Far Cry 2 - Make your old PC feel cutting edge

Posted by Tiberius Jonez

I think we'd all agree that good gameplay is what ultimately counts in making any great videogame, but there is no doubt that great graphics make any gaming experience that much more immersive. Unfortunately, modern games with directx 10 capabilities and all the bells and whistles are often unplayable for the average PC owner.

With Far Cry 2, the brainwizards at Ubisoft have somehow managed to make one of the most stunning graphics engines without requiring a $3,000 uber-rig to run the game.

The Far Cry 2 video below (recorded from my PC using FRAPS) features the game's opening sequence so you can see just how pretty this game is, even without maxing out every graphics option. While my PC is capable of running Far Cry 2 with maxed out settings, this video demonstrates that even if you don't have the latest tech in your PC, you can still enjoy beautiful graphics.

.

Far Cry 2's manual recommends 2GB of ram to run the game with full settings, and as you can see, it runs well. My PC has 2 Gb of OCZ Platinum Rev 2 Ram (800mhz). The game's graphics settings are set to "very high" with 4x antialiasing, "ultra real" trees and lighting.

I am thoroughly impressed with this engine. It runs smoothly while making your eyes burn with glorious graphics splendor. The only downside is, if you weren't a graphics whore before playing this game, you will be after. You've been warned.

Enjoy the video.

Blogging with video - the basics

Posted by Tiberius Jonez

As an avid gamer and gaming journalist, I’ve always appreciated blogs that include original video with their stories. Unfortunately, until recently, the prospect of including videos here at GameJonez Blog just seemed like more effort than it was worth.

From capturing video, to editing it and compressing it to an acceptable size for blogging (100MB or less) while still retaining a high enough level of quality to make it worth viewing online, the prospect of learning the process was daunting to say the least.

As usual, we fear that which we don’t understand. After several hours of googling, downloading and trial and error, I can safely say I now have at least a functioning understanding of how to make this video blogging thing a reality.

The Gears of War video below was created using the steps outlined in this short article.



If you want to learn how to do this yourself, read on.

There are some basic steps to keep in mind when it comes to capturing, manipulating and uploading videos to the internet. First, you need a utility for capturing the video. For the purposes of this article, I am talking only about capturing PC video, not video from gaming consoles. By far, the best utility I found, and the highest rated around the net is FRAPS. You can buy the full version of FRAPS for $37, which is a steal when you see how powerful and easy it is to use. A trial version is also available and will work for this purpose.

Once installed, simply start FRAPS and then start whatever program you want to capture video from – a game, a browser, whatever. Basically whatever your video card is outputting at the time, FRAPS will capture it and save it. Simply hit the F9 key to begin capturing, and press it again to stop. FRAPS can also take and save screenshots in your preferred format by hitting the F10 key. Besides capturing video and screenshots, FRAPS has many functions as a benchmarking utility as well. For more info on FRAPS’ benchmarking capabilities, visit the FRAPS website.

Once you’ve captured some avi video with FRAPS, you will see the next problem to overcome – that video you captured is HUGE!!! The video below (which is under 5 minutes long) originally weighed in at over 2.5 GIGS! Most blogs and other sites like YouTube will limit you to uploading videos of 100MB or less.

Not to worry, our friends over at Adobe have the perfect solution – Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0. You can download the 30 day free trial for short term use, but if you have any interest in video editing from your camcorder or other source, you really can’t go wrong with Adobe Premiere Elements.

Now, Premiere Elements isn’t quite as simple as FRAPS, but it’s far from rocket science. For now, let’s keep it simple. All you’re going to do in Elements is open your saved avi file, edit it if you like, and then export it.

When you choose to export, you will be prompted to select your preferred codec. I recommend Windows Media Player simply because almost everyone has it and, more importantly, it does an excellent job of compressing video while maintaining a high level of visual quality. Once you’ve selected a codec, you can set several other parameters like aspect ration, etc. Otherwise, you can just click OK and go with the defaults.

The cool thing here is any changes you make to the export settings can be saved as an export template, so you can use these same settings for future projects.

After the video finishes saving, open it up and prepare to be amazed. Our video which was once 2.5GB’s is now only 17.5MB’s (your numbers will vary based on the settings you chose). That’s an astounding level of compression. Of course, the higher quality video settings you select during the export process, the larger your final file will be. You may be surprised just how high a quality of video you can achieve while staying under 100MB’s.

Voila! That’s pretty much it. Your video is done. All you need to do now is upload it to Blogger or YouTube and that’s as easy as following their simple instructions. With Blogger, it’s as simple as adding a photo to a story.

So, let your inner video producer out and start posting your videos for the world to see today!

Gears of War 2: Flashback Map Pack

Posted by Tiberius Jonez

Tomorrow, one of the biggest titles of the year ships with a sizable bonus regardless of which version you pick up. In addition to the ten multiplayer maps included with Gears of War 2, Epic Games has added a download code within each new copy of the game to download five additional maps taken from the original Gears of War. The Flashback Map Pack not only adds a dose of nostalgia to the Gears of War 2 multiplayer experience but it freshens the "old" maps with new designs for each.

Some of the changes you can expect include the waters of Canals now being frozen, Gridlock's been overtaken by lush vegetation, Tyro Station seems to have had an upgrade in tech, Mansion appears more abandoned than ever and Subway has dried up and now rains pieces of ash from the ongoing war.

Check out the video to see the changes for yourself.