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.

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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.

Mounting losses force EA to layoff 600 employees

Submitted by Tiberius Jonez

It seems noone is immune to the ill-effects of this Bush economy, and that includes industry giant Electronic Arts. The uber publisher announced its second quarter fiscal results and the news is not good. Coming off a first quarter loss of $95 million, EA announced a loss of $310 million for the period ending September 30. The loss comes despite the retail successes of Madden NFL 09 (4.5 million units sold), Spore (2 million units sold) and Warhammer Online (1.2 million units sold).

Due to the mounting losses, EA announced plans to eliminate roughly 600 employees, representing 6% of the company's total work force. While EA expects to make up some of the losses with upcoming holiday sales, we doubt that makes those 600 feel any better.

Deadliest Catch: Alaskan Storm, Are you serious?

By Melissa Melanson

So, I saw this review on Gamespot and just had to look further. I've watched all the Deadliest Catch shows this season and I couldn't believe it possible that they would make a video game? but nowadays they make videogames of just about anything so why not? This game has been out since mid June and this is the first I've heard of it. Why am I not surprised?

I can't imagine playing a game like this as I've watched the real life experience of being a fisherman on the Bering Sea and it seems terrifying. However, after I watched gamespot's review they did mention that you play most of the game as the captain barking orders, determining where to fish, etc... I like the idea that you in the safety of the cabin most of the time but that you still get to experience in some sense.

I think after about an hour or so I might be bored though because really how exciting can it be when all you see is the vast Bering Sea out your windows. Maybe the next time they want to create a game from a reality show and would like to do something with water they should try ICE ROAD TRUCKERS instead. That actually sounds like it might be fun.

I would recommend if you would like to play this game that you rent and not buy. I don't personally think its worth the $50 they are charging for it.
What do you guys think? Would you consider playing this game?

Cliff “Don’t call me Cliffy B” Bleszinski on Gears of War 2 fixes

By Tiberius Jonez

Gears of War was a great game – no doubt about it. The campaign was fun, and while the multiplayer was what really gave the game its long legs, it was far from perfect. Many players hated the grenade sticking (I loved it) and Epic addressed that issue with a patch that somehow made me even better at it. Others found the chainsaw randomness annoying. But without a doubt the biggest complaint I heard during online matches was about the host shotgun advantage. Basically, if the host of a match used a shotgun, that player could destroy the entire opposing team even when it seemed a certainty that he was out of shottie range or not even aiming at his victim. It could turn a mostly great online experience into a frustrating, cuss-laden, controller-throwing scream fest.

Well, in a recent interview with GamePro, Gears creator Cliff Bleszinski says Epic has addressed all those bugs, and that Gears 2 will best its predecessor in every way. From an improved cover system and chainsaw duels to more players online, a more stylized lighting engine and much more, Gears of War 2 appears to be well on its way to taking the franchise to all new heights of bloody goodness.

He Said, “Lego Indiana Jones, The Original Adventures” is a pleasant surprise

By Tiberius Jonez

Well, as you can see below, my better half has really enjoyed playing the new Lego Indiana Jones game. Well, why not, with a name like Jones – it has to be good, right?

Well, when I asked for the game for Father’s Day, it was more an excuse to have something we could play together than an outright desire to play it myself. Sure, I had read reviews of the previous Lego games and figured they must at least be decent, but I honestly thought they’d be too simple for an uber-gamer like me. However, I am pleasantly surprised to report, Lego Indiana Jones,The Original Adventures is a really fun game – and it’s challenging to boot.

The graphics are very cute and quite eye-pleasing aside from some noticeable vertical tearing. The camera angle isn’t always conducive to making the platforming aspects of the game as easy as they could be – which is somewhat surprising considering this is the latest of several such Lego games. While it is somewhat disappointing that Traveler’s Tales, the developer responsible for the game hasn’t solved the game’s camera issues – it is not a huge detractor from the game’s overall fun factor.

While I was expecting simple puzzles from the title, I can attest to the fiendish difficulty of some of the game’s puzzles portions. We’ve had to consult YouTube on more than one occasion to figure out what step we were missing to get past different challenges the game presented for us.

As far as the way Traveler's Tales handles the Indiana Jones franchise – they do a remarkable job of remaining true to the movies while adding their own unique comic twists here and there. A sense of fun and light-hearted humor pervades the entire production and adds nicely to the title’s overall appeal. Any fan of the man in the hat will enjoy the Lego treatment he receives.

Overall, I would highly recommend Lego Indiana Jones, The Original Adventures to anyone who either loves good action-platforming-puzzle games, or to any fan of the Indiana Jones movies.

Indy is a winner on the big and small screens!

She Said "Lego Indiana Jones, the original adventure" is awesome!!

by Melissa Melanson

So who am I? I am Tiberius Jonez' wife. I endure the night after night of game playing in our house. To be honest, I am a sims2 fan so as you can see I don't have much gaming experience myself however, I can tell a psp from a ps3. I can talk a big "game", I just don't play them a lot until my husband asked for this game for Father's day. I thought "great another game", Sigh, but this one was different. Tiberius asked me if I wanted to play and I thought why not? Couldn't hurt I guess.

I was pleasantly surprised at how much fun it was. I've seen all the movies but my memory isn't the best so I didn't remember half as much as my husband did about what comes next so for me it was a surprise around every corner which made it even more exciting. I always played the sidekick and he played Indie. We made a great team.



Even our 2 year old son who loves Video Games (what a shock!!) liked watching. It was exciting, challenging and the puzzles were quite difficult. A few times we had to even look for help as neither of us could figure out the next step. I like games that make you think and just aren't a shootem up game with really no point but to shoot the enemy. I would highly recommend this game to young and old. The lego style is really quite unique and fun. I think that is what I liked about it the most. If the style was geared more towards a lara croft look, more realistic I don't know if I would have been so inclined to play, but this style almost seemed silly and once I started playing it sucked me in. I can't wait until my husband gets home every night so we can play. We've played a total of 3 nights now and have maybe completed 1/5th of the game thus far. I suspect there will be many more nights of fun to come.

Sony working on “wii-mote” for PS3

By Tiberius Jonez

Sony’s PS3 is slowly starting to outsell the Xbox 360 and now they are aiming to steal some of Nintendo’s thunder by creating a new motion-sensing controller that will break apart into two pieces similar to the Wii-Mote.

While Sony declined comment, it is rumored that the new controller has already been shipped to developers who are working on some Wii-like titles.

With Blu-Ray now the standard High Definition DVD format, the slow roll-out of HOME expected later this year and this move designed to target the casual or non-gamer, Sony is hoping to position the PS3 as the best value for a home entertainment system currently available.

When Sony will officially announce the new controller is unknown, but you can be sure they will make it public at this year’s E3 expo, if not sooner.

Gamefly Reviewed – Should you be renting games?

by Tiberius Jonez

This is a story I originally posted in Feb. 07. I wanted to bring it back and ask you, the reader what you think? Do you use gamefly? If not, tell me do you rent or buy and why?

I recently became a member of Gamefly. For the uninitiated, Gamefly is the Netflix of video games. A monthly subscription fee of $21.95 allows you to rent two games at a time ($28.95 for three) for as long as you like with no late fees. You can also opt to buy the game if you like it, and they will send you the original case and manual. They offer a huge library of games from every console manufacturer including the Next-Gen offerings and handhelds.

I have found Gamefly to be a huge money saver in my household. As a father with a 6 month old son, money is at a premium, and cutting costs is a very real factor in our every day lives.

As someone who used to spend $60 to $180 every month on games, often returning them after a week because of dissatisfaction and only getting a fraction of the purchase value in in-store credit, Gamefly has been a welcome way to increase entertainment while reducing costs.

Gamefly is very convenient; you simply make your game choices in order of desire on their website, and the games arrive in the mail 2 to 4 business days later. The envelope converts to a postage paid return envelope. By using "Fastscan" technology, when a returned game is scanned at your local post office, Gamefly receives the information instantly and ships out the next game on your list before the last one is even received back at the warehouse. Pretty slick! (note: the Fastscan feature isn’t available in some rural areas where electronic scanning technology is still not used).

In the 3 months that I've been a member, I've rented 12 games. Had I purchased those games, I would have spent roughly $700. That’s a savings of $635 for me and my family. Every game I've rented so far has been free of defects, and it’s been a great way to catch up on some of the games I've missed out on over the past year.

One of the best features of Gamefly is the prices for games you choose to purchase. They are significantly less than used prices offered at regular game retailers.

The greatest benefit I've personally received is the improved attitude of my wife towards my gaming. She used to constantly drop not-so-subtle hints about the costs of my gaming. Now, she doesn't mind me playing nearly as much because of the huge reduction is money spent for gaming each month. In fact, she has rented a couple DS games herself and we bought Mariokart DS after renting it and we play it together. Now, that’s a win-win situation!

All in all, I whole-heartedly recommend Gamefly as a great way to both save money and to try out the games you are interested in to see if they are worthy of a purchase.

Gamefly Netflix