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A pair of downloadable games have been released on the PlayStation Store for PC: the PS1 Classic Rayman and the formerly available-only-on-UMD PSP title Star Trek: Tactical Assault. Rayman is just $6, while Star Trek is available for the much higher price of $20, which seems pretty high for a game that’s nearly two years old and wasn’t received well by critics.

You can also find Sony’s E3 press conference in three chunks, just like on the PS3 Store, but you better have quite a lot of free space on your memory sticks — they each take up between 1.17GB and 1.5GB.

Downloadable Games

STAR TREK: Tactical Assault ($19.99) (also downloadable via PS3)
File size: 140 MB

Rayman ($5.99)
File size: 97 MB

E3 Video

PlayStation E3 2008 Press Conference – Part 1
File size: 1.26 GB (HD)

PlayStation E3 2008 Press Conference – Part 2
File size: 1.17 GB (HD)

PlayStation E3 2008 Press Conference – Part 3
File size: 1.5 GB (HD)

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I’m a Fallout fan. I’ve been following this game since it was a GURPS title. I was saddened when Interplay lost their way and the franchise seemed doomed to obscurity but when Bethesda scooped up the game three years ago I found renewed hope.

Last year Todd Howard, and the team fresh off of The Elder Scrolls Oblivion showed a very tight, controlled demonstration of the game in action, and this year I actually got 30 minutes of hands on time with the title. While the areas shown in the live demo area covered much the same content as last years presentation I didn’t care. This wasn’t my shot to gauge the story or the acting; this was about finding out if Fallout could translate to the 1st person RPG space and not lose its charm.

Well I have good and bad news for Fallout fans. Fallout 3 makes the transition well but only if you’re a fan of the Oblivion style of gaming (which I most definitely am). Controlling the character, implementing stat points and choosing perks using the Pip boy interface were all simple and intuitive.

Unlike Oblivion, Fallout 3 does not rely on a clunky interface. There is inventory management but its reminiscent of the older Fallout’s turn based grid with a few modern updates. The change of setting - from a medieval combat system to a modern gun-slinging wasteland works well also. I demo’d the game on the 360 and the title showed the same visual finesse of Bethesda’s earlier game. Those who found fault with the dialog interface or camera system of that title will find it virtually unchanged.

I spent a good deal of time navigating and interacting with NPCs. Dialog choices that could be influenced by skills were set apart - including the percentage chance of success, though the actual “roll” was hidden it was obvious when you succeeded or failed. This little tweak felt like a good reflection of the classic games and the content of the dialog also followed a more adult, humorous bent in the area of Megaton.

Wading into combat with some rabid scavengers in an old elementary school, I used every chance possible once engaged to test out the V.A.T.S. targeting system. This turn-based mode freezes combat momentarily and displays a digital overlay of a foe. The various target spots of the baddie glows and players can choose trick shots with likely success indicated by percentages based on skills and perks your character has.

All in all I’m just as excited about this game as I was last year. The hands on experience felt familiar in many good ways and with the game coming soon on the 360, PC and PS3 at least I won’t have to wait long to wander around at the end of the world nuking super mutants.

As I am sure you are aware by now, our industrious E3 team is hard at work gathering scraps of info for your perusal. We’re adding something a little different this year for your enjoyment: a nightly podcast wrap-up of the day’s events.

Wondering what’s in this episode? In the words or your immortal host, Shawn Sines, “E3 2008 Day 1: Microsoft & EA talked a lot, we’re talking about their talking.. only with opinions, innuendo and veiled sarcasm. Will the new Live! changes make sense? Is Dragon Age the most disappointing trailer of the show? Listen and find out what we think about Day 1 (sort of) of E3!”

We’ll have a podcast coming your way from E3 every day this week, so make sure you check it out.

You can grab the pocast directly from this link.

As always, you can send comments, suggestions, or snide remarks to podcast@filefront.com. Our back catalog of episodes is available at http://podcast.filefront.com. The File-N-Forget Podcast is also available on the iTunes Music store.

Gaming Today is in the trenched at E3 this week, and yesterday may have been pretty exciting, what with FFXIII being released for the Xbox 360, Resident Evil 5 getting a release date, all the Halo Wars and Gears of War Footage (will be posted soon) and other nice nuggets - it is only going to get better today.
The Nintendo press conference will start off the morning, and the day will close with the Activision private party (away from E3) taking place around 7:00 pm PST. So for those of us on EST, we can expect some info to start arriving 10pm this evening as far as that event goes. Again, Jonathan and Shawn will be blogging live, so expect more information throughout the day and into the evening.

Meanwhile, what are you excited to hear about? Personally, I am curious to see what else Bethesda has to offer other than more Fallout 3 info, and Activision will more than likely be talking up the Guitar Hero franchise and possibly be giving us the first real look at World Tour. They released a press statement yesterday during the Microsoft event about the new Metallica coming to Legends of Rock, so hopefully the guys will have more information on that later. What I am anxious to hear about is the new Wolfenstein title because there is nothing more fun than shooting Nazis ate up with the occult bug.

As far as the Sony press conference goes, I am keeping my fingers crossed that God of War 3 is mentioned or at least shown in rough form. Of course, I am a total Kratos groupie, and anything regarding a future title starring the angry Spartan piques my interest very much. I am sure we will also hear more about “Home” and LittleBigPlanet and many other titles along with future firmware updates coming, so keep your eyes peeled.

With a strong boot to the opening, Microsoft kicked off E3 with the first press conference out of the gate. There was a lot of speculation before the show.. Microsoft would announce a price cut, a motion controller, avatars, the cure for cancer.. the list goes on. While we didn’t get the cure for cancer or a motion controller it definitely felt like Microsoft was aiming at a pretty wide audience with some of its announced new titles and a number of not-quite innovations aimed at broadening the reach of the console in the media and casual markets.

The focus of the entire conference this year seemed to be on the multi-player experience. Not the static gamer matches, but co-operative experiences, media and experience sharing. Many of the titles shown reflect this philosophy and Microsoft’s internal announcements definitely reflect it.

So lets get the hysterics out of the way… Gears of War 2 does LOOK good. Fallout 3 does have VATS. Resident Evil 5 has co-op online play. There.. now to my impressions of the event, for another take, be sure to check out Johnathan’s impressions of exactly the same event, now with less sarcasm…
Read the full article

Microsoft kicked off E3 with a press conference not unlike a firecracker that has been dipped in water: it starts off exciting, but then the fuse runs out and all you get a a little “pop” if you’re lucky. Similarly, they brought out the big guns for an opener, leaving everything but the last few minutes pretty unsurprising. Read on for a play-by-play of Microsoft’s big E3 announcements. Read the full article

Bethesda Softworks has released a gameplay movie from Fallout 3, and once you get past the campy but fun beginning of the trailer, you get to see some actual gameplay footage of the post-apocalyptic game.

To say that it looks a bit different from any other Fallout title is stretching it - it looks vastly different. I am still happy to have pre-ordered the game though, October cannot get here soon enough in my opinion. Let’s hope it was worth the wait, because although I trust Bethesda, I am still slightly worried about so many changes being made to my second-favorite franchise.

Gamers can now find Sacred Gold on Valve’s Steam service. As the preparations for the coming of Sacred 2 accelerate, some gamers may want to take a shot at the first game to get to know the setting or revisit an old favorite. The Sacred Gold digital download contains the original award winning game as well as Sacred Plus and Sacred Underworld.

It seems that gamers are waiting breathlessly on several games based on old favorites these days. Between Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, Fallout 3 and Sacred 2, players seem happy to over look the absence of new titles out there. I know that if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it; but that will only please the masses for so long.

via Steam

E3.. once the premiere event of the video game season is now a shadow of its former self. While we’ve discussed this in the past and even lamented a bit about things long gone, Ron and Shawn choose this week to discuss the upcoming event and related coverage plans for the File-N-Forget Podcast and Gaming Today in general.

Readers and listeners should send suggestions for E3 coverage and possible developer questions to the podcast email. We’ll happily address them and if possible pose them to the guilty parties during the event and report back.

Once we move on from that topic the infamous Jack Thompson makes himself a topic of discussion again. In light of the recently released recommendations for his disbarment in Florida and then we move on to the “Jack Thompson” memorial Rant & Rave segment where Ron actually praises a Gamestop store, and Shawn laments the state of aussie censorship.

This weeks show is available by direct download here.

As always, you can get past episodes from our podcast page at http://podcast.filefront.com, and you can send your comments, questions, suggestions, or snarky comments to podcast@filefront.com.

File-N-Forget is also available on the iTunes Music Store.

This is certainly one of the coolest promotional events I’ve heard of in awhile. In order to promote their upcoming post-apocalyptic RPG, Fallout 3, Bethesda has partnered up with the American Cinematheque and GEEK Monthly magazine to sponsor a post-apocalyptic film festival. Dubbed “A Post-Apocalyptic Film Festival Presented by Fallout 3,” the event will showcase some of the works that helped inspire the game as well as some of the finer post-apocalyptic movies out there. These films will be shown at 7 PM at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica on Friday, August 22nd and Saturday August 23rd:

Friday
‘Wizards’ (Directed by Ralph Bakshi)
‘Damnation Alley’ (Directed by Jack Smight)
‘A Boy and His Dog’ (Directed by L.Q. Jones).

Saturday
‘The Last Man on Earth’ (Directed by Ubaldo Ragona)
‘The Omega Man’ (Directed by Boris Sagal)
‘Twelve Monkeys’ (Directed by Terry Gilliam)

I already know my favorite out of those (Chuck Heston FTW!). That’s definitely a cool lineup, but even cooler is the fact that each day only costs $10, which gets you three films, a bag of popcorn, a large soda, and a free Fallout 3 giveaway. Tickets go on sale July 25th through Fandango.com.

Via Press Release

The latest word on the Fallout 3 situation in Australia is that the game has been banned for in-game drug use. news.com.au has published statements from a report by Australia’s Office of Film & Literature Classification:

In the Board’s view these realistic visual representations of drugs and their delivery method bring the ’science-fiction’ drugs in line with ‘real-world’ drugs… The player can also select and use ‘Morphine’ (a proscribed drug) which has the positive effect of enabling the character to ignore limb pain when the character’s extremities are targeted by the enemy.

Although there reasons are not entirely unexpected, they’re still disappointing. Fans of Fallout 3 are protesting, pointing out that other games that have been approved also have in-game drug use. As one gamer astutely wrote in an online post, “What are the syringes in Bioshock filled with – magic fairy dust?”

The Australian ratings system is also partly to blame. Although films can be classified with a R18+ rating, video games top out at a M15+ rating. Fallout 3 is now a spark ready to reignite the whole R18+ rating for video games controversy.

via GamePolitics

Yikes. In a bit of a blow to Bethesda, Fallout 3 has been denied classification by the Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification, which means that since it has received and “RC” rating, it is hereby banned from being sold in Australia.

Australia is very stringent when it comes to rating games, and if you have followed the history of such actions in the past, you may recall all the troubles Rockstar has has with the GTA titles, and more recently,  Dark Sector from D3P was cut to pieces just so it could be released in the land down under.

Australia does not grant games a rating above 15+, but allows movies to receive 18+ ratings, and to help you make sense of the classification system, here are the rules:

There are six classification categories for films (G, PG, M, MA 15+, R 18+, X 18+) and four classification categories for computer games (G, PG, M and MA 15+). The R 18+ and X 18+ categories do not apply to computer games in Australia. Films and computer games can also be classified RC (refused classification). RC films and computer games cannot be legally sold or distributed in Australia.

I suppose all the drug use, slavery and addiction references that were just recently revealed to be part of the game were the main factors in the decision. This means that Fallout 3 will have to be drastically cut to get the green light for our Australian brethren, which most likely will be the case because I seriously doubt Bethesda will just skip such a lucrative opportunity  to make money off Australian gamers.

Via: GamesIndustry.biz

Gamers looking forward to the premier of the Fallout 3 trailer at E3 will have a chance to preview it before the start of the event. You just have to sacrifice some sleep, or remember to set your Tivo. According to Bethesda, partial footage will be shown on GameTrailers TV with Geoff Keighley: E3 Preview on Spike TV at 1:00 am. Parts of a never before seen Fallout 3 trailer will be included in the broadcast.

Gamers will also catch glimpses of  Gears of War 2, Prince Of Persia, Resistance 2, Rock Band 2, UFC 2009 Undisputed , the next game from BioWare and more.

Of course most gamers won’t have a problem being up at 1 am. You might still want to record it so the broadcast doesn’t interrupt your regularly scheduled gaming.

via Bethesda Blog

Bethesda has a new Mod Interview up with Elder Scrolls modder Gaël Zimmermann or Gez as he’s known online. He’s been modding the Elder Scroll series since Daggerfall and is currently the Head of Concept Art for the mod project Tamriel Rebuilt.

In Morrowind, the Tamriel Rebuilt team focused on expanding the rest of the Morrowind province. For Elder Scrolls IV, Oblivion, the team is creating Hammerfell, the home of the Redguards. Gez is looking forward to seeing TES5 and plans to continue with the Tamriel Rebuilt project.

Gez does the occasional solo project, and has translated several mods into his native French. He prefers to work with games that have open source code and wishes Bethesda would open-source the Morrowind and Oblivion engines.

I know it’s a pipe dream because there is too much licensed middleware to leave the matter in Bethesda’s hands, but if the Morrowind or Oblivion engine were open-sourced, the community would be able to do wonderful things with them. While already really impressive, MGE or OBSE are nothing in comparison to what could be done…

To learn more about this French modder, read the entire interview with Gez on Bethesda Blog. You can find more information on the Tamriel Rebuilt project at the official site.

Three new images have popped up for Fallout 3, and while the one featuring the protagonist and Dogmeat looks vaguely familiar, they are pretty nifft images nonetheless so I posted them.

I, along with many, am getting pretty excited about Fallout 3 - so much so that I even pre-ordered the Fallout 3 Collector’s Edition, and to be honest with you I never do that. I even paid for express shipping - which means that I could have bought an awesome pair of heels with that money instead. A gal has to have her priorities though, am I right guys?

Come on October!, get here faster

Bethesda Blog has alerted Oblivion players to an amusing and useful tutorial. The video will show you a little exploit to get rich; quick meaning in ten minutes or less. The piece is done pop-up video style with snide little comments along the way. If you are playing for fun and don’t care to be challenged, or even if you just need a laugh for the day, check out this video.

via Bethesda Blog

Last night’s X-Play brought Executive Producer for Bethesda, Todd Howard, to the show to talk about the upcoming Fallout 3. Howard talked up some of the game’s interesting features, including the massive scope of the game, the unique blend of RPG and FPS elements, and the what they’ve retained from past games. Fans of the series will probably be happy to hear that the trademark/ridiculous gore will be kept intact — he even compared defeating an enemy to Burnout’s crashes. The more I hear about this game, the more I’m certain I’ll be losing quite a large chunk of my life to it.

Via G4TV

Over on the Bethesda Softworks site, Elder Scrolls modder Fliggerty has challenged modders to participate in The First Semi-Annual House Fliggerty Modding Invitational. The contest is geared towards modders who are less well known.

To participate, you must not have a mod in the Hall of Fame on Planet Elder Scrolls and you can’t have a cumulative download count of 5000 or more on any single mod you’ve released. Modders who don’t qualify for the contest are invited to help judge entries.

All members of Great House Fliggerty with a total of 50 posts or more can submit their Morrowind Housing or Hireable Mercenaries mod by Midnight, MST, July 31, 2008. The deadline allows for plenty of time to achieve that number of posts without any inappropriate spamming.

Interested modders can get the full details on Bethesda Softworks.

Emergent Game Technologies has announced the release of the Gamebryo 2.5 development tool. The engine has been used to create Bethesda’s Oblivion and is being used to develop Fallout 3 and Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. Gamebryo 2.5 features a redesigned core with the Emergent Terrain System, a new Geometry System and enhanced support for the Floodgate stream processing engine.

“Gamebryo 2.5 is the foundation for a new generation of creativity in game and simulation development,” says Geoffrey Selzer, CEO, Emergent Game Technologies. “The significant transformation of the Gamebryo core and our vibrant partner community has given birth to the industry’s most powerful and flexible game development environment. Nothing else allows developers to as easily and smoothly create in any genre on multiple platforms.”

Gamebryo 2.5 is compatible with the PC as well as the Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii. Perhaps this is one of the reasons you see familiar settings in multiple games. The engine is meant to be a framework for development, not a cookie cutter short cut.

via Business Wire

These days, adventure games like the newly released Limbo of the Lost tend to fly under the radar. Unless, that is, they apparently get caught swiping textures and graphics from a higher-profile game. Over at GamePlasma, one of their eagle-eyed reviewers was struck with a strong case of deja vu when he was playing through the adventure game. Namely, he noticed a lot of the game’s environments looked exactly like those in The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. He even posted several screenshots from both games for comparison, such as the two shown above. It really is hard to deny how almost exactly alike the environments look, from the textures, to the placement of different objects, to having the exact same portrait under the stairs. Other image comparisons even show bookshelves arranged with the exact same objects in the exact some positions. At this time, it seems neither Bethesda nor Tri Synergy (publishers of Oblivion and Limbo of the Lost, respectively) have any comment on the matter. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.

Via GamePlasma