A bit of Blighty is on its way to Operation Arrowhead

Cameron may think we're a bit junior and get our military history wrong, and upset the PCF forumites but Bohemia Interactive think we're worth a special DLC for Operation Arrowhead - ARMA2: British Armed Forces (or BAF for short).

The DLC for the uber military sim will include a singleplayer campaign where you'll command a mobile observation team and take on the Takistani guerilla forces amassing in the mountains.  read more »

But really it's a matter of control...

Microsoft discovered through research what any PC gamer could have told them - consoleheads would get creamed if they went toe-to-toe with PC gamers and their keyboard and mouse combo.

Rahul Sood, the CTO of HP's gaming business has said that Microsoft canned it's cross-platform gaming plans because: "The console players got destroyed every time. So much so that it would be embarrassing to the Xbox team in general had Microsoft launched this initiative,"

Sood doesn't say whether this included game genres that favour game controllers, such as football games and racing titles, where you'd think there wouldn't be much of difference. But in the TechRadar article he's certainly not happy that the MS cross-platform project was canned.  read more »

Nexon has released a vid of the combat to expect in its latest MMO - Vindictus. It's action-tastical stuff and you'll note the combat is real-time.

This particular video is showing 'Lann' and his two swords. Vindictus uses Source-engine to present it's dark and brutal Celtic-themed world and sports destructible environments.  read more »

Who needs teasers, watch the actual presentation...

Darkspore has been announced, a Diablo-style or an "action role-playing game", if you don't want to mention Diablo. It has a sci-fi setting and is by Maxis, who made Spore. The video (Nice work by AddictedtoGamez) after the break tells you pretty much what everyone knows about it right now. No point regurgitating what they said in the presentation in my different words then.  read more »

I feel sorry for CEO of Activision Bobby Kotick. Every time he opens his grinning chops to say something about the future of Call of Duty he gets accused of not loving the gamers and making small children and unicorns cry.

Take, for instance, his recent Financial Times interview. That got him into trouble, because he was of the opinion that Activision ought to get a slice of the Xbox Live pie as, apparently, 60% of players were principally using Live to play Call of Duty.

Actually he used the phrase "We don't really participate financially in that income stream". I imagine this to involve a Crystal Maze-style dome where Kotick gets to keep all the gold shiny paper he can shove down his trousers in two minutes (Steve Ballmer would be there too, dressed as Richard 0'Brien and playing the harmonica soulfully).  read more »

Valve has launched Alien Swarm on Steam, a Sci-Fi based alien bug hunting shooter in the Alien Breed mold. And it's completely free for everyone to enjoy! Not only that, it comes complete with the full SDK for gamers to create their own unique content like maps, and potentially more elaborate complete mods.

We've had a quick bash on the early sections of the game, and although it's nothing ground breaking in game design, feeling very much like a decent indie title. But being free makes it an essential download. Alien Swarm includes an offline practice level, but ultimately is made for Left 4 Dead style online co-op gaming. There are 4 character classes and over 40 unlockable weapons (accessed through earned XP), along with Steam cloud support and a gamut of achievements.

The 28th Golden Joystick Awards is coming this summer. This prestigious event celebrates the past year’s finest gaming titles across all platforms, where the gaming public is the judge and jury on which games and publishers take home the coveted awards.  Last year an impressive 1.2 million votes were cast.  read more »

Closed beta's were once magical, secretive things that only a select few had access to. They were closed. There were cliques. These people clearly weren't very good at playing the way the vast majority of people did though, and games still shipped with bugs in them. Thus the Open Beta was born, and now anyone lucky enough to get their name drawn from a virtual hat stands a chance of getting in the next big thing.  read more »

I'm not sure if it's always this windy in Brighton, but it feels like the town is in danger of being blown into the sea. I'm at the Develop conference, where the gaming industry's bigwigs, a bunch of journos and politicians like Ed Vaisey (above) discuss the industry and drink copious amounts of free booze. I'm not here for the latter, obviously.

Peter Molyneux's just given an excellent presentation on the new features in Fable III, and it's looking like a really, really good game. Best of all, it's coming to the PC as well. One of its key innovations in the Graphical User Interface - or lack of. Instead of having to scroll through thousands of menus, it's all contained in a special level, known as "The Sanctuary". This includes a 3D model of Fable III's world as opposed to a 2D map, as well as wardrobe and weapon rooms. It's clever shizzle.  read more »

I had a conversation with a sales guy once that asked me what "Run Escape" was. It had come up in one of his search results for the biggest names in gaming on the web and he was very excited by the numbers. The name has stuck for me, even though he was actually talking about that insanely popular browser-based MMO by Jagex called Runescape.

Now Run Escape developer and publisher have announced the closed beta of a sci-fi MMO and the fact it'll be out next year. It's called Stellar Dawn.  read more »