After 27 hours of more rage, the PC demo of Left 4 Dead 2 finally hit just after midnight (GMT time) and I’ve given it a quick go. So far the game is looking fantastic, there’s no doubt it’s similar to the original but this one seems somewhat more polished.

The graphics appear to be more shiny and zombies now take visual damage if you shoot them but don’t drop them. I’ve noticed on a few occasions that some of them are still running around with a great big hole in their chest after being scratched by the shotgun.

I had FRAPS running for my first go so here are a few videos after the jump!

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Oh my god, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much rage on an Internet forum. Today was supposed to be the early release of the Left 4 Dead 2 demo for those who have pre-orders for the game, while XBox 360 owners got their greasy mitts on it first thing this morning PC gamers had to wait until 8pm.

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During the last five years of being on broadband I haven’t ever had any regard for the download limits put in place by my ISP. This is mainly because I’ve been on the unlimited usage package – which has turned out not to be so unlimited after all. As for the very first time I have been slapped with a Fair Usage email by my provider moaning that I’ve downloaded 80GB this month and if I hit 100GB they will proceed to slow my connection during peak times (5pm – 12am).

Y’know I could’ve swore I’ve downloaded more than this in a single month before, especially when I used to download loads of anime, particularly Bleach (huge series).

Anyway, how did I hit this limit? Well, lets say Windows updates (twice!), downloading Steam games (twice, again – also includes Unreal Tournament 3 which is 8GB a pop, ouch!), Youtube videos in HD and of course, good ol’ torrents have contributed nicely.

Now the question is, in the remaining six days of this month, do I slow down my usage and risk slow internets or do I continue as I mean to go on? Weeeeeell, the latest episode of Dexter will be available tonight.

The clocks have gone back and the evenings are going to start getting dark and, but who cares when you’ve got the Left 4 Dead 2 demo to keep you occupied as Winter draws closer.

The pre-load on Steam has begun and I’ve got mine downloaded:

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The demo is out on the 27th October 2009 on Steam for those of you who have pre-ordered with the mere mortals getting it a week later.

Yay for finger prints! :D

My copy of Windows 7 showed up today, which was a bit of surprise considering the postal strike that is currently underway. I guess not as many of the posties were for it as first thought.

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Postal strikes are bad, but today quite frankly I can see an upside to it for my copy of Forza 3 arrived from GAME three days early!

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I’m now the owner of the PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV and the results weren’t too bad actually. The game’s performance on my rig is roughly the same as its Xbox 360 counterpart. I’m running the game at 1680×1050 resolution with majority of the settings as high as they can go. The only thing I’m holding back on is draw distance, which is gauged on the amount of video memory you have. My card has 1GB onboard but I’m only utilising 890mb which translates to 32/33 on the draw distance meter.

I ran Fraps to see what my performance was, here’s the results.

Safehouse areas – 60fps steady
Low traffic areas (i.e. the first time you come out of the Safehouse) – 40 – 50fps
General – 30-40fps

As you can see, these framerates are very playable and it’ll get better if they somehow incorporate Crossfire/SLI support in a future patch.

The only time I encountered an unplayable framerate was when I was on foot in one of the parks and the framerate slipped to around 15-20fps. The strange thing about this was it calmed down once you had Niko jump into a car.

I may overclock my processor in future to see if there’s much of a difference in performance.

I obtained a copy (hehe) of Far Cry 2 last night and tested it on the new rig. My PC can handle this game at the top settings available under Direct X 9 (1680×1050, Ultra High and 8xAA) and it moves along at a smooth 40-50fps.

Next up, I’m going to install Grand Theft Auto IV, a very CPU intensive game and see how that one works out!

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I love my new PC!

Here are the pics of my new baby that I finished building on the 3rd October. After a week of use it’s still working fine (which surprises me). It runs Call of Duty 4 and Left 4 Dead really well, which was er… kind of to be expected and it also handles its own against Crysis on top settings.

The reason why I say top settings is because I’m still currently using Windows XP Professional 32-bit, in a few weeks my copy of Windows 7 will arrive and I’ll be taking advantage of the 64-bit capability along with the DirectX 11-enabled graphics.

The line got fixed but much to my dismay my Internet connection was still crap. After much frustration and reading around I found that a 2 meg IP Profile had been applied to my connection, which essentially meant my connection had been capped. I then proceeded to find out why and learnt that it was applied due to the fault meaning the line wouldn’t get overloaded, it also wouldn’t be taken off until 72 hours after the fault had been repaired.

72 hours have now come and gone, behold my new speed test result!

It’s still a bit iffy, but is much better than it was. I’m also currently downloading Unreal Tournament 3 from Steam and I’m hitting speeds of 740kb/s.

Awesomes!