This Week in PC Gaming: Van Buren, Nvidia Fallout
See what Fallout 3 could have looked like
By Greg McNevin
Van Buren Demo Out
Remember when Fallout 3 was going to be called Van Buren? For those who are frothing at the mouth for Fallout 3, No Mutants Allowed has released Black Isle’s Van Buren tech demo, giving fans a glimpse at what Fallout 3 could have been before Bethesda bought the license.
The demo is part of what was to be the Fallout 3 tutorial and sees your character running through a town, wasting some baddies and heading into a vault just after the bombs fall. Combat isn’t implemented properly, only some of the features work and it’s quite buggy, but still, the light of Fallout 1 & 2 shines through and it’s great, if not a little depressing, to see what Black Isle’s Fallout 3 could have been.
The release will no doubt help build anticipation for Bethesda’s vision, not to mention create a foundation on which to construct a tower of bitching if Bethesda’s effort fails to live up to expectations.
Fallout 3 News
In real Fallout 3 news, Bethesda has updated the Fallout 3 website with some teaser images and a counter… 27 days until the teaser trailer. It has also announced that Quai-Gon Jin is doing voice work. Looking good so far Beth...
Nvidia Adds Superlative To GeForce
Nvidia has kicked another toeful of sand into ATI’s eyes with its new SLI DX10 GeForce 8800 Ultra video card, boasting a 10-15% increase in performance over the previous pixel king, the GeForce 8800 GTX.
The card will no doubt be welcomed by cashed-up gamers, not afraid to drop £475 to make the most of the eye candy in upcoming DX10 games such as Bioshock, Age of Conan and Crysis.
Nvidia is obviously quite pleased with itself too, not only for trumping its own technology, but also for leaving ATI standing there with its cock in its hand. “The graphics industry evolves extremely quickly and it is quite an achievement when you can leapfrog your own performance milestones in succession like we have done with these GeForce 8 Series GPUs,” said Ujesh Desai, general manager of desktop GPUs at Nvidia.
Dell’s Solid State
Speaking of top-end hardware, Dell is now offering 32GB solid state disks (SSDs) as options in its ultraportable Latitude D420 and the semi-rugged D620 ATG laptops.
Sure they aren’t large enough to store an operating system, games and a hulking porn collection, but that’s what external storage is for.
The long overdue introduction of SSDs to the mainstream market will be a boon for gamers as they reduce heat, have lower power consumption and most importantly, offer significant increases in speed across the board.
While 64GB and 128GB drives are on the horizon, the technology is still significantly more expensive than standard hard disk storage (the 32GB Dell option is £225). With Dell and others such as Fujitsu, Samsung and Sandisk pushing the drives though, it won’t be long until prices drop and the technology filters down to more mainstream machines.
StarCraft MMO Rumours Swirling
According to CVG, “Well placed US sources” have revealed Blizzard will indeed be announcing a StarCraft MMO at this month’s Worldwide Invitational tournament in Korea.
Are CVG’s sources telling porkies? If not will StarCraft pillage WoW’s user base? Or will the company enslave the rest of the gaming population and their children with an almighty Zerg rush? We’ll know for sure when the Blizzard metatron speaks on May 19.
[/i]Van Buren Demo
Van Buren Demo Out
Remember when Fallout 3 was going to be called Van Buren? For those who are frothing at the mouth for Fallout 3, No Mutants Allowed has released Black Isle’s Van Buren tech demo, giving fans a glimpse at what Fallout 3 could have been before Bethesda bought the license.
The demo is part of what was to be the Fallout 3 tutorial and sees your character running through a town, wasting some baddies and heading into a vault just after the bombs fall. Combat isn’t implemented properly, only some of the features work and it’s quite buggy, but still, the light of Fallout 1 & 2 shines through and it’s great, if not a little depressing, to see what Black Isle’s Fallout 3 could have been.
The release will no doubt help build anticipation for Bethesda’s vision, not to mention create a foundation on which to construct a tower of bitching if Bethesda’s effort fails to live up to expectations.
Fallout 3 News
In real Fallout 3 news, Bethesda has updated the Fallout 3 website with some teaser images and a counter… 27 days until the teaser trailer. It has also announced that Quai-Gon Jin is doing voice work. Looking good so far Beth...
Nvidia Adds Superlative To GeForce
Nvidia has kicked another toeful of sand into ATI’s eyes with its new SLI DX10 GeForce 8800 Ultra video card, boasting a 10-15% increase in performance over the previous pixel king, the GeForce 8800 GTX.
The card will no doubt be welcomed by cashed-up gamers, not afraid to drop £475 to make the most of the eye candy in upcoming DX10 games such as Bioshock, Age of Conan and Crysis.
Nvidia is obviously quite pleased with itself too, not only for trumping its own technology, but also for leaving ATI standing there with its cock in its hand. “The graphics industry evolves extremely quickly and it is quite an achievement when you can leapfrog your own performance milestones in succession like we have done with these GeForce 8 Series GPUs,” said Ujesh Desai, general manager of desktop GPUs at Nvidia.
Dell’s Solid State
Speaking of top-end hardware, Dell is now offering 32GB solid state disks (SSDs) as options in its ultraportable Latitude D420 and the semi-rugged D620 ATG laptops.
Sure they aren’t large enough to store an operating system, games and a hulking porn collection, but that’s what external storage is for.
The long overdue introduction of SSDs to the mainstream market will be a boon for gamers as they reduce heat, have lower power consumption and most importantly, offer significant increases in speed across the board.
While 64GB and 128GB drives are on the horizon, the technology is still significantly more expensive than standard hard disk storage (the 32GB Dell option is £225). With Dell and others such as Fujitsu, Samsung and Sandisk pushing the drives though, it won’t be long until prices drop and the technology filters down to more mainstream machines.
StarCraft MMO Rumours Swirling
According to CVG, “Well placed US sources” have revealed Blizzard will indeed be announcing a StarCraft MMO at this month’s Worldwide Invitational tournament in Korea.
Are CVG’s sources telling porkies? If not will StarCraft pillage WoW’s user base? Or will the company enslave the rest of the gaming population and their children with an almighty Zerg rush? We’ll know for sure when the Blizzard metatron speaks on May 19.
[/i]Van Buren Demo
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Comments
tyrion 10 May 2007 12:17
1/1
£475 for a graphics card! Makes my PS3 look reasonably priced. This thing had better cook the dinner, wash the dishes and pleasure me orally for that price!