After disposing of their high-profile opponents in the semis, John Choi and Afrolegends squared off in the final of Evo 2009's Super Street Fighter II HD Remix event. The finals saw another Ryu (Choi) vs. Balrog (Afrolegends) bout, but this match shows how two great masters play mind games as they try to outfake and outpredict each other's moves.

If you consider yourself a Street Fighter fan, then there's no way you should miss this one, especially if you already missed the live stream yesterday. It's the final match of the Evo 2009 Street Fighter IV (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360) event between two of the tourney's biggest names: Ryu master and SF legend Daigo Umehara, and the beast known as Justin Wong. The event saved the best for last - this fight was the best fight of the entire tourney.

The sequel to Topware Interactive and Reality Pump's RPG is finally announced for PC, Mac, and Xbox 360 this Winter. Said the press release, Two Worlds II will feature a completely overhauled AI and balancing standards, experienced authors, active combat system, bran-new engine and more.

Shortly after Microsoft and Bungie Studios' monumental Halo 3 release for the Xbox 360, voices were heard all over the internet complaining about the game's resolution having shortchanged buyers. The whines and moans stem from the fact that when set at the 720p resolution, Halo 3's vertical resolution actually runs at 640p.

The fiasco has had more fuel thrown to it since then by the graphics-conscious crowd, prompting Bungie to post a response statement in their official site.

"It's more complicated than that," says Bungie. "In fact, you could argue we gave you 1280 pixels of vertical resolution, since Halo 3 uses not one, but two frame buffers - both of which render at 1152x640 pixels."

"The reason we chose this slightly unorthodox resolution and this very complex use of two buffers is simple enough to see - lighting," Bungie adds. "We wanted to preserve as much dynamic range as possible - so we use one for the high dynamic range and one for the low dynamic range values."

According to Bungie, this technique allows the application of full HDR, which results in the visuals being a lot more realistic than those of average games. The famed developers also explain why they didn't bring that up in earlier statements.

"It would have distracted conversation away from more important aspects of the game," says Bungie. As a parting shot, they added that doing so would have given "tinfoil hats some new gristle to chew on as they cataloged their toenail clippings."

Monolith's forensic, horror and survival title Condemned 2: Bloodshot now boasts a stepped up graphics engine, although the game is only dedicated to the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360. And according to Monolith's Frank Rooke, Condemned 2 is being designed to take full advantage of both next-gen consoles.

 

"Our engine is further optimized with a new shader system, new environmental effects and a new UI system. Our bloom support is now replaced by a new HDR functionality and we have made significant optimizations in CPU and memory use," Rooke said.

But all the new eye candy isn't going to hit the graphics powerhouses of Banzai Runners in the PC community. Rooke said that they have no plans for a PC version of the game at this time, although Condemned: Criminal Origins graced the platform about two years ago. Monolith is also known for Blood, a PC-only classic of... well, bloody proportions, making this call a change of moves for the developers.

But on the offset that opportunities might open up in the future, all fans of the game might want to know that a plethora of new gameplay mechanics have been added, including a new combo hit system. Successive hits mean additional and accumulated damage in the long run, while pushing up the chain meter faster.

Pipes no longer are glued to arms, since Rooke claimed that the pipe can now be hurled arm-to-noggin in graceful - but deadly - fashion. Add to that some new firearms, new weapons and more creative environment kills, and the Condemned player in you can be satisfied for months on end.

Aside from giving an in-depth focus on Ethan Thomas and a twisting story on violence, Condemned 2 will also sport multiplayer gameplay which Rooke vividly describes as something different from the single-player scare:

Imagine you are the only player left on the team and you have successfully tracked down the evidence hidden by the enemy. You're just about to finish the evidence scan and win the match when a bum charges in from behind a dumpster and bashes you in the head with a pipe. Win or lose, you can't reload and try that scenario again.

In a recently published interview by Worth Playing, Free Radical Design has pegged their upcoming next-gen shooter HAZE (still for the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3) as a worthy product to their impressive reputation as innovators in the first-person shooter genre.

 

They have used their prior experience in first-person shooters to deliver an action-packed game like never before. But this time around, they will also be taking the player through an emotional ride, tapping deep into the recesses of personal beliefs, convictions and the ethics of war. HAZE will sport a far deeper story, with emotional ties. Derek Littlewood, team leader of the project, explained:

One of our chief priorities has been to deliver a genuinely moving and emotional experience – but never at the expense of the gameplay. The narrative is packed with rounded characters, each suffering or succeeding in their own human journey.

Perspectives change, and players will get introduced to view-skewing plot twists and turns as HAZE unfolds. Free Radical doesn't want to reveal anything more than they should, although we already know about the Nectar flukes. They hope to succeed in merging a certain level of quality writing that they believe "should exist in the next generation of games." Littlewood expounded:

We want to redefine the intensity and variety of emotions a player can experience in an action FPS. We want HAZE to become the definitive next-gen shooter and maintain Free Radical's reputation for developing some of the best games in the world.

But how will the gameplay turn out? Free Radical designed HAZE so that everything seamlessly unfolds to the next, with no need for loading screens and no mission select screens. Continuity was a goal they sought to achieve, which in turn accomplished their hopes to create a realistic, immersive game world.

Aside from four player cooperative modes through the campaign, Free Radical has pointed out that each version has been designed to take advantage of parallel-processing for squeezing out more power. Although all platforms are capable of this feat and they've catered fairly to all platforms, Sony's PlayStation 3 was probably one of their favorites. Steve Ellis, director of Free Radical, said:

Working on PS3 has allowed us to create vastly superior environments that verge on photo-realism – full-screen effects, High Dynamic Range (HDR) and obscenely complex shaders. It's more challenging than ever before, but the power is greater than anything else that’s out there.

Croteam, developers of the Serious Sam series, has given word that they have teamed up with Gamecock Media Group for their next project. Gamecock will be publishing the next Croteam game which is being developed on the Serious Engine 3.

Croteam's CEO Roman Ribaric spoke on their choice of publisher and why they decided to go with Gamecock.

The Gamecock team includes some of the best people we've worked with in our 14 years of game development.We had a great time and learned a lot when we worked together to produce the first Serious Sam and we are confident that we will achieve similar success this time around.

The company's next venture looks really good based on their background and the engine that they'll be using for the game. The Serious Engine 3 is the proprietary "game creation system" of Croteam and was billed to be designed for next-generation consoles and state-of-the art PC hardware.

The system is said to be able to take advantage of multi-core HDR-rendering graphics systems complete with full per-pixel lighting, shadowing, and shadowbuffers. It also has a custom GPU-accelerated baker for GI lightmaps, multi-threaded physics solver for multicore CPUs, and even built-in support for action-game models.

CEO and Head of Marketing for Gamecock Media Group Mike Wilson commented about the Serious Engine 3 and Croteam's prospective future in the gaming industry saying that "now, with its next-gen engine pushing the latest gaming hardware to the limits of its potential, Croteam is producing a game that will confirm its position among the world's game development elite".

This new game is slated to be released this 2009 on the PC and next-gen consoles. This may be something to look out for, considering the lovely screenshot demos they've produced with the said engine. Be sure to check back for more details on this game.

  

FlatOut Ultimate Carnage from Bugbear Entertainment is the sequel to FlatOut 2. And what a sequel it is. You saw yesterday's beautiful screenshots and today we have a before and after comparison between the sequel and it's predecessor.

On first glance, the difference between the screens are obvious. Better texture, lighting, and overall three dimensional look. Many things have changed between the Xbox title, FlatOut 2 and its next gen brother FlatOut Ultimate Carnage. There are also other changes like the increase of cars on the track at once (from the previous eight to 12) along with five new single player modes plus two online modes.

The first set features the field track. Check out the water. Big difference, right? Ripple effects, the wet look of the water, and the reflections make the second screen very impressive. And check out the clouds too.

The rest of the before and after comparisons after the jump!

Yesterday wasn't a great day for multi-platformers, or at least for Shadowrun. It was reported that the game's beta testing was delayed because of the unexpected Xbox Live downtime the other day. Anyway, as they say, past is past and today is a new today. And as for the other multiplatform game Two Worlds (X360, PC), the sunshine is turning out to be just fine.

We can actually point out a number of reasons why Two Worlds is doing perfectly okay. In fact, it will take us a good long time before we finished with that kind of stuff. But for you, just for you, we made a summary of the game's different exciting features. All the game's goodness packed into just one article, isn't that great? Also, the accompanying ten new screenshots will surely brighten up your day as well.

Two Worlds was developed by SouthPeak Interactive and in collaboration with Topware Interactive. It will be available in retail stores on March 7, 2007.

Features:

• Offering a freedom of choice unseen in other Role Playing Games. The world literally comes to life as it immediately reacts to the player's actions and changes accordingly -offering new and exciting challenges.
• Strong, non-linear storyline. Players can shape their own story by choosing the path of conducting the main conflict and resolving meaningful side-quests.
• Spectacular and dynamically choreographed fights. The combat system combines intuitive steering, tactical challenges and movie-like visual experiences.

The rest of the features and the screens after the jump!

Frontlines: Fuel of War for Xbox 360 and PS3 is still far from being available in your friendly-neighborhood stores, since it is slated for a Fall 2007 release. The game, in case, you are a newbie, is set 20 years in the future, as the world’s dependence on oil increases, so does the tensions. Survival of the fittest is the name of the game as countries scrimmage to secure their economic sources. Small outbreaks turn into a full scale war. This causes new alliances to be formed, and you must now decide which side you will fight for: the Western Coalition or Red Star Alliance.

Kaos Studios' General Manager, Frank DeLise, sheds some light about the FFOW's title, gameplay, maps, and multiplayer gaming. The title is obviously politically motivated, as DeLise explains, "it’s the FUEL that drives us to the “Frontlines” of tomorrow to our next great “War.” Fuel has dual meanings, obviously from our dependency on Oil and is what Fuels a global war. Frontlines came from the game mechanic that allows us to be on the front of a battle...So Frontlines is the franchise name and Fuel of War is the beginning of the global war."

He also believes that developing the game on the Unreal 3 Engine was a good choice since they plan on devoting their time on developing the gameplay and not on designing a game engine. When asked about the gameplay, he mentions that "in FFOW you are always chipping away at the battle and you can form new strategies as you go. For Multiplayer, I [DeLise] really want teamwork to matter. In FFOW, teamwork truly makes your team stronger. More than two people in a vehicle make vehicles much more powerful by target sharing and counter measures, the frontline only moves forward if you work as a team, so expect to see some really cool team based features using the latest military equipment."

A game like FFOW would of course be incomplete without game maps. For now, DeLise divulged that they are planning to have tight infantry maps and large scale Tank/Air battle maps in both Single Player and Multiplayer. HDR support is definitely in the picture.