NVM05.cover_nv 29/10/2004 9:46 AM Page 1 Issue 05 THE WAY It’s Meant To Be Played Ultimate PC gaming with GeForce © MMIV NLP, Inc. TM Tolkien Ent. Lic. to NLP, Inc. Ent. Lic. to NLP, Inc. TM Tolkien © MMIV NLP, One Game To Rule Them All NVIDIA Brings The Battle For Middle-earth To Life NVM05.cover_nv_2_3 29/10/2004 10:33 AM Page 4 The way it’s meant to be played 04 10 11 12 Welcome Welcome to issue five of The Way 13 18 It’s Meant To Be Played magazine. This edition has a record number of games featured – over 30 in total – which is testament to the enduring success of the “NVIDIA®: The Way It’s Meant To Be Played™” (TWIMTBP) programme. This 20 22 campaign is designed to benefit both developers and publishers, as well as games players. By giving developers access to NVIDIA’s hardware, and with NVIDIA’s developer technology engineers on hand throughout the entire coding process, programmers can get the very best graphics and effects into their latest games. Then, our intensive testing for Contents compatibility, stability and reliability NVIDIA news 16 GTR Fia GT Racing means that the consumer can buy a 3 Gizmondo, GeForce 6200, SLI Pitfall 2 PC game with the TWIMTBP logo on Full Spectrum Warrior, the box, confident that the game will TWIMTBP games 17 Codename: Panzers deliver the ultimate ‘install-and-play’ 4 The Lord Of The Rings: Evil Genius experience – so long as you have The Battle For Middle-earth Nexus: The Jupiter Incident your NVIDIA GeForce graphics- 6 Colin McRae Rally 2005 18 FlatOut based card installed, of course. Vivisector: Beast Inside Call Of Duty: United Offensive New games with TWIMTBP 7 The Saga Of Ryzom 19 Joint Ops: Escalation accreditation are coming out all the Vampire: The Masquerade Rome: Total War time – this magazine endeavours to Bloodlines 20 Final Fantasy XI keep track of the major new 10 Painkiller: Battle Out Of Hell 21 Lineage II releases. In this issue, as well as a Dungeon Lords World Of Warcraft bumper crop of games, we’ve also 11 S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow included our first news page, with all Of Chernobyl TWIMTBP features the latest from NVIDIA, and a feature 12 Medal Of Honor Pacific Assault 8 Ubisoft on NVIDIA’s amazing SLI technology Chronicles Of Riddick 14 LucasArts – upgrade your PC at a stroke by 13 Fire Captain: Bay Area Inferno 22 NVIDIA SLI fitting a second graphics card… Sacred Plus I hope you enjoy the magazine, Need For Speed Underground 2 and if there’s anything you think should be incorporated into our pages, please do let me know. Produced by Cover picture © MMIV New Line Productions, Inc. All Rights Darryl Still Reserved. The Lord of the Rings and the names of the characters, Future Plus 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, BA1 2BW items, events and places therein are trademarks of The Saul Zaentz Head of developer relations, Company d/b/a Tolkien Enterprises under license to New Line Printed by Productions, Inc. Game Code and Certain Audio Visual Elements © EMEA 2004 Electronic Arts Inc. All Rights Reserved. Electronic Arts, EA, EA Precision Colour Print, Telford GAMES and the EA GAMES logo are trademarks or registered trade- NVIDIA The Future Network plc is a public company. marks of Electronic Arts Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. Printed in the UK © Future Publishing 2004 [email protected] All images and materials are property of their respective owners. All Rights Reserved. NVIDIA® SLI™ pictures © NVIDIA Corporation ➔ 2 NVM05.cover_nv_2_3 29/10/2004 10:33 AM Page 5 NVIDIA news NVIDIA goes portable with Gizmondo A new handheld gaming ■ Due for launch later this year, the DOUBLE THE Gizmondo mobile gaming device, harnesses the power of the NVIDIA POWER WITH device delivering a true GoForce 3D 4500. With a full 3D NVIDIA SLI geometry processor, 64-bit 2D graphics NVIDIA experience engine, multi-texture support, fully TECHNOLOGY programmable shaders, and battery NVIDIA has long been life-preserving nPower technology, a favourite for PC users ortable games systems GPRS the WMP enables the Gizmondo to looking to improve P deliver a new, more immersive kind have traditionally been network of portable gaming. their graphical somewhat primitive and link for performance, but now there’s something unable to deliver graphical music and even better than an complexity beyond that of the video downloads, this is a NVIDIA GPU… two home consoles of a decade true next-gen gaming system. accessory compatibility, NVIDIA GPUs! Through NVIDIA SLI™, it’s now ago. But that’s set to change What’s more, the inclusion of multimedia messaging, possible to run two with the arrival of Gizmondo the GoForce 3D 4500, with Bluetooth, and a GPS chip GeForce 6 cards of the which has been designed to its 1280KB of dedicated 128- for location-based services same spec alongside one another, to deliver an arcade-quality bit wide SRAM memory, and a completely new produce a double gaming experience – a feat enables the Gizmondo to direction in gaming. whammy of processing made possible through the deliver standard-setting Already the winner of the power. We take a closer look at this use of the NVIDIA® visuals through the use of Electronics Industry Design landmark new GeForce™ 3D 4500, the hardware accelerated 3D. Awards, the mighty technology on page 22. world’s first wireless media Yet the Gizmondo is Gizmondo is due for launch processor (WMP). much more than a games before the end of 2004, NFORCE 4 Equipped with a 2.8 inch console. It’s a full-blown priced at £229. You can find INCREASES colour screen, a Samsung mobile device. It also features out much more about this PERFORMANCE ARM9 400Mhz processor, an MP3 player, MPEG-4 multi-faceted device by AND SECURITY Windows CE.net operating support, digital still camera pointing your browser at Introducing NVIDIA® nForce™ 4, the latest system, and a contract-free functionality, SD card www.gizmondo.com. range of dedicated media and communications processors for the PC. A low latency, single GeForce 6200 brings power to the masses chip motherboard, the edicated to delivering for Microsoft® Direct X® 9.0 nForce4 MCP brings D graphical bang per buck, Shader Model 3.0, along with the latest PCI Express NVIDIA introduces the NVIDIA’s own UltraShadow™ II bus technology to GeForce™ 6200. In a nutshell and antialiasing technologies. AMD platforms, also this takes the acclaimed feature It also features the first adding NVIDIA’s set of the GeForce 6800 Ultra programmable video ActiveArmor™, for GPU and puts it within the processing engine, for protection against grasp of the entry level user. incredible playback of high spyware and hackers. The result is a GPU with the definition video. And there’s nForce4 also offers best performance in its class, even support for PCI Express, support for the new and the ability to handle the with 4GBps of bus bandwidth. NVIDIA SLI multi-GPU advanced visual effects. You can find more details technology as well as With a four rendering pipe about this high performance, storage solutions, design, fast GDDR1 memory entry level solution at including the new SATA and a 128-bit interface, the www.nvidia.co.uk/ ■ 3Gb/s hard drives. For GeForce 6200 includes support The GeForce 6200 utilises the power of the GeForce 6800 Ultra page/geforce_6200.html. GPU, but places it firmly in the reach of the entry level user. more, head to www. nvidia. co.uk/ page/ nforce4_family.html. Visit NVIDIA online. UK: www.nvidia.co.uk US: www.nvidia.com 3 ➔ NVM05.cover_nv_4_5 28/10/2004 2:01 PM Page 4 The way it’s meant to be played The Lord Of The Rings The Battle For Middle-earth Publisher: Electronic Arts Developer: Electronic Arts Release: December Tolkien’s epic tale is faithfully reproduced on a massive scale aving already won massive critical H acclaim for its action titles based ■ The game utilises an upgraded version of the Sage ■ You can take part in and change the outcome of 3D game engine originally used in C&C: Generals. key battles in the stunningly ambitious Middle-Earth. on The Two Towers™ and The Return Of The King™, Electronic Arts now returns a completely new way. As executive overflowing with amazing visual effects, to Middle-earth™ in the most ambitious producer Mark Skaggs says: “What if the with the game capable of depicting Lord Of The Rings title yet. Siding with Ents show up at Helm’s Deep? What if each individual unit in fine detail. The either the powers of good or the dark Gandalf doesn’t die and he takes on the result is a glorious TWIMTBP key title. forces of evil, players can, for the first Balrog in Minas Tirith? All these things “NVIDIA has made great strides with time, take part in the large scale are possible, making this a truly “The way it’s meant to be played” in the campaigns at the heart of the story. unpredictable and exciting experience.” last year,” said Skaggs. “We’ve seen the Controlling legendary heroes, Building substantially on the Sage benefits that NVIDIA’s commitment to mythical creatures, and massive armies, 3D game engine first used in the compatibility and reliability brings to PC gamers are able to wage all out war in a Command & Conquer: Generals™, the games and we believe such initiatives 3D living, breathing depiction of Middle- game offers up an astonishing world, are good for the industry as a whole.” earth.