Left 4 Dead Demo Impressions

I have to start by saying that I’ am a great fan of COOP games (The team work games not shelf stacking type). So I was very excited to see valve working on their own cooperative shooter, especially as it involves zombies. Personal preferences aside I decided to download the demo to see if it was worth buying. I played the demo on steam, and although I do have a 360 I felt this was more of a PC game. The game is 1-4 player coop and 1-8 player versus. The demo is coop only.

Now it seems valve have some weird idea on what the purpose of a demo is. To me the idea of a demo is to

New Games Fallout 3 and Red Alert 3

Last week I brought Fallout 3 and Red Alert 3. Both were long awaited games which I have been juggling between in my spare time. I am planning to write something about both of these very soon but for now my time is spent playing them.

Take a look at the screenshots I have captured for both games on my xfire page. Beware of the Fallout 3 screenshots if you are not fond of gore.

Click here for Kenjaras Xfire Screenshots

These screenshots will update as I play through more of the game. They automatically get uploaded everytime I finish a session on a game.

Heavy update (TF2)

The heavy update was released last night, conveniently just as I got home from work. The update focuses on the heavy class, giving him 35 achievements and 3 new weapons/items. There is the sandvich, which is basically a glorified first aid kit and fun to see in action. The sandwiches heal 120 health and leave the heavy vulnerable to attack in the few seconds it takes for them to munch it down. There is a new mini gun called Natascha which slows enemies down but deals less damage. The last item which most people know about is the KGB (Killing Gloves of Boxing), these gloves give 5 seconds of critical hits when used in exchange for a slower hit speed.

As well as the updates to the heavy there is a new payload map (badwater basin) and a new gamemode called arena. Arena has 5 maps, two new and three converted old ones. Arena is played in rounds where teams face off in a one life battle. There are few health packs around so you need to be careful. The round ends when a central point is captured or one team is knocked out.

There is a new “meet the” video out about the sandvich, you can watch it here

As per usual the class update has turned the game on its head with 90% of all players being heavy. Its a site to see given the heavies large size, watch them lumber around with their miniguns in the masses.

Making Vista more gaming friendly 1

Vista as it stands right now it scolded by the gaming community for being slower than XP at gaming. Due to a recent troublesome virus on XP I decided to go full vista and I have no noticeable performance difference between my old XP setup. Anyway I have been playing with vista and looking into ways I making it more gaming friendly. Some of these enhancements will be the same as XP as it is after all a very similar operating system.

• Install service pack 1

The first thing to do is to make sure you install service pack 1. This includes all the small performance updates that were released, including some vital ones that increase multi core and memory performance.

• Turn off automatic hibernation

When you use your pc for gaming you often need to download large files. This could be the game themselves (if digitally purchased) or patches for games. It seems vista by default sets you pc to hibernate after 20 minutes (I think) of idle time. This is obviously no good if you want to leave you pc downloading big files while you do something else.

To turn this off go to control panel -> System and Maintenance -> Power Options -> Change when the computer sleeps.

Change the put the computer to sleep option to never to turn off auto hibernation.

• Install the gamertag gadget

If you have a 360 or play a lot of the games for windows titles then you may want to show off and keep track of your gamerscore. There are a few gamertag gadgets but the one I have been using is called compact xbox360 gamercard. To install a new gadget that is not in the gadget list go to get more gadgets online. From there search for gamertag and you should find this nice little gadget.

• Install the Steam gadget

The steam gadgets displays your favorite servers in the sidebar and shows how many people are in them as well as what map the server is on. To get his gadget simply go to get more gadgets online and search for steam. When you click a server the gadget expands to show the players, scores and an image of the map.

Kane and Lynch is actually pretty good

I lost all interest in this game last year after all those reviews came out slating it as a mediocre shooter. I decided to pick it up in the 2 for £15 section at GAME and give it a go now its cheap and I got a big suprise. I have only played singleplayer and split screen coop but it is a very impressive game. I never faced any real bugs or problems whilst playing the game straight through on hard. It has a very good story line where you play a pretty much unlikable rogue who is paying for the problems he caused. A lot of reviews call it an average shooter but the cinematic storyline really makes it more of an interactive crime film where you are the star.

Cheap Wii Storage (SD cards at play.com)

If like me you have downloaded quite a bit of addition content and games for your Wii then its likely to be getting pretty full. I recently went on the hunt for an SD card to solve my lack of memory issue and found some very cheap ones on play.com. When I ordered mine they were £5.99, but they are now £6.50 so the prices are fluctuating somewhat. Either way they are very cheap and 2 gigs is a lot of Wii blocks( 1MB is approx 8 blocks).

So if you live in Europe and need an SD card play.com is the place to order from.

The SD cards I am referring to are the SanDisk 2GB.

There are cheaper play.com alternatives but there are some comments of those not working very well.

Thanks to my extra space I have the chance to get most of the wii ware games, reviews to come soon!