Courtesy of Criterion Games, here’s this week’s big announcement! To quote:
We’re talking Burnout Paradise Legendary Cars.
This year, we’ve introduced some of the most incredible vehicles yet seen in a Burnout game. Our FREE Cagney pack brought you the crazy Steel Oval Racer and the Hippie Wagon, and the FREE Bikes Pack brought motorcycles to Paradise City for the first time ever.
In 2009, we’re taking Burnout vehicles to the next level with some truly unbelievable new vehicles. First up – The Jansen 88 Special.
This classic 1980’s styled silver sports car is based on the fan-favourite Jansen P12, but we’ve made a few interesting modifications.
Fill the gauge and hit boost to trigger burning flame trails from your back wheels. The 88 Special’s fast, manoeuvrable and great in the air.
In fact, if you want to take off, this is just the car for you. Hit L3 to switch to hover mode – the w... More »
Google's hotly anticipated push into operating systems for mobile phones was a media sensation, but HTC's version of its Android-powered device is falling short of the hype. Critics say the "Google phone," which went on sale Oct. 22, is a little clunky with design flaws like no earphone jack and an oddly jutting chin. Close, but no iPhone killer.
Zune video MP3 player - Price: $230
Microsoft's latest answer to the iPod, with 120 gigabytes of storage and a 3.2-inch high-resolution color screen, is a vast improvement over the original Zune, which debuted in 2006. But the new Zune faces the same problem as the iPod: Smartphones and other Web-enabled devices chock full of features (think iPhone) threaten to render these one-trick players obsolete.
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By now, the term 'Next-gen' has transformed itself into 'Current-gen' in the minds of videogame enthusiasts. Gamers all across the world have seen what the consoles are capable of, played the cream of the crop, bickered about which version has more Trees, etc.
While there have been a few flops this Gen (Yes, we're looking at YOU Too Human & Lair) there have certainly been plenty of hits. With excellent software having been released for all 3 platforms, we turn our attention to the teams behind the software.
#5- Nintendo EAD (Mario Galaxy, Wii Sports, LOZ: Twilight Princess)
Nintendo's dramatic shift into casual gaming caused a lot of anger and complaints: "Why all the casual games?!?", "Do they even care about core gamers?!! "What The heck is WiiFit?", all these were questions thrown at the Japanese video game juggernaut.
While it's clear the 'Old Nintendo' is long gone, the 'new' Nintendo still has the most valuable feature of... More »
5.00 M33-2:
* Popcorn bug fixes
* Fixed bug that caused some games with certain icons not to work, and caused document.dat not to work.
* Fixed critical bug that caused continous corruption of psx games in RAM.
* Core bugfix: Fixed sctrlKernelSetInit* functions not working.
* M33 network update doesn’t work in 5.00 M33, fixed.
* Added... More »
PlayFire, known for their custom gamer cards, has recently announced a major update to their PS3 trophy card system. They have expanded their selection to better suite the latest three new trophy patches that hit PlayStation 3 for the new games coming out with trophy support.
The update doesn’t stop there! In addition to the new size and themes, PlayFire has introduced ‘automated level calculation’ based off the number & type of trophies you have fully integrated and functioning with a new level progress indicator so you no longer need to constantly adjust or guess your level.
Now, this all sounds cool, and much love to PlayFire for giving the PS3 users a custom gamer card solution, but seriously, when will Sony gives us real time syncing with a flash PSN gamer card? Adding every single trophy and game will get old fast.
All PS3 owners want, is a gamer card that will update in real time just like the XBox ... More »
Fable II explores what happens when a game does away with most forms of punishment, and does nothing but reward its players from start to finish. The results are astonishing.
It's worth stepping away from the tried and tested Pavlovian mechanics that games have inherited from the coin-crunching arcades to consider what Lionhead is proposing. Almost every game ever made has reinforced its rules with penalties: if you fight and lose, you're killed; if you go off and explore, you get lost; if you're spotted when you're meant to be hiding, you're deported back to the start.
It's a strategy that undoubtedly works - many of gaming's finer moments are often interlinked with its harshest challenges - but there's also no escaping the fact that when it all goes wrong you're often treated like a lab monkey undergoing a rather cruel experiment: you may really want that banana, but the chances are you're going to get a lot of electric shocks first.
It's a sobering thought that when the original The Need For Speed came out in 1994 - on the ill-fated 3DO, no less - the original PlayStation wasn't even on shop shelves. The series is now over 14 years old, which makes it one of the oldest racing franchises that's still active today; Only Mario Kart and Ridge Racer are longer in the tooth.
Over the course of the past decade the Need For Speeds have adopted several different styles and forms, but they reached a new level of popularity after the release of Need For Speed Underground. The sequel introduced a free-roaming element and the series never looked back, making its debut on the current crop of consoles with Most Wanted.
It is to these instalments, prior to the disappointing ProStreet, that Undercover harks back, with a strong emphasis on criminal goings-on and baiting the police in the manner of the borderline motor-porn that is The Fast and the Furious.
It is commonly known that Nvidia showed a Bugatti Veyron at the Full HD resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 running a 30 fps – inclusive anti aliasing and the multiple refractions common in ray tracing.
Unfortunately this requires a Quadro-Plex 2100 D4 with four G92 based GPUs to be calculated.
Now there is additional material available in an Nvidia presentation. Here not only pure ray tracing is introduced, but also examples for Hybrid rendering, like mixing rasterisation and ray tracing.
The developers of the Nvidia demo themselves say that both systems are used. Additional info can be found at Nvidia’s developers’ site.
Nvidia: Hybrid rendering example below, and more screenshots can be seen at the link at the top of this article!
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