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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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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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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FIFA 12 - Career Mode Preview

It's fair to say that we were a little underwhelmed by the Career mode in FIFA 11. EA's new feature combined the previously separate Manager and Be-A-Pro modes from FIFA 10, but effectively lost a lot of the details and nuances of each mode in the translation. In-depth stats from the Manager mode fell by the wayside, as did international call-ups from the Be-A-Pro mode; Backroom Staff were ripped out, as was the Player Form feature that debuted in FIFA 10. FIFA 11's career mode appeared to make two modes half as good, and then combine them together into a single offering. Not only did you feel like there was less content on offer, but that content felt shallower and less football-savvy too (who actually starts their career as an inexperienced, 18 year-old player manager of Man Utd anyway?).

At the very least though, EA Canada won't simply be re-boxing the same Career mode from FIFA 11 with all the relevant updates this year. There's clearly been a concerted effort to turn the mode into something resembling a more cohesive managerial experience this time around. "With the second year of Career mode, what we really wanted to get to was a more authentic way of being a manager in particular," FIFA's Producer, David Rutter told us. "It's been really focused on the manager experience this year, to try and experience some of the things that happen to real managers in the real-world based around real-world situations."

After a short stint of hands-on time with the mode, there's certainly some substance behind these claims. One significant addition comes in the form of Youth Scouts, which first have to be hired from a pool of hopefuls and can then be set to the task of recruiting decent young players for your side. "Send a scout away and they'll come back with some recommendations but they're vague," explains Rutter. "Send them again and they'll come back with a greater sense of accuracy but, the more times you do that, the more chance there is of another club stepping in and taking them."

Player Interactions are another step forward this year, where members of your team will express their disappointment at not getting enough games, a lack of achievement at the club, or a wage dispute. This all forms part of a new Player Morale system, although you'll receive similar interactions from players who've received injuries as well. During our play-through, a slightly dismayed Raul Meireles informed us that he'd received a knock during a previous game but hoped to be fit for the next match. It was little more than a text box that popped-up in the menu screen, but it's a neat little addition nonetheless so long as it doesn't get arduously repetitive.

Another area that's been highlighted for improvement is the transfer system. In addition to a new transfer deadline day that offers multiple advances in one day (allowing multiple rounds of negotiations to take place) rather than the previous system that treated deadline day like any other, EA has also promised a more believable system for transfer/contract negotiations with other players/clubs. "They're sometimes high-balling, sometimes low-balling. Sometimes they'll high-ball then low-ball; sometimes they'll low-ball then high-ball to try and interact with you in a slightly unpredictable but realistic way," said Rutter.

Our experience with this side of the mode was limited once again, but even the examples it did throw up were a little dubious. Teams such as Inter Milan, Chelsea, and Olympic Marseille all offered bids for Jamie Carragher, two of which showed examples of low-balling with Chelsea offering £3.5 million and Inter Milan offering £5.5 million against a £6.5 million valuation for the player. The new system does appear to throw up more realistic negotiations then, but the question you've really got to ask yourself is why two of Europe's biggest sides would be interested in spending big money on a 33 year-old central defender whose best years are long behind him.

The caveat at this point, of course, is that the build demoed to us by EA was a work in progress and not representative of the final game - many improvements are left to be made. But it's worth remembering that these kinds of shortcomings frequently sold FIFA 11's Career mode short and broke any sense of suspended disbelief that the game successfully built up elsewhere. One of our gripes with FIFA 11's mode was how CPU teams tended to loan out their experienced first-team regulars, and these sorts of shortcomings were still painfully apparent during our hands-on. When we booted up a game as a player manager in the FIFA 12 build, our board of directors suggested that we loan out a young hopeful for more match experience when that young hopeful just happened to be our Virtual Pro. Unfortunately there was no option to respond to their suggestion with the remark, 'Are you drunk or stupid?'.

Regardless of all of these additions for FIFA 12 though, perhaps our main concern is that so much of what made the previous Manager and Be-A-Pro modes so good still won't be coming to the Career mode in FIFA 12. "I know that international management in particular is one of the biggest questions that we get asked - it's not in this year," Rutter confirmed. "Ultimately it boils down to simple prioritisation issues - bang for buck, what do we think

 

matters most? Sometimes we put things in that benefit the game in a way that isn't immediately obvious to people; they might not see what the cool stuff was."

"Last year it was the underlying competition engine. Most people don't care about that kind of stuff but for us it was a really big accomplishment and we didn't make a big song and dance about it because we knew nobody would be interested in the technology that we're using to pump the tournaments round..." Rutter said.

"...In the meantime people are saying, 'Where is this? Where is that? I wanted my this, I wanted my that,' and everyone has every right to want exactly what they want, it's just sometimes we can't do it and we can't do it because it's not quite at the top of the priority list, or it's just that the amount of time and effort that would go into doing it would take away something far more important. Some people missed some things, some people loved over stuff. Ultimately we're trying to just make the best game we can."

We have no doubt that EA Canada is making the best game it can, or that this year's Career mode will be better than last year's. For us, it's looking like it still won't offer the depth that the previous Be-A-Pro and Manager modes had separately in FIFA 10, but at the very least it's building towards a more immersive managerial experience. The folks at Sports Interactive don't have anything to worry about quite yet though.

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GoldenEye 007: Reloaded Preview

Eurocom's Goldeneye 007 really stood out (for a Wii shooter). It had a solid single-player campaign (for a Wii shooter), compelling multiplayer action (for a Wii shooter), and top-drawer graphics (for a Wii shooter). Crucially, there was a sense that Eurocom had genuine respect for the N64 classic: they understood the importance of stealth in the single player level design, and knew that four-player split-screen was a multiplayer must-have. Naturally, it was never going to eclipse the lustre of its Rareware forbear, but (for a Wii Shooter) it was very good indeed.

It even fared far better (critically at least), than Activision's other high profile Bond game, Blood Stone. In fact, the failure of Blood Stone, and relative success of Goldeneye 007, proved if nothing else that releasing a Bond game without a strong license tie-in is a risky proposition, particularly if the gameplay isn't exceptionally solid.

And so we come to Goldeneye 007: Reloaded, a PS360 remake of Eurocom's 'Wii-imagining' of the N64 classic, remastered in 60fps HD. But can a game that was 'good for a Wii shooter' possibly hope to survive in the brutally competitive HD FPS market? And with Blood Stone apparently crashing the Bond market last year, does anyone even really want to play as 007 anymore, anyway?

Eurocom's entire single-player campaign has survived the port intact and without alteration - to the extent that, despite assurances from the team that all assets have been rebuilt for the HD remake ("from the ground up"), it's hard to initially discern much disparity with the Wii version. This is likely more a testament to the confident cinematic direction of the Wii original than an indication of any critical deficiency in the new HD textures and geometry, however. Camera sweeps and level layouts have been faithfully preserved, and the port seems to capture the essence of Eurocom's work - this is, after all, a remake rather than another 're-imagining'. A cursory play-through of the snowy Severnaya level reveals that the visceral melee take-downs of the Wii original are still intact, with the choice of carnage or subtle stealth largely left to player preference (on lower difficulty levels at least).

Nods to the N64 original abound; the camera still pans round into Bond's head at the start of each level, the sniper rifle is still in that first tower of the Dam section, and 007 even rolls off a few asides which reference dialogue from the original game and movie.

"Just like old times," he whispers to 006 as the pair silently subdue a pair of guards at the start of the Dam map (a line originally from the end of Facility in the N64 original - but we won't nitpick when a developer is tapping on the fourth wall).

It's not just like old times, of course. Pierce Brosnan is replaced by Daniel Craig, and Eurocom's Goldeneye has entirely new, Wii-made levels - with Bond writer Bruce Feirstein updating the story to focus on the banking crisis rather than Cold War fallout. Feirstein wasn't the only Bond talent to be drawn to the game; 007 composer Dave Arnold and Craig stunt double Ben Cooke were drafted in to supply music and motion-capture footage as well (for Goldeneye: Reloaded, Eurocom has apparently summoned Cooke back to their on-site motion-capture facility to record additional animations specifically for the port). Naturally Eurocom's gameplay reflects the advances in FPS mechanics that have occurred over the last decade, with grenade indicators, instant-kill melee attacks, regenerating health, and even the ability to aim and move concurrently all making it through to the port.

New to Goldeneye 007: Reloaded are a set of single-player challenges based on reworked sections of the campaign and multiplayer maps (with a few entirely new ones thrown in too). There are ten challenges in total, ranging from Assault and Elimination missions to more exotic Stealth and Wave Defense maps (which charge you with sneaking undetected through a level, or defending an array of computer terminals from waves of AI opponents). An editor is also planned to facilitate custom mission creation, with players selecting from a range of maps, victory conditions and A.I. to set their own challenges. Activision claims that these modes will add an additional 10 hours of play to the single-player experience.

But single-player action is only one half of any successful Goldeneye game. The port team are completely rebuilding the multiplayer portion of Reloaded to accommodate 16-player online matches (up from the Wii version's 8), with re-jigged maps, additional characters and a brand new selection of 'spy-based modes'.

"We just wanted to do some things that are not straight up deathmatch or team deathmatch," Activision Producer, James Steer, told us.

"We're using the fact that we are a 007 game to try and do some things that are maybe slightly different to what you might expect of a first-person shooter." Exactly what those things are is currently a mystery, but the prospect of spy-based multiplayer Bondage is an intriguing one. 4-player offline split-screen has been confirmed, and survives the transition to the HD consoles.

With only a few months until Reloaded's autumn release window, it's clear that substantial polishing remains to be done. Load times, draw-in and the occasional incongruous animation still need addressing, and the stick response on the Xbox 360 build we played felt curiously sluggish. However, such anomalies aren't unusual for pre-Alpha code, and the team are confident that all issues will be resolved in time for launch. No word yet on whether Reloaded will support motion controls ("stay tuned", hinted Steer), but given that the Wii version was built around the option it's not entirely inconceivable.

With upscaled visuals, revamped multiplayer, and improved online support, Goldeneye 007: Reloaded could prove to be the definitive version of Eurocom's likeable Bond FPS. The game will be up against stiff competition in the latter half of the year, and it remains to be seen whether the promised 'spy-based' multiplayer modes and new single-player challenges will prove to be substantive additions to the core offering. Nevertheless, if Activision invest enough in the remake, it might just turn out to be the second best Bond game of all time - not bad for a Wii shooter.

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Heroes of Ruin - Hands-on Preview

“All the character of a corned beef sandwich, with none of the taste.”

“More interesting than an accountancy lecture. Barely.”

And these are some of the nicer comments I've had about my writing. People just don't seem to appreciate generic twaddle. It's as though basic competency isn't enough, as though people expect something original or interesting as well. Something moving or beautiful. Something approaching art. Of course, it's hard to produce art when your subject matter is so consistently unoriginal, when publishers insist that 'design by marketing committee'

 

is a reasonable substitute for artistic vision. It's not surprising that the bearded and obtuse dismiss games as a serious medium when so many titles are so clean-cut and obvious.

Heroes of Ruin seems clean-cut and obvious, at least superficially. The result of a “merging of ideas” between Square-Enix and developer n-Space, you can't help but suspect it's been dreamt up to scratch a marketing itch rather than a creative one. The art style was designed to have “a broad range of appeal” and largely determined by “focus groups” according to Squeenix producer George Wright, and despite being a multiplayer hack-n-slash dungeon-crawler with randomly generated levels and loot, the official line is that it's an Action-Adventure, rather than an Action-RPG.

“I think we’ve got a lot more mainstream appeal than just another RPG would or just another action game would have.” n-Space Producer Tim Schwalk has previously bragged (thanks, Siliconera).

“If I had a copy of this, and I really wanted to play with magic, I could choose an appropriate character. But my buddy who always plays Call of Duty and Madden, he can jump in as a Gunslinger. He’s got bombs and guns, and he’s going to ‘get it,’ you know?”     

You might not expect a great deal from the story of such a game. Let's see:

“War raged for over a hundred years until strong, powerful Lords emerged from the fighting to bring a fragile peace to the land. This peace is threatened when one of the Lords, Ataraxis, ruler of the city of Nexus, is taken ill by a deadly curse. A call is sent out, promising rewards beyond measure for anyone who finds a cure.” (From the game's official website.)

Still, once you scratch the surface, there are a few interesting (if not strictly original) ideas running through Heroes of Ruin. Additional players can drop-in and out at any time; you can choose to let strangers jump in at random, Demon's Souls-style, or simply limit the privilege to selected friends. The difficulty rebalances at each checkpoint to reflect the average level of your current team, and enemies gain new abilities as the difficulty increases, rather than simply getting stronger. Loners can elect to play solo if they prefer (which presumably, they would), but risk losing certain multiplayer-related bonuses. The game's randomised loot is also handled intelligently; walking over dropped armour displays its stats compared with your current equipment, and a simple tap of the d-pad can either equip it or sell it off straight away. Take that, fiddly RPG menus. Cleverly, all the loot you've sold is transmitted via Streetpass so that anyone can potentially buy your old +10 Pants of Destruction.

Playing as the 'Vindicator' (a paladdin-archetype) reveals a competent if familiar battle system: sword combos can be strung together with a magic-draining (but powerful) dash attack, R blocks, and a quick tap sends you rolling away from danger. Enemies in the demo didn't display any ground-breaking attack patterns or AI, but they're serviceable cannon-fodder, and the Tibur (Shark-men) stand-out against some other fairly drab fantasy staples. Four character classes will be available in the final game, including a mage-like Alchitect, a  melee-focused Savage, and a Gunslinger that attacks from afar with bullets and bombs. According to Community Manager Kevin Eva, each character has “their own reasons” for embarking on the quest, some of which, he hinted, might not be entirely above board.

We encountered two mini-bosses during our brief play-through: a skeletal pirate captain with the power to make players (literally) run away in fear, and a conch-wielding Tibur that summoned two horrifying sea mutants, all dark and mangled with extraneous, pincer-like limbs. The final boss, an amiable-looking pink leviathan, could only be summoned once certain key items had been wrenched from the cold, dead hands (fins?) of the mini-bosses – a sensible fail-safe given the randomly-generated layout of the levels. After hacking at his tentacles for a bit, and dodging some hot, salty spume, our pink friend soon came to a sticky end, marking the end of the demo.

Heroes of Ruin still has several months of development time left. Many of the place-holder NPCs are yet to have their dialogue implemented, and various improvements await the interface and AI (that Tibur mini-boss just glitched nervously from side to side as we hacked him to death). The team is certainly exploiting all 3DS connectivity features to the full, and plans for downloadable daily challenges promise to extend the game's appeal post-release. Although we didn't experience anything particularly original or compelling during our play-through, there's no doubt that n-Space has implemented a number of zeitgeisty features, and the current dearth of original 3DS titles means they're potentially well-placed to find some fans for the game. Nevertheless, questions remain about the originality of the setting, mechanics and design choices on display, and it's unclear whether Heroes of Ruin will prove inventive enough to be of real interest to fans of the genre.

There's a sense that, despite the clever connectivity options, n-Space might be playing it a little too safe with the rest of the design; there's little evidence of nuance in the combat, and developer comments suggest that puzzles will be perfunctory at best. Balancing such a dynamic difficulty system is going to prove a real challenge, and currently the only real penalty for dying is an annoying trek back to your team-mates caused by some inconsistent check-pointing. Hopefully n-Space will implement some mechanism for players to manually tweak the difficulty, as it seems unlikely that any purely automated system could offer a consistently tense and challenging experience given the varied team-configurations that can arise.

n-Space may still have time to address these issues if they're willing to take some creative gambles (Bastion, as a recent example, managed to integrate difficulty choices within a compelling risk/reward framework extremely successfully) but unfortunately, it's precisely a lack of creative-risk taking that currently poses the biggest threat to the project. By playing it safe, n-Space may be missing an opportunity here, and if there's one thing worse than failure, it's mediocrity.

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Bodycount Preview

On the Xbox Live Arcade this week, EA and Criterion's 2006 title, Black has been reduced in price to 800 Microsoft Points. No doubt it's a price promotion by EA that's been strategically timed to hitch a ride with Codemasters' ramping-up of publicity for Bodycount, which is currently as ramped-up as it gets with the game preparing for launch at the start of next month. Both games share much of the same DNA, not only through a number of developers on Codemasters' Guildford-based team but in the game's overall design as well. Once again, the focus is on guns and destruction; on using destructible environments as a vehicle for gameplay. It was a highly innovative approach to FPS design in 2006 and, actually, it remains relatively underused in current-gen shooters today.

Some games have utilised destructible cover and limited environmental destruction in recent years, but mostly as an added peripheral feature rather than a gameplay 'pillar'. Where titles have gone balls-out with the destruction (Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Red Faction: Guerilla), they've come across more as showy tech-demos than refined examples of game design. It's fair to say that DICE is one studio that's really nailed destructible environments with its Battlefield games and the proprietary Frostbite tech powering them, although we're struggling to think of another developer with such a skilled hand in this area. Perhaps, then, Bodycount bolts from its shaky foundations almost as refreshingly as Black did over five years ago. The space for innovation in this area remains and the market is just as primed to accept it.

But there are some added teeth in the jaws of Bodycount's gameplay – it is, in many ways, Black Mark II. A system of scored combos and power-ups places it firmly into Bulletstorm's territory, leaving us to wonder whether it's a coincidence that all of these game titles start with the letter B (our instinct tells us no). Much like People Can Fly's refreshing shooter, Bodycount rewards you for killing people in ever more creative ways: end somebody with a headshot and you'll get a x1 multiplier; melee kill them from behind, or shoot them with your dying breath/the final bullet in your magazine, on the other hand, and you'll ratchet-up that multiplier even further. Although not quite as wide-ranging as the Bulletstorm equivalent 'Skillshots', these varieties of kill do at least encourage you to experiment a bit. It all correlates to a Bodycount score that's tallied up at the end of each level, leaving you with a graded score from A-E that takes additional factors into account, such as how many of the destructible or explosive set-pieces you took advantage of.

Different types of kills also effect the amount of 'Intel' that spews from the bodies of enemies as you dispatch them. Blue Intel comes from regular kills, yellow from 'skill-kills', and red from chained kills. This Intel is effectively the game's currency – think of it like XP. As you progress in the campaign and collect more Intel, you'll open up the option to use various support actions which start with a timed period of invincibility and move up the tiers through explosive ammo, radar augmentations and, at the top-end of the scale, an airstrike. Roughly comparable to Call of Duty's perks, these abilities were consistent throughout the three levels of single-player and the Horde-style co-op mode we sampled. Although not quite as cathartic and rewarding as their CoD counterparts, they do at least offer an incentive to play the game as intended, with as much fiery destruction and explosive gumption as possible. But it's perhaps this destructible element of the game that underwhelmed us the most in what was, admittedly, a more broad than comprehensive sit-down with the code.

For the sections we played through, most of the game environments' destructibility just seemed so... predictable [prestructable? ed.]. There were red oil barrels, outposts constructed out of wood, glass partitions, and the occasional hut that all said, 'Shoot me and I will fall apart/explode'. It was the same setup with Black in 2006, where abundantly clear signposting informed the gamer: 'Rigged set-piece of destruction here'. Unlike with DICE's Frostbite engine though, we rarely came across a level section that deconstructed in a way we weren't expecting, or made us stand back and marvel at the levels of destruction on show. We'd hoped for a step-up in the design from what Black offered five years ago, but instead what we found were very similar blueprints and ideas buoyed by more advanced technology (e.g. materials that break apart convincingly, smoother physics, and more detailed textures). It just didn't feel that creative for a gameplay dynamic that's rife with possibilities and crying out for more innovative thinking.

All of that said, we did only sample three missions from a total of 18 in the full game, so there's clearly a lot more content in stock that could prove our initial concerns wrong. Codemasters Guildford's Horde-style co-op mode also brings a lot to the table, taking sections from the campaign and using them as maps that you and a co-op partner have to defend from waves of enemies. Defeated waves result in more advanced weaponry and a higher Bodycount score, which can then be posted to online leaderboards for bragging rights. And there's a competitive multiplayer component in the full game too: although limited to deathmatch and team deathmatch modes for 12 players, the prospect of adding human opponents to these destructible environments is a promising one.

Our initial impressions of Bodycount are that it's not quite what we'd hoped it would be. Beyond a staid feel to some of the destructible environments' design, even the gunplay wasn't quite as raucous and off-the-hook as what we'd anticipated given the Black lineage - other than a clever little cover system (half a press of the left-trigger peers down the barrel; a full press prompts an almost skittle-like 'lean' out of cover), Bodycount's core-combat felt a touch on the generic side. There really is a lot more to see of the game though, so we're reserving judgement for now and hoping for the best come review.

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Rage Preview

The slug slices tendon and sinew, plucking open his biceps like an overstrung ukelele. Clasping his inert, dangling limb, the wastelander slumps against a nearby wall, grimacing and howling as you close in. A crushing rifle blow to the cheek shatters his tawdry face-mask and sends him crashing down into the dust. Babbling with shock, he lurches onto his elbow and waves a shaky pistol towards you, loosing a few futile rounds before his skull comes apart at the muzzle of your shotgun.

id know how to make killing fun, and with RAGE they’ve brought the full weight of their FPS talent to bear. The charred post-apocalyptic landscape is a graphical showcase for their latest id Tech 5 engine, a dustbowl dotted with cyberpunk outcrops and treacherous bandit dens; character models are lovingly sculpted and exquisitely detailed, meticulously crafted down to the very last freckle. But as good as things look in the game, (and they undoubtedly look very, very good) it’s how they move that really sets RAGE apart. Interactions with NPC’s in the survivor camps you come across are natural and unobtrusive - they’ll casually strike up a conversation as you approach, gesturing and swaying in a disarmingly realistic way - and it’s this same attention to detail in the animation of the game’s enemies (the result of countless hours of cleverly blended motion-capture data and AI) that makes killing in RAGE so very, very satisfying. Your foes have character; the various bandit factions you encounter all have their own distinctive aesthetic, method of attack, and set of reactions to painful stimuli. A thug from The Wasted - a group of drunken, cockney petrol-heads - might recklessly charge round a corner wielding a flaming baseball bat, but fire a few rounds into him and he’ll stumble back in pain, grasping his bullet-torn limbs as he crawls into cover.

Such behaviour is anathema to a member of the ninja-like Ghost Clan however; a few light flesh wounds might make him wince but would never deter him from nimbly leaping over railings to strike you down with his sword. Mutants on the other hand, will attack in a blind fury but tend to break under sustained fire, desperately scrabbling back behind cover if they feel out-gunned. And ‘feel’ is the critical word here; the animations are so well constructed and seamlessly combined that it seems almost as if your enemies genuinely ‘feel’ the punishment you dish out to them, such is the illusion of realism crafted by their nuanced, believable reactions. The solid voice acting also plays a part in this suspension of disbelief, with groups of enemies engaging in small talk as you stalk them voyeuristically from the shadows.

Of course, being an id game, everything is so OTT that it never really gets disturbing, so let’s not dwell on why it’s so utterly satisfying to kill these responsive humanoid bots and focus instead on the meaty weaponry with which you do it. In the early part of the game you get your standard pistol, shotgun, assault and sniper-rifle variants – however, ammo types can be switched on the fly, allowing for easy access to more esoteric variations of each. Equipping Fat Boy rounds turns your pistol into a hefty magnum with brutal stopping power, while Killbursts contain “bullets within bullets within bullets”, letting you empty a whole clip into an unsuspecting mutant’s face in under a second (a couple of cranial Killbursts will even take down the be-tentacled, bile spitting Kraken you encounter later on). A crossbow facilitates stealthier tactics: using either standard or electrified bolts, you can sneak through enemy strong-holds picking off guards as you go, or whip out your Mind Control bolts and turn an innocent bandit into an improvised ambling explosive. There’s also a range of quick-use gadgets you can craft from the scattered detritus you find lying around, from sentry guns and healing bandages to a brutal three pronged metallic boomerang, perfect for the occasional impromptu decapitation.

Despite its excellent core combat mechanics, RAGE isn’t content to be just another corridor shooter and encompasses a range of RPG-lite elements within a semi-open-world setting; a structure id describes as ‘directed freedom’. Although in practice (in the early part of the game at least) you’re largely ferried along on a sequence of tasks set by a limited number of NPCs, you’re largely free to choose when you deign to undertake them, and the availability of additional side-quests means that you generally have other options besides pursuing the main missions. The size and scope of the early areas seems fairly well balanced too: just big enough to provide a sense of freedom and exploration in the dusty opening valleys, yet small enough to retain a densely-detailed and coherent design without overwhelming the player. There’s loot, crafting, and driving too – with upgradeable ATVs and dune buggies at your disposal you can race, fight, or simply tear down abandoned freeways through the desert (watch out for bandit ambushes, mind). After your first few hours you’ll reach the settlement town of Wellspring - a bustling network of winding back-alleys and haphazard shanty shacks where stragglers bet on violent holographic board-games, and a range of shady NPCs await with strange missions and illicit goods in side-street shops - hinting at how the game’s structure might broaden beyond it’s opening section.

So far, we’re really impressed by RAGE; the excellent enemy animations and charming character of the free-roam setting point to a potentially outstanding title. There are, however, just a few niggling doubts. Driving through the world somewhat diminishes the sense of scope that it has on foot, and it’s not yet clear whether the vehicle-based sections will prove as satisfying as the core shooting action. Additionally, an early machine-gun-wielding boss seems to have an incongruously static attack cycle compared to the range of behaviour exhibited by his standard foot soldiers. Some might also note the potential tension between id’s focus on visceral blasting - the linearity of the early combat sections - and the purportedly quasi-open-world structure that RAGE aspires to, but others would slap them for being pretentious and call it a clever balance of seemingly disparate gameplay ideals instead. And then slap themselves. Who will have the final slap? We’ll have to wait until the game’s long-awaited release this October to find out.

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Dark Souls Preview

Economics dictate design. In the heyday of the arcade, it made fiscal sense for games to abuse their players; more deaths meant more money in the slot, tumbling down into the belly of the beast. But with the rise of the home console, and the ascendancy of the pre-owned market, modern games have become terribly insecure.

'We can’t challenge gamers!' they cry, 'We’ll get traded in, lose money... There’ll be no sequel!' Consequently, current games would rather hold your hand than rap your knuckles; rub your throbbing ego rather than slap it down. Even series that were once defined by dread and tension, where the threat of death carried genuine gameplay consequences, have been nerfed by checkpoints and lowest-common-denominator pandering (*cough* Resident Evil). This is precisely why encountering a brute like Dark Souls is such a refreshing experience: it has the self-confidence to put you in your place, and much like its predecessor - Demon’s Souls - It forces you to earn its respect. Rather than meekly showering you with praise and ‘achievements’ for tying your shoes, it kicks you in the face as you bend over to grasp your laces. And laughs.

Take the opening section of the preview code, for example: you emerge in a small stone courtyard within a vast gothic castle, dappled sunlight pawing at your sword arm through the swaying leaves above. Ahead, a lever opens a nearby passage; to your left, a thin bridge extends off into the battlements, guarded by an enormous, blood-red dragon. There’s an item on the bridge too, just ahead of the beast.

Now, take a moment, and imagine you’re a knight on a terrifying quest in a huge foreboding castle. Would you, as a rational human being, run towards a massive fire-breathing monster? No. But games dictate that ‘Exploration Must Equal Reward!’, so you trot off down the bridge, and straight into an inferno-cremation hell-death.

Back to the start. You head through the passage this time, instead. Up and around a stairwell, you spot a skeletal knight grasping a scimitar, its mocking jaw locked in an eternal rictus grin. You charge - your gleaming blade raised high - only to get shanked in the ribs by his mate, who was lurking off in a doorway to the right.

Back to the start. You tread carefully up the stairs this time, shield raised, and prepare for battle. Strong and weak attacks are set on the right shoulder buttons, with blocks, parries and dodges on the left; face buttons are reserved for items and stance changes (you can stow your shield for example, which increases your attack speed but leaves you defenseless). It’s unorthodox, and slightly clunky at first, but somehow still intuitive enough to grasp after a few goes. Combat is a tense, deliberate game of cat and mouse; a few clean hits will kill you, so you have to block and parry carefully until an opening presents itself. There’s a clear system of risk and reward here: strong blows deliver massive damage, but can also leave you open to a fatal counter. Nimble players can dodge into position to deal massive damage from behind, while mage or archer-types might camp up high and attack from afar. The preview code offered a range of preset characters: a Knight and Soldier focused on melee combat, a Witch and Pyromancer with various magic abilities, and a brutal Black Knight with a menacing collection of Sharp Pointy Things. There was also a Paladin with a ranged lightning-bolt lance (the easiest pick thanks to his generous healing spell). In the final game you’ll be able to comprehensively tailor the appearance and skills of your character, and use a variety of weapons and abilities throughout.

Skeletons destroyed, you come to an arched doorway at the top of the stairwell. In the courtyard beyond lurks a massive armoured boar, its blood red eyes gleam beneath the glare of its steel-clad tusks. Thankfully, it’s far too fat to make it through the archway, and just sits there, glaring. You lure its skeletal guards towards you and dispatch them one by one in the narrow opening, before dashing off up some stairs to the right. After rushing the archers above, you spot a passage leading off behind the death-pig below. If you drop down you should have ample time to make your escape, right?

Wrong. Porky is surprisingly swift, and as you saunter nonchalantly towards the exit he crushes you with a sudden charge. Half-gored, you somehow stumble down the steps to the dungeon below, and into the dagger of a minor grunt. Back to the start.

Despite its frequency, death doesn’t feel unfair in Dark Souls. Dying is a learning mechanism that teaches you to think more carefully; to modify your approach and devise a smarter solution to the problem at hand. It’s a pedagogical approach with teeth, however: die, and you lose all the ‘souls’ you’ve collected, getting just one attempt to retrieve your fallen corpse before they vanish forever. As these are the in-game currency (and analogue of experience points), Dark Souls effectively punishes struggling players by removing the only means they have to mitigate its difficulty (leveling-up). Such negative reinforcement brazenly defies the modern norm of rewarding failure by removing challenge, and has a singularly unique and sublime consequence: death gains genuine weight and significance, resulting in a consistently high level of tension and suspense throughout play. It’s a feeling of dread and fear that perfectly compliments the dark fantasy setting of the game. With it’s huge gothic gargoyles, enormous mace-wielding iron golems, and labyrinthine network of treacherous ledges and traps, Dark Souls is somewhat reminiscent of a Fighting Fantasy adventure book, in which a single wrong turn can end in a grisly, untimely death (the developers cite Deathtrap Dungeon as an influence for the swinging axe-pendulums of a later level).

Brilliantly though, it’s not just the traps and beasts devised by From Software that you have to beware; play connected to PSN or Xbox Live, and other players can invade your game and attack, with mage-types even disguising themselves as inanimate objects as they lay in wait. Many of the  other subtle online innovations of Demon’s Souls are also retained: occasionally you’ll glimpse a phantom image of another player, showing how they tackled a nearby challenge (or more likely, how they died trying), and preset messages can be left to warn others of upcoming danger, or trick them into traps – you can even team up in co-op to take on Dark Souls’ considerable challenges with others, if you feel like playing nice. Although the world tendencies of the first game have been removed (which reflected how collaborative/competitive you were - with payoffs in both directions), the developers have spoken of a ‘pledge’ that players may choose to take, which indicates whether they want to be a help or hindrance online, and this will presumably feed-back into the gameplay somehow.

Dark Souls also builds on its predecessor in several logical ways: it’s an open-world experience now (rather than a series of linear levels linked to a single hub), with progression dictated by character development (you can eventually level up and kill the red dragon to reach the distant ramparts of the castle). There are checkpoints now too: once you eventually get beyond the Metal Boar of Death, you reach a beacon which resets your spawn point and replenishes your health and healing potions (but also repopulates the entire level with enemies). While this latter addition might prove controversial with die-hard Demon’s Souls fans, the developers (and marketing department) insist that checkpoints have only been added so that the game’s challenges can be made even more severe, and from what we’ve played so far, the balance feels broadly right.

It’s clear that there’s still much to discover about this complex sequel: checkpoints interact with your ‘humanity’ in some unspecified way, and the potential for online interaction and disruption has been expanded upon with various class-specific abilities (the Pyromancer, for example, can summon a Grave Lord which randomly infects another player’s game, causing monsters to continually respawn). Although Demon’s Souls' fans might struggle to re-capture the same exhilarating sense of surprise and discovery - the thrill of the new - that they had with the original, there’s still much here for them to enjoy, and new players discovering the series for the first time are set for a refreshing - if rather challenging - treat.

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