http://pastebin.com/zEjieFtr

On the above page he lists some user accounts, but he says he has uploaded the full list to a file sharing site as an archive totalling 6.12GB.

The file sharing site in question is BayFiles, which seems to have gone offline. The hacker, calling himself ‘Reckz0r‘ on Twitter suggests that Microsoft is responsible for taking the site offline.

If this is a legitimate claim then it could be the worst PR disaster for Microsoft in recent history. There is no excuse for allowing so many passwords to be reverse engineered in this way – it would be down to poor security. On his Twitter account the hacker claims that Microsoft stores passwords in plaintext format which would be against all security best practices.

Our advice: change your Xbox Live password immediately!

We’ve reached out to Amazon and EA for comment, and will update this page with more information as we get it. And it looks an Xbox One title, based on the $99.99 placeholder matching the PS4′s game pricing placeholder.

Thanks, NeoGaf.

The page can be found here:

While we’ll ignore (seriously though – it’s actually hilarious) the related items on the page, Microsoft’s willingness to sell the controller separately is a smart and necessary move for any next-gen console. Here’s looking at you, Wii U gamepad.

From the sounds of it, it appears that the Xbox One will be the exclusive place to find this series; more information, however, as we can confirm it.

The new engine is named Ignite, and it’s supposed to produce dynamic environments that impact the way you play.

The four games are UFC, FIFA, Madden 25, and NBA Live.  Additionally, EA has confirmed that the Xbox One will also receive exclusive content for each title.

More information as we get it.

Pretty interesting stuff – some of the new pieces are welcome changes to what was already the best controller on the market.

Announced at today’s Xbox reveal, we’re looking forward to seeing this in action. What are your thoughts on the new console?

Players are put into the boots of Artyom, the central character of the last game – who still remains a silent hero except during loading screens – and follows on one year after the explosive events of Metro 2033, where the surface outside of the Metro was bombed with missiles in an attempt to remove any of the mutated beings that had made the poisonous outside their home. While Metro 2033 introduced you to the inhabitants of the underground network, it never flushed out all of the different cultures and civilians living in their own cultivated habitats; thankfully, this is where Last Light shines exquisitely, delving deeper and offering a broader scope to the variety of people who are living in these awful conditions. Last Light also endorses the outside environment of the Moscow surface, an area mostly used in the first game to install mystery, using rare trips to the surface to show off how ravaged the once flustering area of Moscow had become. The game features many outdoor events that, while sinister and full of dangerous hazards, are striking to traverse through in their own twisted way. If Metro 2033 was known for its harrowing tunnels, then Last Light will be known for is disturbing outdoors. In fact, it should be known for its diversity of the two, making the journey varied from start to finish.

In a strange way, the journey of Last Light reminded me of Half-Life 2. This unwanted world forced on people, the way the game pushes players through small areas of downtime from visiting one of the friendly zones, where you’re given time to look around and take in the world, even enjoy its pleasures, repeats itself and adds to the incredible sense of atmosphere. Flashbacks help to show eerie story points, such as being in the seat of a plane crash when the bombs drop. Then you arrive at charming places, like the wonderful Venice, in which people only hear rumours that Venice was a name of a beautiful city that floated on water, with Metro’s own Venice, beautiful in its own depressing way, is a place that is half soaked in dirty water that has built up from the snow melting and seeping through the ground down into this refugee town. Last Light does exceptionally well at creating a world you care about, and this is backed up with the stellar sound design and decent voice acting with that hint of Russian.

Newly introduced foes grace the surface – occasionally underground as well – that are true monstrosities. I beg to question how these actually formed from mutated planet life, but either way, walking through the spider infested lairs and using the torch to burn giant spiders to flip them over to hit their soft underbellies, makes for a good mix-up with the gunplay. It’s scenes like this that remind you that Last Light is a horror-themed game.

Anyone who has already visited the world of Metro has an idea of what to expect. It’s more of the same in regards to most of the mechanics. The gas mask still plays a huge role within the game, used to protect Artyom from dangerous chemicals on the surface or when situations underground necessitate the use of it. The mask can also break if you are take too much damage while wearing it, and it plays a distressing audio sound of Artyom gasping for any clean air and is covered in a visual blur that gets more overpowering the closer Artyom is to suffocating. Scattered around are used gas masks by the deceased, so a replacement can often be found when you are taking part in some of the game’s bigger fire fights.

Filters for the gas mask are also frequently discovered upon and stashed in Artyom’s inventory. A standard filter can supply up to five minutes of air at one time. Once it becomes inefficient, you can replace it, pushing the timer back up to five minutes. Filters are stored as time, as various filters scattered around the environment offer numerous values, but are all stored as one clock that communicates  to the user how much time is available before clean air is no longer viable. I never found myself truly running out of air. In the original game, the air filters were sparsely scattered around, creating concerns about how efficiently you could use the gas mask, but in Last Light, you can discover them littered everywhere. In fact, the game as a whole is stress-free on the normal difficulty, a big difference compared to Metro 2033’s less than friendly combat that made every enemy a dangerous opponent.

There are numerous reasons to take into account the drop in difficulty. Obviously, in a commercial sense, is to make the bar of entry lower for newer players, taking the feedback from the original game and letting people enjoy their time with Last Light to soak themselves in its atmosphere and story without much getting in the way of being able to finish the game. Mechanically, this comes down to ammo being easily available, where limited ammo was something that added to the survival aspects of Metro 2033. The stealth route is still feasible, using silence weapons to pop out the lights, and then with the use of context sensitive button presses, use instant death kills or knockouts that are great for quick removal of the enemy. The new watch that Artyom wears does a worthy job at indicating if players are standing in highly visible areas, by alerting the player with a distinguishable blue light, which will help anyone who has trouble deciphering if he or she is hidden from the enemy.

The battered guns from Metro 2033 return here in the sequel, but now the guns are just visually deteriorated, as the feeling of using such unreliable weapons has gone, the kickback from shooting is reduced, making it feel like a standard shooter in that regard. Not that this is a knock against the game; it’s not, and it feels good to shoot because the enemy AI – for the most part at least – is component enough to fight back.  Weapons can be upgraded using the game’s currency of high-quality bullets, adding silencers, scopes and all those mechanical gadgets. One thing that I never had to do was use the currency as ammunition. It might be different on the hardest setting, but the normal setting planted ammunition everywhere.

On the topic of difficulty, a fan favourite with Metro 2033 was the post release inclusion of Ranger difficulty, which made the game more challenging with a new set of rules. Ammo was reduced and stealth was more of a focus, as both Artyom and his foes did much more damage, dying in two to three hits. If playing with the hardcore version of Ranger mode, then the HUD was removed, adding even more immersion. Fans praised ranger mode highly, so you would think it would make a return for Last Light. Well, I am happy to announce that Ranger mode is back…. as a pre-order bonus DLC. I’ll just take a breather while I wait for you to stop spitting on the floor in disgust, because that is what this is, a dirty marketing ploy that spreads its poster with “Experience complete immersion” and “The way it was meant to be played.” That’s not something that should be a pre-order bonus. Deep Silver says it’s because retailers demand pre-order DLC as a requirement. If that is the case, then why not just do something less offensive than removing a feature of the game and then charging money for it for people who didn’t pre-order? I’ve seen gun skins, a limited edition weapon and other less unpleasant means than what’s on offer here.

4A Games have once again used the jaw-dropping engine of Metro 2033 to push some of the best first-person shooter visuals on the PC. This was a game that was targeted with PC hardware in mind. It supports DirectX 11 and comes with all the fancy bells and whistles of that API, along with detailed textures to create a world that, even though is withered by destruction, is pure bliss on the eyes. The teams’ art direction helps too. In such a bleak world there is only so much you can do with the colour palette in a wasted environment, yet 4A Games manages to make it interesting, with the rare occasion of a splash of colour making its way in to show how lovely the world once was.

On a technical level, I did have some problems with the game running on an AMD 6990. Now, this card should have no problem running Last Light, and it didn’t for the most part, hitting around 70+ frames on max settings (without supersampling), but in two or three areas of the game the frame rate would drop dramatically, hitting around 20. I knew it wasn’t the card, so it was either the drivers or the game, but I don’t think it was the drivers, since on one occasion I stopped playing at one of these dreaded frame killers. However, when I returned the next time, the frame rate was back to normal. As typing this, a patch has just been released on Steam and tests show that it has solved problems with the frame rate.

People no doubt want to know if this a successful sequel. I personally found Last Light to be the more enjoyable of the two games. Aspects of Metro 2033 didn’t click with me as they did with some fans. But since Last Light brings across its aesthetics from the original and improves upon them visually and thematically, exploring the bigger picture and giving players a better time in the world of Metro, that the changes to the gunplay do not spoil the overall package. Last Light has the mechanics of a great shooter that is built alongside a brilliant atmospheric and refreshing world that anyone who is fed up with shooters being the same would do well to give it a shot.

8/10

Returning heroes Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine are joined with new partners in this latest tale. Chris spends most of his time with Jessica Sherawat, while Jill hangs with Parker Luciani. In the Resident Evil timeline, Revelations takes place between Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 5, with a story about the terrorist organisation Veltro and its rebirth, after disappearing off the radar due to their bio-organic weapons (BOW) attack on the floating city of Terragrigia. The game begins with Jill and Parker in search of Chris and Jessica at their last known whereabouts, the cruise ship SS Queen Zenobia. This isn’t a Resident Evil game without a silly plot, and it’s all here, told through episodes that allow the game to switch between characters and the current perspective on the overall story. Emulating a TV series, each new episode begins with “Previously on Resident Evil: Revelations,” which stems from its design as a portable game. There is nothing wrong with it being on consoles, as each chapter mostly lasts over 30 minutes and it does not compromise the quality of the game.

The site reviewed Revelations on 3DS and had high praise for the game. This port to the consoles and PC hasn’t altered that view, but Capcom did decide to add new content, mostly for the multiplayer-focused Raid mode; nothing has changed in regards to the story. There are no extra chapters, additional rooms or anything related to extend the main campaign. The one thing that does affect the single-player is the new Infernal difficulty, where the game places more enemies and changes their location. Items have also had their places remixed so that veteran players won’t be able to use their knowledge from previous plays. Infernal is a nice inclusion for the hardcore fans who want more of a challenge after playing it on the 3DS, or for anyone who might want to play through the game multiple times.

For me, Revelations is the best Resident Evil game since Resident Evil 4. It manages to invoke the slower pacing of the classic games, but at the same time implementing a modern approach to its gun-play mechanics. The puzzles are not a focus, so fans that like that aspect of the older titles might be a little disappointed, but the ship, with its eerie and desolate appearance, does give a great sense of atmosphere on arrival, as players try unraveling the mystery and find answers to what the hell happened on the SS Queen Zenobia. The cruise ship parts of the story do bring in elements of the backtracking that was present in Resident Evil and its mansion. Finding emblems and keys to unlock other compartments to explore newly unlocked areas is definitely a throwback that I am willing to embrace.

Inventory management is kept to a minimum, with characters allowed to carry up to three weapons. These can be swapped in the magical, connected storage boxes, but this is limited to weapons only, as key items are automatically stored on the player without limitation. Green herbs have their own section on the main screen and no longer require mixing with red herbs to buff their effectiveness – characters will be fully healed with the use of one herb. Secondary weapons, such as grenades and mines, can be picked up but are limited in the amount you can carry. Same with ammo for each of the three weapons you hold. Upgrades can be found around the environment, offering increased ammo capacity or add-ons for weaponry to buff an aspect. These are not locked to one weapon, allowing players to visit a storage box to swap them between their favourite guns.

A new feature to Revelations was the inclusion of Genesis, a scanning tool that uncovers hidden items and offers a reward of a green herb if you could build up the metre to 100 percent. This requires the scanning of enemies, dead or alive, with the alive offering more metre building. It’s a simple mechanic, offering the chance for players to decide to go for those extra points from scanning an enemy before engaging in combat. Just be careful the enemy isn’t too close, or it’s free food time for these monsters. It wouldn’t have hurt to have the Genesis have a more involving role, such as the brilliant usage of the scanner visor in Metroid Prime.

That’s my only major gripe with Revelations, really – the enemies. They are all a bit too lacklustre in quality. Old classics like the Hunters are nice to see, but when you return to the grey, sloppy, slimy designs of the T-Abyss infested population of the SS Queen Zenobia, then it’s a bit of a drag to look at. Monsters don’t react much to shots, either, which I guess makes sense for water-based enemies – bullets easily going through them and such – but it doesn’t feel as rewarding to pop a cap in them, removing any strategy to gun-play that has been featured in recent titles that include a behind-the-shoulder camera. A small note to report is that with a typical, third-person control system based on a 360 controller, it makes it a lot easier to strafe while shooting, which is very handy in a game like this.

Raid mode was met with praise on the 3DS version, so Capcom have added more weapons, skills and characters to improve upon what was already there. Levels from the single-player are used to construct the stages for Raid mode, although these are often broken down into smaller chunks. The premise of Raid mode is to supply an action-focused multiplayer mode that gradually gets harder with level-ups. BP is rewarded for finishing these stages, which can be spent in the shop to buy better weapons, ammo, or upgrade weapons. It’s a different approach to the survival tactics of Mercenaries; rather, this has inspiration of a score-attack feature. Raid mode isn’t afraid to have a laugh, as enemies become modified into bigger but slower monsters, or tiny but speedy beasts. There’s something amusing seeing mini Scagdead running around with his saw trying to kill you.

MT Framework has proven to be a wonderful engine with fantastic scalability on various platforms. Revelations on 3DS remains one of the better-looking games on the handheld, but its port to consoles isn’t shabby either. The origins of being developed for the 3DS do show, such as simple and blurry textures showing up from time to time, but this HD update looks fine and sharp on consoles that being on a large TV doesn’t do it any injustice. The 360 version runs at 30FPS and keeps that framerate for the most part, but just like on the 3DS, when the game is loading a new area on the fly, the framerate will be hit with judders until the loading is done. A shame, but it happens in places where nothing is going on.

There isn’t much here to draw in the original fans of the 3DS version of Revelations. If you’re diehard enough, then you might enjoy playing it on the bigger screen, but this console release is aimed for people without Nintendo’s handheld. For them, then, Resident Evil: Revelations is a great step in the right direction. A well-done port for newcomers to the game and at the same time a reminder that Resident Evil can be a great game with quality atmosphere without having to succumb to the big-budget, AAA nonsense that plagues the industry.

8/10

You soon come across a house that acts as a chapter select, although you are required to unlock chapters in order by completing the previous ones. Walking through a door, you enter a room that contains all of that chapter’s puzzle entrances, which also must be completed in order. This can be pretty annoying if you find yourself stuck on a particular puzzle as you aren’t allowed to move on and come back later – you are forced to be extremely linear. Each puzzle has the same, simple objective: exit through the door. This is made difficult by a number of traps and elements built to confuse and disorient the player. The first obstacle is the level design itself, as it is based on the impossible works of M. C. Escher that Echochrome players may find familiar. For example, there are often columns that stretch between two walls that players can either walk around or land on, depending on how they are approached. This has the player often discovering new and interesting ways to move around each platform and promotes an attitude that is unlike usual puzzle games, forcing you to think less about your next move and has you instead just trying everything.

Each chapter introduces a new unique twist that builds up as you progress, with the first introducing menaces and keys required to unlock the exit door. Menaces are creepy-looking spheres that roll about as you shift the gravity, most often crushing the player beneath them. Death is common but it doesn’t restart the puzzle, instead adopting a Braid-like time reversal function that lets you go back as much as you need. Having your character die looks great, as there is a smudge left where you died that looks like the character was rubbed out, sticking to the game’s sketched art style. The second chapter brings with it vortexes. These vortexes are inescapable spheres that warp their surroundings and have a good amount of gravity to suck in objects, including the player. They can sometimes be temporarily stopped via buttons that require the player or a menace to weigh down. Vortexes can occasionally be useful as they can trap objects that would kill the player or stop them from free-falling off the map. Both menaces and vortexes can be dangerous obstacles or useful mechanics, leaving it up to the player to learn how to cleverly manoeuvre around them and use them to their advantage.

The third chapter is where it gets more difficult by including a new inversion mechanic. Symbolised by a Penrose triangle at both sides of a platform, the player can invert the world by flipping the character through to the opposing side, which changes everything. Firstly, this alters the colour of the main character, which becomes more complicated as different colour keys, doors and menaces are included. The player can only collect keys and enter doors of the same colour. Menaces of the same colour follow the same gravitational angle as the protagonist, whereas opposite-coloured menaces and keys have their gravity reversed, shooting them to the top of their enclosures. This makes way for so many different combinations of puzzle elements that it can easily become troublesome to make your way around a stage. The final chapter comes with a veil, a place that can be stood on as the gravity is shifted so the player is not affected. This doesn’t simply have you moving around menaces and dropping keys onto stationary points – the change in gravity made when inside the veil continues once it is exited. This means that menaces that have been moved 90 degrees to the player will continue to be pulled by gravity at 90 degrees respective of the player’s position. When inversions and veils meet, the inverted menaces and keys are also affected by the veil, which has a huge amount of potential scenarios and will have you close to tears with confusion… But nothing feels better when you have the ‘eureka’ moment and finally solve a difficult puzzle.

There are a total of four chapters, each consisting of six stages. After completion, Mirror World is unlocked. By activating a tesseract that appears once all stages are cleared, the world is flipped, unlocking a further four chapters that once again hold six puzzles each, for a total of 48 stages. Personally, I dislike simple mirror worlds and see it as a cheap way to extend a game, but this is different. Each mirror stage is reversed – as expected – but also includes a number of extra obstacles that significantly change how each level is played. The difficulty spike is huge and a single puzzle can easily take 30+ minutes to figure out. It’s good for those who enjoyed the game and are looking for that extra challenge, but it’s probably not suited for those who only just made it through the first set of chapters. The difficulty is masochistic and it drove me insane just looking at some of the levels. Some real thought went into placing each new obstacle and it achieves its goal of extending the game, and then some.

Throughout the stages, there are also hidden wisps to find that each reveal part of a picture. They are well-hidden and I only managed to find two out of seven on my first playthrough. It wasn’t until looking online afterwards that I truly understood how difficult some are to find, with one even requiring the Konami Code to be input. Finding all the wisps doesn’t seem to make any worthwhile changes to the game and it seems they are just there for an extra touch of mystery, further perplexing the player.

The Bridge is in black and white and everything looks as if it has been sketched with a pencil – even the player starts every puzzle by being drawn into the world. It’s a good art style and suits the Escher vibe the gameplay upholds, but the main character can seem quite tame. All he does is walk around sluggishly and fall about. He could have done with some more fluid animations to keep him from looking plain boring. The story is almost non-existent and what little of it there is, is told through a poetic medium of one or two seemingly random sentences at a time, confusing the player with its cryptic nonsense. Having the chapters laid out in a house, with more areas becoming unlockable, and getting the story told through small chunks of mysterious text reminded me heavily of Braid. Although it definitely borrows from other games, it lives up to its name for unique mechanics and experimental level design.

Overall, The Bridge is a fun game that will constantly fascinate and simultaneously baffle players. It’s an experience that could only be achieved by an indie game, as it’s full of creativity and cares more about awing the player than just simply entertaining them. Although it may only appeal to puzzle game fans due to its sharp difficulty spike and confusing mechanics, the style and design of the game can be appreciated by anybody. It can be a fleeting or a drawn-out experience depending on the player, but more than likely if the mirror world is completed, it will take over five hours and may cause insanity if finished in one sitting. There is a lot of potential for even more brain-breaking puzzles and mechanic mix-ups that I hope to see in the future as downloadable content or even a full-fledged sequel. For a game that was created by just two students, it’s an accomplishment to be incredibly proud of and I know that I’ll be gifting a few of my friends this game throughout the year, even if it is only to drive them crazy with confusion too.

7/10

This is where DreadOut, a video game developed by an Indonesian studio called Digital Happiness, grabbed my attention. It evokes classic survival-horror suspense that I haven’t felt since Amnesia, but before that, not since the almighty spook-fest that is Fatal Frame 2, which DreadOut is heavily inspired by, but with an Indonesian ghost folklore twist instead of Japanese myths.

DreadOut currently has three days left on its Indiegogo campaign, and at the time of this post, is short by $6,000 of its rather low goal of $25,000. If you like what you see in the video below, then you can support the game by going to DreadOut‘s page on Indiegogo, or  take the demo for a spin yourself and feel the crushing atmosphere this game covers you in. After my own 15 minutes with the game, I can easily say I am excited to see where this project goes. You can see my experience with the game in the video below, along with a on-the-spot talk about my opinions on DreadOut.

Daedalic Entertainment has been developing and publishing some worthy adventure games for the past few years, including such titles as Deponia, The Whispered World and The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav. The company is back with more point-and-click goodness with The Night of the Rabbit, a wonderful looking title created by Matthias Kempke that involves, well, a rabbit. I got to personally spend a little time with the game and play through one sixth of the content that will be offered for its release at the end of May.

The story revolves around a young boy called Jeremiah Hazelnut, who, along with loving his mum’s amazing blackberry pie (he always wants the first and biggest slice), has a huge interest in the world of magic and would love to become a magician one day. It’s a delightful sunny day at the beginning of the game and there are only two days left of Jeremiah’s holiday before he has to go back to school. He wants an adventure before his return to the boring world of education, and that’s what he discovers when he receives a strange letter with a spell that summons a magician called Marquis de Hoto; but he isn’t any old magician – he’s a humanoid rabbit. Mr. Hoto offers Jeremiah the chance to learn magic, an offer than Jeremiah simply cannot refuse. So he takes the rabbit’s top hat, wears it smartly, and then is warped to the small village of Mousewood to become a magician’s apprentice, which as you can probably guess, is the home of mice. Now both Marquis and Jeremiah are the same size as the cute little rodents, and this where the adventure really begins for little Jerry.

On first impressions with The Night of the Rabbit, what mainly struck me were the visuals – they are a thing of beauty. All these lovely environments and characters are completely hand-drawn and stand out due to the sharpness of the art. Wandering into a new environment is met with excitement, seeing if the artist can still keep the surroundings looking enchanted and alive with fairy-like charm. Its aesthetics remind me of an old cartoon or children’s book that has sprung to life from a magical painting. Since the game only consists of this gorgeous 2D art, it means the requirements are at a low bar for entry, so a PC from the past eight years could run this no problem.

Visuals can only get you so far in an adventure game. The genre is built upon the intuitive blend of puzzles situated in the game’s world, how appealing its characters are and how interesting the story is. The Night of the Rabbit seems to be stepping in the right direction from the early hours of the game. The first major puzzle is to create a portal that summons Mr. Hoto, which involves hunting down items placed around three areas of the game: Jeremiah’s home and garden, the forest, and a section that goes deeper into the forest that features a small stream. The game feeds you tips from the letter on how to create this potion, but it’s done in a way that isn’t too challenging but also is not spoon-fed to players – there’s a little experimentation to solving puzzles.

After the first puzzle is over, Jeremiah receives a special coin that acts as the game’s way of giving the player hints. Space Bar activates this coin, and everything that is interactive in that area will tingle with a multi-coloured flicker. It helps distinguish what you can click on, as I found some objects weren’t clear to see without this little magic trick. The coin can also be used to reveal hidden objects, such as one example where Jeremiah reveals that there is someone standing behind a mouse but nothing is visible to the naked eye. Whip out the coin and all is revealed.

It’s a neat idea to blend the hint system into a real gameplay mechanic, but it’s a shame that the journal isn’t as effective as it should be. I feel it doesn’t note down enough information about the tasks. One example is right at the beginning of the game when you are trying to build the Carrot Flame. The letter explains the ingredients and what you need to do, but none of that is jotted down in the journal. To remember it, you either have to write it down on a physical piece of paper, or click and repeat the dialogue until you see what was missing or was required next. It’s a little tedious having to do it for the more demanding puzzles. Jeremiah also gets access to a wand that will allow him to speak to the magical rabbit to gain hints on what to do next. This may be because this is a preview and is the early part of the game, but this did nothing at all to help me; it instead just repeated the same dialogue of getting the party ready for Jeremiah’s magician initiation. I have been told more spells become available later on.

Voice acting is present for all the characters that I’ve interacted with so far, and, above all else, isn’t irritating like a couple of other game protagonists have been in the genre – although, there are some delays between dialogue speech that spoils the overall presentation. Acting can also be overdramatized on some characters, but in a way, this twists with the idea that The Night of the Rabbit could be a children’s animation and undoubtedly strives for the same kind of jesting dialogue. It’s charming. Jeremiah is a happy kid that isn’t full of himself, and the rabbit, Marquis, has a mystique about him that makes it intriguing to see what he’s really up to.

The Night of the Rabbit is leading the story somewhere curious. Maybe something a little sinister is going on in the background of the plot, as I am still not sure what the very start of the game was hinting at with Marquis and an unknown woodsprite entity. Whatever it is, I’m excited to carry on with the magical adventure of Jeremiah and Marquis, with none of the small complaints being enough to put me off the game. If you’re a fan of the genre and are looking for some old-school, point-and-click fun, then The Night of the Rabbit seems to be on the right track to deliver a competent adventure.

ShootMania is truly a game that heralds the old days of PC first-person shooters. The era where the fast paced combat of Unreal Tournament and Quake III Arena were the giants of multiplayer FPS, requiring players to have perfect aiming and bunny hopping skills to defeat their opponents, rather than the Call of Duty extravaganza that has infested many titles, taking away such concepts and replacing them with experience systems, pre-match equipment and special perks. I don’t particularly hate that style, but I am a little fed up that my multiplayer experiences becoming similar across various franchises. That’s when a title that invokes an old style of gameplay, such as ShootMania, feels more revitalising to play than it should be in the year 2013, all thanks to the current state of the genre.

Nadeo has stripped down this multiplayer-only title to the bare minimum, meaning everyone is thrown into the same situation with identical weapons, the same abilities and the same amount of health, which is dependent on the game mode being played, but it usually offers between two to four hits before death. It’s a completely fair playing field where the good players are the ones who have the skills to adapt to the mechanics of the game. Controls are unbelievably easy to grasp, using the typical first-person controls of the keyboard and mouse, WASD for movement and mouse to aim, along with firing the weapon with left click and jumping or sprinting with the right click. The space bar does the same job as the right mouse button so as not to limit your use of the mouse, but it just felt intuitive to use your other finger to control your mobility. Having sprinting and jumping assigned to the same button was initially a bizarre thing to deal with. A tap of the button will make the character jump, but holding it down will allow sprinting on landing. If you fall or use a ramp to get elevation off the ground then you can activate sprint without jumping – a safer way to activate due to not being airborne for long. A metre drains when you are running, limiting the ability to constantly dash everywhere on the map.

The standard weapon is an energy blast, a shot that simulates something of a projectile, where you can see the projectile travelling towards the desired target rather than having an instant shot. These balls of energy are clearly visible, making it harder to take shots from long distances, forcing the player to get in closer and reducing that dreaded sniper problem that often plagues other shooters. A clever person might be able to pull off a lucky shot by predicting where someone will be, but there is a limitation on the ammo – maximum of four shots stored – that stops the possibility of spamming energy blasts, again, adding to the idea that you have to be smart about how you play. Do you shoot all four or save it for when a shot is needed most? The choice is down to the player and how well they can manage their ammo count in specific situations.

Two other guns are accessible, the rail-gun and the grenade launcher. The rail-gun is limited to specific game modes and certain podiums in maps. This gun fires off an instant hitting bolt of energy that kills in one shot, but the downside is that you cannot jump because the weapon’s zoom is assigned to the jump button (depending on the game mode). The grenade launcher is accessible by running to underground parts of the map, which on arrival, will be automatically equipped. You have no option to change back, since there isn’t any weapon selecting mechanic, so players have to contemplate about an additional alteration to the gameplay if they want to follow someone into the depths of the underground for a kill.

In a bizarre way, this straightforwardness to the gunplay creates gameplay that remains far from shallow. Somehow Nadeo managed to craft a product that is simple to grasp, yet elegantly deeper than what it seems from the initial portrayal of the game. It’s a shame then that it does not explain much of this to you. I spent most of my time figuring this out on my own or asking players who were already knowledgeable about the game in the chat window. Why? Because there is no tutorial section in the game to explain everything, and the only offline play is creating a LAN server, no bot action here. I kind of didn’t expect it to feature any due to its competitive online nature, although a mod has come out for horde mode and that has bots, so maybe the community might do something with the creation tools.  There are recommended servers for beginners, but these are scarcely populated with players. As I write this, there are six players on one and zero on the other.

While the game itself may strife for a minimalistic approach to multiplayer, one thing it undoubtedly does not lack is game modes. The most popular types seem to Battle, Royal, Joust and Elite, as they are more servers for them than any of the other modes. Battle is ShootMania’s capture point mode, except rather than switching sides when a round is over, multiple phases happen during the same match. The first person to begin taking control of a point will initiate their teams attack phase; from there, the team has 15 seconds to begin taking over a tower. Every time a potential capture is started the clock will stop and will only begin counting down from 15 again when capturing is interrupted or a team member isn’t trying to capture a point. It’s a twist on the norm and adds a sense of urgency every time your team is either attacking or defending.

Royal is the last-man standing mode, where all players have one life and the last person alive wins. One pole is situated in the middle of the map and if anyone captures it then a tornado begins to surround the outside of the arena. As time passes the tornado gets smaller, closing down the amount of space for the map, until only the centre is left for the final few people to battle between each other. The tornado is a nifty application that stops people from hiding in the corner of the map to turtle out their round position. Joust on the other hand is a one vs. one type with a modification to the gameplay; you have no ammo until you touch a tower – there are two in these smaller one vs. one levels – and then you are given five shots that do not replenish. If you waste them, you have no choice but to get to the other tower to gain more ammo.

The last of the popular modes, Elite, is a three vs. three, but only one offensive player is participating at a time and has an objective to take over a capture point before being killed. This is against three defenders, but the attacker is given three pieces of armour and the rail-gun to help, meaning instant kill if the attacking player hits a defender. A win can also be given if the attacker kills all defenders. The teams swap around so that everyone gets a chance to be the attacker. Just from me talking about the descriptions of the game types should enlighten people by how different these modes are compared to some of the genre standards that are in today’s shooters.

I’ve already mentioned that ShootMania suffers from a lack of tutorials, and it’s one of the problems that bring the overall aspect of the game down. It’s very much aimed for people who want to play the game in the long run, maybe even dabble in a bit of eSports, since Nadeo and Ubisoft are promoting ShootMania very heavily as a game for such events. I just don’t know what it is with Nadeo, but they can’t seem to make a very logical user interface. The menus are a muddle to navigate – which if you have played TrackMania 2 then you’ll be used to them by now – and everything is basic. I know that is what they were aiming for with the game, but surely you would want a presentable user interface for newcomers rather than some high-school student’s attempt at making a poster in Microsoft Word.

If TrackMania is anything to go by, then the game will be filled with plenty of fan created maps and game types. I’m personally not intelligent enough to design such maps, but the map creation was easy to grasp to begin basic adjustments. It’s the lack of information in the game that could problematically stop people from delving into creating content, but the internet does have wikiguides to help point people in the right direction, if they are willing to try.

Visuals are good enough, but I wouldn’t say they were outstanding due to the bland art direction. There is only one theme for the environment at the moment, so prepare to see lots of grass, brown cliffs, caves, trees and shallow water. Nadeo are following in the footsteps of TrackMania 2 and offering future packs that are based around various themes. The next one due is ShootMania Cryo, which is centred on snow and will come with its own physics and rule sets. The first-person perspective is literally a crosshair, no gun or anything, and the UI uses metres at the bottom to represent health, stamina and ammo, while the top shows time and score. The chat window can get messy when everyone is using their own colours and strange text alterations that look like a mishmash of a baby’s colouring book gone wrong.

There’s a hurdle you have to overcome when first entering the world of Shootmania, specifically if you aren’t used to playing such classic, fast-paced shooters, but on a personal note, after an hour or two it began to grow on me as I understood what made the game tick. It sure won’t be a game for everyone, and it doesn’t do well to introduce new players, but I feel that the gameplay speaks for itself with Nadeo’s simple yet deep approach. If you want to shoot people in a different way and have a tolerance to learn, then ShootMania is the place to go and do that, and the future can only look brighter once the community floods the game with their creativity.

8/10

Originally born from a single fan-art drawing, the character of Black Rock Shooter soon became a licensed icon spanning an Anime series, Manga, and the aforementioned game on PSP. What makes the BRS property unique, however, is that all three media feature a completely separate setting and story, the only link shared between them being the titular character (and even then, her origin stories are completely different as well). Whereas previous iterations featured familiar tropes such as high school girls traveling to alternate dimensions, the PSP adaptation features a significantly darker set-piece: the end of humanity.

In the year 2032, a mysterious alien army invaded the Earth for the sole purpose of eliminating the human race. After years of conflict, the surviving human population has been whittled down to exactly twelve individuals, all soldiers of the PSS organization. In a last desperate attempt to turn the tide, the soldiers have awakened Black Rock Shooter, a man-made weapon possessing incredible strength as well as weaponry capable of destroying the aliens, but at the price of a limited memory capacity that makes her almost child-like in innocence. As she travels around the world helping PSS mount a counteroffensive, BRS will also question her life’s purpose as well as the mysterious origin surrounding her creation.

The story takes on some surprising twists and turns, though much of it is affected by generic Anime melodrama. Despite representing the last remnants of the human race, most of the PSS soldiers are faceless drones with one discernible personality quirk (such as getting carsick or naming every mission after fictional movies), making the interactions between these band of brothers feel cartoony instead of camaraderie. This also affects the gameplay in certain cases, such as frequent breaks in the action to insert more pointless dialog, or a mission that requires you to run around and interact with every NPC in order to advance the plot. While not fully realized, the setting still establishes some dark themes and elements, and remains interesting enough to see through to its conclusion.

The game also features some decent visuals that may not hold up among the best looking PSP titles, but still suffice in carrying the sci-fi Anime aesthetic. Don’t expect to actually perform BRS’ acrobatic antics in the actual game, though. While the character designs give the impression that the game’s genre would be a third person shooter, it is in fact a third person RPG shooter. When bumping against enemies in the area, the game instantly switches to an RPG battle screen where players must move a targeting reticule that snaps onto enemy targets, pelting them with rifle fire until all the targets are destroyed. While players have free aim over the weapon, their movement is restricted, the only actions to avoid enemy fire being a block button or an evasive dodge that switches between the left and right side of the battle area.

All of these actions can be performed instantly, but take up BRS’ stamina meter. When the gauge reaches maximum, she will overheat and be unable to perform any actions at all, leaving her momentarily susceptible to attacks. To counter this, there are recovery items for both health and recovery dropped by enemies or found in nearby chests, though the real key is learning to pace between shooting and evading. Also available at your disposal are skills which can be assigned to specific buttons while holding down the right trigger. These skills make up offensive attacks like the Charge Beam or recovery abilities like Defender Mode or Physical Recovery, as well as more strategic abilities like the Sniper rifle (which can stun enemies for a few seconds). These skills can be swapped out at any time, but only five can be equipped at a time. Players can choose whether to equip an offensive set of skills, defensive, or a combination of both, but there is no key configuration to follow; aside from a few boss battles, the game’s difficulty never gets uncomfortable, with enemies following the same basic patterns over and over.

As a result, the gameplay is satisfactory but also repetitive. Observant players can blast through different enemy types within seconds after establishing their patterns, and the areas in the game are linear in most cases and bland-looking at all times. Each area is divided into stages that make up a chapter, but players will basically be running back and forth between the same areas in order to fulfill multiple objectives. Fortunately, there are a couple of features that encourage repeat playthroughs: the game routinely offers “challenges” that reward players with permanent stat boosts or a new skill ability by meeting the specified conditions.

Such conditions typically revolve around defeating a certain enemy X amount of times, or finishing off said enemies with a specific move. More advanced challenges include not taking any damage during motorcycle segments (while not impossible, the length of these segments will result in much hair-pulling should an enemy nick you mere moments before finishing), which include more advanced rewards. Finishing a chapter also unlocks the “free mode” for that chapter, which bundles all of the stages together into one long seamless mission free of dialogue, allowing additional rewards including costumes, music, and more.

As one of the last PSP titles, Black Rock Shooter is not the most remarkable game to close off Sony’s first generation portable, but the intriguing story and quick-paced game mechanics may serve as an appropriate handheld distraction. If you are a fan of its Anime aesthetics, or at least willing to tolerate them, the game will suffice as a budget title with an average amount of content to play through.

6/10

Scared is more known for its action RPG entries (we reviewed the last major game in the franchise, Sacred 2), which are similar to titles like Diablo, so it’s a little strange to see Sacred branch into a new genre, especially one such as the side-scrolling beat-em-up, not that I have anything against games doing that when it makes it worthwhile. Sacred Citadel’s story is acting as a prequel for the upcoming Sacred 3, but to be honest, you need zero knowledge of any entry in the franchise because you can get by through this typical fantasy story of an ancient evil scheming to overrule a kingdom and, as you would expect, you play the guys who are tasked in defeating it.

Four characters are available, which represent an entry for each class – Warrior, Ranger, Mage and Shaman. Every characters’ focus is a little different, such as the Mage being able to cast ice and fire magic to launch at enemies, while the Warrior has moves that offer more devastating damage attacks. The skills are the main attributes that separate each class, because every character can dual-wield two different weapons at a time and isn’t limited to a weapon type, so a Mage can use an axe and a Warrior can use a wand – yeah, a Warrior with a wand, just take time to imagine that for a second. The basic combos are the same, with characters having a light and heavy attack that can be mixed, but at the start this lacks depth because you can only perform a basic three hit combo without being able to alter into any other attack move.

This is where the series’ RPG elements make a crossover into Sacred Citadel, as defeating the game’s mob of enemies offers experience points. Hitting a new level gives the chance to put skill points into one of four self-explanatory stats – defence, attack, power and dexterity, and also allows for the character to learn a new attack combo or skill depending on the level your hero has reached. This adds much needed depth to the lacklustre low level characters and makes it enjoyable in the process. Additional damage can be dealt once a metre is charged from killing enemies. This will unleash a devastating attack, which is very handy in escaping when overwhelmed with enemies.

Loot will randomly drop from enemies, which consists of weapons and armour. Stats are basic, in that a weapon has strength or defence value and occasionally an elemental bounding along with it. It’s kept simplistic so that people can keep focus on battling. It wouldn’t be very good if you had to keep pausing to study a weapons attributes and figure out if it was better. Weapons lay around on the battlefield and players simply stand over it to see if it is an improvement. A simple button press allows for a seamless exchange, keeping the action flowing without interruption.

Levels are of decent length for a game like this, as they last an average of 10 minutes and are based on different aesthetic themes for each of the four acts. Most levels play out the same way; you jump in to the stage, walk right and beat people up till it’s the end. Not every level has a boss; instead, bosses are saved for the last level of the act. Mounts make a feature, such as the Golden Axe (another classic beat-em-up) inspired beast to a more mechanical device of the mobile cannon. Outside of stages, you have the opportunity to visit a town to purchase new gear or crystals that offer buffs for a limited duration. Challenges are also available in town and are accepted by placing a bet to beat the following stage under these new rule sets. The life challenge requires players to beat the game without dying, Time is a time attack, giving players a target time to finish within, and lastly, Score, is finishing a level with a higher score. Failing to beat these tasks will only lose the money placed on the bet; the level itself is still counted as being finished, which is very nice of the developers to implement them this way.

Bizarrely, there is only the option for up to three player cooperative, which is both offline or online. Why three? It makes no sense to do this, since the game offers four characters to use. Those characters don’t switch stats either, so if you get the Warrior up to level 12 and then fancy playing the Mage, then she will begin at level 1. I played the game locally in cooperative for the most part, as online takes a while to find a game, mainly because there doesn’t seem to be many people playing it.  When I did get a game, Sacred Citadel‘s netcode seem to handle the action well.

Sacred Citadel has a gorgeous art style that stood out a lot for me. It lacks exhaustive details, but it manages to be stylish by mixing it with an appealing, unique, 3D cel-shaded, water-colour aesthetic.  It’s annoying that this pretty art can’t be fully displayed on a good monitor, as I had to play the game in window mode due to its limited resolution options. The maximum resolution is 1600×900, which just seems ridiculously to do in the year 2013. I have read that there is a way to mod an options file to offer high resolutions, but this stretches the image, giving less than ideal quality for the game’s art to shine.

I was really hoping that Sacred Citadel would be a great beat-em-up game. I adored its look from pre-release trailers, but I feel it offers too much of a basic approach to the genre. It appears no one can blend the awesomeness of Streets of Rage 2 with the brilliant design of Guardian Heroes without understanding the aspects that made them great. Sacred Citadel isn’t a bad game, but it’s not particularly worthy either. Confined to the roots of modest fun, Sacred Citadel’s cool art can’t help cover up its repetitive mechanics and reasonable approach to the genre. Fine for an hour at a time, but shouldn’t be treated as anything other than a lower alternative to better games doing the same thing.

6/10

Riptide follows on instantaneously from the events of Dead Island, with all four original survivors landing on an military ship hoping to find peace and protection, but end up instead being brought into custody by the guy in charge. Against their will, the survivors are examined to see what is causing their body to fight off against the infection, but soon pass out after having too many drugs pumped into their system. Waking up, all hell has broken lose as the zombies overrun the ship, causing for panic and a simulation of the Titantic, as the carrier crashes into the rocks and washes ashore the survivors onto the game’s new location, the island of Palanai. Meeting up with another group of survivors, the protagonists begin to do what they already have been doing previously – smashing zombies apart.  The plot is once again forgettable, like some B-movie zombie film, but the main attraction in Dead Island isn’t the story. It’s about smacking zombies.

Previous players can use an imported save file from Dead Island to continue the use of their character. If you did not play that game, then your selected hero will begin from level 15. Along with the return of Xian Mei (dangerously wields bladed weaponry), Sam B (rapper who sings about Voodoo nonsense), Logan (the sporty guy who is a jack-of-all-trades) and Purna (gun girl), a new guy named John Morgan joins the line-up. His ability is hand-to-hand combat and comes with one nifty skill that would make even Duke Nukem proud – the talent to send a zombie flying backwards with a simple kick with his boot. The new character was inspired by a popular mod based on Fist of the North Star and allowed gamers to smack the daylights out of zombies and launch them with powerful impacting fists. Sadly, he isn’t as exciting as that mod, but if you like getting up close and personal with zombies, then his melee focus will give you that amusement.

Changes to the gameplay itself are small, with the new mechanic of wave survival thrown into certain parts of the plot. During this phase, players use surroundings, such as barb-wire, to set up defences before you acknowledge the start of the zombie wave. Once initiated, you’re stuck in this central area fighting off waves upon waves of zombies, occasionally getting a break to heal and gain supplies before more arrive. Each one can last a varied amount of time, but it clearly shows on screen how healthy the waves are, giving you an indication if you’re close to killing the remaining bits of running, rotting meat. At first they were fun, but this new mechanic needs fleshing out to keep it more interesting, such as being a separate mode with more depth added for the cooperative play. I can see the perfect setting in my head – a Dungeon Defenders style mode with Dead Island’s gameplay would be rather fun.

With the new features gone over, what is left is what you had in the original game. The island is new, but the location contains the same aesthetics as the previous game, only with some areas feeling more jungle-like, making it seem as if it was an extension to the island of Banoi. It certainly would not look out of place in Dead Island. Now, I’m not saying the island itself is awful; on the contrary, this location makes for some very interesting places to visit. From the shanty towns to the sea village and caverns, there’s something to discover during your first adventure. The swampy areas can be traversed easily thanks to the newly featured boats. Using boats makes travelling much safer than swimming, since the new drowner zombies like to act lifeless in the water while waiting for some poor soul to accidentally brush past them and be met with a surprise attack. All that said and done, returnees will see the same sunny tropical setting, the same clear and raining skies, all while doing the same repetitive quests.

Yep, through the 15 hours or so I spent with the game I did a lot of moving from one point to another, killing lots of zombies, retrieving an item for a NPC or killing some bigger zombie, then making my way back to hand in the quest, with the occasional survival wave thrown into the mix. I just wished for a change, something different to the gameplay that wasn’t such a fetch-quest lover’s wet dream, and the longer I played the more I got bored of it. It’s a game that I feel you have to play in small chucks, and doing long sessions as I did by yourself isn’t the best way to go about Riptide‘s style of gameplay.

It’s the same for the combat, in which it’s a fun mechanic and has a very nice ear-pleasing hit with every decapitate zombie, but it’s basic, undeveloped and clunky at heart, and soon falls into the same repetitive pattern of discovering a zombie, slicing it with a sword or smashing its head open with a hammer, picking up any loot and then moving on. Like the game as a whole, it draws on your ability to withstand it to the point it turns tedious and you have to stop. Classic guns like shotguns and rifles to more fun weapons, like the set-zombie-on-fire flare gun, all appear in-game, but using firearms just didn’t feel right for me. Maybe because only one character specialises in guns, but I found more fun was had discovering blueprints and crafting nail bats or hot rod swords (it sets zombies on fire) than shooting with an assault rifle.

Experience points are rewarded for kills and successfully finishing quests, which are used to unlock additional skills for the characters. A lot of the skills are replicates from Dead Island, and just like in the previous game, many of them weren’t worth my time. I found myself focusing on a few skills that I liked and then was not fussed where the rest of the points went. Give me health, give me power and then I’ll go have a laugh killing zombies.

Cooperative play automatically makes most things fun, and having a friend or three (up to four players) come join in the zombie slaying can be a right laugh. More so than doing the quests, as having friends can help remove some of the tedious play, making the group forget the task at hand and go off slaying zombies for an hour or two of harmless fun. Since death is voided of any real punishment – money is deducted from your total when you die – taking chances and throwing yourself into a horde is rather amusing. This time around (well, it was sorted in the last Dead Island patch, version 1.3, which is funny enough the initial version of the retail release of Riptide - guess that explains the reduced number of bugs this time) the cooperative scales much better, having separate scaled enemies on the client side, so if a high level player enters a low level player’s game, the zombies won’t be impossible to beat for the newer player.

The version I played was for the PC and most of it looks great. The environment flourishes with a rich and tropical colour palette and the environment scale is huge, with a big draw distance helping with a sense of scale. I had a few issues with ATI drivers at first, causing cutscenes to feature a strange distortion in colour, but this issue was fixed in the recent driver update, and everything else ran smoothly. Signs of a console port do creep in, as some of the textures are low quality, but if you want to run this at its best, then the PC version is the way to go.

More of the same, yeah, it sounds like I am repeating myself like a bad case of deja vu, but that is exactly what Dead Island Riptide is, a reprint of what came before with no improvements to the core mechanics that were really needed to take the game to great heights. If you have no problem with that and want more Dead Island, then you’ve got more Dead Island, so go ahead and enjoy what you already know you will. For me, I got bored after playing through Dead Island, and having more of that extended didn’t do much to excite, leaving me disappointed in what should have been a great follow up. Dead Island Riptide is a stop-gap extension to the franchise that is enjoyable in small doses, but disappointingly fails to address problems that plagued the original game.

6/10

Speaking with a writer from the site GameRanx, Mike Laidlaw, the game’s creative director, mentioned this on Twitter -

Hopefully this means our first look at the game in action, but we’ll have to wait a few more weeks for confirmation.

This new challenging environment is named Bitterblack Isle and is located off the coast of the game’s original starting point, the seaside village of Cassardis. Even though the new content is situated here, it’s advised to not even begin to think about taking on the task unless you have a completed game save file, since the enemies are of high level and will chop down a new character in an instant. Dark Arisen does include the original Dragon’s Dogma, so even if you did not finish the game before, this separate title will work with your previous save, allowing you to continue the adventure.

Kicking off the quest line for the Dark Arisen content requires speaking to a character called Olra, a blonde woman who is mysteriously dressed in black (is that ever a good sign?) and will transport you away to the island. The place of Bitterblack Isle is contradictory to the game’s original open-world of Gransys. It’s a claustrophobic’s worst nightmare, as the setting is a closed-off linear dungeon that forces players to go down into the depths of it and discover the nightmarish creatures that await them. There is a lot of fighting to do in the expansion, giving me a feeling that this was aimed at people who wanted to test their might with the game’s combat engine against these tough-as-nails enemies.

There’s also an unmistakable nod to Demon’s/Dark Souls within this eerie underground lair and combat focus – although, the game’s combat system isn’t as weighty and unforgiving with a player’s error compared to From Software’s masterpiece. A question of unease envelopes your body as you remain unsure about what lies around the next corner and what devilish tricks are concealed away. One of my first deaths was due to my unfortunate contact with a bogus chest that popped out some demonic worm that engulfed half of my body and continued to ravage my health. I was frantically shaking the stick to fill up the escape metre, but to no avail, as I was way underpowered to escape at that point. It’s a rude awakening to the difficulty of the new content.

It only gets harder the further you go down. The closing stages are filled with enemies that will simply knock you out in a hit if you aren’t a high-enough level. Unlike the main game and the early parts of Bitterblack Isle, this section requires much work from the player – relying on skills to dodge the overpowering odds, or simply die in frustration as another instant death unfolds. There is nothing wrong with inspiring Dark Souls-like difficulty, but the Souls franchise was made around intelligent design decisions and clever placement of enemies. Dark Arisen falters at doing this, to the point where the designers thought the answer to making the game difficult is to jam-pack rooms with towering enemies and clog a player in these troubling situations. Even for experienced players, these situations will be annoying as your hero and their pawns are bombarded with attacks and curses, and seemingly can’t get a chance to do anything. Capcom recommend that the level entry be around 50, which is fine for the first third or an half, but once I crossed that point I found myself going back to Gransys to level-up more. I’d recommend bumping up your level to around 80 or 90 to comfortably get through most of this content.

As well as meeting new enemies, you will also be able to find cursed items that are given a category ID and a level. Taking these back to Olra will allow her to clear the curse from these items, which randomly gives you a piece of gear that is related to the level of the once anonymous item. NPCs can also upgrade weapons and armour past the initial dragon forge state to help with progressing through Bitterblack Isle, while new skills are gained to keep a sense of newness to your existing hero and pawn.

If you never experienced Dragon’s Dogma, then there is no question that Dark Arisen is worth a pickup, as it includes the original game, plus all this bonus content. You can check out the site’s review if you want to read up on the verdict for the original game. The title becomes a little more questionable when you speak of the additional content, though. It’s not like there isn’t a hefty amount; 10 hours extra is great, but the problem is that to experience this new content you have to buy Dark Arisen physically, because there is no option of downloadable content for the original title. It will depend on how much you love the game to determine if the RRP of £19.99 is enough for this content. I can say that I have seen it for around £15, and it will no doubt drop to less than that on popular internet stores. Fans do get a small bonus for their return to Gransys. For starters, the annoyingly expensive Ferrystones are now not required, as the game will place a special ferrystone in your item box that has unlimited uses. Along with this, existing players will also get 100,000 Rift Crystals and a special armour pack with new costumes.

While fixing the fast travel problems that existed in Dragon’s Dogma, all other problems seemed to have been left to inhabit the game. The lore of the world isn’t as fleshed-out as I would like, and the additional area doesn’t do much to build on that. The framerate is still unstable, dropping often during battle; and the pop-in is still there, with some enemies popping in screen only a few metres away. It is a shame that the title isn’t on PC, as it would be nice to see what this game could run like when having powerful hardware behind it. At the moment, it seems current hardware is handicapping Dark Arisen’s potential for silky smooth gameplay. The 360 version reviewed came on two discs, with the second disc acting as an installer for a Japanese audio track and HD textures. It’s been stated that these HD textures are the original textures for Dragon’s Dogma, as the textures on the play disc are less detailed to be able to fit all the content on one play disc.

Dragon’s Dogma itself is a fantastic title with some innovative ideas for the genre. If you never played it, then I strongly suggest buying the Dark Arisen release, especially if you love western-esque RPGs; and for the budget price, you are getting one quality video game. Scoring this re-release budget as an expansion for existing players, then, it’s not as fully recommended for anyone but the hardcore fans of the wonderful Dragon’s Dogma. But to be honest, the new content is aimed mostly at those followers, and they will find the challenge rewarding, if a little broken, towards the end of Bitterblack Isle.

7/10

Let’s get this out of the way first. Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate does not contain any story. You arrive in a village and are tasked to help rebuild the locale by slaying terrifying monsters and harvesting resources. A title such as Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate doesn’t need to limit its scope to a plot being a piece of scripted gameplay, movie-style cutscenes, written text or dialogue. It’s one of a select few video games that exist in this day and age that spawns a story through the experiences that people acquire over the course of the game, alone or with friends, when participating in hunting down one of the game’s many memorable beasts. Through failure or success, this game will get people talking about their adventures in the vast lands of Monster Hunter. 

Nintendo’s Wii system was the last console to receive a Monster Hunter title that was translated. It was named Monster Hunter Tri, since it was the third generation of the series. Think similar to Pokémon, where normally a generation includes two colours, then a third entry later before moving onto the next generation of critters. This is the same for Monster Hunter, with Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate being, as the title would suggest, the ultimate version of the third entry. This is no marketing ploy to make the game sound better than it is, as there is truth to the title’s name. Publishers are usually fine with sprinkling a few extras here and there, and finishing it at that, but Capcom has gone the extra mile to pull in fans that played the 100 hours plus content that was in Monster Hunter Tri.

Throwing out some numbers, 3 Ultimate contains 73 monsters, where Tri featured only 35. What is even more exciting is that the additions are mostly large beasts, which is where a lot of the thrilling fights happen. When you match the numbers with Tri’s 18 large monsters to 3 Ultimate’s 51, you kind of see how much you are getting extra. A lot of the new monsters are from an unreleased PlayStation Portable game called Monster Hunter Portable 3^rd, but since that never saw the light of day outside of Japan, having all these new monsters is close to feeling like having a different game. It doesn’t stop there, as including these fresh meats means that 211 new quests were added, bringing the total to 339, along with over 1,000 new weapons and over 1,000 new pieces of armour. It’s jam packed with content that will last you three times as long as the Wii entry. If that’s not one of the best examples of adding new content to an existing game, then I don’t know what is.

Monster Hunter has been notoriously known as a game that is hard to get in to, and that is true to some extent.  People interested in the title need to play without any misconception, as thinking the game is all-out action with a giant sword will give anyone a rude awakening. Combat is slow, stiff, and far more realistic that you might expect. In essence, Monster Hunter is the definition of a methodical video game. Rushing in only leads to death, so one must study a creature’s behaviour before fully being able to take them down. The problem is the game doesn’t give enough information to introduce new players. A small tutorial and easier mission structures at the beginning of the game help, but newcomers expecting a full explanation of mechanics and features will have to read a guide or get help from friends to fully understand. This is a title with incredible depth, and even after nine years on from the original Monster Hunter, none of the copycats that try to take advantage of the success have managed to clone what makes Monster Hunter so appealing – the way it feels.

From the get-go the depth is evident, as the game offers twelve weapon types to use, all which handle drastically different. There are no classes in the game, but the weapons act as the determining factor on how the hunter attacks. Using the series’ trademark great sword means your attacks are slow, but do huge damage on each swing in exchange for the lowered agility of carrying such a huge slab of metal. Prefer speed instead? Then go for the dual blades or sword and shield. If you prefer shooting, you can use the bow or the gunlance to hit prey from afar. There is a weapon here for everyone, and even if you get bored of one type, you can simply make another to experiment with. It’s a shame that not all are explained well, making some weapons appear harder to use when in fact they aren’t  At least the game is open to players switching around armour and weapons freely to experiment, mainly due to equipment coming with enhancements that are beneficial to exploiting weaknesses of monsters, which plays a very important part in the challenging G rank missions in the latter half of the game.

The “thrill of the hunt” is a perfect phrase that sums up participating in a quest. Each monster has its own distinctive behaviour, and watching how monsters move and how they attack is always a place of discovery on the first encounter. Unlike many games, every monster battle feels like a fight for life, with earlier monsters, such as the Great Jaggi, a dinosaur-esque creature that’s a bit bigger than your character, taking from five to ten minutes to put down, to the massive Uragaan, that will take twice as long to fall and is more of a challenge, due to its aggressive nature and stone-like jaw that it loves to pummel hunters with. Visuals and sounds are used to determine what is coming next in an attack, but animations are also used to display the beast’s HP – there are no health bars – so looking out for the monster limping is the sign that it is in a weaken state and is close to death, or if your quest is to capture, then the signal to lay a trap and tranquillize it.

Progression requires the upgrade of weapons and armour to take more hits or deal more damage on the tougher hunts. However, with no level system in place, this is done by using the items you gain from successfully finishing quests and carving the remains of hunted animals. It will involve grinding the same quest to gather enough materials, be it from living creatures or plants and herbs, which are used to make potions and buff inducing drinks, but that’s where the multiplayer comes in to take away some of the grind and offer the best time with the game. I prefer to look at it as the single player aspect that trains your soul with the monsters, preparing you with fights so that you don’t let your party down when you enter the real deal – the multiplayer, which makes up most of the game’s total quests.

Online comes with its own set of quests that are made for multiple people, since monsters are buffed up with more health to compensate for four hunters. To access the online section, players need to join from the single player’s hub and connect to a world, then a lobby (which can handle up to 100 players), then finally join a room or create your own. The tavern area allows for a small dose of rest and recuperation as players wait for hunters to join in. In this area, you can eat food to buff your hunter for the next quest, buy items, access your items and equipment, which is handy when you need to switch gear aimed at specific monsters through the equipment set save system. The game makes it easy to add companions to a friend list and see when they are online, perfect for anyone who has a close group of friends who hunt together.

Moving the action to the field and seeing how other people are geared out is fascinating. Weapons you think are terrible might, in the hands of the right player, far better than you anticipated. I watched one dude work his magic with the bagpipes, a weapon that hits somewhat like a hammer, but allows the user to also play music to buff party members close by. For me, that weapon is like a no-go area; it just doesn’t click with me, but I am sure some other people think that about the switch axe or the dual blades. Playing 3 Ultimate with a full party is a testament to the detail and depth that has gone into making this game excel at its trade – fighting monsters. There is something magical in battling these towering titans, watching one guy take the aggro, while another lays down a trap, another dude staying out of harm’s way and shooting healing bullets at the team to keep them healthy, and the final guy going all in with a giant sword. Plenty of things could go wrong with the game in a situation like this, such as buggy AI, but Monsters manage to handle a group well and keep the challenge intact. Even when you’re an expert in defeating monsters, one slight misstep in concentration can cost you a large chunk of health, so you always have to be vigilant as the group share three lives between them.

Sadly, the 3DS iteration has no online access; instead, it’s limited to local player only (it’s still the same content, so no worries about anything being cut) with other 3DS systems or playing with a Wii U close by. If you do own a Wii U, then you can download an application off the eShop to make the Wii U an access point for the 3DS to go play online, but if you already have the Wii U version, then there is no point in doing that. It’s a real shame Nintendo hasn’t employed the concept of cross-buy, something Sony is doing, where you get a PlayStation 3 and Vita version of a game for one price. Even if Nintendo isn’t willing to sacrifice the profits for it, at least offer some discount to allow fans to get both versions together for cheaper, because a game like Monster Hunter is ideal for the built-in save swapping feature.

Regarding the graphics, the Wii U version is crisp and clean, but it’s not a game that shows off the power of Nintendo’s entry into high-definition. The textures are low detailed in sections and the environments aren’t exactly what I would call populated, but it’s atill the best the franchise has ever looked, so I can’t put much blame on them for porting the Japanese 3DS release to the Wii U. Running on the 3DS, the game turns out rather well and the use of 3D is good. It makes a sense of depth between you and the monster seem more apparent. The game does suffer from bad aliasing, which I assume is to keep the frame rate up, and I don’t know what they were doing with the game’s apparently smudged font. Turning on the 3D seems to make the text clearer, but it’s a strange thing to have in the game, and if no one noticed that during testing, then I have to question his eyesight.

Regardless, Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate is the best entry in the franchise. It’s content is packed enough for fans to return to, while for newcomers, it’s like a best of series, containing most of the monsters and gear from past entries and sandwiching them all into one lovely package. I can see why Capcom is changing gameplay in the upcoming Monster Hunter 4, because here is the perfect representation of what Capcom was trying to achieve with the franchise. While we wait for an announcement to see if Monster Hunter 4 does arrive for us, let’s just take the time to play Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate and be happy that we have the best game in the series to play, no matter if you’re on handheld or – especially – Nintendo’s Wii U, as for me this is the best game on that system to date.

9/10

With the announcement of Terraria coming to the EU PSN store on May 15th, it seems like the perfect opportunity to give away the game. Our own writer, Nathan, had very positive things to say about the console port;

Terraria is nearly perfect for what it is and unlike any other game you’ve played in a very long time. If you’re a fan of replayable, explorable and challenging games, you need to try Terraria. Most importantly, the game is incredibly fun, and that’s something I can dig.

DarkZero has teamed up with 505 Games to offer one lucky reader the chance to jump into the world of Terraria.

To enter, all you need to do is follow @darkzerouk on Twitter and send a tweet to @darkzerouk saying that you want to win Terraria. The competition closes on the 12th of May 2013, so make sure you get your tweets in before then.  The competition is limited to European participants only.

Enjoy the trailer below, and good luck.

Terraria is an excellent experience both single and multi-player and will keep you captivated for literally 100s of hours. It’s a game about exploration, discovery and fast-paced action and now it’s finally coming to us via the PSN. I, personally, was a huge fan of the PC version and racked up an unseemly number of playtime hours, still never even defeating the final boss. I’ll definitely be picking this up on release day and starting my quest again with all new console-exclusive items, weapons, enemies and boss battles.

November 21st on Xbox 360, PS4, PS3, Wii U, and PC. Ready your hacking devices.

There is an official post on the game’s development blog explaining the contents of this upcoming period.

• This is an exclusive ‘early access’ type of Beta; we’ll be using keys again and we plan to open it up as soon as possible. Newsletter subscriber? We’ll send you a key, guaranteed.
• Relax Collaborators, you will have your guaranteed spot, and a head start.
• This will be a continuous full-time Beta, except for some inevitable maintenance and patching down-time.
• This is a ramp-up to the Open Beta. Depending on issues and feedback, this could end pretty quickly after May 10th. (Though not within a week, you silly goose!)
• A character wipe is not planned; if there is something REALLY problematic that pops up we might have to, but we will try to avoid this at all costs.
• We’re going to start off with 3 classes (Gunner, Arcanist, Warden) and 4 races (Heartlanders, Stoigmari, Avens and Ostenians) and build up to the 4th class (Channeler) and the 7 other races throughout the early access Beta.

People who have tested the game already will be invited automatically for the early access. However, if you have yet to participate and want to see what City of Steam is all about (tip – it is not about Gabe Newell’s home town) register and join the newsletter to receive an early access beta key.

For anyone new to Sanctum, the premise is to protect a power core helplessly placed in your home base from the waves of strange alien creatures who have their eyes set on smashing your luminous, blue energy orb to smithereens. Sanctum 2 is split into two phases. The first is the build phase, in which you are given downtime to place blockades on the ground to hinder the progress of aliens. You cannot completely block the pathways, but you can control where enemies will go, and this is where clever players will manipulate the pathway of the enemy to increase the time it needs to reach the power core. On top of placing blocks, you can also spend credits to buy a variety of towers to place as additional defences. Everything is from the first-person perspective, which might not sound satisfying to do when planning defences, but the handling of deploying barricades and turrets is rather easy to grasp, thanks to the blueprint outline that shows where things will be placed.

Moving on to the wave phase is where you need to have your wits about you. Players need to keep their eyes on the mini-map to see which spawn point is sending out the most menacing enemies. These aliens cover all ranges of attacks, such as the small, fast critters that have a sole purpose of rushing to the core, while the huge, armoured behemoths require you to get behind them to deal damage. Let’s not forget the incredibly annoying flying healers that need to be targeted first to stop them from turning aliens into bullet sponges. There seems to be a large variety of enemies, so to fight them, you are given two weapons to use – a main weapon and a sub-weapon. Both come with infinite ammo, but when the clip runs dry, you are left with a cooldown while the gun reloads. A neat implementation is how the reloading works: Guns are reloaded even when they aren’t equipped, so you can quickly switch to your sub-weapon and keep firing. Normally, by the time you have emptied that gun’s clip, you are able to switch back to the original weapon and fire again. This mechanic offers a way for players to keep in on the action without having to deal with the dreaded reloading and getting caught off guard when the ammo is depleted, which is very handy in a game that sends plenty of enemies in your direction.

Most enemies have a flashing red point placed somewhere on their bodies. These should be the focus of your attacks, as blasting those deals critical damage. All the weapons allow the use of their sight, so you can aim down the barrel for better accuracy. Every gun also has an alternative fire mode, often using more bullets but in turn offering a more damaging attack. The assault rifle’s alt-fire is a grenade launcher, while the energy pistol sends out homing energy balls. The level design is made so that players can easily get around the walls by jumping over them, and bigger enemies can be shot at over the perimeters. Walls are also handy if you want to get away from enemies, as these guys aren’t afraid of attacking, and it can help to put space between yourself and them to let your health regenerate. Killing all the required enemies in a wave rewards with more building blocks and additional money – used to place more towers or upgrade existing defences. Towers range from fast, light machine-guns, to slower, more powerful lightning towers that spark enemies close to each other, to towers that don’t damage but snare the foe in a negative status effect. One thing I noticed in this beta build is that when playing cooperatively (supports up to four players), the rewards given at the end of a wave are not shared between the players, nor do players get their own drops. This means you need to communicate with each other as to who should pick up the money.

Skye Autumn makes her return, and now brings along her little sister Sweet. Skye seems to be the all-around girl, as she has good speed, fast weapons and the ability to double jump, while her sister is the opposite and specialises in explosions. The last two characters are the long-range specialist SiMo, whose rifle makes it easier to hit those glowing red weakpoints, and Haigen, an up-and-close combat master who comes with a shotgun and above-average HP. Along with having unique abilities, a character can alter their sub-weapon, towers and perks, with extra gear that unlocks when you reach specific experience levels on your profile. Perks are handy for situations where you are struggling. For example, if your power core keeps taking damage, equip the 12% regeneration per round. Want to do more damage? Equip the ability to do more critical shots. As a side-note: The developers are no doubt having fun coming up with ideas for perks, as I noticed one of the perks – called plumber boots – references a certain red mascot, and if equipped, it enables your character to deal 5000 points of damage if you jump on an enemy. I never came across any fire flower perks, though.

On release, the first Sanctum only included three maps, but Coffee Stain Studios have stated that 16 maps will be available for the sequel’s launch day. Maps take less time to participate in, as you are no longer surviving 20+ waves, but around 6-11 on average. Even when you are finished with these levels, there are modifiers called “feats of strength” that increase the difficulty but offer more experience points if you manage to complete a stage with them on. Modifiers can alter attributes to make aliens faster, do more damage, increase health, and one even delays a player’s respawn until the wave is over, rather than letting you come back after being dead for ten seconds. There is certainly much more content included in Sanctum 2 over its predecessor.

If there is one thing the studio seems to come off more confident in, it’s the graphics. The sequel still uses Unreal Engine 3, but if you compare the original title with this game, then you can clearly see a better progression in graphics and art. This is no modern-day, brown and orange-colour-schemed shooter; it’s full of vibrant colours that give off a sci-fi vibe with the presentation. Everything about it just seems more polished and I have no doubt this is from the knowledge learnt from creating the last game. Even the controller support is much improved, so for any of you that like couch gaming with a 360 controller will be happy to know that it works perfectly fine.

Sanctum 2 is on the right track to becoming a great follow-up. It fixes the shortcomings of the original by fleshing out the mechanics and systems to play a better game of tower defence meets first-person action. Fans should be excited for this new instalment, and for people who have never played Sanctum, then you might be in for a treat once it arrives for Summer 2013 on PC, with a console version releasing sometime after.

In this universe, Superman has been tricked by The Joker into thinking that the pregnant Lois Lane is actually Doomsday, one of Superman’s most powerful foes, so Superman goes to fight “him” and accidentally kills Lois Lane and his unborn son. Not only that, but Lois’ heartbeat was on a trigger, setting off a nuclear bomb in Metropolis, killing millions more. As you can imagine, this gets Superman pretty angry. He crashes in on Batman interrogating The Joker, snaps after The Joker provokes him, and kills him. This is where the single-player story mode starts at.

The fact that it has a story mode is one of the great things about the game. I love my fighting games, but I find that the vast majority don’t really have any sort of story mode – apart from maybe a quick prologue and then a very short ending sequence. Injustice: Gods Among Us borrows one of the things that made the latest Mortal Kombat game so good, and that’s a single-player experience that actually offers a decent story mode. After the initial intro of Superman going all trigger-happy on The Joker, you then go back to the ‘normal’ DC Universe that most people who read DC comics know about, which doesn’t have a psychotic Superman in it. Some of these heroes are then transported to the evil Superman’s universe to help stop him from ruling the planet. You play as predetermined characters in several chapters, and as the story unravels, you will need to team up with some unlikely allies and go up against enemies that would normally be your friends.

The story mode is very engaging and seems like it could easily be transported over to a comic book – which, if it did, I would definitely read. The only problem is that it’s quite short, able to be completed in around three hours. But then you also have several other modes that most fighting games also have included. The first is Battle Mode, which is your standard face-off against several random enemies before going against the boss character – which, in this case, is Superman. There are several other options as well, though, including battles that add player buffs in the fight, battles that make you poisoned and slowly lose health throughout the fight, and a survival mode where you keep the same health across each fight. These extras are fun additions for any player who likes a challenge – some are really tough.

The next mode is the Star Labs Challenge, which features 10 challenges for each character. These challenges range from just standard fights, fights where you get poisoned and then still have to win, and sometimes there will be obstacles you need to get past to complete the challenge. One of my favorite challenges was one of Catwoman’s where you have to take control of her cat, Isis, and get past obstacles without getting caught. The challenges are different enough that you will want to keep going back and doing them, as each award up to three stars when you complete a particular task. For instance, one challenge has you facing Solomon Grundy as Batman, and you have special zombie bombs you can use to cause extra damage. You get a star if you defeat Grundy without missing with a bomb, but you also get a star if you beat Grundy without using any bombs. So you will want to replay challenges to get them all. The last mode is your standard multiplayer mode – both online and offline – but you also get a King Of The Hill option, which can be very fun. There are also daily challenges through the online mode that you can complete to gain extra experience.

Anyone who’s played the most recent Mortal Kombat game will instantly recognize the controls, as Injustice: Gods Among Us takes many of the combat mechanics into this game as well. The basic controls are fairly easy to get to grips with, and you will quickly learn how to pull off a quick three-to-four-hit combo. It uses a basic, four-button control system, with Square being light attack, Triangle being medium, X being heavy, and Circle used for a character-specific attack. For example, Batman summons three floating batarangs he can shoot at his opponent for extended combos, whereas Superman gains an attack boost for several seconds, giving all his attacks a power boost. Every character also has their own special attacks, and by using all these different moves, you can start landing some really powerful combos.

When you fight, you also slowly build up a special meter you can use to power-up your special attacks by pressing R2, but what you really want to use it on is the super move. Every character has a unique super move that causes a massive amount of damage and looks just plain awesome – although some look like they would hurt a lot more than others. Batman zaps you with a quick charge rod, hits you a few times, throws a batarang at your face, and then runs you over with the Batmobile. Superman, on the other hand, punches you into orbit and then smashes you back down from space. I think it’s pretty obvious which one of these would actually hurt more.

Another thing Injustice: Gods Among Us does – which is something else not many fighting games do – is feature environments you can interact with. Every level has several different objects you can use against your opponent. These range from shooting lasers from flying guns and throwing a piano at someone. Different characters interact differently with certain objects, too. If you’re a gadget-type fighter like Batman, then you interact with a car by jumping on it and then jumping safely away from danger. If you were a power-type like Superman, however, then you interact with the car by picking it up and smashing it over your opponent’s head. The coolest interaction you can do is when you activate a transition. This can only be done on one side of the level (different depending on what level you are on) and is executed by holding Back and X, which does massive damage to your opponent and also shows them getting destroyed by different elements in a new part of the environment. On the rooftops of Gotham, your opponent can get knocked into a wall and then smashed by a wrecking ball, falling onto a railway line. A train will then come steaming in to run them over and knock them into a new part of the level. These little action sequences never get old and I’m always trying to knock my opponents into new areas.

One of the problems Injustice:Gods Among Us has is that unless you are a big DC fan, then there is going to be some characters you’re not going to have any idea who they are. The big guys like Superman, Batman, The Joker and Catwoman are all here, but then you have people like Killer Frost, Raven, Ares and Shazam. While this is a small problem, there are enough of the more popular characters to remedy this, and with the release of a few DC movies recently and the Justice League movie in the works), more and more of these characters will start becoming popular.

The game itself looks great, with each character looking like they’ve just been pulled out of the comic. The level design is also very impressive, especially when you interact with the different parts of the environment and stuff starts exploding in the background. In fact, sometimes there’s so much going on in the background that it looks like it might actually interact with the fight itself. As already mentioned, the super moves and the transition scenes create great little action sequences that not only look really cool, but also give you a quick breather so you can recuperate in the middle of a hectic fight.

Anyone who enjoyed Mortal Kombat 9 is going to enjoy this game, and fans of DC Comics will also like the great representation of heroes and villains. It is a shame that the fatalities that made Mortal Kombat so popular aren’t here, but I think that was one of the problems with Mortal Kombat VS DC Universe. You can’t really show Superman ripping off Batman’s head, so leaving half-arsed fatality attempts out of the game is probably a good thing.

8/10

Notice the 3rd image contains the GTA V log0 – apart from that sight, the only information we have is that “The guy in the suit of the last photo exits the totaled car while talking to the camera; as he makes his way out, the car explodes and he walks by the car under the trees while some other effects are set behind him.”

More information as we get it – we’ve reached out to Rockstar in hopes of learning more about how they plan to use this particular sequence.

While Square Enix certainly deserves the prize for their failure and ambitious do-over, Tecmo-Koei’s mishandling of Ninja Gaiden 3 should also be considered as a close runner-up. Recognizing the ire from fans, Tecmo attempted to re-package it as a Wii U launch title, Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge, adding in dozens of sorely-missed features such as multiple weapons and re-balanced difficulty, as well as a couple of exclusive missions starring Ayane. Obviously this did little to please PS3 and 360 owners who weren’t interested in investing in a new system, but as with most third party Nintendo “exclusives,” Razor’s Edge has now found its way back to those systems as well.

Before detailing the changes made to the game, let’s discuss the one thing that hasn’t changed – the story. At the behest of the Japanese Self Defense Force, modern-day ninja Ryu Hayabusa must travel to different parts of the world to eliminate a group of terrorists led by a mysterious cult of magic-using alchemists. After slaughtering an entire army of PMCs and their Anime-looking robot tank, Ryu encounters the masked cult leader known as the Regent of the Mask, who places a blood curse on Ryu’s right arm. Filled with murderous rage that seems no different from the murderous rage he was displaying earlier, Ryu most suppress the curse on his arm while unraveling the malicious intentions of the cult before their world-conquering plans are put into motion.

The previous two Ninja Gaiden games were hardly the pinnacle of videogame storytelling, but they still sufficed as goofy power fantasies that never got in the way of the gameplay. Ninja Gaiden 3 ignores both of these points with overly long exposition as well as taking itself far too seriously. Scenes that feature a super-powered ninja like Ryu holding top secret meetings inside a Japanese naval ship while also getting tongue-tied when a precocious little girl asks him to be his new daddy are just some of the dull moments that will have players reaching for the skip button. Likewise, the new villains are equally boring, consisting mostly of foul-mouthed terrorists all hailing from the same British country as well as a goofy masked man who would barely serve as an early level boss in the NES Ninja Gaiden titles, not to mention the unintentionally hilarious inaccuracies in his biblical metaphors.

As for the gameplay, much has been changed, removed, and improved upon since the original botched release. Enemies will no longer beg for their lives, instead constantly shouting obscenities at players as they have their various limbs removed. They also behave far more aggressively and will also attempt to dodge or block attacks, and will attempt to take you out with a devastating kamikaze attack once they’ve lost an arm or leg. The stiff controls and movement have also been adjusted back to the fluid feel of the previous NG games while also returning Ryu’s arsenal of weapons and Ninpo skills, as well as upgradable abilities and weapon power-ups by spending karma points. This upgrade tree can be accessed at any time during the game rather than waiting to access a checkpoint.

The inclusion of these features would, in theory, bring Ninja Gaiden 3 back to the quality of the first two games. Unfortunately, by attempting to fix some issues, Tecmo has added a whole host of new ones to get frustrated over. The most prevalent is the difficulty curve or, rather, the difficulty ten-car pileup. In an attempt to bring back the brutal challenge of the previous games that fans loved so much, NG3 has taken far too many steps to make players feel miserable instead of motivated. Chief among them is the removal of all healing items; whereas the previous game allowed you to stock up on herbs and other items to get you out of a pinch, NG3 only has two ways of restoring lost health – at the end of an enemy wave, or by using a Ninpo spell.

This may sound like a reasonable compromise that encourages players to improve their skills during battle, but this concept is hampered by the utterly punishing amount of foes tossed your way in each wave. Dozens of armed foes will bum rush players in groups, slashing and shooting in every direction with unrelenting force. Should you succeed in dispatching the group of foes blocking your path, you will be treated to another group of enemies looking to take a swing at you, followed by yet another group, and sometimes a mini-boss. None of the enemies are any tougher than the ones in previous NG games and all feature patterns that should be easy enough to observe, but the sheer number of baddies that the game relentlessly tosses at you becomes not only physically exhausting, but also boring. Players will too often be forced to truck on through for minutes at a time during these fights only to lose your last precious sliver of health at the very last foe, which means starting the battle all over again from the first enemy.

Also, it should be noted that Ryu is evidently made of paper this time around – one single hit can bring down a quarter of your health. Lose less than half and the game will display an annoying low health indicator in the form of a beating heart and a blood-red filter that takes up the entire screen. Get used to this effect, because it will plague your gaming experience for over 90% of the time. To compound matters, your base health also decreases after repeated attacks and will not recover fully until you have reached a save point. This does not reset after reloading a Game Over, either, so you can look forward to restarting incredibly long, incredibly damaging battles with even less health than before

If there is one silver lining to the torment of NG3’s difficulty, it’s the patented “Steel on Bone” mechanic. Essentially a devastating counter move, the mechanic involves dodging an enemy’s heavy attack (always indicated as a glowing red strike), then hitting the Y button to slice through their innards. This move will not only instantly kill the attacking opponent, but can be chained to carve through surrounding enemies as well. Being able to take out half a dozen foes in a matter of seconds does invoke a certain amount of bloody satisfaction, but it also creates the notion of having to wait for the opportune attack to initiate the counter. The concept of not constantly attacking enemies is one that should never be present in the lightning-fast-paced action of the NG series and is also hampered by the relentless standard attacks from surrounding foes. Even the room-clearing Ninpo spells take forever to accumulate energy and are now forced to be kept in reserve so that you can regain that crucial amount of health.

The other additions, including extra weapons and gore, feel like an extemporaneous band-aid that doesn’t quite cover the game’s problems. Enemies may be braver on the battlefield, but that doesn’t stop Ryu from splattering their entrails all over each area. Not a single enemy dies pleasantly, even when stealth-killed from behind. The same could be said of Ayane’s pointless inclusion, which also features an oil massage and towel disrobing. That said, at least her missions are the most reasonably balanced, likely because they were created separately from the original game. Ayane’s half-sister and DOA veteran Kasumi is also playable for the first time in the NG series, though nothing feels more disconnecting than the normally pacifistic kunoichi tear enemies apart with the same uncaring bloodlust as her anti-hero sibling.

Another example of clumsy pandering is the addition of extra weapons. While Ryu’s trademark staff, claws, and scythe all function as well as they did in the previous games, their inclusion in the game is done so without any meaningful context, and are simply provided to players out of thin air or when hitting save points. None of the weapons provide any tactical advantage whatsoever, and more often than not the default katana will provide more damage, especially on bosses. Classic enemies such as the Fiends are also copied and pasted into the game with no logical explanation of coherence, as are the placement of Golden Scarabs which require players to be near-sighted in order to miss any of them. Ultimately, rather than feeling like retooled additions, these features become unnecessary and fan-service, two elements that still don’t fix the main problems of the game.

Areas are wholly uninteresting with looping hallways, the occasional wall or platform to scale over, and (most infuriating of all) an overuse of wall-scaling, which requires constant alternating presses of the shoulder buttons while also including occasional hazards or enemies that must be evaded. This wall-climbing mechanic also plagues players during certain boss fights and is never once engaging. In fact, the game will have already shown you all of its tricks within the first hour; fight enemy waves, scale some walls, fight more enemies while frantically aiming the bow at foes shooting from a distance (at least they go down in one hit and with an auto-aim assist), swan dive from impossibly large heights only to break your fall with a nearby foe, die a million times, rinse and repeat.

Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge never had much of a chance of matching the quality of its predecessors, but it would have at least sufficed as a decent game. The unforgiving difficulty and poorly-planned gameplay restrictions only bring to light the still-present flaws of the original game rather than cover them up. Between this and the underperformed Vita port, the Ninja Gaiden series has become a mockery of its former self and now stands as the type of substandard game experiences its former creator Itagaki used to openly mock. Any goodwill left between Team Ninja’s 8-bit revival and its longtime fans is now crippled, and the deadly blow inflicted on this once-mighty action series might prove fatal.

4/10

Take a look:

Notice the wall transformation, reliance on hammer smashing, and the similar boss at the end of the first dungeon? Safe to say that this one looks like the legacy of A Link to the Past is being well taken care of.

More information as we get it.

This time the video covers making the game as authentic as possible by acquiring the film’s star cast to come in as voice actors, such as  Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg and Zoe Saldana, for the game. Having the stars fill their roles, along with using the sound effects from the films, has helped the developers, Digital Extremes, create a true Star Trek experience. Star Trek:  The Video Game will be available April 26 for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. 

Check the video out below and engage.

If you missed out the first two in the series, then you can check them out below as well.

Part 1: The Ultimate Co-op Experience.

Part 2: Reimagining the Gorn.