The Games I Play; The Settings I Use
Borderlands is basically a mix between an FPS and an action RPG in the spirit of Diablo — kill stuff and get random-generated loot. While co-op is arguably the best way to play the game (the game supports up to four players), it can also be played solo and it runs pretty well on a Mac that’s three years old.
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Tags: borderlands, diablo
I’m not an online gamer, but the EA Store had a great deal on Battlefield: Bad Company 2 a few weeks ago so I picked it up. Below are my settings for the single-player.
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Tags: battlefield
There’s not a lot I can say about S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat that I haven’t already said about S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. These are open world FPSes that, in turns, terrify and delight. They are games you play with the lights off and your headphones on so that you can soak up every drop of the atmosphere — because, face it, there’s nothing quite like wandering through the pitch of night with a tiny flashlight, while you’re slowly bleeding to death, your ammo is running low, and you can’t sprint because you’re too overloaded with the loot of other fallen Stalkers.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl is one of the scariest, most atmospheric games I’ve ever played on the PC. I’m not a huge horror fan — not even a little horror fan — but that didn’t stop me from buying S.T.A.L.K.E.R. last July. In fact, two things overrode my instinct to not get the game: 1) Shawn Elliot repeatedly mentioning the game on the GFW Radio podcast and this article by Jim Rossignol on Rock, Paper, Shotgun.
If you took Call of Duty 1 or 2 and mixed it in a pot with Rainbox Six: Vegas, you’d have a pretty good idea of what Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway is like — a linear FPS with tactical, squad-based elements. I picked it up a few weeks back on GamersGate for $7.50 USD and I’ve gotten my money’s worth out of it, though it took longer to download than for me to play through.
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Tags: brothers in arms, rainbow six vegas, call of duty, fallout 3, far cry 2
Pretty much unlike any game I’ve ever played (other than the first-person perspective), theHunter is a slow, meditative, and yet heart-pounding experience. It’s a hunting sim, yes, but so well done that you get lost in it — completely and utterly taken in by the atmosphere and the actual hunting (tracking, spotting, luring) itself. Did I mention it’s free? Well, it is. As long as you don’t mind hunting only Mule Deer, you don’t have to pay a cent — simply go to the website and sign up for the “Guest Pass,” which gets you a rifle, unlimited ammo, and all the Mule Deer you can bag.
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Tags: thehunter
Ubisoft had totally sold me on the idea of Far Cry 2 (Oct 2008) before the game ever came out, mostly because of their promo videos (especially, “Deceiving Your Enemy“). Semi-descructable environments (including buildings and vegetation), a huge, open world, night-and-day cycles, decent enemy AI, and fire that could spread unpredictably — all seemed like the ingredients for a dream flambé FPS.
But would I be able to run it?
I had my doubts, until I read a story stating that the game ran pretty well on modest/mid-level PCs. So, I downloaded and installed the game to see. While Far Cry 2 itself isn’t everything I’d hoped for (it’s fun, no doubt about it, just repetitive), it has performed well on my “modest,” one-year-old iMac. Below are the settings I’ve used.
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Tags: far cry 2
Since GTA IV is currently a no go, I’ve been looking around to see what other PC games might be worth picking up for the holiday. One I never gave much thought to, because of how it crushed GPUs when it came out last year, is Crysis. I came across a pretty interesting forum post over at MacRumors showing benchmark results and in-game images of Crysis on a late ’07 model aluminum 20” iMac with the following specs:
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Fallout 3 (Oct 2008) is the game I most anticipated this year. I loved Oblivion and the idea of a post-apocalyptic RPG from the same developers seemed like an incredible idea.
The phrase “Oblivion with guns” has been tossed around a lot to describe Fallout 3, both positively and derisively. Well, it is and it isn’t. There are definitely similarities between the two Bethesda games (for better and for worse), but I’ve enjoyed this game immensely and it runs quite well on my iMac, with a solid 30-50 fps @ 1280×800 in most areas.
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Tags: fallout 3
