik

  • Help! Need new GPU (and maybe PSU?)

    I got an ATI 4870 1GB for about £140 a few weeks ago, and it kicks the shit out of my previous 8800 GTX (which is still used in my desktop PC upstairs — this is in a gaming HTPC). Even Crysis runs pretty smoothly (I'd estimate about 30 FPS) on 1080p with every setting on 'High' and 4x anti-aliasing.

    While ATI have had their issues, their newest cards (the only one in this range better than the 4870 is the 4890 I believe) deliver excellent performance for the money. And more critically for me, they use less power and are smaller/quieter than their NVIDIA counterparts.

    If you're looking for all-out power and you're not too bothered about price, power consumption, volume, and size... go for NVIDIA. But if you're trying to squeeze the most out of a budget, ATI seems to be the best choice right now. As usual it's all about what happens to deliver the best value at a given moment.

    With regards to ATI cards being rubbish, I think nowadays there's no real distinction between them and NVIDIA. The image quality is perceptibly identical, and the drivers are no more or less easy to use for either. As someone with experience using recent high-end cards from both I think I'm in a good position to say this.

  • E3 2009

    You guys didn't like the latest series of 24? I thought it was pretty much one of the finest yet, alongside the first nuclear series and the nerve gas series. I found it a massive breath of fresh air that they did away with the same old predictable conventions such as CTU, Los Angeles, the 25th amendment, etc.

  • Toy Story 3 Teaser and now Trailer!

    Yay. I wonder if Pixar will ever do a sequel for another of their films, rather than going crazy with just the one.

    I finally got around to watching Wall-E this week. Holy shit that is an amazing film, with a surprisingly thought-provoking story for a Pixar film. Really amazing how much life they breathed into the robots, especially the main characters who had no mouths and said like two words.

  • Heavy Rain

    If this were to be like the ultimate QTE-type game then I think I could actually enjoy it, where you can choose to handle each situation in totally different ways and genuinely change the outcome. For example, I'd be quite impressed if during that encounter with the beastly black guy you could just crack some jokes to end the problem in a friendly way, and he becomes an ally or something in the story. You know, truly script-changing stuff.

    Sadly I suspect that despite their promises of dozens and dozens of scenes, no game over screens, a flexible story, etc, it'll actually end up more like Fahrenheit where it's basically a series of long cutscenes and you pretty much just keep the cutscene going by hitting the right buttons.

    I guess when you really think about it, what they're doing here isn't that different to old-school adventure games. In classics like Monkey Island and Grim Fandango you pretty much just carried out a series of pre-defined actions in exactly the way the developer intended, but were given some choice over which dialogue to use, when to do certain things, etc. And when some serious storytelling was needed, you watched a completely non-interactive cutscene.

    It was more the story, atmosphere, and characterisation that made those games so great, and that kind of distracted you from the fact you had pretty much no say in how to play the game. If Heavy Rain can nail the same things I think it could be very entertaining — or it could be like Fahrenheit and go completely off the deep end story-wise.

  • TF2 Sniper Update

    Do such competitions require that you have all the unlocks, then? Because they're a large part of the appeal, and apparently soon there'll be new ways to not only earn them, but also lose them again. You can test the foundation of this if you hit that nice 'Delete' button in your load-out screen.

    I'm sure TF2 clan play can be done, but it definitely seems like more hassle than its worth to me considering the multitude of rules you must enforce to keep what is an extremely random/flexible game in check. But then my clanning days are well behind me.

  • TF2 Sniper Update

    I assume Dux means for competitive clan play.

    I can kind of see how TF2 could be a bit tricky for that kind of thing, considering all the random variables and the fact that some people can use weapons completely inaccessible by others — and eventually the special hats each class can have will mix that up even more.

    I'm of the firm belief that TF2 is first and foremost a game designed to be fun when played casually. It can be incredibly rewarding when played this way, especially if you get some good team players on your side. However I think all the stuff that makes it so fun for casual play is precisely what messes it up for competitive play.

    I wouldn't want TF2 any other way, though. I am officially the best casual TF2 player in the universe.

  • What have you purchased recently?

    Well it's not too late to swap it, but it is worth noting that it's a microATX motherboard I need and a budget of ~£80. I'll have a look at what MSI do in this criteria (unless you know off hand), but from what I've heard after asking around Gigabyte's microATX motherboards are pretty well received.

  • What have you purchased recently?

    My 360 and PS3 were looking a bit lonely next to the TV downstairs, so I've decided to fix that by building a gaming HTPC. TF2 looks so amazing on the big VIERA.

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