<-125x125 Button - right->Perseus Mandate is the second Retail Expansion version of the original F.E.A.R. game. From the start, I noticed some improvements which later on gave me an overall quite good gaming experience. This time, another F.E.A.R. team has to deal with more of the spawned evil spirits of Alma and Paxton Fettel’s “cloned” Replica soldiers.
Gameplay Demo

PC requirements-wise, you would need Windows XP or Vista, Pentium 4 1.7 GHz or equivalent (minimum) or better (including the new dual core CPUs), 512 MB RAM (at least, but the more, the better), 8 GB hard disk space, DirectX 9.0-compliant sound card, a video card from the GeForce 6xxx series or Ati 1xxx, DirectX 9.0c April edition (or the DX 10 from Vista). Ati users with video-cards from the latest generations (2900 or 3800) should install the Ageia Drivers – as some new games require this in order to load properly – and as a consequence some visual effects like explosions will become more detailed (even if some games don’t require these special drivers to run properly). I was able to get an average of 100 frames per second, at max graphics settings with my Andromeda-XE computer system.

The Perseus Mandate game story begins in the middle of the events of the original F.E.A.R. game, when ATC kills Aldus Bishop and starts the battle against F.E.A.R. and Delta Force. Commander Betters drops from the sky a second F.E.A.R. team into the ATC's secondary facility to investigate the company and any of the illegal activities. The F.E.A.R. team members are Captain David Raynes, Lt. Steve Chen, and the unnamed F.E.A.R. Sergeant (that’s you, the player character). After “bulleting” through Replica soldiers and ATC security forces, the second F.E.A.R. team discovers that a third faction has already infiltrated the ATC facility and killed everyone inside. These highly-trained mercenaries are known as "Nightcrawlers", who are equipped with advanced weapons, and there are several elite super-soldiers who possess the same slow motion ability like the first F.E.A.R. Pointman.

The Sergeant soon finds out that Nightcrawlers work for the mystery Senator, and are searching for "the Source", the genetic sample from which the Replica soldiers were (re)created (later to be discovered as a sample of Paxton Fettel's DNA). The F.E.A.R. team discovers that there were 3 major facilities involved in the Project Perseus (an active bio-research facility where Fettel's DNA has been stored, an “abandoned” hidden cloning facility where the Replica soldiers were actually artificially created), and the Origin facility where Alma had been imprisoned. The F.E.A.R. and Delta Force launch an assault at the archival facility, spending bullets on the Replica, ATC, and Nightcrawler soldiers. Still, the Nightcrawlers manage to obtain and escape with a sample of Fettel's DNA, while the F.E.A.R. team almost manages to capture Gavin Morrison (the Senator's main agent) but are interrupted by an explosion (at the Origin facility) that renders the entire city into chaos.

The Sergeant and Lt. Chen soon discover that the explosion of the Origin facility has unleashed a wave of deadly paranormal activity. Chen manages to strike an attack by the creatures that killed Doug Holliday, but is trashed and broken by a new type of Alma apparition that comes out of the floor. The Sergeant continues through the subway system in pursuit of the Nightcrawlers and this is one of the levels where the player needs must use a “never-ending ammo firing weapon”, like a huge machine gun, in order to shoot the many “ghostly-enemies”. The Sergeant reaches the surface and reestablishes contact with Captain Raynes. The new orders are to head towards the ATC Cloning Facility, where the Nightcrawlers seem to be gathering. Fettel appears to be resurrected and obviously starts playing his old tricks by summoning Replica soldiers in order to hinder the efforts of the other factions.

The Sergeant finds Gavin Morrison, who got captured by the Nightcrawlers. Morrison reports that the Nightcrawlers are attempting to acquire a sample of Alma's DNA, and that they must be stopped. Morrison guides the Sergeant for a while but is killed when Alma drops a fully armored car on him. Yes, I know what you’ll say – too much blood on this game already – and the reply goes – it explains the "M" rating of the game, and second, that’s one of the big points of this game. The Sergeant gets to the Cloning Facility, where he is greeted by the ghost of Paxton Fettel (doesn’t this guy ever get tired of the same old tricks?), who tells Sergeant a few confusing lines (apparently these lines also indicate some background and highly contextual information on the origin of the dark project which was cancelled due to unforeseen consequences), as well as sending in Replica soldiers to kill him. The Sergeant “bullets out” his way through Fettel's Replicas and the Nightcrawler forces, but is too late to prevent the Nightcrawler Commander from stealing a sample of Alma's DNA.

The Sergeant pursues the Nightcrawler Commander through the facility, and eventually faces him and the remaining Nightcrawler forces in a final showdown. After all the bullets have been fired and all is quiet again, the Sergeant finally acquires the sample of Alma's DNA, and gets to the surface where Captain Raynes is waiting for him. The Sergeant and Raynes shoot their way through Fettel's final Replica Elite soldiers, and successfully manage to reach the evacuation helicopter. When the Sergeant gets inside, Lt. Chen appears to be there waiting for them (but is seen only by the player apparently). Captain Raynes says that the Sergeant is on for a promotion to Lieutenant, and that Chen would be proud of him, while Chen's ghost fades away. Wait, that’s not really the end – if the gamer is patient enough to watch all the credits to the end, there's another cut-scene where an Elite-Nightcrawler reports to the Senator that the casualties were “acceptable” and places on the table a DNA sample from Fettel. After the game has been finished there are 3 additional mission-maps unlocked for practice before playing against other human opponents in multiplayer matches.

F.E.A.R. Music Video

I was again impressed by the realistic sound of the bullet shells falling on the floor - so accurate and properly positioned in space. Again, in some high-action scenes there is a very good music soundtrack stimulating the player to reach the objective as fast as possible.

Digitainment Mark: 9.0 (a pretty good game, with intense action scenes)

Developer: TimeGate Studios

Publisher: Sierra Entertainment

Official Site: http://www.whatisfear.com

<-125x125 Button - left->The night is getting colder, tainted by the screams of the unfortunate. Maybe I should have drowned with them, but fate has other plans in store for my perdition. The horrible noise can only mean that our crashed plane is sinking fast and I feel the urge to put some between us, lest I join it in the watery grave. Eerily gleaming fires stretch over ocean waves so calm, yet light pieces the darkness with unwavering certainty. I’ve reached the lighthouse at the end of the world, one lonely withered thorn to support hope where there is none. My chest hurts, but I’ll live yet; these steps - man made for sure. I must find the others.

“No gods, no kings, only man”

In the land of art, science and industry these symbols are engraved upon the walls, like runes of warding, ironically, the truth which brought the city’s downfall. As I descent with my newfound batysphere, I wonder who would have thought a whole city lies here at the bottom of the ocean. Rapture, as they call it, is a dream for all to men to free themselves of social and moral restrictions, and evolve to something greater. But can man be redeemed from his true destructive nature through technology? The wealthy and idealistic industry man Andrew Ryan seems to think this way, but entering the submerged city my welcoming party is grim. Creatures lurk in the shadows at every corner and they are not human anymore. I don’t even feel like leaving the relative safety of the batysphere after seeing IT rip the entrails off my rescuer. It is still out there, whispering secrets of my death and I don’t even have a crowbar to defend myself.

If you liked System Shock 2, then Bioshock is the game for you. If you love the retro theme Fallout used to push back in the days, Bioshock will also feel strangely familiar. I spent quite a lot of game time sight seeing and delving deeper into the complex social reality of Rapture. We’re talking about a large living city here, thus every location used to be someone’s quarters, bar of health center. Evidence of people’s past thoughts and actions can be found at every corner, usually by means of audio diaries picked up along the way. Rapture was created as a city of promise, a land of the free where everyone gets what he deserves in a seemingly capitalistic offer-and-demand ruled society.

Andrew Ryan sought to build a perfect society comprised out of elite individuals in the fields of art and science. In truth, man covers all the aspects of labor even in such an idealistic endeavor, thus physical work also needed to be employed, by those most fitted to perform it. Ryan was the father of Rapture, yet the rules he enforced lead him to be just one player in the vast game of economics. When rivals finally emerged, with the mindless back-up of the masses, power hungering turned to system corruption in the upper hierarchy.

“Adam is the canvass but plasmids are the paint”

The tool of this muffled civil war was Adam. Extracted through sea shells and developed into a mutagenic agent by a group of Rapture scientists lead by Tanenbaum, Adam enhanced humans with powers beyond their wildest dreams. Through Adam one gains the capacity to store plasmids and use them as they wish. Plasmids resemble spells since they require substantial quantities of Eve to be triggered off. Telekinesis, the control of fire or the power to freeze your foes are just a few; doubled by combat, technological and physical tonics which passively augment the denizens of Rapture, and now, yourself. But in order to gain Adam, a choice is to be made.

At some point it became apparent that there is not enough Adam to go around, and Tanenbaum engineered the Little Sisters to collect Adam from the dead. Guarded by massive armored robots called Big Brothers, these fiendish little girls have been transformed to see dead people as angels. Approaching them has since become a crime in rapture as they carry that which everyone here craves for. Big Brothers hit extremely hard and the first time you fight them is one of the most interesting things in Bioshock. Plenty of healing hypos, running around pillars and aiming for the head with armor piercing ammo should eventually do the trick.

And here’s the choice. The best way of getting Adam is to harvest it from the Little Sisters, leading to their impending death. Should you play nice, the little girls can be rescued from their mutagenic curse by a method taught to you by Tanenbaum. It leads to less Adam, but substantial rewards later on because the good doctor feels guilty and wants her children back. If you’re the kind of player that searches for items through every crevice, you’ll do just fine with less Adam. Ignore that completely if you plan to take on the game on the legendary difficulty. Spend Adam to gain more plasmids and increase your characteristics, including the amount of health and Eve you have. Tonics can be picked up on your journeys and basically represent items lying around. However, there is a possibility to gain more from research.

Humans never change

So we have a ‘50s retro themed city swarming with plasmid infested creatures that most of their humanity and spend their time hungering for Adam: splicers. It’s been a genuine pleasure to approach them from the shadow and listen to their rants undisturbed. Beyond the dim lights of Rapture, shadow and reality come together in a ghoulish fest where seeing and believing can never be the same. Complex shadows dance on the wall in front and I can tell a mother is bent over her child’s crib just around the corner. At first she sings a lullaby seemingly happy but then sorrow and madness take over. Wailing, crying out to the men gods of Rapture that took her child away, she lounges towards me with a wild look on her face. At first Adam made super humans out of the elite citizens of Rapture, but their developed Adam addiction lead to the loss of sanity. It’s only one of the main withdrawal symptoms, but the flesh decays as well. Splicers are bloodied and paranoid, their bodies scarred and their wits gone.

The doctor seems to be working late tonight, down at the gene splicing dental lab. I can tell by his shadow movements that he’s quite busy as I approach silently from behind. But then again, the light turn off leaving me defenseless and I must retreat as healing is expensive at this stage. Much of the scare comes from this use of lighting, sound and superb voice acting. I haven’t heard such great monologues since Sanitarium, one decade ago.

Atlas is directing you every move through the radio straight from the beginning, seemingly a true friend in this hour of need. With his help you going to discover the traps of perdition which brought great men and women to despair and madness, and Adam had a role to play in each story. First off we have Dr. Steinman, the surgery’s Picasso, obsessed with plasmid perfection in human beauty. Ryan’s rival in the works of industrial Rapture used to be Fontaine, now presumed dead. The story then arcs to Pete Wilkins, the underground rat living a parasitic life off his former master Fontaine. Land Ford is the biologist which used Adam to grow trees here on the ocean floor, subdued by Andrew Ryan’s strong grip over all things Rapture. Who can forget Sander Cohen, the mad artist who used plasmids to nurture a kind of grotesque art form built on pathos and death. The list goes on as you face Andrew Ryan in the end.

The plot thickens

Often enough you’ll be faced with hacking various turrets, robots, safes and vendor machines through your incursions in the world of Rapture. The mini game is always the same and presents you with a race of wits against time, rebuilding an exit way out of the given puzzle game. You have to arrange the tube pieces in such a way to structure a way for the liquid to reach its destination, while avoiding alarms and broken fuses. It’s refreshing to see that personal wits make a difference in the game, no matter how (un)skilled the in-game character is. Rewards are great should you crack these graphical riddles and range from ammo to cash, health and eve packs. Should you run out of ammo, tipping off an alarm and hacking two or three bots to escort you through the remainder of the level is generally a good idea.

Bioshock isn’t a hard game though and pleasure derives through every aspect of the work presented before your eye and fingertips. I’d like to think that it’s one of the good aspects of the multi format games, since Bioshock has a PC and Xbox versions. For a shooter, the mouse is pretty much involved in aiming the gun faster and that’s pretty much it. The casual style gameplay doesn’t require you go to that much trouble when it comes to strafing, jumping around and dodging bullets behind obstacles. So it’s not a hardcore shooter where you go out of bullets fast, which in turn lets you enjoy the creepy atmosphere more.

Take a picture. It lasts longer

The basics of research lie in accurate observation of your surroundings. Yet taking pictures of splicers wandering around or rushing for your scalp isn’t exactly the first thing that came through my mind when I picked up the camera. Its screenshot time now, because the more you catch on film, the more research points you gain and every time the bar goes to full, you learn something new about the creature. Yes, most splicers are vulnerable to anti personnel ammo, but I bet you’ll want to gain that special (free) tonic from research level two, or maybe that incredibly powerful ability the creature has been using to drop you dead. I was lost when I met Houdini Splicers for the first time. They just teleport around and throw fireballs at me, laughing the mad man’s laughter. Yet after careful observation through the use of my trusty weapon six camera, I found out I can stealth myself and go invisible if standing still with the new camouflage physical tonic. It can’t get any better than that.

Plasmid eye candy

It would have been unfair to start the review talking about graphics, but time has come to praise Bioshock and its wonderful use of the Unreal Engine 3. Movement is all right with the note that jumping is a bit off by default and you need to boost your character with running tonics to get the full feeling of a shooter. Turrets have no problems throwing at you high speed bullets (which can miss), rockets and flames. Flying sentries come in like butterflies, inaccurately hovering up and down in a very realistic movement pattern. I did mention lighting earlier. While 2K Games advertised Bioshock runs on Shader Model 3.0, there is an unofficial patch out there which allows 2.0 shader graphical cards run the game just fine. Even so, darkness is never impenetrable and developers use shadows to great effect, hinting that which you can not see, pushing you further exploring. The Houdini Splicers are some interesting characters and their rendering and invisibility effects left me jaw open and wondering just what the hell that was. World textures are detailed yet have a sense of roughness about them, which only adds to the depth of the retro concept. Taking screenshots of poster ads never gets old.

Where to next?

All in all Bioshock offer very good value for the money and Bioshock main concept man Ken Levine along with the new defunct Irrational Games developers (swallowed up by 2K Games) did a fantastic job at about every aspect of the game. The sense of playing a polished release that won’t disappoint is unmatched, and will undoubtedly weight heavily when looking for the game of the year. The only way to destroy your own gaming experience is by abusing some generous game mechanics like the Vita Chambers which basically spell resurrection safe spots. If you stick with the regular “kill first, ask questions later” modus operandi and save the game often, there won’t be any need to resurrect at the last visited Vita Chamber. Feeling that Big Daddy would go down faster if you hit it with a wrench is wrong; don’t do it. I positively adore the retro atmosphere and if you are a Fallout fan, I’m sure Bioshock will look like a welcomed revival and not a rip off because imagery and dialogues are rebuilt from scratch.

<-125x125 Button - left->Redefining the standards of the FPS genre – that was the mission of this game. Did it succeed? I would be tempted to think that the developers have made a very good attempt. The impressive amount of new features when compared to the 2004 edition is relatively well balanced as to attract new fans - to make it easy for them adjust to the game style. The old fans of the whole Unreal Game Series are debating their opinions on the official forums. This new tale brings some old characters back into the spotlight, like Malcom, the leader of the Thunder Crash team, also called by the Ronin hero “Thunder Cash” because of the high amount of money they got paid.

It is quite interesting to see how the story develops with each new version of a game or the games inspired by the original one. I own every PC game from the Unreal Series and so far I was impressed with new graphics and the game engine compatibility with a wide range of computer configurations, in fact the Unreal games have a reputation that they run pretty well on a lot of computers: this is not really the case with the latest title, Unreal Tournament 3. The first game told us a story in 2 parts about some prisoner on a space ship having a forced landing on a planet inhabited by some aliens and the trying to escape (Unreal and Unreal – The Return To Na Pali – The Gold Edition).

Ever since the first game, the music was impressive and very dynamic and the game engine was superior to all the other “attempts” at that time. The second game was a competition, namely Unreal Tournament (classic version – Game Of The Year Edition) – and it boosted the concept of multiplayer online and LAN shooter game (in worldwide competitions among the clans of players with very good skills). The story in that game, in short, was that the Skaarj (an alien race) attacked the Earth and destroyed a lot of cities – which determined the appearance of War Corporations like Axon, Izanagi and Liandri – and each of these corporations was fighting for power and dominance. The conflicts led to the legalization of “consensual murder” and that resulted into the organization of bloody public battles under the name of Unreal Tournament.

The next step was Unreal Tournament 2003, which was a merely “remix” of the initial Unreal Tournament, and since it didn’t bring something revolutionary like its predecessor, the fans were disappointed. At about the same time, there was the need of another game from the series that would have a much better single player story and that would somehow would be connected to the first game from the series and that was Unreal II: The Awakening – where John Dalton, a space-marine is sent with his crew in missions on various planets in order to retrieve some artifacts which mounted together would create one of the most powerful weapons in the universe. The Xbox version of the UT 2003 was Unreal Championship which was continued with Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict.

The next milestone was Unreal Tournament 2004 (March 16, 2004 - and later on released for the Linux and Mac platforms as well), which came with new graphics and added a few new game-play styles, like Onslaught and also vehicles (to be used on the huge maps for the Onslaught mode). The presence of some new weapons (like the grenade launcher, spider mine layer, Anti Vehicle Rocket Launcher - AVRiL) is also motivated by the new game-play at that time. The Unreal Anthology (games collection) containing the Unreal Gold, Unreal Tournament (classic), Unreal II: The Awakening and Unreal Tournament 2004 was released in 2006 along with soundtrack CDs with music from the whole series (and the fans appreciated that).
Single Player Story Trailer

Unreal Tournament 3 is the latest game from the Unreal Series (also the bloodiest) and comes with an interesting single player story, and an even more “addictive” multiplayer than ever before. In fact, that’s what the whole concept aimed at – the online matches offer unprecedented immersive action and hours of intense game-play. But this latest package doesn’t come without some flaws – while many new games have the same problem, that being the rush to publish them while they still need a lot of tweaking, others have huge system requirements. UT 3 can be classified as a somehow rushed release as there seems to be a total lack of support for antialising and thus the edges of the objects in the game are not smooth and they are really jagged in some parts. It’s not something we would still expect to see in a game released within this timeframe, as nearly all games today have in their menus various tweaks for the graphic effects.

The graphics settings from UT 3 are rather too simple and don’t leave too much room for tweaking and so the gamers will have to rely on the game engine to offer them the eye-candy and that caused a lot of debates on the official and other Unreal online communities. While we understand that the game editor application was brilliantly conceived to export maps for the PlayStation 3 (the game comes in a PS 3 version as well – though nothing beats aiming with a gaming mouse in a FPS) – offering an interoperability between PCs and consoles, the lack for proper filtering of the textures is not really acceptable! You can see below in the screenshot from a cinematic (so the overall game performance doesn't even come into question!) that the rendering of the shadows is poorly implemented (squarish edges) - and if that happens into a in-game movie (and that is actually a bik movie file and not a pre-scripted action!) which should look really well, what can we expect from the game itself? I dare the developers to explain that.

And yes, there’s a reason for that – and I won’t go into details - but the game engine uses the “deferred shading” technique which helps the game run faster, but hinders even the forced texture-filtering settings from the video-card drivers. Normally a gamer shouldn’t have to apply all sorts of tricks or get into some complicated (for average PC users) procedures so that the game would look “the way it’s meant to be played”. If it doesn’t look good, right out of the box, even with the maxed settings from the graphics panel (on a PC that is more than capable to run the game), then many people might not buy it – it’s a harsh decision, but the reason is pretty good. As PC requirements, the game needs Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista or Linux with advanced 3D processing or Mac OS X 10.4, 2.0+ GHz Single Core Processor (or better a dual core one with slightly higher clock frequency), 512 Mbytes of System RAM (or 1GB, the more - the better), NVIDIA 6200+ or ATI Radeon 9600+ Video Card (or the latest top high-end cards) and 8 GB of free hard drive space.

The story in the game follows the adventures of Reaper, the leader of the Ronin team (as the Izanagi called them - Ronin meaning samurai). They were a clan of warriors who protected the Twin Souls mining colony. The Necris team came, led by Akasha, and they destroyed the colony – that made the Ronin retreat to Earth, where the Izanagi Corporation hired them for the Tournament. Malcom, a former player and famous champion from the Unreal Tournaments, was hired by the Izanagi as well to lead their operations. Each chapter has video tutorials about what the player is supposed to do.

The first mission was more about proving the “legendary” warrior skills of the Ronin. It was hilarious at some points when the team mates shouted “I need some back-up”, “I’m taking heavy fire” or “I just got owned!” It wasn’t exactly as if Reaper didn’t have his plate already full.
“With the Caesar’s Coin”, the battles started to be more and more difficult as the gamer is dependent up to a certain point on the team members (bots) who will have to achieve certain goals in order to win specific tactical approaches. During the matches from “The Liandri Conflict”, the Ronin have met The Corrupt, as those robots appeared earlier on in UT 2004, but this time they were led by Matrix, one of the executives from Liandri who had upgraded at the request of the superiors.

A new attack takes place over the location of the Izanagi and Reaper is disappointed by Malcom’s attitude. And so, the Ronins are sent on the Necris homeland, in order to defeat them. What Reaper really wanted was to kill Akasha, the one who led the attack at the Twin Souls mine colony. After chasing her on a space ship, and on the Necris land, the team ends up near the home of Akasha, where only Reaper steps in to defeat her “up close and personal”. In the “Disposable Assets” chapter-movie, the gamer can see how Malcom betrays the Ronin team, by making an agreement with one of the Necris leaders. After defeating Akasha, Reaper is faced with his worst fear – the death of his sister – and then he realizes who betrayed them and who gave their location to the Necris squad that killed his team. It’s a shame really that there’s not an ending where Reaper would fight against Malcom, but I’m guessing that this will come in the next tournament game from the series (I would hate to believe they would leave this ending in thin air, just like that). Throughout the game, each chapter has different game styles, like Team Deathmatch, Capture The Flag and Duel (this one being between 2 players).

Obviously the game has a lot more to offer than the single player mode. You can play with your online friends or make a LAN Game Party. You can choose your player from the Iron Guard (yeah, Lauren is still hot as Reaper says in one of the matches and she replies “you bleed better than you shoot”). Such games can have up to 32 players divided into 2 teams. Another very interesting idea is that when you play with bots – the artificial intelligence has been so well improved that it can recognize voice commands (you can use a microphone), like “go and check the bridge” – and they might answer “the bridge is clear”.

If we had the Axon vehicles in the UT 2004, in UT 3 we also have some Necris vehicles, like the Darkwalkers (those huge 3 legged vehicles) that look like the alien machines from the movie “The War Of The Worlds” (that’s another game – added to the list - that was inspired by those aliens!). Did I enjoy playing the game? Yes, a lot actually, especially since I was familiar with the series and I liked the combat feeling the game gave me. I'm not saying in the lines above how bad it was, but I'm still curious how could the devs miss the point of most games today - they have to look totally amazing, even if the action in them is realistic or unreal.

The sound in the game was… “unreal”. And this is not like saying “this apple is so… red”, but rather expressing the same feeling all the games from the series have given me over the years – which means it was typical. But what was the most impressive, was the soundtrack of the game – truly amazing – very dynamic and stimulating. I did get it with the game in the same package and some of the tracks can be easily listened to in other environments or circumstances as well, especially the tracks from the first CD.

Digitainment Mark: 8 out of 10 (for having a rushed release)

Publisher: Midway Games

Designer: Steven Polge

Engine: Unreal Engine 3

Official Website (where you can also order the game): http://www.unrealtournament3.com

Fresh from the shelves, Crysis launched quite a stir when gamers everywhere saw their high end computers lowered to the level of rusty typewriters when running the game on high details. As you may have remembered, the title is a killer in terms of system requirements and squeezing the most in terms of graphical quality it’s almost impossible on nowadays mainstream technology. 3D Mark 2006 is demanding in terms of resources, but that’s the way benchmarks do things. Here’s where moder Mad Boris come in to fix this shortcoming. He developed and recently released an unofficial benchmarking tool for Crysis which can tell you everything you need to know.

<-250x250 Square - left->Check out this topic for a more detailed rundown on its possibilities. “The tool provides a robust front end to benchmarking Crysis. Provides ability to queue up many runs and will provide detailed results for each test as well as an overall summary with accurate averages. The first and foremost goals were simplicity and reliability in the tool and in the benchmark scores. Simply queue up several different runs mixing settings, resolutions, antialiasing levels and click "Begin benchmark Run". You can add a frame number where screenshots can be made on every frame for comparison. Use Negative numbers to make a screenshot on every N frame (i.e.: -399). Hit view button to view them. For advanced users you can add custom cvars or import a cfg file that will run globally on all tests.”

The great thing about the utility is that you can run simultaneous tests for different conditions. Window mode is available, along with 32 and 64 bit, DX9 and DX10 tests. Logs can provide summaries on three or more loops, on retail, demo and custom demo versions of Crysis. The benchmark can be paused whenever you see fit, to take screenshots at key moments, or compare screenshots taken automatically at user given frames. All in all, it’s a good tool to tinker with your masterpiece. Should your system run low on certain conditions (as I know it will) you can just adapt until this benchmark points out the best fps versus image quality ratio.

<-250x250 Square - left->You have probably watched a lot of shows on Discovery TV about the “famous” Area 51 which supposedly does not exist, or if it does it’s not what most people think of it, and the reporters have been told by the US authorities that it is a restricted access zone anyway. So basically we do not know what’s hiding behind the whole “concept of Area 51”, but we (just as the game developers from Midway Studios Austin did) can speculate or make up stories and sell them as well. But what makes this game special is not its story - it’s the way in which the whole idea was implemented.
Older Trailer Of The Game

The game-engine is based largely on the Unreal 3 engine, thus offering playability on a wide range of computer configurations, from the classical PC desktops that handle Windows XP very well to the most up to date advanced PC configurations that are running Windows Vista. The game-story is not exactly complicated, it’s rather pretty simple actually and the plot is quite linear – even if you can go and explore the maps all you like, there definitely a certain point that needs to be reached in order to proceed to a new level. What I found rather “unique” is the extremely simple and very “empty-stats” HUD, just like very few other games have. What does that mean – the game developers wanted to give the player as much realism as possible, and in many scenes you may not even see the crosshair (that helps you aim better) and no health bar stats whatsoever – in fact you will get a hint telling you that if the screen gets hot red (while being shot at) – you’re about to be toast.
E3 2007 Trailer Of The Game

The action is divided on seven large maps, and it starts in Iraq. I must say this game gives a pretty accurate image of the “Iraq missions” of the soldiers – Aeran Pierce is the Delta Force (Delta Force again, like in Crysis?) soldier who was sent, along with 2 other soldiers to hit some objectives. As soon as the Iraq job is finished, the soldiers return to the Nevada area, to their main military base, which is in quarantine due to the infection of an “unknown” agent that resulted after the malfunction of an experiment sponsored by the government (isn’t that typical?). So nothing out of the ordinary so far, but as soon as Aeran Pierce starts exploring the new areas and even loses some of his team members, the perspective over the action changes a bit.

The soldiers are terrified (who wouldn’t be?) when they start seeing really big worm-like monsters blocking their path. Of course, they are trained not to show their fear and they would engage in fierce battle and heated fire even if they don’t stand a (serious) chance. The whole point in winning each step of the mission is that the main hero needs to perform his duties in an excellent manner so that the squad morale is maintained at a high level. Seriously, the script puts the gamer into some scenarios one wouldn’t agree with in the first place, but since most “end-level-actions” are scripted, there is nothing you can do about it really. As an example, there would be the “leaving behind” of the soldier Somers because there is no possibility to literally help him escape. Aeran Pierce is a silent character most of the times and likes to follow orders the best way he can – in some cases you would think he’s a machine, not a real person.

The idea behind the following levels is that the team needs to get from let’s say point A, on the map, to point B, sometimes with a few detours on the way, and most likely the soldiers will have to engage into spending bullets on monster-heads. Yeah, the monsters can be really annoying and some of them don’t just die at first shot – some of them get up and go back in action again, just like in movies. In some areas, Pierce will have to use special weapons that would help in finishing off the enemies in a considerably smaller amount of time. The big mission maps Rachel, Insurgency, Topside, Wrecked, and Topside Old are similar in concept, each having special tasks or key objectives that need to be acquired.

Pierce discovers that Somers betrays the troops by starting to help the enemy “reborn-soldiers”, yeah, that type of enemies which just keep popping up until there have been enough rockets blown to their faces (like in the “Serious Sam” game series). In the final chapter, the experimental unit that got out of control is destroyed and Pierce is picked up by an army helicopter.

I must say I enjoyed the helicopter machinegun sequences – they really give an “army” feel to the game. Overall the developers had a good idea and did a good job in creating the atmosphere for the action. What I noticed (just like I will present later on in the review of the Unreal Tournament 3) is that the Unreal 3 engine is capable of truly realistic effects, even comparable and in some cases better than the ones from Crysis, under the CryEngine 2, without being a resource hog: Now that’s what I would call smart usage of the computer resources and effective overall optimization! It’s not a coincidence that many game developers are using this game engine – it offers a lot without asking too much or over the top (exaggerated) PC configurations (which aren’t even capable to get exactly all the details at the maximum graphical settings – in games like Crysis). However, the advertisements in the game are pretty frequent and they all are about Midway Studios – now we understand that they did a great job and the effort need to be appreciated, but too much advertising can irritate the eyes after a while.
Gameplay With Developer Comments

The sound in the game is well connected to the musical soundtrack and it offers tactical information in the field of action. The developers must have been lucky enough to record the sounds for the weapons from real samples.

Digitainment Mark: 9.8 out of 10 (for the “army” feel of the game and the smart usage of the resources of the PC by the engine)

Developer: Midway Studio Austin

Publisher: Midway

Official website: http://www.blacksitegame.com