Technology Lesson

Review:
Even games with the best of intentions come and go, if they fall short in a couple key areas, to be eventually shuffled off to the graveyard of industry footnotes. A new graphical innovation here, a good sense of humor there, but something just doesnt gel. With Far Cry, however, you can see so many places where things could have gone wrong, but didnt. The AI could easily have been blindly aggressive or stone deaf. The load times could have been constant and distracting. In almost all major areas, Far Cry manages to walk the tightrope of game design over a chasm of Things Gone Wrong. Ive always wondered why no one apparently tried to license the AI of the Marines in Half-Life, because after that, I was always a little bit disappointed with the FPSs that came after. And finally someone has answered the call and the creatures here are actually smart.

Its not all wine and roses, though. Its important to keep in mind that this game is meant to push your rig to its limit. My home system is a 2.4GHz P4 with 512MB of RAM and a 9700 Pro, and while this has been more than enough for 99% of the games Ive played on, with all the details cranked up, its not the case here. I need the full power of the Alienware rig at work, a 3.0GHz P4 with a gigabyte of RAM and a 9800 Pro. The deciding factor seems to be the extra RAM and CPU horsepower, as I can run everything on Very High on this machine, but the home rig has to do Medium and High on most options. However, the many graphical options provide plenty of flexibility. You cant ratchet down view distance, but you can tone down things like dynamic lighting, water effects, and shadows. The game will only load once for each of the enormous areas, and it takes about a minute, but reloading from a save game after dying only takes a few seconds. The system with a gigabyte of RAM did both operations noticeably quicker.


With that said, Far Cry can be an incredibly beautiful game. From the 1-kilometer view distance, to the almost-overflowing foliage, lighting and more, this game is a bullet point list of things youd want a game to be able to do. Im very pleased to say, though, that its more than just a glorified tech demo. It creates a continuous strategic and tactical challenge while wowing my eyeballs with next-generation bells and whistles. There is some clipping--it seems to be unavoidable in a 3D engine--and textures at a distance scale down noticeably even with everything maxed out. Also, youll sometimes see long-range targets fade in as you get close to them. Lastly, lowering some of the graphical settings for the environment can produce foliage popping, where a bush will start out as a flat, basic texture, then sort of spring into a full-fledged, high-detail image as you get close to it. However, the smallest (and most numerous) foliage objects would fade into view as you may have seen in PlanetSide, which is much more transparent for the player. Read more

System requirements:
MINIMUM PC REQUIREMENTS
Windows 98SE/2000/XP
MINIMUM
Pentium III or AMD Athlon 1GHz Processor
256MB RAM
64MB DirectX compatible Video Card
DirectX compatible Sound Card
4X CD-ROM Drive
4GB Hard Disk Space
DirectX 9.0b
RECOMMENDED
Pentium 4 2GHz or AMD Athlon XP 2000+ Processor
512MB RAM
128MB GeForce 4 or ATI Radeon 9500 Class Video Card
Sound Blaster Audigy Series Sound Card
DirectX 9.0b
8X DVD or 32X CD-ROM Drive
4GB Hard Disk Space
MULTIPLAYER SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

Broadband with 64Kbps Upstream

Screen Shots: Click on the image to view large screen

Review:
Gas Guzzlers Extreme, for no sensible reason, reminds me of a racing game I thoroughly enjoyed and yet have never heard a single other human mention: Beetle Crazy Cup. It came out in 2000, from Infrogrames as was, by the entirely unknown Xpiral. It was a VW-licensed game that I gave it 85% in PC Gamer back then, and I don’t think a single person bought it. I bring this up, because I’m struggling to find too many interesting things to say about Gas Guzzlers Extreme.


That’s not to say it’s a disaster. It’s incredibly clumsy, but the issue here is that it’s just a touch bland. It’s, well, a driving game with shooting in it. It’s Mario Kart with proper cars, and utterly without the intuitive delivery. Have I enjoyed my brief go? A bit. I haven’t hated it. I’ve driven around a few tracks, done well, done badly, shot at other cars and been shot at. And, it all feels awfully familiar.


There’s a definite desire to go big, but unfortunately little actual delivery. So while it seems to think it’s delivering big explosions and violence, it’s all rather tempered and ordinary, the real pleasure of an anarchic driving game buried in a confusion of obscurity. Everything is just so incredibly vague, from whether you’ve clipped a floating bonus item to pick it up to what bonus you currently have to whether you’ve deployed it. The Arcade mode offers generous cornering and liberal use of handbrakes, and that’s my sort of racing, but all the other cars seem to be having a lot more fun than me. I can see the mines they’ve dropped – I’ve no idea if I’ve ever dropped mine.

There’s a garage, cars to be bought and augmented with won money, exactly as you’d expect. You begin with a Reliant Robin, then move onto a Beetle – you get the idea there. But you can attach weapons, boost engines, etc, and then take part in the heavily rubber-banded racing that’s a mad cluster of short-cuts and frustration as other drivers crash into you. That’s an issue solved by jumping online, of course, where such actions feel far more fair when done at you by another human. Although that’s a bit tricky here – at the time of writing there were a total of seven people playing, and the game wouldn’t let me join the one populated race. Which is actually a shame, as the deathmatch mode against the AI is quite fun. It has potential online.

However, I really wasn’t too impressed with a new game in late 2013 turning Win 7 down to Basic mode, nor refusing to launch until I’d set my desktop resolution to 1024×768.
But what has this to do with Beetle Crazy Cup, you ask. Good point. Read more

System Requirements:
Processor Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.00GHz
Video card GeForce 8800 Ultra / Radeon HD 4850
RAM         2 GB
DirectX     9.0c
OS            Windows XP
Free space 12 GB

Screen Shots: Click on the image to view large screen

Info:
While Red Storm Entertainments Rainbow Six series often gets all the credit for establishing the tactical shooter genre, games like NovaLogics long-running Delta Force series deserve some credit too. With a focus on real-world weaponry, long-range sniping, and quick kills, the early Delta Force games helped create a new level of realism in shooters. Nevertheless, the Delta Force series has since been left limping along the gaming wayside, surpassed by superior tactical shooters like SWAT 3, Operation Flashpoint, and Ghost Recon. NovaLogics latest release, Delta Force: Task Force Dagger, simply cant compare with these games and marks a real step backward for the Delta Force series.

It may sound like doublespeak, but NovaLogic is billing Task Force Dagger as a "stand-alone mission pack" for 2000s once-decent but now-dated Delta Force: Land Warrior. This seeming contradiction means youll get the same fundamental game engine featured in Land Warrior, but with 25 new missions and a bunch of new weapons. Unfortunately, none of them are particularly entertaining.

In Task Force Dagger, you head to Afghanistan to fight in missions inspired by Operation Enduring Freedom--which may suggest to some that NovaLogic is simply trying to profit from tragic real-world events. NovaLogic touts the game as a tribute to the heroes of the conflict, but Task Force Dagger simply treats the subject matter with cold, boring sterility. As far as story and setting go, its one of the most uninvolving tactical shooters in a long time.

In Task Force Dagger, youll head to places like Kandahar, where youll destroy SAM sites. In Mazar-e Sharif, youll try to capture an enemy commander. In Bagh-e Daud, youll try to rescue a journalist. Despite this seeming variety, many missions play the same: Approach a compound, snipe a bunch of guys who are just standing around, move in, blast a few remaining guys who are just standing around, and grab some documents or blow something up. The fact that you do most of these things without any AI companions is both dull and unrealistic. As for multiplayer, its decent enough for a short spell but ultimately just the same sort of thing youve played many times before: capture the flag, king of the hill, deathmatch, and the like.

Delta Force: Land Warrior is probably most remembered for its atrocious enemy AI. The utter ineptitude of your opponents often made the game feel more like a glorified shooting gallery than a true tactical shooter. Task Force Dagger offers little, if any, improvement to the AI. If the enemy beats you, its only because they grossly outnumber you. Theyre brainless pushovers who yell out for no reason, only drawing attention to themselves, or who stand motionless when you shoot one of their buddies in the same room.

Youll get to "fight" these enemies as one of 10 different Special Forces groups, like the US Green Berets or the British SAS. Each force has special abilities, like enhanced swimming (not exactly in demand in the mountains of Afghanistan) or the ability to withstand more damage (apparently Marines have thicker skin). Each group also has its preferred weapons, though how exactly these preferences affect gameplay is never made clear, since its easy enough to hit targets with any weapon. Read more

System requirements: MINIMUM
Pentium II 400MHz Processor
200MB Hard Disk Space
64MB RAM
4X CD-ROM Drive
Windows compatible Sound Card
Direct3D Accelerated Video Card
Mouse
DirectX 7.0
Full Duplex Sound Card for Transmitting Voice-Over-Net
RECOMMENDED
128MB RAM
Voice-Over-Net

NovaWorld Service (multiplayer)

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