Holly Valance to Star in Red Alert 3: Uprising

Electronic Arts has officially unveiled the Uprising expansion for Red Alert 3, which is set to be released in March and pick up from where the single player campaign left off. And now it seems that the publisher is also picking up the habit of introducing very attractive ladies for the full motion videos that will be featured in Uprising, by introducing Australian Holly Valance, who will join the line up of the original game, which featured such beauties as: Gemma Atkinson, Kelly Hu or Ivana Milicevic.  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.

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.

Researchers from England, Finland, and the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen, publishing in the prodigious journal Climate Dynamics, say that, by looking back in history and analyzing correlations between periods of warming and the level of the sea, they've found that water levels can vary very fast within the relatively-limited time frame of a century.

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

The Political Machine 2008 has one deep flaw: it needs to be played by someone who either has a good understanding of how Presidential elections work in the United States or by someone who is interested in learning about them. I sincerely hope that the game developed by Stardock gets into the hands of people interested in politics and really I think it should be used as school material. Yup, it's that good of a simulation. I was so proud of my achievements as Lord Kona that I wrotea short article about it. I might even do some After Action Reports regarding other political campaigns. The game feels epic enough, without taking itself too seriously, that you surely feel proud when you win, especially if you crank up the difficulty a bit and play with a longer scenario that the standard 41 weeks. You should know that you just can't win it in this game. You need to watch out for the actual political leanings of the state where you campaign, know the strengths, easily seen in the attributes, and the weaknesses of your candidate, watch the way the public feeling regarding each political issue develops as the campaign goes on. You also need to be careful in picking a running mate and have all the right answers when you appear on television. The game is by no means a complete simulation of the political aspect of choosing a President, but it does a very good job in presenting some of the intricacies involved. The only thing is that it asks is a bit of time and patience. It's not a game for the casual player, but, as stated above, a game for those interested in politics. Concept It's very simple, actually. You pick a candidate or you create one from scratch and then go on to contest the election of the position of POTUS aka President of the United States. There are issues and attributes to all the candidates, money to be spend and acquired, electoral votes to be gained and political mischief to be caused. You will make appearances on talk shows, which might seem all to familiar to people that watch American political coverage and you can call on the power of the media to help you with ads on television and in newspapers. You also get to make policy stands on issues through speeches and there are always some consultants to bring in and smear your opponent. It's all turn based, with each action you perform draining a pool of action points determined by your Stamina stat. The game offers two modes that will mainly interest a gamer. Quick Play is what you want if you only plan to start a battle from scratch against another candidate, while Campaign pits your candidate against figures from the past and present in increasingly more difficult challenges. And don't forget while I learned during my first hour with the game right click to move your character. I might be politically aware but simple movement controls sometime seem to be too much for me. Don't forget about the scenarios that Stardock put in the game other than the 2008 Campaign. You can play an 1860 American scenario, with segregation and states rights at the core, or as a Drengin inspired political scenario, where the main issues are the reformation of slave pit conditions and possible alliance with the Yor. Last but not least, there's an European scenario with the twist that it's all portrayed at the level of knowledge of the American high school student (hint: he gets quite a few things wrong). Check out the guy with the green head Define your political stance and get a big pencil Gameplay The main idea in The Political Machine 2008 is that presence equals success, to some degree. In order to win elections you need to establish presence, which pretty much means going at least twice to every state of the United States. The mere presence in one place lets regular folk that vote know you are running for office and boosts your standings. To maintain a presence in a state, the player can build three structures: campaign headquarters, which offers access to issues, allowing you to create more varied speeches (a must especially in battleground states) and bring in money; consulting offices (giving you access to media events and to campaign operatives); outreach centers, which generate much needed endorsement points. Only one can be built in each state and there are three levels per building. I recommend going for the outreach centers first, to get as many endorsements as possible and concentrate on headquarters for the last part of the campaign. Results of the strategy might vary on the selected length of the campaign. It's very important to manage your resources right. Try to hit all the television shows that show up as events on the map. The Coldcut Report and Barry King Live are really important to supporters. Also try to pick up all random characters, even if some might be bad for you, because there's a chance to score a powerful operative like the Cheerleader or the Heckler early on. Watch out for the money meter and learn to make quick "cash trips" to places like Texas, California and Florida. Never underestimate the importance of a TV add, especially a negative one. You may also want to hire the Speech Writer and the Fashion Consultant early on to increase the strength of your campaign. If things start going south very quickly, there are some text tutorials, more akin to a manual than a videogame introduction that can help you with some of the finest points of the game. Don't hesitate to check them out. There are a few things that bug me. One is the simplicity of the talk show mini-games, which are short and where the answers don't seem to influence political standings very much. Another one is the fact that the options for consultants and endorsements are rather limited and that PR clout and Political Action points seem to become quite useless as the game reaches the end. And the actual election animation is long, forcing you to watch as every state declares it is in favor of one candidate or another, without a way to skip to the end. Visuals and audio The game is adequate for what it aims to achieve. The bobble heads are all cute and instantly recognizable, the talk show hosts have a little resemblance to actual characters and the map is well rendered. As you can see in the screenshots, the game does not need to be extraordinary in the graphics department, as its main strength lies elsewhere. The one issue that I have related to the graphics is that sometimes switching the overlays for the map to see different data created some artifacts on our test machine. It might be the game, it might be something else, but since it showed up, I thought I should mention it.  Speaking of graphics, the introduction to the game is great, with poor George W. Bush trying to push around some cardboard boxes with his over sized head while the candidates plaster every inch of ground with their adds. It's all quite ironic while at the same time an interesting commentary on the politics system, as is the entire game. The music in the game (as always) tends to get repetitive after a while, but the irony is actually nicely translated into the sound department. The soundtrack is something like the Muzak of the hypermarket mixed with vaguely patriotic themes. Nice, but I usually crank up some Death Metal while I try to secure the presidency as Lord Kona of Drengi. America is a battlefield A bit of a setback Multiplayer To get into multiplayer, you need to connect through Impulse, the digital distribution platform from Stardock, and get the latest update. After that, you can wage political war on any of your friends that also harbor dreams of becoming President. The game plays out pretty much in the same way as the single player component, with the exception that you have to deal with a human mind and not the AI opponent. Conclusion Get this game. Try it out and see how you do in a simple match up. Read up on the Internet about all the things that you do not understand. Read CNN or major blogs for political news. Read statistical data regarding the voting preferences of the white male population of Ohio and then look up information on by how many votes Al Gore lost the election in Florida. It would not hurt to ask someone why Electoral College votes do not always reflect the popular vote and why vice presidents don't matter much. All the above subjects are touched upon in the game, which manages to depict political mechanism while also criticizing some of them. And it does it all with humor, a light art style and great bobble heads.  If you don't know and do not want to know politics, forget The Political Machine 2008. It's clearly not for you. If you know politics or want to learn about it, get this game. I am eagerly waiting for the release of Race for Congress and Race for the Senate, which Stardock must be creating.

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. Tech trees are now different Game is looking better 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. New techs coming your way Nice empire 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.