Perfectly blending blood, dismemberment, mythological beasts, tight gameplay, harems, and goddesses that wear sheer handkerchiefs for shirts, the God of War series has always brought the best of what good games should be. Now Kratos comes fireslashing his way to HD glory after 2 mindblowing appearances on the PS2. The series has always brought the hack and slash combat system to an artform, but beyond the awesomely gratuitous sex and violence has always come great level design. Boss battles in the first 2 iterations created an epic scope that still put most current gen games to shame.
Possibly to become the best game to come out ever, God of War 3 comes hacking its way exclusively to the PS3 towards the end of this year.
Click the jump for more images of glorious badassery. (more…)
So EA made this demo before the Ricky Hatton/Manny Pacquiao fight to promote Fight Night Round 4 coming out this summer. Smart marketing tying in this fight considering YouTube alone is going to be serving some major exposure for people looking for the vegas brawl. The boxers look insanely realistic and the animation looks to be the best the series has had to offer. Only thing they didnt get right is that they didn’t predict that Hatton was going get annihilated in the 2nd round and have his brain rattled by a massive left hook from the Filipino madman. This match was the follow up fight after Manny Pacquiao pummeled The Golden Boy, Oscar de la Hoya into retirement.
It’s easy to join the hate train when it comes to Saw. Yes they come out with one every year, but I’ll watch anything Charlie Clouser does the score to. And when it comes to the hatred of Saw, does anyone that dislike the movies actually keep watching them? You either like to watch people get ripped part or not.
At any rate, if you had no idea the movies existed and saw this as a stand alone game, you might actually be intrigued. There’s all this Resident Evil 5 hype that’s more of an action game than anything. The Saw game seems to take the genre back to roots in at least the aspect of creating an atmosphere or sense of tension like early RE, Clock Tower and Silent Hill. I could be wrong, but to hastily smash these developers for what might have potential is irrational when compared to some of the sins esteemed publishers commit, not to mention are forgiven for.
A rare occasion that a cartoon character becomes so popular that they become canon in the actual comics. But loved far and wide for her maniacal tendencies, Harley Quinn was introduced in Batman the Animated Series 15 or so odd years ago. Her performance has paid off because she continues her candy lane of murder and mayhem in Batman books today. And now, she appears in Batman: Arkham Asylum with a bit of a Dark Knight makeover. Guess lil ol’ Harl has been doing a bit of shopping.
As the world’s preeminent detective, Batman has a lousy track record when it comes to video games. But I’ve been on board with this ever since I’d heard Kevin Conroy and Mark Hammil’s voices in the original teaser.
But not in the way you’re thinkin’, bub. But maybe so. I can appreciate AM2’s use of the double entendre, but its title definitely leans towards the wetwork connotation. I say this because of the righteous amounts of violence and bloodletting its lead character, Rubi, displays.
The Tomb Traider games have been trying to recreate Lara Croft’s image to recover her waning appeal. AM2 may have beaten them to the punch because Rubi seems to have all the action Tomb Raider wishes it could have as well as Lara’s sex appeal without becoming a caricature of herself. She’s 007 cool and Ninja Gaiden deadly with a little Prince of Persia style.
But to say that WET is 100% derivative would be unfair. Its visuals seem to be very unique in itself. With grunge and dust-scratched film filters alongside high contrast killing blows, it looks to be a visual feast. While easy to compare it to Max Payne, the game takes the best of all worlds much like the heroine herself. Combine acrobatics with hyper-stylized gun and swordplay and you may just have a product greater than the titles it’s influenced by. For instance, Rubi can trigger her slow-mo, wallrun while pegging unfortunates, walljump then penetrate the neck of an even more unfortunate with her sword. But don’t just take my word for it, check out the gameplay video below and her website here.
WET is looking at a TBA release date somewhere in 2009.
For someone who’s not really into downloadable content, I’ve talked quite a bit about DLC the past couple of days. On the heels of the RE5 DLC, comes the announcement of Killzone 2’s first DLC package. Not surprising, it will be a couple of new multiplayer maps.
The DLC pack is called Steel & Titanium. The two maps are called Wasteland Bullet, and Vekta Cruiser. The first map sounds quite intriguing as it will take place on a couple of fast moving trains. It provides some interesting environment interaction. The Vekta Cruiser sounds like a fan induced inclusion which is never a bad thing. Click the link below for more details.
Power Man, (Luke Cage) and and Iron Fist (Danny Rand) were a 70’s super-hero duo, The Heroes for Hire. While a bit hokey for today’s standards, Cage and Iron Fist have been updated for modern comics and they’re the real deal. Nick Cage actually chose his stage name from Power Man for a little funfact. The current Iron Fist comic run is heavily entrenched in Far East mythology and magic-based power paced like a wushu martial arts movie with a Western superhero twist.
Kotaku’s posted a video showing some in-game action of Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2. While not the original developers of M:UA, Vicarious Visions have been responsible for porting the the original to the DS and PSP. And no stranger to comic book action, they’ve had their fingerprints on Ultimate Spider-Man, X-Men :Legends 2 and Batman Begins for the portable systems.
Looks like they’re in the big leagues now and have a tough act follow because the original Ultimate Alliance had some out of the park fun-factor. If this video is any indication, it appears they might actually have that covered.
Hayabusa from Ninja Gaiden gets another lovely companion in Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2. Ayana, best known as the purple-haired ninja from the Tecmo Dead or Alive fighting game series, takes a place beside the buxom blonde warrior Rachel and another raven-haired warrior with a glaive. She’s a likely candidate for an appearance since she and Hayabusa are both in Tecmo franchises and they’re both rockass ninja. Believe it or not, they’ve used Ayane’s classic costume that’s got that 6 foot red bow strapped to her backside. Not a bad present if you ask me.
And that’s wear blue jeans and a t-shirt. I think I have more interesting superhero costumes than this. Ah well it is an origin story that’s a video game based on a movie based on a comic book. That mouthful said, the game actually looks better than the movie. So far, it looks to be God of War violent which any solo Wolverine property should be. when X-Men aren’t around to keep him in check he’s usually running around dicing fools. Like blood-buckets spilling from a frenzied maniac killer violent. The trailer here shows more of the stylish action to be expected but the game might be the first adaptation to actually be the bloodbath it should be.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Time will tell whether or not the gameplay is solid. And for a movie adaptation, that’s a tall order. But from the looks of things we can at least be optimistic.
So a friend showed me this link to the new Final Fantasy 13 trailer and it looks pretty sick. Of course the cut scenes are over the top action insanity, but it seems like they’ve finally raised the bar during the actual gameplay combat where the camera work seems integrated and cinematic and the character animations are seamless and fluid. Not that past efforts had fallen short, but I knew it was only a matter of the technology catching up to the execution.
I think we’re almost there, folks.
Check out our girl, Lightning I believe she’s called, (a Squall/Cloud with breasts and a gunblade) in the visual extravaganza by clicking the pic.
