Redefining the franchise, SSX combines snowboarding with action adventure.
Deadly Descents refers to one of three key gameplay modes that EA was keen to shout about. The Deadly Descents are “all about survival gameplay” and outrunning “amazing” avalanches, rockslides and falling stalactites.
In the case of Pixel Blocked, it plays like a cross between Nintendo’s Picross series and any of the many Sokoban clones out there.
You’re given a grid of blocks you can rotate at a 90° angle and a gun thingy that shoots more blocks.
The object is to fill in the missing blocks on the grid with nothing out-of-place. The puzzles feature three different block types already in place in which to construct around.
Steel blocks are the easy ones to work with. Magnet blocks grab any blocks that pass directly by them. And finally crumble blocks break as soon as a block lands on them.
At E3 this year, THQ showed an impressive, if somewhat unrepresentative, demo of Metro: First Light. Instead of showing the game as it will play, they created an all-action sequence that shows off quite how remarkable the engine is. Rather than offering slow, spooky the atmosphere you’ll really be playing in. The first part of that video, broken up into three chunks for maximum annoyance, is below.
The trailer shows off how you can manipulate the environment to your advantage, bringing darkness to areas infected by light.
After all the talk about being outside the vehicle, we go behind the wheel in our latest ride.
Even with all the talk surrounding the on-foot aspects in the upcoming game, Need for Speed: The Run, it’s refreshing to get behind the wheels of some of the fastest cars in the world and see where the game is heading as we race across the United States.
Of course, we know only bits and pieces behind the game’s expansive story; we are expecting a game that puts players in the role of Jack as he races from San Francisco to New York against other competitors and from the mob. In our latest hands-on time with the game, we had the opportunity to drive a Porsche 911 GT3 in a stretch of desert highway in the game’s Sprint Race mode.
The objective was simple: Complete the stretch of highway as fast as possible and overtake 10 cars to improve our overall in-game ranking. We drove a Porsche, and the stretch of highway offered what you’d expect with past NFS games: plenty of shortcuts, tight turns, and the necessity of avoiding incoming traffic. As far as we’ve been told, all courses in the game are based on actual real-life spots throughout the country, but some slight modifications have been made to incorporate the Frostbite 2 engine and to make it more appealing for racing fans.
A new implantation being introduced in The Run is the rewind feature. Unlike other games where the rewind feature is available to use at anytime, here, it kicks in only in certain situations; specifically, those in which you crash and total your car. Now, rather than having to replay particular races all over again, you are taken back to the last-reached checkpoint and can attempt that particular spot again. The vehicles are put back in their same spots, and now you have the opportunity to fix the mistake that may have caused the first accident to occur.
While racing, we had to use the rewind feature twice, and both times, it was on the same particular stretch of highway. It was kind of nice to be able to try the same spot a couple of times because we got to see what we did wrong the first time. For the second attempt, we went in the complete opposite direction but still managed to destroy our ride.
Although it’s nice that you don’t have to restart a particular race from the beginning, racers are still penalized for using this feature. While the number of rewinds resets after each race, your race timer does not, and this will factor into bragging rights. Also, depending on the game’s difficulty, the number of times you can use this feature is limited. With the one course we raced, it would be highly unlikely that someone would use up all available rewinds, but we expect that later stages and more populated courses, such as city ones, may require numerous attempts.
The popular Autolog feature makes its return in The Run, and your use of rewinds will factor in how much you’ll be able to show off to friends. Because the timer does not reset, if you use the rewind feature, don’t expect to get a really good time. Also, even if you do manage to beat your friend’s time, if you used a rewind, your score is tagged as such, and it won’t hold as much merit.
The racing experience thus far has been what we’ve come to expect from a Need for Speed game, so fans shouldn’t worry too much in that regard. Now, we must wait and see how the game’s Story mode holds out, and hopefully, we’ll hear more on that before the game is released later this year.
We thought we had seen the ultimate street brawling crossover when Street Fighter X Tekken hit the scene. We were wrong. In fall 2012, Street Fighter and Hello Kitty will finally be one, at least from a merchandising perspective.
Hello Kitty parent company Sanrio and Capcom are teaming up to mash-up Street Fighter and Japan’s favorite feline in a line of co-branded merchandise featuring Kitty and friends dressed up in iconic Street Fighter garb. The announcement was teased yesterday during the Capcom panel at the San Diego Comic-Con yesterday, when an image of Hello Kitty in a Chun-Li outfit briefly flashed on the screen. I’ve not seen the image, but I assume it looked something like the above picture, the work of artist and illustrator Karen Hallion.
While no specific merchandise has been announced, we can probably expect figures, t-shirts, pencil case, and whatever else Sanrio has sitting around its warehouse, waiting for cat heads to be stamped on them.
“Capcom has long admired Sanrio and their ability to create memorable and cherished lifestyle brands so it is a distinct pleasure to partner with them for this new cross-over line of merchandise,” said Joshua Izzo, Director of Licensing, Capcom Entertainment, Inc. “The combination of Street Fighter and Hello Kitty will offer fans a whole new way to experience our characters.”
I’ll reserve my excitement until there’s a video game that lets me punch that little jerk Badtz-Maru right in the face.
Upgrade to Kinect-driven pet game adds a new adventure, pandas, grizzlies, and more; set for release as add-on or in bundled retail release this fall.
Last year’s Kinectimals allowed players to enjoy all the cuteness of baby tigers, leopards, and other big cats with none of the danger to life and limb. Microsoft is expanding on that idea, as today it announced an expansion that would serve the same need for those who love the idea of playing with bear cubs but hate the idea of being savagely mauled.
Set for release this fall, Kinectimals Now with Bears will be available as a $50 stand-alone retail game or a $15 downloadable add-on for the original game. As the name suggests, the expansion’s big attraction are the ursine additions, including a black bear, grizzly bear, polar bear, panda bear, and more. The game will also feature a new guide and a new plot in which the player and a cub explore Bear Island in the footsteps of a famous explorer in search of buried treasure.
A combination of pet simulator and minigame collection, the original Kinectimals let players adopt and care for a variety of different big cat cubs like tigers, leopards, and so forth. Using the Kinect camera, players could play with the pets, teach them tricks, and perform a number of more unlikely activities like racing them around obstacle courses on remote control cars.
Something else to add to The Infinite Download List Of Infinite Downloads is Aether, a major mod for good ol’ Minecraft that’s so fat with features and changes that you could almost call it a total conversion. It’s also an extension of Minecraft’s ill-defined, open-to-interpretation fictional universe. If The Nether is Minecraft’s hell, then Aether is its heaven – an even more abstract cube-world of floating sky-islands, angry birds (no, not those ones), loot-holding dungeons and flying whales.
They had me at ‘flying whales.’ Oh, and there’s a ton of new block types (including trampoline-like bouncy clouds) plus an expanded, more RPG-like accessory system and even difficulty tiers for the new dungeon runs.
This one will require full exploration for a longer, later post, but meantime find out more and get it installed here.
Bit of a bastard to install, requiring a few other mini-mods first, so if you’re struggling or not in place where you can download lots of random zip files, here’s The Yogcast’s exporation of The Aether:
Microsoft’s facial-expression-capturing Xbox 360 add-on arrives free for all Xbox Live users for a limited time; Kinect Sparkler confirmed for July 28 debut.
Avatar Kinect lets up to seven users congregate in virtual chat rooms as their Xbox 360 avatars. The Kinect tracks the users’ movements–from nodding heads to raising eyebrows–and maps them to their digital counterparts. The application also lets users set their chats against two dozen different backdrops, as well as record and edit video clips of the conversations to share with others.
Until September 8, Avatar Kinect will be free for all Xbox Live users. After that, only Gold subscribers will be given complimentary access to the service.
Microsoft also dated another Kinect utility today, revealing that Kinect Sparkler would launch July 28. The digital toy lets players use their fingers as virtual sparklers, painting a canvas with multicolored fireworks in three dimensions. Like Avatar Kinect, Kinect Sparkler will also have a means to save and share creations with others. When it launches, Kinect Sparkler will sell for 240 Microsoft points ($3).
The Carmageddon reincarnation has been officially revealed. It’s called Carmageddon: Reincarnation, appropriately enough. (The website appears completely broken at the moment.) And it’s being made by the same team that created the original two games, Stainless Games.
“Carmageddon has returned to its Indie developer roots, and the time is right to bring the game to a new audience.”
Are the words from CEO and co-founder of Stainless, Patrick Buckland. He carries on,
“Originally an ambitious title that tested the hardware limits of its day, we’re excited that the game will finally get the showcase it deserves on today’s platforms.”
Volition and THQ are already readying a third game in the open-world crime series, which will take the franchise in a “new direction.”
Having defeated the rival gangs of Stilwater at the end of Saints Row 2 and overthrown the influence of the Ultor Corporation, the Saints have found themselves with free reign over the city. They target a bank, attempting to airlift the vault out of it, but the alarm alerts the Stilwater PD and the Saints are incarcerated. In prison, they learn that the bank they tried to rob was owned by a huge international crime organization called the Syndicate, led by Phillipe Loren.
After bribing the police, the Syndicate capture the Saints’ leader, Johnny Gat, and Shaundi to try and negotiate a business plan with them, aboard Loren’s private jet. While in-flight, Loren tells them they will be allowed to live if they turn over two-thirds of their territory in Stilwater. The leader of the Saints rejects this offer, and a gunfight breaks out, with the Saint’s leader thrown from the jet.
With the Syndicate in full control of Stilwater, the Saints relocate themselves to the city of Steelport. Pierce is instructed to remain in Stilwater to make sure everything runs smoothly. Steelport is a city that was created as factories flourished with little city planning, and since has suffered from economic failure, contrasting the glamour of Stilwater. The Syndicate has already begun to take control of some parts of Steelport, focusing on vices like merchandise and gambling.
To extend their reach, the Syndicate had divided their control of the city through three gangs. The Morning Star, lead by Loren directly, are typically European men with impeccable taste, selling guns. The Mexican wrestler Killbane controls the Luchadores who deal with gambling. The Deckers, led by hacktivist Matt Miller, are computer geniuses, and handle the money laundering. The Saints see the opportunity to take control of Steelport from these groups. A government trained Special Tactical Anti-Gang (STAG) units will attempt to halt any violent activity whether it be the Saints or the Syndicate.