The game is currently only playable with one of these alpha codes, which you can get hold of by purchasing one of their previously developed titles for a nominal fee (this is down to Google checkout issues). This is a clever method and the ties to minecraft are clear: release a basic version of a game with a unique premise and boat loads of potential for a small fee, and voila, you have your development money. Those getting their hands on PZ at this stage will receive updates and support for the life of the title, with no extra costs incurred. If you think you’re the type to get hooked and keep coming back to open world RPGs – especially if there’s zombies involved – you might want to check it out.

Booting up the game for the first time you’re treated to a short developer written introduction which makes it clear from the get go that the game in its current iteration falls far short of where they hope to take it in the ensuing weeks and months. They want it made nice and clear, this is an early Alpha. After a couple of darkened screens of basic exposition the first in-game scene loads, showing a man standing in the upstairs room of a small suburban house, looking down on who we soon learn is his wife; and she’s not doing so good. She’s got a broken leg that’s bleeding badly and after a few sentences of quite well written dialogue, your first mission is to find something to bandage it with. However, don’t expect to just find some bandages handy, as PZ quickly introduces you to the game’s gathering and crafting system. Utilising a similar, but nicely simplified version of Minecraft’s item creation, dragging some bed sheets into a simple flow chart style panel gives you strips of cotton. You can then use these to stop the bleeding.

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The game has a very old school look to it and even plays in a similar fashion, with movement limited to the 8 directions you’d have sent your character on old D-Pad controlled titles. However, while this doesn’t emerse you in the same way that Crysis does, the title’s hauntingly tragic music and believeably dialogue quickly sets the scene for your emotional involvement. Having your first task be to care for your injured wife also makes a change from most zombie titles that are focused around the bloodbaths that can be had when you don’t care about your victims; and when they shuffle along at 2mph. As any good zombie based movie, book or comic will tell you, the strength and variety of a undead based drama is how people react to it; the zombies themselves are relatively one dimensional.

After you’ve dealt with the immediate problems your injured spouse faces, it’s off to the tool shed to get some wood and your trusty hammer and nails. With these you’re able to barricade the windows and doors. This feature alone is something that I am very excited about, as I can perfectly imagine taking an axe to tables and chairs in a frantic need for more wood to shore up my defences as the horde approaches. As it stands, you can barricade the aforementioned entry ways, giving more strength to your house and making it harder for the zombies to get in. However, they don’t last forever. When you have a pack of zombies on your front step, you can watch as the health value of your defences gradually diminishes, with a satisfyingly terriying thump as they attempt to break through. Expect to jump the first time they do, 30 zombies suddenly appearing in your living room can be quite frightening, and shows an impressive level of immersion for such a retro looking game.

Food and sleep are also things that need to be taken into consideration and is unfortunately for this reviewer the reason I ended up dieing; the first time at least. Yes, that’s right, I burnt the bloody soup. Keeping things as spoiler free as possible, I’ll just say that anyone playing this game should not be destracted by radio broadcasts too much; make sure to switch the oven off if you leave the room.

There are other aspects of the “tutorial level” which I won’t go into now as they’re more narrative based than anything, but once that is complete, or you take a somewhat alternate route to skip them:

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You enter a portion of the game known as free roam, where you’re able to do what you please. This includes running down half deserted streets, investigating nearby houses, raiding them for food and finding shelter when the sun goes down. Light and dark play an important part in this game because as difficult as it is to survive while dodging hordes of the undead in the daylight, when the streets go pitch black, it’s nigh on impossible. I’m excited by the prospect of players getting themselves some security lights for their compounds, hooking up generators for power and more; though Indiestone has also said that they plan to have randomised events as well as time based ones that will see most food rot beyond a certain time, power to be infrequent and eventually stop completely as services we all rely on begin to shut down in the wake of the outbreak. Imagine these events being noted through radio and TV broadcasts; how frightening will it be when they too cease for good?

There are quite a few things that arn’t present yet that will be soon and will probably be necessary for the game to maintain a fan base beyond the hardcore; some sort of save system being at the top of the list. But there are also things you might not expect, such as the fact that if you’re bitten but don’t die straight away, you have a chance of coming back as a zombie and joining the hordes; though most of my outings have ended with either a shotgun shell in my head, some burnt soup marinading my overcooked corpse, or my chest eaten out by you know who.

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This is also the core of something that PZ does that 99.9% of other games don’t: it begins with telling you that this is the story of how you died. It’s inevitable, as the developers themselves have put it; you will die, it’s just a matter of how and when. Of course with players becoming more experienced and without the inclusion of unfair difficulty curves – which isn’t out of the realms of possibility – Project Zomboid is likely to have a few that manage to stave off death far longer than expected, but this isn’t what the game is designed for. Indistone have started with a principle that the short, sweet stories, of how you fought off a horde only to be gunned down by a crazed NPC survivor are far more interesting than the simple hard fact that you survived for 100 days, 200, 300 or whatever. In the same way that MMOs without real loss feel empty and pointless, this game is designed in a way that without the eventuality of death it too would somehow be less fulfilling and exciting. If the end is inevitable and decided, then it matters more what you do before it happens; if the destination isn’t so certain, the journey is perhaps less important.

Indistone have released the beginnings of a game which I’ll certainly be keeping a close eye on. The potential for a game like this is massive, with calls for multiplayer already showing up on many a message board. While it is expected that the developers will get to that at some point, in the meantime they want to get “crafting” the single player to make it as strong as possible. If they could just add a second door to the main bank lobby though I’d really appreciate it. My last run for supplies ended with me holed up in there, unfortunately there was no way out; and the game ended once again with me dead on the floor.

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Monster Hunter Tri – a Great Game Nearly Missed

As gaming has evolved over the past 30 years or so, it’s moved from being a hobby for programmers, to a time passer for children, into a multi- billion pound industry with massive companies backing development, and professionals found in every facet of the market. Be they full time game reviewers, artists, developers, programmers, testers and more.

In this way it mirrors other industries like movie and music, where originally it was just one dude with a camera snapping fast moving pictures of a horse, and another speaking into the large horn of his mechanical phonograph. Now though all these industries have grown up, including the people who work in them and like these other giant mediums, gaming has managed to gain a similarly respected image. While this is fantastic for us gamers in some senses, it does lead to one thing that could be considered a shame; stereotyping.

I say this because I’m not a big MMO gamer, or a big RPG player. I can’t be bothered with the time that is required performing mundane tasks, levelling up, gathering materials, buying health potions; in short, I’m not the kind of person that enjoys a grind session. It was with this attitude that I began my play with monster Hunter Tri, a game and franchise that has had fantastic reviews since it’s inception, but it’s become famous for the amount of things you must do outside of hunting big monsters; and for the sheer scale of preparation each hunt requires.

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After a couple of hours of gameplay, I completely understood what the skeptics were on about. You have a farm which can produce materials, and ships that you can send to fish for you; these industries must be maintained and upgraded with "resources" gathered from hunting monsters while not on quests. You have to gather herbs tomake potions but only after you’ve combined them with blue mushrooms. These however arn’t very powerful without combining them with honey to make them "mega." Later on you need Might seeds and armorskin potions, dash extracts and chilled meat. You have to cook your food to keep your stamina up, make cold drinks to have on a hot day, traps and tranquiliser bombs; the list goes on.

After about three hours of killing smaller creatures, and hunting for materials, gathering, fishing and more I really didn’t understand what the fuss was about. Sure it was a pretty well constucted RPG – without levelling I might add – with a versatile weapon and armour construction system; but I just didn’t think it was for me.At this point, I almost never picked up my Wiimote controlled sword and shield again.

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That was until I had my first taste of online action. Turns out my brother had also rented this game and we met up online – after muddling our way through the myriad of online menus and connection screens – and did a few basic quests together. Still nothing particularly mind blowing, until we hit upon our first confrontation with a "big" monster. I quote that word, because by this game’s standards, a Great Jaggi is the smallest of the boss monsters, but it was big to us at the time. For 30 minutes we battle this beast, dieing a couple of times in the process but it was during this battle that it all started to click into place.

We had to duck and roll, block and weave. The combat was exciting as we were glued to the monsters actions, judging its next attacks and waiting for an opening to strike. There was no health bar above its head to let us know we were winning, only the occasional stumble or cry from the creatures jaws gave us any indication we were hurting it. All of a sudden, after one tremendous hit from my sword the raptor like monster flew backwards, landing on its back; he was going down. As it stood again it began to limp away. We followed it to its lair and being wary of its multiple smaller bodyguard versions of itself, we crept in and the final battle began.

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After several more minutes my brother delivered the killing blow. We were jubilant, triumphant beyond anything I’d felt in a game for a long time. We’d beaten this creature that had taken almost everything we had. It was a fair fight with no clear winner until the very end. And then I felt something I’ve never felt in a game before, I felt respect for my fallen foe. It wasn’t just some AI that had obviously repeatable patterns of attack. It didn’t have a health bar that I’d destroyed, and we hadn’t won because our equipment or level was high enough; we’d beaten it because we were better.

Introduction

Speedlink have decided to put together a simple package of 99 games from one of the ’80s-to-early-’90s era’s most prominent gaming systems – the Commodore 64 – along with a USB imitation of the chunky joysticks representative of those good old days. So we shall now take an [up], [space], [fire], [run] down memory lane to find out if they can hope to cash in on this fine gaming heritage.

Features

• 8-way early arcade-style USB joystick
• Four fire buttons
• 99 C64 games on CD complete with pre-configured VICE emulator
• No drivers needed – plug ‘n’ play!

Introduction

While here at XSReviews we almost exclusively keep our attention focused on the hardware side of life. That said, none of it is worth it unless you can use it to enjoy the software that it powers, in most of our cases, gaming. Today I’ll be taking a look at a title called King of Fighters XII, which as you might have guessed, comes from a long line of other games. It has a lot to live up to with some of the older titles being considered some of the best fighters of all time. How does this one live up to our scrutiny? Lets see.

Game Blurb

“The legendary 3-on-3 fighting game series that united rival brawlers from SNK Playmore’s classic arcade franchises celebrates its 15th Anniversary in style with the release of The King of Fighters XII.

For the first time in its history, this epic martial arts showdown has undergone a complete graphical overhaul. The antiquated character sprites used over the past 14 years have been dropped in favour of all-new, high-resolution fighters fluidly animating across painstakingly detailed, 100% hand-drawn backgrounds.”

Caveat

Just so things are in perspective I’ll make the following clear. This is the first KoF game I’ve ever played, so even with my diligent research, there may be some discrepancies in the description of the series. If there’s anything in this review you feel is inaccurate, please contact us through the forums using the link “chat about King of Fighters” at the end of this review.

Introduction

Sherlock Holmes: A popular fictional detective, born and based in London, created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in the late 19th Century. Many readers have been interested in his stories and adventures with his sidekick Dr Watson. Who’d have thought that they would make a video game about him? Turns out there is actually a series of games based on his adventures, 4 in fact! Such titles as “Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened” and “The Case of the Silver Earring”. Today I have with me, Sherlock Holmes Vs Arsene Lupin (anyone else think he looks like Poirot?) so let’s see what it’s like.

Plot

The game allows players to take on the role of Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson and Inspector Lestrade who all play their own parts in the mystery solving. When the game begins, Holmes receives a letter from Arsene Lupin, a very successful French burglar, challenging him to attempt to stop his latest heist. The Inspector and his team have to solve a range of riddles, puzzles and quests throughout the game in order to bring Lupin down.

As the story unfolds, the three characters come across clues and references to historical characters that link together with the threat of Arsene Lupin. Most of the game is based on these historical events and the notes you take will decide what course you take.

Introduction

Ageia and their PhysX technology have taken some serious flack since they first introduced the idea of a dedicated PPU (Physics Processing Unit). Despite this however, they have struggled on, getting their hardware supported in many a popular game. Recently, Cell Factor also came into play, a game that practically runs like a PhysX benchmark. Just over a year on from our original PhysX review how have things changed and is there any difference between the two currently offered choices for a physics junkie; the BFG and the Asus? We hope to answer these questions in this review.

To read our original review of Asus’ rendition of the PhysX processing card click here.

Specifications and Features

A little about Ageia

“In 2002, five innovative technologists and entrepreneurs shared a vision of a uniquely diverse company teaming together to add new levels of realism to computer simulated physics processes. They brought their skills and knowledge from around the world–from America , Germany , Egypt , India and America — and named their company based on their countries of origin: AGEIA Technologies, Inc.

Today, AGEIA is dedicated to delivering dynamic interactive realism to the ever demanding complexity of next generation games. Its flagship solution, AGEIA PhysX, is the world’s first dedicated physics engine and physics processor to bridge the gap between static virtual worlds and responsive unscripted physical reality. AGEIA PhysX allows developers to use active physics-based environments for a truly realistic entertainment experience.

AGEIA’s major investors include Apex Venture Partners, BA Venture Partners, HIG Ventures, Granite Global Ventures, CID Equity Partners, and VentureTech Alliance.”

Ageia PhysX Support

Current Supporting Games

Coming soon Supporting Games

Competition

The main competitor of PhysX technology – and a much more established one at that – is the Havok SDK. This physics engine is used in many successful games including Gears of War and Half Life 2. It works by offloading physics effects to the GPU as Shader Model 3.0 instructions while sending gamplay physics instructions to the CPU. This obviously has it’s advantages in the fact that it is completely self contained and doesn’t need a seperate card to calculate physics, but it does mean extra CPU load and that the ammount of physics calculations that can be processed is limited to CPU power.

ATI and Nvidia have pledged to develope their own physics options. ATi have stated that they aim to a stream processor product which combines a CPU and GPU on one chip while Nvidia’s 8 series cards support a physics system called “Quantum Effects Technology” which is designed to directly compete with the PhysX PPU.

Ageia believes that by using a dedicated PPU game developers will have the option to use much more comlicated in-game physics and much more interaction between objects. They have recently showcased this in the much anticipated CellFactor Revolution where hundreds of objects can be seen displaying realistic physical traits through the way they interact with each other’s movements and the actions of the character.

The PPU Comparison – Asus Vs. BFG

Before looking at PhysX technology in games and comparing the two PhysX card options, we decided to take our usual critical look at the BFG card that we had yet to test. The BFG PhysX card is identical to the Asus version except for the change in cooler. Where Asus use a fan to draw air across a heatsink shrouded in plastic to direct the air, BFG use a simpler flower petal style cooler blowing the air in all directions across raised sinks surrounding the fan.

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For those that wonder what a Physics Processor looks like, here’s your chance.

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The Asus and BFG cards are pretty much identical apart from a slight change in the positions of the top three capacitors, and of course the cooler.

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Both PhysX cards need a 4pin molex connector to power and the fan itself is powered by a small 2pin connector situated on the card itself.

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Testing

Testing in this review is going to be a bit different from the usual format. Instead of simply being a list of benchmarks, used hardware and test results it will be a showcasing – through screenshots and scores – of what effects PhysX technology has on a games aesthetics, game play and whether is is worth the cost of a dedicated physics card.

For testing Ageia were kind enough to provide us with some PhysX supporting games: Auto Assault, Stoked Rider and Cell Factor (pre-release beta). Since then the full game of Cell Factor has been released so that version was used for experimenting with the BFG PPU. We will also use RealityMark for a bit of synthetic PhysX testing.

Test Rig

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
Asus P5W DH Deluxe
Sapphire x1900XT
OCZ 2gb PC6400 Special Ops.
Silverstone Olympia 650w

First Game – Auto Assault

Auto Assault (AA) is a post-apocalyptic, vehicular MMORPG. The main focus of the game is using your souped up car/van/buggy to traverse the land in search of weaponry, armor, fortune and fame all the while blowing up everything in site. One of the main draws of AA is that most of the “Towns” held by hostile units can be destroyed, and by most of I mean every building, defensive turret and wall. Obviously this lends itself to PhysX technology very well, it will be interesting to see what effect a dedicated PPU has on gaming.

Ageia claims in their “Review Guide” that the PhysX card has several effects on the environment when compared to software physics. The first one I tested was the liquid physics in the game. So I drove around for a while trying to find some sort of acid spewing monster or a waterfall; anything with moving liquids. Fortunately I came upon a monster of sorts that didn’t like me once I moved within his agro range; this was the result:

Software physics

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Hardware physics

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As you can see, in the PhysX powered screenshot there is a bit more fluid flying my way. Not the most groundbreaking of changes, but it does look better; a bit more real.

The next thing I decided to take a look at was building destruction. Now, with or without the PhysX card most buildings in the game can be destroyed by you and your marauding machine. However, with the PPU enabled you should get some more detailed destruction.

Software pysics

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Hardware physics

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I must admit, that I didn’t notice any real difference there. Can you spot any difference in the images? The buildings collapsed with equal finesse and detail in software and hardware physics mode leaving me a bit confused as to what the PPU actually effected here.

The final main change that hardware physics is supposed to effect in AA was the wire fencing that can be found in most of the industrial sectors of the game. Without PhysX technology the fences are designed to simply break into several pieces whereas with it, they are supposed to fold down onto the ground in an undulating, “wire fencey” sort of way.

Software pysics

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Hardware physics

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Now there is a big difference. With PhysX technology perhaps we could say goodbye to the age old blocks of wall and ceiling breaking away under fire? This change isn’t purely cosmetic as well as when
the fences cause a small bit of drag as they bend around the car as you smash through them, instead of simply breaking into the typical three pieces. Here are some more screenshots of the folding fences in action:

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Second Game - Stoked Rider: Alaska Alien

Stoked Rider is a snowboarding game designed with a rather cartoon like graphical edge. Featuring human characters as well as aliens who begin their downhill run strapped to jetpacks and with their ski-lift substituted for a flying saucer; this is one crazy game. However, not only being rather intuitive with their game design, BongFish have also incorporated PhysX technology to help add some extra effects to this strange title. Byusing PhysX technology, gamers can not only have huge ammounts of snow particles moving out of their way as make their way down the mountain, but there is also the danger of large avalanches of snowy particles that can engulf and topple the rider. These features can be enabled without a PPU present, and I will be seeing how our test rig handles these huge ammounts of ingame particles.

The effects of the PhysX processor are much more apparent in Stoked Rider than in Auto Assualt. Switching from no extra effects, to software physics effects, to hardware physics effects, the differences are huge.

No physics effects

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Software physics effects

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Hardware physics effects

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Although the ammount of particles between the software and hardware physics is relatively similar, the frame rate drops considerably when offloading the physics calculations onto the CPU. However, it was still playable-ish for most of the early levels, but as more snow got involved higher up the mountain, without hardware enabled PhysX, smooth gameplay was impossible.

The addition of all the extra snow particles with physics effects allowed BongFish to create avalanches that can cause real problems for the player. These cause huge frame rate lags when in software physics mode, but with the PPU enabled, everything runs very smoothly. As you can see, avalanches are not possible without physics supports.

No physics effects

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Software physics effects

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(The avalanche is in the background)

Hardware physics effects

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Third Game – Cell Factor Revolution

Cell Factor is set in a futurisitic, industrial, war torn atmosphere and is purely designed to show off the effects of having a dedicated PPU. There are huge ammounts of boxes, barrels and neglected machinery that players can either blow up with conventional weaponry, or manipular using their psychic powers. The game also attemptes to showcase the capabilities of PhysX technology through the use of innovative cloth and liquid effects.

A demo of Cell Factor has been out for quite some time, and we received a pre-release beta copy of the game before its official release (You can view my gameplay videos showcasing the Guardian and Bishop characters here.) but upon the release of the full game, I downloaded it to showcase the some screenshots of the game.

The hardware for testing this game was changed slightly to allow full detail settings. The rig used was as follows:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 3.15ghz
Asus P5W DH Deluxe
EVGA 8800GTX Ultra
OCZ 2gb PC6400 Special Ops. @ 875mhz
Silverstone Olympia 650w

Cell factor does allow for in game play without PhysX support, but it simply removes liquid and cloth effects from the levels, while also reducing the ammount of objects. It also only allows game play on two levels as apposed to the full 6.

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All of the above screenshots are at maximum detail at 1280*1024 with the BFG PhysX card installed. If these are any indication of how dedicated physics processing could take modern games, I am very excited.

Synthetic Testing – Reality Mark

As well as using some of these PhysX supporting games to test the card(s) we also used the Ageia produced benchmark, RealityMark. This is a PhysX performance benchmarking tool that allows users to see the difference between Software Physics mode (and therefore CPU powered) and Hardware Physics mode (therefore PhysX card powered). We will also use this benchmark to see if there is any different between the two PhysX cards and, just for fun, see if anything happens when you plug both in.

Cooling

The coolers on the PhysX cards are very noisy indeed; about as loud as the stock coolers on x1900 cards. This does provide quite an annoyance and it would be nice to see some quieter aftermarket coolers if/when these cards become a bit more popular; perhaps you can even overclock them!

Cost

At £100 these cards are still not cheap and people will debate whether these cards are worth it till the end of time. However, even though those with little money may see this as quite an expensive add-on card, for those wtih nothing left to upgrade it may be a good choice.

Conclusion

PhysX technology will continue to be the focus of many a debate until one of two things happen: A) Ageia folds and the PhysX PPU fades from view and remains a novel idea that once was, or B) A popular game supports the card causing a large influx of PhysX purchases and therefore securing the future of the dedicated PPU. Games like Unreal Tournament 3 just might do this as the huge popularity of the Unreal franchies could mean that a lot of its players decide they want more interaction in their games than software physics can provide.

However, even if PhysX technology does get incorporated in more games, the true mainstream uptake of a seperate PhysX card depends on how game developers build the effects into their products. There needs to be more options for the end user, allowing those with a PhysX card to crank those effects up to the max, but to also permit those with varying speeds of processors (and no PPU) to change the level of physics just as those with different graphics cards can vary the levels of visual detail and eye candy in games.

But what about now? Are the PhysX effects worth £100 of your hard earned cash? It really comes down to what games you play and what you look for in them. If none of the games you play can support PhysX technology, then there is no reason for you to have this noisy little card in your rig. However, if you find yourself whileing away the hours playing Cell Factor, Auto Assault or any of the games listed at the beginning of this review and you find you want more flying boxes, more acid spit and more particles in general, then the PhysX card is starting to become worthwhile.

I’d like to thank our sponsors Ageia for providing us with the cards and games.

Discuss this review in our forums.

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