Game Craic Is Now Dot Com!

Our new video games and movie reviews website Game Craic is now officially our own website.

The new address is www.Game-Craic.com, with daily news updates and reviews, bringing you the best craic around. Currently, we only do video gaming and the odd movie news update, but we're soon to be doing weekly videos and eventually adding a comic book section to the website.

So, don't forget to check us out over at Game Craic, and feel free to join in or ignite any discussions in the comment section below the articles. Feedback is more than welcome.

If you have Twitter, then you can follow us @Game_Craic

Cheers,
Jay.

Time for something new!

Hey Gamers!

Game Craic

I have pretty much moved web locations now, and I don't have much time to do any posts for this blog any more. Not only am I currently writing for the internet magazine Blogcritics.org, but I am a co-founder of a brand new blog (soon to be website) for all of the gaming news, previews and reviews you will ever need, with a movie section soon to be introduced into the mix. Our new to-be website is called Game Craic, and you can find us here.

You can follow me on Twitter (epixx_Jb) by clicking here, and you can follow Game Craic on Twitter (Game_Craic) by clicking here.

We hope that you will get involved and keep up to date with our articles!

See you around, and thank you to all,

Jayhmmz (''')(O.o)(''')

ArmA 2: Free-to-Play

Hey Gamers!

Ever wanted to give the tactical war shooter ArmA 2 a try, but never ended up getting round to it? Well then ponder no more! Developer Bohemia Interactive have recently announced that their multiplayer version of ArmA 2 will be available as a Free-to-Play download towards the end of this month, June 2011. I for one am one of those people who always took an interest in the game, but never did get that final push to purchase it, so this time around I will definitely give it a try.

Once the game is released for download, there will be no mod support. However, gamers will be able to create missions and scenarios for up to 50 players at a time, to keep ArmA 2 as fresh as possible, to add a little bit of longevity to the game; not bad for a free download, I must say.

If you haven't ever heard of ArmA 2 before, or you just simply need more information on the game, then click here.

Battlefield 3: Multiplayer

Hey Gamers!

Battlefield 3 itself looks absolutely stunning, as you have most probably seen yourself. However, I am more interested in the Multiplayer aspect, rather than the campaign, even though I wish the campaign to be brilliant as well. After having played every single major Battlefield release since Battlefield 1942 came out back in 2002, EA DICE have never failed to provide us with an epic and stable online service, and it has been one of those games to really shine in the first person shooter genre. The Battlefield series never did have a single player campaign until the release of Bad Company, so it has pretty much always been a multiplayer-dedicated franchise. Because of this, and having a lot of practice with the multiplayer aspect of the game, they always deliver perfection, and I will not be expecting Battlefield 3 to be anything less than perfect - if anything, it looks more than perfect.

Click here to see a very pleasing interview with Lars Gustavsson from EA DICE, as he talks to Gamespot about Battlefield 3 multiplayer. He basically says that everything good about the Battlefield and Bad Company games will be melded in to one epic experience, with lots more features and improvements on top of what is already a successful creation. On top of all of the nice little features and changes though, I am most excited about the reintroduction of fighter jets!

Even though Modern Warfare 3 is predicted to outsell Battlefield 3 in the opening days of the game's releases, I do believe that Battlefield 3 will end up outselling MW3 overall, and it will no doubt rise way above Call of Duty's lack of ideas and direction.

In EA DICE we trust!

Star Wars: The Old Republic Beta

Hey Gamers!
I received an email from EA today, notifying me that there are still spots open to become Beta tester for the highly anticipated MMORPG from Bioware and LucasArts, Star Wars: The Old Republic.
It's going to be the same deal as Call of Duty: Elite (as explained in my previous blog post), however, you will need to register yourself and create an account on the website before you can enter yourself for a chance to be a tester for the game; easy peasy though. 



To apply, click here!

Fingers crossed for those who apply, including myself!
Hope you're all good.

Call of Duty: Elite Beta

Hey Gamers! 


This is my first dedicated post on this blog for quite some time now, as I've just been copying and pasting some of my published stuff over on Blogcritics onto here... so yeah, I've been a bit lazy in that sense! I'm going to try and spend more time on my own blog from now on, as well as doing my work for the website magazine, just so I can get some news bulletins out to you all with hast; let's start with a popular franchise, shall we?


It was announced today that Activision will be making a Beta version of Call of Duty: Elite available for players to test out, just so that they can get it perfect for the release of MW3, I presume (let's hope that the game is near perfect, eh?). Call of Duty: Elite is a social networking service for gamers who will be playing MW3, which will allow players to befriend people, chat with people, group up with people and start a clan with friends and total strangers... Codbook?


If you want to be considered as a Beta tester for CoD Elite, then you will have to register your details here, and hope that you get a spot! Also, you can read more about Call of Duty: Elite, here.


Hope you're all good! Thanks for reading.

L.A. Noire

Seeing as the L.A. Noire hype is in full swing now, I've been re-watching some videos and reading up on some details on what is included in Rockstar's new title. One of the features that keeps on impressing me is the attention to detail on the facial expressions of the characters; it's mind blowing! So, I dug a little deeper to get some information for all of you who aren't quite sure on how they do it.


The method of creating the facial expressions for the characters isn't like any other methods that have been used before; this is the first time that something like this has been done for a big title release in the videogame industry. It uses Depth Analysis's newly developed technology called MotionScan. MotionScan uses 32 High Definition cameras which surrounds an actor/actress, and the cameras capture the facial expressions from every angle possible, to create a realistic looking in-game character without the use of animation; it's pretty damn cool, and the results are phenomenal. You can read more about MotionScan here.

Now that this technology is available for videogames, more and more developers will hopefully follow in L.A. Noire's footsteps, and integrate this into their own games. This will then give us gamers convincing looking characters as well as the already-achievable (but not always achieved) convincing voice acting.

The future for videogames is looking very bright indeed.

Article first published as L.A. Noire's Motion Capture Technology on Blogcritics, by Jay Blundell.