The first trailer has been released for the upcoming Evil Dead App. While not much is known about the actual gameplay, from the trailer we get a good look at various cut-scenes from the upcoming app. It has a very LEGO game look – that is, slightly comical and caricatured from the film. No word on a release date or price but on the official website it is listed as ‘Coming Soon’.
Released yesterday, this is a new trailer for the all-CG Resident Evil: Damnation. A sequel to 2008’s Resident Evil: Degeneration, this trailer sets up the action with Leon S. Kennedy caught in a ‘European War Zone’ when unnatural creatures begin to appear.
Let me start off by saying that we did not have a Playstation Move to use for this review. Prostroke Golf admits that the big draw to this title is it’s full compatibility with the Move. Prostroke Golf’s other big draw is that anyone can pick up the game and play a round of golf. This proves true in the fact that I know nothing about the sport other than hit the ball into the hole and was able to jump right in.
The controls are simple using the left stick to swing your club and the buttons used to view various modes. You can use the caddy view mode to play in a third person view or switch to a Prostroke view that will put you right in the golfer’s loafers. The prostroke view mode would be much easier to use if you have the PlayStation Move controller. Each view mode has the shot setup, swing, and post shot options. In shot setup you can choose your correct club, adjust the ball, and zoom in on the pin. Swing mode pretty much says it all as this is where the main action is. Post shot let’s you speed up up your shot or watch a replay to help you on other holes.
The gameplay in Prostroke Golf is pretty limited and is nowhere as deep as other major golf titles on store shelves. There is a career mode, but there is just no meat to it and it gets repetitive after a while. In career mode, you have the option of running tournaments for fame and glory or challenges that pit you up against Mr. Daly himself. For what it’s worth if you are into gold you will find all the modes fun to play for awhile. Prostroke Golf has an online component to the game which is pretty standard to most sport games. You can set up a quick match or a custom game to head out on the links with your friends.
GRAPHICS AND SOUND:
The graphics in Prostroke Golf are downright bad. In this day and age of HD graphics, it really feels like you are playing off a last gen system. I found several weird FPS issues and some screen tearing throughout the play-test. The player models are bland and just do not seem real in any way shape or form. It’s like the developers spent too much time focusing on the move components rather than the graphics.
The sound in Prostroke Golf suffers as well. While not horrible, the courses just seem lacking of any life. It almost felt like you were playing in a bio-dome, void of all ambient life. The commentary is not bad but feels really out of place when it pops in.
FINAL THOUGHTS
If you have PlayStation Move Prostroke Golf would not be a bad rental to try out with your other PlayStation Move titles. Without owning Move I just can’t recommend this game to our Shogunites. The game has zero lasting appeal and there are far better golf games on the market to spend your time with.
Konami has released some new screenshots from its upcoming actioner, NeverDead. Due out on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 platforms on a future, as of yet unannounced date, the game puts players in the role of a wise-cracking demon hunter in a world consumed by a demonic plague.
Checkout the new screenshots, After the Break!
‘War. War Never Changes…’
Fallout: New Vegas is the latest chapter in the Fallout series, which started with the original Fallout back in 1997. After being brought into the first-person world with Bethesda Softworks’ Fallout 3, developer Obsidian Entertainment has created this latest chapter in the beloved series.
Unlike Fallout 3, where you begin life as a vault-dweller, the player starts as a mail courier who has stepped into the wrong place at the most wrong time possible. In fact, you kind of die. Kind of. Suffice it to say that, upon being brought back from near-death, you get to customize out your character in a fashion that will be familiar to Fallout 3 fans. Character customization is fairly straightforward and Obsidian has made some of the skills a lot easier to select. For example, no longer do you have various ‘Gun’ skills (small, heavy, etc). In New Vegas, you simply have a ‘Guns’ skill. Of course, there is still an Energy Weapons skill as well as Melee and Unarmed abilities, but at least most guns are now grouped together. This comes in handy as the land surrounding New Vegas is fraught with danger and you need to be able to handle weapons of opportunity, whether it be a rusty pistol or a shiny laser rifle.
The area of New Vegas is actually built over the leftovers of what was once known as Las Vegas. In fact, there are so many familiar settings in the game that it made this Southern California resident hungry for a trip up the I-15 to actually play some craps! For instance, I was pleasantly surprised to see the roller-coaster and ‘Buffalo Bill’s’ esque casino at Primm – not to mention towns like Searchlight, Jean, and Boulder City on the map. Unlike the D.C. Wasteland, the Mojave area was not directly hit by the nuclear warheads (well, not as many) so much of the ground water is rad-free and there is plenty of plant-life about… And animals.
The actual gameplay of Fallout: New Vegas is similar enough to Fallout 3 that no detailed review is needed of the system, suffice it to say that it still does work. Rather, the changes from that system are what truly matters in this case. For instance, some of the old gameplay issues remain, like a wonky cinematic camera as well as strange cinematic animations. However, Obsidian has made a few additions to the gameplay mechanics which add a lot to the overall experience. First of these enhancements is the new crafting system. No longer are you stuck just crafting various one-off weapons. Now you can craft ammo at reloading benches as well as new weapons, mods, and food at crafting stations and camp fires. There are a lot more component types out there to use in said stations as well. Going back to ammo, now you have various degrees of ammunition for each caliber of weapon. You can get armor piercing rounds of +P rounds even!
The next big addition to the game is the faction system. No longer do you have just one reputation gauge with which all NPCs in the game world judge you by. Now, you can earn and lose reputation with a multitude of in-game factions. From the roguish Powder Gangers to the New California Republic. Pissing off one side may increase your standing with another. Furthermore, altering your rep too much can cause some sides not to deal with you anymore, shutting off access to certain quests.
This allows for a lot more re-playability in New Vegas, as you can explore the benefits of each faction against the others. Also related to this faction system are disguises. If, for instance, you put on a Powder Ganger’s armor you will become disguised as one of them. This came in handy as I explored the correctional facility near Jean. I entered a cell block, eliminated the enemies in the area and donned some of their armor before leaving. The various enemies in the courtyard were not alarmed by me at all, even after repeating the process through several cell blocks.
Obsidian has also added a lot of new weapons to the game, from 9mm pistols to my personal favorite – the Light Machine Gun. Nothing says ‘fragged’ like a hail of 5.56mm rounds peppering an enemy target. There is even a laser-based sub-machine gun which will leave enemies burnt to a crisp in no-time flat. A big emphasis was placed on combat in this Fallout game, it is much more the Aliens to Fallout 3’s Alien.
The stories and quests of New Vegas are where this game really alters from its predecessor. In Fallout 3, your main storyline was VERY epic and all-consuming. In New Vegas, you are already born into the outside world and the main story feels like more of a guideline than a rule. At 18 hours in, I had yet to be in New Vegas and was instead doing all of the quests scattered across the landscape I could find. The game has an incredible amount to do and see. Its almost a post-apocalyptic life simulator than sci-fi game. This is not a negative by any means, it is actually rather refreshing.
Surprisingly, this Fallout game is plagues by bugs – including numerous crashes to the desktop. I have gotten into the habit of saving quite often just in case as these CTDs appear out of nowhere. These bugs are not just on the Windows PC version either, as many Xbox 360 gamers are complaining about similar issues (albeit not CTDs). One has to wonder how the Obsidian QA process contrasts from that of Bethesda’s in order to let these bugs hit retail shelves.
Visually, the graphics of Fallout: New Vegas look only slightly better than those in Fallout 3. They are good, but not great, and I was disappointed that the visual quality had not been increased further since the last game. Sound design is excellent, with the world of New Vegas and the Mojave area teeming with various ambient noises. Actors are all incredible, from Battlestar Galactica’s Michael Hogan to Friends’ Matthew Perry to Ron Perlman (like you need a reminder). Everyone does a terrific job at giving their characters vocal life.
Overall, Fallout: New Vegas is a great role-playing experience, whether you are new to the series or are experienced enough to remember when you heard Richard Dean Anderson in a Fallout game. Despite its bugs, the game will provide you with a tremendous amount of playtime, just go out and explore!
Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick was released in 2003 and immediately got knocked down by most reviewers. I want to say this upfront because I think it got panned because of when it came out more than anything else. Had it made it out a couple years earlier it would have preceded Grand Theft Auto III, the game by which all following 3D shooters would be compared to from then on, and GTA3 was one hell of an act to follow. This is a shame because the game has so much campy fun and gore, it even has a button just dedicated to playing Ash quips (voiced by THE Bruce Campbell) whenever you want to!
The game starts with Ash narrating his story to a stranger who’s only shown as a pair of ancient eyes and raised eyebrows. It then fades to Dearborn, Michigan where we find Ash on a bar stool drinking away his woes on the 12 year anniversary of the death of his girlfriend (from the first Evil Dead game, Hail To the King which, in my opinion, is one to AVOID!). It is 20 years after the events of the Evil Dead movie trilogy and a local television show has found the infamous Necronomicon reading reel from the cabin and decides to play it live on-air. The result is a vortex over the television station, time travel, and lots and lots of deadites! I don’t want to give away too much of the story but it keeps the camp fun going from beginning to end and Bruce Campbell did an amazing job voice acting. It was made around the time the first Spider-Man movie was being made and was supposed to keep Ash around until Sam Raimi could get back to the Evil Dead series. In the end another video game and several comic lines wound up being the way that today you can still get your Ash fix. They even made two short comic runs of ‘Freddy Vs. Jason Vs. Ash’, a highly rumored about movie project that fell through and became comics that read like an Evil Dead film.
Atmosphere:
Back to the game though, this game does a great job of keeping the creepy atmosphere. The Deadites travel fast and Dearborn is soon a ghost town with only a few untouched or un-eaten inhabitants. Paper flutters on the breeze, the music is dramatic and the streets are sparsely lit by street lights. It can be hard to see the Deadites as they wait in the shadows or attack on poorly lit streets. Through all this runs Ash, a bit hunched over, as he kills Deadites in gore-filled attacks and keeps his famous macho/idiot persona. If not for his quips and the over the top gore this might have been a game that was taken serious with the solidly creepy atmosphere. But Ash keeps it fun through multiple time periods and locations.
Game Play:
The areas are pretty large and elaborate with lots of killing to do and a few locals to talk to in order to advance the storyline. You dual wield weapons and you can choose different ones depending on mood or effectiveness throughout the game as you pick them up. Weapons are also upgradable throughout the game giving you more boom for your buck as you go and you will need it, at times there are over 30 Deadites coming for you all at once. Camera tracking can be a little awkward and swing a bit wide not showing what is in front of you, but this is solved quickly by hitting a single button. The game has combos which are rewarded with extra quips when delivered and health is measured in blood drops on a bar in the upper corner. When things get crazy button mashing does work, but might not work as well as strategic map placement and maneuvering. You also find spells as you go so that if you manage to read them just right you can hit the Deadites with their own medicine, but if you don’t pronounce every single syllable correctly you might find yourself on your back in a world of hurt.
Controls:
Controls are pretty straight forward and easy to work, in some cases almost too easy. The game has an excellent enemy lock system which makes some kills too easy as you learn the enemy’s pattern, pick the right weapon and run around while your shots always hit home. I found it was almost as much fun to not use the lock system and manually aim though this makes combos much harder. With the lock system the last boss is way too easy, which combined with the straying camera are really the two biggest issues with the game. Luckily the ending after the boss is still worth it.
Graphics/Audio:
Graphics for 2003 are pretty good, but probably were rendered a little simpler to avoid loading screens and to allow the actions of over 30 Deadites to be attacking at once and still not lose the gore factor. The gore is rendered very well, with huge amounts of blood spraying in an arc as you slash through Deadites with the chainsaw and blood trails well from the Deadites that are blown in two and are still crawling after you. The television I was playing on was far bigger than the one I had back in 2003 but the game still looks great on a large LCD screen. Audio is crisp and excellent, noises sound like they are coming from the room you are in and Ash’s voice is perfectly clear as he delivers his one-liners. They also have comments for when you reclick on objects or stop moving Ash for a while like ‘Excuse me… hello? Time to wake up and smell the corpses!’ These are pretty common these days but was kinda special back then. Heck at one point while playing it I just kept hitting the Ash comment button in response to all my wife’s questions.
Playtime/Cost:
It is a pretty quick play, probably can be done in one dark and stormy night, though it is more fun to kill some extra Deadites and hear Ash/Bruce Campbell deliver as many quotables as you can. Since the game is several years old you can pick it up for pretty cheap new or used, probably the hardest thing would be to find it, which on the internet is only a couple clicks away. Plus one of the extras included is a terrific video of some of the greatest moments in Evil Dead history, through the original film right up to the game, with ‘making of’ segments for the game and comments from Bruce Campbell about the Evil Dead franchise and the game play of A Fistful Of Boomstick. I have put this game on just to watch that video before.
Last Call:
If you are looking for some camp to go with your horror gaming, Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick is a great way to get yourself in the holiday mood… or just release some stress. If you are an Evil Dead fan this is part of the storyline you really should experience. Final Word: ‘Groovy’.
*DISCLOSURE: I am a huge Bruce Campbell fan. But if the game sucked I would still tell you, like the Hail To The King game, man that was painful.
EA Sports MMA is radically different than its competitor in terms of in-game control. EA Sports has imported the very popular ‘Total Fight Control’ method used in the Fight Night series. Instead of mashing a button to do repeated strikes, the player uses the right stick to perform various types of motions. The left stick controls the player’s movement including dodges that work to setup your right stick strikes. You can go for quick, timed jabs or looping crosses to do serious damage, Holding down the left trigger will switch the stick strikes to leg kicks and the right bumped is used to switch the striking to the body. As with Fight Night, the system feels smooth and works really well with most actions. When a player needs to hit a cross or uppercut the stick doesn’t respond as quick but still gets the job done. When fighting in the game it seems really hard to ring your opponents bell. There was one match where my opponents face was literally smashed meat and he did not go down. On the flip-side, it is really easy for a fighter you control to get the knockout. In a fighting game there should be a better balance between striking and ground work.
As with any mixed-martial arts match, striking is not your only option. you can clinch your opponent using the Y button and, from there, devastate people with knees or hit the A button to attempt a throw. The A button is also used to perform takedowns that bring you into a whole new world of MMA. The ground game in EA Sports MMA is where the fun really comes in. The EA Sports team set a focus on making EA Sports MMA all about strategy. As you hit the ground with your opponent you need to figure out how to get the correct position. Strike to pass and pass to strike is a phrase commonly used in the game. Instead of just smashing buttons you need to setup your position with a few strikes and then hit the A button to advance. This will put you in different situations like side control or full mount. This is not easy though as your opponent is constantly trying to turn the tide. The player’s controller will vibrate and you need to hit the B button at the correct time to counter the move. Once you get in a good position you can either go for the big strikes or hit a submission. You would think that this is all about slamming home a button until you get the KO or tap out right? Once again, the player will be very wrong if they go that route. EA MMA has a stamina system that makes the player watch how much energy they have left to act. If you run out of gas, then you are far more likely to get reversed or your punches will not have much force behind them. Once you land a submission using the X button the game takes you into a mini game of sorts. Choking submission use a ‘Sweet Spot’ type game where you need to following the lighted area of the circle with your left stick. Has you hit the area the vibration and circle will increase until the opponent taps out. Armbars and other limb type submissions will enter a stamina management type system. You need to hit the X button and watch your stamina bar to increase the power of the submission. The on-screen graphic will show an x-ray type view of the opponents limb until they finally tap. Overall, the gameplay in EA Sports MMA is a fresh change to games of that sport.
CAREER MODE
The first thing anyone playing a sports game wants to do make themselves into a fighter right? EA Sports MMA has a robust career mode taken right from the Fight Night series. You start by creating your character with a pretty deep character creation system. You can go as far as using EA’s Gameface to import your face right onto the fighter. The only problem here is that you have to start from scratch even if you already have a gameface from another EA game.
Once you have created your fighter and picked their fighting style you are sent out to Bas Rutten’s gym. Bas Rutten is not only a legend in the sport but a true character. Instead of just boring training menu’s and stat upgrades Bas’ quirky comments really wrap up the entire mode. It gives the career mode that real sense of story that previous games have missed. As you train and fight you will have the option to visit other gym’s run by legendary fighters. Each gym owner has a set of special moves to learn which are completed by mini games. Some of these mini games are extremely hard and not for the easy mode player. After you learn your move you can add it into your arsenal for all future matches. This gives the player the chance to step up their game, no matter what style of fighting they picked. Each pre-match session consists of 8 weeks of training. Training can be done by the player or simulated depending on how involved you want to be. While I understand the need for these training weeks I have yet to see a MMA game that will just sim all the weeks at once to let you get to the match. The training weeks can really put a wall in the fast paced action of the fights. Overall career mode is all about winning titles and gaining fame. EA Sports MMA delivers on a fun career mode that adds a bit of much needed story to your created player.
ONLINE MODE
While I did not test much of the online mode EA Sports MMA offers your traditional online fighting via EA’s Online Pass service. The one twist on EA Sports MMA’s online mode is the ability to have your actual online matches scouted by someone at EA. If picked by EA, you could be tapped to participate in a live online match for prizes. This is a pretty interesting twist to online player and brings some of the e-sports side to the genre. I would love to see this in more EA Sports titles.
PRESENTATION AND ROSTER
EA Sports MMA sets out to deliver the ultimate MMA experience to the fans. If you drop the ball on the presentation then how can deliver that experience? It’s a good thing that, in classic fashion, EA hit a home run with the presentation in EA Sports MMA. The player has a bunch of arena’s to choose from that are detailed right down to the actual announcers. It was a big surprise to play in one of the DREAM arena’s and hear the famous ‘screaming lady’ announcing the fighters. Each fighter has their own ring entrance complete with pyrotechnics and the official Strikeforce announcers call each fight. The presentation is very TV-like and had no glitches. The roster in EA Sports MMA is huge, drawing mainly from the Strikeforce league. Legendary fighters like Bas Rutten and Fedor are in the game but EA Sports MMA really gives a spotlight to younger stars like Jake Shields. On the international tip, several fighters from the DREAM organization are also featured.
GRAPHICS AND SOUND
The graphics in EA Sports MMA are crisp and the fighters’ likenesses are spot-on. The game moves smooth with no noticeable glitches. One fear I had was that, with EA Sports titles, players can sometimes look a little cartoony. Thankfully, the fighters in EA Sports MMA do not suffer from this and add a lot of realism to the game. The only place needing a bit of polish was the damage to the actual fighters. In MMA people can get really messed up in a fight and while a little blood splatter can happen it was hard to see damage on your fighter. The sound in EA Sports MMA is also a bit of a tricky beast. The announcers are spot-on and Bas Rutten’s voice overs were great. I did however encounter a weird strange bug throughout my entire playtime. There were many points in every mode where the sound was almost fast forwarded for no reason. It was as if someone was hitting the button to garble and speed up the audio track. This became very distracting and made it sometimes hard to figure out what was going on, especially in training.
FINAL THOUGHTS
While EA Sports MMA is not perfect, it is a huge step in the right direction for the MMA game genre. EA Sports has laid down the gauntlet with EA Sports MMA and challenged any and all comers. If you are a fan of mixed-martial arts, then you should check this one out right away.
Harmonix and MTV Games have unleashed Rock Band 3, their new music game platform to the USA. The game is available now for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii and the DS, and will be available in many other territories on October 29th. The game features 83 songs right out of the box with such artists as Phish, Anthrax, and a whole lot more. Rock Band 3 is also fully-compatible with the Rock Band Music Library, which currently has over 2,000 songs in its vault.
Thom Robertson has released a new gameplay video of his spaceship bridge simulation, Artemis. In the game, players each use their own PC or laptop to simulate a bridge station and the ‘Captain’ makes commands as needed – as is the case in most of the sci-fi shows on television. The game demo is free to download and play, and looks to be a fun time if you could get your friends and the needed hardware together. The full version of the game costs $60 dollars.
Sony Online Entertainment and DC Comics have revealed Scarecrow as one of the villains in their upcoming MMORPG, DC Universe Online. DCUO is due out early next year and will allow players to become a super-individual of their own design on either the side of good… or evil.
Checkout some additional images of the Scarecrow, After the Break!
