Recession hit US so badly until EA plans to put an end for Need for Speed series due to financial crisis. According to the Electronic Playground, EA has canceled all Need for Speed production after the failure of Need for Speed Undercover. If you realized Need for Speed series lost it’s ‘mojo’ ever since Most Wanted going to downhill. However, let’s wait for the official announcement from EA.
Recently I stumbled a very cool teaser trailer of Half Life in Source engine. It's a complete recreation (a *mod made by guys from Black Mesa) of Half Life into Source engine. The storyline remain unchanged except the graphics. The graphics almost like Half Life 2 and I guess it's more realistic than Half Life 2.
Can You Run It helps you to find out whether YOUR machine can run the game or not . It's an online requirement calculation tool that inspects your computer's hardware and configuration settings whether it will be able to handle the graphics of the game. A report will be provided in the end of inspection, enlist detailed explanation on which hardware can support the game and vice versa so, you can upgrade it individually (if needed).
It's really simple to use: select the game you want to check and wait for 2-3 minutes while the software analyses (probably need to install ActiveX for their propierty Java app to run, to do so). I did tried for the game Hitman: Blood Money, and as expected my graphic card unable to support besides that, for better understanding a simple graph available and it shows my notebook not even support the minimum requirement lol.
*machine - CPU? Computer? Erm basically a computer that you use to play games.
*ultimate gaming rig - a gaming computer with latest hardware in the market and highly tweaked for solely gaming purposes only.
This might be a really outdated news or whatever it is but, I just found out about couple of weeks ago. Few of you might knew that I'm a DotA die hard fan but does not mean I'm not a pro either. I playing for my own satisfaction with my KJ friends. For those, who wondering what the heck is DotA - it is actually an abbreviation for Defense of the Ancients: a custom scenario map for Warcraft 3: Frozen Throne and it's famous around the world. Now, I'm not going to give a speech about DotA origin or whatsoever - if you want to know more about DotA head to here.
I came across news with new teaser from Blizzard with unsolved with icy look alike splash screen at the Blizzard site. What announcement could Blizzard going to give now? Could it be a new Diablo game or ice from the Frozen Throne or mineral from StarCraft. StarCraft? Isn't it too early too announce the expansion pack? However, according to WorldOfWar website they manage to crack down the mystery behind the icy wallpaper.
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Seriously I just started to play this game to fill my leisure time now I'm addicted to it and worst thing is till I got no time to blog as well. I became more interested to play Tales of Pirates instead of blogging . So, let me share few words about Tales of Pirates.
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For more drooling clips of NFS Pro Street, kindly head to GameTrailers.com
Does anyone realize there is no Pinball game on Windows Vista? Pinball the Windows default classic game, anyone? Why the Microsoft did not shipped the Pinball along with their new operating system? Don’t ask me I don’t know about that either but what I know is we still can play Pinball on Windows Vista.
Since the author of the software uploaded it on an online storage site, it’s not a good idea for me to directly put the download link. So, I linked to the site which the author posted about his/her work.
Windowsxlive [Now Available: Final Version of Pinball for Vista]
Yeah, back again with Need for Speed Pro Street news and this time few detailed information about the game. NFS fan sure knew that NFS Pro Street is different than any other NFS series before. So, what are the difference/s the EA is/are talking about? This game has a totally new driving experience, new game modes and new features. The game takes place in closed tracks, so there is no open world anymore.
Basically, the main new features are damage, physics and smoke. All three things are highly evolved,
Damage:The game is all about damage, you have to watch out that you don’t wreck your car, because repairing is expensive.
The damage model are realistic - bumpers and tires can fall off, windows break, hoods fly away and based on the material (metal, glass, plastic or carbon) it gets scratches or breaks. All the damage is calculated on-the-fly, so it doesn’t look always the same. It even depends on how fast you hit a wall; the car will be damaged based on many parameters. The damage will affect your car performance. The more you crash your car, the slower you will get. If you crash your car too much, the race is over.
Locations:
The tracks in Need for Speed Pro Street are based on locations, which exist in the real world. EA did a lot of research and took many photos to make the tracks look as realistic as possible. As the player you travel all around the world to participate at the race events. Each event is hosted by different organizations, so it will always have a different style.
Game modes:
There are 4 game modes in Need for Speed Pro Street: GRIP, Drift, Drag and Speed Challenge. For every game mode, you will have your personal car, which is perfectly balanced for this type of race. EA didn’t talk much about the game modes in the game, but so far:
GRIP will be like the circuit mode, where you race a certain number of laps.
Drift mode will be different than in NFS Carbon, because of the new car physics. To extend accessibility, Electronic Arts built in “assists”, which will help you steering the car and staying on the track. If you turn off all the assists, it’s more for the hardcore gamers and the game will be more like simulation – it is more real.
Drag mode returns, but there is no information yet, what will be different.
Speed Challenge (new mode), which is mainly a really long track, where you can push your car to the limits. At highest speeds you race down a straight road, with almost no curves. But once you try to steer, you have to watch out not to get off the road, because that high speed can be dangerous…
Driving:
We have the possibility to drive with assists on or off.
Switch assists off – the car is not easy to handle and it’s more realistic, due to the new physics. This time you can drive the way you like.
Switch assists on –for “arcade-style” gameplay and it is easier to drive, just as you’re used to it from older NFS titles. Need for Speed Pro Street still stays between a simulation- and arcade-game and this is how it should be.
A big affect on the driving experience will have the customization.
Cars:
There will be more cars than in any other Need for Speed games – cars from around 26 manufacturers, there will be 8 “super-cars”, which we will be able to tune to the high-end.
Customization:
The customization is a BIG PART in Need for Speed Pro Street.
Visual styling – Autosculpt, we already know from NFS Carbon. But this time it’s much more detailed and can autosculpt almost any part of the car. The best thing is: The visual tuning of our car will affect the performance. For this reason EA built in for example a wind tunnel, where we can test our new car design, if it fits our needs.
Performance tuning ¬ EA introduced different layers of modifications. First layer, the “arcade-style” people can upgrade their cars by just using predefined upgrade packages. If we want to go deeper though, there is a whole world of possibilities. We can change almost everything, parts of the engine, brakes, tires…there are 90+ individual part slots and 30+ tuning variables. Since there is so much concentration on the customization, EA introduced a new feature called “blue prints”. We don’t have to build in every part we want immediately; we can save our tuning combinations as a blue print. So we can create our ideal combination of parts, and only if we apply the blue print to our car, they’re going to be built in.
Graphics:
The cars are designed to look more photo-real, not as in NFS Carbon. The lights reflects as it should, even based on the material, the damage model is very detailed too.
A big new graphical feature in this game is the smoke! In almost every racing game, the smokes the tires make looked very primitive or are even 2D textures. The smoke looks damn good. Especially when doing a burnout or drifting around it’s very important that it feels as real as possible. And it really does with the smoke, which was made with Shader Model 3.0.
Music:
As in every Need for Speed game the music is very important. This time EA got Junkie XL to create some tracks, which are playing during the game. Depending on which event you’re participating, you’ll listen to different music styles, like for example Hard Rock, Techno, Electronic or Punk. These styles are connected with the organizations, who set up these events.
Apart from Junkie XL there will be also other music from licensed artists.
Extracted from NFS-Planet