Last week though was a little different, as Acer South Africa launched their new Predator series of Gaming PC’s, and to coincide with this launch, I decided to take one the most graphically intense game out, and throw it at this hardware.... As the action unfolds of the original game, you will now play his role in exactly what was going on in the background. One thing I immediately noticed was how much more I enjoyed this character, as he felt more “real” to me, and he was a character that I could relate to almost instantly. He has a different way of doing things than “Nomad”, the original games character, and EA have managed to show a more personal side of a character than in the first. The gameplay in the title is pure First Person Shooter action, as it was in the original, but they have tweaked a lot of things in this title to go above and beyond the original. The first thing that grabbed me about the game play is that it’s more action based.... Where else can you shoot into a crowd of enemies, set the speed option up and run into them by surprise, and then switch to strength and throw the enemy across the terrain.... All the standard Nanosuit options have returned, where you have the ability to Cloak your character, and not be seen by enemies.... One thing they have tweaked is that in the lower difficulties, you no longer have to manually pick up ammo; instead just walk over the guns and the ammo is added. Driving vehicles is also a lot better than the original, taking something that I did not enjoy in Crysis, and making it really fun.... Now lets get to the meaty stuff, as one thing the Crysis series is known for is it’s great graphics, and EA promised to deliver on this part. The promise was made not only will the game run on a more variety of PC’s, but that it would look better than the original, something that I thought would be very hard to do.... To me it looks noticeably better, not just from terrain and bush, but they seems to taken away the clinical element of the graphics in the first, and made it more vibrant.... I could go on and on here, but I really don’t need to, cause it’s as simple as this.... It’s almost perfect in every way, the only issue being it’s over too soon, about 6 hours, but hell, I’ll play it over and over again.

Gametrailers.com has released a Far Cry 2 video blowout showing off multiple gameplay videos of different scenarios at different times of day. While we can assume that the videos are all taken from the PC version, the console footage we have seen is looking mighty fine as well. It seems that Far Cry 2 is doing a great job of capturing the atmosphere of Africa amazingly well and while most of us only really see this side of Africa whilst at national parks, there is still something about it that hits home everytime I see one of these videos.

We received a press release from Megarom with a list of all of the games they are going to be showing off at rAge this year and the list is looking mighty fine indeed. Megarom will be showing off games from publishers such as Activision, Ubisoft and Take 2. There are a lot of title in this list that I am looking forward to so I will be doing everything in my power to steal all of them from the Megarom stand at rAge. I hope their security is really bad, especially when I get there and ask the security guard to go and buy himself a R200 cup of coffee. Two of the Far Cry 2 developers and one EndWar developer will also be at the stand, so that will be a nice treat and is something that we South Africans don't usually get to experience. I wonder if they will help me carry the GH: World Tour instruments to my car? I mean, they are from Ubisoft not Activision, so I am sure they wouldn't mind. I have put up a full list of the games that will be on display, after the jump. Activision: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Call of Duty: World at War Guitar Hero: World Tour Ubisoft: Far Cry 2 Tom Clancy's EndWar Shaun White's Snowboarding Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway Prince of Persia Take 2: Midnight Club: Los Angeles Bioshock One last note. Remember that Megarom will be hosting a Guitar Hero III competition as well and the prizes are ridiculously cool to say the least. Get those fingers practicing.

Treyarch, the developers of Call of Duty 3 have been under a lot of fire from gamers and critics who said that they were never nearly as talented as the big boys from Infinity Ward (Creators of the COD franchise and developers of the first, second and fourth installments), The truth is that they only had 8 months to work on COD 3 while Infinity Ward had two years to pump out COD 4. So now that Treyarch have been given a decent amount of time to develop a title they have been given a chance to show their true potential.... Gameplayer.com.au has had a chance to test out the 4 player online co-op and from the sounds of things, Treyarch is proving that they are a becoming a force to be reckoned with. Just last week I was able to get some hands-on time with some early code of COD 5 and I was impressed with what I had seen.... My opinion changed after my experience with the first level of COD 5 but in the end I realised that I had not seen nearly enough to get a solid feeling of the games worth. Gameplayer.com.au has been lucky enough to get some time with the games 4 player co-op and their impression left me thinking that my initial excitement was justified.... As we’ve come to expect from the Call of Duty series, you really do get immersed in the world through a non-stop barrage of sound-effects, explosions, bullet-fire and well executed action set-pieces. Yeah it plays straighter than Ron Jeremy’s ****, but it is sensory overload of the highest order and it facilitates such tension that your butt cheeks will creep ever forward, clinging onto the edge of your couch as a clam would latch onto a diver’s ankle.... Gameplayer does go on to describe that their are definite differences between the two, saying: it is a different type of game. The weaponry is old-school, and while new additions like the flamethrower provide plenty of comedic value – that’s right kiddies, watching foes light up like kerosene covered hay bales is worth the price of admission alone – if you love your red-dot enabled M16A4, you might be more than a little put-off.... Both games may use the same engine, but very few assets were able to transcend from modern day to the forties and the attention to detail, as well as the sharpness of the A.I – where Infinity Ward’s talent really shines – aren’t as impressive.... So the big question is, which of the two are going to be better when we finally get to compare them. While the upgrade from COD 3 to COD 4 was a lot larger and left us blown away by its improvements, it lacked any form of co-operative play. COD 5 will have to have an incredibly strong multiplayer package to take players away from COD 4 and move them back into the worn-torn maps of World War 2.... Infinity Ward delivers nothing short of spectacular in terms of its titles and to even match them will be proof enough that they are not what all the nay-sayers thought they were.

I'm writing this article only a short while after arriving home from a Megarom event that had two rather humourous French blokes from Activision give us a presentation of their upcoming titles for the Christmas season. While they did a great job of keeping things fun and interesting, nothing could compare to the guy in the back row who thought that there was a walkway behind his seat and literally took a casual step off of a 2 meter ledge, shaking the entire rooms floor as he slammed into the ground.... I had the chance to get some hands on time with Call of Duty: World at War as well Guitar Hero: World Tour . Yes indeed, A couple of guys and myself stood up on a small stage in front of a bunch of strangers as I fought back the pressure of nailing the solo of Michael Jackson's "Beat It" on Expert mode, which I thankfully handled and made sure to not look like a complete noob (It came out of nowhere I swear). You had better make sure to check the site for my hands-on impressions of both COD:WAW and GH: World Tour as I will have both of them up shortly after this article sees the light of day and you will really want to hear what I have to say if you are a fan of the COD series or games that let you rock out in style.... If there is one thing that Activision impressed me with, it was that they very openly admitted to many of the faults in their previous titles and that they seemed to have really listened to the suggestions and complaints of gamers around the world and made any necessary changes to make better games. Whether they have done enough or not is something that we will only really find out once we have had time with the finished titles. We were also treated to some footage of the upcoming action title "Fracture", which takes a whole new approach on combat by giving you the ability to alter the terrain around you to your advantage.

...Quantum of Solace, the new James Bond game also looks like it has a lot of potential, especially for a 007 title since the last couple of Bond titles were nothing special to say the least. Add the fact that it is using the COD 4 graphics engine and it actually might surprise us. Obviously one of Activision's biggest titles for the year is Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. While I quite liked the feel of the game I can't say that I am completely sure that it will not get repetitive. We didn't see much more than what is already available in the demo so if you want to know more you can go read the impressions of the demo that I put up a while ago by clicking here. While there were a few other titles shown off such as Clone Wars, Spiderman: Web of Shadows and believe it or not, two Barbie titles, the real ones you want to pay attention to are the ones described above. All I can really say is that after my experiences with a few of these upcoming titles, the only advice I can give you is to start saving up. There is a big season of gaming on the way and you are going to want a couple of these in your games library come Christmas.

Good news for anyone that is interested in the latest zombie bashing survival shooter from Valve. Valve's Gabe Newell has confirmed that a demo will be coming out soon for Xbox 360 and PC. "I don't know what the date is for release [of the demo] though. I think it's going to contain the first part of one of the campaigns. I think it'll probably be Hospital but I'm not sure." says Newell when discussing the topic. Hopefully we will see it before the release of the game in November because if my memory serves me correctly, the demo for Half Life 2 on PC came a good while after the release of the game in stores. So with the demo giving gamers a taste of both single and multiplayer, it should give us enough to decide if its worth our money in the crazy upcoming season of releases.

PC gaming magazine PC Zone has released what looks to be the first review of Crysis: Warhead hitting it with a super solid 92%. This is a little bit of what they have to say: With its budget price and improved multiplayer, there’s more than enough here to cheer nay-sayers. One of the most striking things about Warhead is the way it shakes the template Crysis snowglobe and has its constituent parts drift and settle into surprising new patterns. In Crysis encounters with enemies were heavily cordoned off from each other, in Warhead anything goes. It’s a frenzy of intelligent and original level design, far away from the Far Cry model that Crysis aped.” Sounds like a blast and something to look forward to on PC. I played through Crysis earlier this year and really had a fantastic time, even if my Macbook Pro was huffing and puffing the whole way through but I actually hear that Warhead is going to be more spec friendly than the first one. Crysis Warhead apparently has a South African ETA of Friday 19 September.

Oddworld creator Lorne (Lawn) Lanning has been speaking about why he thinks that consoles are a step backwards and not what he was excited about years ago. Lanning has the following to say: "Personally, I think the consoles are a problem. Years ago I was excited about consoles, but anything that makes development more expensive rather than better, faster, cheaper, I think is a step backwards. When I look at what's happening, it's a bit disappointing because the consoles are running into a place where affordable games are having a rough time getting out there." I guess that all the big money and schedules are starting to add more and more pressure to a lot of smaller developers that aren't graced with huge budgets. Is he right though? A lot of us are all gaming fanboys, we love it all but we also love to see technology progress and get better. The main reason that I turned to consoles was because I was tired of having to keep my PC up to date so that I can play the latest games. Now I get home with my shiny new game, pop it in and run it the way that the developers intended. It seems that Lanning is targeting a market that is more interested in customisation and a lot of sharing options, saying: "PC games also allow people to build their game as they chose. There's a big difference between spending $50 or $60 on a game and hoping I love it and buying a game for $5 and then buying additional content for that game, so by the time I have invested $50 in it I really love it and I've personalized it a lot more to what I'm interested in." Hello. Hello. Follow me. Ok. [Who knows where that comes from?]