This game is based in the zero gravity of space which makes ofr some very interesting game play.

I’ll get the graphics part out of the way first. This game is direct x 10 only so XP users can’t enjoy this one, the graphics aren’t to bad all though the game is very restricted by my current hardware which is based around an e5200 and a gts250 which when purchased almost 5 months ago seemed like a half descent choice (well for my limiting budget anyway)

The texturing in the game seems quiet simple and the effects aren’t to bad but are quiet system taxing when there is a lot happening in the game at once.

In the below 2 images I have had to cut the graphics options down quiet a lot which shows.

lots of jagged edges around the images

lots of jagged edges around the images

As you can see there is quiet a few jagged edges when the detail is toned down so that I can get at least 30fps, I can see I need to do some more tweaking and maybe tone down the resolution a little

The next images are just random captures that I took.

main title screen

crap everywhere

pretty isn't it?

moon in pieces

lost again

over bright

looks like I lost

blue earth

what is that planet

im game menu

There is no health, shields or power ups of any kind, if you receive to much damage you can take cover quickly and your health will go back up to 50% so be careful.

When I finished playing this game for the first time I felt a little motion sick and I kept expecting everything on my desktop to still be rotating like I was back in the game, very strange I know.

Apart from a few problems with graphics and the fact that the controls take a while to get use to this game isn’t to bad, a quick single player mode would be nice and perhaps explain how the moon got like this for those of us that it isn’t apparent to

• Close you browser before you start gaming, especially if you are viewing a flash based web site, I know that on my system Firefox with multiple tabs open can spike in the CPU usage department around 25%
• Close itunes, this program can be quiet nasty with FPS based games, the average frame rate drops by at least 30% in games with itunes running in the back ground
• Disable all the sounds in windows and in programs that are running in the back ground, a few examples are messenger, skype, xfire etc (Vista has an unusual sound API and I find that if you have a game running using all the sound resources and messenger sounds you gaming FPS will drop quiet a bit for a few seconds (well for me any way)
• Stop your virus scanner from real time scanning for your game folders (also stop your virus scanner from real time scanning you pictures folder) this can be done by adding folders to the scanning exclusions list, I know in Norton gaming edition you can do this quiet easily.
• Put your page file on a separate hard disk, I have my main drive for windows and games and another drive for crap and a page file and I have found that this can help with the loading and the stability of my gaming
• Your index file can also be moved to another drive, this is not just for gaming but also for general usage as I find indexing is a lot smoother and quicker when gaming
• Set the power options to high performance from balanced

Just a few tweaks, I shall add more to the list over time.

Most of Vista’s other features Don’t really affect performance.

A small USB based DVB-T stick by the guys a Pinnacle.

leadtek-dvb-t-card

A V-gear PCI based firewire card, not sure what model.

pci-firewire-card

The is snazzi capture card number 2. Has dual composite, audio in, s-video and 2 firewire ports.

snazzi-capture-card

The is snazzi capture card number 3. Has dual composite, audio in, s-video and 2 firewire ports (same as above but with much different packaged software)

snazzi-capture-card-2

This is a web camera that is worth around the $120AU mark but I have seen $20 web cams that work better that have much better picture quality.

vgear-forgot-model

This one my first V-gear web cam, has a glass lens and is terrible with low light situations.

vgear-talkcam-live-show

This is a 5.25″ drive bay box that connects to products like the V-gear Speed TV PCI card, or it connects to any capture card with composite, s-video and firewire, also has an RF sensor and a mic input on it.

video-bay

The last item for now is a wireless skype phone that works very well on my Vista home premium 64bit desktop system and enables you to fully control skype (well the main features any way) since i am not really a skype user this phone isn’t used any more.

wireless-skype-phone

Well that is it for now, hope you enjoy looking at the pictures I have taken about the Multimedia products that I own, I know I dont use most of the items but they are nice to look at and remember what was

I use to work with TV tuners for a living and really enjoy it but now I don’t which is fine, but i don’t keep track of it all so much any more, mainly because it has died off in my opinion

Something went wrong. We’re working on getting it fixed as soon as we can.

facebook-truly-sucks

I am at a loss as how to resolve or fix this problem.

Doesn’t matter what computer I access facebook from, here at home or at work and even if i use the lite version of facebook it still has problems.

I keep coming back to facebook for some unknown reason, I think I need my head looked at

An early V-Gear PCI DVB-T card, works fine but good luck getting newer drivers or even 64bit drivers.

vgear-vstream

USB net radion device, problem is that it is based on activeX so it needs internet explorer installed.

usb-net-radio

An older lifeview DVB-T stick, TV Walker twin.

tv-walker-cruise-lr550

Speed TV which is a basic Analogue PCI TV tuner, works well with the video bay which I forgot to include in this line up.

speed-tv-analogue

One of the nice snazzi capture cards with dual composite inputs, firewire and s-video, I would still be using this card instead of my dvd maker 2 if I could get 64bit drivers for it

snazzi-pci-capture-card

LR820t2a2 which is a dual digital and dual analogue capture device, the hardware is great but the drivers and viewing software are very old now.

lr820t2a2

LR306n, one of the better PCI hybrid card, I used this product for quiet some time.

lr306n_pci

This is the very hot running LR306 unit, not to be confused with the LR306n unit, with this card you can watch both the analogue and digital channels at once.

lr306-dual-view

A lifeview voip box that I never used, i personally never found the point of such a unit.

lifeview-voip-box

This is an unknown Lifeview DVB-T stick that uses the Trident chipset (TM6000 or there abouts)

lifeview-singal-dvbt-stick

The LR860 triple card. This is a PCI-e X1 card with satellite, dual digital, dual analogue and video inputs.

lifeview-lr860

LR822T2A2M, this card is a dual hybrid with hardware encoding for the analogue so that media center doesn’t need a software MCE encoder installed.

lifeview-lr822t2a2m

LR548, is an analogue USB tv tuner and video capture unit with hardware decoding and quiet a loud cooling fan built in.

lifeview-lr548

LR524tam, this is a single hybrid unit with hardware encoding, I actually tested this card under 64bit windows 7 and it had lots of problems under Win7 MCE.

lifeview-lr524tam

An express card with dual digital.

lifeview-lr514t2

A small low profile card that is analogue only. I think this card has hardware encoding.

lifeview-fly-tv-mce

A basic USB FM tuner with very strange software.

kworld-fm700

An express slot hybrid unit with component, s-video and composite inputs, with a very large antennae and a very small antennae.

kworld-ec100d

This is a dual DVB-T digital USB stick that I currently use on my New acer laptop, enables you to watch 2 channels at once or watch one channel and record another, also has a built in signal detector.

kworld-399u

This is just a USB based satellite USB receiver, used to pickup all the foreign channels.

freeview-usb-sat-receiver

A USB composite and s-video capture unit that comes with cyberlinks power director and power director.

dvd-maker-2

PE210SE dual digital DVB-T card that is PCI-e X1

PE210SE

An older DVB-T card bus product.

card-bus-dvbt

A DAB+ usb stick that is a little ahead of its time here in Australia

bad-plus-usb-stick

Portable power goodness…
I use this unit as back up power for my ipod, Nokia 6300, Digital Camera and my nintendo DS unit and it works very well.

adp-1800-portable-power

Well that is it for now, Would you believe that I have being to post this for a few weeks now, still isn’t showing how I actually won’t it to display.

This will limit what I can post a little.

Doing things at 10kbps is not so fun.

I am working on a number of lifeview and kworld items. A new downloads page is in the works and a few other little things.

Even at work the internet is very slow, Australia’s telecommunications are not the best even at the best of times, slow and quiet problematic.

Happy surfing all…

First up let me say that this game was first banned in Australia because it was deemed to violent for the M15+ classification so was denied classification because we don’t have any higher game classification like R18+ (wow I have never used the word classification so much in one sentence)

I know quiet a few people that blew there tops or where close to it when they first heard that it won’t be available in Australia but now it looks like a modified version with a few things missing or removed.

Is it just me or is there other games the classification board should be worried about, I would love to be a fly on the wall when they talk with each other about most of these games and what rating to give them.

I would like to know if they are going to change the Xbox version as well? Couldn’t you just import it from over seas?

Well that is it from me so lets see if this whole classification debacle works it self out before the release.

Here is a table with my results.

Quiet long I know but it seems a little slow, especially in the memory department.
This is en e5200 at stock speed, 4gb of dual channel ddr2-800 memory which is cheap PNY rubbish and a half descent gts250.

my little score

I used the 64 bit version as you can see from the task manager screen shot below. No *32 after it.

passmark-64bit-proof

That is it for now