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After having a blast getting slaughtered by dogs in the Xbox 360 and PC betas and suffering the ignominy of having it played back to us on the kill cam, Call of Duty (yes, I said doody) World at War fans in India will be able to start kicking the living crap out of my hapless soldier in the game starting today. In what is a welcome change from seeing games release months after their international release dates (or sometimes, not at all, thanks to stupid, mutated two-headed bovines and even dumber Fox network-ey legal types) World at War will be available for the PC, the Xbox 360 and the PS3 for INR 1299, 2499 and 2799 respectively. Sure, you’re not running around gunning Soviet / Chechen / Islamic fundamentalist hydrids and saving the world seven seconds before nuclear annihilation, but hey, at least this time you have the option of being able to train your gun sights on World War II cannon fodder with your friends instead of being humiliated by getting knifed nine times in a row by the multiplayer whore (read “best friend”) sitting next to you.
Rejoice, counter-terrorist hotshots! After months of sheer neglect, Ubisoft has finally announced that a sequel to the highly successful tactical shooter Rainbow Six: Vegas is currently in development at their Montreal studios.
Critically acclaimed for reviving the Rainbow Six series after the load of steaming horseshit called Lockdown, Vegas brought fans of the tactical shooter genre as well as regular FPS fans together in a great meld, before ending with an infuriatingly nail-biting cliffhanger. Announcing Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 in a press release, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot has said that the sequel, still set in Las Vegas, should be arriving on the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 sometime in March 2008, with a new single player campaign and some surprising additions to the multiplayer and co-op modes.
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas has been the effect of a bomb in the world of video gaming in 2006, by introducing in one fell swoop technological advance and innovation in terms gameplay.
We are confident that Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2 will also pioneer in the field of highly competitive shooters and delight fans of the Rainbow Six brand.
This time, though, let’s hope that PC owners get a better port job with fewer problems and complaints and that PS3 owners don’t have to wait months before getting to drop tangos with a well placed shot. Irena Morales, I’m-a comin’ to getcha!
via [CVG]
Most of us that play Unreal Tournament 3 (UT3) do so because we get our ya-yas blasting total strangers into a fiery oblivion with the Necris DarkWalker. Or in my case, trying to see how long I can survive without having some form of death befall my virtual character. (In case you’re wondering, not long) But for Holland native Frederiek van Gammeren (aka Frantic), the UT3 launch party at Omega Sektor turned out to be a night to remember.
After all, it’s not every day you create a Guinness World Record for racking up 131 kills in half an hour. The first official UT3 tournament in Europe saw Epic’s Mark Rein, game journalists and top ranked UT3 players get together for a massive fragfest, as Stuart Remnant walked away with a high end SCAN PC and Frantic took the record for the most number of kills in a 30-minute UT3 deathmatch. At the event, Mark Rein confirmed the November 23rd European release date for the game, which comes as a sore issue for Xbox 360 owners, considering Epic has already announced that the Xbox 360 version of the game will be delayed to 2008 due to issues with the mods.
Hit the jump for pictures of the event, as I go and try to best my personal best of fragging 4 enemies before splattering all over the place.
Looks like no retailer can actually keep his ugly lil’ paws from tearing open those precious Halo 3 boxes and shower copies down from the rooftops. So what if the game is only supposed to be sold a week later, right? Images are coming in of a lot of Halo 3 copies in the wild, and considering how some retards have been stupid (or sadistic) enough to post the endings on YouTube, one wonders why even bother sticking to a release date instead of slapping on a sticker that reads “Go nuts! Sell as you please” instead of the one that pleads “Do not sell before 9/25/07″.
We’re not sure what’s going to happen in India, considering the games have to be sent to retailers before the 25th, but we’re waiting for some form of communication from Microsoft India on how they’re actually planning to prevent retailers here from going the same way of their crazed US and UK counterparts.
For those that were scared that Microsoft would ban your Xbox LIVE account if you took your purchase online before the 25th, rest easy, MS has got your back, even as they probably fleece the skin off the retailers’ for selling them in the first place.
“We can confirm that Microsoft is not taking any action (such as banning Xbox Live accounts) against gamers who are playing Halo 3 before the official street date. Any rumours or speculation to the contrary are false.”
said Microsoft, in an official press release issued to Pro-G, which had initially warned that anyone taking their copy of the game online before the 25th will have their accounts banned. I wouldn’t mind getting my copy before the 25th, considering I can’t really spoil it for anyone, what with me sitting on a broken Xbox 360 for the last 22 days now.
UPDATE: The official word from Mohit Anand, Country Manager for Microsoft India’s Entertainment and Devices Division is that they are taking enough precautions to make sure the street date is not broken here as well.
We are doing what we need to, and that is all I am willing to say :), but rest assured the game will be on shelves on [the] 25th.
We’re sure it will be, Mohit, but you’ve really got our eyebrows raised as far as they’ll go with that cryptic smiley emoticon there. Oh well, let the inexorably painful one-week wait begin! We waited years for the game, I’m sure we could wait another couple of days… I think. At least until I start crying on the doorsteps of the retailer to let me have my copy before then.
When Vijay said Microsoft’s sparing no expense for Halo 3, he meant every word of it. As if it wasn’t enough that other countries were getting massive launch parties for the final installment in the epic Halo story arc, Microsoft UK wants to show them up. Big.
Renting out the biggest theater in London, the BFI IMAX, the Halo 3 launch party for UK is an exclusive event being hosted by musician Pharrel Williams, who will also be taking on members of the public in Halo 3 matches as well as being connected to a number of other cities including Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam and Milan via Xbox LIVE. And you thought the Microsoft India launch event for the game was big! *sigh* When, if ever, will we see something like this in our own little country. For Mass Effect, perhaps? Hello, Mohit? Pretty please with lots of sugar and strawberries on top?
Think Evil. Breed Evil. Control All. Thats what the game’s tag line says and you’re all fired up to unleash all your rage caused from years of virginity upon anything that laughs at you. But you’re let down. Why? Read on, and I’ll explain in this very quick take on Overlord.
Overlord is an RPG that allows you to be truly and genuinely evil and piss off the world to no end. The objective here is to strike fear into the hearts of your enemies and make them tremble at your very name. The more people you successfully manage to impress with your evil-ness, the more powerful you become! To do this, in addition to your broke-ass weapon, you’re also given some cool magic spells and most importantly minions to do your bidding. Think of the minions as the Gremlins meets the small wise-ass, smack-talking Grunt dudes from Halo.
With the latest flood of new game releases and with almost everyone around disappeared to either play BioShock, watch awesome videos, kick back on their Xbox 360 or otherwise write possibly spoiler filled reviews of the “Game of the moment” *glares at certain people*, it leaves those of us without systems or 360s or PS3s to contribute to the one niche that is still left open: random rants and raves.
As seen by the ever-awesome scenes from BioShock, Crysis and even Assassin’s Creed, games nowadays are becoming more and more realistic. As with the previous generations, each set of games coming out these days pushes the visual boundaries further and further. Sooner or later, we’re going to end up seeing games that are really, really hard to distinguish from the movies we watch everyday. Of course, this usually ends up coming at cost of system resources, money and time so high, that the line that defines ‘sane’ is so far away; it looks most akin to a dot to those individuals that would dare look back (I’m looking at you, id. You and your bloody 20GB of Rage textures! You want Rage? TRY HULK RAGE! *SMASH!*).
However, since this issue has pretty much been discussed to death time and again over a million of the internet’s websites, forums and other venues for discussion, I won’t touch on it too much. Such discussions are normally peaceful and more expressions of opinion. Usually they just start out as words, but then slowly descend into a madness from which everything from Ion Cannons to Tactical Nuclear strikes are deployed to bring about devastation upon the armies of tanks, planes and infantry that struggle for control upon a massive and varied terrain of jagged programming code, drivers and the occasional wreck of an old 486s or Amiga of yore.
Okay, kidding. So it usually doesn’t end up like that. But the flame wars that usually emerge can be ferocious in nature and were it to be mapped into an RTS of sorts, I bet it’d put even Supreme Commander to shame.
To focus back on the subject (do random rants even have subjects?) the realism of today’s games is nothing short of awesome, but it does have its drawbacks. Having been spoiled by F.E.A.R., Doom 3 and other new games, it is becoming incredibly harder to revisit the old retro-days of yore.
Upon seeing the old, dated graphics that came with many a DOS game, my mind cringes; as if demanding that resolution be higher than the mere 640×480 pixels that was once considered ‘king’ of gaming in its day and age. When I finally got a chance to play Turok 1 again – a game that, for the one level I played it back when it came out I thoroughly enjoyed, I couldn’t get through even half of the same level before giving up. The graphics, the sound…my mind simply couldn’t wrap itself around how something could be so awfully painful – even as it recollected memories of all the fun it had with it at one point of time.
Then came Turok 2; although a fair bit better (especially with controls) than its predecessor, once again half-way through the game I had to stop. I just couldn’t stand the low-poly models; the horrid textures. Although I had insane fun with the game play (very, very little can actually beat using a cerebral bore, or watching as your arrows impale an enemy dino in the neck), it soon got tiring – especially with the constant annoying “Turok! Help us please!” whining from those damn brats in their damn cages! I mean, seriously, when I open the cage they should at least, you know, stop whining and make a break for it. But nooooo! Idiots have to wait for Turok to come and rescue them so they can just ‘disappear’ into nowhere. If they could disappear before, why the heck did they even have to wait for Turok in the first place?!
I have absolutely no clue how I withstood and enjoyed the game to its fullest the first time around I played it. Perhaps the fact that I was a fair bit younger and more naïve might’ve done something to the lack of criticism. Back then, to get –any- game to run well on your systems was a miracle.
But there are some games, some which despite their age seem to have that sense of style that never grows too old to enjoy. This applies both to the game play and the visuals itself. It’s a sense of style – a uniqueness that somehow newer games seem to have difficulty replicating. Doom 3 and Quake 4 are good examples of this lack of style – both games are virtually identical when it comes to graphics and game play as a whole. Although Q4 did have a few (and somewhat cool) vehicles, there really wasn’t anything that set it apart; besides perhaps the story (which rode a lot on it’s predecessor actually). Something similar could be said about FEAR. Although visually, it’s far darker and the firefights more intense with the use of slow motion, it still strikes me as ‘just another FPS’ when it comes down to it.
What gripped me about FEAR was not its dark, brooding hallways, or the scary girl ghost jumping out at me from the dark corners when I absolutely least expected it to the point where my heart skipped a beat every time I saw a little girl wearing red (oh my god did that shadow just move?) or such. What gripped me about FEAR was, rightfully, the story – which still does. However, despite this the fact that it really just looked like another shooter on the market sort of made it slightly less…unique, as it were.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m all for realism and awesome graphics – the two easily make up some of the best games around. But in the strive to better graphics, for some reason developers seem to be moving more and more away from having unique styles to those graphics.
By styles, I don’t mean completely cartoony or even cell shaded stuff. Team Fortress 2 is an excellent of how going on with style and cell shading works to make something unique. Yet, at the same time having everyone do that would just be counter-productive.
Its just that when every game that comes out looks incredibly real, where does the true difference lie? In the lighting? In the models or scenery? In the textures and artwork?
Whenever I see concept art for any games, it’s simply mind boggling just how good the artists of these various developer companies are. Then one compares the art to the actual in-game models themselves and then it ends up somewhat…underwhelming. Although no doubt that in certain cases the models come out far cooler than the art; many times the art itself just looks better. Be it colors or lighting, there is something about the way the artist made it – the style of the entire thing as it were, that appeals to viewer.
To take another example of such style – Defcon.
Its colors are simplistic, the details to a minimum. Yet it is this simplicity; this denial of any details that seems to flow with any player’s perceptions. The nuclear missiles are little but simple icons, yet it does not matter – the entire visual theme blends into that of the game play, creating in essence, a style hard to replicate by many other games.
It is by far not the only example. Many of us have heard of the addictive fl0w. I had the pleasure to play this simple, almost beautiful game’s limited version on the PC. Despite being rather short, its visuals merge well with the soft chimes and sound, and in turn merge with the game play again to make something different; unique almost.
Then there are older games, from the era where realism was not very possible. Games in this era relied on impressive artwork, visuals and impressive action to draw in the gamer. A few good examples could be like Crusader: No Regret and maybe even to a lesser extent Mortal Kombat and the street fighter series.
Yet another recent example can be Battleships Forever – a successor to the hit classic Warning Forever. Indeed, one could quote a myriad of examples of games with their own unique styles – but such wishful thinking is really futile.
The market’s prevailing attitude rests more on realism than anything else right now, dictating where the majority of publishers wish to aim their content. Although developers do move to the whims of the majority of their collective audiences, the trend is thankfully not universal. Team Fortress 2 will come out, while Starcraft 2 seems to hold some promise as well. Other good, fun games to look out for is perhaps Little Big World on the PS3 or alternatively, one could just go to the Xbox Live Arcades for a dose of nostalgia.