We sat down with legendary John Carmack and picked his brain on a few of our favorite topics. Along the way, we asked him which graphics card--AMD or Nvidia--he would buy right that second and why. His answer might surprise you.

PCG: If you were to buy a graphics card right now, what would you get?

John Carmack: Let me caution this by saying that this is not necessarily a benchmarked result. We’ve had closer relationships with Nvidia over the years, and my systems have had Nvidia cards in them for generations. We have more personal ties with Nvidia. As I understand it, ATI/AMD cards are winning a lot of the benchmarks right now for when you straight-out make synthetic benchmarks for things like that, but our games do get more hands-on polish time on the Nvidia side of things.

Nvidia does have a stronger dev-relations team. I can always drop an email for an obscure question. So its more of a socio-cultural decision there rather than a raw “Which hardware is better.” Although that does feed back into it, when you’ve got the dev-relation team that is deeply intertwined with the development studio. That tends to make your hardware, in some cases, come out better than what it truly is, because it’s got more of the software side behind it.



You almost can’t make a bad decision with graphics cards nowadays. Any of the add-in cards from AMD or Nvidia are all insanely powerful. The only thing that’s still lacking—and it’s changing—is the integrated graphics parts. Rage executes on an Intel integrated graphics part, but it isn’t something you’d want to run it on right now. But even that’s going to be changing with the upcoming generations of things.

I mean, the latest integrated graphics parts probably are more powerful in many ways than the consoles. If they gave us the same low-level of access, coupled with the much more powerful CPUs, we could do good stuff there. Of course, that’s the worrisome large-scale industry dynamic there, where as integrated parts become “good enough,” it’s got to make life really scary for Nvidia on there. If it went that way to its logical conclusion, where Intel parts were good enough and Nvidia was pinched enough not to be able to do the continuous R&D, that would be an unfortunate thing for the industry.

To some degree, it seems almost inevitable where the world of multi-hundred-dollar add-in cards are doing something that’s being done pretty well by an on-die chip. Not right now, maybe not next year, but it’s hard to imagine a world five years from now where you don’t have competent graphics on every CPU die.

On first glance, the wireless Chimaera’s gloss and flat-black coloring is absolutely gorgeous, but this beauty is tarnished by some quirky design choices. For one, there’s no USB connection. Instead, there’s a docking station that resembles an upside-down “T” that’s powered by an A/C outlet plug. You also have to use RCA cables to connect the docking station to your soundcard or motherboard. If neither of those have RCA inputs—and they probably don’t—you’ll have to search for a 3.5mm to RCA adapter cable that may or may not have come with your mobo or soundcard, or head to your local electronics store and buy one (they’re just a couple bucks). You then rest the headset on top of the docking station to recharge the Chimaera’s two included, but tough to install AAA batteries.

Still—once it’s functional—the Chimaera sounds wonderful. It’s a 2.1 headest, but the bass is punchy, and sword swipes and gunshots seem to come from all directions, despite the lack of any virtual surround software. The mic quality is average, but fine for gaming and Skype. I managed to squeeze out 10 hours of use on a charge, and I successfully walked up three flights of stairs before the 2.4GHz wireless signal began to hiccup. That’s respectable, but for 130 bucks, there are better wireless headsets out there (such as the Logitech F540s) that don’t require as much setup frustration.

$130 ◆ www.razerzone.com ◆ Category: Dream

Obsidian is busy as a beehive these days, both prepping Dungeon Siege III for a June launch and putting the final touches on Honest Hearts, the second DLC batch for Fallout: New Vegas. Honest Hearts will send players off the Mojave map and into the wilderness of Utah's Zion National Park to defend a caravan from tribal raiders. Like the first DLC, Dead Money, the story will pick up the story of a mentioned-but-not-seen character from the main game, The Burned Man.

I wasn't super-wild about Dead Money - though it was a great story, the repetitive level design and obnoxious beeping explosive collar took a chunk of the fun out of it. But the first Fallout 3 DLC, Operation Anchorage, was pretty weak too, and then we got the much better Broken Steel, The Pitt, and Point Lookout (let's not talk about Mothership Zeta), so I'm still very much looking forward to exploring Honest Hearts next week. Click Read and Comment to see the latest batch of screenshots.

We've been itching to tell you all about our time with the first ten hours of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Now we can. Check out our spoiler free preview, Tom's diary and our Deus Ex: Human Revolution podcast, in which Tim, Tom, Graham ad Rich get together to chat about the first ten hours.

But what else has been happening in the world of PC gaming? As always, here's everything you need to know in one handy list.


A Duke Nukem Forever demo could be just around the corner.
Fable 3 is getting a demo, too.
Here's an illuminating presentation by Valve writer Erik Wolpaw on Portal 2.
ArenaNet discuss why they think MMOs are in a rut.
A trailer and the first screens of the Fallout: New Vegas Honest Hearts have emerged.
A Pro Evolution Soccer 2012 announcement is imminent.
CD Projekt are considering Witcher 2 expansions.

 
We've played Deus Ex: Human Revolution so much that our minds are full of a black and gold vision of the future in which we're all augmented super-games journalists, downloading the latest PC games directly into our octo-core brains. If we lived in that glorious cyber-future, which of Deus Ex: Human Revolution's augmentations would you have?

Kotaku has been reporting on a series of possible Modern Warfare 3 leaks, and has turned up what might just be the cover for the PC edition of the next Call of Duty game. The logo on the cover image is the same as the one uncovered by a separate leak on the Electric Hydra forums, suggesting that this box art could be legitimate. There's also a logo for "Call of Duty Elite," which could be the premium Call of Duty online service that Activision have hinted at in the past. You'll find both images below.

In the recent Activision Blizzard earnings call, Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg discussed the formation of another Call of Duty "platform" in addition to Modern Warfare 3 and the micro-transaction funded Call of Duty Online.

"I told you we had formed a wholly-owned development studio called Beachhead to lead the creation of an all-new connected digital universe for the Call of Duty franchise," said Hirshberg, "this platform will include a suite of services and content plan that will unite and ignite the community like never before."

If Call of Duty Elite is real, it might well be this. There are more Modern Warfare 3 announcements to come soon enough. We'll have to wait and see if the following images are real.

Commander Shepard dominates our cover this month, unleashing the kind of stare that should send all of Earth's would-be attackers running to the far edges of the solar system. It's so intense it's quite hard to look at for more than a few moments. Go on, try it. See?

He's incredibly angry because this month we infiltrated Bioware and stole six pages worth of Mass Effect 3 secrets for our preview. Braving Shepard's wrath was just one of the dangers we encountered putting together Issue 227. Discover the others below.



This month Graham had to dodge dragons and learn the art of magical shouting to survive his encounter with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. We deciphered his terrified, bloodstained scrawls into a preview. Then we force fed him some calming tea and then put him in the PC Gamer crate and shipped him to Iceland to write about the Eve Fanfest. We also got to grips with Prey 2, Rage and the new Game of Thrones RTS, and braved the beautifully insane courses of Trackmania 2.

Then we went to war, going behind the scenes with the gun-wielding developers of Red Orchestra to learn the secrets of their success. Not to be outdone, Craig travelled TO THE FUTURE to bring us news of the best upcoming indie games, including Hawken, Spy Party, Grim Dawn, Rock of Ages, Monaco and more.

We also reviewed all of the latest releases. Nothing dangerous can happen reviewing games, right? It all depends on how angry your Portal 2 co-op partner gets when you drop him off an edge for the tenth time. Keyboards can be effective weapons. As well as Portal 2, we delivered judgement on IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover, The Sims Medieval, Operation Flashpoint: Red River, Darkspore, and much more.

This month we also unveil our expanded hardware section. We take a look at Kinect on PC, look at the future of broadband, and deliver a round up of the best new monitors and gaming PCs released this month.

Finally, in Extra Life, Rich finally finds out what Craig is scared of, Tom Senior forms a bond with a giant tortoise in Rift, Owen fights Tim to the death in Shogun 2 and Tom Francis walks into a hail of bullets like it ain't no thing in Crysis 2.

Sound good? You can buy the issue online right now. If you really like it, you can subscribe and get future issues delivered to your door. There's even a digital edition that you can read on your PC, or an iDevice of your choice.

Tim asks Tom, Graham and Rich about their impressions of the third Deus Ex game, having played the first ten hours very, very thoroughly. Turns out it's amazing. You can read our impressions in Tom's preview, and a more in depth account of his playthrough in a diary of a psychopath.

We each talk about the way we played it, how the game responded, our favourite augmentations, and how the game measures up to the mighty original.

Download the MP3, subscribe, or find our other podcasts here.

I've played Deus Ex: Human Revolution for about 40 hours now, so I don't think it's too soon to say this: it's incredible. Four of us here in the office have had access to the first ten hours of the game for a few weeks - I'm on my fifth time through - and today we're finally allowed to tell you what we think of it.

In this post I want to tell you exactly how good it is and why, then you can read about what I got up to in it in my diary of a psychopath. Tomorrow Graham will tell you about his hacking-focused style, and on Friday Rich will try to talk and sneak his way through the whole thing. We'll avoid specific plot spoilers, but inevitably we're going to be mentioning situations you'll encounter yourself when the game comes out in August. In the meantime, you can hear all our spoiler-free impressions in a Deus Ex special of our podcast.

The first Deus Ex looked like a shooter, but was inordinately tough to play as one. It expected you to look for other ways to approach your enemies: sneak past them, create a diversion, use something in your inventory to stun them, turn a nearby turret to your side, or find another route to avoid them entirely.

Human Revolution has every part of that. On the maximum difficulty (referred to as 'Deus Ex'), being shot at for more than a second is death. You can sneak past your enemies, distract them, stun them, subvert the environment and find new routes through the level.

The difference is that each option is slicker. The cover system lets you see enemies without them seeing you, by pulling back to third person. It's an unfair advantage, but it means stealth is a viable option without having to make the enemies laughably short sighted.

The AI isn't exactly human, but throw something across the room and they prowl cautiously, rather than trundling over and staring. The non-lethal options, including a short-range tazer and an area-effect airblast weapon, are supremely satisfying to use. And hacking is properly developed this time: a tense minigame that varies in pace and structure from hack to hack.

Whether it's as good as Deus Ex will depend on how well these options are maintained and developed in the rest of the game, but we've played more than enough to see that they work, they're fun, and they all hang together a something that feels like Deus Ex.



The character progression is certainly better: it might not have the original's skills, but the mechanical augs you can upgrade yourself force much tougher choices. You earn Praxis points to spend on them quite slowly, so buying a new aug for 2 points is an agonisingly big decision.

The first hacking upgrade in Deus Ex, affordable from the word go, would get you into any terminal in the game. Human Revolution has 4 hacking augs with 12 upgrades, all useful in distinct ways. But the other options are so exciting that I've never been able to spare the points: how could I not get the no-fall-damage aug, or the throw-fridges-at-people aug, or the kill-two-people-at-once aug? What about my legs, reader? Where will I get the points to upgrade my legs?!

This version is the first time I've been able to play past the introductory missions, and the biggest surprise there is the richness of this world. I'd noticed every office in your headquarters had a name on it - I had no idea you could get inside each of them, hack into every computer and read every e-mail these people had sent to each other. I had no idea the minor subplot mentioned near the start could turn into such a sprawling quest, with dirt on so many characters, secrets and lies to be discovered far from the critical path of your mission.

The streets of Detroit are just as full of intrigue, if you snoop around. Every time the three of us talk about the game, we each discover places we haven't been to yet, clues we're yet to find, or the full story to something we assumed was just an irrelevant detail. Before the central conspiracy has even got started, it feels like a world full of fascinating little secrets.

This is what I've wanted from every game in the eleven years since Deus Ex. But only a few since then have used interactivity like this; as a way to give the player a meaningful say in everything from the delivery of the story to the genre of the action. Seeing it done so beautifully, with a dark layer of polish, makes me incredibly happy.

In the next few days we'll tell you a bunch of ways the first ten hours of Human Revolution can be played, and you can hear spoiler-free impressions from me, Graham and Rich in our Deus Ex podcast.

A few of us in the office have been playing the first ten hours of Deus Ex: Human Revolution for the last few weeks, but we weren't allowed to tell you much about them until today. The trouble is, it's incredibly good. So all that pent up excitement has turned itself into a series of diaries: today I'll talk you through what happens if you try to play the game as a cyborg psychopath.

Tomorrow Graham will tell you about his hacking-focused style, and on Friday Rich will try to talk and sneak his way through the whole thing. We'll avoid specific plot spoilers, but inevitably we're going to be mentioning situations you'll encounter yourself when the game comes out in August. In the meantime, you can read our general impressions in my preview, and all our spoiler-free impressions in a Deus Ex special of our podcast.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution starts with a conference call between four or five shadowy figures. It's possible they're conspiring. I'm not going to talk about that, and I'm not going to talk about the next half hour: it's an only semi-interactive intro, so it doesn't have much to do with the rest of the game.

I'll start from the first meaningful choice you get: you're flying out to stop terrorists from stealing a secret new augmentation prototype from your employer, Sarif Industries. Sarif himself is, for some reason, your personal caddy in the chopper on the way over. Would sir care to murder his opponents or render them unconscious? Murder? Very good. And would sir prefer to engage at range or close quarters? Close quarters murder, an excellent choice if I may say.

That gives me the revolver. Hang on, I have a 5,000 pixel wide picture of it somewhere.



Dropped in front of two SWAT agents, I suddenly get the urge to use it. I've already played this first mission sensibly, at a hands-on event with the console version. So this time, I ask the question every gamer must ask themselves at some point in their lives: "Can I just, like, shoot these guys and take their stuff?"

BLAM. Yep! His colleague is appreciably startled, but only gets one shot off before I switch my aim to him. Friendlies aren't invincible in this game, it turns out. And mouse control makes shooting people in the head much, much easier.

The SWAT guys in the next room are alert but not hostile - they heard the shots but didn't see who did it. It's an unsolvable case, guys, give up. It definitely wasn't the guy with the revolver now ducking behind a crate to pick you off.

This is harder: three armoured guys at once. I get the captain easily, but have to take cover as the other two spray fire back. The switch to third person when you hide feels much nicer now that I'm playing on PC - it's almost identical to the way Rainbow Six: Vegas works, and that's one of my favourite shooters.

One SWAT guy reloads, the other pushes forward. I peek out to shoot the reloader, then stand up to melee the other. Giant chisels flick out of my wrists, I stab him in the throat and spleen, then smack him to the floor.

Wow, I am a terrible person. With a free assault rifle.

I go easier on the terrorists, only breaking their arms and jaws with non-lethal takedowns. I dive into cover and bring out the revolver when things get out of hand. Pretty soon I find the hostages - they're only an optional objective, but I screwed this up badly during the console hands-on session. This time I've already found the defuse code for the bomb in someone's' e-mail, so I stroll in and save everyone easily. Then, I wonder.

How will the game handle it if I save the hostages, then kill them myself?

"Pritchard," Jensen radios in, as he stabs both fist-chisels through a woman's ribcage. "I've found the hostages."
"I'm relaying good news, I hope?" Jensen throws the woman's limp body onto the sofa and turns to the next.
"They're fine."

For science, I headshot the rest of them and sneak out the vent. Deal with that, game.



Later in the mission, I get my first Praxis point. These are how you buy or upgrade augmentations for your now semi-mechanical body. It costs 2 to buy a new one, so if you want to spend your first right away, you can only upgrade what you've got. One of the upgrades for your arms lets you haul and throw heavier objects, so of course I went for that.

First thing to throw: a goddamn turret. I have to sneak by a security camera to get behind it, so I pick the whole gun emplacement up and hurl it at the camera. It smashes, naturally, and I leave the turret facing a corner like a misbehaving child.

Finally I face the lead terrorist, Zeke, who has another hostage. Negotiate? Sure, I'll negotiate with bull- hang on, missed. I'll negotiate with- oh, he's killed the hostage. I'll negotiate with- well, yes, I just shot him in the end, so that's not really negotiation.

I also shot the guy who burst through the door immediately afterwards, before I even realised he was SWAT. Then I shot all the other SWAT troops on the helipad, then I shot all the other SWAT troops on the top floor, then I discovered the entire complex had been completely repopulated with SWAT troops. And I did the whole mission again, in reverse.

It's like Hitman: these guys aren't hostile until they see you attack, so you can stalk them carefully, get them on their own, and puncture them with your fist-chisels without alerting their friends. I have no idea why Eidos Montreal thought I might go through a whole 90-minute mission backwards after I'd already completed it, but they accounted for the possibility. And for a deranged serial killer like my character, it was fun in a whole new way.



I'll skip the debrief, it's story stuff I don't want to spoil. But the characters at Sarif HQ react quite convincingly to my bizarre rescue-massacre, correctly acknowledging that the hostages died. No-one knows I did it, of course, but I'm impressed that completing the 'rescue' objective didn't lock everyone into "Well done!" mode - the game actually checks if they're still alive. The only small slip-up is a newspaper article that claims the bomb went off, when in fact I defused it.

The next time you leave Sarif HQ, it's not by helicopter but the front door. You're in Detroit, the game's first city hub, and the point at which it really opens up.

It's not a full city like GTA or Oblivion - the closest point of comparison is the obvious one, Deus Ex. It's a few blocks of streets and backalleys, and while you can't go in every building, it's actually more explorable than Deus Ex ever was.

I find an arms dealer in an abandoned gas station and buy a shotgun from him. I find a gleaming LIMB Clinic, the surgeries where augs are normally installed, and buy some Praxis points to upgrade my own. And finally I wander into an apartment complex to talk to an ex-cop, now a security guard, about a side quest I've just picked up.

He's helpful, but- well, science. I have to find out if the game will let me kill him. I head up to the apartment he's guarding, hack my way into someone's flat and pick up their fridge-freezer. It's a bit of a trek to get it downstairs, the strength aug slowly draining my energy, but I manage it with enough power left to hurl it into his head. He's knocked onto his desk, confused and understandably hostile, but by the time he's stood up I've picked up the fridge again and hurled it into his chest, killing him. Sorry, friend. It had to be this way.



Exploring the apartments of Detroit is fascinating. I keep stumbling across scenes and scraps of story that seem like they relate to something important I haven't discovered yet. In one, I hack my way into an apartment containing nothing of interest but a gun on the desk and a locked door.

It's beyond my hacking skill, so I'm about to leave disappointed when I notice a grill in the door. I crouch down and peer through - there's a light flashing within. I'm doubly annoyed that I can't get in there, and even more irritated when I realise that's probabaly an explosive - proximity LAMs flashed like this in Deus Ex. If games were logical, I'd just be able to shoot through this flimsy grille and hit the mine, probably blowing this door clean off.

Hmm.

This is Deus Ex. It might actually be that logical. So I try it.

It works. The blast is enormous, not simply breaking the door but obliterating it. Inside, there are credits, ammo and grenades galore, as well as a computer to be hacked for some background on the guy who lives here. He's clearly into some bad stuff.

I never discovered how bad on this run, but when our other diaries go up watch for any reference to O'Malley - there's a lot more to this.



I finally find what I'm looking for, the apartment of someone involved with a theft I'm investigating for a friend. While snooping through his computer, though, I hear someone approaching. Esc! Esc! Esc!

I press myself up against the wall and look round the bedroom door. A punk with a pistol is prowling the apartment, shouting for me to come out. I decide not to oblige, and blind-fire with my new shotgun.

The crack is vicious, but the cloud of lead only glances him. He fires wildly at the doorway until his clip is empty, at which point I swing out, take aim at his neck, and hit him with a more accurate blast that sends him sprawling over the living room table.

He's not the guy, but I know where to find him now. He's loitering by a skip outside, and I know from his e-mails that he has the recording I need on him. When we talk, he gives me a Robin Hood justification for his actions, and says he'll only give me the recording if I deal with the drug dealers who've been hounding him.

I consider it, then hit him in the face so hard that his head hits the skip.

Not everyone is OK with this. Most of the hobos and punks in the alley cower, but two pull uzis and open fire. I'm hit before I make it to cover, but alive - barely. When they split up, I lean out and headshot one, then skewer the other as he tries to flank me.

This is why you make a game this way: if the quest you've written isn't compelling to a certain kind of player, or they don't feel the reward measures up, they can still end up having an awesome time. I wouldn't have minded having to kill some drug dealers - I do love killing - but even if I hadn't been on a psycho playthrough, I just didn't feel this guy was in any position to send me on an errand. The game let me express that, with fists.



The final treat in the apartments of Detroit is something I missed until Rich told me it existed. The block's entrance is locked, but if you stand precariously on a barrel and jump up to the fire escape ladder, you can get in. And there's a man slouching on a desk, hood up.

It's not the man. It's the silencer he sells.

He doesn't know my character, but I'm not the right guy to sell a silencer to. I shoot his bodyguard in the back of the head with a gratifying thud, then spin and shoot him in the face before he can level his shotgun. Most of his merchandise is locked up in the heavy boxes around us, but he has some good stuff on him too. I slip out.

One of the most substantial sidequests in Detroit comes from a prostitute on Derelict Row who claims to know you. "Jensen, over here!" She says as you walk past. I walk over and slam my robot fist into her face. Everyone screams.

Um. Look, I know how this is going to sound, but I honestly didn't mean to do that. I just switched my melee key to what I normally use for 'Interact', and my muscle memory kicked in.

She's out cold, and depressingly no-one much cares that I hit her - no-one with a gun, at least. On her body, I find a thousand credits and a rare weapon mod. Well, no sense letting this stuff go to waste. I mean, sure, she'll probably wake up soon, but... look, I'm just going to take it. Judge away.

The last thing in this build of the game is the mission Rich saw last week. It's a fun mission, but there's less scope for a psychopath to experiment with, since everyone in it is already hostile: killing them seemed like stating the obvious. And it ends in a boss fight that's the only major disappointment so far: we've all searched, but there seems to be no non-violent or alternative way around it.

In general, the hubs are where most of the richness and flexibility of Deus Ex really shines. The missions work well to give you renewed purpose and a chance to put any new weapons and augs to a tougher test, whether it's a stealth or combat one. But I hope the full game sticks roughly to this pattern: a few missions per hub, with at least as much of your time spent exploring the world and its story. There are three city hubs in total and the game takes around 25 and 35 hours to complete first time, so the maths suggests exactly that.

What do you mean you haven't got a brand new Sandy Bridge processor yet? Intel's second gen Core processors are pretty much the only choice for building or upgrading a gaming system right now. As if to prove the superiority of its chip du jour, the big I has just launched another motherboard chipset to support it: the Z68 Express.

Aimed at high performance machines, the first wave of Z68 boards from ASUS, MSI and Gigabyte are around the same price as the outgoing P67 chipset. And there are a lot of other similarities between the two. For example, there's the Z68 gives you full access to overclocking controls in the BIOS, with switches that aren't available on the most keenly priced H67 and H61 boards, even if you have an unlocked CPU.

The biggest thing that Z68 has which P67 doesn't is support for the built-in GPU that Sandy Bridge has on its die. While this isn't such a big deal in terms of gaming performance - if you're spending this much on a machine you don't want to play with integrated graphics - but it does open up the QuickSync video encoding engine for crunching HD movies. In most tests this has been obliterating the performance of GPU-accelerated video encoding, but if you dropped a Core i7 or Core i5 into a P67 motherboard, QuickSync was frustratingly disabled. Thanks to the inclusion of Lucidlogix' Virtu tech on the Z68, you can switch between integrated or discrete graphics, and use QuickSync all the time.

For in game performance, though, the thing we'll be looking most closely at is the new Smart Response Technology (SRT). A lot of you have told us recently that you've been adding solid state drives (SSDs) to your PCs and getting good results for accelerating boot times, loading speeds and multitasking performance. The problem with SSDs is that they tend to be very small, less than 128GB, so you can't put many apps on them. SRT overcomes this, by creating one big virtual drive out of your traditional disk and an SSD, and intelligently moving commonly used files onto the faster flash memory of the SSD.

I'll be putting together an X68 system over the next few days and testing it for next month's hardware reviews in the mag, but early reviews are online now if you can't wait. I'll report back on the blog to let you know how I get on with SRT specifically.

X68 looks to have been well received so far, but if there's a problem I spy already it's that it brings the total number of motherboard chipsets which now take the 1155 pin Core processors to four, a launch rate of nearly one a month. Most manufacturers offering two or three individual models based on each of the H61, H67 and P67 platforms, while Gigabyte alone has nine different variations of Z68 already, with two more planned this year.

Some might argue that there's a little too much choice out there. Things could be a little confusing for the even moderately well informed buyer.

At least it's a change from January, when there were no motherboards at all for the plucky little to latch onto.