Latest Articles (Page 3593)

3DO Europe have announced that "Sammy Sosa High Heat Baseball", apparently described by PC Gamer USA as "the best baseball game ever", will be released in Europe on June 30th, priced at just £20 in the UK. The game features a whole range of single player options including practice, season and career modes, as well as letting you play over the internet or a LAN. For the full story, read the press release.

EuroGamer has a special treat for your eyes today - a dozen exclusive new screenshots of space-bound 3D strategy game, "Homeworld Cataclysm". The shots were taken using a preview version of the game and a GeForce 2 GTS graphics card, running at 1024x768 in 32 bit colour with full scene anti-aliasing enabled. For some of the most gorgeous graphics ever seen on a PC, click here!

Today's review here on EuroGamer takes a look at "Tachyon : The Fringe", a space combat sim that features more open-ended gameplay than most games of its kind, some interesting large-scale multiplayer support, and the vocal talents of Bruce Campbell, best known as Ash from the Evil Dead movies.

"Just what the heck is a Tachyon?", I hear you ask. Well, here's a brief explanation : a warp is formed in space by a Ripstar, which allows a spacecraft to fly through a faster-than-light wave.

Since the latest patch for Asheron's Call was introduced a few days ago, some of the trees in the world of Dereth have been mysteriously disappearing! It turns out that this is due to a bug though, rather than some sinister shadow plot to destroy Dereth through global warming...

Gamesurge previews the Opera mod for Half-Life, inspired by Hong Kong "blood opera" movies rather than Wagner and Bizet...

for the CPL's forthcoming American events, which was due to open today, has had to be delayed for a few days due to technical problems with their new registration system. The new plan is to begin registrations at 3pm Central Time (that's 9pm UK time, 10pm in Europe) on Thursday, and you will be able to register for both Frag 4 and the Babbages CPL event with one fell swoop. Check the CPL website for more details.

The latest and greatest of the i-series LAN parties run by Multiplay UK took place this weekend in Swindon, a town which is probably better known for its love affair with mini round-abouts than hardcore gaming...

Last weekend saw the guys from Multiplay UK taking over the "Winners Lounge" at Swindon Town football club for a massive LAN party called "i4", and I was there to cover the whole event for EuroGamer. So if you want to find out what happens when you take 350 hardcore gamers and stick them in a room together with upwards of half a million pounds worth of computer hardware, garnishing with full English breakfasts, chicken curries and copious amounts of coke and alcohol, read our report on the event - "Sleepless in Swindon"!

3dfx have announced that their flagship Voodoo 5 5500 AGP graphics card is finally available in the UK. The recommended price is £249, and it comes with a CD of game demos from GamePlay, as well as a demo version of WinDVD. For full details, read the press release, and look for a full review of the card here on EuroGamer within the next few days...

has a amusing article looking at how geeks and babes just don't mix. He takes E3 as his example, "Some of the photos that come back from E3 don't resemble a gamers fest so much as they do a fashion model conference that has been invaded by the kids from Special Ed" the author continues, "The visual contrast in these beauty and the beast shots is frightening".

I'm sure more than one of you will have noticed the problems Half Life had last night. Millions of games players were unable to play Half Life all night as WON Half-Life authorization server was failing. This morning Won have released a fix for this.

Massively multiplayer RPGs are all the rage at the moment, with a whole horde of fundamentally similar games currently under development. This weekend EuroGamer takes a look at one of the many hopeful newcomers, which is going by the name of "Neocron".

The first CPL Asia event is now over, and ironically the two grand finalists were an American and a Scandinavian! To find out who took home the $3,500 first prize, and to see how the rest of the big names fared against strong opposition from largely unknown local talent at the big Singapore tournament, check the CPL website. And in related news, the Adrenaline Vault has posted a gallery of photographs from the event.

A little known developer named Reakktor Media are the designers behind Neocron, an ever-evolving, ever-growing massively multiplayer online RPG (MMORPG) that looks set to be one of the hottest online releases of 2001.

Those guys at Trenches just don't stop. Today they have an interview with Bubba Wolford who is a Senior PR Specialist at 3Dfx Interactive. They chat about the inevitable 3dfx versus Nvidia war on at the moment,

conclude their look at piracy in games today with a look at the pirate's lair. They visit IRC channels, news groups and even chat with a former pirate, aptly named Long John Silver. He makes some interesting points, "how many times do people buy full priced software then they find they have to spend hours connected to the Net to download patches because the software is faulty? That's cheating consumers".

, the chaps behind the amazingly successful championship manager series have teamed up with SportLive to offer a unique service on the eve of the Euro 2000 finals. They have given all the players on all 16 squads championship manager like stats, to aid those out there picking fantasy football teams, or those just fighting with their mates.

The folks at trenches have an interview with Cedric "Inoxx" Fiorentino, the chap behind the INOXX map pack for Unreal Tournament. Its an interesting look into the mind of a top map designer. What he does, and indeed how he does it

take a few moments to examine the death of Looking Glass Studios, and ponder why companies like this flounder and die while others prosper. They look at how LGS took risks when others just followed scripts

With the recent arrival of the Everquest expansion pack, Ruins of Kunark, here in the UK thanks to French publisher Ubisoft, we have taken a closer look at the pack to see whether it is worth your hard-earned cash, whether you are a newcomer to the world of Norrath, or a veteran in search of new lands to explore away from the familiar crowded settings of the original game. To find out more, read our review!

- Verant / Sony UK Publisher - UbiSoft

Romania is hardly a haven of game design, and that area of Eastern Europe is probably better known as the stomping grounds of Dracula and Vlad The Impaler than for its computer games...

Growing up playing on my older cousin's NES was how I began my gaming life. The Sega MegaDrive was my first machine and I racked up an unhealthy tally of hours/days/months on it, becoming a hardcore 'Sega Gamer' during the SNES v MegaDrive "which is better?" arguments (so what if the SNES was better Sega had more games). As I grew older my parents bought me a Pentium 100MHz PC, and as far as gaming was concerned I never looked at a console again, even when many of my friends were playing 'Daytona' and the like on their Sega Saturns. It made no difference to me, as I was enthralled with my first game, 'Screamer'. It was a brilliant racer yet only cost me £20. Why would I want to pay double the price for console games, which I felt, weren't quite as good? What really gave the kick in the teeth to my console gaming days were the FPS (First Person Shooter) games. No console at the time could dream of competing with them. It didn't take long for my hardcore console only friends to 'move on' and get themselves PCs. It was as if they were maturing as gamers. Even though they had to get used to installing the games and having all the buggy problems that we're used to with PCs, they endured them because the quality was better. Upon the release of Quake, every gamer without a PC was laughed at with pity, well I laughed at them anyway. Now up until this point in time consoles always had an edge on the PC when it came to multiplayer. Get your mates to bring their kit and joypads round and away you go. So easy, so simple, fun yet limited (usually only two player), just like everything else with consoles. The PC gave pretty dire performance in these modes. Sure you could network, but that was limited to a privileged few. No doubt, consoles had the upper hand but all that was soon shattered… As the months past, the PCs got better and better until suddenly 300MHz was upon us. Consoles were a forgotten pleasant dream. An upgrade later and the Quake2 logo graced my holy monitor. I remember going through its option menu and finding a Multiplayer section. Off course it didn't work first time (like a lot of things dotted around PC history!) so I rushed out and got myself a 56k modem. To this day I still remember the first time I ever joined a server, the first time an opponent actually chased me (as I lagged) around the map no matter how much I ran away. This was amazing! No more dodgy AI opposition! It was such a wonderful experience, one that no console has really managed to provide so far. The PC had gained the massive advantage of the (increasingly accessible) Internet, providing limitless possibilities in gameplay, across an increasing selection of genres of game so that gamers of all tastes would enjoy it. The powers that be would not allow the console to die. The finances involved in the companies who own them had too much at stake. Sega, Sony and Nintendo started to recognise the advantages of the PC and put their best efforts into making their next generation of products able to compete with the PC. How have they tried to do this so far? To put it simply, they're turning their machines into…*begin drum role*…PCs! Makes sense, "If you can't beat them, join them." As the PC has always advanced at breakneck pace, consoles are having to radically evolve to close the gap. The main step involved in achieving this is to get the consoles online. Done. The abilities of the new consoles and those due to be released in the near future are astounding, rivalling the current high performance PC's. Sounds good doesn't it? But as we all know that every few months, Intel and AMD bring out all new, more powerful Processors to the market (Damn right, says Mug, looking at his PIII-800E -Ed). Already they're at the landmark GHz, which even Microsoft's X-Box, (which is not due for release for quite some time) will not match. Don't bother even saying "not many gamers can afford a GHz processor", because I'm willing to bet that once the X-Box is finally out, Intel and AMD would have slashed 60% off their original release price of the 1GHz as we'll probably have +1.5Ghz by then. Seeing as new consoles are only released every other year or so, they're doomed to be lagging behind indefinitely. Just as Microsoft was the catalyst involved in making the PC so accessible to everyone, they intend to do the same for the console. Their announced entrance into the ultra competitive console market has caused a few waves already. I would not be surprised if future generations of MS console had almost identical windows versions as its PC counterpart. Would it inherit the same abilities as a PC? Could we upgrade our consoles one day? And if so, would or even could it still be termed a console? As far as I'm concerned, a console is a games only system. When the Playstation and Saturn were able to play audio CD's it was thought to be an advancement, a cool feature. Now though we're able to get keyboards and handle our emails with them. See where this is going? There is another side to this possibility. What if all the PC-like consoles of the future out sell the traditional PCs in the games market. Although I just cant imagine company offices LANing their Playstation 7's together to network the printer. The PC as a games machine could become obsolete. Sometime in the future, and at the rate technology is improving, it's definitely going to be far sooner than anyone thinks, one of these devices will die out as a games machine. Once the console gains all the traits of a PC, the two will be forced into direct competition with each other. Who knows what will happen. If one day a future console is able to give fluid 100fps in Quake 9 without any crashes or driver problems, I'll start calling myself a hardcore console gamer once more. Until then, I'll happily sit myself on the fence.

Today, Gamespy have an interesting look into the murky world of software piracy. Software piracy has since the dawn of the PC been a problem for software publishers and developers. "Conservative estimates by the BSA/SIIA (Business Software Association/Software & Industry Information Association) put a worldwide revenue loss in the $12.2 billion range worldwide (for business applications only) during the year 1999"

has an interview with one of Quake 3 Arena's best map-designers, Paul Jaquays. Paul talks about the art of map making and his latest project the Q3 mod Team Arena.

have an interesting chat with Kevin Cloud of ID software. He talks about how he came upon ID software, and life as an artist working on some of the best games of all time.

The day we all thought would never come has finally arrived. Yes, John Romero's long overdue first person shooter, Daikatana, has appeared in stores in the UK today. Thanks to Nemesis for confirming this portent of the impending apocalypse. We would, of course, recommend that you wait for our full review of the game before buying it though!

British company Altitude have launched their web-based space trading game, Diaspora. The game has been in open beta for several months now, and over 8000 players have taken part in the game during that time, including me. Even back in December the game was highly addictive, and since then a number of new features have been added including improved support for player guilds and 600 missions to carry out when you get bored of blowing up pirates and shuffling cargo backwards and forwards.

Registration has now opened for the first two Red Storm Rising events, in Philadelphia PA (July 14-16th) and Orlando FL (August 4-6th). Organised by the Clan World Network, these large LAN parties will focus on Red Storm's special forces games, Rainbow Six and Rogue Spear, and cost $45 for a weekend of low ping action. Check the Red Storm Rising website for more details...