gaming – Page 7 – StuffWeLike

Information you need – Edinburgh Interactive Festival

As events go the Edinburgh Interactive Festival is among the most prestigious for those involved in the gaming industry. It’s been announced that GameStation will be acting as the retail partner for the event again this year. What it means for the everyday man is special discounts at the event when going to purchase games at their on-site store.

There are also a few good points to Gamestations involvement for the Scottish public at large with a one-off pre-festival launch event scheduled at the Gamestation store on Prices Street in Edinburgh in August featuring giveaways and competitions. While full details are still coming the Gamestation website will be updated with full info near the end of July.

In addition a highlight for all at the festival is the public screenings programme. It allows members of the public to preview in person some of the biggest games before they are released in addition to asking those involved questions about the games involved and offers a glimpse into their development. Most screening sessions are around 45-60 minutes long so its not a 30 second gameplay clip in most cases. It’s most of the perks that the press get only without the annoying writing to justify the freebies!

While the screenings are a ticket only affair they are free of charge with the tickets available in any Gamestation branch in Scotland. A download & print version for those outside Scotland can also be found on the Gamestation website from June 10th.

Empire of Sports – March Online Gaming Competition

To sports gamers/fans wanting to try a different online competition Empire of Sports is holding a virtual Skeleton Championships where players try to beat everyone else winning real prize money in the bobsleigh.

While having a chance to win cash prizes does require a subscription to the game the first few qualification rounds are free to play so it might make for a nice distraction at the very least. It is taking place until March 28th so there’s a week of enjoyment to be had for anyone who is interested. The graphics are not fantastic but the game is enjoyable enough to be worth a look.

Since Empire of Sports has been a bit under the radar to this point at it’s prologue (open beta) stage it simply can be considered an MMO where you start a character and level up by playing tennis, football, basketball, bobsleigh, skiing and finally a good bit of track & field. You have a small city environment to begin from with mingames and shops so that provides a nice change for RPG orientated gamers.

To take part be sure to check out empireofsports.com for more information and a list of prizes.

Monday XBL shuts down.

Just a friendly reminder that on Monday the XBox Live service will be out of action for a full 24-hours. If you need a quick fix of Halo or Call of Duty on the console then now is really your last chance to get in some good times.

Microsoft are also running a few competitions this weekend to keep things buzzing before they go offline so it might be worth taking a look to see what’s going on. For PS3 users however all is normal and will continue to be so. It’s hard to imagine a world without XBL now especially with all the fanboys arguing that it’s a great service or that it’s bad you have to pay to play. Anyway, time is running out. For some the best XBL game will forever be Halo 2, but what do you think? As usual comments are always welcome here at SWL where gaming matters.

Blizzard Exec: Microsoft not doing enough for PC Gaming

It’s great that there’s a resurgence of PC gaming, or at least PC game development. Valve is already doing fantastic with promising stuff in Steam Cloud. Blizzard show their respect for the venerable platform by making pretty much all their games PC-exclusive (and they’re all big hits, too). I mention this because I believe that Blizzard has every authority of accusing Microsoft for not doing anything for Windows and gaming.

Ever since Microsoft dipped its feet into the console world, it’s never come back, devoting all of its gaming attention to the Xbox and Xbox 360. This is with good reason, as Blizzard COO Paul Sams notes, because it is where Microsoft Games’ bread and butter is, and it is their system, after all.

But they just can’t continue to ignore Windows.“Certainly they have a lot in Windows. And Windows is a system that supports all the business applications as well as games.” he says. That’s true: active participation from Microsoft is what is necessary to bring forth the PC as a gaming platform. Windows is easily the most widespread platform right now, with more copies of Windows in this world than every other console combined.

Take heed, Microsoft, and mend your ways!

Asus unveils Godlike PC Gaming Rig

There are computers. And then there is this monstrosity from Asus’ stables. Behold: The ASUS ARES CG6155 Desktop PC, designed to give gamers the ultimate gaming experience. Hell, the experience is so ultimate, even the game developers have no clue what it feels like.

The case you see above has been inspired off of armours from both Eastern and Western influence, perfectly matching the PC’s theme of providing- I dunno, UNLIMITED ABSOLUTE POWER. It looks stylish and Asus makes it a point to add substance as well.

The machine contains only the most high-end components money can buy, easily making it the ultimate gaming rig you can buy. Oh wait, you can’t: the price will probably be large enough to buy a Pacific island and build your own vacation home on it. Still, if you are the sort willing to sacrifice a great vacation for unlimited Crysis gameplay, be my guest.

The specifications:

OS: Microsoft Vista Ultimate

CPU: Intel Core2 Extreme QX9650 (Overclockable up to 4.0GHz)

Chipset: NVIDIA nForce 790i Ultra SLI

Memory: Dual Channel DDR3 1333MHz up to 8G

Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX280 3-Way SLI

HDD: Up to 4TB

ODD: Blu-ray DVD

LAN: 2 x LAN 10/100/1000

Power Supply: 2 Kilowatts (Dual Power)

Accessory: Gaming Keyboard, Mouse, Mousepad, Headset

Seriously, it’s like Asus decided “Okay, show me the topmost stuff in every possible PC component. Great, now let’s package it all together with a killer CPU case and sell it and hope that some rich-ass geek will buy it!”

ATI Catalyst 8.5

While normally new Catalyst drivers don’t warrant
a comment the newest version do. This is because not
only do they add the usual performance increases for
games in DirectX 9 and 10 but it’s also certified for
Windows XP Service Pack 3. There are also new TV-out
features including a bigger range of HD supported
formats.
Continue reading “ATI Catalyst 8.5”