Loading ...
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.
The Gods of Press Kits have been pretty generous lately, what with press kits raining left, right and center. Close on the heels of the Killzone 2 press kit, another surprise awaited us in form of the Street Fighter IV press kit that showed up on our doors a few days back, or rather, on our Editor-in-chief, Krishnan’s door. So while Vijay is busy wearing out his keyboard working all day long on Street Fighter IV related articles, Krishnan gets to fulfill his adolescent fantasies with a rather sweet looking Chun-Li action figure included in the press kit. Thank god for small mercies that the press kit does not contain the playable code; Vijay is this close to going postal on all of us.
Hit the jump to have a look at what all has Capcom packed in into the Street Fighter IV press kit.
When Microsoft Train Simulator came out in 2001, I paid an exorbitant price in the way of an arm, a leg and several assorted body parts to experience the luxury of taking the Amtrak Acela, the Flying Scotsman and the Orient Express out on their scenic routes. There were a number of challenges that the game used to throw up, and since I wasn’t much of a sim buff, I didn’t care two cents for the game telling me that I was making the ride a living nightmare for the virtual passengers that had the misfortune of being on my train – but there wasn’t anything more thrilling than watching a legendary train rush past the camera at breakneck speed under your control.
Even though I’d heard of Microsoft Flight Simulator being used to train pilots (I usually used to practice water landings, or catastrophic crashes as most people would call them, long before Capt. Chesley Sullenberger) I guess someone’s finally seeing the point of using a rail sim to help train new employees!
Almost a hundred and fifty years in operation, Union Pacific has turned to videogames to train the thousands of new employees that have been hired by the Fat Controller to perform various tasks such as sorting carts and operating switches. Kinda like Thomas the Tank Engine, except for really real!
With the game having gone gold and set to take players back to the Halo universe come February 27th, Halo: Wars is all set to start building the hype all over again, this time with the demo coming up on 05/02/2007, featuring two tutorials, the first two campaign missions and a multiplayer map. And if that don’t whet your appetite, here’s three ultra-high-resolution screenshots of the game featuring lone Warthogs and massive battles between the UNSC and the We ♥ Purple Covenant forces. Click on the thumbnails below for the full-resolution images. Don’t say we didn’t warn you though – they’re huge.
A game that could have saved the SixAxis! With a title like AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! — A Reckless Disregard for Gravity or Aaaaa! for short, you just know you want to try it. Unfortunately, the title isn’t very eloquent, but the basic premise involves BASE jumping off buildings that reach up into the stratosphere and score points by avoiding girders and performing crazy aerial stuff (one of which also involves flipping off all those adoring fans on the 132nd floor that just zipped past you at 70 mph) before “parachuting into the arms of your cheering fans”. And the welcoming arms of the cops too, I guess. Obviously, making a splotchy mess on the pavement won’t net you a decent score!
We’re not sure if Aaaaa!, made by the same guys that gave us The Wonderful End of the World is geared towards wannabe BASE jumpers suffering from a serious case of vertigo and sanity or the PAIN crowd that just wants to turn Homo Sapiens into tomato ketchup. Either which way, this is surely the cheapest way of toying with death. Maybe someone will now make a game where we can play chicken on the train tracks…
Screenshots and prototype videos after the jump.