why i think mobile hardware needs to concentrate on battery life now

Had a galaxy s4 for a while now and i just use it for calls/internet/camera and the odd game and i have to charge it every day.

Now the specs of a lot of modern phones and tablets you are talking quad core 2ghz + and 3gb of ram and i have to say i really do not see why they need that sort of specs perhaps there might be the odd game but i really cannot see how going online or watching a video needs that.

Every year we get a incremental upgrade but the battery remains the same while there may be improvements to battery life by making it more efficient but battery's remain the same for me personally i would sacrifice the slimness on a phone for a bigger battery.

Though one thing i did wonder i had a old calculator which had a little solar panel in it i wonder why that has not been done on a phone yet sure you may keep your phone in the pocket but taking it out to charge would not be a issue  

what do game characters do when the player is not there ?

I tend to overthink things and was playing doom 3 a while back and i picked up a armor and this hidden wall came down and a imp came out and attacked.

And it just got me wondering what would have been thinking if it was real ?

"i hope someone takes the bait soon i have been here for hours"

" i really need to go to the toilet"

"next time i go into a hidden room i will make sure it has heating"


It is more common with older games but you do get the impression the games revolve around the player character. Can you imagine in zelda the shop keeper thinking "i only have that one customer that keeps me in business"

DRM or no you cannot play the game you paid for

Many many years ago i bought a copy of half life 2 and it was one of the worst experiences i ever had on the pc. Not because of the game which is great but the time it took me to get to the stage of playing the thing.

At the time only had a 56k modem and of course with half life 2 you had to install STEAM which back then was a far different beast. I really do not know how long it took me from actually putting the disc in to actually playing the game but it was a long time and i was getting very annoyed.

Now i have to say if someone had said to me here is a pirate copy of the game on disc you just install and play i would have done it and justified it by saying i already paid for the thing.

Now many years later steam is far better (though now having broadband helps) but there many games where drm is a issue i heard the new dragons age inquisition caused a few problems and then we have the always online issues.

In the end drm affects the people who actually pay for the game make it much friendlier for example instead of having always online perhaps have it check into the servers once every week so if the servers are down you can still play it. 

Sound in games

Have to say i have never been a audiophile while i like a good tune and can appreciate a good sound effect like dooms pump action shotgun sound has always been just there for me

Also it feels like audio has not progressed as much as other things for my pc have not used a sound card for years as i always felt like the onboard sound was good enough for what i need

Though part of that could be down to headphones/speakers often people tell me you get good ones it would make a difference though i just never felt compelled to get them.

However i can say in some games the 3d sound is a gameplay help so you can tell where enemies are coming from

I would be very interested in hearing (pun intented) from people who have a top of the line sound system on how much better it is  

Putting together a desktop PC

So i have been building pc's for many years my first ever pc i built was a athlon xp in about 2003 and since then mostly stuck with amd (more to do with price ) though did build a intel Q6600 and i thought i would give a few things i have learned. now this is mostly from my point of view in that i use the pc 80% for games and the rest video editing

1. Research on the components often picking the wrong parts  can cause problems perhaps a motherboard is not compatible with a certain processor or memory config (i got a 990fx motherboard and went to my local computer shop and bought a random 8gb memory.....turns out it was not compatible. If you are paying for a whole new rig then bundles on trusted web sites might be a good idea

2.Price vs performance for example a 4790k compared to a 4690k in games may only be a few frames faster per second or in handbrake might be a little bit faster but the price difference is over 100 euro so would it be worth paying the extra ? if time is money and its for productivity then probably so but for general use i doubt it ,

3.Do not scrimp though quite a few times i bought that graphics card that was cheap and really it was  not good enough to handle games later on and i really wish i had saved and waited that little bit longer

4. WAIT, that new processor/hard drive/graphics card/motherboard just come out i would always say wait till any issues are known and drivers are updated also hopefully prices come down

Give me a Assassin's creed type of game with no animus stuff

So i was intrigued by these games i thought they looked cool so i picked up the first one i really like history and to be taken back to a time to soak in the atmosphere

However for me and this i understand is a personal preference the Animus stuff really killed the atmosphere in the first game and while that has been cut back in later games it is still there

When you were roaming through a place and then these future elements creep in or you get things like no memory to prevent you seeing a certain area it broke the atmosphere for me but also they acted as obvious ways so you did what the developers wanted.

I would really love that type of a game and the new lord of the rings game which had elements of assassins creed as well as other games like batman really did a great job and i hope with there future games that they really go in a different direction

Lee evans comedy gig dublin

So just got back from seeing lee evans thought i would give my opinions

Weather wise was not the best was raining alot so really had to get taxis to get there thankfully was nice weather after the gig so can walk back to the hotel afterwards

The venue itself (the three arena) was pretty good but the prices for drinks and food was horrendous (6.50 euro for a small bottle of coors light )

Where we were sitting was not the best

But there were worse and it was a good enough view as for the gig itself i thought it was excellent the jokes were constant and he never missed a beat (i always thought with dvds they were edited but after seeing him live perhaps not) there were a lot of laughs and towards the end he really put on a show.And even stayed on to shake hands with people  As my first ever comedy gig i would go back again but i would really want more prime seats.   

What would your dream game be ?

Some of my dream games would be 

A sequel to symphony of the night with HD art and insane amount of 2d animation and detail in characters and backgrounds 

Baldurs gate 3 the second game was awesome and very few games came to that sort of size and depth (i think bioware even stated they would never make a game on that scale again which is a shame )

A massive epic story based rpg but with a combat along the lines of bayonetta or devil may cry 

Pokemon but a wii u version with a huge 3d game world (was thinking like a skyrim/zelda/pokemon hybrid)

A 2d fighting game with epic sized characters amazing 2d animation and really over the top combat (skull girls was pretty close but was thinking more in the lines of the marvel vs capcom )

HD remake of final fantasy VII/vagrant story/dark cloud 2 (and many more rpgs) and i mean a complete redo not just up res

A dynasty warriors style game but with much better combat (like with bayonetta etc) and more of a feeling of a massive campaign where what you do and how well you do impacts on happens in the war.

Colony wars sequel one of the first games i remember where how well you did impacted the mission you did next 

Diablo 3 two years on

Much has changed in the past few years diablo 3 has undergone many changes from the removal of the auction house the addition of the paragon system plus the reaper of souls addon.

It is almost hard to remember what the game was originally like but all i can say it is a far far better game then before  a lot of my original irks still remain though 

Always online should be got rid of (lag is still a issue) and i still would like paragon points put into skills you use (more like in diablo 2) and more hot keys for skills

But the reaper of souls dlc adds a pretty good campaign and the loot drops are now far better also the adventure mode and rifts are quite addictive 

In the end its far beyond the game it was..I would like one more dlc  another campaign to really finish the story off but i would like it if the previous campaigns they added more content like sidequests 

Endings in video games ?

So you have played through a epic 10 hr + game filled with story and cutscenes and the reward at the end a 5 min cutscene

Happened in bioshock and to be honest cannot say i was that happy especially when they spent so long on the narrative and the story it felt like a afterthought.

Now do not get me wrong i am not after a hour long ending movie. I would just like a bit of effort that closes the game nicely  

Bayonetta ended the game really well for me and there are alot of role playing games that have really good endings (though do not get me started on mass effect 3)

All i ask for if you set up for a big story do not skimp on ending it

Things in games i think should be banished

This will be a personal list so may be stuff other people like which i can appreciate  .

QTE (Quick time events) Now they can be done well like in god of war but having games made up by them or as part of what would normally be a cutscene just really is one of my gripes i think with gameplay you need to have variety and with QTE it is either succeed or fail and once memorized just feels like a waste of time.

Really slow tutorials with no option to skip. Many games have that starting level to show you what to do (and often as part of the story which makes things very slow) and worse when you want to play the game again you have to go through that slog.

Unskippable cutscenes . Cannot believe this still happens in 2014.

Winning in the battle then losing in the following cutscene . Happens a lot in blazblue but have seen it in other games but where you completely thrash the enemy then in the cutscene shows you lost.

Pixel art ....when done well it can be good but i have just seen far to many where it just goes for the over the top blocky look i would like the art to at least be up to 8bit/16bit level i would really kill for a hi res fantastic animation art style nowdays.

Invisible walls i think are pretty lazy now and could be hidden with more design

Graphics tearing and stuttering sensitivity

Dunno if i am just unlucky but i notice things like screen tearing and microstuttering a lot in games and they really bug me and if there really bad i just cannot play them.

Screen tearing is where two frames show up on the same screen here is a pic

Now you can fix that by enabling v-sync but then that brings to my next issue

Microstuttering is where even if the frame rate is 60fps on average it is not consistent so you get these noticeable stutters which makes the visuals not as smooth as the number would (happens a lot in crossfire and sli cards )

Now at the moment i have a old monitor and people have been saying g-sync solves the problems though the price is quite a lot and the selection of monitors are a bit limited. Nvidia do a have a free thing called adaptive v-sync though have heard it helps but does not solve the issue. There is the new free sync standard coming but not sure when the monitors will arrive and how it compares to g-sync 

But i would like to ask people if getting a 144hz would be the answer or if g-sync is so much better ? 

DLC or disc locked content

So one of my irks from the previous generation was so called Dlc which was actually already on the disc and you pay money to unlock it.

Happened with quite a few capcom games and many others (if you buy something like a new character or level etc and the download is 100kb then you know it is on disc most of the time)

And it seems to have happened with the new borderlands game which some bright spark has hacked and stuff has been leaked about the baroness class and the clone jack. Now while they may say stuff like there not finished which could well be true i think leaving evidence like that is a pretty stupid thing to do.

However that reminded me of a real annoyance that never got reported basically in borderlands 2 when the 3rd headhunter pack got released it actually had in it included the 4th one in its entire finished form (a month or 2 before it was supposed to be finished )and it could be played through. I think that was the first case of the already on dlc dlc.

In the end all it makes me do is wait for a more complete game later on. Especially when they encourage to pay for a season pass. I mean with a game you know what is in store but a season pass (which is often nearly the same price as the full game) the dlc could be anything from perhaps a few skins or costumes to a few new maps  

Game genres i would love to see make a comeback

So with the space sim coming back i thought i would make a list of other game genres that need to make a comeback.

God games . I really miss games such as populous/power monger/dungeon keeper/startopia etc just the idea of the control you have and the sense of expanding is great. Even the game black and white was awesome (though i thought the control you had was to limited).

On rails space/flying shooters. Games such as starfox and panzer dragoon i really loved them and felt they could be so much more now while crimson dragoon came out recently was not a patch on previous panzer dragoon games. And with star fox the multiple levels and secrets now that would blow my mind.

Pinball. Now while pinball has come back such as the excellent pinball fx series i still feel that that is to firmly rooted in "real world" pinball and with the things they can do in video games could be so much more if anyone remembers the games dragons fury and flipnic on the ps2 will know what i mean.

Military flight sim. There has been a few recently but i am still looking out for that big one that brings me back to the days of playing gunship 2000 and falcon 4.0 which can be accessible but have that massive in depth campaign but also would be cool to have a world war 1 flight sim as i loved the amiga game knights of the sky  

I really really hate cheap jump scares in films and games

Games and films that rely on these are really showing a lack of imagination. The earliest one i remember was the zombie dog jumping through a window in resident evil 1 and then it felt new. But now it has been overdone

I would much rather the atmosphere and the story bring out the scare's a few games create such a atmosphere you always feel unsettled and even if there are no jumps you nerves are on a razer's edge.

I found the jump scares are not really scary but more of a surprise jump as really it could be anything that would pop out even a cute puppy but it would still make you jump.

For me what i find scary is the unseen and the way things can trick your mind into seeing things that may not be there the more psychological scares.

All i can say the the film makers and game makers do not rely on jump scares as once they are seen you know there coming but if you create the right atmosphere and setting it will always last.