The Game Druid

If you haven’t downloaded it get going!! Cuz the Crysis Demo is out!!

Click here to download it!!

Also, you might want to look at their system requirements:

Minimum system requirements

OS - Windows XP or Windows Vista
Processor - 2.8 GHz or faster (XP) or 3.2 GHz or faster* (Vista)
Memory - 1.0 GB RAM (XP) or 1.5 GB RAM (Vista)
Video Card -256 MB**
Hard Drive - 12GB
Sound Card - DirectX 9.0c compatible

Recommended System Requirements

OS - Windows XP / Vista
Processor - Intel Core 2 DUO @ 2.2GHz or AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+
Memory - 2.0 GB RAM
GPU - NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS/640 or similar

* Supported Processors: Intel Pentium 4 2.8 GHz (3.2 GHz for Vista) or faster, Intel Core 2.0 GHz (2.2 GHz for Vista) or faster, AMD Athlon 2800+ (3200+ for Vista) or faster.

** Supported chipsets: NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT or greater; ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (Radeon X800 Pro for Vista) or greater. Laptop versions of these chipsets may work but are not supported. Integrated chipsets are not supported. Updates to your video and sound card drivers may be required.

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Sony might not have included a headset with PlayStation 3, but they’re not sure you need one.

The company is getting set to drop the PlayStation Eye, its microphone/camera attachment for PlayStation 3, in retail stores this October 23. And a producer at Sony writes on the company blog that it’s more than just a camera:

PS3 Eye Camera Attatchment also has a built-in 4-microphone array that allows you to enjoy online AV chat and in-game voice chat, in what we’re calling a “natural environment,” meaning, not awkwardly leaning toward your camera or speaking abnormally loud just so the mic picks up your voice. IMHO, this microphone really does do away with the need for a headset.

First off, I say that Sony should add “IMHO” into more of their announcements. Secondly, I hope all the people who paid sixty bucks for the Warhawk headset package don’t read the above.

Sony also announced today that the PlayStation Eye will be sold separately for $40, in case you don’t want to buy Eye of Judgment for $70. They also announced that software called EyeCreate will be offered for free through the PlayStation 3’s download store, allowing users to edit and share photos and videos.

Source: Wired

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While most multiplatform titles for the PS3 and Xbox 360 are usually extremely similar, every once in a while, the developer includes a few distinct differences. THQ is doing just that with this year’s WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2008, slated to release on November 13 for the PS3 and 360 and definitely bound to garner some big sales.

According to a recent interview with PSU.com, THQ’s Dan Ryan revealed a bunch of new details and info concerning the upcoming wrestling title. In answer to one of the questions regarding possible differences between the PS3 and 360 versions, Ryan had some very interesting comments. As it turns out, while the 360 version will let the player record and play their own songs, the PS3 version will make use of the Sixaxis for what they’re calling an “Interactive Entrance” feature. His full response is below:

“The Xbox 360 version of the game will allow players to use songs stored on their hard drive for entrance music, while the PlayStation 3 version will include the unique Interactive Entrance feature. By utilizing the technology of the SIAXIS controller, we’re now giving players the option of actually witnessing their favorite Superstar’s ring entrance – from the Superstar’s perspective. Players can tilt the controller up, down, left and right to turn a Superstar’s head as he or she heads to the ring, allowing players for the first time to see the action through the Superstar’s eyes.”

It’s very original to be sure. Being able to look around with your chosen character when making your grand entrance sounds great, and now we’re wondering if you can interact with the audience in any way. We also want to ask if the motion sensing will play any role in the gameplay itself, but this little feature is pretty darn cool.

Half-Life 2: Episode Two opens with a “previously in Half-Life 2 episodes” (how fucking cool is that??) sort of recap montage that is the game’s only real concession to the kind of static, cutscene-driven storytelling that still dominates video games. Certainly, some are of the opinion that the Half-Life series, particularly beginning with Half-Life 2, employs its uncommon brand of contextual narrative and in-game cutscenes as just a more interactive version of the traditional style, but such characterizations sell the developer’s efforts short.

With unfortunately few examples of others catching on since Valve started adhering to its own rigid design principles with its first game, the studio still knows how to subtly and seamlessly direct a player’s eye through entirely in-game means better than just about anyone else working in the medium. Episode Two reflects the latest in Valve’s continuing goal to build on its already top-notch sense of pacing, atmosphere, gameplay variety, and content density–from Valve, it’s just what you would expect, at least if you’re a Valve fan or have been keeping up with the pre-release coverage, but relative to the pace at which most developers exhibit this kind of growth, it’s practically a marvel.

How so? While Episode One took the formula largely established by Half-Life 2 and refined it–regardless of whether you found that evolution an improvement; I did–Episode Two refines it yet again but also introduces a much more dramatic spate of new elements to the mix than did its predecessor.

The game sees a broader range of environments, that in a first for the series leave concrete and steel behind and branch out to the wilderness. In a great touch that speaks to Valve’s instinct for thematic cohesion and iconography, a constant visual reminder of the center of the Half-Life 2 mythos is visible in the distance from nearly every outdoor location.

New gameplay vignettes are introduced, bolstering the series’ already impressive repertoire. It has to be tough at this point figuring out new physics puzzles, but they are here–and one, conjuring images of a designer wracking his brain for new material, is satisfyingly ridiculous in its abuse of reality. Despite its gravitas, Half-Life has always embraced the less realistic, more video gamey side of things when it comes to puzzle solving, and this game is no exception.

Most crucially, however, is Valve’s first stab at taking combat into broader arenas. This is what gives the game such an impressive breadth–there is plenty of Half-Life corridor fighting, and an early underground sequence showcases the Source engine’s lighting improvements in a gorgeous fashion, but there are also shootouts in small villages and building clusters. Hunters, Episode Two’s new three-legged mini-Striders, add an element of combat nonlinearity new to the series. If you hole up in a house, they might come up through the cellar; if you run outside, one might climb up to the roof to gain a better line of sight.

These encounters feel more replayable than past Half-Life fights. While they don’t attempt to match up in scale to franchises like Halo, whose stock and trade is large-scale combat, and they can be played as straighter firefights if you desire, they do represent one of the biggest steps Valve has taken in terms of broadening what is already one of the most impressive and well-executed ranges of gameplay to be found in the entire straight FPS genre.

Episodic sidekick Alyx gets a boost too, with further improvements to her combat AI and range of animation–she’ll lay down blind suppressing fire from behind cover if the situation gets too hot, and if she happens to be standing on the driver side of the wonderfully stripped-down muscle car that accompanies you through much of the game, she’ll enter by sliding into the passenger seat from the hood.

Deserving of special mention is Episode Two’s ending battle, an extremely ambitious capping off of Valve’s first foray into open-ended combat, and one of the most frantic and memorable ending battles in any shooter of recent memory.

Also noteworthy is an almost arcade-like automated turret sequence that both introduces yet another kind of gameplay encounter. The two NPCs who drive the sequence strongly highlight the extremely visible contributions of Chet Faliszek and Erik Wolpaw, the Old Man Murray creators currently serving as writers at Valve. (”No offense, Freeman, but things were pretty quiet until you showed up,” gripes one of the scene’s main characters.) Faliszek is said to have been more involved in Episode Two, and he brings a needed breadth to the game world’s inhabitants.

While Marc Laidlaw remains the mastermind of the overriding fiction, Faliszek’s contributions turn the supporting cast of “extras” from a Greek chorus of Freeman-worshipping clones to a broad range of personalities encapsulating not just despair and adoration but comic relief, frustration, and a sense of a larger world. The game even pokes fun at the series’ relentless “right man in the right place” mentality (or is it “the right man in the wrong place”?); at one point, a Vortigaunt wryly considers aloud how “the Freeman” plans to circumvent the latest “parade of obstacles.” Meanwhile, the more operatic elements remain intact, with plot elements such as the G-Man seeing both questions addressed by cryptic answers, and new questions raised.

Just as the gameplay in parts reflects the more open approach to environments, so too does the music. Kelley Bailey’s sparse and conservatively-rationed electronic musical accompaniment to the world of Half-Life has always been more impressive and well-used to me than most game music of similar genre, despite that genre being traditionally overused in video games–though it is being displaced by the generic B-grade Hollywood symphonic score.

The music is as well-placed and heart-pumpingly-timed as ever, but it also takes on a more organic quality than it has ever had in a Half-Life game. Along with the move out into more natural environments comes a greater reliance on less-synthesized instruments–or at least the effect of them. With Bailey’s somewhat distanced sense of composition and general “Half-Life” sound still in place, the change contributes excellently to an overall sense of evolution in the series as a whole. Longtime series fans are also likely to pick up on some subtle gameplay-to-music linkups that pay subtle homage to past moments.

(As an aside, though nobody would confuse this game’s music with the kind of thing generally associated with muscle cars, there is a nice bit of synergy in the hopefully-not-coincidental inclusion of both a snarling, turbo-charged metal steed and the series’ most rock-driven soundtrack yet.)

With neither length nor the release frequency of the Half-Life 2 “episodes” being particularly episodic, it has fallen to the narrative and plot elemets in Episode Two to live up to the designator. Episode One took criticism for lacking tangible plot relative to Half-Life 2; whereas Episode One was largely driven by a general sense of urgency, Episode Two is much more practically driven by concrete plot motivations in the style of Half-Life 2.

For better or worse, elements of the game’s fiction allow for occasional brief toe-dipping into more static cutscenes. And the game’s ending, which surely fits the “episodic” bill better than anything else in either episode yet, is less of the “I wish they didn’t end this here” variety as in Episode One and more of the “TELL ME WHAT HAPPENS NEXT, YOU BASTARDS” kind. You know, in a good way.

In some ways, the subtlety and effectiveness with which Valve grows its design sense presents problems for its own marketability. Many reviews of Episode One glossed over the improvements to pacing and density that the game demonstrated, while placing perhaps undue weight on length, a fairly arbitrary game property that is probably more tied to quality in this industry than it should be.

Episode Two has a better sense of its own marketing, with more “bullet point” improvements than Episode One–new environments! new enemies! more hours of gameplay! and so on, surely to the relief of distributor Electronic Arts, but it never feels as if such inclusions are gratuitous.

On that note, by packing Episode Two with the rest of The Orange Box, Valve has sidestepped many of the inevitable complaints about the latest iteration of its current development model. Certainly, in regards to Episode Two itself, some may still wish for greater length, but at this point the company has turned out a game that is of comparable length to many standalone games–and, for the price of one of those standalone games you get an extremely robust multiplayer offering as well as one another single-player offering that is one of the most inventive around, not to mention two proven single-player games that you can use to convert the unconvinced.

Is there anything negative to say about Episode Two? If you’re on board with the kind of thing Valve does, not really. Those turned off by the heavily on-rails nature of the series will find little change here, despite the more open nature of individual battles themselves, and those frustrated by the game’s cryptic story and endlessly deus ex machina-driven plot points may still be left wanting. But in a genre where even the best games tend to just pick one thing and do it well, Valve continues to pick more and more things and do them well–and some of them the company still does better than anyone around. Once again, the bar has been raised, and it is impossible not to recommend this game. We give it a 8/10

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Do yawl remember Team Fortress 1? It was a hoot! Ahem..anyway…now that’s out of the way… lets move on to Team Fortress 2!!

This is a game that has seen every facet of its structure fine-tuned by top-level craftsmen. Its designers have refined the original shape of Team Fortress, like carving masters whittling away at a piece of prime wood. Every wall and weapon and machine gun turret feels as solid as oak. Every map has been reduced to its most basic form, play-tested and polished with a glossy varnish. The finished product positively shines.

The essence of Team Fortress is very much intact. You’ll still have the same nine classes of warriors to choose from, and it’s still an online-only exercise in fast-paced scheming and careful action. Your personal pride will still need to be balanced with the team goal of helping to capture flags (no longer an actual flag, but “intelligence”) and control points. You will still feel the urge to idly snipe from the wall in 2Fort, even as your team takes a nose-dive in the standings.

Flaked away from its earlier form have been the standard Team Fortress grenades, which every class once tossed around with all the careless abandon of a kid in a fireworks store. Sure, explosions are fun, but by reducing the similarity between each class, the nine characters feel all the more distinct. So distinct, in fact, that it’s often difficult to settle on one choice from respawn to respawn. They all look so sadistically attractive.

Team Fortress 2 is a headshot of a game. Stylistically, we’ve never seen anything quite like it–one that taps into its own inner vibe so effortlessly. The artists clearly came to a crossroads at some point, pulled the trigger on a new look, and have been rewarded for their boldness with a splatter of charming models and endearing trailers. The Pixar quality of it seems to have sprung up from the seed of Team Fortress’ already-established gameplay, the nature of which matches the comic style perfectly.

The resultant cartoon aesthetic is so logical that it’s easy to forget how strange it is that a cartoony shooter can be simultaneously brutal and funny. When the aptly-named Heavy Weapons Guy flashes a toothy grin mid-execution, automatically issuing a joyous Venturian battle cry in the face of his victim, one can only be struck by how well it works.

This much is clear: Team Fortress 2 works on all levels.

You don’t have to look any further than the Spy class. One of the more unique conventions ever to grace gaming, the Spy is a psychological mind-trip from both sides of the team color curtain. When anyone on your side can potentially be an enemy, a permanent cloud of paranoia hangs over every player. Fearing your friends is exciting, if only because it feels so fresh. And is there anything more satisfying than playing the part of the opposition as a Spy, like a first-person acting audition, until the eventual switchblade opportunity, the frantic cloaked getaway, and the spreading of confusion and terror amongst your enemies?

The maps compliment the frenetic action well. The best of them, such as the control-point map Gravel Pit, offer a choice to attacking and defending teams between two initial points, ensuring a surprising opening. You’ll be faced with capturing the A and B points before the final home-base of C is open for the taking. This leads to a desperate last-stand scenario, with both teams scrambling as the timer ticks down.

Tactically, the battlegrounds may seem deceptively simple at first–that is, until a crafty Engineer’s well-placed turret mows you down five straight times. Like the classes–where the Soldier’s rocket jump and the Scout’s Mario-esque leaps will set advanced players apart–each map has its own ins and outs, allowing for a future expansion of both individual and team-play philosophy. Complicating things is a dynamic placement of both starting and capture points on certain maps, requiring map-memorizing veterans to be on their game in order to quickly adjust.

So are there imperfections? Of course–no game is spared some criticism. There could be a few more maps. Of the included six, only a few truly capitalize on the subtle mechanics of the game, the rest often devolving into futile, tug-of-war stalemates or crushing defeats. The classic 2Fort map now feels somewhat stale, antiquated. Default respawn times seem a little high. The classes will never be perfectly balanced–such is the nature of class-based combat. And so on.

To sit and complain about such minor quibbles is tantamount to taking a magnifying glass to a great painting. It’s like reviewing the piano and complaining that not every song played was Bach. People will write more piano music, and people will create more TF2 maps–both Valve and its sizable mod community.

We also can’t complain when not every phrase is instantly stimulating. Is the Heavy/Medic combination–the Ghostbusters beam-swinging Medic with its invulnerability-granting shield, and the Heavy with its rapid fire and beefy health bar–tiresome in its dominance? A little, but there are always ways to counter a bad note in the middle of a round. Adaptability is key in Team Fortress, and this version is no different. You often find yourself frustrated not in your lack of ability, but in your own basic stubbornness to give up on your futilely-placed turrets, or your impossible, wrong-headed plan of Scout infiltration.

Perhaps the easiest thing to say about Team Fortress 2 is that it is simply addictive. It’s a lot of fun, in the most fundamental sense. Whether you’re lighting up a crowd with the Pyro, scoring ping-defying long-range kills with the Sniper, or just popping regular-old rockets off with the Soldier, it is undeniably a good time–and a bargain at that.

Team Fortress 2 is not a week-long diversion, and it should not be missed. We at the Game Druid give it a 9/10!!

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Oddly enough, the developers chose to stage the war on U.S. soil, a la “Red Dawn.” The game starts with a ridiculous premise. After a shooting war starts in Europe, the Russians supposedly have the guile to hide armies inside cargo ships that storm ashore in Seattle. Now consider that the Russians only have a one port in the Pacific ocean, and it’s an icy one at that. Further consider that the U.S. Navy was a lot bigger than the Russian navy, which consisted mostly of submarines. And then you have to wonder how the Russians managed to fly a lot of planes over Seattle, from half a world away, and land divisions of paratroopers in a complete surprise attack.

OK, I know. The point is the developers wanted to have the action on U.S. soil so that Americans would buy the game. Anyhow, the game starts with a tutorial that has a flare of drama because it has a voice over by a tough drill sergeant. The voice adds a touch of humanity to the game because the vehicles and soldiers you command are sort of like ants. The view of the gamer is so elevated that you don’t get to see your soldiers close up, as with Company of Heroes. The birds-eye view fits with the sweeping landscapes of the game. It also adds realism because modern weaponry enables firefights at very long ranges. With this broad view, you can fit an entire town on a battle map.

The tutorial shows you how to maneuver in 3-D space with 360 degrees of camera control. Pulling that off is always the trickiest problem in a real-time strategy game. You don’t have time to get disoriented in real-time combat. This game does as good a job as any in 3-D going back as far as Homeworld, but it makes the same trade-offs compared to games that used a fixed 3-D view. It’s easy to move your view to the wrong spot of the battle. The tutorial shows you how to get reinforcements onto the battlefield via air drop and how to rain death on the enemy using off-map artillery, air strikes, and missiles. The latter indirect combat adds a great deal of joy and tactics to the game; it’s almost more fun than the direct combat.

After the tutorial, the first mission depicts the invasion of Seattle. You see the story unfold in animated cinematics with reasonably good dialogs and animations. You also see the story narrated via painted still images that also allow you to feel more emotion about the civilian losses as the Russians take over. I give a thumbs up to developers for realizing that this is the way to make a birds-eye view game more emotionally involving.

You start out commanding just a couple of vehicles. Most vehicles have a unique offensive and defensive feature that you can command yourself. The Bradley Fighting Vehicle has a TOW missile that you can use to target individual enemy vehicles. It also can generate smoke to protect itself in a defensive maneuver. Like throwing grenades with soldiers in Company of Heroes, you can spend a lot of time directing your TOW missiles at individual Russian tanks. But if you do that in bigger battles, it takes a lot of precious time and amounts to micro-managing a battle that you really should fight on a higher level. The Seattle streets look pretty good. You can recognize terrain like the waterfront and the freeways, the King Dome and the bridges. Each becomes a key point where you have to fight off the Russians as you stage a strategic retreat.

The Russians move against you with paratroopers, trooper carriers, battle tanks and other vehicles. Their helicopters drop soldiers and vehicles behind you in attempts to flank you. But the artificial intelligence isn’t that good. The Russian vehicles have a tendency to drive right through your own lines, particularly if you cut through their columns. They stop and shoot at point-blank range, which leads to some unbelievable suicidal firefights. (Hey, maybe they’re trained to do that, but it sure isn’t smart play).

But the overall structure of the game is good. Your infantry is vulnerable in the open, but you can send them into buildings. Once inside, they can be deadly to any vehicles or infantry trying to get past them. Anti-tank infantry is particularly good against the Russians. To take them out, it’s best to rain an artillery barrage on the buildings.

A lot of the missions require you to take some ground. You move your forces to occupy a couple of circles at the designated target. Then you have to hang on to it in case of counterattacks. The tanks can be deadly to other vehicles and they can generally withstand more than one TOW attack. One of the flaws of the game is that the vehicles don’t light up when you target them with a TOW, so you can’t tell if you clicked on the vehicle or missed it. It’s easy to miss when the target is moving. You have to waste time clicking two or three times to get your attack right.

The retreat from Seattle leads to a battle where you have to take and then defend a small town in the Northwest. Each leg of taking the town happens piecemeal, in separate missions. But the real fun starts when you have to defend the town against Soviet attack. That’s where you have to line up precisely timed artillery and air attacks. If you do it right, then you get the joy of seeing the Soviet forces go up in a huge bombardment. Dirt flies and smoke clouds rise in the air. Tanks explode in fiery hulks. The environment is entirely destructible, so you can fight over the rubble of buildings and destroyed vehicles.

Ultimately, the battles expand and you get to use your reinforcement points to purchase bigger and bigger things, leading right up to a tactical nuclear weapon. There is a lot that is satifying in this game. But the AI flaws mean that it’s much better to play multiplayer over the Internet against someone who has the brains to fight the right way. Still, this is a highly enjoyable game with enough visual and tactical advances over past RTS games. It’s enough to draw me away from the consoles to the PC, for a short time, during a season of exciting games. And it’s the first PC game this year since Supreme Commander to hold my attention. Well done.

We at The Game Druid give it 8.5/10

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1979: Before Halo, before World of Warcraft, before Myst, there was Pac-Man. On this day, Pac-Man makes its debut in Japan.

While it wasn’t the first videogame — arcade games, including video ones, had existed for years — Pac-Man turned videogaming into a phenomenon by burning it into the collective consciousness in a way that previous games did not.

The brainchild of Toru Iwatani, a designer for Namco, a Japanese software company, Pac-Man is a model of complex simplicity. The concept — the player controls a blob with a mouth that navigates a two-dimensional maze, eating dots and ghosts while trying to avoid being eaten itself — could have been dreamed up by a 10 year old. But try racking up big points; ah, there’s the rub.

The game received a lukewarm reception in Japan (where it was originally sold under the name Puck-Man), but became an instant hit when it arrived in the United States. The name was supposedly changed to Pac-Man for the U.S. market for fear that some bright wit might alter the spelling into an obscenity.

Regardless of the name, Pac-Man quickly left every existing arcade game in its wake. Versions were made to accommodate virtually every platform out there and spinoffs of the game itself, such as Ms. Pac-Man, were marketed to feed off the popularity of the original.

Nearly three decades after its appearance, Pac-Man is still being sold and remains one of the most popular videogames of all time.

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There’s no better way to get through a Tuesday than with two free demos on the Xbox 360 Live Marketplace.

F.E.A.R. Files: Extraction Point and Project Gotham Race 4 are the freebies of choice today, so get downloading!

PGR4: Race three exotic cars and two beauteous bikes through the streets of Macau and a snow laden Nürburgring. Includes an exclusive Nürburgring Snow Challenge and unique PGR Arcade Events.

F.E.A.R. Files: Extraction Point: F.E.A.R. Files combines the award winning F.E.A.R.: Extraction Point with the brand new F.E.A.R.: Perseus Mandate in one terrifying package. This demo based off of the events in Extraction Point showcases the hyper-stylized action and paranormal horror that define F.E.A.R. Engage the Replica soliders and powerful supernatural entities in close quarters combat with a powerful arsenal, including the new Minigun. Highly destructible environments and combat adaptable AI bring the action to life in this follow up to the critically acclaimed F.E.A.R.

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Sony Japan has revealed that the 40GB PS3 will be available across the region in Ceramic White and standard black, GamesIndustry.biz reports.

It will cost JPY 39,980 (GBP 168 / EUR 242) and be available from 11th November, alongside a separate White DualShock 3 controller for JPY 5500 (GBP 23 / EUR 33).
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Earlier today, Sony Japan announced further price cuts for 60GB and 20GB PS3 units in the region, ahead of the busy Christmas retail period.

Starting 17th October, the 60GB SKU will cost JPY 54,980 (GBP 230 / EUR 332), and the 20GB unit will be JPY 44,980 (GBP 189 / EUR 273).

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