(Click image above for larger version) 

Talking about stuff hitting you out of left field, a nice little PR “roundup” from Microsoft is definitely not what we expected to find in our inbox this warm (yes, warm, weird, I know) Saturday afternoon. A colorful little flyer full of “gamer-talk”, the notice promises a lot more fun for the Indian Xbox 360 community, including local releases for Sakaguchi-san’s Lost Odeyssey and the much-awaited Ninja Gaiden 2, which we presume will happen sometime early February.

Apart from talking a little bit more about the educational content, which Microsoft will release on the Xbox 360 in partnership with Educomp - a “technology driven education organization” (FATAL ERROR: Keyphrase Overusage!) we are told that kids would now be able to play with math, science and social studies in completely new ways (oh joy!) and hopefully walk away “educationally enriched” rather than a bad craving for Mass Effect and Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties. Hey, don’t quote us on this, but we actually learnt more of our history playing with the latter than by sitting around in class, where we usually just passed notes back and forth to stave off the Sandman’s intoxicating aura.

Although we have a number of complaints about what we received, we’ll look the other way this time when it comes to encouraging people to trash talk and indulge in unsporting and aggressive behavior on Xbox LIVE (no matter how sarcastic you wanted it to appear) or plagiarizing content straight from GameSpot’s game guides. Please don’t let us catch you doing these again as we might most probably be tempted to send a sharply-worded critique your way. For now, we’re happy we’ll get to see Ninja Gaiden 2 soon, which coupled with the Burnout Paradise release at the end of the month and the Burnout 3: Takedown Marketplace release on Monday, should keep us coasting until April until the big ticket items end up in our grubby mitts.

We’ve had one bitch of a time ever since we announced the Game of the Year awards and the massive gaming giveaway the likes of which India’s never seen. We missed Christmas, the New Year, our pets’ birthdays and other assorted events just to bring all this goodness to the Indian gaming community and we’ve been blown away by the tremendous response we’ve gotten from the community and the sponsors.

In the end, it is all done and all but the three major prizes have been announced. So point your browser here and check if you are one of the lucky bastards that’s managed to win something while we curse ourselves for making your day. We and the fantastic folks over at GamingIndians have gone to a lot of trouble to set this up, but it’s all been worth the terrible, unyielding pain we’ve had to endure over the last couple of weeks.

At this point, we want to say a big “Thank you” to our generous sponsors who made all of this possible in the first place. We wouldn’t have pulled it off without you, so how about giving it up for these awesome folks who made this thing a resounding success: (and maybe a couple of pints of beer the next time you meet them)

• Ajay Khanna, EA India
• Anand Khemani, e-Xpress Interactive
• Avinash Bali, Tech2 Gaming
• Faiyaz Shaikh, Milestone Interactive
• Manoj Menon, World Wide CDROMs
• Mohit Anand, Microsoft India
• Rahul Varma, The IT Wares
• Sameer Desai, GamingIndians
• Sanjoy John, Microsoft India
• Vinit Agarwal, GamingIndians
• Yashdeep Bali, EA India
• Zarik Nabi, Milestone Interactive

And yes, more applause for all the other people who helped us on this, including the mods, admins and members at GamingIndians and The ANGRY Pixel, all the people behind the scenes at these companies, the great folks over at Genesis BM (especially Charanya Chidambaram and Priyanki Ahluwalia) and all the dedicated (no, really) folks over here at The ANGRY Pixel, especially Abhinav Pattanayak (my right hand man / scapegoat in this whole affair), Anandraj Singh, Bobby Sandhu, Dev Kanchen, Reginald Miranda, Jay Patel, Ravi Sinha and his anime-loving cuckoo brother, Vijay Sinha. It’s an honor working with such talented and crazy individuals such as yourselves.

Remember to stay tuned for more contests and other fun stuff heading your way in the near future and yes, do come back on the 15th to see if you’ve won yourself one of the three big prizes and to read up on the rest of our Game of the Year articles. And yes, soon you will also be able to read up on how we structured the big prize contests (along with their solutions) and maybe introduce your forehead to the nearest solid object when you find out how close you came to solving the “seemingly impossible” puzzles. In the meantime, I’m gonna go curl up under the covers for a couple of hours and catch up on some much-needed beauty sleep.

I have no qualms admitting it. I’ve been unabashedly advicing people who ask me that the Sony PSP is the best damned investment they can make in the console gaming market, if they can buy only one. No other device lets you be entertained so well on the move, allowing you to watch movies, browse the Internet, listen to music and yes, play games no matter where you are. Perfect for when you’re stuck in a boring meeting, or stuck in an elevator without a sweet thing, or bored to death the next time the Electricity Board decides to see what would happen if they pulled the plug on your power line.

And if Sony has their way, you will be able to see movies of unprecedented quality end up on your PSP straight from your BluRay movie and your PlayStation 3 console. After making the announcement that users on the handheld wonder will also be able to Skype to their hearts’ content, Sony has said that it plans to include special version of the movies on certain BD discs, which when loaded into the PS3 and connected to the PSP, will transfer a hi-def “made for PSP” version of the movie onto its memory stick.

While there’s no confirmation on which discs will start to see this functionality (we’re guessing movies under the SPE banner will be the first to use this, duh), this certainly beats sitting around for the better part of an hour with third party video conversion programs.

[via Wired]

I just hate contests! Yes, I know we’re running a whopper of one right now on this very site, but it completely sucks when you can’t really win anything for yourself. And if you thought my luck held out when it came to other contests, boy are you mistaken. In any case, the guys over at Tech2, in association with Milestone Interactive, have managed to snag a 40 GB PlayStation 3 and a copy of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune to give away to one lucky…. fellow. (See how I didn’t use extreme profanity there? I would also like to take this opportunity to thank my anger management therapist for trying to cure me of my addiction to rageahol.)

All you need to do to win the shiny, sexy black beast with the Spiderman font and the best damn game for the platform is simply head over to the contest page here, read through the three articles that contain the code, crack it and then sit back and relax and pray like hell you win. Hurry, you don’t have a lot of time left. A small tip if you want to win: hire a harem of supermodels and send them to the Tech2 Editor’s house to, erm, fortify your standing in the prize line. But whoever wins, listen up, the second I come to know you’re not a fan or you’re going to eBay it ASAP, you will get hunted down like the dog you are and blown up like a midget in a microwave. Consider yourself warned… Or you could just choose to give me the goodies and die a relatively painless death. Your call.

Looks like the Scots are putting their own unique spin on the gaming world. After awarding the first Unreal Tournament III world record, the folks over at the Guinness World Records are now coming out with the Guinness World Records Gamers Edition 2008 on February 8th, 2008. Meant to be a collection of astounding videogame-related records, the book will carry detailed profiles on the best videogames ever made, interviews with record holders and a ton of awesome trivia that should prove to other people how big a videogame nerd you are - like knowing, for example, that Faiz Chopdat has served the “Longest Prison Sentence For Playing A Computer Game” after refusing to turn off his Tetris game while on board an airplane and instantly becoming my lord and master.

But wait, that’s not all, if you’ve been boasting all your life about kicking ass in Guitar Hero, here’s your chance to put your money where your mouth is by taking part in the very first Highest Scorer on Guitar Hero World Record attempt. All you gotta do is cosplay like your favorite guitar hero and end up on February 6th, 2008 at Paris, London, New York, Toronto, Los Angeles or Australia and prove you’ve got what it takes to to be the best damned GH player in the world. According to the official rules:

Players will rock in pairs to one song before passing on to the next Guitar Hero, with just 15 seconds changeover between jams! Paris will kick off proceedings followed by the London, New York, Toronto, LA and Sydney. Players will also be given the chance to form a group and compete for the highest score set by a 6 people playing one guitar, with each person allocated a key and the strum bar to play!

I suppose if you suck at that, you could try showing the world how you’re the best when it comes to 100%-ing every song on Expert with the standard Xbox 360 controller… and then get fed through a straw for the rest of your life…

Boy, it’s been quite a while without any news on Kane’s Wrath - the expansion to last year’s blast-of-an-RTS that was Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars. But with the game just around the corner, we’re starting to see a lot more assets designed specifically to make us play through Tiberium Wars all over again, including the 12 new screenshots you see right here. While you enjoy their goodness and dream about blasting enemies into oblivion with an Ion Cannon or a Nuke, we’ll just go and drool all over Natasha Henstridge as Alexa, who is all set to join Joe Kucan (Kane) and Carl Lumbly from Alias in the HD-cutscenes that made us drool all over Tricia Helfer (poor Kilian) and Jennifer Morrison in Tiberium Wars. And for the love of God, why the heck does Tiberium always remind me of Kryptonite?

Hit the jump for the screenshots.

(more…)

For all those of you that have been waiting for the announcement, it is finally time. We are now in the final 24 hours of the Sweepstakes contest we’ve been running for a long time, so if you’ve voted in our Game of the Year polls, but haven’t yet confirmed your participation in the sweepstakes, you’ve got very little time left to do it.

And we’ve got all three of our mega contests up and running, where you stand to win a copy of Halo 3 Legendary Edition Master Chief Helmet, an XFX 8600 GT and a copy of Crysis or a special copy of the BioShock Collector’s Edition with the Big Daddy figurine. All you’ve got to do is crack the codes that we’ve put up in these three posts and solve them. But be warned, they are nowhere near easy!

The Halo 3 “My head won’t fit inside” Contest:
Details / Discussions
Prize Sponsor: Microsoft India

The PC “Ima graphix whore” Aficionado Contest:
Details / Discussions
Prize Sponsors: The IT Wares / Electronic Arts India

The Big BioShock “Who’s yo Daddy?” Contest:
Details / Discussions
Prize Sponsors: e-Xpress Interactive

On the bright side though, we’ve finally decided we’re going to give in to all you guys’ screams and extend the time for the mega prizes from today to the 15th. So you have until 11:59 PM, January 14, 2008 to crack the codes before we close shop and announce the winners for the mega prizes on the 15th. The winners list for the other prizes will go up sometime tomorrow, so be sure to check the Rules and Regulations and make sure you understand them full well. There will be a test later…

Finally, thanks a lot for giving us sadists some of the best fun we’ve ever had in our lives torturing you with fiendish puzzles designed to shave a couple of years off your lives. We will be wrapping up the whole show by posting the remainder of our Game of the Year articles up and announcing the winners, before we waltz off to a marathon TF2-slash-CoD4 session and drop off the face of the earth until the end of the month. Oh, yes, remember to stay tuned, ‘cos we’ve got some major announcements coming up before long and we may even announce another devilishly fun (for us) contest soon enough. And just when you thought it was safe to let your guard down…

PRIZE SPONSORS