P(ret)T(y) Boats

Still trying to find something that will make the horrendous amount of money you spent on Vista and a DirectX 10 graphics card worthwhile? Can't help, sorry. At least not until Crysis.

However, the 250Mb of downloadabliness here may very briefly make you feel ever so slightly better about yourself and your loose-clasped whore of a wallet. It's a DX10 rolling demo/benchmark of Dubya Dubya Two naval sim PT Boats: Knights of the Sea and, actually, it's really quite pretty. Good water, good boats. Job done. Close your eyes when the straight-outta-PS1 sailors appear though, or you'll start cryring again. While it's not the heartbreaking beauty of, say, a UT 2003 landscape, I still had one of those increasingly frequent "hang on - games can actually look like this now?" moments of mild future-shock.

About the game itself? Don't know much I'm afraid, as in practice this is the kind of thing that often gives me the creeping fear, ashamed of the inadequacies of my own patience and ability to think tactically. It claims to be heavy on the action though, and also lets you jump between first person cannons-a-go-go and a third person strategic view that lets you scoot multiple boats off to where you want them.

The screenshot above, incidentally, is of the DX9 version of the game, as DX10 is a bugger to screenshot unless you can run the game in a window, and this one won't let me. Actual benchmark's much juicer, honest.

You may now return to your scheduled yelling at Vista that it's fat, lazy and worthless.