It’s the beginning of the month, you (or your dad) just got your salary, so why wait for later? Why not decide on the games you are going to buy this month? E-xpress has sent us a list of games which they’ll be releasing in India this month. It’s not a complete list of all the games that’ll be releasing this month, but e-xpress definitely has a few good titles for you this month. Here’s the full list:
PC (Games for Windows)
Title Name MRP Publisher Genre
Aliens vs Predator 699 SEGA Action
Nepolean Total War 999 SEGA Historic Real-Time Strategy
Sonic & Sega All Star Racing 699 SEGA Kart Racing
Assassins Creed II 999 Ubisoft Action Adventure
Silent Hunter 5 699 Ubisoft Action Adventure
Supreme Commander 2 999 Square Enix Sci-Fi Real-Time Strategy
Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising 499 THQ Real-Time Strategy
Metro 2033 699 THQ Sci-Fi First-Person Shooter
Just Cause 2 699 Eidos Modern Action Adventure
Playstation 3 (PS3)
Title Name MRP Publisher Genre
Sonic & Sega All Star Racing 2499 SEGA Kart Racing
Final Fantasy XIII 2499 Sqaure Enix Role Playing
Yakuza 3 2499 SEGA Modern Action Adventure
Batman Arkham Asylum GOTY 2499 Eidos Action
Just Cause 2 2499 Eidos Modern Action Adventure
Resonance Of Fate 2499 SEGA Role Playing
Microsoft Xbox 360
Title Name MRP Publisher Genre
Sonic & Sega All Star Racing 2499 SEGA Kart Racing
Final Fantasy XIII 2499 Sqaure Enix Role Playing
Metro 2033 2499 THQ Sci-Fi First-Person Shooter
Batman Arkham Asylum GOTY 2499 Eidos Action
Resonance of Fate 2499 SEGA Role Playing
Just Cause 2 2499 Eidos Modern Action Adventure
PSP
Title Name MRP Publisher Genre
Shaun White Snow + POP ‘Rival Swords’ PSP Pack 1299 Ubisoft
Driver ’76 + Prince of Persia 3 Revelations PSP Pack 1299 Ubisoft
Just in from e-xpress, Ben 10: Alien Force Vilgax is now available in stores. If you’re a fan of the cartoon like my cousin you should buy it. The picture says the rest.
Square Enix, today announces it has released a demo of Supreme Commander 2 on Steam today. Developed by Gas Powered Games, SC2, is set 25 years after Supreme Commander, and it features numerous game enhancements in the form of in-depth campaign mode, online multiplayer and a unique storyline.
The demo has two levels of the tutorial as well as two missions for the United Earth Federation (UEF), one of the three factions of the Colonial Defense Coalition. In the game, the Cybran invasion force is on the run and sensors have picked up a number of operational Cybran Mass Extractors off the coast of the Weddell Strait. Players will need to explore the islands in the strait and successfully destroy the extractors.
After refusing orders and refusing to surrender their Armored Command Unit, players are now public enemy #1 in the UEF. Colonel Rodgers has targeted New Cathedral, a colony where the players’ wife and child reside – they will need to take the most direct route to defend the colony. Unfortunately, that means traveling through the ruins of the Boolon Industrial Complex.
Saltmarch Media, the same group who had organised Indian Developer Summit is organising Indian Game Developer Summit in Bangalore, on Feb 27 (this weekend). The one day event will see discussions on topics ranging from game development, marketing, team-management among others.
You can check out the schedule here, the talks I’m looking forward to the most are:
Technology And Market Trends In The PC Game Industry by Keita Iida, part of NVIDIA’s Content & Technology organization since 2001
Bootstrapping for Mobile Game Development in India by Krishna Chaitanya Pediredla, founder and managing partner of Drona Labs, which focuses on developing games and applications for the Apple Iphone.
Quality Asset Creation & Sound As A Storyteller by Varun Nair, who has been a part of sound industry for the past four and half years and has dabbled in most areas of sound during this period.
Stretching Torque to Duplicate a Commercial AAA Game Engine in Ghajini by Imran Khan, VP Technology at FXLabs.
Preparing for the Great Indian Social Gaming Rush by Sumit Gupta, CEO and Founder of BitRhymes, a social gaming company.
Open Source for Your Game Development by Kinshuk Sunil, an indie game developer from New Delhi and Yadu Rajiv, an indie game developer from Trivandrum.
The Creative Core Team by Jithin Rao, a producer at Ubisoft Pune, the game publisher Ubisoft’s first Indian studio.
Now the list is cool if not for the last two which clash, hmm I guess I’ll have to figure out a way to attend both. In case you’re interested, you can register here and do ping me if you’re around. You’ll find all my contact info here.
Electronic Arts has announced two new Co-Op maps for Army of Two: The 40th Day, which released in India a month back.
Army of Two: The 40th Day – Chapters of Deceit features two all co-op campaign mapsand in the new chapters, players stumble upon information that could lead to ending the invasion by Jonah and his 40th Day Initiative army. However, they quickly learn that everyone is out for themselves and to trust no one but their partner.
Having played the game once on Xbox 360, I think I’ll try it again with the new campaign. How about you?
The new campaign maps will be available for download on Xbox Live and PlayStationNetwork on April 1, 2010 for $9.99 or 800 Xbox LIVE points
Games n Gadgets, a games-only shop which opened about 6 months ago or so in Jayanagar has come up with an ambitious plan. They have tied up with Bangalore-based company, mCoupon, who’ll provide them with an innovative loyalty management service.
In this system, anyone can join the GNG club by either just sending a simple sms “ADDME GNG” to 9243000111 or by filling up a simple form at http://gng.mcoupons.in. Once you register, you get 100 points — which converts to Rs200 discount on store — and everytime you buy a new item you get more points. You can accumulate these points to buy goods from their store or use it as a discount card.
This website also describes the benefits and conveniences of having a mobile loyalty program. Basically it includes easy registration, looking up their points at any point of time by sending a simple SMS. They can even raise a query or submit a complaint by sending sms “COMPLAINT GNG <complaint>” or “QUERY GNG <query>”. When the complaint/query is resolved by the the store, the sender gets a SMS with the resolution.
This system is no different than the loyalty/membership cards given out shopping chains such as Shopper’s Stop, the key here is the SMS shortcode technology used by mCoupons.
Gamers n Gadgets are also the official Gaming Partners for the PC-Expo which is being organised in Palace ground from February 19 (Friday, today) to February 22.
They’ll also be organising a corporate level Wii Gaming championship in those 4 days.
Capcom is up to something we think it’s not such a bad idea. Resident Evil 4 will soon be available for iPhone and iPod Touch in serialised episodes.
Dubbed Resident Evil 4: For Beginners, the game contains the first two chapters of Resident Evil 4 for iPhone as well as a new tutorial level. Additionally, the game offers a new “Beginner” difficulty setting, one new “shooting gallery” mini game and three mercenary missions. Players will be able to download the remaining Resident Evil 4 chapters as DLC, if they wish to continue the journey. Customers that have already purchase the full game will receive the added features in a free update.
Featuring high-resolution 3D graphics and intuitive context sensitive Multi-Touch controls, Resident Evil 4 for iPhone allows gamers to experience one of the most thrilling chapters of the Resident Evil saga in an all new way. Engage in running gun fights against crowds of enemies utilizing Resident Evil 4’s intuitive tap interface. The new location based damage system allows the player to blast enemies in their legs to slow them down or in the head for a quick kill. Additionally, context sensitive controls pop up as needed allowing the player to perform complex actions with a tap of the button. Players can climb ladders, equip binoculars and jump out windows with the touch of an icon.
Resident Evil 4: For Beginners for the iPhone and iPod touch is now available for $.99 (great pricing) from the App Store. For additional information check the capcom site.
If you want to play Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, the upcoming game from Ubisoft, all you have to do is buy a copy of Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction for Xbox360.
Yes you hear that right; Ubisoft is offering gamers a chance to be the first to play Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier’s Multiplayer Beta this summer. This exclusive beta invitation will be available for a limited time to customers who purchase Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction for Xbox 360.
e-Xpress Interactive would be releasing the game Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction in India in April 2010. So if you’re looking forward to Future Soldier, you can pre-order Splinter Cell Conviction and have an early advantage here’s a teaser video of Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier.
Epic Games, has released the February 2010 UDK Beta, an updated version of the Unreal Development Kit (UDK), the free edition of Unreal Engine 3 that provides access to the game development toolset.
Epic is committed to providing the UDK community with regular software releases at no charge, and the latest beta is available now for download.
An extensive list of new additions and improvements included with this version is available at:
The February 2010 Beta UDK Features and Tools
New color picker
Update in real time, e.g., change color and see level lighting update as you drag!
Properly deal with HDR colors
Capture from the entire screen – even your desktop!
Screen door fades
New screen door dissolve effect for fading primitives (SM3+ only)
Actors can fade in/out based on their MaxDrawDistance
Static meshes, ProcBuildings, Skeletal Meshes and SpeedTrees are supported
Static Mesh LODs can and Massive LODs can cross-dissolve between each other
UDK Improvements
Dramatically improved Navigation Mesh simplification
50-60% reduction in polygon counts, with corresponding 50-60% reduction in memory footprint
Faster at runtime due to less nodes to traverse, etc.
Makeup of mesh is much improved with edges that span obstacle to obstacle and provide more accurate width representation of the geometry
Matinee improvements
Multi-select support for Matinee groups and tracks
Users can now copy and paste many tracks at once in Matinee
Multiple Matinee groups can now be moved into a folder in a single action
Curve Editor new feature: Movement axis locking
Kismet improvements
Added Kismet “And” gate
Fires its output once, only after every linked input has fired at least once
CameraAnim Improvements
Greatly improved CameraAnim handling and blending of post-process values
Static mesh LOD improvements
Screendoor fade between static mesh LODs for supporting materials based on time
Static meshes are forced down the dynamic rendering path while transitioning
Static mesh dynamic rendering path now uses the same LOD heuristic as the static path
Screendoor fade even works on dynamic shadows from the static mesh
Necessary to avoid popping due to LODs shadowing each other
Lightmap resolution is now halved for each static mesh LOD level
Moving UTGame native code to UDKBase native package
Volumes, static meshes and triggers now have more apparent collision hull wires
Optimizations, Upgrades, and Fixes
Bink update fixes the #3 most common UDK crash
SpeedTree applications upgrade from 5.0.0 to 5.0.2
Fixes an incompatibility with tablet drivers
Exports the G channel of normal maps correctly for use with UE3
A few other minor fixes
Static mesh component vertex color memory savings
Painted vertex colors now use half as much memory
Save System overhaul to unify map and content package code paths and enhance usability for content creators.
I used to play NFS a lot as a kid and there was this neighbourhood friend who used to looove Ferraris. I’m not in touch with him, but Ferraris have been missing from NFS series since Hot Pursuit 2. So the good news now is that Ferrari cars are now available as downloadable content for NFS Shift.
The cars which’ll be available are 1996 Ferrari F50 GT, 2005 Ferrari F430 Spider, 2005 Ferrari FXX, 2005 Ferrari Superamerica, 2006 Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano, 2006 Ferrari F430 Challenge (Online/Quick event only), 2006 Ferrari F430 GTC (Online/Quick event only), 2007 Ferrari 430 Scuderia, 2008 Ferrari California and the 2008 Ferrari 16M Scuderia Spider.
In addition to 10 new cars, the Ferrari Racing Series will also extend SHIFT’s career mode with 46 new Ferrari specific challenges designed for the Ferrari cars to participate in including hot laps, eliminators, endurance races and a world tour. Completing the perfect Ferrari package are an additional 125 gamerpoints as a reward for undertaking various exciting challenges. All Ferrari cars can also be taken online where players can prove who has the skills to master these high-performance Italian racing machines.
The Ferrari Racing pack will be available worldwide today, Feb 9, on Xbox 360and for 800 Microsoft Points. Here are a few of the cars which’ll be available in the game.
The picture says the rest.
What they said…