What's New?

Battlefield 3 will not have splitscreen

Battlefield 3 will not contain splitscreen. Karl Troedsson of development studio Dice confirms this to "That Videogame Blog".

The co-op mode, that lets you play a variety of missions with two people online, has nothing to do with the singleplayer mode of the game. Dice has also announced that six co-op maps are available on the disc when the game launches on October 27th for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

In june, Patrick Bach from Dice confirmed that there will be ten co-op maps (and not the six that are confirmed now). Let's hope that the 4 other maps will be downloadable content.

Carbine's studio MMORPG is named "Wildstar".

The new title from NCsoft that is being developed by Carbine studio, is named Wildstar. The MMO was displayed on the Gamescom.

At the moment Wildstar in still in pre-alfa and there is no release date set yet for the MMO. People who visit the Gamescom can already play the game. The first images of the game are cartoonic, and are in a futuristic and fantasy style.

The game is being compared to World of Warcraft because of its appearance, but the developers promise that Wildstar is a unique MMO. The game offers big differences in its play style dependent on the speciality the player chooses (Explorer, Soldier, Settler, Scientist).

 

Mojang challenges Bethesda for a fight

 No not a real fight, but a gaming fight. Markus Persson, founder of the Minecraft-developer "Mojang", has challenged Bethesda for a gaming fight for the game "Scrolls". Referring to the lawsuit that Bethesda has started, because the name of the game Mojang is developing, would be confused with Bethesda's "Elder Scrolls".

 Notch challenges Bethesda to a fight in Quake3. His idea is inspired by the popular tv series "Game of Thrones". He refers to the scene where Tyrion chose for "A trial by battle in the Eyrie". 

Persson's wants it to happen like this:

                 - Mojang will choose three of their best Quake players just as Bethesda will

                 - Mojang chooses a map, Bethesda will choose a map

                 - Matches that will take 20 minutes, highest amount of kills in both maps will win

Persson does not care who will win, he says that it won't make the lawsuit necessary "If we win, you let go of the lawsuit. If you win, we will change the name Scrolls. We cannot say who will win, but we can say that our game is in no way related to your series".

Advantage?

If Bethesda decides to accept Perssons offer, it will probably come up with the best of the best. Bethesda is owned by Zenimax Media, that is also owner of the Quake-developer id Software. The founder of the studio is also founder of the Quake-series, John Carmack, who is still working in the company.

Red Faction: Armageddon

• Published by: THQ
• Developer: Volition
• Genre: Action
• Players: 1-4
• Playable on: PC, PS3, Xbox360

Everything can be taken down, it may even taken down, sometimes it must be taken down. Meet Red Faction: Armageddon.

It has always been hard to develop a good action game. Back in the 2D gaming age you walked through the world, using an arsenal of weapons and skills to defeat your enemies. Some special attacks and the different settings were the only way to differ from other games. These days, shooters seem to have a similar problem. Most of them play exactly the same. You really have to think of a new concept to make your game a game to never forget. RFA (Red Faction: Armageddon) succeeds very well in doing this.

There is evil on Mars

Compared to the previous Red Faction, RFA uses a linear structure, what really does bad for the story, because you just run down a tunnel and kill aliens on a scripted road.
Some years after the previous part, Darius Mason unintentionally releases an ancient underground evil on Mars. As a consequence of this you have to move through underground locations and kill aliens.
Sometimes you get a Dead Space feeling, but that feeling quickly removes itself when you see the environments and get into action.
Darius is a great hero, he has just enough charisma to keep the story interesting. Graphically seen RFA is not the best but it still looks great because of the lightning and underground environments.

Entertaining!

Repair Bridges

The best thing about RFA is the tool set. Just as the previous parts you can take down numerous things in the world and there are many weapons that can be used to do that.
With the Nano Forge you can repair objects, walls and even bridges, kill enemies or just destroy a part of the environment. Besides standard weapons you can also use melee attacks, get some new skills and later you get control of a really good looking exo-suit and a futuristic tank.

If you are familiar with the controls and using the skills how you should use them, it is surprisingly entertaining to use the environment in your advantage and to exterminate the aliens.

Conclusion

RFA certainly is not at all a revolutionary game, and hardcore gamers will miss the multiplayer mode. But the great story, gameplay and action make this game one of a kind.

From Dust

 

• Published by: Ubisoft
• Developer: Ubisoft
• Genre: Simulation
• Players: 1
• Playable on: Xbox360, PC, PS3

When I was a little boy I always liked to build castles from sand, always made a canal around it and made sure that nothing could be able to penetrate through all of that... Unfortunately I did not think about the waves that were coming from the sea.

Help us God! 


From dust brings all of that together. Basically, you are a god and you have to bring your tribe to safety because a big wave is coming, a volcano that is going to erupt and burn your entire tribe if you don't act quick or any other thing that Mother Nature sends to kill your tribe.
You are their God, and they depend on you alone to bring them to a safe place which you create with the powers you posses. Your tribe has to go through portals that will bring them to other areas, to open a portal a village must be build. Sounds simple, but your little people are not resistant to water or fire, so you have to protect them from the occasional natural disasters.
You pick up some lava and throw it down somewhere else so you get a stone wall, you can pick up sand and form a path for your tribe to walk over or take care of fires with the water you can pick up.

Harder then it looks

Everything you do requires some speed and knowledge, because Mother Nature is a great enemy. For example: Erosion, if you got your stone wall (which you created with lava), and some water will clash in it then your wall is going to erode.
Sometimes your tribe is not going the direction you want, which is kinda frustrating because you cannot do much about it. Also, if one of your people is in need of help and you are doing something else, you cannot locate him fast because there is not the slightest idea of where he could be.

Conclusion 

From Dust is a refreshing game that can battle others in the genre, because of its low pricing and high quality textures this game is one to look forward at if you are planning to buy it.
It feels great to fight the elements and to try to survive long enough to complete the level. Because at the end you will be greatly rewarded....

Infamous 2

• Published by: Sony Computer Entertainment
• Developer: Sucker Punch
  
• Genre: Third-Person (action,shooter)
• Players: 1
• Playable on: PS3

When the PSN was hacked I was mad at Sony, not only for not being able to resist the attack, but also for not supplying the gamers with enough information of what exactly had been hacked... Anyway, we just had to deal with it. When the PSN was brought back up again, us gamers could choose from some games, one of the games was Infamous (1).

While playing the first Infamous game, I heard that there was another game being developed by the developer "Sucker Punch" (Famous for making the Sly Raccoon series and also for Infamous). Fortunately for me that this game was Infamous 2 because I had lots and lots of fun playing the first Infamous game.

When you start up Infamous 2 you will get a quick tutorial about the controls, but the developer expects that you are already familiar with them. All in all, you get to know the controls very quickly and you've got plenty enough time to go around the city and use your powers.

In the end the powers you retrieved from Empire city were not great enough to save the city, so you fled to New Marais. In New Marais you will be trained for the fight against "The Beast" (a demonic creature) and to defeat it.

The Beast

Saint or Killer?

Just like in the first game you can either be the good guy or the bad guy, I chose to be the good guy. But with such great power comes a great responsibility, so I held onto that. I did not make any innocent casualties, but healed them when I could. And I did not suck up The Militia's soul energy, but instead of that I cuffed them.
Your friend Zeke (yep he joins the party) made you "The Amp" which is an electrically charged weapon with which you can slice your enemies in two pieces easily. You could ofcourse take no note that there are also innocent civilians passing by and also slice them in two... But it pays good XP to be good, and the abilities you can buy from it are really spectacular.
It is of course harder to be good then being bad, but I find more satisfaction in being good because it just does not feel right to just kill the innocent people on the streets.



Extra help

Kuo and Nix, who will help you in the second Infamous game and got their powers kind of similar as cole did, are one of the major changes compared to the first Infamous. Except for the story and the chaos, nothing much has changed in this game, you can still free roam and kick-ass.
Cole learned  to do an advantage to parkour, instead of running amazingly fast and jump high, he can also climb buildings to get a nice view.
Much of the side-quests are just slight variations on the quests you did in the first game, but that is not even the worst thing. When you finished a main quest and you need to get back to let's say your home, you find your home settled on top of a roof instead of inside which is kind of disappointing. But for the real lone-wolves it is quite nice to have no actual home which mean you don't have to get back to the same spot over and over again.

-one of the swamp monsters-

This time you will face some new factions in your new city, the factions from the first Infamous game are completely gone. The Militia is a group of men that took over New Marais and want to cure the world of  the "Special power disease" which mean they want to kill everyone that has special powers, their leader Bertrand is convinced that he needs to do this as a present to the world. Then you also got the swamp monsters, which are mutated humans that had some kind of virus in their body that slowly turns them into the monsters.

Enslaved

Infamous 2 is one of those games you really cannot stop playing even if you want to, you always get the feeling like : "Let me get this blast shard" or "I want to do this quest first" and to gather enough xp to get the specific power you want.

The new introduced UGC (User Generated Content) won't really help to let you shut off your ps3. With the UGC you can create your own missions and publish them for the world to play, it is kind of similar to the editor in Littlebigplanet but way more complicated.
It is really good to see how people are enthusiastic about creating those missions for us to play. The game developer has promised us to regularly provide the updates for the UGC community so they can keep creating new missions which will be different every time.

Conclusion
The second Infamous game is a lovely sequel. The colorful, good shaped city, the moral choices with big consequences and enslaving gameplay make this game one of the best third person games out now.