I sat down, the giant TV in front of me and an Xbox 360 controller gripped firmly in my hand. The wire on the controller didn’t lead to an Xbox though, and I can only guess the specifications of the monster whirring away inside the cabinet it was housed inside.

It’s 1912, and you’re back in the sea. But this time you’re safely aboard a boat, with a man/woman double act ferrying you to the lighthouse, looming in the distance. The male announces that Booker (the protagonist) doesn’t row, and something feels off.

The odd couple in the boat have a surreal aura about them, and there’s a definite sense of ‘Twilight Zone’ about the affairs unfolding in front of you. The story instantly grabs you by the face and shoves matchsticks in your eyes, enthralling you in its mysteries.

Booker doesn’t row.

It’s not only the conversations that draw you in, however. Every scene is crammed with an abundance of detail. The waves wrestle with one another, as a thousand crushed diamonds glisten on its surface.

Every texture is like fast relief Prozac for your eyeballs.

The aforementioned lighthouse functions as an elevator to the floating city of Columbia, much like the elevator that took you into the depths of Rapture, but ascension is a more impressive spectacle.

Columbia is the perfect contrast to the apocalyptic Rapture. The amount of detail in every scene puts many games to shame and you can absolutely tell that it’s a labour of love. People mill about, engaging in conversation, whilst hummingbirds hover near the flowers in the long, flowing grass. Light beams through the clouds and dissipates through every small gap in the trees, as fireworks explode all around you. Buildings, adorned with balloons and propaganda, shift and float into place in front of your very eyes, as far off islands linger on the horizon.

Red, white and blue adorn absolutely everything and the city and its denizens are exploding with a sense of misplaced jingoism.

Extreme patriotism isn’t the only vibe you get from Columbia, though. The citizens are brainwashed by the propaganda that bedecks every street corner, like the Kinetiscopes, which essentially play you a silent movie – one of the most aptly named being: ‘How To Deal With The Irish Problem’.

Propaganda like this litters Columbia.

The themes of racism are dealt with subtlety and maturity, which is important to note. And I found it refreshing that a game was willing to tackle such a controversial and adult theme.

‘Mature’ is a word that many games throw around in PR blurb, usually because of breasts and decapitations, so it’s exhilarating for a game to tackle proper adult themes, such as racism, chauvinism and children bearing arms. It’s not just thrown into the game for the ‘shock factor’ either, as these themes sit comfortably within the game’s timeline.

There is one scene in particular, that I won’t spoil for you here, but it shocked me to the core and I’m surprised it wasn’t censored. I’m glad it wasn’t, though.

The similarities between Columbia and the ill-fated Titanic, which sank the very same year, are notable. In another parallel twist on reality, that same year a patent was applied for, to synthesise the drug MDMA. Much like the drug-like Vigors that the Columbian citizens drink to imbue them with supernatural abilities, but we’ll go into that later.

Time plays a huge role in the labyrinthine plot.

Not long after Booker’s arrival in Columbia, I was strolling around, soaking up the ambiance and noting every incidental detail that I happened to stumble across. I came across the ‘Bee Sharps – Columbia’s gayest quartet’ and I stood and listened for a while, aurally devouring their dulcet tones. Then it hit me. They were singing a Beach Boys song and the more astute among you will notice that this song is from the swinging sixties.

Do you think Ken Levine and co. made a period error? I certainly don’t.

As in the original Bioshock, the technology on display is far ahead of what we had at the time and the mechanisms run via alternative power sources. There are robotic vending machines and gun turrets, as well as robotic horses, so no fear of them ending up in your lasagne, I suppose.

This game has ALL the vistas.

Once I had finished wandering around in awe, I decided to play some carnival games. These are essentially cleverly disguised (and completely optional) tutorials – teaching you the basics of Vigor and firearm usage.

The first Vigor that you acquire allows control over machines, allowing you to turn turrets into allies and make the robotic vending machines spit coins at your feet. This power is extremely handy when things inevitably kick off. The build up to the action scenes is quite a long one, made even longer by my procrastination, but the build up was something I enjoyed and I wanted to be saturated by it.

Many games wouldn’t get away with such a creeping crescendo, but I just wanted to bathe in it and breathe it into my lungs.

With such an unconventional opening, it’s a good job then, that the action holds up to the same lofty standards. Your first encounter is based around melee combat, where you use the Skyhook (that you attain by brutal methods and is like a drill arm, but un-drilly) to pummel the faces of your adversaries.

These meaty hooks, uppercuts and hurried backhands, sometimes take the enemy’s head clean off.

Melee attacks are handled with a click of the right stick (if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it) and the attacks home in, semi-automated, straight into your victim’s face. It’s not long before you pick up a pistol, which functions with a snap-to aim when looking down the iron sights, and things start to get shooty.

By default, satisfying RPG-like numbers pop up as you damage your enemies, and also signify when your target is vulnerable to damage. I didn’t find these intrusive, but they can be turned off if you find them distracting, or that they take away from the immersion.

The Vigors, akin to the Plasmids in the first Bioshock, allow you to fight in a more tactical manner: laying traps and turning enemies to your side. More will be available in the full release, but the ones in the preview build all felt good to use, and gave you a specific, tactical edge.

It’s a good job that you have these supernatural abilities, because you’re not just here to sightsee, you’re here to save a damsel in distress. Elizabeth: the Lamb of Columbia.

When you finally arrive at the prison, masquerading as a gleaming statue, you enter through a web of labs and testing chambers containing research notes and audio logs. There is a room with subwoofers pulsating to an ethereal song and seemingly trying to harness some sort of power resonating from the young lady located deeper within the compound.

You feel like a voyeur, spying on her through one-sided glass as she wanders about in her chamber, blissfully unaware of your presence. She opens a rift in space-time, and you see a window into the future, with a cinema showing ‘Revenge of The Jedi’. The vision of times to come is cut short however, by a van careening towards the young lady, forcing her to close the rift in a panic.

Once the thimble fingered Elizabeth joins your company she never feels like a burden. In the calm moments she carves her own path, never forcing you to follow or to wait. During combat she stays out of the way and you have no need to protect her.

In fact, in combat she soon becomes weaponised.

She makes herself useful by throwing you weapons and ammunition as well as health packs. She calls to you when she has something of use and a timely button press prompts her to throw and Booker swing around and catch. She scavenges money outside of battle, too – flipping a coin to Booker, in a lovely touch.

Elizabeth is bad ass.

Her ability to open rifts also comes in handy during conflict, allowing her to pull things into existence through time itself. These seem to be varied, for example, in the section I played there was a turret that you could pull through time to aid you, complete with a defensive wall. The other option was to phase a balcony into the present, allowing you to gain a vertical advantage on your enemies, from where you can do a variety of things, like send a flock of crows to peck out their eyes.

The way you phase these into existence feels a bit fiddly at first, but this was shown near the end of the preview, so only time will tell if it gets better with practice.

One area of the game that does feel instantly intuitive, though, is the way the player uses the Skyhook for traversal. There are hooks dotted around the environment, and when you look at them they emit a haze, signifying that you may attach to them. This is done with a quick tap of the jump button, which sends you zooming towards the intended location, where you hang until you look at the spot where you want to land (often an enemy’s face) and jump again.

When used in conjunction with the rollercoaster-like Skyrails it provides a feeling of euphoria of which I’ve not felt in a game for a long while. These airbound tracks zip you around Columbia with grace and ease, even allowing you to jump mid-descent so you can speed up the traversal if you’re under fire. It feels intuitive, and more importantly for a game, it feels fun.

Fun isn’t hard for Bioshock Infinite to pull off when the intensity heightens, as it’s a game that manages to make exploration fun in itself. When I get my hands on the full game I’m going to crawl through it and bask in the rich universe created by Ken Levine and his brilliant team of visionaries.

Everything I saw in the preview just left me wanting more – it feels like a shot of originality straight to the main vein and for me, March 26th can’t come fast enough.

To recap: Agent 47 must kill his ex-controller Diana Burnwood. However, things aren’t as simple as they seem, and Agent 47 knows better than to just leave things be. Going rogue he begins a long and bloody quest that brings him face to face with southern businessman/authority figure Blake Dexter, arguably one of his more twisted adversaries yet. The preview build we played didn’t really push forth many details on the entire situation but the five chapters were deftly crafted and flow effortlessly with the narrative.

Hitman: Absolution doesn’t try to employ any cutting edge story techniques, nor does it weigh down the missions with excessive cut-scenes. Paying attention to developments is important, especially since so many of them happen within the context of the mission. But the segments between missions are tautly constructed. Agent 47 is his usual dead-pan self, Dexter is as sinister as they come (and it’s hard not to see a little Bush-streak in his mannerisms), and the other characters are similarly well-developed. But being 47 doesn’t mean just embodying the man – it means controlling him, and using his most dangerous skills effectively.

Absolution employs a control scheme that may take getting used to, but it’s never overtly complicated to use, whether in a pinch or while avoiding enemies. A new melee combat system has been installed, which relies on quick time events to disable attackers. You can also fake surrender, in order to sucker an enemy in, before proceeding to take him hostage, commandeering his weapon and annihilating his allies. A Mark & Execute system also comes in handy if you’re surrounded by multiple enemies. The usual mechanics of sneaking, navigating from cover to cover and stealing uniforms to blend in with surroundings is still intact. A special meter for activating Instinct Mode guides you to targets and objectives, along with allowing you to blend in with your enemies.

Be warned however: If enemies get too close of a look, they’ll be on to you. And they’ll be nice enough to tell their friends, depending on how alert they are. The Threat Meter is now a grey circle on the screen, showcasing the direction of alerted enemies. Moving quickly and quietly is thus supremely important. This especially plays a huge role when you have no guns to use. Agent 47 can use objects in the environment to his advantage, to create distractions or even whack enemies over – or through – the skull with.

All of these factors come together for some of the most vibrant levels you’ll see in a third person action game. You’ll sneak past strippers having serious conversations about the loss of their dignity to the more unscrupulous clients. You’ll overhear cops toying with hippies as they attempt to arrest the lot of ’em. The henchmen eschew the traditional, well, henchmen banter in favour of calm, collected conversation. No one feels out of place – except you, if the enemies look hard enough.

Let it be said that Absolution features some of the more vicious ways to kill a target that you’ll see in an action game. One example is the Chinese market, wherein you must assassinate a target who is under heavy surveillance. There are several approaches to take: For example, you could obtain a poisonous fish and mix it with his drink, or head to a food stall he likes to frequent and mix it with his usual order (this entails killing the original cook, however). You could set off his car alarm, thus getting him alone in the alley to execute. Or just shoot him from the rooftops with a sniper rifle. The possibilities, at times, feel endless but don’t let it fool you into thinking that you won’t be on a roller-coaster every now and then.

Taking place in Chicago, a series of missions has you infiltrating a hotel where Dexter is staying, attempting to corner him (before being disposed of and framed for murder), escaping the burning wreckage of the building, navigating down the floors – past marijuana farmers and police – through an abandoned library, avoiding detection by helicopters, and then to the subway where you have to reactivate the trains to make your daring escape. It’s so tense, yet so concisely packed, offering up a multitude of ways to bypass your foes but never once taking away from the tension of the exercise or the observation necessary. One particular mission has you assassinating three targets across the crowded Chinese market, and it’s far from easy. But that’s what makes it fun, as you’ll be exploring more and more obscure and insane ways to kill these guys.

The various challenges in the game reward you for attempting different kinds of kills, be they with weapons, explosives or other nefarious means. Finish enough challenges and you can level up 47’s abilities. This creates a good motivation for revisiting missions, but more importantly, having familiarized one’s self with a mission before, it’s interesting to go back and attempt it again, armed with the knowledge of the environment and target patterns. It’s what encourages the leap from players to hit-men: The more you learn about an environment, the better equipped you’ll be to tackle it.

There are some games you get so caught up in that you tend to downplay the graphics and sound. Hitman: Absolution’s next generation visuals only augment the experience. Honestly, if every single third person action adventure put in this much effort into water effects, dynamic shadows, character textures and environmental design, life would be a whole lot easier. A sinister, Gotham-like tone paints the proceedings of Absolution, flirting with the neon smut of strip-clubs and gothic dystopia alike. It’s a fitting package, accentuating the grim world that 47 finds himself forever running circles in.

We didn’t get a chance to try out the new Contracts mode, sadly, which allows you to custom-create hits and upload them online for players to take up. The devs are also providing their own range of hits for players to take up. Time will tell how well this mode blows up, but judging from the rest of the game, it should be a blast. IO Interactive and Square-Enix have something very special with Hitman: Absolution. They’ve taken the beloved franchise and significantly upped it to the level of an intelligent summer blockbuster. It’s absorbing yet intricate in it’s mechanics and rewards both the road less travelled and the one revisited. It’s already looking like a major winner, not only for the franchise as a whole but as one of the more compelling stealth/action titles to come out in recent years.

If it bleeds.. well you know.

We got the chance to preview Brink in my hometown of NYC, which was a pleasure in itself, but since the core gameplay I got to take part in at last years E3, Brink has come a long way.  First off the character customization was so in-depth, you could spend hours changing your skin tone, voice/accent, tattoos, physical attributes and much more.  Simply picking the head on your character will give you the option to change your accent, facial hair, face paint, facial tattoos, facial scars, face gear(masks), hair or head gear.  This goes on for each area of the body giving you the ability to change Jackets, Colors, Body Tattoos, Shirts, Pants and the assortment is huge!  Even with Archetype you can change your look, skin, nose, etc.  That customization also extends itself to the weapons with the ability to have custom skins on your guns as well as choosing specific attachments for each weapon.

There were literally tons of features that I got to see that I have never seen before, for instance one that stood out the most were the ‘controller presets’ to other first-person shooters.  Instead of giving you different control setups, Brink actually lets you choose presets such as Call of Duty, Counter Strike and many more, so you can quickly pick the shooter you like the controls the best in and pick that preset, then your done.  Of course you are not limited to the presets as you can customize the controls exactly how you want them.

Brink and it’s drop-in/drop-out 8 player co-op draws you away from just wanting to stick to one class as there are four different ones.  You can simply find a near by hub that lets you change your class depending on the situation at hand.  There is the Engineer, Medic, Soldier and Operative.  You can level up and gain abilities that are specific to each class as well as ones that are in place no matter what class you play as.  I did notice a ‘Buy abilities’ tab leading me to believe you use XP to get them, but don’t quote on that as our time was limited during the event.  I played as a Medic quite a bit as I was able to heal myself on the go and getting near downed team mates I could toss them a epipad/ syringe and the cool thing about this is that the downed player does not have to use the syringe I through to him to get back up as he has a choice to also re-spawn at our base.  This can be for a number of reasons.

As you can see the customization is endless.

Our main mission of many different ones, was to escort our tank to a designated area while we played against the AI trying to slow us down by damaging the tank and killing us so no one can be there to escort the tank halting it.  There are also side tasks each class might have for instance, I switched to my soldier class to learn that I could set a charge in a area that would give our team a short cut back to the tank we had escorted a ways up, after re-spawning at our base, giving us a nice advantage.  As soon as I switch back to a medic I see an AI Engineer patching up the shortcut I just made!  His life ended quickly.  The Engineer is also the one who must repair the tank if it has taken too much damage in this mission.  So this leaves me from wanting to switch from class to class doing side tasks to help the team rather than sticking to one class and one class alone.

There are also Challenges in the game that are separate from your normal unlocks.  These challenges give you much more rewarding things.  In each challenge you can unlock three stars with each star unlocking something new.  Now Splash Damage went about a little differently as that third star might be the hardest to unlock but it might not be the best item, so players don’t have to be limited to getting all the cool stuff based on their skill.  These challenges are also tracked on a friends only leaderboard.  One example of a Challenge called “Parkour This” which requires you you to race around check points as a light body type.  All these awesome features in the game, but by far one of the coolest things is SMART system which allows you to flow over object jumping and sliding making you feel like Spiderman.  Just pressing the button won’t bring you to a halt in any situation, getting you into places fast when you need to be and out of places quickly when your in trouble.

Fighting In The War Room

Here are some things about Brink you should know:

Publisher:     Bethesda Softworks
Developer:    Splash Damage
Release Date:    May 20th
Platform:    Games for Windows / Xbox 360 / PlayStation®3 system
Genre:    First Person Shooter
Description:
Brink is an immersive first-person shooter that blends single-player, co-op, and multiplayer gameplay into one seamless experience, allowing you to develop your character whether playing alone, with your friends, or against others online. You decide the combat role you want to assume in the world of Brink as you fight to save yourself and mankind’s last refuge. Brink offers a compelling mix of dynamic battlefields, extensive customization options, and an innovative control system that will keep you coming back for more.

Story:
Brink takes place on the Ark, a man-made floating city that is on the brink of all-out civil war. Originally built as an experimental, self-sufficient and 100% “green” habitat, the reported rapid rise of the Earth’s oceans has forced the Ark to become home to not only the original founders and their descendants but also to thousands of refugees. With tensions between the two groups growing, Security and Resistance forces are locked in a heated battle for control of the Ark. Which side will you choose?

Key Features:

Not Just Another Hero – Brink’s advanced player customization offers a near-endless combination of looks for your character – allowing for the appearance of your character to be truly unique.  As you progress through the game and acquire more experience, you’ll have even more opportunities for customization.
Two Sides to Every Story – Choose to fight through the single player campaign as either a member of the Resistance or the Security and then take your same character online to play cooperatively or competitively against other players.
Blurring the Lines – Take your unique character online at any time you choose!  Brink allows you to seamlessly move between your single player campaign, co-op with friends, and intense multiplayer action. Multiplayer takes the story online where you can play with up to seven other people (or AI characters) cooperatively as you take on the opposing faction or with up to 16 players competitively.
Play SMART – Brink uses the familiar shooter controls that you’re used to, without frustrating, artificial constraints and adds a new feature: the SMART button.  When you press the SMART button, the game dynamically evaluates where you’re trying to get to, and makes it happen. Whether you’re a seasoned FPS veteran or someone just getting started, you’ll be able to make more intelligent decisions during the fast-paced action with SMART.
Context-Sensitive Goals and Rewards – Objectives, communications, missions, and inventory selection are all dynamically generated based on your role, your condition, your location, your squad-mates, and the overall status of the battle in all gameplay modes.  You’ll always know exactly where to go, what to do when you get there, and what your reward will be for success.

BrinkTheGame.com

Character and team creation facilities are nothing new within sports games, but a dedicated creation application on pc is a bit of an oddity. Rather than just having a ‘create a character’ mode on the disc, the gurus at EA have made a website for the FIFA 11 creation centre where players can create a team and players and download them onto their own console. The level of depth and the amount of aspects you can tweak is interesting and the ability to share you creation with the world certainly makes it all an intriguing endeavour.

Those who have pre-ordered a copy of FIFA 11 should have already received a code to sample the delights of the creation centre’s beta test. The rest of you will be able to use it from when FIFA 11 launches later this month.

You even get to edit what kind of shoes your players wear

I got a chance to check out some of the potential of the creation centre and it certainly has enough customizable components to keep the fans happy. Even though there might not (yet) be a particularly large selection of different clothes, accessories and face types to choose from, there are many other ways you can keep your team and players unique. Whether it is through the various kits your side will be wearing or even individual statistics and behaviour patterns, the creation centre really lets you edit some of the finer points of your players and team with an easy to use interface. It definitely has a lot of potential, though I wasn’t hugely impressed by the quantity of different face, hair and clothing types and the lack of limits on attribute points you can allocate seemed slightly unbalanced. That said, the teams made in the creation centre will only be usable in local and player matches meaning that it won’t be too unfair leaving players to choose for themselves if they should or shouldn’t create players with maxed out stats.

The character creation tools are in depth, but people are guaranteed to abuse the system and give their players full stats

Whilst I was impressed with the ease of use and versatility of the creation centre, I’m forced to ask the question of why it is necessary. There was nothing about it that made me think it had to be a separate PC application. Maybe a stripped down version will be included on the disc when FIFA 11 comes out, but if not it seems a little bit needless to have to create your content on a PC when it could easily be done on your 360/PS3.

This also leads into a wider debate on the centralisation of online gaming services. Is it a good thing that features like the creation centre or Ubisoft’s Uplay are being handled separately, or should everything be unified under your Gamertag or PSN ID? I for one am not a fan of having to remember so many different user names and passwords, but there are definitely strong arguments on both sides. What do you guys think? Sound off in the comments section below.

One game that best exemplifies and personifies the perfection that all their games have boasted of this generation is a game that, originally, wasn’t even released separately. It was just a part of a compilation, but it was this very game that made that specific compilation, The Orange Box, what it is considered to be. That game is Portal, Valve’s best title this generation.

Portal was a First Person Adventure game, much like the last generation’s beautiful title, Metroid Prime, and not a First Person Shooter. The game had practically no enemies at all, and all it concentrated on puzzles and platforming. It provided for a very unique and refreshing formula, driving the gaming industry forward with a boost of innovation and perfection. What was best about Portal was that it was almost equally good on all the three systems it was released on (Xbox 360, PS3, PC).

It was received by rave reviews all over the board. Critics and gamers alike cited it as one of the best games to have been released in recent memory, and Portal immediately became a fan favourite, and soon, the clamouring for a sequel of Portal began. I know we have been waiting for the third episode of Half Life 2 for quite some time now, but Valve listens to its fans, and once again, Valve has obliged. We are getting a sequel to the much acclaimed Portal, and Portal 2 will be with us not any later than February next year.

But Portal’s legacy is not an easy one to live up to. Being the legendary game that Portal was, its sequel will definitely have a hard time living up to the name it bears. And thus, question, doubts, and often, apprehensions are seeded in fans of the first Valve puzzle game. Will it be as good as it is hyped to be? Will it stand up to it’s legacy, to its predecessor’s acclaim? Will it surprise us and innovate in the same way the original Portal did?

Those are questions that can answered, but the asnwers are something that cannot be re-affirmed right now. So for now, let us satiate or thirst for more Portal by targeting these questions one by one.

Portal 2- Wondrous Gameplay

The Aperture Science Enrichment Center, Portal 2’s version of the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, will make the player face similar challenges as Portal. We, the players, will face the same challenging puzzles and platforming sections that we came to love in Portal. For those who are not acquainted with Portal’s gameplay, the aforementioned gun, referred to as the Portal gun, is used to create two distinct portal ends, orange and blue. The portals create a visual and physical connection between two different locations in three-dimensional space. Neither end is specifically an entrance or exit; all objects that travel through one portal will exit through the other (quoted from Wikipedia).

Thanks, IGN!

This gameplay mechanic provides for an immense element of strategy, adding innumerable layers of depth and complexity to the gameplay. Seeing how good this mechanic worked out in Portal, and the fact that it will be returning in Portal 2, is simply a re-assurance than Portal 2 will be one heck of a game.

Not only that- several new additions such as the Pneumatic Diversity Vents (ability to use air currents to push a turret over or to draw objects into the suction), Excursion Funnel (bring players or other objects to otherwise inaccessible areas) and Propulsion/Repulsion Gel (boosts player’s speed as she crosses a surface/ allows players to jump from a surface) will be featured in the game. Many new means of transporting in the game’s environment will also be incorporated.

One pretty neat addition in the game, something that the original Portal was unable to boast of, is co-op. Let’s have a look at it:

Co-op Gameplay

FREA-KING. AWE-SOME.

Portal 2 will allow two players toplay through the campaign co-operatively. In this mode of the game, both the players will be given separate Portal guns (though one can use the other player’s portals if need be), and to avoid any confusion, the colour of both the players’ portals will be different, for the sake of convenience. In this co-op mode, players will face several sections that will be more challenging than they would be in the single player capmiagn, encouraging both the players to work together. Split screen will be available for those who will be playing locally, and those who play online will be able to have temporary split-screen, so that they can play what to do next together more easily. Not only will the players have the ability to voice chat during this mode, they will also be able to use in the game to signal their partners what they plan to do next.

As is pretty apparent from the information above, the new co-op will definitely add even more depth and replayablity to the already complex and fun formula of the game. We will have to wait and watch about that, though, as it is something we have never seen in a Portal game. Although, it looks like an interesting idea.

Best On The PlayStation 3

Valve are known to be rabid PS3 haters, especially Doug Lombardi. His announcement at E3, then, that their upcoming game, Portal 2, would be best on Sony’s home console, PlayStation 3, came as a huge surprise to us.

But what will be so good about the PS3 version that will make it the best version of Portal 2, better even than the PC version. Valve have already announced they will not be supporting 3D or Move, so they cannot be it. So what is it then? I’ll tell you: it’s the PC-PS3 interconnectivity. Valve have said that the general idea is that “you will be able to play between PS3 and PC.”

Of course it hasn’t been confirmed yet. All Valve have said is that it is “something the team is gunning for.” But then again, what other explanation can you think of? How, other then this, can the PS3 version turn out to be the best of all? This, according to us, is the only plausible explanation.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Portal 2 will release for the Mac OS, PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 February next year. What are your expectations from the game? Tell us via your comments.

]]> https://gamingbolt.com/portal-2-is-it-worth-the-hype/feed 7 10770 https://gamingbolt.com/kane-and-lynch-2-dog-days-hands-on-preview https://gamingbolt.com/kane-and-lynch-2-dog-days-hands-on-preview#comments Wed, 28 Jul 2010 09:50:18 +0000 http://gamingbolt.com/?p=9962 So a few days ago we got our preview copy of Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days from Eidos via Express Games. We all know and accept that the original Kane and Lynch was far from perfect, but after some extended playtime with the sequel, Dog Days, we can safely say that Kane & Lynch 2 is shaping up much more promisingly than its predecessor.

We got a chance to play through the first four levels of Dog Days. As many of you will have gathered from trailers and teasers, the game takes place in Shanghai, China. The levels are suitably filled with seedy looking bars, dodgy apartments and grim looking fishmongers, the citizens eyeing you at every step.

The preview placed us in Lynch’s shoes as he attempts to give a low-life a shakedown, which quickly escalates into all-out warfare on the streets. The mechanics have changed little since the previous game- you’ll still be hiding behind cover, popping out for a few shots then moving up. However the entire cover system has been reworked- for the better. Whereas Dead Men had you shifting your body around until you made your character parallel with the wall at which point he would magically stick to it, Dog Days now uses a simple one-button approach. Hit one button and your character will automatically snap onto any nearby cover, whether it be a wall, a car, a table, whatever.

The two protagonists are a couple of gangsters with a complicated relationship.

The shooting however, is not so satisfying. It seems that every gun in the game has pretty shocking accuracy, as the crosshairs remain fairly spaced throughout, and there are no iron sights. The guns generally have pretty pathetic kick, with only one or two weapons truly satisfying our inner psychopath.

Fortunately, the game has again far surpassed the original with its AI. It’s still not the smartest you might encounter, and it doesn’t hold a candle to the kind of AI found in Crysis, but it’s light years ahead of Dead Men. While your allies and enemies alike had a habit of standing in the open and taking shots full to the face, they now stick to cover, and they are pretty reluctant to stick more than a hand out of cover if you’re popping shots over their heads.

The various squalid locales make up the backdrpo for many of the shootouts.

Cover is now temporary in many cases. One scene has you battling police SWAT teams in a restaurant while partitions explode all around you and your cover disintegrates. Some levels allow you to throw cans of fuel around, which are good for knocking out any particularly stubborn bits of cover. The preview didn’t give us access to any other indirect fire weapons such as grenades though, so flushing enemies out of cover could be rather tricky. We expect this is a feature we will see in the full game though.

Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days has one major problem however- it looks downright fugly. Not content with just a few jaggies, the games explosions look like something out of Wolfenstein 3D and the characters in cutscenes lack perspective and detail. The entire game also plays out with some sort of a permanent grain filter which makes it look like you’re playing the game on your dad’s old TV that still uses a clothes hanger for an aerial. When we saw the initial screenshots from the game we thought that they were just badly developed- but I’m afraid to say, the game does in fact look just like this.

After all that’s said and done though, Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days is still a vast improvement on the lacklustre original, and holds together all the basic third person shooter mechanics fairly well. But when it releases next month, it’s going to be up against strong competition, particularly from Mafia 2, releasing just over one week later on August 24.

Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days releases on August 17 for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC.

Up close and real personal.

My first impressions of the game are heightened by my absolute infatuation with the song “New Noise” by Refused. It’s the perfect blend of epic build up and power driving chorus. The demo also features the song that insists that the “boom” is coming, and let me tell you that the intigration of music in the actual game play is absolutely one hundred and ten percent perfect. My knees got weak, and my butt started to sweat as somehow the timing for hits and kick-offs are perfect. Nothing gets a hardcore gamer with good taste in music in the zone like a synced out soundtrack.

Graphics are lacking in some areas, and really good in others. Ill look more into that when I can actually fully examine Backbreakers in its entirety. As far as I can tell it almost looks futuristic. The pads are not traditional and the stadiums are pretty crazy as well. You can choose night, day, and rain, but no snow. That’s possibly just a demo thing but who knows, developers have been known to pull a head scratcher or two from time to time.

Feel a little concussed? $#@!

The main goal of Backbreakers in my opinion was not to make a successful football game although they may have, but to really cut out all the horse malarkey and make a damn good physics engine. Its real good, and from what I can tell there aren’t many glitches in it. The contact is great and clipping is kept at a minimal, once again when I can actually get my hands on the full version here shortly Ill look into gratuitous amounts of detail on all the skimmed topics above.

It’s a whole new way to play football, all I can say is that if you’re a Madden fan don’t get ready to jump off the bandwagon. Just be ready to play football in a way that you could have never imagined before. It’s a weird set-up but the more you play the more fun it becomes. It’s absolutely worth a download so go get the demo and start crushing some backs.

Backbreaker physics video.

The story of the game is that there is a giant Teddy Bear birthday party…but Naughty Bear wasn’t invited. Naughty Bear decides the right thing to do is to bring Daddles a present anyways, but on his way to deliver it he gets laughed at by the other bears. Naughty then realizes what he should do in light of this.

Go on a Homicidal Rampage, terrorize the other bears, and brutally murder them.

Teach Those Bears a Lesson

The game itself plays like a cross between an adventure and stealth game. The main objective is to complete level objectives, get revenge on the other bears, and collect Naughty Points. Your Naughty Points are what is used to score your efforts, and can be achieved in many different ways.

You get Naughty Points by scaring, and killing the other bears, but outright murder isn’t the best option if you are going for lots of points. The key to the game is the ability to scare the stuffing out of one of the bears, and let him live to tell the others his tale. The more scared you can get the bears, the higher your multiplayer will get, and the more creative you are with how you deal with them, the more points you can get. But you have to be careful, if you let a scared bear go, he could call the cops-or the army. You have to find the balance of where you can still keep Naughty safe while scaring.

You have many different weapons, traps, and environmental hazards you can use to your advantage against the other bears to help you score points. There are conventional weapons like machetes, cricket bats, guns and hammers, but you can also use things like fridges, cake mixers, electrical boxes and BBQ’s. There are also unlockable costumes and hats that will make the bears in the world act differently towards you. Naughty Bear claims to have incredible replay value because of how many different ways you can go through each level.

Naughty Bear has Weapons Galore

The lasting appeal here isn’t just the core game mechanic, its the presentation. Sure there are plenty of games out like Gears of War that are full of gore, but Naughty Bear takes the comical approach. Instead of buckets of blood being sprayed around, the bears explode into clouds of stuffing. Instead of manly grunts and screams, its high pitched wails and shrieks. It’s the overall feel of taking something innocent and twisting it into a horror movie, and it’s hilarious.

But wait there is more! Naughty Bear actually has a multiplayer mode. So after you are done murdering helpless AI Teddy’s, you can hop online and compete against other real people. The modes announced so far are an Oddball like Cake Walk mode, where one bear has to hold onto a cake for as long as possible while avoiding enemy bears. A Scavenge like Jelly mode, where 3 bears have to run into the woods and collect plates of Jelly while a player controlling Naughty Bear lurks in the shadows. There is also Assault, a 2v2 game type where one team is defending a gold statue while the other is trying to destroy it, and Golden Uzi, a game type like Juggernaut where one bear has a golden uzi and the others try to kill him and take that Uzi.

Naughty Bear is the type of game you don’t want to miss. It is going to go under a lot of gamers radars, but the ones who do find it are going to have a rare gem. Naughty Bear comes to the Xbox360 and Playstation 3 June 29^th.

And for horror fans, don’t miss Amazon and Gamestop’s pre-order bonuses, a Freddy Krueger Costume from Amazon and a Jason Vorhees Costume from Gamestop.

Keep in mind this is only a beta, and I hope Dice fixes all of the problems or at least the major ones found in the “Ugly” section.

The Good:

Controls:

Fans of Bad Company 2 will find this game to be very familiar, which is why I did, the controls and movement makes it feel like it’s a battlefield game, makes sense since its made by Dice.

Maps:

The maps that are in the beta are pretty good, and I’m sure that if a lot of you are already bored with the middle east style maps due to playing too much Modern Warfare 2, Medal of Honor will not change that.

Customization:

One of the key things to success these days is customization, and though you don’t have that choice in the beginning (like every other shooter), once you level up you will unlock some better magazines, scopes, weapons and camouflages.

Rewards for kill streaks:

Similar to Call of Duty, the game rewards you with things like UAV’s and Mortar Strikes once you get a number of kiils in a row, which is really awesome.

The Bad:

Graphics:

They are just dated, not horrible, but dated, nothing amazing. I can easily compare a 2007 shooter that looks better, known as Call of Duty 4.

Sniper Rifles are horrible:

Sniper Rifles just don’t work they way they are supposed to:

Firstly, the sniper rifle for the Marines is not even a sniper rifle, but I can understand why they gave that weapon to that class, and both the Taliban and US sniper rifles just don’t work good, I had to shoot someone over 4 times just to kill him, with a sniper rifle!

M16 is stronger than the Ak47:

Seriously, that makes no sense.

Team play:

Coming from Dice, team play is a big aspect of their games, such as in Bad Company 2, I could easily communicate with my buddies without using a microphone, Medal of Honor just doesn’t give you that and even in the mission type games I felt like a lonewolf all the time.

It’s Dice, yet no destruction:

Even though its Dice, who are known for delivering a high quality destruction engine known as FrostBite that can be found in a game like Bad Company, I was surprised to see that it just wasn’t there, and felt like Modern Warfare.

The Ugly:

Constant Freezes:

The game just froze on me at least 3 times and i had to restart my console, nothing else can be said about that.

Delay:

Getting killed is one thing, but having a delay of about 2-3 seconds is horrible, meaning that once you do get killed, the game just freezes for 3 seconds and then you get to respawn, I’m sure everyone experiences this.

Explosions:

Now I’m not talking about the looks of them (though they are not good), I’m talking about them being too small, they seriously look horrible and have a horrible effect on your enemies and the environment.

Lags:

I had to knife some one two times in order to kill him, and even though he died on my first hit, I still had to shoot him to guarantee his death.

Can’t get off hills:

I happened to respawn on a hill twice, and even though it looked like I could get off, both times I was unable to get off and had to kill myself.

Overall Thoughts:

Even though the game is fun and I would recommend that you will try it out, it suffers from a lot of problems that just have to be fixed, and even though its still a beta, I have never played a beta that suffers the way Medal of Honor does.

If I have missed anything or maybe you found some things to be good/bad/ugly, let us know in the comments below.

The Medal of Honor beta goes live on June 21 on the PS3 and PC, the 360 version has been delayed till next week.

Let me start by talking about the single player campaign. The game starts a bit in the past, The Optimus Prime is just beginning his rise to power and putting together the Autobots, while Megatron is himself doing the same. The game uses two separate campaigns that guide you through the story. You can choose to play either the Decepticon or Autobot campaign first, but the Decepticon campaign takes place first in time.

There will be a cast of familiar robots, like Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen, the original voice of Optimus Prime), Bumblebee (the original, not the version from the recent films), Grimlock, Ironhide, Jazz, and Kup. On the Decepticon side there is Megatron, Starscream, Soundwave, Thundercracker and Skywarp. All these names should be familiar to anyone who has seen the original animated series or movie.

The Real Bumblebee is Back

Developer interviews have revealed that the story of the game is going to heavily focus on the start of the conflict between the Decepticons and Autobots, as well as dig a little deeper into the motives and personalities of the Transformers themselves.

So what about the Multiplayer? Honestly, what makes this game perk players ears is not a single player campaign, its the well done multiplayer.

First off we have Escalation mode, a take on the ever so popular horde wave after wave of enemies survival mode. You can choose to play as Autobots or Decepticons, and the goal is to last as long as you can against increasingly difficult waves of enemies. What brings a refreshing twist is the class system in War for Cybertron, which is in effect during Escalation mode.

You will have the choice of playing 4 different classes in the multiplayer modes:

Scout- A small, quick, stealthy wielder of shotguns, pistols and sniper rifles.

Soldier- The Heavy Weapons Robot, wielding Rocket launchers, machine guns and gatling guns, as well as devastating melee attacks.

Leader- The Leader is exactly what he sounds like, a big robot who INSPIRES Buffs his teammates.

Scientist- Every game needs a medic, and the scientist is just that.

Expect Numerous Gritty Battles

The Escalation mode has also taken a few ideas from other popular Wave based survival games. By killing enemies, you earn credits, and at the end of each round, these credits are used to buy health, weapons, and ammo. Weapons and ammo are self explanatory, but the reason for buying health packs is because of the way health is handled. You have regenerating health, but your total health is divided into sections, and you can only regenerate enough to fill the section you are currently at. So for example, if you are shot down to 46% of your health, you will only regenerate to the 50% mark.

When you run out of health, you are knocked into the down-but-not-out stage, where you are crippled on the ground, but can still shoot, and still be revived, and as an added bonus, if you don’t get revived, you can activate a personal self destruct.

The actual head to head multiplayer has a few different game types such as Team Deathmatch, Free for all, and a Domination node like game type.

War for Cybertron is also using the character progression model that has worked so well for the Modern Warfare series, allowing players to level up each class, customize weapons, armor abilities and Perk like bonuses…as well as Kill Streaks. All of these upgrades are unlocked by leveling through playing each class. The upgrades and abilities give you the option to play each class in numerous different ways.

And by far the coolest multiplayer aspect: When you click in the left stick to sprint, you transform into a car, or plane…awesome.

Transformers: War for Cybertron has all the ingredients of a great game, add in the nostalga factor for Transformers fans, and it turns into a must have. Transformers: War for Cybertron hits stores June 22^nd for the Xbox360 and Playstion 3, and don’t miss the Gamestop pre-order bonus to get Shockwave as a playable character.

Don't Miss Your Chance to Play as Shockwave