Sniper: Ghost Warrior

Hello!

This is like, my second review of a game. My first was Race Driver: GRiD, which was awesome after some tweaking. For today, I’ll be reviewing a game from a little known publisher called City Interactive. It is titled with the very imagination-provoking Sniper: Ghost Warrior.

Before I proceed, I discovered something funny about this game. We all know how aiming using Analog sticks on consoles are. Workable yes, precise no. There’s usually auto-aim involved. However, a game that requires precise aiming such as Sniper: Ghost Warrior was also released on Xbox 360. Go figure out how to make precise aims with those sticks.

Anyway, I got it on PC, so let’s move on. What motivated me to try this game was that I was going to play as a sniper again. After going through the awesomeness of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2′s sniper moments, I thought that playing a sniper-simulation would be great too. And just check out that cover! Reminds you of something, eh?

Ok, enough ramblings, let’s get to the actual review.

General

The game runs on the Chrome 4 Engine, that was employed in Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood. I didn’t play that one, but I got to say, the engine is good. The foliage, bushes, trees etc… were nicely detailed, even if I toned down the settings a bit. Performances are good with a recent-enough computer. A Core 2 Duo, 2GB of RAM and a recent-enough graphics card, such as the excellent Radeon 4850 is enough to get you playing without too much degradation in Frames Per Second (fps).

The weather is another nice touch. The water effects impressed me most, without going into a lot of technical details. I’ve got a few pictures for you to see for yourself. The visuals are absolutely stunning.

On to the gameplay part. As its name suggests, you are going to be playing as a sniper. Yay! But no. There are some level where you play as a soldier, in a classic First Person Shooter (fps) situations. Such as the oil-rig level, which will remind you of a much more famous game. It is very similar. Very similar indeed. These moments are just run-and-gun, so aim-shoot-aim-shoot, dash for cover. In recent FPS games, when you hide behind cover, your health slowly goes back to full if you have taken hits. Not in Sniper: GW. You have to use the good old first aid, so you need to be conscious about getting shot. And boy, you’ll get shot a lot!

There’s not much to be said about those moments, so let’s go back to the actual sniper moments. Sadly, this is where the game sucks most.

When we think about “military sniper” and “jungles”, we think about a guy (or lady, why not), dressed in a funny suit. It’s actually called a Ghillie Suit. So, we have that guy in Sniper: GW, dressed in his ghillie, and sneaking through the forest.

BAM! Someone shoots at me! WHAT THE HELL?! CROUCH! Is there any sniper around? I scan the environment, I can’t find anything. I stand up again, more shots! Whaaat? I check the red pointer at the top, and see that the attack seems to be coming from the front. So I stand up, switch to the scope, and slow-down time using the appropriate key. Oh there you are, behind a bush. Sneaky bastard, die!

What I just described above is one of the very common things that happen in SGW (it’s getting shorter, I know). Your enemies seem to have eagle eyes! Sometimes, I wonder who’s actually the sniper, me or the AI?

Damn AI!

When they are not aiming at me from the moon, and getting to hit me with their automatic rifles, they are plain stupid. They friendly-fire! I’ve seen a guy cross the path of another, and get mowed down by machine-gun fire! Sometimes, they just stand up and do nothing. Most of the times, they hear a gunshot, see their friends go down, and they won’t even bother to duck to cover, but instead scan the environment. Worse, they won’t even alert their friends, or sound an alarm! Pathetic AI.

They are only good at aiming me from kilometres away. Hell, a computer-controlled guy saw me, in a ghillie suit, while I was sniping from inside a bush! What’s the ghillie for, AI, if you can see me from a mile away?! And not only seeing, they are damn accurate at that! They shoot with pinpoint accuracy from long distances. Worse, sometimes a guy is running, turns and he is immediately aiming at me, and shooting. Not even locating me anything. He KNOWS I’m here. As if he’s got eyes in the back of the head. Or all around the head, for that matter!

That’s about the AI enemies. What about the AI allies? Worse! They can’t aim! They REFUSE to aim. I am sniping, they run in front of me. I shoot. They DON’T die. So much for realism. Interestingly, AI enemies’ friendly-fire are fatal.

Pathetic AI. That’s all there’s to say. Either they are TOO good. Or just plain dumb.

An Enemy Model

The Environment: Pretty but restrictive

Now let’s see the environment itself. We’ve often been shown open-worlds lately. GTA, Farcry 2, Crysis etc… have all been setting the trend of an open, reactive world. Much to my displeasure, SGW does NOT include an open-world. You are constrained to the paths and such. You can go astray a few, and you’ll hit with invisible walls. These totally kill realisms. Where we have reached nowadays, there should be open-worlds. If it looks like the player can climb on a rock, then jump a fence, it should be possible. Not that you jump on the rock, jump towards the fence, and hit an invisible wall that prevents you from going on.

The problem with those invisible walls? They block off all the spots that seem to be great sniper nests. Most are off-limits. This greatly annoys me. Sniping involves choosing your spot. It should be secluded, but offer great vantage point. It should provide cover if ever you are discovered and need to scram. It should also be high in altitude if possible. SGW does not allow this freedom of choice. Worse, sometimes it tells you to walk towards the front-door of an enemy camp. Where’s the stealth in that? Ever seen a ghillie’d up sniper walk up the front door of an enemy? Me too.

The game features a grapnel. Imagine how it could be used. You find a branch overlooking an enemy camp, with lots of leaves and stuff around. You use your grapnel, and climb the tree, sit there and start shooting. After a few shots, you change location to another vantage point that you’d have marked on your map. No. SGW does not let you do this. The grapnel is only used in some scripted situations. Sigh…

Spot 2 enemies in there!

There they are! The 2 yellow flashes!

Invincible birds!

A nice off-limit sniper-nest.

The Good Parts?

The great thing about Sniper: Ghost Warrior however, is how well the sniping system works. You got your variety of rifles on different levels, and your scope as you’d expect. You’ll also get a “stealth” bar at the bottom. The moment it fills up completely, your enemy sees you and is aware of your location. He’s going to shoot with pinpoint accuracy using his eagle eyes.

While sniping, you will have to monitor your heart-rate and wind speed, which have distinct gauges at the top. You’ll also have to keep track of the range, because the further your target, the more gravity will affect the path of the bullet. All these are taken into consideration in SGW, making it a great system. If this sounds too complex for you, don’t despair. If you aim for long enough, a red reticule will show you where the bullet will actually land. So you just aim the red reticule on an enemy’s head, and voila, headshot! Without having to care about all the difficult stuff. Bear in mind that this red reticule does not appear on higher difficulties, so those wanting a more realistic sniping experience may try the higher difficulties. Remember though, on medium the AI got eagle eyes. On higher difficulties, it’s like the AI enemies are seeing you through the Hubble telescope.

You can also “hold your breath” using the the appropriate key. This will steady the scope, and slow down time, making sniping easier. This is somewhat overkill. Steadying the cope is enough, without having to slow down time. It makes things too easy. Assuming you’ve been able to aim at the enemy without getting riddled with bullets first.

The sniping system is enjoyable. That’s the only reason I’m playing SGW. Not the story.

Why not the story?

Because SGW wants to be Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. The missions are exactly like CoD’s! You are pursuing a guy, so you’re following his trail all around, trying to take off his head. So you complete one mission, just to find out that the guy has escaped. However, in CoD, the process of getting to the guy is interesting. You take alternate paths from your friends. You get support. You are on your own. It makes your pulse race.

Sniper: Ghost Warrior’s story is like CoD, but without the fast-paced action. So you’re crossing a level, fighting your way in stealth, taking out guys etc… only to find that at the end, the main target is not there. The next level? Do the same thing again, with lots of patience, only to find the guy is not there. After 3 missions, you’re tired and ask yourself how people can frack up missions that much.

The run-and-gun parts are no better. I have no idea why the oil-rig mission is there. There’s no point at all. You storm in, save a guy, that has not much to do with the story. Nor are you told much in the mission briefings.

Overall, the story feels flimsy. Not on par with CoD:MW’s story in any case.

How it should have been?

So the enemies are no good. The environment is pretty but no good. The story is no good. Only the sniping system is kind of good. So is it recommended? Frankly, no. I’d not recommend that game to a friend. If you really want to give it a try, let its price fall first. Then get it.

But then, how could it have been interesting? Just imagine that scenario:

You get your briefing about a certain guy that is selling state secrets to an unfriendly nation, or something like that. You are given his general location, but do not know exactly where he is found. He is to be eliminated.

So your spotter and yourself are are left at your insertion point, with your equipment, a supply of food and drinks, a pair of binoculars, a grapnel and your ghillie suit.

You then make your way, slowly towards the enemy camp. The terrain is a deep jungle, with a river to the west, and mountains to the north, all in an open-world environment. The enemy camp is found near the mountains. Between you and the enemy is a civilian village, and enemy patrols in the jungle.

You have to find a vantage point to take aim at your target, so you move in stealth towards the enemy camp. You have to avoid both enemy patrols (you can’t kill them, missing patrols are soon noticed. If you do, you have to hide the bodies and expect heavier-armed guard patrols since they now expect an attack), and civilians (they panic and make a fuss, and you can’t kill them normally).

So you sneak by. You can’t take too long, because the target might leave the area, causing a mission fail. So you move quickly and stealthily.

While approaching the village, you hear civilians talking about the target’s habit of coming to the village at night, probably for some dirty business with local women. Now you have a choice. Do you find a vantage nearby and wait for the target, then snipe him when he’s in the village? This reduces the number of guards that’ll be on your trail after the hit. However, the target may not come to the village at all, causing a mission fail. Or you can go to the enemy camp, and take the hit there, where you’re sure the target will come sometime, or may already be stationed at. But after the kill, there will be many guards after you.

You choose to go for a vantage point near the village. So you scout around, and find a good spot and lay there, in an abandonned water tower, just outside a farm a distance from the village. The hole in the cliff looked interesting too. You mark it on your map as backup. You choose to “sleep”, while your spotter remains awake, and wakes you when the target comes. This causes time to flow by, up to the point where the target comes to the village (sometimes, he doesn’t, and mission fails). So you take aim, consider wind speed etc… as you are told by your spotter (or the red reticule, on easier difficulties). You take the shot, the target goes down.

Now you have to reach your extraction point. No holds barred. You can start shooting every non-civilian because they know they are under attack and will return fire. Keep in mind they don’t know where you are, but they know you’re around. So if you know how to sneak, you can prevent bloodshed. This increases your rating.

You escape safely. There it was, Mission 1, First Part. That was only a lieutenant, and not the actual guy. This hit will cause unrest, as it’d seem rival factions made the hit. This will somehow bring out the real target. That’s how Sniper Ghost Warrior should have been. In Multiplayer, there may be more snipers trying to take a target, and they might bring you down. The one who takes the target wins. The Farcry2 of sniper games. Open-world freedom to choose your path or how you get to your sniping nest, dynamic environments (rain damaging your cover bit by bit) and AI characters that do not shoot like monkeys. Not the CoD-imitation that it currently is.

Conclusion

As it is? Not worth it. But the series holds much potential. Only if City Interactive enhances the scenario, gameplay and AI. My note for this game is a paltry 3.5/10, for the great environments, and sniping system.

Other reviewers gave it a 5.5 or so. I’m more severe. I’m tired of being riddled with bullets from afar. I’m the sniper. I shoot from afar. Not the normal enemies!

So there ya go, the review of SGW, and how an utopian sniper game would be.

This article comes from GeekScribes

Sniper: Ghost Warrior PC Review

(This tutorial is for Windows, but TS works on Linux too. I’ll try to cover that at some other time).

Teamspeak (TS) can also be used when not gaming. For example, if you want to hold a conference among friends, or some other people. But I guess that for these stuff, Skype works best. The problem with Skype is that it provides quality at the cost of bandwidth, and when you are gaming on the low upload speeds in Mauritius, every last bit of bandwidth is important. So if you want a bandwidth-efficient way of holding a conference of around 16 people at a time (there can be more), Teamspeak is the way to go, without killing your connection.

To facilitate the connection among your friends, for both gaming on a virtual network as well as TS connection, we would like to recommend Hamachi. You can check our Hamachi article if you wish.

How to use Teamspeak? Well it’s simple enough: Teamspeak consists of 2 parts: The Server and the client. One of you people will have to host the server, and the rest will connect to that person. The person hosting the server will have to connect to him/herself. Therefore, I will break this article in 2 parts, one for the hoster and one for the clients. Here goes:

For the Hoster:

1. Go to the link above, and download Teamspeak 2 Server. It’s around 1.5MB. The Updated Executable version may be installed after installing the full version if you wish.
2. After installing Teamspeak Server, you will be given a series of random passwords. REMEMBER THOSE OR NOTE THEM DOWN! You will use them to login your admin panel.
   • But what if you have failed to remember those passwords? Laaameee! But yeah there is a solution:
     
     • You just need to go to the folder where you installed Teamspeak Server (It’s in the same folder as Client).
     • Find the lines with this text below. The password is given after them. The lines below, the password is not shown.
     • “admin account info: username: admin password:
       superadmin account info: username: superadmin password: “
3. Then start the Server. There should be an icon on your desktop, or you can start it via the Install folder via server_windows.exe. You will see the TS server icon in your notification area.
4. Right-click that icon and select Administration. Your browser will open and you can access TS administration. Yes, it’s a web-based administration. Cool!

   

5. Login with your Superadmin details. Now you know why you had to remember those passwords.

   

6. What I’d advise is to immediately head to Superadmin Manager, then click the Edit Button, then choose a new password for you. Those random passwords are tough to remember.
7. After that, head to Servers.
   1. Add a server there, using the Add Server button. You will need to fill up some details like the Server Name, the Server Welcome Message, the Password and the Server Type. I’d advise the “Clan Server” unless you want to give public access to your server. The codecs checkboxes can be left as they are. That’s it. Click Add to finish.
8. Now we are going to create user accounts for the people that will use your server. It’s a pain but it gives you more control about who can access your server. After you have created the server, click on the “Select” button beside it.

   

9. You will notice that you now have more options. Go to User Manager.
   1. Click on the Edit button beside “admin”. Change the password for admin to something you can remember. Also, note the checkbox. This means that you can give other users Server Admin privileges. Click Save.
   2. (This step is not required, but it’s better to do it.) Now the hard part.You need to click the Add Client button, type a login name and passwords for EACH user that you want to give access to the server, including yourself as a client. This works if you have a small number of users, and you want control. I think you can also register users if they connect as Anonymous. I’ve not tested that part.
10. That’s it. You can now logout. You need to proceed to the “For the Client” section to connect now. Yes, connect to yourself.

For the Client:

So you heard that your friend has a brand new TS server up and you want to connect and chat? Well, here’s how to:

1. Download the Teamspeak Client from the link above. It’s the 5MB something file. You can install the Updated Executable version afterwards if you want.
2. Install and launch it. That’s the window you get. Wooo evil violet blank window!

   

3. If you are using Hamachi, open it before trying to connect. The hoster must be on Hamachi too. Or you can just use their ISP-assigned IP if you want, but if it’s dynamic, you will need to type it everytime you want to connect. The point of all this? Use Hamachi. It makes things simpler. And it’s free.
4. Go to Connection -> Connect. It’s kinda long to do it this way, but it’s one-off. You can then just connect to the same servers without typing stuff in the future. I’d not recommend the Quick Connect, unless you are connecting just for one time. If you plan on connecting again in the future, use the Connect one.
   1. Right click on the big white space on the left, and choose Add Server. Type a name for the server.
   2. For label, type a meaningful name for the server. Like “John’s TS Serv”
   3. Server Address is the IP Address of the person hosting the server. That’s why we recommended Hamachi. You get to use a fixed IP for the server everytime. And it’s real easy to connect then.
   4. Nickname you can put anything. IMPORTANT: If server has registered an account for you, put that nickname the same as your assigned username. I found that TS sometimes doesn’t connect if Nickname is not the same as Login Name if accounts have been assigned by the hoster.
   5. For the other details, you need to ask the server for your login name and password. Enable Auto-Reconnect. If you lose connection to the server, it’ll reconnect automatically.
   6. If you know the hoster will create a particular channel, you can put it in Default Channel. Eg. If you know you will play Left 4 Dead and know that the hoster will create a channel called “l4dTS”, you can put “l4dTS” in the Default Channel to automatically join it on connect/re-connect. That’s it. If you want to connect, click on the Connect button.
   7. If you are the hoster: The server address is going to be: “127.0.0.1″ that is, localhost. Your username/password will be whatever you have created in the Server Admin part.
5. That’s it. You will probably be on the server unless something weird happened. There, you can create new channels, switch to channel and chat with other people.
6. Now, you need to configure the client for best usage. This comes in the next section.

Configuring the Client

If you are in Mauritius, follow these steps closely to get the best performance out of the client. For others on near-megabit upload speeds, you can skip the part on codecs.

The steps below are not in order, so you can just do them or skip them, depending on what you want.

• When you are gaming, you don’t want to be pushing buttons to be able to talk (a-la Walkie Talkie). TS has a mechanism that enables voice comms while you are speaking, and disables it afterwards. To enable this option do this:
  • Settings menu – Sound Input/Output Options. For Voice Send method, select Voice Activation, and set the Slider to the middle or slightly nearer towards Whisper, between Shout and Whisper. While you are at it, set the Output Volume to a bit more than middle. Say, three-quarter of the way to Max.
• Some shortcuts (global hotkeys) are useful, particularly Mute Microphone and Mute Sound in-game. To set those, do this:
  • Settings – Key Settings. Select one of the 3 boxes, and press Set. Type in a key. If for example, you want to use CTRL + ] as a shortcut, then in the first box, press Set then press CTRL button on your keyboard. Select the second box, then Set button, then press ] on your keyboard. From the Actions box, choose what you want to do. Those under Toggle are useful to set on hotkeys. These hotkeys are global, so they work even if the program is minimized, while you are in-game. Repeat these steps to assign other keys.
• Under Settings – Options – Bandwidth, you can place limits on how much bandwidth TS can use. Useful if you are on a low connection.
• Again, under Settings – Options – Sound Devices, sometimes “Force 8-bit Recording” can cause problems. Disable that if it’s activated. Also, make sure that the Input/Output devices there are also good. If in doubt, just set them to Primary Capture Driver / Primary Sound Driver for each.
• After having created channels (or for existing channels), you can right-click the channel – Edit channel. There, you can set a number of channel options. We are concerned with the Codec option. From experience on Mauritius’ connection, with 6-8 players, we recommend the Speex 5.2 Kbit codec. If you have a higher connection (specially upload), you can go for higher end codecs. Of course, higher Kbits usually mean higher quality. But 5.2 was enough for us to hear clearly.
• A final tip that is not part of Teamspeak. You need to correctly set the volume of your microphone and speakers. You can do this via the Volume Controller in Windows (the small speaker incon in the notification area). Under Microphone – Advanced, make sure Microphone Boost is disabled. Then, Go to Options – Properties – Adjust Volume For: Recording. Make sure the checkbox for Microphone is checked. Click ok. Next, make sure the volume of Microphone is high enough.

That’s it for the Teamspeak setup article. If you have questions, you can post here. We are not involved with the Teamspeak project and so, we won’t be able to answer all questions as gurus of Teamspeak would do. But we’ll try to help if we can. Awaiting your comments and suggestions, like if you know a better voice communication software.

And please, no Ventrilo vs Teamspeak flame wars in the comments!

This article comes from GeekScribes

In-Game Voice Communication with TeamSpeak

Hello Readers! Been a long time since you heard sarcastic and ranting me, huh? Sorry for the long delays between posts, but hey, I got a life too!

Well, today, I’m here to write about that device above that’s nearly burning a hole in my casing. It’s my new Radeon 4850 Graphics card, or GPU in the jargon. It’s made by Sapphire, as you can probably read from that fan on top.

I’m not here to do a benchmark of this device. There are plenty of these already floating on the Internet, and a quick Google search should serve you what you want. What’s the point then? Well, it’s just to give you some user opinions about the device in case you want one like that, together with why I bought this particular device.

Design and Issues

Firstly, why this card? Why an ATI and not an NVidia? Everybody just says NVidia and Geforce, so why bother with an ATI? Simply because in terms of performance/price, this card rocks. If you go read the reviews, you will then know what I mean.

For the price, around $160 online, Rs.6000 something in Mauritius, you get unbeatable performance, somewhat higher than the Geforce 9800 offers according to benchmarks. And the 9800 retails for even more than that.

I was lucky since a friend of mine bought these in bulk and I was able to get a better price than what would retail in Mauritius, so I went for it.

Installation in itself was a breeze. Uninstall your old card’s drives. Plug it in the PCI-E (PCI Express) socket, connect the dedicated PCI-E power cable, boot and test, install new drivers and I was off. This card, however, required me to change my Power Supply from 450W to 550W, partly because the other was already overloaded, and since there was no PCI-E outlet in the 450W one.

Note that, even if this card is not dual-slot, it takes dual-slot height in your case! Before buying it, make sure you have space.

The Sapphire 4850 does come with a molex-to-PCI-E converter, but it required 2 molex outlets to be turned into 1 PCI-E power inlet. I didn’t have 2 molex free, and this is why I had to fork another Rs.2000 on a Coolermaster 550w power. If you are going to use the molex converters, make sure that you have at least 30A on the 12V rails. At least, that what people have been saying online. This can be checked quite easily, since it is written on the body of the power supply. It’s usually in the form “12V1@20A | 12V2@20A” which basically means you have 40A on the 12V rails.

Now there is a big issue with this particular card, and it’s called heat! Put simply, this card boils! The first versions were particularly bad, with temperatures of 80-90 deg C quite reachable. That’s way too hot for any card, but the card makers said it could handle it. The card yes, but not the other surrounding components in your case!

This card has a modified fan and heatsink design which partly solves the problem. To somewhat reduce that problem, I’d advise installing the latest Catalyst drivers. As from 8.11 (I think), ATI includes Manual Fan Control as part of the ATI Overdrive settings in the driver’s Advanced settings. This allows you to set the idle fan speed. 65% seemed reasonable to me, and the idle temperatures of my card is around 50-55 Deg C. Not bad. My Geforce 8600 used to run at 60. Oh, I forgot to mention the 3 120mm fans that run in my case. If you don’t have case fans, the temp would be even more, so keep an eye on the temps.

I use HWMonitor to keep monitoring the temperatures of the various parts of my PC. It’s free and available here. It gives you 3 readings (Min, Max, Current) for a lot of stuff like CPU, GPU, HDs, Case Fans etc…

Under load, and in the high temperatures of the Mauritian summer, the card runs to 75-80 deg C quite easily, and it’s like having a heater in the room. Not particularly pleasant. Now I know why it’s a good idea to have an AC unit in the room where a computer is located!

Not only heat, it does make quite a lot of noise too. Not really unbearable, but you can definitely hear the fan spinning quite easily, even idle. You probably won’t be sleeping very well with that thing running in your room.

Game performance

Absolutely astounding! This card is a monster to actual games, with the sole exception of GPU-killer Crysis. Personally, I tested with Farcry2, Crysis and Racedriver: GRID.

I was able to run Farcry2 at Ultra High settings with a reasonable 35-40FPS, with no Anti-aliasing (AA). Just wow! That was a bit too much for me. So I turned everything back to Very High, and put 2xAA. FPS around 40 on average, with a minimum of 30. Ain’t Dunia Engine great, despite FC2 being a relatively boring game?

Next, GRID. Everything on highest settings. Resolution 1280×1024. 2xAA. FPS around 50. FPS I didn’t particularly mind the FPS, which I thought might be a bit higher. However, the in-game graphics were absolutely stunning! The reflections, crowd and environments, were rendered with superb details. Specially the Japan tracks!

I know I raged against GRID in another post, but that was because it was lagging on my PC and not responding to controls! I’d also advise you to remove the motion blur. I cannot play with that thing on.

Finally, Crysis. I kept it last because it’s one hell of a game. Graphics are truly stunning and lifelike. The forests around you feel alive, and so does the environment, wherever you are on the island. Most man-made things are destructible in Crysis and those even serve a purpose: You can blow a building and kill enemies inside! Seriously, the graphics in Crysis are plain wow, and that’s why it’s turned into a benchmark for most reviews nowadays.

Regarding Crysis however, even the Radeon 4850 could not overcome it. At highest settings (Very High for me, on WinXP DX9), I got a measly 20-25FPS. My 8600 did give me 5-10FPS though, so it’s still an increase, but not playable at all.

On high, FPS goes around 40 without AA, and that’s definitely playable, with good amounts of eye-candy for the environments. Crysis definitely earns its title of GPU-killer.

Conclusions

That’s about it for my opinions post. The 4850 is a great card, but if you have the budget, go for the 4870 which packs even more performance and better graphics in your games. It retails for around $300 or if you want 4870×2 (twice the fun!), then $500 for you. Expensive I know, but if you are an enthusiastic gamer, you will be ready to spend that much. I’m a gamer, but not *that* enthusiastic, so I went for the cheaper 4850 as a cheaper alternative which I recommend if your budget is same as mine. It’s worth its price, take that from me.

However, you must also be ready for the inconveniences, such as the excessive heat and noise, and possibly some more parts changes such as a new PSU probably, or even a new Motherboard!

That’s all for me. Comments awaited. If you have a Geforce 9-series or a Radeon 4850, what do you think about it? What would you recommend, apart for the 4850? What’s currently on your gaming list? Let’s hear it!

This article comes from GeekScribes

Sapphire’s Radeon 4850: My Opinions

Picture courtesy of VideoGaming247

Farcry 2 has positioned itself as a very probable candidate for the “Game of the Year” with highly advanced AI and graphics. It was to be expected from the guys that made Crysis and the Cry Engine. If you have ever seen the screenshots of FC2, you know what I’m talking about. If not, then see this video as a teaser.

It’s already out, and you can go and buy/download your copy now itself. It appears to be a game that’s worth playing.

It has not yet reached me, and as soon as I finish it, you will have my review here on GS.

My friend just informed me of something really interesting. Farcry 2 is about you being a mercenary, and progressing through the game doing missions for various factions and everything.

The interesting thing? One of the playable characters is a Mauritian! Yes, you read it right. You can play as a Mauritian, called Quarbani Singh, coming from Port Louis! (Fictitious person I hope!). Apparently, he’s a retired SMF! Thumbs up for detail!

It’s amazing that some big developers like Ubisoft knows about our tiny Island, and even features a Mauritian character! Thank you Ubisoft! I guess it’s probably that one of the developers there visited Mauritius and wanted to let others know Mauritius is great, or something like that. Or there is a Mauritian developer there. Nevertheless, it’s much appreciated.

This will probably boost knowledge about Mauritius among the gaming community, which is not a bad thing. They will get to know how crappy our Internet speeds are, and gamers value speed!

So, what do you think about it? Will Mauritius be better known?

This article comes from GeekScribes

Farcry 2 features a Mauritian Mercenary!

Google just released the Beta version of its browser, called Google Chrome (why chrome anyways?). Since a few days, I’ve been seeing that pokeball-like logo all over the Internets and I thought I must add my piece of text to the already long list of blog posts about the newest browser out there. Seriously, nearly 12 million results on Google when I search for “Google Chrome”.

What’s the hype about it? Everybody is “Chrome released”, “Chrome does that”, “Chrome does this”, “Chrome makes tea”, bla bla… Let’s see… Before I move on, I need to say that Chrome is released under BSD license, and it’s Open-Source!

Statcounter reports something interesting. In one day, Chrome captured 1% of market share, as you can see from the picture below. Amazing, I say. Most surprising is the fact that Firefox (a favourite), Safari and other browsers are losing ground, while IE is gaining.

Well, after all, it’s not that surprising. Why? Because with every new Windows install, you get a free browser, Internet Explorer. Yay! So with every new Windows install, you can assume that there is a new IE user out there (who has not discovered Chrome or Firefox yet). And yeah, Internet Explorer 8 was just released so this has to be counted too.

Coming back to Chrome, what’s so interesting about it? It’s just a browser, a piece of software like so many out there. For example, how does it surpass Firefox, one browser that the World has given much love to?

Here’s what I think Chrome does better than Firefox:

• Memory management! My Firefox (bloated with tons of addons) takes 163MB with around 10 tabs open (WTF!!) while on load, Chrome takes a measly 10MB of memory. That should make me a convert, but not yet. (try about:memory in Chrome’s address bar btw! )
  • Try “about:internets” in the bar now… “no quotes!” There are more of those “about” tricks. Go see Lifehacker.
• Chrome is fast! Blazingly fast!! Sites load fast, the browser loads fast (<1 second on my PC). Sites load faster than Firefox too, by some Google magic. I dunno why, but it happens.

  

• Chrome, being made by Google, is tightly integrated with Google. The address bar acts like an address bar (doh!) and a search bar, all in one. A bit like Firefox’s bar, but works kind of better. One thing I liked with Chrome is that it’s not just restricted to Google as a search engine. You can choose which search engine to use in the properties. Thumbs up Google for allowing competition.
• Chrome looks good. It’s pleasing to the eye, but that’s just me. I like the minimalist layout.
• Chrome is good at download management. There’s the “download sidebar” which tells you download progress directly in your sidebar. This is available in Firefox too, via addons. Chrome has it in-built.
• Incognito mode: This allows you to create a new window, and whatever you do in it doesn’t get recorded to history. Cookies are deleted on window-closing. This is especially useful if you want to plan birthday surprises (according to Google), or if you want to browse pr0n without your parents knowing (according to me).
• Tab dragging: You can drag tabs out of windows to create new windows, or merge tabs in a window. This kind of management is really useful for tab-crazy guys like me.
• Speed-dial like feature for commonly visited pages on new tab creation. This gives you thumbnails of your favourite sites so you can access them fast, without having to use bookmarks or type the address.
• Built-in task manager to handle unresponsive tabs and close them if needs be. Good move here Chrome.
• Built-in phishing protection. Now you will probably know if somebody is trying to steal your account or data.

There are other features available on Chrome’s home, so I’ll let you read them there. I just listed some here.

But this is how Firefox does things better than Chrome (since I’m a Firefox fan)

• Firefox has addons that let’s it do anything it wants. Manage tabs like you want with Tabmix, manage downloads with DownThemAll, find website bugs with Firebug, get website shots with ScreenGrab! Hell, you can even make Firefox do GUI prototyping with Pencil! It’s no longer a browser after a while.
  • Chrome has no support for addons (yet). This is good (less memory usage) and bad (less functions).
• Firefox has in-built support for RSS, something which is lacking in Google Chrome.
• Firefox can do what Chrome can do with the help of Addons. Yes. For example, AutoDial gives you the favourite-sites features in Firefox. Not very pretty, but it works.

So why Chrome? Because it’s an alternative. We’ve been using Firefox, Opera, Safari or some other browsers like Maxthon. Now we got a new contender, and it has some good features and performance figures to give us. Why not make good use of it? And when it comes from search-engine-giant Google, we gotta give it some serious looks.

For people who make heavy use of Google (me), Chrome is a real life-saver, due to its tight integration with Google. You can rapidly search for things on Google in Chrome, and it also gives you suggestions when typing addresses, which really rocks. Oh, another good reason to love Chrome: The Comic Book! Way to go for creativity!

There have been some privacy concerns with Chrome though, like a controversial clause in the End-User License Agreement (EULA) that says that whatever you do in Chrome, Google owns it. Like if I made this post in Chrome, Google would own “The Content”. This was changed recently, so no fears now.

Now, there is some claims that the address bar will send data to Google, and that 2% of this data will be kept.

Let’s wait and see what other browsers have to say to Chrome grabbing market share. (Firefox could learn some good things from Chrome, like memory management.)

Your views please? Do you use Chrome? Are you going to use it? Comments awaited!

Ps. As you may have seen, GeekScribes has no new posts for quite a while. Remember about me telling you that we were students? Well, Uni is really taking our time (Assignments! Too many of them!), and we are not finding time to post. But when we do, you will have good content, rest assured. If not, feel free to remind us.

This article comes from GeekScribes

Behold Chrome: New contender in Browser Wars Arena!