This is the official trailer of Grand Theft Auto 5.Enjoy!
Wednesday 18 December 2013
Tuesday 17 December 2013
Love Real Racing 3? We do too.
Help your favorite mobile racing game score a “Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop” TechCrunch Crunchies Award! Nominate now: http://tcrn.ch/18SjrCL #crunchies
PlayStation 4 prices go crazy as fans hit ebay to get hold of one
The PlayStation 4 launched yesterday and has already sold out across most of the UK.
Now, eager fans desperate to get their hands on this new console, are forking out over £200 more than its £349 recommended price.
Online auction site ebay is full of the consoles today, and most are selling for over £500. One console, which included two games, went under the hammer at £590.
The PlayStation 4 is one of the most eagerly awaited products of the year, and fans queued for up to 3 days to grab one at midnight on Friday.
If you haven’t pre-ordered your PS4, it’s unlikely you will have one in your stocking before Christmas day.
Ian Chambers from GAME said "We’ve hired 4,000 extra staff to help cope with the demand for the new Playstation. We'll do our best to get a console in everyone's hands, although stock is extremely limited."
And Amazon said customers who had not already placed an order wouldn't receive a console in time for the 25th December.
The Crew - One of the best games of 2014
Billed as the next evolutionary step in the open-world arcade racer, The Crew is basically Need For Speed: Most Wanted built to the size of World Of Warcraft. Players are let loose in a 5,000-sq-km map of the USA filled with huge cities, rural back-roads, mountain passes, arid deserts and woodland lanes. They can team up with mates and strangers on the fly, but essentially the draw here is to win races, rack up XP and unlock the game’s myriad automobile delights. This is a game that turns the USA into one giant racing circuit and its ambition is, quite frankly, astounding.
GT6 is OUT NOW.
Check out our exclusive interview with the legendary creator Kazunori Yamauchi > http://bit.ly/18om2kZ
Including a lunar adventure too...
Including a lunar adventure too...
Monday 9 December 2013
Grand Theft Auto V - The Best Game of 2013
Where do you begin talking about Grand Theft Auto V? Do you start with the vast, varied, beautiful open world? Do you start with the innovative structure that gives you three independent protagonists you can switch between on the fly? Maybe you talk about the assortment of side activities you can engage in, or the tremendous number of ways in which you can go about making your own fun. Or perhaps you dive right into the game’s story problems, or its serious issues with women. GTA V is a complicated and fascinating game, one that fumbles here and there and has an unnecessary strain of misogynistic nastiness running through it. But it also does amazing things no other open-world game has attempted before, using multiple perspectives to put you in the thick of cinematic heist sequences and other exhilarating, multi-layered missions like no open-world game before.
Those perspectives come courtesy of Michael, Franklin, and Trevor. Michael’s a former criminal who’s dissatisfied with his current life of privilege and relaxation. His marriage is on the rocks and he struggles to connect with his shallow daughter Tracey, who dreams of making it big in reality TV, and with his lazy, entitled son Jimmy, who spends most of his time spouting hate-filled trash talk while playing video games online. Franklin’s a talented young driver and repo man who doesn’t seem to have too many opportunities to move up in the world, until he has a chance meeting with Michael. Michael finds Franklin easier to connect with than his own children, and he promptly takes him under his wing and ushers him into a life of big-time crime.
Moments of hypocrisy and inconsistency diminish the otherwise strong characters.
And then there’s Trevor, a former friend and business associate of Michael’s who is now a methamphetamine entrepreneur living in a desert town north of Los Santos. Trevor’s a truly horrible, terrifying, psychotic human being--and a terrific character. He possesses a chilling combination of intelligence and insanity, and he’s so monstrously violent and frightening at times that he almost makes the other two protagonists seem well-adjusted by comparison. Exceptional voice acting and animation help make Trevor a character you will never, ever forget, even though you might want to.
When circumstances reunite the long-estranged Trevor and Michael, the tensions between them complicate the entire group dynamic; Michael, Trevor and Franklin may work together, but they don’t always get along. Their dialogue is sharp and snappy and it’s usually a joy to watch them interacting with each other, but unfortunately, the characters sometimes behave in ways that don’t feel consistent. For instance, Franklin takes the moral high ground in an argument with a paparazzo, then casts his reservations aside to help him take degrading photos of a female celebrity. And when Trevor shows up in Michael’s life after an extended absence, the speed with which the two start working together again is at odds with their deep-seated reservations about each other.
Perhaps most troubling is a mission in which you’re instructed to torture a man. Trevor states that torture doesn’t work, and the person ordering the torture is an arrogant and corrupt government official, suggesting that the scene is meant to be a critical commentary on the United States’ use of waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation” methods. But the fact that Trevor (and you, if you want to progress through the story) tortures the man regardless, and that he does end up spilling more information as a result, sends a very different message. These moments of hypocrisy and inconsistency diminish the otherwise strong characters; it feels like they are leaping into situations not because it's what they would actually want to do, but because the mission design demands that they must.
Thankfully, the missions are frequently incredible, which makes it a bit easier to overlook the occasional contradictions in character behavior, if not the mixed political messages. The high points of the game are the heists, big jobs planned by Michael and the gang. These jobs usually give you a few different options for how you want to approach a situation, and your choice completely changes how the heist plays out. On one job, for instance, one option has you posing as a janitor to infiltrate a building and plant bombs, then triggering the bombs and entering the building with your crew disguised as firefighters. The other, more direct option involves parachuting onto the building and busting in, armed to the teeth.
It’s exhilarating, swapping between these roles and these perspectives, and it’s part of what makes GTA V the current pinnacle of open-world mission design.
These are elaborate, multi-stage sequences that involve prep work. You might need to acquire equipment ahead of time, find a good place to hide a getaway car, and make other arrangements before you’re ready to pull off the job. You also need to select supporting members for your crew, as some jobs may require a hacker, an additional getaway driver, or another gunman. More skilled crew members typically take a bigger cut, but if you hire cheap, inexperienced people, they may end up failing at their tasks and compromising the operation. Of course, not every step of this process is thrilling, but these early steps make you feel more invested in the job when it does go down, and they evoke the feeling of films like Heat in which the slow buildup to the crimes makes the payoff in the action-packed scenes more intense.
There’s a terrific contrast between the urban lives of Michael and Franklin and Trevor’s existence in a poor, secluded town in the desert.
These missions and many others have you switching between characters. You might rappel down a building as Michael, provide sniper cover for him as Franklin, and fly a getaway helicopter as Trevor, all on one mission. In another exciting mission, you take out a plane’s engines from a great distance as Michael, then pursue the doomed, burning aircraft over land as Trevor. It’s exhilarating, swapping between these roles and these perspectives, and it’s part of what makes GTA V the current pinnacle of open-world mission design. Even putting the three-protagonist structure aside, the mission design is frequently surprising and sometimes stupendous. You don scuba gear to infiltrate a heavily guarded laboratory via the ocean, recklessly fly a small aircraft into the bay of a large cargo plane, and get thrust into all sorts of other memorable situations.
Even when not on missions, you can switch between the three protagonists, and the transition is handled via a stylish satellite view sequence that zooms out from one character’s location and then zooms in on another’s, building up anticipation as you wonder what the character you’re swapping to might be doing at this particular moment. Sometimes you find them in relatively ordinary situations; you might happen upon Michael relaxing at home in front of the TV screen, indulging his love of classic movies. At other times, the circumstances you find them in are more dramatic. Trevor might be on the beach in his underwear, surrounded by dead bodies, with no explanation offered for how they got there. Each character has his own contacts and his own missions, and because the characters have such different vibes, the freedom to switch between them at will makes the game feel more multifaceted than it would otherwise. There’s a terrific contrast between the urban lives of Michael and Franklin and Trevor’s existence in a poor, secluded town in the desert.
The three-protagonist structure also means that you can be engaged in street races in Los Santos one minute, and hunting elk in the forest the next. In fact, the number of activities available to you throughout GTA V’s world is almost staggering. You can play golf or tennis or darts, or participate in races on streets, offroad or on the water. You can take in movies, buy businesses, and play the stock market, which is designed to respond to player transactions, creating an opportunity for collusion and insider trading. You also stumble upon random occurrences in the world from time to time, creating a sense that this is a place with a life of its own. You might go into a salon for a haircut, only to find that the place is being robbed. You might rescue a woman from a burning car wreck who then becomes a potential getaway driver for you on future heists.
And of course, there’s no end to the ways that you can make your own unstructured fun. Maybe you want to use a truck to block lanes of traffic, pour gasoline from a gerry can all around the stopped cars, ignite the fuel and watch the spectacular explosion that occurs. Or perhaps you prefer to see if you can fly under bridges in a jumbo jet. Maybe you want to parachute onto the roof of the tallest building in Los Santos, or climb to the peak of Mount Chiliad. Or you can blow up a gas station and then run into the hills, where you might be safe from the cops but find yourself being pounced on by a bobcat. Whatever kind of freeform mayhem you cause, you’re sure to get the authorities on your case from time to time. Police pursuits here can be tense on city streets, where you might try to find secluded back alleys to hide in until the cops give up the chase. They can also be silly at times; you might shake off some police pursuers just by driving offroad up a hill in plain sight of the cops.
Whether you’re evading the police in a rickety junker or a road-hugging sports car, the handling in GTA V is great, and the fact that vehicles feel so different from each other means there’s a real reason to store the cars you like in the garages at your characters’ homes or in ones you can purchase in the city. Driving is so much fun that you’ll likely enjoy crossing even great distances in the game’s large world, taking in everything from the artwork on buildings along Vespucci Beach to the setting sun reflecting on the Alamo Sea. Should you tire of commuting across Los Santos, however, you can call a cab and warp to your destination.
GTA V has little room for women except to portray them as strippers, prostitutes, long-suffering wives, humorless girlfriends and goofy, new-age feminists we’re meant to laugh at.
When shooting breaks out, as it often does in the lives of these criminals, you have a terrific variety of weapons at your disposal that you can customize with suppressors, scopes, flashlights and other doodads. By default, your aim snaps to enemies. This makes picking them off quite easy, but gunplay is a lot of fun despite the ease of aiming, because you’re regularly fending off so many attackers and you still need to make good use of cover to stay alive. If you’re looking for more challenging shooting, you can switch to an aim assist option or to free aim at any time.
There’s so much more to say about GTA V. In series tradition, it has an eclectic assortment of radio stations featuring great songs from numerous genres and eras. In a break with series tradition, it also has an excellent ambient score of its own that lends missions more cinematic flavor. On a less positive note, it’s deeply frustrating that, while its central and supporting male characters are flawed and complex characters, with a few extremely minor exceptions (such as the aforementioned optional getaway driver), GTA V has little room for women except to portray them as strippers, prostitutes, long-suffering wives, humorless girlfriends and goofy, new-age feminists we’re meant to laugh at.
Characters constantly spout lines that glorify male sexuality while demeaning women, and the billboards and radio stations of the world reinforce this misogyny, with ads that equate manhood with sleek sports cars while encouraging women to purchase a fragrance that will make them “smell like a bitch.” Yes, these are exaggerations of misogynistic undercurrents in our own society, but not satirical ones. With nothing in the narrative to underscore how insane and wrong this is, all the game does is reinforce and celebrate sexism. The beauty of cruising in the sun-kissed Los Santos hills while listening to “Higher Love” by Steve Winwood turns sour really quick when a voice comes on the radio that talks about using a woman as a urinal.
So Los Santos is a place of contrasts, of luxury and poverty, tranquility and violence, beauty and ugliness. GTA V is an imperfect yet astounding game that has great characters and an innovative and exciting narrative structure, even if the story it uses that structure to tell is hobbled at times by inconsistent character behavior, muddled political messages and rampant misogyny. It also raises the bar for open-world mission design in a big way and has one of the most beautiful, lively, diverse and stimulating worlds ever seen in a game. Your time in Los Santos may leave you with a few psychological scars, but you shouldn’t let that stop you from visiting.
Thursday 28 November 2013
The Amazing Spider-Man
In The Amazing Spider-Man, the webslinger dispenses quick wit almost as fast as he dispenses justice. More importantly, he gets room to show off his high-flying acrobatics with a freedom his last two outings were lacking. This time, Spidey has the whole of Manhattan as his playground. As you fling yourself above the city, swinging past skyscrapers and vaulting from towers, you get a dizzying sense of what it would be like to slip into the famous red and blue costume.
It's a joy when The Amazing Spider-Man thrusts you into this wide-open world. By holding down a single trigger, you propel webbing from your wrists, swinging in whichever direction you choose. Expectedly, you don't necessarily see the webbing attach to anything nearby, which is fine: the joyous locomotion is all in the name of fun. Yet the game does a great job of providing the illusion that the laws of physics still vaguely apply. When you swish through a park that isn't near tall buildings, you stay near the ground, practically brushing the grass underneath you. When surrounded by stately superstructures, you rise toward the heavens, from where you can look upon the entire city and admire its vibrancy.
Out here in the concrete wilds, The Amazing Spider-Man is at its best, simply because moving around is so much fun. Hundreds of collectible comic pages twinkle on rooftops and flutter in the air. They are simple but nice rewards for the act of locomotion. Come near a page, and you hear and see its telltale glimmer, and note the button prompt inviting you to fling toward it. These signs are enough to have you scanning the screen, searching for the elusive paper. But there's more to the game than webswinging, of course: most of the story-based missions take you off the streets and send you into the sewers and other such interiors. Out in Manhattan, most tasks are optional and involve picking up asylum escapees and returning them to their institution, beating up muggers, and so forth.
With a couple of exceptions, most of these tasks don't evolve in any way, and they become stale if you focus on them for too long. One minigame has you hovering a circle over Spidey as he flies through the air automatically; you're meant to keep him in view of the video camera that follows him. It isn't very challenging or fun, and in fact, on medium (Hero) difficulty, The Amazing Spider-Man is rarely challenging. Other tasks--rescuing sickly citizens and rushing them to a nearby makeshift hospital--are more enjoyable, in part because of the banter between Spider-Man and his poor passengers. ("No drooling on the suit, please!") But eventually, the voice samples repeat, and playing paramedic loses some of its appeal. Nevertheless, there are enough things to do that you'll be thrilled to have the chance to zoom through the air at top speed.
The missions that lead you through the story aren't as delightful as the open-world hijinks, though the story itself is as wonderfully absurd as any Spidey tale to come before it. The game begins (apparently) after the events of the upcoming The Amazing Spider-Man film, with a tour of the Oscorp facility, where the corporation is winding down some unusual experiments. Well, not everything is on the up-and-up, and soon a viral outbreak has the city in turmoil. Peter/Spider-Man's response? Break out an asylum inmate who holds the key to a cure. With so many variables, it's no wonder that Spidey's plans don't follow their intended script, though he stays pretty upbeat throughout. Spider-Man is as funny here as he's ever been, cracking wise in even the most stressful situations. The dialogue is a good mix of seriousness and ridiculousness, making it easy to stick with the plot even when it goes so far over the top it spills into bizarre territory.
Story-driven chapters are notably more confining than the free-form gameplay that surrounds them. You investigate dull-looking sewers, where you notice technical drawbacks like heavy aliasing that go overlooked in Manhattan, which is saturated with color and personality. In the indoor spaces, you confront hazards like steam valves (clog them up with your web shots!) and pools of acid (navigate around them!). You must take a more cautious approach, holding down a button to slow down time, choosing a proper perch, and then releasing the button to leap to that spot. You can tap the button should you prefer a more fluid pace, but you risk zipping into the wrong position if you aren't careful.
That same button, when used on a guard, a robot, or some other meanie, has you rushing in to initiate combat. The influence of Batman: Arkham City is keenly felt when you bash on baddies, though Spidey's game isn't as fluid as Batman's. Nevertheless, the basics are similar: you tap attack buttons to pound on your foes, and when the right visual prompt appears, you press the dodge button to somersault out of the way. And like Bats, Spidey is particularly vulnerable to bullets, though you have a one-button escape move that allows you to quickly flee danger. You can even web-grab objects like vending machines and dumpsters and smash them on the ground, stunning nearby foes and allowing you to easily blanket them with webbing.
The similarities to that other superhero game are obvious in sections that encourage stealth. You can hover above an enemy or slink from behind and perform a sneak attack. Dropping from a beam, tapping a guard's shoulder, and then wrapping him up and sticking him to the ceiling is a hoot. The AI is mechanical, and not too keen--it's usually simple to zip out of danger and resume your predation.
The guards aren't imbeciles, though, and shine their flashlights about when they are aware of your presence, potentially giving you away if a beam lands on you. Another great touch: you aren't limited to roosting in predetermined areas. Though you can't necessarily stick to every surface, you can usually flit to the wall right over your target's head and wrap him up from there. It's a nice, flexible system.
These gameplay basics are fine, but the interior missions are much less compelling than events that occur in the open city. A lengthy section toward the end of the game is even more limiting than many of the missions that come before, losing most of the fun in favor of providing narrative tension. But even before this, avoiding alarm lasers and acid puddles isn't as enjoyable as most aboveground missions, and there are few opportunities to swing with abandon. While the combat is entertaining enough to watch, it is entirely too easy most of the time. There's a simple upgrade system in place in which you spend experience points on new moves and other improvements. But there's no real sense that you are getting more powerful. Battles are easy from beginning to end, and never feel radically different or require more finesse just because you level up your skills.
That's even true of most of the boss fights, which rarely require more than a single attempt. Fighting half-man, half-beast abominations isn't that compelling due to the ease of combat. Robot battles in the streets of Manhattan, on the other hand, make up for their lack of challenge with an incredible sense of speed and the illusion of public danger. Imagine any given scene in a superhero movie in which the superstar faces a menacing rival in the midst of a bustling metropolis. The Amazing Spider-Man deftly re-creates that brand of visual rush when you race after marauding machines and glide about gigantic automatons. The skill required often comes down to hitting the right button when prompted, but when the excellent movement mechanics collide with the urgency of a boss battle, the game is explosive.
Such moments are the exception rather than the rule in The Amazing Spider-Man. The game spends too much time in drab drains and boring science facilities, where its best assets are sidelined in favor of easy combat scenarios. But when developer Beenox gives Spidey room to soar, you get caught up in the pure elation of swinging through a spirited city, where helicopters hover overhead and well-wishers call out to you in the streets. And that elation is the best reason to don the suit once more and remind yourself that with great power comes good fun.
Grid 2
The first few moments of Grid 2 should be a disaster. You're strapped into a bruising muscle car and immediately asked to negotiate the corners of downtown Chicago amid a cavalcade of roaring V8s. But rather than serving as a messy reminder of why so many driving games ease you in with something a bit more sensible, this opening race is a perfect example of what makes Grid 2 such a blast. This is a game that takes every opportunity to remove the barriers between you and the thrill of all-out street racing. With an exciting career mode and handling that strikes a great balance between arcade and simulation, it succeeds brilliantly at that task.
Whether you're drifting through the hills of rural Japan or careening along California's Pacific Coast Highway, Grid 2 gives you the tools to perform some truly spectacular automotive feats. This is all thanks to a driving model that borrows equally from the forgiving handling of an arcade racer and the demanding physics of a driving simulator. Cars are nimble and highly responsive, but there's a very real relationship between your tires and the surface beneath them. You can give up only so much traction before a drift sends you spinning into a barricade, while accelerating too quickly out of a corner can spell disaster if you've forgotten that you're in a rear-wheel drive. There's this delicate balance between the flashy and the grounded, but it's a balance that Grid 2 pulls off extremely well.
It's only fitting that with such an empowering driving model, Grid 2 treats you as an ambassador to the sport rather than a no-name up-and-comer. You're the poster child of the newly formed World Series of Racing, an organization designed to bring together drivers from all corners of the globe. Your job is to win over these international stars and convince them to join the cause. You do this by traveling the world and competing against everything from muscle cars in Miami to hot hatches in Barcelona to luxury sedans in Dubai. You'll even find yourself driving in supercars on real-world circuits, whether it's the historic Indianapolis Motor Speedway or the relatively new Algarve Circuit in Portugal. All the while you're earning new fans to bolster the WSR, a sort of currency that propels you from one event to the next.
Grid 2 features no shortage of spectacular locations, and every one of them looks gorgeous. From the golden sunset above the construction cranes of Dubai to the glittering lights of nighttime Paris, these environments feature an exceptional attention to detail. The varied selection of cars looks just as great, no matter if they're in pristine condition at the start of the race or shedding metalwork left and right via the game's frighteningly convincing damage system. The whole presentation is simply top-notch, right on down to the immersive soundscape of roaring engines and squealing tires. The frame rate occasionally drops during vicious collisions, but for the most part, Grid 2 is a smooth and technically impressive racing experience.
There's a lot more to Grid 2 than its impressive presentation. This is a robust package with a lengthy and exciting career mode. You're constantly being introduced to new driving disciplines and event types. There are standard offerings such as elimination and time attack, as well as more specialized events such as drifting contests and touge, an automotive ballet where two cars race through narrow mountain roads and any collisions lead to an immediate disqualification.
But the most fun can be found in an event type called live routes. Normally urban locales like Miami and Dubai are divided into six or so predefined tracks, each taking you on a tour through different areas of the city. What live routes do is generate a dynamic layout that stitches together sections from every single one of those six tracks. It's an event where you never know what's around the next bend, which keeps you on your toes as you maintain an exacting focus on each randomly selected turn.
The focus of Grid 2's career mode is very much about getting you on the road and having you experience one crazy race after the other. This is not a game that wants you to spend too much time in the garage. Instead of buying cars and upgrading engine parts, you're simply awarded a choice of vehicles after milestone events. As your garage expands, you develop a collection of grippy all-wheel drives like the Audi RS5, demanding track cars like the KTM X-Bow R, and all manner of other makes and models. With such a varied selection of cars and event types, there's a deeply satisfying sense of challenge in learning the nuances of each vehicle and deciding which one is best suited for a particular event. Rarely does the most powerful car win by default; Grid 2 demands a familiarity with your garage and is all the more rewarding for it.
Even with its forgiving handling, Grid 2 can get quite challenging--especially toward the latter stages of the career mode. There's no driving line to guide you through each corner, and full vehicle damage is enabled by default, meaning your car starts to pull and sputter if it has taken too many hits. As the game ramps up in difficulty, you may find yourself wishing for optional driving assists, which are sadly lacking here--your only option is to raise or lower the difficulty level. Fortunately, Grid 2's fleet of vehicles are such a blast to maneuver that you'll be more than up to the task. Add in the ability to rewind time after a nasty accident, and what you get is a game that challenges you but rarely leaves you frustrated.
As engrossing as Grid 2's career mode is, it's just as easy to get sucked into the multiplayer side of things. Besides giving you the opportunity to race all those same tracks and event types in a competitive online environment, Grid 2's multiplayer serves as a nice counterpart to the career mode by allowing you to get a little more hands-on with your collection of cars. Racing online earns you cash to buy new vehicles, which you can tune by upgrading the engine, drivetrain, and handling. And while you're keeping tabs on your garage, the game is keeping tabs on you by tracking your driving style and ensuring that you're matched up with drivers who race just as clean or dirty as you. The multiplayer is a terrific addition to an already excellent game, and the ability to play local split-screen is just icing on the cake.
Whether you're competing online or off, Grid 2 offers a fantastic blend of arcade and simulation racing. This is a game that wants you to experience the thrill of breakneck street racing, and gives you all the tools necessary to do just that. With terrific handling, gorgeous environments, and a broad selection of event types, Grid 2 slams on the gas and rarely slows down.
Resistance 3
Things do not look good for humanity in alternate-history 1950s America. Despite your heroic efforts as Nathan Hale in Resistance: Fall of Man and Resistance 2, the vicious Chimeran hordes have overrun the nation, and Resistance 3's campaign once again paints a stirring picture of an all-but-complete invasion. Developer Insomniac Games has proven its ability to deliver invigorating and challenging action, and it does so again here in an exciting campaign that boasts one of the most diverse and deadly arsenals around. You can play the whole affair cooperatively with another player online or off, which is a welcome addition, though it's a shame that the fantastic class-based co-op from Resistance 2 does not make a return. Fortunately, the competitive multiplayer doles out intense firefights and intriguing rewards aplenty, and it's fun to combine your unique arsenal with potent abilities to wreak havoc on your fellow humans. Resistance 3's strengths far outweigh its shortcomings, making it another great entry in this sci-fi shooter franchise.
If you finished the Resistance 2 campaign, then you're bound to remember a guy named Joseph Capelli. After getting dishonorably discharged from the military, Joe gets married, has a kid, and settles down in a lengthy network of tunnels underneath a bombed-out suburban neighborhood. Our protagonist's home is one of a few hidden communities that you encounter throughout the campaign, and they are all thoughtful and evocative glimpses of how humans might cling together in the midst of a catastrophe. Joe isn't what you'd call a strong leading man, but throughout the campaign, you meet some interesting characters who add some welcome flavor to Joe's bland personality. Supporting characters also comment on your battlefield prowess in a way that enhances the context (Joe was an actual soldier, they are civilians) and makes you feel like a force to be reckoned with. The environments add a lot of character as well. From Joe's dusty Oklahoma outpost and the foggy Mississippi River to an infested mountain village, each location is richly detailed and artfully rendered, creating an engrossing sense of place and mood.
Though everywhere you go is visually interesting, there are some abrupt leaps and odd detours that can make the campaign feel disjointed at times. Still, it moves along at a good clip. Small skirmishes build up to large firefights, which lead to some big boss encounters that draw on the franchise's knack for using a large sense of scale to create dramatic encounters. Enemies often explode in bloody chunks or lose limbs when killed, and taking down towering foes is very satisfying, though Resistance 3 doesn't go as big as its predecessor. You can complete the campaign in as few as six hours, and unfortunately, the pace falters toward the end, leaving you with a conclusion that is less climactic than you might expect. Though the ending isn't very satisfying, playing the entire campaign is, thanks largely to Resistance 3's tightly tuned action.
Your enemies are aggressive, numerous, and varied, so you must read the battlefield and maneuver smartly. Popping out from cover and shooting might be effective in a small-scale battle, but enemies that leap behind you, rapidly swarm you, or shoot right through your cover force you to adapt your tactics or die. You face a lotof foes, and ammunition isn't exactly plentiful, so you need to leverage your entire arsenal to survive. Fortunately, the guns of Resistance 3 are some of the best in the business. Tried-and-true favorites like the bullseye, auger, and magnum return early on, but as you progress, you get some new treats that can freeze, electrocute, and even mutate your enemies. Each weapon has a secondary fire that can be as simple as a grenade launcher or as sinister as a swirling electric vortex of death. Furthermore, every gun levels up as you use it, making it deadlier and sometimes granting auxiliary bonuses, like incendiary ammunition or a better scope. There is no limit to how many weapons you can carry with you, and Resistance 3 forces you to put them all to work. It's not uncommon to exhaust your ammunition for multiple weapons during an intense firefight, so you either have to make do with a less-than-optimal firearm or scavenge the battlefield under enemy fire in hopes of finding an ammo cache.
To deal with these diverse enemies, you must stretch your arsenal to the limits, and this creates an engaging sense of improvisation. This feeling is augmented by the fact that your health does not regenerate automatically. Health pickups are fairly plentiful, but there are still many times when the Chimera are bearing down on you and you are low on health, ammo, or both. The tension this creates makes blasting your way through the campaign all the more thrilling, though if you're taking a friend along for the ride, you should consider upping the difficulty level. Whether online or split-screen, having another gun by your side makes things a bit easier and creates some slack in the otherwise taut action. There is no cooperative matchmaking, however, so you have to find your own companion, and alas, the addictive eight-player cooperative mode from Resistance 2 is nowhere to be found. Campaign co-op is a welcome addition, however, especially when the campaign is as thrilling as it is here.
There is also excitement to be found online in competitive multiplayer matches. The manic 60-player matches from Resistance 2 have been capped at 16, making for a much tighter experience. The great environmental design from the campaign carries over to the various maps, though some are certainly prettier than others, and they all have diverse routes that allow you to move around the battlefield and hopefully catch your enemy unaware. In addition to Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch, there are a few familiar objective-based modes, including Capture the Flag, Chain Reaction (capture the territory), and Breach (destroy/defend). These are solid, though unexciting, incarnations of tried-and-true game types, though the latter two have an annoying hitch. In both of these types, at least one team has limited reinforcements. When the reinforcements are depleted, the match ends instantly rather than lets the players who are still alive fight to their last breath. It's an abrupt and unpleasant way to conclude a fierce battle, but for the rest of the time, these modes do a good job of setting the stage for the real draw: the unique arsenal and intriguing combat abilities.
You get to use all of the weapons from the campaign here, and though the ones available early on are basic, you gain access to more interesting ones by leveling up. You do this by gaining experience in the usual ways, with bonus ribbons granting extra experience for notable battlefield actions. As you unlock new weapons, it's fun to put them to work on your enemies, but even if you're still a ways from unlocking one you particularly like, you can always grab it from a fallen foe. You automatically pick up any weapon you walk over, and as in the campaign, there's no limit to how many you can hold. This makes staying alive longer an even more enticing goal because your arsenal can grow substantially and make you that much deadlier. If you manage to string a few kills together, you can earn a berserk power that might make you invisible, give you a big protective shield, or even mutate you into a hulking warrior with a nasty grenade launcher.
You can also utilize your suite of abilities to make you a more powerful competitor. Some of the bonuses are passive, like increased ammo and quicker aim speed; some must be activated, like a bubble shield or ammo beacon. Those examples probably sound familiar if you're acquainted with online multiplayer shooters, but what about a projected image of yourself that runs alongside you? Or the ability to see your enemy's recent footsteps? There are even some higher level abilities that actively hamstring you by decreasing your sprint speed or limiting your arsenal in exchange for richer XP rewards. The variety of active and passive abilities combined with the diverse weapons in play help distinguish Resistance 3's competitive multiplayer as an intriguing and rewarding way to spend hours of your online time.
The successful multiplayer paired with the atmospheric and challenging campaign make Resistance 3 a great shooter. Both may have their limitations, but the action here is undeniably exciting. Those with the necessary accessories can use the well-implemented PlayStation Move controls (single-player only) or take on their foes in stereoscopic 3D. No matter what your gaming setup, you're in for a treat. Whether you're storming a Chimeran squad with blood in your eyes and the hope of freezing them all solid before they take your last slivers of health or tracking an enemy, tagging him, and watching him vainly try to flee the bullets that follow him around corners, Resistance 3 offers a brand of excitement you won't find in any other shooter franchise.
Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception
Is it possible to have your expectations raised too high? Uncharted 2: Among Thieves delivered a monumental leap over the first game in the series, and it might be easy to fall into the trap of assuming the same advancements would take place in every subsequent release. If that's your state of mind going into Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, you might walk away slightly disappointed. But that's not a fair response. Though the third entry in this treasure-hunting franchise offers a similar experience to its revered predecessor, it's no less magical. Just about every element showcases the care and craftsmanship you would expect from the series. Combat is even more versatile than in previous entries, combining incredible shooting encounters with advanced hand-to-hand takedowns set in lavishly designed areas. When you need a break from the taxing physical endeavors, thoughtful puzzles allow you to explore your more contemplative side. And these two elements are punctuated by exhilarating set-piece events that leave you gasping. Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception is another superb entry in Nathan Drake's ongoing quest to find the world's many lost treasures.
Once again, Nathan Drake is in search of lost treasure in a mysterious land. The story encompasses many of the same tropes from previous games--deception, twists, camaraderie--though the nuts and bolts of the plot have never been one of Uncharted's strong points. Rather, it's the realistic portrayal of characters--their lively back-and-forth discussions and snide jokes--that give you a reason to care about the tale. Drake, Sully, and the supporting cast sport detailed animation that makes them almost look real, and their playful dialogue further cements this image. Tempers flare, threats are made, and you can feel the tension during heated moments. But these lifelong friends always make up, and it's their believable relationships that make it so easy to become invested in their struggles.
When you picture Uncharted, you may think of plundering ancient tombs or throwing as many grenades as you can manage in bombastic sequences. But the opening of Drake's Deception eschews the larger-than-life action the series is known for in favor of an old-fashioned bar brawl. This is where the new animations that have been incorporated into fisticuffs are apparent as you wrestle with a platoon of aggressive men in a confined place. Shoving a burly dude into the bar while you pummel his face or grabbing a stray bottle to crash over someone's head conjures images of Patrick Swayze handling business in Road House, and the controls are precise enough to make it possible to manage an approaching group without getting your face beaten. Ultimately, these instances where you're forced to take matters into your own hands are the weakest aspect of the game because your freedom is so limited, but that's not to say they're boring. There's a satisfying rhythm to throwing fists while avoiding counters, and you have enough flexibility to move around that you don't feel like you're just performing mindless quick-time events.
As much fun as it may be to bash in a man's head with a wooden chair, it can't match the thrill of beating a man with your fists when he's sporting an assault rifle. There are segments where you have to fistfight in Drake's Deception, but there are other times when you're in a battle for your life and you can use any weapon you want to stay alive. Thanks to the incredibly impactful animations of a hand-to-hand assault, it's fun to put aside the bullets and explosives to focus on getting your hands dirty instead. Being sneaky certainly helps. Snapping a man's neck before he can turn around or just shoving someone clear off a building is immensely rewarding. But there are other times when stealth doesn't work, and you find yourself grappling, feinting, and punching below the belt, while bullets fly and enemies scream death threats at you. Particular animations make these encounters a special treat. You may grasp the barrel of your gun and swing at someone's head with a metal uppercut or elbow a foe in the neck like a wrestler suffering from roid rage, and it's hard to contain your joyous laugh. There are times when you run out of bullets and fighting with your fists is the only way to go. Once you finish off your foe, a slow motion moment in which Drake snatches your enemy's discarded gun in midair adds a fitting end to the fight.
Of course, you don't have to go toe-to-toe if you'd rather not. The beauty of Uncharted's combat is that you can dispatch foes in a variety of ways, and all of them feel incredibly empowering. The key is the expertly designed levels. Drake's Deception is a cover-based, third-person shooter; thus, chest-high walls populate many of your encounters. But those familiar structures aren't used as a crutch here. Verticality gives you the option to climb around like a gun-toting monkey if you prefer, getting the drop on lackadaisical foes. If a man with a rocket launcher is forcing you to hunker behind a piece of debris, fear not; you can smoothly leap from cover, shimmy up a nearby wall, and sprint pell-mell across a rooftop. Grab a sniper rifle on the way if you want to handle him from afar or a shotgun if you'd like to pop him right in the head. Toss grenades at the group of enemies hiding by that well, man the turret once you finish off its previous operator, or sprint past everyone until you make it to the door that marks your safety. Versatile level design lets you choose how to go about killing your pesky foes in Drake's Deception, and rock-solid controls ensure every action you want to perform can be pulled off without any hesitation.
If you're feeling sluggish and just want to use your gun for a while, doing so is a perfectly valid alternative to the high-flying adventuring. The mechanics in Drake's Deception have been refined even further from the previous game. No matter which gun you grab, you can target weak points with ease, and enemies recoil when you prick their flesh with searing-hot bullets. Drake's Deception offers so many different ways to take down foes that you might think it falls into the camp of jack-of-all-trades, master of none. But that's not true at all. If you take things slowly--crouch behind cover only risking your neck when the opportunity presents itself--you have just as much of a chance to succeed as someone who makes use of Drake's agility. And you can have just as much fun, too. The weapons are a blast to use. Landing a headshot from across the map with a sniper rifle is eminently satisfying, as is taking out a gunner with a sure blast from a shotgun. You can easily keep an enemy off balance with a fast-shooting assault rifle or knock a grenade right out of someone's hand with a steady pistol. Ample ammunition lets you focus on the fun of firing rather than scrounging for extra bullets, so you can stick with your favorite weapon if you want or mix things up after every fight.
Uncharted is at its best when the difficulty rises. During many of the game's fights, you can relax and dispose of foes with easy grace. Though this is certainly fun, being forced to play smartly makes things even more exciting. Enemies aren't scared to charge at you when you're hiding behind cover. When you see someone sprinting in your direction, you have to decide quickly if you're going to run or fight, and that decision is frequently the difference between life and death. Dealing with flanking enemies while a sniper is keeping you pinned down forces you to act with determination, and though you may die repeatedly in certain sections, it rarely feels like the game is at fault. However, not every aspect of the combat is flawless. There are times when the AI forgets you're trying to kill them and they just stand around, taking in the impressive view. On the other end of the spectrum, your location may be uncovered when you're trying to be sneaky, even if you stay out of sight. There's also a small quirk with the hand-to-hand killing animations. One of these involves pulling the pin from an enemy's grenade. This looks painfully delightful, but if this randomly triggered event happens at the wrong time, you could be stuck with nowhere to flee.
The occasional flaw doesn't prevent the combat from being immensely thrilling, and the excitement continues in the platforming sections. As in previous games, there are times when you must climb up walls, swing from pillars, and shimmy up trees, and these sections are linear. You can't jump unless there's a handhold to grab onto, and there's only one way out of your predicament. Thus, it's not as empowering as in games where you move with unrestricted freedom. Aside from the combat, every other element is structured to limit creativity, with the focus placed on the beautiful sights and unexpected pitfalls. You might think you're safe climbing a strong wooden ladder, only to see it deteriorate in your hands. And it's these moments that inject some excitement into your leaping. You never know what is going to hold your weight, so you move quickly and purposefully, hoping you can reach solid ground alive.
Puzzles also return from previous games with few changes. While Drake is wandering around ancient cities, he stumbles upon seemingly impassable barriers, but the solutions are hinted at in his handy journal. You may need to complete a mural by casting a shadow or light up certain sections of an enormous globe, and these aren't particularly difficult, but they are still a great diversion from the thrilling action sequences. And that's one of the most impressive aspects of Drake's Deception. The pace smoothly moves between action and puzzles, with entertaining cutscenes thrown in the mix. You never spend so long on one activity that you grow tired of performing the same tricks repeatedly. The chapters bleed into one another, so it's easy to lose a dozen or more hours before you realize just how long you've been playing. And once you wrap up the campaign, you'll want to go through one more time. Ramp up the difficulty, suss out the hidden treasures you missed the first time, and soak in the sights once more. This is a fantastic game that grabs your attention and never lets go.
But if you do become lonely, there's a chaotic cooperative mode. There are three different options, but the best of these is Adventure. Here, you team up with one or two friends and take part in five reconstructed levels from the campaigns of Drake's Deception and Among Thieves. Puzzle and platforming sections have been removed, so the focus is placed entirely on combat. And it's incredible. Enemies are more susceptible to your fists than in the single-player campaign (two punches should finish them off), and it's a hoot to sprint around the battlefield cracking necks and punching groins until you fall to a barrage of gunfire. Just hope your friends resurrect you because you have a limited number of shared lives and the difficulty can get steep. There are sections where you can't rely on your fists to come out ahead, and these require you to carefully coordinate to stay alive. One friend may unleash suppressive fire with an assault rifle while you move in with a shotgun or just snap someone's neck when he's distracted, and there are so many ways to play that going through these levels multiple times is still fun.
The other two cooperative modes aren't quite as good, but they have their charms. Arena is a series of co-op challenges against an onslaught of enemies. You may have to reach a certain kill count or steal a treasure, and it's fun teaming up with some friends to take on the unrelenting horde. The other mode mixes competitive play with cooperative strategizing. Hunters is a two-versus-two assault where one team tries to steal treasures while the other tries to stop them. The defenders also have AI teammates, which makes it pretty tricky when you're trying to nab their goods. Although both of these modes are good fun, they get tiresome more quickly than Adventure. Things enter a predictable rhythm after a few rounds, and though the core mechanics are satisfying enough to overcome this, they have limited appeal.
The real draw of the online offerings is the competitive mode. Uncharted 2 introduced multiplayer competition, and Drake's Deception builds on that strong blueprint. The versatility of the single-player combat is well realized here, so a wide variety of tactics can be employed to kill those who challenge you. Hand-to-hand fighting, long-range sniping, grenade tosses, shotgun blasts, and all of the other great maneuvers from the campaign are here, and the well-designed levels give you plenty of different options. One big difference is the speed. Playing online is much faster than offline, so hunkering behind cover isn't nearly as effective. The sprint button is far more useful, and you better use it frequently or you'll be run down by someone who knows what he's doing. Sprinting to a safe place, firing a few choice shots, and then moving on delivers a satisfying rhythm, and the fear that someone may be sneaking up behind you keeps you from becoming lax. Experience points give you money to buy new weapons and perks, which changes things as you sink more time into it. And if you want to start on the same page, a hardcore mode strips out those bonuses so skill, and skill alone, is what determines a winner.
All of these different modes and gameplay types look phenomenal, thanks to impressive technology and strong artistic design. A stirring soundtrack beautifully complements your journey, drifting between hard-edged riffs and delicate acoustics, depending on the situation. Everything that Drake's Deception attempts, it pulls off with flying colors. This is a beautiful, cohesive, and, most importantly, fun adventure that cements the Uncharted franchise as one of the best around. More of a good thing is welcome here. You'll laugh with joy, yelp with excitement, and, above all else, be thankful that you're playing something as expertly crafted as Drake's Deception.
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