We can expect to see GTA IV land on the PC on the 18th November in the US and the 21st November in Europe. I am excited, November will be a great month for PC games, Mirror’s Edge, Left 4 Dead and now GTA IV.

Hell. Yes.

Rest of World Group

Is there anyone out there who wants in on the Red Alert 3 Beta but doens’t have a key? Then look no further as I have one Beta Key I can give away to the winner of a little competition I am going to run.

It is simple, just get in touch with me at contact(at)evo-gamer.com with the subject ‘RA3 Beta’ and tell me what your favourite Command and Conquer game is and tell me why in no more than 15 words.

Closing date for entries is Thursday 14th August at 23.00 GMT. If you don’t have a key for the Red Alert 3 Beta, this is a great chance to win one.

Remember this is your chance to vote for your favourite games, so go at it. For those interested my Top 10 follows.

1. Half-Life
2. Battlefield 2
3. Team Fortress 2
4. Football Manager (series)
5. Portal
6. Half-Life 2
7. Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2
8. Thief: Deadly Shadows
9. Race Driver: GRID
10. Peggle

Bear in mind these are just my favourite games, not what I think are the best games ever. A subtle but important thing to remember.

If anyone is interested in acquiring Valve, VP Doug Lombardi is “happy to have that conversation,” he told Gamasutra.

“By the same token, the company’s doing pretty well, and we’re really happy with what we’re doing,” he added.

“So we’ll see. I mean, anything is possible.”

In regards to deal with EA and their thoughts on Steam Doug revealed this.

“EA was very progressive about saying, ‘We understand who you guys are. We understand what Steam is. We don’t want Steam to go away.’ Well, they might want Steam to go away, but they’re not asking us to make Steam go away.”

So while I doubt Valve are going out actively looking for someone to buy them up I think there is room for their relationship with EA to become even closer. As long as Valve stay true to what they are then they can do whatever the hell they want.

It all started with the demo, what has got to go down as one of the best demos released in recent years. The Gulf of Oman presented a brilliant blend of the different features we would witness come release of the full game. It may have lacked the jets, choppers and any ranking system, but it gave us a clear idea of what to expect, great squad based combat and plenty of blood-pumping action.
With the full game everything was just that much bigger with bigger maps, more vehicles, stats and everything else. Playing Battlefield 2 is like entering a world which finely balances the run and gun of Call of Duty and avoids the harsh realism of mods such as Project Reality. It is this fine balance which makes Battlefield 2 such a great game, if they had gone too far one way or the other then the whole thing may have fallen apart.

That DICE managed to create such a fine game to play is a testament to their certain something which makes them one of the leading developers of the present era. It is not just the core game itself which is so great, it is the stats system which provides that extra something to play and strive for. Looking back in hindsight it is clear that what DICE introduced with Battlefield 2 has played a large part in the ever increasing presence of achievements and stats systems in more modern games.

While many other games in recent years have tried to shoehorn the Battlefield 2 system into their own games, the way it worked with Battlefield 2 is unsurpassed. Logging onto the game, jumping on a server and earning those last few points to gain your promotion are memories that will stay with me and many other players for a lifetime. The role of the unlockable weapons interwoven in with the stats tracking was also a well crafted piece of game design.

It meant that in addition to playing for medals and ranks, players were out on the battlefield fighting to get their hands on some new equipment. The joy about the way this was done in Battlefield 2 is found in the fact that it was simple and streamlined. Unlike in Battlefield 2142 there wasn’t an overwhelming range of unlockable items, and the unlockable weapons in Battlefield 2 for the large part didn’t turn those who held them into unstoppable killing machines. You can ask many Battlefield 2 players which weapons they prefer to use and many of them will say they prefer to use the standard weapons. It is this perfect balance in the stats system and unlockable weapons that made Battlefield 2 such a great game at the time, and still makes it standout today.

Mention must be made of the squad play, this is what attracted myself to the game so much and has kept many people still playing today. The squad play created a terrific sense of teamwork and camaraderie that wasn’t and still isn’t found in many games that dominate the charts today. It is this which keeps me coming back, I know that I can find a server and create a squad with the knowledge that those who join will follow my orders and work coherently as a unit.

While the game may be looking a bit dated after three years of great service to many gamers it still holds up well, this is in down to the great stats tracking system and the sense of teamwork that has evolved over time thanks to the squad system. With Battlefield Heroes just around the corner, what better way to reacquaint yourself with the series than by booting up Battlefield 2 again.

QuakeCon is surely the best place for getting a boat load of news that has any relevance at all to id Software. This year is no different with Wolfenstein, Doom 4, Rage and the Doom movie being discussed and shown off. You want a low-down on all the news, then read on my friends.

So the first news if that the above trailer has been released for the new Wolfenstein game. Well I am interested, but not jumping up and down in excitement like I was hoping to be. Having read the PC Gamer preview of the game in the latest issue I felt a bit deflated. It all seems as though the game is going too far into the world of the paranormal with two worlds and more and more of these elements emerging. It does kind of put me off, I have great memories from playing Return to Castle Wolfenstein which had its fair share of that stuff, I just don’t want the new game to take it too far and ruin the underlying game experience.

Anyway that new trailer for it looks damn good, so why don’t we wait for some more information to emerge before jumping to too many conclusions.

Now that is what I call an action packed, full of thrills, exciting trailer. The game of course is Rage, a post-apocalyptic first-person shooter which id are keen to make clear is not a driving game. Project lead Tim Willits told Eurogamer that the company felt that following the revealing of Rage at last years QuakeCon that many people thought it was going to be more about racing and vehicular combat.

“That’s one of the things that we want to try and address - the game is a first-person action game that has a variety of gameplay that is no longer just run-and-gun. It focuses on story-driven missions. It’s not this huge mindless open world. But it is a first-person action game that has a variety of gameplay built upon id Tech 5. That’s really our key message.”

If that trailer is anything to go by then we will be in for a treat of a game, one that seems to be pushing the boundaries of graphics and gameplay. Rage looks really exciting right now, however in that talk with Eurogamer it emerges that we will be waiting quite a while to see it in shops.

We asked Willits if Rage is a 2009 game, 2010, 2011, and all he’d say is that it’s “not that far out” in response to the last one.

And in shops it seems it will be for Rage and Doom 4 if this Maximum PC report is anything to go by. It reveals that Rage and Doom 4 won’t be receiving the digital distribution treatment despite EA publishing the Rage. EA has its own digital distribution service and the entire id back catalogue is available on Steam. This is indeed interesting, can we expect things to change closer to the release of Rage, I hope so.

In further news regarding Doom 4 Kotaku has word from Todd Hollenshead (id CEO) about the naming of the game. So can we really be calling it Doom 4?

“We are working on what the story is going to be for the game right now, the logo (shown during QuakeCon) didn’t have a four or a subtitle. We haven’t made the decision about that yet. There is probably a let’s not make a numeral game and some say we should make it one.”

Hollenshead also told Kotaku that the game will stick true to the roots of Doom by presenting a very visceral experience with lots of big guns and demons.

Personally I will be really looking forward to this next Doom game, as long as there is more variety than was present in Doom 3. A potentially great game that was let down by being too dark with too many corridors. It always sticks out to me as failing to match what was achieved with Half-Life 2, I hope with the next Doom those failings can be fixed.

It also emerges on Kotaku that Hollenshead would love to do another Doom move (perhaps based on the next game?) but that it is up to Universal whether anything happens.

Finally Eurogamer has some of the big bits of gossip that emerged from John Carmack’s keynote speech at QuakeCon. Details focus largely on Quake Live but the article also covers Carmack’s thoughts on the PC-Console war.

“With the help of Mental Echo players can travel into the past of the ship and find out what really happened there and the reasons for the catastrophe. In this way Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason is more like an unusual detective story with an ability (for the reader or in our case - the player) to interfere the course of actions in the past and change the situation in future. The main task of our team was to create a game [in which this ability] is perceived as something integral.”

If anyone is interested in Cryostasis and wants to learn more about the game and the story then head on over here for the low-down.

Update 2 - That link has been changed a few times since I last updated this, whatever this is just an attempt by a mod at getting some exposure. They succeeded, but only because the initial impression was that this was a Valve piece of work.

Original Story

Damn it.

Is Valve re-entering the Viral marketing world? Prior to the release of Portal Aperture Science was found on the web and masses of information was uncovered by many people who were eagerly anticipating Portal. A new site knows as Black Mesa Research has recently surfaced on the web. Look at the ‘About Us’ and ‘Latest News’ sections.

What does this all mean? Well the ‘Contact’ e-mail address leads to an immediate Delivery Status Notification reply and a Whois.Net search doesn’t indicate a Seattle based registration which is where Valve is based.

To throw a further spanner in the works a ‘John Q. Fake’ sent an e-mail to the halflife2.net news address telling us to look closer at this thread which was started on the 17th July.

Furthemore there is a ‘Aemote Access’ link at the bottom on the Black Mesa Research site which require a username and password. I am sure someone can dig up more on this.

A ‘Press Release’ accessed by clicking on the image on the website.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 23, 2008
BLACK MESA RESEARCH RECIEVES REGULATORY APPROVAL FOR REVOLUTIONARY NEW RESEARCH

Washington, DC — Black Mesa Research Corporation (NY:M), the world leader in advanced technology research and development, received regulatory approval from the Department of Energy today to proceed with the planning stages of exciting new high energy particle physics research presently slated to begin in the second half of FY 2008.

The results from this groundbreaking new research will lead to vast improvements in Black Mesa scientists’ ability to harness the fundamental forces of the universe to greatly benefit American consumers’ quality of life.

In recognition of the revolutionary nature of this research the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has already granted Black Mesa Research Corporation a waiver for standard requirements for high energy particle research in January. The Department of Energy’s approval of the project earlier today marked the end of the major regulatory hurdles faced by Black Mesa Research for this research.

For more information about Black Mesa Research and the HEPP/AM research, visit blackmesaresearch.com.
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Most interesting…

So next year we can expect titles such as Madden, NCAA Football and I assume a whole host of others to appear on the PC. With a focus on online connectivity.

Really if that is all EA are planning on doing to restart many of these franchises on the PC then they are missing out on something. A focus on online connectivity is coming a few years too late, the PC has long been an online platform so to finally decide to “take advatange of the online connectivity” is a sure sign of EA Sports’ lack of interest in the PC over recent years.

This must just be the tip of the iceberg in the return of EA Sports titles to the PC as their treatment of their titles on the PC has been shoddy recently. Here is to seeing them develop their PC games with a focus on the PC, not just porting over a console version.