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UPDATE: OK, looks like the original plan’s scrapped. Milestone’s just called us up to let us know that if you’ve got the time and want to take a look at Street Fighter IV, you’re more than welcome to drop in and kick our ass at the launch party. Yes, you heard us – it’s open to all gamers now. So if you’ve got nothing better to do on the 20th, head on over to The Living Room on Residency Cross Road (next to Dena Bank) between 5 PM and 8 PM and get your SF4 groove on!
‘Tis that season again – we’ve all got Carl Douglas’ “Kung Fu Fighting” set to repeat infinitely on our iPods; we’ve dressed up like Ryu, Ken and Rufus – ready to play mock-fights with the unsuspecting passer-by on a crowded street; we’ve used up the spare “Free Karate Lesson” coupon, and soon after, the “Free Plaster Cast” coupon that we had lying around the house for the last three years; we’ve done nothing but watch martial arts movies (and not the wire-fu crapitos) every spare minute we get and dug up and played through every Street Fighter game ever made till date. But wait, what about Street Fighter IV? Unless you’re a game journalist with a cool site like ours (plug away, my good man) and gotten a orgasmic press kit and a review copy, you’re gonna have wait until the game is officially available in stores.
Dejected? Awww, don’t be! Because we’re giving away five special invites to the Street Fighter IV launch party in Bangalore this Friday! You will find yourself mingling with the most devout gamers in the country, where you can pick on our resident associate editor Street Fighter ignoramus, Abhinav, and use your extensive knowledge of all things Street Fighter to subdue him into giving him your lunch money giving you his lunch money. So, what are you waiting for? Send a nice little email to streetfighter4 {at} theangrypixel(.)com and tell us why we should include you in the inner circle of awesomeness. If you’ve got time on your hands, we’ll even take frenzied cellphone recordings of you screaming “Shoryuken-Shoryuken! Hadoken-Hadoken!”, followed by a couple of death gurgles. Preferably in a library or a hospital or any other environment where you’re supposed to keep your trap shut! So yeah, chop-chop, we’re waiting!
With just a couple of days more for us to enjoy Ensemble’s swan song, Halo Wars, Microsoft has released the next dev diary, or ViDoc as Bungie christened them, to get the hype train rolling for the next game set in the Haloverse. After introducing us to the Spartans last time around, the new diary focuses on how the team focused on developing a strategy game that was exclusive to the consoles, including working with the vast amounts of material available in the Halo universe, getting the controls just right for “consolification” and meeting all the expectations of the fans and (former) skeptics such as myself.
More than half a year after its arrival in arcades, Capcom’s Street Fighter IV has finally come home to console owners (and hopefully PC ones, too). You’d think after 20 years of playing Street Fighter games, as great as they are and still till even now, that numero quarto would seem like the same song and dance all over again. We won’t argue with that, but Street Fighter IV (SFIV) reinforces everything you’ve ever wanted in a fighting game, things you didn’t expect to enjoy, and things that you didn’t want or knew existed – all in one extremely well-executed, polished package. To put it bluntly, it’s a hard dish to not to fall in love with all over again.
So, you’re one of those new-fangled gamers that’s just itching to get his hands dirty with Street Fighter IV after everyone that’s cool around you has been talking about nothing but the game the last couple of months. But wait, what happens when you get the game and find your posterior handed to you on a bloody silver plate because you don’t have a friggin’ clue about how exactly you’re supposed to pull off those fancy-schmancy moves that will net you your win? Fear no more, we’re here to the rescue of all those people that want to get ready for Street Fighter IV with a handy character moves guide that you can keep referring to. At least, until you get good enough to score a 100% on a pop quiz if we were to wake you at 3 in the morning and grill you on them. We got this little handy guide along with our little press kit earlier and scanned them because, oh, let’s say an associate editor that’s spent way too much time playing shooters suddenly threw us a curveball by asking which button he should be mashing to block incoming attacks! Yeah, Bruce, fancy that!
Hit the jump for your download!
Food, water, air, shelter, Killzone 2 – which seems to be the new updated list of what people need to stay alive and not curl up into a tight little ball and die from heartbreak and neglect. Just as news comes pouring in that the most eagerly awaited game of all time on the PS3 has officially broken street date and is ending up on game shelves everywhere in Dubai and Pakistan, we get some shocking news of what’s happening right in our backyard. With tensions running high between India and her next door neighbour, obviously, we can’t have them lording it over us about how they’re playing Killzone 2 and we aren’t. Well, fear no more, for India has followed suit and is breaking the street date as of right bloody now, with copies of the game being made available in all major cities starting from today.
And the best part is, it’s all official. With gamers in the country beating down the doors of the regional SCE distributors and threatening to cancel their pre-orders and take their business to the gray markets, Sony India and Milestone Interactive have done pretty much the only thing they could to save their business – break the street date officially and get the game out to starving fans a day or two before they’ll be available for sale in teeny tiny stores in a crowded alleyway. Talk about flipping the gray market off big time! Although we knew about it as soon as news of the Dubai leaks reached us, we were asked to keep our mouths shut until an official press release could be whipped up explaining what the heck was going on. Which, incidentally, also explains why we rushed to get our single player review of the game out the door a week before schedule.
Hit the jump for the official press release.
E3 2005 – the defining moment when Sony and Guerilla Games (GG) almost convinced me to pick up a PS3 as soon as the shiny piano-black console with the Spiderman font would become available, southbound credit lines be damned. The now-infamous trailer blew the collective gaming world away – jaws dropping and tongues doing a very wet red-carpet routine with the realisation that the sky will soon be the limit, thanks to the almost-mythical power of the Cell processor quietly purring away under the hood of the sexy black beast. Unfortunately, heartbreak soon followed with the disclosure that contrary to what Sony had claimed, the trailer was, in fact, prerendered CG, created to show off what would it should look like when it would finally launch, provided things didn’t get screwed six ways from Sunday from now till then. Most PS3 fans felt cheap and used after all the emotional trauma they suffered at the hands of the Xbox 360 and Wii fans after defending the trailer across message boards all over the internet – sort of like marrying the gorgeous girl they’d dated for ten years only to find out she was a transvestite on the wedding night. Soon after, Grand Theft Auto 4 hopped on top of the Xbox 360 bandwagon and before long, I was putting my money on the Redmond giant’s offering, signing the contract in blood without reading the fine print about how it would occasionally keep reminding me of a reddish hell, which would happen, predictably, when I found myself completely getting drawn in by some game.
Fast forward to late 2008: GG and Sony jump-start the hype train once again with preview builds of Killzone 2 starting to show up on game-show floors all over the planet. This time around, PS3 fans, confident in the knowledge that the PS3 finally had its “killer app” squarely in its sights, pulled up their pants, reset their passwords and stormed forums and message boards worldwide with a new found vigor. The following months saw me wading through N4G-melting previews and an acute overdose of animated GIFs explaining visually why Killzone 2 will be the second coming of Jesus and how GG was all set to pull off a Kratos by kicking God out of His Almighty Throne and setting up a bitchin’ LAN party right there in the middle of heaven. Whoa, did I back the wrong horse there by siding with the Xbox 360?
With the game just days away from launch, good news seems to be pouring from all the sides for the Street Fighter fans out there. Capcom Europe has outlined its plans for downloadable content and expansion packs that would me made available to gamers post-release of the latest game in the series, Street Fighter IV.
Titled Championship Mode, this expansion pack will add a variety of features to an already impressive list. With the release of this expansion, players will be able to record, upload and download top matches, vote for their favorites and leave feedback. Besides, you will also have a new points system to measure your skill and an improved matchmaking system. And the best part of all this it will not cost you a dime.
And thats not all!
How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice! And if that fails, an inexpensive GPS, Google Maps and front-row tickets could probably do wonders. But how do you get to Jaspreet Bindra, the man holding all the strings to Microsoft India’s Entertainment & Devices Division? Well, after trying for over four months through the usual PR channels, we finally decided to use my Xbox MVP status to try and spend some quality time with the newly appointed Country Manager and ask some really hard hitting questions that were just burning to be answered. So, last Wednesday, with a lot of help from the absolutely adorable Abhishek Kant – Community Program Manager for Microsoft India – we managed to burn up the telephone wires for the better part of an hour with the warm and very approachable Jaspreet and the Assistant Product Manager for the Xbox 360 – Sanjoy John, getting down to brass tacks about the Xbox 360 and the Games for Windows platforms in India.
We were originally supposed to schedule a video interview with him sometime next week, but with Vijay and Reggie rowing the slave galleon pretty hard next week (not to mention how every spare moment in Vijay’s life is now spent playing Gollum And Its Precious with his Leader Class Bulkhead action figure), we decided we’ll just roll with what we have for now and do the video interview when the stars are aligned just right. One note about the following interview, when you see text marked out in italics like this, that’s just me inserting my thoughts on what’s being said or just being the kooky klass klown. Consider yourself warned.
It has been a while since The ANGRY Pixel has compiled a Thursday Top Ten list. Well, we have a Thursday on hand here so what better way to make use of it then come up with a brand new list, which happens to be a list of the ten most stupid, weird decisions that the videogame giants have taken in the recent years. So while they plowed forward, brimming in confidence that their way is the right way, all we could do is watch them slack-jawed in disbelief as they happily shot themselves in the foot.
Hit the jump to have a look at what The ANGRY Pixel believes are the top ten worst decisions of this generation.
Mere weeks remain before Street Fighter IV punches its way onto our consoles, ready to pummel into submission our weekend drunken gaming spree. In the meantime, while we flex our wrists in anticipation, meditate to elevate our mind and soul onto one plane where no challenge is daunting enough, let us afford a glance at the achievement/trophy list for the upcoming game.
Our Hadouken is strong.