Must Play Games In 2017

I decided to make a list of games I want to play in 2017. I realized that I will never get to finish and play all the games I own. I have 210 games on Steam, I finished about 40 of those, so I got a long way to go. I combed through GOG, Origin, Uplay and Steam and came up with this list -

1. Alan Wake
2. Assassins Creed 3 - Got it for free on Uplay. Never played an Assassin's Creed game before, and I am not sure how well received this game was. I hear good things about Black Flag...but there is not a whole lot of talk about this one. 
3. Batman: Arkham Asylum
4. Batman: Arkham City
5. Battlefield 1 Single Player
6. BioShock Infinite
7. Borderlands
8. Borderlands 2
9. Call of Juarez
10. Call of Juarez 2 Bound in Blood
11. Call of Juarez Gunslinger
12. Commandos 3 - I am not sure if I will get to finish this game. Its difficult, and the fact that resolution is restricted to 1024x768 adds to the difficulty. I would still like to finish this. 
13. Commandos Strike Force - The last game in the Commandos series. I would like to finish this purely for nostalgia sake.
14. Company of Heroes 2
15. Crysis 3 - Purchased this on Origin for a very low price. Its a good game to test my GeForce GTX 1080
16. Dear Esther - The very first walking simulator...I'd like to see what they are all about.
17. Dishonored
18. Dying Light
19. Fallout New Vegas - I haven't played a Fallout game in a very long time. I think New Vegas would be a good game to get back into the series.
20. Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon
21. Hard Reset
22. Max Payne 3
23. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor - Got it on Steam sale a few days ago. 
24. Watch Dogs 2 - Got it free with my Samsung SSD
25. Witcher 2: Assassins Of Kings - Finished The Witcher over the weekend. This game is next on the list.
26. Wolfenstein: The New Order - Picked it up on sale a few days ago

I want to make sure I don't buy a whole lot of games in 2017. If at all I end up buying games, these are the ones on my watch list -

1. Battlefield 1 Premium - My most wanted "game". I did not pre order BF1 and I did not buy Premium at launch. DICE did a fantastic job with BF1 so far, so I think I will pick this one at some point before the first DLC comes out. 
2. Doom - If I can get this for under $10, I will pick up. 
3. The Witcher 3 GOTY - I am going to buy this game at some point...no question about it. 
4. Wolfenstein Old Blood - I hear its not as good as the main game, but if I get it for cheap, I think its worth checking out.

Armored Shield Full Round - Battlefield 3 (PC)

This full round of Armored Shield was recorded on May 1, 2013, using FRAPS. Quality is terrible. I managed to do well and reach the top of the scoreboard. That does not happen too often. 

Grand Theft Auto 4 (PC) Review

I know I am about 8 years late to the GTA 4 PC party. When I first saw this game announced for the PC, it looked great in the trailers but I couldn’t buy it at launch because it was too expensive. I picked this up for $7.50 during a steam sale, therefore I am not terribly unhappy for what I got, but not worth the $60 launch price.

Where do I even begin describing the problems with this game. Let’s start with the awful GFWL.

GFWL is by far the worst DRM I’ve ever come across. Save games are tied to a GFWL profile - even if it's an offline profile. So if you ever need to take a backup of the save games, restoring them would not be possible without restoring the offline profile as well. If you forget this very important step, the game will not recognize the save files, and you are forced to start the game from the beginning. The only workaround is to use xliveless patch.

However, using the xliveless made some of the mods not work correctly, but that is a small trade off compared to starting the game all over again.

At this point, I want to remind people that games purchased from the Windows 10 Store might have the same issues...but that’s a different topic for another day.

GFWL is the worst. Shame on Microsoft for this anti-consumer garbage. Never forget.

In addition to GFWL issues, GTA 4 is a bad PC port. When I started the game for the first time, it defaulted to 640x480 because clearly my 980 isn't good enough for this 8 year old game. I had to use a workaround for the game to not lock my resolution to 640x480. Not a good start.

The save system is really bad because there are no mission checkpoints. Failing a mission will mean starting over, but starting over means, all the armor and health are not restored, instead they will be at the same level as they were when the mission failed.

During long missions, you are constantly fighting the game’s weird design choices, bad controls, and one mistake could mean either restarting the mission or loading a previous save point. This is tedious to say the least.

The final mission is particularly awful. It is one of those drawn out missions which starts off with a car chase, followed by a shootout, then by a timed chase bike chase, followed by a chopper chase, followed by a foot chase. Make one mistake, and the enemy gets away, and you have to start ALL over again.

As if this isn’t bad enough, this mission has a game breaking bug. At one point in the mission, there is a QTE (quick time event), where you have to mash the spacebar for the character to climb into a chopper, but this QTE will never work if your game is running at over 30FPS! Fortunately I found a forum post which highlighted this issue. I had to use FRAPS, and start a recording which restricted my framerate to 30FPS, and then I was able to get past this section. If it wasn't for the forum post, it would have been game over at this point.

In conclusion, while the story is good, and characters are interesting, the PC port is a technical mess. I would recommend skipping this game entirely, but if you must play this game, try to get it for under $10. Anything more than that, is not worth it in my opinion.

Verdict - Not Recommended. 

Steam Review

Battlefield 4 - Engineer 100

Battlefield 3, which I purchased in 2012, was one of the best games I played at the time. Even though the weapon balance was great, I still enjoyed the game a lot. I loved the maps and the gun play.I put in 718 hours into it.

I remember thinking at the time that I may not put in as much time in Battlefield 4 because I did not believe it was going to be as good. That was 3 years ago. As of 10/16/2016, I put in a ridiculous 2391 hours. Definitely got my money's worth out of this game. Battlefield Hardline came and went, but it did not measure up Battlefield 4 for me, and it looks like the community in general did not receive the game very well, which is a shame because some of the maps in Hardline were fantastic.

I wonder if I am going to play Battlefield 1 for as long. I can’t wait to get my hands on the beta which should be out on soon.

So as a final curtain call to Battlefield 4, I decided to make a compilation of some of the best moments in Battlefield 4 as an Engineer. I titled it Engineer 100. I am going to make more videos at some point for different classes and vehicles.

Azadi Palace Full Round - Battlefield 3 (PC)

This is the first of many post I plan to make. I've got videos of full rounds on all maps in Battlefield 3 maps. Played this round on May 7th, 2013.This was before the ShadowPlay days. I used DxTory record the gameplay.

At the time I was using a Hannspree HZ281HPB monitor which had a resolution of 1920x1200. I couldn't imagine a better monitor at the time. Little did I know that WQHD was right around the corner.

The unfortunate part is, I recorded most of the footage at 1440x900 resolution. I didn't know much about video editing/rendering. I used VirtualDub to edit the videos when I needed to, which is an excellent video editing tool, but I didn't know how to put it to good use.

Add to this, Youtube down scaled the resolution to 720p. Some of the videos I recorded are at 960x600. I bet they look worse. Nevertheless, its great to revisit these maps, for the sake of nostalgia. There are hardly any DLC servers available out there. 

I also improved a lot since then as a Battlefield player. Some of the things I do are cringe worthy. 

 

Need For Speed: Shift 2 Unleashed Diary - Part 7 - Not Going For 100%

My initial idea when starting Need For Speed Shift 2: Unleashed was to get 100% completion in the career mode. After playing this game for a while I realized that there is a whole lot of padding going on, and its starting to get repetitive. I wanted to give up and move on, but I realized I am fairly close to getting to the final championship, and I don't have to get anywhere near 100% for that. 

I am at a point where I don't know why I am playing this game, other than because I started it, and I want to finish it. I have far too many games in my collection to be wasting time on a game like this. 

Gigabyte Support Was a Let Down

Short version

- December 31, 2015 - Started having problems with my Gigabyte motherboard

- January 3, 2016 - Purchased MSI motherboard

- January 13, 2016 - Sent Gigabyte motherboard for RMA

- January 25, 2016 - Gigabyte sent me my motherboard. They said they tested it, and found nothing wrong with it.

- February 8, 2016 - MSI motherboard started having issues. 

- February 8, 2016 - Tried to the use the Gigabyte motherboard, it was still broken. Had the exact problems as before, they fixed nothing.

- February 9, 2016 - Sent MSI motherboard for RMA

- February 25 - Got the new motherboard that MSI sent me, installed it, everything is working fine now. Life is happy. Hope it stays this way.

Conclusion - I am going not buy another Gigabyte motherboard because their support was a let down. I will stick to either MSI and if they fail me, I will have to turn to ASUS or ASRock. 

Long version

We moved into a new house on December 18, 2015. I was very happy to have a dedicated office/gaming room. We were moving from a very old apartment into a really nice house. The best house I’ve ever lived in. The plan was to set up our two gaming machines, for creating content for Youtube, and also for work. 

A friend donated us his fancy looking desk, which had plenty of room for a triple monitor setup. 

My setup before I started having motherboard issues

We setup everything, and for a few days, life was great. I took some time off for a bit before the New Year’s weekend, to to spend time in our new home, and play games and just relax. 

That’s when the problems started. On December 31, 2015. Nvidia driver kept crashing in addition to Windows freezing intermittently. I thought it was the GPU. I switched my GTX980 with the GTX780 from my wife’s machine. Still had the same problems. Her computer had no issues with my GTX980. 

After hours of troubleshooting, I couldn’t narrow it down to either the RAM or the hard drives. 

Then I thought it was Windows that had the problem, and I thought I should format and reinstall. So went into BIOS to change the boot device, and the BIOS froze. It dawned on me that it might be the motherboard that's causing all the problems. I’ve never had a motherboard gone bad before, so maybe my luck has run out. At this point, I still hadn’t ruled out Windows, so I thought I’d go ahead and reinstall Windows and see if it solves the problems.

This was when things got really worse. I loaded Windows setup and formatted the hard drive, and as new files were being loaded, I got this error - 

0x80070002 Error when installing Windows 7

I googled it, and I couldn’t find anything helpful. I thought my Windows 7 DVD had some problem. So I made a USB boot drive, and I tried to install Windows through it, and that failed with the same error.

At this point, I was at my wits end. I had no computer, and my New Years’ plans were ruined. 

The next morning, I decided to RMA the Gigabyte motherboard. I created an RMA request on January 1, 2016. I didn’t expect the approval to happen anytime soon because of the holiday season, so I purchased an MSI motherboard from NewEgg on January 3 2016. I had free 2 day shipping available through Shoprunner. The MSI motherboard arrived on January 6 2016. 

I installed this motherboard, and installed Windows, and everything went smoothly. This confirmed my suspicion that the Gigabyte motherboard was causing all the issues. 

My RMA was approved on January 6 2016, but life got a little busy, and I couldn’t send it till January 13 2016. I put a note explaining all the problems I had, and even mentioned that BIOS would freeze intermittently, and installing Windows was impossible. 

Gigabyte received it on January 20 2016 and they sent me back my motherboard January 24 2016. They made a note that the motherboard had no problems, and sent me back the exact same piece. 

Gigabyte RMA status page

When I realized this, I decided not to swap out my working MSI motherboard with the Gigabyte motherboard, which I believed to be still broken. I wanted to send an email to Gigabyte asking them to replace this particular motherboard. I would be more than happy to accept a certified refurbished item, but life got busy and I just neglected it. 

On February 8 2016, the unthinkable happened. The MSI motherboard stopped working. The computer wouldn’t post. Resetting the CMOS, didn't help. I was dead in the water. 

I figured I should at least give the Gigabyte motherboard a try, because my situation couldn't get any worse. So I reinstalled it, and what is the first thing that happens? Nvidia driver crashes. This didn’t surprise me one bit. I decided to give Windows reinstall a try, and as I went into BIOS to change the boot order, it froze. I knew there was no point in trying to get this motherboard to work. Problems don’t magically fix themselves. 

I was so tried with computer problems that I thought about just setting my computer aside till I can afford a Skylake machine. I even thought about buying a prebuilt machine…

I quickly came back to my senses, and began the RMA process. I created the request and it was instantly approved, which was nice. I sent the motherboard to MSI on February 9, 2016, and I got a replacement from them on February 25, 2016. 

MSI RMA status page

I removed the Gigabyte motherboard, and installed the new MSI board, and everything is working well now. I hope it stays this way. I do not want to make any changes to my machine until I am ready to build a Skylake machine. 

The bottomline is, I was very disappointed with Gigabyte. I am not going to buy their products after seeing how their RMA was very unhelpful. In contrast MSI did the right thing, and sent me a replacement without any fuss. I will stick to MSI for my Skylake build.