This is your weekly ride on the Halo hype train. It’s an exciting time to be a Halo fan. We’re just over a month out from a major title release, which means the folks over at Microsoft, Bungie, and 343 Industries have started pumping out all of the television adds, articles, and products needed to keep the Halo community drooling, as well as try and hook as many last minute stragglers who might be wandering around the Call of Duty isle.
Well too celebrate Comic Con being a week ago today we’ve got the final set of photo’s from Saturday’s events. Plenty of people dressed up of course booth babes.
Shogun 2 will be the seventh full Total War game, and the first since this years Napoleon: Total War saw great success. The original Shogun: Total War was the first in the Total War series, and the development team at the Creative Assembly have been keen to reiterate that Shogun 2 will return the series to its roots; a full circle, so to speak. This will firstly, and most obviously, see a return to feudal Japan as the setting, and consequently see a slight reduction in terms of scale and the different types of units. Fear not, strategy fans, this reduction should be seen more as a streamlining: the smaller number of units will have far more defined roles on the battlefield.
Alan Wake’s “The Signal” DLC picks up right where the main game ended. Serving as the seventh “episode” of the game, it opens up refreshing our memories with the “previously seen on” trailer utilized through the main game and explains exactly what happened at the end in case we weren’t too sure. Alan has succeeded in saving his wife Alice by destroying the darkness’ avatar in the long deceased Barbara Jagger, but in the process has trapped himself within the darkness. Now, in a twisted and constantly shifting dark mirror of Bright Falls, Alan must find a way out of the darkness before succumbing to the encroaching madness while also figuring out what new presence Alan is fighting against that is using shadows of his memories to try to steer him off the proper path.
This year has been quite the year for games so a few of us at the Xbox team figured we’d count off our top 5 games we played on the Xbox 360 this year so far. Keep in mind, this list is not based to exclusives only.
5. Bioshock 2- Many people, including myself, were skeptical going into Bioshock 2, it had a new developer and the first game felt as if it did not really need a sequel. It did take a while to get going, but once it did, it was a blast. The story was of course nowhere near as spectacular and immersive as its processors but it was enough to keep us chugging along in this beautiful and fun game.
“Now is the time to descend into madness as you explore the dark and twisted world of “The Signal,” the first Game Add-on for “Alan Wake.” In this latest chapter to the critically acclaimed psychological action thriller exclusive to Xbox 360, our favourite writer is in greater peril than ever before as the boundaries between reality and nightmare become disturbingly distorted. Threatening to overwhelm Alan’s mind, the nightmarish mysteries feel chillingly familiar. Keep your flashlight nearby as you get ready to follow “The Signal.”
You know the drill. It’s Trailer Tracker where we at Player Affinity stalk the latest trailers hitting the web like a tiger waiting in the long grass to ambush a tubby tourist taking a pee. Coming off a number of second trailers at Comic Con we take a look at the premier of Zach Snyder’s Sucker Punch but not before jigsaw comes at us in 3D in the final instalment of the “Saw” anthology. We also have the trailers for the indie sci-fi flick Monsters, Stone with Robert DeNiro and Edward Norton and The Company Men with Ben Affleck who seems to be in everything lately. Let’s pounce!
Gamers, generally, are not the wealthiest of clientele. By this logic, a large portion of gamers would, if they had the opportunity, rather play many games for the price of one. Unfortunately, the quick solution to this problem is our good friend piracy. Arguably, no piece of piracy software is more popular today than the R4 for Nintendo’s DS. Unless that is, you live in the UK where the R4’s popularity will undoubtedly start to wane do to officially becoming illegal to sell, advertise and import the device as of today.
It was one of the most controversial decisions in the history of comics. Back in September of 1988, DC Comics opened up a 24-hour vote where fans would decide the fate of Jason Todd, the second Robin in the famed Batman canon. By less than 100 votes, fans decided that Batman would not make it in time to save Jason from the clutches of the Joker and thus complete the now legendary “A Death in the Family” story arc. Flash forward 20 years now (about four or five in the actual DC Universe) and DC decided to find a way to bring Jason back. Batman: Under the Red Hood is the story of how Batman’s greatest failure comes back to haunt him in ways he never could have imagined.
This week’s DVD and Blu-ray releases offer us violence galore. We have the release of the hit Clash of the Titans, which has fights between men, gods and monsters and the very bloody Repo Men that consists of Jude Law with knives. There is martial arts in the form of Hong Kong film Ip Man and the slightly more family friendly but very artistic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. We have animated offerings with a new Batman adventure and the re-release of G.I. Joe: The Movie. And finally we have the Blu-ray release of all the very violent Rambo films that gives us a mix of good and bad films.
