The problem with download sizes

In the recent years gaming has made a transition from physical discs being the most common distribution medium to digital distribution being the most popular. This was perfectly fine a few years ago when the average game download didn't exceed a twenty gigabyte download size, but today games download sizes can be double or even triple that. For many consumers this causes 2 major problems. The first being hard drive space, the average computer usually contains a hard drive able to hold 500 gigabytes to one terabyte (a terabyte is 1024 gigabytes) while this allows for quite a few games to be installed currently it could pose a problem in the future where, if games continue increasing the amount of space needed to install, would result in the user only being able to install a small handful of games at a time. The other problem (and one I and many others around here suffer from) is dreadfully slow download speeds. In cities with dense population packed closely together it's easy to provide them with say, fiber optic cables (which have incredibly fast transfer rates resulting in download speed of potentially a gigabyte per second) but around small low population areas like the small foothill town I live in it's considered a miracle for a download speed to reach 800 kilobytes a second (1024 kilobytes to a megabyte and 1024 megabytes to a gigabyte) which means if I want to download a game it can be a process that spans multiple days when it should only be a couple of hours. In example the recently released on pc Grand Theft Auto 5 had a download size of over sixty gigabytes, this took me literally two full days to download and put an level of strain on my aging system that it shouldn't be subjected to.

The way I see it the only solutions to these problems would be to a. discover a new way to optimize games, further reducing the size needed to install. b. Find a way to make larger hard drives a cheaper and more accessible option for future systems. c. Find a cost effective way to provide even low population areas with fiber optic internet cables. While a and b are more likely to happen its unfortunately a fools dream to hope for things such c because areas like mine wouldn't generate enough cash for the companies providing fiber optic internet service to consider it a viable option.

pictured is an internet speed test done on my computer notice the F grade and slower than 81% of US

Developers should take a note on Payday 2's well thought out weapon customization system!

Payday 2 is a game that I greatly enjoy, from its tight controls to its just a little over the top heists everything about this game is fun. But despite the fun factor Payday 2 has managed to do something many games have tried to do and failed at doing so. I am of course talking about its weapon modification system. While most games will just sprinkle the players arsenal with a few modifications (which sometimes only act as a cosmetic item) and usually don't change the weapons behavior all that much, Payday 2 does quite the opposite and almost overwhelms the player with a wealth of mods that can be just minor stat changers or be so drastic it can entirely re purpose the gun!

The weapons of Payday 2 have 8 statistic categories; magazine which obviously denotes the magazine capacity of the gun, total ammo which is the overall amount of ammo that you can carry for the weapon, rate of fire which is the amount of bullets the gun can shoot in a minute, damage which is the amount of damage inflicted per bullet, accuracy which affects the weapons bullet grouping, stability which is how controllable the weapon is, concealment which is how noticeable the gun is and finally threat which is how intimidating the gun looks.

The greatest example of the games modification options is the Car-4. It is the most customizable weapon in the game. This rifle can be made into a silent discreet gun with pinpoint accuracy that's very controllable to it's polar opposite, a high powered, high profile death machine. Every part of this gun can be swapped out for other parts making it from this

to something like this 

The part I most enjoy is the balance you have to find when building a gun. For example if you were looking to build a suppressed high concealment rating rifle you could use only parts designed with stealth in mind but that will more than likely leave you with a weapon that suffers from low damage and usually either a low accuracy or stability. This may not seem all that bad but even a difference of a few points in a guns stats can make a major difference on its usefulness in game. This naturally guides the player to start experimenting with modifications, using a combination of stealthy and aggressive mods to find the perfect balance  for their gun that fits the needs they require it to fulfill.

Pictured below (and a few above) are a few of my most customized guns in Payday 2 and their base models as well 

Grand Theft Auto 5 PC Version First Impressions

It's now been two days since GTA V has released and after messing around with it for a few hours I'd like to give it a "worth it or not?" rundown. Upon my first launch it booted up, the rockstar logo appeared (for those of you who don't know they're the studio responsible for this game) and then it got caught in an infinite loop making me force quit the game, the same thing happened about 2-3 more times before I got it to load into the main menu. Fortunately that's where my trouble with the game ended and the fun began, The game opens with you in control of one of three bank robbers who refer to each other only by their initials. After herding the panicked civilians into the tellers room you make your way to the vault and bag a couple million in cold hard cash, a guard grabs you pulls off your mask and points a gun at your head. At this point the game prompts you to press a button causing your control to switch over to one of the other robbers who then shoots the guard freeing up "T". The trio fights their way out of the bank and through a couple car fulls of cops before you make your getaway in a car by the road. The next sequence has you drive down a snowy road avoiding the cop cruisers trying to run you off the road until a scripted sequence in which a train hits your car forces you to continue on foot until "M" and "B" are shot while "T" manages to evade the police. That was just the opening sequence to GTA V and the action to the point that I've played has not yet let up.

Killing Floor Review

Killing Floor is a cooperative survival horror first person shooter by Tripwire Interactive. It was released May 14th, 2009 and ever since has remained an very popular game in the pc world.

Killing Floor takes place in England where a Biotechnology company in London called Horzine Biotech was contracted by the military to do experimentation on cloning and genetic modification. The experiments fail becoming horridly mutated and extremely aggressive. As you can probably guess something goes wrong causing all of the experiments to escape and attack the population. The police try holding them off but it does no good and soon the mutant clones overrun the city and the military is called in to help deal with the outbreak.

The player is given a choice between a couple different classes each one offering different perks like increased accuracy or improved healing. The players start the level with a knife a pistol a medical syringe and a welding tool and can find extra ammo and even some of the less expensive weapons scattered throughout the map. Other weapons can be bought from a trader along with armor and other items with the money accumulated from killing mutants. The syringe can be used to heal other players (and yourself if you play as the medic class) and is an excellent tool for getting players to not stray to far from each other and promotes teamwork. The welding tool is used to barricade doors and fix electronics.

The game plays out in a wave form meaning that a set number of enemies will spawn, once they are killed there is downtime before the next round to stock up and the next wave of enemies spawn usually increasing in difficulty until the final wave which spawns mostly lower level enemies and a boss mutant. The boss mutants are incredibly powerful and require much more coordination and skill to kill compared to the other mutants. As you would expect from a game like this all the maps bring a heavy post apocalyptic atmosphere with them. Be it the blood splattered walls of a dimly lit ravaged underground laboratory, crumbling bombed out apartment complexes or an eerie farmhouse tucked away in the woods.

Despite being a game about England on its last leg trying to fight off the mutants it manages to stay very lighthearted. On certain holidays (Halloween, Christmas etc) the game gets a little visual change that makes the mutants look more appropriately themed (such as looking like ginger bread men or dressed as Santa for the Christmas event). And even if you don't have the privilege of playing during a holiday event you can still enjoy the quips of the soldiers as they call they poke fun at the mutants or jokingly jeer at each other. Killing floor is a really fun game and an excellent way to pass the time with your friends or strangers alike (although it is more fun to play with your friends as most multiplayer games are).