Here’s a Call of Duty: Black Ops trailer featuring the Berlin Wall, one of five new maps for the First Strike downloadable content.
Brink is a Sci-Fi action game set in a dystopian future.
Tecmo Koei teases reveal of blood-spattered sequel at upcoming convention; game to ship sometime in 2012; first trailer inside.
Last year at the Tokyo Game Show, Tecmo Koei unveiled Ninja Gaiden III, the upcoming installment in the ultraviolent–and ultradifficult–action series. Little was revealed about the game, other than it would once again feature protagonist Ryu Hayabusa engaged in the bloody combat the franchise is known for.
Today, Tecmo Koei released the first teaser trailer for the game, which also teased the title’s brutal nature. Running around 37 seconds, the clip shows Ryu Hayabusa repeatedly slashing and stabbing someone–from the victim’s point of view. The clip then shows the titular ninja, covered in blood, leaning back to take off his famed mask–and then cuts to the Japanese character for the number three. The words “unmask” and “E3 2011″ then appear before the trailer ends.
The accompanying press release–which never mentions Ninja Gaiden III by name–promises that the “new title” will see release sometime in 2012. Development is underway at Team Ninja under the leadership of the studio’s leader, Yosuke Hayashi. Hayashi took over the shop after former head Tomonobu Itagaki left the company following Ninja Gaiden II’s release in 2008.
“The game is set to introduce this franchise to a broader audience while at the same time retaining the legendary challenge that has drawn hardcore gamers to the series for years,” Tecmo Koei said in a statement. The company promised that a playable demo of the game would be on hand for the press at E3.
We make our way through a slimier version of Aperture Science in a two-hour hands-on demo of Portal 2′s single-player campaign.
“Say apple,” Wheatley commands, surveying you with his twitchy blue eye. You go to speak, but end up jumping on the spot instead. “I don’t want to alarm you,” he starts, trying to keep his voice steady, “but you probably have brain damage. Not to worry, though. We’ll probably be okay. I mean, you know, as long as nothing else goes wrong.”
Plenty of things went wrong during our two-hour hands-on demo of Portal 2′s single-player campaign at Valve’s headquarters near Seattle. We made our way through the opening chapters of the game, before skipping ahead to a new section in the latter-part of the campaign.
Portal 2′s beginning is familiar enough: Chell, alone in a room. It’s not the cold, sterile environment we’ve seen before; this new room is a vast improvement–carpeted floors, a wardrobe, a desk, potted plants, and even art. But something just doesn’t feel right.
The new AI caretaker is male, for one. His baritone voice breaks out over the loudspeakers, instructing you to move around and get used to your surroundings. If you’re feeling up to it, he chirps, you can do some basic mental stimulation exercises by staring intently at the framed painting that hangs above your bed.
Or, if that doesn’t do it for you, he can always provide some classical music. You’re just beginning to think about requesting Bach’s Organ Concerto in G when you lose consciousness; you come to in the same room, although you barely recognize it now: vines creep along the walls, the carpet is a mushy brown color, and the desk and wardrobe have fallen into disuse and decay.
And suddenly, there’s Wheatley (brilliantly voiced by Stephen Merchant)–the neurotic caretaker of Aperture’s 10,000 test subjects–telling you that the whole place is collapsing and you have to escape, now.
If running around in an online world shooting anonymous people with a virtual rifle is something you consider yourself highly proficient at, how about if you were in control of the real thing?
Well now’s the time to find out. With the Ultimate Recruit Training Programme you’ll take control of an actual Helghast StA 52 Assault Rifle in an interactive close-combat experience. Taking place on a fully mechanized shooting range via the wonder of the web, real-time sensors will give you feedback and scoring via Facebook and Twitter.
Not only that but you’ll be screamed at by an experienced military campaigner, Drill Sergeant McCain, who will pore over your performance and shout you down if necessary. Now, do you maggots understand that?
Each recruit’s range performance is scrutinized by the ever-vigilant Drill Sergeant and only those who display extraordinary poise and control when firing, will satisfy his exacting standards. If you score low, don’t expect an easy ride, forgiveness is definitely not one of his virtues.
Click here to enlist – Good luck soldier!
Two-mission add-on for EA’s sci-fi horror shooter arrives on XBL, PSN next week for ; no announced plans for PC release.
Electronic Arts bigwigs are already talking about Dead Space 3, but the company isn’t even done with Dead Space 2 yet. The publisher today announced that March 1 will see the launch of Dead Space 2: Severed for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the sci-fi shooter.
A downloadable add-on featuring characters from Dead Space: Extraction, Severed will include two stand-alone single-player chapters. The expansion will drop players into the role of Gabe Weller, a security guard on the necromorph-infested Sprawl, as he escorts Lexine Murdock to safety. Weller is equipped with an upgraded pulse rifle and security suit, both of which will come in handy when faced with the returning Twitcher, which fans may remember from the original Dead Space.
Dead Space 2: Severed will be available for .99 (560 Microsoft points). As for a PC release of the add-on, an EA representative told GameSpot that “the team is focusing on Severed for X360 and PS3.”
For more on the core game, check out GameSpot’s review of Dead Space 2.
Check out DICE’s new game engine Frostbite 2 in this first look at gameplay from Battlefield 3.
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Microsoft announces simultaneous worldwide release for Epic Games’ Xbox 360-exclusive shooter; no beta date yet.
It may be one of the jewels in Microsoft’s 2011 lineup, but Gears of War 3 has had a tumultuous time on the road to release. The game’s unveiling was set to take place on chat show Late Night with Jimmy Fallon but was delayed, though not before the game’s release date was reportedly leaked on Xbox Live.
Shortly after the Late Night showing, Microsoft confirmed that the game would be landing in April 2011, but then had to renege on its initial promise and delay the game to a holiday 2011 release.
Today, Microsoft has announced a new worldwide release date for Gears of War 3 of September 20, 2011. This brings territories such as Japan, Australia, and Europe in line with the US, which was originally going to get the game first when it was slated for an April release date.
Microsoft has also named some of the maps and weapons that are due to appear in the game when it lands in September. There will be new multiplayer maps by the name of Trenches, Overpass, Mercy, Checkout, and Thrashball, as well as new weapons, including a bayonet charge, a retro lancer, a sawed-off shotgun, a one-shot, an incendiary grenade, and a digger launcher. Microsoft has also promised that more news on the multiplayer public beta will be released soon.
Gears of War 3′s new release date places it just one week after another high-profile shooter–id’s Rage. To find out more about Gears of War 3, including the game’s new Beast mode, read GameSpot’s ongoing coverage of the game.
This crass shooter has its drawbacks, but it’s got no shortage of stylish fun. Score: 8.0 / great
Sci-fi first-person shooter Bulletstorm is a celebration of adolescent crassness. It is neither artful nor sophisticated, proudly wearing strings of obscenities as a badge of dishonor. Subtle it isn’t; entertaining, it is. Where the meatheaded characters and forced, childish dialogue fail, the gameplay mostly succeeds, pushing you through a variety of attractive environments and encouraging you to “kill with skill.”
In Bulletstorm, you earn points by kicking your enemies into cacti, shooting them in the rear end, and flinging them into the air with your electric leash, among many other variations and combinations of bullets, boots, and exploding barrels. You spend these points on ammo, weapon upgrades, and more, giving you reason to perform these moves beyond the initial gratification they provide.
Bulletstorm is sometimes ludicrous and often ludicrously fun–an enjoyable and occasionally embarrassing journey to the profane future it predicts.
The Confederation of Planets’ General Sarrano is a product of this future. This potty-mouthed, wholly abhorrent man is part of a secret army called Dead Echo–as was Grayson Hunt, a grunt who discovered that the targets that Sarrano ordered his team execute were innocent of wrongdoing. Years later, a drunken Grayson, thirsty for revenge, leads his crew of mercenaries into a battle they’re ill-prepared to win.
Grayson and Sarrano both crash-land on the planet Stygia, where Grayson’s quest for vengeance is coupled with his plan to escape. As Grayson, you are accompanied by Ishi, a colleague constantly fighting to control the robotic AI used to patch his brain after he’s injured during Grayson’s alcohol-fueled rampage.
Ishi is Bulletstorm’s best character: conflicted, temperamental, and unpredictable. Nevertheless, praising any of this game’s characters is somewhat of a backhanded compliment, given their shallow penchant for describing events, emotions, and each other using four-letter words combined in various nonsensical ways.
A few of these bizarre outbreaks of sexual innuendo might be absurd enough to put a momentary grin on your face, but the cringe-worthy dialogue isn’t coupled with, say, Duke Nukem 3D’s hysterical hypersexual excess, Serious Sam’s vibrant surreality, or Vanquish’s tongue-in-cheek skewering of modern video game machismo. In fact, Bulletstorm’s finest narrative moments are those that leave the trashy talk behind and touch ever-so-briefly on Grayson’s guilty conscience, and his attempts to help Ishi conquer the AI infesting his mind.
Unfortunately, the verbal sleaze gets tiring quickly and undermines any attempt at serious storytelling. Perhaps developer People Can Fly meant for this dialogue to be so over the top as to be side-splittingly funny. Instead, it comes across as a forced attempt to appeal to our basest instincts.
And so Bulletstorm lacks wit, but it has no shortage of entertaining, in-your-face action. The six-hour campaign is packed with fun shooting made even more enjoyable by the way you earn rewards for being awesome. Your awesomeness begins with the energy leash, which lets you grab foes from afar and yank them toward you. Doing so causes them to helplessly hover in the air for a few seconds as if the laws of time and gravity were temporarily suspended just for that particular enemy.
Here’s a gameplay trailer for Ace Combat: Assault Horizon.
