Many of you have noticed by now that our third game has been announced in PC Gamer, and its name is Defcon. You'll see we've made room for it on the new site, and we'll have some nice screenshots and information for you to look at soon. We are also pleased to announce that Gary Chambers (Icepick to the IV community) is the mystery second developer on the Defcon project, and has been working for us full-time for the past six months since graduating.

Codename Eagle Battlefield 2 Mod 02:34 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Action (2 comments)
Fans of Codename Eagle might be pleased that a mod team has brought the spirit of the game over to Battlefield 2:

CE: Legends is a total conversion mod that pays tribute to Codename Eagle, a game released in 1999. The timeline is around WWI including biplanes, early tanks, a motorcycle, even a giant zeppelin blimp. Gameplay is geared for action and each player starts out with an array of weapons to choose from. The level "No Man's Land" is included in this build of the mod along with support for several original BF2 levels that use new gamemodes.

Supported gamemodes include: Capture the Flag, BF2 vs CE, and Singleplayer 11 new vehicles and 9 new weapons

The screenies look nice; it's a World War 1 themed game with biplanes and all that jazz.

An Almanac of Pimps, Orcs and Lightsabers 03:16 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: General News (3 comments)
From the off the beaten path department comes The 2006 Gamer's Tome of Ultimate Wisdom: An Almanac of Pimps, Orcs and Lightsabers, a book by William Abner:

The 2006 Gamer's Tome of Ultimate Wisdom: An Almanac of Pimps, Orcs and Lightsabers book by William Abner is filled with entertaining reviews, previews, and commentaries on all gaming platforms and the gaming industry as a whole. The 300 page book takes a month-by-month look back at the significant game releases of 2005 and looks ahead to the exciting titles gamers can expect to see in 2006. Along the way the Gamer's Tome offers insights into anything and everything that has to do with gaming, including why sports games are the biggest rip-off in the industry, advice on how to talk about games in public without being shunned by "regular" people and even what energy drinks give you that extra oomph you need to get through an all-night LAN party.

Hardware & Tech Nuggets 12:45 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - hardware: General News (1 comment)
It guess the fat lady has sung for Opera:

Boards

• ATI Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire Edition - Digit-Life
• Gigabyte G1975X - Legionhardware

  Cases
  

• Aspire's LAN Party Proud X-Qpack Case - Tomshardware

  Cooling
  

• Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro - techPowerUp

  Memory
  

• Corsair 2048MB XMS PC3500LL PRO Dual Channel DDR - Big Bruin

  Video
  

• ATI X1800XL Video Card Overclocking Guide - Legit Reviews

Game Reviews 12:30 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: General News (0 comments)

Civ IV


• Civilization IV - Game Revolution - A-

  360
  

• Kameo: Elements of Power - The Armchair Empire - 7.9/10

  Xbox
  

• True Crime: NYC - Gaminghorizon - 5.6/10

  PS2
  

• Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows - Game Revolution - D+

  PSP
  

• The Con - Gaming Age - D

  DS
  

• Mario Kart DS - The Armchair Empire - 9/10

In Other News... 12:15 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - In-House: In Other News... (12 comments)
Merry Christmas Eve, you pagan bastids!

Today's question:

What games are on your holiday play list?

Is it true? Who knows! What do you guys think?

Gothic III Preview 09:43 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Role-Playing (4 comments)
Those wild and crazy guys over at ActionTrip previewed Piranha Bytes's hot looking RPG, Gothic III:

Many cool new features are being added to Gothic 3. I should emphasize though, that the developers are still toying around with some ideas. Piranha Bytes seems to show a keen interest in how fans feel generally about the worlds and characters of Gothic. Apparently, most fans are itching to see horseback riding in the game. The developers are still considering how to implement this in the third installment. Personally, when I played Gothic 2, I also felt that a mighty stead would be a welcomed addition, so I could go around the countryside more swiftly. In the end, I always figured that going on foot is one of the essentials of gameplay and that if I rode around on a horse all day, I would surely miss out on many of the games concealed pleasures (not those types of pleasures!). Should horses be introduced to the game, it might cast a shadow on other aspects that make RPGs cool to play - such as methodical exploration, looking for hidden treasures, etc. Plus, it could change the pace of the game itself. Even so, I think it would be interesting to see how mountable creatures would fit into this one.

Obsidian Visit Part Three 09:40 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Role-Playing (0 comments)
The NWN Vault conjured up part three of its special series of stories based on a visit to Obsidian. Today, they chat with Neverwinter Nights 2 Community Manager Shane DeFreest.

Gamespy Reader's Choice Awards 03:37 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: General News (3 comments)
Gamespy posted the results of its Reader's choice awards of 2005 (or as I like to call them: the real awards, cough). Their picks were very close to ours, although a couple first and second places got the old switcharoo. Dig it.

Star Wars Empire at War Preview 03:20 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Real-Time Strategy (4 comments)
1Up previewed Petroglyph's (former Westwood types) Star Wars Empire at War which blends space combat and traditional land-based real-time strategy.

When your fleet arrives at its target, say for instance Alderran (who could resist?) you commit your forces to the fight and with a click of the "begin" button the real fighting begins. Unlike Homeworld's 3D space strategy, it all takes place on a flat plane, and that's absolutely ok. Not having to wrestle with the concept of moving in 3D makes battles much easier to manage, and the graphics easily handle making the battles look 3D. That fits with the general feel of combat that doesn't require a whole lot of micromanagement. Once you've issued orders you're free to do other things, like tap the Space Bar to enter cinematic camera mode. It still needs some polishing to iron out awkward angels and sometimes spastic jumping from view to view, but it gives you quite a rush to see those orders play out much as you could imagine it happening if you were directing your own Star Wars movie.

Civ4 v1.52 Manual Download 02:43 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Turned-Based Strategy (0 comments)
Since the auto-updater is getting hit harder than an unwanted redheaded stepchild on Christmas morning wondering were their presents are, the Apolyton Civilization Site has a manual download for Civ4 v1.52. The update comes in at around 45 megs and fixes a lot of the memory leak / laggy performance issues after you've been playing awhile (among other stuff, its' a major update).

Neverwinter Nights 2 Interview at RPG Vault: Part 3 up 10:03 am - Elias 'Mithan' Doulias - Games: Role-Playing (0 comments)
RPG Vault has put up part 3 of its Neverwinter Nights 2 Interview.

Jonric: How much playing time can the average player expect, and what degree of replayability? And why should someone who didn't play the first one want to try the sequel?

Ferret Baudoin: The number of hours is a tricky thing to quantify - we're shooting for 30 to 40 hours of dungeon-romping, plot-twisting and monster-slaying fun. But mileage can vary widely on this.

PS3 to sell 200 million units in first 5 years? 09:43 am - Elias 'Mithan' Doulias - Consoles: PS3 (29 comments)
Business Week has an interesting article up where they say that Sony is expected to sell 200 million units of the PS3 in the first 5 years. They also mention that a top Sony exec says that the Cell processor is as good as the Pentium.

Putting the Cell in a gaming console gives the chip a high-profile start. Sony's gaming machine, PlayStation2, has been the hottest console in history, topping 100 million units in November after five years on the market. Analysts predict the next-generation machine will do even better. Sony is expected to sell more than 12 million PS3s in the first year and reach the 200 million mark within five years, estimates researcher Envisioneering Group.

Those numbers would give Sony the crucial economies of scale needed to ratchet down the cost of each chip -- estimated in the hundreds of dollars today. But matching Intel's reach won't be easy. The No. 1 chipmaker has sold hundreds of millions of Pentium microprocessors in PCs over the years. "The Pentium chip is unique in its stature, and I don't ever expect its success to be repeated," says Tom Starnes, an analyst at market-watcher Gartner.

Hardware & Tech Nuggets 12:02 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - hardware: General News (0 comments)
Not a creature was stirring, except for the X-Arcade trackball mouse...

Cooling

• Arctic-Cooling Freezer 64 Pro - Legionhardware

  CPU
  

• AMD Opteron against Intel Xeon - Xbit Labs

  Mice
  

• X-Arcade Trackball Mouse - 3DGameMan

  Video
  

• The All-In-Wonder 2006 PCIe Edition: The Latest Multimedia Solution From ATI - Anandtech
• ATI All-In-Wonder 2006 PCI Express - Viperlair

Game Reviews 12:01 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: General News (2 comments)

PC

• Civ IV - Groovgames - 9/10
• Diplomacy - 1Up - 3/10
• Half-Life 2 The Lost Coast - GGMania - n/a
• Starship Troopers - 1Up - 4/10
• Star Wars Galaxies - Computer Gaming World - 1.5/5
• Vietcong 2 - 1Up - 5/10

  Xbox
  

• Cabela's Dangerous Hunts 2 - TeamXbox - 5.1/10
• The Sims 2 - 1Up - 6.8/10

  PS2
  

• Aeon Flux - 1Up - 6/10
• Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows - 1Up - 6.5/10

  GameCube
  

• Mario Pary 7 - 1Up - 5.5/10

  DS
  

• Animal Crossing: Wild World - Gaming Age - B+
• Dragon Booster - Gamespy - 2/5

In Other News... 12:00 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - In-House: In Other News... (18 comments)
Just two more days until Christmas...

Today's question:

Have any hot holiday plans?