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Player issues this query: "Since the holiday season is rolling around, I've been contemplating shelling out the big bucks for a nice LCD display. I'm a die-hard gamer, with several choices of monitors in the market today, it can get a little confusing. Ghosting seemed to be a problem with intense games, but with displays reaching 8ms-16ms response time, is it really an issue anymore? Is it time for this gamer to move on to greener pastures, or stay the course with my trusty CRT?"

Thanks to GamesRadar for its PC Gamer-reprinted article discussing why graphics alone aren't enough to sell a game anymore. The author explains: "During the final days of Steam, I found myself playing the original Half-Life. And, frankly, it looked perfectly acceptable. While it clearly lacks the fine polish of modern first-person shooters, the world it presented me with was entirely comparable with anything around. And, being a great game in the first place, it was more enjoyable than - say - Unreal II." He continues: "However, if you went back to 1998 when Valve's masterpiece was released, and attempted to play a game five years older than that, it would be a very different experience. To go back and play System Shock, Doom or Wolfenstein requires a whole re-arrangement of your thought processes to accept the difference in graphics quality." Do you agree that "...the days when graphics ruled videogames are rapidly drawing to a close"?

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to the official Natural Selection page, where V3.0 Beta of the Half-Life mod "hybrid first-person/real-time strategy game" is now available. According to the page, changes include 10 new maps, as well as the addition of Natural Selection: Combat, a "...new fast and furious gameplay mode focusing on intense action. Combat games generally last less than ten minutes, and require very little knowledge to play." The mod can now be played using the add-on's "official Steam support", and will be "...listed under the 'My Games' section (not as a 3rd-party mod)", a laudable achievement for the Natural Selection developers, who've also implemented vital "skulk prediction fixes" for this update.