Gaming News

Ubisoft have made available a new Ghost Recon 2 movie featuring in-game footage with commentary by designer Christian Allen. The game looks good, however it does have more of an arcade game feel than the original.

The movie shows the various vehicles in the game, controlling a fixed gun to take down a helicopter, and calling in an airstrike. Funnily enough, there wasn't a clip of the whole team lying down in the road being pushed along by an APC :)

Download the movie - 25MB from Ubisoft's ftp.

EA have announced that the version 1.2 patch for Battlefield Vietnam is due out today. Details of the patch are as follows:

Bug fixes

• Tank splash damage against light and heavy vehicles now works.
• Minimap sorting order altered so players are visible above the CP flags.
• Performance problems resolved at the temple in HoChiMinh Trail and Cambodian Incursion.
• Repeating napalm sound bug has been resolved.
• The bug with grenades that goes through bridges has been resolved.
• Parachute not opening properly on first key press.
• Missing icon flashes for radio commands resolved.

Balance/gameplay tweaks

• Helicopter pads at main bases will not reload or repair helicopters occupied by enemy players, even after the control point is taken by the enemy. Note that this is determined by the team the player is on, not by the vehicle they are in.
• Mi8 hitpoints reduced from 125 to 100. Rocket reload time increased from 3 to 4.5 seconds.

Read the full release notes at EA.

Update - the patch is now out and can be downloaded from EA.

Valve are making the purchase of Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike:Source available over the Steam network. Buyers will get CS immediately (assuming they have preloaded it over the past few weeks), and they will get Half-Life 2 as soon as it is released.

The Steam client has been updated to support the various purchasing options.

Read about the offers on the Steam site.

It now transpires that Vivendi have the legal right to sit on the final release candidate of Half-Life 2 for upto six months. With the release candidate being due in the next few weeks, the reported September 2004 release has gone the way of the reported September 2003 release. Will it even make it out for xmas? It's not looking promising :(

The full article can be read on Gamespot.

Apologies for the recent site outage - this was caused by a power supply failure in the web server. Thanks to the Freddys crew for bringing it back to life :)

United Offensive, the official expansion for Call of Duty, will be available in GAME stores later this week. If the original is anything to go by, then it should be excellent.

It has not been developed by Infinity Ward - the expansion was coded by Gray Matter Studios. That said, it will be of the same style and quality, offering missions as American, British and Soviet again.

The multiplayer side of the game has not been left out either - it will feature 11 new maps and 3 new modes of play.

The sequel to the realistic strategy FPS Ghost Recon is soon to be available. Reports show that the console versions will be available in November this year, with the PC version coming out early 2005.

Most of the industry news sites have posted articles on what the game is to be like. These can be read at Eurogamer, PC Zone and GameSpot. Those that didn't play the original seem to like the sequel, whereas those who were fans of Ghost Recon were concerned that it may be dummed down for a mass market audience. Having to read the manual for a game these days simply will not do :/ Surely publishers will have learned that lesson following all the negative feedback to the "sequel" of Deus Ex. Maybe not.

EA's sequal to Allied Assault has been given a release date of 12th November 2004. This is slightly later than initially planned, but can be considered timely relative to Half-Life 2.

GameSpot have recently been publishing a number of in-game footage movies for download. They look good :)

DF-Lynx is hosting another Mini-LAN tomorrow. The start time is likely to be around 7pm. The games will be BF:Vietnam, with possibly a bit of BF:Vietnam thrown in for good measure.

Bring your kit along, or join at bobbly.gotdns.com.

Doom 3 was available in stores throughout the UK yesterday. First impressions - fantastic :)

It's got the great gameplay we were hoping for, and a superb atmosphere that makes you jump whenever you turn a corner. It tops AvP2 for suspense, and that takes some doing.

So what about playability and performance? Well out of the box on my P4 2.4GHz with GeForce 4 Ti4600 GS (ForceWare 61.77), it did seem to struggle at 1280x1024 with suggested settings. A quick trip to the UpsetChaps Doom 3 Tweaks page provided me with a bunch of settings optimised for a 128MB card. Applying these made all the difference. Gameplay was very smooth with no stutter, even when it gets busy. These settings do turn off shadows, which would add a great deal to the game, but I think most people would prefer a smoother game.

All in all, great game. Now it's just a matter of finding time to do it justice :/

After twawling through the web logs for this site, we've compiled a list of the more amusing search phrases people have used to arrive here.

You can view the list in our Humour section.

UpsetChaps have published a guide for Doom 3. It covers various gameplay aspects, and also offers some settings for optimum performance for difference PC setups.

An update for the popular Battlefield Vietnam game was released yesterday. There are numerous changes, including new maps and vehicles, gameplay tweaks and UI improvements.

Read the full changelog and download the update from the EA Site.

Earlier this week, Skype left beta stage and was officially released as a full product. The final beta came out last week with loads of tweaks and fixes, however we've found nothing wrong with Skype during all the recent mini-LANs we've been using it for.

HardOCP have published an article testing ATI and Nvidia graphics cards with the latest Doom 3 demo.

Read the findings on the HardOCP site.

The Steam news site last night published details of the closure of the WON auth system for the non-Steam versions of HalfLife, Counter-Strike and all other HL mods. Here's the article:

Starting July 26th the shutdown of the WON authentication servers will begin. This process will be completed on July 31st. This means players will no longer be able to access Internet features of Valve games, such as Counter-Strike 1.5, using the WON authentication servers. Users can continue using Valve games on the Steam service by downloading the Steam installer and setting up a Steam account. For more information visit www.steampowered.com. Counter-Strike 1.5 players will be upgraded to Counter-Strike 1.6 free of charge through Steam.

Bob will be hosting a mini-LAN tomorrow night. Games will be BF1942 and BF Vietnam, however Wij has demanded some Painkiller.

Gaming due to start around 7pm

A press release has been circulating indicating that Doom 3 is to be available in stores from the week of 2nd August. There is no indication whether this is for PC or XBox, however it was believed that the PC version was to be released first.

hl2fallout.com have posted an article detailing what kind of performance you can expect from various levels of hardware. It seems the key is having a decent DirectX9 card, along with a CPU of 2.4GHz or above.

Read the full HalfLife 2 hardware requirements article.

The HalfLife 2 team have named the voice-over cast for the forthcoming game. Some names we know from films and TV shows, others we don't.

Read the full list on the PC Zone news page.