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Archive for the ‘PC’ Category
I vividly remember the first time I played a Splinter Cell game; half the time I was busy retrieving my jaw from the floor. Right from the amazing graphics to the stealth, from staying in the shadows to making sure that the guy you just knocked out had to be tucked away in the shadows as well, each and every mechanic of the game worked together to make it a truly memorable experience. Sam Fisher has come quite a way down the line. So much so that in his fifth outing, it is almost for the fans of the original game to even recognize Sam Fisher, and for that matter, Splinter Cell. But is that such a bad thing, more so when we harp about games like Call of Duty never staying from the tried and tested formula? Let’s find out.
Obsidian has been hard at work on Alpha Protocol for quite a while now. Even then, the game has mostly stayed well below the hype-radar. Now, that is not really a bad thing, especially if the game surprises us by turning out to be a masterpiece in the end. But still, considering the amount of money we gamers are supposed to pony up for titles nowadays, it is always welcome to have an idea or two about how the game is turning out to be. With that thought in mind, we have been giving the preview code of Alpha Protocol a spin for the past few days. There have been a few hits and a couple of misses. Hit the jump to find what they are and will they matter to you when the time comes up to put your hard-earned cash on the counter.
I could never really understand the obsession of setting their games in a nuclear winter setting in this part of the world. First there was GSC Game World with the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series and now we have A4 games, a bunch of developers from Ukraine with their rendition of a nuclear winter ravaged Moscow in the near-future. Based on the best-selling novel by the same name by Dmitry Glukhovsky, the game features Moscow, devastated in a nuclear war, leaving it’s survivors trapped below the wasteland in its intricate metro tunnels, as they try to survive in any which way possible. Is the game good enough to send chills down your skin as you fight your way through claustrophobic underground tunnels as you battle hideous mutants? Let’s find out.
When was the last time you hopped on to a propane tank in a game, shot the tank and then actually took off into the sky, riding the propane tank all the way? Or hijacked hovering helicopters? Taken off on a parachute while racing towards the edge of a cliff on a motorbike? Or actually ended up on flying 747’s, riding on its wings? If all these things sound crazy enough to not even make it into a video-game, then my friend, you are oh-so wrong for you haven’t yet paid a visit to the crazy-yet-fun world of Just Cause 2.
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Once you have managed to not lose your sanity trying to get to connect to one of the many servers available on the PC version of Battlefield Bad Company 2 (BFBC2), you will discover that the guys at DICE have managed to craft a wonderfully addictive multiplayer game. It’s a shame then that so many people out there playing the game are deprived of really enjoying the game to its full extent only because they are either new to the series in the general or are haven’t yet grasped the basics of Battlefield’s multiplayer mode or are just douche-bags who enjoy using an Abram as their personally taxi or are just there to boost their K/D ratio. While we can’t do anything about the douche-bags, here are five quick tips that you, can use to be a good in BFBC2 without breaking a sweat.
Creative Assembly’s Total War series has reserved a special place in the hearts of RTS aficionados across the world. Empire: Total War (ETW), the latest in the series till now, was breathtaking in its scope. No wonder that it is on the must-play list of all RTS gamers. Maybe that is what prompted Creative Assembly to go for a sort of stand-alone expansion in form of Napoleon: Total War (NTW) instead of a full-fledged new game in the Total War series. So instead of a free-flowing game style that most Total War fanatics would be accustomed to, you will instead be stepping into the shoes Napoleon Bonaparte.
Veterans of ETW will feel immediately at ease with NTW as they happen to share the same code. There have been tweaks and new features being added into the game so gamers hopefully should be able to see some of the niggles from ETW being addressed in NTW. So at the end of the day, you still have the good old turn-based game which transforms into a real-time war game when the need arises. The only thing different would be that you would be following the exploits of Napoleon over a course of four campaigns, namely, Egyptian, Italian, European and the infamous Waterloo.
Here is something for the PC gamers. Razer is keen on accelerating its expansion in India and Mr. Tan Min Liang, CEO, Razer wants to share the action-plan with you. To this end, they are organizing a little tea-party with us gamers in Bangalore and Mumbai. Besides getting a chance to experience Razer’s product line-up that includes the likes of DeathAdder, Mamba, Lycosa Mirror, Vespula and Destructor, this event will also provide you with ample opportunity to interact with the brains behind Razer’s product-design as well take home a goodie bag or two. Razer is keen to stress that the event is meant for their gaming audience and would love to have as many of us show-up as possible. Now if only they had decided upon a weekend event. Anyways, for those who can make it, the event details are after the jump.
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 did it first and now Just Cause 2 has done the same; rack up over 2 million downloads of its demo. Nowadays it is very rare to have a demo for a game as most of the developers / publishers do not feel the need to expend any energy in making a demo for their games. Maybe they will give this strategy a re-think considering how well received some of the demos have been in recent times, boosting up the interest in the game as well as converting fence-sitters to day-1 buyers.
Besides chocking the bandwidth, Just Cause 2’s 35 square miles of the Panauan playground featured in the demo for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 has given us some interesting figures. Hit the jump to head to the trivia section and find out what gamers have been up to in the Just Cause 2 world since the demo hit the web on 4th March 2010.
Being a massive fan of the AvP universe, and having read all the novels in the series, I know I was waiting for this one. I wanted to play the story. I desperately wanted to see Machiko Noguchi kick ass, especially after seeing the first AvP movie make it so close to that story. I wanted to see Yautja battle with honor and the Xenomorphs tear through flesh and bone.
The AvP game of 1999 (which I consider the scariest game of all time), followed a standard movie based plot, while the follow up by Sierra wasn’t very memorable either. I was REALLY hoping that someone would finally go back to the novels and comics and do something different. However, this doesn’t really happen in AvP 2010. The story pretty much follows the AvP movie, throws in the predictable Weyland-Yutani capitalist-bastard angle and doesn’t leave much to remember.
11 years after AvP, Rebellion has reloaded the franchise with all new DirectX 11 based graphics that promises to scare the bejeesus out of you while your jaw drops in awe of the stunning visuals. So does AvP 2010 live up to the hype? Or is it one of those big-title releases that can’t put its money where its mouth is? Read on and decide for yourself.
Silent Hunter is all ready to set sail for the fifth time, harnessing the raw power of the modern day PC’s to deliver a richer and more life-like experience of what it feels like to be the commander of a hulking mass of bullet-shaped steel and sail right under the nose of enemy ships. Silent Hunter V has a bevy of improvements lined up of the previous iterations of the game. The most important one all these changes is that you no longer can change stations just at the flick of a switch. So now, if you want to go from the gunner’s station to another section of the ship, you will have to actually walk through the submarine, brush against other crew members and slid through port-holes to get to your destination, all in a first-persons view.
Thankfully, the realism factor can be toned down at will, keeping the game accessible to both the causal gamer as well as a true submarine-warfare sim fanatic. So if you are one of those who would rather prefer to have a third-person view of their submarine or just let loose a salvo of torpedoes on the enemy battle-ship, you can do just that by bringing the realism a notch down. Thankfully, by doing that, the game doesn’t turn into a cake-walk and still manages to throw enough challenges at you to keep you hooked.