As a gamer, I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with the word ‘option’; I love it when one of the options is too good to be true; I hate it when all the options are good. This month and the in the coming one, all we gamers will be showered with options, thanks to E-Xpress. I’ve been getting mail after mail from them over the past week and a half on games that’ll be and has released in India. What’re the games you ask? Here goes nothing…

WWE SmackDown vs RAW 2010
Ya ya we all like WWE or used to like it at some point of time. If you’re one of those who still do, then I would like to inform you that it’s available in retail now.
Wallet Damage:  PS3- Rs2499 PSP – Rs1599  Xbox 360 – Rs2499  Wii – Rs2199  Nintendo DS – Rs1499

GTA China Town Wars and Episodes from Liberty City
Okay no explanation, we know you know all about them (If you don’t check our earlier posts)
Wallet Damage: PSP -  Rs1499  Xbox 360 – Rs1999
Meanwhile, those who haven’t played GTA IV yet, the prices of console version (both Xbox360 and PS3) has been dropped to Rs1,499.

Assassin’s Creed II
The original one looked good, but might have bee a little boring to play, the second one however looks a little more interesting.
The game will soon be available in stores
Wallet Damage: Xbox360 & PS3: Rs2599  DS & PSP: Rs1599

Borderlands
An interesting Diablo-inspired FPS title
Available for Xbox360, PC, PS3

Avatar the game
Yes, now that’s one game I’m looking forward to and I don’t think I’ll be disappointed.
The game will be releasing sometime this December and is available for PS3, Xbox360, PC, Wii and PSP.

So there, we’re spoilt for choice now let me go back to my first line.. the love-hate relationship. I hate to miss out on any of these games. Where will I put my money. Which game will I buy? Tough choice indeed!

We had earlier written about Bring Your Own Computer (BYOC) LAN Party and gaming tournament which will be organised across the country. The event will be held on the same dates as announced earlier, so start packing your PCs or do some last min modding to add extra oomph to your rig. In the tournament section however, you will be able to use the systems provided by the organisers alone.

And all you console gamers, please don’t stay away, there will be a lot of console action as well at the BenQ Console Zone.

Meanwhile, Consoul might be arranging a few Xbox360 consoles which gamers can rent out at Bangalore. The organisers of BYOC will rent out PCs and monitors to gamers who find it inconvenient to carry their rigs along, but it’s not sure if it’s restricted to Delhi or if it’ll be available in all locations.

This is the first time the event’s being organised outside Delhi and we wish the organisers best of luck, as we need such events to really encourage gaming culture in India.

The venues and the dates for the event are as follows

Delhi : 7-8 Nov.

Venue: Global School, NBCC Plaza, Pushp Vihar, Saket.

Mumbai : 14-15 Nov.

Venue: Ajivasan Hall, Juhu Tara Road, Near SNDT College.

Bengaluru : 21 Nov.

Scared Heart School, Behing Good Shepard Auditorium, Museum Road.

Hyderabad : 28 Nov.

The games for the tournament

Counter Strike, DoTa, Call of Duty 4, NFS Most Wanted, Fifa09

See you there folks

PS: The organisers say there’s Rs10lakh worth of goodies for taking.. okay stop drooling

After Fifa, NFL, NBA, Cricket, now Indian games are ready to mark their presence on the gaming arena with Desi Adda: Games of India. Sony  has developed this console game that includes indigenous sports like Pachisi, Goat & the tiger, Kite Fight, Kabaddi, Gilli Danda and the beat matching dance game. The game is developed by Hyderabad based GameShastra, for PS2.

First Looks

“First impression is the last impression”. This saying has always mattered and will matter in the future too. Desi Adda has lived up to this saying. After checking out the Hanuman earlier which disappointed us, Desi Adda by the looks of it impresses us here. Hope it lives up to the impression it has created here.

The game surprisingly has a s ’story line’. You play the part of Avinash, son of an NRI businessman, who comes to visit his ancestral village (Dil Bole Hadippa in a rural way ). The guy has spent his time abroad, and this being his his first visit to an Indian village, it fascinates him. The story unfolds as he roams around the village and plays the different village games. We hope they won’t have cheesy hindi dialogues like in the Hanuman game which was released earlier.

Priced at Rs499 for PS2 and Rs999 for the PSP (yes there’s a PSP version!), the game is playable in 3 Indian languages : Hindi, Punjabi and in Tamil and this game is the first game completely developed by Indian Development Studio for the PSP.

Developed on a low budget, what we think here is that the game should get a fair trial & has to be seen as a advancement in the Indian gaming industry (trying to be a nationalist here ).

We are curious to see how they implemented games like kabaddi,gilli danda on a console and how the game mechanics are going to be. Watch out this space for more updates.

PS: Again, we’re hoping,  praying, pleading that it’s not like Hanuman. If it is, we’re not even bothering to play it fully like we did last time!

*** Now why is an Indian gaming blog talking about technology, orkut etc? Because we
are passionate about everything related to technology. At heart we still remain a gaming blog with
an Indian twist =) ***

I used to be an Orkut addict, I used to spam my own scrapbook to increase scrap count, I used to flood friends’ scrapbooks just to make their life hell, Orkut used to be open on one tab of my Firefox browser all the time; but that was back in 2006. A lot has happened since then, Facebook came, saw, conquered; Twitter got free publicity in media every time there was an earthquake or a bomb explosion (continues to get); the term real-time and cloud became the new web 2.0. In Short, a decade has passed in ‘technology time’.

Orkut meanwhile, continues to grow and still manages to attract a lot of people who’re getting started on the web. But the latest set of updates announced a few days back, just might bring them back to the top again. I’ve tried to sum up some nice things in the interface which I liked.

To start with, the new interface was designed using Google Web Toolkit, the same toolkit that was used to develop the quite impressive Google Wave. Once someone invites you, you’ll see something like this on the top bar.

Click on it and you’ll be led to the new homepage.

The first thing that strikes your eye is the blue box on top, the colour of it can be set to red, orange, pink, green or black.The box also poses a question “What are you up to” now where have we heard that before. (Clue:answer it in 140chrs). On home page there’s nothing on the blue box other than the question and the captcha that pops up below it when you post a link in your status message. In profile page, the blue box also includes your basic details (contact, status, age, location) visible only to your followers.

On the home page, below the ‘blue box’ it’ll you’ll find friend suggestion, the scroller system of which has been improved upon.

You can minimise this element and the next element is ‘What’s new’, here you’ll see birthday updates, friend requests etc and below this comes ‘Friend Updates’ which is quite similar to Facebook; you can comment on everything.

The list of friends on the right has a search option with real-time results. Not like in Facebook where name of the person is listed. Here their profile pics turn up in real time. I like it!

Now hit the profile link on top and you’ll be find this page. Below the blue box there is ‘about me’ section, followed by ‘your updates’ and then testimonials you received. You can click to edit the about me section and also optionally set a gadget as default instead of the ‘about me’ text. The gadgets you’ve added will be visible as tabs on top of about me.

The Orkut logo on to left the page is much more than a logo. It’s also a jump list. Mouse over and ta da a nice list pops up

Now getting to the most used part of Orkut — scrapbook. Apaprt from the inline replies to scraps you can also reply to scrap via chat.. yup gchat right from orkut. You can also post video scraps by clicking a small video icon present in the scrap, paste the link from youtube and that’s that. Videos you uploaded will be shown with a small screengrab, clicking it’ll expand the video and it looks like this.

Another process which underwent a massive update was teh photo upload feature. Try uploading photos in bulk. It’ll show a thumbnail image which you can caption, rotate even as the images are uploading, You can also set who can see the photo from the same screen.

Almost everything else resides in the ‘more’ tab after the videos tab. I like what they have overall, but like @manuscrypts pointed out via a DM, it needs to be seen how present users use it. Will they like it? Will they graduate to Facebook after getting used to Orkut Facebook like interface?

PS: I think the blue box on home page takes up too much space. Wouldn’t it be much better if it was like this?

PPS: Character limit for comments to status messages

I used to love playing NFS series of games as a kid; as a matter of fact, it was one of the first games that got me totally hooked on to video games. But through the years the charm wore off as the developers used their tried and tested formulae way too many times.

I gave up on the series and moved on to other Flatout and Burnout which were not just fun to play, but also different in their own unique ways. That being the context I had high hopes for NFS Shift, for in the game I saw something that would get me back to liking the series yet again, and I need to say it has done so successfully.

Shift is not a racing sim, nor is it a total arcade racer either. It finds itself in between these two groups which have their own top games and franchises. With the car modelling and control, it works somewhat like a sim, but when it comes to overtaking and catching up, it’s still  an arcade game. You can still catch up after an initial spin out, provided it’s a three or four lap race and you can even push opponents off the road with ease.

Where the game really shines is with the cockpit view. The screen goes blurry when you crash, you get an real sense of speed as surrounding flash by, but you’ll also end up slamming on the brakes way too late. The last issue however is a temporary one and once you get used to the tracks, it’ll be a non-issue. In the beginning of a race, when all cars are trying to crowd around and push ahead this camera angle makes it even more difficult to navigate through the road ahead. You might say that’s how life is in a real race, but then in a real race the driver has 360 degree vision, he doesn’t need to press a few keys on the numpad to look around. That being the case, I ended up starting most races with normal, helicopter view.

Track Record

Apart from the staple races, Shift brings to us a few special events which have some of the most interesting races in the game. The best are those in which cars from the same company are placed against each other. My favourite mode in the NFS series, the drift mode, however, is almost impossible to get used to. I tried and I tried and I tried.. yet failed. I’ll keep trying mind you, but the level progression system in Shift is such that you can keep going even if you haven’t won all races. You can avoid almost all Drift races and still do pretty well.

Levels are dependent upon the number of stars you get for each race. Every race will have different criteria, in completion of which, you’ll be awarded stars. So when you first play a race, you can concentrate on winning a race, and the second time, you can try to achieve those points you missed out the first time. It could be ‘mastering all curves’ or ‘clean overtaking’ to name a few.

Going Faster

To keep winning races you need to upgrade your car on the way and the tuning settings have progressed a lot since the last version. Because of the lack of time, I opted for the  Quick Tuning mode and set the car to perform the way I wanted it to. If you’re an automotive freak, you can hit the Advanced Tuning and fine tune your cars performance. Another point to note is that certain upgrades don’t work well until another upgrade is bought. I realised this after I installed a few performance updates only to find it almost impossible to control my car. Once I installed the weight reduction package, things fell into place. My Porsche returned to its normal self.

Paying for all thee upgrades will never be a hassle considering the kinda money you win in each race. A friend of mine who played a few races, thought money was showered on the driver more than what was necessary — ehmm you’ll feel like a member of  Indian cricket team .

Around 70 cars are available in the game, but me being me, stuck to Porsche cars for most parts of the game, except for the first stage when I was driving a Mazda.

How Hardcore is It?

One reason why racing titles appeal to everyone is its simplicity and the level of complexity it could be pushed to, NFS Shift is no different. IN the beginning of the game you’ll get to drive a car with minimal assists and aggressive opponents, just to check your driving ability. Depending on how well you fare, you might be slotted to the most difficult setting — realistic damage, no driving assists, aggressive AI — and if you screw up you’ll be thrown lollipops in the form of, easy AI (will skid out way too often) driving assists (brake last moment and still get away with it!) to name a few.

Verdict

Overall, NFS Shift is a good game, and a great way to take the franchise ahead and the game has brought me back to liking NFS franchise again. The graphics are beautiful and the cars sound too sexy. Great going, EA, Slightly Mad (developer), you got the trick right this time

The Good

Racing modes

Graphics

No Story line.. Yay!

Cock pit view

The Bad

Drift is daft!

Too easy to reach championship mode

We need more bling :-/

We’ve been cribbing about lack of details with regard to WCG India stage, now we have some info. The finals are in Chennai this time around and not in Mumbai.

I think I’ll shut my trap and let you read the press release:

Indiagames brings to you the mother of all gaming tournaments, the – WCG 2009 – India Nation Final

Watch the clash of the Titans from across India at the national finale

Talented players will compete in the Counterstrike, FIFA and Trackmania games, followed by the Samsung Mobile Challenge where participants will battle it out in the games of Asphalt 4 and Wise Star II

Join Ajit Kashyap, Head, WCG India announce the winner of the National finals and speak about the on-going preparations for the World Finals to be held at Chengdu, China

Venue: BLUR, Satyam Cinema, 25, Mamatha complex, 5th Floor,

Whites road, Royapettah, Chennai 600 014, India

Date: 26^th – 27^th November ‘09

Time: 1 – 3 pm

When did you last hear that a Car is launched through a video game….Yes that is happening and No it’s not happening with NFS. Volkswagen is thinking out of the box & using the power of games to promote it. They have decided to launch the new 2010 GTI Volkswagen through the iPhone platform.

Volkswagen has a game created by Firemint known as Real Racing GTI which is available as free download. With this are giving hands-on (literally) experience. Now one can experience every aspect of the new car through the app available for their iPhones and at the same time challenging players with the reward being winning a real 2010 GTI.

Unluckily this contest is for US only it still impresses us

We saw a few trailers from the upcoming downloadable content for GTA 4 from Liberty City, now we have more details on the multiplayer mode and the new set of weapons which will be available.

All the multiplayer modes in GTA IV has undergone massive overhaul and adds tighter Deathmatch arenas for more fierce matches. The addition of new gameplay features include parachutes, kill streaks and assisted kills. The featured modes are: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, GTA Race, Race and Free Mode
In Deathmatch, with up to 16 players online, your objective is to have the most kills within the set time. Players are awarded contract money for each kill, and can also loot casualties for their dropped cash. The player with the most cash when the game ends wins. In Team Deathmatch, players work as a team to rub out other teams for money – and the crew with the most cash at the end of the round wins.
The Ballad of Gay Tony takes these classic multiplayer modes and gives them a high-powered bump with the addition of new weapons like the Assault SMG, the Explosive Shotgun, the Advanced Sniper Rifle, Sticky Bombs and more. See below for the full list and other specifications.

New Weapons
Pistol .44, Explosive Shotgun, Assault SMG, Gold SMG, Advanced MG, Advanced Sniper, Sticky Bombs and Parachute

Cash for Kills
Make $25 for every assisted kill.

Kill Streaks
Kill streaks of 3, 5 or 10 gives the player health and armor bonuses. Ending other players’ kill streaks you earn $125.

Deathmatch Locations
Deathmatch locations are contained areas, making for an even more intense experience. New locations include: CC Plaza, Meadow Hills, Firefly Island, Alderney Building Site, Varsity Heights, Factory, Construction, Acter Power Station, Pier 45, Castle Gardens Park, Boat House, Easton Subway, Warehouse, Hospital, Waste, Trespass, Museum and more.

Weapon Classes
Episodic, Automatic, Sniper Rifles, Explosives, Sticky Bombs.

Free Mode
Free Mode is a long-running fan favorite mode that is truly the sandbox equivalent of Multiplayer. No rules, no guidelines, just all out mayhem and anarchy. Join in and go nuts rampaging amongst other Grand Theft Auto lunatics. Or get together with friends and create your own original game in this wide open freeform mode. Now made more insane than ever with the addition of the nimble Buzzard attack helicopter, the devastating N.O.O.S.E. APC and even parachutes to enable you to skydive down from the top of Rotterdam Tower blasting fools from up above.

The Lost and Damned – Multiplayer

Deathmatch and Team DM
New weapons class: Biker Weapons (automatic 9mm, sawed off shotgun, pipe bomb, pool cue, assault shotgun and grenade launcher)

Races
New Race Type: Checkpoint races but each biker is equipped with a bat.

New Race Vehicle Classes:
Race Class: The Lost
Vehicles: Diabolus, Hexer, Lycan, Hellfury, Zombie, Innovation
Race Class: Angels of Death
Vehicles: Wayfarer, Daemon, Wolfsbane, Angel, Nightblade, Revenant
Race Class: Street Bikes
Vehicles: Double T, Double T Custom, Hakuchou, Hakuchou Custom, Bati 800, Bati Custom
Other Race Classes: Vans, Cars and Trucks

New Mode: Club Business:
How to Play: Angus will keep you informed as to what’s on the agenda for The Lost MC. Complete tasks to gain standing within the Club.
Description: Players must work together to complete a variety of different tasks and earn money for The Lost MC. These can include stealing bikes, taking out an enemy biker gang and picking up other members of Club.

New Mode: Lone Wolf Biker:
How to Play: One player is the Lone Wolf Biker, racing to checkpoints while evading the pursuers. Kill the Lone Wolf Biker and it’ll be you getting hunted – and you’ll become invincible for ten seconds. Pursuers can hold Y to respawn their vehicles.

Description: One player starts as the Lone Wolf Biker and must pass through checkpoints while avoiding the other players. If another player manages to kill the Lone Wolf Biker then they will become the new Lone Wolf Biker and must then avoid the pursuers. The winner is the player who has spent the most time as the Lone Wolf Biker when the round ends.

New Mode: Chopper Vs Chopper
How to Play: The biker tries to get to a checkpoint – the pursuer pilots an attack helicopter hunting them down. When the biker dies, the roles are reversed.
Hold Y to respawn your vehicle.
Description: One player starts on a bike and the other player in an attack helicopter. The biker must reach checkpoints dotted around the map and try to avoid being killed by the pursuer. Roles are reversed if the attacker manages to kill the biker. The player who has passed the most checkpoints at the end of the round wins.

New Mode: Witness Protection
How to Play: The N.O.O.S.E have to escort witnesses to police stations around the city, while The Lost try to destroy the transport bus and take out the snitches before they talk.
Description: The Lost MC players must kill the as many of the 3 witnesses as possible before the N.O.O.S.E driver can drop them off at each police station. They can do this by destroying the prison bus or by chasing down the bus and shooting the witnesses as they walk from the bus to station.
One N.O.O.S.E player will be selected as the driver and the other members of the N.O.O.S.E team must protect the witnesses.
The first witness is worth $500, the second $1000 and the third $1500. The team with the highest score at the end of the round wins.

New Mode: Own the City
How to Play: Take as much territory as you can. A territory becomes yours when all its defenders are dead. While you own a territory, members of your club will appear to defend it. Your club’s Gun Van is marked with a square blip on your radar. Drive it near your defenders to equip them with better weaponry.
Description: The Lost MC battles the Angels of Death for control of Liberty City. The chosen location is split up into several different territories. Each team must take over as many of these territories as possible before the round ends. Your team will capture a territory once you have killed all AI defenders and enemy players inside it.
The team in control of the most territory at the end of the round wins.

After becoming a big brand in Delhi with 8 successful events, Xtreme Gaming has decided to organise, Bring Your Own Computer (BYOC) in other Indian cities — Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad — as well.

For the event, the participants will have to to get their PCs and games along, and what follows is a 48 hours crazy gaming LAN-party, where you can frag, snipe and even exchange a few pleasantries. Those who find it difficult to carry their rigs around can rent one at the event, the rates will be announced later. BYOC is a blessing in disguise considering the cancellation of Vixture and shoddy organising of WCG in India.

Ashish Gupta, Director of Xtreme Gaming said that the console gamers are also welcome to come and join the LAN party, however no consoles will be available on rental basis. The tourney started off in 2007 in Delhi when 67 participants turned up. Since then they have organised one every quarter and in the last edition saw around 750 participants. They’re expecting at least 500 people to turn up in Bangalore and I hope they do.

Meanwhile, do carry your own games and carry the popular ones if you want to have some fun over LAN. That said, don’t restrict yourself to Counter Strike

So here are some basic details of the tournament

Delhi

Where: Global School of Management Science,

NBCC Plaza, Pushp Vihar, Sector – 5, Saket, New Delhi.

When: November 7 – 8, 2009

Mumbai

Where: Ajivasan Hall, Juhu Tara Road, Santacruz(W), Mumbai.

When: November 14 – 15, 2009

Bangalore

Where: — YET TO BE ANNOUNCED –

When: November 21, 2009

BYOC™ will be an action-packed weekend event featuring tournaments & some great events with awesome prizes.

Hyderabad

Where: — YET TO BE ANNOUNCED –

When: November 28, 2009

BYOC™ will be an action-packed weekend event featuring tournaments & some great events with awesome prizes.

Now if you’re all geared up you can hit the register page

I’m no one to comment on the quality of apps on the store, but a Nokia Ovi Store ad thatappeared on this site, gamebashing.com tells something about the company.

The URL provided on the ad is ovi.store.com when such a URL doesn’t exist. Most people would just click on it and would be taken to the right location. store.ovi.com.

But I don’t understand how they could screw up with a simple ad. Doesn’t anyone proof read the copy of the ad?

If you’re lucky you might still find the ad on the right sidebar of this post