At our studio tour of Treyarch for the exclusive reveal of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, Adam Rosas, Animation Lead, took us under his wing to give us a demo of how the studio improved upon its character animations for Black Ops 2. The team employed what’s known as a ‘full performance capture’, in which actors are fitted with special suits and up to 84 light-sensitive spheres are fixed onto their limbs and facial features to capture precise movements and expressions. In order to see just how far they could go with the characters, the team decided to first use a female actor to capture their first few shots.

Rosas explained that women tend to emote differently than men, so it was much more challenging trying to map the female actor’s expressions with the character model. But after a little bit of tweaking and the addition of just four minor bones, the animated character was able to produce a near-exact lip sync with the actor’s voice, and her facial expressions and body language was fluid and right on cue. This was then used as a starting point for the other characters in the game, so the animations that we saw in the game were some of the best yet in the franchise.

Since the trailer’s debut, one thing that has got people talking is the quick scene involving horses jumping over a wall. Rosas chuckles and said that even the horse was motion captured to give it the most authentic look, and to make sure that its movements in the game were as natural as possible. He did recount some rather hair-raising episodes involving the horse during motion capture, but the horse was never uncomfortable or injured during the process, and the end result can be plainly seen in the trailer.

Stay tuned for more coverage on Black Ops 2 as we get it!

1. Huge open world

The world of Dragon’s Dogma, while not as expansive as Skyrim, offers plenty to explore. The vast terrain and variety in locations available presents great sense of exploration and adventuring. The same drive that had you striving to reach every area in Skyrim is similarly available here, and will play a key factor in how attached you become to the game.

2. Day/Night Cycles

Dragon’s Dogma’s world operates on a full 24-hour Day/Night cycle. This means that the game has an internal clock that changes and affects the world. The Day/Night shift is not for mere aesthetic purposes but it rather plays a huge part in the game’s system. It’s always recommended for you to accomplish your quests while the Sun is still up whenever possible. This is because when night time arrives things get real nasty. Different much more powerful creatures appear at night, ones that you will often have a very hard time fighting against. This cycle system creates an interesting spin on how you would manage your in-game time to accomplish your quests as efficiently as possible while avoiding the night.

3. The Pawn system

The Pawn system is something that is quite unique to Dragon’s Dogma. Pawns are basically servants that can be hired by the main character of the game to aid you throughout your adventures. Your main Pawn is the one you create yourself at first, tailoring him/her to your own liking from appearance to personality. While this may sound at first like a regular companion found in other Western RPGs, Pawns actually have their own personalities and often speak or give advice to you on your journey. To top that off, your main Pawn can be shared with other players online so that he/she can explore different areas and come back with stories and information that can aid you in the game. While Dragon’s Dogma is solely a single player game, the Pawn mechanism offers the ability to connect with different people in a unique and fresh method.

4. Mix of Strategic and fast paced combat

The combat in the game offers the best of both worlds. In other words, while the combat feels fluid and it also offers enough depth making sure what you do actually matters rather than it being mindless hack and slash. The combat feels similar to the one found in the Souls series, but is less punishing and much faster in terms of speed. Dragon’s Dogma also introduces the ability to actually jump on creatures you fight and hang on to them. For example, while fighting a Griffin in the demo I was able jump on its back while it was ascending to the air. This made the combat experience very different than regular ground fights as you were struggling to keep hanging on while trying to bring down the creature at the same time. All of these different elements shape Dragon’s Dogma idea to demonstrate its own take on how combat is supposed to be done in Action-RPGs.

5. Tons of content available

In order to finish the main game it’s going to take you 40-50 hours of playtime. While if you want to complete more side quests and explore the whole world of the game then you are looking at 100+ hours of playtime. This means that the game has a ton of content to offer and will keep you engaged for a long period of time.

The demo of Dragon’s Dogma is currently out on both XBL and PSN, while the final game comes out on May 22nd in NA and May 25th in EU. Be sure to check it out and tell us what you think in the comment section!

After a brief introduction from the lovely PR folks (i.e ‘film anything and you’re flying home’), Mark Lamia, Studio Head at Treyarch, strides into the room. “Welcome”, he begins “to the Internet’s worst-kept secret.”

Lamia is of course referring to the recent Internet leaks that have pointed to Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, and today we get to be the first ones in the world to officially see what the studio has been up to. Treyarch has enjoyed plenty of success with the Call of Duty franchise – the studio reception area holds a large screen that displays in real time the hundreds of thousands of gamers logging in to score some headshots. Lamia credits the studio with pushing the boundaries of the franchise, and promises that they will always deliver a ‘complete package’ to fans. Without getting into too much detail, he said that Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 will receive a massive technological push to take advantage of DirectX 11 and deliver a COD experience like never before. The original Call of Duty: Black Ops opened to phenomenal success, selling an estimated 4.2 million copies in the U.S alone within 24 hours of going on sale.

A COD story like never before
The story for Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 initially sounds like something out of a science fiction movie, but Lamia assures us that as with previous titles, the game is based on hard facts. While the present day sees the battle for oil being a key political driver, in a number of years attention will be shifted to something called “rare earth elements”- seventeen chemical elements that fuel most of today’s consumer devices. From screens to smartphones, every modern device has some degree of rare earth elements in it. And it turns out that China currently has the largest deposits of rare earth elements in the world, making it a hot topic of discussion.

Lamia’s short geography lesson is intertwined with press clippings and even a statement from President Obama in March 2012 stating that the United States is planning to look into China’s iron grasp on its export of rare earth elements. It’s also revealed that rare earth elements play a big factor in military technologies, especially heavy weapons and unmanned military drones. Which leads us to the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ moment about the storyline in Black Ops 2.

The game starts off in the ‘80s, where you play as David Mason, son of Alex Mason, the main protagonist in the original Call of Duty: Black Ops. Rather than just introduce a roster of familiar characters in Black Ops 2, Lamia explained that the team had to sit down and think about ‘why does  so-and-so character need to come back to COD?’ I’m not saying that every single character you meet will be someone from the original game, but (HUGE SPOILER ALERT AHEAD) as a tip, fans will be happy to know that Woods does return to the franchise and that most of the game is told through him. Having said that, each and every character you meet will be vital to your character and story progression.

For the first time in the series’ history, Black Ops 2 will shift the time-frame halfway through the game, fast-forwarding the action to the year 2025. Now of course Treyarch could have gone all Terminator and flooded the world with killer robots and deadly lasers, but they’re far too sensible to do that. They instead employed the thinking of a man called Peter W Singer, author of the book “Wired For War”, which essentially details how warfare is going to completely change in coming years. Singer’s job is essentially to advise world leaders on any growing concerns in the coming decades. His first divination is what Lamia talked about at the start of the presentation – who is going to control the rare earth elements in the years to come? The second statement was more of a play on what is already happening on the battlefield today; the use of robotics in warfare. Drones, automated turrets, and bomb-diffusing robots are just some of the things that troops use every day in battle.

So naturally Treyarch thought they would play on this ‘automation invasion’ and see if they could work this into the game. And they did it beautifully – in 2025 huge waves of American drones and equipment have gone on the fritz and are now bombing and attacking various cities. It turns out the machines aren’t out of control at all, but are being manipulated by the game’s villain, who Lamia describes as “the most comprehensive three-dimensional character we’ve ever created”. That’s saying quite a lot, but the beauty of that statement is that you get to see for yourself if it’s true – when the game is set in the 80s you get to learn of this villain’s character, and you gradually see events unfold that created the monster you confront in 2025. To him everyone else are merely pawns in his twisted game; whether he wants to achieve world domination or unadulterated chaos is for you to discover. The story unfolds in spectacular fashion, thanks to the writing skills of David Goyer, who consulted on the storyline for the original Black Ops. Here’s a short video from Dave Anthony, Game Director, on how the story is setup in Black Ops 2:

Resistance: Burning Skies is set between the events of Resistance 1 and 2 and it tells the story of a brand new protagonist named Tom Riley. Riley is a New York fireman that is thrown into the action both because of his duty and his need to protect his family. The game opens off with the Chimera starting their invasion into U.S. soil for the first time. You control Riley in New York City trying to secure the safety of civilians while searching for his family to make sure they are out of harm’s way. The preview build ran for the first three stages and it seems that the game overall retains the Resistance feel quite well. The visuals in Burning Skies are well done especially when it comes to the character models, the environments however lacked detailed textures and often felt inferior compared the characters. There were also a few notable frame drops whenever a lot of action is going on screen but both problems can’t be fully judged just yet as this was a mere preview build.

The controls are the obvious main change in Resistance: Burning Skies, and while at first they take a bit of getting used to they do end up working pretty well. The top triggers and face action buttons follow the standard setup from previous Resistance games, and the availability of the dual analog sticks on the system makes sure that Nihilistic is trying to deliver an FPS experience with no compromises. The two significant changes to the controls however are the sprinting and the use of secondary weapons. Sprinting is now done by either tapping twice on the back touch panel while holding forward at the same time or by holding down on the D-Pad. As for secondary weapons, they are activated through the use of different specified gestures on the touch screen. The control scheme does the job well and is definitely heads and shoulders above anything I have experienced from the genre on a handheld.

The Weapon wheel returns from Resistance 1 and 3 as well as the ability to upgrade weapons using a type of technology called Grey tech that you collect as you progress through the game. It’s also important to note that the upgrades in this game are limited and you need to choose which kind of enhancements you would want in each weapon. The fact that you can’t upgrade everything to max performance means that choice is an important factor in the game and it can dictate how you use each weapon available in your arsenal.

Nihilistic are looking to deliver a solid FPS experience on a handheld device for the first time with Resistance: Burning Skies and it seems that they have done a good job of reaching their goal. The PS Vita has plenty of input options and Nihilistic made sure that they choose things that work well to use system’s offerings effectively . Resistance: Burning Skies is looking to be a welcomed entry to the PS Vita’s library and one that would set a new standard for the FPS genre on handheld devices.

Since it’s a compact Bluetooth headset primarily, comfort is the first factor of consideration. Ergonomically it’s comfortable on the ear when you first put it on. But not for long. After a prolonged use of above 3 hours without break, I found out that the ear plugs tend to become itchy and uncomfortable. Once in a while you would have to unplug the headset and give your ears some rest after that itchiness that occurs after a certain amount of time.

Sound quality is surprisingly loud and clear. In the usual first person shooter on your console, all those messages and commands from your squad can be heard easily without any trouble. That’s usually the first thing that’s important with a Bluetooth headset and the Giotech delivers on that front. But an equally important factor is the sound quality of the mic with it so that you can speak back to your team members. Unfortunately, the praise can’t be stated for the mic that it comes along with. The box says that these are ‘noise-cancelling’, but that actually didn’t end up to be true unfortunately. There’ quite a bit of noise audible when you speak and that probably has to do with the distance of the mic from your lips when it’s on. An even bigger problem is that even when you’re not saying a single word, it transmits a fair amount of ambient noise back to your team at all times. Because of this, you’re then asked to pull down the in game volume before you get kicked out of the squad. Not the best of things to happen during a heated battle in a first person shooter.

When it comes to mobility, it really does score points because of its small size which makes it very portable and light-weight. If it wasn’t for the itchiness that begins to take place after a while, you wouldn’t even notice that it was on you for hours. As far as battery life is concerned, a 3 hour charge via USB will give you around 6 hours of game time. When the battery starts falling off, one can hear a beep every 3-4 seconds alarming the user of the depleting battery. This is also followed by the changing of the LED lamp light the usual blue to red.

But with a headset like this, you’ve got to look at the price point before you end up judging the product itself. Sure, it isn’t the perfect headset and has its set of flaws but what market is it aiming for? The headset costs the same as most other entry level headsets in the market that are specifically made for gaming. And on that front, it’s worth the price considering it meets the basic demands of a device like this. It would be great if the mic was just as good as it was promised, but that isn’t to say that it’s not effective.

Below is a list of things of those annoyances that video game developers slap on their games for some absurd reason. And like those aforementioned little children, they are as much fun before you realize that, yes, they are playing you. You keep to their structure, you behave to their command and put up with the bullsh*t because you have to. You like them (and because you spent a good load of your salary on them).

There is way too much going on-screen

There are two kinds of games in the world: one that pauses the game to explain the gameplay mechanics to you, and one that just dumps that on the top side corner while throwing objectives, in-game dialogue, on-screen events, achievements and in-game rewards popups all at once. Last time I checked, I had two eyes and they couldn’t comprehend individually.

Bloody blood bloody screen

Speaking of eyes, another most jarring “modern-day” after effect of regenerating health is how developers want to show reducing health. Instead of just having a simple, easy-to-follow health bar that clearly marks the ‘amount’ of health the player has before he has to load from a checkpoint 30 mins earlier, developers think it’s a great idea to blur the screen till your eyes hurt, and then cloud it with sickening red overlay during which you can get shot and die because you can’t see a goddamn thing. Realism can go fly Uncle Charlie’s kite.

Unnecessary Sequels

Out of the blue, a developer releases a game so good, it instantly turns into a classic, spawns Internet memes, and gets featured on Reddit almost eighteen thousand times a day. Then the developer releases a sequel and everything goes downhill from there. Bioshock 2, Mafia 2, Lost Planet 2, and Crysis 2, are just a few examples of unnecessary sequels that shouldn’t have been made. They were a pointless exercise in turning a game into a franchise without sufficient material to do so. They were made because they could be. Also, because, money.

The wrong kind of cross promotion

Dragon Age 2 armor in Mass Effect 3? Cool, why not. Mass Effect 3 armor in Final Fantasy? Well, that is just insanely stupid. I am all up and pro-for cross promotion in video games (unless they are tied to being retailer-exclusives, in which case they once again go fly Uncle Charlie’s kite). But developers need to draw a line between sensible cross promotion which adds value to their games and others, and where it devalues their games and make the whole thing seem like an unfunny joke.

Quick Time Events during cut scenes

Cut scenes work in two ways – they move the story forward, and they act as a cool-off period between intense action sequences that allows the player to lay down the controller, wipe the sweat off their hands, feel victorious in their mass pwnage and crack some knuckles. So when Quick Time Events are thrown in randomly without prior notice and lasts for like 2 seconds during which the lack of correct input can change the story completely or cause you to replay a chapter again, is when developers deserve all the hate and rage in the world.

“We’re aiming to have something for everyone at MEFCC – from the 5 year old who loves Spider-man to those of us who loved Avatar and Iron Man as well as the hardcore fans out there who are looking take part in gaming competitions with PLG, get autographs from artists and so much more,” said Arafaat Ali Khan, PR Director at ExtraCake PRA, the team behind the event.

Below are ten reasons why you should be looking forward to the first ever Middle East Film & Comic-Con this weekend. Stand a chance to win a pair of tickets to the events by entering our competitions here and here.

1. Hollywood Celebrities

MEFCC has gone to lengths to make sure that the guests attending the event do not disappoint. And hence they’ve got an impressive roster of guests that includes actors from ‘Lord of the Rings’, ’24′, ‘Battlestar Galactica’, ‘Game of Thrones’, ‘Conan the Barbarian’ and ‘The Walking Dead’ among others. Even the writer of the hit movie ‘Chronicle’ is attending the event. It doesn’t get any better than that.

2. Comics and Manga

Needless to say, Comic-Con is a haven for comic minded individuals. If you like comics and manga, then it is almost a scientific fact that you will be present at Comic-Con. Marvel comics, the company responsible for some the world’s most famous comic book characters, will have its own stand and exhibitions at the events. Furthermore, Jashanmal Comics Village and TV Manga Town will feature some of the most popular comic titles (such as Everlast, The Darkness, Kill Shakespeare) and international comic and manga artists.

3. Cosplay

Unleash your inner otaku with the Comic-Con’s Cosplay contest. Dress up as a film, comic book or anime character and participate in the cosplay tournament judged by the Cosplay Queen herself, Alodia Gosiengfiao. Comic-Con will also have the folks from Mr. Ben’s Costume Closet present at the event with their own costume filled booth. So, if you aren’t able to prepare a costume by the time of the event, Mr. Ben will be there for the rescue.

4. Panels

The veterans of the comic and film industry that we’ve mentioned above? Not only do you actually get to meet them, but you also get to hear them in some smartly devised panels at the event that cater to the niche manga and comic market as well as filmmakers who want to learn a thing or two from the pros of the industry. Highlights include ‘Character Creation with Mark Smylie (Archaia), Sohaib Awan (Jinnrise) & Mark Sable (Hazed)’, ‘Film Making Panel with Ali Mostafa, Ashraf Ghori and Max Landis’, and ‘The Art of telling the story with Conor McCreary & Anthony Del Col’.

5. Workshops

1. Continued Story

The Pokémon games always started right from the beginning, with you choosing one of three starting Pokémon and then heading off to challenge the world while chasing all 8 GYM badges to complete the game. Since this time around we are getting direct sequels to Black and White it would be awesome to have the story pick off sometime after the events of the first two games. Nintendo can either opt to continue the story of the characters from the first two games or bring in brand new characters set in the same world as the previous ones. Either ways it will be awesome to see a brand new take on the Pokémon formula because of the nature of the two games.

2. The ability to carry over your progress from Pokémon Black/White

It would be quite exciting if players of the previous games were able to carry their progress from Black/White to these brand new sequels. New players who will play the game for the first time can instead start a brand new save with a few events preset from the start. The idea of having the experience you had from Black/White somehow affect the events of the sequel is something that has never been done in Pokémon games before and it would be a fantastic addition to Black/White 2 giving a much more personalized experience to fans of the series.

Oh wait, that’s not right. Okay, let’s try this again: The true success of a video game can be measured by the number fan-made shorts, parodies and covers it has inspired, which eventually gets featured on Reddit. Yup, that sounds about right.

Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is one such example. The RPG reached a level of popularity unmatched by any game last year. It even gave the Internet a new meme involving arrows and knees.

Below is a list not of those, thankfully, but of some of the funniest, creative, and outrageous fan-made movies based upon and inspired by the fus-ro’s and the hoo-haaiia’s of Skyrim.

Morrowind and Skyrim Theme Piano Violin
While it loads: Pianist Lara6683 (left) and violinist ViolinTay (right) tunes up a superlative mix of the theme songs from Morrowind and Skyrim. The piece starts with Morrowind and cleanly seeps into Skyrim as if it were part of the same song. The tune is beautifully soulful and brings the majestic and epic feel of the two games quite well.

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The Dragonborn Comes
While it loads: With 6 million views on YouTube so far, there’s a good chance you have already seen this. Here’s an excuse to watch it again. Malukah takes Jeremy Soule’s ‘The Dragonborn Comes’ to an altogether different level with a haunting rendition that will leave you spellbound for the entire two mins of it. It’s so good, in fact, that she would totally get accepted in the Bard’s College.

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Skyrim Epic Rap
While it loads: Dan Bull puts together a rap on Skyrim we wish it would play whenever we would face a dragon in the game. It talks of a Dragonborn who wears a hat with badass horns, and who scoffs at the thought of you being a better warrior than him with a dragon shout that’s sweeter than sodastream.

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How I Play Skyrim
While it loads: Michael Shanks has played a lot of Skyrim. Because only those that have trudged for hundreds of hours in Skyrim can truly understand the “unrelentingly, unforgiving, uninterruptedly epic experience” that the RPG is. The butterfly in the end is just…true.

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The Best Skyrim Fan Film
While it loads: It’s not easy to make a Skyrim film. Especially when you want to make it the “best skyrim” film there is. There is the production to be taken care of, the direction, the location, the costumes, the epic-sounding dialogues, the glitches, invisible men, crashes, poor frame-rates, flying NPCs, and all that. It’s hard business.

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Skyrim: Dragon Hunt
While it loads: Don’t mind the inconsistencies in this video – like the crossbow and the armor – Tim Antos’ short film came out a good months before Skyrim. Despite that, Antos manages to capture the feel of the ‘dragon hunt’ quite well, and unlike many fan made short, this boasts pretty decent production values.

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Skyrim: The Arrival
While it loads: Here’s another fan-made movie with good production values. Skyrim: The Arrival is shot in first-person and tells the story of a dragonborn who “follows a dragon called RuneRax to earth encountering many friends and foes to discover a string of conspiracies surrounding Oblivion and the new realm, earth.”

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Skyrim 2012
While it loads: How would Skyrim be in 2012? It would still have people using the ‘bucket on the head’ trick to steal things, apparently.

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‘Dovahkiin’
While it loads: Lindsay Sterling’s and Peter Hollens’ Skyrim video is goofy but they make amends with an enthralling rendition of ‘Dovahkiin’. The back track is made up entirely of 114 tracks of Hollen’s voice, which is 113 more than the voices I can sing in.

What are some of the bigger changes that gamers can expect to see in Epic Mickey 2?
For us the biggest change is the fact that we’re going multi-platform this time around. So gamers can enjoy Epic Mickey 2 on the Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360. We’re also including 2-player local co-op which really changes the dynamic of how the game plays out. It’s an entirely different experience when you play along with someone versus when you play along with the AI. There’s also full voice acting this time, so characters will sound just like how they’ve sounded through years gone by, so it’s a really authentic Disney experience.

The PS3 version of the game has Move support as well – was it hard to adapt the control schemes to the Move? Why did you decide not to include Kinect support?
It wasn’t as difficult as you might imagine – although the Playstation Move and Wii controls are different, there wasn’t too much of a change for adapting the control scheme to the PS Move. We didn’t work to include Kinect in the game because although Kinect is a superb piece of technology, we felt that it didn’t quite fit in with the game. The hardest part about including Kinect in the game would have been the movement, and usually you’re ‘on rails’ or have limited scope of moving your character around. So ultimately we decided that it would have been a bit too complicated to include Kinect support in the Xbox version of the game.

Why did you decide not to include online multiplayer?
If you go to any Disney movie screening, what do you see? A father and daughter enjoying the movie together; a couple enjoying a quiet movie night on their own – people enjoy spending time together. Which is what we thought about when we worked on the multiplayer aspect of the game. We wanted people to come together and enjoy the game sitting together on their couch at home, rather than with a stranger across the globe. Excluding online gameplay might be a decision I regret later on, but we’ll come to that at our next interview!

What was the development process like for Epic Mickey 2?
I can honestly say that the development process this time around was like nothing I’ve ever done before. We knew from day one that we would be hitting all platforms, but our studio only has experience with developing for the Wii. So we had a choice – we could build a studio for 700 people too work on this game, or have 160 people working together to collaborate across all the systems. We have excellent development partners in the UK and across the globe who are able to bring the game’s vision to light on the different consoles, and it’s really made our job so much more easier. We would work on a prototype model or storyboard first, and when we were happy with it we would pass it on the different studios to look at and work on. It really cut out development time down and made sure that the end product was still spectacular.

Has the game dynamic changed much from the first game?
What we wanted to do was to really give gamers the feeling of a story being told, so we worked hard on that in this game. From the way the story plays out, to the player-made decisions, to the cinematic pieces, we wanted to keep the player engaged throughout the game. We also wanted to give players a different experience when playing with a friend, so we included cross-player abilities that really change how you take on enemies. There’s also a fair bit of healthy competition going on in the game when you have two payers involved, which is always fun to observe. I love that players do unexpected things when they’re gaming – you could write hundreds of AI scripts to try and predict a player’s moves, but in the end players end up creating their own fun which is just awesome.

Can you talk a bit more about the decision-making that gamers will face in Epic Mickey 2?
I’ve always been a fan of giving people choice in games; it allows them to be creative and dictate in what direction they want the game to flow. It not only lets gamers show how clever they are but it also means that players have to live with the consequences of their decisions. Epic Mickey 2 offers a very unique way to make decisions in the game, and the decisions you make will play through with you for a large part of the game. You would have to back-track quite a bit to be able to reverse your decision, if possible. In this way, gamers are ‘authors of their own experience’ in the game.

Do you think that we’ll see other Disney franchises explored in a way similar to Epic Mickey?
Of course! It would be great to spend the rest of my life honoring these characters for as long as I can, so don’t be too surprised if you see another epic adventure heading your way in the years to come