Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Borderlands 2 will have guns. Of all the things in the entire universe I’d be absolutely, un-hesitantly comfortable staking my life on, that’d rank only behind “Texas is warm” and “Borderlands 2 will have lands.” Gearbox, though, wants to set its more-than-87-bazillion guns apart from the rest of the industry’s comparatively tasteful collection of 63 trillion, so it’s attempting to infuse real personality into brands this time around. If you delve into the vault beyond the break, you won’t find some bizarro squid god, but you will come away with three very silly gun “commercials” and (bonus!) an impressive showcase of BL2′s PC-only PhysX features.

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OnLive and Gaikai are pretty silly names. I mean, OnLive is a made-up word that rolls off the tongue far better than it does the brain, and Gaikai actually refers to the ocean, which is sort of the opposite of the clouds. So when I saw “Nvidia” and “cloud gaming” in the same sentence, I was thrilled. What would a graphics hardware manufacturer with a history of impressively impenetrable names do when matched against this caliber of peer? “Grid,” as it turns out. Well, er, OK. Man, that’s not ridiculous at all. In consolation, it’s promising latency that’s “comparable, if not better, than gaming on a console at home.” I guess that’s something.

Alternative headline: Hawken Is Going To Be Playable First Over Gaikai.
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Do you care about anti-aliasing? Do you dream of snuggling up to its sort of crisp edges and mild performance hit? Or are jaggies an acceptable compromise in the name of RAW INCREDIBLE SPEEDY SPEED? It’s one of those things I find it increasingly hard to go without (though not as much as anisotropic filtering, missus) yet it’s always the first thing to go if a game’s not running so well on my ageing PC. Also, so many games don’t include a decent/any option for it in their settings, requiring me to have a fiddle in driver settings with variable results. Both NVIDIA and AMD are trying to change that, with newer anti-aliasing tech and the option to force it on globally in driver settings.
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Expect plenty more of these kinds of updates leading up to next week’s web-wide SOPA protests: it’s an enormously important issue for the future of the internet and everyone who uses it, so we’re giving it our all.

Also declaring themselves strongly against the online culture-trashing folly today are Minecraft-makers Mojang, who intend to make a right old song and dance about SOPA next week, NVIDIA, Trine chaps Frozenbyte, Torchlight devs Runic and retromancers Good Old Games. Positions, statements and assorted protests below.
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Take this with a pinch of salt, I think, but Techgage is reporting the findings of a recent Nvidia conference call in which the graphics company suggested that PC games revenue will pass that generated by consoles in 2014. THAT MEANS THE PC WILL BE BEST. That’s not format-war. That’s math. Or something.

The blame for this lies with the rapid growth in digital distribution, microtransactions, and the free-but-not sector (as I am now calling it). The report also features a PC performance vs consoles graph (above) which made me laugh with the blatantness of it. Yes, top end PC graphics actually are 900%+ more powerful than console hardware. Thanks, Nvidia.

(They don’t do nothing – I just wanted to make the gag).

NVIDIA’s current big deal is true 3D gaming – a funny pair of specs that blesses on-screen worlds with depth and pop-outery, just like movies from the 80s or late 00s. Which one of those two it is most akin to depends on the spectacle technology you use – old fashioned red/blue sillies or complicated and expensive stereoscopic shutter thingers. I’ve been having a poke at the former which – in theory – works with most every 3D game, so long as you have a recentish NVIDIA card.
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There’s been plenty of predicition lately that the age of supermegapixelshaderooed blockbuster games on PC might be drawing to a close, in favour of lower-spec, lower-profile inventiveness from the indie, MMO, browser-based and casual scenes. What there hasn’t been is much hard data that reflects this possible sea change. The news that current 3D card king NVIDIA recorded an eyewatering $30 million loss last year (that’s after a $797.6m profit in the preceding year) could have something to do with it.
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