PC Gaming News
Bethesda Teases with Fallout 3 Interview
By Eric HansonNovember 19, 2007
Fans of Fallout are no doubt eagerly awaiting the take of (relatively) new franchise owners Bethesda Softworks on the series in the third installment, now due to come out some time in Fall 2008. Those same fans probably sense Bethesda's tough position (even as they're waiting to see whether or not the self-professed Fallout geeks damage the franchise); it's never easy to satisfy every member of a hardcore fan base, and Bethesda's position as newcomers to the Fallout scene will put every design decision the company makes in Fallout 3 under twice as much scrutiny. However, after reading part one of an interview with Bethesda's Pete Hines (done by CVG's Stuart Bishop), we're wondering if Bethesda might end up staying too close to the game's roots in their quest to keep the Fallout faithful happy.
Consider Hines's response to the question of how Bethesda will avoid alienating current fans and new users: he covers more points of continuity (character system, dialog system) than changes, and leaves us wondering what exactly "what's our next big thing going to be for this series" really means. Bethesda seems like they're too on top of the ball to screw up the Fallout franchise, but we hope they make Fallout 3 more than just a recycle of the first two games.
Skewed & Reviewed Quizzes Infinity Ward About Call of Duty 4
By Eric HansonNovember 16, 2007
Nice interview of Infinity Ward's Robert Bowling by Gareth Von Kallenbach of Skewed & Reviewed on 2404.org, talking about the fourth installation of the Call of Duty franchise. The interview includes some details on the basics: weapons, locations, enemies, and the storyline behind the first Call of Duty game that doesn't take place in World War 2. There's also some vindication: Infinity Ward considers this game (and not the console-only Call of Duty 3) the third installation in the series, and says they wouldn't dream of abandoning PC gamers; welcome news to all of us PC types who saw Call of Duty 3 as a slap to the face.
One thing announcement from this interview that bothers us, though: as with Call of Duty 2, there are no vehicles in multiplayer games, which we don't understand. Was Infinity Ward worried about balance? If so, they should take a look at the multiplayer versions of other vehicle-heavy FPS games, where game designers programmed in all kinds of checks and balances to keep anyone with a vehicle from dominating the game board. The lack of vehicles won't stop us from getting the game, but we expected better.
Aspyr Brings Guitar Hero III to PC Gamers
By Eric HansonNovember 14, 2007
Game republishers Aspyr Media announced today that they've released their PC port of Activision's Guitar Hero III, the game that makes every air guitarist's dream a shred-reality. The ported version features the same concepts as the original: play the set lists, beat the Guitar God bosses, unlock the hidden content, thrill to rocking the enormous venues full of screaming fans...you get the picture. Aspyr's done a fairly good job of keeping the price reasonable, too: $79.99 gets you the game and a wired X-Plorer Guitar Controller so you can avoid the incredibly lame fate of trying to be a guitar god using a keyboard and a mouse.
We applaud Aspyr for sharing the guitar love with all of the non-console gamers out there, but we have to admit that Guitar Hero on PC seems a bit like porting real time strategy games to consoles: a nice idea on the surface, but one that just doesn't translate as well as theory might suggest. Think about it: would you rather rock Madison Square Garden on a 50-inch HD television, or a 20-inch computer monitor? We're pretty sure the larger version is going to have much bigger thrills.
Hellgate: London's Asian Launch Woes Resolve With a Deletion
By Eric HansonNovember 12, 2007
If you're a Hellgate: London player on one the game's Asian servers you're probably not a happy camper right now: you're about to lose your character. You see, after a tough launch that included numerous server crashes, Hellgate: London creator Flagship Studios and Asian partner IAHGames created what they call Patch0, which developers designed to finally eliminate all of the launch-time problems that could sink the game before it got off the ground. There's just one problem, though: as announced yesterday, to completely implement Patch0, the Hellgate: London team needs to wipe out everyone's character and start all over again. Hellgate: London launched on Halloween, so we know there have to be a few gamers out there who are literally about to lose about two weeks of their lives to this server fix, and we completely sympathize.
We do like how Flagship is handling this tough situation, though: they're giving every subscriber an additional four weeks of fee-free gaming as a way to make up for the lost characters, and maybe even keep a few angry customers from drifting away to other games. We have a lot of respect for Flagship for owning up to the problem and fixing it as best they could, and to those affected by the deletion, we hope the process of recreating your character is just as fun as it was building it in the first place.
Microsoft Announces Winners of Dream-Build-Play
By Eric HansonNovember 8, 2007
Ah, Microsoft. You are so very devious in your gateway drug ways. Take XNA, for example, the game development toolset that Microsoft launched in December of 2006. The platform, whose name stands for "XNA's Not Acronymed" (how hip), allows any developer, including complete neophytes, to develop games for Windows or XBox 360 using a simple editor and a whole host of reusable libraries. It's definitely a platform for the people, but it sucks you right into Microsoft's vision of how games should run: not only are all of the products of XNA Windows or XBox 360 only, but the system works on the .NET Framework 2.0 with the C# programming language - two Microsoft products. A gateway drug indeed, and it's snared its first victims: the four winners of Microsoft's Dream-Build-Play contest.
The winners (announced by Microsoft on Monday) developed games with such fun titles as the pirate-themed Yo Ho Kablammo! to beat out 4,600 other contestants for the opportunity to publish their games with Microsoft, and pick up a few other gaming-related cash and prizes, like a souped-up gaming PC. We get the feeling that at least a couple of these winners will go on to do very well in the gaming industry.
Hellgate: London Launches First Themed Event
By Eric HansonNovember 8, 2007
Only a few days out of the gate, and the producers of Hellgate: London are running their first themed event for paying subscribers: Guy Fawkes Day. The event, which takes its name from an English holiday that celebrates the failure of Guy Fawkes, an English soldier and dissident, to blow up Parliament and the king using barrels of gunpowder in 1605 (those of you who've read/seen V for Vendetta will recognize the plotline), will run on Hellgate: London's servers from November 5 (Guy Fawkes Day) to November 11.
The Hellgate: London Underground site has all of the details on the theme and what's been added, but the main focus is on finding unusual monsters attracted by the celebration and killing them with weaponry that techsmiths are not normally producing. Since Hellgate: London is still in its infancy there's no word on whether or not Guy Fawkes Day will become an annual event in the Hellgate: London world, but we think it would be pretty cool if events like this one moved in regular rotation throughout the year, so, for example, your character could plan to purchase an item they'd know was going to appear in early November.
Homeworld 3 a Future Possibility?
By Eric HansonNovember 5, 2007
Strategy fans doubtless remember the groundbreaking RTS Homeworld (released in 1999), the pure combat strategy title that introduced the world to true three-dimensional gaming through hours of space combat. The game had enough success to garner a sequel, Homeworld 2 (released in 2003), that continued the Homeworld storyline with a new threat and many more hours of space borne fun. Developer Relic Entertainment might have continued with another installment, but parent company (and owner of the Homeworld license) Sierra / Vivendi sold Relic to rival THQ in 2004.
Flash forward to November 3, when (as reported on Blues News) RelicNews Forums member Mnementh announces s/he has found a document on the US Patent Office website that names THQ as the new owners of the Homeworld trademark, opening up the possibility for a new sequel. However, before you get too excited: that transfer took place in July, 2006, and there's been no other rumors of an impending Homeworld sequel. We suspect that if Homeworld three does ever see the light of day, it won't be for another couple of years at the very least.
Flagship Announces Premium Content for Hellgate: London
By Eric HansonOctober 31, 2007
As reported on Blue's News: Flagship Studios, makers of the upcoming RPG Hellgate: London, have announced a few of the advantages premium subscribers shelling out $9.95 a month will get over their freeloading brethren. Most of these extra features are reward-based: accumulation of points for things like PvP, long-term goals, or just themed events that will only be available (on a limited basis) for those laying out the bucks. There'll also be additional items, monsters, and levels that will be premium-only, which could translate into a big advantage for premium players, especially if PvP extends to all subscribers. It also appears that guild creation will be premium-only, which is a good incentive for anyone who likes to form clans.
Flagship doesn't plan to disappoint with release dates, either: According to this interview on shacknews with Flagship's Bill Roper, the premium content has a regular release schedule, starting in December with the massive Patch 0. While we assume that premium subscribers will be getting extras right from the start (Hellgate: London hits the streets tomorrow), we do like that Flagship isn't dangling the premium content carrot without giving a set schedule to manage gamer expectations.
NVIDIA Announces 8800 GT
By Eric HansonOctober 31, 2007
NVIDIA announced yesterday that they're expanding their GeForce 8 Series GPU line with the 8800 GT. The new card, which joins the 8800 Ultra, GTX and GTS graphics cards, features the same DirectX 10 capabilities and technology as the existing 8 Series GeForce cards, but with a lower price point ($199 to $259, according to NVIDIA) than the lower-end 8800 GTS cards. NVIDIA says they released the GT to meet year-old gamer demands for a higher-powered 8 Series GeForce card at a lower cost, in stark contrast to the wallet-squeezing cost of the high-end video cards.
What makes the GT launch really interesting is that the new card is not only cheaper than the GTS cards, but more powerful, too, beating the older card in all of the comparison categories NVIDIA lists on its GeForce 8800 page. Creating a cheaper and more powerful card seems like a gutsy move to us, because it'll no doubt upset a number of manufacturers, not to mention customers who just dropped $250+ on a GTS card, but we have to respect that kind of dedication to the requests of the gamer.
Crysis Goes Gold; Demo Tweak Announced
By Eric HansonOctober 31, 2007
After the successful release of the single-player demo last week, Crysis (as noted by Blue's News) announced today that the full version of the game has gone gold, and will be in stores on the expected launch date of November 11. According to the company, programmers are immensely proud not only of the non-linear game play that's practically a requirement of today's first person shooters, but of the game's need for a high-level - and in particular, a NVIDIA - video card to get the full effects of CryENGINE 2's graphics capabilities.
Meanwhile, the Crysis Online Forums lit up last night when a user announced that s/he had figured out how to hack the Crysis demo files in Windows XP so that the graphics in DirectX 9 looked just as good as those in DirectX 10 on Windows Vista. A number of users are reporting success with the hack, but many have also noticed a big performance hit. We don't know enough about DirectX to say whether changes between versions are as simple as editing a few lines of code in a game, but we suspect that one of the major differences might be how DirectX 10 optimizes graphics code, leading to that decrease in playing speed.
Crysis Demo Coming this Friday
By Eric HansonOctober 23, 2007
In case you've been living under a rock: the single-player demo for Crysis becomes available to all and sundry this Friday. The first person shooter, set to launch in the middle of November, centers around the run-and-gun actions of Delta Force operative Jake Dunn, who runs around four different environments fighting aliens and members of the armed forces of the superpower North Korea (vaguely topical, but how does North Korea become a superpower in 12 years? Maybe it's the aliens) in an exoskeleton modeled after the equipment of the US government's Future Warrior 2020 program.
As with many shooters, plot isn't the primary motivator in Crysis: the game's CryENGINE 2 video engine, with its almost disturbingly realistic rendering capabilities (the engine's first license was to a French architectural company to give clients an exact representation of a building before construction begins), and full DirectX 10 support, may be PC gamers' best hope in reclaiming the graphics crown from the likes of both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. That superiority will come at a price, of course: if your computer isn't running two of the best NVIDIA video cards, expect tears to start pouring out of its air vents the first time you try and launch the demo.
TN Games Takes Rumble Concept Too Far?
By Eric HansonOctober 23, 2007
We have to agree with Kotaku on this one: is replicating combat damage from a first person shooter really such a good idea? We're referring to the FPS Vest from TN Games, a full torso vest that contains, according to the manufacturer, "eight active zones that simulate the direction and forces of bullet fire, crushing explosions, and fear-inducing finger taps as they occur in the game." In other words, if you take a hit in the game, you take a hit in the chest or back, too, like you've got a rumble pack strapped to body. We can't tell exactly how those impact zones work, but we see something about an air compressor, and we suspect things get pretty intense.
Look: we understand that there are more than a few really hardcore types out there - the weekend warriors who tote full camouflage and face paint out to the paintball fields and spend their afternoons running skirmish patterns before returning home to a nice evening headshoting n00bs online - and maybe they're willing to lay out $170 for a force feedback mechanism wrapped around the chest. But all we can think of is the impact of every single hit we've ever taken in Call of Duty 2 hitting us in the kidneys, over and over again.
Hellgate: London Adware Ignites Fan Rage
By Eric HansonOctober 23, 2007
Disgust over in-game ads is nothing new; we remember some sort of flap when Battlefield 2142 players noticed the in-game billboards and wondered why there were ads for computer parts in a post-apocalyptic universe, but in retrospect that huff seems like a slight breeze compared to the rising windstorm over the latest in-game ad ploy: as reported in The Inquirer, observant gamers found that not only does Hellgate: London's license agreement mention the use of in-game advertising, but that the game collects your IP address and other information about your computer and stores them anonymously to help target the ads you'll see in game.
Hellgate: London's publishers may not be planning to do anything insidious with the information they collect - and we can't fault them for trying to expand online advertising, which is still a very fluid medium - but we have to agree with many of the commenters on the Voodoo Extreme post on the same topic: any sort of reporting software, no matter how anonymous, opens up your computer to all sorts of nasty attacks that the Internet has become all too infamous for, and that we'd rather live without. As with Sony's DRM issues two years ago, we have a feeling that EA will have to make some 11th hour fixes to Hellgate: London's data collection before the bad PR will go away.
Blue Orb Brings Xbox Control to Windows Gaming
By Eric HansonOctober 17, 2007
If you're the sort of gaming bigamist who can't decide between your Xbox 360 and your PC when it comes to favorite gaming platforms - or you just happen to both PC and console gaming and you've wondered why you can't use that nice Xbox 360 controller with your PC - good news for you: according to Gaming Today, a company called Blue Orb just announced the release of a program called SwitchBlade that connects your 360 controller to Windows so you can use it as a gaming controller in PC games. Available -for free - on Xfire, SwitchBlade initially works with the hugely popular World of Warcraft, and will connect to other games through free future updates.
We think this is a really smart move on Blue Orb's part: after years of drifting apart, console and PC gaming are starting to reconnect through things like DirectX 10 and the interoperability between Xbox Live and Windows Vista. SwitchBlade brings that synergy one step further by blurring the lines between console gaming on a TV, and PC gaming through a media center, and puts Blue Orb in a position to capitalize on a whole group of gamers looking for some cross-connectivity. We're excited to see whether or not this concept takes off.
Ubisoft Taps Jesper Kyd to Compose Assassin's Creed Score
By Eric HansonOctober 17, 2007
Music lovers rejoice: according to GWN, Ubisoft announced today that they've hired Jesper Kyd, whose work has appeared in over 30 video games and 15 films, to compose the music for their upcoming release Assassin's Creed, an action-adventure title. In the game, the player takes role of Altaïr, a member of the mysterious Hashshashin, who must kill the nine leaders who are directing the Third Crusade, unveiling in the process a massive conspiracy. According to GWN, Assassin's Creed producer Jade Raymond cited Kyd's hiring to his ability to not only find a balance the designers liked between a medieval and a modern feel to the music, but to create pacing that matched the game play very well.
Having played the two most recent Hitman games over the past nine months, we can totally understand why Ubisoft chose to hire Kyd: not only does the man know how to create an effective mood (especially in Hitman: Contracts - we haven't looked at a rainy day the same way since), but Assassin's Creed sounds like a more complicated version of Hitman set in the Middle Ages. We're sure Kyd's score will complement the game perfectly.
DIGITAL KICKERS Says We All Must Go FASTER
By Eric HansonOctober 17, 2007
Perhaps taking a cue from the loud talkers who infest the 24-hour news cycle, indie game production company DIGITAL KICKERS is all about the shouting - although DIGITAL KICKERS does so in print form through the magic of all caps letters. They use 'em in their company's name. They use 'em to describe their company philosophy: DIGITAL KICKERS believes in the powers of CREATIVITY and ILLUSION. The company even uses complete capitalization in their game names, like FASTER, their first project (of two - they're starting small). According to the company's website, FASTER is a racing game, but it's better than other racing games out there, because you can build a community of friends and foes as you seek to be the fastest. It's like life on the street!
We poke fun, but we have to give DIGITAL KICKERS credit: they're jumping right for the brass ring of multiplayer competition with their first release, which shows they've got their heads in the right place. We wouldn't call their first title a stunner in the looks department, and we wouldn't say that any of the game play features listed in this press release sound particularly innovative, but none of that matters if FASTER wins the hearts and minds of the gaming public, right? Go get 'em, guys, cap locks and all.
Team Fortress 2 Beta Hits the Streets Through Pre-Order
By Eric HansonSeptember 24, 2007
Anyone hooked into the world of the first-person shooter back in the late 1990s and early part of this decade remembers Team Fortress Classic: the run away success built on a Half-Life mod, with all of those character classes, team-dynamic-based game play, Capture the Flag game mode (among others), and lots of blowing things up. It launched the careers of the guys who created it, lived up to the "classic" in its name with hours of fun play, and generally kicked a lot of butt. It's also been the focus of a vaporware controversy for almost 10 years, as fans waited, and waited, and waited for promised sequel.
Well, the wait is finally almost over: Valve gave early adopters access to the Team Fortress 2 beta as a way of saying thanks for pre-ordering Orange Box, which will include both the retail version of Team Fortress 2 along with Half-Life Episode 2 and a new game called Portal. Despite the cartoonish graphics (or perhaps even as a result of those graphics and the other touches of humor Valve included in the game), the news reports from the beta have been universally positive, and we're planning on grabbing a copy ourselves.
Crytek Delays Release of Crysis Demo; Announces Suprise
By Eric HansonSeptember 24, 2007
Those of you awaiting the single player demo of Crysis will have to wait a bit longer: Crytek announced today they're pushing the demo release date back to October 26, to make sure they can get the final version of the game out the door in mid-November. To soften the blow, the company also announced that the surprise they promised gamers at the end of August will be a copy of the game editor CryEngine 2, which allows gamers to start creating their own maps and mods before the final version of the game actually ships.
A few gaming sites are calling conspiracy of the Halo 3 on the announcement (saying, in effect, that Crytek didn't want to fight for gamer attention when the eagerly anticipated Halo 3 is about to hit the shelves), but we're just as intrigued by the concept of getting a game editor before getting the game as being a good thing. Not that we expect the future of game development to be completely freeform, but we do have to wonder why a developer would want to expose the guts of a game to player tinkering before they show off the storyline and official ideas of game play.
Aurora Online Clamps Down on Transgendered Gaming
By Eric HansonSeptember 24, 2007
If you're a guy with a penchant for playing female characters in MMORPGs (or a gal who plays female characters in MMORPGs), be thankful you don't live in China, or at least don't play the Chinese MMORPG King of the World: developer Aurora Technology decided to freeze all of the accounts of any female characters until their owners can prove they are biological females via webcam, presumably through some long process of checking by a live human - or a really powerful piece of facial recognition software. The freeze is a part of Aurora's requirements that only women play female characters in the game, although anyone - man or woman - can play a male character if they choose.
A number of commentators have pointed out that the technological requirements to make this ban work are enough to sink the game like a stone (are webcams really that ubiquitous? We certainly don't make a habit of having one around), but we're surprised at Aurora's parochialism: not only are role-playing games all about the fantasy of being someone entirely different, but joining any online community gives you the opportunity of remaking the image the rest of the world sees. Requiring this level of exposure makes us wonder if Aurora hasn't missed the whole point behind gaming online.
Significant Modifications to Medieval II
By Eric HansonAugust 10, 2007
Creative Assembly announced last week that they've made some significant modifications to Medieval II: Total War unit stats in an effort to rebalance the game for the upcoming release of the Kingdoms expansion, due at the end of August. The biggest change: the relationship between cavalry and infantry units; cavalry units have shrunk in size and now come with lower statistics. As a result cavalry has lost most of its ability to fight head on with infantry, making it more reliant on charges to the flanks and rear of a unit to win.
Not surprisingly, these changes ignited a storm of controversy and we can't say we disagree. An attempt at historical accuracy has always been one of the hallmarks of the Total War games, but Creative Assembly freely admits they made the changes to improve game play first. We just wonder why, as many fans suggested, they didn't opt to make those battle-winning heavy cavalry units more expensive to purchase instead of limiting the capabilities of soldiers that, in real life, were responsible for so many crushing victories on the battlefield. We're curious to see how much these changes end up changing the dynamics of the game in the name of balance.
World in Conflict Goes Gold
By Eric HansonAugust 10, 2007
Sierra Entertainment just announced that their new upcoming strategy/action/blow things up in cool ways title World in Conflict has gone gold in preparation for a mid-September release. In case you're not familiar with it, the game takes place right around the end of the Cold War, except the Cold War hasn't ended; it's gone red hot instead. Superpower duke things out and you're right in the middle, but as a tactical commander, not a grunt. In classic strategy style, the computer gives you objectives to complete, but there's no resource gathering, which we think is pretty cool. Instead, reinforcements arrive as you request them, forcing you to make priority decisions about what units you'll need to have to win. World in Conflict also has a multiplayer mode - of course - bringing the action online for what we suspect will be very intense battles, possibly ending in some sort of Armageddon.
We played the demo at the very tail-end of the beta test, so while we didn't get a chance to fully experience multiplayer battles, we did see a lot of things we really liked in the tutorial. Calling in air and artillery strikes on moving targets, for example, was a challenging enough experience to make us feel truly accomplished when we hit something.
id Software: Rage!
By Eric HansonAugust 10, 2007
Here's some shocking news: id Software is planning a departure from the world of first person shooters. That's right: the company that brought you Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake announced its next game, Rage, will include car racing, car customization and wide-open desert vistas to drive around in. Of course, because we're talking about id Software, departure is more like a foot out the door than a complete and total change; Rage will have plenty of first person shooter elements as well, like killing off the members of the oppressive regime that's trying to keep you from living your freewheeling life on post-apocalyptic Earth. We're thinking the Mad Max vibe that Rage so clearly espouses could be kinda cool to explore in a game, especially if it's done through an open-end storyline.
id's mix and match of game types underscores a trend we feel we've been seeing a lot lately: exciting examples of multi-genre game titles. Mixing genres isn't new, of course, but we feel there's been a strong push recently to find types of games to create in the hopes of catching the public's eye. We're certainly excited to see how this trend continues in the future.
