Set 18 months after the last game, Gears of War 3 is the last in the Gears Trilogy. So, how did Cliffy B and his team at Epic fare? Check out the video review below and sound off on in the comments!

Ok, so it has the best Menu design and game options EVER! But what is Rock of Ages??

Could Insomniac’s Resistance 3 be the best PlayStation 3 exclusive shooter ever released?

Still on the fence about Dead Island – check out this video review.

My feeling is that if the developers had been able to capture the drama from the original trailer then this would have been one of the best games of 2011. But it seems like this game is a far cry from that beautiful trailer/opening sequence.

Driving games aren’t usually my speed, so when I agreed to review Driver: San Francisco, I began psyching myself up for one long road trip. Luckily, I was pleasantly surprised when I hit the gas and found an action game that, while sporting a few potholes, quickly raced into my subconscious and didn’t let go for the entire ride.

Essentially, you control the series’ policeman mainstay, John Tanner, as he drives around the city in pursuit of a fugitive named Charles Jericho.

Well… sort of, anyway.

In a car chase early on, Tanner and his partner get into an accident, and our hero is sent into a coma. Subconsciously, Tanner pursues Jericho through a dream-world version of San Francisco, tracking down leads and tailing persons of interest in an attempt to find out the man’s plans so he can thwart them upon waking up. Ah, but it’s more interesting than that – being that this is Tanner’s dream, he has a degree of control over the environment. At any point, he can ‘Shift’ to any other car in the city and take control of its driver.

See this hot face?  It’s about to get a great big bump.

The missions on offer make creative use of the Shift mechanic. During chase scenes when you’re having trouble catching the enemy, you can just Shift to an oncoming vehicle and smash into him. In one particularly harrowing mission, there are ten bombs placed on trucks throughout the city, and they will detonate in three minutes. You have to quickly Shift to vehicles that are not only nearby, but small enough to drive underneath the trucks so you can disarm the bombs. Along the way, you’ll also do ridiculous stunts like rushing a dying man to the hospital while keeping his heart rate above 20 by weaving through traffic and doing other dangerous actions.

While the game does have a fair bit of variety in mission types, the idea truck starts running on fumes about halfway through. In order to unlock the next story mission, you usually need to complete a few City missions, which typically involve one of several recurring side characters. There are these two Asian illegal street-racers in particular who keep promising to stop after winning ‘just one more’, but, lo and behold, in the next chapter you’re forced to bail them out again. Most of it is fun, but you can tell a lot of these missions were added just to artificially extend the game’s length.

Car chases like these quickly become commonplace in this game.

My other main gripe is that the Shift functionality has some contrived limitations. While it is fun to switch to another car to ram the enemy you’re chasing, why can’t you just take control of that enemy and pull his car over? Yes that would make the game too easy, but a little explanation would have been appreciated. Rule of Cool, I guess.

The game also offers an entertaining multiplayer mode, playable locally and online. There are several gametypes to unlock, like Tag and various races. My favourite is a literal game of cops-n-robbers, in which one player controls a getaway vehicle that has to reach drop-off points and escape while the others, as cops, try to smash him to pieces. The cops can Shift to any vehicle at any time, so this makes for a very fast-paced game, the balance of which can pull a u-turn at any moment.

Switch to first-person view for even more intensity.

Rounding out the feature list is a comprehensive video editor, which allows you to record and then recut your gameplay to make your own short movies. I didn’t tinker with this too much, but there are more than enough options for budding film makers to make the next car-chase action blockbuster. Smaller clips can even be uploaded online for the world to see.

The presentation is fairly well-done here, with the city itself being the standout. Right out of the gate, you’re presented with a fully-realized San Francisco, brimming with colour and teeming with life. The cars all animate realistically with a fair physics engine, making the action seem like something you’d see in a Hollywood action movie. The characters all have real personality, too. Tanner seems like an intentionally-cheesy Schwarzenegger riff, with plenty of one-liners and attitude to spare. Whenever you shift into another car, there’s a mini-conversation with the other passengers, hinting that there’s more going on in the city than what Tanner is doing. The dialogue is quite funny during missions, such as when you control a man who is helping his thieving wife escape the cops. At the end of the mission, after revealing that she’s leaving you, she off-handedly says “Actually, as far as the cops know, you took the money. Thanks for everything — bye!”

Not from the game–this was my drive to work this morning.

The game took me around 15 hours to beat, though I only took on a modicum of the hundreds of side missions. There are plenty of extra races, car chases, and other events you can participate in to unlock cars and earn Willpower (basically money). Essentially, if I decide to 100% this thing, I’ll be playing for quite a while.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time with Driver: San Francisco. True, it sometimes goes off the pavement with repetitive missions and questionable application of its main gameplay hook, but it was quite a fun way to spend my spare time the last few days. The plot throws a few curveballs at you late in the game, and I always wanted to see what happened next. The city and play style were clearly designed as a homage to action flicks of the ‘80s and ‘90s, which I don’t mind one bit. At the end of the day, this latest entry in the Driver franchise is one smooth ride.

Source: gamrFeed

Reviewers have a tendency, I think, to conflate reviews of a new system’s launch titles with their critiques of the hardware itself. It’s not a good habit, but it’s an understandable one: Everything that seems good or bad about a platform is often distilled into those early releases. Plus, a high-profile game review makes for a convenient soapbox. In the case of Pilotwings: Resort, however, the strengths and failings on display have less to do with the 3DS platform and more to do with Nintendo’s current creative direction.

The Pilotwings series has been around since the Super NES launched, 20 years ago, but Resort hardly resembles the previous games — at least not on a superficial level. Where the older installments were essentially hardware tech demos dressed up with classic Nintendo charm and personality, Resort doesn’t really do anything particularly dazzling, and its aesthetics are drawn directly from the company’s modern Wii-brand games. In fact, the game’s subtitle ties it directly to Wii Sports Resort, as the two games are set on the same island. Whatever personality Pilotwings as a series might once have possessed has been whitewashed by a deliberate sense of genericness, with familiar characters completely replaced by Miis. It’s a somewhat strange decision, since the 3DS’s early adopters are most likely to be dedicated Nintendo fans who would prefer the familiar to the faceless, but I suppose Resort is meant to be the 3DS’s equivalent of Wii Sports…minus the “free with purchase” part, of course.

Source: 1UP RSS feed

The Dragon Age 2 reviews are starting to come in from around the web. So far, it has a score of 84 on Metacritic.com and a similar score of 83.05% (360 version) on GameRankings.com.

Here are a few review scores from that article:

The Escapist: 100
The advancements in RPG mechanics would be enough to set it apart, but the real achievement of Dragon Age II is in the story-telling. I could point out the improved combat and graphics till there’s blood covering my face, but BioWare is one of the few companies that uses the advanced computing power available to modern game designers to let you actually play a role.

3DJuegos: 91
It may be difficult for hardcore gamers to ignore the revamped combat system, but once you calm down and excuse some minor flaws, you’ll find an amazing game in Dragon Age II.

Official Xbox Magazine: 90
Next to its predecessor, Dragon Age II may be a slightly altered beast, but the minute Isabela slyly chirps “I like big boats, I cannot lie” to a Desire Demon in the murky Fade, you’ll realize this game offers some of the deepest, nerdiest, most worthwhile 40 to 60 hours you’ll ever love losing sleep over. [April 2011, p.70]

VideoGamer: 70
Despite the way narrative has been re-structured and the combat made meatier, this sequel follows the old conventions of the genre too literally to develop an individuality beyond them. Two entries down the pipe, and Dragon Age is still experiencing the growing pains of a series that’s more dedicated to studying fantasy games than developing its own personality in the genre.

Gameblog.fr: 60
Dragon Age II is blessed with a deep universe and a ton of content, but it’s sadly undermined by its technical side. Even though, visually, the game goes beyond the original, it still forgoes some elements of its predecessor in order to become more action-oriented, which is a choice that will most probably keep dividing opinions. We’d have hoped to see this sequel install the franchise as a must-have by correcting the shortcomings of the original. Instead, we’ll have to make-do with finding it most entertaining indeed, but without any added praise. Too bad.

Still not swayed? Perhaps you need some additional prodding to help you in your purchase decision. Well, if that’s the case, then please revisit the awesome trailers.

Dragon Age II Trailers

Dragon Age 2 Destiny Trailer:

Dragon Age 2 Rise to Power:

Source: MetaCritic.com

DC Universe Online is a bold venture. The massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG) genre is a tough nut to crack. World of Warcraft sports more subscribers than the population of Greece and tends to push out most competitors. Sony Online Entertainment decided to back their newest MMO with intellectual property powerhouse DC Entertainment, home of DC Comics and a plethora of recognizable characters like Batman and Superman. The partnership has paid off.

DC Universe Online (DCUO) takes place mostly in Metropolis and Gotham City. Lex Luthor travels back in time to warn the heroes of the apocalyptic fate they must now avoid. He had successfully killed off Superman and the Justice League in his time, only to allow Brainiac to invade the now-weakened Earth and begin harvesting the planet for knowledge. Lex has brought along ‘exobytes’ which hold the powers of long-dead heroes and villains so they can be distributed to normal people to assist in the fight against Brainiac. That’s where you come in. You are given powers by an exobyte to join the heroes or villains in the fight against a common foe: Brainiac.

DCUO starts off with a fairly deep character creation system. You choose hero or villain and then choose a mentor. Your mentor dictates much of the early game content and the type of late-game equipment you’ll be able to buy. Heroes choose from Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman. Villains choose from Lex Luthor, The Joker, or Circe. The creator then lets you choose stance (how you look when standing around), skin type (not just color, you can look like Dr. Manhattan or a 6’ tall cat), and you can fully customize the color scheme and style of your hero or villain. Movement style is also a big part of DCUO. You don’t get mounts in this game; instead you start with acrobatics, flight, or super speed. They can all move fast or get over obstacles, it’s just a matter of preference.

The part that really affects your gameplay is power selection. There are six power sets available. All powers can take on the damage (DPS) role, but also have their own specific roles available. Fire and ice are tank roles. Sorcery and nature are healer roles. Psychic and gadget powers are controller roles. You also choose what weapons you would like to wield in combat. Each weapon has melee and ranged attacks, the type of weapon determines which is stronger and how fast they can be used. For instance, the rifle is good at range but useless in melee. Martial arts are exactly the opposite.

Now you’re off and running in the DC Universe, starting inside a Brainiac ship for your tutorial. Beat up a few robots, equip some beginner equipment, take down a boss, and then finally team up with Superman or Lex Luthor while pummeling a small horde of robots. After that, you find yourself either in a police station (hero) or a nightclub (villain), which acts as a base of operations. You’ll get all sorts of missions here as well as do some low-level shopping. Leave, and you can also travel to other nightclubs or police stations in your starting city if you so choose. Around level 10, the Justice League Watchtower or Legion Hall of Injustice become available via a teleporter. These are massive basses that give access to higher level shopping and teleporters to the city you didn’t start in.

Quests are generally divided into small sub-missions. It’s usually go to area X and beat up so many minor enemies or destroy a certain number of offending objects. Get some experience and then go to the next area. Most quests end with a ‘dungeon’. That is, it will be some building you have to enter which is like an instance dungeon. While the earlier areas are open and you can find numerous other players beating up the same enemies, these buildings are populated for each group that enters. Enter alone, and you’ll have to finish it alone. Fortunately, you can usually find people standing by the entrance wanting to partner up.

Creating a group is where you find the single biggest flaw in DC Universe Online: communication. There are two ways to communicate inDCUO. One is via text chatting and the other is voice chat. Voice chat doesn’t work. At the time of this writing, it is completely non-functional. Text chatting was obviously designed with the PC in mind and doesn’t cater to the PS3 at all. If you want to text chat, you hit the select button and the PS3 on-screen keyboard pops up even if you have a USB keyboard plugged in. You cannot move your character at all while in a text chat, either. Communication is the key to upper-level content in any MMORPG and players shouldn’t have to turn to Ventrillo or Skype to solve their communication needs in DC Universe Online.

Moving past that, once in a party you don’t need to communicate much in low-level content, you just head in and beat up some enemies. Combat is handled primarily with square and triangle. Square is melee and triangle is ranged, different combinations of the two along with holding and releasing can be unlocked with skill points for numerous combos and powerful blows. Your powers are used by holding either the L2 or R2 buttons and pressing one of the four face buttons. This all makes for an MMORPG that adapts surprisingly well to the console. It really feels very action-oriented rather than the normal point and click nature of other MMORPGs.

Raids, Player vs. Player (PvP), and instances are all handled through the ‘Alerts’ menu. Heading to this menu lists them all in one nice, neat menu so you can join a queue for any of them very easily. PvP offers two different modes: standard and legends. Standard is what you would normally expect, with objectives that pit heroes against villains; chaos ensues. Legends levels the playing field by putting all players in the shoes of an NPC like Batman rather than their own character. It’s not about your equipment in Legends PvP, just pure skill.

The game has a level cap of 30, at which point most of DCUO’s content opens up with high-level raids, PvP, and instances. Many of these are simply level-adjusted versions of earlier quests, whilst some are original for high-level characters. This is also where getting some friends or joining a league (guild) is necessary. While all the leveling content can be challenging but doable alone, the upper level content requires more people to beat. Beating this content will award you top tier gear along with Marks that can be used to purchase faction (mentor) specific gear.

While DC Universe Online won’t win any beauty competitions against other top-tier PS3 games like Uncharted or Killzone, the graphics are great for an MMORPG. The sheer volume of content that has to load up all at once in an MMORPG prevents the graphics from being top notch, but they are right up there with any other graphically advanced MMORPG. DCUO also brought in superstar artist and DC Comic co-publisher Jim Lee as creative director. Marv Wolfman, legendary comics writer of such titles as “Crisis on Infinite Earths”, wrote much of the content. These combine for a great art style mixed with some equally great storytelling.

Sony Online Entertainment brought in several big-name actors to voice the key NPCs in DCUO. Adam Baldwin (“Chuck”) plays Superman, Kevin Conroy (“Batman: The Animated Series”) returns to the voice of Batman, and James Marsters (“Buffy”, “Smallville”) takes on the voice of Lex Luther. That’s just a few. Missions are given to you with NPC voiceovers and even random NPCs on the street are given a voice, not just a text box.

The cities are expansive. So expansive I did notice quite a bit of pop-in when traversing large distances at high speed. There is so much pop-in the game becomes unplayable as the loading of scenery tries to catch up to your location. This forces you to either head back the way you came or go into a police station/nightclub so the game can load up the area anew when you exit.

Despite the pop-in, the professionally voiced and frequently interacted-with NPCs, along with expansive cities really gives you an immersive DC Universe feel. I’m a comic book fan, long-time reader of DC Comics and the game doesn’t just bring the big-name, movie starring characters. It also brings to life characters like Oracle, The Question, Felix Faust, and the OMACs. It takes you to STAR Labs, The Daily Planet, Wayne Tower, and Crime Alley. That’s something DC Universe Online has over other MMORPGs: it immerses you in classic, recognizable characters and locations.

Value is always a tricky thing to gauge with an MMORPG. The monthly fee is $ 14.95 per month but Playstation Network is offering ways to purchase multiple months for a discount. There is supposed to be a lifetime subscription available as well, but currently PSN only allows $ 150 in the PSN wallet at once, so it isn’t available until they get that fixed. The potential $ 199 lifetime subscription would pay for itself in the 14th month over the monthly fee.

The time to level 30 is about 40 hours, but DCUO allows you to create multiple characters so you can experience all the differing content of heroes, villains, and different mentors. Sony estimates that more than half the content in the game is designed for level capped characters as well.

Much of what makes the difference between a good MMORPG and one that’s mediocre is the game’s support. You’re paying a monthly fee, but you’re expecting continuous support and new content to be added. DCUO has already announced their February content updates for 2011. It brings new quests for low-level characters and new high-level instances centering around Catwoman stealing some cursed Egyptian artifact and adds the feline femme fatale to the Legends PvP selection as well. Their plan is to add content of this depth each and every month, so the publisher and developer support is looking very good.

Overall, DC Universe Online is a really good game that could be a lot better. The action-oriented combat lends itself to the console but the communication and menus don’t. It surprises me they didn’t just develop versions for the PC and PS3 on different platforms since they don’t share servers anyway. There are just too many things that feel like they would be more at home on a PC. That said, the game really puts you in the DC Universe and offers hours upon hours of content. In the never-ending quest for better stuff (the central mechanic of all MMORPGs),DCUO knows what it’s doing.

Despite its flaws, DC Universe Online is an easy recommendation for comic book fans that like MMORPGs. It’s still a pretty easy recommendation for MMORPG fans looking for something to play on their console. Sony Online may have finally figured out the winning formula for putting an MMORPG on a console: DC Universe + online = a good game.

gamrFeed

Mr. Nolan,

From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Thank you for Inception.

From this day forward, I will be there opening weekend, to support your work.

Much Love,
TeamCTF.com

After a crushing 4-1 defeat once more at the hands of Germany in the world cup, you’d think that football (soccer) was the last thing on my mind. However, I simply couldn’t ignore the release of the second high profile rendition of the beautiful game to hit the AppStore.

EA have released two games based on their hit FIFA license. Gameloft have done admirably too, but it’s been the two releases from X2 that have stolen the show thus far. So how will Konami fair with Pro Evolution Soccer 2010 for iPhone and ipod Touch?

There are a ton a play options and a bevy of cups to play for, 19 in all, including the European cup, Italian cup, Spanish Cup, UEFA champions league cup and Europa league cup. Konami have added their custom ‘Konami’ Cup, which lets you mix and match any of the cup teams into a dream cup. The Europa cup is the biggest league to play, with 48 teams to play through before cup glory. As well as cups and leagues you can play quick matches which randomly pics two teams to battle it out, or you can choose an exhibition match and choose any two teams from the full roster available. This includes club teams and international teams. So, for example, you could play Liverpool against Spain, creating an interesting doppleganger of Fernando Torres as a striker for both teams!

While the full roster of international teams are available, the same cannot be said for the cup teams. Only Liverpool FC and Wolves are available from the UK, due to licensing, with other teams and the Premier League given fake names instead. I assume EA got the license to use those teams officially on the platform.

If there is one thing that Konami’s offering brings to the table well, it’s great controls. There are three options in all. One is true flow, which uses accelerometer and one touch passing and shooting. The other two options use a virtual analogue stick as usual, with either one touch, or A and B buttons for ball control. To be honest, the accelerometer doesn’t really work well… however, the one touch ball control works great, especially for beginners. Instead of worrying about complex button taps, the game intelligently works out what shot you are trying to do, and for the most part it gets it right. Used as a training aid you can get good at the basics before moving onto the the standard A and B setup. I’m not sure why, but I found PES’s v-stick and buttons to be easier to use than the other games, and found my goal tally to be far higher, even on harder difficulties. Does this make PES easier than the others? Possibly, but it’s certainly more fun!

The graphics are another standout for PES. For me it looks the best out there. It might not have the effects as the others, but it looks the most realistic and authentic. The colour palette across any four of the weather effects all look natural, and the player animations are some of the best i’ve seen so far, perfectly blending from one sequence to the other. Up close the character models aren’t the highest in polygon count, nor bear any likeness to their player names, but from a distance you can almost be fooled into thinking you are watching a real game on the TV.

Unfortunately, while PES 2010 has great graphics, some of the best controls and the basic gameplay is great, it cant keep up with the competition on options. Both EA’s, Gameloft’s and X2’s offerings give you multiplayer, with the last two offering full online. Multiplayer is probably one of the main reasons for playing in the first place, and it’s an odd omission from Konami. Small details such as recording replays, and Gameloft’s Youtube uploads is also amiss. And finally sound. While the game does sound good with a mix of rock and classical in the menus, the on-pitch sound effects fall short. The Crowd sound good for the most part, but it’s the lack off commentary that is most apparent. You could argue that some of the other football offerings don’t do that great a job of the commentary, however, it is a traditional part of football, and to leave it out is, well… like removing one of Pele’s legs!

Overall then and it’s another great football game for iPhone and iPod Touch. If, like me, you prefer the simpler controls, then PES 2010 might be for you, but you may want to weigh up the pros and cons of the other offerings out there…. Especially the current champion, X2 Football (Soccer) 2010.

Pro Evolution Soccer (P.E.S. 2010) is out now for £5.99 (.99), get it on

Pro Evolution Soccer 2010 (PES 2010) – review is a post from: TouchGen

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