GoldenEye 007 – Protect Natalya

Escort missions are always a highway to misery but GoldenEye 007 made escorting Natalya resemble Bond’s legendary car roll in Casino Royale. First, if you get too far ahead – like in the Jungle – some random enemies might pick her off. She’s constantly in the line of your fire, which makes for accidental kills more often than you’d think. The least Rare could have done was make Natalya somewhat durable but alas, it didn’t.

It goes without saying, but owing to this feature’s nature, there will be major spoilers ahead for every game we speak about. So if you see us beginning to talk about a game you’d rather not have spoiled for you, go ahead and skip to the next entry.

PERSONA 3

Persona 3’s ending is an unpleasant one in a slightly different way- while we do end up managing to beat the larger threat and save the world and all that, it ends up extracting a heavy toll. The main protagonist ends up sacrificing himself to keep Nyx sealed away. It’s a much more personal loss, and sure, in the grand scheme of things the good outweighs the bad- but it still hits you like a ton of bricks.

If investing in Origin Access Premier for early access to full-games like BioWare’s Anthem or DICE’s Battlefield 5 doesn’t seem appealing, then don’t worry- there might still be more incentive. Electronic Arts has added several new games to the Origin Access Vault, which is fully accessible to Basic subscribers (at $5 per month, or $30 per year). The biggest is perhaps Madden NFL 19 – it released in August 2018 and made several improvements, while adding a new Longshot story (it has its shortcomings though, so keep that in mind).

Gone Home is the next best option, offering a compelling first person narrative that’s equal parts creepy and insightful. The Fullbright Company’s newest title Tacoma is unfortunately not available in the Vault, but that might change down the line. If you’re a Star Wars fan though, there’s plenty to keep you covered.

LucasArts’ Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 1 and 2 have been added to the Vault. LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga, a compilation of the first three games, along with LEGO Star Wars 3: The Clone Wars and Star Wars TIE Fighter Special Edition are also available. Overall, in addition to the dozens of other titles in the Vault, these are some pretty good offerings overall.

“Miller’s” Betrayal – Metal Gear Solid

For many of us in the PlayStation One days, Miller was one of the bigger betrayers. Despite assisting Solid Snake throughout his mission on Shadow Moses, especially when allies like Roy Campbell and Naomi Hunter couldn’t be trusted, Miller actually tricked him into activating Metal Gear REX. That’s because, well, he’s not actually Miller but Liquid Snake in disguise.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Okay, yes, The Force Unleashed did make us experience a rather uneven story with the stupidly named “Starkiller” as the protagonist. However, the opening allowed for playing as Darth Vader, feeling every bit as powerful and domineering as the movies made him out to be. Well, the good movies, that is.

Hugo Strange – Batman: Arkham City

The story for Batman: Arkham City starts simply enough – Bruce Wayne is against the creation of this massive city as an asylum. Hugo Strange captures him and knows about him being Batman. From there, Batman escapes into the city while Strange goes ahead with his plans for Protocol 10. Why doesn’t Strange try killing Batman or Wayne sooner? Granted, he sends an assassin or something but all those military forces and you still don’t make him a priority? Why even kidnap him in the first place then?

Blackman has been in LucasArts for thirteen years now. Apart from The Force Unleashed, his resume boasts of games uch as Star Wars: Force Commander, Star Wars Galaxies, as well as a number of Star Wars themed comics.

Speaking to IGN, he said: “While the decision to leave LucasArts did not happen overnight or come easily, I really feel that now is the best time for me to move on and explore new creative challenges and I look forward to the next phase of my career.”

Fair enough, and I think I speak for everybody when I say that we’re all gonna be looking forward to his next game. The Force Unleashed may not have been the greatest game ever, but it certainly was built around a novel idea. Its sequel, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2, is due this October for every gaming platform in existence.

Speaking in an interview with ComputerAndVideoGames.com, executive producer Hayden Blackman argued that Star Wars in no way clashes with the same plotpoints as comic books like Spider-Man and such.

“Not really,” he said when asked if the Lucas companies were discussing a franchise ‘reboot’. “We don’t necessarily perceive it in the same way of there being all these divergent threads.

“When I started at the company 13 years ago I worked on this reference project that was an encyclopedia, and I was warned when I first took the job that I was going to have difficulty dealing with continuity conflicts – but there weren’t that many, there were a handful.

“LucasArts licensing does a really great job of keeping everything consistent and having it make sense,” he added.

“If there is ever a conflict they find really creative ways to explain away that conflict, so I don’t feel like its like a lot of comic book companies where they have so many timelines in so many different worlds that they need to collapse them all.

“We don’t have that same problem, what we do have a strong desire to do is to re-imagine Star Wars, based on the medium and that’s what we did with Force Unleashed 1.

“That’s where the idea for the over the top Force powers came from, but from a story standpoint we never use the story to explain why the powers were all over the top, that’s the way the Force is portrayed in our particular medium and fans love that.”

At the end of the interview, he also said the he would love to see a Super Star Wars (the SNES classic) remake on the Xbox 360.

Your thoughts? Tell us in your comments.

The Twitter list included Monkey Island 2: Special Edition, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II, Star Wars: The Old Republic “and more.”

What could LucasArts possibly mean by more? Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars is a sure shot, but could we perhapd finally be getting a glimpse at Star Wars: Battlefront III?

E3 draws nearer by the day. With less than a week left, we’ll know all the answers to the questions that have been raised in the past few days soon enough.

It is currently unknown as to whether this date is region specific or worldwide. The date was confirmed yesterday on the game’s Facebook page. May the Fourth be with you (gerrit?)!

“May The Fourth be with you, since it will be Unleashed Oct 26th, 2010!”

The post currently has 866 ‘likes’.

Aside from a couple of scans in local mags, nothing has been seen or heard from this game since the VGA’s. We got a feeling they have something up their sleeve though…