Quake Wars is Golden
The Battle for Earth begins Oct 2nd; September 28th for Europe and AU
Halo 3 Gone Gold
Warm up your 360s! Halo 3 hits stores on Sept. 25th. Are you ready?
Crysis Single Player Demo
Dated! Plus check out the latest batch of screenshots and Nanosuit HD video
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The Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars PC Demo comes with the final version of Valley, one of the larger battlegrounds in the game. Set in Yosemite, California, Valley has the Global Defense Force on the attack, as they attempt to foil a Strogg contamination plot centering on a water treatment facility. Valley features a great blend of close quarters infantry action, vehicle battles and aircraft dogfights, and the varied terrain combining mountains, waterways, tunnels and industrial structures allows for many different playing styles. To top it all off, there's a multitude of optional side missions and plenty of opportunities to try out the various defense turrets, artillery and radar deployables - Valley is a prime example of the frantic and diverse action you'll find in Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars.For those who already played Valley in the Public Beta, the map has undergone further balance improvements based on your feedback. Most notably, the GDF can now capture the Contaminator Forward Spawn before the Shield Generator is hacked, which really cranks up the action around that objective. On top of that, the Demo contains the final XP and weapon balance, player movement, and vehicle handling.
The Demo also features ETQW's bots, so you can explore the map and gameplay in single player mode with computer-controlled opponents, or use the bots to fill up empty slots on multiplayer servers. We are also including the standalone server as well as the server launcher tool, so you can host your own online and LAN games. Where You'll Get It
With Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars finished, we've got the system requirements locked down and finalized. Here's what you need in order to run the Demo:
SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS
Microsoft Windows XP/Vista (Windows 95/98/ME/2000 are unsupported) w/ Microsoft DirectX 9.0c HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS
CPU: Intel Pentium 4 2.8 GHz or AMD Athlon XP 2800+ processor (Pentium 4 3.0GHz or equivalent for Windows Vista) RAM: 512MB RAM (768MB for Windows Vista) Video Card: 128MB NVIDIA Geforce 5700 or ATI Radeon 9700 Sound Card: 100% DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card HDD Space: 750MB of free hard drive space, plus 200MB for Windows swap file Internet: Broadband connection SUPPORTED VIDEO CHIPSETS
NVIDIA GeforceFX Series (5700 or higher, not including 5700LE and 5700VE) NVIDIA Geforce 6 Series (6200 or higher) NVIDIA Geforce 7 Series (7300 or higher) NVIDIA Geforce 8 Series ATI Radeon 9700 or higher ATI Radeon X700 or higher ATI Radeon X1650 or higher
There'll be a full range of demo launch festivities, details of which can be found here.
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment will publish Project Origin, the videogame sequel to the hit game F.E.A.R., developed by Monolith Productions for the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, PLAYSTATION 3 computer entertainment system and Games for Windows. The name was chosen by the fans, as they submitted entries and then voted for the winning submission.“Project Origin is the name we can stand behind since it was picked by the gaming community, and this game marks a new beginning for the franchise,” says Samantha Ryan, Senior Vice President, Production and Development, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. “With the consoles and the PC, we’re dedicated to add a new game dynamic to the universe and build upon what the players loved about the original game.”
“Our team really enjoyed letting the fans drive the naming process, and we are excited to expand upon the work we began in the original game and establish Project Origin as a premier gaming franchise in its own right,” said Troy Skinner, Producer, Monolith Productions.
The sequel will continue the original game’s spine-tingling supernatural suspense story of an escalating paranormal crisis that threatens to destroy a major American city. At the center of the calamity is the mysterious Alma, whose rage against those who wronged her triggered a chain of events that have spiraled completely out of control. Now that she has free reign, the consequences will be unimaginable.
.NCsoft Europe, the world’s leading developer and publisher of online computer games, announced today that Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa has reached gold master status and will launch commercial service in Europe and North America on October 19, 2007. Pre-order customers will begin their three-day head start on October 16.One of the most anticipated PC games of the year, Tabula Rasa is gaming legend Richard Garriott’s newest title, which combines a vast, persistent game world and rich storyline with fast paced action. Set in a near-future science fiction storyline, players create characters that must fight to save humanity against hostile alien enemies while trying to gain control of the universe. The game introduces several innovative elements to massively multiplayer online (MMO) games, including a Character Cloning System that allows players to explore different character classes without having to create a new character, and dynamic battlefields where players experience the frenetic action of combat in an ongoing war.
“It has been a heck of a journey,” said Richard Garriott, the game’s Executive Producer. “The fact that we are getting ready for the final stretch towards launch feels great, but it is also just the beginning. I think we’ve managed to do something truly unique and I hope that the gaming community likes it as much as we do. Now, I am looking forward to a really fun ‘end of beta event’ for our incredible testers, and focusing development on new planets and innovations for future expansions of Tabula Rasa.”
The standard edition box of Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa will be available at major retailers at an expected retail price of £29.99 / €44.99 and at the PlayNC store. Customers will be able to purchase the recently announced Limited Collector’s Edition box from major retailers at an expected retail price of £49.99 / €69.99. Both products include the first month of online game play. After the first month, players will be charged a monthly subscription fee of £8.99 / €12.99.
And at the end of October, Hellgate: London will launch.
Set in the near future, the Battlefield: Bad Company single-player campaign drops gamers into a dramatic Eurasian conflict. As part of a squad of four soldiers, players risk it all to go AWOL on a personal quest for riches and revenge. Featuring a dramatic storyline flavored with dark humor, Battlefield: Bad Company leads gamers far from the traditional frontlines on a wild ride with a group of renegade soldiers who decide that sometimes the gratitude of a nation just isn’t enough.The Battlefield: Bad Company cinematic single-player experience captures the freedom and intensity of the franchise’s legendary multiplayer sandbox gameplay in a dynamic world where nearly everything is destructible. Gamers have total freedom to be daring and innovative, adapting to and tackling challenges in unexpected “Battlefield-style” ways. Create sniping positions by blowing out a piece of a wall or drive your tank straight through a small house – anything can happen on an ever-changing battlefield, forcing players, their teammates, and enemies to react accordingly.
Battlefield: Bad Company also features a full suite of the franchise’s trademark multiplayer gameplay, supporting 24 players online.
Battlefield: Bad Company is the first game built from the ground up for next-generation consoles using DICE’s bleeding-edge Frostbite™ game engine, delivering unrivaled graphics, effects and gameplay.
Key Features
Cinematic single-player experience – A deep campaign loaded with dark humor follows a wayward band of ordinary soldiers who risk it all on a quest for revenge and personal gain War, your way – Battlefield: Bad Company sandbox environments are 90 percent destructible, meaning any structure can be demolished down to its foundation. Gamers can shape the battlefield to match their play style – the possibilities are literally endless. New vehicles, weapons and toys – Land, air or sea, dozens of new tools are waiting for explosive experimentation. Battlefield: Bad Company gives gamers the building blocks to get creative and usher in a new era of their own “Battlefield moments” Frostbite game engine – DICE’s Frostbite game engine raises the bar for next-gen gaming, with stunning HD graphics that bring characters, vehicles, and environments to life like never before., Genre-defining multiplayer – Support for 24 players online in a world designed to take full advantage of the game’s massively destructible environments True “Through the gun” experience – DICE’s attention to detail is applied to the act of firing a weapon. Dozens of subtle changes to the FPS formula add up to a vastly improved shooting experience.
Starr Long and Lead Designer Paul Sage took us through a demo that was a variant on what we saw at E3. In the subsequent Q&A;, there were some juicy PVP factoids divulged: Tabula Rasa's clan PVP will support clans up to 200 players. Maps are designed to support 300-400 players and 2000 NPCs simultaneously, so it could make for some large-scale laser-rifle mayhem.
The event was a remarkable extravaganza over 8 hours, involved paranormal people, full tour of the Mansion Britannia 2 and then a space-alien attack involving explosions and helicopters on the 70-acre construction site for Garriott's new digs, Britannia 3. Pictures were taken and are forthcoming. We will be sure to post some of the incriminating ones here as soon as we get them, along with the press release.
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Fury Media #1
Examples of the graphics we'll see in Auran's online game with
persistent characters fighting for their home servers - Three exclusive
screenshots
Today's question:
What game - currently out on the market now - is in most dire need of patching?
Console or PC (cough).
So Bizarre is a crazy place to be right now. PGR4 is on the brink of release, which subsequently means that for some people their work here is done. Many of the team are enjoying some well earned time off, but it's bittersweet as they're also on-call should they be needed back at the studio.I love me some PGR.For those of us still here at Bizarre (which is the majority in truth), it's a mad dash to get everything finished, screenshots taken, artwork finalised, etc. etc. Our production team are supervising the certification process at MGS, which is pretty much the last step required before the game "goes gold" and heads off to manufacturing. Needless to say we all want the game to go through cert first time and with flying colours, but if anything is wrong we are still all on hand to sort it out and get it packaged up again for the next attempt.
Regardless of all this certification tomfoolery, you'll be able to pick up the game on 2nd October in the United States, or the 12th October in Europe.
As of right now, Left 4 Dead is scheduled to ship in the first half of 2008 for PC and Xbox 360. There's no chance at this point of cross-platform play. The game will have persistent statistics viewable by others, so players trying to find a game will have a good idea of who's the most effective fighter and who likes to shoot their teammates. On PC, Valve said this game, along with Team Fortress 2, will have the statistics uploaded to users' Steam community pages.
Even the most hardcore of console gamers would agree that controllers are rather unwieldy when compared to the PC's venerable mouse and keyboard tag-team. Because of this, one of Team Fortress 2's main objectives is to provide more than one path to perform certain actions. As mentioned, the d-pad can be used to swap weapons, but so can the L and R Bumpers. Pressing Start brings up the game's main menu, at which players can swap teams or classes, among other options. Since a staple of Team Fortress is to switch classes at any time--thus allowing players to experience each character's unique gameplay dynamics--pressing the Back button instantly calls forth the class selection screen. It's all about options, and TF2 has them in surplus.
You might’ve heard some rumors on the interwebs that PCXL magazine is making some sort of zombified resurrection. Like most things you read online, bold speculation and claim end up being a mix of truthiness and poppycock. Such is the case here. A magazine with the moniker PCXL is indeed for sale on newsstands across the continent, but instead of full-fledged ongoing publication, this new edition of PCXL is a one-shot special issue.
SPOnG: How long will the single player campaign last and what will there be in terms of longevity play?Thanks, InCrysis.Alex Werner: The single player campaign runs, depending on your game style, at about 10 hours if you play it once through. If you want to see everything you could double that time easily. And if you play with stealth mainly it may take 15-20 hours, it’s really up to you! But minimum - about 10 hours.
GI: With all that’s been going on with Unreal Engine 3 and your dealings with Epic, how far has switching engines set you back in development?If his case was so fantastic, you'd think he would just STFU and let his lawyers do the talking in court.Dyack: The damages that we suffered because of the failure of the Unreal Engine have been grievous. We, as a company, have worked really, really hard to overcome that. What we’re going to show people in October, through our hard work, is really going to shine through. To the extent of damages—that’s all to be proven at trial.
From a standpoint of Silicon Knights, we’re really trying to concentrate on the games. We really are a games company, and we did everything we could to avoid this litigation. But, you know, our lawyers—who are fantastic lawyers—are going to take this forward. We’re confident that we’re going to see justice. We strongly believe in all the claims that we have forwarded in the suit, and the emperor has no clothes. We’re confident in everything we’ve stated, and I hope that we see justice, and we’re going to fight hard for it. As far as everything else goes, I’m going to have to say, “No comment” on that.
This guy has a bigger mouth than Derek Smart.
The next philosophy is to "build and protect the brand" –- "The Blizzard name is our most important property," he said, and it stands for "high quality, fun, and polish." The company thinks of its brand as a bank account, constantly trying to "make 'brand deposits' and avoid 'brand withdrawals.'"Too bad most publishers don't get this concept...Next, Morhaime said the company always resists the pressure to ship early. Pressure, he said, comes from all around to ship the game as soon as possible, something Blizzard tries to resist as shipping early is "very risky," and, referring to the last point, "shipping a game early can do tremendous damage to a brand or a franchise."
He pleaded that the industry "think long term" and said "shipping early and losing players is very short term mentality." The company fought this battle in 1996 when Diablo missed its holiday release schedule, which, in the end, perhaps impacted day one sales, but went on to sell well throughout 1997.
"Nobody looks back at Diablo and says 'if only they’d released it 3 weeks earlier'," said Morhaime, and through that experience the company was able to educate its parent company that it's quality that matters -- something Blizzard had to deal with again as Burning Crusade missed its own holiday deadline.
Harmonix, the leading developer of music-based games, MTV Games, a division of MTV Networks within Viacom (NYSE: VIA, VIA.B), and Rhino Entertainment, a division of Warner Music Group (NYSE:WMG), announced a deal that will bring the legendary band Grateful Dead to the highly anticipated music videogame Rock Band. The iconic group is making 18 master recordings from its diverse catalog available as digitally distributed game levels following Rock Band’s release this holiday season. Among the songs available will be the classic Dead tracks “Truckin’,” “Uncle John’s Band,” “Touch of Grey,” “Sugar Magnolia,” and “Casey Jones.”“Grateful Dead’s unique fusion of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, and jazz challenged traditional musical boundaries and pushed the limits of creativity to produce a signature sound that is undeniably their own,” stated Paul DeGooyer, MTV's Senior Vice President of Audio, Home Video and Electronic Games. “With an enormous legion of fans all over the world, Rock Band will give players a chance to interact with the music of these beloved rock pioneers and experience what Grateful Dead did best - jam from the depths of their souls.”
Midway Games Inc. (NYSE: MWY), a leading interactive entertainment publisher and developer today announced that Stranglehold, for the Xbox 360™ video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, is now shipping to retail outlets nationwide. Featuring duel-wielding, stunt-laden gameplay, incredible environmental destruction and a multiplayer experience that brings all the intense action online, Stranglehold is available for a U.S. suggested retail price of $59.99 for Xbox 360. The Xbox 360 collector's edition is available for a U.S. suggested retail price of $69.99. Stranglehold is scheduled to be available for PC on September 18 and the PlayStation3 computer entertainment system on September 25 for a U.S. suggested retail price of $49.99 and $59.99, respectively. The PS3 collector's edition will feature the game and a full-length version of John Woo's critically acclaimed action film "Hard Boiled" both on the same high-capacity PlayStation 3 Blu-ray disc, for a suggested retail price of $69.99."Stranglehold marks a significant milestone in Midway's commitment to developing and publishing high-quality, triple-A products," said Steve Allison, chief marketing officer, Midway. "The game not only delivers the intense, cinematic gunplay that acclaimed action director John Woo is known for, but completely redefines what action gaming is all about."
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Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising Media #11
In this week's visual from the Perpetual team, we see a tranquil scene
with boats, palm trees et al reflected in a river - An exclusive screenshot
Jonric's Blog
Sept 3 - Sun's open source server technology, Austin GDC, my new PC
Command & Conquer 3 - I thought it was pretty good the first time I played it on mostly medium settings. Quick load times, smooth graphics, nice shaders, etc. One of the big problems I had was that the view was so close to the ground. After playing SupCom, CNC3 felt claustrophobic. I don't know if they zoomed it out a bit more over time in various patches, but it's not an issue anymore. Irregardless, CNC3 looks fab fully cranked up and the cut scenes are amusing.
Today's question:
What are some games you've bought this past year (or so) but haven't gotten around to playing yet?