A few of us from the Nexus staff made the trip out to see id Software's Doom 3 running live. The build on display was clearly a vertical slice rather than anything close to final, but the engine work is already the main story.
The lighting model is the part that is hard to describe to someone who has not seen it. Every light casts real-time shadows, and the UAC corridors we walked through felt unsettling because the darkness is doing the work, not scripted jump scares.
Blizzard sent out another round of closed beta invitations for World of Warcraft this week, and at least three of our forum regulars got the email. The beta is still under NDA, so do not expect screenshots from them.
If you signed up on the official site and have not heard anything, you are in good company. The beta thread in our Online and MMO forum is already past 40 replies.
Six months after the game missed its September 30 date, there is still no firm release date for Half-Life 2. We round up the latest statements from Valve and Vivendi and weigh in on why nobody should pencil in a date just yet.
Valve has said very little since the source code leak last October. Vivendi's last financial report still lists the game for this year, which is about all anyone has on the record.
Our regular weekend LAN crew burned through a stack of CD-Rs installing patches and somehow still found time for a Counter-Strike tournament. 31 people showed up, which is a new record for the church basement.
The 24 port switch gave out at about 2am on Saturday, so we ran the rest of the night on two smaller hubs and a lot of patience. FragMaster99 took the CS tournament again, and NoScope came in a close second.
Two big PC releases landed today. Crytek's Far Cry is out from Ubisoft, and Valve finally shipped Counter-Strike: Condition Zero after more than two years and three different developers.
Far Cry is the one to watch if you just bought a new video card. The jungle levels look incredible and the draw distance is something else. Condition Zero comes with the Deleted Scenes single player campaign and an updated multiplayer game with bots.
