This mash-up of genres wears its influences on its sleeve, but it's a very pretty sleeve nonetheless.

PAX may not quite be on par with E3 when it comes to major game announcements, but it’s still hard to get through the weekend without seeing a few new titles in the headlines. One of the more interesting reveals from the show thus far has been Ubisoft’s unveiling of Outland, an artistic platformer from the developer behind Super Stardust HD. Outland combines retro 2D platforming with a number of elements from shoot-em-ups--most noticeably a light-dark dynamic similar to Ikaruga. After hearing about the game yesterday, we took a walk over to the Ubisoft booth, hung a left at HAWX 2, and took a look at the demo being shown for this upcoming downloadable title.

If what they say about first impressions is true, Outland is certainly in good shape. Its slick art design combines stark black platforms with vivid, colorful background scenery. The level we saw had a definite jungle theme to it, with roots curling from the bottom of floating platforms and giant spider creatures skittering along on the ground.

The story diving the game is a simple one: one day you awaken from a strange dream, notice things around you aren’t quite right, and set out on a quest to speak with a shaman who can heal your ills. This sets the stage for a jungle world overrun by mysterious creatures and monsters. Along with the aforementioned spiders, we also saw an imposing boss figure named the Golem. This one-eyed creature towered over the protagonist, wielding a giant club and looking not entirely unlike one of the bosses from Shadow of the Colossus.

What seems like it will ultimately set Outland apart from other pretty 2D platformers is the light-dark dynamic that’s been heavily inspired (to put it politely) by the classic arcade shooter Ikaruga. Essentially, there are enemies, platforms, and hazards in the world that can either be neutral, light, or dark. As the player, you quickly unlock the ability to fully align yourself with either your light side (a pale blue) or dark side (a deep red). In terms of combat, you can only attack enemies of the opposite color (attacking same-colored enemies will wind up hurting you) while absorbing flying projectiles of the same color will heal instead of harm you. The game encourages clever exploration beyond the required path, often making certain moving platforms usable only when you’re aligned with that color.

The shoot-em-up comparisons don’t end at Ikaruga’s light-dark system, either. A lot of areas in the game will unleash what feels very much like a top-down shooter’s idea of ’bullet hell.’ You’ll see waves of flying blips that are actually harmful projectiles. These often come out of the ceiling in semicircles of alternating color, forcing you to both quickly take cover under platforms and rapidly switch sides to keep from getting hurt. Having not played the game, we can’t say how difficult this wind up being in practice, but developer Housemarque assures us that they’re keeping the difficulty accessible for casual players. These bullet hell areas, then, are more an optional challenge for the hardcore players to defeat in order to earn bonus items and collectibles.

All in all, Outland certainly looks like an interesting platformer. It may wear its influences on its sleeve, but the combination of different genres is at least creative in its own right. We’re hoping to get a chance to play it soon to see just how these different elements come together. Keep an eye out for more coverage.

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We dive into this futuristic survival-adventure game and use the environment in clever ways to stay alive.

A sinking ship would definitely rank up there as one of the worst places to be left in and have to fight for survival. Usually if you're fighting aliens, zombies or ghosts, you have some sort of weapon or at least an open area to keep your back against. However in Hydrophobia, we started out with having to scramble to another level just to ensure we have enough air, and when we were faced with terrorists, all we were given was a tiny stun gun. Thankfully, you're not limited to the stun gun for the rest of the game, but with limited weaponry, you are forced to use the environment to your advantage, which is the purpose of Hydrophobia.

Looks like there is no chance of getting into some dry clothes.

Who's Making It: The game is being developed by Dark Energy, located in Manchester and Microsoft is publishing the title.

What It Looks Like: Hydrophobia is set 30 years into the future aboard a giant vessel called Queen of the World. Like the Titanic of the future (after it hit the iceberg), you are walking around metal corridors and winding staircases, swimming up elevator shafts that are usually flooded with water. What's interesting is that you can control how much water you want in your area by keeping certain doors closed or to make things more interesting, open up the floodgates.

What You Do: As the reluctant heroine Kate, you are a system's engineer who is onboard when the terrorists attack. Your goal is to survive and take out the enemy but you're not exactly a fighter. The game is designed to highlight more exploration than combat. The ship is massive, and you'll encounter obstacles that you'll need to find a way to get past, as your world is crumbling down around you. When you are eventually armed with a weapon, it's like a third-person shooter with a cover system. We were told that there would be semi-automatic weapons later, but with the stun gun, it was difficult to keep enemies down unless we used the environment to properly dispose of them.

How It Plays: When in combat, you use the right bumper to draw your weapon and the right trigger to fire. A white dot on screen is used to aim, and a red target reticle will appear when there is something that can be shot at, whether it be another person or a box or explosive barrel. What's convenient is that while you're maneuvering through water that is almost waist high, there are plenty of barrels to aim your stun gun at to cause an explosion to finish off the terrorists, as well as create a mini tidal wave in a cramped corridor. There is never really a swarm of enemies coming at you from what we've seen, but carefully placed oil barrels can easily dispose of a group after they explode.

The cover system allows you to press A to hug one of the nearby walls. It's not the kind of game that you'd want to run out with guns blazing, so you need to sit back and carefully think about how you want to proceed. To knock out an enemy we had to charge our gun first before firing, otherwise you're only sending mini shockwaves with the stun gun, which didn't seem to do much except annoy the enemy. Once you do get them on their back (we were hoping that they'd drown), they'd get right back up again after a few moments, so we had to either fire at some oil barrels or send sparks flying by shooting the electrical switches on the wall.

In our demo we were given mission objectives, such as tracking down a key in order to progress to the next area. It seemed simple enough, but we had to swim through flooded chambers to get to it. You are given a map to help you navigate the enormous ship, and as you're exploring, you're playing with the constant flow of water that is spilling in from just about everywhere. You can fire at windows to let more water in, or leave it the way it is and try to handle the situation with the current water level. There are situations where you'll be swimming through completely flooded halls, so you'll need to look for patches of light and head up for some air.

What They Say: Hydrophobia is the first game developed using Dark Energy's revolutionary HydroEngine, the world's only full computation fluid dynamics engine for games. This incredible technology allows water and other liquids to flow and behave completely realistically, resulting in the most dynamic and dramatic gameplay you've ever seen.

Take cover when you need to.

What We Say: Mingled with our own fear of drowning, Hydrophobia was an intense experience (and yes, we know it's called aquaphobia). Between looking for pockets of air to make sure we could make it to the next door, Kate also had to keep an eye out for terrorists, who are armed with much better weapons than we were. The constant flow of water and changing environment was impressive. It forces you to rethink your strategy because you may have fired at an oil barrel and caused it to explode, but now the burning oil is heading toward you. It's good to see some variety when it comes to survival games so look for Hydrophobia when it is released on September 29.

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We grapple, leap, and uppercut our way through this retro sequel.

Bionic Commando Rearmed played like a love letter to a bygone era of 8-bit platformers, adding a stylish coat of paint to a game whose overall structure felt firmly rooted in the 1980s. Of course, there was a perfectly good reason for that: Bionic Commando Rearmed was a remake of an NES classic. Rearmed 2, being a sequel to a remake, doesn’t have that same immediate connection to a decades-old predecessor. This has given Capcom and developer Fatshark the creative leeway to make some changes and additions to the original formula, several of which we’ve just had the chance to experience in the game’s latest hands-on demo.

The most noticeable one is your character’s ability to jump. Bionic Commando was a game that revolved around a grapple mechanic, having players run along and swing across gaps rather than leap over them. Grappling is still at the heart of the experience in Rearmed 2, but now you can move around in a way that feels, to put it simply, more natural. Levels are still designed in such a way that you’ll need to thoroughly master that grapple mechanic to get by, as well as seek out new weapons to unlock special sequestered goodies a la Metroid, so the addition of jump feels like less of a game changer and more of a slight breath of fresh air.

A number of new attack abilities are in store for players, as well. You can now do a sort of death from above attack when leaping from high platforms down to enemies below, which is also a mechanic that plays a role in progressing through puzzles whenever you’re trapped behind a stone wall. You can unlock a powerful uppercut ability that can instantly take care of weak enemies or let you quickly launch an explosive barrel at the tougher ones.

Like the original Rearmed, the sequel will also have a co-operative multiplayer mode that allows two players to play simultaneously. You share lives and unlockables, and there’s no friendly fire, so there’s not much of a chance to grief your teammate. While the level design doesn’t change to require team-focused progression through puzzles, there are a number of enemy types that require you to work as a tight pair rather than let one person do all the work. You’ll have the chance to play it alone or with a friend when Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 is released in early 2011.

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We try out the final DLC chapter of Dragon Age: Origins. Warning: this story includes spoilers.

Dragon Age: Origins swept thousands of would-be adventurers away with an epic storyline that told the tale of a land torn apart by war, and the role of your character, a member of the powerful Grey Wardens legion, to bring peace. Over the course of that adventure, your character met the likes of knights, thieves, traitors, and faithful hounds. Your character also met Morrigan, a mysterious witch whose powerful sorcery made her a valuable ally but whose actions’well, let's just say she didn't always share your goals throughout your journey. Over the course of the original game and its ensuing downloadable content updates, Morrigan vanished from the world on her own uknown quest, and in Witch Hunt, the final DLC update for Dragon Age, you'll eventually track her down and be able to get some answers out of her. Please note that this story contains spoilers, both about the original game, and about the DLC itself.

Witch Hunt is described as being somewhere between 90 minutes to two hours long, and once again lets you either create a new Grey Warden character, or to import your existing character to play as. Since the DLC focuses on Morrigan, if you chose to involve your character in a romantic relationship with her, your dialogue options when you finally track her down will change, and if you decided to have a child with her, your speech choices will also be different.

True warriors can win any battle with a faithful hound at their side.

In any case, Witch Hunt will let you revisit several locales from the original game, such as Flemeth's old home in the swamp and the Circle of Mages (from the original game's mage origin story), while meeting up to three new companions who can join your party. We began the adventure outside of Flemeth's home, searching for clues as to Morrigan's whereabouts and were greeted by the first companion, a Mabari hound (who, if you've imported a character who played through the original game, will be your original dog character, or will be an all-new companion if you're using a new character to play the DLC). After being joined by the faithful hound, we entered the hovel to find the female elf warrior Ariane who also hunted Morrigan, since the sorceress had apparently stolen away an ancient elven tome from her tribe. After striking a quick truce with the elf (who became our second companion), we then made our way to the mage's circle--both to research "eluvian," the topic of the mysterious elven book and also to meet the DLC's third companion, the mageling Finn.

Since our time with the DLC was limited, we skipped ahead to a few key points in the game, including a new boss battle with a new monster, the "varterral" (otherwise known as "the strider")--a powerful critter that will appear in Dragon Age 2 (just like how the previous DLC update, Golems of Amgarrak, also contained a monster that will appear in the sequel). The strider is an enormous, creepy-crawly critter that resembles a giant, spindly-legged spider made of driftwood. This giant creature has numerous abilities that can incapacitate your party members and also has a challenging habit of leaping into the air if it's getting too beaten up to escape your frontline fighters. Thankfully, we were playing a pre-loaded save game with characters that BioWare helpfully advanced to extremely high levels, so while the battle was a close one, it wasn't impossible.

We then skipped ahead to our final saved games--saved games for characters, some of whom had romanced Morrigan, others of whom hadn't. These last saved games were set just before the DLC's conclusion--at the moment where the party catches up with Morrigan and the main character can interrogate her. It seems that Morrigan has discovered a fully-functional eluvian--the magic mirrors from the original game that can potentially act as portals to another world, though to the enchantress's touch, the surface of the mirror rippled like water.

Goodbye, Morrigan.

Despite the fact that we're basically spoiling the ending of the DLC in this story (and with it, the saga of the original Dragon Age), you can take comfort in the fact that Morrigan was her usual cryptic self, and generally avoided giving a straight answer to nearly all of our questions. When asked about her intentions, she simply replied that she had much to do that required her to acquire power over time, and that her adopted mother Flemeth was the real threat (and depending on whether you elected to kill Flemeth, you can take a slightly different dialogue choice here). When asked about the child, Morrigan says only that the child is somewhere safe, and being prepared for "what is to come." After barely giving you any kind of answers to your questions, you must then bid the witch farewell, though how you choose to end your meeting with her is up to you.

Witch Hunt will be released this Tuesday, September 7.

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We fend off the Brad-obsessed Japanese school girls in Twisted Pixel's upcoming Xbox Live Arcade game.

After The Maw and Splosion Man, indie developer Twisted Pixel has been hard at work on their next action-platformer, Comic Jumper: The Adventures of Captain Smiley for Xbox Live Arcade. It looks to follow in Splosion Man's footsteps in terms of over-the-top ridiculousness (in a good way), and at the 2010 Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle, they not only announced a release date, but they also were showing off the new manga level that they had been talking about since E3. For our last demo of Comic Jumper, go here.

Who's Making It: Twisted Pixel are the developers behind Comic Jumper and Microsoft will be publishing it.

What It Looks Like: That depends on what level you're playing in. The black and white manga level that was being shown is a tongue in cheek take on shoujo manga, which directly translates into "little girls." The hand-drawn art style is very much what you would expect in this type of manga, full of girls with ponytails, short skirts and plenty of hearts and bubbles. It's an interesting change of pace to say the least.

What You Do: Captain Smiley also undergoes a bit of a transformation from level to level. In this particular one, he's rockin' the spikey anime hairdo and wielding a sword that is much to large for anyone his size to wield. That doesn't matter though, because when he's not swinging his massive weapon, he's firing a never-ending stream of hearts and bubbles into girls who are completely boy crazy. In this demo, two girls NaNa and CoCo have kidnapped a guy named Brad because he is oh-so-cute so Captain Smiley is off to rescue him.

How It Plays: This particular level changes up the gameplay as you progress from right to left (just like manga!) There are some side-scrolling portions of the game where you can do your melee attacks and use your weapon of love. As you progress through the Japanese high school, you'll move into areas where the game takes over and it becames a rail shooter, and you use the analog stick to move the reticle and fire with the right trigger. You still have the freedom to shuffle around the screen though, and use the left trigger to jump.

The boss at the end is a giant squishy squirrel teddy bear hybrid with big dark eyes and six limbs. Its form of attack is to cry, so you're running around dodging huge tear drops. Do we really need to say more?

What They Say: If you liked Splosion Man, you're going to love this one.

Better do something quick before you're kissed to death.

What We Say: It definitely looks like Comic Jumper is going the quirky and silly route because even the premise of the game is just plain goofy. You're playing as a super hero who isn't doing so well in his own comic, so he asks his creators (Twisted Pixel) to help him out a bit. Cameos from the development staff make an appearance when you do special attacks. It probably doesn't get much weirder than that, but then again, we haven't played through the entire game yet.

Look for our review of Comic Jumper: The Adventures of Captain Smiley when it is released on October 6.

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You read that right. The video game equivalent of the walking dead is playable here at PAX 2010.

We'll spare you any history lessons on Duke Nukem Forever. If you follow video games at all, you likely know the long, rocky, infamous--and did we say long?--history behind this first-person shooter. All you need to know is that it's actually playable here at PAX 2010. Granted, as you'd expect, there's quite a line to see it. But if there was ever a game where a lengthy queue was appropriate, it's this one. CEO of Gearbox Randy Pitchford certainly knows. "I heard the line outside was 13 years long," Pitchford joked while giving a presentation on how new developer Gearbox picked up the project after 3D Realms collapsed last year.

To give a quick summary, Pitchford described his personal attachment to the franchise (Duke Nukem 3D was the first game he worked on before forming his own studio) as well as the reason publisher 2K Games trusted Gearbox to salvage the project ("we brought them a megahit with Borderlands"). But it was a quick introduction, followed by a new trailer and the opportunity for everyone there to get some hands-on time with a couple of different levels.

The trailer was Duke at his ridiculous best, punching giant aliens below the belt, spouting one-liners, and taking more than a few self-referential jabs at himself. After that, it was time to play the game. The demo started off simply enough: You're standing in front of a urinal in a men's room with the screen politely directing you to pull the right trigger to begin urinating. This opening scene sets the table rather appropriately for a brief but utterly absurd demo. A few seconds later, you walk up to some EDF forces in a locker room drawing plans to deal with the current alien invasion on a whiteboard. One soldier--the only one left standing amid a number of mangled survivors--invites you to offer your advice, and after a little first-person whiteboard scribbling by the player, that soldier remarks something to the effect of, "That's a great plan! If we had done that, that guy over there would still have his arm!’"Pause. "And at least one of his balls."

Duke, being a man of action, quickly runs through the tunnels of this football stadium--it turns out that's where the demo starts--and out onto the field. Standing on the 50-yard line is a giant one-eyed alien monster called the Cycloid. Fortunately, Duke has just picked up a rocket launcher called the Devastator. Using this handy little weapon, you run all over the rain-soaked field dodging the boss's attacks while occasionally firing rockets at his single, solitary eye. After a couple of minutes, the beast is felled, and Duke celebrates by ripping out his eye and kicking a field goal with it.

After this, the game's first level, we were quickly transported to the 15th level. This one begins in some arid canyons with Duke cruising along in his signature monster truck. The controls are simple: just pull the right trigger to accelerate and hit the B button to handbrake around a corner. This sequence seemed like a bit of a palate cleanser, as there wasn't a whole lot of challenge--just cruise along, look cool, and splatter the occasional pig alien too stupid to get out of your way. But you run out of gas before arriving at a small canyon village and have to do on-foot battle against a bunch of ugly aliens.

To help even the odds, the game scatters a few useful guns around the little town. There's the railgun, which comes in handy for remote sniping; the shrink ray, which turns your enemies into tiny things that are almost too adorable to kill; and a turret gun for dealing with a landing enemy spaceship. Unfortunately, we weren't able to progress past said spaceship before the allotted demo time was over. But we'll go ahead and assume there were aliens, guns, and one-liners to be found after a successful completion. Call it a hunch.

If there's one thing that surprised us about the demo, it's this: Duke Nukem Forever is pretty darn fun for a game with such a tumultuous development. The comic timing was impressive, the guns felt satisfying, and the graphics were quite pleasing to look at. Of course, this is a Duke Nukem game through and through, so there are some inherent elements to it that will instantly turn some people off. But pick up a controller, spend a few minutes with it, and you'll be surprised at how well it has turned out. Whether the rest of the game can follow suit is something we're eager to see. Stay tuned for more.

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A pair of cute robots star in Valve's team-focused twist on the Portal formula.

According to GLaDOS, Portal 2's dry-witted antagonist, scientific achievement is all about cooperation. That's why one of history's greatest scientific teams is the duo of "Albert Einstein and his cousin Terry." Of course, it's pretty obvious she's lying through her robot teeth on that one. But what would Portal be without a villain spouting out hilarious bits of grossly inaccurate misinformation at every turn? That's just Portal. But all this cooperation business? Well, that's certainly new.

Fortunately Valve is here at PAX 2010 to explain what co-op is all about, as this new feature was the focus of the developer's latest Portal 2 demo. To put it in context, this mode is one of the many new ways Portal 2 is expanding on its predecessor. In addition to a single-player story that Valve claims will last about twice as long as the first Portal, the co-op mode will clock in at roughly the same length--making for an overall package that's supposedly four times as large as the original Portal.

Co-op tells a parallel story to the single-player mode, with a pair of new robotic protagonists simply named Blue and Orange. They're an oddly cute pair, one squat and one oblong, looking almost like a robotic Bert and Ernie. The two players can interact with each other in a variety of ways that range from critical to solving puzzles all the way to almost entirely nonsensical. The latter includes the ability to wave at one another, or just simply start dancing in celebratory glee.

But as hard as it may be to hear, dancing alone won't solve puzzles. To solve puzzles, you'll need to master the new co-op mechanics. We were shown a few examples of ways the two players will have to interact with each other to progress through GLaDOS' increasingly devious death traps. One very basic option is a paint tool that lets one player tag a surface in order to indicate to his or her teammate that this is the place where you need to drop a portal. According to Valve, this is to alleviate the vague gesturing and eventual frustrated shouting that tends to creep up whenever two players are trying to tell each other where to go in an online game.

Beyond simply tagging walls and surfaces, you can now work together by combining your portals to send one player to areas he wouldn't normally be able to reach on his own. As one example, Valve showed us how infinite falling can work in a co-op scenario: Player B sets up two portals above each other and lets Player A fall infinitely between the two. Then, Player B carefully aims and shoots a portal onto a distant wall to launch Player A--with all that built-up momentum--across a pit of deadly goo and onto a safe ledge. There were times in the first game when you could do something like this, but infinite falling was almost always too disorienting to use strategically. But with a friend at your side, it's suddenly a mechanic that can be used quite a bit more often.

Adding more complexity are some of the new objects you can interact with in the world. One we were shown was a reflector cube designed to reflect the path of deadly lasers. These come in handy whenever the door leading to your goal is powered down, making it necessary to guide laser beams to laser receptacles to power the door back up. One player drops the cube in a certain location, while another drops portals around to carefully guide the laser beam along. The trick, of course, is making sure you don't accidentally zap your buddy with a deadly laser beam along the way.

Everything we were shown suggested a very promising follow-up to the original Portal. This new co-op mode is looking a bit more complex and heavy on mechanics, so it could very well provide a much steeper learning curve. But between GLaDOS' reliably laugh-worthy dialogue--and there was plenty of it--and the sense of accomplishment that goes along with solving those puzzles, we'll go ahead and assume that the steeper climb will be worth it. You can expect to see Portal 2 arrive on February 9.

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We get our hands on this soon-to-be-released downloadable content for Mass Effect 2.

BioWare's space opera sequel Mass Effect 2 has already offered players hours of hybrid shooter and role-playing adventure, but the developer isn't done yet. The next downloadable content for the game, Lair of the Shadow Broker, is described by BioWare as the "most premium DLC" for the game yet and will be the "richest in scope," since it not only will include five new levels (of which one is open-ended), but will also introduce content that will actually start bridging the gap between Mass Effect 2 and the next game in the series. The DLC will be released next week and will let you reconnect with an old friend, Dr. Liara T'soni, the blue-skinned asari researcher from the first game with whom you, as Commander Shepard, could have a romantic relationship. This time around, the good doctor ends up in a whole heap of trouble with the crime lord known as the Shadow Broker--the mysterious figure who has been referenced in both Mass Effect games--and it's up to you to rescue her. Please be advised that this story may contain minor spoilers.

Lair of the Shadow Broker opens with an ugly police scene.

Lair of the Shadow Broker takes place during the main Mass Effect 2 game on the planet Illium and begins with Shepard receiving a note from Liara to meet her at her home. Obviously, if you decided to have that special relationship with Liara in the first game and have imported your saved character to Mass Effect 2 to play the DLC, your interactions with Liara will be different. In any case, after reading the message, you can transport yourself immediately to her lodgings, which have been ransacked and covered by far-flung-future police tape (digital light displays with a scrolling ticker that reads "Police Line: Do Not Cross"), with Liara herself nowhere in sight. The local authorities were already prowling through the wreckage and demanded we leave the area, though a high-ranking asari agent, a Spectre (the special operatives of the Citadel Council, like Shepard) named Tela Vasir, pulled rank and cleared us to enter the apartment.

In a brief conversation with Vasir, we learned that Liara had apparently fled the scene moments ago, but we deduced that she must have left a note, or at least some clues, behind. After briefly searching her apartment, we found a picture, keyed to Shepard's identity, which changed to a landscape of an alien planet whose relics were part of the doctor's collection. We then scanned each relic until we found a hidden data disc with a recorded transmission of Liara conversing with an underground contact about the Shadow Broker's next move at the Dracon Travel Center, a huge downtown high-rise. The transmission ended with both Liara and her contact spooked by the sound of a break-in and both characters fleeing downtown.

We immediately transitioned over to the building--by way of a loading screen--with our team, while Vasir hopped into her hovercar to cover the building from the roof down. Our party entered the building to find not only that it had been blown up by explosives, but also that dozens of its employees had been gunned down by professional mercenaries whom we eventually encountered in the bombed-out office space, ducking down beneath the partial-cover flaming desks and torn-up computer terminals.

We finally made our way to the top and were just too late to save the informant from being shot, though Vasir was on the scene, claiming that she, too, had been too late and that the Shadow Broker's henchmen had already fled. Because we hadn't seen the shot ourselves, we found the agent's story to be highly suspicious, and moments later, our suspicions were confirmed when Liara herself emerged from the shadows with a gun trained on the Spectre, accusing her of murdering the contact and raiding her apartment. At this point, Vasir attempted to make a dramatic escape, finally leaping into her hovercar to escape into the Illium night.

High-speed car chases await you in this new DLC.

Our party leaped into the nearest vehicle, a hovering taxi, and gave chase as part of Mass Effect 2's new car chases, which act a bit like a futuristic arcade racer with a Z-axis. Vasir's vehicle appeared onscreen with a bright-red marker and left a bright-red contrail, so she was easy to track, although the underhanded agent also had explosive mines that she left floating behind her that threw our own vehicle off track. Since our own vehicle didn't have any weapons (it was a taxi, after all), we couldn't do much other than try to follow Vasir around every tight turn and not slam into oncoming traffic. Fortunately, the game autosaved several times over the course of the chase, so it wasn't frustrating. Finally, the chase ended when Vasir had a head-on collision and went spinning out of control. We pursued the agent and leaped out of our vehicle to pursue on foot, at which point our play session ended.

Lair of the Shadow Broker will be available this Tuesday, September 7.

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