[View with PicLens]

12►

Screens via Destructoid

Let’s not beat around the bush, the original Kane and Lynch was bad.  Butt ugly with difficult controls and horrible AI, it certainly didn’t look like sequel material and yet, almost three years later, here we are… with early demo access.

Kane and Lynch have come a long way since 2007, as have their developers, IO Interactive.  Kane and Lynch have moved to Shanghai and IO Interactive made a similar fresh start in the east, with their Square Enix/ Eidos publishing deal.  Rather than struggling to make another bland shooter on a last-gen engine they let their creativity run wild the last year, with Mini Ninjas to show for it.  As a studio born in blood however, famous for the Hitman series, it was only a matter of time before IO returned to gritty shooters and Kane and Lynch 2 is undoubtedly their most adult work yet.

The demo sets out as it aims to continue, bloody and pixelated, with an opening cinematic introducing the game’s most striking feature, its handheld camera style.  Mimicking the style of a camera-phone video, your perspective bumps and shakes along with your movements and while you still have total control of the camera, IO have managed to pull off the raw handheld feeling that they were clearly going for.  The sound cracks and pops and the video is full of digital artifacting but there is still enough detail for the gameplay not to be negatively affected.  It is an effect that is quite popular in modern film, but entirely absent from gaming and at its high points; this style of presentation can make Kane and Lynch 2 one of the most visceral shooters around, despite its mediocre graphics.  It would be nice if the plot explained the handheld presentation but even without reasoning, it is a fantastic effect.

Kane and Lynch isn’t just the original with a new coat of paint however, IO have changed the fundamentals than made the first so profoundly awful.  The cover system is tied to the A button, replacing the awful contextual system of the first and meaning that there is never any doubt as to whether you are in cover or out of it.  The cover improvements are needed as well, as the AI have been completely overhauled.  At one point in the demo a team of police flanked me on both sides whilst another cop destroyed my cover by throwing a gas can and shooting it.  The AI are some of the most aggressive and unpredictable I have seen in a while.  The improvements IO have made in Kane and Lynch 2 may not make it the pinnacle of third person shooting, but they do make it fun, allowing the game’s innovative design and unusually gritty aesthetics to take centre stage.

Turns out Live players are a shifty backstabbing bunch.

Speaking of innovation, a special mention must go to the demo’s multiplayer mode.  Rather than producing the standard multiplayer suite of deathmatch and objective games, IO have produced a unique multiplayer mode to fit the dark criminal world of Kane and Lynch, its called Fragile Alliance.  The idea is simple; a team of criminals commit a heist (in the demo map, robbing an armoured truck) and have to escape the police.  This simple idea becomes a lot more nerve racking however when you add the fact that any player can betray you and steal your money.  This results in some very tense teamwork and a constant sense of paranoia.  With everybody on edge, one wrong move or accidental incident of friendly fire can result in half of the team going down in a panicked massacre.

Fragile Alliance manages to capture all the nervy atmosphere of con movies like Ronin and Heat and also acts as a perfect symbol for all the promise of Kane and Lynch.  It looks like this time IO Interactive have got the gameplay to back up their ambitious cinematic ambition, we will find out when the game hits shelves August 24.

Naruto Shippuuden is an anime and manga series, created by Masashi Kishimoto. It follows the story of an orphaned boy, Naruto Uzumaki, who has been impregnated with the spirit of the evil nine tailed fox on his journey to becoming the greatest ninja his village has ever known. Naruto is one of nine Ninjas who house these creatures and in turn has become one of the nine targets of Akatsuki, a organisation who hunt down and capture these creatures to use them to their own ends.

Naruto Shippuuden is the second part of the Naruto manga and takes place three years after its predecessor, by which time the characters have grown and matured. Naruto: Ultimate Ninja is a series of video games based on Naruto and Ultimate Ninja Storm is the next-generation version of the game series.

With the sequel to Ultimate Ninja Storm due out this year, Namco Bandai released this trailer as a teaser to show us what the game will look like and what it contains. Most notable is that the game is going to be on both the PS3 and 360 (UNS1 was a PS3-exclusive). It looks to be the same style and gameplay as the last game, with a few tweaks made. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing though…

Here are some details on Ultimate Ninja Storm 2:

• In terms of story, it takes place exactly where its predecessor ended.
• Now features many more playable characters
• Set for release in Q4/2010
• Available on both PS3 and Xbox 360
• Presumably covers up to the conclusion of the Sasuke and Sai arc.
• The special moves have been re-animated to be closer to the characters personalities at this point in the story

Overall, it looks like another solid game which strongly follows the format of the first. Hopefully, if another trailer comes along it can show us a few more of the newer features on offer as well as the playable characters. For now though, this gets a thumbs up from me and looks like another solid Namco creation.

The game is set in an 10 square mile area called Empire Bay, which is based on New York City and its nickname, “The Empire State”.

The game map image released shows us what design the game map is and the names of some characters in the game that you presumably have to take missions from.

Certain key locations are marked out and the map shows how the different places around Empire Bay connect together.

Mafia II is set between 1945 and 1955 and apparently, the game has a 700 page script with several hours of cutscenes – its prequel, Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven, had a 400 page script. Expect this game to be the Godfather of the mafia games. Har har.

It’s not much to look at, but it’s interesting to see. Click the image to see it in its full 1600×1200 size.

Somebody’s been nice enough to record some footage of one of the levels of the upcoming Xbox Live Arcade, PSN & Wiiware release Sonic 4 and we’ve got it here for you to watch. It is as of the time of writing available to watch on Youtube, but for how long we don’t know so we thought it best to upload it ourselves.

Eagerly anticipating this, I watched the video excitedly and was not disappointed – along with tweaked graphics and a few little “super” additions, it looks like Sonic 4 encapsulates everything that made the original Sonic games on the Sega Genesis so fun.

The level recorded is Act 2 of the Mad Gear Zone level – a rough camcorder recording of Act 1 was uploaded to Youtube a little while back but it doesn’t make for pleasant watching. Mad Gear Zone is based on Sonic 2′s Metropolis Zone.

The seven minute long video is below for your delectation. It’s obviously not going to be in super high-definition 1080p in fullscreen but it’s fine (best watching it without fullscreening it since the video gets stretched & definition gets lost when Sonic is flinging himself around). It’s certainly a better quality than the Act 1 video though…

The caricatured and exaggerated models look great.

• You play FBI agent William Carter, heading a task-force to stop the alien threat.
• You collect evidence at the scene, a mechanic similar to Bioshock’s photography is pictured. Evidence funds your investigation.
• There is a risk/reward balance between gathering evidence and getting out alive, the missions are fairly non-linear.
• The game isn’t linear, you have a headquaters and you can scan police radio and tapped phones to choose where to head next.
• Elerium, a very rare alien element can be collected, allowing you to create new weapons and tools.
• 2K won’t confirm or deny a multiplayer element, because that went so well with Bioshock 2…

To me XCOM looks like a Bioshock-style game in a very different setting. The Team Fortress 2 meets 50s advertising art style looks great to me and the choice of a faceless, abstracted enemy also excites me.  The team has a high-pedigree and, as somebody who never played the original XCOM games, this looks really exciting.

Make what you will of Lost Planet’s outlandish controls but I love the fact that it differentiates itself from other shooters.  The grapple and the 90 degree quick turn is what sets Lost Planet apart from the cover obsessed competition.  Unfortunately while the acrobatic gameplay works well in a single-player or co-op scenario, it’s all but useless in versus mode.  While the Akrid are designed to grappled on and jumped around, slow lumbering titans for you to conquer, fighting another human exposes all the flaws of an only circumstantially brilliant control system.  If another player gets within ten meters of you for example, the aim speed (designed to shoot Akrid from distance) simply cannot keep up.  As a result, close up fire fights can last up to 20 seconds, feeling more like dogfights than shootouts.

Another example of the game’s inability to manage competitive play comes when a grenade knocks you off your feet, placing you in a 5 second standing-up animation during which you are incredibly vulnerable.  There are dozens of occurrences like this, artifacts from the single player game that considerably unbalance competitive play.  As a result, the winners of most of my games were the ones camping powerful weapons or decent kill-spots.  I’m not saying that no skill is involved but there are an awful lot of exploits that often turn the side of an increasingly frustrating battle.

It’s not that Lost Planet 2 looks to be a bad game, I loved the first game’s campaign and loved the co-op demo for the sequel, but the formula simply doesn’t translate into competitive play.

This year EA are going to have to prove their worth all over again with Skate 3.  Coming out only a year after the previous instalment it’s starting to look more like cash-grab than ever before (those fat in-game billboards don’t help).

The demo starts off well, hitting all the right marks in the presentation.  You are lead through “skate school” by Coach Frank (Jason Lee, My Name Is Earl) who familiarises you with the basics.  His charisma shines through in his virtual double and, while Black Box has never been good at building characters, Coach Frank is a great one.  Once the tutorial is over, the great presentation continues into the open-world, which maintains the oversaturated lazy summer vibe that make Skate’s cities such a fun place to be.

Create a park could add a lot to the game, but we can't tell from the demo.

Unfortunately, while the presentation is second to none, the UI now slicker than an Apple product, it seems to be the first game in the series to suffer from a lack of genuine innovation.  Skate 2 more than justified itself by doubling the trick roster and adding off-board controls and in comparison Skate 3 feels somewhat unneeded.  A perfect example of this is the new trick roster, the ability to drop into pipes has been added and there are some new tricks like the darkside grind, but these feel like small additions to an already complete system, nothing that will change the way you skate.  Continuing the focus on gimmickry rather than substantial change, there seems to be a larger focus on the hall of meat mode that entertained us in Skate 2 for all of five minutes.  Why you would waste your time jumping off of buildings rather than playing with the intricate and rewarding skating system is beyond me.

I’m not saying that Skate 3 is a bad game, I had a brilliant time playing around in the demo but it just didn’t seem that different to Skate 2.  While it must be mentioned that the main promises of Skate 3, a persistent online infrastructure and custom park creation can’t be appreciated until the full game hits (May 11^th), the central gameplay hasn’t changed enough for me to recommend it to long-time series veterans.

But this year I really do feel it will be a huge year for gaming. There are products this year which could potentially revolutionize the industry… potentially. Games such as Halo Reach, Gran Turismo 5, & Crysis 2 could have a deep impact on what developers do with their own games and hardware products such as  Project Natal is trying to bring the best motion sensing capabilities ever. OnLive wants to eliminate the disc and use streaming capabilities to play games.

Both Project Natal and OnLive have the potential to greatly expand the way we game from now on. Will they succeed? There’s no way to know until everything is released. So now that quarter one has passed, I’m deciding to log these feelings. Expect a few lists here people. Everyone loves lists, and most people tend to disagree with them.

Either way, here’s what I think we’re looking at this year as far as games go.

What We Have:

Top Honors:

God of War III - This game has already wowed critics everywhere. Its slick visuals & epic size give it a leg up on the other titles of 2010. This was not a perfect title though. The story in GoW3 didn’t stack up as well as the other entries did and may have taken some gamers slightly out of the experience but if you’re main concern with this game is the story, you shouldn’t be playing it anyways. Amazingly fluid combat, immense bosses & landscapes, beautiful visuals and improvements on every other aspect of the game make it a sure contender for Game of the Year everywhere and I guarantee it will win quite a few this year.

Mass Effect 2 – Although I’m not a huge fan of this series, I am a huge fan of RPGs especially ones with big stories so I have played through both games and spent many hours doing so. Mass Effect 2 was a definite improvement on the first game in virtually every way. Some people may say the game’s skill tree was dumbed down too much. While it may appear so, it really wasn’t. Rather it was made more user friendly and organized better. Things may have been missing but not enough to create a problem. The game held beautiful visuals, a great shooting mechanic and a great story and blended them into one brilliant concoction. This will win many awards as well.

Bioshock 2 – An amazing single player FPS that slightly borrowed RPG elements and used them right. The campaign was engrossing every single second. The splicing of creepiness and action are forever engraved in my mind. The multiplayer was also extremely fun and pretty addicting. I had very low expectations for the online experience but I was shocked at how much fun I had with it. Considering the multiplayer was kind of buggy and laggy at times but it still was more entertaining than most other games says a lot. Expect awards here too.

Honorable Mentions:

Final Fantasy XIII
Just Cause 2
Heavy Rain
Bayonetta
Dante’s Inferno
Darksiders
Aliens vs Predator

What We Have To Look Forward To:

We’re a quarter of the way through the year and we already have a lot of great games. As everyone knows, things tend to slow dramatically during the summer but we’re still in for quite a treat in the next 3 quarters of releases. Here’s a quick look at some of the major titles dropping this year. Please note, there may be some titles missing that you’re excited for but that’s not to say those titles are less important in any way.

Upcoming Releases:

Portal 2
Crysis 2
Halo Reach
Fallout: New Vegas
Crackdown 2
Alan Wake
Splinter Cell Conviction
Lost Planet 2
Super Mario Galaxy 2
Red Dead Redemption
Batman Arkham Asylum 2
Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands
Alpha Protocol
Mafia II
Dead Rising 2
Brink
Medal of Honor
Gran Turismo 5
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
Fable 3
Rock Band 3
Postal 3
Singularity
StarCraft 2
Pokemon Black & White
R.U.S.E.
Max Payne 3
True Crime
OnLive
Project Natal

Here’s a list of my top ten anticipated games:

1. Halo Reach
2. Fallout: New Vegas
3. Crysis 2
4. Portal 2
5. Medal of Honor
6. Splinter Cell Conviction
7. Brink
8. Crackdown 2
9. Alan Wake
10. Project Natal

IF everything goes right we could be looking at one of the best years in gaming in a while. Here’s to hoping it all does.

You also control hero units, pictured on the box.

The RTS genre has been in turmoil these recent years.  Relic have been focusing on micro-level combat with Company of Heroes and Dawn of War, EA have maintained (for the most part) the classical base building approach with C&C, Ubisoft are focusing on psychological tactics with RUSE and Blizzard are set to reinvent the wheel with the imminent release of Star Craft II.  The stale genre is being pulled in any and every direction, each developer desperate to make their approach the next standard in RTS gaming.  While this process of reinvention is producing some dud titles (I’m looking at you C&C4), it is undoubtedly the start of a very exciting change for the genre.

One of the directions being explored is scale, taking the classic resource managing, base building RTS and shifting it to a continental scale.  The pioneer in this particular venture is Gas Powered Games, the title Supreme Commander and this year, Supreme Commander 2.  I checked out today’s demo to see if this is a decent innovation or a dead end.

SC2 starts like most old-school RTS’, with a long winded tutorial.  While this is somewhat necessary, it lacks charisma and by focusing on the basics, fails to display the scale of warfare that Supreme Commander is famous for.  Once you do finally get to play with “Strategic vision mode”, zooming out to view the entire battlefield, things get an awful lot more interesting.  The Spartan unit design and underwhelming graphical detail begin to make sense as you realise that this incredibly zoomed out view is clearly how the game is intended to be played.  From this view you can selectively “paint” units to collect them, this makes executing large scale tactical manoeuvres such as flanking and setting up lines of defence relatively easy.  Using both the strategic view and the micro level view I found that controlling my army was an intuitive and easy task, even on a console.

While each unit may look dull, when hundreds of units engage the game can look surprisingly good.

While strategic vision mode does add another tactical layer to the proceedings, the levels in the demo don’t best take advantage of it.  Rather basic in structure the levels focus on bottlenecks and resource control at the expense of a truly epic scale.  While these demo levels may not fully representative of the variety on offer in the full game, they were not very impressive.  Taking a similarly 90s approach, the voice acting, characters and storyline presented in the demo were incredibly corny.

Overall Supreme Commander 2 looks to be a classic RTS with a gimmicky twist.  Sure the strategic view does add a few possibilities to battle tactics but it hardly revolutionises the genre.  Supreme Commander 2 focuses on base-building, tech trees and amassing ridiculous numbers of units.  For those who can appreciate the slow build-up of old-school RTS gameplay there is a lot to enjoy here, but for people who lack the time to spend half an hour building their base and army before going to war, they might want to pass on this one.  Supreme Commander 2 doesn’t look to reinvent the RTS genre but sticks faithfully to an effective formula.

The game has been out since November in Japan, but this gives all those who didn’t get a chance to play the PlayStation 2 release a chance to catch up on what they’ve been missing, along with enough new content to make previous players pick it up again.

He looked normal and while to some this would perhaps take away from the identity of the stealth-action game, I welcomed this change because the prospects that would come with this were enticing. However Ubisoft delayed development of the game, the concepts were shifted around & tweaked and it’s taken over two years for the game to ready for public use even if only in the form of a bitesize demo. How is the demo, you ask?

Simple answer: I think it’s bloody brilliant.

For those who have played any of the four previous Splinter Cell titles that precede ConViction, the first thing you’ll notice more than anything else is the aesthetic. There is a completely new look: this is the main thing that has remained since the redesign. Ubisoft have stuck with the humanising of Sam Fisher: he’s not a lycra-wearing secret agent armed to the teeth with high-tech gadgets supplied by the NSA. Sam is a regular-looking guy who carries a couple of tools and wears a turtleneck jumper and his trademark goggles almost with disdain.

His no-mercy attitude is alive and kicking still though – the very first thing you do is beat a suspect to submission in order to gain information. The motives are different now though as Sam has his own agenda. He’s not working for the NSA branch Third Echelon anymore: he’s actually being hunted by them. Sam’s trying to seek revenge for the death of his daughter & there’s no holding back.

The objectives & credits blend into the background of the game nicely.

You take control of Sam in a public bathroom as he’s “asking” for information regarding a target. Attention to detail is highly noticeable here too: the level of detail is an improvement over Double Agent (even though DA had brilliant attention to detail with the lighting). It’s clear though that the massive delay has done a world of good: everything seems tweaked to perfection. This stretches as far as objective details as your objectives will appear in-game on the environment in a sort of Heroes-esque fashion.

The presentation of ConViction gives the game another step in a different direction from the preceding titles but it doesn’t seem tacky or thrown-in. Due care and attention is given to little things like this to give these things worthwhile meaning.

Another little thing you’ll notice that gives ConViction a different feel is that you can mark enemies to attack – this leads to either setting up an auto-kill function that incapacitates every enemy marked or simply knowing where your enemy is. To gain the auto-kill function you have to silently take down an enemy – the opening sets up this option so you get used to it but later on you’ll have to rely on your own skill to use it effectively. It will come in handy but there is a wholly satisfying feeling to taking down enemies yourself with a pistol.

The opening section was vivid, brutal and impactual. It made for great gaming.

Speaking of which the shooting mechanics are pretty basic but in an Uncharted manner: the crosshair is small but effective. The sensitivity is just right so you don’t feel like you’re being forced into stealth. Shooting someone will alert enemies but not to your presence – this can play to your advantage in certain situations as it can be used to help flank an enemy. If an enemy is hit another one may go to where the body is, diverting their line of sight and allowing you to sneak around them.

This means that you can shoot someone, quickly move to flank and take out another enemy without them ever realising you’re coming behind them. If an enemy does know where your position is and you move out of the position an outline of Sam will appear and it acts as a sort of marker for you to base where the enemies are looking at.

Try to use the flanking system with the marking system if you can – this gives the game real depth. Heavily relying on just stealth or just action means that the feeling of success is subdued and that element of stealth-action is eliminated in favour of one side of the coin. Both the stealth and action styles combine to create a highly riveting & enjoyable experience – playing either or takes away from the atmosphere somewhat.

In general, the idea of stealth movement is still prominent but there’s a change of pacing now. It’s not so much now about meticulous planning and assessing every possible angle before deducing and acting out the best course of action: instead there’s an element of risk and open choice. If you make a mistake it’s recoverable and it won’t jeopardise the next part whereas in older Splinter Cell games if you made a mistake chances are the end result would be catastrophic.

How you control Sam seems to have been affected by this: the ConViction demo implemented a cover-to-cover system for a large portion of the time which was very much akin to the likes of Gears of War. Whilst the idea of occasionally scripted movements doesn’t seem like what you’d expect from a Splinter Cell it works very well.

Overall Impressions:

You’ll notice that the half-stealth, half-action mix strays from previous Splinter Cell games: you still use the shadows & noise as a necessity and you will implement gadget use but the slow-motion auto-kills, the lessened focus on planning out attacks and the overall feel gives ConViction a different game experience that most likely split the Splinter Cell userbase and newcomers alike.

The demo is short (no more than 10 minutes worth) but you get enough to give you a real taste of what’s to come. It’s not the demo that was shown at gaming conferences which was a nice surprise.

The alterations that are most prominent may take away from the identity of Splinter Cell – ConViction is less Sam Fisher, more Jason Bourne – but the changes won’t go to waste. ConViction feels and plays great once you’ve got yourself used to the new design.

The right spots were hit for me when playing the demo: it’ll be a shame to see some core components of Splinter Cell games go but the change is positive. Put it this way: I’ve been waiting with eager anticipation for ConViction for years and in no way has the demo dampened my eagerness. I want this game even more.

Included in each retail copy should be a Ghost Recon: Future Soldier beta code. The game should have a campaign mode, an entirely separate co-operative campaign mode with four missions, two characters (neither of which are Sam Fisher), a Rainbow Six-style points system, a 6-hour storyline and a prequel setting. There will also be a “Deniable Ops” mode which is a multiplayer mode on the co-0p campaign maps and two other maps.

Splinter Cell ConViction is hitting the Xbox 360 and PC on the 13th April in the US, the 15th Apri in the EU & Australia and the 16th April in the UK.

I had completely forgotten however about Blur until reminded to grab a beta code for the multiplayer. Interest piqued again, I waited until the email came through with my code and I downloaded and jumped into the beta with both eagerness and trepidation. In some way, I’m grateful that I wasn’t massively impressed with the outcome because in the back of my mind I must have known that no matter how hard Bizarre tried, they wouldn’t make a better racing game (again, for me at least) than PGR4.

Mixing an array of racing titles such as Need for Speed, Forza Motorsport, Project Gotham, Ridge Racer, Wipeout and even Mario Kart, the experience you have is ultimately affected by this. For the multiplayer side anyway, there is a ranking system slightly akin to Forza that you earn points for depending on what you do in races. The beta offers four different modes with six different tracks and several Modern Warfare-esque challenges to complete externally. The two modes I’ve experienced and most people will are unlocked from the start and both are basic races disguised as alternate game modes.

You start off with a handful of cars, all modelled with great realism: if you take any big positive from Blur, it’s the visual quality. The cars look fantastic, the landscapes look realistic and blend well with the shine and pace of the lights that flash and “blur” whilst driving at breakneck speeds. Visually, Blur is sound. The realism isn’t Forza standard but it’s pretty much on-par with PGR4 (at least with the cars).

Taking your shiny car to the track, the main objective is to win a race. To win you have to beat the other opponents to the line but there are several factors affecting how you do this that come in the form of powerups. There are multiple powerups that offer you different powers such as speed boost, mines, seeking missiles and shields and they are scattered over the tracks in numerous locations. Let me put it this way: the more offensive powerups you use, the more likely you’ll win. Speed and missiles are the most effective, whilst the other powerups have minimal use in the grand scheme of things. Keep picking up speed boosts and missiles consistently and you’ll probably win.

There are a fair chunk of powerups but after a few races you’ll feel a sense of unwelcome familiarity creep in. The powerups don’t seem varied or creative enough and once you’ve found that speed and missile powerups work wonders you’ll see little reason to go for anything else. This in itself is an issue because if looking at this from a Mario Kart perspective, Blur takes the bad side of the powerup system from Mario Kart and doesn’t factor in the good side- when in first place you’re completely subsceptible to missiles and other weapon and there’s little you can do except dodge and evade as much as possible. The powerups on the track are available to everyone and don’t waiver, so what you get everyone else can get.

Blur looks excellent, no question.

In Mario Kart, if you were in last it would give you an advantage to even up the odds. In Blur, if you’re in last you have the same odds as everyone else but if you’re in first you are actually at a disadvantage in that you don’t need weapons and everyone behind you will send attacks at you. One of those attacks hit and odds are you’ll probably get hit by another. You will probably lose first place to second and will have to play catch-up but if you’re more than halfway through a race you’re unlikely to win. By the time you’ve recuperated from the position losing hit(s) you’ll be at such a disadvantage that you’ll find it difficult to chase down first place and take it back.

This frustrated me because I found myself in first several times and losing the position because I focused on maintaining speed and my position and not anything else which gave other racers the chance to take advantage. This is where my next issue factors in.

The handbrake feels overly sensitive whilst the brakes not sensitive enough, so you find yourself around most corners fighting for control – the culmination of this usually leaves you bouncing off the walls or dropping a sharp amount of crucial speed. The game isn’t massively horrific to control but for a game that relies on the winner having consistency and tactical precision, the rusty and stiff braking control does nothing to help you.

Driving in a straight line is absolutely fine and even basic moving from side to side is fine too – just be wary of every corner that’s more than 90 degrees… Blur seems to want you to mimic Ridge Racer’s drift style (it even rewards drifting with points) but the execution of drift is either accidental or forced: it doesn’t feel natural in Blur to slide around a corner and you’ll usually be left lamenting your decision to drift when you drop a few places on the grid because someone else went for either the slow & steady or breakneck “bounce off the side” strategy.

This is the main problem above all else: it’s confused in its intention. It’s in a new but murky area where arcade simulation is combined with realistic cars, landscapes & controls. On paper, Blur should be highly intriguing and to a certain extent it is but once the initial wow factor of “look at the shiny!” has passed, you’re left with an awkwardly uneven driving experience that sits in a purgatory genre.

Overall Impressions:

You can’t fault the presentation of the game. It’s the game itself that’s at fault: it tries to blend together realistic driving simulation with arcade aspects to create a hybrid racing game and the end product isn’t as great as it sounds. Perhaps the single player will yield a better experience – it’s the game play that the issue lies with, not the multiplayer component.

With Split/Second and Gran Turismo 5 both on the way and Forza 3 already well-established, I can’t see Blur making the impact the developers would hope for. That being said, some will find the smash and bash racing & the ranking system to their tastes.

This beta was played on the Xbox 360. Blur will be released on May 25th in the USA and May 28th in the EU on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.

Crackdown 2

Crackdown 2 was confirmed for a June release date (UPDATE: which in the last few hours Microsoft have said was a mistake), an announcement accompanied by the screenshots and box-art below.

Fable III

Peter Molenyeux started the sure to be ridiculous hype-train for Fable III at X10.  He claimed that Fable III will be “an RPG without a health bar or experience”.  He also demonstrated that weapons and equipment will change aesthetically to suit your moral alignment similarly to how your character did in past games.  The aesthetic changes in the world, characters and items seem more pronounced in general than in past games, where in the last game you may have had a halo, in this game you will have expansive angel wings that emote towards other characters, it all looks a lot more organic.  Molenyeux also commented on the fact that, as ruler of the kingdom of Albion, you will be able to pass law and rule the kingdom as you please.  This obviously ties into the political landscape of Albion and reflects the moral choices on a larger scale.

“Touch” was also mentioned numerous time, Molenyeux thinks that more intimate interactions between characters will build a larger emotional bond between the player and the game.  It has been heavily rumoured that the “touch” mechanic means Project Natal integration but this is yet to be confirmed.  Overall, Fable III looks to be a solid if slightly rushed follow up to Fable II and if the Natal integration comes to fruition this could be an extremely interesting prospect.

The video below is the first of the Fable III developer diaries and includes gameplay footage (subscribe to our YouTube channel where we will post the rest of the series).

Splinter Cell: Conviction

X10 brought little new info on Splinter Cell: Conviction apart from the announcement that a beta invite for Ghost Recon: Future Soldier will be bundled with the game.  This new trailer hit also hit.

And The Rest…

• Microsoft flaunted their exclusive FFXIII 250gb bundle, disregarding the fact that there is no original artwork on the thing, a half arsed job compared to the beautifully engraved FFXIII PS3 bundle in Japan.
• Lost Planet 2 was announced to launch for May 18th with split-screen co-op, it’s shaping up well.
• Alan Wake was disappointingly canned for the PC.
• Perfect Dark XBLA was confirmed for March, looks fun.
• Valve announced “The Passing” DLC for Left 4 Dead 2 will release in March and will entail the new survivors meeting the old survivors.  Interestingly there will also be a new brand of special infected called, “The Fallen”.
• Valve then bizarrely announced a new campaign for Left 4 Dead, yep the original, coming a month after the L4D2 one.

A demo of Quantic Dream’s long-awaited interactive experience Heavy Rain was released to the general public last week. I say experience because I still can’t decide whether I should call Heavy Rain a game or not and therein lies my problem.

I’m a film guy nowadays but I have been gaming for many years. I’ve clocked more hours on more games than I’d care to mention. to many gamers I’d be considered a rookie in comparison but with more than a decade of gaming under my belt I can definitely hold my own. I’ve watched the video game industry grow rapidly and evolve faster than I can keep track. New and innovative people show us what could be the future of gaming but rather than disregard them we open our minds to the possibilities. Slowly disappearing are the days of wired controllers, 8-bit games, cartridges, memory cards and rumble packs.

They are being swept aside to make way for motion-controlled gaming, 1080p visuals, downloadable games, internal memory, backwards compatibility, wireless controllers & 3D gaming. Amidst the wave of new ways to play, David Cage asks you to forget most of that and try out a different style of gaming: an interactive movie experience. The idea sounds a little silly but as mentioned earlier, the gaming community can embrace the prospect of a new way to play. Myself along with many others like me found ourselves relishing the opportunity to try this experimental and intriguing new form of gaming.

David Cage had won the gamers over. His charming persona sold us the ideas he had and all he needed was for us to see for ourselves what he was trying to do. Exhibited last year several times, many gamers got the chance to play the first demo for the game. We were blown away by incredible visuals, the prospect of your decisions affecting the story arc and (most importantly) the innovative style of playing Heavy Rain.

I was sold. But when the public demo was released and I got to play a couple of other scenarios in the story I found myself at odds with my own original impressions. Was my first impression affected by the pitch made by Cage? Is Heavy Rain really as good as I believed?

Is Heavy Rain even a game?

When I played through the demo (which I have done twice) I immediately get wrapped up in the world of Heavy Rain, the film noir styles and the thriller elements that the theme of rain itself exemplify. As far as the narrative and the immersion into Heavy Rain’s story go, I was definitely impressed. The two characters you play as and the other characters you meet during the demo all feel believable, unscripted and they compliment the setting perfectly. The first part of the demo (outside of the mini tutorial) introduces you to the asthmatic Scott Shelby, a private detective who is trying to solve the murder case that runs throughout the story.

He’s looking for the murdered known as the Origami Killer and in the demo he’s come to a “sleazy place” to ask a victim’s mother if she knows anything that could help him find the killer. Right from the start of this “sequence” the sense of realism is incredible. Everything you see on screen is immaculately designed, the whole environment looking extraordinary. The first character aside from Scott Shelby you’re introduced to is the owner of the place and his uncaring attitude is just one of many convincing moments. It feels very much like watching a cutscene even though you are in full control.

You can bribe the owner to tell you where to find your person but you don’t have to if you don’t want to. Whether choosing to or not is something that could affect the story but I haven’t worked out how yet. Heavy Rain has been touted a lot as being an experience that is affected by the decisions you make but it seems that a lot of decisions do lead to pretty much the same outcome. You’ll experience this during the sequence because many different options are presented to you which in turn play out differently but the end result for me was different in both playthroughs.

Visually Heavy Rain is very, very impressive.

One moment that exemplified this was when Scott has an asthma attack – you can leave Scott to have it for as long as you like but no matter how long you leave him struggling before you give him his inhaler, the same end result occurs because it leads to the big moment in the sequence. This kind of annoyed me because it suggested that you have a choice but you really don’t. That being said what follows can play out differently (but only if you chose to not press the buttons).

The other half of the demo seemed to be far more scripted and straightforward. Playing as FBI agent Norman Jayden, in this sequence you are looking for clues to help figure out what happened at the crime scene you are in. Someone has been murdered by the Origami Killer and as Norman you are looking for things that could help you figure out the events that took place. This would be very enjoyable to do were it not for the awkward movement controls within the game – you hold down R2 to move and use the left analogue stick to move in the direction you want to go. It feels unnatural to do this – I’d much rather just have the analogue stick as the movement and use the R2 button for something else.

The sequence is still good fun as you implement your special sunglasses which can detect elements of things not visible to the human eye. Kind of like the glasses in They Live, but with shoe prints and DNA samples instead of aliens. The detective element is where the game flourishes and the quick time events that come hand in hand with the core game play fit well with the more open environment you’re allowed to explore.

Much in the same way as the first scene, the environment you’re in looks fantastic. The height of realism in Heavy Rain is something I haven’t really experienced before and it really does help you engage in the experience. It’s the visuals and the narrative that excel in Heavy Rain and they do help with forgiving the little game play mechanics that can be annoying.

This is Norman Jayden, wearing his special sunglasses. The moments where you use the glasses to find clues are my favourite bits of Heavy Rain (probably because those moments feel like I'm playing a video game).

That said though my problem still remains. I liked my time with Heavy Rain and in no way should it be classed as bad. It’s a great experience and it is really good to watch and get engrossed in. But that’s my problem. When I’m playing Heavy Rain, it doesn’t feel like I’m playing a game. It feels like I’m playing out the sequences in a film. It’s a dilemma I’m in because I really appreciate what Heavy Rain does and as an avid film watcher and gamer it should tick all the right boxes.

But there’s that niggling feeling that I don’t want to have any control over Heavy Rain, I just want to sit back and let everything pan out. I would love Quantic Dream to add a feature that lets Heavy Rain randomly play out one of the story arcs so I can sit back and really appreciate the visual quality and the engaging story. While experiencing Heavy Rain I sometimes feel like the quick time elements and the button pressing is detaching me from the narrative and the realism which is what I’m far more interested in.

Heavy Rain is great, no question and I hope that when I pick up a copy (which I definitely will) that my problem will be eradicated. I’d love a Heavy Rain film. If there’s a Heavy Rain in the pipeline then I’m happy.

Alan Wake

Alan Wake was dated for May 18th, an announcement that was accompanied by this sweet trailer.

An $80 Alan Wake collector’s edition was also revealed, the box itself is hardbound in linen, made to resemble a hardcover book and will include:

• Game Disc in box with unique art
• Exclusive In-Game Audio Commentary and Hints by Remedy
• “The Alan Wake Files” – a 144pg book that includes a short story written by Alan Wake and compiles the FBI dossiers investigating the events in Bright Falls, WA
• Exclusive Audio Disc with Soundtrack and Score
• Game Add-on token redeemable on Xbox LIVE for the first Alan Wake add-on content pack
• Exclusive Xbox disc with special content: Alan Wake Xbox Live Theme and Alan Wake Avatar for Xbox LIVE

I am a big advocate of developer commentary in games and if it’s anything like Valve’s commentary then it alone will make the package worth the mark up.

Dead Rising 2

Dead Rising 2 was dated for the 28th of August and Capcom announced a downloadable prologue chapter entitled “CASE ZERO” exclusively for the 360.  This announcement was also accompanied by a trailer demonstrating the player’s ability to combine weapons.  Watergun + gasoline = flamethrower, bike + chainsaw = erm… bikesaw?  Trailer below.

Halo Reach

Halo Reach’s multiplayer beta was confirmed for May 3.  The now standard Halo setup of 4 player co-op, split-screen and screenshot and video capture suites are all confirmed.  The game has been described as “gritty”, but when applied to the Halo universe that probably equates to glitter rather than gravel.  The press release also claims “an all-new engine” although the screenshots suggest otherwise.  There looks to be a lot of in engine change, such as new animations and effects, but the core is unmistakably the same.  Think Modern Warfare 1 to 2 rather than a complete overhaul.  I guess all will be revealed when “the largest ever console beta” launches this May.  Oh yea and lame box-art confirmed.

]]> http://scrambledpixel.com/2010/02/11/x10-roundup-part-1/feed/ 1 http://scrambledpixel.com/2010/02/07/fallout-new-vegas-screens-and-info/ http://scrambledpixel.com/2010/02/07/fallout-new-vegas-screens-and-info/#comments Mon, 08 Feb 2010 00:01:24 +0000 Balaam http://scrambledpixel.com/?p=5431 The March issue of PC Gamer UK has the scoop on Fallout: New Vegas with screens and info.

Unfortunately, judging by the reused assets and general feeling of déjà vu, early signs are suggesting that New Vegas will be more of the same rather than a revolutionary step forward for the series.  Below is a gallery of screens as well as information compiled from the issue for you to make up your own less jaded and sceptic mind.

• There is an optional hardcore mode, the character needs to drink water, ammo has weight, healing isn’t instant etc. Normal mode is more similar to Fallout 3 gameplay.

• The storyline is focused on the New California Republic vs. Caesar’s Legion vs. New Vegas residents.

• Set in the Mojave wastelands. Vegas didn’t get many nukes. More intact buildings, as well as desert vegetation. Vegas itself is mostly intact.

• You don’t play a Vault Dweller (or descendant of one) but a courier, left for dead and saved by a friendly robot.

• There is a screenshot of a vault suit as well.

• There is an assault rifle looking like the M4, as well as a new big gun with a backpack, held like a minigun.

• There are special moves for melee weapons in VATS – specifically a move for a golf club called “Fore” which seems to be a groin shot.

• Bartering is not just lower prices but negotiating for better rewards.

• Followers can be managed through a context-sensitive menu, with orders like “follow”, “stay” or “attack”.

• The Hoover Dam is in the game and is supplying electricity to the city.

• There is a quest to rescue a ghoul from some super mutants. The ghoul can then become your companion.

• The Geckos are back.

• There are both dumb and intelligent super mutants, including the elite Nightkin.

• Some super mutants look similar to the ones in Fallout 3, while others are new. There is e.g. a female super mutant with a 1950s hairstyle who apparently is one of their leaders.

• Screenshots include a guy with a beard and straw hat, a ghoul and an NCR Ranger

• The only picture of New Vegas itself is concept art and not a screenshot

• Some location screenshots include a huge model dinosaur advertising a hotel, some satellite dishes, an array of solar panels

• A character generation shot showing a “vigour machine” instead of the skill book

• NCR base is the McCarran Airport, Caesar’s Legion is based in the Vegas Strip, while super mutants are based in a place called Black Mountain. There is also a town called Fremont and another called Primm. A topless reuve is mentioned as being in the latter.

• NCR Ranger armor is similar to a brown combat armor with sleeves, there are concept arts of a Ranger

• Skils have a bigger effect on conversation choices. E.g. someone with a high Explosives skill may be able to have a coversation about explosives where appropriate.

• There is a Reputation system in adition to Karma.

Via the excellent All Games Beta

Flight owns ground combat in Dark Void

My main comment about Dark Void last I played it was that the flight sections were it’s main strength compared to it’s monotonous ground encounters, Airtight seem to know their strengths too because you start the demo at the top of a cliff, the kind that begs to be jumped off of.  Once you leap, engage your jetpack and un-invert the controls after a horrifying and sudden dive into a cliff face the action really starts.  In the air is where Dark Void really shines, the lighting breaks through the impressive clouds, the textures that looked murky up close look fine when you’re zipping past them and the fluid animations give off an air (no pun intended) of velocity.  Once in the air you are encouraged to get comfortable with the jetpack controls through a quick tutorial.  It’s responsive as you would expect from the developers of Crimson Skies and the gesture controls that trigger quick 180 turns and other aerobatics are intuitive and infinitely useful.

You don’t get much time to play around however, before some nasty looking UFOs show up intent on murdering you.  Using the agility of your jetpack is key to taking down the UFOs as you need to line up machine gun sweeps to shoot them down, there is a nice balance between your superior agility and their superior firepower but the combat never blows you away.  As well as shooting the UFOs I also experimented with the ability to hijack them, this lead me into an easy but incredibly lengthy quick time event sequence that disappointingly breaks the fast paced flow of the battle.  Furthermore the hijacking maneuver is incredibly easy to pull off, unbalancing the combat to a glaring degree.

After this aerial fight the game then switches seamlessly to an on foot battle in a tower.  I was impressed by the seamless change from flight to cover based combat but at the same time fairly disappointed by the on foot combat itself.  The guns fail to feel at all empowering, the sound effects and enemy is dire and the cover mechanic is nonsensical.  It is by no means broken but it feels half arsed.  After a few minutes of average combat a boss showed up and the demo finished with a spectacular battle pulled one of the cheapest tricks in the book, faded out just before the finale. End of demo.

Ignoring the sour taste that the end of the demo left in my mouth, I’m still not convinced by Dark Void, the concept seems to awesome to screw up but a series of technical flaws (average graphics, poor audio) and poor design choices (control scheme, cover system, quick time events) leave me sceptical about this game.  Similarly to my previous hands-on, I am left feeling that if the majority of the game is aerial combat that it will do alright, but if I’m stuck with too much average third person shooting then Dark Void could be one of the early disappointments of the year.

The Dark Void demo is available now on both the Xbox Live Marketplace and the Playstation Store.

You get to ride these beasts, much like in God of War.

Lucifer is trying to take over the throne of God, and in order to do so, he must wed a Heaven-bound soul. Enter Dante, a veteran knight of the crusades who returns home to find his house ransacked and his beloved Beatrice murdered in cold blood. He also arrives just in time to see Lucifer drag Beatrice’s soul into the depths of hell. Naturally pissed, he sets off on a journey through the 9 circles of hell to face down Lucifer himself and win back Beatrice’s soul.

I’m going to be honest. This game is amazing. In the first 10 minutes of the somewhat lengthy demo, you stitch a giant cross directly onto your chest, slay dozens of enemy fodder, rip a knife out of your back, defy Death himself and steal Death’s own scythe to utterly obliterate him with it. If that isn’t the epitome of bad ass, I’m not sure what is.

Some may compare Dante’s Inferno to God of War. I don’t blame them! That isn’t necessarily a bad thing though – far from it in fact. To say the gameplay is reminiscent of God of War would be an understatement – it plays like a carbon copy. I played it on the PS3, so you can imagine how easy it was to settle into the familiar control scheme. You also collect souls in order level up your abilities. However, there are two ability trees used to level Dante up – Unholy and Holy. When you grab an enemy, you can either punish or absolve their souls, and depending on the one you choose, the souls count towards their corresponding Ability trees.

He's only got eyes for you..

The visuals of Dante’s Inferno are quite well done, especially the CGI cutscenes. There is so much detail that you can pick up the little hairs on Beatrice’s face. Another thing to mention is that there are quite a few cutscenes that are animated in a very unique way, and I’m quite excited to see more of these in the full version. The voice acting seems quite solid, but since you really only get to hear a few of the characters in the demo, only time will tell if the rest of the cast follows suite. The impressive orchestral tracks sound massive and really capture the scope of the quest that you’ve embarked on… much like God of War.

I can say that I’m super interested in this game and can’t wait to play it when it gets released on February 09, 2010. Another thing of note is that PS3 owners get the option to get the exclusive Divine Edition of the game, which includes developer commentaries, a Wayne Barlow digital art book, the game’s soundtrack, and a digital copy of the complete Longfellow translation of Dante Alighieri’s Inferno. This will be the same cost as the Xbox 360 standard version.

Why would you put a corridor in a game about jetpacks?

Dark Void’s gameplay is split quite obviously into two sections: cover based shooting and flight.  The cover based shooting is standard stuff with the A button moving you in and out of cover, the system is almost identical to Gears of War.  The shooting itself felt a bit weak however, with the robotic enemies soaking up entire clips of ammo before going down.  The enemies also seemed to either stick in one bit of cover without moving or charge directly at you.  They did track you well if you moved around the environment with your jetpack but their predictable AI patterns need some work.

The cover based shooting also works moving up or down a vertical edge, with you clinging to ledges and leaning over to shoot enemies.  It looks great, but in gameplay terms it is confined corridor shooting, even if the corridor look spectacular in scale.

Although pretty, this is effectively a corridor

At this point in my play of Dark Void I was ready to give it up as a depressingly average third person shooter.  The jetpack, which I initially though would change the feel of the game entirely had simply moved the game from a vertical to a horizontal plain.  I was about to put the controller down when I turned a corner, out of a narrow jungle path and saw a vista that promised Dark Void could do more than corridors.  It was a wide open expanse.  The ground was a colourful array of jungle, rivers and beaches with imposing alien towers reaching up into the sky and towering over me.

I jumped, and for the next 5 minutes Dark Void was a different game.  The graphics that looked grainy and poor in the  shooting sections looked great as I whizzed past them in this wide open arena.  The jittery on foot animations were replaced by flailing limbs and strained turns that portrayed the immense speed that my jetpack now possessed.  I felt like I was strapped to a missile.  This feeling of being at the edge of control continued as UFOs showed up to thwart me.  The jetpack’s agility mixed with it’s fragility made this one of the most engaging aerial combat scenes I have ever experienced.

In the air is where Dark Void shines.

Dark Void is a game that could end up scoring 80s or 40s depending entirely on the balance between fight and flight.  I was disappointed by the game every time I had my boots on the ground, but as soon as I took off it was a different game entirely.  Lets hope Airtight pull this one off and gets the winning balance of ground to air combat (10 to 90 please).