Assassin's Creed 2 hyped with live action movie.

In the coming month of November, gamers will be able to purchase some of the most anticipated games of 2009. Apart from Dragon Age, Modern Warfare 2 and L4D 2 we will also be able to purchase Assassin's Creed 2 (actually on the same day as L4D 2..).

If you haven't played or at least heard of the first Assassin's Creed (although you'd have to be Helen Keller for this to be the case) then you should probably try the game out. Similar to the first game, in AC2 you play an assassin with a wide and entertaining variety of weapons and killing techniques available to you. AC2 is set in Italy during the renaissance and so the player has access to a few more awesome gadgets (including some kind of flying contraption).

Anyway, in order to get possible players hyped up and to delve a little into the backstory of AC2, Ubisoft has released a short live action movie on YouTube about the protagonist's father, who is also an assassin. This movie comes in a few parts (2 or 3) and the first has been released. It's not particularly great, although it does give an interesting insight into the background of the plot. Fans of AC2 should definitely check it out.

The video can be found here.

Eufloria thoughts

Some of you may have heard of Eufloria, an indie game developed by Rudolf Kremers and Alex May (yes, I know; actual people). You may have seen screenshots on Steam, and thought something along the lines of- "Huh. That looks pretty neat."

And it kind of is. The game is essentially a very basic RTS/ space sim. You have asteroids on which grow trees. The trees make seedlings, which you can tell to go to other asteroids and make more trees. If there are bad seedlings on the other asteroids, your dudes will fight them. One of you will win, and get to plant your trees on that asteroid.

That's the entire game, more or less; there are different types of trees and such, but it never gets overly complicated (or hasn't yet- I haven't beaten it). The art style looks pretty amazing, and some of the procedural generation stuff is pretty cool. The soundtrack is nice too, with a very ambient, calming quality to it.

The problem lies in just how slow this game is. The enemies NEVER attack you. I played the first five levels in full screen, but after that I windowed it and just waited for my seedlings to build up (I'm actually doing that right now). It's really such a basic thing that it's not even really a distraction, as everything is automated, pretty much. This means that you're not really playing a game, in the end, but rather doing a few clicks a minute, and listening to the music (which I have since turned off to listen to my own).

It's a shame, because the game looks like it could be so much more. The AI just really isn't up to scratch though, and having to wait 5 minutes to build up an army big enough to take out their defences just sucks. If the game had multiplayer, it would be way better. But it doesn't.

A disappointment, in the end. A nice idea, poorly thought through.

Borderlands delayed.

You know that game that I was excited about? Called Borderlands? Fuck that game.

Not really, but it does annoy me that a game four hours away from release got pushed back 3 days (and yes, I know 3 days isn't much). So I ain't playing it right now. But I will be. And then Dragon Age 3 days after that. And then Modern Warfare after that. And then Assassin's Creed 2. And then Left 4 Dead 2. And then...

There are a lot of games coming out, people.

Windows 7 Released

Microsoft's new and (hopefully) improved Operating System has been released in recent days and I thought I'd give a quick run down of how it will be different from XP or Vista, and what effects it will have on gaming.

Windows 7 has been described essentially as how Vista should have been when it was released. There are less bugs, it is supposedly more user friendly and it runs newer games a little better than older OS'se's'es's (that is the correct grammatical expression, I checked with a French guy...).
The main thing you'll find with Windows 7 game wise is that it supports Direct X 11. This isn't exactly an awesome feature at the moment, but I wouldn't be surprised if in the future we saw a lot more games coming out that utilized that feature to its full potential. This essentially means that a purchase of Windows 7 will help you if you want to future proof your PC for gaming. Other cool features of Windows 7 include automatic split-screen, allowing you to view two folders side by side (something that I can see thousands of uses for) and other cool little user friendly quirks like that.

The only downside to Windows 7 may be compatability issues, however I've spoken to several people who were in the Windows 7 beta and most of them reported that it ran well with their games including the all important COD4. For users of Vista I'd recommend the upgrade (which may be free for some or most of you, I can't remember) and for users of XP, this is certainly a much more worthy OS that deserves serious consideration when you next upgrade your PC.

Modern Warefare 2 predicted to sell 16-18 million copies

An analyst has predicted that Activision's highly anticipated Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will sell between 16 and 18 million copies within the first year of its release. It's predecessor, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, sold 13 million units (and probably a bit more because that's just a figure off the top of my head). That certainly isn't record breaking in terms of game sales (Nintendogs sold 22.7 million units on the DS) but it certainly does make me spiteful towards Activision and Infinity Ward. They're obviously already rolling in cash, so it irks me that they would introduce the new IW.NET system to combat piracy when they'll still be making millions of dollars.

An article on the prediction can be found here.

Sweet.

So we have this guy called Albie now. And he can actually draw. It's the best thing ever.

This has nothing to do with games. It's just awesome.

...Fine. I've been playing pretty much what I said before. Uncharted 2 will be the first game I get all achievem- sorry, trophies(dude they're totally different), for.
Borderlands in 2 days, Dragon Age a few days after that... I may also have exams at some point, but there are more important things to do.

I feel like recommending some iPhone/iPod Touch games:

Peggle (you -need- this one),
Bloons Tower Defense,
GeoDefense,
Fieldrunners (you may notice a theme),
Dungeon Hunter,
FlightControl,
WordFu,
Worms,
Pocket God,
Zen Bound,
GeoDefense Swarm,
Mass Effect Galaxy,
Crayon Physics.

There are, of course, many more. Those are just some of the gems in the huge tidal wave of shit that is the App Store.