Thalandros

Got a custom made prebuilt 3 years ago, since I've gotten more tech savvy and started replacing everything separately.

Maybe not max settings, but most recent games will run at 60fps at high settings for a while. It's a very good card. If you want MAX settings and 60+ FPS look at a 290x or 780.

I use one with the new, bad firmware and such and even though it's definitely not matching up to similar 120Gb SSD's, it still boots windows up in a matter of 13 seconds, and runs fine for games. Unless you're a heavy duty user, or a benchmarker, you're not going to notice much difference. I usually recommend against it aswell, but for that price? 

A simple google would've done it. But you can safely reinstall no problem with the same key.

I really don't care for headphones more than 2.1, but speakers just sound awesome with more than 2.1, especially on a big HD/UHD screen that should be great to watch movies. On PC, I have Sennheiser HD 598's which are 2.1 headphones but have ''EAR'' technology which basically makes the sound more natural. For gaming, 5,1 could make a SLIGHT difference for performance in FPS etc, for the rest like films and music, really not. You could try a pair of headphones with Razer Surround, it simulates surround sound. It's not perfect but a good indicator for if you like it

Watch Dogs review
by Thalandros


Topics that shall be discussed:
- Graphics
- Controls and Functioning
- Gameplay
- Sound and Story
- Conclusion.


Graphics:

Watch Dogs was released only yesterday with big expectations, despite the graphics just not being quite the same as revealed in E3 ’12. Despite that, I was not disappointed. Before we go on, my specs:

Intel Core i5 4670 @ 3.4Mhz, 3,8Mhz turbo.
Ice X HD Radeon 6950 2GB
8GB RAM @ 1333Mhz
120GB Kingston SSD. (I know!)

I was genuinely amazed with what my specs were able to pull off. I am able to run at medium with high textures and high shadows (because of my CPU), and the game looked quite spectacular at a solid 50-60FPS throughout, at 1920x1080p. Especially the sunsets and nighttimes were beautiful, but the game did have a bit of a slow render rate, as in the vehicles and pedestrians loaded quite close by. This couldn’t be changed in the settings and was quite annoying. Apart from that they did a good job around midtier GPU’s at least, but I’ve heard MANY complains from higher end GPU’s (GTX 780, Radeon R9 280/290x etc.) running on higher settings with severe FPS drops. Let’s hope these issues are fixed in coming patches. The textures genuinely looked quite awesome and I felt really good driving in the city, looking around.



Physics I’ll include with Graphics. It’s a bit wonky, this one. From one side I really like the physics and it might be a little over the top, and from the other it’s not that great and a bit underwhelming (when smashing against a small wall for example.) It’s personal but I don’t care too much about it, it’s ‘’passable’’ for me. Don’t expect huge explosions, but do expect enemies falling on the ground from 50M up on a building.


- Controls and Functioning

This is the biggest problem for me. At the start the game felt VERY weird, especially the menu with a crapton of acceleration which I had to turn off in the variables file. Kind of put me off. Apart from that controlling felt a bit unnatural but I got used to that very quickly and it was quite comfortable since then. The controls are easy but dear lord, the game is a pain in ass to control with the mouse. I thought this game was natively built on PC? That didn’t show. The vast majority of menus didn’t have mouse cursors and you had to ‘’guess’’ where your mouse pointer’d be. Also shooting felt a bit off at first, but I got used to it.

Driving a car is my biggest complaint however. Cars feel very stiff and not very responsive. Outside of a few that feel ‘’okay-ish’’, the vast majority of cars actually feel like I don’t want to drive them. Over time you kind of get used to it, but it never is and will be the driving other open world games have, it’s just a bit less mobile and more stiff. Motor cycles on the other hand I like quite a bit and I’ve enjoyed driving on them, especially with that awesome jacket Aiden Pearce has.
Things like looking around take a while of getting used to as well, but once you do feels natural and alright.

- Gameplay
The world feels quite alive. I really like little features they added in, or the THOUSANDS of possible conditions the people are in. ‘’Frequent watcher of police reality TV-series’’, or ‘’Remarried’’ for example. Funny little things. What saddens me is that none of their conditions really have an impact at that point in the game. They don’t react more angry because they were ‘’recently dumped’’, or an ‘’ex-police officer’’. I understand that’d be a LOT of coding to do however, so maybe next time! The world outside of that also feels quite alive. Always there are atleast some cars and pedestrians around, and you can actually go into a LOT of buildings, however irrelevant they may be. You can order a coke at a cafeteria, get new clothes (obviously), buy a gun and then threaten the shopkeeper, take his money and run..!
So yeah, a lot of things to do in the city.
People compare this game to GTA V, and they do so falsely. The game is an open world, bit of a ‘’mayhem’’ game like GTA and Saints Row, but not precisely. It’s got a lot of interesting mechanics that make me interested. The hacking (usually most hacks are done by holding Q), are very quickly intuitive and can be used for strategy very efficiently. Exploding the explosives on a guard for example, or lifting a bridge right before police rides over it is and feels SO rewarding and adds a whole new level of enjoyment to the game. The overall mechanics feel well implemented into the core gameplay; a GTA-style open world RPG.
 Stealth & Hacking:
The game allows you to be very stealthy (although doesn’t always prefer if you do, which is kind of a letdown)
especially in Gang Hideout sidemissions. More on this later. You can be so creative going stealth, and no mission is ever the same. If you pick a lot of skills in the ‘’hacking’’ tree, you’re in for a treat. You can disable comms, distract people (For example, they just killed a dolphin it says on their condition, and you ‘’distract’’ them by playing a dolphin sound. Very limited and only on gang members, understandably!). Also you can explode explosives on top of someone who’s wearing grenades.
A fun example: In the beginning of the game, you get ambushed. There were snipers with grenades on the rooftops. Behind them there was an electrical device you can blow up. I did that, the sniper fell off the roof, I exploded his grenade while nearly on the ground, he blew up the car and his other three gang members.
That just feels great and is so much fun, it just never gets old.

Sidemissions and things to do:

 
Along with Stealth, this is where the game TRULY shines. There is just so much to do in Chicago. You can do Gang hideouts (invade a hideout, knock down a certain individual and get out) Fixer contracts (Catch someone, distract the police etc.) Criminal Convoy (Disrupt and kill someone and his ride, then get away or kill his entire escort.)
and numerous other things like playing a game of poker or chess. The game is almost too distracting from the main missions sometimes! You frequently get called that a new Criminal Convoy has been found for you to mess up, for example.
There’s also crimes you can solve if you want to. This’ll bring your reputation bar up if you solve them while killing or bringing the criminal down. (You can become an ‘’anarchist’’ or a ‘’vigilante’’. These things will have minor impact on the game except some cute noticing by pedestrians etc. You get it up by solving crimes and missions, and down by killing people or police!)
Gunplay
Gunplay is kind of a minus about this game for me. As stated I have minor mouse issues with the game but the shooting feels a bit shaky sometimes. Outside of that, gunfights are pretty fun once you get the hang of it and you’re easily killed if you put your difficulty high enough! It's an okay part of the game, just like most open world games. Don't expect Battlefield/Planetside 2 level shooter here!

Police: A minor point, but the police in this game is kind of weird. You pretty much only get police on you when a pedestrian calls the police, and you’ll have a chance to interfere (this happens when you pull your gun out in public, or steal a car VERY frequently and is very annoying.).
If you fail to interfere, a scan goes down at your location and once it reaches a 100%, (aka you stay within the scan range) police comes after you. The police catch-n-run is very fun though, especially playing with bridges and using traffic to blow up their cars!
Multiplayer:
 
This is an interesting part of the game, because if it works well, it’s awesome. Problem is, it doesn’t work well. Right now the Ubisoft servers are often down and don’t work properly, or there are some other errors. A lot of hackers have also been spotted already.
I haven't dug into multiplayer too much because the game itself is just so much fun, but..!
Personally, the mode that stands out and is my absolute favorite is the ‘’Intrusion’’ mode, where you hack another player (and seamlessly join his game!) and hope he doesn’t spot and kill you before you do. Of course, you can get this done to you too! Very awesome, especially when it’s a tough match. After your game you’re back in your world, like nothing happened, It’s really good fun.


Story & Sound
The game features music from pretty known bands (Rise Against) and other artists. They seem to have had a lot of budget go into copyrighted material to use for their game. A lot of music I’ve never heard of before too though, so that’s good!
The sound of the overall game is rich and well, except gunshots. They sound fairly bad and aren’t very exciting. The ambient sounds or the street performers though, are top notch and a pleasure to listen to.
 
Story I won’t go to much into because I’m afraid I might spoil stuff, but the story up to this point has got me gripped pretty good, and I want to know what happens next! The dialogue is always very good and very strong characters come up. A lot of messed up ones aswell, obviously. It's pretty deep so far and I'm liking the character progression (or regression at start of the game) we're getting. It's by no means a Call of Duty campaign!
From the getgo you do realize this is a story about revenge however. So if you’re not into that, then you won’t care too much. Still really good however! I’m in the middle of act II for people who want to know. 


Conclusion & Verdict:

I was REALLY anticipating this game considering I’ve been waiting for it for two years now. I didn’t expect it to be perfect, I don’t really do that with Ubisoft games anyway, but I expected a lot. And expectations were met. I really like the game so far and I will for quite some time. To give some sort of indication: Tuesday it came out for me at 9am. I started playing at 1PM and played (with a 2hr break) until 3AM. I felt really emerged and the game looked good too. I had quite a bit of fun with a friend on Free roam mode and can’t wait to try that out with more than 2 people.

I hope you liked and gained knowledge from this review!
Leave any constructive feedback below!
Thanks!


PS: Pictures are a bit low res, Imgur didn't work with me and I messed up a bit. Sorry!
 
@martsc2


The website I just opened where I post my future reviews as well as here: http://techandgamequickies.webs.com/apps/blog/

I saw this in the comments of that Facebook post and LOLed.
 

It's a gamer headset. Gaming headsets just break fast, it's a fact. They probably will last you 1, maaaaybe two years. You're much better off getting a cheap (but better than most headset mics) microphone and a decent pair of headphones for the same price.

Do keep in mind this guy is positive about the Xbone and PS4.
 
it's also very clear he's just promoting the product

Watch Dogs review
by Thalandros


Topics that shall be discussed:
- Graphics
- Controls and Functioning
- Gameplay
- Sound and Story
- Conclusion.


Graphics:

Watch Dogs was released only yesterday with big expectations, despite the graphics just not being quite the same as revealed in E3 ’12. Despite that, I was not disappointed. Before we go on, my specs:

Intel Core i5 4670 @ 3.4Mhz, 3,8Mhz turbo.
Ice X HD Radeon 6950 2GB
8GB RAM @ 1333Mhz
120GB Kingston SSD. (I know!)

I was genuinely amazed with what my specs were able to pull off. I am able to run at medium with high textures and high shadows (because of my CPU), and the game looked quite spectacular at a solid 50-60FPS throughout, at 1920x1080p. Especially the sunsets and nighttimes were beautiful, but the game did have a bit of a slow render rate, as in the vehicles and pedestrians loaded quite close by. This couldn’t be changed in the settings and was quite annoying. Apart from that they did a good job around midtier GPU’s at least, but I’ve heard MANY complains from higher end GPU’s (GTX 780, Radeon R9 280/290x etc.) running on higher settings with severe FPS drops. Let’s hope these issues are fixed in coming patches. The textures genuinely looked quite awesome and I felt really good driving in the city, looking around.



Physics I’ll include with Graphics. It’s a bit wonky, this one. From one side I really like the physics and it might be a little over the top, and from the other it’s not that great and a bit underwhelming (when smashing against a small wall for example.) It’s personal but I don’t care too much about it, it’s ‘’passable’’ for me. Don’t expect huge explosions, but do expect enemies falling on the ground from 50M up on a building.


- Controls and Functioning

This is the biggest problem for me. At the start the game felt VERY weird, especially the menu with a crapton of acceleration which I had to turn off in the variables file. Kind of put me off. Apart from that controlling felt a bit unnatural but I got used to that very quickly and it was quite comfortable since then. The controls are easy but dear lord, the game is a pain in ass to control with the mouse. I thought this game was natively built on PC? That didn’t show. The vast majority of menus didn’t have mouse cursors and you had to ‘’guess’’ where your mouse pointer’d be. Also shooting felt a bit off at first, but I got used to it.

Driving a car is my biggest complaint however. Cars feel very stiff and not very responsive. Outside of a few that feel ‘’okay-ish’’, the vast majority of cars actually feel like I don’t want to drive them. Over time you kind of get used to it, but it never is and will be the driving other open world games have, it’s just a bit less mobile and more stiff. Motor cycles on the other hand I like quite a bit and I’ve enjoyed driving on them, especially with that awesome jacket Aiden Pearce has.
Things like looking around take a while of getting used to as well, but once you do feels natural and alright.

- Gameplay
The world feels quite alive. I really like little features they added in, or the THOUSANDS of possible conditions the people are in. ‘’Frequent watcher of police reality TV-series’’, or ‘’Remarried’’ for example. Funny little things. What saddens me is that none of their conditions really have an impact at that point in the game. They don’t react more angry because they were ‘’recently dumped’’, or an ‘’ex-police officer’’. I understand that’d be a LOT of coding to do however, so maybe next time! The world outside of that also feels quite alive. Always there are atleast some cars and pedestrians around, and you can actually go into a LOT of buildings, however irrelevant they may be. You can order a coke at a cafeteria, get new clothes (obviously), buy a gun and then threaten the shopkeeper, take his money and run..!
So yeah, a lot of things to do in the city.
People compare this game to GTA V, and they do so falsely. The game is an open world, bit of a ‘’mayhem’’ game like GTA and Saints Row, but not precisely. It’s got a lot of interesting mechanics that make me interested. The hacking (usually most hacks are done by holding Q), are very quickly intuitive and can be used for strategy very efficiently. Exploding the explosives on a guard for example, or lifting a bridge right before police rides over it is and feels SO rewarding and adds a whole new level of enjoyment to the game. The overall mechanics feel well implemented into the core gameplay; a GTA-style open world RPG.
 Stealth & Hacking:
The game allows you to be very stealthy (although doesn’t always prefer if you do, which is kind of a letdown)
especially in Gang Hideout sidemissions. More on this later. You can be so creative going stealth, and no mission is ever the same. If you pick a lot of skills in the ‘’hacking’’ tree, you’re in for a treat. You can disable comms, distract people (For example, they just killed a dolphin it says on their condition, and you ‘’distract’’ them by playing a dolphin sound. Very limited and only on gang members, understandably!). Also you can explode explosives on top of someone who’s wearing grenades.
A fun example: In the beginning of the game, you get ambushed. There were snipers with grenades on the rooftops. Behind them there was an electrical device you can blow up. I did that, the sniper fell off the roof, I exploded his grenade while nearly on the ground, he blew up the car and his other three gang members.
That just feels great and is so much fun, it just never gets old.

Sidemissions and things to do:

 
Along with Stealth, this is where the game TRULY shines. There is just so much to do in Chicago. You can do Gang hideouts (invade a hideout, knock down a certain individual and get out) Fixer contracts (Catch someone, distract the police etc.) Criminal Convoy (Disrupt and kill someone and his ride, then get away or kill his entire escort.)
and numerous other things like playing a game of poker or chess. The game is almost too distracting from the main missions sometimes! You frequently get called that a new Criminal Convoy has been found for you to mess up, for example.
There’s also crimes you can solve if you want to. This’ll bring your reputation bar up if you solve them while killing or bringing the criminal down. (You can become an ‘’anarchist’’ or a ‘’vigilante’’. These things will have minor impact on the game except some cute noticing by pedestrians etc. You get it up by solving crimes and missions, and down by killing people or police!)
Gunplay
Gunplay is kind of a minus about this game for me. As stated I have minor mouse issues with the game but the shooting feels a bit shaky sometimes. Outside of that, gunfights are pretty fun once you get the hang of it and you’re easily killed if you put your difficulty high enough! It's an okay part of the game, just like most open world games. Don't expect Battlefield/Planetside 2 level shooter here!

Police: A minor point, but the police in this game is kind of weird. You pretty much only get police on you when a pedestrian calls the police, and you’ll have a chance to interfere (this happens when you pull your gun out in public, or steal a car VERY frequently and is very annoying.).
If you fail to interfere, a scan goes down at your location and once it reaches a 100%, (aka you stay within the scan range) police comes after you. The police catch-n-run is very fun though, especially playing with bridges and using traffic to blow up their cars!
Multiplayer:
 
This is an interesting part of the game, because if it works well, it’s awesome. Problem is, it doesn’t work well. Right now the Ubisoft servers are often down and don’t work properly, or there are some other errors. A lot of hackers have also been spotted already.
I haven't dug into multiplayer too much because the game itself is just so much fun, but..!
Personally, the mode that stands out and is my absolute favorite is the ‘’Intrusion’’ mode, where you hack another player (and seamlessly join his game!) and hope he doesn’t spot and kill you before you do. Of course, you can get this done to you too! Very awesome, especially when it’s a tough match. After your game you’re back in your world, like nothing happened, It’s really good fun.


Story & Sound
The game features music from pretty known bands (Rise Against) and other artists. They seem to have had a lot of budget go into copyrighted material to use for their game. A lot of music I’ve never heard of before too though, so that’s good!
The sound of the overall game is rich and well, except gunshots. They sound fairly bad and aren’t very exciting. The ambient sounds or the street performers though, are top notch and a pleasure to listen to.
 
Story I won’t go to much into because I’m afraid I might spoil stuff, but the story up to this point has got me gripped pretty good, and I want to know what happens next! The dialogue is always very good and very strong characters come up. A lot of messed up ones aswell, obviously. It's pretty deep so far and I'm liking the character progression (or regression at start of the game) we're getting. It's by no means a Call of Duty campaign!
From the getgo you do realize this is a story about revenge however. So if you’re not into that, then you won’t care too much. Still really good however! I’m in the middle of act II for people who want to know. 


Conclusion & Verdict:

I was REALLY anticipating this game considering I’ve been waiting for it for two years now. I didn’t expect it to be perfect, I don’t really do that with Ubisoft games anyway, but I expected a lot. And expectations were met. I really like the game so far and I will for quite some time. To give some sort of indication: Tuesday it came out for me at 9am. I started playing at 1PM and played (with a 2hr break) until 3AM. I felt really emerged and the game looked good too. I had quite a bit of fun with a friend on Free roam mode and can’t wait to try that out with more than 2 people.

I hope you liked and gained knowledge from this review!
Leave any constructive feedback below!
Thanks!


PS: Pictures are a bit low res, Imgur didn't work with me and I messed up a bit. Sorry!
 
@martsc2


The website I just opened where I post my future reviews as well as here: http://techandgamequickies.webs.com/apps/blog/

It's a gamer headset. Gaming headsets just break fast, it's a fact. They probably will last you 1, maaaaybe two years. You're much better off getting a cheap (but better than most headset mics) microphone and a decent pair of headphones for the same price.

Do keep in mind this guy is positive about the Xbone and PS4.
 
it's also very clear he's just promoting the product

I really need to start make a post and just paste it in all these threads. Hokay:


Whatever you're looking for, you're probably not getting yourself a good deal by buying a gaming headset. They're ripoffs. these companies have no experience making good, quality headphones and microphones and will be garbage just like the build quality of the actual gear. Therefore, stick with headphones/IEM's + a modmic, Zalman ZM-1 mic (amazing microphone for €5) or a desktop microphone (more expensive option.) For under 100$ you can get yourself some okay headphones already, look at Sennheiser, Denon etc. 

A good link for you with gigantic amounts of information: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/tech-support/319355-the-ultimate-headphone-audio-thread-seriously


   I previously had a Roccat Kave (€90~), and now own a pair of Sennheiser HD 598's, the most expensive model of the 5XX series from sennheiser. I don't think I'll have to buy another pair for the next 3-4 years (own them for a year now). I recently purchased a hardcase just to be sure, but they're already sturdy, look amazing, they sound awesomely balanced and you can hear where the sound is coming from (E.A.R. technology is what they call it. probably also just a marketing technique). I can wear these cans for years in a row if I have to, because they're just so comfortable. Never again will I buy a gaming headset!

Me neither, just really interested in getting a decent chair, haha

You might start giving a fuck when something happens or is worse because of the alcohol. As said, it's probably not abd to have a couple of beers every weekend, whatever. Just don't overdo it and fuck yourself up, because guess what, you're prone to doing that at your (and my, but I'm staying quite far away from it) age.

Drinking age just got raised to 18 here, and I'm 16.

I think that's unreasonable (mostly because we're used to 16, so most people will do it illegaly anyway)


I think alcohol at any age past 15 is fine, as long as you aren't a complete retard about it which seems what most people around my age seem to find it useful for. I guess it's kind of a retard magnet.

Personally I drink a beer once every couple months at a special occasion (at home only, obviously) at a birthday. I like it, but not to the point of f***ing myself up.

It's the other way around. People think gaming headset have some special ability to do "gaming" sounds when in reality they don't. There is no magical footstep sound signature. Surround is either created purely software or with multiple tiny speakers which causes a massive quality loss without actually giving any better surround experience over stereo headphones. Some of the best surround/positional headphones are not gaming headsets at all. I have the Superlux headphones and they are way better for positional accuracy than any headset from a gaming peripheral company I've ever used.
 
Also, a $10 Zalman clip-on mic will turn the Superlux headphones into a headset that beats all those gaming peripheral company toys.

My mistake of getting a NON-K i5 4670. Definitely get it, you won't regret it and overclocking is safe as long as you don't go WAY out of the ordinary.

Razer Electras have a mic on them (need a splitter or whatever it's called though to let the input go through the audio jack), and are very basssy. I looked at them when I wanted budget headphones. They seem comfortable and affordable for around 50 of your local currency.

Yeah, sorry. I quoted it from another forum where I also posted it, and apparently the BBcode made it black. I use the night-version of LTT, so I didn't realise.

Watch Dogs review
by Thalandros


Topics that shall be discussed:
- Graphics
- Controls and Functioning
- Gameplay
- Sound and Story
- Conclusion.


Graphics:

Watch Dogs was released only yesterday with big expectations, despite the graphics just not being quite the same as revealed in E3 ’12. Despite that, I was not disappointed. Before we go on, my specs:

Intel Core i5 4670 @ 3.4Mhz, 3,8Mhz turbo.
Ice X HD Radeon 6950 2GB
8GB RAM @ 1333Mhz
120GB Kingston SSD. (I know!)

I was genuinely amazed with what my specs were able to pull off. I am able to run at medium with high textures and high shadows (because of my CPU), and the game looked quite spectacular at a solid 50-60FPS throughout, at 1920x1080p. Especially the sunsets and nighttimes were beautiful, but the game did have a bit of a slow render rate, as in the vehicles and pedestrians loaded quite close by. This couldn’t be changed in the settings and was quite annoying. Apart from that they did a good job around midtier GPU’s at least, but I’ve heard MANY complains from higher end GPU’s (GTX 780, Radeon R9 280/290x etc.) running on higher settings with severe FPS drops. Let’s hope these issues are fixed in coming patches. The textures genuinely looked quite awesome and I felt really good driving in the city, looking around.



Physics I’ll include with Graphics. It’s a bit wonky, this one. From one side I really like the physics and it might be a little over the top, and from the other it’s not that great and a bit underwhelming (when smashing against a small wall for example.) It’s personal but I don’t care too much about it, it’s ‘’passable’’ for me. Don’t expect huge explosions, but do expect enemies falling on the ground from 50M up on a building.


- Controls and Functioning

This is the biggest problem for me. At the start the game felt VERY weird, especially the menu with a crapton of acceleration which I had to turn off in the variables file. Kind of put me off. Apart from that controlling felt a bit unnatural but I got used to that very quickly and it was quite comfortable since then. The controls are easy but dear lord, the game is a pain in ass to control with the mouse. I thought this game was natively built on PC? That didn’t show. The vast majority of menus didn’t have mouse cursors and you had to ‘’guess’’ where your mouse pointer’d be. Also shooting felt a bit off at first, but I got used to it.

Driving a car is my biggest complaint however. Cars feel very stiff and not very responsive. Outside of a few that feel ‘’okay-ish’’, the vast majority of cars actually feel like I don’t want to drive them. Over time you kind of get used to it, but it never is and will be the driving other open world games have, it’s just a bit less mobile and more stiff. Motor cycles on the other hand I like quite a bit and I’ve enjoyed driving on them, especially with that awesome jacket Aiden Pearce has.
Things like looking around take a while of getting used to as well, but once you do feels natural and alright.

- Gameplay
The world feels quite alive. I really like little features they added in, or the THOUSANDS of possible conditions the people are in. ‘’Frequent watcher of police reality TV-series’’, or ‘’Remarried’’ for example. Funny little things. What saddens me is that none of their conditions really have an impact at that point in the game. They don’t react more angry because they were ‘’recently dumped’’, or an ‘’ex-police officer’’. I understand that’d be a LOT of coding to do however, so maybe next time! The world outside of that also feels quite alive. Always there are atleast some cars and pedestrians around, and you can actually go into a LOT of buildings, however irrelevant they may be. You can order a coke at a cafeteria, get new clothes (obviously), buy a gun and then threaten the shopkeeper, take his money and run..!
So yeah, a lot of things to do in the city.
People compare this game to GTA V, and they do so falsely. The game is an open world, bit of a ‘’mayhem’’ game like GTA and Saints Row, but not precisely. It’s got a lot of interesting mechanics that make me interested. The hacking (usually most hacks are done by holding Q), are very quickly intuitive and can be used for strategy very efficiently. Exploding the explosives on a guard for example, or lifting a bridge right before police rides over it is and feels SO rewarding and adds a whole new level of enjoyment to the game. The overall mechanics feel well implemented into the core gameplay; a GTA-style open world RPG.
 Stealth & Hacking:
The game allows you to be very stealthy (although doesn’t always prefer if you do, which is kind of a letdown)
especially in Gang Hideout sidemissions. More on this later. You can be so creative going stealth, and no mission is ever the same. If you pick a lot of skills in the ‘’hacking’’ tree, you’re in for a treat. You can disable comms, distract people (For example, they just killed a dolphin it says on their condition, and you ‘’distract’’ them by playing a dolphin sound. Very limited and only on gang members, understandably!). Also you can explode explosives on top of someone who’s wearing grenades.
A fun example: In the beginning of the game, you get ambushed. There were snipers with grenades on the rooftops. Behind them there was an electrical device you can blow up. I did that, the sniper fell off the roof, I exploded his grenade while nearly on the ground, he blew up the car and his other three gang members.
That just feels great and is so much fun, it just never gets old.

Sidemissions and things to do:

 
Along with Stealth, this is where the game TRULY shines. There is just so much to do in Chicago. You can do Gang hideouts (invade a hideout, knock down a certain individual and get out) Fixer contracts (Catch someone, distract the police etc.) Criminal Convoy (Disrupt and kill someone and his ride, then get away or kill his entire escort.)
and numerous other things like playing a game of poker or chess. The game is almost too distracting from the main missions sometimes! You frequently get called that a new Criminal Convoy has been found for you to mess up, for example.
There’s also crimes you can solve if you want to. This’ll bring your reputation bar up if you solve them while killing or bringing the criminal down. (You can become an ‘’anarchist’’ or a ‘’vigilante’’. These things will have minor impact on the game except some cute noticing by pedestrians etc. You get it up by solving crimes and missions, and down by killing people or police!)
Gunplay
Gunplay is kind of a minus about this game for me. As stated I have minor mouse issues with the game but the shooting feels a bit shaky sometimes. Outside of that, gunfights are pretty fun once you get the hang of it and you’re easily killed if you put your difficulty high enough! It's an okay part of the game, just like most open world games. Don't expect Battlefield/Planetside 2 level shooter here!

Police: A minor point, but the police in this game is kind of weird. You pretty much only get police on you when a pedestrian calls the police, and you’ll have a chance to interfere (this happens when you pull your gun out in public, or steal a car VERY frequently and is very annoying.).
If you fail to interfere, a scan goes down at your location and once it reaches a 100%, (aka you stay within the scan range) police comes after you. The police catch-n-run is very fun though, especially playing with bridges and using traffic to blow up their cars!
Multiplayer:
 
This is an interesting part of the game, because if it works well, it’s awesome. Problem is, it doesn’t work well. Right now the Ubisoft servers are often down and don’t work properly, or there are some other errors. A lot of hackers have also been spotted already.
I haven't dug into multiplayer too much because the game itself is just so much fun, but..!
Personally, the mode that stands out and is my absolute favorite is the ‘’Intrusion’’ mode, where you hack another player (and seamlessly join his game!) and hope he doesn’t spot and kill you before you do. Of course, you can get this done to you too! Very awesome, especially when it’s a tough match. After your game you’re back in your world, like nothing happened, It’s really good fun.


Story & Sound
The game features music from pretty known bands (Rise Against) and other artists. They seem to have had a lot of budget go into copyrighted material to use for their game. A lot of music I’ve never heard of before too though, so that’s good!
The sound of the overall game is rich and well, except gunshots. They sound fairly bad and aren’t very exciting. The ambient sounds or the street performers though, are top notch and a pleasure to listen to.
 
Story I won’t go to much into because I’m afraid I might spoil stuff, but the story up to this point has got me gripped pretty good, and I want to know what happens next! The dialogue is always very good and very strong characters come up. A lot of messed up ones aswell, obviously. It's pretty deep so far and I'm liking the character progression (or regression at start of the game) we're getting. It's by no means a Call of Duty campaign!
From the getgo you do realize this is a story about revenge however. So if you’re not into that, then you won’t care too much. Still really good however! I’m in the middle of act II for people who want to know. 


Conclusion & Verdict:

I was REALLY anticipating this game considering I’ve been waiting for it for two years now. I didn’t expect it to be perfect, I don’t really do that with Ubisoft games anyway, but I expected a lot. And expectations were met. I really like the game so far and I will for quite some time. To give some sort of indication: Tuesday it came out for me at 9am. I started playing at 1PM and played (with a 2hr break) until 3AM. I felt really emerged and the game looked good too. I had quite a bit of fun with a friend on Free roam mode and can’t wait to try that out with more than 2 people.

I hope you liked and gained knowledge from this review!
Leave any constructive feedback below!
Thanks!


PS: Pictures are a bit low res, Imgur didn't work with me and I messed up a bit. Sorry!
 
@martsc2


The website I just opened where I post my future reviews as well as here: http://techandgamequickies.webs.com/apps/blog/

Watch Dogs review
by Thalandros


Topics that shall be discussed:
- Graphics
- Controls and Functioning
- Gameplay
- Sound and Story
- Conclusion.


Graphics:

Watch Dogs was released only yesterday with big expectations, despite the graphics just not being quite the same as revealed in E3 ’12. Despite that, I was not disappointed. Before we go on, my specs:

Intel Core i5 4670 @ 3.4Mhz, 3,8Mhz turbo.
Ice X HD Radeon 6950 2GB
8GB RAM @ 1333Mhz
120GB Kingston SSD. (I know!)

I was genuinely amazed with what my specs were able to pull off. I am able to run at medium with high textures and high shadows (because of my CPU), and the game looked quite spectacular at a solid 50-60FPS throughout, at 1920x1080p. Especially the sunsets and nighttimes were beautiful, but the game did have a bit of a slow render rate, as in the vehicles and pedestrians loaded quite close by. This couldn’t be changed in the settings and was quite annoying. Apart from that they did a good job around midtier GPU’s at least, but I’ve heard MANY complains from higher end GPU’s (GTX 780, Radeon R9 280/290x etc.) running on higher settings with severe FPS drops. Let’s hope these issues are fixed in coming patches. The textures genuinely looked quite awesome and I felt really good driving in the city, looking around.



Physics I’ll include with Graphics. It’s a bit wonky, this one. From one side I really like the physics and it might be a little over the top, and from the other it’s not that great and a bit underwhelming (when smashing against a small wall for example.) It’s personal but I don’t care too much about it, it’s ‘’passable’’ for me. Don’t expect huge explosions, but do expect enemies falling on the ground from 50M up on a building.


- Controls and Functioning

This is the biggest problem for me. At the start the game felt VERY weird, especially the menu with a crapton of acceleration which I had to turn off in the variables file. Kind of put me off. Apart from that controlling felt a bit unnatural but I got used to that very quickly and it was quite comfortable since then. The controls are easy but dear lord, the game is a pain in ass to control with the mouse. I thought this game was natively built on PC? That didn’t show. The vast majority of menus didn’t have mouse cursors and you had to ‘’guess’’ where your mouse pointer’d be. Also shooting felt a bit off at first, but I got used to it.

Driving a car is my biggest complaint however. Cars feel very stiff and not very responsive. Outside of a few that feel ‘’okay-ish’’, the vast majority of cars actually feel like I don’t want to drive them. Over time you kind of get used to it, but it never is and will be the driving other open world games have, it’s just a bit less mobile and more stiff. Motor cycles on the other hand I like quite a bit and I’ve enjoyed driving on them, especially with that awesome jacket Aiden Pearce has.
Things like looking around take a while of getting used to as well, but once you do feels natural and alright.

- Gameplay
The world feels quite alive. I really like little features they added in, or the THOUSANDS of possible conditions the people are in. ‘’Frequent watcher of police reality TV-series’’, or ‘’Remarried’’ for example. Funny little things. What saddens me is that none of their conditions really have an impact at that point in the game. They don’t react more angry because they were ‘’recently dumped’’, or an ‘’ex-police officer’’. I understand that’d be a LOT of coding to do however, so maybe next time! The world outside of that also feels quite alive. Always there are atleast some cars and pedestrians around, and you can actually go into a LOT of buildings, however irrelevant they may be. You can order a coke at a cafeteria, get new clothes (obviously), buy a gun and then threaten the shopkeeper, take his money and run..!
So yeah, a lot of things to do in the city.
People compare this game to GTA V, and they do so falsely. The game is an open world, bit of a ‘’mayhem’’ game like GTA and Saints Row, but not precisely. It’s got a lot of interesting mechanics that make me interested. The hacking (usually most hacks are done by holding Q), are very quickly intuitive and can be used for strategy very efficiently. Exploding the explosives on a guard for example, or lifting a bridge right before police rides over it is and feels SO rewarding and adds a whole new level of enjoyment to the game. The overall mechanics feel well implemented into the core gameplay; a GTA-style open world RPG.
 Stealth & Hacking:
The game allows you to be very stealthy (although doesn’t always prefer if you do, which is kind of a letdown)
especially in Gang Hideout sidemissions. More on this later. You can be so creative going stealth, and no mission is ever the same. If you pick a lot of skills in the ‘’hacking’’ tree, you’re in for a treat. You can disable comms, distract people (For example, they just killed a dolphin it says on their condition, and you ‘’distract’’ them by playing a dolphin sound. Very limited and only on gang members, understandably!). Also you can explode explosives on top of someone who’s wearing grenades.
A fun example: In the beginning of the game, you get ambushed. There were snipers with grenades on the rooftops. Behind them there was an electrical device you can blow up. I did that, the sniper fell off the roof, I exploded his grenade while nearly on the ground, he blew up the car and his other three gang members.
That just feels great and is so much fun, it just never gets old.

Sidemissions and things to do:

 
Along with Stealth, this is where the game TRULY shines. There is just so much to do in Chicago. You can do Gang hideouts (invade a hideout, knock down a certain individual and get out) Fixer contracts (Catch someone, distract the police etc.) Criminal Convoy (Disrupt and kill someone and his ride, then get away or kill his entire escort.)
and numerous other things like playing a game of poker or chess. The game is almost too distracting from the main missions sometimes! You frequently get called that a new Criminal Convoy has been found for you to mess up, for example.
There’s also crimes you can solve if you want to. This’ll bring your reputation bar up if you solve them while killing or bringing the criminal down. (You can become an ‘’anarchist’’ or a ‘’vigilante’’. These things will have minor impact on the game except some cute noticing by pedestrians etc. You get it up by solving crimes and missions, and down by killing people or police!)
Gunplay
Gunplay is kind of a minus about this game for me. As stated I have minor mouse issues with the game but the shooting feels a bit shaky sometimes. Outside of that, gunfights are pretty fun once you get the hang of it and you’re easily killed if you put your difficulty high enough! It's an okay part of the game, just like most open world games. Don't expect Battlefield/Planetside 2 level shooter here!

Police: A minor point, but the police in this game is kind of weird. You pretty much only get police on you when a pedestrian calls the police, and you’ll have a chance to interfere (this happens when you pull your gun out in public, or steal a car VERY frequently and is very annoying.).
If you fail to interfere, a scan goes down at your location and once it reaches a 100%, (aka you stay within the scan range) police comes after you. The police catch-n-run is very fun though, especially playing with bridges and using traffic to blow up their cars!
Multiplayer:
 
This is an interesting part of the game, because if it works well, it’s awesome. Problem is, it doesn’t work well. Right now the Ubisoft servers are often down and don’t work properly, or there are some other errors. A lot of hackers have also been spotted already.
I haven't dug into multiplayer too much because the game itself is just so much fun, but..!
Personally, the mode that stands out and is my absolute favorite is the ‘’Intrusion’’ mode, where you hack another player (and seamlessly join his game!) and hope he doesn’t spot and kill you before you do. Of course, you can get this done to you too! Very awesome, especially when it’s a tough match. After your game you’re back in your world, like nothing happened, It’s really good fun.


Story & Sound
The game features music from pretty known bands (Rise Against) and other artists. They seem to have had a lot of budget go into copyrighted material to use for their game. A lot of music I’ve never heard of before too though, so that’s good!
The sound of the overall game is rich and well, except gunshots. They sound fairly bad and aren’t very exciting. The ambient sounds or the street performers though, are top notch and a pleasure to listen to.
 
Story I won’t go to much into because I’m afraid I might spoil stuff, but the story up to this point has got me gripped pretty good, and I want to know what happens next! The dialogue is always very good and very strong characters come up. A lot of messed up ones aswell, obviously. It's pretty deep so far and I'm liking the character progression (or regression at start of the game) we're getting. It's by no means a Call of Duty campaign!
From the getgo you do realize this is a story about revenge however. So if you’re not into that, then you won’t care too much. Still really good however! I’m in the middle of act II for people who want to know. 


Conclusion & Verdict:

I was REALLY anticipating this game considering I’ve been waiting for it for two years now. I didn’t expect it to be perfect, I don’t really do that with Ubisoft games anyway, but I expected a lot. And expectations were met. I really like the game so far and I will for quite some time. To give some sort of indication: Tuesday it came out for me at 9am. I started playing at 1PM and played (with a 2hr break) until 3AM. I felt really emerged and the game looked good too. I had quite a bit of fun with a friend on Free roam mode and can’t wait to try that out with more than 2 people.

I hope you liked and gained knowledge from this review!
Leave any constructive feedback below!
Thanks!


PS: Pictures are a bit low res, Imgur didn't work with me and I messed up a bit. Sorry!
 
@martsc2


The website I just opened where I post my future reviews as well as here: http://techandgamequickies.webs.com/apps/blog/

What do you mean? Does quality of gameplay go up over the years? That's complete bullshit. I still play Warcraft III and Zoo Tycoon 1. 
The game is good and enjoyable for the overwhelming majority. It was hyped up way too far beyond any reasonable expectations, quit your whining. It's okay to dislike and complain, it's not okay to hate just because you can

I think people love to jump the hatetrain. I enjoy my game quite a lot and barely notice any bugs, let alone any gamebreaking bugs. It's not super optimized but the difference between medium and high/ultra isn't that gigantic anyway, and aslong as I can run 50/60 FPS I'm okay with that. Game looks good, is innovative and keeps me entertained. I'm perfectly happy. 

Watch Dogs review
by Thalandros


Topics that shall be discussed:
- Graphics
- Controls and Functioning
- Gameplay
- Sound and Story
- Conclusion.


Graphics:

Watch Dogs was released only yesterday with big expectations, despite the graphics just not being quite the same as revealed in E3 ’12. Despite that, I was not disappointed. Before we go on, my specs:

Intel Core i5 4670 @ 3.4Mhz, 3,8Mhz turbo.
Ice X HD Radeon 6950 2GB
8GB RAM @ 1333Mhz
120GB Kingston SSD. (I know!)

I was genuinely amazed with what my specs were able to pull off. I am able to run at medium with high textures and high shadows (because of my CPU), and the game looked quite spectacular at a solid 50-60FPS throughout, at 1920x1080p. Especially the sunsets and nighttimes were beautiful, but the game did have a bit of a slow render rate, as in the vehicles and pedestrians loaded quite close by. This couldn’t be changed in the settings and was quite annoying. Apart from that they did a good job around midtier GPU’s at least, but I’ve heard MANY complains from higher end GPU’s (GTX 780, Radeon R9 280/290x etc.) running on higher settings with severe FPS drops. Let’s hope these issues are fixed in coming patches. The textures genuinely looked quite awesome and I felt really good driving in the city, looking around.



Physics I’ll include with Graphics. It’s a bit wonky, this one. From one side I really like the physics and it might be a little over the top, and from the other it’s not that great and a bit underwhelming (when smashing against a small wall for example.) It’s personal but I don’t care too much about it, it’s ‘’passable’’ for me. Don’t expect huge explosions, but do expect enemies falling on the ground from 50M up on a building.


- Controls and Functioning

This is the biggest problem for me. At the start the game felt VERY weird, especially the menu with a crapton of acceleration which I had to turn off in the variables file. Kind of put me off. Apart from that controlling felt a bit unnatural but I got used to that very quickly and it was quite comfortable since then. The controls are easy but dear lord, the game is a pain in ass to control with the mouse. I thought this game was natively built on PC? That didn’t show. The vast majority of menus didn’t have mouse cursors and you had to ‘’guess’’ where your mouse pointer’d be. Also shooting felt a bit off at first, but I got used to it.

Driving a car is my biggest complaint however. Cars feel very stiff and not very responsive. Outside of a few that feel ‘’okay-ish’’, the vast majority of cars actually feel like I don’t want to drive them. Over time you kind of get used to it, but it never is and will be the driving other open world games have, it’s just a bit less mobile and more stiff. Motor cycles on the other hand I like quite a bit and I’ve enjoyed driving on them, especially with that awesome jacket Aiden Pearce has.
Things like looking around take a while of getting used to as well, but once you do feels natural and alright.

- Gameplay
The world feels quite alive. I really like little features they added in, or the THOUSANDS of possible conditions the people are in. ‘’Frequent watcher of police reality TV-series’’, or ‘’Remarried’’ for example. Funny little things. What saddens me is that none of their conditions really have an impact at that point in the game. They don’t react more angry because they were ‘’recently dumped’’, or an ‘’ex-police officer’’. I understand that’d be a LOT of coding to do however, so maybe next time! The world outside of that also feels quite alive. Always there are atleast some cars and pedestrians around, and you can actually go into a LOT of buildings, however irrelevant they may be. You can order a coke at a cafeteria, get new clothes (obviously), buy a gun and then threaten the shopkeeper, take his money and run..!
So yeah, a lot of things to do in the city.
People compare this game to GTA V, and they do so falsely. The game is an open world, bit of a ‘’mayhem’’ game like GTA and Saints Row, but not precisely. It’s got a lot of interesting mechanics that make me interested. The hacking (usually most hacks are done by holding Q), are very quickly intuitive and can be used for strategy very efficiently. Exploding the explosives on a guard for example, or lifting a bridge right before police rides over it is and feels SO rewarding and adds a whole new level of enjoyment to the game. The overall mechanics feel well implemented into the core gameplay; a GTA-style open world RPG.
 Stealth & Hacking:
The game allows you to be very stealthy (although doesn’t always prefer if you do, which is kind of a letdown)
especially in Gang Hideout sidemissions. More on this later. You can be so creative going stealth, and no mission is ever the same. If you pick a lot of skills in the ‘’hacking’’ tree, you’re in for a treat. You can disable comms, distract people (For example, they just killed a dolphin it says on their condition, and you ‘’distract’’ them by playing a dolphin sound. Very limited and only on gang members, understandably!). Also you can explode explosives on top of someone who’s wearing grenades.
A fun example: In the beginning of the game, you get ambushed. There were snipers with grenades on the rooftops. Behind them there was an electrical device you can blow up. I did that, the sniper fell off the roof, I exploded his grenade while nearly on the ground, he blew up the car and his other three gang members.
That just feels great and is so much fun, it just never gets old.

Sidemissions and things to do:

 
Along with Stealth, this is where the game TRULY shines. There is just so much to do in Chicago. You can do Gang hideouts (invade a hideout, knock down a certain individual and get out) Fixer contracts (Catch someone, distract the police etc.) Criminal Convoy (Disrupt and kill someone and his ride, then get away or kill his entire escort.)
and numerous other things like playing a game of poker or chess. The game is almost too distracting from the main missions sometimes! You frequently get called that a new Criminal Convoy has been found for you to mess up, for example.
There’s also crimes you can solve if you want to. This’ll bring your reputation bar up if you solve them while killing or bringing the criminal down. (You can become an ‘’anarchist’’ or a ‘’vigilante’’. These things will have minor impact on the game except some cute noticing by pedestrians etc. You get it up by solving crimes and missions, and down by killing people or police!)
Gunplay
Gunplay is kind of a minus about this game for me. As stated I have minor mouse issues with the game but the shooting feels a bit shaky sometimes. Outside of that, gunfights are pretty fun once you get the hang of it and you’re easily killed if you put your difficulty high enough! It's an okay part of the game, just like most open world games. Don't expect Battlefield/Planetside 2 level shooter here!

Police: A minor point, but the police in this game is kind of weird. You pretty much only get police on you when a pedestrian calls the police, and you’ll have a chance to interfere (this happens when you pull your gun out in public, or steal a car VERY frequently and is very annoying.).
If you fail to interfere, a scan goes down at your location and once it reaches a 100%, (aka you stay within the scan range) police comes after you. The police catch-n-run is very fun though, especially playing with bridges and using traffic to blow up their cars!
Multiplayer:
 
This is an interesting part of the game, because if it works well, it’s awesome. Problem is, it doesn’t work well. Right now the Ubisoft servers are often down and don’t work properly, or there are some other errors. A lot of hackers have also been spotted already.
I haven't dug into multiplayer too much because the game itself is just so much fun, but..!
Personally, the mode that stands out and is my absolute favorite is the ‘’Intrusion’’ mode, where you hack another player (and seamlessly join his game!) and hope he doesn’t spot and kill you before you do. Of course, you can get this done to you too! Very awesome, especially when it’s a tough match. After your game you’re back in your world, like nothing happened, It’s really good fun.


Story & Sound
The game features music from pretty known bands (Rise Against) and other artists. They seem to have had a lot of budget go into copyrighted material to use for their game. A lot of music I’ve never heard of before too though, so that’s good!
The sound of the overall game is rich and well, except gunshots. They sound fairly bad and aren’t very exciting. The ambient sounds or the street performers though, are top notch and a pleasure to listen to.
 
Story I won’t go to much into because I’m afraid I might spoil stuff, but the story up to this point has got me gripped pretty good, and I want to know what happens next! The dialogue is always very good and very strong characters come up. A lot of messed up ones aswell, obviously. It's pretty deep so far and I'm liking the character progression (or regression at start of the game) we're getting. It's by no means a Call of Duty campaign!
From the getgo you do realize this is a story about revenge however. So if you’re not into that, then you won’t care too much. Still really good however! I’m in the middle of act II for people who want to know. 


Conclusion & Verdict:

I was REALLY anticipating this game considering I’ve been waiting for it for two years now. I didn’t expect it to be perfect, I don’t really do that with Ubisoft games anyway, but I expected a lot. And expectations were met. I really like the game so far and I will for quite some time. To give some sort of indication: Tuesday it came out for me at 9am. I started playing at 1PM and played (with a 2hr break) until 3AM. I felt really emerged and the game looked good too. I had quite a bit of fun with a friend on Free roam mode and can’t wait to try that out with more than 2 people.

I hope you liked and gained knowledge from this review!
Leave any constructive feedback below!
Thanks!


PS: Pictures are a bit low res, Imgur didn't work with me and I messed up a bit. Sorry!
 
@martsc2


The website I just opened where I post my future reviews as well as here: http://techandgamequickies.webs.com/apps/blog/