GAMES NEVER END

Men of War: Red Tide

2010-01-28T08:25:00.000+07:00

Being a Black Coat must have been very annoying. This is one of the lessons we’re taking away from Red Tide, a WWII RTS with an eye for historical accuracy and realism that focuses on the exploits of these little-known yet resourceful Russian marines. Here’s another lesson we’re taking away: the Black Coats had to quicksave all the time.

That Red Tide selects Easy mode by default is telling. While plenty of missions provide an enjoyable challenge (on Easy, once you know what you’re doing), some don’t. The astonishingly unfair second mission could put you off for life: you and eight guys are dropped in a forest outside a village with 60 or so enemy soldiers, who have two machinegun emplacements, an armoured APC, a tank and two armoured cars.

In a house is a Romanian POW. You wipe out the enemy troops, get the POW, and then a convoy rolls up and you have to obliterate it. Then you jump into some vehicles to escape, but your route is littered with obstacles. By the end of it, your eight men have slaughtered an army. Imagine an orange, and when you peel the skin off it there’s more skin underneath – and then when you get that skin off too, underneath it is a bomb. Our quicksave finger is calloused.

In what can only be a nod to the lack of professional training afforded to Russian officers, there’s no tutorial or tips of any kind. That lack of training is also re-created in your troops’ pathfinding and AI. It turns out that despite their fearsome reputation for night-time amphibious bayonet assaults, the Black Coats had great trouble getting in and out of their boats. Even on land, our marines would go for tactically unsound walkabouts.

But it feels like being a Black Coat could be a great time. The same realism and attention to detail that make Red Tide so hard also create a hugely engaging and satisfying experience that ticks over in your head long after you’ve stopped playing. Each time your plan comes together, it feels like finding a chink in the armour of some faceless khaki goliath, and the pop and slump of every felled enemy soldier becomes a balm to your soul. At these times you can relax a little and enjoy the mass of new vehicles that are Red Tide’s only concrete addition to Men of War, plus the simple pleasure of your little soldiers commandeering a big gun and blowing sizeable holes in a garrisoned building.

Shame you’ll be doing it alone. In a decision we’re not sure is historically accurate at all, Best Way have removed all multiplayer from Men of War. Gone are the host of competitive multiplayer modes and the fabled co-op, rendering Red Tide no more than a hastily put-together standalone mission pack for a better game. Twenty sprawling, multi-part missions that beg to be solved, true, but also ones that eschew a difficulty curve in favour of a difficulty mountain range.

Men of War A4, the other standalone expansion for Men of War, is currently in development. You might be best off waiting for that.

Rise of Flight: The First Great Air War

2010-01-28T08:23:00.000+07:00

In Rise of Flight the brutal honesty is confined to the physics, damage models and virtual cockpits. Russian outfit Neoqb have created a fleet of fake Fokkers, Albatrosses, Spads and Sopwiths that deceive the inner ear as consummately as they do the eye. We’ve flown every WWI sim since Red Baron and have never experienced anything quite this raw, exhilarating or believable.

The first air warriors perished in numerous hideous ways and RoF lets you try most of them. Burn alive after taking a gas tank hit, drop to your doom after shedding your wings in an over-eager dive, or break every bone in your body after spinning out of a duel. Piloting these wiry war machines is actually pretty straightforward, even with realism options such as engine management active. The challenge is flying them at their limits while some bedroom Boelcke riddles your tail with sizzling lead.

Multiplayer is at the heart of the sim, and most of the servers are ‘full realism’ and crawling with canny aces. The good news is that half those aces will be on your side. Until Neoqb patch-in a dogfight mode, all scenarios are team-based.

Sadly, there are a few lice nestling in the seams of this exquisitely stitched sheepskin flying jacket. Louse number one is the DRM. To fly RoF – even alone – you need an active internet connection. ISP playing silly buggers? Oak tree KOed your phone line? You’re grounded, old son. Louse number two is the spartan single-player mode. Call us old-fashioned if you must, but we like our sky sims to come with configurable dogfight generators and enveloping, dynamic campaigns.

A mission editor, a sprinkle of single sorties and a campaign engine that randomly generates its challenges but doesn’t encourage freelancing or foster a sense of squadron don’t quite cut it. If you demand a rich, colourful career mode, stick with Over Flanders Fields or the venerable Red Baron II, or wait and see what external DCGs the community cook up (there’s already one in the works).

You may also want to hang back if you like your hangars well-stocked. RoF ships with just four flyables: the Fokker D.VII, Spad XIII, Albatross D.Va and Nieuport 28. Extra birds such as the iconic Camel and Dr.I cost money for each. Ah IL-2, how we miss thy generosity.

Ninja Blade

2010-01-28T08:20:00.000+07:00

Urgh, what a slog. There’s just no joy at all to be had from playing this game, even though you’ve got all sorts of whizz-bang action and swords chopping at enemies with wanton abandon. But there’s no soul there, none at all.

Ninja Blade is as corporate a game as you’re likely to ever play, with virtually nothing to identify it from the hundreds of other games that block up the shelves with their inane drudgery. And, on top of all of this, it’s riddled, nay, infested with quick time events, those three dreaded words that plague all right-minded individuals.

You play a character called Ken Ogawa, who likes to wear ninja clothes and do ninja things. The question of why global organisations are recruiting ninjas to battle ‘infected’ creatures across the globe is left unanswered. (Argh, even the choice of bad guy is so thoughtless, it makes us angry just to write it.) Anyway, as our Ken chops up shambling entities, upgrades his weapons and presses Space when prompted to by the game, he has to contend with that most hideous of things: the shoddy console port effect. Yes, when you save the game it says, “Do not turn off your console”. Would it have been too much trouble to change that word to “machine”? Really?

All the controls are marked in Xbox 360 control pad symbols, so you have no idea what key you’re meant to be pressing. Yes, we could have plugged in a pad, but what if we didn’t have one or ours broke? So we had to guess which keys did what, because there’s no way the game’s going to actually make it easy for us. Press RT and move the left stick to wall run. Right, we know WSAD is the left stick, so what’s RT? Quick check of the controls reveals nothing, so we’ll just spend five minutes pressing all the keys and falling off a ledge to find out which one it is. Ah ha! CTRL! At last, you little rascal.

As you can see, we hated playing this game. The unendurable boss battles, the combat, the ridiculous American accents for the clearly non-American characters, the astonishing number of QTEs and, finally, the lack of anything approaching an original idea contrives to make this one of the most ghastly games we’ve had the misfortune to play. Refuse to accept a game with such little creative effort put into it and vote with your wallets.

God Of War Collection

2010-01-28T08:16:00.000+07:00

God of War Collection – comprising the original PS2 games, repackaged on one handy blu-ray disc and remastered in HD – looks like a PlayStation 2.5 game. It may be a purely cosmetic overhaul – astutely handled by Bluepoint Games, the developer behind PSN’s Blast Factor – but Kratos’ PS2 adventures have lost little of their brutal substance.

The disc comes with the brilliant God of War and the even better God of War II, except the visuals are delivered in 720P. Nothing has been lost in translation from the PS2 version to PS3, so it plays exactly the same. For the uninitiated, GOW set the benchmark for hack and slash ultra-violence, twinned to epic screen-size boss battles. Oh, and anti-hero Kratos is a mad man. Armed with the Blades of Chaos (read: massive slicey blades) and coated with – in a plot twist that goes some way to explaining why he’s so furious – the ashes of his scorched family, he wades through harpies, minotaurs, screaming sirens and most other mythical beasts you care to mention. He’s also packing magic spells including Poseidon’s Rage – an electric blast radius that fries all within it or Typhon’s Bane – basically a glorified bow and arrow.

In GOW he’s a mortal working with the Gods to knock Ares – the original God of War – down a peg or two. Problem is, Ares stands taller than the Empire State building, which is pretty tall. Thus begins an adventure through Athens and down to Hades in search of the tools to eff him up. In GOW II, Kratos is tricked into relinquishing all his powers by the vengeful Gods, so he teams up with the Titans to teach his old holy chums a lesson in revenge. Across both games you’ll kill thousands of enemies without batting an eye-lid. OK, maybe you’ll wince a little when he pulls an archer apart with his bare hands.

Aside from the glossy visuals, both games being on one disc and the obligatory Trophies, God of War Collection doesn’t contain anything else you could call new. But it’s not like we expected new levels, weapons and a custom soundtrack. Hell no. What we want, and what we’re pretty sure you’ll agree with when you play it, is a stunning reminder of why God of War made such an impact on PS2 in the first place.

From the opening moments of both games, you can’t help but marvel at the beauty – and scale – of the environments, reveling in glee at the undimmed, visceral brutality of Kratos’ attacks. Countless games have tried and failed to match the epic scale and stylish kills of God of War since it first appeared in 2005 and they’ve all been left bloody-nosed. But while God of War Collection highlights how some of the visuals haven’t aged well (especially the untouched cutscenes) these HD remakes still play great and don’t feel out of place on PS3. For us, the opening to God of War II, where you methodically take down a giant angry statue, stills ranks as one of the greatest openers in any game we’ve played. And with this collector’s edition’s spit and polish, it looks even better than before.

What we didn’t remember about either game is how hard they are. It seems unlikely that Sony would’ve advised Bluepoint Games to up the ante in terms of difficulty, but there’s a Trophy specifically called Getting My Ass Kicked, which is a bronze award for dying so many times that you’re offered Easy mode. We don’t remember the beasts being so tricky to dispatch the first time around, especially the super-strength minotaurs. But we see this extra difficulty as a new challenge for us to enjoy and absolutely not a steady decrease in our gaming skills.

One slightly annoying thing about God of War Collection is that once you enter either game’s menu, you can’t simply drop out and fire up the other one without quitting out all the way to the XMB. It may just be a flaw in the version that we’re playing but it’s pretty grating if you fancy a change halfway through. Another gripe is the fact that the challenge rooms aren’t unlocked from the off. These bastard-hard rooms consist of special challenges like firing a giant stake into as many undead creatures as you can in a set time limit. Or fling as many enemies off a flying platform as possible with your throwing skills. But alas, you’ll have to work Kratos’ grey dangly bits to get them.

If you’re in any doubt about God of War’s importance to gaming, let alone the PlayStation brand, here’s the perfect chance to get acquainted with the titles that pushed PS2 to its limits – uniting arcane, but precise, Japanese play dynamics with Western accessibility and production bombast. You won’t be disappointed with Kratos’ HD adventures. That ashen grey look was meant for 720P. A hulking reinvention? By Zeus’ ragged beard, no – but you’ll sure like Kratos when he’s angry. If you're in the UK, you could wait for the official release or import it (the game’s already out in the US and runs on a UK PS3).

Dark Void

2010-01-28T08:12:00.000+07:00

Groan, groan, groan to the high heavens. Is this truly all we have to look forward to for the next 10 billion years? Do we just have to watch some guy who looks pretty much the same in every single game trudging about scenery rendered in Unreal Tournament 3’s engine? Are developers deliberately failing to come up with anything new whatsoever to shape their games? And no, we don’t just mean “make the same game and then stick some bloody gimmick into it so people think it’s different from the last one.”

That’s exactly what’s happened here, yet again. Dark Void, a game that had the potential to be something special if it hadn’t been crushed underneath the hammer of unoriginality. Just because you’ve got a jet pack in the game doesn’t mean it’s going to hide the fact we might as well be playing Dark Sector, Damnation, or Terminator: Salvation or... well, you get the picture. It doesn’t help that said jet pack sections are very difficult to control effectively using the traditional mouse and keyboard setup. It’s better with a pad, but it’s still pretty weak and imprecise. We’ll concede that when it does work it feels pretty cool, but it’s so fiddly, you always feel that this facade could shatter in the blink of an eye.

The best thing about the game is the plot and setting. While the idea of “humans stranded in rebellious bondage seek saviour to break free of chains” isn’t an original one, the whole tie-in with the Bermuda Triangle is interesting. You feel more could have been made of this – why didn’t they really play on this aspect and have more than just a cameo from a scientist based on Nikola Tesla? There’s all sorts of missing celebrities they could have had, but enough of that. We could go on for a long time about it. So yeah, the setting is good and you just wish the game could back it up, as is usually the case with these over-the-shoulder titles we’ve been seeing so much of.

There’s a cover system, which is of little surprise to anyone, and there’s also a ‘vertical cover system’, which just involves flipping the viewpoint to face up a surface, and your character performing prescribed moves by pressing the C key. It can serve up some pleasant visual moments, but other than that it’s just an unnecessary gimmick.

Speaking of visuals, they are bland and washed-out, especially with the ever-present distance fog blighting the land. To add to the uninspiring visuals, the crux of the game – shooting Geth-like creatures with big slugs controlling them – is vapid and tedious too. Every enemy seems to take about 40 bullets to the face before they go down in time-honoured “stretch-the-gameplay-out-artificially” tradition until you upgrade your weapons using the obligatory upgrade system that every game has to have now. You don’t actually get to make many upgrades, as the points you collect to enable them take ages to accumulate.

There must be something good about this game, though. There has to be. As we mentioned, there’s the “when it works” air combat. Once you get used to it, it can feel fluid and exciting, but the line between success and failure is much too fine. If you’re using the mouse and keys, the temptation is always to use the WASD keys to move around – but when flying, you need to use the mouse, which is criminally sluggish and imprecise – the very opposite to what it should be. So, definitely use a gamepad, as it’s clear the mouse support was added as a very last-minute afterthought. If you can use one, or if you can force yourself not to press A or D to strafe left and right, then it’ll be good fun soaring around in the clouds. Just don’t expect to be too accurate with your gunfire and you’ll be fine.

Dark Void is a criminal waste of time and energy, as standard and generic a game as you could hope to find, with a couple of little things that raise it out of the meat grinder and back into the land of the living. The flying side of things is reasonable but not worth all the hype, as the main game is a total bore and the plot is wasted on the rest of the package. That about sums it up.

The Secret World

2010-01-28T08:06:00.000+07:00

Unlike their last effort, Age of Conan, Funcom is using an original setting for this online game: the real world. But don’t worry: this isn’t a game that has you washing +1 dishes before travelling to the supermarket to purchase increasingly nutritious vegetables. Like the classic shooter/RPG Deus Ex, The Secret World is grounded in our most intriguing urban legends, myths and secret societies. This gives Funcom the chance to create lore that’s accessible to everyone, but lets them apply their own interpretations.

Funcom’s focus is on the hidden orders popularised by the likes of Dan Brown, National Treasure, and the tinfoil-hat-wearing lunatics who fuel conspiracy theories. The factions – the Illuminati, Templar, and the Dragon – give players the chance to explore material that’s ripe for development.

Each faction will have home cities – New York, London, and Seoul respectively – based in reality, so don’t expect to see much strange architecture to begin with. Although, that’s not saying it’s going to be an everyday experience. Vampires, Atlantis, and the end of the Mayan calendar (2012) will all play a role in the game.

The factions themselves are full of character. The Templar is a modern take on the traditional crusaders, while the Illuminati are far more corporate with order and money driving their gains. The Dragon is the most mysterious, preferring to spread chaos from behind the scenes like a clandestine puppet master.

Funcom is staying coy about The Secret World’s narrative specifics, bar that its history tracks back 100 million years. There’s also the fantasy realm Agartha which will come later, although details are still sketchy on what it’ll entail. So we’ll just have to wait for the announcement of the inevitable expansion pack.

What it is sure of is the game’s combat. Your powers are identical across the factions. Swords, shotguns, and sub-machine guns all lend themselves to responsive, quick combat. Those thinking of Age of Conan’s problems with scraps will have their views quickly quashed. The combat has been built from the ground up to provide a fluid experience never really seen in MMOs before. Expect plenty of leaping, slicing, shooting and everything else that resides in between.

As your choice of faction is purely cosmetic, it means you can focus on bettering your skills rather than worrying if you’ve selected the weaker faction. Even more interesting is Funcom’s choice to do away with traditional levels and classes. Your avatar is defined by his abilities. The way you play is reflected in your skills. It leads to organic gaming where you are no longer restricted by a poor choice in the beginning. The developers are also hoping it’ll narrow the gap between new players and veterans.

Chuck in player-made organisations called cabals (i.e. guilds) and it’s obvious that Funcom is aiming to reward cooperative players. Age of Conan struggled with social interaction and it’s good to see that Funcom is attempting to rectify the mistake. That’s not saying that you’ll be forced to interact - the game has plenty for the solo player. It’s just as playable alone, but team-based quests and other community-based bonuses mean you’ll be better off if you’re social. Leaderboards and the implementation of social networks are planned – another way to let you keep track of your character’s progress.

But perhaps the best thing about The Secret World is it links to our reality. While there are plenty of mythical beasts and supernatural attacks, you’ll be fighting through the streets of recognisable cities. Abandoned cars, decrepit gas stations, and rusting scrap yards give the impression that this is a world in decay. On top of that, the scope for expansion is unfathomable. Our world alone is huge, and that’s before Funcom starts being all creative.

Dante's Inferno

2010-01-28T08:02:00.000+07:00

God of War meets Dead Space in Hell. That’s how we first described Dante’s Inferno and it wouldn’t be risking the wrath of Hell to suggest that’s how EA’s infernal epic looks now.

However, reducing the game to comparisons no longer does it justice. Sure, it plays like God of War – something the developers admitted to us – and it’s made by the same studio that handled Dead Space, but thanks to the game’s unique vision of Hell, it’s unlike anything we’ve seen before.

“When it comes to the environments in the game, we’ve tried to be as faithful to the poem as we could,” explains Jonathan Knight, executive producer on Dante’s Inferno. “Some sections, such as the Wood of the Suicides, or the Styx Marsh and the lead-up to the City of Dis, are pretty accurately re-constructed in the game, based directly upon Dante’s descriptions of what he imagined.”

To give you some idea of what that might be, the trees in the Wood of the Suicides are made up of people who took their own lives, constantly twisted and petrified in torment. The road to the City of Dis is a similarly cheery place: here, sinners are trapped inside burning coffins, eternally scrabbling to escape. Sure beats warehouses, docks and generic urban sprawls.

This adherence to the poem extends to the characters. Figures such as King Minos (judge of the dead), Phlegyas (guides Dante and Virgil to Hell) and Charon (ferries the dead across the River Styx) appear pretty much as they are in The Divine Comedy. In fact, Knight is keen to point out that “only when it comes to the story, and to the sins of Dante and his dark past, did we feel the need to really deviate and add new layers”.

He goes on to give the reason for this, saying: “We wanted to make an action game, and so it was important to create drama and conflict. Rather than a simple pilgrimage to find Beatrice, we made it into a rescue mission to save Beatrice from the clutches of Hell. We also gave a bigger part to Lucifer, made him a strong antagonist, and it sort of grew from there.”

Of course, the biggest departure from the poem is Dante appearing as a war-bloodied, self-wounding Knight of the Crusades and not a politically savvy pre-Renaissance poet. Let’s face it: sharp, 14th Century Italian literature doesn’t sell games. This is where the God of War comparisons start to kick in. Dante’s Inferno is a violent, third-person action game with a flawed hero and a slick, simple combo system. Even the buttons are the same as the ones found in God of War. However, instead of reeling in horror when confronted with the question of similarity to Sony’s multi-million dollar franchise, the developers at Visceral actually welcome the comparisons.

“It’s fair and flattering” says Knight. “We are obviously making a game in the third-person story-driven melee combat genre, and games like God of War, Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden are among the best in that class. We are honoured to be mentioned in that company. If the controls remind people of those games, then we hope that’s a good thing for gamers. What we’re focused on are the things that set Dante’s Inferno apart from the crowd.”

And what sets Dante’s apart? Technically, the game does look and play very smoothly. The team has already pledged its commitment to making sure it runs at a solid 60 frames per second, which – despite usually being a stat for the hardcore tech nerds – is important for reaction-based slashers. From a more gameplay-oriented perspective, Knight is keen to talk about the Righteousness system. Righteousness is morality with an action twist.

“In the game, the player is given the choice to punish or absolve the damned, the demons and the minions of Hell. This choice isn’t just made in modal interactions with the damned, it’s made constantly in finish moves in second-to-second combat throughout the game,” explains Knight. “Over time, the more you absolve, the more you’ll contribute to a Holy bar, which in turn leads to leveling up the Holy path. At each new level, the cross becomes stronger, and new abilities and modifications open up. The same is true down the Unholy path. You can level up both paths slowly, or more quickly by choosing one path or the other.”

In other words, think inFamous, only with the option to be good or a jerk built in to every significant encounter. And, much like we saw in Sony’s lightning-flinging action game, you’re rewarded with extra abilities and exclusive magic attacks the more extreme your alignment becomes. Throughout the game you find relics (unique weapons), which are either Holy or Unholy. Depending on how you’re playing the game, these relics will be more or less effective – so if you’re following a righteous path, don’t expect too much from your Unholy pick-ups.

“All the different systems are tied into this overall theme of choice: to punish or to absolve. We think it fits very well with the theme of free will, which was so important to Dante Alighieri, and it gives players more options in their play style,” claims Knight. We’re not sure choosing a preferred method of slaughtering unbaptised babies with knives for arms was quite the ‘free will’ Dante Alighieri had in mind when he wrote The Divine Comedy, but it does make for an entertainingly gruesome spectacle.

Dante in the game uses his scythe to produce the kind of finishing moves that would make even Kratos queasy. One example sees him slipping his scythe inside the body of a grotesquely fat enemy in the ‘Greed’ circle and snatching the blade back out, roughly chopping the creature in half. That’ll be an ‘Unholy’ finish, then.

However, we’ve also seen examples of ‘righteous’ finishes, where Dante presses his Holy Cross into the face of a fallen opponent and reduces them to a pile of glowing dust, presumably freeing their tormented soul. It’s all done with a Quick Time Event sequence, just like the God of War series. That seems like a bit of a disappointment considering games like Ninja Gaiden 2, and later down the line, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow have started to move away from QTEs as a resolution to epic (and occasionally not-so-epic) boss battles.

With so much violence and some downright horrific imagery in the levels (as a side note, Knight tells us that there was some material considered too nasty to appear in the final version of the game, but he won’t say what) it only seems like a matter of time before the knee-jerkers and banner-wavers start to close in on Dante’s Inferno in a big way.

EA staged a fake Christian protest at this year’s E3 games show in LA to drum up publicity for the game, and this seems to have kept other objections at bay – presumably for fear of doing EAs work for them. Knight takes an impish view on the subject, saying: “People have had 700 years to protest against the poem, and not much has ever come from that approach. The game is an adaptation of this incredible work of fiction, and that’s just what it is: a work of fiction. It’s a fantasy about a guy fighting the demons of the afterlife, as well as his own demons, in pursuit of the love of his life. What’s not to like about that?”

BioShock 2

2010-01-28T07:56:00.000+07:00

There’s more than one Big Sister. For whatever reason, 2K Marin had been leading us to believe that the lithe nemesis of BioShock 2 was a lonely thing. Sure, she’d pull you through iron doors with psycho-kinetic powers, whirling you up into a violent cloud of debris before slamming you to the floor, but there was a sense that when she wasn’t nearby, she’d be sitting alone and crying, trying to read a book but skewering it with her bayonet forearms.

But the Big Sister is, in fact, many. Now when we can’t see them, there’s the fear that they might be throwing parties and talking about how shit we are. Terror is no longer tainted by pity, and so when you do encounter one of the skittish, wall-leaping assassins, you’ll fear them completely. You’ll also be able to win, which is partly the reason why the Big Sister became a sorority rather than a solo foe.

“As of last time we spoke,” explains Jordan Thomas, creative director, “we were talking about a Big Sister who was at the centre of the fiction. There’s still a character in whom the soul of that narrative still exists, but as BioShock 2’s narrative must exist in harmony with the gameplay, we decided to give the player that feeling of victory that comes from actually defeating this foe when she comes for you. So the Big Sisters are Sofia Lamb’s, our new villain’s, mightiest enforcers. Yet as you go through the game, you’ll learn more and more about this character who is at the centre of that fiction.”

Hopefully you’re up to speed with the terminology of BioShock, or at least enough of it to not be fazed by talk of young children syringing pints of fluid from corpses before guzzling it down like sinewy Gatorade, because BioShock 2 continues the fiction in a not at all dissimilar way. The opening part of the level we played shows just how little the actual format of the game’s changed – your train journey is impeded by a door which has been frozen shut, a shifty sounding ally (Sinclair, a protege to Andrew Ryan) tells you, via shortwave radio, that to proceed you must find the Incinerate plasmid, which is hidden deep inside a wonderfully constructed and detailed amusement park.

The amusement park’s function in Rapture is revealed to you gradually through scattered audio diaries: when the children of Rapture began to ask about the surface, Ryan decided to build this place – Ryan Amusements – to make them terrified of the world above.

The park’s centrepiece is the Journey to the Surface ride, an on-rails bathysphere trip through narrow wooden streets and cardboard shop fronts. Scenes of metaphors made real judder into motion as you pass: a menacing, giant animatronic hand tears the roof from a farmhouse to steal the farmer’s invisible income while Ryan’s crackling voice echoes the same anti-Socialist, anti-tax agenda we heard during the opening scenes of BioShock.

Subtle as a wet fart in a crematorium though all that may be, there’s still fun to be had exploring Ryan’s distorted vision of the world above the waves. Elsewhere in the park, animated dioramas cheerfully detail the history of Rapture, from Ryan’s original expedition to the laying of the foundations. It’s porn for the detail-perverts, and we love every ounce of it.

You’re also a Big Daddy. Well, an early model Big Daddy, and one not as mutated as those that went into full production. It makes little difference to how BioShock 2 handles, and it’s thankfully unlike the closing sections of the previous game. You’re as nimble as you were suitless in BioShock – the only immediately noticeable differences are in the stomping sounds you make, and your giant drill arm, which replaces the wrench as your melee tool of choice.

In fact, all of the weapons you wield are beefier than most of Jack’s armoury. Your rivet gun not only fires, well, rivets, but it’s also capable of laying down rivet traps on floors, walls and ceilings. If approached, these traps will fire rivets directly upwards, downwards or sideways through whatever unfortunate sack of organic matter that happens to get in the way.

Next, your spear gun catches splicers and lifts them off the floor, pinning them to whatever they hit next. Retrieve the spear and they fall back down. Use a rocket spear and the bolt will lodge itself in the splicer’s flesh before sparking to life, launching the victim upwards or into a mad, screaming death spiral about the room. To end the show, it explodes. As you might guess, these rocket spears are as rare as hens’ tits.

As a Big Daddy, your interaction with Little Sisters is more complex than just harvesting or saving them. You’ll come across the girls in much the same way, with their clomping protectors in tow as they flit about the abandoned hallways. A new Big Daddy type is shown, the can-faced Rumbler, who can throw down handfuls of mini-turrets.

“You didn’t see it,” claims Jordan, “but I could’ve frozen the Rumbler and hacked his turrets.”

We believe him – the number of interactions between plasmids and the environment seems to have increased. You can fire an ice plasmid at a cyclone trap to turn it into a freezing wind, capable of turning splicers into flying blocks of ice. Likewise, the Incinerate plasmid will turn a cyclone trap into a blazing tornado. And you can electrocute a flying turret to short circuit it. Do this and it’ll fall, and if it lands in water it’ll zap anyone unlucky enough to be sharing the puddle. As with the first game, there’s scope for ingenuity when coming up against Big Daddies, and the world encourages it in its placement of broken water pipes and security cameras.

As soon as you’ve carved a path to a Little Sister, your binary choice is now between harvesting and adopting her. Adopt, and she hops on your shoulder and guides you to a corpse with magical pheromone-o-vision, a glittering trail of sparkles leading you to a pre-determined body.

According to Jordan, only certain splicer remains are fit to have ADAM sucked out of their torsos, and these corpses are likely to be ones 2K Marin have chosen for us. Ones that sit in well-lit rooms surrounded by enough doors and entry-points to make the inevitable siege unpredictable. They’ll also, based on the two occasions in which we found ourselves chaperoning the macabre event, be flanked by security cameras or turrets, both of which can be hacked to turn the arena to your advantage.

Hacking’s changed too. Instead of the polarising minigames of the first BioShock, in which you’d be faced with an impromptu game of Pipe Mania before being allowed to open a door or crack a safe, you’re now presented with a multicoloured bar along which an arrow slides. Stop it in the green and your hacking attempt is a success, stop it in the blue and your aim is true – you’ll MacGuyver the turret into being even more effective than usual.

Of course, miss both of these colours and not only are you really bad at a simple reaction-based game, but you fail the hack attempt. Crucially, regardless of whether you fail or succeed, the world no longer grinds to a standstill while you fiddle with objects – this explains why Pipe Mania’s been replaced by this rudimentary minigame – turrets will still tear away at you while you’re fingering their access panels, and security cameras will gleefully send teams of robots after you while you poke at their innards.

To this end we now have Remote Hacking Darts, which do exactly what you’re imagining them to. That you have to collect and ration these darts turns hacking into a commodity rather than a pure skill, and ties the stealth approach to moving through Rapture more closely to the action approach. Whereas hacking in BioShock - those times you ran through hails of gunfire to reach the safety of your frozen Pipe Mania limbo - felt entirely like cheating, it instead feels like true ingenuity and resourcefulness in BioShock 2.

Just as we prepared for Big Daddy encounters in the first game, we prepare for splicer sieges in the second. As soon as you set down your Little Sister to allow her to harvest a corpse, the deranged residents of Rapture flood into the room to... well, we’re not entirely sure what their intentions actually are. They’re certainly angry, and as our rivet traps, now-allied turrets and cyclone plasmids roar into life, the room is the scene of the most frenetic combat Rapture’s yet seen. Your preparations falter soon enough and you’re left protecting your Sister with reliable plasmids and guns. And drills.

This is where dual wielding begins to pull its weight. Your role as a Big Daddy might not imbue you with any immediate sense of physical superiority over Jack – but the ability to wield a plasmid in one hand and a weapon in the other allows for far more fluid combat with splicers, and at a faster pace too. A paralysing electrobolt followed by a torso-mangling thrust of your drill replaces a similar, wrench-based manoeuvre from the first game, while the benefits of being able to shred a screaming housewife with Gatling gun rounds while simultaneously grilling her with your upgraded Incinerate plasmid are obvious.

This is where BioShock 2 truly makes you feel powerful. A good thing too, as elsewhere, your stature as a Big Daddy – the toughest enemies from the first game – seems to have been neutered at every turn. Splicers are more powerful, as Jordan explains.

“The balance of the city 10 years on is much more feral and unforgiving than the first game,” he warns us. “The splicers you encounter have been augmenting themselves for years and years – and those who’ve managed to survive since BioShock are truly post-human. They’re able to take on a Big Daddy with ease. So you’re really fighting for survival.”

Brutes are one of these new breeds of splicer, Mafia goon-types with broken fedoras who’ve been taking strength tonics in the decade between games. They’re walking tanks – not a million miles from Left 4 Dead’s Tank in terms of aesthetics – and they’ll take a fair few smacks before they give it up.

“The Vita-Chambers,” continues Jordan, explaining the various ways this new Rapture intends to punish you, “if you die during a fight with a Big Daddy, you’ll come back to find the Little Sister has healed him. So you can’t just whittle them to death in the way that you once did.” A strange balance has been met then. You’re now in the clomping, commanding iron boots of a genetically advanced, physically-superior super-mutant, but your stomping grounds are populated by enemies more powerful than ever before.

The net total of all this line-shifting is a game that feels severely similar to BioShock in its play style, visual style, format, plot and pace, and that’s something that should cause furrowed brows among those who were expecting more of a departure from the brass-and-glass underwater kingdom.

Still, it’s the setting that will ultimately impress, and the opportunity to return to one of gaming’s most original locations in order to rummage around bits of the city that went curiously unnoticed in the first game. Ryan Amusements alone is testament to the sort of quality set-piece locations 2K Marin are capable of conjuring up - dark and twisted insights into the unhinged brainwrongs of Andrew Ryan - and places as unsettling as anything you could care to dig out of old Rapture.

That’s just the tip of this maddening iceberg too: the real thrill will be in uncovering the crackpots - the Sander Cohens - of this new world. And having had 10 years to properly marinate in their own lunacy, surrounded by naught but sea and splicers, they’re sure to be properly cuckoo.

Dust 514

2010-01-28T07:52:00.000+07:00

EVE Online is serious business for a serious number of players so devs CCP are treating Dust’s place in their universe with care. Every war fought on Dust’s battlefields will impact on the EVE universe, affecting trade, politics, and warfare throughout the space-based PC MMO.

With this power placed in the hands of console gamers, CCP are doing their best to keep the riffraff out. The first few months with the game will largely be spent in battles against AI or in skirmishes which have no effect on EVE’s universe of New Eden. Later, players will form alliances and will be hired by corporations and individuals operating in EVE Online, temporarily paid to seize control of a rival faction’s cities or military structures.

Each battlefield clocks in at around five kilometres with servers supporting a ‘significant’ number of players. Missions begin on board your faction’s War Barge overlooking the planet to be assaulted and detailing your commander’s load-out for the mission. Commanders provide shape and order to the battle – each faction’s leader remains on board the Mobile Command Centre, a sky fortress which hovers high above the battlefield. While grunts and squad leaders engage at ground level, commanders issue orders, deploy vehicles, and place waypoints, while positioning and re-positioning the MCC to keep it safe and effective.

The ultimate objective on any map is to bring down the enemy base, and battles escalate as ground forces seize objectives, earn command points, and raise the stakes. Ground assault troops will be able to lower the carrier’s shields and strike at its other defensive countermeasures to leave it open for attack, but still careful manoeuvring can keep your home base safe a little longer. Even as the game reaches its climax there’s still reason to fight on and assault the enemy’s outposts – attacking their artillery to buy your carrier a few more seconds; just long enough to take down the enemy’s own base.

Instead of a gradual crawl up an arbitrary Achievement tree as a reward, every win or loss in Dust means something to someone who has a personal stake in the EVE universe. You’ll have their gratitude; better still, you’ll have their money – to be spent on new guns and equipment.

Dust is experiment layered upon experiment. It’s a large-scale shooter from a first-time shooter dev which affects the balance of power in a game console-only gamers will never even play. It’s a tactical game without classes, only stacks of equipment and complex customisable weapons to choose from. It’s a test of how willing shooter players are to invest in a system of microtransactions to incur advantages in-game.

Toughest of all, it’s a multiplayer shooter without a real campaign element. Every time any developer tries that trick on a console, they fall on their face. Shadowrun, Quake Wars, Section 8 – all solid multiplayer shooters built without real campaigns, each failing harder than the last. Only Battlefield 1943, at bargain price, has landed on its feet. With those handicaps and the fickle console community behind the wheel, it’s not enough for Dust to be the cleverest shooter of the generation; it’ll have to be the best shooter too.

It’s unfortunately not enough for Dust to look and play as well as it should. As a pure multiplayer game, without tens of thousands of players on day one there might as well be no game at all. Picking the stupefying name of ‘Dust 514’ probably wasn’t a good start.

Aliens vs Predator

2010-01-28T07:43:00.000+07:00

In space no-one can hear you scream. But in the gaming room of Oxford-based developer Rebellion’s head office everyone can. Sitting mere meters away from the world’s largest TV screen with the lights down low and the volume up high, Aliens vs Predator is a very scary game.

It’s also a very ambitious game. Each species (humans, Aliens and Predators) gets its own campaign, control method and even screen furniture. Clearly Rebellion has gotten under the skin of these creatures to bring them to virtual life as accurately as possible. The result is a game that can by turns leave you feeling slightly sick with fear or giddy with power.

That each species has been fine-tuned for just the right balance of vulnerability and toughness is also impressive. Humans have access to greater firepower, the Aliens are quick and stealthy and the Predator is a master of the hunt. None are invincible and all can be deadly when used effectively.

It‘s a supremely authentic feeling title. There are various nods to the movies, from iconic weaponry such as the pulse rifle to the horrible clicking sound the Predator makes. There’s even a terrifying Predalien too.

So far, so impressive (our playthrough left us feeling a bit jittery with adrenaline), but questions remain. The Predator’s controls for instance feel a bit unwieldy at times and close quarters combat can be a slog. The major fear though is that the game’s chief selling point – its three distinctive campaigns – will result in each feeling too short and the whole feeling a bit, well, bitty.

That said, Aliens vs Predator is without doubt one of the most playfully inventive and exciting shooters we’ve seen for some time. We’re going to go out on a limb and say that if it were a movie it’d be Aliens rather than AvP: Requiem. The next three sections cover the three species’ campaigns, so read on to find out what we played of each.

We’re first introduced to Six, the game’s playable Alien character, as he bursts out of the chest of some poor unfortunate soul somewhere in the bowels of the Weyland-Yutani compound. It’s a sinister and unsettling scene but, oddly enough, makes us sympathise with Six and start eyeing up the evil scientists for a good mauling.

Cut to an adult Six that’s restrained in a lab and being put through his paces by a particularly sinister scientist. As more unfortunate employees of the world’s most evil corporation are marched in one by one we quickly get the hang of things.

You can’t carry weapons as the Alien, but effectively you are a weapon. Armed with vicious claws, a long tail and two (count ’em) mouths, playing as an Alien is visceral, gruesome fun. Felled enemies can even be grabbed, initiating one of several finishing moves. Our favourite? Puncturing skulls with the inner mouth.

But once Six is freed from his prison, it’s the speed of the thing that really impresses. He can barrel along at a frightening pace and takes walls and ceilings in stride. To move more stealthily he can even dodge in and out of vents and use his tail to disable light sources. And you’ll need to be stealthy too. Faced with armed guards and sentry guns you’ll be torn to acid-soaked ribbons in seconds.

The end result is a fast-paced first-person experience that plays against all your finely honed shooter instincts. Here escaping firefights by taking cover behind scenery is pointless. Instead, you’re required to climb the walls before dropping from the ceiling for a surprise attack. It’s a wrench to get your head around, but once you do, mercilessly hunting down your quarry becomes a guilty pleasure. Just as well too, as the scene ends with Six releasing his brethren and the Alien queen. It looks like there are going to be a lot more Alien attacks in mission two.

The mighty Predator’s game begins as a group of warriors descend to the planet to investigate the deaths of a pack of wet-behind-the-mandibles young Preds. The scene is set by a transmission showing one victim being latched onto by a facehugger – nicely setting up the inevitable appearance of a Predalien later on.

The game proper begins with a tutorial, necessarily so as the Predator controls are easily the most complicated of the three characters. Largely, combat is handled with wrist gauntlets - raise both of them to serve as a block that can set up counters. It’s a weighty, pugilistic system that again subverts the norms of first-person combat.

Left at that, the Predator’s game would be something of a slog. But in common with the Alien, the hunter is more vulnerable than his movie appearances would have us believe. As a result there’s a wealth of other techniques available that make for some nicely tactical gameplay.

At one point we’re charged with entering a heavily guarded human compound to retrieve the head of its commander. Simply wading in and slashing away quickly proves futile. Instead, we choose to approach things differently by enabling the cloaking device and leaping from rooftop to rooftop.

Targeting an enemy allows you to record their voice and project it somewhere else in the compound. Curious humans will now be drawn toward the sound and become ripe for picking off with a well-timed lunge or a blast from your shoulder-mounted cannons.

Despite your character’s immense power, then, the real thrill comes from approaching things tactically. Herding a soldier like a dumb cow before tearing his head and spine out is much more satisfying than trading blows for bullets.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2

2010-01-28T07:35:00.000+07:00

If you’re reading this, then you’ve managed to find a spare few minutes to drag yourself away from Modern Warfare 2. Yes, we know, it’s difficult – you’ve just got the Ninja perk and launched your first Tactical Nuke. But you also have the intelligence to appreciate that Modern Warfare 2 isn’t the absolute and final word in war-based online multiplayer.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was always likely to be dogged with comparisons to Call of Duty. But the simple fact is that the Battlefield series has always presented multiplayer on a much grander scale, and for a longer period of time.

The dusty, bleached-looking level we sampled, set on America’s Pacific coast, has typical Battlefield magnitude. An evolution of the original Bad Company’s ‘Gold Rush’ mode (now just called ‘Rush’), your mission to defend or destroy two important locations will, as always, rely as much on transport as on-foot soldiers.

Gordon Van Dyke, producer of numerous Battlefield titles, admits to us that vehicles have felt a little fragile in past games. Not so here – tanks feel thunderous and weighty (not to mention devastating), while armored trucks and quad bikes are rapid but not quite so unstable. Of course, the finely honed ‘paper, scissors, stone’ nature of Battlefield games (Bad Company 2 being “the best tuned Battlefield to date”, according to Van Dyke) means these vehicles aren’t invincible.

Each of the four classes (Medic, Assault, Recon and Engineer) has explosive methods to dispatch armor. Plus, tactically maneuvering the fight from open, treacherous land to intense street combat is a specialty that DICE have been perfecting nicely since Battlefield 2 back in 2005.

In our hands-on we got a chance to play in two teams of five (rather than the full 24 players), so the colossal maps did feel a bit empty. Respawning back in base could mean a huge trek to get back into the action if you’re an invading force. This did, however, give us the opportunity to try different approaches of attack; storming in with a tank, sneaking round the flank on an ATV or advancing quietly up through cover on foot, for example.

The two-man tank combo is as devastating as ever. With one man driving and operating the turret to take down other vehicles, the second man on the machine gun mops up any sneaky beggars trying to place charges on you. Killy goodness. The arcade feel to the driving suits the game just fine, and makes rolling a vehicle fun instead of a pain in the ass.

Like all Battlefield games, there’s a near vertical learning curve. If you’re new to the series, don’t even think about going online without some offline practice first. If not, get used to respawning and super accurate snipers. As you gain ranks, you’ll attain more ways to customize your soldier, including familiar upgrades like more grenades and unlimited sprinting.

Luckily, the early guns are relatively lethal, so a skilled player will still have a shot at beating veterans, although some might opt for support classes before attempting to take on everyone toe-to-toe. Still, when in comparison to MW2, the guns are noticeably less powerful. The survivability of everyone is necessary so that Medics actually have something to do – if everyone died in a couple of shots, you’d never get a chance to heal anyone.

Developers DICE know that Bad Company 2’s long term appeal lies in the multiplayer but are keen to stress that the single-player campaign has also been given more attention than ever. As you’d hope, Sarge, Sweetwater, Haggard and Marlowe of B-Company return but the tone is darker and the attitude more mature – something highlighted by the fact that they’re in conflict with the Russians while simultaneously attempting to neutralize a substantial weapon threat in South America. Certainly more righteous than lining their pockets with gold.

Such a mission will take B-Company across Chile – from the snow-capped mountains of the Andes, to barren desert, to tropical rainstorms in central Chile. DICE want to deliver the feeling of open-world freedom but also put you in controlled, exciting situations and from what we’ve seen so far that’s exactly the case. Bad Company 2 looks like it will be very good company indeed.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction

2010-01-28T07:30:00.000+07:00

A choke hold is a great bonding experience. Not between you and the man who’s holding a gun to your head – there’ll always be a tragic, longing awkwardness in that relationship – but between you and your fellow player, the guy flitting from shadow to shadow, circling around to spring up behind your captor and snap his neck like a bony pencil.

Or maybe, if he’s got one of his execution moves prepared, your friend will poke a hole between the eyes of the guard with Bauer-like aloofness. For these situations Splinter Cell Conviction needs a Manly Hug button, because when one spy helps out another, the mutual appreciation for one another’s usefulness is almost tangible.

We’re playing the third map in Conviction’s co-operative campaign, Yastreb Complex, a small part of a five-hour long prologue to the events of the single player game. The two-player campaign is a game in itself, taking in new locations and seen through the luminescent goggles of two new characters. The story goes that Third Echelon notices that three Russian EMP bombs have vanished, and must jump into bed with their Russian-counterpart, Voron, in order to track them down and save the world. It’s James Bond in spandex with big thigh muscles.

Enter Archer, the green-goggled Fisher-lite character, and his soon-to-be best pal Kestrel, who, as a Russian man, has to wear the red goggles. Despite their chromatic differences, the two eventually become the best of friends, crow barring doors open together, planting C-4 charges for simultaneous detonations, and marking and executing entire rooms of people at once.

Gone, as far as the Yastreb Complex level tells, are the vaguely erotic acrobatic moves of Chaos Theory (the phrase “use me as man-rope you mucky cow” may never be heard again) and arriving are the well-phrased mechanics of Conviction we spoke about in our last preview, tuned for two players.

Yastreb Complex, then. Having C-4ed a bit of wall, we slither into a loading bay area shrouded in darkness. The objective is to find and interrogate one Major Rebko, and my partner in this spy thriller is Patrick Redding, game director for Conviction’s multiplayer game and in possession of the kinds of skills that only come of having demonstrated the game a thousand times.

As in the single-player game, “marking and executing” is your most effective means of shoveling out death, and to illustrate Redding effortlessly marks three patrolling guards who immediately appear on my HUD as hovering arrows. In response I clamber up a pipe. Desperate to look like I know what I’m doing up in my lofty perch, I mark three more men. All six are within our collective field of vision, and should we decide to, we may dispatch them with clinical precision.

They’ve called this, simply enough, ‘Dual Mark and Execute’. Executions are rapid-fire, auto aimed fatal shots, available only once you’ve engaged in melee with an enemy (in this way, you’re restricted from using the powerful one-hit-kill move against every guard you encounter). In co-op, executions become grandly choreographed, synchronous events. When one of us triggers an execution, time slows to allow the other player to begin theirs, and the end result is a room of six guards dropping to the floor before they realize what’s happening.

Stylish, efficient, and visually elegant, it’s a spectacle that’s rationed throughout the level, requiring co-ordination and (whaddya know) co-operation to pull off. Lone executions are still an option, naturally, as is the ability to execute targets marked by another player. The potentially intrusive time dilation only comes into effect if both players have the opportunity to simultaneously perform an execution, otherwise it’s carried out on the crack of a whip.

Yastreb Complex, along with every inch of the co-op campaign, is built from the ground up to be tackled by a duo. Multiple routes are nearly always available, and enemies often appear in formations that require they be taken out simultaneously – either hawkishly watching one another’s backs or moving in patterns that can be identified and relayed to your fellow player. As we approach our objective, myself and Redding are made to rely on communication and co-ordination. The complex’s office floor, replete with scalable partition walls and a crawl-space above the ceiling tiles, tests our abilities to work in tandem.

Redding hoists himself up into the maze of asbestos-riddled ceiling tiles and switches to his sonar goggles to highlight enemies below. I creep, otherwise blind to what’s around the next corner, from cubicle to cubicle while my teammate barks warnings and instructions: “Wait at that corner”, “The guards are chatting, move now”, “Quick, vault over that photocopier all awesome-like”. Inside, though you’d never admit it, you feel that maybe this is how real spies talk to one another. On some childish level, Conviction’s co-op is the authentic espionage experience.

When it all goes tits up though, and we’re both unable to carry out our swanky execution moves, Redding starts firing silenced shots through the ceiling tiles, a mysterious deadly hail falling on the unwitting guardians of the office. Taking aim at the light fittings, I plunge the room into darkness and turn the tide of battle back in favor of the men with the sonar-goggles. This is when the choke hold happens, I’m grabbed from behind and my perilous incompetence is flagged up on Redding’s screen. It’s the Splinter Cell equivalent of being Smokered in Left 4 Dead, or incapacitated in Modern Warfare, and Redding’s reaction – to circle around and twist the man’s head off – cements the spirit of the co-operation in a manner familiar to you if you’ve played either of those games.

Interrogations appear in co-op too, and much like in the single-player, they employ “contextual bash points” in the environment, that is, you can pin an interrogatee’s hand to a tree with a knife, or smush his face into a photocopier until both are shattered and covered in toner, depending on where you take him. Both players can have a go at hurting a man until he talks, with one doing the grabbing and shaking while the other keeps an eye out for reinforcements.

In its current form, however, the implementation feels odd. On the Yastreb Complex level, Major Rebko flops petulantly to the floor in between snippets of information in order to allow the other player an opportunity to “have a go”. And the role of scouting during the interrogation is pointless, as backup never arrives until you’ve progressed by completing the scene.

Yastreb ends with me lugging Major Rebko to an eye and fingerprint scanner with my teammate providing cover. Gunmen stream onto the mezzanine outside Rebko’s office, while Redding monkeys along balconies, popping up above the railing to grab enemies and throw them down to the floor below. Then there’s a twist, tables are turned dramatically and we find ourselves in the most Mexican of stand-offs. We fade to black. The playthrough is over. Just 20 minutes of a five-hour co-operative campaign, outside of the Fisher-focused single-player adventure. The question is: who would ever want to play single-player after that?

But this is (very almost) 2010. Multiplayer without a World at War-style Siege mode, or a Left 4 Dead-style Survival mode, would cause ladies to faint in the street, and men to start brawling and tumbling through shop windows. With this in mind, on top of a co-op campaign fledged to within an inch of its life, you’ll find, astonishingly, Deniable Ops, a collection of maps playable in four different game types with either one or two players. It’s also designed to be played over and over until our sun explodes, with Ubisoft reckoning that Deniable Ops is where players will clock up most of their playtime.

A quick and humorless rundown of the four game types then. Hunter has you eliminating all enemies on a map as quickly as possible. Infiltration has you doing the same, but forces you to avoid detection. Last Stand is Conviction’s nod to an increasingly popular game mode in which you must defeat increasingly well-equipped waves of enemies. And finally, Face-Off pits two spies against one another in a map populated by AI guards.

I’m shown the Lumber Mill map in Infiltration mode, this time in single-player. The crippling loneliness is made worse by the sense that you’re now half as effective as you were before, and with that comes the burden of having to mark your own enemies and scout your own routes – it’s a remarkably different experience. Lumber Mill is notable for all of its piles of lumber, great big trunks stacked in well-lit rows, forcing you to make daring scoots down between bright wooden corridors and clamber among the rusted machinery.

Unlike the story-led co-op mode, in which enemies’ starting positions are dictated by level designers, Deniable Ops promises “emergent gameplay”. That is, enemies will crop up in different places each time you play. This creates some interesting situations in the Face-Off games, especially when combined with one of the single-player game’s features: last known position.

Successfully breaking line-of-sight with the AI leaves behind a ghostly visage of yourself, indicating where the AI last copped eyes on you. The AI will investigate that area, or simply fire blindly at it while you maneuver yourself to a more advantageous location. In Face-Off, using your last known position to lure guards towards your opponent is also a viable tactic.

Of course, in this mode the game-ending executions are impossible to pull-off against human players. It’s also, you might have noticed, the only non-co-operative part of Conviction’s multiplayer game. Spies vs Mercs won’t appear in Conviction, as Ubisoft focus their efforts on the lengthy co-op campaign.

Tying the whole experience together is P.E.C.S. (the Persistent Elite Creation System): XP that’s earned with everything you do in single and multiplayer. Challenges are set across both single- and multiplayer, requiring you to kill certain numbers of people with certain weapons, or achieve other unlikely feats. With the XP you earn from doing so, you’ll be able to get upgrades, new equipment, and costumes for Archer and Kestrel.

Clearly, Conviction’s multiplayer won’t be a side feature. For many it’ll be the main attraction, a juggernaut of a co-op campaign bolstered by the inclusion of replayable Deniable Ops missions. Splinter Cell seems to have found a new online niche, shedding the Spies vs Mercs (sure to cause some pained howls at first) in favor of the richer co-op experience. From what we’ve seen thus far, the change in focus is paying off.

Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight

2010-01-28T07:25:00.000+07:00

Can it be true? Is this the last ever Command & Conquer? Has Kane finally met his match? Respectively: Apparently, ditto, and it would appear so. We’ll believe it when we see it, but according to assistant producer Matt Ott, “We’re really going to wrap it up this time.”

It’s mildly terrifying to consider that the first C&C game came out in 1995 but it’s one of those rare games that can genuinely claim to have pioneered a genre. Real-time strategy may not be the poster boy for the PC it once was, but the development team at EA are refusing to rest on their sizeable laurels, and are indeed introducing fundamental gameplay changes for this fourth and, allegedly, final fling.

As any fools knows, one of the key concepts of C&C is fortifying your base, hunkering down and clinging on for dear life, repelling all that the enemy throws your way. Not anymore. Step forward the crawler mobile base, which as the name suggests, can stagger to a point on the map and unpack into a fully working base. Furthermore, should your base be destroyed, you can simply redeploy the crawler, even switching to a different class. Yes, there are three classes, namely offence, defence and support. Bluff traditionalists needn’t panic however: “There’s a lot of classic elements in there,” says Ott.

“If you choose to play a defensive class you’ll be able to fortify, hold down an area, build up around it. You’ll still have access to classic buildings like super weapons: the Temple Of Nod, the GDI Ion Cannon. So that kind of bunker down and build up your base gameplay still exists in the game; we’ve just added the offensive and support classes for people who work together as a team.

“Offence class is more tank-oriented - you also have the commander unit, and the support class has access to the airport - they’re very mobile, quick, and they also have player powers that can be used anywhere on the battlefield.

“Any of those classes is going to have all the tools you need to be successful. It is possible to have a team of five offensive players and still win a match. However, the classes really play to each other’s strengths by working together as a team.”

It’s a lot to take on board at once, particularly for someone who struggled to complete the demo of the original C&C, which came on a floppy disc and was played on something called a 486. This time round, We’re on a 10-PC LAN in a disused dairy in East London, sitting next to none other than Kane himself, or at least the man who plays him, Joe Kucan.

There’s no shame in admitting that we make a pig’s ear of our time with C&C4, simply sending all of our troops to a fiery death before trying again with a different class, and similar results. It’s almost a relief when our PC crashes, sparing us the indignity of another crushing defeat. Although we later learn that we’ve been playing at level 20 – the highest. Yes, there are RPG-style levels, with persistent player progression throughout the entire game, whether in you’re in campaign, skirmish or multiplayer mode.

Although in terms of story it’s a classic Nod vs GDI scenario – The Scrin, C&C3’s purple aliens, having been dropped – C&C4 appears to be advancing the genre that the original Command & Conquer founded. The advancements will also impact on the single-player campaign, which will be fast-paced and heavily reliant on map awareness, albeit more forgiving in that you can simply redeploy your crawler, whenever your base is wiped out.

So is this really the end? Ott is adamant: “This is the epic conclusion of the Tiberian saga, the story that we started back in 1995. It’s going to be the conclusion of Kane’s plan, GDI versus Nod, the fate of the world, the fate of Tiberian, it’s all here. It’s going to wrap up the saga.”

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands

2010-01-28T07:20:00.000+07:00

Like precious drops of life-giving water in a barren, dust-strewn landscape, details on Ubisoft’s new Prince of Persia game – slated to launch across all major gaming consoles in just a matter of months – have been excruciatingly scarce. Even the teaser trailer below left fans choking in the desert sands, desperate for real information. After chatting with Director of Level Design Michael McIntyre at a recent Ubisoft press event, however, we’ve managed to scavenge a few draughts of early intel on the game to temporarily slake your thirst.

Forgotten Sands ties back into the Sands of Time trilogy and features the titular Prince from those games, rather than the rebooted Prince character from 2008’s Prince of Persia title. This new tale takes place during a gap between Sands of Time and Prince of Persia: Warrior Within. “[During that gap] there were all these adventures that the character went on that we never really talked about, so now we’re making a game based on one of those adventures,” McIntyre says. “It doesn’t have anything to do with the whole time story.”

Without going into a lot of specific detail, he outlined Forgotten Sands’ initial story premise for us. “Our prince character is going to visit his brother’s kingdom, and when he arrives he finds the kingdom is under attack. He’s essentially trying to help out this brother.” This better explains the action found in the trailer footage above, with scenes of a desert city under siege. Billowing clouds of smoke emanate from the battleground, while combatants are gutted by a surge of undead warriors. Amidst the chaos and crumbling buildings, the Prince nimbly darts his way through the wreckage and climbs to the top of a tall spire where he’s greeted by a massive, demonic-looking sand beast that towers over the ruined city. Yes, the “dark secret” the narrator professes to be hidden within the sand does not appear to be a friendly one.

As expected, Forgotten Sands won’t deviate from the action-oriented platforming gameplay the series is known for. The Prince’s acrobatic maneuvers, the puzzles and combat will all be very similar to Sands of Time. “We’re really trying to evoke the same spirit of that trilogy, so it’s all going to be very reminiscent of that,” says McIntyre. In the trilogy, the prince had a bevy of slick moves and magical, time-altering powers. McIntyre confirmed that the ability to rewind time to get out of sticky situations will return, but the remainder of the Prince’s powers this time around will focus on the elements of nature.

Though we weren’t fortunate enough to steal a glimpse of the game in action, the trailer shows the cel-shaded visual style from the recent Prince of Persia game has been ditched in favor of a look that better matches the Sands of Time series. It’s pretty slick, and we’re anxious to get our hands on some Princely action soon. Forgotten Sands is scheduled to launch in May 2010 for consoles and handheld gaming platforms alike. Keep your eyes peeled here for more details as they come out.

Supreme Commander 2

2010-01-28T07:15:00.000+07:00

A Monkeylord has steamrollered the front lines, Titan bots are overwhelming your point defence, and a Sky King Extreme just pelted your Commander so hard he had to eject his own head to survive. And your secret weapon, an automoton the size of the Empire State, is only 70% complete. In any other RTS, game over. In Supreme Commander 2.

“Activate.... the Universal Colossus!”
“But sir!” your robot engineers would say if they could, “it’s not ready yet! It’s never been field tested! There could be catastrophic consequences we-”
“SILENCE! You have your orders!”

It stirs. It turns. It stomps. Lasers shoot from its eyes, obliterating whole lines of enemy units. Graviton generators in its hands suck tanks into the air and crumple them. It goes toe to toe with the damaged Monkeylord and smashes it into a burnt-out wreck. And then, it stops. It’s crashed.

SupCom was good at two things: massive experimental units, and making you feel inadequate about your PC. SupCom2 is no good at the latter: it runs faster on a given PC than its three-year-old predecessor (as for Xbox 360, well we haven't seen how it runs yet). But it’s gone nuts with the former: it has 27 Experimentals to the first game’s 9, and you can Half-Bake one before it’s complete. The result is fully functional, but every ten seconds it runs the risk of complete and permanent failure.

There’s often something you want in a hurry. SupCom creator Chris Taylor showed us the mobile Bomb Bouncer, a device that projects an umbrella over your other units and absorbs everything aerial units try to rain on them. It can turn that stored energy into an energy blast to take down enemy planes.

Then there is the Loyalty Cannon. It fires loyalty. It looks like one of Supreme Commander’s characteristic stadium-sized artillery pieces, but it zaps nearby enemy units with a beam that rewires them to fight for you. We watched it neutralise a whole incoming army, turning the front lines against the rear, then turning the rear lines too.

Unlocking Experimentals means spending research points to climb one of four tech trees: Land, Air, Sea, or Structures. Other options in these trees upgrade certain classes of your existing units. To unlock the hilarious Unit Cannon – a structure that fires the bots it builds at the enemy – you need a few of the upgrades in the Structure tree.

It’s no longer a case of "What’s the best thing I can afford?," but "What do I fancy specialising in?" With three different factions, each with five different tech trees and nine unique Experimentals, every commander’s answer will be different. Watching those answers wreck each other is going to be fun.

Twin Sector

2010-01-28T00:14:00.000+07:00

Twin Sector is doubly disappointing. It begins by stealing some of the best ideas from other physics-based puzzle games, which would be bad enough, but then it adds an extra layer of aggravation by not actually doing anything interesting with those ideas. The end result is an exercise in wasted potential, where the few small bright spots that you do stumble across are quickly obscured by sloppy mechanics, a dull story and a succession of boring environments. The sad part is that there really are the makings of an enjoyable game here, but it fails on nearly every level.

You begin the game with a very stiff and awkward cutscene that sets the tone for the game's tedious story. It seems that all of humanity has been placed into cryogenic suspension to wait out some sort of crisis. The player takes on the role of Ashley Simms, a star athlete and hero of a recent cave rescue, who is awoken from her cryogenic sleep by OSCAR, a HAL-like computer program, who warns that a generator failure will soon cut of life support to all the cryo units. Ashley has ten hours to get down to repair the generator before all of humanity dies. Of course, a series of twists and new challenges will appear along the way to drive the story in a new direction.

The story itself is pretty thin and the exposition doesn't really give you much to go on. The unexpected developments in the story aren't really that unexpected. A sentient computer program wants me to run an errand? And seems completely unable to turn off the automatic security defenses along the way? Having never seen anything like this before in my life, that sounds totally reliable to me. By the time you reach the first big twist halfway through the story, you'll hardly care.

A big part of that is due to the ridiculous circumstances you'll find yourself in, but it's also due to the terrifically awful voice acting. While I get that OSCAR is supposed to be a sort of lifeless computer program, that doesn't mean the voice acting has to be totally flat. Compared against the writing and acting of other memorable AI programs like HAL, SHODAN or GLaDOS, OSCAR has absolutely zero personality. Given that he's the only character you'll be interacting with for almost the entire game, it's hard to care at all about the story. What's more aggravating is that Ashley's voiceover seems only slightly more human.

You'll be tempted to turn the sounds off altogether and rely on the subtitles alone. Even then, you're not safe from the writing, which features such classic lines as using fire to "lit up a bottle," "Did this thing just moved?" and, my personal favorite, "From where is all this trash coming from?" At this point, there's no compelling reason to stay invested in the story.

Even if you manage to get past the thin story and monotonous voice acting, you'll find just as little personality or appeal in the generic and repetitive environments. The layouts are very linear with lots of big, pointless rooms and plenty of hallways that go nowhere in particular. It's as if the levels are designed without any regard for the purpose of the actual space, so you'll find yourself confronted with an arbitrary assortment of fans, locked doors and crates. I mean, what's the point of a glass walled room filled with motion-tracking turrets? Or the endless moving laser fences? Or chutes that automatically spit out water canisters or explosive barrels? There's no reason for any of this stuff beyond the demands of the gameplay. There's no sense of purpose or consistency in it.

So if the story and setting are uninspired, the gameplay must be awesome, right? Well, if not outright awesome, the gameplay is at least a mixed bag. Ashley makes use of two telekinetic gloves in Twin Sector; the left one attracts objects and the right one pushes them away. Simply hold down the appropriate mouse button and you can charge up the ability to deliver a super-powered push or pull. An overcharge system appears later in the game that gives you even more power.

You'll use the gloves in one of two ways. First, you can use them to attract or repel objects. Use the left glove to pick up a barrel, then charge up the right one to fire it at a distant switch. Or charge up the left glove to pull a water canister through a fire to extinguish the flames. Use the right glove to push away the electrified tracer drones that hunt you down in some of the levels. Or use the left glove to pick up a crate and shield yourself from a turret.

One of the problems here though, is that the crates you'll be using are so big that you won't be able to see anything when you're holding them. This makes them ideal shields against the turrets and lasers in the game, but makes them tough to aim as projectiles. Trying to aim a massive crate at a small grate or button or tracer is more about luck than skill. Though you can rotate the objects in your control, it's nearly impossible to orient them properly when working in the close confines of the levels. It's also a problem in the few instances where you're required to stack objects on top of each other.

The physics are also a bit crooked in places. Bottles can jump and spin and ricochet around from the gentlest of pushes and crates can bump into one another in ways that make stacking them particularly frustrating. The upside to that is, of course, that you can simply pick up a crate and walk into the turrets to knock them over.

You can also use the gloves to get around the environment. Simply charge the left glove and aim it at the wall to pull yourself up into otherwise inaccessible locations. Or use the right glove to cushion yourself from a fall that would otherwise have killed you. Believe me, until you get the hang of this one, you will be dying from lots of very short drops.

All in all, the puzzles presented by the game are fairly satisfying, but OSCAR usually gives you enough information that the puzzles are more about execution than thinking. There are some bright spots where you'll have to be a bit more logical about things, and even a few spots where I was happy to discover an improvised solution to what appeared to be a very scripted problem, but these moments were brief reprieves in a succession of puzzle cliches.

Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter

2010-01-28T00:03:00.000+07:00

If you're tired of all the sophistication and nuance in modern first-person shooters, you may want to take a trip back to simpler times with Serious Sam HD. There is no cover system, no elaborate story, and no characters to care about. What it does have is testosterone to spare and plenty of cheesy action movie one-liners delivered by our meathead hero, Sam. All you do is run around blowing the crap out of everything in sight, an activity that remains entertaining some 15 years after we first blasted our way through Doom's corridors. The whole thing has a very low budget B-movie feel to it and, despite the title, it definitely doesn't take itself too seriously.

Monsters from another dimension are here to kill us all, and Sam 'Serious' Stone is the one-man wrecking crew who will save us. You'll guide Sam through mostly linear levels set in ancient Egypt, stopping to solve only the most simple of puzzles along the way. In the spirit of Wolfenstein 3D, though, there are plenty of secrets to find.

As the focus is on shooting stuff, there are several fun weapons you'll find lying around. In addition to your standard shotguns and machine guns you'll find a Predator-style portable mini-gun, an effective laser blaster, and a cannon that shoots giant cannonballs that instantly take down just about anything. Regardless of your weapon of choice, fallen enemies explode in a very satisfying splatter of meat and gore.

Enemies swarm at you from every direction almost constantly, but there are only a handful of bad guy types so you're basically being attacked by never-ending waves of clones. This is one of those games that locks you in a room and keeps respawning enemies for way too long -- a mechanic I've always felt was lazy on the developer's part. Serious Sam is pretty challenging, but too often it's because of these cheap gimmicks.

Aside from the shiny new high-definition graphics the only other new component to Serious Sam is the four-player co-op mode. It can be fun to blast through the game with three friends but the framerate drops pretty seriously. Other than that, there are no new levels, enemies, or weapons to be found. In fact, the 16-player Deathmatch mode from the PC version has been removed here, which is a disappointing move considering the excellent Battlefield 1943 has been hosting 24-player online XBLA battles for over six months now.

With so little in the way of new content, players who already blasted their way through the adventure eight years ago might not find enough here to bring them back for another go round. But if you're a shooter fan who missed Serious Sam the first time, now's your chance to see why it's a cult favorite.

This XBLA version includes a very handy auto-aiming option that makes it much easier to hit your target. Some gamers might find it a little too easy, actually, but I appreciate it.

The Lord of the Rings Online: Siege of Mirkwood

2010-01-27T23:48:00.000+07:00

You are about to enter the first true battle of what will likely be our last war in Middle-earth." With that pronouncement, you enter the Mirkwood. From the golden shores of Lothlorien, we cross to the eastern shore of the Anduin where the forests have been corrupted by the forces of Sauron. It is a dark, dreadful place, filled with patrolling goblins, orcs, poisonous spiders, dank forests, and murky swamps. The foothold the elves have carved out is a pitiful bridgehead barely holding its own and we are assisting the elves in assaulting the orc fortresses and defending the ground they have gained.

The content in The Lord of the Rings Online is much more linear and focused on narrative than many other MMOs, based as it is on the works of Tolkien. There is an overarching storyline to follow in the War of the Ring, and Turbine has done a great job in bringing the story and the atmosphere of it to The Lord of the Rings Online. From the Shadows of Angmar to the Mines of Moria, Turbine has created a game and a world that is at once both familiar and unpredictable. The Siege of Mirkwood is no different. The next chapter of the story as it were, we are brought into Southern Mirkwood. Dol Guldor is occupied by one of Sauron's lieutenants and that is what we are pushing for.

Turbine has created a sense of impending doom as we move from the glorious sunlit wonder of Lothlorien, right into the frontlines of the battle. The atmosphere, the ambient sounds, the music, the immediate quests, all assist in creating that visceral urgency of being in the frontlines of a war zone. This then, is what we've been training for. All through the Shadows of Angmar, even through the "long dark" of the Mines of Moria, the War of the Ring has been a backdrop to our adventuring, but this, this is the frontline. No longer are we singing to trees; now we are patrolling the pickets, defending camps and assaulting the enemy.

The Siege of Mirkwood has been termed a "mini-expansion" by fans and certainly, it seems to be that as there's only one region, Southern Mirkwood, with nine areas within it. They are all dark, even in the day cycle, but still quite different from each other. Canyons and valleys and ruins mark one region, putrid swamp gases rise from another and the sense of being watched is high as you encounter goblins and orcs behind dead tree stumps and rocks. A high level expansion, The Siege of Mirkwood raises the player level cap to 65 and the Legendary item cap to 70. It also brings with it, several welcome changes to the game.

Legendary items, introduced in the Mines of Moria, are equipment that changes with you as you level. The Identify skill now gives more information about the Legendary item so players will get a better sense of where the item is headed before they invest a great deal of time into it only to find it less than useful later on.

Mounts have become a skill rather than an inventory item, freeing up an inventory slot, and in exchange for a long summon, players can interact with NPCs while mounted instead of having to dismount each time and you can ride them through portals and stay mounted when you zone.

More important is the change to combat. A change to the queuing of skills vis-a-vis auto-attack has made combat feel much more interactive and live, firing off when the skill is activated rather than a second or two later.

This expansion also brings a new feature to the game, Skirmishes. Skirmishes are combat instances that can be run solo or with a fellowship. Accessible via the UI, players can choose between eleven different maps and set the difficulty level between one and four. It is an alternative path for advancement from level 30 on up, and designed to complement Session play. Both are deeply entwined into the lore and further develop the story of Middle-Earth. The tutorial for example, takes you back to the brigand invasion of Bree with you defending the Prancing Pony. They are replayable and contain enough randomized elements that each instance feels different. One of these random elements is the placement and types of Lieutenants (mini-bosses) that may enter the fray, and another is the additional objectives that show up as you play through the instance.

A feature of Skirmishes is the minion system. Each player is provided with a soldier that they can train, advance, pick traits for and assign roles to. However, the soldier is not a pet. Usable only in the skirmish system, they are AI controlled and can sometimes seem to run around aimlessly. They are meant to complement the player character and can be used as a healer, archer or warrior, etc. The Skirmish system has a separate reward system. Different types of Skirmish marks are earned and these are used to upgrade your soldier and to purchase rewards from vendors in Skirmish camps found outside major cities.

A number of these Skirmishes are also part of the Epic Book and they feel more like full-scale battles than mere a mere skirmish. This sense of scale is greatly enhanced by the presence of soldiers together with your fellowship and their pets. A twelve-man instance can have twelve soldiers as well as the Captain and Loremaster pets, creating an allied force of over twenty-four.

The Lord of the Rings Online always had beautiful graphics to complement the gameplay and this expansion is no different. The dark atmosphere of Mirkwood greatly enhances the immersiveness of the game. The graphics and animations of creatures such as the spiders, Orcs and Felbeasts are also second to none, and there are plenty to be seen, both in Mirkwood itself as well as in the instances. Turbine has also managed to do wonders with contrast and color saturation so you aren't just tempted to crank up the gamma on your screen. It's not all browns and grays. There are colors and shades of browns, greens and grays as well as intense black contrasting with the more subtle shades.

Lest you think this is an entirely outdoor zone, we then get to the end objective of Dol Guldor. A massive structure inhabited by one of Sauron's lieutenants and his Fell Beast. The walls and towers of Dol Guldor loom menacingly in the distance long before you reach them. The Hell Hawks circling the sky, the eerie silhouettes of dead trees, the tendrils of fog that creep along the ground, all contribute to the feeling of dread even before the beast flies overhead and your character cringes in response. There, players will raid in the sword halls and dungeons of Dol Guldor, and in the chambers of the tower itself, all the way up to the final tower raid for a 12-man raid against the Nazghul on his Fell Beast. If that isn't challenging enough, there's also a "challenge" mode in the Dol Guldor instances. Light the challenge brazier and the instance becomes much harder. More NPCs perhaps and/or more mini-bosses, or even all the mini-bosses at once and again, there is the randomization factor for replayability.

Batman: Arkham Asylum

2010-01-27T21:03:00.000+07:00

How many games are using Batman as the main character and how that success? That's the first question that arises when we read the news about the plan-making Batman Arkham Asylum game a year ago. At that Eidos still has not purchased by Square Enix and staying as the game publisher. Answering this question, it's rarely the caped crusader has a successful game based on human imaging. Most of the Batman games on the market success story and the runway wearing character from Batman The Animated Series. Perhaps this is because the character of Batman illustrated considered difficult to form realistic in video games. Batman Arkham Asylum will change that view by presenting gameplay and a very neat story and an epic for the human form of Batman, not the animation.

Batman Arkham Asylum story opens with a scene that Batmobile raced toward Arkham Asylum, in the Batmobile looks chattering Joker figure is not clear in the conditions attached. Batman figure apparently was transporting eternal enemy to Arkham Asylum, where dangerous criminals undergoing therapy. After arriving at the Arkham Asylum Batman met with commissioner Gordon, the figure of the anti-corruption police and a close friend of Batman. Batman felt something was wrong from the beginning of their visit to Arkham Asylum, Joker too fast for him giving up just yet damaging Joker Blackgate prison. This is what makes Blackgate jail inmates transferred to Arkham Asylum and Batman did not like it.

Sure enough when the Joker left entirely to the guards Arkham Asylum, Joker immediately fled to the Arkham Asylum who had been commanded by Harley Quinn. Joker also announced that he had put a bomb at some point the city will he destroyed if the police or regular army had set foot in Arkham Asylum. Faced with unfavorable conditions choose to pursue Batman Joker in Arkham Asylum, and this is where your adventure as Batman begins.

Batman Arkham Asylum have story ideas fresh enough for a Batman game. How it would be like a Batman must fight in a place that it was full of people who hated him. Not just one but all the enemies of Batman's enemies, the Joker as the main enemy of both the core story.

Plus the first value comes from the gameplay. Batman Arkham Asylum has a hodgepodge gameplay. This game has some freedom style games that use the concept of an open world, the concept is supported by some secret and hidden content that we can access when we are reaching or have certain points in the game. This causes us to often check the area around or back and forth to the area previously explored. So for the problem Longevity Batman Arkham Asylum game is guaranteed.

Above plus the new terms of the area and how to play, wait until you're faced with the enemies and fought with them. Batman in this game has three basic movements to fight. The first movement is to attack, then counter attack and the last is the stunt attack. Every movement can be combined in such a way that could produce enough destructive attacks. Try to do counter then forwarded to the stunt followed by a long combo. Certainly you will see the final attack that pretty cool. Combo-combo-owned batman we can also upgrade experience acquired as Batman, so start simple combo movements to the complex combo is here.

We had also had a chance to tell you that Batman Arkham Asylum gameplay mixed enough, never in the battle hodgepodge elements had already seen. The reason we are given many options to defeat the enemy. Starting from frontal attacks to attack crept Solid Snake style. Rocksteady Studios also not forget to add sliding movement which followed a typical style kick Batman. So Batman is in this game is not a figure of Batman reliable gadgets gadgets-for battle. Batman is very strong power even with his bare hands could rip Batman iron lid that blocks the vents, so why are we not using energy to kick Batman's enemies?

Another plus comes from the characters and the voice of business in the in-game voice. For this one advantage we have to thank Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill and Arleen Sorkin managed to turn the character of Batman and his friends very well. Watching cutscene in Batman Arkham Asylum was like watching a scene that was Batman The Animated. So for now forget about Christian Bale's voice growling or late Ledger's sinister chuckle, because Batman Arkham Asylum is a different world with The Dark Knight. For the business vote, Batman Arkham Asylum has everything you need to pamper your ears. All material sound in this game has a quality that can given two thumbs at once, especially when combined with the ability to voice the character, Batman Arkham Asylum atmosphere became very wearing. Ever listen to growl Crocc Killer in Batman Arkham Asylum? I swear, we do not want to see the creatures at night.

This game has a feature called detective mode. With this feature we can see through walls, see what our enemies, to see what weapons they had brought, seeking a way out and many more. This game also has exploration system that is easy to understand, you simply turn on detective mode, all objects that can be invited to interact can be seen. This game also has a relatively easy puzzle, the article several places that have made platformer elements quite easily with the hook grapling firing features.

The only weakness in Batman Arkham Asylum game actually comes from the Unreal 3.0 engine which is very famous. Rocksteady Studios because it seems less mastered the use of these engines. If at first glance Batman Arkham Asylum has incredible graphics, but try to see detailed textures and lighting that is sometimes too vibrant. Also this game suffers the same disease with the other games developed using the Unreal 3.0 engine, the shadow moving irregularly. So practically Batman Arkham Asylum has graphics are ok but not exceptional. It was graphically presented Batman Arkham Asylum graphic is only equivalent to Gears of Wars was released three years ago.

Need For Speed: Shiftt

2010-01-27T20:52:00.000+07:00

The Need for Speed has always been guaranteed a certain quality racing game for a decade. But although the Need for Speed series is very well known, in the era of PS2 and PS3, games Need for Speed flying less than the PC era. When Need for Speed: Undercover sales drop, the more convinced that EA NFS fans needed something new. To meet these demands return back EA Need for Speed series to the most basic roots, and so was born a Need for Speed is a racing circuit with simulation gameplay.

Unlike the series of Forza and Gran Turismo is the initial target was already racing simulation, Need for Speed: Shift start everything from scratch. EA seems to not want to throw all typical Need for Speed, for it retains EA development base gameplay is arcade, but adding elements simulation

When I first played this game, you will undergo a test lap. When I drive a car is very rough and uncontrolled, then this game will suggest the type of easy to use, packed with aid so that you can keep playing. But if you successfully complete the lap with perfect, this game will offer advanced settings you use. Despite its advanced control, simulation elements offered by the Need for Speed: Shift is still far below the Forza and GT series.

Weakness in the apparently intentional, because playing Need for Speed without seeing a car pull unreasonable or Nitro is too fast. The cars in Need for Speed: Shift does not have realistic damage. You can make a BMW car dented, but the damage was limited to mere cosmetic. With the features in this game is not wrong, when NFS: Shift could be called the perfect marriage between arcade and simulation gameplay. All were supported by a balance between these two elements and the gradual pleasure of simulation and arcade elements.

Need for Speed: Shift wear RPG gameplay element. In essence we will get EXP which depends on the time your performance race. If you managed to constantly be in the prescribed lines and turned steadily, surely you will get high points as an accurate driver. Whereas if you hit enemies with aggressive and turning the barbarian way, then the points will increase your agresif. Until a certain point these two points we can see the results, whether you're a driver or an agresif rider accurate.

If you have an orientation to drive with accurate, then you will get the design and the additional equipment based on these points. Whereas if you drive carefully and you will get points accuracy. Both these points have a different way so if you want to get them the only way is to repeat the game with a different playing styles.

Because a system like an RPG game, then you will have a level indicating the level of your level. Unfortunately, the level provided by the NFS: Shift only reached level 50. When you reach that level there is nothing you can do. Fortunately, the disappointment is slightly relieved by the presence of 70 + cars that can be used.

Another disappointment is in NFS: Shift is, the same mode short career with the time you take to raise the level. Imagine to finish this game 100% you only need about eight hours. Eight-hour time was very briefly when compared with the experience of playing Need for Speed series of options.

Online mode in NFS: Shift is fun to play. There are two modes that we can use to play online. The first mode is a versus mode that allows us to quickly collided with seven drivers at once. The second mode is the Duel mode drivers. In this mode we have to catch drivers in front of us, pursuer and pursued buffer replacement switch play. If you win a lot of events there is a possibility Duel driver you can follow Duel Driver Championship.

Need for Speed: Shift is an interesting improvisation of the NFS series, ranging from the visual, cars, circuits, they have added details and effects. Remarkably, all these additions are not sacrificing framerate. NFS: Shift also has a scene that decorated prerender throughout the game. Prerender scene is very cool and detailed, unlike the previous NFS NFS, which tends to look like a cartoon. NFS: Shift smoothly collection of generic NFS soundtrack that you would not have felt out of place with its genre. For sound business NFS: Shift has an amazing collection of sound, imagine every sound machine has characteristics of each, so that eventually our goal to listen to the Ferrari engine sound across.

Heroes Over Europe

2010-01-27T19:08:00.000+07:00

Before you start playing a game, maybe this is a question we must ask first. Are you the type of gamer who wants to know everything in detail, from the dashboard of a boat until the buttons are detailed in a plane or you are the type of gamer who just wants to use a simple controller, flying straight away and finish enemy after enemy visible? All that really depends on the mission given in the game. For a more casual gamer, it might be more interested to play this game with a similar playing style as well as arcade game. Well, Heroes Over Europe is more focused on style arcade game, where you only need to direct the enemy planes and dropping away. Unfortunately, because the game is not too good, plus a few specific errors in this game, has made games that should be good, be not too good.

Before you start playing the online mode, there are 14 missions that you can run. Serving the picture was still impressed though not good enough really. As a game, you will be given a direct order and characteristics of each person who gave the order you can hear directly from his voice and the history of that person.

Game for themselves do not follow the chronological storyline there and they prefer to go through a couple of years there just to tell the story and that of course would be a bit troublesome for people who are trying to find out how the story goes. Each successful mission you complete, will automatically open the new ships, which each has its own characteristics. There are more suited to be the engine of air combat and there is also a more suitable vessel used as a tool to remove the bomb and ran away just like that.

As usual, given the mission would surely have known by the veterans of this game like a plane. You will be assigned to protect certain forces, destroying ships at sea, killing a soldier and AA guns in the mainland, mainstay kill enemy soldiers from the air and dropped a bomb straight into collection tanks there. Sometimes, you also will get a mission where you have to fly through the streets and undulating flight between the existing buildings.

The mission provided here is actually quite a standard for simulation games flight, but unfortunately, this type of mission is too often used so it will seem a bit bland though you've managed to run the mission. Very often you will face a situation where you have to feel safe, but you will come back again another same enemies, but with higher numbers, or sometimes even come back the enemy with a body size much bigger for you beat.

Even so, there are some additional given here. Supplement is you can get some special attacks that can instantly kill and clean the ceiling of the enemy aircraft. By directing you to the enemy target that is, automatically there will be a gauge that is slowly but surely began to fill. As already half full, it is possible you can enter Kill Ace mode. In Ace Kill, time will slow and allow you to direct your weapon and kill the enemy. Of course it would be more stable again if you can meet the first gauge. Because the gauge is full, even if you've managed to kill some enemies, Kill Ace mode will not go away immediately.

Keep in mind, AI here is less reliable, so you have to do it all their own. With a game like this, do not be surprised if up to a point, gamers are bored and do not intend to continue the game anymore.

There are other several other elements that make us somewhat disappointed with this game. These elements is when you're riding bomber very large, bi-planes or planes that have a high level of agility, it just feels the same and there is no difference at all. Well, for gamers who want to feel he exclaimed full control plane, there is an arcade mode and professional mode. By activating the professional mode, then automatically you will get the freedom to control the aircraft in full and in accordance with your wishes. But according to our advice, should not have tried. The reason, given the level of difficulty because some games are not very fit, will surely make things more difficult, unless you really are a seasoned pilot.

Once again, as we said before, the graph is here is not too well. Starting from the blast effects, the effects of damage to the ship, model ship to the environment around you look very ordinary and even music can not make a gamer is not going to feel something good enough to remember. This game really did have something to be proud of, but unfortunately not supported with lots of things that make this game fail.

NBA 2K10

2010-01-27T17:22:00.000+07:00

Although until now EA Sports has always been a pioneer in most sports games, the NBA 2K franchise is still remains a game they have unmatched quality. With a very good picture, games outside and inside the field of fairly steady and the number of features available, NBA 2K is always successfully put its competitors who always tends to produce games that are not too good. Now, after 10 years to act in the world of gaming, 2K Sports will still seem to continue their dominance in the sport. After all this time, 2K Games is also getting help from the Sony, so this game will certainly have a very big improvement and will not disappoint gamers as well.

Of course for the veteran NBA 2K9 will always questioned how the game of basketball itself as being in the field (in the NBA 2K10). We must admit, this game has one game tempo is faster and good enough to play. One change that must be recognized by gamers of all is the turbo system or run fast no matter if you are in defensive positions or attack. 2K10 has added a new energy system where you will be running by relying on two bars given in the game. This bar has two stages. The first stage of yellow and blue second stage. Yellow is a bar that shows you the energy to run and the blue color is your stamina. If you spend a second bar, the characters are you using it will need a break before starting to play again. This is a pretty good way to keep the game will not be like the basketball version of the arcade game where the characters can be used continuously as if spurred not have the stamina.

Changes are also made on the playcalling system (a system where you will provide specific instructions to change the way you play). When the NBA 2K9, there were only 8 types of commands you can use, so this time you will get 24 types of commands you can spend to change the game so that you can turn the situation around the game. It's just that, with the existence of too many choices is, of course, will require some time to choose what order would you use. As it will be as vulnerable enough for you because the enemy can easily win you the ball and put the ball into the hoop without any means of your obstacles. So, it's good you own the right to determine what command would you spend.

There are also some things that seem not changed by the 2K Games. In the previous game, gamers can easily put the ball lay-ups or put the ball in the style of jumping. But this was not maintained in the NBA 2K10 because very often we get the ball we were holding and while we were doing lay-ups, the ball should bounce into it instead of the ring and actually taken by the opponent. Things like this will surely damage the glorious moments of you and it is not impossible that such a destructive and even demoralize you. This time, when you look at the game in this game, every time you want to do a movement that suddenly, the opponent can easily steal the ball and immediately took him away.

Speaking of defense issues, this time feature lockdown defense is back again and this time even more better when compared with the previous. Of course this will only happen when you watch someone who was holding the ball. Well, when your opponent was carrying the ball, you can keep the enemy with a very tight and if you can guess the direction of the enemy fled, it is not possible you can force him to do the double team or even out of the field and lead the team moved the ball to you. Only the biggest problem here is the ball carriers tend to be more straightforward and fast in this game and even they often do not need help from anyone.

For a given AI problem, actually we think AI here is pretty good and effective. But they also often make stupid mistakes that could result in defeat for you. If you ask AI to keep one of your opponent, sometimes he'll just stand still and not doing anything against the holder of the ball. Even the AI is also often movements headaches. Take, for example, AI justu often give the ball to another player who was in a position out of bounds. It's confusing.

Another problem emerges here is 2K10, which very often can damage your timing has been set up in such a way. If you're carrying the ball in the field or are trying to make shots while jumping, this will not be a problem. But the difference as if you've moved to the bottom of the ring, his framerate sometimes be decreased in such a way and will cause you confusion and it is not likely to cause you to lose the ball. This really feels conspicuous in Xbox360 console.

NBA 2K10 for this, one thing that really made us chuckle was amazed offered graph. This time, not just the players look so realistic, but almost every move they do look solid. All things start from the pass from behind his back to attempt to steal the ball is falling freely look so natural, cutscene before the game started well and looked so good when it is animated on the field was quite stable and did not disappoint at all.

Other elements can also be an additional value for this game is the reaction from the audience when you're playing. If you managed to score three in one shot, then the audience will be instantly cheered. If you are a guest team and the position you now is to win, then you will often hear a groan from the audience or even the audience was silent instead. When this happens, usually the speaker will try to improve the spirit of the audience. So extraordinary is not it?

Latest features attached to the NBA 2K10 NBA Today that can provide the latest news, info exchange of players, status and many more topics of conversation are given here. That way, Harlan, Kellogg and Miller will look much more natural and not so rigid anymore like the previous version.

One mode else can you use as a place to develop characters that you use the development mode leagues and teams, which allows you to develop and prepare your team to play together with other gamers. Then there are modes where you can create and shape the careers of the characters that you create and train a character in order to compete with the mega star. If you still had the ability not good enough, eventually you will be sent back to the development league team to improve your skills again.

All these modes are given a fairly exciting fashion and fun to play. The challenge that you will get more and more and you can also create and train your character to become a star in the world of basketball as Michael Jordan or any other characters.

Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince

2010-01-27T17:09:00.000+07:00

Harry Potter: The Half-Blood Prince is the sequel to 6 of 7 books authored by JK Rowling and should be recognized, both the novel and the movie is selling like peanuts. In addition to his debut in a book or movie, Harry Potter, of course, is to debut in the world game and has recorded a 6 game with the same title with the movie. Admittedly, too, that rarely made a game based on the successful film version. Fortunately this one is not included in it.

Harry Potter: The Half-Blood Prince told him about the 6th year Harry at Hogwarts wizarding school, where he will be back adventure in a world filled with shades of magic along with his friends, Ron and Hermione. This time, besides having to deal with the enemy, Lord Voldemort, Harry must also deal with romantic nuances that have started burning inside him (not surprising, considering the age Harry was hit puberty).

For gamers who read his book, of course will know with certainty about the way the story of this game. But we will try to translate it as accurately as possible about the 6th year at Hogwarts Harry. But definitely, everything in the series to-6 times this has begun to be serious. As usual, Harry's archenemy, Draco Malfoy is still the culprit of all the fad for so long. Not anymore.

Notes for gamers who have not read the book, maybe this game will not be able to tell more clearly about what is happening. So, advice from us before playing this game, gamers should read it before playing the game fun and have been made with this in such a way that can have its own appeal.

Like in previous games, you will do a lot of activities related to the magical world, ranging from making potions, learn magic to defend themselves, fly using broomsticks, wizard-style duel with another character and do a lot of exploration to reveal very very secret at Hogwarts this many (if gamers still remember the words Dumbledore himself said that he did not know all the secrets at Hogwarts).

In between all these activities, perhaps our activities according to the most unique and exciting is the activities you to create potions. In this activity, you will have 16 kinds of materials you can use to create a potion that you want in a first person perspective. When you play, you'll get an indicator on the right that shows what material you use, and until the stage of colors do you have to stop pouring the material. If you pour excess material required, you will be a screen full of smoke and you'll be prompted to press LT and RT buttons simultaneously for a while to remove all the smoke.

Another element that is not less interesting here is flying. In the Half-Blood Prince, Harry has been appointed as captain of Quidditch and of course have a duty to try to bring his team to victory. In contrast to some previous games, this time all you have flights arranged by the computer and you just try to adapt your movement to try to sort through the star to be getting closer to the Snitch (which is usually golden ball into decisive victory or a decisive completion of the game). If you can not follow the path that has been given by this game, slowly but surely, you will be asked to repeat the game because you have been deemed a failure. So do not look lightly on this one.

Elements of the fight in the wizarding world is also quite interesting. If the fight earlier in the Order of the Phoenix extremely difficult, precisely this time a little easier, but still is far from word perfect. Here are 6 magic tricks you can use. There Stupefy, Protego, Expelliarmus, Petrificus Totalus, Levicorpus and Charging and everything was arranged with the help of your controller. Also different from previous versions, this time you will find the bar before the blood that is not included here.

In addition, now you will receive assistance from Nearly Headless Nick to find the way to your destination. Different from the previous where you only get a few footprints will take you there. Now Harry is already able to run, an additional unique and good enough. We never try, where we made Harry ran at full speed but because it collides with another student who was in the vicinity, Harry actually fell.

Need to be recognized that Harry Potter game is far from word perfect. It is true that this game has a design environment is a very good school, but unfortunately the face of each character that is sometimes just looks like a robot who is learning to speak. But only up to our disappointment there alone, because in general this game is good enough for a standard game of Harry Potter.

Make Unlimited Health For Vehicles In GTA San Andreas

2010-01-27T16:03:00.000+07:00

For fans of GTA, of course, has never played GTA San Andreas game. In this game, we can freely drive all vehicles in the game there is. But, if you feel annoyed when he was driving a vehicle, the vehicle then exploded after suffering damage?

If so, I will give you the cheat to make these vehicles will be damaged if you crash the vehicle with anything. This cheat may have much to learn. But I gave it to cheat players who do not know.

Well, I just tell. When you are driving a vehicle, type the following cheat "JCNRUAD" (without the "). Then enter the vehicle, and then type the cheat again. Done, then your vehicle will be resistant to any damage. Repeat these steps each time you change your vehicle.

The Saw

2010-01-27T15:48:00.000+07:00

Who is not familiar with the name Jigsaw? Jigsaw is not the name of a puzzle used by the children to play. In this case, Jigsaw is the pseudonym of someone who has felt the cruelty of the world on him that has a lot to do good for the people. That person is John Kramer. Which became the beginning of all this is when his wife who was carrying her first child, suffered a miscarriage due to the action of a bully who can not get away from drugs. Because the sense of profound sadness, he was separating himself from friends and his wife.

Any misfortune befall John continued. At times like that, she had been diagnosed with cancer that can not be cured. In sadness and fear that he suffered during that time, he also made observations of those around him and just see that people around him just not showing gratitude for the life given by God to them, even though he himself did not get it from God's goodness.

Starting from there, he began to give them a test and the test is more likely to resemble as the rehabilitation rather than examination. Although said to be the rehabilitation of John, but this test uses the lives of its main stake. As already gamers know, John was finally getting the nickname Jigsaw because he always took the pieces of the victim who did not successfully pass the test. These pieces illustrate that something is missing from the victims who had died and John called it a "survival instinct".

Well, in a game which will also bring you face to face with Jigsaw, you will act as Detective Tapp. In the story, when Tapp realized, she realized that she had been fitted with an iron helmet, and if not successfully released on time, then loses his head Tapp. From here, you're going to start the first game you are trying to escape from the iron helmet. The first exam was not too hard and still you are going through. But should we admit, when we started this game, feeling tense already started creeping ourselves and we were quite excited to get through this ordeal.

Soon after he was free, Tapp realized that he was one of the many people who are trapped in the house (or room) and he has become one of the toys from a murderer. The man who kidnapped her is the one who had always pursued by Tapp, Jigsaw. During this, he always claimed that he never committed murder, and he has always given a choice for them to stay alive and so far, the victims are rarely willing to take the painful choices (mutilation, suicide and murder). In addition, they are also often faced with a series of puzzles that will make you fear and panic.

In the game, you'll meet a lot of obstacles that would kill you instantly killed with a single subject only. There is a trap (the most we have encountered here) shotgun, and there are also traps in the form of electricity. For a shotgun trap, this trap will be difficult to see, especially if you're not careful. A touch of the cable into the main trigger, loses his head Tapp. Therefore our advice is, be careful.

The problem is, just be careful is not enough to guarantee the safety of you in this game. The reason, Jigsaw has placed a key in the lock Tapp and is the key to free the prisoners themselves that there is there. Jigsaw has made Tapp became the most sought-after in the place and unfortunately again, everything has a purpose to kill Tapp in order to get the key. To make the game exciting enough, you'll be presented with a variety of puzzles that enough to make your brain spin fast and under pressure from the death of more and more approaching. But after all this time we play the Saw, this game was beginning to feel a little boring with the collection of the puzzle is likely the same. Luckily the lives at stake here made this game a little bit of life and more stressful.

During the game, Tapp could be arming themselves with various weapons that are in place, ranging from broom sticks, iron bars and a revolver is quite deadly. For Melee weapons which we have mentioned above, the weapon did not have the effectiveness that we expect from a weapon. The main problem here is that every time we are faced with new enemies and start swinging a weapon, the enemy often had launched an offensive to Tapp and lead our attack failed. That is why, during the game we prefer to use my bare hands than Melee weapons are completely ineffective it.

You will also get some other things like blood bars, equipment you can collect to make a trap or lock of some object locked here. You also need to be careful of broken glass which will also very often you meet. Unfortunately again, this is sometimes broken glass you can not avoid and you must pass with bare feet. Every time you pass the broken glass, you will lose blood.

For business graphics, this game has pretty good graphics. Starting from the surrounding environment that is designed in such a way as to cause fear and tension, coupled with a grim design and dark from every room you enter (just look around you are filled with dead bodies, blood, body parts hanging pig, a former corpse people who previously had been the victim of Jigsaw, a pool of blood and many more). Yes, indeed this is a game that managed to make us feel tense and worried because every step that one, either from you or from the way the puzzle provided by Jigsaw, then this means "instant death". All this is also supported by the placement of a suitable voice and distinctive style Saw.