Better actually, imo. 

SS1 

Almost forgot about that one. Downloading now. 

There are, surprisingly, quite a number of really high quality doom3 packs. Not necessarily mods, but just level packs and episodes.

Can't remember which ones (I played probably a good 50 releases for d3). Check here for some:
http://doom3.filefront.com/files/Doom_III/Maps/Single_Player/;4340?sort=downloads&order_in=desc&limit=100&descriptions_in=0&summary_in=0#files 

i don't think it's that surprising actually. the colossal amount of work required must weed out all but the most diehard mappers/modders.

it sure weeded me out. ^_^; 

Yeah it must have aye. I mean there's some shitters in the bunch, but I would have thought Doom3 mapping would be fkn hard. And yet there's probably a good 20 high quality releases.

Perhaps it's the opposite and the great engine and ability to build a box room then throw in all sorts of prefabs makes it quite easy to map for. One thing I did notice - 95% of custom map releases follow the exact same indoor lab bullshit of Doom3. No one much branched out to other themes.

Necros does that mean you scrapped your d3 map? You bastard I was looking forward to that! 

That's because the game's resources allow for nothing else. If you were to make something entirely different, you'd also have to be a good texture artist and a proficient modeller. And I take it the number of available custom texture sets is limited - not least because everything other than base style looks odd at best in that engine. 

necros is one hell of a scrapper... 

http://www.systemshock.org/index.php/topic,211.0.html 

is Stalker SOC meant to run like total shit or is there some performance tweak I cant find?

GTX465 that's had no issues with anything else so far, including CoD MW1 and 2, but maybe this is a real resource hog? 

Did you install all of the gazillion of official patches?
This is probably a driver conflict. SOC ran fine on my old card, but I could never get the addon to work. It was always slow and unstable. No problems on the new card. Perhaps there's an older driver version or some hotfix/workaround that can make it work for you. 

1.0005 or something.

Will look into drivers, havent had to so far for anything else.

Witcher runs fine on max, will install Crysis/Warhead tomorrow to see how that fares. 

http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/action/stalker/download_6169713.html

Useful if it works for you. Also make sure you patch STALKER. 

Are idtech4. Is that not basically true? They run good on old systems. I mean they are well made games, but they dont have bump-mapping or super hi-res textures or anything.

You should be able to run Crysis on very high with a GTX465, or Crysis Warhead on Enthusiast settings, and get 30fps :) 

Definitely not idtech4. 

will look at it again tomorrow. But will install Crysis first to see what performance I get there.

Witcher runs great though. 

Started out as idTech3! (after some more reading), but by now it is very heavily modified, to the point where it is a seperate engine in its own right. 

IW's engine is alright, but when Treyarch gets it for their games they tend to butcher things and break things that used to work, and just turn it into an awful series of unfortunate events. Makes me nervous when Treyarch releases 'tools' for Blops (whatever that means.) 

MW1/MW2 run great on my crappy nvidia 7600GT. Sadly, blops performance sucks on my system, not worth playing until I upgrade. 

Bullets don't kill people. Just play mw2 or a real FPS like q3,nexuiz/xonotic, oa, aa, &c. 

thanks, you are a good person, deep down. 

Just attempted to play Second Sight (2004). It's a third person game, although you have a first person view as well, but none of controls work from first person, which is retarded.

I got to the third level and decided it was too crap to continue with. First game I've ever quit so early. The level design was from the 90s, the gameplay was slow and annoying. Too much fucking around just to fire your gun. Let alone fucking around with all your stupid psychic abilities. Movement was butchered.

And what's worse is the constant alarms that go off as soon as a scientist sees you.

Pass. Area 51 next I think, if I can install it. 

http://www.humblebundle.com/ numero 2 

Now for the money to transfer from paypal... 

Even the free downloadable version of Area 51 (with advertising) failed to install. Guess i'll have to torrent it. In the meantime, I played Quake 4...


With Quake and Quake 2 being my two favourite games of all time, and will unlikely ever be beaten, it would be hard for me not to have high hopes for Quake 4. It didn't make much difference that id Software had dropped the job into the talented Raven Software's mits. Heretic, Hexen, Soldier of Fortune, Star Trek Voyager and all their sequels; these were all solid, professional and, most importantly, fun games. So Raven taking over the Quake duties is almost as good as id doing it themselves. And as it turned out, Quake 4 felt like a superior game to Doom 3.

While Doom 3 took place almost entirely inside tight futuristic bases, unfortunately Quake 4 didn't try to re-invent the wheel here and is almost exactly the same. The only difference is there are more outdoor areas and the level design is a little better. Everything is easier to see, there's much more variety in design, although it's still only the 'base' style, so expecting Painkiller level of variety will leave disappointed. While there aren't huge awe-inspiring set-pieces, it's all solidly good looking. Sadly, the id Tech 4 engine just doesn't seem capable of doing huge, sprawling areas. So Raven are stuck with a corridor crawl similar to Doom 3.

Having said that there are some big outdoors areas, but they are lacking in detail. The three biggest levels are the vehicle-based ones. And these copped a lot of flack from players suggesting they ruin the game. As it turned out, only 3 in 33 levels are vehicle based, and one of them is only several minutes long. In all, a maximum of 10% of the game would be vehicle based.

While the engine is restricted, the way it does lighting looks fantastic, especially when your team-mates have their flashlights on and they're cast all over the inner depths darkened base. So it's a shame there have been very few games using id Tech 4, just Prey, Quake Wars and Wolfenstein following.

Gameplay in Quake 4 was all solid. The enemies had plenty of variety and all looked fantastic. It's just disappointing that they weren't more closely related to Quake 2. The Berserker, Gunner and a few others were there, but not recognisable from Quake 2. Different attacks, speeds and difficulty means they're basically new enemies. Iron Maiden was a little more obvious, but again apart from being female, could be a completely different enemy. Arguably the more fearsome of Quake 2, the Gladiator, makes a return in Quake 4. But he's quite different; slower with a railgun that seems easier to avoid. So while there weren't many similarities, in some respects and homage aside, it's probably a good thing because the Quake 2 enemies were very basic in their attacks compared to Quake 4. This isn't 1998 anymore.

Most of the weapons make a return. The Machine Gun is much better, there's no Double Shotgun but the Single Shotgun packs enough of a punch to play almost the entire game through just with these two weapons. The Hyper Blaster, now your fourth weapons, is a good switch up as it packs a punch but also has plenty of ammo. Grenade Launcher, Railgun, Lightning Gun are all very similar to Quake 2. The Rocket Launcher is a little faster but requires reloading, meaning I didn't use it much. The new gun is the Nailgun, which is very fast paced but I didn't find it to be particularly effective compared to the Machine Gun/Shotgun combination.

I played on medium difficulty and it was fairly spot on. The first half of the game was fairly easy and it was a long time before I died, but the second half steadily got tougher with some great boss battles to finish the game off.

So overall I really liked Quake 4. It did feel like another Raven game; very similar in level design to their others, but that's a minor criticism because all their games look good. And with id Tech 4, great! While it doesn't live up to the groundbreaking prequels, it's great to have a solid, fun, return to Stroggos. With slightly better level design and much more fast-paced gameplay, I preferred it over Doom 3.