The new Star Trek game from Gameforge is ambitious -- and free.
By Mike Nelson, 03/07/2011 at 17:30When I saw the Star Trek: Infinite Space trailer a couple of weeks ago, it was hard to determine exactly what this game was about. If you haven't seen it yet, it was a CG trailer featuring a number of starships fighting each other. Nice trailer, but a little sparse as to exactly what this game is; last week at GDC, I had a chance to find out.
Infinite Space will be a free-to-play browser-based Star Trek game mixed with exploration, combat, and role-playing elements. The specific Trek timeline for the game takes place between seasons three through six of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine during the Dominion War. Those familiar with the television series will know that this was a key point in the series with epic space battles raging across the galaxy on a weekly basis -- Infinite Space is designed to be the backdrop for the battles we never got to see on television. To lend credibility to the story and the source material, Michael and Denise Okuda (authors of the Star Trek Encyclopedia) advised on the game along with Star Trek: The Next Generation screenwriter, Lee Sheldon to help with story aspects of the game.
Our first look into how button-mashing/QTE-filled combat can fit into a hardcore RPG.
By Alice Liang, 03/07/2011 at 16:46It's always exciting to see a game for the very first time. Up until now, I had only heard a few tidbits of information about EA and 38 Studios/Big Huge Games' fantasy-themed role-playing game Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning, glimpsed a few initial assets, and watched the debut trailer. Last week, I and other press were given a first look at a small portion of the Kingdom of Amalur -- the vast world in which both Reckoning and 38 Studio's Project Copernicus (the codename for the MMORPG project), take place. Although it was mentioned that Reckoning is currently in an alpha state, what was shown was attention grabbing -- mostly due to the ways in which the game puts new spins on tired genre conventions.
Without knowing much of what to expect, reactions can obviously go one of two ways when you first lay eyes on a game, and I was pleasantly thrilled by what I saw. Now, I'm assuming that for the demonstration, the game was being played on what was the best PC money can buy, with an Xbox 360 controller plugged into it, so I took in the gorgeous, glowy graphics with a grain of salt; but the environments were very appealing, and invoked the proper high fantasy vibe. Although stylistically, Reckoning's art design isn't entirely groundbreaking, but each environment looked lovingly crafted, with subtle details that felt deliberately placed rather than arbitrarily strewn about for ambiance. Imagine, if you will, a well done (and less cartoony) World of Warcraft.
The follow-up to 2007's grisly, character-driven game has a new art style, and bloodier gameplay than before.
By Justin Haywald, 03/03/2011 at 12:01The Darkness was a dark, violent game. As mobster hitman Jackie Estacado, you used your titular Darkness powers to blow through legions of goons, rip men's hearts from their chests, and summon goblin-like creatures to do your morally questionable bidding. With the Darkness 2, Dark Sector developer Digital Extremes is taking charge of the franchise to deliver a story that hues a little more closely to the comics than the original, while ramping up the violence significantly.
While details were scarce, 2K revealed a brief gameplay demo during this year's GDC that showed off the game's slightly cel-shaded graphic style. The team is aiming for a more comic book-like effect, but the stylized look doesn't detract from the game's very adult themes. 2K made a point of defining the effect as "graphic noir" and emphasized it's "hand-painted" look several times throughout the demo...but regardless of what you call it, it looks pretty good. Gameplay-wise, things operate similarly: Jackie still dual-wields weapons, and you still shoot out lights to bathe your enemies in darkness and open up your demonic powers.
Details from the first live gameplay demonstration of Team Ico's latest.
By Matt Leone, 03/02/2011 at 08:01The day before Sony's recent NGP press conference in Japan -- after over five years in development, nearly two years since they released the debut trailer, and conveniently embargoed until the first day of GDC -- Team Ico decided to finally prove The Last Guardian is a real game and opened their doors to show it to the media running on PS3 hardware for the first time.
Now, I should establish up-front that they didn't show a lot. If you're worried about spoilers or knowing too much before playing, you're fine here. If anything, you may almost be too safe, given the lack of specifics.
"What you will be seeing today will be a demonstration for the purpose of today, not directly related to the final product," says director Fumito Ueda through a translator as he starts the presentation. "It will be a vertical slice."
Rockstar's gritty crime drama has more than a little in common (in a good way) with Capcom's courtroom comedy series.
By Justin Haywald, 03/01/2011 at 12:15From just watching the trailers for L.A. Noire, it's almost impossible to classify what kind of game it is. But after finally playing through a full case of Team Bondi's (with plenty of oversight from Rockstar Games) crime drama at a recent hands-on event, I can confidently say the game mixes the open-world elements of Grand Theft Auto with investigation sections that channel, of all things, the Ace Attorney series.
In the overall story, you're working your way up the cop career ladder from traffic through different police desks (homicide, narcotics, etc.). The demo takes place a little less than halfway through the game; you're new to the homicide desk and investigating a string of murders involving women who are left dead, horribly battered, and stripped naked. While the plot revolves around trying to discover whether these murders are part of the original Black Dahlia case or from a copycat killer, in this one hour demo, I only lightly touch on the overarching story that ties all the game's cases together.
PlatinumGames' first foray into online multiplayer action looks to blend the studio's signature style with a classic multiplayer formula.
By Brandon Justice, 02/28/2011 at 13:11While most developers are opting for things such as "mass-market reach" and "franchise potential," the crew at PlatinumGames is a bit of an enigma in contrast. From the blood-soaked universe of MadWorld to the unrelenting zaniness of Bayonetta, this imaginative crew of Capcom ex-patriots have made their living off a sort of systematic indifference to the status quo. But originality isn't just an external benchmark, and rather than continue to alter the expectations of the average gamer, Platinum now plans to push boundaries of a more personal sort by tackling their first online title, Anarchy Reigns.
According to producer Atsushi Inaba, it has proven to be a bit of a rocky start: "Everything has been hard from day one. This is our first online game, and that meant we had to start from scratch. We've hit on a lot of traps in the process, some of which we could have avoided if we had prior experience in online gaming."
Some tips from both our own play experience and from Gears of War 3's executive producer to give you a leg up when the multiplayer beta launches in April.
By Tina Sanchez, 02/24/2011 at 17:30In just a couple of months (all Microsoft would commit to is "mid-April"), you too can jump into the Gears of War 3 multiplayer beta. We've detailed some of the tweaks and changes that Gears 3 brings to multiplayer before -- what we have here is a basic guide to performing well once the beta is actually live.
We played a few matches on all six maps available; at the moment, the beta will have the maps Checkout and Thrashball, and as our news story states, you can go to the Gears of War Facebook page to vote on whether to which two of these other maps -- Overpass, Old Town, Mercy, or Trenches -- to play. We like Overpass because it has this crazy moment where the world geometry shifts around, and we have a soft spot for Old Town -- if only because it features roaming chickens and exploding pumpkins. But once you get into the beta, here are some quick tips:
Triple-takedowns, new voice actors, and Batman's electrician skills are among the new things we learn from Rocksteady's presentation.
By Frank Cifaldi, 02/24/2011 at 16:46Warner Bros. and Rocksteady are finally far enough along in development on Batman: Arkham City to start showing it off, and earlier today, we got our first look at the game in action. The demonstration we saw lasted about 25 minutes, and showed Batman saving a captive Catwoman from Two-Face, tossing Harley Quinn aside like a doll, riding around on a helicopter, and escaping from an exploding watchtower by crashing through a window. It was kind of awesome, and showed just how different of an experience this new game will provide compared to Batman: Arkham Asylum.
We learned a lot of new things during the demo, which we will now share with you, the hungry Batman-themed videogame consumer.
A much larger world awaits fans in this spiritual sequel.
By Kat Bailey, 02/23/2011 at 16:40If there's one element that stands out from Demon's Souls (apart from its often maddening difficulty), it was its overwhelming sense of claustrophobia. Even the open-air environments felt like they were pressing in from all sides -- usually in the form of enemies looking for your head. It's a natural feeling to have when death is around every corner.
For its spiritual successor, Dark Souls, director Hidetaka Miyazaki and company plan to give players a much larger (and more open) world to explore, but it will doubtlessly be every bit as claustrophobic as before. In this quick email Q&A, he talks about some of his plans for that world, and drops a few hints on what kind of new weapons and online features fans can expect for the sequel.
Our hands-on reveals the most radically different and refreshing Telltale game yet.
By Thierry Nguyen, 02/18/2011 at 16:03Jurassic Park, even in its first few moments, already feels unlike most Telltale games. It's still fundamentally a story driven adventure where you guide characters around and alternate between puzzles and dialogue, but there're a lot of curveballs for Telltale fans. From what I play, I don't actually move a character around directly to go examine stuff and solve puzzles; instead, I move the camera around with the right analog stick and hit buttons that pop up in very specific spots. That is, when I look around the area, a big and obvious A button floats over the head of a triceratops, an equally obvious Right Bumper floats over the nearby plant said triceratops is munching on, and a big blue X pops up when I look over the triceratops' rear end.
A few minutes later, another significant change in the Telltale formula shows up: a quick-time event. Whether I'm hurriedly trying to hotwire a Jeep or get away from a rampaging Tyrannosaurus rex, I have to either rapidly tap a face button or quickly move an analog stick around. These action sequences also lead right into the biggest change that Jurassic Park brings to a Telltale game: you can die.
Details from Game Informer, and empirical evidence of how close our speculation from last year is.
By Thierry Nguyen, 02/15/2011 at 18:45Thanks to Game Informer, we finally have some concrete details on Battlefield 3. Quietly announced via a beta offer for people who snagged Medal of Honor last year, the fine fellows at DICE have just-as-quietly been banging on the title until Game Informer's cover story. While actual details are still a bit scant (since it's still a reveal/first look) there's enough for us to reflect on the predictions and speculations we made last year.
I still consider Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield 2 some of the finest multiplayer shooters in recent (read: after the year 2000) history, and as much as I like Battlefield: Bad Company 2, it's not quite the same. Sure, BC2 looks great and features awesome destructibility, but it also doesn't quite have the scale and sheer chaos that the original Battlefield games featured. So it's good to be hearing stuff like how in addition to the improved destruction, that the player count and the vehicles will be more like Battlefield 2 rather than Bad Company 2. Here's a quick rundown of what we have right and wrong.
Indie star Pixel teams up with NIS for his first retail product, but he hasn't given up on indie development.
By Jeremy Parish, 02/11/2011 at 19:59Largely the work of a single man -- Daisuke Amaya, who operates under the alias Pixel -- 2004's Cave Story for PC still represents a high water mark for indie games. It reintroduced many gamers to the joys of pixel art, exploratory platforming, and white-knuckle challenge, and it contained all of these elements in a perfect balance, emulsified in a suspension of interesting story and likable characters. Cave Story is rightly regarded as a classic...yet until now, it's never actually been published on physical media.
That will change this summer, when the game finally sees release as a 3DS retail title courtesy of Nippon Ichi Software. This is no straight port, however, but a full remake of the game with polygonal 2.5D graphics and new content. While fans are already sputtering in disappointment about these changes, Amaya doesn't see the shift in visual style as a compromise.
What actually happens in the story when you're not using bullets to perforate someone's rear end.
By Taylor Cocke, 02/11/2011 at 18:14What better way to deal with getting backstabbed by your commanding officer than slamming your ship -- kamikaze-style -- into his prized warship, followed by going through an ultra-violent (and occasionally drunken) rampage through a crumbling resort planet turned mutant nightmare? Bulletstorm's Grayson Hunt certainly can't think of one.
Sure, we could catch you up to speed about the backstory. We could tell you all about how General Serrano tricked Grayson and his crew into Skillshot-ing dozens of innocent citizens by telling them that they were enemies of the state and needed to be removed. We could also tell you about how Grayson found out he was being deceived and decided to become a renegade space pirate hell-bent on killing Serrano for all the evil he caused in the world. But that's not the reason why we play Bulletstorm. It's all an excuse to blast our way though a completely over-the-top campaign -- killing in as many ways as possible along the way.
Hands-on with DNF's first two hours reveal a game full of excessive attitude, old-school gunplay, titillation, and tons of not-shooting side activities.
By Thierry Nguyen, 02/09/2011 at 09:00In Duke Nukem Forever's first couple of hours, I: take a piss in a urinal, turn on a bunch of showers, flush some toilets, spin some chairs, autograph a book, lift weights, curl some dumbbells, bench press some bigger weights, punch a speedbag, cook some microwave popcorn, play some pinball, drive an RC car, and shoot some aliens. While DNF does become a pretty straightforward action game with corridor shooting (with occasional turret firing bits), the amount of simple and mundane actions rivals that of Heavy Rain of all things. I mean, not only am I still surprised to be actually playing Duke Nukem Forever after all these years, I'm surprised to be doing so much random stuff within it.
For this hands-on session, which took place in the tastefully titled "Duke Nukem's Titty City" (which was, in actuality, a converted strip club -- despite the venue's normal purpose, the women who staffed the event were actually clothed the entire time, which reminds me of how clothed the women remain whenever the agents of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation visited such a place), I get to play the beginning. That is, I start with the same game-within-a-game-followed-by-virtual-double-fellatio demonstration that Jeremy played at PAX. But after Duke quips about how the game better be worth twelve years of waiting, it's time for him to ride down and make an appearance on a talk show.
Our latest hands-on reveals a faster, bloodier, yet no less complex, Dragon Age.
By Thierry Nguyen, 02/08/2011 at 17:00Like anyone else who's been following Dragon Age 2, I've been hearing the same quips about, "hit a button and something awesome happens" or how "visceral" the combat is. While I don't adopt the "they're pulling a Mass Effect 2 on Dragon Age: Origins" stance, I still usually sort of roll my eyes and think, "whatever" when I hear those phrases; but after playing about an hour-and-a-half of Dragon Age 2, I have to admit that those sorts of phrases aren't entirely inaccurate. Playing on both the PC and the Xbox360, it's safe to say that Dragon Age 2 isn't a Mass Effect 2-style "strip down the RPG elements and turn it into an action game with RPG touches" endeavor -- it's more of "take Dragon Age, and make it a bit better, prettier, and faster."
That last point stands out the most for me. Make no mistake: Dragon Age 2 isn't suddenly an action game with stats -- you still issue commands to your party members, and you can still pause during combat (easily done on PC by hitting the spacebar, and using radial menus a la like the previous game) to figure out the situation. Though, in DAO, there was a sort of lackadaisical attitude in your characters when it came to combat. The simple act of issuing an attack order usually translated into the directed character sort of lollygagging their way to their target, and then enacting a slow attack animation. Getting a rogue to the proper position for a backstab attack was a pain-and-a-half due to the lack of walking speed. Not so with Dragon Age 2 anymore.
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