For me, 'most ancicipated' is different than what I feel will be the best games of 2010. I have chosen five games that I think can change the balance of gaming and I’m trying to stay away from sequels, Mafia II being the only exception.
1. Dante’s Inferno
After playing the demo, I realized one thing. This game is God of War. It's almost exactly the same game, but with a different setting. The combat is smooth and silky and it controls exactly like God of War. It even has Quick Time Events (you press a certain button at a certain time), which was originally made famous by Resident Evil 4. It is now also a God of War staple. The demo, which is available on PSN and XBL, is worth playing through. It’s a long demo at about an hour and it gives you a full boss battle and a mini boss. It ends at a proper location, making you crave some more. It’s about the best game-selling demo I have played since Batman: Arkham Asylum. It may rank up there with Bioshock as one of the best demos I’ve ever played, period. I hope the story stays good as it has a lot to work with, being based on a poem (POEM!?, how many games have you ever played based on a poem) that is almost 700 years old. It’s like the stylization of Assassin’s Creed, only in Hell. You have to go through the 9 levels of Hell and each one has its own boss. People love boss battles that are smart and not too easy or hard. Here’s hoping they can get that balance down.
2. Heavy Rain
Indigo Prophecy is one of my favorite original Xbox games, lame ending aside. The next game from the same development team is Heavy Rain. It could prove to be too much movie and not enough game and end up being hurt by being a Playstation 3 exclusive. Still, nobody knows exactly what to expect from this game other than a twisted story and highly realistic graphics. It will be full of Quick Time Events (note a recurring theme here?) and you play as four separate characters. If one dies it affects the rest of the game! I have a lot of skepticism about how exactly that will work and how it will affect replay value, but it kind of worked in Indigo Prophecy. My only concern is how much will you actually be playing this game and not just clicking a button at a certain time. The demo can't get here fast enough.
3. Mafia II
The first Mafia was pretty good on the PC but stunk on PS2 and PS3. This one is being developed concurrently for PC/PS3/360 and looks to be the game that Godfather should have been. So far everything I’ve seen looks like this game is a combination of the best elements of the Godfather games and the GTA games. It's open-ended with a heavy emphasis on story and other mafias fighting with your crime family. It will not be as goofy as GTA, that's for sure, but can it be better? Can the world be much more alive than GTA IV was? It’s hard to tell until you actually jump into the game and start playing it.
4. Split/Second
I was debating which racing game I was going to put on this list, either Split/Second or Blur, and after thinking it over, I chose Split/Second. Why? Well as much as I love Bizarre Creations and Project Gotham, the developers of Split/Second also developed Pure which, aside from its lame career mode, was just plain fun. Now they are taking their awesome ATV games and making a bona fide car racing game. What’s the difference? Each race has a bunch of “special events” that once you build up your “powerplay” meter, you can trigger them and create obstacles, shortcuts or change the race course entirely. Burnout kind of had that, but it was very limited and each race only had 1 or 2. These tracks are supposed to have a LOT in each one. The story mode also sounds intriguing, using a reality TV show premise, broken up into numerous “seasons” with 24 episodes, and one episode consisting of 3 race events.
5. Alan Wake
I don’t usually take to survival horror games, but this one is not your typical survival horror. It’s what the guys over at Remedy Entertainment are calling a “psychological action thriller." This is a game that is about 5 years in the making, and the first game from these guys since Max Payne 2. The game was originally planned to be more free-roam, but that has since been removed to focus on a compelling story. I can’t thank them enough for that; not every single game needs to be free-roam. Sometimes I just want the story to progress and not have to do a million side stories to get the full experience. What has been shown of this game so far looks amazing, from the graphics to the “psychological action” scenes. I want a scary game that has nothing to do with monsters (Dead Space) zombies (Resident Evil) or fog (Silent Hill).
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
M.A.G. Beta Review
Hello again game fans! I hope everyone had a great time over the holidays. On Christmas day I battled obese cats and a fastidious toilet bowl. I wish I was kidding and literally dare you to top that. What better way to kick off the New Year than with a brand new review of one of the most highly anticipated shooters of 2010? Modern Warfare 2 is currently plagued by widespread hacking, glitching and a piss poor matchmaking system. Could Zipper Interactive have the answer for all of the disillusioned FPS fans?
M.A.G. is the latest from famed SOCOM developer Zipper Interactive. The team decided to forgo heading up last year's SOCOM: Confrontation and instead chose to tackle a much greater feat. They aim to create a structured and team-focused, online-only shooter featuring up to 256 players. The concept revolves around three Private Military Corporations or PMC's and the struggle to dominate the battlefield. You begin by choosing one of three factions to work for and fine tuning minor appearance options for your character. Next you equip your load out with one of the three starting weapons: Sniper, Assault or Light Machine Gun. As experience is gained in combat, you rank up and unlock skill points that can be used to purchase additional weapons and upgrades. The gameplay borrows from some of the industry's heavy hitters including Battlefield: Bad Company, Killzone 2 and the Modern Warfare series. You will have to heal yourself to survive continuous encounters since the decision was made to implement a non-regenerating health system, which honestly feels antiquated. The skill point progression system is a credit to Call of Duty 4 and the squad system is reminiscent of Killzone 2. Taking several elements previously done and combining them isn't necessarily a bad thing, however there doesn't appear to be much innovation or originality. M.A.G. is a shooter, it works, and that is its greatest strength.
This game is by no means a graphical powerhouse. The visuals are clean and crisp, but unfortunately lack fine detail. This isn't surprising considering the massive size of the maps populated by up to 256 combatants. The maps feature awful draw distance with rampant texture pop-in. There is currently not much customization in character appearance, but this is presumably because this is only a sampling of the final build.
Team Zipper aims to balance the lack of technical brawn with the use of dedicated servers. Having suffered several weeks of nearly unplayable matches in Modern Warfare 2, joining a dedicated server was a revelation. There was nearly no lag to be found in the several hours I've already invested. This introduced something that has been sorely missing from many online shooters: a level playing field. There seems to be an issue with scope accuracy that is unrelated to lag. There were several instances where I fired on a prone target with a Sniper rifle only to have the round seemingly disappear. Be prepared to wait excessive spawn times as well. I waited as long as twenty seconds on many occasions. Once you spawn, be prepared to trek a minute or so before you see any signs of life. That is of course unless you fall victim to spawn camping, which is already a concern in the game (I played several matches where the enemy team was able to target us at the pre-designated spawn location).
There is tremendous potential for MAG to have a strong presence in the crowded FPS market. With a now industry standard deep upgrade system and lag free dedicated servers, it could easily garner a tremendous online community. The beta is available now on PSN (allow at least 30 minutes to download) and the full game will be released on January 26th, 2010 on the Playstation 3.
M.A.G. is the latest from famed SOCOM developer Zipper Interactive. The team decided to forgo heading up last year's SOCOM: Confrontation and instead chose to tackle a much greater feat. They aim to create a structured and team-focused, online-only shooter featuring up to 256 players. The concept revolves around three Private Military Corporations or PMC's and the struggle to dominate the battlefield. You begin by choosing one of three factions to work for and fine tuning minor appearance options for your character. Next you equip your load out with one of the three starting weapons: Sniper, Assault or Light Machine Gun. As experience is gained in combat, you rank up and unlock skill points that can be used to purchase additional weapons and upgrades. The gameplay borrows from some of the industry's heavy hitters including Battlefield: Bad Company, Killzone 2 and the Modern Warfare series. You will have to heal yourself to survive continuous encounters since the decision was made to implement a non-regenerating health system, which honestly feels antiquated. The skill point progression system is a credit to Call of Duty 4 and the squad system is reminiscent of Killzone 2. Taking several elements previously done and combining them isn't necessarily a bad thing, however there doesn't appear to be much innovation or originality. M.A.G. is a shooter, it works, and that is its greatest strength.
This game is by no means a graphical powerhouse. The visuals are clean and crisp, but unfortunately lack fine detail. This isn't surprising considering the massive size of the maps populated by up to 256 combatants. The maps feature awful draw distance with rampant texture pop-in. There is currently not much customization in character appearance, but this is presumably because this is only a sampling of the final build.
Team Zipper aims to balance the lack of technical brawn with the use of dedicated servers. Having suffered several weeks of nearly unplayable matches in Modern Warfare 2, joining a dedicated server was a revelation. There was nearly no lag to be found in the several hours I've already invested. This introduced something that has been sorely missing from many online shooters: a level playing field. There seems to be an issue with scope accuracy that is unrelated to lag. There were several instances where I fired on a prone target with a Sniper rifle only to have the round seemingly disappear. Be prepared to wait excessive spawn times as well. I waited as long as twenty seconds on many occasions. Once you spawn, be prepared to trek a minute or so before you see any signs of life. That is of course unless you fall victim to spawn camping, which is already a concern in the game (I played several matches where the enemy team was able to target us at the pre-designated spawn location).
There is tremendous potential for MAG to have a strong presence in the crowded FPS market. With a now industry standard deep upgrade system and lag free dedicated servers, it could easily garner a tremendous online community. The beta is available now on PSN (allow at least 30 minutes to download) and the full game will be released on January 26th, 2010 on the Playstation 3.
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