GAMETRAILERS

The First Templar

noreply@blogger.com (angel799) — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 16:32:00 +0000

Kalypso and Haemimont Games have a good relationship going. Kalypso, normally known for budget titles and odd simulation games on the PC, have substantially improved their image with the very well-received Tropico 3. Haemimont Games, who had been known for slightly obscure city-building games, created the humorous and enjoyable city-management game with Kalypso’s help. It looks like they’ll do the same with Tropico 4.

The duo is trying something odd with a new IP called The First Templar. This is a co-operative third-person hack ‘n’ slash using the Tropico engine. The Tropico engine is powerful enough for zooming into the city streets of a tropical metropolis, but can it survive a shift in genre?

The setting is eminently compelling. After the first Assassin’s Creed game, it became obvious that 13th century crusade-era video games were sorely underrepresented. The First Crusade takes a separate perspective from Assassin’s Creed. It’s a hack ’n’ slash title about a French crusader searching for the Holy Grail. Nobody knows if it’s good or evil, but the relic represents actual salvation for our knight. It seems the Knights Templar, both a powerful military and economic institution in Europe, have made many enemies across the continent. From here players will branch out across Europe, battling soldiers, mutant humans, and even the Inquisition.

Unfortunately, The First Templar is not a pretty game. Textures are stretched across the landscape, and the environments look mundane. The character models are fairly unimpressive, and aliasing is a major visual drag. Some of the buildings appear technically sound, though, a detail worth noting considering their role as accurate historical representations of real buildings.

Combat is fairly standard stuff. Haemimont wants to make the game as historically correct as possible, so fighting is mostly sword swings. However, each of the characters have skill trees to upgrade stats, abilities, and special attacks. Special attacks are tied to the zeal meter. Since there is always at least two characters fighting together, players can switch back and forth to utilize each characters special skill sets. The action feels fairly basic, and isn’t terribly fresh or new.

Thankfully, the drop-in, drop-out co-op looks promising, allowing players to roll with the French templar or one of two pals: a fellow knight and a sexy noble woman who has been declared a heretic. It’s a simple system that promises to work well due to its fundamental design.

The First Templar doesn’t encourage high expectations; it just feels like a second rate game. Heamimont has a few months to fix any problems, but the genre shift may have caused them to lose some of the je ne sais quoi that made Tropico 3 so delightful. Hopefully they can get it together for the May 10 launch.

Yakuza 4

noreply@blogger.com (angel799) — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 21:58:00 +0000

What made last year's Yakuza 3 great was its story. I started out as a reformed Japanese mobster (see: yakuza) who didn't want trouble, but people messed with my orphanage so I got back into the life of beating people's asses. It was a fun ride that allowed me to look past the game's flaws. Yakuza 4's story is split between four different characters who each have a part in the major plot but don't come together until the very end. Each tale is constrained with little room to grow and the overall plot is longwinded and a bit hard to follow.

In short, the lackluster narrative totally knocks the wind out of the best thing this series had going for it.

Yakuza 4 is a mafia movie in a JRPG/brawler hybrid. Through four acts and a short finale, I played as a loan shark, an escaped convict, a jaded cop and that reformed yakuza I mentioned a while ago. Each time I'd start as one of these guys, I'd begin leveling him up, learning new moves, and figuring out his personal history.

The majority of their habits boil down to punching and kicking dudes in the face. As I'd walk down the street in Tokyo's fictional red light district (the spot where nearly the entire game plays out), random people would run up and challenge me to brawls. This is that JPRG element at work. I get in the random battle, smear my opponent's blood on my knuckles, and bank experience points to make my character better than ever. As I wail on guys, I'm filling a Heat meter that allows me to execute devastating finishers like bashing a guy's head with a baseball bat.

It's fun and brutal. There's a sick satisfaction to the final blow I'd land and the slow motion tumble my victim would take while spewing out blood. I dig the fighting, but boss fights are cheap. The AI could pull off moves I couldn't and never missed a move due to the lackluster targeting like I did.

If you're keeping track, all that fighting is largely untouched from Yakuza 3. Nearly all the Heat finishers I've seen are recycled from the last game. The new characters come with unique abilities -- the policeman can parry and the con man can bulldoze people -- but outside of a few person-specific moves, it's well-worn territory. Not to mention that I spent all this time leveling-up a character just to switch to another and do it all over again to unlock very similar moves.

I had similar complaints about the last Yakuza -- you're just doing the same thing over and over again -- but back then, the story carried the game. Here, that doesn't happen.

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

noreply@blogger.com (angel799) — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 21:42:00 +0000

Sony and Naughty Dog were on hand at last week's Game Developers Conference to show off a bit of new content in Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. And when we say "a bit," we really mean it. The press got to see a quick cutscene revealing the game's primary villain, and then it was on to the same burning chateau demo we saw back when the game was introduced in December. Fortunately, Sony did bring along some 3D glasses so we could see how the gameplay looked with the Z-axis all poking out and whatnot. So how's it all coming along? Well, this will come as a surprise to approximately zero people, but Uncharted 3 looks great no matter how many dimensions you're experiencing.

Let's start with this new bad guy…or rather bad lady in this case. Her name's Catherine Marlowe, and according to developer Naughty Dog, she's quite the evil mastermind. Marlowe is the head of a highly powerful cabal (read: shadowy organization) that began during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. We're not entirely sure what sort of conspiracies this cabal gets up to, but we were told that they operate with a brutal task force of former special forces agents to get whatever it is they need done. Now Marlowe is after the ring that Nathan Drake carries around his neck (the yin to his half-tucked shirt's yang) because of its connection to Sir Francis Drake. Obviously, Nate would very much like to hold onto it.

Marlowe was shown being all snide and villainous in a cutscene plucked right from the game's storyline. Sully and Drake are violently knocked from a doorway into a dimly lit urban alley, likely somewhere in London judging from the well-armed guards with English accents standing by to keep our pair of heroes from doing anything stupid. To drive home the point, these guards give Drake and Sully a pretty good beatdown despite the fact that the two are dressed in surprisingly snappy formalwear. Soon enough, Marlowe shows up and has a less-than-pleasant conversation with Drake. If we had to describe her look and sound, it would be Dame Judi Dench's fun-hating evil twin. With Helen Mirren's hair. And a giant umbrella knife. Listen, we're getting sidetracked--this lady is nasty. That's the important thing.

After this brief look at the game's new villain, Sony and Naughty Dog passed out the shutter glasses to show how Uncharted 3 looks in 3D. We were situated too far away from the TV to see if there was a noticeable impact on the game's resolution with 3D enabled--an issue with recent games like Killzone 3. However, we did notice that the game's 3D effects add a pretty substantial sense of scale to the climbing and platforming sequences. In this burning chateau demo, Drake and Sully are trying to flee a burning mansion as crackling walls and support beams are toppling down around them. During those moments when Drake has to balance across a narrow beam above a massive pit of fire, or shimmy his way along a narrow ledge, the 3D effect makes the drop below seem that much more ominous. The effect is substantially more subtle during combat sequences, where nothing really popped out at us. But when you're staring down a potentially deadly ledge, the effect is much more pronounced.

Sony's GDC demo of Uncharted 3 was an impressive showing, though we'd be lying if we said we weren't hoping for more substantially new content out of the event. Still, we've got plenty of time to go until the game's November release, so we'll just bide our time knowing that Naughty Dog--with all those Game of the Year trophies on the shelves--probably knows what it's doing.

Sega Rally Online Arcade

noreply@blogger.com (angel799) — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 21:29:00 +0000

Sega Rally Online Arcade comes from a whole different era, a time when places like “Tropical” and “Alpine” were perfectly valid locations for a racing title, or when unnatural racing physics were applied to real-world cars. Sega Rally Online Arcade embodies this slightly off-kilter version of racing, and it seems that it could even exceed the standards of its predecessors.

Announced last month, Sega Rally Online Arcade borrows elements from previous Sega Rally titles—such as Sega Rally 3 and Sega Rally Revo—updates the cars somewhat, and takes them online. Players will jump back into the seats of the Ford Focus and Mitsubishi Evos and drift through very familiar tracks, now with online support. We were only shown three levels, and with only 13 cars to choose from, the offerings are not as varied as they were in the past.

Fans of Sega’s Rally franchise will find plenty to like. Returning tracks from previous games bring a bit of the familiar, and the active road degradation will greatly impact road control. Levels shift from dirt, snow, sand, and tarmac, and vehicles control differently depending on type. Overall, Sega Rally Online Arcade is the rally racing experience players have known since 1995.

Multiplayer is the big focus of the game, with six-player online providing a key component of the experience. Single-player will unlock more courses and cars, but online multiplayer is the main draw.

That’s really all there is to it. Sega Rally Online Arcade is an online version of a recognizable brand, a sort of “best of” for the franchise. It’ll be out later this year for PSN and XBLA.

Tropico 4

noreply@blogger.com (angel799) — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 21:24:00 +0000

There was a lot to love about Tropico 3. Developer Haemimont and publisher Kalypso worked hard to revive the franchise that died in 2003, and the end product was full of charm and fun, not to forget a substantial amount of polish. Now they’re working on Tropico 4, and while the game doesn’t feel like a substantial change from its predecessor, there is promise for a solid continuation of Tropico 3 type entertainment.

Tropico 3 played on the idea of dictatorship extremely well. El Presidente could be an evil man bearing low morals and a weak GI tract or a beloved hero raising the people of Tropico out of the ashes of middling third-world living. Either way, El Presidente was a dictator plain and simple, and the player wielded absolute control of the nation.

Tropico 4 builds on this concept even more. Yes, Tropico is still a small island, but this time El Presidente has higher goals. Instead of just building alliances with the Soviet Union or the US, the player’s goal is to turn Tropico into a first-world superpower.

There is a completely new focus to the game. Players still start off small, but even small actions make big changes. For example, should the player start mining, El Presidente would have to build schools, churches, and bars for the miners and their families. Bars cause problems, so police enforcement is needed, and with the boosted economy, piers are needed to import and export goods. And that’s just the beginning. If a players starts constructing amusement parks, tourists will arrive, so players have to be aware where on the island their resources are and where they should build hotels and attractions.

As the island becomes wealthier, water parks, stock exchanges, zoos and other high-end services can be built. By incorporating all of these services into your nation, Tropico can reach superpower status. Tropico 4 is very much like Tropico 3—a direct sequel that won’t reinvent the series, only expand upon it. There are 20 new missions on 10 new maps, and the 20 new building types lean toward the technically frivolous. These services signify a shift toward the new “first-world” focus of the game.

Like previous games, the decisions of El Presidente can have good and bad effects on the people. Secret police can be sent to assassinate unruly citizens, or they can be outright executed. However, execute that farmer for not selling his property, and people will dislike you. Assassinate him with the KGB or CIA, and receive no repercussions. Should colleges students protest due to educational budget cuts, you can pay them off, ignore them, arrest them, or punish them. Every action affects how the people of Tropico respond. El Presidente can keep all the money for himself, and upgrade his island in a poor manner at the expense of his people. In contrast, he can invest into his nation and have it slowly become relevant. It’s a balance players must strike on their own, and everything from forging alliances to appointing ministers will impact that progression.

The Council of Ministers is a new addition to Tropico 4. Individual citizens can be appointed to the council, and depending on their educational background and interests, they can prove helpful or hurtful. Depending on how outrageous El President’s laws and edicts are—such as substantially raising taxes on food—ministers can make it more palatable for the people. Players will also be dealing with lobbyists from different industries, indicating a much more political focus in Tropico 4.

The last new addition to the franchise is even more interactive disasters. Elements completely outside the control of the player, such as volcanoes, droughts and tornadoes, join the older disasters in wreaking havoc. Developer Haemimont knows that these were some of the more popular features in the game, so expect El Presidente to deal with natural disasters more often.

Tropico 4 is well on its way to becoming a solid sequel to Tropico 3. With new features including Facebook and Twitter support, publisher Kalypso is keeping the game progressive, while familiar gameplay will keep returning players coming back. We’ll see if Tropico 4 lives up to the surprise and success of its predecessor this April.

RIFT

noreply@blogger.com (angel799) — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 18:19:00 +0000

Trion Worlds is slowly unleashing its new MMO, RIFT, onto the world and it’s shaping up to be quite a worthy experience. The third round of limited beta concluded on the December 31, and fans have been able to play as both the Defiant and as the Guardians. There is a new contender in town. World of Warcraft might have to watch its back.

RIFT takes place in the world of Telara, where the Defiant and the Guardians are at war with not only themselves, but the otherworldly rifts that tear open the sky and unleash its hordes upon unsuspecting victims. Though the Defiant is generally portrayed as bad, and the Guardians as good, no side is inherently good or evil, as their motives are both sound, and both fight for what they believe in. You take on the role of a created Ascended, and are whisked away back in time (after a few tutorial quests) to prevent the future calamities that are threatening the very destruction of your world.

One thing you will come across very early on is the ability to multiclass. Starting out from four Callings, the Warrior, Mage, Cleric and Rogue, you are able to pick three out of eight available souls for each class. For instance, the Warrior is able to pick from the Champion, Reaver, Paladin, Warlord, Paragon, Riftblade, Beastmaster and Void Knight souls, and form a new hybrid class that uses skills from each soul. There are never enough points to max out all skills, so number crunchers can rest assured that they can put their skill-calculators to good use and carefully plan out their trees.

I chose the Warrior calling and found myself drawn to the Beastmaster soul, as I wanted to focus on damage as well as have a pet to help me out in battle. As my second soul, I chose the Void Knight, who specializes in anti-magic abilities and pacts and plays a more defensive role. The third soul was the Champion, the all out offensive DPS class that specializes in 2-handed weapons. Through this combination of souls, I was able to create a class that’s unique to me and my play-style.

One of the main draws are the titular rifts that can and will spawn at any moment and at any place. An outpost you might think is safe can turn into a fiery battlezone as a fire rift tears open the sky and pours demons and monsters upon unsuspecting victims. It’s then up to you and a handful of nearby players to slay the monsters and close the rift back up. These random and unscheduled events bring a sense of uncertainty, yet are incredibly fun, assuming you have players around who are willing to help you out, as these mobs tend to be quite powerful.

Every MMO faces concerns over grinding and fetch quests. Though there is no shortage of quests to take on, they all feel fresh and engaging. Whether it’s to escort an NPC through a dangerous zone, or turn lazy students into animals to teach them a lesson, I never felt bored. So far I have not encountered a need to grind at all, as quests more than compensated me with enough XP. Dying is handled similarly to WoW. If you die, you have an option to resurrect at the graveyard or run to your body and resurrect there. Once every hour, you’re also able to Soul Walk, which let’s you come back to life right on the spot.

One glance at RIFT and you’ll see that the game is absolutely stunning, provided you have the rig to maximize your graphic settings. It might not be the most original when it comes to control and overall user interface, but I think that’s what Trion is trying to capitalize on. Rather than completely reworking their own UI, RIFT plays a lot like World of Warcraft, and other similar MMOs. Though this might come across as a cop-out, it ensures that you’ll be able to jump into RIFT and feel right at home, if you’re already an established veteran of MMOs.

Small touches show the developer’s expertise in the genre. For example: I am a great offender of Alt+Tabbing to other programs during other MMOs, so I often click back to find myself being attacked or already dead. If you minimize RIFT and get attacked, the tab on your Start bar starts to flash, alerting you to maximize the window and defend yourself. It’s a feature overlooked by other MMOs, and one that will almost certainly become standard after RIFT’s release.

Trion’s promise to release a “complete and finished” MMO on launch looks like it’s slowly coming true. Even in beta, where there are bugs to be encountered, the game already plays like a charm and has me itching to go back and join my fellow Telarians.

Dead Island

noreply@blogger.com (angel799) — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 18:14:00 +0000

Dead Island came out of nowhere for most gamers with an extremely impressive trailer that has garnered a lot of support. It was a great introduction into the setting and tone of the game, but there wasn’t a speck of gameplay so skeptics were present in full force. I can understand why someone wouldn’t want to get too excited for a game based just off a cinematic trailer, but after seeing the game at GDC I think that all the skeptics will be pleasantly surprised.

The trailer making its way on the internet is actually just the start of the game and shows the initial outbreak of zombies. You play one of the lucky survivors who were able to make it out of the hotel with all your limbs and organs intact. When the game starts up you can choose between one of four different classes: tank, assassin, jack-of-all trades, and a leader character. This choice will affect the skills you have available to you as you level up. The developers like to call the game a Zombie-Slasher/Action RPG and I think the new genre designation is apt. Instead of focusing on the use of guns and ranged weapons like most zombie games, Dead Island is a melee focused game that forces you to get right up in the face of all of your undead opponents. The first weapon I saw was a simple boat oar but as you wander around the island you can find new weapons like mallets or even craft your own using materials found around the island such as a machete with a battery slapped onto it to give it an electric attack or bombs strapped to throwing knives to make “sticky bombs.”
I suggest not getting too attached to any weapon you find though because smashing skulls over and over again has its consequences and your wonderful new machete won’t last forever. Every weapon you pick up has three different stats connected to it: Damage, Force, and Reach. Your weapon’s reach is one of the most important qualities since getting close to zombies is usually very ill advised, but that’s not to say you don’t have some other options. Every weapon you pick up can be thrown and they do a surprising amount of damage even if you throw something as ungainly as a sledge hammer. Every zombie you kill gives experience and once you level up you can unlock skills in a couple of different trees (fury, combat, and survival for the tank class) and your health and stamina increase to take you from green horn tourist to a zombie-killing, Radioshack-loving badass.

The entire island is presented as an open world that you can travel around at your leisure (except for the zombies of course) so although you have a main story and main quest to work through there are also plenty of side quests you can do if you like such as helping a civilian you see trapped in a car surrounded by zombies. Put in some effort and you can even get a vehicle so you can go touring around the island. The demo I saw started at a beach resort and it fully embodied the “Paradise gone mad” ideal that the developers mentioned with blood filled hot tubs and gore stained surf boards but they assured me that there were other environments on the island.

Any zombie game worth its salt needs some variety to the zombies and Dead Island was not found wanting. You have your standard slowly shambling zombies as well as zombies on fire, suicide bomber zombies, zombies with weapons and a number of boss zombies. The developers showed off their Dead Space-like dismemberment gameplay by breaking the legs of some fast moving zombies to slow them down and cutting off the arm of a zombie holding a weapon to disarm him (HA!.....disarm).
Left 4 Dead has shown people how much fun zombie killing can be with a group so of course Dead Island has that as well. You can play with up to four people with drop in/drop out multiplayer. Even though there are four character classes, that doesn’t mean everyone has to pick a different class when they play multiplayer. Instead you choose your character when you start the game and that is permanent for that save file. Once you get yourself situated you can then opt to turn on the online and join anyone who would like the help regardless of their class.

So all in all, Dead Island is looking to be Dead Space, Fallout, Left 4 Dead, and Dead Rising 2 all mashed together into a Zombie-Slasher/Action RPG. No release date has been announced but keep your eye out for this game when it releases for PS3, 360, and PC.

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

noreply@blogger.com (angel799) — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 09:35:00 +0000

Let me explain exactly why you should be excited for The Witcher 2. It all starts with the sidequest I got to play during a hands-on demonstration of the game at Atari’s offices in New York. Tomasz Gop, Senior Producer at Witcher developer CD Projekt RED, was on hand to walk me through the game and answer some of my questions.

The demo opens with the protagonist, Geralt of Rivia, in the middle of a dwarven town, presumably on his way to a tavern – though, that’s entirely up to the player. What transpires is completely optional, “Not all players will actually get to see it, because of the non-linearity that we have in the game,” says Gop. “The locations are just one of the aspects of [the non-linearity]. So depending on how you play, you go here or there, some things are only shown to you if you choose this or that.”

Optional content is nothing new – after all, Fallout 3 famously gave you the option to nuke an entire town and multiple quest lines - but when I explain the care and depth that went into this simple side-quest, you’ll understand that Gop and his team are doing something very special.

Ahead of Geralt is a collection of dwarven buildings, huts, and shops divided by vast stone walls and set against an ominous mountainside. “It’s actually been quite complex because Andrzej Sapkowski, the author of the books about the witcher - he has described dwarven interiors and buildings and…well, it wasn’t that much of a reference. He gave us, ‘Dwarven interiors are like a reflection of their souls, they’re really harsh on the outside, and really warm on the inside.’ What do you do with that?” asks Gop.

What they did was create a space that looks lived-in and teeming with life. I head down the stairwell before me and approach a tavern entrance. At the door to the tavern is a man, and the beginning of the side-quest that progresses the demo. The problem, it seems, is that some people have been found murdered, and Geralt has been called upon to help solve the crime. Thanks to his experience, Geralt is a sort of fantasy CSI detective, able to make conclusions about what kind of monster may have committed the killings based on the state of the bodies.

From there, Geralt is to head to a crypt outside of town to examine the bodies, but I wanted to do a bit of exploring first, so I headed into the tavern. Inside were dozens of villagers, Geralt’s bard Dandelion, and a smattering of simple bar games. Each of the bar games is a simple mini-game. Arm wrestling, for example, has you using the mouse to keep a slider within a moving safe zone, while fights play out like a quick-time event.

I then spoke to Dandelion, who offered up a new song to which Geralt was not interested. The banter between the two friends shows the sharpness of the writing in The Witcher 2. It’s the kind of clever, compelling, and even funny dialogue you usually only get in a more linear Bioware RPG, not huge, open-world fare.

On my way out I checked my journal to get back to the quest, and I got a peek at the way the quest log is handled. “We actually approached the quest log from a different angle. We described the log as if it was Dandelion who writes the story of what Geralt does,” Gop explains. “If you were to finish the game and print out it out it would resemble kind of a book.”

It goes even further – Gop details what he says is a minor feature, but puts even more emphasis on the openness of the game: “Because of the non-linearity level that we have, we believe that for most people, if they have finished the game and speak about it with their friends and colleagues, it will feel different for a lot of people. So we thought, we will integrate that with social media. You will have the option to synchronize your progress through the game with Facebook or Twitter for others to see.”

Heading out of town and through the forest to the crypt where the bodies are, I get my first taste of combat. The combat in The Witcher 2 is surprisingly action-oriented, though never so fast-paced you can’t get a handle on it if you’re more acclimated to an RPG pace. Geralt has melee weapons, magic signs, and back up weapons like the bomb the developers conveniently left in my inventory. My first move was to toss a bomb into the mob of soldiers attacking me, which stunned them and left them open to brutal finishers. From there things got a bit more complicated, as the group wasn’t afraid to surround me and pound away mercilessly. Blocking and evading are an important aspect of the combat, with successful blocks staggering opponents and leaving them open to attack. Combined with magic like a force push, fireball, and shield, players must use their full repertoire to open enemies’ defenses. The combat, above all else, has a good pace to it, with give and take between opponents and a visceral feel to the attacks.

With the mob dispatched, I headed across a river, through the woods, and into the crypt. The Witcher 2 is a beautiful game – if, like me, you’re a sucker for fantasy worlds that let you run around in the woods, this game is a dream come true.

Inside the crypt, I found the bodies of the dead and made my way to the freshest corpse. From there I was given multiple options to example different parts of the body, and depending on what I found, the plot would play out differently. For example, one wound has something embedded in it, but Geralt can’t get at it without the proper instruments. “You’d actually unlock another branch of the quest, which would give you a bunch of new conclusions,” says Gop. Underneath the corpse, I find Dandelion’s poetry book. Geralt concludes that the murders have been committed by a Succubus. So off I go to question Dandelion and find the Succubus.

On the way back I’m attacked by a giant spider, and even with the demo’s generous health boost, the thing does some hefty damage. “We do not auto-scale opponents. Normally, you’d probably want to run away and come back a few hours later. It’s part of our philosophy – we don’t believe auto-scaled opponents are fun, we believe they take fun out of the RPG.”

I returned to the tavern and spoke to Dandelion, who told me that his poetry book was recently stolen. Geralt hatched a scheme to have Dandelion read the poetry book and lure out the Succubus. I headed out of town to where the Succubus should be and the game put me in the shoes of Dandelion. From there I was tasked with reciting a decent poem from multiple dialogue options. “If you were to read the volume of poetry [beforehand] it would help you in this part,” Gop explains.

After figuring out the right combination of lines, the Succubus revealed its lair and invited Dandelion in. From there I could guide Dandelion back to Geralt or down into the lair. I went with sending Dandelion to his sexy doom, to which Geralt grunted, “Fucking idiot actually went in.”

Resuming control of Geralt, I headed in to save Dandelion and confront the Succubus. “You might fight with her, or you might speak to her,” Gop explained. “If you fight with her and kill her, the quest ends. If you speak to her you will see another way to develop this quest. You can reason with her and find out more about what happened. Depending on how you play, you may have not even been half way through this quest.”

Speaking further on the non-linear narrative, Gop told me the game has 16 different endings, some of which are locked out almost immediately based on early game choices. The game is even more non-linear than the original, which was a decision made based on fan feedback. “We knew from the first Witcher that people appreciate it, because most of the praise that we had was for doing a non-linear story.”

The Witcher 2 will allow players to import their save from the original, allowing for three different openings to the game. When I asked how this affects newcomers to the series, Gop reassured me, “Even though it’s a franchise, we’re not going to do a game that people are lost in.”

As someone who has an old PC and a new-found desperate need to get my hands on this game, I asked Gop about a console version. “We would like to do a console version of The Witcher 2, we never denied that.”

The original Witcher was intended to be released on consoles, but the outsourced port of the game didn’t work out. “One of the main lessons that we learned from this [is that] whenever we want to do a console game, we also definitely should do it in-house. If we ever approach The Witcher 2 or once again The Witcher 1, we’d definitely do it in-house.”

If this short demo is anything to go by, The Witcher 2 is going to be a serious force this year. Even against the likes of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Dragon Age 2, CD Projekt’s latest looks to offer the most depth, maturity, and non-linear storytelling of any upcoming RPG – I can’t wait.

Call of Juarez: The Cartel

noreply@blogger.com (angel799) — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 22:38:00 +0000

Call of Juarez: The Cartel is a modern-day excursion through the seedy drug cartel business, the setting of which includes the Mexcian city of Ciudad Juárez, a town situated steps away from El Paso, Texas. It's unsurprising that the area's residents aren't entirely enthralled about what they consider a glorification of the drug-related violence they've experienced.

Juárez is regarded as one of the most violent cities in North America. More than 3,000 people were murdered within its borders last year as the result of drug trading - that's more than eight murders every day, on average. On the other side of the border is El Paso, one of the biggest 20 metropolitan areas in the US and, in contrast, a city that's rated as one of the safest in the country.

The border between the two cities is one of the most intense and storied areas throughout the entire continent. That makes for good fiction, which is why the game exists. Nevertheless, El Paso County Sheriff's Office Commander Gomecindo Lopez believes it's inappropriate.

"In games you get hurt, you die and you get another life. In real life, you only die once. This goes along the lines of narco-songs that portray cartel leaders as heroes, but both are a gross misrepresentation of who they are. They are criminals," said Lopez in a Reuters interview.

Laurencio Barraza, who works with children in Juárez, commented, "Lots of kids say they want to be a hitman, because they are the ones that get away with everything." Ubisoft's new game, he says, will only make things worse. "This glorifies violence, as if victims were just another number or another bonus."

In response to the criticisms, an Ubisoft spokesperson said, "Call of Juarez: The Cartel is purely fictional and developed by the team at Techland for entertainment purposes only."

"While Call of Juarez: The Cartel touches on subjects relevant to current events in Juárez, it does so in a fictional manner that makes the gaming experience feel more like being immersed in an action-movie than in a real-life situation."

Ubisoft has no plans to tweak the game, which is slated for launch this summer. Little has been released about the game, but you can check out its official site for a few bites of info.

Homefront

noreply@blogger.com (angel799) — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 22:27:00 +0000

If you are looking for a new game for your console, then you might be interested to know that a new game called Homefront is soon to arrive by early 2011. Basically, Homefront is an upcoming first-person shooter video game that was developed by Kaos Studios and published by THQ and comes with a tag line “Home is where the war is.” This game was written by John Milius, the man behind the Red Dawn and the co-writer of Apocalypse Now.

For those people who are not familiar with the story, this game is set in the near future America 17 years from now where a nuclear-armed Korean’s People Army invades the US. One of the major portions of the story focuses not only on the growth of the North Korean force, but also on the economic downfall of the US.

Homefront is basically a speculative fiction that will focus on the fall of the US so in this game the player will be invited to be a part of the American forces and make use of guerrilla tactics, take command of various military vehicles and utilized advanced drone technology. This game will come up with a vehicle- based 32-player online warfare that will make use of dedicated servers.

This game is intended to be launched for various consoles such as the Xbox 360, PS 3 and PC. However, the minimum system requirement for this game has not been provided yet. In addition to what has been mentioned about this game, this game will also feature fictional physics that will surely attract more players to play the game.

Homefront’s gameplay was also completely revised and focus more on a cinematic and character driven experience. And aside from being a single –player gameplay, this upcoming game will also come up with a multi-player component that focuses mainly on a large scale vehicle based combat. It will also feature a new battle points system that will allow players to purchase weapons, gears and vehicles. Players will have the chance to earn points by getting kills and taking objectives.

Homefront will be released in North America on March 8, 2011 followed by Australia on March 10, 2011, March 11, 2011 in Europe and April 29, 2011 in Japan. THQ is very confident that this game will become and hit and there were also some rumors that even this game has not yet been release, THQ is already planning to come up with a sequel. So always keep posted for more details.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

noreply@blogger.com (angel799) — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 22:01:00 +0000

Assasssin's Creed 2 was a major success and game of the year contender for 2009, continuing the saga of the assassins against the templars in brilliant fashion. Initially, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood was a disappointment. Fans were expecting a new setting with new characters in a new time period. They also weren't expecting a game so soon. They felt cheated, as though Ubisoft were trying to simply cash in on an already successful game engine.

VG Chartz went behind closed doors to see how the newest installment in the Assassin's Creed franchise is playing out as well as getting some hands-on time with the new multiplayer features. One thing is certain, Ubisoft definitely isn't phoning in Brotherhood.

The demo for the single-player began with the same trailer shown at the Ubisoft press conference, with Ezio heading toward a church as a carriage exits. Guards attempt to stop him but they are mowed down by arrows from afar. As the villain exits the carriage with armed guards, more assassin's come up to aid Ezio, evening the odds.

It then fades to a scene of Ezio in bed with a woman when the villa falls under attack. The first new feature of Brotherhood is then shown off as Ezio rides his horse through the town surrounding his villa toward the wall.
He then climbs the outer walls of the villa and mans the cannons to stave off enemy cannons and siege towers. Eventually a siege tower breaks through and Ezio has to engage in combat. The combat system has been rethought to be more action oriented rather than feeling like a minigame. Bonuses in combat are awarded for striking early and fast. Kill combos will positively affect your ability in combat as well.

The main location of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood is then revealed to be Rome, which will be more than three times the size of Florence from Assassin's Creed 2. Rome will feature many famous locations such as The Parthenon.

The final single-player feature displayed in the demonstration was the ability to call upon your brotherhood of assassins. This can be something as simple as killing a single opponent on a roof to taking out a line of several guards with arrows from the rooftops. They actually showed a recreation of the E3 trailer done in actual gameplay, calling in fellow assassins to fight the new enemy type: The Swiss Guard.

Off we were then to get some hands-on time with the multiplayer aspect of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. This honestly left me feeling very mixed. The mode they made available to us gave you a target while another player was targeting you. Points are earned for killing your target, particularly with style. Points are also earned for successfully evading a predator to the point their contract is cancelled. The problem here lies in successfully being stealthy against a human opponent.

For instance, I once was stalking a target while hiding in a bale of hay. They were heading straight for me, but then starting taking a wide berth around the hay bale. As they passed, I jumped out of the hay and right into the arms of my predator. Even though I had remained invisible on his radar, he visually saw me dive into the hay and waited for me to come back out. The game mechanics gave me no way of knowing he was near.

The other problem I had was a lack of countermeasure. The developer later told me there are smoke bombs that stun predators and a pushing tactic in case your predator confronts you face to face. The problem was I never knew I was about to die until the blade was in my back. The whole multiplayer process feels like a great idea that really hasn't come to fruition successfully yet.

Nevertheless, I paid $60 for Assassin's Creed 2 without multiplayer and the single player portion of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood is shaping up to be a familiar and yet vastly improved experience, estimated to clock in at a bit over 15 hours of story. Here's hoping they get the multiplayer component up to the standard set by the rest of the game.

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

noreply@blogger.com (angel799) — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 21:27:00 +0000

Hype is a strange thing. It can kill a game that was decent by creating high expectations before the game is even out. This has made many a disappointing game seem even worse because it had been hyped as a great game for so long. There is a positive side to hype though. When you spend months waiting for a game and hyping it up to be amazing, and the game actually delivers then you have one of the best gaming experiences you could ask for. I’m happy to say that Metal Gear Solid 4 lives up to its hype and delivers in almost every possible aspect.

In Metal Gear Solid 4 you play as Solid Snake, a covert operative that has been the main character for most of the Metal Gear Solid series. The storyline is the culmination of all of those previous games, so I highly suggest that you watch one of the story recaps to better get your head around all the characters and throwbacks you’ll be seeing while playing the game. The storyline is most definitely worth the effort, although highly confusing at points, and it is easily one of the most involved and interesting stories in recent gaming. The story is mainly told through cut scenes, during which you’ll be given the option to see flashbacks by pressing “x” or to look through Snake’s eyes by holding “L1” which often shows off just how much of a lecher Snake really is. With those options in mind, there is still an awful lot of watching in this game, and if that isn’t your cup of tea then this game might not be your thing, although given the quality of the game itself I suggest toughing it out or just skipping the cut scenes.

Some new features to the Metal Gear Solid world make their debut in Metal Gear Solid 4, and all of them really add something to the game itself. On the gunplay side of the game, you now have the ability to customize your weapons. At first this seems like an unnecessary addition, but I actually found it amazingly useful for changing up my favorite gun (the M4) for different situations. These customizations are either found on the ground, or bought from a mysterious gun vendor called Drebin, from whom you can also buy an assortment of weapons, ammo, and certain items. On the sneaking side of things you now have what is called “Octocamo”, which basically is an automatic system for using the same camouflage system used in Metal Gear Solid 3. During Metal Gear Solid 4 you will usually be wearing a suit that will automatically change appearances to camouflage you with your surroundings when you are pressed up against a surface and wait for around two seconds. Not only does this mechanic allow simple designs like grass or snow patterns such as were possible in Metal Gear Solid 3, but it also allows for some very interesting patterns when you are camouflaged into carpet or a steel grate. The suit can remember two patterns from wherever you care to take them from, which you can set the suit to manually along with several other preset options. Personally I saved a pattern from a steel grating and a tile floor.

The presentation of Metal Gear Solid 4 is near flawless. From a technical standpoint, the menus were simple and easy to manage, the game had no bugs that I ever noticed and everything just had a polish to it that you don’t often see in games. Beyond the game looking polished, it’s the little additions in the menus like a camera of what’s happening at your HQ at all times, and the Japanese symbols included before the English words on the menu that makes everything seem so perfectly well thought out. There was nothing menu wise that I thought I should be able to do but couldn’t. The only technical hiccup I ever noticed was a single guard that didn’t seem to know where I was even though everyone was on alert and there were many people already shooting at me. A single mishap in a 26 hour play through is nothing to write home about however, so I’m not really going to worry about that. There are a good number of loading times between areas, none more than 5 seconds to my recollection, and the game took a very strange route for its install times. There is a large install time (around 10 min.) at the beginning, and there are also smaller (around 2-3 min.) install times between acts. None of these were really an issue for me, but I can see where one might get annoyed by it, especially if they wanted to switch between acts a few times for whatever reason.

The visual presentation is very often breath taking, especially during the cut scenes and certain unforgettable moments of the actual gameplay. My only gripe is that the shadows during the cutscenes are very jaggy and it is actually fairly noticeable at points. That is an incredibly small problem though, and may not even be an issue for most. All in all the game looks beautiful.

The audio presentation of the game grabs you right from the main menu with one of my new favorite musical scores from gaming. The ambient noise works well during all of the sections of the game, and is especially noticeable during times when you are sneaking through a live battlefield. The songs are memorable and at points old songs from the MGS series are used to help the gamer remember a certain fight or event in the previous games of the series. The use of the old songs is incredibly nostalgic and really adds to the atmosphere of some sections of the game.

The gameplay is amazingly varied and gives you an incredible amount of choice for a decidedly linear game. During Metal Gear Solid 4 your job will usually be to get from one point to another. The great part about this is the number of ways that you can actually get to that point. If you feel like sneaking that’s certainly an option, with all kinds of different paths for you to take. On the other hand, if you’re a more violent type then you can run in guns blazing and just dash your way to your objective. The choice is yours and isn’t even kept to those two major choices since you can easily find a happy medium between the two. Personally I enjoy sniping, so during these sections I would often sneak through an area on my stomach and take out anyone that got in my way from afar with my silenced M4. Along with the aforementioned sections of gameplay, there are also boss fights and other random sections that you play that couldn’t accurately defined as shooter or sneaking. I am honestly impressed with the amount of polish that these sections got while being such small parts of the game. None of them really came across as a minigame, but instead a story driven section of the game that you got to play. Almost like a playable cut scene. All in all the gameplay was amazingly fun, with an amount of choice and diversity in what you do that I rarely see.

The value of Metal Gear Solid 4 is far past the sixty dollars that you will spend to play it. Along with the main game, which can take upwards of 30 hours to play through the first time, you’ll also be given ample reason to play through again on harder difficulties (which I’m probably going to start doing myself fairly soon) as well as multiplayer options through Metal Gear Online. The online aspect of the game is a lot of fun, but my only gripe is that there didn’t really seem to be any game modes where sneaking was encouraged. Perhaps I just haven’t found these game modes, but until I do there will definitely be something missing from Metal Gear Online for me.

Overall this game is an incredible experience and a definite must have for any PS3 owner. Even if you’ve never played a Metal Gear Solid game before, I still suggest reading up on the storyline and picking this game up, you won’t be disappointed. That is actually exactly what I did since I had only played Metal Gear Solid 3 before playing the fourth installment in the series, so it is definitely possible to catch up on the story without too much effort.

Valkyria Chronicles

noreply@blogger.com (angel799) — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 21:22:00 +0000

The recent trend within storytelling in gaming has been to move away from linear storylines and lean on the side of player freedom, allowing a person to choose between options and in a way make their own story. While this is commendable in some ways, there is still a lot to be said about a great linear gaming experience, and Valkyria Chronicles shows exactly that. The game plays exactly how a linear game should play, putting in new functions that lend new options to the player and telling a mature story without ever resorting to gore or excessive bloodshed to prove its own maturity, something that is not often seen in a game whose story is centered on war. It also succeeds in making one of the most engaging and accessible battle mechanics to any Strategy RPG I have played.

The combat in Valkyria is easily one of the greatest achievements of the game. It changes up the regular SRPG standard in a way rarely seen. Your role in these battles is acting as the general commander on the field. At the beginning of the battle you are given information on the goals as well as the obstacles ahead and allowed to pick and choose which members of your squad will be starting in the positions available. Each turn you are given a certain number of command points which you can use to issue special commands that up certain stats of your squad members or heal a character in dire need, or you can use the points to take control of one of your squad members. Once you have chosen a squad member the camera dives into your strategic map, coming to rest in a behind the shoulder view of your chosen squad member. You now have control of the character, running with the left analog stick, manipulating the camera with the right analog stick, toggling through weapons with the square button, and taking aim with the R1 button. The character cannot move around infinitely, however, and is given an AP bar which will steadily decrease as you move your character wherever your heart desires. Once you have found a good position, or run your AP bar dry, you can then press R1 to go into a first person view and take aim at your preferred target. Head shots do more damage than body shots, a display on the upper right will tell you how many shots you will take as well as how many shots it will take to kill the current target, and a circle around your crosshairs gives you an idea of the precision of your current weapon. Once ready, you then press the X button to let your bullets, or grenades, or weird exploding lance rocket-like thingies fly.

Most of the strategy of Valkyria Chronicles comes from managing your command points as well as positioning your squad members effectively. The command point management is difficult because command points can be saved for a second turn or used for special orders, and a single character can also be used multiple times during any given turn if you have the necessary command points (albeit with a decrease in available AP each time you use them more than once in a single turn). Utilizing your command points well is often the difference between defeat and victory, and is always important if you are looking for a good rating at the end of the fight.

Squad member positioning is another key factor because every soldier with unlimited ammo (shocktroopers, scouts, engineers, and the machine guns of tanks) will let loose whenever they see an enemy coming, and also because crouching in cover greatly reduces damage and negates the possibility of head shots. These two things make where you position your soldiers for your enemy’s turn almost as important as what you do during your own turn. Placing a line of soldiers where you think your enemy is intending to go can kill off an enemy without wasting any of your own turns, and keeping your squad members in cover is essential to making sure they get out alive.

It is also important to take out the enemy’s leaders while protecting your own. There are certain characters in the game that are denoted as leaders, and having these characters alive during a fight will give you one more command point for each leader alive. This means that you will almost always have all three leader characters out during any given fight, which is one of my few pet peeves because I would’ve liked the punishment for not using the main story characters to be less severe. Though you can certainly play through the game without using them, you’ll just have less command points than the maximum possible.

There are essentially 6 different unit types in the game. The tank, which houses the squad commander, is fantastic for taking out other tanks, clearing up a group of enemy soldiers with a well placed explosion, and knocking down almost any obstructions it comes against. On the negative side the tank takes two command points to use instead of one, and has a fairly low AP amount.

Scouts are basically as their name describes, they are armed with a rifle and one grenade per turn, have extremely high AP, and are especially useful for catching sight of hidden enemies in tall grass. Their attack power and defense are fairly low however, so they can’t deal with an entrenched enemy very well and can easily die if they get caught in a crossfire.

Shocktroopers are your all around soldier, with no specific downsides to using them. They carry a machine gun and have probably the second highest defense , with about half the AP of a Scout. Shocktroopers are usually best used to run into heavily entrenched enemies and take them out using either the machine gun or one grenade per turn.

Lancers are your anti tank troops. They don’t run very fast, but have around the same AP as Shocktroopers. They only have a lance as their sole weapon, and are extremely bad shots with it. You can think of a lance as a goofy rocket launcher. When going against enemy tanks, Lancers and your own tank are really your only option to taking them out. They are provided with their maximum of three rockets to begin with and then gain one more each command turn. Lancers have very high defense from explosives, but not as high bullet defense so they are highly susceptible to snipers, which brings us to the next unit type.

Snipers have easily the lowest AP, it can be difficult to move them to where you want them, and their low defense means you won’t be running them through gunfire for very long. However they come with the best accuracy, the ability to zoom in on targets, and the ability to kill enemies with a head shot with a single round. Snipers have the same ammo worries as Lancers, however, as they start with only their maximum of three rounds, and gain another each command turn.

Engineers are probably best described as a support class. They have AP around three quarters of a scout’s and a comparable defense with easily the worst offensive capabilities. This weakness is tempered by their ability to disable enemy mines, repair tanks, sandbag walls, and refill the ammo of any squad member by touching them. Whenever you plan to use a lancer or a sniper for more than three turns engineers are your best bet, and they are the only means by which you can “heal” your tank.

One slightly unique function of the battle system is what happens to your characters when they die. When a squad member’s health goes to zero, they are knocked out on the ground and their mark on your strategic map is crossed through. You are then given 3 turns to get to and touch that character with another soldier to call a medic and safely evacuate the character out. If you do not do so by the end of three turns, or the enemy touches the fallen squad member before you do, then that character is dead and gone for your entire play through (presuming they aren’t one of three main story characters who instead are gone solely for that fight). During especially difficult fights you will find that you have to balance your objective with trying to reach the fallen, and it is fairly likely that you will lose a couple of soldiers through out the game. I really enjoy this system because it adds permanence to the death of a side character that (along with reading the back story of the side characters) can actually make you miss your fallen comrades somewhat (R.I.P. Nadine).

The other side of this mechanic is that the death of a character or two is not as detrimental as it probably would be in other games. Due to reasons I will touch on later, the members of any given class are all fairly equal in stats and are therefore mostly interchangeable for your strategies. This doesn’t mean that they are all carbon copies of one another, however, as each of your characters will have some perks or detriments based on their given side story. These vary from Walter who is cocky and therefore has a chance of lower evasion skills when his health is high, to Rosie who has a debilitating allergy which has a chance to drain her health whenever in a desert environment, or Lynn whose hard working attitude gives her a chance to take two actions in a single turn instead of one. These attributes add nuance and complexity to how you organize your squad, and also serve to give each of the characters their own story and personality.

The first thing that should clue you in on Valkyria’s linear storyline is the menu set up itself. All of the menus in Valkyria are managed through a book-like interface. From this interface you can choose to continue the story, go to the headquarters to manage troops and equipment, look at the medals you have achieved in combat, and read up on weapons, people, and “historical” events. The “Chapters” tab which encompasses the storyline is easily the best and most important consequence of this menu style. In this tab you unlock battles you can play as well as storyline events that you can watch. What makes this interface great, is that once you have unlocked any cut scene or dialogue, you can come back to that scene as many times as you want. This is a fantastic way to give the player the freedom to watch their favorite cut scenes as many times as they want, and I can tell you that I have watched a particular scene from Chapter 11 at least five times. You don’t have the same freedom with the battles on your first play through the game, but if you decide to go through the story again, you’ll then be able to do the battles as many times as you want.

The “Headquarters” tab allows you to manage the members of your squad, the equipment your squad is wearing, as well as use your experience and money earned. At the Command Center you are able to choose which 20 members of the 50 or so available candidates you want to use in the upcoming battles, which can be especially important if your current squad contains soldiers who may have allergies that will be detrimental in the next fight (I still want to know how people can be allergic to metal). In the R&D facility you can satiate your commercialist desire by spending your hard earned cash on upgrades to weapons and armor and various options for outfitting your tank. The “Training Field” is where you will utilize your experience points to level your characters. One great thing about Valkyria Chronicles is that you don’t level characters individually, but you instead level them as a class. This makes all of the members of any class mostly statistically interchangeable and works very well with the game’s death system, allowing you to miss the character that is gone, without completely screwing over your play through. After you have chosen who will be in your squad, the “Squad Barracks” can be used to choose what specific weapon model each character will use and view various information on the squad members themselves.

Valkyria’s storyline centers on the plight of a small country stuck between two battling behemoths. The East Europan Imperial Alliance and the Atlantic Federation are fighting for dominance of the entire continent of Europa (just change the “a” to an “e” and you’ll have a good picture) while the citizens of the tiny neutral country of Gallia try to ignore the conflict and go about their daily lives. Before too long, the rich resources of Ragnite (basically powers everything in the game from streetlamps to mortar shells) in Gallia are too tempting for the Empire to pass up, and they begin to invade. Gallia has long had a policy of universal and mandatory military training, and you take command of one of the squads of militia formed to fight off the coming Empire.

There are a lot of things that the storyline of Valkyria does well that should be commended. While there is very little blood in the game, the story delves deeply into many mature themes such as racism, death, and the idea that even though you are at war, the people on the other side of the battlefield are still human beings with lives and families to go back to. It is very refreshing and I am happy to see that the developers used the general atmosphere of a war movie extremely well when making their story. Also interesting is the aspects of life that the game totally ignores. Based on attributes there are some characters who are clearly homosexual, but this is simply treated as a random attribute that has very little bearing on the narrative or the stats of the character. It is an extremely mature and commendable way to deal with the subject, and I hope other developers take notice. The story is not perfect of course, there are a few clichés (every JRPG needs a love story right?), and a few cringe worthy moments mainly stemming from the inclusion of the Squad’s pig mascot, but Valkyria gets far more things right with the story than it does wrong.

The second thing that Valkyria does very well from a story aspect is giving a meaningful personality to all of the 50 characters you’ll have the ability to use. Every single squad member has a back story, their own voice acting, and their own attributes that make them unique. There’s enough variety in there that I think that everyone will find some that they really enjoy using and listening to (Walter, Cherry, and Herbert are all hilarious). You also have a lot of incentive to use every single available character, since using them for a few battles will unlock more of their back story as well as another attribute. This has been the main focus of my second play through.

There are a couple issues as far as technical presentation goes. When looking through waving grass or smoke there can sometimes be significant frame rate drops. These are few and far between however, and do not affect the actual gameplay at all due to the turn based nature of the game. On the other side, the menus of Valkyria are close to brilliant, as reading all of these events from a “book” is not only aesthetically pleasing, but also allows the player to go back to any scene that they care to watch again -- something that I hope JRPG developers in general pick up if not the book interface as a whole. The load times are fairly short, with probably only 10 seconds when the battle starts and then nothing else throughout. These loading times were tested using the optional install however, so I am unsure of how they would change without it.

The visual presentation of Valkyria is nearly breathtaking. The pseudo-watercolor aesthetics really catch the eye, and are accentuated by the painting-like border that is always on the edges of the screen, giving the game the look as though you are playing it on a canvas. With the exception of enemy non-leaders, the character models for are very unique, with very few characters looking anything like each other. I think the only little annoyance I have with the visual presentation is that no one has lips. This is a small issue, but becomes extremely obvious when two characters try to kiss. Also the "talking heads" motif common in SRPG's is used perhaps more than I would like, but I can understand that one wouldn't want every scene to be a cutscene since it's nice to be able to control the tempo of the conversations.

The music is top notch, a very nice score that will stick into your mind. I think my only complaint is that they use certain songs too much, and I wish they had spread the song use out better so that you are less likely to get tired of any given song. The voice over talent of Valkyria is great in both English and Japanese. I played through my first time in English and I found very few annoying voices, and the acting during cut scenes was usually very believable even in the more emotional scenes. As I played through my second time in Japanese I noticed a couple voice talents that will make any anime nerd happy (Maximillian being Lelouch from Code Geass for example). Also a major upside to Valkyria’s audio presentation is that there is very little text left unspoken. Unless you are being briefed on a mission every single sentence that is uttered by a character is voiced.

Even with the great presentation, Valkyria’s best aspect is its gameplay. The combination of strategy with a unique interface makes for an extremely fun battle system that has been the main impetus for me starting a second play-through. The story missions are all unique and you will find yourself fighting trench warfare across deserts, reclaiming hostages, and doing demolition work on key strategic Imperial strongholds. No two missions feel anything like each other, and the variety among them is very commendable. My only qualm with how the game played was the inability to change the sensitivity while aiming. This can make aiming with a sniper rather difficult as you try to get the crosshairs just barely where you want them. This is a minor annoyance due to the game’s turn based nature, however. The story is also extremely fun to play through and watch, with many epic moments that I find myself watching again and again.

Value is probably Valkyria’s worst point. My first play through clocked out at 32 hours, which is shorter than a lot of JRPG’s. This is tempered by the idea that Valkyria’s design takes out much of the grinding that can take up your time in other JRPG’s, so I would argue that 32 hours in Valkyria is much more value than 32 hours in your average JRPG. Another upside is that Valkyria has a lot of replay value, with more side characters to learn about as well as a great gameplay mechanic and medals to earn. I do wish that the medals had been adapted to trophies, since it seems like they are practically set up for it already, but such is not the case. There is the promise of further playtime through downloadable content in the future that allows you to try your hand playing on the Imperial side of the war, but as there will be a charge involved I can't really count this as a plus side for value's sake -- however true Valkyria die-hards will be happy for the further playtime and story development.

Those who have read all my reviews and are keeping track (so basically the staff editors and my immediate family. *waves* HI MOM!!) will notice that this is easily the longest review I have ever submitted. This game deserves nothing less. I love this title and have very few complaints. The gameplay is addicting, the story is engaging, and the characters’ personalities are very interesting. On the downside there is a lot of use of the old “talking heads” motif within JRPG story telling, some slowdown in specific points, and no one has lips (yes I’m still harping on that). Basically, if you are a JRPG fan and you don’t give Valkyria a shot, you do yourself a disservice. So go out and buy it if you own a Playstation 3, or go borrow one if you don’t, because this is the kind of JRPG that the Playstation 3 users have been waiting for.

God of War 3

noreply@blogger.com (angel799) — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 21:14:00 +0000

After three long years, the conclusion of the God of War trilogy is upon us. And I can say, with absolute certainty, that it was worth the wait.

The player reprises the role of Kratos, legendary military commander and “Ghost of Sparta”, in his quest for vengeance - vengeance which can only be fulfilled by the slaughter of Zeus, king of the gods and Lord of Olympus. After travelling back in time to the Great War between the Gods and Titans, Kratos takes the latter to Mount Olympus to launch one final assault, destroying the mountain and all of its inhabitants.

Naturally, this doesn’t work. If it did, God of War III would be rather short. The bolt of Zeus sends Kratos plummeting to (surprise, surprise) the depths of Hades, where he (shockingly) loses all of his magic, and most of his health. Interestingly, this is the fourth time that he’s visited the fiery realm, and it looks completely different each visit. In God of War, Hades consisted of a few rocks, a huge amount of lava and some rotating metal structures with no clear purpose. In the sequel, it was a large wall with some minions on it. But, apparently, the Lord of the Underworld hired a new contractor in the few days between the events of God of War II and III, because it’s now an enormous stone structure with technology that we in the 21st Century could only dream of. Anyway, Kratos somehow manages to retain Athena’s Blades, as well as the Blade of Olympus (the sword forged especially for Zeus which ended the Great War and banished the Titans to Tartarus) which, for some inadequately explored reason, he rarely uses.

Gaia makes no attempt to rescue the warrior, saying that he was no more than a pawn. So it is that Kratos ends up alone for arguably the first time in the entire series. His one ally takes the form of Athena, who sacrificed herself to save Zeus only a few days previous. Even she doesn’t do a whole lot, simply handing him his new weapons – the Blades of Exile – and then disappearing for several hours. All of Kratos’ powers, all of his weapons, his abilities and his items this time around come about as the fruition of his own labours. No Olympian, Titan or human gives him any pity or charity. Not that he needs it; he has the aforementioned Blade of Olympus to annihilate everything that moves and is more than 20 feet tall.

Kratos’ questionable psychology aside, God of War III’s story is fantastic. It is an epic adventure from the fires of Hades to the clouds of Olympus, alternating between exhilarating action and suspense, and never failing to deliver. Traditional cutscenes (all in-engine; no CGI to be found here) progress the adventure, while 2D red-and-black animations explore the psychology of the different characters and, on occasion, recap events from the previous games. Though I can’t speak from personal experience, it appears as though a player new to the franchise could easily jump in without feeling overly lost.

The Ghost of Sparta’s personality is certainly deeper than in previous games. His emotions, rather than ranging from indignation to fury, with occasional bouts of self-pity, are varied. At certain points you can even see the loving, caring side of Kratos (yes, it exists). Not that this means the game is any less violent. Oh, no. In fact, it’s far more violent than either of the previous games. Dead foes spray Kratos with blood, centaurs leak intestines, and with the larger scale (there are far more enemies on-screen at most points in God of War III than ever in its predecessors) comes far more simultaneous bloodshed. It’s fantastic.

The Olympians (with the exception of Hephaestus, whom everybody now despises) are brash, arrogant and power-hungry, as you would expect Gods to be. They all consistently taunt Kratos until the moment that he rams his blade through their hearts. From most of these gods, Kratos gains powers, weapons and items, as well as knowledge about his ultimate quest, the Flame of Olympus which allegedly contains enough power to destroy the gods. As the Spartan slays them, however, the world slowly grows darker and more ruinous. Floods sink the land; the sun disappears behind the clouds; plagues infect those who manage to survive. From the halls of Olympus you often have the ability to glimpse these great and terrible sights, with limited camera control which allows you to observe the environment.

Combat in God of War III is largely unchanged from the PS2 games, and this is no bad thing. There is a reason that the series appeals to so many gamers whom other hack and slash games leave cold - it’s simple. Simple, but effective. Many of the combos from God of War and its sequel make an appearance, including (of course) the Plume of Prometheus, fast and strong enough to defeat even the most powerful of the game’s enemies. The Blades of Exile function in a very similar way to the Blades of Chaos and Athena’s Blades. The basic play style is identical. The one main modification is a new move which attaches the Blades to an enemy, and pulls Kratos towards them. This attack is integral to God of War III’s combat (at least, the way I played it), and is shared by three of the four weapons.

GoW3 marks the first occasion in the series where any of the alternative weapons are actually good. Three weapons complement the Blades of Exile. First, and certainly least, are the Claws of Hades. These are, essentially, the Blades of Exile, except for the fact that they are blue, and they deal less damage. Next up are the Nemean Cestus, which you may remember from the original trailer for the game. These are stone gloves which Kratos can wear on each hand. They are slow, but incredibly powerful, and they can destroy the onyx shields and barriers scattered throughout the game. Finally, my personal favourite: the Nemesis Whip. Forged by Hephaestus, this is an electrically-charged contraption consisting of spinning blades attached to a chain. Incredibly powerful, but only acquired near the end of the game. The fantastic thing about the combat is that you’ll find yourself needing to use each of these weapons (except perhaps the Claws of Hades) in their own time. You will almost certainly have a favourite, but you won’t be able to use this throughout the game.

There is a fifth weapon, but one which is rarely used: the Blade of Olympus. Activating the Rage of Sparta (which works exactly like the Rage of the Gods and of the Titans in God of War and its sequel respectively) allows Kratos to use the legendary weapon for a brief period of time. In my opinion, it is rather useless. The blade is painfully slow, and while it deals a large amount of damage, it’s simply not worth it for the most part. Kratos also uses the Blade of Olympus when he wants to slay a God or Titan, usually with a Context Sensitive Attack (quick time event).

In addition to the weapons, there are a number of items which Kratos gains during his travels. These can be used as weapons, but they have wider uses. The head of Helios lights up dark paths and exposes hidden chests, and the boots of Hermes allow Kratos to run up certain walls, etc. These items are powered by a recharging item meter.

Magic works a little differently from previous entries in the franchise. Instead of each power being accessible at all times, powers are tied to the weapons. This is another reason why you have to vary your weapon use - a very strong weapon may have an all-but-useless magical power. However, like previous games in the series, magic does not recharge, and must be regained from the Blue Orbs found in chests and occasionally gained by killing enemies. There are five types of chest in God of War III:

-The green chest rejuvenates Kratos and restores his health.
-The blue chest restores Kratos’ magic.
-The red chest gives Kratos red experience orbs, which he can use to power up his weapons and items.
-The white chest bestows red orbs, and green, blue or gold orbs (which fill up the Rage of Sparta meter).
-The large chest gives Kratos a collectible item - a Gorgon Eye (three of these increase the health maximum), Phoenix Feather (three increase the magic maximum) or Minotaur Horn (three increase item power - not particularly useful, because this regenerates).

For some reason, Kratos now opens chests with one hand instead of two, with the exception of the large chest. It does make him appear to be more of a badass, but he must get a sore arm after a while.

As with any game in the series, of course, there is more to it than just the combat. There are several puzzles littered throughout Olympus which Kratos must solve, though not as many and not quite as irritating as in previous games. At certain times, the Ghost of Sparta can use the Icarus Wings which he gained in God of War II for flight, avoiding obstacles and rocks, to ascend the mountain quickly. At no point does the game begin to get repetitive. The platforming can be a little finicky at times, but for the most part, it works well.

Backtracking does exist, but it’s not as prevalent as in the original two games. And where it does exist, it’s justified. Kratos doesn’t meander back to where he was ten minutes ago where a door has opened. He plunges to locations which he visited six hours ago, and obliterates everything.

There is one exception to the ever-present fantastic gameplay, however. Namely, the first half hour of the game. This is what Santa Monica promised the entire game would be like, and I couldn’t be happier that they lied, because it’s a giant mess. Yes, the cinematography is fantastic, the graphics are stunning, and the camera angles are incredible. Unfortunately, this makes the game near-impossible to play. Gaia flip-flops all over the place and Kratos goes flying. Destroying huge monsters while clinging onto a Titan isn’t nearly as enjoyable as it sounds.

On the topic of graphics and cinematography, both are fantastic. High Definition has done wonders for the visuals of this franchise. Kratos is immaculately detailed, the environments are incredible, and effects are top-notch. The game zooms in and out at just the right times, to highlight the characters or the world around them, without intruding on the gameplay. This is fortunate, because camera angles were a huge problem, arguably the largest, in God of War and its sequel. The camera changes depending on your position and the direction in which you are travelling. Occasionally, Kratos comes across “Ancient Pedestals”, which allow him to look freely over the landscape (his head controlled by the Left Stick) while giving a short caption at the bottom, describing the scene.

Character performance is also top-notch. The gods emanate power in their voices, and Kratos’ voice actor successfully changes emotions to fit the situation. Lip-synching is near-perfect. The music suits the action, with loud orchestral scores during intense moments of action. There are a handful of sound glitches towards the beginning of the game, but these are rare, and disappear entirely after an hour or so. Other than that, the game runs fine, never (unintentionally) slowing down (though a few intentional slowdowns to highlight the action do exist), and I encountered no other glitches.

I played on God (Normal) difficulty, and I found it challenging, but never cheap. New tactics are required every so often, but enemies aren’t overly powerful. I died some 70 times over the course of the game, but most of this was to do with mis-timed jumping.

The game clocked in, for me and most others, at about 12 hours - slightly longer than the previous games in the franchise. But this is 12 hours of intense action, and of fantastic, quality gameplay. There is always the ability to replay the game on higher difficulties, find those elusive collectibles and earn trophies. You can also use costumes earned by beating the game, and items named Godly Possessions littered across the map which bestow incredible powers on Kratos, which cannot be used until the game is beaten. Then, there is the Challenge of Olympus, which is far more difficult than the Challenge of the Titans in God of War II, and slightly more so than the Challenge of the Gods in God of War. Many “making of” videos are also made available, and it can be fascinating to watch the development process.
In conclusion, God of War III is fantastic. It is an amazing experience: exhilarating gameplay is tied together with a fascinating story and mind-blowing graphics. I would say that it’s the best in the trilogy by quite a long way, and among the highest quality games on the PS3, and it brings said trilogy to a close with a bang. Nearly all of the loose strings in the series are tied up, but just enough are left dangling to warrant another entry in the series. I hope that the next entry does exist, because while God of War III would be an excellent end to an excellent series, I still want more, and that’s a good sign. If previous games in the series have left you cold, God of War III will not suddenly appeal to you. But if you found any semblance of enjoyment in its predecessors, this is a game which must be played.

The Sims: Medieval

noreply@blogger.com (angel799) — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 21:06:00 +0000

The developer started things off by telling us a cool story about how the original developer conceived the idea for The Sims in the first place. It seems inspiration for The Sims arose like a phoenix from the ashes of the developer's own tragic house fire. As he was working toward rebuilding his home, the visionary game designer decided he was having fun, and that he could build a game around the experience. As was explained to him later, you needed people in the game in order to make it fun.

The people in The Sims: Medieval are definitely the fun part. As you start the game, you begin as the Queen, (or king). You can then undergo a huge character modification process, guided by a hugely comprehensive guide that, like a good butler, is there when you need him/her but will get the hell out of your way at the slightest provocation. Part of the character process is selecting a fatal flaw and two additional positive elements to your personality, and that in turn influences your quests.

Pick a quest and you're on your way. My Queen liked to get her hands dirty in helping her kingdom grow, so she apparently decided the thing to do would be to chop some wood in the forest. Without an axe, I might add. Apparently she was also a frickin' Jedi.

The visuals seem to be exactly what we've come to expect from a Sims game. They've got a lot of practice making each element exactly right, despite the purposefully rough edges, vaulted ceilings, and dirty environmental elements. The game looks exactly the way it ought. The special effects magic is resonably sparkly without being eye-stabby, and the game characters that're supposed to be sexy are reasonably sexy.

Gameplay was as good as the rest of The Sims games. Each element is easily controllable, manipulatable, and you don't have to spend a huge amount of time learning how the game works, for those of you new to the Sims universe. I'm reasonably new to the Sims if I'm being honest. Which I am.
For those who are old hats at The Sims, there's plenty of newness for you. The facial expressions, character designs, missions, and environmental elements seem richer. It seems a fuller universe, and there are two new religious factions which will add a little x-factor to your quests. The best part about the religious factions? They worship you. Who doesn't love that? There's an assassin, a witch, a knight, and a magician, and a Monarch of either gender.

Death and failure are as inevitable to life as achievements and/or trophies, and you'll find both in The Sims: Medieval. It's possible to fail quests, possible to kill people, and possible to allow people to die. You'll be rewarded for achieving your goals, and completing your kingdom's ambitions.

The Sims: Medieval looks like quite a bit of old-timey fun. Do yourself a favor and pick it up.

Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One

noreply@blogger.com (angel799) — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 20:57:00 +0000

Ratchet & Clank is, without a doubt, one of the best Sony-exclusive series. Instead of just resting on their laurels with another brilliant sequel that's really just more of the same, Insomniac Games is mixing it up a bit. After first announcing Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One at gamescom a few weeks ago, there hasn't been much news. That changed at PAX today, however, when a panel hosted by Adam Sessler of G4TV fame gave us loads of new details about the game. Oh, and we've got some shaky cam gameplay videos! Woo!

All 4 One is a co-op game. It's very co-op, like The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords on the Game Boy Advance, or LittleBigPlanet. You can pick up your friends and throw them across gaps (or off cliffs!), and you have to work together to turn levers, solve puzzles, and fly up air shafts. It's a game that Insomniac has been wanting to make for a long time, and with the last two Future games on PS3 neglecting to include the multiplayer aspects present in the final PS2 R&C, it seemed like a prime time to bring back some teamwork.

It's a funny team, though: Ratchet, Clank, Captain Qwark, and Dr. Nefarious(!), who is the sworn enemy of, well... the rest of the team. The story of the game is that Nefarious sets out to kill Qwark, but all four of the characters are captured somehow by the Creature Collector on an unknown planet and forced to work together to survive. That doesn't mean they have to like it, however. The grumbling and bickering in the ambient dialog will make it clear that Nefarious really doesn't want to be here. Luckily, he wants to live more than he wants Ratchet, Clank, and Qwark to die, and the relationship between the four characters is a key part of the game's storyline progression.

So how does it work? Each character has their own lifebar that floats under them at any given point, and the camera zooms back to a "director's view." There's can't be a classic R&C over-the-shoulder camera when you need to have all four characters on-screen at the same time, all the time. (There didn't seem to be a HUD, either.) To survive in the world, it looked like every character had a vacuum cleaner-type weapon that can suck in anything - even their allies - and shoot it out: across gaps, at enemies, etc. You can throw your friends off a clliff, too, but that won't win you the game very quickly, now will it? Insomniac has built a bit of "playful antagonism" into the game, so you won't really have to worry about griefing too much.

After you toss an ally across a gap, you can use a hookshot-type item to pull yourself to them across distances. The hookshot also plays into the play mechanics; at one point there's a Pixel Junk Eden-like section where the four players have to swing around each other to reach higher areas. Reminds me of the magnetic grapple on Jet Moto. Fun stuff. If you get tossed of a ledge, don't worry too much. Respawn time is very short because Insomniac realized it had to be; it's no fun having to sit and watch your friends play the game while you wait to return to life.

The co-op will be drop-in/drop-out anytime, online or off. If you want two people on the couch and two across the world, that's fine. Four on the couch? That's cool too. Players can come and go as they please, and you can even migrate your PSN ID over to your friend's house if you want to play together so you can nab those precious trophies while on the road. Very cool.

Besides the vacuums and the hookshots, each character has his own special weapon. Qwark has the Fists of Justice and Nefarious has the Annihilator Blades, but the Ratchet and Clank weapons haven't been revealed yet. At least you can suck up Clank with the vacuum, hurl him at an enemy, and have him transform into a destructive weight to squash the baddies from above.

The other weapons, probably the biggest draw of the Ratchet & Clank franchise, are still being tweaked, and especially the weapon selection process. In a four-player online game, you don't want to have to wait every few seconds while a member of the team changes out their weapon via the auto-pausing weapon select wheel. Insomniac assured us that they are making that as simple and streamlined as possible while still having the variety of weapons and ease of selection that gamers are used to. They haven't quite perfected the formula for the ammo in the game, either, but there is definitely going to be a marketplace where you can buy and upgrade your guns, at least.
A few final things from the Insomniac panel:
Death - If you die in battle, a friend has to revive you to get you back in the action. If all four die, the team has to restart from the last checkpoint. Falling/being thrown off a cliff just gives you a minor health penalty and a few seconds to wait to respawn.
Frames-per-second - All 4 One is set at a solid 30 FPS to allow some b-e-a-u-tiful effects and details in the environment. Totally worth the higher-speed trade-off.
There's a TON of hidden stuff to encourage replayability. Did you expect anything less from a Ratchet & Clank game?
You can hurt your friends in ways that don't involve throwing them off cliffs for a minimum life loss, but they're a secret until the player discovers it themselves.
Bots - If you don't have a friend, one will be appointed to you by the computer. Hope the AI can figure out things like how to use a staircase. This ensures that there will always be a one-player mode, at least.
Other possible names for the game? "4play," "Multiple Organisms," "Fiends with Benefits," and "Bros Before Foes." Insomniac went with All 4 One because they wanted moms to actually buy this game for their kids.

That's all the info for today, but check out the two off-screen-camera gameplay videos below and see if I missed anything. The game will launch in 2011 exclusively on the PS3.

Brink

noreply@blogger.com (angel799) — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 20:50:00 +0000

Brink is a visually and thematically unique shooter. Feeling like an expansion upon other team-based shooters, Brink blurs the lines between single player, cooperative, and multiplayer versus gaming. There are no true single-player levels—in which your character runs down straight corridors to an end—as Brink takes place on the battle field. Sure, the single-player game has goals, but at any given time a player can jump in and join up with real-world players. Even more, taking the game online, players will be impeded by others. Not many other games attempt to squeeze the single player into the multiplayer quite like this. And before you mention Mindjack, just remember that game failed terribly.

So while it is a squad/team-based shooter like Team Fortress 2, don’t think there isn’t a story. Brink tells the tale of the Ark, an experimental floating metropolis designed to be a progressive green city in an increasingly messy world. A smashing success, the Ark saw an influx of refugees and an increasing metropolis as the landmasses slowly drowned under rising seawater due to global warming. No longer a scientific novelty, Ark becomes one of the few livable areas on the planet, and like all cities slowly loses its sheen.

Two factions at this point are fighting over the massive city: Security and Resistance. The Security forces are the traditional army, guided by keeping the city unified under the original goals of its founders. The Resistance, a rag-tag army, is trying to ETC. No one is really bad or good, but the two factions view each other as the saviors of Ark. Between rundown slums in Resistance-lead neighborhoods to highly defended facilities led by the Security, there are plenty of regions for these two groups to duke it out.

With that foundation, we see what Brink is really about the classes. Soldiers, engineers, medics, and more, each one brings something unique and special to the equation. Any character can be any class, and it’s easy to change them at any control point.

Objectives in Brink are constantly in flux. While many other games set out a specific goal, such as taking over a control point or defending a VIP, in Brink these general goals are supplemented with sub-goals. Classes can be changed with a quick visit to a control point, and each class will have different sub-objectives. Sure, an engineer or a medic can try to keep up with the soldiers attempting to reach the next control point; however, they would be better suited to changing their goals to something that better fits their abilities. A medic will want to be aware of who has fallen and needs to be revived, and an engineer will want to find nearby tanks and vehicles to hijack or protect. Managing your goals is important, and the context sensitive nature goes far to making the game feel fresh compared to other shooters.

Character customization is deep. If you can’t tell by the screenshots, Brink is an intensely colorful game, where all the characters look like the long-faced demo man from Team Fortress 2. I’m going to be blunt: Every character is butt-ugly, but their unsightly appearances somehow fit into the mood and feel of the game. With hundreds of unlockables to customize the characters, you can make over your ugly brute into a snazzy-dressed soldier. Making a character that visually represents you will be a primary source of enjoyment for many players.

How a character looks does actually impact how the game plays. There are three body types: light, medium and heavy. Small guys should best use the SMART system, executing jumps and wall runs the other two class sizes could only dream of. They are incredibly lithe, and will reach objectives much earlier than the other classes. Heavy guys, while slower, can take more damage. The medium guys fall somewhere in the middle.

This brings us to the SMART system. A context-sensitive button that changes depending on what the player’s actions, the system is mostly used for moving players around. Unlike other shooters, where the characters must jump oddly up to different areas, the SMART system allows for characters to just run to and vault up walls, over railings, and more.

Brink is a gorgeous game. Ark looks very much like the city in Mirror’s Edge, with lots of clean white lines broken by electric blues, oranges and greens. The characters have a unique cartoon aesthetic that fits the game, and it’s a visual treat. Expect good things from Brink’s aesthetic.

All in all, Brink is an incredibly promising game. Those looking for an in-depth single-player game might want to look elsewhere, but anyone comfortable with the idea of continually playing with others would be smart to check out Brink on May 17.

The Lord of the Rings: War in the North

noreply@blogger.com (angel799) — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 18:00:00 +0000

I’ll admit: I had never heard of Lord of the Rings: War in the North before I saw it demoed at E3. I enjoyed the movies, and I even read one of the books before losing faith in the face of Tolkien’s florid verbosity, but the games, well… there just seemed to be so many of them. I couldn’t keep up with all the subtitles. War in the North, the yet-to-be-released action RPG from Snowblind Studios (Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance on PS2), may change that.

Middle Earth is not a happy place. Under Sauron’s eye, the forests are a place of danger, the fields are full of traps, and even the skies aren’t safe. This is where my preview opened. An elf, a dwarf, and a human (but not Legolas, Gimli, and Aragorn) are flying over Mirkwood Forest on the backs of eagles. They are on a never-before-told quest to find the wizard Ratagast.

BAM! Out of nowhere, the dragon being ridden by Wolfrun the Beastrider collides with the dwarf’s eagle. The dwarf falls down, down, down, into the forest. Wolfrun follows; the dwarf’s allies also pursue. Quick cut to the ground. We have a brief cutscene using some pretty decent in-game graphics where the eagles take out the dragon, leaving our three heroes to deal with Wolfrun. Fight time!

War in the North is all about the interdependent co-op. The human’s magic, the elf’s bow, and the dwarf’s axe must all work together to conquer foes, or they will fall. First, the human casts a protective bubble around the heroes to shield them from Wolfrun’s projectiles. The elf can still shoot his bow through the shield, however. It reminds me a bit of the not-well-received Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles on the GameCube, but instead of a bucket, you just have a human at the center of your bubble.

Anyway, the human keeps his shield going as long as he can while also shooting off fireballs at Wolfrun, the dwarf runs around to try and ambush him from the back with his axe, and the elf shoots off arrow after arrow in a third-person shooter style (and headshots = instant kill on normal enemies, so aim well). It’s close, but eventually the teamwork of the three heroes saves the day.

This is followed by a short dialogue with Valerie the eagle (who sounds vaguely reminiscent of Patrick Stewart, but he’s already in Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, so it couldn’t be him… could it?) which employs the Mass Effect-esque circular dialogue choice-maker. I’m sure this dialogue ring has a cooler name, but it’s escaping me at the moment. They should call it a Mood Ring.

So after Valerie flies off to do some eagle stuff, our heroes are left to traipse through the forest on foot. Here we see a few key differences between the three characters. The elf sees some footprints through the woods that the others missed which leads to a hidden treasure chest. The human finds some magic mushrooms that he harvests to make into health potions. The dwarf senses structural instabilities in rocks, and smashes through the weak walls with his axe, leading to even more hidden treasure. There’s a lot of hidden treasure in this game, apparently.

The treasure from chests and fallen enemies is often equipment for your characters. There’s the typical RPG head/chest/feet/arms/legs equip slots like in an Elder Scrolls game, so it’s not too big of a learning curve for experienced players.
get to see a few more aspects of battle that we didn’t see before. Let’s run down a few last things about combat in no particular order:
The troll’s underlings are able to cast the protective bubble spell, too, but are also susceptible to graphic dismemberment and finishing moves at the hands of our heroes. Get close; hit hard.
The elf can use some minor stealth moves, and flaming arrows! Ooooohhhh.
If you get caught by a boss, you can dodge its attacks with QTE button-presses like a God of War game while your allies try to free you.
When you lose all your health, you can still crawl around to escape harm’s way. An ally can revive you by standing near your sad, broken body and holding the A button for a moment. This happened quite a few times during the troll fight – trolls are tough. The heroes prevailed, however, and we were sent away with our War in the North t-shirts and a tale to tell.

This game could be the best use of the Lord of the Rings license on a console since the Two Towers game on the PlayStation 2. See for yourself when it drops next year on PS3, 360, and PC.

Rage

noreply@blogger.com (angel799) — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 13:45:00 +0000

It’s been quite some time since id Software released a new IP and it seems like they’re pulling out all the stops to celebrate it. RAGE is a first person shooter with a good amount of variety that seems like Fallout 3 without the RPG elements.

Apparently there was an asteroid heading for Earth and our government in their infinite wisdom put 12 guys in life sustaining pods in order to repopulate the planet. Someone should really tell the government the birds and the bees speech before they make decisions like this. Anyway you play as one of these survivors as he crawls out of a capsule to find that the world isn’t as desolate as he thought it would be, and in fact there are still quite a number people.

Walking out into the light he noticed a shack on the right side and just sauntered right in. Crazy Joe told him about some bandits nearby and a town called Wellspring and it was decided. Some bandits got in the way but they were quickly dispatched by some standard FPS gunplay and some not so standard FPS huge spinning throwing blade. After that it was time to drive off to town in a buggy outfitted with machine guns. We were told that the buggy could be customized with different weapons with parts found during your travels.

Once in town he passed by a racing manager and the classic overly angry rival who hates new comers. Passing by these two he came upon the Wellmaster who had called out an alarm. There were some bandits below who were trying to poison the water supply which would quite quickly kill the town. After accepting the mission he headed down into the caves. A trusty crossbow with electric bolts allowed him to quickly electrocute some bandits standing in water ala Bioshock.

Beyond the crossbow and other standard weapons the main character can engineer his own tools such as lock grinders, turrets, and bomb strapped toy cars all of which were shown. The bandits had some acrobatic moves and a creepy almost insane vibe that made them unique from other bandit groups.

Speaking of other bandit groups the demo then went back in time to before the main character got a buggy. Here he was fighting against some large bruiser type bandits with a British accent and a love of cars. Once the regular cronies were dispatched there was a mini boss fight with the leader of the bandits crashing into the hideout in a car with a minigun on top.

After dispatching the bandit boss it was off to a place called Dead City which was known as such because apparently noone ever comes back alive from the place. It quickly became apparent how the place got its name as small human shaped creatures came burrowing out of the ground and ran at the character at full force. As though that wasn’t enough a huge brute of a creature standing at least 20 feet tall came in carrying a Howitzer.

A quick game of cat and mouse resumed with the developer doing everything he could to not get hit by the huge shells coming out of the creature’s cannon. Victory was short lived, however, as a new creature came bounding past the corpse of the first and dwarfing it as much as the old creature dwarfed you. Here the demo ended.
What I saw was all running on the 360 but the devs assured us that the end result would be the same on the PS3 and 360 as well as the PC version. RAGE is scheduled to release sometime in 2011 and from what I saw FPS fans should keep a close eye on this one.

All Points Bulletin

noreply@blogger.com (angel799) — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 13:39:00 +0000

Whenever people hear about APB (All-Points Bulletin), they invariably think of it as the "Grand Theft Auto MMO." That would be doing the game a great disservice - it's so much more. Grand Theft Auto IV launched to universal acclaim and has since been ostracized for everything from the bro-date mechanics to Niko's personality. APB won't have either of those. True, you can still run around and shoot people, and then steal a car and run over more people, but that's where the similarities end. APB is about cops, robbers, teamwork, and... designing.

First, there are two basic modes in the game to pick from right off the bat: there's the action district and the social district. The action district is where the meat of the game lies. First, you choose whether you want your character to be a Criminal or an Enforcer (cop). Criminals will perform a crime, be it robbing a bank, or blowing up a car, or burning down a building, and then the police will put out an all-points bulletin for your arrest. The Enforcers then have to capture or kill the Criminals, and the Criminals will be fighting to complete the dastardly job of looting/killing/burning/etc. before the time runs out or they get stopped by the cops.

It controls very much like a typical third-person shooter, with WASD keys used for movement and the mouse used for aim. I've never tried driving using anything besides a controller on a home console before, either, but the driving worked better than I was expecting considering the non-analog-ness of a mouse/keyboard setup.

You can upgrade weapons by using up to three different upgradeable slots in each, and you can steal cars or buy them from the repair shop. Each car can carry passengers that lean out the windows to shoot the other team, and you have the GTA-standard, "When your car lights on fire, you need to get out quick!" There's a huge aspect of strategy here too. You need to find the right weapon for the range you'll be fighting at (i.e. shotgun vs. sniper rifle), and the guy on the higher ground will almost always have the advantage. One fun fact: each district will have up to 80 players at once, although not all on the same mission (most are 7vs7, I believe? Don't quote me on that), so you can be barreling down a sideroad on a high-speed pursuit and run right into a firefight between two other brawling factions. Very cool.

Criminals and Enforcers have their own levels of prestige, as well. Do a lot of crime, and your notoriety will go up, allowing you to get cooler stuff and also have more Enforcers chasing you at once. As a cop, you can use lethal force on the Criminals, which causes a very short respawn, or you can use non-lethal weapons like beanbag guns. The non-lethals cause the Criminals to keel over, and then you can run up and arrest them. This gives cops a HUGE boost, and causes the Criminal to have a ten-second respawn (that's a very long time when you're just sitting there on your knees crying). Oh, and the cop can shoot the perp in cold blood while he's there being arrested, but that's no good for their good cop-ness, even if it does make you feel totally hardcore.

Besides the action, there is a huuuuuge aspect of customization in APB. The social district of the game is like PlayStation Home, only imagine if you could actually do stuff there and it wasn't just a huge advertisement for digital clothes that you'll never wear. Here, there's a place to design clothes, and characters, and car decals, and tattoos, and hairstyles, and music. The editors are incredibly robust - think of it as a WRPG create-a-character mode, but with even more customizability and a punk-rock aesthetic. Basically, anything you want to design can be in the game.

The music editor sticks out in particular, to me. You can create 5-second jingles that play when you kill an opponent as a sort of "death tune," or you can create an entire soundtrack for your game that'll blare from your car speakers when you perform drive-bys. The death tunes stick in my mind because I got capped once, and a clip of "Never Gonna Give You Up" played as I fell lifeless to the pavement. Gotta love Rickrolls.

But wait... there's more! If you don't want to create your own music, you can use your music collection on your PC as the soundtrack for your game. The thing is, it'll only play out of your car speakers when you're driving. APB uses Last.fm's technology to give other players a flavor of where your musical tastes lie. Say you're playing "Where It's At" by Beck on your stereo. If someone jumps into your car (or is merely close enough to hear your speakers), they'll hear "Where It's At" if it's also in their musical collection. If they don't have it, they'll hear another song by Beck, or, failing that, they'll be treated to a similar artist based on Last.fm's "You might also like..." technology. Eventually, you'll be able to tell who's coming for you based on the prog rock soundtrack blaring from their speakers. Very cool. (If you created your music with the Fruity Loops-style in-game music editor, everyone will be able to hear that tune all the time; there's no "Artists similar to DJ Killface" option... yet.)

Since APB is an MMO, it'll cost money. Realtime Worlds has a unique and awesome way of going about this, however. Let me break it down for you:
APB costs $49.99 and includes 50 hours of playtime out of the box. These hours never expire. They know that not everyone will be a die-hard play-every-day addict, so they only charge you playtime when you're actually playing. Novel, eh?
If you want a monthly unlimited plan, it's $9.99 a month, or you can get 20 more hours of never-expires playtime for $6.99.
Besides that, everything else uses it's own point system, similar to Microsoft Points. I call them "APBucks." Har de har. You can purchase points in denomination of 200 for $4.99, or 400 for $9.99, or 600 for $14.99, and so on and so on. There's no savings when you purchase larger bundles yet; I think it's just for convenience so far, although I can see something like discounts on larger amounts happening someday.
Points can be redeemed for added playtime, or you can use them to purchase decals/tunes/clothes that other players designed on the marketplace.
Playtime only decreases while you're in the action district; your time in the social district is unlimited. You can design to your heart's content.
Cool part incoming: you can sell your tattoo/clothes/music to other players for in-game cash (which is used for buying cars, upgrading guns, etc.), OR for points, which can be redeemed for more playtime. So, you can burn up your 50 hours, then hit the design studio, make something amazing, and sell it to other players on the marketplace for more playtime. This is awesome, and I don't know why more companies don't do this.
APB is in open beta right now, and the full game launches on June 29 on PC. If you preorder, you get a bunch of free stuff (including ten bonus hours of playtime). Get on that! I'll see you there.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

noreply@blogger.com (angel799) — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 13:33:00 +0000

It’s been a long time since the last Deus Ex game, and Invisible War failed to impress with its more simplistic approach to the Deus Ex design. Though announced quite some time ago, Eidos went silent about the anticipated new entry in the franchise, and with Square Enix’s acquisition of the publisher the fate of Deus Ex was unknown. Enter Deus Ex: Human Revolution, a prequel to the original game and an ambitious rebirth of the franchise.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution takes place in 2027, during the age of biomechanical augmentation alluded to in the first Deux Ex game. Set only 17 years in the future, Deus Ex deals with the growing practice of human augmentation, which divides the world, causing strife and unrest. You play Adam Jensen, a heavily modified human capable of incredible feats of strength, stealth, and agility, as he seeks to discover the mystery behind the strife between augmented and natural humans. As a prequel to the original game, it’s possible to play it without any knowledge of the Deus Ex universe, but there will be references to the other Deus Ex games for those familiar with them.

Deus Ex games are built on four pillars of design, which shape the gameplay experience. These are stealth, action, hacking, and social. Our demo started with the social aspect. Jensen entered a sprawling urban island-city full of seedy criminal underworlds and powerful organizations. In this demo Jensen visits a particular bar, seeking information. I noticed the streets around the bar were full of NPCs, and I was told that none of these NPCs are simply there for show, and Jensen can converse with all of them. Some will offer information, and others sidequests, but the social aspect of the game will allow Jensen to accomplish much through conversation alone.

Jensen entered the very exclusive bar through paying the guard in our demo, but he also could have used conversation skills to talk his way in, shot the guard, or snuck in a back way. Conversations with incidental NPCs may have also revealed unique information helpful to him. Once in the bar Jensen attempted to convince the information broker to reveal the information he needed, but failed. This caused Jensen to resort to stealth, and he snuck into a vent to complete his espionage.

Once the information was gathered the demo switched to a new area, as they showed off a mission. At this point Jensen needed to sneak into a shipping yard and warehouse. The shipping yard was heavily guarded, but because Jensen had a lot of strength he was able to lift some debris out of the way and sneak in through a crack in the wall. There were multiple possible routes in, and what was available depended on how the character was developed. It’s also an option to simply charge the front gates, guns blazing.

At this point, Jensen proceeded to advance towards his goal with stealth. While most of the game is played in first person, when Jensen attaches to cover the camera switches to third person, allowing better view of your surroundings both for targeting in combat and avoiding guard patrols. Jensen dispatched multiple guards with blades deployed from his mechanical arms. He also showed the trailer move of punching through a cement wall to snap the neck of the guard behind it. The skills were stylish and brutal, but they are contextual and not scripted according to the developers. They were also clear that you can choose to simply disable the guards instead if you prefer, and the entirety of the game can be completed without killing.

As Jensen drew nearer his goal, he began to deploy more advanced stealth mechanisms, including a full body cloaking device and a silenced pistol, allowing him to dispatch enemies with greater efficiency and stealth. Once he reached the warehouse Jensen was again presented with numerous options of entry, but the developer chose to take him in through the roof. After reaching the skylight Jensen dropped through it, and all pretense of stealth was abandoned; it was time for a firefight. Jensen landed between two guards and deployed dozens of small metallic balls upon landing which hovered around him, then launched outward, killing many and causing mass destruction.

As the firefight began the developers made efficient use of cover and their arsenal of weapons. Jensen primarily used an assault rifle, returning fire both in and out of cover in a first person firefight. The target reticule did not seem to be affected by Jensen’s stats, and the standard soldiers were soon defeated, but this was not the end. A gigantic quadruped mech was dropped into the warehouse, and Jensen was once again attacking and running. He picked up a rocket launcher, used it to get a lock, and then hid behind a barrier. When he shot the rocket it went over the barrier and sought out the mech, striking and destroying it. The developers explained this was one of the many RPG aspects of the game, and the rocket was able to seek because of an upgrade applied to it.

The demo drew to a close with Jensen confronted by an extremely powerful augmented human, whose arms could turn into enormous guns. It was a blast to watch, and alleviated any apprehension I had that it wouldn’t meet what I expected of a Deus Ex game. If this demo is any indication it will be a true evolution for the franchise. Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a true Deus Ex game, and so far looks like an incredible experience for fans and new players alike.

inFamous 2

noreply@blogger.com (angel799) — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 13:26:00 +0000

I, like many people, quite enjoyed inFamous. It was only slightly overshadowed by the release of Arkham Asylum in the same year, and when a sequel was announced last year I was pretty stoked. I got a good amount of hands-on time with Cole's electric second chapter at GDC, and thankfully the sequel doesn't seem to disappoint.

The first thing I noticed when picking up the inFamous 2 demo was the graphics. There is clearly a major overhaul in the visual fidelity. The world was much more lively and rich, featuring a lot more variety on screen at once. The art design, as well, was a big improvement for me, with New Marais having some style and intrigue that wasn't found in its predecessor. The streets themselves look far less like the simple grids that made up large portions of Empire City, and the new trollies allow some quick travel for Cole above the streets themselves. Cole still doesn't really look like the original Cole, but he's close enough that the fanboys probably won't complain. His voice, however, still seems a bit off.

I played through one mission in my demo, which was pretty much the same kind of mission you'd expect to find in the first game. I had to chase down a convoy of baddies which was escorting a group of imprisoned soldiers. I blasted away the badguys, hopped onto the truck with the good guys, and freed them. InFamous 2's minimap and mission structure seem pretty similar to the first, which is good as long as there's a little more variety in the sidequests than we saw in the original game.

Those who played inFamous will be instantly familiar with the basic controls, as most of them are unchnaged. L1 sitll enters aim mode, R1 still hovers, X jumps, Square melees, and L2 still drains energy from nearby supplies (while having the added benefit of now "pinging" for electrical sources like L3 used to do). In aim mode you'll find your standard assortment of powers, with lightning bolt, shock wave, megawatt hammer, and shock grenade all present. Most of these abilities seem to function the same as they did in inFamous, although the lightning bolt feels like it has a bit more kick behind it. Melee has especially seen a boost in strength, and the new slow-down effect is a nice addition to the style of the game. After doing a certain amount of damage and then taking down an enemy with a purple aura, Cole can do his incredibly destructive Vortex move with the down button on the D-Pad, and this is incredibly satisfying in both its ability to destroy enemies and the environment.

Movement is almost identical as well, although everything feels a little faster. Cole can still scale buildings with ease, hover, and grind along power lines and tram lines. The additional tram lines make it easier to find places where you can grind and travel quickly, which is appreciated. My one complaint is it, at times, felt like the camera was zoomed in a bit too close for both movement and combat, and I had trouble seeing around Cole and figuring out what was going on at times. The camera also moves very fast with even the most gentle of hands on the right analog stick.

Cole's newest adventure isn't likely to change what you loved (or hated) about the original inFamous, but it does seem to be delivering a more fluid and polished experience, which will hopefully offer more variety as well. At the very least it already has a much more vibrant and unique visual flare. You can look forward to inFamous 2 releasing on June 7th in North America.

Resistance 3

noreply@blogger.com (angel799) — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 13:21:00 +0000

Insomniac Games and Sony Computer Entertainment hosted a reveal event for Resistance 3 tonight. What was revealed? Multiplayer. We got some hands on time with the new Resistance game, both in single and multiplayer.

If you were a fan of those massive 60-player battles from Resistance 2, then you'll be disappointed. The focus on the new Resistance will be "less on military might" and more on humanity. This is reflected in the new maximum size for any multiplayer mode: sixteen players. Resistance 3 is trying for a more intimate multiplayer feel where you really need some strategy and intelligence to take out your enemies, not just throwing massive numbers against massive numbers.

Available to be played was just team deathmatch, though Insomniac said they're working on objective-based multiplayer as well. You can specify your loadout, but it becomes much deeper than that. You can use skill points to purchase upgrades for your weapons as well as both passive and active abilities. Some of these new abilities include ammo regeneration fields that let you drop a zone where your allies can regenerate ammo. Bubble shields make a return as an ability here. There is also temporary cloaking and the electric shield which makes people pay for melee attacks. The Chimera even showed off an ability in which scorpion-like leapers crawl out of your dead body to attack enemies.
The single player campaign will be based purely in locations around the United States, but the multiplayer maps will be in locations around the world. We played in the map "The Jail" in the Republic of Chad and this map was great. It was nicely destroyed which made lots of vertical shooting areas in addition to flat areas. The map seemed equally welcoming for snipers as run-and-gunners.

Sitting down with the single player, the game looks and feels tight. It definitely feels more like the first Resistance than Resistance 2, so much so that they're bringing back the much-missed weapon wheel so you can carry quite the arsenal with you. The demo was set in the fictitious Haven, Oklahoma, as it is being overrun with a Chimera death squad. After taking down some basic and jet-equipped Chimera, it was time for a fight with a Brute. Weapons upgrades are also available in the single-player campaign. I saw a couple of my weapons level up during the demo.

Fans of the Resistance franchise have generally panned the second game compared to the first, so many of the changes will be welcome. Resistance 3 also brings its fair share of innovation to the table and still looks great doing it. The outdoor areas featured high wind that gave the whole landscape a brutal feel, and the debris in the air made the world feel very bleak indeed. The game looks very much the part of Resistance, but with several welcome improvements.

Darkspore

noreply@blogger.com (angel799) — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 13:15:00 +0000

Darkspore is an online point and click action RPG that appears to take place several years after the end of Spore, although this is never expressly stated. A race known as the Crogenitors travelled and colonised the galaxy, creating sentient beings known as the Darkspore. These were essentially genetically modified biological superweapons, created using E-DNA, an unstable substance that creates mutations in the DNA of an organism. Needless to say, this all went horribly wrong, and the mutants become self-aware, formed a hive mind and almost succeeded in destroying the Crogenitors. It’s like a robot apocalypse, but without the robots. Apparently, in their millions of years of existence, the Crogenitors never quite got around to watching Terminator.

Fortunately, a few members of the ancient race survived and formed an insurgency, and created new living weapons. You are one of these Crogenitors, and together with the other survivors from your race, you must defeat the Darkspore once and for all.

The story seems really interesting, and is told by a short cutscene that plays when you complete a new level. However, whilst the overarching backstory is intriguing, the details can be a little hard to follow. The cutscenes appear to require some knowledge of the history of the Crogenitors, which for obvious reasons nobody possesses.

No manual is included with the beta, so some of the following information confuses even me, and thus may not be entirely correct.

The campaign has three difficulties, and you must complete the entire campaign to move on to the next difficulty. It does not have a certain number of levels, but rather 24 threat levels. When you select a threat level, a map is allegedly randomly generated with the selected threat level. Having said that, I have played the same threat level more than once, and found myself on identical maps, so perhaps I’m missing something. Each threat level has different enemy levels. The first level has enemies with level 0-4, the second has levels 2-6, and so on. They are named in the same manner as older games: rather than going 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, they follow the pattern 1-1, 1-2, 1-3, 1-4, 2-1. As the first number in the level changes, the level becomes significantly more difficult, and the level range increases by four rather than two. You must complete a level before moving on to the next. I’m not sure about this next bit, but it seems to me that you have to complete the level on single player before you can move on. This really serves to discourage co-operative gameplay. An annoying remnant from the co-op gameplay that remains in the single player is the inability to pause. I can understand this when there are other people playing with you, but not when you’re playing alone.

Basic gameplay is relatively simple, and is explained by a short tutorial. You left-click on the ground to move your character, and left click on an enemy or object to attack it. I personally found it much easier to move by holding down the left mouse button and moving the mouse to direct my creature, as this avoids excessive clicking. Pressing a numerical button orders your creature to use a special ability, of which it can have a maximum of five. I’m not exactly sure what unlocks these, but it is presumably the creature’s Hero level, which is affected by the quality of its gear and your Crogenitor level. They also don’t unlock in order, which makes switching a bit of a pain as you get used to a new layout. You switch between your three squad members with the QWE buttons, or by clicking their portraits in the bottom right. The system works well, but it is often difficult to tell exactly which creature you should be using; fortunately, it doesn’t really matter.

There are some hundred living weapons that can be unlocked in the game, but only three can fit in your squad at any one time. Additional squads can be bought using DNA, which you collect by killing enemies and breaking objects. One annoying thing is that you have to walk to the DNA to pick it up; it would have been much simpler if you gained it automatically. Each of these living weapons has a Type, different specialties, and different attacks and abilities. The type only really comes into play when you are facing another enemy of that type; they deal you double damage. For this reason, it is often possible to finish an entire level without changing character. Luckily, though, the game becomes considerably more difficult as you progress, and your characters’ limited health values will mean that switching is essential.

Some enemies drop equipment when killed. If you are playing single-player, this goes to you. In multiplayer, however, all players roll a 100-sided dice, and the one with the highest value gets the item. It seemed to me that I was getting the item a disproportionate number of times, but this is only because you don’t notice when you don’t. Still, though, it would have been nice if all of the items went to everyone, like in LittleBigPlanet and other co-operative games. There also isn’t really any competition between players – not even a count of how many Darkspore each of you killed. Half the time, someone will have left before the end of the level. You can play with up to three other players online, and the more players you have, the higher the experience you earn, and the more difficult the enemies, which is to say, having more players is not an advantage, but nor is it an inconvenience.

Getting back to the equipment you pick up (or buy from the store in exchange for DNA), this, like your creatures, has a type, and only a creature of the same type can equip it. Each piece of equipment improves certain stats, and increases your creature’s Hero level; each piece also has a level of its own, which makes choosing between them much easier. They are equipped with a watered-down version of the Spore Creature Editor, which you can use to make your creature look all colourful and interesting, but won’t, because it provides no benefit and takes time. Perhaps if you were one of those people who spent hours designing buildings in Spore’s Civilization stage, you might enjoy this feature. However, other than the name, creature editor and possible story links, the games are nothing alike, which, in my humble opinion, is a good thing.

On top of the campaign, Darkspore has a Player vs. Player (PvP) mode, unlocked when you reach Crogenitor Level 9. This is remarkably unimpressive. Two people go into an arena and repeatedly right-click each other until one dies. You can, of course, switch and use abilities, but it takes far too long, it’s slow, and it’s actually quite frustrating. Nothing to write home about, and nowhere near as enjoyable as the campaign.

The game looks very impressive, as long as you don’t zoom in. The environments are colourful, and you can often see scenery and future parts of the level below the ground on which you are standing. Zoom in, and you notice just how blurry the creatures actually are. Sound effects are nice and crisp, but some in-level music would be nice.
Darkspore is shaping up very nicely, and while it won’t be the be all and end all of action RPGs, it could be a highly enjoyable co-operative and single-player action experience. It launches on 29th March 2011, only on PC. Act quickly, and you could get into the beta yourself and give it a try.

Diablo 3

noreply@blogger.com (angel799) — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 13:09:00 +0000

Honestly, I've never gotten into Diablo. Raised a console gamer (a very different breed than our PC-gaming counterparts), I had always been of the opinion, "Oh, so it's a game where you click a lot?" Further, the isometric view screenshots have really not been doing the game justice. I mean, check out some screens for the upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops (Ooh!), then compare them to the mild-mannered Diablo III screens (Oh.). The news of a double-wielding Demon Hunter class did nothing to change my mind, either.

Being a total Diablo n00b, I went with the class that seemed most attuned to my console sensibilities: the Barbarian. Big sword, looked tough, my kind of killin' machine. (Then found out later that the Monk is a straight-up God of War-ification of PC gaming. If only I had known!) There was an option to pick the sex of the character, but each class had only one option at this point in the development cycle.

Dropped into a dungeon with a fifteen-minute time limit, I quickly come to terms with just how simple and intuitive everything is. Click on a barrel, hit the barrel. Click on an enemy, hit the enemy. "I" brings up the inventory. Shuffle things around and re-equip new weapons and armor with an easy click-and-drag. Hit a number key on the keyboard to use one of your spells or abilities. Simple as that.

It's good that it's so intuitive, because within about thirty seconds there are more than a dozen zombies lumbering toward me, while mages behind them fire off spells at my character and summon zombie dogs to attack me from underneath my feet. Click click click. My Barbarian cleaves through one undead enemy after another with an entirely unexpected viciousness.

Limbs fly. Heads roll. Blood fountains stain the walls and floor. Severed zombie torsos refuse to give up the ghost and continue to crawl towards me, swiping out with their cold, undead fingers. They fall under a few viscerally satisfying swipes from my sword. I focus on the summoners. Do I want to fight an unending stream of flaming zombie dogs? No sir, I do not. Luckily, summoner robes aren't the most protective armor against a giant broadsword.

It's about now, as appendages bounce around the room and blood spurts from every new orifice I create in my enemies, that I realize just how detailed and beautiful DIII is. Fire spells produce their own flickering light, casting new shadows across the floors on the way to their targets. The zombies animate just how I'd expect a real zombie to act, complete with a tenacious tendency to continue attacking long after they should have ceased to move. Screenshots cannot capture how good it looks, how good it feels.

There are environmental traps, as well. Giant blades cut down from the ceiling and damage both your character and your enemies. Fire pits need to be navigated carefully, but zombies caught in the flames become the slow-burning Inferno Zombies that you're better off attacking from a distance, lest their flaming bodies burn you too. Hit a rope tied to the wall and parts of the ceiling will crash down on your opponents like a chandelier in an earthquake. It seems like there's always another way to fight besides just click click click.
Defeated enemies will rain loot on you, as well. Your inventory is pretty small, but you're able to salvage unusable/useless weapons and equipment you discover right from your bag. This turns your spoils of war into crafting materials that can be given to NPCs to create something newer and better for you. I wasn't able to discover one of these helpful NPCs during my brief demo, but perhaps it's a skill that the player will be able to learn later, as well?

The addictive carrot-on-a-stick nature of the first two Diablo games was apparent in my short time with the third iteration. There are also some just-announced PvP arenas and co-op play to keep gamers addicted for the next dozen years, although there wasn't a chance to try them out yet, really. I was assured, however, that the team at Blizzard is making every effort to ensure that the multiplayer aspects of DIII will be much more than just an afterthought like the Duel option from past games. A huge community built up around that mechanic, despite Blizzard adding it as merely a throwaway feature, and they hope to better serve that community this time.