Activision announced that COD 5:World At War will support both and offline co-operative play for up to four players online on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC, in addition to two-player local split-screen cooperative play on home consoles. Coop usually makes games about twice as fun as they would normally be so it will probably be worth it.

The campaign will allow gamers to gain experience points and unlock perks for use in competitive multiplayer modes. This is quite similar to the perks system in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. As players participate with different ranks the difficulty or the toughness changes accordingly.Mark Lamia of Treyarch studio who made COD 5 says that he wants gamers to feel the WWII in a completely different way. A host of new enemies is being provided to employ new tactics as well as new, groundbreaking tools–like co-op and the flamethrower–to succeed in the epic fight.

World at War lands on PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, Wii, Xbox 360 and Nintendo DS this fall.

Launching on PS3 and Xbox 360, players will join the ‘B’ Company, a wayward band of soldiers more interested in the pursuit of gold and personal financial gain than following the rules. It is rated “T” and landed on retail shelves on June 23 (that’s yesterday) on Xbox and PS3 in North America and June 27 in Europe.

To cherish this occasion, the publishers i.e. EA released a few comic clips, online. In a trailer released June 16th, 2008, the team makes a reference to the Metal Gear series. Sweetwater, a member of Bad Company thinks he’s seen someone wearing an eye-patch, hiding inside a barrel, to which Haggard responds, “A barrel? Why would someone want to hide in there? That’s as stupid as hiding in a cardboard box!” to which Sweetwater replies, “Probably it’s made out of some kind of solid metal! Like its Japanese or something!” Haggard fires a grenade at it, and finds, amongst the wreckage of the barrel, a black eye-patch. He puts it on and proceeds to bump into Sweetwater.

In another subsequently released trailer, Haggard is seen running down a destroyed street while Gary Jules’ Mad World is sung in the background by Sweetwater (a reference to the Gears of War trailer). Haggard then tells Sweetwater to knock it off.

Battlefield Bad Company has only just been released, but early reviews for the game are positive, with the deformable environments, large maps, diverse array of vehicles, and multiplayer mode earning it praise from critics.

The PS3 had an extremely shaky start, launched prematurely to compete against the rival Xbox 360, it suffered major losses. The Sony gaming division lost close to $2.15B in FY07, since they were selling double the number of PS3s but at a loss.

Let me try and explain the “Funda”  to those who lack a few ounces of gaming grey. Most consoles are designed with a 4-6 year life cycle, although it is often streached to a staggering 10 year cycle (PS2). The consoles are designed with the latest technology and hence have a very high production rate. The consoles are sold at a loss initially so as to offer attaractive prices for the consumers. The PS3 was initially selling at $499 and $599 but the production cost was somewhere around $800, so the heavy losses. As per a report on Next-Gen:

While $3 billion is a hefty number, Sony did reduce losses year-on-year in the games segment, despite selling nearly twice as many consoles (again, at a loss) in FY08 as it did in FY07.

Sony attributed the segment’s year-on-year cost reduction of about $1 billion to “successful PS3 hardware cost reductions.”

The fact that Sony sold 267.4 million software units across PS3, PS2 and PSP also played a major role in offsetting hardware costs.

Sony CEO Howard Stringer recently said that restoring profitability to the company’s TV and games businesses is a top priority.

The World of Warcraft or WoW as it is popularly known is a virtual world that boasts of more than 10 Million players. This massive world has had its share of problems and here is a new one. As per a report on crunchgear:

The MMORPG world is too big a target to resist, I guess. Worm-wranglers in China created a worm falled Frethog, which this new one Taterf is based on. It copies itself around, executes whenever you look at it, and by means of keylogging, packet sniffing, or other methods, determines your online game login info. It’s targeting the big ones, like WoW, Lineage, and even Steam.

Once they’ve got your info, they’re free to do what they want: auction off your items, change your password and sell your account, or just play it I suppose, though I doubt that’s happening much

A new study from Experian Consumer Research showed that the PS3 is most popular with consumers over the age of 45.

The report also showed that Xbox 360 covered the 35-44 year old demographic, and the Nintendo Wii taking the 18-24 age range.

(What about, 25-34 years? Are they forbidden from playing video games? Or maybe they play all the three.)

Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 owners/players are more likely to say they cannot live without magazines and video game consoles, and less likely to say they cannot live without television and computers than the average new media respondent.  They differ somewhat in their necessity for books, radio and newspapers.

Respondents who play or own the video game consoles depicted are predictably younger skewing than the population of respondents who have been online for 1+ hours per week (new media respondents).  The Nintendo Wii console appears to appeal more to the 18-24 demographic, while the Xbox 360 appeals more to the 35-44 demographic and the PlayStation 3 appeals more to those over 44.

LucasArts broke the silence by confirming Wii for Lightsaber Duels.The game will feature combat controlled by the player holding the wiimote as if it was his saber handle. Videogame geeks or enthusiasts who are mainly Star Wars fans are quite excited about the confirmation.

But the only problem that might surface in the long run with fans is that game takes place specifically in the Clone Wars film and animated series era. Lightsaber Duel will feature destructible environments with Clone Wars-era characters and plenty of laser swords, force powers which will be a big factor in the game. Although Anakin and the General Grievous will be present, characters like Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker will not feature in the game.

 In Addition LucasArts will also be releasing Star Wars The Clone Wars: Jedi Alliance exclusively for the Nintendo DS in which the player would be controlling two Jedi simultaneously.The possibility of developing combos and special abilities that strengthen the more you use a character combination seems fascinating. A friend of yours can jump in and assist you and can drop out to let you continue your mission - this is enabled by the wi-fi co-op feature. Both games are out due this holiday season.

MGS 4 is selling like hot cakes, selling more than 1.3 million units on the first day. The game is the last chapter in the Solid Snake Saga, but if rumors are to be believed the next MGS will be a prequel probably about Big Boss.

 Speaking in an interview with 1UP a week before the game’s release, MGS4 assistant producer Ryan Payton said there is “still a lot of room for filling in the gaps as far as Big Boss is concerned.” When asked about the possibility of a Metal Gear Solid 5, Payton responded, “There are some misunderstandings that this is the final Metal Gear game. But it’s really the final chapter of the Solid Snake story. That’s all.”

I personally am really excited as MGS 3 was a really good title and a new adventure featuring the Big Boss makes sense. The Big Boss is an iconic character in MGS and deserves a next-gen title.

Team Fortress 2 is a really popular game, a game that has been updated regularly. Valve now wants to connect with its users, so it has launched a TF2 blog.The blog has just started and has only a few posts, but we can expect updates quite regularly.

The original idea for the game was initiaed way back in 1999, but due to various reasons the game was constantly delayed. Like its predecessors, Team Fortress 2 is built around two opposing teams competing for an objective. These two teams are meant to represent a demolition and a construction company: Reliable Excavation Demolition (RED) and Builders League United (BLU). Players can choose to play as one of nine classes in these teams, each with their own unique strengths and weaknesses. Although the abilities of a number of classes have changed from earlier Team Fortress incarnations, the basic elements of each class have remained.

The game was released with six official maps, although three extra maps have been included in subsequent updates. read more on Wiki.

The upcoming title in the Tomb Raider series called Tomb Raider Underworld is still a few months away. But if you are a die-hard fan, you can always visit the Wiki-Page or look at a new batch of screenshots. Let me share some info about the game:

Tomb Raider: Underworld, previously known as Tomb Raider 8 during early development, is the eighth game in the Tomb Raider series and the third game in the series to be developed by Crystal Dynamics. It will resume the adventure from where Tomb Raider: Legend left off and address elements of the plot left unexplained in Legend and Tomb Raider: Anniversary, which are Crystal Dynamics’ previous games in the series. It will be set primarily in Southern Mexico, particularly in Chiapas, where Lara Croft uncovers portals between her current world and the underworld, Xibalba

Is DRM making you unhappy? Well now its futile to worry about it.  2K removes the hated install limits on the PC version of BioShock. Now you don’t have to install anything or patch it up when you buy your copy of Bioshock- it is already done!

They move of fixing Bioshock DRM free has happened earlier than expected.They haven’t done everything right but still this move at-least shows that we can trust them in the long run. Bioshock’s SecuRom -supported copyright protection had created a huge controversy at the time of its release, which led the simultaneous limit of installation from 2 to 5  PC’s  . Thanks for taking away SecuRom. EA should take a note of this.