University of Abertay Dundee undergraduates (200 of them!) have launched Play2Improve, a free online service that will help train new FPS players. It also provides work experience & training on marketing. The program will work by simulating live action and using learning tools based on psychological research. It has been made with world champion gamer Paul McGarrity. Play2Improve will make money through selling personal tuition and premium features.
Matt Seeney, Play2Improve Chief Executive, said, “Being based in Abertay University has been a great help while we develop and put the finishing touches to FPS Trainer. As well as the great facilities and easy access to computer games experts, having more than 200 students prepare marketing ideas for us is incredible! First-person shooters are incredibly popular games, but are fiercely competitive online. It can be very disheartening for inexperienced gamers to jump straight into a game like Quake Live and play online against very experienced gamers, some of whom might even be full-time professionals. By providing interactive training, FPS Trainer is much, much more sophisticated than the basic tutorial levels in games. Using computer gaming technology, psychological research and the skills of a world champion gamer, we’ve developed a truly unique service that will help gamers improve their skills, and enjoy their gaming even more. We might even help create a new world champion!”
Who knew that when Microsoft released Kinect, they would be creating a robot? Well technically it was AlexP of NUI, who hacked together a Windows Phone 7 and Kinect so that they are able to communicate.
As he says, “Kinect device hosts some pretty amazing hardware. For starters, the Kinect’s depth sensor is stunning. A quality depth sensing camera like this would ordinarily cost a couple orders of magnitude more than the Kinect device itself. For only ~$150, Kinect makes RGB-D type of sensing accessible to anyone. The potential uses are numerous including HCI, robotics, educational use, surveillance, motion capture, people/object tracking, 3D scanning, etc.”
It may not be too impressive at the moment, but considering that Kinect has only been out for 4 days, this project has got some serious legs. Haha. Legs…
Amazon.com is running a special offer where you can pick up one Kinect title and grab another at half price as long as it is all during the same transaction. Just add two Kinect games and you’ll only have to pay half price for one of them. That is quite a good deal.
There are eleven Kinect games taking part in the offer, which pretty much just includes all of the launch titles. The titles are (if you don’t know them): Dance Central, Kinect Sports, Your Shape: Fitness Evolved, Sonic Free Riders, Fighters Uncaged, Kinectimals, Kinect Joy Ride, Motion Sports, Dance Masters, Adrenalin Misfits and The Biggest Loser Ultimate Workout.
Go to amazon now, and pick up the deal while it lasts. The offer ends on November 13th.
If you aren’t busy playing a particular game that just released 18 minutes ago, then I’m sure you will be happy to see this weeks releases on the xbox live arcade. They include two games that aren’t so familiar, a reduced XBLA game that is quite a steal, and some demos for your tasting pleasures.
First on the list of unfamiliar games is Cave’s 1999 arcade cabinet and ‘manic shooter’, Guwange, which will be available Wednesday at 800MSP.
Secondly we have Faery: Legends of Avalon, an XBLA RPG. The price is currently unknown, but I am leaning toward 1200MSP. I feel my gut is going to be correct on this one.
Deal of the Week meanwhile is half price Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game. If you have picked up this game, I strongly suggest a try of the Demo. At 400MSP this game is a steal, and the soundtrack more than covers the many reasons why you would want to purchase this game. The deal will last until early morning of Monday, November 14th.
Finally, there’s a bunch of demos on the Xbox Live Marketplace right now for your tasting pleasures, keep in mind that the Kinect Joy Ride demo will require kinect, and Rock Band 3 requires instrument peripherals to be used correctly. For everyone else that doesn’t have these, you can enjoy the Apache: Air Assualt Demo.
Who’s That Flying?!, the newest game from Mediatonic, will release on November 16, 2010. November 16 will present some tough choices. Skulk around in period costume with hidden knives? Catch criminals in the latest cop super cars? Use a hyper powered lazer arm to save the citizens of Earth? After a freakin’ delay, WTF will be priced at 5.99. Get it on a the mini side of the PSP and PS3 on November 17, 2010 in Europe.
Paul Croft, head of games, Mediatonic states, “Who’s That Flying!? had suffered an unforeseen delay thanks to interference from the Doom Beasts, which hampered compatibility in some extremely rare cases when playing on the PS3. We wanted to take the time to rectify this to make sure that all players had the same (hopefully awesome) experience regardless of their setup.”
Game Name:Paperboy: Special Delivery Platform(s):iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad Publisher(s):Glu Games Inc Developer(s):Glu Games Inc Genre(s):Arcade Release Date:4th November, 2010 Price: $4.99 (BUY NOW!)
Overview
Do you still remember the original Paperboy that you used to play in the arcade back in the 80s? It has now comes to the iDevices! (Again!) The first port-over by Elite System Ltd. that reach the App Store in December last year was pulled due to licensing issues, and we thought we will never see it in the store again. Thanks to Glu, the game is now back on the App Store with a new game mode, more features and better graphics.
Gameplay
The core gameplay is similar to the original one on the arcade. You, as the paperboy, deliver newspapers to your subscribers. Points are awarded once you made a successful delivery. In each level, you will start from the bottom of the street with 3 lives and 10 newspapers (which is shown at the bottom of the screen). One life is lost every time you collide with the obstacles. It’s game over if you lose all your lives and you have to start all over again from the beginning. It is not easy being a paperboy (or papergirl) after all!
You will cycle along a suburban street with a long row of houses on the left side. No worries though. It is easy to distinguish the house of subscribers from the non-subscribers. The subscribers are indicated by a green mailbox and a yellow carpet by their doorstep. You can choose to deliver it to their doorstep or to their mailbox, but the latter will earn you more points.
As you cycle down the street, you have to avoid the obstacles to keep going. Some of these obstacles are stationary, while some will come rolling at your way. You will see trash cans, dogs chasing after you, burglars, lamp posts, moving vehicles on the road, random rolling tyres, a boy on a skateboard, a basketball guy, break-dancers, or even lawnmowers.
That’s not all. If you want to be the bad guy, you can vandalise the home by damaging their houses, such as throwing the newspapers towards the closed windows and you will see the windows break at that instance (newspapers can break the windows?!). You can do that to non-subscribers and ran away laughing. But if you try that stunt to your subscribers, they will unsubscribe. Less amount of subscriber means fewer newspapers to deliver, which results in lower scores. So be very cautious while planning your throws!
Glu has also included a new game mode. Yes, you heard it right. A new story mode is introduced, which they claimed to be easier than the classic mode. There are a total of 20 available levels for players to adventure through as the story unfolds, and there are plenty of mini-games within the levels to keep the players entertained. Are you bored of delivering newspapers? Now, you can race towards the end of the street at a given time, or be an archery-boy on the move by throwing newspapers at the bullseyes to challenge the global highscore. There are also 10 special abilities for you to unlock, like the yo-yo and the multi-paper throws. These abilities will help you in the later levels, which prove to be challenging (for me, at least).
Controls
In my opinion, Glu has implemented the controls mechanism very well for this game on the Apple portable devices. All you need to do is to tap anywhere on the screen to throw the newspapers. They are also generous enough to offer you 3 different control schemes to navigate around the street, which include the on-screen buttons with tilting controls, pure titling controls and a joypad.
The default controls utilizes the tilt controls and on-screen touch buttons to navigate as you cycle along the suburban street. Tilt your device backward or frontward to control the cycling speed of your bicycle and touch the on-screen buttons to move left or right. For a person who have never played the original Paperboy in the arcade (a person like me), the controls are easy to grasp and the touch-responsive controls allows you to enjoy the game greatly.
Graphics/Interfaces
The retro looks of the original game is kept with enhanced graphics. It fits the game really well and it will remind you of the original Paperboy that you have played back in the older days. I’m really impressed with the graphics, especially on Retina Display-enabled devices. It is nice to look at as everything is crystal clear on screen. Everything, including the menu. Also, the menu navigation is made easy with responsive touch controls, which is good.
Conclusion
I would say that Glu has done a good job in porting over everyone’s favourite classic game to the Apple devices. It has what you will expect from a Paperboy game, just better. It also supports multi-tasking and Game Center leaderboard on iOS4 devices, which is a great addition. You can compete with your friends in an attempt to dominate the global leaderboard. This will keep the players coming back to the game for more!
If you like the original arcade-style Paperboy, you will love this game. If you like a casual pick-up-and-play game, then this game is for you. Great replayability, more features, a new game mode, and enhanced graphics. What more do you want?
With a few patches already applied to the PC version and the two console versions there are still plenty of bugs crawling around the world of New Vegas, and I’m not talking about Giant Radscorpions here. Though expect this to change as Bethesda has now promised that they will be bringing up a comprehensive patch for Fallout: New Vegas on all systems and it will be available sometime in the next few weeks.
This patch is in it’s final testing phases and will fix many of the game’s biggest issues that have been reported by the userbase. Such as issues with save games on the 360 console and game ending bugs. There is also a patch coming inbetween now and then for the PC version to fix corrupted saves, and problems with Havok and NVIDIA. Hopefully this time everything will be running smoothly after this patch goes through.
Medal of Honor Platforms: Playstation 3 (Reviewed), PC, Xbox 360 Publisher: Electronic Arts Developer: Danger Close (Single Player), DICE (Multiplayer) Genres: Action, Shooter Release Date: Out Now
Overview:
Coming from a long franchise of WWII shooters, Medal of Honor has finally seen a reboot into modern times. But does it have enough to set itself apart from every other shooter that is on the market today? With as many changes that have been made to the Medal of Honor franchise has undergone, do they have what it takes to compete?
Story:
Just one year after the terrorist attacks on September 11th players there is an intense war happening in Afghanistan against said terrorists. Players take switch between different characters per level and each one is a Tier-One Operator. These teams called AFO Wolfpack and AFO Neptune signify the team names that players will be able to identify themselves with as they go along. There isn’t a figurehead enemy around however as players are there for one thing only; to help put an end to the war.
By jumping into the on-going conflict in the Middle East and placing players right in the middle of some of the battlefields where fighting still is going on would be a moving experience, if only players actually were able to develop any personal connection with the members of Tier One. There is barely any character development which means even when someone dies it only feels like one less body moving around on the screen which is a real shame. Put this together with the fact that action sequences play out like a bad war movie and you will be encountering the story in a nutshell.
Graphics:
Medal of Honor sets itself a step above from other war games as far as appearances go. There are problems of course but let’s go over what it does well first. The lighting is gorgeous, there are times when you are exploring a cave or exiting said cave and it reacts exactly as one would expect it to in the real world. These lighting effects create real to life shadow effects instead of the blobs of darkness that we have grown used to seeing. There are heat haze distortions outside in the desert, and the sun can blind you at times mimicking the real desert action.
There are times however that the graphics take a turn for the worse. Textures load in slowly at times which creates the effect that you are only looking at a partially finished part of the game until everything loads well enough. The frame rate drops slightly during the heavy action but this is far from a deal breaker. There is the occasional sign of pop-in visuals however but only on the fast moving sections such as the ATV area.
Gameplay: (Single Player)
As you enter the campaign mode you will soon be treated to a very gritty and intense action packed game that is full of your usual FPS features with a few revamps to the formula. For example while there is no cover system, players can lean out from walls by pressing the L2 R2 buttons. Speaking of controls themselves players are given full customization of their Y and X axis sensitivity which is useful for those of us used to fast pace twitch controls. The controls themselves are responsive and fluidly switch between whichever weapon you happen to be using.
I say whatever weapon because you will be given a few different options when it comes to weaponry in this game. There is a moment when you will be hopping inside of an Apache gunship and tasked with destroying enemy fortifications and these controls don’t suffer the slightest. But beyond the controls the overall gameplay just feels so full of tension and excitement that you will be sliding between cover hoping that this wall won’t shatter from bullets at any time.
While the gameplay is intense and enjoyable, there are plenty of moments that players will be having themselves either A. Confused on where to go, or B. Stuck waiting for their AI friends to catch up. This means that the game uses what is called a tripwire method. The tripwire method requires players to reach a certain area of the map before something happens, but in Danger Close’s tripwire it also requires that your AI partners set off the tripwire too. This only furthers the frustration when they get stuck behind rocks or stand there and do nothing while you are being pinned down by heavy fire.
Another additional mode that is unlocked upon beating the game is Tier 1 mode. This mode allows players to perform speed runs of the campaign levels and be scored by how fast they are going and their performance. There is even a trophy for beating every level’s par time. There are no checkpoints however so death means the restart of the level. This mode does give some replayability but many frustrations cause it from being truly fun. While the difficulty is increased, as one may expect, the players AI companions can cause the time to waste away as you wait for them to get into position for a certain action. This means that you could possibly miss the Par time by a few seconds simply due to faulty AI companions. There is also no online co-op or split screen available which is disappointing.
With a campaign that can last roughly six to eight hours it may be considered average length as far as other FPSs are concerned but with the addition of the Tier 1 mode it does help lengthen the overall replayability of the single player campaign and is worth competing with friends on the leaderboards.
(Online Multiplayer)
The multiplayer on the other hand was handled entirely by a different company from the rest of the game and even uses a different engine. DICE, using the Frostbite engine which has been made popular from the Battlefield Games, though the environment in this game isn’t destructible like one may expect from the BC series. Rather what establishes MoH’s multiplayer as its separate entity is the way that leveling up is handled and the class system.
While some who have grown accustomed to the full customization of Call of Duty will call pre-set classes restrictive but this is hardly the case due to the fact that everything is still customizable. There are three main classes to choose from; Assault, Spec Ops, and Sniper. The classes level up separately from one another, so if you are proficient as an Assault class, your Sniper class will still be level one. Classes will unlock different abilities and weaponry for the classes that they level up over time, though these will be restricted to the class they were unlocked for.
With that there are also four different modes of gameplay which bears a striking similarity to BC; these modes are Team Assault, Sector Control, Objective Raid, and Combat Mission. Though unfortunately there are only a few maps to be included into these modes. With a very small three for Combat Missions and five other maps for the rest of the gameplay modes. Which means one can expect plenty of DLC to expand upon the amount of maps that at launch is very small.
What also sets these maps apart however is the amount of detail that each one has. The graphics that are already stunning in the single player modes are carried directly into the online multiplayer. Meaning that players will experience the same effects of drifting smoke from grenades and light flashes just as if they were doing battle in a real battlefield. This also lends well to the fact that the maps are quite large and harbor 12 vs. 12 teams making for quite a large scale battle.
There is some minor lag issues that result in random deaths from unseen bullets but this usually only happens right in the midst of heavy action, causing a slowdown. This is hardly a deal breaker due to the fact that lag can always play a part in every battle, and thankfully is only a rare occurrence in MoH.
Overall:
With a storyline that fails to grip the heart of the players, one thing that Medal of Honor does right is set the atmosphere for what a real war zone would be like. Do not get me wrong though, the game itself is very fun and enjoyable and being immersed in such a realistic war setting does marvels to set MoH apart. The online multiplayer is enjoyable and though there are only a few maps to choose from at the moment, it doesn’t take too much away from the fun that you can have playing with your friends and taking down the “OpFor.”
I give Medal of Honor for the PS3
A copy of the game was provided for review by EA. The main story was beaten within 7 hours on Normal, and have begun working on a Tier 1 completion run. Sampled the online mode with each match type and dominated quite a few enemies. Completed with 30 trophies and looking to go back and get even more in the online multiplayer.
Developers Behaviour Interactive, formally known as Artificial Mind & Movement, announced two upcoming titles recently in celebration of the rebranding of the company. Naughty Bear 2 and Wet 2 both are now confirmed from the Canadian studio who are also going to focus more on creating original IPs in the future.
Here is an official statement from Behaviour on the rebrand and the expected titles in the works:
While Behaviour has always been recognized as a premiere work-for-hire game studio, the company has renewed their focus on developing original IP on multiple platforms alongside its work-for-hire business with major publishers. With five specialized internal studios (gamer, portable, online, downloadable and family), Behaviour offers a development solution for any project.
“We are and will always strive to be the best and most trusted independent game development studio in the industry,” said Rémi Racine, CEO, Behaviour. “The change in name is not only a return to our previous name but also an indicator of the evolution of the company. We have developed a strong reputation as a high-quality work-for-hire studio as well as a creator of our own original content and will continue to pursue both sides of the business. The new name reflects the renaissance of the company.”
“Wet 2 (multi-platform), Naughty Bear 2 (multi-platform), Doritos Crash Course (XBLA) as well as Rango (multi-platform), which was announced by EA and Paramount Digital Entertainment on November 4th (official press release), are all currently in development at Behaviour,” added Jamie Leece, Senior Vice President of Business Development. “We have just completed Sims 3 (Wii), and are also working on several unannounced games for Xbox 360 videogame and entertainment system, PlayStation 3 computer entertainment system, Nintendo’s Wii and DS systems, Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, next generation handhelds, a Facebook game to be launched in November and a Casual MMO to be launched early next year.
I wasn’t too crazy about Naughty Bear, but a sequel for Wet is great news to me. Behaviour Interactive seems to be concentrating on originality as well, which is what gaming needs. Now two sequels do not exactly scream original, but with the growth of the company should mean many more original titles like Naughty Bear and Wet should come fourth in the future. If you are a fan of either title this is great news and now I will be certainly keeping an eye on the Canadian Studio as there looks to be a lot to come from Behaviour in the future.
Have you played the Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit demo yet? We here at Capsule Computers would like to remind you that today is the last day to do so. But, if you are in withdrawal tomorrow, you should totally come back and watch these videos that make Need for Speed and Seacrest County look A-MAH-ZING! Of course, you might be too busy doing something with guns and whatnot, but if racing is still in your blood, look no further. I guess you could also watch these videos today, but that would would ruin this whole paragraph. Do what you wish though.
