JohnTyra.com

I love free stuff, even if it’s only a download. On Thursday, you can enjoy this love of freebies as well. =)

EA, the creator of many different gaming titles, will be releasing a free PC demo download of their upcoming game ‘Battlefield: Bad Company’ this Thursday (8/7/08). Personally, I have not played Battlefield, but it has received good reviews in addition to the praise of some fellow gamers.

Not wanting to leave you hanging, here’s what their site says about this game:

Set in the near future, the Battlefield: Bad Company single-player campaign drops gamers behind enemy lines as part of a squad of four soldiers - risking it all to go AWOL on a personal quest. Featuring a dramatic storyline flavoured with attitude, Battlefield: Bad Company leads gamers far from the traditional frontlines on a wild ride with a group of renegade soldiers who decide that sometimes the gratitude of a nation just isn’t enough.

 

The Battlefield: Bad Company cinematic single-player experience captures the freedom and intensity of the Battlefield series’ multiplayer sandbox gameplay in a dynamic world where nearly everything is destructible. Players have total freedom to be daring and innovative, adapting to and tackling challenges in unexpected Battlefield-style ways. Create sniping positions by blowing out a piece of a wall or drive your tank straight through a small house. The ever-changing battlefield forces players, their teammates and enemies to react accordingly.

 

The game also features the all new, objective based multiplayer game mode “Gold Rush”, supporting 24 players online. Play as attackers and defenders and make full use of the tactical destruction as well as the unique vehicle experience of Battlefield: Bad Company.

 

Battlefield: Bad Company is the first game built from the ground up for next-generation consoles using DICE’s bleeding-edge Frostbite game engine, delivering unrivalled graphics, effects and gameplay.

Not exactly the most exciting thing happening this week, but it’s worth noting. Microsoft’s Silverlight plug-in is an alternative for embedding rich media content, sort of like Adobe’s Flash plug-in. Their latest version, Silverlight 2, is being used by the well known ‘advertising’ company DoubleClick as a medium to inject advertising within a video.

So, in conjunction with Flash, Windows Media and Realplayer you can now expect overly loud advertisements on some popular Silverlight 2 enabled sites. This includes NBC’s coverage of the Olympics, which is claimed to be well over 2.5k hours worth of video, which will be interruped by these ads.

Like it or not, I suppose intrusive advertisements are not going anywhere soon, even for video streams…