Doom 3

What do you do when all Hell breaks loose? Shoot it with the biggest gun you can find

Who would have thought that anything bad could happen from mixing the occult and ancient alien technology? It's up to you, Space Marine, to thwart the invasion from a Hell dimension that has started on a Mars research station and threatens to spread to Earth.

There’s no disputing that Doom 3 has some of the prettiest graphics ever on the PC, showing some of the ugliest monsters ever to throw fireballs at your head. The creatures that stalk you in the darkness are pretty terrifying if you hold still long enough to get a good look, though by that time they've probably taken a bite out of you. And you won't want to pause often: the fast and furious, shoot-everything-that-moves, kill-or-be-killed frenzy of bullets, blood and demons is a shooter in its purest, most refined form.

Nothing is as scary as what you can't see. The levels are dark to a fault, forcing you to switch from your gun to a flashlight in some areas just to see when you're about to be attacked. Of course, that means that when you are attacked, you're unarmed and vulnerable for a moment as you switch back to your Hummer-sized gun and open fire. Love it or hate it, it's a novel trick that helps distinguish Doom 3 from every shooter clone that has come in the past decade. The sensation you get from playing is best compared to a sci-fi horror movie like Aliens, and it is an experience that is definitely best enjoyed in a dark room with the surround sound cranked up.

The only real problem is that the gameplay doesn't vary much from that formula, and after the first few hours you stop being shocked when a monster pops out behind you. Relief comes with the occasional boss battle against something really huge, and the game's action-dense 10- to 12-hour length means it's over before it really gets old.

Unfortunately there aren't any fancy multiplayer features offered, but all the basic deathmatch functions are included. If you just want to frag someone with the BFG, you'll be satisfied.

Star Wars The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes Impressions - Jedi, Clones, and Canonical Cartoon Stories

We take an up-close look at this family-friendly action game based on the Star Wars TV cartoon series.

 

Who's Making This Game: LucasArts, the developer/publisher that makes official video game adaptations for all of filmmaker George Lucas' Star Wars franchises, including the Star Wars The Clone Wars animated series, on which this game is based. 

What the Game Looks Like: Republic Heroes looks like a colorful and cartoonlike game that very closely resembles the TV cartoon. This is probably because the game developers at LucasArts have full access to all the art assets from the cartoon show. In fact, the story is being written by the writers of the actual TV series and bridges the gap between seasons one and two of the show.

What There Is to Do: In Republic Heroes, you can play as one of two character types: Jedi or Clones. The game will have eight playable Jedi characters, including Anakin and Obi-Wan. It will also have new characters, such as Mace Windu. It'll have 10 playable Clone characters, six of which are characters from the TV show; four of which are original characters being created specifically for this game. As a Jedi, you will fight melee battles with your lightsaber and use your force powers to fight battles, navigate the world, and solve puzzles. Your catlike Jedi agility will also let you do some "droidjacking." This means you hop on top of any droid in the game and take control of it while riding on top of it; you can use its weapon systems to fire on enemies and any other abilities that droid has for your benefit. You can also do this to any droid in the game. As a Clone, you are a "grunt" soldier of the Republic who's generally sent in to sweep warzones clean for Jedi to come in and do their thing. Clones will have a variety of blaster weapons and can get new ones as pick-up items that drop from fallen enemies. They can also throw grenadelike thermal detonators.

How the Game Is Played: The game seems to be played like any third-person shooter but is intended to be accessible to players of all ages and skill levels. Jedi characters fight with their lightsabers and can perform dazzling lunges and combination swings, though there is only one attack button for Jedi characters, which should make things easy enough to pick up. Clones fire their blaster weapons with a clearly defined transparent firing arc superimposed onscreen to help guide your aim, and you can pick up heavier weapons, such as miniguns and rocket launchers, to blast enemy droids to bits. However, you fire simply nudging your right analog stick, and by pressing and holding it in circles, you can rotate your character 360 degrees while firing continuously, which is similar to such classic arcade games as Smash TV. You can also toss thermal detonators, which have a handy transparent arc that shows where your projectile will land. As in other third-person action games, you'll fight your way through enemies, explore new areas, solve puzzles, and collect "force orbs," which can unlock character hats and masks, as well as other hidden items.

What They Say: QA lead Troy Sims described Republic Heroes as being a game with lots of fun action, but one that's also going to be very accessible to players of all ages.  

What We Say: It does look like Republic Heroes should be easy enough to play, and assuming the gameplay holds up, the simplified combat, item collection, and puzzle solving should be a very effective way to burn through a couple of afternoons for the young (or the young at heart). Republic Heroes is being released on September 8, 2009, for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, DS, PSP, PC, and in North America only, the PlayStation 2.

Gran Turismo Portable

There were screenshots. There was video. There was even a picture of the PSP 1000 sitting next to a UMD with 'Gran Turismo' on it. So why has it taken five years for the damn thing to finally appear on Sony's handheld?

We can only assume that this is what Polyphony has been doing to it in that time:

May 11, 2004 we saw that PSP box art and swanky UMD that implied it was ready to go. TWO THOUSAND AND FOUR. We could go on but, for the sake of our blood pressure, let's just forget that the last five years ever happened and start again. So... what have we got?

The new game features 800 vehicle models and 45 tracks. Impressive figures, although some cars are only different in name (like 5 variations of the Hyundai Coupe/Tiberion) and some tracks mere alternative routes around the same course such as Suzuka's East and West variations. You can also drive them in reverse to get even more lifespan from the game. Duplicates or no, it's bewildering when you're actually presented with the choice.

The game is almost identical to PS2 Gran Turismo titles in terms of style and sensation of movement and, as you'll probably know, that means quality. Few sims manage to make every car model feel unique, but GT pulls it off just as convincingly on PSP as it does on PS2 or PS3.

The depth of the simulation means that G-forces (no, not the guinea pigs) are shifting as you take the turns, apply the brakes or gun the throttle. You wouldn't think a handheld racer could truly convey that sensation of steering a superpowered car around race circuits or through narrow back-streets, but PSP handles it with aplomb. At 60fps, the simulation of driving is never compromised and the faster cars are simply a pleasure to drive.

 

 

Soulcalibur: Broken Destiny

The finely tuned fighter works well on handheld

Success in Soulcalibur: Broken Destiny requires a sharp mind and a sharp weapon. Combat is brutal, quick and handled using the bare minimum of complex thumb acrobatics – just as it is in SC IV. Instead of a focus on impossible combos and complex throws, the fighting here is about reacting to opponents’ moves with swift counters or carefully selected flurries of attacks. It’s tactical it’s as much an intellectual battle of wills as it is a slugfest, and this plays to the PSP’s strengths.

That Calibur’s fighting system has altered little since the Soul series began 13-years ago is testament to just how good it is. That it’s been transferred so successfully to the PSP is impressive. Die-hard fans hoping for something new will inevitably be disappointed, but even they can’t fail to be impressed at just how complete and convincing a handheld title this is.

Thankfully, it’s newcomers to the series that are being targeted. The addition of a new Gauntlet mode is testament to that. It’s basically a rigorous training session that reduces the ins and outs of the combat to an increasingly repetitive series of two-second minigames. The non-canon plot, too, seems to be aimed directly at people who don’t take the series too seriously. It’s entertainingly worded, even going so far as to drop the odd double entendre. However, this easy entry into the world of Soul Calibur comes at a price. There are no mission modes to match the adventure or weapon master sections that have appeared in earlier iterations, and you never feel as if there’s anything to really get your teeth into.

Happily when it comes to the intricacies of gameplay, little introduced in Soulcalibur IV is lost, from the crowd pleasing critical finishers to the colourful visuals. The create mode is particularly impressive and the ability to unlock new items and equipment will ensure you keep coming back to fine tune your fighter. Rarely are one-on-one fighters (with the exception perhaps of realistic fight-sims such as Fight Night or UFC) quite as customisable as this.

nevitably such care and attention to detail results in a fighter that is less throwaway than the genre’s arcade roots suggest. Broken Destiny is ideal for quick bouts against friends thanks to the brilliant ad-hoc versus mode, but it’s the more involving challenges (such as create mode) that provide the real longevity. The focus on new players might give fans the cold shoulder but it doesn’t detract from the intensity of the fighting.

SmackDown vs. Raw 2010: Creation is King

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If creativity is your thing, WWE SmackDown! vs. Raw 2010 has got you covered. More than covered, in fact. From top to bottom, the creation tools in THQ's upcoming wrestling game have been either overhauled, upgraded, or, in some cases, re-made from the ground up. The result will be a game that is more open-ended and flexible than ever before. Recently, THQ producers visited GameSpot HQ to give us an exclusive first look at the new modes in SmackDown! 2010, which is the 11th game in the long-running wrestling series. After watching the demo and getting the briefest of tastes of what the new creation tools will allow you to do in the game, we can't wait to see what people come up with.

While existing features like create-a-wrestler and create-a-finisher have received important upgrades, the big news for creative types will be the design-a-story mode. Using what looks to be a flexible set of tools, you'll be able to unleash your inner Vince McMahon (or, if you're evil, your inner Vince Russo) and design broadcasts of RAW, SmackDown, and ECW from the ground up. This is much more than just an extension of GM mode from a few years ago--you'll have control of everything: matches that appear in your show, backstage fights, interviews galore, and even the words each Superstar speaks will be from your specific script.

Using a variety of preset choices that you can edit to your heart's content, you can create scenarios that will make up your individual weekly show. Create a slow-building feud between two Superstars; build a love story between your created wrestler and your favorite WWE Diva; or go completely nuts and feature an entire show that is nothing but Triple H screaming nursery rhymes at the crowd from the middle of the ring. It's up to you.

When setting up a show, you'll have the choice to create either a scene or a match. Creating a match is straightforward--you'll be able to choose from any of the available match types in the game, set the competitors, and set any specific win conditions. Creating scenes takes a bit more work, and you'll have complete control over the scene, including the setting which can include backstage antics with exploding cars, to more traditional sequences featuring interviews between WWE announcers and talent. There's even a luminous white background that looks like something out of a hallucination, perfect for creating a dreamscape for your favorite sleepy Superstar.

 

 

Once you've got a setting and some general action points added in (in one backstage scene, for example, you can cause the star of the scene to get hit by a speeding car), you'll have the ability to add text to your scene, which will appear on the bottom of the screen. There's a character limit you'll need to be mindful of, but from what we saw, there's plenty of room to get a decent amount of back and forth going. Reading text instead of hearing the voices of the wrestlers feels a bit retro, but considering that you can write anything you want, the novelty factor probably outweighs the lack of voice acting.

While you can choose from anyone on the SVR 2010 roster to star in your original stories, why not use a Superstar of your own creation? Create-a-wrestler is nothing new in the SmackDown series, but like so many of the creation tools in this year's game, it has been expanded and improved into something better. There's a ton of new fully 3D-modeled apparel for your wrestler--no more painted-on ties or shirts, for example. If you put a robe or jacket on your created star, the fabric will move realistically. There's also plenty of variety--just in headgear alone we saw everything from traditional luchadore masks to eyeless hoods, samurai headgear, and even a giant chicken head. All of it looks like great fun to experiment with, but to our eyes, the best feature of the "new" CAW was the speedy menus; the developers at Yuke's have spent time on improving the loading time in screens--so the long delays while waiting for parts to load up in the CAW menu look to be a thing of the past. For existing WWE Superstars, there's a "Superstar Threads" tool to customize their outfits--such as changing up the colors of Rey Mysterio Jr.'s masks and ring attire to something completely of your choosing.

Create-a-finisher, introduced in last year's game, has seen its own share of improvements. THQ producers told us there is about 30 percent more content in the standard front grapple finishers, as well as an entirely new category of finishers, this time from the top rope. As with the standard finishers, you create your top-rope finisher by stringing together a bunch of separate animations, the taunt you use to start things off, the dismount off the top rope, any flips or kicks you perform in the air, and finally your crunching landing on the mat. You can even make minor adjustments to animation speed and jump trajectory to create just the kind of move you're looking for.

Enveloping all of these enhanced creation modes is the idea of sharing online. Anything you create in SVR 2010--be it your favorite create-a-wrestler, your insane top-rope finishing move, or your epic series of RAW episodes--will be able to be uploaded and shared with the online world. You will be able to rate content you download too, allowing the best content (and its respective creators) to rise to the top--and you'll be able to add tags to your creations for easy browsing purposes. In essence, THQ is blowing out online content and every SmackDown fan is a potential contributor.

Elsewhere in the game, the developers are throwing a bone to players who might have been away from the SmackDown series for a while with an interactive tutorial that will provide a primer of sorts for the sometimes complex controls that are part of the game. You can use whomever you want in the ring, and you can choose to play either solo or against a friend. As you move around the ring, pop-ups will appear onscreen with instructions on how to pull off different context-sensitive maneuvers--for instance, which types of moves will be available to you in a front grapple or what you can do when moving on the apron. In all, there are more than 100 training tips available, and you can choose to play the tutorial with several AI settings--including the AI turned completely off, if you like.

When in the ring, you can expect to see a back-to-basics approach in terms of presentation. The game's sometimes cluttered HUD from previous years has been stripped down. Gone are the health meter and location-specific damage meters that sat in the upper corners of the screen. Instead, the game is focusing much more on the body language of the wrestlers to convey their relative health. The only HUD elements that will remain are a small halo appearing underneath each wrestler that acts as a momentum meter, and the occasional reversal timing indicator that will pop onscreen above the wrestlers' heads.

Speaking of reversals, the reversal system has been tweaked for SVR 2010 as well. Previous games had separate buttons for strike and grapple reverses--this year that's whittled down to a single reversal button, which should simplify the process. The timing of reversals--or, more accurately, the length of a reversal window--has been tweaked as well in order to prevent reversals from becoming too easy to execute. Other control changes include a new pinfall kickout system borrowed from THQ's Legends of WrestleMania game (which requires you to fill up a meter in order to kick out of a pin), a load of new moves available to players when standing on the apron (such as Triple H yanking people into the ring, or Rey Mysterio Jr. performing a springboard leap into the ring), four "strong" grapple holds available to players (up from two in last year's game)--collar and elbow, side headlock, wrist lock, and rear waste lock, each of which triggers a different set moves. In addition, you'll be able to manually transition between grapples by holding down the right bumper and moving the right stick.

In keeping with the game's customization theme, it will be easy to record your own match highlights this time around. At the end of a match, you'll be able to see a list of defining moments in the match you just completed. You can choose to rewatch any of these defining moments--anything from bloodying your opponent to sending him (or her) through a stack of tables--and save them for later use.

Last year's Road to WrestleMania mode returns this year with six brand-new stories from around the WWE stable of wrestlers. This time around, there will be a Diva-centric storyline, as well as a story specifically meant to focus on your created wrestler, which is all the more reason to bust out that giant chicken head for your created grappler.

In addition to seeing the Xbox 360 version of the game, we got a chance to check out the Wii and Nintendo DS versions of SVR 2010. On the Wii, the frenetic pace and motion-based gameplay of last year's game have been nearly completely jettisoned this time around in favor of a more realistic game speed and a control scheme that more closely resembles that found in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game. In fact, producers told us that the goal was to make the Wii version as comparable to the other versions of the game as possible. As a result, SVR 2010 for the Wii will have a feature set that is virtually identical to the other versions, including the extensive creation options like create-a-finisher, the upgraded create-a-wrestler, and the all-new story designer.

The controls in the Wii version will be more button-centric than ever before--and the aforementioned motion controls have been largely done away with, mainly because they were so unpredictable in the previous game. That said, you'll have lots of options for control--including the default Wii Remote and Nunchuk, as well as alternate control schemes using the GameCube controller or the Wii Classic Controller.

 

 

This screenshot comes from the Wii version of the game.

THQ is still searching for an ideal DS solution for the SmackDown series, and this year represents another experiment. Game speed has been upped from previous games, and in the ring, the gameplay takes place from an elevated camera, with a perspective that is almost top-down. Unlike previous games, which used the touch screen almost exclusively, this year's game on the DS will use buttons to control the action in the ring.

The big addition for the DS version will be a collectible card system. You'll earn cards in season mode, either by winning matches or by doing favors for WWE Superstars you'll encounter along the way, and you'll have a deck of cards to choose from before a match. You'll go into a match with a handful of cards and can activate them in the match, like run-ins from other wrestlers, or for specialized boosts that will make your grapples temporarily unblockable. In addition to the match boost cards, you'll earn cards that will unlock goodies like new match types, create-a-wrestler parts, and more.

The DS version will also have a story mode that will have you interacting with WWE Superstars, and even Vince McMahon himself. The 12-chapter story will be semi-open-ended, allowing you to travel across multiple locales, such as the gym (where you can train your created character to improve his or her stats), the hospital (where you can nurse your wounds), and Mr. McMahon's office (where you can be berated by the boss). Of course, you'll be wrestling in tons of matches as well, as you play through a storyline that is sure to have plenty of double-crosses, body slams, and, presumably, lots and lots of exclamation marks.

As much as we've revealed today for WWE SmackDown! vs. Raw 2010, there are still lots more surprises to come for the game. GameSpot will be on top of all the latest developments in the coming months, leading up to the game's release on October 20. 

CONTRA III: THE ALIEN WARS

Contra III was the first time videogames really paid attention to the idea of riding missiles, and it’s remembered as one of the greatest games of the 16-bit era because of it. After riding down the fourth stage’s alien-infested stretch of desert highway on your hovercycle, a friendly looking chopper swoops down and invites you to climb on with a blinking arrow.

Then, once you’ve taken to the skies and fought off some lame jackass with a jetpack, the missile you were hanging from suddenly detaches and blasts ahead.

 

 

Soon, your missile is joined by three others…

.. which you’ll be forced to quickly jump to as the rocket you were riding detonates against the ass-end of an alien airship.

 

 

What follows is easily the single most kickass battle ever to take place on the Super NES,  as heroes Jimbo and Sully leap frantically between disintegrating missiles while lobbing absurd amounts of firepower at the giant, red sensor the aliens were so kind as to put on the back of their ship.

Then, when it’s all over and the airship detonates in a brilliant flash of nuclear indignance, you find yourself safely back on the chopper that brought you into the air. And on an unfired missile, no less.

 

 

This leads us to believe that the “battle” was really all just a dream, and that Jimbo accidentally tore the helicopter a new asshole while dangling, asleep, from the missile.

Why not? It’s not much more ridiculous than anything else that happens in Contra III.

 

Dragon Age Updated Preview - Rage of Mages

You say you want to cast magic missile? You're attacking the darkness? Fine, fine, there's an elf in front of you, and he's going to explain how magic works in Dragon Age.

Dragon Age: Origins is the upcoming fantasy-themed game from our friends at BioWare, a wholly owned subsidiary of Electronic Arts and the Canadian studio responsible for such role-playing games as Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and Mass Effect. It's also a game we really haven't had a chance to cover very often here on GameSpot, so we're happy to finally have a chance to post a new preview story covering the use of wizardry in the game. In Dragon Age, you can choose to play as a "mage" class, which starts off with the mage tower origin story we've covered previously, then leads to a tale of sorcery-powered high adventure and zapping bad guys with nasty zappy spells.

While Dragon Age's list of skills is universal for characters of all professions (including such abilities, as conversational coercion, potion-brewing herbalism, thievery, and combat training), the game has a unique set of "talents" for mages. Mage characters have a single line of mage-specific skills that include a basic attack spell, arcane bolt, improved ability to zap people using a magic staff, personal shielding magic, and an overall boost to wizardly power. This basic line of skills never seems like a bad choice to spend talent points in as you gain experience levels, except that there are four other talent lines (or "schools of magic," if you prefer) with plenty of other interesting and useful spell abilities that are worth exploring.

The four additional talent trees for mages are primal (elemental damage spells); creation (healing and protective magics); spirit (which focuses on countermagics and controlling enchantments); and entropy (which focuses on hindering magics). Primal, for instance, includes four different talent lines for fire, ice, lightning, and earth, each of which has four levels of abilities, including the classic fireball, lightning bolt, and cone-of-cold spells you may remember from BioWare's previous Dungeons & Dragons-based games. However, the primal talent group also includes certain spell abilities with combinatorial effects. For instance, the most powerful talent in the earth line, petrify, briefly turns an enemy to stone and makes that enemy vulnerable to instant death by shattering if attacked with a concussive spell, such as the earth line's stonefist spell. As it turns out, certain spells from the ice talent line can also freeze enemies solid, rendering them similarly vulnerable to being shattered. The primal line also contains two different weapon enhancements for all characters in your party; the fire line causes weapons to deal fire-based damage; the ice line causes weapons to deal cold-based damage. The remaining spells in the primal talent lines are generally powerful damage-dealers with large radii that can also damage your teammates if they get in the line of fire. Careful micromanagement (or combinatorial strategies, discussed later) is crucial in using these talents, let you blast your own party to smithereens. 

 

 

The creation line of talents is a straightforward set of healing and protection (or "buffing") spell abilities, including on-the-spot healing and over-time regeneration, and full-party regeneration, as well as offensive and defensive team boosts and the Dragon Age version of "haste"--which makes you and your team attack more quickly but drains away your character's energy. The creation line also includes a set of "glyph" spells that affect a small chunk of territory with various magical properties, including defensive skills like canceling magic or increasing your teammates' defenses, and offensive glyphs that can repel or paralyze enemies that stumble into the radius. Finally, the creation talents also includes a miscellaneous line of spell abilities that enhance endurance regeneration and include a precious few attack spells, including an "insect swarm" spell that continuously damages its target, and a "grease" spell, which, just like in Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights, causes an area of ground to be covered with a slippery grease that hinders movement. However, in Dragon Age, an area affected by the grease spell can also be set alight by fire spells, burning up any enemies or friendlies in the area.

The spirit line of spells also contains four sets of talents, each with four abilities. The spirit line is focused more on canceling magic and draining "mana" (magic energy) from your foes, though it also has some powerful attack spells. Among others, spirit includes a line of talents to protect against or dispel hostile magic; a line of talents that interferes with your enemies' mana and limits their ability to cast spells of their own; a line of talents that deals with death by magic and replenishes spent energy from corpses, animates fallen enemy corpses as allies, and a "walking bomb" effect that causes an enemy under effects of the spell to explode if killed, damaging everyone in the radius. The spirit line also has a psionics-based set of talents that lets casters enhance their parties' weapons, psychically blast a single foe, encase a single target in a protective bubble (similar to Baldur's Gate II's Otiluke's Resilient Sphere); and contain an enemy in a cage of crushing force that will also shatter any frozen or petrified foes. The spirit line seems to be the most subtle of all the mage's talent trees and from what we've played of the early game, won't necessarily be needed to dispatch the enemies you encounter at first.  

Finally, the entropy line of talents includes a series of debilitating spell abilities, including a set of talents that weakens or paralyzes foes; a set of "hexes" that curse any enemies in range with a specific affliction; a set of nightmare-based abilities that can freeze enemies in their tracks, along with a powerful analogues to Baldur's Gate II's sleep, horror, and chaos spells, which immobilize enemies in slumber, cripple them with fear, and completely confuse them into performing random acts, respectively. As it happens, sleeping enemies who are then targeted by a horror spell suffer maddening nightmares that deal severe damage to them, instantly killing most weaker foes. The entropy talent line also has a set of death magic-based spell abilities that drain an enemy's health or summons a damaging noxious cloud to hang over an area, not unlike the classic cloudkill and acid fog spells of Baldur's Gate II. 

Each of these talent groups has powerful, useful abilities, but it seems that BioWare didn't intend for players to fully specialize in any individual one, and in some cases, except possibly creation (which will set you up as a solid combat healer with good protection spells, a minor hindrance spell, and a single damaging spell), you'll actually limit your mage's overall ability if you focus on only one school. Considering that you won't be able to take every single spell talent in the entire game in a single play-through, you'll most likely want to do some experimenting, then think about focusing in a certain direction. In addition, since several spell abilities have combinatorial effects with other spells or other professions' talents, it pays to start thinking and get strategic.

 

 

For instance, properly specialized mages are excellent at controlling individual enemies as well as crowds, using such talents as the spirit line's force field or primal's petrify to remove a single enemy from play, while using other talents such as entropy's sleep, horror, and paralysis spells, or creation's glyphs of repulsions and paralysis to render groups of enemies helpless. This kind of strategy seems useful not only to stop an enemy charge, but also to divide and conquer--when facing a paralyzed battalion of enemies, you and your troops can pick off and eliminate choice targets one by one. In addition, fighters who are specialized in two-handed weapons can learn the "indomitable" warrior talent, which makes them immune to talents and spell abilities that would otherwise knock them off their feet, so concussive spell talents like earthquake and glyph of repulsion are a great setup for a party packing two-handed weapons, since the fighters can rush right into the area of effect, immune to the magic, and begin hacking away at the monsters lying on their backs.

Alternately, proper talent selection can make your mage a strong support character that softens up tough bosses for your fighters. Abilities such as the entropy line's hex spells and creation's glyphs can reduce these formidable foes' resistances to damage; the spirit line's talents can eliminate any boss character's protective magics or drain them away; and both primal and spirit have weapon-enhancing spells that can help you deal additional damage. The spirit line's walking bomb talent (and its upgraded version, virulent walking bomb, which spreads the effect of making foes explode when they die to any nearby foes) works especially well against large groups or bosses with smaller minion critters. And of course, when fighting powerful bosses, it's important to keep your team up and running with the creation line's various healing and buff spells.  

Another very viable way to specialize a mage in Dragon Age is to focus on controlling territory on the battlefield by first entrapping enemies, then bombarding them. (If you've used the web spell followed by area-damage spells such as cloudkill in Baldur's Gate II, you'll know what we're talking about.) Several of the mage's different talent lines have large-radius abilities that can incapacitate your enemies; the creation line's grease spell and glyphs of repulsion and paralysis; the entropy line's mass paralysis and sleep spells, and nearly all of the primal line's ice spells can all make sure a group of enemies in a certain area either get stuck or are forced to move extremely slowly. From here, you can either have your party's archers feather your enemies with arrows, or start bombarding them with magic. Dragon Age has several high-end bombardment spell abilities, such as the primal line's high-end fire-based inferno or cold-based blizzard and the entropy line's high-end death cloud.

But be advised that snag-and-slag isn't as easy as it was in previous BioWare games, since many incapacitating spells can affect only enemies within a certain distance from your casting them, though you can at least lay down the glyph spells off in the distance, then lure your foes into them. Also, be advised that even though magic is extremely powerful in Dragon Age and casting spells really does get results, it isn't the rapid-fire experience it was in BioWare's previous fantasy games. As we've mentioned in our previous coverage, the way Dragon Age's spell abilities work is much closer to how magic spells work in a massively multiplayer game such as World of Warcraft. Your mage has a set amount of mana in a bar that gets expended with each cast of a spell, and several spell abilities are modal--that is, they are toggled on or off and provide a persistent effect, such as enhancing your party's weapons--at the cost of constantly draining mana. Also, every time a spell is cast, it has a cooldown time that completely restricts you from spitting it out again, and the most powerful, high-end spell abilities in the game generally have the longest cooldown times. Finally, all of the most powerful combat damage spells (inferno, blizzard, and so on) deal "friendly fire" damage to nearby teammates, so you have to take great care to line up spells carefully without zapping your teammates, and this can be a lot more challenging than it might seem, since most enemies, if not incapacitated, will make every effort to sprint out of range. 

 

 

That's our in-depth look at the different talent trees available for the mages and some of the higher-end strategies you can use in Dragon Age: Origins. Stay tuned to GameSpot for any additional updates--considering how little we've covered this game so far, there may indeed be lots more to come.  

NFL 2K2

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The original NFL 2K was a huge hit when the Dreamcast launched, and NFL 2K1 introduced online play a full two seasons before Madden would add it. But NFL 2K2 was the Dreamcast’s pigskin pinnacle.

The 2K series had always been defined by fast-paced action, gameplay that was deep but still totally accessible, and graphics so realistic you mistook them for a TV broadcast of a real football game. That last one seems ridiculous now, but the other two bits, speed and accessibility, were critical in setting the game apart from Madden. Everything in 2K2 was quicker and more arcade-like, more concerned with “was it fun to juke that chump and dance into the end zone?” than “would a 227-pound man really be able to switch direction that quickly when running full-tilt, or should the controls be more sluggish to reflect real-world momentum?”

 

 

But there’s more. From a gamer-level perspective, the 2K series gave Dreamcast owners their pride back when haters taunted them. Dreamcast didn’t have Madden? Dreamcast didn’t need Madden. Its game was faster, hipper, and went online years earlier. Madden, by comparison, seemed old-fashioned.

What made it the best: Setting aside the whole Madden rivalry, NFL 2K2 played like a dream. In its day, it was arguably the apogee of video game football. It had a huge number of game modes, it had online play (Madden didn’t yet), it was a snap to pick up but tough to master, and the on-field play was top-notch. NFL 2K2 was the best version of the Dreamcast’s flagship series. It just plain rocked.

In fact, it rocked so hard that the series continued after the Dreamcast died. It even sold okay, right up until 2004, when Madden publisher Electronic Arts gave the NFL a brazillion dollars for the exclusive NFL license.

Best moment: The exact moment was different for every player, but they all happened because NFL 2K2 recreated the emotion of real football better than any previous game had. This felt like the NFL, from the roar of the crowd to the heartbreak of watching your opponent steal your victory by scoring a touchdown on the last play of the game.

Sonic Adventure 2

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The first Sonic Adventure was a fantastic launch title, but it doesn’t hold up so well today. Chalk it up to scattershot gameplay, poor pacing or a weirdly dull presentation, but mostly it’s because Adventure delivers too few moments like this:

Nearly two years later – after the Dreamcast’s plug had officially been pulled – Sonic Adventure 2 came roaring in to send the system off with a bang. If the first Adventure was about Sega going nuts trying out new things on the Dreamcast, then Adventure 2 was about the company showing off what it had learned since then; the gameplay was faster and more focused, the story was divided into two good-and-evil plotlines instead of six, and the cartoony presentation was more in line with the series’ character.

Additionally, Adventure 2 was the first Sonic game to give players a chance to see the story from Eggman/Dr. Robotnik’s point of view, even if he was just stomping around in a robot walker that was nearly identical to the one Tails used in the good-guy storyline. And in the name of symmetry, it also introduced Sonic’s black-furred nemesis Shadow, who – despite later being held up as an example of everything wrong with the Sonic franchise – was a pretty cool addition to the cast. Or at least, he was better than all the other additions the Adventure series made.

What made it the best: A few other Dreamcast platformers might be remembered with a little more fondness than Sonic Adventure 2, but none of them delivered quite as much as it did. Each of the game’s six characters played identically to their good/evil counterparts, but their segments – which included shooting as Tails/Robotnik and hunting for emerald shards as Knuckles/Rouge the Bat – were actually fun to play, instead of just being filler between the faster Sonic levels. It also saw the return of the first Adventure’s virtual pets, the angelic Chao, who – aside from being able to absorb the appearances of adorable baby animals and level up on the Dreamcast’s VMU memory cards/handheld consoles – were entirely optional.

 Best moment: The game’s first level as Sonic, a breakneck run down the hilly streets of San Francisco that began with Sonic leaping out of a plane, continued with him demolishing traffic on a snowboard (on asphalt, yes) and concluded with him being chased by a runaway 18-wheeler. Granted, it was never quite that awesome again, but we couldn’t have asked for a more explosive opening.

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 Review

This clumsy and unsatisfying sequel is a step backward.

The good news: Marvel Alliance 2 doesn't feature nearly as much waggling as the first game. The bad news: almost everything else. This action/role-playing game set in the Marvel universe starts with a good foundation--namely, the excellent Civil War storyline, which provides a fitting backdrop for what could have been an all-star, superpowered frolic. Unfortunately, an unfinished and poorly designed button masher is wrapped around it instead. The action is awkward, the level design is messy and uninspired, and the minimal dialogue and inconsistent voice acting denigrate the source material. In contrast to its Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 cousins, this version of Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 is wholly inadequate.

Nevertheless, there are some points of light twinkling in the murk that mainly come from the source material bringing the fabled heroes together. The story is based on two well-known Marvel storylines: Secret War and Civil War. A number of excellent prerendered cutscenes bring the imaginative plot to life and, more importantly, force you to make an important choice a short ways into the game. You see, our bastions of justice are split into two camps over a newly established law coercing superheroes into officially registering with the US government. Your decision impacts how the middle portion plays and which heroes from the sizeable roster you can include in your team of four before the two branching paths meet again for the final act. The divergent story is a great idea and, in theory, should provide a good reason to return for a second round to see what you missed if you were to have chosen differently. However, this bifurcated story is diminished by simplistic storytelling that fails to involve you with its characters. The thoughtful plot is thinned out by shockingly few (and sparsely written) character conversations in between missions--none of which involve multiple dialogue options, let alone divergent ones. The voice acting doesn't help matters either. While some heroes sound fine, other voice-overs are amateurish, and some spoken dialogue specific to the Wii--such as an exchange between two scientists--is just plain embarrassing.

The first half hour of the game introduces you to all you'll need to know to get you through the missions. From an isometric camera view, you lead a team of four Marvel stars through hordes of expendable henchmen, occasionally taking detours to perform simple tasks or solve puzzles. You lead one character at a time, while the other three are controlled by the AI or a buddy (or two or three) in local cooperative play. By hammering on the A and B buttons, you string standard attacks into combos that might trip or stun your foes. Each hero can eventually perform four different superpowers, and depending on your hero, you can jump, double jump, fly, or even teleport. If you want to squeeze the most out of the experience, you will do best to grab a friend: AI-controlled heroes are a real drag on the proceedings. They often stand around doing nothing in the midst of big fights and boss battles, so you may find yourself screaming at the Incredible Hulk to stop talking about smashing and actually do it. AI characters also have a habit of huddling close to you as you traverse the tight, cluttered hallways, as if villain-stomping were an excuse for team bonding. This can get incredibly vexing because they have a habit of fencing you into corners and not letting you escape. You can switch freely to other characters on your active team, so this isn't a game-ending problem, but it's one of many glaring issues that make Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 clumsy and frustrating.

Perhaps awkward clumps of heroes without regard for personal boundaries would be easier to handle if the levels were accommodating, but alas, you spend a good amount of time walking down narrow, flavorless corridors and encountering poorly placed clusters of enemies prepared to take advantage of your team's greatest weakness: a bad camera. It's bad enough that it will nauseatingly swoop around to give you a completely different view of the action than you need (this is particularly annoying in co-op play), but it has an even worse habit of positioning itself just above doorways where a cluster of collaborators will be waiting to deliver a beatdown. As if to give you a fancy cinematic view, there are a few sequences in which you watch the action from the side, but most of these occasions don't work out. In one case, you view through a series of windows broken up by slats, so you can't even see the action that well. Furthermore, the frame rate drops considerably during these sections, which breaks up the flow and destroys any visual appeal that may have been gleaned. You can control the camera manually by pressing the 1 button and tilting the remote, but this doesn't alleviate any of the aforementioned irritations. It seems that the camera was created to handle large, open-air environments--but Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 doesn't feature any. Even the city-street levels--the largest in the game--suffer from these issues. 

 

 

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Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 Review

This clumsy and unsatisfying sequel is a step backward.
The Good

    * Large cast of great characters 
    * Fusion attacks look cool 
    * Local four-player co-op.

The Bad

    * Unlocking extra characters isn't worth the frustration 
    * Bland, claustrophobic level design 
    * Terrible AI 
    * Jittery camera and other glitches 
    * Pointless motion controls and no support for alternate controllers.

The good news: Marvel Alliance 2 doesn't feature nearly as much waggling as the first game. The bad news: almost everything else. This action/role-playing game set in the Marvel universe starts with a good foundation--namely, the excellent Civil War storyline, which provides a fitting backdrop for what could have been an all-star, superpowered frolic. Unfortunately, an unfinished and poorly designed button masher is wrapped around it instead. The action is awkward, the level design is messy and uninspired, and the minimal dialogue and inconsistent voice acting denigrate the source material. In contrast to its Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 cousins, this version of Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 is wholly inadequate.

The game doesn't do the explosive story any justice.

Nevertheless, there are some points of light twinkling in the murk that mainly come from the source material bringing the fabled heroes together. The story is based on two well-known Marvel storylines: Secret War and Civil War. A number of excellent prerendered cutscenes bring the imaginative plot to life and, more importantly, force you to make an important choice a short ways into the game. You see, our bastions of justice are split into two camps over a newly established law coercing superheroes into officially registering with the US government. Your decision impacts how the middle portion plays and which heroes from the sizeable roster you can include in your team of four before the two branching paths meet again for the final act. The divergent story is a great idea and, in theory, should provide a good reason to return for a second round to see what you missed if you were to have chosen differently. However, this bifurcated story is diminished by simplistic storytelling that fails to involve you with its characters. The thoughtful plot is thinned out by shockingly few (and sparsely written) character conversations in between missions--none of which involve multiple dialogue options, let alone divergent ones. The voice acting doesn't help matters either. While some heroes sound fine, other voice-overs are amateurish, and some spoken dialogue specific to the Wii--such as an exchange between two scientists--is just plain embarrassing.

The first half hour of the game introduces you to all you'll need to know to get you through the missions. From an isometric camera view, you lead a team of four Marvel stars through hordes of expendable henchmen, occasionally taking detours to perform simple tasks or solve puzzles. You lead one character at a time, while the other three are controlled by the AI or a buddy (or two or three) in local cooperative play. By hammering on the A and B buttons, you string standard attacks into combos that might trip or stun your foes. Each hero can eventually perform four different superpowers, and depending on your hero, you can jump, double jump, fly, or even teleport. If you want to squeeze the most out of the experience, you will do best to grab a friend: AI-controlled heroes are a real drag on the proceedings. They often stand around doing nothing in the midst of big fights and boss battles, so you may find yourself screaming at the Incredible Hulk to stop talking about smashing and actually do it. AI characters also have a habit of huddling close to you as you traverse the tight, cluttered hallways, as if villain-stomping were an excuse for team bonding. This can get incredibly vexing because they have a habit of fencing you into corners and not letting you escape. You can switch freely to other characters on your active team, so this isn't a game-ending problem, but it's one of many glaring issues that make Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 clumsy and frustrating.

Perhaps awkward clumps of heroes without regard for personal boundaries would be easier to handle if the levels were accommodating, but alas, you spend a good amount of time walking down narrow, flavorless corridors and encountering poorly placed clusters of enemies prepared to take advantage of your team's greatest weakness: a bad camera. It's bad enough that it will nauseatingly swoop around to give you a completely different view of the action than you need (this is particularly annoying in co-op play), but it has an even worse habit of positioning itself just above doorways where a cluster of collaborators will be waiting to deliver a beatdown. As if to give you a fancy cinematic view, there are a few sequences in which you watch the action from the side, but most of these occasions don't work out. In one case, you view through a series of windows broken up by slats, so you can't even see the action that well. Furthermore, the frame rate drops considerably during these sections, which breaks up the flow and destroys any visual appeal that may have been gleaned. You can control the camera manually by pressing the 1 button and tilting the remote, but this doesn't alleviate any of the aforementioned irritations. It seems that the camera was created to handle large, open-air environments--but Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 doesn't feature any. Even the city-street levels--the largest in the game--suffer from these issues.

Fun fact: When Psylocke first appeared, she was Captain Britain's twin sister.

The action isn't all bad, but it isn't good either. At its simplest, the button mashing, superpower-infused mayhem has a basic appeal. Yet Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 seems to go out of its way to diminish the sense of flow and might that its combat should instill. Enemies love to perform knockbacks and stuns, and when you get enough foes after you, they can string several such attacks together. Even if you block frequently, your groove will be constantly interrupted by these types of attack. This is an even greater annoyance when using certain powers that entail longer-lasting animations that can't be halted, such as Human Torch's flame stream. These frustrations culminate in the game's bonus missions. If you want to expand your roster and add unlockable characters to your team, you have to take on these scenarios. It's too bad you don't unlock characters as you play the campaign (as in other versions of the game) because these missions are a hassle and therefore not worth the trouble. For example, to unlock Jean Grey, you have to perform a solo mission in which you must destroy a bunch of vehicles by telekinetically flinging self-destructing enemies at them. But this mission is the opposite of fun. The suicidal foes get stuck on objects and spawn in too few locations; when these issues are combined with the ungainly camera, your annoyance levels rise. Unlocking Penance involves defeating a certain number of enemies and then a final boss, but a huge enemy bottleneck that occurs right after opening a door puts the camera in a typically unhelpful position, and the ensuing madness might bring an end to the level. Few of these missions are enjoyable, and even if you make it through, you may not have earned enough points to unlock the character in question.

This sequel introduces a new type of skill: fusions. These two-character attacks do an extra amount of damage, and some of them light up the screen with vibrant special effects. But they aren't much fun to perform and are hampered by clumsy features. You must build up a fusion energy meter, indicated on the screen by stars. Once you reach four stars, you can unleash a fusion by holding Z, flinging the nunchuk to the side, and using the onscreen pointer to choose the hero you want fused with your active character. Because you normally don't have to keep the remote aimed at the screen, orienting the cursor can take a moment, which is a minor annoyance. A greater related issue is the character-revival mechanic, which is also tied to the fusion stars. Unless an enemy drops a fusion token, which immediately grants you four stars, your meter is slow to build. Reviving a downed character uses up a star, which prolongs the wait. And, those tokens have a bad habit of appearing where they're hardest to get to--in the middle of multicharacter melees. It's odd, too, that the bright visual eruptions caused by fusions aren't accompanied by energetic audio effects. They sound feeble, which makes performing them less than exciting.  

When you aren't beating up minor criminals and Marvel villains, you will be leveling your characters and equipping teamwide upgrade medals that drop on the battlefield. These elements are sadly shallow. You begin with only one upgrade slot and unlock a few more as you play; this methodology is just a way of presenting a stripped-down progression system as a series of "rewards." You can spend skill points as you see fit, and if you choose to allow characters to auto-advance, it's nice that you can assign priority levels to various powers so that they may evolve more quickly. However, the fact that you must lock yourself into a leveling method (auto-level the entire party, manually advance party, or auto-advance party but manually level the player-controlled character) at the outset of the game is mind-boggling. Also mind-boggling: every attempt to provide variety by taking the player out of battle. An end-level puzzle in which you must activate a sequence of computer terminals stops the game dead in its tracks, and the way your AI-controlled party crowds near you as you move about the room makes it even more exasperating. You point the remote at the screen and maneuver a dot through a maze in a hacking minigame, but this tangent isn't fun and seems like an obvious "let's do this because we can" motion-controlled gimmick. As such, don't expect to plug in a Classic Controller or GameCube controller: This button masher requires a remote and nunchuk.

Some licensed games are a labor of love, exhibiting profound respect for the source material. Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, on the other hand, doesn't exhibit the kind of care and reverence a beloved brand merits. It's inelegant and underdeveloped, and it represents a major step backward when compared to the original. Halfhearted dialogue, bad AI, unimaginative level design, stripped RPG elements, and all sorts of other factors make the game feel as if it were pieced together on an assembly line and quickly tossed onto store shelves. The Marvel License deserves better--and so do Wii owners. 

Kevin VanOrd

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising Updated Hands-On

We check out the two multiplayer modes in Codemasters' upcoming realistic military shooter.

"This is not really a Rambo game."

So says Codemasters executive producer Sion Lenton of the upcoming Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. He's not exaggerating either--in this hyper-realistic first-person shooter, going lone wolf will often get you cut down in the line of fire. Success in Dragon Rising, therefore, is measured in steps where every decision you make on the battlefield needs to be carefully considered and expertly executed. Codemasters reps, including Lenton, recently visited GameSpot offices to show off the multiplayer modes in the game, which look to be just as demanding as those found when playing solo. 

There's a fair bit of lore in Dragon Rising's near-future campaign setting, but the essential facts are these: The year is 2011 and China, Russia, and the US are feuding over an oil-rich island off the eastern coast of Russia. The island, known as Skira, is a real place, though Lenton told us that the in-game layout of Skira is actually based on an Alaskan island deemed to be more topographically interesting than the real thing. The campaign follows the fire teams on the ground as they look to sort out the Skira kerfuffle in the only way that makes sense in video games: gunning it out.

Though you can play the campaign solo or with a friend via co-operative play, our focus was on the game's multiplayer modes. There are two modes to speak of: Annihilation and Infiltration. Annihilation mode is essentially Deathmatch with two teams going up against one another on a specific section of Skira. Infiltration mode tasks teams with certain objectives--one team might look to assault and destroy a specific target, for example. The difference here is that the attacking team will have fewer forces at hand but will be better equipped, while the defending force will have more numbers but fewer weapons at hand.

In both Annihilation and Infiltration modes, each human player involved in a match will have a squad of three AI-controlled soldiers. Just as in the single-player game, you'll be able to issue orders to your squadmates, essentially making them an effective part of your attack (or defense). The command radial menu at your disposal is unchanged from the single-player game and will let you set targets for your squadmates to maneuver to, as well as set more specific orders, such as formation and specific rules of engagement. As Lenton told us, the AI squadmates have been designed to be self-sufficient and a help in battle (they even have minds of their own, it seems, and won't run willy-nilly into a kill zone despite your direct orders). At the same time, the AI commands are specific enough for players who want to dig deeper into the menus and really micromanage their fellow soldiers.

In the Annihilation match we watched, two teams of forces battled it out in a timed match, with both teams looking to take control of a bridge that acted as a choke point on the map. The same realistic injury model is fully in place in multiplayer--where one shot can take you out or severely injure you. If you take a bullet in the arm, your aim will be affected; if you take one in the leg, you'll be hobbling...and leaking blood all the while. If you don't get patched up, either by a medic or with a medikit in your pack, it'll be over for you. Despite the game's huge maps, you'll be respawned near any of your surviving squadmates; though if you all die, you'll respawn back at the start, which can result in quite a hike to get back to the action.

In the Infiltration match we saw, the attacking team's long hike to the objective gave the defending team time to set up the defenses. With more troops at your disposal, you can instruct squads to man strategic points, such as sandbag placements or mounted guns, as you wait for the attack to begin. The special ops team--armed with better weapons like sniper rifles, mines, and so on--will need to do some recon before they attack to try to figure out where enemy troops are stationed.

Running on the Ego engine that also powers Codemasters' racing games, such as the Dirt and Gird series, Dragon Rising has a look all its own. It is one that, according to Lenton, borrows more inspiration from war-time documentaries than feature films. As a result, the game's got a grimy look to it, full of sophisticated particle effects that add a layer of grit and haze to your surroundings and makes enemy soldiers that are already tough to find in the huge levels that much more difficult to spot.

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising is about as far from run-and-gun action as you can imagine, and that slower pace will require a measure of patience on behalf of the player who will need to front-load lots of planning into a level before the bullets start flying. Those with a head for strategy, heads up: Dragon Rising is set for deployment on October 6.

GTA IV: The Ballad Of Gay Tony - What GR editors thought

We've all had a go on it - see if we all agree
Last week, Rockstar visited our UK and US offices to show us the latest instalment of GTA IV's Xbox 360 exclusive DLC - The Ballad Of Gay Tony. Unusually for a game demo, most of the GamesRadar team were able to get substantial hands-on time, and by the end of the day we all had something to say about the new theme, style, weapons, vehicles and altogether more 'San Andreas-y' feeling missions.

For the uninitiated, Ballad focuses on a new protagonist, Luis Lopez, bodyguard and business partner to nightclub baron “Gay” Tony Prince. As the richest of GTA IV’s three protagonists, Luis has access to better cars and better guns than Niko or Johnny, including Belgian P-90 assault rifles, C4 sticky bombs and rapid-fire auto-shotguns that fire explosive rounds. He also has more activities available to him, including a dancing minigame, randomly generated side missions at his club, BASE jumping from an assortment of buildings and the ability to replay any completed missions.

What we saw during our international hands-on was a thorough introduction to some of Ballad’s new characters, weapons and acitivities, as well as three missions. The first, “Dropping In,” was a showcase for the episode’s new parachuting and skydiving action, as Luis dropped into the penthouse offices of the local hockey team. He then murdered the owner and his bodyguards, all the while keeping in touch with his new boss Timur (actually a henchman for GTA IV heavy Bulgarin) via a Bluetooth headset, before leaping out a window and floating safely down to the back of a moving flatbed truck.

The next two missions introduced us to Yusuf Amir, who GTA IV fans might remember as the developer from Dubai that Playboy X was trying to suck up to. First up was “For the Man Who Has Everything,” which involved Luis inching his way along the top of a moving subway train, ducking overpasses and police choppers, all so he could decouple the lead car and enable Yusuf to steal it by helicopter. Next was “Sexy Time,” which required Luis to steal aboard a gigantic yacht, jack an experimental helicopter and then sink the enormous luxury boat before its occupants could shoot him down.

 

 

So, that's what we've played of The Ballad of Gay Tony so far. What did we think? Rather than single out one writer to write up his thoughts, we thought we'd give everyone a shout - that's the venerable Mikel Reparaz from our US office and Dave Meikleham, Dave Houghton, Matt Cundy and Nathan Irvine from the UK. We've set up the preview as a question and answer arrangement with all the editors giving their spin on six talking points. If you want any more info, send them a PM, drop us a line on Twitter or leave a message in the comments.

What do you think of the new storyline and theme?

"I’m actually really excited by it. Just getting to see another side of GTA IV’s story is interesting to me at this point, but I like that they’ve taken it in a more lighthearted, colorful direction, because The Lost and Damned’s grain filter gave the proceedings a more depressing, joyless feel than I think Rockstar intended. Everything’s big and loud and colorful and explosive." Mikel Reparaz

"I really like that Rockstar is using Luis’ position in the centre of the hedonistic and affluent club world as an excuse to go screaming-mad-bonkers with the gameplay and mission design. No longer do we start as a lowly crime-loving pauper scrabbling around for peashooter and cheeseknives." Dave Houghton

 

"The idea of focusing on Liberty City’s gay scene is interesting. I just hope they don’t treat it with the series’ usual broad-brush stereotyping - one Florian Kravich was enough, ta very much." Dave Meikleham

"The theme and storyline are spot on. They hark back to the colourful and comical world of Vice City and the amount of things to do (base-jumping) in San Andreas." Nathan Irvine

"I'm never massively fussed about storyline. As long as I get to do plenty of stupid crazy shit along the way in a GTA game, that's me happy. And Ballad of Gay Tony looks like it'll keep me happy." Matt Cundy

Is Luis Lopez a good choice as lead role?

"Yeah, he strikes me as an interesting guy. At first I was leery about playing as a character who’s at the beck and call of a single boss, but if you think about it, having to protect Tony and run missions for him probably won’t be all that different from Niko’s relationship with Roman." (MR)

"So far I have no reason to think that Luis is a bad choice, but I’ve seen nowhere near enough of his character to decide whether I really like the guy or not. At the moment he’s just another gritty, put-upon GTA anti-hero, but at the moment I’m happy to believe Rockstar will make him more interesting than that. Let’s hope it does." (DH)

 

"The only GTA lead I’ve ever really taken to was Tommy Vercetti. To be honest, I’m fed up with playing supposedly conflicted characters, trying to go on the straight and narrow that have an aversion to killing, who then go on to garrotte more people than Genghis Khan. Luis’ story looks like it might be set in this mould, which would leave me a bit cold." (DM)

"Not particularly. We’ve only seen a glimpse into what makes the guy tick, but he's a carbon-copy of Rockstar’s previous leads. Tough? Check. Shady past? Check. Torn between doing right and wrong? Check. Will kill indiscriminately either way? Check. Rockstar may have missed a trick by not making Gay Tony the lead. It would’ve been interesting playing as a gay man who'd rather swing a handbag than a baseball bat." (NI)

"Rockstar has gone to the trouble of giving the interface a completely fabulous makeover and the trailers suggested a dazzling neon sparkly disco-ball vibe. So I didn't get why I was playing as such a disappointingly not fabulous lead. Lopez looks like he would be at home in San Andreas. But here? He just doesn't feel like he fits the glitz." (MC)

What did you think of the new OTT weapons and vehicles?

"The weapons are fantastic, especially the auto-shotgun with its explosive shells. At the beginning of my hands-on time, they gave me a minute to just play around with the guns, and the devastation I was able to wreak on the cops was breathtaking." (MR)

"I judge the fun factor of video game hardware on my patented Scale of Giggle. If a gun makes me smile, I like it. If it makes me titter, it’s a winner. Gay Tony’s cranked-up death-kit took me from 0 - demented cackle in about 1.5 seconds flat." (DH)

"The new shotgun, which packs bus-bashing, copter-crashing explosive shells, is amazing. I kept deliberately failing missions simply because I couldn’t resist shooting the fuzz in the face. The new helicopter seems like a hoot, too, and was much easier to manoeuvre than GTA IV’s unruly whirlybirds." (DM)

"GTA’s going out with a bang in this one and the new assault shotgun and sticky grenades are there to encourage carnage in the most entertaining way possible." (NI)

"The exploding shotgun shells bring a new meaning to devastation. You want carnage? Holy shit kickers. This is two barrels of super-sized wrecking ball Armageddon carnage. If you've got a bad-tempered elephant, this is the gun that can take it down. Oh, and Sticky grenades + pedestrians = GOOD TIMES." (MC)

Which bit of the hands-on demo impressed you most?

"It’s a toss-up between the skydiving, which was a lot of fun and which I proved to be really good at, and the mission where you’re riding on top of a subway so that Yusuf can steal one of the cars.

"I liked the sense of speed and the wind drag slowing Luis down, and I liked that he occasionally had to flatten himself against the car when a tunnel came along. But mostly I liked tearing attack choppers apart with the explosive auto-shotgun. That was pretty badass." (MR)

"A stratospherically high parachute mission gave me the most spectacular view of Liberty City I've enjoyed yet. The sheer scale of Liberty City is *still* utterly mind blowing. I'm glad the parachute's back." (MC)

 

 

"The sky-diving infiltration mission really brought home to me how much of a scaled-up, San-Andreas-crazy feel Rockstar seems to be bringing to Gay Tony. Parachuting to the top of a skyscraper from not far below cloud level before butter-knifing down through it with a P90 has exactly the right balance of brutality and ludicrous carnival decadence." (DH)

"The epic fight atop the train carriage that the crazy Yusuf character wants to steal. Blowing SWAT team choppers out of the sky with the new shotgun is bags of fun." (NI)

How does it stack up against the original game and Lost and The Damned?

"At its best, GTA has always been about playing with toys we’d never be able to touch in real life, and that’s what the chunk of Ballad I played through delivered. In terms of gameplay, I like that there’s more stuff to do, even if certain things - like the dancing minigame - are likely going to be throwaway asides I’ll probably try once and then forget about.

"Otherwise, what we’ve seen so far seems to be in line with the last two installments in terms of mission complexity and scope - although I’ll withhold judgment until I’ve had a chance to play through more." (MR)

"I’m definitely more excited about it than I was about LatD. It keeps the grit and texture of GTA IV, but blends it with so much gleefully exaggerated lunacy as to feel almost like a GTA theme park ride." (DH)

"Again, a bit early too say. But the change in tone from angst-ridden bikers to a paranoia-filled jaunt of base-jumping, criminals caught in their kecks and flamboyant nightclubs seems more in keeping with the series’ previous sense of fun." (DM)

"More comedy, outrageous weapons and more variety of things to do in Liberty City equals a more unique experience than the last two." (NI)

"It looks every bit as incredible and feels every bit as playable as both previous Liberty City excursions. But, fundamentally, there's no drastic difference - it's still trademark GTA. Anyone that's interested knows exactly what that means by now." (MC)

Is it 'gay' enough?

"It’s kind of hard to tell from what we saw - I think the idea of an openly gay character playing a big role in the story is intriguing, if only because it’s venturing into territory that the game industry is still obviously uncomfortable with. I’m interested to see whether Rockstar uses Tony Prince’s apparent homosexuality as a humanizing character trait, or if they just play it for laughs." (MR)

"Admittedly we’re going to have to get further into the rampant glam of Gay Tony’s club realm before we can see just how glitzed-up this GTA is, but between the daylight, city-based missions and Luis’ dour persona, I felt like the only nod to the sparkly madness we were hoping for was the multi-coloured reskin of the options menu. I want eye-searing neon and flaming camp, goddamnit." (DH)

"Well, the menus are a bit pink. Does that count as gay? To be honest, it doesn’t really matter. Look at GTA IV, everyone bangs on about how amazingly gritty it was. But, last time I checked, bombing around in a bright orange sports car, while wearing a thousand buck suit and listening to 80s rock wasn’t exactly the definition of grit." (DM)

"The neon gradients, soft sparkles and liberal use of pink are all well and good, but that promise of 'flamboyant playfulness' wasn't really bursting through in any of the demo's characters or scenarios. The Rockstar rep assured me that it would be more evident when playing from start to finish. And, in fairness, I didn't get to meet Gay Tony or check out his club, so... I think the logo and trailers filled my head with glittery thoughts and I was expecting a little more than pink mission markers." (MC)

The Ballad of Gay Tony will be available to buy on disc as one part of Episodes from Liberty City, which will also include the much celebrated first episode, The Lost and Damned. Episodes from Liberty City will be available in stores on October 29th, 2009 for $39.99/£34.99. You do not need to own a copy of the original GTAIV to play Episodes From Liberty City. The Ballad of Gay Tony will also be available separately as a download on October 29th, 2009 for 1600 Microsoft points.

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