Sudden Strike 3 Arms For Victory PC video game Patch released

Fireglow Games Publishing releases a small yet pleasant pack (97,5 Mb) consisting of two multiplayer maps (all control points can be captured only one time) and a single-player mission. The pack (97,5 Mb) also contains a patch with numerous improvements and bug fixes.

Description of the maps:

Tongs - This peculiar map contains a large island in the middle. It can be played by 2 to 6 people. There are 5 bridges on the map and a lot of flags to fight for.

Elimination - This map features kill-em-all style on a flat map.

Untermehmen VII "C" - This hardcore single mission features the old good Sudden Strike play. You have limited amount of reinforcements ... and the enemy has much more. You will like it.
This pack requires the original Sudden Strike 3 Arms for Victory DVD.

About Sudden Strike 3: Arms for Victory:
Sudden Strike 3: Arms for Victory is the latest installment in the award-winning, critically acclaimed and hugely popular Sudden Strike series. It features historically authentic models built to scale, fully interactive giant maps and full 3-D state-of-the-art graphics in the popular Sudden Strike style. Only Sudden Strike plays like the 'real thing'. WW2 gaming at its best: on land, at sea and in the air!

Features:

• Fully interactive landscape (all objects can be destroyed, all buildings and pillboxes can be used as shelter)


• Massive operations on big maps, strategic scale of the maps (front line can be a few kilometres long)


• Thousands of units fighting in real time


• More than 300 tanks, ships, soldiers, guns and planes with original weapons built to scale


• Great sounds, 5.1 supported, nations speak native languages


• New feature - advanced Micro AI-behaviour allows your troops to act exactly as you plan


• Joint naval and ground operations, air raids, artillery strikes etc.


• State-of-the-art technology to render 3D landscape, realistic lines of sight and fire


• Spectacular visual & lighting effects


• Multiplayer mode: up to 8 players, GameSpy® supported


• Five campaigns playable for American, British, German, Japanese and Soviet sides

Download from here...

Battle Rage PC video game - beta test

Battle Rage, the latest production of Teyon, is coming into beta tests and balancing phase.

The game is officially announced to be completed in the first quarter of 2008.

Soon we will reveal all the details concerning the game's mechanics and gameplay. Until that time we would like to present the first official trailer from the game allowing you to feel the climate of Battle Rage.



The game is a TPS with elements of the beat'em up game and allows a player to control giant robots. Battles between the robots take place on carefully selected battlegrounds. The player can fight alone (versus one, two or three opponents) or in the team with one sidekick. Every machine has its own weapons for melee and distance combat, additional weapon types can be found on the maps. The player has also a possibility to tweak parameters of the robot to fit them to his preferences. The game offers the player three modes: quick game, arcade and multiplayer.

If you want to know more about the game, visit its official website: http://battle-rage.com

Load Inc. partnership with Assassin Studio

Today, Load Inc. announced a partnership with the serious folks at Assassin Studio in Seattle. The two companies are teaming up to give a fresh start to Mad Tracks PC. After tremendous release on Xbox 360™ Live Arcade this summer, Douglas Boze, CEO of Assassin Studios will be on the lookout for a distribution and retail partner in North America for the great PC version. Now why ‘Assassin’ you wonder? Our award winning AD, Herve Nedelec, has his own version: “no doubt about it, Douglas kills the competition”.

“There’s a great thing about Mad Tracks PC once you start you can actually stop! And that comes in handy when it’s time for a New Years Eve dinner” says Thomas Leinekugel, VP project manager at Load Inc. and fine food enthusiast.

“With over 1.2 million downloads of the trial version of Mad Tracks on PC and over 630,000 XBLA downloads, we are very excited about the possibilities of coupling this product with the right distributor in North America”, says Douglas Boze, CEO of Assassin Studios.

Reflexive Entertainment releases PC video game The Great Tree

Fly into a magical world of mystery and adventure told through beautiful drawings and mesmerizing gameplay with Reflexive's newest game: The Great Tree.

Whispers speak of something sinister in the shadows. The time of the Great Descent draws nigh, but the Great Tree is failing. Stripped of its source of energy, its life force is running out. The fairy Wren, whose lives are intertwined with the tree, must find a way to collect the pollen that can save The Great Tree...and themselves.

Reflexive Entertainment (www.reflexive-inc.com) is proud to announce the release of The Great Tree. A grown-up story of good and evil that puts the survival of an enchanted world into your hands.

Drawn and painted by the same award-winning artist behind Wik: Fable of Souls, The Great Tree transports players into a beautifully dark world full of magic and mystery. The story of the faeries known as the Wren is one fraught with intrigue and danger. Told through elaborate drawings and poignant voice, the epic story has been carefully put together through blood, sweat and tears, to bring players a unique gaming experience.

Taking on the role of one of the Wren selected to collect pollen, players hear the story through cinematic interludes and then live it through the levels. Using magical powers and agile movements, players must avoid powerful and innovative enemies that literally come alive from the background in ways that are both exciting and horrifying.

"Watching a mushroom that you thought was just a pretty picture in the background open its eyes, change its expression and then open its mouth to try to eat you is just one of many amazing moments in this game that will startle, surprise and in the end simply amaze you," said Ion Hardie, Director of Product Development. "It contains moments that are as unique and enjoyable as anything I've ever seen in any game."

Featuring stunning locales, surprising enemies, and 100 wondrous levels, The Great Tree provides an amazing gaming experience, which feels akin to an epic film. More information, including the game's demo, can now be found at The Great Tree game's website: http://www.thegreattreegame.com/.

Cost headache for game developers

Next-generation consoles have wowed gamers with breathtaking graphics, surround sound and stunning gameplay since coming on to the market in the past year.

Halo 3 has been a massive success for Microsoft
Cutting-edge video games might be a dream come true for consumers around the world, but for many companies developing them, it's been a nightmare.

The movie-like productions on Sony's Playstation 3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360 games have meant that the cost of producing them has risen sharply.

Halo 3, an extremely popular game produced by Microsoft, is estimated to have cost $30m (£15m). However, the American software giant was able to recoup that, and the millions more spent on marketing, straight away.

On its first day of sales, it brought in $170m, setting the record for the most money earned in a day by an entertainment product. It far outstripped the money made in a day by Spiderman 3, the biggest-grossing Hollywood film.

More from the BBC

Video games reduce blood flow to the brain!!!!

People who spend too much time playing video games, especially violent video games, may risk damaging brain function and affect their learning and emotional control, a study released yesterday showed.

Chou Yuan-hua, a doctor in the Department of Psychiatry at Taipei Veterans General Hospital, enlisted 30 youngsters -- all aged 25 -- as research subjects for the study.

They were given physical examinations to monitor changes in blood circulation in their brains before and after each played a video game for 30 minutes.

The study found that the act of playing video games obviously caused decreased blood flow to the brain, and that the effect is even more pronounced in those playing violent video games.

Source: Taipei Times

Glasgow Scientists say Silicon Chips are holding back Game Development

According to researchers at Glasgow University and the US Semiconductor Research Corporation, silicon chips are restricting the advancement of videogames.

Because the chips have reached their limits of speed and performance, say the scientists, progress in game design is being held back.

Professor Iain Thayne is leading the team that's researching a new breed of "super chips," that could theoretically allow designers to "develop games that make you feel as though you are part of the synthesised world.

"Thayne says that many current games "still feel very unrealistic and flat."

In addition to increasing the speed of computers, these new chips could lengthen battery life for cell phones and digital cameras.

Source: Wired

From the Yorkshire Post...

Super chips to boost computer games

A new generation of "super chips" is being designed to make computer games more lifelike.
Scientists say silicon chips that power computers and games consoles have reached their peak in terms of speed and ability.

Now an international team of experts is working on a new breed that will allow game designers to create more complex, lifelike graphics.

The new chips could also lengthen battery life for mobile phones and digital cameras and increase the speed of computers.

The project, supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, is the result of a £1.2m partnership between electronics specialists at Glasgow University and the US Semiconductor Research Corporation.

Lead researcher Professor Iain Thayne said: "A lot of computer games still feel very unrealistic and flat. What gamers want is to develop games that make you feel as though you are part of the synthesised world.

"It is the silicon chips installed in games consoles which are holding this development back and so by increasing the power of chips a whole new generation of computer games can be launched."

Games makers could get them within three years.

Top ten games of 2007 - Number One : The Orange Box on PC XBox 360 PlayStation 3

It had to be, didn’t it? Whether you look at The Orange Box as one game, three games or five games – whether you’re a newcomer to the series who wants to play it in his living room on a console or a hardened fan who wants the PC experience, there’s still no faulting The Orange Box. If nothing else there’s still just an enormous feeling of value.

Half-Life 2: Episode 2 is perhaps the most perfect and appreciable of the Half-Life experience yet. The meaty part of the story, Episode 2 picks up directly after Episode 1 and sees Alyx Vance and Gordon Freeman desperately trying to make it to White Forest Base to deliver a message of the utmost importance to the resistance.

The story is brilliantly told and the pace is kept fast so that players are constantly moving, barging through obstacles and knocking foes and trials aside. There is no pause, no relief save those shared between characters at pivotal moments of the plot.


There is always something to overcome and, if nothing else, Episode 2 generates a fantastic sensation of motion – of constantly striving closer to a goal. By the end you’ll be collapsed over your desk, feeling like you’ve just managed to accomplish something for the first time in your life. It always, honestly feels like the characters are real, that they depend on you and that you are Gordon Freeman, their salvation.

At times the story will move you to tears, at others to laughter but, for the vast majority of the time you won’t have time to think. You’ll be stuck on the edge of your seat like an indecisive emo on a clifftop and you’ll be concerned only with doing what you can to save the characters which have become your friends and unveil more of the slowly revealed nature of the GMan.

Then there’s Portal, which tells the story of Chell and GlaDOS – the test subject and examiner of Aperture Science respectively. Portal takes an entirely different tack, slowing players down and giving them a relaxing and oddly romantic story which ties directly in to the events of Episode 2.

Using the brand new game mechanic of the portal gun, players can progress the story at a mostly leisurely pace, savouring a truly dry sense of excellently written humour.

Then Team Fortress 2, the much delayed sequel and office multiplayer game of choice. Streamlined to perfection in a way not seen in any game before, players get a chance to frag their friends in style by hopping around in a cel-shaded arena of death.

No matter what style of play you prefer – sneaky spies like Tim, saw-toting medics like Rich or slippery scope-eyed snipers like me – there’s just something for everyone. And that’s what makes The Orange Box so great as a whole – there’s something for everyone and, to be honest, each and every one of the games in the box could stand to be in the top three on its own.

For the first time we don't have one game which tries to be a jack of all trades, cramming in multiplayer modes which are clearly unsuitable or puzzles which don't mesh with the game world at all. Instead, we have three games each of which is dedicated to a single purpose and then honed to a brilliant edge. You've got Episode 2 for your story-loving action heroes, Portal for your humorous case-crackers and Team Fortress 2 for when you haven't got anybody else at all.

Put them all together and you've got our Game of the Year.

Source: Bit-Tech

Top ten games of 2007 - Number Two : BioShock on PC XBox 360

“L-L-look at you, Hacker…” Whoops, sorry – wrong game. This isn’t the seminal System Shock 2, this is its spiritual successor, BioShock.

In development since time out of mind, BioShock was originally about exploring a Nazi bunker filled with zombies and mutants left behind from the dreadful experiments of WWII. The game would have had a firm horror feel to it and was more heavily targeted at the RPG end of the FPS/RPG genre.

My, how things changed...

BioShock ended up as something with much more of a sophisticated and unique feel. The player takes the role of an anonymous character who is aboard a plane when it crashes over the Atlantic. The only survivor, you swim to what you think is a lighthouse – only to find it’s actually the entrance to an extensive underwater city called Rapture, a place in dire need of a hero.

Founded by a man called Andrew Ryan, Rapture was intended to be a capitalist paradise where the best minds of the world retreated to live in harmony and peace, away from governmental pressures. Instead, Ryan dug too deep into the world and discovered a new type of animal which, when... um, processed... allowed the creation of new technology called Plasmids. The Plasmids allow genetic code of users to be re-written, granting new powers and abilities.


The Plasmids carry a high price though and drove substantial portions of Rapture to madness while, at the same time, a civil revolt was in progress against Ryan and his followers.

The story to BioShock is a rarity in itself – something dark and powerful, but also intelligent and well-presented. In a industry littered with simple run and gun shooters, BioShock stands head and shoulders above the rest, marking itself as truly the Thinking Man’s Shooter.

Rapture is a haunting, ruined city littered with audio diaries, posters and the trinkets of those now dead...or worse. It’s a gory place, splattered with blood and littered with corpses. Deformed, crazed denizens lurk in the shadows and every time you kill one you feel a pang of guilt – you know that the person you just killed may have been somebody important. For them to even be in Rapture to start with they must have been a scientist, artist or doctor. It makes every fight vaguely repugnant and uncomfortable.

At the same time though, Rapture is a beautiful place. 1950s jazz floats down the hallways and the art-deco architecture of the building means that it is staggeringly gorgeous to look at. That’s the brilliance of BioShock – the fusion of sweets and sours to form a delicious whole which is perfectly balanced.

At every point in the game there is a choice to be made, be it moral or tactical, and every time the game makes sure you know the full ramifications of your actions. In fact the only action you can be sure you'll feel good about is actually picking BioShock up in the first place!

Source: Bit-Tech

Top ten games of 2007 - Number Three : Super Mario Galaxy on Nintendo Wii

Mario is back (again) and even though this must be the hundredth game to bear his name, it still manages to feel fresh and inventive – grasping hold of the brilliance of Super Mario 64 and slipstreaming past it, towards excellence.

Super Mario Galaxy is a simple premise – the Princess has been kidnapped again and there’s only one plumber in the world with the guts to get her back. Unfortunately, that plumber ends up getting a bit lost and comes to on the Cosmic Observatory, a travelling telescope which runs on Power Stars. The rest of the game is then spent collecting Power Stars to charge the Observatory so that Mario can search for Peach and bring her back to the Mushroom Kingdom.

Super Mario Galaxy is one of those games that is as much evolution as it is revolution. Sure, it’s yet another Mario game and yes, it is pretty much just Super Mario 64 in space and with different abilities – but that’s no bad thing!


Super Mario Galaxy is a perfect singleplayer adventure-platformer, with all the chaff and crud blasted off and the game reduced to just the core fun-making components. It’s pretty much the only thing the Wii can run anyway.

Miyamoto’s little Italian pal has come a long way since he first started out under the name of ‘Jumpman’ and never is that more clear than in Super Mario Galaxy, which sees Mario exploring strange new worlds and ways of playing. Sometimes you’ll be rolling around on top of balls, tilting the Wiimote to control speed and direction. The rest of the time you’ll be flying around as a bee, drifting through walls as a ghost or bouncing around as a spring.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Mario game if it didn’t have an adorable child-like appearance and array of characters too. Super Mario Galaxy has these both in spades – cutesy little Star creatures who demand you stuff them with delicious star bits so they can “TRRAANSFOOOOOORM!” into brand new planets. There’s even a storybook section to the game which lets you learn more and more of the back story.

There are admittedly a few flaws in the game, but the fact that they are so incredibly few is a testament to the quality of the game. Who cares if there’s no really decent co-op?

Stuffed with reasons to play and with a control system and presentation which is easy to pick up, Super Mario Galaxy appeals to kids and adults alike and is the type of game which will keep couples and families playing together for months.

Source: Bit-Tech