Gaming News

After initially recommending that customers equip themselves with a 480W power supply in order to use the new GeForce 6800 Ultra cards, this has now been revised following further testing. A lot depends on the quality of your power supply, and also the number of components drawing power from it in the PC. Nvidia are now suggesting that a good quality 350W supply would be sufficient.

I've got an 256MB Asus 6800GT DDR3 card on order with the intention of running it on a 400W supply from Q Technology - update to follow when I give it a try :)

Read the Gamespot interview with Nvidia on the subject.

Merry xmas from DFC :)

Both BF 1942 ands BF Vietnam have been updated earlier this month. The patches address an exploit that is present in both games. Links to the downloads can be found on our Game Versions and Patches page.

ATI have released a new set of graphics drivers. Games impacted by fixes in the new drivers include Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike, DOOM 3 and Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault.

Bob has confirmed that the next LAN will not be until 2005. It's hoped the new cellar venue will be ready by late January/early February. No expense has been spared on the construction of the new gaming arena, including 6U a rack for all the networking kit, twin 13 amp plug sockets and 100Mbps ethernet ports at every desk, all connected by nearly half a mile of CAT5e cabling.

After a little digging, we've managed to find the classic LAN rhyme from a couple of years ago. 'Twas the night before Easter...

Getting to the end of HL2 is a bit like when you reach the end of Lord of the Rings - you're sad it's over and you want more. HL2 is every bit the worthy successor to the original, carrying momentum all the way through to the end.

The AI of the enemies is much better than the original, although not as good as in FarCry. The AI of your allies is not brilliant - they still always manage to get in your way when you are trying to do something. The animation of the enemy aircraft and the creepers is awesome. The weapons are okay, with the exception of the gravity gun which is superb. Using it to fire saw blades through the heads of the zombies in Ravenholm was most satisfying :)

All in all, this has to be the best single player FPS we've seen. Worth the wait? Very much so.

I've read a lot of things on various forums regarding HL2 and its installation, some good and some bad, but once people manage to start playing, I've not seen a bad word written about it.

My personal experience was that the installation from a retail DVD went fine. I already had an up to date Steam installation, so that bit was not an issue (many people reported issues creating Steam accounts on the day, but that's hardly surprising given the load the servers must have been under). The only bit that took a while was the unlocking of files - that was a good 15-20 minutes. Once that was complete, the game started fine. Note that Trebz found that his installation from DVD failed unless he opted to install CS:Source aswell as HL2. The Valve HL2 Forums have plenty of discussions on installation issues.

So onto the game itself - absolutely superb. I've not got particularly far yet (just got to the bit where your bike thing gets its gun) but the bits I've seen are just great. It has the expansiveness and graphical detail of FarCry but on top of that it's kept the atmosphere of the original HL. The interaction between your character, the AI characters and the objects and scenery is spot on. The ability to pick up and move just about anything on the map meant they could be really creative with the various puzzles throughout the game. It's not just a case of finding hidden buttons or levers anymore. Eg in the sewers, there are a couple of places where you have to move bricks or barrels to weigh down one end of a plank of wood in order to make a ramp for your bike to jump off.

I've not had chance to look at the multiplayer side of it yet, but no doubt will do in due course.

What a top week we have in store, with the releases of both Half-Life 2 and Medal of Honor : Pacific Assault. Both these games have been delayed, and then some more. And in HL2's case, some more again.

However, the wait is now over. More updates to follow when we see the LAN potential of these games.

At last it looks like we have a firm date for the release of Half-Life 2. Vivendi issued a statement saying that the game had gone gold and that a release was earmarked for Tuesday 16th November. This year!

After all the delays and disappointments over the last 18 months, let's hope this time it really happens.

ATI have released their latest driver set - Catalyst 4.10. ATI are now recommending that users install Windows XP SP2 prior to updating their drivers.

You can download the drivers or read what gamers are saying about them on the Blues News Forums.

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 :/