War might never change, but it looks like the Fallout torch has jumped hands from Interplay over to those of the Oblivion giant, Bethesda SoftWorks. After years of waiting for Fallout 3, and having many a person quit his day job to go stand outside Interplay’s offices and complain, it looks like the game may finally see the light of day.

GamesIndustry.biz picked up an SEC filing that showed Bethesda picking up the Fallout rights from Interplay for a cool $5.75 million, which basically allows them to develop multiple (now I know I am not the only one drooling about Fallout 4 and 5…) sequels to the franchise, in addition to licensing out the MMO rights back (yeah, you heard that right) to Interplay. Is it just me or am I the only one that can laugh at this and the Baikonur Cosmodrome rent control?

But wait, it gets even better for the poor guys at Interplay. Not only do they have to pay Bethesda for the MMO license, but they’ll have to share their sales and subscription fees, as well as make sure they get a whopping $30 million in funding within two years, as well as make sure that development wraps up within four years, or else they’ll lose it all. They could have just taken their pants down for Bethesda and bent over, that would have probably been a lot easier and probably a lot more enjoyable than watching the love of your life come back to stab you in the back.

But what do we care, right? I mean, I do feel a tad sad when much-loved game development companies shut their doors forever, but as long as someone else picks up the flag and runs with it, I don’t have anything to complain about. Unless it happens to be EA and System Shock… But hey, look at the bright side, this way, it’d most probably end up on the next-gen consoles as well!

Read the GamesIndustry.biz article >> 

Damn! Get to a certain age and all you hear about from your parents are about you getting hitched. What’s worse is that everytime someone you know gets married, the pressure mounts on you to go and walk down the Green Mile with your happily-ever-after (bah!) partner. What makes the whole thing worse for a hardcore gamer is that destiny always plays an unfair hand by throwing you in with someone who has absolutely no respect for your gaming habits and would rather complain about how childish you are while she plonks her ass down on the couch to watch cooking shows and brain-deadening soap operas that would make any grown man try to kill himself in the first 5 minutes.

While most of us try to convince our girlfriends and future wives about how we love games just as much as they love shoe shopping, some of us stash our favorite games in secret nooks that she would never find. Heck, her finding the secret games stash would bring more raining death-fire on our heads than her finding our extensive porno stash and sex toy collection. And then there are the wusses, the ones who are completely willing to sell out, quite literally, by putting years and years of gaming history for sale on eBay for a ridiculously low amount of dough.

Take a look at this guy. He’s selling almost every game console and videogame that’s been released for the last 20 years on eBay just because he’s going to marry some girl! Jeez, man, you’d give away classics that you don’t have a whelk’s chance in a supernova of getting back just for a girl. Just take a look at his collection, he’s got systems like the Atari 2600, ColecoVision and the NeoGeo and practically every top rated game ever made in the history of gaming and he’s practically signing his soul over to the devil. Face it, dude, you’re gonna get a LOT more love from Shining Force than you’ll ever get from her. I hate to think what’s gonna happen to this guy if she decides to dump his ass some day and walk out on him. Did I mention he’s got the original box packaging for almost everything he owns? Yeah. this guy deserves to wear the ball and chain, and I most certainly don’t mean the proverbial one.

Wanna own gaming history?
Head on over to the gaming pariah’s eBay listing >>

Sometimes I just wonder how Andy Serkis gets on with his career? This is probably the only guy who is one of the most popular actors that’s rarely seen on screen in his real form. From Gollum to King Kong, Serkis has motion captured his way right into our hearts and into the annals of moviemaking history. And if mo-capping for movies wasn’t enough, he’s now doing it for what probably could become one of the best games ever made – Heavenly Sword.

I’m just gonna shut up and let his persona say it all. This is one of the best mo-capping shoots I’ve ever seen, even though it’s more rant than action. All hail the coming of the new age thespian. <Gollum!> (sigh) As if Heroes didn’t piss me off by showing Micah and Niki/Jessica playing the game, now this has to come along. Damn, Heavenly Sword is fast becoming the reason I’ll run out and buy a PS3 the day the game hits the shelves.

OK, now that we’ve actually had enough time to analyze the Flash animation over and over again, here’s an actual breakdown of the really interesting stuff on the site and what can be said for certain. All of this is NOT speculation and actual facts taken straight from the game’s website.

• The game is set around or after 2028, 14 years after the events of Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2.
• The game seems to incorporate the Cross-Com from the Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter games, considering how it is explicitly mentioned in the scrolling text feed, as well as seen in the “Promotion Recommended” recall mode.
• The US is a silent observer of the war in Europe, merely acting as a refugee camp until it gets attacked as well, forcing a counter-strike.
• However, the counter-strike has disastrous effects, with Washington D.C. being completely wiped out by electromagnetic pulse bombs, resulting in the simultaneous destruction of almost all federal/military facilities including the Pentagon, the NSA and CIA.
• It is not known whether the immediate areas around the nuclear explosions are survivable due to the amounts of low level radiation, even though the explosions themselves were seemingly self contained.
• New York City also bears the brunt of war, with major exits out of the city, including the Lincoln tunnel, destroyed and the residents facing internal rioting as more and more of them clamor to get out of the city.
• With their political and economic centers under siege, the United States moves to an interim capital in Boston and shifts the NASDAQ and the NYSE to Chicago, causing massive computer glitches that push current economic conditions from bad to worse.
• The United States joins the European Theater conflict and suffers major casualties in France.
• London, just as in WW2, pays a heavy price, with the Parliament fallen and major landmarks destroyed. The London Stock Exchange reels as major manufacturing facilities are nationalized to fuel the war machine.
• The new Chinese Yuan and the Japanese Yen flourish, thanks to the major players, the US Dollar and the Euro losing out big time. In fact, it seems that the governments of Europe and the United States are working to settle trade agreements that will allow open transfer of conflict currency.
• In the face of overwhelming odds, the United States has created the Joint Strike Force (JSF), a team comprising of some of the best people in the armed forces, to counter the new threat.
• Oil and natural gas controls have been wrestled away from the ONGC and is now in the hands of a select group of countries including Russia and Libya, who are trying to use the situation to their advantage.
• In the face of new conflict, the Canadian and Mexican Prime Ministers have withdrawn participation from their treaties with the United States.
• Due to the massive exodus from the United States, the borders at Mexico and Canada are now extremely well guarded, with Ciudad Juarez seeing large amounts of refugees across the border, although the exact status of the Canadian border control is not known.
• With more and more people fleeing from the United States, most South Asian countries have taken extreme steps to curb the reverse migration. Only those that were born in their countries will be allowed to return home, with the remaining being denied immigration as well as long term visas.
• With the war raging in Europe, thousands of students relocated from all over the continent have been holed up in the former tourist paradise of Ibiza, with former nightclubs now serving as refugee centers. The United Nations has expressed tremendous outrage at world heritage sites being used as internment camps, but it seems that they are completely powerless to stop the conflict.
• Shortages of water has led to great conflict across Sofia, Bulgaria and St. Petersburg, Russia, forcing people to riot on the streets. In Oslo, people have taken matters into their own hand and raided a water storage facility and looting resources worth over 2.5 million Euros.

More information on the JSF soldier:

• It is quite obvious that the injured guy was once a part of the Ghost team, considering how there are numerous references to “Cross-Com Intact” and how we can see him looking at multiple hostiles being highlighted in his Cross-Com during a recall.
• Having suffered severe injuries to his shoulder and collar bone, the guy has been this way for quite a bit of time, allowing the injury to worsen and mature.
• The extensive injuries to his system have resulted in a high fever, making his doctors postpone surgery to fix his shoulder blades. Chances of recovery at pegged at around 62% and it is possible that he may have very limited functionality in his right arm, thanks to the injuries.
• The high fever has also left the subject in a delirious state, where he is extremely panicky and almost catatonic. He is also unable to exert any state of control over the unpleasant experiences from his past. Speech is indecipherable.
• Mind-probe analysis reveals no trace of loss, no pessimism, no despondencies or fatalist/defeatist/pacifist tendencies and no remorse or regret. His ability to recall past memories is hazy at best and he has no memory of what happened after his capture or where is he is right now. Also a highly paranoid and obsessed individual.
• Served as a peacekeeper in Africa (USAFRICOM) as well as in USNORTHCOM and USCENTCOM (Pre-nuclear FOP) before joining the JSF Team.
• Frequently lets his past pain cloud his current objectives, hates people of Slavic descent for some reason, but is a great strategist and has been nominated for promotions and won several medals for his exemplary duties.

So what do I think about this game? It looks like this is the next game in line for the Ghost Recon franchise (Ciudad Juarez and El Paso from GRAW2 and the Canadian and Mexican government leaders are clearly mentioned in the radio broadcast), and even though a lot of people are wondering whether this will be a combination of all Tom Clancy franchises, I don’t really think that’s the case here. This game probably builds on the cliffhanger ending of GRAW2, where Cpt. Scott Mitchell bravely offers to put himself in the direct line of fire from the EM Pulse missiles just so that the United States can take out smuggled nuclear weapons. What might probably be the case is that about 15 years later, the rebels finally manage to strike deep in the heart of the US homeland, taking out Washington DC and NYC, and sparking a global conflict.

Helpless in the face of such terror, the US Armed Forces creates the JSF, a team of extremely toughened individuals to deal with the threats. At some point, it looks like the soldier we see, who seems to have lost his wife and child in an attack, is captured by enemy forces and later retreived by the United States JSF. Just because a game mentions other Tom Clancy franchises doesn’t have to mean that they will be playable in the game, considering how Splinter Cell is mentioned by name in GRAW2, but Sam Fisher has nothing to do with the game. I just don’t care, I love the Ghost Recon franchise and would be happen just as long as I get to shoot me some rebels. If it just so happens that they’re going to weave a nice back story for the lead character, a la Sam Fisher, who am I to complain? But just what is it with macho stories in which the guy’s wife and kid HAVE to die to harden the guy?

Three days back, dear friend Jay Patel passed on the link to a sub-website registered to Ubisoft’s name, one that had something to do with the next game in the Ubisoft Tom Clancy series. In classic Ubisoft style, the website is extremely good looking and well designed. It is viral marketing as never before, as it has a continuous radio news cast giving clues as to what the game might be about.

This game does look mighty interesting AND bizarre. Forgive me as I rant on this. Understand that these are my OWN interpretations of the website and not facts by any means.

My guess, is the game is a logical conclusion to all the escalating conflict from all the Tom Clancy games yet. JSF refers to the “Joint Strike Force” program and presumably ~jsf28555833-80604722~ is a soldier from that elite unit.

1. jsf28555833-80604722: Supposedly the protagonist of the game. We see a injured man on the site homepage. The upper half of the screen shows a full status report on his vital signs, as the reports read “Mind Map status: Verified. RhD Antigen:(null) >0 or negative, Antibody analysis: No compatibility detected.” Now according to what they taught me in my first year of B.Tech, Rh factor refers to the rhesus blood group. RhD is an antigen that expresses itself on the surface of red blood cells, and helps in controlling their neural linkage to the brain. The emotion of pain is the said ‘linkage”, which means that JSF program’s suppressed RhD in their recruits allow them to FEEL NO PAIN. Kinda makes sense. The bastards have been blabbering about building super soldiers from the days of Project Invisible. A soldier who can’t feel pain is just the perfect warrior, dont you think? Sure they will die, but they won’t feel a thing until they actually do. That means longer stamina and longer staying power in tough firefights.

Apart from this, two of the links, according to me at least, are flashbacks to the recruit’s life. In one of them, we can hear him making a call from a railway station (I could hear the train announcements) from a government locked satellite frequency.

In other of the links, we can see a kid playing with some ornament and calling the camera ‘Daddy’ and a blast and gunfire seconds quickly follow. Maybe, this ties in somehow. If I have to take a wild guess, I’d say this guy has seen action in either the Ghost Recon team or the Rainbow team. He got banged somewhere in between and was taken in by the JSF program as he qualifies in every way – nothing to lose, familiar with battle and supposedly bitter at having lost his family.

2. Radio News: This was the most intresting bit of the whole deal. The news reader’s voice has a metallic, emotionless hum to it, suggesting automisation of media. This in turn signifies that the media is no longer controlled by ‘agendas’ and human governments nurturing them. The mood portrayed in the radio broadcast suggests a post nuclear warfare world. The timeline as mentioned in the newscast is 2028. The terrorist have supposedly nuked the German/France LOC some 12 years ago, thus sending Europe in the pit completely. The Euro has fallen down in the stocks and the market value of Europe as a tourist hub has also gone down. A report about how student tourists to Ibiza were forced to live in night clubs converted to hostels serves to heighten the point about the raging conflict in Europe.

The Caribbean nations have split up their market share and currency deal from US, thus causing the US Dollar to drop down a lot. Japan looks to be strongest economic power at that time apparently.

The news cast also speaks of sports and cultural activity. This suggests the world is trying to get back to normal, but terrorism is still prevalent apparently, on a large scale. The news cast also hints at a full scale war in Europe, with conflict raging between the British, Spanish and German forces. The death toll is very high and the news caster calls out the figures as if it is the most normal thing in the world for tens of thousands of people to die, suggesting that the war has gone on long enough for people to actually fear and rue over it.

The world is having a serious water and fuel crisis. The water reserves in the UK were stolen by the refugees coming across the English Channel, leading to a full sized genocide committed by the English forces on the refugees. There were also talks of reverse immigration to Asia and the MINDBLOWING population explosion in Asia. Some policy is apparently being formulated on the whole issue by the South Asian governments.

3. My thoughts on the whole deal: The stage is well set, and judging by the situations we are being told about, it seems a perfect premise for the typically corny, yet heroic entry of the US to the whole scene.

The videos show multiple references to the Ghost team and I could actually see Captain Mitchell with his typical gun stance in one of the vids. Let’s see where it takes us. I am hoping for a kickass, all consuming final fight against the heart of terrorism. But I could not find a reference to Sam Fisher, maybe I missed it. Let’s hear you people out!

…make Chloe something something….

Meet Chloe O’Brian – Intelligence Agent/Internet Protocol Manager, firearm expert, social recluse, and of course, hot babe with a sweet rack. Which probably explains why almost every geek on the planet has a mondo crush on her. Sadly, however, just like the old Shakespeare dude said, appearances can often be deceptive. No, we don’t mean that she’s actually a shemale or something like that. We’ve got worse news for the geeks (you guys better sit down) – Ms. Mary Lynn Rajskub isn’t as tech-savvy as Chloe! In fact, that’s a supermassive understatement, the equivalent of describing a thermonuclear reaction with the words “It go boom!”

Geek Monthly decided to sit down and walk Ms. Rajskub through the paces, posing a barrage of questions designed to see how much she knew about her job at CTU, just like Prof. Frink decided to grill Lucy Lawless on Xena! And guess what, the results are hilarious. Here’s some pricess quips to make your day, or, if you were hoping to marry her and raise little Dexter – Boy Geniuses, push you enough to go jump off the nearest bridge.

Windows Vista DRM – Good or bad?
It’s outstanding. No, fair. Actually I don’t use a PC—we’re all on Macs. Is that weird?
(Nope, that about makes you a hardcore geek in our book) 

What’s your favorite Linux distro?
The purple one?
(Ack, murder!! Look, Lisa, this has purple stuff inside. Purple is a fruit!)

Do you think the increase in performance between the Intel Duo and the Intel Core Duo is worth the price?
It’s a little expensive—overpriced.
(Yes…must….say….with….straight….face…)

What is a mouse?
The one I have at home is squishy—but on the show it’s just big—I have to work it with both hands.
(Umm, work it with both hands? I thought she played a geek, not a porn star!)

In one episode you had to reboot the routers. Why did you have to do this yourself? Don’t you have patsies to do that stuff?
It’s like I have to do everything myself—no one else is to be trusted.
(Well said, Mrs. Mulder!)

How much RAM is enough RAM?
I need more RAM.
(Yeah, don’t we all. You also need a nice big hard disk in your drive bay.)

There’s a theory on the net that Chloe has Asberger Syndrome…
I’ve heard about this—let’s just say I’m a genius and leave it at that. And that I can talk to dolphins.
(Oh good, this way at least you’ll get a free fish bowl when the Vogons come)

Ahh, what the hell, we’re just here to see Chloe get out of that business suit and into hot sexy dresses and pose with guns, swords and ….. big bombs?

Read the complete article here >>

I’m not a lucky man. Me and Lady Luck have never been on speaking terms ever since I discovered that the best prize I could grab for free is a couple of birth control pills. I’ve struck out everywhere there was something cool being given away, watching the materialistic object of my fantasies get whisked away by someone who couldn’t even figure out the packaging if it didn’t have a huge “THIS SIDE UP” printed on it. And what’s worse is the amount of time, money and I’ve wasted at arcade prize-grabbing games, you know, the one where you try to grab freebies with a crane or hit the button at the right time to stop something moving fast so you can get some goodies? It obviously doesn’t help your chances of getting some if you spend 200 bucks on one of these games and can’t even win the hopelessly patient girlfriend standing next to you a little plush toy.

Understandably, I’ve been ripping mad ever since a couple of guys started YouTubing about the kind of things they win from these frustratingly rigged contraptazoinks. And if that wasn’t enough, there are sites like Kotaku that give away custom laser-etched PS3s and tons of next-generation schwag to people who have to do little more than scour their community rants for answers to silly little questions. Jeez, and I had to PAY $778 to get my Xbox 360, whereas some gangly teen with a pocketful of change and virtually no life walks away with cool loot that will probably end up on eBay the very same night. Why doesn’t someone have mercy on poor souls like me and toss a couple of bones this old dog’s way? At this point, I just feel like Amy Wong at the Moon Amusement Park’s UFO Catcher machine – azhennihaodasene! Q@^%#$*

Like what you see? OK, so that’s an obvious April Fools Day joke and I am about 10 days overdue! But still, there’s something absolutely magnetic about fake consoles. So, in true gamer fashion, 99lives came up with an article about the five best fake gaming consoles of all time! From the Sega Phoenix (or as I like to call it – the Phonix), an unholy marriage between a suitcase, an Xbox 360 on a bad day and a plastic lunch box to the PSPboy, a brilliant looking gaming device that I’d so totally buy if it was real, the article lists more weirdos like the Sega Hedgehog, the Apple iGame and the Nintendo ON. Shh, don’t tell 99lives we told you this, but we’ve also got the inside scoop on two new awesome handhelds – the Nintendo DS2 and the Sony PSP2. Like we said… SHHHH!

Pocket Mode… mmmm!

Wonder if the PSP2 will finally have a second analog stick? But what the heck, I’d still buy it anyway! More fake console goodness after the jump.

Read the full article here >>

As a developer, hammering out code for a multimillion dollar behemoth isn’t really satisfying for a person’s ego, especially when it’s planet sized like mine. Everytime I see someone at a job that I want to do, like a globetrotter or a porn star, I usually work myself up into a complete state of frenzy about how I should be at that job, getting paid to have criminally insane amounts of fun. Another job to add to the list seems to be this – foley artist for Digital Extremes’ latest game, Dark Sector.

These guys get to have obscene amounts of fun generating sound effects for Dark Sector, simulating the sounds of snapping necks, extreme dismemberment and squelchy glaive kills by ripping apart celery stalks, smashing watermelons with hammers and fingerfucking zuchhinis to kingdom come! We’ll just let you go and watch these guys live our veggie/fruit sadomasochistic dreams while we try to find some voodoo dolls of these guys to crucify.

Watch the video at GamesRadar >

We’ve all complained about SKOAR!’s slipping standards at a hundred different places on the Interwebs, but it looks like things may be worse than they seem. Take the new issue, for instance. Among other fresh targets of oppurtunity, it looks like they have turned the guns on their own customer service guys. And if that wasn’t enough, they still haven’t learned their lesson and are going around giving StarLancer and Max Payne on their DVDs! If you don’t have the 200 bucks to fork over for the game, then what gives you the bloody right to even call yourself a gamer?

But I digress. The worst travesty in the history of the magazine has to be the latest Game of the Year awards. They’re so phenomenally disgusting that it raises suspicions whether they even know one genre from another. Never mind the fact that the ONLY nominees are the ones that the magazine has reviewed, but the nominee list itself is so mindbogglingly stupid that, when I heard of it, made my mouth open and close involuntarily a couple of times while my brain filled with inexplicable, but terribly attractive, images of the SKOAR! building on fire and the idiots that made this list running, screaming from the blazing ruins with at least three hefty spears protruding from their backs! (Yes, that was a Douglas Adams reference, so castrate me. I love his work!)

What’s so crazy about the list? Take a look for yourself:

See anything wrong up there? When did Okami become an action game? When did Kingdom Hearts 2, FF XII and NWN2, and oh, for the love of GOD, Viva Piñata become strategy titles?! Yes, there’s elements of strategy involved in these games, but that’s NOT their primary design feature! If you’re going to go out out on such a far limb to include turn-based and regular RPGs in the genre, then why not include games like Brothers in Arms and Bioshock in there as well? For a magazine that prides itself on being “elite”, screwups like this just don’t help that image, especially if you go around making such Kong-sized boo-boos and saying Condemned: Criminal Origins is available exclusively on the PlayStation 2 platform!

Almost every game on that list deserves to be named Game of the Year in its own genre, considering how Daxter pushed the mobile platforming envelope further than anyone thought possible, and how games like Tomb Raider Legend and the Sam & Max episodes revived franchises that almost every one of us considered stone-cold dead. Why doesn’t anyone at SKOAR! talk about how 2006 was such a wonderful year for RPGs and Adventure games, or how games like Company of Heroes, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Okami and Shadow of the Colossus created milestones in gaming history that will be remembered fondly for decades! It’s about bloody time that the ”gamers” at SKOAR! get their heads out of their collective asses and see the situation for what it actually is – gaming is India is no longer (and as far as I can see, it never was) the realm of the greasy teen with an unhealthy fixation on Counter-Strike: Source!

At this point, the SKOAR! gravy train is fast running out of steam and is headed for a bone-crushing collision with the cold, hard moutain of reality. As for me, I just hope no one outside this country gets their hands on the magazine. The myth of the stupid Indian gamer is already prevalent among the international gaming community and this type of trash will just serve to perpetuate it. SKOAR!’s got a long, long way to go before they go anywhere near mainstream, and until they actually sit down and decide which section of the Indian gaming community they are going to cater to, and not show double standards in every aspect of their work, they’re fast on their way to becoming the largest train wreck Indian gaming has ever seen. So much for leading by example… bah!