Australian gamers can breathe a sigh of relief as GTA IV has been given an MA 15+ rating, avoiding a repeat performance of the fiasco that was San Andreas. It’s the most restrictive rating in Australia, as no R18 code exists in the region. The corollary of this most pleasing news is that the game’s content is probably complete.
via MaxConsole
EA has issued a new Medal of Honor: Airborne patch, which weighs in at a whopping 1.3 GB. Before throwing your arms up in the air, please be reminded that amongst other little tweaks to gameplay, spawn points for every multiplayer map have been adjusted, so these must all be included in the update.
via ShackNews
Touted as raising the bar for all independent games, Aquaria has recently won top honors at the 2007 Independent Games Festival, taking home the best game of the year award.
The basic storyline is that you are the magical being Naija who must travel through the depths of the ocean to find her family. The game is a 2D sidescroller that has a mix of exploration, battling, puzzle solving and crafting.
Currently the game is only PC but developer Bit Blot have said they are working with Ambrosia Software on a Mac version. Probably wouldn’t be a bad idea for them to consider an Xbox Live release either.
Check back as we plan to do a review very soon.
via Joystiq
Team Fortress 2 fans are in for a bit of a treat in the coming weeks. It has been confirmed that 360 players will be getting a new patch that has already been sent off to Microsoft for approval. The patch will fix “several game-play exploits, improve bandwidth usage, improve stats reporting and fixes some menu bugs.”
PC players will be getting maps as they are individually released and 360 users will get a pack. It is not known when we will see them trickle out or if they will be free.
Valve are also planning to give players the same tools they used to make the videos for the game. Valve hopes that this will create a plethora of user created content to show off the different classes. As above, we don’t not know when this feature will be hitting.
There has been no word on the PS3 version of the game, but given that Valve are not handling that game we wouldn’t really expect them to talk about it.
via ShackNews
So you probably thought that the announcement of being able to run three cards in SLI would mean a respectable frame rate when playing Crysis on maxed out graphics – think again. PC Games Hardware built a system containing three NVIDIA 8800 Ultras and it only managed to pump out a measly 37.9FPS. Thats over US$1800 worth of graphics cards and they only had 1X anti aliasing and anisotropic filtering on!
At this stage you may have several questions running through your mind: Is this game broken? How the hell did they even develop it? How many years until we have hardware that can run it at 60FPS? Could God create a game so system hoggy that not even he could play it? Probably not but Crytek have managed to.
Check after the jump for benchmark figures.
Ubisoft have announced that their long running turn-based strategy franchise, Heroes of Might and Magic, will be hitting web browsers. Heroes of Might and Magic Kingdoms will be playable for no monetary fee, but you’ll be hassled by advertising to entice you to buy items or gold. When it comes to playing online against thousands of people however, it’s a pretty small price to pay.
For those who live in the UK and wish to partake in the beta all you have to do is buy a copy of the Heroes of Might and Magic Complete Edition for your code. We aren’t sure how the rest of the world gets in on the beta, but your best bet is to head over to the game’s website and sign up for updates.
via Kotaku
NVIDIA has extended its SLI technology, allowing up to three GeForce graphics cards to be used in one machine - delivering up to 2.8 times the performance of a single GPU system.
If you’ve ever wanted to run Crysis at 2560×1600 with 8x AA and all the DirectX 10 effects enabled, this is the way to do it - although it’ll cost you a pretty penny. You’ll need a NVIDIA nForce 850 SLI MCP motherboard to start, then three GeForce 8800 GTX or 8800 Ultra cards to get the ultimate money-is-no-object gaming rig.
Check www.slizone.com for a list of 3-way SLI certified components.
NVIDIA have released their 8800 GTS 512MB, a second revision of their 8800 GTS line. The card relies on 65nm technology to run cooler than ever, and packs 25% more power than the previous GTS. Unfortunately, benchmarks aren’t as impressive as many suspected they would be. The 8800 GTS 512MB comes close, but does not beat its older, bigger brother the 8800 GTX in an unoverclocked state. The GTS’s benefit over the GTX is a low price of US$299 and the built-in HD movie processing that takes virtually all of the work away from your CPU when watching high-definition content.
Radical Entertainment’s Prototype certainly looks like its going to deliver a healthy dose of rooftop-jumping and body mutilation, all in a similar vein to The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. If you are a fan of any game which incorporates genetic mutation, shapeshifting, government conspiracies, and of course a bit of the old ultra-violence, this is the game for you.
via Gametrailers
The first trailer for Borderlands has hit the net. The slightly stilted animation and talking suggests that this video could very well be in-game footage. If this were so, the game would rank a few notches above Mass Effect in terms of visuals. The wait is still a long way off, however - 4th quarter of 2008.
via GameTrailers
