Quantum Conundrum Review

Odds are, Quantum Conundrum will give you serious Portal vibes, and for good reason: The cartoony new first-person puzzler is designed by Kim Swift, one of the creators of the original Portal. While this multi-dimensional mind-boggler doesn't quite match the genius of its forebear, it delightfully says, "Laws of physics be damned!" and hands over the keys to four distinct dimensions beyond our own.

Conundrum sends you on a quest of inter-dimensional problem solving to rescue your mad-scientist uncle, who has gone missing somewhere in his labyrinthine mansion. The professor's latest invention, the Inter-dimensional Shift Device (or ISD), should prove quite useful in navigating the obstacles in each room -- obstacles like death lasers and pools of skin-melting "science juice." (On a side note, why would anyone build rooms like this? That is a conundrum for another time…)

Playing this game will feel instantly familiar to anyone who’s spent time with Portal. You move from room to room solving one environmental puzzle at a time. The only characters to be found are robots. And an unseen person on the god mic (your uncle) fills the GLaDOS role, providing colorful commentary on your performance every step of the way.

Does Quantum Conundrum have you completely confounded? Solutions for every puzzle are a click away in the Quantum Conundrum Wiki.

But Quantum's shifty abilities provide their own special kind of brain teasers. Rather than pondering portals, here you're thinking about weight, speed, and velocity -- sometimes all at once.

The Interdimensional Shift Device (or IDS) lets you freely phase into four dimensions, each changing the physical properties of your environment in different ways. For example, say you need to drop something heavy on a switch. In the fluffy dimension, everything sheds its weight and can be lifted with ease.

That's a very basic example, but as you’d expect, the puzzles become much more complex as you progress, with the IDS also empowering you to reverse gravity and bend time. Eventually you'll enter the fluffy dimension, pick up a heavy object, throw it, switch to the slow time dimension so you can hop on, then alternate reversing gravity while you ride on the heavy object's wave of inertia over some deathtrap. Quantum Conundrum stumped me a few times, but never frustrated me.

The four dimensions in Quantum Conundrum are:

Fluffy: Heavy objects can easily be carried or blown by the wind.

Heavy: Light objects become paper weights. Useful for pressing switches.

Slow Motion: Time slows to a crawl but you move at normal speed.

Reverse Gravity: Anything not tied down will float to the ceiling.

Is it safe?

Though the puzzles often dazzle with brilliant design, the interior decorating of the mansion where you spend all your time shows less imagination. You wander through the same hallways passing the same books all throughout the game, and the corridors lack detail. It doesn’t really feel like a wacky, Doc Brown-like inventor lives here.

Story-wise, your uncle communicates with you from the Netherworld during your journey, dropping hint after hint about his whereabouts. Unfortunately, the big reveal with regard to his fate ends up being pretty insignificant -- it seems like a twist is being foreshadowed the whole time, but ultimately the opportunity is missed.

Which leads me to the real let down: the disappointing ending. I'm not going to spoil anything, of course, but know that the end of your five-hour adventure lacks both climax and satisfaction. It’s neither heavy nor fluffy enough.

Source : ign[dot]com

Activision Reveals Walking Dead First-Person Shooter

Activision has announced a new game based on The Walking Dead. Not to be confused with Telltale’s episodic The Walking Dead adventure game, Activision’s version is a first-person action game based on AMC’s The Walking Dead TV show.

Developed by Terminal Reality, The Walking Dead will revolve around Daryl Dixon and his brother Merle on a “haunting, unforgiving quest to make their way to the supposed safety of Atlanta.” Players will control Daryl as they attempt to avoid detection from zombies that hunt using sight, sound and smell and will choose between fighting them or using stealth to avoid detection. According to Activision, “No place is truly safe for Daryl as he makes his way through the Georgia countryside in this new, post-apocalyptic world.”

Supplies will be scarce and players will need to carefully manage food, ammunition and supplies as they make their way through the game. Daryl will encounter “a slew of other characters” along the way that can help or hurt him. Whether or not these characters accompany Daryl is completely up to the player and “represents just some of the major decisions that will constantly be made while fighting to survive.”

The Walking Dead will hit stores in 2013 for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. Few other details are available, but check out the game’s official site for more info in the future. Until then, keep an eye out for all the latest announcements about The Walking Dead TV show before it returns to AMC for season three later this year.

Andrew Goldfarb is IGN’s associate news editor. Keep up with pictures of the latest food he’s been eating by following him on Twitter or IGN.

Source : ign[dot]com

Tiny and Big: Grandpa's Leftovers Review

Great game design teams can take a well-tread genre and throw in a change to make it feel new all over again. Portal exemplifies this, taking first-person shooter mechanics and tossing in brilliant and inventive elements from puzzle and platformer titles to make it about using your brain, rather than spilling those of your enemies. In the same vein we have the quirky indie-developed Tiny and Big: Grandpa’s Leftovers. While its challenge level and narrative are uneven, Tiny and Big nonetheless brings a unique twist to its platforming that, when paired with its fantastic aesthetic and personality, creates an endearing and delightful little experience.

Tiny and Big is the story of the two titular characters. You play as Tiny, a bookish little guy with a penchant for science, using your wits to overcome obstacles in your quest to find Big and recover your inheritance – a pair of underpants. Big’s a jerk, though, and will do everything in his power to slow you down, constantly running away and using his underpants-conferred magical powers to throw gigantic chunks of the world or levitate himself to the higher ground.

Not to be outdone by magic, Tiny’s got a few tools in his arsenal that make him deft at reaching the unreachable. If Tiny encounters a sheer wall he has no chance of jumping up, he can pull out his raygun and slice the world apart. With a few clicks of the mouse you can dynamically cut apart rocks and structures, shaving a column into a set of stairs that you can easily hop up. With your raygun it’s easy to cut up the world, then deploy a rocket booster, use your arms or a grappling hook to push and pull the stone into a configuration that allows you to progress.

At its most basic level, Tiny’s quest really boils down to a few environments you have to scale, but it manages to stay fun because each step is a little sandbox that lets you use your imagination to succeed. You could walk up to a wall and slice it into tiny chunks if you wanted, or you could just as easy do a gigantic slice that allows you to bring the whole wall down in one swoop. Sometimes I would cut stairs out of the world, still other times I might attach a rocket booster to a felled piece of stone, jump on top of it and then ride across a chasm. I died a whole heck of a lot, but forgiving checkpoints didn’t make it too much of a headache. Even when I did die, it usually was the result of hilariously poor planning, with a piece of a rock or wall coming down and crushing me.

It only takes a few hours to get through the entirety of Tiny and Big, but in this case that’s a good thing. Tiny and Big’s slicing mechanism entrances, but since you immediately have access to all the gameplay mechanics from the start, it’d grow wearisome if it went on much longer. The occasional boss battle might force you to be a bit faster with your cuts, but Tiny and Big doesn’t introduce anything new or tweak the formula throughout the story. In many ways it kind of feels like a really long tech demo with incredible aesthetics.

Really, it’s hard not to talk about Tiny and Big without spending time on its looks and music. The most valuable collectibles in each stage are cassette tapes that unlock phenomenal – and often bizarre – indie rock tracks. With so little done as far as the character’s voices -- they’re mostly composed of single sounds and grunts-- it’s nice to have fun and beautiful melodies accompanying your journey. The music feels right for the scenery, too. The look of Tiny and Big feels like someone took the cartoon Adventure Time and put it into the Borderlands engine. Along with its quirkily drawn characters, there’s just so much character in everything you see. Even the game’s menus are fun, and keep in step with the whimsical feeling of the story.

Like I said, Tiny and Big’s length is just about right for what’s included, but I’d really like to see the team at Black Pants Game Studio do more with their ingenious slicing mechanic and story. Some parts of Tiny and Big made me feel like I had to think to overcome them, but other parts felt a bit repetitive or so obvious that I wondered why the studio even bothered to put it in the game (cut a very conspicuously placed column to get across a gap? I’ve done this before…). Likewise I’d love it if the story went deeper. The funny in-game cut-scenes really show that the team has a knack for humor and making lovable characters, but in between all you have is the music to listen to. Games like this, where you spend so much time alone, need more witty banter between a companion and backstory to make the world interesting.



Source : ign[dot]com

Quantum Conundrum Review

Odds are, Quantum Conundrum will give you serious Portal vibes, and for good reason: The cartoony new first-person puzzler is designed by Kim Swift, one of the creators of the original Portal. While this multi-dimensional mind-boggler doesn't quite match the genius of its forebear, it delightfully says, "Laws of physics be damned!" and hands over the keys to four distinct dimensions beyond our own.

Conundrum sends you on a quest of inter-dimensional problem solving to rescue your mad-scientist uncle, who has gone missing somewhere in his labyrinthine mansion. The professor's latest invention, the Inter-dimensional Shift Device (or ISD), should prove quite useful in navigating the obstacles in each room -- obstacles like death lasers and pools of skin-melting "science juice." (On a side note, why would anyone build rooms like this? That is a conundrum for another time…)

Playing this game will feel instantly familiar to anyone who’s spent time with Portal. You move from room to room solving one environmental puzzle at a time. The only characters to be found are robots. And an unseen person on the god mic (your uncle) fills the GLaDOS role, providing colorful commentary on your performance every step of the way.

But Quantum's shifty abilities provide their own special kind of brain teasers. Rather than pondering portals, here you're thinking about weight, speed, and velocity -- sometimes all at once.

The Interdimensional Shift Device (or IDS) lets you freely phase into four dimensions, each changing the physical properties of your environment in different ways. For example, say you need to drop something heavy on a switch. In the fluffy dimension, everything sheds its weight and can be lifted with ease.

That's a very basic example, but as you’d expect, the puzzles become much more complex as you progress, with the IDS also empowering you to reverse gravity and bend time. Eventually you'll enter the fluffy dimension, pick up a heavy object, throw it, switch to the slow time dimension so you can hop on, then alternate reversing gravity while you ride on the heavy object's wave of inertia over some deathtrap. Quantum Conundrum stumped me a few times, but never frustrated me.

Is it safe?

Though the puzzles often dazzle with brilliant design, the interior decorating of the mansion where you spend all your time shows less imagination. You wander through the same hallways passing the same books all throughout the game, and the corridors lack detail. It doesn’t really feel like a wacky, Doc Brown-like inventor lives here.

Story-wise, your uncle communicates with you from the Netherworld during your journey, dropping hint after hint about his whereabouts. Unfortunately, the big reveal with regard to his fate ends up being pretty insignificant -- it seems like a twist is being foreshadowed the whole time, but ultimately the opportunity is missed.

Which leads me to the real let down: the disappointing ending. I'm not going to spoil anything, of course, but know that the end of your five-hour adventure lacks both climax and satisfaction. It’s neither heavy nor fluffy enough.



Source : ign[dot]com

E3 2012: Zeno Clash II Revealed

Altus and developer Ace Team have revealed Zeno Clash II, a sequel to the studio’s strange take on first-person combat released in 2009 for PC and 2010 for XBLA.

Zeno Clash II will feature an open world, where you’ll again play as protagonist Ghat and punch all sorts of feathery, spiny, grotesque creatures directly in their noses. Expect more role-playing game elements this time around, which will allow you to customize Ghat and his companion Rimat’s strengths to better pummel things. It will also feature drop-in, drop-out co-operative play throughout the entire game.

"The world of Zenozoik is one of wild dreams and wilder nightmares," stated Andres Bordeu, co-founder of ACE Team.  "This is part of the reason we are working on , to give players the opportunity to explore Zenozoik with a friend via online cooperative multiplayer, turning those moments of wonder and awe into a shared adventure."

Zeno Clash II is currently scheduled to be released in early 2013 for download through Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Store and Steam.

Source : http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/06/04/e3-2012-zeno-clash-ii-revealed

Resistance: Burning Skies Review

Resistance: Burning Skies Review:

Resistance: Burning Skies isn't just the debut first-person shooter to grace Sony's PlayStation Vita platform. It's also gaming's very first portable twin-stick FPS, a feat made possible thanks to the Vita's powerful, PSP-topping guts. And yet as powerful as those guts may be, it's not enough to save Nihilistic Software's efforts here. Burning Skies may walk and talk like a Resistance game, but it sure doesn't play like one.

 

 

Burning Down the House

Burning Skies is set against the backdrop of the Chimeran invasion of the United States, with players stepping into the shoes of firefighter Tom Riley. Out on a routine call to a burning warehouse, Riley and his squad run into an alien threat that soon reveals itself as the vanguard for a full-scale invasion.

Although Riley is eventually (and inevitably) caught up in the larger story, his sole motivation throughout the game is personal. He's fighting to protect his wife and teenage daughter, whom he meets up with early on in the game before sending them on their way to a nearby refugee camp. Why he doesn't just join them in that moment when he has the chance is never really made clear, and it's an example that speak to the narrative's larger issues.

The story in Burning Skies lacks any of the emotional depth that made Insomniac's console outings so compelling. You can see the Vita game reaching in that direction, but the two big character moments that come up toward the end ultimately feel hollow and out of place. There's also some nodding going on in the direction of Nathan Hale's adventures, though more in the form of deep cut offhand reference that only the hardest of the hardcore fans will pick up on.

Resistance Is Futile

The narrative woes are minor complaints in the context of Burning Skies' larger issues. Chief among those is the feeling that this is little more than a wannabe Resistance game. All of the necessary pieces are here: gun-toting Chimeran forces, imaginitively designed firearms, big boss-like beasties, locked first-person perspective, and more besides. These pieces add up into something familiar, but it feels more like a Frankenstein's monster take on the FPS series than the proper spin-off that it's meant to be.

Take combat scenarios. Which ones, you ask? Try all of them. The settings may change, but the execution is largely the same each time: you enter a new area, access to your previous location is locked out, a wave of Chimera spawn in, you kill them all. Or, more accurately, they kill you a few times while you learn the spawn patterns and then you kill them all. It's a dull process, especially once the difficulty ratchets up in the late game.

The canny AI from the console trilogy is nowhere to be seen in this portable spin-off. Your enemy is definitely aggressive; Chimera forces will know exactly when and where you poke your head out of cover to pop off a few shots every single time. They'll rush your position, and occasionally show a glimmer of intelligence by working around to a flanking position. They're just as likely, however, to confuse a wall for your firefighter hero, and get stuck in a running animation as they endlessly charge a position that you were never close to in the first place.

Combine that dimwitted AI with some uninspiring level design. You'll encounter one or two sections later in the game that almost feel like Resistance on the PlayStation 3 with fights that span multiple rooms or large, open spaces. Unfortunately, these sections are much better at highlighting the flawed AI. Besides that, you'll still spend most of the game taking on the Chimera is much tighter confines, featureless hallways and rooms, broken city streets, that all funnel you along a singular tight path.

The arsenal, at least, is familiar and well thought out. Favorites like the Bullseye and Auger are joined by a handful of new weapon like the Mule, a double-barreled shotgun that doubles as an explosive bolt-firing crossbow. The weapons themselves are fine; they all feel very unique and powerful in their own way.

There's even some innovation in the form of Gray Tech, collectible power-ups that can be "spent" on each weapon's set of six upgrades. A New Game+ option opens up after you've beaten the game, allowing you to continue collecting Gray Tech. The upgrades are all weapon-specific and most of them offer some pretty effective boosts, but most players will gather more than enough Gray Tech in a single playthrough to get a sense for the good stuff.

This being a Vita game, touch controls are to be expected. Each weapon's alt-fire capability, a Resistance staple, is relegated in Burning Skies to touch screen controls. Some weapons require swipes across the screen, such as the Mule, while others require you to tap the enemy target's location on the screen.

It's a solid idea in theory, but the actual process of adjusting your grip on the Vita as you let go with one hand, tap the screen, and then grab the handheld again simply doesn't work very well. You're using these weapons in combat situations, after all, and the necessary pause in action that comes when you adjust your grip is enough to significantly diminish the tactical value of secondary weapon attacks.

This isn't to say that Nihilistic's work to integrate Vita-specific functionality into an FPS framework is a total disaster. There are a few ideas that work out well, though we've admittedly seen variations on these in two other shooting-oriented Vita games already: Uncharted: Golden Abyss and Unit 13. Both of those games, just like this one, rely on the left and right fringes of the touch screen for control options that would fit on a SIXAXIS but not the Vita's sligthly stripped-down interface.

Melee attacks with Tom's fireman's axe and grenade tosses are both relegated to touch screen buttons that are always visible on the right side of the screen. It's an easy stretch to move your thumb from the face buttons or right analog controls to one of the touch options. Helpfully, the melee attack "button" also doubles as an action button, so you can tap that to open doors and interact with mission-specific objects. You can also double-tap the rear touchpad to sprint, but it's much more effective to press down on the D-pad instead, since the Vita's design makes it possible to hit the D-pad button while still pressing forward on the left thumbstick.

Resisting World War

Nihilistic also included a multiplayer component in Burning Skies. Rather than try to deliver an online play experience that is in any way uniquely portable or Vita-focused, players can instead link up with a Wi-Fi connection and drop into competitive online matches for up to eight players in Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and Survival (comparable to Halo's Infection).

Multiplayer in Burning Skies isn't bad, per se, it's just entirely unnecessary. It's built with a console audience in mind, just like the rest of the game, but it's also built like a console game. There's a system of level-based unlocks for your various weapons and their upgrades. How many players are really going to invest enough time to climb through 30 multiplayer ranks in Burning Skies' Wi-Fi-only online mode?

The unlocks are also woefully unbalanced; once you've got the Mauler, a ridiculously powerful Chimeran chain gun, or the multi-rocket-launching S.W.A.R.M., there's really no need to ever go back to default weapons like the Bullseye or Carbine.

So while the multiplayer mode in Burning Skies certainly works, there's really no reason for it to be here in the first place. The Wi-Fi requirement is certainly a technical limitation, but Nihilistic gets some blame as well for failing to come up with a multiplayer mode that actually belongs on the Vita platform.

Nihilistic had an opportunity to set the bar for FPS gaming on the Vita. Instead, we've got this halfway decent first-person shooter whose main strength is the fact that it's portable. Burning Skies is a passable time-waster in that sense, giving you plenty of corridors to run through and alien dudes to shoot. That's also the heart of the problem though. It's technically flawed in some key ways, but the biggest sin that Resistance: Burning Skies commits is its top-to-bottom lack of ambition

Source : http://www.g4tv.com/games/psv/65702/resistance-burning-skies/review/

Resistance: Burning Skies Review

Looking back at IGN's previews of Resistance: Burning Skies, the same idea keeps popping up: this is a handheld first-person shooter that feels like its console brethren. After shoehorning FPS games onto portables for years, having a true dual-stick shooter on the go is exciting -- it's just that Resistance: Burning Skies isn't. Burning Skies is a competent shooter with presentation problems that does little to thrill you.

Like most shooters these days, Resistance: Burning Skies is broken into two parts -- single player and online multiplayer. The solo campaign casts you as Tom Reilly, a New York firefighter thrust right into the action as the Chimera invade America for the first time. Tom's just doing his job and rescuing people, but when the Chimera abduct his wife and kid in front of him, he's committed to the fight until he gets them back (translating into six chapters of gameplay that should take you six or fewer hours).

“ Burning Skies is a competent shooter with presentation problems that does little to thrill you.

Unfortunately, most of that is straightforward and mindless. Tom rarely speaks, and when he does, it's rarely about his emotions. We're just some dude blasting and hacking our way across a bridge because getting there is the objective and we're hoping to find some weapon upgrades on the linear path. There are cutscenes between each chapter, but they're always told from another character's perspective. We never get a genuine moment with Tom, so why should we care about his motivation?

As such, the action is the main focus in Resistance: Burning Skies, and again, it's competent but lackluster. If you want to shoot things and peek out of cover, Burning Skies has it, but it doesn't have much more than that. Each time you run into a room, there are a bunch of Chimera to shoot. Most of these guys will just stand there and fight from one spot. Bosses are a breeze, and I think that has something to do with the way the game is controlled on the Vita.

Oddly, Burning Skies disables the Vita's ability to take screenshots.

See, the dual sticks and shoulder buttons allow for the console FPS basics that everyone knows. It's tight, responsive and going to make most feel at home. However, the Vita makes up for the buttons it's lacking with the front touch screen and the rear touch pad. You can double tap the back touch to run, and tap or hold the front touch to melee, interact with the environment and utilize each of the eight guns' secondary fire modes.

Here's where the breezy feeling meets the controls. These touch mechanics work and were only annoying when I'd accidentally melee a door or fire a tag round into the floor trying to interact with an object. However, holding the screen to fire an RPG or mark an enemy for the Bullseye takes time, and I think that's why the enemies aren't all that challenging; they're giving you a chance to use the touch screen mechanics.

There's a Burning Skies Trophy for killing a bunch of Executioners -- huge enemies each with a cannon for an arm -- but when one of these guys would show up, I'd stand in the open, tag the cannon with the Bullseye, and then empty a clip from cover. The game gave me ample time to do this without getting blown away by the beast. I didn't need a crazy strategy or to stay on my toes. It was as if the game was saying "Use the secondary now!" Even though the game does offer different difficulties, I found the ones unlocked from the get go to be like this but with less health for Tom.

In the spots where I did die, Burning Skies became all the more frustrating due to its poor checkpoint system. Sometimes, I'd start quite a ways back from where I perished (the bridge section), and other times I'd start before a pivotal moment and have to listen to the same conversation over and over (the final boss).

When you switch to multiplayer, you lose the gripes about story and the ho-hum enemies, but you don't find the hook that'll make Resistance: Burning Skies a must have. Good for up to eight players, the online options are limited at best. There are no clans, a handful of maps, and perks that are just unlockable weapons and mods from the single-player campaign. If you're aching for a handheld shooter, the game's three modes (deathmatch, team deathmatch and survival) will be here for you, but I don’t know how much of a community will sprout up around this.

Interestingly, one of my biggest complaints about Resistance: Burning Skies is the game's audio. The orchestral score is beautiful, but it doesn't seem to get used all that often. Instead, it seemed like my soundtrack was my own footsteps as I ran through single-player and multiplayer. In multiplayer, another issue arose where I'd be all alone in an area but gunfire would sound as if it was raining down on me. No matter where I was in a match, it sounded like I was in the heat of battle as long as someone somewhere was using his or her gun.



Source : http://www.ign.com

Dead Island Game of the Year Edition Announced

Deep Silver has revealed the Dead Island Game of the Year Edition. The new version of last year’s first person zombie killing adventure includes all of the game’s previously-released DLC, including Bloodbath Arena mode, Ryder White's single-player story campaign and a blueprint for the Ripper weapon mod.

In addition to the announcement, Deep Silver revealed that more than three million copies of Dead Island have been sold worldwide.

The GOTY edition will be available on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC for $29.99. It will hit stores on June 26th in North America and July 6th in Europe. For more on Dead Island, be sure to check out our review.

Source : http://www.ign.com

XCOM: Enemy Unknown Is Noob Approved

Confession: I've been bored as hell with all this XCOM talk. Saw the first-person shooter years ago and wasn't impressed. Proofread IGN Editor Anthony Gallegos' XCOM: Enemy Unknown March preview and didn't give it a second thought. Got assigned to see XCOM: Enemy Unknown at a pre-E3 event and wasn't all that excited.

Then, I played the introduction. Now, I can't wait to get my hands on the final product.

My problem leading up to playing was simple: I just didn't know anything about this franchise. A PC gaming staple, the original XCOM is known as one of the best strategy games around and as IGN's greatest PC game of all time. Nice accolades, but not something that means a lot to folks buying consoles in 2012.

Firaxis and 2K are counting on that. The E3 demo I played is the optional training folks can jump into -- it's built for the un-indoctrinated and walks you through deploying your four-person squad, navigating the Shadow Complex-like map that acts as your homebase, and how to fund research projects. The minutia of being able to dedicate resources to one add-on over another, to name the individual members of your squadron (who can then get killed in action never to return), to tackle missions exactly the way I want to: this stuff intrigues the hell out of me, and I know from titles such as Valkyria Chronicles and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker that it keeps me playing for dozens of hours.

The intro mode also doles out the story. Alien ships have smashed into Earth and are disintegrating the public while moving in their forces. Your four-person team is dispatched to a crash site, and you soon find a group of aliens packing mind control and laser guns.

Now, Anthony's already broken down how gameplay works and the details you'd want to know, but I actually got to play it on a PC -- with a controller. As a game that's also coming to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, the controller's a big deal, and it works really well. Remember, there are no more "time units;" now, you get two actions like moving and attacking for each squad member each turn. When it's time to control a character, a movement grid pops up, you move the cursor, and you see the path your soldier will take. You can move them into cover or right into battle.

It was easy to wrap my head around, and it didn't feel like I was playing something that was meant for a mouse. Triggering an attack, tossing a grenade or firing a rocket was a cinch.

Yes, yes -- loot the gas station.

If there's a downside to XCOM: Enemy Unknown right now, it is the fact that it doesn't look that great. Environments are fine, but character models are a bit vanilla and not packing much detail. I think that might be because upgrading and outfitting is so important (a fully decked out dude was shown fighting a "Sectopod," which I hear is a big deal), but I won't know until I get more time with.

What I do know is that Firaxis is targeting a new audience with XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and it's working because all I want to do is play more, and this is from a guy who couldn't even tell you what this game was about a week ago.

Source : http://www.ign.com

BioShock Infinite delayed to 2013

BioShock Infinite will not ship this October as previously announced. Take-Two Interactive today announced that Irrational Games' upcoming first-person shooter will now release on February 26, 2013.

BioShock Infinite won't hit the skies this year.

In a statement, Irrational Games creative director Ken Levine explained that the extra development time will afford the studio an opportunity to pursue new game ideas.

"When we announced the release date of BioShock Infinite in March, we felt pretty good about the timing," he said. "Since then, we've uncovered opportunities to make Infinite into something even more extraordinary. Therefore, to give our talented team the time they need to deliver the best Infinite possible, we've decided to move the game's release to February."

In an update to the Irrational Games website, Levine also explained that BioShock Infinite will not be shown at this summer's Electronic Entertainment Expo and GamesCom.

"That way, the next time you see our game, it will be essentially the product we intend to put in the box. Preparing for these events takes time away from development," he explained.

When BioShock Infinite does ship, it will do so with great sales expectations. In August 2011, one analyst suggested the game would be a significant financial boon for Take- Two, saying it could ship 4.9 million copies.

BioShock Infinite is set in Columbia, a flying city in an early alternate 20th century where utopian ideals have given way to chaos in a sea of weaponry, plasmid-like powers, and political upheaval. Into this mess steps the game's protagonist, Booker DeWitt, a former member of the feared Pinkerton National Detective Agency, which was America's largest security company in the late 19th century. According to GameSpot's latest preview, DeWitt will enter a world where steampunk robots have replaced horses and people, and where crazed citizens foment revolution with strange powers--and lots of guns.




Source : http://gamespot.com/news/bioshock-infinite-delayed-to-2013-6375880

Starhawk Review

Starhawk Review:
By 2007 standards, Warhawk was an unusual third person multiplayer game. Not only was it the PlayStation 3’s first dual release as a BD-Rom and digital download, it also took the risk of removing the game’s planned story mode, a risk paid that off based on the game’s positive reception.
This time however, developer Lightbox Interactive (made up of some staff from Warhawk developer Incognito Entertainment) took the time to not only add a campaign, but also a Horde-inspired co-op mode. Yet these additions feel like mere bonuses when you discover how well Starhawk gives players the freedom and flexibility to transition from on-foot combat to aerial dogfighting in a matter of seconds. While the lack of such a feature in Warhawk didn’t hurt the 2007 game, Starhawk manages to make its spiritual predecessor feel older than it really is, which says something about this first effort by LightBox.

A Promising Start
Told mostly through economical and unusually concise “motion comic” cutscenes (not unlike the some of the expository scenes from Resistance 3), Starhawk’s story centers around an energy miner named Emmett Graves. Off in a colony unimaginatively named the Frontier, there’s great risk in the kind of energy he’s harvesting, known as rift energy. Direct and extended exposure to rift energy can corrupt anyone, mutating them into lethal creatures known as the Outcasts. The fact that the Outcasts are very protective of the energy makes them Starhawk’s antagonists, a personal problem for Emmett because his older brother is one of them.
The campaign itself starts promisingly enough. You quickly learn how to drop structures from space and use them (and your weapons) against the Outcast. This will later include the flight vehicle central to Starhawk, the transformable and aptly named Hawk. The guy dropping the goods from space is Emmett’s technical engineer, Sydney Cutter. You then traverse through a desert landscape on a Sidewinder, a nimble vehicle not unlike the speeder bike from Star Wars. The backdrop of the rugged frontier, complemented by all the advanced weaponry and technology, makes this initial chapter feel like something Borderlands fans can get behind.

Five-Hour Training Mode
Yet it is by the third or fourth mission one realizes that, despite genuine attempts at giving Starhawk an engrossing narrative, this campaign feels more like a five-hour training mode in preparation for the multiplayer. The majority of the objectives are conveniently laid out by Cutter even before the enemies arrive. He tells Emmett of the inbound enemy types, how many seconds before they arrive, and even where they’ll land on the map.
While this takes away from the single player mode’s immersiveness, it’s an issue that pales in comparison to the difficulty challenges near the end of the campaign. It is by the tenth mission that players will encounter an objective so difficult that many will discover--just out of desperation--a significant exploitable feature that can be used in both the single player and co-op modes. This involves delaying the arrival of the next wave of enemies and harvesting enough energy to litter the map with more than enough turrets and cannons to overwhelm the Outcasts. While I assume this was not the intended design, it’ll be the only way many gamers can beat this mission, especially since you’re facing the classic infinite spawning monster closet.
The Outcast do not spawn infinitely in the co-op mode, but they do give you a proper beating. It adjusts based on player count, up to four, but no matter how many you play with, it will still be very difficult. These missions involve protecting a rig for six rounds, starting with the Outcast infantry and then later adding Hawks and other vehicles. I played every co-op map at least thrice; some maps we gave up on because the rig would destroyed by the second or third wave. And for the ones we did beat, we had to resort to the same energy farming exploit from the single player mode, often by leaving one sniper alive so as not to trigger the next wave.




It’s Sure Something To Look At
It’s of some minor consolation that these exploits manage to bring forth a great deal of visual spectacle. Imagine planting a dozen cannons, all of which self-aim their laser eyes at any Hawks flying by. Now picture one of the later rounds starring a swarm of over a dozen lethal Hawks and having your cannons give them a proper greeting. It’s a thrill to watch Hawk after Hawk get shot down, some spinning to their demise in red and orange flames. It’s an even better experience as an active participant, whether you’re on foot and helping pick off Hawks with a remarkably effective rocket launcher or taking to the air yourself for some dogfighting.
In some respects, both the colonisation theme and the ‘instant building’ design makes Starhawk feel like a companion experience to last year’s Red Faction: Armageddon. It’s especially the case with the latter; rhe Nano-Forge in Armageddon, with its ‘instant-building’ capability is about as unbelievable as the ability to call down a collection of self-building structures from space in Starhawk. Not that this is a bad thing; it is science-fiction after all. There’s even a trophy for dropping a building on top of an opponent.
And it is in this gameplay mechanic that Starhawk’s multiplayer is the game’s main draw. It is a game that should interest real-time strategy enthusiasts and will help make some action game fans understand one of the fundamental draws of the RTS genre. This involves planting an automated structure that operates without your direct supervision but still gives you a sense of accomplishment when that structure operates as designed. It’s very satisfying to continually see your name appear in the scrolling kill ticker because a cannon you planted took down a Hawk all on its own.




Hot Mech-On-Mech Action
Another one of Starhawk’s strengths lies in being able to switch from defense to offense (and vice versa) in very little time. While teammates are off in their Sidewinders at the start of a Capture The Flag match, you might prefer to drop turrets and cannons around your team’s flag and keep watch for the impending arrival of flag-hungry opponents. Then the ‘Enemy Flag Taken’ notification appears, forcing the judgement call of holding the fort or helping escort your buddy. Due to the Hawks’ often-impressive mobility, many players will often choose the latter option. With a simple jump, a mid-air transformation and a dramatic musical cue to set the mood, there’s anticipation in possibly saving your teammate from a pursuer riding his own Sidewinder, or worse, a Hawk.


The common and worthwhile occurrence of mech-vs-mech combat will satisfy most any gamer who has dabbled in the multiplayer modes of the last couple Transformers video games. The only thing more remarkable than the Hawks’ mobility is how resilient it is when hitting terrain, which can happen when weaving through some of the maps’ rock columns. Clearly Lightbox would rather have players die at the hands of enemies as opposed to dying from intricate level design.
The fittingly large maps--many equal to the map sizes in the Battlefield series--accommodate Starhawk’s vehicles with enough ground area and airspace to roam. Many of these maps also have enough terrain diversity that it will take some time before knowing the most efficient (or exploitable) paths to best take home enemy flags. Aside from CTF, Lightbox sticks to other familiar multiplayer modes: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and a variation of the territory-based Conquest mode called Zones. When you’ve played enough to know all the enemy capture points and flag locales without referring to the map you just might feel less upset that Star Wars: Battlefront 3 was cancelled.




You’re In Control
The only thing worse than those hamfisted and triumphant jet fly-bys that appear throughout the Modern Warfare games was how it was a shame that you and your friends couldn’t be the ones controlling the planes themselves. It’s one of the reasons why Battlefield’s multiplayer is so well regarded and why it works well for Starhawk. A match mostly made up of good players will yield a few scenes worth recording. If you happen to be that flag holder riding a Sidewinder while being chased by a Hawk, expect to have a Michael Bay moment if a friendly Hawk comes to your rescue. While Starhawk is not recommended for those seeking a worthwhile single player or Horde experience, the versus multiplayer is fully featured enough to make it a worthy successor to Warhark, enhanced further by simplistic RTS gameplay and transforming mechs.


Source : http://www.g4tv.com/games/ps3/65273/starhawk/review/

Spec Ops: The Line Demo Marches Onto PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 Ads By Google » Blog Tags Today's Most Popular Videos »

Starting today, console gamers get to try out a taste of Yager Development's 2K Games-published third-person shooter Spec Ops: The Line, compliments of a newly released playable demo. The chunk pulled from two of the game's early chapters offers a glimpse at the dark and frequently disturbing story which carries echoes of Joseph Conrad's novella, Heart of Darkness.

The demo is available for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 platforms, but on the 360 side only Xbox Live Gold subscribers can start downloading it now. Silver subscribers will have to wait until May 15 for access. There's no rush though, since we've still got a bit of time before the game is released. Spec Ops: The Line arrives in stores on June 26, 2012 for PS3, Xbox 360, and Windows PC platforms.


Source : http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/723559/spec-ops-the-line-demo-marches-onto-playstation-3-xbox-360/