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Games I Own: The Thief Series

Posted on 27th Mar 2009 at 15:07 by Joe Martin with 12 comments

Joe Martin
First, a confession; I wasn’t going to write about Thief originally. I was actually trying to write a blog post about the gaming achievement I was most proud of, which for me was completing Bookworm in classic mode. In the course of writing that post I started talking about Thief though and before long the game was dominating the post. I love Thief.

I got introduced to Thief back when the first demo came out on a PC Gamer cover disc, though I actually only tried the demo as a matter of curiosity. Even back then the graphics were too ugly to attract my attention straight away.

When I got in to the demo though, which was the entire first level of the game, I was hooked. Not just hooked in the way that I played it three or four times either; I was physically addicted. I’m confident that, if someone put a gun to my head, I could play that level with my eyes shut. Lord Bafford’s Manor was permanently etched onto my brain with the kind of furious heat that only comes from eyes that burn from staring at a screen so long.

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Revisiting the Akasa Enigma

Posted on 27th Mar 2009 at 13:29 by Richard Swinburne with 7 comments

It wasn't unexpected that Akasa had a few points of concern about our review. Akasa said that in order for the case to perform optimally, the mini-ITX board needed to be less than 30mm tall and we needed to use Akasa's LGA775 or AM2+ coolers specially designed for it.

We checked our Gigabyte GA-230D and found the northbridge heatsink and fan was 35mm tall, while the Jetway NC92-330-LF was 29.5mm, as was the reference Intel Atom board.

Revisiting the Akasa Enigma Revisiting Akasa's Enigma Revisiting the Akasa Enigma Revisiting Akasa's Enigma
Click to enlarge

Our immediate concern is "how do I know what mini-ITX motherboard I buy is compatible?" We looked around at mini-ITX boards listed on websites and seldom do they list the total height, making choosing the right board a very difficult task.

Revisiting the Akasa Enigma Revisiting Akasa's Enigma Revisiting the Akasa Enigma Revisiting Akasa's Enigma
Click to enlarge

Another thing is the complete lack of manual in the box - we had to be instructed by Akasa of the "correct way" to install everything which is very specific. Just a sheet of A4 explaining that a 90 degree SATA connector is required (another additional purchase from Akasa), and the hard drive should be installed upside down and facing inwards would have been good.

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Are there any funny computer jokes?

Posted on 26th Mar 2009 at 12:24 by Clive Webster with 37 comments

Clive Webster
Most areas of our modern life seem easy to create jokes from – politics is an obvious choice, but you can probably think of quite a few jokes about pubs, traffic wardens, flying, pretty much everything. But it struck me last night that I haven’t heard a funny IT joke for ages. Or perhaps ever. The best I could up with was this:

Q: What’s Ali G’s favourite MP3 player?
A: An AiiiPod.

How lame is that?

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I hope PC gaming graphics have plateaued

Posted on 26th Mar 2009 at 12:14 by Mark Mackay with 48 comments

Mark Mackay
During October of last year, in an interview with CVG, Valve’s vice president of marketing, Doug Lombardi stated that he believes PC gaming graphics are close to being as good as they’ll get.

Lombardi told CVG that he believes that ‘graphics have started to top-out. We've got really great-looking games but what we want are more intelligent, more visceral games and the multi-core processors are going to be the way that we get there on PC.’

Some of you might feel that this is nonsense; others might feel that it’s true but you wish it wasn’t because you want to be dazzled by graphical feats of unimaginable excellence. Personally, not only do I believe that Lombardi’s statement holds a good deal of truth but I also actually hope that he’s right.

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Xbox 360 Demo round-up: Guitar Hero: Metallica and more

Posted on 24th Mar 2009 at 09:33 by Alex Watson with 2 comments

Alex Watson
As it's the middle of the month, and I only have cash for practical things, over the weekend I fired up the Xbox 360 to see what free demos were available. First up: Guitar Hero: Metallica. The last band-specific Guitar Hero focussed on Aerosmith, and was a mediocre mid-tempo effort. The graphics achieved the impressive feat of making Steven Tyler & co. look even more like zombies than they do in real life, and there was a distinct lack of soul and care to the whole enterprise.

Judging from the demo, GH: Metallica will be a much better product. For starters, it's based on the Guitar Hero World Tour engine so the graphics are much improved, both technically and in terms of art direction. Whereas GH: Aerosmith was cartoony, colourful and cluttered, GH: Metallica uses Left 4 Dead-style desaturated colours and film grain to give the visuals some bite. The character models of the band look far more realistic than before, and the developers have reduced a lot of the visual clutter - the note streak you're on is subtly illustrated with a skull-embossed plectrums to the right of the fretboard and the rock meter is less intrusive. The game also works in artwork from Metallica's albums - the fist from St Anger punches upwards when the song ends, for instance.

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Games I Own: Grim Fandango

Posted on 23rd Mar 2009 at 14:03 by Joe Martin with 11 comments

Joe Martin
Grim Fandango has three distinctions in my games library. Firstly, it’s one of my favourite games. Secondly, it’s one of the only 3D adventure games I really like (Escape from Monkey Island is a disgrace to the series, I reckon) and thirdly, it’s one of only a handful of games that I’d label as a romantic game.

Romance is, I think, something that isn’t explored enough in games – probably because of a weakness in the medium that doesn’t make it hugely capable of displaying that emotion. I can only think of a half-dozen games that actually deal with matters of the heart so openly and most of them are Leisure Suit Larry games! Despite it being a fairly small niche though, Grim Fandango stands head and shoulders above the masses as perhaps the most singularly romantic game I’ve ever played.

The story for the game is a masterpiece of noir fiction, set in a imaginative take on the Mexican afterlife and with players cast as unlikely hero, Manny Calvera, salesman for new souls. When somebody dies in the real world it’s Manny’s job to assess their soul and try to find them the quickest way to the true heaven. If someone has been good in their life then they can take a quick train through the afterlife straight to heaven. If they’ve been bad then they’ll be lucky if they’re even given a map, but it’s Manny’s job to help them as best he can.

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IntelliTXT is no more

Posted on 20th Mar 2009 at 13:05 by Tim Smalley with 49 comments

Tim Smalley
Over the past month or so, we have been trialling IntelliTXT text link advertisements on all of the article pages on bit-tech and I'm now pleased to tell you that they have gone.

It was a type of advertising that we had discussed on a number of occasions prior to bit-tech's acquisition last year and each time we decided to hold off. This time, the decision went the other way and that's part of the reason why I wanted to gather your feedback – both positive and negative – on it shortly after it went live.

Based on the valuable feedback we have received – both from the community and the industry – the decision has been taken to remove it from the site with immediate effect.

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Addictions on the go: Puzzle Quest

Posted on 20th Mar 2009 at 11:11 by Mark Mackay with 6 comments

Mark Mackay
A few weeks ago I blogged about Fieldrunners on the iPhone. Not only is Fieldrunners an awesome game by any standard, it’s also the first game I’ve ever been truly addicted to on a mobile phone, which I see as a big step forward for gaming.

Today, I’m writing about the second game I’ve been addicted to on my iPhone, Puzzle Quest which is essentially an RPG crossed with Bejewelled.

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Two decades of innovation and we still get sore fingers

Posted on 19th Mar 2009 at 11:06 by Antony Leather with 6 comments

Antony Leather
I'm often asked how to build a water-cooled PC and what components are compatible with what. Mainly what frightens people is the assumed complexity of the cooling system compared to air cooling.

Having just completed the labs test for Issue 69 of Custom PC involving numerous CPU coolers, I can honestly say that mounting a waterblock like the D-Tek FuZion V2 is an awful lot easier than many CPU coolers I've seen.

In fact, the FuZion V2 costs a lot less than most air-coolers too. Alright, I'll concede that you need to fork out for pumps, radiators and reservoirs too, but the fact remains.

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RIP: Asus responds to its flaming motherboard

Posted on 18th Mar 2009 at 10:12 by Richard Swinburne with 7 comments

Asus has responded with a detailed report as to why its M3A-H/HDMI went up in flames and smoke. After publishing the first episode following the freshening smell of burnt electronics festered in our labs, Asus was keen to take the board back to Taiwan for further testing and let us know how it got on.

RIP: Asus responds to its flaming motherboard RIP: Asus responds to flaming motherboard

Here's its conclusion, with Asus' words and pictures (all we have done is tidy the English a little):

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Get 3 Issues for just £1
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