How to: Games in 3D

Now that Avatar has pushed us into a world where 3D cinema is suddenly something we’re not only hearing about, but apparently going to see in droves, it seems like it might be a good time to talk about the options for anyone who wants to give gaming in 3D a go.

Left 4 Dead is just one of a surprising number of 3D capable games 🙂

It’s a relatively simple setup, but it does take a little trying to get there. Of course, there is a bit of getting your hands dirty with your registry, and you could do any amount of damage while you’re in there (and we can’t take any responsibility for that) but the payoff is that there are plenty of games out there already that you can play in 3D.

For those who might want to try it out, there are a couple of options. The first is to go for Nvidia’s 3D vision arrangement, which weighs in at €150.

The other is a little cheaper, but we’ll say right now that this one only works for Nvidia, so if you’re using an ATI card you’re a little out of luck, sadly. You could also have trouble is you’re using a 64-bit OS; we’ve only tested it on Vista 32bit, but there are plenty of people out there who claim to have it all running well under 64-bit.

This is a surprisingly old one, and it’s been floating around since early last year, but it’s a hack that people aren’t entirely aware of. The games that we’ve tried it for are just Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress 2, since those are the ones that we had access to while we were playing with our software that support it, but there are plenty of games that support 3D viewing, including Assassin’s Creed, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Resident Evil 5, and a bundle of others – including just about any game that runs on the source engine since Episode 2.

Valve: No Half-Life in 2010

It seems that Valve is being nice and up front about the odds of us seeing any new additions to its vastly successful Half-Life series over the course of this year, shooting down hopes that we’d see a new episode in 2010 nice and early.

I wonder how long the logo took...

Word from Valve comes courtesy of VG247, which highlights the fact that Valve’s Gabe Newell discussed Half-Life 2: Episode 3’s development in an interview last year, saying that the game was still under development. For now we have no indication of just why the next addition to the Half-Life 2 continuity is taking quite so long, but when the protracted delays seem to be a fairly damning indictment of Valve’s move to episodic content for the series.

Prey Sold Out… on Steam

Thanks to a massive price drop as part of its Christmas sale, Steam has managed, bizarrely, to end up “Sold Out” of 2K Games’ portal-throwing first person shooter, Prey.

Strange stuff...

One of the biggest reasons to opt with digital distribution for games is convenience, not only on the part of the end user, but for the distributor itself. Steam’s model, one would have thought, prevents it from ever having to post a sold out sign, since games should be practically infinitely reproducible. Apparently that’s not the case for 2K Games’ Prey, though so far the reason seems to be a little vague.