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OK, so, not a lot of people made it to the Street Fighter IV launch party at The Living Room last week. Probably because they were busy spending quality time with their friends and loved ones, telling them how important they are when you’re living life at 120 mph. Or they were probably in bed, sipping on a cup of hot coffee, or pounding on a controller, or maybe both. (Ahem!) Oh, I remember now! It was because it was on a freaking Friday evening where the Satanic bosses at our workplace were going, “Just a couple of more hours before these in-bred SOBs go home for two days to nurse their bruises and their egos, so let’s push them harder. And yeah, send that database warehousing tub-o’-lard into my room. I’ve got a couple of fluggaenkdechioebolsen reports that I wanna go over with him!” (WARNING: That linky’s totally NSFW, so beware. And kids, stay away for your own good, at least until you’re older!)
But anyway, that was Street Fighter IV, so let’s talk about Killzone 2. You’ve read about it. You’ve seen all the videos. Maybe even participated in a few forum wars about how it’s the next best thing to hot garlic bread and cheese dip. Well, now is the time to check it out for yourselves. If you were one of the unlucky few who still hasn’t got the game or the fence-sitter minority, The Living Room is the place to be this weekend. Starting tomorrow, gaming folks who manage to wander over to The Living Room in Bangalore after 1 PM will get to spend three days in the company of the numero uno shooter for the PS3, Killzone 2. Like Niko Bellic hoped, maybe this time, things will be different. Or whatever, I don’t know, click on the ad for more details. Me, I have just one question – “Will there be Red Bull?”
(Click image for a high-res photo of the Killzone 2 swag)
Welly, well, well! Looks like contest season has started again here. For all those folks that had their brians (yes, that was deliberate) aching from all the disuse, here’s something that should get those little grey cells firing wildly. Say hello to our Killzone 2 contest, where five lucky blokes will be able to snatch up aKillzone 2 artbook (yes, the same ones you’d have gotten if you got your press kit or placed your Steelbook copy order at GI), a Killzone 2 cap that should serve for protection from the harsh sunlight (if this contest were held on Helghan, we could have given you gas masks, but you’re on Earth, so tough luck!) and a nifty skin to deck out your PS3 and profess your love for all things Killzone 2. Without further ado, happy hunting, and oh yeah, don’t forget to check out our ossum-possum review of Killzone 2 while you’re tearing your hair out! 
Contest Details / End-dates / Terms & Conditions / Winners List
After complaining for months about not getting any love down south in Bangalore from Milestone, we finally got ourselves a nice little launch party for Street Fighter IV this Friday at The Living Room, where fans of the game could just sit back and kick their friends’ butt every which way with punches, kicks and focus moves. In fact, the party was so awesome that we completely didn’t manage to attend it! Don’t ask us why, because it mostly involves our associate editor busy rowing the slave boat and getting whipped good at work. As for me, well, I originally wanted to say I couldn’t make it because I had a brain tumor and had to get it checked out, but if I do, I’ve been promised that I’ll get my neck snapped by Milestone’s friendly neighborhood PR liaise, Payal, who loves nothing more than keeping us on track and, err, “mothering us” to make sure we do what we’re supposed to and don’t go around doing naughty things, like eating sand, spilling cooking oil all over the floor and breaking embargoes. (Ooh, look, Jill Valentine’s dead!)
Very few games have snuck up behind me and bit my head off the way Dead Space did last year. A game that everyone had mediocre hopes for quickly became the poster child for creating an atmosphere of horror that permeated every pixel on the screen. And when videos rolled out last week about how Dead Space was originally meant to emerge on the Xbox, tongues started wagging about how the game, when made on the Wii, could actually turn out to be very interesting.
As if to answer a bunch of unvoiced questions, we get a new press release and a trailer earlier today informing us that Dead Space: Extraction is headed to the Wii sometime later this summer. While we’re not sure exactly what percentage of the trailer is in-game and what’s CG, what we’ve seen of the Xbox presentation is enough to convince me that the Wii version could definitely prove to be enough fun to crap my pants all over again.
According to the press release, Extraction is set on the Aegis VII mining colony and presumably runs parallel to the animated comics -- before the USG Ishimura shows up and events of Downfall and Dead Space play out. As the necromorph infestation spreads through the colony, players will get to use the unique motion control capabiilties of the Wiimote, combined with a first-person (yes, you read that right, first-person) perspective to take the necros apart one bloody limb at a time.
And honestly speaking, after checking out the animated comics, Downfall and having walked a mile Issac’s shoes thrice already, I just can’t wait to get on the colony and kick necro butt. The only sad part is, I just know that the poor girl is probably going to get her pretty little head lobotomized by one of them crawling Necro-creating bat-creatures at the end…
Whoo boy, it’s raining bikers by the dozen this week on Xbox LIVE! First up, we get all new biker outfits so that we can doll up our avatars as angry biker dudes and chicks, just to proclaim our love for all things GTA IV. And as of today, the most anticipated expansion for which Microsoft paid Rockstar $10 million is out now for all of us to enjoy. The Lost and the Damned, featuring Johnny Klebitz as he takes his Hell’s Angels party across the dark underbelly of Liberty City, is now available on Xbox LIVE Marketplace for 1600 Microsoft Points a pop, which kinda works out to around a thousand bucks.
And the best part of all? Not only do you get to blitz around Liberty City, but if you’re one of the first 800 lucky guys to download it in the country, you’re going to net yourself a cool 1000 Microsoft Points! For free! Available across Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and India, this promotion lasts until the 28th of this month, so there’s really no reason why should deny yourself some GTA lovin’ and some free points on the side. More information on the promotion is available here.
When it released, Braid blew the entire world away with its art and some of the most amazing, innovative gameplay mechanics anyone had ever seen. And the fact that it snuggled comfortably into the Microsoft Xbox 360 exclusive stable all this time didn’t make the PC gamers all too happy, especially considering the PC version kept getting pushed back with each passing day.
Not anymore. According to Stardock software, the PC version of Braid is coming to their Impulse digital distribution platform come March 31, 2009! According to the pre-orders page on the ImpulseDriven site, the game will cost $19.95, almost $5 more than the Xbox LIVE Arcade version does, which should probably start another rant from the PC camp, but hey, at least you didn’t have to invest in a console, right?
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!