Halo: Combat Visuals Evolved

Alright, I take it back. While I'm not so sure about some of the story aspects since I was somewhat disappointed in it after I beat it, I'm absolutely loving the game play, the visuals are great, and the sound overall is fantastic. The music is something that the gameplay doesn't really do, sets it apart from the rest of the Halo series. It really gives it a different tone, and I'm loving that, but that's not to say I dislike the past Halo's one bit, I still love those. I'm not sure about anyone else, but if you play somewhat tactical and are focused a bit, Legendary is easily manageable on your own. I think the Elites for sure are far easier than they were in Reach.

13.15 | 0 komentar | Read More

GameSpot GamePlay Episode 17: Space Noise

November 7, 2012 5:29PM PST

Bioware's Mike Gamble ushers our alpha team into Omega to discuss Mass Effect 3, corporate theft, and host Kevin VanOrd's mathematical deficiencies.

Bioware's Mike Gamble talks Mass Effect 3, working for an evil corporation, and seedy intergalactic dance clubs. Tom Mc Shea talks about his summer at Camp Karateka, Carolyn Petit ponders the meaning of a single screenshot, and Chris Watters drinks from a well of poisoned water.

And if you need a lesson in the new math, host Kevin VanOrd is your man. Also, apologies for some audio level inconsistencies. Tom tripped over a cable. Authentically.

Click here to subscribe to GameSpot Gameplay via iTunes.

Click here to subscribe to GameSpot Gameplay via Zune.

Subscribe to this RSS feed to receive new episodes of GameSpot GamePlay through your favorite RSS reader.

GameSpot GamePlay Episode 16: Press X to Batman

GameSpot GamePlay Episode 15: A Series of Death Screams

GameSpot GamePlay Episode 14: Splinter Shell

GameSpot GamePlay Episode 13: Double Jesus

GameSpot GamePlay Episode 12: All Pandas go to Heaven

GameSpot GamePlay Episode 11: Enter The Pee Zone

GameSpot GamePlay Episode 10: Adolf Critler

GameSpot GamePlay Episode 9: Out of the Closet

GameSpot GamePlay Episode 8: Ladycrotch

GameSpot GamePlay Episode 7: Bald and Powdery

GameSpot GamePlay Episode 6: Dirty Talk

By Kevin VanOrd, Senior Editor

Kevin VanOrd is a lifelong RPG lover and violin player. When he isn't busy building PCs and composing symphonies, he watches American Dad reruns with his fat cat, Ollie.

13.15 | 0 komentar | Read More

GS News - AC Anthology, ACIII sells 3.5M, Watch Dogs in 2013

Assassin's Creed Anthology collection announced, first-week sales of ACIII rise 100 percent over AC: Revelations' mark; futuristic action game landing next year; company posts $41.35 million loss for six-month period.

0 comments 0 people listening

13.15 | 0 komentar | Read More

Historical Travelogue – Assassin–s Creed III

Not bad!  Occupy is a topic? Dumbfounding, but --nice try

It's a shame that AC3 focused on Boston and New York, because Phili was the true hub of the patriots, it was the largest and most important city among the Colonies.  The game is actually pretty bad historically speaking.  The portrayal of the Boston Tea party is shame, shame, shameful!  I would have rather struck down James Otis with a bolt of lightening.  I'm glad the series has ended, I can't stand to see a good game humiliate itself, and AC3 is the worst.  They should have stopped when Ezio killed Savonarola, everything after that was just jumping sharks.

13.15 | 0 komentar | Read More

Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz Review

The beauty of Monkey Ball has always been in its simplicity. Those teetering-on-the-edge, twitchy moments as you coaxed your monkey-filled ball across treacherous platforms, moving obstacles, and gaping chasms were wholly compelling, and a lot of fun to boot. And so they remain in Super Monkey Ball: Banana Splitz, for the most part. While the standard Monkey Ball challenges are largely well-designed, colourful slices of classic Monkey Ball action, Banana Splitz's other modes are a convoluted, frustrating mess. The minigames range from dull to horribly confusing, giving you little reason to try to compete against others.

It's best to stick to the classic Monkey Ball mode. There, you must guide the cute monkey ball of your choice by tilting platforms with the analogue stick and rolling the ball around a devilishly challenging selection of courses, which are spread across beginner, normal, and advanced difficulty levels. Each course sports a different and wildly colourful theme that sets the tone for the challenges ahead. The beginner levels are bright, palm-tree-infused affairs with wide platforms, simple curves, and easy-to-reach bananas. Normal ushers in dinosaurs and prehistoric objects that try to smash your ball out of the way, while advanced brings the pain with heaps of jumps, holes, and impossibly thin platforms to navigate.

The advanced difficulty level almost errs on the side of being too hard, but there's always a way to make it through each level and towards the goal at the end, even if the solution isn't immediately obvious. That's so long as you stick to the analogue stick controls, though. Trying to complete anything but the easiest of levels with the motion controls is a painful experience--they simply aren't accurate enough, not to mention that it's difficult to see the screen when you're tilting it away from your face to slow your monkey ball down. That lack of precision also makes collecting bananas all the more difficult, which you need to do to earn high scores, or extra lives and continues should you fall off the edge of a platform one to many times.

You can relive those glorious moments of failure by saving replays of them to one of 16 slots, and you can share them--along with replays of your successes--with other Banana Blitz players. It's nowhere near as useful as sharing full-track playthroughs, but there are some amusing bailouts to be found online. Speaking of online, Banana Blitz features a full multiplayer mode via online and ad hoc connections, as well as simple pass-the-handheld play. Unfortunately, the multiplayer modes don't make use of the franchise's classic gameplay and instead focus on a series of minigames.

And those minigames are something of a mess. Things start off promisingly enough with Monkey Target, where you launch your monkey ball off a ramp and float it through the air, pass through checkpoints, and attempt to land on a platform at the end. There are three variations of the mode that change up the layout of the final landing platform--including a neat pinball-inspired layout--but all variants quickly become repetitive. So too does Monkey Bowling and its touch-screen controls that make it far too easy to score a strike each and every time, even on levels where there are warped lanes or gaps.

Those are the best of the bunch, though. Take Monkey Rodeo, an infuriating game where you have to collect bananas by bouncing ball-riding monkeys around with the rear touch pad. It's nigh on impossible to control your monkey and earn points, and the overly aggressive AI relentlessly smashes into you. There's the sluggish Battle Billiards too, which, despite the injection of monkeys in balls, fails to make playing billiards at all exciting. But the very worst of the lot is Pixie Hunt. Here, you're asked to use the Vita's camera to take photos of objects that match the colour of the reticle and…that's it. That's the whole game. The fact that someone, somewhere, at some stage in this game's development thought that was entertaining is maddening.

Similarly maddening is the promisingly titled Edit mode, which isn't actually a way to create your own wacky Monkey Ball courses using the touch screen. Instead, it's a simple random course generator that lets you snap a picture using the Vita's camera and use it as a background. That's incredibly disappointing. Fun (if not wholly original) as the classic Monkey Ball mode may be, it's not enough to prop up the rest of this confused mishmash of mundane minigames.

13.15 | 0 komentar | Read More

Code of Princess Review

Code of Princess has a renowned lineage to live up to. It has been promoted as being from several of the staffers behind the Sega Saturn (and, more recently, XBLA) beat-'em-up classic Guardian Heroes, so fans had high expectations. Code of Princess doesn't quite hit the notes necessary to become a similarly loved genre classic, but it's still a solid brawler with a distinct personality to it.

The game follows scantily dressed Princess Solange and her ragtag team of companions as they rescue the land from a wicked queen. It's a straightforward story, but the dialogue and characters are anything but. The world of Code of Princess is self-aware of its fantasy ridiculousness, and there are some amusing interactions among the cast of playable weirdos. The cast is fairly sizable (though only four characters are playable in the campaign), and they're all distinct in their appearance and demeanor: Lady Zozo is a disinterested necromancer constructed from "spare parts"; Allegro is an axe-wielding elf bard who swears he's just a few experience points from being the world's best sage; and the only thing that stands out more than Solange's skimpy armor (which everyone in-game agrees is ludicrous) is her self-preservation instinct. Ali, the speedy thief, is the most grounded presence in a world populated by masters of Ultimate Manimal Arts and nuns that forgo prayer to beat the sin out of people.

What makes the humorous characters and setting even more appealing is the ease with which you can dive into the game. Code of Princess' side-scrolling brawling action takes a dash of inspiration from traditional action and fighting games without complicating its formula too much. Characters have a set of basic combos and strikes, along with special skills performed with button presses combined with other inputs. Each character has a distinct moveset, but their commands are all quite similar, making it easy to hop from one character to another--you simply need to learn which command corresponds to which skill.

If there are a lot of enemies onscreen, you can lock on to one by hitting it with a Y button strike, which allows homing magic and techniques to target that foe exclusively and regular strikes to deal additional damage. Learning how to use character skills to set up and perform mega-damaging combos on hordes of enemies is one of the most fun aspects of the game.

There are a host of defensive maneuvers you can perform as well. You can guard against attacks and take less damage, and double-tapping a controller direction while doing this allows for a quick dodge. As in Guardian Heroes, the stages are made up of multiple side-scrolling combat planes, and you may swap the plane you are currently on. This is handy for getting away from large swarms of foes and sometimes lets you take advantage of objects in the stage for cover. Since enemies can swap planes as well, it's usually only a temporary reprieve from combat, but jumping from plane to plane wisely can help you lure enemies in and set up big-damage strikes. Finally, you may unleash a powerful burst technique that can blow away groups of foes and grant a temporary strength boost in exchange for all of your fighter's current magic power.

While the game takes a lot of inspiration from Guardian Heroes, it's quite different in the way it progresses. Code of Princess doesn't present branching paths through the game. Instead, you play through individual missions that make up the longer, linear story. You can choose to replay completed sections of the game, as well as bonus missions that unlock as you complete parts of the main story. As you complete these quests, you unlock new equipment and playable characters for the game's multiplayer modes, as well as money to buy new items from Marco the feline shopkeeper. You also gain experience points and levels for your characters that permanently increase their capabilities. Once a stage has been unlocked for one character, it's available for all other characters as well, so you can swap between them as you see fit.

However, this feature highlights one of the issues with Code of Princess. There are sudden spikes in difficulty, and if your characters' strength isn't adequate, you'll find yourself outclassed by enemies quickly. It's tempting to swap characters constantly throughout the story, but if you do this, you'll soon find all of them lagging behind in levels when the really tough battles begin. You don't get any consolation experience points if you wipe out during a stage, either, even if you've spent a good amount of time playing through it. If you don't want to play a single character through the whole story mode, you need to grind in the free play modes and missions, which can quickly become annoying and repetitive. (Late-addition story characters like Allegro will likely need to grind anyway.) If you don't feel like gaining levels, you can attempt to exploit the enemy AI with hit-and-run tactics, which isn't any less repetitive.

A more serious issue, however, is the frame rate. Code of Princess looks nice, with well-animated sprites, appealing character designs, and a good use of the 3D effect with the combat planes. However, once more enemies begin to show up, the frame rate takes a noticeable hit, which is a very distracting problem in an action game with a lot going on at once. The frame rate issues are particularly egregious in the multiplayer modes. The game supports up to four players in local or online multiplayer sessions. Playing with a single buddy competitively or in co-op modes is a lot of fun, but once more than one friend joins the fray, the frame rate starts to collapse to the realm of near unplayability. Turning off the 3D alleviates this issue somewhat, but the need to shut off one of the console's main features to enjoy the game properly is frustrating.

There's a lot to like about Code of Princess: the characters and dialogue are amusing, the combat is fundamentally solid, and there's a lot of replayability in the various missions and side quests. Even though some design and technical hiccups prevent the game from reaching the heights of its inspiration, there's still enjoyment to be had from this goofy fantasy romp.

13.15 | 0 komentar | Read More

GS News - Halo 4 devs speak out against sexism

• Oct 31, 2012
• 1,238 (Views)

343 Industries head Bonnie Ross and Halo 4 executive producer Kiki Wolfkill say sexist behavior on Xbox Live is unacceptable; also say developers have a responsibility to wipe out sexism in the industry.

0 comments 0 people listening

13.15 | 0 komentar | Read More

Cutting the Cord: Halo without Bungie

We speak to 343 Industries head Bonnie Ross and Halo 4 executive producer Kiki Wolfkill about the challenges of taking on one of the industry's biggest franchises.

Bonnie Ross is a forward-thinker. As the head of Microsoft's 343 Industries, she's the woman in charge of protecting the future of Halo and guiding a legion of loyal fans through the next ten years of the franchise. It's a daunting prospect any way you look at it, but Ross is confident that her team is right for the job. On November 6, the day of Halo 4's release, she hopes that the world will prove her right.

343 Industries was first established in 2007 to support Microsoft's Halo business, following the publisher's split from original franchise creator Bungie. While Bungie would go on to develop two more Halo titles for Microsoft--2009's Halo 3: ODST and 2010's Halo: Reach--the establishment of 343 confirmed the publisher's intentions to keep the three billion-dollar franchise going long after Bungie had left the building.

Ross was chosen to lead the 343 team after a long career as a producer on Microsoft sports titles and key franchises including Gears of War and Mass Effect. She's not the nervous type--her 18 years industry experience has seen to that--but she's not shy to admit the prospect of taking over one of the biggest gaming franchises of all time was initially intimidating.

"My biggest fear was that I was going to be the person that ruined Halo," she says. "I wanted to spend as much time as possible making sure 343 had the right foundations of the franchise so that we could be the right guardians of the Halo universe."

Bungie's decision to stay onboard for two more Halo titles allowed 343 to spend its first 18 months as a studio doing just that. The studio worked in collaboration with the original Halo creators to learn about the franchise, its history, and the various elements that made up its vast universe. The first thing that was immediately clear to Ross was how differently the two studios worked. In Bungie's case, the team presided over development of the Halo games but left the fiction and consumer products side of the business to another branch within Microsoft, which Ross says led to misunderstandings between Bungie and the Microsoft over the future of the franchise. Her solution was to bring everything under one roof. As a result, 343 now looks after the entire Halo franchise including software, consumer products, toys, apparel, and fiction.

The next thing Ross wanted to focus on was building a studio culture. Microsoft's financial backing allowed her to hire developers who she believed fit her idea of what she wanted 343 to be: a highly creative and collaborative environment where employees could feel comfortable in speaking up and sharing their opinion across various departments. Her first stop was Kiki Wolfkill, the former Microsoft Studios art director whose 17-year industry career has spanned franchises including Forza and Gears of War.

"It was an interesting time at Microsoft," Wolfkill says. "We had decided to take on a challenge as big and ambitious as you can possibly get. Not that we didn't understand what we were getting into. We're not scaredy-cats. There's an underdog mentality at 343 that I think is pushing us to great things."

***

343 began work on Halo 4 in 2009 after getting the all-clear from Microsoft Studios head Phil Spencer, who was heavily involved in the decision to push ahead with the new series. (Spencer once joked at E3 2012 that he wouldn't be ready to call 343 a proper studio until after they shipped Halo 4.)

The first problem was working out what to keep of the old Halo and what to throw out. When Wolfkill and Ross identified what aspects of the canon needed to be reinforced before any additions could be made, the pair found themselves coming back to the same constant: the Chief.

"It was clear when I joined 343 that Bonnie's vision for Halo centered around the game's universe," Wolfkill says. "When we started to map out what we wanted to do with Halo 4 there was no question about it not being focused on Master Chief."

Wolfkill and Ross both know the Halo universe contains a great deal of untold stories, but they couldn't imagine Halo 4 without the hero at the centre of this universe. They decided the new Halo would be a personal story, one that gave Master Chief more dimension, more humanity.

"Heroes are made through trials and tribulations," Wolfkill says. "We wanted to turn Master Chief into a character that players connect to."

That's where Cortana comes in. Wolfkill says the relationship between Master Chief and Cortana plays an important role in this regard. Players will learn to view both characters in a new light, and come to a new understanding about the importance of their bond.

This is also partly the reason why 343 Industries refers to the new Halo series as a "saga". In exploring the Halo universe to uncover new stories, the team found more than they'd bargained for: enough to feel that they didn't want to be restricted with how they develop the franchise in the future. The story arc developed by 343 spans across a number of games, but that's all Wolfkill and Ross will say on that subject for now.

***

Giving Master Chief more depth was a relatively easy decision compared to the conversation regarding what Halo 4 should innovate on. Ross realized she had to be deliberately cautious in this regard: while a lot hangs in the balance if the game doesn't succeed--343's reputation, the future of the Halo franchise, and the personal sacrifices of over 300 developers who have given the last five years of their life to Halo 4--it was the thought of disappointing Halo fans that played most on her mind.

"Halo 4 is a work of art, but ultimately what we wanted to do was prove to Halo fans that we've stayed true to the franchise," she says. "The universe forms the foundation of the franchise and it means a lot to people. It's our first time taking the keys to the car and we don't want to mess it up."

It's true that Halo has acquired a passionate and dedicated fanbase since the release of Halo: Combat Evolved in 2001. The games are valued for their narrative-driven campaigns, polished multiplayer, and the overall canon itself, which has been explored through multiple bestselling novels. Not for the first time since starting work on Halo 4, 343 developers found themselves going back to the things that made Halo great to find inspiration.

Ross and Halo 4 development director Frank O'Connor wanted players to experience a new side to the Halo story, one that would explore the complexities of the Forerunners and their technology. Of course, you can't have a new playground without new companions. The introduction of a new enemy class in Halo 4--the Prometheans--is a huge change for the franchise, and something that 343 is confident will change the gameplay experience for the better.

"We wanted a new enemy class that would work together so that encounters could change dynamically," Wolfkill says. "This changes how players approach these encounters, and of course gives them some new weapons to play with."

The 343 team has also tweaked aspects of Halo's multiplayer. Players will be able to customize their own Spartan and make their through the different modes in the game as a career, earning Spartan Points (SP) to unlock weapons, armor, and upgrades and progressing through the ranks. The studio has also added a story-driven game mode, Spartan Ops, which aims to weave a narrative thread through Halo 4's multiplayer.

"We knew we were taking a leap of faith by introducing all these new elements, but we had to do it," Wolfkill says. "We wanted to develop our own voice while respecting an IP we all care about. We know we're making an investment, but we're certain it's the right one."

"We've had to make a lot of hard decisions on Halo 4," Ross continues. "I didn't agree with all of them, but I think that's okay. Halo 4 is an expression of a whole range of different voices. It's exactly what we wanted it to be."

Halo 4 will be released on November 6.

13.15 | 0 komentar | Read More

Assassin's Creed III: Liberation Review

Aveline de Grandpre is a fascinating character. Not only is the heroine of Assassin's Creed III: Liberation the series' first female protagonist, but her backstory deals with one of the darkest periods in American history. This is a woman born from the romance between a wealthy father and a slave mother, someone who has overcome her uncertain upbringing to find a new life in the Assassin Brotherhood. She's the sort of figure capable of anchoring a truly special game--making it all the more disappointing that Liberation, taken as a whole, is a bit dull.

It's not that Liberation lacks for new ideas. In fact, this Vita spin-off introduces a number of intriguing concepts. Rather than one of Desmond Miles' trips through the Animus, the narrative in Liberation is framed as a piece of historical entertainment delivered by Abstergo Industries, the illusive corporation that serves as the series' overarching antagonist. It is, in other words, a story about Assassins as told by Templars.

There's great potential here for the type of storytelling unique to an unreliable narrator, yet Liberation takes little advantage of its own narrative format. Though the story deals with such heavy themes as slavery and the cultural identity of a city transitioning from French to Spanish rule, it's a largely aimless and hastily delivered plot that sees Aveline bounce around like a pinball from one enemy to the next for the bulk of the game. There are occasional flashes of excitement when a mysterious hacker infiltrates Abstergo's narrative to offer you the "truth" about these events, but they amount to little more than a handful of extended cutscenes back-loaded toward the end of the game.

The greatest casualty of Liberation's muddled storytelling is Aveline herself. She's introduced as an intriguing and strong-willed character, but Aveline's personality is hardly explored beyond that initial introduction. Her recruitment into the Assassin Brotherhood is quickly glossed over, while her gender and mixed ethnicity only occasionally factor into the story. These are interesting traits that you wish the game would explore in more detail, but it's more concerned with a dizzying roster of villains and side characters than spending much time on the heroine at its center.

Where Liberation shines brightest is its re-creation of the city Aveline calls home. This is a brilliant version of 18th-century New Orleans, one that beautifully reflects the diverse cultural ambience formed over years of operating as a French trading port. You often venture outside the city too, spending time with smugglers in the bayou as well as journeying to a couple more locations well beyond Louisiana (though to name them would be spoiling things). These locales look terrific, easily rivaling the rich vistas of Liberation's console counterparts. It's enough to make you stop and soak up the atmosphere during those moments you're scaling a church tower to synchronize the world map.

Unfortunately, you really do have to stop to appreciate the world around you because when things get moving, the Vita hardware tends to struggle under the weight of Ubisoft's graphical ambitions. The frame rate drops precipitously when you hit a dead sprint, and large-scale fights against more than four or five enemies will make things chug as well. It's too bad, because these frame rate issues severely impact the fluid and freewheeling style of urban parkour that has long been the greatest strength of this franchise. Likewise, these visual hiccups don't do any favors to an otherwise refined combat system, which disposes of manual lock-on in favor of a more flexible and intuitive approach to swordfights.

13.15 | 0 komentar | Read More

Need for Speed: Most Wanted - Video Review

 jayd02 Underground 3, minus the cheesy acting from all the other games. UG2 was good only for vehicle customization and tuning, but gameplay wise it was sparse and empty and I handily smashed the AI the instant I got my hands on the Pontiac GTO, never looked back once I put my foot on the gas.

If they kept the open world Burnout style, have the tuning of UG2, the seamless switching from SP to MP like Paradise, tight controls and physics(arcade of course) and make the police tenacious like the level 6 monsters from the original Most Wanted.  Make the streets much more populated Midnight Club 3 style and for once use an actual real city, it worked well for MC3. In fact they should have multiple cities at most 3 to become the Most Wanted racer in the game. Oh and they should also add the one on one downhill races from Carbon(that was the best part of that whole game)to unlock special cars/parts.  Oh and ease up on the damn exotic cars, those things are freaking boring, that's all I see in every driving game who can shove the most exotics in your face.  Most Wanted had a nice balance, lets not forget all the sleeper cars rolling around on everyday streets eh?

13.15 | 0 komentar | Read More