Exploring Stuff That Makes Life Great
Crytek sure knows how to get the ball rolling. They’ve announced CryENGINE 3, their next video game engine. For the record, the first one was used by Far Cry, the second by Crysis and the third one will be by, well, we don’t know that yet.
Continue reading “Crytek’s CryENGINE 3 Coming Soon”
Yes I went to see this “film.” It was cheap. Continue reading “Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li – Review”
Every now and then a good Sonic game is released to the masses. Fans and critics cheer and then Sega screws up the jubilee by announcing a new Sonic game that messes with the formula. Sonic Unleased has been touted by Sega as THE Sonic game that brings the franchise back to its roots and fixes many problems that have plagued recent Sonic games. Continue reading “Game Review: Sonic Unleased – A step in the RIGHT Direction”
Wow, it seems like only yesterday I brought you the news of Ubisoft Montreal announcing Far Cry 2. With that game coming close to release now, Ubisoft Montreal goes further to announce another addition to the franchise. No, it’s not the Far Cry: Africa Pet Zoo for the DS, it’s a full-fledged Far Cry 3.
Announced at Leipzig, it has been confirmed that the game will be set in Africa. Ubisoft Montreal seems to be keen on boosting African tourism industries with their repeated interest in African wildlife and the promise it holds. I agree with that, too: you can only fight so much in Normandy! Still, I was expecting a Far Cry set in, say, an East European urban setting, or maybe the Great Wall of China or someplace equally exotic.
The team has made a commitment to Africa, supposedly, but shows interest in the Antarctic setting as well, which would be totally cool in my opinion, no pun intended. They also admit that the Africa setting will save time. Hmm.
The game will use the same engine as Far Cry 2 and we don’t have any more details on it, as usual. Suffice to say, it’ll involve lots of exotic, open-world, instinct-based action. Crytek is, as usual, out of the picture, probably too busy working on Crysis 2 or some such.
Finally, with QuakeCon going, we can get some more dope on Rage, id’s flagship project for their much-touted id Tech 5 Engine, which appears to have been dubbed the Rage Engine now, albeit unofficially.i
Carmack clears the fact that even though their website claims Rage to be a “vehicle-based” game, the vehicular element is not the focus of the game, and it’s still a very first-person shooter. It won’t be a “mindless” open world game, and all its missions will be pretty story-based. Still, it’ll put quite a bit of focus on the open world aspect, seeing as that’s what id wants to prove with id Tech 5.
The engine which Rage will be showcasing is pretty much near completion, according to Carmack. It’s been in development for some three years, and id still has some polishing to do, such as working on the animation system and some tweaks to the big-time MegaTexture system. But all the biggie stuff is done and the engine is almost ready.
While Rage will showcase all the large world environments in the engine, the real meat should be “the next Doom” game, which is to you and me, Doom 4. According to Carmack, Doom 4 will have 3 times the horsepower of Rage, but will have to run at 30 FPS, which is half of that of Rage.
Doom 4 will also be significantly better on the “creative aspects” and “level design”, which isn’t surprising since Doom 3 blew everyone else out of the water for level design. As for what it will feature, Carmack merely says that we’ll have “guns, blood, demons, and gibs” which is a shocking departure from Doom‘s tradition of magical pixies, fairy dust and ponies.
Still, details on Doom 4 are pretty bleak, so we’ll head back to Rage.
Rage will be delivered for the Xbox 360, PS3, PC and Mac. On the Xbox 360, however, id seems to be coming across some problems. The game will fit on 3 DVDs for the Xbox 360, which seems to be a limiting factor. Due to royalties, the cost of a third DVD would go into millions. This would mean that id would be forced to compromise on textures and compress them into 2 DVDs. Darn you, Microsoft!
The PS3 goes sailing smooth with the Blu-Ray discs and the game should come on both DVD and Blu-Ray formats for the PC and Mac. As for when it will arrive, ask any id fanboy and you will get the curt reply of “when it’s done.” id isn’t really sure, but denies it would take as long as 2011. I’d place my bet on early 2010 then, with Doom 4 later that year.
And finally, id played an extended trailer at QuakeCon, which the folks at Shackvideo caught. It’s almost the same as the one at E3, but has some extra stuff. Check it out!
Movie video game tie-ins aren’t news, but what Warner Bros. is trying to go with them is. Warner has announced that they will be experimenting with downloadable tie-in games for Watchmen and two are already in the works!
The first will be around the release of the movie (i.e. March 2009), while the second will arrive shortly after the DVD release. What’s more, if these two games end up successful, Warner will go ahead with further episodes.
Seeing the sorry fate of movie-based video games was probably what spurred Warner into action. The downloadable format means that the game will be shorter and more appealing to the fans. According to Warner, this model will end up better at pleasing fans and critics, which is definitely going to be a tough task.
Interestingly, the source article at Variety also says that if the series ends up successfull, there might even be future pics tie-ins with the games. We’re not sure if a downloadable series can get that successful, so we’re just gonna go with a “Yeah, right” for now.
Right now we know that the first game will be released for the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. It will be developed by Danish developer Deadline Games. I checked out their Wikipedia entry and I don’t see any titles ringing any bells. The game will feature Rorshach and Nite Owl battling crime.
This would mean that the game is something of a prequel to Watchmen, where a close friendship between Rorshach and Nite Owl as crimefighting buddies is hinted at. Would be great to see this in the form of a video game, but again, we’re totally not sure if this is gonna work.
