3DS | Heroes of Ruin: Diablo For Your 3DS?

Consider Heroes of Ruin for a spot of dungeon crawling on the go.

With Diablo III up and (just about) running, what better time to talk about Heroes of Ruin? This is a game that squeezes the essentials of a Diablo-like experience onto Nintendo's 3D handheld: a fantasy-flavoured, class-based, multiplayer dungeon crawler with randomly generated levels. You play as one of a party of up to four adventurers, drawn together by a local or internet connection and a quest to save the realm's sphinx king, Ataraxis, who has been laid up with a nasty curse.

The four character classes are cast mostly from the archetypal fantasy moulds. There's the spellcasting Alchitecht, brawling Savage, dual-wielding Gunslinger, and the Vindicator--a knight-like, swordfighting lion-man.

And here he is.

Early on, your band is despatched from the hub city of Nexus to a network of catacombs in an underground lagoon which, like Heroes of Ruins' other labyrinthine dungeons, is procedurally fashioned to be different in each playthrough.

Here, rays of light leak through the rock overhead, looking natty in 3D, and in general the styling resembles the pleasing fantasy chunkiness of World of Warcraft, between the floating exclamation points over quest givers' heads and the catacombs' froggy murloc enemies.

And here they are.

Bipedal shark monsters and light puzzling also feature down in the catacombs; for the latter, you must arrange the arms of ancient statues to unlock the way to an enemy boss.

The peppy combat is based on a primary attack (a basic sword swipe, as a Vindicator) and three of the other manoeuvres you choose to learn as you level, each mapped to a face button. As you might expect of a portable Diablo-alike, there's an emphasis on loot, with a nicely streamlined system that lets you immediately sell on goodies you can't use, to save them from cluttering your inventory.

Publisher Square Enix makes some interesting noises about Heroes of Ruins' eventual daily challenges, issued over the internet and with which players can earn rewards. Though we haven't seen those for ourselves, they could add another layer of longevity to the game, as could the promised in-game shop, in which you can trade rare items with others.

The co-operative play system is easygoing, letting players drop in and out of friends' games regardless of their own progress. Single-player is an option but, much like in Diablo, is missing the point. There's more fun to be had in multiplayer, so here's hoping for efficient matchmaking and a healthy population of potential party members after launch in June.

In the meantime, if you're in London from 25-27 May, you'll be able to play the game for yourself at the MCM Expo, where GameSpot UK is the official gaming partner.

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PlayStation Vita | The Five Fundamentals of FIFA 13

Is FIFA 13 the "revolution" EA is making it out to be, or are we just in for a new set of tweaks?

It is 11:05 AM. I am out of breath and covered in crumbs. Not just any crumbs, mind, but the crumbs of a Danish hastily eaten on a mad sprint to a meeting (there is nothing crumblier than a press-junket pastry). If sacrifices were to be made, though, eating a dignified breakfast was to be rightly one of them. For this was the grand unveiling of FIFA 13 and I was surrounded by the cream of the sports gaming press: a cadre of journalists from across Europe, all wide-eyed and eager to hear about the latest updates to the FIFA franchise. None of them were late or covered in crumbs.

There was no time to wallow in crumb-related self-consciousness, though. Important people were waxing lyrical on the future of the FIFA franchise. "Revolution, not evolution", said lead producer David Rutter. "Captures the unpredictability of real world football", said line producer Nick Channon." The world's most connected brand in sport", said Andrew Wilson, the head of EA Sports. This was a finely tuned marketing machine at full power.

The substance beneath the marketing spiel is five fundamental new features designed to enhance the way FIFA plays: an improved Player Impact Engine, AI improvements, a better dribbling system, tactical free kicks, and a brand new first touch system. Here's the lowdown on each.

Player Impact Engine

The Player Impact Engine is getting a range of tweaks. One of the biggest upgrades removes the comical pile-ups that occurred when players fell into each other, resulting in moments like the infamous Fabianski kiss. An algorithm will detect when a pile-up is happening and trigger a range of new animations that let players roll out of the collision without looking like they're trying to make out with each other.

Player statistics such as strength and balance will also affect the Player Impact Engine, particularly in push/pull situations. Stronger players will have an advantage in trying to win back the ball against weaker players, complete with new animations. The whole push/pull mechanic has been tweaked to be much stronger this time around, too, but there's a greater risk of conceding a free kick, should you use it too much.

Player statistics also play a greater role in off-the-ball situations. Defenders can use their size and strength to force opposing players into poor touches or bad decisions before they receive the ball. This potentially lets you interrupt the flow of the game, or better defend set pieces without actually having to steal the ball from the opposing team. It results in a "better balance" between attacking and defending, according to team EA.

Artificial Intelligence

A new positioning code makes up the bulk of the AI improvements, which should prevent many of the weird zigzag runs that happened in FIFA 12. AI players will analyse the whole length of a run by thinking two plays ahead, rather than just one. That means they will look at who will receive the ball next, and who is most likely to receive the ball after that, hopefully making better use of space and opening up more opportunities for creative goal scoring.

The referee gets an IQ upgrade too, or rather a sort of downgrade to make him more human. That means there will potentially be less super-human and ultimately unrealistic decisions. Referee position, line of sight, and a dose of human-fallibility should mean that sometimes mistakes will be made and decisions will sometimes be questionable.

Complete Dribbling

In addition to the 360-degree dribbling already in place, FIFA 13 will respond better to how far you push the analogue stick in a certain direction. You'll be able to slow down the pace during a run, allowing you to navigate better between opposing defenders. It's more natural as well, with players no longer having to face the direction in which you want them to dribble. That means you'll be able to dribble in any direction, but always face the goal, much like players do in real life.

As well as looking more natural, It'll also make it easier to shield the ball from defenders and get around them with skill moves. Tied into that is the introduction of the ball control mechanic from FIFA Street, that lets you stop the ball and move it around on the spot with your player's foot using an analogue stick. It was a great feature in FIFA Street, and it is a pleasant surprise to see the core FIFA team taking some its improvements on board.

Tactical Free Kicks

Free kicks have traditionally been rather static affairs in the FIFA series, but 13 aims to change all that with a new Tactical Free Kick system. You'll be able to position up to three players around the ball, two of which can perform a dummy to throw off the opposition. To balance that new ability out, defenders have the option of deciding how many players to put in a wall, whether to risk the wrath of the ref and tiptoe it forward, and when to jump. This results in a neat cat-and-mouse game between the two teams, with defenders trying to ensure they don't jump on a dummy and attackers making trying to decipher when the jump is made.

First Touch System

The final improvement EA unveiled for FIFA 13 was a brand new first touch system. It attempts to rectify the somewhat unrealistic first touches of FIFA players, who have the uncanny ability to control the ball to a dead stop, regardless of the type of ball coming into them. The new system takes into account external factors like how fast the ball is travelling, the height, and the angle, as well as player attributes, affecting how accurately the player is able to control the ball. This should result in more pop-ups, miss-hits, and the ball simply running away from players.

Evolution Not Revolution?

After two hours the presentation was over and the coffee had run out. And while my knowledge of FIFA was all the richer, I couldn't help thinking that perhaps FIFA 13 won't be quite the "revolution" that David Rutter was making it out to be. Sure, the "new" features are great, but many of them are merely enhancements of old ones. There is no huge overhaul that compares, for instance, to the Tactical Defending System in FIFA 12. Nor is there a great leap in the visuals to lust over--at least at this stage. Revolution? Perhaps not. But an already great game made better? That's still something to get excited about.

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PlayStation 3 | Exploring Nothingness in The Unfinished Swan

Sony trades sandy for sterile in its latest downloadable game, The Unfinished Swan.

Highlight the page below to explore our first look at Sony's latest downloadable art game.

Close your eyes and look around. Go on, we'll wait. Now open them. Dark, wasn't it? No matter which direction you looked, everything was uniformly blank. Game developers often use plain environments when designing level layouts and spaces. But what would happen if instead of adding detail, you stood in a world lacking texture or depth? A single, flat colour appears to stretch endlessly in every direction, but could be no more than a few feet in front of your face. There's no way to discern distance, so perhaps you're teetering on the edge of a huge fall, or standing at the base of a looming tower. Welcome to the world of The Unfinished Swan, Sony's latest foray into arthouse games, and a former, student project the publisher hopes to turn into its next big downloadable hit.

But what is this place, and how did we end up here? Forgive us if we go a little light on the details, but because The Unfinished Swan, like Journey before it, is a game designed around player exploration, we don't want to spoil any of the surprises. You play as Monroe, a child left alone after his mother passes away. Her lifelong passion was art, and, while she loved to paint, she didn't ever finish any of her works, amassing some 300 paintings left in various states of completion. Monroe is given the choice of taking just one of the works with him when he's sent to an orphanage, and he chooses the namesake Unfinished Swan.

We were dropped into a sterile white space. Creative director Ian Dallas explained that many of the studio's play testers stood around, waiting for something to happen or wondering if this was still a loading screen. There were no crosshairs to aim, no visible character attributes to gauge our proportions, and no clear objective. A chime sounded, and, like Pavlov's dog, we sprung into action, invited to interact with the place around us. The game is playable either with the standard first-person shooter dual analog sticks or using the PlayStation Move wand. Trigger presses fling out globs of viscous black paint--and it was only once our guide began to liberally dose it out that we saw the space take form around us.

Our first thought was of Michelangelo's David, a complete "something" lurking within an abstract "nothing," waiting to be revealed one splash at a time. But, while painting is a means to an end, it's not the primary aim. Paint acts as the conduit to drive exploration, rather than pushing you to cover every inch of it in an opposing shade. It's the stark tonal difference between the black and white that provides definition; were you to simply cover everything with as much paint as possible, you'd end up where you began, just in a different colour.

Walls rose up as we splattered and sprayed the paint; the revealed width and height of the place drew our path, propelling us forward along the corridor. We discovered a bench, tall, swaying trees, a frog, and a pond. Not everything in this mysterious world was friendly, however, and we watched as the frog hopped into the water--only to be consumed by a breaching sea monster. It's an odd sensation, paralysed by not knowing if the step ahead leads to a gruesome end or the next obstacle to be faced. But something compels you to push on.

This is a bleak and sanitary world, so the orange footprints of the swan we chased or a simple yellow shape hovering in the air would let us know we were on the right track. It's as close as we got to a compass or checkpoint, and, by painting, we discovered huge sculptures, created by the creator of the world we were investigating.

This is the king's place, a dreamscape manifestation of his own frame of mind, and one that we were told will adapt to reflect his own evolution as a character over the course of the game. Some of his favourite things were there: a unicorn, a hippo, and a giant piece of bacon--which was a tad macabre when it was so closely placed near a bust of a happy-looking pig. Perhaps it was an ominous warning of what was to come?

Pathways twisted and turned; vast, palatial walls and staircases rose out of the nothing in front of our eyes; and long, sweeping walking tracks gave way to narrow scaffolding catwalks. We stopped periodically to admire our own handiwork from a position of elevation, as a trail of painted mess stretched out behind and below us. This isn't your typical downloadable title, but it does share some common game features with its contemporaries. There are items to collect, such as hidden balloons and narrated storybook pages that fill you in on what's happening around you. Some were left in plain sight (as plain as white objects in a white world can be), while others were hidden behind false walls, which could be knocked over with precision-placed paint.

Levels are quite short, and our demo ended as we tracked down our living, moving swan. As we stepped towards it, we dropped into a pit, with the scene fading to black--but this was only the start of the adventure. With so much of this game hinging upon discovery, the development team is wary of leading players, sharing too much, or setting up any expectations. Ian Dallas explained that it will be the same sort of length as Journey and that the team is committed to keeping the experience impactful through its brevity. The sorts of experiences gamers want and what they're willing to pay are moving targets, but we're interested in The Unfinished Swan's concept and eager to see how this exploratory escapade plays out. Look for it later this year, exclusively on the PlayStation 3.

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PC | A Desolate Future or The Desolate Hope?

This game has multiple genres, an '80s sci-fi flick art style, and a coffee pot, and best of all, it's free!

In a time when humans were looking to expand to other worlds, robots equipped with the most advanced artificial intelligence that technology could provide were sent out across the universe to discover habitable planets for humans to call their own. But with so many robots sent into space, it was easy for humans to forget some of them if others had already discovered habitable life. The robots, on the other hand, accomplished setting up their world for human habitation and waited tirelessly for their masters. The Desolate Hope is a side-scrolling top-down platformer with role-playing and turn-based elements that focuses on a group of robots that continue to carry out their objectives as if their human masters are still on their way. You play as a computer program tasked with inhabiting the body of a coffee pot that is equipped with advanced technology in order to combat a virus that is plaguing your digital world and its robot inhabitants.

A beautiful simulation.

The coffee pot resides in a base station equipped with the latest human habitat technology. This technology allows for massive worlds to be created within a digital realm and the ability to experience these worlds through simulation. The station contains rooms that are each equipped with a different simulation that is affected by the virus, and a visually detailed robot gatekeeper grants you passage into each simulation. You must enter each simulation and eradicate the virus. Don't fear: you will not be pouring coffee on this threat, but instead killing it with an electrified orb weapon and the ability to jump, both of which can be upgraded throughout your journey. There is a night-and-day cycle, which affects how much time you have in each simulation to finish your task, adding urgency to the overall game and a nice break for you to explore the station and the beautiful art design, which is reminiscent of an '80s sci-fi flick.

Frozen in time.

There are plenty of hours of gameplay, a nonlinear path allowing for exploration, and detailed art design all packaged within a free game. Now you can't beat that, so check out the game here and experience The Desolate Hope for yourself.

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PlayStation 3 | Ready, set, go-kart! Get ready to race with Sackboy

Drop the fluffy clutch and do some sack circle work as Little Big Planet goes racing.

Racing games are a bit like the ice cream of the games industry. They come in a vast array of flavours, and, for the most part, people find and stick to what they like. There's arcade chocolate, simulation strawberry, and the enjoyable, albeit slightly plain, vanilla in-betweens. There's rocky road, the games that focus on destructible environments and adrenalin-pumping action, and the fun, fruity flavours, like banana, for the kids. But even if you love ice cream, no one wants to eat the same single flavour forever.

Little Big Planet Karting's goal is to provide spoonfuls of all the flavours, and let you decide on what you want and when. By providing variety, the development team at United Front Games hopes to avoid many of the pitfalls that racing games suffer from. Instead of offering a set range of car types and drivers, LBPK gives players a seemingly unlimited identikit and garage, where they can create unique and individual vehicles. ModNation Racers offered digital lead-foots the chance to fiddle with the appearance of their character, as well as to create whole new circuits to share with the PlayStation community. The studio has moved on, to take what it believes are the strongest aspects of MNR and fuse them with Little Big Planet DNA. The result is something halfway between the two franchises that still looks like LBP.

The Little Big Planet pod remains the centre of the experience; it's used to change up the look of your sack people, pimp out your ride, and explore and launch tracks to play on. Costumes for karts and characters come complete and in kit form, so you can either throw on a whole new look or adjust it in specific places, such as steering wheels, seats, and different chassis styles. There are tanks, motorbikes with sidecars, Formula 1-style shapes, and more exotic "found art" looks, such as karts made from drinking straws or terracotta pots.

We zoomed around on a few different models, and found that while their appearance gives an indication of how they handle and accelerate--tanks are slow and heavy, and bikes are more nimble and zippy--there doesn't appear to be any stat indicators when making your selection, as you'd find in other arcade racing games. But while this is missing, influences and features from other games in the arcade racing genre are apparent. Item pick-ups provide a range of offensive and defensive weapons and abilities, such as missiles, giant punching gloves, lightning, and rockets, and can be used to obliterate other drivers and help you close the gap when trailing. The further you lag behind the leader, the better your chances of receiving more powerful items to help you catch up for a podium finish.

One of the features to make a direct move from LBP to LBPK is the grappling hook. One circuit of our demo was set on a giant kitchen table, and it featured large holes in the track to swing across. Tapping and holding the shoulder button makes the hook lash out and cling to hanging foam points, and by riding the arc and releasing at the peak of your swing, you can access alternative paths that act like shortcuts.

Battle mode offers a break from straight lap racing, and lets you maim other sack people by using a range of weapons. The large, square space of King's Castle included scattered power-ups, surfaces to hide behind, and a frantic dash for the limited number of items from the start of the round. Our game crowned the first player to earn 10 kills, but, because of the open, editable nature of the LBP universe, players will also be able to create original battle-game types and settings.

Drifting was our biggest hurdle, and we found it easiest going in early and wiggling the stick through the corner before receiving a speed boost on the exit. It takes a moment to earn, so we don't see snaking as being a huge issue in online matches. The three tracks in our demo all shared similar visual and gameplay traits, but given that LBPK is being built around the same user-generated content systems as LBP, you can expect the really interesting creations to come once the community gets its hands on the tools. Unfortunately, because the two platforms powering the games are so vastly different, fans hoping that their ModNation Racers content would be supported in LBPK will be disappointed to hear that this won't be the case.

Good karting games are tuned to the nth degree. The addition of a diverse customisation suite, like the LBP tools, and the fun of ModNation Racers mean that fans won't be stuck with the usual mirror and reverse versions of the same tracks on disc, but we can't shake the feeling that this still feels like a karting expansion pack that could have been offered for LBP. That said, while the inspirations are obvious, we still had fun searching out the racing line, bumping other drivers, and collecting things to make our opponents explode. Little Big Planet Karting will be zooming onto the PlayStation 3 in 2012.

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PC | Phantasy Star Online 2: MAG Fest

We traverse a future space forest in the closed beta of Sega's long awaited MMO sequel.

Despite Phantasy Star Online being ahead of its time as the first MMO to work on a console way back in 2000, the franchise as a whole has seen better days. With a recent string of mediocre games, Sega seems like they're getting their act together in turning things around for Phantasy Star Online 2. We checked out the recent closed beta session for the PC version and found new things to get excited about while traversing space and killing waves of indigenous alien creatures and evil spawns called Darkers.

You have three standard classes to pick from: the close-ranged Hunter; the long-ranged gun-toting Rangers; and the magic-wielding Forces. You also get to pick your races. Humans are adaptable to any class and have balanced stats, while the Newmans are better at spell-casting roles since their physical form is as effective as a wet paper towel. The robotic CASTs race is better-suited for more physical roles, which means they are terrible at handling magic.

A party that slays together, stays together.

It has been ages since we've played a Phantasy Star Online title, so we picked the easiest class to explore with: the Hunter. As for our race, we decided to go with the CASTs because, hey, when you have a chance to pick a cyborg race in a space-based MMO, you just go for it. While we didn't spend much time on the character creator, we did see that the customization options were plentiful, from facial morphing to tweaking eyelashes and body proportions. Fans can lose themselves creating their perfect space opera anime avatar.

The tutorial mission was set in a forest area. We were given the standard guidelines on how the game's controls and classes work. PSO2 feels more action-oriented due to the addition of jumping, guarding and evasions.

Each class has their own special combat maneuvers: Hunters can block, while Forces can cast area-of-effect spells. The Rangers can go nuts with the long-reaching grenade shot skill. All of these abilities require the PP meter which regenerates decently after a second of usage, and we found that mapping the quick swap weapon option to the mouse wheel helped switch up combat faster and more efficiently.

Using our Hunter, we alternated between using a two-handed sword and our fists for variety in combat. The quick switch also allowed us to use our entire combat arsenal to go as far as to juggle foes to the air, which is also new to the series. Blocking was also a good way to deal damage; we had to time it just right before the enemy's strike made contact.

The Emergency CODE system allows players to fight guys like these on a random basis.

We also had a chance to play around with the Forces class, and she came with her own array of spells like Fire Blast and Frost Attack. The former only allowed us to attack a single target but inflicted the enemy with burn status which deals damage over time. Frost Attack dealt less damage, but could be used to hit multiple foes in a straight line, and also has a chance to freeze them. Bum rushing as a magic user is suicide, and we avoided getting close unless we knew we could finish off our target with a few melee strikes.

Randomness plays a significant role in PSO2. While the geographic nature of the map stayed the same, enemy positions, level layouts and item drops were dynamically scattered, altered and distributed during our second and third run in the forest level. Furthermore, PSO2 introduces interrupt events to shake things up when you least expect them. These include crashed space ships or high-level groups of Darkers teleporting within the vicinity. Other times, the game can throw a type of interrupt event where you duel against a boss (usually a few levels higher than you), regardless of whether the current quest you're in contains a boss or not.

These bad boys usually require a four-person group to take down efficiently. Fortunately, gamers can gain access to multi-party areas, where up to twelve players can complete quests in the same zone. The catch is that the difficulty of the interrupt events will scale according to the number of players in the area. Players can expect to stay in their designated questing areas a lot longer than usual thanks to these random occurrences.

We found this concept fun and challenging, and our personal interrupt event experiences weren't too dangerous because we quested in areas with two to three other characters. But, the potential to experience big and memorable events were there. As long as others in the area don't mind being neighborly, solo players may find strangers lending a helping hand when things get hot.

The character creation tool is pretty detailed.

After completing our first quest we assigned ourselves to the Gate, Phantasy Star Online 2's hub. We were shown the Matter Board, a device that shows how much of the narrative a player has completed. You will need to complete a certain number of quests to move the nodes forward. Think of it as a grocery list of quests that need completing before advancing the story, which in turn opens up new quests with bigger enemies to fight and better loot to acquire. However, players are required to complete the same quests multiple times to get better drops from defeated enemies to fulfill the criteria, which we found slightly repetitive.

Fans will also be pleased to know that the flying AI companions known as MAGs return. Having these little fellas next to you boosts your stats exponentially; players are able to get them via a quest at the Gate as long as they're at level 10. Feeding them different items will make them evolve into different and powerful forms. Getting them to higher levels can make them shoot out Photon Blasts, and different types of attacks are available depending on how they evolve. So far, we've seen MAGs recover PP meters faster than usual, rush enemies ahead of their masters, and even perform an area-of-effect attack.

PSO2's developer Satoshi Sakai recently mentioned that there will be a desert planet called Liliipa available for exploration in the open beta phase of the game, complete with new story quests and items up for partaking and looting. However, he has yet to announce the actual date of the open beta. In any case, while a few may find PSO2 akin to a cheap throwback of the first game at a glance, a deeper look into the core system may prove otherwise.

In a galaxy far, far away, space monkeys do exist.

The developers are taking a chance with their interrupt events system, multi-party areas, and action-heavy conflict systems to make their core online RPG series relevant again. We're hoping that because of this, Sega plans to expand their user base outside of Japan.

For now, Japanese players can expect Phantasy Star Online 2 to be out for PC this summer for a grand sum of zero dollars. iOS and Android users aren't left out of the loop, as they can check out a version of PSO2 from this winter. The Vita version is slated to be out next year and will feature cross-platform play with the PC version. Stay tuned for more details.

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PC | The Five Biggest Surprises About Call of Duty: Black Ops II

Is there still room for creativity in Call of Duty? Treyarch hopes so.

After all the rumors and leaks, it's finally official: Treyarch is at work on a sequel to Black Ops, due for arrival later this year. This sort of news isn't exactly shocking, of course, considering that Call of Duty has long been one of those annualized series where gossiping about the next game is a bit like spreading rumors about tomorrow's sunrise. But just because the existence of Black Ops II is a foregone conclusion doesn't mean that the content of the game is on that same level of predictability. In fact, the team at Treyarch has got quite a number of tricks up its sleeve for this upcoming first-person shooter. The core action is very much Call of Duty, but the overall package might just surprise you.

It's set in the future and the past

The Call of Duty franchise has always been fond of the idea of dual protagonists, whether it was alternating between two separate theaters of war in the World War II days or two different elite tactical units in the Modern Warfare franchise. Black Ops II is out to do the same thing, but with one very different twist: instead of being separated by geography, the playable characters are separated by decades of time.

One half of the game picks up immediately after Black Ops, with you following the journey of Frank Woods, who, as luck would have it, didn't quite die at the end of the last game. Whether he's riding on horseback alongside mujahideen during the Afghan Civil War or off pursuing Russian secrets in some other corner of the world, Woods' adventures will take him through some of the later stages of the Cold War.

The other half of the campaign, though, kicks off in the year 2025, when advanced weapon technologies rule the day. This half of the campaign is filled with drone warfare (you can hack and deploy drones in the heat of combat), robotic quadrupeds roaming the battlefield, and fancy weapon systems that let you do some pretty crazy stuff with your basic firearms (like hold the trigger longer for a charged fire). Even subtle things like the general aesthetic of the heads-up display or the style of the music have a more futuristic feel to them.

If done right, this type of setup could make for a very interesting experience. There's going to be a lot of contrast between the tone and technologies of these two halves of the campaign, and bouncing between the two could be a lot of fun. Treyarch is keen to stress that it has done this to examine some distinct historical parallels (the old Cold War with Russia and the new one with China), which could be interesting if the thoughtfulness that goes into that premise isn't overshadowed by sheer chaos and spectacle--something that's always a risk when it comes to storytelling in Call of Duty.

Welcome to Los Angeles circa 2025.

It has branching storylines

Call of Duty games have long been this industry's go-to example for linear storytelling. Once you have finished the mile-a-minute campaigns, there has never been a tremendous reason to go back and play through the story again. With Black Ops II, however, Treyarch wants to give you some control over how the story progresses and thus add a reason to go back and experience different events. It's doing this through a combination of old-fashioned decision-making and allowing mission failures to alter the story rather than simply lead to a game-over screen. Did you manage to kill that one antagonist before he got away? Did you successfully protect that VIP? Instances such as these (if not these examples specifically) can occasionally lead to different outcomes depending on how well you do.

Ideally, this method of storytelling will be more nuanced than just "kill all the men, get the good ending" versus "kill most of the men, get the slightly worse ending." We're hoping to see more moral gray area, where you are given the chance to make difficult decisions that alter the game on top of how you perform in battle. This sort of narrative system has the potential to seriously alter how you experience a Call of Duty campaign, and we're hoping that Treyarch can pull it off in a meaningful way.

Unmanned robotic vehicles play a large role in the 2025 portion of the campaign.

It's occasionally a real-time strategy game

Treyarch is working on a new game mode for Black Ops II called Strikeforce, which is the studio's attempt to add a more hands-off, sandbox experience for players who want to run-and-gun on their own terms. What Strikeforce does is drop you into a large environment with a number of AI squadmates (sadly, this mode isn't co-op) and then give you a series of objectives spread throughout the map. It's basically the game giving you a bunch of space, a bunch of toys, and a bunch of enemies to take care of how you see fit.

The novel bit is that you don't have to play as the foot soldiers on the ground. You can bounce out to a sort of all-seeing-eye camera that lets you quickly scan across the map and issue orders to the troops on the ground. And since this is the year 2025 (the supplementary game modes like Strikeforce and competitive multiplayer all stick to the future), you can also issue orders to drones, and even play as them from a first-person perspective (including air and ground units). The whole thing is basically Call of Duty's version of a toy chest come to life. You can either pretend to be each little unit on the ground, or simply play out the entire match as the disembodied overlord looming over the battle, telling everyone what to do and where to go.

One thing that hasn't changed about this Call of Duty: gruff men who enjoy shouting and tattoos.

It has a villain Treyarch wants you to care about

Think of all the things the Call of Duty franchise has done well over the years: the sensation of being in the middle of a chaotic warzone, the terrific feel of the weapons, the exciting (and occasionally eccentric) set pieces. With this next game, Treyarch is hoping to add "interesting and multifaceted villain" to that list.

While the studio isn't going into too much detail about this antagonist's identity, they did mention that they'll be using the full span of the campaign--both the past and future--to establish the villain as a young man, show his descent into evil, and reveal the full extent of that trajectory come 2025. To help build this villain, Treyarch has been working with screenwriter David Goyer, whose credits include Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Remember Heath Ledger as the Joker? That's the sort of lightning Treyarch is hoping to bottle up with the help of Goyer.

Game director Dave Anthony explains it like this: "If you look at a show like The Sopranos, the main character is essentially a villain. Not only a villain, but a cold-blooded murderer. But you're presented with somebody that you actually understand as a human being and empathize with. And then suddenly you'll see them do something that's so horrific that it puts you in a real conflict. That's the approach we're taking with the villain of Black Ops II."

It's more influenced by e-sports than you think

With last year's Modern Warfare 3, Infinity Ward made the call to forgo LAN support. It was a decision that led competitive gaming leagues like MLG to drop MW3 from the pro circuits. Treyarch's approach to e-sports couldn't be more different. Black Ops II multiplayer design lead David Vonderhaar says that tailoring their game to resonate with the e-sports community is a huge goal for Treyarch. "E-sports has a really big influence. It helps us envision ways we can make the game for a competitive mindset, so there's elements of e-sports directly influencing the game design in multiplayer," says Vonderhaar. "But what's also really fascinating is e-sports as a spectator experience."

"The theater was fantastic, millions of people making millions of videos. But what's also fantastic is all these people who watch games get played. I just read this stat a couple days ago: 3 billion minutes per month of people watching people play video games. Three billion minutes! I'm thinking, man, Call of Duty could be 3 billion minutes if it was fun to watch. So this is impacting the game design. Making the game fun to watch is a big part of our agenda."

You can expect to see Black Ops II hit stores on November 13. Stay tuned for more coverage once next month's E3 rolls around.

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PC | Getting Physical With London 2012 - The Official Video Game of the Olympic Games

Get off the couch and get involved with the sports in London 2012 - The Official Video Game of the Olympic Games.

It's that time again, when vague disinterest gives way to devoted nationalism and cries of "Gold!" As the Olympics draw closer, so does the release of the video game: Sega's London 2012 - The Official Video Game of the Olympic Games. We recently had the chance to sit down, suit up, and embrace our inner athlete. Featuring more than 45 sports across five different console platforms, there are plenty of ways to get your sporting fix. You'll be able to participate in a number of events, from cycling to synchronised diving, striving for Olympic greatness at the end of it all.

Thankfully, the controls in London 2012 are significantly improved, compared to previous Olympic video games. But while the once-infamous button-mashing events are far fewer in number, they still make an appearance. Quick-time events attached to sports, such as trampoline and vault, help capture the authenticity of the actions performed during the events. Artistic director Dean Ferguson stressed to us during our demo that it was particularly important to have the player feel as if they are directly involved in the success or failure of their athlete's performance. That said, while faithful, it took us a few tries (even with the aid of the tutorial) to figure out how to balance timing and precision to perform at our digital best.

Trying your hand (or legs) at hurdles requires you to push forward on the left analog stick, and tap "A" at the correct time to vault over the steel barricades. Missing the required timing sends your athlete's knees towards the obstacle at speed.

Sega has even gone to the lengths of setting up an in-house motion-capture rig at its Brisbane studio to help create realistic movement for the characters. The same attention to detail has been applied to many of the game's venues, digitally reconstructed using real-world blueprints, and helping give credibility to the "official" feel. Unfortunately, though, while they have gone to great lengths to capture the authenticity of the experience, the licence doesn't extend to permitting the developers to use the likenesses of real athletes. Where many players may have been looking forward to finally beating Usain Bolt at his own game, they will be forced to line up on the blocks with a virtual unknown.

Difficulty for each of the events is flexible for a range of skill levels, but, even on the normal setting, attempting to kayak down a white-water rapid was about as awkward on the Xbox as it probably is in real life. Because of this, the inclusion of both Kinect and PlayStation Move support is extremely clever. We suffered some unresponsiveness during events, but when they were working at full speed, we had much more fun shooting an arrow or batting back a ping-pong ball than we did performing the same action on a controller.

The Move controller is perfect for events that require the quick snap of a wrist, as the device mimics a paddle, while arms work just as well on the Kinect as your awkwardly positioned arms would with a real bow and arrow. The Kinect follows as you draw back your bow, and fires as you throw up your arms. It took some getting used to--not to just release our invisible arrow as you would a real one.

The great strength of London 2012, however, is not in its numerous sports or unique control system, but rather its alternative play modes. Next to classic single-player, the game introduces a party mode, where iconic sports such as archery have been changed up for something a little more lighthearted by featuring a rapid-fire version. In it, players compete for the highest score in a designated time. Add to this the online multiplayer functionality, and we can see players getting sporting enjoyment long after the torch has moved on to the next town. Sega has done a decent job at making a genuinely fun minigame compilation, even if only to let you mock your friends while they exert excessive force throwing virtual javelins about.

London 2012 is out on June 28 for the Xbox 360, PC, and PS3.

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Xbox 360 | How Sega Is Transforming the Next Sonic Kart Racer

The follow-up to Sonic Sega All-Stars Racing brings new drivers, new tracks, and two new vehicle types.

When you hear people talk about Sonic All-Stars Racing Transformed, you're going to hear a lot of references to Rare's 1997 kart racer, Diddy Kong Racing. Both are goofy racing games starring a host of animal mascots, and both put you behind the wheel of cars, planes, and hovercrafts. In Diddy Kong Racing, you had to choose which vehicle type to pilot before a race; while in Transformed, you can control all three. Recently, we got the chance to get our first look at the game and go hands-on with a multiplayer demo. There are a lot of exciting additions to run through, so buckle up.

In Transformed, each player controls a single vehicle that can alternate between three different modes: car, plane, and hovercraft. These transformations are triggered by driving through large blue rings, called "transformation gates" (see above), at specific locations along the track. Typically, these transformations are mandatory, and you don't control when they occur. However, there are exceptions to this rule. For example, one track might present a fork in the road, with one route leading to a hovercraft transformation and the other to a car transformation. Some tracks (and game modes) will even be mono-vehicular, with all players controlling a single vehicle type throughout.

Supporting these new vehicle types has led developer Sumo Digital to build an entirely new physics engine for this game. Compared to the automotive handling in the original, driving a car in Transformed felt more grounded. The cars are a bit more responsive when cutting corners at high speeds, and they emulate a better sense of weight on the track. The planes are much slower to turn than the cars, and travel the fastest of the three. Planes also have the added benefit of traveling along the z-axis, decelerating during ascent and (rapidly) accelerating during descent. Finally, the boat is the wild card. In shallow water it handles similarly to the car, but in deep water with heavy waves it's a challenge to stay in control while maintaining top speed.

Each vehicle felt distinct. They were challenging to pilot at times, but that challenge arose naturally from the track design, rather than poor handling. There were also a few new faces behind the wheels of these machines. Vyse, from the Dreamcast-era Japanese role-playing game Skies of Arcadia, and Gilius, from the late-'80s beat-'em-up Golden Axe, were playable (complete with their own unique vehicles). There are plenty more new racers to come, and each will handle a little differently from the others. Certain characters will even be better suited for one vehicle type over another, but these fine details are still in the works.

There is plenty more Sega love to be found outside of the roster. Track selection is just as important, with our session's opening track being modeled after Japanese rail shooter Panzer Dragoon. This track incorporated all three vehicle types throughout the different laps. During the first lap we started as the car and then later transformed into the boat. On the second lap a piece of the track was destroyed, and our route was modified to include a plane section instead of a boat section. Route alterations such as this will not be uncommon and will trigger automatically.

A Super Monkey Ball-inspired track followed. This track was all downhill (a teleportation pad transported racers back to the top) and started in hovercraft mode. Being completely downhill, it was naturally a lot faster than the previous track and gave us plenty of opportunities to try out the new trick system. Tricks in Transformed work similarly to the way they did in Mario Kart Wii--by successfully performing a midair trick in Mario Kart Wii, your character earned a speed boost upon hitting the ground. Transformed takes it a step further by introducing a risk/reward element: if you hit the ground before completing a trick, you take a speed penalty. There are more complex tricks characters can perform as well, but whether this will lead to a larger speed boost is still being determined.

The final point to cover is the all-star attack. These behave a little differently than they did in the previous game. These powerful attacks are no longer just a means for helping players jump from the back of the pack to the front; they are a reward for good driving. By collecting coins, performing tricks, overtaking other racers, and so forth, you gradually fill your all-star meter. Once this meter is full, you can activate your character's all-star attack, which transforms your character into an invulnerable, supercharged airplane with a unique weapon. This power-up is only temporary and can be activated at any time once the all-star meter is full. However, once the all-star meter is full, it occupies your weapon slot, meaning you can no longer pick up or use the other weapons in the game. That is, until you exhaust your all-start attack.

Sadly, the all-star attacks, along with several other features, were not yet implemented during our play session. Taking a hovercraft over lava, air-drifting alongside cavern walls, and exploring all of the different game modes will have to wait. Luckily, we won't have to wait for long since Sumo Digital is eyeing a winter release sometime this year. And when it's released, Sonic All-Stars Racing Transformed will be available for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo 3DS, and PlayStation Vita.

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PlayStation 3 | Greece Goes Multiplayer in God of War: Ascension

Squad of War? Find out why Kratos is bringing friends to the party in God of War: Ascension.

"Kratos was an asshole in God of War II and III," said Todd Pappy, game director of God of War: Ascension, as our presentation began. This fourth console release, and earliest GOW prequel, gives Sony Santa Monica Studio a chance to colour god-slayer Kratos in a very different light. The team is emphatic that this is their most ambitious game yet, and it's easy to see why. The scale and cinematic quality that are synonymous with the series have been mirrored, now appearing in a new, single-player campaign and being brought over to power the game's first multiplayer outing. While developers on hand admitted that the move from a one-player game to an experience that players can share with each other means redistribution of time and resources, they also believe that the result will be what fans have long been crying out for.

Our demo began with a black screen, as winds howled around us. A tight zoom of Kratos revealed the titular hero making his return in this adventure, although, as the game takes place prior to the events of the console trilogy, his body appeared bronzed, rather than ashen white, not yet carrying the shameful mark of his slain family. Draped over his body was a colourful tribal outfit. As the camera panned around to show us the scene, he pulled on a large helmet to protect his skull. He's not yet a god, and the security it affords was an early indication of his frailty.

The action kicked off immediately as a small Cyclops burst through a corridor doorway. With no Blades of Chaos with which to lash out and grab our target, we rushed forward with a huge, ornate sword in hand. It was impressive to watch as the pair began to tangle; animations appeared smooth and natural. A second warrior joined the fray, running interference and baiting the beast as we performed a deft flanking movement to attack it from its unprotected side. We took it in turns with our brother in arms, eventually pinning the Cyclops down and carving deep gashes into its stomach, watching as its insides unravelled, spilling out on the ground below.

We didn't hang around long to marvel at our gory handiwork. Our guide proved that this was a live demonstration by shaking the weapon in midair and activating a rousing battle cry. We broke through into a larger, multi-storey space. In the background, a huge Cyclops was being held captive in a collar and wrist chains. Our goal wasn't immediately apparent, and there was no HUD to speak of, but the combat was distinctly God of War as we began to cull handfuls of enemies. A large spinning cog was connected to two circular platforms, keeping the monster in check. It was a good thing, too, with each of our characters about the size of one of its giant fingernails.

We swatted the smaller opponents away like flies, performing a flashy combo that in one fell swoop cut off one hand in its upward motion, and finished the job with a lethal downward blow. The result put daylight between the two halves of our victim, and reminded us of the T-1000 in Terminator 2, as the unconnected body parts flailed around with their new bifurcated status. The familiar coloured orbs of previous games were scattered around the zone and were accompanied by series staples, such as loot chests and traps. Looking for a better vantage point, we climbed a nearby wall, moving diagonally rather than shimmying up a simple linear path as we would have previously. Interactive surfaces were subtle and gave us a real sense of freedom as we scampered around.

While other players dashed around us on the battlefield, the camera remained focused exclusively on our character model. Some of our compatriots swung massive, weighty hammers, while others played support for the squad, dropping to their knees to throw out a group heal. Hades, Poseidon, Zeus, and Ares will each have their own unique combat styles, but they also play into classic combat archetypes, such as melee, ranged, healer, and tank. This is light role-playing, and, as a result, the design team hasn't yet nailed down whether GOW: Ascension will go as far as to include a buff system. They did, however, suggest that teams that opt for a more rounded group of fighters would better those who favour multiples of the same unit type.

The mode we saw, tentatively named Team Execution, featured two groups of four players battling to secure a point. The first team to complete the objective activated their cog, dragging the Cyclops down to within striking range on a platform so that the victorious side could harpoon it. Once done, they plunged a glowing spear directly into its eye. There won't be any finishing-move quick-time events to end the fight, but the player who performs best during the game is given the glory of being the one to land the killing blow.

Beyond the notoriety of being the one who gets to stab something big in the face, the most valuable player of the match is also rewarded with bonuses based on his or her performance. A persistent multiplayer mode will allow you to level up your Troy or Spartan soldier and give you access to a range of perks, weapons, and abilities. A range of spoils will be delivered from the gods, with a mixture of found items and unlocks from your own talent trees. Perks will be character specific and can be activated either in combat by achieving a particular goal, such as reaching a designated number of kills, or more passively by giving you increased stats from the outset of a match.

While the development team is remaining tight-lipped on any other game modes for the moment, they did confirm that not all types will be based around four-versus-four battles. A range of objectives and smaller maps will also be available to accommodate a range of group sizes.

What is clear is that God of War: Ascension looks to be taking a page out of the book of fellow Sony franchise Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. The latter set the goal of bringing the scale and urgency of its single-player, cinematic-driven moments to multiplayer, and GOW: Ascension is following suit. But the question remains: Is multiplayer really the feature God of War fans have been calling for? Stay tuned for more details ahead of the game's 2013 release date.

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PC | Meet Dynamite Jack: Part MGS, Part Bomberman

Ever consider escaping from an underground mine armed with an unlimited supply of bombs while dodging lasers and henchmen?

If the stealthy gameplay of Metal Gear Solid collided with the audacious weapons of Bomberman, you would get Dynamite Jack. In this top-down action adventure game, you play as a former space marine, who was captured during battle and made to work in a mine against his will, until he figured out a way to break out. But that's only half the battle. You must escape this underground facility where there are guards everywhere, ranging from basic sentry units to crazy laser-beam-shooting scientists. Don't fear, though, because you have a couple of weapons to help you along the way.

Time to blow up some stuff!

The first and probably most important is the detonator, which gives you an unlimited supply of bombs that pack a deadly punch. The only drawback is that you can place only one bomb at a time until you detonate it. This adds some challenge to each level because it stops you from running and bombing everything in sight and instead allows you to stealthily bomb your enemies in an efficient manner. The second weapon is your flashlight, which guides your pathway, preventing you from falling down sinkholes and walking down dead ends, and it repels monsters. As you progress farther down the levels, you encounter wookie-like monsters that attack you when it's dark but run away when light is shed on them--every little boy's nightmare and dream.

The level design is simple at first since you encounter only one enemy type. As you progress, you will encounter more enemies and obstacles, such as moving laser beams, which stand in the way of escape. There is plenty of replay value as well. There are achievements in every level, but one of the most difficult ones to get is the achievement for not dying at all. You get an unlimited number of lives and well-placed save points, but your enemies have a wide moving line of sight that can get you constantly killed, which it did to us. We had a lot of fun with the levels we played and can't wait to see the final product once it's released on Steam later this year.

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PlayStation 3 | Kratos vs. Parappa: Who Will Win in the PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale?

We find out which Sony characters will reign supreme when the company's biggest hitting personalities come out to fight.

The rumours have been circulating for months. What would happen if Sony took a healthy slathering of its iconic PlayStation characters and played them off against each other in a virtual battle to the death? Turns out it's no longer a pipe dream, with the publisher revealing PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, the awkwardly long title that will allow you to finally settle that bet you have with your buddies about whether or not Parappa the Rappa could take down Kratos in a few rounds of bare-knuckled action.

This Traveling Wilburys of fighting games is every PlayStation fan's wet dream, and while the limited roster of six characters--Kratos, Fat Princess, Sly Cooper, Radec, Sweet Tooth, and Parappa the Rappa--on show at the event we attended served only to whet our appetite, it's by no means a bad start. Signing over its most beloved personalities isn't something Sony is entering into lightly, with the project being helmed by new studio SuperBot Entertainment, a veritable A-team of fighting game development veterans.

So what are they working on? Sony describes it as a "mash-up brawler," a multiplayer title with more than a passing resemblance to Nintendo's own Super Smash Bros. series. Once you've selected your character and found one to three friends (the remaining free character spaces become AI controlled), your task is to bust their pretty digital faces, earning points for scoring killing blows and being penalised points each time you're slain.

The SSB similarities don't end there, with taps on the square, triangle, and circle buttons and holding one of four directions on the D-pad or analog stick used to activate a range of differing attack types. Some are short-range melee swings, some are flung items, while others are for planting or tossing out defensive weapons like mines or arrows. Deceptively simple at first glance, its fighting game roots mean there's a much deeper experience lurking below the surface waiting to be mastered. There are no combo input systems to memorise or health bars to monitor, and while super attacks are as simple to perform as tapping the R2 button when you've built enough energy to make your character begin to glow, timing its use is essential. At level one (of three), characters will lunge forward, place explosives, fire a deadly gun shot, or mount a giant riding chicken to get bloodthirsty. Taking the chance on dealing prolonged damage over the course of the several-minute-long match and unleashing a level-three super fills the screen with a much larger area-of-effect attack and has a good chance of taking the lives of several victims at once. The risk-reward payoff can easily turn the tide of any match with a single, well-timed release.

Of course, you need a place to fight, and each of the four environments in our demo included a range of static and interactive elements, and like the character roster, pairs up some unusual bedfellows. For example, the Hades arena had the god of the underworld swiping at all four players periodically, dealing hurt to anyone unlucky enough to fall underneath his huge glowing blades. Ground shakes from the tantrum added additional platforms to an otherwise flat surface and allowed for death-from-above attacks. The Patapon army also invaded the scene, taking aim and firing volleys of arrows to snare anyone caught around the highlighted zones.

Ratchet Clank's Metropolis cityscape came complete with background crates asking for smashing, but quickly became a classic warzone when a whirring shredder opened in the middle of the map and Kratos' old friend, the multi-headed Hydra, popped in to say hi.

Jak and Daxter's Sandover Village came under fire from hole-in-one-hungry golfers, who rained down dimpled, white headaches as we scrambled to kill each other, and a huge turbine sucked parts of the environment offscreen in a vicious vortex. Environmental events are entirely independent of your actions and provide an extra threat. While you won't need to turn them on to see them in action, they're an easy attention thief, quickly distracting you from the other million things happening on the screen at any given time.

It's not every day you see a psychopathic clown shoulder-charging a racoon.

Occasionally power-up items such as glowing double-edged swords, Hedgehog grenades from Resistance, and Wipeout's Gravity Shields enter the fray, requiring you to stay still momentarily while holding the R1 button to scoop them up. Each item provides its own kind of bonus and acts as a good way to build the energy required to perform super attacks, but they must be dropped before you can activate any of your character's special moves. While never specifically orchestrated, many times during our demo we witnessed the remaining three other players in the game gang up to take down the threat before returning to every-man-for-himself survival tactics.

A game like PlayStation All-Stars lives and dies by its roster, and while we were able to try out only six of the as-yet-unknown number of characters that will ship with the game, we did learn a few things about the unique attributes, strengths, and weaknesses of those already included.

At present, Sly Cooper is the only character in the game to forgo the inclusion of a block. Instead, he relies on the power of invisibility to disappear and reappear on the screen at will. This is particularly handy for sneaking up behind an unsuspecting victim and activating the super attack, which uses longtime friend Murray the Hippo as a fleshy battering ram and knocks anyone in its path to their death. Before you cry hacks, observant players can often predict--based on your travel speed and jump range--where you're likely to be. It's certainly not foolproof, and with no real defensive abilities up our sleeve, we often bought a one-way ticket on the pain train. As a master thief, he's also able to steal energy from rival players.

Parappa the Rappa's kung fu tutelage under Chop Chop Master Onion has made him quite the formidable melee specialist. When other players spill their attack power orbs, he can drop his boom box and use it to automatically collect energy without having to risk getting beaten up in person.

Colonel Radec from the Killzone series packs a sniper rifle, and if given enough time and space, he can fire a nasty shot that propels players back and into the air. He's great for playing keep-away, but his susceptibility at short range means he can be punished if you can get in his face.

Sweet Tooth makes his appearance in PlayStation All-Stars sans ice cream truck. Just because he's not behind the wheel doesn't mean he has given up his usual ways, brandishing his machete and more than a little familiar with the painful end of a shotgun. His rush-down attacks can set up more advanced strings of moves, while dropping mines and running for the hills makes it tough for others to follow too closely behind.

Fat Princess was one of our surprise favourite characters. She has the ability to summon a villager at will, without spending any energy to do so. Tapping the circle button shot out a little red helper that was useful for softening up a would-be attacker or providing a chance to put some distance between you and the target. Saving and spending all her power on a level-three skill takes control of the screen briefly as she throws a group of minions out, doing their best to mess up the place.

While members of the SuperBot development team at the event admitted that Kratos was one of the more popular character choices with testers, thanks partly to his recognisability and diverse move set of dashes, spear charges, and melee strikes with his Blades of Chaos, they're working closely to make sure that powerful characters come with their own penalties for selection. One solution they're looking at is for them to require more energy to perform their basic, level-one super attack.

Environments are drawn from across a wide range of games too.

Though only six characters were present in the early version of the game we saw, clear nods were given to a handful of Sony's other titles, such as Everybody's Golf, Ratchet Clank, Resistance, Jak and Daxter, and Little Big Planet. The team also confirmed that they are already in discussions with major third-party studios around licensing deals. At this early stage, everyone could be a contender.

While PlayStation All-Stars certainly wears its influences on its sleeve, it also appears to be bringing a few new features to the multiplayer brawler table. Most importantly, we had a blast slugging it out with other players. Plenty of questions still remain, such as Sony's plans for support of online competitive play, the number and quality of the remaining faces on the character roster, and whether the game will also receive a Vita port. Who are you hoping to see make the cut? Look for more on it ahead of its 2012 release date.

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PC | Firefall: Jetpacks in Copacobana

We traverse the first few areas of the Firefall closed beta, and partake in some shooting revelry.

It's not just the familiar shooter controls and feel, the different perspective choices between third-person and first-person, the cell-shaded aesthetics, and the ability to leap tall bounds with the jetpack that got us really into Red 5's latest online shooter Firefall. In fact, it's not even the fact that is still looks polished for a free-to-play title (a common trend with the likes of Tribes: Ascend out recently) that piqued our curiosity.

No, what really got our heads turned to the closed beta since last week was that the developers were aiming to make Firefall's world as alive and as organic as possible using the concept of staged content. Essentially, online players on the Player vs. Enemy section of the game will slowly unravel the world as they beat back the on-world phenomena known as "The Melding" (ie, giant miasma of death). Bit by bit, players work together doing small missions like retrieve "x" number of medical supplies or resources, and even large-scale ones, like conquering a fortress occupied by an alien army to unravel not only the narrative parts of the game, but also new areas to explore, as well as new enemies to put bullets and plasma into.

You have to work your butt off with resource gathering if you want to get equipped with the best possible gear.

Wandering around the outskirts of the starting area, the Phoenix Outpost at Copacabana, South America, also yields World Events. These are random quests that players can enter and partake in, which make the whole online planescape more alive. We randomly came across grey shock troopers called the Chosen; some big, some small and fast, and all of them taunting you to shoot them while they're reloading. We felt that it was best to take down the bigger groups housed behind their giant energy-fortress contraption with other online players, so we were content with picking them off one by one using the Assault battleframe until we were sated with the resource and money drops we received.

Speaking of loot, players will also be kept busy with gear crafting by using the resources and materials found on enemy corpses or mineral deposits that can only be opened up with sonic grenades. Be it a modifier that increases the amount of grenades or ammo you have, or just a new weapon or battleframe that makes you kill bugs better and more efficiently, gathering up materials on the outskirts of the Copacobana will become your modus operandi. The basic stuff can be crafted by anyone who has just started, but the more advanced schematics will require more dedication in resource accumulating.

That's where the resource hammer and thumper drills come in; the former lets you scan for the best spot for mineral gathering while the latter lets you harvest said minerals. The thumper will attract enemy attention while summoned, so protecting it from being assaulted is part and parcel of getting your loot for item crafting.

While the staged content scenario is not really a brand new feature, the way that Red 5 is handling this right now holds huge promise. Just imagine an online landscape where players can band together on the fly, protecting each other's thumpers or even filling in the role of a medic for a random party assaulted by a Chosen battalion. This all leads to the common goal of beating the PvE part of the game, and unlocking more parts of the map, thus instilling a sense of personal accomplishment for contributing to the greater good.

We needed a break from playing nice, so we also took a stab at Player vs. Player, which was held totally separate from the PvE universe. We only managed to check out a few deathmatch modes; at this point in time, it wasn't easy to find players for Sabotage mode (Firefall's mandatory capture-the-flag archetype) and Harvester mode (a game type where players take over harvester areas until the time limit expires).

The matches we fought during team deathmatch were intense, and were set in rather bright holiday resort areas. This was perhaps deliberately done to keep in theme with the PvE mode, but it certainly beats your usual grey map packs set in a war-torn city or urban landscape. Just like most class-based team shooters, having a balanced team is essential to staying alive. Our Dreadnaught battleframe may have the suppressing firepower to push the enemy forces away, but we were content to letting our team's Assault and Recon class take point while the Engineer set up his turret(s) on our side of the map. The mobility of jetpacks help keep the flow of the matches as fast as possible; it's not up to Unreal Tournament's hyper-laced level of intensity, but it's faster than your average Halo Reach and Call of Duty fragfests.

Players will need to work together to unlock more PvE areas and fight monstrosities like that.

Having said that, the closed beta came with bugs aplenty, like quest items not triggering the way they should, or the battleframe option in a state of inactiveness in the middle of PvP. The developers did state that these problems will be fixed on an organic basis; patches for the game will be doled out consistently. We did check back with the game five days after our play through; most of the problems we mentioned were fixed, so this really shows how on top of things the company is in making sure that everyone's stay is pleasant given the circumstances.

With its fast-paced, action-packed beginning for PvE to its multiplayer, we could have a potential hit on our hands. We also hope that Red 5's experiment with the aforementioned staged content and dynamic world concept pans out; it would be a great breath of fresh air in a repetitive sea full of multiplayer deathmatch-focused warfare shooters of the modern variety. At the very least, the game will only cost you the grand total of zero dollars when it releases in open beta form later this year.

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3DS | Project X Zone: Triple Threat Impressions

Read our initial thoughts on the recently announced Namco Bandai/Capcom/Sega crossover JRPG.

Remember the RPG that Namco Bandai and Capcom did for the PS2 back in 2005? Of course you don't; it wasn't released outside of Japan. However, the internet was full of hype regarding the crossover at the time, and while not exactly a stellar achievement in quality, the game sold reasonably well due to its plethora of fan service for both Capcom and Namco Bandai fans.

Fast-forward eight years later, and the two companies have joined forces with Sega to try again. This time, with a title called Project X Zone for the 3DS. The recent trailer for the game--presented during Nintendo's press conference last Saturday--showed actual gameplay. This is what we could gather from what was shown.

Firstly, two-man teams of characters from their respective brands will be dishing out damage to enemies. X and Zero from the Mega Man X series? Check. Pai and Akira from Virtua Fighter? Check. Yurie and Estelle from Tales of Vesperia? Check. Space Channel 5's Ulala summoning the robot from Alien Storm and the flying gunner from Space Harrier for a cross assault of sorts? Sure, why not.

Ryu and Ken re-enacting a Street Fighter IV flowchart.

The enemies are also from the different franchises: in the trailer, we saw Dante (Devil May Cry) team up with Demitri (Darkstalkers) against a puppet minion straight out of the first Devil May Cry, and a glimpse of Street Fighter's gi-wearing poster boys Ryu and Ken beating up a Resident Evil tyrant lookalike using their brand of Hadoukens and Shoryukens.

Performing regular moves with your assigned teams during a fight will build up a super meter on the bottom right of the screen. Presumably, when it reaches its maximum, the team can perform super moves to deal big damage like Ken's Shinryuken. All of these super moves will feature short, animated cut-scenes of characters posing before its execution. While this is a nice touch, one wonders whether each character will have more than one special move, or even a tag-team variant of a special move.

Based on the screenshots of the game, the developers will be melding all the universes of each franchise into one unique world. In one instance, we saw the Chattes Noires theatre from the Sakura Wars games alongside Colby's Movie Land from the Dead Rising series. Of course, more characters and teams will be announced as the months go by; the developers of the project revealed that the character list is not final.

We suspect that it's just going to be an updated version of the PS2 import title Namco X Capcom, only with a bigger roster and stereoscopic 3D, thanks to the system it's on. The past PS2 title was panned for its simplistic strategy RPG combat system and its over-reliance on crossover fan service over substance, so the danger of the three companies repeating this design flaw is still there.

Will Project X Zone put in characters from old titles like Rival Schools, Burning Force, and Altered Beast?

On the flip side, there's a chance that the three companies will actually do something concrete other than relying on the aforementioned fan service. Plus, having Capcom's Dante and Demitri taking on bad guys from Valkyria Chronicles and .Hack can be a dream to some, and who are we to argue, since these mash-ups from big companies are few and far between?

Project X Zone is scheduled to be out this year in Japan. There is currently no word on whether the game will be out in North America and Europe, but it may seem hopeful given that the majority of characters used in the crossover are recognisable among gaming fans across the world. For the full list of characters announced so far, check out GameSpot's previous report on the crossover title.

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PlayStation 3 | New Platform, Same Old Raccoon? We Find Out in Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time

Is Sly stealing candy from a baby, or going after Fort Knox in this long-awaited sequel? We find out in our first hands-on play.

Just when you thought it was safe to start leaving your valuables sitting around without fear of them being pilfered, raccoon master thief, Sly Cooper makes his stealthy return to the PlayStation family. Though his latest adventure comes six years since the last game, Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves shipped, Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time is a direct sequel, being developed not by its original creators, Sucker Punch, but rather Sanzaru Games, the team who brought the high-definition The Sly Collection to the PlayStation 3 in 2010.

Porting the previous three games to the PS3 has given Sanzaru time to get to grips with the franchise, and while what we saw in our first hands-on play with Sly's new adventure is certainly in the same style and format fans have come to know and love, there are also new tricks in the works.

Not content to have turned an everyday suburban van into a monster truck and mobile artillery strike, Sly's buddy Bentley has now found a way to allow their ride to travel through time. As luck would have it (or perhaps in direct response) the modification coincides with pages of the Thievius Raccoonus--Sly's family heirloom, and guide to raccoon robbery skills--beginning to disappear. A little creative space manipulation is required, and the game puts you in the playable shoes of Cooper family members throughout the ages.

The first mission we saw had us playing as Sly's ninja ancestor, Rioichi, in a traditional Japanese-themed setting. As a great thief, and the inventor of sushi, he had a bit of a thing for knives. So much so that he had created a door lock system that required using three of his favourite blades as keys to gain access. Unfortunately for us, guards had stolen the precious daggers, and we needed to pickpocket them in order to get them back. Fishing around in coin purses now serves a third function. In addition to rewarding coins to spend on abilities, and giving you quest items, each enemy also has a chance to reward you with a gem that can be sold for bonus cash.

It wasn't all bad news though, and while Ryoichi had some work to do, the tasks were made easier by having access, not only to the Ninja Spire move Sly learns and uses throughout the original trilogy, but a new, and exclusive trick that works as a long range pounce while perched on objects. Tapping the R2 button and pointing the analog stick brings up a landing spot on other surfaces, and we used it to span huge gaps in the environment. This was particularly useful to help avoid the delicate porcelain plates on the floor that once touched would break and alert guards to our location.

Spotlights with machine guns and laser trip floors return, and while seemingly a little out of place in ancient Japan, we were assured they're there for a good reason. While the bad guy(s) responsible for their installation remains a secret, the dev team hinted that Sly isn't the only one who can mess around with time travel.

While this section chasing knife keys had us feeling right at home with the sorts of gentle stealth and platforming we've seen in previous Sly games, we did come across an issue with gauging danger from some of the roving searchlights. One set in particular appeared to sweep over a rope we needed to jump to, but it was only once we had rotated the camera to get a better view that we realised the two were some distance apart.

The second mission we got to play moved from the wooden floors of a traditional Japanese village to a slightly more chaotic circus theme and complete with fire rings, huge golden musical horns, and trapezes to swing on. It also gave us a quick glimpse at the game's new costume feature. While you will only play as one of Sly's previous family members at a time, costumes will grant you extra abilities you may need to do more exploring. For example, if you were to come across an arrow bucket but hadn't yet obtained the Robin Hood-inspired archer look, you wouldn't be able to traverse across certain areas. Once you had gained it, you could then fire an arrow with a tethered rope attached, and use it as a makeshift bridge. The team wouldn't be drawn on exact details of what would be given to players who backtrack to use the new found talents, but alluded that they may be tied to both extra missions and better rewards.

Firing arrows during the circus level offered a welcome relief from the standard platforming, and came with its own challenges as we steered them towards targets and dodged enemy cannonballs.

Fans hoping that Sly's first new outing on the PlayStation 3 will finally allow for online cooperative or competitive play will have to keep on waiting, with the development team saying it currently has no plans for adding an online multiplayer mode. That said, if you liked Sly 3's split-screen competitive modes, they may make a return here.

If you were expecting that after such an extended hiatus, Sly's return would mark a completely new look and style for the series, then from what we've seen so far, that doesn't appear to be the case. This is a sequel, not a reboot. What we did see was familiar, and grows on the already successful mix of jumping puzzles, stealth combat, and humour. Our brief look at the new costumes system gave us a taste of potential for a much deeper exploratory experience, and we're interested to find out more about how it works, and the rewards for players who take the time to go searching out all the nooks and crannies of the game world. Look for more on Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time when it hits the PlayStation 3 later this year. Hey… where did my wallet go?

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PC | Crysis 3: Welcome to the (Urban) Jungle

We got fun and games. Also, high-tech archery, swamps.

One of Crysis 3's sci-fi superguns fires 500 rounds a second. That would be 30,000 rounds a minute, math fans, if you didn't have to reload after near enough every squeeze of the trigger. With each squeeze, the Typhoon assault weapon emits a low buzz and minces whatever is standing at the business end of the barrel--making it a sound and logical advance for futuristic weapon design, if not a great feat of imagination (why not 5,000 rounds a second, while you're at it).

That's a bit like the general approach for Crysis 3. Set in 2047, two decades after the end of Crysis 2, it closes out the Crysis shooter trilogy, says Crytek, setting aside stand-alone expansion Crysis Warhead. Where the first game was set on an island covered in tropical jungle and the second in the ruins of New York, Crysis 3 is set in the ruins of New York covered in tropical jungle. It's a neat and consistent kind of progression, if not a great feat of imagination.

The cybernetic alien Ceph and the human forces of corrupt private military outfit CELL return to be shot and stabbed by the nanosuited Prophet, who returns from the first game and from the dead (see Crysis 2) to exact vengeance on CELL for sealing New York under a dome in its quest for world domination. Prophet begins the game in a CELL facility, escapes, and ends up in New York's Liberty Dome, which was installed to capture Ceph and cleanse their presence with accelerated biological growth.

As a result of that growth, nature has reclaimed the city. Crytek says its city has undergone a full transformation, making it more of an "urban jungle" and less, say, like the New York of I Am Legend--a recognisable city overlaid with wilderness. The demo we're shown takes place at night in the remains of Chinatown, where Prophet arrives with Psycho (Brit protagonist of Crysis Warhead) nattering advice over his radio. The superpowered nanosuit's augmented visor display is familiar, tagging enemy fighters and the like.

As promised, there's more jungle than concrete to Chinatown. Swamps and leafy vegetation are more prominent than the occasional ruined buildings, though both look mighty pretty; the plentiful rays and detailed shadows come courtesy of an "enhanced" version of CryEngine 3. There, Prophet skulks around in the undergrowth with his Predator-like nanosuit cloak up, stealthing up to the bipedal Stalker Ceph and knifing them in the fleshy, unarmoured parts. His vengeful intentions manifest as post-kill quips addressed to no one in particular ("I'm going to kill you all one by one" and "We'll see who gets hunted").

Shooting from stealth is encouraged, too. Prophet's newest toy is the composite bow: a sleek, fold-out bow and a selection of arrow warheads not unlike Hawkeye-style trick arrows, with explosive, pointy, and electro arrowheads populating Prophet…s nanoquiver. With that bow, and from stealth mode, Prophet can silently skewer distant enemies, in keeping with Crytek's vision of Prophet as a hunter in the urban jungle.

Twang!

Other weapons include those high-tech heavy weapons pinched from alien enemies, such as a heavy mortar called the highpoly. Other enemies include the Scorcher Ceph (small, crawling enemies that turn into flamethrower turrets when they halt and rear up) and Ceph aerial remotes (flying, seeking drones that strip off your stealth cloak). There's a new hacking mechanism, too, that lets you remotely reprogram enemy gun turrets, though don't expect a hacking minigame; the idea, says Crytek, is to add another battlefield element to strategise with, not to tack on a hacking puzzle system.

With our first look being a hands-off presentation, it's not possible yet to gauge how sandboxy the world and action of Crysis 3 will be, but at first blush it's flexible much in the same way as Crysis 2--far from free-roaming, but open to multiple plans of attack. Where and how much it does diverge from the last game, beyond the technobow and the New York jungle, we'll see as we go.

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PC | Alone, confused, and sick in the world of Stasis.

Turn off the lights, puts some headphones on, and get ready to wake up in the world of Stasis. The trailers had us biting our nails off.

You wake up, covered in a green slimy liquid. There's nothing to indicate what time of day or year it is. You don't know where you are or what you're doing lying face-up in a dirty abandoned research facility. Yet, three defining thoughts enter your brain: Where's your wife? Where's your daughter? What are you going to do to get your family back? Stasis is an adventure horror game told in an isometric perspective, which is a viewpoint that is rotated slightly to reveal other facets of the game environment than are visible from a top-down perspective or side view, thereby producing a three-dimensional effect.

You play as John Maracheck, a man in search of his family within the confinements of an abandoned research facility. There is no beta or demo to try out, but there are two trailers that seem to capture the eerie horror of being clueless and alone in a facility reminiscent of one found in Dead Space or BioShock. The sound design in the gameplay trailer offers a bit of what to expect in the final product; eruptive sounds had us jumping out of our seats and creepy computer voices had us biting our nails. The game has no release date, but we'll be eagerly awaiting this one. Check out the trailers below and see for yourself.

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PlayStation 3 | Street Fighter X Tekken Gets Cross-Platform Play

The Vita version of the crossover brawler will enable battles between the PS3 and Vita, and comes with the 12 new fighters packaged as DLC for everyone else.

When Street Fighter X Tekken arrives for Sony's handheld this autumn, the home console versions will have been kicking around for months. So it's just as well the Vita release is more than the same game squeezed onto a smaller screen. It also opens up cross-platform play between the Vita and PlayStation 3s--good news for Vita owners with more friends on PS3s than on Sony's portable console.

Smooth cross-platform matchmaking and battling like this is no mean feat; in a demo at Capcom's annual Captivate showcase (that is, admittedly, under ideal circumstances), there was no perceptible lag between action on the Vita and PS3 displays. And it looks terrific on the Vita, too.

The Vita version adds Blanka et al.

On top of the Sony hardware love-in, there's the new touchscreen battle system, which divides the touchscreen and the rear touchpad on the Vita into a few programmable sectors, to which you can map combos and other actions--in practice, not dissimilar to the 3DS version of Super Street Fighter IV. In our time with the game, part of the back pad could be swiped to tag in our second character. That's all layered over familiar gamepad-like controls assigned to the Vita's two sticks and face buttons.

Given the abundance and variety of input options, we're curious about the control habits into which players will settle in the long term to balance comfort and killer instincts; making the most of all the sticks, buttons, and touch surfaces at once in our first go made for some finger gymnastics, but we're sure there's a more elegant solution (for more elegant players). Yet to be answered is also the question of the competitive advantage in cross-platform play. Our hands-on was strictly Vita versus Vita, but between easy combos tied to touchscreen regions for Vita players and comfy, full-sized pads or even fight sticks for PS3 players, whose platform gives them the edge?

As to the other big addition, Street Fighter X Tekken arrives on the Vita with a fuller roster than that of its home console forerunner. There are 12 extra characters in the lineup, six from each side of the crossover fence: Blanka, Sakura, Guy, Cody, Elena, Dudley, Alisa, Bryan, Christie, Jack, Lars, and Lei. Among the new story-based fighter pairings with their own bespoke cinematics, the sparky duo of Blanka and Sakura is our favourite.

Those new dozen characters are the very same infamously burned onto the Street Fighter X Tekken home console discs and locked off as a slice of future downloadable content. At least PS3 players planning to pick up the Vita release won't have to pay twice; owning both versions of the game adds the new fighters to the PS3 version, where they will also be available for PS3-on-PS3 brawling.

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PlayStation 3 | DMC: Dante Gets Naked, Is Fun to Play

Now that we've gone hands-on with Ninja Theory's Devil May Cry reboot, we can stop talking about the hair. Right after this preview.

Tameem Antoniades is relieved to put DMC into the hands of the press at last--maybe now we'll stop banging on about how Dante looks and start on whether he's any fun to play. "Ironically, Dante's hair is black and mine's turning white now," says the Ninja Theory chief, referring to months of being denounced by fans for supposedly remaking the white-haired Devil May Cry star in his own image.

And we would stop banging on about it, if Dante weren't naked as a nudist jaybird as we find him at the start of DMC. He's sleeping off a heavy night in a grungy trailer strewn with pizza boxes and someone's girly underthings. But gratuitous this (non-graphic) nudity is not, says Ninja Theory. It's an allegory for Devil May Cry's fresh start, of course, in which its protagonist has been figuratively and literally stripped down, then rebuilt and reclothed from scratch. Therefore, you'll spot young Dante in an introductory fight cinematic, doing a slow-motion dive into his free-falling outfit, adult-rated anatomy slyly concealed with props (pizza slice, baseball bat).

Combos in limbo.

Demonic forces have brought a grudge match to Dante's front door, turning the pleasure pier on which he lives into a nightmarish limbo dimension, a twisted version of the real world with a sneering layer of satire, where neon arcade signs read "Spend Money" and "Gluttony's Good," and omnipresent security cameras house twitchy red eyeballs. Only Dante can see (and shoot and skewer) the denizens of limbo, though the impact of certain actions crosses back into the real world; when Dante and his hunter demon adversary tear down a Ferris wheel, it's sent crashing and rolling down the pier in the land of the living as well.

But nakedness and hellish backdrop aside, how does it play? Very nicely, in fact. The action doesn't cleave quite as close to Devil May Cry 4's as claimed (if it did, why bother with a reboot?), but it's emphatically a Devil May Cry game, with the essentials firmly in place. There are scores and combos and grades to beat the band, and paths locked off with supernatural obstacles until you clobber all the demonic nasties in the area.

Dante is armed with his canonical twin handguns and sword, but also an angelic and a demonic weapon (an ethereal scythe and a fiery axe in our hands-on), tied respectively to the left and right triggers. The face buttons call up a familiar set of moves--shoot, stab, launch--but, in combination with a trigger, also bring the corresponding special weapon into play.

A demonic smackdown on the pier.

With an angel weapon active, Dante can grapple across an arena to a distant enemy (or up to a flying one) or swing around with a quick, wide-ranging attack, and the "launch" manoeuvre with the angelic weapon equipped can whirl a whole host of spindly demons skyward. With the devilish weapon enabled, Dante can drag a lighter enemy from across the arena into stabbing range, pull a flying foe out of the sky, or bash a shielded, heavy enemy with a more powerful blow.

The angel and demon weapons amount to a combat system with instant switching between a quick and a heavy mode, lots of variety for creating combos, and the means to stay all up in the enemy's grille for chained attacks. A flock of cherubic flying monsters, for instance, lets you string together a series of grapples, hoisting Dante higher and higher over the battlefield, smashing demons all the way--and staying aloft by shooting and skewering the enemy is gleeful good fun, with the soundtrack music and vocals ramping up according to how high your grade rises. So relax: there's much more to DMC than a bratty hero with a controversial haircut.

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PlayStation 3 | Lost Planet 3: The Last Thing You Expected

Unless you expected a civilian hero, a personal story, and Western developer Spark Unlimited (in which case, good job).

After Lost Planet 2's modest sales and lukewarm reviews, Capcom must have had a long, hard think on its sci-fi shooter series. A change of direction was probable, then, but not an about-face like this: Lost Planet 3 is a character-driven, primarily single-player adventure set years before the events of the first game. It's recognisably a Lost Planet outing (frozen plains, armoured mech suits, glowing akrid weak points), but there's a civilian hero, a personal story, engaging voice acting, and nary a nod at multiplayer co-op in its debut presentation at Capcom's annual Captivate showcase.

The new direction comes partly of a new studio. Lost Planet 3 is in the works at US studio Spark Unlimited, not with a Capcom in-house team. The new looks come of a new engine--not Capcom's own MT Framework, but ubiquitous workhorse Unreal, doing a spiffy job on the bluish alien glaciers, orange sunlight, and glinting mechs of E.D.N. III. The action, meanwhile, combines third-person shooting and exploration with first-person mech piloting and robo-brawling.

Where Lost Planet 2 took place after a thaw, revealing new jungle and desert environments, Lost Planet 3 turns back the clock to when the alien world was fully frozen, in the early days of human colonisation. Franchise director Kenji Oguro, still overseeing, promises a return to strictly cold climes, implying the second game steered too far from the icy terrain that marked out game one. "When you think of Lost Planet," he says, "you think of snow and ice and a very desolate world. This is one of the core concepts of Lost Planet 3."

Capcom producer Andrew Szymanski, meanwhile, talks up the story, a tale of "surviving in a harsh environment and unravelling its mysteries" as everyman protagonist Jim, a bearded construction labourer working to support his wife and baby back on Earth. ("The more I earn, the sooner I get to hold you both again," he says.) The hands-off demo was heavy on the cutscenes, charmingly voiced, showing Jim waking from a nap in the cab of his construction mech suit--the game's main vehicle and the series' biggest mech to date, says Oguro-san.

The portion presented comes from early in the game, starting in the enormous ice cavern hangar of the colony construction squad to which Jim is contracted. He ambles around this quest and upgrade hub in third person, whipping out a Dead Space-style holographic menu interface projected from a gauntlet gizmo. When he's piloting the mech suit, on the other hand, the game pops into first person: a cockpit view through the rig's frosty windows, from which he controls its mighty power arms--one a giant claw, one a giant drill, both strictly meant for construction work and clearing paths, but also handy in a scrap with a giant akrid crab beast.

Of which there are plenty on Jim's first mission. In it, he's despatched to plant ice-melting thermal posts at an intended building site. When a sudden storm ices up the cockpit canopy, he has to kick his way out--and the rest of the time, we're told, you can hop in and out at almost any point. Initially there are man-sized, four-legged akrid to see off; later come the colossal crab monsters, inevitable glowing weak spots protected by thick plates of translucent ice, as well as smallish, skittering, buglike variants. These latter beasties turn up in a mysteriously abandoned base Jim discovers while going about his day job; locations like these are inaccessible by mech, leaving Jim to tramp about on foot.

And the view from his mech suit.

The strategic akrid battles that combine shooting and mech controls are the most interesting. In one scuffle with an armoured, scorpionlike akrid, Jim uses the suit's claw hand to seize the monster's giant arm and pin it in place, before leaping out of the cockpit to fire away at exposed underbelly. In other fights, the mech can do all the work, grabbing with one arm and drilling with the other, spattering the windows with glowing akrid goo.

As first impressions go, this was a good one--a blast of icy fresh air after the ho-hum shooting and stomping of game two. Spark's last offering was the mediocre Legendary, but that's ancient history (2008), and on the strength of the demo, be prepared to keep an open mind. Capcom's approach here to rejuvenating Lost Planet (hand it to a Western studio) resembles the Devil May Cry reboot given to British developer Ninja Theory. Here's hoping it pays off.

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