Joeb’s Blog…Thing

Gaming

Sorry for the delay between the last part and this part - I was ill, and GTA IV was released

So anyway, I have no screenshots, as the laptop has been formatted in order for it’s return later today. However I can say that apart from the very latest games, such as Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (CoD4) etc. This laptop managed to run everything on full settings.

The games I tried out on the laptop (albeit briefly tried) were:

• The Sims 2 (incl. Nightlife)
• Command & Conquer 3 Kane Edition
• CoD4
• Black & White 2
• Half Life 2/Counterstrike Source
• Unreal Tournament 2004

For a little run down of the games and how they looked and performed, click below

Sims 2

This ran very well, as I expected it would, however I did find that there was an issue with the particular graphics card in the laptop, which caused the game to stop displaying anything. However when this ocurred Vista recovered the driver and play could resume normally. Overall a decent experience however.

C&C 3

Now I’ve been a fan of C&C games for a LONG time, I even have the 1st one in it’s original packaging somewhere! I enjoyed playing this game on full settings, it made it feel like a totally different game (normally when I play it on my own laptop I have to play on low settings :’(). That said, I thoroughly enjoyed playing the game on this laptop, there was no lag whatsoever, I’ll miss playing it at such a high screen resolution on full graphics.

CoD4

Now this game is only around 8 months old I believe (I can’t remember exactly), so I didn’t expect it to perform quite as well as the others, knowing how large the game is (I have it on Xbox 360). I was quite correct in my thinking as well as it turns out. Though the laptop will play the game on full settings at 1920×1200, it runs slow and isn’t really that playable. Needless to say I only tried the training level (again - I’ve completed it on the Xbox 360). So this is my basis for not recommending brand new games on the machine.

Black & White 2

I’ve never been able to play this game on full settings on any of the PC’s I own, so to do so at the full HD screen resolution was brilliant. The game was still good, and the fact the graphics were a massive improvement over any time I’ve played the game before was just a huge bonus. It improved the desire to play to say the least. Sadly I never got time to finish the game while I had the laptop (mainly because I somehow managed to corrupt the Windows install so had to use the recovery disc :p)

Half Life 2/CS: Source

I never really played Half Life 2 all that much, but I can say that it looked good (I’m not the biggest HL fan to be honest). However I did give CS: Source quite a bit of play time. I enjoyed it, the graphics were a lot better than the last time I played it I had a laugh while playing it online, and miraculously it didn’t kill my router

Unreal Tournament 2004

I’m a big fan of this game as well I literally had all the settings maxed out - and little something I never managed to find in UT2004 before (I’ll possibly tell you what it was another time if you ask nicely). And I enjoyed playing it, ran perfectly smoothly, I even got some online play in (I didn’t know there was still servers for it!) I’m still waiting on UT3 for the Xbox 360