Posts filed under ‘PC’

You should remember Sanctum from the reviews both Dan and I did. I mentioned the fact that future updates were coming. Well folks, here it is. Yesterday’s update brings both a new map, updates, and new features. I am a little shaky on the update/patch part of the game, other than it fixes a few bugs people reported. The new features appear to be mainly geared towards multiplayer, something Coffee Stain Studios said they were trying to work on. Now in the multiplayer tab, you have the ability to see games hosted over Steam and join them. Quite an improvement for us loners with a three person friends list. Also available is a new map titled Glade. I can’t play it yet as my saved games are gone so I have to work hard again to unlock it. However, here are a few screenshots and a wallpaper.

Phantom EFX has spent the last several years becoming one of the top slot machine game developers of the Real Deal series. This explains why several of their regular games grace the shelves of my household. When Battle Slots was released 5 days ahead of schedule, on April 14th, to quell the masses yearning hunger for it; I was more than curious. After a fresh copy arrived in my mailbox, I soon discovered what had people clinging to the game. In fact, I had a hard time weaseling it away from my fiancee who loves slot machine games and owns several of Phantom’s games already. I honestly didn’t think she would like it. After all, it has RPG elements with might and magic at its core. Can adding slots really convert someone? She says yes, but I still had to play it for myself.

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When one thinks of the phrase “tower defense game”, a few thoughts immediately come to mind.  A drab colored, top down flash game filled with mediocre artwork and no sense of flash is one of those thoughts  On the flip side, when I think of the genre “FPS”, sights of armor clad superheros clashing fist first in a blaze of plasma fury, dance in my head. What I wouldn’t have thought to do is to combine the two.  However, Coffee Stain Studios thought of it and started working on an Unreal Mod to accomplish it.

It eventually became more than a mod, after Coffee Stain Studios became a main contestant in the ‘Make Something Unreal’ by Epic Games in 2009.  Sanctum scored 4th place in both ‘Best FPS Game Mod’ and also in the ‘Education’ category.  The Swedish team has come along way since then, as they have put out Sanctum as a full fledged game on Steam.

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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.

If you’re like me, then a game like Battlefield Play4Free sounds both interesting and intriguing.  Follow that train of thought, you are also cheap and stingy.  That’s ok because EA knows you are this way and has a solution.  What they’re calling a mixture of Battlefield 2 maps and Bad Company 2 weapons, is set into a framework that perhaps is similar to Battlefield Heroes; at least in the sense that it is free.  However, Play4Free isn’t out yet, just in beta.  If you were paying attention, you’d know we have a way to get in.

What we have here are codes that we would like to share with the first five people that post comments.  Simply enough, post your comment quickly! (Don’t forget that this is for PC only.  Also you can go ahead and add my medic, Puzuzu, to you’re friends list once you get in.)

-UPDATE- We’ve had five prompt comments and they have been rewarded.  We’re closing this up for now.  Perhaps Mike will get the same deal when he joins Battlefield Play4Free and we would have more to give away.

Atomic Games first came to my attention when an open letter from Atomic’s current president Peter Tamte, former executive vice president of Bungie Studios, was posted on Kotatku calling out Activision’s President Bobby Kotick for a comment that was said during the 2010 Bank of America Merrill Lynch Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference.  Mr. Kotick is quoted saying “Bungie are a very unusual company. They’re probably the last remaining high quality independent developer.”  The response from Tamte was, “If this is true, you’re screwed.”  He said that simply because small independent studios like Atomic Games are what large third-party developers eat for breakfast in order for their games to be a little more regularly timed.  Tamte challenged Kotick to produce just the multi-player section of Call of Duty: Black Ops and place it for sale by consumers. Perhaps Tamte wanted Activision to provide direct one to one comparison of a solely multi-player based game such as Breach, which is made by an independent developer who doesn’t have large amounts of cash to throw into making a game.

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Here is last week’s “Weekly Build” – sorry for the delay!

Recently, the enthusiast oriented builds we have put together have been relatively expensive, usually around the $1,000 mark. After seeing my article on the $500 PC for grandma, Jared became curious as to how cheaply you could build a machine but still be able to use it for gaming. I set out to see what kind of gaming performance you could squeeze out of $600. As it turns out, quite a bit.

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Matt shared this video with me, and though the mod itself is a few months old, I had to pass it on. It looks like a decent amount of work went into this Doom II mod, though I wish they would have tried recreating some of the maps as well. The mod is advertised as “MW2 for poor people” – I’m not sure about the “poor people” part, it just looks fun to me!

[MW2 Mod for Doom - Robbaz.com]

Mike:

Welcome to a new weekly segment we are calling “Weekly Build”. Each week, one of our writers will piece together a computer based on current online specials that meets one of several criteria.

These criteria may vary from week to week, but typically the machines will be either restricted to a certain price point, or a specific purpose. This week’s system is limited by both: a $1,000 price cap, and that it be a purpose-built gaming PC.

Geek-Republic’s newest member Jared takes us through this week’s build.

There aren’t too many great sales this week, but I think I was able to put a good machine for a decent price.

Before deciding on a budget I looked through this week’s sales. While there was nothing unprecedented, there were some good deals on some of the higher end components. I decided on a $1,000 budget, and I would say this build falls somewhere between a gaming rig and a performance machine.

Note: all prices include shipping.

$119.99 - OCZ Vertex Series OCZSSD2-1VTX60G 2.5″ 60GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) [Newegg]

While 60gb is probably not enough space to store all of your data, it should easily be enough for an OS/application drive. I chose this particular drive because it is on sale at the moment, but alternatively 2 smaller drives could be used in a RAID 0 configuration for an equivalent capacity and increased speed.

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