Take a look at Fallout 3

More than 10 years ago, serious computer role-playing game fans fell in love with a postapocalyptic role-playing game called Fallout, a game that offered deep role playing, dark humor, and a memorable adventure that was worth replaying. More than 10 years later, an entirely different studio is now working on the next game in the series, trying to stay true to the original vision of the first Fallout game from 1997 while also including all the improvements and open-ended exploration of its last game, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Yes, Bethesda Softworks is working on Fallout 3. Yes, your adventure will take place in the postapocalyptic wasteland (in this case, the ruins of Washington DC); yes, you'll still start your adventure as a dweller in a vault (a colony living in a radiation shelter left over from the nuclear war); and yes, we had an opportunity to take an updated look at the game.



Main character creation occurs as the player experiences the character's childhood. The character's mother dies in labour in the Vault 101 hospital, immediately after which the player decides the character's general appearance through a DNA analysis conducted by the father. Afterwards, the father removes his surgeon's mask to reveal a face similar to the one chosen by the player for the character. As a child in the Vault, the character receives a book titled "Your Special" whereupon the player can set the character's seven Primary Aptitude The character receives training weapons and a PIP-Boy 3000 later on during childhood, and the player's performance in various tests determines the rest of the attributes. Additionally, several quests inside the Vault will be able to influence the player character's relationship with his or her father. Skills and Perks are similar to those in previous games: the player chooses three Tag Skills out of 14 to be the character's specialties. Four skills have been cut out from the game (Fallout and Fallout 2 had 18 skills) but it is unknown which skills have been removed. The maximum level the player can achieve is level 20. The Traits from the previous Fallout installments were combined with Perks in Fallout 3, and the player can choose a new Perk each time after gaining a level.


Another facet of gameplay is that firearms wear out over time: as a weapon degenerates, its rate of fire slows and it loses accuracy. However, worn out firearms can be combined to make more reliable and powerful weapons. Weapon schematics can also be found and used to create various devices such as the Rock-it Launcher, created by combining a leaf blower and a wood chipper, that can fire various items such as lunchboxes and stuffed animals, or the Clever Shrapnel Bomb, made out of a Vault-Tec lunchbox and bottlecaps. Along with equipping various weapons, the player can also utilize different armors and clothing that may have effects that can alter various skills. For example, a pair of mechanic's coveralls may boost the player's repair skill while it is worn. Armor and clothing come in two main parts for the head and body, allowing a player to wear different combinations of hats and armor. Also, a player's inventory has a specified weight limit, preventing a player from carrying too many items. Items like weapon ammo have no weight, due to the developer not wishing to bog down inventory management.

The Sims 3 Comming Soon

The best-selling PC game franchise of all time just got a bit more best-selling. EA announced today that The Sims series has now sold 100 million copies worldwide since it launched in 2000. Since the first game, the series has been translated into 22 different languages and sold in 60 countries around the world. According to the New York Times, the franchise has generated over $4 billion for its publisher, Electronic Arts--or around $500 million per year.

The third stand-alone game in the Sims series will feature a new engine, which EA has been slaving away at for three years, and the biggest new feature will be the ability to seamlessly move around an open neighbourhood. Previous games in the Sims series were expanded by packs such as The Sims: Hot Date, and The Sims: Vacation, which let gamers take their sims on holiday or into town with a beau, for example, but these communal zones were always separate from sims' abodes.

In the next game, the sims will be able to walk freely around their neighbourhoods, visit their pals, and venture to new locations such as City Hall and the local park. There will also be a "deeper" system for governing how sims behave, called the Realistic Personality System, which will let gamers manipulate five character traits when creating their sims. This opens up a number of possibilities, or as EA puts it: "Will you create the nosy, inappropriate, kleptomaniac grandmother who loves to meddle in other people's business? Or the commitment-phobic, hot-headed punk rocker whose rude nature and childish disposition keeps him from scoring a date?" Apparently, 700 million different combinations await.

Dracula 3 Features

As you'd expect, Dracula 3 takes place in Eastern Europe, with locales that comes across as gloomy and deserted as you'd expect. You play a catholic priest investigating a candidate for beautification to sainthood only to discover that the subject may not be so admirable after all; in fact, she was apparently trying to become a vampire. That's not so great if you've got to report to the Holy See.
Fortunately, there's a mystery to solve first, with clues like dead bodies riddled with arrows, messages written in blood, and puzzles like one that has you try and reconstruct a library's catalog system after it has mysteriously burned to the ground. Now here comes the spoiler, so look away if you really like surprises: You also start turning into a vampire, which isn't too bad as things such as night vision are pretty handy when you're sealed inside a stone sarcophagus.

The mechanics in Dracula are simple: point and then click. You can also right-click to open a series of menus that handily point out your objectives, inventory, recent conversations, and documents recovered. And when in doubt, consult the bible. A bible written in Latin is included, and you can open it to random pages for verses that act as clues for what to do next.

EA promises "No more Crappy Games"

Silver-haired fox John Riccitiello believes EA has "the best title plan of any company in the industry". This, he feels, happened as a result of letting the core creative teams run free and dream up new IP, rather than churn out licensed sequels.
"Frankly I think that a lot of the intellectual property we create are better than the licenses. That doesn't mean there isn't room for great licenses. There's room for both," Riccitiello told MTV Multiplayer.

"I think what you're noticing is that in years gone by we haven't had as many great, original intellectual properties. There's a lot more of that this year from EA and I think from here forward.

"I think what redeems our industry is quality, and I think we take a step back every time we take a license and exploit it with a crappy game. That's not what we're about," he said.
Riccitiello recently said EA quality has been rising "sharply" since developer administrative burdens were shifted so they can focus on creating games. He also said EA was wrong to assume Xbox 360 and PS3 will lead the current generation, and promised as many as 40 games are in development for Wii and DS.

GTA IV Confirmed for PC

Grand Theft Auto IV will be released for PC on 21st November in Europe, Rockstar announced today. Pleasantly, that's just a few days after the PC version arrives in North America on 18th November. Rockstar founder Sam Houser says it "looks and plays beautifully on PC and we can't wait for people to play it".

A PC version of the game has been rumoured since before the PS3 and 360 versions were even released, but Rockstar has never previously confirmed it. The most telling sighting was a rating on the ESRB website, although that was removed a few hours later. GTA IV came out worldwide on 29th April and Rockstar said in early June that it had sold 8.5 million copies. The game charts the course of hero Niko Bellic as he arrives in Liberty City - a caricature of New York - and has to embark on a life of crime to get his cousin and himself out of trouble

WoW: Wrath of the Lich King

With the opening of the Dark Portal, and the renewed war to stop the Burning Crusade's destruction of worlds, the heroes of Azeroth have given little thought to the frozen wastes of Northrend -- and the terrible, ancient powers that wait there. Yet the brooding evils of the fallen Nerubian empire and their malevolent sovereign have not forgotten Azeroth…
The former death knight and now Lich King Arthas has set in motion events that could lead to the extinction of all life in Azeroth, as his undead armies and the necromantic power of the plague threaten to sweep across the land. Only the mightiest heroes can survive the frozen northlands with any hope of disrupting the plans of Arthas -- and perhaps even challenge the Lich King himself and end his reign of terror for all time.

Some of the features announced at BlizzCon 2007 include:

• Level cap raised to 80
• Battle with the Lich King at the Frozen Throne
• One new playable class: Death Knight
• A new continent: Northrend
• The creation of a new profession: Inscription
• Profession level cap raised to 450
• Hundreds of new items, quests, dungeons, creatures, spells and weapons
• Siege weapons and destructible buildings (for PvP)
• Transform your hero's look with new character-customization options, including new hairstyles and dances.
• A non-instanced Battleground.
• Improved Graphics Engine (applied to shaders, flame effects and detailed shadows)
• New factions including the Speartusk and the Taunka, a racial cousin to the Tauren.
• Subsequent features announced or confirmed by Blizzard include :
• Achievements for both the expansion and existing content
• New Mount, Vanity Pet and Token Storage
  

Several new instances will be included in the expansion pack. Another instance will appear in the Caverns of Time, set during the human campaign of Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, in which Prince Arthas massacred the townspeople of Stratholme because they were infected by the plague. Many new 5-man, 10-man, and 25-man dungeons will be located in Northrend, including:

• Utgarde Keep - An instance in the Howling Fjord filled with the Vrykul, a Viking-like race devoted to serving the Lich King. It has two wings - Utgarde Keep, and Utgarde Pinnacle.
• Azjol-Nerub - The contested capital of the Nerubian race of spider-people.
• Icecrown Citadel - Players will battle Arthas the Lich King, the ruler of the Undead Scourge.
• Naxxramas - An updated version of the original Naxxramas, redesigned to cater for 10 and 25 man content. Blizzard has also confirmed a new instance hub called the Nexus, home of the Blue Dragonflight, which will contain at least three instances. The first, a low 70s instance set in Ice Caverns, the second a high level instance seeing the player and their group face enemies on floating rings, and a final raid instance against the Blue Dragon Aspect Malygos, which takes place in a rift in the sky.

Diablo 3

Development on Diablo III began some time in 2005 when Blizzard North was still in operation. The original artistic design differed from that shown at Blizzard Worldwide Invitational 2008 demonstration, and had undergone three revisions before reaching the standards felt necessary by the team behind Diablo III. The development teams comprise fifty people. Most of the game mechanics and physics are complete and undergoing minor revisions. Most of the current and remaining development will focus on adding game content.

The game takes place in Sanctuary, the dark fantasy world of the Diablo series. This world was saved twenty years prior by a handful of unnamed heroes in Diablo II. Warriors that survived the onslaught of the armies of the Burning Hells have gone mad from their ordeals, and it is up to a new generation of heroes to face the forces of evil threatening the world of Sanctuary. Players will have the opportunity to explore familiar settings such as Tristram. Two of five classes have been unveiled so far: Barbarian and Witch Doctor. Players may choose gender for each class, a change from the fixed class genders in the previous two games.

With different types of monsters on hand, it's fortunate that the character classes in Diablo 3 will be just as epically powerful as you remember. The Barbarian is still a melee specialist (though not without his specialized ranged attacks). The Barbarian's skills will be familiar to Diablo II fans--we saw the whirlwind in effect, sweeping through scores of enemies--but he’ll have some other tricks up his sleeves (that is, if he wore sleeves), including the sweep, which can blast multiple enemies around him. During the on-stage demo, the Barbarian managed to take down a stone wall on a group of zombies, pointing to more interactive environments throughout the gameplay. While environments won't be fully destructible, you can look forward to many instances, such as this one, where you can use the environment to your advantage, with a certain amount of real physics involved in the destruction.

The Witch Doctor will have control over disease, can summon pets, and can even control the minds of his or her enemies. We saw a few examples of these different approaches in the game demo: Locust swarm is a spell that summons a nasty horde of flying locusts that can overwhelm an opponent. Better yet, the locusts will automatically spawn to attack additional enemies in the area. We saw one pet in use too; the mongrel. This pet can attack enemies and can be buffed with other Witch Doctor spells; during the demo, the player cast locust swarm on his mongrel, giving the pet an attack bonus. We also briefly saw the horrify spell, which causes enemies to temporarily flee in terror. By far, his coolest ability was the wall of zombie, which was truly terrifying. If you've seen a wall of fire or ice in a game before, you probably have a pretty good idea of what this skill involves.





In Diablo III, potions will still play a part of the action but their importance has been downplayed, thanks to a couple of changes. The first are health globes, which drop off defeated enemies and will serve to boost the health of your character, as well as those around you if you're playing co-operatively. As the developers put it, the idea of enemies dropping health is one that will keep the player moving forward in the game, as opposed to trying to avoid combat. In addition, a new skill toolbar, similar in location to the old potion belt in Diablo II, will make your skills that much more accessible, easily allowing you to switch between skills on the fly. You’ll even be able to swap skills quickly using the roller on your mouse for even more ease of use. The result is a game you’ll likely be able to play almost completely with your mouse; no more hunting for skills using the F key on your keyboard. Here's one more important addition regarding cooperative play: When a character picks up a health globe, any surrounding allies also benefit from that health globe, which seems like it will encourage players to stick together when hacking and slashing their way throughout the game. To our ears, it also makes it sound like practically any class will be able to tank effectively (as long as someone is picking up the health globes and standing nearby), but we'll have to see how it plays out as the game develops.

Deadliest Catch: Alaskan Storm

Now millions of fans of Discovery Channel's highest rated and Emmy-nominated series DEADLIEST CATCH can hunt for elusive King and Opilio Crab in the challenging new Deadliest Catch Alaskan Storm video game.
Deadliest Catch Alaskan Storm was inspired by Sig, Edgar and Norman Hansen - three brothers who have made their living crab fishing on the Bering Sea aboard their family's fishing vessel, the Northwestern. The Hansen brothers started game development with Liquid Dragon Studios in October 2005.



Authenticity and realism were critical to the Hansen brothers. They invited key development team members to Dutch Harbor, Alaska to personally experience life on the Northwestern. The game's realism is enhanced with four real Bering Sea harbors and 34,000 miles of real Alaskan coastline created from the United States Geological Survey. In addition, Deadliest Catch Alaskan Storm is the first video game to feature United States Coast Guard vessels and helicopters.
With waves over 40 feet high, Deadliest Catch Alaskan Storm features the best wave effects in a video game to date. In the words of Captain Sig Hansen, "It may not be life or death, but chills went up my spine the first time I saw the Northwestern sink in the game."

Deadliest Catch Alaskan Storm lets gamers captain their own boat in the frenzied search for King and Opilio crab. Gamers select one of five real crab boats, including the Northwestern, Cornelia Marie and Sea Star - all featured on the series, or create and customize their own boat. Gamers then recruit and manage their own crew from a roster of twenty real crab fishermen. Selecting the wrong boat or recruiting the wrong crew member can mean the difference between landing a Bering Sea jackpot or disaster. The ultimate goal is to return safely each season, upgrade your boat and crew, and attempt to break Captain Sig Hansen and the Northwestern crew's actual lifetime catch of twenty million pounds.
Features:

• Career Mode (Realistic and challenging simulation for gamers and Deadliest Catch fans)
• Missions (Gamers experience the hard core Bering Sea life, including participation in United States Coast Guard search and rescue missions and ice flow navigation)
• Arcade Mini-Games (Allows casual gamers to enjoy fun challenges, including crab boat races and skiff races)
• Five Authentic Crab Boats, twenty Real Fishermen (including Edgar and Norman Hansen, Josh and Jake Harris), six Authentic Captains (including Captains Sig Hansen, Phil Harris and Larry Hendricks) and 4,500 lines of recorded character dialogue
• Customize you're own boat
  

Whether a die-hard fan or someone who has never seen the Discovery Channel series, Deadliest Catch Alaskan Storm is an immersive and challenging experience, putting them at the helm of one the world's most dangerous jobs-- that of a crab boat captain in the icy Bering Sea.

Spore

Spore the new Real Time Strategy from Electronic Arts is set to be released on the 5th

September 2008. One of the most anticipated games of 2008, Spore lets you customize and create you're own Species. You start of as a tiny micro-organism and have to work and evolve your creature to the end of space

You start of as a tiny cell and begin you're galactic adventure, from there you will need to evolve your creature so they will survive the harsh planes of the universe. You can Battle, Talk or Sneak you're way through civilization.

You're Species go through many phases in there life.

Phases-

The first phase of existence, the cell phase, is sometimes referred to as the tide pool, cellular, or microbial phase. The player guides simple protean microbes around in a 2D environment where it must deal with fluid dynamics and predators, while eating weaker microbes or plants. The player may choose whether the creature is an herbivore or a carnivore prior to starting the phase. Once the microbe has eaten several cells, the player can enter an editor in which they can modify the appearance, shape, and abilities of the microbe by spending "DNA points". A player may choose to remove some part from the microbe, which will refund some DNA points. If the creature dies, the player may restart from an earlier phase or point in the game. The player must also seek out special "golden shields" from meteor fragments that provide new parts for the player to use in the editor, such as spikes, mouths or limbs.

The creature phase is similar to the cell phase, but with several important differences. Principally, the environment is now truly 3D. Other creatures will inhabit the world, and most of them will have been created by other players. Creatures will automatically be introduced into the environment to maintain a balanced ecosystem. If the player creates a bigger, tougher creature, the predators that are downloaded will likewise be stronger than average.
In this stage, the basic goal is the same: hunt food to earn DNA points, reproduce, and avoid being eaten by predators. Unlike the asexual reproduction of the cell phase, the player must now locate a mate. Once the creature has laid an egg, scavengers will attempt to steal the eggs and the player must defend them (conversely, the player may eat other creatures' eggs as well). Before the egg hatches, the player will have the opportunity to 'evolve' their creature via the creature editor, spending DNA points to buy body parts. When the egg hatches, the player controls a baby version of the creature. "The Science Behind Spore" video featured a non-player controlled creature taller than a tree threatening a city, indicating the size possibilities at the other end of the scale.

After the player's species evolves its brain far enough, it enters the tribal phase. Physical development ceases, as does the player's exclusive control over an individual creature. The player is given a hut, a group of fully evolved creatures, a mini-map of the world for the first time, as well as two of six possible "super powers". These are unlocked depending on the species' behavior in the previous phases.
In this phase the game is similar to an real-time strategy game. The player may give the tribe tools such as weapons, musical instruments, and campfires. Food now replaces "DNA points" as the player's currency, which the player can spend on items and structures, or use to barter with other tribes. Creatures also gain the option to wear clothes that demarcate their professions. The player may also tame other creatures, and even use them as livestock.

When entering the civilization phase, the player's tribal camp is now a city. Players now have two new editors: the building and vehicle editors. The game will attempt to detect what style of content the player prefers, download similar content created by other players and add it to the buy menu. Players can now construct a variety of land vehicles, aircraft, ships and submersibles. If players start at the Civilization phase, they may assign one of three civilization types: militaristic, economic or religious.
In constructing vehicles and buildings, as with most real-time strategy games, there is a capacity limit; building factories will increase the cap, additionally, constructing them adjacent to one another will provide a productivity bonus.

The space phase provides new goals and paths to follow as the player begins to spread through the universe.
The player may now terraform and colonize neighboring uninhabitable planets with special tools (water tool, volcano tool, etc). The ultimate tool is a technology which Wright dubbed the Genesis device, named after the device in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Terraforming tools include pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to act as a greenhouse gas. Left unchecked this can cause oceans to rise, then eventually to evaporate and transform the world into a desert planet, followed by a molten rock in space.
The player may cause comets to crash into a planet to create water, or force volcanoes to erupt to increase atmosphere. Players may build cities on the surface of an inhospitable planet once they gain the ability to create bubbled cities, similar in function to self-sustaining arcologies