A recent trailer released by Bethesda Studios, the makers of the Elder Scrolls Series, and Fallout, and Arkane Studios, creators of Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, depicts a dystopic world ruled by an aristocratic elite set in a steam punk, neo-victorian age (I dont even know what that means), and quite frankly, based on reading a game informer article a few months back and watching this trailer, I have come to the conclusion that it is quite possibly a highlight in gaming for this year. Granted this is a preview based on limited sources, and information, information derived from the trailer, I do have to stress that I can be wrong. But out of excitement, considering this is the only game I’m looking forward to this year other than Bioshock Infinite, I write a compilation of all announced features, settings, and characters, along with gameplay.

As mention it is set in a steam-punkish world with a strong victorian feel to it. The town portrayed in the trailer and concept art is dystopic, and reminiscent of a slum, actually, it is a slum, backwater and full of rats and dirty, poor commoners. There is a police-like military patrolling the streets, killing protesters in brutal and gory ways. You see a rail carriage, with an aristocrat inside it, surrounding it you have these walker suit things, soldiers with bows that shoot explosives, electric fields, that fry people to ash. This game, so far, looks gruesome, and like damn hell exciting. Straight away, you see the cruelty of this world, and straight away, what comes to mind is how will the player interact with it, and how consequences and interaction will shape the player’s experience. Well, I hope its that way, the environment of a game has always been an important medium for how the player experiences the game world, and more importantly, the impression it leaves.

So this brings me to my next point, the characters, you play as Corvo, a bodyguard to the Empress of Dunwall (the city that is in the trailer [i think]), who has been framed as the murderer of this particular Empress. The trailer begins in a jail (or is it gaol) cell, with Corvo sitting there, when a strange mysterious man walks up to his cell from the shadows, says a few words about having your revenge, then appears in your cell, granting you ‘his mark.’ Corvo then gains the ability to do some pretty neat things. To compare with another game, Corvo becomes like Adam Jensen of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. And just like DE:HR, you have a non-linear game experience.

In the game you have the choice to finish a mission however you want, your object (as far as i know) is to have your revenge on the Lord Regent and his cronies, who assassinated the Empress of Dunwall. As such, you can choose to play non-lethally, using your powers to subjugate them. You have a myriad amount of abilities, ones that I can remember, are slow time, or possession of another NPC, which is pretty cool, however the only drawback to the possession ability is that if your host dies, so do you. One of the features is how you use these powers, as you can use multiple powers at once, you have a ton of combinations to come up with an interesting way to take someone (or thing) out.

So as mentioned, this game has potential, and I am looking forward to it. If you haven't seen the trailer will include it in links below. Dishonored could be a mass success (not based on profits but rather, the actual game is good), or it could be a massive flop, not doing anything new and just rehashing on already established genre. Either way, I look forward to it, and Bioshock Infinite as well. All we can do is wait and see.

Here is the link to the trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1HlYTukh9A

All statistic are derived from the initial month of release

A question that seems to get asked a lot by our customers is why we always use ‘slower’ CPUs – for example, only including a Core i5 processor when our competitors are giving out Core i7 processors for the same price.

The reason? By spending less on the CPU, we can balance the CPU and Graphics Card processing power ratio, making your games run faster and smoother than they otherwise would on one of our competitors’ systems.

Seems a little paradoxical? Here’s how it works: when you’re gaming, the graphics card is responsible for everything that appears on-screen. It draws the pretty pictures, so to speak. The CPU only tells the graphics card what to draw. Of course, it’s important to have a fast CPU, and most desktop CPUs are fast enough for this purpose.

But when the graphics card can’t even keep up with the CPU, that’s when you begin to have problems. At best, you won’t be able to turn up the details to make your games look truly as good as they should. And at worst, you’ll have lag, stutter and freezes when the action gets heavier – common in most first-person shooters including the ever-popular Battlefield 3.

In a real-world example, take our NightFire system (with an Intel Core i5-2400 and a Radeon HD6870) and a system from Competitor P (with an Intel Core i7-2600 and a Radeon HD6770).

The following graph shows performance in a well-known synthetic game benchmark (3DMark Vantage running in Performance mode). Both the total scores of the systems (and the average contribution of the CPU and GPU to total performance) are shown.

Big difference between the two. Even though the Core i7-2600 is much faster than the i5-2400, the difference just isn’t enough to let the i7-based system catch up with our NightFire system.

At this point you may be wondering how this translates into real-world gaming performance – and the answer is very well, in fact. For the following graph, we’re going to take Battlefield 3 as an example.

There’s a massive difference of 20fps between the two systems. And with the i7-based system running at a borderline 30fps, even a small dip in frame rates will be noticeable. But with the NightFire, there’s a healthy 20fps of headroom, meaning that your game won’t start lagging when you venture into a heavy firefight or out into the open.

The thing to note here, though, is that this comparison was between the NightFire’s Radeon HD6870, and the Radeon HD6770 (the de-facto entry-midrange standard). This doesn’t bode well at all for the majority of our competitors, who are shipping even slower cards with their ‘gaming’ PCs (or even no graphics card at all!)

And that’s one of the things makes us different – we’ve already done the design work for you, so you know you’re getting the best value-for-money when you buy one of our systems.

There will be a Nightbreaker event on the 19th of April, a thursday, 9am to 7 pm. There will be an event as well. If you're free and have nothing to do, why not come by? Its $15 for the entire night.

Here is a link to the event page.

http://www.facebook.com/events/269856803106172/

Dear customers,

We're open during the Easter public holidays. Our normal operational hours remains the same from 10am - 11pm. However we are closing at 6pm on Monday 09/04/12 due to private function. Sorry for any inconvenience caused.

Have a lovely Easter holiday break!

Tribes: Ascend is an upcoming free-to-play multiplayer-only first-person shooter part of the Tribes franchise. It is currently being developed by Hi-Rez Studios and was announced on March 11, 2011 at PAX East with an expected release in early 2012. It will be available as a digital download for Microsoft Windows, though Hi-Rez Studios haven't ruled out the possibility of an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 release in the future. Iconic aspects from previous Tribes games such as jetpacks and skiing will be featured in the game. Currently, the game is in open beta and will release on April 12, 2012.

Mass Effect 3 is an action role-playing game developed by BioWare and published by Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Officially announced on December 11, 2010, the game was released March 6, 2012 and marks the final chapter in the Mass Effect trilogy of video games, completing the story of Commander Shepard.

Thanks Vision China Times for Sponsoring CT. Please see their relevant news portal here by clicking the icon below.

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The latest sequel and addition to the Assassin's Creed franchise is AC: Revelations. It still focus' on Ezio's tale, but with a twist. This time, Desmond is trapped within the Animus and only by reliving the memories of Ezio and Altair can he escape this cyber prison. That being said, Desmond and Altair are playable. Personally I had mixed reception of this game, I feel that this is simply prolonging the adventures of Ezio, and no longer bringing anything new to the table. There are obvious improvements to the game, but at the same time, there are unnecessary additions to this free-roam parkour assassin simulator. I am not saying this game is all bad, but rather, I enjoyed it a lot, I have more of a problem with the story, some odd content, and Desmond's bits.

So to begin, I'll list my most enjoyable part of the game. The obvious improvement to running/parkour. Movement is so much more fluid then in the previous titles. In almost every situation, you are on the move. From the very beginning till the very end. Climbing animations have also been improved, and with the addition of the hook, one can access zip lines and higher ledges. There is so much to explore in Constantinople and so much to see. We played it on the PC, so I wouldn't know about the performance of the console counterparts, but with everything on maximum, the game looked awesome. Highly detailed, objects near and far, silhouettes of towers, churches and mosques in the distance, the Hagia Sophia being the most prominent building on the horizon.

That being said, in some cases, movement wasn't that enjoyable, most particularily in Desmond's moments, where platforms moving around constantly. The only thing you are really doing here is moving from portal to portal which leads to the memories of Ezio or Altair, and hearing Desmond talk about himself. Those moments where one controlled Altair were linear, they are more focused on the story, of what happened at Masyaf and brings closure to the aftermath to the first AC game, but don't offer that much new content.

Just like in Brotherhood, Ezio recruits assassins which are sent out on contracts. This functions similarly to Brotherhood, in the sense that, instead of the Borgias, you take out the Templar's control over a city. Eventually, as an Assassin eventually gains enough experience and ranking, you can designate him the leader of a faction den and that opens up new missions. In some missions you can accompany newbie assassins as they try to get their target. I liked this feature because it showed Ezio actually taking more involvement with his Assassin brethren.

Now, the most poorly executed feature in Revelations is the attempt at tower defense. It is probably the most frustrating aspect of the game, camera angles arn’t that great and are in fact limiting, and there is this annoying zoom in on fallen enemies or allies. It isn’t complex, you simply place down barricades and assassins at the expense of morale, that being the currency.

Another new feature is bomb crafting, as simple as it sounds. You find various of bits and pieces and you put them together to make functioning explosives. But in all honesty, i never got around to using them, there is simply no incentives, or practical use to them in combat. Difficulty of combat has increased since the last game, but its still centered around sword play. Range enemies are a minor annoyance, and like to hide behind cover, being out of melee range. Getting shot hurts, and i recommend against it. Combat flow is enjoyable and there are all the more kill animations.

I feel that i’ve covered a fair amount of the game, if i am forgetting something, other then the multiplayer, feel free to comment. I havn’t tried out the multiplayer and I do not intend to, as its difficult to review properly. Regardless it was an enjoyable game, but the story was lacking. The free roam parkour and exploration is really the center point of this game, and it does excell in the deliverance of this fun and unique feature.