Crysis 3 Review - After Completion

Crytek are back and now working with studios across the world have developed the third installment of their franchise, Crysis 3.

Playing a genetically enhanced super soldier (sound familiar) called 'Prophet' you are tasked with aiding other soldiers who have been ejected from the genetics program in a post apocalyptic rendition of Earth.

Cell have begun to bring to an end the nanosuit once thought to be thought of the future of worldwide warfare. Now a problem with its discovery of its development sourced from Alien technology that was discovered deep within the earth (reference to War of The Worlds).

In removing the nanosuit program due to soldiers ability to disconnect from the program, rogue soldiers have been subject to capture, torture and the forceful removal of nanosuits within specialist cell labs. Your task to lead a journey to free them and in turn a journey of discovery of more dark secrets that Cell Corporation hold from public view.

Visuals The Plenty

As a modern FPS it goes without saying that visuals and raw graphics within the game are top notch, even within the Xbox 360 version shaders and specular lighting are utilised immensely the environment and each level is designed to take advantage of this.

Cry Engine has always been known for its focus on advanced physics simulation in addition to the latest in fluid dynamics simulation, fabric, cloth and foliage deformation and skeletal simulations illustrating the forces that can be exerted during movement, transportation, or projection. The level of agility that the protagonist within the game is one not seen in other FPS, all of these controlled by player and not button led such as those in the Call of Duty series.

Dialogue

In game dialogue and voice talent is sourced very well other than Prophet's cliche 'action hero' bursts of emotive speech the co stars has a distinctive British 'Jason Statham' sounding accent. This works well with some of the FMV sequences which play on the emotive human vs killing machine stance.

Gameplay

Each action, or situation the character is emersed within allows the game to be played in any style that the user wishes. From ultimate stealth using the crossbow, which is equipped with an assortment of deadly arrow tips including thermite, carbon fibre, and airburst frag. Or to that of sheer firepower with the ability to customise weaponry in game, the art of successful combination of all ammunition types only once mastered will make the game easier to play.

Multiplayer

Multiplayer is actually surprisingly good, game modes and level design are well throughout and using the environment to your advantage give the experience more depth. Hunter mode is one pick up and play mode which was a big favourite. A Cell vs Hunter all out hunt, Cell carry motion trackers inspired from the Alien Series. Whilst hunters are invisible and carry crossbows with deadly accuracy. Simple last Cell Operative left alive wins, it gave hide and seek a whole new level.

With an average game completion time of around 6-7 hours there is a real sense of reward once completed.. With the video game industry miles ahead of the film industry, Crysis 3 aims to be an all out blockbuster, expect to be treated to a large scale trigger event at the end of each level with its root cause being you. The best example being the 007 Goldeneye inspired dam level, never has destruction looks so good.

Rating 8.6/10

Crysis 3, PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Publisher: Electronic Arts

The New Mac Pro - Hardware Review

Having previously fallen into the series of unfortunate events that lead me to acquire the original Mac Pro Desktop. Apple Inc have begun to establish themselves yet again as revolutionary technological pioneers by announcing the new redesigned Mac Pro Desktop range.

Having build systems for almost a decade now and owning many of the product when you tear down most Apple products your are usually disappointed. In fairness the Mac Mini range do well to balance price to performance ratios with component selection. However the behemoth that is the Mac Pro has always felt overpriced and over hyped.

The redesigned in no exception and having price tags of over £2000 must be justified to the extreme and the following short deconstruction of the new design will explain the pitfalls of this new 'innovation'.

The design is striking at first glance yet looking at the bare bones its the same story. Xeon CPU architecture and masses of infographics that explain bandwidth rates and immense raw power of the system.

The design is simply a PC wrapped within a circular tube with linkage to components fed through proprietary connectors to accommodate the new design. This in result meaning fewer user moddable parts. Something the original Mac Pro used as its USP. With this gone the system setup now accommodates inwards facing main board components with a central cooling fan. The RAM slots within sides and the flip side contains dual graphics chipsets arranged in similar manner to the mainboard.

Clearly the idea of dual graphics cards within a performance system seems a new concept to Apple. Clearly the fact is that custom builds have had these for years with the price outlay for most Mac Pro's this cannot justify the standard prediction of a price tag of £1.5k+ for a basic build with underpowered CPU's and GPU's.

Be cautious many of the claims are that of features and performance landmarks that were achieved before the announcement of this. The drive performance through using PCi-E as opposed to the standard SATA interface again is not a new concept.

In conclusion through a pure hardware analysis of the machine its clear it has no substance as a performance machine and with Apple's history the price unless heavily lowered will not impress the standard system builder.

On the other hand Apple being Apple, will use their marketing magic to convince the masses that this is yet again a revolution.

-Adstronix.

Seven Years Later

Haven't written in this blog for over seven years and I though instead of creating a new one I would return to this and pick up where I left off. My blogging drought was caused by unknown meanderings with real life, real life actually owns the digital space which these words reside in and I'm telling you its a much prettier and happier world.

During those seven years I have worked within IT for Emailvision, worked on multi-million pound marketing campaigns got a taste of client side consultancy, worked for Sky, and of course been part of the the most memorable London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. I've gained wealth and seen wealth disappear I've had tragedy and success and throughout it all I'm still the same.

Adstronix the blogger of tech, news, politics, science. This time I'm back, and hopefully for good. Using my phone as a blogging platform will allow me to contribute much more greatly, with efficiency and also you'll get to read my life in words, which according to many is in my hands, much like when Arsenal played their last EPL league game knowing their destiny was in their own hands, the next few years is what determines the success I have made of my life and I advise anyone to whether first year or second to start carving futures.

Blogging again is required by me to form a new online persona one of less complexity. During these seven years the web has changed. Not just HTML itself but the whole landscape. Every company wants their website to be mobile, the new go to word is 'responsiveness', the word isn't as complex as how I described it within my first venture into job interviews for this summer but I though I better get on and start rethinking my skillset.

Currently most people within the IT industry have a certain level of skills that are passable for jobs that are mundane. However due to the 'change' (the big R word) I have decided to update my skills to now include the following:

Motion Graphics and Composition
>Responsive Web Design (JQuery/CSS3/HTML5)
>Social Media Integration and SEO/SES
>Analytics Management and PPC revenue.

This of course will be the foundation upon which my own final year project as well as my own personal projects will reside within.

Today is Saturday which means its football time, the guys and Rocks lane are also holding an after match BBQ which hopefully caters for me :)

Keep posted for the next entry, I assure you it won't be another decade away this time.

Have a nice day...

-Adstronix

Leaked News from a well known source shows, and confirms that Nvidia has the 8xxx series ready, now these coupled with an fx-57 or one of the intel core 2 duos is a likely Xbox 360 killer. I mean lets take the stats of the new Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTX just one of the G80 Chips.

The GeForce 8800GTX with 768MB of GDDR3 video memory on a 384-bit memory bus. Core and memory clocks are set at 575 MHz and 900 MHz (1.8GHZ DDR). Other GeForce 8800 series features include 128-bit HDR with 16x anti-aliasing and NVIDIA’s Quantum Physics Engine.

Anway, there are only two disadvantages, well three,

1. The 8800GTX require two PCi-Express Power Connectors

2. For people without Powerful power supplies, your going to need just 450W for the graphic card itself

3. I expect that the price will be out of reach for some people just as many of todays cards are.

Other than that, its a next next gen Graphics card.

No fancy colours here, just solid shiny dark shades, GO G80

We have to see what AMD ATI Come with, hope its not dissapointing.

As Promised, I am going to show you the machine which I am writing this from, it's not THE top computer but it is everything I need to do my work. It costs a bit more than the Xbox 360 but it does more, and we all know that consoles are born obsolete.


Below are some snaps I took when I finished building it, the first boot was amazing, loading times are great, anyway here it is: (specs and price are BELOW)


Side VIEW:




Side Closeup:




Side Near:




Parellel VIEW: (The Best Picture)



Specifications, as of October 2006:

Case: Black ATX Form Factor Case with 2 UV Extractor Fans and Front Panel Soft Blue LED (9x Fans Total)


Power Supply Unit: X-Power 450 Watt, with latest Connectors (PCi-E)

MainBoard: ECS EliteGroup KN1 SLi Extreme

Chipset: Nvidia's NForce 4 SLi, with Dual GigaLan, 10xUSB, 6xSATA2, SoundStorm APU


Processor: AMD's Athlon 64 3500+ Socket 939 @ OC Speed of 2.5Ghz (2508 Mhz)

Ram: *Kingston 512MB DDR400 + *Kingston 512MB DDR400 (Matched Pair) (1GB)


Drives/Storage -
Phillips Dual Layer DVDRW+/-
Hitachi 160GB SATA Hard Drive
Maxtor 40GB IDE Hard Drive

Oh and the Price:

£420.50 (The 50p was for a drink)

Next Time: - Benchmarks - The Benchmark of a £400~ PC

Heathrow Terminal 5. is it almost complete?

Heres something that might interest you, the progress of Terminal 5 at heathrow,

I was just using Google Earth and came across this, at first glance it looked like someone had wrote in this into the mapping, take a look below, It for Real:

Terminal 5 from Google Earth TM




--New Terminal Building
--New Road Carriageways



<<< "T5" Roundabout, yes it actually is there, anyway the place looks amazing. I think that when the terminal will finally be complete the roundabout maybe the main entrance, much like the famous tunnel is for the other terminals at Heathrow.

Anyway, for now I can only guess, but still I think this place will give the surrounding areas a boost, with both more tourism and more Jobs for locals, I am not no MP but if i was, I would really grab this opportunity to really sort out LBHounslow by putting rehabilitation offenders, and people who have been set onto the wrong path a new lease of life, showing them that life has a point, and that they can become,

Whoever they want.

Here you can see the roundabout markings and T5 green in a close up:

I suppose this is what the pilot of a aircraft will see once the lands or takes off from T5......

What a site. just imagine this place filled up with cars, I know I can. lol

Battlefield 2142 Releases in the United Kingdom on Friday 20th October
, if you love 1942 and if you were addicted to battles in number 2 then 2142 will blow you away, make sure you give it a try you don't need that much a powerful system to play it but it makes the experience better, anyway play.com are selling it for £26.99 Delivered.

From playing the demo, I was really amazed how they changed the original BF2 Engine so much, also I can't wait to see how some of the beattiful levels are, I hope I can learn them before people to get an advantage in the game. anyway
It on PC ONLY so you console gamers are going to have to wait for EA next big Battlefield project: Battlefield: Bad Company

Throw out the rules of engagement, this is all-out war! Dice and EA announce Battlefield: Bad Company, currently in development for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

Anyway 1.5 Millions games have been logged just for the demo version why don't you try it before you decide to buy, thats what I do with all my games

The Battlefield 2142 Demo (Multiplayer) is quite a large file (1.07GB)

Get it Here: ftp://largedownloads.ea.com/pub/demos/Battlefield/2142/Battlefield_2142_Demo.exe

EA, DICE All Rights Are Theirs I am just a Fan...

AMD vs Intel
I agree For now that Advanced Micro Devices have lost the top spot in the processor performance market, this does not still make me want to go out and buy a Intel Core 2 Duo, the main reason for this is that I am happy with my AMD Athlon 64 3500+ as it is a superb processor which beats any Intel Pentium 4 or Pentium ### Series hands down.

Also I know that AMD never will fall behind in the race, as we speak they are developing something that will really push CPU technology in more effient and expansive ways, at the moment all I know is that their Project is called "K8L" and that their ventures will include the worlds first 2 x Dual Core CPU system and in late 2008 the earth shattering 4x4 design which is still a bit of a mystery, i think it means a 4 Core CPU with 2 of them. But we will have to wait and see, anyway it is up to you if you want to buy an intel core based Desktop or laptop, but as for me I can wait, because I already have 5 years of expanability in my current AMD Machine.

Find out more about My Machine the full Specs will be in a blog soon.