A troubling bit of information was discovered in Europe earlier today when an image of the European version of the Resistance 3 hardware bundle showed the existence of something called the “PSN Pass.” German website Konsolentreff was the first with this image and it seems that SCEE was quick to respond to the rumor,unfortunately confirming the existence of said PSN Pass.
The PSN Pass will work similar to the Project Ten Dollar or Online Pass move that other companies have taken, where online access will require the use of a one time only code that will enable new copies of the game to play online, while used copies will require a separate code purchase. Both SCEE and SCEA released a statement about the code today, saying that it is a “game-specific” program but will be used in the future. I’ve always been an advocate against these annoying online pass measures, but what do you think about this move?
Last night our good friends at Ubisoft invited a few of us over to check out some multilayer builds for Driver: San Francisco and Call of Juarez: The Cartel. They were offering burritos, chips and beer so we couldn’t refuse! After hanging out with our BFFs, Sam Fisher and King Kong, we stopped treating the Ubisoft office like a theme park and picked up some controllers and went head-to-head on Driver: San Francisco for the Playstation 3 and tried out the new co-opetition mode for Call of Juarez: The Cartel on Xbox 360. These are just my impressions on these multiplayer builds, you can see LinkageAx’s impressions here.
(Left to Right) Master Abbott, Matt Vella (thats me!), and LinkageAx up to our usual mischief.
Driver: San Francisco
Unfortunately I missed out on getting a hands-on preview of the single player last time we met up with Ubisoft, but from what hear, it’s pretty awesome. I can’t speak from personal experience with that section of the game, but I can say that multiplayer for Driver: San Francisco is extremely fun. Ubisoft have perfectly captured that chaos and frantic action the original game had when your trying to outrun the cops, and multiplied it by tenfold. In fact much of it feels like a throwback to the debut title. I didn’t see any guns at all and I couldn’t get out my car. Driver is Driver again, so its no longer a Shooter or a Walker, and it’s all for the better! Another new feature included that you may already know of if you’ve been following the game is the ‘Shift’ feature, which allows you to appear in place of another car, kinda like those uber cool agents in that Matrix movie. It’s a really smart idea to include, as if you completely suck and can’t catch up, you can use it to cheat your way ahead, and adds a lot to the chaos and keeps everyone in the game, ensuring everyone is always in the middle of the action and has fun.
Forget boring modes like time trials and that crap, Driver: San Francisco keeps it fresh and fun. We tried out each mode with four players.
Tag: ‘Tag’ is pretty much capture the flag but with cars, where your goal is to be ‘tagged’ for a certain amount of time while other players are trying to ram or hit them so they can steal the ‘flag’ to become the tagged player. The game concludes when a player has been tagged for a certain amount of time. This mode is insanely fun, as the tagged player can’t use the shift feature, so your trying to escape a bunch of dudes who can appear anywhere at anytime. On the other hand its fun simply trying to chase the tagged vehicle, but also a great deal of strategy is needed to predict the other players movements and decision making in order where to shift to intercept your opponent. Strategy in a driving game-I never thought I’d see that, but it works really well!
Trailblazer: In Trailblazer your competing for a high score. An AI controlled car races ahead while leaving behind a short trail of light following it. Players must compete with each other to tail the car closely, racking up points by staying in this ray of light. The car is faster than the other players, so your constantly competing with your opponents to catch up to it. It works out as your basic car chase, but with a twist. While in other modes your often chasing someone with the intention to attack them, your goal here is to simply follow them and get the other players as far away from it as possible. So you want to be closely behind the trailblazer and barging and nudging your enemies off coarse and into the oncoming traffic. Rather than shifting to a car ahead of the lead to intercept, players are encouraged to shift to a car closely behind the lead car that is going in the same direction. Its the only mode we played where all four players had the same goal, and also one of the most different, providing a nice variation in game play.
Takedown:This mode had one player as a criminal, while the other three played as cops. The bad guy got a health bar and the cops had unlimited health, and only the cops could use the shift ability. It pretty much played as a survival mode, as the robber had to survive for a particular amount of time, while the cops had to destroy the robbers’ car within the set time limit. It encouraged a lot of team work and turned out to be quite fun, especially when Ben (LinkageAX), and another player managed to pin down Phil (MasterAbbott) while I constantly reversed and sped up to ram him! This co-operative feel it had really enhanced the experience, and playing as the robber was awesome for the same reasons being tagged in tag was-it felt like the world was after you and the adrenaline rush from the escape was just awesome.
To sum up my experience with Driver: San Francisco’s multiplayer, I have to say it’s big chunks of fun! The blend of destruction-derby styled assaults and high-energy car chases have been used to achieved this, being much more interesting than a standard car race. A nice mix of both co-operative and competitive really keeps players on their toes, and the shift feature guarantees anything can happen, and anyone can win regardless of the situation. The game feels fast and the destruction feels awesome. I imagine the racing aspect of multiplayer that is yet to be revealed will be good, but won’t be as exciting, however this new shift feature may change that. While we played on LAN, I believe online will be extremely rewarding, but most importantly I hear local split-screen will be available, which is PERFECT for a game like this. The ability to tell someone to ‘suck it’ to their face only amplifies the glory, and the laughs are plenty! Driver: San Francisco comes out on September, 1st 2011 and I highly recommend you give the multiplayer a go, because its a blast to play.
Oh yeah, and we had a Driver tournament and the winner got some tequila. Who won? I honestly don’t know or care. I stopped paying attention the second I lost, and jumped onto the Xbox 360 and checked out Call of Juarez: The Cartel!
Call of Juarez: The Cartel
In Call of Juarez: The Cartel plays in a more modern setting than it’s predecessors, however that classic cowboy/western theme has still been kept for the most part, creating an interesting mix of styles that have mashed well together. The game follows a task force with their own personal demons going after a mexican drug cartel, in the typical FPS fashion, and the two levels we played involved mostly hopping into a car, driving to a location to achieve an objective, kill some drug-dealing minorities along the way, and head back into the vehicle where you then head to the next location. Its simple but fun, and was presented nicely with some sweet graphics and very impressive voice acting.
We gave the new co-opetition mode a play, which works as your typical co-operative campaign for three players, but with a competitive twist- every now-and-then somebody will randomly get a phone call with a secret mission objective, and it kept things interesting and fresh, and it worked well. Helping out your team mates had a strong impact on the gameplay, so your encouraged to work as a team, and thus teamwork feels really rewarding. For example, players can preform a ‘Team Entry‘. When approaching a closed door, two players can stand either side and one can stand in the middle, and on command all three will barge into the room full of enemies, entering concentrate mode and allowing you to kill them all in glorious slow-motion. Epic! Also reviving a fallen player has a big part of gameplay, and it is done simply and swiftly so it doesn’t feel like a hassle, so helping your fallen ally doesn’t feel like a chore which is nice.
One particular level we played was based in some kind of forest, and I must say I really enjoyed the level design. The terrain was uneven and filled with slopes, trees and rocks which provided great cover. I found it helpful in flanking targets as well which was nice. Controls will seem very familiar to most gamers, so naturally they feel comfortable. Melee attacks feel particularly rewarding. Yeah sure its the usual ‘click the analogue stick and you hit a guy’ kind of thing, but a nice stream of blood flies from your victim accompanied by some sweet sound effects which make you feel like a total bad-ass. One of the biggest highlights in my opinion was the voice acting, it really sounds like this title has a high cost production going on, and the dialogue is mostly great, especially from your Mexican gangster enemies, showing how surprisingly fun it is to be threatened in a foreign language by a dude with a gun.
We were informed that the build we were playing was actually a ‘delicate’ and ‘fragile’ one, but for the most part the game ran pretty smoothly to me. Some graphics would flicker or seem out here and there, but that stuff is to be expected in a multiplayer build for incomplete game, and I’m sure this won’t be the case in the final product. On that note, the graphics do look really pretty and the world Ubisoft have show us here is full of character, and character design looks really superb as well. One of the ‘little things’ I appreciated was the compass directing you to your locations as this little white dot showing you where to go next. I found it really helpful, especially since it was easy at times to stray off the path and away from your mission. I heard in the final product the white dot will look like something else but still maintain the same job though.
I can’t really judge the entire game based on my short experience with Call of Juarez: The Cartel, but I can say it is shaping up very nicely. I’m sure it’s design and presentation will help separate it from the rest of the cliche FPS pack, and it being accompanied with good voice acting and dialogue shows much promise for the single-player campaign. Furthermore, the idea of co-opitition is pretty cleaver and works well and is a blast to play. I look forward to seeing more of this game soon! Call of Juarez: The Cartel hits stores July 21 in all of it’s modernized western cowboy FPS glory.
I’d like to take the chance to thank Ubisoft again for inviting us for the night and giving us a hands on sneak peak of what we can expect from these titles. Both games are shaping up nicely and are both looking and feeling great! Keep an eye on our website their reviews in the near future!
I am honestly surprised we haven’t seen anything from Gex in quite some time, but thankfully, Crystal Dynamics are bringing over Gex: Deep Cover Gecko as of today on the Playstation Network in Europe. Now if you lived under a rock in the 90’s, Gex was the equivalent of Mario for the 3DO and was later ported to the Sega Saturn and the original Playstaion. In this third entry in the series which was released on the Nintendo 64, Playstation, and the Game Boy Color, and players take control of the gecko as he set off on a mission to save Agent Xtra who has been kidnapped by Gex’s arch nemesis, Rez.
The Gex series is also known for it’s many pokes at pop-culture as well as the lizard’s many one-liners, which may or may not be a bit dated by today’s standards, but still should prove to be a blast of nostalgia for those who have fond memories of the original. Gex: Deep Cover Gecko is now available in the PSN for £7.99 / €9.99. Now if we can just get a sequel (looking at you, Crystal Dynamics ;))
Dead Block, a zombie tower defense game from Digital Reality and Candygun games has hit the Xbox LIVE arcade today. The game set in 1950’s USA, places you into the throes of a zombie apocalypse. Let’s not forget the apocalypse was caused by that dang rock n’ roll music, which evidently has the ability the raise the dead and make them hungry for some juicy brains.
The game feature’s 3 heroes; Mike, Jack and Foxy as they defend themselves from the brain-dead rotting corpses lusting to devour their brains, by hiding in shelters and boarding up windows as they attempt to fortify their town from the zombie invasion.
Featuring a total of 10 levels of single-player mode and a 4-player split-screen local co-op mode, the game provides you with many opportunities to take on some deadmen with or without friends.
Dead Block is available on the Xbox LIVE Arcade for 800 Microsoft Points and is also available on the Playstation Network for $9.99. For more information about Dead Block check out the official website and watch the launch trailer below.
Folks, in this article I am going to explain the commenting system and how it can benefit you.
The commenting system is a system designed to enable users to have a discussion on a particular article. These comments can be viewed by other users and visitors on the site, so make sure that your opinion is heard. The comments section can also benefit you in certain ways. One of these benefits is in Capsule Computers Cube Points.
These Capsule Computers Cube Points can be redeemed for prizes by using the Capsule Computers Cube Points link on the side panel of the main website. Winners typically get to choose the games and or other prizes, like mousepads and figures etc. So be sure to comment on all interesting articles! Just try not to abuse the system, abuse will not be tolerated and may lead to having your account terminated or other penalties. I should point out that while anyone can post anonymously, only registered members are able to claim Cube Points.
Lastly, by posting on articles, you help to build our community and make it strong! A strong community is excellent for a website as it helps us to achieve our end goal of world domination much faster than if we have to build robots or commission engineers to build robots for us.
Makoto Kobayashi, mechanical designer for series such as Gundam ZZ, Last Exile and Giant Robo, announced at the conclusion of Anime Expo that he is currently working on an anime remake of the classic space opera masterpiece Space Battle Yamato anime. Thus confirming that the new remake of Yamato will be released some time next year.
The series, known in english as Star Blazers, also had an anime feature Space Battleship Yamato: Ressurection in 2009 and an incredibly successful live-action adaptation in 2010.
Yamato is considered by many anime fans as one of the greatest space-based anime series of all time and it is without a doubt amazing news that a remake is on the way.
The story follows the crew of the eponymous Space Battleship Yamato as they battle against a deadly race of aliens known as the Gamilas, who have released radioactive meteorite bombs on earth, rendering the planet uninhabitable.
We will keep you posted on updates on the production of the remake and any other Space Battleship Yamato news.
If you are a regular reader here, you should know by now that we have been keeping you updated with PopCap’s ongoing charity auction where all proceeds are being donated to Special Effect and the Starlight Children’s Foundation. This week marks the end of the auction, and by the looks of things, PopCap are determined to end this sale with a bang.
The major item this week is the Plants vs. Zombies zombie jack-in-the-box concept sketch on canvas, which will be on display for a limited time only at London’s Mash Clothing, 73 Oxford Street, London.
Other items include:
Bejeweled 3 ceramic lemonade set
Bejeweled 3 introduction screen painting
Peggle Bjorn archive
A personalised sketch to be done post auction with buyer input
Plants vs. Zombies street scene concept sketch
Plants vs. Zombies zombie jack-in-the-box concept sketch on canvas
Plants vs. Zombies light box
All items start at just $1 and are now available for bidding/viewing at www.ebay.com/popcap.Hurry now though, as this auction ends July 12th!
You’ve probably seen those 30 Day Song or Movie Challenges going around on Facebook. Well, we found a Video Game equivalent, and thought it would be fun to have each of our editors list their answers in a 30 Questions format, as an introduction to the kind of gamers we are.
Q1 – Your first video game.
Lemmings
Even with only 16×16 pixels, those little blue and green dudes have more personality than a lot of FPS characters today.
Q2 – Your favorite character.
Waluigi
He may only exist to give Wario a doubles partner in sports games, but I love his tie-damsels-to-train-tracks brand of villainy.
Q3 – A game that is underrated.
Aliens vs. Predator (2010)
I loved the 2001 game, and although this one was given a “meh” in reviews, I loved the inclusion of execution moves and the focus on melee combat. Although it had a much weaker story.
Q4 – Your guilty pleasure game
Angry Birds
Seriously, if I have more than four consecutive spare seconds, my phone will come out and pigs will die.
Q5 – Game Character you feel you are most like (or wish u were)
Mick (my Pokemon trainer)
Leaving home at age 10 to catch wild animals and subdue them into doing your bidding? I wish.
Q6 – Most Annoying Character
Sonic the Hedgehog
Invented as a marketing tool to combat Mario, given an arrogant, douchey attitude, has the creepiest online fanbase, starred in way more terrible games than good ones, and is still somehow really popular. I don’t get it.
Q7 – The game you’ve spent the most time playing
Fallout 3
I spent so much time wandering around the Capital Wasteland, because I kept getting distracted from the main quests. In a good way. All up, between the main game and all five expansions, I clocked in almost 200 hours.
Q8 – Best soundtrack.
Super Smash Bros Brawl
Features over 300 tracks from Nintendo’s history, some in their original state, some remixed with orchestral or modern instruments. I actually have a lot of them on my iPod.
Q9 – Scariest game.
Dead Space
I’m not proud of it, but this game actually made me scream out loud. Just ask my old housemate.
Q10 – Best game play.
Wow, extremely hard to pick just one.
Q11 – Gaming system of choice.
Again, hard to pick. I play on just about everything. My PC, Xbox 360, Wii and iPhone all get about the same amount of attention.
Q12 – A game everyone should play.
Plants vs. Zombies
Simple addictive gameplay and quirky art style. It can be “hardcore” if you want to play it that way, but it works just fine for a quick session on the bus.
Q13 – A game you’ve played more than five times.
The Itchy & Scratchy Game
A pretty obscure Super Nintendo game I remember playing repeatedly back in the day. You basically play as Itchy and have to slaughter Scratchy with various cartoony weapons, across various cartoony settings.
Q14 – Current (or most recent) gaming wallpaper.
Torn
This was the game we made as our final project in my Games Design course at Qantm.
Q15 – The game you’re playing right now.
Penumbra
A fairly obscure survival horror game, with no combat. You see something, you hide. Or die. Often both.
Q16 – Game with the best cutscenes.
Legacy of Kain series
This is a case where the story is given more attention than the gameplay, and you keep playing just to reach the next cutscene. The opening sequence for Soul Reaver, and the last few cutscenes in Defiance rank among my favourites ever.
Q17 – Favorite antagonist.
Dimitri (Grand Theft Auto IV)
Man, I hate that guy! He screws Niko over big time, and you really want to see him die by the end. A well-designed final mission allows the player to decide if they exact revenge on him or follow the traditional narrative structure and not let the hero succumb to temptation.
Q18 – Favorite protagonist.
Manny Calavera (Grim Fandango)
Manny works as a reaper in an Aztec-inspired underworld, but discovers he’s stuck there on account of a soul-smuggling operation. As a character, he’s resourceful, funny and determined. And his outward design is cool.
Q19 – A game setting you wish you lived in.
Oddworld
The world itself is fascinating, but I can’t decide where I’d want to live in it. I’d either have to be a mudokon slave, a slig crony, an imperialistic glukkon, or one of many species that are on the verge of extinction. Tough choice.
Q20 – Favorite game to play with friends
New Super Mario Bros. Wii
Fairly standard single-player gameplay, but get a few mates and a few beers, and suddenly it becomes half cooperative platformer, and half competitive trollfest. Our first choice among pre-pub drinking games.
Q21 – Game with the best story.
Aliens vs. Predator 2
Tells the extensive story of a facility overrun with aliens, from the point of view of each species. The Alien, Predator and Marine campaigns intersect and overlap, and I’ve played through each multiple times. Then I went through and wrote down dates and times for each chapter, and played through chronologically.
Q22 – A game sequel which disappointed you.
Destroy All Humans! Path of the Furon
The first two games in the series were amazing! Fun gameplay with a decent story and a great sense of humour. After Pandemic Studios in Queensland closed down, THQ worked with the franchise to churn out an unpolished turd of a Wii game, and a half-finished buggy mess on the PS3/Xbox 360. Strangely though, the humour was kept relatively intact across all titles.
Q23 – Game you think had the best graphics or art style.
Braid/Limbo
I declare a tie between these two quirky indy platformers.
Braid looks like a Disney cartoon, with vibrant colours, smooth animations, and very detailed characters and environments.
Limbo goes to the other extreme, presenting a greyscale, silhouette world that almost looks like shadow puppets.
Both succeed beyond expectation in creating unique worlds that stand out from the pack.
Q24 – Funniest game moment
Portal 2
In its entirety. Adding other hilarious characters like Wheatley and Cave Johnson give us a breather from GlaDOS’ thinly veiled hostility.
Q25 – A game you plan on playing.
Nintendo’s (very late) first party 3DS games. Super Mario 3DS and Luigi’s Mansion 2 are particularly high on my list.
Q26 – Best voice acting.
Oddworld
Every character or species in the Oddworld series has a very distinct voice and speech style.
Q27 – Most epic scene ever.
The final boss fight in Dead Space. When it grabs you by the foot and swings you round, and you have to shoot it in the eyes before it lowers you into its mouth… Wow.
Q28 – Favorite game developer.
Nintendo
Their major franchises may suffer from advanced sequelitis, but they’re almost always highly polished and extremely fun, and coupled with their tendency to reinvent the game industry every so often, we have a clear winner.
Q29 – A game you thought you wouldn’t like, but ended up loving.
Left 4 Dead
I assumed it was a standard zombie shooter. I assumed wrong. Valve have done a fantastic job of ensuring that teamwork is not just an option, it’s a necessity. The game is well balanced in Versus mode, as both the Survivors and the Infected have the potential to absolutely dominate the other team – depending on who can work as a more effective team.
Q30 – Your favorite game of all time.
Super Smash Bros Brawl (AKA Encyclopedia Nintendica)
There is no other game that my brothers, friends and I have played so consistently for so long. There is yet to be a space of more than a few weeks between sessions of this since its release mid 2008.
I’m normally not really into fighting games, but I love the looser controls of Smash Bros, the interactive environments, the unpredictability of each match due to outside forces, and the inclusion of characters, weapons, environments, and items from every major Nintendo franchise.
We arrived at Ubisofts Sydney office at 6PM and asked the receptionist for ‘Owen’. Sam Fischer guided us to some nearby seats to wait for our host. It was there we met some other representatives from local media sites, this was also a good time to check my Streetpass for new inclusions. I had gained a few Miis from the people within the building, increasing my count by a few. Score.
It was a few short moments before we were greeted by Owen, our host, and lead into the preview rooms. The way it was set up was that we had four Playstation 3’s set up with preview multiplayer builds of Driver: San Francisco and we also had 3 Xbox 360 units set up with a multiplayer build of Call of Juarez: The Cartel. Our Capsule Computers party (consisting of Masterabbott, Matt Vella and Myself) were the first group to play Call of Juarez: The Cartel, with the other media outlets playing Driver: San Fransisco first.
Call of Juarez: The Cartel
Call of Juarez: The Cartel is a First-Person shooter (and third entry in a series of games) coming to the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and Games for Windows live platforms in a week or so.
The game about a group of what seemed to be Bounty Hunter types working with an FBI agent (or similar) to bring down a crime cartel of what seemed to be drug dealers. The game had us running around, killing gangsters and blowing up stuff. The things we blew up were generally tents of drugs, as our first mission was set in a woodland area, and was quite fun to do. One of the things I liked about doing that in the mission was that if you stood in the smoke spewing out of the wreckage, you would get hurt by the smoke and take damage. It was cool.
The multiplayer in Call of Juarez: The Cartel is (from what we can gather from the build we played) a co-operative affair. Generally before a mission, players would be grouped in a lobby area just outside the beginning of a missions zone and would all have to get into the car to indicate that they were ready to start. Once all players got into the vehicle, the mission would begin and players would have to follow their objectives. To make the game more interesting, the developers have also included an interesting system where players playing a certain character will have their own secret missions to undertake throughout each main mission. Like, for instance, in a level we played set in a suburb, the leading female character had to make a secret phone call from a drug dealers house while avoiding detection from the other players. It was really interesting doing this and being busted by another player.
Driver: San Fransicso
Driver: San Fransisco is a driving game (and the fifth in a series of games) coming to the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and Games for Windows platforms in September this year (unless there’s some kind of delay).
The game follows the story of a San Francisco police officer who gets into a car-crash and finds himself with the ability to possess other drivers within the city. This ability plays a prominent role in the multiplayer aspect of the game. The multiplayer in Driver: San Francisco is a competitive thing and is certainly a lot of fun. On the multiplayer we tried three game types, Trailblazer, Tag and Pursuit.
Each of the gametypes ended up being an incredibly chaotic and fun ordeal, with players trying to complete each objective all the while chaotically shifting between vehicles to do their best to win. Things got incredibly hectic in the Pursuit mode when everyone was charged with catching Phil.
In Takedown, players are charged with becoming police officers while another player is in charge of being a criminal. The police officers jobs are to deal damage to the criminal in order to bring him down. This is achieved by ramming and trading paint by the police officers. The player with the most damage dealt wins, unless the Criminals damage rate is higher than the next highest score. In this instance with Phil being the criminal, the opposing players managed to drive him into a corner and repeatedly ram him until he miraculously managed to escape by the breadth of a fiber of hair.
Trailblazer was an incredibly creative multiplayer gametype requiring players to follow a vehicle and stay within its trails. This is incredibly fun, especially at the point when it’s 3 players fighting over the position of just behind the vehicle. Much chaos ensues. If players eventually get taken off the trail, its incredibly easy to get back on by possessing a vehicle large enough and with just enough distance to collide with opposing players accurately.
Lastly, tag is pretty much how it sounds, one player is a vehicle that needs to be tagged while the other players need to tag that player in order to become it. Once you have the tag, you accumulate points in order to win. Whoever gets 100 points (not sure if this can be modified, it was 100 on the build we played) wins. Now, this would normally be a pretty straightforward affair, but once you slip in the shift mechanic, things suddenly become a little insane. Players who are not the tagged player can shift into other vehicles in order to catch up to and tag that vehicle. I remember at one point, I had shifted into a truck with a ramp on its back and had a player drive up that and get my tag and then also drive off. Was hilarious.
Overall we had tonnes of fun at Ubisoft and had a blast previewing these games! I hope that the final builds are as fun (or more fun) than these preview builds has been!
This week we have Michael Marr and Ben Webb back from Supernova 2011, but first we get into what we’ve been playing, talk about the weeks game news and before we wrap up we dive into our very own Zombie Survival Plans.
Cast: Alexis Ayala, Dustin Spencer, Ben Webb, Michael Marr
