Vast fields hold plenty of monsters to battle.

Our journey through Xenoblade Chronicles started in a large green field, surrounded by glassy blue lakes. Our character Shulk–the lead protagonist–was wielding a typically massive sword, and had a partner that followed him around. Taking control of Shulk we explored the lake area, admiring the surrounding mountain ranges and vivid green fields. As we moved down towards the shoreline of the lake, creatures that looked like giant crustaceans appeared. While they were clearly enemies for us to battle, we couldn’t do so straight away. To fight, we had to access a menu and select Battle, before the enemy would engage us.

Once engaged, we got to grips with battle system. Battles took place in realtime, but were semi-automated. Normal attacks such as the swipes of our sword happened automatically at regular intervals, while more damaging “breaker” attacks had to be launched via the menu system. Our enemy attacked us too, curling up into its shell and rolling itself toward us. We could dodge out of the way most of the time, but its fast speed often made it tricky to avoid, costing us valauble health points. Our partner lent a hand, hacking away at the enemy while we dodged it, decreasing its HP. Eventually, we destroyed the creature, which left a chest containing items in its wake.

We decided to to take those items to a town to see if we could make use of them. We brought up a world map and warped to the nearest town, where we encountered its inhabitants. Most of them were friendly enough, regaling us with tales of monster battles while we explored the many wooden shops and houses. One particularly talkative citizen kept trying to convince us the try the local curry, but sadly our giant sword wasn’t well received by the proprietor of the curry restaurant. Others offered us side quests, such as collecting items for them, or killing monsters outside the town. Many citizens were also keen to tell us about Ether, which is the substance that all living beings are made out of in the Xenoblade universe; even monsters.

No Japanese RPG is complete without battling giant robots.

Unfortunately, there was little else we learnt about the story from our hands-on, though Nintendo mentioned that it revolved around a war between humans and monsters that had been raging for many years. Though its hardly the most original of setups, we were promised that the tale would evolve over the course of the game, with new areas of the world map opening up for exploration. Judging by the sheer size of the world map we saw, Xenoblade Chronicles players will have plenty to explore too. Look out for it when it launches on Nintendo Wii later this year.

source from: gamespot

One of the stranger games on display at Nintendo’s MCM Expo was Solatorobo: Red The Hunter, a third-person action RPG for the Nintendo DS developed by CyberConnect2 and published by Namco Bandai. It’s the spiritual successor to Tail Concert–also developed by CyberConnect2–that was released for the PlayStation back in 1999. While it’s already seen a Japanese release, an English-language version of Red The Hunter isn’t hitting European shelves until July. We grabbed a DS for a brief hands-on, discovering that all you need to fend off a vicious attack are giant robot arms.

Red The Hunter takes place on the Shepherd Republic, a set of floating islands inhabited by a race of cats and dogs that use specialised robot suits to help them with their everyday jobs. You play as Red Savarin, a dog who is sent on a mission to retrieve a stolen file from an airship. It’s there that our hands-on kicked off, and where we first got our first glimpse of Red’s robot suit. The suit was equipped with rockets, enabling us to jump great distances, as well as powerful arms, which we could use to pick up and break objects.

While the game is 3D, most of the action onboard the airship took place on a 2D plane, moving from left to right. As we moved across we encountered small enemies that we dispatched by throwing nearby crates at them. Eventually we entered a small room, where some dialogue appeared to inform us the ship was under attack. Making our way back to the deck, another ship appeared in the distance, and began firing huge rockets at us. Fortunately, we were able to grab the rockets using our massive mechanical arms and hurl them back at our attacker. Eventually, our attacker’s ship was destroyed, and we were told to make our way to another room onboard.

Unfortunately, that’s where our time with the story mode ended, but we were able to check out some of Red The Hunter’s minigames. The first was called Fishing Mode, which–as the name suggests–involved trying to catch fish. These were no ordinary fish, though, their huge size often dwarfing the small boat from which we were launching our harpoon. Once our harpoon had attached itself to a fish we had to reel it in by hammering the A button, and pushing the d-pad in a direction that appeared on screen. We had to be careful not to push the A button too many times, though, otherwise our engines would overheat and we’d lost the fish.

The second minigame required us to leap around various platforms collecting boxes, by using our suit’s rockets to fly through the air. The handling of the suit was very similar to that of the jet pack in Pilot Wings, requiring care nudging of the d-pad to guide us to platforms before our boost ran out. In each mode, the dialogue had been well translated from Japanese, and the few brief moments of voice acting we heard sounded good, if a little over-acted.

source from: gamespot

The 1980 Atari arcade classic Warlords lives once more in this Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network title, due summer 2011. For those unfamiliar with the original, Warlords resembles Breakout crossed with Pong, flavoured with fantasy fiction. Two to four players slide a shield along the wall of their forts to deflect fireballs, which bounce away and towards the enemy in the manner of a Pong ball. If they fail to deflect a fireball, it damages their fort, a la Breakout. A player wins by defending their fort and demolishing those of their enemies.

A two-player match in fort-smashing Warlords.

The players’ forts are arranged around the edge of a walled courtyard, with the action best viewed from above (there’s also a less useful view that places the camera inside the fort, peering out over the top of your walls). Fireballs bounce around inside the courtyard, spat there by a passing dragon, and a steady stream of little armoured minions (“snoots”) issues from each fort. With your left analog stick you control your sliding shield, and with the right analog stick you move your rally snoot, a flag-bearing snoot towards which all your other armoured grunts make their way.

The multi-purpose snoots are used to seize control points, which confer various power-ups, to repair your walls, and to damage those of your opponents. And while they are milling around in the courtyard, more and more ricocheting fireballs will collect in the same space–they will stick around for as long as they are bounced by shields. It makes for a chaotic battlefield, and demands both sharp reflexes and strategic thinking, while you deflect fireballs with one stick and position your troops with the other.

Follow the bouncing fireball.

Matters are further complicated by an aggressive black knight character, who occasionally appears on the field with troops of his own. He can be attacked with a fireball power shot, obtained by catching and holding a fireball with your shield, charging and repositioning it, then firing it back out. The black knight’s attacks on your fort walls will come in addition, of course, to the charged fireball shots from your enemies (either computer-controlled or human-controlled, via local or online multiplayer).

The game is styled in a lightly comic fantasy fashion, and looks good, though it doesn’t quite dazzle; the snoots are puny, top-heavy creatures with skull helmets, and the player is squeakily guided through the tutorial by one of their number. Up close, their animations lack some polish, but you’ll mostly see them from afar and above. The multiplayer variants will include free-for-all and two-versus-two, and should make for some hectic competitive and co-operative action when it becomes available for download this summer.

source from: gamespot

1. Tommy Isn’t the Main Character

Prey 2 follows U.S. Marshall Killian Samuels — a character who was abducted during the same kidnapping spree that netted Tommy Tawodi, the Cherokee protagonist from the first game. Keen eyes will remember a sequence in Prey that found Tommy on an empty passenger plane; Samuels was one of the abductees. Those worried that Samuels’ presence in Prey 2 is some kind of whitewash shouldn’t be so concerned. Chris Rhinehart, Prey 2′s project lead, insists that Tommy hasn’t been booted from his series. “Tommy is still very much part of the Prey universe, and he’s still very much part of Prey 2,” Rhinehart insists. Tommy and Killian have business together.

2. Prey 2 Is an Open-World Game

Human Head has some major ambitions for Prey 2. Rhinehart says the ultimate goal of Prey was to “explore both sides of the predator/prey relationship.” But Prey was mostly about being hunted down by angry aliens. “In Prey 2, we wanted to explore both sides and let you be the the predator,” Rhinehart says. To that end, Killian Samuels finds himself on an alien world called Exodus. Many years have passed since his abduction, and he’s found a way to leverage his skills as a former U.S. Marshall: bounty hunting. So, rather than cramming Samuels into cramped corridors, Human Head gives him sprawling, vertical alien cities to explore. Rhinehart calls the vibe of the game “alien noir,” but it’s easier to just cite the influence of Blade Runner. Imagine running around a teeming, neon-lit alien city, scanning your surroundings for wanted criminals and nabbing them for rewards. Prey 2 has a plot, but the planet of Exodus is also rife with “ambient bounties” and other quests to keep you distracted. Rhinehart himself cited Fallout 3 and Red Dead Redemption as models.

3. No Portals, No Gravity

Fans of Prey remember the game for its mind-bending levels. Crazy alien technology forced Tommy to futz with gravity, walking on ceilings and teleport from one end of a room to another via portals. All those mechanics went down in flames when Tommy destroyed the alien Sphere in the original Prey. “We wanted to take players someplace new again,” Rhinehart says. And the tradeoff when players get to Exodus is that they’re armed with a fairly badass arsenal of tools, weapons, and gadgets for catching alien scum. On top of Samuels’ aforementioned scanner, the guy has a bolo that he can use to lasso fleeing crooks. Hover boots allow him to safely come down from great heights. Or just grab a shoulder-mounted rocket (upgradable and customizable, depending on the ammo you buy) if you just want to burn everything to ash.

4. Prey 2 Plays Like Mirror’s Edge

The cities on Exodus are vertical, and Samuels isn’t forced to walk everywhere he goes. A good predator always scopes out its prey from a good vantage point, and that’s one of the key ways to play Prey 2: Killian can climb his way to a high ledge (his hand always extends when another ledge is within reach) and use his scanner to get the lay of the land before going in for the kill. During our demo of Prey 2, we saw Samuels pursue an alien mark through the streets. The target — blessed with the ability to teleport — easily vaulted two moving trains, materializing on a high ledge. Killian’s job was to keep up, using his wits and climbing abilities to navigate the architecture. Dubbed “agile combat” by the folks at Human Head, this system ensures that much of Prey 2 is spent dashing from cover-to-cover in combat situations and chasing targets across vertical landscapes.

5. No Multiplayer

Nothing is more disappointing than tacked-on multiplayer modes that wind up unplayed weeks after a game comes out. Human Head made the tough decision to focus on the single-player portion of their game. “Watering down single-player and multiplayer is not good for the developer, it’s not good for the publisher, and its not good for the player,” Rhinehart says. “It’s better to focus your energy on one or the other.” But value-conscious gamers need assurances that they won’t be done playing Prey 2 over the course of a weekend. “We’re targeting at least around 15 hours,” Rhinehart says. Rushed gamers will be able to push through the game faster — and those who like exploring every secret and chasing down every ambient bounty? “It’s hard to put an upper cap on that.”

source from: gamespy

Welcome to the Interrogation Room, GameSpy’s signature pre-release game coverage format. Here, a GameSpy editor (typically one who’s relatively in-the-dark about the game in question) grills his peers for information on a hotly anticipated game — hopefully with more entertaining results than the typical boilerplate preview would provide.

Will Tuttle, Editor in Chief: So Eric, I hear you got to spend a bit of quality time withResistance 3 recently. Let’s kick this off with a look back at your history with the series. Did you play the previous games? If so, what did you think of them?

Eric Neigher, Contributing Editor: Resistance: Fall of Man was one of the first first-person shooters I played on the console, and it’s safe to say I was underwhelmed. Well, more like I was just whelmed. It was all right, but brought nothing new or interesting to the FPS genre. Resistance 2 was a considerable improvement, in just about every way, and it’s still one of the better PS3-exclusive shooters. Its cooperative campaign (with up to eight players at once!) was especially great — absolutely everything is better in co-op. Resistance 2 also got my mark for being one of the darkest and bleakest shooters I’ve played: it’s tough to impart a sense of utter hopelessness, but still get the player psyched up about shooting things. Between the two games, I’d say Resistance 3 can be the tiebreaker for the series: Will it bring something interesting and compelling to the genre, or just be another also-ran?

Will Tuttle: Well, it sounds like you and I feel the same way about the first two games, so we’ve got that going for us, which is nice. During your time with Resistance 3, did you learn much about the game’s story and how it fits in with the rest of the series? Without spoiling too much for those readers that didn’t play Resistance 2, it’s not like the folks at Insomniac could just continue from where that game left off… could they?

Eric Neigher: Well, yes and no. Without spoiling too much for readers who haven’t played Resistance 2 and have blocked access to Wikipedia to avoid learning this information: The guy who [SPOILER REDACTED] during the [SPOILER REDACTED] of Resistance 2 is now the main character in Resistance 3. His name is Joseph Capelli, and he — like most of the other remaining humans — has given up the fight against the Chimera invaders, and is just trying to freakin’ survive in the post-invasion hell that is 1957-era Earth. In this parallel universe, I mean. Earth in 1957 was actually pretty nice in our universe. Except, you know, in like Maoist China and stuff. Anyway, what happens is, [SPOILER REDACTED] from Resistance 2 arrives out of nowhere with a plan to kick the crap out of the Chimera army in New York, and needs Joseph’s help. Joseph’s wife basically guilt-trips him with a combination of patriotic appeal and general wife-ish nagging to head from Oklahoma to New York to go try to save humanity. So, in some sense, the game continues with the same basic tropes and some familiar characters, but the main plot line and protagonist are, obviously, different.

Will Tuttle: So does that mean the entire game takes place in New York, or will we see something similar to Resistance 2, which included a number of different locales from across the country?

Eric Neigher: Right, exactly — it’s something like Damnation Alley, except without the really cool combat-RV, and with a lot more in-your-face killin’. The single-player game follows Capelli’s journey to New York and, presumably, his major ass-kickery upon arrival… but it is not fixed in a single location. For its part, Insomniac advised us that while the single-player is entirely contained within the United States, the multiplayer is set around the world. We even got to play through a level that took place in Bogota, Colombia — and that featured brighter colors, more sunlight, and a bit more wide-open feel than the previously released multiplayer maps. And speaking of multiplayer, this time through, Insomniac has greatly reduced the maximum number of players (just 16 here), but made the level design more intimate, with many new gameplay and design tweaks. Part of this is new killstreak rewards (called “Berserks” here), which are different for each race: On three kills, for example, human players get a deployable energy shield, whereas Chimera players receive a cloaking device. Balance still needs to be addressed, but it looks as though the Resistance team has learned a lot from titles like Call of Duty: Black Ops, and will be featuring a lot of the same kind of leveling up, persistent bonuses, class customization, and rewards for doing cool things (like headshots or rescuing injured teammates) in-game.

Will Tuttle: Yeah, I had a chance to play a bit of the multiplayer at this year’s Game Developers Conference, and I was impressed by the move to 16 players. It definitely made it feel less chaotic, while somehow keeping things really exciting. I enjoyed the weapons, too — though that’s always been one of the series’ best features. Did you see any new toys that got your blood a-boilin’?

Eric Neigher: Definitely, Resistance has always had some cool guns — I really like that one that shoots through walls. That one’s back. New, though, is the “Dead Eye,” Resistance 3′s answer to the sniper rifle… which works pretty much like every sniper rifle ever. The twist here is that it’s a Chimera weapon, and the new Chimera sniper enemy (the Sniper Hybrid) uses it against you. This enemy has a cloaking device… but also, inexplicably, uses an extremely visible red laser sight, allowing you to counter-snipe if you can react quickly enough, or sneak up on them. The laser sight isn’t visible unless the Chimera sniper is stationary, so you get get into some serious cat-and-mouse stuff here. In the demo I saw, the Insomniac guy kept getting his ass kicked by the A.I., and finally resorted to using grenades and other weapons against the snipers, rather than trying to counter-snipe. Balance issues, I suppose. On the plus side, weapons like the Dead Eye are upgradable throughout the game, and can employ both primary and secondary firing options (both of which are individually upgradable). And Resistance 3 includes more new enemies than just snipers, too. I saw the new Shield Drone — a bad guy that looks a little like the spherical lightsaber testing droid that Luke Skywalker spars with in the original Star Wars. It floats near Chimera bad guys and drapes them in a shield that makes them utterly invulnerable until the drone itself is destroyed. Guaranteed to piss off noobs!

Will Tuttle: Hmmm, I can’t tell if I like that, as I’m often one of said noobs. Let’s shut this puppy down with a look at the graphics and sound. How does Resistance 3 compare to other first-party heavy-hitters like Uncharted 3 and Killzone 3?

Eric Neigher: From what I saw, the graphics were every bit as impressive as those of Killzone 3, although Resistance 3 uses a much more subdued color palette, which tends to make things seem less impressive than they actually are. Without question, the game’s set pieces look great, and even the multiplayer maps (which were a bit more colorful) were looking as good as anything I’ve seen on PS3 this year — Uncharted 3 included. One thing Insomniac does better than just about anyone else is sound design, and Resistance 3 has fantastic positional audio, killer gun noises with bottom, and (one hopes) a continuation of the series’ enjoyable original score. From a purely technical perspective, PS3 aficionados should be thrilled with this one. Time will tell if the same can be said from a gameplay perspective.

source from: gamespy

Guild Wars 2 — the even-more-massively-multiplayer sequel to ArenaNet and NCsoft’s smash hit massively multiplayer role-playing game — is coming. And if you ask us, it can’t get here quick enough. We recently had the chance to pick Guild Wars 2 lead designer Eric Flannum’s brain about the game, and he also had a few insightful things to say about the MMO scene as a whole.

GameSpy: You’ve unveiled all but two of the game’s eight classes. So far, we have the Elementalist, Necromancer, Ranger, Warrior, Guardian, and Thief. Do you have any hints about the last two? Will we see the return of the Mesmer!?

Eric Flannum: We’ve given hints out, so I think it’s safe for me to say that there is one brand new profession and one returning profession yet to be revealed.

GameSpy: How persistent are the game’s dynamic events? To use one of your common examples, if a bunch of raiders wreck a village, and nobody saves it, what happens next? Do players have to group up and retake it by force, or do the raiders eventually “reset” and leave the village on their own, or what?

Eric Flannum: Events are fully persistent. In the example you give, the raiders will never reset on their own, unless players intervene.

GameSpy: What was the thought process behind removing the original Guild Wars’ popular henchman/hero system? I’d say it was one of the game’s strongest and most well-executed mechanics.

Eric Flannum: The henchman/hero system in Guild Wars is certainly one of the coolest things about the game, but it just didn’t fit with what we were trying to accomplish in Guild Wars 2. First, we wanted Guild Wars 2 to be a persistent-world MMO with big, epic encounters. With a henchman system, that would mean that each player in the game is potentially running around with the equivalent of four other players. This would just kill system performance unless we optimized the game specifically around this feature. We also wanted to do away with restrictive profession roles so that there was no more “looking for healer” involved in putting together a party; instead, people can just play the game with their friends. Going this route also eliminated our need for the henchman/hero system, which exists primarily to fill missing party roles.

GameSpy: Is Gwen — the original game’s poor-victimized-child-turned-badass-mage and pseudo-mascot — gonna show up anywhere?

Eric Flannum: Guild Wars 2 takes place 250 years after the first game, so Gwen will not be putting in an appearance. However, one of Gwen’s descendants is Logan Thackeray, who leads a group called the Seraph in the human capital of Divinity’s Reach.

GameSpy: We’d really love to hear some concrete details about the player-versus-player combat — seeing as how it’s called Guild Wars, and all!

Eric Flannum: We’ll be releasing more details on PvP in the future, but I can say that we have two basic types of PvP: competitive PvP and World vs. World. First, we have what we call competitive PvP, and there are two primary ways to engage in it. Players can join games using a server browser, very similar to what you might experience in a first-person shooter. You can join games in progress, so you won’t have to wait for auto-matching if you want to jump in for some quick PvP. For those who are more serious about their PvP, we have a tournament system that matches premade teams of players against each other. It’s important to note that competitive PvP features no power progression, so everyone is on equal footing.

Then we have our World vs. World PvP, or WvW. This form of PvP features a massive war between three different worlds (what you might call servers or shards in other games), across four large maps. These maps are available all the time, and don’t have player limits, so it’s possible to have battles involving hundreds of players at a time. The game involves capturing and holding keeps and other strategic locations, and plays out like a giant strategy game where each player is an individual participant.

GameSpy: Here’s kind of a high-concept question: A lot of MMOs are – well, how can we put it? They’re World of Warcraft copycats. What is it about this genre that causes it to (largely) stagnate for years on end?

Eric Flannum: Although I’m not sure I’d go so far as saying most MMOs are “World of Warcraft copycats,” I think some amount of stagnation is definitely going on in the MMO genre. Having gone through development on the first game and with what we’ve experienced developing Guild Wars 2, there’s actually a pretty simple explanation for this: Developing an MMO is hard. I mean, really hard.

I’ve worked on a lot of different types of games, and while all of them present challenges, none of them compare to the difficulty of developing an MMO. You have complex network models to deal with. You have to create enough content and systems to support players getting not just 20 or 40 hours (which is a long time for most games), but hundreds or thousands of hours of play out the game. You have to deal with the community aspect of the game. The economics and balance of the game become much more involved in an environment where you have thousands of players interacting. The list goes on and on.

You don’t see a lot of companies taking many chances, because developing such a complex game is not only hard, but also very expensive. Add to this the fact that you have a clear “number one” game that’s making a ton of money. From that viewpoint, it becomes very easy for a company to become conservative and not take any chances that could cause the game to take longer to develop – or even risk it becoming a failure when it does launch. At ArenaNet, we see things quite differently; we think that the only way to compete in the MMO market is by taking risks. If we can deliver a fun and unique gameplay experience, then we believe we can attract many more players than we would by playing it safe.

GameSpy: To follow up on that, why do you think it’s taking this genre so long to move beyond the basic “click on exclamation mark, do quest, get reward” model?

Eric Flannum: I think we’ve certainly seen some games dabble in alternate forms of content, but we haven’t seen many of them really “go for it.” What I mean by that is, you often see quests as a primary form of content with something else as a secondary form. This means that you’re taking less risks, but it also means that you’re structuring your entire game around a type of content that everyone else is using. With that structure in place, it’s very hard to break away from many of the same conventions that those other games use… and so you run the risk of having your game feel very similar to other quest-based games.

This all stems from MMO developers being very risk-averse. Once we see more games taking chances and succeeding (and I certainly hope we do), I think we’ll see a lot more MMOs that aren’t based on standard quest systems.

source from: gamespy

I’ve played a lot of Elder Scrolls in my day. I’ve topped over 100 hours in both The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (yes, dear readers, I know you played more and I’m a noob and I fail and all of that), numbers that undoubtedly would have been higher if my job didn’t necessitate pesky actions like “playing other games.” I’ve always loved role-playing games, but the series’ blend of high fantasy and first-person action hooked me like no other games before or since.

With that said (and as you might expect), I was more than a little excited when Bethesda finally announced the fifth title in the much-ballyhooed series. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrimwas shown to members of the press for the first time last week at an event held high in the snowy mountains of Utah, the perfect setting to unveil a game that takes place in the world of Tamriel’s coldest region. After a nearly-two-hour presentation of the game, I walked away safe in the knowledge that not only was the game on track to be one of the year’s best games, but also to be the best Elder Scrolls to date. Why’s that, you ask? Well, let me break it down for you, list-style!

Pretty, Shiny Things

This might seem like a no-brainer, given the fact that we’re now nearly six years into the Xbox 360′s lifecycle (note: that was the platform Skyrim was shown on) — but Skyrim’s visuals are very impressive even when you take the system’s age into account. Oblivion was a nice-looking game and all, but Skyrim features all of the latest graphical bells and whistles that help to make today’s games that much more realistic. If I might get all jargon-y for a minute, I was most impressed by the draw distances, which have been improved to the point that I could see much, much further than I ever could in Oblivion.

The Creation engine (as Bethesda calls it) was essentially rebuilt from the ground up for Skyrim, and features greatly improved lighting and a dynamic weather system that’s perfect for cranking out blinding snowstorms when you least expect them. You’ll definitely be dealing with those from time to time, as Skyrim features a number of different locales (polar tundras, high mountaintops, fall forests, etc.) and a level of verticality never seen in an Elder Scrolls game. Yes, you actually need to cross over those massive mountains, an adventure that will definitely take some time.

First & Third

In the hundred-plus hours I spent playing Oblivion, I spent maybe five minutes in third-person mode. It’s not that I was opposed to that view, as some of my favorite games use that perspective; no, I stuck with the first-person view solely because my character’s third-person animations were simply dreadful. That appears to have been fixed in a big way in Skyrim, thanks to an overhauled animation system. The player-character (and everyone you meet during your travels) moves much more fluidly, to the point that I suspect a lot more people will use this as their default view.

Left vs. Right

Skyrim’s biggest gameplay change is easily the new right hand/left hand system, which fundamentally alters the combat in some interesting new ways. Essentially, you can put any combination of weapons, magic, or shields in either your right or left hand, making for near-endless possibilities. Yes, you can stick with your trusty sword-and-shield combo if you’d like, but now you can dual-wield one-handed weapons or sport magic in one hand while wielding a sword in the other. Mage players should be very happy to hear that similar spells combine to create a super-spell of sorts, demonstrated during the demo when a fireball spell was equipped in each hand. Being able to control what each hand does could make for a really cool mechanic, although it’s tough to say how well it will actually work until I get my hands on the game.

Like Bookmarks, But for Swords

Oblivion’s inventory system was unwieldy — especially once you accumulated dozens of similar items. While it doesn’t appear to be completely final, inventory management in Skyrim looks much more streamlined. Everything in your main inventory view is grouped by type, allowing for easier item management. What really pushes it in the right direction, however, is the ability to set favorites, almost like creating bookmarks for websites.

Putting items, spells, or weapons in your favorites list allows you to quickly cycle between them using the up and down buttons on the d-pad once it’s brought up, then equip them to whichever hand you’d like. If you are the type of person that likes to spend a lot of time looking at your loot, rest assured that every item in the inventory menu is fully rendered and can be rotated and ogled to your heart’s delight.

Keep Watching The Skies

The inventory system isn’t the only thing that’s streamlined, though; Skyrim’s developers went to great lengths to make everything flow as naturally as possible, while cutting down on the number of menus. Pressing up on the d-pad brings up the beautiful new character menu, which consists of constellations in the night sky. The birth signs from previous Elder Scrolls are gone, in favor of a system that allows you to look to the stars to see who you are. This is where you choose your skills and perks, determining your character type. The leveling system is still a little bit cloudy, but it sounds like you still level up your skills by actually using them (after all, practice makes perfect). As you hit certain levels, you earn perks, each of which has different ranks. And no, you can’t level up your Athletics skill and overall level by jumping constantly — the developers decided to do away with that skill category altogether.

Living Just Enough For The Village

Anyone who played Oblivion probably has memories of following a non-player character around to see what they did in their off-time. The answer was typically “nothing much.” According to Bethesda, this isn’t the case with Skyrim; NPCs behave more realistically, going about their business whether you’re around or not, thanks to some new-and-improved A.I. What I was most interested to hear about, however, is the fact that you can take jobs in Skyrim, directly affecting the amount of resources in each town and the global economy as a whole. You can earn money by chopping wood or mining gold, or head to the blacksmith to learn how to craft your own weapons. I didn’t get a look at how this system works, but it certainly sounds interesting.

Dealing Death With Flair

Although the combat in Skyrim appears similar to previous games, the new animation system makes it feel much more realistically brutal. Combatants (including the player) grunt and swing wildly, pushing each other away in an attempt to create space for their attacks. Some weapons (particularly axes, if perked correctly) deal bleeding damage over time — which comes in mighty handy when fighting higher-level enemies.

Coolest of all, you can occasionally perform a finishing move that provides a gloriously violent flourish at the end. Running an enemy through with your sword or burying an axe deep in his head with a satisfying, sickening crunch definitely gets the blood a-boiling, and I’m really looking forward to discovering more of these techniques.

Dungeons…

One of the big knocks against Oblivion was that the dungeons seemed nearly identical — something the developers obviously took to heart when designing Skyrim. During one extended dungeon crawl, I noticed several different environments, from fairly standard stone/rock corridors to large antechambers encased in ice. Holes in the mountain’s walls let light and snow stream in, creating some truly dreamlike visuals. I was also happy to see that booby-traps make their return, and they can still be used against unsuspecting enemies (provided you notice them before tripping them yourself). Additionally, some of the environmental puzzles require a bit of thought and an attentive eye. It’s tough to say if everydungeon will be wholly unique, but this is definitely a step in the right direction.

…and Dragons

Much has been made of the fact that Skyrim will feature dragons (basically occasional boss fights) in a big way, and for good reason: They’re downright terrifying. I got my first glimpse of one of these ancient creatures just outside a mountaintop temple (leading into the aforementioned dungeon), and even though I wasn’t controlling the demo, I wanted to yell “Run!” after it spied the player and took to the sky. After circling a few times, the dragon began to dive, and the player character got inside just before it landed. Once the dungeon was complete, well, it was finally time to fight and kill said dragon. So what changed?

Shout It Out Loud

As a “dragonborn,” your character has the ability to perform shouts, which are akin to magic, except they draw from a different pool than your standard spells. As you play through Skyrim, you learn words of power that are used on their own or combined into shouts. Fusing three words into a complete shout provides the ultimate level of damage, as was the case with the Unrelenting Force power that literally blew enemies away. The coolest shout I saw was Slow Time, which did just that, slowing everything around the play to a crawl… including that pesky dragon. Once the dragon fell, his soul was absorbed by the player just before the demo ended. What does that provide? Bethesda’s keeping quiet on that front (as well as many others) — so hopefully, we’ll find out in the not-too-distant future.

source from: gamespy

Ryan Scott. Executive Editor: So how was American McGee Presents American McGee’sAlice: Madness Returns, The Sequel To American McGee’s Classic American McGee Presents American McGee’s Alice?

Will Tuttle, Editor in Chief: Well, it wasn’t quite as awesome as Ryan Scott’s Snarky Interrogation Room Intro: A Ryan Scott Production, but it’s looking pretty nice so far. It’s funny — I remember enjoying the original game, but I was a little surprised when Electronic Arts announced the sequel. I mean, it’s been nearly a dozen years, so it’ll be interesting to see if the series still has an audience, or if EA is just shooting to pull in brand-new players who never spent any time in Wonderland back in the day.

Ryan Scott: So, I gather that understanding the story isn’t endemic on having played the first game, then?

Will Tuttle: I don’t think it requires players to know much about the first game, although like any good sequel, it includes plenty of references to the first game. Basically, Madness Returns takes place 11 years after the original, with our heroine (the titular Alice, duh) being released from the insane asylum she’d been locked inside. She’s still got plenty of issues to work through, so she goes back to Wonderland — the dream world that only exists inside her head — to find out what really killed her parents so many years ago. Once she’s in Wonderland (Madness Returns flips between that and jolly olde London), she finds that it’s even more twisted and messed-up than ever. While it might sound like you need to know a lot of the back story to enjoy Madness Returns, that really doesn’t seem to be the case, as I have a feeling a lot of that is explained early on.

Ryan Scott: And what exactly does she find when she returns to Wonderland? Does she have a tea party with the Mad Hatter? Does he say whether he’s going to be in the next Batman movie?

Will Tuttle: I didn’t get to meet the Mad Hatter, but he’s definitely in the game, and plays a central role. Wonderland itself is a beautifully twisted nightmare on par with the first game, although it’s obviously much nicer-looking thanks to this generation’s shinier graphics. All sorts of crazy angles and weird visuals were ripped from the mind of Mr. McGee himself, and I was really impressed by some of the wide-shot vistas that I saw. The game can best be described as an action-platformer, and the sequences I saw highlighted the latter nicely. Alice has a triple-jump glide that allows her to reach some far-off platforms, and I fell to my death a few times while trying to make my way over to some that weren’t meant to be reached. I finally realized that I could hop into a shrinking violet (get it?!?) to shrink myself down. In addition to letting Alice squeeze through the occasional tiny door, it serves another purpose: When I was small, I could momentarily see invisible platforms that allowed me to reach the aforementioned far-off places and find special treasures. These areas were a little obvious for my liking, although that may have been intentional on the developers’ part for the demo.

Ryan Scott: Does Alice get into any fights? Can you take the Cheshire Cat out with a grenade launcher?

Will Tuttle: Oh yes, Alice shows plenty of combat skills as she makes her way through Wonderland. The game’s combat is fairly standard for action games, with a few nice twists. Alice has both light and heavy melee and ranged attacks, and it’s very easy to switch between the four on the fly (that is, you don’t actually have to change weapons or anything to string together combos). On the ranged front, the Pepper Grinder basically acts as a machine gun, while the Teapot is akin to a grenade launcher. Alice’s two melee weapons follow this whimsical path, with the Vorpal Blade providing light attacks and the Hobby Horse essentially giving her a heavy, hammer-like attack. While this all sounds pretty straightforward, I encountered a lot of enemies that required a bit of thought before they could be defeated. For instance, during a battle with one of the big playing card guards, I needed to deflect his ranged attacks several times before knocking down his shield enough to finish him off with more standard combat techniques. Hopefully, the game features more examples of this type of “puzzle combat,” as we all know how boring it is to just mash an attack button for hours on end.

Ryan Scott: You know, going along the Disneyland theme, I was hoping for American McGee’s Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, but this sounds cool, too (and yes, I know this is a Grimm fairy tale, Internets — it was a joke, GEEZ). Any final thoughts to take us out? Is this gonna end like Sucker Punch, where all this stuff happened in the asylum, but we’re not sure what the hell’s going on (Sucker Punch spoilers)?

Will Tuttle: Well, we definitely know that Wonderland is all in Alice’s head, as it’s basically a place that she mentally escapes to when the going gets tough. I’m actually really excited to see what they do with the real-world stuff, as I’m sure American’s McGee’s vision of Victorian London is pretty twisted. More than anything, my time with Alice: Madness Returns made me want to play the original game again to see what’s really changed over the last 11 years, outside of the greatly improved graphics. I’m also a sucker for a good story, so I hope that’s one area in which the sequel delivers. I can handle not really knowing or understanding what’s going on when it’s intentional and leads to a payoff, so hopefully everything will come together in the end.

source from: gamespy

In Tropico 4, you’ll still create a new dictator with different traits and will still need to balance the needs of the people against your nation’s burgeoning economy, as well as the requests of foreign superpowers. This time around, you won’t just be meeting with the USA and the Soviet Republic. China will also play a role as an economic superpower that you must consider in your administration. To help you attain absolute power and completely above-the-board riches, Tropico 4 will now let you appoint citizens to a council of ministers to support your political initiatives.

Otherwise, Tropico 4 will have a much bigger campaign than the previous game–20 missions across 10 new maps, in fact. The game will also have 20 new structures to build that will reflect the game’s latter-day sensibilities, such as a stock exchange, a shopping mall, and a water park. In response to demand from the fan community, the new game will also have more natural disasters (volcanoes, droughts, tornadoes, among others) that will randomly pop up and potentially change the complexion of your current course of action. The game will even integrate functionality for Facebook and Twitter, so if you’re the sort of dictator who needs to broadcast every new exploit of your benevolent regime to your followers, you’ll be able to do that, too.

Tropico 4 will give Tropico 3 players more of what they want: more missions, more structures, more natural disasters, and more politics. The game is scheduled for release this August on the PC and on the Xbox 360.

source from: gamespot

In Gods & Heroes, you’ll play as one of four characters at launch (the soldier, the mystic, the priest, or the gladiator–with two additional professions, the nomad and the scout, planned for a post-launch time frame), but you won’t be a fresh-faced youngster. Your character starts life as an established hero of the Roman Empire and the owner of your family’s ancestral estate, though you are also opposed by political rivals in the senate. But those squabbles pale in comparison to what happens to you at the very outset of the game. A faction of powerful raiders has invaded your family’s estate and burned it to the ground. Enraged, you seek out the island base of these invaders and begin your quest for revenge.

We played through an incomplete version of the early experience, starting with the outskirts of the bandits’ home island, a grassy area with intermittent marble architecture and a massive population of red-toga-wearing brutes. Our character was more or less brand new and had very few abilities in combat beyond a few simple sword attacks. But our hosts at Heatwave obligingly swapped out our starting character with a higher-level gladiator, who not only had a few more spectacular sword attacks, but also had a small army of minions. In addition to wielding godlike powers granted to your character by whichever deity you choose to follow, you’ll eventually be able to acquire a stable of more than 130 different retainer characters, from skillful human archers to axe-wielding minotaurs, who will follow you into battle.

Our higher-level character had skipped ahead to a high-level area inhabited by massive cyclopes who had a nasty habit of knocking their foes flying, so we were grateful to have minions to step up and take the worst of the beating. Heatwave’s development team concedes that while the game may not quite look state of the art anymore, it will have a great deal of gameplay depth and offer a stiffer challenge. The team explains that its beta community consists of players who are somewhat older than average and more experienced in online games–discerning players who have suggested they won’t mind paying for a premium experience. This is why Gods & Heroes is no longer planned to be a free-to-play game for the time being and is instead planned to launch as a retail product.

We then adjourned to the character estate, an instanced personal area and perhaps the game’s most unique new feature. With the estate system, Gods & Heroes goes one step further past player housing and will let players build out and customize their own picturesque vale bordered by mountains on one side and a shimmering lake on the other. When you first start the game, your estate will consist of nothing but empty land in the wake of the bandit attacks. But over time, you’ll be able to customize the area with different buildings, such as temples and armories, which can be used to strengthen your minions. You’ll also eventually be able to add decorative items, such as statues of your favored gods. And as you might imagine, you’ll be able to invite your friends to visit and admire your awesome new pad.

You, too, will be able to build out the grounds of your own estate.

Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising will offer intriguing new player housing, a huge assortment of minion characters, and challenging gameplay. Heatwave plans to launch the game later this year.

source from: gamespot