HP Fansite

Battlefield Bad Company 2 (Retail) Initial Impressions

Bad Company 2 main menu!

So I’ve been indulging a little guilty pleasure lately, playing Battlefield Bad Company 2, and delaying the HP Elitebook 8440p review. But rest assured, it was well worth the small compromise (plus, the review of the Elitebook 8440p will be out later this week). I’d like to take my big pair of headphones off and some time off the game to share a few impressions I’ve had so far about the game:

• The retail box is pretty
• The very FIRST map you play in single player is set in the World War 2 era. You don’t get your full set of gear and gadgets at first, destroyable elements are present along with a few explosions but not yet to the ‘full’ extent of modern day maps – think of the graphics in the WW2 map as a marriage between Call of Duty: World at War and Crysis.
• Despite the idea of the first map being set in World War 2, you still get 1) the rest of the game set in ‘present’ modern times and 2) you still get to man a machine gun mounted on the back of some Japanese truck while getting driven around by your AI teammates at full speed!
• Absolutely LOVE the vast variety of destructible elements in the game. Pretty much anything you see can be blown into shreds using explosives, or torn through using your gun!
• Optimization seems to have been done since “Beta” versions and the game now runs smoothly on many systems, including a Core 2 Duo wielding notebook. Nice! I also noticed a decent performance boost if you use a quad core system and/or graphics card supporting DX11 (like the ATI one used in the 2010 Envy 15)
• Again, if you have at least just a decent/midrange laptop, you CAN run this game well (albeit not at high settings) so don’t fret
• Multiplayer is as promising as it looked/looks in early videos around the net. Try the real deal in the retail game and it’s even more awesome (I’m gonna keep that a bit of a surprise till my “final” review of the game which I’ll be posting in the next 24 hours)

More to come in my final review of Bad Company 2 coming really soon!!!!

HP Slate to be cheaper than Apple iPad equivalent

In a report today by the Wall Street Journal online, there’s news that HP plans to introduce their HP Slate at a price lower than the Apple iPad (3G connectivity version) of the same size (presumably built-in memory size, not physical size). Isn’t competition great?! Technically, the HP Slate (which I’d like to remind you, will run on full-fledge Windows 7) would still be a better deal than the iPad (which is just an oversized iPod Touch with iPhone OS plus a few additional features for the larger display), even if priced slightly higher, because of versatility of Windows 7 versus a mobile OS. But I suppose this move is even better, to prevent the dreaming ‘iSheep’ from just blindly buying the iPad because it’s “cheaper”…

Comparing the HP Slate and Apple iPad, of similar memory and price, the HP Slate is the obvious victor with Windows 7. Imagine all the things you could do with a full fledged OS (AKA the same things you currently do on your desktop/notebook, minus playing Crysis and running 3Ds MAX), compared to the mobile OS used by the iPad. Now imagine the HP Slate being even cheaper than the iPad, what a great deal that would be! For the record, the Apple iPad will sell for $629, $729 and $829 for 16 GB, 32 GB and 64 GB 3G-enabled versions. Oh remember to check out a comparison between the two slate form factor devices in the HP Slate vs Apple iPad article I posted last month!

Super HP belated Valentine’s day rumors roundup

Okay, fine, so this may have little to do with Valentine’s day… but let’s spread some love for the several HP notebooks that have been and continue to stay elusive.

Elitebook 8740w: So it seems a lot of people have a couple of grand lying around and are all set to drop it on this long-awaited Mobile Workstation on the precise millisecond it comes out. Question is WHEN?! There was a gap of roughly one month between when the Elitebook 6930p and 8530/8730w series were announced back in 2008. It’s been over a month since the Elitebook 8440 and 8540 models were announced at CES 2010, so where is the 8740w?! (And oh, before I forget 8740w, where are your smaller friends as well?). I suspect the Elitebook 8740w’s elusiveness has something to do with ATI launching FirePro mobile, HP launching DreamColor 2 displays or both. Most likely DreamColor 2 is the culprit. You see, DreamColor displays are a wonderful technology that you don’t see on notebooks everyday… so what a great party/bash it would be for HP to launch the flagship Elitebook 8740w FEATURING DreamColor 2?! It’s very, very, very likely that the 8740w and DreamColor 2 will debut hand-in-hand, at least that’s the way speculation seems to be pointing…

Envy 14 and Envy 17: Cooler than ever. Not that the Envy 13 and 15 aren’t cool enough, in the cool dude sense of the word, because they look awesome. Word is the Envy 14 and Envy 17 will not only LOOK awesome, but stay cool as well… as in, not burn up your palms and thighs as you work on an Office 2010 document or play Crysis 2 at high settings in the future.

Envy 17’s first sale?! Everyone rush out and check your local consumer electronics store(s) now! An enthusiastic reader claims (multiple times) that he’s bought an Envy 17 less than a week ago, from some place that he would’ve never gone to buy a computer from (he doesn’t mention where) and that he got a good deal on it. In another of his comments, he emphasizes that it has a “number pad”, though little else is mentioned. False alarm? Or could someone else really hit the jackpot and find a store selling the Envy 17? Pictures or it didn’t happen!

Shifting things around: If anyone has noticed, HP has shifted their new 8440 and 8540 forwards on their Elitebook page, and relegated the 6930p, 8530p and 8540w to the back seat (or right edge of the page). Perhaps this is a sign of the Elitebook 8740w to come? Or is this just HP doing some website spring cleaning, again?

Okay, I’m done shifting through rumors and whatnot for the day. Back to putting on the finishing touches to my Envy 15 + ATI Mobility Radeon 5830 review…

I’ve got Left4Dead 2… and it loves to crash!

Hope everyone had a marvelous Thanksgiving and Black Friday weekend. I got one of 2009’s smash hit (to be) FPS titles over the weekends – Left4Dead 2 for PC. One word to sum up gameplay: Awesome! The graphics are not particularly game changing or Crysis-like, but nevertheless still mindblowing. Valve did a good job proving that Left4Dead 2 is more than just a “DLC” that could’ve been applied to the original Left4Dead. New zombie models, plenty of new weapons (including a large host of melee weapons), more graphical detail, enhanced game mechanics (the AI Director is now really sneaky, having the ability to vary certain parts of maps and paths) and new maps; complete with different kinds of weather, terrain and all. I really was shocked when I first opened the game today and played the first scene of the Dead Center campaign – and by the time I got into the first saferoom, I thought to myself – wow there’s a lot to learn and re-learn in Left4Dead 2 (despite me being a seasoned Left4Dead 1 player). There are some really challenging challenges, such as getting through the burning hotel covered in thick smoke that hinders visibility.

I might do a little review write up and bring my Left4Dead fansite back from the dead soon, but what’s stopping me now is the fact that Left4Dead 2 just LOVES to crash. No idea why, but it’s NOT my computer’s fault – definitely a glitch or two on Valve’s side. Understandably, I’m not fortunate enough to own something like a HP Z800 Workstation: In fact, I don’t even have a desktop and rely on my personal, totally UN-gaming adept laptop (and sometimes those of friends’/review units) to have a ton of gaming fun. But I feel that Left4Dead 2 actually runs SMOOTHER than the original Left4Dead 1, for some mysterious reason. I can light up tons of fires, handle hordes of a couple of dozen zombies and even stare pipe bombs in the eye as they explode… and the game still runs smoothly and doesn’t crash (L4D 1 used to crash intermittently during graphics intensive parts of campaigns). If it doesn’t crash during graphics intensive scenes, when DOES it crash?! Answer: When you do certain things. Funny thing is Left4Dead 2 consistently crashes each and every time I finish a scenario. And it gets annoying that I have to restart the game after EVERY map (grrr!!). The game also crashes when anyone kills a Witch, anytime. So I have to sneak around Witches and hope that the Survivor bots do too. Valve has acknowledged the crash issue, triggered by certain events, and I really, really, REALLY hope they come up with a solution/patch FAST!

What’s not to like about Left4Dead 2? Well, based on my 6 hours with the game so far, I have spotted a few issues. The water textures and splashes look quite unrealistic (I think Call of Duty 5: World at War did a much better job at water and liquid textures). There are some sounds and textures that have been ‘recycled’ from the original Left4Dead 1, not that I mind, but it just seems to hint that the game isn’t a complete revamp/overhaul compared to the original. The musical cues of some of the Special Infected are just too ‘close’ and similar to the background music, making it difficult to distinguish between the two. I also noticed a few other (smaller) annoyances but I don’t think they affect gameplay much, so yeah, I’ll probably talk about them once I write a review of the game (that is, once the game crash issue is fixed)

Oh, I also miss the original survivors from Left4Dead 1: Bill, Francis, Zoey and Louis. I think Coach and Nick from Left4Dead 2 are both interesting, but I’m somehow not a big fan of the other two: Rochelle and Ellis (but that’s just me). I hope they bring the original survivors back at some point in time: either via a DLC for Left4Dead 2 and/or in Left4Dead 3! Preferably both. Oh, did I mention Sonja Kinski (Zoey’s facial model) is absolutely georgeous? I think I might have a fondness for her =). Bill rocks with his lines too, and he looks like George Clooney (which reminds me of the excellent Ocean’s 11/12/13 series). There, two more reasons that I’d like to see the original Survivors BACK!

And let’s not forget about Left4Dead 1 either – I’d like to see Valve continue to release new maps and features for the game. I’m still gonna play Left4Dead 1, alongside Left4Dead 2.