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Xbox 360 Elite Confirmed & Ridiculed 09:28 pm
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- Consoles: Xbox 360
(83 comments)
On the off-chance you thought the Xbox 360 "Elite" was just an April Fools Day joke in Game Informer, Microsoft has officially unveiled the new system this evening. Highlights include a 120 gig hard drive, HDMI output, the whole "everything is black" thing, plus a nice, fat, inflated price tag of $479.99. To add insult to injury, it comes with a not-so-elite Xbox Live! Silver membership.
Here's how Sony replied to the "Elite" 360:
"We think every PlayStation 3 owner should have an "elite" experience, which is why we include an internal hard drive and HDMI output in every PS3 we sell, along with the 50 GB of storage capacity on a high definition Blu-ray disc. Sony has been the strongest advocate of high definition as the future of next-generation gaming. This requires high-definition components, including HDMI output, and large storage devices to deliver and store all that rich and vivid HD content. Microsoft's announcement today not only legitimizes Sony's PS3 strategy, it moves us closer to adopting universal standards in the area of high definition gaming that will benefit game developers and ultimately the end user."
Top 25 Most Awesomest Game Covers 08:25 pm
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- Games: General News
(10 comments)
IGN has an amusing new top-25 list today, this time for the best of the worst game boxes from throughout history. From Fabio ("I can't believe its not butter") to ShaqFu, it's all in there... This week's topic had so many great selections that we expanded the list from the standard 10 picks to a whopping 25. What topic could get us so excited that we'd fatten our list? The worst (or is it best?) box art in game history! Box art has long been one of the surest ways to market a game. A great cover can illicit a purchase even from a knowledgeable gamer. Cover art has evolved over the years and so there aren't nearly as many choices from modern games. Good thing so many covers from the early days of gaming were terrible. It was not easy narrowing the field down to just 25, but we did our best. Enjoy.
Team Fortress 2 Interview 08:09 pm
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- Games: Action
(3 comments)
The gang over at Game Informer interviewed a few of the guys at Valve to learn more about Team Fortress 2. While the graphics are on the cartoony side, the visuals aren't going to be cheap looking:
GI: You guys are going to be support the lower-end cards and the higher-end cards. What about for the people who have plunked down for the DX10 cards? What are people with DX10 cards going to see differently than the people who don't have it?
Walker: The recent facial-technology stuff, which you'll need a high-end card to be able to see. And then of course the auto LOD and stuff like that, which you don't need to do on the higher cards. We have upped our highest-resolution textures for TF2, they're higher than any product we've shipped previously. In the past, what you needed to have the best textures, the highest-resolution textures, has increased. In TF2, to get the highest-resolution textures, you'll need one of the more recent cards, as well. You have like 768 megs of RAM in the cards these days, and we will actually use that in TF2. So there's definitely some stuff there for those guys.
Word is the game will ship with six maps; three classic remakes, plus three new ones.
NVIDIA Working on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Drivers 08:02 pm
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- Games: Action
(7 comments)
Firing Squad has learned that NVIDIA is working on some new forceware drivers for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. We've learned that NVIDIA is hard at work on developing a new ForceWare driver for GeForce 8800 users that will bring performance enhancements as well as SLI support for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. One thing we've already noticed in our S.T.A.L.K.E.R. testing is that the GeForce 8800 GTX doesn't perform that much faster than the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB with today's 97.92 driver, so hopefully the upcoming driver will really allow the GeForce 8800 GTX to flex its muscles. The new driver will hopefully be available sometime next week, we're keeping our fingers crossed. Wouldn't be swell if SLI, oh I dunno.. just worked all the time?
CNC 3 and Shivering Isles Interviews 07:58 pm
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- Games: General News
(0 comments)
The latest Gaming Steve podcast has interviews with EA's Ameri Ajani about Command & Conquer 3, plus also a chat with Bethesda's Bruce Nesmith who talks about The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles.
CNC 3 v1.1 Patch 07:19 pm
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- Games: Real-Time Strategy
(0 comments)
The Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars v1.1 patch is now live. I'm assuming you can grab it via the in-game updater thingie (I won't have my collector's ed until tomorrow, so I'm not sure how they handle patches yet). Here are the change notes:
Version 1.1 Launcher File - March, 2007
============================
This patch for Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars fixes several bugs and exploits:
Exploits
Scrin Mastermind's Teleport Units ability maximum range reduced.
GDI Engineers, Nod Saboteurs, and Scrin Assimilators can no longer capture structures when under the effects of the Scrin's Phase Field ability.
Optimizations
Improved video playback on low-end system configurations.
Balance Changes
Scrin Storm Column cost / build time increased to 3,000 credits / 30 seconds.
Scrin Buzzer health reduced to 75 and weapon damage changed to SNIPER.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an error that would occasionally result in a crash in Nod vs. Nod matches on the multiplayer map Deadly Sertao.
Fixed issues with automated map transfer ability in multiplayer.
Fixed an error that would sometimes cause a Commentator's telestrator drawings to not erase when intended during BattleCast matches.
Fixed issues with replay file playback.
Fixed placeholder text and chat log errors with the Comrade in- game chat window.
Other Changes
References to Nod's "Avatar Warmech" unit have been changed to "Avatar".
The next, major update will be released in April.
Oblivion: Shivering Isles (PC) Ships Out 03:12 pm
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- Games: Role-Playing
(4 comments)
The PC version of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - Shivering Isles has shipped off to stores today, offering PC gamers the chance to pick up a boxed copy of the expansion. Yesterday, the 360 version hit Live, where its offered as a digital purchase only, as expansion packs don't get any love on consoles. Bethesda Softworks, a ZeniMax Media company, and 2K today announced that The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles, the official expansion for the award-winning The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, is now shipping to retail stores throughout North America for Windows. Shivering Isles is also available today on Xbox 360™ video game and entertainment system from Microsoft via Xbox Live online entertainment network.
Shivering Isles features more than 30 hours of new gameplay and allows you to explore an entirely new plane of Oblivion - the realm of Sheogorath, the Daedric Prince of Madness. Shivering Isles adds to the existing world of Oblivion so you can continue playing with your existing save game/character, or create an all new character just to explore the new content.
Within the Realm of Sheogorath, players can explore the two extreme sides of the god's madness - the sublimely creative and the completely psychotic. Something is happening to the Shivering Isles and Sheogorath himself looks to you to be his champion and defend his realm and its inhabitants from destruction. Do you have the strength to survive his trials, tame a realm fraught with paranoia and despair, and wear the mantle of a God?
The Shivering Isles features a bizarre landscape split between the two sides - Mania and Dementia -filled with vast, twisting dungeons mirroring the roots of the trees they are buried within. You'll encounter more than a dozen new creatures including hideous insects, Flesh Atronachs, skeletal Shambles, and amphibious Grummites. Throughout your adventure, you will discover all new items, ingredients, spells, and much more. Or, you can have the talented craftsmen of Crucible and Bliss forge new armor and weapons just for you.
Here's the PC.IGN review of it.
Guild Wars 2 Announced 03:02 pm
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- Games: Role-Playing
(0 comments)
ArenaNet and NCsoft today officially announced Guild Wars 2.
Bellevue, WA., March 27, 2007—NCsoft and ArenaNet today revealed their exciting plans for the future of the hugely successful Guild Wars franchise. The companies announced that development already is underway on a full sequel to the original Guild Wars games. Guild Wars 2 will draw from the game mechanics that made the original Guild Wars one of the most popular online games ever and will add a fully persistent world. It was also revealed that, like its predecessors, Guild Wars 2 will not have a subscription fee. No launch date was announced, but the ArenaNet team anticipates that Guild Wars 2 will go into beta sometime in the second half of 2008.
In addition, ArenaNet developers are working on the first true expansion for the Guild Wars franchise, Guild Wars: Eye of the North™. Due to hit store shelves during the 2007 holiday season, Guild Wars: Eye of the North™ will require at least one of the previous Guild Wars campaigns (Prophecies™, Factions™, or Nightfall™) in order to play. It's a game that will benefit long-time players of the Guild Wars games, with all of the content targeting existing Guild Wars characters.
"We felt it was extremely important to reward those people who have been playing Guild Wars since the game first launched in 2005," said Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet. "Those players have seen three very large campaigns created in a little under two years and so we think it's time to begin filling in the details of the existing world and to provide more content for current characters. We are thrilled to focus our time on something that our players have been asking for."
Set largely in the dungeons and caverns of the lands of Tyria that players first explored in Guild Wars Prophecies, Guild Wars: Eye of the North will have 18 large, multi-level dungeons, 150 new skills across all 10 Guild Wars professions, 10 new Heroes, 40 new armor sets, and even more items, weapons and titles.
And for those looking even further down the road at Guild Wars 2, Guild Wars: Eye of the North will provide a Hall of Monuments where players' accomplishments are memorialized and eventually inherited by their Guild Wars 2 characters, unlocking exclusive items and bonuses in Guild Wars 2.
"It's the payoff we hope players will appreciate as we continue to build on the Guild Wars franchise," said Strain. "We're excited to announce these two new products and we want players to know that Guild Wars has an extremely exciting future in the months and years ahead."
SupCom Quad-Core Performance 01:28 am
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- hardware: General News
(26 comments)
[H] whipped up an interesting article called SupCom & Intel Core 2 Quad Gameplay Advantages which takes a look at how game performance in Gas Powered Games' recently released RTS improves with multiple core CPUs. They even did a XP vs Vista comparison:
We were quite surprised at the level of disparity between Windows Vista and Windows XP performance in Supreme Commander. We initially began this evaluation with the intention of using Windows Vista solely. Windows Vista supposedly has better support handling multiple threads across multi-CPUs. This should benefit dual-core and quad-core usage in games that take advantage of multi-threading. After we performed our evaluation in Windows Vista, to be thorough, we decided to evulate Supreme Commander under Windows XP to make validate our results further.
What we discovered immediately was that performance was much faster under Windows XP. It was at the level where we could now run the game with higher in-game settings on dual and quad-core. It is quite clear as can be seen from our highest playable settings evaluation and our apples-to-apples tests that Windows XP is simply faster. However, the same pattern of core scaling emerged that we experienced under Windows Vista. Single-core was still unplayable, dual-core was much more playable, and quad-core delivered the best experience with noticeable improvements.
Looks like it's Quad-Core or bust for my next upgrade...
Check out our Supreme Commander review if ya missed it.
Hardware & Tech Nuggets 01:03 am
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- hardware: General News
(0 comments)
RPG Vault Goodness 12:56 am
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- Games: Role-Playing
(0 comments)
Game Reviews 12:55 am
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- Games: General News
(7 comments)
In Other News... 12:45 am
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- In-House: In Other News...
(31 comments)
April 1st is creeping up on us... It falls on a Sunday this year, so shenanigans are bound to be limited.
Today's question:
What are the absolute worst game sequels you can think of? Any platform, or era.
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