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Company of Heroes Coming Q3 2006
Posted by John Goulden Categories: E3, PC, Screenshots, Strategy,
Company of Heroes was brought to the public’s attention at E3 2005, but was still heavily in production at the time. Now, after three years of work, the PC game is well on track for a scheduled release in Q3 2006. If you’ve been living under a rock, here’s a quick rundown on what you can expect.
In wanting to make a game they would truly enjoy themselves, the developers built an RTS game that is truly dynamic, and one that doesn’t feature traditional choke points based on geography and other static game elements. Instead, the game features a totally deformable world which you can use to your advantage. Everything you see in the game can be destroyed, and we do mean everything. To illustrate, imagine a flank attack that would strike at the heart of your opponent’s infrastructure, but a wall stands between you and your objective. Instead of going around the wall, have your soldiers concentrate their attack on the wall to destroy a portion of it allowing you unfettered access to your enemy’s unprotected flank. That kind of scenario is a simplified concept of some of the awesome things that can be done by using the terrain and buildings to your advantage.
No longer will you need to coddle your soldiers for fear their stupidity will be the death of them. Such brilliant acts like standing in the middle of a street while under fire, or failing to utilize available cover nearby and offering themselves up as cannon fodder will be a thing of the past. With Company of Heroes, your units will automatically seek any cover available to them, while still following the orders you provide to them. That means running and crouching between cover points, and realizing that some cover is better than others. During the course of battle, craters caused by artillery fire or mortar rounds will likely be created and these craters can provide cover for your men as they advance on an enemy’s position.
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More Xbox 360 HD DVD Player Details
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Accessories, E3, Xbox 360,
So, we all know about the announcement of Microsoft’s HD DVD player add-on for the Xbox 360, right? What you may not know is how exactly is works. We have been getting questions from readers as it pertains to USB connections and such, worried that their pristinely beautiful setup will be ruined by the addition of the HD DVD player causing them to have to move the wireless network adapter to the front. So, we asked Microsoft for a few more details.
As it turns out, when you buy the Xbox 360 HD DVD player, you are also getting two more USB ports. So, you plug the USB out on the HD DVD drive to your rear USB in. The player has two more USB ports that you can use to connect other accessories, such as the Xbox Live Vision Camera, or the wireless network adapter. Even better, though, is the fact that the HD DVD player actually has the snap-in slots for the wireless network adapter as well, so there are no worries as to if the adapter’s USB cord will reach from the console to the drive. Lastly, there will be no DVI or HDMI output. All output will be through the Xbox 360 video out. From the looks of things, HD DVD releases aren’t going to have the protection token that requires the digital output connection to be present. Makes sense. Still, we would prefer some sort of HDMI or DVI cable support for the 360.
PS3: Expensive, But Not 3DO Expensive
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Culture, E3, PlayStation 3,
Time for a little perspective on the price of the PS3; yes, $500 - $600 is somewhat shockingly high given the pricing of the Xbox 360, and historical console launches. But gamers should remember that the 3DO launched at a wallet-busting $700, so the PS3 isn’t the highest priced console ever. Of course, the 3DO burned up in a fiery crash, and the resulting corpse died a slow, lingering death when the Playstation came around. But Curmudgeon Gamer also lists console pricing adjusted for inflation. Both the Atari 2600 and the Intellivision both cost more in inflation-adjusted dollars than the Playstation 3, which gives Sony some hope that their price point isn’t going to be a killer. Still, it will be the highest priced console in this and the previous generation in adjusted dollars. Since 1995, the only console to launch with a higher adjusted price was the lamented Sega Saturn. Sega lost that battle to the Playstation, and it should also be noted that when the Playstation launched, the Saturn’s price was brought down to $299. So historically, looking at the successes and failures at particular price points, Sony is definitely on the high end. It’s not the highest priced console around, and price is only one of many factors used when consumers make purchase decisions. It’s doubtful the high price will have that much of an effect on early adopters, considering the high prices many were willing to pay for the Xbox 360 on the secondary market, but past that first wave of purchasers, Sony may have a problem.
Read More 
| Curmudegeongamer.com
Xbox 360 Toshiba Firmware Reportedly Hacked
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Mods/Hacks, Xbox 360,
A post in the Xboxhacker.net forums reports that a hacked firmware for Xbox 360’s with the Toshiba drive TS-H943 has been released. According to the release notes, the following are supported:
- Boots all Xtreme Xbox 360 backups
- Boots all Xtreme Xbox 1 backups
- Boots all Xbox 360 originals
- Boots all Xbox 1 originals on Xbox 360
- Xtreme0800 extraction firmware enables drive to function natively under Windows without any hardware conversion/adaptors
- Use on Xbox Live at own risk
The release was credited to Commodore4Eva, and there have been a few reports of success from a few users booting backups of Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfare. While this hack was known to be possible before, this is the first public release of a hacked firmware for the Xbox 360, and it will be interesting to see how Microsoft responds to this hack. The firmware hack is definitely not a thing for a rookie user to attempt, but as more information hits the Internet and more users attempt the hack, the methods for rewriting the firmware will certainly become more streamlined. Reports also indicate that hacks for the other DVD drives used in the Xbox 360 will be coming soon.
Read More | Xboxhacker.net
Parents Sue Game Distributor Over Son’s Suicide
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Culture, Internet,
According to a news report from the Xinhua newspaper, a 13 year old Chinese boy committed suicide after playing Warcraft for 36 hours at an Internet cafe in 2004. These reports state that the child threw himself out of a 24th story window in “honor of the heroes of the game he worshipped.” The parents are now suing the Chinese game distributor, Aomeisoft, for 100,000 Yuan in damages, and to try to have a warning label placed on the software about Internet addiction. The parents had originally tried to sue Blizzard, but the Chinese court blocked this action.
The loss of a life at such a young age is a horrible tragedy, but allowing any person of any age to play a game for 36 hours straight can be dangerous. With a young child, this can only be more so. It is hard to believe that a warning label about addiction could be effective when the parents don’t even notice a marathon gaming session. Apparently, abdication of parental responsibility is a global phenomenon. It is sad to hear of such instances of neglect, but suing the game developer or publisher hardly seems like a way to ensure that such tragedies do not repeat themselves.
Read More | Xinhuanet.com
First Impressions of Mass Effect
Posted by Jake Ludington Categories: Adventure, E3, Role Playing Games, Xbox 360,
After being completely blown away by Gears of War early in the day, I was admittedly jaded by the time I got the chance to look at Mass Effect. Space games just aren’t my thing and the endless pitch of “we’ve got the new new thing” from each product demo starts to wear thin. So when the BioWare team launched into a demo of Mass Effect, I had my guard up. Turns out Mass Effect is exactly the kind of space game I might get into. I’m a huge fan of Bethesda’s Oblivion, with open-ended questing, divergent storylines and interaction with non-player characters throughout the world. Think of the Oblivion concept as the jumping off point for Mass Effect.
The game ratchets things up a notch in several key areas. Interaction and realism in interactions with NPC entities inside the Mass Effect galaxy are at the forefront of the non-combat experience. Where Oblivion occasionally gives you a couple of approaches for talking to a character, with different outcomes depending on whether you’re a jerk, polite or manipulative; Mass Effect takes this to the next level, offering multiple conversation options for each stage of the conversation, offering more ways to succeed or fail in getting the information you need out of a conversation. Combat scenarios offer a range of complex options as well. Instead of flying solo on every mission, you’ve got two NPC teammates who either focus on whatever target you aren’t currently aiming for or can be positioned for strategic strikes on target objectives.
We’ll see how the story plays out once the game finally hits retail. The foundation synthetic beings returning every 50,000 years to purge all humanoids from the galaxy. Part of your job is to figure out why. It seems like many RPGs borrow the Tolkien end-of-days approach where the monumental quest of a few will rescue the many from the brink of eternal darkness, but it often comes off feeling contrived. The 30 minutes I spent looking at Mass Effect leave me feeling like the story line works, but you never know until you actually play.
Halo 3: Behind The Trailer
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Corporate News, E3, First Person Shooters, Xbox 360,
The folks at Bungie have come home after E3, and have a little insider information about what went on behind the scenes when they debuted their Halo 3 teaser trailer at the Microsoft pre-E3 conference. There were six debug units from Bungie, three of which were used at Grauman’s Chinese. Apparently, there were actually two units running the trailer simultaneously, in case something catastrophic happened to one system. If some unforeseen event had happened to one debug box, the other would be running in parallel as a kind of hot-swap system. Luckily, they had no technical difficulties; most of the issues seemed to be with marketing timing. Since the Microsoft presentation was delayed, the E3 Halo trailer actually hit Xbox Live before the official announcement. These details and some talk about what went on at the closed-doors press briefing are posted on Bungie.net.
Read More | Bungie.net
Rumor: Dashboard Update By End of May
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Rumors, Xbox 360, Xbox Live,
A translation of Xbox Archiv in Germany has supposedly confirmed a large Xbox Live Dashboard update to be happening at the end of May. Key among the improvements are the creation of an Xbox Live download queue and the ability to handle background downloading. The confirmation of these changes is supposed to be from Boris Schneider-Johne of Microsoft Germany. In addition to the background downloading, more updates are supposed to be scheduled, including better bandwidth management. It does seem a little strange that this update didn’t seem to get any coverage out of E3, but gamers should cross their finger in the hope that by the end of May, they should be able to download files and play games at the same time.
Read More | Xboxic.com translation of Xbox Archiv
Draenei Join Blood Elves in Burning Crusade
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Internet, MMORPG, PC, Screenshots, Trailers,
The new Alliance race in World of Warcraft will be the Draenei, according to reports in the New York Times. While the Blood Elf race joining the Horde was announced quite a while ago, there has been a lot of secrecy around the new Alliance races. The Times also features a Q&A with lead designer for Burning Crusade, Jeff Kaplan. At this time, the Draenei players will be able to choose to be either the warrior, priest, paladin, mage or hunter classes, and there will be new entry points for the new races as well. In the interview with Kaplan, things like changes to flight paths and item distribution and content development are discussed, and screenshots and trailers are available for download. The Burning Crusade is targeted to be available in late 2006.
Read More | New York Times
Sony Computer Entertainment PSP Trailer Roundup
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Corporate News, E3, PSP, Trailers,
Sony Computer Entertainment of America has been posting some of the E3 2006 trailers online for some of their upcoming PSP titles, including:
ATV Offroad Fury Pro: The followup to the previous ATV game, will now feature cross-compatibility with ATV Offroad 4 for the PS2, and Infrastructure Wi-Fi connectivity.
Gangs of London: Gangs has a weird look, a kind of a mix of pseudo-realism and cell-shading for the character models and environments.
LocoRoco: A very colorful 2-D platform game; the graphics are super stylized, but very engaging. A demo is available online for PSP users with firmware 2.7.
NBA 07: The series has kind of been floundering on the PSP, and the 2007 release hopes to turn that around. In lieu of an actual franchise mode, they’ve added a “conquest” mode, and some slight graphical improvements.
SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo 2: The updated version of last year’s highly rated tactical online FPS. The update will link to the upcoming SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Combined Assault on the PS2 and offers new game modes, including Tug of War and Capture the Flag.
World Tour Soccer ‘06: The 2006 version of last year’s game, re-designed for the PSP. The new version supports four player multiplayer, twice the amount of last year’s version, but still no infrastructure mode.
Read More | Playstation.com E3
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