Talking to Eurogamer, Holly Valance said that she would “play a news reporter called Brenda Snow. She's investigating a research facility that might be doing some dodgy business, and thinks perhaps the president's involved. I interview him walking down a red carpet. He's played by Malcolm McDowell, which is super-cool. It's a camp, over-dramatised character, it's not too serious. It was fun to go a little bit over the top.” The music star turned actress turned object of interest for the players of Red Alert doesn't have a lot of gaming credentials. She admits to playing her Nintendo Wii and to owning an Xbox 360 from Microsoft and a PlayStation Portable from Sony. It's not clear whether the future star of Uprising has played Red Alert 3 or plans to spend some time with the upcoming expansion. Holly Valance has both a singing career and has starred in several movies, including one based on the Dead or Alive series of videogames (you can see the poster in the picture accompanying this article) and the thriller Taken, which was released to positive reviews in 2008, where she starred alongside Liam Neeson. She was born to a Serb father and a British mother and is 25 years old. Holly Valance says that she even played Dead or Alive preparing for the movie. |
Monday, January 12, 2009
Holly Valance to Star in Red Alert 3: Uprising
Nature::Sea Level to Rise 1 Meter in 100 Years
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, a branch of the United Nations that deals with assessing the effects of global warming on the globe, has estimated that sea levels worldwide will rise by about 30-35 centimeters in the next century, on account of the large quantities of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere, and the melting of the ice sheets. Now, a new study shows that the increase could be by as much as three times higher, based on background studies the international team conducted over the past few years.
University of Copenhagen Niels Bohr Institute Center for Ice and Climate geophysicist Aslak Grinsted explains that “Instead of making calculations based on what one believes will happen with the melting of the ice sheets, we have made calculations based on what has actually happened in the past. We have looked at the direct relationship between the global temperature and the sea level 2000 years into the past.”
The team says that good examples to test its theories are illustrated by the 12th century, when a warm period prompted a 20cm increase in global water levels, and the “little ice age” of the 18th century, when levels dropped by as much as 25cm, compared to today's levels.
According to the IPCC model, ice sheet warm and break slower than the oceans do, which has been their main reason for giving out their rather “optimistic” forecast. However, data collected by Grinsted and colleagues proves that a three-degree-Celsius increase in temperature will undoubtedly force the ice to crack a lot faster, and a century is a very long time, considering that it is daily subjected to pressures from outside factors
The Political Machine 2008
The Political Machine 2008 1.0
+ Great political simulation
+ Interesting art style
+ Good learning tool
- Requires player interest
System requirements:
Windows XP/Vista
1 GHz Processor
512 MB Free System RAM
64 MB DirectX 9.0c 3D Video Card
1 GB Free Hard Drive Space
DirectX 9.0c
Internet connection required for multiplayer and for game updates
Galactic Civilization 2: Twilight of the Arno
When a second expansion for a game is announced, it might be time to tell the developers they're pushing the limit of what's acceptable. Usually expansions mean more levels, same gameplay, more movies and less entertainment for the player. Well, that's certainly not the case with Twilight of the Arnor, the most recent expansion for the Galactic Civilizations 2 title from Stardock. Galactic Civilization 2 can singlehandedly be credited for the revitalization of the 4X genre in space. It's true that the 4X flame, that spawned creatures like Sid Meier's Alpha Centaury or Master of Orion, was never endangered because of the long running and always successful Civilization franchise. But the space- and turn-based strategy games have long been plagued by bad design, feature creep (which means putting together a game so loaded with stuff to do that the fun is thrown out the window) and, ultimately, lead to a lack of interest from gamers. Galactic Civilization 2 brought in a new perspective on the genre and several gameplay mechanics were changed from old classics like Civilization when it debuted in 2006. Even if the game did not contain a multiplayer mode, sporting only a Metaverse where players could post their highest scores, it was praised by critics for the way it created a complete experience that introduced new elements without breaking the 4X gameplay template. The second and, quoting Stardock, "last" expansion for Galactic Civilization 2 is named Twilight of the Arnor. The single player will revolve around Terran forces finding the last member of the once powerful Arnor race in a bid to restore peace to a galaxy that was threatened by both the Dread Lords and the Korath clan of the Drengin. Usually the single player campaign challenge is well crafted and enjoyable, but real TBS players that enjoy the space setting will no doubt get Twilight of the Arnor for the sandbox mode and all the countless hours of turn-based bliss it can offer.The range of choices is as big as that from Dark Avatar when creating a game. Smaller maps, up to medium galaxy size, make for-good one-on-one matches or three-way duels. The AI can be a really tough opponent on these smaller galactic battlefields. I'd go for a Gigantic or even a newly introduced Immense galaxy. Sure, it's gonna suck up time quicker than a black hole, but at least you can get nine computer opponents into the game and have a blast while trying to survive. While launching the game don't forget to customize the points allocation for your race and the political party that's in charge at the beginning of the game. A war-like expansionist Krynn plays a whole lot different than a defensive and tech incline Krynn. And there's nothing more rewarding that making the poor Torians a more aggressive bunch than the Korath. The main enhancement in Twilight can be seen as soon as you begin researching. Each civilization in the game has a different tech tree and, because of that, different planetary improvements and different weapons to be employed in time of conflict. The technologies and the planetary improvements are tailored to the backstory and unique characteristics of each civilization. The Drengin are gonna get a lot of mileage out of slaves and slave-related structures, while the cybernetic Yor get a lot of technologies that improve their economic efficiency and a structure that's half power plant. Trading with other civilizations can also net you their unique techs, but mostly they have little to no effect with another civilization. The AI is also apparently rattled when forced to give up faction specific tech and more than once it went to war after such trading. A most interesting addition to the game are the Shards of the Precursors, ancient pieces of resource that can propel any of the younger civilizations to the level of the Arnor and of the Dread Lords. You can build starbases on top of the shards, as you can build starbases on top of all other resources and they slowly generate the points needed to make your civilization ascend. The problem is that once you go past the half way point in your pious road to Ascension pretty much every AI lead civilization wants a piece of you. So, either you're a great turtler and can take their assault while you become pure energy or you can pretty much conquer the galaxy by yourself by the time you take your existence to a whole new level. Assisting every would-be ruler of the galaxy in his quest will be the new Terror Stars (I guess naming them Death Stars would have been too obvious, ha?) which are basically star killers. They move slowly and are pretty vulnerable to all enemy fleets, but they can destroy the star of a system and take out all the planets around it. Best used by the Korath while playing the Imperial March from Star Wars and doing your best Darth Vader "I am your father!" impression. Other major improvements are under the hood. Galactic Civilization used to eat memory like I ate salty crackers while playing GalCiv 2. Now I'm on a damn diet and Stardock seems to have put the game on a diet, too. Even on Immense maps with all the civs loaded the game looks much better and runs much faster than a Gigantic map with four civilizations did in Dark Avatar. The performance improvement is mainly down to shred yet more detailed textures for the ships and pre-designed rather than fractal-based planet generation. And if all the replayability and the customization aren't satisfactory enough for the hardcore gamers amongst us, Stardock will also be shipping a complete editor with the game. Users can design everything in that thing, from new planetary improvements and new weapons to new maps and new campaigns. All the products of the community's creativity can then be uploaded to the Internet. Don't forget, to share is to care. All of the elements that made the original game great are still there. The player's economy is not divided into the two familiar separate spheres of production and trade. Instead, the production values on all planets were tied into the income system. If you don't have the currency to pay for a unit of production, then stuff would not get built. This concept made the game more challenging at purely economical level, forcing the player to never buff his industrial power more than his income allowed or risk getting a deficit which in turn could also affect people's loyalties to him as a ruler. The single player AI is also extremely well crafted and capable. The "intelligent" setting provided no resource handicap to the AI or to the player, yet the AI opponents are quite capable of creating strategies and counter-strategies to most moves a human player could produce. Stardock has gone on to implement more advanced AI in patches and in the Dar Avatar expansion which hit in early 2007 and the AI in Twilight feels more capable than ever. Sometimes they launch massive assaults and sometimes they limit their war effort to quick hits and run raids. The diplomacy smarts of the AI are much improved, too, as they tend to offer much less in deals than in Dar Avatar. The only complaint at the moment is that some of the text in the game is limited or missing, but that's probably going to be solved till the game launches. Also the technology victory seems to be a bit too easy to achieve, especially if you invest some points in research at the beginning of the game and then create a tight little empire with well developed defenses. Other than that, only a deep hatred of all things space-based or of all things turn-based can limit one's capacity to love Galactic Civilizations 2: Twilight of the Arnor. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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