To add to the ton of Resident Evil news that has been rolling out over the past few weeks, Capcom has finally confirmed their new Resident Evil game, entitled Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City coming out for the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360. Capcom did not specify if the new game would be an XBLA/PSN title or a full retail release.
We’ve
reached an interesting point in this generation as far as graphics are
concerned. Consoles are starting to show their limitations (especially the 360) and with PC’s
getting their fancy new range of high end video cards, games on the PC are
looking a lot better. There’s a lot more to good graphics than a high polygon
count, though, and it’s not always stuff that can be represented in a screenshot. Graphics are
never going to be “perfect”; there is always going to be that one rough edge or
texture that isn’t quite mapped right. The debate of whether graphics matter or
not will most likely never end, but where are they going to end up by the end
of the next generation of hardware?
The Heroes of Might and Magic
is a series very close to my heart. I have lost many hours to the rich
turned-based gameplay that the previous entries have offered and the
sixth entry to the series looks to be offering the classic Heroes gameplay with an overhauled single-player component. The
first four entries of the series were developed by New World Computing
and the last game was done by Nival Interactive. This entry of the
series is being handled by Black Hole Entertainment, who has previously
delved into the world of fantasy strategy gaming with Warhammer: Mark of Chaos.
The hype was high for Homefront, a title that revolves
around an alternate reality future in which North Korea invades the mainland of
the United States. This invasion scenario was written by John Milius (who also
wrote Red Dawn) and was developed by Kaos Studios, formerly of Frontlines: Fuel of
War. It is clear from the start that the single-player of Homefront was not the
primary focus of development, as it sags in many areas and comes off as a weak
Call of Duty clone than anything else. The one uptick is the decent multiplayer
that combines common deathmatch and capture objective modes with the ability to
buy equipment based on performance mid-battle, allowing for more diverse
strategies. However, the presentation of the bleak occupied lands is pretty
much the primary driver that makes this title stand out; everything else is
fairly unimpressive.
Describing
Swarm by its core mechanics would leave most people rather puzzled. The
game takes very clear inspirations from the Lemmings titles, in that you
control a group of creatures that act as a single unit and you have to make use
of their abilities to make it to the end of the levels. The similarities end
there, however. The Swarm controls are far more dynamic and you are not limited
to the number you start with. There’s virtually no narrative to speak of in
Swarm; this is a game that is all about the gameplay, which offers up more
depth than you might initially think.
I had high hopes for Crysis 2, a game that had a lot to live
up to, considering its predecessors essentially set the bar for freedom and
graphics in first-person shooters. What’s more, the original Crysis was a
PC-exclusive, allowing all sorts of graphical extremes to be attempted. Crysis
2, however, is a console-centric title, with a port to PC; the possibilities
are more limited by static hardware requirements. Fortunately, this hasn’t
stymied the developer Crytek, as Crysis 2 is a fantastic looking game, and
brings forward essentially every innovation from the original, albeit with some
limitations in map size and an annoying inventory system. The sheer length of
the quality campaign, matched with a decent deathmatch-style multiplayer may
prove Crysis 2 to become a console classic on par with other greats of the
genre.
I was there from the beginning with the Red Faction series when it premiered on the Playstation 2. That first game was released a decade ago, and had the then-revolutionary feature of “Geo-mod” technology, which is fancy talk for being able to distort the environment when you used explosives. In the first game, this was used far too sparingly, with only a few areas where players had the means, and motivation to blast their way through large sections of the terrain. However, when the second Red Faction came out, it had significantly more opportunities to blow holes through things that got in your way. Not so long ago, the series took this to the extreme with Red Faction Guerrilla where pretty much anything standing could be knocked down. Now, the franchise is back with the ultimate incarnation of this gameplay premise: Red Faction Armageddon, a game where blowing up everything you see is just the start of the fun.
