Sony has announced that the upcoming PS3 title, Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, will also be heading to PlayStation Vita. It will be released at the same time, which is the third or fourth quarter of 2012.

The game will feature cross-play functionality, which means that you’ll be able to save on your PS3 and go portable with your Vita, picking up where you left off.

Check out the trailer and screens for the Vita version.

Blizzard issued a statement on Wednesday apologizing to all gamers who purchased Diablo III since its May 15 launch but were unable to play it smoothly (or at all) due to login issues, glitches and other nasty things. Blizzard also announced that it will be delaying the launch of the real-world Auction House.

Blizzard’s community manager, Bashiok, issued the apology on the US Battle.net forums, saying:

Diablo Players:

We’d like to extend a very sincere thank you to everyone who joined the global Diablo III launch celebrations this week, as well as to everyone who was ready to jump into Sanctuary the moment the game went live.

To that end, we’d also like to say that we’ve been humbled by your enthusiasm — and we sincerely regret that your crusade to bring down the Lord of Terror was thwarted not by mobs of demons, but by mortal infrastructure. As many of you are aware, technical issues occurring within hours after the game’s launch led to players experiencing error messages and difficulty logging in. These issues cropped up again last night for the Americas and Europe servers. Despite very aggressive projections, our preparations for the launch of the game did not go far enough.

We’ve been monitoring the game 24/7 and have applied several optimizations to help our systems better weather the global rush. As of late last night, specifically 11:50 PM PDT on May 15, all systems have been online and running relatively smoothly. We’re continuing to monitor performance globally and will be taking further measures as needed to ensure a positive experience for everyone. This includes some maintenance to implement additional improvements for each region.

In order to make sure everything is continuing to run as it should, we’ve decided to move out our target launch for the real-money auction house beyond our original estimated date of May 22. We’ll post further updates on that in the near future.

Aside from the tremendous number of players simultaneously logging in to the game, one of the launch-day service issues was linked to the achievement system. Some players began to notice early on that achievements were either not being earned properly, or not being saved between multiple logins. We’re investigating this issue and will provide a specific update as soon as possible.

We greatly appreciate everyone’s support, and we want to sincerely apologize for the difficulties many of you encountered on day one. Please visit the Battle.net Support site or Support forums for the latest service-related updates or for help in troubleshooting any technical issues you may be having downloading, installing, or while playing the game.

Thank you again for your patience while we reinforce the gates of Sanctuary and further strengthen it for your onslaught.

Respectfully,
Blizzard Entertainment

Have you seen any improvements in your Diablo III experience yet? Or are you still struggling to play it?

Naughty Dog’s community strategist Eric Monacelli recently replied to some fan inquiries on the PlayStation Blog about The Last Of Us, and in doing so revealed that  will feature some form of multiplayer, but nothing has been confirmed just yet.

Monacelli, in response to some weed who said that he or she or it wouldn’t buy the game since it has no online or couch co-op, said:

“We have not announced any plans about online multiplayer but there will be some kind of multiplayer aspect to the game.”

Further confirmation came from game director Bruce Stanley, who was also in the process of replying to many fans who were wondering what kind of multiplayer the game would have.

“We’re working on a bunch of ideas, but we haven’t nailed anything down. We definitely know it’s going to be awesome,” he teased.

The Last Of Us is set to release exclusively on PS3 in late 2012 or early 2013. My guess is the latter.

Be sure to check out the newly released trailer for the game, which according to Monacelli is entirely made of in-game footage. It’s definitely going to be one sexy-looking game.

FIFA’s line producer David Rutter recently spoke with CVG in a FIFA 13 interview, revealing a number of interesting things about the franchise from the developers’ point of view.

Rutter explained that despite the massive success FIFA enjoys on an annual basis, the development team EA Canada remains fully aware of the dangers of complacency, and as such a watchful eye is always kept on Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer series. Rutter said that the reason for the team’s vigilance is down to the fact that they are “hugely critical” of themselves.

“We are hugely critical of ourselves to the extent where we get in trouble for it when we’re doing presentations,” he admitted. “I know Andrew [Wilson] and before him Peter Moore would always say, ‘don’t be so hard on yourselves, you’ve got to tell some good news too.’

“So today I did the good news; ‘fantastic reviews, amazing sales, everyone loves our game’ and then Aaron steps up and goes, ‘this is rubbish, this is rubbish…’ It’s just the way we are. We don’t have a great deal of time in the year to make the game and we don’t have a great deal of time in the year either to celebrate what we just did.”

Rutter reasoned that being located in Canada keeps the team a safe distance from all the hype, excitement and popularity that could potentially encourage complacency.

“I think actually being in Canada is a bit of an advantage as well because we’re away from all the, ‘woohoo! Look how amazing we are!’ We don’t see the shops with tonnes of FIFA copies in them, or see the launch or hear about it on the news. We’re far enough away that we’re this little isolated pod of negative nerds all working on FIFA.”

So in other words, Canada is uncool?

Rutter also revealed that despite the fact that FIFA has performed significantly better than PES in terms of sales performance in recent years, the development team always considers its rival to be a threat.

“There are other things out there,” he said. “We’re still worried about what Konami is going to do with Pro Evolution Soccer and naturally they’re our closest sports competitor.”

Blizzard is currently in the process of dealing with a mountain of problems with Diablo III, which just launched yesterday and is already causing mass outrage.

Firstly, to get to the less significant one, Blizzard are currently trying to fix a game breaking Diablo 3 bug that has been reported multiple times on the official Diablo 3 forums. The bug occurs when players trade a shield with a Templar follower found early in the game, and this causes players to be booted from the game, shown an error 3006 message, and then be unable to log back into Battle.net. The problem seems common with the Demon Hunter class, so be careful with your gear for now.

Blizzard has said that it’s busy looking into the problem and suggests that players avoid the Templar until it can deliver a hotfix. It didn’t specify when this would be.

And now onto the main event, which is that the launch servers have been battered by the absurd amount of traffic. So people often can’t play the game. Now you know why there aren’t reviews up yet.

The issue began when excited players all trying to activate their games online in short time caused the servers to slow down dramatically, and eventually display error messages that prevented them from logging in and playing. The problem was out of control last night, and so bad that players started trending their error messages on Twitter, because hey, what else can you do.

Blizzard told fans this morning that those who still can’t get into the game should “wait and try again”. New servers are being launched to accommodate for the traffic while Battle.net is offline to make room.

“Please note that due to a high volume of traffic, login and character creation may be slower than normal,” it said in a statement.

“If you’re unable to login to the game or create characters, please wait and try again. We’ve temporarily taken our Battle.net websites offline and launched more servers to accommodate for the traffic. We hope to resolve these issues as soon as possible and appreciate your patience.”

In my opinion this is pathetic. It’s what you get when you want to use online activation and try to turn single-player campaigns into permanently-online experiences. Especially games like Diablo III which will obviously be overflowing with traffic after its launch. I mean the game has only been anticipated for the last twelve years. I haven’t bought Diablo III yet, but I know I would be extremely pissed if I just spent almost R500, or R700 for the Collector’s Edition, but can’t play my single-player game.

Capcom has been at the centre of a lot of rage from the gaming community recently due to their practice of locking on-disc content so that it can be sold as DLC.

However, Capcom’s US boss Christian Svensson has stated that the publishing giants are listening to fan feedback and are currently rethinking its policy.

Svensson revealed this when speaking on the Capcom-Unity Blog, promising fans that the issue is being looked at it. But the inevitable catch came when he said that it’s too late right now to change the DLC policy for upcoming games like Dragon’s Dogma.

“We would like to assure you that we have been listening to your comments and as such have begun the process of re-evaluating how such additional game content is delivered in the future.

“As this process has only just commenced in the past month or so, there will be some titles, where development began some time ago and that are scheduled for release in the coming months, for which we are unable to make changes to the way some of their post release content is delivered,” he explained.

According to Svensson, Capcom’s decision to use on-disc DLC was made during the early stages of Dragon’s Dogma development cycle, and as such it’s too late to change it now.

“One such title is Dragon’s Dogma, where the decision to include some additional (but not all planned additional) game content for the game on disc was made at the beginning of the game’s development cycle as at the time this was determined to be the most efficient way of ensuring certain content was made available.

“Owners of Dragon’s Dogma will be able to further their gameplay experience with the release of additional quests, weapons and other items in the months following the game going on sale.”

I’ll believe it when I see it. I wouldn’t trust Capcom when it comes to having fan’s best interests in mind.

I’d like to follow up my last Question of the Week about which game had the worst ending, with a solidly predictable one about which game had the best ending. Simple and self-explanatory.

The best ending could involve any game which you felt had the sickest plot twist, or ended a game or franchise in the perfect way. Or perhaps even a game that ended so dramatically, even on a cliff hanger, that you absolutely couldn’t wait for its sequel. All of this means not Mass Effect 3 hey.

Just kidding. Kinda. Not really.

But it doesn’t just have to be the “ending” as in the moments before the final credits. It’s more like “the last stretch”, or the climax. For example, everyone who played the original BioShock will know why I’d consider that to be one of my favourite game endings, but it wasn’t the actual ending that made it so incredible, but the finale as a whole. It was just so damn epic, and one of the coolest twists you’d find.

I also absolutely loved the endings of most of the Metal Gear Solid games, as each one blew my mind and reminded me why it’s my favourite game series of all time. Other endings I won’t be forgetting come from Infamous and Prototype, because the final plot twists in both those games were just so damn insane that it made them special for me. I also loved the first Assassin’s Creed game’s ending, where things went utterly bonkers and my hype levels for Assassin’s Creed 2 threatened to take away my sanity. I miss those days of Assassin’s Creed, before it turned into a milked creature.

And of course, as a Batman obsessed freak, I completely loved the ending of Arkham City. It blew me away and just made me feel proud of Rocksteady for the liberties they took with the Batman universe, and how they created something so fantastic and memorable out of it.

Alright, I’ll stop now.

What are your favourite and best game endings?

Blizzard has expressed many times in the past that it wants to do a console version of Diablo III, but it has now confirmed that the studio hasn’t even begun experimenting with one yet, and is still not sure if one is even possible.

“We haven’t officially announced it, because we’re not ‘experimenting,’” game director Jay Wilson said to Gamasutra in a lengthy interview.

“We tell people that basically we’re experimenting, because it helps us hire people. The better people we hire, the better chance we have to actually make it.

“That’s why we haven’t kept it super secret, but we also haven’t confirmed it, because we’re not sure yet whether we think it will work, and whether we think we have the resources to do it.”

Diablo III is out on PC and Mac as of today. But who am I kidding, you’re already all lost to it.

It seems like a lifetime ago since I was fifteen years old and foaming at the mouth in anticipation for the original Prototype, which is a game from 2009 that I still absolutely love. It had its fair share of flaws, but it was a great game with an amazing and pretty insane story that faltered only because of convoluted presentation. Yet, it’s still one of my personal favourite sandbox games. Despite that, however, I was skeptical of Prototype 2 matching the overall experience of the original. But if I have to be honest, I must say that I walked away from Prototype 2 quite pleased, with the only disappointment being that it was rather forgettable. Sure, it has a lot wrong with it, but it also does a lot right, and in the end if you’re going into this game for some mindless chaotic action, then you’ll get all the thrill you need. But if you want something more meaningful or outstanding, you probably won’t find it here.

Prototype 2 made quite a bold move with its story, as the basic idea of the plot is that you’ll need to kill the protagonist from the first game, Alex Mercer. As a whole the game is pretty much a straight up revenge story, which is exactly what the developers had in mind for the game. In the game you take on the role of Sergeant James Heller, who is out on duty when he gets various calls from his wife who is fearing for their daughter’s safety. When Heller eventually returns home, he finds them both dead which causes him to rejoin the military and its fight for New York City against the deadly Mercer virus. Heller, however, only has one thing on his mind, and that’s revenge against Mercer, who he blames for the death of his family. But destiny has a different plan for Heller, as his early encounter with Mercer goes south, with him ending up being infected by the original game’s protagonist. Mercer’s infection causes Heller to develop the same powers as his adversary, and from there the hunt begins.

The story was strange to form an opinion about for me, because for the most part I wasn’t entirely sure whether it wanted to be taken seriously or not. It’s hardly interesting or exciting, the dialogue is overflowing with F-bombs and is often really juvenile, at times it approached some more mature or darker themes only to revert back to total absurdity and, in general, it’s a plot where you’ll just go with the flow rather than pay much attention, which is a pity. However, I feel the main problem with the story is actually the character of Heller. In the original game, Alex Mercer presented a very interesting dynamic as he was a victim but also an anti-hero who did horrific things. At times you could sympathise with him, and others you’d probably think he was wildly bonkers but with a strong motivation for his insanity. Heller, by contrast, is supposed to be more human because he’s a man who lost his family and driven to the edge of his sanity, but for most of the game he just comes across as an unsympathetic asshole who can be even worse than Alex Mercer himself. While he often is portrayed as a mindless brute who can be just as hilarious as he can be badass, he isn’t much of a victim and you definitely can’t relate to him. Many gamers probably won’t care as long as they get to be badass and break things, but for me Alex Mercer was just a much more deep and interesting character to follow.

Another thing that was rather upsetting was that Alex Mercer has been completely changed from the original game. With a new voice actor and seemingly new personality, he just lost all depth which makes his encounters with Heller significantly less interesting than they should be. I get that I’m going on about the story for quite a bit, but it’s only really to come to the point that you shouldn’t be taking this sequel seriously at all. It was clearly designed to be a fun ride more than anything else, despite how ambiguous the story is when it comes to how it wants players to perceive it. And that’s what I ended up doing really, as long as I could have more reasons to uppercut helicopters or turn people into lethal bio-bombs. And after all is said and done, when it comes to gameplay Prototype 2 continues the series’ desire to make players feel like the most powerful being in the world, and pulls it off excellently.

Prototype 2 is nearly identical to the original with its gameplay, but many improvements have been made that definitely make things feel better, if not new. The parkour is still as awesome and addictive as ever as you’ll charge at breakneck speeds, run up walls like a boss, scale buildings with a simple jump or glide through the air. And it feels like Heller is easier to maneuver than Mercer was in the first game, but that’s mainly because Heller starts out a lot slower and weaker and it’s only in the later stages of the game and after acquiring many upgrades that he shows his true colours. The mission structure and upgrade system have both also undergone a considerable improvement, and have become far easier to work with. Now they both work together. Rather than grinding out thousands and thousands of experience points like in the first game, Prototype 2 lets players improve Heller’s stats such as health, regeneration or shape shifting using skill points gained after levelling up, as well as acquire mutations through completing side missions, which provide a permanent boost and are presented in categories such as offensive, defensive, locomotion and power specialist. For example getting enough experience will level you up and allow you to maybe boost Heller’s maximum health, while acquiring a mutation could do anything from vamping up Heller’s top speed to making him immune to bullets. Lastly, players can level up their main powers and firearm skills by consuming special targets in the world.

It’s a fantastic system because it allows players to gradually become more powerful and constantly progress, but the problem comes in that this unfortunately makes the pacing really slow, as it requires a sizable amount of work to earn upgrades. But hey, at least it’s a bit better than acquiring a million experience points like you needed to do towards the end of the original game. However, it does bring me to one of the worst things about the game, which is that practically a third, or dare I say half of the entire game feels like a tutorial. For most of the early hours of the game your hand will be held, you’ll be told what to do and overall you’ll progress really slowly. It even takes forever just to be able to allowed to start hijacking helicopters and tanks. You get the five main weapons, namely claw, blade, hammerfist, whipfist and tendrils with shield now being a built-in block ability, at set points in the game, and they’re spaced quite far apart so you don’t really get free reign to play with all of your toys until much later on in the game. It takes quite a long while before the game opens up and allows you to run wild, which is a real pity for those who played the original and want to immediately get more of that, but fortunately the best of rewards comes in later when you finally become a powerhouse and have acquired most of the upgrades. It really ends up being worth it, and delivers the game’s best moments.

On the matter of the powers and the combat system, there’s a lot different. Firstly, you’re able to equip two powers at once and use them together without having to access the radial menu. While you can’t really combo them together, it’s cool to have access to two rather than having to keep swapping. The powers seem to be a lot more balanced this time around, with equal amounts of fun spread across them, and it’s more enjoyable to pick a favourite now that all powers remain useful throughout the game. However, it’s unfortunate that a number of Heller’s attack animations have been rehashed from the previous game, and despite that some great moves have been completely omitted. For example, the barehanded fighting moves are mostly gone, and Heller doesn’t have bullet dive drop, hammerfist toss or the ability to use whipfist in the air to latch onto helicopters. But while he’s lost those, he has gained some other badass moves, such as the ability to instantly destroy tanks and helicopters or rip their weapons off and use them to cause mayhem. Not to mention bio-bomb, where you turn someone into a lethal tendril bomb either stealthily or blatantly and watch the priceless chaos unfold. Using Heller’s abilities is simply an amazing feeling, because few games can capture the level of power that Prototype 2 manages to give you in its later stages, and it’s just a thrill to experience it.

But despite how enjoyable these elements of the game are, another one of the worst problems with Prototype 2 is that it’s very repetitive, and a big part of the reason for this are the missions, which seriously lack variety and cause the game to feel quite shallow at times. Most missions involve simply killing something or infiltrating a base, consuming targets of interest and exiting alerts. I recall a few deviations, but without any interesting story to drive the game forward the lackluster missions really become a lot more noticeable. Let me put it into perspective. A family member of mine, who has no interest in or knowledge about modern video games, was watching me play the game and commented that it was crazy and obscenely violent, which is a good thing, but then went on to ask me what the idea was of it all, because I didn’t seem to be doing anything important other than just killing stuff. And that’s perhaps the gist of it really. Enjoying this game isn’t about the story or doing anything meaningful, it’s simply about complete carnage and finding ways to jack around, misbehave and cause chaos. Is that enough? Well it certainly is if you want mindless entertainment, but there’s not a lot more in it for you.

Prototype 2 will take you over ten hours to finish, depending on your tendency to mess around or chase after collectibles. On top of that, there’s always a new game+ mode, which is great to have, and an Insane difficulty mode, for all those craving a challenge or achievement. Even if most of the early hours are consumed by tutorials and slow pacing, there’s a great amount of gameplay time on offer here to make it worth the run. Graphically, Prototype 2 is quite an impressive step over its predecessor. It won’t really amaze you, and in a number of areas the visuals can look ugly or lacking in detail, but it looks pretty decent overall and the best thing about it is that no matter how much chaos happens on screen, the game will never show any signs of slowing down. It’s fantastic when considering just how much chaos Prototype 2 can stuff your screen with, even if the game cheats a little bit by cutting down on the draw distance. The game uses sound well to convey the absolute mayhem that gives it its name, and surprisingly the voice acting is of a good standard despite the absurdity of the dialogue. I never had any technical issues with the game, and it really was a very comfortable experience to have.

Prototype 2 succeeds at providing players with a game that they don’t really need to take all that seriously and can simply enjoy without much effort. Unfortunately, it’s not really a lasting or meaningful experience, and as such you should be wary of paying full price for it unless you’re a fan of the original or a completionist, because there’s plenty of satisfying content here. Prototype 2 is a great deal of fun and a noteworthy distraction from the boring real world, but sadly it’s pretty forgettable in the end.

Many Half-Life fans are still eagerly anticipating Black Mesa, the independent remake of Valve’s classic. However, in all this excitement, it’s highly possible that fans may have overlooked a pretty fantastic high resolution texture pack that was released a while ago for Half-Life.

From Guru3D’s member ‘kanej2007′, the HD mod for the game is around 700mb in size, but it ends up being somewhere around 2gb when you extract it. If you want to give it a look, you can download it here, but don’t forget to also get the latest patch for the mod while you’re at it.

Installing it is simple, as you’ll just need to copy everything from the ‘hl1′ folder into your existing directory for the game. If you’re using the Steam Version, you’ll need to copy the enb series into your Half-Life source engine folder. Then you just need to launch the Half-Life source exe file to play.

It’s been confirmed that the HD mod works with the Steam version of Half-Life, so don’t worry.

Check out how the HD pack affects the game’s visuals in the gallery below.

I don’t think the first part of this news will be too surprising to anyone, since Blizzard missing this year’s E3 would only mean that it’s the fifth consecutive year in which the company has not attended the event.

But it’s important to know, so this news comes from MCV who had this confirmed by a Blizzard representative.

However, what’s more questionable is that Blizzard won’t be holding its BlizzCon event this year, which means we won’t be hearing anything about the company’s MMO “Project Titan” or the upcoming StarCraft II expansions for a while.

If it helps, Blizzard will be at Gamescom 2012 in August.

Still, I’m pretty keen to see what E3 2012 has in store for us when it kicks off on June 5 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. It will wrap up on June 7.

In my last column I talked about the problems with gaming tutorials, and today I’m going to rant about difficulty settings, because I feel that they are another area that is seriously lacking in today’s games. Of course because there are so many genres and different types of games, I can’t exactly cover everything and all forms of difficulty in general, but I will be focusing mainly on games such as shooters and RPGs and action adventure games, because the problem is most common in these genres. I began thinking about this after games I played recently made me drop down to normal from hard simply because there was no point to upping the difficulty other than to experience frustration.

The reason is because the games in question did what many games of today do when it comes to the implementation of difficulty settings, and I’m sure you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you guessed a mixture of lowering player health and increasing enemy damage, or simply upping the enemy count, then you’d have guessed right. This approach to difficulty settings is something I consider to be lazy and not that fun, as it often turns the experience frustrating and seriously screws up the game’s natural difficulty curve. As you may have experienced, increasing the difficulty settings for many games these days can result in obscure, inconsistent and unpredictable difficulty curves, and can result in turning the challenge into an exercise of both endurance, luck and frustration, rather than skill.

I will be giving a number of examples to illustrate this in practice as well as talk about what I consider to be bad execution of difficulty settings. Then I’ll go on to talk about how difficulty settings can be improved. All in this reasonably short column. Alright scratch that you know it’s not going to be so short.

Before talking about how difficulty settings can be improved, we naturally need to talk about the problems that currently exist. To use the games I was playing recently as examples, let’s take Sniper Elite V2 first. It’s a third person shooter with a strong emphasis on sniping as the title suggests, but you don’t really need to know anything about the game for me to make this point. I first chose to play the game on normal, but after a while I felt myself wanting more of a challenge, so I raised the difficulty to hard. This proved to be a mistake. All that happened was either my health became less or enemies did more damage, which amounts to the same thing really, and the game changed for the worse. Simply being exposed for a few seconds and taking like two hits got me to critical health and forced me to wait questionably long to recover, and suddenly the game wasn’t about executing badass headshots anymore but about raging at cheap deaths and trying not to die whenever I poked my head out of cover. It took a lot of the fun out of the game, and I soon got over it. I could still get through the levels without breaking too much of a sweat, but my point is that it did not provide me with a thrilling, new or interesting challenge, but rather with a badly executed test of frustration and trial and error.

I like to use Call of Duty as an example, but it wasn’t always that way. The recent Call of Duty games I’ve played, since World at War, have taken the fun out of Veteran difficulty for me, which is the highest setting. The reason is because the game becomes significantly less immersive for me, but much more frustrating. This happens because suppressing heavy fire and gunning down every living organism becomes an exercise in dodging hundreds of grenades that all land on top of you in a second, forcing you to expose yourself and die, and of course, infamously waiting to heal every time a potato crumb clips your eyebrow. It also results in certain sections of the game being insanely hard while others are strangely cakewalk. Lots of games do this. I could point to the Uncharted series, where putting up the difficulty setting to the highest levels basically means you’ll be spending every fight in critical health with a grey screen, and trying to push your luck as far as possible with all your trial and error approaches.

I’ll probably get flamed for this, but as much as I loved The Witcher 2, I wasn’t too fond of its difficulty settings. The gist of it was you dealing less damage and enemies dealing more as you increased difficulty, with the only interesting change for me being that items become harder to acquire. But the reason I didn’t like The Witcher 2′s difficulty settings was because the game originally has a negative difficulty curve, in that it starts out pretty damn tough but becomes a lot easier later on as you level up, upgrade your skills and acquire better equipment. Increasing the difficulty setting by too much results in this becoming utterly bonkers. Normal was the perfect choice for me in that game.

Now, the games I’ve mentioned above are random examples, but they all demonstrate the same pattern of what I believe aren’t good uses of difficulty settings. The reason is because in the games mentioned above, increasing the difficulty does not create a new experience, challenge players in new ways, or make them play and think differently. Aside from maybe The Witcher 2 in many respects. But for the most part it simply results in playing the game the same way but with frustration replacing fun, and luck and trial and error replacing skill. It just forces players to struggle a lot more despite not being fully tested on ability and actual mastery of the game and its mechanics. There are countless games that artificially make things more difficult rather than change the game through careful manipulation of its mechanics and challenges to players. I think this is the core problem which games need to address.

Of course the first thing we must understand is that difficulty settings often revolve around context. Each and every game is made more challenging in different ways depending on the game itself and its mechanics. With that said, I feel that difficulty settings need to be given some thought by developers so that they change the player experience and enable gamers to play the same game but with a very different approach. The game should treat players differently and force them to treat it differently. The various difficulty levels should feel new and inventive. For some examples, players should be given less resources, handicaps and extra assistance should be removed and enemies should display new behaviours that they wouldn’t otherwise demonstrate in the lower difficulties. Perhaps more difficult or different types of enemies should be introduced earlier on in the game. Maybe the environment should become more dangerous, such as by increasing the amount of hazards or reducing the strength of cover. Enemy and item locations and spawn points should be changed so that the player isn’t fully prepared for everything after playing the game once. I’m not saying that all games should do this, as it is quite a lot of work, but these are just some examples, many of which don’t require a lot of effort, that can make the experience on harder difficulties more meaningful and challenging in the good ways.

As always a point is made better with some examples. When I think of games with good uses of difficulty settings, I often think about Hitman: Blood Money, one of my favourite games of all time. As you increase the difficulty setting, enemies become smarter, you get less health, extra assistance is significantly reduced, evidence left behind damages your rating and, most importantly of all, players get a reduced limit to the amount of times they can save their game during a level, where the highest difficulty rating doesn’t allow saves at all. As I said, it’s all about context, and for a game that revolves around strategy, stealth, planning and careful execution, these changes significantly enhance the challenge and force players to think long and hard before making moves or taking risks, as well as makes the experience much more authentic if players are opting to get the highest ratings. You’ll be forced to change the way you think, constantly keep track of what you’ve done and what evidence you may have left behind earlier on in the level, and carefully go about your work as though its an art and you’re a perfectionist. In this way Blood Money really is one of the most awesome experiences for me.

Another game with excellent use of its difficulty settings is the RPG Dragon Age: Origins. Yes, yes, I may utterly despise Dragon Age 2 but I love the original game. Origins does it great because the game is already challenging on its own, but increasing the difficulty results in enemies becoming smarter and becoming harder to beat, traps doing more damage, players forced to carry less potions and, best of all, friendly fire becoming enabled. This means that you and your allies are able to harm each other with things like area of effect spells. This may seem small, but friendly fire being on dramatically changes the entire game and forces players to play so much more carefully, constantly be aware of ally positions and employ a lot more strategy in battles because things like using your area of effect spells can cause your party to separate and make you all vulnerable. It’s a perfect example of how one small change can create a much tougher and different experience for players. It’s so much more meaningful and challenging than simply weakening the player and strengthening the enemy.

For some final examples, I’ll point to the original Crysis. It may not be a grand example of using difficulty settings effectively, but it implements some nice tweaks that spice the game up. As you increase the difficulty, most forms of player assistance such as enemies being highlighted in the environment and grenade indicators fall away, but on the hardest difficulty, the Korean enemies you face stop speaking English and start speaking purely in Korean. It may not seem like it has that much of an impact on gameplay, but it’s a cool touch because firstly it makes the experience more authentic and secondly you won’t be able to pick up on enemy tactics unless you speak Korean, so you’ll need to become somewhat more adaptive. I remember always liking the difficulty options for the PS3′s Resistance 2, as the higher difficulties replaced weak enemies with stronger ones with more powerful weapons, changed the enemy count and spawn points and increased the strength of enemies.

And should I go into Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls? Should I? Maybe not. But I love them.

In conclusion, I could have made the point in a lot fewer words with a lot less examples, but I suppose I was in a ranting mood, especially at this moment in time where every word I type is further procrastination to studying for exams. However, this topic is so vast because it differs for each and every genre, and that’s why I chose to mainly focus on shooters, RPGs and action games because I find them to be most guilty of bad execution of difficulty settings. My main point is that difficulty settings need to be a lot more creative than simply weakening the player, upping the enemy count or increasing enemy damage. They need to be game changers. Naturally the context of the game is critical to determining how it can be manipulated with its difficulty, but I think it’s very important in design that the higher difficulties should strive to change the way gamers think about and play the game, and they should offer a different and more sophisticated experience. Let’s face it, when difficulty settings are implemented correctly, games can really shine in offering a rewarding challenge and completely changing the way the game is played and experienced, mostly for the better.

And what can I say, I do like a good challenge at the end of the day. That rhymed, it was unintentional.

Gifwil. Probably not that catchy, I’d say. So for future reference I’ll just abbreviate “Games for Windows Live” as “Gwaffle” for no apparent reason. It’s like waffle.

Anyway, Rockstar has confirmed via Twitter that the PC version of Max Payne 3 will not support Gwaffle.

The tweet simply stated: “No, Max Payne 3 for PC will not use Games for Windows Live.”

This isn’t a first for Rockstar, as the PC version of LA Noire, which released at the end of last year, also didn’t use it.

Max Payne 3 will be out on May 18 for PS3 and Xbox 360, and the PC version will be out on June 1. It won’t have Gwaffle.

Gwaffle. Gwaffle. Gwaffle.

Square Enix has revealed that the highly anticipated Hitman: Absolution will be released on November 20 this year, while the mini game and pre-order bonus Hitman: Sniper Challenge will be made available from May 15.

Interestingly, this announcement has come right after retailer speculation suggested that the game would be out in September.

The release date confirmation came with the official announcement of Sniper Challenge, which will be a standalone experience that is exclusive to those who pre-order the game.

“Agent 47 is the best in the business so it seemed appropriate to create the best pre-order reward possible for our fans,” said Jon Brooke, brand director of the Hitman franchise. “Hitman: Sniper Challenge is a way of thanking customers and giving them a taste of Agent 47′s skills from the moment they pre-order the game.”

Sniper Challenge will be unlocked on PSN and Xbox Live on May 15, but only on August 1 for Steam.

This has just made my entire gaming year. I can’t wait!

Half-Life fans are still anxiously waiting for news about Black Mesa, the independent remake of the original game in the series. While the game has mostly been in the dark, we last heard about it in February this year when news was let out that the project is still alive.

Interestingly enough, the game was meant to be released back in 2009, but the development team held it back, and now we’ve gotten an explanation as to why that happened.

Black Mesa’s Carlos Montero, in a recent interview with RockPaperShotgun, explained that while the team did their best to meet the deadline, and that they did actually have a working version of Black Mesa, a lot of shortcuts had to be taken in order to meet the deadline which compromised the end product’s quality. As a result, the team felt it was best to delay the project.

Montero said: “We were determined to make this release date come hell or high water, and we killed ourselves to do it. We were cutting corners everywhere, cutting chunks of maps out, rushing through everything, making rash decisions. Basically, we ended up going against all of our core values just to hit this deadline we had set for ourselves. It was harrowing, frustrating, and as we came to find out, ultimately futile.

“While we had something at the end of all of this, it still had huge missing chunks of the game and none of us were proud of it anymore. If anything, we were more disgusted with all of the shortcuts we had taken to get there, and all of the great ideas we had put aside to make it happen. We had a huge internal discussion in which we ultimately decided to break the news to the public and to re-focus and make something we could actually be proud of.”

This was one of the main reasons why the Black Mesa team became tight-lipped about the project. Montero explained that it was wrong of the team to hype up the gaming public when Black Mesa still had a long journey ahead of it.

“If I could go back in time and prevent us from releasing the media and hyping up the public the way that we did, I would. In the end, all of that hurt us more than helped us. It was our naive mistake to get the public that excited from the beginning, and it would have been unfair of us to keep them excited by continuing a long string of media and constant updates.

“There was a point where we realized we had a long road ahead, and we weren’t quite sure where the end was. It became clear to us that it would be better to stop whipping the public into a frenzy, stop getting them excited, and more or less allow them to forget about us for a bit while we figured out how to finish the game.”

However, despite this, it seems like more news is emerging about the project, and perhaps we’ll hear something positive about it sooner or later.

You can read the full interview over at RockPaperShotgun.

Unfortunately, fans are still waiting, seemingly endlessly, for a Hitman: Absolution release date to be announced.

Now, it look as though various online retailers decided to take it upon themselves to provide a release date for the game, pointing towards the month of September.

Retailers Zavvi and HotUKDeals have stuck a plausible September 17 release date onto the game, while ShopTo have it listed for September 24.

Hopefully this proves to be legit. Let’s pray we get a response from Square Enix and IO Interactive soon.

Paul Sage, the creative director for The Elder Scrolls Online, has recently told Game Informer that players will still get to experience individual heroism in the upcoming MMO, just like in the main series.

“You absolutely get that same experience of the world with that distraction-based gameplay where you really get to control your own destiny in how you experience the game,” said Sage. “I don’t think [being the hero] is much different in an MMO than it is in any other medium, really, any other typical RPG. I think this just gives us more opportunity to make you the hero.

“When I’m looking at the screen, when the NPCs see me, they see me as the hero, they react to me as the hero. When you’re playing with a group of friends, or even strangers, and you’re a healer, and you heal that guy that’s on his last leg, it sounds silly, but in a way you’re that person’s hero. I think that’s a big thing for people, it reinforces that social bond. You get to be a hero amongst your friends.”

When quizzed over fan reactions to the transition to an MMO, Sage said that it was important for the developers to make “a good game first” before anything else.

“We have to make our own game,” he said. “We want to make a good game first. Not a good MMO, not a good Elder Scrolls game, we want to make a good game first, a great experience for the player.”

You can watch the full interview on GameInformer.

LightBox Interactive has announced that all future DLC map packs for the PS3 exclusive multiplayer shooter, Starhawk, will be completely free. This is being done to avoid player division according to studio president Dylan Jobe.

“Whenever we release a map pack you won’t have to pay a friggin’ dime,” revealed Jobe.

“Madness!”, you may think, but there’s a reason behind it. “We really didn’t like how in Warhawk when we released a new map pack, it forced these divisions on our players,” explained Jobe. “And after we released three expansions, our player community was pretty fractured.”

Jobe also revealed a teaser image for Starhawk’s next map pack, which shows off the planet Cypress.

He commented that the map is “a lush, swampy world that’s home to an abandoned research facility that many years ago was responsible for researching the mysteries of Rift Energy.”

If you want to be technical, amongst the first things we heard about FIFA 13 was that the players would look more realistic, which is great news.

Now, at a recent London showcase, the game’s producer David Rutter spilled the beans on five major improvements that FIFA 13 will bring to the series. It’s not entirely clear whether they’re the only five, but it sounds like the gameplay will undergo significant change.

The changes are listed and detailed below.

First Touch Control
One of the first things to do at FIFA 13 was to implement a more realistic ball control. Now it will be more difficult to control a receiving ball with your player. It all depends on the strength, the speed, the ball height and the technical skills of your player to achieve the control of the ball and run with it.

Player Impact
Another feature that got improved is the player impact engine. There will be no more unrealistic animations in the players challenges!The engine has been optimized and new a set of impact values ​​has been added at the hip and the upper body area.

Complete Dribble
In FIFA 12 you could dribble just by changing direction,in FIFA 13 this won’t be possible anymore!

Tactical Free-Kicks
The free-kicks got a new free kick system. Up to three players can now gather around the ball and make fun of the opponent’s defense and goalie. You can now feint a direct shot and adjust it to a player who comes off the wall. Also the defense set pieces have been improved to go with the new free kick system. For example, you can make a defensive team with more players into the wall and send out a player to block the ball.

Attacking AI
The offensive Artificial Intelligence got a huge improvement. The CPU-controlled players got better running routes and better guessing options of where you pass the ball. Also the strikers are smarter and move with the offside line of your defenders, waiting to receive the ball and run with it towards your goal post.

David Rutter also revealed that FIFA 13 will bring in new features and upgrades such as new passing types, new shot rotation moves and new goalkeeper animations. Furthermore, the cheering and celebration animations have been adjusted to fit the current day football atmosphere. FIFA 13 will also work towards improving referees.

Sounds interesting.

Crytek’s Rasmus Højengaard has stepped up to reassure PC gamers that their version of Crysis 3 will include PC-specific graphics features.

Højengaard, when speaking to Spong, joked a little about Crysis’s PC journey, while talking up Crysis 3′s graphics.

“PC players, fundamentally only want Crysis to be on PC, right? And, you know, that’s kind of understandable when you consider how the original game – and even Crytek itself – started out,” he said.

“But, we’re definitely pushing this game a lot from a visual standpoint, and for sure there’s going to be visual goodies in it that you can only get if you have a super-high-end PC.

“At the same time, we want to ensure if you don’t have a super-high-end PC, the game will still look amazing. On top of that, we want to make sure the experience is not different from platform to platform.”

He didn’t specify what the unique graphical features for the PC version would be.

The newest issue of Game Informer features an interview with Final Fantasy Versus XIII director, Tetsuya Nomura, in which he discusses the latest Kingdom Hearts title for the Nintendo 3DS. Inevitably, questions about the state of Final Fantasy Versus XIII were raised.

The game was announced almost six years ago, and there’s still not much out on it at the moment. Maybe it’s trying to be the next Duke Nukem Forever.

Either way, Nomura had the following to say when asked about Versus XIII and if we’ll be hearing about it soon:

“We would like to ask for your patience on an official announcement for this title. It always takes time when tackling the challenge of doing something completely new, but we are doing our best to bring information to the fans as quickly as we can.

“Your patience is greatly appreciated.”

And the clock is still ticking.

I guess now we know why the world will end this year.

Amazon has revealed that day one pre-orders for Call of Duty: Black Ops II are not only ten times the pre-order numbers for the original Black Ops, but also 30 percent higher than Modern Warfare 3′s pre-order count.

Previously, it was Modern Warfare 3 that set the Amazon record for the most pre-ordered game of all-time. More than that, Modern Warfare 3 is among the top 20 pre-orders of all time for Amazon, and that’s not just among games. Now, it looks like Black Ops 2 might top that.

Have you seen the game’s first trailer? I will admit it’s hard to recognise Call of Duty in there, but gameplay will tell the full story. Apart from looking forward to the single-player, as I quite enjoyed the campaign in the original Black Ops, I’m not too excited for this.

Hi-Rez, the developers of Tribes: Ascend, has confirmed that there are currently no plans to bring their game to PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Todd Harris, the studio head, recently speaking with Gamasutra, revealed that despite the developer toying with the idea bringing the game to consoles, its business model took away hopes of a port.

“We do not have any plans for Tribes on console at this time,” said Harris. “The way it went is that we wanted to do the free-to-play model, and there wasn’t a clear path to that on consoles early on. Based on that, we optimized the game around the strengths of the PC, and specifically a keyboard and mouse control.”

“Once we decided it’d only be on the PC, we optimized around speed, a quick turn radius, and PC game controls. We’re still interested in free-to-play on consoles, but at this point, we have nothing specific to Tribes on console.”

Tribes is a free-to-player FPS that launched on PC just last month, gaining widespread critical acclaim and acquiring over 800,000 registered accounts.

“It’s really our belief that for an online multiplayer game, particularly, free-to-play is the best model for gamers and for studios.”

Ubisoft has let out a bunch of new concept art for the original Assassin’s Creed, dating back to November 2004, and showing off some of the early ideas the team had and played around with when inventing the franchise.

The art was produced by Khai Nguyen, and some of the more interesting images reveal that the team thought about co-op, a female assassin and a spin-off to Prince of Persia. The Assassin’s Creed Facebook page details a number of these images and tells us of their significance.

You can check out the full gallery below, and if you’re interested to find out more about some of the images be sure to head over to the game’s Facebook page.

David Jaffe, the charismatic game director of the original God of War, recently offered his thoughts on developer SCE Santa Monica Studios’ decision to bring multiplayer to the series for the first time with the newly announced God of War: Ascension. It’s a bold move, but only time will tell if it pays off.

Jaffe, when speaking about his general thoughts on the multiplayer, said: “I think the MP they showed for GOW looks fun. IDig putting class based FPS team design in a brawler. If it wrx it’ll play fresh. I get some peeps upset IF MP comes@expense of SP, but there’s no evidence of that so not sure why some peeps whining about it.”

When asked if he feels that budgets or effort for the single-player will be compromised by the inclusion of multiplayer, Jaffe responded by saying:

“Not saying UR wrong but a) no evidence of that at all and b) sad state of the industry(and the medium?) to assume more money to throw at a game is what makes it better.

“I’d rather have a 5 hour GOW that chose 5 hours because it allowed the game to stay fresh and be filled with meaningful storytelling-thru-gameplay moments than have a 12 hour game that is a simply filled with set piece after set piece. Would RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK or THE DARK KNIGHT be better with a longer running time or more pages? Would Tetris be better with five extra shapes?”

Jaffe also took the opportunity to issue a response to critics, saying:

“If the new GOW has a meh campaign there will- and should be- much anger. My point is: have faith in the team at least enough to give them the benefit of doubt until y’all see/play some SP. Dont you think this team has earned that?

“If a game let’s you down in anyway- and Lord knows the last TM let some folks down:(- the game makers deserve to be judged and their decisions scrutinized. But if a team feels they CAN do amazing MP and SP (aka Goldeneye, Modern Warfare) who cares if the motivation behind adding SP or MP was a business motivation The fact the game exists AT ALL is in large part a biz motivation.

“I’m not saying gamers should not be skeptical and not look4best deals4their hard earned cash. Just suggesting folks give it a chance before they jump all over one of the most talented teams in the ENTIRE GAME BIZ. Seems pretty arrogant/snobby 4gamers to act as if such a talented team- that has delivered4so long- hasn’t thought it thru. If they have not, read some reviews and then skip the game. But until that happens, I say they’ve earned our faith.”

If you haven’t already, take a look at the first gameplay footage for the game’s multiplayer.

Interim DICE CEO and Battlefield 3 executive producer Patrick Bach has thrown his penny into the debate pot regarding the rumours suggesting that the next-gen consoles will kill off used, or secondhand, gaming. This is currently quite a hot topic in the industry, as you might have guessed.

“Yeah, I heard about that. I think that can be a win and a loss,” he said to CVG at a recent EA event. “I think it’s a loss if it only means that you will be able to get fewer games for the same money. But in theory you could see it the other way, because a lot of companies making games today are struggling based on second-hand sales.”

Bach went on to suggest that while passionate gamers could potentially spend more cash on games, the removal of the second-hand market may possibly lead to a more diverse range of titles, as in there could be more new IPs.

“So if you think that there are too few new IPs on the market, no one can take that risk if their game is at risk of being resold too many times. Therefore you see a lot of online games being the most popular. You mentioned that you feel like a lot of [online shooters] have the same formula and this is one of the reasons, which most people seem to not realise.

“So on the positive side you could see more games being created because of this, and also more new IPs, because there’d be a bigger market for games that don’t have for instance multiplayer. There could be awesome single player-only games, which you can’t really do these days because people just pirate them, which is sad.

“From a gamer perspective, if you want to buy as many games as possible then this could be a problem, but if you want more diverse games then it’s a more positive thing than negative. The only thing I know is that people are not doing it to be evil and stupid, it’s about trying to create some benefits for consumers.”

Well it’s not much of an opinion, but it’s far better than the opinion of Crytek’s lead developer, who claimed it would be “absolutely awesome”, and then later went on to put out fires by saying he wasn’t being serious or something.

Activision’s official Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 website has gone live, and it’s confirmed new information for those interested in this title. I will resist the urge to use a troll face.

The site confirms Black Ops 2′s official box art, as well as that, as expected, the game will be out on November 13 for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

The pre-order page reveals: “Pushing the boundaries of what fans have come to expect from the record-setting entertainment franchise, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 propels players into a near future, 21st Century Cold War, where technology and weapons have converged to create a new generation of warfare.”

And that’s all folks.

The release dates for the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection Vita version have been confirmed by Konami.

Initially only the Japan release date was set for June, while Europe simply had a “summer” ETA slapped on it.

However, it turns out that the game will also be out in June in North America and Europe. To be specific, the former will see the game released on June 12, and the latter, which includes us, will get the game on June 29.

The Metal Gear Solid HD Collection includes high-definition remakes of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, as well as an improved version of Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker.

April was a great gaming month with many fantastic highlights, including games like Angry Birds Space, FEZ, Journey, Silent Hill: Downpour, Catherine and Twisted Metal. The only game we’re missing a review of is Prototype 2, but hopefully that will be out soon. Well, it’s May now and new games await, so you know what to do! Check out the list down below and plan your gaming budget.

Note: The games listed here are not all games being released in May, but rather the more noticeable ones.

May 2012’s Game List

Index

• Diablo III
• DiRT: Showdown
• Dragon’s Dogma
• Game of Thrones
• Max Payne 3
• Mortal Kombat (Vita)
• Resistance: Burning Skies
• Sniper Elite V2
• Sorcery
• Starhawk
• Street Fighter X Tekken (PC Version)
• Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier

Browse through the pages below to see all of the games and their information in detail, or simply click the name of the game above to be taken straight to that specific game’s page.

Sony has released the first God of War: Ascension gameplay details ahead of the live web stream happening later this afternoon, which will officially showcase the game.

It was confirmed by USA Today that the game, currently in development over at Sony Santa Monica Studios, will introduce multiplayer to the series for the very first time.

“Playable by up to eight players, the game’s multiplayer version lets two teams compete, domination style, against each other, but then must ultimately defeat a large God of War-worthy boss for victory,” USA Today explains.

“In the level shown, a gigantic one-cyclops Polythemus pounded and railed over the multileveled map. The camera zoomed in on individual visceral battles. In one, two warriors who look like cousins of Kratos disembowel an enemy and his innards flow out. Later, one combatant cleaves an opponent in half from head to thorax.

“Eventually, the dominating team turns their attention to the Cyclops, attach some chains to restrain it and one leaps to put out its eye. ‘The whole idea behind it is that we want to bring the big moments to multiplayer,’ Papy said after the demonstration.”

The game will be released exclusively on PS3 in Spring 2013. An exact date hasn’t been confirmed.

Remember Rasmus Højengaard, the creative director at Crytek, saying that it would be “absolutely awesome” from a business perspective if the system of blocking secondhand games was put into place?

Well, now he has gone against those statements, by coming out to claim:

“My comment made in the interview released on the 24th of April, touching upon ‘blocking sales of used games’, was not intended to be taken seriously nor representative of the opinion of Crytek.”

Oh that’s so cute, Hojengaard. But we’re all adults here, and we know this is just damage control after the anger you caused online over your stupid comments.

After attending the Cape Town Prototype 2 launch event this past Thursday night, and getting to play the game, I stumbled once again upon one of the things that I can’t stand in modern gaming. Tutorials. Now, I had a great deal of fun playing Prototype 2, but that was only after the first twenty or so minutes when the game finally stopped with the introductory tutorials. But this isn’t about Prototype 2, it’s about games in general because almost all of them are guilty of this evil which threatens to destroy the IQ of the entire universe. No really, I’m quite serious. Tutorials are the reason I’m bored at the beginning of a lot of games rather than excited, they’re the reason I can’t enjoy the freedom to experiment and learn the game in the beginning, they’re the reason why certain interesting mechanics become redundant at the start of a game, and they’re probably the reason why KFC cancelled the Double Crunch.

I’m deadly serious, so let me head into this column and discuss why tutorials need to be destroyed.

In today’s gaming, one of the things that annoys me the most is how serious developers take the idea of “making things accessible to newcomers”, so much so that I feel certain games actually undermine my intelligence, and in many ways their own logic. The worst of it occurs in sequels. Let’s take Prototype 2 for example. Chances are that you would be playing it since you’re a fan of the original game. So why then, does the game open with a twenty minute introduction teaching you the very same mechanics you spent the entirety of the first game using? Let’s look at Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, since the screenshot above is from that game. It’s the fourth game in the series, but it opens by showing you how to move, use the camera and climb walls, and how to perform basic combat. Really now, if you haven’t played the first three games in the series, what on earth would you be doing playing Revelations? I’m completely fine with in-game help and the option to take tutorials, but I hate it when they’re forced onto players who are completely familiar with the game they’re playing.

The idea of these compulsory tutorials is completely contradictory to getting fans hooked onto a game, and selling a game to you. What exactly am I talking about? Well, in today’s world, games go to such incredible lengths to market themselves to gamers, yet it makes no sense to me why those same games do not try and sell themselves to gamers during the early hours of the game. There’s an almost obsessive tendency for sequels to start right at square one, which may work nicely for newcomers, but it doesn’t help people like me who want to get immersed straight away and immediately discover, or rediscover, why we’re playing the game in the first place. For example, the ideal and best way to start a sequel for me would be the way God of War III began, where the game basically said, “Right bitch, you’ve played the first two, and you know what it has been building up to. So man up and go kill this giant water God.” I was completely sold in the opening sequence, and my excitement levels were sky high as the game incredibly set the stage for an epic scale boss fight as your first welcome to the game. Now that’s awesome. However, regarding any game, that is not a sequel, an example of what I consider a great start is incidentally the opening sequence of the original Prototype. You were thrown straight into a massive battle between the military and the infected monsters, your character was powered up and you were free to raise hell and enjoy what the game did best for a short while.

Let me give you the following analogy to illustrate my main point. Take a look at the immensely popular and incredibly awesome movies, Batman Begins and its sequel The Dark Knight. The former slowly introduced you to the character of Bruce Wayne, took you right to Batman’s origins, showed you how he grew up to become the caped crusader, and painted a clear picture of what motivated and drove the character. And that’s all great, and thoroughly entertaining and immersive the first time around. But then The Dark Knight came along, and rightfully took for granted that you had watched the first one, so it threw you straight into the mix, assuming that you were fully equipped with the necessary knowledge to go into the movie, and it immersed you straight away into the new world, fully taking advantage of its new toys and creative freedom. Now, let’s take a look at the flip side. Imagine that The Dark Knight had started out with twenty minutes of recapping, showing flashbacks of the first movie to enlighten you on what’s going on. I can’t say I would have enjoyed that, personally. I think my excitement levels would have plunged down to a level of mellow or even below. Look, I know games and movies are very different ball games, but it’s the principle of the idea of “slow-walking” that I’m trying to make clear.

That’s about the gist of what was on my mind since the Prototype 2 launch event. I really dream of a world where tutorials aren’t compulsory monsters that slow-walk you through the opening sequences of games, exhausting cool mechanics you’d much rather want to experiment with for yourself and making you perform boring, lifeless tasks multiple times as though you’re incompetent. I think most gamers would much rather have their game start off with a bang, or have the tutorial feature as either an optional thing on the side that is integrated into the game seamlessly. A great example of this, off the top of my head, was in last year’s Deus Ex: Human Revolution, where tutorials were entirely optional and popped up on the screen at set points in the game, prompting you whether or not you’d like to view a short video tutorial to explain one of the game’s mechanics. They didn’t interrupt gameplay, as they rather nicely chose to appear in the corner of the screen, and you could either ignore them completely, or view them, and that’s what I loved about the game. It didn’t assume you were a child incapable of figuring things out on your own. It allowed you the freedom to play the game and learn for yourself.

That’s what I would like to see more of. It may seem like a minor issue to many, but for me mundane and compulsory tutorials take away a lot of the initial excitement I have for a game. A lot of the initial magic for me in a game is in figuring out how things work and learning for myself how to play, and what I can and can’t do. I love that aspect – the freedom to explore the game’s mechanics and test them for myself. But compulsory tutorials take that element away, forcing me to do things in one way and one way only, reducing the magic, treating me like I’m incompetent and taking me out of the experience. When I play a game, I want to be sold within the first hour or two at most. I want to know that I’m playing this for a good reason. And when I head into any sequel, I should be made to feel as though I’m already prepared to jump in and take on a new experience in a familiar world. That’s what I want.

That doesn’t mean that I always want to be thrown into the deep end. It just means that I don’t want to feel so restricted at the beginning of a game, and I want to have my own experience.

It just means that I want compulsory, boring tutorials to die. Painfully.

Welcome to the fifth entry in our Hall of Fame feature, where we’ll be revisiting arguably what is one of video game history’s greatest ever adaptions of Star Wars, and one of the best examples of a proper licensed game. In actual fact, many gamers would even consider this to be one of the best role-playing games ever made. It was a BioWare production, interestingly enough, back in the days where they made extremely awesome role-playing games and weren’t finding themselves at the centre of massive controversy. But let’s not talk about that. We’re here for a game that many will fondly remember for being one of the best reasons to love Star Wars back in the day. And that’s no exaggeration.

That’s right. We’re bringing the nostalgia, along with history’s greatest gaming legends.

Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic

Star Wars Knights Of The Old Republic: one of the greatest adaptions of Star Wars in video game history

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is a role-playing game that was released on Xbox on September 12, 2003 and on PC on December 5 in the same year. Developed by BioWare and published by LucasArts, it was designed to be a breath of fresh air for the Star Wars universe, one that wasn’t directly involved with the movies. But the game had a rather interesting journey leading up to its release. The title was first announced in July 2000, where BioWare revealed that they were working together with LucasArts in order to create a Star Wars RPG for the PC and next-generation consoles. At the time, joint BioWare CEO and co-founder Greg Zeschuk described their excitement about the game, saying “The opportunity to create a richly detailed new chapter in the Star Wars universe is incredibly exciting for us. We are honored to be working with the extremely talented folks at Lucas Arts, developing a role-playing game based upon one of the most high-profile licenses in the world.”

However it wasn’t until E3 in 2001 that the game was officially revealed as Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and it was discovered that the game had been in development for around six months. LucasArts’ Mike Gallo commented on the game’s development, saying “Preproduction started in 2000, but the discussions started back in 1999. The first actual e-mails were in October or November of ’99. That’s when we first started talking to BioWare. But some really serious work finally started at the beginning of 2000.” One of the most interesting aspects about the project was from early details released on the game which revealed that it was to be set four thousand years before the events of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, which at the time boosted the revival of the Star Wars franchise as it had returned to the big screen to widespread audience success, and a sequel to the movie was already in the works. According to BioWare CEO Raymond Muzyka, LucasArts gave them a choice of possible settings for the game. “LucasArts came to us and said that we could do an Episode II game,” Muzyka said. “Or LucasArts said we could go 4,000 years back, which is a period that’s hardly been covered before.” In the end, BioWare chose the latter, to set the game before the movies so as to have a greater amount of creative freedom. BioWare wanted to create something fans of the movies could feel at home with, but ensure that it was different enough to effectively fit in before the movies.

It was soon confirmed that the game was in development for PC and Xbox, with the latter being chosen over other consoles due to BioWare’s familiarity with it, especially in the role-playing department. However, Hudson spoke of the challenges that came about during development, such as the decision on how much graphical detail needed to be put in. He commented, “Since our games generally have a lot of AI and scripting, numerous character models, and huge environments, we stress the hardware in a very different way than most games. This made it difficult to predict how well the game would run.” The game used the Odyssey Engine, which was based on the Aurora Engine (used in Neverwinter Nights) but redesigned for Knights of the Old Republic. The game was graphically impressive for its time, and highly detailed. Hudson spoke about the modifications to the graphics that needed to be made for the PC and Xbox. “You typically play console games on a TV across the room while PC games are played on a monitor only inches away.” As such, console games focus more on close-up action and overall render quality, while PC games are more for high resolutions and sharper textures.

BioWare developed the main game, its engine and the story, while LucasArt handled the audio. To illustrate how big the project was, it was confirmed that the game had three hundred different characters and fifteen thousand lines of dialogue. And at the time, it really showed, because when the game released players found that its story was extremely compelling, and packed with characters to interact and have lengthy, multi-layered conversations with. The game allowed players to decide, progressively with all minor and major choices, whether they wished to walk the path of the light, stay neutral or give in to the dark side. Depending which side you went, your character’s appearance and move set would be totally different. What may now seem relatively simple in today’s times, was a gem all those years ago, adding a lot more depth to the experience. As was previously mentioned, the game takes place 4000 years before the first movie, where Darth Malak, a Sith lord and former apprentice of the legendary Darth Revan, has launched a full-scale Sith attack against the Republic. The Jedi are scattered and vulnerable, and many have turned to the dark side or fell. Your character, of which you can be male or female, wakes up onboard a Republic ship that is under attack by Malak’s army, having no memory of his or her past. With some help, you manage to escape, but it’s only the beginning as you’ll need to recover your past and rise to power in order to return order to the galaxy.

The gameplay was a lot deeper than one would have expected for a Star Wars game. In the beginning you chose one of three classes during the character customisation process. Later on you get to choose Jedi subclasses. But it’s up to you to dress your character up by building your stats, tiered feats (much like perks) and abilities, and later on tiered Force powers, either light or dark. As you levelled up, you gained skill points to spend on stats, and got to choose new feats. The combat system worked in real time, but with a bunch of twists that made it both deep and tactical. However, despite its complexity, players could get to grips with it fairly easily, but being effective in building your character took a bit of learning. Typically, you used either swords or blaster rifles in combat, with lightsabers only usable by Jedi’s and coming in later in the story. You could fight one-handed, duel wield or use a double-edged blade, all with their own advantages and disadvantages. If you want a more modern example of how combat played out, relations can be drawn to Dragon Age: Origins. Players moved in real-time, strategically planning usage of attacks, skills and items, and were able to pause the game at any time during combat to get sorted out. It was an awesome system that was both challenging and rewarding, with the force powers being used in fantastic ways, and with there being a clear differentiation between light and dark. For example, dark side players could use force powers like lightning and drain life, while Jedi could heal and safeguard themselves and their allies against threats.

But one of the best and most valuable features of the game was the party system. For most of the game, you could take two companions with you when exploring the vast planets you were freely allowed to visit, leaving the rest behind in your ship. Players could manually control party members at any time, simply switching to them if their abilities are needed, or if a change is wanted. Party members actively engaged in conversation with each other or the player, and sometimes participated in conversations with NPCs, or reacted to a decision you made, whether they’re for or against it. However, the best thing about the party characters in the game was that you, as the player, were able to shape them. You were able to greatly change them over the course of the story, shifting them between dark and light depending on your influence and your actions, and some relationships could end in joy or misery depending on how far you go. The game had a bright and intriguing cast of characters who really got you invested into the experience, and this, coupled together with the choice between dark and light and your playstyle, gave the game a great sense of re-playability, especially with regards to story. And the story was incredible, especially that insane plot twist towards the end that I won’t divulge.

Knights of the Old Republic was just a phenomenal experience. It used the Star Wars universe in a fantastic and unique way, provided players with deep and challenging combat, and delivered a compelling narrative with powerful characters. The game rightfully picked up many awards after its release, including achieving Best PC Game, Best Story and overall Game of the Year awards, among many others, from many different sources such as IGN and PC Gamer. It also received universal critical acclaim, scoring 93 percent on Metacritic with a user score of 8.9, which is a staggering achievement. It’s still widely considered today to be one of the greatest Star Wars projects of all time, and one of the best role-playing games around. I would certainly agree with that, because if I didn’t play it about five times after its release I probably would go back and play it again today without hesitation.

Naturally its staggering success meant that a sequel was on the cards, and that’s exactly what we got, with a few catches. But please, if you haven’t played this game yet, there’s no excuse as it was released on Steam in 2009, and the Mac App store in 2011, so get it and play it as soon as you can. You really don’t need to be a Star Wars fanatic to love this – just a fan of great RPGs.

Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic II:

The Sith Lords

Star Wars Knights Of The Old Republic II: The Sith Lords took a few stumbles, but it was a brilliant game.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords was definitely a game that everyone who loved the first wanted to see, but it didn’t come without its own share of controversy. The first was its short and rushed development cycle. While the original game was three years in the making, and saw release towards the end of 2003, KOTOR II was released in February of 2005, which meant that it just about enjoyed a year of development. Clearly a year is worrying for the sequel to a game of KOTOR’s massive success. And on top of that, the warning bells were sounding when it was revealed that BioWare would not be developing the game, but rather Obsidian Entertainment. This was because the chaps at BioWare were off developing Jade Empire at the time, and had begun focusing on their own intellectual properties, so they suggested Obsidian due to being familiar with their past work.

However, despite the issues surrounding the game, fans were hoping for the best and undoubtedly ready to go for round two after the success of the original game. KOTOR II was set five years after the events of the original, where the Jedi have almost been completely eradicated by the Sith. Once again the player had a choice between creating a male or female character, but either way the player was a former Jedi Knight exiled from the Order. When awakened on a ship by a mysterious woman called Kreia, who serves as your mentor in the game, the player is thrust back into the conflict in which he or she must restore a connection to the Force and take the fight back to the Sith. Players were again allowed to choose between the light or dark side of the Force, through their actions in the game, and travelled from planet to planet in search of help and to either aid or damage the Republic’s mission to restore peace and stability to the galaxy. Characterisation and story were once again massively important elements and fortunately the game was so great in these aspects that even though it didn’t undergo dramatic change compared to the original and suffered technically, it was still a fantastic experience that did more than enough to justify playing it. Fans weren’t going to miss out in any case.

It was a shame that such a black cloud hung over the game, because despite all odds it still turned out amazing. It wasn’t perfect, mind you, and it may not have reached the heights of its predecessor, but it was still an awesome and compelling experience nonetheless. Its main drawbacks weren’t from the core experience, which was great, but rather from its unfortunate bugs and unpolished areas, which strongly gave the impression that it was incomplete. The game was created using an updated version of the Odyssey engine that powered the first game, and BioWare gave technical assistance to Obsidian during KOTOR II’s development, but naturally the development period was too short to make it perfect or all that it could have been. The effects of the unfortunate development time were confirmed by the game’s producer, Chris Avellone, in an interview after its launch, in which he stated that he wished “there had been more time” to make the game, because the rush had resulted in a large amount of content being cut from the game, such as a droid factory, a whole planet and various other locations. Thankfully, the game received four patches to improve its quality and fix gameplay issues. And still, it was really well received by fans and critics, achieving a rating of 85 on Metacritic and getting praise for its story and characters. It didn’t quite outdo its predecessor, but it definitely was a worthy sequel.

However, did its success mean that there would be a third entry in the series? Fans definitely wouldn’t have minded that after the first two games, and the team behind the game were quite keen for another. And that’s what we ended up getting. Just in a way that no one would have expected at the time. And the path leading to it was one filled with tragedy for fans. I’m quite serious, so let’s take a look.

Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic III

It's funny how things turn out sometimes...

Before you have a panic attack, yes I’m well aware that there was never a Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic III, but there was a rather tragic story behind it. Interestingly enough it did eventually turn into something though. But it all started in 2003 when LucasArts cancelled their console MMOG project, Proteus, during its early design phase. After its cancellation, the project’s team went on to develop KOTOR 3, bringing some elements of Proteus’ designs to the third installment of the highly successful series. However, in what came as terrible news to fans, KOTOR 3 ended up being cancelled because of cuts beginning in 2004 that were made to position LucasArts for future success. What made the news so much more difficult to take was that, according to game designer John Stafford, the development team had “wrote a story, designed most of the environments/worlds, and many of the quests, characters, and items” for KOTOR 3 before its cancellation. In the end all we got to see of it was concept art that was published in the 2008 book Rogue Leaders: The Story of LucasArts.

Can you guess what KOTOR 3 eventually turned into? Well, if you guessed Star Wars: The Old Republic, the 2012 MMORPG, then you’d have been right. But how did that happen? Well, all the way back in July of 2008, during the year’s E3 press conference, Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello confirmed that a Knights of the Old Republic MMORPG was in the works. But in October in that same year, LucasArts and BioWare invited the press to the official unveiling of their next game, saying “BioWare and LucasArts invite you to attend the official unveiling of the game that has been rumored about for years.” This naturally prompted widespread rumours that it was either to do with KOTOR III or the rumoured Old Republic MMO, but towards the end of the month, at the invitation-only press event, BioWare and LucasArts confirmed that their next project was the MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic, which would be set 300 years after the first two games in the series, depicting new rising conflicts between the Jedi and Sith. As for the rest, that’s all in the present, so there’s nothing more to say.

But in the end all that really matters here is that the original two entries in the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic series were incredible role-playing games that deserve to still be remembered today. They were just amazing experiences, and any Star Wars fan who loved them would be unlikely to ever forget them. I know I won’t. Both games together undoubtedly deserve a spot on our Hall of Fame.

Keep an eye out for the next entry in our Hall of Fame then, meatbags. Sorry, inside joke.

There may never have been a third game, but the first two were legendary enough.

The latest weapons trailer for Max Payne 3 shows off the 1911 semi-automatic pistol, and just like the previous trailers it’s really short. But I guess all you really need to see, as the game draws closer to its May 18 release date, is some old school action. And Mr Payne sure does love his pistols.

Check it out above.

According to the creative directors of Dishonored, who recently had a chat with VG247, the game will have enough content to allow players to shape their own unique experiences based on how they choose to play it.

Raf Colantonio, the co-creative director, told Sam Clay at a viewing event last week for the game that even though the main storyline will remain identical for all players, the “minute-to-minute story” promises to provide something different for each player, depending on how they play.

“I think every playthrough will be a little different, yes,” said Colantonio.

“It’s not that every playthrough will have a different story, it’s that every playthrough will have its own minute-to-minute story. The overarching story is gonna be kind of the same for everybody: the different endings and different flavours now and then.

“What matters again is as a player, I feel like I own the experience. I feel like, ‘wow, the system responded to what I wanted to do and it was kinda cool’.”

Colantonio’s partner in creative crime, Harvey Smith, known around the industry for his work on Deus Ex and Thief, made similar statements.

“Different people are gonna purchase the game different ways,” said Smith.

“Some people are just gonna race and bash their way through. And that works, that’s fine. And other people are going to take their time, play creatively and experiment like that. And we’re okay with both approaches.”

Dishonored will release on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 somewhere in 2012, but since the date hasn’t even been narrowed down yet, my guess is that it will be delayed to early 2013.

Be sure to watch the exciting debut cinematic trailer if you haven’t already.

Konami has announced it is currently working on patches for both Silent Hill: Downpour and the Silent Hill HD Collection on Xbox and PS3. No release date was given.

“Understanding the issues some users are experiencing, development teams are currently creating online patches for both games, which will fix the frame rate issues, the audio-synching in Silent Hill HD Collection, and the Auto-Save issues in Silent Hill Downpour,” said Konami.

While there isn’t an exact date yet, the developer did say that the patches will arrive “in the coming weeks”.

Irrational Game’s Ken Levine recently spoke with Penny Arcade Report about his thoughts regarding the amount of publicity that games receive in comparison to other forms of media, claiming that games’ share of the limelight is still relatively small. Levine believes that its key for people to know what a game is actually about before telling them to spend hard-earned cash.

“Compare how games are marketed versus movies. Look at the Hunger Games, a big movie,” said Levine. “And BioShock Infinite, a big game release. Or Call of Duty, look at the extreme examples. How many impressions do you think a Hunger Games gets on the average person versus Call of Duty? How many opportunities are there to tell people about this cool thing?

“We’re not covered in the New York Times in a major way, the way a movie would be. We’re not on the cover of Entertainment Weekly. People overestimate how exposed games are, in comparison to other forms of media. There are maybe a million hardcore games, and Call of Duty is going to sell 25 million copies. You either find ways to reach the other [24 million] in ways you can’t normally, or repeat the imagery enough that when they go to IGN they might come across it.

“We’re asking them to spend a lot of money: $60. That’s a lot of money. It’s our responsibility to give them the information they need to make the purchasing decision. But at the end of the day, the last person you should listening to about making a buying decision about BioShock Infinite is Ken Levine. I’m biased.”

However, Levine thinks that deciding when and how much to market a game is a balancing act. He specifically referenced BioShock Infinite, seeing as how it’s his current project, and revealed that if he had been in charge of the PR work for the game, he would only have announced it later on its development period so that the game would not be exposed too much before launch. But because there always existed the threat of a leak, or rather in today’s time is was practically inevitable that one would happen, it was decided that the game had to be revealed earlier than Levine would have liked.

“We probably would have announced it later, but we were worried about it leaking,” he said. “We had a nice unintentional head fake, everyone thought we were working on this X-Com game, but we weren’t. It wasn’t what people expected. Without our presentation, people would have gotten the wrong message about [BioShock Infinite], it would have been confusing.”

“I would have announced it significantly later if I wasn’t worried about that,” Levine added. “We had this external factor.”

Crytek recently chatted with Gamerzines, revealing its ambition to create “the best-looking game that’s ever been made” with Crysis 3, and the studio believes that it’s “well on the way” to achieving that goal.

Talk about setting the bar high. Although colour me skeptical of Crysis 3′s gameplay after Crysis 2.

“It’s really important for us to underline that [Crysis 3] is not only about the technology, but about the setting and the mood,” said Rasmus Højengaard, Crytek’s creative director.

“The thing is, the quality of the artwork here is not so much about the tech as the quality of the actual art, and that’s really good because it’s easier to translate onto lesser-powerful hardware platforms. The difficult thing to translate is the tech, and we want to make sure that not only do we push the technology, we also the push the quality of the artwork, the mood and the sense of a living breathing environment.

“The visuals need to be amazing even if they don’t have the tech,” he continued. “We’re just going for making the best looking game that’s ever been made, basically, and I think we’re well on the way.”

Once again Crytek will be using its own in-house engine, the CryEngine, to power the game, as it did with the previous games in the series. According to the developer, Crysis 3 is being developed utilising an ‘enhanced’ version of CryEngine 3.

However, the tricky part is that the industry expects spring 2013 to be when the next-generation consoles will be revealed, and it then becomes questionable whether Crysis 3 may be overshadowed by the revelation of next-gen technology. But Højengaard is confident that this won’t be an issue.

“God of War [2] had big success doing this where it launched late in the console cycle,” he continued.

“I think if a game is amazing enough and if there’s no availability of other consoles, then people will buy it anyway. Whether it’s going to be a swansong or a benchmark of what was possible on those consoles, we can’t really tell until we’re at that point. If it becomes that, that’s great!”

Højengaard believes that Crytek’s confidence in its technology is so high that the studio has developed “almost arrogant perceptions to game design,” demonstrating this by adding random items into its game worlds hoping that players “might see it”.

“We had all these random animals walking around [in Crysis 1] and all that kind of stuff. That kind of headspace where you have almost arrogant perceptions to game design: ‘I’m going to put a frog here just because you might see it’. We now have little critters jumping around Manhattan [in Crysis 3].”

That last part is pretty cool. I remember getting eaten by a shark in the original Crysis because I swam out too far and too deep. It was scary as hell but pretty awesome. I didn’t find anything enjoyable like that in Crysis 2, so I really hope Crysis 3 brings back the magic from the original game, in all areas.

Be sure to check out the debut gameplay trailer if you haven’t already.

Stellar Impact is an online-only strategy game that emulates, but greatly deviates from, traditional DotA-style gameplay, taking place in a sci-fi universe and focusing on space naval combat and micro-management. It treads a fine line between classic real-time strategy and multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) games. It’s the first title developed by Tindalos Interactive, and while it’s a pretty solid attempt at creating something new in the genre, it faces a fair set of problems that prove to be extremely difficult to overcome. The main issue is that it suffers in the face of its incredibly strong competition, with games like DOTA 2 and League of Legends on offer at zero cost. As such, Stellar Impact has to sell itself on its unique space navy combat, and if you’re someone interested in this concept or looking for something new in the genre then this just may be a good choice. It definitely shows promise.

The game caters for up to 12 players, and offers two gameplay modes, namely Conquest and Battlefield. The former is similar to traditional DotA, in that you have to destroy your opponent’s base that is safeguarded by turrets, your enemy players and mini attack squadrons that spawn at set intervals, much like DotA’s creeps. However, the twist is that firstly you’re able to buy up to three mini fleets to follow you and help you in combat, ranging from armoured tanks to assault squads, provided you have the cash for it. Secondly, you’ll need to work with your team to capture objectives on the map that all grant different bonuses that are important to winning a match. If you want something more action orientated, then Battlefield would be your mode, as you basically have to eliminate all enemy players or defend a central objective for 120 seconds, and be the first team to win all three rounds.

Aside from a tutorial that covers the basics, Stellar Impact is quite happy to throw its players into the deep end, and even when you feel like you’ve got it you’ll still have to learn the hard way online, as you suffer at the hands of stronger and more experienced players. The core reasons for this is that firstly the game doesn’t really have a matchmaking system, so you’ll need to make sure you’re playing with lower ranked players if you want to have a chance at fun, and secondly, in addition to in-game ship upgrades that disappear after each round, as is the standard, there are also permanent upgrades in the form of equipment that is awarded at the end of each round. This means that the more games you play, the stronger you’ll get, which doesn’t make things easy for newcomers, as it’s unlikely that you’ll be starting on an even playing field with the rest when starting up a game. To put this into perspective, I had to learn the hard way as I suffered four straight defeats when I first started playing, making barely any contribution to my team due to my lack of experience and power. However, the upside to this system is that things inevitably get better, and you’ll appreciate it more once you’re past the bad times.

The great thing about Stellar Impact is that its gameplay is simple to grasp, yet it’s a surprisingly deep game that’s difficult to be good at, as it requires a wide-range of player tactics and micro-management. It may prove daunting in the start, but the reward is in reaching a point where you finally become a force to be reckoned with. There are 5 starting classes in the game, defined by the ship you pick, of which you have the choice of Destroyer, Cruiser, Dreadnought, Corvette or Frigate. Unfortunately, to get the Support, Carrier and Artillery classes you’ll need to pay. Each class is distinctive in its attributes and value to the team, and have a large number of special abilities of which you can equip four at a time before starting a match. It’s really awesome to have so much customisability in how you want to play, whether you want to be tank, full on assault, a survivalist or a balance between attack and defense and more. Creep abilities and ship attributes are levelled up in-game using command points earned by killing enemies, capturing objectives, and gradually over time, lasting for the duration of the round. Your ship’s four primary abilities are levelled up using your limited number of skill points available per round, as you reach new tier levels as indicated by the bar at the top of the screen.

Players control their ship by using a right-click to set its direction, and pressing W to move forward. Hitting W again will increase throttle speed, while the S key is used to slow down or completely stop. Left-clicking targets an area or enemy ships, and the space bar fires off your weapons. Your ship’s abilities are mapped to the number keys as is the standard in a game like this. At a glance it seems simple enough, but it’s actually very difficult to effectively maneuver your ship in the thick of battle, so much so that it can often become frustrating to play well, especially when you have to avoid the number of environmental hazards floating around. These come in the form of floating asteroids, which are lethal upon impact, dust clouds which continuously deal damage to you, plasma fields that drastically slow down your movement speed, solar flares that pull you in and deal significant damage to your shields, and gas clouds that render you invisible to the opposition unless they have a scanner or come into contact with you. It’s of critical importance to learn how to micro-manage your ship and its weapons.

These elements add a great sense of skill and tactics to the game, and it becomes rewarding when you eventually learn how to play. The best parts of the game are in customising your ship, selecting the right skills and upgrades and planning your moves carefully in order to best your opponents. Once things are rolling in first gear Stellar Impact really becomes a gem of an indie game, and admittedly I really started to enjoy the game only once I became competent at it and felt like I could make some kind of impact on the game. It’s incredibly satisfying to destroy your first enemy, let me tell you that much. Depending on the game mode you choose and the number of players, matches can last anything from fifteen minutes to an hour, although the upside is that if you’re blatantly losing with no chance of recovery, your team can vote to surrender so as to prevent opposing players from deliberately delaying the inevitable and wasting your time. Of course it can happen that players surrender prematurely, but you end up getting a win so it evens out. Furthermore, it’s pleasing to see that Stellar Impact tracks quitters by showing the percentage of games they’ve abandoned whenever they join a game, so you’ll be fully aware of the risks you’re taking if one of those players happens to end up on your team.

The game looks pretty decent visually, and it’s not overly busy. Maps are nicely detailed and quite dynamic, offering a playing field that’s diverse, easy on the eye and charming. The only problem I had really was with the User Interface, which isn’t the prettiest or most intuitive of interfaces. It takes a while to get used to it and to learn how to properly manage your upgrades and resources. It could do with an improvement, but it’s not exactly unusable by any means. With regards to audio, it would have been nice to have a wider-range of background music on offer, but your own music can always fix that. The sound effects are pretty good though, which makes the experience more enjoyable. Stellar Impact is a breeze to play in terms of its functionality, as it loads really quickly, there is minimal delay online and overall it’s just a very comfortable experience. I had no problems finding games, navigating the menus or learning how things work, but in fairness it does take a fair amount of time to learn how to play.

In the end, Stellar Impact is a really fun and surprisingly deep game that delivers a pretty good tactical experience. Unfortunately, it will most likely fly under the radar for most players due to its stronger competition. To reiterate, despite this being a gem of an indie game, it’s quite difficult to recommend Stellar Impact, even for its entry price of $10, when there are a number of great alternatives in the same genre, namely DOTA 2 and League of Legends, both of which are completely free to play. Your desire to play this can only be influenced by how much the sci-fi concept appeals to you. But either way, if you’re looking for something different in this genre, then this would be a good choice.

After the recent global rage-induced season of controversy surrounding the ending of Mass Effect 3, I started to think about game endings in general and decided to ask readers about this in this week’s Question of the Week. That is, what would be the worst game ending you’ve ever experienced?

Typically, a game’s ending can be bad because it doesn’t answer its main story questions, is nonsensical, contradicts its plot, ends on a bad cliff-hanger or just plain sucks. Of course there are many criteria that determines a bad ending, and while a lot of it is subjective, there are many exceptions that just aren’t good in general. So, which game severed your nerve because of its ending?

Personally, funnily enough, the worst ending I can remember in recent times actually is from the highly controversial Mass Effect 3. I hated it, and said most of what was needed to say in my write-up about it. And yes, I also studied in the indoctrination ending too, after my write-up, and my opinion hasn’t changed much. Another ending that I recently remember hating was from Syndicate, because it was cliched and left the game feeling so unfinished, much like Enslaved: Odyssey to the West.

I don’t want to ramble on for too long, so I won’t really go back ten years ago to think of any endings in the distant past that I considered to be bad. But I’m sure that you get the gist of it by now.

So what are your worst game endings? Mine is Mass Effect 3′s, from recent memory.

Rockstar has confirmed that the Xbox 360 version of upcoming Max Payne 3 will be on two separate discs.

This news was confirmed when Redbox, a US rental service, revealed that Max Payne 3 will be on two discs with the first containing half of the single player and the full multiplayer. At a later stage Rockstar verified the information from Redbox as true through a Tweet.

“Redbox only ever rent out one disc, for any multi-disc game,” it said. “Max is on 2 discs for 360, so Redbox will be renting disc 1 which contains half of the single player story and the full multiplayer game.”

Multiple discs is not a new concept to the Xbox 360, but personally I feel for them in this case because I’d hate to swap discs in a single-player experience. Personally, I wouldn’t mind one disc for single-player and one for multiplayer, but Max Payne 3′s method is a bit unfortunate.

Max Payne 3 will be released on May 18 for PS3 and Xbox 360, and on June 1 for PC.

Here we have yet another short teaser trailer for Prototype 2, just as it’s about to release for PS3 and Xbox 360. The PC version is sadly only arriving on July 30.

You know what to do if Prototype 2 is on your wishlist and you need more reasons to get it.

Keep an eye out for our review in the near future.

Well that’s an inspiring attitude from Mikael Nermark, the president and CEO of Starbreeze Studios.

Nermark, recently speaking with Joystiq, said that despite being proud of Starbreeze’s work on sci-fi shooter Syndicate, he feels fans’ expectations were too high.

However, in the end the firm was “happy” with the direction they took and how it turned out.

“Syndicate comes with a lot of expectations,” he said. “Such a great brand, such a great franchise. I don’t think we could’ve ever lived up to some people’s expectations.

“I love the original. When I got into the industry way back, RTS and that kind of game were my kind of game. But you always wanna add your touch to it, you wanna make it your game even though it’s built on a great franchise.

“So I think that’s hard. Overall, we’re happy.”

Not a great excuse considering the game was turned into a generic shooter in order to appeal to the masses. For me it was fun at times, but quite forgettable really, and mediocre overall.

Angry Birds, whether you love it or hate it, is fast edging closer to world domination. It may not be the most sophisticated game around, but Rovio faced a challenging task in trying to freshen up the now established and extremely popular formula, and what better way to do that than to take things into space and bring zero gravity into the mix. However, while the new space setting doesn’t dramatically change the way the game is played, I can respect their attempts to freshen things up, and they have definitely achieved that to a certain degree. It’s satisfyingly fresh without deviating too much from what makes it special. There are around 60 levels to keep you entertained initially, with more to arrive through free updates. Sadly, hardcore extra levels require an additional purchase, and while the asking price isn’t exactly a train smash, it’s a bit upsetting that these fun levels haven’t been included in the package already, especially when considering that Space has fewer levels than its predecessors.

It’s business as usual with you having to kill a bunch of pigs using your limited birds, except this time the focus on gravity has done wonders in creating some pretty unique and exciting puzzles. Due to the absence of gravity, firing your birds into space sends them on a slow, straight journey, while attacking nearby planets, which have their own gravity fields, will greatly affect the movement of your birds. Some gravity fields have a strong pull, while others will increase movement speed and alter your birds’ directions. These combine to produce some fantastic results, often presenting you with some pretty awesome opportunities to create chaos and unleash hell on those nasty pigs. You’ll get to curve your birds around miniature planets and attack pigs from behind, crush them by using floating debris and use the environment and gravity in rather interesting ways to win. For instance, things can get pretty trippy when you have two gravity fields right next to each other, and you’ll need to exercise more precision in your attacks unless you want to watch your birds go bonkers. However, due to this a few levels can feel like they rely more on luck than actual skill, as results will almost be random, but overall the game does a great job of presenting you with inventive new challenges with each level.

There are a few new gameplay features in Angry Birds Space, and they’re pretty awesome. The first is naturally the new birds. While you still get your standard Red attack bird, Blue cluster bird, Black Bomb bird, and the now Green large tank bird, you’ll also get a new Purple homing bird that has replaced the previous Yellow speed bird, and a new Ice bird. The former moves in standard fashion until you click to lock onto a target, where it will then gain a burst of speed and close in for the kill. The Ice bird, as you may have guessed, freezes pigs and objects, allowing you to crush them with your next attack, which is useful when faced with stone defenses. Another new addition to the formula is with the hidden golden eggs, which now instead of just giving you a sense of achievement, also serve to transport you to bonus levels that are really fun and act as mini intervals to the level you’re currently playing. Some are really cool, like the Space Invaders-inspired bonus. But my favourite new addition is the boss battles, which feature a pig in an armoured space vehicle, and you’ll need to crush his ride with floating asteroids and your Bomb birds. It can sometimes take luck to win these, but they’re easy and fun.

The only real downside to Angry Birds Space is that, because it only contains 60 levels initially, it can be over really quickly and leave you wanting more. And bar one or two levels, I didn’t find the game to be particularly challenging. Some might enjoy going through the game with minimal frustration and difficulty, but I’d have much rather preferred the game getting increasingly difficult as you progress. Either way, it’s highly entertaining, and despite the criticisms it’s picking up these days for its lack of sophistication and identical sequels, I couldn’t help but play this game continuously right until I completed it. Angry Birds Space is as addictive as its predecessors, if not more so with its fantastic space setting. It’s not perfect, but I had a great deal of fun with it and wouldn’t mind having some more levels. Although I really hope the new levels brought in are more challenging and over the top.

Angry Birds Space looks as awesome and as charming as ever with its new setting, and it’s a joy to play. Admittedly it’s not as vibrant and colourful as its predecessors, but the setting more than makes up for it. The new animations are great, and it’s worth a smile every time you see a pig get a sudden scared look on his face when danger is close or breathe a sigh of relief if he narrowly escapes it, and it’s funny to see a pig doze off to sleep while wrapped in a protective bubble. These pig expressions can make you really want to kill them though. The background music is pretty intense and really fitting for the style of the game, while the sound effects are just spectacular. It was definitely hard for me to get over the new Purple bird’s priceless “Peek-a-boo” scream. At least, that’s what it sounded like.

Angry Birds Space is a great new direction for the franchise. It admirably manages to be fresh without giving up or deviating too much from what made it so popular. If you’re a fan of this series, then you really don’t need to be told to go out and get this game. However, if you’re not, then the familiarity to its predecessors that Angry Birds Space holds onto definitely won’t turn you into a fan now. In the end, love it or hate it, Angry Birds Space is a great game that does what this series does best.

There’s nothing quite like a good, long laugh to start a blue Monday off with, and I have Activision to thank for that.

Adding more fuel to one of my favourite rage topics, Activision’s Social Media Manager, Dan Amrich, recently responded to a number of negative comments made on the PlayStation Blog regarding the Call of Duty franchise.

In response to one such comment slating Call of Duty for being the same thing every year, Amrich stated:

“That said, if you do not feel Call of Duty is worth your time or money, I totally respect that. A lot of other people (myself included) enjoy playing the game and feel the maps are worth their asking price. But we all make different decisions, because there are a lot of different kinds of gamers out there.”

“I don’t think the games are copy/pasted every year either, but maybe it’s all in what you are looking for in a game.

Amrich also had this to say to a commenter complaining that the sequel to Modern Warfare 3 would just be the same thing again.

“You don’t have to like what CoD is every year, but to say now “it’s going to be the same thing” seems pretty unfair. Better to wait and see what’s on tap before you make up your mind. If MW2 was all you needed, that’s fine too.”

Oh come now, Activision. We’re all grown-ups here.

It would seem that previous speculation that Valve’s DOTA 2 would be free-to-play has actually turned out to be true. I was expecting a once-off payment, but Valve know how to surprise, don’t they?

According to Valve boss Gabe Newell, when speaking in an interview on a Seven Day Cooldown podcast, DOTA 2 will be free-to-play, but “with a twist”, although don’t let that worry you.

Newell has expressed that the free-to-play model planned for DOTA 2 is pretty unconventional, and unlike any that have been used in other games so far. He did have trouble explaining it though.

“It’s going to be free-to-play – it’ll have some twists, but that’s the easiest way for people to think about it,” Newell said.

Newell didn’t go into much detail regarding how the free-to-play system will work once the game releases in full, but he did hint that “valuable” players to the community would receive rewards.

“The issue that we’re struggling with quite a bit is something I’ve kind of talked about before, which is how do you properly value people’s contributions to a community?

“We’re trying to figure out ways so that people who are more valuable to everybody else [are] recognised and accommodated. We all know people where if they’re playing we want to play, and there are other people where if they’re playing we would [rather] be on the other side of the planet.

“It’s just a question of coming up with mechanisms that recognise and reward people who are doing things that are valuable to other groups of people.”

Newell gave an example of what kind of players will be rewarded, explaining that Valve will look to players who act as “useful guides” and tutors in games like DOTA 2. It will also look at “how people can create value or a service in one game and benefit somebody in a different game, you can start to see how the different games sort knit together.”

DOTA 2 is due to release fully sometime this year. It’s still in its beta phase at the moment, so be sure to read our full impressions of it if you want to know more.

The debut teaser trailer for Crysis 3 has launched, and being a teaser it’s of course not that exciting at all. For me anyway. But don’t worry, the full reveal is due on April 24.

Check it out above to see a dude in a Nanosuit fire a sophisticated bow.

Crysis 3 will be out in Spring 2013 for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

Bethesda has stepped up to confirm that Prey 2 has not been cancelled, plugging previous rumours suggesting that it had been. However, the bad news is that the game has been delayed, and won’t release in 2012 due to it not meeting Bethesda’s “quality standards”.

There you have it, the shooter is still in the works over at Human Head Studios.

“Development of Prey 2 has not been cancelled but the game will not be released in 2012 as planned,” Bethesda confirmed in a statement to VG247.

“The delay is due to the fact that game development has not progressed satisfactorily this past year, and the game does not currently meet our quality standards. Prey 2 has shown great promise and we regret disappointing our fans. We have made a substantial investment in game development to deliver the experience fans want.

“We are determined only to release the AAA game that fans rightfully expect, and are unwilling to compromise our quality standards to meet a release schedule.”

Prey 2 was officially revealed last year March for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360. After that, the game was pretty much in the dark, but shown to the press behind closed doors on a number of occasions. It proceeded to make more significant appearances at Bethesda’s pre-E3 event in Utah last year April, as well as featured at the E3 press conference, QuakeCon and gamescom. On top of that, it was publicly shown off at PAX Prime and the Eurogamer Expo.

Now that Prey 2 is off the cards for 2012, it’s clear that Bethesda will be narrowing its focus on Skyrim’s DLC and Dishonored, the newly announced stealth action game for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

Or to be more specific, Dishonored is a first-person open world Neo-Victorian action adventure stealth action video game. Got it?

In case you missed it, earlier today we saw the announcement of God of War: Ascension, the sequel to God of War III and prequel to the franchise’s story.

However, word is that despite Ascension being a prequel to the original God of War, there’s nothing to say that Sony won’t revisit the story after the events of God of War III.

Todd Papy, the game director, speaking on Twitter, suggested that it will be addressed in time, and fans will have to exercise patience in the meantime.

“We will talk about that soon,” he responded when asked why Ascension does not pick up where God of War III left off. “You’ll just need to have some patience with us,” he said with a winking emoticon.

Papy also confirmed that the leak earlier today wasn’t an intentional move by Sony.

“It was a leak,” he explained, “but you have to roll with it.” Apparently the reveal wasn’t meant to happen until the afternoon, but Amazon’s mistake forced Sony to officially reveal it through Blog posts and raise the curtain earlier than planned.

God of War: Ascension is scheduled to release exclusively on PS3 in late 2013.

Admit it, doesn’t a part of you die inside every time you hear this statement from developers nowadays?

Not to mention that I recall this very thing being said about Crysis 2 during its development, but such is life.

Anyway, Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli has revealed through Twitter that Crysis 3 “will push the 360, PS3 to its limits, ahead of Crysis 2, but Crysis 3 PC will be clearly ahead!”

I hope so, because that didn’t seem to be the case with Crysis 2. Either way, let’s wait to see the first game footage due out today. It’s probably a cinematic trailer.