FiringSquad: What can you tell us about the graphical looks and features of Star Trek: Legacy?
Dr. Ian Lane Davis: We’re really excited about the look and feel of Legacy – we’re breaking new ground: bringing dynamic 3D battlefields to life; immersing players in a backdrop of beautifully rendered space environments, realized nebulas, wormholes, planets, and stars. The look is awesome! We’re adding in the kind of detail that really makes the gameplay come to life: detailed weapon effects and damage modeling (weapons searing with energy and charged shields that surge with every hit, ships with full damage modeling that break apart, strewing debris and sparks). I’m looking forward to players’ reactions when they get their first look at this.
FiringSquad: What will the multiplayer modes be like?
Dr. Ian Lane Davis: Legacy’s single-player will focus solely on the Federation, with multiplayer allowing you to command the Romulan, Klingon, and Borg war machines as well. Full details on the races aren’t being released just yet, but rest assured these fleets will be comprehensive, allowing you to really assess the strengths and weaknesses of each race – and develop new tactics accordingly. You may also see races in eras you might not have seen a lot of them in before! We’re still finalizing player numbers and modes, more info on that later.
Legacy’s multiplayer experience is all about massively cool space battle at its best. It’s focused on real-time Starfleet combat (from small-scale engagements to all-out war with dozens of warships fighting simultaneous battles across vast sections of space). Players can engage in a quick single system battle, or fight across multiple space systems and upgrade the fleet between each battle.
FiringSquad: Will there be any mod tools released for Star Trek: Legacy?
Dr. Ian Lane Davis: Of course we’d love to support our community, as they’ve been so supportive of us for so long. Final details here will be up to our publishing friends at Bethesda.
FiringSquad: Will there be a playable demo of the game released before the game ships?
Dr. Ian Lane Davis: Again, this one is up to our friends at Bethesda – nothing announced yet.
FiringSquad: After the game is released are there any plans to release additional content or perhaps an expansion pack?
Dr. Ian Lane Davis: No word on additional content yet – it is certainly a possibility, owing to the fact that the Xbox Live service is great at supporting additional content updates and gameplay expansion downloads.
FiringSquad: Finally is there anything else you wish to say about Star Trek: Legacy?
Dr. Ian Lane Davis: Yeah, the team’s been pushing hard to bring this one to life for fans - we’re doing our best to make this one a blast. We’ll keep pushing, as they say: “Our course, second star to the right - and straight on ‘til morning.”
I’d also like to thank you for your time John, and for allowing us to check in with your readers. Always a pleasure.
Phenom II Gets A New Revision: 125W AMD Phenom II X4 965 Performance Preview
Promising lower power consumption, lower temps, and most importantly for enthusiasts, more OC'ing, AMD is back with a new CPU revision for the Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition, which now boasts a 125W TDP. Is AMD able to deliver on their promises though? Find out in today's article!
Shattered Horizon Review
FutureMark, well known for their popular 3DMark benchmarks, is venturing into new territory with Shattered Horizon. This multiplayer shooter is perhaps best known for its system requirements -- the game supports DX10 only -- but there's more underneath the surface of this game than fancy visuals. Is it worth its $20 price tag though? Read Vandy's take inside!
Borderlands PC Review
Is it an RPG or is it an FPS? Borderlands blends the best elements of both in one entertaining package. Vandy has spent the past week playing the PC version of the game and came away rather impressed. Read his full thoughts on the game in today's review!
AMD Athlon II X3 435/Athlon II X2 240e Performance Preview
Today AMD is introducing 8 new Athlon II CPUs intended to service different segments of the budget CPU market. For HTPC users, new 45W dual, triple, and quad core offerings should deliver good performance along with low power, while performance junkies on a budget will want to look at AMD's new Athlon II X3 CPUs. See how the new chips stack up in terms of performance and OC'ing in this article!
EVGA P55 FTW Review
Looking for a good P55 motherboard to OC your CPU beyond 4GHz? If so, you may want to check out EVGA's P55 FTW. With its extra ATX12V connector, this motherboard can send up to 600W of juice to the CPU, and it's got more voltage settings in BIOS than 95% of the general public needs. But that's just barely scratching the surface of what this board can do. Check out today's review for the full details!
ATI Radeon HD 5770/5750 Performance Preview
With prices ranging from $109-$159, ATI's Radeon 5700 series of cards bring DX11 gaming to mainstream price points and usher in new levels of energy efficiency. But are they powerful enough to dethrone ATI's Radeon 4800 series cards? Yes and no. Read today's article for more info!
Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising Review
While it's not the true sequel to Operation Flashpoint, Dragon Rising is billed as a modern tactical sim just like its predecessor. Does it live up to these claims? Read Vandy's take in today's review!
Batman: Arkham Asylum PhysX Features and Performance
One eye candy feature PC users can enjoy over the console edition of Batman: AA is PhysX. Rocksteady's PhysX implementation is more than just tearing cloth and added objects too, although that's of course in there. Vandy goes over the features and performance of PhysX in Batman: AA in this article!
ATI Radeon 5850 Performance Preview
Not everyone's got $400 to spend on a shiny new Radeon 5870 card, which is why it can be argued that ATI's Radeon 5850 is the more relevant GPU for a lot of gamers and hardware enthusiasts. Based on the same DX11 RV870 architecture as the 5870, the 5850 delivers next-generation performance in a smaller, more efficient package, and most importantly it's priced for less than $300. ATI pitches it as their answer to the GeForce GTX 285...See how it compares in this article!
Overclocking the Radeon HD 5870
We weren't satisfied with the 900MHz core/1300MHz memory speeds we hit last week with our Radeon 5870 boards. We wanted to see how far ATI's latest flagship GPU could be pushed, and how well it could perform at those speeds. We also wanted to see which component delivered better performance results: OC'ing the memory, or OC'ing the GPU?
Fortunately thanks to AMD's GPU Clock Tool, we now have unlimited speeds on tap for OC'ing. Is 1GHz within reach? Find out in today's article!