Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
For streams of all reviews please visit http://youtube.com/unclethursday or http://blip.tv/utgr
Lisencing
Uncle Thursday Game Reviews by Samuel Altersitz is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Rage Review
Review of Rage from id Software and Bethesda Softworks.
For streams of all reviews, please check out http://youtube.com/unclethursday or http://blip.tv/utgr
Monday, October 24, 2011
Batman: Arkham City Review
Review of Batman: Arkham City, developed by Rocksteady Studios, published by Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment.
Friday, September 23, 2011
Gears of war 3 Review
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
The final chapter of Delta Squad's battle against the Locust Horde and Lambent incursion is here! How does Gears of War 3 stand up? Find out.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Mortal Kombat Fatality Tutorial (Part 5)
The currently final tutorial for fatalities in the new Mortal Kombat. This part covers all 4 downloadable characters, plus the PlayStation 3 exclusive character, Kratos.
Just as a note, there are no alternate costumes (yet) for the DLC characters.
As a bonus I also show the babalities for Goro and Kintaro. I just couldn't babality Shao Khan to show that. There is a good video of his babality at http://youtu.be/DnzaQ4DtHLQ that you can see.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Mortal Kombat Fatality Tutorial (Part 4)
7 more fighters, 28 more finishing moves! All alternate costumes for each fighter shown. This completes all the characters that are on the retail disks for both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 systems.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Mortal Kombat Fatality Training (Part 3)
8 more fighters, 32 more finishing moves, all available costumes for the 8 fighters shown!
Please see Part 1 if you need information on the button numbers or meanings of the distances.
Monday, September 5, 2011
Mortal Kombat Fatality Tutorial (Part 2)
In this beginner friendly tutorial on the finishing moves of Mortal Kombat I show off all the finishing moves and costumes of 8 fighters.
If you need information on distances or button configuration, please see Part 1.
Mortal Kombat Fatality Turotial (Part 1)
In this beginner friendly tutorial on the finishing moves of Mortal Kombat I explain distances, the button numbers and where those buttons are on the default control scheme as well as show off all the finishing moves and costumes of four fighters.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
New Hardware and Software are Here!
So, I have new hardware and software installed for recording my game footage.
The new hardware is the Hauppauge HD PVR. I was planning on getting this item, anyway, but when my SlingBox Pro HD decided to brick itself, well, I knew I had to get it ASAP.
So, Friday morning after work, I headed out to Best Buy. Took a while to find the product. It was in the computer section, not the TV/Home Theater section. But it was well hidden. So, $213 later, I had it in my grubby little hands (after tax, it retails for $200).
Brought it home and set it up. I haven't used the component cables it came with, yet. I had the cables already running to the HDTV from my SlingBox, so I just used them as the output. But, good Christmas the cables they packed with this thing are long and sturdy. Also, since I am not planning on using it with anything but my game consoles, I didn't bother hooking up the IR Blaster for remote control access. It's easy enough to turn it on from it's front facing power switch.
Next I needed software to record from it, since the software it comes with is Windows only, and I am on an iMac. There are no free versions that work with the product, though. So I had a choice between two pay products.
The first and cheaper version is HDPVRCapture, which is written by an engineer at Hauppauge (I guess the company won't make native Mac software). It runs well enough, but it requires another third party software solution to view the incoming footage while you are recording, VLC Player. Granted, I already have VLC Player, so that wasn't a huge issue. However, it did cause VLC Player to crash a few times while I tried the demo (which allows 2 minutes of recording each recording). There was also a 4 or 5 second lag between what was on the screen and what was on the game that was very noticeable. While I dealt with the same long lag while using my SlingBox Pro HD, I remember how much of a pain it was to watch back and forth to see when to stop recording.
The other software was EyeTV 3. Unfortunately, there was no demo to try out. So, I instead went and looked at videos recorded with it as well as looked up any comparison reviews between the EyeTV software and the HDPVRCapture software. Everything pointed out that the two programs worked pretty much equally well at recording videos. But EyeTV had two major advantages. First, it has a built in viewer, so no additional third party software is needed. Second, the lag between what you are playing and what is on the computer is only 1 second. That's a huge difference.
The prices of the software are pretty different, though. HDPVR Capture is only $30 and you can use the software in demo mode for 2 minutes of footage at a time before you pay. EyeTV 3 is $80, with no demo available. After trying the demo mode of HDPVRCapture and having it crash VLC Player more than a few times, though, I decided the more expensive software was the way to go.
Don't think of this as me saying EyeTV 3 is the only way to go, however. Your mileage may vary; and if you feel that spending an extra $50 isn't worth it if you get a HD PVR with a Mac, then by all means check out and use HDPVRCapture. I just happened to have the money to spend.
Let me just say... WOW! The diference in video quality from my old setup of using the SlingBox Pro HD and one of two screen capture programs is like night and day. I'm now able to get 59.97 fps recording instead of the 30 fps max I could get before (while still keeping the file sizes of the raw movie files manageable); colors and darks are crisper; and the ability to automagically export to h.264 MP4s without taxing my system to death (the HD PVR has a built in h.264 encoder) is a godsend. So, now not only do I get higher quality videos, but the are exported much faster, too.
I also am trying out Adobe Premiere CS 5 over Final Cut Pro 7. And, so far, I like it better. It renders faster, it converts some things in the background so you don;t have to render as often, and it lets you preview most things without needing to render them, first. The only problem I had was figuring out how to do voice overs, at first. But once that was out of the way, I found it just as easy to use as FCP7 with my menial knowledge of video editing; only projects will be done faster.
So, UTGR is back up and running. The next major review I do will be Gears of War 3 for the Xbox 360. I know Batman: Arkham City will be another major review I do, as well. But there may be some other reviews hitting in between.
Here are some sample videos using the new setup:
The new hardware is the Hauppauge HD PVR. I was planning on getting this item, anyway, but when my SlingBox Pro HD decided to brick itself, well, I knew I had to get it ASAP.
So, Friday morning after work, I headed out to Best Buy. Took a while to find the product. It was in the computer section, not the TV/Home Theater section. But it was well hidden. So, $213 later, I had it in my grubby little hands (after tax, it retails for $200).
Brought it home and set it up. I haven't used the component cables it came with, yet. I had the cables already running to the HDTV from my SlingBox, so I just used them as the output. But, good Christmas the cables they packed with this thing are long and sturdy. Also, since I am not planning on using it with anything but my game consoles, I didn't bother hooking up the IR Blaster for remote control access. It's easy enough to turn it on from it's front facing power switch.
Next I needed software to record from it, since the software it comes with is Windows only, and I am on an iMac. There are no free versions that work with the product, though. So I had a choice between two pay products.
The first and cheaper version is HDPVRCapture, which is written by an engineer at Hauppauge (I guess the company won't make native Mac software). It runs well enough, but it requires another third party software solution to view the incoming footage while you are recording, VLC Player. Granted, I already have VLC Player, so that wasn't a huge issue. However, it did cause VLC Player to crash a few times while I tried the demo (which allows 2 minutes of recording each recording). There was also a 4 or 5 second lag between what was on the screen and what was on the game that was very noticeable. While I dealt with the same long lag while using my SlingBox Pro HD, I remember how much of a pain it was to watch back and forth to see when to stop recording.
The other software was EyeTV 3. Unfortunately, there was no demo to try out. So, I instead went and looked at videos recorded with it as well as looked up any comparison reviews between the EyeTV software and the HDPVRCapture software. Everything pointed out that the two programs worked pretty much equally well at recording videos. But EyeTV had two major advantages. First, it has a built in viewer, so no additional third party software is needed. Second, the lag between what you are playing and what is on the computer is only 1 second. That's a huge difference.
The prices of the software are pretty different, though. HDPVR Capture is only $30 and you can use the software in demo mode for 2 minutes of footage at a time before you pay. EyeTV 3 is $80, with no demo available. After trying the demo mode of HDPVRCapture and having it crash VLC Player more than a few times, though, I decided the more expensive software was the way to go.
Don't think of this as me saying EyeTV 3 is the only way to go, however. Your mileage may vary; and if you feel that spending an extra $50 isn't worth it if you get a HD PVR with a Mac, then by all means check out and use HDPVRCapture. I just happened to have the money to spend.
Let me just say... WOW! The diference in video quality from my old setup of using the SlingBox Pro HD and one of two screen capture programs is like night and day. I'm now able to get 59.97 fps recording instead of the 30 fps max I could get before (while still keeping the file sizes of the raw movie files manageable); colors and darks are crisper; and the ability to automagically export to h.264 MP4s without taxing my system to death (the HD PVR has a built in h.264 encoder) is a godsend. So, now not only do I get higher quality videos, but the are exported much faster, too.
I also am trying out Adobe Premiere CS 5 over Final Cut Pro 7. And, so far, I like it better. It renders faster, it converts some things in the background so you don;t have to render as often, and it lets you preview most things without needing to render them, first. The only problem I had was figuring out how to do voice overs, at first. But once that was out of the way, I found it just as easy to use as FCP7 with my menial knowledge of video editing; only projects will be done faster.
So, UTGR is back up and running. The next major review I do will be Gears of War 3 for the Xbox 360. I know Batman: Arkham City will be another major review I do, as well. But there may be some other reviews hitting in between.
Here are some sample videos using the new setup:
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Duke Nukem Forever Review
Review of Duke Nukem Forever
Developers: 3D Realms, Gearbox Software
Publisher: 2K Games
Developers: 3D Realms, Gearbox Software
Publisher: 2K Games
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Changing equipment soon.
So, while my current equipment can get the job done, I have decided that I need to change it out for new equipment.
Currently, I use a SlingBox Pro HD and the SlingPlayer app along with two screen capture programs, SnapzProX and Screenflick, to record my videos for the reviews. And, while these work, the quality isn't always where I would like it to be. Specifically in the frame rate and color/brightness categories.
Because the recording programs are screen capture programs, their frame rates are not always steady. If something affects the processor in the background, the frame rate captured can slow down. If the recorded movie is fairly large, the frame rates can become lower to save hard drive space.
There's aslo the issue of hard drie space needed for the raw movie files. Screenflick has very nice quality, but its raw movie files are freaking huge. SnapzProX has slightly less quality, but a more steady framerate and the raw movie files are smaller than Screenflick's... but unlike Screenflick, I get no indication of how large the current raw file being recorded is. And when I am recording at 1280x720 for 720p video, well, the raw movie files are still quite large.
Then there's the issue of compressing the raw movies down into an editable but smaller format. Screenflick can do this faster than SnapzProX, but it still takes time. SnapzProX also automatically deletes the raw file once it has compressed the movie down to an h.264 format; Screenflick does not delete the raw movies automatically-- and even after deleting them manually from within the program, it does not free up the hard drive space until the program is quit out of.
The biggest issue, however, is working with the different movie formats. Even though they are both set to compress down to h.264, Final Cut Pro sees them as different file formats. This means rendering time if I have footage from both programs being used. Final Cut accepts the Screenflick movies into it without any video rendering, just audio. However, for the SnapzProX movies, it requires rendering of both the audio and the video. And, for some God forsaken reason, Final Cut wants to take an hour or so to render 30 or so seconds worth of SnapzProX footage.
I can't realistically deal with these issues and try to get reviews out in a timely manner, especially with my work schedule where I can potentially work 6 days a week right now. For example, my Mortal Kombat review took me all day Saturday and some of the Sunday when it was posted to edit because of these issues. That's far too long.
So, I have decided that in the next month or so, I will be changing my equipment out. I will be moving from the SlingBox to the Happauge HDPVR. However, the HDPVR doesn't come with native Mac software to record with. Therefore I will also either be getting EyeTV 3 as a software solution, or HDPVR Recorder, both of which are for the Mac and both of which support the Happauge HDPVR. In fact, the HDPVR Recorder software was written by an employee at Happauge specifically so Mac users could still use the device (I Suppose Happauge didn't license the software from him because they feel there isn't a Mac market for their PVR) . Videos I have seen using these software solutions seem to be of excellent quality.
And there's an added bonus to the HDPVR as well. It has built in hardware encoding for h.264, freeing up system resources.
Though, truth be told, the Happauge HDPVR isn't really a true PVR. It has no internal hard drive. Instead, it can only record while hooked into a PC or Mac through USB and it uses the computer's hard drive as the recording destination. But, it does then pull back the m2ts file it makes and converts it using its own hardware to a h.264 file that can then be edited. This saves system resources on the computer, tremendously. The m2ts file can then be deleted if it isn't going to be used.
But, this isn't cheap. The HDPVR is going to run me about $200, just by itself. The software is going to be either $30 for the HDPVR Recorder or $80 for EyeTV 3. I want to get a better microphone, as well. That will be at least another $100. So, I will have to wait a few paychecks to have enough set aside in order to purchase the new equipment and software I need, while still having enough money to pay my bills and such.
So, with that said, I am hoping to have everything up and running under the new setup by the beginning of July, at the latest. Maybe not the new mic, but at least the HDPVR and recording software. Hopefully, after that, the recording and editing of my video reviews will go faster.
Currently, I use a SlingBox Pro HD and the SlingPlayer app along with two screen capture programs, SnapzProX and Screenflick, to record my videos for the reviews. And, while these work, the quality isn't always where I would like it to be. Specifically in the frame rate and color/brightness categories.
Because the recording programs are screen capture programs, their frame rates are not always steady. If something affects the processor in the background, the frame rate captured can slow down. If the recorded movie is fairly large, the frame rates can become lower to save hard drive space.
There's aslo the issue of hard drie space needed for the raw movie files. Screenflick has very nice quality, but its raw movie files are freaking huge. SnapzProX has slightly less quality, but a more steady framerate and the raw movie files are smaller than Screenflick's... but unlike Screenflick, I get no indication of how large the current raw file being recorded is. And when I am recording at 1280x720 for 720p video, well, the raw movie files are still quite large.
Then there's the issue of compressing the raw movies down into an editable but smaller format. Screenflick can do this faster than SnapzProX, but it still takes time. SnapzProX also automatically deletes the raw file once it has compressed the movie down to an h.264 format; Screenflick does not delete the raw movies automatically-- and even after deleting them manually from within the program, it does not free up the hard drive space until the program is quit out of.
The biggest issue, however, is working with the different movie formats. Even though they are both set to compress down to h.264, Final Cut Pro sees them as different file formats. This means rendering time if I have footage from both programs being used. Final Cut accepts the Screenflick movies into it without any video rendering, just audio. However, for the SnapzProX movies, it requires rendering of both the audio and the video. And, for some God forsaken reason, Final Cut wants to take an hour or so to render 30 or so seconds worth of SnapzProX footage.
I can't realistically deal with these issues and try to get reviews out in a timely manner, especially with my work schedule where I can potentially work 6 days a week right now. For example, my Mortal Kombat review took me all day Saturday and some of the Sunday when it was posted to edit because of these issues. That's far too long.
So, I have decided that in the next month or so, I will be changing my equipment out. I will be moving from the SlingBox to the Happauge HDPVR. However, the HDPVR doesn't come with native Mac software to record with. Therefore I will also either be getting EyeTV 3 as a software solution, or HDPVR Recorder, both of which are for the Mac and both of which support the Happauge HDPVR. In fact, the HDPVR Recorder software was written by an employee at Happauge specifically so Mac users could still use the device (I Suppose Happauge didn't license the software from him because they feel there isn't a Mac market for their PVR) . Videos I have seen using these software solutions seem to be of excellent quality.
And there's an added bonus to the HDPVR as well. It has built in hardware encoding for h.264, freeing up system resources.
Though, truth be told, the Happauge HDPVR isn't really a true PVR. It has no internal hard drive. Instead, it can only record while hooked into a PC or Mac through USB and it uses the computer's hard drive as the recording destination. But, it does then pull back the m2ts file it makes and converts it using its own hardware to a h.264 file that can then be edited. This saves system resources on the computer, tremendously. The m2ts file can then be deleted if it isn't going to be used.
But, this isn't cheap. The HDPVR is going to run me about $200, just by itself. The software is going to be either $30 for the HDPVR Recorder or $80 for EyeTV 3. I want to get a better microphone, as well. That will be at least another $100. So, I will have to wait a few paychecks to have enough set aside in order to purchase the new equipment and software I need, while still having enough money to pay my bills and such.
So, with that said, I am hoping to have everything up and running under the new setup by the beginning of July, at the latest. Maybe not the new mic, but at least the HDPVR and recording software. Hopefully, after that, the recording and editing of my video reviews will go faster.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Mortal Kombat (2011) Review (Xbox 360/PS3)
Mortal Kombat (20011) review for both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3
Developer: NetherRealm Studios
Publisher: Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Mortal Kombat Demo (PS3) Impressions
Quick thoughts on the Mortal Kombat demo available for the PS3.
Developer: Netherrealm Studios
Publisher: Warner Brothers Games
Review written, footage recorded, editing and voice over by Samuel Altersitz (Uncle Thursday)
The original content in this video is copyright 2011 Samuel Altersitz
Uncle Thursday Game Reviews by Samuel Altersitz is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
All game footage and sound used in this video is used under the Fair Use Doctrine with regards to "The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole" as well as "excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment." All trademarks and copyrights not belonging to Samuel Altersitz remain the property of their respective owners.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Bulletstorm Review
Developer: Epic Games/People Can Fly
Publisher: EA
Footage Recorded, voice over and editing by Samuel Altersitz (Uncle Thursday)
Run Time: 5:46
File Size: 287 MB
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Batman: Arkham Asylum Review
Review of Batman: Arkham Asylum
Developer: Rocksteady
Publisher: Eidos/Warner Brother Games
Footage recorded, voice over and editing by Sam Altersitz (Uncle Thursday)
Friday, February 11, 2011
DC Universe Online Review (PS3)
Review of DC Universe Online (PlayStation 3 version) by Sony Online Entertainment and Warner Brothers Games.
Footage recorded, voice over and editing done by Sam Altersitz (Uncle Thursday).
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Thoughts on my first real attempt at using Final Cut Pro
So, episode 1 of UTGR is in the can and posted. It hasn't gotten a ton of hits, but that's probably to be expected until more people hear about it.
It's been a long time coming, actually. I tried working on it with Final Cut Express, which I had pre-installed on my iMac when I bought it, but what Apple doesn't tell you is that Express is mainly kind of like a glorified iMovie. Sure, it has most of the bells and whistles Final Cut Pro has; but it has a massive drawback in that it can ONLY work with digital video camera formats. No .mov, no H.263 or H.264, nothing. Therefore, in order to try and edit anything in real time, you have to have it either in a DV format or spend literally HOURS re-rendering from whatever format you have as an original into a DV format to work with.
This pretty much makes Final Cut Express a non-functional video editor for my purposes.
Now that I have Final Cut Pro, things are different.
And, without all the tedious hours of re-rendering, I found Final Cut Pro to be exceptionally easy to use in its basic ways.
So I set up a new project, imported my recorded game footage by dragging all the movies I recorded into the project, and got to work. Working with my first clip, I set the in and out point and dragged it to the timeline, at which point FCP said the timeline wasn't in the same format and I should automagically make it the same format, which I did. At that point, the video was able to be modified in real time without any rendering. The audio needed to be rendered, but that took about 10 seconds.
Since all my clips were recorded in the same format, this was the same for every clip. This made learning some of the finer points of FCP a lot easier.
I quickly learned how to adjust the volume of the clips so it was less than my voiceover, and learned to ensure that I didn't put the clips in a spot where their audio would break up my voice over audio, which I had pre-recorded and imported. In hindsight, since FCP has a record voiceover option, I will probably just use that from now on for a few reasons.
First, rendering the MP3 I used for my voiceover seems to have added some artifacts into it which were not in the original recording. Second, if I didn't place the clips in the correct part of the timeline, they would break up my MP3 and I would have to manually set it back into position. Third, rather than try to match the clips I make to the audio I pre-recorded, which didn't always work as I had intended, I can instead work with the clips I have in the length I feel is appropriate, and record my voiceover to them. This may mean slightly longer reviews in some cases, but with more practice I feel I can shorten clips down to exactly what I need to keep the reviews concise, yet informative.
I was also able to test layering of video, which is actually how I did the opening titles; by layering the larger UTGR font typing out over top of the smaller font printing out the entire words. Also in the opening sequence of the review, I layered another clip over top of the Unitology message and stripped its audio out so that it didn't interfere with the Unitology message. Lucikly, I also happened to place the clip that went over the Unitology message precisely where I wanted it on my first drop. Beginner's luck, I suppose.
All in all, I found the actual real time editing to be a lot easier than I thought it would be. It took only about 2 hours to edit the entire video, which may sound like a lot, but editing always takes a while. It just gets faster once one learns the tricks to speed it up and as one becomes more comfortable editing.
The Dead Space 2 review is a little longer than it possibly needed to be. For most games, I should be able to do the complete review in 5 to 6 minutes. I pretty much need to cut down on how wordy I get when writing my review script. Again, a learning process. As time goes on and I do more reviews, I'm sure I'll find a happy medium between video length and what I say in the reviews.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Dead Space 2 Review
Dead Space 2 Review
Publisher : EA
Developer: Visceral Games
Footage recorded, edited and voice over by Sam Altersitz (Uncle Thursday)
Please note this is my first time using Final Cut Pro, so any thoughts on how to improve for the future are welcome.
Run Time 8:38
File Size 563 MB
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