Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 6:30 PM

Category: First Person

2007 October 31 - Midway and Epic today announced that Unreal Tournament 3 has gone to gold master for the PC. Developed by the team behind the critically acclaimed video game Gears of War, Unreal Tournament 3 is currently scheduled to ship in North America on November 19th for the PC with a suggested retail price of $49.95 and $59.95 for the collector's edition. The PlayStation3 version will follow soon. Unreal Tournament fans can get a taste of the compelling first person shooter by checking out the previously released single-player trailer below, or download the beta demo that is available now at: click here.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 7:56 AM

Category: First Person

The year’s biggest PC game has just gotten that much closer to hitting store shelves. Crysis, Crytek’s next-generation first person shooter for the PC has gone gold and will be on store shelves everywhere November 16, 2007.

“We are extremely proud of what we have been able to accomplish with Crysis,” said Cevat Yerli, CEO of Crytek. “We wanted to push the boundaries both visually and with open-ended, non-linear gameplay and we believe the end result delivers that vision.”

The current single player demo, available in DX10 and DX9, has given gamers their first taste of the immersive, non-linear Crysis experience. Highlighted by Crytek’s open-ended level design and the game’s Nanosuit gameplay mechanic, which challenges gamers to analyze and approach every individual encounter before acting, Crysis delivers a completely new and refreshing FPS gameplay experience.

Of course, the single player demo also features the stunning, award-winning graphics powered by Crytek’s revolutionary CryENGINE 2. Assistance from key partners such as NVIDIA, Intel and Microsoft have helped make Crysis one of the most anticipated PC games of all time.

“Crytek and EA are rewarding PC gamers with the world’s most technologically advanced video game,” said Roy Taylor, vice president of content at NVIDIA. “Our programmers are intensely proud to have helped Crytek push the boundaries of interactivity and immersion. The game was developed and tested on NVIDIA, and we recommend GeForce 8800-Series graphics cards for the best experience.”

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 7:38 AM

Category: Entertainment

Porter Wagoner was known for a string of country hits in the '60s, perennial appearances at the Grand Ole Opry in his trademark rhinestone suits, and for launching the career of Dolly Parton.

Mr. Wagoner had 81 singles on the country charts, including 29 Top 10 records. His hits included “Green, Green Grass of Home,” “Skid Row Joe” and “The Cold Hard Facts of Life.” He was famous for capturing straight up the raw emotions of people living tough lives, sometimes using his speaking voice in an old-time country technique called recitation.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:43 AM

Category: Hardware

We’ve covered almost each and every existing diagonal in our LCD monitor roundups, from now-obsolete 15" models to newest 27" and 30" giants, but 23-24-inchers have remained out of our focus for some reason. Today we are going to make up for this omission by offering you a detailed review of 8 eight 23" and 24" monitors including solutions from Acer, Apple, Dell, LG, Samsung and ViewSonic.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 11:53 AM

Category: Simulation

In SH4, you can choose to play the lengthy career mode, jump into the action with standalone missions or seek out the enemy in war patrol mode. The career mode will eat up a large chunk of your free time as you plot courses across the Pacific to enemy territory, meticulously calculating your every move to remain stealthy while getting the job done. You must complete several missions and tours in your choice of several historical submarine classes, from the quick and stealthy to the large and powerful.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 6:24 PM

Category: First Person

This latest part of Valve's episodic waltz through the Half-Life canon follows directly on from where Episode 1 left off - you're even treated to a synopsis, in case you've forgotten what's happened! Very much a concise but short, single player blast, Episode 2 continues the pattern of strong story telling, dark humour and intense action scenes.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 2:33 PM

Category: First Person

Barker fans too will be disappointed to hear that the game isn't scary in the least, and despite the fleshy, goo-ey visuals it doesn't contain a considerable amount of material that genuinely shocks.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 6:33 PM

Category: Role Playing

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 1:51 PM

Category: First Person

Just in time for the fright-filled holiday of the year, Codemasters today announced that its long-awaited action horror game Clive Barker's Jericho™ is now shipping and will be available from retail stores this Friday, 26th October, for the Xbox 360™ video game and entertainment system from Microsoft®, the PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system and Games for Windows®.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 10:25 AM

Category: Action

As a ship-to-ship combat title, Battlestar Galactica sticks very, very closely to its television roots. As a player, you take authentic BSG spacecrafts into battle from both sides of the conflict, Cylons and humans.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:03 AM

Category: Role Playing

As you grind through the world, there are some impressions that leap out at you, and some that grow over time. The first impression is, of course, the graphics. Loki is a very good-looking game that bursts with spectacular effects and artistic acumen. Textures — whether they're painted onto a model or a world object — are gritty, realistic and full of detail.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 11:23 AM

Category: First Person

The Time Shield is one of the many time powers at your command in multiplayer. When activated, it surrounds you in a protective sphere of slowed time that slows down any incoming projectiles, enemies or objects while you can move freely around the map. It also makes you invulnerable to enemy time grenades for a critical edge in battle.

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

Category: First Person

Microsoft Game Studios announced today that the eagerly-awaited “Gears of War” for Windows has gone gold and will hit retailers throughout North America on November 6th.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 6:11 PM

Category: Role Playing

CD Projekt's impressive-looking PC RPG The Witcher has gone gold and ships to stores in North America on October 30. Based on Andrzej Sapkowski's series of novels, the game follows Geralt, who in his role as a mutant witcher, drinks, seduces women, and slays monsters as he explores the seedy underbelly of the world.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 5:45 PM

Category: Role Playing

In all, the game offers 250 different skills to players, grouped along various skill trees. An especially useful ability Red Studio demonstrated was making potions that could enhance Geralt's stats. Consuming too many at once would poison the body, but being able to brew strong potions and then quickly consume them before entering a boss fight was a crucial component of success.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:08 PM

Category: First Person

After getting delayed, gutted, and extensively overhauled, Saber Interactive's TimeShift (PC, PS3, X360) has gone gold for PC and Xbox 360 and will make its retail date of October 30. The PlayStation 3 version is currently scheduled for release December 4.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 8:21 AM

Category: First Person

Hunters, Episode Two's new three-legged mini-Striders, add an element of combat nonlinearity new to the series. If you hole up in a house, they might come up through the cellar; if you run outside, one might climb up to the roof to gain a better line of sight.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 12:59 PM

Category: First Person

Unreal Tournament 3 represents a departure of sorts from its predecessors. While the early UTs were billed as sort of the blood sport of the future, Unreal Tournament 3 will usher in a single-player campaign about an intergalactic war and featuring characters that look like they were from the casting call for Gears of War, another Epic game. But while Gears of War is a very tactical game about using cover, Unreal Tournament 3, just like its predecessors, is about lightning-fast run-and-gun gameplay where you'll do a lot of killing and dying, but you're always able to respawn within seconds to continue the fight.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:22 AM

Category: Action

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 10:40 PM

Category: Action

It is at the Montreal studio that we get our first significant taste of Assassin's Creed, which is just days away from reaching gold master, the final step before production. Over the span of a few hours, we were able to execute two complete assassination missions (of nine, in total) set near the middle of the purported 20-hour experience, including all of the necessary exploratory and investigatory elements that precede each actual kill.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 2:43 PM

Category: Role Playing

We had mentioned it a long, long time ago but we hadn’t released it, until now. Starting Monday, October 15 it will be available to download via Xbox Live (for Xbox 360) and elderscrolls.com (for PC). And, for one week, it will be free to anybody who wants to download it and play it. So mark it on your calendars and don’t forget.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 3:13 PM

Category: First Person

Purchasers of the PC version of The Orange Box who already own Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode One can conveniently “gift” them to a friend from within Steam.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 7:18 AM

Category: First Person

At its core, Instinct is a by-the-books first-person shooter. Its plot follows three Russian military spec-op soldiers infiltrating a secret, illegal research and development lab buried in the mountains of North Korea. The facility has been engaged in morally bankrupt biological warfare experiments, attempting to manipulate virus code. The scientists succeed, but not in the way they had hoped. The end result is that the entire base gets overrun with zombies. Yes, zombies. Undead. Ab-dead.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:17 AM

Category: Action

The preview build is a collection of levels randomly selected from the full build, so it doesn't give me any idea whatsoever of the story arc. The official press statement from publisher Meridian 4, however, states that the events in this iteration are occurring simultaneously with those of the original Shadowgrounds. In effect, this is just fleshing out and expanding upon the New Atlantis colony on Ganymede.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:45 AM

Category: First Person

I spent the first few hours as a pin cushion for enemy bullets. It was only after a good three or four hours that things began to fall into place, and I started to see how this game has carved out a very distinctive niche in the crowded team-based shooter genre. And yet it was only after a few hours of play time that I also started to noticed the one major issue I have with the game.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:42 AM

Category: First Person

CoD4 doesn't mess with the basics: all the multiplayer modes you want are here. Where it gets interesting is with the ability to adapt and customise your character in some surprising ways.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 10:06 AM

Category: First Person

PC players also get a map-editing program designed to facilitate a Gears of War modding community, superficially similar to the editor that shipped with Unreal Tournament 3. Although Epic admits that this editor is going to be overall simpler than UT3's, it compensates by releasing the Kismet visual scripting language used in designing virtually everything about Gears. By giving players Kismet and all of the other tools and assets used to design Gears, Epic hopes to simplify the process of creating mods so that more players can contribute to the community. In addition to the exclusive content, Gears PC buyers also get the complete content of the 360 original and all of the content released as downloads via Xbox Live.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 12:13 AM

Category: First Person

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 1:10 PM

Category: First Person

"Gears of War" thrusts gamers into a deep and harrowing story of humankind's epic battle for survival against the Locust Horde, a nightmarish race of creatures that surface from the bowels of the planet.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 7:37 AM

Category: Role Playing

10 years ago the original Fallout was released and forever changed role-playing games. Now is your chance to be a part of Fallout history. We're giving you, the fans, a chance to design one of the perks for Fallout 3!

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 8:09 AM

Category: Entertainment

Maxwell starred alongside Sir Sean Connery in Bond's first movie outing, Dr No, in 1962.

She played the role until 1985's A View To A Kill with Sir Roger Moore, who told the BBC she had been a "great asset" to the early Bond movies.