Official Total PC Gaming News

Frodo goes Facebook

Ben Biggs — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:55:35 +0000

Codemasters Online’s Lord Of The Rings Online is to get an in-game social networking site. Developer Turbine’s boss Jim Crowley announced this morning at the Tokyo Game Show that it would be “a version of Facebook or MySpace that sits directly on top of the gaming world.

“This is a fully-featured, rich, robust social network. It has every single feature that you would find in the major commercial social networks such as Facebook and MySpace.”

It will launch at the end of this year and feature profile pages for all LotRO player characters, with friend lists and communication tools as an extension of the current social networking system. It will also launch for Turbine’s other MMOs around the same time or next year.

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New S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky patch available

Ben Biggs — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 16:02:16 +0000

Patch version 1.505 of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky is now available for download. It’s 56MB and corrects a number of bugs, including gameplay errors and crashes in both single and multiplayer, as well as adding functionality to multiplayer. You’ll be glad to hear that it’s backwards compatible with version 1.504 though, so there won’t be the same savegame issue we had with the previous patch. Download it from the Clear Sky website.

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Jack Thompson permanently disbarred

Ben Biggs — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 09:54:18 +0000

Jack Thompson, the US attorney and anti-video games activist, has been permanently disbarred by the Florida Supreme Court. This follows an approval from the Supreme Court for a recommendation to permanently disbar Thompson in July and includes an order for Thompson to pay legal fees amounting to nearly $45,000.

Thompson’s response was to send a press release to Kotaku stating that, “This past Friday Thompson filed a federal civil rights action against The Bar, the Supreme Court, and all seven of its Justices. This rush to disbarment is in retribution for the filing of that federal suit.”

In light of the warnings Thompson has been given in the past few years that he has come to the fore - including a reprimand by Judge Ronald Friedman in 2006 stating that he found statements made by Thompson “unprofessional and contemptible” - we think it was a matter of ‘when’ and not ‘if’ it would come to this.

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Top 50 Flash Games at Total PC Gaming.com!

Russell Barnes — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 16:19:40 +0000

Bored? Got ten minutes spare and nothing to fill it? Ideal…

Get yourself over to www.totalpcgaming.com’s Top 50 Flash games to while away your time hitting high scores and generally japing about. You can find the link on the front page of our website.

Among the top 50 are Battleships, Trials 2 and Pong - what more could you want?!

You can impress your mates with your high scores or grab a screenshot for proof and head over to Total PC Gaming.com’s forum to challenge other readers.

Enjoy!

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Portal Prelude

Ben Biggs — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 12:57:54 +0000

A sequel to Valve’s Portal has been announced - but not by Valve. Portal Prelude comes from a three-man dev team that have been working on an unofficial prequel to the Orange Box hit since January. It’s a bigger game that harks back to a pre-GladOS era, it’s coming very soon (end of September/October time) and best of all, it’s completely free! All you need to play is Steam and the original Portal game. Check it out here.

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Total PC Gaming Voicemail

Ben Biggs — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 10:02:34 +0000

Do you fancy asking questions, chucking a few ideas around or just shouting down the phone at us? Do you want to have a bit of our TPCG podcast action? Then get on the Skype blower to Total_PC_Gaming on 020 3286 6694 and leave us a message…

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TPCG Podcast #3 now available

Ben Biggs — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 12:52:35 +0000

Catch up with the latest PC Games gossip in our third Total PC Gaming Magazine podcast. Listen to myself (Ben), Russell, Dave and Andy talk games, games, bikini armour, games, Warhammer Online, games, banter and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Also, plenty of messing around and sound stupid (but well-informed stupid) on an international broadcast medium. Like we’ve got any personal street cred to lose anyway…

Download and listen to it here. If you’re listening on an iPod or via iTunes, you can get the enhanced version, complete with images for the bikini armour parade. Bonus!

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Warhammer Online Open Beta Date Announced

Ben Biggs — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 11:55:48 +0000

GOA, EA and Mythic Studios have announced that the open beta for Warhammer Online: Age OF Reckoning will begin on 7 September. Fans of the highly anticipated MMO will be able to enter the European open beta by pre-ordering WAR and going to the GOA account centre or visiting the EA Store to sign up for a limited number of spots. GOA also announced on the official forum that they have lifted the NDA for all players in the current closed beta phase of Warhammer Online. The game will be released nearly two weeks after the open beta commences, on 18 September.

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Nvidia and ATI price fixing, discovered during class certification hearing

James Pikover — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 11:21:39 +0000

In a normal class certification hearing, the plaintiffs revealed an email between Nvidia senior VP of marketing, Dan Vivoli, and ATI’s president and COO, Dave Orton, which points to inflated prices and collusion. It reads: “I really think we should work harder together on the marketing front. As you and I have talked about, even though we are competitors, we have the common goal of making our category a well positioned, respected playing field. $5 and $8 stocks are a result of no respect.”
While Nvidia’s supremacy has been clear over the last year, this email-gone-public is a huge blow to both videocard companies. Presiding judge Aslup stated the class certification will be further investigated.
Learn more here

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VoodooPC merging with HP’s consumer PC development team

James Pikover — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 14:15:33 +0000

VoodooPC, longtime hardcore gaming company renowned for high-end desktops and laptops was recently shifted by parent company HP into a more refined role. The Envy 133 laptop is thinner than the Apple Airbook at its thickest point and is meant to be elegant yet powerful, and has a wide range of features to support it. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the Omen is a powerful to the point of absurdity.
The radical change from simply a gaming PC manufacturer to a mixture of super-hardcore desktops and expensively capable laptops was remarkable at the time, but understandable. Compared to its competition, VoodooPC was not performing well enough. Yet merging it with HP’s current consumer PC unit seems to be the end of VoodooPC as it were, and a reintroduction to HP’s gaming PC besides the Blackbird 002.
Read the whole story here

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