New York, New York. The city so nice they named it twice. Except poor old Max Payne doesn’t seem to agree if these screenshots are anything to go by.

After the moderate success of the recent movie which used New York for some great noir elements it’s surprising to see Rockstar ditch the Big Apple for this sunny, possibly South American setting.

It would seem that his whole image seems to have dried up in the sun too. Former NYPD detective Max now looks like a mix of John McClane from Die Hard and an escaped convict.

Read More  »

Previous | Image 1 of 6 | Next

Massive Action Game (MAG) 1

The PS2 was long held to be the cheap and cheerful games console offering a range of friendly, fun games for all age groups of casual and dedicated gamers.  Hence it's strong position in the industry for years and the big release of the PS3.  The problem (if you can call it that), by contrast, with the PS3 is it isn't a cheap, friendly console for everyone, it's a big piece of kit that carries as big a price as it's hardware and graphics capabilities.  Rather than a household console for everyone (which is currently occupied by the Wii), it's price tag and capabilities make it more attractive to hardcore dedicated gamers than anyone else in the market.  With it's price cut coming this year hopefully and big games releases coming soon, the PS3 is looking increasingly attractive to mid range gamers.

MAG will use the PS3's impressive hardware capabilities to some of the highest levels we've ever seen, allowing it to out perform the Xbox and even most PC games by offering 256 online multiplayer action.  Gamers will play within an 8-player squad.  There will be 4 squads within a platoon (32) and 4 platoons in a company (128).  Two teams of 128 players will then compete against each other for each map. At each organisational level (Squad, Platoon, Company) one player will be designated as In Charge, with progressively greater power and control the higher the rank.  Currently, these positions look like they'll be designated to those with the highest individual score and achievement, with each level having increasing ability to direct the battle, which will take place on battlefields and maps on a scale not hitherto seen on console FPS games.

Read More  »

Game Hub has recently looked at the impact that the internet and online gaming has had on the way we play games.  Digital distribution of games together with cloud gaming have and might shake up the games industry in a big way, but in this 3rd part in the series, we're looking at how the internet has changed who we play games with and how it has changed our personal and gaming identities through clans and guilds.

If and how we can define ourself through video games is really made possible with multiplayer gaming. Before 'the internet', gaming was, at most, only a 4 player pursuit and multiplayer aspects of games limited.  Gleaming rays of hope of what was to come came from games like Goldeneye, but the ability to identify yourself as a member of a group of gamers was stunted.  Moving into online gaming, FPS's and MMORPG's are the genres most commonly associated with clans and guilds and both allow the player to identify themselves and associate themselves with an organised group of gamers and as a member of that clan or guild.

Different species and character groups within MMORPG's mean identity within a game can...

Read More  »

Physical media and dedicated gaming consoles, we are told, are dying breeds.  And the prime suspect for their expected demise is “The Cloud”.  Cloud Gaming is on it's way and may shake up the gaming world for all of us so I'm taking a look in to this to see exactly what it is, and what it means for the gaming community.

The Cloud is already present in most of our daily lives. Every time you check your Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail emails via a web browser, you're accessing, retrieving and interacting with them stored in The Cloud. Most internet users have also interacted with The Cloud when using Google Docs in which your docs, spreadsheets and presentations are all edited online without ever being saved or used on your PC itself.  The analogy of 'The Cloud' is the 'place' where the files you view and use online are stored and means not only do we save our hard drives from the abuse of saving thousands of emails and documents, but also that we can access them anywhere on the world.

Looking at gaming, Cloud Gaming is set to cause one of the biggest shake ups of the way we play games since the early 1970's when the first dedicated gaming consoles hit the shelves.  The “Cloud Gaming” generation will not own physical media nor will they store video games on a hardrive. Instead, they'll connect via the internet to central servers, on which the games are stored and the processing required to run them takes place.  With all of the processing and media storage happening remotely, the only hardware the user will require is a PC with an internet connection and a 3rd party box to manage the flow of information from PC, through the internet to their servers, and then to receive that information back and translate it onto your TV or monitor.  With the industry leaders currently claiming to have all but eliminated latency (down to 1 millisecond), the gamer's interactions with the servers through the internet is planned to be as seamless and quick as interacting with a console in the same room.

Read More  »

Digital. Everything’s going digital. In fact if you’re in America right now it’s the only way you can watch TV, as the analogue signal was recently switched off. The last few years has seen digitally distributed music explode and become the market leader way ahead of the CD.

But what about games? Recent years have seen platforms such as PSN (PlayStation Network) and Xbox Live Marketplace distributing small and diverse games such as Geometry Wars, Braid, Flower, and Rag Doll Kung Fu. There have even been full-sized games such as Warhawk and Burnout Paradise, or extra chapters as in GTA4: The Lost and Damned.

So what does this mean? Will game discs start to fade out like CD’s? Only a fool would say so (or somebody very confident of not accidentally deleting their collection after a night on the town). However, Sony’s recent announcement (that we all knew about anyway) about the new PSP Go, is relying solely on digitally savvy gamers.

The new PSP will not have a UMD drive; instead games will solely be available through digital distribution. This can be via the PSN on PS3, or on a home computer, and possibly straight to the PSP with a wireless connection at home connecting straight to the PSN Store.

Read More  »

Compared to Casino Royale, the Quantum of Solace film was a big let down, so there’s not much hope for the game of the film right? Movie tie-ins are usually average at best.

So it’s a big surprise to find out that the game is actually rather good. Actually it’s very good. The missions take scenes from the last two bond films, not just Quantum. But not in order, as the game plays through Quantum to after the desert sinkhole shootout, then through Casino Royale, then finishing with the remainder of the second film. Yep me neither.

Running on the Call of Duty 4 engine you’d be forgiven for expecting a straight-forward FPS, and that is the standard view. But this has more in common with the Brothers in Arms games, with a snap-to-cover button. This puts the game into a third-person perspective displaying Daniel Craig’s well replicated emotionless features if not his nearly neon blue eyes.

Read More  »

With Nintendo’s roster of imminent releases, it looks like this year and next could mark the company’s re-discovery of its roots as a unique and ‘pro-gamer’ institution. Following last year’s E3 showcase, Nintendo garnered some criticism for ‘dumbing down’ with many of its titles for Wii seeming aimed at a large majority of lucrative casual gamers rather than the more traditional fan base, prompting some detractors to go as far as announcing the end of the company as a unique and recognisable games developer. But with two new Mario games on the way and a new Metroid, Nintendo’s attention seems to be returning to its definitive franchises.

Read More  »

Fuel Review

Developer: Asobo Studio

Publisher: Codemasters

Videogames often draw the most absurd parallels. When you take your first drive in Fuel, the open world racing game from Asobo Studio, you might find yourself thinking of You’ve Been Framed. There’s always a clip of some show-off in that programme on a motorbike or quad, who thinks he can make it up that muddy slope only for his vehicle to tip up indignantly, almost crushing him in the process. In Fuel, that show-off is you, and the hilarity your doing. But right here lies the first problem. The game proudly presents itself as an open world exploration sim as much as it does a standard racer, giving you, it claims, free reign over the vast global-warming terraformed environment of near future North America. To make this huge playing field -the biggest ever seen in a game, around 14,400 square kilometres to be exact- manageable in gameplay terms, Asobo Studio have invented all manner of exploration-curtailing design features. Crashing your vehicle, or ‘totalling’ it if you’re in on the extreme sports lingo, is one of them. Rather than witness your racer fall to his hilarious £250-well earned doom, the game’s screen fades to black and places you back on the land a reasonable distance from where you crashed. Not only does this disjointedly interrupt the supposedly seamless sim-like nature that Fuel champions, but because there’s no recognisable signs of damage to your vehicle as it drives through and is damaged by terrain, it’s very difficult to tell where and when such a feature will be initiated. Obstacles such as trees, cliffs and farm buildings seem to do random amounts of damage to your vehicle, regardless of its bulk or the speed at which you’re driving it at. This means, like ever-popular You’ve Been Framed camcorder celebrities such as the extreme sports show-off, the drunk wedding gran or the over-exited dog at a barbeque, you never really learn from your mistakes. What parts of the environment can and cannot be traversed seem entirely arbitrary, and you’re never sure if your vehicle will withstand you charging through them. As such, you tend to stay clear of these dangerous areas, reticent to explore them rather than encouraged.

Read More  »