Mass Effect 2 – E3 \’09 Teaser

BioWare has released a short, E3 ’09 teaser for its upcoming action-RPG sequel, Mass Effect 2. Definitely worth a peak:

Mafia II – Pre-E3 Cinematic Trailer

2K Games has released a Pre-E3 cinematic trailer for the much awaited and anticipated sequel, Mafia II. Worth a looky:

NFS: Shift – New Trailer

Electronic Arts has unleashed a new trailer for the latest installment in the Need for Speed series, NFS: Shift. The trailer introduces the BMW M3 GT2. Check it out:

Batman: Arkham Asylum Gets Dated

Eidos has finally announced the release window for its upcoming action title Batman: Arkham Asylum, after delaying it from its June release.

Initially scheduled for a June 23, 2009 release, the awaited Batman adventure will now be available on August 25th in North America and August 28th in Europe.

Eidos also said that the PS3 version of the game will be playable alongside releases like Mini Ninjas and Just Cause 2 at E3 ’09.

“Eidos is proud to offer three very innovative and unique products at this year’s E3. These games are a reflection of Eidos’ commitment to deliver compelling characters in rich and expansive environments, allowing players to immerse themselves in engaging gameplay,” said Eidos EVP for sales and marketing Robert A. Lindsey.

“Heading back to the Los Angeles Convention Center is a big deal and Eidos is striving to make the return to the show floor unforgettable.”

Operation Flashpoint 2 – E3 \\\’09 Trailer

Codemasters has released a new E3 ’09 trailer for their upcoming game Operation Flashpoint 2: Dragon Rising. Check it out:

Brink – Debut Trailer

Splash Damage and Bethesda Softworks has unveiled their new project, the multiplatform first person action title Brink. The game is slated to release next year. Check out the debut trailer:

Dead Space Extraction Official Release Date

Press release:
Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) and its Visceral Games™ studio announced today that Dead SpaceTM Extraction, will be available in stores on September 29, 2009 in North America and October 2, 2009 in Europe exclusively for the Wii™. Dead Space Extraction delivers the highly-polished, action-horror experience the Dead Space franchise is known for while upping the ante for technical excellence on the Wii with some of the best visuals ever showcased on the platform.

“Our team is really excited to bring the intensity of the Dead Space universe to an entire new audience,” said Executive Producer, Steve Papoutsis. “We are going to deliver the same high quality, cinematic experience we delivered in the original Dead Space, while also adding co-op, new enemies, weapons and taking advantage of all of the unique features the Wii has to offer.”

Bionic Commando

Never one to disappoint the fans, Capcom set tongues wagging last year with a remake of one their classic games, Bionic Commando. Bionic Commando: Rearmed breathed new life into the game with update visuals and tighter gameplay, but still kept much of the original game’s side-scrolling charm. Riding on the success of this revamp, Capcom decided to release Bionic Commando on the next gen consoles with a whole new look and feel in order to really get the fans going.

The new Bionic Commando breaks away from the side-scrolling action and immerses players in a full 3D world. You play as Nathan Spencer, a brooding bionic soldier who was falsely imprisoned and is now being called upon by the government to investigate a terrorist attack on Ascension City. Let me get one thing off my chest – the game’s story isn’t going to be winning any awards, and plays out like it was scribbled together on napkins during the happy hour at some local bar. There are so many gaping plot holes that it’s almost impossible to take the storyline seriously, so you just end up pointlessly running around blowing stuff up.

Rather than be a traditional shoot ‘em up game, Bionic Commando throws something new into the mix through the use of Nathan’s bionic arm. Once you’ve been reunited with your bionic arm in the early stages of the game (a very touching love affair if you ask me), you then slowly ‘remember’ how to use it, and unlock different abilities. Your most basic and useful one is the ability to fling your grappling hook onto almost anything in the environment, and go swinging around like a modern day Tarzan. Though this may sound like a lot of fun, the game has a ridiculously steep learning curve when it comes to swinging around properly. If you don’t let go at the right moment, you lose all your momentum and end up falling to your doom. Still, once you’ve gotten over this crippling swing tutorial, the world is your playground, and you can spend quite a lot of time scaling buildings, throwing cars, and juggling, boulders, all thanks to your grappling hook and bionic arm. You can pull off some rather swell moves, such as grappling onto an enemy and reeling in towards them to deliver a flying kick, or punching an object into the air and then hurtling it towards an unsuspecting victim. When you’re not swinging around like a baboon, the game does throw a few weapons your way, but they are completely useless. Your very first weapon is supposed to be some kind of pistol, but instead seems to be loaded with rubber bullets, doing hardly any damage to your enemies. You’re later given slightly larger weapons to play with, but again these come with limited firepower.

The game’s jump to 3D does have its flaws of course. Though the game levels may look and feel fully immersive, you’re often restricted in how much of the level you can explore. The game’s levels are decorated with areas of glowing blue radiation, and venturing close to them for too long results in an instant death. This is a major downside to the game, as the gameplay soon begins to feel very linear, which is a real shame. If its more action you desire, you can hop into multiplayer mode and battle out against 8 other players as you swing and pummel you way across levels in deathmatch or capture the flag modes.

Capcom certainly put in a considerable effort in the level designs – each level looks derelict and destroyed, and offers a perfect playground for your swinging skills, not to mention handy scatterings of throwable objects. If only the annoying radiation limits weren’t present, you could spend more time exploring this massive city. The voice acting is passable, though it’s often irritating when Nathan tries to deliver one of his humorous one-liners as he slugs an enemy off the screen.

Bionic Commando tries hard to re-invent itself, but it ends up shooting itself in the foot. The swinging around levels may be fun the first few times, but it soon becomes repetitive, not to mention frustrating if you haven’t quite got the hang of the swing mechanics. If you’re a fan of this game, stay away from this one unless you want your respect for Capcom to go flying out the window.

Sonic and the Black Knight

Sonic and the Black Knight is the second installment of the Sonic Storybook series, the first being Sonic and the Secret Rings. Basically the idea here is: Sonic + Classic Children’s Story = $$$… right? Well the actual equation is Sonic + Classic Story + garbage Gameplay = bad review. The last installment of the Storybook series was an off-shoot of the Arabian Nights, and this one is of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. So naturally Sonic has to wield a sword… great lets completely change the style of play that has defined Sonic for over a decade, that will surely yield great results! Well at least the game is still fast paced for the most part.

You are introduced to Merlina (granddaughter of Merlin… love the creative name huh?), who is surrounded by a bunch of goons and a dark armored figure on a horse, we are told that he is King Arthur. I’m already scratching my head here because that guy CLEARLY looks like a bad guy. Oh wait it is… take one of the most celebrated heroes of all time and make him a villain… great idea! (Please sense my sarcasm) Merlina then instantaneously summons our lovable hedgehog from the sky to protect her, who lands with a thud, who then franticly ping pongs around to save his two chili-cheese dogs from meeting their demise in the dirt. After eating one of them, he tosses the other in the air, wipes out all the goons except for King Arthur, and catches it before it lands. Merlina then explains that the power of Excalibur has corrupted the king so he is ruling his kingdom using armies from the underworld (Lich king anyone?) Then as Sonic attempts to go after the king, Merlina stops him saying that the game doesn’t end 5 minutes from the opening no matter how much you want it to, no wait I lied… she says something about King Arthur’s invulnerability due to Excalibur’s scabbard etc.  This all took place in a beautiful cut scene; I was actually impressed and thought that no matter how bad the game was at least I could have my pretty cut scenes. Well, sad news is, that’s the ONLY damned cut scene in almost the whole friggin’ game, all other modes of storytelling while progressing are some form of animated storyboard garbage where their lips don’t even move.

But the voice acting is great and Sonic still sounds like the lovable arrogant douche from the other games. However the dialogue is so corny and the one-liners don’t even hit me at first because they aren’t even recognizable as one-liners (That’s showing how bad they are, not how dumb I am ). The game later introduces you to your sword, Caliburn (he also talks by the way, with a heavy accent to boot), and you are to master using him in order to defeat the three knights of Arthur and eventually face King Arthur himself. Now get this, Knuckles is Sir Gawain, and Shadow is Sir Lancelot, two of the three knights you are to defeat. They are also wearing medieval helmets and have armor and swords. They look stupid, very stupid, but it was somewhat amusing. I love how this game not only butchers Sonic lore but also the Arthurian one.

This is the most linear game I have ever played, even compared to Mario on the SNES. You know why?  At least in Mario you can face backwards. One of the first things that struck me was… “Hey, I can’t turn around.” Then you start to notice that there is no camera control, which can only mean one things… there is no reason to adjust the camera. Then I realized there is only one directional for almost the whole game, forward tilt. Sonic performs hairpin turns, loops, and other crazy stunts all by simply pressing forward. There is not much gameplay left in a game to redeem itself from such a terrible design. Also, sonic only has sword attacks this time around, and sword maneuvers are performed by moving the Wii-mote. Now you may think that swinging it horizontally will make a sweep and vertical would be a direct slash, I sure was, but then I realized it doesn’t matter HOW you move the Wii-mote, you will always slash and destroy things in your path by blindly flailing the Wii-mote. There is also a jump move which has no real use other than scaling objects, and a Soul Surge move which uses up an energy bar that allows you to perfectly hit enemies, but flailing wildly does the job just fine so this ability has no real use except for a boss fight. Speaking of Boss fights… WOW did they do a TERRIBLE absolutely HORRENDOUS job of designing boss fights. Not to mention that all of the knights were EXACTLY the same type of fight. I will go through my first encounter (not like any later encounter was different) with a boss knight to more effectively articulate how bad they are. You start out face to face with a Knight, since I had no idea what this encounter had in store for me, I just charged in while flailing the Wii-mote. Now get this, before the enemy finished talking I had already won. I was almost certain that I had somehow glitched the game or my random flailing must have accidently unlocked the hidden combo or something, so I immediately restarted the fight. Second time through, I did the same thing, and I won within seconds. The next two knights are EXACTLY the same, I even tried closing my eyes one time and I think I did better.

There are two boss fights left after these, which actually are boss fights but are not anything extraordinary. (How can they be with three buttons as your arsenal?) The other instances of Wii-mote specific actions are also extremely lackluster. On one occasion you are to use the Wii-pointer to reflect light, using your sword, into a rock to free a civilian by shattering it with light. (Makes complete sense I know, I got an A in physics…) It is nice to know that the Sonic Team wants me to practice my pointing skills in case I wanted to work for the weather station. There are also prompts to shake your Wii-mote when parrying a boss (only King Arthur really) to get more attacks in, but these prompts are badly timed.  I kept dying to King Arthur only to figure out the timing of the prompt was wrong and that was why I was failing.

The extras in the game are irritating and pointless. As you go through levels you get items such as helmets flowers and tomes.  I think this is Sonic Team’s attempt at trying to make sonic into some type of RPG that medieval is often associated with, but none of the items are equipable nor do they have any sort of value, other than trading it to friends online. Multiplayer for such a thoughtless game is also not even worth mentioning, although there are a lot of multiplayer modes, along with an online ranking of scores from the single player mode. However if you are above the age of 10 and spend time perfecting your scores for such a bad game’s online ranking, you have severe problems. The game from start to finish can be done in one night, it is a very short game, and you will be thankful for that.

Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor

From the onset, the engine feels similar to Warhammer: Dawn of War 2, albeit with more explosiveness to it. You have your cover system, intense particle effects from all the explosions which are livelier than DoW2, and interestingly running the benchmark is a nice visual treat of what this engine can do at the absolute most zoomed in level. Considering it’s mostly a strategy game and it’s meant to be played top down, the cinematic feel of the action from this point of view is absolutely beautiful.

The level of detail is much higher than previous games, explosions and sound are superb. A note on the sound quality of this game, during the campaign when you hear a tank coming your way your immediate reaction will be to hide your soldiers or reposition your units in such a way that you don’t want to be caught off guard. It’s kind of an instinctual reaction, but pretty hysterical when you try to justify why you reacted that way. The attention to detail to the sounds in the game, results in an accurate effect of said situation when an enemy tank or vehicle is nearby even though you can’t see it.

Getting to play a point of view other than the allies is definitely welcome, Nazi German story for the first time as you control a single tank and follow the events surrounding this particular tank crew. There is one quirk though that I felt, the campaigns seem very straight forward. There isn’t much resource building required, field upgrades seemed to have little importance in the overall mission, however I will say that upgrades are of some use during final missions of each campaign. It seems to have been designed that way on purpose, because when you jump into skirmish or online and resources and control points start factoring in, the difficulty skyrockets.

If you are new to Company of Heroes but have played more traditional RTS games, such as the Command and Conquer series, you are in for an awakening. It’s ridiculously difficult to play a game where everything depends on everything else. Where you position your defensive turrets vs. how you intend to take on that tank. Yes…how you hit the tank even depends, hit it from the side or the back does more damage than simply hitting it head on, which as a matter of fact does very little damage. Couple that with soldiers, specifically anti-tank infantry and you should seriously consider retreat, and hope that you don’t lose your engine.

Maybe that mass army strategy works in more traditional RTS games, whereas here a single machine gunner can mow down most of your infantry. Structures can be garrisoned, but watch out for those flamethrowers, tanks, and grenades. For practically every unit that exists in the game, there exists a counter unit. You want to send a tank out, send it out with some machine gunner infantry, some regular infantry, combat engineers, and maybe a sniper. Each for a different purpose, machine gunners to mow down those units attacking the tank from the side lets say, regular infantry to clear them with a grenade and protect your engineers or to capture control points, your engineers to capture control points as well, or build defensive structures, or to repair that tank on the fly. The sniper to take out targets from a distance and to give you an idea of what’s surrounding the area while taking advantage of the units’ far sight.

The 3 new online modes are the fruit of the basket in this standalone expansion. Those who have played previous Company of Heroes games will be in for a surprise. Each of the modes are now there to force you into a narrower field, but do emphasize co-op play. It might seem like a nuisance but it’s sure to feel much clearer to you once you get going.

The 3 modes are Operation Stonewall, Operation Panzerkrieg and Operation Assault. Players new to the series will find Operation Stonewall to be the closest to what they are used to, however fans of the series should know that it still contains every element unique to the Company of Heroes series. Up to four players are in charge of a single Allied barracks in the middle of a European town. The purpose is to defend against waves of German soldiers and it’s up to the players to come together at defending the town. Choosing one of the available specializations is at the heart of this mode. Each player should pick the one that they feel most comfortable with or able to work with better, so that when the time comes for the next wave they are able to coordinate their troops much more effectively.

Operation Panzerkrieg, and yes as the name implies it involves tanks. One tank per human player actually, across three players. It’s unique however, in the sense that not only are you controlling one tank, you do get to choose which kind of tank and its upgrade path. In essence players who are well versed in this mode can truly annihilate anything should they use tanks that are upgraded with abilities that support the other two in tight spots. For example one person has a Tiger tank, against other tanks, another has an M4 Sherman, against infantry, etc.

Operation Assault is by far the most difficult of the three, similar to the previous mode, this mode puts you in control of a SINGLE unit. Yes you read that right, a SINGLE unit. Each human player chooses one hero type of infantry, so you could be a sniper whereas the second player could be mortar, another could be machine gunner. There does seem to be one issue with it, it is a narrow map, and practically the most effective way at times just seems to be to blow your way through anything to get to the other side before the enemy does the same to you. The AI Infantry does help at times, however if your teammates can coordinate well with you then they are useless.

This brings me to my final quirk about this standalone expansion, all three new campaigns play out on the same map. The same goes for the multiplayer modes, they are on different maps for each operation however everytime you play those specific modes you are confined to playing the map of that operation. As mentioned earlier the Campaign isn’t as epic as the word implies, however the tweaks to the gameplay, and the new multiplayer modes do make up for this. Tales of Valor is definitely worth trying for the fan of the series, there is just the worry that it may get tedious or boring pretty fast.

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