Tech Olive

It’s no surprise that the first day of Call of Duty: Black Ops brought in a lot of gamers — 77,609 at one time in fact, according to Steam’s statistics. Of course, this wouldn’t be a story without mentioning the expected issues that gamers are currently experiencing. Some are reporting lag problems and it seems that it has to do with the CPU. Gamers that are having this issue are noticing their CPU load is running close to 100%. Basically what’s happening is that the game freezes up every 30 seconds or so and stays frozen for a few seconds. To see exactly what I mean, jump on after the break for a video.

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Bigfoot Networks, makers of the fantastic Killer 2100 NIC, are showing PC gamers some love this week with a Black Ops giveaway.

“To enter to win, users need simply join the Bigfoot Networks Steam Group (http://steamcommunity.com/groups/bigfootnetworks) and fill out the profile information as normal, changing the headline to “Play More, Win More, Fragmore”.”

The lucky winner, chosen this Friday, November 12th, will be given a free copy of Black Ops (or any other game of his/her choice) from the Steam store.

While Call of Duty: Black Ops might be getting all the attention today, Nvidia has released their new flagship GPU, the GeForce GTX 580 (purposely on the same day as Black Ops). A couple days ago, Nvidia spoke about some of the details of the card and even demoed what the card is capable of. Today, the rest of the details are let loose. This new card sports a 772MHz clock speed, 1.5GB of 384-bit GDDR5 memory clocked at an effective 4GHz, as well as 512 processor cores. The card is now available for purchase at select retailers if you happen to have at least $500 laying around. There’s no reason not to Tri-SLI this puppy.

[Press Release]

Taking advantage of Amazon’s $5 off, $0.99 release-date shipping, and an exclusive limited edition Laser Cel, I pre-ordered my Call of Duty: Black Ops and it arrived today. After tearing open the packaging, I got a glimpse at the exclusive Laser Cel as pictured above. Join me after the break for some hands-on and size-reference images of the exclusive Laser Cel.

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It’s been almost a week since the Kinect for Xbox 360 from Microsoft came out, and already we’re seeing the results of clever hands at work on this amazing device. A member of the NUI Group managed to create an open-source driver for the Kinect that controls the NUI Motor and be able to display the real-time accelerometer data on his Windows 7 machine. Obviously this isn’t much. It’s not like you’ll be able to game with it on your PC, but it does show that it can work on a PC.

It seems like he’s not going to let us all in on his secret (figures), but he does plan to use the hack in his company’s visual software CL Studio Live. There’s a couple of videos after the break, so be sure to check those out to see the hacking evidence caught on tape.

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We already know that Amazon pre-orderers of Call of Duty: Black Ops have already gotten word that their copy is on the way, and today Steam has announced that they will unlock the game at 10 AM Eastern Time tomorrow. In the meantime, gamers who pre-ordered the game on Steam may now pre-load Black Ops, that way they’re ready when the clock strikes ten!

UPDATE: We’ve gotten word from our good friends at TDK that Black Ops has been unlocked on Steam for the past three hours in Europe (it’s 8:23PM ET at the time of this update). Any other Europeans here already playing the game?

[Steam Page]

The Bargain Bin is a weekly feature that helps out gamers in the tough economy. How does it help? Once a week, it offers a great and cheap game ($10 or less) to keep you going until your next paycheck.

For the lovers of open-world games and zombie-killing experiences, The Bargain Bin will please your needs without hurting you wallet. If you jump on this deal quick, you’ll save an extra %10!

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If you ended up pre-ordering Call of Duty: Black Ops on Amazon and bought the $0.99 Release Date Delivery, you’ll be pleased to know that your copy of the game is on its way to your house this very instant. Hopefully Amazon fulfills their end of the bargain by actually delivering the game on time. Some have complained in the past that they didn’t get their copy of Rock Band 3 until the next day. Fingers crossed!

While gameplay experiences like „Dinner Date” will always struggle to appeal to the average gaming masses, we at Tech Olive just can’t get enough of all the risk-taking experimentation and the ingenuity that comes from indie game developers, and „Dinner Date” is no exception. We were fortunate enough to get a near-complete build of the game, so let’s quickly dive right in!

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The past week’s best news and featured content you might have missed, as well as a preview of the week ahead…

Retro Review: SkiFree
- This month’s Retro Review touches on a game that just about everyone has played or at least seen. SkiFree was created in 1991 by a programmer at Microsoft, the game has seen several updates over the years, and today we pay homage to a true classic. If you’ve never heard of this game, then go drown yourself prepare yourself for one of the biggest classics since Super Mario Bros.

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