There’s a new WW2 strategy game on the horizon dealing with the dreaded eastern front; Gary Grigsby’s War in the East: The German-Soviet War 1941-1945. This is the latest in the turn-based combat simulation that stretches from Berlin to Leningrad and into the Urals. Play the Soviet Union under the banner Mother Russia using slash and burn on your own land to deny German troops supplies. Or you can take the reigns of the German army under Hitler’s command and try to succeed where Napoleon failed. whatever your choice you”re sure to face your toughest opponent, the harsh Russian winters.

Gary Grigsby’s War in the East: The German-Soviet War 1941-1945 is slated for a late 2009 release. Get the intricate details following the break.

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If you haven’t heard yet, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has threatened, in a roundabout way, to drop his company’s support for PS3 if Sony doesn’t consider a price cut.

According to MCV, Kotick said in an interview,

“I’m getting concerned about Sony – the PS3 is losing a bit of momentum and they don’t make it easy for me to support the platform. It’s expensive to develop for the console, and the Wii and the Xbox are just selling better. Games generate a better return on invested capital on the Xbox than on the PlayStation.

They have to cut the price, because if they don’t, the attach rates are likely to slow. If we are being realistic, we might have to stop supporting Sony. When we look at 2010 and 2011, we might want to consider if we support the console — and the PSP too.”

That’s a big shot fired across Sony’s bow. So, will Sony take him seriously, and how will they respond?

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dragon age origins

Bioware, long the favorites of PC RPG fans are firing up the information train to release new trailer and new screens for its upcoming magnum opus – Dragon Age: Origins. While the movies all make folks drool and the screens look exciting one key question every PC gamer asks is: “Will I have to upgrade to play this beast?”

Well as of today we have the final system requirments for the game, and its likely that anyone who owns a moderately powerful modern PC will be able to play it in at least Neverwinter Nights 1, 1995 style graphic mode. As expected the requirements for Vista are a bit higher than their XP counterpart but both have a sizable hard drive footprint – 20GB! Wow! The game will also be released on the Sony PS3 and Microsoft Xbox 360 console this October.

Here are the Specs:

Windows XP Minimum Specifications
OS: Windows XP with SP3
CPU: Intel Core 2 (or equivalent) running at 1.4Ghz or greater
AMD X2 (or equivalent) running at 1.8Ghz or greater
RAM: 1GB or more
Video: ATI Radeon X850 128MB or greater
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT 128MB or greater
DVD ROM (Physical copy)
20 GB HD space

Windows Vista Minimum Specifications
OS: Windows Vista with SP1
CPU: Intel Core 2 (or equivalent) running at 1.6Ghz or greater
AMD X2 (or equivalent) running at 2.2GHZ or greater
RAM: 1.5 GB or more
Video: ATI Radeon X1550 256MB or greater
NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT 256MB or greater
DVD ROM (Physical copy)
20 GB HD space

Recommended Specifications
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4Ghz Processor or equivalent
RAM: 4 GB (Vista) or 2 GB (XP)
Video: ATI 3850 512 MB or greater
NVIDIA 8800GTS 512 MB or greater
DVD ROM (Physical copy)
20 GB HD space

Along with the resurrection of the site.. we’ll be bringing back out regular editorial content as well. To kick off our first weekend back I thought I’d get The Analog Gamer back up and running quickly as well. First out of the box I wanted to take the opportunity to highlight a game I’m sure many of the mainstream RPG players have never heard of – Untold.

I’ll let the following interview with one of the game’s creators explain exactly what Untold is but lets just say this is not your normal pen and paper RPG concept. Click through to the jump to read through my interview with Brannon Hollingsworth, Untold’s co-creator and one of the talented folks from The Wandering Men Studios. You can also find out more about Untold itself on its official website.

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Hopefully all of you out there have gotten your fill of turkey and all the fixings and are ready to sit back and relax now that the family mayhem has subsided. What better way to do that than to play a couple of PC demos or patch some of your current games? If this sounds good to you, FileFront has plenty to offer this week. They may not help you lose the extra pounds you gained, but they will at least get your mind off of the left overs that your mother sent home with you.

Demos

• Command & Conquer Red Alert 3: This single-player demo features the game’s cinematic opening, one full campaign mission from both the Soviet and Allied campaigns, and an interactive tutorial. The full game features 3 full campaigns (all playable solo or co-op online), a skirmish mode pitting you against nine formidable commanders, and competitive online multiplayer.

• StuntMANIA!pro v3.0.0: Fast paced 3D car stunt driving game, where you get to perform the most amazing tricks and stunts in some really cool environments. You can select any of the NINE amazing stunt cars and play either timed games, challenge games or just go crazy and have fun. Are there any limitations in the demo version? Yes.You are limited to playing only one stunt car (Razor), you can only play one environment (Trixter Park) but in both Daytme and Nighttime modes, you cant play AIR SPEED FREAK or BONUS ROUNDUP games, you are unable to save your scores and stunt rankings are not kept for you. (Mac version is can be found here: StuntMANIA!pro v3.0.0 Mac Demo)

• Zombie Shooter 2: In the sequel Sigma Team strives to put all the best features of Zombie Shooter and Alien Shooter series, player’s needs and suggestions have been listened to, as well as improved gfx, larger variety of enemies, more vehicle types, and more than 50 weapons and accessories.

• Professor Heinz Wolff`s Gravity: Deep Silver has released a demo for Professor Heinz Wolff’s Gravity. The demo contains a tutorial, as well as five attractive levels with varied degrees of difficulty and gorgeous, hand-painted backgrounds. Just like in the real game, virtual professor Heinz Wolff will provide you with helpful hints. The aim of Professor Heinz Wolff’s Gravity is to place various building blocks correctly in each level, in order to move a ball to a given target point. To that end, players must take the force of gravity into consideration and cleverly place differently shaped objects, so that their physical connection will trigger forces of leverage and chain reactions. The steadily rising learning curve introduces PC and console puzzlers to the easy-to-learn, entertaining principle of the game, and helps them to familiarize themselves with physical and mechanical effects. Various possible solutions and beautiful hand-illustrated themed backgrounds make for plenty of variety.

• Geneforge 5: Overthrow – Mac: Spiderweb Software brings you Geneforge 5: Overthrow, the final chapter in their fantasy epic. Return to the world of the Shapers one final time. Explore a vast, war-torn world, create and mold your own army of strange, powerful monsters, and choose a side to help lead to final victory.

• Qwak Demo: Experience super-playable coin-op style action, in this cute platformer, available NOW on your PC.

As always, for the full list of demos and patches, click here and here.

Patches are listed after the jump.

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Shacknews is reporting that Electronic Arts forum users and owners of Spore and Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 and other EA published titles may get banned from their games if they are banned from the forums. Apparently, EA has changed their policy on their forums and when these changes go into effect, your forum login will be attached to your Master EA Account.

According to C&C Community Manager Aaron Kaufman a.k.a. “eaapoc“, gamers who violate the Terms of Service agreement within the forums can be banned from all EA-moderated forums and any EA game they may have purchased. What this means is that if you act unsavory in forums, you could be banned from posting and also banned from playing your game because your account and serial number are all connected.

Pulled straight from the forum, here is the post from eaapoc that has so many people in an uproar:

“Your forum account will be directly tied to your Master EA Account, so if we ban you on the forums, you would be banned from the game as well since the login process is the same. And you’d actually be banned from your other EA games as well since its all tied to your account. So if you have Spore and Red Alert 3 and you get yourself banned on our forums or in-game, well, your Spore account would be banned to. It’s all one in the same, so I strongly recommend people play nice and act mature.

All in all, we expect people to come on here and abide by our ToS. We hate banning people, it makes our lives a lot tougher, but its what we have to do.

Those banned will stay banned, but like most other internet services, its not that hard to create a new fake e-mail account. However, its a lot harder to get a new serial key =)”

When further questioned by another forum user, Kaufman elaborated that you must be in severe violation of the ToS to be banned, and since all EA accounts are tied together, acting inappropriately can have dire consequences:

“It’s clearly stated in our “Terms of Service” that your actions on the forums can impact your in-game status. Your forum account is tied to your EA account, that’s not for a bad reason, it’s so we can tie all your stats and profile and such together.

Further, breaking our ToS and getting yourself banned is not easy if you act like a normal mature human being.”

So what will happen if you get in an online argument with a forum moderator who develops a grudge against you and bans you just for the simple fact that he can? How is this fair considering that you paid $50 and upwards for your EA published game and are suddenly no longer able to play it?

Shacknews brought that bit of questioning up as well when they sited the scandal that broke back in September when Spore players were threatened with being banned for discussing the DRM in the forums. The thread discussing Spore’s DRM was locked and a message was posted saying that if anyone continued to discuss it that they were at risk of being banned which “in some cases would mean you would need to buy a new copy to play Spore”.

EA responded, called it a case of “mis-communication” posted by an “over-zealous community volunteer” and said that all forum users were free to discuss DRM or anything else they like as long as it was kept civil.

Looking over the Terms of Service agreement, nothing is really stated in regards to what will happen to you should you violate the ToS, and the only thing that caught me off guard a bit was the phrase “Specific EA Services may also post additional rules that apply to your conduct on those services”, which means that each EA site possibly has more rules of conduct, who knows what your punishment will be should you act in a way they personally do not find redeemable.

While it is understandable for forum moderators to remove posts or ban certain members for continue to post vulgarity, harassing or racist comments, or spam – how does this give them the right to keep people from playing a game that they paid for legally? We are all familiar with some of the different types of people in online forums and communities, and while some may be annoying, perverted and insulting at times, they still have every right to play a game they have purchased no matter if they act like an ill-mannered baboon or not.

Hopefully EA will clear this up soon like they did the last time, and if it is indeed the case that gamers will be banned from their games, EA should seriously consider getting out of the business of videogames, because otherwise they will start losing more money than they ever dreamed.

Jim Crowley, Turbine’s president and CEO, revealed some interesting news this morning at the Tokyo Game Show that should get Lord of the Rings Online players pretty excited. Apparently, the company plans on adding social a networking site to the MMORPG by years end that will be reminiscent of MySpace and Facebook and connected to the online world.

Not only will gamers be able to display full character profiles and upload other gaming data from LOTRO, but they will also have the ability to add friends, view live news feeds, and share videos via a YouTube style feature.

Speaking to Eurogamer, Crowley described the new tool as “a version of Facebook or MySpace that sits directly on top of the gaming world. This is a fully-featured, rich, robust social network. It has every single feature that you would find in the major commercial social networks such as Facebook and MySpace.”

Fully expected to launch by the end of the year, Crowely feels that MMOs are in a position to integrate “web-literate” players into a Web 2.0 network attached to the games, and that Turbine’s other online games Dungeons & Dragons Online and Asheron’s Call will also be able to get in on the networking come late 2008 or during 2009. This would eventually make Turbine more money as well by “extending the lifetime value of the customer and driving “viral customer acquisition” by getting gamers more involved in the online world they are paying a monthly fee for.

“Turbine believes that a closed eco-system will have to become an open eco-system. The MMO needs to learn… to adapt itself to the ‘born digital’ generation. The MMO needs to step out of its shell and start reaching a much broader and deeper audience.”

He went on to elaborate that this is a great opportunity for developers to take advantage of advertising without ruining the games by riddling them with product placements.

“It allows you to inject advertising in a way that’s not in conflict with the game world,” he said. “It’s natural to it, something you see across the web 2.0 space.”

This is great news for players who want to socialize with their Kinships or other online friends in a more in-depth way than just going on grinding missions together. From a personal standpoint, it would be fun to be able to delve deeper into my character and show off some of the cool things I have accomplished that you just cannot see when inspecting an online character; plus it would be nice if you can sign in to the network without signing into the game as well. That way, you can check on your friends’ progress from your mobile without having to be near the computer your game is installed on. Maybe in the future, gaming companies will find a way to integrate all MMOs into one social network so that others can stay up to date on all of your online characters – not just one specific game.

True Fantasy Live Online and Marvel Universe Online have something in common aside from wanting their title to convey the fact that they are (or were, at least) online — both games were MMOs being published by Microsoft that were ultimately canceled. Microsoft Game Studios clearly has had a death touch of sorts when it comes to MMOs, which is a subject former MGS general manager turned corporate VP Shane Kim discussed with Edge recently.

“I’ll admit MGS has not had success in the MMO space, and that happened under my leadership, so I take full responsibility,” he said. “It’s a tough and challenging space that’s evolving all the time – a lot of shifting sands. We haven’t been able to crack the code.”

Given that Microsoft has clearly been the most aggressive in the online space of the three console manufacturers, it seems pretty backwards that they’ve been so unable to get an MMO to the market.

Kim continued, “Game development is hard enough as it is – in the MMO space you’re talking an even bigger investment, basically double. So it does add that layer of complexity – we just haven’t found that right mix.

“…I think we’ve made the right decision not to proceed with those things like the Marvel MMO. And that’s tough, both for customers looking forward to it and teams working on it. That said, we haven’t been successful, but there’s nothing to say those titles can’t be successful on 360.”

Final Fantasy XI is one of the few MMOs available on the system which, don’t forget, has the critical flaw of not having a standard hard drive included with each console.

“There’s a lot of ongoing work,” Kim said. “I think those are real challenges, and I know that our third-party folks want to enable all kinds of content and we work very hard to create a stable and secure environment on Xbox 360 and that’s where you see that tension. I’m sure we can solve that problem though in a way that is good for MMO developers and customers because we want that content: and we’re getting very close. But we’re late with that, and we feel bad about that.”

Until they prove otherwise, I’d recommend this: don’t get too attached to any MMOs you see coming out of Microsoft. I was looking forward to True Fantasy back when it was poised to be release on Xbox 1, so imagine my disappointment when I found out that was disappointed… and then had it happen again to Marvel.

The announcement that Jade Raymond is now attached to Ubisoft’s new IP, I Am Alive, fills me with two reactions. One is optimism, because if Ubisoft is pushing someone of Raymond’s caliber and guaranteed media coverage onto this project now, that means they must think they have something special on their hands. My other reaction though is dread, because now we can look forward to the dregs of the internet focusing more on Raymond’s looks than the actual game she’s working on all over again, just like with Assassin’s Creed. At any rate, I Am Alive is set to debut next week at E3, so hopefully we’ll get to find out what it’s actually about then. Based on the title, my best guess it’s the long overdue video game adaptation of the 1993 film, Alive, which chronicles the trials of the Donner party as their plane crashes in the Andes, and they’re forced to resort to cannibalism to survive. I’m thinking maybe something like Cooking Mama?
Via Gamekyo

TAC’s Widow Maker Bass Guitar Controller, which is 100% Compatible with all Guitar Hero games plus Rock Band for the PS2 and PS3 is now available at retail for $69.99. The Widow Maker Bass Guitar is the first bass guitar controller on the market to feature:

• 4-1 compatibility
• PowerThief Power Saving Mode – Automatically powers the controller off when the unit senses inactivity to squeeze every last drop of power out of battery packs
• AutoSense 2.4GHz Wireless – Unlike infrared systems on other controllers that require a direct line of sight to the console, it automatically detects available single or multi-user RF channels to provide a 30 foot radius of 2.4GHz wireless connectivity
• 360 FLY Function – Special design for the controller to attach to the belt clip with a single pivot point, which allows players to spin the controllers wildly, paying homage to flashy acrobatic visual effects made famous by ZZ Top, Cheap Trick and others! See http://www.youtube.com/theantcommandos.
• Xtended Fret Button Array – A second set of FeatherTouch fret buttons high on the neck enables players to jam like the pros by jumping to the higher set of fret buttons for world-class solos—and return to the lower set to rock out rhythm parts
• Low Battery Indicator – When the battery is low, the Red light will blink. No more guessing
• Patented Button Cluster – Specially designed button cluster features a recessed Start button that prevents players from accidentally pausing the game in the middle of a blistering jams
• Super Whammy System – Finely tuned with a high density precision coil spring assembly, it provides reliable operation for many years of extreme abuse from rock ‘n’ roll animals
• ComfortNeck – Exciting new neck dimensions and a specially designed contoured edge provides a more comfortable grip on the neck, which reduces finger fatigue even after many hours of play
• TickleTilt Sensor – The smart TickleTilt Sensor incorporates two separate sensitive sensors so players can activate Star Power by lightly tilting the controller
• Whammy-wah food Pedal Connection – Expansion port for future connection to Whammy-Wah foot pedal for Star Power and whammy.
• PlayStation 3 D-Pad & Home Button Support – Designed and built-in for your navigational convenient when not playing the game.

The bass guitar controller features FeatherTouch Fret Buttons which are undercoated with new, stronger rubber cushions for a “clickier” feel when pressed. Using the Widow Maker to lay down their bass rhythms, gamers will be able to rock out to all versions of Rock Band or Guitar Hero for the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3.

Bass guitar fans will love all of the special features that the Widow Maker is equipped with. One of the hottest new elements is the 360 FLY Function Clip where special button clips allow for strap-free game play and the wild spinning of the controller so gamers can perform similar moves just like their most idolized guitarists. A unique button cluster with a recessed Start button will enable players to let loose and go wild without accidentally pausing the game during a jam session. Additionally, its new PowerThief power saving mode automatically conserves precious battery power for extended hours of play. For the comfort of gamers, the Widow Maker features a specially-designed contoured edge which provides a more comfortable grip on the neck, reducing finger fatigue after a late-night jam session. Realistic tothe slightest detail, the Widow Maker Bass guitar controller features a stylish headstock with five tuning pegs, and it even functions as a six-string controller if necessary.

A bit pricey, but if you decide to get one, let us know what you think of it.

Via: Press Release