Vector-

Game Informations : Developer: Insomniac Games Publishers: Oculus VR, Insomniac Games Platforms: Microsoft Windows Initial release date: June 6, 2016 What excites me most about virtual reality gaming are the opportunities that open up for new and innovative styles of gaming that were never before possible. But despite being an Oculus exclusive, VR-only game, Edge of Nowhere is not that kind of game. It’s a very conventional and unexciting blend of third-person platforming action, light survival-horror, and typical stealth that feels like it would’ve worked completely fine on a traditional gaming system. Blocking out the real world does add to the sense of isolation it’s going for in its bleak Arctic environments, at least, but it doesn’t change the way you play enough for Edge of Nowhere to stand out The only VR feature that’s made extensive use of is head tracking, which is used for camera control, directing your flashlight in dark areas, and aiming your shotgun and thrown rocks. Most of that works well – especially the aiming, which feels about as accurate as a mouse, and much better than the gamepad you’re forced to use. The camera, on the other hand, makes going back the way you came for any reason (such as to pick up ammo or health you might’ve passed momentarily) an ordeal. You have to physically turn around in your seat to see where you’re going, which isn’t very convenient for what is otherwise a comfortable seated VR experience. That said, Edge of Nowhere’s levels are so tightly linear that going backwards isn’t something you need to do very often. There are no secrets to find or alternate paths to seek out, which prevents any sense of exploration you might expect from an explorer-themed game and offers no reason to want to replay it. In a roughly six-hour story campaign that bears more than a few similarities to Dead Space 2, generic protagonist Victor Howard must battle his way through fleshy, bulbous monsters and grotesquely mutated humans as he searches for his missing fiancee (who is also an explorer). It’s given some extra depth by calling Victor’s sanity into question (also like Dead Space 2) by distorting the world around us in strange ways, to the point where it’s uncertain what’s real and what’s in his head. Those flashback hallucinations do a good job of temporarily transporting you to other locations, which is otherwise exclusively in creature-infested ice caverns and snow-covered Arctic tundra. If not for those, there’d be very little to establish that the story is set in 1932, as snow hasn’t changed much over the last 80 years. Those are the most visually impressive areas - especially the jungle scenes - but on the whole Edge isn’t a terrific-looking game. Some of the environments look extremely low-polygon and jagged, which doesn’t look all that convincing even for big chunks of ice. A couple of routine boss fights change things up a little every once in awhile, but never do much to stand out. There’s typical “wait for the monster to open up to attack” fight and the “avoid the giant monster’s searchlight” sequence. I appreciate them for adding to gameplay variety, but neither is memorable or original. Action scenes are competent but rarely surprising. There’s a lot of running forward as the floor collapses behind you and ice platforms breaking off or falling over as you jump on or off of them, lots of clambering over obstacles, and a whole lot of climbing ice walls with your ice axes. Those climbing sequences are the most overdone - or maybe they just feel that way because the movement speed is so slow and the hazards of the ice breaking out from under you are so often repeated. I soon adopted a quicker but unrealistic method of repeatedly leaping upward and digging in with my axes like some sort of weird superhero, just to speed things up. To its credit, there are a few sequences in the latter half of the campaign I enjoyed, when all of the different hazards are thrown at you at once and there’s a time pressure to keep moving. I fell to my death fairly frequently, but the save checkpoints are so close together and the loading times so quick that it didn’t matter much - in fact, I was far more reckless in my platforming than I normally would be because I didn’t fear death. Between platforming sequences and hallucinations are the stealth and combat against a small variety of enemy types, nearly all of which are literally blind and detect you based on sound or within a radius (which is visible thanks to Victor’s unexplained Detective Vision ability). If that reminds you of The Last of Us’ Clicker zombies, it should: these stealth sequences seem pulled directly out of Naughty Dog’s playbook. Most of them are navigated by tossing rocks to lure enemies away from your path, and optionally tossing another rock to activate a nearby spike trap to impale them like hors d'oeuvres on toothpicks. Alternatively, you can try to fight your way through with your ax and the satisfyingly powerful shotgun, but its one-shot-per-load and long reload times make that a method of last resort. Victor can only take a few hits even from the enemies that don’t instantly and graphically murder him when they catch you, so it’s best to keep your distance. These stealth sequences are at their best when ammo is scarce enough that you have to make use of the environment to deal with as many monsters as possible before going loud. If that’s your style, I encourage you to play on the highest difficulty level, which decreases the amount of supplies available. Verdict: Edge of Nowhere stands out in the current library of VR games only because it’s one of the longer and more polished games out there, but compared to the conventional third-person action-stealth games it closely emulates it’s competent but unremarkable. If you’ve played a game in this genre before, Victor’s platforming and sneaking will do very little to surprise you, other than the way the sense of isolation you get from putting on the Oculus Rift enhances the setting. ---------------------------------------------------------------- System Requirements Minimum: OS: Win 7 64 Processor: Intel Core i5-4590 3.3GHz / AMD FX-8350 Graphics: AMD Radeon R9 290 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 4GB System Memory: 8 GB RAM Storage: 15 GB Hard drive space DirectX 11 Compatible Graphics Card Recommended: OS: Win 7 64 Processor: Intel Core i5-4590 3.3GHz / AMD FX-8350 Graphics: AMD Radeon R9 290 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 4GB VRAM: 4GB System Memory: 8 GB RAM Storage: 15 GB Hard drive space

Game Informations : Developer: Ubisoft Montreal, Ubisoft Ukraine Publishers: Ubisoft, Akella Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Ps4, Xbox One, Ps3, Xbox 360, Mac Initial release date: Nov 17, 2009 Assassin's Creed II is the follow-up to Ubisoft's 2007 hit that attracted a mass audience if not unanimous critical acclaim. The sequel is an expansive and bloody romp through Renaissance Italy that plays up every po[CENSORED]r aspect of the first installment while righting many of its flaws.The PC and Mac versions ere released months after the game came out on consoles, and much has already been said about the digital rights management issues that have affected the experience since its release. The DRM measures require users to maintain an internet connection while playing Assassin's Creed II in any mode. If you lack a constant, reliable connection, you might want to give this game a pass, even though it's a single player experience. Ubisoft's DRM servers also went down directly after launch, restricting access to new gamers. However our recent experience with the game remained uninterrupted. We did purposefully cut off our internet connection to confirm that the game will pause until a new connection could be established. It does. While disconnected, we were also unable to access the "bonus content" from the game's main menu due to an inability to reach Ubisoft's servers. Once you get past this strict and inconvenient method of piracy protection, Assassin's Creed II is the same great experience that console gamers enjoyed last year. The two "missing" memory sequences that were later made available through download on consoles are available right from the start. PC gamers who have yet to experience this sequel will notice right away that Assassin's Creed II has evolved from an ill-defined action game into a fully featured open world experience. Everything from the new monetary system to the ability to buy armor and weapons makes it a richer, and ultimately more satisfying game than its predecessor. The plot of Assassin's Creed pulls together a bit of The Matrix, a lot of historical fiction, and throws in elements of the madcap conspiracy theories found in a Dan Brown novel. The series also has the benefit of being crafted by some of the most talented hands in game development. With only a handful of exceptions, the environments, animations, and art are beautifully portrayed. In addition to its good looks, the sequel's gameplay builds so much upon the foundations of the first game, that in retrospect, the first Assassin's Creed looks like little more than a technical demonstration. Both fans and detractors of Assassin's Creed will be pleased to know that the sequel fully addresses and ties up many of the loose ends from the last game. It picks up exactly where we left off, with the kidnapped bartender Desmond locked in his cell at Abstergo. This corporation is the modern-day face of the Templars and they're after Desmond's valuable genetic memories. The magic of modern technology allows Desmond to relive the exploits of his Assassin ancestors. His genealogy puts him at the center of a war between the Templars and Assassins. The game starts off with a bang, springing Desmond from jail and introducing him to the Assassins at their secret hideout. Here they have access to the same technology that allows Desmond to relive the past. In the last game, his brain was forcibly used to reveal powerful artifacts hidden in 12th century Jerusalem. This time Desmond temporally relocates to 15th century Italy by choice to learn the ways of the Assassins through the life of Ezio Audituerre de Firenze. It's a convoluted setup, but it's also a great excuse to skip around in time, taking control of a character for only the most interesting moments of his life. Players are introduced to Ezio at the moment of his birth as part of a clever lesson on movement. It then jumps to his formative years as a womanizer, a street fighter, and the son of a wealthy banker. He isn't a wholly likable character, but the game steers us towards a revenge plot that provides the player plenty of motivation to stick with the story. The Renaissance setting also adds a much needed dose of color and humor to the series. In the early missions, we're introduced to the excellent free running system that allows players to climb over almost any surface. Movement speed in Assassin's Creed II has been significantly increased from the first game, enabling players to fluidly zip around the city. The animations are still excellent, and Ezio's body realistically adjusts to his environment as he climbs and vaults past obstacles. The only downside of free running is that there are moments when the camera doesn't present the best view of what's over the next rooftop. Overzealous free runners will take more damage from falling off buildings than they'll ever take from a sword. The controls on a PC are fully customizable, but there's no avoiding the fact that this game was developed specifically for a controller. I recommend using the supported Xbox 360 controller over a mouse and keyboard setup to avoid the awkward button combinations required for something as simple as running and climbing. For better or for worse "stealth" games are defined by the Metal Gear series. Hideo Kojima's vision of tactical espionage has extremely rigid rules about when a player is hidden and when they are plainly visible. Assassin's Creed II breaks this convention, adhering more to the rules of a Jason Bourne movie, where quick actions and a dense crowd are the tools of escape. I find this version of stealth refreshing, more realistic, and ultimately a success due to the numerous options players have when navigating the city streets. There are still hiding places like bales of hay and roof gardens in Assassin's Creed II. They act as sort of "safe zones" that break a pursuers line of site. Ezio can even dive underwater for a limited time to hide from his enemies. But a more satisfying approach to dealing with foes is to divert them with hired help. Thieves, mercenaries and whores can be hired for a fee and directed at targets as living tools of distraction. Players can also toss money into a crowd to cause a small riot amongst the peasantry. This sandbox approach to stealth requires a bit of practice and it won't always result in success, but when it does come together, it's very rewarding. If you choose to fight instead of hide, another plethora of options opens up. On the weapon selection wheel, there are swords, daggers, smoke bombs, throwing knives the dual assassin blades, and a surprise weapon I won't spoil. Each weapon has its benefits in terms of strength and speed along with its own slick set of animations. New weapons can be permanently purchased through shops, or temporarily stolen from an adversary in the heat of battle. Weapon variation has done a lot to improve the variety of combat; late in Assassin's Creed II you'll be looking for a fight instead of turning tail. Even without sword, the way you engage an enemy has depth. A notoriety meter and enemy awareness indicators being clearly marked on the screen give players fair warning over what sets off the guards. Once engaged, there are sidesteps, special combat moves (like throwing sand in someone's face), and grapples. Novice players will fall back on slamming a single attack button, which quickly becomes repetitive, but experts can turn combat into an art. The addition of a monetary system also drastically changes Assassin's Creed II. Ezio receives money as he completes quests, finds treasures, or pickpockets victims. Health will not regenerate completely over time, so medicine and upgradeable armor must be purchased to keep Ezio alive. Besides applying funds to armor, weaponry, and remedies, you also have the ability to upgrade your home base -- a Villa in the country-side. The Villa is something of a glorified display case for all of the collectibles and secret items, but players can also dedicate money to upgrading its appearance and facilities. Rebuild the church and find a treasure; rebuild the blacksmith and get a discount. It's an addictive and optional diversion that completionists will drool over. The Villa also gives the game a geographic center and a safe zone to tally your progress. Annoyingly, it's also the only place Ezio can swap weapons and armor, but the addition of travel kiosks mean that players can now be transported to surrounding cities instantly. Through the mission structure, Assassin's Creed II guides and nudges players towards the meat of the game. At the start of each mission the player must "accept" the task, or put it off until later. The missions that advance the story are always marked on the map with an exclamation point, meaning that a game with plenty of diversions also keeps the main goal visible at all times. It's a good design and a nod to critics of the last game who bemoaned side missions that stood in the way of the good stuff. It's difficult to nail down parts of Assassin's Creed II that aren't satisfying. Sections that border on frustrating are either fleeting or optional and some of this "extra" content is downright excellent. For example, Prince of Persia fans will revel in the hidden tombs that require dexterity, patience, and expert timing. Even if you ignore the extras in Assassin's Creed II, the game is still a lengthy experience. The story alone lasts upwards of 18 hours and includes enough variety to be interesting throughout. Not every mission is equally as exciting. The assassinations are far more exhilarating than tailing a target or following an ally through a city. However, there are some one-off missions that are both exciting and wildly different from the core gameplay. With more variety and a tighter focus, Assassin's Creed II gets the pacing just right. Of course some PC gamers enjoy the benefits of playing at a much higher resolution with crisp, clean textures. Our beefy AlienWare was able to run the game at full settings with only minor stuttering. But while the art direction and detailed recreation of Renaissance is still visually pleasing, it is slightly less impressive when compared to games that are currently pushing graphical boundaries on the PC. Verdict: Assassin's Creed II transforms a middling action game into an intriguing and consistently entertaining open-world adventure. Based on this game, Ubisoft Montreal should run a clinic on how to iterate a franchise and if the series continues in this vein, the next installment will take aim at Rockstar's best efforts. The experience is layered, unique, and shows an incredible attention to detail. This is one case where the sequel has triumphed over the original by catching the gameplay up to the already excellent visuals. No matter what your preconceptions are about Assassin's Creed II, the game is well worth your time and money. -------------------------------------------------------------- System Requirements Minimum: OS: Win Xp 32 Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 1.8GHz / AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4000+ Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 4550 or NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GS VRAM: 256MB System Memory: 1.5 GB RAM Storage: 8 GB Hard drive space DirectX 9 Compatible Graphics Card Recommended: OS: Win Xp 32 Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 2.66GHz / AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 6000+ Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 3870 or NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT VRAM: 512MB System Memory: 3 GB RAM Storage: 8 GB Hard drive space

Game Informations : Developer: TMG Studios B.V. Publishers: TMG Studios B.V. Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Xbox One, Mac Initial release date: Oct 10, 2019 We Were Here Together soars far more often than it falls and delivers the best co-op puzzle experience you'll find anywhere. The We Were Here games are a series of co-op first-person puzzle games by Total Mayhem Games. Each entry has been brief, yet packed full of awesome two-player escape room-type puzzles to solve. The newest game in the series, We Were Here Together, is easily twice the size of the previous two games both in length and production value. While the added length does create more opportunity for duds, We Were Here Together soars far more often than it falls and delivers the best co-op puzzle experience you'll find anywhere. All three We Were Here games follow the same general blueprint: two characters stumble upon a castle and, upon entering it, are separated on two distinct paths. Armed with only a walkie-talkie with which to communicate, the players need to work together to escape by sharing information and solving a wide variety of puzzles. It's a communication exercise, and a bonding experience to be certain. We Were Here Together pushes the series forward a giant step by increasing the length of the game dramatically, adding separate narratives for each player, and creating the most visually impressive and elaborate environments the series has ever seen. We Were Here Together has A LOT of puzzles. Just by the number: We Were Here Too took my friend and I 77-minutes to complete (it's free-to-play and absolutely worth an hour of your time), We Were Here Too took two hours to complete (also totally worth it), and We Were Here Together took us six hours. There are fantastic, memorable puzzles in the third installment, but there are also the worst puzzles in the series, particularly as you get closer to the end. The game begins as no other game in the series has: both players start together and solve the first puzzle together. It's a brilliant starting point for players who aren't familiar with the series and haven't already established a shorthand with their partner because both players can see the same things. Yes, you'll need to separate in order to complete tasks simultaneously and share information, but it's a great first puzzle because if you get confused, you can go see what your partner is looking at and chip away at the breakdowns in your communication. From here on out though, you'll be separated on different tracks in traditional We Were Here style. This is the first game in the series that allows you to pick up multiple objects and place them in your inventory, leading to more elaborate puzzles. One of the best involves combining seeds and different colored nutrients together to alchemize different solutions where each player only has half of the items and recipes needed. You'll be sending ingredients back and forth to each, concocting each material without knowing what the other person is even working on, yet it all comes together perfectly. On the other end of the spectrum, there are some puzzles near the end that are either brain dead simple, obnoxiously complex, or somehow, both. There is a puzzle that involves relaying long, Latin-sounding words to each other that are almost all the same and all difficult to pronounce, so you'll spend most of the puzzle spelling words. It isn't difficult, but it is annoying. We also brute-forced a puzzle for the first time in We Were Here history. Towards the end of the game, a puzzle had no apparent solution, but wasn't too difficult to figure out through trial and error. For me, this is the biggest no-no of all-time in a puzzle game. The final puzzle is an incredibly small logic puzzle that you would have done in grade school. It's almost insulting how simple it is and, unfortunately, the steady decline of puzzles towards the end gives the game a bit of a "ran out of time" feel. The series has always had a strange way of handling the story. The games all begin essential in medias res with the unnamed characters entering the castle with no setup whatsoever. There is sometimes lore to find and read, and as the game progresses, a story about a mad king and a dark ritual start to work their way into the puzzles. It's always been particularly understated and left wide open to interpretation. In We Were Here Together, the story is pushed much further to the forefront by introducing other characters and cutscenes between each puzzle. It's particularly effective in the way that each character is presented half of the story, just as each player is presented half of the puzzle. When the characters finally come back together at the end, so does the story. And the final moments are made all the better if players chose to conceal certain information from each other (wink wink, nudge nudge). Unfortunately, I still really don't have any idea what the story is. I've played all three games and, without specifically digging around for lore bits, I'm left pretty baffled by the narrative events in We Were Here Together. There's a post-credit scene that definitely sets up a new game, which is great, but the content of the cutscenes didn't particularly impact me because I didn't have the context for what was happening. It starts as a rescue mission for some people stranded in a snowstorm, but quickly thereafter, you'll be forging soul stones and teaming up with a ghost to beat an evil clown, and I really just don't know what was going on. That said, the series has been nothing if not an evolution from one entry to the next, and I expect We Were Here 4ever to deliver on its story and finally make it all make sense. I really enjoy this series and I appreciate how far it has come in the last couple of years. I hope that as the games get longer and budget increases, that they can maintain the same focused quality of the first two entries. Personally, I'd rather have less puzzles than bad puzzles ------------------------------------------------------------ System Requirements Minimum: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 7/8/8.1/10 64 bit Processor: Intel Core i3 4000 series or equivalent Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: Nvidia GTX 750 or equivalent, integrated graphics not supported DirectX: Version 11 Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 15 GB available space Additional Notes: A working PC-compatible microphone Recommended: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 7/8/8.1/10 64 bit Processor: Intel Core i5 4000 series or equivalent Memory: 8 GB RAM Graphics: Nvidia GTX 970 or equivalent, integrated graphics not supported DirectX: Version 11 Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 15 GB available space Additional Notes: A working PC-compatible microphone

Game Informations : Developer: Ubisoft, ‎Ubisoft Quebec Publishers: Ubisoft Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Ps4, Xbox One Initial release date: Oct 23, 2015 Every year, the Assassin’s Creed series struggles with the idea of inheritance. Like its Templars and Assassins, who are locked in a never-ending struggle for relics, each game picks a side in the question of how strongly should it lean into its now-convoluted ancient lore and incorporate the still-underdeveloped present-day elements. Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate chooses wisely, leaves out multiplayer entirely, and pushes a lot of that baggage into the background, largely freeing itself up to make the most of Victorian London and have fun with sneaking, climbing, and stabbing. Syndicate smartly negotiates this internal conflict by dramatising it in the form of its twin playable characters, Evie and Jacob Frye. The former is a devout Assassin, intent on stopping the Templars by tracking down the remaining pieces of Eden. Her brother Jacob, however, is a pragmatist – a social reformer who rails against the Assassin’s burdensome legacy and wishes to help his city in more immediate ways, seemingly embodying my desire to move on from the tangled mysticism. They’re both extremely likeable, well-drawn protagonists, and the interaction between the two is laced with a lively sibling rivalry that brings levity to otherwise-earnest cutscenes. But their contrasting worldviews have the greatest positive impact on Syndicate’s structure, which is both engaging and meaningful. You can freely switch between Jacob and Evie at most points, with side missions and open-world activities open equally to both. Campaign missions, however, are different, with Jacob taking the lead in the majority of the core assassinations. This is frustrating, especially since Evie is pitched as the more stealthy of the pair. But I soon realised that Syndicate is just not that interested in exploring forgotten tombs in search of dusty relics; it wants to liberate the great city of London from its terrible oppressors. And to be blunt, Syndicate’s a much better experience for identifying more closely with the goals of Jacob. Despite being sidelined so often, Evie comes across as the more nuanced character, struggling with her sense of duty, where Jacob is a more straightforward bloke with clear goals. By the end of the 20-hour campaign, I felt like I’d probably spent more time with Evie due to prefering her in side missions, and I certainly knew her better. She sees the bigger picture, with her missions tackling problems Jacob can’t even comprehend. Evie also stars in my favourite assassination mission – a nighttime infiltration of the Tower of London. Given their differences, I was disappointed with how similar Jacob and Evie are to play. They each possess three high-level abilities designed around their supposed strengths of stealth and combat, respectively – Evie can effectively become invisible when stationary, for example, while Jacob has more deadly combos. But the rest of the abilities are identical. At first, I exaggerated the differences by investing all of Evie’s points into the stealth skill tree and Jacob’s into combat, thinking I could switch between the two depending on the situation. But since you can’t switch between characters within campaign missions, that’s not a viable approach. In one mission, I was playing as Jacob and it would’ve been really useful to unlock a specific door to make a quick escape, but because I’d only unlocked advanced lockpicking for Evie – who was unavailable – I had to take a longer, more hazardous route out of the building. Ah, London… in 1868, it was a bustling, heavily industrialised city, the heart of an unprecedented Empire. It feels like a different type of place to those Assassin’s Creed has visited in the past. The churches of Rome and Paris give way to London’s glistening train stations and infernal factories, its cathedrals to industry and progress. It’s not an exact replica – the map is nipped and tucked, bringing some landmarks closer together – but on the whole it feels like London, especially key areas like Trafalgar Square and the Palace of Westminster. At first, I thought it was fairly ugly – a smear of brown and grey – but it slowly yields its charms. The slums are caked in mud and thousands of chimneys spew forth thick black smoke, but there’s a kind of beauty when you see it blot the sky at dusk. Similarly, walking around the foggy streets of central London by gaslight is wonderfully atmospheric. And after Unity's troubled release, it's worth stating I encountered no noteworthy bugs or performance issues. But London is also well-represented in a mechanical sense. Jacob’s effort to free the city from the Templars who control it is accomplished by slowly building up a gang, known as the Rooks, by deposing small-time Templars who control various districts within the seven boroughs. Most of the activities in the open-world, outside of side quests, contribute towards this goal, and as a consequence a lot of the optional activities feel more meaningful and less like filler. It feels like you’re chipping away at the enemy, clawing back parts of the city. Similarly, you can stifle the enemy in other ways, like bribing the police or controlling the docks. Admittedly, these gang upgrades are simply purchased through a sterile menu, but they convey the notion of the 19th-century city as a complex organism. The campaign missions achieve something similar, with each target occupying a slightly different sphere of influence, including the worlds of science, politics, and finance. Even though it positions the devious Crawford Starrick behind everything, it effectively conveys the idea of corruption and control being diffused across different systems. It all sounds rather serious, but Syndicate is also the silliest Assassin’s instalment in quite some time. It shows a real delight in ransacking its rich Victorian setting for fun stuff to do. There are so many amusing missions, from tracking down hallucinogenic orchids for Charles Darwin to retrieving the lapdog of Benjamin Disraeli’s wife in the Devil’s Acre, the most dangerous part of London. Early on, you can dress up Jacob as Sherlock Holmes, don Cthulhu-inspired tentacular brass knuckles, and hunt down occultists with Charles Dickens. What’s not to love about that sentence? The Charles Dickens side-missions are definitely my favourites. You accompany the great novelist to expose fraudsters, catch hypnotists, visit the most haunted house in London, and even have a supernatural encounter of your own. It’s Syndicate at its most consistently engaging, eccentric, and playful, which makes the terrible ending all the more baffling. What were they thinking? It’s entirely at odds with what the story has been about, mired in the dense, po-faced lore it spends the best part of 25 hours trying its best to forget about. Inside the mostly entertaining and lively packaging, however, what you’re being asked to do feels very familiar. Missions almost always involve the traditional Assassin’s Creed staples of following, escorting, or killing people and/or stealing items, but Syndicate’s characters and situations do more than enough to stave off boredom. The most prominent new mechanic is the grapple-gun, and on the whole, it’s well implemented and fun to use. Its ratcheting mechanism prevents you from turning into Batman; it’s not possible to zip around London at high speed or glide, but it allows you get negotiate wider roads without coming down to street level, and reach London’s higher rooftops with ease. When you’re on the ground, carriages can be stolen at any time, and provide a helpful way to cover more ground since London’s a big place, around a third bigger than Unity’s take on Paris. They don’t feel particularly fast or exciting to drive, but they handle much better than I was expecting. The latest iteration of Assassin’s Creed combat, on the other hand, looks fast-paced and attractive – the sword cane became a favourite, thanks to its delightfully brutal finishers – but got a touch repetitive by the time I was through. It would also be nice to have more non-lethal ways to subdue others, especially in a setting that introduces the police as a hostile but ultimately well-meaning obstacle that I didn’t feel good about having to kill. Technology dominates the era, but Alexander Graham-Bell – the era’s Da Vinci – doesn’t have much to offer your arsenal outside of an electrical grenade which is effective at incapacitating large groups of enemies but draws far too much attention. And if you’re wondering if this is the year when Assassin’s Creed finally fixes its long-standing problems with your character accidentally grabbing the wrong ledge or climbing the wrong wall, it sadly has not. But free-running as good here as it’s ever been. Verdict: Assassin’s Creed Syndicate is the most fun I’ve had with an Assassin’s game since Black Flag. In fact, I liked it more. Apart from its ill-fitting conclusion, it never takes itself too seriously and delights in the rich possibilities of its Victorian setting and great new grapple gun. As you explore its contrasting boroughs, you glean some sense of what powered this great city in the 19th century. The story missions capitalise on this by exploring different spheres of influence, which when combined with elements like mass transit, heavy industry, and law enforcement, make this feel like a different type of city than has been featured in the series to date. Best of all, Syndicate asks you to take London back in a way puts the last few games to shame. ----------------------------------------------------------------- System requirements Minimum: OS: Windows 7 64-bit CPU: Intel Core i5-2400s 2.5GHz or AMD FX 6350 3.9GHz RAM: 6 GB System Memory VRAM: 2GB Graphics Memory GPU: Nvidia GTX 660 or AMD Radeon R9 270 HD: 50 GB available space (7200rpm) DX: DirectX 11 Recommended: OS: Windows 10 64-bit CPU: Intel Core i7-3770 3.5GHz or AMD FX-8350 4.0GHz RAM: 8 GB System Memory VRAM: 3GB Graphics Memory GPU: Nvidia GTX 760 (4GB), GTX 970 or ATI Radeon R9 280X

Game Informations : Developer: Ubisoft, Ubisoft Sofia Publishers: Ubisoft Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Ps4, Ps3, Xbox One, Xbox 360 Initial release date: Nov 11, 2014 History has always played a pivotal role in the Assassin’s Creed series. It serves as both inspiration and backdrop – a resource for dramatic events, supporting characters, and villains. Rogue is slightly different, though; it’s more concerned with examining the history of the series itself than exploring real-life events. The result is one of the most striking and intriguing stories seen in an Assassin's Creed game, but forgettable missions, an empty world, and lack of effort to put a new spin on how this long-running series plays and controls continually undermine its dramatic intentions. Rogue’s greatest strength is its central character – Shay Patrick Cormac – and his journey from dutiful Assassin to vengeful Templar. Most of the trailers surrounding Rogue have portrayed Shay as a cold-blooded killer, but that’s in no way accurate; his story is nuanced, and the narrative is patiently unfolded. You play the first third or so of Rogue as an Assassin, which lets you forge relationships with those you will later hunt. There’s a good chunk of the 14-hour campaign where Shay doesn’t have any clear allegiances, and even then, he never really descends into brutal killer territory. There’s always a sympathetic motivation to be found; it’s all much more nuanced and ambiguous than I was expecting, and it makes for the most engaging story in an Assassin’s Creed game since the days of Ezio Auditore da Firenze. Rogue also attempts to transfer the crisis of faith Shay experiences to us, and for me it worked. Familiar faces and locations from each of the past Assassin's Creed games are thrown up and put in some sort of order, but the perspective of those events we know is either changed or challenged. Shay isn’t a villain; he’s an individual, who questions orders and suspects inherited truths, and for the first time in the series we are encouraged to do the same. Rogue is great because it does away with the idea of black-and-white villains at all. This adds a renewed level of intrigue to what is a very familiar Assassin’s Creed experience of running across rooftops, freeing hostages, sabotaging the enemy, and of course, killing important people. I was hoping some of this would feel different playing as Shay the Templar, but disappointingly there are no new abilities to distinguish. Since he was trained as an Assassin, it’s bloody business as usual. And when the time came to confront my former Assassin brothers and sisters, what should've been dramatic moments were revealed as forgettably staged and mechanically bland. In both good ways and bad, Rogue plays like a direct sequel to Black Flag, and carries on its strong emphasis on seafaring. The map sends us around Albany, New York, the frozen waters of the North Atlantic, as well as plenty of small towns and quaint settlements, like the pumpkin-strewn Sleepy Hollow, dotted around. Even though it can be on occasion a bit fuzzy around the edges with some dodgy shading, Rogue is a frequently pretty experience. Sailing through blizzards while your ship cuts through the ice looks great and is thrilling. But for all of its good looks and atmosphere, I can’t help but find Rogue’s world lacking. Yes, it looks big on a map, apparently crammed with things to do – forts to conquer, animals to hunt, territory to explore – but I can’t stress how extraneous all of these activities are. For example, I only lightly upgraded my ship, and managed to easily finish the campaign without ever tending to Shay’s equipment. Consequently, there's just no reason to spend time hunting; there's no benefit. And I feel the same about the icons and question marks dotted around its sprawling map: they're just not that interesting, and if you do explore, the pay-off rarely justifies the excursion. As a result, Rogue feels deceptive; it appears to be generous, but it's not. And because it's a world that doesn't reward curiosity, either with fun or material gain, I finished Shay's story without really getting to know the cities of Albany or New York, and used fast travel whenever possible. Over the years Assassin’s Creed has acquired so many systems – hunting, urban renewal, myriad collectibles – but unlike a savvy pirate, it’s reluctant to jettison them for the good of the mission. Sadly, for a game so focussed on reappraising the past, Rogue’s core combat and traversal mechanics remain unimproved, and as with every Assassin's Creed game before it, at times I found them painfully frustrating. There are several missions which involve you taking out a series of guards in wide-open environments, but rarely did I feel like a skilled assassin as I jumped into a campfire by accident or like a seasoned captain of a ship as I jumped into the bay of a harbour instead of its pier. This is all frustrating – or if you're in a good mood, a touch comical – but when it ruins key moments in the story, I found it unforgivable. Verdict: Rogue has the most interesting story of any recent Assassin’s Creed game. It’s fascinated by its own history, and introduces a level of ambiguity which changes how we look at the formerly simple conflict between Assassins and Templars. So it's all the more disappointing there's so little to do while the story is being told; the upgrade economy's pointless and most of the tasks are quite trivial. Story aside, so much of Rogue feels redundant, repetitive, and ultimately in need of reinvention. --------------------------------------------------------------- System Requirements Minimum: OS: Win 7 64 Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz / AMD Athlon II X4 620 Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 5670 1024MB or NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 VRAM: 1GB System Memory: 2 GB RAM Storage: 11.6 GB Hard drive space DirectX 11 Compatible Graphics Card Recommeneded: OS: Win 8 64 Processor: Intel Core i5-2400S 2.5GHz / AMD FX-6100 Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 6870 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti System Memory: 4 GB RAM Storage: 11.6 GB Hard drive space

Game Informations : Developer: Ubisoft Montreal, Ubisoft Ukraine Publishers: Ubisoft Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Ps4, Ps3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, MAC Initial release date: Nov 16, 2010 The most important thing you need to know before starting Assassin's Creed Brotherhood is that, after the first hour, you're never forced to man any more asinine cannons. Don't be discouraged by the frustratingly pointless, cinematic-heavy introduction, because everything after that is compelling. I couldn't stay mad at the game for long—not after nimbly scaling Rome's famous Coliseum and flicking my blade into the necks of three hapless gunmen, all entirely undetected. Brotherhood's massive and complex open world is an engrossing, blood-soaked playground. Ubisoft Montreal has stressed that Brotherhood has a number of innovations and evolutions designed to keep the experience fresh, and we can certainly tell you that there's easily as much content here as in Assassin's Creed II, but will it be enough to really help this title distinguish itself from last year's stellar outing? Let's find out. After confronting Rodrigo Borgia and having his mind blown far beneath the Vatican at the end of Assassin's Creed II (and no, that's not a euphemism), the story picks up with Ezio ready for some well-earned R&R. It's not to be. Cesare Borgia – Rodrigo Borgia's son – is ticked off, and mounts a full scale attack on the assassins. The villa in Monteriggioni is destroyed and Ezio loses everything. Yes, after 20+ hours working towards all that bad-ass armour and weaponry, it's lost in a moment and players must begin again. Such is the fickle nature of videogames. In any case, Ezio travels to Rome determined to take his revenge against Cesare. The city is divided into 12 districts, each of which is overseen by a Borgia tower, representing the Borgia's control of the area. As long as the tower stands, soldiers are out in force, shops remain closed and the people oppressed. Assassinate the tower's Captain and burn it to the ground, however, and the area will open up for business. Ezio is then able to renovate blacksmiths, banks, stables and more, and these all add to his income, in much the same way renovating Monteriggioni did in the last game. The more shops that are open, the more items will be available and perks Ezio will get. For instance, the more tailors you have, the more pouches for carrying knives and other items will be available, whereas the more banks are open the more money Ezio can store before his account is full. Each defeated tower also opens up an assassin apprentice slot, but more on that later. It's important to note that while the Borgia towers are a key element of the game's structure, they're not actually central to taking down Cesare. You can actually finish Brotherhood without destroying all the towers. Instead, they're about earning income, unlocking items, gaining apprentice assassins and reducing the presence of Borgia guards across the city. By destroying a tower, players can make missions in that region easier for themselves by ensuring there'll be less guards around. How to get to each Captain? Well, that's up to you. Each tower is surrounded by a compound where the guards are on high alert, so it's up to players to work out the best path to the Captain. Easier compounds allow astute players to clinically execute the Captain with little-to-no danger, while more difficult ones will inevitably result in a huge confrontation, or have a more difficult path to the end goal. As fans of open-world games would expect, a lot of the player's time will be occupied with missions and activities that don't necessarily advance the plot. It's easy to get sidetracked for hours finding treasure chests, taking on assassination contracts, doing missions for the various guilds or trying to level up your relationship with them, exploring the world or climbing landmarks like the Coliseum. Subterranean environments return too, in the guise of Sons of Romulus missions. These make for a nice change of pace, as the focus is very much on movement puzzles over combat. Leonardo da Vinci is back as an ally too, and once again provides weapons for Ezio. Turns out he's also been pressured into creating war machines for Cesare, so it's up to Ezio to destroy the plans and prototypes. These see you wielding a chain gun mounted to a horse and cart, piloting a boat with a naval cannon, gliding about in Leo's paraglider – modified to fire bombs, and manning a renaissance-era tank. They're not actually that exciting, but at least inject a little variety into the gameplay. And honestly? That's something Brotherhood needs. The gameplay on offer here is solid, but by and large the bulk of the missions are pretty similar in nature to those we've already experienced in depth in Assassin's Creed II. It really feels like treading the same old ground, without great improvements. The missions where Ezio must tail a target are still frustrating, for instance, thanks to the small sweet spot at which the player must stay away in order to follow - but not alert – his target. There are three major changes that try to switch things up: the assassins' guild, the tweaks to combat and the ability to ride your horse anywhere. Recruiting assassins who can be called upon with the press of a button is obviously the big one, and it works very much as advertised. With each Borgia tower destroyed a new slot opens up, allowing Ezio to rescue and recruit an ordinary citizen of Rome. Calling on an assassin is as simple as targeting an enemy and hitting L1/Left trigger on PS3/360 respectively. Depending on the location and the level of your assassin, he or she might run or ride up to the target, or drop down from above. It's cool to watch, and once you have six assassins you have three groups that can be called, with a cool-down time of a few minutes for each. Assassins gain experience through combat, but they can also be sent off to complete contracts around Europe. The greater the difficulty of a mission, the higher the XP and cash reward, and players prepared to gamble can quickly level up their assassins by assigning them difficult contracts with a lower chance of success. These missions only take five to ten minutes each and the interface is easy to use. With each level gained, you can boost either armour or weaponry, and as assassins rise through the ranks, they'll also unlock more advanced options, such as the ability to use smoke bombs. As a side note, your assassin recruits can die, but you'll likely only lose a couple in the entirety of the game. The point of the assassin recruits is that Ezio is now a leader of men. The scale of the fight has changed – it's no longer just one man against his enemies; it's now one man trying to rally the support of a city against a tyrant. The assassins work in that sense, but when it comes to gameplay they actually just serve to make the game less challenging. Assassin's Creed II was far from hard, but at least in that game players had to work for their kills. Here it's a simple matter of directing the Death From Above. With a single button press you'll unleash a kill which, while cool, is also a little hollow. It's not like utilizing the assassins is a genuinely new mechanic either. Ezio can already hire thieves, mercenaries or courtesans to distract or kill targets, and this is just an evolution of that concept. Whereas players couldn't rely on the guilds in ACII, however, the assassins in this game can easily become a crutch – a get-out-of-jail-free card. It's not the only aspect that makes Brotherhood less challenging – and ultimately less enjoyable – than it should be. The inclusion of the crossbow, while fun, means that you no longer have to watch your step on rooftops. Once upon a time, the best tactic was to sneak up on guards for a blade kill or hang from the edge of the building and pull them off. No more. Just target them from the next rooftop over with the crossbow and they're dead. No fuss, and no real skill required. It's also worth mentioning that looting dead guards' bodies now yields far more valuable items than it did in ACII. You can top up on smoke bombs, crossbow bolts, poison, bullets and medicine with relative ease. Compare this to the significant financial investment and effort required to stay topped up in the first game, and the balance of gameplay shifts even further towards being too easy. Hand to hand combat is undeniably entertaining, however. In addition to dodging and countering, Ezio can now kick an enemy to open him up for a hit, while stringing together successive attacks allows him to dispatch enemies even more efficiently than before. The highlight, however, would have to be the sub-weapon system. Why just run a guy through with a sword when you can slash him then shoot him in the face? These new combo kills are brutal and satisfying, and you won't tire of seeing the many and varied animations on offer. Combat's not without its issues, however. I still found the lock-on finicky, while there are still glitches, such as Ezio's unfortunate habit of occasionally leaping from on high for a kill, only to bump a pole or something similar on the way down and land flat on his face in front of the guards he's meant to be skewering. Surely if there's an obstruction the player shouldn't be given the option to choose "assassinate"? Ezio's abilities on horseback have also been expanded for Brotherhood. Not only can he take a horse almost anywhere in the city (and summon one with a press of the Y/triangle button), but he can leap from one horse to another for a kill, and he can stand on horseback and use it as a jumping off point for free running. It's a neat inclusion but I didn't really find myself using the horses in that way much – it's a little fiddlier than simply attacking. In fact, I mostly used horses for getting around, so it's a shame that the gallop button has been lost to make room for the ability to stand on horseback. Trying to get from point A to point B now feels more like a leisurely Sunday afternoon trot than a mad dash. Rome is a dynamic and interesting world, with all sorts of systems that can impact upon Ezio and be used by players. Run around killing fools in public, for instance, and your notoriety goes up. Guards will instantly pay closer attention to you. Want to lower it? You can do that by ripping down wanted posters, bribing heralds or killing witnesses. Mind you, you could always avoid attention altogether by disappearing into crowds. While it's still a little less seamless than I'd like, Ezio can blend in with groups walking through Rome, plus he can hide in plain sight by sitting on a bench or standing with a group. These elements are an integral part of the game's rich playground, and will be a source of delight for new players, but anyone who played Assassin's Creed II will know all about them. One element that is new, however, is the fact that Ezio now has an additional objective or challenge in order to achieve full synchronisation in a mission. These range from time-based challenges: complete this mission in under 8 minutes, to combat-related challenges: don't take damage, only kill your target, and beyond. They're a good inclusion for the hardcore fans as they'll be the ones replaying missions in order to get 100% sync. For the more casual players, however, it's actually a little disheartening to beat a mission only to be told you only achieved 50% synchronisation. Perhaps the biggest surprise of the Brotherhood package is the multiplayer, which is refreshing and inventive. In a neat twist, you're actually playing as the bad guys: as Abstergo agents – the modern day Templars. Turns out this is how they're training to hunt the assassins. The basic idea is that you're given a target to locate and kill, while also being hunted by another player. The radar helps you track your foe, but the games take place in bustling locations full of NPCs, so it's entirely possible for your target to blend in with the crowd. Literally so, in some cases. One of the special abilities transforms all the people around the player into your character model, while another lets you change character models altogether. Brotherhood has four multiplayer modes. Wanted and Advance Wanted are free-for-alls, with the latter being a more challenging version of Wanted with tweaked rules. By way of example, the radar is far less accurate in this mode. You'll only ever be able to narrow down your opponent's location to the general vicinity, leading to a tense game of observation – looking for the tell that reveals your target. Alliance, on the other hand, sees the players split into pairs, and as you'd imagine, coordinated hunting is key, while Manhunt divides players into two teams. One team hunts, while one team hides. The hiding team earns points for remaining undetected, and the closer they stay to one another, the more points. Overall, this is excellent stuff, and turns the usual adversarial frag-fest on its head. Forget being the guy who runs the fastest and racks up the most kills – Brotherhood rewards being a true assassin. Players are awarded points on a sliding scale, so an overt kill will net a whole lot less than a stealthy assassination while hidden. In this multiplayer contest it's the gamers who learn to be patient that will ultimately prevail. Plus, the ranking system means that the contests continue to evolve as you play, with tactical depth increasing the more abilities are unlocked. Verdict: Brotherhood is a great game, but it’s hard to wholeheartedly recommend. This is really a title designed for fans of Assassin’s Creed II, as it’s a continuation of that story, but the reality is that people who finished that game want something new – or that at least represents a clear step forward. Brotherhood doesn’t deliver that. The game doesn’t advance the wider narrative very far, the new mechanics don’t really add a great deal and the mission designs rarely explore new gameplay possibilities. That said, Brotherhood really looks the part, with a step up in the graphics department – particularly on PS3, and a massive and varied city to explore. It also introduces an innovative multiplayer suite, for which the team(s) should be applauded. At the end of the day, it depends what you’re looking for. If you’re new to Assassin’s Creed, this is a solid entry, but picking up the threads of the convoluted story may be a challenge. If you’re an experienced assassin, on the other hand, expect to tread pretty similar ground to the last title. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- System Requirements Minimum: OS: Win Xp 32 Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 1.8GHz / AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4000+ Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 4550 or NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GS System Memory: 1.5 GB RAM Storage: 8 GB Hard drive space DirectX 9 Compatible Graphics Card Recommended: OS: Win Xp 32 Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 2.66GHz / AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 6000+ Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 3870 or NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT System Memory: 3 GB RAM Storage: 8 GB Hard drive space

Game Informations : Developer: Hazelight Studios Publishers: Electronic Arts Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Ps4, Xbox One Initial release date: March 23, 2018 A Way Out’s revenge-fueled plot is structured around flashbacks to how Vincent and his next-cell-neighbor Leo ended up in this predicament, until the story catches up to them aboard a plane and carries on from there. It ebbs and flows like a movie, and it somewhat feels like one too, despite a runtime about three times longer than your average theater experience. You will spend a lot of its roughly six hours with your controller down, watching cutscenes. But you’re also often free to walk around in many of those moments, with the screen frequently split to accommodate both players’ freedom to move and explore. As my co-op partner and I approached the climax of A Way Out, the cinematic, 1970’s-set prison-break adventure from the studio headed by filmmaker-turned-game-developer Josef Fares, I thought it had run out of gas. I’d been hooked for the first five hours, which do a magnificent job of blending drama with action and emotion with lightheartedness. In that time we’d rarely done the same style of of gameplay twice, and I had gotten to know and understand Vincent, the more diplomatic and reserved of the two playable convicts in this mandatory two-player story. But here we were, knee-deep in a cliched sequence I’d seen a million times before in both games and movies. I thought A Way Out had run out of tricks. Leo and Vincent each have believable motivations that become clear as the story unfolds. So, too, do the actors’ performances improve as the plot progresses, with most of the notably wooden dialogue delivery contained in the early scenes. It’s as if they had to get to know each other, just as we needed to get to know them. It’s interesting to talk to the same NPC with Leo and Vincent separately, one right after the other, because while the conversation will usually turn out the same way, the path of those chats will be completely different. Leo is more violent and action-first, while Vincent prefers to talk his way out of sticky situations. So when you’re given the choice to handle a tense moment with a curious police officer Leo’s way or Vincent’s way, Leo wants to knock him out, while Vincent fakes a highly contagious illness. A Way Out is laced with small cooperative moments outside of just dialogue, too, like having to tap X simultaneously to bust through a door, or one person splashing around in a pond to chase the fish toward the other player holding a spear. But even though it’s focused on its story sequences, A Way Out is decidedly not a “walking simulator”-style adventure – in fact, it’s more like a collection of largely enjoyable minigames. Sometimes you’re sneaking around in tall grass like Sam Fisher, choking out bad guys. Sometimes you’re punching people from a 2.5D side-scrolling camera like it’s a Double Dragon remake. Sometimes you’re driving a car, or throwing darts, or playing a banjo, or shooting hoops, or arm wrestling, or fishing, or...you get the idea. All of that variety is a double-edged sword: though this swath of activities often left me smiling, the trade-off is that none of them control and feel as good as games dedicated to those ideas. The baseball segment won’t be unseating MLB The Show 18, is what I’m saying, but even so it put a smile on my face. “Clunky” is probably the best description of the worst A Way Out’s minigames ever get, with the gunplay feeling particularly subpar in this, the age of spectacularly polished shooters. None of those is A Way Out’s specialty, though. Instead, it focuses primarily on its story and the intertwining cooperative gameplay with the characters of Leo and Vincent themselves, and in those key areas it largely succeeds. Does the timing on certain moments seem implausibly convenient? Yes. Do the two men end up escaping unscathed from seemingly impossible scenarios? Uh-huh. (Side note: A Way Out’s police officers make Star Wars’ Stormtroopers look like expert marksmen.) The prison-breaking pair definitely don’t always get along, though, and sometimes they even compete, just like real frienemies would, which creates some fun player-versus-player moments. Neither my co-op partner nor I would give in during our button-mashing arm-wrestling match, even though it had no bearing on the game or the story, and I took a completely unnecessary glee in beating him in Connect Four (twice). At times it felt like we really were inhabiting these characters. A Way Out’s finest moments come when it’s at its most cinematic. The brilliantly choreographed hospital escape scene, for example, maintains one unbroken “camera shot” even as controls are cleverly trading back and forth between Leo and Vincent, while the aforementioned ending blends cinematography and gameplay in clever ways. And a Splinter Cell-esque back-to-back climb up a tall maintenance shaft requires the utmost cooperation and communication and had us laughing at every misstep. It was the peak of the mandatory cooperative gameplay that’s enforced here. And commendably, you get a free download token to give to a friend, so you only have to buy one copy to play online. Verdict: If you go into A Way Out thinking its mandatory two-player co-op is a gimmick, you’ll likely come out of it realizing that it couldn’t have been done any other way. Vincent and Leo’s journey will have you and a friend performing tasks together both mundane and dramatic, and the result is a memorable, variety-packed cinematic adventure that feels like what Telltale’s games might’ve evolved into if they’d leaned into game mechanics instead of phasing them out. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- System Requirements Minimum: 720P 30 FPS AT LOW SETTINGS O/S: Windows 7 64-bit, 8.1 64-bit or Windows 10 64-bit CPU: Intel core i3-2100T @ 2.5GHz/AMD FX 6100, or better RAM: 8GB GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650Ti 2GB, AMD Radeon HD 7750 2GB DirectX: 11 Compatible video card or equivalent Hard Drive: 25GB Input: At least one Xbox-compatible/PlayStation-compatible controller Online connection requirements: 256KBPS or faster Internet connection Recommended: 1080P 60 FPS AT HIGH SETTINGS O/S: Windows 7 64-bit, 8.1 64-bit or Windows 10 64-bit RAM: 16GB CPU: Intel Core i5 3570K; AMD Ryzen 3 1300x or equivalent GPU: Nvidia GT 960; AMD R9 290 or equivalent DirectX: 11 Compatible video card or equivalent Hard Drive: 25GB Input: At least one Xbox-compatible/PlayStation-compatible controller Online connection requirements: 256KBPS or faster Internet connection

Game Informations : Developer: YAGER Development GmbH, YAGER, Six Foot Publishers: Penguin Random House LLC Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Play Station 4 Initial release date: Oct 14, 2018 With Saturn looming above me and the labyrinth of a sprawling space station below me, I can't stop thinking about Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. Dreadnought’s space combat is literally worlds away from the galleons and sabers of Ubisoft's pirate epic, but it delivers the same nautical warfare satisfaction when I pull up one of the hulking titular ships alongside another dreadnought and let the broadside cannons erupt in a blaze of glory. I miss swinging abroad and taking the vessel for myself, but Dreadnought makes up for that with some Trekkie tech like cloaking devices and warp jumps. That’s the kind of fun Dreadnought delivers in its finest moments. It’s a free-to-play, team-based PvP-focused area shooter in the style of World of Tanks, with its biggest and most distinctive difference being that it’s set in space. It thrives on the same type of slow, cooperative play that keeps Wargaming’s WW2 shooter appealing almost in spite of itself, while at the same time adding some depth in the form of vertical play allowed by the ships’ disregard for gravity. It’s fairly easy to get into thanks to three five-versus-five PvP modes that offer minor variations on Team Deathmatch, such Onslaught mode, which makes you protect your command ship while blasting away at everyone else. There's also a PvE-focused Havoc mode (or horde) where three players to fight successive waves of increasingly powerful enemies. The basic gameplay in Havoc doesn't feel much different from the main matches – after all, due to the low po[CENSORED]tion on PS4 as of this writing, you often end up playing against bots in PvP anyway – but surviving demands a degree of communication and trust you often don't get in the randomly matched PvP matches. In no case, though, should you ever expect twitchy speed. Dreadnought is a slow game at the fastest of times, but that doesn't mean it isn't satisfying, particularly when you swing your massive vessel around with all the speed of a glacier melting, line up a target in your sights, and unleash all guns and missiles at once. The slower speed, in fact, adds tension and encourages thoughtful play, at least when you can get the random players you’re grouped with when you’re not in a squad to cooperate. I keep bringing this up for a reason. Uncooperative team members are annoying in any multiplayer game, but they're especially bad in a class-based game where each person has a role to play. Each of Dreadnought’s five ship classes closely corresponds to those you’d find in a run-of-the-mill fantasy MMORPG. The dreadnought is the tank – a powerful, lumbering beast that turns like a glacier. At the other end of the spectrum are the corvettes: fast (relatively), vulnerable fighters that can literally fly circles around their larger adversaries. In between, there’s the artillery cruiser, which is basically a flying sniper rifle, the jack-of-all-trades destroyer class, and the support-role tactical cruiser that understandably often gets targeted first because of its powerful healing abilities. That kind of role-based design might be a big part of the reason why Dreadnought wisely doesn't force you to stick with one class for the duration of a match. If your team's having a hard time, switching out to another ship often makes the match go more smoothly. You can bring along a stable of five ships, switching out to one of the others after you die. Special abilities add further variety, such as the artillery cruiser’s stationary cloaking skill or the dreadnought's ability to quickly warp ahead a short distance to ambush or escape a bad situation. Each ship comes with at least a single level of individual weapon upgrades for the abilities maps the to action buttons, allowing you to boost the effectiveness of missiles or improve the tactical cruiser's healing beam. Yet the real advancement in Dreadnought centers on unlocking new and better versions of each class of ship in a five-tier tech tree. Climbing a rung in that ladder is definitely something to look forward to, and if the player po[CENSORED]tion ever grows to the point where you’re unlikely to find yourself in a Tier 2 ship and matched against a bunch of Tier 4s it might be a good system. Right now, though, it’s causing some balance issues. The ability to switch out ships makes this a bit more bearable, but it can still be a pain. Dreadnought may be a spaceship game, but it sidesteps the associated danger of empty maps by setting many of the battles close to the surface of moons like Callisto, and those that take place elsewhere unfold in dense asteroid fields and around space-bound mining operations. It arguably even has more depth than a terrestrial game, as the spaceships’ disregard for gravity allows a vertical element to tactics as well. In my case, I found I performed best in the ship's sniper class, raising my ship to peek over the nearest asteroid and then floating back down out of view after I'd killed my target. A tank isn't quite that versatile. The gameplay itself is largely intuitive, but one slightly awkward element is the controls, which map boosts for shields, guns, or thrusters to swipes on the DualShock 4’s touchpad. These are essential functions, and would probably be better tied to the D-pad. Even the menus can be annoying. They’re navigable enough, but their text is so tiny that trying to read them on a TV from even a few feet away becomes a chore. Unfortunately, progress quickly declines from a satisfying pace to a chore as the quantity of XP and research time needed to unlock more ships demands more and more grinding as you move up the tiers. It's a long process, particularly you can't move down to a ship in a higher tier unless you've bought all the weapons and ability upgrades for the ship in the tier below it, and the XP and credit costs grow ever larger once you start moving into the third tier. For that matter, upgrading isn't even all that interesting. Only in higher tiers can you choose which weapons you want to outfit your ships with, and even then these options are limited. For the most part, it's just buying all the upgrades to your existing weapons and then moving on to the next line. But if you want to progress quickly, Dreadnought nudges you to spend cash. The idea, then, is to buy XP boosts that last from a week to a year. Obviously, it makes some sense that the developers need to make some money off of this free-to-play game, but Dreadnought is slightly obnoxious in the way it shows you how much XP you could be making as a paid player when every victory or loss screen pops up. Alternatively, you could buy some premium ships that cost can around $40, which sounds bad but fortunately are only moderately more powerful than the free ships of their tiers. Honestly, if I’d paid for one I’d have been disappointed because you can't customize them in the same ways as some of their regular counterparts. If you want to upgrade the premium "Trident" dreadnought's weapons, for instance, you're stuck with the Tier IV repeater guns and nuclear missiles that come with it. Other the other hand, the decision likely keeps them from being wildly overpowered and again, the customization options aren't that robust anyway. But again, the grind itself wouldn't be quite as disagreeable if there were more people around. Dreadnought on PS4 is not a dead game, but the po[CENSORED]tion is certainly erratic. Sometimes I'd hop on and get into a match immediately, while at other times I'd find myself waiting more than 20 minutes for a match. Not surprisingly, it was especially difficult to get into a Havoc match without a pre-made squad owing to the coordination involved. It's a great testament to the appeal of Dreadnought that I never felt like giving up during these long waits. Between five widely different types of ships, the beautiful zones, and the sense that I was actually handling myself rather well against better-equipped players for most of my early playtime, I consistently found something to look forward to. Dread it, I did not. Verdict: Dreadnought in many ways successfully brings the World of Tanks formula to outer space with sci-fi flair, and the vertical movements of the ships add some depth. It’s often fun, but if you want to advance at a reasonable pace you’ll have to deal with an unreliably active PS4 player po[CENSORED]tion and an XP system that requires a lot of grinding to unlock new ships. ------------------------------------------------------------- System Requirements Minimum: CPU: Intel Core i5 4690T - 2.5GHz GPU: DirectX 11 compatible video card with 1GB memory HDD: 11GB space available OS: Windows 7 64bit RAM: 4GB Recommended: CPU: Intel Core i7 4770 - 3.4GHz GPU: DirectX 11 compatible video card with 2GB memory HDD: 11GB space available OS: Windows 7 64bit or higher RAM: 8GB

Game Informations : Developer: E-Line Media Publishers: E-Line Media Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Ps4, Xbox One, IOS Initial release date: April 17, 2020 When there's a squad of field experts on a game's development team, I always feel like I'm in safe hands. Beyond Blue's inclusive development process—involving scientists, marine biologists, and a close partnership with the BBC's Blue Planet II crew—made me excited to learn more about the mysteries and perils of our planet's oceans. Games that aspire to both entertain and educate need to have a balance of genuine learning and engaging storytelling, and although Beyond Blue sails with the former, it flounders with the later. Beyond Blue is a third-person diving simulator that plunges you into the calm blues of the Western Pacific ocean. You slip into the soggy flippers of Mirai, a marine biologist who is tracking a pod of whales whilst documenting various underwater creatures. Alongside a small team of scientists, Mirai studies the family of whales, recording their songs and watching their behaviour in hope of furthering her research into these giants of the sea. Beyond Blue is split into eight separate dives, acting as watery chapters for the overall story. Each dive begins with you swimming to an electronic buoy that pinpoints underwater creatures for you to find and scan. Futuristic technology allows Mirai to dive effortlessly through the water and, even with the clunkiest keyboard and mouse, gliding feels smooth and satisfying. Each dive is in a different atmospheric pocket of the ocean. There are waypoints that progress the story but you're free to explore the impressively realistic environments at your own leisure. When you find the pinpointed creature, you can use a small drone to have a close-up look to examine and record their markings. Although you'll come face-to-face with giant sperm whales, hammerhead sharks, and alienesque squids, there's no imminent danger—it's a relatively peaceful game. Mirai and her team livestream the dives online, so there's an ongoing conversation about what certain fish are, and why the team makes certain decisions. Although it felt a little performative for the sake of the livestream, I really liked the on-going explanation about what I was doing and why, making my documenting and scanning more than mindless busywork. When you're done with a dive you return to a small submarine that acts as a home base. Creatures you have scanned get entered into a database featuring some light information about each species. The sub is also an opportunity to chat with Mirai's colleagues and make phone calls back home to her family. The game follows the same cycle: return to the sub, talk about findings, go diving, return to the sub, talk about findings, go diving. It's pretty repetitive, but the scan information and mini-documentaries you find on the submarine's tablet help somewhat to break up the rhythm. The environments wildly vary in terms of successfully capturing the wonder of the sea. One level plunges you into an interconnected system of deep-sea trenches with no map, leaving you to explore its rocky corridors with exciting trepidation. But then, another level was just a blue haze of open ocean with nothing in sight. I understand that open water is an integral layer of the ocean, but dedicating a whole dive to essentially an empty space left me a little disappointed, especially as there's only a handful of chapters Unfortunately, many of Beyond Blue's dives feel a little uninspired. Although its ocean is more realistic than Abzu's magical dream-world and Subnautica's alien planet, even it's most active environments felt empty. It never felt like the ocean was teeming with life. There are some artful moments but both its environments and storytelling stay one-note throughout the three hour run time, with several plotlines gasping for space to breathe. It briefly touches upon the devastating effects of deep-sea mining and how certain pollutants are making the sea a toxic environment for wildlife, but then quickly moves on. There's even a storyline about Mirai's grandmother having Alzheimer's disease, but it never goes anywhere. You can feel the good intentions of the game through its dedication to realism and its creature database, but it's muddied by lacklustre storytelling. The beating heart of Beyond Blue lies within the game's mini-documentary videos. As you progress through Beyond Blue's chapters you begin to unlock videos that provide insightful information about the state of the Earth's oceans. These offer an eye-opening perspective on climate change and our attitude towards the planet, and give expert insight into the places and species seen in the game. The biologists and scientists who lend their voices these clips are passionate about studying and saving our vibrant oceans, and it's unfortunate that the sentiment of the videos doesn't translate into the game. E-line Media's previous adventure game, Never Alone, was brilliant in presenting the histories, stories and life lessons of Alaska Natives through both the same type of documentary videos coupled with a story that emotionally engages. Beyond Blue is the perfect game to tackle the important issues its videos present, but doesn't delve deep enough to drive those ideas home. Although some of the environmental messages are lost, the act scanning Beyond Blue's creatures and exploring its realistic environments makes for a brilliant educational tool. Its chapters feel like a collection of calm, interactive lectures rather than a passionate plea for action—and that's far from being a bad thing. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- System Requirements Minimum: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 7 x64 or newer Processor: Intel Core i5-4460 / AMD FX-6300 @ 3.5 GHz or equivalent Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 or AMD R9 270 (2GB VRAM with Shader Model 5.0 or better) DirectX: Version 11 Storage: 40 GB available space

Game Informations : Developer: Avalanche Studios Group Publishers: Square Enix Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Ps4, Xbox One Initial release date: Dec 4, 2018 After wrapping up around 20 hours worth of Just Cause 4’s story missions and having destructive fun blowing up basically all the things, I went back and read my review of Just Cause 3 from 2015. This, I thought, explains that deja vu sensation. With a few additions, reading that review will tell you everything you need to know about Just Cause 4’s strengths. This is a very iterative sequel, and therefore it’s just as gloriously over-the-top and action-movie stupid as the last one. It does learn from and address many of Just Cause 3’s mistakes, especially when it comes to some of the more annoyingly repetitious mission types, but it doesn’t really come with a must-have new idea to give it its own identity. If you’re keeping track, this is now the fourth Latin tropical despot whom Rico Rodriguez – effectively the secret lovechild of Wolverine and a flying squirrel who is also a secret agent – has set out to depose. Adding the personal angle of Rodriguez family involvement in Dictator #4’s weather-control scheme means very little due to the completely twist-free nature of the story, especially since that dictator shows up only at the beginning and end. I did enjoy the way cutscenes lay out the next series of mission objectives as steps toward a long-term goal, almost Ocean’s 11-style, but otherwise it’s yet another tale of regime change via explosion. In the absence of a new Red Faction game, Just Cause 4 is at the top of its field when it comes to blowing stuff up. Virtually everything that’s red – and a few things that aren’t – will explode when damaged, and destroying one of the huge, Epcot Center-like fuel tank spheres produces some of the most spectacular fireballs seen in any game. I can’t stress enough how big a part of the satisfaction of Just Cause 4 comes down to watching a thunderous chain reaction of detonations. But, at the same time, that’s all carried over from the previous game, and I’d have loved to have seen Just Cause 4 double down even more on destructibility. It doesn’t, really. It’s not that there’s nothing new under the tropical sun. For one, the map of the island of Solis feels just as expansive as Just Cause 3’s Medici without directly repeating it, and its diverse environments keep exploring it from becoming monotonous. Like a great filming location, you’re never far from beaches, jungles, deserts, snowy mountains, and everything in between. Its urban settings are a tad on the bland side, especially if you’re coming fresh off of Spider-Man, but outside of that it checks all the boxes for what you want and expect in an open-world game map – including a huge number of side challenges to complete with your wingsuit and/or vehicles. Liberating the map piece by piece has a new spin that resolves one of my chief complaints about Just Cause 3. Instead of taking back every town by knocking down annoying propaganda speakers and statues, now almost all of the several dozen provinces has a real mission associated with it that must be cleared in order to claim it – and the weapon or vehicle unlock it comes with. Sure, you’ll play most mission types more than once, especially the one where you have to hunt down several switches in an area, or the one where you have to drive bomb-rigged cars into the ocean to disarm them, but it’s a significant step up in variety. That said, it’s a bit of a downer how many missions are built around the idea of finding switches to disable indestructible turret cannons. This is a game about blowing things up, and being told all your firepower means nothing in these circumstances is a little frustrating. After initially being hopeful that I’d have some meaningful control over how my weirdly pastel-colored rebellion would spread across Solis, I was disappointed by the conquest map. You’re initially told that you must dispatch troops to extend the front line of the battle against the dictator’s mercenary soldiers, but it’s much less interesting than it sounds – this is less Risk or XCOM and more about the formality of opening the map to say “Yes, I took this over” after you’ve done the mission to take it over. The enemy never tries to take any territory back, so there’s no metagame there – it’s little more than a thinly veiled upgrade menu, as each territory comes with weapons or vehicles that can be airdropped to you. The soldiers you need to capture a territory are generated by going slightly out of your way to blow things up, so if you’re anything like me you’ll have more than you’ll ever need. It’s through the airdrops that Just Cause 4 wants to indulge your every destructive and playful impulse. Want a tank? How about a fighter jet? No problem - after a few fairly easy unlocks, with the push of a few buttons all the military hardware you could ask for will literally fall from the sky to make your next mission that much more explosive. It makes finding that stuff in the wild a little less special, but I’m glad I get to play with these toys where and when I want to. There’s also less busywork involved in getting up to speed than ever before. Though there are tons and tons of unlocks to earn, Just Cause 4 wastes no time in giving you access to your parachute, wingsuit, and grapple – everything you need to wreak destruction anywhere on the island. As someone with a pretty firm grasp of the basics, I was very pleased to not have to earn all of that back again before the party got started. Switching between parachute and gliding to cover huge stretches of terrain quickly is virtually unchanged since Just Cause 3, and I have no problem with that. Absurd as it is to pull off tricks like completely avoiding fall damage from any height by grappling the ground and pulling yourself toward it faster than you were already falling, it’s a fantastic mode of travel that’s unique to Just Cause, and using it effectively it involves an element of skill. One of the big new features of Just Cause 4 is the alternate grapple modes, but they’re more of a physics novelty than gameplay innovation. With the push of a button you can cycle between three loadouts: the traditional retractor, attachable balloons straight out of Metal Gear Solid V that let you lift sheep or anything else high into the air, and jets which (when manually activated) launch a victim uncontrollably through the air. It’s impressive how, after unlocking them, you’re able to equip modifications that tailor them to whatever mischief you have in mind: you can make balloons explode when destroyed or float where you’re looking, or have jets fire in different directions or burn out after a specified amount of time. But unless you’re more interested in creating hilarious GIFs than fighting enemies in interesting ways, the latter two are both wildly impractical in combat. That’s relative to the trusty retractor, which is basically the ultimate weapon because it gives you the capability to look at virtually any two things in the world and make them kiss until one or both explode. The other two grapple modes and their unlockable mods aren’t nearly as effective, and aren’t used in the occasional environmental puzzles at all. They’re strictly for making bizarre things happen, like launching poor soldiers into the stratosphere. That’s all well and good – and often very, very funny – but it’s a shame Avalanche wasn’t able to find any actual gameplay mechanics or challenges to build around them. That said, combat in Just Cause hasn’t been about challenge in a good long while. Rico can absorb so much damage – and heal back to full health so quickly – that a typical enemy soldier shooting him in the face is no more cause for concern than a sunburn. In fact, most of these battles aren’t a question of whether you can defeat the army of mercenaries lined up against you, because of course you can. When they roll up in a tank, all you have to do is look at it and push a button and suddenly their tank is your tank. And, especially when there’s any significant number of enemies on the field at a time, their AI all but ceases to function and reduces them to punching bags. As long as you keep moving and remember to bail out of a vehicle before it explodes, you’ll probably win. So the goal, effectively, is to look good wiping the floor with them – which, don’t get me wrong, can be quite satisfying. It’s the moments when the enemy is throwing all of its firepower at you when Just Cause 4 feels the most sensational, with chain-reaction explosions and spectacular crashes right and left as you sail through the flames unscathed. To Avalanche’s credit, there is some significantly improved enemy diversity that prevents you from blowing through their ranks quite as easily as before, including flying drones, soldiers with grapple-proof shields, stealth suits, grenades that drop when they die, and even occasional suits of power armor that function as mini-boss fights – because when attack choppers and tanks can be slapped aside like insects, you need the Iron Man Mark I armor to stand a chance. I did delight in exploiting certain weaknesses: that guy with the deployable shield might think he’s safe from my grapple, but if I can spot a foot sticking out underneath, he’s about to be strung up from the nearest building by that foot. I’ve waited a long time in this review to mention the weather effects, and that’s largely because they’re a bit underused. For example, the visually-impressive tornado takes forever to show up, and when it does it might as well be a solid object – trying to skydive into it has Rico bounce off like he’s hit a wall. Other than that, you do see a few areas where you’ll have your visibility limited by sandstorms or get zapped by lightning storms if you fly too high too long, but if I were a supervillain with a weather-controlling machine I’d like to think I’d make much more creative use of it. We do get a few weapons that use those same technologies. The Lightning Gun is a pretty underwhelming damage hose, but the Wind Cannon is basically Rico’s version of shouting FUS RO DAH and blasting everything in his path. Across the board, just about every weapon has an alt-fire function that usually make up for the lack of grenades or placed charges - most guns come with something that’s at least as destructive, and the sticky mine launcher fills that role nicely (though they’re hard to come by). Thus far I’ve only been able to try out the PC version, which runs nicely and never crashed on my GTX 1080. Physics bugs aren’t rare, but usually funny – one time, for instance, I was manning a turret in a boat and was suddenly launched about a mile through the air. But only one mission needed to be restarted because of a scripting error. I did have some issues with the weirdly mapped menu controls on mouse and keyboard, including the extremely stupid lack of support for mapping controls to the mouse thumb buttons. I wasn’t able to unlock the grapple mods with the mouse – I had to switch to a controller to make it work. Also, flying a jet with the keyboard is all but impossible because you can’t use the mouse to steer. Hopefully we'll have some video of the console versions up shortly so we can see how it stacks up. Verdict: Just Cause 4 has everything you expect from a Just Cause game, almost to a fault. Relative to Just Cause 3 the improvements are widespread across its beautiful open world, but generally minor. So while blowing up yet another dictator’s army is the same kind of mindless explosive fun and physics-based comedy the series is built on, it doesn’t do much to incorporate the new weather systems or grapple mods into combat. That leaves me with a distinct “more of the same” feeling. ---------------------------------------------------------- System Requirements Minimum: CPU: Intel Core i5-2400 @ 3.1 GHz | AMD FX-6300 @ 3.5 GHz or better CPU SPEED: Info RAM: 8 GB OS: Windows 7 SP1 with Platform Update for Windows 7 (64-bit versions only) VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 (2GB VRAM or better) | AMD R9 270 (2GB VRAM or better) PIXEL SHADER: 5.0 VERTEX SHADER: 5.0 FREE DISK SPACE: 59 GB DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 2 GB Recommended: CPU: Intel Core i7-4770 @ 3.4 GHz | AMD Ryzen 5 1600 @ 3.2 GHz or equivalent CPU SPEED: Info RAM: 16 GB OS: Windows 10 (64-bit versions only) VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 (6GB VRAM or better) | AMD Vega 56 (6GB VRAM or better) PIXEL SHADER: 5.1 VERTEX SHADER: 5.1 FREE DISK SPACE: 59 GB DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 6 GB

Game Informations : Developer: Avalanche Studios Publishers: Square Enix Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Ps4, Xbox One Initial release date: Dec 1, 2015 Just Cause 3 is a game about pulling insane, death-defying stunts while destroying everything in sight with spectacular fireball explosions. Awesome explosions: Just Cause 3’s got ‘em! The story would have you believe all of this spectacular demolition is about liberating the picturesque island nation of Medici from a mustache-twirling dictator. But considering it doesn’t even care how many civilians you blow up in the process, we all know what it’s really about: ridiculous over-the-top action, physics-based comedy, and impressive destruction in a vast sandbox world. In those areas, Just Cause 3 is at the top of its game. The map is absolutely huge (reportedly its three islands span 400 square kilometers, but I didn’t have a tape measure on me to confirm), and how you choose to get from its sunny beaches and forests to its snowy peaks is a big part of the joy of it. There’s fast travel if you’re into the whole brevity thing, plus arcadey-feeling cars, planes, boats, and more, but learning to use Rico Rodriguez's unique combination of grappling hook, parachuting, and wingsuit to gracefully zip around is the most challenging and rewarding. There’s a real skill to it, and mastering techniques such as the no-parachute, no-wingsuit Spider-Man-style swinging takes some practice. I was driven to experiment with those methods because Square Enix’s servers are always tracking just about every move you make, popping up with alerts when you’re climbing the leaderboard in stats like longest freefall or highest parachute climb, constantly pitting you against your friends list to create countless tiny challenges. It even pops up with a notification when someone beats your score, seeming to ask if you’re going to let that aggression stand. It’s also routinely hilarious, because all of this acrobatic movement can easily end in Rico performing a face-first slam into the ground or a building or a tree. That always makes me smile through a cringe, and especially spectacular ones made me glad I had ShadowPlay running in the background. Combat shares in that violent slapstick humor because it gives you so many absurd tools that enable creative destruction. You can, of course, simply shoot guys in run-and-gun fights, but if you put in a little extra effort you can, among many other things, grapple-kick them, string them up to the nearest tall building, tie them together and conk their heads, or tie moving vehicles to the ground to create a spectacular end-over-end flip and crash. Another favorite of mine is running up to an unsuspecting soldier, slapping a sticky explosive charge literally on their face, backing away, and hitting the detonator. It’s doubly hilarious if you’ve unlocked the rocket-booster bombs, because the victim’s last few moments are spent writhing on the ground as the thruster throws them around before it explodes. Wonky physics goofs like an enemy jeep launching through the air after a minor collision are generally a great time, especially since realism isn’t exactly the goal here so much as having crazy things happen. Rico’s also unbelievably durable to anything other than being inside a vehicle when it explodes, so having a whole building collapse on top of you is funny rather than tragic. It was only when those things didn’t work out in my favor that I was irked, such as when I had a fighter jet air-dropped to my location (you can do that once you’ve unlocked it, because Just Cause 3 is all about instant gratification) only to have it spontaneously explode before I could get in, as though it was damaged during shipping. Blowing things up is what Just Cause 3 does best. Though not everything in this world is destructible (typical buildings are impervious to damage, for example) enough that Just Cause 3 has some of the best and most empowering explosions this side of Red Faction: Guerrilla. Your main targets are exploding stuff like fuel tanks and power generators, which are clearly marked in red and scattered liberally around most towns and military bases, but you can also collapse flimsy-looking structures like guard towers, gas stations, and, even more spectacularly, huge bridges. Combined with a good number of extremely potent weapons, ranging from machine guns and grenade launchers to an airstrike-targeting laser and a shoulder-mounted nuke, you can rain destruction down on everything in your path even while floating on your parachute. And of course, you can hijack virtually any enemy vehicle to obtain infinite ammunition. It’s a recipe for great moments. Enemies bolster the illusion of being an over-the-top action hero by being as dumb as bags of rocks. They’re slow to react, usually terrible shots, and will often drive their vehicles into each other or over cliffs. That works out, because there are a ton of them and they spawn out of nowhere, so even with Rico’s ridiculous durability and recharging health, you can still get overwhelmed if you don't recognize when it's time to retreat. Also, a shout-out to the one advanced soldier who pulls some action-hero moves of his own, spinning around to dodge you John Woo-style as he fires pistols from both hands. Just Cause 3’s main problem, which arises from its absolutely massive map, is that liberating the many towns, bases, and outposts across dozens of provinces on Medici’s three large islands becomes repetitive. You blow up everything with red on it, take over the police station, maybe kill a few specific enemies, knock over a statue of the dictator, then raise the Rebel flag, and you’re done. Most liberated villages reveal uninteresting challenges like race courses for cars, boats, and planes, and those in turn unlock some hit-or-miss new abilities for Rico. Then you do it again, and again, and again, sometimes as forced padding between story missions. Military bases are more fun to take over, since many of them feel more custom-built and unique - they include locations like naval bases, air strips, military depots, army-controlled mines, and sometimes include heavy defenses. Plus, they’ll throw a lot more heavy military hardware at you, which gives you the opportunity to hijack powerful tanks, helicopters, and jets. They’ll also usually unlock more interesting challenges, such as rounding up precious ore stones using an oversized magnet you tow around or driving a car loaded with explosives into a cluster of enemies. While I give Rico and his crew credit for occasionally tossing out a self-aware joke that got a chuckle out of me, Just Cause 3’s story is a paint-by-numbers action plot where some characters know they’re in a lighthearted parody while others never figure that out. Specifically the villain, who seems like he’s trying his best to be legitimately unsettling but falling short, takes himself far too seriously to fit into this wise-cracking game. It’s thin, too, and even developer Avalanche’s writers seemed to be getting sick of justifying these missions by the end of the roughly 30-hour run. “You’d think he’d have learned after the last two times,” Rico says as he and his cohorts plot a final assault in the exact same way they blew up the last two major targets. Verdict: Just Cause 3 is a playground where you get to be a physics-defying force of destruction, and its loop of liberating dozens of towns across this enormous scenic world would’ve gotten old much quicker if the combat wasn’t so full of options for free-form mayhem. Getting the most out of it requires some creativity and tolerance for performance bugs on your part, so come expecting to make at least some of your own fun. [Editor’s Note: This review was conducted on the PC version, which we obtained from Square Enix first. Our early impressions of the console versions show that it’s identical in content, but we’ve seen significant performance problems, including extremely long load times and significant frame rate issues that will require further testing to fully evaluate. Our PlayStation 4/Xbox One review will follow later this week.] ----------------------------------------------------------------- System Requirements Minimum: CPU: Intel Core i5-2500k, 3.3GHz / AMD Phenom II X6 1075T 3GHz CPU SPEED: Info RAM: 8 GB OS: Vista SP2 / Windows 7.1 SP1 / Windows 8.1 (64-bit Operating System Required) VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 (2GB) / AMD Radeon HD 7870 (2GB) PIXEL SHADER: 5.0 VERTEX SHADER: 5.0 FREE DISK SPACE: 54 GB DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 2048 MB Recommended: CPU: Intel Core i7-3770, 3.4 GHz / AMD FX-8350, 4.0 GHz CPU SPEED: Info RAM: 8 GB OS: Vista SP2 / Windows 7.1 SP1 / Windows 8.1 (64-bit Operating System Required) VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 (3GB) / AMD R9 290 (4GB) PIXEL SHADER: 5.0 VERTEX SHADER: 5.0 FREE DISK SPACE: 54 GB DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 3072 MB

Game Informations : Developer: Coffee Stain Studios Publishers: Coffee Stain Studios Platforms: Microsoft Windows Initial release date: March 19, 2019 Satisfactory belongs to a genre of games that I like to call “comfy crafters”. That is, as you spend a long weekend building a sprawling industrial plant that grows ever out of control, you take a moment to step back and look at what you have created. Standing on a planet all alone with no other life forms to share this world with but the native flora and fauna, you breathe deeply and stare off like Shrek at the beginning of his first film, gazing at his swamp as the first bars of ‘All Star’ play. It feels like home. In this early access stage, the familiar elements of factory building games are mostly all here. You have resource hubs, automatic mining drills, conveyor belts, vehicles, power plants, electric poles, and assembly buildings that automatically manufacture products from components delivered through entry points. There are storage units, foundations and ramps, weapons and body gear such as jetpacks which are unlocked through gameplay. Until a full narrative for Satisfactory is produced, the objective is to “tech up”, unlocking as many different buildings and upgrades as possible, and posting your land-devouring assembly plants and conveyor belt spaghetti dishes on social media to inspire and disgust your fellow extraplanetary colonists across webspace. Consumers of crafting games will often fall into a certain motion when playing a game like Minecraft or Factorio; thrown into a hostile environment, we find the nearest resource hub and bunker down; building walls, placing turrets, and boxing ourselves in. It’s the safest way to play, and often integral to strategies that carry players into the end game. In Satisfactory, this is discouraged through many elements that encourage exploration. Single machine upgrades are locked inside of denizen “power slugs”, which must be captured, wrung, and juiced for the progress of mankind. High-end (for the early access) technology uses minerals that are only found in one-time nodes scattered around the world. In addition, the further you progress along Satisfactory’s tech tree, the further out our brave colonist must venture to secure the resources required to build the next stage of technology. Satisfactory presents a very immersive experience of planetary exploration. Very little is predictable, and while enemies and hazards are not altogether difficult to overcome, they are extremely dangerous to the unfamiliar. Until you understand the attack patterns of creatures such as the Spitter, even one enemy can hunt you to death. Until you know what flowers are safe to approach and which ones have defence mechanisms, a walk in the woods is figuratively playing with fire. As your only default weapon is a shock prod and the most impressive firearm you can unlock so far is the space-age equivalent of a crossbow, caution must be exercised any time you leave the safety of your base. But of course, you will want to explore. Satisfactory’s maps are extraordinarily beautiful. My favourite is the first map, with its breathtaking waterfalls, serene lakes, beaches, and mountain formations. Building an assembly plant in the middle of all this natural beauty feels somewhat sinful, but stepping outside the door of your utilitarian colonist base at verdant green and orange skies gives my heart joy. So far, the storyteller seems to passively belittle you as worker grunt of the galactic-scale FicSit corporation, and remind you that your efforts on the planet are in service to your corporate overlords. Once the storyteller’s stiff supervisor-to-grunt message is over, you can return to bouncing on jump pads and landing into green space jelly, flying across alien landscapes with your jetpack, and riding turbo fast conveyor belt highways. The general feel of Satisfactory from the wilderness exploration to the futuristic amusement park contraptions you can build, is just so much fun in its overall tone that the corporate narrative as it stands feels out of place. It is possible to have a corporate body belittling you and still have fun with futuristic gadgets; it was so endearing in the narrative of the game Portal. However, the science fiction fun and the corporate overtones need more work to synchronize. However, this sense of verticality and open world-ness adds a new challenge to the game, and also makes it easier to navigate in the world. The whole thing feels like a combo of Factorio, Space engineers, and subnautica, Building things is intuitive and easy, and call my base an Italian restaurant because damn there is a lot of spaghetti cookin’ back there! But, the new added third dimension allows this spaghetti to be alleviated, to some degree. I especially like the foundation and wall system, which allows you to build warehouses full of neat production facilities. I can’t wait! I haven’t unlocked any vehicles yet, but I hope they are easy to program and use, because having a fleet of autonomous dump trucks going back and forth between mineral deposits would be super cool! I’d be SWIMMING in iron plates!!! I can’t make them fast enough!! Anyways, the game runs very well, and I bet there are some clever techniques at play to keep large factories running smoothly in the background. It is kind of annoying having to open my inventory and manually drag handheld items to the hand slot to use them. I mean, in order for me to eat a berry, I have to open my inventory, drag the XenoTool out of the hand slot, drag the berries into the hand slot, close the inventory, eat the berries, then open the inventory, drag the XenoTool back into the hand slot, and close the inventory! I think that there should be a feature where if you are not placing anything, the scroll wheel would cycle through any handheld item you have in your inventory. -------------------------------------------------------------------- System Requirements: Minimum: CPU: i5-3570k 3,4 GHz 4 Core CPU SPEED: Info RAM: 8 GB OS: Windows 7 or later (64-Bit) VIDEO CARD: GTX 760 2GB PIXEL SHADER: 5.0 VERTEX SHADER: 5.0 FREE DISK SPACE: 20 GB DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 2048 MB

Game Informations: Developer: Hinterland Studio Publishers: Hinterland Studio Platforms: Microsoft Windows, PS4, Xbox One Initial release date: Sep 22, 2014 As The Long Dark emerges after years in early access, it introduces the first two chapters in a five-part story, called Wintermute. The game's demanding survival mechanics have the potential to mesh well with the story of a plane crash survivor stuck in the Canadian wilderness of Great Bear, but it's too early to say whether or not Wintermute's narrative ultimately pays off. It is, however, clearly off to a rocky start, leaving the more open-ended sandbox mode as the best reason to jump into The Long Dark today. During Wintermute, you play as Will Mackenzie, a loner pilot working in the northern reaches of Canada, who agrees to help transport his distressed ex-wife and her mysterious cargo somewhere into the far reaches of the woods. Though there are a few revealing moments shared between Will and Dr. Astrid Greenwood before their plane comes crashing down, the quick and cliched implication of an emotional backstory through suggestive and vague dialogue makes a weak first impression. It certainly doesn't help that many of the scenes throughout Wintermute's first two episodes are hampered by odd animation jitters and floating objects that pop in and out frame. While you both survive the sudden crash that cuts your conversation short, you are separated from one another, and Will succumbs to injuries that make surviving the harsh winterscape a true challenge. Recovering from the crash acts as the game's tutorial, throwing you into the basics of survival. Whether it's seeking shelter, starting a fire, or generally looking after your vital signs, almost everything you need is covered, giving you some confidence before you set out on a journey to find your lost passenger. Learning how to make the most of The Long Dark's survival mechanics is no simple task, but these foundational steps are relatively easy compared to the hurdles that lie ahead. Despite Mackenzie's apparent desperation to find Astrid, he's more than happy to scout the countryside to gather things for other people, ultimately earning nothing for himself except scraps of information about Astrid's possible whereabouts and increased knowledge of the wild. It's frustrating to watch--and even more frustrating to play. As you carry on, most of your time will be spent scouring abandoned structures for granola bars, harvesting meat from animal carcasses found frozen in ice, and dodging the elements as best you can. Tools like knives and hatchets can be built provided you have the right blueprints, parts, and access to a forge or a workbench. They also need to be maintained using spare parts, which can be gathered by breaking down extra items. Annoyingly, inventory management doesn't let you optimise your carry weight by combining like items, so instead of being able to do something like emptying lantern fuel containers into a jerry can, you're forced to carry them all around separately. Be careful where you tread, as well, as it's not uncommon to get stuck in geometry without the means to free yourself--you aren't able to jump, only crouch and walk. Mackenzie's survival knowledge is minimal to begin with, so his crafting abilities are minimal at best, but what he can make is essential. Blueprints can be found to learn how to craft new items, though these are extremely few and far between. In my experience, most crafting time is spent breaking down things found in the world; spare chairs, tables, curtains, old bedrolls, there's a lot that can be fixed into something else, and it could be life-saving. By combining some sticks, a bit of spare cloth, and some lantern fuel, you can make a simple torch, providing not just light and heat but also warding off any potential predators that may be circling nearby. The first episode never really lets go of your hand, keeping you close to a small township for most of its entirety--and rarely asking you to venture to edges of the playable area just beyond the town limits. It's not until the second episode that you're set free--albeit under the conflicting pretense of playing fetch for someone else--across three large expanses of untamed wilderness. Refreshingly, these spaces are deathly beautiful and a showcase for The Long Dark's striking visual style. When the aurora borealis shines at night, it's nothing short of stunning--the green hues bounce softly off of snow-covered surroundings. Likewise, the stark pink and orange sunsets that wash over Great Bear are consistently captivating. They are easy come, easy go, due to the game's dynamic weather system, but it's impressive how the world--and your place within it--can turn on a dime, choking clear skies with a gusty snowstorm, turning a moment of peace into a chaotic dash for shelter. When you set aside the available Wintermute episodes--which, crucially, you can--The Long Dark's tough yet rewarding gameplay owns the spotlight. Survival mode is unforgiving, but it plays to the game's best strength, and you can always dial down the difficulty to keep going--likewise, if you're finding it too easy, you can ramp it up as well. The sandbox also has five challenges you can attempt if you require a hint of direction, offering a more catered survival experience, but without the stringent procession of tasks seen in Wintermute. Stricken from frostbite, and desperately wanting shelter from a violent blizzard, the feeling of helplessness in the sandbox mode gets overwhelming, and it's in these moments of desperation that The Long Dark is most effective. And thus every minute you survive, and every meter of progress you make, feels remarkably rewarding--the result of a series of calculated decisions you made in the face of depressingly unfavorable odds. When the weather isn't out to kill you, chances are you'll find some wildlife that would be more than happy to try. A lone wolf can be handled by waving around a lit torch or flare in its face, but if a pack gets a whiff of you nearby, the only option is to run. And did I mention bears? There are bears, and they aren't interested in being friendly. Death comes swiftly and brutally at the hands of the animals in The Long Dark, a stark contrast to the slow fade into darkness that comes with growing colder and hungrier. It's important to remember that The Long Dark is just waking up from early access. It's cold, hungry, and huddled somewhere under a rock face, but it's just gotten the fire started. Another three story episodes are still due, so there is time to turn things around for Will and Astrid. However, because the best parts of The Long Dark are already alive and well in survival mode, perhaps Wintermute's weak beginning is reason enough to stick to what's worked for the game all along, blemishes and all. ------------------------------------------------- System Requirements Minimum: CPU: Dual-Core Intel i5 CPU @ 2GHz+ CPU SPEED: Info RAM: 2 GB OS: Windows XP VIDEO CARD: Intel 4xxx Series w/ 512MB VRAM or better PIXEL SHADER: 3.0 VERTEX SHADER: 3.0 SOUND CARD: Yes FREE DISK SPACE: 1 GB DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 512 MB Recommended: CPU: Intel i7 CPU @ 2.6GHz or higher CPU SPEED: Info RAM: 8 GB OS: Windows 7 VIDEO CARD: nVidia GeForce GTX 555 w/ 1GB VRAM or better PIXEL SHADER: 5.0 VERTEX SHADER: 5.0 SOUND CARD: Yes FREE DISK SPACE: 1 GB DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 1 GB

Game Informations : Developer: Telltale Games Publishers: Telltale Games, Skybound Games Platforms: Microsoft Windows, PS3, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Andriod, IOS, MAC Initial release date: Dec 17, 2013 Hope " is one quality that you will find quite little of in Robert Kirkman's graphic novel series, and the same goes for the TV show and now game series that it inspired. Dire circumstances and consequential choices continue to hang heavy on Season 2 of Telltale's The Walking Dead game series. Whereas the first game at least gave players two protagonists who could rely on each other as they faced the bitter reality of a walker-overrun world, Season 2 focuses on young Clementine and her desperate, lonely battle for survival. Though she will meet other living souls along her journey, her life ultimately depends on the choices and actions that she makes ... the choices that you, the player, will make. All That Remains: Clementine is damaged. Emotional scarring is starting to wear on The Walking Dead’s young heroine. She deals with loss, loneliness, and violence in different ways, and Season 2’s premiere, “All That Remains,” makes it abundantly clear that her innocence is lost.How you play determines whether or not it’s forgotten, allowing you to forge an incredible new version of someone you thought you understood. The Walking Dead: Season 2, Episode 1 - “All That Remains” centers on how you, as Clementine, survive the savagery of humanity and the ceaseless danger of the undead. More than this, “All That Remains” examines how a strong, independent Clementine survives the sorrow of losing everything. Developer Telltale Games describes The Walking Dead an “interactive adventure,” as it prioritizes cinematic storytelling while deemphasizing gameplay. It handles its point-and-click formula here similarly to last time, adapting minimal visual elements from the developer’s other series, The Wolf Among Us, to clean up its interface. Walking Dead also brings back its typically unstable frame rate and camera transitions, particularly on iOS devices and PlayStation Vita, as well as awkward animations and a handful of minor visual bugs. The mobile and Vita versions also feature a distracting brown border at the edge of the screen, which fades in and out during conversation. It obscures the scene and draws attention away from the characters -- a cardinal sin in a game of this nature. I still enjoy the frantic button-prompt-powered battles with zombies, exploring environments at my own pace, interacting with mundane objects, and engaging in human conversations as Clementine. Everything I’m doing feels important. I just don’t know where it’s going. The overarching story here is empty and vague, and your decisions from last season don't appear to matter much two years later. Clementine ends up in the company of an untrusting new group that finds her stranded and alone, but because everyone exists to question Clementine, we’re left not knowing what anybody but Clementine wants. Pete, the group’s sympathetic leader, has potential as an interesting father-figure type, but we’ve seen that story before. Clementine gravitates toward Luke, a young man she can confide in about Lee, but he’s never presented as anything more than a nice guy. The most interesting opportunity for potential is another young girl, oblivious to the brutality beyond her bedroom door, who wants to pal around with Clementine. This new group of survivors — whose fascinating, strained relationships will inevitably lead to surprising conflict — don’t explain much about themselves or their motivation. The main plot thread of the season is clearly a threatening character to come, but they keep their fears fairly secret right up until the abrupt ending. Whether by design or indecision, the grand scheme of where this story is going seems as lost and confused as Clementine. It’s her story, though, that defines Season 2. The Walking Dead’s limited objectives and light puzzle elements -- collecting supplies to treat a wound, or scavenging for food, for example -- intelligently correlate to Clementine’s motivations. It affects how she handles a situation, what this group of survivors thinks of her, and which of them she’ll trust. Your decisions dictate the direction of Clementine’s story, and the kind of young woman she’s become in Everett’s absence. From scene to scene, as Clementine’s pushed farther from safety and those she trusts, “All That Remains” often reaches the same impressive levels of tension and stress as any Season 1 highlight. Season 2 has already created emotionally resonant, haunting scenes powered by disturbing imagery. Brace yourself if you have a sensitive stomach. At times, the violence and gore around her borders on exploitative. The displeasure of a throat-cutting mercy kill, and seeing the detail of a screaming child’s bleeding injury, are some of the most appalling moments in any of The Walking Dead’s many forms. Certain scenes strike a difficult balance of effectiveness and excess, but they’re eventually justifiable. The consequences of Clementine’s harrowing experiences rank among the series’ most remarkable, engaging character moments. It’s tempting to treat Clementine as a hardened badass in moments of distress. She’s growing up in a world that’s wrong. She’s alone, stewing in her own angst and anguish.cThis leads to many irresistible dialogue decisions. Some of her most satisfying conversation choices are arrogant or flat-out mean. She can also appeal to a person’s humanity. It’s difficult not to give someone the sad eyes to get what you want when given the option — but it begs the ethical question about which form of emotional mani[CENSORED]tion makes you feel the least bad. Not enough games are willing to pose provocative, contemplative questions like this, and it remains what makes The Walking Dead special. Lee Everett choosing whether or not to amputate his infected arm, execute Larry, or let Ben die stand out as some of Season 1’s strongest scenes. When Season 2 finishes, it’s possible we’ll look back on “All That Remains” and remember Clementine delivering cold, callous threats to a pregnant woman she’s blackmailing. As a character study, “All That Remains” is an exceptional exploration of a young woman’s struggle to stay strong in unforgiving circumstances. I’m more invested in Clementine now than I’ve ever been, and I admire her believable independence and resolve. A House Divided: Seeds sown in The Walking Dead: Season 2’s premiere don’t sprout in Episode 2, “A House Divided” -- they explode like a bomb.While the first episode focuses more on character development than plot, the second finds its direction, puts everything in context, and delivers a brutal, violent story that fractures the relationships established last time. It’s one of the best episodes of the series to date. Clementine’s fascinating character arc continues down a dark hole, but this episode truly belongs to actor Michael Madsen and his character Carver, a villain with a quiet, terrifying menace. Like Negan and The Governor in The Walking Dead comics, he will have major, memorable ramifications on Clementine and her crew. Madsen is an actor who’s been known to chew through scenery, but in “A House Divided” his subdued performance as Carver is superb. He’s calm, calculated, and equally terrifying whether he’s talking to a little girl or torturing a man. Control is his endgame, not just power, and he sets the stage for a bleak future for Clementine and her group – one that should prove to be full of violent revenge and no-win decisions in the coming episodes. Likewise, Clementine is establishing a bit of control herself. If Episode 1’s goal was to make us uncomfortable with her character growth, Episode 2 is a reminder that there’s always someone out there worse than than the worst person you know. Over this episode’s two-and-a-half-hours she makes many big decisions about her group’s fate, especially during the stressful and bloody 30-minute finale, while reconciling (and damaging) relationships along the way. Short of Lee Everett, nothing has changed Clem in quite the same way as the catastrophic events Carver puts into motion during this episode’s lengthy climax. Its dilemmas are devastating, and the urgency of important decisions proved as stressful as any of Season 1’s most important scenes. Better than ever before, developer Telltale’s writing humanizes characters new and old, which makes interacting with them (and potentially hurting them) all the more heartwrenching. “A House Divided” may be the biggest episode of The Walking Dead yet, both in terms of the ground covered and the variables you’ll encounter along the way. Conversations make up the majority of the interactive story, and they splinter off in wildly different directions depending on who’s alive to have them and how you treat others. You may not see certain settings, have entire conversations, or interact with certain people depending on where you take Clementine by the end of the episode’s five-day stretch. On her journey north to find safety and a missing friend, Clementine also ends up in frantic fights that are among the best action sequences Telltale has ever created. I felt my heart furiously punching against my chest after searching for a weapon, killing a zombie, and trying to save someone from falling off a bridge. Tension during button-mashy fight scenes is rare, and nobody’s better at it than this team. It's still concerning to see sudden frame rate drops and animation stutters during these sorts of sequences on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 though. PC remains the ideal platform for The Walking Dead. The majority of scenes throughout “A House Divided” feel definitive, like they’ll each have lasting consequences on Clementine, Luke’s family, or a new group of trustworthy survivors. Telltale completely changes the playing field based on those decisions, too. Depending on whether Clementine gives herself up or tries to sneak away to find backup, she’ll have entirely different gameplay options, conversations, and choices in separate locations. It’s great to see immediate, important shifts like this instead of wondering when that one specific dialogue choice will come back to help or hurt me. For the first time playing The Walking Dead, I absolutely had to rewind and see how else a scene played out. I did this four times, and each time I came out the other side hurting from the hard-hitting results of my actions. Amid the significant, scarring events, the writing here is exceptionally human. A chilling and introspective speech about regret, family, and letting go stands out as one of the franchise’s strongest character moments. “A House Divided” also achieves a great deal in what it doesn’t say. It implies and hints at many things that pay off in surprising ways. Some moments made me smile, others broke my heart. It also touches on religion, homosexuality, and tolerance with grace, once more lending credible weight to The Walking Dead’s growing cast of complex, endearing characters In Harm's Way: In Harm’s Way writer Pierre Shorette forces many of The Walking Dead’s characters to their physical and mental breaking points. The scenes in which they’re each tested are memorable, excellent, and effectively unpleasant, in a way that is uniquely Walking Dead -- to acknowledge you have enjoyed them is to submit to your own sadistic sensibilities. Yet there is no glee during the unpredictable story told during In Harm’s Way. Clementine’s new family is imprisoned by Bill Carver, the quiet maniac who debuted in Episode 2: A House Divided. Clementine and company’s overnight escape plans put everyone at risk, and the way In Harm’s Way builds to its devastating climax had me anxious and uncomfortable in all the right ways. The Walking Dead explores what that means to players while putting them on a hopeless road for Episode 4. In Harm’s Way is about as bleak as this franchise has ever been, and what little optimism exists is only here to remind you how easily it can be used against you. Sociopaths in video games usually exist to motivate the player’s violence. Their mental instability absolves you of any uncertainty or guilt when you do something terrible to them. They’re “crazy” -- just kill them. Bill Carver is a different kind of sociopath. He made me play Clementine differently than I had been, but in quite the opposite way of most games. My cold, bitter Clementine warmed to those around her, even those she didn’t fully trust, because of Carver. Yes, I wanted him dead -- he is likely the first person Clementine has ever truly hated -- but that was secondary to protecting those who suffered because of him. Empathy is the greatest success of In Harm’s Way. It focuses on people, features very little environmental exploration, and doesn’t bother with puzzles. Contextually, this is a human episode, so there’s little room for the more involved “play” aspects of this adventure game. Despite having less interactive portions than previous episodes, In Harms Way has tension, discomfort, and character development that’s among the best of them. I have no idea what Clementine’s future holds. That’s unnerving. But, like Clementine, I’m focusing on getting these people to a better place than the people I left behind. Amid The Ruins: Telltale Games Has a hard time building up to its endings. Ending something isn’t easy, but this is a storytelling team that’s proved it knows how to stick the landing. Yet -- like The Wolf Among Us and The Walking Dead’s first season -- Episode 4 is an odd lull in a story that’s built phenomenal momentum until now. Amid the Ruins, like many of The Walking Dead’s point-and-click adventure game episodes, focuses on the calmer, quieter side of surviving the zombie apocalypse. Its bursts of unexpected violence force main character Clementine to make difficult decisions that leave her, a young orphan, responsible for the safety of the people she cares about. In Amid the Ruins, that ever-growing number of characters starts to dwindle.People in Clementine’s life seem to exist solely so their departure can hurt her. Often, this makes for meaningful moments that define her as a character -- specifically the version of her that you create by responding to terrible situations and potentially worse people. Loss, specifically how Clementine processes and proceeds with it, remains the focus of The Walking Dead: Season 2. Amid the Ruins features plenty of loss, and some of the heavy decisions connected to them wield the same gut-punching power Telltale Games has become known for. Much of Amid the Ruins, however, felt like loss with little meaning, as though characters are being cut because the cast is too big, or they don’t fit where the finale is going.Characters vanish so rapidly and unexpectedly that it robs The Walking Dead of certain emotional value. Some exits are cheap, while others are unjustified, feel forced, or are forgotten as quickly as they happened. Worse, some of those unsatisfyingly departed characters are replaced by new villains -- introduced out of nowhere, with no clear motivation -- who feel out of place, inappropriate, and somewhat cartoonish. In playing Amid the Ruins, I enjoyed discovering more about people we’ve spent little time getting to know. This episode spends a lot of time with Jane, the woman who helped Clem and her friends in Episode 3, as our young heroine learns about her past and takes lessons in killing zombies. You’ll also see new conflicts arise between old friends and new. Resolving these problems is tense and satisfying as it always is, but most of it appears to be inconsequential by the end. Characters disregard unforgivable and unforgettable past events to focus on new problems, which lessened the impact of previous decisions I’d made. One fantastic scene in particular shows a grieving, despondent character clearly contemplating suicide. The performance is genuine, and it creates a heavy air that made me as uncomfortable as the concerned friends around him. In the scenes that follow a new tension snaps them out of it, but this person never revisits their own trauma, and never resolves the serious personal problem with Clementine that I created previously. For the first time in this season, I don’t believe in what certain people are doing fits with their character and their history. Meanwhile, although The Walking Dead: Season 2 has been building to something bigger for Clementine, it fizzles here by the end of Episode 4, the complex political drama that’s been brewing between feuding sides all but evaporates. Bickering elders don’t seem to weigh on Clementine as much as the grim things she has to do on her own. She’s starting to feel small, despite the big things she’s doing. I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing yet. Maybe that’s the point. Perhaps the desperation and hopelessness of The Walking Dead’s bleak world is starting to overwhelm Clementine’s story -- one where a little girl begins to break, to give in, and give up on what little she has left. This could be where The Walking Dead is headed. Where it’s at, like the first episode of Season 2, is in an interesting place for one person, and spinning its wheels for most everyone else. No Going Back: When pushed to their absolute limits, human beings show their true colors. The Walking Dead: Season 2 -- Episode 5: No Going Back tempts its remaining cast members to cross lines and endure unbearable personal trials.How they respond to main character Clementine, and each other, forces us to make some of the most difficult decisions of the season -- some of which make it painfully clear where you stand with people you once loved, hated, trusted, or doubted.The hook of Telltale’s excellent point-and-click adventure series is engaging with these events -- either through dialogue choices or actions -- based on the kind of person your Clementine has become. Where Episode 4: Amid the Ruins rapidly and repeatedly wrote off characters, No Going Back spends a significant amount of time exploring who Clementine has left and what they mean to her. While Amid the Ruins is still a problematic episode, No Going Back capitalizes on its setup and pays it off with grace. The slow, contemplative first hour sees these worn survivors reflecting on their lives, cracking jokes with each other, and trying their best to behave like things are normal again. It can’t last. Small problems spiral quickly out of control, and the calm is crushed by weighty, gut-wrenching dilemmas that place an enormous amount of pressure on Clementine’s group. Memorable moments cut to the bone in every scene. Bad situations test Clem’s resolve and her companions’ trust. Best-case scenario, someone earns their redemption -- but not before they’ve salted the earth. Worst case? That’s up to you. It’s oddly fascinating to watch these people’s relationships deteriorate, crumble, or implode. The Walking Dead’s phenomenal, convincing character performances have never been better than this. Raging arguments made me genuinely uncomfortable, in the same way watching loved ones bicker might. I felt uneasy about numerous escalating tensions because I didn’t know who was in the right, whose side to take, or even if I should make Clementine speak up. I grew to fear, pity, hate, and forgive characters based on the horrors we endured together -- or because of each other. I love this series for its ability to evoke such a wide range of emotions, and No Going Back is the pinnacle of Season 2’s provocative, painful, and unforgettable story. Season 1 of The Walking Dead ends on a much different note than this, and it has significantly different goals. The conversations about how your Clementine’s story ended, and how you got there, will share comparable enthusiasm to that of Lee Everett’s story. Trading stories with others means learning of entirely different ways scenes could play out. Different decisions can take you to entirely different locations, with separate people. No Going Back is ambitious as a finale, and it’s clearly executed with confidence. Even loose ends you may wish to see wrapped up serve a purpose. Not everyone’s story gets bow-tied closure -- sometimes, things are entirely out of your hands, and the not knowing hurts just as bad as the truth might have. The Walking Dead is a strange beast in that the more miserable it makes its audience, the better it is. In comics, television, and video games, one of the greatest measures of success is if it can make you feel how horrible it feels to be part of its world. In that respect, Season 2 of Telltale Games’ series is in the upper echelon of all Walking Dead fiction. Clementine is a strong lead, stronger and steeled than most in my story than most, I’d wager. But having seen all the options laid out as I played, this doesn’t have to be the case, and knowing that is a powerful feeling. It may make for an even better finale than the superb conclusion I built for my Clementine -- a person whose true colors have finally been laid bare. It is surprising how much The Walking Dead: Season 2’s finale accomplishes in just two hours. Each scene studies a set of characters, analyzing their goals, their nature, and what they’ve become in the two years since the undead started roaming. No Going Back poses challenging questions about people you love, people you might be using, and those you might loathe. It is, ultimately, a test of these characters’ wills, and a look at each of their limits. Telltale Games crafted brilliant no-win scenarios for Clementine, and the outcome of each is a result of what your Clementine is willing to say, lose, or do for herself or her family. Sometimes, those two can’t be reconciled, which leads to devastating conclusions. This is perhaps the most heartbreaking and tense episode of anything Telltale has ever made. How Clementine braces for the impact of everything in front of her is up to you -- and where that takes her left me in awe. Verdict: It is surprising how much The Walking Dead: Season 2’s finale accomplishes in just two hours. Each scene studies a set of characters, analyzing their goals, their nature, and what they’ve become in the two years since the undead started roaming. No Going Back poses challenging questions about people you love, people you might be using, and those you might loathe. It is, ultimately, a test of these characters’ wills, and a look at each of their limits. Telltale Games crafted brilliant no-win scenarios for Clementine, and the outcome of each is a result of what your Clementine is willing to say, lose, or do for herself or her family. Sometimes, those two can’t be reconciled, which leads to devastating conclusions. This is perhaps the most heartbreaking and tense episode of anything Telltale has ever made. How Clementine braces for the impact of everything in front of her is up to you -- and where that takes her left me in awe. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- System Requirements: Minimum: OS: Win Xp 32 Processor: Intel Pentium 4 2.0GHz / AMD Athlon XP 1700+ Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 4200 or NVIDIA GeForce 205 VRAM: 512MB System Memory: 3 GB RAM Storage: 2 GB Hard drive space DirectX 9 Compatible Graphics Card Recommended: OS: Win 7 32 Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 2.4GHz / AMD Athlon 5050e Dual Core Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 4650 1GB or NVIDIA GeForce GT 130 VRAM: 1GB System Memory: 3 GB RAM Storage: 2 GB Hard drive space

Game Informations : Developer: Techland Publishers: Deep Silver Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360, PS3 Initial release date: April 23, 2013 A sequel to 2011’s first-person zombie-dismembering co-op role-playing game, Dead Island Riptide adds a new character, some additional zombies, and boats, but otherwise largely reanimates the same hours of gory decapitations and corpse looting. The action is here in spades, but Riptide doesn't lift a finger to address the original Dead Island's failures.That's not a terrible thing, because for my money Dead Island – and by extension Riptide – nails what a zombie RPG should be. Loot the island, upgrade machetes from flimsy metal to powerful electrified killing machines, and level up your character with a seemingly endless supply of experience points. The “DING” of hitting that next level is a hypnotic device – a Pavlovian trigger – that had me popping open my skill tree and hemming and hawing over whether I wanted more bleeding damage or more inventory slots. Meanwhile, the story is an afterthought (now officially a Dead Island tradition), supported with shoddy cutscenes that bring little motivation and a few laughs at the inconsistent voice acting, which runs the gamut from excellent all the way to terrible. Picking up where the original game left off, our group of four survivors meet the new guy and are immediately shipwrecked on a new island overrun with zombies. How creative. Yes, once again, Riptide is packing four-player co-op, and this is where those characters you pick from in the beginning (or import from a Dead Island save) complement each other. Xian’s knives were all I wanted to use, but my roomie’s adoption of the new Brawler, John Morgan, meant he could hilariously punt zombies out of the way while I focused on sneaking by baddies on my way to the objective. Brilliantly, the enemies scale to the appropriate level in co-op, so even if I took my Level 61 character and joined you on Chapter 1, I’d be fighting zombies on my level and you’d be fighting zombies on yours. (This is something the original Dead Island added in a patch after launch.) We’d share money and XP, so it’s an awesome setup to keep people totally engaged as they play one character to the level cap. Riptide is a smorgasbord of content, and even now, with more than 20 hours played and the completely flat and goofy boss-fight ending behind me, I’m still playing because hacking off limbs and leveling up is so satisfying. There are new zombies such as the screamer (her yell freezes you in place) and the drowner (he plays possum in the water) that make you change up how you tackle similar undead situations. In the same vein, Dead Zones are cool monster dungeons packing named bosses; I’m still scouring the island and clearing those. This is why you play this game: it’s great gory fun. When I was playing co-op with my roommate, I didn’t care that we were talking over a random questgiver’s monologue; that person’s story didn’t matter, but our plan for getting an engine back as quickly as possible certainly did. It’s through these successes that the impact of Dead Island Riptide’s failures is lessened. Although, it does suck that once you complete the campaign you can’t run around the island and clean up quests -- so make sure you have everything done before heading into the endgame One failure that can't be ignored is that the world still doesn’t look that hot. Textures pop in, screen tearing persists, and missing frames aren’t uncommon. Performance is worst on the PS3 and best on the PC, but no version is unplayable or perfect. But what’s so crazy is that once again, this stuff really doesn’t matter. Your quest log brims with story missions, you run into side quests wandering the sun-splashed island locales, and Techland tosses in new team missions that make the survivors at your bases more helpful in battle. Just like the original Dead Island (that's a phrase I'm saying a lot today), RPG gameplay saves Riptide from its narrative mistakes and lackluster graphics. Verdict: I seriously love Dead Island Riptide for its satisfying zombie dismemberment and co-op, but technically, it's done nothing to build itself into a great game. Rather than fix the graphics and the performance problems that plagued the original two years ago, Techland slightly modified the setting and delivered a new character and more content. It’s a fun time, but there are no surprises or killer new features to make it an impressive package. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ System Requirements Minimum: CPU: Core2Duo 2.66 GHz RAM: 1 GB OS: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 VIDEO CARD: ATI 2600XT 512MB VRAM (geforce 8600GT) PIXEL SHADER: 3.0 VERTEX SHADER: 3.0 SOUND CARD: Yes FREE DISK SPACE: 7 GB DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 512 MB Recommended: CPU: Core2Duo 2.66 GHz RAM: 4 GB OS: Windows 7 VIDEO CARD: Nvidia geforce 9600 (1G) PIXEL SHADER: 4.0 VERTEX SHADER: 4.0 SOUND CARD: Yes FREE DISK SPACE: 7 GB DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 1 GB

Game Informations : Developer: Remedy Entertainment, Nitro Games Publishers: Remedy Entertainment, THQ Nordic, Microsoft Corporation, Xbox Games Studio Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Xbox One, Xbox 360 Initial release date: May 14, 2010 The protagonist, Alan Wake, isn't initially an action hero. He's a po[CENSORED]r fiction writer attempting to escape the pressures of fame and creative expectation whose vacation in Bright Falls quickly turns Twin Peaks weird. His wife goes missing, and his search to find her is swiftly diverted into the realm of the paranormal, forcing him to pick up a gun and pull the trigger to stay alive. It's an adventure heavily informed by television shows like X-Files and Twilight Zone and horror fiction from Stephen King and H.P. Lovecraft. Presentation, character building, and plot twists take on just as big a role as the tightly wound action gameplay you'd expect from a Remedy title. The result is a swirling tale of fiction that's endearingly self-aware, that occasionally sputters and stumbles, but offers enough scares, laughs, and thrills to keep you hooked. The core story spans six episodes, each crafted like part of a TV miniseries. After the first episode's exposition each that follows ends with a cliffhanger, fades to a title screen (strangely without credits) as songs from the game's excellent licensed soundtrack play, and then transitions into a plot recap as the next begins. Even if episodic gaming isn't particularly original at this point, the style of the presentation fits with what Remedy is trying to accomplish here; delivering a video game experience that feels like a novel presented as a TV show. This blending of different arts touches all aspects of the game, from how the story is told within each episode, the way the characters are developed, to how you interact with the environments. In place are standard cut-scenes where characters interact and advance the action along with plenty of inner monologue voice over from Wake as he comes across new and strange phenomena. Like in a written work, this allows for insight into the mind of the protagonist without the need for overly artificial character interaction to draw it out, and various other storytelling devices further fragment the order of reality. Techniques employed by Remedy to convey the unfocused rage of Max Payne, a game fans will find references to throughout Alan Wake, are used more subtly here to generate a sense of mystery, isolation, and creeping dread. By leaving the straightforward path to the next checkpoint and exploring the surroundings, radios and television sets can be found in spots like wooden lookout towers and construction site trailers. It may be tempting for some to plow past these extras to get to the end, but I'd strongly advise you take the time to listen to and watch everything you can. It highlights what a great job Remedy has done building a richly detailed game world that retains authenticity even as its plot spirals further into the mists of the fantastic. Details delivered through radio broadcasts and the Twilight Zone-esque live-action "Night Springs" television show poke fun at the genre's conventions, build out character, and dump more self-referential slabs into Remedy's melting pot of mediums. Wake frequently stumbles across manuscript pages which, like audio logs in BioShock, serve the purpose of providing perspective from other characters not otherwise possible, foreshadowing events to come, as well as explaining bits of the backstory. The twist is the pages were written by Wake himself, something he can't recall doing. Making sure you explore and collect as many as possible helps to more fully develop the world and story, as well as building tension as the game blurs truth and fiction. Bright Falls and its forested mountainous surroundings are masterfully realized and resonate with realism. Wake is a famous figure everyone recognizes, all the townsfolk know each other, and they seems more concerned and excited over an upcoming town festival than they are with the dangers encroaching from all sides. Of course everyone has their secrets, some malevolent and some hilarious, and sifting through the radio programs, manuscript pages, and talking to everyone helps solidify their identities. While many still come off as stereotypical – there's the staple comic-relief character, the batty old woman, the good-hearted local cop, the troublesome FBI agent – the way they behave and interrelate keeps them entertaining. Remedy built in a large amount of extraneous dialogue that's worth hearing so if you find a character be sure to hang around and listen to what they've got to say, even if not all the voice acting is of the same high quality. Additional character is exuded by the design of the environments. Remedy's skill with crafting spaces that feel lived in is readily apparent. Locations are packed with detail and feel rusted and worn. Weeds choke the back lot of the police station, surrounding the husk of a long forgotten vehicle. A recliner ringed with beer cans sits atop a construction container overlooking a brilliantly lighted power plant, reinforcing the idea that there isn't a whole lot to do for fun around these parts. A mental therapy building is lined with inspirational posters and idyllic paintings that reflect the ego of the proprietor and function of the establishment. This intimate scale of detail is then juxtaposed with sprawling vistas as you peer deep into moonlit mountain valleys rippling with shadow. It gives the game a sense of place and purpose, making it an easy world to identify with. During the day in each episode Wake can wander and talk to NPCs, but once the clouds roll in and the moon lights up it's a whole different beast. Shadows flit across the ground at supernatural speed like X-Files black oil when threats are imminent. The lighting effects can be stunning. Moonlight pours from above, streetlamps and construction bulbs indicate the way forward, and Wake's all-important flashlight is a tool for exploration and, more importantly, a weapon. Just because there's such a focus on story and presentation doesn't mean the game lacks a responsive and satisfying combat system. Wake's arsenal isn't gigantic, but everything's useful. Emerging from the woods are humans infected with darkness, voracious birds, large pieces of machinery and automobiles that get tossed around like toys, and even massive construction vehicles that burst from their resting places to flatten you. The first order of business in stopping anything taken by darkness is to hit it with light. Wake's flashlight is the most direct method. Point it at a dark target and a shower of sparks like a circular saw on sheet metal go flying off. Sound effects shriek like power drills and with continued exposure to light the darkness surrounding a target is shattered. Follow it up with a shot from a pistol, shotgun or hunting rifle and you've got a kill. It's a simple interplay that's helped along with some smooth animations and weighty sounds that give firearms and collisions a powerful feel. The more you play, the more variety is added to the combat. Flares sparked in Wake's hand push back the shadow enemies, keeping them stumbling for the light's duration. For a quick escape Wake can drop it to the ground and dart off while the stick burns down. Running away is frequently an option in the game, though limited in a few ways. Enemies are fast, attack often by swinging shovels and knives or by tossing axes. You have a dodge move that can duck under individual attacks, but it requires precise timing. Combine that with the fact that Wake does not have an unlimited sprint and you'll have difficulty running to the next lighted checkpoint with regularity, forcing you to consider ammunition reserves, distance to the next checkpoint, and how thoroughly you want to explore each area before advancing. At times you can take advantage of other light sources. A flare gun acts like a grenade launcher by detonating in a brilliant bang, disintegrating any in range. Environmental hazards can be utilized as well by blasting explosive containers or flicking on construction lamps. Foes advance at different speeds and getting familiar with the wrinkles of combat – like a how a concentrated blast of light can momentarily stun – can help keep things in order and allow you to pick apart the shifting shadows one at a time. It's a system that's best when it's challenging, so crank the difficulty as high as it'll go if you have any experience playing games. Combat progression culminates in a handful of thrilling sequences that I can't really describe in detail here for fear or spoiling things, but Valve fans might find one to be especially familiar. In open spaces enemies can attack from all angles, meaning you need to be constantly on guard and must shift the angle of the camera to get a good view. This also leads to one of the game's issues where it's easy to get the camera rotated behind a tree or other environmental obstacle, obscuring the action. In many cases on a high difficulty setting this means an axe to the face or a step off a nearby cliff, which can be unfortunate if it's been a fair amount of time since the last checkpoint. It's not a major flaw but it's noticeable enough to make an impact on the experience. Compared to the Xbox 360 version, there are minor control differences here. Wake can be controlled with a mouse and keyboard or gamepad. Both methods work well, but if you're using a mouse and keyboard, you lose the ability to aim your flashlight without expending battery power. With an Xbox 360 controller, this is still possible by pressing the left trigger only halfway down. Thankfully the difference is negligible because aiming without the flashlight raised is perfectly functional. PC players should be pleased that the interface has been adjusted for the PC version, allowing weapon switching with the number keys and mouse wheel. As for the actual story, it's a case where the questions raised are often more interesting than the answers, and where deeper meaning is often brushed aside in the name of entertainment. By the time everything's wrapping up at the end you might feel a slight pang of disappointment since enough loose ends are left fluttering to allow for future episodes. Thankfully with the PC version you get both downloadable episodes, The Signal and The Writer, which extend the story and provide a few answers, though still leave it hanging by the end. Aside from a few clever presentation elements, the combat encounters are similar to what's found in the initial six episodes, but the additional story and creative set-pieces are still worth checking out. Exploration is limited to small areas around the linear path forward and, aside from the radios and televisions, there are a wealth of collectibles to pick up and hidden ammunition and weapons to uncover. Occasionally Wake will have to hop into a vehicle instead of proceed on foot in which case the headlights can blast away darkness from enemies and a tap by the car can put them down for good, but these parts can't really compare to the excitement of the on-foot action. It's a welcome change of pace to be able to get out and cover large distances swiftly while admiring the scenery, but you lose the sense of vulnerability and isolation felt as Wake ventures into underground mine shafts and hedge mazes as the wind howls and strings surge on the soundtrack. I also have to point out that the choice of product placement in Alan Wake is absolutely atrocious. I suppose the advertisements were necessary to get the game out the door, but it's still an unfortunate commercial blight on an otherwise excellent game. Verdict: Remedy has built a world that, despite being a fantastical realm of twisting shadows and realities, is solidly anchored in authenticity. Outstanding environmental design and some brilliant visuals and sound make Bright Falls and its mountainous surroundings look and feel alive. Though the camera can cause issues and the supernatural story that's more interested in asking questions than answering them, it's a tough game to put down once you've started. Remedy's done a great job of mixing elements of written work, television, and video games to create an experience full of scares, laughs, and thrills that's just as fun to play as it is to watch. ----------------------------------------------------------------- System Requirements Minimum: CPU: Info CPU SPEED: Dual Core 2 GHz Intel or 2.8 GHz AMD RAM: 2 GB OS: Windows XP/Vista/7 VIDEO CARD: GeForce 8800 GT or Radeon HD 2900 Pro PIXEL SHADER: 3.0 VERTEX SHADER: 3.0 SOUND CARD: Yes FREE DISK SPACE: 8 GB DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 512 MB Recommended: CPU: Info CPU SPEED: Quad Core 2.66 GHz Intel or 3.2 GHz AMD RAM: 4 GB OS: Windows 7 VIDEO CARD: GeForce GTX 275 or Radeon HD 4870 PIXEL SHADER: 4.0 VERTEX SHADER: 4.0 SOUND CARD: Yes FREE DISK SPACE: 8 GB DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 1 GB

Game Informations : Developer: Supermassive Games Publishers: Sony Interactive Entertainment Platforms: Play Station 4 Initial release date: August 25, 2015 At its best, Until Dawn is a gleefully cheesy homage to horror movies, set in a world built by a developer that clearly adores the genre. Although its thrills are tempered by a lack of story cohesion, its robust choice-and-consequence system and keen eye on horror’s most ridiculous tropes makes Until Dawn ultimately worth playing. Developer Supermassive Games has threaded horror movie cliches into Until Dawn’s set-up and amplified them to extreme degrees. Eight attractive stereotypes, played with great gusto by a well-rounded cast that’s a little too good for the material, have gathered together to “party like porn stars” in a remote cabin on the top of a snowy mountain that can only be accessed by an unreliable cable car. Why are they there? To mark the one year anniversary of the mysterious disappearance of their friends in the surrounding woods, naturally. Until Dawn’s game world is small, but Supermassive has made it as entertainingly hostile as possible. Its beautifully detailed cabin is huge, cold, and full of secrets, while the surrounding area features a sanitorium with a large morgue, an abandoned mine shaft, and a range of aggressive wildlife. This bitter landscape is filmed with a keen eye on isolation, and Until Dawn does a great job at encouraging the sense you’re always being watched through high angles and tracking shots. It’s a ridiculous place to spend any length of time, of course, and during its first half Until Dawn really revels in the slasher genre’s idiosyncratic idiocy. Characters take baths with their headphones in. Couples go to dangerous lengths to have sex. Everybody seems to think scaring the hell out of each other is really ‘fun’. While I wish Graham Reznick and Larry Fessenden’s script had been more acerbic overall - sometimes I wondered if the bad jokes were intentionally bad jokes - I enjoyed Until Dawn’s familiarity, from the dumb jock arguing with the bad boy over the queen bee to Hayden Panettiere's character being stuck in a towel for half the run-time. Such gleeful abuse of genre tropes does dilute Until Dawn’s scares significantly - I laughed more than I flinched - though there is the odd bit of clever misdirection resulting in genuine shocks. Supermassive has an excellent handle on the visual language of horror movies, and Until Dawn is at its most scary when a character is ever so slowly backing out of a doorway, or approaching a rattling trap door. Until Dawn can’t quite sustain its tongue-in-cheek tone through its ten-ish hours, however, and its story veers off in an entirely different direction in a much darker and sillier second half (which owes an awful lot to a certain British horror flick). While there are still some tense moments to be had here, this sudden shift strips away any cohesiveness and left me feeling like I’d played through two very different - and discordant - games. Fortunately, Until Dawn encourages a more consistent sense of tension elsewhere. Your goal is to save (or kill?) as many characters as you can over the evening as possible, and every decision they make under your control shapes their fates. Bend a weapon out of shape? Don’t expect to have it later when you’re under attack. Be cruel to another character? You won’t have his support when you need it the most. Some decisions I made in Until Dawn had minor consequences, some left me genuinely shocked, and all felt satisfyingly connected to an action I had made. I played through twice to mess around with its systems, and was delighted to find new storylines and information I’d missed the first time around by choosing different options. Quick-time events play a big part in Until Dawn, too, and though occasionally tedious - there’s far too much climbing over walls for my liking - there are real repercussions for failing. Some of Until Dawn’s most thrilling moments came when I was being pursued and had to make split-second decisions on my method of escape, all the while trying not to fumble at a prompt which would result in my immediate capture or death. It’s worth noting I had a tough time with Until Dawn’s motion controls during these frantic sections, and as they brought nothing to the experience elsewhere, I’d recommend sticking with traditional controls. Less successful is an odd bit of fourth-wall breaking theatre that has a more obtuse effect on Until Dawn’s story. ‘Doctor Hill’ (performed by Fargo’s Peter Storemare) is a psychiatrist who will talk to you directly in between chapters, at first ascertaining your fears and teasing out your thoughts on each character. How you answer him has a subtle effect on Until Dawn’s early scares - you’ll encounter a needle if you tell him you’re scared of needles, for example - but his role quickly descends into a strictly thematic one, which becomes redundant as the story takes that hard left-turn. Verdict: Until Dawn is a flawed, but fun experience. Though an unfocused story means it falls short of greatness, it’s an otherwise entertaining homage to the curious traditions of horror movies which pays off your in-game decisions with occasionally shocking consequences. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Game Informations : Developer: Criterion Software Publishers: Electronic Arts Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Ps3, Xbox 360, Andriod Initial release date: Oct 30, 2012 Two years ago acclaimed British developer Criterion took a stab at one of Need for Speed’s most established imprints: Hot Pursuit. The results were fantastic; it was a game that pushed the arcade racer forward in new, exciting directions, providing unprecedented levels of connectivity, and was a major shot in the arm for the series.Thankfully, following on from the disappointment of last year’s entry The Run, Criterion is back in the driving seat, turning its perfectionist’s gaze towards another title from the franchise’s past. This time it’s Most Wanted receiving the makeover and the results occasionally approach the sublime. The first thing that impresses you about Most Wanted - and there are many highlights to choose from - is the sheer quality and craftsmanship of the game. It’s evident in most aspects of the game. It’s been constructed with a fastidious attention to detail. You’ll emerge from winding tunnels into blinding light; flecks of dirt and blades of grass will cling to the screen should you choose to go off-road; the music quality will dip and static will accumulate on your Sat Nav when you venture underground; the warm sunlight skims off rainwater that has pooled on the uneven, cracked tarmac. They’re all little touches – testament to time and energy – but when they all combine, as they frequently do, the result approaches something quite sublime. And you’ll still be able to appreciate it all tearing down the highway at 150 miles per hour. You get the impression that Criterion is rather proud of its achievement. Each race is prefaced by an introductory video, which showcases the city it has built from the ground up. Some are surreal vignettes in which police cars fall from the sky or perch on the ceiling of car parks like flies; others are snapshots of the city itself, showcasing its urban beauty. Things in the distance don’t bear up to the same scrutiny but it’s a more than acceptable tradeoff, since every side of Fairhaven – every sewer and flood drain, bridge and road – is accessible to you right from the beginning, without a single intrusive loading time. This is open-world gaming at it’s most seamless. Different sections aren’t crudely welded together with lengthy loading times. You’ll only be pulled out of it when you change cars, enter a race or switch to multiplayer and it never takes more than a few seconds. But this is a driving game of course, so inevitably it comes down to the cars. And in keeping with its sandbox aspirations, you're able to drive nearly every one of its 41 vehicles right from the start, from the mundane Lancia Delta to the most desirable Aston Martin V12 Vantage. To drive them you don’t have to win races or accumulate points or buy tokens; you just have to find them. Some are hidden on rooftops or down back alleys; some are hiding in plain sight. When you find a new car it’s equipped with stock components: basic tyres, a basic chassis and transmission, and no nitrous exhaust. You upgrade your car by accumulating Speed Points, which you earn by transgressing the law, setting off speed cameras, bursting through billboards, evading the police. But the fastest way to net some serious Speed Points is by entering street races. Each car has five races open to it, ranging from easy to hard. The races themselves are fairly varied: there are straightforward circuit races, sprint races and Speed Runs, in which you’ll have to maintain an absurdly-fast average time while weaving in and out of traffic. Place well in the races and you’ll receive perks such as off-road tyres, a reinforced chassis (so you can burst through roadblocks), or different gear sets, depending on whether you want a higher top speed or faster acceleration. Modding is easily done via Easy Drive, the game’s persistent on-screen menu. It lets you upgrade your car using the D-pad, change your car and set a route to new race. It again furthers that open-world feel. Criterion is smart enough to know that nothing is more antithetical to the open-world experience that it’s trying to create than drilling down through a series of static menus. In addition to straightforward races, there are also Ambush events in which you’ll have to evade the boys in blue. Part of the fun of Most Wanted is antagonising the authorities. Initially you’ll feel restricted to the roads and highways of Fairhaven, but the races show you different sides to the city. There are two ways in which you can lose the fuzz: keep on running for the horizon and hope they can’t chase you or break the line of sight and hide under a bridge, like Ryan Gosling in Drive. But police interference isn’t limited to Ambush events. They’ll get involved in most races, attempting to ram you off the road or into oncoming traffic; dropping stingers right in front of you; or blocking entire intersections. As your ‘Heat’ level increases they’ll employ faster cars to chase you down and even call in SWAT teams. And this is where your mods can give you a slight advantage – if you need to plough through parked SWAT vans or SUVs you must equip a reinforced chassis and the powershot exhaust, otherwise your car will crumple on impact. However, modding on the move isn’t all that easy and the risk of crashing into an obstacle while trying to change to re-inflatable tyres isn’t really worth it. And while Kinect allows you to access Easy Drive more easily, during the fast-paced races of Most Wanted it’s still a bit of liability to mod mid-race. The spectacular is well within reach of even the novice in Most Wanted. Cars handle brilliantly. Once you master drifting and how to use nitrous bursts effectively, you’ll be competitive in most races. Harder races aren’t intimidating with practice and a range of mods unlocked. Slow and steady won’t win you races in Most Wanted; only insanely fast and audacious will. Races in Most Wanted begin not from a static racing line, with you patiently waiting to hit the gas, but from a rolling start – you’re furiously thrown into the middle of the race and that’s pretty much emblematic for the game itself. The opening credits end with an invitation – a robotic-sounding woman’s voice says, “What happens next is up to you.” And that’s part of the game’s central weakness. It provides so much freedom that some will find it rather aimless. When you can drive and upgrade a Lamborghini Gallardo right from the beginning, the motivation to do it all again with a hatchback quickly evaporates. Some many of its pleasures are immediate, not rationed nor deferred. Saying that, there is a very loose narrative of sorts: you’re tasked with becoming the city’s most notorious racer. When you earn sufficient Speed Points you’ll be able to challenge one of Fairhaven’s ten most wanted racers. They drive the most desirable cars in the game – from the real-world Bugatti Veyron to fantastical concept cars – and the races are akin to boss fights, periodically testing your skills and knowledge of the city’s streets. (Incidentally, each race is preceded by the most stunning introduction.) Beat them by successfully take down their vehicle and you’ll take their car as a prize. It’s the main incentive to keep on racking up those Speed Points. That incentive is bolstered by the game’s approach to multiplayer. You’ll be able to drive around a private version of the city with friends, smashing into each other with Ballardian glee, or run through ‘setlists’, which comprise of races as well as challenges – who can make the biggest jump or execute the longest drift, and so on. It’s a lot fun and, as with the main game, it’s all seamless and flowing. Events are linked by mini-races as players attempt to get to the starting point before the rest. But if multiplayer isn’t your sort of thing Criterion has subtly woven competition into the very fabric of Fairhaven. Billboards will carry the face of your friend who burst through it at a higher speed, for instance. It’s subtle but very effective. Verdict: As with all sandbox games the narrative is of your own making but this is even more true of Most Wanted. The side-effect is that it can feel aimless at times. If you desire structure, if you wanted a game to be meted out to you, you might find its instant freedom somewhat overwhelming. But Most Wanted is all about deviation and deviance. It’s the racing game for people who don’t tend to like racing games. You’re not punished for missing that apex or abandoning that nagging racing line. It’s undoubtedly one of the year’s most exhilarating experiences. ---------------------------------------------------------- System Requirements Minimum: CPU: Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHZ or Althon X2 2.7 GHz CPU SPEED: Info RAM: 2 GB OS: Windows Vista (Service Pack 2) 32-Bit VIDEO CARD: ATI RADEON 3870 or higher performance / NVIDIA GEFORCE 8800 GT or higher performance PIXEL SHADER: 4.0 VERTEX SHADER: 4.0 SOUND CARD: Yes FREE DISK SPACE: 20 GB DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 512 MB Recommended: CPU: Quad-Core CPU CPU SPEED: Info RAM: 4 GB OS: Windows 7 64-Bit VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 560 or ATI RADEON 6950 PIXEL SHADER: 5.0 VERTEX SHADER: 5.0 SOUND CARD: Yes FREE DISK SPACE: 20 GB DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 1024 MB

Game Informations : Developer: Slant Six Games, Capcom Publishers: Capcom Platforms: Microsoft Windows, PS3, Xbox360 Initial release date: March 20, 2012 In theory, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City had everything going for it - a great concept set in a beloved universe and a rich, compelling canon to draw from. However, this team-based shooter amounts to far less than the sum of its parts. There's a distinct difference between a franchise offshoot and a franchise bastardization. Unfortunately, Operation Raccoon City can only be defined as the latter. ORC puts players behind the scenes of Resident Evil 2 and 3, particularly that disastrous outbreak in Raccoon City. You play as a member of the Umbrella Security Service, retrieving virus samples and destroying all evidence of Umbrella's involvement in the catastrophe. It's a brilliant concept, one that could have made for an extremely badass story and shed light on these well-known Resident Evil events. Unfortunately, all of this potential is squandered by some strange choices and truly terrible execution. The AI of team members and enemies is simply atrocious. While it's preferable to play with friends, I was still stunned by how useless the computer-controlled teammates were. Not only are you unable to control their actions in any way, but their every move is unreasonable and downright idiotic. From running into empty rooms you've already cleared to constantly walking into obvious trip mines to finding surprising and frustrating ways to get themselves killed, your team offers no real backup or assistance, and there's very little incentive to even revive them when they fall. For a team-based shooter, this is absolutely unacceptable. The enemy AI is no better. There were literally countless times where a Hunter would jump in front of me, wave its arms, then dash away or jump off the edge of something for seemingly no reason. When you have to chase down a Hunter and practically beg it to attack you, you know something's not quite right. And while dumb zombies are at least understandable if not preferable, the fact that BOWs and even human foes act like they have no blood flow to the brain just makes no sense. As if that weren't enough, the aiming is downright spotty blindfiring, at times, is completely broken and enemy damage is somewhat random. Sometimes you can unload an entire clip into a Licker's face and it won't flinch, other times a couple of bullets do the trick. The melee attack is also way overpowered. Sure, it's a fine mechanic for a normal shooter, but not for one set in the RE universe, where your knife is supposed to be a last resort to temporarily postpone death until you find more ammo. In ORC, you can practically hack and slash your way through parts of the game, killing that trademark RE suspense. The game also implements an auto-cover mechanic, whereby you stick to any wall you go near. It's beyond annoying when you venture over to pick up an herb and end up sticking to the wall. In fact, it's downright frustrating and almost never actually useful. Having auto-cover in a cover-based shooter, especially one that's supposed to be tactical, makes no sense. Perhaps it could have been implemented in a way that was clever and useful - but it's not. It's just not. As if all that weren't enough, ORC also suffers from a complete lack of atmosphere, which is simply unforgivable for a game boasting the Resident Evil branding. The set pieces are bland and forgettable, and everything down to the music fails to capture the RE universe or create any amount of tension. The only impressive parts of the package are the graphics and character models, but even those certainly don't rank among the best of this generation. The story offers no insight into Umbrella's actions, and its flow and progression are both uninteresting and nonsensical. Sure, Resident Evil is known for its cheesy and "out there" plotlines - but they're usually at least interesting, and bolstered by memorable characters that are easy to care about. While you can play as Leon, HUNK, Jill and other recognizable characters in the Heroes multiplayer mode, during the main campaign you're stuck taking control of one of a handful of bland, faceless USS members with absolutely no personality or story arc to speak of. It's always fascinating in Resident Evil games when you get a glimmer of what goes on behind the scenes of Umbrella - when its employees are humanized and portrayed as real people who, for various reasons, are capable of unimaginable evil. None of this conflict or depth is present in ORC, and it's a true shame. As is, it's impossible to care about what's going on in the already paper thin story. ORC's multiplayer modes don't help much either, as they suffer from the same problems as single player - namely poor AI, a lack of atmosphere and an environment that is frustrating to interact with (there are literally tiny steps you can't jump off and have to go around). The only difference is that you have a companion around to share in your pain and assure you it will all be over soon. In addition to co-op in the main campaign, ORC has four multiplayer modes, each of which supports up to eight players. Heroes mode offers a four-on-four team match that lets you play as notable RE characters (Leon, Claire, Ada, etc.), and Biohazard is essentially capture the flag, only you're trying to capture lost G-virus vials. Survivors is a fight for survival against human and computer-controlled enemies that doesn't end until the extraction helicopter arrives, and Team Attack is a team deathmatch - if you and your friends score more kills than the other team, you win. The number of play options would be great if the rest of the multiplayer experience were passable, but much like the rest of ORC, poorly thought-out gameplay mechanics, bad level design and a total lack of tension and suspense bring the whole thing down. Verdict: Given the huge amount of potential the developers of Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City had to work with, it's disappointing how little of it was actually realized. On several occasions I was legitimately surprised by the mention of the name William Birkin or the familiar sound of picking up an herb, having long forgotten that this was supposed to be a Resident Evil game. The terrible AI, the lackluster locations and the complete lack of atmosphere or memorable characters destroy what could have been a brilliant offshoot. In the end, Operation Raccoon City is little more than a poor man's SOCOM, and a destitute man's Resident Evil. ------------------------------------------------------------------- System Requirements Minimum: OS: Win Xp 32 Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 2.4GHz / AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5400+ Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 5550 512MB or NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTS 512MB System Memory: 2 GB RAM Storage: 8 GB Hard drive space DirectX 9 Compatible Graphics Card Recommended: OS: Win 7 64 Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 2.66GHz / AMD Phenom II X4 940 Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 6950 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 System Memory: 4 GB RAM Storage: 8 GB Hard drive space

Game Informations : Developer: EA Black Box, Firebrand Games Publishers: Electronic Arts Platforms: Microsoft Windows, PS3, Xbox360 Initial release date: Nov 15, 2011 In the time it's taken Black Box to make Need for Speed: The Run, we've had three other awesome NFS titles from other developers. While that's great for fans, it kind of spoiled Black Box's return to form. Need for Speed: The Run feels like a traditional NFS game, released after the franchise had already redefined itself. What Need for Speed: The Run has going for it is that it feels more like an old-school NFS game than the last few "spinoff" titles have. Developer Black Box has been making NFS games for over a decade, and they bring a lot of that arcade style, nitrous fueled racing action back. Racing down snow and ice covered tracks, skidding along a turn and narrowly avoiding plummeting off the edge of a cliff face is exhilarating. Weaving through traffic on a crowded freeway feels tense and frightening. Throughout the campaign, the scenery and gameplay constantly change as you race from coast to coast. There's a good balance of different race types. You'll go from a standard eight car race, to a checkpoint time attack, to a one on one mountain drifting battle, to a cop chase. It's very rare that the same type of race repeats twice in a row. The driving can feel floaty at times, but the car classes perform differently, and getting a good time can largely depend on good car choice. On the Normal difficulty the racer AI is, well, kind of dumb. They'll crash into other cars, police will target only you, and they'll miss shortcuts, even if you enter one right in front of them. The locales are definitely best part of this Need for Speed. In fact, The Run has some of the most gorgeous and interesting set pieces I've seen in a racing game. The Rockies, Yosemite National Park, San Francisco, even the New Jersey Turnpike are all lifelike and well detailed. Which is why it's a shame that so many of the tracks in The Run are boring. To be fair, they mostly match up with the areas of the country that are boring, too (sorry, the Midwest). But even some tracks that should be amazing, like the final battle race in New York City, are entirely underwhelming. More than that, though, my biggest problem with The Run is the lack of options. I don't just mean the inability to customize and upgrade cars (which I personally don't mind, but is a big concern for many fans), but more that I can't fine tune my racing experience. After the campaign there is a Challenge Series which offers additional gameplay, similar to Shift's challenges. However, there is no free race option at all in this game. Whether I'm playing by myself, or online, I have to choose from the preset Challenges with their car types and rules. Beyond the dumb story, the unintuitive way to switch cars, and any problems I have with the AI, it's these lack of features that turns The Run from my racing game of the holiday, to a weekend rental. I beat the challenges, I beat the story, and now I don't have a lot more to go through. Part of the problem stems from how scripted the campaign feels. There are cop chases where all your competitors get stopped by roadblocks. Survival races where you just have to not crash. And the final climactic race has multiple sections where it doesn't matter what you do, you get a scripted event. I can blaze ahead of the opponent, but suddenly he's at my side to show a cutscene and push me off the road. If there was an awesome story being told then maybe these would make more sense, but usually it feels like the game is holding your hand. And it's a problem because otherwise the online is set up great. I like how I earn bonus XP for nearly everything I might do in a race. I love that AutoLog is back so I can constantly compare race times with my friends. The playlists work well and the racing was nearly lag free in my albeit limited exposure to it. But then I'm limited to picking between exotic sprints or a muscle car challenge and my interest wanes. The story itself is rather baffling, too. The Run exists in a world where subway trains travel at 140 mph and every girl is a smoking hot maybe-lesbian. You play as Jack, a guy who got in trouble with the mob, so he enters a cross country race to get a bunch of money. That's pretty much all the story you get. The writers never extrapolate on why Jack is in trouble, or who the other racers are (aside from a couple superfluous loading screen bios). And it's all stuff that needs answers because Jack appears to be in some deep sh--. Hey game, do you want to explain what Jack did to make the Chicago mob track him down in California, try to execute him, chase him all the way across the country, try to gun him down on a crowded freeway, get a helicopter to shoot him down (killing civilians and cops in the process), destroy an oil refinery, and send in a mob boss's son to finish the job? No? Ok then. Then why did you bother putting a story in here at all? Verdict: Need for Speed: The Run has a good racer inside it. It can be exciting and visceral, and there were numerous times in the game where I stopped and said, “Sh--, that was cool.” But all this awesome racing action gets somewhat lost amid the nonexistent story, the dumb/scripted AI, the lack of options, and the overall shortness of the game. The Run is not a marathon racing game, it's a quick and dirty drag race. -------------------------------------------------------------- System Requirements Minimum: CPU: 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD Equivalent CPU SPEED: Info RAM: 3 GB OS: Windows Vista SP2 32-bit VIDEO CARD: 512 MB RAM ATI Radeon 4870 or higher performance / 512 MB RAM NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT or higher performance PIXEL SHADER: 4.0 VERTEX SHADER: 4.0 SOUND CARD: Yes FREE DISK SPACE: 18 GB DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 512 MB Recommended: CPU: 3.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Quad or AMD Equivalent CPU SPEED: Info RAM: 4 GB OS: Windows 7 SP1 64-bit VIDEO CARD: 1024 MB RAM ATI Radeon HD 6950 / 1024 MB RAM NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 PIXEL SHADER: 5.0 VERTEX SHADER: 5.0 SOUND CARD: Yes FREE DISK SPACE: 18 GB DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 1 GB

Game Informations : Developer: Ubisoft Montreal Publishers: Ubisoft Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360, PS3 Initial release date: Dec 2, 2008 Forget what you know about the Prince of Persia series. Let go the Sands of Time. Release your Warrior Within. Ubisoft Montreal has created a new Prince, in a new world, with a new female companion and a very different design philosophy. The longer you hold on to the style of last generation's Prince of Persia, the harder it will be to master the new one. Embrace the change and you're likely to fall in love with the new Prince (or at least his lovely companion). When we meet the new Prince, he hardly seems princely at all. Little more than a smooth-talking thief, the Prince gets lost in a sandstorm while searching for his donkey, Farah. Of course, this is no ordinary sandstorm. This mystical phenomenon transports the Prince to another land, one seemingly made more of myth than reality. It's here where he fatefully runs into Elika, a beautiful barefoot descendant of a clan sworn to guard the prison of the evil god Ahriman. As bad luck would have it, the two meet just in time to witness Ahriman's release from his prison inside the Tree of Life. His escape releases corruption across the four areas of the world. This corruption will spread further unless the Prince and Elika can heal the infected lands. And so begins your adventure. This is a story about love. Not the love between the Prince and Elika, but between you and Elika. She is your constant guide, able to cast a spell at any time to show you the path to your goal. Come across a gap too great for the Prince to leap? Elika can assist with a double-jump move. Want some help in combat? Elika patrols the arena, ready to attack at your command. Miss a ledge and about to fall to your death? No sweat. Elika will always save you. Elika teaches you about corruption and the battle between Ahriman and Ormazd, about the history of the four infected areas and the tragic tales of all four bosses you must battle. She's your greatest asset and far more likeable than the boorish Prince. If Elika were just a little bit more real or I was just a tad more insane, I'd marry her. With Fable II, Peter Molyneux attempted to make us care so greatly for our dog that we would sacrifice everything to protect him. He didn't fully succeed. But Ubisoft Montreal got it right. Elika is so significant to the story and gameplay that I found myself caring far more for her safety than that of my own character, the Prince. And the real genius is that Elika is as easy to control as pressing a single button. That's all it takes. Double jumps, combat moves and magic with Elika are all assigned to one button. Her AI is perfectly designed so that she never takes the lead and never gets in the way. And that's saying something, considering how quickly the Prince moves about the world. In truth, Elika is really just a manifestation of actions we've been performing in games for years. We've all seen a double jump before and heroes who mix in magic with their swordplay. All Ubisoft did was take these very standard gameplay elements and give them a physical form. It's because Elika is such a natural extension of the gameplay that it's easy to care for her. The rest of the Prince's actions are just as simple as commanding Elika. Each is assigned to its own button. There's one for acrobatics, your sword and your gauntlet. These work both while free running about the world and in combat. So when you are battling the Warrior -- a massive creature made of stone -- you instinctively know that if you want to slide between his legs, you're going to use the acrobatic button. Ease of use is a primary focus of the Prince's design. In fact, it's so easy, some may subconsciously overcomplicate things. When you're running about the world, performing acrobatic sequences, it's difficult at first to shake off years of training in action platformers. But Prince is actually simpler (and in many ways better) than previous iterations of the series or other action games. You never need to hold down a button -- there is no pre-loading your jumps. That's because you can jump off a wall at any time. So if you jump to a wall and then hold down jump as you are landing, you aren't preloading the next jump, you're actually going to jump again. To play Prince properly, you need to relax (yes, relax) and feel the cadence of the Prince's movements. You will never furiously tap any button while free running. It's more like: Jump, pause, jump, pause, jump, use Elika, pause, jump. Finding the right rhythm can lead to some spectacular-looking and amazingly fluid sequences. And if you can't get the rhythm, your punishment is having the Prince briefly pause on beams and poles, waiting for you to get it together. When done right, you are treated to some spectacular animations both from the Prince and Elika. It's like playing a Cirque de Soleil video game at times. This system isn't perfect. There are times when you might think you can drop down to a lower area safely, only to fail because there is a specific way the developers want you to reach that spot. And there were more than a few times when I leaped in a direction I hadn't intended (this happens most often when jumping off poles) or overshot a ledge seemingly because I was too effective in my approach. Fortunately, these issues are more the exception than the rule. For the most part, Prince of Persia handles brilliantly and manages to create an excellent sense of fluidity. Combat follows a similar philosophy to acrobatics. This is not a button masher. In fact, button mashing is a sin in the world of Prince of Persia. Instead, combat is a rhythmic chaining of combos. You're not meant to be tensed up and leaned forward during battle. You're supposed to be relaxed, absorbing in the environment, the look of the enemy, and the Prince's incredible animations. There's a fairly deep combo tree in Prince of Persia that can branch off from any of the four buttons (sword, gauntlet, Elika and acrobatics). Discovering how to keep a combo branch from closing allows you to string together a dozen hits for an amazing attack sequence. All combat is one-on-one (or one-on-two if you count Elika) allowing Ubisoft to mani[CENSORED]te the camera freely for a more cinematic experience. And just because you are only battling a single enemy, don't expect combat to be easy. The AI is tough and adapts to your play. Do well and the AI blocks more often and becomes more aggressive. Get your butt handed to you too often and the AI eases up. There's no way to individually manage this (no difficulty setting or other options), but I found the combat most rewarding when the AI was taking it to me. The only trouble with facing the harder AI is that they more readily engage in quick-time-event attacks. These cut-scene attacks stutter the flow of combat when you get three or four in a row. And since each enemy only has three or four types of attacks, it quickly begins to feel repetitive; especially when you consider that you will fight each boss five or six times. I enjoyed the progression of the bosses, how they become more difficult with each battle and how the arenas themselves made each combat feel a little different, but the QTE moments start coming far too often. Getting the flow of combat is more difficult than getting into the acrobatics. It's going to be difficult -- perhaps even impossible -- for some to break their old habits. For those who can't get into POP's flow, the experience may be short-lived. Prince of Persia isn't for everyone. You are either going to love it or just not get it at all. If you can embrace the idea that this is more about an experience than about the traditional "beating the game" mentality, then you are in for something special. If the combat or acrobatics prove a challenge, don't worry. You can't die. At all. Ever. Elika will always save you. If you fall, she'll grab your hand and pull you back to safety, depositing you at the last solid ground you were on. If you're going to get squashed by an enemy, Elika will yank you to safety. This gives the enemy a chance to heal, but it keeps the combat moving. This steals some of the challenge from Prince of Persia, but it also offers some freedom for exploration. You can make leaps of faith in an attempt to get at a Light Seed knowing that failing won't penalize you. I'm okay with removing any serious penalties from a game like Prince. After all, the more you stress about death, the harder it would be to enjoy the scenery. But I do hold issue with some of the other ways Ubisoft has made Prince consumer friendly. When you need to double jump, the color bleeds out of the world. When an enemy is about to counter attack, the block button flashes on screen. There's no way to remove these prompts for those who want to add some challenge. At times, Prince feels a bit like Mister Toad's Wild Ride. Sure, you have your hands on the steering wheel, but you're being guided along. I'm all for making things accessible to a broader audience, but there's no reason Ubisoft couldn't also service the hardcore gamer at the same time. Perhaps the most challenging moments in Prince are when Elika uses her powers. There are four magic abilities to unlock, each tied to magic plates found throughout the world. Two of the powers are almost identical and offer no skill challenge at all. The red plate rebounds you forward -- often to another red plate) and the blue plates have Elika sling the Prince forward. Different animation, same idea. The other two powers do require some skill and are used for some of the longer sequences in Prince of Persia. The dash power sends the Prince running up walls. Though you're on a track, you will need to move left and right to dodge obstacles and corruption traps. It's simple gameplay, but these sequences can be several minutes long and failing means starting back from the beginning. The flight power follows the same principal, only Elika takes the Prince in the air. You must dodge left, right, up and down as you soar through the air. For all its creative juice POP comes up a tad short on the magic elements. Dash and flight are really the same thing, but with one on the ground and the other in the air. And the other powers are identical in every aspect but the animation. I would have liked to see a bit more variety here, especially since the magic plates take a prominent role the deeper you get into the Prince's world. Fans of the POP franchise know that there's a third element to compliment platforming and combat. There are indeed a handful of puzzle elements in Prince of Persia. The majority of these are very minor things -- mostly moving plates to redirect where you can run. There are only two truly Prince-worthy puzzles. One has you changing the flow of a river of corruption so you can reach a new area, the other has you mani[CENSORED]ting some gates to reveal a series of magic plates. It would have been nice to have more puzzles or more ways to alter pathways up walls, but it's nice to at least have something. Certainly puzzles have been downgraded in the new POP, but not completely forgotten. Prince of Persia can best be described as an open-world platformer with boss battles. It's clearly been influenced by Shadow of the Colossus. Within an hour of starting up a game, you'll be able to run from one end of the world to the other, examining the four very different locations. You won't, however, be able to cure every area right off the bat. Each of the four areas is comprised of six sections (or levels) all of which can be explored from the periphery. But to give players a sense of progression, the majority of these sections can only be cured after obtaining a specific magic power for Elika. You do, however, get to choose the order in which you unlock Elika's four powers. And the order in which you heal the various locales has a direct affect on gameplay. Each area has its own boss, whom you will face off against repeatedly as you slowly work to heal every section of the land they protect. And each boss has a unique corruption trap to release into the world. The Warrior creates columns of corruption that shoot out from walls and grab at the Prince; the Concubine releases bat-like creatures that chase after the Prince, forcing him forward. Even after beating a boss, the trap sent into the world remains in all of the other corrupted areas. These traps stack, meaning that in the final levels, you'll be dealing with all four traps layered on top of one another. This dynamically changes the acrobatic challenges in each area. Ascending up the spiraling tower to the top of the Royal Palace when no traps have been released is quite a different experience than doing so with bats chasing you as corruption tremors roll up and down the wall and columns of black goo reach for your heels as you leap to the next ledge. I was a bit skeptical that just tossing in a trap to an area could make it feel different, but it really does. Mind you, even with four traps released in the world, the difficulty of Prince of Persia doesn't dramatically elevate. Because many of the runs from one section of stable ground to the next offer few moments to stop, the traps are often solved by having good timing at the outset. Get off on the right foot and you will almost never have an issue with the subsequent traps on the run. Ubisoft did a great job of giving a sense of urgency with the traps – it always feels like you just barely avoided being nabbed by a column of corruption – but the danger is often an illusion. When moving through corrupted areas, you may feel funneled into a certain direction, repeating similar sequences, but even then there's something fulfilling about making those jumps. After reaching the healing ground, Elika can rid that section of the world of corruption. The corruption is pushed away, replaced by lush grass, dandelions and butterflies. The sickly area you just ran through is now transformed. Walls of corruption that prevented further exploration have evaporated. And this is where Prince of Persia stands out from other games. Often the "healed" areas are pretty boring to travel through. It's often a necessary evil of poor design to backtrack through a completed level. But there's a reason to explore the healed areas of Prince of Persia. After healing a level, 45 Light Seeds appear. These seeds are used to unlock new magic powers for Elika. The majority of these luminous orbs can be gathered just by traveling back through the area. However, those looking to gather all 1001 Light Seeds will have to search every nook and cranny of the world. The payoff for doing so is unlockable skins, which can be used to put the Prince and Elika in different looks. But the bigger reward is seeing the game world. As pretty as the world of Prince might be when covered in corruption, it's absolutely magical when healed. There are moments when I felt like I was running through a watercolor painting. The four areas of Prince are wholly unique in look and each manages to find the perfect balance between fantasy and reality. If you don't take some time out of your quest to stand on a plateau to admire the vista, you're missing out on POP's greatest gift. The visuals aren't superficial. There's a story for every single area you visit. Elika's people abandoned this world long before Ahriman was freed and you can learn more of the history by speaking to Elika. There's a talk button, which you can use anytime you're stopped (or to talk smack to enemies). This adds optional conversations which give you more insight into Elika, the Prince, the bosses you're battling and the lands you're healing. Some of the conversations are seemingly trivial, but showcase the Prince's piss-poor personality (must he always be such a jerk?) and Elika's charm. The Prince is a bit too acerbic for my tastes and some of his lines are groan-worthy. But Elika and the bosses are well-voiced and make up for the Prince's deficiencies. Verdict: In every console generation there are one or two games that, regardless of any flaws, hold tight in my memory even years later. I can still picture scenes from Chrono Trigger on the Super Nintendo System as if I just played it the other day. Despite a flurry of great games released in the past year, I still get the itch from time to time to play Jet Set Radio Future on Xbox. Your beloved games may be different, but I’m certain most long-time gamers have a few titles they treasure – the games they can never trade in. Ubisoft’s relaunch of Prince of Persia may just be such a game for me from this generation. It’s not the best game ever released on PC, PS3 or Xbox 360; it’s not even the best game released this year. And yet Prince of Persia is that rare game that has managed to tap into that part of me that would die defending Chrono Trigger or JSRF. It has its shortcomings, but I already sense that Prince of Persia will be one of the few games from this generation that I carry with me for the next decade. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ System Requirements Minimum: CPU: Dual core 2.6 GHz Pentium D or AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ RAM: 1 GB Windows XP / 2 GB Windows Vista VIDEO CARD: 256 MB DirectX 10.0/9.0c-compliant, Shader Model 3.0-enabled video card (NVIDIA GeForce 6800 / 7 / 8 / 9 / GTX 260-280 series & ATI RADEON X1600 / 1650 - 1950 / HD 2000 - 4000 series) TOTAL VIDEO RAM: 256 MB HARDWARE T&L: Yes PIXEL SHADER: 3.0 VERTEX SHADER: 3.0 DIRECTX VERSION: DirectX 9.0c or 10.0 (included on disc) SOUND CARD: Yes FREE DISK SPACE: 9 GB Recommended: CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2 GHz or AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ or better CPU SPEED: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2 GHz or AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ or better RAM: 1 GB Windows XP / 2 GB Windows Vista VIDEO CARD: 256 MB DirectX 10.0/9.0c-compliant, Shader Model 3.0-enabled video card (NVIDIA GeForce 6800 / 7 / 8 / 9 / GTX 260-280 series & ATI RADEON X1600 / 1650 - 1950 / HD 2000 - 4000 series) TOTAL VIDEO RAM: 256 MB HARDWARE T&L: Yes PIXEL SHADER: 3.0 VERTEX SHADER: 3.0 DIRECTX VERSION: DirectX 9.0c or 10.0 (included on disc) SOUND CARD: Yes FREE DISK SPACE: 9 GB

Game Informations : Developer: DICE Publishers: Electronic Arts Platforms: Microsoft Windows, PS3, Xbox360 Initial release date: Oct 25, 2011 Battlefield 3 suffers from an identity crisis. It delivers scorching multiplayer, fitting of its decade-long pedigree of famously expansive big-team battles, but stumbles over a generic single-player campaign that feels like a different game. While DICE may not deliver a memorable story here, it doesn't need to when Battlefield 3's online warfare raises every bar imaginable, delivering one of the best multiplayer experiences of the year. I doubt Battlefield purists will complain much about the campaign, honestly; I know you're enlisting in this battle to bring down entire armies online. From the beaches of Kharg Island to the hills of Damavand Peak, Battlefield 3's multiplayer maps provide an immediate sense of scale. Everything about their design screams size, personalization, and the need to take creative initiative to succeed. Choose to pop headshots from the prone position, spin barrel rolls in a jet outfitted with personal unlocks, or see how many dog tags you can knife from your opponents; Battlefield 3's multiplayer is about the freedom of choice. The online fight feels like a geography lesson (in a good way). Depending on the game mode, each map utilizes a different area or shifts wider and wider as gameplay progresses. You might not see half of a map like Caspian Border or Seine Crossing during your first few Rush matches. Yes, certain areas feel empty and repeated map elements like shipping crates conjure deja vu, but the sense of scope is exhilarating. Where many online shooters teach you the nooks and crannies of every map, Battlefield 3 is a wide sandbox that encourages variety and exploration. Battlefield 3 shines in matches with 63 other players, where every bullet has a new enemy's name on it. Is the gameplay balanced? Battlefield 3's online teeter-totter comes down to personal preference. I've been pinned down at my spawn point in Operation Metro by a dozen, well-stocked snipers and I've taken over an entire conquest map single-handedly. I'm no Maverick in a jet, so I learned to rain down hellfire from a chopper. For any class or tactic that doesn't work, like a painter's palette, Battlefield 3 offers alternatives. All four streamlined classes (Soldier, Engineer, Assault, and Recon) get their own problem-solving unlocks, so leveling each one is paramount to sitting on top of the leaderboards. Battlefield 3's rewards and progression will keep you coming back to its online rumble for a long time. From adding heat-seeking missiles to an Anti-Aircraft Tank to simply changing camouflage, there's always a carrot dangling just out of reach -- if you can wrangle the score to earn it. While the newly implemented Team Deathmatch modes encourage high kills and low deaths, Battlefield remains a team-based game where you can sit atop the scoreboard no matter how many times you've died. Heal an injured teammate, resupply a sniper, or make sure a tank gets fixed up, Battlefield is about working towards the greater good and it's just as refreshing now as it was in 2002 -- all while looking outstanding on PC. From sun flares to smoke bursting from a collapsing building, Battlefield 3's Frostbite 2 engine provides marvelous visuals. It performs admirably on lowered settings, but for anyone who's doubled up on their NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580s, Battlefield 3 provides a gorgeous spectrum of environments speckled with detail to brag about. Nighttime elements present a stark intensity, with glowing fluorescent signs dotting the cityscape and street lights blinding you from seeing enemies. The waves crashing on a beach below a late-game villa are mesmerizing -- as is the simple scrub brush dotting maps like Operation Firestorm. At maximum settings, Battlefield 3 looks stunning. The engine isn't perfect by any means. I encountered prone legs jutting through walls, saw snipers half-buried in mountainsides, watched my dead body stick through the hood of a jeep, and even noticed a story character float in a straight line from point A to point B, walls be damned. I've seen flower pots float in midair, noticed AI soldiers in their shooting position long after death, and I somehow committed suicide by running over the lip of a crater. These glitches are annoying, but they don't break the game. But they do break the immersion of the story and in the case of an undeserved multiplayer suicide, cause unneeded frustration. While longtime fans know Battlefield as a multiplayer experience, its campaign and cooperative experiences can't be ignored. For those of you more interested in the single-player campaign than multiplayer, definitely take note. Whereas both Battlefield: Bad Company games added a story underwritten with humor, Battlefield 3 takes a more serious path. Its tale of global threats reads like twenty years of military fiction thrown in a blender and turned into a checklist. WMDs? Check. Russians? Uh huh. Insurgents tucked into Middle Eastern alleyways? Yup. It's all there and woven into levels through the recollections of Sergeant James Blackburn during an interrogation (didn't we see this in Call of Duty: Black Ops?). There's inherent tension in the threat of a terrorist attack, but Battlefield 3's campaign feels like well-trodden ground. Battlefield 3's campaign does hit some memorable moments (especially in the graphics department), but as a whole it's trite and frustrating. The campaign jams Battlefield 3's multiplayer into a linear box where freedom of choice gets thrown out a non-destructible window. There are only a few buildings to blow holes in, barely any vehicles to take the wheel of, and quicktime events adorn enemy encounters in almost every level. While you can literally crash a helicopter on an opponent's head while parachuting to safety if you so choose in multiplayer, campaign makes you hit spacebar at just the right moment to avoid getting punched -- they're two different games. The co-op missions surround the events of the campaign, yet feel more enjoyable as individual levels. Working with a teammate leads to more creative approaches of attacks, though the same AI frustrations are in place. While opening doors and during other set animations, AI enemies gain invulnerability. They also have an uncanny ability to pick you out of the crowd. Even while using an AI teammate as cover -- not standard operating procedure, I know -- enemies still find you. dditionally, most levels feature a bottleneck where death hits out of the blue. Whether it's a grenade exploding without an indicator, a blast from an unseen enemy, or late-game quicktime event that introduces a new button, the campaign and co-op levels are a minefield of frustration -- especially when cranking the difficulty up to hard. All told, it's a brief affair -- I burned through the single-player portion in under six hours, the co-op content adds another two or three. Verdict: When you shut down Battlefield 3 and let the Frostbite 2-powered dust settle, it certainly has some problems. But DICE’s adoration of and expertise with the online experience permeates every aspect of its multiplayer. Regardless of the narrative missteps or the occasional glitches, Battlefield 3 offers an unforgettable, world-class multiplayer suite that's sure to excite shooter fans, whether they fired their first bullet in Battlefield 1942 or have just now heeded Battlefield's call of duty. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- System Requirements Minimum: CPU: 2 GHz DUAL CORE (Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz or Athlon X2 2.7 GHz) CPU SPEED: Info RAM: 2 GB OS: Windows Vista (Service Pack 1) 32-bit VIDEO CARD: (AMD): DirectX 10.1 compatible with 512 MB RAM (ATI Radeon 3000, 4000, 5000 or 6000 series, with ATI Radeon HD 3870 or higher performance)(NVIDIA): DirectX 10.0 compatible with 512 MB RAM (NVIDIA GeForce 8, 9, 200, 300, 400 or 500 series, with NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT or higher performance) PIXEL SHADER: 4.0 (ATI 4.1) VERTEX SHADER: 4.0 (ATI 4.1) SOUND CARD: Yes FREE DISK SPACE: 20 GB DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 512 MB Recommended: CPU: QUAD-CORE RAM: 4 GB OS: Windows 7 64-Bit VIDEO CARD: DirectX 11 compatible with 1024 MB RAM (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 or ATI Radeon HD 6950) PIXEL SHADER: 5.0 VERTEX SHADER: 5.0 SOUND CARD: Yes FREE DISK SPACE: 20 GB DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 1 GB