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
2009 was a great year for this blog. For god’s sake it was shifted to an independent domain this year. I’ve seen it grow from 10 visitors to a day to a few hundred over the year. I’ve also seen a lot of change happening in India gaming industry — for good!
PS3 became cheaper, launched slimmer version, and Microsoft is coming out with a few good schemes for Xbox360 after killing pro model and launching Arcade +1
Couple of India themed games released and flopped. Ghajini was pathetic, Desi-Adda was so-so. -1
EA shut down marketing division in India during recession, which meant they tied up for fewer events. -1
We do wish for the best when it comes to gaming and India, but what I heard today makes me want to strike out ‘good’ from the equation. Why? Because government has upped the import duty for games Becasue Redington who are in charge of distribution of many Xbox360 titles in India has upped the prices by almost Rs800.
According to Consoul.in, prices of EA games (Xbox360 only)are going up, up and away
EA Catologue Titles – Old MRP – New MRP (Tentative)
Fifa 2010 – 2499 -> 3299
Nfs Shift – 2499 -> 3299
Brutal Legend – 2499 -> 3299
Dragon Age – Collectors – 2699 -> 3999
Saboteur – 1899 -> 2699
Left 4 Dead – Classic Edition – 999 -> 1699
XBox 360 Game CD Left 4 Dead 2 – 2499 -> 3299
XBox 360 Game CD NBA 10 – 1999 -> 2999
upcoming titles, all prices are tentative
Army of Men – 40th Day 3499
Mass Effect 2 – Collectors 3999
Mass Effect 2 – Standard 3499
Dante Inferno – Collectors 3999
Dante Inferno – Standard 3499
Battlefield 2 Bad company – Collectors 3999
Battlefield 2 Bad company – Standard 3499
Thankfully the price hike is for only console games as PC games which are sold here are packaged in India. Which brings up the question of why console games are not packaged here. If you ask the console companies, they’ll tell you that the volumes are not large enough. And the volumes won’t go up until the prices reduce. A classic chicken and egg scenario. So what should come first the volume, or packaging of games in India?
Remember Ghajini? Yes that game which made me scream nooooooo, turns out it won the 24fps animation award for the “Best Game Design”. Woah! Rilly? Could you please tell us who the competition included. I can only think of Hanuman, which was equally lame.
If my guess work is right, the award went to the game which sucked less than the other one, not to a game that deserved to win. Which brings me to yet another rant on gaming in India.
Do we need such pointless award ceremonies, or even categories where awards are given out just for the heck of it, to ease egos of few people in the industry. Sure, there’s nothing wrong in appreciating efforts by individuals in the industry, but does awards make any sense here? How do we appreciate companies that put in a lot of money and effort into creating games which — forget the international standards — are too buggy to be enjoyed. These games lack originality, lack a USP except the Indian-ness. The excuses range from low-spec nature of PCs in India to cost and returns, but my question is why can’t you guys think global? If Slumdog Millionaire a bollywood movie (in essence) with a UK based director can grab Oscars, why can’t we make an India themed game with international appeal and quality?
Why do the developers think the gamers here will fall for the shit that’s thrown our way? Yes, we would like to see the industry grow and for that reason we might even go and buy a copy of the game (I didn’t wait for the review copy of Desi Adda for example) but why make us regret the money we put into the game? How difficult is to develop a game based on a movie?
Take your time, don’t get bullied by the producer who thinks of games as a promotional medium rather as a stand-alone piece of art (poke poke at Ghajini).
Why not quote James Cameroon who wanted Avatar, based on the movie, to be different from the movie, not forced down by the story line and environments in the movie? Why not approach EA, Sony, or Microsoft (3 gaming cos with an established base in India) to produce the game, they do understand the production cycle of games right (Don’t put in your own money)?
The other approach would be the one adopted by UTV, buy a few studios abroad, let them worry about game production. Ultimately they have an India connect but the games have nothing to do with India except for the fact that parent company is based in India.
I think UTVs approach works better in India, of now. The parent company can set up a smaller studio in India who can help the bigger studio based abroad to develop the game. That way the Indian studio can understand India’s place in gaming world; understand how they can contribute to gaming industry. Should they be like Dhruva, who have worked on assets of tons of racing titles including Forza 3 or should they concentrate on mobile version of the game much EA’s Hyderabad studio does? As of now production work for games are spread out across the globe, direction work is mostly done out of US, coding in Eastern Europe, modeling, animation in Asia (Philippines, India etc) and all these are put together finally in US or Europe again and sent for testing to places like Bangalore.
What should be India’s role? Do we have good enough coders to produce games? Do Indian style of art (high on colour contrasts — ghajini) appeal to western audience (games needs to have an international appeal as of now unlike bollywood)? Do we have good game-worthy ideas? Are we over-dependent on mythology? A few debatable questions for which we may not have answers as of now, but the sooner we find them, we can stop talking about “India the next big gaming country” and get down to work at hand… and may be give awards to studios that has produced a game that deserves the award.
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
Gameguru has quoted Variety who has a news article up saying Electronic Art’s Spore game’s being made into a movie err ‘creature feature’. If you ask me, that’s one of the oddest choice for a movie based on a game. First of all, the fun part of Spore movie was the fact that you could create your own creature who would behave the way you want it to. But how would that work in a movie?
Or if they plan to make spoof of Discovery features based on animals I’m all for it. To spice it up, they could include some of these videos too if they want to.
Also, creatures on Spore speak a language which is impossible to make out much like simlish, so it would be interesting to see how they mitigate this issue. If these creatures start speaking english out of the blue it would kill the fun.
Anyway lets keep our fingers crossed and hope that the game is good.
So I finally got my hands on the latest in the NFS franchise, NFS Shift. I haven’t been a big fan of the series off-late and I have been playing Burnout series more. But I need to say that Shift is a welcome change to the series. No more story lines- it was fun once, twice but then on it started feeling sloppy.
I like the sun – It’s hot out there now go melt the tracks with some hot driving.
Camera – Before I got the game, I swore I’ll drive only in the first person view. Why? Because it feels just like a first person shooter. Every time you crash everything turns blurry much like it happens when someone drops a smoke bomb in many FPS titles. But after trying it, I realised it’s not for me, may be I’ll go back to in-car camera after I get used to the cars and tracks a bit.
The AI is not as easy as in previous titles, of course, I had to try it out in a race to realise it. I only managed to finish 7th out of a lineup of 10 as I skid out of track once. In a race which spans two laps that’s unforgivable.
Here are a few screens. Longer preview, and a full-blown review in a weeks time
All okay in there?
Just past the first curve of the race =) Didn’t crash **grin**
Now this is the football game that I have been waiting for a looong time….
After winning around 25 international gaming awards with FIFA 09, EA has continued to work on the game and I need to say they met the expectations from gamers, at least mine to certain extant.
Responding to consumer feedback from gamers, FIFA 10 refines an already brilliant game engine, to continue to set the benchmark as the most complete simulation of football. Pro Evolution Soccer (PES) finally has a rival, a game which can stand up to the quality PES to known to possess, a game which might further shift the balance in favour of EA. If Konami doesn’t do anything extraordinary in with their next PES game, they might be asking for trouble
One major point my co-author Balu didn’t liked about Fifa 09 was that players couldn’t run diagonally (EDIT: Was referring to PC version). EA comes up with a solutions to this with 360° dribbling. They claim it to be the first-ever true 360° dribbling system in a football game providing finer dribbling control, enabling players to find spaces between defenders that previously were not possible.
This feature is awesome to say the least, sometimes this makes passing and dribbling very easy and real-life like. But not too easy either. You have to get the strength of the shot right or stand a chance of losing possession of the ball.
Speaking of graphics, they look slightly better than last year, but to me they still look robotic. The ambience and the stadiums too have been slightly improved upon from last year. In short graphic-whores have no reason to complain (I’m one step beyond them I suppose).
The game also has undergone core gameplay refinements based on responsiveness and intelligence, plus a completely overhauled of the ‘Manager Mode’ that includes more than 50 major improvements.
Ball control like I mentioned earlier has been improved upon, not drastically as EA would claim, but just enough for everything to feel right. The physics of the ball too has been improved, the ball doesn’t feel feather-weight anymore as it did in the last installment.
Besides this, more than 50 major improvements were made to create an authentic experience to mimic the real-world game in this version. Player transfers are determined by multiple decision points, including club finance and prestige, and competition from AI-controlled clubs.
Player development is more realistic with true-to-life growth curves. This year even the Russian League is included in the squad. So more Arshavin’s transferring to your teams now.
The Bad
The version which was made available looked like an alpha build of sorts. There were a few problems with AI, but nothing hat can’t be sorted out in a few builds. Because of the same reason I am saving nit-picking and game bashing for later on, when the game releases
Just got a mail from Milestone Interactive, you can check out latest games from Electronic Arts in Mumbai on August 26 from 12 noon to 5 in the evening. The demo will be organised at Gulmohar Banquet Hall, The Trident, Nariman Point.
The games that will be showcased are Brutal Legend, Dante’s Inferno, FIFA 10, Need for Speed Shift and Saboteur.
No news of any such event in other cities as yet, you can check here for updates or just grab the site’s RSS feed.
Why do the developers think the gamers here will fall for the shit that’s thrown our way? Yes, we would like to see the industry grow and for that reason we might even go and buy a copy of the game (I didn’t wait for the review copy of Desi Adda for example) but why make us regret the money we put into the game? How difficult is to develop a game based on a movie?
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.
.
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.
One major point my co-author 
What they said…