Frankly, I think that the singleplayer portion of the series, in particular that of Killzone 3, features some of the worst characters and writing that I have ever experienced in gaming. Every single thing about Rico and Co. is horrible especially since the last game ended on them literally wiping out all life on a planet just because they couldn’t be bothered stopping it. I really hope this is an experiment looking to prove whether the game would function well without a singleplayer portion. I really think a Killzone Tournament type deal would be the best direction the series could hope to go in. You should really give the multiplayer a go when it launches from next week.

That helicopter level in the first game was kind of cool.

I honestly didn’t think we’d be seeing a sequel to the first game after I finished up my review when it came out in 2010. Even back then the whole modern military thing was getting strained and it just didn’t do enough to stand out from the crowd. The real challenge Medal of Honor: Warfighter will face when it comes out will be that E.A. has a stable of high-profile shooters on the go right now. Battlefield 3 has established itself as a serious force in the genre and a likely E3 reveal for Respawn’s title means that even making its presence felt amongst stable-mates will be tough. Not to mention just how serious a problem shooter-fatigue seems to be becoming.

A Machine for Pigs (a title that I think really works at getting under your skin and conjuring up some pretty foul images)  will not be a direct sequel to the original but will be set in the same universe. It will be set in 1899 and focus on a London industrialist who is haunted by dark dreams ever since he returned from a trip to Mexico. These dreams concern a nightmarish machine and will presumably set the scene for horror in a suitably Lovecraftian fashion.

Few other games have captured the primordial sense of terror and the flight response better than Amnesia: Dark Descent. It stuck to core tenets of effective horror by making sure the player never saw too much of their enemies by making it harmful to look at them, not to mention tons of those physics driven moments where you feel like every horror movie victim who couldn’t find the right key or get that door open in time. Hopefully the incredibly high standard of writing from Dear Esther will carry over into this new game and bring everything to a whole new level.

A tweet from Hudson (beware this link it contains DLC spoilers states that:

It takes about three months from “content complete”  to bug-fix, certify, manufacture, and ship game discs. In that time we work on DLC.

This is how it works for all games with the alternative being that half the team gets the sack while the game goes through the certification process. I have edited certain things from Michael Gamble’s statement in order to keep them completely clean but will post a link to the thread where the comments were made so do not proceed below the picture if you want to steer clear.

Michael Gamble posted a thread (which is full of DLC spoilers) on the Bioware forums designed to deal with fan fallout to the news and had this to say (certain storyline elements are replaced by [Redacted] by me, we want to keep this site completely Mass Effect 3 spoiler-free):

As most of you know, yesterday there was a leak that revealed the upcoming DLC “ME3:From Ashes” on the
Xbox LIVE Marketplace. This leak took place before we were prepared to make an announcement about the details of that pack (slated for this Friday).

There has been a lot of discussion about the DLC offering but we wanted to clarify a few things…

- The Collectors Edition has been advertised from the beginning as containing a bonus character/mission, but we were not at liberty to provide the details. [Redacted] is optional content that is certainly designed to appeal to long-time fans, which is why he is part of the CE offering (the version many fans would be likely to purchase).  Mass Effect 3 is a complete – and a huge game – right out of the box.

- The content in “From Ashes” was developed by a separate team (after the core game was finished) and not completed until well after the main game went into certification.

- The Collectors Edition has been sold out in most places for some time now, and is becoming very hard to find (many players prefer not to purchase the digital version). As such, we wanted to make this content available so that SE buyers could also incorporate [Redacted] into their game.

We’ll be releasing some images and video about this pack in the coming days.

As always, we are extremely thankful for all of your support. We pulled out all of the stops to make Mass Effect 3 the best game ever, and we can’t wait for you all to experience it.

The comments from Hudson and Gamble will not be likely to quell much of the anger being expressed at the moment by fans.The From Ashes DLC pack will contain a new character and quest as well as weapon and appearance skins for your other squadmates. It will cost 800 Microsoft Points and comes with the collectors edition of the game. Mass Effect 3 is out on the ninth of March.

SCEE Ireland’s Managing director, Niall O’ Hanrahan, calls the Vita  “the ultimate portable gaming device. The quality of the gaming experience is monumentally better than any other mobile device available and we are confident that once Irish gaming fans get their hands on it, they won’t want to put it down.”

We all know that it isn’t enough to simply just play games in a handheld market that is increasingly dominated by mobile phones and the Vita has plenty of stuff outside of gamign to keep you interested. Social apps like Near will allow you to stalk see what other Vita players around you are playing and if they want to play with you. Part offers voice and text chat both in and out of games while live-area is a kind of social network for gaming on the Vita.

The handheld is available right this second and comes in at €250 for the wi-fi model or €299.99 for a 3G model that includes ten euro credit for Vodafone, the sole provider of 3G services for the device. Both flavours come packed with some AR markers and the AR suite which you can find out more about in our interview with Sony’s John McLaughlin.

Borderlands 2 is out on the 21st of September here for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360. If you are a monster and like dubstep then the song used in the trailer is by Nero and appears to be called “Doomsday”. I was really hoping for armour as loot in this game but maybe they are saving up that announcement for closer to the games release. Right now though,  a gazillion guns and bigger skill trees sound pretty impressive.

This is not the first sign of serious trouble within GAME. The company recently let forty-six management staff go from its headquarters in Basingstoke, England. All of these events follow on from a tough Christmas which saw sales at GAME stores drop by a massive 17.6 six percent year-on-year. While predicting the death of such a massive chain is premature things are definitely not good within what was once THE place to buy your games. Things are sure to develop pretty quickly on this one as we get into the busy period again so keep your eyes on this page and, from Sunday, theplayer.ie.

You will get “From Ashes” if you are one of the lucky people to get your hands on the sold out Collector’s Edition of the game. I was fairly confident of what the DLC was before this and since having my suspicions confirmed I have to say I think that it is a pretty cool move. Of course, the current and baffling backlash against Bioware and Mass Effect occurring  in some online communities will try to tell you otherwise. Mass Effect 3 is out on the ninth for PC and Xbox 360. It is also coming out that day on the PS3 and will be available on the SEN/PSN as a digital download if you just can’t stand those retailers.

Jennifer is a valued, talented employee who has been with BioWare for many years and we hope will be with us for many more. It is awful that a few people have decided to make her a target for hate and threats, going so far as fabricating forum posts and attributing them to her, and singling her out for projects to which she has not contributed (i.e., Jennifer is not even a part of the Mass Effect writing team). All of us at BioWare support and will continue to support Jennifer fully, and are happy to see so many people out there are also supporting her during this difficult time.

Personally, I think a statement made by a Bioware employee about one of these keyboard warriors being a “fucking moron” also got the job done.

This is a problem that is easy to ignore but it is one that is becoming more and more frequent. Think of literally any female figure in this industry, go to a popular internet forum and search her name. How many of the posts will be questioning her skill, knowledge or fitness to do her job simply because she is a woman, how many of them will be rape threats? Hepler openly admitted that she does not game but that has nothing to do with her position as a writer. Martin Sheen probably doesn’t play either and he does a perfectly fine job in a roll that similarly requires no gaming experience, but I digress. Those forum topics will be filled with bile and an absolute ton of it will be related to gender.

This site has recently been hit by this issue and it is probably why this post is now as long as it is. We have recently been on the search for new contributors and a fantastic one landed in twitter inbox one day. Her articles were concise, flowed well, displayed excellent knowledge of what she was writing about; absolutely everything was right. We both agreed that maybe it would be best to put some of the articles on her blog, mainly because I wanted to impress upon her that negative commentary was something that you should expect. It is simply something that comes with this gig. Neither of us could have been prepared for the torrent of rape threats and gender based bile that was spewed on the article. She declined to proceed with her plan to write about this industry any further and I do not blame her for a second.

I’m going to stop this here since it is dangerously close to being a rant but I will close on this. There are no question marks on this issue, no asking if there is a problem. There simply exists a massive problem with sexism in this industry and it is absolutely holding the medium back. Ask yourself honestly if you think an industry without a problem with this issue could produce a game like Girl Fight?

Nah, nothing wrong here at all.

If we want gaming to emerge from the basements and shadows as much as well all say we do then we stop with the boob armour, we stop with women characters being one dimensional sex objects or damsels in distress, and we start conducting ourselves like modern fucking adults. We start listening to the women brave enough to be openly a part of gaming and include them as the vital part of the industry they are. This goes for the teams who make games, the marketing execs who advertise them, the PR teams, the audience who consume the games and especially the media who have the power to highlight issues and change attitudes. Kudos to Dr. Ray and Bioware for standing behind their employees and against this kind of behaviour.

Much has been made of the games narrative and while claims that it will be mature (in the good way, not the stupid way) and cerebral have always rang hollow this trailer really depresses me. I am all for hoping that this is just the Nth case of odious games marketers painting a product in completely the wrong light but all of those delays, that release date and the apparent focus on multiplayer are not getting me hyped up for what Yager promised actually being in the game. We shall find out when it launches for the 360 and PS3 when it launches later this year.

Within a few minutes of starting the game you will be given access to a piece of steel that was taken from Zero’s body when the government took him in after crash-landing. This plate allows Zero to “warp” through thin walls and into objects, including the guards and scientists that populate the shadowy underwater facility where the game takes place.

The facility is laid out in a style similar to Metroid or Castlevania games meaning that certain areas will be blocked the first time you see them due to the fact you won’t have the right powers. Given that you only ever have four abilities, Warp isn’t exactly as deep as the games mentioned above but it still feels better than if the game had just been a straight run through levels. Unfortunately it is how you get around the facility that ends up really hurting this game.

An indicator shows where you can expect zero to go but some the occasional lack of precision shown during the earlier, more sedate puzzles is a warning of what the rest of the game has in store. This includes warping into lasers, the line-of-fire, water, bottomless pits and all kinds of other unpleasant instant death. Rarely is this your fault more than the game just not having good enough controls. It is even worse in the games challenge rooms that I eventually just gave up on.

A mysterious alien presence guides you to sources of more of your powers which include being able to send a ghost of Zero in to the world, the ability to switch places with objects in the world and finally the ability to throw objects that you are inside.They are teased out in the way you would expect with the section after you gain each power being dedicated to puzzles and situations that demand their use.

None of these puzzles are taxing mentally but the increasing demand of precision makes some of them maddening. Knowing what to do but having faulty tools to do it with is incredibly frustrating, something exacerbated by the five second load screen that separates each inevitable death and your resurrection at one of the games (mercifully) plentiful checkpoints. I had to walk away from the game several times during a boss fight and then during the torturous final twenty-minutes. If I had not been reviewing it I wouldn’t have come back.

Aside from the issue of precision, Warp is also just a slow game. Zero’s default walking speed is just not enough and the delay after each warp never really makes that a fun way to get around. You can grab collectible grubs that are dotted around the landscape but the basic movement and warp speed enhancements are quite expensive. This is made even worse by the fact that other upgrades can be really helpful in the late-game. The increased speed should probably have just been the default in the first place. God help you if you manage to step in a puddle of water which slows you down even further while making your warp useless for several seconds.

The tone of the game is also strange. It feels like the team were attempting to get into the ballpark of something like ‘Splosion Man but just ended up with a game that isn’t very funny and comes across as feeling all over the place for a tonal perspective.

The facility you are in is populated by various guards and scientists. The guards are obviously antagonistic and will become increasingly difficult to kill as the game wears on. They also have the habit of shooting you from off the screen which is just lovely. As they make their rounds they will whistle and sing songs but never say anything funny. However, it is certainly more funny than having an unarmed scientist scream “I have a wife and kids” before you enter their body and make  it explode into a cloud of viscera and limbs.

On the positive side of things, the game occasionally hits its stride and results in a few rooms of genuinely fun puzzles and it generally looks really pleasant. I love the cutesy design of Zero whose vocalisations and mannerisms reminded me a little of creature in The Maw. It’s just a shame these quality designs didn’t get the genuinely humorous writing that they look like they deserve and that the controls so frequently let the game become an experience in frustration.

Verdict:

Gameplay: 4/10

Graphics: 7/10

Sound: 6/10

Story/ Narrative: 4/10

Overall: 4/10

Warp was developed by Trapdoor and published by EA. The version reviewed was the Xbox 360 version which is available now for 800 Microsoft points as part of the House Party promotion. It is coming to the PC and PS3 on the thirteenth of March.

It also reveals that the Alliance ground military uses Mako and Hammerhead vehicles as their main method of conveyance. Given that one drives like a shopping trolly with greasy wheels and the other overheats in the mildest of combat situations, I can’t say I am enthusiastic about winning things on the ground. You do get to see a shot of the Normandy actually fighting which I will always enjoy since its a classic sci-fi design. Mass Effect 3 is almost upon us and day-by-day we are building up some really exciting stuff for you around that date so do keep your eye on us.

If you don’t know what Augmented Reality is, McLaughlin describes it as “gameplay in your world. A marker acts as a point to create gameplay objects that you can zoom in and out on using a camera.”  Several of these cards come bundled with the system along with some games for you to try out. These card markers are also what have been holding the possibilities of the tech back, but Vita has the ability to change this.

He explained that the Vita “removes the limits by allowing more markers.” More markers has the obvious gameplay implication of creating more objects and McLaughin also raises the example that these elements can be manipulated and linked and gives the examples of a race track where “you can create a hill by placing a card on top of a mug and create chicanes and turns just by moving the markers around the table; there are far more possibilities.”

So far, so impressive and I had to ask whether this technology was something that Sony had had in mind from the beginning with the Vita given the somewhat poor reputation that AR has amongst hardcore gamers. McLaughlin told me that “we have been working with Novarama (developers of Vita WAAR title Reality Fighters) for three or four years now on this. We think of them as real pioneers in the filed of augmented reality.”

The obvious question that comes to mind with this kind of technology is whether the platform it is being shown on is the only one capable of doing it. He is fairly certain that it is, especially in the handheld space, and definitely the only platform when you can expect a general framerate of sixty frames-per-second. “The extra power of the Vita gives us 60 FPS which leads to smoother AR. Even if the game is graphically intensive and runs at 30 FPS the AR camera itself can be sixty” he said.

Of course, cards are all well and good for when you want to chase some beasts or race cars around a table but the Vita is a handheld device and you won’t always have the benefit of smooth surfaces. McLaughin told me that it’s here that the system of cameras and gyros within the Vita come into play, he said that “the gyros create a form of marker-less AR. If you are on the beach or at the park just point the Vita, press the button and AR will appear to the right scale in front of you.”

The Vita has a number of dedicated AR games that will be available at launch, including Reality Fighters, Fireworks, Table Football and Cliff Diving (those last three come free as part of the AR Suite) but what about implications beyond launch? McLaughlin cites that we can expect to see dedicated AR titles in pretty much any genre you care to think of but also mentioned that he fully expects to see AR crop up as an element within games.

He had a number of examples to hand included “if Gran Turismo were to come to the PS Vita, it could let you look at one of those gorgeous cars on your table.” He also presented the really intriguing idea of the possibility the technology could be seen in less conventional genres, such as a hypothetical detective game where “your character could approach a lightswitch and the AR could show you the lightswitch in front of you so you can find a fingerprints or piece of evidence.”

Whatever the future of the device as a whole, AR does appear to be something that people get a kick out of. The WAAR technology in the Vita is genuinely impressive and the games I got to try with it were nice little diversions. If the promises of AR becoming a part of larger games becomes a reality then I think it could really add something to the Vita as a system, it’s just up to developers to go beyond simple tech-demos and show us something really spectacular. The Vita launches on the twenty-second of February.

You also only have one weapon most of the time, a rocket style projectile that is bound to your right mouse with jump occupying your left. You will occasionally gain access to a one shot kill rail gun but that’s about it. The playing field is also completely level so don’t expect perks, kill-streaks, levelling up or any of the other elements that have become de riguer in the modern shooter genre. If you need a touchstone think Quake 3 or Unreal Tournament and then weep tears of joy.

So far this all sounds really like the kind of “boiling off” of elements that make the Trackmania games so simple and fun to play. Naturally, this being a “mania” game you will also be able to craft their own levels, game modes but the actual physics of the game world will remain locked away just as they do in Trackmania. Shootmania: Storm will launch for €19.99, will be a PC exclusive and currently doesn’t have a release date.

Love those lighting bolts at the start. Day 1′s creative director, TJ Wagner, said that “It feels great to return to the Mech genre and community we’ve played games with and made games with, for almost two decades. Combining the customization and RPG elements of the early MechWarrior PC and board games with the fast paced arcade action of the MechAssault series and making it all Free-to-Play is an exciting opportunity to be part of.” There is something inherently cool about the Western spin given to the Japanese concept of mechs and I am really glad that after such a long period of drought, the genre looks to be coming back to some kind of life again. There is no date for Reign of Thunder yet other than “soon” so stay tuned.

It will allow you to use friends ghosts, show you leaderboards, and generally create a sense that you are connected to something even when not using dedicated internet modes. You will also be able to set your own ghosts loose to record wins or losses even when you aren’t playing. It has been quite some time since there were good extreme sports games coming out and I really do hope that SSX starts a trend of this style of gaming coming back in a big way. The demo is only available until the twentieth of March leaving you to wait for two days before the full titles comes out on the twenty-second.

The game is slated for a March 30th release date on the PS3 and Xbox 360 but will be the first PGA Tour game since 2006 not to come out on the Wii.

Mass Effect 3 is out on the ninth of March and you can get a look at just how badly things are going on Earth when the game begins by grabbing the demo which is up now for the PS3, PC and 360. You can also join the masses in their galaxy-saving adventures by trying a little bit of the multiplayer which is also in the demo. Try to play it with friends because it is hard as hell and you won’t last very long on your own or with randoms.

It’s been a long time coming but it looks like SSX is on course to bring back some of the spirit of the extreme spots games of the mid 2000′s into the modern era. If everything remains on course the game will be coming out on the second of March and it does seem kind of late to delay it again. A demo will also be hitting the download services on the twenty-first of this month. SSX is coming out on the PS3 and Xbxo 360.

Though I have not loved some of the choice Karpyshyn made in his work,  finding a writer with even basic level of competence in this industry seems to be extremely difficult and Karpyshyn was far more than just competent. Karpyshyn made sure to note that his departure from Bioware was completely amicable and had the following words for people worried about the writing quality in future Bioware titles:

The story and dialog in any BioWare game is the result of an entire team of writers working together, and I often felt I received an excessive amount of the credit for the games we created.

Despite these modest comments he will be a loss to Bioware and the series that he contributed to.

KOA: Reckoning opens with your character waking from the dead and finding themselves thrown into the middle of a skirmish between a group of friendly gnomes and the evil Tuattha. You quickly find out that the Tuattha are an evil faction of elves that are reincarnated following death making them all but invincible. They are also one of the few races who possess this ability which makes fighting a war against them pretty hard. Your own resurrection sets things in motion and the discovery that you can change fate makes you the focal point of the efforts to stop the Tuattha menace.

After the initial tutorial skirmish you are left to your own devices in the world of Amalur. You quickly grasp that each distinct region is sectioned off into smaller districts that will usually contain a town or settlement of some sort that will serve as your quest hub. During my first few hours with the game I loved clearing out every quest from every area since it gave me an excuse to just fight, gain experience and gather loot but that soon came to a grinding halt.

It is easy to write off Reckoning as having a cheery aesthetic based on the opening area but things do get darker.

The combat in KOA: Reckoning is probably the most action oriented I can remember playing in an RPG and has more in common with God of War than Skyrim or WoW. You can roll around enemies to evade attacks and switch between two weapons on the fly. Generally this means that you can have something for ranged combat and something for when you are getting more intimate with foes but I also rolled with a fast and slow melee weapon to better suit the speed of the enemy I was fighting. Unfortunately, the timed button press combos just don’t offer enough complexity to hold up over the run-time of the game; this is doubly true if you are doing a lot of those side quests I mentioned.

The one thing that did hold my interest was the interesting open nature of Reckoning’s class and level system. In game your attributes, skills and abilities fall under the three different fates: Might, Finesse and Sorcery. These three fates obviously align to the fighter, rogue and mage equivalents in other games but the real fun comes from mixing them up.

The game openly encourages this mixing and matching by offering “fate cards” that offer bonuses for having put a certain number of skill points into a certain fate or number of fates. For instance, the warlock fate card is designed to help a mixture of rogue and mage and even replaces the standard roll move with a short range teleport! Every mixture of class possible is viable and supported by the system making sure that you won’t find yourself with a completely useless character.

Even putting a small amount of points into the sorcery fate will unlock some pretty devastating spells.

By the end of the main quest I had decided to overcome the fragility issue my character was encountering by sinking some points into Might in order to access some beefier armour. Combining this with a protection spell and ultra lethal daggers made combat a triviality. The fact that I had crafted a suit of armour that basically kept my health topped up at all times probably helped there too. If things ever did get hectic I just chugged some of the potions I had brewed up.

If you are a loot whore then you are well catered for here with every piece of equipment carrying the usual green, blue, pink etc. colour coding to let you know whether something is worth lugging around with you. Items suffer from wear and tear and the prices you will be charged to repair them are utterly outrageous so make sure you stock up on repair kits.

There is a lot to do in Reckoning but only some of it is interesting and this is far and away the games biggest failing. I really think the game would have benefited from having content cut and more focus being placed on the main path that basically offers a decent “tour” of the world of Amalur. Unfortunately side-quests that feel like they fell out of an MMO clutter the entire landscape and it became all to easy to become bogged down in killing twenty spiders or grabbing a certain item from whoever. It made a game I loved at around twenty hours in into one that was beginning to feel like work at forty. I would really recommend that people stick like glue to the main and faction quests.

Even after the lustre has begun to wear off the systems the game is still pretty, especially once you leave the prototypical enchanted forest opening area. The enemies look and animate well (courtesy of Spawn creator Todd McFarlane) as does your character. It also ran well at high settings on a laptop that is over a year old so the quality of the port is quite high.

McFarlane was obviously kept well under control. Don't expect any Spawn-esque designs here.

The story was interesting for the most part but did rely heavily on fantasy tropes you will have seen a dozen times, it was penned by R.A. Salvatore after all. I will also make special mention to the obvious Irish overtones much of the world has. For instance the Tuattha are an obvious nod to the Tuatha De Danann of Irish myth, even if every single character in the game pronounces the word incorrectly. The majority of the Elven characters also speak in something approaching an Irish accent, so it’s nice to see a fantasy universe with the right people on top. My favourite Irish influence was the fact that the generic skeleton enemies are known as “fear gorta”.

During my review of the game I spent most of my time really enjoying Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning and only began to have my doubts after spending some time getting knee deep into the games side content. If you put it out of your head that you should explore every nook and cranny of Reckoning’s world and stick mostly to the main and faction quests then you should have an enjoyable twenty hours.  If you really love the combat or feel of the game then there is easily forty to fifty more hours of content on top of the stuff I would consider central but cannot recommend ploughing through material that would feel more at home in an online MMO than a single player RPG.

Verdict:

Gameplay: 7/10

Graphics: 7/10

Sound: 6/10

Narrative: 6/10

Overall: 7/10

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is available now for the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC. This review is based on the PC version of the game. The pc version of the game requires the installation of the Origin client and a one-time activation that requires internet access.

Mass Effect 3 is launching on terra firma on the ninth of March. The space launch will be happening then so keep an eye out just in case the promotion launches here or if you live in one of the cities above. You can try the some selected singleplayer content and a large amount of the multiplayer by downloading the demo which launched on Tuesday.

I can’t lie and say I wouldn’t be a million times happier about this game if Remedy were developing it, but it’s not like Rockstar tolerate mediocrity. The Houser’s are capable writers and even if the game doesn’t satisfy from a fan-service angle, it will be interesting to see how Rockstar are able to deal with a more linear experience. This is the first game the studio will be releasing (in modern times) that doesn’t focus on some kind of open-world. I am eagerly awaiting the results.

Journey casts you as a strange armless figure that is wandering through a sprawling desert. You can only jump after collecting fragments of light that can be found in the ruins dotting the desolate landscape. However, if you are connected to the PSN, you will occasionally cross paths with other people doing the same thing. You are not notified of when a player is in your world (or vice-versa) and cannot communicate with them outside of making your character sing in an unknown language. I think this game will really grab some people but it does go without saying that there is a good chance that this is really going to be a love it or hate it kind of deal.

If you are able to make it to the Games Fleadh which takes place this March fourteenth and fifteenth you will be able to play a demo version of the game, the full game will hit around the middle of this year. This is a game that is truly and completely Irish to the core and promises to be hilarious considering that The Rubber Bandits are obviously very funny and those of your familiar with our Splitscreen show interview with Paddy and the lads will know that they are funny people too. It’s also the only press package I’ve ever seen that had an animated GIF file in it and that’s just great:

The trailer also features the voice work of Brian Cox (X-Men 2, Killzone 1 & 2) and Roasario Dawson (Sin City) as well as a pretty tasteful remix of a tune from the original game by Nero. While this iteration of the series bears little in common to the original isometric strategy games it is refreshing to see a first person shooter that doesn’t involve the modern military or sand. The games co-op demo is out now so if you want to get a feel for how it plays then give it a look.

The trailer is being pulled down as soon as it goes up but the knowledge that the game will be coming on September the sixth this year cannot be erased. That’s a Thursday which would be a weird day to release a game so maybe adjust that date to the seventh. The trailer itself is an all CG affair that shows how the games protagonist, Jason, gets caught up in some kind of bad-business on an idyllic island. In lieu of posting a trailer that will be down within the hour here is that E3 reveal:

An interview with Edge magazine has also shed a little bit of light on the game with the team saying that they wanted to present a more personal story rather than the “hard-edged political cynicism” of Far Cry 2. In terms of gameplay, Far Cry 3 seems to be going for a more linear, mission-based approach that will allow you to experiment within more contained areas rather than the sprawling open world of the last game. Weapon degradation is also out but one mission will apparently see Jason chowing down on some hallucinogenic mushrooms before taking on his enemies. Cutting out the open-world sounds bad to me, but at least it should mean the end of the infinitely respawning checkpoing nightmares of Far Cry 2.

The new trailer focussing on the level doesn’t seem to show any actual gameplay but should clue you in to the general attitude of the game, that is to say it is heavy on snowboarding lingo like “wicked” and “carving”. Here it is:

SSX has been given a ton of time to recover from the poor reception the intial “Call of Dudey” reveal a few years ago and is now shaping up to be a return to form for the once revered series. I just hope I can overcome my allergy to dubstep before the game comes out on the second of March for the PS3 and Xbox 360.

The demo offers both single and multiplayer modes, with the latter being locked until the seventeenth unless you have an online activated copy of Battlefield 3. Since single-player is really what counts about this series I will be focussing on that. The demo offers you a choice of male or female Shepard, both origin stories and, most importantly, what class you wish to play as. I picked Sentinel, since the mix of biotic and soldier was pretty much unstoppable in the last game.

I suspect the demo does not begin at the actual start of the game and instead after the introductory sequence which apparently sees Shepard answering for the events that took place at the end of the “Arrival” DLC. In any case Shepard is on lockdown, has been stripped of his or her rank and is just kind of hanging out before being informed that the Reapers have reached Earth. From this point on the demo level is a complete spectacle with massive Reaper ships landing amongst an increasingly devastated Earth city.

The series has messed with anything of this scale since that incredibly memorable spacewalk outside the Citadel at the end of the first game. It’s a fantastic scene and really hammers home that things have finally properly kicked off in the Mass Effect universe. This is no small raid on a colony but a full-scale attack on a species home planet. You and Admiral Anderson are amongst the few survivors of the shock attack and set off to get rescued by the Normandy.

The shooting you get to do during this section is against husks so you aren’t exactly using a huge array of tactics other than “shoot those guys” but it does immediately establish that the shooting controls are now on-par with most fully fledged action games. Moving between cover and acquiring targets is quick and easy, as was mixing in some of my biotic powers. It also feels satisfying with weapons doing reasonable amounts of damage without ever making things too easy.

Another point that immediately stood out was the increased fidelity graphically and in terms of sound design. You are probably familiar with the “M8 Avenger” gun from the series; it is generally used as Shepard’s default weapon in any promotional material and has always been a decent default gun for some classes. In the past the gun has sounded like someone pissing on galvanise but now sounds like a mix of the familiar loud rattle of today’s weaponry mixed with some audio filters that do just enough to suggest that the gun is futuristic or otherworldly.

As I said, graphically the game has made a big leap but some character models still look a little off. The newly redesigned Ashley kind of looks like one of the “real-dolls” catalogued in the depressing/hilarious documentary Guys and Dolls. I will say that Garrus, Wrex and Liara look noticeably better than they did in the last game. The environments and effects are also much-improved with a noticeably higher importance being placed on background detail this time around.

The first missions ends with a sample of what Black Swan composer Clint Mansell has brought to game and I think it makes an already effective scene become that bit more striking. The mission also earns browny points from me by ending on a scene that really reminded me of Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds remake.

The second mission in the demo is slightly longer and hasn’t been shown as extensively as the first so I will keep things short and vague for anyone avoiding spoilers. It places a heavier focus on combat against a more intelligent foe. The demo gives you access to several weapons and each one is fun to use and has pretty distinctive characteristics. The Mattock, for instance, requires you to pump the trigger to keep your rate of fire up but can turn into a real death-dealer if you are using it right.

The single-player portion of the demo clocked up at about forty-five minutes for me and it is fairly obvious that both missions have had large sections cut out of them. The game looks and sounds great, plays well and hints that it will have the depth many found lacking from the second game (one stat increases Shepard’s “carry weight”) as well as the conversation system that fans already love.

You can play the single player portion of the demo right now and can also enjoy multiplayer from today if you have activated a copy of Battlefield 3 online. You will be waiting until the seventeenth to sample that part of the game if you don’t. The full game releases on the ninth of March for the PC, Ps3 and Xbox 360.

The trailer is also plugging the Mass Effect 3 demo which went up today and offers some instructions on how to grab it. E.A. and Bioware are really putting some strength behind this one and are looking to send the series out on a real high. I will be posting my own impressions of the single player portion of the demo later on but suffice to say I think that Bioware will have done enough to quell the bizarre air of worry that has begun to surround the game in recent months. The full game is out on March ninth here in Ireland. If you are of the American persuasion you will be able to watch that trailer during the episode of The Walking Dead which will air this Sunday night on AMC.

It’s certainly no “weird looking girl” by Chris Cunnigham and is at least several times less baffling than David Lynch’s bizarre “duck man” short but I actually like the ad. I am going to be getting my grubby paws on the Vita tomorrow evening so I will have all of the information you need ahead of the platforms release next Wednesday. I should also be able to tell you what the “Vita Vault” program that will be visiting Irish cities is all about. Stay tuned for that.

Describing what the game is is actually problematic but suffice to say, if you do not like more abstract, “arty” games then this is most certainly not for you. If you want to hear some good writing and possibly the beginning of interactive fiction moving beyond the text-adventure then this game might scratch your itch. At the very least you can try the original Dear Esther mod. If that grabs you early on you should definitely drop the money for this full version of the project.

The game also managed to make the videos part of the narrative. Mr. Scratch, Wake’s insane alter-ego and possible source of the dark power that is threatening the world, has only ever appeared inside television screens in-game and is actually played by the same voice-actor as Alan Wake himself. He is also absolutely snooker-loopy as this new video from Alan Wake’s American Nightmare demonstrates:

Alan Wake’s American Nightmare is set to come out on the twenty-second of February and will be the second game in the House Party promotion on Xbox Live. I thought the first game was really underrated when it came out just under two-years ago so hopefully this new downloadable game coupled with the impending release of the original on the PC will be enough to get the title the attention it deserves.

Rockstar confirmed that they will have more to  say in a fan questions and answers session that was mainly dedicated to Max Payne 3. They said that ” we’d like to again thank you and everyone out there for the amazing response to the debut Grand Theft Auto V trailer. We know that there are a ton of questions you all have about the game, including release date and lots else. Right now, we are very hard at work on the game and are excited as well to show and tell you more as development progresses – except that we’ll be talking much more about GTA V starting at some point in a few months’ time. ”

The developer also received a question about the future of L.A. Noire, something which seemed more or less finished after the closure of developer Bondai late last year. However, Rockstar tell the reader: “don’t count out the possibility of a new game in the L.A. Noire franchise in the future. We simply have not decided anything.” While this answer is more a placeholder than anything it’s certainly better than an out-of-hand dismissal of the game.

Valve, who brought on key members of the DOTA community (including it’s official “custodian” Icefrog) to help with DOTA 2, do not dispute that things seem pretty clear cut from the EULA. However, they say that “Valve denies the use of DOTA marks by Valve and its predecessors in interest is under license from or for the benefit of Blizzard.” In English this would seem to indicate that since Blizzard don’t directly make DOTA it isn’t something they own.

This case could take a year to resolve itself with Blizzard having up to this time in 2013 to file a final rebuttal. DOTA 2 is currently in an increasingly open beta and though it does not have a release date Valve do seem to be gearing up to get it out the door sooner rather than later. Obviously, this cannot happen while the games name is under a trademark dispute. It will be interesting to see how it all eventually pans out.

It is sad to see the two biggest PC-centric developers left fighting each other over something like this. On the one hand Blizzard’s EULA does seem quite sinister in that it claims ownership of things made by their fans. On the other Valve’s trademarking of the DOTA name has always seemed quite strange and an odd move for a company that has always focussed so heavily on treating fan projects well.  I wonder what Basshunter thinks of all this?

Modern gamers might be most familiar with Obsidians flawed gems such as KOTOR 2, Alpha Protocol and Fallout: New Vegas. If you look a bit further into Avellones past you find Planescape: Torment. The game was released in late 1999 for the PC and immediately won praise for it’s unique setting and incredibly high-standard of writing. Unfortunately, the game was sold short by a baffling advertising campaign and became a cult classic and never achieved mainstream success. Obviously this is far from a confirmation but it is a certainty that old-school RPG fans are every bit as passionate about their genre as adventure fans so the money is probably there.

You will also notice that Jacob, Miranda and Samara feature in this trailer, if only for a split second. The game is just over a month from release and we are more than a little excited around these parts. Expect some cool stuff around the release of the game on March the ninth. Until then you will have to keep yourself amused with the demo for the game which drops on Valentines day. The demo will let you experience the beginning of the Reaper attack on Earth as well as a sampling of the brand new multiplayer mode.

The game also features the now obligatory raft of buzzword mechanics such as total racquet control and P.R.O AI system. While I don’t really know what those systems do I can tell you that I had a ton of fun playing this one a few months ago. It was also the most swamped I have ever seen a booth at a press event. I think tennis has always translated well to games since the court is quite confined and the game is usually played by individuals meaning that the player is completely focussed on their character rather than swapping between the six, eleven etc. players on the court in other sports. Heres hoping that Grand Slam Tennis 2 can keep up that tradition.

Donations started at $15 dollars which earns you the game on Steam and the documentary  while the single donation of $10,000 got the donor a lunch with Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert. After a rocky period following the release and subsequent lukewarm critical and sales reception of Brutal Legend, Double Fine have sprung back into life with a handful of high-quality downloadble titles such as Iron Brigade, Stacking and Costume Quest. This entire endeavour is the culmination of a new wave in gaming culture that began with Minecraft. Present players with an idea or pitch that they believe in and they will probably pay for it sight-unseen. Double Fine are the first large independent company to try this but based on this success don’t expect them to be the last.

You will play as Cole Mathis, a ground soldier as well as someone in control of some ships. The levels will alternate between regular first person alien-mashing and what Activision describe as “Battle Command” sequences. Presumably this is achieved by challenging one of your extra-terrestrial foes to a game of Battleship right in the heat of battle*.

Double Helix are no stranger to films licences seeing as they are responsible for the poorly rated G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and last years Green Lantern. Not that I wish to malign the studio for having the poor fortune of being handed the unenviable task of working on movie tie-in games which is by all accounts absolutely horrible. Battleship will be out on the 360 and PS3 this April. Separate versions of the games will be coming to the 3DS, DS and Wii later on.

*Definitely not the case.

Epic has optioned four of the books and has enlisted four start-ups to make them into games as part of the Make Something Unreal competition. The games will be released on iOS (Iphone, Ipad) and a fully licensed version of the iOS version of the Unreal 3 Engine is up for grabs. The A-Team, Team Gandalf, Nova Eye and what are being described as an “all-star” group will be duking it out under the mentorship of industry veterans in an effort to win the prize.

The four books that have been chosen are The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, The Citadel of Chaos, Deathtrap Dungeon and Armies of Death. Again, if you are old you will remember that Deathtrap Dungeon was adapted into a weird third-person adventure game way back in 1998. It wasn’t very good. Hopefully the version that comes out of this competition is better than that. The results of the competition will be announced in April and you should be playing the games on your Apple device around that time too.

While I’m sure that fungal infected humans will be an enemy perhaps they will be used as sparingly as the more exotic enemies were in the Uncharted games. The game will see a roving weapon and drug trader called Joel take a girl too young to remember a normal world on the road from the safety of a military containment camp designed to quarantine some of humanity from the fungal disease that has turned the majority of the race into mindless monsters. Joel’s moral ambiguity seems to be a central point to the game and having uninfected humans present the writers of the game with any number of interesting moments to explore just how dark his character is and whether what the actions the two become involved with are necessary. The Last of Us is tentatively scheduled to come out before the end of this year.

Guillame de Foundaumiere, CEO of flagship French developer Quantic Dream, painted a bleak picture of what could happen if the measure is not extended in a letter to the Commission:

The abandonment of this flagship measure, which brings hope to a large number of European studios and which has demonstrated its effectiveness in France, would be an historic mistake.

He continued by saying that if the measure was discontinued that his studio would be seeking to take advantage of the attractive tax rates in Canada. This is something that dozens of European companies have already done with UK based gaming industry body TIGA estimating the their industry has contracted by ten percent. It belives that two-fifths of the jobs lost since 2009 have gone overseas.

If the game itself can capture the kind of action that makes films like Hard Boiled such classics, then Activision (who turned their back on the project two years ago) will have some egg on their face. The game is being developed by United Front Games and their executive producer, Stephen Van Der Mescht, promises that “The extensive experience both our studios have in creating compelling openworld gameplay and rich and rewarding combat makes for a perfect partnership. Working together we can make sure that Sleeping Dogs is the most intense and immersive experience it can be.”

It could also just be a case that Gamestop erroneously sold content that they weren’t supposed to sell until a month or two down the line. If it is day one DLC then Bioware certainly won’t be ingratiating themselves to an audience that frequently complained about the smaller weapon DLC packs that were released for Mass Effect 2. I would like it if this was just some bizarre cross-promotion and it unlocked one of the suicidal tribe members from Ubisoft’s From Dust game as a squad member. Mass Effect 3 comes out on the ninth of March.

The Creation Kit marks the first major use of the Steam Workshop by a big game on this scale. The Workshop is a way of promoting and delivering mods for games on Valve’s service within Steam and should cut out the need for people to visit strange sites and move files into sub-folders and edit things themselves. Previous Elder Scrolls games had always been blighted by a number of issues surrounding mods and this integration should hopefully do much to alleviate them. For those of playing on the consoles we now get to be even more jealous of the PC Elder Scrolls experience because people have made some seriously cool stuff with these tools fin Bethesda’s other games.

Sorry. Given that the console is probably what you are actually looking forward to I’ll run down what exactly comes in the package in case you have forgotten. It comes with an R2-D2 coloured consoles, a 320 HDD, white Kinect, gold C-3PO controller, and the game itself. No price has been announced for these part but it’s coming at around $450 so don’t expect it too be much less than €450 given how these things usually pan out for us.

 I never said what I was doing post TM (and I’m still on TM along with ESP for the next months as we launch it and balance it in real time and make sure it’s a perfect game and continue to support it). At the same time I will be opening a game studio here in San Diego because I really miss internal game development. Happy to share more details later

Jaffe also cleared some of the air on the casual game rumours by saying “Short ver: never say never but I have zero plans to make games like FARMVILLE and ANGRY BIRDS.”

He also confirmed that some lay-offs had occured at Eat Sleep Play but that he was not among them citing that he was a co-owner of the company and that the dismissals had been “very painful for all to do.” The God of War creator also confirmed that he will release a full statement on the rumours later on today but “rite now: kids need they damn waffles!” Twisted Metal will release in Europe on the seventh of March.

Durall then moves on to the more controversial issue of people lending games to people. I actually like his suggestion that ” they could implement something similar to what Amazon is doing with their Kindle Books lending policy.  The license of the game could be transferred for a set time to another Gamer Tag and the original owner won’t be able to play during that time.” Though this kind of solution would only really fit for the more savvy part of the audience and not the younger people who tend to be the ones swapping games in the first place.

This conversation definitely isn’t going to go away but I can’t help but feel that Durall is being very reductive in a lot of his comments. Some of his solutions do make sense but only to a small portion of the people who play games. He applauds Sony’s decision to have downloadable Vita games be cheaper than the retail versions and points to this as a possible solution to what he perceives as a problem. He doesn’t stop to consider that switching to a digital-only market just isn’t possible for some people, hell some countries and I would include Ireland in that. That level of internet infrastructure generally doesn’t exist for all but the most hardcore elements of the audience and I’d imagine most of them are already buying games new anyway. The regular person who plays a few games a year probably won’t have the high-grade connection and bandwith resources on their package to go downloading games that usually come in at around seven gigs, files that will be even bigger when we are talking about the next-generation. Expect to see this argument cropping up more and more as time goes on.

Psychonauts was a 2005 adventure-platformer that centred on the adventures of Raz, a new cadet at a Summer camp for psychic children. It featured some absolutely amazing writing and incredible set-piece levels but was often let down by some of the moment to moment gameplay. Still though, the game has (rightfully) attracted huge critical praise and a cult fanbase that remains loyal to this day. The original is available on Steam with full Steamworks support (including cloud saves) now and even better all the profits go directly to Double Fine themselves. I don’t know if we will ever see a fully blown Psychonauts sequel but perhaps some smaller episodic adventures centred on exploring different minds might fit the downloadble format which has been so good to Double Fine recently.