Latest Articles (Page 3583)
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New Year's Day EverQuest's most successful ever
While the rest of us were nursing hangovers the size of many small Eastern European countries, Massively Multiplayer Online RPG creators Verant and owners Sony were raising their glasses for the second day running to their most successful day of EverQust play ever. Before New Year's, Sony estimate that its 38 San Diego-based servers were playing host to some 60,000 to 70,000 players simultaneously at peak hours, but on January 1st, it is said that the peak total for the most players logged on simultaneously rose to an astronomical 81,858, approximately a quarter of the 330,000 subscribed EverQuest players in the world. The total is said to have steadily increased since the release last month in the States of mission pack The Scars of Velious. The mission pack is due out over here sometime this quarter.
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Another Gaming Network Hits the Dust
This time it's C|Net's GameCenter Alliance which bites the bullet
It's never a pleasant thing to have to report on the demise of a fellow website, so it's especially distressing when an entire network is forced to close up shop. C|Net, the company responsible for the recent acquisition of ZDNet, has closed down the hosting side of its gaming operation, GameCenter. The gaming portal itself will remain open, but its many hosted sites, including Stomped.com, Counter-Strike.net and Unreal Universe will all either be forced to close or look for hosting elsewhere. There has been much debate over the reasons for the closure, and in an interview today on GameSpy.com, GameCenter representative Josh McCloskey answered a few questions on the topic. His answers are deliberately vague, but he did point out that the Alliance's main aims were "to increase traffic to Gamecenter, and to promote independent Web sites that offered high-quality gaming editorial," and that C|Net "will now be able to re-dedicate resources from the Alliance directly back into Gamecenter, thus making Gamecenter more profitable in the future." It seems likely that C|Net chose to abandon the program once they had discovered that the advertising revenue streams didn't pay the rent, so to speak. The same was true of the GameFan Network, which also shut up shop quite recently. Industry analysts suggest that without a radical shakeup, many more networks will go the same way in the coming year. In similar news, it seems that content staff returning to GameLoft this morning the world over were told that there was no longer a job there for them. Rumour has it the content staff from every territory in the world is being laid off, with cutbacks scheduled for other parts of the business soon.
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The shots Microsoft doesn’t want you to see
yesterday went live with previously unseen images of the Xbox console; the same images seen in the latest issue of American games magazine EGM. Microsoft demanded their removal, but at the time of writing they were still available. The shape of the console is somewhat similar to your average VCR, with an embossed 'X' easily discernible against the outline. Pictures of the controller are also included. Many have questioned the validity of the screenshots due to the lack of USB ports on the front of the unit, where they had been expected for interfacing with the joypads and other controllers. The pads shown in the images at PlanetGeForce look like a cross between the Microsoft Sidewinder and Sega's Dreamcast controller, with an analogue thumbstick on either side of a big Xbox logo as well as a D-pad, what looks like four buttons on the right as well as the usual Select and Start buttons. Shoulder buttons seem to be visible as well. The console itself has four controller ports, again like the Dreamcast. One of the biggest criticisms of Sony's PlayStation 2 design is the presence of only two ports. The Xbox has clearly been designed with prominent display in mind. Its curved roof could be joined by a top-loading mechanism, making it a poor bed-fellow for VCRs and other television peripheries. At the rear, the console features an Ethernet port, a digital connector (possibly DVI, which would indicate LCD panel display and monitor capability), a standard power adapter socket and a large fan for cooling. The shots will likely have to be removed within the next 48 hours when Microsoft catch on, so take a look while you still can. In related news, Microsoft has put out a call for youngsters aged 13 and above in the Seattle area near their Redmond headquarters to come along and test the Xbox. Update: PlanetGeForce has gone down. GameBasement is mirroring all the scans in one big image. This may go down at any time.
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Review | Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2
Review - one of last year's most influential skating titles comes to the Dreamcast
The first THPS game was widely accepted as the most enjoyable and accurate skating game yet, and this sequel is even better. The whole game has a polished and professional feel, and almost everything - bar the game physics - are true-to-life. A huge array of skaters from the pro circuit such as Bob Burnquist, Rodney Mullen and Elyssa Steamer make appearances, as well as hidden characters such as Officer Dick from the first game, and even SpiderMan, who is of course the subject of Neversoft's other THPS engine title. Even more impressive is the option to create your own skater: choose the body (male only, unfortunatley), face, hair, clothing, weight, skate style and array of tricks, grabs, jumps and grinds, and you can have yourself on screen pulling off all those moves you were too scared to do back in high school. And pulling those gnarly tricks off is no problem. The control system is nice and easy to pick up, with a control system that's both easy to learn and highly customisable. The main buttons are simply jump, grab, grind and fliptrick. Simply get some air, then press one of the buttons and a combination of directions on the D-pad, and you'll be pulling off Japan Airs, Tailgrabs and 50-50 grinds in a matter of minutes. Sadly, the analogue stick doesn't seem to make much of a difference to affairs, so I just stuck with the d-pad. However, this is more than adequate, and pulling off huge combos is a breeze. By doing a manual when you land out of a trick, you can keep the trick multiplier going and get crazy scores well into the millions. Although all the tricks and skaters are true-to-life, the physics allow for improved balance and air time, so as well as being realistic, the game retains a fun, arcade-esque feel, and it pulls the balance off really well.
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Intel Confirm P4 1.3GHz Release
We didn’t think it was a rumour, and Intel are now agreeing with us.
Yesterday afternoon we reported on rumours that the American branch of Dell Computers was taking orders for "Dimension" series PCs based on the new 1.3GHz Pentium 4 part. Intel had previously claimed that the processor would not see the light of the corporate showroom until the 29th of this month. The reason for the early release, according to an Intel spokesperson quoted at The Register, is that the company wants to offer a "broader range of options" to customers, and that to this end they have started to ship the part to their OEM customers in bulk ahead of demand. The UK branch of Dell is now stocking 1.3GHz Pentium 4 systems for less than £1,000, although for some incomprehensible reason, said systems use TNT2-based graphics cards. In related news, Intel is said to be suing Rambus by CNBC. Details of the suit, if they do exist, are thin on the ground. Related Feature - CPUs on the Move
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The chance to play one of last year's finest RPGs
Although the online gaming community is still fuming over this week's Battle.net hack, Blizzard are now back in the news with the release of the demo version of Diablo II. We reviewed Diablo II a few months ago, and gave it 9/10. Anybody who has not yet bought the game is urged to try it out for free. The demo, which weighs in at 125Mb, is available from the following locations:-
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We don’t know where it’s from, but apparently it’s genuine.
Daily Radar are purporting to have a genuine Grand Theft Auto 3 screenshot. They couldn't get anything out of developers Rockstar (presumably, they say, because they're still supping on Turkey sandwiches and belching wine, but more likely one would think, because the world doesn't turn fast enough). Indicating a rather significant departure from the game's roots, the shot is in full 3D, with a Police car, some bodies and a beaming streetlamp. Although the screenshot looks fairly realistic, there's plenty to be critical of, including the rather bland texturing and the lack of any real action. It looks rather like "Driver" did, but slightly bluer. Daily Radar enthuse that they shall have access to a wealth of new information within the next few days. We will keep you posted. Update - apparently the mystery of where this came from is finally solved. It was provided to Grand Theft Auto mega-site GOURANGA! by Sam Houser at Rockstar, and then "borrowed" by Daily Radar a couple of days later. Top work, chaps.
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January Sales hit the e-commerce giant
You could be forgiven for thinking that online stores consider themselves exempt from the expensive luxury of "January Sales", but not Gameplay. The sale, which lasts as long as the stock does, includes titles like Shadowman on the PC for £4.99, recently reviewed Prince Naseem Boxing for only £17.99 and many other games on the PC, Dreamcast, PlayStation and Nintendo 64. Other bargains we have found include Speed Freaks in the PSX section for £12.99 and Euro 2000 PSX for £9.99. It's still the best PSX footy title out there aside from Actua Soccer 3. Elsewhere in the PC section, last year's phenomenal MDK2 is going for a paltry £4.99, and if you fancy a bit of gaming history, Grand Prix II is also available for a fiver. Slightly more expensive is Elite Force, at £14.99, but nonetheless worthwhile. Daikatana can be had for a tenner, incidentally, but we wouldn't recommend it for anything less than comedy value.
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Feature | Picks for 2001
Article - our picks for the coming year
This time last year EuroGamer's staff picked out some of the games that we were most looking forward to playing in the year 2000. Twelve months later most of the titles we picked out still haven't been released, and one of the three which actually did appear ("Star Trek : New Worlds") turned out to be something of a disappointment.
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Water-cooling Your Graphics Card
One for show, but certainly not one for the faint-hearted
Water-cooling has become the 'in thing' for hardware overclockers in the last few months. With the release of the new Senfu water kits, which have introduced water-based cooling solutions to the mainstream cooling market, the uptake has predictably risen tenfold. While there are risks involved, many tweakers have decided to live dangerously, regarding the perils of water-cooling with the same contempt they have come to treat the dangers of overclocking with. Overclocking processors using water-cooling is no longer enough for some of the most prolific though, and the graphics card is the next port of call. Veteran overclocker "Hypothermia" is now offering a how-to on the procedure, to be found here. The process has more to do with cooling the memory of the graphics card than the GPU, and according to the author is for show more than for performance. Obviously though, the possibilities of increased performance through overclocking will draw people to it as much as the prospect of impressing friends with the natty internals of one's computer. Water-cooling is commonly misconceived as the literal application of water to components to cool them. In actuality, water never directly touches any part of the machine. The key components of water-cooling are a "water-block", lots of insulated tubing to pipe the water and a pump. Cold water is placed in a container, sometimes a bucket, and pumped through pipes into a water-block, which is physically attached to the processor or in this case graphics card. The water lowers the temperature of the water-block so much that it cools the component in question far more efficiently than a normal heatsink and fan combination. The water then circulates back out into the container, where it is cooled again. The obvious hazards of such a procedure are that the water has to be repeatedly cooled, the pump, water-block and pipes need to be checked for glogging regularly and that the water-cooling setup really needs to be set going a few seconds before the PC is turned on so as to ensure a good flow of cooling immediately. The usual problems of good thermal contact must be overcome too. Hypothermia's guide shows you how to perform the procedure on your graphics card, and uses another popular component, a Peltier. While Peltiers are not compulsory, they do help to cool even more efficiently, however in the event of a problem, they can be very dangerous to your processor or in this case graphics card. Although the author does insist that the procedure was not carried out just to improve his benchmark scores, his overclocking results seem remarkable post-installation. If you're looking for that extra boost and don't mind living on the edge, water-cooling your processor may be the answer.
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The mobile CPU war continues apace. But is the 1GHz mobile Pentium III already available?
After a year of watching Intel and AMD battle neck and neck for the CPU market, it's easy to spot when Intel are worried about something. The most telltale sign is that they defy their own roadmap of releases in order to get the jump on a competitor, and judging by today's news, this is just what they are doing. German group Media Markt has started to advertise a notebook computer based on a 1GHz Pentium III processor. However, Intel's roadmap, which recently underwent detailed analysis at The Register, claims that such a processor will not be available until March. Although normally this would fail to raise an eyebrow, it comes only days after the news that Dell are advertising PCs in the USA which use 1.3GHz Pentium 4 CPUs, which similarly should not be available if the roadmap is to be believed. It is unlikely that the two releases are a coincidence, coming as they do so close to one another. AMD's own mobile Athlon and Duron parts are already ramping up for release, so it is little surprise to see Intel making a move to try and eclipse their media exposure. It has been almost year since the ratrace for the 1GHz barrier in desktop PCs was making headlines. It's entirely possible that Intel are taking no chances this time and opting to subdue the opposition in one fell swoop. Reports at The Register suggest that the mobile PIII 1GHz advertised by Media Markt may in fact be a normal desktop Pentium III, which would likely refuse to operate without a battery recharge after a matter of minutes. A recent article at Tom's Hardware explained the difficulty of manufacturing safe and reliable mobile processors, listing thermal design, active cooling and other issues as the most important aspects of a mobile processor's development. With desktop CPUs, cooling is usually an afterthought thanks to the space available within the average PC case. AMD's "PowerNow!" solution, shown off extensively at recent trade show Comdex, will fight Intel on a different level. With the mobile Athlon and Duron CPUs not expected until the second quarter of this year, the K6-based technology will use only the CPU cycles it needs, operating at idle speeds of some 200MHz and ramping up to speeds of 533MHz under load. The variable power consumption will mean longer battery life, something that Intel have been battling to match in the last year, unsuccessfully so far. Many laptops last less than two hours under average levels of use before requiring a recharge. This writer's PII-400 laptop can handle barely three minutes rendering something complex like Half-Life under Windows 2000 using the battery. PowerNow! can be seen in action in hardware e-zine The Tech Report's coverage of Comdex.
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One of the Internet's most popular multiplayer games faces extensive downtime after a wily hacker put it into disarray
An embarrassed Blizzard Entertainment today announced that its multiplayer online RPG "Diablo II" will be unavailable to some gamers for up to a week while the company tries to restore data destroyed in a hack attack. Hackers exploited a weakness in the servers of Battle.net, the company's online service, allowing them to bring down the authorization process. The hackers then proceeded to take control of some characters and strip them of their items, weapons and other bonus equipment, in some cases killing the character outright, so that when the real player logged back on he or she would be forced to start afresh. The attack has unsurprisingly targeted those gamers with high skill levels and valuable items at their disposal, spoiling literally months of hard work. Blizzard are now in the process of restoring those characters affected from their most recent backups. "We will be reviving all hardcore characters who died between December 19th and January 1st," the company told reporters. "The restored hardcore characters will be revived with the experience, skills and items possessed as of Tuesday, December 19th." The company had no comment to make about the possibility that characters who had died under legitimate circumstances would also receive this special treatment. For Blizzard this turn of events must be very awkward. Many players have been petitioning the company to fix bugs and problems with unbalanced gameplay for many months now after the somewhat unpopular release of the last patch. The way that Blizzard neglected to inform players about changes has also come under fire. Players affected by the problems should be back online and ready for use within a week, as soon as the security hole is patched up. Related Feature - Diablo II Review
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Feature | 2000 For Gamers
Article - we recap an interesting year for gaming
The year 2000 turned out to be quite an interesting one for gamers, although most of the excitement came in the tail end of the year. As part of our year end wrap-up, today we take a look back at some of the key events and trends that shaped the year for gamers...
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Feature | Games Of The Year 2000
Article - we pick our favourite games of the year
Described as a "transitional year" by the gaming industry, 2000 saw everybody waiting with baited breath for the western launch of the PlayStation 2. And what an anti-climax that turned out to be. But despite developers and publishers alike waiting to leap on to the Sony bandwagon as it hurtled towards the abyss, this year has still seen some truly excellent releases on consoles and PC alike. So to kick off our traditional end of year wrap-up, today we take a look at some of the best games of the year 2000...
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Review | The Battle of Britain
Review - fight them in the air, with Rowan's latest
Rowan's new game, Battle of Britain, builds on the success of their earlier hit, Mig Alley, long regarded as the outstanding dogfight simulator. Now Rowan have added better terrain graphics, more aircraft, great clouds, a more involving campaign and functioning multiplayer. Surely this has to be a recipe for success? The game offers three modes of play - training missions, individual missions and campaigns. You can fly the Hurricane or Spitfire for the Royal Air Force or the Messerschmidt-109 and -110 and the Junkers-87 for the Luftwaffe. As an interesting sideshow you can even fly as a gunner in the three German medium bombers used in the battle, fending off aggressive British pilots with your single machinegun from one of three positions in each aircraft. In the campaigns you can direct the air war from either side in as much detail as you wish, from giving general directives to specifying raid composition and tactics for individual targets. You can jump in and fly any of your aircraft at any time, scrambling from Manston in your Spit or approaching London in your Heinkel.
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Serious Sam Version 2.1a Patch
There's not much going on in the run up the New Year's, but if you're an FPS fan, this should keep you warm
Although there isn't much going on, despite the freezing weather keeping everybody inside, it seems in Croatia at least the midnight fires are burning, the product of which is an update patch for Serious Sam's public multiplayer test. This patch fixes the firewall problem that prevented people behind walls / NAT from getting onto servers outside their network, and also a bunch of other, minor issues. The patch resets all your settings to default, but 2.1 and 2.1a are intercompatible.
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Review | Dynasty Warriors II
Review - a scrolling beat 'em up for the 21st Century?
What is it with game developers these days? Are they just out to make my job more difficult? With every new release it's some bizarre new behemoth of a concept that requires press briefings, extensive playtest sessions and ultimately more time to review than it takes to translate Tolstoy into Cantonese using a pocket calculator. Why has the gaming industry denied its roots so? Every other new release that ends up on my desk is some sort of 'incredible breakthrough' in how we'll see and interpret gaming for the next fifteen years. If I had my way there'd be far more Dynasty Warriors to this world and far less pantomime shoot 'em ups. In a sense then, it's quite pleasant to discover that although Final Fight-clone Dynasty Warriors II isn't quite the game we had hoped it would have been, its shortcomings are more to do with longevity and bad design than with the genre itself showing its age. In fact, if we're lucky, overzealous developers KOEI will flash back to the drawing board and bedazzle us with the coming of DWIII. However, in the meantime, lets put down our collective glass of Christmas sherry and trade our mince pies for broadswords. It's time for battle. Dynasty Warriors II is like playing Golden Axe with crossed eyes. You are fighting in a truly 3D setting, with a third person 'over the shoulder' approach and more assailants to overcome than could be drummed up on a scouring mission through Greater London. Whereas titles like Final Fight and Golden Axe obliged you to trade blows with only a token force, DWII is literally swarming with enemies. You start out by selecting a burly fellow from one of the historically compiled Warlords available, and almost immediately you are swamped by attackers. Thankfully the learning curve is less of a curve and more of a straight.
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Review | Prince Naseem Boxing
Review - the man with the Tigerskin drawers and the quick fists spawns a boxing game - who'da thunk it?
Of all the sports to pluck from real-life and mould a computer game around, boxing is perhaps one of the most difficult. So many boxing games in the past have promised so much, but failed to deliver the crushing punches expected of them. Unrealistic, sluggish boxing titles simply won't sell.
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Review | Sega GT
Review - a bad game at a bad time? Blunder of the year award at the ready, chaps
One of the things that was evident to people who played Gran Turismo when it burst onto the gaming scene several years ago was that it was the kind of game that would spawn plenty of pretenders. The killer combination of a snug physics engine coupled with one of the most varied reward structures ever completely redefined the racing genre for the better. In fact, the only game that it's fair to say has come close to emulating GT's success since then is Metropolis Street Racer on the Dreamcast, a game that we felt was so utterly complete that we spent the best part of two weeks sweating over what we could find to criticize about it. Which all in all doesn't bode terribly well for Sega GT, which is as you may already have guessed a Gran Turismo clone. In its own right a fairly entertaining title, GT has unfortunately chosen to arrive in the wake of MSR, and during one of the busiest periods of the computerized racing calendar. With Christmas looming, the game really didn't stand a chance, and thanks to some unruly controls and an unintuitive interface, it sealed its own fate. But nonetheless, from the point of view of the average gamer, beguiled into fritting away his Christmas money in the 'Sale' section of the local electronics gaff, it may represent an interesting diversion from the cold turkey sandwiches and stale wines that otherwise occupy one's time. And so here we are, and I don't know about you but the sandwiches are starting to look tempting...
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As we predicted, Microsoft announce updated specifications for their next generation console
Last week there were murmurings about a 1GHz processor boost for Microsoft's Xbox, and while these rumours have now been quashed, there has been an update to the official Xbox specification while we were all supping on Turkey. The change concerns the nVidia graphics chip, which has been downsized to a 250MHz model, rather than the proposed 300MHz. Directly affected by this change is the machine's polygon performance, which is reduced from 150M per second to 125M. If you want to see how the Xbox now lines up with the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo's GameCube, take a gander at Microsoft's official Xbox website. In other Xbox news, Ravisent have announced that they are to be the official provider of Xbox DVD software.
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Review | MoHo
Review - Lost Toys' oddball action game reaches the PC - we check it out
Far into the future life as we know it has ceased to be, and there are as many synthetic lifeforms as humans. The two races do not get along at all well either, and crime is all too commonplace. Law and order is still a requirement though, so at least you are safe in the knowledge that in the future you can still stop a Bobby on the street to ask for directions!
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Review | Starship Troopers review
Review - join the mobile infantry in this real-time strategy game based on the hit sci-fi movie and novel of the same name
Scenes of graphic violence and gut wrenching horror were witnessed by millions when Paul Verhoeven's gore splattered sci-fi fest exploded onto the cinema screens a couple of years ago, which was received with a great sigh of relief from the masses. The film industry was becoming too clever by far, it would seem. A film, it was said, was not a film unless it had 18 different plots all running simultaneously, and more twists and turns than you could shake a stick at. So it was with great pleasure that we all sat and watched arms, legs and heads being ripped asunder by nasty special effects without having to spark up a braincell. This is a far cry from the controversial book of the same name, of which the film covers about 10 chapters. First published in 1959 and written by the man many claim to be the Godfather of Sci-Fi, Robert A. Heinlein (Asimov being the God of Sci-Fi, of course), it was a thinly disguised damning of the American political system and it's irrational paranoia regarding communism, the great evil of the East. So it was with some surprise that I noticed a development team from Australia, Bluetongue, was charged with making the game of the film of the book, especially considering the fact that their previous form involved an 'Australian Football' game that never made it past the shores of Sydney and a horse riding game specifically aimed towards the young females of the gaming community. Would they be inclined to go for an out and out action blastathon, or are they more likely to try to emulate the thought provoking ideals of the book? Well, the answer is a mixture of both, because 'Starship Troopers' is the first game of many purporting to mix role-playing and real-time strategy elements with anything approaching success. Would you like to know more?
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Review | Galaxy Quest
Review - Dreamworks set their phasers to pun in one of 1999's funniest movies
- Dean Parisot Producer - Mark Johnson Starring - Tim Allen Sigourney Weaver Alan Rickman Tony Shalhoub Filmed - America, 1999 DVD by - DreamWorks Pictures
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Review | B-17 Flying Fortress : The Mighty 8th
Review - EuroGamer takes to the skies over wartorn Europe to test the latest World War II flight sim
B-17 is a brave attempt to do something new with the flight simulator genre. Let's face it, there is not much flying to be done in a B-17 beyond taking off, holding her steady for hundreds of miles, and then landing. The B-17 is a heavy bomber and is therefore unsuitable for the aerobatics that attract gamers to the classier fighter aircraft; no B-17 pilot sim was going to do very well.
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Take 2 bring some festive cheer for Oni fans
Proving that Shockwave is capable of doing more than creating annoying "interactive" ad banners and bandwidth-sapping style-over-substance websites, Take 2 have commissioned a fun little web-game from Liquid Idea animations featuring Konoko, the heroine of third person beat 'em up "Oni". If you have already exhausted the Oni demo that was released last week and can't wait for more, this could be just the fix you need to tide you over until the game's European launch in March. And given that Christmas this year is more likely to be grey and murky than white (here in the UK at least), it may be the only chance you get to do some serious snowballing this festive season...
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The last shopping days before Christmas introduce some interesting new toys to the market!
Looking for something to keep your occupied during your Gran's unavoidable Christmas visit? Or perhaps anything to avoid the Queen's bloomin' speech? Can't say I blame you, I myself shall be tucked up warmly playing Shenmue while the old bat witters on. So what's on offer this week? According to the latest information we have... quite a bit! The PlayStation says hello to 007 Racing, and Burstrick from JVC, and its big brother the PS2 meets up with F1 Racing Championship and Surfing H30.
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Rival DDR chipset manufacturers put head to head by Anand
If you scan various archives on the Internet for the last two months since the official release of AMD's 760 motherboard chipset, you will find very little information about where to buy motherboards with the chipset integrated. The reason for this is that there are only very limited quantities, and because of the price premium on DDR RAM (and the fact that very few companies supply it) nobody seems to want a piece of the action. The other reason is that the performance increase in choosing the higher spec'd motherboard (about 10%) isn't enough for some people. ALi's recently released MAGiK1 chipset isn't mature enough to offer much of an improvement either, and of course, the price differential is enormous when taking the RAM purchase into account. So where does VIA's KT133A chipset fit in? It's not their fabled DDR KM266, which will be the hardcore DDR chipset (and we suspect the precursor to new Socket A motherboard releases from both ABit and ASUS). The idea with the KT133A, rather like the old Appollo 133A is to extend current technology to take advantage of new advances. In this case, it's a KT chipset that supports the higher memory bus. A fancy go-between, if ever there was one. The question is, as Anand puts it in his provocative review of the latter, "how effective can the 266MHz FSB be if the KT133A chipset is still limited to the PC133 SDRAM support of its predecessor?" His latest review, of the KT133A chipset, raises plenty of valid points and provides some interesting benchmarks of the new chipset. His conclusions, that the KT133A provides 90% of the improvements of the AMD 760 without the added cost of DDR RAM, will no doubt meet with fierce debate, but his article does make a lot of sense. If you're the owner of an Athlon system and fancy an upgrade, you might like to hold out until the world has made its mind up on VIA's new chipset. Until then, we invite you to mull over Anand's thoughts.
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Phantasy Star Online becomes the most import-friendly RPG ever
If you've ever been put off from importing the latest release of your favourite game from Japan because you feared the language barrier would render it unplayable, then this update is for you. We had always assumed that Phantasy Star Online, Sega's multiplayer RPG for the Dreamcast would allow users from each company to have certain phrases used by their online friends translated, but apparently the game also includes the option to run the game itself in any of the five supported languages! As such, importing a copy from Japan will make no nevermind to practically everybody, as they can simply switch it to run in English. Genius. Of course, you can't just run an import Dreamcast game on a PAL system, either you will need the legendary Dreamcast boot disk (readily available) or you will need some form of Action Replay-like device or chip to help. We don't really advocate the use of import titles, but if you don't want to wait, there is no other option. Naturally, it's slightly more work getting the game to dial Japan from the UK! And I don't think anyone is likely to recommend you do that.
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Quake III 1.27 Source and Tools
Id release the latest public SDK for their multiplayer first person shooter
Id Software have released the tools and source kit for the latest version (1.27) of their multiplayer first person shooter. Robert Duffy updated his plans early in the AM with the news. "The 1.27 game source and the tool source has been put up on our ftp site," he wrote. "This game source contains prebuilt tools in the bin_nt directory but there is not yet a user friendly version of the tool installer done. A tool install that contains additional media for Team Arena creation, entity definitions etc. will be released shortly ( mid January-ish ). Timothee and his crew should be releasing GTKRadiant that WILL be user friendly soon ( next week as I hear it )." Continuing, he pointed out that "The source for the tools is also available. Graeme is going to be releasing the ROQ endocer today or tomorrow I believe. Enjoy." Read the whole update here for some more dev-friendly information, and download the various files from the following locations:- 1.27 Game Source
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Half-Life-based first person shooter demo now available
A couple of weeks ago we reviewed Gunman Chronicles, calling it "a worthy addition to your single player FPS collection". It's met with a lot of competition in the run up to Christmas from the likes of No-One Lives Forever, Project IGI and Delta Force : Land Warrior amongst others, but now you can decide for yourself whether the game that is fundamentally little more than a Half-Life mission pack is really worth spending your Christmas readies on. The accompanying readme text is fairly light on information, but it looks as though the bulk of the demo is comprised of training for the rest of the title. You can download the 58.9Mb file from the following locations:-
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