DirectX 11 - the one sure thing you'll want as soon as Windows Seven ships to shelves a few years from now. Revealed back in Gamefest 2008, DirectX 11 turned heads with its venture into multithreaded computing territory and support for using shader processors as additional processing power. Today, however, Microsoft's Kevin Gee detailed what the software engineers at Redmond had planned for the API, and we've compiled a summary at the full story.

AMD isn't done serving the little market they managed to carve out of an idea brought about by Epic Games' Mark Rein. While folks new to the scene are probably still getting down and dirty with their AMD 780-based boards, the Germany-based company decided it was time to hike the bar a bit higher with the 790GX. Details come at you at the full story.

In a recently published interview by Worth Playing, Free Radical Design has pegged their upcoming next-gen shooter HAZE (still for the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3) as a worthy product to their impressive reputation as innovators in the first-person shooter genre.

 

They have used their prior experience in first-person shooters to deliver an action-packed game like never before. But this time around, they will also be taking the player through an emotional ride, tapping deep into the recesses of personal beliefs, convictions and the ethics of war. HAZE will sport a far deeper story, with emotional ties. Derek Littlewood, team leader of the project, explained:

One of our chief priorities has been to deliver a genuinely moving and emotional experience – but never at the expense of the gameplay. The narrative is packed with rounded characters, each suffering or succeeding in their own human journey.

Perspectives change, and players will get introduced to view-skewing plot twists and turns as HAZE unfolds. Free Radical doesn't want to reveal anything more than they should, although we already know about the Nectar flukes. They hope to succeed in merging a certain level of quality writing that they believe "should exist in the next generation of games." Littlewood expounded:

We want to redefine the intensity and variety of emotions a player can experience in an action FPS. We want HAZE to become the definitive next-gen shooter and maintain Free Radical's reputation for developing some of the best games in the world.

But how will the gameplay turn out? Free Radical designed HAZE so that everything seamlessly unfolds to the next, with no need for loading screens and no mission select screens. Continuity was a goal they sought to achieve, which in turn accomplished their hopes to create a realistic, immersive game world.

Aside from four player cooperative modes through the campaign, Free Radical has pointed out that each version has been designed to take advantage of parallel-processing for squeezing out more power. Although all platforms are capable of this feat and they've catered fairly to all platforms, Sony's PlayStation 3 was probably one of their favorites. Steve Ellis, director of Free Radical, said:

Working on PS3 has allowed us to create vastly superior environments that verge on photo-realism – full-screen effects, High Dynamic Range (HDR) and obscenely complex shaders. It's more challenging than ever before, but the power is greater than anything else that’s out there.

Croteam, developers of the Serious Sam series, has given word that they have teamed up with Gamecock Media Group for their next project. Gamecock will be publishing the next Croteam game which is being developed on the Serious Engine 3.

Croteam's CEO Roman Ribaric spoke on their choice of publisher and why they decided to go with Gamecock.

The Gamecock team includes some of the best people we've worked with in our 14 years of game development.We had a great time and learned a lot when we worked together to produce the first Serious Sam and we are confident that we will achieve similar success this time around.

The company's next venture looks really good based on their background and the engine that they'll be using for the game. The Serious Engine 3 is the proprietary "game creation system" of Croteam and was billed to be designed for next-generation consoles and state-of-the art PC hardware.

The system is said to be able to take advantage of multi-core HDR-rendering graphics systems complete with full per-pixel lighting, shadowing, and shadowbuffers. It also has a custom GPU-accelerated baker for GI lightmaps, multi-threaded physics solver for multicore CPUs, and even built-in support for action-game models.

CEO and Head of Marketing for Gamecock Media Group Mike Wilson commented about the Serious Engine 3 and Croteam's prospective future in the gaming industry saying that "now, with its next-gen engine pushing the latest gaming hardware to the limits of its potential, Croteam is producing a game that will confirm its position among the world's game development elite".

This new game is slated to be released this 2009 on the PC and next-gen consoles. This may be something to look out for, considering the lovely screenshot demos they've produced with the said engine. Be sure to check back for more details on this game.

  

For those of you who always wanted to be in the military to legally shoot people but never had the desire to go to boot camp, this is your chance to get as close to the real thing as it gets.

ArmA: Combat Operations features dazzling battlefronts which takes players across the land, sea and skies for missions. Graphics are looking sweet, as they should be. The system requirements are pretty steep, so that means there ain't no chance your granny's PC will be running it on its best day.

The game features as described by Atari are as follows:

• Story driven single player campaign: Write your own campaign storyline by choosing the right mission order when playing the 20+ missions. Play it differently next time and find new ways to victory!
• Large scale multiplayer: Use ArmA Combat Operations’ strong multiplayer mode and play battles where tanks supported by infantry and helicopters take control of an enemy city. The engine takes up 50+ living opponents in a role of both friendly and enemy forces.
• More than 30 weapons: Every weapon has unique firing characteristics with the new and improved recoil system.
• Vast environment to explore: Explore Sahrani, an area over 400 square kilometers in size full of flora and fauna.
• More than 30 modern vehicles: All vehicles in the game can be controlled - tanks, armored vehicles, helicopters, airplanes, civilian cars or even boats.
• Multiple gunners: Utilize the multiple gunner positions on tanks and helicopters to rain death on your enemies both in multiplayer missions and single player campaign.

    

• HDR Lighting effects: Ambushing an enemy with the sun in your eyes leaves you at the disadvantage. Think smart, fight better!
• Real constellations and tides: ArmA's great depth even includes such features as fully simulated star maps, lunar cycles and tides. Watch where you park your vehicle, soldier!
• Built-in mission editor: Create you own scenarios using the easy-to-use mission wizard, advanced built-in mission editor, scripting language or BI tools available online and share your creation with the game.

The game has already been shipped by Atari, so lace up the combat shoes and get ready to fire at will, ladies. There ain't no telling if we're coming back alive from this one.

In a recent IGN interview with the people behind the upcoming Cyanide-developed RPG for PC, Loki, they were able to squeeze info regarding the abilities, combat, enemies, items, quests, and multiplayer (among many others) options in the game. The interviewees are Game Designer Yannick Fleurit, Lead Artist Thomas Veauclin and Sound Designer Vincent Percevault. Read on for the gist of the inside info they offer. And in the interest of saving time (and bandwidth), here's how we're gonna do this:

• Players will be able to choose among four avatars: Norse warrior, Greek fighter, Egyptian sorcerer and Aztec shaman. Each has a different fighting style and method, depending on their specific strengths and abilities.
• Character development: The ability system in Loki is based on the Faith of the hero, and the culture-specific gods that the hero worships.
• Combat and weapons: Fleurit says that combat is THE core of Loki, and the combat system was designed such that attacks can be executed just by clicking on the targeted monster. There are 15 types of weapons, four of which are specific to each hero. There are three types of combat abilities: special attacks, spells, and talents.
• Multiplayer modes: The Co-op mode lets you play with up to five of your friends while the second mode can be aptly called the Arena, wherein you'll be able to fight duels in a ladder-type competition.
• Visual technologies employed:
• normal mapping
• full dynamic shadows (hardware shadowmap)
• Irradience Environment Light
• Pixel BRDF (Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function)
• tone mapping (HDR)
• shader model 3.0

Want more? Click on the read link to check out the full interview coverage.

Atari has just announced that they will take on the N.A. publishing duties for the upcoming tactical military FPS for the PC, ArmA: Armed Assault. And to celebrate this newly inked deal, they've also released a whole buncha screens for FPS-hungry gamers to feast their eyes on.

Now just in case this is your first time out of your parents' basement and have never heard of the game, here are some of the features you can look forward to:

• more than 20 mission campaigns
• Large scale multiplayer - they put the multi in multiplayer, with more than 100 opponents in both friendly and enemy forces, manage your infantry and take control of enemy cities
• More than 30 weapons - a new and improved recoil system gives unique firing characteristics to every weapon
• More than 30 modern vehicles that are all manipulable
• Multiple gunners
• HDR Lighting effects and fully simulated star maps, lunar cycles, and whatnot
• mission editor allows you to create your own scenarios and battlefields

The game is slated for release May this year, so while we wait for that seemingly faraway day to come, feast your eyes on the screens we have for you right behind the "full article" link, soldier!

Yesterday wasn't a great day for multi-platformers, or at least for Shadowrun. It was reported that the game's beta testing was delayed because of the unexpected Xbox Live downtime the other day. Anyway, as they say, past is past and today is a new today. And as for the other multiplatform game Two Worlds (X360, PC), the sunshine is turning out to be just fine.

We can actually point out a number of reasons why Two Worlds is doing perfectly okay. In fact, it will take us a good long time before we finished with that kind of stuff. But for you, just for you, we made a summary of the game's different exciting features. All the game's goodness packed into just one article, isn't that great? Also, the accompanying ten new screenshots will surely brighten up your day as well.

Two Worlds was developed by SouthPeak Interactive and in collaboration with Topware Interactive. It will be available in retail stores on March 7, 2007.

Features:

• Offering a freedom of choice unseen in other Role Playing Games. The world literally comes to life as it immediately reacts to the player's actions and changes accordingly -offering new and exciting challenges.
• Strong, non-linear storyline. Players can shape their own story by choosing the path of conducting the main conflict and resolving meaningful side-quests.
• Spectacular and dynamically choreographed fights. The combat system combines intuitive steering, tactical challenges and movie-like visual experiences.

The rest of the features and the screens after the jump!