Nvidia and AMD might not release new cards until 2012 — who cares?

Tuesday, August 16th, 2011

I’ve become used to Nvidia and AMD rocking up with new graphics cards on a consistently quick schedule: since 2008 and beginning with the GeForce 9000-series, Nvidia has released six generations of GPUs, and AMD has replied with three of its own, starting with the Radeon HD 4000-series.

Both firms put the finishing touches on their current ranges in the spring, and the trail’s gone quiet since. Nvidia has confirmed that it won’t release any new cards before 2012, and AMD hasn’t mentioned any potential release dates for its new Radeon HD 7000-series — presumably taking extra time to further tweak and perfect the new chips. (more…)

iPhone App of the Week: CM Legends 1980s

Friday, April 8th, 2011

Appalling crowd violence, pitches that would bog down a shire horse, and John Fashanu: there was a lot wrong with 1980s football. Yet, proper fans still look back at the era of terracing, Terry Gibson and tight shorts with little but fondness – and CM 1980s Legends delivers nostalgia by the physio’s bucketful.

The Championship Manager series has long been the poor relation of Sports Interactive’s Football Manager on the PC – but within the limited scope of the iPhone, CM still delivers an enjoyable commuter-sized romp. It wisely dispenses with the complexity of its PC brethren: there are no in-depth training routines, pan-European scouting missions, or pages of player stats to pore over. You largely pick your team (only two subs, remember), tweak your formation and do your best to persuade Newcastle to sell you a youthful Paul Gascoigne.

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3D in the home: let the hype truly begin

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

So, you thought the 3D hype was already in full swing? Brace yourself, because over the next few weeks we’re going to see advertising campaigns, news stories and product announcements blitz our lives. And at least some of the blame falls at the door of that accursed World Cup.

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Is this really the way to stop kids playing violent games?

Friday, May 7th, 2010

Here’s the sight that greets your eyes if you head to www.justcause.com. You see, to protect our youngsters from looking at the violent images contained within, Eidos has installed the chocolate-fireguard defence known as asking people for their date of birth before accessing the site.

This has long been pointless, but now Eidos isn’t even bothering to explain why you need to enter a month, day and year. It’s just chucking up the dropdown boxes in the knowledge that no-one cares. “Even” ten-year-olds (and I say “even” in quote marks because most children seem to be at their most savvy when they’re about ten) will just put in a false date.

And if someone misunderstands and enter today’s date – it’s surely the most logical action on seeing such a prompt – they’ll be shown a message saying “Sorry, you are not eligible to view the content on this site.” From that point on, or at least until they clear out their cookies, Eidos will believe they’re under 18 and only allow them to see child-friendly content.

It’s possibly the most stupid thing I’ve seen all year.

Will the Radiohead experiment work on gamers?

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

Like several other members of the PC Pro editorial team, I pretty much drop all pretence of working/eating/sleeping/human contact for a month or so at the same point each year: when Football Manager is released for the PC. This year will be no different, as I bravely attempt to carry local minnows Bromley from the Blue Square South to the Champions League, ducking and diving in the transfer market and abusing my fellow managers in the press.

But, for the first time in its short lifetime, I am genuinely considering opting against Football Manager. Actually, that’s a barefaced lie – i fully intend to buy FM2010, but this year I’m also going to buy its big rival, Championship Manager.

Not because I think it will have improved to a level at which it genuinely competes with Sports Interactive’s record-smashing masterpiece – although early reports suggest it’s giving it a hell of a go – but because Eidos is doing something a bit different with the CM2010 launch. (more…)

iPhone: a return to the golden age of gaming?

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

When I were a lad, a new computer game didn’t cost the same as a tank of petrol. I remember eagerly scanning the shelves of my local WH Smith, hoping to find a new release among the stacks of Commodore 64 tapes priced at £2.99. If I hadn’t given my mum too much lip that week, I might even have been able to persuade her to part with £3.99 for one of the premium titles, such as The Way of the Exploding Fist.

The era of the low-budget game pretty much died with the Commodore 64, Spectrum and Amstrad era. Before long the Amiga and the Atari ST had raised the budget bar to £9.99 – not so much an impulse purchase, as a couple of weeks pocket money at the very least.

Yet, that was nothing compared to the inflation of the console era. New PlayStation titles routinely cost £30. Today, a brand new Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 title can set you back £50. I sympathise with the parents I see dragging their disappointed offspring away from the game aisles in Tesco, explaining they simply can’t afford the latest releases. For my mum it was a couple quid on top of her copy of the Daily Mail and Woman’s Weekly; for today’s mums it’s almost as much as the weekly shopping bill.

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Gaming-gem Daggerfall is now free

Friday, July 10th, 2009

This is slightly off the PC Pro beat but given that a great, big slab of gaming history is involved I decided to stretch my legs. Bethesda (that’s them who made Fallout 3 and Oblivion) have just released the Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall for free in order to celebrate fifteen years of the series. It’ll happily rattle around in a 150MB corner of your hard drive and needs only hugs to make it happy. You’ll need that gaming-gateway-to-the-past DosBox to get it running – that’s right chums Daggerfall really is that ancient – but if you’ve never gazed upon this gem I suggest you do so now.

You see, Daggerfall wasn’t coded so much as assembled out of dark matter. That 150MB contains a huge landscape filled with thousands of towns, dungeons and happenings. It’s randomly generated meaning that after a few hours you’ll inevitably find yourself wandering down the same section of corridor for the eighth time, but it’s still quite an incredible sight when you first clap eyes on that immense game map.

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The 10 biggest PC stories from E3 2009

Monday, June 8th, 2009

The annual Electronic Entertainment Expo, known as E3, attracts tens of thousands of hardcore gamers and industry figures to Los Angeles each June.

It’s the biggest show of the year, where Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo deliver keynote presentations, and, even though it’s easy to get caught up in Project Natal and the PSP Go, plenty of exciting PC news has emerged from E3.

Here, we’ve sifted through the dodgy RTS titles and lazy console ports to pick out the most important PC gaming stories to emerge from the three-day conference, so take a look at our top stories and let us know what you think.

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Single-handed entertainment

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

Not too long ago now, I found myself sitting in a wheelchair parked in the corner of an A&E department in Staffordshire. It wasn’t the Saturday afternoon I’d been hoping for.

My bicycle and I had parted ways at a crucial moment in the day’s riding. It had selfishly decided that it didn’t want to accompany me all the way to the bottom of the hill, and its decision saw me hurtle skyward, soar head-first over a sizeable mound of earth, and come to rest abruptly against a tree stump lurking on the other side. 

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Amazon takes shopping next-gen

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008

If anyone’s going to change the way we shop online it’s Amazon. It sells pretty much everything you could ever wish to buy on a high street, usually at lower prices, with fast, often free delivery and (in my experience) excellent customer service.

But the one problem online retailers have is capturing the browsing shopper. With only a home page to compete with the highly visible displays in most shop windows, it’s not easy to simply wander around an online store and spot something you may not have been looking for.

Step forward Amazon WindowShop. (more…)