Archive for July, 2011

Dawn of War 2: Retribution screenshots reveal Eldar Ulthwe DLC

A new post on the Dawn of War 2: Retribution blog reveals a new DLC pack that will add the Ulthwe faction to the Eldar. The Ulthwe have the level of cheer you’d expect from a faction that lives their entire lives near an inter dimensional phenomenon known as the Eye of Terror. They’re not be too optimistic about the future of the universe, but they are very good at shooting demons in the face. The DLC will provide a new look for most of the main Eldar units, similar to the recent Dark Angels pack which was released back in April for $7.50 / £5.00. There’s no news on a release date or pricing details just yet, but you can see four new screenshots of the redesigned units below.

Battlefield 3 not coming to Steam says retailer

A report from a meeting between retailer Gamestop and financial research firm Baird suggests that Battlefield 3 will not be coming to Steam. According to Develop, the key quote from the report comes directly from Gamestop executives, who said that “the upcoming EA title Battlefield 3 will be sold as a download through GameStop, but not through Steam.”

EA recently briefly published a list of retailers for Battlefield 3, from which Steam was conspicuously absent. Other digital download sites like Gamersgate, Direct2Drive and EA’s own Origin were on the list, however, and an unnamed Gamestop executive tells Develop that Battlefield 3 will be coming to digital retailers other than Gamestop. It looks as though it’s just Steam who are being frozen out.

This week’s winners

Welcome to this week’s winners, where we round up the results of our most recent competitions. If you’ve entered anything recently be sure to check inside to see if you’ve won. Remember, if we don’t hear from you for three weeks we will give your prize to someone else.

Check inside for the latest results.

Dota 2 coming “soon” via improved Steam download system

Valve detailed their plans for an improved download system for Steam over the weekend in a post on Steam, saying that “soon, Dota 2 will be delivered using it.” When Dota 2 was announced last October, Valve slated it for release this year. Since then there’s been very little information beyond the impressive character art, but we may see a lot more shortly. Valve are listed to show an unnamed strategy game at Gamescom next month, and developer IceFrog has said in a Q&A that at some stage “there will certainly be an opportunity to get involved with beta testing Dota 2.” We’ll have to wait and see what Valve show in Cologne on August 17.

Dishonored interactive map reveals weird whales and mysterious continent

Here’s what we know so far about Arkane’s intriguing new game, Dishonored. It’s a first person action game from the creators of Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, co-created by Deus Ex lead designer Harvey Smith with art from Half Life 2′s Viktor Antonov. You play as Corvo, a bodyguard framed for a crime he didn’t commit on a mission to assassinate his way out of trouble using guns, gadgets and possessed rats.

Also, according to a new interactive map on GameInformer, there will be whales. Lots of whales. The whales have tentacles, and their explosive blubber is used to power the world’s industries. If I ever write a stranger sentence than that, I’ll eat my shirt.

The Witcher 2 patch 1.3 to add extra quest and save woman in Vergen

The upcoming 1.3 patch for The Witcher 2 will add free DLC, according to a new post on The Witcher 2 site. The new DLC will slot add some bonus witchering to chapter two, with a quest called “A Sackful of Fluff,” and “will prove most rewarding to those who demonstrate patience.” There’s no news on what the quest will contain. Hopefully witches.

The patch will also fix a lot of UI irritations. A much needed “junk” section in your items menu should help avoid the embarrassing situation where Geralt is carrying so many looted toenails he can’t physically move any more. If you simply must keep all of those toenails, inns now provide item storage. Haters of annoying imp creatures will also be pleased to know that a “problem with some nekkers being immortal has been resolved,” and a random woman in Vergen will be pleased to hear that “option to fist fight woman praying at a statue in Vergen has been deactivated.” Full patch notes follow.

Turn your hard drive into a hybrid

Fancy SSD performance with the kind of storage capacity more commonly associated with a traditional hard drive? You’ve got two choices: either sell your first born to buy a large SSD drive, or take a look at Icy Dock’s new SSD Xpander.

The SSD Xpander is a 3.5inch hard disk caddy designed to hold a standard 2.5inch laptop SSD drive. Around the back, though, there’s an extra SATA port for daisy chaining a normal 3.5inch hard drive to the Xpander. Once you’ve connected both SSD and HDD, a second partition is created on the latter and connected to the SSD via an internal RAID interface. The SSD now appears to Windows (or any other OS, since this is a hardware implementation) as double its actual size. Caching technology moves data between the HDD and the SSD to try and ensure that the bits and bytes you need are kept in the faster SSD half of the virtual drive.

It’s a little like Intel’s Smart Response Technology (SRT) which premièred on recent Z68 motherboards, which can also join an SSD and a hard drive in an unholy union of speed. Only the Xpander theoretically works with any motherboard and system.

The obvious drawback is the same one as is associated with any RAID striping set-up – if one drive fails, you lose data from both. Also, if the caching technology moves data around too much it could end up wearing out the SSD or overloading its garbage collection capabilties. It’s also potentially cheaper to look at a native hybrid drive like the Seagate Momentous XT than buying two separate drives for a new build.

Still, the idea of having a large virtual drive capable of SSD speeds is hugely appealing, and gets around the current house keeping problems of what should and shouldn’t be installed directly to the SSD when a small capacity one is included in a system. Plus, the Icy Dock SSD Xpander is only £30/$48. Since our review sample of has just turned up in the labs, I’ll be able to tell you whether it’s any good or not in the next few days.

Saturday Crapshoot: BloodRayne 3

Every week, Richard Cobbett rolls the dice to bring you an obscure slice of gaming history, from lost gems to weapons grade atrocities. Except this week, because the game decided to play silly buggers. Instead, let’s catch up with the latest from everyone’s favourite director, Uwe Boll.

BloodRayne 3 is a movie that clearly didn’t need to be made. Same goes for BloodRayne 2. The first film though, I can at least see the attraction of the license. Nobody could ever make a good BloodRayne movie, and no matter how much love and money was poured into the project, it would never lead to, say, Dame Judi Dench walking down the red carpet, Oscar in hand, gushing over the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to play the Queen of the Lecher Bitches. You could however make a fun BloodRayne movie – a knowing, confident, trashy action flick that slammed its first reel down on the table and said “Look, it’s a hot redhead vampire chick in leather, killing Nazis. You in? Bring popcorn.”

So of course, Boll opted to make a historical piece set in the 1700s. Then he did BloodRayne 2 as… a western. Only now does he turn his attention to the horrors of the Third Reich, as seen in the original game. Can this change be shot in the arm the series needs? You may be surprised!

Smart Casual – How PopCap conquered casual gaming

Following the news that PopCap has been purchased by EA. We’ve decided to bring you a feature on the mammoth casual games developer that originally ran in PC Gamer UK issue 220.

Sitting on the floor of Benaroya Hall in Seattle, I’m depressed as hell. I’ve come to the Casual Connect Conference 2010 to hear the makers of casual and social games share their ideas, but in three days of lectures I haven’t heard a single idea about games.

Instead they’re talking about how designers don’t matter. They’re talking about how psychological tricks can turn their audience into zombies. They’re talking about how to use metrics to better monetise your mum. This isn’t just the industry’s business men and women talking, either; these are the people who actually make the games. At a point in history when a new and huge mainstream audience is trying computer games for the first time, our ambassadors aren’t interested in talking about how to make something fun.

A week too late, Steam announces a new download system

One week after Steam was crushed by huge demand from ravenous, bargain-crazed PC game buyers, Valve has announced that Steam will roll out a “better, stronger, faster” download system. (Better late than never, we suppose.) The statement doesn’t go too in-depth on what’s happening behind the curtain, but it does say that data will be sent via a firewall-friendly HTTP system “and will automatically take advantage of web-caching proxies installed at ISPs.”

More importantly, this update will make the patches you download smaller. The way the current system works, if there’s a 1MB patch to a 10MB file, you have to download the full 10MB file. The new system will reduce your download burden to just the 1MB difference. So the next time you go to launch a game and find that it needs to download a patch before it’ll start, that time may be significantly reduced.

But wait, there’s more! Further down the line, Valve says this system will allow Steam to finally implement some requested features, “like download scheduling, bandwidth throttling, and prioritizing which games get downloaded first. You’ll also be able to download an update to a game while you’re playing that game; Steam will apply the update after you exit the game.” And on that day, one of our biggest gripes with Steam will finally evaporate forever.