Category Archives: Previews

Hands-on previews, Platforms, Previews, PS Vita

Gravity Rush (Vita Hands-On Preview)

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This is one the first action beat em’ up titles we’ve seen on the PS Vita and from this hands-on demo it’s fair to say that it’s one of the most visually appealing Vita games yet. Despite the demo being in English, there’s not much we can gleam about the story. There’s a mystical cat in a quaint town square, then monsters attack.

The aesthetic style is a hybrid of comic-book visuals and anime cell-shading. Storyboards illustrate some plot elements and you can move the Vita around to peak around the frames, providing a rather pleasing semi-3D effect. The gameplay seems to have been influenced by a wide range of sources as gamers will be able to spot elements of Bayonetta in the combat and the Spider-Man games in the way you utilise walls as traversable surfaces.

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Hands-on previews, Platforms, Previews, PS Vita

Little Big Planet Vita (Hands-On Preview)

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With the Vita on a seemingly unstoppable display of going from strength to strength, it was almost unsurprising to see a complex title like Little Big Planet appear so at home so soon on the new handheld.

During our hands-on time, we were able to try out a few levels that showed off how the Vita’s extra features would be uniquely utilised during gameplay. We were also invited to a developer demonstration of the create mode too, and we’re now convinced it has the potential to be much more user-friendly than the PS3 versions.

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Hands-on previews, Platforms, PlayStation 3, Previews, PSN (PlayStation Store)

Uncharted 3: Multiplayer’s New Maps (Hands-on Preview)

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This was new a sample of some new multiplayer playgrounds, unfamiliar even to players of the recent beta, with some local matches over a LAN connection bringing Manchester PlayStation Access attendees together before encouraging them to pull each other off ledges.

Uncharted 2 surprised everyone by making a fine first effort with the multiplayer and U3 looks set to surpass it easily with its dosage of cinematic sequences and power plays where a team is given a temporary stat boost. Today we played around on a few maps new maps with team deathmatches being the game of choice. One map was set in a desert village, similar to that seen in the recent single-player footage. There were lots of close alleys with corners and walls to hide behind, making for a fast-paced match where itchy trigger fingers and sharp melee skills proved most lethal. The climbing was brilliant here too as it can be used to perform grab kills to pull opponents over a ledge. It’s uber-slick and will probably cost us many lives in the pursuit of enjoyment over a decent kill/death ratio, as it does leave you vulnerable to being swatting off the wall in a hail of gunfire.

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Hands-on previews, Platforms, PlayStation 3, Previews, Xbox 360

Goldeneye: Reloaded (Latest Hands-on Preview)

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It would be a shame if this gets lost in the Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3 storm, as it’s a hell of a lot of fun. It might just be the perfect tonic to military shooter fatigue.

The aiming still feels a little loose, as I noted with my Gamescom preview, but the game plays quite well forgoing iron-sight aiming and just blasting through. There is a large amount of auto-aim when you pull up your sights and watch as they pull across the screen to the nearest enemy. As with most titles though I’m sure you’ll be able to tone down the sensitivity and turn off any auto-aim functions so you can maintain control.

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Hands-on previews, PlayStation 3, Previews

Starhawk (Hands-On Preview)

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Starhawk’s single player game is something I’ve been waiting to get my hands on for a while now and I’m glad to say it was well worth the wait. This sci-fi third-person shooter is shaping up to be a lot of fun, especially given the original game’s lack of an offline side. But can it compete in a genre crowded with classics like Uncharted and Gears of War? Being able to instantly drop an arsenal of buildings, turret towers and vehicles from your own personal orbital carrier will certainly help its cause.

This early mission introduces the eagerly awaited building mechanics of the game. First though, it was time to clear the building site of a few aliens, who have a neon-Chimera feel to them. The standard assault rifle weapon was more than capable of taking them on, with no sign of any unwanted auto-aim to take away your fun. Red barrels and grenades provide huge explosions scattering bodies everywhere in glorious fashion. After playing through Brink, recently, it felt good to have grenades that erupted in fire again instead acting like a popped semi-deflated beach ball.

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Hands-on previews, Platforms, PlayStation 3, Previews

Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One (Hands-On Preview)

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For years, the Ratchet & Clank series has been crying out for co-op and from what I’ve played so far, it was a great call for Insomniac Games to finally run with it before they put all their efforts into the multi-format Overstrike. After playing the beta recently, I was worried about a few bugs that required a game reset, but I’m happy to report they were nowhere to be seen with this latest build of the game that took place in the same levels.

Ignoring the usual heroes, Ratchet and Clank, we opted to play an offline two-player game as the showboating Captain Quark and the er nefarious Dr. Nefarious, the two characters that have provided some great laughs over the years. Players will find the action very similar to the older games with every character having shooting and melee skills, complete with their own version of Ratchet’s Comet Strike, where they throw their weapon, only to have it boomerang back to them, which is great for smaller enemies and crates.

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Features, Hands-on previews, PlayStation 3, Previews, PS Vita, Xbox 360

Eurogamer Expo: The Good, The Bad & The Contenders

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Here’s a roundup of some of the games I managed to get some extensive hands-on time with at the recent Eurogamer Expo in London. As well as highlighting what was looking good, I’ve pointed out a few that you should definitely beware of before you splash the cash. The Contender category consists of a few games that you might usually overlook due to past form or generic looks, but have a read; you might just change your mind.

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Hands-on previews, PC, Platforms, PlayStation 3, Previews, Xbox 360

Road Testing The Racers At The Eurogamer Expo

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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.

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Hands-on previews, Platforms, PlayStation 3, Previews, Xbox 360

Final Fantasy XIII-2 (Hands-On Preview)

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Regretting not finishing Final Fantasy XIII? Well that probably depends on whether you managed to forgive the linearity and heavily automated combat to push on and finish, or on how adept you are at finding HD cutscene compilations on torrent sites to enjoy what was a cracking story along with some generation-leading CGI.

Either way you better get cracking because there’s every chance that you’ll want to return to Cocoon and Gran Pulse next year with this sequel. Don’t worry about your FFX-2 flashbacks; no Dresspheres have been sighted, yet.

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Previews, Regular previews

Darksiders II (Preview)

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The first game was a surprise hit from the Vigil Games team. Despite being an original creation, the world felt so lived in and like it had a deep past with plenty of scope for further stories, making for a world we’re eager to dive back into.

For the sequel, you play as a different Horseman of the apocalypse, Death. Rather than joining your bother War, immediately after the events of the first game, which would have been a great starting point given the tantalising conclusion, your adventure will run alongside that of your brother’s. This parallel story may throw up the odd familiar face, but we’re told to expect plenty of new locations, which is definitely better than going through all the old ones with everyone telling you that you’ve just missed your brother.

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Hands-on previews, Previews, Wii

Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games (Hands-on Preview)

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After a brief panic of thinking I’d spent a full year queuing for games at Gamescom I stirred myself awake to remember an early Olympics title would of course be released the Christmas before the event itself. Especially after the previous games on the Wii sold by the tonne. It’s still heart breaking to see Sonic standing next to archrival Mario with no signs of murderous intentions though.

Our hands-on session with some of our German cousins was in the form of a multiplayer party with laughs and smiles hiding the pride of wanting to win at all costs. Wiimotes at the ready then.

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PC, PlayStation 3, Previews, Regular previews, Xbox 360

Metro: Last Light (Preview)

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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.

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Hands-on previews, Previews, PS Vita

Resistance: Burning Skies (Vita Hands-on Preview)

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One of the biggest challenges facing the PS Vita handheld is its ability to work with first-person shooters. The addition of a second analogue stick -and they are proper sticks now instead of nubs- is an important leap forwards from the original PSP and from our hand-on experience it’s a challenge the device and developers are already relishing.

Nihilistic are bringing the Resistance series to the handheld market for the first time in FPS form, after the third-person adventures of Retribution. The improvements are instantly noticeable, making the console’s 2012 arrival seem very far away for everyone outside of Japan.

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Hands-on previews, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Move, Previews

Medieval Moves: Deadmund’s Quest (Hands-On Preview)

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If anyone could make another great game for the PlayStation Move, it would be the team behind its best game so far. Rather than knock out Sports Champions 2, Zindagi Games have opted for a fun action title. You might recognise parts of the game from the early tech demos for the PlayStation Move back at E3 2009. It’s good to see that demo become a full game, we’re just surprised it took this long.

Medieval Moves is a first-person action adventure game with movement around the game world taking place automatically and the action kicking off between stops. This leaves your hands free to concentrate on using your weapons and other cool gadgets to get through the medieval settings against an army of skeleton warriors and other ghoulish foes.

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PlayStation 3, Previews, Regular previews, Video, Xbox 360

Lollipop Chainsaw (Preview)

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Just looking at the Suda 51 name and Juliet Starling’s outfit, you know this is going to be another bat-shit crazy game from the Japanese auteur and Grasshopper Manufacture. What I didn’t expect to see at the developer walkthrough with Producer Scott Warr at Warner Bros Interactive’s Gamescom HQ was some of the most engaging action of the week.

You are high-school cheerleader Juliet Starling who forgoes further extra-curricular activities in favour of a spot of vampire zombie slaying and it looks like they’ve chosen her 18th birthday (cutting it close, Suda-san) to come and find her at school. We’re not asking why zombies are there; let’s face it, if no film in history can give us a decent explanation, why should we expect any more from Suda 51’s pigtails-and-chainsaw vision? Juliet attends San Romero High, an on-the-nose reference reference to the classic zombie director, who still manages to get his dues despite his last few films being absolute shite.

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Hands-on previews, Platforms, PlayStation 3, Previews, Xbox 360

Goldeneye: Reloaded (Hands-On Preview)

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If you don’t have a Nintendo Wii, then you may have ignored their Goldeneye remake. Hell, you might have a Wii, but the prospect of taking it out of the box to mangle your childhood memories with bastardised controls just doesn’t seem like a good idea. Well now the N64 classic, a game that many regard as the best movie tie-in ever and one of the finest multiplayer games in existence, is getting the HD treatment it deserves. Fuck knows why emotional potato man Daniel Craig is in it though.

Goldeneye: Reloaded isn’t an entirely faithful HD reworking, it’s more of a ‘reimagining’, which if you remember Tim Burton describing his remake of Planet of the Apes the same way a few years ago, isn’t always a great thing. In fairness though the game scored well on the Wii and it’s bound to be better than the last Bond title we saw on the HD consoles, Blood Stone.

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Hands-on previews, PC, Platforms, PlayStation 3, Previews, PSN (PlayStation Store), Video, XBLA, Xbox 360

Joe Danger: The Movie (Hands-on Preview)

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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.

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Hands-on previews, PC, Platforms, PlayStation 3, Previews, PSN (PlayStation Store), XBLA, Xbox 360

Renegade Ops (Hands-on Preview)

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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.

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Hands-on previews, PC, PlayStation 3, Previews, Xbox 360

Saints Row The Third (Hands-on Preview)

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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.

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Hands-on previews, Platforms, Previews, PS Vita

WipEout 2048 (Vita Hands-on Preview)

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A Sony console just wouldn’t be right without a WipEout game and the new PlayStation Vita handheld is more than capable of doing the series justice for its tenth title. In our developer session at Gamescom 2011, we were lucky enough to enjoy a presentation from Sony’s Studio Liverpool team and then get a play for ourselves.

Set just 37 years from now, at the “dawn of the sport,” four years before the original PS1 game set in 2052. It’s the first season of the sport, just after anti-gravity was invented. At this rate, it’s highly doubtful we’ll see technology leap forwards as much in the next 37 years, seeing as we’ll all be forced to plod along in hybrids at misery MPH. That’s why we’ll always love games like this as do Studio Liverpool who are keen to emphasise the importance of the time setting of the game compared to the other games in the series:

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