Pics trickle out for the Secret World

The veil of secrecy surrounding Funcom’s newest MMO, The Secret World, is starting to let in a little light on a few details. If you’re not familiar with it, the Secret World sounds like a mix between Cthulhu, the X-Files, Fringe, and Shadowrun. The setting takes place in the ‘real’ world, such as New York, only the weird stories that you might have heard growing up are actually true.

And in the game, you’re a member of a secret society that quietly wages war against this unseen evil as well as compete against the other groups that you don’t agree with. To make things even more interesting, it boasts that its gameplay is without levels or classes. Beta testing is supposed to start soon, but in the meantime, here are four new pics to sink your fingers into.

Beast? Nightmare? Or another player?

The Berlin Wall dares you to crush it again

Whatever that thing is in the background, I'm hoping it's on your side.

So much for self service.

Would you like to ride with Batman? (PS3 review)

Of all of the gadgets that he had brought with him, Batman suddenly realizes that he had forgotten his watch.

Yes, it’s yet another positive review on Batman: Arkham Asylum. I liked it. A lot.

It’s probably the best Batman game out right now to encapsulate what it can feel to be the Caped Crusader within a game. Is it perfect? No, but it does more than its fair share in getting things done right than not and that goes a long way in making it a fun experience.

As it’s only Rocksteady’s second title, that makes it even more of a remarkable achievement. As far as the Guinness record goes for being the highest critically rated game of all time, I’m not touching that argument, but it most definitely doesn’t fail.

I originally posted this up on Bitmob and am posting a copy for this blog as well, so if you want to catch the dossier on this inmate, you can catch it there or here.

Review: Bionic Commando for the Xbox 360

Bionic Commando on the NES was one of my favorite adventure games featuring a crazy story involving Badds and a guy with the title of Generalissimo. The final boss’ name was “Master-D” and instead of spinning records, he was an exploding head that looked suspiciously like Hitler. Years later, I found out that WAS supposed to be Hitler, but thanks to localization tweaks, it was changed to the name of someone that might have been been on MTV.

Bionic Commando's come a long way since this came out more than two decades ago.

So here we are with not one, but two games based off of Capcom’s controversial, head asploding title. One, Bionic Commando: Rearmed, is a remake of the NES game which, itself, was actually based off of the original arcade version without so much story behind it. And now we’ve got the full console treatment with…Bionic Commando.

The Commando has been updated with a gritty attitude and dreads to match, but the story is still reminiscent of the badly translated version that we were treated to in the States. And he’s in 3D. The polished controls go far in making you feel like a swinging hero without boundaries, but there are a few short circuits in this bionic production inducing enough frustration to question whether it was worth the pain of having to go through it all.

So here’s the field report from this operation for anyone interested in the details. Not quite the tear jerking return that I was expecting, but the eighties-style charm is hard to resist if you like that kind of thing.

Xbox 360 Review: Resident Evil 5

The demo left me a little cool on Resident Evil 5, especially after playing through Dead Space, but the full game was a welcome surprise once I had “relearned” the controls and got back into the swing of things. The game became a lot more entertaining afterwards and it was filled with everything that I’ve come to expect from Capcom: twisted villains, story steeped in Resident Evil’s lore, fun extras, solid voice acting, great graphics, and awesome unlockables.

Some things also took a little getting used to, such as the real-time menu, but this is also a great way for newcomers to get into Resident Evil without having to know about everything that occurred before. But for veterans, there’s plenty for them to feel nostalgic about here while running for their lives at the same time.

A complete field report has been prepped here if you want the gory details.

Chris Redfield returns with a new partner

Ready for another steampunk game? This time, it’s from Russia…

It looks like another steampunk game is on the horizon, this time from Russian publisher, GFI. The game is called “Steam Slug” and it looks like it will be a third person shooter set in the 14th century. The twist is that steam machines with living brains in jars have risen up and in the ensuing war for survival, the world is reduced to something of an apocalyptic wasteland.

I’ll give it marks for doing something completely out from left field with the story…most of the Russian games that I’ve played have whacked out sci-fi tales whether it’s S.T.A.L.K.E.R. or You Are Empty. Steam Slug sounds like it’s going to be following that tradition and looking at the first screens, it’s not going to disappoint in that department. It sounds like it could be interesting.

You can check out what is already available at the official site.

I'm guessing that's some kind of train. Either that, or a steam-powered worm thing with a spiked head.

Music isn’t just for gaming anymore

Music in gaming hasn’t quite cut across the demographic strata as easily as James Horner’s or Michael Giacchino’s work has in film, but it never ceases to amaze me just how far and how varied the work is from game to game. After listening to a little 8-bit love on 8bitcollective and then switching over to Valkyria Chronicles’ soundtrack, it hit me just how far it has come.

While film may have a few pieces to punctuate spots in the narrative where an emotional drive is needed or to match the action in a ballet of ruin, many games tend to have a massive number of tracks required to span the ten, twenty, or thirty plus hours that a player will be spending within its world. Not every game has this kind of required commitment, but those that do…such as the Metal Gear Solid titles, Final Fantasy, or Capcom’s Onimusha series…deliver plenty for the ears to gorge on for good reason.

Although the impression that games are still the purview of children and young adults continues to hold sway among many of those that fail to look past the cover art or holiday seasons, looking at how much money and human effort is spent to produce each $60 USD slice of entertainment and to hear producers speak of budgets in the tens of millions clearly makes the work put into this particular hobby as serious as that of a big budget film with a quality that often goes unnoticed outside of the gaming crowd.

Bring up the soundtrack of a popular film at a party and people may instantly remember it and even mention the name of the artists responsible, such as James Horner. Mention Jeremy Soule or Inon Zur to the same crowd, and you might get a blank stare.

Granted, both crowds don’t have to swim in the same pool, but music-wise, it is almost as if gaming music still lives under the impression that it continues to get something of a short shrift in terms of a wider sense of recognition. That unless you are a gamer, you don’t “get it”. I beg to differ.

I think that if anyone simply likes music in general, they’ll get it as soon as they hear Keiki Kobayashi’s orchestrated theme for the Liberation of Gracemeria (Ace Combat 6), Frank Klepacki’s end techno-remix for Universe at War, James Hannigan’s Soviet March for Red Alert 3, Hitoshi Sakimoto’s work in FFXII, Nobuo Uematsu’s piano piece “From Zanarkand” from FFX, or Inon Zur’s work in Fallout 3 among many, many others.

So the next time that you or a friend sit down with a game that also has as much of a story to tell as there is to play through, take some time and listen to the music that comes out from your speakers. You might like what you hear.

Michael Jackson dead at 50

It looks like it was finally confirmed by the press that the King of Pop has passed away.

Despite the controversy surrounding his life, the one thing that has always struck me was in watching his public rise and fall from the eighties and through to today. As I grew up in the eighties, especially, you couldn’t turn on a pop radio station without hearing one of his hits and to see the effect that his persona and his music has had on the world. I remember that when his Thriller jacket first came out, I would hear stories of how kids in my class would become green with envy on learning that one of their friends had it.

Everyone wanted to learn the moonwalk. It was wild! Everyone I knew…even adults at the time…were entranced by the magic he brought through the radio. At Epcot, I remember my brother and our parents standing in line for an hour and a half outside of the Imagination pavilion…not for the ride, but to watch Captain EO in 3D which cast him as a singing, dancing space captain out to save the galaxy. Not once, but two or three times. I’ll admit it: I love sci-fi, but the music was awesome cool, too.

And then Sega came out with Moonwalker for the Genesis which was great fun. The game was also available in the arcades. Beating down bad guys with dance moves, his white hat, and the power of his music was as unique an experience as you could probably find on the console at the time.

That’s probably how a lot of people are going to remember him, me included…not for the the fall of his public persona or what the scrutiny of his life have shaken loose, but for the incredible  inspiration that he had awakened through his music and his work, defying borders and making fans in the most unlikely of places even during the final years of the Cold War.

The musical legacy that he leaves behind and the magic that has given so many of his fans is nothing short of an amazing phenomenon that I feel privileged to have been a part of in my lifetime. I sometimes wonder what that kid ultimately did with his jacket, or if his friend had finally learned the moonwalk, but we can all hear just what his music had brought the world by turning on the radio.

E3: Saboteur still looks fantastic

Sure, it’s a WW2 game, but a WW2 free-roaming city game with sneaking elements and assassinations instead of endless truckloads of Nazis pouring out of houses and cars in FPS mode. Well, it might have a little of that last part, but from what I’ve seen of EA’s new game from Pandemic, I’m eager to see what the final results are going to be like. Pandemic’s responsible for the Mercenaries titles, too, and after playing through Merc 2, I can’t wait to see how they leverage some of that expertise into a covert take on WW2 in Paris.

At E3, they showed off more of the game and explained more of the mechanics behind the gameplay with a sabotage mission against an ammo dump and after waiting for this game ever since it was announced a few years ago, it’s one of my most anticipated titles for the year.

This will not end well.

G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra has some cool boxart

At EA’s presser, we were given a notebook to write down, ah, notes with, and a 2GB USB drive filled with lots of assets, such as the boxart for the upcoming G.I. Joe game based on the movie. Check these out:

The art is the same for the Xbox 360's, but without the neon green of the case. The one for the PS2 is the same along with the Wii.

The PSP's is the same as the console ones, but the DS gets this cool print.

I’ll probably be picking up either the PS3 or Xbox 360 version of the game just to see what it is like. I’ve always been a fan of the cartoon series so if the game brings back some of that nostalgia, it might be a lot of fun. Then again, it’s a movie tie-in game, so I’m still hedging my bets. We’ll see.

Xbox 360 review: Prototype

Anyone for bad guy shishkebabs?

Prototype was a lot of fun, but in some ways, it was a shallow experience that made it as disappointing. Don’t get me wrong, the game has a lot of gore to satisfy the action crowd, plenty of activities to play with, and a free-roaming city to explore, but other than that, there’s isn’t much to sweep it out from beneath Radical Entertainment’s work with the Hulk. That’s probably the worst part of the game for me, that it starts off with a lot of promise but doesn’t push itself as far as I’d wanted to see it go.

Still, not a bad game by any stretch, and it’s a great game to play through as a weekend rental at least.

My classified debriefing can be found here filled with all of the details.