I'm not kidding. Take a look at this, if you have'nt already, and you'll know what I'm talking about. It makes F.E.A.R (or for that matter, the infamous stalker car in HL2: Episode One) seem like PG-13 material.
I don't have the patience to provide a synopsis here, and the video does a great job anyway - so just go ahead and watch it.
It suffices to say that a retro psychadelic look, little girls, and a decaying underwater utopia form an unsettling combination for insane phychological horror.

This is one game I'm not looking forward to play. 

Phew! Sixty hours into Oblivion and I'm still on level 10. I'm not even halfway through the main quest and I've hardly explored a dozen dungeons.

I'm going to stop. No doubt Oblivion is one of the best RPG's ever made, but putting it bluntly, Oblivion is flawed. NPC interaction is constricted, the AI is coarse, and most NPC's seem to enjoy behaving out of character. Of course, you're too sucked in at the beginning (say the first twenty hours) to notice, but eventually, every object (yup, even my new shiny enchanted dwarven armor), every NPC and every quest seem like the same.
Like the title says, I'm burnt out.

So I'm taking a breather, and looking at what's been happening in the other world. Er...I mean the real world. It's incredibly amazing, actually. Not having to see shiny faces with pointed ears, no pixelated rocks or jagged edges, and best of all, not having to listen to the story of the Daedra being driven out of K'vatch for the umpteenth time.



So that's about it. I've still got to see if the Gray Fox is for real, so I'm not quitting. Not yet. Oblivion still has far too many treasures for an adventurer, goblins for a skirmisher, undead for a dungeon delver, and vampires for a vigilante to hunt down - and I'm game. Well, in a week or two, at any rate.

After restricting myself from playing Oblivion during weekdays, I found myself plotting and day-dreaming about what I'm going to do I play it next. It's not taken over my life yet, but I can see it happening - in the near future.

Thanks to http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/article.asp?SCID=27&CIID=36222&p=1, I can now run the game with a  significantly better image quality - I've even stopped cursing my 6600GT. 

There's enough to write about Oblivion to keep me occupied for hours, but I'd rather be doing something better - no prizes for guessing what. I'll update this blog as soon as find time. 

The unbelievable hype surrounding the Elder Scrolls 4 : Oblivion, was hard to believe. Stories of players getting lost in Tamriel, claims of 100+ hours of gameplay, gorgeous visuals - you get the picture. Owing to a number of reasons ( including 1>the fact that it would make my 6600GT seem like junk, and 2>I have a real life I'm quite content with), I stayed away from it all this time, until, at last, I could bear the temptation no longer.
              I'm hooked. There's no other word for it. I've never had the patience to play an RPG, (Inventory management, shoddy combat, stupid AI....Bleh) but Oblivion has changed all that. Despite the fact that I'm running it at 800X600 at medium settings (at 100% view fade, with distant lands off), it still feels incredible.
I'd like to write more, but I've better things to do. Like closing magical portals.
See you in a hundred game hours.

It's been over a month since my last blog, perhaps because I have'nt played anything new since then. A startling lack of topics to write about coupled with my laziness, I suppose. After all, writing a review is hard work- especially if it's been a while since you've played the game. Hope to add some new content in the month of August.
For now,
Check out www.tweakguides.com - It's a totally original, down to earth collection of performance guides for most of the graphically intensive titles out there. As a bonus, it has the most comprehensive windows xp tweaking guide on the web - and it's free, of course.

Well, I'm done with F.E.A.R. (The fullstops are annoying.). As much as I'd like to pepper this entry with exotically phrased praises and commendations, I'm going to hold myself back until I write that review - If, that is, I ever get around to writing a review for F.E.A.R - I wilt away every time I try to, fearing that I'd never do justice to the game.
Here's a little game for you to play :
Read this first:
F.E.A.R has graphics, a lighting and particle system, an ambience that helps create a atmosphere, a story that ties up pretty neatly at the end(despite forcing you to stretch your imagination a little),  AI -the best in any game ever, and most importantly, system requirements that will make your pc bleed.
All things considered, F.E.A.R. is the second best fps ever. Period.

Now insert the following adjectives anywhere you feel like in the above paragraph:
Stunning, incredible, awesome, fantabulous, amazing, breathtaking, jaw-dropping..

Now, was'nt that fun?

"C'mon", I thought, "How on earth can a game actually be scary? Exciting - perhaps. Intriguing - possibly. story driven - Sure, but scary?"
And then I downloaded the demo. And boy, was I blown away! I now have the full version - and I'm loving every moment of it. Guys at monolith sure like to mess with our heads. The subtle interplay of shadows, the stark contrast between the chaos of combat and the spooky silence it leaves behind, the cohesive and cunning behaviour of the replica, the nightmarish visions and voices - and the seriously creepy little girl - I think I'll save the adjectives for my review.
I'm playing interval 5 now - and I'm taking it easy. I'm playing in single hour bursts, and I don't care if I'm missing out on the "immersion factor". I intend to savour the marvel that is F.E.A.R. for as long as I can.

PS: Why do all clocks, everywhere, show the time to be 1:15 (I'm assuming AM)?

It's my first rant! (Er..I mean my first "blog"...)

Well, it's not about gaming. Rather, It's about a moral issue that's been plaguing me for a while.

You're still there? Good. I thought you'd have disappeared at the mention of "moral issue". I intend to clear up a few notions about knowledge, and what it means to know something. Say you're asked if you know what specular and diffuse reflections are, and how they differ from each other(This is my gamespot blog, so it's got to have something to do with games!). Say, also, that you've read these :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffuse_reflection
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specular

Now Wikipedia has what I'd call articles on "Lighting for n00Bs"(Oh, and I don't know how 'n00Bs' is spelt in l33t.) , and the above mentioned wikis fall under this category.

(Off topic: Most Wikipedia articles that involve technical stuff are either aimed at n00Bs, or are detailed enough in irregular bursts to confuse everyone, veterans included. A prime example of this is the former of the above mentioned wikis. Articles for n00Bs are usually written in the layman's tongue, which tends to contort the subject matter until it gives an oversimplified picture, often a false one. I'm no authority on radiation, but the article on diffuse reflection does seem to be written, rather ineffieciently, for n00Bs. I'm not complaining - the info is free, at any rate. It's just an observation.)

Would you say you know what they are and how they differ once you've gone through the articles? At the end of the exercise, (if, that is, you actually bother to read through them- it was the lighting in HL2 that got me thinking about that stuff) all I knew was a bunch of names for a few more phenomena without knowing much about the phenomena themselves. I know a few more terms now: "microfacets", "perfect specular reflectors" and "specular highlights" - none of which are clearly defined - infact, two of these terms are actually defined in terms of each other!

What I'm trying to bring to your attention is the chasm between knowing what something is called, and knowing what it means. It is'nt hard to find more down to earth examples of this misconception that people (I'm no exception. We all are victims of wishful thinking - we like to believe that we know something because we have a name for it.) hold : Everyone 'knows' what monsoons are, or why they occur. Well, I don't. And neither do most of you. In fact, very few people (perhaps an insignificant fraction of the total number of physicists and meteorologists) actually know what's happening (and why).

A few more examples leap into my mind : The sun moves in an apparently peculiar fashion across the sky over the course of an year. If you stay near the equator, it's weird enough - if you stay at high latitudes, boy, you're in for a surprise! Everyone believes they know exactly how the sun moves - think about it.
If you're not convinced, google it and check for yourself. (The more ambitious ones could set up a sundial with a pole and a flat slab - and figure out the path of the sun by measuring the length and the inclination of the pole's shadow on the slab at the same time of the day, once a week, for a couple of months.) If you're still not convinced, search for "analema" on google.
Now, the crux of the argument. I could know terms like "equinox", and "ascending and descending nodes", and "sidereal time" and so on... (standard astronomy jargon), without knowing anything about what the sun is actually upto.

So let's face it : We are not as knowledgable as we seem. We are, in fact, a confused bunch of folks prone to accept flashy jargon without an inkling of knowledge. I say this even more so with laymen in mind - the kind who toss around terms like "HDR" ( I suppose you saw this coming!).

I'm not against laymen getting to know about HDR. I'm against laymen "trivializing" it. Give stuff the respect it deserves.

I'm not sure how to end such an incredibly long rant.(Blog. Not rant. Blog.) So I just will.

----------------------------------------
PS : I read the whole thing just now: it's vague. Bah... I'm not changing it now.

Correction: "Ascending and descending nodes"  are associated with the motion of the moon, not the sun.