Tech Olive

Despite having just announced F1 2010, Codemasters is also working on the next entry into the DiRT series. UK gaming magazine Edge got the scoop during an interview with Codemasters VP Gavin Cheshire. It seems Codemasters is looking to bring something completely new to the racing genre with the installment of DiRT 3:

“There’s an overwhelming arcing vision to all of our racing titles, and Grid is incredibly strong, but we’re lucky enough to be in a position where we’ve got racing games in different areas. Dirt was a complete reboot – we threw away what was going on and redid it completely – and then we rebooted Grid because it wasn’t top gun, and then we rebooted Dirt 2. I’m not saying we’re throwing all the codebase away, but we’re throwing the thoughts away and coming out with something fresh and new. Because if you don’t innovate, you’re dead.”

via [Big Download]

With the approaching release of Just Cause 2 and the anticipation of the upcoming Arkham Asylum sequel, Steam is offering an amazing deal of $22.09 for both games.

Never one to miss a chance to make fun of or otherwise beat Infinity Ward at their own game, DICE has announced that they will be releasing a Bad Company 2 VIP map pack on March 30th free to all gamers (on all platforms) that have entered their VIP Code. Follow the break for DICE’s description of the upcoming maps.

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An interesting BSOD graced the screen of a projector at GDC this week (see above). It seemed completely harmless until gamers looked closer. It seems GLaDOS was behind it all and was offering to fill the area with deadly neurotoxins. Upon closer inspection, the BSOD had even more information to offer. When a dedicated gamer over at the Penny Arcade forums got ahold of the image, he had the following light to shed on the mystery:

“The hex converted to decimal: 226 228 226 : 215 197 213 196 228 213 227 ( 201 ) + 211 197 197 197
If it’s ASCII it’s extended ASCII. Could it be EBCDIC (common mainframe encoding)?
Edit: It IS EBCDIC. It spells: S U S : P E N D … U N T ( I ) L … E E E (colon, dots for spacing, and parens added to roughly locate them in the source image.)
Hey, being QSECOFR on an AS/400 many years ago finally pays off!”

So, there you have it. All that work and excitement and we get a simple message: “Suspended until E3.” Perhaps we’ll actually get some real, non-cryptic details come mid June?

via [Steam Forums]

It seems that the stream of free Mass Effect 2 DLC has ended. Bioware announced that the next DLC release pack for the game will come to gamers at a cost. Yes, even us beloved PC gamers. The new DLC, titled “Kasumi’s Stolen Memory,” will release April 6th and bring with it a new Locust SMG, along with adding a new 30-minute mission, new party companion and some other additions. Unfortunately, Bioware is still in discussions on what the final price for the DLC will be. We’ll keep you posted.

via [Joystiq]

Razer has announced a new product…if you can call it that. The Razer Salmosa Pro-Gaming Edition is a very limited run (50 units total) of a shrunken-down Salmosa. Other than that, it’s exactly the same hardware, color and price; $39.99.

It’s a very confusing and underwhelming announcement considering the Salmosa isn’t a very popular mouse, so wouldn’t it make more sense to give the Diamondback or Lachesis a new, improved and/or limited edition release? At any rate, the new version of the Salmosa is only available to North American buyers while the limited supplies last.

[Announcement]

As expected, Codemasters announced this week that their next upcoming racing game is F1 2010, which (according to Codemasters) will be the first F1 game on the PC in 8 years. The game is planned for release this September on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. Read the full press release after the break.

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Instead of bloating this post with filler, I’ll just get right to the images. You’re welcome. Follow the break.

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In such economic turmoil, who will you turn to for the best cheap games? Well, Tech Olive’s Bargain Bin, of course. Every week, we’ll pick a nice game for under $10 that you should check out. This week, we’ve got a horror title: Penumbra Black Plague; the newest game in the Penumbra series for the paltry sum of $4.97 (with shipping, my total was about $8).

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Finally, we get to see if Nvidia’s new Fermi card is any match for ATI’s monster HD 5870. Tom Petersen, Director of Technical Marketing at Nvidia gives us a quick walkthrough of their benchmark for the GTX 480 and how the new card really excels in tessellation, but looking at the graph of the results themselves doesn’t really make us ooh and ah. Yes, the GTX 480 does perform a bit better than its competitor, but isn’t this thing supposed to blow it out of the water? It’s a brand new card going up against another card that’s a half-year old….By any means, you can catch the video after the break.

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