Apparently, Eidos was not impressed with the 1.5 million units of Tomb Raider: Underworld sold in the game’s first weeks out of the gate and will be considering a redesign of not only the character Lara Croft but everything in an attempt to make the game more ‘female-friendly’. The Tomb Raider games are a very long-running franchise, beginning back in 1996, and Eidos has even hired models to portray the character of Lara Croft at conventions and other events.
Via the TimesOnline
The 8 Ball DLC pack is now available for Codemasters’ Race Driver: GRID. The pack adds eight new vehicles to drive as well as two new multiplayer events to race them on. The pack is going for 800 Microsoft Points and will be available today.
Official Release:
Codemasters® today announced the launch of the new downloadable “8 Ball” premium content pack for Race Driver: GRID™, the hit racing game of the summer, for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft® and the PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system. The 8 Ball pack will be available today, Thursday 4th December, from Xbox LIVE® Marketplace (800 Microsoft Points) and from PLAYSTATION®Network (£6.29 / €7.99 / $9.99).
True to the original game’s quality ethos, the 8 Ball pack delivers eight superb high performance new cars to drive in the game’s ‘Race Day’ mode and online races. New featured cars include the McLaren F1 GTR, TVR Cerbera Speed 12, Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X, Honda S2000, Nissan GT-R (S-G2008), VW Nardo, Pontiac Firebird Trans AM and the Volvo C30 (full details in Notes).
The origins of the Das Keyboard are surprising, with it actually being developed by Metadot Corp, open-source software developer. Daniel Guermeur, the company’s founder, wanted to better his typing abilities by creating a keyboard with no visible markings on it. This eventually gave rise to the Das Keyboard Ultimate. We got the chance to review the Das Keyboard Professional, which is the same as the Ultimate version, save for the fact it still has letter markings on it.
The Das Keyboard Professional features a sturdy, black plastic body with a sheen reminiscent of Darth Vader’s helmet. Weighing a little over two and half pounds, the heavy keyboard’s innards are also impressive, featuring gold-plated key switches that illicit a very loud ‘click’ with each key press. This gives to the keyboard’s moniker, ‘The keyboard that clicks’. If you require a silent keyboard, this unit will not be what you are looking for. This audible cue hearkens back to the time of early IBM keyboards and ‘typewriters’ (for you youngsters out there, Wikipedia the word). It is a pleasant, not grating, noise which makes for a unique typing experience. The key action is incredible, with a slightly longer slide than you will find on most keyboards. 
In our review, we spent quite a number of days just typing with it and to this end, we know of no better keyboard. It is an amazing unit for typists and that is really where the Das Keyboard really shines.
There is a USB 2.0 pass-through on the keyboard, which will allow you easy connection to digital cameras and/or joysticks without having to reach behind the PC case, and the keyboard also features some very slick electroluminescent indicators for the scroll, number, and page lock states in the upper right-hand corner of the unit.
That being said, our review would not be complete without telling you fine people how it worked under gaming conditions. The Das Keyboard Professional has a feature called ‘N-key rollover’, which provides anti-ghosting for up to twelve keys at a time. Remember, this keyboard is not designed or marketed as a gaming keyboard but this feature gave us some hope as to its gaming usage. We played ample sessions of both Fallout 3 and Left 4 Dead with the keyboard and were left with a mixed bag. In the slower combat of Fallout 3, the Das Keyboard Professional was a fine performer. In the more frenetic combat of Left 4 Dead, we found the long action of the keys to be somewhat detrimental in that during a flurry of keystrokes, you are actually slowed down a bit in comparison to a shorter-action gaming keyboard. 
For you moderate gamers out there however, the Das Keyboard Professional will work very well and should tackle most any situation.
The Das Keyboard Professional should be standard-issue for those of you who spend your days typing novels, blogging, drafting TPS reports, or even doing some gaming here and there. If you can shell out the $130 dollars for one, you and your fingers will not be disappointed.
Developed by Ubisoft Montreal (Assassin’s Creed), Far Cry 2 is a mixed bag. Far Cry 2 puts players into the heart of an African country at war with itself. Your character has been sent there to assassinate a gun runner supplying to both sides of the conflict in an effort to stabilize the region. Unfortunately, on the way to your hotel, you come down with malaria and get caught up in a firefight. After this brief training mission, you get introduced to the leader of one of the nsides fighting each other and get impressed into service, taking on missions for them. And then Ubisoft Montreal adds the fun.
After the first few missions you run, the game really opens up, giving you free reign to move about as you wish. The African environment is rendered beautifully thanks to Far Cry 2’s Dunia engine. The way the sunlight breaks through trees is a sight to see. Day and night cycles are handled very nicely and the game begins to feel a bit more like an RPG with the vast expanse of land you could potentially wander about.
However, once the lead starts flying, any illusions about the game not being a first-person shooter go out the window. Firefights are intense and, while the enemy AI can be very wonky at times, combat is definitely fun. Weapons all have various levels of repair, the worst often leading to jamming and possibly exploding (not good). Weapons tend to aim very realistically, and generally you will not get good results just spraying and praying from the hip. You really need to aim down the sites of your weapon to achieve good kill shots. You are equipped with five healing syringes in the game, each will fix some of the damage you take in your travels. You can usually find more of these in first-aid kits scattered about.
Even more fun is a clever game gimmick envolving setting fire to the grasslands in order to burn your enemies alive. By using your friendly flame thrower you can not only use the fire as an offensive weapons, but also a defensive device, setting a wall of fire to shield you from oncoming enemies. Of course, you can always light an enemy on fire with it too, but I digress…
Far Cry 2’s landscapes are fairly huge, with tons of broken terrain to navigate. Ubisoft Montreal created a 50km2 area for gamers to play in, and it does feel like you are in the middle of nowhere. Getting from one place to another can take up to ten minutes in some cases. This driving (yes, you can use vehicles in the game) is often interrupted by armed checkpoints and other things to shoot at, but trust us when we say you will have some time to admire the scenery. Ubisoft has put all manner of vehicles into the game, and you can drive most any of them. Should a vehicle become damaged, you can even pull off to the side of the road and make repairs. In jeeps with mounted machine guns, you can toggle which position you want to be in (driver/gunner). This toggle yields a cool animation of you pulling yourself through the roll bars behind the driver seat into the gunner’s position and vice versa.
Far Cry 2 has a unique buddy system in which you make friends with NPCs along the way, which will help you on missions and so forth. If you die in combat, you will see a buddy carry you back to a safe house to heal up. Safe houses are exactly that, safe places you can hold up in when needed.
All is not perfect in Africa, however, with Far Cry 2 suffering from a few issues which can really hamper the fun. First is the spotty AI: I have seen enemies run to flank me and I have also seen them just endlessly run their vehicles into the side of a building. In order to battle your bout of malaria, you need special pills. However, to gain more of these pills, you generally have to do the same mission over and over again for various low-level contacts. Unfortunately, you need the pills to survive so Ubisoft is basically forcing you to play these out. And lastly, we found issue with the respawning of enemies at locations around the map. We took delicate time to plan our attack on an enemy factory, executed it perfectly and left for five minutes to another location. We came back and everyone had respawned. While we imagine an enemy organization would restaff a location eventually, to do so that quickly is just unrealistic and takes away from the fun of having decimated your opponents. 
We would have liked to see enemy forces stumble upon the destruction and trickle in to re-position at these posts instead.
Aside from these issues, we hold that Far Cry 2 is a very solid shooter and well worth the purchase for anyone looking for such a title. Do not expect this to be Far Cry, there are no feral traits or sci-fi anything, this is a whole new animal. Ubisoft Montreal is to be commended on their fine work.
The ‘X’ series of space sims have always been known for their open-universe gameplay and freedom of choice. X3: Terran Conflict upholds this tradition along with bringing the story began ten years ago, in X: Beyond the Frontier, to a close.
For newcomers, you should expect to scratch your heads for many hours while attempting to suss out what to do next. Don’t fear, this is a perfectly normal effect of jumping into an ‘X’ game. The effect will pass in time as you realize that the whole universe is your oyster. You can do just about anything you like within the realm of the game, whether it is to work as a trader, mercenary, or pirate (and a whole lot more). You can even build up a fleet of your own to perform duties while you are away. The game even allows you to build your own business empire by owning factories, stations, etc. The depth in X3: Terran Conflict is so vast, I doubt anyone could do everything the game has to offer. So explore why don’t you!?! Just remember to save often.
For you veterans to the series that have played X3: Reunion, feel happy, as you are in for a treat. Egosoft has enhanced Terran Conflict from its recent predecessor in many fruitful ways. For instance, graphically, the game looks even better than Reunion (and that is saying something). Space is so vast, the word ‘vast’ really can’t do it justice. 
This feeling of hugeality (my word) is properly infused within the game. No matter how powerful you become, how rich, or how many ships you acquire, you are still just one person in a very humbling universe. Your starship’s user interface, while still full of complex options, has been refined as has controlling your space craft with your mouse (although I highly recommend a flight stick for the ‘full effect’). Navigating the menus is easily done, but make sure you are out of harms way before exploring them, it would be a shame for some pirates to get the drop on you! Based on the new features, it is quite clear that Egosoft has listened to the fans and has brought out a very complete product.
One thing that has bugged me since X3: Reunion, however, is the lack of a cockpit view. In the original X: Beyond the Frontier, your viewpoint was from within a 3d cockpit view as was it in X2: The Threat. In the third game of the series, Egosoft removed the cockpit and provided a view more reminiscent of Freespace 2 (one of the greatest space-combat games of all time, btw). This is, obviously, more a personal preference and I just like to see the ship around me. In its defense, the view does work well and gives you more of an unobstructed view than a cockpit would.
Combat still feels realistic (well, as realistic as I think space-combat should be), even without true Newtonian movement. You can purchase and equip a variety of weapons, from energy-based blasters to torpedoes and cannons. Same goes for ship/station components: there is just a gigantic variety of everything for everything. This hearkens back to the game’s magnificent scope and continues to show their desire to create a truly immersive universe for the player to exist within.
In our interview with Egosoft Founder Bernd Lehahn, he mentioned that his biggest regret with the ‘X’ series was that they were forced to release X3: Reunion early, and in a more unpolished state than he would have liked it to be in. I can safely say that X3: Terran Conflict has not suffered such a fate and will be enjoyable by long-time fans of the series as well as fans of games such as Independence War, Privateer, and Starlancer. X3: Terran Conflict has something in it for everyone. Unfortunately, big-production space sims are few and far between these days and it is very important to support quality work like this.
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The nice folks at Konami have a new video for us from their recently-released Silent Hill Homecoming. This is the intro movie for the survival-horror title. Enjoy…If you dare, muhahaha…Sorry.
Interplay, a legendary game company which was defunct for quite some time, has apparently re-staffed and launched a new website. Chris Taylor, who was one of the designers on games like Fallout and its sequel (just to name a couple), has been signed on to the new development team. They also tease a ‘Project V13’ which is the code name for an upcoming MMO they are working on. Could this be the Fallout MMO? We thought would have fallen in the hands of Zenimax.
Interplay Website
Official Release:
Interplay Entertainment Corp. (OTC BB:IPLY) announced today the launch of an all-new web site at www.interplay.com.
The site, developed over the last several months, is designed to improve the company’s communication with customers, investors, and partners. The new site includes forums based on past and future Interplay games, a customer support section, detailed information on the company and its products, and much more.
The company also announced that Chris Taylor, a game designer who was a part of the original Fallout game development team at Interplay in 1994, has rejoined the company. Taylor will serve as Lead System Designer for “Project V13,” the working title of Interplay’s next generation Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMO) currently in development. Taylor joins other original Fallout team members on staff at Interplay’s internal game studio, which recently opened an office in Irvine, Calif. Additional development staff members continue to be hired as the project ramps-up.
The first DLC pack for Race Driver: GRID has been announced. Called the ‘8 Ball’ pack, it will contain eight new cars including the Honda S2000, McLaren F1 GTR, and Volvo C30. Also included will be two additional online events to take part in. The 8 Ball pack will be available sometime near the end of this year.
Official Release:
Codemasters today announced the forthcoming release of the first downloadable content pack for Race Driver: GRID™, the summer’s hit game that made racing exciting again, with the reveal of the ‘8 Ball’ pack coming this autumn for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft® and the PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system.
Enhancing the award-winning Race Driver: GRID, the premium 8 Ball pack is set to feature eight thrilling new cars to race and two new online events to compete in. Each vehicle is beautifully realised and was carefully selected as a thoroughbred racing car with a unique personality to deliver a stunning race experience.
Starting on a new planet in a spiral-armed galaxy, you are presented with a cutscene of a meteor, carrying the building blocks of life, crashing into your planet. 
The camera follows it down to its ocean impact with a quick camera zoom in to reveal your species emerging from the rock. You don’t look like much at this point, basically a small cellular blob with a flagella, pair of eyes, and a mouth part (you select to be a carnivore or herbivore). Your goal is simple: swim through the waters, eating as much as possible in order to advance to the next level of the stage. This stage is similar in concept to flOw, albeit with much more fleshed-out graphics. Each of these levels in the cell stage increases your creature in size that is accompanied by a very cool ‘zooming-out’ effect by the camera. Blurry (yet seemingly Death Star-sized) creatures and objects that appeared in the background will now be revealed as your size, and even bigger things appear in the background. This in-game commentary on ‘there is always a bigger fish’ is a very cool element to the stage and really gives you the feeling your little organism is growing. In addition to size, you increase in available DNA points with every level increment. This is where the creature editor comes into play. As you collect DNA from either plants or animal life, you will eventually unlock the ability to equip different kinds of defensive and offensive parts to your body. Each of these pieces costs a different amount of DNA from your total pool. 
Creatures are SO CUSTOMIZABLE it is not anywhere near funny. Objects can be placed just about anywhere and all have their own adjustments as well. With so much variation at your fingertips, it is easy to lose yourself in it for hours just experimenting with different configurations.
So, you have eaten enough DNA and your race of multi-cellular organisms is now ready to move to dry land. A quick trip to the creature creator to add some basic legs to your species and you are all set: the creature stage has begun. This stage, much like the cell stage is all about gaining DNA through food. It was the most intimate of the stages due to the amount of different body parts to configure as well as your only controlling one creature. You control its actions and will be directly responsible for leading your species to the tribal stage. It is easy to empathize with your creature and feel like you are experiencing the world through its eyes (or whatever you chose as sensory organs). With each increase in creature stage level, however, your brain grows a size larger and you gain the ability to add a pack member to aid you. These pack members (a max of three) will mirror your actions. This also marks the first time in the game where you can befriend other species on the map for mutual defense. 
For you herbivores out there, focus on the peaceful, diplomatic body parts then charm the pants off of those other species!
In the next stage, your creatures form a tribe and you will no longer control just one of them. This stage (as well as the next) plays like a simple real-time strategy game with the focus being your tribes domination of its continent (namely the other tribes thereon) through diplomatic or combative means. Unfortunately, you lose the ability to change your species’ biology at this point and focus on its tribal clothing and equipment (not nearly as satisfying). The tribal stage is a bit weaker on the fun than the previous two, but still entertaining.
After the tribal stage comes the civilization stage and that is where Spore took a down-turn for me. The civilization stage sets your tribe (now in a modern city for which you design the buildings) against the other cities of the planet all rules by other tribes. 
You will create land, air, and sea vessels which like the creature editor you can get lost in for quite some time. Unfortunately, you can only design one kind of each of these vehicles for the three categories (military, religious, economic). The civilization stage is not fleshed-out enough as far as its real-time strategy elements are concerned to be anything more than a buffer between two otherwise fun stages. In opposition, I could accept the simplistic gameplay of the tribal stage because your people ARE primitives at that point. Also, you no longer get the warm and fuzzies by controlling your individual creature anymore so you have nothing to empathize with.
Thankfully, the space stage brings us back to the realm of ‘fun’ by putting you in control of a spacecraft of your own design. 
You ‘pilot’ the ship from planet to planet, performing various missions such as seeding, destroying, and scanning. This brings back the intimacy of the creature stage while also allowing you to construct some very sweet-looking space ships. Some people I know have gone so far as construction their own X-Wings in the game. Not very original, I know, but it does show off the flexibility of the editor.
Visually, Spore looks very nice with a slightly cartoonish presentation (thankfully cause had they gone for realism it would be a blood bath). It is not, however, the ‘next big thing’ in graphics as some reviews would have you believe. Sound design is great with plenty of ambient noise to go around. Creatures’ vocals consist of warbles and other cute noises which only serve to make you like them even more. 
And when they are scared and shrieking while you devour them, it makes you feel a little bad. I still have nightmares…
Another interesting feature of the game is that your creatures can be shared online in the massive ‘Sporepedia’, which is a repository of creatures, vehicles, etc made by the huge number of people playing Spore online. When played in online mode, Spore will grab a random sampling of creatures and what not from the Sporepedia and place them inside your game.
Conclusion: Spore is a fun and addictive game that will provide you with many hours of enjoyment, especially creating species and testing them out in the creature stage. While the game takes a bit of a down-turn in the civilization stage, it rebounds nicely with the space stage and is well worth your time.
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iGames centers across the country are hosting launch parties as well as a two week showcase for the upcoming Warhammer Battle March. Battle March is the expansion to the RTS Warhammer Mark of Chaos.
26 iGames centers from around the country will host a launch party on September 6th and over one hundred centers will host a two week showcase of the game.
For more information, hit the official iGames website.
