unr3al

Actually it does, unfortunately. That's why they call it the war on drugs. And it's not a war the police can win.

No problem. I have fun writing them, I just don't always get the time and I can't always buy every game when it first comes out. I don't get sent review copies for free, sadly. :(

Before I kick things off here, I want to briefly say that I've been writing game reviews on another forum I'm a member of for years now, and my fellow forum members seem to enjoy them, so I thought I'd give sharing one of these on here a shot. I hope you find it entertaining and/or helpful. Some of you here may have been wondering where the Battlefield 4 review was since the game has been out for over a week and since I had already played the beta. I wanted to make sure that I gave this game some good quality time before I made a verdict because some game play experiences I found so brilliant that I had to slap a gold star on my monitor, and others I found frustrating to the point where I wanted to not touch another shooter for a while. Finally after putting some time in, I feel I can write a fair review of everything Battlefield 4 has to offer. Story: First to clarify the storyline. Without giving too much away, you belong to a unit of U.S. Marines that behaves a lot more like a Spec Ops group than they should. You play a young Marine that's part of a squadron full of equally ranked Sergeants, who eventually becomes the leader of the squad for a time. In whatever universe this game is set in, there is a tyrannical dictator that has come to power in China, and as has been the case before (see the Bay of Pigs Invasion), the U.S. wants to tip the balance of power and alter the future of Chinese/US relations to something that will be in their favor. This involves freeing a VIP who is being held as a political prisoner so he can speak the words of truth and show all the Chinese citizens the light, or something like that. But of course, as with most military operations, nothing goes as planned. You soon find yourself under attack from one of the worlds largest armies, and find the U.S. Military unable to do very much about it. Your job is to rectify that by doing some more action film bold & daring Spec Ops work. While I find the story this game tells to be a little bit more interesting than Battlefield 3's campaign, it is full of plot holes that actually bothered me during and after the 6 hours (yes 6 hours again, just like your average Call of Duty or Battlefield game these days) it took me to finish it. Firstly, I could buy into a scenario of China attacking our naval fleet that patrols the pacific ocean and potentially disabling us for a day or two, but to suggest that there wouldn't be any retaliation from U.S. Forces stationed elsewhere, or for that matter, any retaliation from any of our allied nations (England, France, Germany, Canada, Australia, Japan, etc) is absolutely ludicrous. If World War 3 were started, nations across the globe are going to very quickly pick sides. Another issue with the story is a passing comment I made earlier. You're character is in a Marine unit. By definition of your branch of military, you do not perform Spec Ops missions. We have things like DEVGRU and Delta Force for that. Lastly is the tie-in with the Russian army. They are considered enemy combatants in this game, but it isn't explained why at all that I noticed. Russia is no longer a communist country, so where's the tie in? Overall, the prospect of war with China isn't exactly far fetched, and Russia still considers us their biggest military threat. Members of all branches of their military will tell you that drills they practice involve scenarios with us as the opposing force. But the plot holes here are too big to ignore. No Irish, I'm not okay. This story sucks and I have no idea why we're even here. What the story does better than the previous game is that it manages to hit home a little more. Chinese and U.S. Relations and ways of governing are very different and may eventually clash. They pose a significant threat since many of their weapon and vehicles technologies continue to improve, and they have no shortage of people to recruit into their military should the occasion of a draft arise. In addition, you will run into a few scenarios that may sadden you due to a couple of scenes where you get a feeling of helplessness during certain parts of the game, and you even get to see a little bit of the good in what the U.S. Military does abroad. The problem is these moments don't mean as much as they should because most of the characters that meet an unfortunate fate have very little (if any) development before they are “retired” from the story. All in all, I'd like to see DICE/EA hire a screenwriter like the Call of Duty team does. Their single player stories are also only around 6 hours, but they're much better written on some occasions. Battlefield 4's campaign isn't exactly throw away, but it's rough around the edges and lacks structure to say the least. Score: 5/10 Graphics: While I was fairly unimpressed with some of the visuals in the Battlefield 4 beta, I have to say that the full version of the game has panned out a lot better. Textures on other maps look very good, environmental effects are commonly used, and are placed extremely well (many places in Asia deal with severe hurricanes or monsoons, and you get a taste of that on both the single player and multiplayer levels), and character models have improved. The equipment you use has also been updated. American forces have ditched the hummers and traded them in for the new road-side bomb-proof vehicles we're supposed to be using now, new guns are available with all sorts of crazy attachments, and the animations are polished for the most part. One thing I'm very pleased to see is that you are no longer able to get half of your body into a wall or corner to hide yourself during a multiplayer map. As far as hardware goes, if you put everything on ultra using my hardware (Core i7 3770K, 6GB DDR3, nVidia GTX 670), you can run it very well, usually between 55-75 depending on what you're looking at on screen. Recording to the same hard drive you play the game on is not an option unless you lower the details to 'High', as the framerate drop will make the game unplayable. This game still doesn't match up to Crysis, but it's actually pretty close. Better motion blur, more lush environments, and better character animations would probably do it, but I'm sure the multiplayer would suffer as a result of it, so I'm happy with where it is. The Shanghai skyline looks amazing at night. Shame about the armed guards surrounding the entire hotel... except the side entrance. No need to guard that. There's some beautiful scenery if you have time to pause between sniper bullets and mortar shells. Score: 8/10 Sound: You'll be seeing some old sounds of vehicles and weapons returning, and plenty of new ones coming in as new items have been added to the game. Chief among them are the new selection of ground vehicles, jets and of course the all-mighty assault boats. Guns have what I would consider to be the proper amount of punch. Some old sounds of vehicles such as the horns and the four wheeler motor haven't been improved, which is slightly annoying, but ignorable since you'll have better things to worry about, like dodging bullets and shells flying around the map. The music used is extremely similar to that of Battlefield 3. Modern, electronic, sharp. Not something you'd listen to in your car stereo but it's very good for the loading screens. Buildings collapsing and walls breaking apart sounds very satisfying with my 5.1 headset on, and I'm sure a good 5.1 or 7.1 surround setup would be just as good if not better. Score: 8/10 Gamplay & Lasting Appeal: One of the biggest problems I have with nearly all video games today is “the grind”. I grew up during the 1990's. And in those days, shooter games were pick-up and go. Something you could play really briefly after work or before heading to school if you got up early for a spot of fun. Today's games seem to require a much heftier time investment, and Battlefield 4 is no exception. From a developer perspective, I understand why this is. Because so many people are playing video games, and are tired of the same old content and formula, game companies have to think of ways to extend the life of their games by adding in small content like new maps, weapons, vehicles, etc. And these things take time to develop. So in order to keep you playing, they give you things to do. In the case of a lot of shooter games these days, it's unlocking weapons, attachments, camos and “perks”. The beef I have with Battlefield 4 is that the unlocking process is in my opinion; far more agonizing than that of Battlefield 3 or any call of duty game, chiefly because the unlocks have now been randomized to an extent. In Battlefield 3, you would be able to pick a class, work towards a weapon, and once you get what you want, you could repeatedly use that weapon to get all the nice attachments for it after racking up a certain amount of kills, and if you were satisfied with that, you we're all done. All or most important guns were also unlocked by a certain level, too. In an attempt to stretch out the time it takes ever further, unlocks are a bit more complicated. You can indeed pick a class and start leveling it up to unlock new weapons, but you don't earn all attachments for it in a specific order. You are now awarded what are called “Battlepacks”, which are little bundles of random accessories and cheap thrills such as camos or XP bonuses to keep you going. The problem is just that, though; They are random unlocks. Nearly everything I've got from a generic Battlepack has been an accessory for a gun I'll never use, ever. Eventually, with enough use of a single gun, you'll also get Battlepacks specifically for the gun you're using, but they are still randomized accessories, so while the new scope or laser you get may be for your gun, it may not be in the order you want. So someone with some luck may get the cool night-vision scope right away, while others have to toil away and grind Battlepacks until they finally unlock everything. Meanwhile, I'm still using the one class I'm trying to trick out my gun for, ignoring objectives like blowing up vehicles or taking out enemy snipers at a distance because I'm focused on grinding a Medic (as an example), so in effect, the grinding can actually cause you and your teammates to lose games. On top of that, the perks system in this game works a lot like... well, actually; Deus Ex. Instead of working hard and sinking lots of hours into the game to get permanent personal and squad perks for when you spawn in, you end up getting a specific “set” of perks (no customization) that you have to earn by keeping a kill streak. As an example, I'd have to get X number of kills in a row to get the squad ammo perk, because even though it's the only once I may be concerned with, it's not awarded to me when I spawn or even upon my first kill. And if I die, my team and I lose that perk and we have to start all over again. Some people may like this system, but I don't understand why I have to unlock something if I can't use it anyway without a kill streak. Bottom line here is that the unlock system is confusing at best, and terribly frustrating at worst. Again, I understand why developers do it, and Battlefield isn't the only game to do it, but this is without a doubt the most complex unlock system I've ever dealt with in any video game ever. I feel like I'm sounding like an old man here, but just give me my shit and let me play. I'm supposed to be a solider. Hand me the equipment I need to do my job and let me go do it. You're assigned a role in the real military and given the weapon you need to fulfill that role. You don't start off with a BB gun and work your way up to a .50 cal after you take down 1,500 Taliban members. As far as the actual mechanics go, there are some improvements and some things that were touched that shouldn't have been. With the new physics system, weather plays a large role in certain maps. Large storm surges will make it rain, causing it to be a little harder to see, and the sea will swell with massive waves, making moving in a boat much harder, never mind swimming. Speaking of which, you can now finally dive under water to hide from people shooting at you. You do not have a breath meter that I can notice, so you need to pay attention to how long you've been under, or you'll start taking damage and eventually die. As mentioned before, you also cannot perform as many cheap tactics, such as hiding yourself in a corner with your body half way in the wall, making you less of a target, which is definitely appreciated. Those are some (but not all) of the positives. For the negatives, they've changed around the hit boxes for enemies and changed damage values for a lot of weapons. Sniper rifles seem to do more torso damage in soft core mode, while assault rifles do less. With an AK-12 it can take nearly an entire clip to kill someone if they're not standing still, partially due to the recoil, but mostly in part to bullet damage from the assault rifles not being too realistic. The only way to fix that is to get yourself a fast firing weapon, but those don't work well at long range, as you'd imagine. The solution to this problem is to play 'Hardcore' mode where all weapons can kill quickly, but there are less hardcore servers than normal ones, so finding a game you like may be harder. I feel that pistols and shotguns are balanced correctly, though I feel they ruined a few pistols that were great in the last game while introducing new ones that sort of take their place. I also find it unfair that a sawed off 12-gauge shotgun is considered a pistol in this game. Sniper rifles, although more powerful now have one more nerf on them. In addition to having scope glint in dark areas of the game (wouldn't happen in real life) there are also bullet tracers, even at short range so it's very easy to find where a sniper is if you don't have your back turned to him/her. As far as game modes, they have returned to the basics (mostly). They have introduced a couple of bomb oriented game modes, similar to that of Unreal Tournament or Counter Strike, on top of the regular Team Deathmatch, Rush and Concquest game modes. They have removed Capture The Flag, but I suspect they'll add it back in later on down the line after a few expansions packs come out. The maps are well thought out, and are generally fair to both teams as to where they spawn on each side. Squads now hold 5 members instead of four, and there is built-in chat for your squad, but not for your entire team. I'm not sure as to why that is, or if that will change going forward. I like the idea of making it more like Counter Strike for that matter, where you can toggle “all talk” on and off so you could potentially have all players on both sides talk to each other. "Weather plays a large roll in certain maps." Big matches are fast and furious, and this time around vehicles don't seem too overwhelming on large maps, though I haven't ran into any servers that advertise “instant re-spawn” for vehicles, so maybe if those start becoming abundant again I might change my tune. Small matches are tactical and tense, and using a knife is more satisfying than ever. You get choices of knives to use (I use a machete), and there's even a counter-knife mechanic where an opponent has a chance to block your knife attempt, and stab you back if they press 'F' at the right time. Other than the things I mentioned, the game plays more or less the same as Battlefield 3, which I think is a good thing. If you were good at the previous game, you'll be good at this one. This game, remember is extremely team/squad dependent. If you play with random people, and they happen to be idiots, you're going to lose. Generally speaking, you can't carry your team, no matter how hard you fight. So play with friends to ensure victory, otherwise good luck. I've had minimal play time with friends, and I'm around a 55% win/loss ratio. I was around 75% (that's the top 1% in the world across all platforms) in Battlefield 3 because I had a clan full of competent people to pub with for most of the time I played it. While they have re-introduced commander mode for directing the boots on the ground, I don't find it being used that often, and when it is, players have the option of ignoring it, so to me it feels useless. "...you can't carry your team, no matter how hard you fight." Score 8/10 Overall: 7.3/10 The good: -Great graphics. -A multiplayer game play formula that's already been tested and approved by millions. -Dedicated servers. -Plenty of customization. -Wonderful use of weather, object destruction and map physics that end up affecting game-play in a big way. -Excellent demonstration of teamwork affecting the course of a game. The bad: -Worsened weapon mechanics. -Server and game instability at launch (that seems worse than the beta I played). -Too few maps. -Bad single player story. -Horrendously complicated unlock system. I do like this game, I really do. But being honest, this isn't much different than Battlefield 3. This is the exact same sort of “rut” that Call of Duty is in. Now that being said, Call of Duty breaks records every release, and people can't get enough of it. Battlefield has the same sort of pattern going for it too, so there's no need to change in theory. The game-play score can't get a solid 8 (or higher) from me until either that changes, or they polish up what new “features” they did add in, and address some of the veteran player complaints about weapon behavior and crashing issues. If you're a lover of military shooters with spectacular multiplayer, this is the game for you. I still claim that I'd take this game over Call of Duty any day if I could only pick one game to own. But if you're looking for a "new" or "different" shooter experience, you should keep moving. Maybe wait for another Borderlands or Fallout or something. **FYI: all screenshots were taken by me, in game with no editing whatsoever.**

Sounds like Battlefield's or Call of Duty's needlessly complicated unlock systems. FYI: They don't let cops with arrest powers in the U.S. go without carrying a gun. Not in these parts anyway. Good luck telling a guy with a .44 revolver he's under arrest if all you have is a baton.

That CPU is horrible. You should be running an AMD FX processor of some sort if you're going to use AMD instead of Intel. You also didn't list a video card.

I'd be concerned about more pressing issues. One that's bothering me now is that Windows 8 keeps resetting my "flex jack", the port in the back of my sound card that can be used as either an audio Line-In or a Microphone port. It resets it every time I rebooting, disabling my microphone. It took me a while to figure that one out. But it's pretty annoying. I might have to submit a support ticket eventually.

As cool as that looks, honestly I don't think anyone could survive a zombie apocalypse. Guns are a great immediate defense, but you'll run out of ammo at some point and if the arms manufacturing plants have been overrun, then you're out of luck. Even if you can make your own bullets, the poor quality of them will eventually wreck the gun and make it unusable. You'd also have to be very skilled with melee weapons to conserve your ammo as much as possible, and have outdoor survival skills to ensure you can get fresh water and food from natural sources. Essentially, you'd have to have the skill set of at least a U.S. Marine quality soldier or better. lol America's G.I.'s and normal civilians likely won't survive any real length of time. Any hope of actually solving an outbreak would be the way the Umbrella Corporation tried to deal with it in one of the first Resident Evil movies, where they gather all the infected people up in a walled up city and then nuke it. Other than that, the only way someone who's not infected could live is if they managed to make it to a deserted island away from any main land (provided the zombies we wind up with can't swim or walk under water) and live there for the rest of their lives. Not exactly an ideal scenario. Yeah... Anyway, cool gear, wouldn't be enough though.

Better safe than sorry. I had this same thing happen to me actually. Back when people used AOL Instant Messenger, a girl I knew had an away message that said "Taking every pill in this house." She had depression issues and "cut" before. I immediately called the police and a state trooper went over, found her unconscious on the floor. Trooper called me back and said he couldn't give me too many details, but they managed to keep her alive, and had her drink a charcoal mix to get the stuff out of her stomach. I don't like sounding pompous but, I'm pretty sure I saved her life. She wasn't upset with me but she didn't exactly thank me profusely either. But I cared about her, and that's why I called. Others may have ignored it but I cared enough to be the first one to call 911 and get her help. You showed that you cared enough to ensure her safety at all costs, even at the risk of her being upset with you. That's love (even if it's for a friend). If she can't appreciate that, well that's her loss. You can find better friends if so. Glad everything turned out alright for you.

Intros before every video waste another 10 seconds of my time each time I watch. Make it an image with a 3 second sound clip if you're going to do one at all. Honestly I'd rather people not do them. Or put them at the end if you want so we don't have to watch them. I do that with most of my videos.

There's no such thing as free. Someone, somewhere, is paying for it. States and towns have to raise peoples taxes to build schools, buy new books and materials, parents need to keep their kids supplied and dressed every year, kids need to use various resources to do their homework, etc. As far as "earned" is concerned, I'd say our soldiers have had to pay the most "up front" cost, if you will. But our standards aren't high enough in the U.S. Plenty of countries are surpassing us in quality of education.

Part of that is due to OS formatting loss, though.

Gotta find laughs where I can.

"Sorry I need this, cop stuff." *Takes scooter/SUV/car/bike/whatever.* I've seen that a lot. Thing is they still magically have the ability to use a P.A. system (that doesn't exist) in civilian cars to shout at you like the others do in their cruisers.

It's not even the clock speed here, it's the actual architecture. The A series is what you find in laptops. The A6 specifically is usually found in laptops around the $400-500 range and is intended to compete with the Intel Core i3. Not exactly gaming caliber. The A8 and A10 are a little more respectable, and could compete with an Intel i5. The FX series of CPU is the one designed for higher end purposes, which you generally only find in big desktops. You get a much better return on your investment with those. You may see a small boost in performance but I'd trash that CPU & GPU combo altogether.

Just because there's no limit doesn't mean it's a good idea to fill up my HDD without realizing it. XFire is especially bad with that. Anyway, yeah I agree it will be better in the future, it's a new feature.

You just explained your own temperatures. The 9400 looks like this The 9800 looks like this: Way less silicon, was less transistors and GPU cores, less stuff to cool. Regardless, this is even less worth it. The 9400 is a card that came stock in retail computers that were intended for "multimedia" use, it's not for gaming. Your OC will be show negligible difference, if it works at all.

CPU's bad, improving your GPU would help, but not much since that CPU is going to bottleneck a good card pretty severely.

You'd be surprised how quickly those 20 minutes are up, or how fast you hit a large storage space. 30 minutes of uncompressed, raw video can be 60-80GB at 1080p, never mind if you have a higher resolution going.

You have some very serious problems that you may want to speak to a doctor about if something bothers you that much, let alone an operating system UI.

...I'm gonna go now...

The problem with that is, nVidia said that currently it only records in short duration and is meant to capture the last few minutes of gameplay in case you did something absolutely amazing and need to capture those last few moments immediately. I'm sure that will change with time, but for now that's nVidia's vision. Moments like this:

I don't doubt that. The thing is a lot of danger comes from outside. Remember that post about the murder in Danvers, MA? The murderer was from Tennessee (most recently) and had only been attending that school for two weeks. Gangs also wind up in that town, and it's not because that's where they're based. It's because they're able to take "The T" train & bus line to go there from other crime ridden towns like Lynn or Lawrence. Danvers is a place where there are two malls, and gang members often go there to scout for new recruits. People who are alone, and vulnerable to peer pressure. The gang becomes their "family". Police officers are often there in plain/casual attire to detour that kind of stuff from happening though. The best method for fighting gang crime is prevention, in my opinion. Once you're in that life and that culture, it's hard to get out.

I appreciate that, thanks. I'm eager, but I think sometimes it's not always what you know, it's who you know. I think if I manage to get a hold of the right combination of contacts/references, good answers to interview questions and show physical/mental adaptation to duties of the job, I can make it. Advice I get from current and former L.E.O.'s from different departments is to keep trying, and never give up. That's how you get the job, according to a lot of them. And a few things have been going right for me. I wound up at a citizens academy, the staff is friendly with me, I now work with a retired D.E.A. agent of 27 years who is happy to refer me to any place I apply and I've managed to remain in good standing as far as my record goes. Just gotta keep it up, have the right attitude going forward and show them I'm hungry.

I plan on both. Developing a healthy relationship with local departments is a good first step.

There was no "force" before hand, you just had to click a simple tile. Now you have the option of booting straight to the classic desktop, but that doesn't mean the Start screen is gone from your life forever. You'll need to return to it for several reasons such as adjusting settings, viewing device properties or even basic searching unless you decide to waste a bunch of time creating shortcuts on the desktop for everything or using 3rd party mods. There are small aesthetic changes such as the re-introduction of a start button on the desktop, more ways to customize tiles, security improvements, universal search (searching on the start screen now pulls up results from both your PC and the web), new apps including an extremely useful one to teach folks how to use the OS, being able to display four apps at once on one screen, Skype and SkyDrive integration directly from a web browser, and more. You can view this list to find out about all the new features: http://www.extremetech.com/computing/159803-windows-8-1-a-complete-list-of-changes-and-new-features Long story short: The changes made are for people who had minor gripes about the UI. Anyone who's already been using it happily will find very little to talk about here.