McPhee

TBH it's not Duke Nukem that it reminds me of. Playing through the demo it feels more like Unreal Tournament does Geometry Wars. I love it. A breath of fresh air after so many serious shooters. The FPS I enjoyed this much was Borderlands, for similar reasons. I just wish I knew how people were getting those 18,000 scores! I keep getting close to 3 stars (8,500 points) but I'm not sure what I'm missing that could get me that far, let alone hit those numbers!

It's up now along with the Crysis 2 demo. Nearly 3GB between the two! Should take me until some time this evening to download... Pre-ordered. It's amazing. I mean, the trailers made the game look a little dodgy, but in motion it all comes together. It's the points system that makes the game, trying to eek every possible point out of each enemy/group in order to place that little bit higher on the scoreboard. Played the demo through 4 times so far and will no doubt go back to it as more people get the game and there's more high scores to beat.

Just bought one of these; http://www.anandtech.com/show/3842/asus-vg236h-review-our-first-look-at-120hz/1 Got fed up with my old 19" monitor, it's got a crack in the screen, the colours are wank and the black level is far too grey. Figured my recent upgrades are kinda pointless if my monitor sucks. Not looking forward to seeing my frame rate plunge through the floor though. I can max out every game on the market at the moment, even get 40fps on Metro. Going from 1440x900 to 1920x1080 3D will put and end to that (and make me want a new GPU...).

Hmm... 3G? Could be interesting if it has calling/texting support (maybe with a bluetooth headset?) and would certainly go some way to diluting a high price.

After watching the trailer I'm expecting this to suck. Still awesome though!

Surely it's a little soon to see any games? Or did you mean any good games to come out of any homebrew scene?

I might be up for a spot of gameage on Friday. Depends what time I get back from London. Eyefinity? Nowt wrong with 1680x1050 though, just means you'll be maxing out games for longer.

The terms usually state that you can only leave if the new T&Cs are of significan financial detriment. For example, if your network starts charging for calls to 0800 numbers you need to have a history of calling these numer to get out of the contract. Same goes for internet allowance, if you use sub-500MB/month it's difficult to argue that a move from 3GB down to 1GB is any justification for early termination.

Won't be on tonight, my brother has borrowed my PC to do some rendering for his Uni project.

Wicked! Will watch the trailer later. Knew Gearbox would get it out

You'd be right and wrong there. The manufacturing process is too efficient for all low-end chips to be broken high-end parts. The majority these days are just locked down. The larest example is the discovery that AMD's Athlon X2 5200+ (costs around £30) can be unlocked to use all 4 cores and the full amount of L3 cache. Intel have just done the sensible thing and decided to monetise these unlocks (their chips are more difficult to crack anyhow). Sounds like it will work much the same way as PC game DRM. It'll get cracked pretty quick, but will stop people with pirated copies playing online. Certainly makes piracy a lot less appealing for certain types of games.

It's quite normal. It's cheaper to manufacture one high-spec processor and then hardware/software lock it's capabilities to create lower models in the range than it is to manufacture all models seperately. The only thing new in that story is Intel are now providing a way to unlock these chips to a higher spec processor.

I'd watch how many games you pick up now TBH, this year is ridiculously packed for PC releases. Pretty good list here; http://www.techspot.com/guides/356-hot-pc-games-of-2011/ So many! lol They missed out Shogun II: Total War though. It's got to be Empire or Napoleon for me. I love them both, but so much missed potential. Empire is a tad broken and Napoleon is just too easy. Playing as small nations like the United Netherlands, the Italian Republic or Denmark is barely any harder than playing as Britain. I'm taking Paris of Napoleon when I should be struggling to survive!

If there are enough people wanting to play then I could probably borrow* a server off The O.C. *when I say 'borrow' what I actually mean is abuse admin privileges by burning, time bombing and freezing all the other players until they quit/I get bored and kick them...

Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. That's for some of America's best legal minds to decide. Trying to dissect the details on an internet forum with very little information to go on is a tad pointless. Time will tell if they are guilty of any of the above.

I think the damage to small developers thing is played up way too much TBH. Small developers loose comparatively small numbers of sales, but can gain high levels of circulation through piracy. Big developers loose large numbers of sales but gain nothing in return, circulation wouldn't have suffered much if piracy didn't exist. I'm going to use Alan Wake as an example. It was pirated over 1.14 Million times in 2010. Microsoft have sold 50 Million Xbox 360 consoles worldwide, a "small percentage" being modded. Lets take that "small percentage" to be 4%, or 2 Million consoles. In that case, 57% of users with modded consoles downloaded Alan Wake. This compares to 850,000 legitimate sales across the other 48 Million consoles (assuming nobody with a modded console bought the game), or 1.77% of users. The short of it; nobody wanted to buy Alan Wake. If piracy never existed and the game appealed evenly across all users then you'd expect another 35,400 sales. The real figure would probably be a few thousand units higher. Alan Wake would still have been a flop, unless there was some attribute of the game that appealed massively more to people who pirate than those who don't. I'm not condoning piracy, just arguing against the idea that "it hurts the small guys most". In the Alan Wake example, if piracy ceased to exist sales wouldn't have likely improved much anyway. Instead over a Million fewer copies of the game would be in circulation. At least some people played it There's quite a few examples like this. Piracy damages the industry, but nowhere near as much as some make out. Some vendors have even learned to turn it to their advantage (Microsoft).

URGH makes me sick, arseholes who think they have the right to stop people running whatever they want a console... I jest. My point is simple though. Right now it's pretty unclear who is right. The courts will decide on that outcome. Maybe it will go like the "mobile telephony" (AKA iPhone) case last year and it will be ruled that these people had every right to utilise the hardware they own in any (legal) way that they see fit. Or maybe the courts will decide they're in breach of the DMCA. Nobody knows right now.

I've bought one thing off there, Batman: AA because it was going for a fiver. Really wish I hadn't. The download is so ridiculously slow and fails regularly, plus there's no way to back-up the game. It took me a week to get it last time. Not sure I can be arsed with this PC, though I would like to play the game...

No, people's livelihoods are being fucked by the cheap bastards who won't pay for the entertainment that they are receiving. Nothing new there. It has nothing to do with the hackers, or "that American professor". They provided the tools, it's up to the moral backbone of each individual to decide if or how they should be used. I love the fact that people can now do whatever the hell they like and it's now someone else's/society's fault for allowing them to do it. What happened to having a conscience? Or being responsible for your own moral choices? The hammer can be used as a tool or a weapon. It's up to the individual that holds it to make that choice. Don't blame the Smith.

Steam on the 360 will never happen, Steam is a competitor to Games For Windows Live (though there ain't much competition, GFWL and it's Marketplace are aweful!) so there's pretty much zero chance of Microsoft endorsing it or helping Valve to gain more business.

Easter will be the next big one (if it follows last year). You're looking at saving around a tenner if you wait and both L4D titles go on sale. The Valve Complete pack was £25 over the Christmas period, so it's a bit unfortunate that you missed it. BTW, Dyson, is that BC2 you play or BC2:Vietnam? I picked up 'Nam on 360 for some stupid reason.

I wonder, if it's a success could we see more Steam on the PS3? With it's impending piracy problems I guess that could be one solution. Steam isn't uncrackable, but it makes pirating games a pain in the arse.

You should be able to upgrade to any 35W socket 1156 processor (assuming the chip isn't soldered on to the board, which it probably isn't) providing the bios support is there for that chip. It's a bit of a gamble though, and (just to give you an idea of price) an i7-720QM will set you back around £300. An i5 will be over the £200 mark and isn't really worth the expense.

Done. Sent you a copy of Team Fortress 2 as well. If you don't want it/already have it then I'll send it to someone else. Grabbed it off the Christmas sale for my Dad but it's been sat in his email inbox for three weeks. Pretty sure he doesn't want it (it ain't Call of Duty, therefore it's "probably crap") and I don't see the sense in an awesome game going to waste!

Agreed. As much as I want to play it I can't stomach the costs involved. It's why I don't play MMO. I'm happy to pay for the game or pay a subscription but not both. I'll wait for the game itself to go free, or drop to near the £10 mark before picking it up.