Moody Gamer

Crytek, the developers of the very much hyped yet great game: Crysis will soon be releasing the Standalone expansion of the game named Crysis Warhead. The game story is the same as the first one except this time you get to play as Psycho instead of Nomad. The single player levels will be more action packed than before with a lot of improvements almost everywhere. The multiplayer has been also tweaked and also the big question answered: Will it run better? YES IT WILL. The first two reviews that went online already are giving great scores for the game. IGN gave it 9.4 while Eurogamer (which was harsh on MGS4) gave it 9/10. The reviews already say that it can run at high resolutions on Enthusiast (Very High) setting pretty well on a 8800 GTS card. Ofcourse no mention of Anti-Aliasing or Anisotropic Filtering being used. Still, the talk about performance optimizations are pretty evident in the reviews which is always good.

After Crysis was released, Crytek wasn’t happy on how the sales went and blamed it on piracy. So they already announced that they will stop releasing PC exclusives and might consider console releases. Though with the near release of Crysis Warhead (25th September 2008), in a surprise move, Crytek announced that both Crysis and Crysis Warhead are available on Steam! For those who don’t know, Steam is an application you can install on your PC and through it buy and download games. You can quickly learn more about Steam at store.steampowered.com/about. This marks the first EA game being released on Steam and questions are already floating on whether more games will follow (Red Alert 3!).

The reason for Crytek releasing both games on Steam is because it proved to be a very effective way to sell games with lesser risk of piracy and hence better sales which might help Crytek reconsider their PC exclusives direction, though I doubt.

Lastly, I went ahead and pre-ordered Crysis Warhead of Steam (it is released there on 16th of September) which is the first time I use it, lets see how it goes oh and keep an eye for MEGamers review.

Am sure by now you have noticed how much of a fan of Red Alert series I am. Why not when the game really focuses on fun factor a lot. Keep in mind I play almost every popular RTS out there too! Anyway, fan or not, EA are giving away the first Red Alert for FREE. Yep, no strings attached, no registration required, just a direct link to the compressed ISO images which you can load on a virtual CD or burn on a blank CD and get started playing the first Red Alert and second C&C game.

Scroll down at this EA link to get the download files.

In addition, if you pre-order Red Alert 3, you will instantly get Red Alert 2 with it for free. It isn’t really necessary to play the previous installements but it is great fun to pass time if you are waiting for Red Alert 3 to be released or just want to explore the old versions.

Yep, after I got my copy of Kane’s Wrath, looking for the Red Alert 3 Beta went in vain. EA have given Command & Conquer 3: Kane’s Wrath buyer the change to participate in Red Alert 3 Beta testing by providing Beta keys in the game box. To my surprise, I found nothing in my copy of C&C3 expansion pack, kane’s Wrath. I went to Red Alert 3 website and started looking up why. It seems EA didn’t put the Beta keys in all the regions. Was so eager to join the beta especially after how much fun is Kane’s Wrath. EA seem to have gone a long mile with their balancing and patching. It is enough to say that Out of Sync issues that plagued C&C Generals are none existent in C&C3. Still nowhere near Starcraft polish but good enough to have an enjoyable time playing online. With Red Alert 3 coming, even more attention is given to the multiplayer side of the game and from current impressions from the Beta, people are having a blast.

Hope next time EA gives our region a better chance with such opportunities and offers. There is still the possibility that EA might open Red Alert 3 Beta to the public at a later stage but no word on that at the moment, here is hoping though.

Digital Chumps has a nice comprehensive impression on Red Alert 3 Beta that you might want to check out here.