PC Gaming

You, by now, know that I am kind of obsessed by Irrational Games upcoming horror game: Bioshock. Therefore I cant help my self spamming out news about the game. This time CVG has been able to get hold of senior designer Joe McDonagh.

He shared quite a bit of information on the game with them.
He also took the time to reinforce the fact that this game is only coming out on the Xbox 360 and PC. Here is what Joe had to say.

bioshock, interview, Irrational games, Joe McDonagh

Remember that other time when Ubisoft revealed its release schedule for Holiday 07 and Haze (PC) was dated only a week after the PS3 version? Well, it looks like Ubisoft is now trying to rewrite history.

Because now Ubisoft has removed any date and mention of the PC and Xbox 360 versions of Haze from the list. An Ubisoft UK representative told joystick that the mysterious disappearance could be attributed to the PlayStation 3 being “the only confirmed platform for Haze.”

Not that Ubisoft ever where good at doing their marketing job, but didn’t we play this game already? After unleashing yesterday’s avalanche of release dates and promptly crushing the month of November in the process, Ubisoft has removed any date and mention of the PC and Xbox 360 versions of Haze from the list.

When we asked directly whether Haze was a PS3 exclusive or not, Ubisoft simply reiterated that the system was “the only confirmed platform.” It’s the same line we kept hearing when Ubisoft was dodging questions about the exclusivity haze surrounding Assassin’s Creed — a game which started out on “PlayStation 3 and at this time, no other platform has been confirmed.” Ubisoft later admitted a PC version would “indeed see the light some day” (the same day, actually) and then finally confirmed an Xbox 360 version to an unsurprised audience.

Personally, I think they are just pushing the 360 and PC dates out as to not compete directly with some other heavy hitting shooters on the other platforms …It might be that they don’t want to compete with …well lets see …big shooter as perhaps Halo 3 …

Basically, Ubisoft have made two relevant statements:
The first: PS3 is the only announced platform.
The second: 360 and PC versions will follow one week later.

They are probably both true.

ubisoft, games, FPS, Haze

Since I am a hardware geek, I can’t resist showing this little beauty for you. She is called “Compenion” and is a sleek concept laptop designed by Felix Schmidberger.

The Compenion has a futuristic look with an OLED touch screen, (that serves as both monitor and keyboard) and you can tap away by hand or use the “senstylus” pen to control it.

I don’t know about the gaming, but I certainly know that my own lap-top has been trough a lot and if this little beauty contains the right hardware.Its a must in every gamers home …

Source: scifi

PC, Next-gen gaming, Lap-top, Sci-Fi

Guys I now give you a brand new video from Bill Roper’s Hellgate: London. This video features around four and a half minutes of game-play action. For thoose of you that doesn’t know Hellgate: London is a Role playing/First person shooter game.

Gameplay is based on the character’s stats, as per role-playing games, as opposed to the player’s personal skill. This game is also a must … after all this is formal Blizzard personell that made it …

Watch the video here >>

Hellgate website

Hellgate london, video, trailer, games, RPG, FPS

John Carmack recently showed off id’s secret new game engine called id Tech 5. He showed it at a Mac at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference.

Id Software’s co-founder and technical director, John Carmack, demonstrated id Tech 5 and commented, “Since many developers at id have made the switch to the Mac for their personal use, we decided it was now time to bring our core game technology to OS X. After a rapid bring up of the code base, we were delighted to find that the latest Macs are the fastest systems in our offices for some of the time consuming processing jobs and will be contributing to our development process in many useful ways.”
Even though it was running on a Mac, Id says that id Tech 5 additionally supports the Xbox 360 and Playstation3 console platforms as well as the PC.

Here is a video of the Tech 5-engine, lets hope we get something real good out of it when Id give us the first spot at their new, still unannounced, FPS game.

John Carmack, Id-software, gameengine, FPS

I posed a few questions to the Dev’s of Fallout:3 at BethSoft. Here, is one of their answers! From KamakaziKangaroo. Let me start this out, by posting my questions followed by His answers.

Now into the madness:

I want to start by asking a question of the Dev. Crew. Something I haven’t really seen answered here, even in Todd’s moving speech. That question is this: Many of the TES: fans felt it a depature from the norm they had seen. Many Fallout fans feel that F3 is going to be, to quote one of my readers, “the mentally handicapped sibling” of the Fallout Franchise. I’m pretty sure you guys know all of that. I also know that, Beth, as a company, is going to take the franchise in the route they thing best.
Now my personal stake in this is different. I’m a fan here, not just an outside set of eye’s like I am with so many other games. While there are many questions, I think i’ll just pose my most important one’s now, and see how it goes.

1. What is your “Vision” for F3? By that I understand the “Best we can make it”. But at this point what are you shooting for? Classic Fallout? Or will this be a new vision under the same franchise?

2. How much freedom are you shooting for as far as dialog options, quests, factions, feats, stats, ect. go?

3. Do you take a “Fan-first” Perspective to development? Meaning, are you fans of Fallout, who now get to work on it?

4. How shocked are you that I, as a Vault Dweller, am currently writeing to you from the future?

5. In all reality, everyone knows that Beth. will probably assemble the finest team possible to put this game togeather. Do you ever sit in a round-table room, dress in medievel garb, and discuss spreading the holy word to the heathens?

6. What is going to be more important to you for F3? Freedom of choice, or the over-all story?

In closing, I hope that you guys will do the best you can with this amazing franchise. While I understand that the hard-core fans will probably never be completely happy, and the rest of the outside world may never truely understand that, I do pray you can find a happy medium, in which the Hardcore fans are pleased, and the newbies for the franchise are amazed. To be honest, even with some of the worst parts of TES:IV, you guys really amazed many of us, and helped many of my freinds understand why I was so obsessed with that IP. Suddenly HARDCORE FPS fanatics are borrowing my copy of Oblivion. When I look back on that, I get it, and it really made me happy. So here’s to hoping you can breathe the same life into a very loved franchise, and strike the balance that many of us hope you will.

Let me preface this by saying that I joined the Bethesda crew a few months before Oblivion was released, so I only got to playtest it for a while before they put me to work making monsters.
On the one hand I was floored by the graphics, recorded audio, all the new gimmicky things Oblivion introduced to the TES series. I was also immediately addicted to the gameplay, I was impressed with the game mechanics, and I thought it “felt” fantastic.
On the other hand, visually and conceptually I felt let down, since I thought that Morrowind was one of the most visually creative games I’d ever seen. Here was a concrete world, much like our own, but with art, architecture, clothing and culture that was utterly alien. I was entranced completely, and everything felt truly impressive and realistic. Oblivion didn’t do it for me. In terms of graphics and gameplay, it was farrrr superior. The vision was what was lacking, in my mind. Of course, part of this had to do with the different setting within Cyrodil, but still. However, in no way do I think this is indicative of where we’re going as a series… I think perhaps we got so wrapped up in making it truly FUN that that became somewhat of a priority?
I could go on for a while, but let me get to the questions.

I think we learned a lot from Oblivion, and I believe that a lot of the criticism we got - particularly in the forums, but like someone said earlier (Fizzbang?), mainly from ourselves - is being addressed very consciously.
Ok I’ve got to get back to monstering, I’ve spent way too much time on this post..!

Yes, for everyone out there. You should know. The Dev’s are creating a game for Fallout Fans, and are fans themself. This game could be in no better hands.

For a first-person shooter playing girl there are so many titles to look forward to. One of the upcoming games that is really looking good is Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. I am really glad to see how it develops, I mean, even if Splash Damage haven’t showed their skills yet, they where co-creators of the award winning Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, and in conjunction with id Software, Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars employs id Software’s new MegaTexture graphics technology, delivering large outdoor battlefields of unrivaled detail.

Just look at the pictures guys …These life-like recreations of real-world environments are awesome. I really hope and believe that ET: QW will be the game that really puts the Battlefield franchise up for a test.

For those of you who don’t know …Enemy Territory: Quake Wars pits the armies of Earth against the invading alien Strogg in the ultimate online strategic shooter. Featuring strategic team play, persistent character promotions, day and night time combat missions, and the universe’s most powerful weapons and vehicles.

Gamers choose to play as Human or Strogg in one of five unique character classes. Employing an arsenal of weapons, vehicles and deployable armaments, players engage in an action-packed test of skill and coordinated teamwork through a series of combat objectives. Persistent character growth and achievements reward players for teamwork, while clearly defined mission and class objectives guide new players to meaningful contributions on the battlefield.

I really like the world of E-sports and to see what the new and upcoming multiplayer games are including is making me belive that they are geared towards esports more than ever before. I also happened to know that the guys at Splash Damage have played competitively in clans and such before, so I really trust that they know what they are doing.

It does look great, doesn’t it?

Game website

If you are a strategy fan, like this gal you probably have an eye for the Age of Empires series. If so ..you guys will be glad to hear that a second expansion pack is in development for Age of Empires III and will take players into Asia this fall. At least I was pleased to hear that …

Age of Empires III, is one of the best selling titles in the franchise’s history. It has sold more than 2 million copies until today’s date. Now, Ensemble Studios and Big Huge Games has unveiled the first details about Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties.

“The success of Age of Empires III has given us the opportunity to expand the game play further and offer a fresh perspective through this expansion pack created by Big Huge Games.” said Bruce Shelley, lead designer, Ensemble Studios.

In this expansion-pack the player gets introduced to Asian civilizations, the expansion pack will also provide new content and several new game play elements such as new ways of trading, random map styles, and 15 new Asian “wonders.”

This expansion pack will be the first “Age of Empires” title developed by Big Huge Games, the development studio responsible for the incredibly popular real-time strategy franchise “Rise of Nations®.”

“Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties” will also ship as a Games for Windows title with easier installation, improved reliability and support for key Windows Vista features, including the Games Explorer and Parental Controls.

Source: Pressrelease here

Yes, its official! Blizzard Entertainment seconds ago announced that StarCraft 2 is the new game. And it looks like an RTS according to the pictures atIGN
.

After a long night of waiting and speculating at Blizzard’s Worldwide Invitational, the world got the news they had been waiting for for almost a decade. Starcraft 2 is under development and the game is actually playable and is being showed live on screen at the South Korean Event…

We don’t have much information at this time apart from what is being showed at the video, but there appears to be several new Protoss units: Immortals, which have a shield that actives upon damage only, Colossals are huge Protoss units with dual laser guns. The Stalker unit can teleport and the Warprey is a flying unit.
For more details about the game play information, head over to IGN.

Terran reapers are also new units and many Zerg can teleport as well. So far nothing about a new race but the game appears to be in 3D according to this short game play demo. IGN reports that the whole game looks strikingly similar to StarCraft 1, just like the community have requested.

Here is the gameplay video

Source: IGN.com

Official website:Starcraft2.com

This is a complete unit round-up for the newest in the Command and Conquer series: Tiberium Wars. Courtesy of Vilham at BF2s.

You can find out more about Tiberium Wars here

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Ok, so most of you that are reading this will play games online and we all know how annoying lag is. So I sent myself out on a mission to find the top 20 lag reducing tips of all time, unfortunately I only found 12 so you’re stuck with them! I’ve tried to make sure that they’re all general tips rather than game specific ones. So, read on…

Online, Lag, Reduction

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There’s a been a whole lot of hype over the upcoming new release in the Command and Conquer series. Tiberium Wars will be released in March 2007. The game will take place at the advent of and during the “Third Tiberium War”, after the Brotherhood of Nod (hehe, a sleeping army won’t be much good) launches an unexpected and worldwide offensive against the Global Defense Initiative, abruptly ending a period of seventeen years of silence. GDI field commanders rally their troops and begin to combat the Brotherhood’s second re-emergence, trying to restore lost hope. The game will also feature the introduction of a new third faction to the Tiberian series of the Command & Conquer games called the Scrin. This is also the second C&C title in which the player will be able to upgrade their forces. An interesting feature that will be added in this installment is VoIP (Voice-over IP) in the multiplayer game, this will be highly useful in team games. Now, I’ve never been highly attracted by the C & C series but this has really got me looking in to buying it. As release date comes ever closer more and more screenshots and gameplay videos have been released, I’ve collaborated as many as I can here and frankly the game looks awesome! Videos and screenshots inside.

Command and Conquer, 3, Tiberium, Wars

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More screenshots! Of Bioshock this time. This game should be coming to the Xbox 360 and PC at some time in June 2007. Bioshock, being developed by Irrational Games has been said to have “unprecedented emergent gameplay”. Word has it that it will seamlessly integrate the FPS and RPG genres.

Bioshock