BlueSonnet

I went later in the afternoon to pick up a copy, but Game were out of stock. I would be bothered but for 2 things - they are charging £10 more than Amazon, and I'm still on placement and wouldn't be able to play it for weeks yet anyway.

Well i'm back, from my trip to hell.

So yup i had a few more fiddles with the settings of the game. Believe it or not I managed to get the game fps to about an average of 30, and occationally it was up to 50 to 60, all along with features i kept such as stencil shading and bumpmapping. Pretty cool, but guess what? Amongst all the changes i made, one of them was to crank the resolution down to (wait for it...)

320 to 240 pixels

hiss...

Yeah i know, i suck, but figured if my graphics card is going to act like a shit card then i'll treat it like one. :P Didn't seem to ruin gameplay for me in any case, but afraid i can't comment much on graphics.

Ok analysis:

The first hour of the game was pretty amazing, just like what pcgamer said. All the people doing this that and the other, spreading rumours, greeting you as a newbie and the like. I often found myself sitting still for a bit to watch the news in the game or playing super turbo turkey puncher (weren't too much to see there but i doubt i was going to see it again so meh). Lighting was pretty cool obviously, but you do take it for granted after a while.

To cut to the chase i like the way it was building up to the moment when hell breaks loose, when the lighting started to get dark or people were talking more about strange occurences and the like. I was quite amazed that the part where hell breaks loose wasn't a scripted movie as shown in the trailers, meaning i had to keep an eye on my surroundings (and the zombie-to-be chap on my right) whilst watching the carnage on the screen.

As far as the fright factor goes, i didn't find it scary so far. I blame the footage that was released as it got me ready for the worst (but still i need to play the rest of the game). I proceeded with caution though, checking the rooms with my flashlight before proceeding ahead. I didn't find it to be any surprise when i first encountered a spanner-armed zombie standing right on the other side of a door. On the other hand there were moments that got me jumpy and made me stop and think. After i killed my first zombie i almost jumped out of my skin when another came behind me an shot me in the head (i was playing it on veteran btw), before i kicked his ass to high hell. Whilst the standard zombies were pretty much easy, the imps i faced were the ones that got the adrenaline going. They take more damage than their original counterparts and the cramped conditions only made it worse. Otherwise they weren't too much of a pain. What got me killed the first time was my carelessness towards the zombies with guns. I often fought them in dark conditions where they fired from the shadows, and i was left wondering where they were. Gonna get that bastard the next time i play this game.

Quick list of other things i liked.
. The blur effects when you get hit.
. The shading; seeing a shadow creeping round the corner and all.
. The voice acting and facial animations (not up to HL2 standards but decent enough).
. How the zombies hid in the shadows.

Finally some things i didn't like.
. The zombie gibbing; sorry, but it doesn't let me see the cool ragdoll physiques as much as i can.
. Could have just been me playing the game on veteren but i was hoping that the amount of enemies were more spaced out throughout the levels and acted by themselves rather than just waiting on the spot for me, just so that i could get that paranoia feeling that something might be behind me.
. I still need to play the game some more, but i wanna see more wall climbing imps as much as normal walkers.
. Is it just me or some of the monsters i encountered so far could have done with more sfx?

Overall, pretty damn swell so far.

I think my next mission is to get a better graphics card. I should kick myself in the ass for not doing it earlier (i'm a bum you see). Even if i can run the game, i'm sure it would look a 100 times more sexy with say, even Geforce 4 128 mb thing for my PC, and perform better too. Compared to my other hardware components it is only the graphics card that is letting me down. For now maybe i should fiddle with my settings some more, but gathering about £100 to £250 is a priority.

Otherwise, its worth the bloody wait so far. Good job Id. :)

Off to bed now i think.

Enjoying it so far, except I just got owned by a cheap trap :(

1024x768 high detail and looking very good