Cloud gaming to discover TERA (or vice versa)

Video game players are more and more to try cloud gaming. Last, the EnMasse Entertainment Editor, responsible for the distribution of the MMORPG TERA in North America.

Little by little, the company Gaikai is to carve out a share of choice in videogame content distribution via so-called "cloud" technologies, multiplying partnerships with the leading names of the Edition. Thus, early March, the firm formalized an agreement to broadcast streaming of two MMORPG of Warner, Lords of the Ring Online, and & Dungeons Dragons Online catalogue. Prior to this, several market players had used its services available to the public of the playable demo, Electronic Arts FIFA 12, or CD Projekt for The Witcher 2.

Today, it is with the American publisher EnMasse Entertainment that Gaikai associated itself, to provide a playable demo of TERA, a MMORPG which you can find the test here. In the program, 30 minutes of gameplay, at the controls of a level 20 character, which should allow the curious to notice mouse in hand on this title very-oriented action.

On a technical level, the image appears obviously very compressed, but the sequence in rest no less fun to browse, especially as it will require no download, if this is a small update your Java environment.

As the direct competitor, Onlive, but pioneer in the market, it seems to lose ground. Even though it has just announced a partnership with LG at E3, its services are still available only in the United States and the United Kingdoms, and playable demo system still lacks the appeal.

Read More

The Samsung Cloud Gaming, or video game streaming on TV

To play a video game directly on its TV without having to turn on the console or computer? Samsung said that it will be possible with the Samsung Cloud Gaming application for its Smart TV.

Samsung wants to grow the game on our television screens in a new dimension. In partnership with Gaikai, one of the leaders of the video game in the cloud, the Korean will offer a simple interface called Samsung Cloud Gaming to play all of the games of the moment without having to process download, installation and application of complicated patches.

For Korean is to give the opportunity to its customers to play in under a minute to any recent game as well as the headlines of the industry without recourse to a living room console or a computer.

After the beta test will take place first in the United States, all screens purchased this year in the Samsung LED 7000 series and the following will be able to visit the "Smart Hub" menu and find the new "Samsung Cloud Gaming" from the time when the Internet connection is sufficient, without more than precision. Samsung also States that it will be possible to test the games free of charge and pay then if the game please. A good way to check if it is playable comfortably or not on its Internet connection speeds. Gaikai and Samsung will make a demonstration a few days at E3, we know more at this time there.

Read More

Raptor Gaming sells his M4

A new black mouse for Gamer, the M4 will arrive a few days in Raptor Gaming.

The German manufacturer Raptor Gaming announces that its latest creation, the M4, will be available very soon. The front, the plastic thermo-moulé for straight hands only covered a surface "pleasant", for a total of six buttons, all extended long USB cable of 2.5 metres plated or that can withstand rates of cooling of 500 and 1000 Hz.

       

Below, a sensor laser 6000 dpi, adjustable from 400 dpi, and the weight for the balancing of the mouse on the type of games or even the strength of the wrist. Around, complete a wrist, 16 two grams weight rests each, two sets of shoes and a nice little bag to hold all this. This mouse to destination of players cost €79,90 and will be available shortly, the matter of a few days.

Read More

Gaming hardware at Gamescom 2011

This week we were present at the Gamescom 2011 in Cologne. This fair is mainly aimed at the introduction of new games, but also gaming hardware is introduced. The stock market exists this year a total of seven halls filled with gaming fun and is visited by international audience. We went along with Razer, SteelSeries and Razer, who showed their new products.

New games this year at the Gamescom mainly of interest are Battlefield 3, Gears of War 3 and as a surprise the release of Warhammer Online: Wrath or Heroes, a free online role-playing game that can be played on Facebook and Google +. There are also many as traditionally dressed people around like Zelda and Darth Vader, including well-equipped Stormtroopers.

Darth Vader and his Stormtroopers were this year also present

At Razer we got news about a new 7.1 headset and SteelSeries showed us his new gaming mice and a Diablo headset. Roccat gave us a demonstration of their new Talk protocol and the German importer CaseKing we saw two future cabinets from Xigmatek and Bitfenix.

Read More

Logitech G300 gaming mouse

Logitech expands its G-Series product line for gamers with the Gaming Mouse G300. This G300 is equipped with nine programmable buttons that you can set game commands that normally only keyboards are reserved.

The built-in memory offers space for the storage of three game profiles, which you should be able to take the difficulty and open on another PC or notebook. You can choose from seven colors that you can save a profile and retrieval. The illuminated side of the mouse shows with the chosen color which profile you're using.

The G300 is suitable for right and left-handers alike, has a 2500 DPI laser, and macros that can be shared with other products from the G-line, including keyboards and headsets. The new mouse is in september in Europe on the market expected, but is available as can be found for approximately 30 Euro.

Read More

Samsung showcases Series 7 gaming laptop at Gamescom

Last Thursday we did already report of the Gamescom 2011, a fair in Cologne where the newest games and gaming hardware which also place is created. Samsung also was represented at this fair, with their latest Series 7 gaming laptop. The copy that Samsung on the stock market showed was equipped with a 17.3 '' Full HD screen with LED backlight, an Intel Core i7 quadcore processor ' Sandy Bridge ' generation, an unknown amount of DDR3 memory (space for up to 16 GB) and 1.5 TB of storage with two hard drives. Samsung has also built ExpressCache, a small 8 GB SSD as a kind of fast buffer serves for the most requested data. This technology is developed by Diskeeper and let the best compare with the ' Smart Response Technology from Intel.

For the graphical horses forces Samsung has shopped at AMD, because in the Series 7 gaming laptop we find a Radeon Mobility HD (in Portuguese) with 2 GB of GDDR5 memory. This graphics card is based on a ' Barts ' GPU with 960 active shaderunits and a 256-bit memory controller (similar to the Radeon HD 6850 for the desktop), where the core works on 680 MHz and memory at an effective speed of 3600 MHz ticking. Furthermore, the laptop equipped with a Blu-ray drive, a card reader, USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports, a VGA and HDMI output, a card reader and a webcam. Networks does this gaming laptop from Samsung via Gigabit LAN, 802 .11n WiFi and Bluetooth 3.0.

The blue keyboard backlighting makes working easier in the dark, where the red lighting on the WSAD keys stresses that gamers (and especially the FPS lovers) are the primary target group. The Series 7 laptop also has a Turbo button on board, that there is an auto overclock is applied that the better performance in games.

Samsung can this new gaming laptop from 12 september in Europe at a price of € 1799.

Samsung shows new Series 7 gaming laptop on the Gamescom in Cologne

 

Read More

System Builder Marathon, June 2011: $500 Gaming PC

Here are links to each of the five articles in this month’s System Builder Marathon (we’ll update them as each story is published). And remember, these systems are all being given away at the end of the marathon.

To enter the giveaway, please fill out this Google form, and be sure to read the complete rules before entering!

Day 1: The $2000 Performance PC
Day 2: The $1000 Enthusiast PC
Day 3: The $500 Gaming PC
Day 4: Performance And Value, Dissected
Day 5: Tom's Hand-Picked SuperCombo

In the first quarter of this year, we went a bit over budget on our $500 Gaming PC, squeezing in both a quad-core AMD Phenom II processor and Radeon HD 6850 graphics. The resulting build, which did leave some room for improvements, still packed serious punch for the money we spent.

Additional price drops over the past three months mean we could have taken that same configuration and jumped up to an even more attractive Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition (BE). The 955 BE would have not only given us a nice frequency increase across its four physical cores, but also the flexibility of a fully unlocked CPU multiplier, and even a better cooling solution for overclocking. Of course, overclockability plays heavily into component selection for our System Builder Marathons (SBMs), typically providing the benchmark data set we value the most.

And here's the point where some folks are going to be disappointed, because this lead-up depicts what we need to compete against, and not what we actually built. This month’s $500 gaming rig departs from the norm by centering on a budget-oriented Intel Sandy Bridge-based platform that cannot be overclocked at all, really. It'll either stand or fall based on its out-of-box performance.

Component  Model  Price (in dollars) Crucial 4 GB (2 x 2 GB) DDR3-1333 CT2KIT25664BA1339Sapphire 100315L Radeon HD 6850 1 GBSeagate Barracuda ST3500413AS 500 GB, SATA 6Gb/s Xigmatek Asgard II B/S CPC-T45UE-U01Antec EarthWatts Green EA380D 380 WAsus 24X DVD Burner SATA Model DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS

Attempting a Sandy Bridge-based gaming PC was contingent on two self-set stipulations. First, I already broke the bank last round, and had to draw a line somewhere on spending. So, it was imperative to avoid outspending last quarter's PC. Second, an even more demanding suite of 3D titles meant that graphics horsepower couldn't be sacrificed.

The only way to achieve both goals was starting with the cheapest available platform possible, a feature-stripped ASRock H61M-VS microATX motherboard and Core i3-2100 processor. Apart from a couple of insignificant difference, we ended with component prices almost exactly the same as this machine's predecessor. Higher-capacity storage was three dollars cheaper than our previous 320 GB drive, but securing a DVD burner ate up a couple of those bills.

Now, we already know from stories like Don Woligroski’s Who's Got Game? Twelve Sub-$200 CPUs compared that the stock Core i3-2100 is a capable gaming processor. In fact, by avoiding some low-resolution CPU limitations, we should easily be able to set a new bar for the $500 SBM build in terms of frame rates at stock settings. But with 70% of the overall performance evaluation weighted outside of games, will a lack of overclocking become a deal-breaker for this machine, preventing us from reusing Intel's severely-limited entry-level parts in future Marathons?

View the original article here

Read More

Gory Gaming: Bulletstorm Performance Analyzed

Although the game had significant performance issues when it was released, Bulletstorm now benefits from the latest graphics drivers and a patch from its developers. Now is the perfect time to see what kind of hardware this game requires for smooth play.

Bulletstorm is a title we were eager to try for a number of reasons. The viral marketing approach, with a Halo-mocking trailer and demo that pokes fun at the Call of Duty series, definitely provided a few laughs. The ultra-violent “Skillshot” system looked intriguing. We were also interested in testing the newest iteration of Epic’s Unreal 3 engine. All told, that was enough motivation for us to take an in-depth look at the game and its performance.

MSI provided a variety of graphics cards from both AMD and Nvidia for our tests in order to demonstrate what kind of frame rates you can expect to get from Bulletstorm across a wide spectrum of hardware. We're looking at both single-card and SLI/CrossFire performance, too. But before digging into the data, let’s go over the game for folks who aren’t familiar with it.

Bulletstorm might be best described as shoot 'em up-style with a furious pace and a delinquent sense of humor. Most enemies are outclassed by such a large margin that you’re more concerned with the elegance of your kills than survival. Dispatching foes in a creative fashion may be recognized as a Skillshot. The rarer and more creative the Skillshot, the more points are awarded. These points can be traded for enhancements that often improve your ability to perform increasingly impressive Skillshots, and the cycle continues.

You unlock a number of weapons as the game progresses, but shooting is often less effective than kicking or yanking (with boots or a wrist-mounted leash, respectively), both of which create a temporary anti-gravity field that immobilizes your victim in the air for a short time.

The game might sound grim, but it's fully immersed in Duke Nukem-esque tongue-in-cheek flair and gruesome (but cartoony) violence. Your avatar is a tough mercenary named Grayson Hunt, whose dialogue could easily be read by Ash from Army Of Darkness. The language is vulgar and deserves the Mature rating, but if you’re in the mood for juvenile potty humor, it’ll steal a smirk from you once in a while. Just don’t expect anything in the way of puzzles or intellectual progression. The game is on obvious rails. There is no jump button, and you can’t fall off cliffs even if you try. Your biggest hurdle will be to figure out the next thing you’re supposed to shoot at.

A game that revels in juvenile laughs and nonstop action can be a guilty pleasure, but this particular approach also leads to annoying situations. For instance, if you’re too involved with a specific enemy you might not notice the prompt telling you to move on to another vital target, and if you’re a bit slow on the uptake, the game rewards you with a quick, scripted death sequence. The Dragon’s Lair-style, do-the-right-thing-immediately-or-die mechanism doesn’t appeal to me, but some people might appreciate the way it breaks up the missions.

Other than that, I don’t have a lot to complain about. If you crave an entertaining diversion with breakneck action, crude jokes, cartoon gore, and some very nice visuals, I’m not sure you’ll find anything that fits the bill better than Bulletstorm.

Now that you’re a little more familiar with the game, let’s take a closer look at the engine behind it and check out its performance.

View the original article here

Read More