reviewstash

No, Planetside isn't "officially" dead (though it might as well be). But, it has always been suprising how such a unique game has sustained a niche for so long (and continues to do so). Even more suprising, is that since 2003 there have been absolutely zero true MMOFPS games released - the only actual MMOFPS games on the market are Planetside and WW2 Online. There are no plans for any truly massive FPS games in the upcoming years (Huxley is not an MMOFPS, and neither is the PS3's "M.A.G." - Global Agenda is an awful UT3 remake).

Sony Online Entertainment truly had an interesting, unique, and groundbreaking concept, but decided to ruin Planetside's potential via bad developers, patching, pricing, performance, and advertising. It's as if SOE decided to blow money on Planetside, then bin it. Even today, the game has potential, and with some quick patching (the game looks incredible with forced Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic) and advertising, Planetside could easily be enjoying the success it deserves; but, in the past couple of months, it has been quite obvious that SOE is merely milking money out of Planetside's remaining, loyal, fans - check out this list of recent events / patches involving the game:

• Hacking is out of control and SOE is doing nothing about it
• Forum is absolutely dead, with most posts being deleted or moved by moderators
• VS (in-game faction), has had weaponry made extremely overpowered in latest patch
• The current staff has absolutely no idea what they're doing and can only implement miniscule database related changes
• Werner (the game's Eurasian server) is devastatingly low in population, and the devs refuse to merge it with the other remaining server
• Everyone is allowed to access BFRs (giant robots that were previously only allowed to people who unlocked them, the original addition of the BFRs are widely cited as the beginning of Planetside's demise), and this is an unintentional bug that still hasn't been fixed (this creates long battle stalemates)
• Battlerank (level system, each level gives you a certification point or "implant", points are spent on enhancing usable arsenal) has been increased to 40, about two times the previous level (26 during the past few years), creating soldiers who have access to nearly every weapon (ruins teamwork)

It's unfortunate that SOE would rather the game population be reduced to zero and a negative corporate cash-flow than put the necessary effort into the game, or sell it. But, how hard is it to further the MMOFPS? The latest Torque engine's netcode can support over 2000 simultaneous clients, while costing only a couple thousand for a resale license. Maybe someday in the future, my children will have an MMOFPS to play, for now I'm not exactly optimistic.

This isn't exactly news per se, but, after opening up the packaging of some new reviewstash related equipment, I just had to post this picture.

On the left is a common household CFL lightbulb (15w 5000K), on the right is one of the massive CFL bulbs that is going to be incorporated into the new video production setup (65w 6500K). This bulb is 10" long, and equivalent to a 300w incandescent bulb (or, your average floodlight). 6500K means that this bulb is essentially at daylight's white point, making for an acurate (and blinding) light. And, amazingly enough, these bulbs (being CFLs) don't get overly warm - so, I won't be sweating out any more video reviews.

Recently, quite a few subtle code changes have taken place on the website, fixing just about all of the bugs. There's a few left, but the website should run even smoother than before (which was pretty dang smooth). With all these changes, what reason do you have to not register? Oh yeah, the contest still isn't up!

Sorry about the silence over the last couple of days - I've ordered some new equipment that should help out with video reviews, and I have some good reviews, contests, and website code changes planned.

Anyway, for all of you American military simulation fans who have already delved into ArmA 2 (via German / Russian release, or by some illicit method), I've got some great news (horrible photoshop aside) - the US edition is being released late this week (steam version), a large patch is coming early this week (which should iron out some of the larger problems), and the demo is planned to come out shortly after the demo (it will be 2 GB in size).

I know I can't wait to demolish some T-72's in my A-10!

BiStudio 1, BiStudio 2, Steam

I honestly wish I could find fault in this video, but they accurately portrayed the final boss in the first Half-Life (with the exception of how hard it was to kill). It's also not really spoiler-ish, if you haven't played either game and are planning on it.

Just when you thought a 33-way thermal compound comparison was enough, Benchmark Reviews decides to go all the way and publish an 80-way comparison. If you've ever wanted to know anything about thermal compound for your computer, then this would be the article for you.

Benchmark Reviews

I recently reviewed Eagle Tech's mobile 2.5" enclosure and found it to be (besides a few minor problems) relatively useful. However, I haven't taken a look at their larger 3.5" enclosures. Tweaknews does just that, and seem fairly impressed.

Tweaknews

The earlier AMD Phenom processors found themselves lacking DDR3 support. Today, iXBT Labs benchmarks the latest AMD Phenom II with DDR3 support. Hopefully, it can standup to Intel's latest DDR3 solutions.

iXBT Labs

While we've already seen extremely high-end 200m series Nvidia card (280m GTX), there hasn't really been much talk of the consumer level graphics cards that utilize the 200m core. Elite Bastards sets the record straight, and previews Nvidia's upcoming 200m graphics cards.

Elite Bastards

For any of you netbook holdouts, I honestly don't think you're going to find a better deal within the next month. This bargain over at ZipZoomFly features an Intel Atom N270 1.60GHz CPU, 8.9in 1024 x 600 LCD, 4GB (SSD) HDD, 1GB DDR2, 802.11b/g, and some lame Linux distro - however, you can easily slap a copy of Windows on this rig. This netbook even has a sense of humor, check this excerpt from the product description:


Anyway, you can pick this up at the link below:

Price: $179.99 @ ZipZoomFly

Here's some good news for all the Star Trek fans out there - Star Trek Online does in fact follow the original timeline, and not the timeline of Star Trek 2009. This is confirmed by Cryptic Studios, who is developing the latest game in the franchise. Hopefully, it'll do the original timeline justice.

However, it is somewhat unfortunate that the original timeline includes both Voyager and Enterprise.

I guess I did call it in my 2009 predictions - AMD struggles, Intel takes dominance, and Nvidia's Tegra starts becoming more and more noticeable. A group of Georgia Tech students have put together a concept Augmented Reality game utilizing Nvidia's upcoming platform. ARhrrrr!, is an augmented reality shooter, which means you interact with the game utilizing real items, i.e. putting a skittle down on the game board in real life creates a bomb in the game. It's some pretty interesting stuff, and considering Microsoft's Natal and the Wii console, augmented reality looks to be the way of the future.

I'm not sure where this MMO came from, or why it decided to come out of "stealth" mode, but it looks absolutely fantastic. Blackstar is an MMORPG space vehicle / third-person land combat hybrid - you can fight in space, and you can land on planets and space ships, which initializes character based gameplay. It somewhat reminds me of Auto Assault, in that it has a top-layer with vehicle based combat, and an instanced layer featuring your actual character. Here's what we know so far:

• Four races
• Flaggable PvP combat
• Rich PvE, story driven
• Epic fleet based battles
• Space & ground combat
• Spell-casting & real-time weapon shooting
• United Colonies or Scorn Empire are factions
• WoW-styled classes (assassins, crusaders, etc.)

Let's hope Spacetime Studios' doesn't publish with EA Games or NCSoft - both publishers seem to enjoy destroying Sci-Fi MMO games (Tabula Rasa, however, had it coming).

Spacetime Studios

I have to say, I'm absolutely impressed with how Archos' first UMPC is shaping up, it looks to be the sleekest UMPC released as of yet. However, it doesn't seem to be pocketable - here's the current known specifications of the Archos 9 UMPC:

• 1.76 lb
• $600 USD
• 80GB HDD
• Windows 7
• 80GB HDD
• 10 x 5 x .6"
• Intel GMA 500 GPU
• 1.3-megapixel webcam
• Intel Atom Z515 1.2GHz
• VGA output, USB 2.0 port
• 3.5G HSPA WWAN, Bluetooth, WiFi
• Dual-antenna DVB-T digital TV tuner

Everyone loves water cooling for the performance, and hates it for the hassle, but what if there could be some sort of compromise? Thermoelectric, "peltier-esque", cooling has recently begun to fill this niche and satisfy the needs of performance hungry individuals that also want easy maintenance. Our friends over at Modders-Inc see if this new technology is useful, or useless.

Modders-Inc

ATI, unlike nVidia, usually allows maximum customization of their graphics cards by their distributors. Today, Bigbruin takes a look at Sapphire's latest rebranding, the Vapor-X Radeon HD4890 1GB Graphics Card, which features a slight overclock over the standard ATI cards. Is the extra clock speed and "Vapor-X" cooling worth the cost? Read on at the link below:

Bigbruin