The Darkness II NYCC Preview November 1, 2011

While at the New York Comic Con I was privileged to demo the game The Darkness II, which I have been highly anticipating for some time.  A sequel to 2007’s The Darkness for the PS3 and Xbox 360, the Darkness tells the story of Jackie Estacato, a mafia hit man who on his twenty-first birthday inherits the Darkness, supernatural powers passed on to him by his family.  With these new powers he avenges the death of his girlfriend Jenny and takes control of the Estacato crime family.

Two years later, Jackie finds himself sore, beaten, and nailed to a wall, which is exactly how the game’s demo began.  More than just the mafia are aware of the dark powers that lurk within Jackie, a Brotherhood which wishes to possess the powers within him once again have him held captive and begin to torture him with the intention to take the powers from him for their own nefarious purposes.  The demo is then presented as a series of flashbacks from that moment, which the game developers assured me are being taken out of sequence from the final version of the game.

Jackie awakes to find himself inside the fanciest restaurant in New York City.  Out of the pages of a Martin Scorsese script, the game automatically moves Jackie as the events around him progress, allowing the player to change his perspective to get a better view of whatever he’s looking at.  As he passes by all the wise guys he makes it to his table in the back and sits down, two beautiful identical twins are at the table waiting for him.  As they engage in uncomfortable small talk, one of the twins immediately gets assassinated, and a van can be seen through the window driving at a hundred miles per hour straight for the restaurant wall!

Jackie is hurt, but not out.  His right hand man grabs him and starts to drag him to safety.  With no way to protect himself during the following shootout, he hands you a gun and says to cover him while he gets you out of there.  Then the game really begins, and you need to defend yourself as waves of enemies make their way into the restaurant, practically turning it into a war zone.  One nice improvement over the previous game is that with one weapon Jackie can aim with sights, allowing for better accuracy with each shot.  Halfway through the sequence, your assistant hands you a second weapon with the hope that you can do more damage with two, and indeed you can.  No longer able to aim down the sights any more, it’s a fair trade-off, as you can now fire faster and can sustain shooting for longer without having to reload.

Jackie is dragged into the kitchen, just as a molotov cocktail is thrown into it.  Combined with a gas leak they were just smelling, the entire kitchen is engulfed in flames and Jackie is severely injured.  As Jackie views his burns all over his body, the voice of Mike Patton, who is reprising his role as the voice of The Darkness, is heard, urging Jackie to release him once again.  With the push of a button, the Darkness is released, and Jackie is at full strength once again.

The next part of the level serves as a tutorial for all the new game mechanics.  The Darkness no longer works the same way as it does in the first game, you can no longer switch powers around like you could previously, and instead you are given different capabilities with it immediately, such as the ability to slash at enemies and object.  This gives you the ability to break through barriers and can act as a melee attack.  You also have the ability to pick up object and hurl them at enemies, which the game developers likened to the Gravity Gun in Half-Life 2.

We flash back to the present, and Jackie continues to be tortured by The Brotherhood.  He is taunted by his failure to save Jenny, and his inability to control the Darkness.

The game then switched to the New York City Subway.  Previously serving as strictly a hub world in the first game, the subways were now filled with enemies gunning for Jackie and his powers.  It is at this moment the player is made aware that Jackie’s weakness is light, and it is imperative that he destroy all the artificial lights in the subway tunnels or else he could fall more susceptible to gunfire.  However, Jackie was not alone anymore.  His friend, the Darkling, was assisting him through the subway, jumping on enemies to distract them and spouting insane statements.  The game developers promise that this new game is unlike the previous as it is treating the Darkling in a whole new way.  The Darkling, as previously depicted, were spawned minions which had different special options.  They would die easily but could be just as easily respawned.  Now, there is only one Darkling and he has a whole new personality.  The game developers assured me that they wanted us to have an attachment to the little guy, and let me tell you, I was feeling attached.

The game faded to white once again and we were snapped back to the present.  As he continued to be tortured, I thought for a moment that the big bad may succeed at taking the Darkness from Jackie, but you can’t keep a powerful hero down.  Amassing his last bits of strength (as well as a quick button press), Jackie was able to free himself from his constraints and upon killing the lights in the room, use the Darkness to save himself.  As the big baddie sulked away in failure and fear, he promises he will return, and “visit his Aunt Sarah.”

That sentence lingering in the air, the demo ended.

I couldn’t be happier about the progress with The Darkness II.  After having seen it previously at E3 earlier this year, I was treated to a whole new section of the game which has impressed me even stronger than the last time I saw it.  The game is inspired by a comic book property of the same name, and from the looks of it, that comic series is being done with the utmost of respect, and should expose a ton of gamers to the comic series, just as the first game had exposed me to it back in 2007.

The Darkness II is coming Feb, 2012 for Xbox 360, PC and PS3.

Resistance 3 Preview August 19, 2011

Humanity is on the brink of destruction.  The planet has been overrun with an invasion force which converts or kills all enemies which stand in their way.  They’re changing the weather, dropping the temperature of the planet to better suit their survival.  We will not survive the winter.  The only man who stood any chance of standing in their way is dead, executed in the back of the head by one of his own squadmates at the moment of his conversion.  Humanity must resist, and a new hero must step forward to lead the charge.

What a way to start a game!

Nathan Hale is dead, and you are Joseph Capelli, who not only has the weight of protecting his wife and child but also the entire surviving Earth population.  Your only hope is the mysterious Dr. Malikov, who sought you out after the events of Resistance 2.  You’re going to need to keep him alive as he crosses the devastated country, preparing for one last stand which will hopefully destroy the Chimeran invaders once and for all.

Gameplay has been retooled in this game quite a bit.  You are no longer restricted to the two weapon limit as you were in Resistance 2.  The weapon wheel, which allows you to carry all the weapons you pick up over the course of the game, has made its glorious return.  The more you use a weapon and the more kills you accumulate with any weapon in particular will effectively level the weapon up, giving you more capabilities, including improved zoom or better damage.  Regenerating health is gone, making you reliant on health packs.

Some of this will carry over to multiplayer.  Some additions to multiplayer include the ability to get payback on the last player who killed you (they’ll be flagged on your HUD).  On a nice added bonus the game will support cooperative through the single-player campaign using either split-screen or online, however it will be limited to two players.  In the past, Resistance: Fall of Man supported two player co-op, but only through split-screen, and Resistance 2 had an entirely separate co-op campaign that could support seven players online (with a maximum of two through split-screen), and trust me YOU NEEDED those seven players just to progress.  Online co-op through the single player campaign has been wanted since Resistance: Fall of Man shipped, and we’re finally getting it.

A multiplayer beta test for the game has already begun for people who own SOCOM4 and to people who preordered off Amazon.  Pretty soon Playstation Plus users will be granted access, and following that, the rest of the PS3 population.

Resistance 3 is coming September 6th, 2011 exclusive to the Playstation 3.

Prey 2 Preview June 8, 2011

It’s like Blade Runner meets Mirror’s Edge is the easiest way to describe it. You play a US Marshal which was stationed on the airplane transported into an alien sphere, the same sphere which transported Tommy and his friends up back in 2006.

This new game starts on the sphere but immediately feels different from the first game, even though it looks the same at first. The protagonist can duck behind cover in a first person perspective as well as slide behind and leap over cover.

He is quickly tranquilized and taken to Exodus. An alien world which does not spin. One side is always dark and one side is always light. On the center of the world is a ring where the game takes place. Now, you’re a bounty hunter on this world. You’ll be able to travel through this whole world with full access at all times.

On your side will be plenty of weapons including electrified ropes which capture enemies and anti grav grenades that can pull enemies up that are ducking behind cover. Your weapon is not out at all times in the game, you have to deploy it, which you can use as an intimidation tactic when someone is not being agreeable with you.

You also have rocket boots which will help you survive long falls, the ability to long jump, and you can climb on any game surface, much like in Mirror’s Edge.

The objective of the game is to find bounties and collect on them. Along the way the player is going to learn how they ended up on the planet, just as the main character learns it.

Prey 2 is coming 2012 to PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.

Gears of War 3 Preview Details June 8, 2011

Here’s an update from E3 which I made sure to post up while I could. I just previewed the single player and multiplayer component of Gears of War 3 with Epic developer, Rod Ferguson!

The single player gameplay that previewed at the Xbox Press Conference was just the tip of the iceberg. After the events of Gears 2 the whole planet has started to die on a massive scale. The Collation of Ordered Governments has been disbanded (and the guy in charge of it has gone missing) and the infection caused by the planet’s resource has been spreading through the planet, polluting oceans. Delta team has simply become Marcus and his friends, living their days out on a converted aircraft carrier until they all die.

The locust are in just as bad a shape. The Queen is dead (apparently) and without her they have no central leader. They have become a motley crew of players causing havoc on the human survivors.

In this game you’ll be able to play from multiple perspectives, and in this version I clearly saw two different teams of four. On one side I saw the side in the press demonstration, Marcus, Dom, Anya were there. On the other side was lead by Cole, with Baird, what looked like a Carmine, and a raven haired woman who Baird was um, quite charming to (insert sarcasm here, he actually hates her).

So with this you’ll be able to flash back and forth among the two squads depending on the story’s progression. Both teams were of four so you’ll still be able to phase in and out cooperatively between the two teams, giving you the story from more perspectives.

Also, Horde 2.0 was demoed today, and while it features all the fun of the original, it has been greatly expanded including the opportunity to change hosts on the fly and replace players during a match. On a gameplay side, you’ll be able to set up fortifications in the map with money, which will buy you things like turrets, mechs, decoys, barriers, and sentries! Building or repairing these will rank the player up, and rank up their skill, expanding what they can deploy. Oh and did I mention there’s a random boss spawn every 10 levels and some bonus objectives and levels as well?

Gears of War 3 is coming September 20th, exclusive to the Xbox 360. Now enjoy this picture of me and Rod.