I paid a visit to the Modern Electronics shop in Sabco center the other day to check the latest games. I was greeted by the salesman with the news that God of War III, Heavy Rain and White Knight Chronicles have been banned in Oman. He told me that the ministry people came over and asked them not to sell these games or else they will be in trouble. I cant remember the last time such thing happened here. Game shops didn’t have any trouble selling God of War games before even though they were banned in the other golf countries.

I guess this is a sign that someone finally woke up and realized that a lot of the games being sold these days contain sex, nudity & extreme violence. I can totally understand why they banned God of War III and Heavy Rain but why the heck did they ban White Knight Chronicles ? I haven’t played it so if you played it please let me know if it has inappropriate contents.

This is bad news for me, I delayed my purchase of God of War III because the price of it was pretty high when it first arrived and also because I still didn’t finish God of War II, and after the ban the price went even higher and the game became rare to find. I’m close into finishing God of War II and I don’t think I’ll have the patience to wait for God of War III‘s price to come down. May god help my wallet!!

I don’t believe in banning games. If we ban mature games then we might as well ban all the R rated movies in the market. The best solution is to put strict rules that forces shops owners to follow the ESRB ratings and never sell mature games to teenagers. I know it’s not an easy thing but it’s still much better than banning the game itself. Does banning games prevent the shops from selling these banned games ? They will keep selling them but the only difference they’re not on display and also its an opportunity for them to sell it at a high price.

Be happy that it wasn’t a total black out!

BBC News has the full story.

Oh and that also means NO WoW!!!

Since they are fairly new, don’t expect a lot but you can be sure to find the latest games at prices that are far cheaper than the rip-off prices of Al-Emad (25 RO for Wrath of the Lich King anyone!) and I hope they don’t get Omanized when it comes to prices and stick closer to the UAE prices which are still expensive but nowhere near as Al-Emad outrageous prices.

The store still lacks a lot of hardware and currently have a few shelves with new games. Hopefully that will improve and will get better. They are already beating Al-Emad when it comes to pricing (18 RO for Wotlk!) and maybe that will pressure Al-Emad to use proper pricing this time since this will create competition.

You can call Oman Geekay at +968 24470498 and +0968 24470499. Their email is gkoman@geekaygames.ae.

Crytek, the developers of the very much hyped yet great game: Crysis will soon be releasing the Standalone expansion of the game named Crysis Warhead. The game story is the same as the first one except this time you get to play as Psycho instead of Nomad. The single player levels will be more action packed than before with a lot of improvements almost everywhere. The multiplayer has been also tweaked and also the big question answered: Will it run better? YES IT WILL. The first two reviews that went online already are giving great scores for the game. IGN gave it 9.4 while Eurogamer (which was harsh on MGS4) gave it 9/10. The reviews already say that it can run at high resolutions on Enthusiast (Very High) setting pretty well on a 8800 GTS card. Ofcourse no mention of Anti-Aliasing or Anisotropic Filtering being used. Still, the talk about performance optimizations are pretty evident in the reviews which is always good.

After Crysis was released, Crytek wasn’t happy on how the sales went and blamed it on piracy. So they already announced that they will stop releasing PC exclusives and might consider console releases. Though with the near release of Crysis Warhead (25th September 2008), in a surprise move, Crytek announced that both Crysis and Crysis Warhead are available on Steam! For those who don’t know, Steam is an application you can install on your PC and through it buy and download games. You can quickly learn more about Steam at store.steampowered.com/about. This marks the first EA game being released on Steam and questions are already floating on whether more games will follow (Red Alert 3!).

The reason for Crytek releasing both games on Steam is because it proved to be a very effective way to sell games with lesser risk of piracy and hence better sales which might help Crytek reconsider their PC exclusives direction, though I doubt.

Lastly, I went ahead and pre-ordered Crysis Warhead of Steam (it is released there on 16th of September) which is the first time I use it, lets see how it goes oh and keep an eye for MEGamers review.

For those waiting for Activision Blizzard‘s big hit RTS StarCraft II, a recent announcement hinted that the game won’t make it in 2008 and might end up being released in 2009 even though they are sticking with “when it’s done”. Knowing from Blizzard’s past, 2009 seems a more realistic release date than 2008 since they are pretty much famous for very long delays just to polish their games.

Another news tidbit that relates to StarCraft II is a possible fourth race to be included in the expansion. Since we all know by now that popular games do get expansions. Activision Blizzard noted that it was time consuming and difficult to include a fourth race in the base game. With races like humans, high tech aliens and brood monsterous aliens what kind of fourth race can we expect? Robots or bionics? One thing for sure, we won’t know before StarCraft II is released.

Check out the details regarding the release date at StarCraftWire.net and the fourth race tidbit at ShackNews.

Am sure by now you have noticed how much of a fan of Red Alert series I am. Why not when the game really focuses on fun factor a lot. Keep in mind I play almost every popular RTS out there too! Anyway, fan or not, EA are giving away the first Red Alert for FREE. Yep, no strings attached, no registration required, just a direct link to the compressed ISO images which you can load on a virtual CD or burn on a blank CD and get started playing the first Red Alert and second C&C game.

Scroll down at this EA link to get the download files.

In addition, if you pre-order Red Alert 3, you will instantly get Red Alert 2 with it for free. It isn’t really necessary to play the previous installements but it is great fun to pass time if you are waiting for Red Alert 3 to be released or just want to explore the old versions.

There has been a lot of talk lately with the advent of current generation consoles like XBox 360, PS3 and Wii about PC gaming being in decline. Most of the flak being shot because of the ongoing trend of PC developers are either going cross-platform, console first PC later or console exclusive development. Add to that the rampant piracy on the PC platform coupled with possible difficulty in developing for various hardware configurations versus a single platform configuration that is available on the consoles.

Yet what is being reported by the PC Gaming Alliance shows otherwise and that PC gaming is far from dieing thanks to online gaming power on the PC (MMOs anyone) and ability to directly download games to your PC (Steam everyone!) are some of the dominant yet few of the reasons why PC gaming will continue to breathe.

Check out the full report on PC Gaming Alliance website.

You read it right. Fileplanet are giving away limited number of Red Alert 3 Beta keys. Just head over to Fileplanet and register to get your key. Registration is free and takes a few seconds. As soon as you receive your beta key, just download the beta client (the game) version 1.03, install it, make an EA account when the game asks you to and you are set to join.

The Red Alert 3 Beta client will allow you to play as the Allies, Soviets or the new Empire of the Rising Sun (another name for Japan) and get to battle other players online on four maps: two 1v1 and two 2v2. Since the game is in beta, expect crashes and lots of bugs but rest assured with the help of many beta testers and you, things will get sorted out for the official release in October.

I will be writing a full blown Red Alert 3 Beta impressions soon at MEGamers so stay tuned for that.

Update: The Impressions is up at MEGamers, check it out.

Seems Sony still wasn’t satisfied with their PSP Slim model and went ahead to improve upon it. The new PSP 300 model is scheduled for release in October 2008. The improvements include the following:

• Anti-reflection technology: Much needed since playing outdoor sometimes gets annoying due to the reflections.
• Improved LCD contrast and color: Nice but nothing to brag here.
• Built in microphone for use with new games and out of the box Skype application: Based on your preference if you will use it or not.
• Slight improvements in size (very slight): Hardly noticeable.

So as you can see, the PSP 3000 is more of an update rather than something new. So if you haven’t got a PSP yet and was thinking to get one, then get this model. If you already have the PSP Slim, there is nothing you really missing out and the new features don’t warrant a purchase over the Slim. If you have the old PSP model (the bulky one), it might be worthy to check this out.

Command and Conquer 3: Kane’s Wrath is the expansion pack for the successful Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars. This is the first foray into 3D for the Tiberium Universe of the C&C series which started the RTS genre as we know it. Kane’s Wrath adds more units, sub factions, more multiplayer maps, a global conquest mode and 13 new single player missions to the core Tiberium Wars game.

The single player portion of the expansion focuses entirely on the NOD faction and Kane’s survival after the second Tiberium war, what led to the third Tiberium war and what happened next at the end. So through all the 13 new missions, you play as NOD only. The cut scenes do answer some questions about what happened between the second and third Tiberium wars from NODs perspective and explains some of the events happened during the third war in addition to the end. You will feel some disjoint sometimes if you aren’t familiar with the Tiberium universe story. The missions themselves are nothing special yet are fun for one or two days play, since they are easy and pretty much require destruction of your enemy’s base. Nothing ground breaking there.

The new global conquest mode is nothing new as well. It is very similar to the Lord of the Rings Battle for Middle Earth 2 War of the Ring mode. The idea is you have the whole map at display and you get to try taking as much territory to win or either by achieving curtain goals for each faction. The game plays in a turn based way. You make your moves and go for the next turn. Conflicts then can be resolved either by real time game play or via auto resolve which lets the computer determine who will win by comparing the two forces’ strengths. Personally, the global conquest mode doesn’t feel right and you really need to be good to win since making one or two mistakes can end the game easily.

Kane’s Wrath adds a lot of cool new units that change the balance of each faction yet still enhance the overall balance during conflicts. In addition, each faction has it’s own Epic unit. These are huge and powerful units that can seriously turn the tide of battle if properly used. Though they are left at the very end of the tech tree and are seriously expensive to build.

The new units are either shared or split throughout the six sub factions, two from each main faction. These sub factions are a more specialized version of their parent faction in a certain area. For example, the Black Hand NOD sub faction focuses on infantry and flame and has no stealth or air technology. The factions are marginally much more balanced when compare to C&C Generals Zero Hour sub factions.

Kane’s Wrath main feature is really the multiplayer section of the game. The layout is still the same of Tiberium Wars multiplayer where you can either ask for an auto match or go check the lobbies for matches that you want to participate in. With all these new units, maps and sub factions, Kane’s Wrath is really a lot of fun online. Add to that the dedication EA is giving to the C&C series, that new patches are more and more common these days with balance changes which are always important when dealing with online exploits. This is no Starcraft polish, but it is good enough to have a fair and fun online experience.

Nothing spectacular in terms of the graphics since it is really the old SAGE engine used in C&C General’s years ago with more shaders. So the game is smooth and will run on a wide selection of PC configurations. The music is mostly untouched and is the same from Tiberium Wars bar one track which is a remixed version of the NOD faction from the previous Tiberium game.

Kane’s Wrath is more of a fans’ expansion pack than for the general audience, yet if you are into online multiplayer RTS games, I strongly recommend you try this since it is fast and fun to play.