Precursors - White Gold - Released @ GamersGate

These came faster than I expected, so I missed their release a couple of days back. As promised, Precursors and Xenus 2: White Gold from Deep Shadows have both hit GamersGate. Some of our forum posters suggest there may be issues with ATI cards and the level of patching is unclear, so at $29.95 each, I'd suggest you do your due diligence. Still, I enjoyed Boiling Point (the original Xenus) enough back in the day, so they may be worth a look.
More information.

I picked up xenus 2, as I have become a huge STALKER fan and this game seemed to be of a similar style. There was some English voiceover in the intro movie, but other than that it seems that voices are disabled and it just displays English text for dialogue. The gameplay seems pretty good but there are definitely some issues:

1. The Gamersgate install doesn't work "out of the box". It seems to be some kind of issue with the activation/license key maybe? I had to use a nodvd crack to be able to play. Hopefully this is resolved soon.

2. The ATI graphics card issue came up with my 5750. There is a fix but apparently it removes the crosshairs from the sniper rifle which is a bit of a pain.

3. I am having sound issues that I am currently trying to sort out. There seem to be different channels for weather, footsteps, vehicle engines, gunshots, etc. Once and a awhile these channels cut out, which is kind of annoying. Trying to see if adjusting any of my sound card parameters or changing drivers will fix it.

In summary, I would definitely wait for Gamersgate to fix the activation issue. I haven't checked their forum to see if there is a fix yet. Also, since there is limited documentation with the game and limited English website information about the game, be prepared to have to figure some stuff out yourself.

30 bucks each !!?

thats a lot for one year old games!

White Gold seems unable to lauch on Vista and Windows 7 64bit. This can be fixed with a different .exe.

ATI cards suffer from flickering. This can also be solved.

I will not link to either of these fixes as I am not sure what the policy is here.

Screenshots and discussion of White Gold and Precursor can be found here:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=416756

turian said:

30 bucks each !!?

thats a lot for one year old games!

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One year old? At least White Gold was released '08, it's '11 soon I'm pretty sure Precursors came out late 2008 or early 2009 too..

Yeah way too expensive. Games like these ARE rare but they're old and they're kind of low budget titles.. It also seems so idiotic that the latest patches arent applied, they made voice overs but they didnt bother applying the latest bugfixes?

Its a little high , but look at it this way these games are probably better than any 60 dollar triple A title or some 15 dollar DLC for 39 sec of content.

Actually Precursors came out in late 2009 so one year is right for that one but White Gold is 2 1/2 years old.

Basically were getting an English version without the patches and there charging $30. Yeah I can wait longer when there cheaper or finally get patched.

Boiling Point was a complete mess, design and bug wise, so I guess I'll wait a couple months more before even considering buying these two games.

These games have had very few bugs and I have never even used the patches and never encountered one. It is definitely not like Boiling Point was when it came out.

I bought Precursors yesterday and i am having a blast.... definitely not aus buggy as boiling point... Its a good mixture of FPS and RPG with a lot of quests (most of them kill/fetch) but i really enjoy it.... and the translation ist not bad IMHO (though i am not native speaker)... most of the dialogue is without voice-over which I prefer over a bad english voiceover....

So I can definetely recommend it.......
L.

So how does the translation hold up? Is it 'just' wesp's [1] patch or done professionally?
[1] I don't mean to belittle his efforts, but it's quite annoying quality-wise. Like a RTwNP babelfish.

The English translation was already in the files and Wesp just released a patch that moves the English overwritting the Russian.

To be fair to Wesp he *just* copied over the english files that were already on the DVDs ( which was a major effort in itself) . I think the his newest (1.2) translation may have some more polish but since I've installed it in the middle of playing the games I have no idea.

GamersGate release of White Gold is utter shit. I am comparing it with my Russian retail copy and:

GG version has no manual in English
GG version is not patched
GG version is not fully voiced, just cutscenes
GG version has really, and I mean really crappy voiceover actors
GG version has problems with ambient sounds

sound file is 0,36GB compare to 1,72GB in Russian version

Haven`t had time to compare the actual translation in detail with wesp patch but I really hope he`ll continue his work and improve his translation even further as he can get the necessary files to compare the quality of translation.

I was able to fix the ATI flickering without the post process fix by modding the framerate in the video options INI file. Therefore you can keep all of the ironsights/scopes and weather effects with an ATI card.

I still haven't been unable to resolve the sound issue with sound cutting out. Dark Savant do you think the sound file size difference is just due to the fact of there being less voiceovers in the english version?

Screenshots and discussion of White Gold and Precursor can be found here:

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I bought Precursers and this forum has some very interesting info. The game has about 350 quests and I guess White Gold has about 450? These two have really flown over my radar and I can't wait for the download to finish. I will probably wait for White Gold to get fixed a bit more though

I wouldnt get my hopes up for any more patches for these games.

They have already sold more than 2000 copies of White Gold.

GFI announces 2011th copy of Xenus II White Gold sold


Moscow, Russia, December, 2010 – Game Factory Interactive (GFI), one of the leading Russian publishers and developers, is glad to announce that according to the Christmas weekend report 2011th copy of Xenus II White Gold has been digitally sold.

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wow, that was a bit unexpected. Here's to a least a little bit of hoping for a patch / support then