The PC At E3 - The Keyboard And Mouse Brigade

While we've taken a good hard look at what we expect from Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony during E3 2008, we've not yet touched on the original gaming platform, the personal computer. Back during my first visit to E3 in 1998, PC gaming made up a relatively large portion of the show, with PC publishers large and small showing off everything from big-name titles to tiny indie games like Space Bunnies Must Die. The new E3 has changed that a great deal. Smaller companies who might have once brought their games to the Expo for exposure to retailers and publishers just can't justify the space to show off their wares...and why should they? In the age of high-speed internet, smaller companies can deliver a demo to the press in minutes, so the PC presence has definitely dwindled at the event.

Of course dwindled doesn't mean died, and there are still plenty of PC games on hand, particularly in the MMO department. As the most pirate-proof genre in the industry, we'll see no shortage of MMO titles at E3, but other than that particular genre we can expect PC exclusive titles to be few and far between.

Far Cry 2, for all its promise of open-world gaming, tree-destroying and fire-starting, still seems to be flying under a lot of people's radars. Maybe watching this twenty-minute gameplay demonstration - captured at the Dreamhack LAN show in Sweden - will get you all excited. Certainly nice seeing a presentation of the game that's warts-n-all, gives you an idea of what it'll be like to actually play it, not watch a marketing guy play through it on a trailer.

[via Big Download]

Far Cry 2 Is Not Ubisoft Trying To Outdo Crysis

Far Cry was developed by PC developer Crytek. Crytek made Crysis, and that game is very, very pretty. But Crytek isn't doing Far Cry 2 — Ubisoft is! The photorealism of Crysis must be somewhat intimidating, even for Ubisoft. But the Far Cry 2 developer is going a different direction. Says the game's art director Alex Amancio:

Very early on we knew that we wanted to go a completely different direction. Instead of going for the tropical island and trying to go for hyper realism, we changed the setting. First of all we wanted to have a really, really credible environment, but we didn't want to replicate anybody's vacation photos.

Probably smart. Who wants to play somebody's vacation photos anyway?

Far Cry 2 Different [Ubisoft] [Pic]

Ubidays the Final Round-Up

For those of you who somehow missed all of our Ubisoft coverage, which stretched from early afternoon until late into the night, I've compiled all of our stories on the jump. They include hands on with Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway, H.A.W.X. and Far Cry 2 as well as tons of interviews and impressions.

Far Cry 2 Dev and Port Teams Range from 175 to Three

Far Cry 2 uses a proprietary engine that was built from the ground up for the game. The developers told me that about 175 people worked on creating the engine and then the game for the PC. Currently that team is working to build in DX10 support, though it wasn't ready when I had a chance to look at it.

Because the engine was built to work on a PC, bringing the game, with all of its bells and whistles, over to the Xbox 360 was a relatively easy affair, the developers told me. Afterall, they said, the Xbox 360 is essentially a computer. In fact they only have three people working on the team that is porting the game over.

The Playstation 3? Not quite as simple an affair. They have a team of 14 working on that port, mostly because of the "difficulties" of working with the Playstation 3's unique architecture.

Ubidays 08 Round-Up: From Beyond Good & Evil 2 to Prince of Persia

Ubisoft held their Paris Ubidays today, officially announcing that Beyond Good & Evil was on its way along with a slew of other titles including a DS game to help people quit smoking and a new snowboard title.

If you missed any of the Ubi related news and my hands-on impressions with games like Far Cry 2, Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway and H.A.W.X. then hit up the jump for a round-up of all of our Ubidays 08 related posts to date.

Making Far Cry 2's Africa

Far Cry 2: No Girls Allowed

Far Cry 2, Ubisoft's answer to Grand Theft Auto meets Mercenaries 2, has a lot going for it from its enormous 50-square kilometer map to its use of animal AI. Another neat feature is how they've decided to deal with the player character.

In Far Cry 2 you can't customize the way you look, instead you get to choose to play nine of the dozen characters that inhabit the game as friends. Depending on who you choose it changes some of the 75 or so side missions you can play through.

But why only nine of the dozen characters in the game? Because the other three are women.

"There are so many lines of dialog that they would have had to rescript and record if we let people play as a female," I was told.

Wow, that's not going to go over well.

Far Cry 2 Brings GTA Sandbox to the Serengeti

It’s like Grand Theft Auto IV on the Serengeti, but not really.

At first blush Far Cry 2 looks and behaves a bit like Grand Theft Auto IV: The game has an open world, friends who can come to your rescue, a phone you use to contact them, safe houses, a detailed map for guidance and a non-linear story line.

But where at its heart Grand Theft Auto IV is an action game, Far Cry 2 has its roots deeply embedded in the bedrock of shooters and from what I saw during my short time with the game it seems to remain true to those origins.

Far Cry 2 - Play The Game You Want To Play

It's about giving the player the opportunity to play the game he wants to play the way he wants to play it.

Custom Video Games Training American Spies

As you'd expect from a game that's selling itself on its ability to set loads of things on fire, in these new screens for Ubisoft's Far Cry 2, there's fire. And explosions. Big, murderous explosions. But also love, as a mercenary tries to carry his wounded brother-in-arms to safety, from where he can gently tend to his wounds and slowly, every so slowly, nurse him back to health.

[via Gamefront.de]

Far Cry 2? Very environmentally unfriendly. Just look at that poor tree as it's torn to shreds by a simple pistol! Fortunately, Far Cry 2's environment is a little sturdier than our own, as the tree rebounds in ways environmentalists and the logging industry can only dream of.

The Far Cry Movie Trailer Is Par For The Course For Uwe Boll

This trailer for Uwe Boll's film adaptation of Far Cry is sure to put asses in movie theater seats. Snappy catchphrases in the making like "I haven't said anything about being simple" and the gleaming star power of Til Schweiger are going to go a long way to ensuring that Crytek's game becomes a massive blockbuster. Is it me or is there an out of place punch-in-the-face sound effect near the end?

Crytek Talks Crysis 2, Far Cry Movie and CryEngine 2

By John Gaudiosi

MONTE CARLO—Cevat Yerli, co-founder, president and CEO of German game developer Crytek, recently was a featured speaker (for the second year running) at Imagina 2008, the annual 3D technology conference in Monaco. Following his discussion on the lessons learned from developing Far Cry and Crysis on CryENGINE and CryENGINE 2, he spoke about the changing face of game development.

Today's landscape has fewer independent game studios, especially on the heels of Electronic Arts acquisition of Bioware and Pandemic. Along with Epic Games and id Software, CryTek remains one of the top independent game makers in the world today.

"The challenge is in the balance of creativity versus funding," said Yerli. "The increasing budgets, more demanding platforms and customer behavior makes it difficult to sustain as an independent company. However, at the same time, new opportunities arise such as in casual online games, but also on games that are on simpler platforms such as Nintendo Wii, Xbox Live or Playstation Networks in the form of smaller game experiences, including but not limited to arcade experiences. I believe (digital distribution) is an opportunity to sustain independence and successful titles through these channels may even be more commercially lucrative than titles released through traditional retail business."

Don't Hate Uwe, He's Nice To Injured Drunks

Far Cry 2 A Triumph Of Zebra Rendering

Far Cry 2 Details Get Hazy

Far Cry 2, that game coming to both PCs and 360/PS3, has spilled some gameplay beans to Edge in the most recent issue. And a game that sounded promising before just got a whole lot more interesting.

While video games often present a clean and polished atmosphere, Far Cry 2 presents a world that "isn't this clean, sterile, digital representation of Africa." Guns jam and wounds that are left untreated become fatal. As for leveling up your character, that plotline begins to sound a bit like Haze.