EA Games

Its official Playstation 3 owners will finally have a chance control Commander Shepard. At the moment the release dated is slated for January 2011, which is not too far away. Also The PlayStation 3 edition will include the full Mass Effect 2 game and hours of bonus content. It’s just goes to show that nothing is Exclusive for long, unless the game is being published by Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo.

This seems to happening a lot these days, first with GTA’s DLC and then with Fallout 3’s DLC. It won’t be long before Ubisoft finally announces Splinter Cell: Conviction for PS3.

For those of you who haven’t been following the Mass Effect franchise, let me tell give you a little recap. The Mass Effect franchise is an epic science fiction adventure set in a vast universe filled with dangerous aliens and mysterious, uncharted planets.

In Mass Effect 2, PlayStation 3 players will step into the role of Commander Shepard for the very first time, leading a crew of the most dangerous special operatives from across the galaxy on a mission to save mankind. Featuring intense shooter action, a rich storyline, space exploration and emotionally engaging character interaction, Mass Effect 2 delivers an unparalleled gameplay experience.

There’s nothing better than watching a couple of campers blend in with the ruble of a building as you sabotage it, to blitz with an RPG or a charger. There’s never a dull moment in Bad Company 2, with the Frostbite Engine’s Destruction 2.0 whole buildings and objects in the gaming environment can be destroyed realistically. You’ll spend a lot of time in the campaign shooting and blowing up destructible environments just to admire the realism.

This time around the campaign has taken a turn for a more serious but linear storyline. The Russians have set their keen eyes on a mythical WWII weapon of mass destruction, which in the wrong hands will threaten the world. Preston Marlowe (you the player), Haggard, Sweetwater and Sergeant Redford are sent on a mission to hunt for this weapon before the Russian’s gain possession.

The missions you play throughout the campaign are great fun from vehicle shootouts to avoiding freezing death in the snow trail blazing mountains. Your AI team mates are splendid bullet sponges and rarely take a shot penetrating enough to take a life, leaving it to you to pull the plug on your enemies.

At times when you progress through a mission you can see enemies being spawned right in front of you, generally after a while you start to memorize their positions. There is little incentive for exploration apart from finding the collectable guns placed in every level. Read More  »

Visceral Games visionary of the classic poem “The Divine Comedy” by Dante Alighieri, which foretells the author’s vision of hell is absolutely grotesque and demented. If you think you know what hell looks like then think again. I can assure you this is one of the few video games that will make your skin crawl and leave you feeling squeamish.

Players take the role of the protagonist Dante, who upon returning home finds his beloved Beatrice murdered with a sword plunged into her lower abdomen. With Lucifer in full possession of her soul she is dragged into the depths of hell. Dante descends himself into hell to rescue Beatrice and ultimately redeem himself, as he realizes that he’s paying for his sins and facing his demons.

Visceral Games have played the common factors of the poem and made it into a game which overall sets the basis for levels. As stated in the poem there are nine circles of hell which are named: limbo, lust, gluttony, greed, anger, heresy, violence, fraud and treachery. Each of them has a distinct environment and demons within them. Sometimes this is not the case as other enemies from distinct circles cross over in levels.

Many see the game as God of War, in more or less every way, shape and form. The reason for this is because the level designer, who worked on the God of War franchise, joined Visceral Games development team for Dante’s Inferno. There’s no denying that Dante’s Inferno uses God of War as a strong foundation, however it makes up for unoriginality in other areas.

Take the cross for instance it’s a great weapon for spamming attacks with and keeping enemies at bay. The cross is great fun to use as there’s no limit on the amount of times it can be used. The upgrades for this weapon are irresistible; they literally make you feel as though the wrath of god is in your hands.

As opposed to the cross the scythe is equally a blast getting to grips with. This is your primary weapon and a dominating one too, depending on how you coinsit it with the cross and magic to devise combos. Read More  »

All your votes are in and counted. So who were the winners of the Game Hub Games of the Year Awards 2009? There are a few surprises amongst the obvious ones.  Fortunately for all the nominees, nobody got zero votes (somebody got one though). So here are the Top 3 for each of the 13 categories:

  Read More  »

You are Sean Devlin, an Irish racing car driver who becomes The Saboteur on his road to revenge against the Nazis. While the visuals are painfully average and the open-world gameplay offers nothing new, you might just get find yourself sucked right in anyway with fun gun battles and the optional stealth approach.

A neatly condensed Paris and its nearby countryside make up the landscape of the game. You help out members of the French resistance and British spies to help liberate Paris and send the Germans scurrying back to sausage country.

The early buzz around the game focused on the black and white visuals to signpost areas under heavy Nazi oppression, the idea being you would try and take a neighbourhood back and inspire the Parisians, bringing colour back to the world. Get to a high vantage point and you can see pockets of colour around the city. Oppressed areas appear to be in a permanent ‘rainy night’ condition.

While these elements are present it seems to be merely a gimmick. Once colour does return, it’s just an aesthetic effect, with no impact made upon gameplay and the amount of Nazi’s patrols. Okami and last year’s Prince of Persia are excellent examples of how to do it properly. There was potential for The Saboteur to be visually unique but it ends up looking quite ordinary. The textures of the city are so bland it makes the black and white areas look even worse. Read More  »

Medal of Honor will return in 2010 and for the first time in it's 10 year history will leave the WWII battleground in favour of a modern theatre of war, Afghanistan.

Trailing behind similar games in it's genre in recent years (especially Call of Duty), the Medal of Honor series is hoping to reinvigorate itself by releasing a “best in class” single player campaign as well as world class multiplayer.

The single player campaign will follow the operations of today's elite forces, referencing the will, mindset and professionalism required by today's highest calibre soldiers.  Known as a Tier 1 Operator, you will take on missions no one else can handle under the direct control of the National Command Authority.  The development team has been working closely with US Special forces at all stages of the game's construction to ensure maximum realism and will be basing as much of the game as possible on real events. Read More  »

Eddie Riggs (voiced by Jack Black) is the best roadie in the business, but modern times have seen him forced to work with some awful bands as he's seen his beloved heavy metal get watered down to suit a 'tween demographic'. After saving one of the dipshit band members from certain death onstage, Rigg's huge stage set collapses on him. As his blood drips into his Motorhead-esque belt buckle a metal monster erupts from the stage wasting the band, and Riggs is transported to a whole new dimension. It's got the crazy turned up to 11 all the way from here on in.

The recent demo was a bit misleading as it made the game out to be a hack n' slash style game and made no mention of the Overlord-like RTS segments. At regular intervals you assume command over troops and order them to defend your 'stage' or assault the enemy's stage. You buy extra troops by earning 'fans' from pyres that you need to convert. Unfortunately this is the game's weakest area with the controls often being imprecise and troops often ignoring commands and showing no common sense. These battles can go on for a bit too long as well. You are able to do some fighting yourself (much better), with a combination of melee axe swings and using your guitar to electrocute or burn enemies, or you can go for a spectacular Riff attack, the best of which being the ability to call in a huge flaming Zeppelin to crash down at your feet. It looks absolutely awesome.

It was a bit of a surprise to all of us finding out that the next game to follow the excellent Dead Space would be on the Wii. It might be an ‘on-rails shooter’ but fans will enjoy this prequel to the original game, especially the first level which has a neat twist that they or anyone that’s seen the anime might appreciate.

The game starts before the Ishimura planet cracker mining ship was overrun by an alien plague causing severe psychosis and mutation in their human hosts. Haven’t played the first game? Don’t worry, the prequel nature of the game welcomes newcomers by letting them play through preceding events. Veterans will enjoy some familiar locations and characters and being a part of earlier events from a different perspective on how the shit hit the fan in the first place, as the first game had you starting well after the infection had already spread.

The biggest changes to the game are the transition to an on-rails FPS and the inclusion of constant companions. You are part of a group of four and despite one of them being a soldier, you are the only one that seems to know how to shoot anything. Sure you might see the odd bullet from the other guy but it never does any damage. And naturally, as is the rule in on-rails shooters, the enemy will always go for you instead. The on-rails aspect makes this feel like a seriously twisted ghost train ride. You do get to choose from multiple paths though sometimes. Read More  »