You can look at the title “MX vs. ATV Alive” and wonder a lot of things. For example: What do MX and ATV have against each other? Are they really fighting or just pretending? Will they ever reconcile? And the list goes on. But the most important question is this: What is the word “Alive” doing in the name?
We get back into the mud for a look at a very near-final version of Codemasters’ upcoming off-road racer.
Dirt 3 wastes no time in making the point that rallying is back. While it was present in Dirt 2, the extreme sports aesthetic and overall feel made it seem slightly out of place–but in Dirt 3, point-to-point races in classic rally cars are front and center.
The first thing you notice when starting the game is that the paddock and RV from the previous game are gone, along with all the product placement and extreme sports lifestyle gubbins. Your pre-race car selection is now set up as a team selection but can be done on an ad hoc basis, with the vehicles determined by your reputation rather than by your ability to afford them.
Once you’ve picked your team and car, you find yourself in the “service area” near the start of the race, where you can tweak individual car settings, as well as the difficulty level of your opponents, the number of available flashbacks, and the driving assists.
To begin with, you’re presented with two classic rally stages in Finland, which do a good job of setting the scene for the game. Despite the trimming of the fat that got between you and races in Dirt 2, it will feel instantly familiar for fans of the series. The two stages you hit first are challenging but not punishing: relatively open bends and small jumps that help to ease you into the driver’s seat.
The choices of a Peugeot 207 and Abarth Grande Punto are hardly the most thrilling, but they’re good little rally cars that are fun to throw around the track.
Check out this brand-new action-packed trailer. Renegade Ops lets you unleash mayhem and destruction in a mobile commando unit.
Child of Eden is a visually stunning shooter using Microsoft’s Kinect as well as traditional controls. We go hands-on and give our full report.
2K Games today detailed its plans to spread Darkness throughout the world. The publisher confirmed that The Darkness II, the sequel to 2007′s well-reviewed supernatural first-person shooter, is set to arrive in North American stores October 4, with an international launch October 7.
Escalation is the second downloadable content pack for Call of Duty: Black Ops.
Thor: The Video Game is a third person action adventure game based of the Marvel movie.
All preorders of Atlus adventure-puzzle game to include art book and soundtrack; Deluxe Edition packs in polka dot boxers, T-shirt, sexy pillowcase for an extra $20.
Atlus has dated its summer fling. The publisher today announced that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 adventure puzzle game Catherine will launch in North America July 26 in standard and collector’s editions.
The “Love is Over” Deluxe Edition of Catherine will come bundled with some familiar items from the game. Players will get a pair of polka-dot boxers like those worn by protagonist Vincent, an “empty hearts” T-shirt sported by Catherine, and a pillowcase with the titular character’s scantily clad likeness on it. The Deluxe Edition will sell for $80 and will be delivered in a pizza box from Stray Sheep, the drinking establishment featured in the game.
In addition, Atlus is offering some schwag for those who preorder either the Deluxe Edition of Catherine or the $60 standard release of the game. Gamers who commit to a purchase in advance will receive a 36-page art book, as well as an 11-track CD with remixes of the game’s music.
Catherine has players navigating tricky relationship waters as Vincent. When the commitment-phobic protagonist’s girlfriend Katherine starts talking about taking their relationship to the next level, Vincent finds himself straying. While out drinking with friends, he meets a flirty bombshell named Catherine, whom–after a series of events he can’t quite recall–he wakes up next to the following morning.
In addition to helping Vincent make decisions to extricate himself from the situation, players will be called on to fight off the physical manifestations of his fears and guilt as he sleeps. Atlus will also include local competitive and cooperative multiplayer modes, complete with leaderboard support.
Although the game is an original property, Catherine is a collaboration between a number of notable creators. Katsura Hashino, director of Persona 3 and 4, is serving as producer on Catherine, with help from that series’ character artist Shigenori Soejima and composer Shoji Meguro. Going beyond the world of games, Japanese animation shop Studio4˚C (Tekkonkinkreet, Halo Legends) also lent its talents to the project.
Yakuza creator’s squad-based third-person shooter about a robotic uprising gets a new release window.
Humanity’s inevitable subjugation by its own sentient robotic creations has a new kickoff window. Sega today announced an early 2012 launch for Binary Domain, the third-person squad-based shooter from Yakuza creator Toshihiro Nagoshi.
Binary Domain is set in Tokyo in the year 2080, a time when humans are locked in battle with robots. In the game, players take control of a human peacekeeping team set on regaining control of the city.
“When you hear sci-fi you may think of cold, clinical environments, but with Binary Domain I wanted to combine this with a deep human drama,” Nagoshi said upon the game’s announcement. “The keyword we have in mind for this project is ‘Life.’ I wanted to make something that will be accepted by both the Japanese and Western markets, and this fundamental theme is something everyone knows but which the full extent of can be difficult to grasp.”
Speaking with GameSpot, Nagoshi also discussed the mechanics of how the game handles squad-based combat, the development team’s focus on strong friendly AI, and how he intends to breathe fresh life into a well-worn man-versus-robots premise.
Driver: San Francisco will let you change lanes…and change identities. Get the details in our hands-on report.
Drawing inspiration from such classics as Bullit and The French Connection, as well as more contemporary titles, such as the Bourne series, Driver: San Francisco is aiming to instill some of Hollywood’s hard-nosed cop bravado into its action racing formula. Recently, we got the chance to go behind the wheel of this latest entry in the Driver series alongside series creator Martin Edmondson of developer Ubisoft Reflections.
While previous entries in this series have dabbled in the realm of third-person combat, our demo of Driver: San Francisco forwent such extraneous features and focused on making the driving as fun and wild as possible.
Our session with Driver San Francisco picked up with the continuing story of the series–months after the events that took place in the awkwardly titled DRIV3R. The series’ protagonist, on-again, off-again police officer Tanner, had finally succeeded in putting the villain Jericho behind bars. Jericho’s sentencing was close at hand, but as we soon discovered, not everything would go according to plan.
In brief, Jericho hatched a daring scheme involving an acid tablet, a rocket launcher, and a local news helicopter to make his escape, but not before forcing Tanner into a deadly automotive wreck. After regaining consciousness, Tanner discovered that this event had yielded unexpected results: he could now leave his body and posses other drivers on the San Francisco streets.
With the press of a button we could depart our mortal shell and take flight above the city. From here we could glide around using the two analog sticks (our demonstration was on an Xbox 360) and possess the driver of any vehicle we wanted. In the beginning we were limited to a very intimate view of the city.
However, as our powers developed, we were eventually able to pull the camera back to reveal the entire city and instantly jump anywhere we wanted. As Edmondson noted, including the ability to quickly hop from one side of this massive city to the next in mere moments has been no small technical feat.
To pull this off, the team at Ubisoft Reflections has forgone the use of any middleware in favor of building all its own tech from the ground up–and keeping it running at a smooth 60 frames per second no less.