By Alec Meer on March 4th, 2010 at 5:39 pm.
That gag never gets old. Alternatively, it’s always been unbearably ancient, which is just how I like ‘em. Wait, that sounds wrong.
Anyway: 1.3Gb of Just Cause 2 demo is now available on Steam. Haven’t tried it yet, as it’s only just arrived, but go forth and ascertain whether Walker’s incessant frothing about the trailers has been justified or not. Also, grapple stuff to other stuff. “It’s easily one of the biggest freeroaming demos of all time,” says a man in a suit. He knows the score. Oh yes, and remember you can’t play this if you run Windows XP, as apparently having the gall to play videogames on a perfectly capable operating system from 2001 is akin to being a single-celled organism.
Played it on the 360 and really didn’t enjoy it. Shooting is boring and the grappling hook snapped every time I was just about to do something awesome. I say meh to it.
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Awesome! I’m going home to get it ASAP. Hope you guys like it :)
/Ex-developer of JC2
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Aww, why “ex”? Is there a story? If you can’t share that, how about sharing some “what worked, what didn’t?” kind of stuff in the game itself? :D
Loving the demo. I’ll probably end up with both a console and a PC copy, once the latter drops in price a bit.
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I’m presuming ‘ex’, because it’s probably completed/nearing completion.
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[this is a reply to http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/03/04/play-this-demo-why-just-cause/comment-page-1/#comment-410508 in case this becomes a new post.. if so, someone please instruct me on how to reply properly]
It’s no secret that Avalanche lost two major projects last year and subsequently had to lay off a bunch of people. I was one of the last to go of the ones that went, I believe, cause I rock, and all that, but that’s life. :)
I’m still in the games industry however (since it’s like totally the best one) working as a tools lead on APB.
Hm, about what worked and not… Well, not sure how much I’m allowed to say :) But I can say that I didn’t think it would turn out that great at first, but some 18 months or so before present day, it just clicked I guess and the game became really fun. :) Had a lot of fun playing it during debugging sessions and whatnot.
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I wasn’t aware of Avalanche losing the projects, alas. Sucks when that happens.
Glad you found an alternative though; APB is shaping up to be pretty tremendous as well!
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Very much looking forward to this. Think my computer will be able to run it no problem, but I’ll compare this and the 360 version before deciding. Excited for tonight! Why? Just cause!
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So its not just xp unsupported like say, how windows 2000 is supported by next to nothing. But instead explicitly vista or 7?
Eh, nevermind. On the bright side, by the time i have windows 7 this will be on weekend deal on steam.
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It is DX10 only, and since there is no DX10 for XP, you’ll need Vista or 7.
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Excellent. Time to find out if my PC can handle it or if I’ll have to settle for the 360 version.
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I just gave it a try and have to say… meh. The shooting feels horribly bad, mainly due to some strange auto-aim effect. Or maybe because the physics engine is terrible, I don’t know.
I’ll play around with it a bit more later, but so far I’m underwhelmed. The grappling hook is fun, but the parts of the world I’ve seen so far are pretty bland and boring so that there’s not much vertical movement.
Also keep in mind, that the demo is time-limited. After 30 minutes of mayhem, you’ll have to restart.
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Nice pun.
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Been waiting all day for this, I am so hoping this demo is substantial enough to give me an idea of how good the game is. I really think demo’s are a partial answer to piracy, get the demo out before the game ships and you might find people don’t pirate your games and buy them instead. So Kudos to Avalanche for doing things this way.
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But then you’d get pirates pirating the demo, and we don’t want that.
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Don’t tell anybody, but I just pirated the demo!
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No XP, not thanks.
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Shiny. Enjoyed the first one and looking forward to this one. Just needed the demo to make sure I can run the game.
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@Alex Bakke
Nah, just slap some DRM in the demo and you’re golden.
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But then the pirates would crack the demo!
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This is true. Just look at StarCraft 2.
(And substitute “beta” for “demo.”)
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I will enjoy this game in a couple of years, I’m sure.
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The video rocks, so lets hope this one is fun.
I can’t comment the XP thing. I think is stupid. Software is not hardware, you can always update software to support new things. Is called backports or backward compatibility. This is lazyness or Microsoft briving the game dev’s.
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Software costs money. Updating software costs money. Substantial upgrades to software costs a lot of money which a game is not going to get back after it has been released.
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DirectX 10 is NOT backwards compatible with DirectX 9. It requires a whole new driver model that is not available at all on Windows XP. Its full capabilities can only be harnessed with DX10-compatible hardware. Both DX10 itself and DX10 cards have already been in the market for 3 years.
Now who’s lazy? I’m not saying all XP users are lazy for not upgrading, but accusing Microsoft of being lazy or dishonest in this matter is incredibly stupid. An engine purely based on DirectX10 is long overdue. Now that DX10 systems (Vista/7 + DX10 card) are commonplace, it’s about time we move on.
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What? it’s not windows 95 compatible? That’s just LAZY! I call boycott!
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Sorry mate. If that were REALLY the case there wouldn’t be people who have got DX10 working on XP. In fact one group had it working two years ago.
There is no reason for anything beyond Windows XP to exist unless you are a MSFT shareholder or just gullible.
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@bonedwarf
That’s a very weak argument. By the same logic, what reason is there for XP to exist? Vista and Windows 7 offer significant improvements over XP.
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I only buy computers to download DX10.
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“Significant upgrades” if you mean “the same old shit.” XP worked fine and Vista works fine, but I traded an annoying set of bugs or issues for another. I got Win7 for free and I still didn’t install it. What a worthless upgrade.
The Xbox 360 uses DirectX 9. The PS3 uses OpenGL. This is a console game, right?
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Oh goody. This argument again.
At least no one has referred to them as Micro$oft or brought up Apple yet.
Seriously, 7 is great and I had real problems with Vista, I certainly saw fewer problems than when I had XP.
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Rather enjoyed blasting round the demo just causing a bit of chaos and shooting stuff up. The gunplay takes some getting used to, though. There’s some auto-targeting thing which actually works well – It’s just strange getting your head round not having to be entirely accurate all the time.
Overall looks like a nice step up from the first.
As for the complaints about DX10 only, while it’s a shame some folks can’t play it, the industry is only going to move in that direction, at least with bigger budget releases. DX10/11 are a good step up from DX9 – Not purely in terms of visuals but in terms of performance. Just Cause 2 probably isn’t the game that warrents the upgrade. But in 18 months or so we may well see a fair few titles on the market like this. And at that point, it’s not much different to the need to upgrade your graphics card or your processor in order to keep up with the latest games.
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@bonedwarf
No one has Direct X 10 working on XP – those that claim too are lying. Some people have managed to do some really minor things, simple renderings and outputs… through very, very hacky means. It’s the equivalent of strapping an outboard motor to a Land Rover and calling it amphibious.
Hacking DX10 onto XP would defeat the entire purpose of Direct X 10 – if it was hacked into XP it would be messy, plagued with problems and incompatibilities, and would probably bluescreen more than a windows ME computer.
The whole point of Direct X 10 was to build a new API from the ground up with strict compatibility requirements that was a core component of the OS…
Hacking that into XP would defeat the entire point of it’s existence.
The old XP API was just a hacky mess by the end of it.
There is a world of difference between an XBox 360 using DX9 with consistent hardware, and a PC using it with a myriad of hardware, and drivers.
It’s also the reason graphics drivers are vastly more stable on Vista/7 so much so that if the driver crashes, it simply reinitializes it, all you’ll notice in game is a brief “lag” – where as previously that was pretty much guaranteed to BSOD the machine.
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y’know, imma actually get steam now and create an account for the first time, just to get this demo. I do not have steam yet. I’m pre-industrialised.
I LOVED the first game. A game of running around and wreaking havoc, ignoring any crappy story along the way seems to get my game juices flowing for a long time, somehow.
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@Tusque d’Ivoire: Now this is akin to being a single-celled organism.
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Running XP, ergo not getting it \:
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It actually lives up to all those crazy videos, actually its better, as they looked kind of jerky and didn’t actually look that good, it looks awesome and actually plays really well too, SUPERFUNTIME
Seems like I’ll get this instead of metro 2033
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Downloading the demo, hopefully it’ll work OK on my laptop. Will give it a go this weekend.
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Just tried to get it, but Steam’s playing silly beggars and won’t install the demo. I’ll give it another shot later on, I suppose.
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Whenever that happens, try shutting down steam and starting it up again. Always works for me.
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Fun, but the Grappling cable snaps way too easily.
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That will be a number you can modify.
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I downloaded on the 360 and the shooting is very similar to Red Faction: Guerilla or Saints Row 2. The driving is more like Saints Row 2 and you can drive almost anywhere or off of anything. The gameplay feels more like Red Faction. And people generally aren’t hostile until you provoke them.
It’s definitely fun. Try doing some of the crazy stuff from the videos and you’ll smile until your face hurts. Or try anything. I attached myself to an upright gas canister then shot it – what a ride. :D
On the 360, the demo is limited to 30 minutes at a time and you need a Gold membership to download.
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Haven’t downloaded it yet, but I must admit the comparisons to Saints Row/RF Guerilla frighten me since I found both of them obviously sloppy ports when it comes to the mouse control, especially for steering.
EDIT: Played the demo – much better control than either of the aforementioned game, phew. Stupid fun, not sure 1/2 hour gave me enough time to get to grips with it though.
P.
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@oceanclub I played those games all on the 360, so I can’t speak to the PC versions. I just meant the gameplay was similar to both — which I see as a compliment as I really enjoyed both games.
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I’m looking forward to buying this one for $5 in some holiday sale in 2011 or 2012, after i finally “upgrade” to 7.
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Only played the 360 demo so far, as it came out before this was on Steam, which I’m downloading now. Have to say I really enjoyed the demo on the 360, the game is made for anothing except getting high on the funicity scale.
Only slight qualm I have is I don’t think the grappling hook quite has the range it should have, it’s a bit too difficult to grapple a chopper from the ground, or from air to air. Probably be easier on the PC version as it’ll be easier to aim I guess.
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Controls feel extremely floaty and awkward. Trying to aim just feels weird. Presumably its better on the 360.
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@Vague-rant
Sounds like mouse-smoothing at work. There may be a way to turn that off, either in options or in a config file somewhere.
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I agree about the controls.
It was fun enough but I don’t think I’ll be purchasing at full price. Definitely one to get in the sales though.
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It’s definately a bit of mouse smoothing in there, I did find it improved when I turned off VSync, too.
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I can not wait to hear how much this sell , i am really getting the feeling its not going to sell alot as not alot of us want to have windows 7 , im fine with XP thank you notting wrong with it
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Other than it being out of support and not have the latest version of DX.
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I can not wait to hear how much this sell , i am really getting the feeling its not going to sell alot as not alot of us do not want to have windows 7 , im fine with XP thank you notting wrong with it
Fixed
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Really bloody good demo.
They’ve structured it very cleverly.
It is time limited, you get 30 minutes of fun.
But! You get demo time extends for doing good stuff, like I think I got an extra 30 seconds for doing 6 melee kills. So it encourages you to try again and again to last longer.
There is a pretty big chunk of land to play in, way too much to explore in even two goes.
Then at the end, it gives you a score, goading you to give it another go.
I’ve played the demo twice now, and want to play it again.
It seems to fix a lot of the problems I had with the first game too, although the controls definitely take a while to get used to.
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Also, whilst it is a totally seperate issue, Windows 7 is really great guys.
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Must…irrationally…hate…progress…
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Not really, no. I would have been so pissed if I had spent money on that thing.
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Well, I am now downloading the demo for JC2.
I am bit worried about mouse aiming and how well it’s implemented. Same thing with every multi-platform release these days, really.
There is no excuse for not properly supporting mouse+keyboard controls.
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Plays just like red faction guerilla, one of the best games of last year. Loving it so far :D
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Hey guys, not everyone can afford to upgrade to a brand new operating system, or has a system that will run it as smoothly as XP!
*Grumblegrumblestupid2GBofRAMgrumblemembleexpensivegoddamnOSwharrgarhbl*
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Nobody is saying everybody does, but accepting that newer software won’t run on your old system is just one of the things you have to deal with if you’re unable or unwilling to stay current technologically.
I mean, I can’t afford the new Ferrari but you don’t hear me complaining.
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XP really is a bad operating system when compared to 7. Just get a 7 already people. How many more years must you hang on to that outdated pile? Instead of being thankful to MS for supporting it AT ALL, you guys complain about how some games don’t support it anymore.
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I’m not complaining, I’m just stating the facts. If they don’t want me as a customer, good for them. Less for me to buy. My PS2 still needs some loving, too.
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Just shut the hell up about it not supporting WinXp! You don’t here me complaining the game doesn’t work on my Playstation 2 and Windows 7 is already twice the OS XP ever was. Even Vista nowadays is that bad.
And that’s coming from someone who runs a Linux distro on his laptop.
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Hooray! Downloading it right now..hopefully this is better than the demo for the first part (which turned out to be quite fun despite the horrible demo). And hopefully I did the right thing when I pre-ordered it (after all, I get all of the goodies here in Europe). I’m excited about this demo..can’t wait for it to download..
Also, the Steam-forum never stops to amaze me (esp. after the Portal-magic they’ve done lately):
They already ‘hacked’ the demo so the 30-minute time limit can be edited, as it seems..
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Hmm, okay. Prolonging the demo doesn’t seem to work after all. Well, anyway.
Also, I don’t see why people are complaining about the Vista/7-requirement. If your computer can’t run Windows 7, what makes you think it might run a game like this under XP in the first place? That doesn’t make sense.
Also, have a look at the requirements for Metro 2033 (http://store.steampowered.com/app/43110/):
Optimum Requirements:
* Processor: Core i7 CPU
* Memory: 8GB RAM or higher
* Graphics: NVIDIA DirectX 11 compliant graphics card (GeForce GTX 480 and 470)
* DirectX®: DirectX 11
ouch..
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@Christian
If your computer can’t run Windows 7
You think that’s the only reason that everyone hasn’t “upgraded” to Win7? Really? Not the cost, not the trouble, not the total absence of any tangible or relevant improvement, not the simple fact that XP still works fine so why bother, it must be that people can’t run it? Wow.
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@vinraith
Cost: It’s really not that expensive to upgrade, but I understand that people might have better things to spend the money on, so I’ll let that one through.
Trouble: I’ll give you that one. I’m not planning to upgrade til I build a new PC, because I *really* dislike OS installs on an in-use computer.
Lack of tangible or relevant improvement: You mean like a vastly improved user experience, a more secure OS, or faster boot times? I’m sure there are many more improvements that are both tangible and relevant.
XP still works fine: That’s true. So do typewriters, walkmen, and any number of technologies that have been improved upon. Just don’t be expecting FLAC-quality audio on your walkman or great typography from your typewriter.
Edit: Aw, man. Way to edit your post so my response makes no sense, meanie!
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“vastly improved user experience”
How? Does it suck me off when I log in or something?
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@jsutcliffe
Unedited just for you, you can thank the Lazarus plugin for Firefox.
Anyway, trouble is certainly what’s keeping me from upgrading, though it’s partly the lack of seeing a point as well. You talk about a “vastly improved user experience” but I’ve used 7 on my dad’s PC, I don’t really see anything “vastly improved” about it. There are some things that are slightly better, some things that are slightly worse, and most everything else is basically the same. My system boots quite quickly, so that’s not an issue.
Personally, it’s trouble and lack of tangible advantage that are keeping me away for the time being. I’ll upgrade when I have to, as I always have, but I’ve never been in any particular hurry to “upgrade” my Windows OS. You’re talking to someone that switched to XP from Win 98 in 2006, realize. That switch was a product of 1) support for 98 being terminated, 2) building a new system, so the change was no hassle and 3) wanting to be able to play the (by then fairly sizable) volume of games that wouldn’t run on 98. I don’t think I’m going to be able to wait for “2″ this time, this system is too new, but you can bet I’m not going to bother changing my operating system until “3″ happens.
Computers are better than typewriters at what typewriters do because of editing, MP3 players are better than walkmen because of size, skipping, and (lower priority) sound quality. There’s nothing Win 7 does that I’m particularly interested in right now. When that changes, I’ll switch.
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@Vinraith: Wow, some bitter reaction there.
But no, of course I don’t think that, why would I think that? The thought was just inspired by sleepygamer’s post up there and some other postings I’ve read about similar things.
I know there might be other reasons to stay on an outdated system, but from a gaming point-of-view, there really is no reason (apart from nostalgia I guess). And for old games, there’s always VMs or dual-booting.
I have to use XP at work and have Win 7 at home, and I really wish my company would let me upgrade.
I really think taking the 30 minutes and installing Win 7 was totally worth it (trouble?). And it just cost about 70 €..which is quite cheap if you compare it to modern games (cost?). And it just works and really is quicker and more fun (no improvement?)..and if you take into account that XP sucked without having to install it every year or so..
But hey, everybody gets to choose here, and I’m not judging. I’m just saying (to at least stay a bit on topic here): don’t complain if the newest games don’t support the oldest (still barely supported) OS out there and you feel left out without a real reason.
To the demo: fun times. A bit confusing at first, an I miss aiming when I want to (it toggles), but great fun. Also it runs quite fine on older hardware..
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@Christian
Bitter? About what? If I misunderstood your meaning, I apologize, but it genuinely looked as though you couldn’t think of any other reason that someone might not be running 7.
but from a gaming point-of-view, there really is no reason (apart from nostalgia I guess). And for old games, there’s always VMs or dual-booting.
From a gaming point of view, old games are a very good reason. Dual booting implies I still need XP. Why do I need 7?
I really think taking the 30 minutes and installing Win 7 was totally worth it (trouble?).
30 minutes for the OS, followed by at least several dozen hours to reinstall all the software, to say nothing of time spent working out compatibility issues. The OS install time is not the problem here.
don’t complain if the newest games don’t support the oldest (still barely supported) OS
Personally, I’m fine with it, as it just means the game will be dirt cheap when I can eventually run it. As for others, you’d see less complaining if the whole thing wasn’t so obviously forced. A 360 port that can’t run on DirectX 9? Really? Is there any question at all that MS kicked in a little “development money” to secure that “feature?”
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@Vinraith
So what software of yours isn’t W7 compatible again?
@Christian
Ignore him, He’s a troll. Any time Windows 7 comes up on this site, you can bet your bottom dollar Vinraith will be posting about how ‘XP is just as good’ or posing the open question ‘why should I upgrade?’ or the classic ‘many of my games won’t run in W7′. The response to which (posted above) that has been asked innumerable times and has still has yet to be answered. Sadly you’ve been suckered into engaging with him in another of these fruitless debates. Fact of the matter is, he’s just a lazy shit who’ll happily waste hours (especially yours) telling you why he can’t, won’t or isn’t going to do something because (insert transactional analysis ‘yes, but’ excuse), rather than just do it. Avoid him and UK_John like the plague, they are both forum time vampires.
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A 360 port that can’t run on DirectX 9? Really? Is there any question at all that MS kicked in a little “development money” to secure that “feature?”
Yeah, I see your point there. This *is* strange and a bit disturbing.But hey, it’s no secret that publishers (esp. MS) are screwing with us and trying to maximize their profits. We’ve seen worse in the near past I’d say (which isn’t an excuse of course, just something to consider: it really, really could be worse..).
Also, thinking about Mercenaries 2 (or Saint’s Row 2) here: I’d rather have a quite nice port that just runs on newer OS than a totally screwed port running on everything down to Win 2000.
At least it doesn’t have GfWL.
And for older games resulting in a favored OS : hmm, really depends on what you play more. For me, it’s newer games..and the trust that GoG will make it right..so that’s not an issue I guess.
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@Christian
Fair enough. The point is never to say “no one should upgrade,” it’s merely to point out that there are plenty of reasons for people not to have upgraded yet. No one (no one that I’ve read, anyway) is saying “I’ll never get Win 7,” a lot of us just see this as trying to force a transition to happen faster than it should be. Regardless, as stated before, I’ll be happy to pick this one up in a couple of years when I can run it. Having to wait is certainly, as you say, better than dealing with the kind of DRM that would prevent me from ever buying it in the first place.
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@Christian
See what I mean ;)
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@Kadayi
So rather than, say, state your opinion, your contribution to any thread from now on is going to be what, personally insulting me? What an odd way to spend your time.
And I’ve already told you, but I’ll repeat it here since you seem to have forgotten: Rise of Nations, the earlier Fallout games, and a fair sized body of other older games and programs show up as non-compatible on the Windows 7 site. Maybe some of these are false reports (it showed Fallout 3 as incompatible, but I’ve been told by others it’s not). I have no way of knowing, but why would I potentially close the door on a bunch of older games I like in order to get access to one game I might not? Also, why does this bother you so much that it warrants personal attacks?
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@Vinraith
What arguments? You don’t have any. You get shot down all the time by people with articulate arguments, and your only response is just celebrating your ignorance and apathy and wasting their time. Want to play fallout on W7? try http://www.gog.com (“oh noes spend lunch moneys on games I already own? never!!! “says you in high dudgeon and exits dramatically from the thread)
It’s a constant stream of ‘can’t', ‘won’t’ ‘will never entertain the prospect of’ ‘don’t see the point’. How about some actual genuine enthusiasm for the ‘New’ at some point?
Also for humour value lets see this non compatible games site. I’m fascinated to see this up to date list of titles that won’t run on Windows 7 ;)
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@ Metro 2033 Optimal Specs.
It’s more amazing considering the fact that the GF100 series, nVidia’s foray into Directx 11, has yet to be released and given the appalling yield numbers will be unavailable for most people for most of the year, even if they did want to purchase it.
I do lament more seriously the developer-bribing that gives nVidia exclusive features that could easily be implemented on a comparable ATi card or CPU solution, the latter could be used for PhysX effects, yet the code is not merely purposely left unoptimised, developers have no inducement to replicate effects on other middle-ware or in the case of Arkham Asylum protected by Securom to prevent functionality in circumstances.
Regardless, I’m really excited for Metro 2033 and I just wish I had 0.9 more Directxs to get to 11 (I’m on 10.1).
P.S. I’m replying at length because I cannot seem to download Just Cause 2 because my steam won’t go online, the first such annoyance I’ve had in months, if not years, damnit.
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@Kadayi
I responded to the (less strangely hostile) version of your post on the next page. I’ll repeat the Windows Compatibility Tool page link here, though, in case you miss it there or other people are interested:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/compatibility/windows-7/en-us/Default.aspx
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Total meh. A directionless, gimmicky meh. With specially bad shooting.
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I thought it was quite good actually.
(Nice name you got there, seems I’ going to kill you)
Also does anyone know of some exploit to prolong/remove the time limit?
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@Drewski, nayon
I’m not complaining as such, and I do see your points. I just think it’s a bit sad that I’m going to have to ditch “Barbie’s First GUI” for Windows 7 land.
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Just had a quick 30 min play with the demo.
As expected from the trailers, it’s just pure, chaotic fun. I started by watching a helicopter plummet on top of some bad guys and finished by reversing my hijacked car off a cliff after a high-speed chase.
I’ve got too many games to play at the moment but I might pick this up when it drops in price.
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For people with mouse problems, it could be to do with your overall pc performance, I have had no problem with controls or framerate so the 2 could be linked
Also, make sure vsync is turned off.
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It’s possible – I’m playing on a laptop and the opening cutsequence thing had horribly out of sync audio, suggesting it wasn’t particularly liking something!
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See my post below, this looks to be to do with multicore.
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The game mechanics are definitely geared more towards fun than challenge from what I’ve seen. playing the game proper is pretty boring but trying to pull off stunts in the heat of combat seems like the kind of challenge some will dig. I need to give it a couple more tries before putting cash down.
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I felt the same way in the beginning. There is a mouse smoothing option but it was already false. Lowering the visual level (i.e. reaching 30 FPS) did the trick however.
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I had some problems with periodic slowness (every second it’d grind, not only drop frames but actually run slower – made aiming and driving problematic). If you have this problem or something like it, drop into task manager, right click on justcause2.exe and set the processor affinity to just one of your cores. This seems to sort it out.
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You horrible bunch of miserable bastards. I never ceased to be amazed at the sense of entitlement so prevalent in the gaming community. The winxp comments are ignorant gibberish- 7/vista are better structured to accommodate gaming, but because you want hate M$ you’ll happily deny yourselves the pleasure of this game and an improved OS just to satisfy your desire to gripe. ungghh
I’ve only tried on 360 as my PC is too feeble for this, but it feels a mite spongey there. Can’t imagine it’s much better on PC, but this seems to be the tradeoff you get with large sandboxy games like this – more space means less precision, but it’s better than many of it’s stablemates. Hopefully the mouse precision issue is fixable. Ditto the difficulty really, the game wants you to have fun an making you overly vulnerable would only get in the way of you hooking people to moving cars TBH.
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@Schmung
Entirely right, entitlement-crazed PC loons! I mean, this is a DX 10 game. It requires DX 10 and that’s why there’s no 360 version, so people just need to deal with it.
Also, everyone that doesn’t upgrade to Win 7 right this second hates Microsoft, progress, freedom, and puppies. Bastards.
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Which is the version Schmung tried, you’ll notice, which in turn means he has actually tried the DX9 version himself.
This is getting very complicated.
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Or maybe it’s a game that we don’t want anyway and aren’t playing because it doesn’t support our Gaming OS of choice? That’s not complaining, that’s jsut staing the facts. No support? Sorry, I’m not your customer. Moving along.
“denying the pleasure” – give me a break. Don’t be such a dick. Just Cause 2 will not be worth $200 and an OS install, no way, no how.
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I’m talking gamers in general, not just PC owning folk. Though it does seem marginally worse in this camp.
The equivalence in GPU hardware and DX levels between console/PC is always brought up but it’s cock really. People assume that because the chip in the 360 is of dx9 spec that crossplaform games must therefore only need dx9 to work on PC, which is not really the case. DX10 and WDDM make life easier for devs and if they don’t have to focus on legacy pathways then they can get on with the business of making the game and have to spend less time faffing about. Why would they not take advantage of this when anyone with the base spec of PC to run the game can easily run the OS required by it?
If people are that in love with XP then they can (and likely will) pirate vista/7 just to run the game. What bothers me more than anything about this whole issue is that it is such a minor and tangential inconvenience in the grand scheme of things. Had the thing only run on NVidia cards, or required 4gb of RAM or a mental DRM scheme then I would understand the furore. It doesn’t. It asks that your OS not be nine years old.
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“Or maybe it’s a game that we don’t want anyway and aren’t playing because it doesn’t support our Gaming OS of choice?”
You don’t want it and you can’t play it? Well what’s the problem? Good for you!
I think this game is pretty sweet. It’s not worth an OS upgrade but I’m glad I can run it.
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:( I can’t play this demo because I’m on XP.
There is no way in hell I could even run it anyway, but the fact that I wouldn’t be able to even if I had the specs bothers me.
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BEST. DEMO. EVER!!!
I’m not exaggerating. This is the cleverest use of a demo I have ever seen. The area in the demo alone seems pretty big, but when it cuts to the trailer when your 30 mins are up you realise just how huge the game is going to be. It doesn’t drop you out of the game when the timer runs out neither, just straight to the menu after the trailer, so you are ready to go again if you wish.
I didn’t try to do any particular mission, so I’m not too sure how the game is actually going to be structured, but the demo just felt like some sort of glorious sandbox. I spent most of the time traversing the terrain, getting used to using the grappling hook and parachute combined. Tricky to do, but I can imagine you can move pretty speedily around the place once you master it.
The controls are pretty good. I was expecting to have to use a pad, as I guess it would be designed for consoles first, but after it defaulted to keyboard + mouse and I must have missed the option to enable pad I just stuck with it and everything was fine. It’s not changing the fact that Max Payne is still the only third person shooter to get mouse+keyboard perfect, but it does a very good job.
Performance seems to be good too. I didn’t have any of the mouse problems a couple of people are reporting, so I assume that must be down to frame rate. It was also able to automatically put my resolution to my default 1680×1050 without any hitches. Looks very nice too.
So, this seems to be a very good port and really captures the excitement of the trailers. I can imagine being able to pull off more and more crazy stunts the more you get used to the controls, as well as the toys you have to play with.
I’m of for a second play through.
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Actually, there is one caveat to all of this, which I have just discovered. The cutscenes aren’t skip-able.
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Also: Quicktime-events. Argh!
But to be honest: not as bad as I expected. You take over a helicopter by pressing 1,2 or 3 in a certain order it shows you, and each button just once. So no hammering a button, which is nice, but still pointless. They should have left that out maybe?
But I agree, I really like where this game is going.
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I’m not sure, can you call it a quick time event when it gives you that long to do it? I’m utterly cack-handed and terrible at these things, but I found the time limits pretty generous. As long as it doesn’t do a Mercs 2 and make the fancier vehicles require a baroque combo of buttons to be hammered out at super speed I am fairly happy.
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I had forgotten about those. Yeah, not a big fan of those either. They are used pretty painlessly here though. The choice of keys was a little random, but the time on them is so long that I can’t really complain.
I do wonder whether this demo is set on the very easiest difficulty though. It takes a hell of a lot to kill you and I have only actually ever died when I blow myself up and when I crashed a plane. If the difficulty is set on the lowest setting then the quick time events may need to be done faster on a higher difficulty.
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Despite the time limit easily one of the best demos of the last few months. Actually gave me reason to go out and buy this at full price soon. Much more tricky stuff to do than in the first game and it runs so smooth. Awesome stunts.
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Great demo. It could do with having destructable buildings à la Red Faction: Guerrilla, but that’s a fairly minor complaint when you can hijack helicopters with a grappling hook and surf on top of cars.
In short, I would be buying this right now if I wasn’t waiting for BF:BC2 to unlock later tonight. I’ll definitely pick it up at some point though.
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Two plays did more to increase my interest than most of the trailers.
Not entirely true.
Still, though, a demo hasn’t made me this excited for a game since Batman Arkham Asylum. So yeah. Looking forward to this.
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Looking forward to trying this, gonna go download now.
Any everyone complaining about the non-Win XP thing, if you have a rig capable of running this game, then you’re surely the type to spend a decent amount on your PC maybe every few years. Why not £50 a new OS every what, 7 years (since XP came out?) as well? I bet the RAM in most people’s PCs who are complaning about this set them back that much, not to mention the GPU/CPU prices.
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Essentially, Just Cause 2 demo = Happy Fun Time.
Yay!
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I find it especially hilarious that there are characters in this game who speak with a Ma/Singlish accent! Some people complain about its exaggerated nature but I can verify its authenticity (at least for that ‘comrade’ lady). There are people who do speak like that.
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I’m not planning to upgrade Windows any time soon, and haven’t bought a Windows upgrade since Windows 98 (and there I upgraded from Windows 3!), but I still don’t think it’s unreasonable of them to require XP, considering that the hardware system requirements are high enough that people who can run it most likely bought their computer after XP had been replaced by Vista as the current Windows version. If you chose to install an old OS on your new computer you have yourself to blame if not everything works.
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CANT PLAY DONT HAVE DUMBVISTA
CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK OUT
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CANT CAPTAIN DUMBLOCK COUNT TO SEVEN?
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NEIGH
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Broken key remapping. Yay! Turns out you can’t bind Use to anything but E, meaning you can no longer change weapons if you’ve changed the key to something else. And it takes about 10 bloody seconds to save every key config change….
You’re trying my patience today, Avalanche.
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I use my E key to strafe left… :(
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@V. Tchitcherine.
I get Tim Stone to strafe left for me.
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I use my E key to strafe left… :(
I’m scratching my head trying to figure this out. Are you using a 4ERT keymapping?
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Wow, that blows. And it doesn’t recognize mouse buttons over 3, either. I tried to put the grappling hook on my thumb button and it just labeled it “N/A” (“Not Available?” Huh?) and, even stranger, complained that I’d duplicated the entry for that key. In-game it did nothing. I can fake it by assigning a key to the button with Logitech’s tools, but that sort of blows.
And yeah, that message as it saves the settings feels painfully like a fake pause to make you think the game is working hard.
I sure hope they fix these things, because I’ve already had enough fun to preorder.
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@MWoody
I feel the same way. I’m having a hell of a lot of fun with it, but I just hate playing with their key config. It’s really not something I usually do with games, if I can help it.
Here’s another oddity… not sure if this is something I screwed up or not. Land vehicles have two different weapons, but for some reason, the game defaults to firing both with Mouse2. If I try to change the primary land vehicle weapon to Mouse1, it unbinds the Mouse1 attack for on-foot. *shakes head in dismay*
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It has been a very long time since I’ve downloaded and played a demo but the trailers made it too hard to resist. Very much enjoyed it. If they can build a good sense of progression on top of the ridiculous playground then it should be a winner.
As people have said, it has that Red Faction: Guerrilla feel to it but is a lot more fun. Shooting is better than Red Faction and the toolset is so far very entertaining. Doesn’t take too long to get used to Mouse + Keyboard and I can see the mouse giving us an advantage on the PC.
Look forward to seeing some full reviews.
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My god, the time limit. I hate it. Why ? WHYYYY ?? Why do you have to ruin the otherwise great demo by making the time I can spend limited ???!!??! The demo map area alone is huge, so why the puny 30 minute time limit, and a forced restart from the very beginning of the demo.
It’s otherwise very entertaining game from what I played. It isn’t an intelligent game, mind you.
Explosions. Murder. Lots of murder. No real complaints beyond bit wonky aiming and the bloody time limit.
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“My god, the time limit. I hate it. Why ? WHYYYY ?? Why do you have to ruin the otherwise great demo by making the time I can spend limited ???!!??!”
Because if you could run around and tool around with the game to your hearts content forever, you’d have less reason to buy the full game???!!!?!!?!?!?!?!???
Also, you can play the demo multiple times if you want…
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I don’t have problem with the concept time limit itself as much, but it’s lenght. 30 minutes is just not enough time, considering the distances you have to cover. Some extra 15 minutes would have made completing the mission far more easie, instead of having to rush like a maniac.
Besides, the area is PITIFUL compared to the full map you can see on the PDA and you only get one single story mission, so there isn’t that much “actual” stuff to do.
Still, a lot of fun, and I will most likely be buying this when it comes out. The post was mainly due to the sheer amount of fun I had with the demo….and the need to have more fun.
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You’re lucky if a modern demo gives you 15 minutes of gameplay. Having a half-hour time limit, but enough content to play it a dozen times over makes this one of the biggest demos in ages.
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It was such a bad shooter that I struggled to get to the end of the 30 minutes to be honest. I spent most of that jumping off a cliff and parachuting around looking at the scenery.
Oh well, it made the excruciatingly slow evening’s wait for BC2 a tad more bearable!
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Hell, I finished most of the map in 5 minutes. And you can actually get it to reward you with more time for doing… something, I’m not sure exactly what, but it happened mutiple times.
Frankly, I’m impressed with how much of the game they made available. Damn good demo.
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Holy cow this is awesome! It’s like a dumb 1980s action movie. Outrageously fun, and absolutely superb graphics.
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xp is nine years old; does anyone expect to be able to play with a nine year old graphics card? That would be the geforce 3 series, since then we’ve had;
GeForce 4
GeForce FX
GeForce 6
GeForce 7
GeForce 8
GeForce 9
GeForce 100
GeForce 200
GeForce 300
is it that unreasonable? Vista had some hiccups but became perfectly good within a year of its release, and windows 7 is probably the best microsoft os over, so stop crying and accept that things have moved on.
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Yeah, I grumbled two years ago when Halo 2 and Shadowrun required Vista, but that was TWO YEARS AGO. That’s a hell of a transitional period right there.
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It would be reasonable if every other game on the market could run on a Geforce 4, I guess?
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Remember when games started using Pixel Shaders as standard? The internet was flooded with cries of ‘My card plays every other game, why not this one?’. It’s exactly the same situation now.
XP is nine years old. They started transitioning to DX10 two years ago. Seriously. TWO YEARS.
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Does the fact they’re not getting very far after that long indicate to you they are being successful?
It’s not like XP CAN’T run DX10. It’s MS have chosen to leverage it to sell their piece of shit OS as they realise it offers very little over XP.
I am still waiting for someone to come up with a compelling reason why Windows 7 is so much better than XP. 98 to XP, fair enough. Huge leap in stability etc…
Windows 7… Aside from upping all the system requirements of software (just go read any game box and it says you need more power if you want to run it on Vista or 7) I see very little benefit beyond MS basically twisting my arm behind my back and trying to break it to force me to upgrade.
I’m fully prepared to have the my Jake Blues moment and have gods light shine down on me… But the only benefits from Windows 7 appear to be if you own shares in Microsoft.
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the stability jump from XP to 7 is even bigger (larger? longer?) than 98 from XP.
I mean, why upgrade to Windows at all? DOS lets me copy files all I want! and DOS NEVER CRASHES!
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Sadly, Vista was an abortion of an OS, so we’ve only really had since the Windows 7 tupperware/ann summers/whatever parties to upgrade to a DX10 OS. And sadly, experience has taught a lot of us to avoid new MS operating systems for at least a year, if not two.
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If you’ve spent years (yes, years), using a workstation to render 3D visuals, and produce music with a professional DAW such as Ableton Live, and you’ve done so under both Win XP and more recently 7, you’d know why people are switching.
Sure, XP was always better than 95/98/ME, but that doesn’t mean it was perfectly stable. You’d have to pry my copies of 7 from my cold, dead hands before I’d go back to attempting a week-long render on XP.
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Sadly, Vista was an abortion of an OS, so we’ve only really had since the Windows 7 tupperware/ann summers/whatever parties to upgrade to a DX10 OS. Sadly, experience has taught a lot of us to avoid new MS operating systems for at least a year, if not two.
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@Bonedwarf: One compelling reason: with Windows 7 I can now make use of all 8GB of RAM in my machine, instead of just over 3GB. That means I don’t have to close down everything else when I run a game, and games have more RAM to play with.
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I’m with Bonedwarf on that one… I can edit my photos using Helicon Filter Pro, edit and render videos with Sony Vegas 8, play most of the games etc. with an average uptime of a week and a half on XP Pro, so…why should I bother upgrading? Because Microsoft introduced a new “revolutionary” APIs and then stuffes the money down the developers’ throat to make it the only supported API to compensate the fact the game gonna be unavailable to at least a quarter of its potential market?
HAHA..no, that ain’t no rational reason.. It’s more likely I’ll buy Ass. Creed II with Ubi’s ridiculous DRM during some 75% off just for the luls…
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By the way, for anyone who’s interested, the “minimum” system requirements are pure bullshit. I’m running this on my aging laptop with an 8600GT, 2.4 GHz processor and 4GB of ram. Admittedly I’m running it with everything at the bare minimum, but when I turn the resolution down to 800×600 I get 60 constant FPS!!
Also, the demo is RIDICULOUSLY entertaining.
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Hmm, I’m guessing my 8400M is still S.O.L.
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XP whiners are funny.
You guys really need to get laid…or something, ‘cos this level of retardation is just tragic…
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Eh ? Maybe you’re new to the whole ‘Windows’ thing :) Since 3.11, I’ve been conditioned to adopt windows OSes several years after they’re released, due to their buggy-ass bullshite.
I suspect I have this in common with legions of people. Not being xp-compatible is just plain dumb, saleswise. Most PC users have XP (source: meh).
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I have 3 children here that are very much proof I got laid, and continue to get laid. Pretty much every day.
What does this have to do with me seeing no valid reason for Windows 7 to exist beyond Microsoft needing to make money? And we’d all be fine if it wasn’t for you muppets falling for their shtick and buying the snake oil they’re pedaling.
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INYOURFACE, the hard evidence of Bonedwarf’s getting laid! :D
I, for one, ain’t whinin’…I only hope they got enough money from Micro$oft to cover the loss of potential buyers-XP users
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@Vinraith
What arguments? You don’t have any. Want to play fallout on W7? try http://www.gog.com
Also for humour value lets see this non compatible games site. ;)
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@Kadayi
Perhaps you’re ok with rebuying games to make them run on a new OS. Hell, I probably would be too if I had as much trouble with XP as you apparently do. Since I still don’t see any incentive to “upgrading,” is it really so hard to understand why I might think having to rebuy games I already own in addition to having to buy a new OS, install the new OS, install all my existing software, and handle any compatibility issues might be something I’d at least want to put off for awhile?
Win 7 Compatibility center:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/compatibility/windows-7/en-us/Default.aspx
Fallout 3, as an example:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/compatibility/windows-7/en-us/Search.aspx?type=Software&s=fallout%203
Lots of games just aren’t listed, which I take to mean they may or may not work. Contrary to what you seem to think, I’m not going out of my way to find problems here. I’d be very pleased to discover that everything I want to run on 7 will run on 7. It won’t make me upgrade any faster, of course, but I like to think that I’ll continue to be able to play/use the software I enjoy now into the foreseeable future.
Someone was telling me in a previous thread that a few games that didn’t run on XP worked on 7 in compatibility mode. I’ve yet to confirm that, but it would be very welcome news.
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Despite what that says, Fallout 3 works perfectly fine on Windows 7 (64bit – there is zero point in 32 bit, unless your PC is an ancient peice of rubbish with a CPU which doesn’t support 64bit operations) – perfectly fine.
I should know I was playing it not 20 mins ago.
All you need to do is set compatibility mode to XP, and run as admin.
You don’t even need to do that if you install it anywhere on your computer except for program files (which is write protected as it SHOULD be – yet years of bad practice had coders writing to config/temp files inside it).
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@Starky
Dude, you’re not supposed to tell him about the super super secret windows (all the way back to W95) compatibility mode. I’m afraid we’re going to have to blackball you from the W7 club for that one. ;)
We need him to continue to live in the FEAR that pretty much none of his software will ever work with W7 whatsoever so we can extract that FEAR him and the rest of his kind and use it to power our nefarious engines of global domination.
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@Starky
Yes, you were kind enough to point that out before. Kadayi seemed to think I was making it up (part of my evil plan to smear and destroy MS and all technological progress in the world or something), hence the link.
Were you also the one who mentioned some games that didn’t work in XP running on 7 incompatibility mode? Now that would be a reason to upgrade.
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@Vinraith
You want to find out if a product is compatible with an OS? the best place to go is to the manufacturer of the product (or a support forum), not the manufacturer of the OS. Microsoft rely upon user feedback as to compatibility, they don’t have an infinite army of monkeys testing every piece of software dating back to the dawn of time. Needless to say, if they have no feedback, then their position is going to be ‘not compatible’.
Get (deductive) skillz ;)
http://fallout.bethsoft.com/eng/games/f3-faq.html
Albeit Fallout doesn’t officially support W7 (because it was developed before Win 7 was released), it runs on Vista and it will run perfectly well on W7.
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@Kadayi
Fair enough. It’s a little impractical to hunt down that information for every title I own and piece of software I use, though, hence initially going to the MS’s website. I’m glad to see it’s wrong, it sounds like several of the older games I was concerned about actually do work in compatibility mode despite reports to the contrary. I’ll ignore MS’s site and just hunt down the information myself henceforth.
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VInraith: Basically we’ll be forced to upgrade in the end as the game developers whore themselves to MS for huge chunks of cash to leverage DX10 when it could work just fine on XP.
All the Windows 7 sheep on here, if they’re not being paid by Microsoft, really are gullible.
I’ve seen comparison shots of DX9 vs DX10 and really see no difference. Certainly not that you’d notice while actually PLAYING the game. DX8 to 9, yes, I can see a huge difference in my my race sims for example. But I’ve seen comparisons of 9 to 10. Beyond leveraging Windows 7 there really is little difference, and killing DX10 on XP machines is a conscious choice by Microsoft. It’s not a technological limitation of any kind. The fact that despite them pushing DX10 for over 2 years and it’s still almost completely ignored should indicate to people that it’s all BS PR.
But no. They’d rather sit and chew grass and provide wool for the fine folk at Microsoft.
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Bonedwarf that really is the most ignorant post in this entire thread, you should be pleased – windows 7 Sheep?
It couldn’t just be that people have tried it and simply prefer it could it? No we’ve all bought into some kind of hype and lies…
So here once again, I shall endeavour to educate someone clearly ignorant on the main purpose of DX10+
Lets start with what it isn’t – it isn’t some super graphical update, the days of super graphical advancements are gone, tiny incremental advancements is all we’ll get.
It isn’t because DX10 can do things that DX9 never could or never can.
It’s because DX10 integrates the API into the system in such a way as to make it easier for the developer to implement features, makes it cleaner, more reliable, with better stability. Ensures that hardware conforms to strict regulation, so when a Dev specifies “requires DirectX 10 hardware”, they KNOW that any DX10 Graphics card will support those features.
Killing DX10 on XP IS a technical limitation – oh sure Microsoft could implement some hacky upgrade to DX9 that is sorta, kinda compatible with DX10 – but doing so would defeat the entire purpose of redesigning the DX API from scratch.
It’s the difference between Wikipedia and a book say on College level physics – Wiki has all the same information as the book, as a teacher (dev) you could impart all the same knowledge using nothing but wikipedia. It would be messy however, and in a poor order producing a messy workflow.
So let me say it again, the benefit to DX10 isn’t directly at consumers, but at Developers, allowing them to use advanced features with greater compatibility, less hacked code in their engine, sticking closer to standards and sure of a more stable driver model within the OS.
In effect making it cheaper, and easier for them to make PC games with less (graphical at least) incompatibilities and issues.
Again, any form of DX10 that made it onto XP would be some hacked in compatibility layer – not the integrated system that it is from vista onwards.
XP is a perfectly good operating system, I don’t blame people for wanting to stick with it – it IS inferior to Windows 7, but in ways that doesn’t matter to many end users – again, if new importaint features don’t matter to you, why upgrade? That’s fine.
Just don’t expect to be on the cutting edge of PC gaming if you’re not prepared to be on the cutting edge of Hardware and software.
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I am underwhelmed.
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I am overwhelmed. This is such stupid fun. I spent a few minutes randomly grappling passing motorcyclists to a road-sign on a cliff edge, and then went on a bit of a rampage in a town. I grappled to the top of a water tower, and from my vantage point, I used my magic extendo-rope to tether random thugs to nearby buildings. One of them threw a greande my way though, and it blew the whole water tower up, sending me spiralling towards the ground.
I must have hit my chute button at some point, because about a half-second after I completed a perfect 1080 faceplant-to-hard-surface, my chute opened in perfect Wil-E Coyote style.
The technology in this game is Acme Certified.
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@Dominic
You just gave me my biggest lol of the day. Thank you.
This game seriously is fun.
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One interesting thing of note I spotted. Was trying out the 360 gamepad controls for helicopters, and noticed that a lot of the console commands “double up” on the buttons. For instance, Keyboard has Shift to run and Tab as Dive/roll, whereas the gamepad has Dive/Roll as tap RB and Run as Hold RB. Wish they’d left in the option to do this sort of thing on the keyboard, cut down on the keybinds a little bit.
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Feels very much like a console game. Or in other words a game I don’t usually like that much. This one seems to be a bit more (mindless) fun than most (RF: Guerrilla for example, now that’s a terrible game). I might be interested in buying this from one of those 75% off Steam sales but there’s one huge issue I have and that’s the weird zoomed in viewpoint you control the character from. Simply ruins the game for me though based on comments apparently no one else cares about this (non?) issue.
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No that bothered me too. An .ini hack would be great, though possibly impossible? Either way it wouldn’t quite be a game-breaker, but it’s a little, frustrating issue of which there are one or two others. Slightly wonky aiming, patently console-aimed PDA (they could have crammed a lot more info into it for the PC version using our fancypants large resolutions and screen proximity) and the existence of “press enter” screens.
Still, it remains rather a lot of fun at its core.
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Windows XP is still supported by Microsoft, therefore it’s still a current OS.
The last service pack is nearly 2 years old. It will be 2014 before they will stop releasing security patches for it, and only then will I call people who want to keep using it daft.
I will however say that I can see that if you want to play the newest games, you will probably need a modern OS at some point.
In this case though I cannot see why they couldn’t do a XP compatible version, given that it is a multi-platform release.
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@Reddin
In this case though I cannot see why they couldn’t do a XP compatible version, given that it is a multi-platform release.
Which is the source of most of the rational complaining, I think. If it were a DirectX10-only engine it’d be a hell of a lot more understandable (which is not to say it would stop all complaints, this is the internet after all :)).
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In terms of overall performance there’s little point in running XP on recent hardware, because the fundamental backbone to the OS is from a time that pre-dates multi-core processors and DX capable 10 & 11 graphics cards. You might as well buy a race horse and keep it in a paddock,that’s how much you’re handicapping your systems potential performance. But you get good FPS in XP!!!, sure you get good FPS in DX9, you get zero frames in DX 10 though, and every action you perform from starting up to shutting down is slower in terms of responsiveness Vs Win 7.
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What does multi-core have to do with anything? I have plenty of games that use multi-core in XP and they’re just fine.
And I’m very sick of people defending Microsoft for basically leveraging Direct X to force people to upgrade. I repeat what I said earlier… THERE IS NO TECHNICAL LIMITATION PREVENTING DX10 ON XP. It is entirely down to MS using their monopoly to force people to upgrade.
There is no compelling reason to upgrade other than Microsoft’s need to feed it’s bank account.
My system is 18 months old. Came with Vista. First thing I did was shitcan that and install XP.
And I benefit from LOWER system requirements for games.
Tell me again, leveraging aside, why Win7 is so great?
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@ Bonedwarf : WDMM for starters. Rewrites to some of the backend code that make it fundamentally incompatible with the way XP does things. You’d have to have a completely different code branch for DirectX10 XP edition and it’d be an iron clad nightmare making it work across both OS’s all the time. Doubtless it could be done, but from MS’s point of view it’s a waste of time and money.
Your reactionary slating of all of this is entirely the sort of attitude that you’re accusing the other side of having by daring to say that Win7 is better than XP.
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Schmung: Thankyou for that. I can’t be the only one who’s gone through a video driver update on 7 and really appreciated the fact that a reboot isn’t necessary.
It’s all about the little things, and there’s a boatload of little things that make 7 the OS Windows should have been from the start. Yes it has a higher overhead than XP, but this is 2010, not 2001. 2GB of RAM is very common for a PC these days and that runs 7 perfectly adequately.
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Amazing. Too bad it crashes on my system. Looks like I’ll be playing on Xbox till such a time as I’m able to perform a much needed upgrade. Yes, I will be willing to purchase this particular gem twice.
It’s really unfortunate as it performs mega smoothly until everything locks up. Lots of fun working out interesting ways to destroy various things. :(
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“Oh yes, and remember you can’t play this if you run Windows XP, as apparently having the gall to play videogames on a perfectly capable operating system from 2001 is akin to being a single-celled organism.”
Pretty much. Backward compatibility is really hard. The more platforms you have to support, the harder it is to get the code out the door in the first place.
You may as well be saying “on a perfectly capable computer from 2001″. Or maybe there’s sarcasm I’m missing, there?
This argument had merit when the only alternative was Vista, but (speaking as Linux dev and MacOSX user) Windows 7 is pretty usable. (and cheap, if you get it OEM) Biggest leap for me: plugging in a new USB device and having it just work, like it does when I hook it up to the Mac. Never managed to get that working on WinXP.
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OMFG! why isn’t this out on the ps2! i’ve only had mines for 10 years it’s totally not redundant and perfectly usable, why didn’t they release a crippled version for my backwards machine!!!!!!! :(
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Just tried this, and the biggest problem I’m having is weird control issues. Keybinding problems, weird things like when I’m hanging from the ceiling with my grapple, I can’t drop off. The only way to get out was to grapple something else. Half the time I seem high enough to open a chute, but it doesn’t open. Twice in a row I tried to steer a freefall and just plummeted.
Other than those and a weird glitch where I ended up inside a structure, stuck in the walls, I’m having a blast. I grin every time I blow up a gas can, or set off a rack of canisters, or tether someone to an exploding gas station.
It runs wondrously on my semi-aged machine at a full resolution of 1920×1200, which is nice for a console port. Whenever I get around to getting this, it’ll fulfill my destruction urge for a while. Which would be nice, since I still can’t get Red Faction: Guerrilla working.
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I’ve played through this demo three times already and can’t really foresee stopping. Also on maximum settings, the game is just arrestingly beautiful.
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Oh lord yes! It looks wonderful.
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I love it. Every element from JC1 that needed improvement has been rendered more fun. There’s a slightly obnoxious number of keybinds, but you can do so much more in this that it’s forgivable. Graphics are a great mix of beautiful and not too processor-chewing, and the grappling hook is loads of fun. I love tethering pursuing jeeps to the road in front of them, which causes them to go nose up, flip over and explode.
Shame about the time limit, though. With only one mission, one challenge, and less than 8% of the map, it’s not like you’d get more than you deserved by playing for an unlimited amount of time. Still, I’ve played it through three times, and it’s great. HIGHLY RECOMMEND, people.
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If MS want gamers to adopt Win 7 then maybe they should create something that shows off its awesome power. Make me drool over the Directx11 magnificence. Show me something that makes me want it! Unfortunately, their strategy is to develop software for less powerful and capable hardware and actively refuse to release games on the PC. Why should devs pioneer Win 7 development if the creators themselves don’t even bother to show people what it can do?
I don’t see a silly (in a good way), but possibly fun game by a fairly irrelevant dev as the next step in game development. The market needs to move on, I agree completely with that. But it needs more support to take it there. And MS are doing the opposite of what they need to do.
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And the game actually flies on a system just slightly above the minimum requirements with the settings balanced between medium and high!
Also, LOADS OF FUN! Might be the first game in years I’ll buy full-price.
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And the game actually flies on a system just slightly above the minimum requirements with the settings balanced between medium and high!
Yes, that was a pleasant surprise for me as well. I was afraid of the performance, but seeing it run perfectly fine @1920×1200 with 4xAA and everything else in the middles (and motion-blur turned off, can’t stand it) on my mediocre computer (Phenom 9750, 4GB RAM, 8800GTS 512) was pure joy. Seems it is fairly well optimized, compared to other games that came out on console as well.
Looks nice too..I think a large part of the trick is blurring out the distance. I mean you have the impression that you can see very far, but it’s very blurry. Nice trick, works for me.
The only thing is the lousy cutscenes (those seemed just terrible, bad voice-acting and lip-syncing). Seems a bit along the line of Mass Effect 2, where ingame looked way better than the cutscenes (which was a bit surprising)..
But hey, who needs videos when the game is such fun? Can’t wait for it to be released.
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The point for developers to move to DX10 exclusively is not the admittedly meager step up in display quality, but the hugely simplified development for DX10 due to the Unified Shader Model. Ars had an interview with the dev team of the also-DX10-exclusive Shattered Horizon a while back, and these guys said (I hope I’m using XHTML correctly there):
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And that was not proper XHTML usage. Here we go, again:
The point for developers to move to DX10 exclusively is not the admittedly meager step up in display quality, but the hugely simplified development for DX10 due to the Unified Shader Model. Ars had an interview with the dev team of the also-DX10-exclusive Shattered Horizon a while back, and these guys said (I hope I’m using XHTML correctly there):
I think that makes sense for a developer who needs to cut cost (and who doesn’t these days, anyway?) and/or has to decide how to sensibly allocate limited resources. And judging by the Steam Hardware Survey, that choice kind of makes sense.
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It’s a lot of fun but keys mapping is a problem like I want to add the grapple to my thumb mouse button but in the menu it just shows N/A and dose not work in game. I hope they fix this in the full version. Also to get my res to look right I had to select a different one then go back to it.
Then some of the help controls in game show the 360 controller controls even when I don’t have it plugged in.
But the biggest problem for me is the old returning enemies. This really got to me in the first game and I thought we got over this by now. When you leave a area just a few meters away you go back and all the enemies are there again. I can understand if you’ve gone a long way away but it’s way to close to trigger enemies again. This hurt the flow of the missions in the first game so I was hoping they would do it a bit different this time.
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Aww, thats a great shame.
The lack of persistency in what you kill is one of the reasons I couldnt stand FarCry 2
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I would say it’s worst than Far Cry 2 as they had them show up in jeeps. But here they show up out of nowhere.
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Yeah, tried that and annoyed to find it didn’t work (I wanted to map “Grapple hook” to E since I use it more often).
P.
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Dude, it’s one game nearly four years after the release of Vista. The XBox 360 came out just before Vista. That’s hardly fast.
P.
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It looks amazing. Reminded me of the feeling I had when I played Far Cry for the first time.
Also: too many buttons! And it crashes so often on my machine. Boo! Still having lots of fun with HARD SURFACES though.
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To those people moaning about this not working on their 9 year old OS, get used to this sort of thing happening a lot more over the next 2 years. Anybody who understands the way DX10 works will know it’s the right thing to do moving forward. I loved XP myself and used it since launch but upgraded to 7 recently.
After 9 years of great service it’s time for the old lady to retire.
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So did anyone grapple a gas tank they’d just shot and mentally whoop in delight as you rocket into the stratosphere, riding it like Slim Pickens?
Yeah, me too.
P.
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Absolutely.
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I couldn’t manage to grapple one fast enough; ‘guess I need to try harder!
I _did_, however, attach one to a guard and then shoot it. I have no idea where he landed; I waved goodbye as he disappeared into the clouds.
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It works best if you grapple onto the nozzle on one of the big beige upright gas tanks, THEN shoot it. It’ll remain stable until it launches.
Then you just have to get your timing right so you can dramatically bail out just as it’s about to explode, and not during or after.
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I have to say that I think its pretty ridiculous to expect everyone to have upgraded to Win 7. I agree that it may well provide a better experience that XP overall and DX11 may be very pretty. However, that doesent change the fact that I will not be upgrading for some time because I must buy 7, install it and then reinstall all my software, buy a DX11 capable graphics card and install it and many of us just don’t have the cash lying around to do that. My system is perfectly capable of running any other modern release on top settings.
However, I do understand that technology needs to move forwards. It is just a pity that they have decided to force the issue like this. I felt the same about Crysis. At the end of the day there are many more games to play before this becomes common place. By then i7 processors will be more affordable and it will be viable to upgrade everything at the same time.
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shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit i was all excited about this game, but no win xp?
fucked if i’m gonna set win7 up on my lamewang macbook pro dualboot.
CRAP
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actually i suppose it’s time to upgrade.
really, who remembers whingeing about upgrading from win98?
even when i did, it still took a lot of work to play x-com on xp. bad memories i guess.
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@VelvetFist: ho ho.
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I didn’t even realize that this doesn’t support XP. When I started downloading I was still on XP. Well since I am in MSDNAA I got Windows 7 for free and because my machine was broken and needed a reinstall yesterday, I just decided to go for the new version. Lucky me.
Anyway, the game: I like it very much. It’s great at just creating mayhem wherever you are. And it’s so easy to make an awesome entry by falling from the sky, blow everything up, and then make a super smooth retreat. I could have spent hours in the area that they give you, and then in the end when they zoom out and show you how large the complete game is: holy shit. I can’t imagine ever finishing that game.
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Sure I saw a ‘Press A to skip’ option in the top right of cutscenes? I’m playing with a 360 pad though.
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The Faction mission included in the demo is pretty cool, you get to drive a tank and grapple on to a helicopter.
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@Vinraith
Surely if you’re after information the important aspect is getting accurate information rather than inaccurate no? Also exactly how hard is it to go to another website? I mean Jesus, how much can you promote this idea of personal laziness as some kind of defence?
@Bonedwarf
back under the stairs with you and your wacked out MS theories. The only developers they pay anything to are the ones under their label (like Lionhead), or ones they are cutting a particular deal with (like R* for the GTA IV 360 DLC). It’s actually publishers who pay MS money to sell games on the 360 (that’s why console titles cost more than PC ones because of the licensing fee).
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Unfortunately, this appears to be a fairly bad port, complete with “Press Enter” prompts that won’t accept any other key input. Someone should probably tell console developers that games haven’t used the Enter key in a decade.
JC2 comes to the PC with all the restrictions of its console brethren. Menus and options are essentially copied right over. The game also will not allow binding of mouse buttons 4+. Which is completely inexcusable, especially considering the number of commands the default control layout has splayed across the keyboard.
There are also other little quirks that really harm what is otherwise a fun game. The “stunt” cam that takes over at exactly those times you need control of the camera most, which cannot be toggled off, is almost enough to ruin the whole game for me.
I also feel like the grappling hook breaks far too easily. At first, there appears to be tons of potential for grappling objects to each other. But the stupid line isn’t even strong enough to drag a motorcycle behind a car. Why on earth would you neuter the game’s major distinctive feature like that?
The keybinding menu is broken on multiple levels, too.
The PS3 version, which I also downloaded, is more playable due to the fact that I’m not trying to use 17 keys at once–a problem that wouldn’t exist if I could bind all 7 mouse buttons…or at least 5 of them.
So: Fix the keybinding function, add an “off” option for the actionstuntcamidiocy, and I’m in.
For those experiencing numb/sloppy aiming, try disabling Vsync. It made a huge difference for me, with Vsync enabled the game is unplayable.
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Well…thinking about how ports can go wrong (Saints Row, Mercenaries etc.), this is a fairly good port, I’d say. But yeah, the broken keybinding (I’d like my grapple-hook on my upper thumb-button please) is annoying. Hopefully, they’ll fix that asap.
But seeing how bland the demo for the first part was (no binding at all), I’m hoping this will be looked into fast..
Played it five times now, and still not really bored of it, which is nice. But I’m a bit afraid the missions will be a problem. If they’re too frustrating, that would be sad (for example the demo-mission: I hooked onto the helicopter and tried to jump on one of the cars we were following. I messed up and ended on foot with no chance of catching up..I would have expected the heli to come back and pick me up or something. That was not really fun)..
p.s.:
thanks for the vsync-hint. I’ll try that. Sure helped in Dead Space..
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@Christian re: the mission. I also fell off the truck, but was able to catch up using my grapple, the parachute, and some cross-country shortcuts. I was happy they didn’t have a “you must catch up in 30 seconds or mission’s over” message.
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Eric:
you’re right, that was refreshing. But they have something similar (and in my opinion better, if it’s needed..): as I said, I was on foot and didn’t catch up..and when the convoy was about 1km away, it told me that I’d better hurry, because it’s getting out of range. So still some sort of mechanic to keep you interested in following the target (not like in Far Cry 2 where the convoys would drive around in circles for hours and hours), but not as annoying as that timer. Quite relaxing. Looking forward to the full game.
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Have you guys ever tried using a Belkin? On top of being a top-notch piece of hardware, the nifty little mapping software it comes with makes these key mapping annoyances a thing of the past. I can’t recommend the n52te enough.
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I have an older N52, actually (pre-”te”). I also have access to a Logitech G13. Both lack a row of keys above “WASD” which is a dealbreaker. The G13 is comfortable but too symmetrical, while the N52 is well laid-out but has terrible key action. I give one or the other another try from time to time but always go back to my trusty G15. In my experience, most key binding inconveniences are software issues, not hardware shortfalls. The idea of binding keys to actual keyboard keys is nice, but it’s more of a workaround than a solution.
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@disperse
WERS, E,R are for strafing left and right respectively which I use my left index finger for, jump and duck are A and D. My friends think I’m crazy.
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