Try before you buy.
by AC - permalink
Painkiller Gold has just been made available via Steam, and comes complete with a playable demo. It's not bad. Painkiller was released in 2004, and although the promo material brags about the incredible proprietary 3D PAIN engine, it's a pretty underwhelming game visually, especially when you consider that 2004 also saw the debuts of CryEngine, Source, and the Doom 3 engine. Painkiller runs really fast and has nice physics, but it's all very flat and reminds me a lot of the Quake III engine. It doesn't help that there are only a few weapons in the demo, and you get a bonus for beating it using only the stake launcher. Way to add variety there. Three bad guys and optimally just one gun. But it's still kinda fun in a Serious Sam, mow-em-all-down kinda way.
First impressions of the Prey demo are positive. It looks as good as Quake IV and runs as smoothly. Good atmosphere, although it really is strongly reminiscent of Quake IV and Doom 3. Hopefully Enemy Territory: Quake Wars will finally do something original with that brilliant Doom 3 engine. Anyway, the portal effects in Prey are seriously cool, which makes it suck even more that we have to keep waiting and waiting for Valve to get around to shipping Portal only when Team Fortress 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode 2 are done. I could go on a nice, satisfying rant about how Valve's episodic content plan has gone completely to hell (over a year between Episode 1 and Episode 2, and the value-pricing idea is out the window), but I won't.
I've been playing around with Screamer Radio, a nice little freeware internet radio client. It's a tiny app and comes with a decent preset list. So far I haven't heard a single stutter or skip. On the downside, at least a fourth of the presets are dead, and it gives you only a limited amount of customization. I'd have liked a sortable station list, for one thing. But you can't beat the price. So far, Sky FM is the only station I've liked enough to add it to the favorites list. First track was Bjork, second was Soul Coughing, third was Temple of the Dog. Sweet.
by AC - permalink
Painkiller Gold has just been made available via Steam, and comes complete with a playable demo. It's not bad. Painkiller was released in 2004, and although the promo material brags about the incredible proprietary 3D PAIN engine, it's a pretty underwhelming game visually, especially when you consider that 2004 also saw the debuts of CryEngine, Source, and the Doom 3 engine. Painkiller runs really fast and has nice physics, but it's all very flat and reminds me a lot of the Quake III engine. It doesn't help that there are only a few weapons in the demo, and you get a bonus for beating it using only the stake launcher. Way to add variety there. Three bad guys and optimally just one gun. But it's still kinda fun in a Serious Sam, mow-em-all-down kinda way.
First impressions of the Prey demo are positive. It looks as good as Quake IV and runs as smoothly. Good atmosphere, although it really is strongly reminiscent of Quake IV and Doom 3. Hopefully Enemy Territory: Quake Wars will finally do something original with that brilliant Doom 3 engine. Anyway, the portal effects in Prey are seriously cool, which makes it suck even more that we have to keep waiting and waiting for Valve to get around to shipping Portal only when Team Fortress 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode 2 are done. I could go on a nice, satisfying rant about how Valve's episodic content plan has gone completely to hell (over a year between Episode 1 and Episode 2, and the value-pricing idea is out the window), but I won't.
I've been playing around with Screamer Radio, a nice little freeware internet radio client. It's a tiny app and comes with a decent preset list. So far I haven't heard a single stutter or skip. On the downside, at least a fourth of the presets are dead, and it gives you only a limited amount of customization. I'd have liked a sortable station list, for one thing. But you can't beat the price. So far, Sky FM is the only station I've liked enough to add it to the favorites list. First track was Bjork, second was Soul Coughing, third was Temple of the Dog. Sweet.
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