Posts Tagged ‘Gaming’
Left 4 Dead Demo Confirmed on PC and Xbox 360
Gabe Newell, co-founder of Valve (the greatest gaming company ever), confirmed at Videogamer.com that the demo of Left 4 Dead will be for PC and Xbox 360. Gabe, while unsure of the final content that will be in the demo, assures gamers that both singleplayer and co-op will be in the demo as a taste of what the game will be like. The game itself is due out on November 18th in the US, and November 21, 2008 in Europe.
The Pxl Lab is also planning on reviewing both the PC and Xbox versions of the game, so be sure to check our reviews of the game when it’s released!
Face of Mankind: Rebirth Canceled
Face of Mankind: Rebirth was an MMOFPS that had some great potential. I personally played in the beta for Face of Mankind (not Rebirth, check out this article if you want some more information on the history of the game), and I thought it was an awesome blend of FPS, MMO, and RPG. It had “raids” where players from one of the factions in-game could take over another planet from another faction. The unique quest system let higher level players create quests for others, such as mining a certain ore or assassinating an enemy of theirs.
Even with all of the game’s potential to be something excellent, the recreation of an MMO is not easy for a small team of people financing their own work. Sadly, the game is coming to an end because of the team’s financial problems. Here is an excerpt from the offical FoM site:
FoM, as many other MMORPGs today, is a game that relies heavily
on visual content. For us, being only a small development studio with very limited
resources, it would be nearly impossible to make the game we want it to be. You
might wonder what there is to change? It runs fine and works in a way. That’s right,
but not the way it’s supposed to. And spending so much more power and private funding
into the project made not much sense anymore. There might be a time for FoM in the
future, but it’s just not now.
The developers of FoM, Duplex Systems, are working on another MMO that they hope to release in place of Face of Mankind, called NanoVerse Online. As of right now there is no content on the site besides a nice logo, but Duplex promises that if you continue checking back that more content will be there.
Steam Will Soon Hold Save Games Online
Steam, the service that Valve uses to distribute games online, is known for its excellent copy protection, easy game downloading, and large base of players. Valve announced that they will be adding two more features to help gamers in the near future, namely keeping save games and key bindings on the user’s account, so that players that play their games on multiple computers can keep their data with them. I, who use two computers to play Steam games, find this news a godsend from Valve. This news is also great for people on a single computer, because if a freak accident like a hard drive wipe or fire wipes out the data on your computer, then you still have it when you get a new one! The games that will first see the effects of this update are Half Life, Half Life 2, Counter Strike: Source, and the upcoming Left 4 Dead. I can only hope that they add it to Team Fortress 2 soon after. For those of you that don’t have Steam, you can take advantage of the download button below to get it.
InstantAction Brings 3D Gaming to the Web
Have you been looking to play some great-looking games without leaving the comfort of Firefox? Look no further than InstantAction, a website created just for that purpose. Made by GarageGames, the leader of independent game design, InstantAction brings quality games like Think Tanks and Marble Blast to you for free, with micro transactions helping to keep the site in business. InstantAction takes advantage of being a web-based service by letting you easily join groups/parties of up to 8 people to play games and chat. Currently only one game has a single-player option, which is Marble Blast; however, more games should have that option once the service is stripped of its beta tag.
The only thing I don’t like about InstantAction is that I seem to lose connection to the party leaders right before a game starts, so I have to try and find another host to play a game. Other than this, I think that InstantAction will shape up to be a really great online gaming service in the coming months as it grows in popularity.
See If Your PC Can Play A Game, Before You Play It
YouGamers is an online services built for gamers: You choose a game, the site scans your computer hardware, and then displays whether or not your computer can play the game. If your PC doesn’t meet the requirements, the website will give you some advice about what you should upgrade in order to play. Attentive users will notice that the scans are run with 3DMark, which is the industry standard for computer hardware scanning and evaluation. So, if you’re wondering about Crysis crashing your machine, just check with YouGamers.
See If Your Computer Can Run A Game Before You Play It!
I used YouGamers to see just how well it worked, and I have to say I love it. I knew that Assassin’s Creed had high system requirements, so I went tried seeing if my computer could handle the power. After a quick 2-minute wait, during which I could still browse around the internet, YouGamers had scanned my computer and told me that I beat the minimum requirements to play Assassin’s Creed, but if I wanted to see its full glory, I should get a new videocard. I declined because I’m poor right now, but at least I knew that my machine could take the game when I got around to buying it.
New Team Fortress 2 Spy Skin by Pxl_Buzzard
Hello again everyone. I write with the news that I recently did a small touch-up on
the spy skin in Team Fortress 2 (an excellent online cartoon FPS made by Valve). The skin isn’t anything much, just a new camo tie that I thought was desperately needed (I mean, who wants a plain old striped tie anyways?). I tried to give a fancy beard too, but the game won’t show it for whatever reason even though it shows up in the redone skin. So, without further ado, I present to you the download for the skin (I hope you’ve looked at it on the right side by now to see if you’ll love it or just freak out in it’s pure awesomeness).
