This Week In PC Gaming: Quake, Macs, Fallout
Would you believe, a Mac you could play a half-decent game on?
The Fallout 3 team enters vault 101 for orientation
By Greg McNevin
Official Fallout 3 Website Launches
Along with a bunch of “Best of E3” awards, Bethesda’s Fallout 3 now has a real website to call its own, with Executive Producer Todd Howard kicking off its launch with a somewhat edgy diary entry acknowledging the challenge of being faithful to the Fallout legacy.
“The massive expectations of what this game means to everyone who loved Fallout, RPGs, and gaming-in-general is not lost on us,” writes Howard. “It's impossible to discuss the game with anyone without them referencing Oblivion and/or the Fallout legacy. In many ways, it's the sequel to both games. It's our "next" RPG after Oblivion while also being the sequel to one of the greatest games in the history of electronics. No pressure.”
No pressure indeed. Howard adds that the team has focused on Fallout 1 as their point of departure for the new chapter, and that survival for your character and others alongside the quest for water will be central themes to the game.
“Survival is a key theme of the game, not just for you, but for the characters living in the world. The no-longer-simple act of survival, and the uniqueness of it, gives each character special meaning. What has each one sacrificed to do so?” he writes.
Aside from developer diaries, the site brings together all the information, artwork and screenshots released on the game to date, with more information and media to “trickle out” over the coming months according to Howard.
The release is currently slated for somewhere between March and May 2008.
Don’t forget to check out our interview with Bethesda’s Peter Hines for more Fallout goodness… it’s right over here.
Quake III In Your Web Browser?
Continuing with webby news, id software also made an intriguing announcement at the recent Quakecon in Dallas over the last week, with legendary uber-geek John Carmack spilling the beans on the firm’s new Quake Zero project.
According to Carmack, Quake Zero (unofficial title) will be a free, web browser-based version of Quake III Arena powered by ad bucks. Details are sketchy at the moment, and even Carmack himself seems to be unsure of whether the project will actually work or not.
If it does though, it will certainly blow those crappy flash games we’ve been playing out of the water. Regardless of how addictive it is, you can only play so many different incarnations of tower defence…
Shocker: iMacs Almost Useful For Gaming
Finally, while not specifically PC news and reminding us that Apple does more than make iPods and iPhones, Steve Jobs has announced a new revision of the company’s iMac line at Apple HQ in Cupertino, California.
Apart from being prettier and thinner, the new pearly white squares are also Directx 10 capable thanks to their ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT and 2600 PRO video cards. Not cutting edge cards by any means, but the switch does mean that the seven Mac gamers out there can theoretically run the likes of Crysis and Bioshock (via boot camp Windows emulation).
Whether or not they can run them with acceptable performance is another story though, as all the DX10 games on the way are threatening to squeeze every last drop of juice out of high-end PCs as it is.
Official Fallout 3 Website Launches
Along with a bunch of “Best of E3” awards, Bethesda’s Fallout 3 now has a real website to call its own, with Executive Producer Todd Howard kicking off its launch with a somewhat edgy diary entry acknowledging the challenge of being faithful to the Fallout legacy.
“The massive expectations of what this game means to everyone who loved Fallout, RPGs, and gaming-in-general is not lost on us,” writes Howard. “It's impossible to discuss the game with anyone without them referencing Oblivion and/or the Fallout legacy. In many ways, it's the sequel to both games. It's our "next" RPG after Oblivion while also being the sequel to one of the greatest games in the history of electronics. No pressure.”
No pressure indeed. Howard adds that the team has focused on Fallout 1 as their point of departure for the new chapter, and that survival for your character and others alongside the quest for water will be central themes to the game.
“Survival is a key theme of the game, not just for you, but for the characters living in the world. The no-longer-simple act of survival, and the uniqueness of it, gives each character special meaning. What has each one sacrificed to do so?” he writes.
Aside from developer diaries, the site brings together all the information, artwork and screenshots released on the game to date, with more information and media to “trickle out” over the coming months according to Howard.
The release is currently slated for somewhere between March and May 2008.
Don’t forget to check out our interview with Bethesda’s Peter Hines for more Fallout goodness… it’s right over here.
Quake III In Your Web Browser?
Continuing with webby news, id software also made an intriguing announcement at the recent Quakecon in Dallas over the last week, with legendary uber-geek John Carmack spilling the beans on the firm’s new Quake Zero project.
According to Carmack, Quake Zero (unofficial title) will be a free, web browser-based version of Quake III Arena powered by ad bucks. Details are sketchy at the moment, and even Carmack himself seems to be unsure of whether the project will actually work or not.
If it does though, it will certainly blow those crappy flash games we’ve been playing out of the water. Regardless of how addictive it is, you can only play so many different incarnations of tower defence…
Shocker: iMacs Almost Useful For Gaming
Finally, while not specifically PC news and reminding us that Apple does more than make iPods and iPhones, Steve Jobs has announced a new revision of the company’s iMac line at Apple HQ in Cupertino, California.
Apart from being prettier and thinner, the new pearly white squares are also Directx 10 capable thanks to their ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT and 2600 PRO video cards. Not cutting edge cards by any means, but the switch does mean that the seven Mac gamers out there can theoretically run the likes of Crysis and Bioshock (via boot camp Windows emulation).
Whether or not they can run them with acceptable performance is another story though, as all the DX10 games on the way are threatening to squeeze every last drop of juice out of high-end PCs as it is.
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Comments
TigerUppercut 13 Aug 2007 17:23
1/1
http://www.apple.com/games/
http://macgamefiles.com/
Although Macs do not have nearly as many gaming options as the PC, the momentum the hardware has right now, along with Apple's considerable courting of the publishing community, is starting to see this change. Developers also enjoy working for the hardware. It's easy to program for and is a closed platform - so no endless testing against an infinite number of hardware configurations. The closed platform concept is also good for gamers.
There might not be as many games, but the games that are available don't fall over during the third level with some driver error.
The same can be said for the underground scene. As a new Mac convert, I was concerned that the underground scene - emu, homebrew etc - would be non-existent. Simply not the case. It's all there and it all works all the time.
I think as the masses start to move away from PCs and the horrormess that is Vista, a new revived Mac gaming scene is destined to follow.
http://macgamefiles.com/
Although Macs do not have nearly as many gaming options as the PC, the momentum the hardware has right now, along with Apple's considerable courting of the publishing community, is starting to see this change. Developers also enjoy working for the hardware. It's easy to program for and is a closed platform - so no endless testing against an infinite number of hardware configurations. The closed platform concept is also good for gamers.
There might not be as many games, but the games that are available don't fall over during the third level with some driver error.
The same can be said for the underground scene. As a new Mac convert, I was concerned that the underground scene - emu, homebrew etc - would be non-existent. Simply not the case. It's all there and it all works all the time.
I think as the masses start to move away from PCs and the horrormess that is Vista, a new revived Mac gaming scene is destined to follow.