March 2, 2012

Video Awesomeness: Mass Effect 3 Edition

WARING! MINOR SPOILERS BEWARE!
Back In Novem­ber of 2007 for the Xbox 360 and the sum­mer of 2008 for the PCs Com­man­der Shep­ard and crew came into our lives to save all of human­i­ty from cer­tain death at the hands of  Saren Arterius a  rouge Specter and his Geth min­ions or so it would seem….

Devel­oped by Bioware and pub­lished by Microsoft this action RPG shoot­er has an amaz­ing sto­ry and game play ele­ments made great by Bioware’s ear­li­er mas­ter­piece: Star Wars: Knight of the Old Repub­lic. Mass Effect takes Com­man­der Shep­ard across the known uni­verse to try and stop Saren and the Geth from destroy­ing every intel­li­gent race in exis­tence! Check out this maz­ing trail­er that helped to launch the series:

In Jan­u­ary of 2010 Mass Effect 2 was released with refined game­play and the abil­i­ty to port your Shep­ard char­ac­ter from Mass Effect into Mass Effect 2 adding a new lev­el of con­ti­nu­ity to the sto­ry because the deci­sions made in M.E. 1 affect­ed the sto­ry of M.E. 2.

In Mass Effect 2 the Nor­mandy is on patrol on the out­skirts of the galaxy when it is attacked by an unknown ene­my and Com­man­der Shep­ard is “killed” and then res­ur­rect­ed by Cer­berus a human suprema­cist orga­ni­za­tion led by the Illu­sive Man. When Shep­ard is revived you are thrown back into a race to stop the “Col­lec­tors” from abduct­ing humans for rea­sons unknown! Check out the launch Trail­er for Mass Effect 2:

Now we come to mass Effect 3 with the release of the demo last week it looks like the Epic-ness of this final install­ment will over-shad­ow the first two games in this already impres­sive series! With the war being brought to Earth’s doorstep, Com­man­der Shep­ard is the only one who can stop the impend­ing doom of the entire human race.  Here’s the debut trail­er from last year. Note the release date is wrong because M.E. 3 was pushed back:

Now with this install­ment the Mass Effect series gets its first mul­ti­play­er co-op expe­ri­ence. Much like Gears of War’s Horde mode this Co-op expe­ri­ence in no joke the A.I. is insane­ly intel­li­gent with the abil­i­ty to flank and use tac­tics to destroy every mem­ber of your team but you have many options for sol­dier type and load outs includ­ing many of the races and abil­i­ties from the cam­paign. You can also earn cred­its for achiev­ing objec­tives while play­ing that can be used to pur­chase packs that have pow­er ups, weapons, spe­cial ammo, and new load out options to unlock. Here’s the mul­ti­play­er trail­er that gives us a small look:

Now If that didn’t get you psy­ched, then maybe a deep­er look into the sto­ry with this amaz­ing  full cin­e­mat­ic  trail­er that will tug your heart strings and give you the courage to fight for the Human race! Enjoy…

If you’re still on the ropes and need more con­vinc­ing that this will be game of the year this trail­er was just released:

I have to add this final trail­er sim­ply because all major games are mak­ing epic live action trail­ers to pro­mote their releas­es and Mass Effect is no dif­fer­ent. Now this is no Halo series live action trail­er but still epic in its own right. Check it out:

March 2, 2012

Gaming in Stereo: Double Dragon Friday

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We round out the week of look­ing back at some clas­sic games with one of my per­son­al favorites from my time in the arcades and in front of my NES. Dou­ble Drag­on may have had some recent trou­ble stay­ing on the XBLA but Still billed as an arcade favorite, and had mul­ti­ple releas­es and spin offs, this brawler still holds its own. There were some games in the ven­er­a­ble series I skipped, I did play 1–3 and Bat­tle­toads and Dou­ble Drag­ons. I also checked out the GBA remake and is one of my favorite games from the GBA era. Today’s track, Enter the Guru by Nin­ten­do Guru takes me back to the sum­mer days spent in Gig­gles, my local arcade. I can still smell the Piz­za Boy across from the arcade. Have a great week­end every­one.
 
http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR00963/
 

March 1, 2012

Rumor: COD: Black Ops 2 coming in Nov.

Activi­sion has con­sis­tent­ly been releas­ing COD titles every Nov since COD 3, why should this year be any dif­fer­ent. A list­ing on Ama­zon’s french site has post­ed a list­ing for COD: Black Ops 2 also a Span­ish game retail site has announced it and stat­ed that it will ship in Nov. Offi­cial­ly, for the US at least, no title or release date has been set for the next COD game, but if Activi­sion stays the course then you can bet we’ll see a new COD in Nov, might as well be Black Ops 2.
Per­son­al­ly I enjoyed Black Ops 2 and Im not dis­ap­point­ed to hear rumors about a sec­ond, grant­ed the COD series has begun to meld togeth­er and some updat­ed designs and tech for the game would be refresh­ing but COD pulls it off with fan­tas­tic sto­ry pro­gres­sion and cin­e­mat­ic detail. Its rare that a shoot­er pro­gress­es and inten­si­fies the way COD has been, lets hope if there is a Black Ops 2 on the hori­zon that it can bring the same inten­si­ty that MW has shown.

March 1, 2012

Assassins Creed III Box Art Revealed

After much spec­u­la­tion last night Ubisoft has final­ly giv­en us a glimpse at the cov­er art for this years Assas­sins Creed III, and in the process, answered some ques­tions. The game will be set dur­ing the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion, the main pro­tag­o­nist will be of Native Amer­i­can decent, and that’s about where the detail trail runs cold. While I am excit­ed for anoth­er Assas­sins Creed, I am still real­ly skep­tic about the set­ting. While there were large towns in the colonies around 1776, there just was noth­ing to the extent of pre­vi­ous AC games. While I was per­son­al­ly pulling for Vic­to­ri­an Lon­don, I do have faith in Ubisoft to deliv­er an excep­tion­al game. It will be inter­est­ing to see what else we learn about the title in the com­ing months and do expect a big to do out of Ubisoft at E3 this year. In the mean time enjoy the box art.

March 1, 2012

Gaming in Stereo: Pokémon Thursday

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We will con­tin­ue the trend of clas­sic tunes with this awe­some ver­sion of a Game Boy sta­ple. I was just start­ing high school when the orig­i­nal Blue and Red hit the NA shores and it instant­ly became a hit with my friends and fam­i­ly. I bought a Game Boy specif­i­cal­ly to play Poké­mon and have enjoyed the series to this day, I still play Poké­mon: Black on occa­sion. Today we cel­e­brate Poké­mon with The Mighty Mighty Poké­mon (~Open­ing~ Demo 2) by Lev­el 99 off the Poké­mon: The Miss­ing­no Tracks album. So rock out with some Poké­mon is this week ded­i­cat­ed to clas­sic gam­ing.

http://missingno.ocremix.org/

March 1, 2012

Nexuiz Released

Nexuiz is a first per­son shoot of the are­na vari­ety, some­thing pret­ty rare these days. I am proud to say that this game was devel­oped by none oth­er than Ill­fon­ic Stu­dios, a local to my city (Den­ver). The game was released last night at mid­night. Any­one who enjoyed the old are­na shoot­er games like Quake will love Nexuiz. Nexuiz is like Quake with a sense of humor, and some­thing real­ly cool called muta­tors. Muta­tors get called in dur­ing the game, and change the game play. Up to three muta­tors are active at a time and they all inter­act with each oth­er dif­fer­ent­ly. So on top of the extreme­ly fast paced game­play, you might become col­or­blind or your con­trols will be invert­ed. Talk about tricky!
Are­na shoot­ers bring me back to the good old days at LAN par­ties, scream­ing at peo­ple across the room at 3am about the last match. I’m not sure of Nexuiz will coax me back to a room filled with sweaty Moun­tain Dew filled boys, but it will at least get me at the edge of my seat yelling at the com­put­er screen again. I have actu­al­ly played Nexuiz already, I can’t talk much about that but I was real­ly impressed. The lev­els are just gor­geous, and can­not be com­pared to games like Halo. A lot of love was put into this game, and it real­ly shows.
Devel­op­er: Ill­fon­ic
Release: 2012
Genre: FPS
Plat­form: 360 cur­rent­ly. PC and PS3 release antic­i­pat­ed in the fol­low­ing months
Pub­lish­er: THQ
Web­site: http://www.nexuiz.com/

February 29, 2012

MW3 DLC coming March 20

The DLC is being released as a col­lec­tion of mul­ti-play­er maps and spec ops mis­sions and will be avail­able on March 20th for X360. That that play on PS3 and PC will have to wait until the DLC even­tu­al­ly makes it way down the pipeline to them, I would guess about a month. It will include the maps Lib­er­a­tion, Piaz­za, Over­watch, and Black Box, as well as Spe­cial Ops mis­sions Black Ice and Nego­tia­tor. This con­tent was actu­al­ly devel­oped by three dif­fer­ent devs, Infin­i­ty Ward, Raven Soft­ware and Sledge­ham­mer Games, this should make for an inter­est­ing mix of style and game play. Along with the com­ing DLC, con­tent will also be avail­able for COD: Elite sub­scribers on the March 13.

February 29, 2012

Gaming in Stereo: Classics Continued Wednesday

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Yes, yes I know; two Halo songs in one week, this is an out­rage! But I want­ed to take the rest of the week to ded­i­cate the arti­cle to clas­sic video game tunes, ones that every­one should know no mat­ter how “Hard­core” or “Casu­al” you are. Today’s is, I would say, the most mem­o­rable tune to come from the orig­i­nal Xbox. Halo Theme Mjol­nir Mix by Mar­tin o’Don­nell off of the Halo 2 Offi­cial Sound­track is as icon­ic as the mas­sive size of the Xbox and the “Duke” con­troller. So, sit back and enjoy the rock anthem that defined a con­sole and have a great Wednes­day.

http://www.bungiestore.com/Halo-2-Vol.-1/A/B00067RF6E.htm

February 29, 2012

Developer of LIMBO looking into multi platform development, including mobile

LIMBO, cre­at­ed by devel­op­er Play­dead, may be com­ing to a mobile device near you. The devel­op­er has stat­ed that it is inves­ti­gat­ing new plat­forms for which to branch out in devel­op­ment. Whether this means a LIMBO port, new games to come or both we dont know, seems sil­ly though that LIMBO would be left out, its a sim­ple game but was well received and gained pop­u­lar­i­ty fast so if the devel­op­er breaks into the mobile devel­op­ment are­na I would expect to see an Andoid and iOS ver­sion.
Should Play­dead get into more plat­form devel­op­ment I think we can expect to start see­ing some inter­est­ing things come down the pipeline. As small and sim­ple a game as LIMBO was its pro­duc­tion val­ues were high and it screamed qual­i­ty and tal­ent. To see more games with such unique­ness and build qual­i­ty would be noth­ing less than awe­some, and to effi­cient­ly do that I think they would have to branch out into mul­ti-plat­form devel­op­ment.

February 28, 2012

Gaming in Stereo: Classic Tuesday

 
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Today we are going to do things very sim­ple and lis­ten to a clas­sic. A sim­ple tune from every gamer’s his­to­ry and one that came in a superb pack­age. The Ground Theme (From Super Mario Broth­ers) is one game theme that you can even catch casu­al gamers hum­ming from time to time. This song is from my per­son­al copy of the Super Mario All-Stars Lim­it­ed Edi­tion that was released for the Wii in late 2010. It was a good ded­i­ca­tion to cel­e­brate the 25^th anniver­sary of the Mario fran­chise. Enjoy clas­sic Tues­day!
 
 
http://www.amazon.com/Super-Mario-All-Stars-Limited-Nintendo-Wii/dp/B0049DYNNO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330409211&sr=8–1