Assassin's Creed III World Premier Trailer

Devil May Cry 5 Public Enemy Trailer

Lastly from Capcom's Captivate was a new trailer for the upcoming Devil May Cry game. Sadly still no release date yet.

Lost Planet 3 Announced

Another game to rise out of Capcom's Captivate event, and quite possibly stole the show was the reveal of Lost Planet 3.

"Lost Planet 3 reveals new truths about the foreboding planet and the colonial history of E.D.N. III. Lost Planet 3 introduces Jim, a rig pilot who leaves Earth to take on a hazardous but lucrative contract on E.D.N. III.

Working for Neo-Venus Construction (NEVEC) who are preparing the planet for colonization, Jim joins his fellow pioneers at the Coronis base and begins surveying the uncharted terrain and obtaining samples of the planet’s energy supply – Thermal Energy". 

Check the trailer below.

Resident Evil Captivate Trailer and Release Date

At Capcom's 2012 Captivate event in Rome recently press were able to get the first look at Resident Evil 6 in action. 

release date and a new trailer. The game has now been earmarked to ship globally on October 2nd 2012 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, with the PC version "to follow". 

At Capcom's 2012 Captivate event in Rome recently press were able to get the first look at Resident Evil 6 in action. Among the announcements was the information that the release date globally would be October 2 for both X-Box 360 and PS3, with a PC version to follow. 

Also released was the latest trailer which shows some amazing footage and some interesting developments. The addition of Wesker's son, bringing Ada and Sherry back into it and what seems to be a fight between Chris and Leon has completely blown me away. This is one of my must gets for the year.

EB Games Expo 2012

The 2012 EB Games Expo has finally been announced!!!

Over the last couple of days there have been multiple hints on the EB Games Facebook page leading to the official reveal yesterday. This year the event is based in Sydney and is being held over three days from     Oct  5 - 7 with tickets going on sale from May 24. Alongside this, the EB Games 2012 Expo website was also launched which, whilst not finished at present (will be up May 2), you can play a cool little game that can win you a pass. I will post more about this below.

Not much has been announced so far but there is a secret document you can access on the website by clicking on the EB World mascot Buck and entering your EB World code which shows you some interesting clues on what we may see... if you don't have and EB World card yet I suggest you head to your local EB and get your hands on one. It's the best thing since sliced carrots...

What gamer are you? 

That is the question you are asked when you head to the EB Games 2012 Expo website.  After taking a test and answering a few cool questions you will receive a character and a description on what sort of gamer you are (along with this you can follow some instructions to win free passes to the show, one of which will be given away each day up until May 2). I took the test and got the - 'I'm a brooding, old school, jammin' gamer. Hey, throw this guy a lancer and it is pretty damn accurate.

Borderlands 2: Doomsday trailer

Become a vault hunter, up against a massive world of creatures, psychos, and the evil Handsome Jack. A bazillion weapons just got bazilliondier! More wub? Zero? Shut up and take my money.

Mass Effect 3: Taking Earth Back Trailer

Watch the epic CG launch trailer for Mass Effect 3. The war to Take Earth Back begins on March 6, 2012.

ESRB Rating: MATURE 17+ (Blood, Partial Nudity, Strong Language, Violence, Sexual Content)

A friends thoughts Part 3. Brad vs Skylanders

Epic Skylander whinge session = go

I think the hardest thing to write in here, would be a word apt enough to describe this fucking atrocity without alienating and offending ninety percent of the Internet.

Activision are a company that pride themselves on feeding off the moronic gaming consumer bleeding the common man off his hard earned dollar for tiny shit dribbles of content.

To quote somebody from my …. small circle of associates and companions -

“DLC? In my day they were called patches, and they were free”

Anyway while I have limitless hate for these fuckheads let’s get this topic back on the rails.

Now for the non gaming types who loathe themselves enough to read my textual vomit - Skylanders is a video game aimed at children 12 years and below, A typical adventure game with cutesy character based off Spyro style platforming elements.

This may seem harmless, aside from one small factor that leads to the sheer criminal ideal of the game itself. The game comes packaged with a small “platform” and three character figurines, to play as a certain character in the game - you are required to place this small plastic piece of fuck onto the glowing platform so you can use them.

Now the kicker here is, certain parts of the game are only accessible using certain characters and you only get three in the box.

You have to buy the rest separately.

This is where my limitless agony comes into play, not only do these psychopathic parents fork out ungodly amounts of money on buying these excess characters, Acitivision purposefully undersupply them in order make mothers froth at the mouth. Over the past two months I have had minimum eight people per day asking for these figurines, the majority of them with an aggression and sense of entitlement that makes me want to reach through the telephone and end them with a swift grip to the throat.

So here I am at a store level, I have no control over stock of these tiny soul destroying fucks. ($14AUD per character by the way) But of course them not being in stock is all my fault, So I take all the abuse while Activision plot the next money thieving software to make them rich beyond mortal comprehension.

I think I made a mistake listening to Ghost by Devin Townsend Project while trying to write this blog entry, because it really is quite impossible to stoke the fires of loathing when his music is relaxing the shit out of you - anyway most of you get the point, obviously this wasn’t directed at being a humour filled posting, more my own personal venting. So if you didn’t enjoy it - I’m pleased I ruined somebodies day besides my own.

- Brad

Australia finally gets R18+ classification for games

The Federal Government has introduced legislation to establish an R18+ category for computer and video games in Australia.

Currently in Australia, the maximum legal classification for games is MA15+. Games that are not considered suitable for children are refused classification and banned.

In 2009, the Government received close to 60,000 submissions in response to a discussion paper on the matter.

Minister for Home Affairs Jason Clare says the legislation is scheduled to come into effect at the start of next year.

"This will bring the classification categories for computer games into line with existing categories used to classify films and make the Australian classification regime more consistent with international standards," he said.

The editor of Australian computer-gaming website Kotaku, Mark Serrels, says an R18+ category has been a long time coming.

He says many games currently rated MA15+ are not suitable for children, but their parents have no way of knowing.

"We need an R18+ rating so parents are aware of what games are suitable for children and what games aren't," he said.

"This is something that has been going on for over a decade now so it's really positive that this is happening."

A national telephone survey conducted by Galaxy in 2010 showed 80 per cent of the 2,226 people contacted said they supported the introduction of an adults-only category for games.

SOURCE

A friends thoughts on Star Wars: TOR

I'll begin by saying I can be much more critical, and likely more offensive in my reviews than what you may have read previously on Scarecrow Games. With that in mind, I bring my attention to Star Wars: The Old Republic.

The MMORPG to bring down the numbers of World of Warcraft? I sincerely doubt that. I concede that SW:TOR is polished and refreshing in comparison to the aging beast that is WoW, but to claim it will tear away it's fanbase in favour of lightsabers and starships is presumptuous at best and arrogant to boot. Quite fitting of EA, if I may indulge in the pleasure of slamming a company that was the mastermind of an atrocity such as Origin.

I digress. Having finished with my “EA is evil” rampage, we move onto SW:TOR.

Initially I was excited at the prospect of traversing the Star Wars universe as some kind of strange Lucas inspired being, beating on the Rebel scum and Force choking the life out of a Twi'lek. I was astonished to find my first companion was indeed an annoying Twi'lek female with a shock collar around her neck. The pleasure of pushing that buzzer to wipe the smug look of her face with every snide remark was gleeful, to say the least.

And then, I came to a sudden realisation. I had spent the better part of my week searching dark tombs, waiting for a decent level enemy to respawn to pick up another 20 credits and a fucking worthless datapad.

I realised I had already grown weary of the routine, the same routine I had tried to overcome in past MMORPGs. As much as I love the Star Wars universe, it just couldn't surpass the grind. Maybe it was my ADHD kicking in, but I felt bored.

Graphically, the game looks and plays like Warcraft. The combat system mimics Warcraft. The mechanics are Warcraft. I can't see past it! The true saviour of the game is the fully voiced conversations in your character prologue and Mass Effect style speech wheel, with a standard “Nice guy”, “Couldn't give a shit guy” and “Sinister, broody guy” options, to declare your Light or Dark side intentions. But the prologue only lasts around 20 levels and you're back to the grind!

To be dissapointed in this game is an admission I am, regrettably, forced to make. (No Lucas pun intended.) I wanted to love this game and pour hours into shaping a character that felt like my own. But in the end, almost all the level 50 characters look the same. There seems to be no individualism.

Put all this into a package without Australian servers and you have a clone (Am I pushing this too far?) of a decade old game with lightsabers, and enough lag in the Imperial Starfleet area to make your eyes water.

If you are a slave to the grind and enjoy lightsabers more than original gameplay, this truly is the game for you. If you were bored of DC Universe a week into it's free to play release, then steer clear. Perhaps the game will better itself through added content, but as with all added content in MMORPGs, expect a laundry list of bugs, glitches and patch updates to surely follow. Nothing special here, but surely enjoyable to true fanboys. 2/5

- Luke

Battleship: The Video Game

Activision and Hasbro Announce Upcoming Battleship: The Video Game

Hasbro and Activision have teamed up to present Battleship, a video game adaptation of the movie being released in cinemas with the help of Double Helix Games.  The game features strategic naval command and first-person action gameplay. The game follows Cole Mathis as he fights against an aquatic-based alien.

Combining strategy simulation with first-person shooter gameplay, players take on the enemy beachside while ordering attacks against their marine counterparts. Switching between battlefield and the overview Battle Command map, the game contains carriers, cruisers, destroyers, submarines, frigates and more to keep it interesting.

Battleship: The Video Game will be available on PC, PS3 and X-box 360 this April. Check out the video below.

Gotham City Update and First DLC for free!

When the game launched it did so with the assistance of an army of new dedicated servers to drastically reduce latency issues. Along with that they have slightly decreased the Thunder Dragon’s damage to put it on a more even playing field, fixed the quick-scope exploit, made other weapon balance tweaks and even spent some additional time optimizing maps to help with some frame-rate issues. (Oh, and added some more Calling Card unlocks at the early levels!)

But they are not stopping with that. In March they are going to release the first DLC for free, which includes:

A BRAND NEW MAP: The 25th Floor of the Gotham Times building is about to be your playground for destruction! (Just make sure not to fall of the edge.)

JOIN-IN-PROGRESS: Players can now join a match, even after it has started!

MATCHMAKING FIXES: Matchmaking has been totally revamped! Those errors you remember? They’re a thing of the past. Gone. Finito.

NEW WEAPONS: The Falcon Blade (a bullet-blocking katana worthy of warfare in Gotham) and the Kingmaker (a quick-draw pistol that can humble even the mightiest of Mighties) are available to unlock!

A NEW SUPPORT ITEM: Toxic Gas! Leave a cloud of nigh-invisible noxious vapors in your wake, that will impair and damage those foolish enough to follow you.

A MULTITUDE OF NEW COSTUME CHOICES: In addition to the myriad of costume items already available, they are letting you dress up like a luchador, a corporate schlub gone mad, and so much more!

NEW FUN FACT: The new Nimble Fingers Fun Fact will let you capture Gasblasters faster, and attach/detach batters quicker.

MUTE EARLY, MUTE OFTEN: Ever wanted to squelch that guy blasting techno in the pre-game lobby? Now you can! Easy peezy, lemon squeezy.

Diablo 3 pushed back again

Not much info here sorry guys, Diablo III delayed again... Blizzard now shooting for a Quarter 2 release date. Gamers shouldn't expect the next instalment of the Diablo game franchise, before April.

Bethesda shows crazy Skyrim footage at DICE

Bethesda game director and executive producer Todd Howard debuted the below trailer showing new Skyrim features developed by Bethesda employees. None are guaranteed to see release, but among the concepts shown there were dragon mounts, seasonal foliage, new enemies, and all-new weapons and skill trees. Other features seen included Kinect shouts, building houses, adopting children, kill cams for ranged attacks, paralysis runes, moving platforms, running water in dungeons, flaming horses, mounted combat, fat giants, werebears, and more.

The new features are the result of Bethesda's annual “game jam,” a week-long event where employees are allowed to develop anything they want on company time provided they follow a certain theme. This year, the theme merely asked employees to develop things that could be implemented in Skyrim.

Sleeping Dogs Announcement Trailer

Square Enix London Studios, a part of Square Enix Europe, today announces Sleeping Dog, a gritty and visceral openworld cop drama set in the vibrant city of Hong Kong.

Developed by United Front Games in collaboration with Square Enix London Studios, Sleeping Dogs will be available in the second half of 2012 for the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.

Sleeping Dogs catapults players into the role of undercover cop Wei Shen, tasked with taking down one of the world's most fearsome criminal organisations from the inside... the Hong Kong Triads. As players explore the bustling and crowded Hong Kong island, through its neon-lit side streets and sprawling street markets, an incredible story unfolds of loyalty and betrayal, where Wei begins to question his own motives as he is sucked in deeper than he could ever imagine.

For more information about Sleeping Dogs, visit http://www.sleepingdogs.net

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Review

Official Site

Platform: 360/PS3/PC

Genre: RPG

Released: February 9

Kinect/Move: Not compatible

RECKONING

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, the epic battle that is EA's latest blockbuster role-playing game introduces a massive game world with many hours of adventuring to be had, the game promises us a lot and I intend to find out if it delivers.

Reckoning is an epic, open world role-playing game, dreamt up by R. A. Salvatore, (creator of Drizzt Do’Urden and author of The Forgotten Realms series) and brought to life by Todd McFarlane (artist, writer, toy designer and best known for creating Spawn), Ken Rolston (the lead designer of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion) and his team at Big Huge Games.

Drizzt Do'Urden

Spawn 

HOW IT PLAYS

The game has three main “Destinies”: fighter, mage, and rogue. This system lets you determine your play style. You can choose one style or mix depending on how you play. You can use a primary and a secondary weapon; whether you want to be a warrior who uses a sword, while shooting with a bow, or a mage that uses a staff, who also shoots magic from a sceptre. These styles and more can be mixed in any combination along with parries, combos and cancels. Each weapon also swings and damages differently, and the skills you unlock give them more power throughout the game; once you add advanced abilities such as advanced spells and skills the combat becomes the highlight of the game.

The enemies are varied, especially in the early and middle stages of the game. You encounter sprite-like creatures such as Brownies and Boggarts, wolves, bears, Tuatha, Ettins, trolls, you name it! The bosses are also stunning, holding some awesome challenges.

There is also Reckoning mode, where time slows and you have a ‘Fate’ meter that runs out wherein you can rapidly attack anyone nearby and finish them off in a brutal, intense way which also gains more experience as well as just looking cool.

As you level up, character development points can be distributed toward strength, sorcery or finesse, also worth noting is that you don't have to put all your points into one single style to make a decent character. Outside of combat, you can customize your character with a variety of skills ranging from blacksmithing and potion-crafting to improved stealth and hidden item detection.

LOOK AND FEEL

The graphics reminded me a lot of Fable with a colourful backing and kind of cartoon World of Warcraft type look and feel to it. There’s plenty of gorgeous scenery, crazy scenes and amazing town designs to satisfy, as well as a near endless supply of dungeons, quests and NPC’s to find. The world would take hours to run across from one end to the other (there is a fast travel option). In Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning you can even gain access to real estate. You can expand your home, add rooms, crafting stations and more which adds just another touch to the game.

The game continues on after the credits to let you keep adventuring if you wish, it also offers quests that cannot be completed until this time which also adds gameplay value if you wish to keep playing on. There is no New Game + which is a shame but hopefully this and future DLC will make up for that.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is out February 9 on 360/PS3/PC.

  

SCORE: 4.5/5 SCARECROWS

Melbourne Indie Wins Qantas Award

Melbourne-based independent game developer Harry Lee has won the recent Qantas Spirit of Youth Awards. As part of his prize, Harry will win $5000 in cash, a 12-month mentorship opportunity with the digital agency SOAP Creative, and a trip to the South By Southwest music festival in Texas, USA, to attend the music festival and meet leaders in the interactive content and gaming field.

18 year old Harry Lee runs an independent games studio, Wanderlands and last year released Impasse, a difficult and different puzzle game. More recently, Lee made a mythology inspired platformer called Midas. Midas was awarded four gold medals.

An active member of Melbourne’s development and community, Lee is involved in many projects promoting play making and game literacy, as well as hosting many informal game jams. Last year, he formed The Underground Collective, a society of young game developers in Melbourne who occasionally meet up to discuss, critique, and learn from current game development practices.

You can check out Harry's work here.

There are four new categories in the SOYA awards this year, including Animation, Interactive Content and Gaming - both worth a look if you're an independent developer doing your own new and exciting stuff. Creative categories close every month, so if you're interested in participating (and winning) head over to the SOYA365 site now for more information.

The Interactive Content and Gaming category was only added to SOYA this year and they were flooded with entries. Since SOYA aims to further the career of young creatives, judges looked for entries that showed a developer taking the initiative to create original, thoughtful, and creative work with their own unique style.

You can play Impasse and Harry’s latest game, Midas over at Kongregate.

Microsoft speaks on hacked X-Box Live accounts

Microsoft’s Alex Garden, General Manager of Xbox LIVE, has issued the following statement as a response to the recent flood of hijacked Xbox Live accounts:

Your Security is Important to Me

Since today is Safer Internet Day, I thought it’d be a good opportunity to share a few things that have been on my mind these last several months. Here at Microsoft we view this day through many lenses from online safety to privacy to account and data security and more, and we take your security and online safety very seriously.

As all of us know, account hijacking across the Internet continues to grow. It’s a thriving — albeit illegal — industry affecting online services the globe over. Last year, there was a surge of personal information being compromised and sold, and this undoubtedly has had an impact on all of us.While we here at Xbox have no evidence of a security breach in the Xbox LIVE service, that is of little comfort to our members whose accounts have been compromised by malicious and illegal attacks.

It’s in this vein I’m reminded how important it is to listen to you, our members — to really listen, to really hear and to really do something with what you say. I can assure you we are listening and continue to take aggressive steps to help protect you against ever-changing threats. We also care deeply about how this ongoing issue affects your experience with Xbox LIVE and your trust in us.

Security is an ongoing battle. No matter how well we work to improve security — and we are working every day to bring new forms of protection to Xbox LIVE — our work will never end. With every measure we put in place, ill-intentioned people will create new ways to attack online services.

That’s why I believe it’s more important than ever that our members are armed with information and security tools to actively partner with us in this war on fraud. We have a dedicated web page at http://xbox.com/security detailing all the steps you can take today to help protect your account.

What you’ll see here is the most common sources of attack continue to involve:

· social engineering to gather information about the user to guess the password;

· phishing, whereby the user types the account password into an illegitimate website that is pretending to be something else;

· malicious software on the computer that has captured the password; or

· using the same password from another online service that has been breached.

I share these realities in hope that our members will work with us to reduce the ease of access for hackers. Personal account security starts with setting strong passwords and routinely changing them, using a valid email and a unique password for each online service, adding a phone number, alternate email address, and a unique and private security question via the Windows LIVE ID Account Management site, and reducing the amount of personal information shared online or through social networks. More and more, being mindful of where you login to online services, even when not using Xbox LIVE, and using single-use codes, provides added protection, especially when you’re signing in from a PC that isn’t your own. Working together we can prevail over the criminals.

I realise it may fall flat when we don’t share specific details of our security architecture. However, some of the security measures we have in place to help protect our members include password-attempt throttling, CAPTCHA (an industry-standard anti-scripting measure designed so that an actual human needs to answer the challenge), strong proofs (trusted PC, pin sent to cell phone, secondary e-mail and security questions), and account lockout for multiple failed attempts and compromised accounts, which we investigate and recover to the rightful owner.

Getting ahead of potential threats of harm is an important area of focus. At a broader level, Microsoft continues to investigate cyber-criminals and bot nets, and help shut them down. And although this is an industry-wide challenge, we are an industry-leading company that believes in our responsibility to actively address online fraud and identity theft. As part of this commitment, we continue to put in place security features and process improvements to help secure Xbox LIVE.

Recovering compromised accounts — in a timely manner — is also a priority and an area where we’ve made, and will continue to make, improvements. We have invested more resources in our account recovery process and as a result, for most new fraud cases we are now able to investigate and return accounts within three days. For users who have added strong proofs to their accounts, this may be as fast as 24 hours. We still have a few cases that are taking longer to fully recover and some refunds are still being processed, but we’re making great strides. We hope our customers are experiencing the improvements firsthand.

We do not take lightly the frustrations we’ve heard from our loyal Xbox LIVE members and remain committed to addressing and persistently resolving our customers’ individual and collective concerns. For now, if you have a problem we haven’t yet resolved, please email me. Also tune into Major Nelson’s podcast this week to hear more about our work in the war on fraud.

With my sincere commitment to listen and take action,

Alex Garden

Email: Alex dot Garden at Microsoft dot com

General Manager, Xbox LIVE

LittleBigPlanet to get Kart Racing Game?

There is not much on it yet, but word coming out of Sony’s behind-closed-doors Destination PlayStation event announced that a LittleBigPlanet kart racing game is in development.

There are rumors that the game will be 3D compatible.

Sony also is planning to release an official PlayStation Move racing wheel, which will be compatible with the new Little Big Planet cart racing game.

Microsoft Flight Gets Release Date

Microsoft Studios announced “Microsoft Flight” will be available to download worldwide for free starting 29th February, 2012. In addition, the Hawaiian Adventure Pack, which includes the remaining Hawaiian Islands, a new plane and 20 new missions, will be available to purchase the same day for players looking to expand their horizons.

In addition to exploring Hawaii for free, fans can unlock access to the skies over the remaining Hawaiian Islands by purchasing the Hawaiian Adventure Pack, the first in a series of expansions For “Microsoft Flight.”

The entire island chain offers hundreds of miles to explore and includes stunning recreations of landmark features, from the breathtaking Waimea Canyon in Kaua’i to the high-rise hotels of Waikīkī.

The Hawaiian Adventure pack includes new challenges, five new job types and 20 new missions that will test the players skill.

It also includes the Vans RV-6A, a two-seat, single-engine, low-wing homebuilt airplane made famous for its speed and manoeuvrability.

It's been a while since the last Microsoft Flight Simulator, so it's no doubt this is going to be a big hit, and especially when it's free as well.

Marvel Avengers Alliance Australian Facebook Game

I don't play facebook games and I don't particularly like them, but I am a massive comic book fan, especially when it comes to Marvel so I am real excited to see how this turns out.

The first official Australian announcement from Disney Interactive Media Group about Marvel: Avengers Alliance - the new Facebook game developed by Playdom and the first Marvel title for Facebook.

Marvel: Avengers Alliance provides a combat role playing game experience with dozens of familiar Marvel superheroes and villains, including Spider-Man, Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Wolverine, Hawkeye, Black Widow and many more. 

Once a hero is added to the Avengers team, players can begin training them to unlock unique abilities and attacks, as well as using "ISO-8" to further customize each character's stats. Players will also be able to face-off against each other, challenging their social graph in super-powered asynchronous PvP battles.

Marvel: Avengers Alliance takes place in the wake of a galaxy-wide disaster, known as “the Pulse,” exposing Manhattan to attack from Marvel’s most formidable villains.  Players are recruited as an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., the secret espionage and peace-keeping organization of the Marvel Universe, to assemble and lead teams of superheroes with a mission to keep New York City safe from the clutches of villains.

Playdom has revealed the following playable heroes in Marvel: Avengers Alliance.

Characters Announced:

Human Torch
The Invisible Woman
Mr. Fantastic
The Thing
Colossus
Cyclops
Kitty Pryde
Nightcrawler
Phoenix
Storm

Black Widow

Captain America
Hawkeye
Hulk
Iron Man
Ms. Marvel
Spider-Man
Thor
Wolverine

Marvel: Avengers Alliance will be live on Facebook in Q1 of this year.

Resident Evil Revelations Review

Official Site

Platform: 3DS

Released: Now

Circle Pad Pro: Compatible

With the 3DS in all honesty needing new games to breathe some life back into the device, Resident Evil Revelations was a joy to behold. With gorgeous graphics, the classic Res Evil feel, Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield leading the story campaign (that can hit the 10 hour mark) and extras such as Raid Mode and Co – Op; Capcom have delivered a stunning game that really hits home. Read my review of the latest 3DS game below.

ROOTS BLOODY ROOTS

Resident Evil: Revelations takes you back to the roots of the old survival horror stylings of classic Resident Evil games creating the feel of tense, slow creepy gameplay with stop-and-shoot action that the more recent Resident Evil games have been missing. Saying that it does keep the new look, weaponry, and impressive boss battles seen in Resident Evil 4 and 5 as well as adding new elements such as a new scanning tool called the Genesis which can be used to scan enemies to unlock benefits and can help find extra ammo and supplies along your journey. The well-known Resident Evil weapons are back too of course and can be modified with collectable weapon upgrades, adding to the game.

STORY TIME

The story is set between Resident Evil 4 and 5 where Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield return, both working for the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance (BSAA) in the wake of a bioterrorist attack in which the island city of Terragrigia gets destroyed. Chris is partnered with Jessica Sherawat, and Jill with Parker Luciani, also BSAA agents. The game is set into episodes, which give you a "previously on Resident Evil Revelations” recap when you start playing again. This for the most part is a good fun way to set the game out, except I found save points were too far in between. I would end up leaving my 3DS on or having to sit and finish a certain part to make sure it saved and I didn’t have to start too far back.

The adventure begins on an abandoned cruise ship in the Mediterranean where Jill and Parker have been sent on board to search for Chris Redfield. Far from being empty, the ship hides new horrors that are waiting to emerge from the darkness and becomes the main setting for Resident Evil Revelations. The abandoned cruise ship, Queen Zenobia, is beautiful and is in some ways a tribute to the past with each room and puzzle taking pages out of old RE games. In one setting, you wake up as Jill and it feels, looks and plays out as if you are back in the Mansion from RE1. The graphics are impressive, and the 3D depth is just incredible, but it is still on a portable system so expect some framerate issues between large areas. When you leave a massive hall or use an elevator, the framerate suffers to a notable degree but does not really affect you too badly.

GAMEPLAY

There are new additions to the characters you will meet through the game as well as your partners, most of them with the standard wackiness we all know Capcom by, some interesting and some bland. One good thing about your partners is that they can’t die; this saves a lot of hassle as you don’t have to worry about them or the game can’t drag you into those escort type missions. The game is also Co – Op so you can play it with a friend online or offline in a number of ways.

Along with the gameplay which is all standard RE style, players can choose the shooting style that suits them with the ability to alternate between first and third person views to best pin point enemies. Another thing to note is that Revelations also supports the 3DS Circle Pad Pro. This add-on enables the more traditional set of shooter controls: the left pad for moving, the right pad for looking, the left trigger for popping into aim mode, and the right trigger for firing. The extra pad is not essential for enjoying the game, but if you aren’t one that loves Resident Evil's stop-and-shoot action this is a welcome addition. The touch screen is also used well and thankfully is not overdone. Whether looking at the map, choosing inventory or using it for puzzles through the game it never really hinders you at times.

REPLAY VALUE

The game also offers a fair bit of replay value. After you finish the initial 10 hour campaign you open New Game + and also Raid Mode which is reminiscent of Mercenaries or Horde Mode. Here, you complete areas from the campaign clearing them of enemies as quickly as possible. Enemies have health bars and damage numbers peel off with each bullet hit giving it an arcade type of feel. There is also a focus on loot drops and earning experience points to level up.

Resident Evil: Revelations is out now on 3DS.

  

SCORE: 4.5/5 SCARECROWS

Minecraft developer makes offer to fund Psychonauts sequel

2005's Psychonauts is a crazy platformer adventure game involving Raz. Raz is a young boy gifted with psychic abilities who runs away from the circus to try to sneak into a summer camp for those with similar powers. 

It is just one of those games that demands a sequel and us fans have eagerly been waiting years for one to arise. Now, us Psychonauts fans may finally get our wish, thanks to small discussions involving Psychonauts creator Tim Shafer and Minecraft creator Markus Persson.

"Let's make Psychonauts 2 happen." Persson tweeted directly at Shafer. He then tweeted  "Also, I'm serious."

Since then, Double Fine's Greg Rice has confirmed that "Tim and Markus are talking. I am highly excited for a new Pschyonauts game. Are you? Saying that though, lets not get your hopes up too high.

Official Portal 2 Mod Released for Skyrim

The other day I wrote about how the Skyrim Creation Kit was available Tuesday, and that there was going to be a little surprise. It has now been released on Steam and the surprise was also simultaneously announced.

Bethesda and Valve have teamed up to release an official Portal 2 mod which brings Wheatley to Skyrim (although only known as a Space Core). There was also mention of a mod to add Nolan North's voice into your game. Awesome!

Check the video below

There was also mention of a mod to add Nolan North's voice into your game. Awesome!

To celebrate the opening of the Steam Workshop for Skyrim, Valve and Bethesda have teamed up to bring you the Portal 2 Space Core mod, which will let the aggressively space-centric little robot tag along on your adventures in Tamriel.

Also, since Skyrim was the only major release of 2011 without Nolan North in it, you should consider this mod a patch to fix that problem. You can now feel free to include Skyrim in the “Nolan North” section of your video game library, which is to say, your video game library.

Ghost Recon Future Solider New Trailer

Ubisoft have released a new trailer for Ghost Recon: Future Soldier

Ghost Recon: Future Solder is due on X-box 360 and PS3 on May 24.

Namco Developing Dragon Ball Z Game for Kinect?

Blistered Thumbs announced that it has learned from a reliable source that Namco is developing a brand new Dragon Ball Z game for Kinect.

Apparently the game will be able to read your movements and allow you to pull off attacks from the anime series.

There were no real specifics but it is rumoured that the game has been in testing stage for some time. The game is still in early development so many aspects of the project could change.

Namco believe they have a big hit on their hands though. 

Hands on with Gotham City Imposters Beta

The latest PSN/XBLA game to be developed by Monolith (F.E.A.R.), Gotham City Impostors is a wacky spin on the Batman we all know, an first person online shooter with weird characters, gadgets and game modes it comes off as a fun intriguing game, with funny moments and a tonne of things to unlock. I give my impressions of the beta and a run through of things you will find in the game below.

When I checked my email the other week and found I had been accepted into the Gotham City Imposters beta I have to say, I was pretty excited. I love Batman and I wasn’t quite sure on the idea but it looked fun and I was really interested in giving it a go.

For the beta I played it on the X-box 360. After entering the annoying 25 digits, redeeming my code and starting the 1.7GB install I went and grabbed a drink while waiting for it to finish. Around 20 minutes later the download had finished and I started up the game.

The opening scene involved a bunch of poorly dressed Batman imposters fighting a bunch of joker dressed clowns. There were a couple of funny moments and the atmosphere comes across as a fun wacky game then more of a serious shooter such as BF3 or COD.

Right when I jumped into the game, the beta offers 2 online game modes and 'Initiation' which is basically the tutorial. Putting you in the shoes of a new recruit for the Batman imposters. In this mode you don’t fight anyone, but it gives you a good chance to learn the controls either by shooting targets or trying out the different gadgets available.

The other 2 game modes are ‘Fumigation’ and ‘Psych Warfare’. Fumigation reminded me of Domination in Call of Duty but with a twist, the teams (either the Batz or Jokerz) capture ‘Gasblasters’ which release gas in the air. The more the team releases the more they power up and can reach ‘Critical Mass’ which lets you launch a massive attack on the other team. This then results in bats swarming down that kill the clowns or poison that will kill the bat imposters depending on which team is winning. Psych Warfare is reminiscent of Capture the Flag or Demolition, also with its own twist. Your team has to capture a battery to power up a brain washing machine. Once the machine charges up it then demoralizes the opposing team, making them unable to use weapons or gadgets for a short time.

The game has sharp easy controls and fun gameplay mechanics, there is a good focus on creativity and the amount of customization you can do is overwhelming. Monolith have really put an effort into this game and it shows. The gadgets are one of the main aspects of the game and there are quite a few to choose from. This is what I found makes Gotham City Imposters different to other shooters out there. There’s a glider you can open near a vent or trampoline which allows you to glide around for a short while shooting or even dive bombing an enemy. The well known grapple is of course here too, which is pretty self-explanatory and is quite fun once you get the hang of it.

The one thing that lets me down is that it takes a really long time to get a game, though I am guessing this is just because it is a beta. Sitting in a room waiting to get a match for up to 10 minutes got frustrating. A game won't start until the match was completely full which would also add to the annoyance.

The layout is very cod like, having challenges, custom classes in which you can add mods, camo etc. Gotham City Imposters even has their own variant of the title/emblem layout called ‘Calling Card’. It goes even further though and allows you to make in depth changes to costumes and more. Which adds to the enjoyment greatly.

Gotham City Imposters should be around $15.00 and is available on the the PSN/XBLA marketplace from February 7 in North America, February 8 in other countries.

Skyrim Creation Kit available Tuesday

Pete Hines from Bethesda announced via Twitter that mod tools for Skyrim will be released as early as next Tuesday. There was also a mention of a 'surprise' though I have no idea what it could be.

The Kit gives access to Bethesda's own tools that they used to make Skyrim. Could be interesting, though there are already a lot of amazing mods out there already as we all know. Including the hilarious my little pony, spiderman, and soul calibur sword mods! 

Resident Evil Revelations cheats, codes and unlockables

Main Game

New Game +

We all know what this is. Beat Resident Evil Revelations to unlock the New Game + Mode. (All your weapons, ammo and upgrades will carry over into a new game).

Hell Mode

Beat the game on Normal or Hard difficulty to unlock Hell Mode (hardest difficulty).

Unlockable Weapons and Parts

Complete the following to unlock these awesome weapons/parts:

Weapons

·      PC356 Handgun - Defeat 150 enemies

·      PSG1 Rifle - Scan 15 hidden hand prints

·      Hydra Shotgun - Beat the game on Normal difficulty

·      Rocket Launcher - Beat Hell Mode to unlock with infinite ammo

Custom Parts

·      Bind - Dodge 20 times

·      Edge Runner - Scan all enemies

·      Long Magazine - Land 10 fully charged physical attacks

·      Charge Shot - Complete Casual difficulty

·      Auto Loader - Beat Casual difficulty without using herbs

Raid Mode

Stages

Complete the following (in campaign) to unlock stages (for Raid Mode):

·      Beating Episodes 1 – 3 - Opens stages 1 – 7

·      Beating Episodes 4 – 6 - Opens stages 8 – 12

·      Beating Episodes 7 – 9 - Opens stages 13 – 17

·      Beating episodes 10 – 12 - Opens stages 18 – 20

·      Beating the game - Opens bonus stage 21

Difficulties

Complete the following to unlock more difficulty levels (for Raid Mode):

·      Trench Difficulty - Complete Raid Mode on Chasm Difficulty

·      Abyss Difficulty - Complete Raid Mode on Trench Difficulty

Costumes

Complete the following to unlock costumes (for Raid Mode):

·      Jill (Ship) - Finish Episode 3 in the main game

·      Jill (Beach) - Beat the first Raid Mode level

·      Parker (Ship) - Finish Episode 3 in the main game

·      Parker (Beach) - Gain level 20

·      Parker (Terragrigia) - Obtain a rare weapon

·      Chris (Snow) - Finish Episode 3 in the main game

·      Chris (Ship) - Gain level 30

·      Jessica (Snow) - Gain level 10

·      Jessica (Ship) - Beat Raid Mode on Trench difficulty

·      Jessica (Terragrigia) - Reach level 40

·      Keith (Snow) - Finish Episode 6 in the main game

·      Keith (HQ) - Complete 50 missions

·      Quint (Snow) - Complete 100 missions

·      Quint (HQ) - Gain level 50

Characters

Complete the following to unlock characters (for Raid Mode):

·      Raymond - Clear every stage on Chasm difficulty

·      O'Brian - Clear every stage on Abyss difficulty

·      Norman - Obtain all rare weapons

·      Morgan - Find the real exit on stage 21

Colours

Beat every level in Raid Mode with an S ranking (not including the bonus round) on the following difficulties to unlock a different colour for your name:

·      Green name - Get S ranking in all levels on Chasm difficulty

·      Blue name - Get S ranking in all levels on Trench difficulty

·      Pink name - Get S ranking in all levels on Abyss difficulty