Archive for the ‘Features’ Category

Four beautiful women gathered from around the world. Each one has been mentally violated by the horror of war. As their sole means of survival, they are modified into the ultimate bio-mechanical arsenal: The Beauty and the Beast Corps. Can Solid Snake finally uncover their humanity and rescue them from their lucid nightmares? Or will they simply be another notch or four on the casualty list?

Director Hideo Kojima’s vision, a physical beast on the outside and a woman’s beauty on the inside, has finally been realized with the approaching release of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Two voice actors were provided for each boss in the English voices department, one providing the beast’s voice, the second portraying the human voice and both voices subsequently over-lapped to further the personality divide. The high-grade production values don’t stop there. Kojima commissioned four real-life beauties and used advanced modeling and digital photography techniques to have them provide the framework, so to speak, for the feral four.

We know some of the powers displayed by each beastly beauty, and the references to famous and infamous Metal Gear Solid bosses and Snake Eater pathos. What of the beauty beneath the beast? Let’s take a closer look at the models who have gamers head-over-heels in love with their rampant murder mixed with a dash of stylish mangling and post-traumatic stress echoing in their desensitized mechanical hearts.

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For me, fighting games continue to be a part of my everyday fundamental, button-mashing diet. It only seems like yesterday when I was able to execute my first Hadoken in Street Fighter II. The first time I managed a Fatality off Mortal Kombat’s Johnny Cage, ripping his pretty little head off in supreme satisfaction. The first time experiencing Kasumi’s bouncy-breasty radiance in her Rabbit swimsuit from Dead or Alive Xtreme Volleyball… Oh wait, that last one didn’t have any fighting it in, did it? Ok, more or less, it still had the bouncy-breasty radiance that DOA games are still known for. Upon further reflecting on perpetual conundrums, even cruddy fighting games still had a memorable gimmick or two, like how Primal Fury was essentially Mortal Kombat but with prehistoric animals. Or how Kakuto Chojin so hilariously ripped off Fight Club’s plot. Ah, how one mingles in the memories of the inconsequential!

Getting back to the point, there are still game companies which have stayed long with the fighting genre and continue to support it, despite knowing that the days of coin-op arcades have long passed (Japan notwithstanding). Newer entries continue to be pumped – and thanks to the advent of better net infrastructure, more and more franchises are taking the leap to online matchmaking. No longer content to just playing your homies from the hood or the local game cafe, you’ll now be given the opportunity to fool around with players from all sorts of regions. You haven’t played a real game of Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves until some random 15-year-old Asian munchkin promptly hands over your carcass in less than a minute.

Thusly, I solemnly declare that a brief rundown on potential, forthcoming Beat em’ Ups shall be in effective order. Heaven or Hell, let’s fight!

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You’ve played them. You’ve heard of them. Hell, you’ve probably written bad fanfics about them (no, it doesn’t matter how realistic your portrayal of TifaxSquall is. It’s just not happening, fangirls). Japanese Role Playing Games (JRPGs) are one of the must-haves of just about any video game console you can name, with at least one of the most popular coming bearing the Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest stamp. The quality of JRPGs vary just as much as their irreverent spiraling plot lines do, and finding a derivative troll that feeds like a parasite on your patience is nothing new. However, sometimes you stumble upon a real gem that claims you right from the first Limit Break, and once every ounce of gameplay is experienced, a sequel is the next natural course of action. Here are some of the greatest Japanese RPG franchises that haven’t yet received a new iteration, but which occupy the top of the waiting list.

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For all those who have been following the Indian gaming scene, Mohit Anand’s departure from Microsoft India came as quite a shocker. The news of him stepping down from his post of Country Manager for Microsoft India’s Entertainment and Devices Division was completely out of the blue and caught everyone by surprise. In the ensuing confusion, quite a lot of news sites came out with their take on the circumstances that led to the event, which frankly, seemed to be quite a study in contrast with what we have known about the relationship of Mohit Anand and Microsoft India. So, to set the record set, we decided to talk with the man himself and clear out some of the rumors that have been swirling around on the World Wide Web.

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If you haven’t guessed already, this week’s feature deals with the Best Real-Time Strategy Games of all time. Clearly it’s something incredibly hard to decide, especially considering just how many awesome Strategy games that are out there right now, not counting eternal classics that have withstood the test of time to this day. No, I’m not talking about ancient pieces of history like Dune II or Civilization. Indeed, for a long time the only seeming piece of strategy a computer was considered to exhibit was a simple (yet incredibly complex) game of Chess.Chess was where it all began; simple white vs black, a set piece of units and a board to play on. Many early Strategy games were surprisingly, simply digital versions of Chess. Back then, whole computers were dedicated to making veritable opponents for human players and for a while it was truly the first ‘Strategy’ game for what was considered ‘digital media’ way back in the 1960s and ’70s. This, of course, has been ever changing up to the more recent (and more famous) Deep Blue and its prodigious cousins. Granted, the entire thing would be considered more of a console Strategy Game if you want to be a technical bitch – but they are Strategy Games nonetheless.

Of course we aren’t here to discuss centuries old games that have withstood the test of time. No, we’re here to discuss the very best of RTS games – the ones that have excelled in game play, story and/or just sheer awesomeness that allows them to stand out amongst the crowd of copy-cats that inhabit most genres these days. Without further ado, on with the show!

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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.

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…

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