Scale.  
 
Shepard is supposedly the savior of the galaxy. Of a system in space composed of a hundred billion suns.There are also supposedly hundreds if not thousands of inhabited planets. And it's centered on Earth? 
 
 :/  
 
In the previous Mass Effect games, Bioware made it quite clear that the saga spreads across the whole galaxy, and that Earth is just another planet (you can't even visit Earth in the ME1 and ME2 - but you could visit abandoned gas giants!). A saga that spreads across light years. 
 
If the whole of ME3 is centered around saving the Earth, they seem to be utterly ignoring the scale expressed in the previous games. So what happens when Shepard saves the Earth? There's thousands of other Reapers raping thousands of other planets. Unless there's some secret artifact on Earth that will magically stop the Reapers (a la Fifth Element), which would be a gimmicky plot twist in my mind, I see absolutely no advantage to saving the Earth vs. any other planet. It will do nothing in the grand scheme of things.   

 
On another note, here's something else I observed about ME3. Only one image has been uploaded so far for its wiki and this is what the main page looks like:  
 

 

 "Next gen" consoles are still something like 3 years off, but I thought it'd be fun to speculate on their possible technical specifications. 


Assumptions: 
1. Companies will try to release their consoles at the break-even point (as minimal loss from hardware as possible). 
2. The consoles will cost $300 (consumer sweet spot). 
3. The consoles will use approximately the same amount of power as in the current gen. 
4. The savings from mass production are balanced out by the manufacturing, shipping, and retail costs (therefore they won't be included in the calculations). 
5. They will be released ~2014. 


So here goes: 


PSU - PS3's PSU size is 250W. PSU costs are generally quite stable, and currently 250W PSUs cost about $30-40.  

Case - The compact case design of consoles is probably incredibly cheap to make. Mid-tower PC cases that are much larger and have much more features retail at only $50; it shouldn't cost more than $10-20 for each console case.  

Optical drive - Next gen consoles will almost inevitably include a BR drive, Sony or not. Current BR drives retail for about $100, but cheaper ones can be found for as low as $50. By the time they start making the next gen consoles, my estimate is that functional BR drives could be used for around $30-$40.  

Motherboard - the proprietary motherboard of consoles are basically trimmed down versions of PC motherboards, leaving only the bare essentials. They don't require multiple PCIe slots, SATA controllers etc. My estimate is that they will cost a third to one half the cost of a regular cheap PC motherboard, so I will peg this figure around $30.  

RAM - DDR3 RAM is a given, and by that time RAM costs will probably be less than half of what they are now. Currently it costs about $20 per GB of DDR3 RAM. Assuming that the next gen consoles have 2-4GB RAM, this should cost them roughly $30-$40 by that point.  

HDD - My guess is something like 250-320GB (judging by the current 120-160GB) will be standard. Hard drives in that range currently cost about $45, by my guess is they will be roughly $30 by then. 


This leaves at most about $140 for the CPU+GPU bundle. To determine what they could be, it may be helpful to work backwards from our current hardware to see what could be bought for $140 currently. Right now, a 9800GT is about $75. An X2 260 $65. Both parts are what would've been counted as upper mid end about 2-2.5 years ago.  

So assuming new consoles are released ~2014, we can generally assume that the CPU and GPU will be upper mid end parts from mid-2011. Luckily mid-2011 is not that far off and we can do some quick estimates. The upper mid end parts in that time period will likely be Radeon HD 6850 and 6870. Those are currently deemed rather respectable high end cards at the moment.  

In mid-2011, Sandy Bridge and Bulldozer will be released pushing down the status of current CPUs. The AMD Phenom II X4 9xx series is currently deemed high end, by then it will probably have shifted towards the stronger section of upper mid end. The actual CPU will be IBM-based proprietary technology with a completely different instruction set from desktop processors, much like the PS3's processor is today, but this will still give us a general idea of performance. 


Final specs: 
- IBM proprietary CPU (if translated to x86, would be ~ current AMD Phenom II X4 900 series. However, it will most likely be a RISC-based design which would greatly enhance throughput for gaming, beyond its x86 counterpart)
- Proprietary GPU with raw graphical power ~ Radeon HD 6850 to 6870. Perhaps with 2GB VRAM. 
- 250W PSU
- Blu-ray drive
- 2-4GB RAM
- 250GB Hard Drive


The GPU is generally what matters most for gaming, so based off of the GPU estimate we can get an estimate for how powerful these consoles will be to current gen as a whole. The current gen's PS3 uses the equivalent of a 7800GT. Graphics cards at the 6850/6870 level are ~6-7x as strong (extrapolated from 3Dmark scores and reviews). Therefore, assuming that the consoles release around 2014 we should be able to see machines capable of pushing 6-7 times the graphical workload of the PS3 (given the assumptions mentioned at the beginning), or around as much as current ~$800 PCs. What this means for visual quality is: 


Current gen 

- Less than 1280x720 for most games
- Few advanced shader techniques
- Low framerate, <30
- 0xAA in most games


Next gen

-1920x1080 for most games
- Some minor tessellation ability, many advanced shader techniques
- Better framerates, 60fps becomes possibility
- 4xAA in most games (that is, if MLAA doesn't catch on)


Of course, this is merely conjecture and I could be leagues off, especially if there are any major deviations from the initial assumptions. Just thought I'd throw out a general ballpark, and I'm also curious to know what sort of specs you guys think next gen consoles will bring.     

Earlier today I was cleaning my graphics cards and case for dust because I thought my temps were getting a bit high (90C on the graphics cards, 80C on the CPU). However, when I put everything back after they had been cleaned, my computer was taking extra long to POST, and couldn't boot into Windows after POST. I went into safe mode and had to fanagle with the drivers for about 2 hours before I got it up and running again. Explanation? Who knows, sometimes PCs have more mood swings than a girl on PMS overdrive.  
 
The good news is, my effort was well rewarded with a temperature decrease that blew my mind. New temps --> 60C on the graphics cards and 70C on the CPU (which is amazing for 4Ghz). Excellent.  
 
This inspired me to OC the cards a bit more, and while searching online for the best ways to OC my particular model, I realized that I actually had a rather good revision and model on my particular cards, which meant they had pretty strong OC potential. I started jacking up the Core clock in 10Mhz increments. Then 20. Then 30. By the end of it I had a +15% stable core clock increase on my cards, and around a 10% increase in overall game performance. Not bad for cards that were never originally known for overclocking.  
 
However, I got greedy. Someone posted online in an enthusiast forum that they got an even higher overclock on their cards with the same model. In my mind I thought "hey if he could do it, I can do it too", despite me being fully aware that each set of graphics cards differ, even from the same model and manufacturer. I input his settings in over mine, started up my benchmarking program, and whizz, boom, crash. Ctrl-alt-del was no help so I had to restart. When the desktop came back up again, I saw Windows 7 updater trying to find drivers for my graphics cards. Aaaahh....this can't be good. I already had the newest ones installed (see before) and they were working just fine a few minutes ago. Windows was also operating outside of safe mode, so technically it should've been able to see the drivers already installed. 
 
I started back up the benchmarking program and some games and my framerate was less than a quarter of what it usually was in each. Turns out my cards were in some state of "shock", and I had to fanagle once again with the drivers and this time also the clocks to get it working again. I eventually resolved the issue and got back my OC clocks prior to the overambitious one. 

 
So basically I almost fried my computer today, twice, to get an extra 3 frames per second in Crysis. Was it worth it?  
 
 ... 
 
HELL YEAH BABY

Don't get me wrong, the Left 4 Dead games are great and have plenty of their own merits (large level design, interesting character dialogue, robust multiplayer etc.), but there are some things about RE5's Mercenaries mode that makes plain old zombie killing more fun.  
 
1) More diversity. In an L4D game you get 4 characters as per the name. Each character is the same other than their character model and voices. In RE5, there are also 4 characters but each character comes with their own weapon builds, melee attacks, and mannerisms. There are even different variations of each character, making for a total of 10 unique loadouts. If you want a character that can scissor kick zombies and then shoot them with a longbow, all while wearing a tribal bikini outfit, you've got one. From a gameplay standpoint, the characters are more than just carbon copies of each other.  
 
There are also more enemy types as well. You might exclaim "but wait! L4D has several different special type zombies such as the Boomer and The Spitter!"; true, but those comprise about less than 10% of the zombies you see while playing. Most of the zombies in L4D are clones that all die with 2 or 3 shots anywhere on the body. In comparison, there are a greater variety of zombie types amongst the "common" species in RE5, from ones that wield flaming crossbows to ones that wield shields and spears, while featuring many special zombies as well such as the Executioner.   
 

Bioware stated that in the development of ME2, they took a lot of feedback from the players and press to make their game better. Hopefully someone at Bioware will read this and take some things into consideration for ME3.

-           Allow more heavy weapon usage by providing more ammo for it.

-           Tied to the previous, make environments more destructible. Shooting a mini-nuke or missile at a wall of crates should be able to destroy it. The environments in ME2 felt very static and claustrophobic.

-           Eliminate mining. The implementation of resource gathering wasn’t good in ME1, nor was it good in ME2. Just eliminate it altogether; make upgrades obtainable either through shops, drops, or unlocks.

-           Bring back the Mako and provide plenty of planets to explore, but make it entirely optional (e.g. no missions or resource gathering involved).

-           Firewalker type missions in ME2 were boring as hell. I hope that they are not in ME3 in any form.

-           Bring some of the more RPG elements back. Allow for more diverse weapons and armor (statistics-wise) so that the player can go through the game with more than just the assault rifle that they obtain in the first hour of the game. Allow for attribute point distribution in areas such as health, accuracy armor etc.

-           Similar to how you can retrain Shepard’s abilities, allow us to retrain our squad’s abilities as well at a cost.

-           Allow antialiasing in-engine on the PC version! Most of us had to wait for a driver fix. Mirror’s Edge and Batman: AA were able to do it in Unreal Engine 3, I’m sure the smart folks at Bioware could figure out some way as well.

-           Turn off the subtitles that appear by default after taking too long to choose an option. Allow the player to choose whether they would like to see them or not.

-           More Hanar and Elcor! There are already enough humanoid aliens represented in the ME universe. Hanar are cool and Elcor are funny.

-           Prevent players from being able to hear the same piece of dialog twice. In a conversation, once a choice has been exhausted, that choice should be greyed out or disabled for a certain amount of time. This prevents the immersion-shattering situation where the player hears an exact repeat of what they just heard. 

-           For ambient voices, make them “always-on”, that is, keep a conversation going even when a player is out of hearing range. It’s very fake when people only talk when you draw near. You should be able to “walk into” people talking, and hear an already existing conversation fade in, which would be much more natural.

-           Fix Miranda's face. I think that regardless of our taste in women, we can all agree that there was something "off" about Miranda's face. Restructure it to be closer to the real life actor that she was based on, and I think we’d all be happier.

-           Fix the low-res textures on people’s suits! ME2 was overall a great looking game, but when you walk up to someone and their clothes look like they were drawn in MS Paint with pixels the size of their fist, it’s unnerving. If it’s not possible on consoles, at least provide a high res version for PC gamers.

-           Open up the Citadel again. The Citadel was a central location in ME1, and it was fun to just walk around and explore it. Make the Citadel more than a shopping mall in ME3.  

-           Use more face models! Many of the NPCs in ME2 seem to have been built from a pool of the same 3 or 4 model types. It’s understandable when the Asari or Turians looks the same, but for a race that we can more easily distinguish (humans) there should be more variety.

-           More conversation branches with Joker! Joker is one of the coolest characters in the game, and it’s sad to see that the conversation options that you can have with him at the end of the game are pretty much the same as from the beginning. Joker’s been with Shepard the longest; they should have greater amounts of things to say to each other.

-           Give missions some more diversity other than “run and gun” through an area. Implement some light puzzles, or perhaps areas where you need to talk your way out of a situation (a good example of this is Samara’s loyalty mission in ME2)

-           Give Shepard infinite/longer sprint while outside of combat.

-           Allow us to jump and climb for freer movement.

-           Make Paragon and Renegade situations less common, but more impactful. In ME2, showing a bit of attitude in conversation would net you renegade points. Make the situations where you obtain points more significant, and in such situations, award more points.

That’s about all I can think of at the moment, you’re welcome to discuss or add suggestions of your own. 

So I found this bit of news today and I found it incredibly ironic. Apparently some artists are suing their record labels for using their songs without permission. Other artists have experienced the same and the record companies currently have piracy lawsuits totaling over $50 million. http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Record-Labels-Sued-Piracy-Artists,news-5287.html

Yeah I'm going to get flak for this, just as I got flak for not liking Half Life 2. Though, It should be a counterpoint to those people that I have enjoyed similar games such as S.T.A.L.K.E.R 
 
Fallout 3 was nothing that it was hyped up to be. Immersive? No. Expansive? No. Satisfying Campaign? No. They basically took the postapocalyptic open world idea and boiled it down to its most mundane aspects.  
 
The gunplay is terrible, with the only viable option being to kill people with VATS. VATS seems rather like cheating, and gets boring fast anyway as you essentially just rush up to people with a shotgun and shoot them in the head, no matter what the enemy.  
 
Presentation-wise, the voice acting was meh and the graphics look terrible. It looks like it's running on first generation Source Engine or something; I played the PC version with everything cranked up to max (including res and AA) and that didn't help. Not only is the game graphically lacking, the artistic style is ugly as well. Open world games are supposed to compel you to explore, who wants to explore a land the color of vomit?  
 
For an open world game, it's actually quite small. The vast majority of explorable land is simply empty with a couple wild beasts scattered here and there. For an RPG, the game is also incredibly short as I finished it in 7 hours while doing a reasonable number of sidequests and speaking to most people I encounter. Compounding to this was the infamously bad ending, one of, or possibly the least satisfying ending I can think of in all my years of gaming.  
 
Fallout 3 could've been great, but the execution was extremely clumsy. After playing games like Mass Effect and Stalker, Fallout 3's lack of atmosphere, lack of features and poor visuals was made pointedly obvious.