Game Lens is a game photography feature. I hack, mod, tweak, and stress games (and myself) to not only make them as beautiful as possible; but to explore their environments free of HUD, overlays, and physical confinements; and take interesting, high-resolution screenshots.
Alice: Madness Returns
This is a game I feel has been under-appreciated somewhat, it drags on for a little too long for its own good, the gameplay isn’t anything innovative, (and aiming in particular is annoying) but it’s still quite enjoyable. It flows nicely; with different sections and “worlds” each having a distinct visual design, and they are broken up with trips to the real world inbetween (or as real as it can be in Alice’s head.) It has quite a pretty and interesting art style, despite being a little inconsistent at times. It was a real joy to be able to fly around and explore it on my own terms, and it was a little difficult to pick 4 shots to display here out of the 41 I saved (the rest can be seen on my flickr account, of course!).
“All In” — Download: 1920×1080, 2560×1440
“The Fallen” — Download: 1920×1080, 2560×1440
“Falling Dreams” — Download: 1920×1080, 2560×1440
“Waking up to a Nightmare” — Download: 1920×1080, 2560×1440
Settings and Tweaks: 3449×1940 rendering, Injected Ultra SMAA + Standard In-Game AA, Forced Ambient Occlusion, noclip, static camera, timestop, custom FOV.
Counter Strike: Global Offensive
A strange game to be shooting, maybe, but I like to challenge myself with the Source Engine. As with all Source Engine games, CS:GO sometimes looks lovely, and other times looks like it’s been pulled straight out of 2004. I did enjoy going through all the maps though; there’s quite a nice variety of locations which led to some interesting screenshot possibilities.
“Still Waters” — Download: 1920×1080, 2560×1440
“Dust” — Download: 1920×1080, 2560×1440
Settings and Tweaks: 3449×1940 rendering, 16xQ AA, vignette disabled, noclip, hidden HUD & view model.
Doom 3
This old Gem has received a bit of a makeover in the past few years in the form of modifications, particularly Sikkmod, which adds such shiny goodies as HDR, SSAO, Soft Shadowing, and Depth of Field, all easily adjustable through an in-game menu. If none of that means anything to you, let’s just say that it looks great! Despite still suffering from low poly character models even when decked out with mods, it mostly succeeds in bringing the industrial, bleak, depressing atmosphere of the Mars space station into 2012. In fact, it looks a lot better than the Doom 3 BFG Edition that just came out this week. This makes it worth playing through this fun, shallow jumpathon of a game once again, if your computer can handle the bells and whistles.
“Corridor Crawl” — Download: 1920×1080, 2560×1440
Settings and Tweaks: 2160p rendering (tiledshot), 16x AA + Edge AA, Sikkmod 1.2, Wulfen Textures 2.0 + Monoxead’s Textures, noclip, timestop, hidden HUD & weapon model, custom FOV.
Want more pretty pictures? Check out my Flickr here.
