Back in the Saddle

18 May

 

I’m happy to report that I’m officially back in the saddle after a brief hiatus I needed to take so my wife and I could move into our new home. My office is once again set up, but my recording equipment isn’t all in place. All in all, I’m at about 90% functionality.

I’m coming back at a hectic time and I have quite a few reviews in the backlog that I’m going to cover. Currently, I’m playing (and absolutely loving) The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. Before I post my video review, I can assure you all, this game is getting a “worth buying” rating. If there was a higher rating that I could give it, I would. Maybe I’ll make a “worth buying twice” rating on it.  So far, it is everything a sequel should be. But holy hell, the combat is difficult. I’m very glad I avoided as many previews for this game as I did. It is almost 100% unspoiled for me.

L.A. Noire is sitting on my desk, begging me to play it, but Eliot is covering that review. I’ll just be playing that one for the sheer joy of it.

I still need to play and review Mount and Blade: With Fire and Sword. I did the preview, but shortly afterwards is when things finally started picking up. Patrick is wrapping up reviews for both Brink and Men of War: Assault Squad. Both Michael and Marcos are ready to fire up the JTV page and Gavin is getting his bags ready for E3.

All in all, despite the fact there is a summer lull coming to the game industry  after E3, Elder-Geek.com will still be very busy.

We’re all getting excited for this year’s E3. I’ve got a few wild predictions up my sleeve (none of which will most likely come true). But what about all of you?

Let’s hear ’em all right now! What are your BIG predictions for this year’s E3?

Randy

19 thoughts on “Back in the Saddle”

  1. Well there is inFAMOUS 2 coming out the week of E3 to stave off a few days of the lull, and OoT 3DS coming out in the middle of June. After June though, there will be that lull until October when a lot of quality stuff comes out.

    Ok, E3 predictions:

    Nintendo: Talk about what will be available in the eshop, Mario Kart 3DS info, obviously Wii2 info, Mario 3DS, Pikmin 3 (about time, probably for the Wii2 or 3DS), Kirby Wii info, 3rd party 3DS games and some other Nintendoish stuff.

    Sony: Obvious apology for PSN even though they have been apologizing for about a month now. NGP info that includes games, price point, launch date, etc. Show off Resistance 3, more Uncharted 3, maybe talk about The Last Guardian (if not then it will be at TGS), and probably and hopefully show Move games cause it really needs the help.

    Microsoft: Who knows what they will do besides talk about Gears of War 3, since they have been really quiet lately. Kinect will be talked about, maybe some new services coming in a fall update, the possibility of the Halo remake, and maybe some other first party titles. Heck, Microsoft really needs to get a couple more first party series, and this will be a good chance to show off those series.

    Those are just the big three console makers. There are so many other games to get info about. I am also waiting on BF3 news to see more of what DICE has been working on. This year’s E3 should be a big one with a lot of new console and handheld news. Can’t wait for three weeks from now for E3. If I am not working I will be able to watch everything as it comes out. Can’t wait.

    Oh, and welcome back Randy. I can’t wait to play TW2 either, but I will have to wait until college ends for the summer in well…three weeks. Gonna get my tower fixed in that time though (should be this weekend with a new CPU cooler; stock coolers suck). Well, I guess I can work through my back log this summer, and it is a pretty big one to work through at that.

  2. Was wondering where did all the justin.tv videos went.

    Would love to add my own positive comments about TW2, but the brand new GOG downloader decided that my 9gb preloaded data wasn’t really all that important and just wiped it all out. Such being the case, i’m playing Half Life 2 and APB Reloaded until the GOG downloader decides to redownload and not fail.

    E3 predictions? No idea. I just hope there’s a full STALKER 2 announcement + moar Obsidian. Neither won’t happen, though.

    1. Btw Randy, experiencing bad performance with TW2? Word on GAF is the game’s an under-optimized mess.

      1. So kinda like Crysis? Which is the reason for needing better tech to run the game when the hardware should have been able to run the game just fine at a solid framerate. Well a patch should be available soon to alleviate the problem of the bugs.

        1. Can’t say about TW2 yet, but i never had any problems with playing Crysis at a solid framerate (and with it looking great). People just couldn’t get it into their heads that the game wasn’t mean to be played in the highest settings back when it was released.

      2. Wow. I’m running everything on high or ultra and getting pretty high framerates. I have zero complaints and I’m running on a slightly older machine.

        I too have my copy from GOG but they didnt goof up on me.

        1. Are you running an ATI or a nvidia card? That makes all the difference in terms of problems. The newer ATI/AMD cards are having issues because of catalyst and a few other issues. AMD is working on a fix for TW2 and CDPR is also working on a patch. Cards that are like 3 years old shouldn’t really have a problem. Also it depends, cause some people have no problem with the game, while other people with the exact same card and CPU are having issues. It is just random.

          1. I got a nVidia card and i updated my drivers to the beta version since it says it helps with TW2.

          3. On my rig: 2.13ghz quad core, 6gb RAM and a 9800GTX+, it runs pretty terrible. That is, i struggle to get a solid 30FPS even on minimum settings (updating drivers, uninstalling 3D vision, etc.) and at minimum, TW2 doesn’t look nice. Underwhelmed by that, but i’m liking everything else, specially how many times i got my ass kicked on hard difficulty.

            God please patch this game into playable land.

          5. I sure hope so. The performance of this game feels like they forgot to comment a line or something. No matter what i do, performance is, pure and simple, terrible.

          7. Is that an insider’s scoop i’m readin’?

            Sweet.

            I’ll do APB until then, then 😛

  3. As far as E3 predictions go… I won’t go into too much detail ’cause I’m doing a full writeup for my site… but the big things I expect to see are:

    1) Microsoft will overhype Kinect again, and the audience will look bored again.
    2) HOPEFULLY Microsoft will have some solid first party titles other than gears 3 to discuss.
    3) Most Japanese developers will have small booths and presences after the tsunami damage.
    4) I expect Squenix to go all out, due to the massive losses they’ve taken. They really need to pull all the stops out and get an impressive showing if they want to make some of the losses back.

    As far as Witcher 2… it’s on my list of ‘games to try’ but I find I have trouble making time for new pc games. When I sit at my pc I tend to get lost in either starcraft 2 or wow…

  5. Here are my predictions:
    -No Last Gaurdian shown… but if it is shown at the Sony Press Conference, it will not live up to the hype (I just have a bad feeling about this one).
    -MGSR will have a strong showing, but Kojima will have more to show. 2 new titles, one of which being a new MGS game and another being a possible Snatcher reboot.
    -Bungie shows off their new multiplayer focused shooter, and it is a fresh take on combat/puzzle shooting.

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