Gaming Console Platform

North American PC gamers have been enjoying Meridian4’s Shadowgrounds Survivor for a few months now. Those looking forward to the title in the UK won’t have to wait very long as the publisher announces that the game will hit their shores around April or May.

Andy Sher, CEO at Meridian4, expresses excitement in the upcoming UK launch of their offering. “We know that Shadowgrounds Survivor will be a huge success with the UK fans,” he boldly predicts.

Shadowgrounds Survivor is a shooter with RPG elements that pits players against alien hordes in Ganymede, one of Jupiter’s moons. The story tells the tale of humanity’s desperate plight for survival against invading aliens as seen through the eyes of three protagonists. Conventional, as well as a few unusual weapons have highlighted the game so far, with Sentry Guns and Mechs clearly being crowd favorites.

Here’s a stern warning coming from Konami Digital Entertainment GmbH and Play.com: Players found cheating in Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 (PC, Xbox 360, PS2, PS3, PSP, Wii, DS)’s online tournament matches will be disqualified from the competition and will be banned for a year from the online ranking system.

This statement was issued following the ban of one of the game’s leading online players due to cheating. Konami Digital Entertainment GmbH did not elaborate on the details, but stressed its commitment to keep its turf clean.

An online tournament is currently going on to honor pre-order promises to the game’s customers. Under the pre-order promo, everyone who ordered the game in advance would receive an invitation to join the PES 2008 tilt. Finalists will be flown to Wembley on March 15th to 16th, 2008 for the grand finals.

At stake during the championship round is a whopping 50,000. Add to that the bragging rights involved, and it gives you an idea of what motivated some to do a bit of dirty work to grease the wheels.

Last August, Take-Two Interactive confirmed the development of Mafia 2, which got a lot of our readers fired up in anticipation. Unfortunately, we’ve heard precious little on the game since the release of its trailer and a couple of screenshots.

What we do know of the game is that the graphics look great, and the dark humor is deadly. We speculate that the main protagonist of the game will be Vito, who appeared in the trailer, and who’s been the focus of a couple of past screenshots as well.

Mafia 2 will be released for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC, although no release date has been announced yet. Take-Two may not have released any fresh news on the game, but we’re sure you’ll appreciate this new batch of screenshots:

If you’re reading this line, chances are, you want to catch a glimpse on Atari’s Alone in the Dark 5 (PS3, Xbox 360, PC, Wii). These “sizzle” clips are by far some of the things that made us hungry for the game.

Though these two might be short, it’s enough to reveal the dark, shadowy world of the game. What’s interesting to note about them is that, they have background music that can seriously highlight the game. We do advise you guys to turn up your volumes for maximum satisfaction.

We’ll be cutting the chitchat short since we don’t want to get in the way of your viewing experience. If you’re ready, simply press the play buttons below and enjoy! We’ll be keeping you posted on more updates on the game.

Buy: [Alone in the Dark 5 (PC)]
Buy: [Alone in the Dark 5 (Wii)]
Buy: [Alone in the Dark 5 (Xbox 360)]

Electronic Arts has just announced the release of Patch 1.3 for Medal of Honor: Airborne. New additions and several bug fixes are found in this latest release. The developers also said that this download is quite large because of the changes that they have made for the multiplayer mode and the two new maps.

Also, do take note that you must have the previous patch in order to successfully install Patch 1.3 for the PC. Now, without further ado, here’s a list of the things that can be found in the patch:

• Added the option to replace the rifle class with a non- scoped Springfield for dedicated servers.
• Added the option to replace the rifle class with a non-scoped G43 for dedicated servers.
• Heraklion map is playable in all multiplayer game modes.
• The Hunt Classic map is playable in all multiplayer game modes.
• Objective Mode has been added for all maps in multiplayer.
• Added an in-game server admin tool (Rcon).
• Added a new server command say that allows server admins to make announcements through the console or in-game RCon tool. The announcements will appear on all connected clients and will be distinguished with both a prefix and different color.
• Every in-game message is now logged in game console (press to access it)
• Several options have been set up for which team defends during Objective Mode.
• Kill messages now correspond to a weapon type.

If you guys find yourselves itching to download this latest patch, do visit the source link below and have one hell of a good time blowing your enemies to bits. Do check out our site regularly for more news and updates.

We know you guys want the low-down on the recently released Mod SDK v1.2 for Crytek’s Crysis. As you guys know, this version is the second release and includes the much anticipated game source code of the game.

What’s great about this is that the source code let you guys customize the game by implementing your very own functionalities and features to the game itself, which you can definitely share with the rest of the gaming community.

Aside from the announcement made by Cry-Alex on the release of this Mod SDK, he provided the ever useful changelog of it. Here they are:

Fixes:

• Fixed: Folder structure issue with SDK_Mod suit demonstration level
• Fixed: MaxScript Warning popping up during export
• Fixed: Copy process gives warning instead of crashing if a prerequisite is missing

Updates:

• Added: Crysis Patch2 based Mod source code
• Added: XSI Add-On (including Examples) as a zipped file
• Optimized: Warning to close affected programs pops up on start
• Optimized: ReadMe switched to html
• Optimized: Installation rules for Plug-in are now more flexible

Now if you guys want to find out more details on the Mod SDK v1.2, feel free to visit the source link below. Do come back to QJ for more news and updates!

Checking the game’s teaser on the right, it tells us to “prepare for the future.” Better brace yourselves for a long wait since there’s still no specific release date issued by the Bethesda for their upcoming Fallout 3 (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC).

Rumors have been constantly spreading that the release is going to be on September 9, 2008. Of course, this was due to a list of PS3 release dates that has been sent to retailers by Sony.

For all we know, this rumor could be holding some amount of truth, no matter how small. But Pete Hines says otherwise. In fact, he even spoke about this matter.

Hines said that:

Sept. 9 isn’t the release date. The release date is Fall 2008. Until you see something official from us on when the game will be out, take any date you see from anyone with large grains of salt.

Having that said, we’ll continue to bring you guys with more fresh news on this game as they come.

Buy: [Fallout 3 (PC)]
Buy: [Fallout 3 (Xbox 360)]
Buy: [Fallout 3 (PS3)]

Some studies have shown that video games breed violence, while others say that it’s actually healthy for kids. It’s a bit messy, really.

Let’s put violence on the shelves for now and take a look at this new study from Herber Gintis, Economics Professor at the Central European University. The research studies behavioral patterns by using games. Introversion, in particular, was given attention.

The study collected data from 15 countries with varying levels of economic development, having its subjects play cooperative games.

The study used the cooperative games as a tool to show how economic and social institutions influences a person’s willingness to cooperate with others. The study showed that:

university students in democratic societies with advanced market economies rarely exercised a type of antisocial punishment featured in the game, while this behavior was commonly exercised by students in traditional societies based on authoritarian and parochial social institutions.

The study has no solid conclusions as of yet, but the findings are interesting nonetheless. Here, games were used as a tool to show how the economy influences introversion. It would be interesting to see if they could also show if video games themselves influence human behavior as well.

Even after the release of FPS biggie Crysis for the PC, the fellas over at Crytek obviously stay busy by serving their community. This week, they announced some very important things about their masterwork: a security hole has been discovered and patch 1.2 is almost good to go.

The biggest agenda concerns an exploit that causes some clients on the server to crash. It’s been hotly discussed in the forums as of late, and Crytek acknowledges its existence. They assured everyone that the matter is being treated very seriously and a hotfix is on the way to stabilize the situation.

On the brighter side of things, they also revealed that Patch 1.2 has been finished and approved by the firm’s higher-ups. No release date has been announced, but the devs say it’ll be out very soon.

Patch 1.2 will give players a buffed-up punkbuster mechanism that will thwart attempts to cheat in the game. This should keep the rats out by the time multiplayer fun starts in earnest.

Finally, Crytek tells us that the Mod SDK for Crysis is on track and is continually being updated by the team handling it. We can’t wait to see the community play around with such high-end tools. If you want to see the full nitty-gritty of this week’s announcements from Crymod, follow the source link below and be enlightened.

All people need reassurance, even employees of companies such as Take Two Interactive. With all the news going around regarding Electronic Arts‘ plans to buy out Take Two, it seems that the latter company’s employees need reassurance more than ever.

The interesting thing is that Take Two Interactive management recently sent an interesting e-mail message to its employees regarding changes in their severance plan.

In a nutshell, Take Two Interactive informed its employees that the new Employee Severance Plan will provide for “minimum levels of compensation” in the event that someone else takes control of the company and fires the employees.

While Take Two pointed out that it wasn’t assuming that the Electronic Arts buy-out would actually occur, the company did mention that the purpose of the plan was to address “understandable concerns” that employees might have regarding the possibility of such an occurrence.

A relevant excerpt of the Take Two e-mail message follows:

Our “Change in Control Employee Severance Plan” provides for minimum levels of compensation for all employees in the event that an employee’s position is terminated as a result of a change in control of the Company. These types of plans are fairly common for publicly traded companies. In fact, both Electronic Arts and THQ have change in control severance plans. If you have any questions about our plan, please speak with your manager, local HR director or Courtney Kelley.

We hope that this benefit will alleviate some of the concerns you may have, and allow you to remain fully focused on your responsibilities. You are critical to the success of Take-Two. The most important contribution each of us can make during this period is doing our jobs with the same focus, skill and creativity we always have.