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There is something fundamentally scary about simulation games that keep me from getting anywhere close to one. Be it a driving sim like the Gran Tourismo series where I just am not able to figure out when to brake or the Microsoft Flight Simulator series, the controls of which I could never understand, managing to land my plane belly up even before even taking off. Besides the steep learning curve and the higher-than-normal difficulty factor, I have almost always considered them to be lacking in the fun quotient. This however reflects on my preferred kind of game genre and the afore-mentioned games have such huge fan-base of their own.
Word just came in. It won’t take too long before you get to land on island of Skira and prove your mettle as a skilled warior. Operation Flashpoint 2: Dragon Rising will be out in India in the third week of October i.e. anytime between the 11th to 17th of October.
Just a few more days of wait. PC junkies will get to have the game for a mere Rs. 699 while console gamers can have the PS3 or the Xbox 360 version for Rs. 2499.
Keep a lookout for the ANGRY pixel’s review!
Love it or hate it, but you certainly cannot ignore cricket, especially if you happen to be an Indian. With a billion strong populations as a fan-base, you certainly cannot go wrong with a cricket game. Yet, cricket as a video-game has not managed to catch the gamer’s imagination as it should have. While games like golf, football, rugby, ice-hockey etc have had countless iteration, a cricket game would pop in once in a while and then disappear for extended periods of time. And every time it appeared on the horizon, fans of the game wishing to live out their six-sixes-in-an-over fantasies would be waiting with bated breath, hoping against hope that this would be the one that would be the cricket game. EA has tried it before and Codemasters are no strangers to the sport either, with their last cricket game, Brian Lara Cricket 2007 being the latest one in the series. Now Codemasters is back after a hiatus with a new cricket game, in tandem with Transmission Games. We took the game for a spin and see if this is the deliverance all the cricket fan had been waiting for.
With two racers just a few feet ahead of me, the race is about to end. I plan to make a dash for the finish line on the penultimate corner. Maybe I’ll manage to squeeze in and beat them to first place. The second-last corner is looming ahead; now’s my chance. But before I can even understand what’s happening, the driver in the second position suddenly spins out of control and crashes into the side wall. As I whiz past, I look back to see him still spinning and crashing into the trailing pack of cars, leading to a satisfying pile up. I grin in amazement at how the AI racers are more realistic than the previous racing games I’ve played. No more rubber band AI. Nice touch there – AI racers that don’t always follow the perfect driving line.
With just one driver separating me from the finish line, it’s time to concentrate. In the excitement of the previous crash I failed to overtake him. The last corner is my only chance to overtake him. As I approach it with just a few feet separating us, I try to overtake him from the inside line. Much to my disappointment, I completely misjudge the turn and crash to my left. The screen goes crimson red. Front bumper crumpling in, windshield glass shattering – the car is wrecked beyond repair. It’s the end of the race for me…or is it? This is where the Flashback Feature comes to my rescue, which allows me to rewind up to the last ten seconds before my fatal crash. I can select any point from those ten seconds from which I can restart the race! I roll back to the point just before the crash, adjust my turn and shoot past my rival towards the finishing line and a thrilling victory.
All of this happened in the last twenty seconds of the race. That’s how exciting and adrenaline pumping this game can get.
Shortly after we previewed the PC version of Codemaster’s upcoming mix of arcade and sim racing game, Race Driver GRID, we had a chance to have a look at the Xbox 360 demo version of the game as well. Weighing in at 795 MB, the demo turned out to have more bang for the buck then other game demos that have been clogging our bandwidth but failing to deliver a gameplay experience that would justify the huge file sizes. With support for online racing in the demo via Xbox LIVE, it is pretty much ensured that this is one demo that you won’t be deleting any time soon, at least, not till the game hits the shelves coming June.
The month of May seems to have started off on a great note, what with E-Xpress Interactive playing Santa and leaving us a PC preview copy of the highly anticipated multi-platform game GRID. Knowing the rich history that Codemasters has when it comes to the racing games genre, the racing buffs in us were eager to try out the latest offering from their able-stables. Certainly then, braving the Mumbai traffic to rush back home was something that we were not really too keen upon. However, once back home and having installed the game, it just took us a couple of minutes into the game to know that all the trouble was worth it.
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