PC – Page 59 – StuffWeLike

New Mirror’s Edge Story Trailer

Now I can’t miss a new trailer for Mirror’s Edge. I’ve already envisioned it as the next Portal: a smexy city, a female protagonist and parkour tricks?! This game is genius! I can’t believe it’s going to release on November 13th. That’s so early, it’s unfair!

Anyways, we see yet another trailer for Edge. This time, it’s one of those 2D-animated trailers to explain the story. Sometimes the theme and art of the game almost make me think that it’s a Japanese game, only to shaken up when I see the darn EA logo again. Which makes me wonder if EA is thinking of any draconian DRM measures for the game.

Now this trailer is one of those usual world-turns-into-dystopia stories, except here you can’t tell if its dystopia or utopia we’re heading to. We see our heroine, Faith as a child in a protest march against the usual oppresive-fascist-government. Yep, we’ve seen in Half-Life 2, but what it reminded me the most of was the Second Renaissance short from The Animatrix (damn, that was a good film).

Check out the trailer below! Click here to run and jump to the HD link.

Red Alert 3 – REMIX, an Official trailer to Laugh at

Continuing from yesterday’s post about the Fallout 3 PR campaign being absolutely abstract, Electronic Arts has released a new Command & Conquer Red Alert 3 trailer that begs the question of: what were they smoking?

While I totally did enjoy the REMIX video, I have to say that this came out of left field. Usually marketing campaigns stick to an idea and expand on it over time. This trailer seemed as if an editor was bored at 3am and decided to spice things up.

I still can’t wait for Red Alert 3. If it can maintain this over the top, campy feeling, it may just be one of the best games of the year.

id’s Rage To Enrage Modders?

id’s long tradition of keeping games mod-friendly and mod-supportive appears to have broken with their revolutionary new game: Rage. Tim Willits from id says that it is impossible to mod Rage even on the PC, but the matter is still under consideration.

While id is as always, supportive of mods, Rage is simply too complex a product to mess around with. The biggest hindrance will be the much-talked-about MegaTexture system. For those not in the know, id’s new idea is to create something of a “super-texture” that the game streams seamlessly, rather than rendering hundreds of different textures on different objects.

The system itself is said to consume heaploads of processing power at id. A large number of computers are working hard to process them in a similar not unlike a CG render farm. And if id is taking that long, it will probably take years on an average computer, I imagine. I don’t even want to know the size of that thing.

Still, Willits doesn’t rule out modding entirely. He does say that it may just be possible for users to create mini-mods that will add to the gameplay, in small chunks of stuff. So full mods and conversions may be out of the question, but we’ll still be able to make smaller mods. Sounds fine by me, I guess. Then again, I’m not a modder.

Microsoft “Has A Plan” for Age of Empires

Microsoft very recently announced their plan to dissolve one of their most famous and profitable studios: Ensemble Studios, who have provided them the Age of Empires series for so long and are now working on Halo Wars. But what happens after Halo Wars? Will the Age of Empires franchise be lost into the abyss of nothingness?

Microsoft earlier seemed to suggest that that is not so. While AoE is in their safe hands (some might use other adjectives), what exactly will happen of it? Sequels? Spin-offs? When?

In an epic interview with gamesindustry.biz, Phil Spencer from Microsoft says that they have a plan. Microsoft plans to push the franchise ahead, as it is one of their pillars of support for Windows (a bit like Gears and Halo are for the Xbox 360, I suppose). All 3 iterations of the series have done very well, so Microsoft wouldn’t give up this franchise so easily anyways.

Of course, Ensemble Studios won’t be making anything anymore, and Spencer says that they won’t be necessary for the next Age (heh, pun not intended). But yep: Age of Empires is alive and well and may be coming anytime now.

That image above comes from an artbook released with the collector’s edition of Age of Empires III. It seems to suggest that Ensemble had a big franchise in mind that stretches all the way to version 5. Continuing the series’ historical progression, we’ll head from the Renaissance/Industrial era into the Modern Era with AoE 4 and then the future with AoE 5.

Sounds like a decent enough plan, but I’d rather they go back through history all over again. In any case, the modern age sure as hell wasn’t an “age of empires” and I’d like it if the future wasn’t either. 😉

GTA4 Recommended System Requirements

Now that console gamers have had their fun with the epic Grand Theft Auto IV, it’s time for us PC gamers to have our turn. Of course, it’s still a ways off, and will be in your DVD drive on November 18.

Microsoft’s Games for Windows site just unveiled the Recommended System Requirements for the game (not the minimum ones, mind you), and they are:

OS:     Windows XP SP2
Processor:     Dual core processor (Intel Pentium D or better)
RAM:     2GB
Hard Drive:     18GB free hard disk space
Video Card:     512MB Direct3D 10 compatible video card or Direct3D 9 card compatible with Shader
Drive:     DVD-ROM dual-layer drive

Looks fine and dandy by today’s standards, but what is that I see? 18 gigabytes of free space? Pardon old uncle Zombie, but he’s still stuck in an era where 80 gigabyte drives were plentiful, Pentiums ruled the streets and the Allies fought Nazis.

As you can see, I won’t be trying this game anytime soon, at least until I get a damned new computer. Microsoft does have some info on what you can expect in the PC version:

Optimized controls
Expanded multiplayer
Matchmaking
High Resolution
Video Recording, Editing and Uploading

Looks like the usual console-to-Windows port features to me.