There’s no denying that Far Cry 2 looks gorgeous and the scale of the game seems mind-blowing, much like it’s predecessor. However if there’s one place it falters, it is in character creation.

Unlike most games that allow you to customize your character, you cannot play as a female character in Far Cry 2. Yes you read that right. According to what Ubisoft has told Kotaku:

 ”There are so many lines of dialog that they would have had to rescript and record if we let people play as a female,” I was told.

So while you choose to play 9 of the 12 available characters in the game (the sub-missions you can do depends on your choice of character), your choice is restricted to the male populace. Considering that this is Ubisoft and not any old developer/publisher they could be less lazy. Or are we being too hopeful?

When the fine purveyors of research, Nielsen, announce results of a study, everyone reads. And when they make a particularly astounding discovery when it comes to gamers, you’d be plain stupid not to:

 In a document which revels in shattering stereotypes, there’s some incredible news for the industry’s money men: the European Union is now the second-largest videogaming territory in the world, generating €7.3bn during 2007, compared with €7.4bn in Asia and €6.9bn in the US. This also reflects in the year on figures with UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Scandinavia enjoying an average 25% growth in software sales.

Videogamers are growing up, too, with the UK boasting the most mature players. The average age of an gamer in the UK is now 33 – the highest out of the territories surveyed. In Finland they are, on average 30 while in Spain they are 26.

What does this mean for Indian gamers? Well for starters, publishers club India along with European countries when it comes to game releases as all games officially available here are in the European PAL format (barring a few like Konami, which clubs us with Asia) ,we might just get our games a bit faster than usual. Which is already happening with EA’s games hitting India a mere one week after global releases and Microsoft making sure their 360 games hit the nation at the same time if not faster than the rest of the world.

It has been awhile since we’ve had a new Street Fighter game hit the stores, what with Capcom focusing on other lucrative franchises such as Lost Planet and Devil May Cry this generation. However they haven’t forgot that a good number  of us still want our beat ‘em up thrills, announcing Street Fighter IV for the PS3, 360 and PC.

No official date has been mentioned but if we were to guess we’d say around October this year. Weird crotch shots of Ryu aside (as pictured above) it’s a good time to be a gamer but with some nice games coming up in the future, it would be a better time to be a gamer.

Via Destructoid.

According to VGAChartz, Penny Arcade Adventures, first installment in the episodic action-RPG series based on the cult comic broke the record for the highest-grossing  debut, raking in around $ 330,000 (around Rs. 14,14,500)in over three days. The previous holder for a record 3 day opening, Worms HD was beaten by $50,000.

While some might bitch about that fact that the game costs 1600 points (Rs. 1070) a large chunk of Xbox Live users are actually laying down their points for this title.

However the news gets sweeter. Being one of the first games to break the 150mb limit set by Microsoft (now expanded to 350mb) shows that there definitely is a market for developers looking to pack more awesome-sauce into their digital delights.  Along with this, it goes to show that in spite of recent events, the RPG genre isn’t going to hell. Just yet.

While all of us are gushing over the portable awesomeness of The World Ends With You, the company behind it, Square-Enix , also responsible for the highly popular Final Fantasy series plans to take a direction that would , in my opinion, see more remakes of every Final Fantasy game to date.

It seems that their 2007 profits weren’t too good with their highly lucrative overseas market bearing most of the brunt.  According to Destructoid:

…according to company president Yoichi Wada, who recently issued an ultimatum to his staff: if any games are made that don’t fit into the mainstream’s circle of interest, job cuts will follow. So long, unique concepts that break the mold!

Is this the beginning of the EA-ization of everyone’s favorite maker of role-playing games? Only time will tell.

It’s bad enough that we had to be subject to that trash called Dhoom 2 in the theatres, that fine people from FXLabs (notorious for the pathetic Agni) have decided to torture us with their 3-D rendition of what claims to be Dhoom 2.5 for the PC.

While Yash Raj studios signed a deal with FXLabs to scar gamers for life back in 2007, it seems that their plans will bear fruition  sooner than expected. I wonder what didn’t make the cut into the game which is allowing it to release earlier? Plausible gameplay? Decent graphics? A little better than mediocre voice-acting? Luckily no solid date has been pinned down apart from FXlabs stating “the wait would be over soon!”.

Since this is coming from the studio with claimed Agni met worldwide standards of quality we’re definitely skeptical about this one. And rightly so.

Nvidia and Intel have been at the crux of a graphics war for quite awhile now and it is seeming to heat up even further. The guys in green have announced their purchase of ray-tracing firm, Rayscale.

This acquisition may help Nvidia develop new ways to draw 3D images. The currently used method, rasterization is getting more and more complicated to process while ray-tracing, a method championed by Intel is yet to be attractive enough to be used by developers. Ray-tracing is thought to be too CPU-itensive to be used, though Intel claim that modern day processors have enough power to make it happen (Nvidia heavily dispute this).

According to VentureBeat:

As its name implies, it involves shooting a ray from a single point in a 3-D scene. If the ray hits an object, it assumes that whatever is behind the object is obscured and therefore doesn’t have to be drawn. Ray-tracing is better suited for the CPU (Nvidia disputes this) and so Intel is naturally a big proponent of it. The technique used to take too much horsepower, but now Intel contends that modern CPUs have the oomph to do it. Intel has shown Quake IV running on an eight-core CPU using ray-tracing techniques.

Rasterization, meanwhile, is getting more complicated. The graphics processor, such as those made by Nvidia, makes a “pass” at drawing a scene by rasterizing, or layering image effect such as colors, shadows, and lighting upon a scene. It does this repeatedly until the 3-D scene looks just right.

For the end consumer, this definitely means a better picture and hopefully  at a better price.

The rumors on this one have been floating around way before BioShock even hit the PC or Xbox 360. Now that it’s officially been confirmed around 8 months after winning a string of Game of the Year awards, we wonder what new content they’d be adding to make it worth a purchase (apart from the fact that you might not have a gaming PC or an Xbox 360)? According to the crew at CVG:

Details are thin on the ground at the moment (i.e. there are none), but the next issue of UK PlayStation mag PSM3 - which is on UK newsstands June 5 - promises a lengthy preview of the PS3 version along with a depth charge of screenshots.

New content or otherwise, this is one game you can’t afford to miss regardless on what system you play it on and the more people who have access to it, the better.

Id have announced Doom 4. In the most subtle way possible.

While most studios would scream on the top of their voices and set fire to most of the internet with a rousing press conference, the confirmation of a fourth Doom game has been made via a help-wanted ad, with the company looking to hire some talent to make that fourth jaunt into the bowels of Hell possible.

Though the formats have not been divulged, you can bet your very last paise for a PC release.

Source: IGN.

Mass Effect was buggy but stunning game on the Xbox 360, it’s one of those titles that would feel right at home on the PC given BioWare’s undoubted expertise. However no one counted on them and EA (BioWare’s publisher) to mess things up this bad.

The PC version will require you to authenticate it every 10 days as long as you want to play it. Yes you read right. This is what they had to say:

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.

BioShock had a similar copy protection system and buying an original copy turned out being a pain for most. Is this the beginning of the end for PC gaming? Or would you prefer your games playing you instead of vice-versa?

Via: The Angry Pixel