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Beachhead Previews Call Of Duty Elite Clan Operations

admin — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 09:17:53 +0000

While forming a clan with friends in Call of Duty Elite has been pretty easy since the premium service launched, gaining experience and rewards with that clan hasn't been easy at all so far. Thankfully, Beachhead is reassuring all of us that Clan Operations -- in which clans can compete for experience and actual prizes -- are on the way and should be available... someday.

Beachhead posted a preview of the upcoming Clan Ops interface over on the Elite forums that gives us a look at how the system will work. It details how we'll choose operations and what info we'll see regarding specific Ops – XP, enlistment status, start and end dates, etc. We'll also be able to take a gander at what rewards are being offered for the operations. In the example shown a CoD Elite skateboard is up for grabs.

All of the screens that were released are just previews of the testing process Beachhead is currently putting the system through, so some minor things could still change. Either way, its nice to get preview of things to come, but Beachhead still can't say exactly when the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Clan Operations will be available.

When the announcement is made we'll be sure to let you know. In the meantime head over to the Elite forums and take a peek at the full preview.

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New Videogame Releases For the Week of 2/7:Downloadable Bonanza

admin — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 09:17:52 +0000

The Simpsons Arcade comes to consoles 20 years after the fact, while the much-anticipated (by yours truly, at least) Gotham City Impostors and Shank 2 make their debut. Oh, and Kingdoms of Amalur might just be the best open world game that doesn't have Elder Scrolls in the title.

Title: Kingdoms of Amalur: The Reckoning
Platform(s): Xbox 360, PC, PS3

I've been playing 38 Studios/Big Huge Games' Kingdoms of Amalur for a few hours now (maybe ten or more), and the trajectory of my experience was something like this:

Hour one: "Oh, okay. This game sure is... bright. Bright? Yeah, that seems to be the prevailing look here."

Hour two: "Why are they throwing all of these weapons at me? I'm never going to use them. Forget you and your overly-complex combat system. Also, I don't care much for the way the buttons are mapped."

Hour six: "Just switch out with my Fae blades, then over to my hammer, then back to my staff, and this enemy is dead!"

My review, which is coming a little later this week will obviously not encompass the entire game because there's so danged much of it but as a spoiler, allow me to say that while I've yet to really be drawn into the fiction (whose fantasy is a bit higher than I prefer) the combat is unparalleled in the genre and its many systems describe a brawny RPG experience in a surprisingly bright wrapper.

Title: Gotham City Impostors
Platform(s): PSN, XBLA, PC

I feel like I've been hyped for this game for months, and now that it's finally here, I need to find the time to actually, you know, play it. From the very beginning, the Monolith-developed class-based shooter has seemed like an alternately odd and kind of audacious take on the Batman universe without actually really having to be in any version of Gotham that we can recognize.

At this point, it's a matter of actually getting hands-on and seeing what it's like with other, certainly curious players and see how Monolith has been able to take their skill with developing brutal shooters with the F.E.A.R. series and translate it into this oddball, seemingly comic-manic game.

Title: Resident Evil: Revelations
Platform(s): 3DS

Another review on the way here, but as you might recall from my demo impressions piece, I welcomed the series' return back to its more methodically-paced roots, forcing you to conserve ammo and deal with enemies more strategically (i.e. running away).

And Capcom seems to know that some gamers might be wary of another 3DS RE title after the perhaps slightly over-priced Mercenaries underwhelmed last year. This is a full-fledged game on offer here and not simply an expanded arcade mode, plus it's got more of the ever-deepening Resident Evil mythos for people who are into that kind of thing.

I'm into that kind of thing.

Title: Shank 2
Platform(s): PSN, XBLA, PC

I was super-late to the party with Shank only downloading it last month after a half-off sale convinced me that it was maybe about time to try one of those games everyone had been talking about for a while there. And my experience was kind of mixed: while I thought the art style was pretty engaging, in terms of overall experience, it felt like a copy several generations removed from the kind of grindhouse action movie it was emulating, and I never really got a feel for the combat's nuances, relying on mashing the attack for whatever weapon I had in hand at the time and praying for the best.

Thankfully, developer Klei Entertainment seems to be aware of some of the shortcoming of the game, at least in terms of its combat and are looking to ease players into the action with more elaboration on precisely how one shanks in the world of Shank 2. If the devs are able to clarify that whole experience a bit more, I think Shank 2 could be the kind of game a guy like me could fall for.

Title: The Simpsons Arcade
Platform(s): PSN, XBLA (February 8th is the official date, but it appears to be available now on XBLA)

Jason put together a fine write up for the game in advance of its wider release on PSN after a limited bit of exclusivity for Playstation Plus members last week. His feeling: it's very much the same 20-year-old game for all the good and bad that that implies, and you're simply going to have to decide for yourself how much nostalgia means to you.

Konami is betting somewhere around 10 of your American dollars and I'd be willing to take that bet as well.

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‘Family Guy Online’ Announces Itself As The Next Big Thing In This Trailer

admin — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 09:17:50 +0000

I was surprised and disappointed by the lack of fights with giant chickens.

Family Guy Online, in case you didn't know, is a thing that's about to happen soon-ish. The Roadhouse Interactive MMO has been in closed beta since last summer, but it's on its way to add another free-to-play title to the ever-increasing stack. So think of it as WoW, likely with more fart jokes and just to the line and sometimes over sex jokes. Your mileage on that front, may vary.

Had a good look? Great.

So from what we can see there, it's clearly more of a social thing than out out-and-out MMO thing, opting instead for more of a social experience with game things you can do. So WoW is less a point of reference and more Club Penguin but for a more adult crowd. If on release its bug-free and easy to access for the average user, I could see Family Guy Online being one of those titles that kind of sticks around for a good long time by sheer virtue of a weirdly committed fanbase. Family Guy is one of those shows that seldom provokes a middle-of-the-road reaction, and I suspect that anyone who's interested in playing a game based on the show will likely have as hard a time extricating themselves from the game as they have been from the long-running series.

Family Guy Online is still in closed beta. You can check it out at http://www.familyguyonline.com/.

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This Story Trailer Is As Long As the Title For ‘Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Generations’

admin — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 09:17:49 +0000

This nine minute trailer for Namco Bandai and CyberConnect2's grand Naruto continuity mashup begs the question, "How much Naruto is too much Naruto?"

When I was a kid, one of the benchmarks of that era of comic events was Age of Apocalypse over at Marvel (this was in the 90's when the sales were still somewhere in the millions and the X-Men were the hottest thing on the shelves). I won't bore you with the details of the story, but it was an excuse for the writers and artists to rejigger comic continuity for a few months, give everyone new costumes and smash characters against each other that might not otherwise interact (or even exist).

And I credit series like that for making me susceptible to something like Ultimate Storm Generations, which crams together the entirety of Naruto continuity for one big brawl, mixing and matching rivalries and, from what I can surmise from all the information released so far from Namco Bandai, explore all sort of out-of-continuity tales to your hearts' content with the cast of the series across all incarnations. If you're a fan of the show, this trailer should be like a cruel tease to you, nine minutes of something you want very much to play yesterday while for everyone else, I imagine it'll simply be inscrutable (I'm somewhere in the middle, only having watched some of the anime and read a nice chunk of the manga in the last year).

So with that, enjoy!

Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Generations will be available March 13th for the PS3 and Xbox 360.

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Anecdotal Evidence In ISPR Study Links Gaming Addiction to Shooters, MMOs

admin — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 09:17:48 +0000

A recent study by the New York-based Institute for Special Populations Research conducted through self-reporting among 3380 participants found that in around 5% of those interviewed, the respondents reported "moderate to extreme problem game playing." Keep in mind, this represents 1/20th of the population, and the results are again, based on self-reported results which could skew in either direction, but it's more ammunition for the argument that there is a persistent problem with gaming addiction.

Luther Elliott, Andrew Golub, Eloise Dunlap, and Geoffrey Ream led the study participants aged 18 and up who played games at least one hour in the week before the interview was conducted. The team grouped the types of games that the participants were playing into 15 distinct genres, finding that the incident of FPS, action-adventure, MMOs, online gambling and role-playing games had the highest incidents of behaviors associated with addictive/problem behavior.

While the American Psychiatric Association continues, at this point, to reject adding gaming addiction to its diagnostic manual of disorders, the DSM, I think many of us can easily point to someone in our lives who allow their gaming to run rampant in varying degrees of destructive ways. The documentary Second Skin from 2008 is one of those really effective pieces of anecdotal reporting that makes this point very articulately.

I keep returning to the word "anecdotal," though, because for the time being, there's no concrete evidence, no thoroughly controlled studies that we can point to in order to make a convincing case in either direction. So for the time being, this study represents some interesting observations, but it'll be more interesting still when someone is able to take a more focused look at the issue.

[Source: Game Politics]

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‘Devil Survivor 2′ Gets A New Story And Gameplay Trailer

admin — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 09:17:43 +0000

Based on this new trailer from Atlus, Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2 won't be straying too far from the design of the 2009 release. In terms of plot, it doesn't seem very far from the usual-usual with SMT games, featuring a ticking clock until the end of the world and a group of young people making deals with demons to stave off the apocalypse.

More details about this release and the trailer after the break.

According to the official site, the first game's mechanics have been fine-tuned here, and there's a new Demon Compendium (think Pokedex for demons), along with more demons and a promised doubling of the content from the original. The character designs this time around are by Suzuhito Yasuda who was behind the characters in the anime Durarara!!, bringing a more elaborate look to the series' characters than in previous installments.

Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2 will be available on the DS February 28th.

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‘The Simpsons Arcade Game’ Review

admin — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 08:17:16 +0000

By Jason Cipriano

The Simpsons, television's longest running sitcom, have had a hit-or-miss history when it comes to video games. This February will mark a huge milestone for the show when it airs its 500th episode, and, as if to remind fans of their humble beginnings, Fox and Konami have re-released one of the first games to bear The Simpsons moniker on Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network. Following in the footsteps of two of two other re-released arcade beat-'em-ups, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and X-Men, The Simpsons Arcade Game is a blast from the past that will strike some serious chords of nostalgia for longtime fans.

Released 21 years ago, The Simpsons Arcade Game put players in the shoes of the Simpson family (Homer, Marge, Bart and Lisa) as they tracked down Mr. Smithers who has kidnapped Maggie during a botched jewelry store robbery. Back in the day, The Simpsons was one of the most recognizable four-player cabinets, offering gamers the chance to fight through the streets of Springfield with three of their friends, as the whole Simpsons clan. Fortunately, not much changed in the re-releases.

With an arcade-perfect port of both the U.S. and Japanese ROMs as the basis for the gameplay, everything fans remember from the 1991 arcade release is here in all of its pixilated glory. With guest appearances by everyone from Patty and Selma to Moe to the now deceased Bleeding Gums Murphy and Marvin Monroe, The Simpsons is packed to the gills with references from the first two years the show was on the air.

The cameos and sight gags may be the highlight for most players, as the gameplay itself can get to be a bit repetitive. A casualty of the genre, The Simpsons plays out like countless other beat-'em-ups where you spam on two buttons the whole game and just try to avoid being hit. One thing that does separate this release from some of the other classics, is that The Simpsons can join up for team attacks, allowing two characters to become one. This mechanic offers at least a little variety, and also encourages a little more skill from the co-op gameplay.

In addition to the classic gameplay, it seems like Konami has put a little extra effort into The Simpsons than they did with the TMNT and X-Men re-releases. Including the Japanese ROM (X-Men also included this feature) is just one unlockable alongside original promotion art, a character reference guide, and sound and music tests. While just the game itself may have been enough for most fans who haven't been able to get their hands on it legally in over two decades, these bonuses are a great addition to the download.

Simpsons' fans that are old enough to remember feeding quarter after quarter into this classic cabinet should download this in a heartbeat. Sure, it may capitalize on the nostalgia value of a long-running TV series, but, for what it is, it holds up quite well. While the game inherently has some problems that some gamers may not be able to over look; like the repetitive nature of the beat-'em-up genre or that it isn't as lengthy as other games (about 40 minutes to beat), The Simpsons Arcade Game still stands out as one of the best co-op arcade games of the 90s. Since The Simpsons have been such a touchstone in American pop culture for the last 23 years they've had their fair share of games released with their name on it, some were better than others, but you owe it to yourself to try one of their first, especially now that it's available in such a nice downloadable package.

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Gravity-Defying Shooter ‘Inversion’ Gets Three New Gameplay Videos

admin — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 08:17:16 +0000

A trio of videos show off the topsy-turvy multiplayer gameplay of the Namco Bandai's upcoming third-person shooter.

Over in the comments for one of Inversion's gameplay videos, a user described the Saber Interactive-developed shooter as "Gears of Wall" which is a super-apt way of describing what we're all seeing here, I think. The weapons have some pretty interesting effects, but other than that, the gravity-shifting hook that's touted as being at the heart of the game doesn't get a whole lot of play here (save for a couple of executions). I'm hoping Inversion doesn't fall into the same trap that Capcom's Dark Void did, i.e. becoming Gears of War but also....

Here's the official synopsis:

Take on the role of a young father and husband, Davis Russel, who finds himself thrust into war when his peaceful city is invaded by an unknown enemy. With his daughter missing and conventional weapons and tactics all but useless, this ordinary cop and his partner Leo Delgado will rise up to heed the call of duty, master the fundamental forces of gravity and save the world.

Inversion hits the PS3 and the Xbox 360 on February 7th.

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Preview: ‘Yesterday’ (PC)

admin — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 08:17:15 +0000

You might recall that a couple of weeks back we ran some screens from the upcoming adventure game Yesterday and that I was pretty impressed with the art style on display for the March release. Well with the release about a month out, the developer, Pendulo Studios, sent along a build of the first chapter from the game for us to check out.

Featuring maybe 30 minutes or so of gameplay, the build is pretty much adventure game bread and butter: that's to say, while there aren't any leaps forward in the genre here, its odd tone and kitchen sink story might be of interest to you if the team at Pendulo resolves a few interface, technical, and localization issues before the release date.

In the build, I was able to play as two of the game's playable characters: brainy rich kid Henry White and his jock buddy Cooper. Both of them work for a charitable organization that helps the homeless in New York (albeit a version of the Big Apple that's not especially recognizable to anyone who's lived there), and when Henry enters a tunnel looking for any of the lost and dispossessed, he's captured by a gun-wielding nut and dragged into a bizarre cult ritual. By the end of the build, the story has gone from odd and slightly dangerous to outright dark and maybe a little supernatural.

The basic point and click mechanics of your garden variety adventure game are here, so you'll be clicking on points of interest in the environment, gaining clues about what's going on in the abandoned tunnel, and combining any found objects to access more locations and further explore the story. Dialog-wise, you'll have a couple of choice-list conversations to find out more about the lunatic characters that you meet and there's even a quick chess mini-game to break things up.

The actual puzzles I encountered were more or less straightforward, although I had to do a decent amount of clicking around in the environment to find some of the objects I needed (but then, that's the genre, I suppose). You can see the interface pictured above, with all of the items you've collected organized at the bottom of the screen. I was able to click on an object and drag it over either another object in my inventory or something in the environment for them to interact—a pretty straightforward system, stymied somewhat by the occasional twitchiness of the cursor.

Some of the narrative elements seem interesting but are delivered with a certain flat, directness, as though the script needed another polish to get some humor and personality in there—with one exception. Cooper occasionally has these episodes where he remembers his bullying Scout Master which are some of the funniest and strangest elements in an already off-kilter game. The build I played had animations for the characters' speech but no actual audio for the dialog, so it's possible this may be a voice-free experience.

The art style with which I was so enamored is still here, albeit attached to a work-in-progress animation system. Right now, the characters have a little bit of an awkward, low frame count style to their movement, and most of the characters essentially move in a very deliberate, not-so-fluid style. Hopefully this is something Pendulo is working on because right now it's not really doing a service to the art style.

From what I've played so far, Yesterday could have the potential to be one of those off-kilter, memorable releases that come around as a respite to the usual raft of shooters, fighters, and action games I typically play, at least in terms of telling an unexpected story. But again, it feels like it needs a little more time to back before it feels completely finished and Pendulo will have a total package worthy of those impressive first images they were showing off a couple of weeks back.

Yesterday will be available on the PC in March from Pendulo Studios and Focus Home Interactive. You can find out more about the game on its official site.

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The 2011 NY Videogame Critics Circle Awards Winners Announced

admin — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 08:17:15 +0000

Last week, the New York Videogame Critics Circle announced 2011 slate of winners, crowning Bastion with two awards (one for music, one for Best Indie), while showing some love for Sony's "Michael" ad campaign (you know, the one where Kratos, Snake, and a bunch of other game heroes go to a bar). You can find the full lineup of winners after the jump.

Manhattan Award for Most NY Centric Game: Crysis 2

Battery Park Award for Best Handheld Game: Super Mario Land 3D

Tin Pan Alley Award for Best Music in a Game: Bastion

A Train Award for Best Mobile Game: Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP

Herman Melville Award for Best Writing in a Game: Portal 2

Off Broadway Award for Best Indie Game: Bastion

Statue of Liberty Award for Best Open World Game: Saints Row: The Third

Great White Way Award for Best Overall Acting in a Game: Portal 2

Algonquin Roundtable Award for Best Book: All Your Base Are Belong to Us by Harold Goldberg

Mad Men Award for Best Videogame Commercial: Long Live Play – "Michael"

Big Apple Award for Best Game: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

[Source: NY Game Critics]

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