We get back into the mud for a look at a very near-final version of Codemasters’ upcoming off-road racer.
Dirt 3 wastes no time in making the point that rallying is back. While it was present in Dirt 2, the extreme sports aesthetic and overall feel made it seem slightly out of place–but in Dirt 3, point-to-point races in classic rally cars are front and center.
The first thing you notice when starting the game is that the paddock and RV from the previous game are gone, along with all the product placement and extreme sports lifestyle gubbins. Your pre-race car selection is now set up as a team selection but can be done on an ad hoc basis, with the vehicles determined by your reputation rather than by your ability to afford them.
Once you’ve picked your team and car, you find yourself in the “service area” near the start of the race, where you can tweak individual car settings, as well as the difficulty level of your opponents, the number of available flashbacks, and the driving assists.
To begin with, you’re presented with two classic rally stages in Finland, which do a good job of setting the scene for the game. Despite the trimming of the fat that got between you and races in Dirt 2, it will feel instantly familiar for fans of the series. The two stages you hit first are challenging but not punishing: relatively open bends and small jumps that help to ease you into the driver’s seat.
The choices of a Peugeot 207 and Abarth Grande Punto are hardly the most thrilling, but they’re good little rally cars that are fun to throw around the track.
All preorders of Atlus adventure-puzzle game to include art book and soundtrack; Deluxe Edition packs in polka dot boxers, T-shirt, sexy pillowcase for an extra $20.
Atlus has dated its summer fling. The publisher today announced that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 adventure puzzle game Catherine will launch in North America July 26 in standard and collector’s editions.
The “Love is Over” Deluxe Edition of Catherine will come bundled with some familiar items from the game. Players will get a pair of polka-dot boxers like those worn by protagonist Vincent, an “empty hearts” T-shirt sported by Catherine, and a pillowcase with the titular character’s scantily clad likeness on it. The Deluxe Edition will sell for $80 and will be delivered in a pizza box from Stray Sheep, the drinking establishment featured in the game.
In addition, Atlus is offering some schwag for those who preorder either the Deluxe Edition of Catherine or the $60 standard release of the game. Gamers who commit to a purchase in advance will receive a 36-page art book, as well as an 11-track CD with remixes of the game’s music.
Catherine has players navigating tricky relationship waters as Vincent. When the commitment-phobic protagonist’s girlfriend Katherine starts talking about taking their relationship to the next level, Vincent finds himself straying. While out drinking with friends, he meets a flirty bombshell named Catherine, whom–after a series of events he can’t quite recall–he wakes up next to the following morning.
In addition to helping Vincent make decisions to extricate himself from the situation, players will be called on to fight off the physical manifestations of his fears and guilt as he sleeps. Atlus will also include local competitive and cooperative multiplayer modes, complete with leaderboard support.
Although the game is an original property, Catherine is a collaboration between a number of notable creators. Katsura Hashino, director of Persona 3 and 4, is serving as producer on Catherine, with help from that series’ character artist Shigenori Soejima and composer Shoji Meguro. Going beyond the world of games, Japanese animation shop Studio4˚C (Tekkonkinkreet, Halo Legends) also lent its talents to the project.
Yakuza creator’s squad-based third-person shooter about a robotic uprising gets a new release window.
Humanity’s inevitable subjugation by its own sentient robotic creations has a new kickoff window. Sega today announced an early 2012 launch for Binary Domain, the third-person squad-based shooter from Yakuza creator Toshihiro Nagoshi.
Binary Domain is set in Tokyo in the year 2080, a time when humans are locked in battle with robots. In the game, players take control of a human peacekeeping team set on regaining control of the city.
“When you hear sci-fi you may think of cold, clinical environments, but with Binary Domain I wanted to combine this with a deep human drama,” Nagoshi said upon the game’s announcement. “The keyword we have in mind for this project is ‘Life.’ I wanted to make something that will be accepted by both the Japanese and Western markets, and this fundamental theme is something everyone knows but which the full extent of can be difficult to grasp.”
Speaking with GameSpot, Nagoshi also discussed the mechanics of how the game handles squad-based combat, the development team’s focus on strong friendly AI, and how he intends to breathe fresh life into a well-worn man-versus-robots premise.
Driver: San Francisco will let you change lanes…and change identities. Get the details in our hands-on report.
Drawing inspiration from such classics as Bullit and The French Connection, as well as more contemporary titles, such as the Bourne series, Driver: San Francisco is aiming to instill some of Hollywood’s hard-nosed cop bravado into its action racing formula. Recently, we got the chance to go behind the wheel of this latest entry in the Driver series alongside series creator Martin Edmondson of developer Ubisoft Reflections.
While previous entries in this series have dabbled in the realm of third-person combat, our demo of Driver: San Francisco forwent such extraneous features and focused on making the driving as fun and wild as possible.
Our session with Driver San Francisco picked up with the continuing story of the series–months after the events that took place in the awkwardly titled DRIV3R. The series’ protagonist, on-again, off-again police officer Tanner, had finally succeeded in putting the villain Jericho behind bars. Jericho’s sentencing was close at hand, but as we soon discovered, not everything would go according to plan.
In brief, Jericho hatched a daring scheme involving an acid tablet, a rocket launcher, and a local news helicopter to make his escape, but not before forcing Tanner into a deadly automotive wreck. After regaining consciousness, Tanner discovered that this event had yielded unexpected results: he could now leave his body and posses other drivers on the San Francisco streets.
With the press of a button we could depart our mortal shell and take flight above the city. From here we could glide around using the two analog sticks (our demonstration was on an Xbox 360) and possess the driver of any vehicle we wanted. In the beginning we were limited to a very intimate view of the city.
However, as our powers developed, we were eventually able to pull the camera back to reveal the entire city and instantly jump anywhere we wanted. As Edmondson noted, including the ability to quickly hop from one side of this massive city to the next in mere moments has been no small technical feat.
To pull this off, the team at Ubisoft Reflections has forgone the use of any middleware in favor of building all its own tech from the ground up–and keeping it running at a smooth 60 frames per second no less.
We go underground on the Red Planet in the sequel to 2009′s Red Faction: Guerrilla.
In Red Faction: Armageddon we are on Mars with a shaven-headed Mason once again: Darius Mason this time, grandson of Alex, hero of 2009′s Red Faction: Guerrilla. But where Guerrilla had us rove around on the Martian surface, Armageddon takes us underground. Terraforming has failed since the events of the last game, making Mars uninhabitable aboveground, forcing the human population to relocate into deep networks of rocky caverns. And where Guerrilla was open-world, Armageddon is basically linear, though with some larger, open areas suitable for sandbox-style play linked by the game’s subterranean roads and corridors.
The game’s producer, Jim Boone, tells us Armageddon’s linearity comes from player feedback. Though fans of the previous game enjoyed the vehicles and free-form destruction, he says, they were less keen on trundling long distances through an open environment. He also tells us that some 20 percent of the third-person action still takes place topside, though we didn’t see any sky for the few-hour duration of our hands-on demo, which was taken from early in the game.
As the demo began, the humans were already besieged by huge and vicious insectile beasties. Since these came from deep within the planet Mars and the humans from planet Earth, they are technically the natives. For the purposes of this preview, however, and because they are huge and vicious insectile beasties, we shall call them aliens. Our hero Darius is somehow to blame for the alien uprising–but inadvertently, mind you, and doing his best to make up for it. In the course of the demo, he escorts a convoy through hostile territory, fetches power cells and fixes water pumps for beleaguered civilians, and demolishes all manner of alien-infested structures.
Among the enemies are various brightly coloured red and green creatures, accessorised with organic blades and spikes and ranged bioweapon fire–glowing green globs that explode just after impact. We encountered plenty of ravagers: fast-moving, wall-climbing aliens with bone-bladed arms. Another alien creature, a stealthy variant, is invisible except when attacking but signals its proximity with a blurring effect on Darius’ vision. Others are less subtle and less buglike: one creature was a hulking, horned biped, like a Martian minotaur.
We weren’t short of hardware to see off the alien hordes, with Armageddon forever dropping new weapons in our path, but chief among them was the tremendously fun magnet gun. With this, the game’s signature weapon, you shoot item A (say, the side of a building) and then shoot item B (say, a spiky ravager) to fling the one into the other, as if by magnetic attraction. The quick two-shot operation works a bit like Dead Space’s kinesis module, letting you smash large chunks of the level furniture–girders, walkways, shacks, and the like–into your squishable foes, but also letting you launch enemies up and away, by firing at them and then at the distant cavern ceiling.
Second installment in EA’s bifurcated series dropping in European markets a day before the film is released this summer; retailers indicate July 12 US bow.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 was released last November alongside the film of the same name to a cold reception. Like the film, the video game adaptations were also bifurcated, and EA will have a chance at critical redemption this summer when Part 2 arrives during the week before the film drops this July.
The release date news stems from a new trailer for the game (embedded below), which is introduced by Emma Watson, who plays the part of Hermione Granger from J.K. Rowling’s magical universe.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 will arrive in theaters worldwide on July 15, which means gamers will have the first crack at the culmination of the Harry Potter universe.
July 14 is a Thursday, and the release date shown in the video is meant for the European market. Traditionally, games are released on Tuesdays in North America, which would make a July 12 release date likely for this region. A number of US retailers, including GameStop, are also listing the game for a July 12 bow.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 will be available for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, DS, and PC.
We hold our breath and try to keep up as we get our first look at classic Sonic meets modern Sonic in Sonic Generations.
For a while now, Sega has been trying to reconcile its two contrasting portrayals of Sonic: the old-school Sonic, characterized by the fast-paced, side-scrolling action of the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis days; and the new 3D Sonic, a brighter, cheekier, and slightly more supersonic version (geddit?).
We’ve had old-school gameplay with 3D looks (Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1); 3D gameplay with a dash of side-scrolling (Sonic Colours); and finally, a Kinect-powered racing game (Sonic Free Riders). Now, still hoping to find the perfect balance, Sega has put the two Sonics together in Sonic Generations, a new platformer designed to celebrate the iconic mascot’s 20th anniversary. We recently had the chance to sit through a short demo of the game’s first two levels at Sega’s offices in Sydney.
At this stage, not much is known about Sonic Generations’ story. The game will encompass the 20 years of Sonic’s history and will be set across three defining eras: the 2D Mega Drive/Genesis era; the introduction of 3D in the Dreamcast era; and the modern-day HD graphics era. Instead of creating new levels, the developers have revamped a bunch of iconic stages throughout these eras in HD and given players the choice of playing each stage in either classic side-scrolling 2D or in modern-era 3D.
There will be two incarnations of Sonic to go with each of these options: a classic Sonic and a modern Sonic. Each incarnation will retain the character’s set of moves from whatever era he comes from, meaning the spin dash and spin attack for classic Sonic and the homing attack and sonic boost for modern Sonic.
Plentiful new release slate led by puzzle, fighting, and shooting games; Conduit 2, Xbox Live Arcade Triple Pack, Final Fantasy IV: Complete Collection also out.
It’s a busy week at retail, as a slew of high profile new releases make their debut on Tuesday including Valve’s long-awaited puzzle game and Warner Bros.’ fighter reboot.
Leading the pack this week is Valve Software’s Portal 2. The game follows the events of the first Portal, which saw gamers taking on the role of a human lab rat, Chell, who used a portal gun to create interdimensional openings on ceilings, walls, and floors in an effort to escape the Aperture Science labs. Along the way, players were guided through the diabolical tests by the deceptively sincere, yet altogether sadistic, artificial intelligence known as GLaDOS.
The game will feature a single-player campaign billed as being twice as long as the original’s, but the real focus is on the new multiplayer cooperative mode. The co-op mode will tell a parallel story to the single-player adventure and last roughly as long. In it, players will take control of two robots, named simply Blue and Orange, and work together to tackle their own set of portal-related problems.
Also debuting this Tuesday will be NetherRealm’s gruesome fighter reboot Mortal Kombat. The game’s roster will be a throwback of sorts, full of fighters pulled from the first three games in the series. There is one particularly notable exception, as the PlayStation 3 version will feature God of War protagonist Kratos as a playable character.
Gamers looking to pick up a new contemporary shooter can grab SOCOM 4: U.S. Navy SEALs this week for the PlayStation 3. The game is set in Southeast Asia after a revolution endangers a vital shipping lane similar to the Strait of Malacca. Players assume the role of the commander of a five-man squad of NATO commandos dispatched to prevent international trade from being disrupted. Their mission will only last six days, a time limit that Sony says will add urgency into the campaign.
As is a staple for the series, SOCOM 4 will have an extensive multiplayer component, allowing for teams of players to shoot it out in 32-player matches. Terrain types will include a hostile jungle and half-ruined cities.
Wii owners wishing to continue their effort through the Conduit universe can grab the often delayed Conduit 2 this week. The single-player mode of Conduit 2 will pick up the original game’s alien invasion storyline, with Sega promising dynamic environments, player customization options, and giant boss enemies. As for multiplayer, Sega will introduce new co-op modes for online play, or offline with up to four players sharing a split-screen. The publisher is also promising “increased multiplayer security” for the game, in light of the cheating that undermined the online play of the original game.
On-the-go Final Fantasy fans can pick up Final Fantasy IV: The Complete Collection on Tuesday. This set includes Final Fantasy IV–with revamped visuals to take advantage of the PSP’s widescreen format–as well as its epilogue, Final Fantasy IV: The After Years. The episodic series of downloadable titles was originally released in 2009 on the Wii; this will mark the first time it has been available as part of a retail product.
TUESDAY, APRIL 19
Arcana Heart 3–PS3–Aksys Games
Assassin’s Creed: Ultimate Collection–PC–Encore Software Inc.
Brothers in Arms: Complete Collection–PC–Encore Software Inc.
Conduit 2–Wii–Sega
Final Fantasy IV: The Complete Collection–PSP–Square Enix
Majesty 2 Collection–PC–Paradox Interactive
Mortal Kombat–PS3, X360–Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
Portal 2–X360, PS3, PC, Mac–Valve Software
Prince of Persia: Classic Trilogy HD–PS3–Ubisoft
SOCOM 4: U.S. Navy SEALs–PS3–SCEA
Triple Pack: Xbox Live Arcade Compilation–X360–Microsoft Game Studios
In Serious Sam 3: BFE, “Serious” Sam Stone is gearing up for his third tour of duty against the evil Notorious Mental. Croteam CEO Roman Ribaric gives us the first details.
2001′s arcade-style shooter Serious Sam: The First Encounter seemed like a breath of fresh air for first-person shooter players, who, at the time, had otherwise pretty much been stuck having their virtual gun battles in brown sewers, gray warehouses, gray sewers, or brown warehouses, all full of more crates than you could shake a stick at.
It was, in fact, this novelty that led independent game site Old Man Murray to first discover the game and make it known to the public–and the rest is history. The unusual shooter, developed by Croatian studio Croteam, placed its action-hero protagonist, “Serious” Sam Stone, in enormous outdoor environments and pitted him against a gigantic army of completely insane alien monsters led by Notorious Mental, an alien overlord bent on taking over the universe.
Now, Serious Sam is getting ready for his newest adventure in Serious Sam 3: BFE. Croteam CEO Roman Ribaric explains.
GameSpot: Give us an overview of Serious Sam 3. What’s planned for the new game? Bigger fights against crazy enemies in even bigger outdoor environments? How will the game improve on the previous games in the series? And, what new areas will it explore?
New version of original game’s popular “Tackle Alley” mode exclusively hitting Microsoft’s online store this summer; price, release date TBA.
505 Games’ arcade style football game Backbreaker was released last summer to middling reception. The game was, however, lauded for its Tackle Alley game mode, which was later spun off into an iOS game. Now, that mode is getting a release all its own this summer exclusively on the Xbox Live Arcade.
The news stems from Backbreaker’s official Facebook page, which confirms Backbreaker: Vengeance and redirects players to a preview of the new game at Cheat Code Central.
If Vengeance replicates the Tackle Alley mode found in the original Backbreaker, in the game players will start 100 yards away from the end zone with the ball and must avoid a slew of oncoming bruisers by evading and effective juking.
Vengeance is powered by the Euphoria game engine, which was also used in hot Rockstar properties like Grand Theft Auto: IV and Red Dead Redemption.
Currently, Backbreaker: Vengeance is slated for a “summer” premiere on XBLA. Unfortunately, 505 Games has not placed a specific release date or price on the game.
