Published by Sega Europe, The Club is described by Bizarre Creations, its developer, as a combination of more genres, a racing game and in the same time a scoring-based third-person shooter.

The story of the game is focused on a hidden organization, The Club that only few people around the globe know about it. Its leaders recruit outsiders to fight like ancient gladiators, after the rule “kill or be killed”.

The Club’s origins are not known but rumors say that it evolved from the infamous Hellfire Club of 18th century London, or probably during the Napoleonic Wars.
The secret organization has an astronomical membership fee and once you’re in, you are for life.

Members of The Club are all extremely rich people like drug lords, arms dealers, dictators, media tycoons, Hollywood superstars and even aristocrats and royalty.

When you start the game, you have to choose a character to fight as. Each character has a story which includes his background, the level of speed, strength and stamina, and the way he got into The Club.
Sounds similar with Street Fighter style isn’t it?

Each match has a different location, like war torn cities or underground nuclear shelters, all places being controlled by The Club.

The scoring system counts the number of killings while your combo grows.
Multiplayer, Tournament and Gunplay are the game modes.

The Club game has the release date set to February 1st 2008.

While most of the time the hype created around a title through aggressive publicity is enough to build up a cult status, Clive Barker is a creator known to send ripples through ones existence whenever they come in touch with his ghastly works. Being a continual best seller and master of gore, he managed to extend his success as a writer in both film making and gaming. I for one still feel both dread and twisted pleasure while thinking about Clive Barker’s Undying, one of the great horror gaming crown jewels. It only took six years for Clive Barker’s Jericho to take shape and reach maturity, but it’s ready to be unleashed this Halloween. We found out more about the state of the game via an IGN interview with lead designer Joe Falke.

<-250x250 Square - left->Jericho is an action packed thriller where your Black Ops Squad needs to squelch an ancient evil, nothing short of God’s first creation, before Adam and Eve. Hunting it back to its origin you will spiral downwards through time in the banished city of Al-Khali, facing others that came before you and failed. The modern city is actually built atop ruins of countless previous conquerors, thus holding six different moments in time, so you will fight both current day street warriors as well as back in Roman times. You will make good use of your team mates since each has a special supernatural power which they can improve and later in the game change into other new paranormal abilities.

Clive Barker took an active interest in collaborating with the developers and designers to make an accurate transition of his vision up into the game. In order to enhance the thrill, the developers took the gore horror genre to another level so you could better see exactly what you are killing. You will not snipe the enemy, but instead you will behold its terrible magnificence up close, hearing his every breath and watching the mucus dripping from his wounds. Most shooters will have you battle a limited number of enemies at a time, thus forcing you to burst one down and then duck for cover. In Jericho you will need to take full advantage of your squad, thus fighting hordes of ancient defenders at the same time. It will be nothing short of massive and it goes well to complement the cinematic quality of the game, both in intermissions and actual gameplay. The music score is delivered by Cris Velasco under the strict supervision of the master himself and we can expect the eerie atmosphere the Hollywood horror acquainted us with, in the vein of contemporary composers as Ligeti and Penderecki.

Joe Falke explained that “Clive was a massive help when it came to creating the game's visual style and making the monsters interesting. What he didn't want was monsters that are totally fantastical or anything like that. In Jericho you can imagine just how the monsters have become like they are. Each one needed to look like they had disfigured or mutilated themselves. They have burnt or cut themselves - even sliced off their own limbs in some extreme cases. And, within the context of the story, it makes sense why they would do this.” Meanwhile you can check the horror of the flash site firsthand, a catchy and superbly done preview of the feeling in Jericho.

The well known shooter F.E.A.R. has now a follow-up. Everything is fine … till now.
Well, the problem starts with the fact that there is another game, named F.E.A.R.: Perseus Mandate, which many confuse with F.E.A.R. 2. In fact, things are a little bit different.
You see, as Vivendi, the first publisher of the game, still has the ownership of the game’s name, and the developer is Monolith Productions, the latter will need a new publisher for the game after being purchased by Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment in 2004 in the times when F.E.A.R. was in development phase.

Monolith Productions intends to release the game in 2008, under another title not F.E.A.R. 2 as it was expected, but as Project Origin, decision made after fans voted their choice for the game’s title.

Monolith Productions producer Troy Skinner declared that "Our team really enjoyed letting the fans drive the naming process, and we are excited to expand upon the work we began in the original game and establish Project Origin as a premier gaming franchise in its own right".

The shooter was presented for the first time at E3 Media and Business Summit, 2007 edition in Santa Monica, California, a show that lasted since July 11 until July 13.
Its story will continue F.E.A.R.’s, which is about an operative of the First Encounter Assault Recon squad, the first America’s group of soldiers fighting directly with paranormal threats.
The target is to investigate and stop with all costs Paxton Fettel and his clone army.

In this first part the missions have a high difficulty level and each has a fixed objective. Each player have access to strong weapons.
The graphics is excellent and the special effects together with sound effects make from this game an enjoyable gaming experience.

In Project Origin the action centers on the mysterious Alma, whose rage against those who wronged her triggered a chain of events that have spiraled completely out of control.
Now that she has free reign, the consequences will be unimaginable.

Project Origin will be launched for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.

With the recent release of John Woo’s Stranglehold featuring Chinese movie star Chow Yun Fat and the upcoming Heavenly Sword for the PlayStation 3 system involving the talented Andy Serkis, I decided the time was right for a little reminiscing on the ever debated subject of movies and games – do they work well together?

Well I don’t really know…maybe taking a few examples would help clear things up a bit. Eragon is in my opinion a definite argument to stop making games based on motion pictures, it was poorly created although it wasn’t exactly made by amateurs, but by the games the masterpiece called F.E.A.R., Sierra Entertainment. Sure, some of you will say the movie pretty much sucked too, so that really didn’t help the game much and you’d be right, despite the fact I love fantasy movies, Eragon was a total letdown, been there, seen that.

So then let’s take one of Hollywood’s greatest hits…according to manyof my friends the best movie ever made, Scarface. When I first learned of the making of Scarface, the video game, I immediately thought this has to be a hit! And it didn’t quite turn out that way. Scarface wasn’t terrible but let’s face it, the game was far from perfection. Tony Montana tried his best to impress the gamers but he didn’t come close to stealing the crown from the king of open world games, Grand Theft Auto.

On the other hand, there have also been successful porting of movies to the video games universe. The best example I can think of is Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, every installment in the franchise brought something new and exciting, whether we’re talking about the action genre, the RTS or the MMORPG, LOTR was a success. Then there’s Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, one of the best shooters I ever had the chance to play. Riddick was awesome and the gameplay was so refreshing, giving you the opportunity to do something else than shoot the crap out of people, all with impressive looking graphics. There’s also Peter Jackson’s King Kong, and a very underrated Terminator game, Terminator: Redemption.

There’s also a category of movies that inspired great games but also some of the poorest games in history. I’m talking about “monsters” like Star Wars and Star Trek, franchises that influenced a large number of people over long periods of times, at one time they could even be regarded as religions. In fact I think these two examples really give us the answer to our question, games based on movies don’t necessarily have to suck, as most people say, they can really offer an interesting experience, developers simply have to try harder and take their time.

Like any other games out there, this kind just needs a lot of attention, the majority of films based games are rushed into shops full of bugs and without that finishing touch, just to be launched before the movie’s premiere. That’s just wrong…and games like Xmen III and Ghost Rider are perfect examples.

     Some developers really know how to promote their game with style and apparently that’s the case with Tabula Rasa’s own designer Richard Gerriott. Voodoo Extreme attendees report of last night’s pre-launch party, linked to the Austin Games Developers Conference. It was a skillfully planned event which took place at Gerriott’s Britannia Manor in Texas. The show took about eight hours and involved a tour of the mansion, as well as a special moment including a special ops attack involving helicopters. When the day was done, NCSoft announced the street date for their upcoming Sci-Fi based MMORPG, so Tabula Rasa will hit the shelves on October 19th.

 

    Tabula Rasa is a project long into making at NCSoft as the first reports date back to 2001. The game was initially a fantasy oriented MMO which evolved into a fast paced team based action shooter with role playing elements. It’s a mix where you can gradually improve your character’s armors and weapons while still competing against powerful NPC and players alike, all in real time first shooter mode. Reports say that maps will hold up to 400 players and 2000 NPC characters fit for massive PvP battles between rival clans. The game holds great potential for online competitions and a ladder mode, where your achievements can be compared with players throughout the servers. Still, there are voices which point out that the game still needs more polish and the playing experience isn’t dynamic enough yet. This includes pathing and movement issues, the point and spam combat mechanic and the low number of creature types per map.

 

    Tabula Rasa is currently in the closed beta phase so you can’t get a free piece of the pie before the October 19th release. If you already preordered a copy, NCSoft promised a three day head’s up on the official servers so expect to get the game by October 16th. Meanwhile, remember to stay tuned for updates on the Tabula Rasa home since the official site is being redesigned and should be up soon.