Posts Tagged ‘video’

Today the official website for the Game Of Thrones video game kicked off by providing a new trailer demonstrating the style of combat the game utilizes. One of the main features is the ability to slow down time while you reselect your combat options or use other skills your character possess. Also shown was part of the skill tree and which characters can select which class and how to dual-class certain areas. Watch the video below and you’ll see what I mean.

Yesterday ZOTAC announced the info for their latest video card that makes use of the 560 SE hardware that Nvidia pushed out last month. ZOTAC’s goal is to give gamers a taste of 1080p, without breaking their gaming budget. The 560 SE is the GF114 that Nvidia announced as having 2 SM cores disabled. I liken this to the Celeron CPU chips which come with less on-board cache due to being disabled due to bad performance. Either way, ZOTAC has found a use for the hardware, and that is a card that is still able to churn through DirectX 11 titles. Marketing director Carsten Berger explains, “1080p resolution displays and Microsoft® DirectX® 11-enabled titles are affordable and become quite popular among gamers. Our new ZOTAC® GeForce® GTX 560 SE provides an excellent value for gamers that want to get their feet wet with 1080p and DirectX® 11 gaming,”

Specifications:

•  Product Name ZOTAC® GeForce® GTX 560 SE
• GPU NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 560 SE
• Engine Clock speed 746 MHz
• Unified Shaders 288
• Shader Clock 1492 MHz
• Memory Clock speed 3828 MHz
• Memory 1GB GDDR5
• Memory interface 192-bit
• Display Outputs Dual DVI, HDMI & DisplayPort
• HDCP Yes
• Cooling With fan (dual-slot)
• DirectX^® version DirectX^® 11 with Shader Model 5.0
• Other hardware features Hardware accelerated Blu-ray 3D ready
• Software Features Hardware Video Decode Acceleration Technology, NVIDIA^® CUDA^™ technology, OpenGL^® 4.2
• Windows 7 capability Windows® 7 with DirectCompute support

No mention of pricing and availability, save for the fact that Nvidia is rumored to be setting their 560 SE cards at about $150. Oh, and it comes with a TrackMania 2 Canyon 3-Day Game Pass, but I’m unsure how enticing that is supposed to be.

Checkout – Checkout’s combat takes place in the carcass of an abandoned superstore. The shop owners tried to move their inventory with a closeout sale in the weeks leading up to the HOD evacuations, but ultimately had to walk away and leave everything to time and history. The intense close-quarters combat of the store aisles makes every decision important. Weapon selection is key, cover is essential to survival and every move has an impact. When facing your enemy, remember what the sign says: “Everything must go.”

Drydock – Much has been written about the beauty of Seran culture, but people often forget the backbone of industry upon which it all relies. This shipyard stands full of undelivered goods and the necessary tools of a society’s infrastructure. Its most prominent landmark is the rotting husk of a cargo ship that will forever stand in Drydock.

Gridlock – This ashen street was once a bustling tourist destination known for its quaint inns and waterfront cafés. Even the water is gone now, replaced by the burnt shell of a crater that stands as a testament to the loss of Seran humanity.

Hotel – Small island resorts such as this one catered to the opulent tastes of vacationing Serans. But as the Lambent infection spreads across the globe, tides are shifting to flood once popular beaches, and fierce winds batter and push at the walls of humanity’s creations.

Mercy – This area was once a bustling town square filled with people, but it never recovered from the UIR mortar shellings of the Pendulum Wars. Emergence soon followed, and the already heartbroken residents were shown no mercy by Locust forces, leading to an almost immediate evacuation. This large and open central square is surrounded on all sides by sheltered passageways and buildings.  A raised dais yields powerful weaponry and a view of virtually everything within range, but the power located there must be hard-earned and well-protected to provide any lasting advantage.

Old Town – Several remote areas of Sera managed to stave off the impact of Emergence for quite some time. Island towns such as this one were able to sustain themselves with small farms and a steady bounty from the ocean.  But all good things must come to an end, and eventually they could hide no more. This is an excellent map for team-based play, with multiple areas that are well-suited to both attack and defense scenarios. A well-executed plan will often reap great rewards, and an enemy caught unaware can be flushed into a trap like a chicken free of its coop.

Overpass – As the Lambent infection spreads across Sera, the planet is quite literally falling apart. And as the substrata beneath this forgotten overpass begin to disintegrate, the entire city block is collapsing along with it, sliding into a vast underground cavern. Head for the high ground or you just might slide along with it. Battles in this highly dynamic map often focus around the elevated Overpass, where teams can hole up and take advantage of the protected position and emplaced weaponry located there.  But gaining the high ground can also be a trap, as the team left below will most assuredly use mortars and orbital lasers to regain their lost footing.

Sandbar – This observation post once had a commanding view of the distant horizon. Never threatened, it was thought to be impenetrable due to its unpredictable coastline and the constant shifting of sandbars along the shallow water of the coastline. And it never did fall, it was simply abandoned when humanity fled from a threat that nobody could ever see coming.

Thrashball – This stadium was once home to a different sort of national hero, one who fought for honour and glory, instead of scrambling for survival.  The invigorating roar of the crowd has been replaced by the melancholy moaning of wind in the empty stadium seats. Stadium matches are no longer restricted to the playing field, and the team that controls the concession stands earns a great advantage. The scoreboard still keeps track of every point earned, but its frayed support cables also make it a precarious trap for anyone foolish enough to run underneath it.

Trenches – The Locust have begun to carve mines and tunnels into the rocks of the Seran Deadlands, eking out any existence that resembles the underground passages of the Hollow they once called home. But this harsh environment is as relentless an d unforgiving as any enemy they’ve ever had to face. The Locust Trenches are small and tight, with clean lines of sight across virtually the entire battlefield. The central hill leads to a fortified bunker with a strategically important vantage point. Once taken, it is rarely surrendered, unless opposing forces can manage to sneak up under the cover of a passing sandstorm that leaves everyone blind for a short while.

This new video comes from the Country Club Pictures, the creatures of the fake, but very awesome  Mario Brother game/movie trailers found on their Youtube Channel. This time they gave Gamestation an exclusive with a live action video game clip that puts a slight expose view on the perils of playing Mario Bros. See if you can guess the ending, I know I did.

This video goes behind the scenes with Epic to show what they’ve done to make the multi-player experience in Gears of War 3 the best thing the franchise has seen so far.

“Making Gears 3: Dedicated Execution” shows off a few things, besides the ones the developers talk about, that seem new to GoW.  The first few scenes of the game show a bayonet on the lancer being used to stab and kill Locust.  I noticed a scene where a Locust kills a COG and they erupt in a black cloud.  I’m not really sure what that is, but I like it.   Midway through the clip we see a scripted scene between a Locust and  Cog where they have a chainsaw battle that ends when their gunfire hits the large block above them causing it to drop on both of them.  At first, I wasn’t convinced that it was an interactive environment, but a little bit later we see an actual match that shows the block from another angle dropping.  Though it still could be a timed event like the acid mist in GoW 2.  Did you catch the playable female character?  Compared to Marcus Fenix, she looks like a twig. (Though doesn’t everybody look like a twig next to that beef stick?)

Then the devs talk about Team Deathmatch.  Has there really been no team deathmatch before?  They’re putting their “spin” on it by adding in tickets for lives that count down to the end of the enemy team.  Something that has been done in other games and is something that I feel doesn’t really qualifies as team deathmatch.  Alas, we shall have to wait until beta to see how that plays out.  Looks like they’re also finally able to track kills across the maps.  I only hope that they release the heat maps much like Bungie has done for Halo.

All in all, I am excited for the beta on April 25th.  Hope to see you all there!

Some of you were quick enough to garnish yourselves a pass from us to the closed beta of Battlefield Play4Free.  For the rest of you, your wait is over.  The Battlefield Play4Free Beta has reach open status and will let you in as they work on improving the game and adding content until they can call it a full release.  Of course, if you are like us, this is just enough to tide you over until Battlefield 3 is gold pressed in all its glory.

Finally I can tell you (because they keep putting it out in press releases) how this combines parts of several Battlefield games into one unique system.  It contains the map styles of Battlefield 2, the weapons of Bad Company 2, the experience and coin system of Battlefield Hereos and to me it feels like the playing style of Battlefield: 1943.  Can you say “Mashup?”

If you’re not already enticed enough to join my medic Puzuzu and Mike’s engineer DrNate, then take a look at this trailer and then head over to http://battlefield.play4free.com.

We here at Geek Republic, namely Mike and I, have been geeking out over Battlefield 3.  This is going to be the first PC game that I have purchased in several years!  The last one was Shadowrun!  So here is the latest video: Get that wire cut.

After watching it, I wonder if you’ll have the ability to choose which wire to pull.  I was surprised to see mouse icons appearing during the fighting cut-scene, which of course would be some quick-time elements that could keep the player engaged.  Back out onto the street, fighting continues at a rapid heart thumping pace that makes me, a grown man, cringe.  I certainly wouldn’t want to be a real soldier as I suspect that at this point in the game I will die many, many times.  Not only am I in love with the graphics, but the sounds are so real, they are unreal.  I can’t wait for this title nor the 12 minute reveal on April 17th.

This guy seems to really be enjoying his Samurai sword, perhaps a little too much. Don’t get me wrong – if I got my hands on something this sharp and knew how to use it, I might end the life of a few plastic bottles myself. However, something makes me think that this guy takes things a bit too seriously. The video is pretty entertaining, but it gets even better when the water bottles don’t cooperate.

[via Neatorama]

If you have been wondering how the Kinect might work with FPS games, look no further than here.  Below you will find a short video taken at a game con showing the paintball game found inside Hudson Entertainment’s upcoming release, DECA Sports Freedom.

Take heed from the video above and realize a few things.  Hudson is not a major FPS developer and  paintball is not the only game in the title, but can be found alongside tennis, boxing, archery, beach volleyball, dodge ball, kendo, mogul skiing, snowboard cross and even figure skating.  Therefore it is not the focus of Hudson’s developing skills nor is this likely the final version.  Also, the Kinect is un-familiar technology for most people just trying it out and does have its own unique learning curve.

That said, how about some screenshots from DECA Sports freedom?  OK!

This week I decided to follow in Jared’s footsteps, so I set off to configure a computer with a $1,000 price cap to see if I could build a powerful PC on a reasonable budget. The system I had in mind however, is specifically designed for video and photo editing.

Most photo and video editing software packages now take advantage of multiple CPU cores and the unbeatable floating-point crunching abilities of the latest GPUs on the market. With that in mind, this is what I put together, all for less than $1,000:

AMD Phenom II X6 1055T Thuban 2.8GHz Socket AM3 125W Six-Core Desktop Processor HDT55TFBGRBOX
[$199.99 plus a $10 Instant Rebate - Newegg]

AMD packed six cores into their latest Phenom II chip, which should give you plenty of CPU power to play with.  I could have gone with a slightly faster model that boasts a 3.2Ghz clock speed, but this processor could easily be overclocked to match.  There is no reason to pay more money for something that you can easily get for free.

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