There are games that are up there and on everyone’s radar – or indeed, in everyone’s face thanks to the large amount of marketing or advertising it gets (Halo 3 I’m looking at you) – games that everyone’s heard about and are looking forward to. But then there are games that slip under the radar completely – sleeper hits that somehow manage to miss the marketing train and instead come to your doorstep via bus.

Fracture is one of these games. Somehow I managed to miss all the marketing and road signs stating “TERRAIN DEFORMATION HERE” and being oblivious until the folks over at Penny Arcade mentioned it by putting up this video in their news. After seeing the rather viral excitement of the presenter, I realized that the Fracture demo had hit the XBL marketplace – the only logical action from this was to actually give it a run through. And let me tell you this: I’m really, really glad I did.

Hit the jump to find out why.

(more…)

If the sole ambition in your life has been to get Darwin spinning crazily in his grave, Will Wright has come up with something perfect for the job. The Spore team came out with the Spore Creature Creator today, which has you unleashing your fertile imagination on the hapless organisms ready to climb up the ladder of evolution.

The demo version of the Spore Creature Creator lets you fiddle around with a limited tool set while $9.95 (INR 400) on the table will unlock the complete tool set. The demo weighs in at 200Mb which hopefully won’t strain our excuse-for-broadband connections too much. The demo as well as the full version of the Spore Creature Creator is available for both PC and Mac, here.

In the meantime, enjoy this video. You can download a higher quality version of the same here.

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.

(more…)

Come Friday and we normally sneak out early off work, go some place and get drunk. Thankfully, we still had not managed to sneak off and get ourselves drunk silly when we realized that we have stumbled upon a treasure trove of sorts. On our hands here, we have an awesome quantity of previously unreleased details of the upcoming DICE game, Battlefield: Bad Company scheduled to be seen on both the PS3 and the Xbox 360. In the next few hours, we will give up on the bottle for a while and keep updating you with more juicy details of the game, at least until EA decides to send some lawyers our way. If this has got the Battlefield fans salivating all over their keyboard already, hit the jump to whet your appetite with a look at the Achievement list for the Xbox 360 version of the game and know for yourself why the much talked about Trophy system won’t be seen in the PS3 version.

Update: EA India has kindly asked us to remove the Achievement List for the time being. When we’re given proper notification, we’ll go ahead and put it right back up. Sorry for the inconvenience!

(more…)

Remember how it always feels good to discover a scrunched up, long forgotten currency bill in your dirty, old jeans that you had stashed away sometime back and then completely forgot all about it? Well, I had the gaming equivalent of that feeling when discovered that Burnout: Paradise demo is coming out on the PS3 and the Xbox 360 on 13th December, 2007. A quick check on Google confirmed the demo release date along with lot of details about the demo that will make all the Burnout fans out there mark the date on their calenders.

Here are some of the goodies that the demo has on offer:

• The demo map will be roughly 1/10th the size of the actual game map. Considering the fact the actual game map is gigantic in proportions, the demo map will be giving gamers quite a lot of area to explore.
• Three modes of racing will be available in the demo: Stunts, Burning Route and Race.
• Stunts mode, a new in the series, will involve you getting into all kinds of spectacular jumps, barrel roles and grabbing as much air as possible using the strategically placed ramps. Stringing together consecutive stumps will maximize your score and earn you bigger score multipliers.
• Burning Route will be a point-to-point race while Race will be the usual where you take on other cars in a battle to be the first to cross the finish line.
• If you are the kind that went crazy about the “Hidden Packages” in the GTA games, then you will have a whale of time discovering and smashing through “Burnout Billboards” and “Smashable Construction Pillars”. The game will keep track of how many you have found and taken down.
• Auto repair shops will allow you to simply ride through them to get back your ride in top-shape. Similarly, Paint Shops will paint your cars on the fly.
• Online feature of the demo has you and your pals joining in for a session of Freeburn Online where you can go all out on specially designed stunt sessions.

If this does not get your adrenaline all pumped up in the way only Burnout can, then we wonder what will. For those who had paused long enough from reading this, to mark there calenders, Dec 13th is sure going to be one lucky day!

Thats what our friends at 1UP are saying. After being the recipient of some multi-platform games which were, umm, let’s just say, not on par with the other versions, it feels great to finally hear some good news. Here is what Shane Bettenhausen had to say while comparing the demos on the Xbox 360 and the PS3:

Capcom brought the game in, we got to play it, both the PLAYSTATION 3 and Xbox 360 versions. First thing I noticed, the PLAYSTATION 3 version is better.

Bryan Intihar chimes in on the situation,

It’s funny. You can tell, this game is built for the PlayStation 3, but moved over to the Xbox 360. As of right now, I think the PlayStation 3 version is better. I saw like screen tearing in the Xbox 360 version. Even like, when you were playing it, it felt better on the PlayStation 3.

Bettenhausen comes back with,

With the triggers on the DUALSHOCK 3/SIXAXIS, it’s easier to pull of the moves on the PlayStation 3 versus, the Xbox 360 controller.

Well, we can take this with a pinch of salt since its just a preview.

Now all we have to do is sit back and watch while the Interwebs explode with frenzied chants of “Teh internet is teh biazed!” …or whatever it takes to start a whole new battle in the console wars. Either way, I love my PS3.

Continuing with the tradition of our Thursday Top 10’s, we decided to look at something very obvious, but yet very distinct. So far we’ve looked at the Memorable Character Deaths, the Best Weapons Featured in a FPS and the Top Ten Nine (don’t ask) Original Game Songs. This week, we’re doing a run on some of the most memorable video game themes.

Why? Because apart from the fact how great games really are (no, really!), gamers themselves often tend to rate a game based first on graphics, game play and artistic appeal (though not necessarily in that order) – which is pretty much what decides whether its good enough to play. But EVERY game has to make use of sound and it’s plain to see that, what with games like Half-Life 2 and System Shock 2. Music forms a crucial component of the game-play experience; get the right music at the right time, and you feel the adrenalin pumping. But while most newer games now use ambient noise and music, a lot of cue based intros and then outros – the games we’ve all grown up on and loved have always had that catchy tune, hook, phrase or riff that made everything that much more captivating!

Hit the jump to read more.
(more…)