I have spent six hours with the latest tale of Assassins and Templars, learning, scheming, killing. After everything that has happened, most of all I know I have only scratched the surface of the story Assassin’s Creed III wants to tell.
In Part One of my Far Cry 3 hands on report I talked a little bit about climbing a radio tower and assaulting a mercenary outpost with the help of a hang glider and jet ski. The second part of my report picks up after I have ensured the outpost is cleared.
The mission from the notice board asked me to eliminate a mercenary leader in a nearby camp with a melee or knife takedown. So far, while I had tried to assault the outpost quietly I ended up having to go in guns blazing; this mission would be my first chance of trying out some of the stealth mechanics.
During the Eurogamer Expo I was able to check out the Far Cry 3 demo a couple of times, the demo was PC based and looked amazing. This is the first part of my hands on report.
When I played a little bit of Far Cry 3 during my first day at the Expo I came away with mixed feelings, it seemed to have a lot of potential with the open world and RPG style elements, but that it wasn’t harnessing what it could do properly. That however was a by-product of a limited play test. On the last day of the Expo I had an extended 40 minute session with the game and fell in love with the open world environment. There weren’t any story missions to direct me, just the freedom of the island.
In the midst of my Eurogamer Expo ramblings, I have been delving underground with some small folks in the beta for A Game of Dwarves. Hit the jump for some impressions of the game.
I had no idea what it was going to be like playing a modern racing game with a wheel and pedals until I hit Grid 2 at the Eurogamer Expo. The last time I did was in an ancient beat up SEGA Rally Arcade unit that was gathering dust in my University Students Union. So playing Codemasters’ next big racer with a full wheel and pedal setup was like walking on Mars to me, I didn’t have a clue how things were going to work.
To be honest, it didn’t really work; I spent more time smashing my Ford Mustang into pieces on various trees and rocks than actually driving smoothly on the road in the point-to-point race I was in. This was just one of the demo booths available for Grid 2, the other was a traditional two-lap race with a bunch of AI opponents and an Xbox 360 controller.
After the break you will find a report of my hands on session with F1 Race Stars at the Eurogamer Expo. Due to technical issues I have been unable to post this until now. Enjoy.
As I mentioned in my EG Expo Day 2 Roundup I managed to get a pretty decent session with Dishonored yesterday, and it was a brilliant experience. After the break is a blow-by-blow report of my hands-on session, enjoy.
I see much promise in the War of the Roses Beta for this is a game set in a genre and time-period not often explored by games set in the third-person perspective. Set during the 15th Century the game focuses on the war between the House of Lancaster and the House of York. Swords are a plenty, and the multiplayer beta is full of men slashing away like mad fools. Mainly it is me swiping my sword at anything that moves and not doing much apart from getting swiftly chopped to bits.
I have had the pleasure of taking part in the beta for Dust 514 over the past couple of weeks, the PlayStation 3 shooter which is tied in with the EVE Online universe and which will one day see co-operation between players from both titles. It is a very exciting idea, but one that is clearly going to take a while to come to completion. The beta for Dust is very much that, an early version of the game which is undergoing many changes and updates as it progresses. As such, these are just some early impressions of a still relatively low-level grunt.
The idea behind Dust is brilliant in that whatever happens in Eve impacts on Dust as they share the same universe. I can only assume this means that all the Alliances and Corps found in the PC title will eventually be found in Dust, and that the economies of both will be interlinked with chaos in one game causing chaos in the other. If everything works out, developers CCP could be onto a major winner. Though I do wonder what will happen when the PlayStation 4 eventually gets announced and released, will Dust just transfer over there leaving the PS3 version behind? These are questions for another time though.
One of the first games I ever laid my hands on as a child was Rainbird Software’s Carrier Command. It came bundled with our state-of-the-art Atari ST and from the very first time I loaded it up I was hooked. Providing a futuristic naval simulation, it took place in a beautifully rendered 3D environment, in which you commanded a technologically advanced naval carrier in attacks on gorgeous tropical islands.
Ok, perhaps my memories of the original’s graphical prowess might be a little out of touch with reality, but despite its dated looks, much of what made Carrier Command unique stands out even today. A fully open world with hundreds of miles of ocean to explore. Customisable units, open-ended objectives and a challenging AI to defeat. It was up to you to craft your plan of attack, and defeat could easily come to the unprepared.