Blog - October, 2009 - Page 2

Gaming Podcast 5 - Art, Advertising and Attitude

Posted on 15th Oct 2009 at 10:35 by Podcast with 12 comments

The fourth Gaming Pocast from the CustomPC and bit-tech team, again hosted by Joe and this time with Harry, Mark and Antony joining in for plenty of discussion about the latest events in the games industry across all platforms.

This week we talk about whether games journalists should have to develop games as a qualification, whether games can ever really be considered as an art form and why we've all been put off by the new advertising for Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2.

We also talk about the pending release of Windows 7 and why Joe isn't going to upgrade, as well as whether Valve might have a hidden dark side. Chilling stuff.

We've got a new prize to give away in the competition this week too, so listen closely and if you can guess the game we're describing then send your clearly labelled emails to Podcast@custompc.co.uk - and remember to put 'Gaming Podcast 5' in the subject line, or drop your thoughts in the forums.

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What Happened To The Flight Sim?

Posted on 14th Oct 2009 at 09:59 by Antony Leather with 24 comments

Cast your mind back to the 1990s. Chances are if you were in to PC games at the time you remember playing a flight sim, or at least some kind of game that involved a set of wings and a propellor or afterburner and some machine guns or missiles.

Fleet Defender, Aces over Europe, Red Baron, Battle of Britain, Hind, 1942: Pacific Air War, Air Warrior 3, Apache Longbow, Operation Overlord. I could go on for quite a while before I have to mention Microsoft Flight Simulator which was just a drop in the pond. But this isn't a list of flight sims released in the last 20 years, it's that of those to hit the shelves in a fraction of that time in the 1990's when the PC gaming isle in your average Game store was a little longer. It was also crammed full of flight sim titles.

So what happened? In case you haven't noticed, flight sims have been listed in the endangered species list of PC game genres for several years now. With the demise of ACES Studio, the guys behind Microsoft Flight Simulator, the longest running game franchise on the PC, there are but a handful of companies actually left in the genre now - and even fewer produce combat flight sims!

Asus Xtreme Global Summit – Blog about your prize and win a trip to Taiwan

Posted on 13th Oct 2009 at 17:04 by Ben Hardwidge with 15 comments

It’s time to flex those fingers, dust off the thesaurus and prepare to start hammering out your own exciting tech journal. If you were one of the lucky winners of a ticket to the recent Asus Xtreme Global Summit in London, then Asus wants you to blog about how you got on with your shiny new prizes. What’s more, your blogging skills could even win you the chance to get flown out to the Asus factory in Taiwan to hobnob with the R&D guys.

In the first round of blogs, we want to read all about your first impressions of the kit you took away on the day. You may have even noticed some interesting features about your new hardware that isn’t widely known, for example. We basically want to know what tasks you’ve thrown at your prize, and how you’ve got on with it. In particular, we also want to know how useful you’ve found any of Asus’ own features that you won’t find on other manufacturers’ hardware.

Tags asus, blog, global, prize, summit, taiwan, trip, xtreme

Do Actors Have A Place In Games?

Posted on 12th Oct 2009 at 11:36 by Mark Mackay with 31 comments

It would be true to say that there have been many a great game with actors in it. Actors (or celebrities, to be exact) don’t necessarily make games bad. It just seems to me that there are so many terrible games with actors in that you've really got to question why developers bother.

Let’s start off with Red Alert 3, a game which Joe liked, but I thought was an overworked load of pants. And then lets take Gemma Atkinson, for example. Now, most people that live in the UK will be familiar with Hollyoaks. It’s a teen-type soap opera of epically fail acting.

Lab Update: AMD Athlon II X4 620 and Lynnfield Memory

Posted on 9th Oct 2009 at 11:17 by Richard Swinburne with 14 comments

This week I have been mostly testing AMD's Athlon II X2 620 CPU.

Yes, we're a bit behind, but the Radeons arrived and deciding between a £75 quad core or the latest and shiniest DirectX 11 graphics cards is like wondering whether we'd rather eat out at Marcus Wareing, or go to a burger van at a motorway lay-by.

For the record, The Berkeley is fantastic.

Tags 620, athlon, core, cpu, gigabyte, ii, lynnfield, memory, quad, ud5

Hardware Podcast 6 – Nvidia has a Fermi, snigger, and the new F3 is epic

Posted on 8th Oct 2009 at 19:35 by Podcast with 10 comments

The sixth Hardware podcast sees Antony, Clive, Harry and Rich chat about all the latest hardware goings on. Discussed in the episode is Nvidia’s new GPU architecture, Fermi. Yes, yes, Nvidia’s got a Fermi – stop sniggering at the back!

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I'm Only Stupid Because I Know Too Much

Posted on 8th Oct 2009 at 12:09 by Joe Martin with 17 comments

I was playing Professor Layton and Pandora’s Box yesterday (in the course of writing the review) when I had a moment of utter brain failure. It’s embarrassing to even admit it, that’s how stupid it was of me.

The question was; if you have a rectangular piece of paper and fold it so that there’s an extra centimetre on one side and then you fold it the other way with a centimetre extra on the other end, then how far in millimetres would it be between the two creases when the paper is unfolded?

It’s a simple, easy question and the game gave me three spaces to write a number into. I quickly scribbled my answer down; 100mm and was told that was incorrect. Baffled, I got a piece of paper out and tried it out – measuring the gap as one centimetre. Again I put my answer in. Again; incorrect. It was only on the third go that I slapped my face and realised that there were only 10 millimetres in a centimetre – not 100. I was being a moron and had been led astray by the fact that the game gave you three spaces to put an answer in, not two. I’m an idiot.

That then got me thinking (as best as I was able anyway) about how my brain is stuffed with useless information that I use everyday and all the actual useful stuff that I never need to know has trickled away over the years. It’s ironic and twisted, but I can get more use out of game memory than I’d ever get from remembering how to do trigonometry properly.

What Makes You Quit A Multiplayer Game?

Posted on 6th Oct 2009 at 14:24 by Joe Martin with 51 comments

Those of you who listened to last week’s Gaming Podcast will know that, between the filthy jokes and my off-mike laughing fit, we talked about our lunchtime gaming habits – specifically COD4. We play every lunch time and occasionally after work too, with ‘we’ being most bit-tech, ComputerShopper and Micromart staff.

In the wake of our most recent after-work game an interesting dilemma presented itself though and we schedule our next big match for November 10th. The day that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 goes on sale. Thus is was asked; do we carry on playing COD4 for the time being, or do we switch over to the sequel?

Strangely enough, only two people said that they wanted to switch to the new game. Many reasons were given – shortage of funds, can’t be bothered to install, PCs that won’t run it, etc. My own reason however was simply that I wasn’t ready to leave COD4 just yet and don’t feel I’ve got everything I can out of it.

Using the iPhone as a Sat Nav Part II

Posted on 5th Oct 2009 at 10:33 by Antony Leather with 10 comments

I blogged a few weeks ago about my experience with the TomTom and CoPilot apps for the iPhone. In short they were all but unusable and I was left feeling pretty dissapointed, not to mention thinking that the iPhone simply wasn't up to the task - or even that it was faulty. A lot has changed since then though, I've got a refund on one, and the other has received an update which promissed improved GPS performance.

With no update planned for the unusable TomTom app combined with the fact it cost me close to £60, I decided that a refund was in order. I also decided that if CoPilot failed to work after its update, I would go for a seperate Sat Nav unit and make rude jestures at my iPhone. Luckily the refund wasn't an issue, and a quick email to Apple through iTunes saw the money back in my account a few days later.

The CoPilot update took a few weeks to arrive but during a rainy evening a few weeks ago, I installed it and went out for a drive. Things didn't start off too well with CoPilot's second test. Initially I was about to throw my iPhone out the window then reverse over it a few times. The red location icon failed to lock on to my position and showed me as being half a mile away. Things seemed to have got worse not better!

Gaming Podcast 4 - The PSPgo, Dreamcast and future of RTS games

Posted on 1st Oct 2009 at 14:01 by Podcast with 12 comments

The fourth Gaming Pocast from the CustomPC and bit-tech team, again hosted by Joe and this time with Clive, Mark and Antony joining in for plenty of discussion about the latest events in the games industry across all platforms.

This week they discuss the future of the Japanese games market, why none of them will buy a PSPgo and why the Dreamcast was so great. Also, rants about the evolution of the RTS genre and a chance to win a copy of Zeno Clash, plus the usual reader mail.

If you've got questions you'd like to see answered in the next podcast feel free to send them to the usual address or drop them in the forums.

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bit-tech.net

Gaming Podcast 5 - Art, Advertising and Attitude

What Happened To The Flight Sim?

Asus Xtreme Global Summit – Blog about your prize and win a trip to Taiwan

Do Actors Have A Place In Games?

Lab Update: AMD Athlon II X4 620 and Lynnfield Memory

Hardware Podcast 6 – Nvidia has a Fermi, snigger, and the new F3 is epic

I'm Only Stupid Because I Know Too Much

What Makes You Quit A Multiplayer Game?

Using the iPhone as a Sat Nav Part II

Gaming Podcast 4 - The PSPgo, Dreamcast and future of RTS games

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