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4Jul/110

Steam – Summer Camp Sale – Singularity (walkthrough)

By McAkomx - Only today, Steam offers "Singularity" for a discounted price in the "Summer Camp Sale" promo. If you like action and want an interesting story, then this game is worth a recommendation.

It stands out from the classic shooter with an interesting topic. Playing with time. Through a item that you get in the game, it is possible for the player to turn back time and thus to change the future. This opens up an entirely new possibilities of gameplay.

We had so much fun with the game back in 2010, that we had create a walkthrough. So if someone is unsure whether he should buy the game or not, he can simply watch a few of our videos. Have fun!

(In Singularity, you will fight your way through an ever-shifting environment haunted with time ravaged creatures, while sudden time waves hurl you back and forth between 1950 and the present day. Use your wits and the perfect weapon - the Time Manipulation Device - to unravel the conspiracy on the remote island of Katorga-12)

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=7ABC39662E3C04E8

Filed under: PC Games, Walkthrough No Comments

25Sep/090

Resident Evil 5, Red Faction: Guerrilla & Batman: Arkham Asylum – Videos and Screenshots!

I had some time on my hands to kill, so I decided to waste it with recording Red Faction: Guerrilla, Resident Evil 5 and Batman: Arkham Asylum gameplay videos and its cut-scenes/cinematics.

I've played mostly Red Faction: Guerrilla. This game is simply awesome. The fact that you can destroy pretty much anything in the environments invites some serious tactics. For example planting remote-exploded bombs under a bridge and killing passing enemies by blowing said bridge at the right moment.

Or blowing up huge smokestacks at the right moment only to watch said smokestack fall on a patrolling enemy car, following by exploding said car, throwing exploding car into the next enemy crowd. Resident Evil 5, however awesome this game is and Batman's super-awesome free flow combat system simply can't beat this for me!

That being said, Resident Evil 5 and Batman: Arkham Asylum are both awesome games! Batman even more so if you have a Nvidia GPU allowing you to play with PhysX enabled. Gives an even more eerie feeling when traveling in damp, dark corridors!

As for Resident Evil 5:

I recorded all 53 in-game cut-scene cinematics from Resident Evil 5. During the recording I switched the costumes (Chris: Warrior, Safari. Sheva: Clubbin', Business) and filters (default, retro, classic horror).

Sadly only 3 gameplay videos! Maybe I'll record a few more, when and if I play Resident Evil 5. The game is great, don't get me wrong. But it has very little replay-value for me. Since I played the game through I can replay all chapters. If you want me to replay a specific chapter, throw me a mail, tweet, dent, or leave a comment!

Batman: Arkham Asylum - Gameplay
Batman: Arkham Asylum - Screenshots

Red Faction: Guerrilla - Gameplay
Red Faction: Guerrilla - Cinematics
Red Faction: Guerrilla - Screenshots

Resident Evil 5 - Gameplay
Resident Evil 5 - All 53 cut-scenes
Resident Evil 5 - Screenshots

Filed under: PC Games No Comments

7Sep/0947

Fraps & VirtualDub: How to save disk space and enjoy good quality, small file size HD video clips

VirtualDub & Fraps settings

The biggest problem most of us face while recording gameplay clips with Fraps is its disk space usage. Fraps records everything uncompressed, continuously (free version is limited to 30 sec.) and sequential. Meaning from start till stop the "whole" clip is split into single 4GB files (For FAT32 filesystem user convenience).

The length of a single 4 GB clip depends on the resolution and the in-game scene you record it in. For example, for me a 4 GB clip has about 90 sec. worth of gameplay in 1920x1200 resolution.

Because of this uncompressed real-time recording your frame-rates drops significantly while playing. There is NO way to keep up 40+fps with Fraps running unless you have one hell of a monster system.

Imagine what happens when you want to capture a 30+ min gameplay clip. Either you buy yourself a Terabyte HDD or you use a very simple trick: recording in half-size, upscaling and sharpening. Read the How-To guide!

Filed under: Software, Tips and Tricks Continue reading

18Jul/090

Trine – A platform game utilizing physics

I'm not easily swayed and fascinated by a game. The last one that really, and I mean REALLY, fascinated me was Baldur's Gate 2 and Fallout. Since then there have been a lot of good and very good games, but no diamonds so far. That is, until now. Trine, man I tells ya, 'tis game just amazes me.

Perhaps it is because this game so much reminds me of my childhood where I used to play The Lost Vikings, I'm a sucker for nostalgia all right. It should be mentioned the new Monkey Island Remake "The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition" is just as awesome!

Or perhaps because this game simply is so awesome. Trine is almost just like The Lost Vikings. You get to play a mage, who conjures boxes, bridges and platforms, who moves objects with his hands, a thief who uses exploding arrows and swings with her rope, and a warrior who uses brute force to smash through the enemy hordes.

The only difference between The Lost Vikings and Trine is that Trine uses "real" physics in order for you to solve the puzzles and that you have instant access to all 3 heroes from anywhere whenever you want. That means you don't have to move the mage first, then the warrior, then the thief. You move as "one". Press "1" the mages comes out, Press "2" the thief goes, Press "3" the warrior appears.

The story behind Trine is somewhat fuzzy. The 3 characters are captured inside a crystal, which is why you have access to all 3 of them anywhere, anytime. Evil spreads throughout the world, you have to beat the evil in order to be freed from the crystal. Quite cliche I know.

Throughout the levels you earn experience and you can loot items from chests. Earned experience results in level gain for each character. Earned points from level ups in turn can be spent to expand each characters abilities. Looted items can be distributed freely between characters in order to make them more powerful.

I can't stress physics enough, it's not the focus of Trine but it is a huge part of the game. You WILL have to make use of it's physics to solve the puzzles.

The only downsize is, Trine is way, way too short. Only 20 levels and the game is done. How fast you do each level depends on the difficulty your set and your ability to solve puzzles. Still I feel 20 levels are too few.

Anyway if you seek a great, amazing platform puzzle-solving game then Trine is just that. I made a few 720p HD game play clips while I was playing it. Enjoy!

Game Play #1: Part 1/2, Part 2/2
Game Play #2: Part 1/3, Part 2/3, Part 3/3
Game Play #3: Part 1/3, Part 2/3, Part 3/3

Filed under: PC Games No Comments

28Jun/090

The Hillbillies invade Fallout 3 – “Point Lookout” HD gameplay clips!

As you can probably imagine I'm currently playing the 3rd new DLC, "Point Lookout". It's Bethesda's 4th one and many more may come (I guess I was wrong, 5 is enough!).

Point Lookout takes you to an isolated island, it is Fallout 3's equivalent of Point Lookout State Park. An amusement park, with a huge carousel surrounded by a damp swamp and an old lighthouse overlooking it. It gives off an eerie feeling.

And the bonus: remember the Pint-Sized Slasher? Perhaps Point Lookout, Maryland is where the Slasher originated.

The whole DLC is somewhat horror / thriller themed. The nuclear bombs did not fall on Point Lookout, but the island was simply forgotten and left to its own resources.

New monsters are present, the Swampfolk, inbreed hillbillies with hostile attitude toward the player, such as Trackers, Creepers/Scrappers and Brawlers/Bruisers. Even a swamp variant of ghouls and mirelurks. Oh, and a new set of humans too, the Tribals.

Of course new quest-able perks are added, although nothing huge, still funny to have and weapons such as double barrel shotguns, axes and shovels.

Because so many Confederates died during the American Civil War on Point Lookout, you'll find Confederate Hats by the thousands.

All in all, I can only recommend this DLC! The 5th DLC "Mothership Zeta" is coming in July August, and will supposedly involve the crashed alien ship and not so friendly extraterrestrials.

Gameplay clips:
The Local Flavor (Calvert's Mansion): Part 1/2, Part 2/2
Exploding Calvert Mansion

Filed under: PC Games No Comments

1Mar/0989

VirtualDub 720p HD settings for YouTube! [Good quality, small file size]

I often record gameplay clips from video games I'm playing with FRAPS. Usually in 1920x1080 resolution depending on the game and the FPS I get with FRAPS running. For transcoding the raw footage to something bearable to upload I usually use only VirtualDub.

Lately I've experimented with settings, and I think I found some good ones. Good video and sound quality with small file size were my goals. I think roughly 100 mb for a 5 min. clip and about 300mb for the full 10 min. in full 720p HD quality is awesome.

I'm still experimenting with sound compression but I think with 192 kb/s AC-3 ACM I have a good start.

Please bear in mind that the higher your resolution is the bigger your file size will be and vice versa. Those 100 mb respectively 300 mb are based on my 1920x1080 resolution!

This guide is intended for 16:10 and 16:9 resolutions. If you're playing on a 4:3 resolution, do not resize down to 1280*720p without maintaining aspect ratio, because the end-result will otherwise look over-stretched/-squeezed.

My settings for VirtualDub are in the picture below. If you want a very detailed explanation what each option does, check this out!

By the way, you have to have the H.264 codec installed to get it working. Download and install the latest VFW-version build here. PAY attention which version you're downloading, x86 (=32bit) or x86_64 (=64bit).

A warning about the Option "Multithreading" -> "Threads" don't set it higher than [# of your CPU Cores * 1.5] because then your whole system will start chugging. For example a Core 2 Duo would be 2 Cores * 1.5 = 3, a Q9550 would be 4 Cores * 1.5 = 6 and an AMD Phenom II X3 would be 3 Cores * 1.5 = 4.5 4.

This is by no means a guarantee that it will or will not work on your system. Each system, its components and its software are unique. You'll probably have to experiment a bit on your own. But those mentioned numbers are a good start.

It also might be necessary for you to adjust the audio volume to your liking. I have -10 dB, because the sound I record is terribad. My onboard sound sucks, period. Some people also experience asynchronous sound, here's how you can fix it.

On a side note: When you have uploaded your clip on YouTube and YouTube processed it the quality then will be lowered again. There's nothing you or I can do about that, it's up to YouTube.

The whole tutorial is also available on YouTube as a video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9XOgnaJ_Hs

A few links to my own HD clips:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxijbXfIs4A&hd=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yt35f2WFFY&hd=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oe4jCQ8zzz0&hd=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNLlobJbrm8&hd=1

Addendum 16.September 2009: Enabling GPU acceleration
Since version 1.9.4 it is possible to use the GPUs processing power (if your GPU supports it, which most modern GPUs do) as part of whole the transcoding process. This way you can speed up the transcoding process significantly (depending on your compression settings!).

On my computer this cut my transcoding time from an average 1h for a 10 min. clip down to some 40-ish minutes. Under "Options" -> "Preferences" enable "3D accel".

Addendum 23.10.2009: Crashes during encoding
There's currently a problem causing VirtualDub 1.9.4/5/6/7/8/9 to crash under Windows 7 while encoding sometimes. The culprit is 3D accel! Turn it off under "Preferences" -> "3D accel" and enjoy VirtualDub once again!

Addendum 16.05.2010: Option "3d accel" slowing down encoding
I've been getting mixed messages. Apparently using "3d accel" causes it to render slower than usual on some systems. I can confirm that. With 3d accel turned on, a 10min video takes about 1 hour 10-20 minutes, while turned off it takes about 1 hour max. You'll have to experiment on your system!

And if you are running on a multicore cpu, don't forget to enable threading via "Option" -> "Preferences" -> set "Threading" to 1!

Update 27.01.2011:
Updated Setting Screenshot

Filed under: Software, Tips and Tricks 89 Comments