Games and IT&C

PowerColor Radeon 6850 PCS+ review

2010-11-20T23:41:00.000+02:00

For this editor one of the more exciting product releases this year has been AMD's Radeon 6800 series. Now we are all still waiting on the best from AMD which has yet to arrive, the 6900 series, but the Radeon HD 6850 and 6870 have had a warm welcome already in the mid-range gaming segment of graphics cards.

PowerColor is as always never late to arrive at the party, they submitted a Radeon HD 6850 for a test and as such we'd be more than happy to bring you a full review on one of their newest products today, the PCS+ version of the Radeon HD 6850.

The new mid-range series 6800 delivers a very decent chunk of gaming performance, a set of new features and, as always, will carry a nice price tag.

PowerColor has been busy though, merely a week or two after the official launch their 6850 range already has a non standard product with custom cooler, custom PCB and a totally non-reference design.

It's positioned in their PCS+ range and as such comes factory overclocked as well. Now remember, the R6850 is clocked at 775 MHz right? PowerColor clocks it at towards 820 MHz for you, and if you feel a little brave then apply some tweaks yourself as that will get you over 900 MHz quite easily. The memory as well, standard you'll need to work with a 4000 MHz (effective data rate) memory clock frequency PowerColor takes that to 4400 MHz on this product. And sure, there as well is some room left to fool around with tweaking wise.

Let's have a quick peek at the new duo and then head onwards into the review, where we'll cover the features, architecture, power consumption and heat levels.

Both cards released in the Radeon HD 6800 range are based on what is now know as the 'Barts' codenamed GPU. The cards deriving from it will in fact be segmented into mid-range, not high-end as many people expected. So yeah, the best has still to come. The reason? AMD needed to clean up some numbering as next year a lot of new products in the fusion line will eat away the lower segment of the numbering scheme.

The Radeon HD 6800 will segment itself in the mid-range market, whereas the Radeon HD 5800 series will be updated with the Radeon HD 6900 (Cayman) series, with a dual-GPU part named Radeon HD 6900 (Antilles), I can't say it often enough to make this clear I guess.

So that is certainly something to think about, as the naming scheme has changed. Also, why did AMD start with the Radeon HD 6850 and 6870 and not 6900 you might ask. Well, obviously it's easier for AMD to release a slightly lower spec GPU but more importantly, currently the only product that really bothers AMD is NVIDIA's lovely GeForce GTX 460 (GF104). This is a very successful product for which AMD does not have a good answer, as such there's a gap in their product line-up and that gap needs to be filled up first.

Within it's own lineup the Radeon HD 6850 will be faster than the Radeon HD 5830 and the Radeon HD 6870 will be faster than the Radeon HD 5850, but not faster than the 5870 . The Radeon HD 6870 will be a pure reference product, while the Radeon HD 6850 will see many custom designs and boards. In the end it will be all about pricing of course.

Let's have a quick comparative overview of some of the specifications representing a certain cope of mid-range performance products

Specifications Radeon HD 5770 Radeon HD 5850 Radeon HD 6850 Radeon HD 6870
GPU Juniper XT Cypress Pro Barts Pro Barts XT
Manufact. tech. 40nm 40 nm 40nm 40nm
GPU frequency 850 MHz 725 MHz 775 MHz 900 MHz
Stream processors 800 1440 960 1120
Memory frequency 4800 MHz 4000 MHz 4000 MHz 4200 MHz
Memory bus 128-bit 256-bit 256-bit 256-bit
Memory buffer 1 GB GDDR5 1 GB GDDR5 1 GB GDDR5 1 GB GDDR5
Power consumption 108 watt 151 watt ~ 127 watt >150 watt
Performance - - Faster than 5830 Faster than 5850

So the two R6800 SKUs each have a separate codename, the R6850 being Barts Pro and the 6870 being the Barts XT. We'll leave the entire codename thing for what it is now and move a little onward into the architecture.

Both cards are of course updated DX11 class products with a couple of new features. Armed with 1.7 billion transistors the Radeon HD 6850 is pitted against the competition's GeForce GTX 460 768MB model, the 6850 which is clocked at 775 MHz on it's core and shader processors domain and comes with a full GB of graphics memory. This memory is 256-bit and running at an effective data-rate of 4000 MHz.

The product has 12 SIMD clusters, 48 texture units, 960 shader processors, 32 ROPs and a TDP of 127W, 19W in idle. Despite the memory bus, you can recognize similarities close to the R5770 here. This product however will bring you 1.5 TFLOPS of performance, and combined with that 256-bit gDDR5 memory it will leave the R5770 far behind it.

You guys will notice that the new 6800 series cards have a plethora of monitor connectors. Quite a bit has changed. The reference design cards will carry two mini Displayport (v1.2) connectors, one HDMI 1.4a connector and two DVI connectors of which one is single link, the other dual-link.

Display ports are now up-to snuff at revision v1.2 and that allows for a lot of extra bandwidth, in fact per connector you could drive up-to three monitors, so if you use both DP 1.2 connectors, up-to 6 monitors will be supported. Unfortunately that isn't all, connecting six monitors to two display port connectors will require an external breakout-box or monitors that supports daisy chain (very expensive). The external breakout-box I mentioned will be called a MST HUB (Multi Stream Transport), to date pricing and availability for that is unknown.

Of course you can configure Eyefinity as you please, through multiple monitors per DP connector, or one at a time with the help of the DVI connectors.

Power consumption

Lets have a look at how much power draw we measure with this graphics card installed.

The methodology: We have a device constantly monitoring the power draw from the PC. We simply stress the GPU, not the processor. The before and after wattage will tell us roughly how much power a graphics card is consuming under load.

Our test system is based on a power hungry Core i7 965/X58 based. This setup is overclocked to 3.75 GHz. Next to that we have energy saving functions disabled for this motherboard and processor (to ensure consistent benchmark results). On average we are using roughly 50 to 100 Watts more than a standard PC due to higher CPU clock settings, water-cooling, additional cold cathode lights etc.

Keep that in mind. Our normal system power consumption is higher than your average system.

Measured power consumption
Advertised TDP = 127W
System in IDLE = 175W
System Wattage with GPU in FULL Stress = 297W
Difference (GPU load) = 122 W
Add average IDLE wattage ~ 19W
Subjective calculated GPU power consumption = ~ 141 Watts

Recommended Power Supply

Here is power supply recommendation on the Radeon HD 6800 series:
Radeon HD 6850 - On your average system the card requires you to have a 450 Watt power supply unit.
Radeon HD 6870 - On your average system the card requires you to have a 500 Watt power supply unit.

The PCS+ R6850 is a very potent product, in its baseline performance it already is a decent chunk faster than the reference 6850 products available on the market and there's some overclocking headroom left as well. Unfortunately PowerColor opted to use a non standard (Chill) Voltage management regulator IC that with current software availble on the market does not allow any voltage tweaking. So on that front the competition like MSI and even reference boards might go a notch higher.

The feature set itself is of course top notch. That improved feature set of course is grand with the new HD3D and UVD 3 update of the video processor. While capable, the HD3D implementation we feel is a loss 3D gaming wise. Pretty much what AMD is doing is saying, "here's a hardware capable product... and you guys do the rest". The complexity of finding the right TV/Monitor, glasses and then 3rd party software you need to buy is, in our vision, too complex for the generic end user without any guarantees that the 3D experience will work properly as it's not backed by AMD whatsoever. Time will tell though, we think that the complexity of a 3rd party for a lot of end-users will simply be complicated, making them choose the competition's solution as that's a handy straight out of the box kit alright. But sure, with the introduction of HD3D and HDMI 1.4a AMD also brings 3D Stereoscopic features towards the new 6000 series graphics cards, which is a welcome addition of course, yet requires optimal monitors and shutter glasses. As stated we do not like the complexity of the 3D gaming side at all, but watching movies and pictures in 3D is an easy to accomplish task.

Architecture wise, it merely improved the efficiency tweaks based of the last-gen architecture. There are no ground-breaking new designs aside from some feature updates. Price performance wise however you have noticed that the R6800 offers a truckload of value for money.

The cooler that PowerColor uses is very silent and brings in plenty cooling performance. The fact remains that we brought this card over 900 MHz on the core frequency without any temperature issues, is a statement all by itself and let's not forget the fact that this card comes factory clocked at faster frequencies offering more performance in it's baseline configuration over the reference products.

So the baseline performance of this product is grand... the cooling is just extremely silent, and all that can be purchased for roughly 179 USD. If you are not planning a massive overclock session with voltage tweaks, then we can wholeheartedly recommend this product. PowerColor tops it off with a free game as well, included is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Agreed, COD Black Ops would have been nicer of course, but still this bundle offers great performance for any modern game at a very fair price.

Gigabyte H55N USB3 motherboard review

2010-11-20T23:27:00.000+02:00

With the ongoing trend of HTPCs and System on a Chip designs in the past year or so we have seen a growing demand for hardware that's getting smaller. Next to the actually ICs especially small form factor motherboards are definitely a topic of growth and trend.

See, today's tested motherboard for example is only 17 x 17 cm on size, and while it has limited options here and there, it can function even as a full high-end PC if you wanted it to. There's no real limit to what processor you use, and if you pop a Core i7 870 processor on this motherboard and inject a dedicated graphics card you might have created the smallest yet fantastic gaming rig you can carry around.

But of course products as the H55N-USB3 motherboard we test today are intended for generic PCs, typically armed with an Intel Clarkdale based processor (which has an embedded GPU), paired with dual-channel memory and an decent HDD. This handful of components will get you a fully functional mainstream PC, perfect for usage as HTPC or generic Desktop work PC.

Gigabyte decided to up all this up a notch or two. They took the extremely small Mini-ITX form factor very serious, and each inch on this motherboard has been equipped with an component. As such we see that the H55N-USB3 motherboard is ready for all LGA 1156 Core i3/i5 and i7 processors, it is equipped with four SATA 2 ports, a x16 PCIe Slot for high-end graphics, durable components like solid chokes and very quality capacitors, optical Toslink SPDIF output, and when paired with a Clarkdale based Core i3 or i5 processor the ability to utilize the D-SUB (VGA), DVI or HDMI connector. Oh and it's got USB 3.0 as well.

All that for 90 EUR, not bad at all we say. Let's pop in a Core i5 661 processor and see if we like it.

So today we'll discuss a topic amongst many of the male and female species for decades now ... does size really matter ?! Is 17 cm is enough ? And yeah, we'll be answering that mythological question today.

We'll be reviewing a very cute and small motherboard sized only 17cm x 17cm, and for those that do not recognize it, this is the Mini-ITX form factor.

Popular in many scenario's like automotive, industry implementations but as we'll show you, with a motherboard like tested today truly excellent for HTPCs and even regular desktop PCs as well.

The product comes from Gigabyte and is tagged as H55H-N-USB3, despite what you might think or feel about Mini-ATX, this little motherboard has it, it's packed and loaded with features. Pop on a Clarkdale based processor like the Core i3 or Core i5 series and you can use it's HDMI, DVI of D-SUB monitor connector. Audio ? No worries the embedded Realtek ACL 892R eight channel audio codec will happily output to analog or coaxial or optical TOSLINK S/PDIF connectors, need USB ? Well, the rear panel even has USB 3.0, need SATA2 ? Here we spot four ports and one eSATA, dual channel memory ? Yep supported, up-to 1600 MHz and in the end if you do not want to use the embedded graphics from the processor, then you can even pop in a full x16 PCIe graphics card and make a wicked gaming rig out of this incredibly handy H55H motherboard.

To facilitate the Clarkdale processors, Intel needed to come out with a specific chipset, in fact they'll be released two of them each with their own derivative sidekicks. This is needed to run the integrated graphics via what's labeled as the Flexible Display Interface (FDI). Intel is offering two new chipsets to the market, H55 and H57/Q57. P55 actually should also work fine, yet obviously not with the embedded IGP. We will actually put this to the test today.

Now you might think the platform will be cheap and well, honestly procing is average at best. Intel will charge its partners 40 USD per chip per 1K units. In a pale comparison, Intel charges almost 40 USD for a P55 chip to the motherboard manufacturers.

The motherboard tested today we'll pair it with a Core i5 661 dual core processor for a test run. But first, let's have a look a some photos of the motherboard itself.

These little motherboards always offer heaps of fun and features don't they ? It's just good to see how much stuff you can chuck into something so small. The end results as such was impressive. Though the boards are not the cheapest at roughly 90 EUR / 105 USD you are building a platform that is small, easy to carry around yet you still get an excellent feature set. The inclusion of the full PCIe x16 slot, the USB 3.0 headers, the wide range of monitor connectivity and even the Optical SPDIF Toslink audio output it all makes the motherboard, as tiny as it is, very feature rich and up-top date on modern standards.

The Mini-ITX motherboard is a perfect example of getting the most out of your hardware. At 17x17 CM we see a PCB fully utilizing everything it can. Face it, this motherboard performs as well as any regular H55 based motherboard and comes is packed with 95% of the regular features as well.

So for a reasonable amount of money you get a proper baseline performing Core i3 and i5 ready motherboard. Pop in a Clarkdale based processor and et voilla, you'll have working 2D/3D graphics as well. It's pretty much all you need to get Windows Vista or 7 going properly. Should you want to game in a more serious fashion, then just make use of the PCIe slot and pop in a dedicated graphics card.

Though we did not cover it deeply, you can even overclock your processor in the BIOS. A somewhat decent selection of features is offered there including Multiplier control and the ability to over and undervolt the processor. Memory overclocking is also fairly good, all memory timings are available, and each timing has an AUTO parameter scales properly with frequency. How much overclock options you actually need on a motherboard like this remains trivial though, but the implementation certainly is very decent should you need it.

Overall the Gigabyte H55N-USB 3.0 is a really fair and good motherboard. Performance is as expected good thanks to H55, and for the money the features are plenty decent for any environment you can think of: automotive, HTPC, desktop, internet, work and even high-end gaming is a very possible alternative here.

Gigabyte stuffed the 17x17cm PCB full with all the features the H55 chipset has to offer and then some more. The one thing you might miss is say an extra PCI x1 slot for more high-end audio. But yeah, there's no room left on the PCB really. Ehm, two things we feel are missing, RAID support and an extra FAN header along with proper FAN RPM control from within the BIOS. But that's all I can think of really.

The H55N-USB 3.0 motherboard comes very recommended as a fair value product. Size apparently doesn't matter, as you can gain every foreseeable and modern option a regular sized mainstream ATX motherboard offers as well, and what makes this a great deal is that you can pair it with any socket 1156 processor. Fast, versatile, feature rich, petite and even USB 3.0

GeForce GTX 580 3-way SLI review

2010-11-20T23:24:00.000+02:00

See, one GeForce GTX 580 is already a power-house in terms of performance, with two cards we already started noticing CPU-limitation in certain titles, e.g. the two GPUs would like to go faster yet the processor (an overclocked Core i7 965 @ 3.8 GHz) is, with somewhat dated titles, not able to keep up with the GPUs 100%.

With GPU performance nearly doubling up each two years this is going to become a problem in the years to come. See, a lot of games these days do have multi-threaded processor support, yet often that is limited to two or three CPU cores. The processor industry is making a huge shift to multi-core processing and with the serial architecture of the processor it poses an issue for multiple and high performance GPUs gaming wise.

In short, we really need faster per core processors to deal with that issue, unfortunately processor manufacturers are only focused on more cores. In the upcoming year for example AMD scheduled production of 16 core CPUs in the second quarter of 2011 and launch with widespread availability in the third quarter. Yep, AMD has revealed its latest Interlagos processor featuring up to 16 CPU cores, of course initially HPC / Server targeted... but that's where we are headed.

Why this tremendous comment on processors in a GPU article? Well, 3-way SLI on the GeForce GTX 580 allows us to look into the future. Two to three years from now what you'll see will be the new high end single 'GPU' performance. Showing you the great potential so much raw horsepower really has also shows drawbacks, in terms of CPU limitation.

So before starting up the article, rest assured we'll be showing you performance of our standard benchmark suite, that means some older titles, some modern titles and some DX11 titles. There's some shock, some awe and some coolness to be found in this article.

Let's head on over to the next page where we'll walk you through, well... everything.

Multi-GPU mode explained

Okay, first we are going to walk through our standard bit explaining multi-GPU gaming. We tend to get a little repetitive with this chapter, but honestly newcomers often do not know how, when and what multi-GPU gaming is and how it functions.

Both NVIDIA's SLI and AMD's ATI Crossfire allow you to combine/add a second, third or fourth similar generation graphics card (to add in more GPUs) to the one you already have in your PC. This way you effectively try to double, triple or even quadruple your raw rendering gaming performance (in theory).

Over the years one thing has proven itself though, the more GPUs you add, the worse the scaling becomes, though two GPUs in most scenarios is ideal.

How do multi-GPU setups work? Think of a farmer with a plough and one horse. One horse will get the job done yet by adding a second or third horse, you'll plough through that farmland much quicker and (hopefully) more efficiently as the weight of that plough is distributed much more evenly. That's roughly the same idea for graphics cards. One card can do the job sufficiently, but with two or more you can achieve much more in less time. And that's what you want in your PC, graphics frames rendered with the least amount of time equals performance.

So along these lines, you could for example place two or more ATI graphics cards into a Crossfire compatible motherboard, or two or more NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards in SLI mode on a compatible SLI motherboard.
A Crossfire compatible motherboard is pretty much ANY motherboard with multiple PCIe x16 slots that is not an nForce motherboard.
An SLI certified motherboard is an nForce motherboard with more than two PCIe x16 slots or a certified P55 or X58 motherboard. If your motherboard does not have the SLI certification mentioned on the box, it's likely not SLI compatible. Keep that in mind. For 3 and 4-way SLI your motherboard will need additional NF200 chips. Thus make very sure your motherboard has support for these extensive modes. Otherwise the driver will refuse to activate.

Once we seat the similar graphics cards on the carefully selected motherboard we just bridge them together, with a supplied Crossfire connector or in NVIDIA's case, an SLI connector. Then install/update the drivers, after which most games can take advantage of the extra horsepower we just added into the system.

These are some pretty nifty parts and bear in mind, when you opt for multi-GPU gaming, always have your gear right. You'll need that quality power supply, you'll need that beefy motherboard and processor, and then you'll need a chassis with some very good airflow keeping the graphics cards nicely chilled down.

Alright then, these are the facts. With 3-way SLI the more 'dated' games will run into that dreaded CPU bottleneck fairly fast unless you really make it heavy on the GPUs, that means resolutions of 1920x1200 and above and flicking on everything you can image quality wise. With the more GPU limited titles like Metro 2033, Battlefield BC2, Crysis and even Far Cry 2 with say 8xAA 3-way SLI does show noticeable gains. But as stated you do need to seek it at the extremely high resolutions.

On the topic of high-resolutions, there are more situations where you can reap the benefits of multi-GPU modes. 3D stereoscopic gaming for example with a modern title can cut your framerate in half. Also, gaming with three monitors where you literally increase the GPU load by threefold, these are situations where a setup like shown today makes sense.

What doesn't make sense obviously is the massive amount of money you need to spend on a setup like this :) The three cards alone will set you down roughly 1400 EUR, and then you still need to build a PC around it. Make no mistake, you'll need heavy duty gear. A top of the line 3-way SLI compatible motherboard, a nice overclockable processor, as you really want some more processor performance, and then obviously we need to have a chat about power consumption and your power supply. The very bare minimum you'll need to get is a kilowatt PSU, and you'll need quality of course. In the worst case scenario with the GPUs overclocked and our processor running at 3.8 GHz we here and there touched 950W (!). So we say, get yourself a good 1200 Watt PSU, and make darn sure that the PSU you choose has these 6-pin AND three 8-pin PCIE PEG connectors to feed the graphics cards.

When it comes to CPU bottlenecking you might wonder... why not overclock that processor any higher? Well, with the complexity of three GPUs you need to find yourself a stable symbiosis of components. We could say overclock to 4.4 GHz yet would need to alter CPU cooling to LCS or better and that PSU would need to be rated higher as well. Remember, overclocking requires additional voltage on the processor, if you need to step from 1.3v towards 1.5v or even higher your overall peak power consumption will rise significantly. An additional 100 to 200 Watts would not be weird at all. And that's why we kept the processor at our 1.35v / 3.75 GHz sweetspot as overclocking it dramatically higher would endanger system stability by pushing the 1200 Watt PSU close to its limits.

So then, in conclusion as always, this is x-factor stuff, extreme, nearly silly stuff to do and show. But people out there do purchase setups like shown today. At least you now know the pros and cons. Our recommendation is simple, if you have the hots for a multi-GPU setup based on the GeForce GTX 580, we recommend a 2-way SLI setup at best. With 3-way you'll run into heaps of curiosities like power consumption, noise levels and then the CPU bottlenecks - that last one is just sheer dreadful.

Flipside of the coin, 3-way SLI can be really helpful with 3D Stereoscopic gaming and a triple monitor gaming setup. The drivers, as always, are done well, we did not have any issues significant enough to mention, so from NVIDIA's side it's all good. But on a single monitor we do think that the infrastructure and sheer cash needed outweighs the extra performance you'll get for it in return. But that doesn't mean it's not tremendously cool stuff to play around with though.

Oh and 4-way SLI you wonder? Worse... that's 2-3% performance increase if you are lucky, with 3DMark Vantage as the exception. So yeah, stick to 2-way SLI we say -- unless you need to break 3DMark records of course

Lost Planet 2 Review

2010-11-20T23:19:00.000+02:00

Lost Planet 2 on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 was a good example of how messing up gameplay basics can render a gorgeous and full-bodied third-person shooter hopelessly un-fun. How refreshing, then, that developer Capcom has addressed some of the shortcomings that plagued the console release, making the newly released PC version noticeably more enjoyable. The package still sports a number of flaws--a dumb and puzzling story, silly online rewards, and a reliance on frequent knockback attacks to create difficulty. And yet a variety of tweaks and fewer communication gaffes make a big difference in Lost Planet 2's overall playability. For that matter, so do the mouse and keyboard controls, which are smooth and intuitive as long as you turn off aim assist and tweak the sensitivity sliders. This still isn't the sci-fi shooter to end all sci-fi shooters, but it's a gorgeous technical achievement and a substantial package that will provide a comfortable home for action junkies looking for something a little different.

This sequel offers up a lot more variety than its predecessor. You sprint through a number of diverse locations, and fantastic visuals bring the planet of E.D.N. III to life. Some frigid areas hark back to the original Lost Planet, including the prologue, which features great Lost Planet standbys: giant mechs known as vital suits (or VSs), enormous aliens called akrid with glowing orange spots (hint: shoot them!), and snow flying everywhere. In other levels, red light bathes industrial corridors, lightning flashes brightly above a turbulent sea, and cyclones sweep across the desert plains. There are plenty of beautiful vistas to take in and many attempts to vary the pace. Over the course of the game, you will rush through the desert on a roaring speeder, defy gravity in the blackness of space, and bring down a giant akrid from the inside. Lost Planet 2 is absolutely stunning on the PC, particularly if you own a video card that can handle its fancy DirectX 11 effects, yet it runs surprisingly well on a medium-powered machine, even with many of the options cranked up.

The early levels have some weird pacing idiosyncrasies. They take just a few minutes to complete, too often coming to an end just as things appear to be picking up. Eventually, the action settles into a better rhythm, and you begin to pick up on Lost Planet 2's various delights and quirks. Perhaps the game's greatest claim to fame is its frequent boss battles versus the giant akrid that often loom above you. In one level, that might mean a giant multi-limbed creature rising from the water; in another, it's two lizardlike beasts paralyzing you with sonic bursts, and then lumbering in your general direction. Like its predecessor, Lost Planet 2 is big on knockback attacks. Monsters might send you flying backward, which can be frustrating, because it takes control away from you while you wait for your character to get back up. However, animation times seem to have been adjusted, and other elements have been changed to make for a much better experience. For example, the sonic attacks in that aforementioned dual akrid battle are much less frequent than in the console versions, which means you spend more time shooting and less time scowling while hammering on the keys that let you break free from paralysis.

The most notable improvements come into play in a level involving a speeding train under attack by a gigantic akrid worm. On consoles, you had to deal with a number of awful design elements during this level, such as absolutely putrid friendly AI, total communication failures, and an infuriating pair of turrets. Instead of dealing with a horrific barrage of missiles, you now set your sights on a flying gunship, which is a lot more fun than getting knocked off of a train over and over again. Your teammates, while still occasionally brain-dead, are less likely to run in place against a train door that won't open. (Too bad your humanoid foes are still as dumb as a box of rocks.) And the final stage of this level, in which you have to load a giant cannon, extinguish fires, and man side turrets, now identifies what you must do via a robotic voice-over and interface markings. This act's first sequence, which you can easily exploit by running to the rear of the train with a sniper rifle, is a total bore, but the rest of the act lets you enjoy the dusty environments as they rush by, all while sniping enemies from afar and mowing them down from within a clanging mech suit.

In light of the imperfect AI, it's best if you grab a few friends or strangers to join you in online cooperative play. Some fights, particularly against the giant bosses, are almost epic this way, particularly with a full contingent of players. One player gets in one of the many different types of mech suits, another rides on the mech's side, and others pummel the oozing creature above with rockets. Yet even co-op play doesn't turn out to be as simple as you'd want. There is no drop-in, drop-out play, so you can't join a friend already in progress. More importantly, you can't join a buddy at all if you haven't already played to that point. (If you want your buddy to help you through the train level but he's only in episode 2, it's a no-go.) The respawn system, which gives players a limited number of lives to share, can still be a frustration, but because the knockbacks here aren't as prevalent as in the other versions, it's a minor point.

Like most of Lost Planet's visual aspects, the cutscenes look great and convey a great deal of action-movie gusto. Unfortunately, they don't tell much of a tale. The original Lost Planet was not big in the story department, but it still made the attempt, and at least you got to know a few of its leading players. Lost Planet 2 doesn't even try. Its characters are nameless and have no discernable personality. A group of speeder-piloting bandits are apparently meant to inject a bit of humor, but they come across as embarrassing racial stereotypes. Without any character development, proper story exposition, or a better antagonist than a faceless corporation you know little about, there's no reason to care about the fate of this attractive world.

Competitive multiplayer is another reason to visit this planet. There are a robust number of modes here, along with an intriguing and occasionally silly system of persistent rewards meant to keep you invested. Many of the modes are shooter standards: Elimination, Team Elimination, and variants on two-flag Capture the Flag and Conquest, called Akrid Egg Battle and Data Post Battle, respectively. Fugitive mode has returned as well and pits a small team of lightly armed fugitives avoiding capture against a fully equipped team of hunters. Some modes come in several variants as well. For example, Team Elimination victory conditions can be customized so that the first team to use up a set number of respawns loses, or the victory might go to the team with the highest point total. These modes can be further customized by the host in a number of ways, from setting the default weapon types, to setting the number of mech suits on the map. Some of the mechanical drawbacks of the campaign are still an annoyance. For example, getting hit in the midst of throwing a grenade interrupts your toss. But the vertically designed maps and cool mechanical monstrosities can lead to some enjoyable shoot-outs.

Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of people playing online, which is a shame, since the game features a persistent mode in which five factions fight it out for control of a larger world map, a la Chromehounds and EndWar. The game also offers a problematic but intriguing system of persistent rewards to keep you invested. The crux of this system is the points you earn while playing, which in turn can be spent on a chance to earn something useful at the game's slot machine. Rewards include new weapons you can add to your default loadout, passive bonuses to equip, and new parts for customizing your character. They also include emotes and titles, called "noms de guerre." It's an intriguing system, but over time it lends itself to disappointment. Unlocking a new shotgun for multiplayer matches is cool, but most of the time, you're getting a new nom de guerre or an emote. So now you can run around with the words "lookin' for love" floating over your head and perform a new kind of fist pump. Customizing your weapons and appearance is great, but the more useless rewards make this system feel unnecessarily padded.

In spite of its occasional awkwardness, Lost Planet 2 is a worthy offering for shooter fans who enjoy the awe-inspiring sight of a colossal creature towering above them. It's good to see this game's better elements getting their fair dues, even if some of the other core issues weren't so readily repaired. The gameplay oddities and small online population keep this celestial object from shining too brightly, but if you're interested in shooting big bugs on a resplendent sci-fi world, or just want to show your friends what your fancy new video card is capable of, then Lost Planet 2 is an entertaining way to pass the hours.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1

2010-11-20T23:15:00.000+02:00

The gameplay for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 will be different from the previous games after developers decided the game required a new direction to suit its growing adult audience.The player will control the character Harry Potter from a third person over-the-shoulder camera, and will be played in the style of a third-person shooter. The Deathly Hallows: Part I game will include a progression system where Harry gains experience and can upgrade his spells.

Combat in Deathly Hallows: Part 1 will involve casting spells by tapping the buttons (each a different spell) on the d-pad. The player will be able to change the spells on the d-pad by going to the menu and selecting the weapon wheel.[9] The spells in Deathly Hallows: Part I include Stupefy, Expelliarmus, Confringo, Confundo, Expulso, Impedimenta, Wingardium Leviosa, Protego, Expecto Patronum, Petrificus Totalus, Finite Incantatem (to free other wizards from Petrificus Totalus) and a Four-Points spell that points which way to go. The spells will also have an effect on enemies and the environment with the player being able to use Wingardium Leviosa to throw objects at other players or to clear paths and the Confundo spell being able to make the enemy fight for the player (which is used in a sniper point of view). Head shots will also be a feature in the game with the player being able to control Harry to aim a spell at their opponent's head. Part of the combat sequences will involve the cover-based gameplay where the player hides behind an object to protect themselves against their opponent until it has been destroyed.

Potions will once again be involved with the player collecting them throughout the world of the game. The player will be able to use the Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder and Garrotting Gas to make an escape while the Exploding Fluid can be used to blast away multiple enemies. The game will also include potions which are beneficial to the player's health including Elixir of Life, Strengthening Solution, Fire-Protection Potion, Murtlap Essence and Blood-Replenishing Potion. When there is an infestation the player is able to use the Doxycide potion while the Polyjuice Potion can be used as a disguise from enemies. The Felix Felicis potion will allow the player to temporarily cast perfect spells and avoid enemy fire.

During stealth missions the player can progress through the level using the Polyjuice Potion, Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder or the Invisibility Cloak.While maneuvering under the Invisibility Cloak the player must move slowly to ensure the stealth meter on the screen does not turn red. If the meter has turned red it means the player is in danger of getting caught and must stay still until the meter has re-generated. When the player gets close enough to an enemy while under the Invisibility Cloak they are able to cast a stunning spell at them, or use the shield charm as a knock-out melee attack.

Dirt 3 Preview

2010-11-20T23:11:00.000+02:00

While Dirt 2 was another highly praised, commercially successful racing game for Codemasters, the studio received plenty of feedback from fans about how to improve it. Tackling criticism is never an easy task, but the team is up front about how it aims to appease fans. More rally driving, more cars, and more variety in stages are the main points they are aiming to address, as well as a greater level of visual and aural fidelity. We found out about the developer's aims during a recent visit to Cardiff, Wales, and spoke to legendary driver Ken Block about gymkhana's inclusion in Dirt 3--the first time the discipline has ever appeared in a racing game.

The main criticism that Codemasters faced post-Dirt 2 was that the game sacrificed rallying for other disciplines. As a result, Dirt 3's career mode will be 60 percent rallying. We got to race the Audi Sport Quattro around one of the new rally stages set in Finland and were impressed with the myriad of improvements. The physics engine is noticeably more advanced, resulting in very realistic differences between surface types. As we went around corners, the wheels touching the grass would slow down, meaning that we could use the rougher surface to tactically aid drifting. As one representative noted, the undulating dips on some of the tracks can also be used to your advantage, acting as grooves for your wheel to follow round the bend.

There are also new assists that help novice rally drivers when they're just starting out. These were turned on by default in our playtest and included stability control, corner braking, and throttle management. Once disabled, the car became more difficult to drive and more prone to spinning out, but not uncontrollably so, just adding another layer of challenge during our third and fourth run-throughs of the track. Codemasters has also chosen to keep the flashback feature of the second game, allowing you to rewind and retry any section of your run. However, the overall difficulty levels are still being tweaked at this stage, so we'll have to wait and see what levels of accessibility and simulation are catered for.

One thing's for sure--with gymkhana now included in the game, rally aficionados are going to have a serious challenge on their hands. Gymkhana is a series of stunts and jumps that are performed in quick succession, and it's a sport that has been popularised by Ken Block on YouTube. The track that we got to play on was a short section of the DC Compound, otherwise known as London's Battersea Power Station, which also appeared in Dirt 2. The compound will gradually open up as you progress through the career, but we got a short section to drive around and test our skills in.

The compound run contained six challenges that we had to try to complete as quickly as possible. Pole Dancer required us to lock the handbrake and donut around one of the pillars on the track--a tricky skill that needs a gentle finger on the accelerator and precise application of the brakes. Other drifting challenges were Trailer Thrash, Pipe Dream, and Can You Dig It, which have you balletically careering your car under trailers, through pipes, and under a digger's arm, respectively. Finally, there were Airborne and Block Buster--the former rewarding a jump with a clean landing, and the latter being about smashing all the foam blocks dotted around the track. This course took us many minutes to complete, even after numerous runs, but it's clear that gymkhana will offer hardcore players proving grounds that will separate the best from the best.

Developers at the studio have managed to clock a 36-second record--an impressive time that they admit will no doubt be smashed by players once the game is released. Bragging rights will also be improved by the fact that you can edit and upload gameplay clips to YouTube, meaning that Ken Block's real-world runs could very well be bettered by virtual ones.

With two-player split screen play for the first time and a new selection of party mode options for eight players online, Dirt 3 is shaping up to be a robust multiplayer package as well. The game is currently slated for a second-quarter 2011 release on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. For a more general overview of the new game and its features, be sure to check out our first hands-on preview, and keep an eye on the site for more on Dirt 3, including trailers, very soon.

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2010-11-11T19:49:00.001+02:00

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Diablo III Preview

2010-11-11T12:43:00.000+02:00

PARIS--The Barbarian sees, and the Barbarian smashes. The Witch Doctor sees and usually lets something else do his dirty work. The two character classes shown off during today’s announcement of Diablo III (unveiled during the opening ceremonies for the 2008 Blizzard Invitational in Paris) is a mixture of old and new, representing the formula that the Blizzard development team seems to be aiming for with the latest installment in its blockbuster action game series.

We'll spend some time recounting our observations of both classes in a bit, but first, we should talk a bit about the trailer that introduced the world to the game for the first time. It started off with your typical dire portents of dread, backed by spooky music and gorgeous visuals. What stood out to us was the variety in those visuals, as well as what they could mean for the gameplay and story. First, we saw a number of different settings in the trailer--including more than one city setting. In addition, the color palette seemed to be much larger than in previous installments; we noticed a grimy, dusty-looking battlefield teeming with soldiers and war machines, as well as at least one night-time landscape, backed by a huge full moon. While maintaining that grim gothic feel to the game, it seems like the Blizzard artists are getting a full chance to explore a larger visual palette that should give the game some variety.

The same impressive look continues on to the actual gameplay. Characters were big and richly detailed (especially when wearing more elaborate armor) but nicely scaled to the environments. In other words, the characters are big, but they can still be easily dwarfed by some of the bigger creatures in the game, as the demo proved with that massive spike-wielding demon at the end. While we thought at first that this was a boss, due to its sheer bulk and the complexity of its attacks, it was later confirmed this was just a run-of-the-mill mob, the likes of which you can expect to see on a fairly regular basis. In addition to monsters of various sizes, the enemies in the game will demonstrate a variety of behaviors. During the demo, we saw the Berserker, a large, mace-wielding monster that’s equal parts strength and bad attitude. During a post-announcement game design panel on Diablo III, we also saw the skeletal shield bearer, a slow-moving skeleton wielding a huge shield. Often accompanying larger enemies as support, the shield bearer will be a tough enemy to deal with, as you’ll first have to take out the monster’s shield before attacking it properly. As a result, shield bearers will be ideal support for enemies who are strictly focused on dealing damage.
With different types of monsters on hand, it's fortunate that the character classes in Diablo III will be just as epically powerful as you remember. The Barbarian is still a melee specialist (though not without his specialized ranged attacks). The Barbarian's skills will be familiar to Diablo II fans--we saw the whirlwind in effect, sweeping through scores of enemies--but he’ll have some other tricks up his sleeves (that is, if he wore sleeves), including the sweep, which can blast multiple enemies around him. During the on-stage demo, the Barbarian managed to take down a stone wall on a group of zombies, pointing to more interactive environments throughout the gameplay. While environments won't be fully destructible, you can look forward to many instances, such as this one, where you can use the environment to your advantage, with a certain amount of real physics involved in the destruction.
If the Barbarian is all about wading into the fray with both weapons blazing, the newly announced Witch Doctor is all about variety. He (or she--Diablo III will let you play as a male or female version of your chosen class but will not offer more advanced customization options) will have more straightforward attacks, like the firebomb, which drops fiery death onto the enemy, as well as more interesting attacks that seem more in keeping with the class.
The Witch Doctor will have control over disease, can summon pets, and can even control the minds of his or her enemies. We saw a few examples of these different approaches in the game demo: Locust swarm is a spell that summons a nasty horde of flying locusts that can overwhelm an opponent. Better yet, the locusts will automatically spawn to attack additional enemies in the area. We saw one pet in use too; the mongrel. This pet can attack enemies and can be buffed with other Witch Doctor spells; during the demo, the player cast locust swarm on his mongrel, giving the pet an attack bonus. We also briefly saw the horrify spell, which causes enemies to temporarily flee in terror. By far, his coolest ability was the wall of zombie, which was truly terrifying. If you've seen a wall of fire or ice in a game before, you probably have a pretty good idea of what this skill involves.

At first glance, the Witch Doctor resembles the Necromancer from Diablo II, both in his relatively skinny appearance (at least, when compared to the Barbarian) and through the class abilities (pet summoning, disease control). When asked about it during the gameplay design seminar, Blizzard developers were quick to point out that the Witch Doctor is very much its own class and that its presence in the game wouldn't necessarily require the removal of the Necromancer in Diablo III. In other words, it's conceivable that both classes could end up in Diablo III, even if it looks unlikely to us at this point.
Using new skills will be easier than ever in Diablo III, thanks to a new combat system and user interface that seems to put a premium on skill usage over potions. As explained during the gameplay seminar, Blizzard developers felt that potion use was too prevalent in the previous game, resulting in combat encounters that were rarely more than wars of attrition because the user kept pounding health potions en masse. In another seminar, Jay Wilson, the lead designer, confirmed that the interface would not be customizable with mods; while this is nigh-on essential for World of Warcraft, Wilson said that it would be detrimental in Diablo III and was not on the table.
In Diablo III, potions will still play a part of the action but their importance has been downplayed, thanks to a couple of changes. The first are health globes, which drop off defeated enemies and will serve to boost the health of your character, as well as those around you if you're playing co-operatively. As the developers put it, the idea of enemies dropping health is one that will keep the player moving forward in the game, as opposed to trying to avoid combat. In addition, a new skill toolbar, similar in location to the old potion belt in Diablo II, will make your skills that much more accessible, easily allowing you to switch between skills on the fly. You’ll even be able to swap skills quickly using the roller on your mouse for even more ease of use. The result is a game you’ll likely be able to play almost completely with your mouse; no more hunting for skills using the F key on your keyboard. Here's one more important addition regarding cooperative play: When a character picks up a health globe, any surrounding allies also benefit from that health globe, which seems like it will encourage players to stick together when hacking and slashing their way throughout the game. To our ears, it also makes it sound like practically any class will be able to tank effectively (as long as someone is picking up the health globes and standing nearby), but we'll have to see how it plays out as the game develops.
Random dungeons will still be a big part of Diablo III. In fact, randomness will prevail throughout the game (and we mean that in a good way). In addition to having randomly created dungeons to explore, the developers have introduced random monsters, random loot droops, and new random scripted events into the game to make each play-through a new experience. In terms of monsters and loot, the stage demo alone was proof of that concept--we saw loads of different types of beasts to fight, from snakelike monsters to hulking brutes, like the final big bad beastie. Blizzard didn't go into much detail regarding loot, but we do know that it's hard at work creating custom-designed armor and weapons that will look great, as well as get the job done in the field of combat. More tie-ins with lore with higher-level drops have been promised than was the case in Diablo II, with items being one of the development teams key focuses in increasing your feeling of involvement with the story as you progress. During the demo, we saw the Barbarian decked out in a suit of golden armor with an imposing-looking helmet and wielding a pair of axes: one enchanted with frost; the other with electricity. We also saw him wielding a fire-enchanted two-handed mace, trailing fire impressively as he spun through a crowd of skeletons.
The random scripted events sound like one of the coolest additions to the game. Each play-through, players will encounter scenarios that are quite different from their previous trip through the game. In one area, you might see a house filled with undead enemies--along with a story about the home's former residents. The second time you play through, that same area might contain a caravan that you'll be prompted to escort to safety. The next time that area might simply be filled with monsters just begging for the opportunity to be killed by you. Scripted events look to greatly increase the level of immersion into the world of Diablo III while keeping the player coming back for more at the same time. There will also be a conversation system in the game, which will give voice to your character in the game; more so than the handful of exclamations your character had in the previous game. We hope to learn more about the conversation system for Diablo III over the weekend and will report back with more details.
Much has yet to be settled in the development of Blizzard's latest game. The pair of character classes we know about are just two in an undetermined (or at least, unreleased) final number of classes that will be in Diablo III, though Blizzard has confirmed that not all the classes from Diablo II are going to make the cut. In addition, while we do know that the online cooperative play will be a huge part of the game, Blizzard hasn't settled on the final number of people that will be able to play together: eight is the current theoretical maximum, but Blizzard made it clear that the final decision was going to be based on what was best for the player and that this number was likely to be lower than the theoretical maximum. Indeed, even the fate of "hardcore" mode is as of yet undecided, though Blizzard devs said they see no reason why it won't be in the final game, given its popularity in Diablo II. As for a secret cow level...when pressed, all Blizzard reps would say was "No comment."
On the other hand, we can confirm the game's release date; it's the same date as for all Blizzard-developed titles: "When it's ready." Until that time--however far in the future it may be--we'll be sure to bring you the latest coverage of the game, including more coverage from this weekend's 2008 Blizzard Invitational, so stay tuned.
[UPDATE] We've just added a wrap-up of this morning's Diablo III discussion panel, regarding the game's art and storyline. Check it out on the GameSpot preview blog, Work in Progress.

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Preview

2010-11-11T12:40:00.000+02:00

What better time to visit Blizzard HQ to see the new World of Warcraft expansion than the week right before the Electronic Entertainment Expo? We hit the ground running toward the Irvine, California-based studio to try out Cataclysm, the new expansion for the massively addictive, massively multiplayer game World of Warcraft. We got a hands-off demonstration of some of the game's new features, and we also got a chance to sit down and play with some of the new content ourselves. Please be advised that this story contains minor spoilers.

Cataclysm will add an enormous amount of new playable content to World of Warcraft (the previous expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, launched with about 1,000 quests; the pre-beta version of Cataclysm already has more than 3,000), including lots of new places to explore, new high-end "raids" for ambitious adventuring parties, new high-end competitive player-versus-player, and greatly revised versions of existing in-game geography. This will reflect both the game's ongoing story and encourage new and returning players to try out the game's lower-level content again or for the first time.
In the wake of the previous expansion's events, which included a destructive rampage by the elder dragon Deathwing the Destroyer, the face of World of Warcraft's realm Azeroth has been forever changed. Key characters central to the game's lore have been defeated or gone missing, such as the orc chieftain Thrall, while several notable geographical locations have been altered dramatically to accommodate the ongoing story, as well as the ongoing needs of players. For instance, Deathwing's raid on the Alliance hometown of Stormwind has left the once-pristine park district a smoking ruin (fortunately, the druid trainer escaped and has relocated), while both Stormwind and the Horde hometown of Orgrimmar have been rezoned with additional trade districts, as well as secondary player banks to help manage overcrowding. Orgrimmar has also been rezoned to allow for separate districts for the tauren, troll, and new goblin races, while the undead starting area of Silverpine has been changed to indicate the faction's new designs on conquest. Once it was just the site of a few moldy, old graves, but now Silverpine's forest is full of war machines for churning out disease-ridden abominations to take over Azeroth, while the tauren starting areas of Thousand Needles and Shimmering Flats have been flooded and changed from desert mesas to rocky riverbeds.

Numerous other minor and major gameplay systems are also being revamped for the expansion. The user interface is getting tweaked to give better alerts (such as a reminder to train new skills your character has earned). Other gameplay additions that had been tossed around at last year's Blizzcon event have also undergone further consideration, and some won't make the cut. The previously announced "path of the titans" feature, for instance, is being scrapped in favor of enhancing the game's glyph system with a third, "medium" glyph to help players further customize their characters. Cataclysm will also offer a new trade profession, archeology, which will tap into the game's lore and backstory by letting players dig up and assemble common artifacts or occasionally find rare ones. These artifacts will primarily be cosmetic accoutrements or "toys," though the Blizzard team suggests that a few may be extremely powerful weapons, armor, or other stuff.
In addition, the "guild currency" system suggested at Blizzcon will not make the cut, though Cataclysm will offer new interface elements that are more supportive of guild members, such as the ability to directly find craftsmen who have the recipes and skill level needed to concoct whichever weapons, armor, or other items you're after. The expansion will also have a new guild advancement system that will let your guild gain "levels" that unlock new global abilities for the group, as well as special guild-only items that can be purchased if you've gained enough faction standing with your guild to unlock them with such activities as raiding and doing well in PVP competition. Guild advancement will come with a new guild interface that will let you more easily call out notable news and achievements, as well as an achievement list that will record who completed which raid or attained which battlegrounds rank and when.

We were then shown some of Cataclysm's new zones, which include "Uldum," a huge outdoor expanse that bears a striking resemblance to ancient Egypt, including pyramids, palm trees, and a Nile-like river. According to the game's lore, this zone houses "titan machines," ancient magical weapons of great power and was previously hidden by illusions, though the illusions were disrupted by Deathwing's attack. And now, exposed area's weapons and quests represent juicy targets of opportunity for both factions. Other zones include various elemental planes presided over by powerful beings known as elemental princes. The plane of air, for instance, appears in the clouds and has the dreamy, hazy look of a grand Arabic city in the clouds, not unlike the palaces in the Disney movie Aladdin. The plane of earth, however, is a gigantic crystalline cave suspended between time and space, in which Deathwing incubated for many years before emerging.

In addition to new player-versus-environment zones, Cataclysm will add plenty of PVP stuff, including new PVP playfields and a new mode of competition. This will come in the form of "rated battlegrounds," which Blizzard describes as "competitive battleground play" that will do a better job of rewarding skilled players. The current game's battlegrounds do offer an opportunity for skilled players to earn precious honor points to purchase valuable rewards, but they also let random players in pick-up groups act like compete jackasses. The new rated battlegrounds will more strongly encourage team-based play by offering a new reward type, "conquest points," while offering two new, tightened-up playfields on which to compete. This will include "Twin Peaks," a mountainous zone with extra graveyards smack dab in the middle of the map, so that defeated players can respawn in an area much closer to the action.

Other additions include a good chunk of high-end raid content, as well as new ease-of-use options for raids, such as the ability to "downshift" larger raids into smaller groups. For example, in the event of playing in a 25-person raiding party one night, you might find out the next night that not everyone can make it. Rather than simply giving up on the raid, you can "downshift" the raid to up to three 10-person raids, which will offer slightly easier content and rewards that aren't quite as good...but you'll at least be able to keep your progress. "Raid lock," the state of being committed to a single raid area after defeating one or more bosses, is also being modified. If you do happen to make some progress into a raid but lose your group, you can join another raiding party that has gotten at least as far. The expansion's new, marquee raiding content is the Bastion of Twilight, a huge subterranean citadel presided over by one of Deathwing's chief lieutenants, and on the hardest difficulty, it houses a dark and terrifying secret below ground that may or may not involve eggs of some sort.
After getting a demonstration of the new high-end features in the game, we changed gears and played through the starting areas for the expansion's two new races: the Alliance worgen (a race of werewolves that can switch back to their human forms) and the Horde goblins. They begin their lives as full-on humans that later become infected by a curse that changes them to wolf-people, though they also possess the racial ability to briefly switch back to their "true form," which gains them a temporary burst of running speed. The race starts off in a remote kingdom besieged by other worgen who attack the settlement relentlessly. Your earliest quests require you to coordinate with the settlement's royalty to evacuate merchants and rustle up livestock before they're butchered until you yourself get infected by the worgen curse. Fortunately, the town alchemist treats you with a potion that lets you keep your humanity, and your ensuing quests involve defending the town from an undead encroachment.
Goblins, on the other hand, are the Horde's "whimsical" race and intended to be a foil to the Alliance's gnomes. The goblins' starting area is a broken-down scrap yard converted into a functional, half-working gadget town, complete with rickety freeways on which to drive your equally rickety hot rod (a drivable vehicle that gets added to your inventory shortly after you arrive). As a goblin character, you're part of a massive corporation of other money-grubbers who are all trying to oust the town's administrator, the merchant prince, who thinks he's so big, riding around in a miniature steam-powered mech and all. Your initial quests require you to collect trade components, hop in your hot rod to rustle up some non-player character followers who help you fight temporarily, and to don a cool leisure suit, sunglasses, and a "bling" necklace to attend a corporate pool party at the filthy, broken-down (but still functional) communal swimming pool. At the pool, you must use new temporary hotkey abilities like "pour a drink," "serve hors d'oeuvres," and "dance" to entertain a certain number of other goblin guests to help your character climb the corporate ladder.

The quests for the new races clearly have a lot of variety and are a whole lot different from the original game's "go kill 10 of these" or "go escort this character or talk to that character" quests. They also have lots of variety and interactivity, both with other characters and with the environment. Cataclysm will clearly have a lot to offer, including the entirely new experience for both new races, plus a redone "old world" Azeroth with new environments and tons of new quests, along with lots of new high-end content. The expansion will launch…when it launches.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II Review

2010-11-11T12:36:00.000+02:00

The PC version of the original Star Wars: The Force Unleashed took a fine game and turned it into a technical mess. The Force Unleashed II takes a lesser game and delivers it in a perfectly playable state. This may come as a relief to players that suffered through the original's performance difficulties, but truth be told, this sequel isn't much of a step forward. Rather, it is less enjoyable, less varied, and shorter than the game that came before it. The art design, while not very diverse, is still impressive, and the story, while not always emotionally convincing, is still dotted with poignant moments. But the frustrations of the original haven't been improved in any meaningful ways, and an incredibly bland final boss battle brings a decent action game to a limp conclusion. The Force Unleashed II has none of the spark or diversity of the first game, and though it isn't as technically troublesome, it harbors some bizarre bugs of its own.

The story is The Force Unleashed II's first notable element. On the watery planet of Kamino, Darth Vader hovers over a familiar figure. It looks to be Starkiller, the original game's leading man and Vader's unauthorized apprentice. But is it really Starkiller--the one said to have sacrificed himself for the Rebellion? Thus, you step into this man's shoes and begin your search for the truth, not to mention the search for Juno Eclipse, Starkiller's former pilot and lover. Excellent voice acting and facial animations give cutscenes emotional impact, and a sequence near the end of the game in which you are plagued by visions is a great touch that melds storytelling with gameplay. It's unfortunate that a lengthy central stretch that focuses on the combat needs of the Rebellion brings the narrative to a halt. It's also unfortunate that you may encounter broken cinematics that play audio and display subtitles over a dark screen. This common glitch is disappointing, given that the story, while not up to the standards of its predecessor, is both fitting and fulfilling. This is in part because it harks back to the original Star Wars trilogy, in which the action was not gratuitous but was granted context by human emotion and complicated relationships.
The game's art design is the other standout facet. On the world of Cato Neimodia, a rich color palette of gold, orange, and red makes an opulent palace come alive. In the final hour, the lights of looming edifices punctuate the murk. As in the first game, striking lighting and painted textures give many of your surroundings a warm, lush look. It's unfortunate that the drawn-out middle section squanders The Force Unleashed II's good looks as much as it squanders the story. The hangars and hallways capture the Imperial vibe, but the lack of diversity will have you missing the temple on Coruscant, the junkyards of Raxus Prime, and the fungal jungles of Felucia--all beautiful and prominent locations featured in the first game. A visit to an important planet in the Star Wars canon may have you excited to explore its humid regions, but there's little gameplay here, and you end up flying away to far less interesting places. A great deal of artistry went into making these locales leap off the screen, and it's regrettable that many of them are so similar that one bleeds right into the next.

The lack of variety extends beyond the game's environments. While The Force Unleashed featured Jawas, Wookies, Felucian skullblades, Rodian rippers, drones, scrap creatures, and more (in addition to the expected troops and walkers), this sequel relies heavily on the same few enemies, repeated over and over again. Armed with your dual sabers and some of the same basic Force powers of the original, you leave behind a trail of stormtroopers, AT-ST walkers, and other trooper and walker variants. You do so by slashing them with your dual lightsabers, zapping them with Force lightning, flinging them back with Force push, and using Force grip to fling objects and enemies around. The powerful physics are still impressive to behold as you toss around barrels and grab TIE fighters out of the air, as is using Force repulse to clear away a crowd of menacing robotic spiders. However, like in the original, the targeting is still imprecise, though less maddeningly so. You can now lock the camera on to a particular enemy, but this pointless addition is of absolutely no help. You still grab objects other than those you intend, and you still fling junk in directions other than that of your target. And as before, the camera might insist on an unhelpful view in linear environments, of which there are more in this outing.

The Force Unleashed II adds a few new abilities to your repertoire. One is Force sense, which is a guidance system that directs you to your objective and negates the need for a map. Another is mind trick, which confuses humanoid enemies and causes them to attack their comrades. However, neither skill is as game changing as the grapple, in which the camera zooms in while you get a good look at the powerful attack. This is cool the first few times, but the same few canned animations lose their edge quickly. Another drawback is that it grappling often works as a win button, allowing you to dash around and exterminate your humanoid foes without much resistance. The final drawback is that in one of the two grapple types, the animations break when you try to deliver a final saber slash, causing your foe to teleport back to the ground.

You can simply avoid the move if you want a greater challenge, but if you stick to standard tactics, you might get frustrated. The game tries to vary the combat by mixing up enemies in different combinations, making for annoying battles in which you face acolytes resistant to Force powers and heavy troopers resistant to lightsaber attacks at once, all while a robot spews flames at you or a couple of walkers fire missiles at you. It's nice that you can deflect those missiles or grab and fling them back, but when you're dealing with a half-dozen other enemies that might temporarily stun you on top of the ranged attacks, you stop feeling like a powerful Jedi, and the combat stops being fun. That's especially true when you want to grab an incoming rocket in the heat of battle and seize some meaningless object instead.
There are a few thrilling set-piece sections to enjoy, such as those in which you hurtle toward the ground, avoiding debris or Force pushing it out of the way. Boss fights, on the other hand, don't have the same driving momentum. A boss battle versus a hulking monstrosity is frustrating due to a limited camera, invisible walls, and unpredictable collision detection. It also drags on and on, which makes it seem like it was meant to pad the campaign's five-hour length. (Luckily, this same fight ends with a fantastic cinematic tour de force that makes the tedium almost worth it.) The final encounter is similarly protracted and perhaps the blandest chore in the game. This battle is unthinkably easy, having you perform the same exact actions over and over again for upward of 10 minutes and never requiring you to mix up techniques. It comes directly after an overlong and boring platforming sequence that dissolves any tension the game may have accumulated to this point. It's a disappointing end to a game that never reaches its potential.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II at least performs better than the original game did on the PC, but it doesn't improve on any of its core mechanics. That's unfortunate because the core combat is fun. It's a thrill to fling your foes into dangerous force fields and to zap jumptroopers with lightning and watch them uncontrollably zip around. And while the story isn't as affecting as the original's, great voice acting and cinematics (at least, the ones that work) help it make an impression nonetheless. Yet with less enjoyable boss battles, less environmental variety, and more enemy repetition, this sequel is a missed opportunity. Perhaps you can't get enough Force Unleashed; in that case, you could always return to the game wearing one of the unlockable costumes or try out some of the unlockable challenge rooms, which are timed combat scenarios of disparate quality. But Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II is too predictable and glitchy to inspire extended play time.

Fable III Preview

2010-11-11T12:32:00.000+02:00

While we just saw Fable III a few weeks ago, logging in a chunk of time from the start of the game, Microsoft offered us another opportunity to spend more time with the game at its Washington offices. As we've noted previously, the latest entry in the role-playing series leans into the theme of choices--great and small--and how they affect the world. Our time with the game let us cover some of the territory we just saw, albeit tightened up some, and also take a more exploratory route through the game.

The early stretch of our time with Fable III played out as before with players being given the choice to pick their gender and familiarize themselves with the current state of Albion, where things start to go poorly pretty quickly. Once the setup is complete, the game still keeps its training wheels on for a bit as you're guided to some set locations and directed through the start of some of the main story quests. However, once you've cleared those required to set up the story and introduce you to the concept of followers and the Road to Rule leveling system, you're free to move along at your own pace.
Your trusty canine buddy is back and always eager to direct you to loot--both obvious and hidden--so you can go exploring for a while if you like. If you're the more devoted sort, you can invest a good amount of time mingling with the various locals you'll meet in towns and other places to build relationships with them that yield guild seals. These are Fable III's nearest equivalent to experience points. Not only does this help with moving through the various gates along the Road to Rule that require a certain number of followers and seals, but it also makes new quests available to you that are specific to building your relationship with a particular character.
If you're feeling more entrepreneurial, you can take on various jobs and make some cash you can use to get a house, set up a shop, or get yourself some nice clothes. But, if you're a no-nonsense linear-gameplay-loving type, you can choose to bypass the side stuff and work your way through the story, which appears to give you just enough followers and guild seals to keep you moving along through the Road to Rule.

However, if you opt to stick to the central story religiously and don't let yourself get sidetracked, you may regret it. Your guild seal count will force you to make some choices about how to upgrade your character, as many upgrades will require more seals than you'll have if you try to tear through the game. We learned fairly quickly that it's probably in your best interest to pick up every upgrade you can on the Road to Rule to ensure you're buffed up enough to deal with the mobs of enemies you'll encounter. Speaking of enemies, the revamped combat system works amazingly well, even in the work-in-progress version of the game we tried. Combos are key to battle and the three-button system keeps them attainable. Juggling straight melee combat with magic and firearms is a very satisfying experience, thanks to the charge moves you can work into the mix. As before, the tactics you favor will help your character evolve in a specific direction, which lets you buff up in the areas that are central to how you play.
The visuals in the work-in-progress version of the game we played were coming together well. Albion is a picturesque place teeming with variety. The different environments we've seen strike a nice balance between new and familiar. The world has a more “lived in” look to it this time out, which we expect is due to all the oppression going on, though we did come across some places that still had some natural beauty to them. The residents and your chosen character are an expressive bunch that come alive as you try out whatever interaction options you have on them. Animation on your character and the various non-player characters you'll come across tend to be where you'll find the game's broadest stabs at humor so far.
In terms of effects, there's quite a bit going on during combat, thanks to the different options open to you. Magic is obviously where you'll find the flashiest effects; the fire and shock spells we saw were impressive and tossed around a good amount of particles and lighting. Melee and gunplay, while not quite as showy as magic, featured more cinematic flourishes tied to camera angles and more subtle lighting to reflect your charged attacks. The unfinished version of the game ran fairly smoothly, although there were the occasional hitches that are to be expected when dealing with an unfinished game.

Based on these recent sessions with the game, we're anxious to spend more time with Fable III. The various refinements and overhauls Lionhead's done give the game a decidedly different feel from its predecessors. While this has changed the game's pacing and balance to a more action-oriented direction, it doesn't appear to have diminished the fun to be had in single-player. We're also very anxious to see how the experience we had is affected by the multiplayer elements. We'll be curious to see how the whole promising package fares when the game ships next month for the Xbox 360.

Test Drive Unlimited 2 Preview

2010-11-11T12:25:00.000+02:00

The original Test Drive Unlimited was a massive, open, online racing game that let you cruise around the magnificent island of O'ahu and challenge other players at a whim through its seamless online integration. The goal of the game was to earn money to purchase the most luxurious (and expensive) cars in the world, and the sequel's premise pretty much follows the same idea. However, this time, the game has a new narrative and you start off on the gorgeous Mediterranean island of Ibiza. We sat in on an hour-long demo of Test Drive Unlimited 2 with senior producer Nour Polloni, who went over several new features as we drooled over the sweet cars that will likely only exist for us in a virtual world.

Polloni began the presentation by highlighting some of the key features of Test Drive Unlimited 2. You can now progress through the game through four different means: competition, social, discovery or collection. The social aspect of the game seems to be a huge focus this time around. Like other massive online games, you can now form a club (similar to a guild or clan), as well as work with others to earn money and build up your reputation. By being active in a club and making friends, you'll increase your social level, which will also go toward raising your global progression. Taking on challenges or creating them will increase your competition level. Now, you'll also be rewarded for wandering off the beaten path, as well as exploring every nook and cranny of the 380-square-km. island. Like a treasure hunt, if you come across car wrecks, you can salvage them and build your own car that won't be available to a dealer anywhere. It looks like regardless of what you decide to do with your time, you'll earn some kind of reward and be continuously working toward your raising your level.
To enhance your experience of admiring or shopping for a car, you can wander around garages, lobbies, and dealerships with your customizable avatar. Instead of navigating through menus, you can now sit and chat with friends in a car at the dealership as you debate the vehicle's features or pick the colors from the car manufacturer's catalog. The shimmer of metallic paint was noticeable as we walked around a bright blue Audi TT RS and were told that the definition in the modeling had been increased. For example, you can see all the minute details, from more refined lines down to the texture of the leather and the stitching within the car. For now, we're only able to reveal the cars that will be in the game, including: Gumpert Apollo Sport, Dodge Viper SRT10, Dodge Charger SRT8, Aston Martin DBS, Ford Mustang GT, Koenigsegg CCXR Edition, and the Audi TT RS Roadster. There were several other high-end cars that we got a chance to look at, but the developers are saving that information for another time.
Based on community feedback, the developers added a day-night cycle so that you can cruise around at night or sit back in your convertible and watch the sunrise from the coast. The cycle takes two-and-a-half hours, so that if you play at the same time every day, you'll be experiencing a different time of day in the game. The developers drove the TT out along the deserted but sandy beach while the waves lapped calmly along the shore and just sat back to admire the golden glow of the sky as the sun dipped beneath the horizon. Now, if only all of this were real. Snapping us back to reality, we zoomed out to view the island from a satellite view and saw that the surrounding sea has been reworked. You can now see the coral reefs and sea depth, as well as the varied landscape that exists on Ibiza. The weather can also change, so it's one thing to be cruising with the top down on a sunny day; it'll be a little more difficult having to navigate through a thunderstorm. Now that vehicle damage has been added, it'll cost money to fix the cosmetic wounds, so tearing across the fields in your Gumpert Apollo may not be such a good idea.

There is 930 km. of road, and 310 km. of it are off-road trails that are indicated by yellow lines when you zoom out of your map, which could take you about 20 hours if you wanted to drive over all of it. We were told that there will be 4x4 cars to handle this kind of terrain, so if you want to go wild with the drifting and skidding, you'll earn money for showing off your skills--just try not to hit anything. Minor damage will show in the form of scratches and can reach a point where the body parts loosen up. All of this is just for looks however, so it won't affect your driving (just your wallet). Dirt will get on your car if you spend a lot of time in the backcountry, but you can always wait for the weather to change to get a free car wash.

Launching an instant challenge is faster now, and there are dozens of multiplayer challenges that we saw on the map, but we weren't given any details about them. You can still create your own challenge with the editor, choose the type of race that you want, mark off your start/finish line, and then drive the challenge to give it a reference time to beat. Your challenge is posted to the gambling hall where other players can pay the fee you set and try to earn your reward. Other online players will drop in or drop out of your game, and you can filter the kinds of drivers you want to see. For example, you can choose just to have your friends or Aston Martin owners. Your avatar isn't the only thing that represents your personality online. To show how tacky you can really be, you can swing by the sticker and car paint shop to customize your vehicle by slapping on as many decals or layers of paint as you like.

To give players a sense of community, you can create or join a racing club where everyone will band together to try to build the reputation of that club and earn money (or donate) for upgrades. The president is responsible for managing the club, but responsibilities can be assigned to other members. You can challenge other clubs, as well as take on internal challenges between members. While you wait on the street for your competitors to show up, you can walk around and chat with your opponents in the virtual lobby instead of waiting on a menu screen. There are three upgrades to a club, which will give you and up to 32 members access to exclusive cars (like the Gumbert), as well as swanky club houses. Only one member can drive the club-exclusive car at any given time, so if you see one on the road, you'll know that the member is part of a club that has earned one of its upgrades. You can only be a part of one club at a time, so pick wisely.
The whole point of the game is to go from rags to riches, and in order to be able to collect all 208 cars, you need to have the space the house them. There are 100 different homes you can possess and many have breathtaking vistas or even a yacht. You can customize the furniture and tiling in your home, as well as invite friends over at any given moment. To see the stats and achievements of other players, each individual has a MyLife profile where you can take a photo of you avatar, as well as filter the achievements you want shown on your profile.
One of the last things we were shown was one of the game's cooperative modes. You can have a friend jump in a car with you and give you directions to his or her house. Your friend can bring up icons to direct you or be your GPS through voice chat. This allows the other player to just take the passenger seat and cruise around with you. We ended our demo by heading over to another player's yacht--the most expensive house you can buy--where we promptly changed into our bathing suits and jumped into the Jacuzzi. Details were vague, but we were told there were advantages to owning such a place and that it would offer "activities."

There was a lot that was shown in the course of an hour, as well as plenty of other features that have yet to be revealed, and we'd like to play the game for ourselves to see how everything handles. The game looks great so far and was running fairly smoothly for the most part. Another important aspect of the game has to do with the airport; as you progress through the game, you'll eventually gain access to the Ibiza airport. From there, you can then take a plane (and your car) to O'ahu and drive around that island all over again. The graphics have been redone and another 600 km. of asphalt, as well as off-road trails, have been added. There will also be new missions and side missions, so those who spent a lot of time with the first game should have enough reason to head back. Polloni stressed that Eden Games is paying close attention to the community feedback and there are already plans to have downloadable content. Motorcycles won't be available on day one, but they are something the developers intend to include.
The next time we'll see Test Drive Unlimited 2 will be at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, so be sure to stay tuned for more information as soon as it becomes available. The game is scheduled to be released this fall on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC.

James Bond 007: Blood Stone Review

2010-11-11T12:06:00.002+02:00

Like a great Bond movie, James Bond 007: Blood Stone jumps headfirst into a spectacular action scene before the opening credits even roll. Going from silently dropping enemies on a ritzy yacht right into a pair of harrowing chase scenes--first by boat on the Mediterranean and then by car on the streets of Athens--this third-person action game from Bizarre Creations makes a thoroughly memorable first impression. What follows is a game that takes its sweet time stepping outside the shadow of this explosive prologue, as a number of early levels fall prey to flat pacing and drab, predictable level design. Such woes don't last forever, though, because the invigorating energy of that opening scene returns full force in the latter half of the adventure. The result is an uneven yet worthwhile James Bond experience, aided in no small part by stellar production values that make it easy to forget that this Bond story isn't tied to a new movie.

There's no hiding the fact that the events driving Blood Stone's narrative are paint-by-numbers James Bond. You begin the game on a hunt to track down a weapons dealer bent on terrorizing the G20 Summit, but a tangled conspiracy sends Bond all over the globe tracking down the usual array of informants, turncoats, and crime lords. It's a story that succeeds not because of any emotional connection to the proceedings, but because of the sheer variety of situations Bond winds up in. At any given point, you might find yourself amid a gunfight in Monaco taking cover behind a craps table; speeding your Aston Martin across the cracking ice sheets of a frozen Siberian river; or darting across the rain-slick rooftops of Bangkok not five minutes after gazing at majestic humpback whales inside an aquarium. The voices of Daniel Craig and Judi Dench add familiarity to the cast, while the brisk cutscenes do a good job of capturing the detached, no-nonsense demeanor of Craig-era James Bond.

For the most part, the variety established by the globe-trotting plot is echoed in the game's action. Blood Stone is very much a hybrid of genres, a game that tries its hand at a lot of things and succeeds at most of them. To run the full list, Blood Stone is simultaneously a third-person shooter with a heavy reliance on cover; a stealth game that values melee takedowns over firefights; a racer replete with frantic chase scenes and explosive tracks; and a gadget-driven espionage simulator. The gadgets are the only major weak link. Pulling open your impossibly powerful smartphone allows you to scan and manipulate your surroundings, performing tasks such as cloning hard drives and cracking security points with little more than the press of a button. Ultimately harmless in their simplicity, these moments of espionage don't detract from the gameplay so much as they pad it with repetitive filler--every scan feels the same, and there's generally little context for why something needs hacking.
That said, on-foot combat is what makes up the bulk of your adventure. Played purely as a third-person shooter, Blood Stone is solid, though a bit unspectacular. The cover mechanics are intuitive and responsive, while weapon sound effects and enemy animations harmonize nicely to make for an impactful shooting experience--though a lack of variety in weaponry and enemy types holds back the core gunplay. Fortunately, Blood Stone is also a game that incentivizes stylish melee combat as a complement to shooting your way through a situation. Any enemy within a few feet of you can be swiftly and brutally taken down with a single button press. From judo-chopping an enemy's throat to choking him with your legs, these vicious takedowns are dead simple to pull off but never get old. Melee takedowns also earn you a "focus kill," which is a mechanic that works similarly to Splinter Cell: Conviction's "mark and execute." These focus kills allow you to string together headshots in rapid succession--up to three in a row--in order to ramp up the pace up and really tear through a shoot-out.

The combat is at its best when you're doing just that: carving your way through enemies with a sense of urgency that deftly mimics a Bond movie's brisk action scenes. The aforementioned Bangkok rooftop level is a prime example of Blood Stone playing to its strengths. You're running after someone with ties to a figure you need to learn more about, and it's a chase that sends you leaping across buildings and quickly dropping every bad guy unlucky enough to get in your way. The game does its best to mix up the pacing so that it's not constantly at full throttle, which is a tack that works quite well in the varied and exciting second half. But Blood Stone's first half isn't nearly as well executed, and pronounced stretches of time when you encounter repetitive environments and few enemies are more the rule than the exception. A lengthy trek through the catacombs of Istanbul is littered with barren, claustrophobic corridors, while a stealthy infiltration into a Siberian oil complex carries all the excitement of a sightseeing tour through a Soviet-era office building. Scenes like these--merely inoffensive rather than bad--could be fine as palate cleansers punctuating sustained action scenes, but linked together they simply leave you yearning for the next big set-piece battle.

While the combat takes a while to warm up, the game's driving scenes are consistently exciting from start to finish. At certain points in the story, Bond jumps behind the wheel of a car to chase someone down--generally at the end of a mission as a sort of climactic transition point toward the next chapter. You race through all manner of delightfully chaotic situations, whether it's escaping an exploding oil refinery in Siberia as fire and debris rain from the heavens or testing the speed limitations of a tow truck as you're zipping through construction sites and crumbling freeway overpasses in Bangkok. Bizarre's pedigree as a racing developer is on full display here (the studio is well known for its Project Gotham series): each vehicle features handling that's forgiving enough to allow for some mistakes, but challenging enough to keep the tension levels high. In fact, these cinematic chase scenes are so exciting that you'll wish there were more of them. As is, they make up less than a quarter of the overall game.
One of the reasons the chase scenes are so much fun is that the detailed environments and visual effects really put you in the moment, which is something of a theme for the game as a whole. When Blood Stone isn't keeping you locked up indoors, it's an aesthetically pleasing game. Whether it's the nighttime fireworks above the Monaco skyline or the sunlight dancing off your car's chrome fender as you speed through Istanbul, objects and environments tend to be rich and varied. Your movement animations when you're running around a level can be awkward from time to time, but on the whole, Blood Stone has clearly benefited from a high attention to detail in its visual design. The PC version of the game is definitely the prettiest, with a large number of resolutions and graphics options to scale to your hardware. In terms of audio, the soundtrack does a great job of establishing varied emotions. The music is unmistakably James Bond, with all the extravagant horns and crashing drums you'd expect from a story focused on the beloved English superspy. It's a soundtrack that underscores the tension of big chase scenes and establishes a more subdued feel during mid-mission cutscenes.

A no-frills multiplayer component is included in Blood Stone, but it's a vanilla third-person shooter experience right on down to teams of red versus blue. Modes include team deathmatch and a couple of objective-based contests, but no matter the mode, the combat is much slower and plodding than the fast-paced levels that make up the best parts of the single-player story. Consequently, the online features don't add a whole lot more value to the relatively short (five or six hour) single-player campaign. It's an online feature set that winds up reinforcing the lingering idea that Blood Stone could have been something quite special if it offered a more consistently exciting experience across the board, but the end result is a game that feels held back by a nervous reluctance toward going all in. But when it hits those high notes--which it does more often than not--Blood Stone is a quality action game. From exciting driving to fast-paced and stylish combat, Blood Stone is an enjoyable foray into the world of James Bond in spite of its flaws.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Preview

2010-11-11T11:34:00.002+02:00

Need for Speed publisher EA is frank about the position of its premier racing series, that is, in the doldrums, after some recent lacklustre offerings. "We were beating up the franchise," says Patrick Soderlund, EA senior vice president. "We wanted to come back from [Need for Speed] Undercover." The decline was attributed to an unworkable one-year development cycle--"You can't make quality that way," he says--and so development duties for this latest instalment went to Criterion, the British studio behind the Burnout series.

With its racing game pedigree and a longer development period in hand, Criterion settled down to making Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, which Soderlund describes as the 1998 PlayStation game (Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit) built for a new generation.
Accordingly, cops-versus-racers action is the hook, and Criterion is well suited to deliver it. The multiplayer modes centre on aggressive, top-speed, eight-driver chases, with players cast either as illegal racers or as the Seacrest County police, who are dispatched to shut them down by any means necessary--with those means ranging from barging them off the road, to spike strips, to electromagnetic pulse weapons. The career mode, on the other hand, is split between that of the racer and the police. You can independently make progress on either side, unlocking events and vehicles for each and earning the bounty you need to reach wanted level 20 (as a racer) or rank 20 (as a cop).
The racer's career is mapped out as time trials, races, duels, and hot pursuits pinpointed across West Coast USA Seacrest County--a state that conveniently spans timber forest, desert, canyon, valley, snowy mountainside, and sandy seafront. Career challenges for the police differ, adding the likes of the chase-and-takedown interceptor event. The developer has declined to go open world; locations are discrete and routes straightforward, with the occasional side route that may or may not be a shortcut.

The game is keen to remind you it is "powered by Autolog"--an overarching social network that links your experience to that of friends, tracking your accomplishments against theirs, sharing photos, and recommending events to try. And though Autolog is the chief innovation in Hot Pursuit, it will still be the core action--that is, the actual driving--that carries the day, or not. It has been up to the task so far, with great drifty arcade handling set off by handsome environments and, as you'd hope, even better-looking cars.
As a racer in career mode, your first vehicles include the sports series' Porsche Boxster Spyder, the BMW Z4 sDrive 35is, the Mazda RX-8, and the Nissan 370Z, and then, as you progress into the performance cars of the second series, you gain access to motors such as the Maserati Gran Cabrio, the Jaguar XKR, and the Alfa Romeo 8C. As a cop, you start out with the classic Ford Crown Victoria and then graduate to a highway patrol Subaru Impreza WRX ST1 and beyond.
Before you reach the rarest and fastest cars in the uppermost series, you get a taste of what's to come in preview events. These time trials temporarily loan you one of the most exotic models: a Pagani Zonda Cinque, for starters, followed by a Porsche 911 GT3 R5, and then a McLaren F1. Hooning down a highway through a snowfield at 200-plus miles per hour in the latter makes the earliest drives feel practically leisurely. Some events in the performance series are designed specifically to showcase car types, pitting American muscle cars against each other along a desert highway, plus Italian convertibles alongside a beach, and German all-wheel drives on a stormy night on wet roads.

The familiar, Burnout-like handling is accompanied by Burnout's trademark spectacular crashes and bodywork-crumpling slow-mo instant replays. These come thick and fast in the most aggressive career events, between the feisty AI and the constant incentive to drive into oncoming traffic; your nitrous boost is refilled by slipstreaming other cars and driving in the wrong lane. Play feels agreeably accessible; the crashes, if they don't wreck you, are spectacular hiccups rather than race-losing, controller-clenching disasters.
Accessibility extends into the game's steady tick of unlocks and levelling. Though finishing a race in the top three will land you bonus experience points (bounty), these can be picked up all over the place, with encouraging onscreen pop-ups for dodging police roadblocks or nearby crashes, for reaching top speed, for wrecking a cop, and so on. That accessibility, combined with Criterion's eye for quality and detail (the eclectic soundtrack mixes Pendulum, M.I.A., Plan B, and Bad Religion), should serve it well upon launch in November. EA will be praying the studio has turned out what Soderlund calls the "first real comeback for Need for Speed."

The Sims Medieval Exclusive Hands-On - Building a Kingdom, Plus More Gameplay Details

2010-11-11T11:32:00.001+02:00

What is The Sims Medieval? It's the next game in The Sims series. That is to say…it's not quite an expansion pack, and it's not quite The Sims 4, but man…! So to answer your question, we don't know. In any case, we recently played it alongside executive producer Rachel Bernstein and have new details to report on just how this unusual new entry in the series--which takes place in ancient times, puts you in the role of blacksmiths, kings, and other medieval professions, and has distinct victory conditions, after which the game ends--actually works.

Our session began with hands-off demonstrations of some of the game's new content, which included a quick pass of your typical kingdom in Medieval. Unlike in The Sims, in which your focus is generally on a nuclear family living in a single house that you may or may not have built, in Medieval, you'll be an unseen deity presiding over an entire kingdom. You'll steer your domain toward one of a handful of different kingdom-based goals aligned with four different kingdom statistics: well-being (general health and economy), security (military strength), culture (provided by artists and minstrels), and knowledge (provided by the arcane research of wizards).
Your typical Medieval kingdom includes not only a monarch's castle (with stony add-ons on either side, such as knight's barracks), but also marketplaces (which can house a town square, a blacksmith, and other crafting services), docks (a home for seafaring ships, which can be used for commerce, diplomacy, and adventurous travel), the gallows (the home of the stocks, where unlawful sims are imprisoned, as well as the pit of the beast, where condemned sims are executed), and a leisure area. This is the home of the fictitious sport of kingball (which, Bernstein explained, is a totally fictitious sport--a version of tetherball, but more…peasant-y).

We then revisited the throne room to catch up with the monarch, who was busy with matters of diplomacy. Medieval's diplomacy model lets you make nice with your neighbors after you make that first diplomatic contact with them by traveling to their castles by boat. After you do so, their nations appear next to yours on the game's old-timey map along with information on your general relations level with them, as well as any trading resources they may have to offer and any ongoing edicts that are on the table.
Edicts in Medieval are cross-kingdom proclamations that affect trade and general law in each kingdom, and your monarch (and other monarchs) can propose them at any time from the scribe's table. Whether or not your nation's edicts get enough votes to pass depends on whether your propositions benefit other nations and whether other nations like yours enough to agree with you. As it turns out, it is possible to please all the people all of the time by forging strong alliances with all your neighbors--it just isn't easy. But if you care to, you can actually set the goal of having favorable relations with every single neighboring kingdom as your kingdom goal and work toward winning a game session that way. Or, you could try to build the biggest and best kingdom there ever was--accomplishing any of these goals earns you achievement points that carry over between games.
Build mode and buy mode from The Sims are both alive and well in Medieval, but they work differently. Buy mode, as we've mentioned, will not let you modify the geometry of a castle, but it will let you add and move any appropriate furnishings you like. It will also let you use a color wheel to tint and layer whichever colors you like onto whatever furnishings you like. You'll be able to choose from a number of different mural wallpapers to adorn your castle walls, and you can even choose from a variety of different light sources. These include torches, lanterns, and even glowing, wizardly orbs that not only cast ambient light, but can also be customized to cast light of a specific color (so you can create an appropriately gloomy purple throne room for a wicked despot). As a matter of fact, Medieval will have an entirely new lighting engine that extends to the exterior and models real-time shadows for clouds that pass over the landscape.
Building in Medieval turns the screen a washed-out sepia-tone brown color and highlights any empty lots in your demesne with a blue icon. Adding new structures is a matter of clicking on a preset empty lot and then dropping in whichever building you want--the structure materializes soon thereafter and can serve its purpose in your township. For instance, the knight's barracks we added to as a west wing to our castle not only made for a tasteful accompaniment, but it also immediately increased our kingdom's security rating by one point. We then built a wizard tower, which increased our kingdom's potential knowledge rating by up to four points. In all cases, once you build a building, you must assign a hero to staff that structure (such as a knight for the barracks or a wizard for a tower). At this point, you can either use the game's modified create-a-sim tool to make your very own custom hero from scratch or alternately, you can use a pre-generated hero character the game provides (but where's the fun in that?).
As we've mentioned in earlier previews, Medieval's create-a-sim is loaded with completely new art assets that represent the more austere time period. When creating our wizard, we were able to choose between a variety of brand new faces, along with clothing sets that included extravagant robes and the humbler rags of a hedge wizard (a padded suit with various pouches strapped to it). Our knight had the choice of various types of armor, including plate mail and chain mail, with or without heraldic designs. If you happen to create a combination of face, hair, and clothes you particularly like, you can save it to your computer as a template and then go back to it whenever you create a new character.Perhaps more importantly, creating a new character lets you choose his or her personality, which includes two (potentially) positive traits and a fatal flaw trait. Our enchantress chose the eloquent and evil traits to get her started and the cruel fatal flaw, which would later inform her action. We then took our first, Elton John-inspired quest, "The Witch Is Back," a quest that introduced a witch into the kingdom's population. Like all of Medieval's quests, this one offered different approaches for a solution. In all cases, these multiple paths will involve different characters and different rewards in terms of your character's skill points (which increase his or her professional prowess, such as spellcasting for a wizard or dueling for a knight), experience points (which help him or her gain levels), and overall kingdom points. This particular quest had three possible solutions: "A Witch No More," an aggressive solution that would require us to slay the hag; "Delightful Wedding," which would require us to somehow get the witch to marry the monarch; or "Counterspellin'," which would require us to use a priest character to sap the witch's power.

Being the evil, cruel, but well-spoken sorceress we were, we chose the violent path and headed to the lab in our wizard tower to begin "scrying"--a magical process that would reveal the location of the witch. With the help of some cheat codes that the developer helpfully entered for us, we cheated our wizard up to the game's highest experience level of 10 (purely for demonstration purposes), just so we could guarantee a successful scrying session and also to unlock all the game's magic. Medieval's magic spells are tied to eight different runes, which you'll acquire over the course of a wizard or priest's career and relate to elemental powers, such as energy, air, and light. In order to cast a spell, you must call upon (that is, left-click) the spell's three runes in the correct three-rune sequence. The game will have several different spells (and a few undocumented rune combinations that will have hidden effects), but for our purposes, the appropriately deadly sounding magic arrow--which is currently invoked by selecting the rune for energy, then the rune for air, then the rune for light--was sufficient.
We then set out to go witch hunting, with our first stop being the king's throne room. Each of Medieval's quests has a separate task window that appears in the bottom-left corner of the screen and tells you exactly what you need to do next to progress. In this case, the first leg of our journey required us to warn the king of the witch's presence. We entered the king's antechamber and immediately found the monarch lounging near the throne. We immediately approached the lackadaisical leader and chose the "warn about witch" social. And despite our character's appropriately melodramatic hand-waving and hysterical "simlish" gibberish, the king refused to heed our warning, dismissing the idea of a witch in his kingdom as a baseless rumor. Discouraged, we checked our quest log, which changed to a new goal--alerting at least three other townspeople of the witch's presence. This was presumably so that the spreading news might eventually cause the citizenry to once again bring the issue before the king. After alerting two very lovely ladies-in-waiting in the throne room, we decided we'd run out of patience and instead did something more in character for an evil and cruel enchantress: We used magic arrow on the king, zapping the sovereign senseless, but fortunately, not killing him.
It was at this point that we got a rundown from the producer on how fatality works in Medieval. Yes, this will be a T-rated game, but yes, sims will die--and in a variety of ways. Lethal magic spells are just one way for lords and ladies to shuffle off this mortal coil. For instance, there are also sword duels to the death that can take place among knights and monarchs. While the typical duel is merely for sport and can be used to gain experience points and skill points in fighting, you can, in fact, send your foe to that great big castle keep in the sky. In addition, if you fall completely out of favor with the townsfolk, they may sentence you to be fed to the beast in the pit--a mostly hidden critter whose only visible feature is a giant tentacle or two that lunges up from its lair and drags in its victims to be devoured offscreen; not unlike another pit beast from a certain galaxy far, far away. However, Bernstein pointed out that characters can build a relationship with the pit beast by feeding it, so that they can actually escape death when the friendly beast refuses to devour them.

We then capped our demonstration session off with a quick hands-on demonstration of crafting, which will also play a significant role in Medieval. We played as a pre-generated blacksmith and embarked on a quest to find an apprentice. Though to begin with, the first few steps required us to remain at our smithy and build a few basic components. Smithing, like Medieval's other crafting skills, requires that your characters possess all the necessary items in their inventory (such as raw materials and tools), and it also requires you to use the proper environmental fixtures--in this case, a red-hot forge and an anvil for pounding out metal. In order to begin smithing, we had our smith--equipped with the proper tools and raw metals--first approach the forge and select the option to begin crafting, which pulled up a glowing, two-level meter onscreen. As our crafting metal got hotter and hotter, the heat level on our crafting meter got closer and closer to our target heat level--but also closer to the slightly higher "overheat" level (which, if reached, means that your project is ruined). We ended our heating session right at our ideal heat level and then canceled the action to heat the metal and sent our smith over to the anvil to begin hammering away. This process took a certain amount of time, but while our smith hammered away, the crafting meter gradually declined, indicating that the metal was cooling. And if it got too cold, the project would be lost. Fortunately, we'd heated our materials up sufficiently to finish our crafting project on time and were soon the proud owner of a pair of apprentice's tongs.
The Sims Medieval is clearly forging a new path for The Sims with a lot more storytelling and a lot more role-playing elements. This unique game will be released in March of next year.

Star Wars: The Old Republic Impressions: Warzones and Craftin

2010-11-11T11:25:00.001+02:00

"Immersion" is the watchword for this massively multiplayer Star Wars game. It not only applies to BioWare's heavy investment in storytelling and fully voiced dialogue--about which we've heard plenty--but also to more traditionally game-y segments of an online role-playing game such as this: the player-versus-player combat, as well as the gathering and crafting system. In a presentation on the game's crafting and warzones (the PVP arenas announced at the Electronic Entertainment Expo), BioWare bods Blaine Christine and Gabe Amatangelo explained how the number-crunching, stat-based heart of each would be concealed to maintain immersion.
The crafting and gathering, for starters, have been designed to fit into the player's experience in a way that is credible with respect to the fiction. As Christine puts it, more or less, it doesn't make sense for a badass Darth Vader-like Sith to skin womp rats for a new pair of boots in between conquering worlds. And, so, the coherent fictional basis for crafting is the crew skills system. "You are the hero," says Christine. "You make your crew work for you."

That crew is made up of the companion characters acquired as you play, with your spaceship as their base of operations. From the ship, your companions can be dispatched to gather materials and commanded to craft items while you go about the business of being, for instance, a Darth Vader-like Sith badass. These crew instructions can also be radioed back to the ship while you are planetside (we saw companion characters toiling over a spaceship workbench in the presentation), and crew members might join you while you quest. They may perhaps gather materials while you fend off enemies (we were shown a shot of Twi'lek character Vette foraging for materials while the player character battled a non-player character foe).

Among the four gathering skills to be included in the game is bioanalysis--the acquisition of information, schematics, and raw materials from living (or dead) creatures. With recipe-like items, companion characters will be able to manufacture useful kits for you; with one of the crafting skills, biochem, they can craft stimpaks, adrenals, and implants to confer benefits on your main character. Alongside gathering and crafting skills come mission skills. Of these, Christine touched on diplomacy and treasure hunting (one of Vette's specialties, as a Twi'lek pirate). With the latter, you can send companions off on errands to gather treasure, while diplomacy missions, for a dark-side character, involve having crew members do your evil bidding and spread your wicked influence around the galaxy. For these missions (say, bribing a senator), you might be rewarded with a shift in your light- or dark-side alignment.

The crew can also undertake this gathering, crafting, and evildoing while you are offline; progress is made both in game time and in your downtime, so you can queue up tasks. When you return to the game, you'll find your treasure hunted and boots crafted, for example, if the needed time has elapsed. It's an interesting remedy for the traditional grind in massively multiplayer online role-playing game profession systems.
Away from crafting and back to fighting, Gabe Amatangelo discussed warzones and player-on-player combat. The warzones are instanced--that is, there will be multiple instances of each to accommodate multiple matches--and can be queued from anywhere in the gameworld, though the first warzone to go on show is set on Alderaan, Princess Leia's homeworld. Here, the PVP battle takes place around a recently discovered planetary defense cannon, with Republic and Empire teams fighting for control of the cannon to destroy the opposing force's ship, which looms overhead. At the moment, the warzone battles are fought with two teams of eight, which are assembled with the help of a matchmaking system, though team sizes may change before the game's release, and PVP combat is rewarded with "all the fixins'" says Amatangelo--meaning the expected gear and tokens.

In warzones, player immersion is kept intact with what Amatangelo calls "a visceral coat of paint" to dress up the points-based progress and other game-y elements considered immersion breaking. Instead of capturing flags or bases, you control gun batteries in order to point them at the enemy's warship looming overhead. Instead of a tick of points as you near victory, your progress is indicated by the visible damage on the smoking, burning ship. Devices, such as respawn timers, are hidden with fiction, too: If you are killed, you reenter the battle by riding a transport vessel down from your ship, with the journey to the battlefield masking your respawn delay.

Expect to hear more on warzones in coming months; Amatangelo says the next warzone to be revealed will be set on a derelict starship and will contrast with the capture-and-hold objectives on Alderaan with "an entirely different gameplay mechanic."

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood First Look

2010-11-11T08:42:00.001+02:00

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood continues the story of Eizo Auditore da Firenze in dramatic fashion. After waking up in bed next to a buxom redhead who`s begging him for another round of action. Eizo finds Villa Auditore under attack from a torrent of cannonballs. Our hero makes his escape across the rooftops, before jumping on a horse and mounting a counterattack. It's an impressively bombastic return for the Italian assassin, and considering that we called him a "terrific new character" in our review of Assassin's Creed II, we're incredibly pleased to see him back.

Brotherhood takes place pretty much immediately after Assassin's Creed II, in 1499. Ezio is happy and his villa is prospering, but there's a new villain on the scene named Cesare--the general of the Papal army. Cesare happens to be the son of Rodrigo Borgia--the villain of ACII--and they're both out to get the newly contented Ezio. Cesare launches an attack on Ezio's villa, with cannonballs lobbed into the town as large towers deliver the evil general's soldiers over the walls.

Ubisoft promises that new advanced equestrian moves will improve on the horseback riding from the last game, with new attack and acrobatic skills on offer. Ezio is also able to use the town's cannons to launch a counterattack on the army, using it to destroy other cannons and towers that are used to get soldiers over the walls. All of the action is directed in a fast and frantic manner, highlighted by Ezio's new ability to use merchandise lifts to scale heights quickly. Ubisoft claims to have listened to fan feedback about ACII, particularly in the combat system. You'll now be rewarded for striking first and hard, with one combo that we saw ending with him shooting his opponent dead from close range.

Ezio's fight didn't end successfully in the demo we saw--despite Ezio's valiant attempts, Cesare breached the gate, showed off an item called the Apple of Eden, and proceeded to shoot Ezio's uncle Mario. At this point, Ezio passed out and fell off the rooftop, in a cutscene that hinted at a major new development in the story. Ubisoft then moved on to demonstrate Brotherhood's new gameplay mechanics. You'll be able to give hope to the people by building up an army of assassins--the Brotherhood of the title--and help restore balance to Italy.

The section we saw jumped forward to Rome in 1503. The archers on the rooftops are now gunmen, and we watched as Ezio called in another assassin to jump in and use concealed blades to bring the guard down. If you need to take out a group of enemies, you can call in an arrow shower, or your team can jump in and fight alongside you hand-to-hand. We watched as Ubisoft demonstrated all these techniques to kill a religious figure in a church, before fighting a group of enemies outside. We didn't get a good feel for how the commands were issued, but it looked simple and impressive in action.

You'll be able to upgrade your team of assassins as you progress. You'll have a set number of tokens to spend, and you'll have to allocate them wisely so that you have the right balance of skills for each situation. The assassins can also die in a fight, so you won't want to send them into a situation they won't be able to handle. If you improve their experience enough, they'll become master assassins and will really be able to help you take care of Cesare.

Brotherhood will also continue the story of Desmond, and according to Ubisoft, "very important things" will happen to the contemporary character. We weren't given specifics, other than that the developer will "start to close some doors" on Desmond's story, so we'll have to wait and see what that rather ominous statement means. Thankfully, Rome will be three times the size of Florence from ACII, so there will be plenty to do in the game as Ezio. Watch out for Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood on November 16 2010, and in the meantime, you'll be able to check out our multiplayer hands-on later on during this year's E3.

F.E.A.R. 3 First Look

2010-11-11T08:34:00.001+02:00

How do yo make a co-op game scary? That's the question looming over Day 1 Studios, the developer behind the upcoming shooter F.E.A.R. 3. Having taken the helm of this supernatural action franchise from original developer Monolith, Day 1 is out to maintain the series' trademark horror elements while building a story campaign around the concept of two players unfurling a paranormal conspiracy side by side.
The notion of the cooperative first-person shooter is nothing new. In fact, it's a feature that's very nearly become a staple of the genre at this point. But for a horror game, it's an entirely different story. These games are built around the uneasiness that one player feels moving ever alone through dimly lit corridors, foggy forests, or whatever other locations disaster/aliens/zombies have struck. What Day 1 is aiming to do with F.E.A.R. 3 is take that uneasiness and uncertainty that a solo player feels and apply it to a fragile cooperative alliance.

F.E.A.R. 3 stars Point Man and Paxton Fettel, which are two names that won't mean much at all if you haven't played the first F.E.A.R. If not, let's bring you up to speed: These two are brothers with a rather rough history between them. Point Man was the first game's protagonist, a supersoldier operating under orders to kill Fettel, a telepathic wizard using his gift to slaughter innocent people. Despite being kin, Point Man carries out his orders and shoots Fettel dead. But that was the original. Things are a little different now.

In F.E.A.R. 3, Fettel returns as a ghostly figure haunting his brother's every move. He occupies a spooky middle ground between companion and antagonist, seeking help from Point Man to reach Alma, the mysterious female figure at the heart of the entire F.E.A.R. story. The reasons are uncertain, but it's nonetheless a setup that offers an interesting diversion from the usual cooperative structure. Not only is there an obvious tension between the two characters, but Fettel's powers and ghostly condition also make for a markedly different gameplay experience from the one to be had by his brother.
Those playing as Point Man should find the experience to be largely similar to the last two games, as you use a variety of military-issue weaponry and the power to slow time to deal with supernatural forces running rampant in an urban setting. New in F.E.A.R. 3 is a sticky cover system that maintains the first-person perspective as you snap in and out of cover. You'll use a single button for vaulting up and over to the other side of a cover object when swarms of enemies suddenly sneak up behind you. Then there's Fettel. Not only does the player assuming control of Fettel view a screen much more saturated in an eerie reddish hue, but he or she also has an entirely different skill set. Fettel can throw blasts of telekinetic energy to toy with enemies or toss them up into the air for a temporary stun. He can also possess people, taking control of enemies to assume their means of movement and attacks.

In his undead state, Fettel is capable of seeing things that Point Man can't see. Certain doors and passageways are only visible to the person playing as Fettel, and it's up to him or her to share this information with the other player. In the short term, this allows one player to take a different route through the level from the other, but we're not quite sure what the long-term consequences are if one co-op teammate decides to keep the fruits of these hidden routes to him or herself for the long haul. What we saw of the game suggests that the two players have little choice but to resolve their differences in light of the enemy soldiers trying to shoot both of them to death, lest they go at it alone against demonic beasts like the scavengers that come scurrying from dark corners as wild, possessed animals with no regard for brotherly disputes.

Like F.E.A.R. 2 before it, F.E.A.R. 3 has certain moments that will encourage you to temporarily trade in spooky on-foot treks through the usual paranormal bloodshed in favor of something a little bit more visceral. We refer here, of course, to the previous game's mech suit sequences. Rather than being the gameplay equivalent of a nice little reward after a tough chapter as they were in F.E.A.R. 2--what Monolith called a "palette cleanser"--mech suit combat sequences in F.E.A.R. 3 require more alertness and judicious use of ammunition. We were shown a battle with the two brothers in their own mech suits up against a single attack helicopter, and the chopper managed to be a formidable foe despite being outnumbered. From the looks of it, these mech sequences are a more central part of the game than they were in the previous game.
We like the idea of a game developer exploring co-op as something besides a basket of hugs and trust exercises-- something a little more uneasy and uncertain. Will F.E.A.R. 3 live up to that intriguing notion? We should have a better idea of how it all comes together as we get closer to F.E.A.R. 3's fall North American/spring Australian release date.

Crysis 2 First Look

2010-11-11T08:31:00.001+02:00

Crytek is aiming to explore new ground in more ways than one. The German developer originally made a name for itself with 2004's Far Cry, a gorgeous first-person shooter that used its lush tropical setting to push the levels of modern PC graphics into truly impressive territory. It was a similar story three years later with Crysis, another critically acclaimed shooter that combined postcard visuals with free-form sandbox gameplay. But rather than go for a hat trick of PC shooters largely set in wild jungles, Crytek is taking a different path with Crysis 2. This sequel will take you to the streets of New York City, and beyond that, it will also mark Crytek's cross-platform debut.
At a press event held last week, Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli answered the evening's big question right away: he would be demoing a stage from Crysis 2 on the Xbox 360 to give everyone a look at what his team has done with this generation's console hardware. Anyone who played the original Crysis knows what a tall order approximating those visuals on consoles was going to be, but after seeing protagonist Nomad tackle aliens and private military contractors on a devastated vision of Wall Street circa 2023, it was hard to be anything but impressed. The sun peeking through the distant haze above crumbled buildings, the bits and pieces of concrete and glass erupting from stray gunfire, and the vibrancy of the oddly lush rooftop gardens were just a few ingredients combining to make for a very pretty demo.

We could go on about the sort of tech running beneath the surface--and Yerli was quite keen to point out specifics--but the simple fact of the matter is that console owners are going to be impressed with Crytek's debut outing on non-PC platforms. Having not seen the PC version, we can't yet say what the visual disparity is going to be between the various platforms, but Yerli told us later on that the PlayStation version is nearly identical to its Xbox counterpart and that the PC is still very much the lead platform. Basically, Yerli told us to expect every bit of the hardware-devouring ambition that Crytek displayed with the original Crysis for those planning to pick up the sequel for the PC. We'll wait and see how things turn out on that front, but it was reassuring to see how well the game ran on Xbox 360.

The iconic nanosuit has undergone some changes in Crysis 2. In the first game, this high-tech exoskeleton allowed you to toggle between maximum strength, speed, stealth, and power--but all four options were mutually exclusive from one another. In Crysis 2, those abilities have been shuffled a bit to allow for more mixing and matching between power-ups. This time around, the four options are strength, stealth, power (which has had speed folded into it), and a new vision mode similar to the previous game's binoculars, which layers tactical information onto your field of vision. The big difference now is that strength and stealth are the two either-or base options (which Yerli describes as choosing between a "predator" and a "tank"), while power and tactical vision can be simultaneously used on top of either of those two for a total of three at once. All these abilities will once again drain over time, but now there's a lot more flexibility with how you use them. On top of that, Yerli also teased the ability to customize upgrades to your nanosuit over the duration of the game to allow for more personalized skills. We're intrigued by this new feature, but it seems smart to avoid holding out hope for a Modern Warfare level of perks and upgrades.
The power ability was the first one we got to see in action, as the demo began with Nomad standing near the edge of a skyscraper's blown-out wall, exposing Manhattan in all its "catastrophic beauty"--to borrow a catchphrase frequently used by Yerli. Switching to the power ability in the nanosuit allowed Nomad to deftly leap from this building to the rooftop of the next one over. Here he took on a squad of PMCs using a contrasting mix of stealth tactics and loud weaponry. Like in the original Crysis, you can grab enemies by the throat and toss them from high perches (in this case, entire buildings) while in power mode. But now imagine being able to do this while quickly speeding to your next hapless victim without toggling between abilities, and you've got a decent idea of what to expect from some of these new nanosuit abilities.

The demo eventually moved from the rooftops down onto the streets, where Nomad traded in his shotgun and assault rifle for a grenade launcher to take on the robotic-looking humanoid aliens patrolling the sidewalks below. The big intersections and partially destroyed buildings offered a large battlefield for this fight. On a similar note, Yerli also mentioned the verticality that these Manhattan skyscrapers offer as another reason to believe the gameplay will maintain a similar level of open sandbox exploration as the original game. Either way, the combat looked impressive, with realistic damage going on all over the place and frequent switching between nanosuit powers showing how quickly you can adapt to a given situation.
There's a very deliberate reason that Crysis 2 is set in New York City. Yerli is the first to admit that Crysis may have been a beautiful game to look at, but its story was sorely lacking any sort of "emotional buy-in." Crytek has chosen to set the sequel in New York to add more emotional resonance to the game's alien invasion story. "If I could pick one city to protect, it would be New York," says Yerli of their decision to set the game in a city widely regarded as one of the great triumphs of humankind. To help flesh out that story, they've hired award-winning sci-fi novelist Richard Morgan as lead writer on Crysis 2. Morgan arrived on the project during what he described as a "storm of creativity" between artists, animators, and programmers. But despite that, he's focused on adding a twisting narrative that explores some moral gray areas during the game, with the invasion having become something of a "vexed political issue." Morgan also talked a lot about the nanosuit playing a big role in the story, going to the point of "becoming a character in its own right…with its own [story] arc."

At this point, it's pleasing to see just how nice the Xbox 360 version of Crysis 2 looks. It would have been nice to see more game, as the presentation we saw was heavy on tech demo reels and light on gameplay. But for the 10 or so minutes of the game we saw in action, there was a lot to like. Now we're eager to see just how ridiculous the PC version looks, as well as how that "verticality" of leaping between skyscrapers figures into the game. We should have more on Crysis 2 leading up to the game's release later this year.

Medal of Honor Review

2010-11-11T08:25:00.001+02:00

In the crowded first-person shooter market, it's important for a game to carve out a niche--do something better than or different from its competitors. Medal of Honor tries to do just that by representing a real conflict that is really happening in a real country between two real opposing forces. From the chatter among the soldiers and the authentic weapons to the environmental continuity, there are many elements that enliven the campaign with an invigorating sense of realism. Unfortunately, this energy is diminished somewhat by a bunch of video game-y elements, like invisible walls, invincible allies, and an incongruous icon that pops up whenever you get a headshot. The campaign finds a reasonable balance between realism and escapism, where it manages to provide a fairly engrossing experience despite its flaws. The online multiplayer offers many thrills of its own, and the adherence to realism makes for battlefields where the only thing between you and a swift death is your gun and your reflexes. Both the single-player and multiplayer components provide some robust entertainment, and though flaws and limitations keep it from being all it can be, Medal of Honor still distinguishes itself on the field of first-person battle.

The single-player campaign takes place in Afghanistan, where craggy peaks loom over dry, rocky terrain. You are part of an American military effort to find and eliminate Taliban forces, and the grounded-in-reality premise feels more immediate than those that feature fictional enemies. The nicely varied environments provide an attractive array of places to wage war, and even though the visuals suffer from some technical imperfections, the fact that the whole campaign takes place in one region of the world creates a good sense of cohesion. It's easy to keep track of who you are and where you fit into the offensive even though you play as multiple characters. While come cutscenes provide good dramatic set-up, the ham-fisted interactions that take place in the command outpost often feel cliche and cheap. It's probably for the best that Medal of Honor didn't take on a wider representation of the current conflict, focusing instead on the characters you meet in the field and their soldierly attitudes. The great battlefield chatter portrays intriguing facets of professionalism and camaraderie among the soldiers, setting an authentic tone that enhances the experience.

During the course of the campaign, you engage in heated firefights and quietly infiltrate enemy encampments, which are familiar actions that feel good thanks to solid controls. Playing as different soldiers provides markedly different combat experiences, and the game transitions between protagonists in logical ways. For example, after fighting your way through enemy artillery positions, you find yourself facing a frightening onslaught that threatens to overwhelm your squad. Your desperate stand ends in a dramatic rescue, and you then play as rescuers as they take on their next mission. On-foot missions are punctuated by exciting moments when you direct powerful air support, and an intense vehicle sequence gives way to a more methodical assault. Things proceed at a good pace, and it's invigorating to realize that all of the exciting action you are engaged in takes place within the bounds of a realistic military operation.

Despite the focus on realism, however, Medal of Honor tries to tightly control your experience throughout the campaign, and this leads to some unfortunate problems. Part of the campaign experience immerses you in the dialogue among your squadmates and up the command chain (some of which is thoughtfully spent ensuring that the individuals in your crosshairs are actually enemies). Much of this chatter is delivered on the run, but there are times when your progress is halted at a flimsy door or a short rocky ledge to let your squadmates talk. There are also a lot of invisible walls that prevent you from going off the beaten path. These two elements seem designed to keep you in line so you can experience the campaign the way it was meant to be experienced, but they can feel heavy handed and restrictive at times. Perhaps more egregious is the not-so-hot enemy AI. The Taliban soldiers can shoot and take cover reasonably well, but they often enter the battlefield or stick their heads out from behind cover in alarmingly predictable ways.

The campaign lasts about six hours, and on the normal difficulty level, it isn't particularly challenging. Ramping up the difficulty makes your foes appreciably harder to kill, and those who like to test their skills will likely enjoy Tier One mode. In this mode, you are timed as you play through individual campaign missions on the hardest difficulty. Performing headshots, melee kills, and kill streaks freezes the clock for varying lengths of time, shaving precious seconds off your completion time. If you manage to complete a level, you are ranked on an online leaderboard in a bunch of different categories, including fastest time, most headshots, and longest distance kill. The challenge of going slowly enough to survive but fast enough to register a strong time creates an exciting sense of tension, especially if you're competing against a friend or a rival.

Medal of Honor also caters to those who prefer more direct competition. The online competitive multiplayer supports up to 24-player matches and covers a range of familiar team-based modes, including deathmatch, sector control, objective raid, and the progressive combat mission. The maps are well designed but not terribly big, ensuring that the matches are almost always intense. You can play as the rifleman, special ops, or sniper, and each class has its own series of guns and gear for you to unlock as you rank up. Success in a match not only helps you rank up, but it can also earn you powerful offensive or defensive support actions, like mortar strikes, enhanced body armor, unmanned aerial vehicle surveillance, and radar jamming. All of your abilities and assets remain strictly within the realm of realism, meaning you will always hear the footsteps of an enemy running up behind you, and you can't revive your bullet-ridden teammates.

The multiplayer action is intense, thanks in part to the excellent sound design that not only makes the battlefield feel hectic, but also conveys valuable information about your surroundings. Getting caught out in the open is usually fatal, and one-on-one firefights are usually resolved within seconds. Quick reflexes and good battlefield awareness are key to your survival, and the single-player campaign does a poor job of preparing you for the speed and accuracy needed to survive in these harsh combat zones. The realistic focus means no concession is made to newcomers, and the learning curve is steep and filled with exclamations of frustration. Medal of Honor's multiplayer has already become a haven for the hardcore, demanding a level of precision that competitive players will either thrive upon or abandon to their twitchier opponents.

Though it may be tempting to look at its flaws and dismiss Medal of Honor as inferior to its competitors, there is a lot to enjoy here. The campaign has its shortcomings, but its unique sense of scope and well-orchestrated pacing make it an enjoyably cohesive adventure. Tier One mode offers an accessible yet formidable challenge, and the competitive multiplayer captures the brutal intensity of a battlefield where one errant move can result in your abrupt death. Medal of Honor doesn't set any new standards for the genre, but it delivers a lot of entertainment and excitement if you're looking to add a splash of realism to your first-person shooting.

Our rating is 74%

Medal of Honor System Requirements

Intel Processor - Core 2 Duo E7300 2.66GHz
AMD Processor - Phenom II X2 550
Nvidia Graphics Card - GeForce 9800 GT
ATI Graphics Card - Radeon HD 3870
RAM Memory - 4 GB
Hard Disk Space - 10 GB
Direct X - 9

Call Of Duty Black Ops Review

2010-11-10T23:50:00.001+02:00

When a franchise consistently delivers massively popular, high-quality games, each new entry in the series comes laden with expectation. Call of Duty: Black Ops has some big shoes to fill, but it does so admirably. The engrossing campaign is chock-full of exciting, varied gameplay and drips with intrigue and intensity. The excellent multiplayer boasts some invigorating new features, and the new combat training mode finally gives novices a way to enjoy the competitive action without suffering the slings and arrows of outrageously skilled veterans. Cooperative zombie killing and video editing tools help make Black Ops the most robustly featured game in the franchise, and though you may have expected it to be the case, this is undoubtedly one of the best shooters of the year.
The single-player campaign is set largely during the 1960s and takes you to Cold War hot spots like Cuba, Russia, and Vietnam. You are an elite covert operative, and your globe-trotting adventures form pieces of a puzzle--a puzzle that your mysterious captors are trying to put together by interrogating you. Each excursion into the field is a memory, and these missions slowly come together to build momentum as each interrogation cutscene puts another piece of the puzzle in place. It's not a very original mechanic, but it gives a coherent context to the action, and a few strong characters and dramatic moments give the story some genuine intrigue. The blurry edges of your consciousness conceal information that must come to light, and the erratic visual effects and eerie audio echoes that accompany your interrogations sometimes bleed into your mission memories, which creates a great tone of uncertainty that plays out in surprising and satisfying ways.

Your interrogation-fueled flashbacks are not beholden to the linear flow of time, allowing your missions cover a wide variety of geography and gameplay. A dramatic breakout from a brutal Soviet prison is one early highlight, and later missions feature frontline conflicts, urban firefights, and mountainous incursions. The environments are richly detailed, and though the campaign is not without a few technical hiccups (like occasionally problematic checkpoint markers and the odd teleporting ally), these moments aren't likely to hinder your enjoyment. In addition to the on-foot action, you use a number of vehicles to achieve your objectives. Some put you in the gunner's seat while others put you behind the wheel, and though the vehicle handling is unremarkable, the thrill of blowing stuff up and speeding through hostile terrain is undeniable. The core running-and-gunning mechanics remain as exciting as ever, and the gameplay variety throughout the campaign keeps the action moving at a great clip.
Though the campaign is a rip-roaring good time, it clocks in at a mere six hours long. The mode that will likely keep you coming back to Black Ops for months to come is, unsurprisingly, the competitive multiplayer. At its core, this is the familiar top-notch Call of Duty action that players have been enjoying for years. You earn experience for doing well in battle, and as you level up, you gain access to new and powerful ways to customize your loadouts. New weapons and maps freshen things up, and one of the new killstreak rewards--an explosive-laden remote-control car--is a delightfully deadly device that embodies the frantic, slightly goofy side of virtual online combat. The key new element, however, is currency. In addition to earning experience for your battlefield performance, you earn Call of Duty points, which you can then spend in a variety of ways. Most perks, weapon attachments, killstreaks, and equipment items are available early on, providing you shell out the points to equip them. Guns are still unlocked as you level up, but again, you have to pony up the points to put one in your loadout. Customization options like face paint, player card backgrounds, and the new create-your-own-icon tool are all accessed by spending points. Having to pay your way gives you more loadout options at lower required levels than in previous Call of Duty games, and the fact that points are so crucial to improving your arsenal makes them as just as sublimely satisfying to earn as experience points.
Call of Duty points also enable two cool new mechanics, the first of which is contracts. These are like the many multiplayer challenges that reward you with experience points for completing combat goals, only you have to pay to complete them. If you do so within the allotted time period, you receive a tidy payout. For example, if you pay 50 points for the stab-a-guy-in-the-back contract and make good, you'll earn 100 points for your troubles. If time expires before you get stabby, you're out 50 points. Tougher contracts cost more, but they also have bigger payouts (get five headshots without dying, cost: 250 points; payout: 3,500 points and 3,500 experience). You can have up to three contracts active at a time across three different categories, and the available contracts change regularly, potentially ensuring a good amount of variety as the weeks pass. Contracts offer a nicely incentivized version of challenges and can give you something fun to strive for if you get in a rut, but don't expect these small gambles to make you rich.
If contracts are gambling against the house, then wager matches are gambling against other players. In these matches, you pay an entrance fee of 10, 1,000, or 10,000 points, depending on how deep your pockets are, and then you get to play the most unique game modes that Black Ops has to offer. One mode gives you progressively better weapons for each kill you tally, while another gives you a pistol with one bullet and only three lives to live. At the end of the match, the pot is split proportionally among the top three finishers, and everyone else comes away empty handed. Wager matches are as exotic as Call of Duty multiplayer gets, and they offer a great change of pace to the familiar frantic firefights.

And for those who hanker for something completely different, the popular four-player cooperative zombie-killing mode that debuted in Call of Duty: World at War has returned. The fight to stay alive against wave after wave of shambling undead is still a tense and bizarre endeavor, and new maps and playable characters take the oddball humor of the situation to a whole new level. Nevertheless, at its core, this is the same frenzied action as found in its predecessor, and each play-through quickly begins to feel much like the last. This is the only proper cooperative mode in Call of Duty: Black Ops, supporting four players online.

There are two new modes that help make Black Ops the most fully featured Call of Duty game yet. Combat Training simulates a competitive multiplayer environment with AI opponents and allows you to set the enemy difficulty to match your skill level. You gain experience and unlock gear in the same way, and though this progress only applies within Combat Training, it's a great way to get the excitement and challenge of competitive multiplayer without submitting to the vicious predations of actual humans. The other new mode is the Theater, which lets you view replays of your games, take screenshots, and edit clips to share with the community. You can string together a number of different segements from a given game, and even render a video lasting up to 30 seconds for upload to the web, though the rendering feature is not fully functional at launch. Reliving moments--both glorious and shameful--is a lot of fun, and the community has already started cranking out content for your viewing pleasure. And though it may only apply to a small percentage of the population at this point, you can also play Call of Duty: Black Ops in stereoscopic 3D, providing you have the proper cables, required glasses, and a compatible monitor. The effect is novel and fairly intriguing, though it takes a significant mental adjustment and may not be comfortable for many players.
While it may not take the signature Call of Duty action to dizzying new heights, Black Ops is a thoroughly excellent game. New modes and mechanics give a jolt of energy to the lively competitive multiplayer, and the engrossing new campaign develops into one of the best in the series. Combat training allows anyone to enjoy the thrills of arena combat and the satisfaction of leveling up, and the opportunities for cooperative play, local competition, and community video creation provide even more outlets for entertainment. Call of Duty: Black Ops lives up to the top-notch pedigree that the series has earned, giving players an awesome new shooter to enjoy just in time for the holidays.

Our rating is 89%

Call of Duty 7 Black Ops System Requirements

Intel Processor - Pentium Dual Core E6500 2.93GHz
AMD Processor - Athlon II X2 260
Nvidia Graphics Card - GeForce GTS 240
ATI Graphics Card - Radeon HD 3870
RAM Memory - 2 GB
Hard Disk Space - 12 GB
Direct X - 9

Radeon HD 6850 & 6870 CrossfireX

2010-11-10T21:39:00.001+02:00

With the release of the series 6800 graphics cards obviously also comes Multi-GPU support. For those of you who have read the reference review, ya'll very likely noticed the photo's with the one CrossfireX connector on top of the card.

CrossfireX, it's a multi-GPU state which we'll cover a bit more in-depth on the next pages, pretty much you can utilize two or more graphics cards to work together and, hopefully, nearly double up on the game rendering performance.

As stated above, the Radeon HD 6850 and 6870 only have one CrossfireX connector, this literally means that you can place only two cards into a multi-GPU setup. While you might feel merely two cards is a limitation, we think .. it's just fine. As always we do not recommend you to utilize more than two GPUs in a PC anyway as you'd quickly run into driver issues, increased power consumption, more heat in the PC to deal with and well .. it's just that the overall compatibility factor starts to increasingly get complicated once you opt 3 or 4-way CrossfireX multi-GPU setups.

Two is fine really ... so with that said let's grab a reference 6850 and 6870 card from AMD, and then hook them up with some retail cards from HIS, to see where we end up performance wise.

I can already tell you this though, this was the first time ever we had no issues with drivers, and yeah, in most cases the CrossfireX scaling was just extraordinary good.

Oh you're interested now eh ? Good, let's head onwards into the review then.

Multi-GPU Setups (CrossfireX)

Multi-GPU gaming explained -- Both NVIDIA's SLI and AMD ATI's Crossfire allow you to combine/add a second, third or even fourth similar generation graphics card (or in more GPUs) to the one you already have in your PC. This way you effectively try to double, triple or even quadruple your raw rendering gaming performance.

Think of a farmer with a plough and one horse. One horse will get the job done yet by adding a second or maybe even four horses, you'll plough through that farmland much quicker and (hopefully) more efficiently. As weird as that analogy sounds, that's roughly the same idea for graphics cards. One card can do the job sufficiently, but with two or more you can achieve much more.

So along these lines, you could for example place two or more ATI graphics cards into a compatible mainboard, or two or more NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards in SLI mode.
A Crossfire compatible mainboard is pretty much ANY mainboard with multiple PCIe x8 / x16 slots.
A SLI certified motherboard is an nForce motherboard with more than two PCIe xc16 slots or a certified X58 or P55 motherboard. If your motherboard does not have the SLI certification mentioned on the box, it's not SLI compatible. Keep that in mind.

Once we seat the similar graphics cards in the carefully selected motherboard we just bridge them together, with a supplied CrossfireX connector or in NVIDIA's case, a SLI connector. Then install/update drivers, after which most games can take advantage of the extra horsepower we just added into the system.

Multi GPU rendering -- the idea is not new at all... if you are familiar with the hardware developments over the past couple of years you'll remember that 3dfx had a very familiar concept with the Voodoo 2 graphics cards series. There are multiple ways to manage two cards rendering one frame; think of Supertiling, it's a popular form of rendering. Alternate Frame Rendering, each card will render a frame (even/uneven) or Split Frame Rendering, simply one GPU renders the upper or the lower part of the frame. So you see there are many methods where two or more GPUs can be utilized to bring you a substantial gain in performance.

Above two R6850 cards. One reference, one model from HIS. We use an unlocked engineering sample Core i7 965 processor and overclock it to 3.75 GHz for this particular system to find a good balance in-between power consumption, and some extra horsepower from the CPU to feed the GPUs data fast enough.

The advantage of a somewhat 6850 mainstream graphics card is that you'll only have one 6-pin power connector per card -- obviously you'll need two (2x 6850) or four (2x 6870) of them depending on what you are installing for a graphics card.

Power consumption

Lets have a look at how much power draw we measure with these graphics cards installed.

The methodology: We have a device constantly monitoring the power draw from the PC. We simply stress the GPU, not the processor. The before and after wattage will tell us roughly how much power a graphics card is consuming under load.

Our test system is based on a power hungry Core i7 965 / X58 based. This setup is overclocked to 3.75 GHz. Next to that we have energy saving functions disabled for this motherboard and processor (to ensure consistent benchmark results). On average we are using roughly 50 to 100 Watts more than a standard PC due to higher CPU clock settings, cooling, additional cold cathode lights etc.

With that in mind. Our normal system power consumption is higher than your average system.
Graphics card IDLE WATT FULL WATT
Radeon HD 6850 1024MB 176 278
Radeon HD 6870 1024MB 173 295
Radeon HD 6850 CrossfireX 186 393
Radeon HD 6870 CrossfireX 184 421

Recommended Power Supply

Here is power supply recommendation:

Radeon HD 6850 x1
On your average system the card requires you to have a 450 Watt power supply unit.

Radeon HD 6850 x2
A second card requires you to add another ~130 Watts. You need a 650 Watt power supply unit.

Radeon HD 6870 x1
On your average system the card requires you to have a 500 Watt power supply unit.

Radeon HD 6870 x2
A second card requires you to add another ~150 Watts. You need a 700 Watt power supply unit.

The more you overclock and tweak, the more power you will use, adapt to that, we always advise you to get a power supply that is more capable then you'll use, have some reserves, please, do not let a PSU be a limitation.

There are many good PSUs out there, please do have a look at our many PSU reviews as we have loads of recommended PSUs for you to check out in there. What would happen if your PSU can't cope with the load?:
bad 3D performance
crashing games
spontaneous reset or imminent shutdown of the PC
freezing during gameplay
PSU overload can cause it to break down

Final Words & Conclusion

We've been dealing with CrossfireX reviews ever since the beginning and surely a lot has changed over the years. The one recommendation we always gave you guys is to keep it simple at 2 GPUs maximum, as after 2 GPUs in a CrossfireX setup you quickly run into weird anomalies that can be irritating. AMD limited the 6800 towards 2-way Multi-GPU gaming as such was a very peasant experience. Most if not all games scaled just really well and the games that are a little GPU bound can scale at 1.9x ... which is very impressive to see.

So over the years Multi-GPU support has improved quite a bit, AMD still isn't up-to snuff at the level of NVIDIA though, multi-GPU supports still literally and directly remains the Achilles heel of ATI's Catalyst drivers. For years now we have been requesting user-based multi-GPU profiles. See when a new game comes out, multi-GPU support will not be supported by the Catalyst driver. ATI will always need to update this through drivers or downloadable profiles. What ATI needs to do is to allow the end user to make custom profiles per game. A small tip, renaming your game-executable towards a game title that is supported can, not always but often, help out.

Now we also do have warn you about the fact that multiple GPUs make more noise and heat inside your PC, so make sure you have some good ventilation inside your PC. Noise wise the R6870 was by far the best, you can expect plain silly old normal noise levels. The R6850 setup was more noisy but remained acceptable and not irritating, but it was borderline though.

Performance wise we see really good numbers, with two 6870 cards you'll see 27.800 points in 3DMark Vantage ( GPU P-score) and 23K5 points for the 6850 setup with two cards. That's sincerely high performance for cards in this price-range anno 2010. Relating that to games then, Dirt in DX11 scored 112 FPS at 19x12 8xaa/16xAF on the R6850 and 124 FPS for the R6870. Considering 60 FPS is all you need you would be future proof for a while alright.

Battlefield Bad Company 2 scores 89 FPS (6870) at 1920x1200 and 8xAA, that's just brilliant as that is a HUGE framerate with 1.9x performance increases. Fact is, you'll beat any single-GPU solution to date in terms of performance, and where the title really is multi-GPU savvy it'll kick in even harder.

Power consumption wise we don't see anything shocking either really, two 6870 cards peaked towards 275 Watt (graphics cards only) which is slightly above one GeForce GTX 480, these are all 'okay' values considering what we are doing.

So let's round things up, personally we always say stick to one or maybe two high-end cards as there is so much less driver fuzz to worry about. It's like this with ATI, once you pass 2 GPUs you'll often find yourself compromising a lot with new game titles versus multi-GPU support. And this is why today's tested products in 2-way CrossfireX mode work so well.

AMD really does needs to step it up a little more on better and even faster game profile support AND user based and created profiles, period. But sure, we also have to acknowledge here, ATI these days has very solid driver releases and release hotfixes and Crossfire support profiles to address to this concern. Credit where credit is due, the overall experience definitely is very interesting.

If you can pick up a second R6850 or R6870 for the right price and can life with some small catalyst driver incompatibilities (as in the future there's bound to be some), then sure .. we'd give a setup like shown today our two thumbs up. Its a relative easy and affordable way to double up on your game performance, if it's properly supported of course.

Fallout: New Vegas Review

2010-11-10T21:32:00.002+02:00

When Bethesda released Fallout 3 in the fall of 2008, it was lauded as one of the greatest open-world role-playing games of the time. Now, two years later the juggernaut of a franchise has another addition to its repertoire with Fallout: New Vegas. It appears that Obsidian didn't feel the need to change much about the successful formula, as the similarities to its predecessor are so significant I often want to call it Fallout 3: New Vegas. Since the first game was so widely loved, that's certainly not a bad thing, but New Vegas does feel like a giant, awesome expansion.

The Fallout series takes place after a nuclear war and the U.S. is desecrated, a shell of its former glory. Humanity emerges from the tragedy as selfish and power-hungry as ever. Despite the bombardment of numerous nukes, the city of Vegas managed to survive the war mostly untouched. In the aftermath, a group of people formed touting the values of the old governmental system and called themselves the New California Republic, or NCR. Thanks to the Hoover Dam, the NCR and citizens of New Vegas have access to clean water and power, something most areas lack. At odds with the NCR is the Legion, a dictatorship lead by a man who renamed himself Caesar. Based on the Roman methodology of conquering other civilizations, the Legion absorbs nearby tribes and enslaves a portion of their population. The NCR and Caesar's Legion butt heads over control of the area, and tensions are high.
You're a courier in these troubled times with no defined background. Just a seemingly regular guy or gal, you're tasked with delivering a package to the New Vegas strip, but let's just say complications arise. Though the story provides pops of color and a few necessary minor twists to keep things interesting, it's predictable just the same. There are three possible endings to the main quest, and similar to Fallout 3 at launch, once you complete it you won't be able to continue your journey through the wastelands unless you re-load an old save. This is a bummer, especially since that was a major complaint with Fallout 3 and Bethesda later fixed it with downloadable content.
When you enter the Mojave Desert for the first time you'll notice that the landscape looks similar to the previous wastelands, but now there's actual vegetation around. While most of it is dried up, you can find and harvest fresh fruit, seeds, and herbs, which you can use to whip up concoctions like healing powder or stimpaks. Though the game is still really difficult when you're inexperienced, the main missions lead you along a relatively safe route to the New Vegas strip, where the story starts to get interesting.

At first I enjoyed the fact that each faction you can help seemed to have shades of grey instead of a black or white morality scale – the New California Republic is bloated and ineffective at protecting its people, but the tight ship the Legion runs with slave labor is off-putting. Then I realized you gain Karma for murdering Legion members and lose Karma for killing NCR troops, so the lines weren't so blurred after all. While it's a little disappointing and short, you won't (and shouldn't) be spending most of your time on the primary quest.

Apart from the key story, there's a plethora of side missions to play through and they're what makes the game truly shine. The great thing about the open world of New Vegas is just that – there are few limits to exploration. There's almost an overwhelming amount of places to find and every time you turn around someone will want your help. Just when you think you've explored every nook and cranny of an area, you'll realize that there are underground sewers to brave or some other previously undiscovered sector. Some quests are short and of the "go fetch" variety, while others are truly epic tales that overshadow the chief storyline. Deception, cannibalism, space travel and drug use are all themes found in off-the-straight-and-narrow places. Expect to spend approximately 100 hours (around the same as Fallout 3) if you want to see and complete every mission available in the game. Depending on how you treat people, their opinion of you will change. If you're kind to a small town of folks and help protect them from hostile groups, they'll idolize you, while the opposing group will hate you. These opinions are important as they'll determine how aggressive the different groups are toward you.
The wasteland can be a lonely place, but you don't have to wander alone. There are several companions that will join you on your quest and will have issues of their own they'll want you to help with. You can be accompanied by two different friends at a time, one of the robot or animal variety and one person (or former person). Each companion offers a special boost and their kills give you experience points, but they can also be more trouble than they're worth. I lost track of mine constantly, and there's no easy way to hunt them down. Even more irritating is their terrible A.I. Although you can easily hop a three-foot-tall fence, your buddies have to go the long way around until they find a direct opening. Still, despite their obvious flaws, it's nice having others around while you fix the world's many problems.

If your relatively silent pals don't comfort you enough, you can also tune into radio stations with Mr. New Vegas as the prime DJ, voiced by Wayne Newton. He's much less irritating than Three-Dog from Fallout 3, but the songs and stories still repeat often, meaning you won't want to be tuned in for the entirety of your playthrough.

If you've played Fallout 3, you won't miss a step when transitioning over to New Vegas since it's largely the same in terms of gameplay. Wandering the desert, you'll meet friendly people and kill aggressive monsters and thugs. Or maybe you'll kill friendly people and become friends with the thugs, though you should still kill the monsters. New animal foes are present in the West, including but not limited to pesky Cazadores (giant flying insects that will poison you), Giant Praying Mantises (er, they are what they sound like) and Nightstalkers (a scary crossbreed of rattlesnake and coyote). All these creatures sport colorful designs, making them pretty to look at while you shoot them. There's something intensely satisfying about lighting an enemy on fire with a flamethrower, then capping them in the head with a .357 Magnum and finishing them off with a Plasma Rifle. Killing is never a chore, and always an adventure.

Speaking of shooting (Pew! Pew!), you can play the game from either a first-person or third-person perspective. Third-person allows for a useful vantage point (you won't find yourself randomly attacked from behind), but the animations are goofy and it's impractical for shooting on the fly. First-person mode is more useable and though you lack a full 360 degree view you can finally aim down the sights with your gun, making it easier to play like a first-person shooter while your V.A.T.S. is recharging. Designed to make the game less of a shooter, V.A.T.S. (stands for Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System) allows you to pause the action and select specific body parts of your target. Want to decapitate a coyote or shoot off the arm of an aggressive gang member? Go right ahead. To keep the system from being abused and completely unbalancing the gameplay, every shot you fire takes up a certain amount of action points. The more powerful the weapon, the more action points it will use.

After you complete enough quests or bring death upon a whole town you might notice that you've leveled up. Fallout: New Vegas uses the same character building system as Fallout 3, so S.P.E.C.I.A.L. determines your basic character stats and skill sets and perks are back. The S.P.E.C.I.A.L. acronym stands for Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck. At the beginning of the game you'll be able to allocate points to whichever stat you'd like, then build out your skills and finally choose a perk. Choose wisely, because although a super strong but unintelligent character might be able to carry a bunch of stuff around, he or she won't gain as many skill points to divvy up later. The skills are the same as before, ranging from lock picking to speech to bartering to guns -- you'll have to think carefully about how you want your character to engage with the world. Although it won't happen every time you level up, you will be prompted to pick perks. Perks are fun and can either help build out your character by increasing your V.A.T.S. accuracy, level you up again immediately, enable Easter eggs that are otherwise locked away, or allow you to om nom on human flesh to regain health. It's great that the breadth and depth of the leveling system remained untouched, but I found myself selecting practical perks over and over to increase my S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats and the experience points I'd gain.

Since New Vegas is known for its gambling, there are more ways to earn caps (Fallout's form of currency) than before. On the strip you can try out the slot machines or play blackjack, and while in the wasteland you can play a game of Caravan with drifters. Caravan is a unique card game that slightly resembles blackjack but requires more strategy and allows you to build out your own particular set of cards. I didn't find it necessary to play much of any of these mini-games as I had more than enough cash by looting every abandoned house I found or every dead body I created.

Though now you can aim down the sights in first-person mode and there are new weapon and ammo modifications and gambling mini-games, the biggest addition to the game is Hardcore Mode. This option makes surviving so much more difficult that the game actually recommends against enabling it. Becoming sort of a Sims situation, you'll have to make sure you regularly feed, water, and rest your character. Adding to that inconvenience is that everything – including ammo – counts toward your weight limit. There are also limitations on your ability to fast travel – if your character would dehydrate by the end of the journey, you won't be able to embark until you've had some water. It's more realistic and offers a degree of difficulty that's hard to find later in the game, but it's not for the faint of heart.

Fallout: New Vegas uses the same engine as Fallout 3 and comes with the same technical issues. Animations have no weight to them, lip synching ranges from good to non-existent and the artificial intelligence is dumber than a rock. More often than not you'll run across an enemy or ally who just can't seem to figure out how to get around that corner. These flubs are certainly humorous, but the choppy framerate and terrible load times are no laughing matter. Load times on consoles range from annoying to downright painful, ranging from 30 seconds to two minutes. New Vegas can run smoothly, but also slows down or freezes intermittently, so save often.

Closing Comments
In New Vegas, the fun Fallout 3 formula is intact, with more polished combat, high-quality side missions, and the exciting setting of the Vegas strip. Unfortunately, the bugs also tagged along for the ride. If Obsidian and Bethesda had polished up the game by fixing the AI, improving the animations or even gotten it to run smoothly, perhaps it would feel less like a giant expansion of Fallout 3 and more like its own game. Be that as it may, Fallout 3 was a great game, so as similar as it is, Fallout: New Vegas is still a fun ride that offers more for fans of the series to enjoy. If you can look past its shortcomings, this is definitely a wasteland worth exploring.

Our rating is 91%

Fallout: New Vegas System Requirements

Intel Processor - Pentium Dual Core E5200 2.5GHz
AMD Processor - Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5800+
Nvidia Graphics Card - GeForce GT 140
ATI Graphics Card - Radeon HD 3870
RAM Memory - 3 GB
Hard Disk Space - 10 GB
Direct X - 9

GeForce GTX 580 SLI

2010-11-10T21:19:00.000+02:00

GeForce GTX 580 SLI gets tested

You know, we see 'enthusiast' performance in the graphics card vs gaming arena, but also 'extreme' performance. And to manage that we often produce articles where we take the best of the best in terms of performance, and then double, triple or quadruple it up thanks to multi-GPU performance.

If your wallet allows it, you can quite easily double up that GPU shader processor count and thus performance with the help of NVIDIA's SLI technology. Let's say that you pick two 479 EUR (499 USD) GeForce GTX 580 cards with 1.5 Gigs of memory each. Doubled up in SLI two of these puppies would bring seriously more performance to the table than a single 580, obviously.

Yes, Multi-GPU gaming has grown to become more popular over the past few year thanks to NVIDIA's SLI solutions initially, and obviously later on when ATI CrossfireX joined that path as well. So today we take two GeForce GTX 580 cards and place them into 2-way SLI mode. We'll throw in a combo Radeon cards setup in CrossfireX, both platforms armed with the very latest drivers, patches and games.

Over the next few pages we'll tell you a bit about multi-GPU gaming, the challenges, the requirements and of course a nice tasty benchmark session. We'll have a peek at temperatures, power consumption and we'll also overclock both GeForce GTX 580 cards in SLI mode to squeeze out every last ounce of performance.

Have a peek at the coolness in the photo below and then let's startup this article.

Explain that Multi-GPU mode you talk about...

Okay so we tend to get a little repetitive with this question, but honestly, is there anyone who visits this website that doesn't know what SLI & Crossfire is? Well surely the regulars know the idea and principles. But it never hurts to explain what we are dealing with today.

Both NVIDIA's SLI and AMD's ATI Crossfire allow you to combine/add a second or even third similar generation graphics card (or add in more GPUs) to the one you already have in your PC. This way you effectively try to double, triple or even quadruple your raw rendering gaming performance (in theory). The more GPUs, the worse the scaling becomes though, two GPUs in most scenarios, is ideal.

Think of a farmer with a plough and one horse. One horse will get the job done yet by adding a second or third horse, you'll plough through that farmland much quicker and (hopefully) more efficiently as the weight of that plough is distributed much more evenly. That's roughly the same idea for graphics cards. One card can do the job sufficiently, but with two or more you can achieve much more.

So along these lines, you could for example place two or more ATI graphics cards into a Crossfire compatible motherboard, or two or more NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards in SLI mode on a compatible motherboard.
A Crossfire compatible motherboard is pretty much ANY motherboard with multiple PCIe x16 slots that is not an nForce motherboard.
An SLI certified motherboard is an nForce motherboard with more than two PCIe x16 slots or a certified P55 or X58 motherboard. If your motherboard does not have the SLI certification mentioned on the box, it's likely not SLI compatible. Keep that in mind.

Once we seat the similar graphics cards on the carefully selected motherboard we just bridge them together, with a supplied Crossfire connector or in NVIDIA's case, an SLI connector. Then install/update the drivers, after which most games can take advantage of the extra horsepower we just added into the system.

Multi GPU rendering -- the idea is not new at all... if you are familiar with the hardware developments over the past couple of years you'll remember that 3dfx had a very familiar concept with the Voodoo 2 graphics cards series. There are multiple ways to manage two cards rendering one frame; think of Super tiling, it's a popular form of rendering. Alternate Frame Rendering, each card will render a frame (even/uneven) or Split Frame Rendering, simply one GPU renders the upper or the lower part of the frame.

So you see, there are many methods where two or more GPUs can be utilized to bring you a substantial gain in performance.

Alright, we've covered most of the hardware. We'll now have a peek at the configuration used, the hardware and software suite and then fire off the benchmarks in which we'll demonstrate the performance.

Final Words & Conclusion

In our previous multi-GPU articles we have already learned that NVIDIA graphics adapters obviously scale extremely well. This article is not different, with the one exception that we have so much graphics horsepower under the hood that we far more quickly run into a CPU bottleneck (the state where the GPUs are waiting on the CPU to provide data). Though that might seem bothersome, it really is luxury problem to have.

Performance wise, not a lot of negatives can be said about the GeForce GTX 580 setup in SLI. In previous articles we have shown you guys already that the performance scaling of two GPUs is something the GTX 400 and thus now 500 series as well, is really good at.

Heat and noise will definitely go up depending on your configuration, but remain acceptable. If you can please do place the cards as far away from each other as possible, a special flexible SLI bridge is required for that though.

Power consumption then, well it is high. When observing Crysis Warhead, which really is tremendously GPU intense, we notice power draws well over the 700+ Watt. You do need to be aware of that, each GPU has a 242W TDP, that's nearing 500 Watt already. Then add a nice spicy processor, likely overclocked a little drawing say 175W~200W and then the residuals like chipset and devices really can accumulate to significant numbers. But hey, this is the extreme high-end arena, it never has been any different. It's just that over the past years we as consumers and press have become much more critical about this topic.

We also really need to mention that one of the boards used (engineering sample) had an older BIOS and that power consumption on that board might be a tad higher as a result of it.

Now keep this in mind, with the more GPU stringent monitor resolutions and modern games you can gain 1.6x ~ 1.9x performance with two of these cards and that really is exemplary.

To be able to operate two or more cards in SLI mode you'll need an SLI certified motherboard. Most Intel X58 based motherboards are SLI certified, and often P55 motherboards as well. That or an older nForce motherboard (which is a dying breed). But carefully make sure and check that out before opting for SLI, okay ?

The big question remains, do you really need SLI with cards as powerful as the GeForce GTX 580 really is? Well, with current games and the brute force that is the GeForce GTX 580, one card will do more than fine of course. It's always like this though, that x-factor, going that extra mile, you gotza have a little more e-peen, you are a record breaker or simply want the best. If you fall within that category then this might be something you should opt.

There's of course another reason you might want to look into SLI, and this is a very valid point: If you like to opt triple screen gaming with NVIDIA's Surround vision option, you will need a serious amount of rendering performance. Add to that if you have beefed up your game platform with 3D Vision, well that's where this feature eats away hefty on your framerate budget, that's where an SLI setup like this actually makes a lot of sense. And for surround vision, SLI is actually a mandatory requirement.

Bare in mind, so much GPU horsepower needs a very spicy PC that can keep up with them GPUs. Also do the right thing and go for a Kilowatt PSU, have a little extra always ... at all times.

We certainly enjoyed testing these two cards in SLI. If you can live with the deficits like power consumption and the sheer amount of money needed to create your game PC that is. Yeah, it puts the full G in Geforce alright :)

We have not seen any driver issues, we did not run into any weird stuff and neither did we had to configure anything. Everything worked straight out of the box with near perfect scaling. As such if you are interested in marvelous game performance and are gaming with an unlimited budget, then this might be your route to follow.

GeForce GTX 580

2010-11-10T21:15:00.000+02:00

Lord of the Cards - The return of the king?

When NVIDIA launched the GeForce GTX 480 in Q1 2010, their worst fears became reality. The high-end Fermi part was launched and then was gutted and slaughtered over three trivial aspects; those being high-power consumption, loud noise levels and a GPU that ran far too hot.

The flipside of that coin was the fact that the performance was actually spot on. To date the GeForce GTX 480 is the fastest kid on the DX11 block offering stunning performance. Yet the dark clouds that started hovering above the Fermi launch was something they never got rid of, up until the GeForce GTX 460 launch.

That made the GeForce GTX 480 probably the worst selling high-end graphics card series to date for NVIDIA. Throughout the year we've reviewed a good number GTX 480 cards and we've always tried to be very fair. We firmly (not Fermi) believe that if NVIDIA addressed the heat and noise levels from the get go, the outcome and overall opinion of the GTX 480 would have been much more positive as more enthusiast targeted end users can live with that somewhat high TDP. Good examples of these are KFA2's excellent GeForce GTX 480 Anarchy and more recently the MSI GTX 480 Lightning and soon Gigabyte's GTX 480 SOC.

However, the damage was done and NVIDIA needed to refocus, redesign and improve the GF100 silicon. They went back to the drawing board, made the design more efficient and at transistor level made some significant changes. As a result they were able to slightly lower the TDP, increase the shader processor count and increase the overall clock frequency on both core and memory domains.

The end result is the product you've all been hearing about for weeks now, the GeForce GTX 580. A product that is more silent then the GTX 280/285/480 you guys are so familiar with, a product that keeps temperatures under control slightly better and noise levels that overall are really silent. All that still based on the 40nm fabrication node, while offering over 20% more performance compared to the reference GeForce GTX 480.

Will NVIDIA have it right this time? Well they'd better hope so, as real soon AMD's Cayman aka Radeon HD 6970 is being released as well. These two cards will go head to head with each other in both price and performance, at least that's what we hope.

Exciting times with an exciting product, head on over to the next page where we'll start up a review on the product that NVIDIA unleashes today, the GeForce GTX 580.

The GeForce GTX 580 graphics processor

So we already stated that for the GeForce GTX 580 NVIDIA went back to the drawing board and introduced a new revision based on the GF100 ASIC, now labeled as the GF110.

With this release, NVIDIA now has a full range of products out on the market from top to bottom. All the new graphics adapters are of course DirectX 11 ready. With Windows 7 and Vista also being DX11 ready all we need are some games to take advantage of DirectCompute, multi-threading, hardware tessellation and new shader 5.0 extensions. DX11 is going to be good and once tessellation kicks into games, much better looking.
GeForce GTX 580 : 512 SP, 384-bit, 243W TDP
GeForce GTX 480 : 480 SP, 384-bit, 250W TDP
GeForce GTX 470 : 448 SP, 320-bit, 225W TDP

The GPU that empowers it all has small architectural changes, some stuff was stripped away and some additional functional units for tessellation, shading and texturing have been added. Make note that the GPU still is big, as the fabrication node is still 40nm. TSMC canceled the 32nm fab node preventing this chip from being smaller.

Both the GF100 and GF110 graphics processors have sixteen shader clusters embedded in them (called SMs). For the GeForce GTX 480 one such a cluster was disabled and on the GeForce GTX 470 two were actually disabled. The GTX 580 has the full 512 shader processors activated, meaning a notch more performance just based on that alone already. So that's 512 shader processors, 32 more than the GTX 480 had.

Finally, to find some additional performance, the card got clocked a chunk faster at 772 MHz as well, whereas the GeForce GTX 480 was clocked at 700 MHz. GeForce
9800 GTX GeForce GTX
285 GeForce GTX
295 GeForce GTX
470 GeForce GTX
480 GeForce GTX
580
Stream (Shader) Processors 128 240 240 x2 448 480 512
Core Clock (MHz) 675 648 576 607 700 772
Shader Clock (MHz) 1675 1476 1242 1215 1400 1544
Memory Clock (effective MHz) 2200 2400 2000 3350 3700 4000
Memory amount 512 MB 1024 MB 1792 MB 1280 1536 1536
Memory Interface 256-bit 512-bit 448-bit x2 320-bit 384-bit 384-bit
Memory Type gDDR2 gDDR3 gDDR3 gDDR5 gDDR5 gDDR5
HDCP Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Two Dual link DVI Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
HDMI No No No Yes Yes Yes

For Fermi NVIDIA made their memory controllers GDDR5 compatible, which was not the case on GT200 based GeForce GTX 260/275/285/295, hence their GDDR3 memory.

Memory wise NVIDIA has large expensive memory volumes due to their architecture, we pass 1 GB as standard these days for most of NVIDIA's series 400 and 500 graphics cards. Each memory partition utilizes one memory controller on the respective GPU, which will get 256MB of memory tied to it.
The GTX 470 has five memory controllers (5x256MB) = 1280 MB of GDDR5 memory
The GTX 480 has six memory controllers (6x256MB) = 1536 MB of GDDR5 memory
The GTX 580 has six memory controllers (6x256MB) = 1536 MB of GDDR5 memory

As you can understand, the massive memory partitions, bus-width and combination of GDDR5 memory (quad data rate) allow the GPU to work with a very high framebuffer bandwidth (effective). Let's put most of the data in a chart to get an idea and overview of changes:Graphics card GeForce GTX 470 GeForce GTX 480 GeForce GTX 580
Fabrication node 40nm 40nm 40nm
Shader processors 448 480 512
Streaming Multiprocessors (SM) 14 15 16
Texture Units 56 60 64
ROP units 40 48 48
Graphics Clock (Core) 607 MHz 700 MHz 772 MHz
Shader Processor Clock 1215 MHz 1401 MHz 1544 MHz
Memory Clock / Data rate 837 MHz / 3348 MHz 924 MHz / 3696 MHz 1000 MHz / 4000 MHz
Graphics memory 1280 MB 1536 MB 1536W MB
Memory interface 320-bit 384-bit 384-bit
Memory bandwidth 134 GB/s 177 GB/s 192 GB/s
Power connectors 2x6-pin PEG 1x6-pin PEG, 1x8-pin PEG 1x6-pin PEG, 1x8-pin PEG
Max board power (TDP) 215 Watts 250 Watts 244 Watts
Recommended Power supply 550 Watts 600 Watts 600 Watts
GPU Thermal Threshold 105 degrees C 105 degrees C 97 degrees C

So we talked about the core clocks, specifications and memory partitions. Obviously there's a lot more to talk through. Now, at the end of the pipeline we run into the ROP (Raster Operation) engine and the GTX 580 again has 48 units for features like pixel blending and AA.

There's a total of 64 texture filtering units available for the GeForce GTX 580. The math is simple here, each SM has four texture units tied to it.
GeForce GTX 470 has 14 SMs X 4 Texture units = 56
GeForce GTX 480 has 15 SMs X 4 Texture units = 60
GeForce GTX 580 has 16 SMs X 4 Texture units = 64

Though still a 40nm based chip, the GF110 GPU comes with almost 3 billion transistors embedded into it. The TDP remains the same at roughly 240~250 Watts, while performance goes up ~20%.

TDP = Thermal Design Power. Roughly translated, when you stress everything on the graphics card 100%, your maximum power consumption is the TDP.

The GeForce GTX 580 comes with both a 6-pin and 8-pin power connector to get enough current and a little spare for overclocking. This boils down as: 8-pin PEG = 150W + 6-pin PEG = 75W + PCIe slot = 75W is 300W available (in theory).

Final words and conclusion

Nice, yeah I certainly like what NVIDIA has done with the GF110 GPU. No matter how you look at it, it is new silicon that runs much more efficiently and thanks to more shader processors, higher clocks, faster memory and tweaks and optimizations at transistor level we get extra performance as well. The end result it a product that at is, give or take, 20% faster than the GTX 480, which is a product that already was blazingly fast of course.

Now, that GTX 480 already was the fastest chip on the globe, yet was haunted by high noise levels and heat issues. We stated it in all our reviews, would the GTX 480 have been more silent and running less hot, then everybody would have been way milder with their opinion of that product.

The GeForce GTX 580 is exactly that, it is the GTX 480 in a new jacket, now comes with vapor chamber cooling, improved PCB and most of all a more refined GPU. Don't get me wrong here, the GPU itself is still huge, but who cares about that when the rest is right? And the rest is right... much higher performance at very okay noise levels with a GPU that runs at decent GPU temperatures. The one downside we measured was an increase power consumption, slightly higher than ther GTX 480. Now we really need to mention that the board used for this article (engineering sample) had an older BIOS and that power consumption on this board might be a tad higher as a result of it.

The cooling performance is better thanks to the vapor chamber cooler, a technology that has been widely adopted in many CPU and VGA cooling solutions already in the past. Even with an overclock towards 850 MHz on the GPU core rediculously stressed we still did not pass 85~87 Degrees C, and trust me that the GPU humped, stressed and dominated with a whip. Mind you that in your overall gaming experience the temperatures will definitely be somewhat lower as we really give the GPU a kick in the proverbial nuts here. 80 Degrees C on average is a number I can safely state is what you'll be seeing.

If you take a reference baseline GTX 480 and compare it to this product we already have 20% faster performance. At an overclocked 850 MHz clock frequency that's accumulated 25% to 30% extra performance easily over that baseline GTS 480 NVIDIA product, and in the world of high-end that is a mighty amount of extra performance. Of course any game to date will play fine at the highest resolutions with a minimum of 4x Antialising enabled and the very best image quality settings. So performance is just not an issue, as well as heat and noise.

Now if you come from an factory overclocked GTX 480 like the KFA2 Anarchy or MSI Lightning, then the difference is NIL really as these cards are clocked faster at default. There's no reason to upgrade whatsoever. However if you're in the market for a pre-overclocked GTX 480 or this reference 580, then obviously the 580 must have your preference as that card at default is as fast as the standard overclocked GTX 480 cards, and then has more room for tweaking. That certainly is a bitter message for KFA2, MSI and Gigabyte who all recently released the supadupa OC models of the GTX 480. It's the reality though, the GTX 580 is the logical choice here.

The new advanced power monitoring management function is well ... dissapointing. If the ICs where there as overprotection for drawing too much power it would have been fine. But it was designed and implemented to detect specific applications such as Furmark and then throttle down the GPU. We really dislike the fact that ODMs like NVIDIA try to dictate how we as a consumer or press should stress the tested hardware. NVIDIA's defense here is that ATI has been doing this on R5000/6000 as well, yet we think the difference is that ATI does not enable it on stress tests, yet is simply a common safety feature when you go way beyond specs. We have not seen ATI cards clock down with Furmark as of recently, unless we clocked say the memory too high after which it clocked down as safety feature. No matter how you look at it or try to explain it, this is going to be a sore topic for now and in the future. There are however many ways to bypass this feature and I expect that any decent reviewer will do so. Much like any protection, if one application does not work, we'll move on to the next one.

Alright, time to round up this review. Saying that the GeForce GTX 580 is merely a respin product would not do NVIDIA justice, this certainly is a new taped out revision that has been tweaked and made more efficient. The end result is a card that is something we expected early 2010, but is faster. The only thing that can ruin NVIDIA's all new release will be AMD's upcoming Cayman (Radeon HD 6970). The performance and pricing of that card is still an unknown. Anyway, if priced right and if it falls within your budget, then we do like to recommend the GeForce GTX 580, but we are afraid that the 479 EUR (499 USD) price tag will scare away many people. High-end anno 2010 should be 400 EUR tops, imho.

The GeForce GTX 580... well this is the product that really should have been launched in Q1, it would have made all the difference in the world for NVIDIA. Though we do not see any groundbreaking new stuff, the performance went up with a good enough margin and 'the feel' of the product is just so much better compared to the GeForce GTX 480 launch. Definitely a card I wouldn't mind having in my PC, now then .. Call of Duty Black Ops bring it on !