Don’t worry about the apocalypse, it’s right at the end of the year. But just in case it’s real, here are some healthy steps to enjoying gaming to its maximum potential.
In a gaming climate that has almost killed off the humble platformer, Trine 2 shines as a reminder of how much potential is still there for developers willing to work at it as Frozenbyte has done once again.
Players of the original 2009 Trine (PS3 and PC) will be able to jump in straight away, while 360 players might experience a longer adjustment, as the game doesn’t take much time to explain the game’s mechanics to the new player.
Essentially, you control three characters at once by swapping between them on the fly to solve the platforming puzzle at hand with only one character appearing on-screen at a time. The wizard levitates objects and conjures crates and planks to help you climb upwards, the thief fires arrows and has a grappling hook to attach to wooden surfaces and swing around, and the knight provides the muscle with a sword and shield combo or a sledgehammer that can also be used to smash through walls.
After Modern Warfare 2, Infinity Ward seemed to be in deep trouble. An overly public spat with Activision led to the loss of numerous staff, leaving the studio’s fate in the balance. Even during development of this game, they’ve had to put up with heckling from the suddenly very cocky Battlefield brand.
They have stepped up in spectacular fashion though. With reinforcements acquired in the form of Sledgehammer Games, they’ve brought us a stunning example of hi-octane warfare yet again. It’s loud, it’s brash and a little bit insane. We wouldn’t want it any other way.
GTAV will have to wait its turn. We’ve been looking forward to Saints Row: The Third for a while now and after the dirty delights of SR2, we can’t wait to get stuck in again with the current console generation’s most enjoyable open world crime series.
After pissing off The Syndicate, the Saints are forced out of Stillwater despite being the world’s most famous street gang. Instead, they’re dumped into Steelport and have to start from square one again. Their rise to power pits them against The Syndicate and the gangs of Morning Star, The Deckers and The Luchadores, the latter of whom are led by Killbane, voiced by Hulk Hogan. With this fresh start, the series is welcoming to old and new players.
Aiming to please fans of both traditional and modern Sonic titles, Sega have included both styles in one game. Surprisingly this hasn’t resulted in the partial disaster I expected. But is Sonic still capable of a decent result in a genre that has unfortunately all but faded?
We find ourselves taking turns to play as the 2D side-scrolling scamp of old and the free-moving chatty rail-grinder. Time travel is the logic behind this merging of styles, as modern-day Sonic joins forces with his younger 1990s self. Together they must defeat Dr. Robotnik and Dr. Eggman, essentially two versions of the same villain. In addition to the fat moustachioed one(s), there’s a sinister creature that caused the time rift in the first place.
After hearing Dirt 3 would be making a return to proper rallying, I couldn’t help but feel let down by the final product. So much of the game was left to the demented machinations of Ken Block; I was relieved they’d taken McRae’s name off the box. A rally car is not a BMX or a skateboard as the clumsy gymkhana sections proved.
WRC 2 lives and breathes for proper rallying though. Traditional A-B stages dominate, with a few Super Special Stage duels thrown in for good measure. All the big names like Loeb, Solberg and Hirvonen are here along with their official WRC rides. The lower rally leagues and the infamous Group B cars are also present. You can race individual rallies with the stars straight away, or get started on the lengthy career mode, The Road to the WRC.
After the chaotic events of Arkham Asylum, only the corrupt world of Gotham City would let the madhouse’s warden become mayor and allow him to hire Dr. Strange to cordon off a whole section of the city for a new asylum/prison. Dr. Strange being the head-case he is, it isn’t long before innocent civilians find themselves locked up without warning or trial. Soon enough, we’re walking Batman himself through the prison gates too, albeit as Bruce Wayne.
It’s going to be another long night for the Batman. Arkham City takes on an open-world approach with various missions available around the city map. It’s clear that films like Escape from New York have heavily influenced the landscape. Electricity is limited and streets are littered with trash, barricades, burnt out cars and mobs of angry thugs. Famous in-mates like Two-Face, Penguin and Joker all have their own areas and gang members. Despite the place being a shit-hole, they’re still all having a massive turf war.
Unlike Skyrim (“get off, I’ve just levelled up!”), racing games are perfect for expos. The queues are never that long and you can have a quick blast on a couple of tracks, test out a few new cars and get an idea of how they’re shaping up. So here’s a look at some of the biggest racing games lining up on the console grid.
After attending a recent developer session at a games expo event, I was invited to a behind closed doors interview session with Nolan North, the talented voice actor behind Nathan Drake of the Uncharted series. During the interview he spoke about how he became a voice actor and about his roles in other games such as the Penguin in Batman: Arkham City and as Desmond in Assassin’s Creed.
Click through to watch the extensive video interview.
The Games Workshop space faring Warhammer 40k universe has been begging for a proper action game for years. Having provided so much inspiration for video games it’s about time it had one.
Relic Entertainment have served 40k well already with their Dawn of War strategy games on the PC, but now they face a different challenge with an assault on the crowded action shooter genre. This is no Gears of War clone though; you’re playing as a Space Marine, the toughest soldiers out there. These seven-foot tall genetically engineered killing machines don’t need a cover-system; they’re all about fighting through the pain.
Now I’m not saying looks are everything, but after slumming it through the grey roughness of the original Metro 2033 game, it’s amazing to see the difference in Metro: Last Light. This game looks gorgeous. Yes, it still has a bit of a grey fetish, but like Killzone, it’s made pretty work of some of the colour palettes old-timers. And the game’s still only at pre-alpha code level, so it could get even better.
Those of you that played through the original game will find that the story of Last Light follows on from the (SPOLIER) ‘bad’ ending where you did launch the missiles to destroy the Dark Ones. So it would seem that your initial fight will be against human enemies, we’re sure there’ll be a few mutants along the way too. We’ve already seen those winged gargoyle-like arseholes (they pissed me off a lot last time) flying about in one of the trailers. Towards the end of the presentation, we also saw some large troll/gorilla-like creatures that featured some astonishingly slick animation and textured rocky skin that almost distracts from them trying to rip Artyom’s face off.
2011 can just end already. First, it was Bioshock Infinite making the wait pure agony, now I can add Joe Danger: The Movie to my most wanted list. Hello Games are well on their way to creating another classic. Seeing as I gave the first game 9/10, I was damn keen to play the sequel at Gamescom 2011. And I did. Every time I passed the stand. By the time I officially met up with Sean Murray and Grant Duncan of Hello Games I thought I had it all worked out. Then they showed me some of the tougher but doubly awesome levels. Now I really hate 2011.
Before I carry on with the platitudes, I’ll quickly re-cap the first game for newcomers: a mainly 2D motorcycle stunt platformer that encouraged linking tricks while getting to the finish line as fast as possible. Gold stars could be won for each event by collecting all the icons, landing on all landing pads and comboing 100% of the level. The controls were simple as you could jump high and perform multiple flips in the air and land doing endos and wheelies to chain stunts; you could even adjust your trajectory in mid-air forwards and backwards.
From Avalanche Studios, the minds behind the Just Cause series, we have the new twin-stick vehicle shooter, Renegade Ops. A downloadable title, that’s less than a month away and looks like one of the hottest downloadable titles at Gamescom 2011.
The twin-stick shooter controls for these armoured vehicles are comfortingly familiar -left for driving, right for aiming and shooting- and allow you to enjoy the simplistic gameplay immediately. An extra boost of speed and braking is handled with the face buttons. A secondary weapon is assigned to R1, while L1 initiates a special ability like EMP strikes to stun enemies, extra armour, helicopter backup or a flare to mark a target for an airstrike, with their use limited while they recharge over time.
Since Saints Row 2 surprised us all by being a hell of a lot better than the original and for many, a more enjoyable game than GTAIV, we’ve been waiting to see how the next game would handle the pressure. Well, just remember it was a bit bonkers before and it’s not prepared to put its pants back on quite yet.
With just one hour to play the new game, we couldn’t believe how quickly it went. The first part of the demo is a bank heist with your Saints Row buddies, and all of you are disguised in oversized Johnny Gat heads, including Gat himself. It would appear that the Saints might have chosen the wrong bank to knock over though. As soon as they let their guards downs, all the bank tellers pull out some serious military grade hardware and open fire.
Hopes were high for Brink. Cool character design, mixed with Mirror’s Edge FPS platforming and served as an objective-based shooter that could instantly take the fight online, replacing bots for real people. With all these elements and a name that implies it’s already on the edge, it’s a tough task on the hands of developers Splash Damage.
Brink features two campaigns based in the Arc, a futuristic city built for mankind’s rich survivors after the melting of the polar ice caps drowned the world. One story has you playing as the Arc’s security forces, the other shows the same events from the rebels (the former builders of the Arc) perspective, who are trying to escape or destroy the Arc. Yes, someone has been playing Bioshock. Both sides are shown as the potential good guys, but the story is merely filler between matches.
When the developers first announced there wouldn’t be a cover system for this third-person-shooter it raised a few eyebrows. Now that I’ve seen the suicidal nature of a swarming orc hoard eager to test the might of a Space Marine’s weaponry, it seems it was a great decision.
So forget about turn-based choices, real time strategy and dice rolling, this is the full-on action title we’ve been waiting for. Strategy fans have enjoyed the Dawn of War games, but action fans always intrigued by the rich sci-fi lineage of the series can now look forward to the first decent Warhammer game since Fire Warrior.
Summary of the News articles I’ve posted at Dealspwn.com in June 2011.
Release date: June 10th 1998 2011
This isn’t the way it was supposed to be. I was psyched to hear I’d get to play Duke Nukem Forever at Gadget Show Live at Birmingham’s epic NEC venue, but I left the Duke’s area and its collection of PR girls in schoolgirl outfits feeling empty and confused.
If Duke Nukem Forever is released after 13 years of development in the condition I played it on Tuesday morning, there’s going to be a backlash of epic proportions. Hopefully the recent delay is seeing Gearbox adding a few buckets of polish to it.
We live in the world of the sequel, the remake, the annual release, the safe bet, the lazy rehash. Occasionally a new name might emerge, a new IP (Intellectual Property) that hopes to become the next big franchise, but they’re generally seen to be too risky in the world of the multi-million pound costs of developing and marketing a game.
Some sequels are essential though and 2011 will be no different with Uncharted 3, Mass Effect 3 and Batman: Arkham City already driving us nuts with the wait. Sometimes though, when we see an announcement for a sequel, our hearts sink, we question the sanity of developers/publishers and usually have a bit of a fight around the office to see which poor sod will have to review it.
So here’s a look at the sequels that haven’t been announced yet, but in all probability will be in the near future. Albeit with slightly more marketable titles. Read more…
The demolition minigames from the previous Red Faction game have been reworked into a stand-alone Ruin mode.
Rather than being more of the same though, it’s set to be a big improvement thanks to the addition of the Magnet Gun, which if you read my recent preview of the single player game, you’d know is the new toy that every big kid should want.
