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. 

F.E.A.R. Diary - Part 2 - The End Game

To think that I wouldn't have revisited this game if it weren't for a defective motherboard...

I finished F.E.A.R today, and I thought the ending was quite excellent. It ends on a real cliff hanger. They set up the sequel quite well. Its a shame that F.E.A.R 2 doesn't have the same PC focused design. I played the demo a long time ago, and I remember it being some what like Call of Duty. I could be wrong.I am not going to install it any time soon. I have Grand Theft Auto 4, Need For Speed Shift 2 and Dying Light to finish.

I think as soon as I finish those games, I will go with the expansion packs. I remember playing the demos a long time ago, and it would be fun to revisit those games again.

There is a frame rate bug that affects the game. At start, the frame rate is maxed out at 144 FPS, which is the refresh rate of the monitor, but after a while, it drops down to around 50 FPS. This is a known bug with the game, and the fix is to disable HID compliant devices in Windows. I didn't believe this at first, but sure enough, it works.

Disabling these devices will fix the frame rate issue

Another thing about the game is the level design. I've yet to play a game which had such bland levels. I can't recollect a single level that was memorable. Not a deal breaker, but with the entire game being set in a huge industrial compound, the map can be very boring. It does get a little bit better towards the end, but for the most part, its kind of boring.

I think this game stands above the rest of the horror games because the scares are very subtle. I enjoy that in a horror game, more so than jump scares, which can get really old.

Nailed to the wall

Alienware in F.E.A.R

Towards the end, it reminded me a lot about Half-Life, specifically the beginning of Half-Life.

Also, sprint and aim down sight (ADS) are very weird compared to modern games. Sprint feels more like walking, and ADS reminds me of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R games. The weapon is only sightly pulled up, and initially I couldn't tell the difference between ADS and non-ADS.

All in all, great game, totally worth the $2.99 I paid for the bundle.

Battlefield 4 Diary - Part 2 - Attack Chopper Domination

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Played a round of Battlefield 4 with friends, something we haven't done in a very long time. We decided to play Conquest Large, and I got the attack chopper on Siege of Shanghai. 

This map is fairly friendly to attack choppers because there is no AA. Of course once the building collapses, anyone with burst fire cannons on their attack boat can take out the chopper without much difficulty. 

I used struggle flying the attack chopper, but some practice on Dragon Valley made me fairly competent. I am still not great at using the two missile, so I stick to the heat seekers. 

Here is a video of some attack chopper gameplay - 

Need For Speed: Shift 2 Unleashed Diary - Part 6 - Downgrade Performance to Win

I was playing some Time Attack races with a highly upgraded  Lamborghini Murciélago, and I kept losing. Over and over again. Couldn't even get to the podium let alone win the race.

The  Lamborghini Murciélago is a Performance Grade A car. I decided to try the Ford Shelby GT instead which is a Performance Grade C car, and I am having much easier time winning races.

Using the Nissan 240 Drift Alliance, which is a Performance Grade D car, makes life even easier. 

Yet another difficulty scaling issue, it looks like. 

Nissan 240 Drift Alliance on the Miami Speedway

Nissan 240 Drift Alliance on the Miami Speedway

Winning at the Miami Speedway

Need For Speed: Shift 2 Unleashed Diary - Part 5 - Gameplay Padding

Sometimes it feels as if developers are trying to pad the length of games by arbitrarily increasing the difficulty of races or the time needed to finish a race in the Time Attack mode. Also the fact that a lot of these tracks are recycled between different game modes makes the career mode tedious.

Maybe I am getting old, but I find it extremely difficult to stay focused on a single race for 6 minutes! This leads me to make mistakes, and it takes longer for me to get through the career mode. 

This is the low hanging fruit of adding longevity to a game, in my opinion. 

Too long for me to stay focused.

Need For Speed: Shift 2 Unleashed Diary - Part 4 - The Intrusive Interface

Modern day game interfaces are getting ridiculous. I can think of at least three EA games that have this HUD clutter problem. Battlefield 4 when it first launched was insane. 

Shift 2 also has the same problem. There is an option to disable the HUD, but that leaves out some of the information I care about. I am not sure why the developers won't give us the option to disable, resize and move UI elements. 

I think simple tweaks to the UI can greatly impact the experience. 

Battlefield 4 UI at launch. Insane HUD clutter

Need For Speed Shift 2 HUD

Need For Speed: Shift 2 Unleashed Diary - Part 3 - Manufacturer Showdown Events Are Fun

These are probably the most fun events so far. I get to try out different cars, and I don't have to worry about difficulty spike based on the type of car I select, and usually the cars themselves range from retro to exotic. 

Speaking of difficulty spike, it still bothers me how unbalanced the game is at times, even when I turn the game difficulty to easy. 

Porsche Cayman S is great to drive

Need For Speed: Shift 2 Unleashed Diary - Part 2 - The Schizophrenic Difficulty

This game's difficulty doesn't make any sense. There are times when I lead an entire lap without any real competition and then there are other laps where I struggle to reach the podium (3rd place or better).

I think it has something to do with scaling difficulty with car upgrades. I should try removing all upgrades and see if I can do any better. 

Or maybe, I am just very bad.

Top racer has an 8 second lead...I can barely reach top 3 spot.

Battlefield 4 Diary - Part 1 - Dragon Valley 2015 MVP

Battlefield 4 is the game I played more than any other game. I played this more than all the other games I ever played combined. So I got my money's worth. All thanks to DICE LA. 

The round I played yesterday was pretty great. Joined with a friend when things weren't looking good for our team. Managed to do well and help our team win. 

Also Dragon Valley 2015 is an excellent map These days this is the only map I play conquest on. Thankfully there is a fairly popular 24/7 Dragon Valley 2015 conquest large server.

http://i.imgur.com/4P4Ns2x.png

Killing machine

Need For Speed: Shift 2 Unleashed Diary - Part 1

Sunday, January 24, 2016

Purchased this game in 2011 from NewEgg for $7.64 (including shipping). This was back when EA was still selling DVDs of their games, and Origin was in its infancy. 

I really enjoyed the first Shift game. When I found this game for cheap, I couldn't resist. So much so that I hadn't played it for 4 years. 

After 2500+ hours of  Battlefield (both 3 and 4), I want to get back into single player gaming again. Hence why I resumed F.E.A.R. as well. 

I think Shift 2 is definitely worth the $7 I paid for it. I am not sure I would pay anymore than that though. It has some extremely annoying design choices. Unskippable intro sequences before every race is definitely one of them. The developers, in their effort to create "an immersive" experience, managed to create an extremely annoying experience. Had I paid full price for this game, I would be even more annoyed.

Also, its not really a sim game. I not as much of an arcade racer as Need For Speed Most Wanted, but by no means is it a simulator. Don't let the marketing fool you. That doesn't make it a bad game though. Its still fun. As long as you paid no more than $7 for it. 

Well...

Someone at EA has a lens flare fetish

That attention to detail

F.E.A.R. Diary - Part 1 - Procrastination

I played some more F.E.A.R. today. Really like the it. Its a traditional PC game. Its got quick save, checkpoint save and manual save. They don't make games like this anymore. When I first played the demo for this game in 2005, I waited to play the full version because at the time I was using a BFG GeForce FX5500OC AGP card. I could barely run the game on medium at 1024x768.

I waited longer than I intended. I moved to a different country, graduated college twice, got a job and in 2011, I installed the full version of F.E.A.R. for the first time. I was using an EVGA GeForce GTX 570 at the time, and I was thoroughly impressed by the graphics. I played it for a bit, and soon Battlefield 3 consumed my gaming, and I barely played any single player games once I got into Battlefield 3.

Soon after that it was Battlefield 4.

I finally started playing this game a few weeks ago, because my motherboard died, and I had to send it for repair, and I was looking to play a single player shooter. I downloaded F.E.A.R. again from Steam, restored the backed up save files and I resumed.

This time around, I had an EVGA GeForce GTX980. Not that it made any difference.

The game is still a lot of fun. The Steam version supports 2560x1440 resolution. Sort of. The game claims its unsupported, but it allows me to play it in this resolution.

F.E.A.R. has a Half-Life and Deus Ex vibe to it. I don't have much more to go. I will be done with it soon at this rate. Then I will move on to GTA4.

Some F.E.A.R. screenshots -

Quick save in an FPS game. This was before the Call of Duty epidemic.

TPS report in F.E.A.R. An homage to Office Space.

First Post

Writing this first post on a cold winter day on January 24, 2016. I intend to keep this blog all about the games I am going to play. 

At the moment, I have GTA 4, Need For Speed Shift 2 Unleashed, F.E.A.R and Dying Light installed on my machine. I intend to finish these three games as quickly as possible so I can move onto other games in my Steam account. 

I am going to play F.E.A.R now and I will probably come back with some screenshots.