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You have to hand it to those guys over at Bioware. Whether its intentional or not on their part, the times at which a player is presented a particularly dicey scene right after jumping into one of the developer’s games at the very first chance they get can either be highly arousing or terribly underwhelming until enough hours have sunken. For me, it was pretty amusing right from the get go when I chose to play it safe as a Male Warrior. While walking into a kitchen where my soon-to-be-possessed pup was found stirring up a bit of conflict with the local Nanny, a gang of rats had ambushed us in the pantry. Rats! You can’t imagine how underpowered we were for this battle, even if it was a mere 1/10th of an entire nanosecond. Regardless, we took those grimfaced bastards back to the Maker. One of my party members takes the time to reflect on the situation through a dialogue tree, while looking absolutely smeared in rats blood. Clearly, this was no ordinary encounter. This was goddamn war.
Right, so maybe it wasn’t completely intentional on their parts, but I couldn’t help laugh. For all the grandiose I’ve witnessed through their trailers of epic tease and those previews of journalistic gloat, it was clear that Dragon Age: Origins (a role-playing game that’s been in the making for some time) had some hefty +2 DEX boots to fill in. Returning to their roots, Bioware once again proves that it knows how to work the fantasy realm, and that some fancy-schmancy Dungeons & Dragons ruleset wasn’t going to make or break it for anyone’s who come to love the Baldur’s Gate series. But how does such an experience fair on the mighty world of console gaming?
When PC owners finally got their hands on Mass Effect a couple of months back , they were more than a little vocal about expressing their disappointment when the “Bring Down The Sky” DLC wasn’t made available for free download as promised. Finally, as of today, PC owners will be able to blast away fugly bug-eyed Batarians and make sure they handle Armageddon rogue asteroids, Cmdr. Shepard style as the long-awaited 309 MB DLC goes up for free download along with the 1.01 patch for the game. According to the changelog, the 34 MB patch includes support for DLC and some bug fixes for audio, gameplay and multicore CPUs.
However, be warned that you don’t just get access to the DLC. You will first have to create a BioWare Community account (if you don’t already have one) and register your Mass Effect CD Key with them to get a Bring Down The Sky key. A needless hassle, but I suppose a necessary one, or God help the DLC pirates. Get all the information you need at the official Mass Effect DLC page here.
As for the Mass Effect Xbox 360 owners who’re kinda hoping for some sort of a “DLC Now Free” announcement, sorry folks, according to BioWare and Microsoft, there will not be any sort of a price cut on the DLC, so you’ll still need to fork over those 400 MS Points if you want to play.
Download Mass Effect v1.01 Patch
Download “Bring Down The Sky” DLC
Rejoice, RPG lovers! Fable 2 is finished, according to Lionhead’s Peter Molyneux, who was at Microsoft’s press conference today to show off the sequel to the quirky, fun and terribly short Fable. Showing off the game, which follows in its predecessor’s footsteps in allowing you to craft your character and mold him from a boy (or girl), Peter talked about the AI dog and the co-op over Xbox LIVE feature before announcing that the game, which will feature persistent and seamless drop-in/drop-out co-op, will be out in October this year. Frankly, we’ve waited long enough to get our wife (or wives) drunk at the local bar before wooing them with gifts and making love to them in the pitch black darkness. Hit the jump for more Fable 2 videos from E3, including the Pub Games videos and the new trailer.
Well, what more can we say? We’ve confirmed with local distributor e-Xpress Interactive a couple of days back that Soulcalibur IV will indeed not make it to Indian shores, thanks to the fact that it’s an Ubisoft game. Since Ubisoft doesn’t believe in offering any sort of sales concession when it comes to Indian markets, and e-Xpress, like anyone else, wouldn’t want non-existent profit margins, Indian gamers eager for Soulcalibur IV will now have to look at Play-Asia (as usual) for their imports.
Speaking to us about the situation, e-Xpress has clarified that rather than haggle with Ubi and import the games for “an obscenely high price”, they’ve elected to not import the game in all likelihood. But the real terrifying part of the conversation came when Fallout 3 came into the picture. In a press release issued last month, Ubisoft had claimed that it would be distributing Fallout 3 in some PAL territory countries in Europe including Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Which indirectly means that if India’s import were to happen via Ubi, there’s no chance of Fallout 3 ever being officially released for the consoles here.
Know how people talk about history repeating itself, but you still see zidiots running around committing the exact same mistakes as everybody else? Apparently, in EA and BioWare’s case, that’s more than hitting the bull’s eye. In what seems to be a serious case of having gone Rip Van Winkle during the Bioshock / SecuROM SNAFU, Derek French, the Technical Producer at BioWare for Mass Effect (PC) has the beginnings of a fine mess on his hands, especially after announcing a copy protection system that makes the Bioshock activation mess (or StarForce even) seem tame by comparison.
According to Derek French, Mass Effect, scheduled to arrive on the PC this 28th, will employ the same SecuROM online activation system that was initially put into Bioshock, allowing the buyer to activate his copy of Mass Effect for 3 times before politely asking to him / her to go to hell, that is, contact the customer service “helpline” to get it reactivated. And while the game itself wouldn’t require the DVD to be physically present in the drive, it goes one step further and phones home every 10 days and re-authenticates just to make sure legit customers are not the worst form of criminal scum publishers swear we are.
Checking out the new trailers for Square-Enix’s PS3 epics Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy Versus XIII initiates a trademark Final Fantasy impeccable – enlightening, revealing, enticing and confounding any red-blooded gamer in one fell swoop. Bear in mind that these titles are still a ways off; FF XIII has only shown smidgeons of gameplay footage and is scheduled for release in late 2008. FF Versus XIII only has CG-animated cut-scenes to its credit and understandably hasn’t been given an official date. However, the fate of the franchise and the two pillars supporting the massive Fabula Nova Crystallis project are, make no mistake about it, drop-fucking-dead gorgeous in an age where looking gorgeous is about as passé as making an FPS.
Looks like everyone’s going MMO these days. That’s where the money comes pouring in, I suppose, even though we never get to see any here apart from the Korean ones. (That’s right, there’s not many WoW freaks here!) Close on the heels of the recently announced Elder Scrolls MMO, Montreal-based audio solution provider Audiokinetic have announced that are providing the Wwise audio tools that will be used in BioWare’s as-of-yet unannounced MMO – the first project from the new BioWare Austin studio.
In an official press release, Gordon Walton, Co-Studio Direction, BioWare Austin have praised the award-winning Wwise tools, which debuted with the ill-fated Shadowrun and has gone on to win many accolades and nominations across several game development awards. Powered by Perpetual server technology (Star Trek: Online) and the Simultronics HeroEngine, there is no word on what IP the MMO will actually be based on, even though rumors circulated all over the Internet around the time that EA bought BioWare that it would be set in the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic universe.
However, while everyone is hungry for another Star Wars MMO after Galaxies went belly up, let’s not forget the fact that BioWare has a rich IP harem from which to draw inspiration for an MMO from – including great franchises such as Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, the upcoming Dragon Age as well as the Xbox 360 blockbuster of the year, Mass Effect.
Bah, but what do I care? MMOs never end up here anyway. I’ll take my single player RPG, please, with a side order of fries. Thank you.
More than 48 hours to go before we can finally get our hands on Mass Effect over here, unlike some lucky dogs elsewhere who’re enjoying it already. For helpless souls like us that just can’t wait for our intergalactic roleplaying fix, Microsoft has been kind enough to launch the Mass Effect Experience, a great Flash site that puts you in the shoes of Cmdr. Shepard on board the SSV Normandy.
No point in me talking about the site, since it’s awesomeness redefined, but one thing that this site has managed to do is to make me try and break into the local distributors’ store to get my copy. I want my character to get some alien lovin’ already! Come on, Microsoft India, have some pity on us. Send us a review copy or something. Help me end my misery!
Scream long and hard and chances are you’ll get what you wanted. In Singapore’s case, that seems to hold very true. Having banning the critically acclaimed Mass Effect after videos of hot alien lesbian sex scenes (if you can even call it that) surfaced on the Internet, Singapore’s Media Development Authority went back to take a look at the scenes and appear to have finally came to their senses. According to The Straits Times:
The Board of Film Censors (BFC) said in a statement on Friday evening that it will selectively use games ratings to ‘enable highly anticipated games to be launched in Singapore’ until it puts in place a games classification system in January.
The statement said that ‘this will allow such games to enter the market with immediacy and give the industry and members of the public a better understanding of the benefits of the proposed games classification system’.
So rejoice fellow Xbox 360 gamers in Singapore, for Mass Effect is banned no longer and you can all get your freak on along with the rest of us by watching your favorite videogame characters indulge in same-sex cross-species humping. Or you could just go play VirtuallyJenna, without all the messy RPG elements, if that’s your thing. Either way, be thankful the MDA hasn’t seen our Bollywood “item numbers” yet.
P.S.: As an afterthought, will Fable for Xbox Originals get banned in Singapore as well, considering it had a lot more sexual stuff going for it. Or what about Fahrenheit, with all its “interactive sex” and the full frontal nudity? What happens when the Fall Update hits Singapore December 4th?
There are good sides and bad sides to living in India, especially if you happen to be a die-hard gamer. The good deal is that almost all PC and Xbox 360 games are a lot cheaper than their US/UK counterparts. That is, if the games actually release down here before the rest of the world has finished playing them three times over. Or worse, like UbiSoft Xbox 360 titles, turn up their noses and ignore us completely.
With first party titles like Halo 3 and Mass Effect enjoying a simultaneous release with their American counterparts, it was more than a little upsetting to PC owners here that Gears of War still wasn’t available on shelves. Naturally, Xbox 360 owners weren’t too happy with the regional restrictions and extremely low content on the Marketplace. After all, Reggie’s not in the best of moods if you keep him from buying DOOM!
However, talking to our stalkers in a short email interview, the good folks at Microsoft India let us know that they are indeed working to fix said problems. According to Sanjoy John, PC owners desperate for their Gears fix will be able to pick up their copies this week, while Xbox 360 owners will see a lot of new content, including more Arcade games and Bollywood related content (blech!), headed their way.
And to feed us rabid Mass Effect hungry zombies, copies will be available with the distributors on the 15th, and in stores around the 20th. And yes, there’s probably even going to be a nice, big launch party, where some of us will be gulping down food while the sane desperate ones try to get as quickly as they can to the alien boobies! Wonder if we’ll get to see any Liara cosplayers at the event.