I amuses me a lot when I find various comments on the Internet about the music soundtrack of certain games. Some people for example would disagree that some soundtracks even deserve to be put on CDs and sold as a separate item. The idea here is not that we should start judging so fast, having a superficial view - obvioulsy there are people who enjoy such music tracks and the game developers thought it was a good idea to give them the opportunity to own such music discs.

<-120x240 Vertical Banner - left->There's an army of fans who have been waiting for a long time and are highly motivated to listen and even buy the soundtrack of the Unreal Tournament 3 - it is after all, one of the goodies that make this game special. Some fans don't listen to those tracks just in the game but also on their mp3 players because they find it stimulating, especially during sports activities. The soundtrack of all the games from the Unreal series has a really good reputation among FPS gamers worldwide, so it's no surprise that Epic Games is releasing a special edition on 2 CDs of the music track from Unreal Tournament 3 (of about 150 minutes), and you can buy it from the Sumthing Distribution website.

If you're wondering about the style of the music, in case you haven't got the chance to listen to it yet, is a mixture of elecro-beats with a lot of techno-gothic influences: “Unreal Tournament 3’s soundtrack largely consists of high intensity fast paced action tracks which provides the drive to match the title’s relentless gameplay style” (...) “Both composers Rom Di Prisco (from Need for Speed series) and Jesper Kyd (from Hitman series) are new to the Unreal franchise contributing a fresh electronic sound in addition to breathing new life into a number of UT classics which were completely re-recorded with modern sensibilities”, said Mike Larson, Audio Director at Epic Games.

Games are powerful tools that serve mainly the entertainment industry and no other master, but every once in a while a big stir come out of debates on its misused educational power or addictive qualities. Today’s issue is about the rating system, how useful and dependable can it be. This Tuesday, four US senators including Hilary Clinton called ESRB officials for a Q&A session with a government committee. Just when people seem to be moving against ESRB, some rather disturbing results come out of a recent study on video game sellers. Apparently almost half the US retailers, or their employees to be specific, sell “M” for mature-rated games to minors without considering the implications.

<-250x250 Square - left->While the tagline might catch you off guard, some clarification is needed. According to the ESRB, M rated games are appropriate for children age 17 and above, while the more drastic “A” for adult-rating applies to ages 18 and higher. One should also take into consideration that the ESRB rating system is purely optional and used only as a “necessary evil” in order to properly sell within the ranks of US mainstream distribution. It states right here that the ESRB is a non profit, self regulatory body that independently assigns ratings, so the enforcement of ratings (or hereby the lack of) is not bound by legal implications.

The undercover survey was conducted by East County Youth Coalition in collaboration with other organizations and performed with purpose of determining just how easy is for minors to get their hands on mature rated videogames. For the sake of logic, we’ll presume that it was a typo and they’re actually talking about children below 17. Over the course of two months, they visited retailers all over the US and tried to buy adult oriented games in over 60 stores. While sexuality, nudity and strong language are mild problems, there is the issue of alcohol, drug use and extreme violence involved. It seems 46% retailers had no problem putting games like Manhunt or Narc into the hands of eager children. The same groups called on retailers to adhere to the rating system, institute formal training for employees, display the rating system in stores and separate mature-themed video games from other games. The ESRB already has a good number of affiliates, the enforcement of the rating denominations seem very lax.

While selling tobacco and alcohol to minors is forbidden by law, there still are some loopholes when it comes to video games and the way they can model young minds. Gaming has pretty much come out of the closet and is nowadays targeting children less and less. After all, the main market is where the money is, and online games are both a very time consuming and successful enterprise which require monthly fees. Selling inappropriate games to minors isn't the videogame industry's fault, yet the blame is always placed here by those pointing fingers. The 50% failure ratio still places the gaming industry ahead of many other entertainment sectors, including the movie and music sector.

Fresh from the shelves, Crysis launched quite a stir when gamers everywhere saw their high end computers lowered to the level of rusty typewriters when running the game on high details. As you may have remembered, the title is a killer in terms of system requirements and squeezing the most in terms of graphical quality it’s almost impossible on nowadays mainstream technology. 3D Mark 2006 is demanding in terms of resources, but that’s the way benchmarks do things. Here’s where moder Mad Boris come in to fix this shortcoming. He developed and recently released an unofficial benchmarking tool for Crysis which can tell you everything you need to know.

<-250x250 Square - left->Check out this topic for a more detailed rundown on its possibilities. “The tool provides a robust front end to benchmarking Crysis. Provides ability to queue up many runs and will provide detailed results for each test as well as an overall summary with accurate averages. The first and foremost goals were simplicity and reliability in the tool and in the benchmark scores. Simply queue up several different runs mixing settings, resolutions, antialiasing levels and click "Begin benchmark Run". You can add a frame number where screenshots can be made on every frame for comparison. Use Negative numbers to make a screenshot on every N frame (i.e.: -399). Hit view button to view them. For advanced users you can add custom cvars or import a cfg file that will run globally on all tests.”

The great thing about the utility is that you can run simultaneous tests for different conditions. Window mode is available, along with 32 and 64 bit, DX9 and DX10 tests. Logs can provide summaries on three or more loops, on retail, demo and custom demo versions of Crysis. The benchmark can be paused whenever you see fit, to take screenshots at key moments, or compare screenshots taken automatically at user given frames. All in all, it’s a good tool to tinker with your masterpiece. Should your system run low on certain conditions (as I know it will) you can just adapt until this benchmark points out the best fps versus image quality ratio.

<-250x250 Square - left->You have probably watched a lot of shows on Discovery TV about the “famous” Area 51 which supposedly does not exist, or if it does it’s not what most people think of it, and the reporters have been told by the US authorities that it is a restricted access zone anyway. So basically we do not know what’s hiding behind the whole “concept of Area 51”, but we (just as the game developers from Midway Studios Austin did) can speculate or make up stories and sell them as well. But what makes this game special is not its story - it’s the way in which the whole idea was implemented.
Older Trailer Of The Game

The game-engine is based largely on the Unreal 3 engine, thus offering playability on a wide range of computer configurations, from the classical PC desktops that handle Windows XP very well to the most up to date advanced PC configurations that are running Windows Vista. The game-story is not exactly complicated, it’s rather pretty simple actually and the plot is quite linear – even if you can go and explore the maps all you like, there definitely a certain point that needs to be reached in order to proceed to a new level. What I found rather “unique” is the extremely simple and very “empty-stats” HUD, just like very few other games have. What does that mean – the game developers wanted to give the player as much realism as possible, and in many scenes you may not even see the crosshair (that helps you aim better) and no health bar stats whatsoever – in fact you will get a hint telling you that if the screen gets hot red (while being shot at) – you’re about to be toast.
E3 2007 Trailer Of The Game

The action is divided on seven large maps, and it starts in Iraq. I must say this game gives a pretty accurate image of the “Iraq missions” of the soldiers – Aeran Pierce is the Delta Force (Delta Force again, like in Crysis?) soldier who was sent, along with 2 other soldiers to hit some objectives. As soon as the Iraq job is finished, the soldiers return to the Nevada area, to their main military base, which is in quarantine due to the infection of an “unknown” agent that resulted after the malfunction of an experiment sponsored by the government (isn’t that typical?). So nothing out of the ordinary so far, but as soon as Aeran Pierce starts exploring the new areas and even loses some of his team members, the perspective over the action changes a bit.

The soldiers are terrified (who wouldn’t be?) when they start seeing really big worm-like monsters blocking their path. Of course, they are trained not to show their fear and they would engage in fierce battle and heated fire even if they don’t stand a (serious) chance. The whole point in winning each step of the mission is that the main hero needs to perform his duties in an excellent manner so that the squad morale is maintained at a high level. Seriously, the script puts the gamer into some scenarios one wouldn’t agree with in the first place, but since most “end-level-actions” are scripted, there is nothing you can do about it really. As an example, there would be the “leaving behind” of the soldier Somers because there is no possibility to literally help him escape. Aeran Pierce is a silent character most of the times and likes to follow orders the best way he can – in some cases you would think he’s a machine, not a real person.

The idea behind the following levels is that the team needs to get from let’s say point A, on the map, to point B, sometimes with a few detours on the way, and most likely the soldiers will have to engage into spending bullets on monster-heads. Yeah, the monsters can be really annoying and some of them don’t just die at first shot – some of them get up and go back in action again, just like in movies. In some areas, Pierce will have to use special weapons that would help in finishing off the enemies in a considerably smaller amount of time. The big mission maps Rachel, Insurgency, Topside, Wrecked, and Topside Old are similar in concept, each having special tasks or key objectives that need to be acquired.

Pierce discovers that Somers betrays the troops by starting to help the enemy “reborn-soldiers”, yeah, that type of enemies which just keep popping up until there have been enough rockets blown to their faces (like in the “Serious Sam” game series). In the final chapter, the experimental unit that got out of control is destroyed and Pierce is picked up by an army helicopter.

I must say I enjoyed the helicopter machinegun sequences – they really give an “army” feel to the game. Overall the developers had a good idea and did a good job in creating the atmosphere for the action. What I noticed (just like I will present later on in the review of the Unreal Tournament 3) is that the Unreal 3 engine is capable of truly realistic effects, even comparable and in some cases better than the ones from Crysis, under the CryEngine 2, without being a resource hog: Now that’s what I would call smart usage of the computer resources and effective overall optimization! It’s not a coincidence that many game developers are using this game engine – it offers a lot without asking too much or over the top (exaggerated) PC configurations (which aren’t even capable to get exactly all the details at the maximum graphical settings – in games like Crysis). However, the advertisements in the game are pretty frequent and they all are about Midway Studios – now we understand that they did a great job and the effort need to be appreciated, but too much advertising can irritate the eyes after a while.
Gameplay With Developer Comments

The sound in the game is well connected to the musical soundtrack and it offers tactical information in the field of action. The developers must have been lucky enough to record the sounds for the weapons from real samples.

Digitainment Mark: 9.8 out of 10 (for the “army” feel of the game and the smart usage of the resources of the PC by the engine)

Developer: Midway Studio Austin

Publisher: Midway

Official website: http://www.blacksitegame.com

Assassin's Creed Trailer


Lately, the people behind the scenes of game studios have made more public appearances and got involved in the fan communities so that their products could achieve all the desired features and quality levels. In some cases, there are some consequences that range from weird to very unpleasant and irritating. Some time ago, the Somethingawful.com website published a few images that were very insulting for the game producer of Assassin's Creed, namely Jade Raymond. Obviously, many people didn't understand why those people who created those images did it in the first place. By now the questionable content has been removed from the website, while UbiSoft had also sent a legal warning letter to the webmaster of that website. However, this created and raised the interest towards what is so special about the game in question. We believe that Jade Raymond can explain much better in the interview below:

Interview with Jade Raymond