LalaLand

Openworld 3D environment for DS. Sounds far fetched doesn’t it?:). Well, not anymore. Ubisoft just published a VD-Dev developed game for the DS that delivers just that.
How would you like to drive through a scale model of New York – 3 Islands of driving mania. Though C.O.P. The Recruit ain’t a racing game but more of a GTA wanna be, it gives you total free roam freedom, a not so good but acceptable story and some racing side missions.
The main plot of the game that should set you in action and adventure throughout the whole city is not very innovative but should do the job – A street racer turned undercover cop using the Criminal Overturn Program thus the C.O.P acronym (not very catchy is it) tries to save the city from corruption and a terrorist threat.
The driving controls are insane in the best way possible and graphics reminds me of the 1st Midtown Madness. The driving feels very good and realistic, cornering is amazing. I bet a great racing game could be done using this engine but we just have to wait and see. A good thing is you can drive pretty much any car on the street by simply flashing your badge and driving away unlike GTA where you are a mean and evil person:) and steal the cars. Traffic is present and i have to admit i laughed a little when I saw some cars involved in accidents that i didn’t cause of course. Beside the cars you will also take command of boats but to my disappointment these will only be available during a couple of the Story missions.
Now let’s get to the shooting part of the game. The character control is good once you get used to it and that won’t take long. The shooting is done by either touching the DS touchscreen or by the use of buttons and you will have to wait and see witch one fits you better because camera rotation is also controled via touchscreen. You have a sufficiently large variety of weapons you will find along the story ranging from a stun gun to automatic rifles and shotguns. Ammunition is limited but if you remember to go to the “Armory” to fill them for free (cause you’re a cop) you’ll do just fine. Just remember this, because during some fights you will not be able to leave and refill your ammo and you wouldn’t want to end up with a stun gun against ak’s:) Playing the game on story mode will keep you busy for around 8-12hours depending on how skilled you are in the art of driving and shooting (dodging bullets). Most of the missions will get you from one side of the island to the other so driving skills and speedy cars are a must but be careful because a speedy car means less resistance and it’s easier to damage it than let’s say a slow but huge bus or garbage truck. The shooting scenes are nice not amazing but do their jobs. On some occasions you will be able to use your tactical skills and create an entry plan for a whole team of special forces to charge into rooms and kill bad guys. But don’t get distracted, their shooting skills aren’t as good as yours and you might still need to do the job yourself.
Overall it is a good game with some impressive technical achievements especially in the openworld 3d realm that might just spring some sequels. Though the story ain’t a blast it’s an OK game and it does have some comic lines scattered through it that will definitely keep you busy on those long commutes or especially if you are caught in traffic jams:). So if you do have a chance and want to try to at least commit some serious car crashes in a superb DS 3D openworld go buy this game.

I had an urge to change something in my game playing pattern lately and so I decided to try an economic strategy. I like strategy games but I was never fond of economic strategies since the game is mostly based on politics and economical growth and less on warfare. So I was a little skeptical when I installed “Anno1404 – Dawn of Discovery”, but as I was shortly to find out this game is quite fun and the graphics displayed are stunning.
The 4th installment in the series, Anno 1404, sets you in a time of conquest and Crusades. The campaign mode will give the player an active role in the Crusade to come. Starting as a small pawn providing supplies to the Crusader Army and becoming a major player in the struggle to uncover a plot against the Emperor. The game is massive as it implies a whole chain of goods and trades to keep you going smoothly ranging from building up your food, stone and iron for future building and ending up in providing coffee and beer to your population. This will keep you going from island to island settling new colonies and creating new trading routes, building up your honor with the local “chief” in order to get access to new goods and buildings.
Overall the campaign will provide the player with a good story to follow and many challenges to fulfill in order to pass to the next stage and onto the next mission.
Besides the Campaign mode the player has two other game-play options. The Continuous Game – which will allow you to play as long as you want without any pressure. This gives you the ability to freely explore this massive game and get your civilization to it’s maximum potential. The other option is the Scenarios mode which offers the player the ability to gain specific medals and award by reaching specially designed goals. The only major missing feature of the game is a Multilayer mode.
I think you will like this game even if the complexity of it may annoy some of you, I’m sure you will end up having a great time exploring the world of Anno1404 with it’s pluses and minuses.
You can view in-game pictures in the gallery below.

I wasn’t much of a western fan boy but this game kinda changed my mind a little. The game is set quite a while before the action in the first COJ. The story follows the adventure of two brothers, Ray and Thomas who turn from Confederate soldiers to deserters and then into treasure hunters. You can play as both Ray and Thomas, each character having a unique set of skills and thus giving you the story from two different perspectives. The single player part has an interesting story that is set in an incredible western world. The dialogue between the characters is smart and in most cases made me laugh quite hard:). The shootouts are fun and even if they aren’t all very difficult they make playing this game a delight.
The Multiplayer is just as fun and engaging as the Single player mode. Up to 12 players can join a session on both LAN and online modes. You can choose from quite a rich number of classes and have a few game modes available to play ranging from your classic Deathmatch to “Wanted” mode which is similar to capture the flag and to a special mode “Wild West Legends” in which your team has to complete a few objectives. In the early games most of the characters will be locked and require for you to play ranked matches and win some money in order to unlock them. Overall the multiplayer is fun to play and will keep you close for some heated sessions.
So if you are looking for a shooter and want to check out some stunning western visual effects while you are shooting your way out of some tight spots this is the game to play and I highly recommend it.
Below you can see a few pictures from the game.

In the “started but never finished” series of games, I present to you images from “Terminator Salvation” the video game. I was expecting more but it just wasn’t meant to be. The game looks ok, you are in a constant battle with “the machines” but ultimately the game lacks that “something” to make it special. Additionally the game suffers from a few software glitches that really got on my nerves in a couple of situations.
Below you can find a gallery with images from the game.

Between June 2nd and June 4th all the eyes were turned to the LA Convention center for the Electronic Entertainment Expo where video games developers and publishers gathered to show us what this next year brings to your computer screen.

Microsoft Conference

Microsoft kicked off E3 with its press conference, unveiling a host of new titles, as well as shedding more light on some already announced. The list of upcoming games were :
- 1 vs 100
- Final Fantasy XIII
- Modern Warfare 2
- The Beatles: Rock Band
- Tony Hawk: RIDE (which will come with a wireless skateboard peripheral that uses foot-based controls)
- Metal Gear Solid Rising (coming for the first time on the Microsoft’s platform)
Some of them will be exclusive to the X360 :
- Halo Reach
- Gears of War 2: Dark Corners
- Crackdown 2
- Forza Motorsport 3
- Halo 3: ODST
- Alan Wake
- Left 4 Dead 2
- Shadow Complex
- Joy Ride
Microsoft also announced that it is to launch a games-on-demand service for Xbox 360, allowing users to buy full games. Around 30 titles are due for the launch of the service in August 2009, with Microsoft accepting direct purchase with credit cards, as well as the standard option of using Microsoft Points.
The first titles on offer will also include Sonic The Hedgehog, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Crackdown, Colin McRae DiRT, Call of Duty 2 and LEGO Star Wars.
Microsoft has also unveiled a “breakthrough sensor” for Xbox 360 that “detects 3D movements and voices,” codenamed Project Natal. Compatible with any Xbox 360 system, the ‘Project Natal’ sensor is the world’s first to combine an RGB camera, depth sensor, multi-array microphone and custom processor running proprietary software all in one device. ‘Project Natal’ tracks full body movement in 3-D, while responding to commands, directions and even a shift of emotion in voice.
The XboxLive will be also connected to Facebook and Twitter.

Ubisoft Conference

During the 2hour conference they presented the tricks they have up their sleeves this year:
- James Cameron’s Avatar: The Game,
- Red Steel2 bundled with the Wii Motion Plus accesory
- Pele’s Academy of Champions Football
- Splinter Cell Conviction
- RUSE
A bunch of Imagine series games like Petz Nursery and a new brand of games called Style Lab. They also presented a new fitness game called Your Shape that uses a camera to make sure you don’t cheat on your exercises:))))
- Rabbids Go Home
- Assassins Creed 2
- Teenage Mutant Turtles Ninja – Smash-Up
- No More Heroes 2 – Desperate Struggle
Also during the Nintendo conference they showed the trailer for a new open world 3D game named COP: The Recruit.

EA Conference
During the E3 2009 press conference, EA has made major announcements for the coming year, especially concerning sports and casual markets. Apart from preview and new trailers listed in the category news below, key takeaways were:
- Major online features will be included in Madden NFL 10.
- EA Sports will release a game based on mixed-martial arts in 2010.
- EA sports will release an expansion pack for its Wii fitness franchise: EA Sport Active.
- EA will be publishing the upcoming MMO title on the PC: All Points Bulletin, currently developed by Realtime Worlds (Crackdown).
Key announcements: Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age: Origins, Dante’s Inferno, Dead Space Extraction, The Sims 3, Army of Two: The 40th Day, The Saboteur, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, and the next Need for Speed

Nintendo Conference

During the E3 2009 press conference Nintendo has made major announcements for the coming year. On the hardware side, Nintendo announced the pulse-sensing Wii Vitality Sensor, which is a new peripheral that recognizes players pulse. On the software side, Nintendo announced several first and third party titles, for the Wii, DS and especially for the DSi. Most notable announcement, is Super Mario Galaxy 2 what makes it the first time two such titles appear on a single Nintendo console. The DSi will also get an interface with Facebook in order to share photos and creations with friends.
Games quoted were :
- For the Wii
- Grand Slam Tennis
- Red Steel 2
For the DS
- C.O.P.: The Recruit
- Zelda Spirit Tracks
Other were presented with a trailer or video :
For the Wii
- Wii Fit Plus, due in Fall ’09
- The Conduit
- Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles
- Dead Space: Extraction
- Metroid: Other M
- Super Mario Galaxy 2
- Final Fantasy Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers
For the DS
- Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story
- Style Savvy
- Flipnote Studio
- Golden Sun, due in 2010
- Kindom Hearts
While other were shown through a demo :
For the Wii
- New Super Mario Bros, featuring a 4-player mode and due for holiday period ’09
- Wii Sports Resort, due for July ’09

Sony Conference

During the E3 2009 press conference, Sony has made major announcements for the coming year. One of the big news is the PSP Go!. The console will have 16G of flash memory with possible extension, built-in WiFi and Bluetooth. Sony said that the all-digital console would not replace current PSPs and that all games will be available digitally as well as in UMD format. The PSP Go! will be available on October 1st for $249.99. No price drop of the original PSP was announced.
Sony also announced a new motion controller. It was unveiled by Richard Marx, creator of the Eye Toy. Like the Microsoft’s Project Natal, this is still a project in development (to be launched in 2010) so neither the design nor the technology is final.
Sony announced 50 PlayStation games coming to the PS Store in 2009. They had some more in-depth trailers and demos for several games.
Games quoted were :
- Gran Turismo PSP
- Resident Evil Portable
- Agent
- Mod Nation Racers
Other were presented with a trailer :
- Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
- Final Fantasy XIII
- Gran Turismo 5
While other were shown through a demo :
- God of War III
- Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
- MAG

Konami Conference

During the E3 2009 press conference, Konami has made major announcements for the coming year:
Kojima will take the lead of a new installment on classic series Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, due out 2010, available on X360 and on PS3.
The announcements of Metal Gear Solid Rising on X360 and PS3 and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker on PSP.(For reference, these annoucements were revealed during Sony and Microsfot’s press conferences.)
The portage of Kojima’s series on Arcade with Metal Gear Arcade.
Other key announcements: Dance Dance Revolution, Karaoke Revolution, Saw, Wireway, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories.

All the conferences and other information can be found at GameSpot.

Sony’s PSP Go! will be released this autumn, according to SCEA’s director of hardware marketing, John Koller. The biggest change of this new PSP is the 16 giga flash memory replacing the UMD drive. The console has a 3.8-inch screen, what is 11% smaller than PSP-3000’s screen. But, it is 43% lighter, has a slide-out controls system and has Bluetooth support.

Let’s get a little serious here SONY, it’s been so long and this is all you come up with. The name, oh yes, it is truly innovative and doesn’t remind us at all of the attachable devices for the PSP, GO!Explore – GPS navigation and GO!Cam – PSP Camera, or is this where the marketing wanted to arrive?!? We’ve been waiting for so long for the UMD format to be removed and this is what you want to replace my PSP with, or is this GO! series supposed to coexist alongside the PSP. Frankly the decrease of screen size is a NO-NO from the start, but we now have flash memory and expandable memory. 16GB Memory Sticks are already out there and personally I will under no circumstance replace my 3000 with this excuse for a console. I hope from the bottom of my heart that with the official announcement at the E3 that you will not let this be the future of the PSP because let me take a quote from your own website “PSP is Go!ng” to a far, far away land that no one will ever remember.

Video games have gone a long way since they first appeared.
From simple colored dots to advanced motion sensitive technology.The question is how far will they go, is there a limit to what we are willing to do to entertain or will we brake some moral limits that shouldn’t be crossed.
Below you can find a very interesting movie trailer regarding that possibility.

Sony has announced the launch of a new firmware for the PSP, the 5.50 system update. The new system will be available on April 21, 2009 and aims at making it much easier to browse the PlayStation Store.
It will also allow unregistered users to browse latest games, demos, and wallpapers in the PlayStation Store. However, an account will still be needed to make purchases.

Source: Kotaku

Marvel Universe Online, the comic book superhero MMO, will be released in 2012. Marvel’s president of worldwide consumer products, Simon Philips, said the MMO wouldn’t be out until after the Captain America movie in 2011 and the Avengers film in 2012.
For reference, Gazillion announced in March, 2009, that its studio Gargantuan would be developing Marvel Universe Online. This news was a part of the publisher’s 10-year deal to create a series of virtual worlds based on the comic book giant’s IP.

Source: GamesIndustry