A new episode of my FC3 survival hunter series has gone up. This time we deal with fearsome crocs, and no, not those crappy shoes

Synthia from Gamespot came to me in one of my previous Blogs asking if I'd like to be part of #videodrome which showcases youtube videos of various sorts from your own material to reviews to sketches. My review of Bioshock Infinite was featured in this weeks  

http://uk.gamespot.com/features/6408029/

Finished up another episode of the survival hunter, this time in episode 6, we face off against tigers and do a little bit of work for the citizens of rook island

Also I'm kinda running out of animals to do lol 

I put together a Vlog type thing talking about what a good horror game should and shouldn't have and how some horror games or franchises have lost their way in recent years. I was gonna have gameplay in the background but didn't have enough footage so I slapped it together of just me talking

Easter egg in the video thumbnail

Still going strong with my survival hunter series in Far Cry 3 with Episode 4. I think I improve the overall quality each week. Especially the audio

I got around to making episode 3 of my survival hunter series in Far Cry 3. and I actually made an intro for it this time, I was meaning to do it for ages but was too lazy. If anyone watches Bear Grylls they will understand the idea behind the intro. The commentary itself in game is more of a Steve Irwin thing. 

So we finally got some glorious footage of DS2 and it looks fantastic. Very much like the first game and that's not a bad thing. In some other games maybe it would be, but for a game that was said to be more accessible and casualised, having it be more of the same is a blessing almost. There have been a few changes here and there and all of which seem to be improvements rather than crippling the experience. I personally can't wait for it. 

More great news is not onnly will it come to PC day 1 too, but that PC is the lead platform this time around. AND it will support 60fps, it's like a souls fans wet dream. Hopefully those 60 fps are consistent and not the horrible performance of its predecessor. The game sadly (for console owners) is NOT next gen and I think it was the right call. Apart from the hermit in me finding it slightly hilarious that the famous souls games from consoles made their way to PC and then became lead platform for it and then not have it next gen, it was a smart move because they said they wanted to release it sooner rather than later. Developing for next gen would mean they would have to wait much longer.

If you want, I put together a video talking about some of the stuff in the 12 minute gameplay trailer and all the stuff we know so far.

So I made another video continuing my FC3 survival hunter series as a bit of fun. Let me know what you think. 

Hello hello, I uploaded this a while ago but didn't post it because lots of people were still enjoying the game, my review has no spoilers in it anyway but it would be better to show it once others have completed it and have a feel for it. Just a few of my thoughts on it, let me know if you agree or disagree. It's one hell of a game that's for sure

So brofists created a thread under his new alt, I didn't know it was him at first and he was ranting about Uncharted. I said I didn't want anymore Uncharted's cos 3 was enough and in another post I called him an idiot (cos let's face it, he is) and when his thread got locked I got this hilarious PM. It made my day

My response since thread was locked

There hasnt been enough Uncharted! I WANT MOAR Uncharted, and so do millions across the globe!

In conclusion who gives a flying rats ass what you want

Also lol at you calling me an idiot just because i domt think Spec Ops is the secomnd coming of christ like you amd the troll Blabadon seem to think

The GAME sucked! Get over it

By the way you are a pc hermit LOSER

So call me all the names you can think of. I dont even care enough about you to get upset

LOL you are a loser in ever sense of the word lol. Do whats right, go kill yourself

I'm glad I could upset someone so much they felt the need to write a message like that. Job well done If I do say so myself

So I made a new video as a goofy idea, trying to do it in a sort of Steve Irwin or Bear Grylls/BBC documentary type video. I think it came out ok but the accent is atrocious lol

So I was putting together a video review of Crysis 3 and had to do up a transcript of what to say. It's not perfect or even that well written but I thought I might as well post it before deleting it. You can also watch the video if you don't like reading, both the video and written review have the exact same dialogue more or less

Crysis 3 Review:

Crysis 3, or as some people like to call it The Interactive tech demo or Interactive benchmark, is one of those game franchises that sums up the modern age of gaming. Every time a new one is announced people get really excited and want to see how it looks, with very little interest in the gameplay, or the story and thats basically all the Crysis games have become. All flash with very little substance. Crysis 3, actually the 4th game in the series if we count warhead, is also very guilty of this. Lets start off with a little background on the game, its set in new york, just like Crysis 2, but its been 24 years since the events of Crysis 2 took place. CELL have taken over as a provider of free energy and have encapsulated New York in a giant dome almost like a greenhouse of sorts and apparently every civilian is in debt. But its never really made apparent just WHY exactly CELL have put a giant bubble around New York, or maybe its said in game and I just didnt listen because I never felt compelled to.

Characters:

 You assume the role of Prophet, still sporting that trendy nanosuit like it was a james bond tuxedo, and hes been out of action for quite some time. He comes back to warn everyone about the end of the world foretold to him in a vision by the leader of the Alien race in the game. This is likely a poor attempt at trying to force the name Prophet to actually have some meaning this time. You are freed by your old buddy Psycho and the two of you hop on your way to save humanity. I may have been a bit too harsh on Crysis 2 when it launched because so much had changed and most of it I felt for the worst, but it wasnt until playing Crysis 3 did I realize that Crysis 2 was actually pretty well made and not a bad game at all. One reason being that the characters never over stepped their bounds, well maybe Lockhart did a bit, but they all had their moment and even the protagonist was quiet and just a cipher to get you through the narrative.

 This time though in Crysis 3 we are back as Prophet and with that comes listening to him ramble on and **** on where every second sentence has him muttering the term The Alpha Ceph and believe me it gets damn annoying after a while. Not only is Prophet a bad character who lacks emotion or soul but that can be applied to all the characters that make up the cast of Crysis 3. Not one character is likeable or worth giving a damn about, even the quirky foul mouthed psycho has changed so much they might as well have just gave us a new character. Hes no longer genuinely funny anymore and most of what he says is what you would expect a 14 year old would to at his mother for not letting him go to the junior Disco with all his friends. He constantly says words like Prick or Bollocks to try force some sort of juvenile humour into the narrative, but it comes off as crude and out of place, especially when you actually listen to how many times he swears in the game. Im not against swearing, I do it all the time in my own day to day speech but this is just over the top and makes you dislike the character instead of the intended effect. Instead of being the hardass he once was, Psycho is reduced to a pitiful man who goes on and on about how his precious nanosuit was taken from him and hes gonna kill whoever did it, hes supposed to be the emotional anchor in the game and I get the direction they tried to go in having him wish he had the nanosuit back and Prophet wishing he could get rid of it because hes sacrificed so much. But Crytek really need to hire some actual writers who can do proper dialogue for characters, the emotion just isnt there and you never once care about any of the characters. Along with our couple of heroes are some minor characters like Karl Ernst Rasch who invented the nanosuits and who has an extremely svelte face and creepy eyes and then you have Claire who is Psychos love interest and sort of the leader of the rebels fighting back against CELL. She is also quite possible one of the worst characters Ive ever seen in a big budget video game, her dialogue is horrendous and involves a lot of fake big words to make her sound like she knows what shes doing but not only that, shes terribly acted out too. Whoever did the voice for her missed the mark totally and all the dialogue comes off as dumb melodrama thats completely over acted and I found it hard to care for what she was saying, the times I actually listened. And thats part of the problem with the characters here, I never cared what any of them said or what any of them believed in. I just wanted them to shut up so I could get back to creeping in bushes skewering heads together with my arrows again. The story takes itself far too seriously and more often than not, those are the stories that suck the most. One last note about the characters is there is no Protagonist vs Antagonist feeling, you kill CELL soldiers because youre told to and they stand in your way but there is never really a reason, theres no big bad head of the CELL to act against and they have no leader. There is no enemy to hate or motivate you towards killing at the end, you just do all these things because the characters tell you to and it falls very flat at times.

Visuals:

Ill move onto visuals now, just to get it out of the way. As everyone knows Crytek have some of the best technical wizardry skills in the business if not THE best. What they can squeeze out of their engine and out of hardware is nothing short of magic and Crysis 3 is a huge testament to that. This game, on PC anyway, is the best looking game I have ever seen to date. No other game comes close to what is on display here and its not just because of the enormous scale, well get to that in a minute, but its also because of the insane attention to detail and all the little tiny things add up to a very immersive visual feast. Environments are extremely dense with detail from rubble, signs, vegetation, vehicles, particles and water. Everywhere you look has so much packed into your field of view that its impossible to not stop and just look around. The main attraction this time around is grass, its being hyped by everyone as looking really good and I would have to agree. Its without doubt the best looking grass or vegetation I have seen in a game. I thought Far Cry 3 was impressive at the time but this walks all over it. The game simulates wind that moves the leaves and explosions also affect it creating a shockwave. Water is also the best Ive ever seen in a game, every single thing that hits the water creates a ripple and each ripple creates a shimmering band of light across the environment. This can look incredible indoors or tunnels where the shimmers light up the whole area. Not only that but the water also has real dynamic reflections that change based on where youre looking and standing and its breathtaking. Scopes actually have little small versions of the environment being cast through it when you move around which is also very impressive and something I always wanted in FPS games, its not a big thing but it adds a lot of depth to an image and really makes it a lot more dynamic. Another incredible aspect of the visuals are character models, they may not be pretty looking people being rendered but my God Psycho has never looked so detailed. The faces are like something you would see in a tech demo and they really do look like real people, especially the eyes. Sadly the rest of the character models like their clothes are much lower res and clash with the high detail of the faces so it can be a bit jarring to look from one to the other.

 Lets talk about the scale of the game now, more specifically the dam level in the game. This is fricken huge; you start off way above the dam looking down on it and can even see little enemies wandering about on it. Then you go down below the dam and take out a lot of dudes and skulk around there for a bit below the skyscrapers. You proceed to the dam level itself after that and kill all the dudes you could spot from a mile away before. Then you actually go inside the dam and blow it up sending water everywhere you were before. This is immense scale and its not sparse either, the environments still have that huge attention to detail and it all happens without even 1 loading screen or even a hiccup in the performance. Its truly awe inspiring and without doubt one of the best levels in the game.

The game runs pretty well, in more chaotic environments the frames can really drop like the first level with lots of rain or the grassy level with all the explosions and wind effects. But for the most part Id say it runs better than Crysis 2, or even on par with it but the visual tradeoff is also a lot better. The stuff on screen feels like it should cost a lot of frames to run. Unlike some games which look ok but also run like **** For anyone unfamiliar with my setup I run an Asus GTX 670 with an Intel i5 3570k and 8 gigs of RAM and I average in the high 30s to high 40s most of the game. It can go way higher and way lower depending on where I am in the game, but Id say 35-45 is roughly where it hangs on max settings.

Gameplay:

Now onto gameplay, which for the most part is largely unchanged from Crysis 2. You still have one button for armor and one for cloak but this time sprinting isnt attached to your energy meter. Thank **** for that. Of course the big thing is the new Bow which I will admit is pretty cool, but it also makes the game entirely too easy. You fire it and its a one shot kill and you never come out of cloak for shooting people with it. Not only that but you can change the arrowheads to explosives or electric ones to take out more than one guy at a time. It makes you feel incredibly overpowered and that can be both a good and bad thing depending on how you look at it. Theres a different suit upgrade system too this time around but it works basically the same as before. You dont get energy from fallen Ceph anymore, you pick up briefcase style objects that give you one unlock point. Theres only one time where youre forced to pick one up though and you have to search for the rest yourself. One thing I **** hate in Crysis 3 is the new hacking mechanic, at first it seemed kinda cool but holy jesus does it get annoying. There are times where you have to hack everything from doors to weapon crates to turrets to even some enemies and they constantly force it upon you, listen Crytek, I know youre proud of this new mechanic but knock it the **** off, its annoying. You can also enter environments where there are about two turrets and just hacking those will kill all the enemies for you making the game even easier again. Thats one of the largest complaints from gamers is that the game is far too easy even on the hardest difficulty.

The game later forces you into the obligatory Crysis vehicle levels and these should never have been allowed in the game. Controlling the dune buggy is spotty at best and you become incredibly exposed and the enemies can kill you far too quickly, the objectives are also very vague in these sections leading you to just drive around avoiding fire wondering what the hell you have to do next. Theres also a VTOL level where you shoot gunships as Psycho flies and its like having your teeth pulled out through your ass. The camera constantly jerks the opposite direction of where to shoot and you miss more targets than you hit, it became very frustrating. In fact that happens a lot in the later levels, Crytek make the levels much larger and more open but the level design just goes out the window. You never really know if youre actually going the right way and the big areas serve no purpose but to look cool. You still tackle all the objectives the exact same way until youre funneled back into a corridor again.

Touching briefly on sound, its pretty much the exact same as Crysis 2. Guns sound the same except for the new alien weapons which actually sound pretty nice. And the suit sounds are all the same such as the deep bass of armor mode and the signature rough robotic voice of changing in and out of different states. Overall it sounds nice but nothing really new or worth writing home about.

Multiplayer:

The multiplayer, for me, may be what saves the game from being a total rent experience. The single player while it has its moments is largely forgettable and not nearly worth the price of admission like its predecessors. But the multiplayer has come a long way and is actually really enjoyable. I never really liked the Multiplayer of Crysis 2 and while a lot is unchanged mechanics wise its just a lot more fun in this iteration for some reason. It feels faster and more energetic, perks are all pretty much the same except for the new noobie auto armor that saves far too many people who dont know how to manage suit energy properly. It can be a little laggy at times and the net code can be total ass, especially seeing killcams and how some guys arrows magically go through objects or seem to have an auto aim effect attached to them, but after you apply some mouse acceleration fixes and lower all the graphical settings it can be quite a fun experience. Im not going to go into detail on the modes as such because I have some other videos up on my channel showing the Multiplayer side of things and this review is mainly for the single player aspect.

Conclusion:

Overall Crysis 3 is a good game but extremely lacking. Its criminally short and out of the very quick 6 hour campaign only about 2-3 hours of it are worth remembering. Later levels are crap and the art style seems to trail off, it feels like they spent a lot of time on some levels and then almost nothing on some others. I was expecting pretty lackluster stuff in the campaign anyway and really only bought it to see what the game looked like maxed out and I imagine a lot of other people did similarly. Bottom line is if you are thinking of getting the game for Single Player only I would wait until its a good bit cheaper and then get it. If you think you will enjoy the Multiplayer then go for it because it can add a lot of value to the purchase and really extend the life of the game. Its nowhere near the game Crysis 1, warhead or even Crysis 2 were and I think it may be time for Crytek to let the series rest for a while and move onto different things. I think if a Crysis 4 came too soon it would completely fatigue the franchise and ultimately work against it. 

I have been trying at youtube now for the last few months and while it's not a long time at all, just getting your videos seen and popular is such fvcking hard work. It's extremely demoralising to upload like 5 videos in a few days and then see you only have like 20 views between them all.

Right now I have about 72 subscribers I think, which is awesome. And I have a total of 44,000 over all my videos. But 27,000 of them are on one video of Far Cry 3 and since then, nothing has captured people's attentions.

Right now I will stay trying and just stick at it but it's frustrating that I spend so much time making and editing and uploading to have none of it pay off.

/vent

Received an email today from a channel called zoomingames.TV, they are a dutch site that delivers gaming news and asked me to become a partner. They're still relatively small compared to something like Machinima but I figure it's a start. They allow a 3 month trial in the beginning that I can opt out of at any time anyway. Seen as all my videos are just playthroughs and no copyright issues I figure why not, I don't have much to lose and it might gather some more views or subs for me.

I'm gonna keep going with my videos anyway and see if anything changes, at te end of the 3 months they ask to sign a contract to continue with them. If nothing has changes I will just opt out and won't sign.

You can check them out here if you would like.

http://www.youtube.com/zoomingames

Their full site is here:

http://www.zoomin.tv/site/index.cfm

Hey guys, quick update on the newest addition to my youtube channel. I ahve started a playthrough of Hotline Miami if you are interested. If you have any suggestions for future games let me know and I will try incorporate them into my channel. If you like what you see please comment or rate the video or subscribe if you'd like

Part 1

Hotline Miami Playlist

I recently bought a new Avermedia Live Gamer HD capture card from Amazon to record my game footage much easier. It helped so much already, games record faster with literall 0 FPS drop in game, so I can play at 60 fps and record at the same time. IT also records videos to a tiny file size, a 42 minute video was only 5GB yesterday. In Dxtory a 42 minute video would have been over 100GB. Here's a sample of a recording using it: BF3 Mobile AA tips and Tactics. Really helps recording BF3 stuff as those rounds can go on for a very long time.

I also ordered a new Microphone that will arrive next week, because if you clicked the video above you will hear how sh!tty my current mic is. I badly need a new one for better quality. So I went for the Blue Microphones Yeti mic. I heard sound tests of it and it sounds very clean and smooth. Just what I need for better commentaries.

I am really going to make a stab at this whole youtube thing and right now I love doing playthroughs and BF3 videos. I would love to have a popular BF3 channel but there are just so many great BF3 youtubers already that my stuff will likely get lost, so I needed some backups. I will keep pumping out videos anyway and see what sticks, if anything. I will be doing a And if youtube fails at least it's still a fun hobby and a good extra part to gaming for me, I enjoy doing it and even if one person in the whole world likes my stuff, then that's a win in my book.

I decided to do a playthrough of Dark Souls (Cos it's awesome). I was bored and recorded a bunch of parts so check it out and let me know what you think If people like it I will keep it going and maybe incorporate some other game play throughs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJD2oIg0EE0

I was talking to her today about it and the whole connecticut shooting thing, and she turned and said "it's true, videogames make people violent". I was kind of shocked cos she knows I play games a lot and I am not violent at all. To which she replied "You just can't feel it, but it's there". I honestly didn't know how to reply to this, she said she saw it on TV how they did experiments with kids that linked videogame to violence

I tried to explain everything to her, and that the media constantly blames videogames like they did with movies before and then rock music after but she doesn't listen to it. One reason for this mentality could be because she is Korean and their government shed a terrible light on video games and the people who play them. And she is very gullible towards the media. If she sees it on TV she tends to think it's legit.

Needless to say I got a bit annoyed at the whole thing (which didn't help the whole violence thing), how does a guy react to that?

So I have always wanted to do some youtube gaming videos after watchign sooooo many online myself. I always thought it was cool and a fun hobby to do. Recently since I have had some time off college before exams I have made a few videos, mainly consisting of Far Cry 3, and would like to keep at it. I have put up about a video a day for the last week and I would love to continue doing that but sadly time likely won't allow me to do so and I will have to cut back when exams start and christmas is over. But still I will continue uploading whenever I can.

A question I wanted to ask anyone who reads is; what would you actually like to see in a youtube gaming video? Do people like straight gameplay, montages with music and lots of frame transitions with cool highlights, commentary walkthroughs or all of the above? Or do you just hate youtube gaming videos?

Let me know what you think and check out my channel linked below. If you like what you see please like some videos and subscribe if you're feeling generous. I normally don't like promoting like this but I would like to keep doing this and the help is always appreciated .

http://www.youtube.com/user/jacksepticeye

A sample of one of my videos:

The Beauty of Far Cry 3