Rahul Shirke

Far Cry 3 Set in Africa

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.

Terry Deary’s “Horrible Histories” to get Video Games!

Now if one of my favourite book series as a kid are Goosebumps, another will be Horrible Histories. Written by Terry Deary, Horrible Histories are essentially history books. They tell you history. But there’s a twist. They tell you the more horrible, the gorier, the more twisted parts of history. The sort your history teacher doesn’t.

Interestingly, there’s going to be an expansion to the franchise. While we won’t be seeing a movie for it, like Goosebumps (hmm, interesting idea), Horrible Histories will be going into the video games arena, with developer Slitherine Strategies taking it up.

If you’ve never heard of Slitherine, do not despair, for you haven’t missed anything. Slitherine’s previous works appear to be rather obscure titles I’ve never heard of either. Still, I think it should be in the right hands, since all of Slitherine’s previous works have been historical strategy games.

To be entirely honest. I’m not sure how a strategy game on Horrible Histories will work out. HH is more about the obscure facts and secrets of histories that were either distorted or maybe censored in time. How can you convert a series like that into a strategy game?

And the second focus of Horrible Histories is humour (and black humour at that). The last game I’ve seen that was actually funny would be Psychonauts. Okay, there’s Portal too. My point being, comedy in video games is an art. How well will Slitherine capture it?

Gearbox Working on Halo 4 for Next Xbox?!

One of the industry’s best upcoming FPS studios, Gearbox Software has been long rumoured to be working on a secret project that is “bigger” than anything they’ve ever tried. Since this is the team that made the entire Brothers in Arms series, the Halo PC port and many awesome expansions of Half-Life, this is something.

Rumour has it that they’re working on nothing but a Halo 4. Apparently the fight isn’t quite finished. Supposedly, the game is in development for a next-generation Xbox console. It should be noted that while we don’t have any announcements of a new console generation, we haven’t even heard talks about anything like that.

The rumour comes from the Official XBox Magazine, and there doesn’t seem to be any hard verification. Still, it doesn’t seem unbelievable or contradictory. Gearbox only has one product on their plate, Borderlands and Bungie announced that they’re done with the Halo franchise.

In any case, Microsoft milking out the Halo franchise definitely isn’t news, what will all that promotion during Halo 3‘s launch. What is news is the weird, outlandish rumour. So is Microsoft working on a next-gen Xbox? How powerful is it? Is Gearbox actually working on a sequel to Halo 3? Will it come anytime before 2015? Questions galore.

We have no doubt that Microsoft has an answer to them all. ‘Microsoft does not respond to rumors’ or some such.

I Am Alive to Become Major Franchise

With the race for awesome graphics having finally rested, developers are coming up with some really innovative titles at last! Probably spurred by Portal, EA will be doing Mirror’s Edge and Ubisoft will do I Am Alive. What is so innovative about that, you ask? Well, I Am Alive will put you in your own disaster movie as you will have to use real-life skills and techniques to save yourself from an earthquake.

It looks like Ubisoft is all ready to turn the game into a franchise already. This is a pretty weird trend I’ve been noticing lately, with developers starting franchises before the completion of the first game (Mass Effect, Crysis being examples). Well, it’s not bad, so who’s complaining?

It is no genius guess that in the potential sequels, we may have our hero facing other objects of natural fury: floods, tsunamis, tornados, storms, maybe volcanos. In any case, you just know that if I Am Alive‘s style can be used on earthquakes, further iterations are inevitable. Oh well, guess the franchise idea wasn’t that far off either!

Also, the first trailer of the game was rather mysterious in itself. Perhaps the events of I Am Alive aren’t as natural as you think. Of course, we, who have been raised on the X-Files will be first to theorise this being part of some global conspiracy, alien invasion or some test created by our alien benefactors. So Ubisoft is going to have to come up with something more original in the story department.

Another question is if the game will at all work. I’m not saying that non-violent games don’t have a chance, but Portal was a work of utter genius, and I’d be shocked if we get a Portal every year. I Am Alive will focus largely on character interactions and problem-solving. Now that we mention it, I’m starting to think that a zombie survival game along the same vein would be awesome…

Hmm, I hope Ubisoft is listening.

Pandora Internet Radio to Fall; Grooveshark to Rise?

I remember first going to Pandora. The site asked me to enter some of my favourite artists. I did. And then it told me that it will play other artists similar to the one I entered. “Excellent!” I utter. I expected a chat room where someone will search up artists. But nope. It was all automated. It was amazing.

It wasn’t perfect, and Last.fm was larger and more attractive, but Pandora was unique. It was the most accurate when it came to recommendations, because of the Music Genome Project, while Last.fm relied on users’ listening habits. But it did not last. As royalties for Internet radio were on the rise, Pandora had to cut access to foreign visitors.

That left me cut out, although I do remember accessing the site once without a proxy and using it for some 20 minutes before expiring my song quota. Could never replicate that moment, but what the hell, it was cool. I really sympathised with Pandora, partly because of the polite apology letter they left for foreign visitors.

Looks like it’s finally time for Pandora to hang up its boots once and for all. SoundExchange is putting on some draconian fees for Internet radio, which is going to hurt Pandora like hell. Royalties have been projected to reach 2.91 cents per listener at 2010. Pandora and others are attempting to petition SoundExchange, but we all know how petitions work.

If it ends up unsuccessful, Pandora will have to pay a whopping 70% of their projected 2008 revenue. Tim Westergren, owner of Pandora says that the minute such an event occurs, Pandora may have to shut shop, which isn’t very surprising. Will this be the demise of free, dynamic Internet radio?

Meanwhile, a new contender has come up to rise the ranks of Internet music. Grooveshark appears to be a brand new site similar to Pandora and Last.fm in that it is a music recommendation system. It appears to be undergoing maintenance right now, so I can’t check it out, but the guys at Mashable seem to have really liked it, so take a look.

Goosebumps Headed for the Big Screen!

Sony Pictures will be doing the big screen version of R.L. Stine’s hugely popular Goosebumps line of books. I’ve read dozens of these as a kid, so I have a reason to be excited, you know. There are 62 books in all, written over the years 1992 through 1997. That’s a lot of content to pick from, almost as much as a comic book franchise.

Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander have been signed on for writing the screenplay. This early, we have no idea on which story will be adapted. If you ask me though, an anthology or a series of loosely connected segments wouldn’t be such a bad idea either, considering the source material.

The tone of the movies is also up for debate. Goosebumps is largely a children’s horror series, which means that you can’t have anything overly horrific or sadistic. For quick reference, they are nothing like Saw or Hostel. The point is, which was the last horror movie you saw that looked like it was perfectly safe for an 11-year old?

Still, the Goosebumps series can perhaps be best appreciated for its eerie settings and the situations that the protagonists encounter. While the resolutions may end up being a bit cheesy or mild, they definitely get you thinking on what Hollywood could do with them and a bit of gore and dark stuff.

Let’s just see how this turns out, then.