Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 8:30 PM

Category: Role Playing

The Witcher has essentially reached the beta phase, and everything is going well in terms of production. We have tight development schedules, and quality tests are being done both by us and by Atari's quality assurance team. We're now polishing everything and are focused on testing, testing again, and more tests.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 2:37 PM

Category: Science

Ripples in the stone show that the dinosaur possibly a T Rex was fighting a current, trying not to drift sideways.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 11:32 AM

Category: Action

ATLANTA - May 29, 2007 - GameTap, the first-of-its-kind broadband entertainment network from Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. (TBS, Inc.), announced today the latest addition to the GameTap Originals line-up, American McGee’s Grimm. The title cements GameTap’s leadership position as a digital publisher and pioneer in episodic games. The 24 episode series will debut in the spring of 2008.

“American McGee is one of the best known and most dynamic developers in the industry today and Grimm is the perfect fit with our GameTap Originals brand,” said Ricardo Sanchez, GameTap’s VP of content. “American is really exploring the potential of episodic game development. Adding this exciting new title to our list of already successful episodic game titles shows our commitment to this proven format.”

In keeping with American’s distinct development style on his smash hit game American McGee’s Alice, fans can expect the same twisted treatment of children’s classics, in addition to a fantastical art style, and groundbreaking gameplay elements. American McGee’s Grimm is a narrative-driven, action-adventure game which immerses the player in a world built around some of the best known tales from the Brothers Grimm, including Rapunzel, Rumplestiltskin, Little Red Riding Hood, and Snow White.

“My interpretation of these classic fables will provide gamers with an entertaining and interactive way of experiencing how the stories were originally meant to unfold,” said American McGee, creative director for Spicy Horse. “The ‘chapters’ inherently lend themselves to the new episodic model that GameTap has perfected.”

American McGee’s Grimm is a story-driven action-adventure game. The player interacts with a compelling collection of vividly drawn characters inhabiting a world built around twisted takes on the best-known tales in Western fiction. The game combines familiar exploration and questing conventions with a thematically inspired fighting mechanic based on the notion that “words are weapons”.

Players will experience the game in a sandbox world which contains missions assigned in episodic fashion. Game and narrative concepts equivalent to TV cliffhangers will be used to create game play and story interest to encourage players to keep up with new releases.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 2:06 PM

Category: Movies

20th Century Fox has acquired feature rights to the life simulation computer game "The SIMS" from Electronic Arts, and has set project up with Fox-based John Davis.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 1:49 PM

Category: Role Playing

The graphics engine is fully scalable – this is not only the standard requirement of the gaming market today but also rather an essential characteristic of good quality productions. We wanted “The Witcher” to be a game for both the financially constrained gamers, as well as for those who can permit themselves the purchase of higher end hardware.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 2:04 PM

Category: Action

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 7:27 AM

Category: Role Playing

What now follows are tedious yet desperately necessary tasks, closely tied with the failure or success of the game – the optimisation of the source code to cut down on required hardware specifications to play the game, the localization of the game into a number of languages (which is further made difficult by the fact that this signifies translating over 250,000 words).

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 8:16 PM

Category: Hardware

You can get the GeForce 8600 in GT and GTS flavors, with the GTS offering higher clock speeds for the graphics core, stream processors, and memory. The GTS's clock speeds are more than just a little bit faster than those of the GT—core and stream processor clocks are up between 22% and 25%, and memory speeds have been boosted by close to 43%. Board vendors are also free to mess with clock speeds on their own, and we have a couple of "overclocked-in-the-box" variants in our roundup.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 3:16 PM

Category: First Person

Like the first arc in the new Half-Life 2 episodic trilogy, Ep. Two places Alyx firmly at Gordon Freeman's side. She remains a worthy companion and the girl all men dream of meeting. She's a crack shot, knows how to take cover, and is always supportive -- even when you drive your hot new muscle car into a pile of giant rocks. Alyx is never annoying, never doubting, and always a welcome assistant. And you're going to need her if you hope to make it through Episode Two with your head intact.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 3:01 PM

Category: Role Playing

Having recently split with Piranah Bytes (which means no more patches btw) over the bug ridden quality of the previous Gothic titles, Jowood announced today that it is in negotiations with a major development studio for Gothic 4, scheduled for PC and consoles.

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

Category: Massively Multiplayer

In these dire times, a brave cadre of Ascalonians has chosen to take the fight to the Charr, striking into their homeland. These units — many of which are made up of humans who've escaped Charr enslavement — have slipped behind (and, in some cases, broken through) the Charr lines. They are now establishing advanced bases deep in Charr territory where they harry the invaders and divert supplies and troops away from Ascalon.

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

Category: Developer

The thing is, there are many forum posts, and we go through and if something gets posted on YouTube we read what everybody says there, and I read every piece of email. I don't respond to every piece of email I get because I can't but I do read every piece of email I get, and try to synthesise that into the clear sense of how we can do a better job with our products.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:36 PM

Category: Music

It's possible for two reasonable adults, probably older than 45, to argue for hours about the most significant pop music event of the 1960s. My own vote would be cast in favor of the Beatles' first appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in February 1964, but a very close second is the release of their "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," the majestic album that will be 40 years old in early June.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 3:33 PM

Category: Role Playing

This being an Elder Scrolls title, The Shivering Isles features a main quest storyline good for about 25-30 hours of game play all on its own, and of course the landscape is chock full of ruins, dungeons and camp sites to explore.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 8:46 AM

Category: Strategy

StarCraft II continues the epic saga of the Protoss, Terran, and Zerg. These three distinct and powerful races will clash once again in the fast-paced real-time strategy sequel to the legendary original, StarCraft. Legions of veteran, upgraded, and brand-new unit types will do battle across the galaxy, as each faction struggles for survival.

Featuring a unique single-player campaign that picks up where StarCraft: Brood War left off, StarCraft II will present a cast of new heroes and familiar faces in an edgy sci-fi story filled with adventure and intrigue. In addition, Blizzard will again offer unparalleled online play through Battle.net, the company's world-renowned gaming service, with several enhancements and new features to make StarCraft II the ultimate competitive real-time strategy game.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 2:26 PM

Category: Role Playing

Once we managed to get our itchy fingers on Aurora, our first priority was to dispose of the unnecessary elements of the “Neverwinter Nights” engine that would otherwise clutter up the processing power in “The Witcher.” Among other things, we had to replace the d20 turn-based mechanism with our own real-time fighting system.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 12:48 PM

Category: Role Playing

Set twenty-five years in the future, Hellgate: London introduces a world devastated by a demon invasion and a desolate city scorched by hellfire where mankind has gone underground to survive. Among them are the Templar, an archaic and secret society that foresaw this demonic apocalypse centuries ago.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 1:59 PM

Category: Role Playing

Following a couple of patches, Bethesda's massive RPG shines even brighter than its predecessors, pushing the standards for RPGs on the PC platform. Even so long after the game's release, I find myself sitting gazing lovingly at much of the scenery. And many of the NPCs are, despite their limitations, a lot more alive than equal attempts in every other game.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:41 AM

Category: Role Playing

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

Category: Hardware

Happily, R600 is at last ready to roll. The Radeon HD 2900 XT graphics card should hit the shelves of online stores today, and we have spent the past couple of weeks dissecting it. Has AMD managed to deliver the goods? Keep reading for our in-depth review of the Radeon HD 2900 XT.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 10:52 AM

Category: Role Playing

Elder Scrolls IV – Shivering Isles uses the same gaming engine used for the base game, Oblivion. And like Oblivion, the graphics and effects are visually appealing, especially when you consider the low polygon modeling of the objects in the game. The textures are brilliantly designed and are used successfully to affect various moods, especially for the two distinct realms within the expansion, Mania and Dementia.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 11:36 AM

Category: Massively Multiplayer

From the more than 1,000 entries, through multiple levels of judging, approximately 100 concepts were selected as finalist entries. Then, the entire Guild Wars Development Team judged the finalists. Eleven concepts were selected as winners, and those concepts will be the basis for new items that will be added to the game in the upcoming months.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 7:55 AM

Category: Role Playing

Nearly all of the improvements that have been made are the ones that any sensible gamer would have asked for. New to the world of Titan Quest are the Caravan Drivers, that allow the easy movement of large inventories of items between characters, and Enchanters who can un-enhance your favourite weapon so that you can attach that more powerful upgrade you have been desperate to try out. Mind you, nothing is free, even in ancient Greece...

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 11:17 AM

Category: Role Playing

Speaking strictly in numbers, the game world is roughly 25% larger than Oblivion's. There are seven major cities in the game, plus a dozen smaller settlements, over fifty underground locations, and hundreds of other places to discover. It's probably also worth noting that there are many different environments. You'll be exploring forests, deserts, islands, snow covered mountains, bamboo forests, volcanic plains, dustbowls and more.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:33 PM

Category: First Person

The lion's share of Episode Two - which at seven hours is what Valve call the "meat" of the trilogy - is an epic road-trip to a rebel safe haven called White Forest.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 3:38 PM

Category: Role Playing

May 8, 2007 (Rockville, MD) – Bethesda Softworks® is pleased to announce that highly acclaimed international actor Liam Neeson will lead the cast providing voice work in Fallout 3. Neeson will play the role of the player’s father and will appear prominently throughout the game. Fallout 3 is currently under development at Bethesda Game Studios, creators of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion®, which won numerous Game of the Year and RPG of the Year awards in 2006.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:34 PM

Category: Role Playing

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 6:58 PM

Category: Action

Using an enhanced ‘Tomb Raider: Legend’ game engine, the graphics, technology and physics bring Lara’s adventure and pursuit of a mystical artefact known only as the Scion right up to today’s technology standards and will offer gamers a completely new gameplay experience.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 11:43 AM

Category: Role Playing

Two Worlds is an open-world RPG that promises a grand adventure. It contains several key elements that a great fantasy game should have – secret tombs to explore, ancient temples to raid, orcs to combat, and of course humans that’ll stab you in the back if you don’t pay close attention. This could potentially be the next game to steal the souls of gamers. The main quest will contain over 40 hours of gameplay. If that isn’t enough for players, the side quests bump the playing time up to 100 hours of gameplay.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 2:03 PM

Category: Role Playing

The console version of "Two Worlds" will unfortunately not be in the stores with the PC version on the 9th of May. As yet, no new release date has been announced. Unfortunately, the reasons for this delay cannot at this time be given by the publishers.

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

Category: First Person

The real aliens live in zero-G. No-one's seen them yet. Maybe around May we'll hint at them in screenshots. But you won't see them properly until you play. And I'm telling you, the first time you see them you'll shit your pants!

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:36 PM

Category: Massively Multiplayer

One of the major new additions to Guild Wars 2 is persistent world areas. The original game was entirely instanced which, according to the ArenaNet team, did wonders for their ability to tell a story (there's a major event in the middle of the original game that completely alters the world forever). "What you lose in an entirely instanced game is a lot of social opportunities," Mike O'Brian said. "There's a lot to be said for running into the same people over and over again. If you run with a pick-up group and you never meet them again, it can make a completely instanced game a very lonely experience." While Guild Wars 2 will contain a lot of instanced mission content, it will also sport a lot of shared landscape and will also be divided up into different servers filled with smaller groups of people in the manner of traditional MMOs.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 8:47 AM

Category: Role Playing

32 square kilometers, varying climate regions, six large towns, a multitude of villages and countless caves and dungeons - plus a tight network of roads... Antaloor has lots to offer you!