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Splinter Cell: Conviction Delayed

It’s one of those good news, bad news kind of things. The good news is Splinter Cell: Conviction has been delayed yet again. The bad news is that it doesn’t seem that the title suggested by most, well, me to replace Conviction has been taken up by Ubi yet. So much for Splinter Cell: Hobo Edition. (A reference to the way Sam Fisher looks in the game trailer)

In all seriousness though. Considering the lack of press information on the new Splinter Cell game it may be for the best that the title has been delayed with a TBA release date. This is because if the game was any way near alpha we would get some new video after the trailer several months back. If its not near that by now there wouldn’t be any time for QA testing before its up to now release date.

It would be interesting to hear some opinions on if you will be at all interested in the game once it comes out and indeed the Splinter Cell franchise as a whole.

Crysis Hotfix

For those of you who have been having graphical problems with Crysis on ATI graphics cards there is now a possible solution. ATI have released a hotfix to sort out your problems before the next display driver version comes out. You can find it at ATI’s website.

Crysis patch in two weeks, Performance to be improved (Yes!)

[Update] – Crytek has updated the status of their latest patch.

inCrysis, a Crysis fansite recently hosted an IRC interview with Cevat Yerli, CEO of Crytek and Roy Taylor, Vice President of Content Relations at NVIDIA. They’ve posted the transcript of the event at their site, which can be found here. While most of the stuff is technobabble, I did extract the following information from it:

Crytek is currently collecting feedback information and will have a patch ready in 7-14 standard, human days.
They are seeing improved performance with every driver and patch update, which is good thing. This also means that performance will be increased in upcoming patches and driver updates.

Some other things worth pointing out:

Crysis is designed as part of a trilogy, so the abrupt ending of the singleplayer was very deliberate. That’s right – why make a spectacular story for one game when you can stretch it to fit three and make more money at the same time?
Cevat says that if you want to get into the gaming industry, start making maps and mods and things. You’ll be noticed if you try hard enough. No guarantees here.
Roy’s response to whether GPUs should handle advanced physics:
- Generally we believe that the GPU can stand by itself as a powerful processor more than capable of accelerating advanced physics for today’s and future games. The GPU lends itself well to scalable, violent or destructible physics. What we need is an industry standard API that developers and the community can get behind, that isn’t proprietary. Ideally the developer can then select the GPU or other processor as they see fit. We dont have one today, and this is something we are looking into.Specifically with regard to CryEngine 2 we are in discussions with the team about this but can’t add more right now.
You should use NVIDIA for playing Crysis.

Thanks, Crownest!

Check out the StuffWeLike.com review of Crysis.

Stagecoach Island = WTF

There’s no other way to describe a game created by a bank other than WTF?! Honestly, I don’t have anything to say on this subject. If you want advertising by a bank in your game go enjoy Stagecoach Island, a realistic MMO game where you play a character as if you’re living in the real world.

Yes you don’t live and enjoy the real world so go create another life in Stagecoach Island – unless you have already created a new life in Second Life. If that’s the case create a third life in Stagecoach Island – unless you have already created a new life in Naughty America: The Game. If that’s the case, StuffWeLike.com does not want you to visit this website again.

Stagecoach Island

WTF??????????

360 Family Timer and Downloadable Games

This December, Microsoft is set to release a new update for the Xbox 360 over Xbox Live.

One of the things included in this update will be a timer for the Xbox. With this timer, the person in charge of the Xbox will be able to set a certain number of hours that the Xbox can be used on a daily or weekly basis. Personally, I think this is a great idea as we may have finally found a way to limit all of those bad-mouthed kids that find their way on to Xbox Live while I’m playing Halo 3. Also, I may end up with some better grades.

Additionally, Xbox 360 owners will be able to fully download original Xbox games over Live in a similar fashion to the Virtual Console on both the Wii and the Playstation 3 for $15 each. Hopefully with this, they will release some of the previously Japanese-only games as they are doing with some of the other consoles. Some of the first games that will be available are Halo, Fable, Crimson Skies, and Burnout 3.

Crysis – Review

Click to see our Crysis DVD

If you haven’t heard of it from all the hype from the last few months, Crysis is a first person shooter published by EA. In Crysis you play a solider in a futuristic (Nano) suit who is sent to a remote island on a mission to find more than he expected.

The storyline in Crysis for the most part cannot be said as it would ruin the game, but it does go into a lot of detail and fleshes out the events surrounding you. Crysis is easy to control in terms of gameplay controls with the mouse and keyboard presenting no issues. For those of you who have seen all of the trailers over the months and played the demo you will find the game is exactly as advertised; a large number of gameplay areas all vast in size and varied in type. While FPS games do well just for being an FPS the biggest draw is the idea of replaying the game using the various different possible ways that the levels can be completed such as doing it once while invisible without killing then going through just like Van-Damme would punching everyone and then finally like Sly would with full-on guns in the jungle just like in Rambo.

While people might have been reporting issues with graphics settings in the demo versions, the full game is extremely easy to use and can scale to any system to give a perfect frame rate. No matter your system’s capabilities, one option that is a must in the graphics settings is Physics quality. The higher quality physics settings control effects such as buildings being able to come crashing down. Lets be fair that’s half of the appeal for the game so having it on high is a must!

There are some issues though that are hard to ignore. After spending up to the last 6 months hearing nothing about how much we are going to love this game, getting a single player campaign that only takes 10 hours to complete on a PC only title is a pretty disappointing. You end up wishing for the game to have been longer since you have been hearing about it for so long, it’s kind of anticlimactic. Some enemies get stuck in walls if you shoot them in close proximity to them which is a serious game play issue. There is also an escort mission, which is rather dull.

With a solid multilayer map set and an ending that leaves it open to a sequel, we can only hope that Crysis 2 fixes the issues with this game. While Crysis is fantastic to play, the excitement of blowing trees drys up pretty quickly and it only actually effects enemy characters directly in the rarest of cases.

Crysis also features a level editor called The Sandbox2. It doesn’t add that much value to the game as it’s way too technical for a novice to use. The program is hidden away in a directory on the install CD with only a single acknowledgment in the readme file and no directions on how to find it on the CD’s autorun let alone use it. The editor also isn’t mentioned at all in the instruction manual in the box.

Verdict: +

Ted Stokes

Proof of full version review before retail release.

We have had some comments on digg that some users doubt that this is a review of the full version. As is usual it is a review of a press unit and above are screenshots taken by myself to prove it is from the full version using the popular fraps screenshot program. Since promo shots are a single one or two from a level it was decided to give a number of non-action shots as to try and not ruin the game or at least the level. At the top of the review are the new exclusive screenshots. Look for the Stuffwelike name on the save screen in screenshot 3.

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