If you like to inflict more self-torture, try tweaking your new Gears of War for the PC. Normally, tweaking the game to get the best performance is a necessary exercise, especially when your net worth isn’t good enough to be announced in a magazine.

Well, Gears gives new meaning to torture.

One of the first things hardware-savvy PC gamers do when they run a game is to view its video settings and see what can be changed. When tweaks are done, said gamer plays through the early stages to test if performance is any good. If there are settings to be changed (and trust me, there will always be settings to be changed), one would simply visit the video settings while the stage is paused.

Not in Gears of War. When you press Esc and look for the video settings, you won’t be able to find it. You’ll have to quit to the main menu, and then visit the video settings. If you want to try out a new configuration scheme, you have to ditch the campaign and go to the main menu.

Funny thing in tweaking is you need to switch a few settings to see which one gives you the best gains. Tweaking was never such a frustrating exercise in any shooter, but Gears does this in spades.

But wait! Aren’t there settings that require you to restart the game for it to take effect? Yes, they have that here too. If you want AA (and if your PC can handle it), you have to restart. That means you have to log into your Windows Live again, unless you don’t plan on saving your progress if you do decide to play.

Post from: EveryJoe

Gears of War annoyance #3: Tweaking torture

We all know that PC gamers are getting Unreal Tournament 3 this very month, but the release date for the Playstation 3 version remains tentative. Mark Rein, vice president at Epic Games, told Eurogamer that the chances of getting the PS3 version this year is still pretty good.

“Right now we’re very close to a release candidate, and we should have it finished by the end of this week. Then we send it off and it’s just a matter of what happens from there.”

While Rein never said it explicitly, I think it’s very doable. Why? This Eurogamer quote was given roughly around November 8, Thursday, at an event in Birmingham. The end of that week would be the 10^th or 11^th. Production would take from two to three weeks (around the end of November), and delivery would probably be another two weeks (this would roughly fall in the first week of December).

There’s a catch.

UT3 won’t make it to Europe until 2008 because according to Rein, the region’s certification process takes longer. They’ll still be testing the game in different languages, so that will eat up some more time.

Post from: EveryJoe

UT3 for the PS3 might launch this year, but Europe gets no love

Unfortunately, the PC gamers won’t be able to get a taste of Crysis on said date. According to CVG, the demo will be available on October 26 instead. Why the delay?

Crytek and EA reasoned that they’re “taking some extra time to make sure you that you have an amazing experience but also we did not want to risk the release date of Crysis at this stage.”

Let me get this straight: the demo was delayed so that the game’s launch would be in time?

Hooey.

The real reason is the release of Halo 3, and we all know it. Their beloved resource hog shooter won’t get any attention this week if they decide to push the demo on September 25 because everybody is playing Halo 3.

The upside in all this? Crytek has revealed what that “huge surprise” was. Apparently, it’s the CryENGINE 2’s Sandbox 2 game editor. Hey, Far Cry had one, right? Boy, we didn’t see that one coming.

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Post from: EveryJoe

Shit-detector: Crysis demo is delayed to meet launch date

September 25 will be an important day in 2007 gaming. Aside from the release of Halo 3 on the Xbox 360, the day also marks the arrival of the Crysis demo on the PC. Getting the demo will answer the single most important question that PC gamers are wondering.

“Can my rig run Crysis?”

You probably know the answer already because we’ve already given you the system requirements, but maybe you’re still in denial because you’re itching to play this shooter but the hardware needed is just insane.

If you must know, what’s in store for us is the game’s first level. There’ll also be a “huge surprise” from Crytek, whatever that is. Maybe the “huge surprise” is the size of the demo. Instead of downloading a 2GB behemoth, perhaps it’s just 600MB. Or maybe the minimum requirements have been readjusted that even a 486 can run the game.

Now that’s wishful thinking.

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Post from: EveryJoe

Crysis demo is coming next month