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.

All gungho about it? Go ahead, download it.

E-xpress will be releasing the game in India in March 2010 and pricing of the game will be as follows:
PC: Rs 999    Xbox 360: Rs. 2499

As always, here are a few screens

Making a  game based on a movie is not new these days.The latest entry, Avatar from Ubisoft, brings Cameron’s world of Pandora to consoles and PCs far and wide with its game take on the fictional world of Pandora.

Avatar-The game, does not follow the same story as the movie. The game sets long before the events that take place in the movie. The mining corporation is beginning to turn Pandora into a mining colony. You can decide  whether to align yourself with the big blue tree-huggers or the rainforest-burning capitalists. Skills are pretty similar between the two sides, though taking the latter side looks much cooler here to me.

The stuff looks quite impressive as of now and the level of detail of the jungle and the creature animations are of extremely high standard. Ubisoft has even got a stereoscopic version of the game which if you have the 3D compatible gadgets, it enhances the gameplay experience.

You can customise more than sixty weapons available in the game, and choose your own unique skills for each clan. A suite of pilotable vehicles and animals allow gamers to expand the battleground in single-player or online multiplayer as they fight to determine the future of Pandora. Here’s the trailer. Check the space again for the full game review soon.

I used to love playing NFS series of games as a kid; as a matter of fact, it was one of the first games that got me totally hooked on to video games. But through the years the charm wore off as the developers used their tried and tested formulae way too many times.

I gave up on the series and moved on to other Flatout and Burnout which were not just fun to play, but also different in their own unique ways. That being the context I had high hopes for NFS Shift, for in the game I saw something that would get me back to liking the series yet again, and I need to say it has done so successfully.

Shift is not a racing sim, nor is it a total arcade racer either. It finds itself in between these two groups which have their own top games and franchises. With the car modelling and control, it works somewhat like a sim, but when it comes to overtaking and catching up, it’s still  an arcade game. You can still catch up after an initial spin out, provided it’s a three or four lap race and you can even push opponents off the road with ease.

Where the game really shines is with the cockpit view. The screen goes blurry when you crash, you get an real sense of speed as surrounding flash by, but you’ll also end up slamming on the brakes way too late. The last issue however is a temporary one and once you get used to the tracks, it’ll be a non-issue. In the beginning of a race, when all cars are trying to crowd around and push ahead this camera angle makes it even more difficult to navigate through the road ahead. You might say that’s how life is in a real race, but then in a real race the driver has 360 degree vision, he doesn’t need to press a few keys on the numpad to look around. That being the case, I ended up starting most races with normal, helicopter view.

Track Record

Apart from the staple races, Shift brings to us a few special events which have some of the most interesting races in the game. The best are those in which cars from the same company are placed against each other. My favourite mode in the NFS series, the drift mode, however, is almost impossible to get used to. I tried and I tried and I tried.. yet failed. I’ll keep trying mind you, but the level progression system in Shift is such that you can keep going even if you haven’t won all races. You can avoid almost all Drift races and still do pretty well.

Levels are dependent upon the number of stars you get for each race. Every race will have different criteria, in completion of which, you’ll be awarded stars. So when you first play a race, you can concentrate on winning a race, and the second time, you can try to achieve those points you missed out the first time. It could be ‘mastering all curves’ or ‘clean overtaking’ to name a few.

Going Faster

To keep winning races you need to upgrade your car on the way and the [smartads] tuning settings have progressed a lot since the last version. Because of the lack of time, I opted for the  Quick Tuning mode and set the car to perform the way I wanted it to. If you’re an automotive freak, you can hit the Advanced Tuning and fine tune your cars performance. Another point to note is that certain upgrades don’t work well until another upgrade is bought. I realised this after I installed a few performance updates only to find it almost impossible to control my car. Once I installed the weight reduction package, things fell into place. My Porsche returned to its normal self.

Paying for all thee upgrades will never be a hassle considering the kinda money you win in each race. A friend of mine who played a few races, thought money was showered on the driver more than what was necessary — ehmm you’ll feel like a member of  Indian cricket team .

Around 70 cars are available in the game, but me being me, stuck to Porsche cars for most parts of the game, except for the first stage when I was driving a Mazda.

How Hardcore is It?

One reason why racing titles appeal to everyone is its simplicity and the level of complexity it could be pushed to, NFS Shift is no different. IN the beginning of the game you’ll get to drive a car with minimal assists and aggressive opponents, just to check your driving ability. Depending on how well you fare, you might be slotted to the most difficult setting — realistic damage, no driving assists, aggressive AI — and if you screw up you’ll be thrown lollipops in the form of, easy AI (will skid out way too often) driving assists (brake last moment and still get away with it!) to name a few.

Verdict

Overall, NFS Shift is a good game, and a great way to take the franchise ahead and the game has brought me back to liking NFS franchise again. The graphics are beautiful and the cars sound too sexy. Great going, EA, Slightly Mad (developer), you got the trick right this time

The Good

Racing modes

Graphics

No Story line.. Yay!

Cock pit view

The Bad

Drift is daft!

Too easy to reach championship mode

We need more bling :-/

The latest game from Pixar, UP, based on the movie by the same name, is enjoyable if you have watched the movie and liked it, else you might find it a little dull and childish.
The game has almost the same story as the movie; but doesn’t engage one the way the movie does. Carl an old man, decides to travel to Paradise Falls, just as he promised his wife he would while she was in her death bed. He manages to get his house to fly by using hundreds of hydrogen balloons. Mid-way he realises that Russell, a boy scout, was standing on his house porch while the house lifted-off. He gets him into the house and after heading through a patch of rough weather, they reach Paradise Falls. Now both of them begin a chase behind the house which drifted-off when they got off at the falls.
Most of the game time will be spent hiking through jungles and jumping over narrow cliffs along waterfalls. So you’ll get Carl and Russell to run, jump, run, jump through the forest floor. To add a little variety to the mind-numbing action you have an option to collect items, which will unlock personal skills through the game.
Apart from running around on the forest floor, you’ll get a chance to get Carl and Russell to travel on a raft and fly a plane.
Also, gamers can switch between the pair at any point during the game and this will be mainly to do certain tasks only one of them can perform. For example, Russell can lift up Carl up a steep cliff and he can in turn lift him up by dropping his cane down.
Graphically, the game is a disappointment considering how good the characters look in the movie. The PC version of the game could easily pass-off as a PS2 game, even if you turn on all the bells and whistles of graphics settings on.
The game however might appeal to children and the tasks and gameplay are easy to learn and get used to. But in an attempt to make a game aimed at kids, I think the developer of the game, THQ, ended up making dumbed down version of the movie.

Rating:

Hope you’re enjoying playing as the cape crusader. Don’t worry about being jobless once you play through the game in a hurry. Eidos has announced that a map pack – Insane Night Map Pack – of the game will be available on September 17 for PS3, Xbox360 and PC.

In the ‘Totally Insane’ FreeFlow Combat map, players will be tested to their fullest as scores of escaped lunatics bear down upon Batman as they make their escape through the asylum’s secure records facility.

These fast-moving foes will challenge all but the most practiced players, with quick reactions and expert timing needed to fend off wave upon wave of insane inmates, bent on taking down the Dark Knight.

In the ‘Nocturnal Hunter’ Invisible Predator map, players take on a wholly different approach, practicing their predatory skills to remain in the shadows, utilizing the Arkham watchtowers and Batman’s arsenal of gadgets to gain the upper hand on The Joker’s army of goons patrolling below.

Batman: Arkham Asylum is rated “T” and is available for PS3 and Xbox 360 for the suggested retail price of $59.99. It will also be available for Games for Windows LIVE at retail outlets for the suggested retail price of $49.99 on September 15. For more information, please visit www.batmanarkhamasylum.com.

Ah those Good Old Games (GOG.com), they have some amazing offers on some old games from Ubisoft and pretty neat prices too. If you haven’t bought them already or if you have lost a copy and want to buy it again, it can’t get cheaper than this, considering it’s DRM free.

The games on offer are Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Beyond Good and Evil. They are being sold for $6.99 each for now, but if you are interested in both, you can get a combo-pack for $9.99.

If you are planning to buy them, Beyond Good and Evil is 1.4GB in size and Sands of Time is 987MB.

Among other good offer, they have Fallout 2 for $5.99  can I say awesome?

Nielsen has done a study of gaming industry from January 2008-January 2009. It provides some interesting insights.

Women Rule

Turns out majority gamers are girls! That’s not me saying it, to be honest, I have hardly spotted a girl playing PC games. According to Nielsen (pdf) report, females above the age of 25 make up 46% of PC gamers in US. Now this stat left me confused but the next line got me back on track, because when Nielsen conducted the study they did not just concentrate on 3D PC games which we have all grown to love. They all studied flash games and card games which come by default with Microsoft.

Card Trick

Turns out about 17 million people play these card games with Solitaire being played by 17 million people in the month of  December 2008 alone. Nielsen studied 184,000 PC gamers as part of the study.

Among ‘genuine games’ it only World of Warcraft that topped the list which was the 7th most played game by both men and women.In December 2008 alone, about 1.8million people played the MMO which has been blamed for everything under the sun from family feuds to bankruptcy.

Second Life to After Life

Another trend to be noted in PC gaming is the decline of the second-life. The user base fell from 500,000 players in January 2008, to a little more than 200,000 players in January 2009. Time for Amul to shut shop in second-life?

What’s With the Youngsters?

Either the young people (under 25) have an attention deficiency problem or they are too much into consoles. It so happens that only gamers who come in the age group of 25-55+ spend around 30mins in a go, playing PC games. More on possible reasons later.

When was the last time you enjoyed playing a cricket based video game? I don’t remember if you ask me, the last one I thoroughly enjoyed was Brian Lara Cricket (in 90s)by Codemasters. After the turn of the millennium, Electronic Arts brought out a few games which according to me, made me averse to cricket video games. They were buggy, too easy or too tough, had below-par graphics and well, never actually improved.

The only difference was Brian Lara Cricket 2007, which wasn’t great but was decent enough. The game had it’s own quirks, but it was much better than any effort from EA till then. In short Codemasters was the Pro Evolution Soccer of Cricket and EA remained EA. (Of course the recent editions of FIFA are much better than PES)

That said, Codemasters is releasing a new cricket based game Ashes Cricket 2009, and a demo of the game will be available on Xbox360 Live today, according to GamingIndians . The PC demo will be available by next week according to Planet Cricket.

What I like most about this game is the fact that it will available on all major platforms — PC, Xbox360, PS3 and on Nintendo Wii. The version I am looking forward to the most is the Wii one, as I just need to swing the Wiimote in the direction I want the shot to be played in, instead of pressing a few buttons. I can almost imagine me playing a switch hit. That said, there is a problem with keeping expectations that high, you ask why? Because I don’t know if the game supports MotionPlus or if the gameplay is as good as the developers claim it to be or if it’s in me to play a whole test match while playing with a Wiimote.

Also, I might have to wait for a while for the Wii version. The PC version will be priced at around Rs499 and Xbox360 version at around Rs1,999.

If you want to preorder the game, Consoul and GamingIndians are running pre-orders.

For extra info visit
Official site Preview PC, Wii

When Google made the announcement about their upcoming Chrome Operating System, the first question that struck me was – What about gaming? Because I use Linux once in a while, (and when I do it is generally Ubuntu) the only way they can get me to use Chrome OS would be through a wider range of games made available through the service.

As of now, Windows continues to have a monopoly over PC based gaming, as there are very few existing games and very few being developed for Mac and Linux . But what needs to be kept in mind is the shift in gaming to browser environment, moving away from PC-hardware intensive gaming. The advantages include — reaching a wider audience, cost-effectiveness, easy distribution and control over piracy, albeit bandwidth intensive.

3D browsing as of now

Business Week had an interesting story a while back on how easy it has become to handle 3D graphics within a browser environment. They even mentioned the effort being put into building 3D games on iPhone, which till recent times, I thought, had very few genuine games. Most of the so-called games were touch-screen implementation of  flash games or just bling elements. The recent launch of games like Doom and the recent news of Duke Nukem being ported to iPhone, all sounds like good news, because if iPhone can handle those games, so can a Netbook with 1GB RAM.

I had earlier blogged about Vector entertainment who are developing a 3D racing game which will work within a browser using v3D engine. In the same story, I even mentioned the progress being made in Java to accommodate 3D objects within an applet. But java applets continue to be resource intensive and until this problem is sorted, the basic objective of games within a browser fails.

Window’s loss, is Google’s loss

If PC gaming move to a browser, Linux will gain a lot much more than any other OS, because primarily it’s free and more flexible than most OSes in the market. Secondly, Chrome is targeting Netbooks, which are low-spec, cheap and well, internet friendly. Gaming on such a platform is inconceivable, if not for a browser approach.

Apart from getting people to use Chrome OS, what does Google gain with an increase in browser based games? Well, most of these browser based games used in-game ads (remember Quake Live ?) for revenue, rather than charge users to play a game. We all know that Google is the king of contextual advertising, they can definitely use their platform to sell ads within a game. That said, in-game ads are a different ball game altogether. There is no option to click on an ad, you can leave a few bullet marks on the ad if you may. So technically speaking, in-game ads function as hoardings and lack the interactivity/customisation associated with Google ads.

But if they find a good work around and contribute to the developing support for 3D in browsers, they have a chance to push Windows out. Until then, I will happily stick with the “evil-empire”.

On Netbooks

When Google announced that the OS they made it pretty specific that their OS will be tailored to Netbooks. It needs to be remembered that the Netbook trend caught up just because of recession. What after recession? Will people continue to splurge money on high-end systems or will people opt for cloud based packages? If the latter turns out to be the future, Google just be able to do what they intend to do.

(As appeared in DNA, Bangalore on May 23)

Guns? Check. Attitude? Check. Sharp curved blades thirsty for blood aka Ulaks? Check. Expressionless face and a grumpy voice? Double check. Then press C to crouch and carefully tread your way into the unforgiving world of Chronicles of Riddick – Assault on Dark Athena.
Assault on Dark Athena is a sequel to Chronicles of Riddick – Escape from Butcher Bay, which is a part of a series of Chronicle of Riddick movies and games brought out over the years, which has Vin Diesel playing the protagonist. The game takes forward the story of Richard B Riddick, a remorseless killer and one of the most feared criminals.
The game begins with his spaceship being dragged into a ship controlled by the mercenaries (mercs) called Dark Athena. On the ship, he meets a young girl, Lynn, who is searching for her parents, who were captured by the mercs. Along with Lynn and other hostages held by the mercs, Riddick finds his way to Revas, the leader of the mercs and the controller of the ship.
Riddick just does what he wants to and listens to none unless they offer him their soul or something very valuable in exchange. How good you find the game depends on what you’re looking to get from it — the gameplay surrounding stealth or the adrenaline rush of action. Depending on these, it can either be a disappointment or a break from the past. One moment  you are embracing the darkness waiting for the enemy to step into the shadow. The very next moment you are spraying bullets like a maniac to fight away hoards of drones (soldiers pieced together from dead bodies and brought to life by chips) and mercs.
The first game in the series, Escape from  Butcher Bay, was pretty much a stealth game. Dark Athena, however, feels more like an action game with the player provided with massive ammo — guns and heavy artillery — quite early on in the game.
Once you have killed the drones, you can use the guns attached to their bodies, to gun down any other drone soldier who might turn up to check on the commotion. Now, that’s all-out action. Darkness just adds to the visual appeal of the game and provides cover for little Lynn and provides no advantage, as such, for Mr Riddick.
What made Escape from Butcher Bay such a big hit on Xbox, was the quality of its gameplay. The developers managed to add some depth to the game with sub-missions which came from prisoners who inhibited the Butcher Bay, one of the most high security prisons in the game universe.
Assault on Dark Athena, in that sense, feels hollow. There’s no need to do all the sneaking around you were forced to do in the earlier version. This time, you’re loaded, and how! With enough ammo to back you, there’s no stopping your getting ahead. What’s more, later in the game, you also get access to Scar gun, and then you can forget about ammo altogether. The Scar gun fires suppressed gas balls, which attaches itself to any object that comes in the trajectory. It stays stuck to the object till you decide when it should explode. So with such a gun, small obstacles like crates and drones become non-issues. The only issue will be surviving the moment.
The enemies are hardly a challenge in the beginning. But as you progress, you will come across a few who will require more than sharp shooting to kill. The toughest ones are the spider drones, which look like surveillance cameras, but can cause severe damage with its laser precision shooting.
For those who haven’t played the original, the Assault on Dark Athena comes with the revamped version of the original game. So it would be better for newbies to start with Butcher Bay before they try out Dark Athena. It not only fills you in on Riddick’s life, but also gives you a better taste of skills and gameplay. Unlike the action-packed movies, the game is more enjoyable and challenging if you try to adopt the stealth method. The multiplayer-options of the game deserve special mention. Apart from options like ‘deathmatch’, ‘team deathmatch’ and ‘capture the flag’ — which are now the staple diet of multiplayer — the game offers two more intriguing options in the form of ‘pitch black’ and ‘riots at Butcher Bay’. ‘Pitch black’ takes the cake for the most interesting of the lot. You can play the game as a merc or as Riddick. If you opt to play as Riddick, you are left with only ulaks, to fight your way past mercs who will be armed with some heavy artillery available at their base. Riddick starts on a lower level and in pitch darkness.
Overall, the game is an enjoyable experience and the fact that it comes packed with two games makes it a good value proposition. The gameplay is as amazing as the storyline, and you will enjoy the multiplayer too, provided you get someone to match up with.

Rating: 4/5

Developers: Starbreeze
Distributor: Milestone Interactive
Reviewed on: PC (Rs999)
Available for: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC
Age-Rating: 16+ (PEGI)