“Nicholson Electroplating” is available for download Tuesday, June 21 via PlayStation Network ($3.99) and Xbox LIVE (320 MS Points) and free of charge for owners of the Rockstar Pass. For those who missed out on the limited-time Rockstar Pass price discount, the promotion has been extended and will now expire on June 21.
Cycling enthusiasts take note, Cyanide Studios and Focus Home Interactive have announced that they will be bringing their cycling simulation, Le Tour de France, to consoles this Summer on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 platforms.
Patrick Pligersdorffer, CEO of Cyanide says, “It’s been a long time that we (at Cyanide) have been thinking of a cycling game especially designed for home consoles. We could not adapt on consoles what perfectly works on PC with Pro Cycling Manager, so we worked on different prototypes before arriving at a satisfying result last year. Tour de France is the first important step in our quest for the ideal cycling simulation for home consoles.”
ZEN Studios has announced that they will be releasing a Captain America inspired pinball table for their Marvel Pinball game on the PS3 and Xbox 360.
Set in the classic World War II environment inspired by Ed Brubaker’s Captain America 65th Anniversary Special, the table engages Cap, Bucky and members of the Howling Commandos in a full assault on Baron Zemo’s castle, where Zemo’s Death Ray and canisters of Adhesive X must be neutralized. As the game progresses, Cap will need to free his friends in the Howling Commandos and defeat several low-level missions as he works to confront the Sleeper before taking the Cosmic Cube from the Red Skull in the final battle.
The new table will be released on June 28th for the PlayStation Network and June 29th for the Xbox LIVE Marketplace.
In this new behind the scenes video for the upcoming horror shooter, FEAR 3, John Carpenter and Steve Niles take us into the game’s development
Duke Nukem Forever starts off 12 years after the events of Duke Nukem 3D – which, in case you have been living under a rock and did not know, also came out 12 years ago. Duke has basically become the king of Las Vegas after single-handedly stopping an alien invasion of the planet. Unfortunately, the aliens are back and Duke is called upon once again to stop them. STOP here if you are looking for anymore story, serious Modern Warfare-esque undertones, or deep meaning. Duke Nukem Forever is a misogynistic, raunchy, fun-filled game full of alien-blasting and boobs (both human and alien – Duke doesn’t discriminate when it comes to boobs). That’s it. If you are willing to leave your preconceived, “This game took 12 years to make it has to be the best thing since the rise of free porn the Internet”, notions as well as sense of decency and cultural morays at the door – you should have a great time! I know I did.
Seriously, this game starts off with the player controlling Duke’s aim while he urinates and, shortly thereafter, is seen just after getting oral sex from his two favorite “babes”. The controls are very straightforward for a shooter, WASD and mouse for movement/aiming and a couple of number buttons to plant explosives and throw grenades. Oh, also, you can use a couple more numeric keys to throwback a bottle of steroids for extra melee strength or can of beer for extra toughness. That’s right – steroids and beer, people, I told you this game was not a politically correct affair. Duke, being the guy that he is, is not powered or fueled by a health bar. Instead, Duke runs on pure, unadulterated EGO. By interacting with various, random objects in the environment (like alien boob sacks or a weight bench) you can increase your maximum amount of EGO. When hit, Duke feels less manly and, as such, his EGO bar decreases temporarily until you can get somewhere to allow it to refill. Obviously, this is just a health bar re-named, but it plays into the game’s main character and just feels right for this one.
The game also features several mini-game sections such as signing a young fan’s copy of your autobiography, “Why I’m So Great”, or even piloting a wrecking ball into the side of a building. The shooting sections are very simple in a Serious Sam kind of way and these additions to the gameplay help keep things interesting in between inappropriate sequences.
Duke has a couple new features since his last outing. It seems that he has developed (well, SOMEONE else developed it for him, most likely) “Duke Vision”, a night vision-like system of seeing in the dark. Oh, it also allows you to see through the clothes of the female characters in the game right down to their exposed breasts and panties. In case you have not deduced this from my description thus far, Duke Nukem Forever is a very mature game in terms of content.
Visually, the game is attractive to look at. I don’t think it will be winning any “Best Of” awards for its visuals but they do the job and appropriately show off every breast, corpse, and pig cop. The audio is similar to the game’s visuals in term of quality and appropriateness, but the real star here is John St. John, the original voice of Duke Nukem, returning to voice the titular character once again. He simply elevates the experience to another level. The level designs are fairly straight-forward and should not present too great a challenge to an experienced gamer. Throughout the game, players get to tour several areas of Las Vegas, such as the Duke Dome, and even get to see sights like the “Fellatio” hotel (a take on the Bellagio hotel).
Throughout the game, Duke rags on video game characters like the the Master Chief from the HALO series and even Isaac Clarke of Dead Space fame. He spouts a ton of inappropriate one-liners and references to a multitude of genre films like Big Trouble in Little China and Commando.
“If I promised to kill you last. I lied.” (killing bad guys)
“You must make a good hero sandwich, cause your giving me a footlong!” (talking to his maid)
“I’m from Las Vegas and I say kill ’em all!” (killing more bad guys)
“Take your tentacles back to Japan you sick freak!” (killing even more bad guys)
On the “bug” front, I did experience a strange graphical glitch while running with the post-processing enabled. Disabling this made it cease and I was able to enjoy the three-boobed alien fun on my 5760×1080 displays. Also, Duke has a tendency to get stuck on things at times which requires the player to move him backwards and jump over whatever is holding him up. Aside from these, I encountered no other bugs or game glitches to speak of.
Overall, Duke Nukem Forever is a mindless, misogynistic game for adults that has a lot of raunchy fun should you leave your morality and preconceived notions at the door. If you are easily or, hell, MODERATELY offended by inappropriate content I highly recommend you skip this one. Otherwise, pick it up on the PC platform and try it out. Come get some!
Kalypso Media has posted up a new gameplay trailer for their upcoming Airline Tycoon 2, which is due out this fall.
Ars Technica reported early this morning that PR agency The Redner Group (who was in charge of DNF PR) posted up a rather threatening tweet on their official Twitter account in response to some of the reviews that Duke Nukem Forever has been receiving (our review is coming out tomorrow, just FYI, as the PC build was not able to be played early). This tweet has since been deleted from their Twitter account.
In response, 2K Games has apparently stopped doing business with the PR agency, as per this official tweet from the game publisher/developer:
2K Games does not endorse or condone the comments made by @TheRednerGroup and confirm they no longer represent our products.
Jim Redner, head of The Redner Group, has since apologized for the tweet made earlier, by way of another tweet:
I have to apologize to the community. I acted out of pure emotion. I will be sending each of you a private apology.
and…
Again, I want everyone to know that I was acting on my own. 2K had nothing to do with this. I am so very sorry for what I said.
I am editorializing this at the moment, but I have had the pleasure of communicating with Jim, in covering various games his company has handled PR for, over the last couple years now. I have never found him to be unprofessional in any way and I have always felt him to handle games with the passion of someone who might as well have created the darn things. He gets behind the products he represents 100%. So, I can understand the reason behind his purely emotional outburst on Twitter. It is difficult seeing something that you believe in getting roasted over the coals and I have to agree with him that many reviews out there seem like they are pouring on the hate just for comedy’s sake or purely for the sake of getting additional article reads. Then again, most of these reviews have been of the Xbox 360 version of the game – so, my experience with the PC version could be completely different. The game is not the Gone With the Wind of video games, but it is not “barely playable” as some reviews state (again, at least the PC version).
Does this excuse the threatening nature of the Tweet? No. But, it does make for a fascinating look at the inter-relationships between game publishers, PR agencies, and media outlets – especially for many average gamers out there who may not realize just how inter-connected the three entities really are.
The folks at iBuyPower have released a video showing off a time lapse build of one of their Erebus liquid-cooled gaming rigs. The rig sports up to ten 120mm fans and up to four GPUs – it was designed for over-clockers and enthusiasts.
One of my personal gems of this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo was Bohemia Interactive’s upcoming Carrier Command: Gaea Mission. The game is a re-imagining of the classic Amiga game where players take on the role of the commander of a battlecruiser complete with aircraft, landing craft, and an arsenal of offensive missiles and defensive turrets. The goal: Destroy the OTHER battlecruiser sailing the seas by way of force and controlling various islands to grant bonuses and provide industrial support.
The game features some very pretty visuals and commanding from the ship’s CIC, you can see crew members working in the background at their respective jobs. The CIC view allows you to handle ship navigation and craft operations as well as dedicated occupied islands to their role (defense, production, research, etc). In this mode you also have a great external view of the ship to show off what exactly is happening to her.
The game also allows commanders to jump to control one of the ships air or landing craft, making it an action title like Battlezone in terms of overall feel. Furthermore, the commander can actually go island-side and the game presents this in the style of a first-person shooter. This varied gameplay helped break up experience and keep things changing and interesting – although, it should be noted that you don’t have to play any of the additional modes you do not wish to. It is entirely possible to play the entire game while commanding from the CIC.
As you capture islands across the archipelago you are fighting around, you can assign them different functions. These functions can be defensive, in which case the island becomes a turret platform. You can also assign them to do things like research. In Carrier Command: Gaea Mission, you will be able to outfit your carrier and craft with new weapons and equipment as you like, so long as you have researched the tech. You can also assign islands to produce replacement craft should your shipboard stores dwindle – just be careful you don’t stretch your supply line too thin as these craft will have to travel from the island to your carrier.
Overall, Carrier Command: Gaea Mission reminds me a lot of a classic naval war games like Harpoon mixed with a game like Total Air War. It has a great mix of sim and action that should please fans of both genres. It accomplishes all this while also being very true to the original title and should be a lot of fun to play when it releases in early 2012.
While at this year’s E3 expo, I was fortunate enough to take an appointment to checkout Certain Affinity’s upcoming XBLA hack and slash title, Crimson Alliance. Crimson Alliance allows up to four players to fight hordes of evil creatures across various fantasy environments. Players choose from three character classes: Mercenary, Assassin, and Wizard – each with their own special attacks and abilities. Additional character classes are a possibility after launch.
In the level I was able to play with the developers, I chose the warrior-like Mercenary class while the developer played as a Wizard. We began moving throughout the beautifully-detailed environments, smashing just about everything we saw for gold and loot. The creatures look equally well-detailed, especially for an XBLA title, and getting the hang of controlling my character took just a couple minutes.
On the same console, each player shares the same screen, so you don’t miss out on any screen real estate by splitting it up. The combat is quick and intense, with simple controls for jump and attack. As you kill enemy units, you will eventually be able to pull off a mega-attack which, depending on your class, has various effects. For example, the warrior goes into this whirlwind attack slicing through enemies in 360 degrees. The levels were made up of various monsters – some ranged, some magical, and some melee based. There were also mini-boss and boss battles to be had to change things up and keep it interesting.
While parallels are bound to be drawn between Crimson Alliance and the Diablo series, they are not really comparable. Crimson Alliance is meant for quick game sessions of pick-up and play with players ranging from childhood to adult. The Diablo series is far more mature.
Overall, my playtime with Crimson Alliance was enjoyable and easy to figure out. Look for this title to come out a little later this Summer.
