Archive for the 'Video games' category

Assassin trailer

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After more than 10 years, Turok comes back and you are ready to kill dinosaurs in a video game. The solo mission of this FPS may feel a bit short, but it’s fun enough to be thrilled while killing lizards on your PC screen.

Like all Internet reviewers, I hate this title because of the strain it puts on the writer just to put the name down on the keyboard. However, it has received a number of reviews. Let’s see some of them:

• JeuxVideoPC.com (screenshots)
• GameSpy (in English)
• CVG (in English)
• EuroGamer first impressions (in English)
• IGN (screenshots)
• Hooked Gamers (in English)
• All trailers
• Guru3D DX10 screenshots
• PCHG DirectX 10 video (Auf Deutsch)

After appearing on gaming consoles, Assassin’s Creed arrived on PC and it seems that the effort was made to ensure that contrary to the previous habit of bad ports from console to PC, it supported well the transfer from one platform to the next (test 1, test 2).

Notice 1: Point Of View offers the video game with most of its GeForce video cards.

Notice 2: Recently, a 3D test has shown that the DirectX 10 rendering was over-simplified by Assassin’s Creed (with undue performance gains at the cost of image quality). There is a patch planned in the short term to correct this.

The boss of Crytek simply announced that Crysis 2 (the sequel to Crysis) would not be ready before 2010. The wait will be long.

2008 will be the year of the triple core CPU. AMD started to ship the Phenom chips in various configurations.

As said before, this is a great way for AMD to differentiate itself, but the prices are not expected to go down immediately. Either because AMD does not want to shoot itself in the foot or because the quantities will not be huge for a few more weeks.

Let’s wait for the next price war between Intel and AMD, remembering that most games do not take advantage of more than 2 cores.

If you have a nVidia graphics card on your PC, you can get a free download of recent games from Steam / Valve.

For a limited time, if you qualify (you only need your PC to hold a nVidia graphics card), you can donwload a free copy of the following games from Steam just by creating an account or having an account on Steam.

• Portal: First Slice (11 levels of this new innovative game from Valve)
• Half-Life 2: Deathmatch (networked FPS)
• Half-Life 2: Lost Coast (FPS technology demonstrator)
• Peggle Extreme (a relatively simple game inspired by old brick games)

Look! It’s a free offer for only half of the PC owners in the world.

Some of the graphics cards are available in different memory sizes (like the successful nVidia 8800 GT or 8800 GTS): 256MB, 512MB, 1GB. But how much RAM do you really need?

Thanks to The Tech Report, you will know: “How much graphics memory do you really need?“.

Summarized:

• 1GB: is worthless, the CPU of the bard will be short before the memory is full
• 512MB: This is the right figure
• 256MB: Not enough if you want to push the definition up

All lovers of role playing knew -at least- the name of Gary Gygax, co-author of Dungeons & Dragons, the game that opened the path for all RPG (Role Playnig Games). This man who influenced the imaginations of countless players and inspired many other creators, just died at 69.

No curing spell is going to bring him back.

Source: NY Times (thanks to Xtian).

This is really a pity when some of the best old games disappear just because nobody even think of leaving a way to use them. They usually call this “abandonware” (software that has been abandonned by its creators).

Their legal status is flimsy, but some companies try to give us access to them. Somehow, they grab the software and put it on sale (really don’t ask me how; I feel that it involves getting an old copy and transfering it to an Internet web archive). I found it freshening (for my old age) to see at Abandonware Games (also known as C:Dos) that they had a large choice of old games still (partly) usable on your modern PC. Like Day of the Tentacle or Worms or even Panzer General 2.

Also, they include a lot more than just the download links (reviews, screenshots and media), but the choice of games is still quite limited in the Classics category. However, if you are ready to dig in the box, you can find wondrous amounts of less well-known games in the Rare category (by Rare, you should understand that this is nearly impossible to find somebody who remembers about these games, most probably because they did not encounter the success, leaving open the options of “this was a sucker” or “this was a little gem that nobody had a chance to discover”). And there even is a forum for fans.

When you’re searching for the best mid-range graphics card (200€ or $200, with the usual conversion rate for computer-software dollar), it is often difficult to find one’s way. This is why a big graphics cards comparison like the one from The Tech Report is more than welcome.

But if you want to run for the result, you can also ask Tom’s Hardware and look at their best gaming graphics card for your budget.

I waited a little while before reacting and writing, but these recent last weeks we have witnessed an interesting move in the little world of graphics cards. While ATI (now AMD) has recently been relegated to the troublingly systematic position of follower or challenger in the competition for the pockets of PC graphics cards buyers, they finally reacted through two noticeable actions:

• On the one hand, in the lower-end of the range, AMD/ATI launched a new nice price solution under $100: The new HD 3400 and HD 3600 are there to grab the awards for the lowest prices and simultaneous 3D graphics (DirectX 10.1, but don’t expect them to be enough for a crusher like Crysis) and HD video capacity (1920×1080p Full-HD resolution). The HD3400-based boards could even go under $65!
• On the other hand, at the star-end of the range which was recently left to nVidia, here is a solution obviously attractive even if not elegant: HD 3870 x2. When you’re short on performance, you can always double it by grouping 2 GPU on 1 card and crash prices down to kick the hell out of your competitors. It’s not 100% perfect (some games will not be optimized for two graphics cores) but this is a (realtively) easy technical solution to setup. ATI did it and robbed the limie light from nVidia (at least for now).

Ok! This is not enough to forget the raw performance of the nVidia boards. But it is interesting to see how AMD/ATI fights with all available tricks to be able to come back a little later with some still-undisclosed new graphics cards.