Just a wee competition for our readers: we’re giving away a retail copy of APB Reloaded: The Boxed Special Edition plus an APB Reloaded t-shirt to one lucky totalpcgaming reader drawn from the proverbial hat.

The APB Reloaded Boxed Special Edition includes the full game,  a permanent Magnum for all characters on one account, a Cisco Car, 500 G1 credits and a 30-day premium account pass. That’s more than £30 worth of in-game goodies.

To win these prizes, simply send us an email with your address in the body and ‘APB Reloaded comp’ in the subject header. Competition closes 10 February. Good luck!

Dragon’s Dogma has a menagerie of large mythological creatures and interesting combat system in which we can fight them with. But it’s our party members and Dragon’s Dogma’s online functionality that intrigues us the most. We spoke to Capcom director Hideaki Itsuno, who told us about the pawn system and how borrowing them from other players works:

“I thought ‘what if we make a system where you raise a mercenary, have others all over the world use it and then the mercenary grows stronger based on those experiences?” Hideaki told us, “If it is done in that way, then the user will not be hindered from playing as they wish and they will still have that feeling of being online. This way, even without the real time communication of things like blogs and twitter, the player is still connected and can play online as they please.

“The pawns are not just partners that you take with you on your adventures, but they are the base of communication. These pawns bring back information about their experiences and the knowledge they have received from their adventures with other users, making them quite helpful.

“The game does not give very straight forward hints but that is where the pawns come in, by bringing back information from all of their travels. This is not just information on the maps or quests, but also information on how to fight monsters. Pawns that are lent out do not just gain knowledge and experience from those renting them, but can also be rated and receive gifts. So every day the player can sit and enjoy that fact that somewhere out there, someone is borrowing their pawn.

Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter was a launch title for the Xbox 360 in 2005, followed up by Advanced Warfighter 2, two years later. A reasonable time frame for a sequel then, but there have been half a dozen delays since GRAW2 and the third Ghost Recon game of this generation, Future Soldier, is only just due this May.

That’s a fairly long time in the video games industry and a hell of a stretch in this generation so we caught up with Ghost Recon’s IP development director, Adrian Lacey and Creative Director Jean-Marc Geffroy to find out what Ubisoft has been doing with Future Soldier to bring it up to date.

Apparently, the studio has been working with genuine Navy SEALs, “I think even in terms of the technology and stuff, it made us realise it had to be a functional tool, and all these futuristic items that everyone would love,” Adrian told us.

“The Navy SEALs were like ‘Yeah, that’s doable and actually in progress but it’s gotta work’. They brought us back down to Earth and as Jean-Marc always says, reality sometimes creates more innovation than fantasy and it really proves that. It made us focus more on that characterization, more on the motion capture and how you work and react to the team with the AI and how they support you.

Then you’ve got the ‘tag-‘em-and-bag-‘em’ feature so it couldn’t be clunky or ‘Alpha 240, please go over there’. The SEALs were like, “It should be ‘Get the f**k over there.’ They should be over there anyway because they know they should get behind cover.’

“It was interesting because there was this one point where it’s a bit stupid to tell them to go over there because they are trained for that,” said Jean-Marc. “But what we need is two things: firstly, to know where the threats are, which we add and grow and have tried to make better for this game. The second was to know the situation, what the threats are, the quality of those threats and if we are going to eliminate part of the threat easily in order to trigger the fight, when we want the fight to be triggered.

“It’s interesting because whether it’s tough missions or level design, you accept that the player plays as they want and trigger the fight when they want, so the AI reacts to every threat even if it’s not the player but another Ghost. They’re not player-centric. The team AI has to know that, like you, they are a threat so we don’t have to script the game like a rollercoaster. The consequences of these one or two choices are something we have to work on and getting this AI right takes time. There’s been a lot of work done on the controller too to make it very, very precise, accurate and responsive.”

iCloud, Apple’s new backup and sync service can prove a nebulous entity in more ways than one. Cloud storage might not be new technology but since we’ve been fiddling around with personal data drives for decades now, it’s a concept that can take some getting used to.

A simple, functional guide can help turn your fraught and stuttering start into a seamless transition onto iCloud, which is where Imagine’s iCloud For Beginners ebook comes in handy.

You can check out iCloud For Beginners on the iTunes store: it covers everything from setting up your iCloud account to sharing data across all your Apple devices in easy to follow, step-by-step tutorials. But best of all (in our opinion) are the funky Multi-Touch features, a veritable sweet shop of multimedia including slideshows, annotated images and scroll-&-pinch pages all designed by experts using Apple’s spanking new iBooks Author software. Plus it’s a bargain too, at $1.99. Don’t ascend into the iCloud without it – get it here.

Look at that! It’s Agent 47 shooting up the joint, right on our front cover. You have no idea how hard it was to get him to pose for this. We were tracking him down for days, he’s not an easy man to get hold of. We thought we’d lost him at one point, until the tea-boy realised he’d stolen a clown costume from somewhere and was making funny glances towards a vicar. He is a funny one.

Agent 47 heads up another packed issue, here’s what you’ll get…

Reviews

Soul Calibur V, Metal Gear Solid: HD Collection, NeverDead, Joe Danger, All Zombies Must Die!, Trine 2, Sonic CD, Voltron, Choplifter HD

Previews

Hitman Absolution, The Darkness II, MUD, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, Fortnite, Ridge Racer: Unbounded, Alan Wake’s American Nightmare, DiRT Showdown, Metal Gear Rising: Revengence, Game Of Thrones, Syndicate, Prototype 2, Mass Effect 3, Halo 4, Bioshock Infinite, South Park

Features

Secret Games, So many developers in the world, so few announced projects. We delve behind the headlines to find out what treats of 2012 are yet to be unveiled.

A Griefer’s Guide To Battlefield 3, Team killing, standing in full view above snipers, even attaching C4 to a plane at take-off. DICE’s shooter is ripe with opportunity to point and giggle. We examine how, exactly.

Club 360, L.A. Noire, we return to Rockstar and Team Bondi’s ambitious take on the open world genre. Does it manage to meld GTA’s freedom with old-school adventure gaming depth, though? We let you have your own say.

If you liked this article, there’s plenty more where that came from. You can download the latest issue of 360 Magazine (also available in all good newsagents) through iTunes to your iPad or iPhone for just £1.99 per issue. Bargain!

Or go here for the United States iTunes store version.

Deus what?

We’re never going to play classic Syndicate again. Even though we’re curious about how it would hold up today, we’re afraid yet another rose-tinted set of memories will be rendered a flaccid disappointment.

Memories like risking an agent’s life to run into a bank and defuse a Smart Bomb worth your entire budget for the next month. Or using the Persuadatron to persuade the civilians, to persuade the policemen, to persuade the enemy agents until we’ve got a train of bodies ambling along behind us like we’re science fiction’s answer to the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

And since 1993 there’s been Deus Ex and System Shock – franchises that have toyed extensively with similar dystopias, taking Syndicate’s concepts and developing them with each fresh iteration. We’re wary about dwelling on the Bullfrog original for too long, for fear of realising the extent that 20 years has dulled its cutting edge.

This is why, for all the resentment former Amiga owners may heap upon Starbreeze for turning the game into a modern FPS, we should applaud the studio for not trying to faithfully recreate the Syndicate experience to the letter.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Brain and chips

The DART 6 bio-chip is a b rain implant that the three rival mega- corporations of Syndicate use to control the world. Eurocorp, Cayman Global and Aspari connect to their agents using this implant, giving them the power to slow time and hack devices – and other agents.

And, of course, the bio-chips are used to make agents loyal to their firm.

Never mind that, though; here’s five easy reasons you should be excited:

5. Starbreeze is the same award-winning developer behind The Chronicles Of Riddick and The Darkness.

4. Executive packages of Syndicate will give gold versions of all guns to co-op players who pre-ordered the game.

3. Weapons and environments from the classic will be used in Syndicate and should be familiar to fans.

2. Missions from Bullfrog’s original Syndicate game will be recreated for a four-player co-operative mode.

1. This time, we don’t choose which agent to control: we play as Miles Kilo, a prototype agent for Eurocorp.

If sci-fi shooters are your thing, why not take a look at Sega’s Binary Domain and its vocal interactions, or perhaps traditional RPG’s are more your bag, then our exclusive interview with Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning will prove interesting.

If you liked this article, there’s plenty more where that came from. You can download the latest issue of 360 Magazine (also available in all good newsagents) through iTunes to your iPad or iPhone for just £1.99 per issue. Bargain!

Or go here for the United States iTunes store version.

Pre-owned gamers, eh? Vagabonds the lot of ‘em, barely a step up from disc copying, free speech legislation exploiting pirates. They’d have your house away if you left your back turned for more that about ten seconds.

No, of course they wouldn’t. They’re simply videogame fans, caught as we all are in a time of economic uncertainty, attempting to follow a hobby that bizarrely releases all of its most prized assets within the space of about six weeks, in the run-up to Christmas. Because, you know, we’ve all got £240 stuffed in a back pocket in case of gaming emergency.

The rumours currently circulating about Microsoft’s upcoming next-generation console then, suggesting games might carry some sort of code recognition system that might cut out pre-owned titles completely, has us worried. We’re all for the industry attempting to claw as much revenue in as it can, but such a course of action seems to welcome economic disaster with open arms.

Firstly, won’t someone please think of the children? If regular adult consumers, buoyed by reasonable amounts of disposable income, balk at the prospect of shelling out £40-50 for each triple-A release, what place for the Kung Fu Pandas of this world? How might this hobby of ours usher in dedicated new fans, with such a huge barrier to entry?

Secondly, the point is seldom made that the record-breaking first-week revenue of, well, almost every videogame is propped up heavily by customers exchanging last week’s blockbusters, that are now worth about ten quid. Without this cache of value still provided by the ability to trade in for consumers to rely upon, might we see sales take a tumble as fewer find themselves able to make the financial stretch?

Thirdly, the labyrinthine array of DLC episodes, map packs and online passes introduced this generation to combat pre-owned purchases represents another significant stream of income publishers lose if there aren’t millions of their game discs ‘out there’, second-hand or not. If sales fall as a result of only new copies of a game being available, the potential for this follow-on business also drops. And, of course, one single second-hand copy of a game could in theory account for multiple DLC and online pass purchases, as it is handed from player to player.

Finally, if second-hand retail dies it’s likely specialist videogame retail will perish alongside it, killing off memories of filthy carpets and weapons grade BO forever? All joking aside, do we really wish to be pushed into the hands of ditsy supermarket attendants, who think Fracture’s a brand of skin cream? The only consolation this would offer is the chance to leave the store plied with alcohol, ready to weep in the dark, in the foetal postion, at how glorious things formerly were. We’re not saying that would be Microsoft’s direct fault if they chose to implement such a policy – that’s more for you to decide.

We spoke to Remedy Entertainment’s Aki “AJ” Järvilehto on the upcoming sequel, Alan Wake’s American Nightmare, to find out what he thinks has ensured American Nightmare’s success:

360 Magazine: Alan Wake was originally planned as an episodic release, what was behind the original thinking and why was it changed to a boxed release?

AJ: With original Alan Wake we wanted to really go for a Stephen King meets Lost theme, tipping our hats to some of the greats like Alfred Hitchcock and Twin Peaks. We took a lot of inspiration from different TV series, and this way we could create an experience, which was easy to jump in an out of. Structuring the game to episodes with “Previously on Alan Wake” inserts to help players get back into the game just flowed naturally. It was also a great structure for storytelling in videogames.

While the episodic format for the game was an awesome fit, however, distributing it this way would have been a massive risk. The world simply wasn’t ready for this new model. Gaming has come a long way since then and continues to balloon. Who knows, I at least hope it’ll be a very viable option in the near future.

360 Magazine: What are the benefits for you as a developer to having your game on XBLA and not on shop shelves?

AJ: There are benefits to both models of course. The fun part about digital distribution is that we can do things faster and with easier iteration. Another really important thing is that in a sense were quite a bit closer to our actual audience, the gamers. Believe it or not we actually read our email and everything people write on Alan Wake’s Facebook pages and forums, and now it is just so much easier to react to the feedback from the fans!

You can read the full interview more about Alan Wake’s American Nightmare in issue 97 of 360 Magazine, on sale 22 February.

You can’t keep anything secret these days. The internet has made sure that even the faintest of whispers can lead to mass speculation and even the merest of rumours can spread faster than wildfire. In today’s gaming world, announcements are foreshadowed by months of industry chatter and as such, you can get a pretty good idea what’s just over the horizon if you keep your ears close enough to the ground. It might not all be right, some of this will just be wishful thinking, but most of this could be hitting a 360 near you very soon.

5) Half-Life 3

Half-Life 3 has been in development so long that the appearance of a website teasing something called ‘Black Aperture’ was enough to send the internet into a frenzy. In true Valve fashion the teasing single page offered nothing more than a logo and the mere promise of more information to come.

The name ‘Black Aperture’ hints at the proper joining of the facilities seen in Half-Life (Black Mesa) and Portal (Aperture Science) respectively, something that’s only been hinted at before. What’s most important about all of this, though, is the simple fact that Valve has begun talking.

Half-Life 2 became notorious for its continuously delayed development, helping enormously to make it one of the most hyped games of its time. Today’s gamers are a little savvier and, though excitement has certainly peaked, it will only begin to truly grow when Valve starts opening the floodgates.

And unfortunately, that depends on when its latest game is getting a release. The further into 2012 we get, too, the less likely whatever it is Valve has planned will see a release in the same year, but we live in hope.

Percentage chance: 47%

4) Tiger (working title)

Bungie’s next game promises to reach players in a way Halo barely touched on. Though Halo’s success could never be described as anything other than stellar, Bungie’s elusive new game promises to be a industry-shaker very much in the same way as it’s breakout hit for Xbox.

Though you could derive any number of meanings from the studios various hints and cryptic nods, there is very little concrete information around, but that hasn’t stopped us speculating wildly on the smallest of clues.

Bungie has hinted that ‘Tiger’, like almost every single one of its other games, will offer players the chance of exploring the stars, but whether this means we’ll be donning super-soldier armour isn’t yet clear. Bungie’s history with Halo’s innovative Forge mode and multiplayer indicates that the studio could be setting its sights on the lofty ambitions of creating an experience that requires a heavy emphasis on social networking and player co-operation.

A game that utilises the MMO genre’s most inclusive traits could hint at the direction Bungie is headed, or it could just be a game where a guy wearing armour shoots purple aliens that go ‘weraagghhh’.

Percentage chance: 26%

3) Kinect 2

Kinect has hit a number of issues since its launch in 2010, from technical limitations, creative confusions and a plain old lack of general support from the industry.

It’s easy to understand why many have been reluctant to involve Kinect in anything more than sports/dance/kids games since its release; it’s really rather difficult to include Kinect in traditional gameplay without crippling the player’s input in the process.

All of this could change with the increased accuracy of the rumoured Kinect 2, though. There’s been plenty of internet speculation talking up the possibilities of a successor to the Xbox 360 from Microsoft (and realistically, Kinect 2 could be a part of this), but for Microsoft’s motion control revolution to truly take hold, it seems the improvements a second iteration would bring are entirely needed.

The ability to lip-read and totally map body movements accurately, without delay, have been touted by some on the internet. It would certainly make a considerable difference, but until developers can wrap their heads around Kinect-only genres and ways of implementing the device unobtrusively into mainstream games, Microsoft’s motion controller will continue convince the hardcore.

Percentage chance: 51%

2) Assassin’s Creed 2012

Ubisoft’s adopted yearly release model for the Assassin’s Creed series has begun to creek under the weight of its over encumbered narrative. Where Brotherhood adapted and evolved the formula sufficiently, adding its own unique spin on to Ezio’s world, Revelations took the tiniest of steps forward making many wonder why exactly they needed another huge sprawling Assassin’s Creed adventure.

Perhaps yearly releases should be left to the sports franchises after all? This minor misstep is unlikely to put Ubisoft off, though, Assassin’s Creed, despite Revelations, is still one of the 360’s most bankable series and a new game for 2012 appears like a strong possibility.

Whether it’s a sequel along the same lines as the previous outings is open to debate, but a job listings on Ubisoft Quebec’s website could shed some light. According to its website, the studio is looking for an “experienced level designers to help create and populate the world for a triple-A MMO project.”

Hints at Cloud gaming also throw up the intriguing possibility that Assassin’s Creed is about to evolve into something far more ambitious than what we’ve seen before, or it could just be a job post for one of Ubi’s other major titles.

Percentage chance: 58%

1) Call Of Duty 2012

It’s Treyarch’s turn. What is it going to do, then? Black Ops 2? World At War 2? A whole new timeframe and spin-off? Well, the smart money’s on the studio returning to Black Ops and fleshing out a different war, taking advantage of its ‘deniable ops’ set-up that pretty much gives it carte blanch to do whatever it wants.

If Ubisoft is struggling to keep a new Assassin’s Creed interesting every year, the same is certainly not true of COD.

This is obviously thanks to its fantastic multiplayer and, with Elite now in place to offer a hub for the DLC and incremental changes, a new COD will more than likely remain largely unchanged in basic form to what we’ve had before.

Not that it’s too much of an issue, clearly the world agrees that the COD formula is working just fine, but just how many samey iterations does the series have left under its belt before it begins to feel stale?

Percentage chance: 85%

As of midnight on the 31^st December 2011, as the clocks ticked over into the New Year and parties the world over toasted to good health, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 became the first current-gen console to be on sale for eight consecutive years. An impressive if unsurprising fact, given the head start it was granted by Sony and Nintendo’s late arrivals, but it’s also unusual. The current consoles have been part of the longest running cycles ever experienced in the modern games industry and though Microsoft and Sony have been adamant that ten years should be the target length of life for their machines, consumers and developers are arguably itching for new technology.

It’s partly the reason rumours, however small or fleeting, have been analysed, speculated over and, more than likely, blown out of all proportion over the last few months. Halo 4’s announcement, for example, was quickly followed with speculation leading many to believe it would launch accompanied by a new machine at the end of 2012. Though Microsoft debunked these rumours faster than the Master Chief reloads his assault rifle, it remains a tantalisingly real prospect.

As 2012 enfolds and each passing month brings us closer to gaming’s biggest event, E3, which would make a perfect platform for a next-gen announcement), a reveal seems imminent. The only question is, will Microsoft’s new machine launch this year, or next?

It’s become evident the economic downturn experienced across the world over the last few years has made clinging on to the current console life cycle the smart choice, for publishers, developers and manufacturers. If rumours are to be believed, though, Microsoft will once again be first to step into next-gen territory ahead of the competition. Test units and rough approximations of the technology have been rumoured to be with studios such as Ubisoft Montreal and even a next-gen Kinect has been touted to be so accurate it has the ability to lip read and interpret emotions from facial expressions. That at least holds hope that future Kinect games will actually work without constant misinterpretations of your actions.

Hex-core CPU’s, AMD graphics processors and 2GB of DDR3 RAM are just a few of the nonsensical technical specifications bandied about as potential make-up of the next-box. Better graphics really are the minimum requirements for a new machine, too. Despite this the 360 has changed beyond all recognition to truly offer an entertainment hub, complete with TV, music, movies and social networking. Recognising this as the consoles renewed focus, there has even been rumours of two distinct versions of the console. A hardcore gamer’s choice and a Kinect-focused set-top box to cater for the fledgling family market.

An interesting prospect and all this conjecture provides no end of fun, but the bottom line is serious. A new console is needed to fuel not only an aging industry economically, but also creatively. For everyone’s sake, we hope these rumours turn out to be true.