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Deus Ex: Human Revolution PC update cuts down loading times
Fact: nobody wants to sit through long loading times. Today's PC patch for Deus Ex: Human Revolution should cut down the time. According to the patch notes on Steam, some machines have seen load times decreased by over 50%. On top of the load times, a start-up crash affecting certain AMD/ATI hardware configurations has been addressed. Mouse sensitivity has also been tweaked, which should hopefully alleviate that problem you had where you would keep running up to dudes and punching them in the face, over and over again. Oh, wait, that's how you're playing the game? Well, carry on then.
Wings Over Atreia: A whole new world, sorta
Mergers have come and gone in Aion; the fabric of existence was ripped asunder, then rewoven. In North America, five new worlds now sit where once there were fourteen, and eight replace eighteen in Europe. Using the mergers as a springboard for their apocalyptic rants, naysayers cried out that the end of Aion was nigh, fervently waving their assertions and jeering at current players. NCsoft, on the other hand, quietly offered promises of a better world, catering to the desires of players for more conflict. To my knowledge, there were no Daevas flinging themselves from the spires of Pandaemonium or Sanctum, nor did any economy crumble and collapse. Fatalities were nil -- well, not counting any local qooqoo sacrifices made in the name of server harmony and stability. So, here we are now at "doomsday plus five." How did things fare? Let's glide past the cut and take a look at the aftermath.
Halo 3 available on Games on Demand, load times may be affected [update]
Halo 3 was recently added to Xbox 360's Games on Demand service, but Microsoft has not confirmed that the longer-than-normal load times present on a hard drive installation were fixed for the digital release. Developer Bungie had previously been quite clear that Halo 3's design functioned best when not installed on the Xbox 360's HDD. Bungie Community Director Brian Jarrard told Kotaku yesterday that to the developer's knowledge there was no additional work "done on the code to optimize the game for HDD installation." We've patiently been awaiting a response from Microsoft on this issue and will update as soon as we receive one. In the meantime, we'd steer those Halo 3 latecomers toward a brick-and-mortar retailer. Update: Microsoft's official response can be found after the break.
Media Player boosts WoW performance
Many players have experienced faster WoW loading times with Windows Media Player (WMP) running in the background. Some players are also reporting lower latency and higher frames per second.This tip surfaced in the Europe forums late November and was picked up by the US forums two weeks ago. Many players are reporting shortened loading times, some by more than 50%.I did a quick test and found that by running WMP in the background, minimized and not playing anything, the login screen popped up about 20 seconds quicker than usual. The world loading time (time between clicking Enter World button and character appearing on screen) was also faster by about 15 seconds. However I did not see any significant improvements in latency or framerate. To eliminate performance boosts due to caching or preloading, I rebooted my machine between each set of timings.Some players have also suggested adding:SET timingMethod "1" or SET timingMethod "2"to the config.wtf file to achieve the same effect without running WMP. For me, this shortened the time for the login screen to appear by 20 seconds as well, but only shortened world loading time by 5 seconds. Combining WMP and the config.wtf tweak resulted in the same timings with just running WMP alone.There's been no official Blizzard response to this yet, although a likely explanation is that WMP modifies how your computer handles background applications. With WMP open, all available CPU resources apparently become allocated to WoW, leading to better performance.Does this quirk work for you? Do you see any improvements in framerate and latency?
All your (German) questions answered
A reader dropped us an interesting tip today -- German online gaming hub Nintendo-LAN.de took reader questions to Leipzig as part of a feature. Google mangles the translation ('hi' becomes 'rear ones' -- how's that for a neat trick?), but as James tipped us off, one of the questioners posted a partial translation to the IGN boards. It's not all hot news, as it seems the questions were e-mailed to the online mag rather before the Games Convention (as one fan asks about using the GCN controller for Twilight Princess), but some of it is interesting. Red Steel is reported to have no load times and movements with the Wiimote are no longer predetermined, but are converted directly from player input. Sounds like we better brush up on our swordplay. What else is there? Well, Nintendo's not confirming a Mario Kart for the Wii yet, but if there is one (wink, wink), it's very likely going to feature full online play. [Thanks, James B.!]
