Review: Battlefield: Bad Company 2Posted by Mitch on March 17th, 2010

Swedish developer DICE has long been the master of online warfare, their lineage of creating excellent multiplayer experiences extending back to 2002’s Battlefield 1942. Even though DICE has a bunch of award winning frag-fests tucked under their caps, their games have always lacked a solo outing outside of throwing a bunch of computer-controlled grunts at someone and calling it “single-player”. DICE’s first foray into the setup of a solitary campaign came with 2007’s Bad Company, the second DICE game on current generation consoles and the first one with a single player portion.

The tone of the game was humorous, and it wedged the story into the huge open maps that the series is known for. The multiplayer was lauded, but then again, that’s a given with DICE. What Bad Company did prove is that they can make single players games, but it was in need of some refinement. Two years later, we’ve got a sequel and it aims to take back the crown of “First Person Shooter King”. What did DICE do differently this time around?
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GamerSushi Asks: Games You Miss?Posted by Eddy on March 16th, 2010

I just spent a whole weekend in Austin, Texas for South By Southwest Interactive, the glorious tech and social media festival. I got to experience a whole lot of awesome things like hanging with some folks from Revision3, Burnie Burns from RoosterTeeth, and fans of Web Zeroes.

However, one thing I didn’t get a lot of: video games. As much fun as I ended up having, whenever I’m separated from gaming for a few days or more I start to go a little nuts. All weekend long, I couldn’t stop thinking about Battlefield: Bad Company 2’s sweet multiplayer and Final Fantasy 13. Despite its opening story issues and inherent Japanese-ness, Final Fantasy 13 is still tickling at a bone that doesn’t get tickled too often these days. I’m not sure what it is, but even though I had some complaints about the opening chapters, I keep finding myself drawn back to it.

So, what games do you guys start to miss when you have to get away from gaming for too long? What are you playing right now?

Brink Trailer Wants to Catch You RollingPosted by Mitch on March 15th, 2010

Brink is a title I’ve had my eye on for quite a while, but there’s been surprisingly few trailers for the upcoming First Person Shooter/free-running game. It’s got all the things I love about current generation shooters: persistent stats, customizable characters, and co-op. The game features something called SMART, which stands for Smooth Movement Across Random Terrain. Check out an example of that in the trailer:

It looks like pre-rendered stuff, but it’s a good example of the game’s art direction. Does this pique your interest? If you do pick it up, which platform will it be for?

Chaos Rising Trailer is a Bloody Good TimePosted by Mitch on March 14th, 2010

While I’ve been known to bemoan the stripping down of traditional Real Time Strategy mechanics, there’s one game that goes about it the right way: Dawn of War II by Relic. You may know Relic for their previous excellent strategy games like the original Dawn of War and Company of Heroes. While you needed a PC of the most beefy variety to play CoH, there’s no denying that it had some of the most dynamic game-play I’ve ever seen in a strategy title. Dawn of War took that and refined it a little more, focusing completely on unit manipulation in the field. A lot of upcoming RTSes purport that they want you to feel “attached” to your cannon fodder, but DoW2 comes the closest. A new expansion came out recently, and it’s been getting some rave reviews. Check out the trailer, heretics.

Has anyone else tried this game yet? If so, what did you think of the original, and do you miss the battlefields covered in carpets of slain Orks? Are you going to pick this expansion up? Just for extra nerd cred, who here paints Warhammer figurines? I have a few painted myself.

Review: Assassin’s Creed II DLC TwoferPosted by Mitch on March 9th, 2010

Since my own personal game of the year 2009 has seen some extra content be released in this very packed first quarter, I felt it was my duty to plunge back into Assassin’s Creed II feet first and see if the DLC could stand up to my amazing reception of the original game. I’ve had an opportunity to finish it off, so let’s head right in.

If you’re unfamiliar with Assassin’s Creed II, I’ll do a quick recap of the premise to bring you up to speed. During the course of gameplay, your character is forced to skip replaying a few years of Ezio’s life due to error in the Animus, a machine used to relive memories of ancestors past. The downloadable content restores the damaged memories, and that’s where the expanded missions take place. Both content packs have been released already for fewer than five dollars and are included with the PC version, if you can actually get past Ubisoft’s DRM measures. Some people have complained about the fact that Ubisoft is charging for cut story content, but I feel that AC2 is complete enough as it is, and anything else they deign to add to it is fine with me. But how well do the two memories fit in with the overall experience?
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What is With All the Streamlining?Posted by Mitch on March 9th, 2010

While Bad Company 2 was released last week on March 2, another sequel that I was greatly anticipating came out that day as well: Supreme Commander 2, the follow up to 2007’s large-scale strategy title. I’d been hearing mumblings going into its release that it was going to eschew the heavy system requirements necessary to render the huge battlefields of the previous game, but I doubted that Gas Powered Games was going to stray too far from the formula of the original. After all, there’s something unique and cathartic about building up a huge base, stocking it with top tier defense guns and shields, then pummeling the enemy’s fortifications with a gigantic navy. The game had a charm that could only come from a prohibitive resource management system, but I loved it all the same.

Now that I’ve had a chance to play Supreme Commander 2 a bit, I can’t help but notice how severely pared down it is from its original inception. I wonder when I became vogue to start taking formerly complicated games and trimming all of the fat off of them. While this trend has been seeing movement for a while, there is another recent example of a game series that started off as bloated with genre tropes as you can possibly get then got whittled down to the bare essentials: Mass Effect. Like I mentioned in my recent post about the upcoming DLC, I’ve been playing the original and the differences in the inventory and level management system are staggering. The same thing is true with Supreme Commander in that there are no more tech trees and the unit upgrades are managed through a simple interface as opposed to a constant advancement of technology.
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Mass Effect 2 Says “Tanks” For the MemoriesPosted by Mitch on March 9th, 2010

I’ve been replaying Mass Effect one recently so I can import a character over to the sequel, something I wasn’t able to do on my three play-throughs (quiet, Eddy). For those of you who may not be familiar with the mechanics of importing versus not importing a legacy Shepard, the game assumes that you made certain decisions, all of which follow the Renegade path, something I don’t usually do in moral choice games.

While Mass Effect one still holds up, one thing that’s really getting to me are the Mako driving sections. That armored personnel carrier handles like a hyper-active child throwing his Hot Wheels around, and I’ve gotten stuck in narrow canyons more times than I care to mention. While I may hate the Mako with a passion, the good folks over at BioWare have decided to give the old wheeled vehicle a make-over and transform it into a hovering tank. Watch the tank in action in the following video:

Pretty slick, if you ask me. Looks like BioWare solved all the complaints with the Mako, which were mostly concerning handling and the occasional problem of not being able to aim properly due to wonky terrain. Most of us have probably finished our ME2 campaigns by now, but who’s going to jump back in and give the “Firewalker” DLC pack a try? It’s coming out late March free for Cerberus members, and those who didn’t buy the game new will have to pay $15USD to join the Network.

Modern Warfare 2 Machinima: No RussianPosted by Eddy on March 8th, 2010

I am a man who has an affinity for some mighty fine machinima from time to time. That’s why I’ve taken a liking to a cool new video by YouTube user Michael Barnes, who has produced a new Modern Warfare 2 machinima titled No Russian.

The video is basically a re-telling of Modern Warfare 2’s plot, with different camera angles and what looks to be some sick as hell settings on his video card. I honestly don’t remember Modern Warfare 2 looking this good, but I really like what he’s done and how he’s cut everything together. Impressive stuff, I must say. Anyway, give it a watch and revel. That’s an order.

Valve’s Going ViralPosted by Eddy on March 4th, 2010

If you haven’t been paying attention, or if you’ve somehow wandered away from the Internet this week, you may have missed the fact that Valve is going bat poop loco with some new viral marketing regarding Portal. They’ve updated the puzzle FPS classic with some mysterious radio codes as well as a new achievement in the last week, and have sent their fans into a rabid frenzy: here is an active Steam thread where they are decoding some new images.

As if that wasn’t all enough, Valve has let loose with some not so subtle teases about its Steam platform seeing a potential future release on the Mac OS. They’ve put together images from several different Mac ad campaigns and incorporated Half Life 2 and Source characters in them. Say what you will about them, these guys are damn clever.

And on top of all that, people have discovered that Portal has been sneakily updated this week with a new ending… Yes, you read that right. If you don’t feel like playing the game to see, check out this video of it below.

So what do you guys think this is leading up to? It seems that Valve is really laying it on thick about a Portal 2 announcement, but there seems to be some Episode 3 imagery in the coded messages as well. Could we be getting both of these bundled in one awesome box? I certainly hope so. Theorize away!

Source- Kotaku and Shacknews

Activision Goes All Order 66 on Infinity WardPosted by Mitch on March 2nd, 2010

Almost five months after releasing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, a smash hit with sales numbering in excess of a billion dollars, a wave of shady goings-on and innuendo has blanketed Infinity Ward, resulting in the layoffs of two senior members, namely Vince Zampella and Jason West. For those who are unfamiliar with the pair, these two are the head honchos at Infinity Ward, so these are some startling developments indeed.

It all started yesterday with IW’s bosses heading for a meeting with Activision CEO Bobby Kotick. Zampella and West went MIA after the meeting and a bunch of “bouncer”-types showed up outside the IW offices creating a “tense situation”. Although the security personnel would not disclose why they had rolled up on IW’s office building, this did not stop the internet’s unofficial band of sleuths from digging through Linked-In, a job-history database. Vince Zampella has changed his profile to reflect his new employment status with his tenure as Infinity Ward’s CEO clearly represented in the past tense.
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