New Games |
- Nimble Sakura Warrior for 3DS is like samurai Punch-Out!!
- Freddie Wong totally leaked the Battlefield 4 trailer!
- Sequence now available on Steam
- BlizzCon11: Diablo III headed to consoles, no public beta
- A Dtoider made this Game Boy 'wise fwom its gwave'
- BlizzCon11: Tara talks Mists of Pandaria with Tom Merritt
- Preview: Ruin (working title)
- Review: Dragon Age II: Mark of the Assassin
- HAWP: Papa Burch in drag
- The Modern Warfare 3 launch trailer is here
- Modnation Racers: Road Trip is better with touch controls
- Metroid Minimalistic shirt now on sale!
- Live show: Hangover takes to the streets
- Preview: Hustle Kings (PlayStation Vita)
- Preview: Wipeout 2048
- Modern Warfare 3 dedicated servers unranked only
- Reggie: If you don't own a 3DS, what's wrong with you?
- Battlefield 3 gets one more super intense trailer
- Warner Brothers handling distribution of Witcher 2 on 360
| Nimble Sakura Warrior for 3DS is like samurai Punch-Out!! Posted: 22 Oct 2011 03:00 PM PDT
Among the news at the recent Nintendo Direct conference -- where the PictoChat-ish app Swapnote was announced -- a new title called Nimble Sakura Warrior for the 3DS eShop was revealed. The game places you in the role of a wandering samurai as he chops down foes, though battles aren't a simple hack-n'-slash affair. In a similar fashion to Punch-Out!! or Infinity Blade, movement during battles is limited; you have to dodge at the right moment with the slide pad and counter with buttons. I'm digging the art style of the game, which looks like a blend of Mystical Ninja and Captain Rainbow. Characters have strange geometric heads like they were Muppets or something. It's great! Combined with some good ol' reflex-based action, Nimble Sakura Warrior sounds like my cup of moonshine. The game will drop in Japan in November, but no overseas release has been announced yet. Nintendo's Downloadable 3DS Samurai Game Is All About Dodging [Siliconera] |
| Freddie Wong totally leaked the Battlefield 4 trailer! Posted: 22 Oct 2011 02:00 PM PDT I hope you nancy boys aren't getting your panties all wet over that Modern Warfare 3 trailer. That sh*t be weaksauce! Battlefield is where it's all at, and I'm not talking about Battlefield 3, which has now been made obsolete before its official release. Give it up for Battlefield 4, baby! Check the graphics on this leaked trailer! It's the most realistic videogame ever designed! EA DICE makes Crytek look like poo-flinging monkeys! I don't know how we can stomach today's disgusting filth -- we might as well be watching stop-motion Lite-Brite. Throw that garbage away and pre-order the last game you'll ever need to play. Ever. Alternate title: Freddie Wong is such a troll Battlefield 4 Trailer [YouTube] |
| Sequence now available on Steam Posted: 22 Oct 2011 01:00 PM PDT Unique and vastly underrated indie XBLIG game, Sequence, has hit the e-shelves on Steam. You can pick up this Iridium Studios gem for 10% off at $4.49, or $4.99 normally which is a total steal. Sequence is by far my favorite indie game of the year. Imagine DDR but with a delightful RPG twist -- you defeat enemies by casting spells set to some pretty awesome beats by Ronald Jenkees and Michael Wade Hamilton. Enemies produce certain drops based on rarity which can be combined to make new spells, items, and even a hidden level. It's all topped with complete voice acting and over 10 hours of gameplay -- although if you're a completionist freak like me, it could be many more. So if you have an urge to satisfy your inner rhythm/RPG nerd, I'd highly recommend picking this one up! |
| BlizzCon11: Diablo III headed to consoles, no public beta Posted: 22 Oct 2011 12:25 PM PDT As soon as I found out that I'd be talking to a couple of the guys from Diablo III at BlizzCon this year, I was determined to find out whether or not the highly-anticipated RPG would, in fact, ever make it to consoles, as previous rumors have suggested. Fortunately, my question answered itself when I learned I'd be interviewing Josh Mosquiera, the game's Lead Console Designer. When asked if his title was a harbinger of things to come, Mosquiera responded, "We're not announcing anything because, literally, there's three of us on the team right now ... but that's what we're trying to do... We're trying to build the best console team at Blizzard. Blizzard is really serious about going back to the console." No general timeline was given, but it seems likely that development has either begun or will do so very soon. I also got a chance to speak with Kevin Martens, Diablo III's Lead Content Developer, who confirmed that Blizzard will not be doing a public beta for the game prior to launch. "We're doing it in waves, so we'll keep adding people. The beta will be going for some time; we're going to be patching it, supporting it, and adding new stuff to it, as well." Other topics of conversation include the emphasis on "action storytelling" this time around, which class is the best class, and what the final year of development is like for a 7-year game. |
| A Dtoider made this Game Boy 'wise fwom its gwave' Posted: 22 Oct 2011 12:00 PM PDT Dtoider ekoala2002, also known as Kodykoala, is no stranger to wild custom figurines. As you can see on his community page as well as his home page, his creations include zombified versions of Mario and the gang, cross sections of Mega Man and Guts Man, and even a Mr. Destructoid LEGO minifig. Kodykoala recently came across an original gray brick Game Boy and was reminded of Game Boy from Captain N. Using that character and the machine's rather poor physical condition as inspiration, he crafted a hell beast straight from our nightmares -- a zombified Game Boy with a thirst for oil and and hunger for circuit boards. I would say that he brought new life to an aging handheld, but... ya know... zombie! If you want to see more shots of the undead portable, hit on up Kodykoala's Flickr page. If you want to show the man even more love, you can buy the figure for a cool $100. Kodykoala makes me rethink zombies yet again with a Game Boy of all things [Tomopop] |
| BlizzCon11: Tara talks Mists of Pandaria with Tom Merritt Posted: 22 Oct 2011 11:15 AM PDT In between fighting the crowds and dousing myself in hand sanitizer at BlizzCon, I had time for a quick stop-and-chat with Tom Merritt, host of Tech News Today and Revision3's Tom's Top 5. We talked all about the new World of Warcraft expansion Mists of Pandaria, to which annual WoW subscribers will get early access. Be sure to check out Chris Morris's hands-on preview of the new expansion for a more detailed look at the Pandaren race and Monk class. |
| Posted: 22 Oct 2011 11:00 AM PDT Hey there boys and girls! You know about all that talk of Diablo III coming to consoles, right? Well I'm here to tell you to not get your hopes up because hopes and dreams are stupid. And also because Sony is about to give us the next best thing with Ruin, the working title of Sony's next big RPG on the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita. Ruin (Working title) (PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita [Previewed]) Ruin, a top-down, loot heavy, dungeon crawler RPG, has drawn its fair share of comparisons to Diablo. That's not to say that this game is some sort of console knock-off of the PC giant. Ruin has a number of defining features that make it stand apart from any other RPG and it all starts with the lair. In Ruin, lairs are a sort of personal hub area where players can customize weapons and armor, decorate with items gained on quest, and equip minions among other things. Lairs breakdown into three section: the sanctum, the forge, and the minion den. The sanctum makes up the biggest portion of your lair, acting as a house are that you can decorate. The cool thing about decoration in Ruin is that obtaining them is all based on your accomplishments and serve as bragging rights. Have you defeated that high level boss? Reforged the legendary lost blade? Defeated a certain amount of high level enemies? For every prestigious act you accomplish you get a new decoration to put in your sanctum. You can bring friends into your sanctum or visit others to quite literally see a players progression translated as fully rendered items. The sanctum also carries all of the items and features that affect your characters stats. Its all very reminiscent of the menu system (or lack thereof) of Fable III. Decorations themselves can get more elaborate as you go along too. So, for example, if you defeat 10 high level sub-bosses you may get a statue to place in your sanctum. Defeat 30 and that statue may become more and more elaborate with jewel, ornaments and other decor. Lairs also get bigger as you level up, increasing the size of you sanctum and the amount of items you can place. The second section of the lair is the forge, where you (surprise!) forge items. Using ingredients and recipes found during quests, the forge allows you to craft stat altering items for your sanctum, armor and weapons for your minions as well as for yourself. Weapons in Ruin are pretty different though from what we have come to expect in RPGs. You don't gain powerful weapons as you go along. Rather, you gain weapons that have the potential to be powerful. Confused? Its actually a pretty simple, yet clever system. When you go on a quest you might find a sword that, for example, can be taken to the forge and beefed up to do 200 points of ice damage. Or you might take it to the forge and construct it so that it does 170 wind damage and 10% chance at a critical hit. The whole point of this is to have players more attached and invested in the weapons and loot they craft, beyond simple number crunching. Rather than discard a weapon for one that does 30 more point of damage or something, Ruin's crafting system is meant to make you think twice before tossing away a weapon as you just spent quite some time adjusting it to your liking. The final piece to Ruin's lair system is the minion den where players customize a small army of henchmen. Remember how I said that you can show off your sanctum and look at other peoples cool stuff? Well Ruin allows you to attack other peoples sanctum for quick XP. Before players can get to your lair though, they must get through your private army that you can customize from a range creatures such as grunts, heavies, lieutenants, sub-bosses and bosses. The minion den is essentially where you micromanage your team's lineup as well as their weapons and armor. Having your lair attacked isn't the worst thing ever, though. While attackers gain XP for their aggressiveness, in an odd twist, you to gain a little XP for being attacked. If you or your minions manage to kill your aggressors, you gain a greater amount of XP. Of course, if you don't survive an attack, the aggressor gains that bigger batch of XP. Basically, once the dust settles the point is that everyone walks away with something to show for their efforts. There are no winners and losers so much as there is the guy that did good and the guy that did better. It's an interesting deviation from the tradition system of rewards and punishment, but honestly if someone cuts through all my hard earned defenses I would want something to show for it. Ruin also features a class system for its character creation. Players will have the option to choose from a mage, assassin (the rouge/thief class), and a warrior. The warriors combat is pretty standard stuff with light and heavy attacks, a block button, as well as some basic combos that you can string together with your light and heavy attacks. Warriors also have special attacks that require mana, such as a charge and a room-clearing stomp. Combat with the assassin is a completely ranged affair and uses and evade rather than a block button. Your main light attack is throwing knives while your secondary heavy attack has you throwing bombs. Bombs do more damage than knives, but your effectiveness with them is directly proportional to you ability to build up combos with your throwing knives. Normally you can only throw one bomb at a time, but build up a three hit combo and you can throw two bombs at once. Three bombs with a six hit combo and so forth. The assassin also has some special mana-burning abilities, like a back stab that teleports you behind every onscreen enemy and stabs them in the back. The mage was not part of our demo. Overall, combat has a very basic, button-mashing feel to it. Being a Vita title, Ruin makes use of some of the new features, and perhaps has the best use of the Vita's Cross-play. At any point in the game, whether you're in your lair or in the middle of a quest, you can transfer your game to and from your PS3 or Vita, picking up right where you left off when you were transferring your game. When I mean right where you left off, I do mean right where you left off. Not back at a your last checkpoint, but right where your character was standing when you paused to transfer. Though it's sadly not a launch title, Ruin is the Vita game that has me most intrigued. Of course since it is also coming to the PlayStation 3 (a system I already own), and so far does nothing unique with the Vita version, my excitement is considerably quelled. If the loot and forging system is as deep as it appears though, me and every other RPG nut has something to look out for in 2012. |
| Review: Dragon Age II: Mark of the Assassin Posted: 22 Oct 2011 10:00 AM PDT To play the first, oh, ten minutes of Dragon Age II: Mark of the Assassin is to gaze into the abyss, to confront everything weird about videogames and the culture that surrounds them. The scene: protagonist Hawke is enlisted to help an exiled assassin, Tallis, break into the estate of an Orlesian nobleman to pilfer some jewels. Playing Hawke as an intrepid dagger-for-hire made sense when he/she was a hardscrabble immigrant; it's less convincing now that (my female) Hawke lives in a mansion and wields considerable social capital, having saved Kirkwall from imminent destruction and all. Hawke is eventually convinced to follow a complete stranger to a foreign country to steal from a powerful oligarch when Tallis, voiced by Felicia Day, coos, "That's just what you do, isn't it?" The corollary goes unsaid, but here it is: "It is when you're the hero in a videogame." That Day -- perhaps the most well-known ambassador of nerd culture -- is involved is equally distracting, serving as an umbilical link to real world and reinforcing how arbitrary and contrived the endeavor of videogaming can be. Dragon Age II: Mark of the Assassin (Mac, PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 [reviewed]) Despite its artifice, Mark of the Assassin fares better than Legacy's otherworldly premise. Instead of being fodder for some hokey blood ritual, Hawke is once again cast as a political actor, a doer of great deeds. To have Hawke's accomplishments reflected back to the player is one of the strengths born from designing Kirkwall as a consistent (albeit relatively static) city. There's very little to say about the bulk of Mark of the Assassin -- its Dragon Age II with an overblown and crudely drawn French accent. There are new enemies called ghasts, but they aren't particularly interesting. Like Legacy before it, Assassin's strength lies in the way it expands the world of Thedas, with changes to mechanics and quest structure being largely secondary. There are a few exceptions, though. First, there are extended stealth and puzzle sections that range from passable to unoffensive. While nothing special in their own right, these setpieces provide a nice break from stabbing people in the neck until they explode. (Incidentally, the new gear and stat boosts aren't doing much to make Hawke's neck stabbing qualitatively better or worse, just stabbier. She's pretty much built to perfection and this point, her telos being destruction.) Second, the boss fight in this DLC is pretty good, not to mention remarkable for the way it marries Dragon Age II's action-genre affections to its stat-crunching, role-playing roots. If BioWare insists on adding environmental and spatial elements to its boss fights, Assassin's action-lite overlay is the way to go. Think the Rock Wraith fight from Act I of DAII, instead of the awful Corypheus debacle from Legacy. (Pro tip: turn all subtitles on for this fight. Your teammates bark useful information during the course of the fight, but it often gets lost in the din and explosions. Taking their advice improves the end of the game dramatically, especially on higher difficulty levels.) Finally, BioWare has apparently dropped out of the "from the rafters" school of enemy design. The only enemies in Assassin who pop into existence are magicked there by an Arcane Horror. It is also balanced pretty well -- I can only think of one difficulty spike -- and branches in a few typically BioWare-ian ways, plus a few subtler ways that take a second playthrough to notice. Still, the crux of Mark of the Assassin is that it's, y'know, more Dragon Age II. Even Tallis -- who joins your party complete with her own skill trees and algebraic tactics -- is more important as a catalyst for the story than for her role in combat. She's basically an Isabella clone with a less pornographic bust, and Assassin isn't long or varied enough to really explore her mage-smashing specialties. From that perspective, it's tempting to wish Hawke could whisk Tallis back to Kirkwall as though she were another Seb Vael or Shale. However, considering her position as an outsider -- she's an elf who makes her living as an assassin and holds, as you'll discover, some pretty out-there beliefs -- I'm glad that BioWare chose to keep her activity limited to this particular quest. Keeping her around any longer would ruin the mystique. Of course, it's almost surely the result of technical considerations, but it serves the story too. This is where BioWare's casting of Felicia Day morphs from a vaguely disconcerting boondoggle to a legitimate design choice. Tallis is voiced with an American accent, which immediately sets her apart from the rest of the British Roman cast. This reinforces her status as a cultural "other" while adding characterization that has nothing to do with the writing or plot of the game. In the service of the bare-bones heist plot, Mark of the Assassin explores different cultural territory than the mage-templar dialectic that dominates so much of the first two games. There's a hitch, though -- Tallis is a cipher for a hitherto under-explored subset of Thedans, but players don't have a baseline of understanding of her background and culture. The result is that Tallis is written to be subtle and nuanced, but -- Dragon Age II's dialogue wheel may be partly to blame -- she comes off as vague and obtuse. This represents a fundamental problem for BioWare -- the strength of Dragon Age DLC in general is that it expands on a rich, expansive world, but if players don't understand the world they're being thrust into, the entire enterprise is undermined. Nevertheless, Mark of the Assassin is a lighthearted and straightforward game that does most things right and nothing truly wrong. BioWare DLC has long been the purview of that company's tinkerers and iterators, its refiners and experimenters, and it's nice to be able to track the team's progress. Fans might be better served by longer, more fully-realized content, but the fact remains that I'm always looking forward to any excuse to dive back into Thedas. |
| Posted: 22 Oct 2011 09:00 AM PDT All Ashly wanted to do was have a family fun night, but Anthony had to be a prissy little b*tch. Look at Papa Burch! He's totally a team player, not to mention "sassy and fierce." Oh, Papa Burch... Heads up: beware the Tank! HAWP: Left 4 Dead: The Sacrifice [GameTrailers] |
| The Modern Warfare 3 launch trailer is here Posted: 22 Oct 2011 08:00 AM PDT
Just like with Battlefield 3, the Modern Warfare 3 launch trailer has arrived. While many of you are going to argue over which game is better, I'm just going to sit back and smile. Why? Because I'm going to be playing the hell out of both the major first-person shooters and enjoy every second of them. As for this trailer, we get to see a lot more locations in the single-player campaign we'll be going to as we hunt down Makarov. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 hits November 8 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. UK Readers: Will you be trading in Battlefield 3 on the troll deal, keeping both, or just saving yourself for MW3? |
| Modnation Racers: Road Trip is better with touch controls Posted: 22 Oct 2011 07:00 AM PDT I am not a fan of motion gaming, waggle, touch screens, or other so-called "casual controls." It's not that I write them off the moment I see them. I just have yet to see a game that uses those control options to make the experience better to gamers like me, who are well accustomed to a standard controller. Just recently though, I saw a game that's finally change my mind, and its name is Modnation Racers: Road Trip. Using the touch screen and back touch pad of the PlayStation Vita, the team at SCE San Diego have created a game that streamlines the creation tools that we know and love while maintaining all of the depth that we expect.
Modnation Racers: Road Trip (PlayStation Vita) For those unfamiliar, Modnation Racers is a the Sony exclusive kart racer with a heavy emphasis on creation and customization. Since the series' launch last year, there have been over 2,000,000 creations available and shared, with approximately 500,000 of those being tracks. Fans of the series will be pleased to know then that Road Trip will be able to access all of those creations, day one. You can't upload Road Trip creations for use on the PlayStation 3 or PlayStation Portable, though. The experience of playing a handheld game versus a console game is distinguished most notably by the fact that handheld experiences must be quick bursts of fun that are as immediately satisfying as they are deep. For a game like Modnation, this can prove a challenge as you can conceivably spend hours building and perfecting a custom track. For Road Trip, United Front is making smart use of the PS Vita touch screen functionality to lessen the amount of time spent building from hours to mere minutes. It starts with you choosing from a preset list of environments: jungles, island resorts, deserts and the like. After that, you simply draw the shape of the track from an overhead view of the environment. Just touch down on the screen to draw and you have a track designing in literally seconds. It's that simple. From here, you can select the placement of finish lines, weapon drops, and boost pads just by selecting the option from the menu and touching the spot you want to place them at. Or you can use the auto-populate feature if you don't care to go too deep. There is also an option to use the Vita camera to make tracks out of what you've photographed. This was not demoed though, so I'm not sure how it works. Once you have a track laid out, you can manipulate the surrounding environment with touch fairly simply. So when I wanted to lay out a lake, I simply selected the option from the menu, traced onscreen the area that I wanted to place my lake in, and watched the terrain form in an effect reminiscent of From Dust. Road Trip also makes use of the back touch pad during track customization. When creating mountains for my track, I place my fingers on the back touch pad and rose the terrain with corresponding spots onscreen. When you have all the touch features working together, what you get is the ability to make complex and creative tracks in minutes. Creating tracks in Road Trip is streamlined, amazingly intuitive and easy to use all while retaining the richness and depth that the series has built its name upon. While the touch controls shine the most in the track editor, they are also featured in the avatar and kart editor. Relegated mostly to Minority Report-style drag and drop, touch in the kart editor allows you to zoom in close and swap out kart components such as tires, suspension, spoilers, etc. In the avatar editor you use the touch controls in a similar manner, swapping out clothes and accessories. One cool feature though is Modnations' use of the the Vita's gyroscope. At anytime when customization a kart or avatar, you can shake the Vita to randomize your creation. It's not the most fascinating feature ever, but it's there and it works. Our demo of Modnation Racers: Road Trip also showed off the game's career mode, complete with over thirty tracks and events. If you like the series' take on kart racing already then you will feel at home here. Drifting and drafting are back and intelligent use of them is as important as managing your boost, shortcuts, and weapons. As I've said, I have never been interested in the whole motion/waggle/touch control craze of late. If every Kinect and Move controller suddenly vanished tomorrow, the evil leprechaun on my shoulder would probably break into a river dance. Road Trip, though, uses touch to great effect that further elevates the core gameplay of the series. Handhelds are about quick fun, and Modnation is about creating cool stuff. Road Trip's use of touch control supports both these design mantras and comes out the better for it. |
| Metroid Minimalistic shirt now on sale! Posted: 22 Oct 2011 06:00 AM PDT Every Metroid needs a host to feed off of. As this is a minimalistic Metroid, it won't take too much of your energy away. Please, think of the Metroids. They need a good home. Baltazar "Fluffy Pancakes" Rosiles created our latest addition to the Destructoid store and goes out to all you Metroid fans. The Minimalistic Metroid shirt is now on sale for $18.95. For more shirts, check out Baltazar's other design (Two bears high-fiving) plus our other new designs like the Bison bison t-shirt and Four Bosses shirt. And don't forgot to help us color in our latest design inspired by Katamari Damacy! |
| Live show: Hangover takes to the streets Posted: 22 Oct 2011 05:00 AM PDT [Tune in to Saturday Morning Hangover every Saturday at 10am Pacific for the latest Xbox Live Indie Games, co-op play and assorted hijinks. Hosted by Conrad Zimmerman, Jordan Devore and the lovely Katrina. We have a couch! Come join us live on Destructoid's Twitch.tv channel!] It's been a couple of weeks since the Hangover came to soothe you back into reality but we're back now, ready to tackle a new batch of Xbox Live Indie Games. There are a few titles this week that look to be decent, so perhaps we'll have a good morning. Of course, there's also a game which is supposed to help open your third eye or something, so let's not get those expectations too high. Rounding out the second half of the show will be Sideway: New York, a rather neat PlayStation Network platformer in which graffiti characters traverse a 3D environment. |
| Preview: Hustle Kings (PlayStation Vita) Posted: 22 Oct 2011 04:00 AM PDT Developed by the small, UK based VooFoo Studio, Hustle Kings released on PlayStation Network in early 2010, receiving a positive review from us. Though I didn’t play that release, I’ve always been a bit of a pool fan and I have played a number of pool games in my lifetime. Hustle Kings (PlayStation Vita) As I mentioned, Hustle Kings is a deep game. There is a variety of pool games, many of which I’ve never even heard of: 8-ball, 9-ball, black ball, killer, cutthroat, 3-ball, and continuous. There is also a career mode and an offline tournament mode where you can build your skills and accumulate “hustle points,” which can be wagered against other players. In addition to the standard games modes, there are a few other distractions, like a collection of trick shot tables that are incredibly challenging to clear.
One other rather cool component to the Vita’s multiplayer is the ability to play against friends without being constantly connected to the Internet. Playing on a handheld device, a lot of people playing Hustle Kings on the Vita might not have a consistently stable Internet connection, so the game can effectively send “turns” taken back and forth between two people playing, almost akin to how people play chess by mail, though obviously much more instant. |
| Posted: 22 Oct 2011 03:00 AM PDT Oh happy days! The PlayStation Vita has an official launch date, and with that, a release date for its lineup of launch titles. We recently had the chance to play around with some of these including Wipeout 2048, the latest installment in Sony's hyper-futuristic racer. With 2048, players get all the same hardcore, precision heavy racing that the series is known for, with added features that make use of the Vita's hardware. Wipeout 2048 (PlayStation Vita) As the name suggests, this Wipeout takes place in the year 2048, the near-future compared to the super futuristic star-dates of most Wipeout games. As far as the series timeline goes, this game takes place at the dawn of anti-gravity racing, before the first Wipeout on the original PlayStation. This change in setting affects the games look and feel quite a bit. Aesthetically, 2048 retains a good amount of the series' hyper-futuristic look, but incorporates more city streets, parks, and other contemporary scenes. During gameplay, the new (or is it old?) setting allows for some crazy track scenarios, such as the driving up a skyscraper, then back down on the track Empire Climb. Track design in general has been altered for this release. Being the hardcore racer that it is, Wipeout has always pitted players against the track almost as much as other players. In an effort to make 2048 more accessible, the team at Liverpool has made tracks wider, a subtle but noticeable change as you will spend less time fighting to stay on course. Fans need not worry though, as a relative noob to the series, you should happy to hear that I still fell of the track plenty of times. Just not as much as in, say, Wipeout HD. Another change to track design are the multiple track paths. Not to be confused with shortcuts, 2048 features branching tracks that incorporate a risk/reward system. So while taking one route may be the the shortest distance to the finish line, it will have more sharp turns and a greater chance for error. Or on a different track, you may run with a route that has more speed boosts while the other route offers more weapon pickups. When actually racing on these tracks, Wipeout 2048 makes use of the PS Vita gyroscope with tilt and touch controls. Of course, there is still the classic thumbstick and face button controls, but Wipeout aims to make use of Vita's motion capabilities, in order to ease in more casual gamers accustomed to playing their iPod or iPhone. The controls break down like this: You hold one finger on the back touch pad to accelerate while steering your vehicle by shifting the Vita left and right. Weapons are managed by taping the right half of the screen for offensive weapons (plasma, missiles, cannons, etc.) and tapping the left half to manage your shields. You use the L an R buttons to control your left and right airbrakes respectively. So while 2048 does use touch, the face buttons are active as well. While great for a game like Modnation, the motion controls in 2048 didn't work all that well in this demo. For a game that requires so much precision, using motion to steer your craft is far too unruly. Overshooting a turn is common and even simple maneuvers, like hitting a speed pad on a straight path, are made harder to pull off. In its current shape, I can't see motion being the favored control option. Managing weapons with the touch screen worked very well though, and when used with the analog controls, felt like the most natural way to play. The final feature shown off for the game was the online play. The first thing you'll notice with the online play is that you are prompted to take a picture with the Vita camera at the start of each race. Whoever places first at the end of the race gets to have their mug plastered on the screen of every other user. It will be interesting it see how "creative" people get with their pics. Online for 2048 will feature eight player races on any of the games ten tracks. Online play will also feature an online campaign mode, essentially a system of secondary objectives, outside of simply winning, to reward both seasoned high level players and newcomers. For a higher ranked racer these objectives include wrecking a certain number of racers and finishing in first place, whereas lower ranked competitors need only avoid getting wrecked and finish in the top five. The online modes of Wipeout 2048 are rounded out with cross platform play between this game and Wipeout HD Fury on PS3. Basically, 2048 users will be able to compete against Fury users online using tracks and vehicles from Wipeout HD Fury. If you have played Wipeout before, you know what to expect here. The racing is tight, fast, and punishing to players not up to the challenge. As it is, it looks to be another solid entry into the series, but as a Vita title, it doesn't do anything mind blowing with the new hardware. |
| Modern Warfare 3 dedicated servers unranked only Posted: 22 Oct 2011 02:00 AM PDT Infinity Ward won itself some kudos after revealing that dedicated servers would be returning for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 but it seems that the praise may have been pre-emptive. In the name of "control," Infinity Ward is restricting dedicated server support to unranked matches only. "It's the same on consoles," said Robert Bowling, as if that would make PC fans happy. "They can't rank up in private or custom games. Public is about progression, private is about control." If you want to have any sort of progress in MW3's multiplayer, it appears that you will have to go public with your games, rather than use the dedicated servers so kindly provided. After Modern Warfare 2's alleged P2P problems, a number of PC gamers are already disliking this new development greatly. It wouldn't be a major console release without something to piss off the computer gamers, right? Modern Warfare 3 PC Dedicated Servers Unranked Only [Hot Blooded Gaming] |
| Reggie: If you don't own a 3DS, what's wrong with you? Posted: 22 Oct 2011 01:00 AM PDT Reggie Fils-Aime, who apparently wears chin polish now, asks the million dollar question in this awkwardly presented video -- if you don't own a 3DS, what's wrong with you? The shiny-faced meat-slab asks this question as he kicked off seven minutes of desperate appealing, as he attempts to convince the world that the 3DS had cool stuff coming. In fairness, what Nintendo offers appears to be something of a mixed bag, with some legit interesting stuff and some boring or long-known items on the menu. Reggie promises increased eShop output with games like Freakyforms, Pushmo, Dillon's Rolling Western and Swapnote. He also reminds us about Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7, before tossing in a quick plug for The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Fils-Aime is so insincere and blatant in his scripting, but I find him so watchable. I don't know why. |
| Battlefield 3 gets one more super intense trailer Posted: 21 Oct 2011 09:00 PM PDT
Guys... Battlefield 3 is right around the corner. Literally. In the game's launch trailer, we get a look at the game's campaign with Marine Sergeant "Black" defending America from a "sinister" Middle-Eastern power. It's a Battlefield 3 trailer, if you don't know what to expect by now I don't know what to tell you. That said, I'm way excited to play DICE's take on a fictional war in the Middle East. Also, I'm really glad this one doesn't have any problems. |
| Warner Brothers handling distribution of Witcher 2 on 360 Posted: 21 Oct 2011 07:00 PM PDT After a few months of legal shenanigans between Witcher 2 developer CD Projekt RED and distributor Namco Bandai, they've announced that Warner Brothers will be taking distribution duties for the Xbox 360 release of the RPG. The re-release was pushed back into 2012 due to a discrepancy between the two companies, but CDP was glad to have the time to "polish the title to perfection," so it's all good, very good. CDP President Adam Kiciński said that "[They] have added significant enhancements to the Xbox 360 version of ‘The Witcher 2,’ going far beyond simply editing the code to run on a new platform." He goes on to say that their RED engine will make The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings one of the best-looking Xbox 360 games to date. |
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