PC

Bulletstorm Preview

One of the more unique titles coming out in the next month is Electronic Arts’ Bulletstorm, a creativity-based first person shooter by developers People Can Fly and Epic Games. Ironically, Bulletstorm isn’t all about guns. Rather than pushing forward what has become an exercise in repetition, Bulletstorm changes the goals of a FPS from the standard “shoot everything you see before you die” to a whole new paradigm: Skillshots. Itself a tongue-in-cheek title with overlarge weapons and cartoony effects, Bulletstorm rewards players by finishing off enemies as creatively as possible be it from kicking them into electric fences to juggling them off a cliff. With the focus taken off clearing stages of enemies and onto the Skillshots, Bulletstorm has the chance to innovate the genre above convention.

World Of Tanks In Open Beta

In online games, “Tank” usually means a warrior whose job is to soak up damage and hold enemy Aggro while the mages blast away.  Well there’s a new MMO where everyone’s a tank, and they don’t need no squishy mages to do the damage dealing! 

Weekend Deals Friday January 28

Yesterday I remarked that there was a bit of a trend for Digital Distributors who seem to love discounting the Red Faction franchise; today that continues with Onlive who are selling Red Faction: Guerrilla for five dollars today only.  They’ll have a different Daily Deal all weekend, tomorrow it will be Metro 2033, and Sunday it will be Darksiders.  They aren’t revealing the prices until the day of, so check back with them each day if you’re an Onlive user.

Weekend Deals Thursday January 27th

I suppose it’s Red Faction Day on the internet, because Direct2Drive and Impulse are both selling a different game in that series today.  If you want the original Red Faction, you can get it for $2.50 on Direct2Drive.com as their daily offering during THQ Week.  If you’re more into new and shiny games, you could opt to get the latest installment in the franchise, Red Faction Guerrilla at ImpulseDriven.com for five dollars.  Both of these are for today, Thursday the 27th only.  Now let’s take a look at what else is on sale this weekend.

Homefront Takes “Viral” Marketing To A New Level

The upcoming shooter Homefront by Kaos Studios and THQ takes place 16 years in the future, after America has been invaded by Korea.  With the help of screenwriter John Milius who wrote Red Dawn and Apocalypse Now, the developers have created an elaborate speculative history to explain how this comes about. Part of the marketing strategy for the game deals with faux video footage of these fictional events mixed in with real newsfootage regarding North Korea.

Breach – Review

We’ve seen a handful of downloadable multiplayer-only shooter games in the last year, such as Battfield 1943, Monday Night Combat, and the less-successful Blacklight: Tango Down.  Now there’s a new entry into this subgenre; Breach by Atomic Games.

Breach is a military game set in the present day.  It uses classes, with customizable equipment, an active cover system, unlockable perks, and highly destructible environments.  On the whole it feels like a combination of popular elements of other shooter games wrapped up in a new franchise, and well, that’s pretty much what it is.  But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing for shooter fans looking for their next conquest.

Crysis 2 Multiplayer Hands On Impressions

Crysis 2, the first direct sequel German studio Crytek has done, has been of an unknown quality up to this point. The game looks better than ever, but most people haven’t gotten to actually get their hands on the game and see how well it played. Now EA and Crytek have released a demo (Consoles only), and we can finally tell how the game works in person. The demo is multiplayer only, with two game modes and one map. Quantity isn’t important though, as what players are clamoring for is the gameplay, and what will ultimately be judged in this demo. This may not be a surprise to you, but, the demo is great. The gameplay is satisfying, the upgrades are meaningful, the map design is impressive, and the graphics are incredible.