At the risk of getting swallowed up in the SF4 hype, this definitely deserves a look: Brütal Legend. From Tim Schafer who blew my mind with the design and creativity of Psychonauts. You play a roadie who wears a possessed belt buckle that comes to life and transports you to The Land of Rock and Roll and then the rest looks like decapitations, disembowling, huge bosses, a giant battle axe, blood splatters, fast cars and naked groupie chicks.

No doubt it will be fantastic.

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whoa didnt know Tim Schafer was making a new game

today is a good day to be an american

Someday I'm going to have to pick up Psychonauts. I played through most of it with a rental, but it was really imaginative and I would like to play through it again... and keep it. The milkman level seriously screwed with my equilibrium.



Never owned it. Just bought it. I have not played this since probably 2000. I have to give it credit for being the first, but I think the next two improved upon it on every level. Yes, even Sons of Liberty. It gives me a chance to play through all three near the same time though. I play on tackling 2 next, and then 3... probably next year. I don't see my time being devoted much to games I've already played once Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect drop.

Tell me about it. Pretty easily my favourite fighting game series ever. The news of a new proper sequel is fucking mental, especially given how awesome Third Strike was on my DC.

I guess you recruit head-banging moshers to your cause, and send them out w/ squad-based commands to smite your demonic enemies. hahaha

hate to call game of the year already, but

Who here has a computer powerful enough to run Half Life 2 and Half Life 2 Episode 1? I need system specs, people.

System Requirements Lab

Do yourself a favor and get a computer powerful enough to run Crysis.

Thx for the response, but I don't need a powerful computer. The computers I have are running quads and duos at 1333, and have Nvidia 8000 generation video cards in them. The reason I asked is I am giving away a free copy of Half Life 2 and Half Life 2 Episode 1. I want to give it to someone who can use it. I need to see system specs.

Haha there are only four computers on Earth that can run Crysis.

Picked up Orange Box over the weekend. Word to the wise: don't try to play Portal at 2:00 in the morning while drunk. Hurts your head. A wee bit of vertigo can be induced, as well.

Mercury Meltdown Revolution (for Wii) is pretty damn addictive and only $20.

Spartan Lasering an occupied Warthog as it's about to crush you from above makes me feel like a big man.
God I love Halo.

Got a new PC this week. Excellent, I thought, I can play Bioshock (I don't have an XBox and my 6 year old PC couldn't run it). Buy it, load it, run it -- no sound. Known issue with Vista and my sound chip (common to many new Dell systmes, so tons of people are having this problem). Developer has not released a patch. How many weeks has the game been out? Message boards say running game in XP compatibility mode will get sound back, but may lead to stability issues. I do this, sound works fine, but game crashes every 10 minutes or so for different reasons, making the game unplayable. Supposedly PC Gamer has an article where a Bioshock developer talks about how great the game runs on Vista.

I remember now why I gave up on PC gaming.

What Dell desktop did you buy? Their "slim" designs are prone to overheating.

Yeah, this is awesome. Played about an hour and a half this afternoon -- definite purchase for PS3 owners.

Also have been working through Half-Life 2 on Xbox 360. In the eighth mission, nearly to Nova Prospekt. Currently kinda stuck fighting off two of those alien helicopter things... there's rockets everywhere, but venturing out of hiding spots gets you shot to shit. I have a feeling it'll be one of those situations where I'll just have to keep doing it until I get lucky.

Street Fighter 4 Trailer. Epic.

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I saw that in person in London last week when they announced it. I tried getting details out of the Capcom producers, but they weren't saying a thing.

Though unlikely, I would love an Okami-style Street Fighter. Those ink blot/blood splatters as you launch into a 18-hit Tatsumaki Senpuu Kyaku combo would be unimaginably awesome.

Inspiron 530. Not a powerhouse, but enough to handle Bioshock at a moderate resolution and framerate.

I never get slimline systems for the reason you state, plus I always want space for future upgrades to extend system life.

Sucks. A friend was having the same issue and running XP mode gave him no problems. There is just no accounting for the infinite configurations of PCs out there. It's not all the developers fault.

Fixing issues may break other things. They don't have to worry with console because the hardware set stays the same. If you want higher quality titles, this is an unfortunate reality.

Always been the downside of PC gaming having to deal with bullshit technical issues like those. But the upside is vastly superior graphics fidelity, higher resolutions, complex control schemes and expandability.

I would never play an FPS on console. Console FPS games are for children and laymen.

So it goes, so shall it forever be.

Which CPU did you get in the package?

Crysis looks damn fine (played it a bit at E3 this year), but to say PCs can put out "vastly superior" visuals over a next-gen console is overstating it quite a bit in this day and age. I don't doubt that a next-gen console can put out something nearly as sharp as Crysis, but at a much lower cost and without aforementioned compatibility issues. And it will -- Crysis is PC exclusive for now, but EA's not going to let it stay that way for very long.

You are wrong. Technically speaking a console can not output high resolution graphics or deal with physics calculations on the scale of a PC. And they can never do so. Ever.

Unless console manufactures sacrifice the low price point. Which will not happen because they are essentially made for children. I play them too; so I am not trying to disparage consoles. It's just the blunt truth.

Yes, consoles catch up every few years. But PCs move the goal post a little further every year as well.

When 360 first came out, people bemoaned the death of the PC. Then the next gen of gfx cards and hardware came about and looked just as good. Now another generation of PC gfx and hardware is about to drop, which looks even better. While the 360 still has the same components.

My PS3 & 360 look damn fine on a 52" plasma but the resolution textures simply cannot match those of a PC running a game with literally, 4x the system and video memory. It's technically impossible.

It not an overstatement at all. My plasma can't even display resolutions that high. Either one can't tell the difference in fidelity, can't afford it or doesn't care overmuch about those things. Take your pick.

Gameplay should still come first, natch. Yet, all things being equal-the PC is the superior platform as concerns fidelity.


I wasn't speaking to exclusivity. Only to sharpness, depth of field and complexity. All of which the Crytek guys are adept at exploiting on the PC platform.

His PC is not the problem. It's a driver issue under Vista with certain configs. He has to wait for a fix or run Bioshock under Xp.

Can't wait to get my hands on this.



Zack & Wiki, Street Fighter 4 and the Okami port for Wii. Capcom can't seem to do any wrong these days.

Rock Star moved up to November 20th to avoid ending the world as we know it by releasing it on Black Friday.



Would-be Rock Band purchasers sharpening their knives and survival instincts in anticipation of dealing with the consumption-mad masses on the game's originally announced Black Friday release date of November 23 can relax a little. Reps for developer Harmonix today confirmed for GameSpot that the game will now go on sale November 20, three days before "Black Friday," and in time for the Thanksgiving holiday.

The game's retail debut will coincide with the launch of a new community Web site, RockBand.com. Harmonix has made no secret that it has wanted to accent some of the social aspects of the Rock Band experience, and the revamped Web site will feature leaderboards, personalized band pages touting the group's accomplishments, individual blogs, forums, and even a "classified section" to help bands fill out their lineups. Eventually the site will also have a "photo creator" function that will allow gamers to set and light a photo shoot starring their characters to further shape their bands' images.

Harmonix has made no secret that it has wanted to accent some of the social aspects of the Rock Band experience, and the revamped Web site will feature leaderboards, personalized band pages touting the group's accomplishments, individual blogs, forums, and even a "classified section" to help bands fill out their lineups. Eventually the site will also have a "photo creator" function that will allow gamers to set and light a photo shoot starring their characters to further shape their bands' images.

Originally announced just for the Xbox 360 and PS3, Rock Band is also set to arrive on the PlayStation 2 on December 18. European launches for all versions of the game will follow in the first quarter of 2008.

Core 2 Duo 2.2GHz, 3GB Memory, NVidia 6800 card with 256MB.


What he said. And running it under XP is only a solution if you enjoy frequent crashes.

What a pain in the ass the Bioshock PC launch has been. First the stupid hubbub over forcing PC gamers to play with a shallower depth of field as console players do. Then the Steam problems and now this sound card nonsense.

Very frustrating.

Which is why I will take a console game over a PC game any day of the week. And I don't disagree with the your comparison of PC vs. console specs, above. But for me, the ease and convenience of console makes it all worthwhile.

Plus, an HDMI connection to a 1080p 56-inch screen looks stunning. Bioshock, espescially. Absolutely fine for my needs.

I do think that the problems like this tend to be blown up larger than what they are. Especially when talking about major releases like Bioshock.

I rarely encounter problems myself. The adage that the satisfied majority are not as vocal as the unsatisfied minority is very true.

Still sucks to have to deal with this Bioshock crap.

But on the other hand, the console release of Orange Box: Team Fortress 2 has a fair amount of reported bugs and lag is a fairly common problem. I think the PC version is much more smooth. So you PC guys have that going for you right now.

For now.

Bioshock is using a modified UR3 engine, and setting it to high when you really can't could cause a crash. I'm sure he knows what he is doing though and has the res scaled down with the older 6800 he's running.

Shouldn't be a problem on low with no AA.

Bioshock will auto-adjust for his setup. If he's running default settings he should have no problem. But it's a driver issue.

And you can turn AA on wih a 6800. The GPU is more than fast enough to handle say 2xAA at 1280res (at least). The 6800 is probably choking on the massive high resolution textures. Turning down the textures and some of the pixel shaders should help some.

Folks underestimate the robustness of the 6 &7 series GPUs. I played Bioshock on an old 6600 and on an 7600 with medium qual. model & textures, low shaders at 1280res.

(Yeah, I run dual 8800s too. Just putting it out there for comparison sake. Not every game needs $1,200 worth of pixel smashing power.)

The 8600 GTS can barely even run the game at medium settings with no AA, and that's a much newer card that outperforms the 6800 GT and Ultra by 20 FPS.

http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics_2007.html

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/biosho...mance/page3.asp




The dude should definitely not be turning on AA with the 6800.

Those charts have AF enabled not AA. 30 fps cap is playable in Bioshock either way.

I'm not saying playing on 7600 with low qual settings is ideal. But it is acceptable for SP play and totally possible for a 6800. Drop those shaders and textures. You got cycles to spare for modeling detail.

i celebration of Super Mario Galaxy I will now play what I consider the canon Mario games (bros 1, lost levels, bros 3, world, 64, and sunshine) in order leading up to November 12.

Sunshine? Learn me.

I had very limited exposure to the GC. I borrowed someone's towards the end of the system, and a whole bunch of games. One game was Sunshine, but the one that got the most play was RE:4. RE:4 owned me, and I only farted around with Sunshine for a few hours.

It didn't wow me like 64 did, even though it was obviously cut from the same cloth. The water-backback thing was annoying . . . i would rather just be able wall jump and unlock puzzles and stuff. I played around in the first 3-4 worlds, as well as fought one Bowser fight on a rollercoaster or some shit.

It seemed very average, and I'm a big Mario guy. It might be in the canon, but does the quality justify it?

No, it's not up to par with the others. Still an enjoyable game and everything, but the level design was so sparse in relation to the epicness of 64. But yeah, of course it's canon, Nintendo EAD platformer and all on a home console. It'd be like dismissing "Presence" by Zeppelin just because it mostly sucks compared to the rest. Sunshine definitely doesn't suck, it's just not that great.

1UP is reporting that Rock Band guitars will not work on GH III, and GH III guitars might not work with Rock Band. The GH II controller will work with both games, but I have no guitars so I have to(if the GH III guitar works w/Rock Bnad) wait till next year to play drums on Rock Band. I know this is partly unconfirmed, but BOOOO game companies that can't get along. I am not spending almost $300 for both games at launch.

Guitar, Interrupted(1UP)

edit

IGN says GH III guitars is A-OK for Rock Band. Looking for more confirmation.

This would be slightly less annoying if GH3 didn't have "co-op exclusive songs" (Sabotage, Reptilia, Suck My Kiss, Cities On Flame With Rock and Roll, Helicopter) that so far appear to be unlocked only with two real players. However, I don't see the bitching about this actually doing anything as Activision/Red Octane already have a huge advantage over Harmonix simply due to having the "Guitar Hero" name and a lot of dumb people not realizing that a new company is making this one. I would think that having third party controllers work would in turn sell more software for each company, but not having used either of the new controllers yet, I'd guess maybe Activision thinks the Rock Band guitar would sell more instead of the GH3 one.

I was planning, and probably still will, buy both bundles for my new PS3 mainly because I want a full band set for Rock Band, but if the GH3 guitar wouldn't work with RB, I'd probably just get it on PS2 where I already have two guitars and would be able to play all the songs without spending another $70. There better be a code to unlock everything like there was in the first two.

Two things I read about Rock Band that bother me, one of which will basically keep me from buying it, are the fact that career mode is apparently not available online, yet single player offline mode is not available either unless you sing and play one of the instruments at the same time. I've got a PS2 that's not even hooked up to the net, so the online thing doesn't impact me (although it's a curious decision), but the second thing is a deal-breaker for me. I pretty much play all of my console games as single-player offline, and I really have no interest in the karaoke part of this game.

I'll find something else to spend my money on.

There is a single player campaign called "Solo Tour Mode" but they haven't said much about it yet. It probably won't be exactly like the Band World Tour, but I'm guessing it will be a little more than just running through the tiers of songs like in GH1-2.

Well, I guess that's something. My real interest in buying the game would be (1) the songs and (2) the chance to play drums. My wife isn't interested in the game much, my 8-year old's a little too young to really get into it (although she does enjoy GH from time to time, but she's not that good), and like I said, I don't go online with my console gaming. So this game would have to give me a good solo gaming experience for me to plop down $170 (or $60 plus drum kit in 2008 if my GHI and GHII guitars will work with it).

There's a solo tour for each instrument, so you don't have to play anything besides guitar if you don't want, same for drums and karaoke.

The Crysis demo is awesome.

i have always sucked at smash bros because i never owned a 64 or gamecube. also, the friends i would play it with were HUGE nintendo dorks. but now that i have a wii, i am pumped. and with today's announcement of a level editor, it actually prompted me to type out OMG to a friend. now all i ask is for Ness to be playable.