Just finished playing Half-Life 2 – The Lost Coast and I was impressed.
For those of you who may have been living in a cupboard somewhere sinister (or not), HL2 – The Lost Coast is what those in the know call a tech demo. Basically, it shows how gorgeous HDR or High Dynamic Range lighting looks. There are literally loads of websites out there that explain this in greater depth, but suffice it to say that people, rocks, water and buildings all look much more realistic with it running. I thought HDR looked great in Far Cry, but in HL2TLC it looks absolutely superb. The monastry at the end looks really nice with the light streaming through the window and the transition pieces where you move from very dark to very light work very well as you are dazzled by the changes in lighting. Even being in a dark corridor and turning on your torch makes you wince slightly which I can see being used by various developers to great effect.
Well done, Valve, please incorporate this in your future games. *big grin*

Just played the demo of F.E.A.R (First Encounter Assault Recon) and I have to be honest and say that I shat my pants. Pure and simple. The whole atmosphere is incredibly dark and the sound effects and music – especially the music – really keep you on the edge of your seat. It doesn’t help in many respects that my new über sound card, the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty Edition, really does give me eXtreme FIdelity surround sound through my headphones i.e. What was that? It was behind me – aaargh! etc etc.
First moment of genuine poo in pants moment was about 90 seconds in and happened last night. I went into the sub-basement of the complex I am suppossed to be penetrating and an air vent next to me shut when I looked at it and the music went da-da-la! in a horror movie stylee. That was it, but it was enough. I moved forward, rats ran at my feet and a little girl giggled somewhere. I went cold, my head stubble went on end, hit ESC, saved the game and called it a night. Yes, I am an adult but even I don’t like having nightmares – especially as the wife tends to find me standing next to the bedroom window when I have one in a real nice Blair Witch moment for her.
There were a few more scary moment in-game such as more giggles, voices in my head, the sound of my in-game breathing and heart rate, all designed to bring on a real feeling of terror. The final one just before the demo ends really was the pièce de résistance, reminding me of the whole freaky house of horror dream sequence in Max Payne 2, I am running between two doors with the little girl giggling and telling me I am gonna die or something. Truely scary.
It doesn’t help that the little girl in the game reminds me waaaaay too much of the little girl in The Ring – a film which I realised that I didn’t want to watch soon after the girl with the weird face in the wardrobe and which I turned off as soon as the heroine started watching the video in the log cabin. *shudder*
Maybe I shouldn’t buy this, because I never got that far past the inital outbreak in Doom 3. I was too scared.