Carnage rage quits E3

video details and more

Can't see the video? Click here

I spent a good portion of E3 with Jon Carnage. That Carnage fella didn't quite care for the offerings at E3, so he rage quit and went on a journey with Daedelus. It's not that bad of a tradeoff, with Daedelus being the greatest DJ in the world and all that. Join us as we leave E3 and play around with some old joysticks.

Directed by Neranjan Bobby Venom.

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

E3 2011: Need for Speed: The Run (Impressions)

by: Tina Amini
NEWS - Game: Need for Speed: The Run
Developer: EA Black Box
Release Window/Date: November 15th
What works: Fantastic graphics that rival that of Battlefield 3’s (because they use the same fancy new Frostbite 2.0 engine) and intense action that the NFS franchise is known for runs rampant in this upcoming racing title.
What needs work: Although taking the action on foot is a grand idea, the implementation of it is less grand. Quick Time Events are all gamers have to look forward to. It certainly adds to the involvement of a cut scene, but is in no way the same kind of action that Black Box is attempting to market it as.

Fans of the Need for Speed franchise won’t need to be convinced to pick this next game up. With the same high action complemented by the insanely mesmerizing graphical capabilities of the Frostbite 2.0 engine (the same one being used to make Battlefield 3 look so pretty), it’s probably a no-brainer for many of you. For those of you unaccustomed to the racing genre, or perhaps yet to be consumed by it, Need for Speed: The Run may just be the iteration for you to pick up on all the hype.

The setting and special effects in Need for Speed not only look fantastic, what with glamorous explosions and destruction, but the development team put stock into creating a believable protagonist, too. His facial features are recorded in 90 different points, whereas most games will use only 30. They spent time recording the actor’s eye movements with ocular technology because, as the developer giving us the presentation stated, “the eyes are key to selling the performance of the player.”

Whilst most character renders are developed piecemeal, Black Box decided to put their actor into the motion capture studio to get every visual simultaneously. Did you see the trailer’s scene where protagonist Jack is struggling, upside down in his car trying to escape before the train hits him? In order to get that footage, they literally put the poor actor in a car, upside down while shaking to motion capture all of his reactions under a more realistic situation. In fact, all of the technology used to create such a believable performance was the same that was used in Avatar. Whatever your feelings toward the plot line in Avatar, you must admit it looked pretty fantastic. Like a modern-day Fern Gully. Back on track, though, they produced all of these effects along with the audio to bring you the best Jack they possibly could.

The Run is a cross country race from San Francisco to NY, where protagonist Jack will be chased down by mobs and cops alike in an effort to delay him. Along the way, Jack will be burning his tires across desserts, mountains, rivers and a slew of other tracks to be found on the cross country road trip. In total, Black Box tells us that there is around 325 km of track, more than any other NFS game in the past. It is an epic journey to say the least.

Although many other NFS titles have focused on the aspect of simulation to impress their racing-fanatic fans, this title will be something in between Hot Pursuit and Shift. There is still a level of difficulty in mastering both the vehicles and tracks, but it is less focused on trying to be a simulation style racing game. The team didn’t spend time analyzing how these cars handle realistically; rather, they concentrated on amplifying the action component as intensely as they could. In fact, the development team is composed of designers from various teams all specializing in action-centric game. Our host and narrator, for instance, was a developer from Codemasters.

Beyond the facade, Black Box wanted to bring you a unique racing experience that blended with on-the-ground action sequences. I was very intrigued about this fact, but was sad to learn that they only composed of QTE sequences. Even less intriguing, the out-of-car sessions will only compose of 10% of the game. This may be a relief to some, but I can imagine that the game would benefit from introducing more ground action components.

Regardless, Black Box is taking initiative to get you more involved in the game. As your car comes skidding to a stop, confronted by the mob chasing you (who, by the way, also have a helicopter), you’ll indicate where Jack should be performing certain actions. QTEs might not really be the most immersive action, but they at least allow you to contribute to the cut scene, thereby giving you the impression that you’ve connected more with this character that you control. You’ll quickly be jumping back into the car, however, because the developers want to retain the idea that your job is to finish the race in first place.

Finally, the Autolog feature from Hot Pursuit returns to connect you to other players within your social world. This adds a competitive, “multiplayer” feel to the single player campaign now that you can race against the AI as well as your friends based on their times. In addition tot he 150 competitors you play against in the game, you’ll also be able to compete against human players. Information about your friends’ status will be represented to you in real time.


Read The Full Article:
http://www.gamingnexus.com/FullNews/E3-2011-Need-for-Speed-The-Run-(Impressions)/
Item23184.aspx

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

Transformers: Dark of the Moon almost here

Can't see the video? Click here

And now, a launch trailer for Transformers: Dark of the Moon. There is a fight which has just begun. some new evil has arisen. You get the general idea. This is likely going to be a pretty cool game if you're into the plot established by the films, as Dark of the Moon fills in events between Revenge of the Fallen and and the new movie.

The thing I find absolutely fascinating about Transformers is that it's capitalizing on our nostalgia for something which was explicitly created to be a marketing campaign. It seems like this generation is the first one for which many of the things we fondly remember were manufactured to appeal to us and we never quite let go of them

This isn't like bell bottoms, poodle skirts or the hula hoop. Transformers, along with many of its contemporaries, was a calculated campaign to sell a wide variety of thematically linked products to an audience incapable of knowing that it wasn't anything more. And now that we're adults and we should no longer be ignorant to this fact, we still love them as a result of that connection to our youth.

It makes me think about the kind of cultural future we're going to sell to our own kids (and then sell them again in their 30's). I wonder what that will be like.

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

Dhaila's Adventures Preview (PC, Mac)

Dhaila's Adventures is a third-person action/adventure game featuring Dhaila, a young fairy whose powers are bound to nature. Developer Wild Games Studio recently released a lengthy gameplay trailer that shows off some of the open-ended game world as well as Dhaila's powers. Check it out behind the cut.

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

E3 2011: APB: Reloaded (Impressions)

by: Sean Nack
NEWS - Game: APB: Reloaded
Developer: Reloaded Studios
Release Window/Date: Currently in open beta
What's Polished: Matchmaking, driving, and fighting all looked like vastly improved ...
What Needs Polished: ... but the graphics could use some work. They're not bad, they're just not spectacular.

APB: Relaoded is the re-launch of the fairly-disastrous open-world shooter APB. Reloaded Studios was brought in to conduct the overhaul, and from what I've seen, APB:R is on track to fulfill the promise of the original.

Reloaded has brought a number of tweaks to APB since they began working on it in November, including something as simple as a new starting vehicle, which developers think will help correct the original games' extremely unbalanced gameplay, while keeping features like highly-customizable character creation. Developers also changed the firing reticle, making it more reactive to recoil and reducing the tendencies of players to "spray and pray." 

More substantial changes include the matchmaking system; the original's matchmaking only looked at your last 50 matches, so an experienced player could hunt down rookies for hours and massively overpower them. APB:R uses a sophisticated algorithm to match players in an area, and then recommends districts to a player via their individual maps to cater an experience to experts or beginners.

APB:R is in open beta right now, and is worth a second look.



Read The Full Article:
http://www.gamingnexus.com/FullNews/E3-2011-APB-Reloaded-(Impressions)/Item23183.
aspx

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

Critical Mass Preview (PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad)

Critical Mass is an upcoming puzzle game from two-man Australian indie game developer Manic Game Studios that brings traditional match-3 gameplay into the world of 3D. The game is launching on June 20, and in the meantime you can check out a gameplay trailer behind the cut.

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

Impressions: Kinect Fun Labs

Microsoft's Kinect Fun Labs is supposed to be a place where smaller, experimental little Kinect programs get thrown up on Xbox Live for us to play with. But does it work, and is it really a lab filled with fun?

Kinect Fun Labs is a separate program you launch from the Kinect Hub, and currently has four "gadgets": Kinect Me, Googly Eyes, Build A Buddy, and Bobble Head. I gave them all two tries, and here are some impressions of the process and end result of each of them.

Kinect Me

Kinect Me is where you scan your entire body (with or without clothes) to create a more lifelike avatar. It feels like a testing ground for the upcoming Avatar Kinect, which is not yet available.

You start by selecting your gender and getting up close to get your face scanned in. Afterwards, you move back a little to fit yourself in a full body outline so it can scan the rest of you. Finally, you choose whether you want to add glasses or not.

The result can be a bit odd. In my case, it scanned the print of PAX shirts for Knights Contract and Fallout: New Vegas pretty well. The resolution of your clothes' texturing is not very high, but you can recognize it pretty well. For those of us that have favorite shirts that we wear all the time, Kinect Me can give you a pretty accurate representation of your look in that regard.

However, my face looks like I am some kind of insane extra from what would've been a mix between the kid on the Mad comic covers and The Goonies. Especially under low-light conditions as depicted below, where I was standing upright and holding a camera. Just look at it! That's my writing posture right there.

With daylight lighting, my head turned out a little bit better than during the nighttime with artificial light. I never had this issue with other games like Kinectimals or Dance Central, which I only play with the curtains closed so as to not embarrass myself in front of people walking by outside. Then again, those games are about skeletal tracking and not about facial fidelity.

When you are done with what comes the closest to an Avatar version of yourself, or more likely what is the last thing you do before you get tired of Kinect Me, you can select an image to start a slideshow that you can add a voice recording to.

If you want, you can then share it to a private account on KinectShare.com and with your friends. Logging into KinectShare is painless as it uses your Xbox Live account info (the same that Xbox.com uses), and from there you can share it to Facebook.

Your friends who have Kinect Fun Labs will also be able to watch your attempt through a Friends Feed inside the Kinect Labs menu. You can also "like" your friends shenanigans if you want, and watching any of your Xbox Live friends' posted content makes their Avatar run into the screen. It's a nice touch, and overall it works pretty well.

The downside of Kinect Me is that this is all you can do with it.

In the end, it's more of a tech demo than anything else, and if you don't care about sharing and posting your results to Facebook or the tiny Kinect Fun Labs area of your console environment, you're not going to use this more than once at best.

Googly Eyes

Googly Eyes lets you scan in any object, slap "googly eyes" on it so it looks like a toy, and then record some movements and voice for a small skit. You start by scanning the front of an object, followed by the back. However, you need a pretty big object for this to work.

I tried to do it with a Togepi figure I have, which was too small. The only way I could make it work is to have part of my hand be included in the image, which turns it into a pretty damn freaky thing. Because it was deemed to small, I put a DualShock 3 controller below him. This worked, although parts of my fingers were still included -- it's hard to hold objects without your hands, you know?

When you are done with this process, the software creates a 3D creature with googly eyes slapped on top of it. You can change the style of these eyes, but they are all googly. Like in Spore, you can also change where the eyes go.

Finally, you can record a little animated sketch. The on-screen creature will follow most of your movements as far as it can (my TogepiShock 3 had no arms, sadly), and you get a couple of seconds to record something ridiculous for your friends. Sharing works like in Kinect Me through the KinectShare website.

Googly Eyes works best with bigger objects and toys and even then there's not a lot you can do with it except record little sketches. This can be fun for parents with kids to play around with, but most of us won't care. On the upside, it does save your creations.

Build A Buddy

While Googly Eyes lets you create a sketch, Build A Buddy lets you create more of a virtual pet by scanning objects. Just like with Googly Eyes, I had to work with a Togepi/DualShock 3 concoction because I just don't have any big toys or fluffy animals lying around.

After scanning the front and back, you have to record yourself saying three lines. Sadly, Kinect Fun Labs is a regional program so I had to deal with Dutch for all of it. When you're done, you can choose a personality for your critter by choosing between two options for three personality factors.

When it's done, your new Buddy will want you to train it. Jump, dance, hide your eyes behind your hands, and it will do some silly moves as a result. Finally, it gives you a short animation where it does everything it learned.

It's kind of cute, and the end result is more fun than what you get with Googly Eyes although the latter lets you customize sketches in more detail if you want to get creative. Your Build A Buddy just goes through the same couple of pre-scripted animations over and over again. They are cute to look at for a couple of times, but the novelty quickly wears off.

If you do have kids, you can "play" with your Buddy after you are done with it. So if they have a favorite cuddly toy, this is a great way for them to play with it. Build A Buddy feels like a more fleshed out version of Googly Eyes in that regard.

It's a bit odd that Microsoft and Good Science didn't just incorporate all of it and more into a Kinect Toys game of sorts, because they are so similar and it's a bit of a hassle to navigate all the menus just to switch between doing a sketch and having a child play with their motion-mirroring toys.

Bobble Head

This is the most basic of all the Kinect Fun Labs playthings. Of all the Kinect Fun Labs gadgets, this one also had the most trouble with lighting. Scan your face and body just like you do in Kinect Me, and choose if you want to be male, female, if you want to have glasses, or a tail. Yes, a tail. You can stop feeling persecuted by Microsoft now, furries!

Because I went with a male character in the Kinect Me, I decided to go for the more lady-like look this time around. After doing the obligatory scanning and posing, you end up with a bobblehead with your face. You can record a voice message so it will play that back when you hover over the head itself. And that's it -- there's nothing more you can do with it (probably didn't expect any more, either).

Bobble Head is really a pointless feature and you're better off not even downloading it to try it out.

Final thoughts

Kinect Fun Labs does offer some messing around for users of all ages, but to call it fun is a bit of a stretch. Kinect Me feels like a prototype of Avatar Kinect, and Googly Eyes and Build A Buddy feel like prototypes of some upcoming Kinectimals "play with your own toy!" first-party title. Bobble Head is just a pointless addition to the three.

It's still an environment that could bring a lot more of these little gadgets to play with while people wait for actual good Kinect games. And from the looks of this year's E3, that might take quite a while. In time, perhaps it can grow into something more substantial and Microsoft only really needs one little application that has meme potential to get everyone to make their own version and share it.

Fun Labs also takes a long time to start up and load a gadget, perhaps because it needs to check online friends feeds and whatnot. It's quite jarring for the experience as a whole, and even though there is a minimum of menus inside all the gadgets -- mostly because there isn't a lot to actually do -- you still feel like it all takes too long.

I even had to launch Build A Buddy and Bobble Head from the "download completed" pop-up screen because they wouldn't get listed in my downloaded gadgets. That is, after trying to redownload them up to four times over the last couple of days. Great fun! At least you get Achievements for each of the gadgets, which is a nice bonus for those that care.

As it stands, Kinect Fun Labs offers consumers some insights into the kind of things that are being worked on behind the scenes. At the same time, it offers the people at Good Science and Microsoft a way for the public to interact with whatever they come up with in early stages and a constrained way to see how the public reacts.

It's still a very limited environment right now, and if you don't own a Kinect sensor, Kinect Fun Labs is no reason for you to buy one. If you do own it, you don't have to share your things with the world to get those Achievements.

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

My Pet Zombie Preview (iPhone, iPad, Android)

If there's one thing that Hollywood's taught us, it's that the zombie apocalypse is going to happen sooner or later. What hasn't been demonstrated in the movies, though, is just how gosh-darned cute said apocalypse is going to be. Thankfully, Riptide Games' upcoming pet sim My Pet Zombie is going to set the record straight.

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

My Pet Zombie Preview (iPhone, iPad)

If there's one thing that Hollywood's taught us, it's that the zombie apocalypse is going to happen sooner or later. What hasn't been demonstrated in the movies, though, is just how gosh-darned cute said apocalypse is going to be. Thankfully, Riptide Games' upcoming pet sim My Pet Zombie is going to set the record straight.

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

Steal Crown and Escape Easy Crown

Steal Crown and Escape Easy Crown is point and click adventure/room escape game. Explore location an infiltrate in to building, unlock all gates and doors to find another ancient crown for your collection! After ancient crown is collected, search for code hints and escape. Good Luck!Play This Game

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/escapegames24/~3/q8XwMEnmdMU/steal-crown-and-escap
e-easy-crown.html

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!