Alice: Madness Returns is set over a decade after the original game.
Alice is finally free from the Rutledge Insane Asylum, and is placed into the care of a psychiatrist who will try to help her conquer her nightmarish hallucinations. Alice is still struggling to recover from the emotional trauma of the fatal fire that accidentally killed her family. The repressed memories start to come back to her, but the stress caused by regaining these lost memories cause her hallucinations and internal struggle to increase in severity.
Alice embarks on an adventure to try to retain her sanity by seeking out the truth of her families’ mysterious accidental death and to save the residents of Wonderland from the evil that is trying to take over. Cross worlds between a gloomy London setting to a richly provocative Wonderland.
Sega publishing Gearbox’s long-awaited game sequel to landmark sci-fi film early next year for the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360; first trailer inside.
Sega and Gearbox have at last announced a release date for their long-awaited game sequel to James Cameron’s classic sci-fi film Aliens. This morning, the publisher and developer revealed that Aliens: Colonial Marines will ship for the PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 in spring 2012. (A previously revealed DS edition of the game was not mentioned.) Also, no rating information for the title was available, but given the gory subject matter, an M for Mature label is likely.
Aliens: Colonial Marines’ story will pick up shortly after the events of Aliens. Players will join a squad of the titular space soldiers who board the USS Sulaco, the spaceship the film, after it is apparently abandoned. From there the action will spread to the surface of the planet LV-426 and its main settlement, Hadley’s Hope. The first-person shooter will also feature environments and weapons inspired by the film.
On Codemasters’ colourful shooter, Bodycount, and its shreddable cover, arcade sensibilities, and novel cover-lean mechanic.
It takes a brave developer (or a foolhardy one) to mess with the formula for a console FPS control scheme. So familiar and ingrained is that formula, a developer better have a good reason to arrange its controls otherwise. Codemasters’ Guildford Studio is one such brave or foolhardy outfit. Its good reason is the cover-lean mechanic in lively, arcadey shooter Bodycount.
With this mechanic, the left-trigger plants you where you stand, rather than giving you the traditional view down the sights. Then, once you are locked in place, the right analog stick controls how you duck and weave on the spot. Instead of crouching or standing up with a button press, you twitch the stick up or down. Instead of full-on strafing left or right around the edge of cover, you move the stick left or right to lean either way.
The idea is that you plant yourself behind cover–say, a low wall–and use the cover-lean system to open up new lines of sight on the bad guys, letting you peek out from behind the wall rather than pop out from behind it. Though it takes time to get to grips with (and to shake the Call of Duty muscle memory), it feels like a neat idea successfully executed. It won’t be to all tastes but, to the studio’s credit, it doesn’t feel like novelty for novelty’s sake.
Andrew Wilson, who took up Stuart Black’s mantle when he left Bodycount and Codemasters, is aware the unconventional mechanic is a gamble. But as the game’s summer release date draws near, it’s time for the studio to have the ’courage of [its] convictions’, as he puts it. And with ’the best gun experience’, says the game director, also up Bodycount’s sleeve, he is quietly confident. Enough of quirky cover schemes, then. What makes a ’best gun experience’?
“It’s all about the effect the bullets have on the world around you,” says Wilson, describing the shreddable cover that keeps you on your toes in the game’s diverse environments. It’s this exaggerated destructibility that smashes the chest-high wall you were hiding behind at an alarming rate, and that means many walls don’t take a heavy weapon to demolish; a standard-issue assault rifle will do the trick. That’s not to say explosives won’t be readily available. Mines and grenades were plentiful in our hands-on. In a fun touch, grenades can be primed to explode on impact with a double tap of the right bumper–like having a grenade launcher permanently at your fingertips.
Dungeon Fighter Online is a side-scrolling action fighting game featuring role-playing elements, five unique character classes, and player versus player.
Dark Souls is a dark fantasy RPG designed to completely embrace the concepts of tension in dungeon exploration, fear in encountering enemies, the joy of new…
The latest adventure from Irrational Games is surprising us in entirely new ways.
BioShock Infinite is shaping up to be one disturbing game. Anyone who has played the original BioShock knows this is territory that Boston-based Irrational Games knows very well. And, after getting a tease of what the developer will be showing off at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, we can say that BioShock Infinite is unsettling in a whole new way. The brief demo of a work-in-progress version of the game we saw showcased the game’s setting, the floating city of Columbia, the cast of troubled characters you’ll encounter, your relationship with the mysterious Elizabeth, and offered a deeper look at some key gameplay mechanics. Although the meaty demo did a fine job of answering many of the questions we’ve had about the game, it wound up raising even more as we got a sense of the intriguing adventure’s scale.
Our last look at BioShock Infinite offered an introduction to the airborne city of Columbia; Booker Dewitt, the game’s main character; Elizabeth, the mysterious and powerful woman Booker is sent to retrieve; and a taste of how the game would play. The short but captivating demo did an excellent job of painting a vivid picture of what to expect from the upcoming game. For this update, creative director Ken Levine served up another 20-minute chunk of the adventure from roughly one-third of the way into the game that focused on Booker and Elizabeth’s journey to the home of Z.H. Comstock, the locale at which he’s supposed to drop her off.
The demo kicked off with the pair entering a sundries shop filled with candy and assorted knickknacks. The scene offered a snapshot of Booker’s evolving relationship with Elizabeth as they explored the store. Elizabeth, given her years of “Rapunzel”-like confinement in her prison, was literally acting like a kid in a candy shop and darting from one item to another. The pair’s conversation veered from silly to serious with Booker coming across like an older brother at times. During the exchange, Booker collected items hidden throughout the shop, ranging from money to the Bucking Bronco “vigor” which is the game’s version of plasmids. Shortly after Booker collected a gun, a wind kicked up around the shop and Elizabeth had a bit of a freak-out.
A quick glance around the room revealed a figure moving outside, visible through the shop window drapes that were mostly closed. Booker moved next to Elizabeth, who was hiding behind a stack of crates, as the room became flooded with a green glow from one of the windows. A massive eye of some kind was shown peering in, obviously looking for something. When the creature stopped its search and moved on, Elizabeth ran to the shop’s side door. When Booker caught up, the pair had an awkward conversation in which Elizabeth made it clear she’d rather die than go back to her prison.
