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| Split/Second Multiplayer Hands-On
April 6, 2010 at 11:40 PM
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| Exploding a building is fun. Exploding a building on top of your friend's speeding car: priceless. 
Things explode in Split/Second. Bridges blow up and collapse, huge tankers slip from their moorings and slide into the nearby sea, and helicopters blow apart into a million shards of metal and glass. And while all of this mayhem happens in a fictionalized reality television setting in the game's single player experience, you can harness this mayhem to your advantage in Split/Second's eight-player multiplayer action. After all, sending a jumbo jet crashing to earth is fun enough by yourself; crashing it into your friends and ruining their race? Well, that's just priceless. At a press event in San Francisco this evening, Disney showed off two multiplayer events in the game: survival mode and standard races. Both are quite similar to their single-player counterparts but the addition of real drivers to the events seems to raise the stakes a bit. In survival mode, your goal is to end the race with the most points--you earn those points by passing eighteen-wheeler trucks. Pass multiple trucks in a row without crashing and you'll earn a combo modifier. The complication here are the color-coded exploding barrels that are falling off the trucks as they wildly slide around the track; blue barrels will knock you off course and running into a red barrel will destroy your car completely. Survival mode matches last three minutes with a thirty-second sudden death period tacked on to the end of a race--which gives you a last desperate sprint to earn additional points. However, if you die in a sudden death, your car will not respawn. Survival mode is a nice change of pace but, apart from the copious exploding barrels, there's not a lot of the mayhem you've come to expect from the game in this mode--there's no exploding scenery and no power plays… you know, the stuff you want from Split/Second. The real action for Split/Second's multiplayer is with the races themselves. Here, so many factors matter: the class of car you choose (the speedy sports cars, the strong and stable trucks, or the balanced muscle cars), the path you choose through the game's ever-evolving levels and, of course, when you use the all-important power plays. You earn power plays by pulling off fancy moves on the track--drifting, drafting, jumping, and so on. If you have enough power play juice you can execute an on-track event by pressing the A or X buttons (on the Xbox 360 controller). A typical power play moment usually involves something blowing up on one side of the road or the other--and it's usually enough to knock an opponent car sideways, slowing them down, but not necessarily stopping them completely. A massive power play, executed with the B button once the meter is filled, can completely change the outcome of a race. These are the events in Split/Second that you paid your hard-earned money to sea--huge oil tankers crashing down on top of you, driving through the middle of smoky tunnels while industrial equipment swings through the air, promising to take you out at the slightest mistake, airport control towers shattering and crumbling to the ground. In addition to unleashing periodic chaos, power plays can also occasionally open up new paths for you to take. When and red or blue arrow pops up on screen, you can initiate a power-play to take a previously unavailable shortcut that can save you a few seconds or more on your lap time. Timing shortcuts is important in races--it's very satisfying to open up a shortcut at the last possible moment and essentially screw your opponent of the opportunity. In between multiplayer races, you'll be able to compare yourself with your opponents in a number of ways. You earn credits depending on the position your finished in the previous race; think of them as simply championship points for your online session. There's also a racing number, which is essentially an overall ranking that gauges your skill--the better you drive, the lower your number will be (with #1 being the best rank of all). Split/Second developers told us that you can improve your ranking even if you aren't winning races. Finally, any achievements you earn in the game will show up as decals on the car you're driving in a race; you won't be able to place those decals yourself (they're automatically added to your car) but anyone driving against you will be able to see exactly what you've accomplished in the game. Based on our hands-on time with the game, Split/Second appears to be good fun online. The frame rate held up fairly well, even with all of the on-screen chaos happening all around. Of course, it remains to be seen how that performance will match up to the real world settings once the game is released but we're keeping our fingers crossed that it will hold up. Disney promises more information on single-player and multiplayer modes in Split/Second before the game's May 18 release, so look for more soon. Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
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| Quantum Theory formulated for late summer
April 6, 2010 at 6:25 PM
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| Tecmo Koei confirms release window for gory third-person shooter on Xbox 360 and PS3. 
In February, Tecmo Koei delayed its PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 shooter Quantum Theory, saying it wouldn't be ready for release before its fiscal quarter ended in March. Today a representative with the publisher confirmed a DualShockers report for GameSpot, narrowing down the game's current launch window. "For now, a solid date hasn't been determined yet, but we're looking at the later part of summer 2010," the representative told GameSpot. Quantum Theory follows beefy protagonist Syd and his female counterpart, Filens. With Earth having suffered a postapocalyptic catastrophe, the duo set out to stem the spread of a mysterious substance known as Erosion, the source of which appears to be in a mysterious "Living Tower." For more information, check out GameSpot's previous coverage of Quantum Theory. Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
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| Halo 3, Tomb Raider: Legend going downloadable
April 6, 2010 at 5:05 PM
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| Microsoft schedules weeks of Xbox Live Arcade and Games on Demand releases, headlined by digital debuts for Bungie's sci-fi shooter and Eidos' Lara Croft revamp. 
With a new 250GB hard drive accessory available and USB memory support just added to the Xbox 360, gamers on Microsoft's system have more storage options than ever before. To help gamers fill up all that extra space, Microsoft today laid out its Xbox Live Arcade and Games on Demand plans for the next few weeks. Next Tuesday, Microsoft will add Tomb Raider: Legend to the Games on Demand section of the North American Xbox Live Marketplace, with gamers in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand getting Devil May Cry 4. The following week, Bungie's 2007 sci-fi shooter Halo 3 will be available for all Xbox 360 gamers around the world, with Europeans also getting the THQ open-world action game Saints Row for the first time. This week also saw new options added to the Games on Demand service, as Microsoft launched Fable II worldwide and Fallout 3 in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. Fable II was already available to download (except in Korea and Japan) in an episodic format, with the first chapter given away for free and subsequent portions of the game carrying a charge. Fallout 3 has also been seen on the service previously, as Bethesda's postapocalyptic role-playing game launched on the North American Games on Demand service last month. Things are quieter elsewhere on the Xbox Live Marketplace, with the biggest launch being Capcom's Final Fight: Double Impact on Wednesday, April 14. The 800 Microsoft point ($10) game pairs the original arcade edition of Final Fight together with another of the publisher's quarter-munchers, Magic Sword. Both games will include high-definition graphical filters (like in the recent downloadable editions of Marvel vs. Capcom 2), with the option to view the games in full-screen mode or to see them surrounded by the original arcade bezel art. Capcom is also adding online multiplayer action to both games, incorporating GGPO netcode designed to disguise latency for arcade-quality online play. Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
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| Infinity Ward loses two more leads
April 6, 2010 at 12:47 PM
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| LinkedIn profiles indicate Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer designer Todd Alderman, software engineer Francesco Gigliotti depart embattled studio. 
March saw the high-profile firings of Infinity Ward studio heads Vince Zampella and Jason West, and it didn't take an analyst's intuition to guess that the two may be joined by other Call of Duty veterans. Just such a scenario now appears to be coming to pass, as the LinkedIn profiles of Infinity Ward lead designer Todd Alderman and lead software engineer Francesco Gigliotti indicate both left the company this month. Both Alderman and Gigliotti joined Infinity Ward in 2002, approximately one year before Activision acquired the studio and the first game in the $3 billion franchise shipped for the PC. Alderman's departure, in particular, could be considered a substantial blow to the studio, as his profile indicates he led design on the franchise's heralded multiplayer component. Activision had not responded to requests for comment on the departures as of press time. The upheaval at Infinity Ward began last month, when Activision abruptly fired Zampella and West due to "breaches of contract and insubordination." At the same time, the publisher revealed a new business unit devoted to the Call of Duty brand, one that will oversee the creation of a new first-person shooter at Treyarch, an action adventure at Sledgehammer Games, and a massively multiplayer online role-playing game for release in Asia. Zampella and West subsequently sued Activision for $36 million as well as control of the Call of Duty license. The two also reportedly secured representation by the Creative Artists Agency, whose clients also include Steven Spielberg, Brad Pitt, David Letterman, and Derek Jeter, to name but a few. For more information on Infinity Ward's $1 billion-selling shooter, as well as the rocky launch of its first map pack, check out GameSpot's previous coverage of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
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| AU Shippin' Out April 6-9: Borderlands: Double Game Add-On Pack
April 6, 2010 at 3:15 AM
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| 2K Games take a page out of Fallout 3's book and releases DLC on a retail disc this week down under. 
The past few weeks have seen the release of hit title after hit title, so it's only natural that eventually things would slow and quiet down. Xbox 360 and PC Borderlands fans who haven't got their machine online or just haven…t made it around to buying the Borderlands expansions: The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned and Mad Moxxi's Underdome downloadable content packs will be pleased to hear that 2K Games is releasing the two packs on a single retail disc. It will be branded as Borderlands: Double Game Add-On Pack, and players should keep in mind that you…ll need an original copy of Borderlands to play. There's no word on whether a PlayStation 3 version of the pack will be making its way to the console any time soon. Other games out this week include indie puzzle game Machinarium and Dead or Alive: Paradise. Stay tuned to AU Shippin' Out for all the latest release. April 8, 2010
Rune Factory Frontier (Wii)
Half-Minute Hero (PSP)
Machinarium (PC)
Dead or Alive Paradise (PSP)
The Secret Saturdays: Beasts of the 5th Sun (DS, Wii)
April 9, 2010
Borderlands: Double Game Add-On Pack (PC, 360)
Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
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