And Origin games too form part of the Green Man Gaming 25% off sale , the stand out being Medal of Honor : Warfighter Limited Edition which comes to £30 using the voucher code from the site.. oh and you get Battlefield 4 Beta guaranteed access by pre ordering .. remember how much fun the Battlefield 3 Beta was? Much more fun than the actual game as things turned out ..
At Eurogamer 2013 DICE had four and sixty Xbox Ones playing Battlefield 4 ... all dev kits ... perhaps the entire dev kit contingent in Europe in one place ... Come the release though most people will be engaging in Battlefield 4 on a variety of platforms ... Two of which I tested over the weekend Whilst I did not get to try head tracking or the Cinemizer HMD with Battlefield at the Eurogamer Expo... I have done so over the course of the Beta ... the release of which was nicely timed as Eurogamer 2013 came to an end ... First impressions, on PS3 and PC (64bit) , most importantly that little annoying browser launcher on PC is a lot less annoying than it used to be when launching Battlefield 3 on PC. Even at this Beta stage the launcher works...yes it still takes time to load levels , but it is significantly improved over the days of Battlefield 2 ... Traditionally DICE ( with all due respect) games launch on PC and are updated and patched as time goes by , not just fixes for faults but real improvements to the game ... this has happened with every Battlefield game on PC and does not detract from the greatness of the series... In fact I think it is cool the developers keep adjusting and fine tuning the game during the course of it's existence... This is vastly important to a game which models battles between 64 players ... because the game has to be in tune with how a herd of players play the game .. so the developers get to watch how we play and adjust how we play , allowing a DICE game like Battlefield to improve over time and age like a fine wine .... The Beta then is just the beginning of the process of how DICE will mold and refine Battlefield 4 in response to how 64 player combat in a sandbox MMOFPS pans out .. like they learnt to long,long ago with Codename Eagle.. Here then is my first play with the PS3 version using the Cinemizer OLED HMD and Zeiss head tracker all FOV movement in the game is via use of the Zeiss head tracker alone on the PS3 ...You can see my ghost in the left hand top corner playing with the Cinemizer OLED HMD and head tracker..
the PS3 version is a world away in detail from the PC version , as far removed as Battlefield 2 is to Battlefield 3 : This is the PC Open Beta of Battlefield 4 which is exclusively 64 bit only atm : Again all FOV movement is through use of the Zeiss head tracker alone and you can see my ghost over the video playing the game on the Cinemizer OLED HMD
It is that time of year when we spend too much time hunting digital download bargains to have time to play any of them ( or ever play some of them) ...which for me explains if not justifies why I have just purchased Battlefield 4 Premium on the PC for £26.14 they also have Battlefield 4 Premium Edition for £48.90 with both Battlefield 4 base game and the Premium DLC . You can find the entire Battlefield series for sale here These are legit , painless to pay for via Paypal and the keys were instant just had time to activate the key on Origin when I noticed .. Space Engineers for £9.90 which also just registered on Steam at which point I noticed Diablo III Reaper of Souls for £24.03 and Diablo III itself for around £20 , Call of Duty ( don't laugh I bought it for work ..honest) with Free Fall for £24.86 , you can also pick up Star Wars The Old Republic 60 day game time for £11.56 and the original game with a 30 day card for just over £4 or satiate your Warcraft , EVE needs .. I also found the Titan Fall Origin key pre order for the sum of £33.25 or 39.99 Euros The site G2A also lists PS3 PSN and Xbox 360 Xbox LIVE codes for sale ... all in all an interesting find .. you can never have too much competition in the digital games retail market.. But Titan Fall and the rest can wait ... if you are a discerning gamer there are real gems out there for a fraction of the price of our old AAA game purchases .. for the next couple of days at least ...Independent gaming rules 2013 and 2014 ....For... 2013s end of years sales reflect THE game development story of not only 2013 but that of 2012 also : the arrival of INDIE gaming BIG time ... which I saw in the tea leaves way back here 2012 video game sales PWNED by Independent games developers . In 2013 the shift has been so big all the great and washed tech blogs are climbing over each other to comment on the latest Rogue like , Sandbox ,or Pixel art masterpiece as the Independent games revolution prepares to sweep aside traditional AAA casual gaming .. 2014 is a year in which Kerbal Space Program, Starbound and a legion of Rogue like descendants will hold their own against Halos and Titan Falls... and annoy their promoters at game shows .. in fact Sony and Microsoft are banking on a steady increase in independent game developers moving to the next gen consoles .. ...there are of course many more gems released or reaching alpha in 2013 .. Over at the Humble Bundle Store ... I picked up Planetary Annihilation for $39.99 , Papers Please for $4.99 Monaco what's yours is mine for $2.99 and my latest Rogue like ... Rogue Legacy for $4.99 you have around an hour to pick up these deals and more including Gone Home for $6.60 On Steam .. don't even get me started ... just follow your nose ... I have two more days left to survive it's 3000 tempting digital morsels..
Indie Royale have a great Debut Bundle ..8 ..with a game called "Murder in the Hotel Lisbon" ..how can you resist ..especially when you see it in action... check it out here or if you are still here check out the video ...
Now if only I could AFFORD the time and space to play or write about these things .. the real world just does not want to stop and let you game sometimes .. although many in the real world could benefit from some time gameside ...
I have so been looking forward to this, after teasing GabeN and Valve for years about bringing the cloud and streaming to our ever expanding Steam archives...spoiled as I have been Using Gaikai and onlive TOGETHER to play multiple streamed games on one lowly tablet PC ... I have played Crysis 2 and Battlefield 3 on Atom powered tablets at rig speed thanks to the cloud(s).. but till now I have needed Splashtop to stream games from my Steam archive.... Note I use the word archive ...because 100s of games and the best part of decade on I do not have time to keep downloading and re downloading to different machines..
First let us establish that Steam In Home streaming fulfills the basic aim of cloud based gaming ... to be able to do so asymmetrically ..by this I mean using a very low powered non gaming device like a Windows 8 tablet circa 2011 .. or iGPU powered device which I term the IHS Target, to play a game from a more powerful gaming Rig ..the one too many of us are chained to Steam In Home Streaming Beta Test 1 : A little ARMA III and COD Ghosts and how to start the thing
Steam In Home Streaming: Battlefield 4 + Windows 8 Desktop The first thing to note is you can stream your desktop and ergo any non Steam App or game..
this means we can IHS games from Origin ...like Crysis 3 in the picture above and also Battlefield 4 : as long as you have these games set up to run in Windowed mode .. just run it border less ..and you will not notice the difference ..
my first few days of testing using the Acer Iconia 6120 and Lenovo X220T non gaming tablets show that IHS works ..and works well with one limitation: as long as you keep your remote res at 720p .. This is over a 120 meg broadband connection In comparison using the same set up Splashtop is able to readily stream 1080p content without lag ..go higher than that though and you will start to see issues .. Steam In Home Streaming: Streaming to 2 target PCs dual screen+single screen Windows 8 tablets
we can easily IHS a game to one target , but why settle for just one target..
At the moment 1080p streaming is beyond the Betas capability..but you know this will come good in the end.. by 1080p streaming I mean the source resolution to be streamed from the host .. As an example check out the difference between 1080p and 720p source streaming with a game of X Rebirth :
Steam In Home Streaming: ARMA III vs Tiny Deathstar vs Youtube Dual+Single Screen tablets
And now for really cool stuff ... Steam In Home HMD Streaming with Head Tracking Over Cloud... this is a way to take VR mobile Using Steam In Home Streaming to mobilize VR : Over the cloud head tracking (without perceptible lag) and HMD gaming In the following video I am playing Arma III streamed to an iGPU Intel HD3000 powered X220T using the Cinemizer OLED HMD and Zeiss headtracker : Firsts : 1. Head tracking transmitted over cloud without lag : I can do this using Splashtop too, but IHS brings unique benefits ..which I will show you in my next article on the Titanfall Beta.
just to show you this is no fluke ..some more Arma III played over the cloud , with head tracking working over the cloud connected to a Cinemizer OLED HMD
Note this is 2D , there is nothing to stop us doing this in 3D .. more on this in my next article
Limitations of the current Beta
1.720p streaming , i.e remote PC source res of 720p and target PCres of 720p are the limits of this current Beta for comfortable gaming experiences
2. Joypad control is not transmitted over the cloud .. you cannot use the Xbox 360 pad yet .. although some joypad buttons were working for me...
And astonishing revelations of GabeNs greatest gift to Steam fans?
1. Full screen streaming is possible and with it for the first time the possibility of cloud playing 3D games ..
2. We can stream the desktop and anything on it
3. Including Origin and non Steam games and Apps
4. There seems to be little or no, actually none that I could detect input lag Zeiss head tracking, touch and legacy control were transmitted and worked as if I were gaming on the remote PC itself.
5. I love that there is nothing to install, no app to launch or update , log on is simple and effortless ..you start Steam and you are already there ...
6. Mulitple target PCs can be connected to one remote and we can instantly flick or throw the game from the point you are at between them .. 7. Mulitple cloud services can run at the same time on the same target PC from the same remote PC . Throughout this test I used Splashtop whilst using Steam IHS . Thanks to Windows 8 pane switching you can see and interact with the results on one tablet screen.
The relevance of Steam In Home Streaming
I cannot emphasize enough how important IHS is to PC gaming, I have been screaming for this functionality and teasing GabeN for a couple of years for this functionality . That Valve delivered is way cool.
What could be better ?
1. IHS running from cloud .. 0 need to install or download your games even to a remote PC
2. IHS on Android and iOS platforms
3. 1080p streaming optimisations ( they will come this is just a Beta)
4. Better support for joypad over cloud control
5. GabeN cans the Steam Machines of yester year and replaces them with a Valve Pocket PC ...that we connect to our HMDs and take VR and HMD Steam gaming mobile ..
Prediction
Half Life 3 will launch as the first 0 install , totally cloud based IHS playable game , laugh? A lot of of people laughed at the thought of having to log onto register Half Life 2 on something called Steam ..not so long ago...
next up I combine IHS with Titanfall ... 3D over the cloud HMD and Head tracking gaming .. making VR mobile..
