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Bear with the super large pictures for now, there's nothing I can do about them.

My current setup:
i5-4670k
Sapphire HD 7870 (2nd gen)
Asus Z87-A motherboard
Patriot Wildfire 120GB (where BF4 is installed)
Asus VS229H-P e-IPS monitor, running BF4 at 1920x1080
Windows 7

The first issue is with Borderless in Mantle:


As you can see, the game window is shifted down by my taskbar. I could move the taskbar to my other monitor, but that would defeat the purpose.

Next issue is with Fullscreen in Mantle:


If you could see my cursor, it would be sitting on top of Options right now, ...

So, one thing to keep in mind about the way that I think about things is that I don't like replacing parts. If I can do anything to make my hardware last longer, I'll do it even if it means sacrificing performance.

In Guild Wars 2, there's an option to limit your framerate to 30fps. I use that setting for two reasons: 1, Guild Wars 2 isn't exactly a high intensity game that requires you to have a high framerate to make split second decisions, and 2, my video card doesn't need to render so often in the pipeline, and so heat production is reduced, and longevity is preserved.

In First Person Shooters, I prefer to have a framerate of about 60, to facilitate quick reactions to changing conditions. One thing I noticed while ...

I think I'm going to start including some small videos of the games I review. I'll post one for this in the comments once I get back to a computer that does better at recording.

This review as about an indie game called "Really Big Sky." It's the sequel to a game by the same studio (Boss Baddie), "Big Sky." It's also the same game as the old one, but with quite a few more game modes. I didn't play the original, but it does have a retro game mode that's basically the old one.

Overview: Basically, this is a bullet hell space shooter. I believe the game most like it is Gradius/R-type, two games I haven't played, so this was my first. You're in space. There are a bunch of enemies out there. Go kill ...

Now for a game that few people have heard of. Dwarf Fortress. Now, many people will say "what the hell is this... thing?" The answer is: it's a roguelike. People will ask "well, what's a roguelike?" A roguelike is an RPG typically made with permanent death/loss, ASCII graphics, and a heck of a lot of randomizing. Some pictures have cropped up over the internet about how ridiculous this game's learning curve is: indeed, the curve is what makes most people stop trying to learn it. Once you get past that curve, the game appears very simple and, well, fun.

Story? There IS NO STORY. You pick a location, you tell your dwarves what to do. You build, you smelt ores, make weapons, bedrooms, elaborate mechanisms, rooms ...

I've decided that creating a whole slew of full length reviews that would be lengthy and require an exorbitant amount of effort, I'm going to use my blog to write a series of miniature reviews. If someone likes a particular review, I can go full-scale with it and try to get it published with TPG.

Today I'll be looking at the third installation of the STALKER series, Call of Pripyat:

Story: Call of Pripyat is less a sequel to the events of Clear Sky and Shadow of Chernobyl (In that order) than it is its own rendition of the game. There are moments that make more sense if you've played the previous two, such as the one at the end, but otherwise Call of Pripyat has its own, unique storyline. Unlike the previous two, however, ...