Not sure why they went with the hard rock guitar soundtrack for the launch trailer as it seems… out of place… but the game looks pretty solid and it’s averaging a healthy 88/100 score on Metacritic.

I know a lot of folks are sick to death of first person shooters set in World War II, but I’m not one of them. I was initially very skeptical of Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat because it was abandoning the WWII setting, but I ended up loving the hell out of it. That hasn’t stopped me from playing the occasional multiplayer session on Call of Duty 2 though.  I’ve been waiting a long time for CoD to take on the Pacific theater as by the time Medal of Honor—which is the other WWII FPS I’ve enjoyed immensely—got around to doing that setting it wasn’t very good. I never played CoD3 because it was a console only title so I’m pleased that this latest version is available for the PC.

The single player looks great. The multiplayer borrows some of the best ideas from CoD4. Flamethrowers, ‘nuff said! And it has a Nazi Zombie(!!!) Co-Op mode (see trailer after the jump). Alas it’s too close to Krismas for me to pick the game up anytime soon, but with a little luck I’ll get as a gift.

Click to read more...

Of particular note is the young woman, Elika, who fights alongside the prince against the forces of darkness. The first game also featured a female companion, Farah, who was mainly there to help with some of the puzzles in the game. While Farah was armed with a bow and arrow her contribution to fighting off the monsters was… pathetic. She was only able to shoot one arrow every thirty seconds or so and ends up being more of a problem than a help as you’re continually saving her from the monster she annoys.

In contrast Elika is an amazing partner that will be integral not only in solving the puzzles, but in successfully defeating the monsters you have to fight. Check out the following footage showing off some of the first level and see just how much Elika contributes to the fight. She’s not just a companion, she’s a necessity:

That’s some wicked cool game play there and I can’t wait to get my hands on it. It’ll hit store shelves on December 2nd so I’m going to have to hope I get it for Krismas.

An article over at the Ripten Video Game blog reports on a post by a community moderator in the Command and Conquer forums that suggests EA is taking a hard line against its customers. Basically if you say something in the official EA forums, any of them, that causes a moderator to ban your account then you won’t be able to login to any EA games you own:

Well, its actually going to be a bit nastier for those who get banned.

Your forum account will be directly tied to your Master EA Account, so if we ban you on the forums, you would be banned from the game as well since the login process is the same. And you’d actually be banned from your other EA games as well since its all tied to your account. So if you have SPORE and Red Alert 3 and you get yourself banned on our forums or in-game, well, your SPORE account would be banned to. It’s all one in the same, so I strongly reccommend people play nice and act mature.

All in all, we expect people to come on here and abide by our ToS. We hate banning people, it makes our lives a lot tougher, but its what we have to do.

Those banned will stay banned, but like most other internet services, its not that hard to create a new fake e-mail account. However, its a lot harder to get a new serial key =)

Nice to see they take such a light hearted approach to potentially locking video gamers out of the games they’ve purchased because EA didn’t like something they wrote on the forums. Considering the number of people who have been banned for expressing their anger at the company on the forums, well, I can see another potential class action lawsuit arising out of this decision. They really are working hard to ensure gamers have every reason to hate them as a company it seems.

Sent in by SEB reader “Matt”.

IRVINE, Calif. - October 28, 2008 - Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. announced today that the subscribership for World of Warcraft^®, its award-winning massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), now exceeds 11 million players worldwide. This milestone was reached as the beta test for Wrath of the Lich King^®, World of Warcraft’s second expansion, nears completion. Wrath of the Lich King will launch in several regions around the world starting on November 13.

“It’s been very rewarding to see gamers around the world continue to show such strong support for World of Warcraft,“ said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment^®. “We remain fully committed to responding to that enthusiasm with a high-quality, constantly evolving game experience.

That’s

active

subscribers, by the way, which Blizzard goes out of their way to mention:

World of Warcraft subscribers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access. Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid cards. Subscribers in licensees’ territories are defined along the same rules.

If WoW were a county it would rank in the list of countries by population at 75 out of 221 right between Greece (11,215,000) and Chad (10,781,000). Growth has slowed quite a bit since the first couple of years, but they still anticipate adding another million to the list within a year’s time now that they’ve launched in Russia and Latin America. Gotta admit, that’s mighty impressive.

The story-based MMO will be set roughly 300 years after BioWare’s 2004 single-player RPG Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (PC, Xbox) and the Obsidian-developed sequel, or 3500 years before the beloved film series.

“We’re making KOTOR 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and beyond—this game is that big, it’s got that much content in it,“ explained BioWare co-founder Ray Muzyka. “It’s very innovative—it’s story based.“

The game has seen a team of 12 full-time writers producing content for the past few years, according to IGN, with each class getting its own story arc as “not everybody’s fantasy was to be Luke [Skywalker].“

“You get to choose many things in the game—your faction, your class, good and evil, how your story unfolds,“ explained lead designer James Ohlen.

“We thought of a Howard the Duck MMO, we thought it was a little too crazy,“ Muzyka joked. He also noted that the game will feature a “full economy.“

“The game is playable,“ asserted BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk, though a playable version was not shown today.

The Old Republic will allow players to choose a companion, as with the previous KOTOR games, and will have full PVP, PVE and RVR (realm vs. realm) combat along with raids. No classes have been revealed as of yet.

I have to admit that I’m not all that excited about it this time around. It probably doesn’t help that I was one of the few people who didn’t really care for Knights of the Old Republic. I bought it for the PC and played maybe a quarter of it before I got bored and moved on to other things. I never picked up the sequel. Granted, just like with Warcraft, the MMORPG by its very nature will have to play much differently than the RPG games did, but I’m still not all that excited about it. The setting is too far back in the past for me to give a crap. I’m much more interesting in the setting used by Star Wars Galaxies, but they fucked that game up so much that it’s not worth playing.

Of course my opinion may change as the game gets closer to release and we learn more about it, but my initial reaction is a solid “meh” at the announcement for now.

M. Zuhdi Jasser, M.D., president of the non-profit American Islamic Forum for Democracy told Edge on Monday, “Muslims cannot benefit from freedom of expression and religion and then turn around and ask that anytime their sensibilities are offended that the freedom of others be restricted.

“The free market allows for expression of disfavor by simply not purchasing a game that may be offensive.”

Jasser, who has also appeared on CNN, in the Washington Times and National Review, said that not only does the First Amendment support freedom of expression, but Mohammed also “defended the rights of his enemies to critique him in any way even if it was offensive to his own Islamic sensibilities or respect for Koranic scripture.”

[...] Jasser said that the demand to censor, as well as Sony’s willingness to bend at the request, is counterproductive to freedom of speech.

“…To demand that [the game] be withdrawn is predicated on a society which gives theocrats who wish to control speech far more value than the central principle of freedom of expression upon which the very practice and freedom of religion is based.”

Jasser added, “The fact that the music writer is a devout Muslim should highlight that at the core of this issue is not about offending ‘all Muslims,’ but only about freedom of expression and the free market.”

He still said that he does not endorse the use of Koranic verses in non-educational videogames, calling the literature “the words of God.”

But he took a clear stance in upholding First Amendment rights.

“AIFD stands against any form of censorship in the marketplace of ideas whether imposed by government or by corporations intimidated by the response of militants or those with an inappropriately sensitive level of political correctness,” Jasser said.

Needless to say, I agree with him. I can totally understand why Sony opted to play it safe, but I still think they should have kept the song. I also think we need more Muslims standing up and saying things like Mr. Jasser here.

“So far, Spore has outsold Sims 2,” he notes. “Commercially, it’s doing very well.”

“Everyone gets that we need some level of protection, or we’re going to be in business for free,” Riccitiello says. But he sees a lack of understanding among “a minority of people that orchestrated a great PR program. They picked the highest-profile game they could find,” he says. “I respect them for the success of their movement.”

“‘I’m guessing that half of them were pirates, and the other half were people caught up in something that they didn’t understand,” he says. “If I’d had a chance to have a conversation with them, they’d have gotten it.”

Thanks John, for telling us you think we’re either thieves or fucking idiots. But let me give you a clue for free: The pirates were all busy downloading your game off of the torrent sites five fucking days before you even put it on store shelves. Why the hell would they bother protesting your game when it was already cracked and on the Net?

And I would absolutely LOVE to have a conversation with you on the topic. Not that I think I could change your mind with my stunningly persuasive argument, but just so you could hear my stance on why I’m not buying your games straight from me. I’d also love to hear you explain how DRM stops piracy on a title that was being pirated before it was ever released? I’d also love to ask you to man up and admit that this is less to do with piracy and more to do with stopping second-hand sales of your titles because you’re upset at how much money GameStop and other companies are making.

This becomes obvious to anyone who reads the Spore EULA which states that there’s no guarantee that you can transfer the activations over to whomever you sell the game to. It’s also clear by the fact that more and more games are coming with features that will only work for the initial purchaser of the title:

Game publishers and developers have long been frustrated by their inability to get a cut of used game sales at retailers such as GameStop.

Rather than just complain, though, game makers are now starting to provide gamers with incentives to not sell their games at all or, at least, not buy used games.

[...] For example, each copy of Gears of War 2 will ship with a unique, one-time-use code for downloading extra multiplayer levels.

Once the code has been used, subsequent owners of that copy of the game will be unable to download the levels.

And NBA Live 09 will include a similar free, one-time code for accessing daily roster and stat updates.

If you buy a used copy of NBA Live 09 and the previous user has already redeemed the code, you’ll have to pay $20 to get the updates.

Isn’t NBA Live 09 one of your company’s titles, John? Why yes, yes it is. At least have the balls to own up to the fact that what you’re attempting to do is to limit what legitimate customers can do with the games they buy from your company rather than stopping piracy. Because we both know that you’re not going to stop the pirates anytime soon and we both know how pissed off you are at all the money GameStop has been making off of second-hand sales.

I am not the fucking idiot you seem to think I am, John.

Some DRM points that will hopefully answer some of your questions and will clarify some misunderstandings about our DRM and SecuROM:

• You have 5 activations on 3 separate PCs.
• Uninstalling the game “refunds” an activation. This process is called “revoke”, so as long as you complete proper uninstall you will be able to install the game an unlimited number of times on 3 systems.
• You can upgrade your computer as many time as you want (using our revoke system)
• Ubisoft is committed to the support of our games, and additional activations can be provided.
• Ubisoft is committed to the long term support of our games: you’ll always be able to play Far Cry 2.

Treating your customers like criminals will do more to kill PC gaming than piracy ever will.

Pity. I really like the first game.

[Update]: I felt the need to register on the UBI.com forums and leave a comment so I thought I’d include it here:

Congratulations! You’ve just guaranteed that I won’t be buying Far Cry 2. Which is a shame as I really loved the first one. Why won’t I be buying the game? Specifically because of the presence of the SecuROM DRM. I could list off all the common reasons such as the known hardware incompatibilities and the fact that it interferes with the operation of some legitimate software tools, but the primary reason is this: I don’t see why I should spend between $50 and $60 to be treated like a criminal when the criminals are enjoying your game with no restrictions whatsoever. And the pirates will crack your game just like they cracked Spore and every other SecuROM protected title prior to that. If Far Cry 2 follows the current trend then it’ll be cracked and on the torrent sites at least a week before it’s due to be released making the inclusion of SecuROM for anti-piracy reasons moot. But then the reason you guys want to use SecuROM over some of the other equally ineffective copy protection schemes that I don’t have a problem with has nothing to do with defeating piracy and everything to do with preventing folks from using the first sale doctrine. I haven’t seen your EULA for FC2 yet, but I’m willing to bet there will be a clause in it that’ll state that the transferal of activations to anyone we happen to sell the game to after we’re done playing is non-existent or very limited. The EULA for Spore had such limitations which proved that SecuROM wasn’t about stopping the pirates and was all about stopping the resale of used games. GameStop is making a KILLING on buying old games and selling them for close to new prices and the game publishers and even some designers have made it no secret just how much that pisses them off. This isn’t about piracy at all because you guys fully expect it’ll be cracked regardless of what you use, but piracy sure makes for a convenient excuse to justify using SecuROM which will keep your legitimate customers from selling off the game once they get bored with it or move on to the next big release.

Code of Bethesda’s highly-anticipated follow-up to Oblivion, Fallout 3, has already been leaked onto the internet and is available on various torrent sites.

The official game isn’t due for release until October 28 in the US and October 31 in Europe, but the Xbox 360 version of the game has been hacked and at the time of writing had well over 2000 people downloading the 6.52GB file on one site alone.

The hacked version of the game would only be playable on an illegally modified Xbox 360.

It is true that the number of modded 360s is probably pretty low and acts somewhat as a barrier against the piracy being too extensive, but piracy still happens even on consoles. If you can make it they can break it and they’ll probably do it long before you ship the game.