Continue reading 'We bought Duke Nukem.' Franchise rights transferred from 3D Realms to Gearbox

'We bought Duke Nukem.' Franchise rights transferred from 3D Realms to Gearbox originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 05 Sep 2010 19:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Free Borderlands update will raise level cap, rebalance main game originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 05 Sep 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Crackdown 2 'Toy Box' DLC crashing issues resolved by reissue originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 05 Sep 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Gallery: Swarm

Continue reading Swarm preview: strength in numbers

Swarm preview: strength in numbers originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 05 Sep 2010 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Here's the BioShock Infinite Game Informer cover(s)

Here's the BioShock Infinite Game Informer cover(s) originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 04 Sep 2010 22:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Halo: Reach's Spartans who didn't make the cut originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 04 Sep 2010 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Video: Watch Splosion Man's 'Donuts, Go Nuts!' song performed live at PAX

Video: Watch Splosion Man's 'Donuts, Go Nuts!' song performed live at PAX originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 04 Sep 2010 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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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Gallery: Portal 2 (PAX 2010 co-op)

Continue reading Portal 2's PAX co-op gameplay footage introduces robot hugs

Portal 2's PAX co-op gameplay footage introduces robot hugs originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 04 Sep 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Halo: Combat Evolved and the battle for boats originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 04 Sep 2010 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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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Gallery: Outland (first screens)

Continue reading Outland preview: When shmups grow legs

Outland preview: When shmups grow legs originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 04 Sep 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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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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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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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Continue reading 80 percent of Power Gig setlist is new to music games

80 percent of Power Gig setlist is new to music games originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 04 Sep 2010 03:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Gallery: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2

Continue reading Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 preview: Force Majeure

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 preview: Force Majeure originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 23:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Gallery: Retro City Rampage (WiiWare)

Retro City Rampage shooting for December on WiiWare, 'in talks' for XBLA and PSN originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 22:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.