Gaming Reviews
AMD Radeon R9 285 Review
AMD’s latest graphics card, the Radeon R9 285, uses a brand-new core, dubbed Tonga. The R9 285 is designed to replace the R9 280 as well as bring the fight to Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 760, and it should play every game at 1080p and 1440p – although 4K will likely be beyond its abilities. AMD Radeon R9 285: Under the Hood The R9 285 is the only card to currently use the Tonga core. It’s a mid-range core, but it shares a crucial part of its architecture with AMD’s high-end 290-series parts, with the 1,792 stream processors split into a quartet of shader engines. That means the R9 285 has double the engines of the 280 it replaces – a move that should improve performance in a host of areas, from geometric and tessellation performance to general compute tasks. Tonga’s high-end DNA bodes well for ga...
Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments Review
Sherlock Holmes has never looked or played better than it does in Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments. The latest in developer Frogwares’ adventure series uses Unreal Engine 3 for a much-needed graphics upgrade. Crimes and Punishments takes place over the course of six perplexing, well-written cases that give Holmes lots of opportunities to do what Holmes does best: Snoop around crime scenes for clues, interrogate suspects, and talk down to just about everyone he meets. Murder is afoot in each of the cases, but that doesn’t stop them from being diverse; from an Egyptian-style ritual killing to a gruesome death by whaling harpoon the plots keep you riveted. And like a good winding mystery, the person who did it is rarely the one you suspect initially. The big new feature here is that th...
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor brings fun and life to the Tolkien universe
The game starts with you as Talion, a ranger of Gondor responsible for guarding the Black Gate of Mordor. In an assault by Sauron’s army you and your family are killed, but you find yourself returned to life and connected with a mysterious wraith who gives you magical powers. Mechanically, Mordor is not an original game. The exploration, climbing and stealth all feel like an Assassin’s Creed title, while the combat is lifted straight out of the Batman Arkham series. Even so, the game throws enough diverse tasks at the player to keep things feeling fresh and interesting. To me, that’s great because I enjoyed both. I loved the stealth and parkour of AC and the combat of Batman. Put that in the LoTR universe and you have a great recipe for a game. Shadow of Mordor is a LOT of fun ...