Video Games

Ben Joffe has developed the Canvascape “3D Walker”, which is the most simple FPS Engine in existence to date. 3D Walker utilizes the Canvas tag found in many internet browsers (ie: Firefox 1.5, Safari and Opera). Although the graphics are rather undeveloped, there’s no deption about the Canvascape “3D Walker”; all there is to do is walk around until you’ve become so bored that your over-a-decade-old GameBoy looks appealing.

I bought Half Life 2 the other day, and looked forward to blasting through the Lost Coast HDR demo, but I enountered some problems. See, there’s a known issue with certain video cards, namely the NVIDIA Geforce GO series (6200go, 6400go, and 6800go) where the game bluescreens when you try to load it. I tried all the solutions above and was able to run it with the -window flag, but to me that’s not good enough. You shouldn’t have to choose between inferior gameplay and the blue screen of death. So, to anyone with a new Sony Vaio, Half Life 2 or any other Steam/Source Engine game might not be for you.

That’s right, Alien Arena is this sites pick for the Free Game of the Week. Why, you ask? Because it’s a 100% free, Multiplayer First-Person-Shooter for the PC that has beautiful graphics powered by the open-source Quake 3 engine. This game has been around for a while, but it has finally gotten a well-needed refurb. The new version, featuring 25 levels, 5 mutators, 9 playable characters, 8 weapons, 3 alternate fire modes, Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, Assault, and Death Ball, is well worth the 151 MB download.

Download via FileFront:
Windows
Linux

I am checking out Half Life 2 over Steam, and the installation is too slow! Take a look at these download speeds:

I am getting ~500KB/s on a connection that regularily sustains 1.2 MB/s. What gives, Valve? Don’t have a great online content distribution network, or what?

Here at VGN, we give you exclusive first-hand reports from the latest in gaming. Today, we bring you 74 original Quake 4 screenshots, hot off the press. Playing through the game, the first thing I notice is how reponsive the menus and cut scenes are. Both run at full frames per second, and feel fluid and lifelike:

The characters themselves seem to lack something realistic: they seem slightly plastic:

Still, Quake 4 is a first-class first person shooter (FPS) with plenty of bang, explosions, violence, and death for its buck:

The HUD is very well done, in my opinion:

For more photos and screenshots, check out the flickr photostream for Quake 4!