Almost 16,000 Steam Members Promise to Boycott L4D2

At this year’s E3 held in LA, Valve announced Left 4 Dead 2, the sequel to the survival horror game Left 4 Dead for the Xbox 360 and Windows PC. Left 4 Dead was very well received by critics and Valve promised to back the second game with even more vigor than it did the first.

But as Kotaku reports, Steam Group L4D2 Boycott (NO-L4D2) has aggregated many irate L4D fans to boycott L4D2. Apparently the fans stand in protest against Steam releasing L4D2 so soon after the first game. So far the group already has 15,841 members on board with the boycott.

The reasons cited by the Steam Group for the boycott are as follows:

- The release of Left 4 Dead 2 as a stand-alone sequel will split the communities and decrease the quality of multiplayer gaming.

- The announced content of Left 4 Dead 2 does not warrant a stand-alone, full-priced sequel and should instead become updates (free or otherwise) for Left 4 Dead.

- Left 4 Dead has not yet received the support and content which Valve has repeatedly stated will be delivered.

- The release of Left 4 Dead 2 will make Left 4 Dead an obsolete purchase and inferior piece of software after only one year since release.

The Group wants that Valve release content for L4D regularly as promised and not make L4D2 a standalone release. Also, if Steam does decide to go ahead with L4D2, the group wants that L4D owners at least be given discounts for the second game.

Meanwhile there are reports that Valve forum posts about the boycott group are being taken down while those making the posts face serious reprimands.

E3 2009: PSP Go Dated and Priced

Thanks to the massive internet leak a few days ago we were all aware of the PSP Go but today at Sony’s E3 press conference we learnt some new stuff as well that goes something like this:

• It has a 3.8-inch wide screen
• It's 43 % percent lighter than the PSP 3000
• It will offer 16GB of built-in flash memory
• It will offer no UMB support

In addition to this we also learnt that the PSP Go will be shipping on the 1st of October 2009 along with Gran Turismo (PSP) for $249 (Rs. 11,706).

E3 2009: Upcoming XBLA games to look forward to

Amongst the deafening din of the big announcements at this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo, a lot of smaller ones were overshadowed. This includes many newly introduced Xbox Live Arcade titles that look utterly awesome, and deserve your attention. With that in mind, this article will introduce what's in-store for you on the Xbox Live Arcade.

Splosion Man

This one's being developed by Twisted Pixel, the guys behind this year's incredibly addictive 'The Maw '. Just like Maw (which was based around a creature who'd eat any and everything), Splosion Man's based around a simple concept - blowing stuff up! The game's a 2.5D action platformer where you play 'Splosion Man' who was "born of plasma and flame in an underground military lab" and uses his body to blow stuff up and get to hard to reach places. By what we've seen, the Splosion Man's cocky style and light-hearted gameplay will probably make for a great, and off-beat platforming experience for all those lazy evenings when you just wanna kick back and de-stress.

Shadow Complex

Here's another action-sidescroller, but with a serious visage and a lot more eye candy. Shadow Complex is being developed by Chair Entertainment and uses the Unreal Engine 3 to bling it up. The game follows the tale of a guy who's bent on getting his girlfriend back after she's abducted to an underground complex. On his way, he blows the hell out of the enemy with a massive arsenal of sweet-ass weaponry. From what we've seen, the game seems to have a good mix of stealth and downright shooter action, along with great visual elements such as real juicy particle effects and really hot explosion.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time Re-Shelled

What completely made my day was Ubisoft's announcement - they're working on a remake for the best TMNT game ever made — Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time, from the good ol' 16-bit days. This title will feature four-player co-op and will hit XBLA on 22nd July, and the PlayStation Network on a later date. The game will be a remake of the arcade version of the game, rather than the SNES one. The only difference between the two are a few variations during a few boss battles. By what we've seen from the video, the gameplay looks like blast - just the way it used to be, and the visuals seem bright, clean, with fluid character animations, making for a potentially awesome co-op retro-remake party game!

The Secrets of Monkey Island: Special Edition

If you've missed our beloved Guybrush Threepwood, you'd be glad to know that he's making a return with Lucas Arts remake of their hit franchise, the Monkey Island series. The game will hit XBLA and PC this year, will feature some really polished 2D art, and be followed by other installments of the series in the near future. This series remake will be called "The Tales of Monkey Island" and should be released episodically.

Marvel vs. Capcom 2

The Dreamcast hit - Marvel vs. Capcom 2 - is due for a revival on June 22, when you'll be able to buy this awesome retro two-player fighting game for 1200 Microsoft Points. The game will get a treatment similar to Street Fighter III Turbo HD Remix where both visuals, as well as net code is concerned (which is a great thing). A demo for the game's already live on the PlayStation network, and one for XBLA should follow soon.

Battlefield 1943

EA DICE's upcoming iteration in the hit online shooter 'Battlefield' series will get a treatment similar to Battlefield Heroes, and be a downloadable title. The game will feature 24 player action in the pacific theatre of war, moving away from the WWII-centric Battlefield 1942. The game will allow you to pick between the US Marines or Imperial Japanese forces and a crap-load of classes. There'll be a healthy dose of environment destruction too. By the looks of it, it seems to be shaping up quite well and for a 1200 Microsoft Point XBLA title, it should offer good value for money.

Joy Ride

Joy Ride is a Mario Kart/Trackmania-styled free online racer that will allow you to race your personal avatar around really good looking cel-shaded tracks. The game will be free initially, but if you wish to pimp your ride, you're going to have to shed out some Microsoft Points.

E3 2009 Highlights Day II

Yesterday we took a look at the events that transpired on day 1 of E3 2009. Today, we’ll look at day 2 that in all honesty wasn’t all that impressive. Perhaps the biggest damper of them all was Nintendo’s press conference. If I could describe the entire conference in one word it would have to be BOOOOOORING! Every year Nintendo feels the need to thrust their sales figures and stats down our throat to prove to the world how they’re dominating the casual games market. It’s boring as hell, annoying and just infuriating how they go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on... you get the drift right?

If you could sit through all that crap - there were a few decent announcements that came out of Nintendo’s camp. Perhaps the biggest one was the collaboration with Team Ninja, the creators of the Ninja Gaiden series for a new Metroid game called Metroid: Other M (yes that is the real name).

In addition to that they announced Super Mario Galaxy 2 that looked pretty much like Super Mario Galaxy 1, which is totally awesome if you liked the first game. You also had a new Mario game that’ll now support co-operative gameplay for up to four players. Once they started talking about DS games my attention sort of started just fading away.

Sony’s press conference was a lot more interesting and even though we didn’t get 8 Days or The Getaway 3, there was a lot of stuff that came out of their camp. Kaz Hirai, SCEA head honcho came on stage to officially announce E3’s "worst kept secret", the PSP Go.

This tiny handheld console will set you back by around Rs. 11,706 and will be available by the 1st of October 2009 along with Gran Turismo for the PSP. Oh, that’s right, Sony showered tons of love on the PSP Go in the form of a bunch of games like Gran Turismo, Resident Evil, Soul Calibur (in which Kratos will now be a playable character) and a new Metal Gear Solid game called Peacekeeper. Gran Tursimo PSP looked pretty cool and the amount of tech they’ve crammed into the PSP is pretty impressive. You’ll have over 800 cars to choose from and visuals running at 60 FPS.


Even though there was no mention of L.A. Noir, Rockstar’s PS3 exclusive announced way back in 2005, we did get another PS3 exclusive from the makers of the GTA series and it goes by the name of Agent. Details are extremely scarce at this moment but it's Rockstar so we have utmost faith in them.

On the gameplay front we got God of War III (release date as of now is March 10th 2009), Assassin’s Creed 2 (available on PC and Xbox360 as well), MAG (Massive Action Game) and Uncharted 2, all of which looked simply phenomenal.  We also got a look at the Lost Guardian that by the way many of you may remember as Project Trico.

It looks a lot like Shadow of the Colossus; only you won’t be killing any gigantic creatures. In fact it appears the young protagonist of the game is best friends with a gigantic mythological character and you can bet your bottom dollar this game is going to tug at your heart strings with this emotional bond between boy and beast.   

And finally you had Sony stepping up to Microsoft’s Project Natal announcement by way of their very own motion controller. We’ve included a video so you can see exactly how this could improve your gaming performance.

E3 2009 Highlights - Day I

Even though E3 hasn’t quite returned to the state of awesomeness it used to be, there were a significant amount of announcements coming out of the Los Angeles Convention Center this year. In case you weren’t following our live tweeting or non-stop news coverage, here’s a recap of the (2) days gone by. Today we’ll take a look at the events that transpired on Day 1.

We’ll start off with Microsoft’s press conference since that did take place first. They kicked off their conference with Rock Band Beatles that in all honesty looked boring as hell to me. They spent way too much time talking about the game and if that wasn’t enough we had Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney come up on stage to talk about how awesome the game’s going to be (no surprises there). Even though I was a bit ticked off with the excessive Rock band coverage I gotta hand it to Microsoft for cutting out the sales charts, the PR crap and heading straight for the games. Respect!

They kicked off the festivities with a bunch of trailers of certain exclusives like a brand new halo game called Halo Reach, Halo 3 ODST, Splinter Cell Conviction (that we later found out was coming out on the PC as well), Left 4 Dead 2 (once again available on PC) and Crackdown 2 that by the way is not being developed by Realtime Worlds since they’re now working on APB (All Points Bulletin).

And speaking of APB, the game will now be produced by EA and should be available sometime next year for both Xbox360 and PC. Since we are on the topic of EA’s press conference allow me to tell you how depressing it was since they spent most of their time talking about casual games for girls, Wii games and Sports games. We did get a Crysis 2 announcement for consoles as well as PC but with no video or trailer to talk about we really can’t get terribly excited.

Mixed martial Arts games are all the rage these days and keeping that tradition in mind EA announced a new MMA game for consoles called EA Sports MMA (don’t you just love the creativity here?)


Back to Microsoft now. During their conference, Epic’s Cliffy B came on stage as well, not to announce a new Gears of War game but to let us know that Epic has been working on a side scrolling 3D action game for XBLA and the PC called Shadow Complex. Even though I was a bit disappointed by the lack of any Gears of War 3 info, I have to admit, the game looked pretty entertaining, and not to mention gorgeous.

Then we got Forza Motorsport 3 that’s not my kind of game but if you like racing sims you’ll be pretty pleased with what the game will bring to the table. You have "visuals running at 60 frames per second, over 400 vehicles to choose from, user-generated content and the ability to upload your very own fully customized high-definition videos on Xbox Live."

Before their show ended Microsoft dropped the bomb on all of us as Hideo Kojima took center stage to announce a Metal gear Solid game called Metal Gear Solid Rising for the Xbox360. Initially there was a bit of confusion as to whether MGS Rising would be an Xbox360 exclusive but it was later disclosed that the game would be coming to the PS3 and PC as well. MGS Rising won’t feature Snake as the protagonist; instead you’ll be stepping into the boots of uber-badass ninja Raiden and the focus this time around will be more on all out action than stealth.

Besides gaming Microsoft also announced a bunch of stuff for Xbox Live. Gold members will now have access to Last.Fm for free. You’ll now have live on-demand streaming 1080p movies on Xbox Live and judging by our internet connection, each movie should take at least 35 years to buffer. Social networking whores will be glad to know that both Facebook and Twitter will be available on Xbox Live as well.

And before MS ended their press conference they announced Project Natal, a unique way to play video games in which you become the controller. Now since none of us are at E3 we can’t really tell you how awesome or crappy this innovation would be but from what we’ve been hearing, it sounds promising. Also making his E3 debut was Milo, Lionhead’s virtual friend. Take a look at the videos below to see both Natal and Milo in action.

The day ended with Ubisoft’s conference that was super long, boring and pretty uninteresting. James Cameron took center stage for nearly an hour and spoke at length about his upcoming game Avatar but without videos, how can you expect us to scream like little girls James?

The one game that stood out for me on Day 1 would have to be Splinter Cell Conviction. The game that had gone into hiding for a while now emerged in an all new avatar with a new badass Sam Fisher who could give Jack Bauer a run for his money.

If you’ve played Double Agent you’d know that Sam’s daughter died and in Conviction he’s going after the people that killed her. Even though stealth remains an important part of this game, Sam’s got a new repertoire of moves at his disposal now with which he can swiftly and brutally dispose off foes on a more up close and personal level.

Gunplay has undergone a significant change as well and as and when you don’t feel like sneaking around in the shadows no more, you can clean shop using the balls-to-the-wall method.

On the whole, the first day was a mixed bag. We got some cool announcements followed by some unimpressive stuff. While I was pretty elated about Crackdown 2, the absence of any gameplay videos did depress me a bit and what’s worse is that I’ll have to wait till 2010 to actually play the damn game. Luckily I have Halo 3: ODST, Splinter Cell Conviction and Left 4 Dead to keep me busy this year.