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Mumbai seems to be getting dedicated game shops left, right and center. Just a few days back we had carried the story about E-Xpress Interactive stepping into retail marketing with their flag-ship store in Mumbai. Now Milestone too has joined the fray in all earnest with a slick-looking retail outlet, Game4u.
Situated at Mega Mall, Oshiwara, Mumbai, the store was formally inaugurated by Vijender Singh, bronze-medalist from the last Olympics and Suraj Gaggan who’s “Give Me Some Sunshine” from the movie “3 Idiots” are on everyone’s lips. Mr. Jayant R. Sharma, CEO/Chairman of Milestone Interactive was on hand to elaborate on his plan to expand the stores presence to multiple cities with a minimum of fifty stores.
Visitors on the store can expect to find demo-kiosks, a pretty neat looking Rock Band setup to have an impromptu jam session and even section just for the girls, called Game4Girls! Besides stocking up on the games, Game4U will also be offering Blu-Ray movies to add to your fledgling collection of hi-def movie library. Hit the jump to see some of the pictures from the event and the shop floor. Better still, visit Game4U and tell us what you think about it.
E-Xpress’s monthly list of scheduled releases is in and it is packing in quite a lot of games this time. PC gamers will finally get a chance to take Assassin’s Creed II for a spin along with stepping into the shoes of a submarine commander with Silent Hill 5, the sub-sim. A word of caution: both the titles are coming with new the DRM system implemented by Ubisoft that would require you to be connected to the Internet at all times to be able to play the game. Metro 2033 and Just cause 2 are both looking good with the latter’s demo out on Steam for you to try and buy. Both are Steam Works games so you can have them permanently added to your Steam games list.
Most of these games will be popping up on the consoles as well along with Batman: Arkham Asylum GOTY edition coming for the Xbox 360 and the PS3. We cannot tell you yet what’s there in the package because of an embargo but we can assure that it is good. Google around if you can’ wait to know as some of the sites have divulged the information. Hit the jump to see the whole list of titles and their price. Don’t forget to tell us what you think about them in the comments section.
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.
Just a quick update from E-Xpress regarding the Indian pricing of Aliens vs Predator for the three platforms. The PC Games for Windows version understandably is the cheapest of the lot at Rs. 699 only while the Xbox 360 and the PS3 versions are priced at Rs. 2499 each. So if you have a fairly good PC, the Games for Windows version would turn out to be the best deal or else, just pick up a console copy based on your preference of your console.
So while we were busy tending to our day-time jobs, The ANGRY Pixel crossed a major milestone. Now we have ten thousand plus feed subscribers; 10,016 to be exact. It is gratifying to know that there are people out there who want to check out what The ANGRY Pixel has to say.
Yes, we do realize this is a fickle number that will keep shifting around but even then, it is a major milestone for a small and independent gaming blog run from India. We thank our readers for sticking with us even after our posting schedules went haywire on account of most of the core team of TAPians getting hitched last year, yours truly included.
TAP will bounce back and soon. In the meantime, you keep cheering for us because that is what matters the most to us!
P.S. Our friends at IndianVideoGamer had a milestone moment of their own when they crossed 5000 members mark recently. Cheers to them as well!
Ever since the concept of Downloadable Content (DLC) gained popularity within the gaming scene, we have been offered everything as a DLC in games; right from new islands (Burnout), brand new single player campaigns (GTA IV) to new multiplayer maps (COD4, COD:WaW, BF:BC) and even something as inane as horse armor (Oblivion)! Infact, now it is assumed that any new game will eventually have a DLC for it.
Anything that would extend the life of a good game is always welcome but if a couple of chapters in-game are dropped in order to be sold to us later on, then that raises certain doubts in mind. Battle for Forli, the first DLC for the brilliantly made Assassins Creed II manages to raise a few doubts of its own. Fans of the series will love the fact that Ubisoft is releasing two additional chapter (the second DLC sometime in February) missing from the main campaign, which purportedly would have delayed the game. Leaving the questions aside for a while, let’s see what the DLC has to offer.
e-Xpress Interactive just sent in there release schedule for the month of February, 2010 along with the console on which they will be available and the hit that you will have to take on your credit-card. The list has a few eagerly anticipated games, like Bioshock II, Aliens Vs. Predator and Napolean Total War, that has been on the must-buy charts of many gamers. And here we were thinking that just maybe, this month would come as some respite for our already maxed out credit cards!
Sob-stories aside, have a quick look at the list after the jump and decide which platform would be the best for you. Those in Mumbai have an even better option of walking into India’s premier game shop; Games: The Shop, again, a great initiative by e-Xpress Interactive. We hope we will get to see one in our namma Bengaluru. Find the press release for this as well after the jump.
After being in development for close to 15 long years, Avatar, the movie finally saw the light of the day a couple of weeks back. After having smashed all box-office records with Titanic, Avatar happens to be James Cameron’s next movie which all but guaranteed that the hype-wagon will steam-in, full blast. As it goes for any new high-profile Hollywood release nowadays, it is almost mandatory to have a video-game tie-in and so did Avatar, except that, this time around, the game was released earlier than the movie hit the theaters. Did letting gamers scour the make-believe world of Pandora on their PCs and consoles actually work in favor of the movie by generating an even greater buzz? Or the decision to craft a parallel story-line rather than following the one in the movie resulted in Avatar, the game falling flat on its face? Let’s find out.
With 2010 just around the corner, our mailboxes have started recieving press-releases of games that we will be getting to see in the early months of the new year. Leading the pack will be Ubisoft’s Splinter Cell: Conviction. E-xpress Interactive have sent this press-release indicating that the game will be in India in February 2010. Though no concrete Indian release date has been mentioned, we are hoping that we get to play this game on our PCs and Xbox 360s on the same day as rest of the world i.e. Feb 20th, 2010.
It’s a shame that after being such a great year for gaming, 2009 has to end on such a sour note. Just when we are ready to head out for our Christmas weekend celebrations, Redington dropped a price-hike bomb on us. Sample this list of games and their tentative price.
EA Catologue Titles – Old MRP – New MRP (Tentative)
Fifa 2010 – 2499 -> 3299
Nfs Shift – 2499 -> 3299
Brutal Legend – 2499 -> 3299
Dragon Age – Collectors – 2699 -> 3999
Saboteur – 1899 -> 2699
Left 4 Dead – Classic Edition – 999 -> 1699
XBox 360 Game CD Left 4 Dead 2 – 2499 -> 3299
XBox 360 Game CD NBA 10 – 1999 -> 2999
Keep reading to know more.
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