Bodycount Review

There was a time when arcade games were one of the most successful genres on consoles. Epitomised by the likes of Daytona USA for the SEGA Saturn and Time Crisis for the original PlayStation, the arcade cabinet to table-top console port effortlessly drew hard-earned cash from wilful gamers' pockets all over again as they set out to discover just how close their home system could get to the industry-leading visuals of a cabinet machine. Limited content and the lack of a half-decent story were of little concern in those days – it was all about recreating the buzz of an arcade emporium in the comfort of your own home with the aid of a much flimsier light gun or racing wheel and minus the compulsive injection of 20 pence pieces. It's hardly shocking, then, that in an era where arcade cabinets near extinction in the UK (they cling on in the seedy backwaters of motorway service stations and seaside piers) and console games like Call of Duty pack tens of hours-worth of blockbusting content onto a single disc, the arcade gaming experience is struggling to compete.

Activision would have you believe that the reason Bizarre Creations' Blur (a game we gave 9/10) was so commercially unsuccessful is because gamers aren't interested in arcade racing games anymore, while classic arcade shooter series like Time Crisis (3 & 4 were released on PS3) have been critically ripped apart this generation. Perhaps the best example of an arcade shooter in recent times was Bizarre Creations' The Club, which met a lukewarm reception from critics in 2008 (again, despite a high score from TVG). You see, we love arcade games here at TVG and we love a good arcade-style combo system, which is exactly the kind of experience Codemasters' Bodycount is aiming for. The whole game is based around a combo multiplier that builds in number as you headshot and frag enemies. With little room for a notable storyline or punctuating set-pieces, this score multiplier effectively becomes the centrepiece to Bodycount's gameplay.

Contrary to our initial impressions during the last preview, it's not the lineage of Bodycount's destructible environments from Criterion's 2006 shooter, Black that form the game's primary focus. Sure, blowing up an explosive canister will take out a few foes nearby, and arcking a grenade into the top floor of a wooden guard tower can bring it to a satisfyingly splintered heap, but it's not the propellant of Bodycount; it's more a supporting member of the cast. Drop a trio of mines at the feet of some enemies on patrol, however, and watch as one gets stepped on and detonated, combusting all nearby fuel cans into a x5 multiplier flurry of kills, and you begin to get a picture of where the appeal ultimately lies. Again, as we pointed out during a recent hands-on, the destruction is actually very formulaic and abundantly predictable, which is arguably as it's supposed to be in an arcade shooter of this type – Battlefield: Bad Company 2, however, it is not.

But while there is an

 

obvious tiering of destructability to the levels – with their red oil drums, fuel cans, and gas canisters – which is semi-excusable in all its arcade trashiness, that doesn't make basic oversights like shoddy AI and lazy level design acceptable just because it's an arcade game. And we're not talking about dull, jack-in-the-box AI that's shoddy just because it's so one dimensional; we're talking about schizophrenic AI that fails to make any consistent sense throughout the entirety of the game. Enemies will land grenades on a 50 pence piece right next to you on every throw, and whole platoons will know your precise location at all times (no matter how much cover you hide behind), constantly showering you with bullets leaving little room for respite. And yet, at other times, they'll fail to notice you standing a few metres in front of them, or they'll get stuck in a feedback loop as they attempt to negotiate a wall by repeatedly walking into it.

But if the AI is glitchy, then the level design is just downright cheap. Most levels resemble a mediocre multiplayer map more than they do a precisely orchestrated single-player layout, while the objectives are as colourful and stimulating as sawdust. Many of the 18 levels are so small, in fact, that the developers often resort to making you retrace your steps and activate a beacon or some such in the same general area that you blew up a command console five minutes earlier. The recycling of assets leads to repetitive colour schemes and environments, and Codies even has the cheek to reuse the same maps on multiple levels. We certainly felt a bit ripped off by all of this by the end of the game – even though the single-player campaign may take towards 10 hours to beat, the actual content on show seems to be more fitting of around half that game time.

Perhaps the score multiplier could appease our frustrations over all of these shortcomings though; perhaps it could resurrect a poor example of a dying genre. Regrettably not. It isn't as if there's anything overtly offensive about the score multiplier, or that it's broken in any way; it's just that it doesn't quite fit together particularly well. It's a bit like Orlando Bloom really: he seems like a nice enough guy and we don't have anything against him, but he just doesn't play the role of a hero convincingly – you get the feeling that he just wants to pop down the street and buy some organic pesto from the deli. Similarly, Bodycount's multiplier should be about freneticism and chained kills but it just hasn't been balanced enough to achieve this. There's no time limit on the multiplier, which encourages an overly methodical approach, and this is then made worse by the fact that any regular gun kill breaks the chain. So, rather than risk an attempt at a headshot, you'll end up darting around the levels dropping copious grenades and mines (which are dispatched plentifully from downed enemies) to keep the multiplier up. At times you'll end up using explosives more than guns, which comes across a bit backward to be honest – the resulting gameplay just doesn't quite ring true. When you compare Bodycount's system to the variation, scope, and balance of Bulletstorm's 'Skillshots', for example, it really does pale in comaprison.

We haven't been able to sample Bodycount's multiplayer on the review code provided, but the details are fairly straight forward: competitive multiplayer comes with deathma

tch and team deatchmatch modes for up to 12 players, while a co-op mode that has you fighting off waves of enemies across an enclosed map in the now standard Horde/co-op Zombies style helps to bolster long-term appeal. A further Bodycount Mode, which grades your scoring performance in each single-player level and sets it against ranked leaderboards, adds a touch of replayability. All in all though, none of this helps to save Bodycount from being one of the poorer FPS titles so far this year. It's not the worst – that achievement goes to Duke Nukem Forever so far – but it's uncomfortably close nonetheless.

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Darksiders II - Interview Feature

If some of Darksiders' gameplay elements felt a little... familiar... at least it can't be denied that it had a visual style all of its own. Joe Madureira (of Marvel Comics fame) crafted a distinctive look for his Zelda/God of War hybrid and it paid off, with the first game in the series shifting over 1.3 million units. With a sequel looming on the horizon, TVG sat down with Daniel Isaac McGuffey, Creative Manager for THQ, to find out more about parallel time-lines, Death, and the Apocalypse.

 

Let's talk about the setting of the game. Why have you chosen to set it at the same time as the first one?

We want people to understand that the Darksiders world is much larger than what they saw in Darksiders I, which all happened on Earth. There's a complete alternate dimension - which we showed a little of today - in the Abyssal Planes, and we want to really explore that, and also set up what's to follow with the four horsemen. We do want to get them all in eventually, but we feel it's really important to showcase each of them one at a time, and show you what makes that character special, show you their motivation, show you their tool-set, how this character moves; traverses; interacts with the world, so the best chance to introduce Death was within that time-frame because of his motivation at the moment, which is to redeem his brother. We didn't want to completely remove War from the story either and just make it completely Death focused because we know people found War endearing and we want to connect the two together, so that's part of the reason why we're doing it in a simultaneous time-frame.

So will you be revisiting some of the events of the first game from another perspective, and meeting up with War as you go through?

Without divulging too much, yeah, there will be some crossover, and you will get a little more insight into what happened in Darksiders I via Darksiders II.

In terms of the new mechanics, what sort of new puzzles can we expect?

We do want to bring back some of the items you had in the first game. You saw the Ghost Hook, which functions a lot like the Abyssal Chain only it has some of Death's sort of signature traversal added to it, so he can get more mileage out of it and use it in different ways. However, he can also use it like War could, so you can use it in combat, pulling enemies towards you, or pulling yourself towards enemies. We wanted to refine the gear experience, so while there were six pieces of gear and a bunch of passive abilities you could get in Darksiders I, this time what I will say is, there will be only three gear items but they will change, evolve and level-up so that they will gain abilities as you go along. We want to keep players from having to go back and forth between menus equipping items; we want you to have the full tool-set available to you at all times once they're all made available to you, and be able to switch between them very fluidly without having to equip and unequip items. So while initially it seems like there will be fewer, they're much more nuanced and robust than what you were able to play with in Darksiders I.

So what are those three gear items? Are we talking equipment or weapons?

Well some of them will function as both, so they will all have a primary function but some of them will have a combat function as well. You saw the Ghost Hook, I don't think we're talking about one of the other ones yet, but there will be a return of the Portal Gun, so the Void Walker will be returning, but it's going to have a lot of different functionality that we didn't see in Darksiders I - it's definitely getting an upgrade.

How extensive will the customisable loot and armour be?

It's super extensive. War had the Trimmer Gauntlet, and Death's Scythe - essentially two different secondary weapons. We want to give the player a chance to get into combat in exactly the way that they feel comfortable with. So if they want to use really light weapons where they can get into combat and do a lot of damage up close, then we want to offer them those; if they want to do really heavy damage with much slower weapons, we want to offer them those. So we have multiple classes of weapons: we have axes, maces, we have melee weapons - which resemble gloves that have claws on them - we have hammers, different pole-arms, broadswords, and those will all have different effects on them. You can expect to see a really vast selection of weapons that will even get different benefits based on the armour that you equip. So there will be sets that you can find - you can find sets of armour that have weapons that correspond and vice-versa.

So will you be able to carry all those through into the multiplayer?

Into multiplayer? We're not talking about multiplayer at the moment.

But there's going to be multiplayer?

I don't think we're quite talking about what we're doing yet with the connected elements.

Can you talk about co-op at all?

We do have a few different things planned, but right now it's just not something we're talking about.

So you've mentioned that there will be other characters, other than Death, in the game - we've got War - is there going to be Fury as well, is that right?

Fury and Strife are the other two horsemen, and we're not talking about what their significance is in the game yet.

See I always thoug

ht it was Famine and Pestilence...

Part of Joe Madureira's involvement is that he has a remarkably different take on things. If I were to tell somebody to draw a tree and Joe to draw a tree, what he does is not going to look anything like what anybody else would do, and that's what he brings to the game. He's going to make Death and War look different to what anybody else would've imagined, and likewise, these guys - Joe and some of the other guys at Vigil - didn't think that Pestilence and Famine sounded like cool characters to play as, so Strife and Fury just fit more into the universe.

So obviously the game's going to be on Wii U as well - can you talk at all about the unique features that that version's going to have?

The team's still designing those. Because the hardware's so early and the team's only had a very limited time to work with the hardware, we're still determining what the most beneficial things to provide for the Wii U user-base will be, but it certainly will have most likely different interface capabilities than all of the other SKUs will have.

There's been talk about possibly releasing a comic book and a movie based on the series. Is there any more news on that?

There most certainly will be a comic book, and as we get closer and closer to the launch of Darksiders II you'll be hearing more and more about that. At THQ - I don't know if you know Danny Bilson, or THQ's mantra... it's one of trans-media - supporting games with products that make sense. Whether that be a movie or a comic book, we want to pursue those options as long as Dan... you know, obviously Darksiders is a game of incredible mind-share and quality; the art, the universe, is something the team works very hard on. So, if a movie makes sense, and upholds the vision of Darksiders, and makes sense in the grand scheme of things we'll do it. If it were just a play for publicity or revenue, it's not something that interests us. We're going to do it when it makes sense to do a Darksiders movie, but yeah, if those elements come together then you can expect to see one.

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Darksiders II Preview

Darksiders II is a sequel in space rather than time. You play as Death rather than War, at the same time, in a different place. And who wouldn't like to be Death for a while? Reaping and pillaging is why we play games after all. To sate our repressed barbarous desires; to smash open an other and smear his blood across our naked chest. To have cool scythes.

Death approaches a huge bell atop a barren, craggy outcrop. He takes a moment to admire his jet black locks in the sheen of his scythe before arcing round to slice the bell into two juddering halves. An enormous floating fortress of rock and dread descends into view, as a pair of monstrous skeletal wyrms unfurl ahead of it.

War is a bit slow and lumbering anyway. A bit of a tank; good for soaking up blasts and crushing civilians, but not exactly nimble; not like Death. One minute you might be queuing up for bacon croutons in Lidl, the next - fatal heart attack. That's stealth. And if you were Death (are you?), you'd also be a bit miffed if your brother (War) got banged up on false pretences for a crime that wasn't really his (ending the world early). You might even set out on a quest to clear his name. In fact you will (did/are), in Darksiders II.

Summoning his undead steed, Death leaps down upon the serpent's rocky back, and charges toward the fortress.

Death is considerably more agile than his brother, scurrying up and along walls to reach far off ledges, and swinging across chasms with his whip-like Ghost Hook. In combat, Death fades and counters; he can't block - he doesn't need to - and relies instead on sneaky evasive manoeuvres to outwit his opponents.

Comparisons to God of War (combat) and Zelda (puzzles) were made with the first game, and they will certainly be made with the second. Despite its unique visual style (courtesy of X-Men comic artist, Joe Madureira), Darksiders is a series which perhaps borrows more than it innovates. Vigil are certainly making a much bigger game this time around however, with each of the four realms in the sequel containing as much dungeon content as the whole of Darksiders I. A central town (such as the fortress Death is currently charging towards) acts as a hub in each realm, populated with a range of NPCs offering side-quests and the promise of rare loot.

Bursting into the throne room, Death demands an audience with The Lord of Bones.

"My lord is busy tending his realm," cackles his skeletal aide.

"You must bring back the head of his champion to earn his counsel."

"I shall embark upon... the fetch quest," sighs a dejected Death, before trudging to the Champion's Arena and glaring at a statue with a few missing horns.

"O  frabjous day! a fetch quest within a fetch quest. Guess I'd better go get those missing horns to summon this bloke, that's how it normally goes after all. Ho hum. Off to this conveniently placed dungeon over here I suppose."

 

The dungeon we we

re shown featured a few simple puzzles (e.g. rotate laser emitting statue to hit receptor across room) and a fair amount of good old-fashioned scrapping. Death wields his dual scythes with aplomb, occasionally fusing them into a single weapon when ending a combo to deal more damage. Brief flashes of his full 'Reaper' form occur during combat, and a range of magical 'Wrath' abilities allow Death to cause damage from a distance, like summoning a flock of eyeball-pecking crows. In addition to his scythes, Death will have access to a huge range of weapons throughout the adventure - including axes, spears, broadswords, and gloves with spiky bits on. Loot pick-ups (with the exception of quest items) are randomised, with foes dropping various unique stat-boosting pieces of armour. Darksiders II will also feature a full skill tree, allowing you to customise Death to your preferred play-style as you level-up. It won't be possible to max-out the skill tree in every direction, so you'll need to tailor your armour-bonuses, skills, and weapons to create a synergistic combination - choosing defense boosting armour and skills if you favour a slower hammer weapon for example.

As the final horn slotted into place, the arena floor began to tremble. A trail snaked its way through the dust towards the reaper. But it was no match for Death. He tore the skull-worm out of the ground before it could strike, felling it with a single sweep of his scythe.

In addition to the array of weapons and armour available, Death will gain access to three pieces of equipment during the adventure. Although the first game had six such items, each piece of gear in Darksiders II is said to have multiple functions and a far wider range of uses. Death's Ghost Hook allows him to latch onto high points and swing through the air, but also functions as a hook-shot, reeling in enemies or pulling him rapidly towards gargantuan foes. The Void Walker, which generates portals, will also be making a return, albeit with significantly revamped functionality.

The silence was all too brief. Before Death stood the champion, a mighty Golem formed of rock and bone. The beast roared with rage and, ripping out its own head and spine, lashed out - obliterating the gallows Death had been standing on moments ago. Death answered with a flail of his own, latching onto the beast's detached cranium with his Ghost Hook, and sent the Golem crashing into the ground.

Vigil is remaining extremely tight-lipped about any potential multiplayer modes, but have hinted that Death might cross paths with the other Horsemen of the Apocalypse on his travels. Although the ending to Darksiders I suggested the possibility of co-op in a sequel, comments from the developers seem to suggest that this might be something they're saving for a later title in the series - and given that Darksiders II runs parallel to the first game, its ending isn't all that relevant anyway. There's still much work to be done at this early stage - adding the promised in-town npcs, and building many of the side-quests and bosses - but the distinctive Marvel-esque aesthetic is already confidently established,

with chunky, colourful character models striding through the game's intricately sculpted, monumental environments. Hopefully Vigil will be able to come up with some distinctive gameplay to compliment Darksiders' distinctive visuals by the time it ships.

"So I'll just finish off this fetch quest then shall I..?"

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Dead Island - Hands On Preview

 

It was never going to be representative of the teaser trailer, was it? Anybody who really thought the video short (which premiered across the web in February and subsequently won its creators, Axis Animation, a Cannes Lions Award) was going to resemble Techland's actual game code should have had their head examined. Simon Pegg may have liked the teaser, it may have been the top trending topic on Twitter for a day, and game commentators predictably made a fuss about the film's infanticide imagery, but ultimately it was just an impressive CGI short that did what it was supposed to do: drum-up interest in the game. Dead Island, the game, is about a zombie infestation across a luxury holiday resort in the tropics and here is where its similarity to the teaser trailer ends.

Sitting down to actually go hands-on with the game, it feels like many of Techland's previous projects: it's very rough around the edges and the gameplay mechanics are a little, well, odd. For a start, whoever came up with the idea of basing such a huge portion of Dead Island's combat around melee weapons is either mildly crazy or a borderline genius (perhaps both). First-person games that rely on melee combat aren't usually attempted by developers and there's a very good reason why: it's usually rubbish. Melee is great as a supporting act (Master Chief's rifle butt, for example) but not as the star player simply because the perspective doesn't lend itself to slog-fests and close quarter engagements. First-person means that it's more difficult to check what's coming up behind you, while melee combat can't easily be varied into combos and it's also more difficult to judge the reach of an axe or hammer when you're swiping it haphazardly in front of your eyes (third-person, it would seem, is better at aiding depth perception).

And yet somehow, much like with Techland's last title, Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, the game still manages to be enjoyable despite this lack of refinement. It's the minor touches, such as the ability to combine various weapons and objects to form new instruments of zombie slaughter, which make the combat interesting. A sticky bomb and a knife, when combined together, make a knife that explodes once it's been stuck in a zombie (particularly useful when thrown), while razors and a baseball bat combine to form, well, you get the point. The sheer range of the melee weapons is equally impressive: knuckle dusters, morning stars, meat cleavers, machetes, and axes to name but a few of the many, and they're all upgradeable to new levels of zombie dicing strength when you've accrued some money to spend.

Regular refurbishment of each weapon adds an element of survival to the mix. Unless you spend a bit of dosh fixing that mace before you go out on a mission, it's liable to cease functioning once you've crushed the skulls of a handful of zombies with it. And then there's the option for ranged combat with these melee weapons too: once a horde of zombies becomes too much to handle, you'll often resort to throwing everything you've got at them until the last thing you've got left is a med-pack, which you'll probably lob at them for good measure anyway. The lock-on system works well for this and Techland has made sure that there's a price to pay for lobbing weapons at zombies by removing the item from your inventory once you've done so. The only way to get it back is to return to the zombie corpse you've impaled and dislodge it from the bloody torso, which ensures that you can only use the throwing option sparingly if you want to

have any hope of survival.

That's not to say that guns don't play a role in the game at all. One playable character from the range of four specialises in ranged weapons and firearms, for example, and we did find the odd AK-47 dotted around the game world during our hands on session. It sort of makes sense, I suppose: how many assault rifles would you find on a luxury holiday resort anyway? On the other hand, presumably maces wouldn't be that commonplace either but that's hardly the point. The tendency towards melee combat, at least in three of the four character classes, does distance Dead Island from the likes of Left 4 Dead. It gives the zombie gaming genre a fresh feel, which is something that Techland has always done quite well in the FPS genre with Call of Juarez despite the many deficiencies elsewhere. And the open world setting, one of Dead Island's key selling points, also makes for an original experience.

Yes, there are problems with that open world: running through the procedurally generated packs of zombies without confrontation is pretty straightforward. Many of the necromancers will follow you for quite some distance despite your best attempts to lose them, but then again a lot of them seem fairly unperturbed by your presence as you sprint through the shady alleyways between each villa. During a straightforward FedEx quest, like the one we did during our hands-on, this 'run away!' tactic is perhaps a little more successful than it should be, but then it's a balanced alternate tactic to some extent as well. Techland has implemented a stamina bar so that you can only run so far and are more liable to damage from attacks when the bar is drained, so there are disadvantages to the flight rather than fight approach. Additionally, if you use the tactic too excessively then eventually you'll be left with more zombies on your tail than you know what to do with. All in all, the game seems to work out a solution to these problems fairly solidly and isn't unbalanced even if it is a little wobbly. One thing we did notice is that a lot of the game environment we played through was cordoned off by concrete walls with Biohazard signs, so it'll be interesting to see just how 'open' the island of Banoi is in practice. Nonetheless, the game world we played in offered plenty of opportunities for exploration through missions and side-quests that were approachable in the usual non-linear fashion.

Those varied classes that we mentioned earlier do help to add elements of strategy and variation too, as do the range of zombies. Xian Mei plays the assassin class and can be used to sneak past zombies without them noticing, which is perfect for flanking while characters like Logan (the all-rounder) and Sam B (the tank) bulldoze through an onslaught of the undead. Meanwhile, the aforementioned firearms specialist, Purna can use ranged attacks to lighten the load. From zombies on fire to zombies emitting noxious gases, and charging zombie mini-bosses restrained by straightjackets, the variation in enemies then manages to put the various playable character classes to good use.

Technically speaking, Techland is getting a lot of the core elements right with Dead Island: there's an original premise with gameplay that's both well varied and balanced (just about), so if the Polish studio can focus on shoring up some of the game's production values and overall sheen, then it could even have mini-blockbuster potential when it launches in September.

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Deus Ex: Human Revolution - DLC Screens & Details News

 

Following the official announcement last weekend, Square Enix Europe has now served up a couple of extra story details on Deus Ex: Human Revolution's 'The Missing Link' DLC while dropping the first batch of screens for the content (shown at the bottom of this article).

The details are a little spoilerific, so if you're yet to finish the game's story then avert your eyes now... 'The Missing Link' takes place towards the end of the main plot, where Adam Jensen goes 'radio silent' with Sarif Industries and boards a freighter ship.

During the main campaign, gamers are shown a cut-scene where Jensen climbs into a stasis chamber of sorts and then the next scene you see shows him exiting the ship three days later and entering a complex where the ship docks.

'The Missing Link' tells the story of what happened on that freighter ship, where Jensen is tortured by Belltower agents and robbed of his augmentations. As a result, gamers effectively have to build a new set of augmentations from scratch. New story elements, characters, and environments are promised – the DLC is scheduled to arrive some time next month.

"We are very excited for Deus Ex: Human Revolution fans to be able to further develop Adam’s journey in the game with The Missing Link DLC," said David Anfossi, Producer of Deus Ex: Human Revolution at Eidos-Montreal. "Gamers will be able to experience a vulnerable side of Adam like never before, which gives the overall game a whole new dimension. The Missing Link propels players into compelling gameplay, beginning with Adam being temporarily stripped of his use of augmentations, new, visually stunning environments and the continuation of Deus Ex: Human Revolution's conspiracy rich story.”

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Driver San Francisco - Final Look Preview

 

Some games are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. If Driver: San Francisco is going to aspire to any of these categories, it'll be the middle one. The title certainly won't be born great, such is the disappointment of former instalments in the series - for the same reason, it seems unlikely that anybody is going to be thrusting greatness upon it. This leaves achieving greatness as Ubisoft Reflections (formerly Reflections Interactive) strives to reinstate the Driver name after a series of poor design choices in the three major instalments following its 1998 debut. And as far as we can see having sat down for a sizeable hands-on with Driver San Francisco's multiplayer and opening single-player act, Ubi Reflections has been working very hard to produce a game of formidable polish.

Take, for example, how far the code has come since we first saw it this time last year. At the centre of the gameplay is a 'shift' dynamic that allows you to teleport freely between any car in the game's open world (we'll explain why later). In our first hands-on with the multiplayer this time last year, the bird's eye view of the city that you used for shifting was featureless and colourless. Buildings and roads were uniformly grey, almost as if the game was in a proof-of-concept stage at the very start of development. In the current build though, this bird's eye view is fully rendered with all the textures and colours that you'd see from the default driver's perspective. The developers were taking on a hefty task with the innovative 'shift' dynamic - smoothly rendering a full open-world with no noticeable drops in frame-rate or pop-up is a daunting prospect at the best of times - so it's great to see that they've been refining and optimising the process so successfully over the last twelve months.

For those of you who haven't been keeping up with the development of DSF though, here's a quick recap: it's billed as a return to the classic gameplay of the original Driver, where the focus was squarely on driving - gone are the GTA-style on-foot sections and gunplay of subsequent sequels. The hook, though, is this 'shift' dynamic. Ubisoft Reflections makes sense of it by placing Tanner, who returns as protagonist, in a coma after a coming together with his long-time adversary, Jericho. Within that coma, Tanner learns that he can shift into any car across the city of San Francisco and embody the driver at that vehicle's wheel. Across the game's main story, Tanner uses this ability (unawares he's in a coma) to infiltrate Jericho's gang and embody his various henchman as they complete jobs for their ringleader. With these details alone, DSF is already the most story-focused pure driving experience in any game of recent times, but it's the variation that Ubisoft Reflections appears to be managing through all of this that's particularly striking.

 

During a couple of hours with t

 

he single-player, we experienced everything from car chases (as both cop and criminal) to illegal point-to-point street races, one mission where we embodied a journalist trying to capture footage of reckless driving, and another where we had to rescue a kidnapped woman in the boot of a car (the key was to take out the kidnapper's car with oncoming collisions by shifting to cars just in front of him). The gameplay hook of shifting really has allowed Ubi Reflections a wide range of tools to flesh out a discernible plot and the studio clearly hasn't shied away from the challenge. Each vehicle you shift into with either a side or story mission attached to it has discernible characters on-board with plentiful lines of dialogue and even minor back-stories to flesh out. There's the driving instructor who bullies the confidence out of his teenage student until Tanner embodies the young boy and scares the living daylights out of the instructor with some crazy driving antics, or the street racer who's trying to win some cash to send his younger brother to college. The scope and breadth of what's going on here is as fresh and invigorating as it is technically impressive.

Of course, no Driver game comes without its focus on American muscle car-style handling, and what better location to frame that than the series' original setting, San Francisco, where Steve McQueen's antics in a Ford Mustang have made the film Bullitt so enduring over the decades. True to the game's heritage, handling is weighty through the corners with a focus on handbrake turns and rung-out drifts. The steep hills of San Francisco make for plenty of ludicrously airborne moments as you chase down the game's various objectives, all of which is then latched onto a Burnout-style currency system. Driving into oncoming traffic, time spent jumping, and drifting all add to the amount of money available for buying new cars and parts, while 'boost' and 'ram' gameplay perks that emerge as the game goes on do manage to keep the driving experience fresh.

From what we've seen of the multiplayer, shifting lends itself as well to the gameplay here as it does in the story missions. Two modes were on offer during our hands-on, one of which was a variant of tag and the other your basic cops and robbers experience. In the tag mode, one player has a trophy and all other players have to steal it off them - the person who holds the trophy longest wins. Shifting has obvious advantages here as you scurry to shift into a vehicle as close as possible to the trophy holder and take them by surprise. The cops and robbers mode, on the other hand, pits numerous cop players against a single robber and, once again, using shifts strategically as a group of cops will soon have the target car pinned into a corner. Ubisoft Reflections has promised 19 multiplayer modes in total (11 online,

the rest split-screen) which is a pretty tantalising prospect, although it'll be interesting to see how many of these turn out to be variants on a theme.

As the arcade driving game genre misfires on current-gen consoles, it's refreshing to have Driver San Francisco come in and fill that void with all kinds of refreshing ideas across its gameplay and storyline. There are genuinely shades of Burnout's previous-gen brilliance here.

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Dual-Thumbpad Add-On For 3DS Spotted [UPDATE] News

True to rumours that emerged around a couple of weeks ago, Nintendo has a new attachment in the offing for its 3DS that will add a second analogue thumbpad to the handheld's existing design.

The news comes from leaked scans of Japanese gaming mag Famitsu (thanks, Kotaku), which clearly show how the add-on attaches itself as a cradle to Nintendo's current 3DS model. As well as a second thumpad, the attachment will also introduce a trigger button to the right shoulder of the 3DS control suite.

Andriasang broke the news originally, reporting that the first game to utilise this underslung peripheral will be Monster Hunter 3G (a 3DS version of the Wii's Monster Hunter 3).

Nintendo's stock rose last month when investors learnt of a pre-TGS announcement that's set to take place on September 13th, so presumably that's when the company plans to drop all of this news.

More as we get it but, in the meantime, check out this neat list on Kotaku of the attachments that Nintendo's released for its various consoles over the years.

Update: Nintendo has now officially confirmed the 3DS attachment, telling Kotaku, "We can confirm that Nintendo plans to release the Circle Pad attachment, but Nintendo's regional subsidiaries will make further announcements about its availability at a later date."

You can bet good money that this "later date" will be next Tuesday, September 13th...

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EA Announces Syndicate Reboot News

Project RedLime has finally gone public: EA's deal with Chronicles of Riddick developer, Starbreeze Studios, that was set to reboot a classic EA franchise has culminated in the official announcement of Syndicate for an early 2012 launch on Xbox 360, PS3, and PC.

Positioned as a reinvention of the mid-90s strategy game from Peter Molyneux's Bullfrog studio, this 21st century reboot will swap the isometric perspective of the original for the ubiquitously popular first-person shooter genre.

Syndicate tells the story of Miles Kilo, a prototype agent for mega-corporation Eurocorp. The game's 2069 setting depicts a dystopian corporatocracy where other companies such as Cayman Global and Ascari vie for control of the American marketplace alongside Eurocorp.

There's a whiff of Deus Ex about all this, as EA explains that everything in Synidcate's world is digitally connected (people included). It seems guns and frag grenades aren't the limits of players' weapons either, as DART 6 bio-chip technology will apparently open up bullet-time powers and upgradeable hacking capabilities (referred to in the press release as “chip breach gameplay”).

Precisely where EA and Starbreeze is going with Syndicate remains purposefully vague at this stage, although this wouldn't be the first classic, isometric strategy game to be re-imagined as an FPS in recent times – 2K Games' XCOM reboot is also due for release early next year.

“We are excited to finally reveal what we’ve been working on the past couple years,” says Mikael Nermark, CEO of Starbreeze Studios. "It's been a great experience working with EA, and an amazing opportunity for us to use our expertise in the first person shooter and action genres to bring back, and reignite, the signature action/espionage gameplay of Syndicate.”

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El Shaddai - Hands On Preview

There are a few things the Japanese love in their games; stylish but lanky heroes, brilliantly white school girl panties, and one long and near incomprehensible story line. These are things you should unashamedly come to expect when you pool together a dream team of Japanese talent, write a check and leave them to create the type of game they’ve always wanted to make. And yes, it’s absolutely mental.

But we’re not talking Bayonetta levels of insanity here, and forget the knickers; El Shaddai is something completely different. It could be interpreted as a strange journey into a Japanese developers’ psyche or – and most likely - a middle finger to the now domineering Western games market. No hulky space marines, guns and brown with bloom to be seen here. It’s a mix of psychedelic platforming and third-person action with a storyline you’ll need to take notes on.
As we mentioned, the Japanese love a confusing story and it's one hell of a tale to tell. Inspired by the Book of Enoch, the plot sees seven angels sent to earth to live with humans. The angels end up falling in love with humanity and, rather than taking a passive role and watching over them as God had intended, they end up introducing angelic technology into humanity.

The humans end up worshipping the angels, rather than God, and end up creating a new species called Nephilim, who for some reason look like walking custard monsters. God’s not a fan of the Nephilim and asks Enoch, God’s scribe, to remove both the Nephilim and the angels who had failed him.

Eventually, as Enoch, you’ll end up in the Tower of Babel on Earth. The tower was built by humans in celebration of the angels and El Shaddai takes place on the many levels of the tower. It’s all very unclear at the beginning, and it almost tries its best to confuse you further when you lose the first fight. Instead of a gamer over, it rewinds right back to the start where an altered version of the opening begins to play. On top of that, it offers alternative endings depending on how you play. While it doesn’t immediately penalise you for dying, allowing you to jump straight back into the action, certain deaths can affect the eventual ending and whether it’s good or bad depends on your overall skill during the whole game rather than specific choices.

El Shaddai offers an environment that constantly changes perspectives and play styles. One minute you’ll be rushing forward and tackling the occasional battle, the next you’ll face challenging jumps in a cutesy side-scrolling platformer or even end up driving a motorbike in a nostalgic homage to Final Fantasy VII’s escape sequence in Midgar. These changes offer a good range of what the engine can do but the overall simplicity of the sections we played felt a little underwhelming. It’s perhaps a case of too much variety in a short amount of time, something we’re hoping the main course should rectify.  

Stripped completely bare of any HUD, El Shaddai is a game you can play or watch with equal measures of enjoyment. It’s another entry for the games as art debate and one that takes its art very seriously. So much so, that the development lead is non

e other than artist Sawaki Takeyasu, famed for his work on Okami and Devil May Cry. It’s the first time he’s ever had control over a games story or gameplay mechanics but one we should be paying attention to.

Perhaps having an artist so involved in the game as a whole might explain the overall simplicity El Shaddai radiates. Unlike Devil May Cry, which offers a decent array of weaponry to play with, El Shaddai has only three. The weapons offer more than rock-paper-scissors styled advantages in battles but also affect platforming abilities. The Arch, a sacrosanct blade used to slice foes up also allows Enoch to glide after jumps. The Gale, a ranged weapon that also grants the ability to dash, and lastly, the Veil, which acts as both a shield and close proximity damage dealer. These weapons are gained during battles where you’re forced to steal and purify them from the many enemies you meet in the game or by picking them up in certain sections of each level. Weapons can dull and you’ll have to purify the weapon should it become infected from repeated use.

While each weapon offers a specific tactic to winning fights, they are also instrumental in passing some of the more difficult side-scrolling platform sections that require the special abilities each weapon offers. There were points during our demo that were impossible to progress through with the weapon we had equipped. Luckily there is usually an essential weapon drop near these sections but we can imagine that won’t always be the case.

Battles are reminiscent of Prince of Persia, where you have a small area to circle around as enemies approach you, as well as the handy instant revive option should you lose a fight. As expected, you can jump, dodge and attack but most of the time you’ll mash the buttons until something awesome happens. While no specific combos are displayed in menus, you can time your button pressing right and perform combos. It’s a system of self-discovery rather than trying to teach you an array of moves over the over, but one that could often leave a deeper understanding of combat to the comfortable repetition of a few basic moves.

It’s the visual style that sets El Shaddai apart from the rest though. Changing from soft cell-shaded 3D environments, harsh dark futuristic highways to 2D cartoon-like side scrollers, the art constantly evolves during your journey. In-engine and hand drawn cut-scenes mash together, and unlike the cut-scenes of Mirror’s Edge, which felt removed from the world, El Shaddai’s mix of traditional and modern art styles blend seamlessly.

It not only offers sheer joy for your visual taste buds but also offers a new dynamic to platforming. Perspectives can be mixed and what appears to be a hole is in fact a platform. We died twice during the demo by falling off what appeared to be a straight bridge but was in fact a long

hole on the road - it makes basic platforming feel fresh and exciting.

This is exactly what El Shaddai appears to be, a fresh injection of platforming goodness and a creative tour de force that set it apart from the ubiquitous gun battles and space marines of contemporary Western titles. El Shaddai is already out in Japan with a European release set for this September.

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F1 2011 - Hands On Preview

 

This year's Formula 1 season has been a paradox so far; it's been as unpredictable as it's been predictable. On the one hand there have been more overtaking manoeuvres in the sport than we've seen for decades, a comeback from last place to first in 30 laps (Jenson Button in Canada), and tyres that perish more quickly than fairy dust in a vat of sulphuric acid. On the other hand, one driver has won six of the first nine races and pretty much secured the Driver's Championship already, barring a monumental reversal of fortunes. That driver's name is Sebastian Vettel.

Exhibiting the same kind of skill for 'race management' that his countryman, Michael Schumacher mastered during his heyday, Vettel has effectively made the lead for races uncharacteristically dull given all the madness going on behind him. And it's the FIA's implementation of new regulations such as the Drag Reduction System (DRS), re-introduction of the Kinectic Energy Recovery System (KERS), and Pirelli's infamously precarious tyre compounds that have created this madness, long may it continue. Given the impressive attention to detail in Codemasters Birmingham's attempt at the sport last year, it'll come as no big surprise to hear that DRS, KERS, and the Pirelli tyres have all been lovingly recreated in F1 2011. Readers who paid attention at E3 this year will probably know this already, and are also probably aware of the other headlining new features on Codemasters' crib-sheet:

A new Co-op Championship mode.Split-screen multiplayer.16 player online multiplayer and full 24-car grids with AI drivers making up the difference.

The marketing focus is clearly on multiplayer this year. It's all part of the 'Go Compete' tagline that Codies has added to last year's 'Be The Driver, Live The Life' mantra. But this is all just swanky new bodywork really - the kind of stuff that you can put on the back of a game's box to sell it but will not necessarily result in core gameplay improvements from one year to the next. For that you've got to get a good look at what's going on under the hood - has the handling improved? What's the driver AI like now? Have they been significantly reworked from last year and, more importantly, does this result in sizeable improvements to the experience?

These questions were foremost in our mind as we sat down to an extensive hands-on session just prior to last weekend's British Grand Prix. Rigs with full steering wheel and peddle arrays glazed the demo hall, as did one of Team Lotus' F1 cars from last year - Lewis Hamilton's brother, Nicolas (an accomplished racing gamer himself and competitor in this year's Renault Clio Cup, which supports the British Touring Car Championship) was also present at the event. We went toe-to-toe with LAN multiplayer, split-screen, and single-player experiences and can say whole-heartedly that F1 2011 is exhibiting the kind of steps forward over a one-year dev cycle that you'd expect from EA's gigantic FIFA team.

Driver AI is the first thing

 

 

that struck us. It's noticeably quicker through corners, more aggressive with overtaking opportunities, and more likely to take a defensive driving line into corners when you're right on its tail. The AI was already impressive last year but, as we outlined in our review, it still suffered from some age-old racing game shortcomings (particularly the problem of getting bogged down in single-file through slow hairpins, allowing you to leapfrog multiple positions). These problems have now been consistently ironed out and effectively relegated to the sidelines. It's abundantly clear that Codies Birmingham has been working particularly hard on the AI's corner quickness, and this is the real difference maker.

It'll add so much to the career mode that the dev team introduced last year, where the goal in your first season was merely to finish in the points rather than win races. Now, with a recognisable concertina effect between you and your opponents as you enter and exit corners, the game has really nailed the sensation of painstakingly chasing down the car in front of you. It's this kind of thing that makes a fight for 10th place in a slower car just as exciting as going for the win in a McLaren, so it looks very much like the core improvements to AI will have a recognisable trickle-down effect through the modes this year.

Handling has also had a lot of attention lavished on it. Despite some gamers' detractions from last year's handling system, in our opinion it was still a solid representation of the sport. In F1 2011, it's once again a system that subscribes to the Codemasters code of being as widely playable as it is realistic, but there's also a more natural feel to it this year. Senior Producer, Paul Jeal has been quick to point out how there's more tangible understeer and oversteer this year and we're inclined to agree. The balance of the car through corners is more noticeable so the rear-end won't violently snap away from you with minimal warning quite so much. We also noticed a lot more understeer into corners, particularly in low-speed turns with an adverse camber where the car is likely to lose a lot of its front-end downforce. Hopefully Codemasters can now take advantage of this in the mechanics of car setups so that there's more inclination to fiddle around in the garage this year.

But the improvements don't end here. Producers, Paul Jeal and Stephen Hood showed some comparative trackside shots of F1 2010 and 2011 at the press event, and there were significant differences. Looking down on Spa Francorchamps' Eau Rouge corner from the top of the hill, screenshots of F1 2010 showed a relatively bare hillside with a uniform grass texture. In F1 2011, on the other hand, the same shot revealed all kinds of flora. If we knew anything about botany then we'd be reporting back to you with tales of azaleas and hyacinths - as it is, we're just going to say there were lots of pretty flowers and shrubs. And the split-screen multiplayer that we mentioned earlier was silky smooth in our play-test, while also managing to retain an impressive amount of graphical detail from a full-screen, single-player view.

It's all representative of a game that really is coming along in leaps and bounds over 12 months of development time. Codemasters' budget can hardly be comparable to the sort of money EA spends on improving FIFA year-over-year, but the kind of leaps forward in design and content are comparable between each series. If you loved last year's F1 game, this will be one to buy again this year. If you didn't play F1 2010, then you're in for a sumptuous treat when F1 2011 releases this September 23rd.

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