Rosco, that demo is the beta demo. The official demo with optimizations to (supposedly) improve perf is coming soon.

And to the other guy implying that I was complaining with my 9700 Pro. Not complaining, just saying the single player demo was supposedly unoptimized. Not sure what perf gain can be made, but I'll check it out again. And a 9700 Pro isn't that bad. I had all the settings on the lowest they could get to make it playable. My machine meets the "recommended specs" which I figure should get me 'medium' details/resolution on just about everything.

It still runs most games decently. When I upgrade next I'll have to do everything as I've hit the end of the line with my mobo. Not worth it to me to do a minor upgrade for a very minor boost.
This comment was edited on Sep 1, 23:15.

Hopefully the demo will be optimized enough to look pretty decent on my 9700 Pro/P4 2.8 gHz machine. It ran pretty poorly before (both the multiplayer and single player beta, which was from the PC Gamer disc). It looks like a lot of fun and skirmish mode should hopefully sate those that like the game long enough for the release date about 2 weeks from now.

Ok, so massive edit here. Tried out the full demo. First mission is actually a skirmish against Space Marines on what I assume is Standard difficulty. The end of the tech tree is cut off, but the rest is buildable up to that point for the Tau.

Second mission is during the campaign, I assume, on the planet where the Tau are supposedly finishing off the Space Marine presence there. Get some back story during the brief cinematic, then the map begins (similar to the skirmish map - desert setting). Tau have some interesting options between the Kroot and the Fire Warrior branch. Could only build one type of vehicle, some sort of hovercraft missile gunship. I guess the Tau don't get any turrets either, which is strange. They're more of an expensive, fewer reinforcements, but very strong faction.

Once you get to the edge of the fortress on the back part of the map, the mission prematurely ends. Second mission probably has about 20-30 minutes of play for standard RTS people and maybe 15-20 for DoW veterans. Skirmish (first option) is about 20 minutes max, and that's if you turtle like hell.

Also, looks like the full game will have a Rise of Nations style map where you select where you want to attack on the planet and with what resources. All factions have a presence there. Could be very cool.

No Necron in the demo, which is annoying, but oh well. If you enjoyed DoW I'd recommend downloading it since it smaller than most demos recently released. Not an RTS fan? Obviously skip it.
This comment was edited on Sep 1, 23:26.

Wow, you sang Policy of Truth. That's awesome. Something I would sing, while only drunk of course. I wouldn't be caught sober karaoking that. Of course, if the pictures ever do come your way you are required by Blue's News law to share them.

Not all the races. An interview indicated that people would have to wait until DoW 2 for the Tyranids which are still misssing. I guess I can understand it. This is pretty cool as it is. And the Company of Heroes beta actually pushes the genre forward in a number of ways, so I can't wait to see what they do next for DoW 2.

Formerly communist and not by free will. Good to see Fredrickson back in fine form today.

Zeph is one of the resident trolls here. He's been here for ages along with a few others.
This comment was edited on Aug 5, 12:41.

I think we'll likely see them slowly lay off the support for Maya and then incorporate bits and pieces of Maya in 3DS Max in the next couple years. It must be expensive for them to A) develop two separate programs that do the same thing (with admittedly different work flows and minor differences in features) and B) maintain those two applications via tech support, patching, etc. Why buy out Alias, if you don't plan to just use the product your company is known for?

But, but this is Blue's News you guys have to hate on almost everything! All kidding aside, I'm pretty excited about the possibilities for this game and the first screenshots have a great style to them. Of course I really liked Undying as well, despite the annoying take-1-million-shots-end-boss.

"What's in the teaches of Peaches?"

"Like sex on the beaches?"

My grandparents live on Whidbey Island up here in the northwest. I remember seeing bald eagles swoop into the water and scoup out a fish or 100 crows swarm one trying to make it flee the area as a kid. They're truly majestic animals.

You know Spume, did you ever think there are 1000's of older titles or independent films that people watch? You know, stuff that got released on DVD and weren't able to see? My parents consume about 15 movies a month through Netflix and have no sign of slowing down. When I sign up again, they'll likely have my list from last time which had over 150 titles queued...

Oh man, when I read this I thought the game was titled "ThreadSpace: Hyperbole" and it was a game about being a viral marketter/corporate PR weasel. Come to think of it, that might have been a more interesting idea...

I was under the impression that you had to tap the space bar since it says as much in the instructions and also the icon on the actual screen shows the space bar being pressed repeatedly. So basically I don't feel that bad, but I still feel like I should've figure it out.

Has anyone been able to get past that first zombie...damn that requires some tappy tap tap-a-roos on your part to beat him.

Did War get banned or something? Anyway, I tried the beta as well. My thoughts:

- Its most definitely a resource hog, which is to be expected I suppose. I hope they do a hell of a lot of optimization though as it certainly needs to be WAYYY more efficient.

- Program compatibility is good for the most part for applications. My antivirus program, "Panda", doesn't work with it though so I had to use the one they suggested. Games older than say 5 or 6 years old have serious issues even with the compatibility boxes "checked".
Can't really speak for modern games because the thing is a resource hog and my system (while compatible with Vista specs) ain't what it used to be.

- Default desktop has "large icons" which are annoying to select a bunch of clumped together if they're surrounded by other icons. I'm sure this can be changed, but annoying none-the-less. Personal pet peeve, nothing more.

- The desktop properties is now "Personalization" which, again, mainstreams everything, but is also annoying because you have to dig deeper or go into an entirely different control panel to make changes. A change for the better for most users.

- It looks nice and somewhat copies the Mac OS look, but instead of chrome you have tinted glass.

- System had problems playing a DVD under the new Windows Media Player in Vista. Tried the beta in XP and it worked fine. Lots of pausing every minute or 45 seconds for a few seconds or so. Really annoying.

- Preview pop-ups are nice when your mouse pointer hovers over a tab, seems to have stream-lined and made pathing through the start menu less round about and the same with logging off/shutting down/sleeping etc. Can't get to the task manager as easily now which is annoying considering that something will inevitably go FUBAR during any given session early on in Vista's life cycle. Default for administrators is *double checking* every sort of deletion you want to do unless you click a check box. Really annoying for mass deletions or whatever. I had to sneak into the User Accounts menu and disable that crap. Then it had the audacity to tell me that my security might be compromised due to that. Yeah, whatever.

- Screensavers are nice and so are the default desktop backgrounds. I really liked the Aurora Borealis screensaver even if it wasn't terribly "effects laden".

- Is Windows Media Center part of Vista now or just this beta? Nice feature anyway, to turn your computer into a media center at will in your living room.

Basically, it feels like a small step up really. It looks nicer, somewhat more streamlined in many areas, but nothing revolutionary (as was expected). I now know I can hold off for a while.

Edited for clarity/spelling error...

This comment was edited on Jun 30, 20:13.

Just saw Supes Returns today. It was ok. It felt like a very safe rehash of the first movie though which is really disappointing. You can almost feel that it would be great...had they actually covered new ground.

As for "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" Batman, you'll love it. Its a great movie. Val Kilmer and Robert Downy Jr. are fantastic in it. Some great lines. As I said before, I wasn't terribly impressed with Night Watch, but that was just me.

It was an okay film in my opinion. I get the distinct feeling that the books, upon which it is based, are much better (as is often the case). I felt like we didn't get to know any of the characters at all in the movie and it was highly confusing and this is probably due to cramming too many characters and events into a 2 hour movie rather than trying to capture a smaller subsection of the book series. The special effects however were fantastic, particularly for a movie that was budgeted at around 5 million dollars total. I'd like to see it again, but I didn't find the acting particularly noteworthy or the action that fantastic.

NiN, buddy, here ya go: http://trailers.gametrailers.com/gt_vault/t_mechassault_pw.wmv

Great matches yesterday for the World Cup: Czech Republic vs. Ghana and Italy vs. USA.

I think this pretty much sums up my feelings on the World Cup from someone I respect (although is too much of a curmudgeon for his own good sometimes): http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=7182963&publicUserId=5380367
This comment was edited on Jun 18, 15:44.