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BioShock Demo on Live! 06:58 pm
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- Consoles: Xbox 360
(56 comments)
There's a 1.35 gig playable demo for 2K Boston's BioShock on Xbox Live at this very moment. Here's more from Major Nelson:
Welcome to Rapture with the official demo to BioShock, the "genetically enhanced" first person shooter. BioShock is a shooter unlike any you've ever played, loaded with weapons and tactics never seen. You'll have an arsenal at your disposal from simple revolvers to rocket launchers and flame throwers, but you'll also be forced to genetically alter your DNA to create an even more deadly weapon - you. Injectable Plasmids give you ungodly powers: blast electrical currents into water to electrocute multiple enemies, freeze them solid and obliterate them with the swing of a wrench, or create a swarm of attack hornets from your own mutated flesh. BioShock is that rare game in which Brainpower is as valuable as Firepower. You'll need plenty of both to get out alive.
Downloading it now!
The PC demo will be out later this month. More on that tomorrow.
The Golden BioShock Press Release 06:03 pm
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- Games: Action
(7 comments)
In case you missed it, 2K Boston's BioShock went gold. The Rapture is almost upon us...
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--2K, a publishing label of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTWO), announced today that BioShock has gone to gold master exclusively for the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system and Games For Windows. Developed by 2K Boston and 2K Australia, the renowned 2K Games development studios, BioShock is a highly anticipated video game that will be available at stores in North America on August 21, 2007 and in Europe beginning August 24, 2007.
BioShock is a first-person shooter that lets players do things never before possible in the genre. Nearly everything in the game can be turned into a weapon; players can biologically modify their bodies with plasmids, hack devices and systems, upgrade weapons and craft new ammo variants, and experiment with different battle techniques.
Players enter the game as a castaway in Rapture, an underwater utopia torn apart by civil war. Caught between powerful forces and hunted down by genetically modified "splicers" and deadly security systems, players have to come to grips with a dangerous and mysterious world filled with powerful technology and fascinating characters. With multiple avenues for surmounting challenges on both a moral and tactical level, no encounter ever plays out the same and no two gamers will play BioShock the same way.
Features:
- Biologically modify your body with plasmids, which are genetic augmentations that empower you with dozens of fantastic abilities including: sending Electrobolts storming from your fingertips, unleashing a swarm of hornets hatched from the veins of your arms, or strategically turning enemies against one another with irritants.
- Take control of your world by hacking devices and systems: reprogram enemy security bots into personal bodyguards, modify vending machines to change prices, and transform machine gun security turrets into powerless pieces of metal.
- Upgrade your weapons at Power-to-the-People stations located through Rapture: craft variants of ammo and plasmids by picking up materials in the city and modifying them at U-Invent kiosks.
- Turn everything into a weapon: the environment, your body, fire and water, and even your worst enemies.
- BioShock's free form combat options allow gameplay scenarios to be approached with a variety of weapons: inject active and passive plasmids, utilize environmental objects, exploit political alliances, or use a combination of techniques. Find your style but know when to adapt.
- Explore an incredible and unique art deco world hidden deep under the ocean, vividly illustrated with realistic water effects and truly next generation graphics.
- Make meaningful and mature decisions that culminate in the ultimate question: Do you exploit the innocent survivors of Rapture to save yourself…or risk it all to become their savior?
Vista Service Pack 1 "Leaked" Preview 04:08 pm
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- Games: General News
(8 comments)
APC Magazine has a "leaked preview" of Microsoft's upcoming Service pack 1 for Windows Vista. Overall impressions are very positive: First up, I can say that there is a very noticeable performance increase. It is obvious that since Microsoft released Vista to manufacturing, it has been optimising the code ever since. (I suspect this revelation will fuel the fires of the people who say Vista was released before it was ready for prime-time.) There's far less hard drive thrashing and in general the system seems much smoother and more responsive. Thanks [H].
Best Buy adds $3 Halo Tax? 04:02 pm
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- Consoles: Xbox 360
(9 comments)
Best Buy is being silly again, this time by proposing a $3 a$$hole tax for Halo 3 related products. While other retailers are pricing the 360 add-ons at Xbox.com's MSRP, Best Buy thinks adding three dollars to that is the perfect theme to tie-in the Halo Three launch. As many devotee gamers will pop-in to jump-in, why would they suspect they aren't getting the best buy? Check out more from XBL Radio.
Unreal Tournament 3: Co-Op Mod Q&A; 03:59 pm
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- Games: Action
(2 comments)
ModDB has an interesting interview with the UT3 Talon 1-5 Team, which are looking to create the first high profile modification for Epic's Unreal Tournament 3. Amongst the features it will include, is co-op gameplay. One of the hottest titles slated for release late this year is Unreal Tournament 3, with many indie development teams fighting to become the top-dog, the must have mod on this next-gen engine. One such team is Talon 1-5, which speeds into the mod scene with work of unrivaled quality and motivation to match. This shooter aims to exploit the seldom developed Cooperative game mode, and create an experience perfect for a group of friends looking for some extreme fun.
Universe at War Quickie 03:55 pm
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- Games: Real-Time Strategy
(0 comments)
GameSpy tossed up a quickie preview of Universe at War, the upcoming RTS from Petroglyph. Despite my humiliating defeat, I'm quite eager to get my hands on the game again. I'm particularly curious about the Novus faction. My desire to choose what I perceived as the most "complete" faction undermined my chance to play with the race I find the coolest, so I lost both ways. Still, Universe at War will be entering its closed beta phase in the near future, so I should have a chance before long. One thing that I'll be interested in seing is how PC and Xbox 360 players will be able to compete against each other. Unless Petroglyph is weaving some magic with the game mechanics (or, God forbid, disallowing the use of hot keys), this will be grossly unfair to console players. We'll see how it shakes down when the game releases this October.
DX10.1 in Vista SP1 Won't Worky with 8800 03:46 pm
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- Games: General News
(15 comments)
The Inquire (ok, not the best source evar) reports that Microsoft will be introducing DirectX 10.1 with Vista service pack 1. The kicker? It won't work with current gen DX10 hardware (8800/2900 series). Don't sweat it though, as it looks pretty minor. But these gamers shouldn't fret too much - 10.1 adds virtually nothing that they will care about and, more to the point, adds almost nothing that developers are likely to care about. The spec revision basically makes a number of things that are optional in DX10 compulsory under the new standard - such as 32-bit floating point filtering, as opposed to the 16-bit current. 4xAA is a compulsory standard to support in 10.1, whereas graphics vendors can pick and choose their anti-aliasing support currently.
We suspect that the spec is likely to be ill-received. Not only does it require brand new hardware, immediately creating a miniscule sub-set of DX10 owners, but it also requires Vista SP1, and also requires developer implementation.
With developers struggling to justify including DX10 features in their games (see the recent comments by John Carmack and Mark Rein), they're going to be about as likely to further limit their product's market as they are to start developing NES games again. This is especially true given the incredibly limited benefits 10.1 is bringing to the party.
Duke Nukem 3D on Xbox Live? Maybe 03:40 pm
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- Consoles: Xbox 360
(2 comments)
After 3D Realms' George Broussard's 2nd Xbox 360 died while playing Geometry Wars, he started chatting about how he was looking into putting Duke 3D on Xbox Live. "Truth be told, we've talked to Microsoft about it and have some people that would port it," he wrote. "Just waiting on the good word from Microsoft to continue."
Could be fun; just don't half-ass it.
World in Conflict Demo Dated 03:33 pm
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- Games: Real-Time Strategy
(0 comments)
In case you want to get another taste of World in Conflict, the demo (as in, non-beta) is going to be released on Aug 20th, according to a Q&A; on the official boards. The full game ships out later next month. Q. Is there going to be a multiplayer demo? If so, when would it come out? And would I be able to create servers to play on a LAN for it?
DP: The demo will feature a sneak peek of both single player and multiplayer. We're going to do it like in the Alpha and Beta tests and have the multiplayer demo online. The demo is slated to go live late in August. The current plan is to not include LAN but to offer skirmish mode. That may change, though, but that's the plan at the moment. Thanks Firing Squad.
My Pretty Oblivion Pony 03:20 pm
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- Games: Role-Playing
(6 comments)
PixalRage has a rather sassy new Oblivion download for your mounting pleasure. It's the Akatosh Mount by Saiden Storm.
What makes this newsworthy? It's a free and fully functional flying dragon mount!
No Halo 3 Spoilers in the Ads. Honest! 03:15 pm
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- Consoles: Xbox 360
(0 comments)
Besides pimping out the podcast and comic, the Bungie weekly update includes quite a few reader submitted Halo 3 questions and answers. Q. There are at least two full-page ads floating around that deal with the same spoilerish content. You've said before that these ad designers have no access to the end of the game and that it's all just "flavor". It's still disconcerting, though, that both imply the same ending, and have the same "tone".
A. There are no spoilers of any kind in the marketing. You have my guarantee, and Marty literally freaks out every time he reads any story content, such as when I mentioned that Spartan 117's real name was "John." Seriously.
In Other News... 03:00 pm
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- In-House: In Other News...
(6 comments)
About this time tomorrow, the new website should be live, depending on when your DNS updates. IGN should be redirecting our old RSS feed, but in case you want to get a head's up on the new one, this is what it's going to be:
http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/rss
That above link doesn't work now, but it will be in about 24 hours.
What else? The transition should be pretty seamless. While we do have a new fangled in-line news comments system, you won't have to make any new accounts or something to post. The old ones will work, and it should log you in automatically. If not, your old user/pass will work.
We are going to use a lighter color scheme, but I like it a lot more than the dark one we have now. Odds are, we'll add a darker skin also down the road if enough people bitch about it. Other than that, there are no huge shocks coming, like us ditching the front page news format (still using it), but besides the slick new layout and comments system, there are a ton of little extras and goodies.
You can make filters or bookmarks with the game objects and topics. And for us, the backend makes it about a trillion times easier to update. Andy will probably still make his flash movies, but we can actually update with live streaming HD videos (assuming you have a godzilla sized fat pipe, or you can just save 'em and watch after they download). Plus, screenshots and media in general is waaaay easier to post.
Again, not everything is done, but the site is at a point where it's ready for public consumption. Look for that bad boy to go live tomorrow afternoon / evening (PST).
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