Este DiRT 3 es una apuesta por ofrecer espectáculo y simulación a partes iguales. En él, Codemasters ha conseguido equilibrar la balanza para hacernos disfrutar como nunca de los rallies y las competiciones Off Road. Ya sabes, esas donde el asfalto brilla por su ausencia.
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MW3 excitement ahead of E3
Forget the teaser trailers, this is the real deal.
The first full length reveal trailer for what could well be the game of 2011 - Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
Ahead of E3 Activision has decided to get the COD fans' collective pulse rate racing by releasing this, quite frankly brilliant, sequence featuring action from the four countries the game takes place in - the US, England, France and Germany. (There's also some Dubai action as well, we hear).
We particularly love the scuba sequence inside a Subway tube.
The game is to be a direct sequel to MW2, kicking off from the ending with the States struggling to fight off a surprise Russian attack, and Manhattan under attack.
We can't wait - we're hoping to get some hands on (or at least eyes-on) time over in LA at E3, so be sure to check back from 6 June.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is due out 8 November.
Tags:
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Call of Duty Infinity Ward Gaming
Video - Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 first full trailer originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 24 May 2011 13:55:00 +0100
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Codemasters' best off-road racer?
In the two previous iterations of DiRT, there has always been a tension between the past values of the series and the direction Codemasters wanted to take it for the future. The first two DiRT games bore the name and legacy of the Colin McRae Rally series - a series which has defined off-road racing games since 1998 - but at the same time they rushed to embrace more diverse styles of racing and a more fevered, transatlantic presentation. Perhaps Codemasters felt that all the X-Games stuff, the “gnarly” events and Travis Pastrana/Ken Block voiceovers would help sell the game outside of Europe, but while DiRT1 and DiRT2 were fun, the series felt like it was losing its soul. Too many circuit races, stadium shows and fireworks, said the fans, and not enough racing through the wilds at breakneck speeds.
Well, DiRT 3 hasn’t dumped the circuit races, the stadium shows or the fireworks. Ken Block makes a reappearance, and there’s still a lot of “awesome” and “you really represented out there” on the soundtrack. All the same, DiRT3 hits a better balance between the old-school CMR and the new-school extreme racing of DiRT 2. ?It’s the best off-road racer Codemasters has made in the last 6 years.?
Of course, it looks and feels incredible. By now, we take it for granted that the EGO engine behind DiRT2, Race Driver: GRID and F1 2011 can pull off astonishingly detailed cars and landscapes and push the one through the other at a ludicrous pace. DiRT3 isn’t quite photorealistic, but at a quick glance it’s not that far off. In fact, with its beautiful, natural lighting and state-of-the-art weather effects, DiRT3 almost looks too pretty to be real. When you’re blasting at over 100mph through scenery that would have looked great in Alan Wake, it’s hard not to be impressed.?
The handling, too, is just about perfect.? To work, an off-road racer needs to transmit the feel of tyres scrambling for grip on mud, snow and shale, and some sense of the way that the weight and momentum of the car continually works against you to spin your vehicle out. Go too far, however, and you make a game that your average console owner just wouldn’t be bothered to play. Playing DiRT3 on the medium difficulty setting, it’s got the balance right, and you can always switch to a different setting or turn the assists on and off if you want a greater or lesser challenge. It’s a game where you have to work hard and think ahead to get a decent time, continually adjusting your course and speed to keep the car on track. The faster you go and the tricker the tracks get, the more difficult this becomes, and the result is a game that’s challenging and exciting in all the ways an off-road racer should be.
Of course, you will go wrong from time to time, but here the Flashback feature Codemasters introduced in Race Driver: GRiD and DiRT2 comes into play. At any point you can pause the action, rewind time to the point where things started going bad, then restart it and correct your mistake. You can only use Flashback a limited number of times, and there are incentives for not using it, but it is - as it was in GRiD - a great way to minimise the frustration that can kick in with a challenging racer. What’s more, your favourite clips can now be posted directly from the game onto YouTube; the ideal way to celebrate a spectacular crash or showcase some gobsmacking feat of driving skill.
What really makes DiRT3 work so well, however, is that it actually gives rally fans what they want without removing the “extreme racing” stuff altogether. While there are fairly straight circuit races in DiRT, in the form of Rally Cross and truck-driving Landrush events, the focus for most of the single-player game is on classic “one man against the clock” racing, with straight rally stages backed up by terrifying Trailblazer events in which heavily customised, rally-ready supercars hurtle along forest tracks at white-knuckle speeds. Off-road racing doesn’t get more exciting than this.?
True, we shuddered a little when drift events put in an appearance, but where Shift 2: Unleashed made these tedious, game-spoiling chores, in DiRT3 they’re just an excuse to rush mostly sideways down a hill-climb track, gathering points for your gravel-scattering slides. In short, “drift” and “fun” can actually belong in the same sentence.?
Meanwhile, the Gymkhana events will appease the new-school DiRT fans without sending the old-school rally nuts into apoplexy. The setup is simple: you and your car in an arena, with ramps for airtime, blocks to shatter and obstacles to drift and donut around. All you need to do is pull off as many point-scoring moves as possible in the time allowed. It’s all a bit Tony Hawks, but it’s a fun way to show off your technique, and the events aren’t so common or so integral to the game that you feel they’re a serious intrusion into the rally action.?
And that really is where the heart of DiRT3 lies. Whether it’s the all-new and extremely effective rain and snow weather systems, some brilliant night racers or a superb line-up of new and classic cars which stretches from 1960s Minis through 80s Quattros to modern greats like the Citroen C4 WRC, Subaru Impreza WRX STI and Ford Fiesta RS WRC, DiRT 3 seems to have rediscovered its love of rallying. While there will always be fans screaming for a more straightforward simulation of the real World Rally Championship, this is still the strongest rally game this console generation. It also helps that the interface has dropped flashiness for speed this time around. While lengthy loading times still slow things down, at least you know that they’re there for the right reasons, not just to add another layer of gloss.
Dirt3 isn’t quite perfect, however. If there’s one complaint it’s that it doesn’t quite offer enough scenic variety. Don’t get us wrong: the landscapes in Finland, Norway. Michigan, Aspen, Africa and Monaco are gorgeous - so gorgeous that it’s tempting to stop the car, get out and take a wander. Yet, when the prevalent Nordic forests, autumnal woodlands and crisp snow are only broken by the odd trip around the streets of Monaco or the dust, grass and mud of the savannah, you can’t help wishing for a spot of action in the sunnier climes of Greece, Spain and Italy, not to mention Mexico, Argentina. And while the game’s shorter stages make for a more accessible racer, it might have been nice to have the odd challenging stage that pushed your concentration for a slightly longer period. Sometimes you’re just hitting that perfect zone of focus when the stage comes to an abrupt end.
Verdict:
DiRT 3 has achieved the impossible: bringing together the rally focus of the classic Colin McRae era with the X-games thrills of the newer DiRT brand. No rival off-road racer looks or drives better, and the only real flaw is a lack of track variety. In a year of excellent driving games, this stands up proudly amongst the very best.
Tags:
Gaming Xbox 360 PS3 Codemasters Racing games Driving games Dirt 3
DiRT 3 originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 24 May 2011 14:00:00 +0100
"The Grand Theft Auto games derive a huge chunk of their fun from consequence-free criminality, whether it’s random missile attacks or mowing down innocent hotdog vendors just for kicks. L.A. Noire shifts to the other side of the law completely, so can a Rockstar game still be enjoyable if you can’t do the the fun stuff?
The central character in LA Noire is war hero turned good cop, Cole Phelps. Cole take assignments in straight order, starting from traffic and working his way up to homicide, arson and vice, while some variety is thrown in with street crime – basically sub missions where you answer calls for help. Throughout, expect a cocktail of car chases, shootouts, fist fights and the occasionally spectacular set piece, which are all good fun if less riotous than anything in GTA or Red Dead Redemption.
However, this reigned in approach makes wayfor a focus on investigation; the heart of L.A. Noire is cerebral and slow burning detection. The initial investigation involves searching at crime scenes for clues, detected by the rumbling of the joypad and musical prompts. This evidence can then be used in the interrogation of suspects. Intuition points earned for successful missions can be used to help you either in the interrogation, or by highlighting clue locations.
The ace in the hole for the interrogations is the amazing motion capture of actor’s faces, that allows for hugely detailed expressions. It’s a huge leap and you can really see the nuances of the performances, which really draws you into the world. Checking for lies requires concentration, and whilst some are more obvious than others, you’ll want to save some intuition points to help out.
The game is serious in tone, drawing on many real life crimes like the Black Dahlia case, and paints a grim view of humanity (and Hollywood). Crimes scenes are gory but there is still some sly humour on display, like the posters for the innocently titled ‘Gay Cowboys’. Interrogations can provide reals moment of darkness; it’s genuinely unnerving to push the button to ask tough questions of traumatised fifteen year old girls.
Being a lawman makes the game more focused and linear than GTA – but as a result, there’s a lot more depth. Like GTA the game is set in a huge sandbox city – in this case a stunningly detailed rendition of late-40s Los Angeles – which when combined wit a superb score makes a superb and original setting for the game.
L.A. Noire being episodic feels like an interactive version of a HBO series, and it’s almost better to take a break after case completion as the street crimes are not quite enough to alleviate a feeling of repetitive familiarity. Cases can be replayed to get better scores, but it may be up to downloadable installments to get more entertainment from the game.
Still, L.A. Noire is a quality, memorable experience oozing class, and almost makes you wish the fedora would make a comeback.
Ezio's quest will see him leaving Italy behind entirely, with Revelations taking him back to Masyaf and also to Rhodes, in addition to the already confirmed settings of Constantinople and Cappadocia (both in modern-day Turkey)...
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I like Final Fantasy enough to have spent hundreds on games, collectibles, music and more, but there's another level of game series love that goes way beyond mine. The collector that put together this collection has to be at the top level of Final Fantasy fandom. It's too bad that eBayer undkodlor is selling it all.
There's every game, every soundtrack, limited Final Fantasy logo'd consoles and portable systems (and mobile phone!), figures, and more. Hell, there's even the Final Fantasy MSX game. If you win the bid, it's free shipping, worldwide. Amazing.
Check out the pictures on the auction page. I feel bad for this collector looking at them. It must have taken a lot of time and money to put this collection together.
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[Community member and fellow Flixist writer Xander Markham offers his view of the future of Nintendo's new console. Do you think Nintendo will bring over converts from other platforms? Let us know in the comments! Want to see your own writing on the front page? Write something awesome and put it in the C Blogs. -- Kauza]
The prospect of a new console launch is always fun, especially when Nintendo's 'Project Café' has to follow an experiment both so successful and divisive as the Wii. I've been running a feature on my new blog remembering the best overlooked Wii games, and will be doing more articles on what we might be able to expect from Café closer to its E3 reveal. I'm also wallowing in my cracking run of form for predictions: in February 2010, in only my fourth Cblog post, I hit the nail on the head in anticipating that Nintendo's next console would make its first appearance at E3 2011. More recently, for Flixist, when the news broke that Quentin Tarantino was making a Western with Franco Nero, I nailed my flag to the mast for a new Django. Lo and behold, Django Unchained. Seriously, they pay Pachter for this?
So here I go again, no doubt destined for humiliation now that I've let a few lucky strikes go to my head. But who can resist speculating when there's a new console on the horizon, especially one following an event so unique in gaming history as the Wii? There are many reasons why this is a fascinating time to be a gamer. So let's lay the cards on the table. This new console, which I'll refer to as 'Café' since that seems to be its official codename, has the unenviable task of following up the Wii's 86 million units sold. Also unenviable is the fact that it will reportedly mark Nintendo's bid to recapture the so-called 'hardcore' gamer who lost confidence in the Wii after a slew of underwhelming titles at launch and the slews of third-party shovelware that followed.
Nintendo President Satoru Iwata has stated that the new console is being released because the Wii has lost the ability to surprise people. Café will launch sometime in 2012, giving it an expected two year head-start on the next PlayStation and Xbox, both of which are supposedly for release in 2014.
Here's the good news for Nintendo: as Chad Concelmo's article shows, the fact that the new console will be in HD seems enough to generate excitement in gamers before they've so much as seen a single screenshot or the controller, which we can expect to undergo some revision from Nintendo's underappreciated Wiimote model. The most recent spate of 360/PS3 game have shown how much the gaming experience has expanded on the other side of the power gulf between the HD consoles and the Wii. The idea of an HD Metroid, or a Zelda on an Elder Scrolls scale, is enough to get most unaffiliated long-time players (aka the non-fanboys) frothing at the mouth, even though an HD Zelda is likely to be a very long way away considering Skyward Sword is coming to the Wii later this year. That game is important for many reasons, but that's a subject for another article.
The bad news is that the Wii has to have a successor at all. Not due to it having to follow such an enormous success story, but because it places Nintendo in a difficult middle ground. Rumours say they want to recapture the 'hardcore' gamer – something they've been trying for since the GameCube launch – yet the type of gamer this refers to is not an audience that has ever been kind to them. Let's not forget that the GameCube, original XBox and PS2 had effective graphical parity at the start of their lifespans and received most of the same multiplatform ports. Why then did the Nintendo versions, barring a handful of exceptions, sell noticeably worse than their rivals' counterparts? The point could be made that the childish appearance of the purple GameCube put off teenagers from buying it, but it was also sold in a sleeker black from launch which, while hardly a stunner, wasn't as outright ugly as the purple version.
The fact is that Nintendo, to be blunt, aren't cool. Microsoft earned their success by focusing all their attention on a handful of the most popular genres and giving them to its audience by the bucketload. The XBox became synonymous with console FPS gaming courtesy of Halo, which is why the top tier of the genre continues to outsell the same games on the PS3. Sony's library is more diverse and eccentric, but presentation is at the heart of their business plan. They brought in the gamers who now call themselves 'hardcore' during the PS and PS2 eras, and their design teams rarely turn out anything not in slick black or packing power under the bonnet (the PS2 was way ahead of its nearest competition at launch and not significantly behind once the GCN and XBox appeared a year later).
Sony have a brand intimately tied up in the new notions of 'hardcore' gaming and cool presentation. Nintendo are the opposite. They are a company associated with history, family friendliness and accessible, affordable technology. The only one of those qualities which the new 'hardcore' gamer values is 'affordable', yet even this comes with two caveats. The first is that Nintendo, whose business strategy depends on them making a profit on each unit sold, can't go overboard on impressive technology, a key factor in the Wii losing the interest of this market. The second is that if the image of the product is negative, no gamer striving to stay in the same social strata as their friends will touch one, no matter the price. If anything, a low price then becomes associated with cheapness in quality, rather than affordability.
Even if Nintendo convince third-parties to support the Café in the way they're hoping – and they're certainly talking the talk in the pre-E3 build-up - all this would amount to is them making up distance on the competition, not overtaking. The Café could be as powerful as the sun, but with costs of development equally astronomical, the games it receives from third-parties will be the same multi-platform releases as the other consoles, with little noticeable improvement. The Wii survived on its exclusives, even from third parties, but they will be significantly harder to come by. When the next consoles from Sony and Microsoft launch, there's every chance they will be packing powerful enough hardware that will leave Nintendo in the same weakened position they've been in with the Wii. Fortunately for Nintendo, those same development costs should stay their competitors' hand for a while: but the moment they feel threatened, it will spell trouble for Café.
Let's also not forget that the gamers Nintendo are going after will have little reason to buy a multiplatform game on the Café, because their trophy/achievement accounts are already established on rival consoles. Why start again when you can improve your existing records? Even if Café becomes the new first choice gamers' console and Nintendo includes their own version of achievements, everyone will be starting from scratch and bragging rights will take some time to come by. The 3DS' slow launch should be a warning sign to Nintendo that there's far more work to be done here than securing the third-party support which the competition already has. Though the handheld has since slipped into one of Ninendo's trademark game droughts, there were plenty of appealing, big name third-party games at launch (Ridge Racer, Street Fighter, Ghost Recon, PES etc), yet sales have dipped rapidly.
There are no more encouraging signs that Nintendo will be able to rely on the support of the new gamers they've brought into the fold either. Several studies have found that the Wii is the forgotten console in many households and its 'casual' users barely aware that its library extends beyond Wii Sports and Wii Fit. What are the chances that these people, who already paid out for a product that has fallen into disuse, would be willing to pay top dollar again for the kind of gaming rig which some speculators are predicting the Café will be? (At the very least, this thing won't launch at GameCube prices). It's not impossible that these people can be brought around and over the previous five years, Nintendo's track record in launching innovative, widely appealing products was excellent. This will require concessions though, to accommodate that audience's need for straightforward controls and technology, which will be offputting to the self-declared 'hardcore'.
So what does all this mean? In short, Nintendo's best chance is to do what they did last time with the Wii, pulling a product out of the hat which promises to change the way we play games, while also making it functional (I love the Wii, but no-one could argue that its technology worked as well as it should have) and compatible with the experiences 'hardcore' gamers are already getting, as not to alienate them. No easy task, being all things to all people.
The final step, then: pray for a miracle.
It would be awesome to have some of the Dtoid community visit me on my blog, and rest assured that the 'no copy and paste' rule will be fully respected! You can also follow me on Facebook for regular updates and the chance to leave that uniquely Cblog brand of sarcastic comment!
