Royal Bengal Rohoshyo

Vacations are nice, especially the winter vacations (which just happens to be my favourite season). But sometimes long vacations run the high risk of turning into a boring affair. Today (the 27^th of December) was a day that was supposed to become one. But thanks to one of my friend who called up yesterday night and asked me whether I was willing to go watch Royal Bengal Rohoshyo. Being an ardent fan of Satyajit Ray and his creation Feluda, it was too tempting to pass. So, I agreed immediately. After getting up late (it’s winter, I just couldn’t help it!), and almost missing the meeting time, I managed to meet up with him on time and then we went on hall-hunting where we’d get a ticket.(Yeah the movie was so good that movie halls were actually going house-full even after 5 days.) After searching 2 theaters, we managed to get a ticket at Star for the 2:55 pm show. The hall also happens to have a good Bose sound system (lucky me!). Since we had about 2 hours on our hand, we found a restaurant, had our lunch and then to waste the remaining time went into a shop on my friend’s suggestion to browse, (he reasoned that it’s better than wandering on the streets) where we ended up almost sneaking out, because the attendant came up on us because we were just loitering around and not actually buying anything. And to make matters worse, it was a shoe shop! (In my defense I blame it squarely on my friend, who pulled me there)

Anyways, with enough time wasted we got into the movie hall. The film started off with Jatayu receiving an invitation from a certain Mahitosh Singha Ray, a former hunter who had written a successful book, to visit his estate and bring along Feluda to help him solve a problem. As with most of Feluda’s adventure, the seemingly beautiful trip turns into an adventure in the jungle. But the movie didn’t feel boring for even a moment. So much so that I was wishing the interval was shorter. The directing was done superbly by Sandip Ray. The actor’s, as always, fit their character’s shoes perfectly. The main trio was exactly like the characters portrayed in the book, with Sabyasachi Chakrobarty being the enigmatic and observant Feluda, Saheb Bhattacharya the young detective-in-training of sorts Topshe and Bibhu Bhattacharjee the writer Lalmohan Ganguly (Jatayu), who was keen on meeting the animals of the jungle, but would freeze and border on fainting every time he meets one. All of the audience was laughing at the antics of Jatayu. The death of Bibhu Bhattacharjee is a great loss to the movie community and those who see this movie will definitely feel the loss. Maybe a replacement will be found, but I personally feel the void that has been left by him won’t be filled. As for the others, Dr. Basudeb Mukherjee as Mahitosh Singha Ray was really good as the former hunter, coming from a long line of hunters as was Paran Bandyopadhyay did an excellent job playing Debotosh Singha Ray, the mentally disturbed elder brother to Mahitosh Singha Ray. Debesh Raychowdhury as Shashanka Sanyal, the best friend of Mahitosh Singha Ray, along with Sanjib Sarkar as Madhablal did an excellent job. It was a small cast, but it was acting that was solidly done which resulted in a very enjoyable movie. The movie wasn’t long, at 1 hour and 50 minutes (with the interval in between), but the story didn’t feel rushed or hanging, so the small time can be forgiven. And once the story got started, it will get you hooked to the story till the very end where Feluda does the big reveal.

Overall it was a great movie, which I’m happy that I could watch. As I prepare to go to bed and think back on the day spent, I can honestly say that it was day well spent and enjoyed.

Assassin's Creed Revelations first impressions

I recently pre-ordered AC Revelations, since I'm absolutely in love with the series. So a little info on the edition that I got, which happens to be a Special Edition, before I go to my first impressions . This edition comes with the Soundtrack, which is totally out of this world, 2 extra multiplayer character and the Turkish Assassin Outfit for Ezio, with is pretty cool, if you are tired watching Ezio's standard costumes.

Overall I am quite satisfied and can say that my pre-order was not in vain. Love the character of Yusuf Tazim. It doesn't kill to put in a little humour, and this proves it. The overall gameplay is similar, except for a few button re-maps and some optimized systems. But then again that is what makes the game so accessible. The settings are really well done, as always with the series, but somehow, Istanbul is a lot more attractive than Rome. And yeah, there are some really detailed textures this time in the city, makes it come alive. And yeah, the hook blade is a wonderful addition, specially for those that didn't like the climb leap jump. And the zipping around is quite fun. Also worth mentioning is the character modeling. Ezio looks a lot mature now, and tired. Even his movement shows his weariness of fighting which seems, as he so correctly puts, to lead only to chaos. Oh and I like the new things they've done to the recruitment mini-game.

Apart from these, this game is one buggy game. Ubisoft should've put more time in optimizing it. There were instances when the sound would stop playing, or the instance when Ezio would grab just air and climb up. Another instance had me hanging on a ledge and just the animation for climbing up playing without Ezio going up, even though the ledge was perfectly climb-able. I had to drop down and try going around until I found a spot that was free from the bug. And yeah, there was just a single bug free spot. Also, the desync in chase sequences happen as soon as the warning sign appears. Plus I even managed to fall to the underground table in the middle of Constantinople, from the where you can't see the sea for miles. Hopefully Ubisoft will patch these out quickly, even though there is already a Day 1 patch out, weighing in around 700 MBs. You can grab it here, if you are looking for it. Just right-click and save it.

Though I haven't really gone through the majority of the game, so will probably later add a more detailed review here.

Welcome the Holiday Seasons with GOG.com

You gotta love the Winter! The cold weather is when you can cuddle up with a good book all bundled up in warm clothes, eat to your hearts content without upsetting your tummy, lie in the gentle morning sun reading  a book with a plate full of fried foods or perhaps go shopping online for that game that you've been eyeing for quite a while, thanks to all the sales that goes off this time of the year.

And so it is with GOG.com that is kick starting the sales with their Holiday Sale over at Gog.com, with almost the entire catalog at 50%. It is now the cheapest place to buy the Witcher EE (with all the Xtra extra goodies). And for those of you that are wondering, yeah this is still that Edition, that I blogged about earlier. And yeah Witcher 2 is at 40%.

And yeah, to celebrate the Holiday Season, they're giving away Empire Earth Gold Edition to anyone who visits them, but for 2 days only. So grab 'em while you can! (Our wallets and cards must really hate this season :P )

Tunes Jungle Adventure

Yet another free games giveaway. It's visible on the side of my blog, but still thought I'd point it out for those who would miss the side-bar. Simply go to here and click the download and activate the game, before the time runs out (18 Hrs left as of the time of writing this article).
Here's a little excerpt from the description:

Once a traveller discovered a secret of an ancient manuscript that points to the treasure of ancient people. The manuscript says that one has to wake up the fire totems and light the sun before the mighty spirit Vislipuzli will reward one with treasure. The only way to do this is to play the magic music.

Burnout Paradise for Free

Just a little heads-up that as the holiday season approaches, EA is offering a free game, albeit a repeat of the last year's Burnout Paradise giveaway. If you like arcade style racing with sleek cars, then Burnout Paradise is a must have for you.
Before redeeming the offer, you have to have an Origin account. Next, fire up the Origin Client and go to the Store tab. From here search for Burnout Paradise and then add it to your cart. Click checkout and in the place of Promo Code, enter: PARADISE and then click apply. The value should come down to 0. From here proceed and voila, you are now the proud owner of Burnout Paradise! The offers limited so hurry!

Mobile Tethering with BSNL 3G

I was never a fan of mobile tethering for internet. Sure it’s a convenience for the Laptop users and people on the go, I always argued that I had a good PC which had a rock solid broad-band connection. The shear notion that the speed of the internet would vary depending on how far you are from the nearest tower was revolting to me. So, even when all my friends were all the rage about having Edge connections for their Laptops and even PCs, I kept quite even when I had a 3G phone.

So when my telephone line was chopped up during some construction work, I had to force myself to get my 3G phone tethered to my PC to get me back online. I thought of getting a BSNL 3G connection for my mobile, because not only was I satisfied with the broadband service and speeds, but also BSNL has the cheapest rates compared to anyone on the market and time of the year. Activation of 3G on the sim was seamless; my phone detected the network and showed the 3G symbol automatically, once I activated BSNL’s internet profile. I even happily recharged my phone with a Data Top-Up of Rs. 98, which gave me 3GBs of data, which was actually a GPRS plan but would work with 3G networks. Sweet! I return home and eagerly connect up my mobile to the PC and all, and lo-and-behold! After showing the registering on the network message, it gives an error message, “Error 734: the PPoE link control protocol was terminated”. I was puzzled, so I went the very next day to the mobile section to ask about the problem. They simply stated that I had to put in the APN as bsnlnet. But the thing was my phone didn’t come with any mobile suite, just a driver that makes it show up as a Motorola modem. I ask them where should put this APN on my PC, they simply reply they don’t know! They even go on to say that since they don’t have any Motorola sets, they don’t how to set it up. Angry and frustrated I stormed out of the counter.

Thankfully the Opera on my phone could use the internet at 3G speeds. Now all I needed was to load Google and punch in the query. Surprisingly this is a common problem. After searching through quite a few website, I chanced upon an article for using BSNL 3G on Linux. Going through the article, I saw that in order to specify the APN one had to set a specific initialization string for the modem. Having once tackled such a situation for a friend with Aircel, I logged into Windows 7 and followed the following steps:

1) First make sure that you have a driver installed for the Phone and it shows up in the Devices and Printers in Win 7, and it’s connected to the PC.

2) Next go to Phone and Modems, by typing “Phone” in the Win 7 Search field on the Start Menu


3) Click on it, put in your location and code when prompted


4) Click on the Modems Tab. Select the modem and click Properties


5) In the Properties Sheet change to the Advanced Tab.


6) In the Advanced Tab type in this string:
AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","bsnlnet"
7) The last part is the APN, which happens to be bsnlnet for me, check with your provider for your area.



8) Click Ok twice, create a dial-up connection using the credentials given by your provider and then connect to the internet using the created connection, it won’t complain.

It was just a few simple steps that got me up and running with 3G speeds, which by the way isn’t phenomenal but isn’t as creeping as GPRS either. I would’ve figured it out even if they had mentioned that we need to initialize it.
But thank God for Google, I was able to figure it out myself and wasn’t at the mercy of those worthless people, who claim to help people. BSNL should just put up some kiosks with internet access and Google as the home page, it won’t be any different than the people that they now have at those so-called “help centers”. Those kiosks will be even better than those morons, at solving problems!

Arma II, Men of War & Tower Bloxx Deluxe for Free

Just found this while surfing, but some might still be able to salvage it. The Sun, along with GreenManGaming, is giving 3 free games, namely ARMA II (a military FPS), Men of War (a WWII Strategy game) and Tower Bloxx Deluxe (a puzzle game), for the weekend to any and all.

Just go here: http://www.greenmangaming.com/thesun/

and click the required game. On the purchase screen add the respective promo codes from here:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/fun/gaming/3681414/Games-for-gratis.html

On successfully redeeming the voucher codes, the price should drop to $0.00 at which point clicking the purchase button will add the games to your account.

If you hurry you still have about 2 and a half hours before the promo-closes.

P.S.: I just got all three of the games, so I can vouch for it's authenticity.

Dungeon Siege III Demo Impression

Dungeon Siege was the first contact with my RPG genre, so it holds a special place in my heart. The very ability to customize characters was a wonderful experience for me. So the first flaw of DS 3 that I notice is the pre-made characters (2 in the demo). Sure it helps in carving the story in a definite manner, but still character customization can be seen in most of the games that claims to have RPG elements and with the first and second game both allowing for a custom character creation, the latter with different races.
With that out of the way, the game surely was designed with the console in mind, the PC version seems to be an after-thought. I say this because of little things like for example a total lack of control customization system. Yes, you can't bind your keys to the configuration you like, but rather will have to make do with the game's configuration. Another annoying little quirk is the assigning of only 3 powers in the interface. Although PC version could very easily manage up to 9-10 hotkeys assigned for this purpose. Clearly this game was developed for the console in mind. (Though, the graphics customization is quite good. I mean for a game that doesn't allow you to set your own key-configs, being allowed to set the MSAF, Texture, Shadows and visual effects is quite surprising!)
The game supposedly supports controllers, but I couldn’t get my controller working, even though I checked the controller support box. And since there’s no input-config screen, I couldn’t even force the game manually in-game to default my input to the connected controller. Maybe the game only supports Xbox 360 controllers, or it’s one of those infamous Obsidian bugs. So, I started the game with the normal Keyboard-Mouse combo. There’s a short introductory sequence that sets up the story and the backdrop of the story. The cut-scene is done through painting based narrations by the grandmaster Odo of the 10th Legionnaires. After the cut-scene you’re made to choose one of the pre-made characters. The demo allowed for 2, a warrior and a mage. Since I’m the mage type, I took up Anjali (yeah seems Square Enix is very interested in Indian names, which makes me proud), an Archon, who can switch between the Human form to fight with a spear, and an elemental fire form, fighting with balls of fire. After this you’re allowed to choose the difficulty from 3, with the Hardcore version, according to the game, not for faint of heart and those prone to throwing controllers (not banging keyboards, even though the controller didn’t work!). Following this there is another cut-scene through a letter based narration and you’re finally thrown in to the game world. The game pops up Tutorial texts giving you directions around the world. The tutorials are very basic covering only the basic usage like moving, attacking and looting and some advanced topics like Empowered attacks. Yet the game doesn’t tell you that for accessing your special power you need to press the numerical keys. Even clicking on the power’s picture doesn’t work. Even after changing the difficulty to Casual, the tutorial wasn’t shown. RPG players might find their way around, but new-comers would be at a complete loss. Also, there are help topics, but again, given the genre of Hack-n-Slash, the players won’t be as patient and it would’ve been preferable to have the info integrated into the game rather than reading pages after pages of it in-game. Maybe it would be included in the Manual, so that players can read it while the game installs.
The game play is simple hack-n-slash like Torchlight or DeathSpank; you move your character using the right mouse button and attack using the left. The movement can also be done using the W & S keys, while A & D rotates the camera. A nice touch, according to my preference. But the console bug is here too, you don't click to loot chest, but rather go near the object and press a button! The combat is based on clicking. Every click makes your character attack, depending on your stance. There are 2 stances for every character: one for handling multiple foes and another for a single foe. Anjali for instance in the human form fights with a spear that attacks in a frontal arc. That means anyone caught in the arc takes damage, and the enemies are intelligent enough to get behind you to attack as well as swarm to overwhelm you. So you’ve got to keep moving about and watch your back while doing it. And the second form for Anjali, her elemental form is for single foes, as she throws fire balls in a single direction. Speaking of enemies, the primary enemies faced by me looked like colonial English soldiers, specially the attire. There are both ranged enemies with bows as well as rifles, and melee enemies. As mentioned above, if you don’t properly guard and block, using the space bar which also drains focus, the enemies will soon overwhelm you. The enemy health stat is displayed by a green circle at their feet, which gradually turns to red as they lose health. The game itself is linear, atleast from what I've seen in the Demo. There aren't any fogged up part, the path's all revealed, and you have a clear marker as to where to go for the objective, so you can just run in that direction to get your objective.
The customization, unlike the previous quirks is quite varied. Sure not as RPG-epic kind, but for a hack-n-slash, it’s quite varied. You have the standard slot for armor, helmet, boots, Yantras (magical amulets for Anjali, another term related to Indian mythologies) and so on. The best thing is the inventory is auto-sorted, so you don’t have to scroll through list of all the equipments to find that specific ring. Every piece of gear is given its own tab, and you’ll find only those things that apply there. The skill system, though short on first look having just 12 skills, is also varied. There are 2 proficiencies for each of them allowing you to customize the skills even further. The talents, likewise, can be upgraded too, to provide better bonus. The health and Stamina are auto-increased at every level, so you don’t need to think of them in term of skills or talents. But different gears do act as Health and Stamina modifiers, so you might pay attention to what you’re equipping. The game makes it easy for you to choose them as the game gives you a summary when you select them in the form whether you’ll gain in any attributes over your current equipped gear or lose them.
It seems like an upgrade over the original Dungeon Siege, but nothing spectacular. The presentation however is very sleek (it’s a Square Enix game after all!). The interface is clean, with the different bars and the portrait at the bottom left, the map at the top. Any items you receive from NPCs are shown in the top left corner. The objective updating is done through slide outs in the bottom center part of the screen, like an achievement pop-up. The game is fully voiced, including the character voices. The dialogue is done through a dialog wheel, kind of like Obsidian’s previous game, Alpha Protocol, though the time limit is removed. The dialog wheel is quite beautiful with intricate art design, a real eye-catcher. That being said, the voice-over of Anjali was, in a word, horrible. It seemed the devs put in a slightly better version of Microsoft Anna, with the voice actress devoid of any emotion and an almost robotic feel to the dialogue. The other voice actors however are quite good, especially the voice-actor voicing Grand Master Odo.
Overall, for players who want to get into the Kingdom Ehb once again, or people looking for something to hack away at will probably love it. The combat is enjoyable, the story intriguing and the presentation is sleek, which can make this game worth playing. Plus the different customization options does warrant some re-play value. It is quite different from the other Dungeon Siege games in the series, it shows that the game's rights have changed hands. Plus the game seems to be lacking in the traditional Obsidian bugs and tech-mis-haps, which seems to be another boon for it.

E3 Live Tour by Gamespot

So, after 4 four days E3 comes to an end. I managed to see about 3 hours of live coverage by Gamespot. The coverage included booths by Atari, which seems to be working on multiple re-makes of their older games from the Arcade era on the newer consoles, mainly the Wii family. One of the games that was allowed to be filmed was Caterpillar infestation. Console players here might recognize it, I really don't have any experience with the franchise. It was for the Wii. Another game was Terra Online. The person in-charge touted it as the first MMO that won't have generic click-auto-attack sequence, but rather a cross-hair that can be controlled with a mouse, akin to the Witcher's OTS mode. The combat is basically based on the type of button that you press, so "it's based on the skill". Apart from that the game has a political system, through which a player can be crowned controller on a region, after the other players have voted in your favour, and if you made the proper promises to them.
There was a coverage of Rusty Hearts too, which, unlike traditional MMORPGs, won't let yo build a character from the ground up, but rather give you one of the four pre-designed characters to choose from. The game can be played with a Gamepad, and is also based on a combo-based combat, that doesn't include auto-attacks. The Anime-esque gamestyle was really cute. It's closed Beta is coming late July.
Another game that caught my eyes in the Stage show was Spiderman: Edge of Time. Here, spidey actively goes around following the instruction of the Spidey from 2099, through time, and thus prevent the future spidey from dying. An example was that while fighting the future spidey mistakenly bursts open 3 toxic containers and starts to die from the chemicals. Now he sends a message to the older spidey, across time nonetheless, to contain these vats, so they don't explode. With the help of PiP, you can see the future spidey breathe a little easy, literally, as you go about re-enforcing the above mentioned vats. The combat is quite fast-paced. But then came the bad news for me. It's scheduled for a release on the PS3 and XBox, no PC!
Some other games that looked interesting was X-Men Destiny, Bioshock Infinite and Tombraider. In X-men the character being played had these pick-ups from the enemies that fills a bar that is used for special attacks. Once the bar is completely filled, it grants a bonus orb, or ward for the RPG minded, that can auto-attack nearby enemy. The Wards' number can be upgraded too. The character shown was using lightning attacks, and the animation and graphics for it was beautiful. Even the sound sounded like real lightning going off, with all the chirping and bursting you'll associate when a ball of lightning hits an enemy.
Bioshock Infinite looked quite gorgeous, but since I don't have much background so cant really comment.
Other games didn't interest me that much, maybe because I wasn't familiar with the series. Games like Harvest Moon. It had a dungeon crawler MMO where you could pet the monster you defeat and use them to work for you in mines or fields.
But the best booth in my opinion was that of IndieCade. It featured all the indie game and also new ideas by independent developers, like Skulls of the Shogun. The concept of the booth was to act as an intermediate for developers and publishers and give some exposure to new game ideas. There was many games that were college projects, and that came out to be full-fledged games, like a game with ideas from Portal mechanics but is a dungeon crawler. One of the new additions to the booth was games based on the You as a Controller concept. One of them was a sensory deprivation game, that will have you wear a helmet that blocks your vision, only giving access to sounds. Your input will be your breathing and your movement. The game will have you thrown underwater, and you have to navigate using the mentioned controls. It's kind of like a torture routine straight from a thriller!
Another have you kissing for your control. A magnet in one's mouth and a sensor on the partner's cheek will be the controller. Just like the Gamespot presenter said, "taking you as the controller to a whole new level!"

Anyways, though this year's E3 was lacking some publisher, it did turn out to be quite nice. With many new things being announced. That being said, there seems to be a game to forward to for everyone, in the coming holiday seasons and the Q1 of next year.

Oh, btw for the ME3 fans, do check out the ME3 booth coverage by Gamespot. It has some extra infos too!

Nintendo's E3 Presentation

Nintendo's presentation was short. It started off with 5 new games announcements for the 3DS, which didn't really make anyone too happy, as evident from the non-enthusiastic crowd. The games were basically remakes of older Nintendo games with the 3D aspect and in some cases (Mario), with new graphics. The only new game was Kid Icarus Uprising, which did garner a few claps. Also announced by Nintendo for Pokemon fans was a new System Update, which would entitle them to a new Pokedex available only through online for the 3DS.

After this lack-luster announcements Nintendo announces the Wii U, the follow-up to the Nintendo Wii. The console can run games in HD. The new console comes with a better hardware, and a innovative controller. The new controller is more like a portable gaming console, complete with 2 analog sticks, the face button, a front facing camera, speakers, microphones...the works, and not to mention a 6.2 in touch-screen! Plus it still has the motion sensing and all the features of the Wii controllers and is compatible with the Wii Accessories. The main point of the new controller is that now players can continue gaming even if they can't access the TV or even share what they are doing on the controller with the TV, with just a simple swish of the fingers on the controller, kind of like sliding the content towards the TV. But still controller can't be used as a portable console, because all of it's processing is done and transfered by the main Wii U console. But this also means that whatever is made for the big screen can run effortlessly on the smaller screen and vice-versa. Some of the demos are really interesting. With a golf game where you put down the controller to see the ball, a shuriken game where you slide the shuriken from the controller onto the screen (like the previous sharing), using the controller to shield against in-coming projectiles, using the controller for scanning targets or use it as a portable hand-held map in large-scale quests (An RPG players dream)!
And with many developers promising new games to hit this console like Batman Arkham City, Assassin's Creed Revelation, Ninja Gaiden, Resident Evil, Tekken, Driver, Ghost Recon Online...this console sure looks promising. Sure it won't appeal to hard-core gamers, but for people who want a drawing room entertainment hub, that can be used for occasional serious gaming, this seems to be a perfect match.

Ubisoft and EA E3 presentation

I managed to catch Ubi's presentation live, and also was able to see EA's presentation. There was this retro version of some games, a sort of special being 25 years in the gaming scene. What would games have looked like if they had been released 20 years ago. It was a nice touch.

The game's announced/talked about were:

Driver: San Francisco

FarCry 3: The villain was awesome! As was the lush jungle graphics!

Brothers in Arms Furious Four: Say hello to Inglorious Bastards meets Brothers in Arms

Tintin: A small bit of gameplay, nothing more, except the fact that the game world will change based on the choices you make.

Ghost Recon Future soldier: Synchronized kills, drones deployment and the likes of Tom Clancy's kinck-knacks.

Ghost Recon Online: Free multiplayer for all.

Rayman: A kinetified version of the Rayman. The fill-up the shapes was quite fun to look at, though!

Just Dance 3

RockSmith: Gives you the ability to plug in a real guitar and start playing/learning.

Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012

Now, the only game that interested me was Assassin's Creed Revelations.

They showed the trailer, where Ezio was cornered by around a 100 guards, with one of his Hidden blade being broken just like his father's was in the film, and then led up to the platform from where Altair had first performed the leap of faith. And just before jumping, a noose was put around his neck. Following this trailer, there was a live demo, depicting a memory sequence in Constantinople. In the demo, the player is given some grenades and asked to escape the Janissaries' blockade. From the demo, the graphics seems to have been further improved, featuring a much more believable city, with an earthy feel to it. The people don't just move about, or murmur, they also greet each other. In the combat front, all the things seems to be unchanged with a new Grenade addition, whose destination you can select. Nothing was told about the multiplayer.


EA's showcased 9 games, both from studios that EA owned as well as independent studios.

EA kicked off the presentation with a trailer of earth under attack by reapers of Mass Effect 3. Following this, there was a live Demo from a mission concerning a Reaper base, which turned out to be a Reaper itself. Many faces returned, like Legion, Garrus, Wrex and surprise surprise, Liara!! There was air-strikes, new enemies, that seemed like indoctrinated people, as well as a new feature, the close combats. In ME 3 not only does your Tech-tool cracks, hacks and heals, but it can also transform into a dagger with which you can kill any enemy that is foolish enough to come near you! Bioware sure does know how to craft a hit! The game looks to be focusing on scales too this time around, which is appropriate, since after all it's all-out war. There still wasn't any mention of the new weapon system or the crafting for that matter. It's going to hit the shelves on 6th March 2012.

Following this was NFS The Run. The most talked about feature here was the Auto-Log which now encompasses the career. Also this time around, there are off-car sequences, where the driver has to out run and even fight off cops, though the interactions seems limited to quick time events only. The game looks quite promising. I might give it a try if there's a demo out. And yeah, this game's powered by Frostbite 2 engine, with some really good visuals.

Then there was Bioware again, with SW TOR. But disappointingly, there wasn't any gameplay demo, just a trailer that was released earlier, highlighting the different classes. I was looking forward to seeing something here.

38 Studios then took stage for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, an open-ended RPG with Elder Scroll elements, having the lead Director of Oblivion and Morrowind. The game looked quite nice with some good fluid combat. Very interesting.

Insomniac's newest game OverStrike was announced too. It's a TPS squad based shooter, consisting of 4 agents, assassins, spies, thieves, and scientists. I would recommend seeing the trailer of this game, just for the laughs. It's targeted towards Xbox 360, but I do hope a PC version comes along.

The Sims Social was announced to be a free facebook game, that'll allow the player to integrate Simming and social networking. The graphics are similar to those of Sims 1, that is an isometric view, and it seems you can do everything that you could do in the Sims, atleast in the vanilla sims. No official date was mentioned, only a coming soon.

2 sports game was announced SSX and FIFA 2012. FIFA's focus will be on community this time, with the ability to play matches based on the real world football scenes. So, if your favourite club lost a match, you could re-write virtual history by winning for that club. Not only that, but you also could put your favourite club on top of the virtual leader board, if enough community members win with that club. Apart from these, there's a new player collision system, that simulates realistic injuries and collisions. Plus, there's more realistic dribbling and blocking.

Finally there was Battlefield 3. Also powered by FrostBite 2 engine, this is one good looking game. The demo included a short footage of multiplayer set in Paris, and a long tank battle scene from the single player. Both looked great.

E3 2011

With less than 3 hours remaining, I thought that I'd post a schedule of sorts here on my blog, with the required link to help my blog readers stay on top E3, courtesy of GameSpot. Though this time some devs like Bungie aren't officially coming to E3.

For latest news of E3, you can head to http://e3.gamespot.com/

And for a primer on what is E3, you can head to http://asia.gamespot.com/features/6314700/how-to-e3-2011/

And here's a handy schedule, courtesy Gamespot.

Monday, June 6

Microsoft Press Conference: 9:30 a.m. - 11 a.m. PDT
EA Press Conference: 12:30 p.m. - 1:30 p.m. PDT
Ubisoft Press Conference: 2:30 p.m. - 3:45 p.m. PDT
Sony Press Conference: 5 p.m. - 7 p.m. PDT

Tuesday, June 7

Nintendo Press Conference: 9 a.m. - 11 a.m. PDT
GameSpot's Live Stage Show, Day 1: 12 p.m. - 6 p.m. PDT
GameSpot's LiveCam Tour 1, Day 1: 12 p.m. - 6 p.m. PDT
GameSpot's LiveCam Tour 2, Day 1: 12 p.m. - 6 p.m. PDT

Wednesday, June 8

GameSpot's Live Stage Show, Day 2: 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. PDT
GameSpot's LiveCam Tour 1, Day 2: 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. PDT
GameSpot's LiveCam Tour 2, Day 2: 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. PDT

Thursday, June 9

GameSpot's Live Stage Show, Day 2: 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. PDT
GameSpot's LiveCam Tour 1, Day 3: 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. PDT
GameSpot's LiveCam Tour 2, Day 3: 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. PDT

I hope that you enjoy this year's E3.

The games that I'd like to see about are:

Mass Effect 3

Star Wars The Old Republic

Assassin's Creed Revelation

Sims 3 Pets (I didn't have the Sims 2 one, so am pretty excited, as it'll add animals in general, like skunks and horses!)

Diablo III (the reason should be obvious enough)

X-Men Destiny (I love a good super-hero game)

Star Craft The Heart of the Swarm

What's your's most anticipated?

P.S.: All the links are from GameSpots' site.

The Witcher Enhanced Edition Director's Cut

Due to some technical problem with my net connection, I just finished downloading The Witcher Enhanced Edition Director's Cut from GoG today. If you remember from my older post, you’ll know about the promo that’s running at GoG from 10^th May till 24^th May. Though I do prefer physical copies, unless there are some irresistible Steam deals, I went out of my way and got the game as soon as I booted up my computer on the 10^th of May. And was I happy that I did purchase the game online. The retail box here still costs about Rs 1500. In addition to the general goodies, I also got the extra GoG goodies, which include the Witcher Story, Soundtrack, Music Inspired by, 18 HD Wallpapers, Witcher Calendar and the likes. Out of all these, the soundtrack alone makes up for the $5 price that GoG is charging. Quite frankly, it's one of the best I've heard so far.

As for the game, when I first played the demo back in 2007, I was very disappointed. Not only were the load times very long, and I mean really long tea-break-length long, but it was missing simple things like an auto-save. Plus the game stuttered and crashed quite a few times, and along with a weird combat system, I eventually gave up on the game. But then I read the review of the EE, and how CD Projeckt fixed many bugs and re-did the dialogues and slashed the loading time by about 80%. But the price was still the deterrent. But thanks to GoG, I can now say that whosoever has not played this game is officially missing a great RPG from their collection. The GoG version of the game is fully patched to patch 1.5. Not only is the game more stable, with better dialogue, but also the load times, my greatest gripe, are pretty quick. The game starts up almost instantaneously and the loads that took well over 15 mins for me in the demo barely take 5 secs. Plus they now have an auto-save feature that saves your progress before every major encounter, a real boon for some players. The inventory is also revamped, with sorting and stacking buttons and separate places for quest, general inventory and alchemy items. I would advise discovering this game by one-self. I don't want to spoil the fun.

Like I’ve already told, I would absolutely recommend it to every and any RPG lover who wants a little mature storyline in the game and doesn’t want to see a Black and White world, rather have a world that's shades of Grey.

You can check out all the extra content that this game comes with for free in addition to the game and the patch features:

I just wish all the games could offer something of such tremendous values!

Age of Empires Online Beta

With the NDA Lifted a public Beta seems to be on the horizon. But till it is announced, I thought it would be nice to share my experience since now I am legally allowed to do it. For those people looking for a Beta key for the closed Beta, you can try your luck by following the instructions here.

Age of Empires holds a special place in my heart. After all, this is the game that brought me to the world of Real-Time-Strategy. I still cherish the day when I took up my mouse and commanded Joan of Arc over a seemingly never-ending campaign of Age of Empires II. After my first tryst with Age of Empires, I just couldn’t have enough, and I had to check out everything that was related to the series, even so far as to going back and checking the first game in the series. And till now, the series, with its gems like Age of Mythology and Age of Empires III, the hasn’t disappointed. So, naturally when Microsoft game studios announced Age of Empires Online, I had to take a look, even though I tend to avoid online games like the plague. And luckily, I was also sent a Beta key. The game is being developed by Robot Entertainment (founded by former Ensemble Studio members of the original AoE repute) and Gas Powered Games (the developers of Supreme Commander). Though the initial core development was done by Robot Entertainment alone which included most of the game, as of 24^th February 2011, they have handed over the further development, the polishing and balancing, to Gas Powered Games, moving on to one of their own IPs, Orcs Must Die! Finally before beginning, I want to say is that this is an review of the Beta version of the game. The problems and bugs mentioned here shouldn’t discourage you from trying gout this game, as they are still in the Beta stage and might get fixed or changed. So the final product might change a lot.

The first thing about designing a sequel is to answer the question, how do you improve over the predecessor. In case of Age of Empires (AoE), it’s a tough question to answer, because the previous game wasn’t broken, in fact it was down-right beautiful, the best looking Strategy game of its time. The answer for the developers seems to be to attract a different audience, while keeping the older core players satisfied. With the games featuring a progressive advance through the ages, throughout the series, it was a little shocking, if I might say, when the game was announced to go back to the ancient civilizations of Greece and Egypt. Even weirder is the fact that the game that revolutionized strategy game’s graphics department, to go for a cartoony look. All these things, at first glance seem to point to a younger audience. But due to my infinite curiosity, I had to look into it, and I’m very happy that I did. In simple words, the game is indeed geared towards a new and younger demographic, but the game doesn’t forget its core players.

The game has changed, with respect to its predecessor AoE III, but most of it is because of the new game play model suited to the online play. The first time you load up the game, you’re given the option to choose a civilization, for now it’s just Greece, with Egypt disabled and a yet unannounced civilization. At the bottom left, you have an option of choosing a realm, alternate for server, though there’s just one for the Beta phase, with hopefully more to be opened. After you choose your civilization, you are dropped onto a map containing 4 basic buildings, including your capital palace, at a corner of a huge map. This is your capital city. Very much like the home city of AoE III, all the things you do, the XP, the coins, the empire points, the raw materials and the loots (Yeah, there’s even a loot system), are used to improve and expand this capital city of yours.

Your game play is basically divided into the time you spend in your capital city and the time you spend on accomplishing different quests, which are basically skirmishes with definite objectives. Unlike the home city of AoE III, where the customization was just cosmetic, here in addition to the decorative customization, you can also add some functional buildings that in turn produces raw materials required to build other buildings, which in turn produces different types of objects depending on the building type. Apart from these there are also other functional buildings, like the Arena, which lets you host party matches, or the Mercenary camp, where you’ll always find a quest giver to sign you up for a PVP match. It’s a good design, which could’ve been done through menus, instead of integrating it into the city itself. Building these buildings is easy. You need to buy blue-prints for each individual building by spending coins, and then having the required raw materials at hand which are required for the building. If you happen to have them in store, you can place the building directly, which results in a nice little construction animation of scaffoldings being thrown up and the construction sounds playing as your building is constructed up. The process is fast, you don’t need to wait, but it’s nice to watch. As you build these buildings, your city grows, not only in then space that it consumes, but also it the way the landscape changes. The buildings that you build brings with it cobbled streets, squares and little details like it. Just like AoE III, your streets aren’t empty. You have tiny villagers strolling around, some relaxing, some just roaming around the bazaar, or praying at the temple, or even fishing! Once you have an industry up, donkey pulled carts will also show up ferrying goods from your workshops to the bazaar and stores. The details are cute and add to the overall charm of your capital city. Among these there are some static persons, who don’t move around much and tend to stay in front of specific buildings. These are your quest givers. Only clicking them, they’ll give you the option of accepting a quest, or if you’ve already done so, abandoning one. The screen where you do these, a sprite of the quest giver with a speech bubble containing some background about the quest, along with the occasional humorous comment, along with a dialog box, detailing the quest, the objective and the rewards.

These quests are skirmishes that you can play in order to earn XP, Coins, Empire Points and Loots and Equipments. This brings us to the second part of the game, the Real-time part which is familiar with most of the strategy players out there. This is the part where you start off with a town center and some villagers and gradually need to build up your economy as well as your military depending on the given objective. This is the part where old players will feel the most “at home”. Most of the game play mechanics are unchanged, apart from small things, which are actually taken from a previous part, like the fact that your villagers are no longer the Atlantean villager types that doesn’t need a drop point for whatever they are carrying; rather they need to build drop sites like AoE II. Another change is that you are not granted access to the full arsenal on the outset, rather you need to play earn XP and unlock the units from the tech tree through leveling up. This restriction also applies to the aging up. In order for you to research the later ages, you need to first unlock them. What this does is that it brings down the learning curve to a gentle slope, with which both new comers as well as veterans will be satisfied. On one hand you aren’t made to feel powerless, but at the same time you aren’t over-powered either, much like the gradual unlock of the campaigns. This gentle learning curve is further reinforced with the tutorial, which gradually eases you in with the different mechanics of your city as well as the game in skirmish mode. The skirmishes are like the older games, which I feel isn’t that bad. After all the old mechanic wasn’t broken and didn’t have too much of a flaw, so retaining that and not changing the game play was a good move. You are given some starting villagers and a town center along with a scout, which this time around, for some weird design concept or perhaps due to the Beta, is irreplaceable and can’t be built from the Stables. From this point you need to build up your fledging settlement and the economy related to it to a strong one to support your offence as well as your defense. Some of the UI elements help you in getting the work done more efficiently. For example, idle villager button no longer cycles through single idle villagers, but rather selects the groups of nearest idle villagers, so you issue quick commands to them. And, as older players would know, during the mid-to-late game sometimes you’ll find villagers standing around because you have finished gathering a resource. On mousing over the resources the game tells you exactly how many gatherers you have and on clicking them cycles through nearest group of gatherers. Also issuing way-pointed commands are much easier, you press shift and order a group of soldiers or villagers, the respective orders and they do it one by one in the order issued. This was a feature that was needed very much and thus allows you to execute some amount of strategic command and tactics, not too advanced, but still it’s welcome.

Like AoE III there is bandit camps here too that holds treasure chests which contain loots in the form of Raw materials, equipments or even blue-prints and recipes. These equipments can be applied on the different units and buildings for a permanent bonus to them, as long as you keep the equipments on them, through the equipments hall in the capital city. The recipes are like the blue-prints, except they allow you produce consumables, which are like the god-powers of Age of Mythology, granting you bonuses like free gold mine or spawning mercenary soldiers or even spawning buildings. Producing these consumables require raw materials given that you have learned the recipe and have space in your inventory. The inventory itself is very basic, just a 16-slot space, that is used to store everything that you get, that’s not currency, on your quest or from your work-shops or as rewards. There are no auto arrange function, but you can drag and drop to organize it the way you like. Each of the slots can hold 100 units of similar objects. So, you see the game play has been stream-lined to welcome new comers but doesn’t forget the older players.

Then there’s the graphics. AoE III introduced very beautiful graphics that included beautifully rendered objects and trees and included are good Physics system. Age of Empires Online instead of going for even more cutting edge graphics, probably due to being an online game, goes with a cartoony approach. With Caricatured characters models and buildings, the game indeed looks cute. Purists may shun it due to the simple graphics, but it fits well with the settings of the game. The game isn’t meant to be very serious, after all. But that doesn’t mean details are missed. Even in this new approach the attention to details is great. Like mentioned above, in your capital city, villager strolls around, fishing, relaxing, tearing grass and the likes. The same amount of details is found in the skirmish too, although a lot less autonomous. Idle villagers from example, sleeps, with “Zzzz” floating over them. Defeated enemies, like the bosses, fall down on their knees or collapses clutching their heart. Normal soldiers, some of them fall down and a grave stone and flowers erupt in their place, while some of them just collapse. Mounted soldiers are thrown off while their horses as both of them die spread-eagled. Trees crash down with the leaves trailing behind, bushes fall-apart, fish jumping at the back of fishing boats, dust billowing around a building under construction, Ships have a rickety feel with planks sticking out from the decks, and being jostled after firing, the flashing of swords of soldiers, donkey-pulled carts that have a carrot dangling in front of the donkey on a stick. Small details like these are abundant, and make the game enjoyable. Sure the buildings don’t go off as spectacularly, but does burst into fire before falling apart. Overall, the effects are quite enjoyable and sometimes it is quite satisfying just looking at your villagers and units scampering around carrying your orders.

But no effect is complete without a believable sound effect backing them up. And this is one field that this game hasn’t disappointed. The sound effects are quite brilliant, with the sounds changing appropriately according to the part where the user is focused. For example when you’re over the market you’ll hear carts and merchants shouting, while when in front of the Temple, you’ll likely hear people praying. The same thing happens in the Skirmish too. Miners have that distinctive sound of their pick-axes striking against ores, gatherers rustling the bushes while gathering, horses neighing, arrows swishing and bows going twang, people shouting when their Town Center are under siege and many more. The sound really does a good job immersing the player in the game. The background score is quite good. Some of them are remixes of the older AoE trademark tunes, while some are new.

The AI in the game is also commendable, with it scaling itself along with the user. Think you can over-run an opponent with just foot soldiers? The AI, even if defeated at the first encounter will send out the proper counters. And it is also intelligent enough of not setting up just lone towers; rather, it’ll put up a range of towers each supporting each other. Thus sieges of enemy towns, especially in the early game without any siege units is quite challenging, requiring multiple stabs at it and a strong economy supporting the effort. The AI doesn’t seem to be cheating too, and earning its resources truthfully. Though one quirk that I noticed is that even when I have a superior army, a group of villagers will attack the soldiers rather than running for the town centers. And when under attack some of the villagers will just run a little distance and stand there, waiting to be killed. But then again it’s the Beta.

But still with so much improvement, there are still many quirks. For example you have to buy a Blueprint for every single building every time you want to build it. That means not only are you paying in material for the building, but are also paying in Gold for every blueprint. Next on the list is the lack of formation commands. While the older AoE was known for being able to command soldiers in formations for some really good and effective tactics, that mechanic is completely missing in this game. There’s just an attack-move command and nothing else related to advanced combat maneuvers. Then there’s the soldiers charging into battle with whatever they have, against a building. A friend once asked me, why is it that people striking with a sword can make a building burst into flames? With AoE III it seemed like the developers had heard such things, but why is it missing here, especially with attention to other details, this aspect sticks out. Another weird aspect is that you can’t save your game while on a quest. So even if the quest drags on for hours you have to play it for hours (even in quests marked as single player only), till you get to your capital city where the game is saved automatically. Then there’s the final controversial point. Though the game will be free to play, many of the juicy units will be only available for premium city owners. I really don’t want to comment on this, but just for the sake of knowing I thought it would be good to mention it here.

Age of Empires is something that I always loved and Age of Empires Online hasn’t let me down. Some people might not like the new looks, but I think this new look gives this game a fresh look and separates it from just a remake. The work by Robot Entertainment, Gas Powered Games and Microsoft game studios is truly commendable. Though, I would’ve preferred a offline game, but with other game companies making you stay online even in a single-player game, the prospect of a game that has online feature built into it, but still having single-player element, is good enough for me. If Microsoft can get the pricing right, they might just have another success story on their hands with Age of Empires Online. On a last note, this is a very enjoyable game that I have enjoyed very much, and often find myself drawn to the game just for that one last quest.

Scores:

Overall: 9.5

Game play: 9.3

Graphics: 9.5

Sound: 9.9

Here are some of my in-game screenshots:

Supreme Commander (Plus Forged Alliance) Review

This game is a classic example of how an excellent product can be marred because there isn't much explanation and an introduction to the mechanics. When I played the demo, I thought, which was reinforced, by the tutorial, that this game is just like all the other RTS games, where you build, group and coordinate an attack to decimate your enemy. So, naturally it didn't make sense when an injured unit would come near an engineer and it wouldn't heal. But then I happened on a video primer on IGN, where I was introduced to the wonderful mechanics of Assistance. This simple, yet wonderful, mechanics makes this game a strategist delight! It's perhaps the only game (out of those that come to my mind anyways) that makes you plan your actions in this game, and that includes the building part too. Once you get hold of this mechanic this is a pretty wonderful game, and suddenly the high scores of Gamespot starts to make sense. I haven't played Total Annihilation, but if it was half as good as this one, then it sure does earn it's place in the RTS Hall of Fame.

The mechanic is simple, you order other units to assist by right-clicking on the one you wish to assist(the plus cursor). Once that's done, depending on the unit that is being assisted, and which is assisting the work changes. For example, if it a combat unit is assisting an engineer, then it will follow it and protect it from enemies, while an engineer assisting a combat unit might increase it's efficiency or rate of fire and heal it when required. Then engineers can assist each others, which results in a tremendous boost to the working rate of the primary engineers. It also keeps units manageable, as controlling the main assisted engineer makes the other assisting engineer follow it around. And there's no limit to the number of unit that can assist. So, as long as you have enough mass and energy to go around, you can make 100s of units assist one engineer, which suddenly makes the building time of 40 mins seem reasonable. And this assistance also extends to buildings, where production buildings will share load, and defensive buildings will gain bonus.

This brings me to the next point of economy in Supreme Commander. It's not the run-of-the mill economy, that is to say, the more unit you have on one resource the quickly you can gather it. You have to build a sustainable economy that remains in the green profit margin and doesn't become more consumption than production, at which point the building will go on, albeit at a slower rate. It's not as if you aren't producing, it's that whatever is being produced, is being used up, and not getting stored. Plus, many of the buildings and even units take up energy, mostly the shielded ones, to operate, whose shield will fail if there isn't a sufficient energy reserve. So, you have to pay attention to the economy too, otherwise your entire army, no matter how powerful can easily fall apart.

Which also reminds me about the army. Unlike other games, where you can spam a single type of unit and hit your opponent until he is overrun, this game puts more stress on the type of unit you bring into play while going against your opponent. Think your hulking giant can make mince meat of anything in it's path, with it's land based Oblivion Cannon? Well, think again, as the hulking giant will be quickly transformed into assimilate-able scrap metal when the opponent brings in it's air-force. So, not only you have to keep a good mix, but also have to keep an eye on the opponent's weakspot, from whence you can stab him and stab him good! It's because of this strongly set mechanic that sets it apart.

All of this strategy talk, can't be done if you don't mention the Tactical view. Out of all the RTS games that I've played till now, there was only Empire Earth that had given me the ability to carry out precision strike and plan my attacks with my Units. CnC has a basic form of it. But this game has that mechanic tightly integrated into the game. Not only can you set a waypoint, but also you can merge 2 waypoints as well as carry out coordinated attacks, wherein your bombers can fly in and bomb high value targets while your tanks move in as soon as your bombers are done, like the real-world battlefield, only you don't have to be a quick shot for this to be precise. Coming back to tactical view, it is a strategist's gold-mine, to put it in simple words! Not only can you do everything from here, but also plan and execute complex tactics, like marking out high value target or identifying the weak points of your enemies as well as your own base. Plus you can see how far your defenses cover and which area needs reinforcing more.

As for the graphics department, the game has quite good graphics and effects, which, if your machine can handle, is pretty nice. Some of the behemoth units crashing down, like the Aeon Assault bot, falling on her knees and then crashing or the shot down planes spinning out of control and then crashing and making a long crash line on the ground, really makes you feel you're in the heat of the battle, not to mention the smaller units that simple gets blown to smithereens when a heavy unit's done with them! Add to that the animations of the units that feel like real mechanical units, with the giant robots stomping onward or the tanks starting off slow and then accelerating in a straight line, or the subs surfacing with one side pushed up first, or even the less maneuverable bombers taking a huge diameter to turn around, makes this game one of the most immersive games on the market. And all these effects are made to come to life, with the excellent sound effects. The creaking of the ships, the floating of the saucers, the sounds of the lasers and missiles going off, or even the muffled artillery shelling that's going on at a distances and the subsequent screen-shaking makes you feel like a commander that's duking it all out on the battlefield, and keeps you glued on for that one more attack, that can easily result into 2+ hours battle which very nicely complements the humongous maps this game has.

As for the campaigns, they are one of the most well designed campaigns. They start off small but gradually eases you onto the humongous maps so that you don't feel lost. The scripted events are great, and the difficulty challenging enough to keep your grey matters humming all through out the campaign till you see the operation complete dialog box, because the defensive line that you thought was impenetrable, will eventually fall. Special commendations for the last missions of the campaign which really makes you feel like the last hope of your respective race, of the main game, and all of the campaigns of the Expansion, which really makes you feel you like backed into a corner.

Apart from all these good sides, there are a few quirks. For one, the game is a Major resource hog, specially the CPU. Unless you have a top of the line CPU, this game will bring it down. Good thing the game does natively support multi-core CPU. Apart from that there's the bug part. The game's buggy as hell. The game starts off fine, with everything smooth and clean, but 2 hours into the game, and the videos start to lag. Completely shut it down and start it off again and it's back to normal! Also, this doesn't qualify as a bug but still a flaw nonetheless, every building you build in this game adds to the unit count! That means even if you put up immovable walls, it will be counted as your unit! What the hell is that supposed to mean! And to add to it, there isn't an unit counter! Although the later part is solved in the expansion, which got a complete facelift.

But still barring all the problems, I would still recommend it to players who like their strategy part in RTS, and not just mindless unit spamming. It's a wonderful game, with a wonderful plot and backdrop as well as wonderful and awesome units (some of the Experimentals are just too awesome!). Kudos to Chris Taylor (whose Dungeon Siege brought me into RPGs ) for such a wonderful and true RTS game. Just that the tutorials needs a lot of work, and leaves a lot to be desired.

Overall: 9.7
Gameplay: 9.8
Graphics: 9.5
Sound: 9.9

Here's some screenshots from my playtime: