Rock Band Blitz Review

Music games are dead -- at least as we've known them since 2005. Plastic guitars sit on closet floors around the world, Rock of the Dead 2 is nowhere in sight, and even Activision was like, "OK, we'll stop shoving Guitar Hero down your throat." But Rock Band Blitz proves that not every game revolving around music needs to be banished to the Island of Misfit Toys. With fast, challenging gameplay, the $14.99 download's focus on high scores should get you and your friends list bopping to the music on your hard drive once again.

Rather than plug in all those unloved instruments, Rock Band Blitz takes the franchise's note highways and connects them to your controller. You use the shoulder buttons to cycle through the drum, guitar, bass, mic and keyboard highways, and then tap the D-pad and the A button to play the descending notes. (Rock Band Blitz actually supports a number of control options, so feel free to just use the joysticks or whatever to play.)

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And therein lies the rub: Rock Band Blitz is a pretty hardcore game if you want it to be.

The setup is a lot like PS2's Amplitude, PSP's Rock Band Unplugged and Rock Band 3 on the DS -- if you've never played a music game like this, you're missing out. Playing Rock Band Blitz is fun even if you're cursing yourself for missing a long note you had no business missing. The notes are coming no matter what, so you have to be quick on the trigger and willing to jump around to master every track. When you're on a roll, it's easy to feel like god's gift to gaming.

Even if you suck at rhythm games, you'll get your rock star moment as you can't fail out of Rock Band Blitz. No matter how terrible you're doing, the song keeps going. Your only concern is getting the highest score you can, so you're trying to nail the notes in order to score points and keep each highway's individual multiplier growing.

Multipliers are one of the big tweaks developer Harmonix has brought to the gameplay of Blitz. When you hit the prerequisite number of notes on a given track, you raise its multiplier. However you can only raise it by so many in a given section of a song. Cross a checkpoint, and the max multiplier will increase giving you a new ceiling to shoot for -- but your ceiling only increases as much as your lowest track multiplier.

If it sounds confusing in explanation, you just need to play a song to get the gist. If you have all your highways at 4x except for a 2x microphone track, you're only going to have a max of 5x for the next section of the song because 2x is only one away from the lowest multiplier.

This system is equal parts ZOMG excitement and the frustration of hindsight. I love jumping between my tracks and trying to get everyone to the temporary ceiling, but how many times did I ignore a vocal track for too long only to not have enough notes to get it whipped into shape before the checkpoint? (The answer is: a lot.) To truly succeed in Rock Band Blitz, you need an intimate knowledge of the songs so that you've concurred the minimal keyboard notes before a bass solo takes you to a checkpoint.

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Rock Band Blitz is doing for Elton John songs what Pac-Man Championship Edition DX did for pellets.

And therein lies the rub: Rock Band Blitz is a pretty hardcore game if you want it to be. Yes, there are pretty colors and poppy songs to entertain your roommate with, but when he goes to bed, you can sit there and nitpick your performance to death because the game is all about high scores. Before you even launch into a session, you're presented with a song's leaderboard so that you can see how your friends did. When you're playing the song, a meter on the side shows you how your friends were doing at the exact point you're at. When you're done, you can fire off Score War challenges to online buds.

Rock Band Blitz is doing for Elton John songs what Pac-Man Championship Edition DX did for pellets. No matter how good you're doing, there's some way to milk Rock Band Blitz songs for more points, and that's rather ingenious. The game isn't about making music, it's about making a place for yourself on the leaderboards.

Knowing that, allow power-ups to change everything. As you knock out songs, you're earning Blitz Cred and coins. Blitz Cred is the game's experience system, and as you hit milestones, you unlock power-ups such as double points for bass notes and bomb notes that clear off surrounding highways. Before launching into a jam session, you can equip three power-ups, but each time you use a power-up, it costs you coins.

You might see that I crushed Stephen and the Colberts' "Charlene (I'm Right Behind You)," but when you try it, you can't get close to my score. You'll need to tinker with power-ups to find the combo that gives you the edge. On the flip side, I might see you embarrass me at a beloved Weezer song, but seeing as I'm fresh out of coins, I need to go farm some by playing Boston's catalog. Rock Band Blitz is pretty great at keeping you playing and -- if you dig the formula -- loving every minute of it.

My problem is that I wish Rock Band Blitz called out to be played. You can link the game with your Facebook so that Score Wars are just a click away, but I'd rather a message to my console told me KingTut33 beat me at The Police's "Can't Stand Losing You." When I turn on my video game machine, I want updates about my video games -- not when I'm trying to figure out if those two people from high school are still married. From a single-player perspective, I always loved building a band in Rock Band Unplugged, and that's not in Blitz. That carrot on the end of the stick would've been nice, especially for players without Rock Band-lovin' friends.

I did notice some framerate issues when Rock band Blitz got super-colorful and jampacked with notes, but for the most part the game ran well.

I've mentioned a lot of different bands in this review, but it's important to point out that Rock Band Blitz only comes with 25 songs, and as it's a hodgepodge trying to have something for everyone, the list is all over the place, which I dig but I know some who don't. However, all Rock Band downloadable content is compatible with Rock Band Blitz. So if you're like me and religiously bought tracks for the few years when music games were the bee's knees, you've got a hard drive full of Rock Band Blitz goodies. And if you skipped the music game craze, the Rock Band store is bursting with tunes to make you happy. Plus, once you buy Blitz, the new 25 songs can then be played in Rock Band 3 with its plastic instruments and such.

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The Walking Dead Episode Two iOS Dated

Telltale Games announced today that The Walking Dead: The Game - Episode Two: Starved for Help will hit the App Store next week. Gamers will be able to grab the episode for $4.99 as an In-App Purchase within The Walking Dead: The Game. Episodes 2-5 are also available in a single package for a discounted $14.99.

The second episode of the studio’s zombie mega-hit debuted on consoles and PC to significant critical acclaim in late June. IGN awarded the title an 8.5  / 10 Editor’s Choice distinction, praising the game’s impressive storytelling and ability to force heavy moral choices onto players.

The Walking Dead: The Game is compatible with iPad 2 and iPhone 4 devices and newer. Players seamlessly control the action via the touch screen, replacing mouse clicks or controller inputs with simple touch-screen taps.

Telltale hasn’t provided a specific release date, but a launch on Thursday, August 30 seems a safe bet given the history of previous major App Store releases.

Justin is Editor of IGN Wireless. He has been reviewing mobile games since the dark days of Java flip phones. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN.

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How Sound Shapes Shines

In a year of indie wonders, PS3 and Vita musical platform puzzler Sound Shapes is a marvel. Crafted by Queasy Games' Jonathan Mak and Shaw-Han Liem, it’s a darling synthesis of a beautifully simple world and hugely likeable music.

Through the central character, a spinning 'fried egg', players navigate gorgeous worlds, gathering musical notes and creating songs along the way.

Platforming and puzzle-solving are wedded together in levels that somehow manage to glue visual minimalism with environmental complexity. This is a game in which thoughtful progression, rather than twitch, pays dividends, especially for those of us who measure our dull two-dimensional acuity with a pendulum. It’s a stop-and-start adventure swinging through the arc of the screen in search of strange, new aural experiences.

Sound Shapes’ cute charm is a balm for anyone suffering from gaming’s malaise, shooting-dudes-fatigue, the point here being discovery and creation rather than mayhem and gore.

Interesting that the tutorial for the game’s level editor comes very early in the experience, a testament to creativity’s central role. It is already yielding genuinely interesting user-generated offerings. Sound Shapes is an artistic adventure both from the creators and for the players.

Some critics have questioned Sound Shapes’ shortness, knocking points off their crude scoring systems because the game is “over” after a few hours. But replayability is a genuine factor here, in which level variety and a catholic musical overlay demand another look, another listen, just like a good album. In any case, there is a Death Mode for people who enjoy a mind-gnashingly tough challenge.

IGN caught up with Jonathan Mak and Shaw-Han Liem to talk about the game’s genesis and the decisions that went into its design. Here are the seven creative steps that culminated in one of the year’s best small-team games.

1. Experimentation

The team had previously created Everyday Shooter, which synthesized a classic game genre with musical exploration. Mak says, “The challenge for us was, ‘how do we give the player more ownership over the music’? Allowing players to actually create music within the game. So when we exhausted the Everyday Shooter style. We kept trying different things, different genres.

“The reason we chose a platformer was, we wanted to find some super-ubiquitous form of video game. A top-down shooter is kind of abstract. It has some weird rules. Certain things you can touch, certain things you can't. If you've never played a video game, you might not really understand that.

“But a platformer already has some real-world things built in. There's gravity. There's a character that walks around. Although I f***ed that up and made the character a fried egg [chuckles]. And the whole going from left-to-right. Classically, the platformer goes the same way. It's similar to how you read music and so it makes sense in that way.”

2. Design

Each of the ‘albums’ that make up the game carry a different musical style and visual story, but they all adhere to a distinctive look, a felt-board collection of shapes and colors that never fails to delight and surprise.

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‘Whoa, what is this crazy sound?’ That sense of discovery. You want the player to feel that.”

Mak says the simple aesthetic was designed to give the player as much access to its music as possible. “You need some way to show the player the gameplay features, the checkpoints, in such a way that it doesn't draw attention away from the stuff that's actually making music. But I think Shaw-Han and I share the same liking of the idea of a clean aesthetic. Luckily, we found [designer] Cory Schmitz.  It just feels more modern. You look at the iPhone. Simple is the way to go.”

3. Gameplay

The elegance of the game’s design is underpinned by its relatively forgiving nature. This is no pixel-Nazi platformer. Once the rules of the world are understood, progression is less a matter of hand-eye-perfection as of timing. Music’s own playbook being the obvious inspiration.

Mak says, “Is about enjoying the music, getting players engaged in music, and inspiring them to write their own music as well. Our worst fear was making some sort of musical toy. I really wanted to get to the point where the game was, for real, a video game. Not just this musical gimmicky thing with some half-assed video game slapped over it. Part of the magic of Sound Shapes was how Shaw-Han was insistent that the game itself be a music instrument.”

4. Music

One of the great commercial and cultural successes of the last decade has been selling the illusion of creativity as entertainment. This idea that, with the right tools, we are all towering mountains of artistic genius just waiting to be mined.

Because, let’s face it, there are few things in entertainment more rewarding than the sensation of creativity. The genius of Sound Shapes is in turning a two-dimensional left-to-right progression into an act of musical composition. Of course, the music is really just being ‘read’ by your movements, but it feels like the songs are being untethered by player-choices.

Mak says, “The game is a gateway to the music. It’s showing people that writing music is easy. We let the players discover that for themselves, and that discovery is what's fun. It's like if you're tweaking a patch on a synth and you discover this crazy thing by turning a knob. ‘Whoa, what is this crazy sound?’ That sense of discovery. You want the player to feel that.”

5. Synthesis

That great human invention, musical notation, allows us to visualize and record pitch, tone, duration, and has been with us for centuries (arguably, millennia). Although Sound Shapes moves the player in every direction on-screen, it works much like a musical score, left-to-right with high notes high, and low notes low.

Shaw-Han Liem explains, “Obviously there's a connection. The music and visuals have things in common. You can map relationships, like tones to colors and volumes to sizes. The timing of animations to the curves of volume.

“There are certain things that map pretty naturally across the two aspects. But of course, not only do these things have to sound good and look good, but they have to be understandable in a game world and meaningful in a way where they work with the logic of a 2D platforming game, I think that's where you start. It's really the intersection of those things when it becomes a big design challenge.”

6. Pitch Perfection

Of course, this synthesis sounds pretty straightforward in principle, but in practice, a platform game and a musical score are not the same things, and they both demand absolute perfect placement within the rules of their own domains. A lava pit that cannot be traversed is no use. Likewise, a duff note will ruin an entire composition.

So, the note floating above the lava pit, assailed by shooting bubbles of magma, must be in harmony with its surroundings.

Mak says, “With scoring the levels, even the placement of the notes, we'd have to be super-careful. Towards the end, we'd be like, okay, I need to move this ground here one pixel, but that might change the rhythm bit. I'd need to move a note down, and then there's this huge day-long discussion about this note moving down and what we should do about it. It can get really intricate.

“In the editor for players, it's kind of a whimsical experience, and obviously that's what we intended. But when we're crafting our levels, we have this mindset of perfection. It's hard to be perfect when you have all these variables floating around.”

7. Level Edits

Sound Shapes’ greatest puzzle is its level editor, which invites you to not only create platform worlds, but to work-in a musical theme. This offers limitless creative possibilities.

Liem says, “After about a week from when we launched in North America, there were already thousands of levels, and tons of really cool ones. We've been watching people starting their own communities on different message boards and sharing different tips and levels.

“I got a message from a guy who said he was at his job secretly sketching out what his level was going to be at his desk, and he was sending out the images and the drawings of what he was planning on doing once he got home and was able to put it together. Obviously we hoped that people would be excited by it, but to be able to see that happening first-hand with some people is really exciting.”

Colin Campbell is a British-born, Santa-Cruz based games journalist, working for IGN. I really think you'll like Sound Shapes. You can contact me via Twitter or IGN to discuss this game.

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Ubisoft: PC has Piracy Rate of 93-95%, F2P the Future

Ubisoft's CEO Yves Guillemot has revealed that the percentage of people who pay in free-to-play games is roughly the same as those who buy boxed games.

So high are the rates of piracy (5-7%), Ubisoft is actively looking to the F2P model as an important way of making money from the PC market going forward, especially in territories badly affected by piracy.

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Online is one of Ubisoft's latest titles to take advantage of this model.

"We want to develop the PC market quite a lot and F2P is really the way to do it," said Guillemot in an interview with GamesIndustry International. "The advantage of F2P is that we can get revenue from countries where we couldn't previously - places where our products were played but not bought. Now with F2P we gain revenue, which helps brands last longer.

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Now with F2P we gain revenue, which helps brands last longer.

"It's a way to get closer to your customers, to make sure you have a revenue. On PC it's only around five to seven per cent of the players who pay for F2P, but normally on PC it's only about five to seven per cent who pay anyway, the rest is pirated. It's around a 93-95 per cent piracy rate, so it ends up at about the same percentage. The revenue we get from the people who play is more long term, so we can continue to bring content."

Ubisoft recently announced a range of F2P titles at Gamescom, including Anno Online, The Settlers Online, Silent Hunter Online, and Heroes of Might Heroes Online.

Is F2P really the future of PC gaming? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Daniel is IGN's UK Staff Writer. You can be part of the world's worst cult by following him on IGN and Twitter.

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The Hunger Games Blu-ray Review

The Hunger Games was one book I intentionally ignored reading before seeing the film. I'd read all seven Harry Potter books before those films made it to the big screen, and couldn't help but feel the sting of every little moment that got axed. While I adore those films, part of me was ever so slightly disappointed by almost every single one of them. Instead of focusing on what the filmmakers got right, I found myself analyzing what got cut out. Following that series, I made it a habit to read the book after the fact. It allows the book and film to exist separate from one another, with the comparisons being less harsh.

I'm also reminded of a great quote I once read from John Irving, the novelist and screenwriter of The Cider House Rules. Tangled in drafts and conflict with the production team, he finally decided to stop adapting his book to the letter, and started focusing on making the best film he could. I'm paraphrasing, but his quote went something like this: We're not making a book, we're making a film.

Such is the case with The Hunger Games, a divisive motion picture that enraged some fans, but also seemed to capture the attention, and admiration, of many fans and non-fans alike. Adapting The Hunger Games is really a catch-22. After all, the book is a bit of an anti-commercial commentary on the sensationalistic nature of realty TV, while also digging on the domination and destructive nature of the 1%, so to speak. It's hard not to sensationalize aspects of the movie in order to sell it to the mainstream crowd, but with a PG-13 rating, there's a fine line between what is and isn't acceptable. Some have commented that the film feels neutered – such is the case when trying to find that bigger audience.

Also, leading up to the film's release, the buzz among non-fans and movie nuts was that the film was a watered-down, Americanized version of the Japanese cult hit, Battle Royale. While those comparisons are certainly valid on some level, Battle Royale isn't the first story to dive into the reality TV craze, nor is it the first to explore our thirst for violence, mayhem and death. That dates all the way back to the days of the Roman empire, and far beyond. And even novels like Lord of the Flies explore what happens when teens are pitted against one another.

As an outsider, viewing The Hunger Games for the first time, I saw a wholly compelling, well-made, multi-layered teen thriller that was largely a metaphor for the angst-addled trials and tribulations of high school life, and the various social structures that seem designed to tear us down at that age.

The circus of The Hunger Games – the crowds of wildly dressed clowns (a sort of mixture of steam punk and hipster) surrounding the contestants – are the teachers, the parents, the counselors and various relatives – each telling the young students what to do and how to survive. Each are watching with their own motivations – some selfishly or enviously.

Instead of cutthroat tests and GPA contests – where being the best student lands the best scholarship, and one point means the world – are the games themselves. Some students will do anything to win. Some feel forced into competing. Others are angered by the perceived redneck who happens to be naturally better or smarter than the hardworking studious youth who feels entitled to the crown. Others simply succumb to a harsh competitive spirit, and want nothing more than to watch their peers fail. There's even a fleeting romance between two teens simply trying to survive the trenches of high school.

This may not be the point of Suzanne Collins' trilogy, but it's the metaphor that stands out the most in director Gary Ross' film, and it's what made the movie entertaining, alluring and often frightening.

 Hunger Games' Josh Hutcherson on Peeta's Progress

The Hunger Games isn't a film that's trying to glamorize violence, either, as some have suggested. That said, the graphic violence depicted in the film definitely pushes the boundaries of the PG-13 rating, so plan appropriately if you're a parent. On that level, the movie doesn't yell at its audience for enjoying the picture or investing in the characters or the story (like Diary of the Dead did, for example), but instead allows the viewer to come to their own conclusions about the film's metaphors and social commentary. If you walk out of The Hunger Games and you rooted for people to die, you missed the point.

The story was a tragedy, on every level. It's a tragedy for Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) who must compete in a war of senseless violence. It's a tragedy for Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson), who's unsure whether Katniss actually feels love for him. And it's even a tragedy for the perceived villains of the story, who trained for this day for their entire lives and saw it all erased by Katniss and Peeta.

The film isn't without its share of flaws, of course. The world itself isn't properly set up in the beginning, leaving a questionable string of logic for what follows. The morose setting of the first act doesn't help much, either. Some characters aren't quite fleshed out as nicely as they should have been. And for a world that's allegedly filled with hungry people, pretty much everyone looks fit as a fiddle. Visual effects are often laughably bad, too, even though set design and costumes are downright Oscar worthy. The shaky camerawork can also get a little nauseating at times.

But those are only minor setbacks in an otherwise stunning first chapter in this inevitable trilogy of striking morality plays. The action is compelling, brutal and tragic – balancing the dark nature of the narrative without playing too excessive or exploitative. The Hunger Games may be a flawed beast, to be sure, but there's plenty of subtext to glean from the narrative, and a slew of wonderfully rich characters worth investing in.

The Hunger Games Blu-ray arrives courtesy of Summit and Lionsgate Home Entertainment. The film is presented in 2.40:1 widescreen, encoded in 1080p/AVC and mixed in thunderous 7.1 DTS-HD Master Audio. Considering that this is easily Lionsgate's biggest film this year, there was a lot riding on this presentation, and the disc itself does not disappoint.

The transfer is stunning in almost every way. Colors are bold and vivid, but morose and subdued when they need to be. Textures, shadows and image depth are top notch, with very little bleed or inconsistency. Film grain is a bit on the heavy side (The Hunger Games was shot on Super 35, so that's not surprising), but it's naturalistic and gritty, adding further texture to the story. The encode itself suffers little artifacting, though some noise was detected during darker, nighttime shots. On the whole, this is a reference transfer that brings the dazzling imagery of the picture to life.

Audio is also reference grade. The 7.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track is both nuanced and aggressive, with atmospheric surround usage, perfect balancing, crystal clear dialogue and hefty, moody bass. Never once was there a single high-end crackle or distortion noted. This mix allows for an immersive listening experience that brings you straight into the action.

The Hunger Games Blu-ray includes two discs – one for the film and a disc full of bonus features. There's also a Digital Copy of the film, and an UltraViolet copy. Disc one is relatively free of goodies, other than a few promos and trailers. There's also a nifty DTS-HD calibration feature. It's a shame all discs don't have this feature as a standard goodie.

Moving on to disc two, there's a slew of material to explore, starting with The World is Watching: Making The Hunger Games, an incredible feature-length documentary chronicling the entire production. It's rare to see documentaries like this much anymore, and I whole-heartedly commend Lionsgate for offering up something this cool. Needless to say, if you're a fan of the film or the book series, this documentary is well worth a look.

The remaining bonus features are mostly fluff, albeit interesting and informative fluff, which isn't surprising considering how much ground is covered in the 140-minute documentary. There are five additional featurettes, totaling about 45 minutes. They include a look at the game center, an examination of director Gary Ross and discussions with Suzanne Collins, Gary Ross and Elvis Mitchel, and Donald Sutherland. The second disc concludes with 90-second propaganda film and a marketing archive for The Hunger Games, including trailers, posters and photos from the film.

Even with the odds stacked against it, The Hunger Games turned out to be a pretty fantastic piece of sci-fi cinema that rides a very fine line between compelling and exploitative, and manages to make the morose, fantastical setting and violent themes work. For some, the adaptation is less than perfect. But for others, particularly newcomers, the film will only inspire more to read the original books. As for the Blu-ray – if you dug this film, this disc is worth owning. With a terrific transfer, knockout audio, and an outstanding collection of bonus features, there's little reason to skip this disc. The Hunger Games survives the competition.

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Darksiders II Review

Darksiders II represents the latest offering from developer Vigil Games, a direct follow-up to the 2010 original. Much like its predecessor, Darksiders II provides some solid action, albeit nestled amid a somewhat flawed experience. It’s also possibly the most derivative game ever made - borrowing adventure and puzzle elements from The Legend of Zelda, action from God of War, platforming from Prince of Persia, and tone from some hellfire version of Lord of the Rings. That’s not necessarily a bad thing - an amalgamation of such incredible franchises could have resulted in the game to end all games. The thing is, if you’re going to so blatantly derive material from such well-known properties, you better nail it. While Darksiders II provides a lengthy and entertaining experience for action adventure fans to sink their teeth into, in the end it never comes close to reaching the heights of the various franchises it so freely borrows from.

Darksiders II further fleshes out the story of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse introduced in the first title - this time with War’s brother, Death, at the helm. Death believes that War has been wrongfully convicted of destroying mankind, and seeks to restore humanity to clear his brother’s name. The narrative is pretty entertaining, if not severely overdramatic. Though it should please anyone solely in the market for ‘epic,’ it lacks any trace of subtlety and often comes off as sophomoric. Given that the end result of any plot advancement is inevitably that Death needs to gather three of something and thrash some skeletons, hearing the characters go on about the old ways and soul judgement just feels a bit silly. However, if a healthy dose of ridiculous doesn’t faze you, the contrived reasons for Death’s various escapades through heaven, hell and everywhere in between do provide an amusing backdrop for his quest.

The majority of the adventure comprises rather standard action fare - Death wields both a fast primary weapon and a slow but powerful secondary weapon, and you chain together moves to slash your way through the various enemies.  There are also a few special abilities you gain along the way - like the ability to summon demon lords to do your bidding or to split your soul in two to solve dungeon puzzles. The game plays fine with a mouse and keyboard, but it’s best if you have a controller - this is clearly how the game was meant to be played, and in any case tracking down the menu to remap keys is a huge pain. The game also doesn’t allow for hot-swapping between controller and keyboard/mouse controls, so you’ll have to reboot if you want to switch.

The action segments are enjoyable enough - inasmuch as it’s hard to make slicing up undead baddies unenjoyable. Still, it’s disappointing that most of the enemies require next to no strategy to overcome. When you do come across an enemy that requires strategy to best, the joy of slaying it is truly satisfying - but these occurrences are few and far between. Most of the time, the answer is just to wait for the enemy to make their move, dodge, then attack. It’s still fun, because dodging and attacking are fun things to do in an action game, but it does get irritatingly repetitive after several hours of the same old song and dance.

One of the touted selling points of Darksiders II is that it’s far bigger than its predecessor - with a map that’s more than twice as big and a campaign that’s about three times longer than the original adventure. Unfortunately, in this case, bigger definitely isn’t better. The freedom Darksiders II offers is something to behold - you’re able to journey around huge areas as you please, slashing enemies and seeking out treasure and loot drops to your heart’s content. But the bloated environments are simply too barren and often devoid of anything interesting to do or see. Since so little is done to vary up the gameplay, the pacing drags and the length of the adventure feels more like a chore than a bonus.

The main problem is that the bulk of the adventure is repetitive. While it’s completely possible to reuse game mechanics throughout a campaign and still keep it feeling fresh, Darksiders II doesn’t achieve this. You’ll find yourself climbing wooden ledges and pegs, setting off bombs, and rolling balls over and over again in exactly same way, instilling a gnawing sense of deja vu. If these mechanics were employed in varied and clever ways, that would be one thing - but they’re not. I found myself rarely challenged by any puzzle I came across, and was often astonished that I was once again expected to repeat the same menial task I had just completed in the previous dungeon, or even in the previous room.

This is no place for a horse.

On the bright side, Darksiders II does offer up some truly epic boss fights to vary up the repetition, ones that will put your skills to the test and are truly exciting to overcome. You’ll fight all kinds of epic demons - ones that can regenerate, ones that are about 100 times your size, and ones that are just plain brutal in their assault patterns. The bosses are one of the highlights of the experience, offering a glimpse of what Darksiders II could have been had the entire quest been as varied and balanced as these memorable battles. 

As for gamers who don’t like fetch quests - this game is not for you. Seriously, the entire game is a fetch quest. All you do is run from area to area, fetching three of these, then three of these, then two of these, then three more of these with combat in between. As someone who honestly doesn’t mind a healthy dose of fetching in their games, Darksiders II still pushed my limits. You end up fetching so much and for so long that the majority of the game feels pretty pointless by the end. Can’t anyone in these various realms do their own errands, for crying out loud?

In truth, the game would have benefitted from being a skosh smaller and a lot more focused. In this way, the original game beats its sequel, as a more linear adventure that keeps the action coming befits this franchise’s intense style of gameplay. After all, there is a limit to how long you can run through similar environments and solve similar puzzles in order to appease your bloodlust for smashing things with cool weapons.

One of the game’s stronger elements is its art design and voice direction. It’s incredible that you can grow so fond of a main character who literally never emotes, as he’s wearing a skull mask for the entirety of the adventure. Death’s awesome voicework doesn't hurt either - hearing him growl at the Makers or deliver lines like, “This is no place for a Horse,” or “You find something for a change,” is inexplicably enjoyable. Even though he’s pretty impossible to relate to - being the embodiment of death and all - his design and presentation still do a great job of making him someone you want to see to his journey’s end.

While too many of the environments in Darksiders II are shockingly similar, some of them are well thought out and epic to behold, as are many of the characters and enemies found within. The visual presentation in this version of Darksiders II also fares better than its console counterparts, though the graphics options are bare minimum compared to other PC games. They get the job done, but don’t allow for the minor tweaks and alterations that PC gamers love. The good news is that the game runs much smoother as a result - gone are the framerate issues of the other versions, replaced by a silky smooth experience. The downside is that while the graphics are good, they’re not great. Things could look crisper, and there are still some shockingly bad textures underscoring the inspired art design. Considering the lack of customization and clumsy menus, this PC version comes off as a somewhat lazy port - but hey, at least it’s far less choppy.

I bet his shoulders are freezing.

A frustrating detractor to Darksiders II is the sheer amount of random glitches you’ll encounter along the way - ones that can’t be accounted for and appear and disappear for seemingly no reason at all. Seeing Death floating above the ground or over thin air is not uncommon, nor is pressing B to perform an action command only for nothing to happen until a few button presses later. Other random glitches I encountered include the inability to discard boots, ally AI that just stands in the corner staring at the wall, a Primary Quest icon that leads you in the wrong direction (then shift positions when you check the in-menu map), and an absence of music and sound effects until the game was reset - and that’s just to name a few. Most of these glitches only last for a short while, then disappear never to surface again. Others, like a targeting system that rarely seems to target the closest enemy or a camera that is often pointing in an inopportune direction, are quite persistent. Sadly, they’re things you’ll just have to learn to cope with if you hope to see Death’s journey to its conclusion. 

The funny thing is, despite its lengthy list of flaws and failures, Darksiders II still manages to offer an enjoyable experience. Despite its lack of variety, the combat is still satisfying to engage in, especially when you run across a behemoth of a boss. And even though there’s not enough to do in them, running around such huge environments is still incredible. Certain abilities you amass along the way - like the Deathgrip or the summoning ability - are terribly fun to play with, and make for some really cool dungeon moments (like dashing across a wall and Deathgripping at the last moment to reach the other side). It’s also worth noting that the game picks up considerably towards the end, finally finding its stride for the last few dungeons. The puzzles get more creative, the enemies and environments more varied - it’s just a shame it takes about 30 or so hours to get to this point.

Possibly the best part of the adventure, something that all action RPG games could learn from, is its implementation of RPG elements such as equipment and customization. Weapons found on the field can be instantly equipped or sent to your inventory with a single button press. Furthermore, each piece of equipment’s stats are displayed when you walk near it, as well as how it will raise or lower your own stats should you equip it. This makes fast decision making a breeze, and greatly increases the joy of seeking out the best armor to equip Death with. Every weapon or bit of armor you equip also changes Death’s appearance, which is a cool touch in making character customization feel more personal. The concept of cursed artillery, which you can ‘feed’ other items to, is also a great way to make the underpowered loot you come across feel like less of a waste. The way equipment is handled in Darksiders II is a true revolution in RPG gameplay, and one of the most solid parts of the experience.

Calling on Death’s bird, Dust, to show you the general direction you should go, and the deeply engrained Fast Travel system (which lets you instantly warp back to certain areas on the fly) are also great innovations for the genre. It’s a true shame the game’s impressive contributions are so severely undermined by its sheer amount of flaws and glitches.

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LEGO Lord of the Rings Rebuilds Middle-Earth

There’s no denying the LEGO games are hugely popular, but they’re certainly guilty of retreading the same format time and again. Thank Gandalf then, that LEGO Lord of the Rings promises to mix up the formula a little and deliver something that remains faithful to the series, but is fresh at the same time.

LEGO Lord of the Rings follows in the footsteps of its predecessors by bringing the best scenes from the movies to life, and putting you right at the heart of the action. You’ll venture deep within the mines of Moria, explore the splendor of Rivendell and endure the exhausting climactic battle against the Uruk-Hai at Helm’s Deep. Indeed, the Two Towers’ finale was one new area Traveller’s Tales showed off at Gamescom and its every bit as chaotic as it’s cinematic counterpart.

As the orc horde pours forward Legolas, Gimli and Aragorn look out over the ramparts. Seconds later the assault begins, with siege ladders slamming into the wall. You’ve got to push them back, using Legolas to shoot the Uruk-Hai clambering over the top, before switching to Gimli, whose extra strength is enough to shove the ladders back from where they came.

“

Much of the Helm’s Deep action is recreated scene by scene.

The attack continues, with more ladders funneling enemies into the firing line, before the camera tracks down to ground level to follow a torch-wielding berserker charging towards a cluster of bombs, They explode and the castle walls are blown sky high, and, this being a LEGO game, blocks of all shapes and sizes ping off in every direction before the relentless battle continues.

It all feels strangely familiar, but for once it’s not because we’ve seen the same gameplay rolled out for before, but because it’s follows the movies so closely. Much of the Helm’s Deep action is recreated scene by scene, and because the game uses dialogue ripped straight from the movies it feels like the most authentic LEGO game yet.

It is still a LEGO game though, which means it’s bursting with humour and puzzles, not to mention places to explore. This is best demonstrated in the new streaming hub world, which – literally – takes in every corner of Middle-earth. It co-exists alongside the main story game and as you beat different chapters of the game new areas of the map are unlocked.

“

It is still a LEGO game though, which means it’s bursting with humour and puzzles, not to mention places to explore.

You’ll start in the idyllic calm of Hobbiton before progressing on to Bree, Rivendell, Rohan and beyond. Climb to the peak of Weathertop and you can look over to the Misty Mountains and across to Isenguard, and of course ultimately Mordor. And once you’ve completed the story part of the game all of this is open to your little hero and you’re able to run from one side of the world to the other if you so desire.

However, there’s more to this hub world than just vast expanses of gorgeous terrain. There are enemies to fight and puzzles to solve, and well as secrets to discover. You’ll find LEGO blocks made from precious Mithril, which you can forge to make tough armour or boots that enable you to jump further, or trade in to purchase high-end magical items. There are new weapons to discover too, which you’ll need to use throughout the land to progress further.

Currently much of Middle-earth is bare, with Traveller’s Tales admitting its still populating the different realms to make it feel like a living, breathing world. But already it looks impressive and in places it smacks of Skyrim, albeit with little stubby guys running round, scooping up bits of plastic.

Certainly, it’s great to see the LEGO series take a bold step, and while it might not be in an all-new direction the addition of an entire world will be a welcome one for veterans and newcomers alike.

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Last Week's Best iPhone Games

Almost all great iPhone games can be sorted into three major categories: bathroom, train or airplane. Bathroom games offer up a few minutes of snap fun but don’t hold up under the scrutiny of lengthy play sessions. Train games are too meaty or complex for short bathroom visits but offer up the perfect morning commute distraction. Finally, airplane games give gamers a full console-quality experience. They might cost more, but they can provide hours of unbroken entertainment.

Mobile gaming moves so fast it can be hard to keep up, even if you subscribe to IGN’s daily App Store Update. If you’re a busy gamer looking for the scoop on which time-killer, commute-easer or 20-hour epic to pick up, we’ve got you covered.

Top Time-Killer

Of the three categories, these quick-hit bathroom games are the most often misunderstood by gamers. They’re simple time killers. By design they are ultra-casual and ultra-simple. Short rounds of Fruit Ninja or Angry Birds aren’t meant to replace the time you spend with Skyrim or Call of Duty. They are meant to replace the time you spent reading the back of the shampoo bottle.

Gasketball (More Info)  (Buy)

“OK, I’m going to go off the ceiling, through the teleporter, onto the conveyor belt and then nothing but net.”

Gasketball is an asynchronous multiplayer game with a set of H.O.R.S.E.-style rules. You compete with your friends (or strangers) to see who can create the most elaborate shots possible using an ever-escalating set collection of gadgets and obstacles. The catch is that before sending a challenge to your friends, you have to successfully make the shot yourself. It’s a lesson in physics, motor skills and puzzle design all rolled into one.

Get a few games going, then kill any free minutes catching up on your turns.

Honorable Mention: Pitfall 

Top Commuter Game

Gamers that drive to work can’t truly appreciate the commuting doldrums of those that travel via bus or train. Sure people-watching is entertaining for a while, but eventually more gamers will strive for a meaty mobile game to fill the time. It needs to be lightweight enough that it doesn’t require your full attention but deep enough to remain fun for plenty of 20-30+ minute rides.

Cafeteria Nipponica (More Info)  (Buy)

Famed sim-maker Kairosoft’s latest gives gamers the opportunity to build and run their own collection of restaurants. Hire staff, set the décor, find ingredients, discover recipes and more. Cafeteria Nipponica is not in Kairosoft’s top tier. The player doesn’t make enough major decisions to break the feeling that the game is on rails, and too much time is spent simply waiting for money to accumulate. But it’s still a perfect train game because it's tailor-made for medium-length gameplay sessions. By the time you get to work you’ll have managed at least one major restaurant upgrade or recipe breakthrough. You’re always one step away from the next big reward.

Top Multi-Hour Epic

Airplane Games are best for gamers that have serious time to kill. At their best, a good airplane game will provide a console-quality experience free from compromise. At the very least it should offer up enough hours of unbroken fun to help you forget the screaming baby in the seat behind you.

Organ Trail: Director’s Cut (More Info)  (Buy)

Organ Trail’s premise is simple: imagine the classic PC & Apple II sim Oregon Trail… but with zombies. It is every bit as bleak and awesome as you’re probably imagining. For bonus dark humor, name your party after your friends. In my first game Colin Moriarity was instantly abducted by bandits and killed in the rescue attempt. Daemon Hatfield lost an arm and eventually succumbed to his wounds when I ran out of medkits. Andrew Goldfarb was bitten and I was forced to put him down before he turned on the group.

Your station wagon losing its muffler becomes a major concern due to its noise-attracting undead. Bison-hunting has been replaced with frantic zombie defense scenarios. Every new city you visit has a ravaged, post-apocalyptic skyline lovingly rendered with a small handful of blocky colors.

Honorable Mention: World Conqueror II

Justin is Editor of IGN Wireless. He has been reviewing cell phone games since the dark days of Java flip phones. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN.

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Coco Game Controller Hits Kickstarter

Apple's iOS devices have sparked a mobile gaming revolution, but let's face it: Real games need real, tactile buttons, and a new Kickstarter campaign aims to add them to four sizes of devices.

The brainchild of Milkshake Labs, the Coco Controller is a planned smartphone case to convert your mobile device into a real handheld game controller, complete with the hardware buttons gamers crave.

• Check out the Kickstarter

Unlike other gaming cases already on the market, the Coco isn't limited strictly to Apple's iOS devices - in fact, there are four sizes planned for the Coco, with support for the Samsung Galaxy S III, the iPhone 4/4S, the fourth-generation iPod touch and the forthcoming sixth-generation iPhone.

Yes, you read that right - Milkshake is allowing Kickstarter pledges to choose which case they want in November, by which time Apple will have certainly released their latest iPhone and the Coco will be ready for it!

Coco includes one multi-axis directional pad, one analog stick, four action buttons and two triggers, and best of all it requires no battery and no Bluetooth connection. An audio out jack at the bottom of the case allows users to plug in headphones or speakers, which is also the same method the case uses to draw power and device communication from. Kickstarter backers can also vote on which colors the Coco will be available before launch.

The creators of the Coco are aiming to raise $175,000 by September 12, and currently have the support of 31 mobile games, but are in "serious talks with several of the largest game studios" and plan to expand support for other titles by the time the case ships.

J.R. is a recovering independent feature film producer/director who turned a love of shiny gadgets into a steady stream of gigs writing about them for fun and profit. He can be frequently be found talking nonsense on Twitter and IGN.

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Gears of War Dev Joins BioShock Infinite Team

Former Epic Games director of production Rod Fergusson has joined Irrational Games. Fergusson himself confirmed the news on Twitter, writing “Yes it's true, I'm leaving my family at Epic to join my new family at Irrational in Boston starting tomorrow. And yes I've played Infinite and it's amazing! Can't wait for you guys to get your hands on it.”

While Fergusson’s formal title hasn’t been revealed, he’s presumably replacing director of product development Tim Gerritsen who departed Irrational yesterday. Gerritsen’s responsibilities included “overseeing the product development division of the company,” reporting progress to corporate, negotiating contracts, hiring and recruitment.

Meanwhile, reports from Kotaku suggest that two multiplayer modes originally planned for BioShock Infinite have been canceled, including one that involved fighting waves of toys inside of an arcade machine, and another that offered a co-op option for completing missions. News of both comes from sources allegedly within Irrational, though creative director Ken Levine simply commented “As I've always said we are experimenting with things, and only if they are good enough will we put them in the game” when asked.

BioShock Infinite is currently set to hit Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC on February 26, 2013.

Andrew Goldfarb is IGN’s associate news editor. Keep up with pictures of the latest food he’s been eating by following him on Twitter or IGN.

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NPD: NCAA 13 Has Big Launch, 3DS Sales Increase

The NPD Group has revealed the top ten best-selling games in the United States for the month of July.

The best-selling titles of the month, in order, are:

1. NCAA Football 13 (360, PS3)
2. Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes (Wii, 360, NDS, PS3, 3DS, PSV, PC)
3. The Amazing Spider-Man (360, PS3, 3DS, NDS, Wii)
4. Just Dance 3 (Wii, 360, PS3)
5. Batman Arkham City (360, PS3, PC)**
6. Call of Duty: Black Ops (360, PS3, DS, Wii, PC)**
7. Assassin's Creed: Revelations (360, PS3, PC)
8. NBA 2K12 (360, PS3, Wii, PSP, PS2, PC)
9. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (360, PS3, Wii, PC)**
10. Dead Island (360, PS3, PC)**

**(includes CE, GOTY editions, bundles, etc. but not those bundled with hardware)

According to NPD analyst Anita Frazier, Pokemon Conquest would be among the top 10 for the month if the chart included individual SKU sales rather than combining sales from all platforms. Frazier notes that Batman: Arkham City and Dead Island “both received a boost in sales due to the release of Game of the Year editions.”

Frazier adds that while sales for hardware and software were down for the month, sales of accessories were up, “driven by increases in points and subscriptions game cards as well as the Skylanders character packs.” She adds that “Between the characters that are packaged with the Skylanders game and the sales of the separate character packs, over 25 million individual Skylanders figures have been sold through at retail in the U.S. since the launch of the game in October 2011.”

On the hardware front, Frazier notes that all platforms had decreased sales this month other than 3DS and DS, which saw increases in sales compared to June. 3DS is also the only system to see a sales increase compared to this month in 2011.

More details coming…

Andrew Goldfarb is IGN’s associate news editor. Keep up with pictures of the latest food he’s been eating by following him on Twitter or IGN.

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Detention Blu-ray Review

The ingredients for Detention, starring “it” kid Josh Hutcherson (The Hunger Games) and newcomer Shanly Caswell, are quite simple. You mix equal parts of Heathers, Mean Girls, Scream, Napoleon Dynamite, Crank, Donnie Darko, Cabin Fever, Eyes Wide Shut, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Superbad and maybe Planet Terror. Then you add a little Back to the Future, Star Trek, a sprinkle of My So-Called Life and a dash of UHF...and whatever else you might have lying around. Blend.

The results are a hypnotic hipster acid trip – a brazenly irreverent jolt to the system that screams cult gem. Simply put, Detention will either have you yelling at the screen, angry that the film loses focus quicker than a child with ADD, or you'll simply sit back and enjoy the weird-ass, shockingly original, ride this film is poised to take you on. And to be honest, if you fall on the side of hate, you're not wrong for feeling that way. After all, not every film is meant to work with all audiences. And Detention definitely tests one's enjoyment of the odd and bizarre.

But Joseph Kahn's rapid-fire cerebral comedy is nothing short of brilliant. Not only does the film harbor enough spirit and humor for at least six films, but Detention also captures the intoxicating zeitgeist of a generation built entirely on empty cliches, irony, merciless energy and hollow nostalgia, sped up thanks to the never-ending 24-hour TMZ-infused cycle. Kahn's voice doesn't necessarily speak for all kids, but rather, he speaks for those who've reached the precipice of their own sanity, and are left pondering their existence, and what's next.

What does their generation mean if all they have are meaningless Facebook updates, texts, tweets and shallow ideas born from the '70s, '80s and '90s, packaged and recycled as something fresh and new – something with meaning. While the energetic images and lightning-fast story on-screen feel a bit empty and thin, that's kinda the point. At its heart, Detention is a shockingly meaningful, potent film about the nature of meaninglessness and its damning effects on the younger generation. Why do hipsters exist? Because we created them.

But you don't need to walk into Detention expecting some sort of life revelation. On the surface, the film is enormously entertaining, swapping back and forth between several angst-ridden youngsters, wrapped within an creepy mystery about a murderous killer offing the kids one-by-one. And the ride is nothing short of wild, poking fun at cliches while adding a dash of incredible originality.

There's a school bully, the feminist stereotype, the nervous dork, Star Trek references galore, the angry principal (played by Dane Cook, who's quite tolerable here in his amusing scene-stealing role), a time-traveling bear, a fly man, the big game, bowling, and an ax-wielding psychopath. While the meta-meter is rather high (perhaps annoyingly so), with references to movies, music and pop culture in every corner, Detention dares to be different. It dares to mock the conventions and cliches of its generation, and it manages to churn out a damn fun movie along the way, that is, if you can tolerate a fast, bumpy ride, with plenty of spins, whirls and head-shaking turns.

Detention arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. The film is presented in 2.35:1, encoded in 1080p/AVC, and mixed in 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio. Shot on Red One MX cameras, Detention has a sharp, crisp glossy shine that gives plenty of zip to the splashy colors and intentionally overcooked visual design. While a bit video-like at times, this is a striking presentation that pops right off the screen in the best of ways. Audio is also outstanding and aggressive, with clean, crackle-free dialogue, hearty bass and atmospheric surround usage. Rarely does the track succumb to the crowded narrative.

Extras include a picture-in-picture track loaded with a wealth of info, including behind-the-scenes tidbits, cast and crew interviews and much more. If you dig the film, check it out. Rounding out the extras, there's a quick outtakes reel featuring the “lovable” (please read sarcastically) Dane Cook, a fight scene rehearsal, screen tests and trailers.

Detention is a hard film to describe, let alone recommend. But, if you're a fan of cult gems like Donnie Darko, Heathers or something off-the-wall like The FP (review here), give the film a shot. It looks and sounds terrific on Blu-ray, and the extras add plenty of insight. However, if you're a lover of Josh Hutcherson simply looking for another film with him in it, something straight forward, might I suggest Little Manhattan, the Journey films or Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant instead.

Follow R.L. Shaffer on Twitter, Facebook or MyIGN and party like it's 1992!

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Epic Gives Ex-Kingdom of Amalur Devs a New Home

Epic has formed a new studio comprising many of the developers who worked on Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning at Big Huge Games, before its parent company 38 Studios filed for bankruptcy.

The new venture is called Impossible Studios, and will be based in Maryland. Sean Dunn will head the studio, overseeing its very first project: Infinity Blade: Dungeons, an action RPG for iOS made in collaboration with Epic and Chair Entertainment (the team behind the previous Infinity Blade titles).

Studio Logo

Dunn said, "Epic Games has truly embraced this stellar collection of developers who were displaced by the closing of Big Huge Games. They have looked after us with complete care, giving us all the tools and resources we need to make a lot of gamers happy." Meanwhile,  the president of Epic Games Mike Capps said, "We were so glad we could help keep this great team together, and we're lucky to have them."

"At the time, I said that finding a full team of superstars was 'impossible' and apparently the name stuck! Pairing the imagination and experience of Impossible with Epic's technology, IP and resources makes for a business greater than the sum of its parts."

Are you excited to see what the Amalur dev team does next? Let us know in the comments below.

Daniel is IGN's UK Games Writer. He hopes to live long and prosper. You can follow him on IGN and Twitter.

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This Week on the PSN (08.07.12)

Every Tuesday, Sony drops a bunch of new stuff onto the PlayStation Network. Those with a PlayStation 3, Vita or PSP can download these goodies, which include PSN games, movies, themes and more. While the Official PlayStation Blog outlines these updates in full each week, we thought we'd help truncate the good news into something more digestible.

PSN Games

There are two new retail-to-digital games on the store this week, but that’s not what’s important. What’s important is that Sound Shapes has finally arrived! Keep in mind that purchasing Sound Shapes gets you both the PS3 and Vita versions for the price of one.

• Hyperdimension Neptunia Mk-II ($49.99)
• Sound Shapes ($14.99)
• The King of Fighters XIII ($29.99)

Vita Games

The only new Vita game this week is Sound Shapes… but it was well worth the wait. Remember the note above; purchasing one version gets you both.

• Sound Shapes ($14.99)

PSP Games

There aren’t any new PSP games.

PlayStation Minis

But there is a new Mini.

• Farm Frenzy 3 ($4.99)

PlayStation Plus

There are new PlayStation Plus perks this week, including Episodes 1 and 2 of The Walking Dead free of charge! As a word of warning, Sideway: New York and Choplifter HD will no longer be free as of next week, so get on ‘em while you still can.

• Papo & Yo (PSN, Pre-Order Discount)
• Sound Shapes (PSN/Vita, Discount)
• The Walking Dead, Episode 1: A New Day (PSN, Free)
• The Walking Dead, Episode 2: Starved For Help (PSN, Free)

PSone Classics

There are no PSone Classics this week.

PS2 Classics

There aren’t any PS2 Classics, either.

DLC

As always, let’s examine this week’s new DLC offerings.

First, for PS3 and PSN…

• Adidas miCoach – Rugby Pack ($4.99)
• Darksiders II – Season Pass ($19.99)
• Dragon’s Dogma – Various DLC ($2.99-$6.99)
• Inversion – Various Maps ($1.99 each)
• Mass Effect 3 – Firefight Pack ($1.99)
• PayDay: The Heist – Wolfpack ($9.99)
• Persona 4 Arena – Various DLC ($1.99-$5.99)
• Record of Agarest War 2 – Various DLC (Free-$6.99)
• Rock Band 3 – Various Tracks ($1.99 each)
• Rock Band Network – Various Tracks ($0.99-$1.99)
• Street Fighter x Tekken – Various DLC (Free-$0.99)
• Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception – Tournament Tickets ($4.49-$50.99)

There’s no new Vita DLC.

Demos

There aren’t any new demos this week.

Discounts

But there are some new discounts!

• Normaltanks (Mini)
• PayDay: The Heist (PSN)
• Super Stardust HD (DLC)
• Two Worlds II (Retail)

Colin Moriarty is an IGN PlayStation editor. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN and learn just how sad the life of a New York Islanders and New York Jets fan can be.

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Do Games Need To Be Photorealistic To Evolve Emotionally?

2K Games boss Christoph Hartmann has said that games achieving real-life graphics is needed for the medium to expand into more genres.

Speaking to GamesIndustry International, the company's global president claimed that photorealistic graphics must be pursued if games are to compete with movies.

“

Until games are photorealistic, it'll be very hard to open up to new genres. We can really only focus on action and shooter titles; those are suitable for consoles now.

"Recreating a Mission Impossible experience in gaming is easy; recreating emotions in Brokeback Mountain is going to be tough, or at least very sensitive in this country... it will be very hard to create very deep emotions like sadness or love, things that drive the movies," he said.

"Until games are photorealistic, it'll be very hard to open up to new genres. We can really only focus on action and shooter titles; those are suitable for consoles now.

"To dramatically change the industry to where we can insert a whole range of emotions, I feel it will only happen when we reach the point that games are photorealistic; then we will have reached an endpoint and that might be the final console."

Predictably, his comments have provoked heated reactions from several well known industry figures, including Peter Molyneux, David Cage and BioWare bosses. But some of the most vehement disagreement came from Markus "Notch" Persson; the man behind Minecraft took to his Twitter to share his objections.

He wrote, "No, Christoph, you LIMIT the number of new genres if you focus on photorealism."

"I had way more emotions playing Proteus than I ever did playing any 2K game."

"Also, Futurama has made me feel sad more than most sad movies can. The Sting, Jurrasic Bark, Luck of the Fryish. Photorealistic? No."

So it seems for now that even though the biggest publishers may be pushing graphical boundaries come the next generation, there are more than enough smaller developers ready to rally round and focus on putting gameplay ahead of presentation.

Will better graphics will give the medium greater emotional clout or not? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Luke Karmali is IGN's UK Editorial Assistant. You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on IGN and on Twitter.

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Need For Speed: Most Wanted is How Open-World Racing Should Be

Criterion doesn’t make sequels to other people’s games. They’re quite emphatic about that. Hot Pursuit wasn’t a follow-up to any other Need for Speed, but rather Criterion’s personal take on the theme. Need for Speed: Most Wanted shares its name with another game in this genre-spanning racing brand, but the interpretation is all Criterion’s own. It does feel a bit like a sequel, though, in some ways – not to any of EA’s previous NFS games, but to the developer’s 2008 open-world racer Burnout Paradise.

Most Wanted is an open-world racer too, setting the player down in a shiny, good-looking American-style city with luxuriously wide roads, extremely car-friendly urban architecture and absolutely no cyclicsts to get in the way. You can leap over the freeway, drive up stairs, drift crazily around the end of a pier, antagonise the police and (naturally) take part in street races of every imaginable variety. And here’s the best part: every car in the game is open from the start, hidden somewhere in the city. All you have to do is get out there and find them.

No more staring longingly at greyed-out shiny Ferraris in unlock menus. No more accumulating XP or cash or whatever other arbitrary value for 10 or 30 or 35 hours before you’re allowed to drive the cars that everybody actually wants to drive. There’s just you, the cops, and a secret-packed urban playground designed for absurd driving. And, via an updated and improved version of Autolog, the constant presence of all your friends.

“

Like Hot Pursuit, Most Wanted is a social racing game, making every tiny challenge into a social leaderboard.

Like Hot Pursuit, Most Wanted is a social racing game, making every tiny challenge into a social leaderboard. Autolog is everywhere, populating the city of Fairhaven with competitive gameplay and turning every speed camera and visible billboard into a competition. Fly through the air for the longest time after smashing through a billboard, and your face will appear on it, adorning that same billboard in your friends’ game until one of them beats your record. The game’s hook, really, is the desire to become the most notorious driver amongst your own group of players.

The city of Fairhaven is full of distractions and incentives, security-gated alleyways and secreted cars and underground shortcuts, all designed to make you want to explore its 100-odd miles of road. Open-world racers can often feel directionless, leaving you to tool around in a city without giving you all that much to actually do – Burnout Paradise suffered from this problem – but here Autolog provides you with a constantly-updated list of new score challenges and people to beat, in addition to the races and events that Criterion constructs for you.

“The city has to be inviting and it has to be interesting, and at any point in the game you’re parked up and going zero miles an hour, there should be something interesting to look at,” says creative director Craig Sullivan, whom you might recognise from Most Wanted’s E3 appearance. “A jump in the distance, a ledge you think you can drive onto, a billboard somewhere high up that makes you think ‘How do I get up there?’, or an interesting drift corner, or some back allyways that have security gates up and make you think, if I smash through them what’s down that alleyway? Is it a car? Is it a hidden route that lets me go faster during a race?”

“

Some back allyways that have security gates up and make you think, if I smash through them what’s down that alleyway? Is it a car? Is it a hidden route that lets me go faster during a race?

When Need For Speed: Most Wanted’s emergent gameplay isn’t throwing up anything that grabs your interest, the Easy Drive menu is where the single-player races and challenges are hiding. Lifted straight from Burnout Paradise, it’s a real-time d-pad operated menu that you can use to switch between different cars, find events and tinker with your car’s mods without leaving the driving seat (although it’s a bit difficult to read and operate a menu at the same time as driving at 100mph down a freeway without smashing into other traffic). You can jump around the map straight to specific races from the menu, so you don’t have to drive around looking for events unless you want to. There are bespoke races and challenges for each individual car, and completing them unlocks mods (nitrous, different tyres that make life easier in off-road  races, all sorts), giving you an incentive to stick with each car for a while rather than switching between them every five minutes.

This being Criterion, of course, the cars aren’t treated with po-faced reverence. They’re there to be crashed, shunted and generally abused. “These are the best-looking cars Need for Speed has ever had. That’s just a fact,” says producer Matt Webster. “But it’s in our nature to take something beautiful and want to smash it up.” This is best exemplified by Most Wanted’s totally chaotic multiplayer, which drops you and a big group of other racers into the city and just throws races at you, sending you careening all over the map to meet-up points.

Before the races even start, there’s a melee at these meet-ups, with everyone ramming into everyone else and screeching around the vicinity. A familiar slow-motion takedown cam rewards you for nudging opponents into pillars or oncoming traffic. Most of the time you don’t even know when the race is going to start, or what direction you should be facing in when it does, resulting in absolute carnage when the 3,2,1 countdown appears on the screen. So far we’ve played drift and jump distance challenges as well as straight races, the latter of which resulted in an awesome mid-air crash.

If Forza is car-worship, Burnout is crashing and Hot Pursuit is cops and robbers, Most Wanted is chaos. It’s about doing the most outrageous things possible in a city designed for vehicular mayhem, motivated by social competition as much as the game’s own challenges. It feels like open-world Burnout that Paradise could have been, with extra structure and motivation provided by Autolog and a smarter, more fluid and intuitive single-player system. Play that uproarious multiplayer for more than five minutes, and you can’t wait to see more. Most Wanted takes many of Criterion’s best ideas and runs with them, and if it works it will play like a career best-of.

Keza MacDonald is in charge of IGN’s games team in the UK and still thinks Burnout 3 might be the best racing game ever made. You can follow here on IGN and Twitter.

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How DayZ Came to Life

Very few video games can trace their origins to the jungles of Brunei, an unforgiving mountainous terrain of soul-sapping humidity, giant ants and longhouse-dwelling native peoples.

But this is where Dean Hall conceived of DayZ, the ArmA II apocalypse-survival mod that’s one of the most popular PC games in the world right now.

Brunei environment

Hall was dropped into the jungle while serving in the New Zealand Armed Forces, a 30-day infantry-survival exercise that strained he and his team-mates’ endurance. They foraged for food and water and tried to survive a relentless environment. As the heat began to take its toll he became malnourished, suffered an injury and, when it was over, spent months recovering in hospital.

The idea for DayZ came from that experience. Hall, aka ‘Rocket’, tells IGN, “I became very interested in a survival-type game, in the levels of subtleties and decision-making that's forced on you based on an emotional context. What happened in Brunei made me really reflect on those elements of the training exercise that brought out an emotional response in me. That's what DayZ is all about.”

DayZ Environment

He adds, “Brunei was a fantastic, life-changing experience for me, definitely. But with a bad element to it as well. I ran out of food very quickly and I was malnourished. So when I came back, my insides hadn't been working properly, my hair had started to fall out, my nails had turned yellow, and so when the whole pipe-works started up again, it tore itself to pieces.”

Purity and Primal Struggle

The game’s attraction is its purity in depicting a primal struggle to stay alive, to forage, avoid danger and stay healthy. It’s set in a tough world of zombies and spartan resources. But any player will tell you, the biggest danger is other survivors.

When you strip away the conventions of our society, of our civilization, this is what ‘post-apocalyptic’ survival really means. People mostly behave like bastards. Every now and again, they offer help, they group together, they create usefulness from the knick-knacks they find. DayZ is a simulation of how people behave in extraordinary circumstances.

It’s the game’s roots as a survival sim that persuaded Hall and the team to significantly change the rules. Previously, players would spawn with a gun in their possession. Now, they spawn entirely unarmed. Only a significant time-investment and deep risk-taking will yield up a rifle and a few rounds, or a blade. The use of these weapons is far from being a guarantee of survival. To zombies, gunshots sound like dinner bells. Any form of combat is extremely risky.

Hall explains the decision to spawn new characters without any defense. “When I originally scoped the mod out, I wanted it to be very brutal, and I wanted the finding of your first weapon to be a real event for the player. But that wasn't possible because of the way zombies were scripted to work. They basically chase you forever. Recent options made that change possible.

"Now, when I sat down and analyzed the numbers, I realized that a lot of new players were being killed by seasoned players, simply because they represented a risk. They were walking around with their Makarov, the little pistol, and they presented a risk to these veteran players. What we found is that a lot of veteran players won't shoot new players who don't have a weapon, because they present no risk. Obviously there's some people who will shoot you no matter what. But we've definitely found that there are people who don't.”

Choices and Tension

The game isn’t really about zombies, it’s about you, the choices you make and the skills you have.

Dean 'Rocket' Hall

Hall says, “We're all scared of natural disasters and big changes. Zombies are easy for us to explain in a narrative. The real part of it comes from the subtlety of its tension. Your character gets hungry, your character gets thirsty. There's no easily-definable mechanic that you can turn around and say, you have to eat every four hours, or you have to eat every three hours. The answer is always - 'well, it depends'. It depends on how much you're carrying, how often you're running, what the weather's doing, how injured you are. The idea is to create these subtle but intuitive tensions, and I think that's really what delivers for the players.”

He adds, “Your character is your character. For example, the stars in ArmA II are mapped to the time, location, and season that your mission's set in. If you can read the stars in real life, to figure out which direction is north or south, then you can do so in the game. There are no instructions, there's no manual, there's no tutorial, it's just you waking up on the beach and having to figure it out for yourself.”

Standalone Version

Of course, the mod has been an enormous success. ArmA II, which is required to play the mod, has been on Steam’s top-five list for weeks. Prague-based publisher Bohemia Interactive had almost 500,000 registered players at the beginning of July, a number that is now touching one million. The mod is a hot conversation piece in the media, on Twitter and Reddit. This is the sort of success that points towards a standalone launch and perhaps even console releases.

Hall says, “I've made no secret, right from the start, that I want to see this as a stand-alone product. There are a number of people who are definitely interested in doing that. I'm 100 percent confident that we will be coming out soon and telling people that it's going to happen. But obviously, there are a lot of things that we need to line up to ensure that it's in the right place."

DayZ is, he points out, an experiment, and the team are learning new things all the time. The mod is entirely free-to-play, though you still have to purchase ArmA II: Combined Operations.

“The experiment needs to continue," he says. "In terms of consoles, look, I think how Minecraft did it is really good. They nailed down the experience, then they looked at it. But that would really depend on the structure of which development team made DayZ as a stand-alone. There are issues with running such a broad game like ArmA on a console although it's been done before.”

Meanwhile, Bohemia is still developing ArmA III for release later this year, a game Hall was hired to work on early in 2012. Newly transplanted to the Czech Republic and unable to speak the language, he found plenty of free time to work on DayZ, before its success made the game his entire focus.

He says, “It was sad to not be working on that, because it is going to be a really awesome game, but for me I want to see DayZ become its own thing.”

Colin Campbell is a games journalist, based in Santa Cruz, California. You can join him on Twitter or at IGN.

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