The rendering quality looked very smooth, and in some spots it seemed richer than the Xbox 360 version. Pete Hines, our Bethesda host, attributed this to a new shader the developers are using that blends higher-quality close textures with the lower-quality distant textures. Effects looked smooth when we had our mage cast a volley of fire bolts across the star-filled night sky above the Imperial City. Later on, we picked up on a small hitch where some horizontal seams appeared about an inch apart when we looked closely at a hillside. However, the problem only seemed to happen at this particular location and we could not duplicate it elsewhere.

World of Whorecraft Interview 12:09 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: MMOG (13 comments)
Kotaku has a special feature up about the World of Whorecraft, a series of short-pornos about (you guessed it), Blizzard's cash-cow MMORPG. Included, are quotes from the director and some of the stars:

"I'm having more fun doing this than the straight up gonzo porn," he said. "I could have made some website, put some swords on it and then had some chicks blowing people and it would have done great. But that's not why I'm doing this. I'm doing this because it's cool and people dig it."

HL2: Episode 2 Pushed Back To Winter 08:03 am - Andrew Burnes - Games: Action (62 comments)
Jesus H, a new press release from EA reveals that Half-Life 2: Episode 2 now won't be out until the Winter:

Electronic Arts, the world's leading interactive entertainment company, and Valve, the award-winning studio behind the blockbuster franchises Half-Life and Counter-Strike, today announced the naming and product configurations The Black Box and The Orange Box, two of the most anticipated action game offerings shipping worldwide this Winter 2007.

The Black Box will ship for the PC, and includes Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Portal and Team Fortress 2. The Orange Box will ship for the PC, PLAYSTATION 3 computer entertainment system, and Xbox 360 videogame and entertainment system, and includes all the content of The Black Box, plus the original Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode One.

Innovative games included in The Black Box and The Orange Box include:

Half-Life 2: Episode Two -- the second installment in Valve's episodic trilogy advances the award-winning story, leading the player to new locations outside of City 17.

Portal -- a pioneering type of single player action game that rewrites the rules for how players approach and manipulate their environment - much like how Half-Life 2's Gravity Gun reinvented the way gamers interact with objects in the game.

Team Fortress 2 -- an all-new version of the legendary title that spawned team based multiplayer action games. The game's daring new art style features the most advanced graphics of any Source-based game released to date.

"In less than 18 months, we've shipped 10 new products to retail outlets with EA Partners," said Gabe Newell, co-founder of Valve. "The Black Box and The Orange Box represent a new approach to publishing multiple products, on multiple platforms and we know through our experience that no organization in the industry is better equipped to successfully launch new product types on multiple platforms than EA Partners."

"Valve is one of the world's premiere independent developers and EA Partners is thrilled to help them bring the groundbreaking action games in The Orange Box and The Black Box to market as their publishing partner," said David DeMartini, vice president and general manager of EA Partners.

The Black Box and The Orange Box are targeted for release this winter 2007.

The Black Box and The Orange Box are also probably the worst looking game boxes I've ever seen, seeing how they're just black and orange with white text on. Like, what the fuck? Oh and to those wishing me well, thank you - my overpriced German doctor is pumping me full of overpriced German drugs in an effort to rid my body of this bastard flu-stroke-chest infection thingy.

The Witcher Screenshots 02:52 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Role-Playing (9 comments)
Three lovely new screenshots from The Witcher, one of Atari's upcoming RPGs:

(Click to Enlarge!)

Jade Empire Special Edition (PC) Screens 02:45 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Role-Playing (8 comments)
21 new screenshots of BioWare's Jade Empires: Special Edition for the PC:

(Click to Enlarge!)

Hardware & Tech Nuggets 01:33 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - hardware: General News (1 comment)

Boards

• ASUS Striker Extreme Mainboard - Xbit Labs
• ASUS Striker Extreme - Legion Hardware
• DFI ICFX3200-T2R/G - [H]

  Cases
  

• Moneual Moncaso 932B HTPC Case - Pro-Clockers

  Cooling
  

• Monsoon II Lite: Thermal Electric Cooling Tower - Anandtech
• Zalman Fatal1ty FC-ZV9 Dual Heatpipe VGA Cooler - PC Apex

  Mice
  

• I-Rocks 4-Way Navigation Laser Mouse - techPowerUp

  Memory
  

• Buffalo FireStix PC2-8000 5-5-5 - Overclockers Online

  Power Supply
  

• Corsair's HX series 620 Watt PSU - Metku
• OCZ ProXStream 1000W - Virtual-Hideout
• XClio Stable Power 460 Watt - Tweaknews

  Storage
  

• Western Digital WD740ADFD: Bottled Lightning - Anandtech

  Video
  

• The Best Gaming Video Cards For The Money - THG
• PCI-E x1 Graphics Performance with Galaxy GeForce 7300GT - Tweaktown

RPG Vault Goodness 01:28 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Role-Playing (0 comments)

Vanguard: Saga of Heroes Launch Event Report
Sigil and Sony celebrate going live with a tribute to the persistent state world's late Art Director, Keith Parkinson

EverQuest: The Buried Sea Media #3
Continuing our visual tour of locales in the upcoming expansion, the Sony team shows us Silyssar -New Chelsith - Six exclusive 1600x1200 screenshots

Game Reviews 01:14 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: General News (12 comments)

360

• Bionicle Heroes - Boomtown - 3/10

  Wii
  

• Far Cry Vengeance - GameSpy - 1.5/5

  DS
  

• Hotel Dusk: Room 215 - Killer Betties - 4/5

  PSP
  

• Capcom Puzzle World - PSP.IGN - 6.9/10
• Capcom Puzzle World - GameSpy - 3.5/5
• Capcom Puzzle World - GameSpot - 7.7/10

  Wireless
  

• Call of Duty 3 - Wireless.IGN - 7.3/10

In Other News... 12:59 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - In-House: In Other News... (21 comments)
The Supreme Commander demo was really cool. It ran much smoother than the beta client. It was fun to check out the single player stuff too. Neat cut-scenes!

Yesterday I was out and about cruising various electronic shops. Man, HDTV prices have really bottomed out. For like $1500 you can get a really nice Sony 40" 1366 rez LCD flatscreen. Like a year ago, the same TV was like $2700. The 56 inch 1080p DLP sets were cheap as well. While I was there, I checked out the computers. Fry's had nothing. The best system they had was a $2400 PC with Intel integrated graphics. No thanks! CompUSA -- going by the name you would figure they would have, well, computers -- had like 10 systems to choose from. They were basically internet machines all in the under $800 range (a.k.a. - trash). Best Buy, believe it or not, was the only place that had anything decent. I was suprised to see some Velocity PCs there (E6600, 2 gigs ram, Geforce 7950 series) for like $1999. The funny thing was that even the cheap-ass $400 e-machines were running Vista in some form. Well, they were trying to!

Today's question:

Whose responsiblity to do you think it is to make XP era games run better on Vista?

The developer, publisher, Microsoft, or NVIDIA?

(Click to Enlarge!)

Windows Vista Showcase 07:35 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: General News (4 comments)
GameSpot has a nice walkthrough of Windows Vista outlining what the different versions contain, photos of the features, how Vista performs, and all of that other good stuff.

Meanwhile, ExtremeTech loaded up 25 popular games on Vista to see if they work or not (thanks Slashdot). Did Vista make the grade?

The final version of Vista is an A- gaming platform, dragged down to a B- by rough drivers—assuming the driver situation is improved in the coming weeks and months, Vista will be a great gaming OS. Even though I installed and tested a lot more games this time around, nearly all of them worked quite well, and only a handful needed just a minor tweak or two, like running the game as Administrator. Steam is hit-or-miss: the app and all its games seem to work fine, but the way it interacts with the Games Explorer is erratic.

ION's Other Game @ The Escapist 07:27 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: General News (4 comments)
The Escapist takes a look back at ION Storm's other game (you know, besides the double D's), Anachronox:

Anachronox was caught in the slow-motion explosion of a drama bomb. Ion Storm Dallas was busy eating itself, a process chronicled everywhere from NPR to Gamespot to our own magazine, and Tom Hall was caught in the middle. "I had different roles at different times: Chief Creative Officer, President, etc. But, basically, I served as the Project Lead on Anachronox, and, where I could, as conscience of the company." He blames Ion's collapse on the company's lack of focus, or rather, their focus on things other than game development. "Once there was a re-focus on making games - boom, they got done."

Hall cites three factors in Ion Storm's demise. "A: too many newbies. We had very few hires that were senior." He said they had a strong desire to give new people a shot, "but we went too far in that regard. We wound up with an amazing team, but a lot of them had to cut their teeth on [our games]. B: politics. I can't go into this for, sadly, legal reasons, but let's just say there was a whole lot of turmoil and not enough focus on making games. C: over-marketing. We were making bold statements before we were even [in] alpha. We needed to shut up until we had something to show. If it hadn't been for those three things, Daikatana would have come out much earlier and been fine."

PGR 4 Update 07:11 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Consoles: Xbox 360 (4 comments)
Bizarre Creations let us know that Studio Update #20 is now online for your viewing pleasure. Topics include: Geometry Wars for the PC, Boom Boom Rocket, and of course, Project Gotham Racing 4.

...And of course that brings us neatly onto... PGR4. The internal team we have here at Bizarre are pretty familiar with the routine now; everybody knows their place and is really getting on with it at a speedy rate. We've seen a couple of excellent new technologies make their way into the game... of course you'll hear more about these in due time.

Oh, and just to clarify: the X06 trailer wasn't gameplay. It wasn't representative of what we've got planned for the style or locations in the game itself. You won't see outer space racing or anything like that! We have changed our design emphasis slightly from previous titles though... I think we're going to surprise a few people with PGR4!

Crysis to Run on Older PCs 07:04 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Action (12 comments)
Next-Gen has some comments from Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli stating that Crysis will, in fact, run on 2-3 year old PCs.

Although Yerli is confident that Crysis will run on older setups, he suggests that if you can only play the game on DX9, try not to view the game running in the superior DX10. "We work hard to give everyone a great experience," he states. "You should not miss anything when [only] playing it on DX9, but if you get a chance to play it on DX10 you might [miss the fidelity when going back to DX9].

He adds that close ties with software and hardware partners have helped Crytek overcome the complicated transition to Vista, DX10 and multi-core processors. Yerli says, "Working with early DX10 hardware was challenging, but our strong connections with Nvidia, Intel and Microsoft have helped a lot. We rarely had crashes, blue screens or rebooting machines."

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. B.E.T.A. @ FilePlanet 05:19 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: Action (3 comments)
Later this month, FilePlanet will be hosting the beta for S.T.A.L.K.E.R., which I'm sure a few of you (cough) might be interested in checking out (a little try before you buy, action). I don't have an exact date for it, but it should be pretty soon...

Supreme Commander Demo Released 09:34 am - Andrew Burnes - Games: Real-Time Strategy (43 comments)
I come from my death bed to bring you word of a Supreme Commander demo.

Download from:

• 3D Gamers
• FilePlanet
• Worthplaying

Magazines vs. The Web: End of an Era 01:30 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: General News (20 comments)
[H]ard|OCP has an interesting editorial up called Magazines vs. The Web: End of an Era which examines why magazines are losing so much market share. Some points they bring up are the timeliness information is delivered, the length and space constraints of online vs print, plus oh-so much more. It mostly deals with technology and hardware, but they look at games too:

In fact, Future US is so sure that the Web is the future it is pouring millions of dollars into an atrocious "gaming portal" named Games Radar. During this meeting, Bint also hinted that there may come a time in the future where Maximum PC would have to go online to compete with other tech hardware sites. A sort of "tech radar," if you will. Clearly, it's becoming increasingly difficult for magazines to stay relevant when there are so many disadvantages inherent in their business model.

Hardware & Tech Nuggets 01:07 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - hardware: General News (0 comments)

Boards

• Abit NF-M2 nView GF 6150/430 mATX - Hardcoreware
• ASUS M2NPV-VM - Motherboards.org

  Cases
  

• iStar Nitro AX Full Tower Computer Case - PCStats
• Moneual Moncaso 932B HTPC Case - Pro-Clockers
• Win F430 Xtreme Series ATX Computer Case - Tweaknews

  Cooling
  

• ASUS V-60 - Legion Hardware
• GlacialTech Silent Blade 80mm Cooling Fan - Future Looks
• Thermaltake Ruby Orb CPU Cooler - Thinkcomputers.org

  CPU
  

• AMD Interview - Hexus
• Athlon 64 3600+ 65nm Brisbane - AMDZone

  Keyboards
  

• Logitech LX 710 Cordless Desktop - Modders-Inc
• Razer Tarantula Keyboard - TechPowerUp

  Memory
  

• Corsair DOMINATOR Twin2X2048-9136C5D DDR2-1142 - PCStats

  Speakers
  

• Logitech Z-10 Interactive Speaker System - CoolTechZone

  Storage
  

• Western Digital WD1600AAJS: 160GB Served on Single Platter - Anandtech

  Video
  

• Asus' EN8800GTX GeForce 8800 GTX - HotHardware
• ASUS EN7950GT and ASUS EN7900GS - Xbit Labs
• Gainward 8800GTX - XS Reviews
• XFX GeForce 8800 GTX XXX Edition - Hexus

RPG Vault Goodness 12:56 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: MMOG (0 comments)

Pirates of the Caribbean Online Media Event Report
Disney invites us to see the massively multiplayer adaptation of its hugely popular theme park and film property

Game Reviews 12:38 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - Games: General News (2 comments)

PC

• Avatar: The Last Airbender - PC.IGN - 5/10
• Europa Universalis III - Play.tm - 85%
• Sam & Max Episode 3 - PC.IGN - 6.6/10
• Vanguard: Saga of Heroes - Yahoo - 3.5/5
• World of WarCraft: The Burning Crusade - GameSpot - 9.2/10
• World of WarCraft: The Burning Crusade - Strategy Informer - 9.3/10

  360
  

• Lost Planet - C&VG; - 8/10

  PS3
  

• Blast Factor - Eurogamer - 6/10
• Sonic the Hedgehog - GameSpot - 4.2/10

  DS
  

• Diddy Kong Racing DS - DS.IGN - 7.1/10
• Diddy Kong Racing DS - GameSpot - 6.7/10
• Fullmetal Alchemist DS - GameSpot - 4/10

  PS2
  

• MVP 07 NCAA Baseball - PS2.IGN - 7.6/10

  PSP
  

• Capcom Puzzle World - PSP.IGN - 3.5/5
• Platypus - Gaming-Age - C-
• Winning Eleven: Pro Evolution Soccer 2007 - PSP.IGN - 8.5/10

In Other News... 12:30 am - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - In-House: In Other News... (24 comments)
I got a beta copy of Silverfall the other day and its pretty enjoyable. If I was to compare it to any other recently released action/RPG, I'd say it's kind of like Titan Quest. Once I get to a decent level, I'll snap off some screenshots for you guys.

Today's question is from raistmaj42, who asks:

What type of moves that you see in movies would you want to be able to do in a game?