Naturally, all this eye candy comes at a price, but Valve are still figuring out where exactly the recommended specification lies for Lost Coast. When pushed, Lombardi revealed that while the CPU requirements may be relatively low at 2.0 to 3.0Ghz, the hunger for RAM borders on the guttenous at 1Gb to 2Gb, though he stresses that these figures are still to be finalised.

Naturally, the more the better, but considering most gamers have 512MB of RAM, and even enthusiasts somehow make do with "only" 1GB, the suggestion that Lost Coast could need as much as two gigabytes of RAM to run HDR optimally may mean that most of the gaming public won't see the full performance for a while yet.

The graphics card requirements are slightly less than stratospheric, at 6800GT / X800Pro level, though as Lombardi points out, "Higher will be better, as always." Just how much better is unknown at this point: "We have not yet had a chance to complete our testing on the highest end products coming from the leading vendors," Lombardi told us, "But we hope to have those details and a final release date to share soon."