The action starts off quietly, though, as the squad infiltrates through the swamp, only to come upon a crashed US Navy plane. A squad member climbs up to the cockpit to check the condition of the pilot only to discover that the body is booby-trapped with a grenade. As soon as it explodes Japanese soldiers, heavily camouflaged with branches and leaves, erupt out of the brush and the fight is on. There's lots of running people through with bayonets, point-blank gunfire, and chaos.

Get through the ambush and it's time to move out of the swamp into the grassland. The flamethrower comes in very handy at this point, since there's plenty of tall grass for Japanese soldiers to hide in. No problem; just burn it down. Also take out those trees where snipers like to camp. If you have two players, you can both have flamethrowers, which makes quick work of the jungle, but you have to be careful of where you point that thing. The flamethrower makes short work of grunts, and it is a bit disturbing how realistic it is. Guys melt when you torch them.

New chips open the door to gaming rigs with a mix of ATI and NVIDIA cards

NVIDIA is busily plugging away with its 200 series and marketing various SLI solutions in the form of anything from a pair of 8000 or 9000 cards to its top end -- a pair of 280 GTXs.  AMD is similarly pushing its 4850/4870 CrossFire solutions along with CrossFire for its new dual-GPU 4870 X2 cards.  The key thing is AMD/ATI cards are not compatible with NVIDIA cards -- CrossFire and SLI are two different technologies.  Furthermore, most motherboards either support SLI or support CrossFire -- most don't do both.

Enter Lucid, also known as LucidLogix, a fabless semiconductor designer (meaning it outsources its chips to other company's fabs, such as TSMC).  Lucid is far from a known name in the graphics industry, though that may soon change.  With the help of Intel Capital backing and over 50 patents, it has developed a technology that seems poised to rock the graphics industry.

The groundbreaking technology is titled the HYDRA Engine.  The accomplishment of the engine is nothing short of unbelievable to those who follow the graphics industry.  It uses hardware and software to allow virtually any AMD/ATI and NVIDIA GPU to work together and share workloads with the CPU, scaling programs almost linearly.  You could probably call the HYDRA Engine CrossFire-SLI, though you might run into a spot of legal trouble in trying to do so.

Compare this image, with the image on the right. Note the missing components, and how they are present in the image on the right. These images will be combined to form the final image. This division is based on how fast each GPU is, and allows for near-linear scaling.  (Source: PC Perspective)
On the left the full screen is displayed, on the right one of the GPU's workload. Note the scene on the right is missing the floor, which is being rendered on the other GPU.  (Source: PC Perspective)

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Changes
• Added server map timeleft to upper right of scoreboard
• Added new firing sounds to The Backburner
• Removed the Custom Tab in the serverbrowser, and added the Tags field to the base Internet Tab
• Increased The Kritzkrieg's uber-charge rate bonus from 10% to 25%
• 32 player servers can now support an extra slot of SourceTV
• Made the freezecam item panel description easier to read
• Players now broadcast whether they chose a team directly or use autoteam
• Added proper handling of cart blocking recognition to Payload maps

Bug fixes
• Fixed bug where switching from flaregun-wielding Pyro to another class meant you didn't get a full ammo loadout on first spawn
• Fixed Spy watch arm not using team skins
• Fixed weapon switching preventing you from using secondary attacks for a 0.2s window after the primary became available
• Fixed players getting stuck in a bad animation state when class switching while spinning the minigun
• Fixed a loophole that allowed players to pickup weapons of other classes

We are currently in the final stages of development of PC patch 1.2.0 and will start testing it shortly. We expect to release the patch in September.

The patch will include the following features:

• DLC1:
-- Boneyard Map
-- Conquer Mode
• Server Browser - Phase 2
• Joystick support
• PC Leaderboards - Unranked
• PC Leaderboards - Ranked
• Dedicated Server Tools

The Heavy's second unlockable, Natascha, slows enemies with her bullets. Anyone damaged by her will move slower for an instant, encouraging them to find cover or turn and face the Heavy, mano-a-tiny-itty-bitty-mano. Unfortunately, Natascha is slightly weaker than Sasha, so she takes longer to finish off a victim. As a result, Natascha's great against fleeing cowards, such as Scouts & Medics, and less great against anyone actively trying to kill her master. Heavies that like to jump around corners and surprise groups of startled enemy crybabies will also find her very useful, although they should look for a Sasha-wielding enemy Heavy before they leap.

In typical Call of Duty fashion, World at War is split into two campaigns: the U.S. Marines fighting the entrenched Japanese in the Pacific islands, and the Russians pushing the Germans back to Berlin toward the end of the war.

The first mission I get to check out is part of the Battle of Peleliu. Here I'm introduced to both my commanding officer, Kiefer "Jack Bauer" Sutherland, and the new battle tactics employed by the Japanese. After discovering a downed P-51 in the jungle, an NPC squadmate checks out the pilot's body hanging out of the cockpit. Everything appears to be normal, until he finds a live grenade tucked under the corpse -- it goes off, and suddenly, the squad is ambushed by Japanese troops hiding in the brush. A big part of the Pacific campaign features ambushes like this as well as unpredictable banzai charges from enemy troops.

We’re pleased to announce that Call of Duty: World at War will be sporting PunkBuster out-of-the-box for PC fans!

Anti-cheat is an important addition to competitive multiplayer games on the PC platform, and we’re partnering with Even Balance to get it right. We’ve had Even Balance technicians out at Treyarch on multiple occasions aiding in the implementation of PB into CoD:WW.

Through this collaboration, we’ll be providing the best anti-cheat solution on the market to keep those hackers at bay.

Also, we think we have our minimum PC system requirements nailed down. Please reference below.

Processor:
- AMD 64 3200+/Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz or better
Memory:
- 8 GB free hard drive space
- 512MB RAM (XP)/1GB RAM (VISTA)
Graphics:
- Shader 3.0 or better
- 256MB Nvidia Geforce 6600GT/ATI Radeon 1600XT or better

Badwater Basin is a Payload map focusing on more open spaces and less chokepoints than Gold Rush. (A) Right out of the gate is a multi-level area where the Blu team needs to control the high ground while moving the cart through a tunnel below. This open area has few natural choke points, allowing Scouts, Soldiers, and Demomen to move creatively through the space, forcing the Red team to rapidly respond to choices made by Blu. (B) As the track winds its way into tighter spaces, vertical control becomes more important. Each successive checkpoint requires the Blu team to take control of defensive positions above the track, usually occupied by Red Engineers. (C) Eventually the track winds down and a large basin which the Blu team must assault from all sides in a final push to destroy the Red base.

Unlike Gold Rush, where the track is split into three separate stages, Badwater Basin uses a single large stage with several checkpoints. As a result, the Blu team is highly encouraged to push the cart hard after beating their way through the Red defensive line.

We’ve been getting a lot of questions about Conquer, our upcoming free additional game mode for Frontlines: Fuel of War. We wanted to take a few minutes to give our fans a quick update by answering some of the most frequent questions:

Q: How many maps will support the new Conquer game mode?

A: Every map that has shipped with the game and will be released as downloadable content will support BOTH the Frontlines and Conquer game modes. If you count the 8 release maps, the recently released Boneyard and the four upcoming maps (Infiltration, Wide-Awake, Sunder and Hindsight), you’ll have a total of 13 maps to experience in both game modes.

Q: Have you reduced the size of any of the maps for Conquer?

A: No! We have not made any modification to the topography or size of our levels, no need to worry about a stripped down version of Solarfarm or Oilfield.

Q: What are some of the changes we can expect in the Conquer levels?

A: Conquer plays differently than Frontlines. In order to provide the best Conquer experience possible we have made balance changes in some maps which includes tweaks to the vehicle selection and placement along with re-balancing the layout and default ownership of some objectives.

Q: Can main bases be captured?

A: No! The game mode is about controlling the battleground. Allowing for the capture of main bases would take focus away from this goal and reward base campers, something we’d all like to avoid. Note that some maps such as Street do not have a single, defined, main base due to their circular nature. In those cases every objective can be captured since there are no main bases to focus on.

Everyone at Kaos Studios is very excited about this addition to the game and can’t wait to play it with everybody online soon. Keep an eye out for an announcement on a release date!

GameStop and the Call of Duty: World At War team have partnered for an exclusive pre-sell offer! To give an advantage to the multiplayer elite on day 1, pre-order through GameStop and you’ll instantly get access to the M1A1 Carbine Assault Rifle! The M1A1 is a high-level (15+) assault rifle which you can have from the moment you start playing multiplayer.

The powerful M1A1 gives you the advantage with:

• A much larger magazine-size than starting rifles so you can get more kills without slowing to reload.
• Pin-tight targeting sight helps with quicker aiming for accurate take downs and headshots.
• Lighting-fast semi-automatic firing gives you kill speeds you’ll need to blow away your competition.