Do you like World of Warcraft? Do you like expansion packs? Do you like testing new content? Do you like free stuff? Do you like reselling it on E-bay? Do you like ambiguous times? Do you like development delays? If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, then you should check out IGN PC “tomorrow morning (Pacific Time)” for a chance to win a free World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade beta key. I know I’ll be checking it, but mostly just for a chance at making an easy $200-300 on E-bay.

So, looks like the good old folks over at Valve have pushed back Episode 2, but more importantly, Team Fortress 2. Fortunately, we’ve been waiting patiently for many years, so another couple months won’t be so bad. Hopefully. Valve is now reporting a Summer 2007 release, delayed from a Q1 2007, that was delayed from a Holiday 2006, that was… Here’s to no more delays. But that might be asking for too much from Valve. At least when they do deliver, it’s the shit.

[Source: IGN]

Razer, the same company that’s been brining us top of the line gaming mice for almost 9 years now, has released their first keyboard, the Tarantula Gaming Keyboard. It’s retailing for $99.99, it’s about the same price as the Logitech G15. (And I don’t even compare it to the Ideazon keyboards, as I can’t stand they way they look or feel.) IGN reviewed the Tarantula, giving it a 8.6, with the biggest deduction coming from how expensive it is. This urks me a bit. Sure it’s expensive, but it’s no more than other high end keyboards. Oh well. One of it’s biggest features is it’s ability to control it’s extra keys from the keyboard itself. So you don’t need to install drivers on every computer. Is this really something that people want? I don’t know about you, but I like to keep my keyboard plugged into my computer. That may just be a personal quirk of mine though. I’m strange like that. Oh well, maybe when the day comes that I have a computer in every room of my house, I’ll eat my words. But I’m thinking by then, something new will have come out. Only time will tell.

NVidia will be releasing their latest line of graphics cards with the release of the 8800GTS and 8800GTX next week. DailyTech received a bunch of gear before the official release, and review it here. So, what do these behemoths have to offer? Well, quite a bit actually. This marks the first DirectX 10 supported card on the market. Now, that doesn’t mean that you should go out and sell your first born to buy a new graphics card. While this is the first to support DX10, it has the drawback of… being the first to support DX10. For one, DX10 is Vista only (as of right now). So, you have at least until Vista before DX10 support is even necessary. There’s a two (and probably a three and a four as well) for reasons not to get the G80 right off the bat, but I believe that reason one is good enough.

What are my plans for the G80s? Read the rest of this entry »

November has arrived, and that means new toys for gamers everywhere. Between the PS3 and the Wii, the console world is being revolutionized (or is that Wii-ized now?) But, PC enthusiasts aren’t being left out to dry. Intel is releasing their latest PC core, the Kentsfield. What’s new about it? How about the fact that it has 4, yeah, you heard me, FOUR cores. And already, reviews are popping up all over:
http://www.techspot.com/review/27-intel-core2-extreme-qx6700-quad/
http://techreport.com/reviews/2006q4/core2-qx6700/index.x?pg=1

Initial reports are saying that while it IS faster in theory, applications have yet to take advantage of it (clearly). And the only times you really see any performance gain is when running multiple applications. One review even claimed to be gaming while encoding divx. Now, I’m not sure how much that will be useful, but I am sure that eventually, quad core will be the standard, much in the same way that dual core has.

AMDs response? Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve only had this blog up for a few hours, but I’m jumping right into it. And the game that’s currently eating all my time (which isn’t much considering all the time I’ve been putting into getting this site started), is Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.

I first saw this game after deciding for some reason or another that Steam was something that I needed to install. (Half-Life 2 is just that good) And just like we’ve come to expect from Steam, the moment I logged on and started it up, I was immediately bombarded by an ad. Fortunately enough, it was for Dark Messiah. This was also around the same time that I started playing Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, so the idea of a First Person RPG caught my attention. So, I installed the demo and was blown away.

Skip ahead a few months. Dark Messiah has hit shelves. I’ve played through the demo a total of 8 billion times. And who didn’t? I mean, how can you deny that dismembering a foe will never get old? And boy had the demo delivered. So naturally, I went out and purchased what I expected to be one of the best games ever. Now, I’m not saying it’s a bad game, but it was far from what i expected.

Read the rest of this entry »