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The visuals within the game are displayed via high-resolution manipulated photo-realistic textures that have been sourced from photos taken around the world (Rage told us), alongside some hand drawn artwork. With Bump mapping enabled, the textures can then be rendered to show off damage done by some of your own handy work. Very impressive indeed. But don't let all of the above frighten you too much, the game plays fine on a Pentium II 233MHz with a Voodoo2. Obviously with a Pentium III, the Katmai instructions enabled and an nVidia TNT, the game not only flies but also looks that bit more 'perty' in 32-bit color.
To back up the visuals, Rage has also been sure to cater for those of you lucky enough to own advanced 3D sound cards. 32-Channel audio playback, advanced Caching of audio data and a high sample playback rate for all sounds should keep you happy, Always 16bit samples. Redbook audio has been used for the in-game music and DirectSound, DirectSound3D, Creative Labs (EAX), Aureal A3D 1.0 are ALL currently supported. If the volume is turned up, the explosions and 'whooshing' sounds of missiles, when coupled with the techno music, do make for some serious 'art of noise' style effects.
As mentioned earlier, Expendable is quite possibly one of the more gory games yet to appear on the PC bar Postal (that pathetic excuse for a game). Naturally with all those weapons at your disposal things are going to get gory. When showed to the same powers that be who banned Quake 2, you just know that Expendable will most likely have them up in arms. In fact the opening sequence has had to be changed already for OEMs whom have signed it up in a bundle deal. We've seen the original and- pretty it isn't. Umbilical cords, hot-irons, human flesh, private parts being pulled at, need we go on? Changing the blood to a green color won't do it this time for our German friends…
After you've gotten used to the 'blood showers', the next thing you notice are the astounding and rather over the top weapons that shoot anything from garden peas up to great big nuclear missiles. We'll leave the obviously different levels of damage to your imagination (or better still take a look at the shots) but needless to say the end result is always utter carnage.
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