Sniper Elite 2, Ridge Racer Unbounded, DiRT Showdown, The Train Giant, Binary Domain, and Avernum: Escape From the Pit are the stars of our game demo line up with week!

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Issue 267 game demo roundup!

Sniper Elite 2

If you’re one of those sneaky multi-player camper types who gets their filthy kicks from frustrating the rest of us then Snipe Elite 2 might be just up your alley. Probably an alley you’re sneaking around right now, and you’ll need those skills here otherwise you’ll have a short journey into an inevitable firewall of lead entering your avatars face. In this demo you get a full mission to test your tiptoeing and shooting moving targets over great distances skills. Fortunately if you do happen to find yourself up close and personal with the Hun, you also pack some handy close quarter back up weapons.
Download from here (Steam required)

Ridge Racer Unbounded

Fancy some over the top blistering speed arcade city racing action with added destruction, then apply within! Ridge Racer Unbounded pretty much ticks all the right boxes where it matters. Forget keyboard controls, a steering wheel is needed or at least a decent joypad to keep your super car under control. The demo includes two tracks to try out and crash constantly around if you don’t take my advice on steering hardware. Or more simply, the experience I found while using the keyboard to uncontrollably swerve myself around the tracks.
Download from here (Steam required)

The Train Giant

Don’t be put of by the name, this is a bit more than a virtual play set for trainspotters. The Train Giant is a sandbox management simulation of the SimCity genre, revolving around constructing a successful city and rail transport system. It’s classic micromanagement so you’re in complete charge of everything here in glorious minute detail including managing all the finances.
Download from here

Binary Domain

PC purists will recognise and likely turn their snooty noses up at this very obvious console to PC port from Capcom. From the level design, through to the less than bleeding edge graphic textures and slightly clunky feedback from mouse movements. In all, results in a forgettable but reasonably entertaining third-person cover shooter that will be worth picking up when it eventually ends up in a Steam sale.
Download from here (Steam required)

Avernum: Escape From the Pit

I applaud Spiderweb and their commitment to create impressive RPG’s of yesteryear. Over the past decades this small company has entertained a cult following of fans with well written epic tales set within vast areas to discover. Escape from the Pit is their latest adventure and promises dozens of hours of deep exploration and adsorbing storytelling.
Download from here

DiRT Showdown

The latest instalment from this racing franchise is an impressive miss-mash of challenges, but all centring around general car breaking carnage. Be prepared to loose your no claims bonus and smash up your car into many smaller pieces as long as your rivals come off the worse at the end of each metal crunching race.
Download from here (Steam required)

You’ve got to love the PC. It is the most vibrant and interesting gaming platform around, catering to a more wide-ranging spectrum of gamers than any other. The reason for that is that it isn’t being held completely in the stranglehold of the big games publishers.

Bohemia Interactive’s hardcore military sim, Arma 2, has seen a massive resurgence in the last couple of weeks. The two-year-old game is now number one in Steam’s list of current top sellers and that’s all thanks to a certain hardcore zombie mod, DayZ, created by modder Dean Hall.

It’s a rarity for such an old title to surge up the download charts without the boon of a sale. At the time of writing Arma 2 is still retailing for £25 with the Operation Arrowhead expansion. That’s got to be good for Bohemia Interactive, especially as the beautiful-looking Arma 3 is on the way at the tail end of this year. Any interest in the previous game has got to be good for the new one.

We spoke with Marek Spanel, Managing Director of Bohemia Interactive, about what the sudden appearance of the DayZ alpha means to it as a developer, and what it means to the PC as a gaming platform as a whole.

The interest in DayZ has been a real boon for the developers of Arma 2. “Bohemia Interactive, as an independent developer, can always benefit from a few extra thousand copies of its game being sold,” says Spanel.

But it’s not just about what it means for its existing games. “Honestly this boost has come at the right time with the oh-so-long-in-the-making remake of Carrier Command and the ambitious Arma 3 on the way.

DayZ is an incredible experiment that’s skyrocketed in a few weeks beyond any reasonable expectation. Also, it looks like there are new people discovering how much Arma can offer them. DayZ is built in, and from, the extraordinary creative community surrounding Arma 2.”

With the base game being around two years old now, this new interest has sparked renewed vigour within the development team. “It not only opens opportunities for some future work,” says Spanel, “but also gives us a new impulse to continue harder with even more fixes and improvements to the core Arma 2 experience.”

The sudden interest in the mod justifies Bohemia’s stance on always supporting the modding community. It’s something the developer has felt was important since Operation Flashpoint first hit our screens.

“It is great example of how important and beneficial it is to have modding support in games – for both users and game creators. DayZ is a stunning achievement on its own but it also takes nearly everything that is great in Arma 2, wraps it up into unique and harsh experience, and all in a way that is more accessible for a broader audience than “boring” realistic military gaming.

It is great example of power in hands of gamers.”

DayZ is also a great example of what separates the PC as a gaming platform compared to the seriously locked-down consoles.

“The PC as a gaming platform allows highly experimental projects to be created and released extremely fast. The PC is, and more likely will remain, the real cutting edge of games development. The PC rocks,” says Spanel.

“DayZ is experience that would not work that well on any other devices, it is an experiment that involves users also being able to easily communicate, share their stories, grab their videos, plan their sessions easily and in depth with others.”

It’s not really that surprising for a game not to hit its proposed release date these days, but it’s always interesting which titles are cut from the Autumn release scrum. Recently it was announced the Tomb Raider reboot was being postponed from its scheduled release date this year to ‘first quarter 2013’.

Darrell Gallacher, studio head at Tomb Raider’s developers, Crystal Dynamics released this statement via the Eidos forum.

“When Crystal Dynamics first set out to reboot the Tomb Raider franchise, there were two goals that we were extremely passionate about. The first was to create a modern Tomb Raider game that would surprise and excite gamers. The second was to make this the best game of our careers, something we would be really proud to be a part of. We truly believe that we have something very special on our hands and we can’t wait to share it with you.

Our priority now is to make sure we fully deliver the very highest quality game. In order to do this, we have decided to move the game’s release date by a few months, from Fall 2012 to the first quarter of 2013.

We’re doing things that are completely new to Tomb Raider in this game and the additional development time will allow us to put the finishing touches into the game and polish it to a level that you deserve. We believe this is the right choice and I guarantee it will be worth the wait. The game is looking amazing and we can’t wait to show it to everyone at E3 in a few weeks.”

With so many games coming out in the Autumn months some inevitably get postponed as publishers start to worry their title might get overlooked in the melee. The worry is that Tomb Raider was picked because it’s just not looking that good right now. Fingers crossed the intervening time will be used wisely.

Six more of the latest game demo’s to enjoy for free.  Angry Birds Space, Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy, Men of War: Assault Squad – Game of the Year Edition, Gas Guzzlers: Combat Carnage, Depth Hunter, and Break Blocks.

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Issue 266 game demo roundup!

Angry Birds Space

If you haven’t quite had enough of launching testy winged animals at thieving porkers then here’s another dose to sate your addiction. The pigs thought that they’d escape retribution by going off world. They were wrong, but this time gravity (or the lack of) adds a different challenge to game.
Download from here

Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy

The latest release in the Combat Mission returns back to it’s original WWII roots and gives us a plentiful demo complete with four distinct scenarios to test your tactical skills. The well detailed units and animations are rather let down by the uninspired flat low resolution background textures. But once you’ve got over this eye candy issue you’ll enjoy a brilliantly balanced close quarters war game.
Download from here

Men of War: Assault Squad – Game of the Year Edition

Not new, but the re-released edition of last years game with all the DLC (5 in total) in a single package. The charm of the game focuses a small unit of troops, where each guy can be individually controlled and kitted out. It’s possible to pick up new equipment along the way, and often you’ll be reusing gear from your fallen comrades or upgrading your weapons by robbing the bodies of the enemy. You’ll find a quick review of the game from PC Gamer over here.
Download from here

Gas Guzzlers: Combat Carnage

Two track public beta of this high octane racer that’s packed with weapons, explosions, and general mayhem. Don’t expect Dirt levels of simulation realism, rather ‘dirty’ tricks and more forgiving arcade car handling. It’s all about the combat carnage!
Download from here

Depth Hunter

In Depth Hunter you’re tasked to seek out and catch particular species with your spear gun. The game supports the Razer Hydra motion controller and NVIDIA 3D VISION. Having both enabled will certainly enhance the immersion of well rendered underwater environment.
Download from here

Break Blocks

Very tricky but original rhythm game and block clearing combo. It’s not easy to get your brain around, and even harder to try and explain in a few words. Even the trailer hear doesn’t help much. Fortunately an easy to follow in-game tutorial handholds you through the basics, and even makes you retry each element when you fowl it up. If you can pat your head while rubbing your belly, then you’re qualified to have a go.
Download from here

When is an external hard drive not an external hard drive? When it’s a PVR/Media server.

Oh.

Freecom has just announced a new square external hard drive that can be connected directly to a TV for USB recording and playback. Cas de Heus, marketing and communications manager EUMEA at Freecom, explains: “With the Hard Drive Sq, you can really put the information you need at your fingertips – whether it is on your PC, laptop of even a TV screen. From a practical point of view, the Hard Drive Sq is everything you would expect from a high-quality external hard drive in that it is fast, easy to use and visually stunning – but the ability to plug it into a TV set gives it an additional edge…The Hard Drive Sq enables users to make the most of this by reliably expanding their TV’s storage capacity.”

We haven’t got our hands on one just yet – though we should be getting one in next month – so we’re not entirely sure how it works. There doesn’t appear to be any TV tuner built-in so we’re guessing the PVR functions are only compatible with TVs that support outputting video via USB. Even if the TV side of things isn’t going to be of use, the Hard Drive Sq comes in 1TB, 2TB and 3TB flavours with a USB 3.0 connection for 130MB/s speeds. We’ll be keeping a eye on this one.

AMD is keeping itself busy at the moment. Not content with the recent release of the high-end 7900 series and the budget-focused 7700s, today it’s squeezed a pair of 7800 cards out of its ripe manufacturing factory. The Radeon HD 7850 and 7870 are aimed at the performance market, but don’t quite boast the kind of price tags that will make your other half think you’ve lost your mind.

These new GPUs utilise AMD’s Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture, are produced using a 28nm production processor and offer up AMD’s rather excellent ZeroCore Power technology – which reduced power consumption significantly when you don’t need cutting-edge polygon pushing. Both cards boast 2GB of GDDR5 memory, offer up support for AMD Eyefinity 2.0 and can be paired up in CrossFire. Prices start from £190 for the Radeon HD 7850 (we’re still waiting for pricing on the 7870).

You can find out what Dave thinks of the 7850 here and the 7870 here.

Sapphire has been thinking out of the box once again, and squeezed the recently released Radeon HD 7750 into a passively-cooled format. While we’re not totally smitted by the 7750, mainly due to its higher-than-we-would-have-hoped pricing, it’s not a bad card. Admittedly the 128-bit interface does limit it’s capabilities as well, but that aside, it can push out a good frame rate at lower resolutions and settings, and does of course support DirectX 11.1.

The fact that this is a passively-cooled model means it could be squeezed into a Home Theatre PC (or HTPC as they’ve quickly become known). It certainly makes for enticing option for a lounge gaming machine. It is a full height, double-slot card mind, so you’ll have to have a chunky chassis to throw it into.

The full press release is available here.

In a short space of time since its launch in October 2010, Tap! has become quite the authority on all things iOS. If you’re confused about which things to stroke, smear and indeed, tap on your iPad or iPhone screen, this is the mag for you. Each issue covers a preposterously huge amount of apps, games and peripherals for your cogitation and delectation.

Makes sense to release a bespoke edition of the mag on iPad then, don’t it? Well don’t get all smug thinking you’ve second guessed us, because not only has Tap! produced a bespoke edition of their fine publication for iPad, making use of all its stroke-y, smeary, tappy features, but their app’s already gone live.

Rather interestingly, the iPad edition’s produced on the iPad itself, using Future’s in-house creation platform: “We wanted to create a magazine that took advantage of all the iPad’s amazing features, and the new Tap! iPad edition does just that” said Chris Finn, Tap!‘s Editor.

To get involved, grab the app for free at the app store, then you can buy a single issue for £2.99 or subscribe for between £7.99 and £23.99. More info on the app itself at its official site.

What with the expansion into digital Zinio editions for many of the mags in Future’s portfolio, you can expect to see lovely bespoke iPad editions for many more of your favourite mags, so keep your eyes peeled.

You’d be challenged to find a game with a weirder history than Mythos (Ed – Easy, Prey). Originally a way to beta test new networking technology, it turned out to be a more absorbing, enjoyable dungeon crawler than the over-hyped and inevitable let-down that was Hellgate: London.

Mythos was blossoming into a sleeper hit then, but due to the ill-fortunes of Flagship Studios, the game was eventually shut down before it was even released and then sold off to South Korean company HanbitSoft. Many of Flagship’s development team went on to form Runic Games and make the remarkably similar Torchlight.

Normally the tale would end there, the IP forever stuck in the hilarious complexity of copyright legalities, but Mythos was saved and worked on by HanbitSoft who recently released it in European as a free to play, micro-transaction supported MMO.

If you’ve had a hankering for massively multiplayer Torchlight – until the real one from Runic games turns up anyway – this is your game. The similarities are startling, right down to animation style and cartoonish visuals along with the isometric camera and simple controls.

This can be a strength: simply walking around a town area it is not uncommon to be accosted by a large group of six or seven wolves and bears – these prove no challenge at all, smashed aside with a few clicks.  It’s a welcome change from the MMO formula, rather than spending the first ten minutes doing fetch quests and slowly beating rats to death with a blunt stick.

The randomisation of dungeons and loot is a strong draw – rather than pray for a 1.37% drop from a boss 45 minutes into a dungeon, I receive powerful items from normal drops.  Early in the game I was gifted by the RNG with a named weapon that had a chance to send out elemental novas with every hit – it was awesome and felt special, something I could call my own.

Beyond gear, the customisation system gives great depth. Every level up allows the distribution of skill points across three radically different trees for each of the three classes with new tiers being purchasable – fancy having top tier abilities? No need to spend points on lower down ones, just buy your way up there.  On top of this is a massive crafting system that allows the production of almost anything in the game.

Issues come when you consider these mechanics are not new.  In fact, not only are they not new, they’ve been in regular use across a wide variety of titles for fifteen years. This actually makes them younger than the world design, which is so classic it might be an antique.

Beyond the pick of character races – Cyclopeans and Satyrs being more commonly enemies in standard fantasy setting – everything is tried and tested fare. Classes are a renamed warrior/ranger/wizard combo. The land is a reasonably peaceful one beset by unknown evils and monsters.  You’ve seen it all before, without the translation errors.

The main problem is the hyper-competitive nature of the genre. There are multiple free to play MMOs that are simply better, having been originally made with the larger budgets a fully-fledged subscription based systems (D&D Online, Warhammer Online). If the clickfest gameplay really appeals, this is currently your best bet, though exactly how different it will be from a single player experience is debatable: hours into Mythos, I still haven’t found a reason to group with others.  A pity, since the community seemed very friendly when chatting in the global channels or helping me with what I thought was a bugged quest.

I enjoyed Mythos, but I doubt I’ll return. It gave me a hankering for its gameplay – unfortunately, I can get that gameplay elsewhere.

Ben Barrett is a freelance games writer and tweets about gaming as ChaosSmurf. Contrary to expectation he is not blue but he is chaotic neutral.

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That’s right. The sweet spot in AMD’s grapphics card range just got a little sweeter with Sapphire’s latest update on the stock card. The HD 6950 TOXIC comes with a core clock set at 880 MHz out of the box, a beefy PCB and improved cooling.

Aside from core boosting, notable improvements are :

“high specification PCB with digital VRMs for excellent power regulation and 8 + 6 pin power connectors. It has a high performance cooler featuring a Vapor Chamber, blower fan and a new perforated backplate to increase airflow out of the system case.”

Like the stock HD 6950, it comes with a dual BIOS, though since AMD got wise to the 6970 BIOS flashing exploit it’s doubtful you’ll be able to get 6970 performances that way. The improved cooling features and PCB do make it highly overclockable though, and the bundled TriXX overclocking software allows core and voltage fiddling galore.

With the higher-end HD 6970s being a bit thin on the ground at the moment, this beefed-up HD 6950 might be just the ticket to fill that hole.