Fortunately, this doesn’t affects us here in South Africa. Capcom has confirmed that the European release date for Asura’s Wrath has been delayed by two weeks.

Capcom confirmed to MCV that the game will now release on PS3 and Xbox 360 on March 9 in the UK. However, it will be out in South Africa on the 24th of February.

We’re not quite sure what the reasons for the delay are, but we did hear about pre-order bonuses for the game, which include the Devastator and Infinity DLC packs. These two packs together add four new game modes. Perhaps even UK retailer problems.

Don’t be afraid, we’ll be alright.

Be sure to read our preview on the game if you haven’t already.

The sixth entry in the Yakuza franchise, Yakuza: Dead Souls, has been given a release date by SEGA, so if you’re looking forward to this PlayStation 3 exclusive title then you’d better mark March 16 on your calender.

If you’ve been an early follower of this title then you’d most probably know it by its Japanese name, Yakuza: Of The End. While the game may have released last year in Japan, it was confirmed back in October that it would be making its way to North America and Europe in March of 2012, renamed Yakuza: Dead Souls. Now we have the exact date.

The zombie action title sees the series’ main protagonist, Kazuma Kiryu, and other playable characters fighting against the undead in Kamurocho.

Fighting games and I have a real love-hate relationship. I really enjoy them; right up until a friend comes over, hits the gamepad with their face and ends up winning matches. The other possibility is I practice, unlock every character and refine my skills, only for the game to then become less enjoyable with friends because I can just cream them. There are exceptions to this however, take Mortal Kombat for example, it’s not only fun to master but easy to enjoy and all my friends actually bought it. So Soul Calibur 5, is it any good? Well I should say so, it may be my first real experience with the Soul Calibur series but I know the genre well and it was definitely better than I expected.

Let’s start with the story, well Soul Calibur 5 definitely takes its story quite seriously, more serious than most in fact. Soul Calibur 5, in true fighting game style, leaves little to be desired and despite trying hard is quite cheesy. It’s called 1607 A.D., taking place 17 years after Soul Calibur IV and revolves around a young Patroklos searching for revenge and the two swords Soul Calibur and Soul Edge. Without giving too much away it is rather predictable and not exactly award winning but that really doesn’t matter does it. The story pushes you forward and keeps combat from being nothing but match after match, occasionally letting you duke it out against adversaries you otherwise wouldn’t get to fight. It is interesting at times and despite its flaws, much more enjoyable than many of the dry story modes served up with most fighting games.

Apart from the story mode, there’s all the sorts of offline modes you’d expect; arcade mode, versus mode, a quick battle mode, a training mode and a legendary souls mode. Legendary souls mode is for the more hardcore player and offers a more difficult arcade mode. Quick battle mode presents you with 4 custom characters (I’ll get to that in a minute) to which you can either challenge or swap out for 4 more characters to challenge. Each battle earns you titles, experience to level up and occasionally a fighting style. Of course there’s an online mode and contains all the features you’d expect from a current-gen fighting game; ranked matches, unranked matches and a rather interesting mode called global colesseo. Global colosseo mode places all players who join into a sort of randomly generated tournament where you move up as you win matches, leading to the two best players to duke it out in the finals. I did try this mode and it was very enjoyable but be warned, there are some insane players coming off of previous Soul Calibur games.

The result of playing online with little to no experience.

Character creation, told you I’d get to it, is back and far more creative and approachable than in Soul Calibur IV; and even more so as you unlock items by levelling up your rank. In character creation you are allowed to customise almost every aspect of what your character wears and what colour or pattern that item should have. This aesthetic skin is placed over the fighting style of a chosen character within the game and makes for a great way to individualise yourself from everyone else who chose the same character. Speaking of characters, there are a few new and many old faces to pit against each other. Of course guest character Ezio from Assassin’s Creed is present and has quite a unique fighting style to match his personality and well… career. It’s one of the larger rosters in the series and maintains a balance of unique fighters who each makes use of a very specialised fighting style. I’m surprised they wrung so much balance out of a weapon system that would seem to make combat quite chaotic.

Gameplay is where Soul Calibur has seen its biggest changes and quite a large change to what was considered the staple mechanics of the Soul Calibur series. Critical finishes and its accompanying soul gauge have been removed so there are no more instant kill opportunities in Soul Calibur V. Armour remains destructible but there is no longer a meter to gauge how destroyed a piece of armour is; the only sign your armour is wearing down is when it shatters off of your character should they take too many heavy blows. Additionally, and to allow for a set of super moves, rather than instant kills, there is a new super gauge that as it fills allows you to use ‘brave’ and ‘critical’ edge attacks that deal heavy damage. They work well enough and seem to balance out the style of combat the character uses; so some more damaging but harder to get in and this will correspond with the tank like character Nightmare. 8-Way-Run (I’m sure they could’ve thought of a better name) allows characters to easily side step their adversary with a quick double-tap of either up or down; something that is crucial in this game as blocking is nowhere near as effective as avoiding an attack all together. I should say that this aspect of combat is rather balanced and means that you can either block, a far easier move to execute, but leaves you open to grabs and other moves. Or you can dodge, which is harder to do as the opponent may read your manoeuvre, opening you to attack but also allowing for retaliation if done right. The final mechanic is called ‘just guard’ and if done correctly results in a ‘perfect’ guard, allowing for a considerably shorter time required countering the opponent. All in all the combat is quite balanced and seems to favour all styles of combat while not making any specific character overbalanced or open to exploit. There are a few characters who are still able to spam a move and create annoying situations though I am yet to play a fighting game where that isn’t the case to some extent.

Yoshimitsu using a critical edge.

Speaking of gameplay, the A.I can be quite brutal at times, something you’d expect from a fighting game, but can also be a bit dim-witted at the easier settings. That’s easy to get around and a quick change of the difficulty will fetch a more suited experience. There is one strange occurrence however, and seems to occur in modes like quick battle where different levels of character difficulty are meshed into one mode. What seems to happen is you’ll choose an adversary who seems relatively easy for the first round and about half way into another round when all of a sudden their difficulty kicks up 10 levels and you get creamed. The other aspect of A.I that might frustrate those new to the series, and without at least some modest level of skill, you might find the last stages of story mode to be surprisingly difficult when all previous matches were far less challenging. None of these A.I faults are game wrecking but can be annoying at times.

The one clear improvement over any other iteration in the series is obviously visuals. Soul Calibur V is a very pretty fighter and makes every effort to squeeze all the detail it can into its characters and levels. To work wonders with the visuals is a fitting and enjoyable sound track as well as smooth framerates, something vital to any tournament level fighter. Soul Calibur V is definitely one of the better looking fighters and makes up for what it lacks in some of the characters voices.

Soul Calibur is an enjoyable game, a great online fighter and will look good for a time to come. Its gameplay isn’t exactly new and employs many of the same characters the series has carried over since the first iteration. It’s definitely an evolution of the series rather than a revolution and despite being the same Soul Calibur we’ve come to expect, it does it rather well. The few hiccups it has are easily outweighed by its strengths and while it may not be my favourite fighter ever, it is far from my least.

I don’t think the title contains that much ambiguity but, to reiterate, in this feature I’ll be presenting my take on seven of history’s greatest ever first person shooters. Of course, these are all games I feel very strongly about, and are my personal choices that I feel represent the very best of what the genre has to offer. Don’t get too carried away though, because as the title says it’s only a list of seven games, and doesn’t encapsulate the entire genre – just my absolute favourite games from it.

So that’s in before the inevitable “why you no include megaton destructor alienz shooter 72 trolol” – it’s my list, not yours, and that’s the way the potato crumbles. I think I messed up that saying. Although that said, I’d very much like to hear your opinions about my list as well as what would be on your own personal lists, so feel free to sound off, praise me or flame me in the comments section.

Without further point-delaying ranting, let’s get to it.

7. Portal

You have a gun and you shoot stuff. Problem?

There’s a reason I didn’t specifically say which Portal I’m referring to, and that’s because I’m just considering the whole game itself, and not really choosing between the original or its sequel. Out of interest though, the latter was our Game of the Year for 2011, and it was very deserving of that award. Those who love Portal will know exactly why it has made my list. The original game in the series was basically a two hour experiment from Valve, but it turned out to be very much close to a perfect game. Protal was entirely original, full of personality and expertly paced, and it featured great writing and absolutely brilliant gameplay. It was definitely a winner, and in my books one of the greatest games to ever grace this genre. And to top it off, its charm, writing and humour makes it memorable.

And last year, let’s not forget Portal 2, which was Valve turning a two hour perfect experience into a full-length game that included an amazing new multiplayer feature. The result was something more. An absolute masterpiece that was one up on perfection. You may be wondering at this point why, if I’m speaking so highly of it, is it at number seven on my list. Well, that’s only because of personal preference, and because I never said my list order made sense. Still, Portal 2 continued to deliver at the standard the original game set, and raised the stakes, especially with its phenomenal multiplayer mode. It was the sequel that we as gamers both deserved and needed (take that The Dark Knight meme!), and I definitely feel that it’s amongst the best this genre has ever had to offer.

6. Crysis (2007)

I can’t stress it enough that I’m not talking about Crysis 2 – that game doesn’t come close to what the original achieved for PC gaming, and neither is it even a good game in my opinion. The original Crysis released in 2007, and it’s one of my favourite games of all time, and one of the best PC and FPS games I’ve ever played. In fact, it’s so damn good that I’ve actually been playing it again recently while waiting for this month’s releases, and I’m enjoying every moment. Not only was the original Crysis the best-looking game ever made for its time, setting the benchmark for PC graphics for years and still having visuals that are brilliant today, but it was also an innovative, unique and exceptional game.

The game centered around an advanced military nanosuit that used energy to enhance strength, speed and armour, as well as render the wearer invisible at will. This feature, coupled together with the expanded open world environment similar to Crytek’s Far Cry, made the game extremely dynamic and diverse. You truly felt like something more than human, and like a force to be reckoned with. You were not invincible by any means, but if you played skillfully and combined your abilities correctly then you could very well feel like it. One of my favourite features in the game was its unique weapon custimisation, which allowed you to modify your guns with silencers, scopes and tactical equipment in real-time and at any moment. You were just completely free to play the game however you wanted to, and the four suit powers, gorgeous visuals and excellent physics made things infinitely more enjoyable. And no one can say that it’s not exhilarating to use maximum strength and throw Koreans clean through buildings. I never grow tired of it, and I have nothing against Asians. I seriously don’t.

Crysis also had a fantastic, action-packed campaign, which also featured an intriguing story. And the cherry on top was that PC gamers could enjoy a great deal of modding to make the game worth playing multiple times. And for me, never since Grand Theft Auto has using cheats been so damn fun in a game, as Crysis allowed you to tweak practically everything through the developer console, including things like the speed and strength boosts your suit gives. It’s easy to see from this exactly how much I love the original Crysis, and I’m really not exaggering anything I’ve said. It’s just awesome.

5. Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory

Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is a game that I will always remember, because not only is it one of the best FPS and multiplayer games I’ve played, but it was also an experience that reinforced to me years ago the idea that graphics don’t make a game. Released as a free, downloadable game, Enemy Territory was a dynamic and unique class-based multiplayer shooter that was as much tactical as it was extremely fun. In the game you could choose to be a solider, medic, engineer, field operator or covert operator, with each having a very distinct play-style and value on the battlefield. Engineers were key for completing objectives required to win, while soldiers were highly effective in combat. Field operators were a unique class, in that they could act as support by giving ammo packs to allies, but they could also call in air strikes. Medics could heal and revive teammates, and they had more health. Covert operators could use silenced weaponry as well as sniper rifles, and take the uniforms of the dead, allowing them to infiltrate enemy bases, and destroy objectives using remotely detonated charges.

There are more abilities for each class that I haven’t mentioned, but the main thing is that from my perspective it’s one of the best class-based tactical shooters you can find. One of the best features was that experience points actually advanced your class in-game the more you played, which granted you new abilities and advantages. However, these were not permanent upgrades like we commonly see today. Rather they lasted for the duration of the rounds before the map changed. Everyone was on even playing fields this way, and had to play well to level up, of which there were four levels.

It was just such a joy to play, finding a fine line between complexity and simplicity. The maps were fantastically designed too, almost providing a fresh experience with each different one. This is one of those games I often find myself thinking about and hoping to play again, because it’s just that great.

4. Half-Life

I’m pretty sure that no one needs to be told why Half-Life is here, and again just like Portal I’m referring to the series as a whole rather than any individual game in it. Half-Life is just one of the most innovative, unique and amazing first person shooters you can ever find, and it was revolutionary for its time. Fans are pleading to the Gods every day that Episode 3 gets officially announced, but at the same time they’re thanking the Lord every night before they sleep because Valve created this series. I think that sums up all the praise I can give it. Well, I could just say “Crowbar” and all fans would probably find themselves smiling. On the upside though, at least Black Mesa, the independent remake of the original Half-Life, is still alive, so there’s that to look forward to. I know I definitely am.

Head over to the next page for the remaining games – my top three.

According to a tweet by Future Shop Gamer, who attended the Destination PlayStation event, Square Enix has lifted the lid on Sleeping Dogs, a new game due to release in August for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

If you’re a little in the dark about this, then let’s backtrack to just about over two weeks ago, when Square Enix filed a trademark for the title “Sleeping Dogs” and we were speculating that it had to do with a new Kane & Lynch game. Turns out, that’s not what it is. Fortunately.

Back to the present, Future Shop also put out an image for the game, which has quite a resemblance to True Crime: Hong Kong. If you’re unsure of the significance in this, well, it’s the game Square Enix took control over after Activision left it about halfway into its development.

Sleeping Dogs is currently in development by United Front Games, with Square Enix London Studios acting as supervisors. The latter would be the same office that saw to Batman: Arkham Asylum and Just Cause 2.

Due to the fact that Square Enix didn’t buy the rights to the IP, the game had to be renamed from True Crime: Hong Kong before it sees the light of day.

“When we first saw and got our hands on the game we fell in love with it,” said Lee Singleton, Square Enix London Studios’ general manager, last year.

“When we met the team at United Front Games it was a done deal in our eyes – we instantly recognised the huge potential in the game and the team.

“UFG is an incredibly talented team, who have individually worked on some of the biggest games in our industry, and this talent shines through from the moment you walk in the door.

“It’s one of those games where you don’t want to put the controller down; it’s what we call ‘sticky’.”

Then all the way back in February of 2011, Activision Publishing boss Eric Hirshberg said the following about the project after it was cancelled:

“Even our most optimistic internal projections show that continued investment was not going to lead to a title at, or near, the top of the competitive open world genre.

“In an industry where only the best games in each category are flourishing, to be blunt, it just wasn’t going to be good enough.”

It will be very interesting to see the outcome of this now, all things considered.

A new trailer for I Am Alive has been released, and it focuses entirely on the importance of climbing in the game. It’s only about a minute in length, so don’t expect to see a whole lot.

In fact this trailer doesn’t really make the game look all that interesting. Not like the last one, which was pretty awesome. Still, it’s cool to see more of this exciting downloadable game.

I Am Alive will be out on Xbox Live on March 7, with a PlayStation Network date still to be announced.

Features removed, game redesigns, release date unconfirmed and the hunger for Diablo 3 grows. Diablo 3 may come out tomorrow, ok probably not, though we might only see it at the dawn of 2013. Luckily, and for all those loot heads out there, those who need an isometric RPG this year, we’ve compiled a list of five games to compete with Diablo 3. Some of these games are relatively light on detail and we’ll give you a video of each to accommodate any info we have. We can’t be sure any of these games will release before Diablo 3, but we’re hoping their developers have stepped up their game in order to compete with Diablo 3. So without further delay, here’s that list — across five pages.

Name: Torchlight 2
Genre: Isometric, Action RPG
Multiplayer: Yes
Platforms: PC, Xbox 360
Developers: Runic Games
Publishers: Perfect World
Release Date: Early 2012 (Pending Confirmation)
Preview: Torchlight 2

Runic Games CEO Max Schaefer, one of the lead designers on Diablo 2 and now assisting on Torchlight 2, along with lead developer Travis Baldree are confident Torchlight 2 will be an indie AAA. Runic Games are not only planning to improve every aspect of Torchlight’s gameplay, as we’ve already talked about in the lengthier preview, but plans to improve on the original’s sales figures; which hit the millions. Furthermore, and with a modestly cheap price, mod support and a multiplayer component over and above the original game’s single player only experience; Runic Games are staring Diablo 3 straight in the eyes and aren’t budging.

Torchlight 2 has a lot of content and sports a very refined and much improved Diablo 2 style of play. And with diverse classes, pet and fishing mechanics returning and a whole bucket load of other nifty little extras; Torchlight 2 is looking to put up a serious fight.

Next entry on the next page.

The last we saw of The Amazing Spider-Man was a screenshot that had a similar visual style to Mirror’s Edge, mostly with the city’s white and blue colour scheme.

Now, The Amazing Spider-Man’s lead designer revealed some new details to fans on the game’s official Facebook page. First on the list was a confirmation of the game’s return to its open world setting, despite the fact that the announcement trailer already made it pretty clear.

The developer said: “Our game brings back free-roaming in Manhattan, where you guys will be able to swing around and discover a variety of side missions, challenges and mini-games in addition to the main storyline.”

And when asked about any new Spidey abilities, the developer touched on one of the game’s new mechanics called “Web Rush”.

“We introduce an all-new gameplay mechanic called the Web Rush, which gives players real-time navigational and combat choices,” they said. “Web Rush can be triggered on the fly, at any moment and immediately presents you with a variety of situational choices, letting you pull off Spidey’s signature moves like never before.”

I guess all we can do is wait for more gameplay footage.

Okay, they’re actually just plain gorgeous but I needed a desert hook. Spec Ops was believed to have been KIA until it emerged from the depths towards the end of 2011 and is now looking very promising indeed.

The game has changed its colours somewhat and looks to be tending towards a survival horror rather than the all-out action title it was revealed as back in 2009. The game is set in a desolate and ruined Dubai with sand playing a key role in gameplay. Get a look at the latest gameplay here and if you’re not satisfied, get a load of some more.

The game is sizing up to be very different from other entries in the third-person shooter genre, especially given the relatively humdrum military background of the characters, and should be a unique experience at the very least.

As it is, Spec Ops: The Line is looking fantastic and seems to still be on course for its release on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 sometime in May.

Remember the Humble Bundle, it’s a great way to buy some enjoyable indie games and contribute to the developers as well as a chosen charity, well now there’s the ‘Indie Gala’.

The Indie Gala is quite similar and really only differs in two distinct ways. Firstly, the bundles include music albums that closely link to the games being offered and secondly, that there is a limited amount available rather than a time with which to make a purchase.

So with relatively cheap prices, a good cause and still over 37000 bundles left, make your purchase today. And if you’re not sure about the titles available check out the site, there are a few combinations to choose from and they’re all pretty awesome.

Naughty Dog’s all new game, The Last of Us, is definitely in the spotlight right now, and practically everyone interested is dying to see some actual gameplay footage.

It also doesn’t help that we’re getting so little details about the game. We saw the debut trailer at the 2011 VGAs, heard a description from the developers regarding the lead protagonist, and received a few gameplay details just a few days ago. That about sums it all up.

And now we’re getting tiny tidbits of information again.

This time it’s from a poster on NeoGAF, who has read the latest issue of Game Informer and taken the liberty of putting it all online.

Firstly, according to the posted details from the mag, Ellie is a 14 year old orphan living in a military quarantine zone. She has only ever known the apocalyptic world seen in the debut trailer, the one destroyed by a fungal outbreak. As a result, she is fascinated by past relics such as books and CDs.

Joel on the other hand, is roughly in his late 40s and is actually a weapons and drugs smuggler, which explains his dark character. He moves his cargo in and out of military-guarded checkpoints.

The fungal outbreak, or infection, that has decayed humanity is apparently able to be transferred through the air. However, for that to happen it needs a high concentration of the infected spores in a small area. The military keep watch at their checkpoints and any people showing signs of being infected are immediately executed. But the interesting part is that according to the information, you’ll be up against humans more frequently than the infected, as humans are the focus.

Personally, what I liked to hear is that Naughty Dog is crafting a self-contained plot for the game, so by the end of it there won’t be any loose ends. A complete game is always good.

The game begins with Joel trying to smuggle Ellie out of a safe zone, because he promised a dying friend that he’d get her to safety. Interestingly enough, their relationship was compared to Hollywood movies like True Grit and Road to Perdition. As you’d expect, things don’t quite work out for Joel, and the two of them end up being hunted by the military.

With its graphics, The Last of Us is apparently inspired by something called “Ruin Porn”, which is a kind of photography that involves capturing images of ruins overgrown by nature. The AI will be very involved, and a lot of work is going into it, especially Ellie’s AI. The AI will use something called a “balance of power” system, where enemies will remain in cover and try to flank you if you’re armed with a gun, but if you’re only equipped with a melee weapon then they will rush you and attempt to overwhelm you. Enemies will also react to what happens around them. They will anger if their friends die, issue warnings when in danger, and get frightened if they’re in trouble. Ellie can help out in combat, such as by throwing a brick to stun enemies and allow Joel to get up close.

The action in the game will be heavily centered around melee combat. Environmental objects like bricks and planks of wood can be used to fight enemies. Guns will be included, but ammo will be rare. However, what’s really interesting is that enemies will often be killed from a single bullet. There will also be platforming and puzzle solving sections in the game, which will involve both the main characters.

There will be health packs in the game, but it takes time to use them, so bullets are lethal to players as well, and avoiding direct confrontation is encouraged.

The game is both very violent and vulgar. There will be tons of swearing, which I’m not too thrilled about personally, as well as gory action. It was said, however, that over time Ellie’s combat proficiency will increase, but Naughty Dog hasn’t given any details about that yet.

Regarding an online mode, the game’s director, Bruce Straley, revealed that the game is “going to have some sort of online component” and said: “we’re working on a bunch of ideas, but we haven’t nailed anything down. We definitely know it’s going to be awesome.”

It’s definitely a lot to digest, but all it does for me personally is make me all the more excited to see gameplay footage. The Last Of Us will be out only on PS3 at the end of this year, or early next year.

Kazunori Yamauchi, the famous creator of the Gran Turismo series, has revealed to fans that another update is coming to GT5, and it’s just around the corner.

Yamauchi made the announcement on his Twitter page, confirming that the update will launch on February 7, which is tomorrow. However, the man didn’t give any details about the patch itself, so we don’t really know what’s coming.

Despite my personal feelings about Gran Turismo 5, I have to give the developers credit for keeping it updated for so long, and showing dedication to bettering the experience.

Let’s hope it keeps improving.

You’ll have to decide for yourself whether there are any real spoilers in the list of Achievements for Mass Effect 3 but here it is for all you Trophy mongers and Achievement whores. We don’t know about you but this list will definitely give Cavie many sleepless nights and a lot of trouble come March 9.

There’s a total of 50 Achievements with a combined total of 1000 MS Points. Get a good look at the list over at Xbox360Achievements.

Naughty Dog’s latest project is The Last of Us, an action title with more than a hint of I Am Legend to it. Check out the debut trailer here, to see what I’m on about. So yesterday we found that this new game really looks to be something entirely different from anything Naughty Dog has done before given that the protagonist is best described as a violent thug, brutal killer and torturer.

Anyway, some new details have dropped for the game and you may want to listen up. Players follow Joel and Ellie as they navigate their own version of post-apocalyptica while scavenging supplies and melee weapons which will break after repeated use. There are boom sticks as well for those who want to hunt for ammo too.

According to Game Informer, Ellie will be a non-playable companion so there goes any hope of co-op. What is mentioned though is that she “managed to keep up, yet stay out of the way.” Now that is something.

Below you’ll see some screenshots, those are apparently in-game not fancy CGI like the trailer.

The Last of Us is scheduled for release in early 2013 and should be something special.

If Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is anything as good as it’s shaping up to be then anyone who picks it up is likely to spend the next few months with it but if you’re a speed freak, you could be over it in just over a week or 200 hours if that’s a better number for you.

That’s a lot of time to spend with any game and it’s got the lead designer from 38 Studios worried that they might have just overdone things a bit. Ideally, the bigger the RPG the better because that’s just how it is with these things but there’s a point where effort turns to overkill. Speaking to Strategy Informer at a recent EA event, lead designer Ian Frazier said that even the QC people who have been testing the game for months now are clocking in at around 8 days to get through all that is KoA: Reckoning.

“That means easy difficulty, skip all cut scenes and dialogue, sprint everywhere that’s sprintable, fast travel everywhere you can, don’t do any combat you don’t need to do… that all took around 200 hours, and that was a speed run.”

The main quest only sets you back between 30 – 40 hours so you’d expect to be getting a great deal of bang for your buck and then some but just hold onto your vale-finding socks because Amalur might not have the steam to keep you going for those 200 hours.

“I think in terms of a selling point – bang for your buck – I think it’s great. It should be on the back of the box. But as a developer I have to look at it and think “did we overdo this?” I really don’t know.”

With any luck, these worries are unfounded but you’ll just have to see for yourself when Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning comes your way next week on PS3, PC and Xbox 360.

So Mortal Kombat is one of the latest high profile titles to be confirmed for Vita alongside names such as BioShock, Monster Hunter and Uncharted (which was out on launch). It sounds like it will be great and NetherRealms’ pledge to make full use of the Vita’s touch functionality should differentiate the experience somewhat.

Here’s a good 100 seconds of gameplay action. It’s cam but decent quality and the Vita’s amazing AMOLED screen makes everything perfectly visible. The game looks like good fun but the wiping blood off the screen thing is almost definitely too gimmicky for its own good. Did we mention that the game will run at a silky 60fps?

Watch it up top. Mortal Kombat will be out for Vita sometime in autumn.

This is interesting news because Naughty Dog seems to be going in a completely different direction than Uncharted, where the protagonist was an adventure hero.

The Last Of Us protagonist, Joel, may in fact be a very bad person. Definitely not your typical good guy hero.

A recent Naughty Dog video that shows off some mo-cap footage also includes some descriptive narration about Joel. The narration is actually from the game’s other lead character, young Ellie, and it reads as follows:

“He’s been called a violent thug, a brutal killer and a torturer. Me? He’s just Joel to me. Back in his day you weren’t afraid of being hunted by other people, and it wasn’t normal for a girl to scavenging the dead and you sure as hell didn’t have to worry about them.”

Personally, this makes the game much more interesting to me.

Furthermore, Joel’s voice actor, Troy Baker, spoke in an interview about the assumed relationship between Joel and Ellie in the game, saying:

“I think what I’ve seen over the last few days, as we’ve been teasing this, is that people think they know what the game is about. People think they know who Joel and Ellie is, and the relationship between the characters. It’s fun to watch from this side because I don’t think anyone really knows.”

The Last of Us is a PS3 exclusive title, but it hasn’t been given a specific release date yet, and right now it looks likely to release at the end of this year or in early 2013.

Be sure to check out the game’s debut cinematic trailer if you haven’t already.

Just in case you haven’t seen the sort of gameplay to expect from Final Fantasy Versus XIII

This is not a wish list and this isn’t a list of features or mechanics we hope to see in Final Fantasy Versus XIII. Instead, this is a look at a couple of the features we are almost certain about the game, features we want done right. I like Final Fantasy XIII and know I’ll enjoy XIII-2 just as much, if not more. However, I think Versus XIII is something new, something different and a chance for Square Enix to evolve the entirety of the JRPG genre. So for that sake, and for the sake of Final Fantasy XIV, which will happen, we want Versus XIII to do well so that it excites that fire back in Square Enix. We want it to affect how Final Fantasy XIV is done and perhaps make Square Enix enough coin to fund remakes of Final Fantasy VII, VIII and IX. I’m a long time fan and veteran of Final Fantasy and will be taking experience from previous titles and applying that to the features of Versus XIII.

1) Final Fantasy has always had some sort of statistic based level up system with which to improve characters. Final Fantasy XIII’s for example had a crystarium system, which while working well enough, never had much depth to it. That’s why we want a more complex, or at least a more in depth, level up and equipment system from Versus XIII. More than that though, it shouldn’t be overly convoluted and instead must be simple to learn but difficult to master. However, and even if it’s done right, the most important thing we’re looking for is a diversity of approaches and paths to level up. While it may seem it a bit silly to ask for the ability to separate your characters from your friends in a single player JRPG, despite everyone experiencing the exact same story, we still think it necessary. Previous Final Fantasy games were more replayable and gave a meaning to grinding because you could develop your own characters; independently catering to the strategies you have in mind. Final Fantasy XIII removed a lot of that by forcing everyone to take the same level up path. If Versus XII makes good on this and this alone, I know it’ll be a much better game for it.

2) A well designed level up system is all well and good but has no real point without a great battle mechanic to accompany it. Versus XIII is taking a more real time approach to battles, not dissimilar from Final Fantasy XII’s system. As such, we immediately know that for a magic system to work, it’s going to need some definite balancing. The reason is Final Fantasy XII, as real time as it was, eliminated almost any need for magic by making it slow and limiting in effectiveness. This time we want it relative from start to finish. Each character is also promised to have unique traits and abilities like (of who seems to be the main character) Nocturnis who is able to equip all weapon types. Or another character, as seen in the gameplay video, is able to aim with his weapon allowing for more precise and so I would assume critical hits. The final thing I would argue for is that the summon system be made more versatile and above all remain useful. That’s right, there is a summon system and I can’t wait to see if you get to directly control the each individual summon. Just make sure they don’t get too weak by the end of the game like you have done in other Final Fantasy games Square Enix.

3) Versus XIII has promised and shown a far more realistic atmosphere, set of characters and environments than ever done before. Above all else, the game seems a whole lot darker than we’ve been used to. That’s great and I love the experimentation with new plot styles and tones of story but Square Enix needs to keep it in check throughout. Like all JRPG’s, there will be some influence from anime and manga, this being the case, I don’t want Versus XIII to make the same mistake as many manga and anime series do; that is to be too dark too much of the time. At the end of the day, Final Fantasy is about overcoming an evil or obstacle and improving in the end. So keep this in mind Square Enix. Also, and knowing Final Fantasy has a habit of revealing weird and unrelated bosses near the end, please don’t just reveal some weird omniscient being at the end of the game; keep us guessing but not at the expense of story. Final Fantasy IX for example was very well done and sported a great story but the last boss had almost no relation to the game.

4) Joy of joys, a traversable map and airships are back, reminiscent of games before FFX; let’s hope they do it correctly. Just in case, we want areas not pertaining to the main story and that, like above, link to side missions and stories. Large open maps are great and providing vehicles to traverse them is a great sign of their size and hopefully scope as well as detail.

5) This final feature hasn’t been confirmed but we’re implying it from what we’ve seen. We want more choice, more options. I realise that JRPG’s and western RPG’s are a different breed and I want it to remain that way. I don’t believe that all RPG’s should be like Mass Effect and being told a story rather than shaping it has its appeal; I love Final Fantasy for being a story book. That doesn’t mean that we don’t want more to the world, more side stories and chances for the inquisitive player to learn more about their characters. Reward the extra effort and time spent by giving those players who have invested some love into the game. I don’t just mean bonus summons and ultimate weapons, although I sorely missed that from Final Fantasy XIII. I just want the kind of effort put into the gameplay and main story to be put into side stories. It’s the small things.

At the end of the day, and judging by the videos and screenshots we’ve seen, Final Fantasy Versus XIII is going to be one hell of a game. I just hope it does more than that, that it evolves and moves the JRPG genre onto a new level. I love western RPG’s but sometimes you just gotta give those JRPG’s some love

Finally, after years of waiting, Remedy has at last confirmed the release date for the PC version of Alan Wake.

The official announcement for the PC version came in December of last year, and since then fans have been eagerly anticipating it. Now, we’ve been given the exact date. You’d better mark February 16, 2012 on your calenders, because that’s when Alan Wake will arrive on PC, but there are some complications surrounding that.

A recent Q&A provided a lot of information, but the most important things to keep in mind is that the PC version will come with both the game’s downloadable content packs, namely the The Signal and The Writer.

As for the complications, well, the game will arrive first on Steam for $29.99 (about R231.44), which is a good price. It will eventually make its way to Origin as well. However, the actual hard-copy retail version will be coming “soon”, and no specific date has been given yet.

Remedy chief technology officer Markus Mäki commented on the PC version, saying: “We’ve done our best to do justice to the PC version and do things the way they should be done for PC. The PC version looks absolutely beautiful. We’re bringing the game to life in a whole new way.

“With our history of PC titles, such as Max Payne, Max Payne 2 and Death Rally, Remedy has always wanted to bring a PC version of Alan Wake to the gamers’ fingertips. Now we can!”

The key features for the PC version are:

• Experience Alan Wake’s Pacific Northwest in higher resolutions and higher fidelity than ever before
• Fully configurable mouse and keyboard support (or if you prefer to play with the Microsoft gamepad connected to your PC, you can do that too!)
• A wide selection of customizable graphics settings and support for 4:3, 16:9 and 16:10 aspect ratios
• Multithreaded engine that takes advantage of quad core CPUs
• Additional features our fans have sought after, such as field of view adjustment as well as “hide HUD”.
• Works with AMD Eyefinity 3D 3-screen mode
• Works with NVIDIA NVISION2 Stereoscopic 3D

I’m definitely looking forward to this. Finally, is all I can say.

‘The Cat that Got the Milk’ is a simple and short game, in fact, the most complicated part of the game is the title itself. If that puts you off however, let me assure you that despite its simplicity this game is a whole bunch of fun.

The Cat that Got the Milk is a charming, almost puzzle-like game where the player directs a small object as it moves from the left of the screen to the right. Moving the cat (I guess it’s a cat) up or down prevents it from moving towards the right; letting go of either direction means it continues on its incessant journey to the right. As the cat moves, it’s the player’s job to direct and avoid any objects in its way; any collisions will mean a return to the beginning of the current stage. And that’s it really, well Ok, some of the obstacles move and some are quite difficult, requiring a bit of patience, but that’s about it.

Now I’m sure you’re all familiar with how addictive simplistic gameplay can be, take Peggle for example, and ‘The Cat that Got the Milk’ doesn’t fail to deliver, making sure to keep you playing until you’ve finished every stage. That’s not always a good thing when some of these zombie state games can go on for hours and hours; happily though, The Cat that Got the Milk (I keep wanting to say ‘that got the hat’) his actually short and sweet. To compliment this, the game uses abstract art to represent the level and obstacles that need navigating and create a very pretty looking game in the process. Just look at the screenshots and tell me you aren’t attracted by the looks of it. If anything the game is even more aesthetically pleasing when viewed as you play it, though the encouraging and enjoyable audio track certainly helps.

Heed my advice; The Cat that Got the Milk will test your reactions. Not your speed or reflexes but the way you would normally play a game of this nature will almost certainly cause quite a few collisions. If you’re not exactly sure what I mean, play it and you’ll begin to understand. It requires a quick yet more relaxed sense of play and as a jumped up (and easily frustrated) individual I found the change of play style enjoyable.

All that’s left to say is download and enjoy it, here’s the link, have fun.

Bethesda has released update 1.4 for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and you can download it through Steam.

The patch will introduce various general performance enhancements, and also contain the usual bug fixes and quest tweaks. Also keep in mind that Bethesda said last month that this update will address the lag issue on the PlayStation 3 version of the game, which is great.

The full list of changes is down below.

General

• Skyrim launcher support for Steam Workshop*
• General optimizations for memory and performance
• Optimized bookshelf script in player-owned houses that would occasionally cause active scripts to lag and also cause an increase to saved games filesize (PS3)
• Improved compiler optimization settings
• Memory optimizations related to scripting
• Fixed crashes related to pathing and AI
• Fixed crash in Haemar’s Shame if player had already completed “A Daedra’s Best Friend”
• Fixed rare crash with loading saved games
• Fixed issue with accented characters not displaying properly at the end of a line
• Fixed issue where quests would incorrectly progress after reloading a save
• Fixed issues with placing and removing books from bookshelves in the player’s home
• Fixed issue where weapon racks and plaques would not work correctly in player’s house if player immediately visits their house before purchasing any furnishing.
• Fixed issue where the player house in Windhelm would not clean up properly
• Fixed crash related to giant attacks and absorb spells
• Fixed issue with ash piles not cleaning up properly
• Fixed occasional issue where overwriting an existing save would fail
• Fixed memory crash with container menu
• Fixed infinite loop with bookshelves
• Fixed issue where traps in Shalidor’s Maze would not work properly in French, German, Spanish and Italian versions
• Fixed issue where transforming back to human from werewolf would occasionally fail
• Bows and daggers will display properly when placed on weapon racks

Quests

• The Unusual Gem inside the Thalmor Embassy is now accessible after finishing “Diplomatic Immunity”
• In “Breaching Security”, the quest token is no longer required to receive a fortune reading from Olava the Feeble
• Fixed issue where Galmar would not complete Joining the Stormcloaks properly if “Season Unending” was an active quest
• Fixed issue where starting “Season Unending” after finishing “Joining the Stormcloaks” would prevent “The Jagged Crown” from starting properly.
• Fixed issue progressing through “Message to Whiterun” while “Season Unending” was still open would block progression for both quests.
• In “Arniel’s Endeavor”, fixed issue where a quest journal would trigger multiple times
• In “Forbidden Legend”, the amulet fragment can no longer disappear after player leaves a dungeon without taking it
• Fixed rare issue in “Forbidden Legend” where killing Mikrul Gauldurson while sneaking would make his corpse unaccessible
• In “The White Phial”, the phial can no longer disappear if player leaves dungeon without taking it
• “The White Phial” will now start properly if player already has a briar heart in their inventory
• Player can no longer get stuck in Misty Grove after completing “A Night to Remember”
• Fixed issue where leaving Riften during “A Chance Arrangement” would prevent quest from progressing
• In “Darkness Returns”, a door in Twilight Sepulcher will properly open if the player leaves the dungeon for an extended period of time before completing the quest
• In “Revealing the Unseen”, if the player leaves the Oculory for an extended period of time after placing the focusing crystal and returns, the quest will proceed correctly
• “Onmund’s Request” will now start properly if player has already found Enthir’s staff before receiving this quest
• Fixed instance where Tonilia would stop buying stolen items and also would not give Guild Leader Armor
• “Repairing the Phial” will start properly if player already has unmelting snow or mammoth tusk in their inventory
• Finding Pantea’s Flute before speaking with Pantea no longer prevents her quest from updating
• In “The Break of Dawn”, fixed rare instance where a quest object would spawn incorrectly on the Katariah during Hail Sithis
• Fixed rare issue in “The Mind of Madness” where player is unable to equip the Wabbajack
• Fixed issue in “Pieces of the Past” where Mehrunes Dagon’s Razor will not trigger properly if player leaves the cell for extended period of time before activating it
• “Blood’s Honor” will start properly if you visited and completed Driftshade and an extended period of time passes before starting the quest.
• Fixed rare issue where “Dampened Spirits” would not start properly
• Fixed issue where killing guards in Cidhna Mine would block progression for “No One Escapes Cidhna Mine”
• Fixed numerous issues with “Blood on the Ice” not triggering properly
• In “Blood on the Ice”, Calixto can now be killed if player owns a house in Windhelm
• In “The Cure for Madness”, killing Cicero then resurrecting him no longer impedes quest progress
• Fixed rare issue in “To Kill an Empire” where an NPC would fail to die properly
• Clearing Knifepoint Ridge before starting “Boethiah’s Champion” no longer prevents quest from starting.

The launch trailer for Big Huge Games’ highly anticipated action RPG, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, has recently been released by EA and 38 Studios.

If you’re interested, you can check it out above. As for the actual game, it will be released on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox360 on February 10 in Europe and here in South Africa.

Be sure to read up on our hands-on preview of the game if you aren’t too sure what this game is about. On the other hand, if you’re eagerly anticipating it, you can try your luck in our competition and stand a chance of winning it on the platform of your choice. The competition ends on February 8.

Electronic Arts has confirmed that BioWare’s epic MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic, has sold over 2 million copies since its launch in December of 2011.

The Old Republic currently has a massive 1.7 million active subscribers not only registered, but playing it for around four hours each day. What makes these statistics all the more impressive is that the game is exclusive to PC.

In case you’re wondering, the other 300,000 owners of the game have either not played it yet or have already “opted out” of their subscriptions, according to EA.

This “makes Star Wars: The Old Republic the fastest-growing subscription MMO in history”, EA boasted during a recent financial call.

Eric Brown, EA’s chief financial officer, commented in the financial call that BioWare’s MMO was “more successful than we anticipated”, and that server stability is also doing better than expected.

EA did its part in pointing out that The Old Republic’s huge sales have not been fully reflected in recent sales reports. The reason is because around 40 percent of the 2 million sales were actually digitally sold through the publisher’s Origin service, and those sales are not tracked by third-party data firms.

The PC version of Prototype 2 has been frustratingly delayed by a full three months and, to make matters worse, no specific reasons have been given whatsoever.

Gamers looking forward to Radical Entertainment’s Protoype 2 on PS3 or Xbox360 will get to see it release on April 27, 2012, but unfortunately PC gamers will have to wait until July 24, which is very disheartening.

The developers made this announcement on their Facebook page, literally giving no reasons at all for the delay. The post reads as follows:

“Hey all, we just wanted to let you know that the PC version of PROTOTYPE 2 is unfortunately going to be delayed until July 24th. Radical Entertainment has always been extremely dedicated to all our fans, and we just wanted to make sure you heard the news from us FIRST. We’ll share more details with you soon.”

I guess we all know the reason is probably piracy. I mean the game is being published by Activision after all. But that doesn’t really make the pill any easier to swallow.

Check out the video above, it’s awesome.

By now I’m sure you’re acquainted with the ‘Humble Bundle’ and the idea behind it. If not, it’s basically the opportunity to buy a collection of indie games at one packaged price. What makes this unique is you choose how much to pay and how that payment is distributed among indie developers, charities and the organisers of the Humble Bundle.

The current Humble Bundle contains EDGE, Osmos, and Anomaly: Warzone Earth; all of which are for Android this time around. Plus, and for those who pay above the average contribution, which is currently about $5.92, you also get a copy of World of Goo.

It’s a great way to contribute to organisations that need the donations and score yourself some awesome Android indie games in the process. So go check out the most current Humble Bundle if you’re interested .

Square Enix has very recently unveiled the launch trailer for Final Fantasy XIII-2, which released yesterday in North America, and is due to arrive on February 3 in Europe and here in South Africa.

The trailer isn’t that long and doesn’t show much, but it’s flashy and has pretty cool music, so I guess it’s worth taking a look at if you’re looking forward to the game. Check it out up top.

There are pre-order bonuses and then there’s Radical Entertainment’s idea of a pre-order bonus. Those who put their name down for Prototype 2 before the game releases will get what’s called the Radnet Edition at no extra cost. It’s a growing trend amongst developers and publishers but usually amounts to little more than an extra weapon or multiplayer skin and occasionally even an artbook. However, this one’s a bit different.

Those who get it will get a one-time use code that opens them up to 55 pieces of varied additional content. These range from bonus mutations and challenges, to Avatar items (Xbox 360)/ animated themes (PS3) and behind-the-scenes videos and more. The additional content will be doled out over 7 weeks from April 24 when the game releases to June 7. There will also be weekly themed rewards which can be won by achieving a bronze medal or higher and a minimum threshold score in that week’s challenges; those who participate in every week’s challenges will win what Activision has dubbed “the ultimate shape-shifting prize,” which will be unveiled in March.

Read up on the Radnet Edition here or just watch the trailer up top. Prototype 2 is out for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC on April 24. This may go down as one of the better pre-order bonuses, just maybe.

There have been five main games so far in the Twisted Metal series, of course not counting the two spin-offs in 2001 and 2002, with the most recent title being 2008′s Twisted Metal: Head-On: Extra Twisted Edition, which was a PlayStation 2 port of the 2005 PSP title Twisted Metal: Head On. All titles considered, that makes Twisted Metal (2012) the eighth entry in the franchise, and marks the series’ first appearance on next-gen consoles. So, what exactly are we in for? Let’s take a look.

Name: Twisted Metal
Genre: Action, Vehicle Combat
Players: 1
Multiplayer: Offline and online split-screen (4 players), Competitive (16 players)
Platforms: PS3 Exclusive
Developers: Eat Sleep Play
Publishers: Sony Computer Entertainment
Release Date: 14 February 2012 (NA), 17 February 2012 (EU, SA)

The game was originally meant to release in October 2011, but was delayed to February 14, 2012 so that it could receive more polish and be “the best Twisted Metal game ever made”, according to developer Eat Sleep Play co-founder David Jaffe. This will be the series’ first appearance on next-gen consoles after all, and fans have huge expectations of it. According to Jaffe, when it comes to story the game will stick to its original concept, where players will compete in Calypso’s Twisted Metal Tournament in order to win and earn their prize. You’ll get to choose which character you want to play the story mode with and, while there won’t be many choices, the available characters will have the option of faction gameplay online. The characters that will be included are Sweet Tooth (The Clowns), Dollface (The Dolls), Mr. Grimm (The Skulls) and the Preacher (The Holy Men), and these make up four factions in the game. Each character can use any vehicle, and each of them will have three different endings to their storylines depending on action taken in the game and the difficulty setting.

However, Twisted Metal’s main attraction is most definitely not the single-player component, as its always been heavily focused on its crazy multiplayer. It’s all about over-the-top vehicle combat, and the game aims to outdo everything the series has done in the past. With regards to content, in addition to the single-player modes, you’ll be able to play split-screen both offline and online with up to 4 players, as well as head into competitive multiplayer with up to 16 players through PlayStation Network. With a variety of game modes including series’ classics as well as completely new ones, and the promise of being able to unleash massive amounts of destruction in brand new, never before seen Twisted levels, this looks to be gearing up to be a winner, and an early triumph for the PlayStation 3 this year.

Twisted Metal isn’t just about whacky fun though, as it’s actually also a strategic game. And there are plenty of new features on offer that look set to evolve the game’s scope beyond its predecessors and change the way it’s played. For starters, there will be over a dozen Twisted vehicles to choose from, and each of them will come equipped with kick-ass weapons to brutally and tactically take apart your enemies, as well as two special abilities unique to each vehicle. While the game will feature many returning vehicles from previous titles, there will also be a lot of new ones to choose from, such as the Death Warrant, which is a 2005-2009 Ford Mustang, the Road Boat, which is an armored 60′s Cadillac sedan, the Vermin, which is a rodent catcher van, and some other fun cars like the Juggernaut, Kamikaze and Meat Wagon. On top of this, the game will feature aerial combat, which is significant because flight is actually a first for the series. Examples of this would be in some of the game’s new vehicles, like the Talon, which is a helicopter equipped with a minigun turret, and a custom chopper dubbed the Reaper. Oh, and don’t worry, Motorbikes are still here, so there’s lots to smile about.

The staple gameplay has players speed around in vehicles, armed to the teeth with explosive weaponry, attempting to obliterate their enemies. However, variety is key to the experience, and it won’t only come from the environments, weapons and vehicles, but also from the various game modes, which offer some exciting twists. You’ll get your standard Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch modes, and then you’ll also get modes like Race, where players must get to checkpoints as fast as they can, Endurance, in which players must survive against respawning enemies until death, Team Hunted, where a player on each team is chosen as the Hunted and will be a target to everyone on the opposing team, and Last Man Standing, where each player has a specific amount of lives and the last surviving player is deemed the winner. There’s also a new online game mode called Nuke Mode, in which each faction has a giant airborne statue that the opposing team must try to destroy. It’s rather interesting because in order to destroy the statues, players must kidnap the enemy team’s leader, and sacrifice that player to a missile launcher to launch a nuke. The player who conducted the sacrifice must control the nuclear missile and guide it to the opposing team’s statue in the air. To win, this process has to be completed three times.

In the game each faction will have different campaigns. But it’s not something to jump for joy over really, because players will basically just get different mix ups of missions depending on their choice of faction. For example, the clowns may start off the game with a deathmatch, while the skulls could have an endurance challenge in the first level. However, it’s been said that each faction will have their own things to do in their story, in order to avoid repetitiveness. If you’re one for achievements or generally just a proud individual, you may be happy to know that each level in the game will have three collectable medals, namely bronze, silver, and gold, as you’d expect. There is solid incentive to earn these medals though, as they will lead to unlocks such as skins, side arms, and even secret characters. On that note, as was seen in the Comic-Con presentation by director David Jaffe and producer Scott Campbell, the game will have a custom paint shop to change the appearance of your vehicles.

When it comes to firepower, players will have a complete and creative arsenal of weapons at their disposal, ranging from missiles and miniguns to giant magnets, Napalm, bombs and – no jokes – flying mascots. New weapons added to the game include the Sniper Rifle and Shotgun, which will be able to do high damage to enemy players if aimed at their vehicle’s windshield. In the game you’ll have access to primary weapons and side-arms. The former are in limited supply, while the latter don’t run out of ammo, but have various pros and cons depending on your choice of weapon in this category. You’ll get to choose side-arms like the Mounted Gun, Submachine Gun, 12 Ga. Shotgun, Rockets, Magnum Revolver or Laser Pistol. Additionally, as previously mentioned, vehicles will also have innate abilities, like perks, as well as advanced attacks and special abilities, such as EMP missiles, shields, mines, rear fire, jump, transformations and more. There’s definitely no shortage of variety in this regard. And the cherry on top is that the game’s levels are fully destructible, allowing players to alter the battlefield.

From what I’ve seen so far, there’s a healthy variety in the game’s stages. For some examples, there’s the Blackrock Stadium, which is an arena, based on a level from Twisted Metal 2, that features lava pits and an overhead track. Then there’s Metro Square, which is a Christmas-themed town square that features Times Square and the Museum of Natural History as landmarks. A nostalgic battleground would be the Los Angeles Skyline, as it combines Twisted Metal rooftop levels from the early games in the series. Then there’s Sunsprings, California, which features as a suburban town that has places like a school, a movie theater and a downtown area to wreak havoc in. Other confirmed maps include Diesel City, Watkyn’s Harbor, Diablo Pass and the classic Adventure Park, which features interactive environments and open design. The game certainly has plenty of diversity when it comes to its maps.

Extra information that may prove useful to you would be that the game will unfortunately make use of the infamous online pass system for access to its mutliplayer features, so without that you’d be missing out on what the experience is all about. On a lighter note, those who pre-order the Limited Edition of Twisted Metal will receive a voucher to download Twisted Metal: Black for free from PlayStation Network. So basically, buy it new and early for the highest reward. Still, I have to say that the more I see this game the more awesome it looks, and it’s really tempting to pre-order it, especially since you can get it brand new for a pleasantly surprising R400, which is an excellent price.

Twisted Metal is shaping up to be a fantastic start to the PlayStation 3′s exclusive line-up. It has great potential, looks hellishly fun and comes with a very reasonable asking price. If you’re in search of something whacky, exciting and multiplayer-focused, then this could turn out to be exactly what you’re looking for. The game will be released exclusively on PlayStation 3 on February 14 in North America, and on February 17 in Europe and here in South Africa. Let’s hope it seriously kicks ass.

Warner Bros. Interactive has announced the opening of the public beta for the PS3 and Xbox360 versions of Gotham City Imposters, which is a Batman-themed multiplayer FPS for those who don’t know.

However, despite entering open beta, access codes for the game are still limited, so if you’re interested and you own an Xbox360 you should go over to the game’s official site and register to stand a chance of winning a code.

On the other hand, if you’re a PS3 gamer, you can enjoy the fact that there are no keys for this version, so you can go over to the PlayStation Store and download it now. Although you might need an American account set up for that.

The last bit of important information we heard about this game was its delay from January to February, so let’s hope that extra time and the beta bodes well for the game.

If you haven’t watched the trailer for Resident Evil 6, do it now. Back already? Okay, cool. So if the trailer has your keen to slice up a bunch of nasties then read on because you’ll be able to do just that sooner than you might think.

Those who purchase Dragon’s Dogma when it releases in May will be rewarded with a free demo of RE 6. Capcom has said that the game will come packaged with a redeemable token which allows players to download the demo early.

Those who don’t like fiery lizards will have to wait until July 3 if you own an Xbox or September 5 if you own a PS3. There’s been no communication as to why the PS3 demo releases so much later but that’s still around two months before the game actually releases in November so it’s not too bad.

Dragon’s Dogma is due on PS3 and Xbox 360 on May 22. While you  mull over whether to get this game or not, let me help you with some RE 6 screenshots and a Dragon’s Dogma trailer.

January has flown past and we’re now in a new month with plenty more exciting games. There are some big names spread across February and March, so you’d better get your wallets ready if you’re interested. Check out the full list down below, and plan out your spending budget.

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

February 2012’s Game List

Index

• Asura’s Wrath
• Binary Domain
• Fallout: New Vegas – Ultimate Edition
• Final Fantasy XIII-2
• Jak and Daxter HD Collection
• Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning
• NeverDead
• Soul Calibur V
• Syndicate
• The Darkness II
• Twisted Metal
• UFC Undisputed 3
• Uncharted: Golden Abyss
• Wipeout 2048

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.

SOL Exodus is here, Freelancer fans it’s time to rejoice… well I mean there’ll probably be a sequel to look forward in the future, and that’ll be cool right. SOL Exodus says it’s a current-gen ode to past greats like Wing Commander and the aforementioned Freelancer, but who really believes what it says on the can. Maybe I’m being a bit unfair, SOL Exodus does promise, well at least the developers promise that, SOL Exodus:

SOL: Exodus is the first downloadable, 3D space-action game that leverages the power of modern graphics technology to deliver epic space battles featuring enormous capital ships, hordes of spacecraft, and beautifully rendered planetary battlegrounds in an action-packed, cinematic presentation reminiscent of TV shows and movies.

So I’ll give it a fair chance and compare the game’s presentation to its supposed promise.

Well the first part mentions that SOL Exodus is the first game to offer beautifully rendered visuals and modern graphics. I assume then that Seamless Entertainment (that’s the developer) hasn’t heard of X3 because well, I’m sorry to tell you this but they use modern graphical effects too and are a lot better at it. The game’s textures aren’t half bad but are nothing to write home about. The rest of the game’s aesthetics are quite good for an indie game but not quite good enough to warrant such a rave write-up about them. The biggest problem by far is that this attempt to do such detailed graphics, as an indie team, means that the rest of the game suffers.

To SOL Exodus’s credit (it’s kind of annoying to use caps lock for ‘SOL’ every time), it does make a genuine attempt to be cinematic and action-packed. If this was 2002 then it would most certainly be exactly that; however, this is 2012 and SOL Exodus really doesn’t cut the mustard. The cinematics are full of simplistic scenes and cheesy one-liners, it just feels like an old game and the story doesn’t really help. The story tells the tale of a Commander trying to save humanity; sounds very Master Chief or Commander Shepard-like doesn’t it? Well the problem is it’s all very generic and has no defining detail to separate it from every other space game ever invented. You’re supposed to be saving humanity with the aid of an A.I. I can’t remember, so I’m going to call her Cortana, and as Commander What’s-His-Name you use your fighter craft to defend against and thwart the efforts of COD (a concept I’m sure Azhar will approve of). COD is a fanatical religious group and I know COD stands for something but well, I don’t really remember that either. It’s all quite forgettable and I just don’t feel like I want to save this version of humanity. Religious fanatics (who I’m going to call the Chaos Space Marines rather than COD) are too overused and only really work if done well and let’s just say these particular Chaos Space Marines aren’t exactly winning SOL Exodus any prizes.

Gameplay wise, SOL Exodus isn’t as action-packed as I was lead to believe, this seems to be a trend now. There’s nothing wrong with the controls and the whole shooting-enemy-fighters mechanic seems solid and polished enough, but that’s again as far as it goes. The game doesn’t distinguish it in any way, it’s just fly to ship; shoot ship; change target; shoot next ship; rinse and repeat. There’s almost no variety in weaponry and the upgrade system is very limited offering only to give you a couple extra missiles or hull integrity for each point invested. It seems like Seamless Entertainment tried too hard to get what they thought an arcade space shooter should be like and forgot to make a game we’d love and enjoy instead. There is a hacking component to combat against the larger enemy ships where you can disable or change the target of their own arsenal or things like engines. The problem is it isn’t fleshed out enough and seems tacked on rather than integrated into the entire experience.

There is one aspect to SOL Exodus that remains completely faithful to the statement made by the developers, it is downloadable. Unfortunately, and in a year so full of AAA titles that they’re literally leaking out of my ear, I really can’t suggest such a generic indie game to anyone. Don’t get me wrong, there are some upcoming indie games to blow the pants off many AAA’s, like Torchlight 2 for example, but this is certainly not one of them. I don’t like to be mean about any game, that’s Azhar’s job, but I certainly can’t say anything nice about SOL Exodus either.

A side note to this is the hacking mechanic of SOL Exodus is called torchlight, and well as I heard torchlight I kinda wanted to play that and not play this. I wonder, is it fate?

As mentioned in yesterday’s article, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning will come with an online pass that will reward players who purchase the game with the House of Valor faction quest, which includes seven missions.

Those who choose to get it secondhand will have to buy this content, and this aspect of the game has been subject to criticism from the gaming community due to the single-player nature of the game. After all, gamers are more accustomed to online passes restricting multiplayer features, and not tampering with single-player content.

However, 38 Studios boss Curt Schilling has defended the decision for the online pass, writing on the game’s official forums that the quest itself is just day-one downloadable content that serves to reward those who purchase the game.

“DAY 1 DLC, to be extremely and VIVIDLY clear, is FREE, 100% totally FREE, to anyone that buys a new copy of Reckoning, ANYONE,” Schilling wrote. “If you don’t buy new games you buy them used, and in that case you will have to pay for the Day 1 free DLC content the new copy buyers got for free. It’s clear the intent right? To promote early adopters and MUCH MORE IMPORTANT TO ME, REWARD fans and gamers who commit to us with their time and money when it benefits the company.”

Schilling then went on to talk about how profit leads to the development of future games, and that things like online passes are a stepping stone to that.

“That’s just how business works. We MUST make a profit to become what we want to become,” Schilling wrote. “THE ONLY way we do that is to make games you CANNOT WAIT TO BUY! If we do that, and you do that, we want to reward you with some cool free stuff as a thank you. You can TOTALLY disagree with this and I am sure many do, so we’ll agree to disagree. This is not 38 trying to take more of your money, or EA in this case, this is us REWARDING people for HELPING US! If you disagree due to methodology, ok, but that is our intent.”

Well, what do you think about that?

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning will release here on February 10 on PC, PS3 and Xbox360.

If you’re a fan of Final Fantasy VII and have a copy of Fallout 3 lying around, then brace yourselves for a mod of pure epicosity. Mako Dawn is an ambitious mod that uses Fallout 3 to place you in one of the most fantastic worlds ever created, well at least according to me and Final Fanatasy VII’s hardcore fans.

Read this and imagine how cool it will be when it’s finally finished, if it’s ever finished.

“Set just prior to the events of the original game, this total conversion aims to recreate the Shinra tower as shown in the 1997 RPG Final Fantasy VII in full 3D. Take any object, use any weapon, interact with anyone. Work to gain access to each floor and unravel company secrets as you ascend – or destroy – the corporate hierarchy.”

And despite the relatively few pictures so far, to which they’ll only really make sense to Final Fantasy VII fans, I’m really excited, can’t wait.

A new Hero’s Guide trailer for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning has been released, showing off more of the large open world. It’s pretty intriguing to watch if you’re looking forward to this game.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning will release on PC, PS3 and Xbox360 on February 10 in Europe and South Africa. While it may be a highly anticipated title, it has been met with a little bit of controversy recently, because of the somewhat buggy demo and the news that the game will have an online pass for the unique Mass Effect armour as well as an entire quest-line that contains seven missions.

Time will tell how this game performs, but for now be sure to read up on our hands-on preview if you haven’t already. You can also enter our competition to stand a chance of winning the game.

EA has earmarked its FIFA Street reboot for a March 16 release on PS3 and Xbox 360 and I’m frankly excited because the game looks honestly good. It will use FIFA 12′s respective engines, feature more OTT skills than ever before and allow players to select their favourite clubs for five-a-side football. Can you imagine the intensity of a five-a-side Classico with no ref to whine to?

The game will also feature something called Street Network. It will be a lot like NFS’s Autolog but with balls instead of gearsticks. I’m not exactly sure why I said that, must be the heat.

Anyway, there’s a new trailer, watch it.

Capcom is at last looking set to give us some details on Dragon’s Dogma, which is a high-budget action RPG that hasn’t really seen much sunlight since its announcement last year. In fact, it wouldn’t really be a far-fetched statement to say that no one really knows what this game is about due to all the secrecy.

Either way, Capcom Unity has promised “a plethora of very exciting new details” from this coming Tuesday onwards, with the main attraction being a complete story trailer that will be posted on the game’s Facebook page. To hype up the trailer, Capcom has released a tiny teaser for the full trailer. Trailerception? Or something equally lame. The teaser barely shows anything though.

Dragon’s Dogma will release on PlayStation 3 and Xbox360 on May 1 in Europe and South Africa. The game will be out in March though in North America.

Pretty much the entire world was disgusted by the vulgarity of the advertisement for SoulCalibur V which gained it the title of BoobCalibur, even Lady Gaga was offended. Well, developer Namco Bandai has done some soul-searching and it would appear that they’ve learnt their lesson.

No more boobs-in-your face ads, no sir. Instead you’ll now get a faceful of ass. God, that sounded disgustingly perverse. In fact, this ad makes the previous one look tasteful and subtle.

Above the be-thonged behind, it reads, “The series’ greatest masterpiece” in Japanese. It gets worse though, much worse. There’s some really bad wordplay in the text with the Japanese word for “series” (シレーズ). The first two letters “shiri” (シリ) have dots over them; “shiri” can mean “butt” in Japanese. But wait, there’s more – “masterpiece” is “kessaku” (“傑作” or “けっさく”) in Japanese, and “ketsu” (“尻” or “けつ”) can mean “butt” in Japanese.

If you haven’t caught on by now, they’re basically calling their game a “mASSterpiece”. The ad appeared in Japanese tabloid, Nikkan Sports. It’s basically like the Daily Voice down here in CT and relishes the chance to put something like this on its pages.

In case you weren’t already made sick by this deadful attempt at advertising, here’s what it looks like a bit further down:

This is disgusting, sexist and I’m actually offended by it. Let us know what you think. In the mean time, you stay classy, Namco.

I’d make a hentai fetish joke right about now regarding the aforementioned tentacles and blood/gore but that would offend Cavie, who is an avid fan of such things, and I just ate so I’ll leave it to you people in the comments.

Anyways, there’s a new trailer for The Darkness II and it’s full of the gory dismemberment we’ve come to relish. It’s only 30 seconds but it is sweet.

The Darkness II will be tearing up a PC, PS3 or Xbox 360 near you on February 10.

You know, when we at eGamer make a mistake, we can just edit the article and it’s all hunky dory. We still proof-read our articles (some better than others) anyway. You’d imagine then that when clearing whatever text may appear on the box of a game there would be an army of people to check that all is kosher and then another army of quality control people to make sure that the first army wasn’t full of degenerates who couldn’t spot the mistakes.

How then did the above faux pa slip through? Resident Evil: Revelations for the 3DS has just been released and people who picked the game were having problems before they even got to the counter. As you can see, the spine of the box reads: “Resident Evil: Revelaitons”.

This pic was snapped by gaming journalist Dan Ackerman who writes for Spin and CNET. Game Informer called Capcom out on this tiny little microscopic error and got a rather interesting reply:

“It has come to our attention that there was a misspelling on the Resident Evil Revelations packaging. We apologize for the mistake, which will be corrected for subsequent productions of the game. We are working on a solution to provide affected customers with the correct packaging. Please visit Capcom-Unity for updates.”

Where’s Homer when you need a “d’oh”?

So Microsoft made a little 2 minute short to promote the release of Star Wars for Kinect and had the humility to call it “hilarious” themselves.

Judge for yourself whether this spoof of the iconic lightsaber duel between Vader and Obi Wan in Episode IV is any good. You may also recognise the dude in the bathrobe but I’m not saying who he is.

The game is set for an autumn release and will give you the power to “unleash your inner Jedi – with no controller in the way” across single and co-op, competitive and duel modes.

Doesn’t it just sound fantastic in every conceivable way?

There’ve been rumours flying all over the place lately but most of them relate to presently fictional consoles and this isn’t one of them.

A job listing by 2K Czech could point to the studio gearing up to get to work on Mafia III. The ad asks for a senior game designer “create designs for game systems and mechanics for the open world city environment.” It also goes on to stipulate that applicants must have shipped at least one AAA release with a Metacritc score of at least 80.

There’s nothing to suggest that this is for Mafia III save that the series is what 2K Czech is best known for. Hopefully it will be a new IP because we weren’t all that impressed with Mafia II.

I knew this day was coming.

I’ve been around long enough so it was just a matter of time, but finally I have something that allows me to rid myself of the reputation I’ve accrued, of being too soft on the games I review.

This then, is Blackwater.

They’re calling it an action FPS, designed for use with Microsoft’s motion-sensing Kinect technology.

What it actually is, however, is a steaming pile of turd.

Blackwater is an on-rails shooter that’s kind of like the Virtua Cop and Time Crisis games of old, but designed for Kinect so there is no fancy and cool-looking gun controller in your hand. You are the controller.

To that extent, the classification of the game as an action FPS is perhaps extremely suitable since this game will give you more of a workout than anything else. But you don’t want a workout, do you? You didn’t buy this game because you thought it was the new Zumba Fitness, you bought it because you wanted to kill things while pretending you have a gun in your hand.

Actually, that you bought it at all would make you something of an idiot or just a hopeless optimist at the very least.

The fact is, the lack of a controller means that most of the action feels about as contrived as it is, and all the game succeeds in doing is making you tired without really entertaining you, like something Zumba-esque would.

Don’t have a Kinect, or just don’t enjoy jumping around? No problem, the game supports a controller as well, but good luck hitting a thing with the shoddy control system that seems to almost punish you for not getting up and off your lazy ass to play the thing using motion controls.

I needn’t say this because the pictures are enough, but the game also looks atrocious. On-rails shooters have never broken records with graphical fidelity, but at the very least give us something that looks like it wasn’t made before Quake 2. The levels and textures are bland, uninspired and telling of a game that was made for the wrong reasons.

The game’s story tells of an elite group of mercenaries who call themselves Blackwater (a ‘private security’ group that actually does exist in real life — yes, this game is based on real-life mercs but that’s about the only cool thing you’ll find here) that are attempting to protect aid workers from a villainous warlord, or something like that…

To be honest, if you manage to follow the story at all then you deserve some kind of medal, or perhaps an Achievement, because for the life of me I tried but I couldn’t hear any of the dialogue thanks to the spoken audio being far softer than the rest of the game’s sounds, and the fact that each piece of story happens for five seconds at the start of each mission.

Missions themselves are spread out over stages, with multiple paths through each stage and pretty much nothing about the game changing throughout.

There are some collectibles to be found, if you’re into that kind of stuff.

To call this game bad would be an understatement.

It fails as any form of entertainment.

You won’t enjoy the gunplay because it’s contrived, lifeless and highly inaccurate on Kinect, and if you switch to a controller you might as well use your love handles to control your shots because that way you at least might accidentally hit something. You won’t enjoy the visuals because you saw them before in 1998 and most of it is brown and ugly anyway. You won’t enjoy the audio on offer because half the time there isn’t any, and when there is you’re too busy trying to hit something to concentrate on enjoying it. You won’t enjoy the story because there pretty much isn’t one that can be understood. And finally, the AI never does a thing other than standing and aiming at you. So no fulfillment there.

If you really must play this game, let it be because you’re tired of using things like Wii Fit and Zumba Fitness and want another way to work out, perhaps to the sounds of gunshots and explosions.

If I had to rate this game as a fitness title, I might have been a bit more lenient but nobody is going to look at the cover for this game and think: “Ooh, here’s a great way to shed a few kilograms.”

Nobody.

And that’s exactly who I would recommend this game for.

I get that it’s not a triple-A title, but really there are so many other games developed by entirely unknown studios, that are wholly better as an experience than this (I would know, because I’m playing a few of them right now), and actually cost a bit less to boot. This game wants to charge you close to triple-A prices for an abysmal experience, and that’s just not on.

Better on Kinect? Yeah, no.

Well, can you really blame her with a name like that? Crystal Dynamics has made the decision to not bring its Tomb Raider reboot to Nintendo’s new console.

In a recent FAQ on the game, the developer stated that the reason for this is that development on Tomb Raider started long before the Wii U was announced in addition to the fact that the a Wii version would be built differently.

“At this time no,” Global Brand Director Karl Stewart said when asked if Tomb Raider was coming to Wii U. “When we started developing the game we made a conscious decision that it was all about building the game for a platform and making sure the game was specific to that platform.

“Given that we’ve been working on the game quite a while before Wii U was announced I think it would not be right to try and port it across. If we started building a game for the Wii U we would build it very differently and we would build it with unique functionality.”

Tomb raider is set to release later this year for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 and while we may not have a specific date, we know that whatever that day may be, it’ll be global.

So there’s now a launch trailer for The Darkness II and it’s all pretty and CG. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice trailer but what caught me out is the background music provided by Nine Inch Nails. Specifically Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails since moments before watching the trailer I was listening to his version of Immigrant Song used in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. It’s a great track from an excellent soundtrack from a very good movie.

Anyway, I’m babbling so watch the trailer while I get myself checked for rabies. Normal service will resume shortly.

The Darkness II is out in all its gloom on February 10 for PS3, PC and Xbox 360.

Would you play something called Hitman: Sniper Challenge? Yeah, it sounds a bit arcadey but it would fit if it were a mobile game.

Square Enix has trademarked the aforementioned Hitman: Sniper Challenge which has revived speculation about the next Hitman installment after it was revealed in November that there would be another after Absolution.

Hitman developer IO Interactive is currently at work on Absolution and will likely move on to the third godawful Kane and Lynch game after that. Although the studio’s head Niels Sorensen has said that part of the studio will be moving on to a new IP after Absolution.

Could it be then that the next Hitman will be the maiden title of Square Enix’s soon to be established Montreal studio? It has already been revealed that it will be “a new premium quality game” in the Hitman franchise.

If it is titled Sniper Challenge or even Hitman: Profession, as another trademark spotted by Siliconera would suggest, then it will likely be a spin-off perhaps for mobile platforms or even a Vita title. With a name like Sniper Challenge it could be a relatively small downloadable title.

A new Hitman wouldn’t be a bad thing so long as it isn’t a cash-in spin-off like so many others.

No, we’re not talking about that period of time between each Assassin’s Creed game when Ezio has a pose off with his reflection, we’re talking fisticuffs. Well the answer, courtesy of Captain Obvious, is of course Ezio.

So what we actually have is a trailer for Boob, er… I mean SoulCalibur V which showcases Ezio as the guest character in the game. Besides bashing his own brains in, he also tussles with Nightmare, Raphael, Viola, Mitsurugi, and Hilde.

His fighting style is a little different to what you’re used to seeing and blue-lightning will occasionally appear around him but remain calm and look at some of the cool moves players will be able to pull off with him.

That said, the game itself doesn’t look too bad and there aren’t nearly as many genetically-enhanced boobs being shoved in your face as you’d think (or want, if you’re into that sort of thing). Although Namco might have had the good sense to leave that aspect of the game out of the media for now.

Like it or not, SoulCalibur V is out on February 3 for PS3 and Xbox 360.

The boss of Twisted Metal developers Eat Sleep Play, David Jaffe, has confirmed that the PS3 exclusive title will get a demo and a patch on day one.

Jaffe, speaking in his latest video blog, assured gamers that the patch will just be something small, and will serve to tweak a few issues regarding balance.

If you know Jaffe, you’d know that he isn’t a big fan of patches, but knows that sometimes they are important.

“I’ve gone on record: I hate patches. But that said – they’re important in some cases,” said Jaffe.

“Once you go gold, you have a couple of weeks to really play the game, and me and the QA guys, we’re just like, ‘You know, this seems a little unbalanced. It would be really cool if this weapon did a little less damage.’ It takes a lot of time to suss those things out.”

Later on in his blog he added that, depending on how successful the game is, there exists the possibility of bringing out a more substantial update in the future.

“You start downloading a huge, memory-intensive level and it starts to feel like, ‘I just bought this, I just wanna play,’” he commented.

“If the game is successful enough we’d love to do future tweaks and adjustments to the game, and some of those hopefully will be level-based. Those might be a little longer.”

Twisted Metal will be released exclusively on PS3 on February 17 in Europe and South Africa.

If you had to dig inside the head of your typical Sega fanboy and remove every memory of Sonic in all of the games that were released featuring the speedy blue hedgehog, you would get something of a better idea of exactly what Sonic Generations is attempting to achieve.

The game is more of a celebration than anything, of the last twenty years of Sonic games — at least, the good ones — but with a fresh high-definition coat of paint slapped on. It is an amalgamation of the core concepts of both the 2D-platformer worlds of the classic games, and the 3D-platformer worlds of later entries into the series.

This game is basically a mash-up of all things Sonic, and as such is a must-buy for every fan of the Sonic series who ever dared to appreciate blazing rapidly through levels as a little blue, humanoid animal.

But what about the rest of the world?

As with most of the recent entries in the Sonic series of games, Sonic Generations does in fact have some story behind it; Sonic is cheerfully celebrating his birthday with friends but it all goes to shit as an inter-dimensional rift opens up and swallows everything whole. Sonic later awakens missing his friends and must seek them out by racing through and restoring various familiar levels that featured in previous titles.

That’s not all though and as an added twist, the inter-dimensional rift happened to also swallow a different version of Sonic, effectively meaning that there are two versions of the blue hedgehog from, let’s call them parallel universes, that must seek out their friends and then save them from the clutches of– we’ll get to that in a bit.

The two Sonic characters, Classic Sonic and Modern Sonic as they’re known in the game, have very distinct play styles that both centre around excessive speed, but diversify in execution.

Classic Sonic keeps things traditionally 2D with all levels strictly side-scrolling, and pretty much as you would remember them from way back when, be it the enemies, the rings, the powerups or the methods of navigation. It’s all very much an ode to the old. For some reason this Sonic is also shorter, slightly lighter, and for the most part a mute.

Modern Sonic is stylistically similar to recent entries in the Sonic series in that his levels are 3D for the most part with you running ‘into the camera’ as it were, but there are also parts where you end up side-scrolling through the level as well. Definitely the more interesting of the two even if a bit more frustrating to play, Modern Sonic’s levels will go from 3D to 2D and back again, with the lock-on controls and jump pads that you know from the modern forays. Modern Sonic is also taller, a darker shade of blue, and able to communicate with actual speech.

The game world consists of what could only be described as an extra-dimensional limbo of sorts where various levels from the previous Sonic games are featured as areas that must be restored, first by travelling through and completing the initial stage — basically the level in its entirety — and then through various challenges that range from using one of Sonic’s powers to achieving a certain goal within some time limit.

Completing each of the initial stages will save one of your friends and unlock the challenges for that area. Upon completing one of those challenges, a key will be unlocked for you to collect. For every three keys you collect, you unlock a story-related boss fight that unlocks new stages for you, and the cycle repeats.

There are also various miscellaneous boss battles not related to the game’s story that you may play through.

Since there are two Sonics this time around, each stage has two Acts associated with it, forcing you to switch between Sonics in order to clear every challenge for that stage. While this does mean that you would effectively have to complete each challenge twice, the actual challenges for each Sonic differ in their execution and the levels themselves are varied enough that you end up actually looking forward to doing so in any case.

Apart from that, there is a tonne of unlocks available for either version of Sonic that includes but is not limited to artwork, music and various power-ups, some that allow you to call in friends to help you out in stages.

There is a lot of ‘game’ to be found in this game, and a fan of Sonic series would be quite at home with this title. For the rest of us, it would depend on how much you enjoy arcade-like platformers.

Don’t get me wrong when I call it arcade-like. There are many, many hours to be lost in this game, completing all the challenges and unlocking everything, but Sonic Generations is most certainly not going to win any awards for story-telling or cinematics. I mean, inter-dimensional rifts that bring together two different kinds of Sonic that must then work together to save both dimensions from an evil time and space traversing enemy that threatens to destroy all of space-time? It’s almost laughable.

See, this is basically Sega finally keeling over and giving in to the rage from Sonic fanboys who have longed for a return to the ways of the classic games in the series, but at the same time offering up a means of showing said fanboys that the classic can be mixed with the modern in a way that works for all.

Whether they actually managed to achieve that depends on how much of a fanboy you are, but all for intents and purposes it certainly seems as though they have, with seamless integration of both perspectives in all the modern stages, and enough of the classic stages to keep the rest happy anyway.

The game also looks great. As it should, being a title released for the current generation of consoles. Be it the classic or modern levels, everything looks pretty and aesthetically delightful, with crisp textures and excellent character animation abound. The contrast between the classic and modern versions of each character and level is also a neat touch that really shows off the polish of the game.

The music is suitable to the arcade nature of the game, with many tracks being very upbeat and ‘happy’ for lack of a better word. It’s a Sonic title, so you expect as much.

There is an online component of the game, but it is limited to ranked scoreboards and speed-runs, and as such it still keeps things strictly singleplayer but allows you to compete with friends for times as well.

Sega have really pulled no punches with this game, and offered up a title that really cannot fail at pleasing everyone. It’s not the perfect Sonic game by any means, but it’s pretty much the best of the series for a very long time.

It’s equal parts challenging as it is entertaining, and a proper throwback to the days of old where running through Green Hill was all you needed to enjoy yourself. Sonic has finally got a game that everyone should play. And it’s about damn time.

A few days ago we told you about Deadlight, the first title from Spanish indie developer Tequila Works. The game sounds like something worth paying attention to and if the screenshots are anything to go by, it also looks surprisingly high quality for an indie title which is in line with the A-list of developers that the studio has accumulated.

It might not be the gameplay that we’d all love to see but there is a teaser trailer out now for Deadlight and it definitely has me curious to see what this game is all about. Check it out.

Deadlight is due out on XBLA mid-2012.