Age of Empires update smooths gameplay
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An update to Age of Empires from MacSoft smooths gameplay with improved networking support and other enhancements.
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Tycho:  Having played collectible card games since the original printing of Magic - taking my dishwasher's tips across the street to Dragon Tails to secure boosters for the coveted Arabian Nights - seeing Gabriel take up the pastime has warmed (but not thawed) my black heart.  It's always a portion of myself I've bridled in his presence, kept hidden, suppressed may be the word.  To have him take it up so freely makes me wonder which perversion of mine he'll take up next.    When he started talking about his "Firestarter" deck, whose dancing fires were stoked by a mysterious device known as "The Holon Engine," I began to worry.  The dangers of Netdecking are fairly substantial when it comes to friendly play, a corrosive force that turns friendly pick-up games into ostentatious displays of wealth on par with rap videos.  If you're playing in a competitive venue, building on prior art and making loads of precision purchases is probably your only recourse.  But if you're just playing at lunch, let me be clear:  you are consorting with devils.    I took time over the weekend to hit the level cap in Call of Duty 4, and then just to be sure that I understood what was going on I played for several more hours.  I'm not the most skilled player you will encounter, with a roughly equal number of kills and deaths, but I prefer to think of my work in an assassinative context - the removal of key players at key moments.  Please let me have this.  In the absence of the game's deeply integrated progression scheme, Infinity Ward would merely have created one of the best shooters available today.  It would have staunch proponents, and they would be right to praise it.  Is there a substance within cream that can rise to the top of itself?  This substance has been discovered.  As a distillation of the Infantry FPS, this is right down to it.  This is brutal, unrepentant, bathtub fucking hooch.  It is tight and smooth, it is lethal.  Unrelenting in its intensity, your first rounds - indeed, your first few levels - will be spent without the succor of CoD4's rich rewards for continued play.  But you'll see them on the killcam, every time you go down:  this one has increased health, of course that would help.  This one does more damage.  This one, after he's killed, pulls his sidearm and takes a few final shots.  This one's shots retain more of their damage after they pass through a wall.        You earn these for leveling up, with the experience you gain for every kill, for every round.  You also earn experience for Challenges, which are (collectively) "awesome things that you did."  I completed X-Ray challenges last night for killing people behind walls, which dished up bonus XP - this is displayed with exultant audio and video cues at the very moment of success.  Killing while crouched, killing while prone, taking down an enemy helicopter, this is all gravy.  There are challenges specific to your weapon, as well:  for kills and headshots with that firearm, you travel down an upgrade path unique to that weapon that reveals sights, camouflage patterns, and other tools to customize your equipment.    Watching videos of multiplayer play online, you'll get the impression that it looks better than it does.  It looks fantastic, don't get me wrong, but it's not completely photorealistic.  What it does have is an extremely reliable framerate and excellent level design, so that during the experience of play these fantastic visuals are transmuted into something sublime.  Here's what I mean:  if a friend is over, and they are watching you play, they'll be able to detect flaws here and there.  Level geometry isn't especially fanciful, and blown paper or leaves look a little strange.  But for the player, movement is just right, player models are just right, and the environments are right so that moment to moment everything gels.      As I said on Friday, to bring this thing into the house of Halo is pretty ballsy - but it'll carve out its proper due.  On the Playstation 3, what force could stand against it?  I have a high opinion of Haze, but I've never played it - that's based mostly on my gut.  Call of Duty 4 will fall hard on that system, like shrieking artillery.
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EA&#39;s latest RTS features combat on two levels; gamers can battle with elves, trolls, and beasts for $39.99. Electronic Arts today shipped its latest real-time strategy game, Armies of Exigo, to retail stores.
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FreeCol 0.6.1 has been released. FreeCol is an open version of the turn based strategy game Colonization.   Changes: - Clicking a colony name on the Turn Report will now display that Colony. - A panel for displaying the requirements of the colonies has now been added. - The bug causing the game to deadlock after displaying the emigration panel has been fixed. - Multiplayer games should now be stable after fixing two critical bugs. - Some other bugfixes as well.  Download FreeCol from here: https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=43225
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Adobe&#39;s update of Photoshop Elements adds several new features and enhancements that allow users to edit photos with a few mouse clicks.
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SAN FRANCISCO - After being written off by industry observers last year, America Online Inc.'s browser unit showed signs of life Tuesday as it released an update to its Netscape Web browser.
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Attention to details and solid advice make up for less-than-stellar graphics.
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Bungie's follow-up to its wildly successful shooter provides hours of fun, provided you're not too irritated by the ending or the long wait for a match on Xbox Live. By Lore SjÃ¶berg.
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I'm not so good with buttons, especially those that control video games. When I play, it's a full-body experience with a lot of arm movement as I try to move my little guy on the screen. The physical activity does nothing to influence the game, but it's good exercise and provides plenty of amusement to my brothers, significant others and anyone else watching.
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Far Colony is a game of exploration and space colonization being held with 23th century. The game is based on management, strategy and planning in the more or less long term, where the use of the military force is not an obligatory way.   This new release include contains all the updates from 2007-August-11 to 2007-August-19. It's mainly bugfixes, data structures updates, some text corrections and updates, update of the options panel and update of the Orbital Object Data Interface.   It's the last release without game modules and routines, all the next releases will have ones (it's the time !!) ;)
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The new dual-sensor approach helps improve live preview performance.
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New 'Places' feature added to alpha release set for next week.
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The long-delayed operating system wonât rock your world, but itâs a big improvement over the current Windows.
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New version allows users to categorize entries and make layout changes more easily.
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Playing high-action video games for a few hours each day can improve your vision, according to researchers in the U.S.
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With a maximum data throughput improvement of up to 33 percent between the CPU and system memory (compared with an 800 MHz system bus), the Extreme Edition&#39;s 1066 MHz bus can enable faster frame rates for both gaming and video editing.
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The latest massively multiplayer game is aiming to provide a softer, gentler experience for those intimidated by the original EverQuest. For the most part, it succeeds. Review by Daniel Terdiman.