There comes a time where everyone feels the need for a little more excitement in their life, a little more danger. For me extreme sports are where I get my kicks, and nothing is more extreme than the high-speed and precision of Formula One. Lucky for me Codemasters have just released F1 2012, and at the touch of a button I can be in control of my very own powerfully tuned behemoth. That settles that then.
Being a fan of Formula One and wanting to play a F1 game are two entirely different things. In my opinion the games that I have seen in the past haven’t delivered the excitement and tension I get when watching the races on TV, and don’t convey the same feel of complete precision and total control that the drivers have over their extremely powerful cars. That is until now.
Rainbow Moon has been described by many as an hardcore old-school RPG. When a game is described as hardcore it is meant to signify that the game is a complex and requires a sizeable amount of time and practice to fully master. This is far from the truth with Rainbow Moon, an ultimately shallow game stretched out for so long that it requires immense dedication and patience to complete.
If numbers are your forte then hold your breath for some impressive figures heading your way, courtesy of Assassin’s Creed III‘s new trailer. Ubisoft are showcasing the capabilities of new engine AnvilNext, boasting some impressive stats in the process. Over a thousand new animations have been added for Connor alone, allowing for more freedom and fluidity when fighting and climbing. A whole host of new abilities make the combat look far more impressive than in previous releases in the series,…
The first details for the third DLC pack for Battlefield 3 have emerged on the official site along with the above piece of concept art.
Aftermath will be set in Tehran after an earthquake has struck which means we will see four new multiplayer maps already full of dust and debris. We can also look forward to cracks and fissures providing on the maps to provide cover and new paths to objectives. There will also be some heavily modified military and civilian vehicles to take for a ride, and there will also be a new game mode, no details on that yet. Before Aftermath comes, we have Armored Kill which is coming in September, more details on this vehicular DLC can be found on the official blog.
I have talked about the travails of the rally game before and I reviewed WRC 2 last year, and it is sad to say I wasn’t entirely blown away by it. I am hoping that WRC 3 offers an improvement as I am longing for a really good, proper rallying title to come out. Hit the jump for two and a half minutes of action on a Spanish stage and for more details on WRC 3.
If there’s one thing I love about Skyrim it’s that it gives the sense of a deep and real, living and breathing world with meaningful consequences. There are various different stories to delve into, different paths to choose and even random chance encounters with a troll or necromancer that could potentially take you halfway across Skyrim on a quest for glory. Dawnguard is the first available DLC from producers Bethesda and adds to this world by deepening your characters story and environment even more.
Having sunk around 125 hours into my original Skyrim playthrough I thought I had more than had my fill of being dragonborn. But after an absence from the game of around three months, Dawnguard has reminded me of my love for the game and made me realise just how much I had actually been missing it. Certainly I had exhausted almost everything my original mage could do, but Dawnguard gives me a good excuse to start afresh with a new class and gives me the chance to do any quests I missed the first time around. Besides I wanted to try out that awesome looking new crossbow and become an evil vampire lord and my goodie two-shoes mage just didn’t seem like the kind of person to do this.
“You’re the marines, the key to survival is to work together.” It sounds simple but when Xenomorphs are leaping all around, composure and teamwork make way for terror and unfortunately damp trousers.
Playing two 6 vs 6 LAN games at Rezzed we demoed the online deathmatch gameplay of Aliens: Colonial Marines. As aliens the games is most similar to a hack-n-slash. The small warehouse we played offered aliens chances to ambush and annihilate individual marines, but the narrow hallways made it easy for the marines to stick together.
Unlike most other online games tactics played as much a deciding factor in which team won as skill. Charging head first into a group of marines will just end in a bunch of smug marines high-fiving each other and acidic blood splattering the walls.
A co-ordinated attack is needed. Either isolating and picking off individual marines or attacking with an all-out assault from all directions. And it really is possible to attack from all directions as the aliens have the ability to cling to walls and ceilings. Dropping down on a marine while decapitating him with your tail is immensely fun as well as a great tactic to terrify the opposition.
Beginning a demo with a cut-scene of a half naked woman is a risky manoeuvre. It can put people off the game instantly, making people think that it is shallow, attention seeking and even misogynistic. Yet this is how the demo to Far Cry 3 opened, a game which could possibly be the most intelligent and abstract FPSs of the past few years.
The demo was available to play at Rezzed where I got a hands-on preview. The first thing that was noticeable was how beautiful the game looked running on a high-end PC. After the opening cut-scene the demo started out in a thicket of jungle, every leaf on every tree stunningly rendered. A path led to a cliff overlooking the island and the pristine blue sea that surrounded it, showing off the game’s impressive draw distance. On a dock on the island a man was casually tipping corpses into the sea.
After a dive into the lagoon and a brief swim the game really began. The jungle’s thick foliage and the default weapon, the bow and arrow, made stealth the most obvious tactic. Picking off enemies with the bow gave a satisfying sense of power. The tension of being seen while drawing back the string countered by the elation of an enemy dropping to the ground, bolt protruding from his body.
This feeling was somewhat lessened though by the relatively quick drawback speed of the bow and its one hit kill effectiveness, regardless of where you shoot an enemy. However, it’s possible that both these issues were due to the difficulty settings of the demo.
When the zombie apocalypse comes – if it hasn’t already begun – we will know the four lunatics with clown masks, blue latex gloves and assault rifles to blame for letting it spread beyond quarantine and we have the video footage to prove it. Check it out.