I was reading an article on the theory of Far Cry 2’s ’slow burn’, which is the idea that it takes a while to get going, but once it does it’s rather brilliant. While this may be true of some people, I found it was rather gripping throughout, from the rather shockingly subdued taxi ride into the country to the various open missions you start out doing. Yes it doesn’t lead you by the hand, but since I always play my games off the beaten path, this really didn’t trouble me. I sought out the Silenced MP5, and went off to do my thing.

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It has just been revealed that Far Cry 2 is now available via Steam in most European countries along with Australia and New Zealand. This is the first time a Ubisoft product has been made available in these regions, will it be the start of a new initiative from Ubisoft to expand it’s presence on Steam? I guess we will have to wait a week or so to see if any other games from them appear on Valve’s digital distribution service.

The game is available for $49.99 for UK customers which is pretty competitive with shops if it wasn’t for the inclusion of Vat on top of that price.

In further great news for Steam it has been revealed that Fallout 3 is available for pre-order on Steam ahead of its release at the end of the month. This is another massive game to appear on Steam and most importantly for some it is available in the UK other non-US countries.

All praise Steam!

I haven’t been keeping track of Dead Space really, but I read Jim’s review of the game in the next issue of PC Gamer and, I must say I was intrigued. I thought it would be worthwhile seeing how much it was on various websites. My first port of call was amazon.co.uk and I was shocked to see a rating of only 1 1/2 stars. I was obviously puzzled as this is meant to be a pretty good game.

Some investigation revealed that there were ten reviews giving the game one star and they all put forward the same complaints that I have numerous times.

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In the past Ubisoft have earned a name for themselves as being ones to blame the woes of the PC squarely at the feet of video game pirates. So it comes as no surprise to read that Far Cry 2 will be using the same DRM as found in Spore, Red Alert 3 and other recent EA titles. Ubisoft forum manager bukowski113 has posted the details of the DRM on the Far Cry 2 forums.

-You have 5 activations per machine on 3 separate PCs.

- The 3 machine activations can be concurrent, but you must have the disc in the drive to run the game

- 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.

While I obviously am not best pleased to see constrictive DRM methods used in this game, I will still be buying it. However I fear that this is going to lead to a similar backlash as to what happened with Spore with many people refusing to purchase the game due to the DRM. In fact I think that the DRM will do more harm than good and we will see more people pirate it as there will likely be a non-DRM version of the game on the usual suspects soon.

Furthermore EA CEO John Riccitiello has commented (as reported by Yahoo) on the use of DRM in EA games.

“We’re still working out the kinks. We implemented a form of DRM and it’s something that 99.8 percent of users wouldn’t notice. But for the other .2 percent, it became an issue and a number of them launched a cabal online to protest against it. I personally don’t like DRM. It interrupts the user experience. We would like to get around that. But there is this problem called piracy out there.”

We have a policy at work, if we see a product on the shelf that we wouldn’t buy ourselves then we remove it from display. It is something which should apply for a whole lot of other businesses too. If the CEO of EA doesn’t like DRM then why of why would he insist on it being implemented in his games? He may have a point that only a minority of people will actually be impacted greatly by DRM, but even this is too much. It is more the fact that people shouldn’t be affected by the actions of the pirates. Hell I already know that people go out and pirate non-DRM versions of games that have it. These are people that had pre-orders in place or were just waiting for the game to be released before purchasing it. Due to the DRM they went and pirated it.

The game companies should realise that DRM is doing more harm than good and is contributing to the (overblown) problem of piracy on the PC.

This latest video/interview for Far Cry 2 is one of the best I have seen for the game recently. While I have been keeping my eyes on Far Cry 2 for a while now, this video shows off some great new gameplay footage and the Creative Director, Clint Hocking talks us through the day/night cycle of the game.

Having watched this I now know how I will play Far Cry 2. I will wait til it is night, sneak into enemy camps, do the necessary deeds then sneak out. Of course that probably won’t happen and I will spectacularly fail whenever I do try and do that. Ah well!

Ubidays 2008 has been and gone and there has been some great new stuff that has emerged from it. I guess the biggest news for many is the following trailer which by all accounts is showing off Beyond Good and Evil 2. Watch it, now!

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Africa? Animals? Country in turmoil? Flamethrowers? Freedom of choice in missions? I’m sold!

Far Cry 2 has been given an autumn release date according to CVG.

Throwing the player in 50km of African land Far Cry 2 looks, to me at least, to be a sure fire contender for Game of the Year. The graphics in all the videos we have seen are gorgeous, the game promises to give the player masses of freedom and even the action looks good!

My only fear is that it will have been altered from the original concept since work began on the 360 and PS3 versions. I still have high hopes regardless and am really looking forward to this.

Kotaku Australia has revealed that the upcoming Battlefield Heroes will only be available in the US and EU..’for now.’

Interesting to see this move by EA, maybe they want to see how their new free-to-play model works before going world wide? Who knows, but I am sure we will hear more on this in the coming months.

The second piece of news for the day comes by way of GamesPolitics and reveals that the Sierra Club plans to place a 1% sales tax on TV sets and Video Games. The plan is to raise $4 million to go towards funding programs to give kids an outdoors education.

I have my reservations on this, surely parents should be able to give their children this education themselves by taking them for a walk in the park or forest. I don’t see how this is going to have any real effect on anything apart from to line a few peoples pockets.

Finally CVG has unearthed some new Far Cry 2 screens, and they do look very very nice!