Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.
In Other News...09:02 pm
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- In-House: In Other News...
(71 comments)
A few people have emailed in asking about the new site design, so I thought I'd give you a little taste. As you can see, a lot of it is done, but we are missing a few bits of art here and there (see review sidebar). One of the challenges of running a front page news site is that it's not the best formula to milk page views. I'm not a big fan of making people click through links to read news unless it's a massive press release or like 20+ screen shots, so the goal was to add value and content beyond just the front page.
If you steer your eyes towards the top nav bar, you'll see a "games" tab. There, you can browse any and all released (or upcoming) titles, find cheat codes, reviews, previews, news stories, screen shots, movies, interviews, files, patches, etc. That's just one of the new perks. Also, you'll be able to filter your news, change the colors of the site with different skins, plus there's a new comments system too. Anyhow, it's a pretty massive undertaking, but we should be done with it this month. It's not just a cosmetic make over; everything from our back-end updating system and up has been redone from scratch.
Here's a teaser shot:
(Click to Enlarge!)
In case you're wondering, my native desktop res is 1680x1050.
As you can see, it's pretty obvious that the game uses the Windows Live! stuff, which means that at least this version shown is using Vista. On the bright side, it looks like the port has new content.
Hopefully they'll include co-op...
We'll know more about the port next week.
Left 4 Dead Co-op Mayhem Video10:03 pm
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- Games: Action
(16 comments)
DJ (cool guy, met him at the Fallout thing) sends word that the latest PC Gamer Video Podcast has about 10 minutes of killer co-op gameplay footage from Left 4 Dead, Valve's next big multiplayer experience. Reading about four-player co-op Zombie killing is one thing, actually seeing it in action is another.
Make sure to check out the Video Podcast to get a taste for yourself.
What was really crazy is that the game was running in 1024x768 for our playtest so that it would run completely smoothly at this point. They apparently have a lot of optimization to do. But the good thing is that the game still looked surprisingly good at only 1024. The water was awesome, the draw distance was ridiculous as usual, characters looked great, effects were wonderful... very little to complain about. In fact, the only thing that seemed strange was the rubble generated by buildings since it was a bit clunky, something only LucasArts has claimed to have solved at this point. Either way, this is not going to be a title for the weak of heart or more importantly, the weak computer. EA did mention that it's still in the plans to have the game run on three year old computers at the time of its release. Crytek certainly knows how to work miracles so we'll see if this can be one of them. We're a little skeptical.
Sega today announced that it will be publishing Gas Powered Games' spiritual successor to the Dungeon Siege franchise. Scheduled for release on the PC early next year, Space Siege casts the player as a cybernetics engineer on a massive ship carrying some of the last survivors of the human race.
Throughout the game, players will have the opportunity to install cybernetic upgrades that will convey bonuses, but at the cost of the engineer's own humanity. This will factor into both the storyline and the gameplay, as an unenhanced human will have to emphasize strategies different from those of a cybernetically augmented character. Space Siege will also support multiplayer action with a four-player co-op mode that has a separate mission structure from the single-player campaign.
Now, it seems that our newly activated PunkBuster integration is causing quite a few problems here and there, with people getting kicked for version mismatches and the like. Let me take a moment to get a few tips and workarounds out there in case your PunkBuster installation doesn't quite behave the way it's supposed to.
The main issue that we're seeing here is that PunkBuster isn't updating itself correctly while you are playing on a server. Generally, if you play on a server running a newer version of PunkBuster, your local PB will authenticate with the PunkBuster master server and then download the updated PunkBuster files from the server you're playing on. If your computer can't reach the PunkBuster master server for whatever reason, PunkBuster won't update and you are kicked from the server.
Sometimes firewall software, such as Norton Internet Security or Windows Firewall, can block outgoing PB packets and thus prevent your computer from talking with the master server. If you do have a software solution like that running in the background and are having this particular problem with PunkBuster, try either adding the PunkBuster services to the list of allowed programs or disabling the software temporarily, and see if PunkBuster updates itself. More information on the PunkBuster services can be found in this handy FAQ.
In playing around with the combat system, I found myself impressed at the level of skill that will be required to master it. CD Projekt could easily have changed a button-mashing system to one that merely required decent timing. As it turns out, each segment of a combo sequence is actually a different length. That means that even at lower difficulty levels, players will need to pay attention to the flashing cursor and at higher levels they'll actually need to have mastered each and every combo sequence.
The Priest of Mitra proves to be a versatile class, dabbling with anything from healing to damage dealing to crowd control and buffing. Their focus naturally lies in the arts of healing, where they have an extensive toolset to draw from as they progress in level and dive deeper into Mitra's powers.
Cone healing is perhaps the Priest of Mitra's most interesting method of healing. In Age of Conan the player can fire off a cone healing spell, such as the Shroud of Purity, that places a moderate healing effect on the caster as well as placing a powerful healing effect on all friendly targets within the cone-shaped area extruding from the player. It's certainly powerful, but it can also be quite challenging to perform correctly for an unskilled Priest of Mitra.
Of course, the Priest of Mitra also has access to team healing spells such as the Radiance spell that heals all allies around the priest. The team heals may provide lesser effect than the cone heals; but then again, they require no targeting and will affect all teammates in a wide radius around the caster. But - less effort, less gain!
Crowd control too? Maybe the organized pvp isn't so noob after all.
MixMaster Online Wallpaper #
Our series of desktops adds a third character type from SeedC Pacific's persistent state world, Phoy the Shooter - An exclusive desktop in two sizes
In Other News...07:40 pm
- Robert 'Apache' Howarth
- In-House: In Other News...
(36 comments)
Sorry for the late start today. IGN was doing a little backend upgrade action in preparation of E3 next week. As mentioned before, Andy and myself won't be attending, but we will have a couple people covering the event for VE. Out of all the games scheduled to be shown at the event next week, I see a grand total 14 that even remotely interest me. Pretty sad, huh? Lets hope for some surprise announcements.
In other, semi-related news one of the "surprises" this year is going to be Gears of War PC. Gametrailers posted the video a little early, but the story has since been removed. I haven't seen the trailer, but according to Andy, "It's like H2V; all press X." Sounds like a winner already! Hopefully Epic has a little creative control left with Microsoft and can at least put in a real interface before it ships.
To Vista, or not to Vista? That is the question...
How much would it piss you off (on a 1-10 scale) if Microsoft made Gears of War exclusive to Vista?
