PC PC GAMES

Impulse is having a pretty sweet Memorial Weekend sale, from Sins of a Solar Empire (A Space RTS) for $3.99, to Mass Effect Bundle (1 & 2) and Dragon Age Bundle (Origins and Awakening) to our buddy’s, Cliff Harris, Gratuitous Space Battles Complete (Includes Gratuitous Space Battles plus The Order, The Swarm and The Tribes expansions. ) and others!

Steam has the Dawn of War II games at half off, or 20 bucks if you buy them together! Need copies of Half Life 2 Orange Box for $20.99 (Half-Life 2, Ep 1, Ep 2, Portal (which you should have got free when it was a week ago!) and TF2, which all but TF2 are now playable on Mac (TF2 will be soon!). And… with a heavy heart, Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Elite Echelon Edition which includes Splinter Cell, Double Agent, Chaos Theory & Conviction’s Deluxe Edition, for less then 50 bucks! Thats a deal! Unless you count in the fact that Conviction has that DRM… aaarrrggghhhhh. You are still saving money buying the game, and its like you are getting the first three free! But still there is that DRM… argh!

But wait, what is this? Direct 2 Drive has the same package Splinter Cell Elite Echelon Edition for a few bucks less!! 45.95. Wow. I would so buy this… if it wasn’t for the DRM, and short amout of play time.

If you do buy the Splinter Cell pack, please let us know what you think of it, and your experience with the DRM is like. Now I gotta go back to trying to get my download speed to go faster!! Stupid Blur came out and I need to download it so I can get owned by Thunder!!

I hope you are not in the same boat as me. I have a friend in Germany and we have been playing all sorts of games over the years over the great distance to Europe just fine. As mentioned in our last podcast Blizzard thinks this is not good and not beneficial. Why… oh… I don’t know… you tell me (It’s a Battle.Net thing… but man, what a sucky implementation!). Blizzard… the new Apple… telling us what is good for us… has the WOW money done harm to a once great company?

Here is the report via INC.GAMERS:

Blizzard’s VP of product development, Frank Pearce, has confirmed to IncGamers that there are no current plans to let EU players play against NA players unless they buy the game in that region as well.

“It’ll be structured very similarly to World of Warcraft, where you’ve got the European region and players matched against the other players within their region,” Pearce told us.

Bob Colayco, one of Blizzard’s main PR reps noted “We haven’t promised anything like that,” but added “that’s something we’ll look into.”

Pearce went on to stress that it’s not all doom and gloom for intercontinental friends and “if you’re a European player and you’ve got friends that are in another region that you want to be able to connect with, we definitely want to support that,” although “it might mean that you have to access it through the US client.”

The main issue is just that you need a separate Battle.net account for each region, and a game associated to that region. Seeing how you need a mandatory physical address for your account, we were wondering if that might not be against the TOS or EULA on principle. Pearce cleared it up by saying he’s “pretty sure that’s not against the TOS or EULA, but you’d be subject to the terms of the EULA for the region in which you’re playing.”
As well as our full StarCraft II Single Player Preview, we will shortly release the full interview with Frank, so stay tuned!

That’s right folks.   For a whopping $19.95, you too can own a copy of the Need for Speed World Starter Pack.  Of which includes:

• Code for access to full Need for Speed™ World game via downloadable client
• $20 (USD) worth of SpeedBoost
• Power-Ups Bundle (Available to all newly created drivers in an account)
• Exclusive Need for Speed World edition Mazda 3 (Available to all drivers, newly created or pre-existing, in an account

People who pre-order, get even more goodies:

• Access to Need for Speed World Beta Events: Pre-order and receive guaranteed access to all remaining Need for Speed World beta events. (Must be 18+; Dates are subject to change)
• • June 2 –June 13
  • June 25 –June 27
• Access to Head Start Event: Get a 7 day head start to the live game before the game releases. (Dates are subject to change)
• • July 13 –July 19
• Pre-order only event: Increased Rep (XP) gain for the duration of Head Start Event.
• Pre-selection: Reserve your driver names in advance of the game going live.
• VIP Status: Displayed in driver profile

Includes:

• Code for beta access
• Need for Speed™ World beta via downloadable client

The official launch date is July 20th.  See ya on the streets!

http://www.impulsedriven.com/nfsworld

The Wizzle

We purchased BLUR for the PC on STEAM and just with two people it has been a blast. We highly recommend you puchase it as well, since we can’t wait playing you online! If you do by it add us to your friends list (Names below the video). If you want I add you to the list as well!

• BlackThunder
• Fascinator
• ChangWang
• BeerJedi
• …

I came across this article by one of the NY Times Economists.  As we all know, we are going through one of the worst economic periods in our history and normally during times like these, crime rates go up.  Instead, over the last 18-24 months, Crime has gone down.  Violent crime and property crime have litterally gone done.

The economist is smart in pointing out that we have more folks already in prison then in the past, but more importantly, police strategies, investigative procedures and technology in general has helped to either prevent incidents from happening or incarcerate would be repeat offenders before the can cause more mayhem.

What the economist found interesting, and what cracks me up, is he looked into other possibilities.  One Harvard economist mentions that one reason for the decline, and emphasizes that it is only an idea, is both the Internet and video games.  He cited the idea that these tools/toys provided a needed distraction by those who would normally be out there committing crimes.   

Woot! Video Games can stop crime (maybe).

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:53:07 — 51.8MB)

What is this, Epic talking about piracy… one would think they know what they talk about… well one would think!? We give you plenty of reasons why it isn’t so, even go so far and quote someone that has to know better… Cliff Harris.

Our other talking points are:

• Epic developer on piracy… epic fail!
• Visit Cliff Harris and buy at least one of his games, do it NOW!
• Split Second, or how not to release a demo
• The looking glass… Blur is due this week
• A look back “Flat Out” so much fun but oh so unstable
• APB pre-purchase sale or how not to “entice people to preorder
• Alpha Protocol pre-purchase goodies, that’s better
• Apple in the News
• Google in the News
• We recommend a TV show, go watch some “Community“
• Torchlight… to MMO, or not to MMO?!
• Square Enix.. has mucho profit
• Bioware… DLC promise made again (in the past and not kept)
• Red Dead Redemption… we miss it on the PC
• Pachter is wrong again… we are not surprised
• PC Gaming Alliance… what alliance?!
• Now not just EA is charging for resold games, more reasons not to buy console!
• Vote your Mountain Dew Flavor (apparently “White Out” is the one to vote for)
• HP ENVY17 is on order
• BFG is out of the video card market
• What does Eyefinity look like in games
• Sears in need of someone that takes pics for them
• Another look at EPIC’s piracy statement
• PC’s looking better the longer there is no new console
• Curlen has two 5870′s and what that means for his current motherboard

Buy Majesty 2 on sale on Steam for only $7.50. It’s quite different kind of game and I had a couple hours fun with it.

Here are the details:

In the world of Majesty, you are the ruler of the kingdom Ardania. At your service are your loyal and somewhat obnoxious subordinates, who have their own minds about how things should be done.

In fact, Majesty is the only game where your heroes decide on their own what should be done and when, leaving you to try to control them through monetary incentives.

Key Features

• Real-time strategy game with indirect control – your heroes have a will of their own.
• Play through a campaign with 16 missions divided into 4 chapters, as well as a few quick missions and a variety of multiplayer maps.
• Build the fantasy city of your dreams and experience an engaging world, but beware: monsters are waiting to lay siege to your domain.
• Defend your realm with noble warriors, spell-wielding wizards or wild barbarians. Choose from more than 10 different classes to oversee the protection of your lands.
• GameSpy multiplayer for up to 4 players over LAN or Internet, including support for ranking ladders and tournaments.
• The official sequel to the best-selling game Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim of 2000.

As Fas’ and I say though, you are not a real gamer if you do not vote for Whiteout!

Homage to the little guys. Go Popcap and Runic!

Many of the the gaming industry sites, including Bluesnews, Gamespy and Industry Gamers have reported that MMO developer Perfect World has aquired a majority Stake in Runic Games.

Why would this affect us? Runic Games is the creater of Torchlight, one of the best low budget games to hit the PC in years (BeerJedi’s Opinion). While it’s a Diablo clone, it’s a very well done game.   Runic’s focus has been to bring Torchlight into an MMO setting, though the player community is very split on this subject, many would like to see a multiplayer option like diablo and not an MMO environment. The investment by Perfect World is a good indicator that Torchlight is preceeding in this direction.

My knowledge of Perfect World is pretty limited, though I do know that many of the MMOs that come from the APAC regions tend to be massive grind fests. I hope they do Torchlight justice as I found the game a very good buy and a lot of fun to play.

Your thoughts on this development?

Got an email announcement to check out the new trailer, so posting the link here. Could not get access to the embed code, but that should come out soon.

Looks very good, and as mentioned in our Podcast 21, dedicated servers.

http://www.callofduty.com/media/videos?media_id=322

Better get your game on if you want to play a little more of the Beta. 2 weeks from now it’s lights out! Here is the news from the big Blizzard:

We’d like to let all of our StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty beta test participants know that the first phase of the beta test will be coming to an end in all regions on Monday, May 31. The beta test will be unavailable for several weeks while we make some hardware and software configuration changes in preparation for the final phase of the beta test and the release of the game. We plan to bring the beta test back online for a couple of weeks prior to the game’s launch to complete our testing. We’ll have more details to share about when this final beta-testing phase will begin at a later date.
We’d like to thank all of our beta-test participants for your enthusiasm, dedication, and valuable feedback during the beta test, and we look forward to hearing more of your thoughts on the StarCraft II beta test as the game’s July 27 launch approaches.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:48:05 — 24.7MB)

Some crazy news this week. EA wants to charge $10 for used games… and developers saying that used game sales are a bigger problem than piracy… yup you heard that right. No wonder we had plenty to talk about!
We had quite a panel this week, so some of the opinions are all over the place as you can imagine. Here are the talking points:

• The play List – The Saboteur, Need for Speed: World, Bioshock 2, Starcraft 2, Napoleon Total War, Bad Company 2, Dirt 2,
• The World Cup is Coming (It tops the European sales charts!)
• Need for Speed World Beta
• MMO talk
• All Points Bulletin
• Hacked Max Payne .exe used on STEAM release
• StarTrek Online
• Blizzard region lock
• Entertainment Software Sales are WAY DOWN
• Steam on the MAC
• Dead Space 2 on PC
• We recommend a Movie or two
• Dedicated servers for Call of Duty: Black Ops
• Where are the Co-Op games?
• Thanks for the Community reviews!
• Wired or Wireless Mouse?
• Fable 3
• UBI still sucks!
• IPAD
• ARMA 2 Q&A

BigJoe’s Racing Rig (he’ll add more pics at a latter date!)

Steam on Mac… oh yeah!

Get it while its hot! (or at least before May 24th!!)

A pic of Kommie on his off day.

CoD: Black Ops – They heard us! And they stuck it to Infinty Ward at the same time!

Wait… so we didn’t have ground breaking sales for games in April… well there goes my 401k

Pirate games bad! Or so say the Devs!

EA’s new take on used sports games. & a follow up to it! Project Fourth Panel (read the notes at the bottom)

Hackers get hacked! Steam ver of a game using the pirate copy!?

The world of Racing! (I mean speed!)

Viral Anti-Overpriced DLC video!

Jedi Not being cool….

JayK’s review on PCPC games gets linked from BluesNews!!!

My favorite take on GameStop

Card Specs:

• Interface: PCI Express 2.0 x16
• Core Clock: 870MHz
• Stream Processors: 1600 Stream Processing Units
• RoPs: 32
• Memory Clock: 1250MHz (5.0Gbps)
• Memory Size: 1GB
• Memory Interface : 256-bit
• Memory Type : GDDR5
• Ports: 1 x HDMI, 1 x DisplayPort, 2 x DVI
• Max Resolution: 2560 x 1600
• CrossFireX Support: Yes
• Size: 270x100x33mm
• System Requirements: 500 Watt or greater power supply with 2x 75W 6-pin PCI Express power connector recommended (600 Watt and four 6-pin connectors for ATI CrossFireX Technology in dual mode)

To me this card can only be described in one word, BEAST! As you may or may not know ATI released Dx11 Gpu’s around September of 2009 and released the 5870 and 5850. Today i am going to be talking about the 5870 Vapor-x, it was released shorty after the reference version. Now, I have a large library of PC games and since the day i got the card i tested them on every single game i own. I will go into detail of my performance in those games later on. But some of those games are the usual benchmarks games like Crysis, Far Cry 2, S.T.A.K.L.E.R Clear Sky, etc. I was able to run all these games at my native resolution of 1920×1200 (25” Wide-screen monitor) and at the highest settings possible. Now the shine of this card would be Direct X 11; which was new at the time of September 2009. Direct X 11 is only available on Windows 7, luckily i picked up a copy on launch date. Now from then on i bought games like S.T.A.K.L.E.R Call of Pripyat , Battle Field: Bad Company 2 which are newly Dx11 games. The 5870 handle those games so well that i was getting around 50-80 fps on both games on my native resolution and on highest possible settings and they looked phenomenal. Now as for temps they never reached above 65 C while gaming on both dx11 games.

When i ran this card on FurMark tho, it reached a temperature of 76 C on max load. I had the card’s fan on 50% and it was fairly quiet. It started to get loud around 70% even though i have around 8 fans in my case. Another part where this card really shines is EyeInfinity. Even though i was not able to run this card in that mode due to the fact i do not have more than one monitor i herd it performs well in games. You may look up reviews online to see their results. But i am just going to let another member of the pcpcgames website show you Eyefinity via his video:

Tim’s Eyefinity video

Overall this card was worth it ! I bought this card about a week after it was released and picked it up on Newegg for about $450. And as for price/performance ratio, its a steal! The drivers are also great, ATI is releasing new ones about every month and include performance in games up 10%. And now for my performance in games. I have a lot more but i’m just posting games that have been known to categorized as “Benchmark Games”

Performance in games

Battle Field: Bad Company 2
1920×1200 , Everything high — Max: 87 — Min: 55 — Avg: 72

BioShock 1
1920×1200 — Everything Possible on High — Dx10 Surfaces — Max: 132 — Min: 86 — Avg: 99

BioShock 2
1920×1200 — Everything Possible on High — Dx10 Surfaces — Max: 120 — Min: 77 — Avg: 90

Borderlands
1920×1200 — Everything Possible on High — Max: 62 ( Game doesnt allow higher) Min: 47 — Avg: 55

Crysis
1920×1200 — Everything on Very High — Max: 54 — Min: 34 — Avg: 45

Crysis: Warhead
1920×1200 — Everything on Enthusiast — Max: 58 — Min: 37 — Avg: 49

DiRT 2
1920×1200 — Everything on Very High — Max: 64 — Min: 46 — Avg: 56

Far Cry 2
1920×1200 — Everything on Very High — Max: 69 — Min: 34 — Avg: 47

Resident Evil 5
1920×1200 — Everything on Very High — Max 62 — Min: 45 — Avg: 53

S.T.A.K.L.E.R Call of Pripyat
1920×1200 — Everything on Very High — Max: 67 — Min: 38 — Avg: 51

Test System Specs:

• Case/Model: Cooler Master CM690
• CPU: AMD Phenom 9550 ~ 2.2 GHZ
• MB: Asus Violet
• RAM: 8 Gb
• Video Card: 5870 Vapor-X
• Sound Card: USB sound card 5hv2 headset
• Hard Drives: 1 Tb Segate
• Optical Drive: Samsung Blu Ray
• Monitor: 25” Hp (w2558hc)
• Keyboard: $10 Hp from wallmart
• Mouse: Razor Deathadder
• OS: Windows 7 Ultimate

This review is by our community member SkippyDogg.
PCPCGAMES – By Gamers, for Gamers!

Time for a refresher. PCPCGames is not about me and my friends. It is about all of you that love PC games. It is here to give you a voice and an outlet for your opinion, joy and frustration with the little grey box under your desk (or is it stuffed with neon lights on top of your shelf ), in other words the hobby you love.

The forums have helped to knit the early community together, but I want more people to come and say Hi on the front page. Down the road we will also have more of you on the podcast. As I said before, the mix of different people is what makes us great.

So, my challenge to YOU is to post more user reviews in the forum, or rant about things. I’ll make sure it makes it on the website. If you want to direct post on the front page give me a shout and I set you up to do so.

The more people share the better. So let’s hear it folks!

By Gamers, For Gamers!

Computer and Video Games reports Treyarch has stated Call of Duty: Black Ops will feature dedicated servers for multiplayer play, confirming a report that surfaced before the recent announcement of the seventh installment in the military shooter series. Dedicated server support was absent from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, in spite of petitions and other protests from unhappy PC gamers, and while Infinity Ward was insistent that this was a necessity, Treyarch studio head Mark Lamia doesn’t agree. “I think dedicated servers are excellent. I don’t see any reason not to see them unless… well, I just don’t see any reason not to,” Lamia recently told PC Format magazine. “It seems people like them and we’re excited about what we’re doing right now.” He explains they are working to offer the best of both worlds. “We do work very hard to reconcile the desire to manipulate and modify those dedicated servers with offering them the persistent experience and benefits that the console system provides, he said. “We’re working very hard to marry those two things, so people can run dedicated servers and also participate in the communal experience the console players get to have, given they’re all on first-party servers.” Issue 221 of PC Zone featuring an eight-page Call of Duty: Black Ops preview is now in the hands of subscribers, and will hit UK newsstands soon.

The Passing is the first piece of downloadable content for last years Left 4 Dead 2, and while it isn’t groundbreaking, it’s a welcome addition to an already stellar game.  The Passing consists of a new campaign, a new primary and secondary weapon, a new special infected, and the introduction of Munitions modes.  The longevity that this downloadable content adds to the game will be based on how dedicated fans of the series are to its multiplayer.

The campaign is somewhat of a letdown, as it’s only three acts long and doesn’t have a lot of variety from the previous campaigns.  While the weather effects and lighting add to the intensity of the acts, they’re there to mask the familiar feeling of each environment which consists of apartment buildings, narrow city streets, and sewers.  The campaigns finale is similar to that of Dead Center’s campaign though with a new map.  It would have been nice to see a new gameplay mode for the finale and then have that mode implemented into multiplayer.  While the campaign itself is somewhat mundane you should push through it, to play around with the new primary weapon, the lead spitting M60 and the slicing golf club.  The weapons are a welcome addition, as the M60 is a force to be reckoned with, dealing out one shot kills, however not being able to reload the weapon keeps the gameplay balanced.  Essentially the golf club is a new “skin” of other melee weapons already available, adding to the available arsenal.

Players can use these welcome additions to test the new special infected, “The Fallen Survivor” who resembles just that.  This infected will run away when spotted, but if you catch up to and kill him, his corpse will drop health kits, molotovs or pipe bombs adding a bit of incentive to take a more offensive approach.  This special infected doesn’t drastically change the gameplay due to its lack of special abilities, but it helps to make equipment drops (especially on expert) more frequent.  Also available are munitions dumps scattered around the acts, each holding unlimited amounts of pills, syringes, molotov’s, etc.

Fans of the previous Left 4 Dead were shocked and overjoyed to learn that The Passing would feature the original four survivors though it was unknown in what capacity.  Unfortunately the original survivors play minimal role (as in you don’t physically interact with them) and it feels like a missed opportunity to really put those characters to good use.

Weekly updated multiplayer modes known as Munitions are what really stand out from this downloadable content.  The first addition was Realism Versus Mode, in which the survivors have no HUD and can’t track allies and items via color borders.  This adds a more challenging way to play thus prolonging the multiplayer mode.

The Passing is a free update for pc owners, though xbox 360 owners have to shell out $7.50 and while the additions of Munitions mode will prolong the already engaging multiplayer, the new weapons and campaign feel cosmetic and don’t fundamentally change the gameplay.

This weeks mutation? “Last Gnome On Earth”
Do you crave attention? Want all the infected to swarm you and the gnome you are carrying? Then we have the game mode for you. The team needs to carry the garden gnome from start to finish in any campaign. The common infected hate the gnome and will swarm whoever is carrying him. Watch out putting him on the ground, a boomer explosion will send him flying!

BeerJedi pointed out that the “Need for Speed: World” Beta is taking place this weekend. You still have a chance to get in if you go to the webpage and sign up… what are you waiting for!

Here is the Official word:

We are very happy to announce the next Need for Speed World beta! The next NFS World beta will begin on Friday, May 14th @ 9am (PDT) and will continue through the weekend ending Sunday, May 16th @ 11:59pm (PDT).