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“Highly acclaimed director Uwe Boll just acquired movie rights for unreleased game!” I’m just pulling your leg. Uwe Boll is really the laughing stock of the movie and gaming scene since his adaptations are so weak that can make grownup fans cry. If you are in dire need of news material, then he is an everlasting source of laughs, gossip and immaturity the likes of which you can rarely see. He did however bought the movie rights for Legend: Hand of God, a game in development at German Anaconda production house and ready to hit the market on October 22.

I’m starting to wonder why, since he’s buying rights for new material faster than he can release the movies. With Seed, Postal and Bloodrayne II: Deliverance just out, he’s filming Far Cry and Alone in the Dark II at the moment, with Bloodrayne III on the horizon. While all previous titles were firmly established franchises with a core gamer audience and acknowledged market success, Legend: Hand of God is just another underground title for now. According to the press release, the expected budget for the Legend: Hand of God movie is around 40 million dollars, a paltry sum judging from Uwe Boll’s confidence in the game: "I think Legend will be very successful because of its unique blend of high fantasy and dark atmosphere." You see, “The world of Legend contains major crossover potential and was already adapted as novel and audio book.” Is it just me that doesn’t see this happening?

I can understand second rate movies in being produced in the silent noir era, since the world was young, inexperienced and budgets were low, but with Uwe Boll it’s a whole different phenomenon. As an old professional boxer with a diploma in Literature, he turned to movie making as director in the early ‘90s. Uwe Boll managed to exploit a loophole in German legislature which provides roughly half the budget one can invest in a movie, as long as the copyright is owned by a German company. This tax shelter raised increasingly higher budgets ranging into 10-20 million dollars while his movies never get more than 5 million in box office returns. For a regular movie director, this kind of failure would mean the end of a career, but amazingly enough, Uwe Boll persists in doing bad movies and getting away with it.

Set in a medieval fantasy world, the yet to be released Legend: Hand of God is an action role playing game featuring hack and slash gameplay and randomized dungeons. Not unlike its master in the gaming world – the Diablo series, you will need to go through the game progression three times in order to reach the maximum level cap set to 100. It does get harder and harder but it’s the same quest line recycled into a perpetual search for better and unique equipment. You receive skill points on each levelup and can distribute them on various skill trees to grow in power and refine your game style with a characteristic approach to battle. While in theory there is nothing preventing the game from reaching greatness both in the gamers’ hearts and in their pockets, Legend: Hand of God doesn’t bring anything new to the table in terms of gameplay. One can’t disregard the flashy 3D graphics though. Uwe Boll always had a sweet spot for blood and gore in his movies, which suits the hack and slash game perfectly.

It’s a sad day for Shadowrun and Mechwarrior fans for yesterday FASA Interactive manager Mitch Gitelman announced the official demise of the studio and termination of current activities. With most remaining game developers being absorbed into other Microsoft Game Studios teams, one can only wonder if FASA’s demise will take the Shadowrun with it. Gitelman assured players that: “As a testament to the team's commitment to Shadowrun, we released three title updates to improve the product even after the team learned we were losing our studio. We have kept our Community Manager and Technical Support Manager on the job to aid and support you and will continue to do so while people continue to play our game.”

Shadowrun is a first person shooter with role playing elements based in the cyberpunk reality of 2031 Brazil. The multiplayer mode resembles a squad based game with a twist. Before the round starts you can purchase, along with weaponry, Magic and Tech to augment your assault. Thus combos are less point and click oriented, hunting for a headshot, and more intense if you manage to plan ahead and chain your abilities. Shadowrun has great potential but managed be seriously overpriced while loading times and lag issues hindered solo and online play to a degree it became frustrating. Most of these were addressed in the August patch and I’m curious about the changes being made by last night’s fix. The funny thing is that sale figures weren’t that bad since the game made it into the top 5 Xbox sales. As with many recent Microsoft titles, the possibility of bringing PC gamers to meet console Xbox users in the same online game is one very advertised feature, which Shadowrun failed to deliver due to low Vista sales.

FASA Interactive emerged in 1998 as the developer of MechCommander and shortly after became a division of Microsoft Game Studios. The Redmond based studio was actually a few miles away from the Microsoft main campus. After the purchase their job was to create exclusive Xbox and PC games and Mechwarrior 4: Vengeance, Mechwarrior: Mercenaries, Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge emerged in the following years. With the release of Shadowrun, earlier this year, rumors about the studio’s impending doom surfaced the net as a decision from high above. It seems many FASA Interactive employees leaked away from the studio in what at that time was called a veritable exodus. Maybe the answer lies in the marketing decision to keep Shadowrun available only on Xbox and Vista, narrowing its reach considerably since Vista has limited backwards compatibility. You should also consider the fact that Razor 1911 hacked the game only to discover that Shadowrun checks for the Windows version at install without utilizing any of its DirectX 10 technology, instead being playable on XP with a crack. Maybe it was just Microsoft policy and FASA just couldn’t compete on the market.

Sinking Island is a new adventure game planned to be released by Microids this fall.
This is the first part of a trilogy developed by White Birds Productions.

Its action is placed on a tropical paradise island, Sagorah, which is sinking slowly. In parallel, a crime is committed at a hotel on the island, where 82 years old American millionaire Walter Jones is found dead next to a massive Art Deco massive tower at which he had worked at dreaming it will become an elite gateway for international jet-setters.

You will have the role of detective Jack Norm, former federal agent, who is searching to discover the murderer and it’s mobile.

Things must go fast because the clues are sinking together with the island.
The clues found at the murder scene are his wheelchair abandoned at the edge of the cliff and several scratches on his face one of which seems to have been made by a woman.
Among the ten people present on the island during the murder were also the heirs to his enormous fortune.

You will store all the clues in the Personal Police Assistant, where will be also updates about the 10 suspects and an interface for matching finger- and foot-prints.
You will also be able to review the data at any time.

There are 2 game modes available.
Race against time Mode when you as Jack have to finish the missions in time, and Adventure Mode, when you don’t have any time limit and can fully immerse yourselves in the beautiful environments.

Now a little more information for you.
White Birds Productions is founded by Benoît Sokal, Olivier Fontenay, Jean-Philippe Messian and Michel Bams in August 2003, and is specialized in adventure games and concentrated on content and graphics.

Microids is the publisher of the game and is known as a French company which develops, edits and distributes video games since 1985, and publishes since 1995, being lead by President Elliot Grassiano.

Sinking Island is described as a point-and-click third-person game with an illustrated realism graphic style.

The PC version availability starts in September while the company prepares a Nintendo DS version also.