Gamernode: Latest PC News

November 15 GameTap releases; Sid Meier pushes ser...

I figured I'd do the GameTap update this week and give ol' Billy a break.

There are two new subscription games this week on GameTap. First up is the arcade title, Armored Warriors, Capcom's mid-90's beat-em-up. I had to look at Wikipedia to remember fully what this game was, but it was a great multiplayer game back in the day. If you care, the story invovles the future and war.

Next up is a (much) better game, and also the 1,000th game released on GameTap: Sid Meier's Civilization IV. If you haven't played this game yet and subscribe to GameTap, you have no excuse now.

In addition to the two new subscription titles, the list of free-play titles has been expanded to 50 with the inclusion of Hitman: Contracts. For the full list of free-play games for this week, take a gander at the full story.

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New Terminator game coming in 2009

Another Terminator game? That's right, even before you can utter "I'll be bock," a new Terminator game is currently under development for release in summer 2009. As of now, planned platforms include unspecified consoles, PC and mobile.

The Halcyon Co., who owns the rights to the Terminator franchise, will be forming a new gaming division and one of its first projects is a game adaptation based on the forth coming Terminator film called "Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins." It's expected the game will coincide with the film's release.

Peter Levin, a former Disney executive, will head up Halcyon Games as acting CEO. The CEO revealed that Halcyon decided to develop the game internally rather than contract another studio to create the game.

"When you own the intellectual property and have t...

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New Seagate hard drives infected with virus

If you bought a Seagate hard drive in the past few months, you might be in for a surprise.

Seems as though a virus managed to find its way onto a line of hard drives earlier in the year, with a small percentage of Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 drives being infected and released for purchase during August of 2007.

The Chinese virus is known as "virus.win32.autorun.ah" and will find your online game passwords and send them to a private server. Some of the affected games include QQ, WSGame, AskTao and Blizzard's famous World of Warcraft.

If you happen to have bought a Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 hard drive after August 2007 then contact Seagate support as soon as possible so they can check if your drive is one of those affected by the virus.

[via 1up]

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NVIDIA releases 8800GT 256MB details

Following on from the recent release of the much acclaimed 8800GT 512MB video card, NVIDIA has released new details regarding the 256MB variation.

The 8800GT 256MB boards will be priced in the $179-$199 USD range and should be arriving in PC stores in the next two weeks. There will be offerings available from Asus, BFG, EVGA, Leadtek, PNY, XFX and a number of other partners.

The specs for the card are as follows:

# of Stream Processors 112 Core Clock Speed 600MHz Shader Clock Speed 1500MHz Memory Clock Speed 700-900MHz (memory speed varies, check with board partners) Memory 256MB GDDR3 Power Connector 6-pin Length 9 inches Board Power 105W Cooling single-slot fansink Outputs 2x dual-link DVI, HDTV-out

The FAQ also contained some information pertaining to DirectX 10.1 and its use in fut...

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Bethesda planning Fallout 3 DLC?

Now that Bethesda is finished with all of its planned downloadable content (DLC) for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, folks may be thinking, "Is Bethesda planning any DLC for their upcoming title, Fallout 3?"

Pete Hines spoke with CVG and mentioned that they're looking at producing DLC once F3 is complete. While Bethesda wants to continue to support Fallout 3 after its release with more content, they have to make sure they don't screw it up first.

"How much of it or what we would do if anything is still up in the air... We had the same approach with Oblivion, which is if we f*** this up, nobody's going to want to download anything for it anyway. So let's focus on the first thing we're doing, get that absolutely right and then we'll have time for the other stuff."

I imagine Bethesda learned som...

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Is Starcraft II Blizzard's next released game?

All secret projects aside, we know that Blizzard Entertainment is working on at least two titles: Starcraft 2 and the next World of Warcraft expansion called Wrath of the Lich King.

While both games carry a TBA release date, Rob Pardo from Blizzard made a comment on the WoW forums recently, which hinted that Starcraft 2 might be heading out the door sooner than Lich King.

Posting under the name Enoyls, Pardo is the current vice president of game design at Blizzard; previously he was the lead designer of WoW. He noted that despite not being heavily involved with WoW as before, he focuses on all games at Blizzard; especially ones that are closest to release and went on to slip in Starcraft 2.

"Yes, I'm pretty active during betas on the forums. During Starcraft, War3 and WOW I was pretty active...

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November 8th GameTap releases

Move over weekly updates for Xbox Live Arcade, Virtual Console and PSN, here's one for GameTap.

This week's new GameTap releases include the world premiere of the first episode in Sam & Max: Season Two, a turn-based tactics game from 2000 called Shadow Watch and an old-school fighting game from the Sega Saturn called Virtua Fighter.

As for additions to the free play list, this week continues GameTap's support for the upcoming Hitman movie, so Hitman 2: Silent Assassin is available for free play. In addition, Joust, Space Invaders, Defender and Root Beer Tapper join Hitman 2 in the free play section.

If you want to check out the three new games added to the list of subscription games or take a gander at the list of 49 free play games, check the full story.

New Subscription Games:

Sam & Max Seaso...

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EA donates SimCity to One Laptop per Child program...

Delaware based, non-profit organization One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is an ongoing foundation that's seeking to provide children around the world a laptop for furthering education.

Today, EA announced they'd be donating Maxis' original simulation game SimCity to the foundation. Therefore, all laptops from the organization will come equipped with SimCity.

While games aren't normally associated with education, SimCity is one of the rare cases. For example, there's an annual contest that runs for 7th and 8th graders throughout the U.S. called the Future City Competition, which uses SimCity.

Steve Seabolt, global branding vice president for EA, said, "SimCity is entertainment that's unintentionally educational. Players learn to use limited resources to build and customize their cities. There are ...

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The Witcher heavily edited during English translat...

Polish developer CD Projekt's new RPG, The Witcher, has been heavily edited and censored during it's English translation according to fans of the game and one of the writers.

Posting on the official Witcher forums, writer Sande Chen said "Yes, it's true. My writing partner and I worked on the English adaptation of the script (based on the translation from the Polish script). It was edited down considerably, not because of censorship, though."

According to the fans though, some of the changes that have been made are quite drastic. For example, a line in the polish that directly translated to English reads as "Why do p**cks go in c**ts? It's the natural order of things. Humans have always disliked dwarves and elves. Not for me to know why," has been changed to just say "Humans have always hate...

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Free Rice game helping to stop world hunger

There should be more games like this.

Poverty.com's Free Rice game is a simple multiple-choice vocabulary test that donates ten grains of rice to the UN's World Food Program for every correctly answered question.. To make the game more interesting and useful to players, each correct answer also increases the difficulty of the following question. Each incorrect answer makes the questions easier.

Over 931 million grains of rice have been donated over the course of a single month, and that number is growing steadily every day. To put that number in perspective, let's consider how many people it could potentially feed.

1 teaspoon holds roughly 250 grains of rice1 tablespoon equals 3 teaspoons1 ounce equals 2 tablespoons1 cup equals 8 ounces

One cup of rice (which expands to two after cooki...

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Call of Duty 4 released to retail, Steam users wai...

With Call of Duty 4 released two days ago in the US, yesterday in Australia and tomorrow in Europe, gamers everywhere are indulging in Infinity Ward's latest shooter in the hugely succesful CoD series. Well, not exactly...

Steam users will not be able to play the game until November 12th, but pre-loading has already begun with pre-purchasing available even earlier on the 6th. It is quite baffling that the game is being played by thousands of gamers all around the world but Steam users have to sit and wait while a locked copy of the game sits on their hard drives for another week.

Another issue with the Steam version is the pricing. While US and Australian customers get the game for $49.95 USD, European customers are being charged an extra $20, which jacks the price up to $69.95 USD! Again, i...

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Gears of War and Games for Windows LIVE issue

If you picked up Gears of War for PC yesterday, then you're in for a treat because the port is pretty excellent. All things aside, it wouldn't be a normal game launch without some technical issues.

The folks behind the Gamerscore Blog outlined a potential problem while applying an automatic update to Games for Windows - LIVE, which may cause the game to be unresponsive. If you don't install the update, you'll be prompted to get it everytime you start Gears and you can't play the game at all.

The first solution is a pretty standard solution - you apply the update and restart the game. For simplicity sake, here's the nine-step walkthrough:

1. Start "Gears of War" for Windows (from Start Menu)2. Once the game starts, press the "Home" key to open the Game for Windows -- LIVE Guide3. Sign-in usi...

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NCsoft buys City of Heroes. Major plans coming

If you happened to trot over to the official site for the MMORPG, City of Heroes today, you may have noticed some new adornments on the main page.

Yes, your eyes are working correctly; NCsoft announced an acquisition of the City of Heroes game license and a formation of a new development studio that'll completely focus on future developments of the MMORPG.

Previously, the game's license was split between the game's original developer Cryptic Studio and NCsoft.

This may indicate that Cryptic Studios is moving towards a new game IP but the split was amicable; the formation of NCsoft's new studio, called NCsoft NorCal, is comprised of many original City of Heroes team members.

Matt Miller, lead designer on City of Heroes, said, "We're thrilled to be bringing the CoH franchise to the next level...

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Sam & Max: Abe Lincoln Must Die, now free!

In anticipation of Sam & Max: Season Two's impending debut on November 9th, Telltale Games announced the free release of Episode 4 from its Sam & Max: Season 1 series today.

Dubbed Abe Lincoln Must Die, many reviewers, including myself, would say this episode is the best, so this is an excellent representation of the hilarity in Sam & Max: Season 1.

So what are you waiting for? The game is already on all major downloads sites and will appear on Telltale's website tomorrow. If you like the episode, pick up the full Season 1 bundle off of Telltale's website for only $29.95!

Here's the plot synopsis: "The president's lost it. Federally mandated group hugs, a pudding embargo... what's next, gun control? Sam & Max are off to Washington to take care of this bozo, but the political climate will on...

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Warhammer vs. World of Warcraft

It's a foregone conclusion that World of Warcraft is the king of MMORPGs. EA Mythic is going to try to get a piece of this lucrative action in the online gaming world and is attempting to do this with Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

But WAR is going after a broader audience by offering new game play features. But according to Attaba Rahim, product manager for Warhammer: Age of Reckoning, their intention isn't to kick WoW's "arse."

"...our goal is not to kick WoW's arse but to deliver the best MMO ever. With Warhammer Online, we will bring new, fresh, funny things that players will embrace (we hope)."

Rahim continued, "It's more about an evolution as players want something different but with some familiar elements."

Judging from the huge numbers of War or Warcraft players around the world,...

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CliffyB talks Gears of War on the PC vs. 360

One of the major failings of many console to PC ports is the lack of attention paid to the control scheme, but  Cliff Bleszinski, aka "CliffyB," lead level designer at Epic Games, has promised the controls on the PC version of Gears of War, coupled with the extended story and updated graphics, will make it feel like an all-new game. 

In his latest blog, CliffyB talks about the key differences between keyboard-mouse game play versus game controller game play and the lengths Epic Games went to during the porting of Gears of War to try and retain the soul of the game and still make it new and challenging for PC gamers.

"Simply put, when a player can aim and move that freely, the pace of the game often needs to keep up in order to remain challenging. Enemy AIs need to respond in a fast and ...

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THQ acquires Homeworld trademark, potential sequel...

If you were a strategy fan back in the late 1990's, then you may have played a little game called Homeworld for PC. Released as its debut title, the then unknown Canadian developer Relic Entertainment had no idea where the game would propel the developer into PC strategy gaming history in the future.

But other than a sequel in 2003, the Homeworld series has been pretty dormant... until today.

A perspective RelicNews forum member pointed out that THQ, current owner of Relic Entertainment, trademarked the Homeworld name from former owner Sierra Entertainment. It appears that even though the name is trademarked with THQ, the actual license would be included too. What, is THQ going to sell Homeworld t-shirts?

Don't forget, this is just a pretty meaty rumor; THQ could just be sitting on the trade...

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Recent layoffs not connected to WAR's delay

Eurogamer has a new interview with EA Mythic's Mark Jacobs, and he reassures them that the recent layoffs at EA Mythic have nothing to do with Warhammer Online's delayed release; in their Q2 financial results, EA revealed that Warhammer would be delayed until Q2 2008.

According to Mark, "It's absolutely unrelated. This is a question that's asked all the time, and I understand why - but in any course of development, there are going to be times when you let some people go. That's just what happens."

Apparently, this is part of EA's new plan of "talking to the community, getting their feedback, and being involved" -- a far cry from the typical EA stereotype we all love to reply with in regards to any negative EA-related news.

Whether or not the delay will result in the WoW Killer so many hoped...

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Warhammer Online delayed again

During a conference call held after EA's Q2 earnings report, EA Mythic revealed that Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning has been delayed again. If this sounds familiar, then you're not alone since we reported a previous delay just back in April that the game was delayed till Q1 2008.

Now, the game is expected for release in the first half of EA's 2009 fiscal year, which begins on April 1, 2008.

A follow-up Q/A session between GameSpot and Mark Jacobs, EA Mythic's general manager, revealed some more details behind the delay.

"It really boils down to this: Our game is going to live and die by two things. One is realm-versus-realm (RvR) gameplay. The second is overall quality. This is not 1999, 1997, or even 2001. This is 2007. We have to be able to release a game that, in terms of quality--wit...

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Intel marching forward with new 45nm Quad Core

Intel is charging ahead in the CPU wars at quite an impressive rate, releasing details of their next Quad Core CPU, the Yorkfield QX9650, which is to feature four 45nm cores.

Intel's working to a schedule they have titled "Tick-Tock", whereby they shrink their current microprocessor design on the "tick" and then release a new microprocessor architecture on the "tock." The new processor, code-named "Penryn" will be launched on Novemeber 12th, 2007. While the Penryn doesn't represent a huge jump in performance or much of a change in design from the current Core 2 processor line, it looks to hold the ability to in the future.

The Yorkfield QX9650 continues the LGA775 socket form factor and can be used on both P35 and X38 chipset motherboards. It runs at a stock 3GHz clock speed and has a 1333...

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