Honestly, I’m a little burnt on the Assassin’s Creed franchise. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the gameplay and the plot of the series has been fairly fascinating, but Ubisoft’s planning on releasing Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood barely a year after the last title came out.
Since there’s no new number in the title, it may be confusing as to what Brotherhood is exactly. Essentially, it’s a continuation of Ezio’s story from Assassin’s Creed 2. However, a multiplayer mode has been added along with a more robust territory/army building metagame.
Much like Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, you can recruit assassins, send them on missions, and upgrade them like Pokemon. It’s an interesting wrinkle in the series, but I’m not sure it’s that compelling to draw me back into the the world of the Renaissance again.
Perhaps you’ll be more inclined after watch the developer walkthrough above.
The Crysis franchise has long been known for incredible graphics and an open ended single-player experience.
So why am I posting a video of multiplayer footage?
Simply put, it intrigues me. See, Crysis also incorporates interesting suit powers such as super strength, speed, or cloaking. That in it of itself is grounds enough to separate the game from the sea of Call of Duty clones out there right now.
Decide for yourself it’s enough to take a look.
Ah, the days of E3 2009. Where the Microsoft Kinect (then Project Natal) was still new, wondrous, and offered a world of possibilities. Back then, one of the more interesting demos was of Milo, an AI boy you could interact with like a real human. Since then, nary a peep has been heard about Milo from his creator, Peter Molyneux (Fable, Populous).
Until now.
Molyneux whipped out Milo at his TED talk earlier this year and it looks a bit more fleshed out as a “game,” as opposed to merely a tech demo. Apparently his goal was to create an environment and interface where humans can interact with an evolving AI as if it was human. No input devices needed, just a Kinect and your bad self.
If you’re time-starved, you can skip to about 9 minutes where the interesting interactions take place. Molyneux reveals that Milo’s AI will “live in the cloud” and evolve from various peoples’ playthroughs. It has the promise of being truly revolutionary stuff for the video game/interactive entertainment industry. Though the Milo demo is ultimately unexciting in subject matter (Milo’s biggest problem is adjusting to a move from England to New England), it’s leagues more interesting than pantomiming through Wii Sports knock-offs.
Well, at least until Milo turns into Skynet and conquers us all.
Although Metroid has been one of Nintendo’s most storied franchises, it’s also paradoxically one of the least understood. Countless times I have seen people embarrass themselves (usually nostalgic gaming poseurs) by referring to Samus Aran as “Metroid”. No, you ninny,”Metroid” is the furthest life form from an attractive female bounty hunter. They are translucent life-sucking alien jellyfish with giant fangs. Capiche?
Nerd rage aside, Metroid lore can be a little confusing, so no one will judge you if you need to watch this 7 minute catch up video on what happened in the previous games. It’s a good time to catch up before Metroid: Other M releases on the Wii next week, as it promises to be a lot more focused on character and story than any other Metroid game prior. (For the first time ever, there’ll be voice acting in a Metroid game!)
However, we’ll still judge you if you pull the faux pas of calling the main character “Metroid.”
(video courtesy of Joystiq)
Other than next week’s Metroid: Other M, Disney’s Epic Mickey is my most anticipated Wii game release this year. (That’s right, Donkey Kong Country Returns? meh.)
Disney recently put out the intro cinematic for the game and in it you can clearly see how much of a dick Mickey Mouse is. I mean seriously, who goes and messes up someone else’s carefully created world by bringing in a darkness of unimaginable horror then bounces back into his own dimension for 50+ years without so much as leaving a courtesy note?
Bed Intruder quickly become ensconced in my top 10 songs of the year from the moment it was released 3 weeks ago. The autotune the news team are talented musical arrangers.
Now, Hayley Williams (Paramore), Jordan Pundik (New Found Glory), and Ethan Luck (Relient K) have taken it upon themselves to cover the song in the only musical style they could have – pop punk.
I <3 my early-mid 2000′s pop punk bands, but this power chord heavy version lacks a certain je ne sais quoi. In fact I’m going to go ahead that the only reason this cover is noteworthy is because of the performers’ celebrity status.
What do you think? Does the fact that “the girl from Paramore” and “the guy from New Found Glory” covered the song make it any more “legit”?
Alright, this trailer for Portal 2′s cooperative gameplay is incredibly short, but I imagine it’s exciting for the throngs of Portal fans out there.
I’m excited for Portal 2 as much as the next guy, but I’m going to play the part of jaded gamer dude and hold it in my pants until we see something truly cool. Call me when they show puzzles where we’ve got to juggle our coop partners with 4 portals on the fly.
Update: Official video embedded
Ok, I think I’ve figured out this video for Yeasayer’s Madder Red.
It’s got to be part of an ARG promoting Bioshock Infinite. I can’t believe they would spoil the game this early, but you can clearly see that Kristen Bell’s one armed face-monster rules the clouds at the end of this video. There’s no doubt it’s the final boss.
Too easy, Ken Levine. Too easy.
It offers these two simple, yet crucial, elements:
1) Real gameplay footage without bullshots/cutscene smoke and mirrors.
2) Informative narration straight from the game creators on how the game plays.
Unfortunately, dev walkthrough videos tend to run on the long side, so you have to have a little interest in the title before you commit the time to view them.
Let’s take care of that little detail for Uber Entertainment’s first title, Monday Night Combat.
It’s a class-based third person shooter. Focus is obviously on the 6v6 multiplayer and creating a “Monday Night Football” feel to each match. There’s a rewards and upgrade system where you can level up certain skills in the middle of the match and also on a meta-level between games too. From the looks of things it could be to the Xbox 360 what Team Fortress 2 is to the PC/Mac, especially at the $15 price point.
Sound interesting? Check out the two developer walkthrough videos below:
Part 1:
Part 2:
It may be ultimately pointless and/or sadistic, but something about seeing professionals masquerade amongst the hoi polloi and utterly owning the unsuspecting public in their craft is absolutely enthralling to me.
As part of their Starcraft 2 release coverage last week, TeamLiquid (a professional-level Starcraft community) posted a video of a diamond-level Starcraft 2 player playing through his five mandatory placement matches. Don’t worry if you’re not familiar with the terminology – all you have to know that this guy is really good and the reason he’s matched up against these poor victims is because everyone has to go through this process in order to be placed into the correct skill-level league. Kind of like taking a placement test to see if you’re in the gifted kid class or the short bus class.
You’ll see entertaining things such as writing out “LOL” in Auto-Turret placement in the enemy base or spelling out his online handle in the middle of the map using carefully placed units. You will also see ridiculous strategies utilized such as using double offensive Planetary Fortresses.
Basically, it’s a much nerdier equivalent of Jewel doing undercover karaoke. Well, maybe with more embarrassment for the common man.
(You can start the video at 3:10 if you want to skip past the internet gamer humor introduction.)
