Wednesday 19 April 2006
The world of digital distribution is making 'going down the shops' as old-hat as, well, an old hat. And that's a leather one with a feather in it. The most convincing example of online shoppery is Steam, a powerful system from the creators of the mighty Half-Life games.
Steam is to games what iTunes is to music. Valve's creation may work on a smaller scale than Apple's huge store, but it solves more problems.
While music and video stores simply upload files and take
Back to Day 4
The Final Push
While gil, items and experience points can take you pretty far in Final Fantasy XI, they're not always the answer. Today we'll help you through some of your first major milestones before pushing you out of the proverbial
Back to Day 2
Day 3: MMO Boot camp
If you've never played an online RPG before, be prepared to change the way you think. Sometimes it seems like the game bashes you over the head with rules - written and unwritten. So why do people bother? Because it turns out these rules actually help more than they hurt, most of the time - and the games are so addictive, anyway. In Final Fantasy XI, many of the rules are designed to force players to play with one another, and others simply aim to get them
Back to Day 1
Day 2: Get a job
If you've played other Final Fantasy games, chances are you've run into the "job system." It's a classic - it lets you totally change your character's class and abilities. Even better, once you hit level 18 you can equip a "Support Job" to make your character kick even more ass, with a sackful of new abilites. In total, Final Fantasy XI sports 18 jobs, each more classic than the last.
Support Jobs operate at half the level of the main job, but can alter your
Wednesday 12 April 2006
When Stainless Steel Studios was pulled as developer for action-slash-strategy game Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War, the game was almost cast into the black hole of development limbo. But, with Midway's in-house development team now at the helm and a confident summer release on the horizon, things are looking good for this promising genre-bending RTS.
With an exclusive playable demo of Rise & Fall appearing on this month's PC Gamer cover disc - on sale tomorrow - we
Agent 47, everyone's favourite hired killer, makes a welcome return this summer, and we tracked down Rasmus Hojengaard, game director at IO Interactive, for a Hitman: Blood Money interrogation.
Born in a secret lab and genetically engineered to be a ruthless killer, Agent 47 uses his shadowy ties to an unknown agency to acquire missions - and for the first time, we'll finally be able to earn cash for killings and blow it on gleaming metal murder-tools.
Hitman: Contracts gave us some excellent
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion breathes the rarified air of the “upgrade game,” a title so huge (and so demanding of your PC's horsepower) that you might have to buy new hardware just to enjoy it. Like two other "upgrade games," Half-Life 2 and Battlefield 2, this fourth Elder Scrolls RPG is a first-person game at heart. Hitting your target means precision aiming and good timing, just like in a shooting game. This also means your PC must deliver smooth animation (tech-y guys will
For some players, The Sims' Build Mode is an entire game. In fact, for a special few - who we like to call builders - it's the only game. It's a real eye-opening experience for us who make this game to see how far the systems we create can be pushed. It's also a testament to the ingenuity, not to mention the persistence, of the builders out there who have a vision and use Build Mode to realize that vision.
It would be simply impossible to talk about all the mind-blowingly cool buildings that
To stand against the onslaught of new consoles, PC developers have cranked up the juice on approaching new software, and the power surge will likely give your rig a shiner if you aren't prepared. Here are the games and the hardware fixes to make sure you are fully-equipped for all of the PC goodness to come.
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion more
What It Will Break: Your puny CD-ROM drive
Yes, finally getting your mitts on the next chapter of the Elder Scrolls story is like catching a mythical
Agent 47, everyone's favorite hired killer, makes a welcome return this summer, and we tracked down Rasmus Hojengaard, game director at IO Interactive, for a Hitman: Blood Money interrogation.
Born in a secret lab and genetically engineered to be a ruthless killer, Agent 47 uses his shadowy ties to an unknown agency to acquire missions - and for the first time, we'll finally be able to earn cash for killings and blow it on gleaming metal murder-tools.
Hitman: Contracts gave us some excellent
