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Chronicles of Riddick - Escape from Butcher Bay
Year 2004 finally delivered two of the most awaited and anticipated games: Half Life 2 and Doom 3. Before that Far Cry dropped the bombshell on the gaming industry, totally redefining graphics and gameplay standards. When we thought we had seen it all, Starbreeze and Vivendi delivered the unhyped and low profile game Chronicles Of The Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay. The game was first released on the Xbox without too much buzz, noise or publicity. The game was then ported to the PC with buffed up graphics. The game starts with Riddick taken to the prison. Riddick is supposed to be one of the most wanted criminals in the galaxy and is an icon in the game. The most fearless, dashing and feared criminal in the whole galaxy. The storyline is not the same as that of the movie; in fact it's entirely different. It starts somewhere in the past in relation to the two movies that we saw on the big screen.

Since Far Cry, the standard of graphics has changed dramatically. Since then we have seen games like Doom 3 and Half Life 2, which set very high standards in graphics. This particular game closely resembles Doom 3. I personally thought that this game must be running on the Doom 3 engine when I first saw the screenshots in Guru3D forums a few months back, but this is not the Doom 3 engine. It's called Starbreeze Engine Technology © (2002 - 2004 Starbreeze AB) and it produces stunning graphics. The game is dark, but not scary pitch black as we saw in Doom 3, and darkness is the friend of Riddick in the game instead of your enemy in Doom 3. Riddick gains the power to see in total darkness in the initial stages of the game.

You will need a pretty powerful machine to run this game at its full glory. The game has shader model profiles for different graphic adapters so make sure you choose the proper shader model before you start playing the game. On machines with the Geforce 6 series of cards, the game auto detects Shader 2.0+ but this is unplayable on most machines even with the mighty 6800U graphics card, and many times the game will simply lock up so make sure you set the Shader Model to 2.0 or lower according to the setup.

The lighting effects are very good and real looking. All models cast shadows properly and gun modeling is also good. The game uses some 3rd person views, especially when you are in conversation, climbing onto boxes, hanging on to something or when you are climbing ladders. During this you will notice how well Riddick is modeled and how good and natural his body movements are. This really shows how well the game engine is working and how much effort was put into making good graphics. We forced the Shader Model to 2.0 here to be able to compare objectively between brands. For those that don't know, a timedemo is simply recording a piece of the game that you play. That recorded piece is then used to playback that scene. This way you can objectively measure the framerate with any graphics card, of course with the same parameters and settings. Suffice to say that the cards can manage a resolution up-to 1600x1200 easily, but ouch .. the XT's are getting bitch slapped by team green bigtime!

Halo: Combat Evolved
Those of you who haven't heard about HALO raise your hands please. you?! What do you mean you haven't heard about it?! Oh you're still gaming on a Dreamcast; daddy is a game reviewer, you say, and can't afford to buy you anything? Oh well, I guess we can let this one slide.

HALO was probably the biggest and certainly the most prominent launch title for Microsoft's Xbox console. You also probably know that Bungie actually originally intended to publish the game on the PC, but were kindly asked to change their mind, well ... bought by MS and help the birth of the Xbox. After two years of waiting, PC gamers can finally sink their teeth into the PC version of the game.

In Halo, you don the armor of the Master Chief; a war-hardened soldier that only comes out when the going gets really tough. The Earth is at war with a mysterious race called the Covenant and as the game opens, a Halcyon-class cruiser from Earth, the Pillar of Autumn, has dropped out of warp badly damaged. Worse yet, the Autumn is being pursued by a Covenant fleet. The Master Chief is given the mandate to get the ships main computer construct, Cortana, away from the cruiser as the captain crashes the battered Pillar of Autumn on a strange ring-shaped object (later to be known as Halo). You must get Cortana off the Autumn and then keep yourself alive long enough figure out what secrets Halo hides.

Now, with the game in public release, most of you will find the performance to be still pretty demanding. The game's use of pixel shader 2.0 causes a lot of disbelieve for Nvidia GeForce FX owners. Bungie decided to upgrade the engine in the PC version to support Pixel Shader 2.0 effects instead of the Pixel Shader 1.1 effects found on the Xbox version. This is noticeable in better shiny armor, water effects and better looking grass. To run Halo on the PC requires a pretty decent system.

Here we again show a variety of results