So Operation Anchorage won’t run on your PC…

Aside from having to fix this, it's actually quite fun if you love new items and story material.

Disclaimer: By following these steps, you take full responsibility for whatever happens next. It’s a simple process, but thanks to so many years in IT, I know that there are people that can screw up a copy/paste out there. If you have any doubts, find someone that can help you.

If you know how to install a mod from a site like Fallout Nexus, then the process is pretty much the same thing with only you having to read the steps as to where the DLC was saved on your PC by Games for Windows Live and then copying and pasting the files to the Data directory. All done!

I had this happen to me. After downloading the content and watching the game say that it was loading it, nothing happens for about an hour until I give up. It seems that even though the game claims to have loaded it, one some machines the quest simply doesn’t start. There is a way to force/fix it, though, but it requires you to do a little jumping through a few technical hoops as I found out after trying to track down some information on this.

If you’ve installed a mod in Oblivion before, then this will seem like cake. If not, I hope my steps are as clear as they can be in case you run into this.

The following steps are for Windows XP so don’t blame me if you try this under Vista. I’m not sure how different the steps are.

After you’ve purchased the content via Games for Windows Live, it will have downloaded it to a default location. First, make sure that you can see hidden folders. If you already can, you can skip these steps. If not and are not sure how to:

1) Double click on My Computer

2) Double click on your C: drive

3) You will see a list of folders.

4) In the menu bar at the top of the window click on Tools -> Folder Options

5) Under Folder Options, click on View

6) Under View, you will see an option marked “Hidden Files and Folders”

7) Double click on “Hidden Files and Folders”

8 ) Click on the radio button next to “Show hidden files and folders”

7) Once you’ve done that, Click on Apply. You should now be able to see hidden folders.

If you can already see hidden folders, or if you’ve followed the steps above, follow this path on your C: drive:

C:\Documents and Settings\MyUserName\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\XLive\DLC

1) “MyUserName” is YOUR user name

2) Under the DLC folder, keep drilling down until you get to a folder called Content

3) Double click on the Content folder

4) You should see three files with the Anchorage name. Highlight all three and right click -> Copy

5) Go to the folder where you installed Fallout 3 (it will usually be: C:\Program Files\Bethesda Softworks\Fallout 3)

6) Double click on the Data folder under your Fallout 3 folder

7) Right click -> Paste; this will copy the three files over

8 ) Start up Fallout 3

9) Click on Data Files; you should see the Fallout 3 file checkmarked and see the Anchorage entry

10) Click on the empty box next to “Anchorage” to checkmark it

11) Start the game and wait a few minutes for the radio signal

That should do it. If it still doesn’t work for you, I’m not sure what to say since these instructions are what worked for me.

review: Ubersoldier II for more WW2 weirdness

Ubersoldier II was the kind of game that I wasn’t expecting. The first Ubersoldier was passable as an okay shooter, but I didn’t think that it would actually pave the way for a sequel, in much the same way that I didn’t expect Mortyr to get another game. But it must have done really well overseas and Russian developer, Burut, came out with a followup to Karl’s adventures.

It’s a good improvement over its predecessor, but it’s definitely a budget shooter for the solo soldier. The powers are back and the action can be fun and it didn’t crash my PC, but the story is best ignored along with the awful English voice acting concentrating on taking out the Third Reich. Again. Not bad for the price, but only if you’re looking for a WW2 shooter that doesn’t quite feel like a WW2 shooter.

Anyways, here’s my field report from the front.

Ubersoldier II brings in a few improvements such as making SS officers gymnasts.

Prince of Persia related: So ubisoft wants you to buy an ending?

Giantbomb (along with a few others) reports that Ubisoft has dropped word that they are going to be releasing DLC for the new Prince of Persia game that has made the rounds on consoles and PCs during the holiday season last year. It’s coming out on February 24th, right when Killzone 2 and a few other titles are making their big splash.

I have played through the game but haven’t had time to post a review on it yet. Suffice it to say, the way I feel about the ending depends on the perspective that I wanted to view it through. I’m leaning towards the “it sucks” angle because, quite frankly, being forced by the narrative into the fake choices that the Prince is being railroaded into never sat well with me. That was my big beef with how the ending went down…someone gave me a controller, but then directed me into a series of false choices. I couldn’t simply leave.

If it played out instead as sa cinematic with a few choices lines, perhaps a few flashbacks to get the floodgates going because the Prince is trying to resolve his decision with his own feelings, maybe I wouldn’t feel as bitter about how it played out. But there it is and so I left the game finished, wondering just what the next adventure was going to be like.

As if hearing the cries of both the critics and the fans over the ending, Ubisoft is releasing DLC oddly entitled “Epilogue”. As in ending. As in “here’s the REAL ending, sorry”.

Seriously Ubisoft? It couldn’t wait for the next game? It wasn’t as if word had come out that the ending sucked and was hitting their sales figures of 2.2m sold. Ubisoft did note that it was below their expectations for the title, but they can always blame it on the economy since game sales sagged across the board in any case.

I hope that this isn’t the opening cash salvo on a trend where designers start adding on key material as a pay-for-patch. Additional adventures, dungeons, characters, skins…I have no problem with that. But going back and then saying “Oh, here’s the Epilogue that was missing from the game, sorry for how it ended!” is like ripping the last few pages out from the book so that it might end in a cliffhanger…and then selling the ending for people that didn’t like it.

On one hand, it’s nice that Ubisoft is bringing this kind of attention to the story and realizes how important it is for players to enjoy it, but I also realize that if the game is strong enough it will stand on its own merits which I think it did. I was willing to accept it because the game leading up to that point was solid enough to be great. Offering this kind of DLC after the fact just feels weird.

Behind that door is the truth of what REALLY happened at the end.

IGN delivers an SFIV fashion show

According to IGN, it looks like SFIV is going to have a slew of optional costumes available, the same ones that could be purchased with in-game currency earned on the arcade version. GiantBomb and the Escapist have both taken a look at what is coming down the runway for our favorite fighters and while the extra content is welcome stuff, the delivery options are still up in the air. Speculation seems to be turning towards premium DLC, but Capcom has been mum on the subject so far. In any case, here’s a rundown on what IGN’s captures have gone through but I suggest watching the video just for the action. It’s hot stuff.

Starting it off is El Fuerto as the the chef that will pummel anyone that puts ketchup on their eggs.

Ryu, clad in ripped pants and doing his best Shirtless Kirk impression, is temporarily distracted by Chun Li's fashionable appearance in a dark gown that does little to hold back the God Legs she is about to stomp all over him with.

My rope is bigger than your rope! Why do I have rope?!

Zangief's plain green pants are nothing compared to E. Honda's...rope. Wearing huge rope must mean Absolute Fist Smashing Badassery or something.

Dhalsim's alternate costume isn't much to look at, but Blanka's best Livingston impersonation racks up points for making him the dapper wild man of Street Fighter.

Guile's muted yet distinctive look pales in comparison to Ken's black gi.

Don't pay any attention to the bars, Balrog's Rocky hopes are dashed by Vega's Spanish Conquest. Ruffled shirt and spandex pants don't compare to Balrog's fighter duds, though. He'll be back for a rematch.

Abel's Olympic dreams haven't ended in 2008 as he comes out in tights and C. Viper's open shirt sexiness and black pants aren't really all that exciting. But it looks great in action.

Rose's magic scarf and gypsy look isn't quite as cute as Sakura's Ryu cosplay sans pants, but both work.

Yeah, that's Dan in the purple and pink. He's got pads to protect his awesomeness against Gen's masked Manchurian manliness of bone crushing facepalms.

Rufus, in his best Green Slime cosplay costume for Dragon Quest, really hated El Fuerto's cooking.

Fei Long's beach look is about to be tossed aside by Cammy's pantless attack of ultimate sorrow. The only thing she's missing from her costume is the Hammer and Sickle, but we all love her anyway.

M. Bison's ripped uniform makes Sagat's clean cut sparring suit look absolutely outmatched here. Like M. Bison cares, anyway.

review: lord of the rings conquest for the xbox 360

Pandemic has released its newest title based on EA’s LOTR license across multiple platforms, spreading the love to Tolkien fans far and wide. It’s not a terrible game unless the details such as how accurate it is against the films much less the actual books matter to you. Console players on the PS3 and the 360 may want to try the demo first which shows off the basics of the gameplay. PC players were shafted in that department.

I’m not sure why, but Conquest seems to have ignored all of the neat things that have been happening in the sandbox battle space both on and offline. At least in DW6, I could upgrade characters and discover new weapons. Conquest is a pure button masher with a short campaign shelf life, but the multiplayer isn’t bad if not incredibly plain. If you are a huge multiplayer fanatic and want to add a little swords and sorcery to your library, you might want to rent this out just to see if it deserves a place in your library. At full price, it’s hard to recommend this game over some of the other titles that are far more fun to experience on any platform.

If you’re interested in the details, I’ve recorded my journey through Middle Earth on the 360.

Tolkien fans will need to look past the flaming swords, lightning strikes, magic shields, and instant kill backstabs as they save or burn Middle Earth.

fear 2 burns with heavy firepower and a very angry little girl

As you may have already heard, F.E.A.R. 2 has come out with a huge 1.8GB demo this week on the PS3, 360, and the PC. I pulled the PC version down since that’s the one I want to play after having gone through the first one in sheer terror on the same platform when it was first released. The graphics look nice and gory, just as they did in the first game, and the action is just as brutal as I remembered it to be.

Fans will quake in their boots at this sight. She's back, and she's really angry.

It plays off on the creepy factor just like the first one did with a few twisted bits of reality to mess with your perceptions. If you haven’t heard anything about the story, it doesn’t put you in the same boots as the character that finished the first game. At the end of that, you witnessed the destruction of a large chunk of the city thanks to a nuclear failsafe that was designed to destroy the top secret facility where horror girl Alma was imprisoned.  In this one, you’re playing Michael Becket, a soldier tasked to arrest Genevieve Aristide, the head of Armacham…the ultracorp responsible for exploiting Alma’s psychic powers…only to run right into the aftermath of Alma’s vengeance against her captors.

The demo packs in a good amount of action amidst blasted set pieces including the suit of powered armor that you can rampage through the streets in for some Robocop-styled excitement. The suit feels more like a guilty-pleasure feature than anything, but it’ll be interesting to see what they do with it. F.E.A.R. 2 feels like it will deliver more of the action and cold terror that the first game did, so I can’t wait to get it into my hands.

Great, I didn't miss the bus!

Alma wants to share her pain with everyone.

The lighting effects are pretty nice. You can even see your own feet and shadow in this game so you're not just a floating camera with two pretend arms.

I guess Alma didn't like the popcorn prices, either.

And the latest in home defense can be yours from your friends at Armacham! Vaporize your enemies with hundreds of depleted uranium rounds per second, or heavy explosives for the kind of finality that corporate firepower can deliver.

So much legendary potential

I played through Spark Unlimited’s other offering, Turning Point: Fall of Liberty, which cast you as an everyman trying to survive an alternate history where the Nazis won WW2 and are now invading the isolationist United States. Lots of awesome ideas packed into it and the CE even had a few choice pieces of fiction to peruse. Unfortunately, the gameplay was less than great and the story came far short to leave any lasting impression.

Now that I’m trying to catch up on my backlog, Legendary was next and I had been keeping an eye on this one when it had been known as “Legendary: The Box” before they dropped the “box” part of the title. Again, it promises the world with plenty of neat ideas squeezed into its adrenaline fed opening only to again come up short in the areas that matter most to gamers. The material is a lot more interesting than the gameplay which fails to deliver anything more basic than the usual FPS elements.

Before the museum burned to the ground, I managed to save my report on this adventure here.

Unfortunately, Mr. Stay Puft didn't cause this.

The high cost of Tabula Rasa

Blue’s has posted two interesting opinion pieces from two different people that had been associated with the soon-to-be-shuttered MMORPG, Tabula Rasa. TB was the brainchild of Richard “Lord British” Garriott, the man best known for his pioneering work with the Ultima series of PC RPGs and there were high hopes in seeing some of that magic rub off with NCSoft’s newest online adventure. Unfortunately, the project was plagued with a few issues, one of which had gone so far as to reinvent the entire look of the game from glam-fantasy graphics into gritty, scorched battlefields.

This WAS going to be the world of Tabula Rasa, pretty rainbows to be patched in later until the art direction was extensively overhauled.

NCSoft designer Scott “Lum the Mad” Jennings underlines the fact that the project was too costly in his article on Broken Toys, a fact echoed by former NCSoft CTO for Europe, Adam Martin, in his piece for T=Machine. Some of the interesting points taken away from both of these articles were:

• Adam Martin expresses surprise from hearing that it took six years to create a game that was “fun”. Fun, as in when it was released as a beta. He pretty much says that he thought the fun concept came first and the rest of the game was built around it, not the other way around. Given how long development had taken for it to get to that point, it’s also a disturbing view on possible issues deep within development that had to be overcome in order to get there. Refocusing the game’s look and feel was most certainly one of these factors.
• Scott Jennings also notes that the state of the game had many voice their dissent on an early release when asked for their input, but their words ultimately fell on deaf ears.
• Tabula Rasa’s development cost was reportedly a cool $100mil, making it a possible contender for one of the most expensive games ever made, placing it in the company of Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto IV which also had a reported development cost of $100mil.
• According to Adam Martin, with so many people involved in the development of TR, delaying it would cost ““hundreds of thousands of dollars” because it would prolong development. That’s about as much money as one would need to purchase more than one virtual space station.
• Scott Jennings notes that the marketing beta, when people got to play it for free before the official release, didn’t drum up the kind of excitement that should have been expected. People would apparently play it and then move on to other things to which he says “…if you can’t get people to play the beta for free, you have serious, serious issues”. It was another warning sign, but I’d guess that at this point, NCSoft couldn’t really go back and say that they were just kidding when the beta was already out there…hinting that the full game was just around the corner.

So what is there to learn from these two? Apparently, games are serious business when you have several tens of millions of dollars at stake. Playing Devil’s Advocate here, I can see NCSoft’s point in pushing the project out of the door and then investing time and money in post-release support…fix as you go and all that made easier thanks to the necessity of needing a high speed connection to enjoy full featured and glitzy MMORPGs like World of Warcraft and Tabula Rasa nowadays.

They needed the game to produce cash as soon as possible, to staunch the bleeding, and get it going. It’s more of the “we’ll fix it later” mentality that both publishers and developers are sometimes forced to play by when they have investors to answer to. But it looks like the project had several other issues that contributed to its early demise well before the first official beta, issues that should have been addressed before several more years were spent in ironing them out.

The sci-fi apocalypse stick hit the game with all of the fury of James Cameron and Ridley Scott, but it wasn't enough to keep it going.

Free Radical’s Star Wars Battlefront 3

…will probably never see the light of day unless someone else picks it up or a publisher decides to fund it.

In case you don’t know who they are, Free Radical was an independent developer formed in 1999 by members of the team known for N64 blockbusters GoldenEye and Perfect Dark. They had also seen quite a bit of success with their Timesplitters FPS franchise on the PS2 and later, the Xbox and Gamecube. Although PC players may have absolutely no idea who they might be or the games that they were responsible for in comparison to what Infinity Ward and Epic were able to deliver with their own franchise favorites, Free Radical had a strong following among their fans.

Unfortunately, hard times hit the studio and they were forced to literally shutter their doors after the release, and dismal reception, of their latest shooter, Haze, on the PS3. Most of the staff was let go, although a skeleton crew remained at the company which had gone into administration, similar to Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States but with some differences. Free Radical’s amusingly unserious corporate site is still up, although nothing on it has changed since late November of last year.

But the bottom line was that projects that they had been working on were pretty much dead in the water. Timesplitters 4 had been reported as being in development and there was word of a new Star Wars Battlefront on the boiler. Now Kotaku is showing off a leaked video of what is supposed to be Battlefront 3, allegedly taken during an internal meeting with Free Radical during better days, showing off an incredibly detailed environment with what can only be jaw dropping graphics on a big screen television. The quality of the video is pretty awful, but your imagination can fill in the blanks for what could have been something new to look forward to.

Here are a few shots from the video. It looks a lot better in motion, but it might whet your appetite for watching the full five or so minute presentation.

It's hard to tell, but that's a player piloted fighter flying towards one of the Republic's assault ships

The fighter veers toward the command towers and eventually flies in between them.

Blurry shot, but that's an Ewok attacking a Stormtrooper. Free Radical is just funny that way.

It's one of those lit tunnels from Bespin and this rebel has just run into the Dark Lord of the Sith slumming around inside. Bad for him.

Clear Sky ahead

Finished playing through Clear Sky and in the end, once I got used to the difficulty, it’s more of what made Shadow of Chernobyl a lot of fun, and some of what made it a mixed bag. The action was great, but the faction system seemed to be a little lacking. Still, it’s completely up to you whether or you want to scavenge for artifacts, kill renegade Stalkers for their gear, or follow the story to its mind melting end. Fans are likely going to get a lot more mileage out of this trip back to Chernobyl if not a heaping dose of deja vu, but newcomers should be warned that it’s every bit as unforgiving as you might have heard.

As always, here’s the lab analysis.

Welcome back to the Zone.