Nuffnang

Saturday, December 28, 2013

Pokemon Bank's Launch Delayed Due to Server Problems




It seems like Valve is not the only company to suffer from overestimating their servers' ability to handle the Holidays and the influx of people who want free stuff (Steam's servers where hammered when Valve offered Left 4 Dead 2 for free), as Nintendo has had to remove the Pokemon Bank and its companion app, the Poke Transporter, from the Japanese eShop (both of which were offered for free for a limited time).

Friday, December 27, 2013

Doctor Who: Time of the Doctor Review (Spoiler-Free)


Just finished watching Time of the Doctor. I know how the Internet hates spoilers so I'm not going to bother providing spoilery details, just the bits that are already known to everyone:

First things first - it ties up all the loose ends that managed to crop up during Moffat's run, including ones that he accidentally brought up while addressing loose ends from previous showrunners. Off the top of my head, the issue with how many regenerations he's had so far (and yes, he's run out of regenerations by the time he turned into the 11th doctor, as for how he managed to regenerate one more time into Peter Capaldi's doctor - you'll just have to watch), who really blew up the TARDIS, what happened to the cracks, what the Silences really are, and how the doctor died on Trenzalore. There are others, but the resolutions happen so fast that you really need to just watch the special on your own while keeping an open eye.

The Time of the Doctor special actually plays out like your typical Christmas special at first, with the Doctor helping Clara cook Christmas Turkey and pretending to be her boyfriend while wearing hologram clothes that only Clara sees (so technically, clara brought home a naked doctor and presented him as her boyfriend to her parents and grandmum.)

Thursday, December 26, 2013

Injustice: Gods Among Us Slow Motion Fix

Okay, so Injustice: Gods Among Us was ported to the PC a couple of months ago. I'm not going to bother reviewing the game, as you probably reached this post while looking for a solution to the slow motion gameplay and you already have a copy of the game (if you're not familiar with the game yet, it's basically Mortal Kombat with DC characters like Superman and Batman.)

First thing's first - what exactly is the problem with the game?

Technically, it's a rush porting job, and we're not talking about being unoptimized. It's actually a very light game that will run well even on a low/mid-range rig (to give you an idea on what it takes to run the game: I have an old Core 2 Duo e8400 + nVidia GT 440 that runs it well on 1080p, with settings on what's basically medium.)

The problem with Injustice: Gods Among Us Ultimate Edition's PC Port, is that whoever is doing the porting didn't bother ensuring that the engine is frame independent. This means unlike majority of PC games these days, when the PC running it struggles to maintain the speed, it doesn't drop frames. Instead, it continues to pump out all 60 frames of the scene, resulting in slow motion instead of frameskips.

Unlike Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 Full Burst, which was also frame-dependent but had the excuse that the engine was coded to be frame dependent from the start and would require massive rewrites of the code, there's simply no excuse for Injustice Gods Among Us because it's using Unreal Engine 3, which was originally developed on the PC and supports frameskipping.

So yeah, Injustice Gods Among Us: Ultimate Edition suffers from slow motion gameplay even on some high end rigs because it can't skip frames like a PC game should do due to the lack of standardized hardware configuration. What can you do about it?

Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Martin Scorsese Heckled at Academy Screening for The Wolf of Wall Street

Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street, which is a film that tells the story of a New York stockbroker who refuses to cooperate in a large securities fraud case involving corruption on Wall Street, is currently getting raves and praises from critics, but the recent Academy screening proves that it's not universally loved, as some senior members in attendance at the event actually heckled the director during the screening.

The main complaints of some of the Academy's older members has to do with the film's sex-and-drug-oriented content. Actress Hope Holiday has posted a less than pleasant account of the evening at her Facebook page:

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 Full Burst Review

Yep, I've been away for a long time, writing for other places and stuff. But I came back, with news of where I've been. As for the review of Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3, I got one over at Infobarrel. It's like, really lengthy and stuff so you should check it out, especially if you're one of them folks having problems with the PC version's poor performance and slow motion gameplay.