GamersBeyond Community Blog

Another Wednesday is upon us and as with every Wednesday there is news in the air… albeit not as much news as I would have liked, it seems that some AAA console title is coming out this week and if you are the all purpose gamer that I would think you are then you should already be in line waiting to pick it up. This game is of course GTAIV and as it is more likely than not to reach PC shores I will admit that I am excited for this game, but I cannot play it due to my lack of consoles and current overseas location. Pity come my way, all of you with the resources to play this game had better play it, play it good!

Mythos, the free to play MMO from the guys that released Hellgate, has moved to region lock. they are preparing for open beta and to do this they need to restrict the regions allowed to access. so as long as you don’t live in Asia you will be able to play. This is just one more reason for me to want to come home ASAP. for those of you not playing mythos I recommend you go sign up and await one of the most quirky and interestingly fun MMOs I have ever had the enjoyment of playing.

As a result of being torn from the beta of Mythos, finishing Bioshock and Assassin’s Creed, and basically just waiting for Mass Effect (which I preordered today!), I have been playing Hellgate london. Hellgate London, as mentioned before, is the big papa to Mythos in that it is a 3rd or 1st person diablo-esque hack and slash/shooter RPG. When this game first came out there were quite a few problems and overall the game had a terribly rocky start. And even though some of the core components that make are being created to flesh out the MMO side of the game are yet to be fully implemented, the game is a much more refined version of itself at launch; as is seen with the newest MP patch 1.3. I might have been one of the minority supporters that shelled out the big bucks for the lifetime membership, but that is only because I could see how good of a game this is turning into. I highly recommend the online version of Hellgate for anyone that is looking to tear into some lumbering zombie flesh.

According to steam, Tuesday (today) they will be releasing the new TF2 update, introducing a new map and play mode, and achievement based weapons for the medic, with other class upgrades coming in future updates. This is a highly anticipated and praised patch as it adds a lot of depth to the gameplay and awesomeness that is Team Fortress 2. if you are one of the ones that doesn’t own this fantastic game I assure you it is worth your money, besides it is so scalable it will even run fine on your computer without any upgrades (not guaranteed if your PC is more than 10 years old).

it looks like Qwest is sheeping into the FiOS market, following Verizon and AT&T. FiOS for the uninitiated is the internet connection that we have been waiting for, instead of standard copper lines that seem to cause a lot of the bottlenecks these days. Fiber is a glass or plastic based cable that carries light from one end to the other. This results in a much cleaner signal and higher transfer rates. If you are a current DSL or Cable subscriber I would look into switching to FiOS as soon as either of the companies above have brought it to your door. Check the Verizon, AT&T, and Qwest sites regularly depending on who you have in your location.

Tom’s compares the 4x and 3x AMD phenom chips, I have also head that the performance is exactly how you would expect from a PC gamer podcast; in multi threaded apps it runs 25% slower than the 4x core, and in non threaded apps there it runs equivalent to any processor. Still worth a check out if you are interested in getting this budget CPU.

Also from AMD are their new ATI RV770 chips slated to be released at the end of this quarter (May-June). Apparently they are shaping up well and shortly after release will be paired with GDDR5 memory replacing the current standard of GDDR3.
This may put a kink in which cards I get this summer, especially if Nvidia doesnt shape up their 9000 series cards.

Speaking of Nvidia they are releasing a new budget card set under the current 9600GT cards. This model is the 9600GSO and has yet to be reviewed but I will post them when I have a chance. The card will run at 650Mhz and have 368MB of gddr3 memory running at 1900Mhz. not something I would buy but hey if crysis isn’t your bag of tea then this card should do ok with the casual games or Media players.

If you are human, then you are probably as anxiously awaiting spore as I am, if not for the uberness, then just because you are curious. The creature creator will be available in June as either a free download with 25% of the content of a $10 purchase with 100% of the content. Anything you create will be able to be used in the retail copy of the game when it goes live possibly this fall.

In hardware that is older than the sun but has yet to see consumers is Holographic storage, and it’s apparent arrival to consumers. These units cost nearly $18,000 for the drive and $200 for the disk. The capacity is 300Gb per disk now with expandability to 1.6TB in the future. Apparently this device is aimed at replacing tape backups.
Not at all what I would have thought, or have been expecting… my idea of holographic storage was a holographic blue cube that sat inside some sort of enclosure on my desk… this just looks like an oversized optical drive.

Ubisoft confirms that there is a new Prince of Persia game in development. Currently scheduled for late 2008 it will reach all platforms including handhelds. The story will be the start of a new chapter in the prince’s life and will of course feature more of the same great gameplay that was in the original.
I wonder if it has anything to do with the upcoming film also in development. we will see…

In assassin’s creed news a performance test was run to test the different levels of performance compared to visual quality. The tests seem pretty detailed and may help you achieve that ever difficult perfect balance of playability and graphics to make the game the most enjoyable you can. In other AC news they will be removing Dx10.1 support because of some flaws that they need to iron out.
This is another one of those must play games that if you don’t have it, get it. oh and get a game pad because the game is so fast paced that it is pretty hard to play w/ keyboard and mouse.

Battlefield heroes looks to be getting better and better, they released some info on the character customization that looks really interesting, yet the rest of the video is a little on the kooky side. for those of you interested in beta check out the link below.

City of heroes has reached its 4 year anniversary by opening up user created content on a level unheard of in an MMO before. Users will be able to make entire story lines for groups of heroes to go though. The user created content will be accessible to all online players and can be rated and reviewed by those that play it.
With the potential of good fun story arcs it seems like this might be a revival, especially if they make the toolset to create this content free to download and use.