Site News

It's been fairly slow around here lately, and boy does the traffic show it.  There are quite possibly no daily readers, but if any of you are out there (other than staff), there is new content coming!  I myself have a couple of reviews to write up and post, and hopefully I'll be able to get that knocked out this week before classes really start up in earnest for me.  As for the rest of the crew, I'm sure they're working on things as well.  Just an update for everyone, hopefully any of you who care see this and know that we haven't forgotten things here at De-Frag!

-Billy

I'd just like to take a minute and say Merry Christmas on behalf of the staff here at De-frag.com to you, our viewers, and thank you for helping this site grow over the last six months! Things have slowed down lately due to the festive season (and the last of the years major releases/news announcements) but we have a few reviews in the works and we'll continue to work round the clock to keep you guys updated on current events.

So once again, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Try not to get too wasted!

Well, this week sees the release of Prince of Persia for the PC and I think that is the last high profile title to hit our platform before Christmas, so I think it's time for an update.

As usual, we have all been way busy with work and other stuff so keeping up with everything that has been coming out has been quite difficult, however I think the four of us have bought almost all the big games now between us. Sam will be getting Prince of Persia, Billy recently bought GTA4 and I have just bought Red Alert 3 and LotRO: Mines of Moria to be getting on with over Christmas, while Grant has been busy killing dudes on Fallout 3. I'm not going to make promises on reviews for all these games since we are all so short on time, but we should have some done eventually, even if they do come in a bit late.

We will also be resuming our Podcasts soon once things have calmed down a little as at the moment, Sam's mic is kinda broken and he's squatting in a friend's house and I just can't seem to free up a good chunk of time to get recording with the rest of the team. We should also be finishing our competition to name our podcast soon because we all completely forgot about it... so yeah, sorry about that :P. We will inform you of the winner, hopefully before Christmas comes around. Remember, if you want to take part, just PM me your suggestion for a name over the forums.

We will probably have our own Game of the Year article coming up soon, where we will each talk about what our favourite game has been, so stay tuned for that, and more over the coming weeks and months.

For now though, get Christmas shopping, there isn't much time left!

The De-Frag Team.

This is the second time now that we have gone to events that state that they will have Dawn of War 2 playable, and yet they haven't. The first time, they just had soulstorm playable, and had the DoWII trailer on loop all day, this time they had a totally badass Rhino tank sitting outside, which I suspect is the one they have the PC's in the back of, and yet they never opened the damn thing!

Click to enlarge the images... it's the closest to DoWII coverage you're going to get from us for now... Hopefully it will be third time lucky next time we go to an event like this.

Greetings de-frag viewers! Just a quick update; myself nd Josh (Sweedums) have just gotten back from the Eurogamer Expo in London and that means that you lucky folks get to hear all about it! So later this evening and over the next day or two expect the website to be updated heavily with hands on, screen grabs, and videos of many highly anticipated Winter games including (but not restricted to), Prince of Persia, Red Faction Guerrilla, Tom Clancy's Endwar and HAWX, and a possible update on Mirror's Edge.

So stick around over the next few days and enjoy our hard work!

In my previous site news update I said how I might be going to the upcoming Eurogamer Expo in London next week, well me and Sam have decided that we can make it and so on Wednesday 29th Octoboer we will be right there on behalf of De-Frag to bring you hands-on coverage of some of the hottest games coming up over the next few months. It's going to be tonnes of fun, and while most of the stuff there is likely to be on consoles, many of the games will have PC counterparts so we will try and get on these and give you our impressions. For a full list of games that will be available on the show floor, read on!

Hey folks, time for another general update on the site I think, so here goes. As you may have seen, we started off our Frag Session series last week with a discussion on DRM. Our next one, due to hit the home page either tonight or maybe tomorrow, will be on "Game to Film Adaptions", due to the recent release of Max Payne, we figured we might as well chime in on the highs (if there are any) and the (many) lows of games turned into films, so check back soon for that!

Also, we apologise for not bringing you a second podcast these past weeks, we have all been super busy with college, university and just work in general so it has been a tough time for us to keep things rolling. Thankfully we have some real dedicated staff around here so it hasn't come to a complete halt. However, we will be carrying it on eventually, hopefully next weekend as I will have that following week on holiday and we WILL be giving away prizes for members on the site!

I also managed to get my review of the new Brothers in Arms game up, which you can see here. I really enjoyed it, so be sure to check out the review if you are considering buying it. We have also got some pretty huge games coming up soon, such as Far Cry 2, Fallout 3 and Dead Space, though I have no idea if we will get reviews of all three because we are all so tight for time, so stay tuned to find out.

To finish off, remember when we went to the PCG Showdown and brought you all that great stuff back? Well next week I'm going to try and get over to the EuroGamer Expo over in London, to check out these games. Though I haven't confirmed anything (I'm still looking for someone to go with) I hopefully will be able to check it out and bring you all sorts of previews and other bits and bobs from the event.

So stick around as things are going to well and truly hot-up over the next few weeks.

The De-Frag Team.

Over the past week we have brought you all our coverage from our trip to the PC Gamer Showdown in Coventry, so for those who may have missed bits, here is a summary of what we saw and did over that hectic weekend.

Left 4 Dead

 - Left 4 Dead Demo Details

 - Left 4 Dead Hands-on Impressions

 - Left 4 Dead Hands-on Video

Far Cry 2

 - Far Cry 2 Hands-on Impressions

 - Far Cry 2 Gameplay videos

Mirror's Edge

 - Mirror's Edge Hands-on Impressions

Also, for a run-down of the tournaments and other activites we saw and did, read on!

Well, tomorrow Sam will be leaving from London to head up to Coventry where he will meet me and a friend on the Saturday morning for PC Gamer’s Showdown LAN. We are totally excited, and so should you be because we are going to have all sorts to tell you when we get back (though we may need time for the effects of the alcohol to wear off!) Here is a list of Pre-Release games that we hope to get hands-on time with while we are there: 

As usual, it seems things are going to slow right down over the weekend in terms of news, so I thought I'd post a little thing here about how things are going. First off, as some of you may have noticed, yesterday the site decided to crap itself and just not work for most of the day. We are pretty sure this is due to our hosts... they were probably playing catch with the server or something, but now things seem to be back on track and running smoothly as usual, so sorry about that guys!

On another note, my copy of Mercenaries 2 arrived in the post yesterday, and after about 3 hours of playtime, I have come to the conclusion that this game is well and truly broken. Aside from the frequent game and occasional machine killing crashes, there are a whole tonne of bugs with getting stuck in scenery, and having objects (in particular mission items) getting stuck in the ground. While I will keep trying with it, I can't promise that a review will come right away, as I will likely be battling with these issues for a while until they patch it. Don't get me wrong though, the game seems like a tonne of fun, and blowing stuff up for no reason is still really satisfying, but it seems I just can't do it for long enough without something breaking. So yeah, I'll keep trying, and I'll try to get a good review out as soon as humanly possible.

On yet another note, be sure to keep an eye on the site towards the end of the month, as me, Sam and a friend of mine are planning on going to the PC Gamer Showdown LAN event. We will be there to bring you videos, pics and hands-on previews with games such as Left 4 Dead, Dawn of War II, Mirror's Edge, and more! Not only that, but we will try to get some interviews with some of the developers that will be there. This will hopefully also signify the starting point for our podcasts that we hope to bring you very soon, as we will try to record one to sum up all that happened over the weekend, so stay tuned!

In the mean time, be sure to check out our recent news on the id pack going for half price, the amazing new screenshots for FUEL, the CoD: World at War UK beta and new Diablo III Screenshots. 

Just as a heads up for those of you who might not have noticed, now when you click "My Account" on the left hand navigation bar, you will see that we have updated the user page a lot since launch. If you want to add information, such as your PC specs, favourite game and playing style, click "Edit" at the top of the page, and under each sub heading fill in your details.

Not only this, but you will also see your blog posts at the bottom of the page, and this applies to all, so check out your friends' profile pages for their blogs!

After much fiddling and tweaking on Cryptecks’s part, we are now able to provide you with a User Blog system. That’s right; there is now an entire page dedicated to you guys and your thoughts on... well… anything! 

Also, if you wish to see a particular user’s blogs, all you need to do is click on their name in the blog page and you will be given a list of all their past articles. You may be asking yourselves, “So how the hell do we get started then?”, so here is a step by step guide on how to get your own blogs up and running:

Step 1 - Log in

Step 2 - Click “Post Content” on the left hand side Navigation bar

Step 3 - Click on “User Blog”

Step 4 - Enter a title in the title field, and your Blog post in the text editor field

Step 5 - Click “Preview” to check your post for spelling etc.

Step 6 - Click “Submit”

And there you go, that should be all you need to know to get your blogs up and running. With the provided editor you should be able to embed videos from sites, such as Youtube and Gametrailers, and insert images hosted on other websites, such as Photobucket and TinyPic along with a whole load of other features. I will be making a full list of “How-To’s” with the editor in our forum shortly, but if you need any help before then, please feel free to ask me or any of the other staff around the site.

With the launch of De-Frag now fading away into the past, and the need for more content moving into the present, I'm now looking for some editorial staff to be able to post PC gaming news/Reviews/Blogs on the site. If you are interested, you can either choose one of those areas, or a selection, or all of them. If you want to know more, leave a comment or join the site and PM me through the forums etc.

Requirements:

A love for PC games

Good English/grammar (spell checkers can only do so much)

An internet connection

So yeah, that's pretty much it, just a heads up to anyone looking for a spot on our Editorial team...

Hey guys, I've just setup the official De-Frag Xfire clan for you to join, so hopefully we can use it as a meeting place for the possibility of future game nights!

To join it, go here.

We hope to see you around!