Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:30 AM

Category: First Person

The thing that struck me first was how strong the AI is. They watch where you’re waving your gun and react accordingly. Aiming at their head? They’re gonna duck. Aiming at their torso, and there’s cover nearby? They’re gonna use it. Are there some garbage cans in the alley with you? They’re likely to pick them up and throw them at you before shooting. They help each other, too - we loved kneecapping guys and laughing at them as they fell to the ground, unable to walk. That is, until they still continued to shoot at us and called over a buddy, who helped them get back up. Oops!

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 11:19 AM

Category: General

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:16 PM

Category: Science

Malaysian media have been gripped by Bigfoot fever since November 2005, when fish farm workers reported seeing three giant human-like hairy beasts at the edge of the Endau Rompin reserve. They also claimed to have seen a gigantic footprint which they photographed.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 12:00 AM

Category: Action

For the uninitiated, the story revolves around the Prince’s use of the Dagger to free the Sands of Time on the advice of an evil Vizier, causing death and destruction in the process, and his attempts to rewind time to before all this happened. Later the Prince travels to the Isle of Time to rid himself of the Dahaka, a demon whose purpose is to hunt down and dispose of those who meddle with the flow of time.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 11:06 PM

Category: Developer

We hired people from all over the country, including Washington, Texas, California, Tennessee, and Michigan. It is amazing to see people so enthusiastic about the opportunity to work here that they are willing to leave behind their old life and move cross country. And as far as I know, no one has regretted their decision! Most of our staff has worked on games before, but there is a sizable group that came from other industries or from school.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 10:49 AM

Category: Role Playing

Will adventurous NPCs *claim* the loot from a dungeon before I get there to explore it?

No, we set them up so that they don’t process while you’re not in the cell to avoid just that situation. While it might be realistic that they’d clean out a dungeon before you’d have a chance, I don’t think that’s in any way fun. There are some “adventurers” who you will see in dungeons that will work with you and do their own looting, but you have to be there.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:39 AM

Category: Role Playing

In our poll at the discussion board, many of you have declared that the film shots are the most interesting form of presenting news on our website. Also today we would like to offer you such a film (however, it does not mean it is going to be repeated every week:) It is a brief record presenting our team and studio.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 12:00 AM

Category: First Person

It's 2007, but the future's a little retro. Folks drive steam-powered lorries; machine guns look more machine than gun. Someone's zapped back in time and mucked up the past, and, as a result, history--and technology with it--has progressed in some wonky ways.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:50 AM

Category: Massively Multiplayer

As for the actual expansion, NCsoft held a free PvP (Player-versus-player) weekend for the title, which included several of the new elements, but was devoid of the actual campaign to be featured when the expansion ships to retail in the spring.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 1:55 PM

Category: Massively Multiplayer

Because the free event concentrated on PvP battles we wer unable to see a lot of Faction's other content, but the two new playable characters are certainly more than enough to write about.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:55 PM

Category: First Person

I've reviewed some games that have made my balls ache in my time, but this one takes the biscuit of dull pain.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 6:13 PM

Category: General

IDC's best guess is that about 1000 new copies of all DOS flavors--MS-DOS, PC-DOS, and the rest--were installed last year. This year? Effectively zip. "There's still some life in it for real specific purposes," says IDC analyst Dan Kusnetzky, "but there's zero growth in usage."

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 3:47 PM

Category: First Person

One of the major challenges in developing a good first-person shooter is crafting believable opponent behavior. As challenging as this is with standard shooters, it is that much more complicated when you throw time control into the mix. How should an opponent react, for example, if you walk right past him while time is frozen? How should he react if he sees you and then you reverse time and hide?

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:18 PM

Category: Role Playing

Greece, Egypt, Babylon--all present and accounted for. Our contacts at Iron Lore remain silent as sphinxes about story specifics but promise a plotline that touches on each of these mythical eras and more.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 2:49 PM

Category: Console Games

Bill Gates: I can't emphasise this enough - we're in this for the long term, and we're confident that our constantly advancing technology will win millions more customers around the world. Right now, we're driving one of the biggest console launches in gaming history. We're delivering Xbox 360 to millions of people around the world in the first ever truly global console launch. Imagine the possibilities when kids from Japan are challenging kids from New York to a race of PGR3, or a PDZ team from Osaka challenges a team from San Francisco. This really is the dawn of a new era of advanced gaming.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:37 PM

Category: Massively Multiplayer

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 10:39 AM

Category: Hardware

The latest graphics chips from ATI and NVIDIA now ensure adequate 3D performance, permitting smooth enjoyment of the graphics quality they provide. The Radeon X1000 series and the Geforce 7 now come complete with PixelShader Version 3 support, and form the basis of a new generation of graphics capabilities. From now on, terms like parallax mapping and HDR rendering will be part of the 3D vocabulary. The obvious improvements in the new shader are found in light and shadows, optical distortions, and reflective or animated surfaces. Here are some examples of current graphics effects.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 10:58 PM

Category: Role Playing

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 10:54 PM

Category: Massively Multiplayer

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 3:41 PM

Category: Massively Multiplayer

"Factions is a stand-alone expansion for Guild Wars." he says. "Players will be able to purchase Factions and have a lot of fun with it without having to purchase the original game. Of course, those players who do have both will have the benefit of being able to cross back and forth between them, bringing items and abilities across and having access to much more content."

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 8:59 PM

Category: Role Playing

We know that there is a lot of excitement over the game and that expectations are high – and that goes for both our community and us here at Flagship Studios! We’re definitely playing it on the safe side in regards to the release date because we want to do everything we can to meet and exceed the expectations we set. We’re still far enough out where a release date, or even a window, would be educated guesswork.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 7:53 PM

Category: Role Playing

This game aims to let the player feel not only immersed in the game world, but also tied to it in an integral way. Your actions will determine future events, and have lasting impacts. For example, during the demo, we learned that the character had accidentally set a villager on fire earlier; after that, when he tried to go join a guild that he had joined in every previous demo, the guildmaster told him he was not welcome. There's a way to fix this, of course -- you can pay a fine, or do something to rehabilitate your reputation so that other villagers will think more kindly of you.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 1:44 PM

Category: First Person

Visually, Emergence is phenomenal. The main section of Emergence, demonstrated on the CES showroom floor, took place in a capsized oil tanker as Blade searches for a weapons dealer. Lighting and graphics textures have the future-gone-awry feel that the first SiN captured so well. The game uses the Source engine, so the physics are similar to Half-Life 2, although Ritual has made some modifications and tweaks to the engine to give it a personalized touch. The studio has been adamant about making the experience as interactive as possible. As in Doom 3 (and very much like the original game), players can interact with consoles within the environment.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 1:37 PM

Category: Role Playing

The editor has received a host of changes ranging from small to large. Many are brand new tools such as the heightfield generation tool, and the region generation tool to populate a large area with objects quickly. The dialogue and quest system has been redone to improve the workflow and tools have been added to better allow Havok objects to be manipulated in the editor. Modders will also have access to the entire range of AI functionality that we have at our disposal.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:44 PM

Category: Role Playing

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 11:24 PM

Category: General

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 2:18 PM

Category: Role Playing

After we got a chance to check the game out at some recent events, however, it looked like the game's developer made the right choice. While it wasn't quite ready for primetime a few months ago, the demo we had today at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show proved that we'll all be heading to Oblivion soon.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 4:53 PM

Category: First Person

In most ways it's the same game that you've played on PC and Valve has done an amazing job in porting the first-person shooter over. This is a clear lesson to other developers showing how it's done. But not everyone has played the PC original, so I won't assume you've played it as I proceed.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 8:57 PM

Category: Role Playing

The most unusual part of Gothic II is its perplexing interface design. I’m unsure how the development team came to the conclusion that not having a mouse cursor in the game was a good idea, but somehow they did. You use the mouse to face the direction you want, so it works basically like a permanent mouse look mode. Finding and using items in your inventory grows increasingly aggravating throughout the game, since you have to use arrow keys to scroll through and select items. Later on, after accumulating countless amounts of items, the frustration only grows. It becomes nearly impossible to use items or potions in a battle due mainly to the fact that you can’t set them to hotkeys.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 2:15 PM

Category: Entertainment

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith took a total of $848.5m (£489.7m). But in the international box office - chart which excludes North America - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in 2005 was the most successful. Both films took more than $800m (£462m) worldwide while no other movies surpassed $600m (£346m).

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 6:26 PM

Category: General

In a year where you could count triple A GameCube titles on, well, a finger, Resident Evil 4’s quality stood out like a saw thumb. After a string of sequels had stretched the Resi formula – fixed camera, clunky controls, cheesy dialogue - to breaking point, RE4 reinvigorated the series and reinvented the survival horror genre.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 12:00 AM

Category: General

Last year's "Best of" features were dominated by two games, Half-Life 2 and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. It could be argued that we haven't had any releases as important as this in the last year, but perhaps this means that the various contributers to Boomtown will have very different opinions of the games of 2005.