Video Games

New Details about Batman: Arkham City

GameSpot sat down with Sefton Hill from Rocksteady Studios, the developers of the highly anticipated Batman: Arkham City. Sefton brings some light to the next game in the franchise. “Arkham City is about five times bigger than Arkham Island”, said Sefton. Rocksteady Studios has been hard at work. Everyone was shocked about how great the first game was and so the team has a lot to live up to. With such a bigger play area, Sefton insists that it won’t be a sandbox-style game adding, “Players will be able to go anywhere at any time”. Sefton also states that you can explore certain side alleys of Arkham City so you can find hidden side missions.

Tropico 4 Coming In Q2: No Polar Bears On This Island

“Tropico 4  sees you return as El Presidente, the tyrannical (or benevolent) dictator of the island paradise of Tropico. The world is changing and Tropico is moving with the times – geographical powers rise and fall and the worldmarket is dominated by new players with new demands and offers – and you, as El Presidente, face a whole new set of challenges. If you are to triumph over your naysayers you will need to gain as much support from your people as possible. Your decisions will shape the future of your nation, and more importantly, the size of your off-shore bank account.”

Cloud Saving on PS3

Data loss or corruption is not an unfamiliar concept to gamers, which is why the online saving functions introduced by companies like Blizzard and Valve Software are so appealing. Now Sony has plans to make this convenient storage method available to PS3 users—at least those who are subscribed to the PlayStation Plus service. The idea is to be able to access backup data from one of Sony’s servers in the unfortunate event that your console’s hard drive takes a dive. It has been speculated that players will still be able to save locally, but saves and other data will be copied to one or more secure “cloud” servers for easy access later on.

Midweek Sales Tuesday February 1st

After a great weekend of strong sales on great games, we’ve hit a speed bump and today’s crop of online sales is looking rather anemic. But perhaps you can find something worth your digital dollars on the list below. 

Let’s start off with Gamersgate.com. They’re throwing a week-long sale on the AI War franchise, with three games and expansions in that series selling for half off at 2-10 dollars. Gamer’s Gate also has about twenty other assorted games on sale, in addition to some pre-order deals.

Monday Night Combat – PC Review

Monday Night Combat is a third-person team-based shooter created by Uber Entertainment, previously released on Xbox Live Marketplace. Being a straight up console-to-PC port job, many believed that the transition would be harsh, but Uber has made sure those fears would be put to rest. Everything just comes together so well, making Monday Night Combat an easy game to recommend.

Gameplay is very interesting, combining a team-based attack/ defense game with a slight strategy element. Each team is given computer-controlled robots that must first be escorted into the other team’s base before they are able to tackle their objective. This adds an interesting layer of complexity to the team-based shooter mechanic, without making it too complex to the pedestrian player. The game is very well optimized and balanced to adjust to some of the skills, weapons, and abilities for the difference in control scheme. The classes are varied enough to give them each very specific roles, while still making sure to avoid redundancy. For example, there’s Sniper, the high-health close-range powerhouse Tank, in addition to the team-healing and robot-upgrading Support.

DoW II: Retribution Multiplayer Beta Starts Today

A reminder to Dawn of War II owners: you will get a chance to test out and help balance the multiplayer of Relic’s new Retribution expansion starting today (February 1st) if you preordered the game through the Steam distribution platform, or have a DOW II forum account that was created before January 25. If you have purchased or registered any of the Dawn of War II games (this includes either the base game or the standalone Chaos Rising expansion), you receive access to the beta starting February 8th. This is all in preparation to create a “Day-Zero” balance patch. 

Dead Space 2 Xbox 360 Review

Dead Space released a little over 2 years ago and was well-regarded in many ways, the biggest being its unique take on combat where instead of just shooting enemies, you have to strategically dismember their limbs until they go down. When I played Dead Space, I never did get enraptured into the experience like everyone else seemed to do. I thought it was interesting and at rare times, scary. But I also felt that the pacing slightly dragged and the story was slowly becoming a bit too predictable for my taste.

I did pick Dead Space back up last December and finally played through it all. My opinions never changed, the combat remained great throughout but the story was nothing special, and a good story is what I itch for in horror games. Dead Space 2 has finally arrived and can it deliver the horror experience the first one promised?