Grid 2

Five years ago Codemasters released Race Driver: Grid. Race Driver: Grid was a very cool game, and now there is Grid 2. Grid 2 was released on 28 May in the US and will be released on 31 May in Europe. Grid 2 takes place in the World Series Racing, a fictional cup. The World Series Racing (WSR) creates a story around your races. While racing you will be 'filmed' and placed on a fictional YouTube. On this way you will be discovered and you grow to the international racing series. I think this is a great way to create a story behind a racing game.

The game looks great, the cars look very realistic. If you crash, the damage looks also very realistic. The environments look very nice. It's still great that the developers can take even more out of the console with every new game. The game has several game modes, such as drift, elimination but also LiveRoutes. With LIveRoutes the route change every lap. In lap one you can have a left-right corner, but in lap two it could be possible that you have a right-left corner. I love the idea and I'm sure that it works good.

For some reason you can't tune your car, you can only change the exterior of your car. It's sad that they took out the possibility to tune your car, because a better car is always nice. The multiplayer has a separate garage than the single player, so if you finish the single player, you need to start all over again with the multiplayer. The game isn't purely focused on realism, Codemasters searched for a good balance between realism and fun. Sadly I didn't play this game yet, but I'm sure it's good. Did you play this game already?

Written by: WZ

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PlayStation 4 versus Xbox One

Both new consoles are announced, the specs of both consoles are known, so let's compare the next-gen hardware!

CPU
The PlayStation 4 has a x86 AMD Jaguar processor, with 8 cores. It's clocked at 1.6 GHz. The Xbox One has a custom Microsoft CPU with also 8 cores. The Xbox One CPU is probably based on an AMD processor. The CPU of both consoles is nearly the same, so no one is stronger or better than the other.

GPU
The GPU of the PS4 is an AMD Radeon chip with 1152 stream processors and a 1.84 TFlops core. The Xbox One has 768 stream processors and a 1.2 TFlops core. The PS4 has clearly a much stronger GPU than the Xbox One.

RAM
The PS4 will have a 8 GB GDDR5 GPU which runs at 5.5 GHz with a maximum bandwidth of 176 GB/s. The Xbox One will have a 8 GB DDR3 GPU which runs at 2.133 GHz with a maximum bandwidth of 68.3GB/s, but it also has a 32MB ESRAM-cache which creates a maximum bandwidth of 102GB/s. The  PS4 is again much stronger. The PlayStation 4 OS uses 1 GB of memory and the Xbox One OS uses 3 GB, so the PS4 has much more RAM than the Xbox One.

Hard disk
The hard disc of the PS4 is not known, but rumours suggest that it will get 500 GB in the basic version. The Xbox One will have a hard disc of 500 GB, so no difference on this part. The consoles don't have a SSD, probably because of the price.

Motion
The PS4 will have PlayStation Move and the controller has SIXAXIS to track your movements. The Xbox One will have Kinect 2.0. Kinect 2.0 is super, it works great and can track every movement very accurate. The Xbox One is clearly the best if you look at the motion sensors.

Connections
Both consoles have USB 3.0, Bluetooth 2.1 and HDMI output with 4K support. The PS4 also has the classic A/V analog output for the older tv's. The Xbox One has two HDMI outputs and the PS4 has one HDMI output. The Xbox has one extra because you can connect your tv receiver to it.

Conclusion
If you only look at the specs, the PlayStation 4 is the big winner. If you like movement games, the Xbox one is absolutely the best of the two consoles thanks to Kinect 2.0. The Xbox One has one extra HDMI input, so you could see that as an advantage, but the PlayStation 4 has A/V output, so no console has a real advantage on the connections.

Sources: PU, Tweakers

Written by: WZ

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Forum

The Dutch Gamer now has an official forum! You can ask everything about games, talk about games or ask things about your console on the forum. The forum also has a mobile version, so you can access it from your smartphone. Hopefully it's useful to you and have fun! Please read the rules before you start posting.

Forum

Written by: WZ

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GTA V pre-order bonuses!

Great news today! Rockstar announced the GTA V pre-order bonuses! They are very cool, so I'm going to tell you everything about them. Everybody who pre-orders the game gets the opportunity to fly the Atomic Blimp. The Atomic Blimp is a huge zeppelin which is always flying above Los Santos as advertisement for Atomic, the largest tyre manufacturer of Los Santos. The Atomic Blimp looks nice, but because it's a Zeppelin it probably won't be very fast, but you will have a great view from this huge zeppelin. If the Atomic Blimp is a hydrogen zeppelin, you can't crash it, because hydrogen will explode when it meets air and crashing means a leaking zeppelin.

GTA V Special Edition
The Special Edition costs $79.99. With the Special Edition you will get the following stuff:

• A copy of the game.
• A steelbook with artwork. The artwork on the steelbook is unique to the steelbook and never shown before.
• A blueprint map. The blueprint map is a map of Los Santos and Blaine Country. It contains special and useful points on the map to get where you can get easy cash for example. It is 21.5” by 26.75”, so also ideal as a poster for your wall.
• Special ability boost (in-game). Every character has it's own special ability, and with this boost it will regenerate 25% quicker.
• Stunt Plane trials (in-game). There are several extra stunt plane trials on the map thanks to this bonus.
• Bonus outfits, tattoos and special deals (in-game). Every character gets several new clothes and new tattoos. Shopkeepers also offer you special deals.
• More weapons (in-game). When you visit the Ammunation, these weapons will be always available for free: a Pistol .50, a Bullpup Shotgun and a melee Hammer.

GTA V Collector’s Edition
The Collector's Edition is the most expensive edition of all, it costs $149.99. With the Collectors Edition you will get the stuff from the Special Edition and the following stuff:

• A security deposit bag with a logo key. The security deposit bag is made to store important items, according to Rockstar. I think it's just a wallet with a key lock.
• Grand Theft Auto V New Era 9FIFTY™ Snapback Cap. Terrible name but it's the coolest thing of all! The Los Santos cap is better than all those baseball caps. It's looking great.
• Custom characters for the GTA Online Character Creation System (in-game), whatever that is.
• Unique Vehicles and Garage Property (in-game). With this piece of content you get some extra vehicles, such as a hotrod and an extra garage to store your extra vehicles.

Great special edition, I think, not those useless stuff which you dump in a corner and where look never at after the first time. The Collector's Edition is my favorite, because of the cap and the ingame content, which is also awesome, but the price is too high for me, so maybe the Special Edition will be my choise. Which one are you going to pre-order? You can pre-order GTA V here: http://www.rockstargames.com/V/preorder

Written by: WZ

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Xbox One

This evening Microsoft announced the new Xbox. It's called 'Xbox One', so no Durango, Infinity or 720, just One. I think it's a weird name because it's the third Xbox. The Xbox One will come in 2013, but when is not told by Microsoft. The interface from the Xbox One looks like Windows 8, which means even coloured squares. The console can show two menus at the same time, so you can watch a movie and Skype with a friend at the same time for example. You can who these menus and hide them with voice control and by movements, which are detected by Kinect 2.0. Every new Xbox will have Kinect 2.0 standard included. Kinect 2.0 can detect movements much better. As you can see on the second image, Kinect can make a very realistic 3D model with it's camera's. The Xbox One will get 8 GB RAM, just like the PS4.

You can't play Xbox 360 games on the Xbox One. The reason is that the Xbox 360 games are DVD games and the Xbox One has a Blue-Ray driver. Maybe the Xbox 360 games you own are available for download on your Xbox One, but this isn't confirmed by Microsoft. Forza Motorsport 5 will be one of the release games of the Xbox One. EA and Microsoft made a big deal, so if you have an Xbox One and an EA game, you will get several extra's. I'm not going to buy the Xbox One, because I love PlayStation, are you going to buy the Xbox One or the PlayStation 4?

Written by: WZ

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Assassin's Creed Movie

The Assassin's Creed movie has a release date. The movie will be in cinema's at 22 May 2015. The release date of the movie is two weeks after the release of The Avengers 2, so it's a bit risky. There isn't much known about the movie because the script is still written. I wonder what the script writer Michael Lesslie will make. I think the movie will have a new assassin. In the beginning the assassin will lose somebody or something important and then he will assassinate several to take revenge. Another option is that the main character will fight for liberty, just like Connor did in Assassin's Creed 3. If the main character is going to be an existing character, the movie will probably a sequel to the game.

Michael Fassbender is the actor who is going to play the main character. He doesn't look like Ezio or Connor, and he looks a bit like Altaïr. Michael Fassbender is known from Prometheus and X-Men: First Class. Ubisoft has two other movies under development: a Splinter Cell movie and a Ghost Recon movie. Are you going to the Assassin's Creed movie? I'm going for sure!

Written by: WZ

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Gran Turismo 6

Yesterday was Gran Turismo 6 announced. Gran Turismo is going to be bigger and better than every Gran Turismo before. This game will have 1200 cars, from which 200 are new. The rest of the vehicles are from Gran Turismo 5. Gran Turismo 6 will have 33 locations which have a total of 71 layouts. 19 of the layouts are brand-new to GT6. Gran Turismo 6 will have a new course maker which will be more user-friendly because the course maker from GT5 wasn't very user-friendly.

Gran Turismo 6 will be focused on communities. You can create and organize your own championships and race against your friends. In the championship you can also put your own tracks created in the course maker. For GT6 they created a new engine, which has better performance and more opportunities to expand in the future. To improve the realism they updated the suspension and the aerodynamics modelling. The tyres are redesigned with two tyre manufactures to improve their realism. I think you won't notice much of the new features which improve the realism, because GT5 was already super realistic.

Customising your car is expanded for GT6, you can add many types of spoilers, bumper, side skirts and rims to your car to make your car as personal as you want. They told that the game will have connectivity with other devices, such as your smartphone or tablet. I could imagine that you have an app on your smartphone in which you can customize your car, watch replays, check lap records and see what friends are doing. Gran Turismo 6 will get several DLCs a month which include new tracks and new cars.

Gran Turismo 6 will come in the holiday of 2013 for PlayStation 3. It's unknown whether there will be a PlayStation 4 version or not. Personally I think they will bring it around summer 2014 for PlayStation 4 as a Complete edition with upgraded graphics.

Written by: WZ

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Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon Review

A month ago I wrote about Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon. Last week this game was released for $15 or €15. I bought the game last weekend for €12 because of a PlayStation Plus discount. The loading screens feature great quotes such as 'You need ammunition to shoot' or 'The hints on the loading screen give hints'. Finally there is a developer who doesn't want to help you with tips in the loading screen. The humor of the game is fantastic. While doing the tutorial Rex wants to get away. You get totally useless explanations such as 'To look around, look around'. After you 'learned' all basics you get dozens of pop-up messages who are extreme annoying, and you get also a message which says it's annoying that you get messages. Great humor!

The game is sadly just a skinned version of Far Cry 3. The enemies don't move different or shoot different. It's not a big deal, because the enemy AI is good. The cars only have different colours and neon strips. The skins are very cool, they are all dark, but have bright lights in them which looks very cool in the dark world of Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon. The world of this game is too dark, when there is something in the shadow it is sometimes very hard to see what it is.

Rex Colt is totally overpowered. You can run and with a speed of 22 mph or 36 km/h and crouch with a speed of 6 mph or 10 km/h. Rex can jump approximately 10 feet or 3 meters high. Because you can jump so high you can make a kill from above on an enemy by jumping in front of him, which is very useful. Basicly you can kill everyone by jumping on him and sprinting to the next enemy, without losing much health. Your health is also extremely much. At the beginning you have 4 bars of health and then it's still not easy to die, but at the end you have 16 lives, and I dying is even more difficult with 16 lives. Rex can breathe forever under water, which is ideal for sneaking up on enemies on a boat. The overpower of Rex is awesome in combination with the Blood Dragons.

The Blood Dragons are the coolest thing of this game. They are huge, have extreme amounts of lives and are extremely powerful. When they are green, they don't see anybody and they are 'friendly'. When they turn yellow, they are suspecting something and when they are red, you've got a problem. Blood Dragons fire a huge laser beam which burns and blasts everything away, except Rex, he can survive the bursts very long. When they come close they will hit you with their giant claws. Killing them is difficult, but with the KillStar it's quite easy.

The KillStar is an awesome weapon which you get in the last mission. With the KillStar you can fire a laser beam which is the same as the one from the Blood Dragon, which means total destruction! The only thing you need to do to clear a group of enemies is hold the trigger and turn slowly around, you kill everything and everybody with this over the top, overpowered laser beam.

Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon is a very good game which has great humor, awesome overpowers, great Blood Dragons and the KillStar is the coolest weapon ever. Sadly the only big thing that changed are the skins and the world is too dark.

Written by: WZ

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DLC

DLCs, nowadays every game has several of them. The price is varying from free to $20, but are they worth it? It depends on the content. Some DLCs offer a gun or a suit, others offer land expansions or an extra storyline. In this feature I will try to solve the question whether DLCs are worth their price.

Free DLCs
Free DLCs are often released as an extra for the loyal players. A free DLC isn't much more than a gun and a suit, or a new vehicle. Most of the time you won't miss anything if you don't download a free DLC. I always download the free DLCs of a game, because I love free things.

Cheap DLCs (less than $2)
Cheap DLCs offer most of the time the same sort of content as free DLCs. I think they aren't worth their price, because you don't get anything useful.

Medium priced DLCs (less than $10)
The medium priced DLCs offer most of the time much new content. The Zodiac Tournament Pack of Sleeping Dogs offers for example a new island, new enemies, new outfits, new collectibles and new arena's. The price of this DLC is $5. It's an okay DLC according to the reviews, not very good, not bad. If you don't download that DLC you won't miss any cool or great things. Medium priced DLC are often a good addition to your gameplay, they offer enough content to keep yourself busy for maximum five hours.

Expensive DLCs (more than $10)
Expensive DLCs are not very much released because they don't sell as good as medium priced DLCs. Expensive DLCs contain very much content and are most of the time from a high quality. The Skyrim DLC Dragonborn for example has a price of $20. You get a new location, 7 new story-missions, 28 new side-missions, 30 new weapons, the possibility to fly dragons and much more. The Dragonborn DLC is from a high quality and is great to play. The DLC offers tens of hours gameplay and you can see the Dragonborn DLC nearly as a new game because of it's size.

Is a DLC worth its price?
It depends on it's content. If you get a gun for $1, a DLC isn't worth it's price, but if you pay $20 for tens of hours great fun and many new things to do, you should consider buying the DLC. The most important thing is what you think by yourself about a DLC. If you like a gun from $1, buy it and if you hate to play Skyrim even more, don't buy the DLC.

What do you think about DLCs?

Written by: WZ

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Carmageddon Mobile Review

In 1997 Carmageddon was released. Carmageddon is a race game, but different. You can win a race on three ways: drive through all checkpoints, wreck all opponents or kill all people. Carmageddon was a very controversial game, because running over people was rewarded. The release version in several countries was censored: people were replaced by zombies and robots, because killing non-human objects wasn't as bad as killing humans. Over the whole world politics asked for new laws for violent video games. Eventually the game was banned in several countries. In 2012 Carmageddon was released on iOS. The release on iOS is very remarkable because Apple banned the game from Mac. Yesterday Carmageddon was released for Android.

The first thing you see is the very friendly devil. I love the devil, he is so evil, the perfect devil in my opinion. When you start you have two cars, you can unlock the rest by wrecking your opponents and sometimes you get their car if you wreck it. The controls of the app are not user friendly. The buttons are too small for my fingers, and I don't have very big fingers. After several races I got more used to the controls. Of course you can use the accelerometer for steering, which works much better for steering.

The environments and vehicles are not very nice, but I didn't expect good graphics, because it's a game from 1997. At the top left corner you see your character, Max Damage or Die Anna. The funny thing is the face from your character, it changes while playing. If you crash, you see the head hitting you screen for example. While racing (or crashing) you can repair your car at all times. Repairing your costs money so you need to try to damage your vehicle not too much if you want to buy upgrades. The game is great fun to play. I was laughing often because of the weird crashes, crazy faces and awesome stunts.

Carmageddon Mobile is a very enjoyable game, sadly the controls aren't very user friendly. The great things about this game are the fun while playing, the face of the driver and you can repair your car at any time, which is ideal in a Demolition Derby like game.

Written by: WZ

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Real Racing 3 Review

Several months ago Real Racing 3 was released for iOS and Android. Real Racing is known as one of the most realistic racing game for the mobile platforms. Real Racing 2 was one of my favorite mobile race games so I downloaded Real Racing 3 as soon as it was available. Real Racing 3 is a freemium game. In the game you have two currencies: R$ and Gold. After winning a race you get R$. Most of the time it's between the 3000 and 8000 R$ a race. You can win gold by leveling and by finishing tournaments for 25, 50 or 100 percent. With R$ you can buy new cars, upgrade your car and repair your car. With gold you can speed up the repair time of a car and the delivery time. The most important thing you can do with gold is buying the best cars, such as the Koenigsegg Agera R or the Porsche 918 RSR. You can buy R$ and gold with real money. The Koenigsegg Agera R has a price of 800 gold. With leveling you gain 3 gold and every five levels 5 gold. If you want the Koenigsegg Agera R you need to become level 235 to gain enough gold. The level cap is level 1000, so you can buy all cars in theory, but level 1000 costs so much time, . You can also buy a gold pack from 99.99 dollar so you have 1000 gold, enough for the Koenigsegg Agera R. $99.99! I can't understand that they dare to ask so much money for a digital car.

The game has very good graphics and quite realistic damage models. If you damage your car you can repair your car with R$. After each race there is taken a percentage of several vehicle conditions such a the engine, the tires and the brakes. Once in a while you need to service your car, and servicing takes time. Sometimes you need to wait 15 minutes before servicing is finished, so if you like to race much, you need many cars or another game.

The opponents are real opponents, they say. By using time shifted multiplayer, which means that your time is recorded and send to the Real Racing servers, you can race with friends without being online at the same time. You need to link the game with Facebook to race against your friends' time. The AI which control your friends car is terrible. The AI wants to drive always on the ideal line. If you are in it's way, you will be pushed away until the AI is back on it's track. If you brake too early and there is an opponent behind you, it will crash into your back.

Real Racing 3 is a very good racing game, with realistic cars and tracks. Sadly the AI is terrible and getting the best cars is nearly impossible. If you like to race on a mobile platform, download this game!

Thanks to: Pocketgamer

Written by: WZ

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Hitman Blood Money Review

Hitman Blood Money is the last game from the Hitman Trilogy. Again the biggest difference with the previous Hitman games is the graphics. They look pretty good for a PlayStation 2 game. The possibilities in this Hitman are great. You can do every mission on many ways, because there are many routes to get to a place and to kill an enemy. Hitman can freerun on a simple way, there are several points in every map where you can climb a fence or walk over a ledge. If you are freerunning and you are spotted, you have a big problem. But if you aren't spotted you can avoid many guards and dangerous points on the map. The maps are designed on a great way, I love the freedom you got to do a contract. While doing a mission it sometimes felt like a free-roam game.

The AI is too agressive I think. When you are discovered, you will be immediately shot by multiple enemies. The upgrading of weapons is a great addition to the tactics of the game. You start with a single Silverballer, but at the end I had a semiautomatic, magnum bullet shooting, silenced, scoped, laser equipped and extended magazine dual Silverballer. At the end one shot was enough to kill, but thanks to the semiautomatic upgrade I could handle groups of enemies with much more ease.

Hitman Blood Money is the best Hitman I played until now, thanks to it's great level designs, many possibilities and weapon upgrades. A big disadvantage is the aggressive AI.

Written by: WZ

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Disc or download?

If you are going to buy a new game, you can choose to buy it on disc or download it. Both types of buying games have their own advantages. Buying a game on disc gives you a little book, although they are most of the time not interesting. Another big advantage is the possibility to borrow games from friends or to friends. Borrowing games is a good way to play many games without buying them all. The disadvantage is the space. Ten discs is ok, it doesn't cost much space. But if you have thirty, and you have thirty games quite quick, it will cost you nearly half a meter or 1.6 foot in the width. You can also damage the disc. If you do that your game is broken, and that is the last you want.

Downloading a game has the opposite advantages and disadvantages of a disc, the advantages are the space a digital game uses: nearly nothing, only your computer or your console to store them and the disadvantages are no possibility to borrow a game and no little book. Downloading also has some more disadvantages: the installment can fail, and then you need to install it again. Your store could also be a problem, my PS3 for example has 320 GB space, and I used 220 GB in a half year. My most games are downloads because of PlayStation Plus.

I prefer to buy games on disc, because I like to have a game in my hands, and you can play your new game much faster because you don't need to download a game and install it. Which one do you prefer, disc or download?

Written by: WZ

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