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GameTab has a torrent and seed for the Science and Industry mod. Enjoy!

The last expansion pack for NWN was a bit of a let-down (it averaged a 79%) but this pack seems to have much better chances.

Does anyone have any statistics on how the intitial release and first expansion pack fared at retail? I am looking forward to a full-blown sequel, but the publisher seems here more willing to issue a "Gold Edition" than to invest in a new full game.

The last expansion pack for NWN was a bit of a let-down (it averaged a 79%) but this pack seems to have much better chances.

Does anyone have any statistics on how the intitial release and first expansion pack fared at retail? I am looking forward to a full-blown sequel, but the publisher seems here more willing to issue a "Gold Edition" than to invest in a new full game.

The last expansion pack for NWN was a bit of a let-down (it averaged a 79%) but this pack seems to have much better chances.

Does anyone have any statistics on how the intitial release and first expansion pack fared at retail? I am looking forward to a full-blown sequel, but the publisher seems here more willing to issue a "Gold Edition" than to invest in a new full game.

From what I'm reading it seems that if you simply connect to Kazzaa you get kicked, doesn't even bother checking what you're doing. I can't wait untill they start doing this for BitTorrent. Because we all know that anything that can be used for something illegal has no possible legal use

To avoid an unnecessary page load on their server, here's a direct link to the bittorrent version.

If Google or Microsoft wished to truly compete in one segment (sports, politics, videogames, etc.) they would have to hire editors to manage those sections and provide a personal touch as well as specialized features for those sections.

I am an Editor at GameTab which is in essence an aggregate site for videogame news and reviews. We are a portal site (much like the Google/MSN news sites) which means that we're trying to be a jumping point for gamers to venture out into other sites. We don't create news ourselves, we merely report what news other sites are presenting and do useful manipulation on the data. In addition we present relevant information such as price deals, developer and fan created box art, torrent files, etc.

For generic news these sites run by corporations are great. They are a strong challenge to outlets such as CNN or MSN.com itself. However, for the many areas of news people will always want that custom feel that they only receive when information is tailored specifically to their tastes.

Maybe this is why Electronics Botique has gotten so into promoting pre-ordering games. It seems like everytime that you pre-order a game, you get some kind of incentive, usually more store credit for trading in old games. Just recently, I received an additonal 3$ trade in value for every game I traded in, and since I traded in 10 games, well, you can do the math... and all I had to do was pre-order SSX3 (which I didn't even purchase, I know it had great reviews, I just don't like snowboarding games). Maybe they assume that once you pre-order it, you somehow feel locked into purchasing it, or maybe you'll purchase it before the reviews even come out. I refuse to purchase a game that gets below an 80% on Gametab.

From a business standpoint, you'd think this would be a bad idea. Though I pre-purchased Medal of Honor: Rising Sun (FINALLY a game based on the Marine Corps), if it ends up getting bad reviews, I'll use my store credit towards something else AND keep my extra bonuses. I'd imagine a lot of people will do the same thing, and EB will be left with a huge overstock of a crappy game.

As for the value of reviews, some games are worth every penny. Goldeney, Age of Mythology, Warcraft, Halo, Madden, Neverwinter Nights, Grand Theft Auto 3, Final Fantasy... at 100$ these games still would have been a bargain, due to the countless hours spent playing them. All of these games received phoenominal reviews. Frankly, with the exception of a few games, I usually buy games soley based on the reviews they recieve. If I'm going to shell out 50$, it had better damn well be a good game, especially for the console, because of the limited online capabilities. If everyone bought games soley based on reviews (provided the reviews weren't overly biased), then it would force companies to release only very high quality games.

I prefer the GameTab server for Shrek torrents.

You can view details and reviews for all of the Return of the King games at GameTab. In addition you can read all of the latest RotK headlines and view the pretty screenshots.

For more Made in Wario screenshots and news bits take a look at this search listing. There's even a Made in Wario official site. We'll see if the game does as well as the original. Perhaps if it sells for $30 or so that will make it well worth the purchase.

The camera-phone was the biggest telecom hit of the past year. Although entry level phones do not yet have cameras standard we may be nearing that feature-set in the next year or so.

Video games and phones are still a mixed bad. The N-Gage was released but sales reports and reviews have been mostly negative. A lot of this can be attributed to Nokia's inexperience in the gaming industry. If Nintendo had developed a mobile phone with the potential to load the vast catalog of GB games then mobile phone gaming could take off like a rocket.

In a few years we might be living in an age where you sign a contract for a year and get a phone which includes the voice unit itself, PDA functionality, MP3 functionality, game functionality, camera functionality and whatever else that is dreamed up in the meantime. I can't wait!

Sites like FileFront and GameTab are the fuuuuuture, Marty. These sites are really only useful as an initial index source you can trust (like ShareReactor, but legal), and for aggregating eyeballs to increase the availability of the files.

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Postal 2 is only interesting due to its violent nature. The general consensus is that the game is offensive but the design underneath the offenses is not solid enough to be worth a purchase.

Go to Gametab.com for a compilation of reviews... Viewtiful Joe is currently averaging a 91%.

"Midway through the production of Half-Life 2," says Gabe Newell, Managing Director at Valve Software, "we realized that our tools were hamstringing our artists. We decided that we needed to go find the right set of tools to build the game. We evaluated all of the tools we could have used for Half-Life 2, and, when we looked at the combination of the products and the companies that were standing behind them, XSI and Softimage were head and shoulders above any of the other options."

Anyone who was lucky enough to see the previews of the work that Valve did with SOFTIMAGE|XSI on Half-Life 2 at E3 knows that the team made the right choice. original link w/more info

"Midway through the production of Half-Life 2," says Gabe Newell, Managing Director at Valve Software, "we realized that our tools were hamstringing our artists. We decided that we needed to go find the right set of tools to build the game. We evaluated all of the tools we could have used for Half-Life 2, and, when we looked at the combination of the products and the companies that were standing behind them, XSI and Softimage were head and shoulders above any of the other options."

Anyone who was lucky enough to see the previews of the work that Valve did with SOFTIMAGE|XSI on Half-Life 2 at E3 knows that the team made the right choice. original link w/more info

"Midway through the production of Half-Life 2," says Gabe Newell, Managing Director at Valve Software, "we realized that our tools were hamstringing our artists. We decided that we needed to go find the right set of tools to build the game. We evaluated all of the tools we could have used for Half-Life 2, and, when we looked at the combination of the products and the companies that were standing behind them, XSI and Softimage were head and shoulders above any of the other options."

Anyone who was lucky enough to see the previews of the work that Valve did with SOFTIMAGE|XSI on Half-Life 2 at E3 knows that the team made the right choice. original link w/more info

Finally a working torrent of the full 19MB version...

Downloaded at usual 200kB+ speeds and played in QT 6.3

Direct link to torrent is here.

Or the direct link:

http://www.gametab.com/files/torrents/rotk_trailer _480x280.mov.torrent

Available here.

Gametab just put up a torrent here.

Gametab just put up a torrent here.

FISKER_Q: you've said you wanted P2P in the steam, is that going to be a reality?

greg_coomer: Right now we're wishing it already was a reality... down the road it probably will be.

halflife2.net

BT is the way to go. Check out transfer on the full installer 1+TB

gametab

On the other hand we see how the traditional client/server system can break down if it has a significant user base and not enough bandwidth. The new Steam client hasn't allowed me to connect to a game since I installed it six hours ago. Who knows how much more data could have been transferred if all the Steam users were connected to each other and sharing their cache through a P2P network?

The next step in P2P would be to combine the swarm downloading of Bittorrent with a persistent P2P network like Edonkey2000. The Achilles Heel of Bittorrent is that it can only transfer one file at a time, and the only way to download multiple files is to open multiple instances of Bittorrent, which drains upload speed, a precious commodity among home broadband users. Some work is being done towards this goal but it currently deals with upload rates for individual downloads, and doesn't manage multiple downloads.

P2P is definitely the future, and I predict its popularity will continue to rise as more consumers sign up for broadband and start sucking down large media files like full albums and movies from corporate sites who aren't prepared for the broadband explosion.

On the other hand we see how the traditional client/server system can break down if it has a significant user base and not enough bandwidth. The new Steam client hasn't allowed me to connect to a game since I installed it six hours ago. Who knows how much more data could have been transferred if all the Steam users were connected to each other and sharing their cache through a P2P network?

The next step in P2P would be to combine the swarm downloading of Bittorrent with a persistent P2P network like Edonkey2000. The Achilles Heel of Bittorrent is that it can only transfer one file at a time, and the only way to download multiple files is to open multiple instances of Bittorrent, which drains upload speed, a precious commodity among home broadband users. Some work is being done towards this goal but it currently deals with upload rates for individual downloads, and doesn't manage multiple downloads.

P2P is definitely the future, and I predict its popularity will continue to rise as more consumers sign up for broadband and start sucking down large media files like full albums and movies from corporate sites who aren't prepared for the broadband explosion.

I was trying to get one more run out of Splinter Cell by trying to make it all the way through on the hard skill level without killing anyone, but even though it's much harder I still start feeling claustrophobic with the lack of options. I started playing the PC version of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 last week which, although in a completely different genre, is so completely open that I find myself having a much better time. All the reviews I've seen agree with me and this review compares it favorably to GTA III and covers the replay aspect quite well.

Here's a bittorrent link to the huge 25min in game movie

Parents who give their children unrestricted access to $2000 worth of anything (like, say, a computer with internet access) are idiots.

Problem: Some vehicles are used to transport illegal drugs.

Your solution: THINK OF TEH CHILDREN!!! NOBODY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO DRIVE A CAR.

The P2P networks are a communications medium, based on the idea that there are routes from each user to everyone else on the internet. Everything - email, games, web, ftp, P2P - uses this mechanism. You can't arbitrarily stop a particular type of traffic or you'll break the internet. Saying that all P2P networks are filthy because they're used for child porn and then rambling on about beacons is about as stupid as saying:

YOU'RE USING THE INTERNET AT THE SAME TIME AS CHILD PORNOGRAPHERS!! EEEEWWWW!!

I don't doubt that illicit material is out there. However, P2P networks still aren't anonymous and it's easy to track down who is sharing any particular files. The RIAA managed to find and attempt to prosecute hundreds of music sharers. Their attempt failed because nobody cares for the RIAA given their bullying attitude. People certainly DO care about the children being abused because of porn, and I think there's no problem with the public wanting child pornographers prosecuted. However, linking sharing music and sharing kiddie porn is a crass, stupid and blatantly self-serving move.

(Besides: The music industry's been pushing ever younger stars, get their singers to show more skin, stage fake lesbian kisses on MTV for the sake of ratings, been accused and convicted of price fixing - and *THEY* want to take the moral high ground? [no offense to any lesbians, I just find MTV's sexual exploitation to be slimy])

The P2P networks do have many legitimate uses. In the future I will be pushing for my company to make promotional material (including demos and several hundred MB of example movies) officially released using P2P. Probably with BitTorrent, but maybe also Gnutella2 via "magnet://[checksum]" links (because I think linking the web and P2P in such as way is a fantastic idea). This should help relieve some of our bandwidth costs and allow users to still be get to the content while our conventional FTP servers are full.

This I think looks very much like the quality of the renderings from Myst 3(especially that one amusment park age) but it is actually a screenshot from Half-Life 2. The video it came from("Docks"(torrent)) is probally the most visualy stunning of the videos released to date.

I looked at Gametab a few minutes ago and nothing. I search the comments for a working bit torrent link, but nothing. So, one last ditch to check Gametab and what do you know? Here is the link to the torrent:

http://www.gametab.com/files/torrents.php?fuse=70

I hardly believe Chessmaster was the last online game to come out. In fact, yesterday, I picked up ESPN Football and it is chock full of online features (downloadable rosters, online leagues, etc). I'd say every major (EA, Sega, Microsoft) sports game that comes out for 2004 will have online features.

Another BitTorrent from GameTab. GameTab seems to download faster than the Torrent in the story.
Torrent Link

Have a look at Gametab.

The best review site on the net, they summarise lots of other reviews and give games an aggregate score. Sort of like Rotten Tomatoes does for movies.

That way you only have to look at a single number to decide if a game is worth checking out.

Torrent is back http://www.gametab.com/files/torrents.php?fuse=18

Just incase the page won't resolve: here.

I would highly suggest getting the Blink movies of HL2.

http://www.gametab.com/files/torrents.php

The AI is far from same old same old, the physics is extremely far along. And the environments are freaking almost totally immersive.

UT2K3 was really the same ole same ole, but take a good look at the real next generation games (D3, DL2, FarCry) and you'll see what I'm talking about.

There are peer to peer networks for the sharing of legal music. In some cases they use digital signatures to ensure the files are legit. Here's the ones I've found so far:

• Furthur Network
• konspire[2b]
• Monotonik's BitTorrents - zip files with ~300 MB of MP3s

There are peer to peer networks for the sharing of legal music. In some cases they use digital signatures to ensure the files are legit. Here's the ones I've found so far:

• Furthur Network
• konspire[2b]
• Monotonik's BitTorrents - zip files with ~300 MB of MP3s

But there are p2p networks for downloading legal music. Some of them use digital signatures to authenticate the legality of the files. Here's the ones I've found so far:

• Furthur Network
• konspire[2b]
• Monotonik's BitTorrents - zip files with ~300 MB of MP3s

If everyone started downloading legal music instead, we would make short work of the RIAA, because people would start buying CDs from indie bands, and seeing their shows, instead of enriching the major labels every time you buy a Britney or New Kids CD. The RIAA would also have no cause to complain - these music downloads are not copyright violations because the artists give you permission to download them.

Probably the best known site for downloading MP3s is of course MP3.com . See especially their genre index . Click the link. You will be quite astounded at how many genres there are.

Unfortunately the website usability of MP3.com is atrocious, and their streaming audio seems to be buggy - I can't get it to work in either Explorer or Mozilla. To get an MP3 file to download to your hard drive, you have to register, which I'm sure will result in merciless spamming. May I suggest registering with a throwaway email address from spamgourmet ?

The Open Directory Project has Bands and Artists and Styles indices. Not all the artists offer downloads, but the site says they list 48,000 artists and I imagine many of them offer downloads.

There are better sites for hosting MP3s than MP3.com. Some of them allow you to buy the band's CD from the same page as the MP3 download. Among them are The Internet Underground Music Archives, CDBaby, Epitonic.com, Lulu, SoundClick, Matador Records and insound .

Monotonik provides BitTorrents with zip files containing 60 to 100 MP3s apiece available here.

If you prefer the higher quality, patent-free Ogg Vorbis files you can find several download sites here . Ogg Vorbis players are available for many platforms - WinAmp will play them on Windows, and I understand iTunes on Mac OS X supports Ogg now. There are open source Linux ogg players and encoders, even an open source fixed-point decoders for embedded applications where the CPU doesn't have floating point hardware.

There are also peer-to-peer applications for distributing legal music. See Furthur Network and konspire[2b] .

Unfortunately, musicians are often not very good website designers, so poor usability is a significant obstacle to getting music directly from artists' websites. If you're a musician, and you'd like to know how you can improve your website so more people will download your music, please read my article If Indie Musicians Wanted Their Music Heard....

Finally, there is the problem of finding the music that's actually worth listening to. The labels do serve the (somewhat) legitimate purpose of picking out the good from the bad. But we can do that ourselves with legal downloads by using collaborative filtering, for example by downloading our music with iRATE, which you'll find at

http://www.gametab.com/files/torrents.php?fuse=55

Usually you see comments like this on CNN.com or in Time Magazine. Where you see them bashing or praising a part of AOL Time Warner and they have an ethical obligation to report that Time/CNN is owned by AOL TW.

GameTab - game news & reviews. compiled.

My personal opinion of There (from what I read in Business2.0 and have seen mentioned online) is that it is simply a bunch of business/marketing people that sat down to decide how to put marketing inside a MMORPG. However, they forgot that they need a MMORPG to actually attract people. Right now it's just a glorified chat room. Apparently they are wanting to license the technology to real MMORPG developers but we'll see how that goes. It's really just a big ploy to get advertisers like Nike, Starbucks, etc. to spend real money to put their logos in the virtual worlds. GameTab - "game news & reviews. compiled"

It appears that the official website for the game is either at this clan server or at this game company. Google returns the fact that Warriors of Freedom RPG is now ... "The Guardians of Har". So maybe the Alternative Games company changed the name of their moderately popular browser-based RPG.

It's interesting that these youths would be corrupted by a simplistic browser RPG. Most previous stories of this type involve games such as Doom or Counter-Strike or sniping in Halo. I guess we might be able to assume that these youths didn't need the first person perspective to corrupt their perspective of reality.

This Columbine article quotes Jack Thompson (the attorney who brought up the video game connection) as saying "We intend to hurt Hollywood. We intend to hurt the video game industry. We intend to hurt porn sites". Mr. Thompson has tried suing the video game companies, tried pressuring Best Buy and Wal-Mart to not carry certain titles and tried to get a bill introduced to outlaw mature video games being sold to minors.

I don't believe that video games caused these youths to go beserk. So I will continue playing games and wondering what exactly is wrong with Jack Thompson.

Oh? So then I guess "illegal p2p" sites like GameTab (bittorrent) and FileFront (redswoosh) aren't a solution for getting game demos faster than CrapPlanet's fantastic client-server lines eh?

P2P is a hack

Why do I get the impression that your job depends on the centralization of power that client-server allows?

If I need to download a BF1942 patch, I'll get it and delete it

Speak for yourself. Not everyone is as selfish as you apparently are, and p2p will eventually have reputation systems for weeding rogues and assholes out of our webs of trust.

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Doom3? What's that? Half Life 2! (<-- 550mb video, bittorrent link) Half Life 2!

GameTab also have BitTorrent links to the WMV and MOV versions on their BitTorrent Files page - useful to know if the other mirrors get clogged up.

Who knows when MGS3 will be out, but the number of news articles about it has been quite stunning lately. Take a look at all of them over at GameTab. This list includes the latest MGS3 headlines from a number of gaming websites across the Internet.

GameFaqs has a really great selection of FAQs but its problem is that it does not 'own' any of the FAQ submissions. GameRankings mainly owns a database filled with statistics and although not easily replicated there are alternatives.

I prefer GameTab to GameRankings (and to a lesser extent MetaCritic.com). GameTab is not owned by a large company like CNet and has a much nicer design and set of user features. It also uses quotes in its review summary pages and quotes help me decide much more easily than raw numbers whether or not a game will be to my liking. So for now on I'll be supporting GameTab (but I'm sure I'll go to GameFaqs because as of yet there is no nice alternative to that site.)