CROSSOVER: LINUX GAMING
SAMSUNG NEXT-GEN NETBOOK
WINDOWS ISN’T THE ONLY OPTION
VIA’S ATOM KILLER PUT TO THE TEST
ISSUE 228 JULY 2009
PERFORMANCE GEAR & GAMING
ISSUE 228 LISTEN… YOU SMELL SOMETHING?
LISTEN… YOU SMELL SOMETHING?
SLI vs Cr ossFire M assive roundup of t dual-car he latest d wonde rs
HOW TO: UNLOCK THE PHENOM’S FOURTH CORE AND OVERCLOCK IT
Push AMD’s triple-core to the limit! WWW.PCFORMAT.CO.UK
H maow to Dem ster
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58 G a m 86 A p es ps S ee pa ge 118
THERE’S MORE… NVIDIA ION picked apart AMD Radeon 4770 benched Viruses: How to fight back Issue 228 July 2009 £5.99 Outside UK & ROI £6.49
ASSASSIN’S CREED 2 TWEAK FALLOUT 3 CLIMBING THE WALLS PLUS: BROKEN STEEL PCF228.cover 1
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t s u j r e v o t o n s ’ e The gam the final boss because at your feet. g n i b b o s f o d l lies r o w e l o h w a There’s sion out there. obses t t e b b o C d r a h c i R t i s e r o l p ex 102
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Xxxxxx the Beyond xxxxx games xx
“Let’s be honest, anyone who can get four novels out of the original Doom deserves something”
T
he strange thing about gaming is that if you exclude roughly 98 per cent of the Japanese export market not covered by anime, Pocky and deeply bizarre porn, it’s spawned relatively few cottage industries. A new release typically hits the shelves, vanishes with the tide of technology, then gets forgotten, except for nostalgia purposes. It’s only in the last few years that some of the spin-offs have started being treated with anything approaching respect: Halo novels have hit the New York Times bestseller lists, game posters and swanky action figures take a proud place in all geek-friendly stores, and movie conversions… well, sad to say, those still invariably stink. Still, things are definitely on the rise. Everything from conventions to the seriousness that spin-offs and fan-projects are being treated to is rapidly improving, often to the point
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that if you don’t take part, you’re only getting part of the story. World of Warcraft is the king here, with much of its backstory restricted almost entirely to spin-off materials. If you want to know why the King of Stormwind, former gladiator Varian Wrynn, is so keen on waging war with the Horde, you need to buy the comics. To find out what the current biggest baddie was up to before the recent patch, you’ll need a copy of the new book Arthas: Rise of the Lich King. You can get the basic details of the story online via one of the many Warcraft wikis, but probably without the same atmosphere.
PLAY A GOOD BOOK
Books about games have been around for decades, and have often been very, very strange. There was a paperback based on the original Leisure Suit Larry games – The Larry Story – that was largely a half-hearted narrative version of the first game’s plot. There were novellas shipped with many other titles, often for use in copy protection
quizzes (type in page 5, paragraph 4, word 1 and the like) and bolstering or explaining away the actual game’s primitive technology. The Elite games used short stories to give the illusion of a bustling future world for you to trade in, while Starglider handwaved its wireframe graphics by pretending they were a tactical aid. Not necessarily convincing, but better than nothing. Commercially speaking though, things don’t get much stranger than the Doom novels. Yes, you read that right. There are six of them – four nominally based on the original game, and two more recent ones about Doom 3. The originals are true… we hesitate to use the word ‘genius’, but let’s be honest, anyone who can get four novels out of the original Doom deserves something. The first, Knee Deep In the Dead, covers the entire original trilogy without pausing for breath. Instead of a mute psychopath, it stars a slightly sarcastic marine called Fly, hunting for a female marine in a world of omnipresent danger and teleporters with a habit of stripping travellers
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naked in the name of making them have really awkward conversations. Book 2 is nominally about Doom 2, but with some major deviations – not least that the demons are aliens trying to prey on humanity’s psychological weaknesses and the Mormons are our last line of defence. Then it gets weird. Really, really weird. The alien race is named Fred. They’re fighting another group of aliens called the Newbies, whose emissaries are a pair called Sears and Roebuck. By the end of the series, it’s as far from Doom as Piers Morgan’s arse is from a Nobel Peace Prize, and not in a good way. Most books are slightly more sane. There have been series based on Wing Commander and Myst, Tomb Raider, Splinter Cell, Mass Effect, Halo, Hellgate: London and many others, including one-shot efforts, like Anarchy Online: Prophet Without Honor, Hitman and Starship Titanic, as written by Terry Jones of Python fame. Some, including Wing Commander: The Price of Freedom and Gabriel Knight 1 and 2 are effectively retold versions of the plot, often from the original writers, who get to put back things they weren’t able to get into the original game. Anarchy Online is easily the most ambitious, telling a story that stretches from there here-and-now, right through to 28708. It’s very, very Dune… The Halo books are among the most popular conversions, and with good reason. Halo: The Fall of Reach in
particular is a good read for fans, detailing the Master Chief’s training before encounting Halo, with the others telling different stories from around its universe. Bungie considers these canon (with the rule that the games’ stories win in the event of a clash), making them a worthwhile read. Some games haven’t fared as well, The Baldur’s Gate 2 novel is a particular stinker, not least for its odd deviations,
such as placing one of the female characters in a bizarre dark elf lesbian scene, and restricting important characters to mere cameos. Planescape Torment didn’t fare much better. When your main character is called The Nameless One, it’s a bad sign when he gets a name within the first few chapters. Still, it could be worse.
The hero of Command and Conquer: Tiberium Wars has to go the whole story suffering under the callsign ‘Puke’.
COMIC RELIEF
Given the iconic nature of many of the games chosen for conversion, comic books are often seen as a better destination. There are Tomb Raider novels, but really, if things are going to start glistening after a quick dip in some ancient Mayan river, you may as draw the damn picture. There aren’t as many comics as you might think, and most of them, like, say, Bloodrayne, are every bit as forgettable as their games. Some are interesting however, including twelve issues of the already comic book themed City of Heroes that never really meshed with the game world like it should have done, and a one-issue special based on Doom that actually made the novels seem sane. Simply called Knee Deep in the DEAD!, it has to be seen to be believed. And thanks to the internet, you can. Visit www.doomworld. com/10years/doomcomic and savour the narrative genius of lines like: “At this particular moment in time, I don’t believe I have a healthier or more deep-felt respect for any object in the universe than this here shotgun…” One very useful function of comics is setting up a game’s backstory outside of the pace and focus that the actual game requires. Mirror’s Edge and Dead Space comics took place before the action kicks off, introducing
ENTERING THE GAMEWORLD Gamers don’t come much more hardcore than S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl fans. In March, over 70 of them descended on a small Russian village to turn their dreams of living in a post-apocalyptic hell into reality. Don’t worry, they asked in advance. However, you’ve got to admire the moxie of a group that doesn’t simply slough around in costume pretending to be bounty hunters, but gets fully involved with pretend knife-fighting, bartering, and the scariest looking warehouse since Fight Club. Admittedly, this is helped by the fact that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is so closely based on Chernobyl. It’s hard to find something similar for, say, System Shock or Planescape Torment. However, game tourism does exist. The more that areas draw from real-world inspiration, the
more fun it becomes to have a poke round. In many cases, they’re already tourist sites – the Paris catacombs, as seen in Deus Ex, or the fairytale castle of Neuschwanstein from Gabriel Knight 2 being just two examples – but that may change over time. Enough people every year flock to the filming locations of their favourite movies and TV shows – indeed, there was a whole Da Vinci Code trail for people who forgot the original book was meant to be lining their cat’s litter tray. How long can it be before we get a worldwide tour of Lara Croft’s conquests, or the chance to poke around a real nuclear bunker under the Fallout banner. If you’ve got to practice for Armageddon, where better than Burlington (www.bbc.co.uk/wiltshire/ underground_city). ). Especially if we can have paintball guns.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is so closely based on Chernobyl that fans like to visit and headshot each other from the Pripyat ferris wheel
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WARCRAFT COMES TO LIFE As proud as you might be of your World of Warcraft character, what could compare to seeing him or her in the flesh? Sadly, that’s not possible. Instead, try Figureprints (www.figureprints. com). These launched in the US last year, and recently started serving Europe as well. The idea is simple. Log in, point the service to your character, and get a sexy model of it through the post. Cost to you: 130 euros, or the same in dollars if you’re in the US. Curse you, exchange rates… Figureprints will only make you a model of your own character, complete with any armour and weapons he or she has equipped. This can be a problem if you want to look like an awesome harbinger of destruction instead of a deranged harlequin in pieces of the environment and setting things up. You don’t need to know any of it to enjoy the games, but it’s a good way of getting into bits of the story that people who just want the boobs and explosions would find gratuitous.
PLAYING WITH TOYS
Oddly, if you want to take your favourite characters into 3D, you’re likely out of luck. There are many action figures out there, but they tend to be based firmly on console games, particular Japanese ones, like Final Fantasy and Street Fighter. PC specific characters are in short
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multiple sets, or if you’ve sold the good looking stuff, but at least it keeps things personal. After all, if all you wanted was a general hero wearing top-tier gear, you may as well just buy one of the action figures. The models are made using rapidprototyping technology, with the 3D data for each character and their items pulled straight from Blizzard’s servers, built up automatically in a series of layers, dunked into a glue bath, and then hand-finished. It’s far from a perfect process, especially if you want something like the dark shiny metallics of a newly forged Death Knight, but the resulting character is clearly yours – face, armour, and even your choice of pose. It’s also early days for the technology, which could easily be
supply, or restricted to promotional items. Only a couple of PC companies have really gotten into this market, and they’re exactly the ones you’d expect: Blizzard and Valve. Valve sells geek-friendly gear by the Weighted Companion Cube load, including a plushy Cube, Black Mesa branded mugs, Aperture Labs parking permits (that sound you can hear is an idea being stretched far beyond sanity) Headcrab hat (and there it goes, snapping right back into awesome), and cuddly Vortigaunts. Blizzard is all about the collectibles. The World of Warcraft ones are the best known, although there’s a range for Starcraft as well. Nothing with the Warcraft brand on it has much difficulty selling [Ed – see PCF225 p52 for the exception]. There are extremely good quality figures, drip-fed onto the market, and offering everything from jabbering baddy Illidan Stormrage, through to Blood Elf rogues and tooled up Orc warriors. However, they’re not the coolest Warcraft merchandise. For that, you usually have to head to the big conventions, or get ready to have your wallet emptied by eBay. Talking Murloc toy? That’ll be £60 from sellers right now. Inflatable Frostmournes (the actual sword wielded by the Lich King himself, if you ignore the ‘inflatable’ bit) go for at least
expanded to other games. MMORPGs are the perfect choice for this merchandise, due to the number of combinations of character types they offer, as well as the chance to show off to fellow fans, but any game with a heavy user-generated content system in place, such as Will Wright’s Spore, would benefit as well. $20, despite having been originally handed out free in goodie bags. Of course, this is nothing compared to the cost of some in-game items from these conventions. At the time of writing, a polar bear for your character to ride on is going for £250, a virtual Murloc suit £320, and a pet from the Diablo games on sale at a phenomenal £900. Of course, whether the sellers actually receive the cash is anyone’s guess. It can’t be long before Warcraft players take a page from Atlas Shrugged and set up a whole loot-based country, funded entirely via gold-selling and weapons crafting. Where companies fall down in providing toys, some enterprising individuals have found a niche. There’s a small but active custom action figure scene on the net, combining bits of existing figures and creating new bits and pieces from scratch – www. kylerobinsoncustoms.com is just one – many of whom take commissions for anything from your MMO character to the star of your favourite series. Hands down our favourite recent find is mother-daughter duo Necronomical Custom Plushies (www.freewebs.com/ necronomicalplush), who specialise in creating bespoke soft toys based on any character from anime through to gaming. They recently started making Warcraft toys, which are just adorable. Our favourite is a Draenai Paladin, complete with balsa wood sword, wired up tentacles and black vinyl gloves. Unlike Figureprints (see ‘Warcraft comes alive’) these are completely unofficial, but so far Blizzard and co have turned a blind eye.
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Of course, anyone trying to make a business out of an individual game would be wise to expect a call from the relevant company’s legal Nazgul.
THE FANDOM MORASS
You don’t have to spend money to massage your geek-spot, or have any discernable talent. Nowhere is this more evident than the world of fan fiction. Now, let’s be clear. There are fan-fiction writers out there with serious talent, and some excellent projects worth your time. One of the most ambitious is a ‘proper’ retelling of Planescape Torment, using the actual dialogue and situations from the game, rather than the hacked-up mishmash of the official novelisation. Download it from www.wischik.com/lu/senses/ pst-book.html. All that said, more often than not people pass around fan fiction for a very different reason. A recent trend in the Half-Life community is using Garry’s Mod to put some of the worst to animation, with the most famous being Full Life Consequences. Watch it at snipurl.com/h49vg, but beware. It starts: “John Freeman who was Gordon Freemans brother was one day in an office typing on a computer. He got an email from his brother that said that aliens and monsters were attacking his place and aksed him for help so he
went.” and promptly gets worse. And if you think that’s bad, we haven’t even mentioned the porn. There’s erotic fan-fiction based on Team Fortress 2, and no, we’re not kidding. Sample line: “When he was healing his Heavy, crouching behind his large friend in an effort to avoid grenades, rockets, and flares, he would find his eyes drifting toward the Heavy’s small, but muscular butt.” We can’t print most of the rest… Good and bad and just plain wrong fan-fiction aside, some of the most fun are the stories that take a serious game and put a funny spin on it. Chris Livingston’s Concerned does this brilliantly with Half-Life 2, retelling the whole story from the point of view of one Gordon Frohman, not so much an alien sympathiser as an all-out fanboy of the brutal Combine regime, who just happens to accidentally set up almost every single part of the actual game while working for the baddies. The comic was so popular, it even got a shout-out in Episode 1. Read it online at www.hlcomic.com. The Last Days Of Foxhound, available at www.gigaville. com, is another great example of this style, retelling the whole Metal Gear Solid saga from the villains’ point of view. It’s not exactly Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, but only because Revolver Ocelot would have shot them on the first page.
“And if you think that’s bad … there’s erotic fan-fiction based on TF2, and no, we’re not kidding” .
Oh dear, the next erotic fan fiction fad perhaps? Two Horde one Pip Boy, while a Darwinian watches
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COSPLAY COMPLEX
Arguably the ultimate expression of fandom however is trying to become your favourite character. You might not be able to leap buildings in a single bound, but at least you can look the part. That’s the theory, anyway. As ever, this tends to be focused around Japanese games, but MMORPGs have helped pull things back in our direction. Popular costumes include Lara Croft, often patterned after the official models that Eidos hires to play her, and some insanely well put together MJOLNIR armour based on the Master Chief in Halo. Cosplayers don’t simply buy a hat or don a wig. The level of detail and build quality can be jaw-dropping. It can also be terrifying, especially when someone tries a look they just don’t have the build for, and doubly-so when you factor in ‘crossplaying’: guys in costumes designed for already impossible girls, often without even bothering to shave. Google ‘Man-Faye’, if you must, but don’t blame us for what you see…
With MMORPGs, there’s a greater connection to individual characters. After all, they’re yours. Cosplayers and costume contests are a regular fixture at conventions, with game-specific ones including Blizzcon and the Everquest-based Fan Faire. However, probably the most fun competitions have been the ones that NCSoft threw for City of Heroes/City of Villains. These typically ask people to dress as their own character, with much of the fun coming from the contrast – not necessarily how different the person is from their avatar, but how something that looks sleek and awesome against a glimmering comic book background doesn’t necessarily retain its mystique in the stark surrounds of a parking lot. Will Champions get the same treatment? Only time – and overwrought dialogue – will tell.
GAMES & BEYOND
When it comes down to it though, games are primarily about having fun, and nobody said it has to be done on screen. Warcraft, you’ll be shocked to hear, has several physical games out there, including a boardgame based on the original strategy titles, a trading card game a bit like Magic: The Gathering (boosted by the fact that cards can be redeemed for rare items in games), and a tabletop RPG from White Wolf, creators of Vampire.
Doom also has a boardgame, and an interesting one at that. One player controls the demonic invasion, including Hell Knights and Marines, with other players controlling one marine each. We haven’t played it, although we’ve heard from people that have that unlike the game, the armies of Hell tend to have a slight advantage. Clearly, Satan can handle his Weetabix. Most card and board game conversions aren’t as well-known, outside dedicated gaming circles. Very few are aware that Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness was turned into a boardgame set in a museum (Lara trying to find evidence to prove her innocence in a murder investigation), that Sid Meier’s Civilisation became a card game, or that Fallout, Wing Commander, Crimson Skies, Myst, and even the failed MMO Auto Assault have all made the conversion. As if this wasn’t meta enough, even online comic Penny Arcade now has its own card game, with a deck for each of the two main characters Gabe and Tycho, and weapons ranging from ‘Erode The Human Soul’ to the Fruit ****er. (Kids, the missing letters are ‘fondl’). With all these novels, comics, stories, toys and extra games to play, it’s a wonder any of us have time for what really matters: the originals. Who knows. Maybe one day, there’ll even be games about the spin-offs. It worked for LEGO Star Wars. Why not Duplo LEGO Star Wars? ¤
WHERE FANDOM CARRIES A GUN By any standards, The Nameless Mod is an insane fan project. Luckily, it also happens to be a fantastic one. We’re deviating slightly in mentioning it here, since it is a game, but it still counts due to being both built by and based on the Deus Ex community, and the relationships and histories built up over their decade long shared-love of one of the best games ever made. The easiest way to describe TNM is to point to Tron or The Matrix, except that instead of the events taking place in some random computer or complex, simulated reality, all the action is built around a Deus Ex forum. The characters you meet are posters’ avatars. The ability to ban people is the equivalent of a tactical nuke. As Treskton, you have to track down a missing moderator somewhere in the sprawling mass of Forum City, meeting some of the strangest characters in gaming history.
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The Nameless Mod was built over the course of seven years, and it shows. In many places, it’s arguably equal or better than the original Deus Ex game, and that’s high praise indeed. You don’t need to know any of the players to enjoy the action, or get any of the in-jokes. Either way, you get two full-length campaigns, each the equivalent of a regular game, plus mission after mission of fantastic action, genuinely good writing, and so many hidden jokes, subquests and clever little bits that we’re not even sure the original creators know about all of them. You’ll need a copy of Deus Ex to play it, but that’s cheap enough thanks to services like Steam offering it for £6. The actual fan game can be downloaded at www. thenamelessmod.com.
The Na m took se eless Mod – a ven ye ars to n insane fan make a projec t th nd of work is a superb p at iec worthy of Deu e s Ex
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