You may or may not have heard that late last week the Mass Effect 3 Beta was accidentally leaked to certain Xbox Live accounts and in the ensuing chaos shaky cam footage and screenshots hit the internet. So to spare your eyes the horror, Bioware have released a trailer showing off most of the moments from the beta in pleasantly clear footage.
A Bioware representative has since come out and said the accidental release was due to “human error” on the part of someone over at Microsoft. The internal beta was accidentally flagged for release to those who had signed up for the new Xbox Live Dashboard beta.
Aside from containing both singleplayer and multiplayer, the beta revealed new options players could choose at the start of the game: “Action Mode”, “Story Mode”, and “RPG mode”. Action Mode would streamline conversations, cutting out most decision making, and focus on the shooting, Story Mode would make the combat far easier and allow full decision making, and RPG Mode is the best of the both – the classic Mass Effect experience we’ve come to know and love.
Check out the video below, be forewarned, there are some light spoilers, and do bear in mind that the game is unfinished. As you’ll probably be able to tell when certain sounds aren’t working, bodies fly through the air, and placeholder voices are used.
Sony is going through a policy change on November 18 in terms of their game content on the Playstation Network. From that day onwards, any content that is purchased on November 18 or beyond, it can only be played on two activated Playstation 3 consoles rather than the current policy of five. The same policy will apply to the Playstation Portable. It is only time affected, so content purchased before Nov. 18 is still allowed to be played on five PS3s and five PSPs.
There is a way to deactivate the system, but it is only on the console. So, if one of your consoles has died, Sony will be providing a deactivation solution over the PC. It will be “a new PlayStation Network account management website where users will be able to deactivate particular devices attached to their PlayStation Network account”, according to the Playstation Blog.
It has received a mixed reaction from the gaming community to say the least. I do not have a reaction on either side of the fence since I only own one PS3 and one PSP. It will also affect the Playstation Vita when it is released next year (or this year in Asia).
It’s alright, I’ll give you a second to let that title set in. Okay, that should do it. Yes, the Power Rangers will now becoming a massively multiplayer online beat-em-up game.
Ntreev Soft have announced that they are developing Power Rangers Online. Along-side this out of left-field announcement they have revealed a trailer that shows off the game in action.
Very little information is currently available about the title other than that it focusing on the Mystic Force series and is currently in closed beta testing mode.
You can check out the trailer for Power Rangers Online below. Be sure to let us know what you think of Power Rangers Online in the shoutbox and comments section.
EA have today announced that they will be holding a Sweepstakes Weekend competition, in order to “Say Thanks” to Battlefield 3 players. There are 3 great prizes to win and all you have to do is play online this weekend between the 11th of November and the 13th of November. As for what prizes you can win, they are as follows:
– Grand Prize is a trip to visit DICE in Stockholm, Sweden on a 3 night round-trip for 1 player as well as 3 friends.
– Second Prize is $5000 USD or the equivalent currency depending upon location.
– Third Prize is a brand new console including all Battlefield titles for that platform.
For more information on the rules of the sweepstakes you can find out everything you need to know here. Will you be participating in the EA “Says Thanks” Sweepstakes Weekend? Let us know in the shoutbox and comments section.
That’s right, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, is out now in stores across Australia. Last night over 200 stores across the nation held midnight launches for the title which is without a doubt one of the most hotly anticipated titles of the entire year.
So if you weren’t one of the campers at your local store’s midnight launch, you can now pick up the long awaited Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. If you aren’t sure about picking it up, here are some facts that may entice you to do so:
– More people pre-ordered Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, than any other title in the series history.
– Call of Duty players have fired more in-game bullets than their are stars in our galaxy.
– There are enough people online each day on Call of Duty to fill up 80 of the worlds largest stadiums.
If that isn’t enough to get you pumped for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, you can also pick up the special Hardened Edition that comes packed with some great Modern Warfare 3 goodies, to excite even the most wayward of fans.
Will you be grabbing a copy of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3? Let us know in the shoutbox and comments section.
With the impending release of Metal Gear Solid HD Collection, Konami have released a trailer for the upcoming collection title. The new trailer teams up everybody’s favourite 48-member Japanese Pop Idol group, AKB48, with the crew behind Metal Gear Solid HD Collection.
More specifically, AKB48 member, Haruna Kojima stars in the trailer in which she sneaks about in the cutest way possible. She then reachs a screen in which she writes over in permanent marker to adjust it to say “Spring has come to Kojima Productions”, with Spring being a reference to the “Haru” part of he name, which means “Spring” in Japanese.
What do you think of the trailer for Metal Gear Solid HD Collection? Let us know in the shoutbox and comment section.
I’ve always told everyone here at Capsule Computers that the Umbrella Corporation is a great place, they strive to preserve and maintain the good health of the people. If you’re not aware their main mission statement is this :
Umbrella is working hard to make the technology of tomorrow a reality for today. Through scientific advancement and technological innovation, Umbrella can create a perfect future. We offer you a future you deserve and a future within your grasp.
Now honestly, I don’t know where people are getting their information from saying that Umbrella are untrustworthy and evil, I have to say this is completely incorrect. If you don’t believe me why not check out their official website, They are even looking for ambitious and tenacious people to join them in all sorts of areas for valuable research and development through a range of special projects. All you have to do is fill out the form on their website and they’ll get back to you.
Click on the link just below to take part in this once in a life time opportunity. http://www.umbrellasciences.com/ (please note, the website is a little buggy) – if you get any weird messages like :
/ Umbrella is lying to you / You need to know the truth / Stop the atrocities / They can be exposed
HELP ME UNCOVER THE TRUTH…
Just ignore it and complete your registration. UNESS you really want to click on that other link to uncover the truth.
Thanks and good luck, I hope you get in, I’ve already been called in for an assessment, can’t wait to enhance and enrich the lives of others through the research of Umbrella.
Ubisoft have unveiled a trailer for their follow-up Your Shape: Fitness Evolved game. Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012 will provide all new exercises to sculpt and shape a new body for yourself. With a mixture or strength, endurance and cardio workouts, you should be able to find an exercise regime to suit your goals.
For those who played the original Your Shape: Fitness Evolved, it looks to be a more intense workout this time around, with a lot more testing exercises available from the looks of it. The trailer may only be a minute and a half, but manages to show press-ups, lunges and jumps. Get ready to burn those calories on the calorie counter.
Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012 releases exclusively for Xbox 360 Kinect on 11th November.
Battlefield 3 Developer:DICE Publisher:EA Platforms:PC (Reviewed), Xbox 360, Playstation 3 Release Date:Out Now Price: $58.99 (Limited Edition – Available Here) / $50.99 (Download – Available Here)
Battlefield 3 is the latest in a long line of war based shooters from DICE and EA. The game features a Single Player campaign as well as an extensive Multiplayer component, that really seems like it was the focus of the games development. Unfortunately for the game, the campaign was quite lacklustre in it’s plot and excecution while the Multiplayer was brilliantly designed and a blast to play.
Story: The story in Battlefield 3 is, in my opinion, not at all that engaging. The developers seem to have taken a cue from another popular title that was released during development (Call of Duty: Black Ops), in that your main protagonist is being interrogated by some kind of government organisation. Further, the story is told disjointedly and feature multiple main characters, some of which die in very unfortunate ways.
Throughout the story, you are a part of a small squad of marines (and by small, I mean small; less than a platoon) who seem to be doing more commando/ counter-terrorist work than any hard military jobs. For example, in one part of the story, the main character is made to cover a small group of marines as they begin to raid a shopping mall. While a marine is likely able to work a Sniper Rifle, doesn’t the army have it’s own squad of snipers for that kind of job; somebody specially trained to assist in these situations?
Throughout the campaign, I never really thought of myself as a marine. I frequently regarded myself as a counter-terrorist being made to strike tactically through dark streets and engage with scripted enemies that sometimes seemed like there was more of than in a small town. What really got to me during these tactical moments though, was when you’re required to stealthily take out an oppenent.
In this one part of the game, your squad mate tells you to creep up on this guy standing guard with backturned near a doorway. Being the stealthy guy that I am, I figured that running at him would alert him to our presence and he’d lay waste to us, so I went into prone and crawled up on him. Little did I know that being too stealthy would cause my character to suddenly drop dead for no apparent reason. The next time I did it, I sprinted at the enemy and knifed him to death; it’s amazing how stealth works in this game.
The campaign also features an abundance of cross-eyed soldiers that appear on your team throughout the game. These are men who will waste an entire clip of ammunition in the direction of an enemy and not hit them at all. Even on Easy, your team-mates are pretty much just there for show. Which was unfortunate as I recall team-mates being more effective in the previous PC Battlefield title.
The campaign isn’t all bad, even if it only feels like you’re on a battlefield a small amount of times, as you get to fly around in a jet early on. This was probably the most amazing thing that I have done in this game. It felt amazing! I had so much fun being in the backseat of the jet and missiling enemies that I didn’t care that it was on-rails. Though, I love the feel of flying outside of games, so that may be impacting on how great the section really was. The only thing that bugged me about this section of the game was how they integrated it into the story. The interrogators just bring her up randomly, the main character says he has no idea what they’re talking about, her (the planes gunner) target had no impact on the overall story and the entire set-up was just a ploy to get you into a plane. If they had’ve had a decent storyline, instead of copying the latest fad, they could have found any other significant way to include jet-flying within the game.
My biggest gripe about the story in Battlefield 3 is that none of the main characters are people that you would really care about, and just as you’re sick of not caring, they die. You can obviously tell when a character is going to die, simply by the amount of nonsense that the developers have lumped onto a character to try and get you to care about them in the brief amount of time that you will be playing them. For example, one of the main characters is given a toy by his son. This built to give the character some kind of background to get you to care about his death later. But you don’t, it feels like it was a ploy to force you to like the character and you wind up not really caring because you know he’s going to die anyway.
However big the flaws may be in the single player campaign (not including having to be online to even access it), it is still a pretty fun experience; but it is not so fun to warrant a purchase if you’re a single player gamer.
Visuals/ Audio: On ultra settings, Battlefield 3 is probably one of the most prettiest games on the market to date. On high settings, it is a step above Bad Company 2 on PC. The game does throttle pretty well, so that if you have a lesser graphics card, you will be able to run it with just a little tinkering. I’m actually running an ATi 5770HD and can run it on ultra with anti-aliasing disabled with a pretty decent frame-rate (~30-40 fps, sometimes fluctuates lower). I’m not sure how you’d fare with a lesser card, but leaving the settings on auto or using auto as a guideline should help you to customise your Battlefield experience to it’s fullest.
It is incredibly evident that the developers have put a lot of effort into the graphics of the game as the game looks beautiful, in regards to the environments, and features amazingly detailed skins for soldiers and vehicles. Even the water effects are great.
In regards to audio, Battlefield 3 features an amazing array of weapon sound effects and explosions. The very few pieces of music in the game are incredibly well done and help set the mood quite well. However, I did find the music under-used in the multiplayer, in that it is only playing during the loading screens, but it did feature prominently in the story.
One of the most memorable moments for me audio-wise, is when I was gunning down enemy players in an alley-way and a rocket flew right past my ears. The sounds really added to the immersion of the game and helps draw you into the Battlefield experience.
Gameplay: In this section I will mostly be covering the generic mechanics as well as the multiplayer as I covered most the single player in the story section.
Battlefield 3 plays like most shooters, point, click and kill. But what makes this different is the way in which you conduct yourself on the battlefield. As Sun Tzu would say “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” So in order to do well on the battlefield, one must first have a plan and a method to carry out that plan; as having a method without a plan will leave you incredibly dead. What I really mean is to think about what you’re doing instead of just sprinting in a straight line from conquest point to conquest point.
In the multiplayer the game consists of a few different gametypes. These are Conquest, Large Conquest, Team Deathmatch, Rush, Squad Rush and Squad Team Deathmatch. Each of those gametypes are played across most of the maps in the game, but the playable area may be different depending on the gametype. For example, a team deathmatch map will utilise a much smaller area (one section of buildings, or a section that is best suited to the game type) compared to large conquest, which is likely to utilise the entirety of the map. I will discuss most of the gametypes in greater detail below.
In anticipation of the 18 November release of LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7 in the UK, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and TT Games have released a demo for the game, which is available now on Xbox LIVE Marketplace for Xbox 360. The PC demo is available on the LEGO Video Games page, with a PlayStation 3 demo to follow on PlayStation Network.
There’s no chance to try it on the other formats it will release on – DS, 3DS, Wii, PSP and PC – but it’s the opportunity to try what is probably the definitive version of the game on Xbox 360, PC or PS3 for free.
