Too much Internet free time » Video games

Doom is back in 2009 – A leak from Nepal

Yves Roumazeilles — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 15:58:20 +0000

Doom 2009

So, the great FPS game will be back before the end of the year 2009. Either the launch campaign started early in Nepal or the bus drivers are using their vehicles as video game weapons (the latter would explain the extraordinarily high frequency of dramatic road accidents there).

DirectX: 8, 9, 10 or 11?

Yves Roumazeilles — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:04:10 +0000

The arrival of Windows 7 also annonces the arrival of a new updated DirectX to serve the PC gamers’ community. We already knew that Vista did not have the favour of the gamers (who often stayed with Windows XP) and that had (among other things) some significant impact on DirectX 10 that required Vista. Will gamers now run to Windows 7? It’s possible, but if you want to see the real progress brought to video games (here, to the very popular Crysis FPS) by the various version of DirectX, check the video below:

YouTube link

Video game fans just can’t take it when it’s real

Yves Roumazeilles — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 19:51:51 +0000

See what happens to video game players, when a real World Rally Championship (WRC) pilot takes them to the real dirt. “Are you ready for the real thing?” Ken Block is not only a good driver, he’s trying his best to have them p…ing their pants.

YouTube link

Source: Autoblog.

More power for your games (free)

Yves Roumazeilles — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 13:25:30 +0000

If you want to grab the maximum CPU power for your PC video game (or any other PC application, by the way), there is a free utility that will ensure that the PC CPU does not spend to much time on anything else: Game Booster. It may be bad for a correctly balanced performance, but some games may appreciate the help.

Nota: This is similar to AMD Fusion Tool, but simpler.

Doom triple pack: Doom, Hexen, Heretic

Yves Roumazeilles — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:19:46 +0000

They were the FPS games of your youth (if you are as old as I am): Doom, Heretic and Hexen are three games where you killed, maimed, crushed, punched and powdered thousands of monsters and all kinds of adversaries. Did you know that you could play all three of them on line?

Point your browser to the Doom Triple Pack.

On-line Doom + Hexen + Heretic

Doom, Quake, shoot-them-all for free

Yves Roumazeilles — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 07:00:49 +0000

How many PC gamers started their career with video games as raw (according to today’s criteria) as Doom or even Quake. We may find their quality too low for our eyes, but they already demonstrated their main strength: the gamer found interesting adversaries and environments where you could not know what would happen behind the corner of a corridor (that generation of video games did not yet open the doors to a wide environment like in FarCry or Crysis).

Doom 1

Already, before the year 2000, PC games were expensive. But here comes the Internet and bands of Internet users now expect to find free things all around. Authors of such games (like Id Software) decided to follow this trend and offer some of these older games as ways to attract more customers for other games. These ones start by being free, and stay as being very pleasant to play.

Doom was put in the public domain a few years ago. Consequence: Here is somebody deciding to re-write it in Flash and you will be able to play Doom (more precisely, Doom 1). You will need Flash 10 and I’m told that PowerPC Macs are not compatible, but you’re going to tote a shotgun and the BFG mini-gun at outer-space monsters and without paying (free).

Limitations of QuackLive:

Windows XP
Windows Vista
Firefox 2.0/3.0
Internet Explorer 7/8

Doom is not enough? You want more, more quality, more guns, more speed? Why not Quake? Id Software just opened access to QuakeLive.com. For free, you’ll get to play Quake, right now, freely, for no money. It will be fun…

More precisely, here is Quake III Arena with free access to all. It will go fast. This is violent gaming. It will only stop when you’re dead.

YouTube link

This is not enough? Again? So, let me offer some video games with calmer settings, but still free. Even better, Linux games.

live.linuX-gamers.net succeeded at preparing Live-DVDs (DVD that are completely autonomous, you can boot on them without installing Linux).

live.linuX-gamers.net (DVD)

A parent guide to MMORPGs

Yves Roumazeilles — Tue, 26 May 2009 19:49:39 +0000

Say you are parent to a kid who is more than willing to play those games that he/she discovered with his/her friends and you don’t know much about them. It’s time to learn some before you make a decision about letting fun happen or not.

From IGN vault.

Blind date, with a Dungeon Master

Yves Roumazeilles — Mon, 18 May 2009 17:54:58 +0000

You could fully appreciate this video only if you have some experience of Role Playing, but I couldn’t help posting it here.

Dungeon Master

Atom.com link

Stan, this video is partly dedicated to you, the Dungeon Master.

Duke Nukem Forever is dead, isn’t it?

Yves Roumazeilles — Fri, 15 May 2009 19:35:48 +0000

Duke Nukem

You have certinaly heard about Duke Nukem Forever, if only because you are interested in PC video games. As a matter of fact, this is (was) a game frist-announced in 1997 as the sequel to Duke Nukem, Duke Nukem II and Duke Nukem 3D (the Duke Nukem trilogy), the last of them being a First Person Shooter (FPS like Doom, FarCry or Crysis) whose success was partly based on its very high level of violence (blood, dismembered corpses, etc.) Whatever! Many old/mature video gamers were awaiting the real availability o this game which well earned its title of best vaporware for many years.

Rumor was running for weeks that, 3DRealms, the developer, had finally closed doors. Take-Two still has the exploitation license, but the horizon is really dark. Some hope to see Duke Nukem ressurect, but… Apogee software, LLC confirmed its willingness to keep developping the trilogy (for the Playstation Portable & Nintendo DS), but… Take-Two attacks 3DRealms and Apogee dragging them to the Judge, but…

Duke Nukem was known for its one-liners; The new one was about to say:

“How would you like a C-4 enema?”
“How would you like a C-4 suppository?”
“This will help your constipation”
“Blow it out your ass”
“Bottoms up asshole”
“Turn your head and cough”
“Gluteus explodeus”
“Right in the Keister”
“I aint blowing smoke up your ass”
“This is about to impact you colon”
“Montezuma’s revenge”
“Colon-ize this motherfucker”
“I’m going to stick this where the sun don’t shine”
“Always be finishing”

Finally, the end is so true that developpers started to leave 3DRealms and are actively looking for new jobs. Even worse, the game assets are dispersed widely: The Web sees the distribution of many good pieces of work, 3D models, script/plot contents (only 60% finshed), many objects and backgrounds, etc.

You can also find

28 screen copies for Duke Nukem Forever
monsters
videos like the following to see were it really went

Link to IGN

At last, you can read the Wired eulogy.

The most fanatical readers/gamers will want to check the only real review of this (unfinshed) video game.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky – latest news

Yves Roumazeilles — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 17:26:10 +0000

It is now official: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky will be available in our stores on September 5th (very soon, eh!)

This should be the reason to go through a last minute list of all the recent screenshots and videos displaying the best images of this FPS game coming from Russia.

Interview videos (from VE3D)
Screenshots (from VE3D)
Trailer (from GameTrailers)
Trailer in HD (from GameTrailers)

Last but not least, the official game web site essentially confirmed the specs of the game that we provided a few weeks ago already.

Project Origin minimum requirements

Yves Roumazeilles — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 16:36:09 +0000

Project Origin is the name of the sequel to F.E.A.R. (a frightening FPS game from Monolith). However, because of licensing issues, it will not be named FEAR 2 or anything like it. Nevertheless, this filiation should attract a lot of attention (the story will start just 30 seconds before the explosive end of the previous opus).

But knowing that F.E.A.R. has had the dubious fame of being a major PC power hog, it is well worth checking what we will need to run such an FPS game. And it is definitely difficult to get some reliable information of that kind for Project Origin, while we are waiting for a realease at the end of the year 2008.

Minimum requirements

Processor: Athlon 64 3000+ or Intel 2.8GHz
Memory: 1 GB of SDRAM
Graphics: DirectX 9.x on GeForce 66xx or Radeon X16xx

Recommended requirements

Processor: Dual core CPU
Memory: 2 GB of SDRAM
Graphics: DirectX 9.x on GeForce 7800 GT or Radeon X1800 series (Shader model 3)

Trailer

And here is a trailer for the game:

Project Origin trailer (click to play the video)

Project Origin: You’ll kill zombies

Yves Roumazeilles — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 11:07:00 +0000

In this PC shooter game, still unavailable, you’ll see quite some destruction.

Link to GameTrailers

Far Cry 2, 100 hours of intense gameplay

Yves Roumazeilles — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 15:17:05 +0000

100 hours, that is the promise from Ubisoft Montréal (where most games only last 10 to 20 hours). This game will have a fully open map in Africa (50 square kilometers, only limited by deadly deserts) where you will meet mercenaries, and weather elements (including fire).

Analysis (in French) at JeuxVideoPC.com.

Crysis Wars comes along with Crysis Warhead

Yves Roumazeilles — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 11:33:45 +0000

While Crysis Warhead is now in pre-order for $29.99/29.95€, we heard that it will come along with a new multi-player component named Crysis Wars.

new online multi-player modes
21 maps

Crysis Warhead – Requirements and other data

Yves Roumazeilles — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 10:12:46 +0000

Crysis Warhead is a sort of complement to Crysis, the FPS PC video game that shocked the FPS game world last year. For my own part, I’ve drawn pleasure from the mere act of replaying the solo game campaign, for its realistic combat scenes, its pleasant images, and its great playability.

But EA is preparing a kind of follow-up. It’s all about following the deeds of a character already found in Crysis. this time, in Crysis Warhead, you are Sergeant Sykes (”Psycho”). It is not a sequel to Crysis (even if everybody was disturbed by the abrupt end essentially opening to the following two episodes in the series), but a a parallel approach to the same part of the scenario.

Nevertheless, what PC configuration will be needed? EA told us that software optimisations will help a lot the users with relatively small PC configurations, who were unable to play Crysis correctly (EA said that a 400€/$620 PC would be enough for the “High quality” settings).

Minimum requirements

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ or Intel Core 2 Duo E6550
Memory: 2 GB of SDRAM
Graphics: DirectX 9.x on GeForce 66xx or Radeon X16xx

Recommended requirements

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+ or Intel Core 2 Duo E6750
Memory: 2 GB of SDRAM
Graphics: Radeon HD4870 or GeForce GTX260

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky – some news

Yves Roumazeilles — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 19:21:31 +0000

These days, I received a number of news in preparation of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky launch. This is an FPS video game for PC that should attract many players already in love with S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky will be shown by GSC Game World in Los Angeles for the Electronic Entertainment Expo (with probable availability in the stores around the end of August)
Image gallery 1 on IGN
Image gallery 2 on IGN
Analyse/preview du jeu en français sur JeuxvideoPC.
Analyse/preview du jeu en français sur ImpactVirtuel.
And still the required PC configuration to play S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky

Link to GameVideos

Radeon HD4870X2 in early August

Yves Roumazeilles — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 10:37:29 +0000

We already knew that AMD-ATI had succeeded to frighten nVidia with its new graphics cards, Radeon HD4850 and HD4870 (the latter are able to do as well as the nVidia GTX260, for less money). But the nVidia GTX280 graphics cards were left without real competition… up to the arrival of Radeon HD4870×2.

Two RV770 GPUs (identical to the one on the AMD Radeon HD4870 card and able to bring the raw power of a GTX280 card), this is the solution found by AMD-ATI. They did it before, they intend to win again.

The announcement arrives with two information bits important for potential purchasers and for nVidia: The price will be identical to the nVidia competition ($499) and the card will be sold starting 2nd August 2008.

nVidia reply? Maybe a “super GTX280″ that is still undescribed.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky – game requirements

Yves Roumazeilles — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 10:50:02 +0000

To play with S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, you will only need a small PC configuration. This FPS video game will accept:

Minimum requirements

Processor: Athlon XP 2200+ or Intel 4 @ 2GHz
Memory: 512 MB SDRAM
Graphics card: DirectX 9c on an (old) graphics card with 128MB memory

Recommended requirements

Processor: CPU dual core (Intel CoreDuo E6400 / AMD 64 X2 4200+)
Memory: 1.5 GB SDRAM
Graphics card: DirectX 9c on an (old) graphics card with 256MB memory (or DirectX 10 card, of course)

Price fall at nVidia

Yves Roumazeilles — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 18:30:16 +0000

Absolutely not surprising news for people who read my post of yesterday about Radeon HD4870 performance: nVidia just announced a general price reduction for its new line of graphics cards in the GTX200 family. The GTX260 go under 300€ (still a little expensive to confront the Radeon HD4870 at 250€ and at a slightly higher performance point). The GTX280 fall under 450€.

Source: Hardware.fr.

Radeon HD4870 performance

Yves Roumazeilles — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:58:02 +0000

Sapphire announced that its Radeon HD4870 would be available in France in the coming days at 249€.

3Dguru has a nice review of the upcoming Radeon HD4870 graphics card. It’s supposed to be the fastest offering from AMD and it is stacked against the GTX260 from nVidia, cheaper Radeon HD4850 and older nVidia GeForce 9800 GTX.

The conclusion is that the HD4870 is going to be a tough competitor for the much more expensive nVidia GTX260 (expect nVidia to cut down prices quite quickly to compensate).