Far Cry 2

There's more than one weekend game download sale going on. Both Steam and Direct2Drive are offering a special deal on pre-ordering Far Cry 2, the upcoming Ubisoft open world shooter that's due out later this fall. If you pre-order the game in full from either one of those download services, you can get the original Far Cry game for free.'

This is the original 2004 release that was the first game from developer Crytek and the first to use their Cryengine software. That game took place on an island, had mutant humans roaming about and while it had large outdoor levels it wasn't an open world like Far Cry 2's Africa setting. This free game offer, (worth about $10) is only for Labor Day weekend only; this offer expires on Tuesday.

The development team working on Far Cry 2 discuss putting in a sense to total immersion into their game and world.

Download the Far Cry 2 "Immersion" HD Video (77 MB)

Ubisoft's upcoming open world shooter Far Cry 2 has a lot of people expecting it will be great. So, apparently, does Ubisoft who are now in early development of the next game in the series at their Montreal studios. Videogaming247 has a quote from team member Patrick Redding who confirmed the plans during last week's Games Convention.

Interestingly, the dev team will apparently keep Far Cry 2's Africa setting for the follow-up game with Redding saying, "There are still things we want to do with the African setting, and I think it's safe to say we'll continue to explore it." While he says other locations might be considered for other titles in the series, he adds, "I think to save time, for us, one of the reasons we chose to use the African setting is because we felt that in order to retain the Far Cry brand value, of an exotic, dangerous environment, a place that maybe people haven't had a chance to see themselves, or have seen extensively in film, television and other games, we wanted to choose Africa."

While the game industry is beginning to understand that they can sell high profile games any time of the year the truth is that the time period between the first of September and the first week of December remains the biggest time of the year for new games to be released. 2008 seems to be no exception to this rule as PC gamers have a ton of new and promising titles to choose from this year.

So which games are we most looking forward to playing this fall? Well it so happens that we have created a feature gallery that has our picks for the PC game titles we most want to play in the next few months. That list include a long awaited MMO, a new expansion pack to the biggest MMO, an alternate history RTS game, a number of great looking first person shooters, a post-apocalyse RPG and a title that some are already declaring "the greatest game ever made." (in fact you can get a clue as to one of the games on our list from this custom case mode we saw at QuakeCon).

Our list of games is ordered by their scheduled release dates. Keep in mind while checking our picks that release dates can and do change at the last minute. Our picks represent the best info on these dates at the time of the posting of this article but if any changes are announced afterward we will report on them on the news site.

Click on the image above to continue reading "Most Anticipated Fall 2008 PC Games"

Ubisoft created the engine for their upcoming open world first person shooter Far Cry 2 from scratch and one of the big features is the game's map editor which will allow folks to make their own multiplayer maps for the game. For Games Convention, Ubisoft released a new trailer showing off the map editor in action.

Both the PC and console versions of the game will get their own map editors but as you might suspect the PC editor has far more options that can be used to create levels in the game (unfortunately there's no single player level building support). Check out the trailer and the editor screenshots along with some new Far Cry 2 single player level action. The game itself is still schedule for release this fall.


Download the Far Cry 2 map editor HD trailer at Big Download now

Sure, Far Cry 2's "The Jackal" trailer looks amazing, but what does it all mean? The trailer flashes by so quickly that it's easy to miss out on some of the details. So, the game developers at Ubisoft deconstruct the trailer for you, highlighting different aspects of the game. Far Cry 2 is scheduled to release in fall of 2008.

Download the HD narrated Far Cry 2 "The Jackal" Trailer (40 MB)

The latest Far Cry 2 trailer takes us back to the African Savannah, where we get a brief montage of all the different characters players will encounter while playing, along with plenty of combat and explosions. The entire game centers on the player's effort to kill a man named The Jackal. From the looks of things, he should be watching his back carefully by the time you're ready for him.

Download the Far Cry 2 "The Jackal" HD Trailer (565 MB)

Far Cry 2 recently made a long trip to Jönköping, Sweden to make an appearance at Dreamhack, the world's largest LAN party in computer games festival. The video documents more about Dreamhack and its caffeinated, sleep deprived, camped-out gamers than the game itself, but it's still fun to watch.

Download Far Cry 2 at Dreamhack HD Video

Here's a question that many of you have been wondering about? "Can Ubisoft's upcoming first person open world shooter Far Cry 2 run on my PC rig?" Well, we can't go about answering that question for every single one of you but we have the next best thing; the official system requirements for the game as presented on the Far Cry 2 message boards.

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS:

CPU: Pentium 4 3.2 Ghz, Pentium D 2.66 Ghz, AMD Athlon 64 3500+ or better
RAM: 1 GB
Video card: NVidia 6800 or ATI X1650 or better
Shader Model 3 required
256 Mb of graphic memory
Media reader: DVD-ROM
Hard drive space: ~12 Gig of HD space. (TBD)

RECOMMENDED:

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo Family, AMD 64 X2 5200+, AMD Phenom or better
RAM: 2 GB
Video card: NVidia 8600 GTS or better, ATI X1900 or better
512 Mb of graphic memory
Sound: 5.1 sound card recommended

SUPPORTED VIDEO CARDS:

NVidia 6800, NVidia 7000 series, 8000 series, 9000 series, 200 series. 8800M and 8700M supported for laptops.
ATI X1650 – 1950 series, HD2000 series, HD3000 series, HD4000 series.

It looks like the minimal requirements will be higher than the 2007 title Crysis which "only" needed a 2.8 Ghx Pentium 4 or an AMD Athlon 2800+ for its processor and either an GeForce 6800 GT or an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro for its minimal rig.

We named this game our most anticipated PC title of E3 2008 and when we went behind closed doors at Ubisoft's meeting room to check out a PC demo build of Far Cry 2 our expectations were certainly high. We came away from the demo impressed by the game's promise, even though we are still scratching our heads as to why the game is even named Far Cry 2. With the exception of a couple of minor similarities, there's really nothing that ties in this game with Crytek's original 2004 shooter.

The game takes place in a section of Africa where your character has to take out an arms dealer that's up to no good. One of the many interesting features in Far Cry 2 is that you can select a different character that is set up with different weapons. Some have powerful but close range weapons while others have longer range arms to set up. There's no sci-fi or mutants here; Far Cry 2 is deadly serious.

Never has there been a game so aptly named.

Far Cry 2, from Ubisoft Montreal, may sport the same name as the Crytek original but the game is completely different according to the developer. Focusing on a more realistic shooter experience, Far Cry 2 is doing away with insane alien baddies and instead focusing on the environment and strong gameplay mechanics. This trailer showcases some of the African setting and introduces players to Reuben Monday-Oluwagembi (it even teases his personal blog), the journalist who seems to be reporting on a man stalking through the smoldering heat -- the title's antagonist, the player. So far the game looks great. Let's see if this one can keep us engaged the way the original almost did. Far Cry 2 is set to release this October.

[via X3F]

Your daily wrap-up of the hottest stories in PC gaming over the weekend.

	Big Download's most anticipated PC games of E3 2008: 5-1 There have been tons of great cliffhanger endings in history. Will Han Solo get out of that carbonite casing? Will Captain Picard get free of the Borg? Who shot J.R. Ewing? Who is the final undiscovered Cylon? We can now add one more cliffhanger to this list. "What games will Big Download pick as the five most anticipated PC games for E3 2008?"
	Big Download's most anticipated PC games of E3 2008: Wild Cards In the past five days we have revealed our picks for the 25 most anticipated games that might be shown at E3 2008. However there are a number of other titles that we are looking forward to seeing at the show as well that didn't quite make the list. There are also some games that might be officially revealed at the show for the first time.
	Big Download's E3 Week Prediction Bingo Come join Big Download in our first annual game of PC E3 Announcement bingo, where we fill a bingo card with some of the likely (and unlikely) things that could happen in the world of computer gaming.
	Big Versus: Civilization IV and Revolution Since the early 1990s, Sid Meier's Civilization franchise has challenged strategy enthusiasts to shape an empire and make their mark in virtual history. While PC gamers enjoy the latest expansion for Civilization IV, Beyond the Sword, they may not realize Firaxis Games has been hard at work redefining the conventions that made the original series so popular in the console exclusive, Civilization Revolution.
	Freeware Friday: I Wanna Be The Guy There's always a lot of nostalgia going on in the freeware scene. From developers taking inspiration from classic games, to outright stealing their concepts, it's not too uncommon to find a game of the kind that you loved so many years ago. This game, however, is not to be loved. No, this week I'm going to tell you about a game that reduces most gamers to tears because of its difficulty. This game, the one that will drive you insane, is I Wanna Be The Guy.

If you were looking forward to test driving Ubisoft's upcoming first person shooter Far Cry 2 in a demo before it's release, we have some bad news. According to a new chat in Eurogamer Ubisoft rep Clint Hocking has revealed that the developer/publisher has no current plans to provide such a demo.

According to Hocking, even if they were to release a demo that made players check out a small portion of the game's enviroment he claims that there would still be 8 to 10 hours of gameplay in that small section and the decision is not to give out a free demo with that much gameplay. This is not the the first time Ubisoft has made thi kind of move. They also didn't release a demo for 2007's Assassin's Creed for similar reasons.

There have been tons of great cliffhanger endings in history. Will Han Solo get out of that carbonite casing? Will Captain Picard get free of the Borg? Who shot J.R. Ewing? Who is the final undiscovered Cylon? We can now add one more cliffhanger to this list. "What games will Big Download pick as the five most anticipated PC games for E3 2008?". Yes we know you have been waiting with baited breath to find out the answer to this hugely important question. Well, your prayers have now been answered. We have now arrived at our choices for the top five PC games we are most looking forward to seeing at the 2008 E3 Media and Business Summit. Will the game that you are most interested in be on this list? Read on for the conclusion to our report. Again you can look back for our picks for 25-21, 20-16, 15-11 and 10-6.

As we mentioned in our previous articles, these are just our predictions on what games will be shown at the event; many of these titles have not been officially confirmed to be at E3 as of this writing. Also, there's no Activision Blizzard titles on this list due to the new massive publisher bypassing E3 but a press conference by Activision Blizzard on Tuesday during E3 is highly expected to show some upcoming titles from that newly merged publisher. With that out of the way let's look at our picks for the next five games on our list.

While Ubisoft has been creating their upcoming first person shooter Far Cry 2 for multiple platforms, a new Q&A on Gamasutra states that the game is being developed with the PC as the primary development system. The game's engineering director Dominic Guay states that the game, which is using Ubisoft's in-house Dunia graphics engine, is being developed as a PC game first but that it will be scalable to run well on lower end machines as well as high end rigs.

Guay also states that these days it's harder to make a high end PC game profitable because he feels the market wouldn't support it; hence the decision to develop Far Cry 2 for the Xbox 360 and PS3 as well. He states, "I think that someone who has a high-end PC and a console will probably prefer to get it on the PC, if he likes shooters. But people who have an older PC might prefer to get it on console, to get a stable experience. It's the same game, and it'll have solid 30 frames per second everywhere."