The Pre-E3 Post: 2013 Edition

I hope you're in for one hell of an E3 this year.

Behold Halo 4's multiplyer suite!

Halo Fourge

Below, you'll find all the details you need on Halo 4's Forge maps and features. It's looking really great.  Certain Affinity knocks it out of the park again! Maybe in Halo 5 we'll get terrain and weather editors.

Check out Halo 4's Forge and a new map!

I cannot believe how good this game looks.

You know my favorite types of Halo maps? The snowy ones. Sidewinder, Containment, and even Solitary, the icy remake of Prisoner, are some of my favorites. But not Snowbound or Avalanche. Halo 3 was a bad game for snow maps. Halo 4, however, is looking like a great game for snow maps! Longbow was revealed back at E3, but now you can see it in action for the first time in the competitive match posted after the break! Plus, new and improved Forge mode developed by Certain Affinity, the dudes behind the many Halo 2 and Halo Reach map packs! The improvements made so far look great, but what I really want is an environmental editor. Here's hoping it'll be announced closer to release!

Installation 04 @ PAX EAST 2012

So I was at PAX East last weekend and I played some great games. Not as many games as I wanted to play, but I played some cool stuff nonetheless. What did this year's show have to offer? Impressions lie within, including a spcial preview of Party of Sin.

More FEZ!

I know you want more FEZ footage, so here it is! Over six minutes of gameplay from the game's demo. FEZ was in development for over four years before it was finally finished a few months back. It's currently being certified by Microsoft for release on the Xbox Live Arcade and should be out in the next couple of months. All that development time has really paid off in my opinion. The level of polish is immediately apparent. Theres's tons of little details everywhere, like the streams of sunlight in the sky, the shadows of the clouds on the ground, and the way the music becomes muffled when Gomez is behind part of the level. If you'd like to see for yourself how much time they've spent tweaking things, check past the break for another gameplay video from only a year ago showing some of the same locations sporting more simplified looks.

AC 3 details? How'd you like the whole damn article?

The 3DS: I have played it!

I played the 3DS today and I can confirm that everything you've heard is true. The 3D works, and it is awesome.

The ultimate RPG?

Developer Big Huge Games has something epic up their sleeves. Almost said wizard sleeve to make it a fantasy reference, but then decided against that because you might get the wrong idea. Looks like I said it anyway, though, so oh well. Anyway, you're probably thinking "Who the hell is Big Huge Games and why the hell should I care?" You should care because this it the newest RPG from Oblivion designer Ken Rolston. But that's not all! It also brings together Todd McFarline as the visual director and fantasy author R.A. Salvatore as the writer. Salvatore created 10,000 years worth of fictional history set in the world Amalur for Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning (that'd be the game's name). Excited yet? You should be. While details are scant as the game will be out fall 2011, it has been revealed that the game will be an open world action RPG set in the world of Big Huge Games also upcoming MMO codenamed Copernicus. More info here. The trailer follows.

Crackdown 2 impressions

Crackdown 2 suffers from something I like to call "next-gen disease." That is 1) it's darker and 2) it has zombies. Because everyone knows if your game isn't dark and zombie-ridden it isn't modern. The city, while the same, is almost unrecognizable at least in the area I played. Everything's decayed and run down, the color pallet is darker and even the Agency agents look like generic armored men. One of my favorite things about the first Crackdown was how your agent would physically evolve when your skills increased. While he certainly gets bigger now, the only other visual effect is more armor. You can choose a specific face for your agent, but you'll never see it, and the armor colors include blue, gray, light gray, and dark gray. Exciting. Even the HUD is transparent black rather than blue. Yes sir, this game certainly has next-gen disease. 

E3: More Fallout Fun

Well readers here's the scoop: A new Fallout Vegas trailer has been released and just in time for E3...yeah. This is not a post about E3 or anything really relating to it besides this trailer, the fact that it is a video game and the timing. What we have here is a standard analysis post. First, let me give you the trailer...

The Installation 04 Official Reach Beta Impressions

Now that the Halo Reach beta is over, it's time for impressions! So, uh, here they are.

Fallout New Vegas Info

Alright people, here is what I have been able to eek out of all the repetitive info and total bull@*(#) that has been posted online about Vegas. WARNING: MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS TO PARTS OF THE GAME INTRO OR TO SOME OF THE NEW FEATURES. YEE ALL BE WARNED OF THE DANGER. If you are still with me, here is some of the stuff so far:

Why the Wii is starting to own

And it's not just because of this awesome Metroid Wii. The system has been getting a lot of quality releases lately. Yes, they are "hardcore." The following games have released or will release this year. If you've got a Wii, you should definitely think about picking these up.

Music Preview: Night Train by Keane

So Keane is coming out with a new EP on May 10th. It was recorded while on tour promoting their last album, Perfect Symmetry. From what I've heard so far, this is pretty much the opposite of that. It's not quite like Hopes and Fears or Under the Iron Sea, but it's closer to them than Perfect Symmetry. Hell, as long as the synth is gone, it's better by default. In fact, the four released songs (with is actually about half the album) are already better than the majority of the tracks on their previous effort. Two of the songs collaborate with K'Naan, a Somali-Canadian rapper. It seems like it's a set up for utter failure, yet it sounds natural. Another track incorporates the sounds of Tigarah, a Japanese Ballie Funk emcee. Strange? Yes. But that doesn't mean it won't come out sounding well. I've never heard of half the people on Plastic Beach, yet it all worked out just fine. Listen to the four released tracks after the break.

Just Cause 2 Impressions, or How to Make a Sandbox Game

Just Cause 2 is big. I mean BIG. And yet, it's far from boring. Even when there's nothing to explode, the detail and scenery in the game is absolutely stunning. Let Just Cause 2 be an example to every other game developer out there: This is how you make a sandbox game.

PAX: Great Success or Epic Fail?

To sum up my experience at PAX in one word: disappointment. I entered with very high hopes. Spent all friday doing my work (and watching March Madness in-between) so that I could immerse myself into the PAX experience Saturday and Sunday. I bought my T ticket, slightly annoyed that PAX would send me a T (the T being the Boston Public Transit; think of a subway) ticket without any money, and boarded the train that would take me to game heaven.

Problem 1: directions. On the train, I open up my iPhone and double-check the directions. The train directions were fairly accurate, they said to get off at Government Center instead of Park Station which isn't too big a deal, just takes longer. The problem was that once arriving at the HCC Station to get to the Convention Center, the PAX site said "follow the signs to PAX" but THERE WERE NO SIGNS!!!! Thanks to my World of Warcraft navigating skills I was able to find the place.......a 15 minute's walk away from the Train Station. Oh, and there's an earlier stop that's literally right next to the convention center that PAX forgot to mention.

Impressions: Blur

I can sum up Blur in a sentence: It's pretty damn fun. For those of you unaware, Blur is the next big game from Bizarre Creations, developers of Project Gotham Racing and Geometry Wars. It can best be described as a more mature Mario Kart. The parallels are uncanny, in fact. You pick a car and race around on a track filled with power-ups used to deter the other cars from passing the finish line before you. At it's current beta stage, it's quite a fun, though slightly flawed, title.

All Points Bulletin

All Points Bulletin, also known as APB, is a sandbox MMOFPS set for release in spring of 2010.

Click to read more...

Impressions: Bayonetta

So I read a preview of this game a few months back that said this:

So we're Bayonetta in this city and we're kicking monsters and shooting things with our boot guns and all of a sudden this giant statue comes to life we're dodging and our clothes are disappearing and then there's lava everywhere so we run on the skyscrapers and fight angels and we're chased by a tsunami and then we're in a cathedral and there's a dragon coming through the window and we're fighting it and then it lifts off and it's flying and the cathedral is flying and everybody's flying and fighting and shooting and what is going on.

Yeah, that pretty much sums up how awesome this game is.