Tech Olive

As promised yesterday, the latest patches for both Call of Duty: Black Ops singleplayer and multiplayer have released for PC gamers. Most of you have already received them if you logged onto Steam at all today, but for those wondering exactly what the patches did, the fixes are as follows:

Call of Duty: Black Ops – Singleplayer

• CPU performance improvements
• Zombie matchmaking improvements
• Fix for locked ADS after pressing shift-TAB to bring up Steam overlay
• Fix for ADS while holding shift as a sniper

Call of Duty: Black Ops – Multiplayer

• CPU performance improvements
• Server browser bug fixes and tweaks to populate faster and do full refresh less often
• Fixed crash when viewing leaderboards if player has more than 99 friends
• Fix for locked ADS after pressing shift-TAB to bring up Steam overlay
• Fix for ADS while holding shift as a sniper

[ SP Press Release, MP Press Release]

The sniper-intensive FPS from City Interactive, Sniper: Ghost Warrior, is on sale this weekend on Steam for $14.99. That’s 50-percent off the retail price. If that’s still not enough to convince you, take a look at our full review of the game. Hopefully that will help lean you in a certain direction.

[Steam Page]

It doesn’t seem that long ago when PCI Express 2.0 was served up to the masses (around two years ago), but we’re already moving into version 3.0. There’s a lot of mumbo jumbo and numbers thrown around that most of us probably don’t care about, but something stunning was the data rate speed of the new spec, which can reach 8 GT/s (gigatransfers per second). This is twice that of PCI Express 2.0. We should also be seeing PCIe 3.0 products able to achieve a 1 GB/s bandwidth in a single direction on a x1 configuration and 32 GB/s on a x16 configuration.

Yes, please.

[Press Release]

As the PC community waits with baited breath for the next bug-squashing and performance-enhancing patch for Call of Duty: Black Ops, it seems Treyarch’s development is finally coming through with the following Twitter announcement:

“We are on track so far to release MP patch sometime tomorrow and SP patch the following day, pending good test results.” — PCdev

From Treyarch’s list of upcoming fixes and improvements, we can expect any of the following (or more) from these patches:

• GPU hitching on certain graphics cards.
• Incomplete server browser results.
• Improvements to Quickmatch joins (results with better ping and reduced lag).
• Zombies “The game session is no longer available” error.

After sitting comfortably with the “Fall 2010″ and the more recent “November 2010″ release dates, Telltale Games has finally given us an actual date to anticipate for the release of Poker Night at the Inventory: This Monday, November 22nd. Consider this your final chance to get in on the pre-order bonuses that are offered. This might also be a good time to practice your P-p-p-poker Face! (I’ll apologize in advance for that sad reference).

[Announcement]

Activision loves talking about the success of their popular games, and this is no exception. Call of Duty: Black Ops has made $650 million in revenue during its first five days of existence. Activision says that this exceeds Modern Warfare 2 by $100 million. Activision did not give specifics as to how many copies were sold on each platform, but we do know that the PC version has been the best-selling game on Steam since the game’s release and the multiplayer portion has been on top of Steam’s players stats since its launch.

[Press Release]

Sad news for all the Portal fans out there. Valve has announced that the sequel puzzle shooter won’t be hitting the market until April 20th of next year (April 22nd for Europeans). The game originally was slated for release later this year and then was delayed for February 2011. Now it looks like we’re going to be waiting a couple more months. No reason was given as to why the game was delayed again.

via [Shacknews]

3D. The third dimension.

Despite the technology’s heritage dating back to the 1950s, it seems this “revolutionary” technology has made a triumphant return to our entertainment lives thanks to none other than Mr. We-need-more-blue-people-on-the-Titanic himself, James Cameron. It’s up to you whether or not you’ll jump onto this creaky and gimmicky bandwagon, but today I offer you a technique to truly experience and appreciate 3D in its most original form. You don’t even need those nerdy glasses.

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Here to save us from the familiar, the standard, and the expected is „Dinner Date”. Promising a whole new and unique gameplay experience, just how well does this new indie project do the job? Does it exceed expectations or has the meal been spoiled?

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Good news for those wanting to get in on Hulu Plus, but don’t want to pay $10 a month for it. They’ve dropped the monthly cost of the service by two George Washingtons, resulting in only $7.99 monthly payments. How’s that sounding to you now? Yay or nay?

via [Engadget]