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The World GameMaster Tournament is back for another yearly round here in India. Preliminaries had already started a few weeks prior, taking place in Chandigarh, Delhi, and Chennai respectively. Bangalore is next on the menu, and most likely our ever-dear editors Krishnan and Abhinav Pattanayak will be there to cover the event. Take a few snaps here, talk to a few participants there - you know, stuff you wouldn’t normally find at certain Game Parties that they’ll be unable to attend today. Right, fellas!
Worth mentioning are the featured games for the competition, which include something other than CounterStrike 1.6. What are the odds of that! Those games are: Call of Duty 2 (Deathmatch), F.E.A.R. (Deathmatch), DOTA All-Stars (for Mumbai only), WARMONGER and the Unreal Tournament 3 demo. For Venue Details, click here.
If haven’t already had the chance to go play and/or try these two demos just yet, I highly recommend that you do so with all due haste. Till then though, here are my impressions on both:
First up: F.E.A.R.: Perseus Mandate
The freaky little girl’s back and she’s meaner than ever. Ladies and Gentlemen, F.E.A.R.: Project Origin has been announced. You can find the exclusive debut trailer from GameTrailers.com here.
Unlike the expansions FEAR: Extraction Point and the upcoming Perseus Mandate, Project Origin is planned to be a true sequel to the FEAR franchise. It’ll start approximately just before the ending of the first game and will be told from the viewpoint of a different character than the Pointman – right now it looks like a Delta Force member going by the name of Michael Beckett. The main story of the game, according to Monolith, is to focus on the central character of Alma – something which they intend to expand on with more sequels down the line. However, what is a fair bit more interesting than this, is the relation between Project Origin and that of Extraction Point, along with the fallout that’s happened between Vivendi and Monolith.
Ahoy thar me harties!
Aye, before you start readin’ this post, I’d recommend headin’ o’er t’ har and read up a bit on the most important day (okay, it isn’t but my mind likes t’ imagine it is) o’ the entire year: International ‘Speak like a pirate’ day, shiver me timbers! (not t’ be confused with the International ‘Speak Like the Goddamn Batman’ day or the far more local ‘Walk like I’’e been kicked in the balls by M$’ day which Enoon has been celebratin’ for the past few weeks). Due t’ the utter awesomeness o’ Pirates, I was goin’ t’ ask for a guest speaker t’ come in today, but it seems the Pirate-ninja feud sort o’ intensifies at this time o’ the year meanin’ their all out busy kickin’ ninja ass. So fer now its all me! YARRR!
*coughs as he’s kicked in the nads by several TAP members*
Okay, okay, fine! Onto more serious matters then. I’ve been rather quiet recently for several reasons. I finally got an Xbox 360 and my recent time has been divided between working, studying, writing and playing GoW, WiC, SoTS, PGR3 and a few other games.
For those of you who were unfortunate enough to not be able to play F.E.A.R. on the PC, and had to pick it up for the Xbox 360 almost a year later, here’s some good news. With Microsoft charging almost every little kilobyte of game-related downloads these days, including stupid themes and gamer pictures, be glad that the new map pack for the horror FPS is now available for download on Xbox Live Marketplace, and yes, it’s 100% free!
With three new multiplayer maps - Ecosphere, a lush, verdant camping ground for the sniper-whores; the dank corridors of Hotel and the unmentionable Sewers (no, they don’t have mutants, alligators and El Chupanibres there, sorry!) - it looks like people finally one more reason to pop that copy of their disc that’s gathering dust on the shelves and start kicking peoples’ heads off in SloMo. F.E.A.R. will expand to include the new expansion, Perseus Mandate on the PC later this year, whereas the Xbox 360 version, titled F.E.A.R. Files, will bundle the original as well as both expansions for the Xbox 360, so that, in true hardcore gamer fashion, we can get suckered into buying a game we already bought - again. O.H. J.O.Y.!
So, we’ve all seen the announcement of Turok coming back to the PC, and I know there’s many of us that would drool at the oppurtunity to really go head to head with Dinosaurs. However, as much as this desire may be, our bold Dino-hunter isn’t the only one making a comeback soon.
First off, we have the announced S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Skies, (gameplay Vid here) which is set to be an expansion pack for the old game. In this expansion, the time is set a year before the events of STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl. We play the role of a Stalker from a rival faction, set out to kill Strelok, the protagonist of the first game. The expansion will flesh out the story of the character a bit more, while expanding more on the history of the zone itself.
(Hit the jump for more details, as well as info on the next F.E.A.R. expansion, titled Perseus Mandate.)
Monolith may be struggling with a community to give their version of the F.E.A.R. sequel a new name, but that doesn’t stop rights holder Sierra Entertainment to go ahead and make more versions of the hit cinematic shooter.
After the blockbuster original and the less-than-lukewarm expansion, Extraction Point, Sierra has announced F.E.A.R. Perseus Mandate, an all-new stand alone expansion pack for Windows and F.E.A.R. Files, the first expansion pack (also stand alone) for the Xbox 360. Both games are scheduled to ship later this fall.
Perseus Mandate is set to deliver an all new experience that presents a different perspective of the events that occur at Armacham, through a parallel storyline that lets players control someone other than the Point Man from the original and the first expansion and battle enemies that he never saw coming.
F.E.A.R Files for the Xbox 360, however, is an amalgamation of Extraction Point and the upcoming Perseus Mandate for the Xbox 360, which saw only a port of the original game. More on the game will be revealed during Sierra’s presentations at E3 in the coming days. Oh boy, the poor cow is being milked for all she’s worth!
Hit the jump to check out the screenshots.