k1's experience with gaming and gadgets

Leenock has been making a huge splash in recent weeks with his incredible run at MLG and his semi-final performance against MVP. He is definitely going to be put to the test as he faces off against Jjakji in a ZvT best of 7. I will definitely be watching this series closely as ZvT is easily my weakest matchup.

Personally hoping for Leenock to pull through 4-2!

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Edit - That was actually a very satisfying finals series, considering most finals from the GSL have been absolute landslide victories for one player. It is awesome that the finals lasted longer than 40 minutes this time around! Hopefully future GSL finals will be just as exciting as this one.

I need to admit first and foremost that I am not the biggest Star Wars fan. As a kid, I watched the movies with friends but never anything really beyond that. When I heard about SWTOR from a friend, I was really skeptical. Thus far, there hasn’t been a single game <-> movie series that hasn’t been terrible. I dismissed SWTOR as another typical WoW clone that would have some nice gimmicks but fall flat on its face after those gimmicks wore off. My only exposure to the game prior to the beta weekend was some early Alpha footage demonstrating basic gameplay mechanics. After this beta weekend though, I can definitely see why my friend  was so excited for the game.

As always, right click > view image to see a larger version of the pictures.

Lore and Questing

One of the first things I worked out was that each class had its own specific quest line. My friends all picked the Sith Inquisitor and I picked the Imperial Agent, which meant they all got to do their beginning quests together and I had to do mine alone. In order to deal with congestion, there are separate instances for quests and the first player to enter determines which instance is initiated.

I managed to unite with my friends after leaving the starting area, and I was pleased to find that my individual class quest had not completed. Unlike other MMO where everyone congregates on a common greater good storyline, you continue your own individual story while experiencing new areas and content. When my friends and I hit a new area, we all had our own respective class quests in specific locations, but also had some common quests to complete as well. 

The quests themselves are nothing out of the ordinary. Players are told to go to different places to kill mobs, collect things, or destroy things. More often than not, players are placed in situations where a conflict of interest is present, and the ultimate mission decision will reward light or dark side points. For example, there is a quest where players are told to eliminate people who are stealing medicine. Once you get to the final room, you find that the medicine is being stolen to help aid the sick who aren’t able to afford it through conventional means. Killing the medicine thief anyways will yield some dark side points, and sparing him will yield light side points.

Dialogues

All of the interactions with NPC have voice acting. Thankfully, unlike Age of Conan, all the NPCs seem to have their audio scripts in tact even beyond the starting area. As with the classic Bioware experience, there are good guy, neutral, and bad guy responses through interactions with various NPC.

A new dynamic introduced is the multiplayer conversation choices. When players are grouped together and share a common quest, they all get to select dialogue choices as normal, and an automated roll takes place to decide which player’s choice is acted out. I think the rolls are done such that it is more or less a round robin style where every player will eventually have their choice selected. This makes for a rather humorous progression of dialogue as you can imagine.

My two friends playing the Sith Inquisitors were going for the standard evil / bad-guy approach while I was attempting to be the Good Guy Sith. As a result, all of our dialogue choices were constantly conflicted, though typically more in favor of them than me. I offered to save someone’s life if they provided me with information, and my friends would elect to kill them right after. There is definitely much room for trolling friends here. Fear not though, as long as your character selects the appropriate dialogue choice, you will earn the light or dark side points regardless of who wins the roll.

Companions

As part of the starting quest line, you eventually get a companion of some sort. I am not sure if they are randomized or not, but this seems to be the case. For my Imperial Agent quest line, I ended up with Kaliyo, who is basically the SWTOR version of Jack. She hates authority and absolutely enjoys chaos, which conflicted with my Good Guy Sith approach to things. It was pretty funny for me to constantly see Kaliyo’s picture pop up with a -1 affection constantly while I did good deeds endlessly.

Having a companion with you unlocks a whole world of possibilities. It makes doing some of the group quests by yourself possible, expediting your leveling experience. Seeing this system in place and thinking back to the days of FFXI where I would spend up to 2 hours looking for a group to grind exp sure brings a smile to my face. Balance is maintained though, as your companion will disappear if there are two or more player characters within your vicinity. 

General Improvements to Life

There are several things that I think should be universal in MMO that SWTOR has brought to the table:

1. Returning to any bind spot you have synced with instead of returning to a specific one - This makes traveling much less painful and cuts down significantly on the constant running that takes place at lower levels. I wish more MMO would introduce this, as opposed to having a shorter cool down timer for specific classes.
2. Looting all nearby corpses - Funnily enough this is an option that has to be enabled in the preferences screen. I don’t know a single person who would prefer to loot each dead mob individually.
3. Self-res via probe or auto return to medical bay - Corpse running is definitely not enjoyable by any person, especially if they have accidentally stumbled upon a terribly difficult area. In addition, wiping to a specific group in a compound would mean having to clear the entire compound again without self-res options.
4. Another minor bonus it he ability to revive not only your own companion but other party members as well. There is something like a 10 or 15 minute cool down for the revive party member ability, but it definitely makes life easier.

As you can see, these above features aren’t exactly ground shattering, but it is evident that Bioware understands the MMO experience and has found a way to make life easier without jeopardizing the content difficulty.

Player vs Player (PVP)

I managed to try out three different PVP modes, each of them requiring team work to achieve a common goal. For those familiar with WoW, one of them is similar to Arathi Basin. The idea is that turrets are spread out at three points of the map, controlling them allows your team to shoot at the enemy war ship. Whoever runs out of energy first loses. The games are pretty high pace with players scrambling around to various parts of the map vying for control of the turrets.

Huttsball is basically soccer with SWTOR themed elements. You are supposed to bring the ball across the enemy’s baseline to score a point. The biggest problem I have encountered thus far is that people aren’t aware of how to pass. There is a pass ball action under the “General” tab in your spell book (hit P to open it). Littered around the map are fire traps on a timer and air ventilation shafts that shoot you into the air (I have no idea how to reliably go a specific direction). In case of a tie, being in possession of the ball when the timer expires will also net you a victory.

The third map is similar to the rush style of game play in Battlefield 3, or Strands of the Ancients from WoW. There are two points of entry for each segment, and the objective for the attacker is to go through three of these segments and download some sensitive data hidden at the very end. The objective for defense is obviously to prevent the attackers from advancing. In my experiences thus far, it is pretty difficult for the defensive team to win. There is almost always a congregation of all players at one point of entry and 1-2 people manage to sneak to the other.

Aside from leveling your PVP ranking, it seems that PVP is a pretty reliable way to level your character as well. For completing each instance of PVP, players are awarded experience points, money, and valor points. Thus far, I have not found any items which are usable below the level 50 cap, I guess there is lots of time to save up.

Suggestions for Retail

In the above picture, I am stuck in the floor and my friend is unable to res me.

There are some things I would love to get fixed prior to the game’s launch on December 20th:

1. Mouse dying -  Lots of people have reported mouse problems regardless of what mouse and drivers they use. I haven’t experienced any thus far, but the error seems to be that the mouse just stops being responsive sporadically.
2. Stock UI is ugly - For whatever reason, the stock UI for every MMO is pretty damn terrible. It isn’t the most space efficient, and the textures are often awful on the eyes. Very minor complaint since Bioware has announced that they are not supporting any mods for SWTOR, which means no custom textures for UI bars and the like. The UI at the PAX demo was actually very appealing, not sure why it was changed for the open beta.
3. Questing locations of interest - Sometimes quests involve running through a packed area, then back out to hand it in. The next step involves running back through that same area, and doing so two to three more times. 
4. Points of Interest on the Map frequently disappear - The only way to fix this appears to be to re-log your character. There are times when re-logging or changing the map location doesn’t work either. Please fix this!
5. Changing instances to join a friend consumes your return//hearth timer - I don’t know if this is intended or not, but it was annoying trying to coordinate with friends on instances. We found several times where everyone happened to be on a cooldown and could not join up for common quests. Hopefully we won’t have lots of instance hopping in retail.

Conclusion

I am walking away from the open beta weekend very impressed with the game that Bioware has put together with Lucas Arts. I am definitely eating my words about SWTOR being just another half-assed WoW clone. Having said that though, there always seems to be one big flaw that comes at the game’s actual release. I’m really hoping that SWTOR does well and skips the traditional huge flaw and just impresses from the get go.

I have not covered everything there is to cover in SWTOR as I want to leave at least parts of the experience untainted. Reading details and being excited about features and content is great, but nothing beats experiencing it first hand with a mind unclouded with preconceptions.

The one downer in all of this excitement for me is that HK is not going to be part of the cool group that gets early access to the game for pre-ordering. What’s worse is that a lot of local game stores still have no word on the exact ETA or pricing of the game. Theoretically, HK should have enough market presence for them to import the game here, but thus far everyone is remaining quite tight lipped. Pre-ordering the game and attaining early access looks like it is going to be a PITA.

It was just a week ago that Leenock made his incredible run at MLG Providence to take the grand prize, and we already have the next event to enjoy. Dreamhack went live earlier today and the games are as action packed as ever. Dreamhack is being broadcast in HD for free, and you can find one such stream over at Day9’s twitch.tv account. Boasting a 120 Gigabit internet connection, Dreamhack’s investment totals around $45 million just in their network infrastructure alone! It looks like they are trying to shatter not only their own attendance record, but the world’s biggest capacity utilization record as well.

Get your snacks, your drinks, and your living room TV ready. This is going to be one heck of a weekend for Starcraft 2 fans. Personally going to be rooting for Sen and Grubby to make some noise this time =)

Hardware enthusiasts are constantly looking for ways to maximize the potential of their systems. Their reasons range from work related needs all the way down to simple bragging rights. Traditionally, overclocking has been the primary approach to squeezing out more performance. Millions of people around the world overclock their CPUs, GPUs, ram, and everything in-between. While these feats are impressive, without FPS counters or benchmarks, most of these improvements would go by unnoticed. The average user would probably have a hard time differentiating between a 2600K clocked at 3.8 and 4.5 ghz for every day usage, which is where the SSD comes in. The SSD offers a real world boost that users at all levels of technical proficiency can experience and enjoy. A single digit boot time requires no technical terms to explain and would be appreciated by most.

Traditionally, I have recommended against users purchasing SSDs in their systems for the following reasons:

1. Utility and Pricing - SSDs float around 220-290 USD for a 128GB drive, depending on the vendor. Most people who would even consider SSDs operate on a budget of roughly 1-1.5k USD for all the hardware and a copy of Windows. Most would easily trade a slightly longer loading time for more eye candy and a more stable gaming experience.
2. Limited space - Right off the bat, you lose 30GB or so to your Windows installation, leaving you with roughly 90GB to work with assuming you picked up a 128GB model. We also need to remember that storage drives typically take a performance hit once they are filled over 50%.
3. Offloading users directory and program files - Installing a SSD is just as easy as installing a mechanical drive, but the process of offloading users and program files directories to a secondary HDD is tedious. Most average users might be put off from such an experience the same way they might be put off from rooting or flashing custom roms on Android devices.
4. Reliability uncertain at the time - With first generation SSDs on the market for less than a year, nobody had a true grasp of the life expectancy. Some users claimed numbers as low as 18 months and others something like 30 years. Without any real world data to go by, I did not feel comfortable recommending SSDs.

Current offerings on the market

Sandforce - SSDs that utilize the Sandforce controllers are typically the highest performing when it comes to speed. On models that utilize the Sandforce-2200 controllers, 550MB/s and 500MB/s read/write speeds are possible where SATA 3.0 6GB/s connectivity is present. Unfortunately, the newest generation of Sandforce controllers have been experiencing problems with crashing and data corruption, leaving many consumers hesitant.

Sandforce announced on October 17 that they have identified the cause of the BSODs and have remedied the problem, providing a fix for all users to download. It has barely been a month since their announcement, so there hasn’t been much real world data to go on just yet. Assuming the problems have been fixed, this would again make the Sandforce drives very competitive.

Intel - Slightly slower than their Sandforce counterparts, Intel’s SSDs pride themselves on reliability. Intel SSDs tend to experience far less problems with crashes and breakdowns, and the pricing reflects this.

Marvell - Traditionally, Marvell has been seen as a “budget” controller for SSDs where consumers go to when they lack the appropriate funding for Intel or Sandforce based SSDs. Thankfully, this time around, they are very competitive on both the pricing and performance fronts.

Crucial M4 SSD

I picked this drive up prior to the announcement of the 009 firmware, so it came with 008 firmware which advertised read and write speeds of 415MB/s and 175 MB/s respectively. Forum goers have been raving about this model for months, with enthusiasm similar to that of G.Skill Eco modules when they hit the market a few years ago. Right away, we can see that the theoretical speeds are still slower than the Sandforce controllers, with the write speed offered being less than half.

The packaging is simple and compact, just the way I like it.

The process to upgrade the firmware from 008 to 009 is very simple, requiring a bootable USB and several minutes in DOS. Remember to do the upgrade before installing your operating system!

Following the upgrade, I did several runs of AS SSD Benchmark, most of the speeds floated between 495 and 505 for sequential reads, and 199 for sequential writes. I did not bother with trying an OS install prior to flashing the firmware so I cannot provide a before/after experience.

Conclusion

A lot of my initial concerns about the SSD still ring true today. For starters, the pricing model has largely remained unchanged, with the top performing 128GB drives commanding a price of over $250 USD (~$1950 HKD). Thankfully, there are more models on the market now like the Crucial M4, offering very good performance for a fraction of the price. When the budget is tight though, this is still the first area I would cut in the majority of building scenarios.

With regards to longevity, good usage habits can go a long way. As long as you are not constantly writing data to your SSD, you should not be experiencing performance hits or degradation any quicker than that of other components in your system. Make the extra effort to do the little bit of reading and just use the drive as normally as possible, remember that even mechanical drives have the chance of dying prematurely.

I’m actually very happy I picked up the Crucial M4. Prior to using it, I was running a raid-0 setup with two Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB 7200RPM drives. I bought into a lot of what I read online: that a raid-0 setup with 7200RPM drives could keep up with a SSD. The F3’s definitely offered decent performance, but there is no replacement to having a SSD in your system.

Championship Sunday is currently live in Providence, and a host of amazing games are going to be broadcast today. At the time of writing, Leenock vs Boxer is over and MC vs DRG is about to commence. Looking at the incredible production quality and intensity of the games, it is easy to see just how hard they have been working to improve the overall experience.

Something really cool that MLG has brought around this time is live streaming over Youtube!

Do go check it out!

Steam has had their forums defaced and databases potentially compromised. Gabe has released an official statement which all users should see upon their next login. Here’s a quick run down :

1. The steam account credentials as well as credit card information could have been compromised, but thus far there is no evidence to suggest that this has taken place.

2. The forums were defaced and it is recommended that all forum users change their passwords for safety purposes.

3. Steam account credentials and forum credentials are separate, but Gabe urges users to consider changing both just to be safe. This is even more important if you are someone who uses the same password for multiple purposes.

The 285.62 drivers from Nvidia offered decent performance for Battlefield 3 for the most part, and the 285.79 drivers look to improve upon that. They aren’t officially out yet but were posted on Battlelogs. Users can manually navigate to the beta drivers section of the Nvidia website to download them. As always, right click and view image to see a larger version.

285.79 drivers

Compared with my previous 285.62 drivers, I have noticed a marked improvement. Even on a single GTX 460 at 846 mhz, I had no problems sustaining a constant 60 FPS (minus micro-stutter from my 2600K). This works out for the best as I am now able to play Battlefield 3 on one GTX 460 and fold uninterrupted on the other.

The microstutter seems to occur in systems where a CPU supporting hyperthreading is present. In some situations, disabling hyperthreading helps to eliminate the microstutter completely. Unfortunately in my system, I am still experiencing microstutter regardless of whether hyperthreading is enabled or not. I hope this isn’t one of those bugs that never gets addressed like the ones in Bad Company 2.

Nevertheless, this new driver update is definitely a step in the right direction for Battlefield 3. The WHQL version of the driver should probably be released next week.

Asus’ successor to the Asus Transformer, the Transformer Prime, has been pushed back to a December release. The official reason cited is that they are trying to get ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich) running out of the box and are working closely with Google to achieve this.

After all the hype surrounding ICS when it was first demoed just under a month ago, it would be great to have it come pre-installed as opposed to having to wait for the traditional upgrade path. Having ICS come installed also prevents scaring new users away who aren’t familiar (or are uncomfortable) with rooting and custom roms without sacrificing the performance benefits.

Meanwhile, I will continue to hope that I can get ICS on my SGS before I upgrade phones next year when my contract expires.

It is no coincidence that Thanksgiving is held in the month of November. It is the one month every year where we are thankful for all the incredible games that come out, by buying more incredible games.

Titles I am looking forward to:

Modern Warfare 3 - 11/8

The Elder Scrolls V:Skyrim - 11/11

LA Noire - 11/11

Arkham City - 11/29

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Part of me really dreads this time period every year. On one hand, there are tons of awesome games to play. On the other hand, the Steam Christmas sale is just around the corner as well. This is going to be a really expensive stretch coming up.

Ever since the original GTA 3 came out for PC all those years ago, I have been a big fan of Rockstar as well as the GTA series. The GTA franchise defined the sandbox style game that we see so many other companies try their hand at these days. Controversial issues, hilarious parodies, and a gripping storyline always made me want more. Rockstar released a slight sampler of our next fix, the next in the GTA storyline which appears to take place in Los Angeles.

Click here to view the trailer

With the unveiling of ICS and the Nexus Prime just under two weeks ago, it seems like everyone is eager to get their hands on a port of ICS to their device. Thankfully, the guys who are responsible for MIUI decided to try their hand at doing just this for the i9000. The build is currently in development status, and since source code won’t be release until mid-November, I don’t think we should be expecting much just yet. Still, it is very exciting to see what could potentially be running on all our phones in the coming months.

On page 11 of the thread are two working youtube videos demonstrating just what type of progress is being made on the port.

For the lazy, here’s the second video which shows the basic UI.

The public beta left a mixed set of reactions several weeks ago. Players were complaining about everything from map selection to the countless bugs still left in the game. Some friends who had pre-ordered cancelled in fear of Battlefield 3 requiring months to be patched into a playable condition. I was initially on the fence as well, but decided it would be worth the risk based on my previous experiences playing BC2.

If you pre-ordered from any store here in Hong Kong or via Origins, you were guaranteed a “Limited Edition” of the game. The main bonus to preordering was the inclusion of the Physical Warfare Pack. This pack includes several bonus weapons which normally wouldn’t be released until much later to the general public. There are also other extra doodads included such as the use of Mass Effect dogtags and access to some bonus content.

Graphics and Performance

As stated in my open beta impressions, the game looks amazing. Everything from lighting to weapons looks great. Thankfully, my second 460 returned from Asus a week ago, just in time for me to crank up the eye candy in my experience. There are some new WHQL drivers released just in time for Battlefield 3 available on Nvidia’s website. I have installed them and there doesn’t seem to be any performance difference from the beta 285.33 drivers I previously tried. Thankfully, SLI works out of the box.

The lighting is the first thing that grabs my attention in this game, it is blindingly bright. It doesn’t matter if it is the flashlight addition on weapons or the street lamps littered throughout the zones, everything gives you a reduction in visibility. This type of attention to detail really lept out at me when I first tried the darker maps in multiplayer. I found it incredibly difficult to spot people when looking towards sources of lights like the sun or lamps. The trade off is that I now find it much easier to find the seemingly infinite number of snipers that are laying prone around the map.

As with the previous Frosbite 1 engine, I have to lower my overclock in order to avoid driver crashes while playing. Where most games as well as my GPU3 F@H client allow me to enjoy 930 mhz on the core, I have to drop all the way down to 800 in order to ensure absolute stability. This is one tough engine, but the graphical display is clearly worth it.

The actual frame rate I get varies depending on the environment I’m in. In the very brief bits of single player campaign I played, I managed to attain almost constant 50+ FPS. In the multiplayer sections, I averaged mid 40’s for the most part and found occasional drops to the mid 30’s in fire fight situations combined with weather effects on the map. Some review websites have posted their experiences testing various cards in the single player campaign. I would definitely take their results with a grain of salt when attempting to extrapolate multiplayer performance numbers.

In terns of latency, the 64 player servers are incredibly fun. The only complaint thus far is the insane amount of rubber banding that occurs in most of the 64 player servers. We haven’t worked out whether the lag is caused by the server not being able to keep up or simple latency issues. We have theorized that it is a server side problem as we have been playing in HK servers which report 14 ping in Battlelogs but rubber band like crazy when it is full of players. Hopefully this is one something that can get worked out either with upgraded server hardware or a patch to make things run more efficiently.

For some reason, I have incredible difficulty differentiating between teammates and enemies without the indicators. As a result, my reactions are typically delayed for a second or two, which is plenty for the enemy player to pump me full of virtual bullets. Minor complaint as none of my other friends seem to have any issues in this regard, sucks to be me I guess!

Single Player

I have managed to put an hour or so into the single player campaign and I think that it is definitely worth checking out. I don’t want to spoil the storyline too much, but there is definitely a little bit of everything for everyone. Infiltration, rambo, dogfighting, you name it. I’m attempting to play through the campaign on hard, but I might have to drop the difficulty down to medium if things continue at their current pace.

One thing that I was surprised to see was the implementation of quick time events (QTE). QTE is where the player will have to react to the commands on screen and their character will perform a move (or get their ass kicked) depending on how accurately and quickly they do the inputs. For example, the E key might flash and a player has to hit E in order to avoid being stabbed by an enemy soldier.

A slight complaint I have is that your AI is really good, too good. In situations where you have to press forward in a given area, simply not dying is enough to get through and proceed to the next checkpoint. It removes a degree of challenge I think, but I am sure there are areas later on where such an approach is not possible. I did buy the game primarily for the multiplayer and co-op aspects, so I don’t know if I will get that far into the campaign.

Multiplayer

Battlefield 3 is incredibly fun in a server filled with other players regardless of their skill level. Unfortunately, the inverse is also true. I have only played one night thus far, but most of the maps seem to be very big, which makes servers with less players essentially unplayable. In a 15 vs 15 player setting on a map as large as Caspian Border, it is possible to spend 5 minutes running or driving between nodes while not being able to encounter a single enemy.

This time around, there is also the option to complete some co-op missions with a friend. You can log specific scores based on how quickly you complete the mission, your firing accuracy, and so on. These scores are updated to Battlelogs so you can compete with friends for e-glory. I plan to try the co-op at some point, most likely after I unlock the UMP in multiplayer.

Most people run around like headless chickens as they try to learn the new maps and get used to the game. It is hilarious to see a humvee full of players suddenly careen off the edge of the road and into the river below. I am also hoping that I will be able to put some decent time in and level my character a bit before everyone starts getting flashlights and infrared add-ons for their guns, making it impossible to see.

Battlelogs

Battlelogs moves the whole server finding and communication experience of Battlefield out of the game and into the browser. For those of you who are old enough, you may remember playing games on “The Zone” back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. You launch instances of the game when you select a server to join or campaign mission to start. Many people seem to be against this transition, but I definitely welcome it as a step in the right direction.

Not being a hardcore Battlefield player, I have not been exposed to the franchise until well after BC2 was released. I have never been a huge FPS player, and typically only play when I have a group of friends to play with. The server joining process in BC2 was extremely sluggish to me. Every screen transition required some time and trying to refresh my server list was painful. With the transition to Battlelogs, everything is much faster, when it works.

The big drawback to Battlelogs is that it doesn’t work on a consistent basis. There have been countless times where I have attempted to join a multiplayer game, either by myself or with friends, and the BF3 client will launch but the game won’t actually load. I know for a fact that I am not the only one experiencing this either. Having to go through this process several times in order to successfully join a server, the new Battlelogs system can frequently feel just as sluggish as its predecessor from BC2. Being a hardware enthusiast of sorts, I have no qualms with trying to solve my own problems. I tried clicking the help link and it leads to a dead end. These are the type of annoyances that really take away from a game. 

Conclusion

In its current state, Battlefield 3 has lots of problems with pretty much every element of the game. Here is a brief list of all the problems I have encountered thus far:

1. Punkbuster - There are already hackers, and many people are getting randomly kicked for PB not working properly despite not being hackers
2. Server lag - Most of the Asian servers cannot handle the advertised loads. The only servers that seem to offer some notion of stability are the SG Fragnetics servers. Haven’t encountered any issues with crashing or rubber-banding just yet. As expected, these are always full.
3. Battlelogs - Party join still doesn’t work consistently. There are countless times when people will be in games and you will not be able to manually join them via friends lists. You have to find the server from the server browser and attempt to join individually.
4. Origins - Everything is wrong with this. The authentication server constantly being down friend lists not working properly make it look worse than Steam when Steam was initially released. The problem is probably magnified because of the sudden burst of people on Origins for BF3.

Whether the game is worth the $390 HKD asking price is completely subjective. I personally think that the game brings many cool things to the table in the Frostbite 2 engine as well as Battlelogs. Unfortunately, the latter is still not working properly, and it significantly hampers on the overall gaming experience. If I only have an hour to play games, I do not want to spend 20 minutes end tasking the game and attempting to join a server.

Those who are not die hard Battlefield fans would best wait for several patches and a price drop before picking the game up. In its current state, the game might scare you away from playing what would actually be a pretty awesome experience if everything worked well.

In case you aren’t a die-hard Battlefield fan and forgot, tomorrow is the long awaited launch date for Battlefield 3. It is already quite late in the day as I write this, but please do try to be as productive as possible today as the next few days most likely aren’t going to be.

HK stores should get their supplies of Battlefield 3 some time between 2 and 3 tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully you pre-ordered a copy if you are interested in the game, as stock is expected to run out quite fast. It still isn’t too late to pre-order on Origins, as the physical collectible items are extremely rare in Hong Kong.

Things to keep in mind:

- There will be a zero day patch, try to get this early

- If you ordered on Origins, try to pre-load the game before the servers get spammed beyond capacity

- Nvidia GPU users, update to beta 285.33 BF3 drivers, there might be a new WHQL driver just for BF3 tomorrow as well

- It is not too late to get a last minute GPU upgrade just to play BF3 with more eye candy

- It is also not too late to get a rage proof mechanical keyboard and mouse in case you didn’t play the beta and get completely dominated

Intro

For the last several years, AMD fans have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of Bulldozer. Consistently battered in performance benchmarks, AMD fans took refuge in knowing that the Phenom II line of processors offered slightly better value than their Intel counterparts in most gaming scenarios. The transition from Deneb to Thuban also brought about a much stronger IMC (Internal Memory Controller) as well as the introduction of Turbo Core to AMD’s processors. These implementations helped improve Thuban’s performance, but still relegated AMD to compete on the value front. Bulldozer had a lot of expectations and hopes to live up to, and the long wait finally ended two weeks ago.

Performance

From the perspective of the overall market, Bulldozer seems to me like it is in limbo. AMD themselves have stated that the FX-8150 Zambezi processor is intended to compete with Intel’s 2500K, again conceding the high end to Intel. This announcement alone isn’t so bad as Thuban was originally designed to compete with the i5 750/760 as well.

Thankfully, the FX-8150 does trade blows with Intel’s 2500K, depending on the application being run. The 8150 follows an all or nothing type of performance curve; if the applications are able to fully utilize all of its processing power, it is worth every penny of the original $245 USD asking price. Because of the way the processor is designed, the opposite is also true. The FX-8150 will fall behind even its predecessor the 1100T in single threaded scenarios.

BD’s Product Placement

Prior to its release, Bulldozer was marketed as the next coming of the original Athlon 64 processors which completely demolished any competition from Intel back in the day. This set the expectation bar quite high prior to Bulldozer’s release. All the hype and fanfare was present, the logos, the FX branding, and all the eager AMD fans bought into it. Even Intel fans wanted AMD to do well this time around, as competition would ensure Intel’s continued pursuit of advancements.

We recently found out from an ex-amd employee that AMD themselves weren’t actually responsible for the original Athlon 64 processor. In addition, everyone responsible for the Athlon 64 had left the company by 2007. Essentially, AMD themselves were never actually responsible for the Athlon 64, and someone had managed to scare everyone who was involved with the project away.

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With the amount of hype that was going into Bulldozer prior to its release, anyone who knew the actual performance figures had to know that the launch would be a filled with criticism. Regardless, there was tons of miscommunication between AMD and the rest of the general public. Whether this was intentional or not is up in the air, but the end result is the same. When compared with its predecessor, Bulldozer makes sense because it lays the foundation for much improved multi-threaded performance. Several years ago, a dual-core processor was the norm, and a quad-core was considered future proof. Nowadays, a quad-core is the norm as is 8GB of ram, so who knows where we will end up several years from now.

I liken the Bulldozer launch to that of Windows Vista’s. While Vista introduced a slew of new features and services, many people couldn’t run them because their systems were dated and they were not familiar with the concept of having to upgrade. The public wasn’t ready. Those of us who did have systems powerful enough to run Vista most likely found that it wasn’t as bad as the initial negative media perceived it to be. With regards to Bulldozer, the opposite seems to have happened. The multi-threaded performance while not exceptional, is still decent. Some have said that the new instruction sets won’t be fully utilized until Windows 8 arrives. Whether this is true or not, AMD has released a product that doesn’t fit into the current market’s needs. Hopefully later revisions of the Bulldozer architecture will have much improved efficiency and processing power to help AMD stay competitive. They definitely took a huge beating with this launch.

For the average gamer, AMD’s Bulldozer will largely be a forgettable step in their quest for a budget gaming machine. A 965 or 1055T with a 990FX motherboard is probably the safest bet for those of you who aren’t squeamish when it comes to overclocking. If you absolutely need to build a new mid-range performer now, it is hard to go wrong with a 2500K and an Asus/AsRock variant of the Z68 chipset. Those who need a slight bit more should wait for the release of the 2700K later this month.

Championship Sunday is currently live at MLG, and man is it insane. The few games I have managed to tune in to have been incredibly close and went down to the last second. I will refrain from actual match discussion since there is already plenty of that over at SCR//TL.

One of the new features being introduced this MLG is the Quad View. As the name implies, users are able to watch 4 live streams concurrently, similar to Teevox. Even without a premium ticket, all users are eligible to try the quad view service which is currently in open beta. Of the four possible streams, non-premium subscribers will be able to tune in to the standard red and blue streams on medium quality settings.

As I continue to watch MLG, I am constantly reminded of how much each event improves over its predecessor. With constant attention to community feedback, MLG has been introducing a slew of new features and upgrades to their streams. With the bar being constantly raised as 2011 winds down, it leaves me feeling incredibly optimistic for the world of e-sports come 2012.

Dead Island has been out for several weeks now here in Hong Kong and I have to say that it is actually surprisingly fun. Hearing just the premise of the game from a friend, I was initially very skeptical. As popular as Left 4 Dead was, it never really did anything for me, so I wasn’t sure that I would enjoy Dead Island. Reading up on the Official Dead Island thread over at OCN did not leave me impressed either. I read about the zero day patch as well as the release of the developer build on Steam. These things didn’t paint Dead Island in the greatest light.

The HK version of the game contains the activation code and installation DVD in an excessively big box. With margins being so tight these days, it would be great to have packaging like pretty much every other game. Space is precious!

Intro

After a night of binge drinking, the main character awakes in their hotel room to find something amiss. The hotel is eerily empty, with unattended luggage littered throughout the hallways. The player is introduced to the basic control mechanisms while they navigate their way out of the hotel.

Of the four playable characters, I chose the one who was supposed to specialize in firearms and ranged weaponry. I was aware of the fact that Dead Island is supposed to be a melee heavy type of zombie survival game, but there is something about the ranged class that attracts me in every game that I play. At the time of writing, my character is currently level 21 and has just recently encountered the first batch of firearms available in the game. Thankfully, most of my talents seem to apply to melee attacks as well.

Mechanics and Gameplay

Despite having a melee focus, there are various things players are able to do in the game. There are explosive containers and bricks that players are able to throw at enemy zombies. You could throw a barrel at a group of zombies and ignite it with a throw of a dagger or shot of your firearm. Later on, players can pick up schematics which allow them to modify weapons. They can add shock attacks to their weapons, or add torches which help illuminate the darker areas of the game.

The one key component to surviving the zombie apocalypse is the ability to kick, it is crucial to master the art of mashing “e”. This single kick has more priority than pretty much any non special-mob type zombie. Even if the zombie is in already in mid-swing, your kick will interrupt their swing similar to a pummel or counterspell on a cast in WoW. We later found that coupling this kick with a bit of running momentum will straight up knock the zombies down, enabling you to do the head-stomp finisher or to mash your LMB to do a 4 slice combo.

The kick is crucial mainly because it allows you to conserve durability. Your weapons are more fragile than a 5 month old baby, and after one fight with a group of several zombies, you will find your weapon in need of repair. Thankfully, the game allows you to carry 12 items in your active inventory at any given time. Players can cycle through various weapons to spread the durability hits as they please.

Questing

Quest hubs are placed in various areas of the environment, with random NPCs littered throughout. This type of layout definitely helps for convenience, as players can complete all the primary quests without much effort, but it does not help the story-telling aspect of the game much. It also makes completing side quests a bit more tedious.

The sheer convenience of most of the quest locators ruins the story telling element to an extent. Everyone needs something done, but like Dragon Age II, the quests themselves feel tedious and monotonous. As a player, I am bright enough to understand that the zombie infestation has ruined many lives and everyone needs something specific done for them. Unfortunately, outside of the main quest line, the rest of the quests seem more like time fillers and excuses to navigate areas instead.

The free roam aspect of the game really adds to the overall experience in my opinion. Players can deviate from the appointed arrows on the minimap and create their own version of the experience. In addition, zombies seem to scale with player levels, so we haven’t encountered any areas that were “off limits” because we could not defeat the mobs at the entrance.

Zombies will respawn if you leave an area for a certain period of time, so it is important to find the repair benches that are scattered throughout each quest zone. They cannot be kited beyond a certain point from their spawn location, so you can avoid them either by sprinting away if you do not have the durability to fight.

Annoyances and Bugs

Bugs are probably the bane of every game at the time of release. For some reason, every game that is released usually has a truckload of issues that either require a patch to be released within the week. In more extreme cases zero day fixes are required, such as the no-clipping mode that some earlier release versions of Dead Island had.

The first glaring bug is the ability to dupe, I don’t even know how this was discovered but I have tried it and it does work. A player equips the weapon they want to dupe, and holds right click as if to throw it. They then press both backspace and the left mouse button at the same time, and two copies of the item will be thrown forward. Rinse and repeat. Using this trick definitely ruins the challenge of the game, but it should make players less afraid of exploring potentially dangerous areas in fear of dying and losing a percentage of their money.

There also seems to be insane amounts of microstutter when playing the game at its highest detail settings. The game itself looks amazing despite being in a DX9 environment, but the microstutter completely ruins the experience. I have tried playing on medium with some success, but it turns out that a lot of gasses and burning areas are not rendered properly with this setting. The only way for me to recognize that I was stepping into fire was for me to see that my character was suddenly taking damage. There is a huge difference in detail and feel between the medium and high graphics settings, and it is a shame that the highest settings do not work as well.

Another annoying aspect of the game is that we haven’t figured out how the save feature works. The auto-saving feature after each quest is completed is easy enough to understand, but it seems there is no way to save outside of just reaching a waypoint or quest hub. My friend and I have had to re-do 10 minutes of questing each time until we realized to stop only at hubs.

Conclusion

Dead Island has definitely brought about many hours of entertainment, but it lacks the shine of a truly great game. I wouldn’t liken it to something like Snakes on a Plane, where the sheer ridiculousness of the plot and execution made it tremendously entertaining. All the tiny little annoyances add up to make it a game that if I were to stop playing, I would have no problem not picking it up again. Having said that though, I am still curious to see where the game will take me. The main storyline is still interesting enough to me that I am willing to see it through. I am not expecting some grande ending or epic confrontation at the end, but it should still be satisfying in its own way.

The official BF3 Open Beta release was on Friday and my experience with it thus far has been a mixed bag. On one hand, I was able to get the 3.5gb beta client directly through Origins at a very speedy 7mb/s. The entire download process took less than ten minutes and installation was a breeze as well. I did have lots of trouble staying connected to servers though, with the game randomly closing mid-match quite frequently.

As always, right click -> view image for a larger version.

Battlelogs

To begin with, BF3 introduces a new system for joining games. As opposed to the traditional method of starting BC2 and finding servers within the game, Battlelogs is a website where all of a player’s relevant stats and friends can be found. From there, players can form parties, platoons, and view stats.

Battlelogs has the look and feel of Facebook, whether that is good or not I will leave up to you. It seems clean enough and is quite snappy regardless of whether I am checking states or trying to contact friends. I have encountered quite a few problems though:

1. Generic Error 1

This error seems to occur when attempting to join a server with a party of 3 or more friends. Several of us will join the server hassle free while others of us will be left with this message. The only fix seems to be to completely re-log both Origins and Battlelogs.

2. Server is full

There have been many times when a server being listed at 16/32 or 25/32 has reported back that it has been full for us. I think this has something to do with the way slot reservations currently work with Battlelogs. I have not encountered a way to reliably replicate this, nor have I encountered a fix.

3. BF3.exe process starts but the game client never shows

Battlelogs will report that the game client has started, as well my task manager. However, the game client never appears on my task bar and I get stuck on “logging in” on my Battlellogs screen. The fix is to just manually end task BF3.exe and attempt to join the server again.

The lighting completely changes when you’re next to a burning object of some sort.

Graphics

To say that the game looks beautiful is definitely an understatement. Unfortunately, it is hard to capture just how fluid and crisp the current graphics are from a simple screenshot. Everything is just elegantly put together and the game is definitely a visual treat for the eyes. Yeah the grass is pretty fake, the trees are quite stiff as well, but nobody cares about those things. We like that statues and walls can be blown to bits, and the rendering of each piece falling apart is all sorts of awesome.

The added realism of the lasers and reflections of scopes and flashlights adds a very nice touch to the game. Unfortunately, I have also found myself completely blinded on occasion. I cannot wait until I unlock my own flashlight and return the favor to my fellow teammates!

Performance

I have turned the settings down to medium in order to attain a playable 30-40 FPS since I am running a single 460 at the moment. When I get my other 460 back from Asus, I am confident that on high settings I can get a smooth 60 as I did with BC2.  I experienced lots of graphical glitches with screen tearing and game crashes until I updated to the beta Nvidia drivers which were released specifically for BF3.

On the CPU front it seems to be quite forgiving as well. As long as you are running some sort of quad core processor released within the last 3 years or so, you should be set. Higher clock speeds will definitely be welcomed, but it is no secret that this is going to be one heck of a GPU limited game.

Conclusion

There are many bugs and glitches that need to be fixed before retail, but I am left feeling quite optimistic. I lucked out in that I got to the beta a bit later than most other people. As a result, most of the glaring issues were fixed and I didn’t encounter them. With a few other minor fixes, I think the game could potentially have a flawless launch.

Hong Kong is still allowing pre-orders for the game for the MSRP of $389, the same as it would cost on Origins. Supposedly, this is still the limited edition being sold locally, and we will get some extra doodads like a thumb drive, BF3 dog tags, and so on. I was told that there might be a chance at some DLC code, which I’m guessing is the weapons pack. Pre-ordering on Origins guarantees the DLC, but the local stores still seems to be a mixed bag. If anyone has more information, please let me know!

Several months ago, a friend of mine was generous enough to gift me a pair of Shure SE315 IEM. Since then, I have been thoroughly enjoying them during my daily commute. It took a good two weeks or so for them to finally burn in, but that magical feeling one day when I put them on was amazing. Unfortunately, one of the foam tips had started to fall apart and my right ear wasn’t very comfortable. Thankfully, my local store had some Comply foam tips on sale.

Comply supplies foam tips for a huge array of different IEM on the market, you aren’t restricted to Shure products at all. For my Shure SE 315, I picked up the Comply T-100. This particular set retails for just under $200 HKD (~26 USD) and contains a set of 10 foam pieces, or five sets for use.

The packaging itself is very simple, a transparent container keeps the foams safe. The foams themselves are slightly sticky, clinging to the side of the container. The other bonus to the packaging here is that it is extremely easy for me to get access to the actual product. There are tons of products out on the market where they have that impossible to cut plastic shell. It doesn’t make the product any safer and us as consumers any happier. Many points here to Comply!

Here we see a comparison between the original medium sized foam tip from Shure on the left, and the new T-100 foam tip on the right. The shape is slightly different, but the overall size is very similar.

The fact that the cable can be removed on the SE 2XX series and up models was helpful when pulling off the existing Shure foam tips. For whatever reason, both the small and medium sized foam tips from Shure that I tried were incredibly difficult to remove. I was constantly afraid of ripping them apart. Asking several other friends who had also elected to go with Comply foam tips, they too commented on how much easier the Comply tips were to install or remove compared with the stock Shure foams.

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I have used them for just over a week now and I find the Comply T-100 foams to be extremely comfortable. Because they aren’t as pudgy and are a bit narrower, I think that they fit slightly better in my ear canal, leading to the improved comfort and isolation over the stock foam tips from Shure. The better isolation leads to better bass as well.

If you are enjoying the stock foam tips that came with your IEM, by all means keep enjoying them! With something as subjective as sound and comfort, everyone is sure to have their own preferences. If you are in the market for some new tips though, Comply offers several different sizes for different models, do check them out!

A few of my friends have held off picking up DE:HR because they are uncertain of how well the game will run on their slightly outdated systems. The good news here is that the game is surprisingly forgiving of GPU performance. Here are my relevant comp specs for some reference:

CPU - Intel Core i7 2600K @ 4.6 ghz 1.325v

RAM - 2GB x 4 G.Skill ECO 1600 CL7 1.35

GPU - Asus GTX 460 1GB DirectCU @ 900 mhz core

HDD - Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB in raid 0

At 1920x1080 with all the details maxed, I had a very comfortable 60 FPS running in SLI. The interesting thing was that I was only at around 40-50% usage depending on the area. In single card mode, I found that with the same details settings, I was still able to get a very impressive 40-50 FPS in the same areas. My GPU usage shot up to 90%, but there were no slow downs of any sort.

I do understand that the GTX 460 1GB is a “mid-range” card for enthusiasts and an “upper-range” card for casuals, but I strongly believe that even if you go back a generation to the GTS 250/260 era, you would still have no trouble playing this beautiful game. As such, don’t wait and pick it up :D