Gamespot's Site Mashup

http://auth.gamespot.com/ Gamespot's Everything Feed! News, Reviews, Videos. Exploding with content? You bet. en-us Wed, 29 Jan 2014 04:34:18 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-witcher-3-shown-off-with-tantalising-new-screenshots/1100-6417411/ <p style="">Polish developer CD Projekt Red has shown off upcoming RPG <a href="/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt/" data-ref-id="false">The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt</a> again via three impressive new screenshots.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Two of the screens show series protagonist Geralt on horseback, first encountering the remains of a battle and later observing a group on the other side of a lake. Between his equestrian jaunts, Geralt is also shown about to intervene as two ruffians assault somebody on a cobbled city street.</p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1493/14930800/2427132-the+witcher+3+new+screen+1.png" data-ref-id="1300-2427132" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1493/14930800/2427132-the+witcher+3+new+screen+1.png" data-ref-id="1300-2427132"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/1493/14930800/2427132-the+witcher+3+new+screen+1.png"></a></figure><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1493/14930800/2427133-the+witcher+3+new+screen+2.png" data-ref-id="1300-2427133" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1493/14930800/2427133-the+witcher+3+new+screen+2.png" data-ref-id="1300-2427133"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/1493/14930800/2427133-the+witcher+3+new+screen+2.png"></a></figure><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1493/14930800/2427134-the+witcher+3+new+screen+3.png" data-ref-id="1300-2427134" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1493/14930800/2427134-the+witcher+3+new+screen+3.png" data-ref-id="1300-2427134"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/1493/14930800/2427134-the+witcher+3+new+screen+3.png"></a></figure><p dir="ltr" style="">The screens were made available to <a style="line-height:1.625;" href="http://forums.cdprojektred.com/" rel="nofollow">commemorate the developer opening its new forums</a>.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">The Witcher 3 is one of the first RPGs that seems to be embracing the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. CD Projekt Red <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/witcher-3-for-xbox-360-or-ps3-would-be-impossible-dev-says/1100-6417274/">has said it would be "impossible" to create the game for 360/PS3</a>, and that the game is already <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/witcher-3-fairly-close-to-maxing-out-power-of-xbox-one-ps4/1100-6417292/">close to maxing out the power of the new consoles</a>.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">CD Projekt Red has promised that The Witcher 3 will be an open-world adventure, thanks to its work on its proprietary REDengine 3. It has been said that the game is 35 times the size of its predecessor. </p><p dir="ltr" style="">The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is due to be released for PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 at some point in 2014.</p><div data-embed-type="video" data-ref-id="2300-6131950" data-width="854" data-height="480"><iframe src="/videos/embed/6131950/" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe></div><p dir="ltr" style=""> </p> Wed, 29 Jan 2014 03:20:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-witcher-3-shown-off-with-tantalising-new-screenshots/1100-6417411/ http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/naruto-shippuden-ultimate-ninja-storm-3-full-burst/1900-6415648/ <p style="">There's a lot to be said for fan service and its role in entertainment. Providing material that speaks directly to an audience with a specific love and appreciation of a given source provides a palpable sense of private-club-like inclusion, allowing fans to feel connected through their shared interest whether they're in the same room or on the other side of the world. Rather than feel isolated and frustrated by an undying love for a given movie, character, comic, or novel, the existence of indulgence-orientated products makes us feel part of something bigger--there are people out there who like this stuff as much as I do. The Ultimate Ninja series has always taken this idea to heart, concentrating its focus to a laser point that other franchises would never dare to attempt for fear of alienating all but the most dedicated of followers. If you're part of the club, then such single-mindedness is great. If you're not, then don't let the door hit you on the way out.</p><p style="">Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 Full Burst is perhaps the most extreme example yet of Namco Bandai's attempt to appeal to the converted and only to the converted. Here's a game not simply for any old Naruto fan, but for Naruto fans who are completely up to date with the story and characters as they currently exist in the anime/manga episodes and are seeking a new way of experiencing previously explored plotlines. If you're not up to date, then not only are you going to struggle enormously with the story as depicted in the game's early stages, but you're going to ruin what you've not yet seen of the TV series. Unfortunately, due to gameplay that is as unwieldy and bloated as its title, Full Burst is not an acceptable way to get yourself up to date with this franchise.</p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2426036-0001.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2426036" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2426036-0001.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2426036"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/416/4161502/2426036-0001.jpg"></a><figcaption>With so many characters, the story is all but impossible to follow without intimate knowledge of prior events.</figcaption></figure><p style="">This may be a beat-'em-up, but the primary Ultimate Adventure mode features so little gameplay in comparison to cutscenes and dialogue-heavy exposition that you'd be forgiven for thinking you're sitting through a barely interactive (albeit combat-heavy) soap opera. It feels as though developer CyberConnect2's plan was to create a condensed edition of the anime in which fight scenes are playable, rather than create a game in its own right. This leads to an experience that features such haphazard and irregular pacing that your principal cause for intrigue rests in trying to work out just how long it's going to be before the game asks you to pick up the controller again--and even when you do, the core combat is a shallow, button mashing affair that requires little in the way of skill. While there's definite and worthwhile value in repackaging the events of a beloved series in a new format, there's also value in a game giving you something to do.</p><p style="">There may be a lack of interaction in story mode, but that doesn't hold true for the package as a whole. Including all of the downloadable content released for the original <a href="/naruto-shippuden-ultimate-ninja-storm-3/" data-ref-id="false">Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja 3</a> release, the volume of content on offer is gargantuan. Chief among the additions is the extra Ultimate Adventure chapter, which sees Sasuke and Itachi Uchiha take on the nefarious Sage Kabuto, a segment that is so phenomenally difficult in comparison to the rest of the game that all previously learned tactics become essentially redundant. The same Sage Kabuto is unlockable as a playable character if you have the patience to jump through the numerous hoops to unlock him, and there are also some new costumes to swoon over.</p><figure data-align="right" data-size="medium" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2426038-0002.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2426038" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2426038-0002.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2426038"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_medium/416/4161502/2426038-0002.jpg"></a><figcaption>Sage Kabuto is a new and unlockable character, but less interesting to control than he looks.</figcaption></figure><p style="">The biggest, but certainly not most interesting, piece of extra content comes in the form of supplementary challenge missions. One hundred of these have you beating an opponent in a fight while handicapped in some way--removing your ability to jump, for example, or setting a limit on the number of attacks at your disposal. While these missions do add some welcome variety to the combat, they primarily serve to highlight just how shallow the core mechanics are. Without these externally shoehorned twists on battle, fighting suffers from an overwhelming shallowness that sees you engage autopilot once the basics become second nature. Only during set-piece boss battles are you asked to do something out of the ordinary.</p><p style="">To compound matters, the most members of the enormous character roster plays in the same way. You swap between characters regularly during Ultimate Adventure, but this is done predominantly to facilitate the narrative rather than to spice up gameplay through variety and diversity. Granted, significant and impressive visual flair is achieved by switching often between characters with attacks that are literally out of this world, but that aesthetic quality doesn't remain interesting long enough for the combat inadequacies to be forgiven. Clearly, this is not a game with the remotest desire to cement its place in the bastion of hardcore fighting game legacy, but that doesn't excuse the fact that there's so little meat to the gameplay that you're essentially feasting on elaborately painted bones.</p><p style="">Similar problems exist with Ultimate Adventure's role-playing-game-lite elements, which allow you to roam around a number of different environments with a view to collecting and buying items to use in combat (health potions, strength buffs, and so on) and optionally talking to loitering non-player characters. At times, these moments provide a welcome break from the cutscene/fight/cutscene pattern, but more often than not, they feel designed to artificially lengthen the game and trick you into thinking you're playing something with genuine genre-blending aspirations.</p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2426040-0004.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2426040" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2426040-0004.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2426040"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/416/4161502/2426040-0004.jpg"></a><figcaption>The Sasuke/Itachi vs. Sage Kabuto battle is the most difficult in the game.</figcaption></figure><p style="">The closest comparison to this format is <a href="/asuras-wrath/" data-ref-id="false">Asura's Wrath</a>, another of CyberConnect2's offerings. However, where Asura's Wrath succeeds in this style of storytelling thanks to its short length and ferocious pace, Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 suffers from attempting to cover far too much ground for the core mechanics to handle. If you do classify yourself as a Naruto aficionado, then simply having another medium through which to consume the narrative is potentially going to be enough to satisfy you. Without a doubt, everyone else should look elsewhere.</p> Wed, 29 Jan 2014 02:00:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/naruto-shippuden-ultimate-ninja-storm-3-full-burst/1900-6415648/ http://www.gamespot.com/videos/beat-blasters-iii-teaser-trailer/2300-6416992/ Take your first look at Beat Blasters III. Tue, 28 Jan 2014 16:10:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/beat-blasters-iii-teaser-trailer/2300-6416992/

http://auth.gamespot.com/ Gamespot's Everything Feed! News, Reviews, Videos. Exploding with content? You bet. en-us Wed, 29 Jan 2014 04:34:18 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-witcher-3-shown-off-with-tantalising-new-screenshots/1100-6417411/ <p style="">Polish developer CD Projekt Red has shown off upcoming RPG <a href="/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt/" data-ref-id="false">The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt</a> again via three impressive new screenshots.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Two of the screens show series protagonist Geralt on horseback, first encountering the remains of a battle and later observing a group on the other side of a lake. Between his equestrian jaunts, Geralt is also shown about to intervene as two ruffians assault somebody on a cobbled city street.</p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1493/14930800/2427132-the+witcher+3+new+screen+1.png" data-ref-id="1300-2427132" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1493/14930800/2427132-the+witcher+3+new+screen+1.png" data-ref-id="1300-2427132"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/1493/14930800/2427132-the+witcher+3+new+screen+1.png"></a></figure><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1493/14930800/2427133-the+witcher+3+new+screen+2.png" data-ref-id="1300-2427133" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1493/14930800/2427133-the+witcher+3+new+screen+2.png" data-ref-id="1300-2427133"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/1493/14930800/2427133-the+witcher+3+new+screen+2.png"></a></figure><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1493/14930800/2427134-the+witcher+3+new+screen+3.png" data-ref-id="1300-2427134" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1493/14930800/2427134-the+witcher+3+new+screen+3.png" data-ref-id="1300-2427134"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/1493/14930800/2427134-the+witcher+3+new+screen+3.png"></a></figure><p dir="ltr" style="">The screens were made available to <a style="line-height:1.625;" href="http://forums.cdprojektred.com/" rel="nofollow">commemorate the developer opening its new forums</a>.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">The Witcher 3 is one of the first RPGs that seems to be embracing the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. CD Projekt Red <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/witcher-3-for-xbox-360-or-ps3-would-be-impossible-dev-says/1100-6417274/">has said it would be "impossible" to create the game for 360/PS3</a>, and that the game is already <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/articles/witcher-3-fairly-close-to-maxing-out-power-of-xbox-one-ps4/1100-6417292/">close to maxing out the power of the new consoles</a>.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">CD Projekt Red has promised that The Witcher 3 will be an open-world adventure, thanks to its work on its proprietary REDengine 3. It has been said that the game is 35 times the size of its predecessor. </p><p dir="ltr" style="">The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is due to be released for PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 at some point in 2014.</p><div data-embed-type="video" data-ref-id="2300-6131950" data-width="854" data-height="480"><iframe src="/videos/embed/6131950/" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe></div><p dir="ltr" style=""> </p> Wed, 29 Jan 2014 03:20:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-witcher-3-shown-off-with-tantalising-new-screenshots/1100-6417411/ http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/naruto-shippuden-ultimate-ninja-storm-3-full-burst/1900-6415648/ <p style="">There's a lot to be said for fan service and its role in entertainment. Providing material that speaks directly to an audience with a specific love and appreciation of a given source provides a palpable sense of private-club-like inclusion, allowing fans to feel connected through their shared interest whether they're in the same room or on the other side of the world. Rather than feel isolated and frustrated by an undying love for a given movie, character, comic, or novel, the existence of indulgence-orientated products makes us feel part of something bigger--there are people out there who like this stuff as much as I do. The Ultimate Ninja series has always taken this idea to heart, concentrating its focus to a laser point that other franchises would never dare to attempt for fear of alienating all but the most dedicated of followers. If you're part of the club, then such single-mindedness is great. If you're not, then don't let the door hit you on the way out.</p><p style="">Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 Full Burst is perhaps the most extreme example yet of Namco Bandai's attempt to appeal to the converted and only to the converted. Here's a game not simply for any old Naruto fan, but for Naruto fans who are completely up to date with the story and characters as they currently exist in the anime/manga episodes and are seeking a new way of experiencing previously explored plotlines. If you're not up to date, then not only are you going to struggle enormously with the story as depicted in the game's early stages, but you're going to ruin what you've not yet seen of the TV series. Unfortunately, due to gameplay that is as unwieldy and bloated as its title, Full Burst is not an acceptable way to get yourself up to date with this franchise.</p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2426036-0001.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2426036" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2426036-0001.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2426036"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/416/4161502/2426036-0001.jpg"></a><figcaption>With so many characters, the story is all but impossible to follow without intimate knowledge of prior events.</figcaption></figure><p style="">This may be a beat-'em-up, but the primary Ultimate Adventure mode features so little gameplay in comparison to cutscenes and dialogue-heavy exposition that you'd be forgiven for thinking you're sitting through a barely interactive (albeit combat-heavy) soap opera. It feels as though developer CyberConnect2's plan was to create a condensed edition of the anime in which fight scenes are playable, rather than create a game in its own right. This leads to an experience that features such haphazard and irregular pacing that your principal cause for intrigue rests in trying to work out just how long it's going to be before the game asks you to pick up the controller again--and even when you do, the core combat is a shallow, button mashing affair that requires little in the way of skill. While there's definite and worthwhile value in repackaging the events of a beloved series in a new format, there's also value in a game giving you something to do.</p><p style="">There may be a lack of interaction in story mode, but that doesn't hold true for the package as a whole. Including all of the downloadable content released for the original <a href="/naruto-shippuden-ultimate-ninja-storm-3/" data-ref-id="false">Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja 3</a> release, the volume of content on offer is gargantuan. Chief among the additions is the extra Ultimate Adventure chapter, which sees Sasuke and Itachi Uchiha take on the nefarious Sage Kabuto, a segment that is so phenomenally difficult in comparison to the rest of the game that all previously learned tactics become essentially redundant. The same Sage Kabuto is unlockable as a playable character if you have the patience to jump through the numerous hoops to unlock him, and there are also some new costumes to swoon over.</p><figure data-align="right" data-size="medium" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2426038-0002.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2426038" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2426038-0002.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2426038"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_medium/416/4161502/2426038-0002.jpg"></a><figcaption>Sage Kabuto is a new and unlockable character, but less interesting to control than he looks.</figcaption></figure><p style="">The biggest, but certainly not most interesting, piece of extra content comes in the form of supplementary challenge missions. One hundred of these have you beating an opponent in a fight while handicapped in some way--removing your ability to jump, for example, or setting a limit on the number of attacks at your disposal. While these missions do add some welcome variety to the combat, they primarily serve to highlight just how shallow the core mechanics are. Without these externally shoehorned twists on battle, fighting suffers from an overwhelming shallowness that sees you engage autopilot once the basics become second nature. Only during set-piece boss battles are you asked to do something out of the ordinary.</p><p style="">To compound matters, the most members of the enormous character roster plays in the same way. You swap between characters regularly during Ultimate Adventure, but this is done predominantly to facilitate the narrative rather than to spice up gameplay through variety and diversity. Granted, significant and impressive visual flair is achieved by switching often between characters with attacks that are literally out of this world, but that aesthetic quality doesn't remain interesting long enough for the combat inadequacies to be forgiven. Clearly, this is not a game with the remotest desire to cement its place in the bastion of hardcore fighting game legacy, but that doesn't excuse the fact that there's so little meat to the gameplay that you're essentially feasting on elaborately painted bones.</p><p style="">Similar problems exist with Ultimate Adventure's role-playing-game-lite elements, which allow you to roam around a number of different environments with a view to collecting and buying items to use in combat (health potions, strength buffs, and so on) and optionally talking to loitering non-player characters. At times, these moments provide a welcome break from the cutscene/fight/cutscene pattern, but more often than not, they feel designed to artificially lengthen the game and trick you into thinking you're playing something with genuine genre-blending aspirations.</p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2426040-0004.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2426040" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2426040-0004.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2426040"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/416/4161502/2426040-0004.jpg"></a><figcaption>The Sasuke/Itachi vs. Sage Kabuto battle is the most difficult in the game.</figcaption></figure><p style="">The closest comparison to this format is <a href="/asuras-wrath/" data-ref-id="false">Asura's Wrath</a>, another of CyberConnect2's offerings. However, where Asura's Wrath succeeds in this style of storytelling thanks to its short length and ferocious pace, Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 suffers from attempting to cover far too much ground for the core mechanics to handle. If you do classify yourself as a Naruto aficionado, then simply having another medium through which to consume the narrative is potentially going to be enough to satisfy you. Without a doubt, everyone else should look elsewhere.</p> Wed, 29 Jan 2014 02:00:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/naruto-shippuden-ultimate-ninja-storm-3-full-burst/1900-6415648/ http://www.gamespot.com/videos/beat-blasters-iii-teaser-trailer/2300-6416992/ Take your first look at Beat Blasters III. Tue, 28 Jan 2014 16:10:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/beat-blasters-iii-teaser-trailer/2300-6416992/

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Gamespot's Site Mashup

http://auth.gamespot.com/ Gamespot's Everything Feed! News, Reviews, Videos. Exploding with content? You bet. en-us Mon, 27 Jan 2014 04:36:30 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/loading-human-is-a-vr-based-point-and-click-adventure-game/1100-6417356/ <figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1493/14930800/2425657-screen+shot+2014-01-27+at+11.21.20.png" data-ref-id="1300-2425657" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1493/14930800/2425657-screen+shot+2014-01-27+at+11.21.20.png" data-ref-id="1300-2425657"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/1493/14930800/2425657-screen+shot+2014-01-27+at+11.21.20.png"></a></figure><p style="">Italian developer Untold Games has announced Loading Human, a classic point-and-click adventure game designed to be played with a VR headset, such as the Oculus Rift.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">The sci-fi game casts players as writer André Gibson, who must relive his memories as part of a procedure to be transferred into an immortal robot body and reunite with his wife Michelle.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">The virtual reality adventure pledges to work with motion controllers alongside a VR headset, with players using their hands to interacting with in-game objects. Untold Games describes it as an "old school" adventure game, with <a href="/the-secret-of-monkey-island-special-edition/" data-ref-id="false">The Secret of Monkey Island</a> and <a href="/phoenix-cms/videos/form?id=6406512/" data-ref-id="false">The Dig</a> cited as inspirations.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Loading Human is aiming to be released for PC and Mac sometime in 2014.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">The developer has <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmVw0uGCUmE" rel="nofollow">released a trailer for the game</a>, and there are more screenshots of the title on the <a href="http://www.untoldgames.com/loadinghuman#!loadinghuman/mainPage" rel="nofollow">Loading Human website</a>.</p><div data-embed-type="video" data-src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmVw0uGCUmE" data-width="100%" data-height="100%"><iframe src="//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FRmVw0uGCUmE%3Fwmode%3Dopaque%26feature%3Doembed&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DRmVw0uGCUmE&amp;image=http%3A%2F%2Fi1.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FRmVw0uGCUmE%2Fhqdefault.jpg&amp;key=4de70bf370934f33a67422a7b05063bd&amp;type=text%2Fhtml&amp;schema=youtube&amp;wmode=opaque" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe></div><p dir="ltr" style=""> </p><p style=""> </p> Mon, 27 Jan 2014 03:28:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/loading-human-is-a-vr-based-point-and-click-adventure-game/1100-6417356/ http://www.gamespot.com/videos/player-vs-gamer-episode-5-mad-about-madden/2300-6416958/ DeSean Jackson of the Philadelphia Eagles & Recording Artist Mike Posner test their Madden might and go head to head in Madden 25. Mon, 27 Jan 2014 03:00:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/player-vs-gamer-episode-5-mad-about-madden/2300-6416958/ http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/might-magic-x-legacy/1900-6415645/ <p style="">You need to have the nostalgia gene to fully appreciate Might &amp; Magic X: Legacy. I do, especially when it comes to role-playing games, so I did. But this is one of those "genre within a genre" retro affairs that self-consciously turns its back on modern conventions and embraces what us old folks were stuck with back in that antediluvian era known as the 1990s. Limbic Entertainment has created an old-fashioned RPG epic that might well have landed on some "best of" lists at the end of 1996. If you're the sort of person who fondly remembers a time before the Might &amp; Magic name meant nothing but turn-based fantasy strategy, this game is for you.</p><p style="">Noting that M&amp;MXL is not for everyone isn't necessarily an insult, either. On the contrary, it's clear from the very first moments of the game that the developers are trying to be as unfashionable as a pair of acid-washed jeans. Everything about this game can be traced back to first-person party-based RPGs from the 1990s, like the original M&amp;M games, the Wizardry series, and even the Eye of the Beholder D&amp;D line. The campaign setting of Ashan is all new for this franchise, however, having been ported over from Might &amp; Magic Heroes right down to the goofy winged helmets. Oddly enough, this approach actually makes M&amp;MXL more of a traditional fantasy game than its forebears, as the original M&amp;M role-players blended spaceships in with their swords and sorcery. Still, the general objective seems to have been to create a new game that picks up right where this style of RPG left off about 15 years ago.</p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423600-0001.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423600" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423600-0001.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423600"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/416/4161502/2423600-0001.jpg"></a><figcaption>The M&amp;MXL bestiary includes the usual roster of fantasy monsters and mythological creatures, like this manticore, which almost looks like a cute puppy dog about to tear your throat out at this angle.</figcaption></figure><p style="">And that mission has been accomplished. Well, mostly. Several core components of the game are well done. There is a fair amount of choice when it comes to character creation, with four races and 12 classes (three per race) spread along the might and magic spectrums. Don't expect anything more revolutionary than the likes of dwarven defenders, human freemages, elven bladedancers, and orc barbarians in the beginning, but you have a lot of freedom to specialize once your party starts leveling up and you begin doling out points between attribute stats and skills. You can specialize in everything from maces and bows to a whopping seven schools of magic, allowing for the custom-crafting of almost any sort of heroic adventurer that you can dream up. The sheer amount of liberty even allows for some evolution during gameplay. I started off with an elven ranger who I thought would be good in ranged combat, but I eventually realized that she worked better as a second spellcaster who specialized in healing. A few levels later, and I had an impressive cleric wannabe curing poison and dishing out restoration incantations when she wasn't offing foes with her bow and arrow.</p><blockquote data-align="right" data-size="large"><p style="">It's clear from the very first moments of the game that the developers are trying to be as unfashionable as a pair of acid-washed jeans.</p></blockquote><p style="">Managing your party is more involved than in most RPGs, so you can't just storm off looking for adventure. First, you need to take care of business by buying food. Without it, you're not allowed to rest, which soon causes your party to grow tired and drop ability scores. You also need to rest to regain health and mana, because neither regenerates on its own over time. Not much of this is spelled out, and the tooltips offered up at the start of the game don't do much to explain the basics. All becomes clear if you're patient, though, or if you remember doing this stuff many years ago. Nevertheless, the game could use more hand-holding in the beginning.</p><figure data-align="right" data-size="medium" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423601-0002.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423601" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423601-0002.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423601"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_medium/416/4161502/2423601-0002.jpg"></a><figcaption>Battles in M&amp;MXL are spectacularly hard and unforgiving. It took three hours to beat these guys. Well, not really, but it felt that long.</figcaption></figure><p style="">Like most RPGs released when grunge was still a thing, M&amp;MXL features a first-person camera and grid-based movement where you move one step at a time. This system works relatively smoothly. Yes, you're stuck with an odd perspective that forces you to view the world as if the party were crammed into a car and looking out through the windshield, and the entire four-person party has to trudge as one through dungeons and forests, like a tank bristling with battle-axes and magic wands. But you soon get used to navigating in such a restricted fashion.</p><p style="">Movement has even been improved from the days of yore. M&amp;MXL features turn-based combat, so you can't gimmick the system. Back in the day, it was common to cheat through real-time battles with tricks like the Eye of the Beholder Two Step, where you would zip forward to hit a monster and then immediately retreat before it could hit you back. Here, you're locked into battle once an enemy closes and the fight begins. So instead of dipsy-doodling back and forth, you're stuck going toe-to-toe with the bad guys. This results in some grueling combat, since you have virtually no range of motion once melee combat has started and no ability at all to choose the better part of valor and run away.</p><blockquote data-size="large" data-align="left"><p style="">Managing your party is more involved than in most RPGs, so you can't just storm off looking for adventure.</p></blockquote><p style="">In some ways, the game goes too far. Not only does it take away the exploits common to first-person RPGs in the '90s, but it hammers away at you relentlessly (even at the lower "adventurer" setting). Combat is unforgiving right from the opening tutorial quest to clean spiders out of an underground lair. Monsters flank and surround you in almost every other fight, frequently spawning in out of nowhere to your rear. Just when you've got your hands full with that minotaur in your face, along come two more to hassle you from behind. Most monsters also have devastating special abilities. Almost every enemy has the ability to stun you, poison you, enfeeble you, petrify you, hit you with extra attacks, and more. Wolves and goblins can insta-kill party members if they get lucky. I don't recall an easy battle in the entire campaign. That sounds sort of fun and intense, but really, I could have done without titanic half-hour struggles to best the likes of two goblins, a couple of cavemen, and a pack of panthers.</p><figure data-align="left" data-size="medium" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423610-0003.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423610" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423610-0003.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423610"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_medium/416/4161502/2423610-0003.jpg"></a><figcaption>Balance can be an issue in spots. You can easily run into enemies that will slice you to ribbons for not being at a high-enough level, like these nasty spectres.</figcaption></figure><p style="">M&amp;MXL isn't impossibly hard, but the punishing difficulty can lead to tedium. You can (eventually) beat any monster, group of monsters, or even the game's collection of brutally tough bosses by thinking about what you're doing when it comes to strategizing and spellcasting. The extreme challenge is a natural fit for a revamped classic, but that doesn't make the occasional bitter pill of a battle easier to swallow. When actually playing the game, I was too busy cursing out the nagas or spiders gooning me from all sides to appreciate the retro character of the battle difficulty.</p><p style="">How dated M&amp;MXL is in other areas is harder to appreciate. The story isn't particularly well developed. The opening preamble is about as exciting as listening to someone recite a tax return, and there isn't much of a tale told during the game itself. Your party consists of a bunch of heroes, oddly called "raiders," who are out to do good things for the human empire in a time of unrest. There isn't much role-playing to be had here; the game is a dry tactical affair where combat is the first order of the day, followed up by the odd puzzle.</p><p style="">Monster stock is limited. Areas and dungeons are populated by just a few specific types of creatures or human thugs, and the pace can drag because fighting the same fight over and over again. Loot isn't varied or particularly imaginative, either when it's dropped or when you check out what's available in shops. It gets better as you go, but there isn't a lot of memorable "gotta have it" gear. As a result, you can go for hours with few serious upgrades of weapons and armor. How items are doled out is also strange. Monsters don't tend to drop much when they're slain, but chests loaded with goodies and gold are strewn all over the wilderness like some kind of medieval take on geocaching.</p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423612-0004.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423612" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423612-0004.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423612"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/416/4161502/2423612-0004.jpg"></a><figcaption>Minotaurs aren't too hellish in a labyrinth, but you don't want to be surrounded by three or four of them in a forest.</figcaption></figure><p style="">The throwback production values are as traditional as the adventure itself, though these elements have not aged all that tastefully. Animations can be choppy, especially in forests, and slowdown is a common occurrence in the wilderness and when there are multiple lighting effects on the screen at the same time. Sound is also sparse, with what seems like a handful of weapon and monster effects. Hero battle boasts like the orc warrior's "I kill you!" are repeated constantly. Even worse, your heroes shout their cries of sadness about being knocked out or killed a few seconds before the blow is actually delivered, so you get advance warning when somebody is about to be taken down. This makes battles a teensy bit anticlimactic.</p><p style="">Might &amp; Magic X: Legacy is a somewhat successful trip back in time to an era when RPGs were both simpler and more complicated than they are today, and a lot more demanding of players when it came to combat. If nostalgia drives you to visit this particular kingdom, you'll not likely regret the time spend there. If your good old days weren't brimming with games of this nature, it's more difficult to appreciate the take-no-prisoners challenge and overlook the limitations.</p> Fri, 24 Jan 2014 12:01:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/might-magic-x-legacy/1900-6415645/

http://auth.gamespot.com/ Gamespot's Everything Feed! News, Reviews, Videos. Exploding with content? You bet. en-us Mon, 27 Jan 2014 04:36:30 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/loading-human-is-a-vr-based-point-and-click-adventure-game/1100-6417356/ <figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1493/14930800/2425657-screen+shot+2014-01-27+at+11.21.20.png" data-ref-id="1300-2425657" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1493/14930800/2425657-screen+shot+2014-01-27+at+11.21.20.png" data-ref-id="1300-2425657"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/1493/14930800/2425657-screen+shot+2014-01-27+at+11.21.20.png"></a></figure><p style="">Italian developer Untold Games has announced Loading Human, a classic point-and-click adventure game designed to be played with a VR headset, such as the Oculus Rift.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">The sci-fi game casts players as writer André Gibson, who must relive his memories as part of a procedure to be transferred into an immortal robot body and reunite with his wife Michelle.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">The virtual reality adventure pledges to work with motion controllers alongside a VR headset, with players using their hands to interacting with in-game objects. Untold Games describes it as an "old school" adventure game, with <a href="/the-secret-of-monkey-island-special-edition/" data-ref-id="false">The Secret of Monkey Island</a> and <a href="/phoenix-cms/videos/form?id=6406512/" data-ref-id="false">The Dig</a> cited as inspirations.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Loading Human is aiming to be released for PC and Mac sometime in 2014.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">The developer has <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmVw0uGCUmE" rel="nofollow">released a trailer for the game</a>, and there are more screenshots of the title on the <a href="http://www.untoldgames.com/loadinghuman#!loadinghuman/mainPage" rel="nofollow">Loading Human website</a>.</p><div data-embed-type="video" data-src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmVw0uGCUmE" data-width="100%" data-height="100%"><iframe src="//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FRmVw0uGCUmE%3Fwmode%3Dopaque%26feature%3Doembed&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DRmVw0uGCUmE&amp;image=http%3A%2F%2Fi1.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FRmVw0uGCUmE%2Fhqdefault.jpg&amp;key=4de70bf370934f33a67422a7b05063bd&amp;type=text%2Fhtml&amp;schema=youtube&amp;wmode=opaque" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe></div><p dir="ltr" style=""> </p><p style=""> </p> Mon, 27 Jan 2014 03:28:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/loading-human-is-a-vr-based-point-and-click-adventure-game/1100-6417356/ http://www.gamespot.com/videos/player-vs-gamer-episode-5-mad-about-madden/2300-6416958/ DeSean Jackson of the Philadelphia Eagles & Recording Artist Mike Posner test their Madden might and go head to head in Madden 25. Mon, 27 Jan 2014 03:00:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/player-vs-gamer-episode-5-mad-about-madden/2300-6416958/ http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/might-magic-x-legacy/1900-6415645/ <p style="">You need to have the nostalgia gene to fully appreciate Might &amp; Magic X: Legacy. I do, especially when it comes to role-playing games, so I did. But this is one of those "genre within a genre" retro affairs that self-consciously turns its back on modern conventions and embraces what us old folks were stuck with back in that antediluvian era known as the 1990s. Limbic Entertainment has created an old-fashioned RPG epic that might well have landed on some "best of" lists at the end of 1996. If you're the sort of person who fondly remembers a time before the Might &amp; Magic name meant nothing but turn-based fantasy strategy, this game is for you.</p><p style="">Noting that M&amp;MXL is not for everyone isn't necessarily an insult, either. On the contrary, it's clear from the very first moments of the game that the developers are trying to be as unfashionable as a pair of acid-washed jeans. Everything about this game can be traced back to first-person party-based RPGs from the 1990s, like the original M&amp;M games, the Wizardry series, and even the Eye of the Beholder D&amp;D line. The campaign setting of Ashan is all new for this franchise, however, having been ported over from Might &amp; Magic Heroes right down to the goofy winged helmets. Oddly enough, this approach actually makes M&amp;MXL more of a traditional fantasy game than its forebears, as the original M&amp;M role-players blended spaceships in with their swords and sorcery. Still, the general objective seems to have been to create a new game that picks up right where this style of RPG left off about 15 years ago.</p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423600-0001.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423600" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423600-0001.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423600"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/416/4161502/2423600-0001.jpg"></a><figcaption>The M&amp;MXL bestiary includes the usual roster of fantasy monsters and mythological creatures, like this manticore, which almost looks like a cute puppy dog about to tear your throat out at this angle.</figcaption></figure><p style="">And that mission has been accomplished. Well, mostly. Several core components of the game are well done. There is a fair amount of choice when it comes to character creation, with four races and 12 classes (three per race) spread along the might and magic spectrums. Don't expect anything more revolutionary than the likes of dwarven defenders, human freemages, elven bladedancers, and orc barbarians in the beginning, but you have a lot of freedom to specialize once your party starts leveling up and you begin doling out points between attribute stats and skills. You can specialize in everything from maces and bows to a whopping seven schools of magic, allowing for the custom-crafting of almost any sort of heroic adventurer that you can dream up. The sheer amount of liberty even allows for some evolution during gameplay. I started off with an elven ranger who I thought would be good in ranged combat, but I eventually realized that she worked better as a second spellcaster who specialized in healing. A few levels later, and I had an impressive cleric wannabe curing poison and dishing out restoration incantations when she wasn't offing foes with her bow and arrow.</p><blockquote data-align="right" data-size="large"><p style="">It's clear from the very first moments of the game that the developers are trying to be as unfashionable as a pair of acid-washed jeans.</p></blockquote><p style="">Managing your party is more involved than in most RPGs, so you can't just storm off looking for adventure. First, you need to take care of business by buying food. Without it, you're not allowed to rest, which soon causes your party to grow tired and drop ability scores. You also need to rest to regain health and mana, because neither regenerates on its own over time. Not much of this is spelled out, and the tooltips offered up at the start of the game don't do much to explain the basics. All becomes clear if you're patient, though, or if you remember doing this stuff many years ago. Nevertheless, the game could use more hand-holding in the beginning.</p><figure data-align="right" data-size="medium" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423601-0002.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423601" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423601-0002.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423601"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_medium/416/4161502/2423601-0002.jpg"></a><figcaption>Battles in M&amp;MXL are spectacularly hard and unforgiving. It took three hours to beat these guys. Well, not really, but it felt that long.</figcaption></figure><p style="">Like most RPGs released when grunge was still a thing, M&amp;MXL features a first-person camera and grid-based movement where you move one step at a time. This system works relatively smoothly. Yes, you're stuck with an odd perspective that forces you to view the world as if the party were crammed into a car and looking out through the windshield, and the entire four-person party has to trudge as one through dungeons and forests, like a tank bristling with battle-axes and magic wands. But you soon get used to navigating in such a restricted fashion.</p><p style="">Movement has even been improved from the days of yore. M&amp;MXL features turn-based combat, so you can't gimmick the system. Back in the day, it was common to cheat through real-time battles with tricks like the Eye of the Beholder Two Step, where you would zip forward to hit a monster and then immediately retreat before it could hit you back. Here, you're locked into battle once an enemy closes and the fight begins. So instead of dipsy-doodling back and forth, you're stuck going toe-to-toe with the bad guys. This results in some grueling combat, since you have virtually no range of motion once melee combat has started and no ability at all to choose the better part of valor and run away.</p><blockquote data-size="large" data-align="left"><p style="">Managing your party is more involved than in most RPGs, so you can't just storm off looking for adventure.</p></blockquote><p style="">In some ways, the game goes too far. Not only does it take away the exploits common to first-person RPGs in the '90s, but it hammers away at you relentlessly (even at the lower "adventurer" setting). Combat is unforgiving right from the opening tutorial quest to clean spiders out of an underground lair. Monsters flank and surround you in almost every other fight, frequently spawning in out of nowhere to your rear. Just when you've got your hands full with that minotaur in your face, along come two more to hassle you from behind. Most monsters also have devastating special abilities. Almost every enemy has the ability to stun you, poison you, enfeeble you, petrify you, hit you with extra attacks, and more. Wolves and goblins can insta-kill party members if they get lucky. I don't recall an easy battle in the entire campaign. That sounds sort of fun and intense, but really, I could have done without titanic half-hour struggles to best the likes of two goblins, a couple of cavemen, and a pack of panthers.</p><figure data-align="left" data-size="medium" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423610-0003.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423610" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423610-0003.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423610"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_medium/416/4161502/2423610-0003.jpg"></a><figcaption>Balance can be an issue in spots. You can easily run into enemies that will slice you to ribbons for not being at a high-enough level, like these nasty spectres.</figcaption></figure><p style="">M&amp;MXL isn't impossibly hard, but the punishing difficulty can lead to tedium. You can (eventually) beat any monster, group of monsters, or even the game's collection of brutally tough bosses by thinking about what you're doing when it comes to strategizing and spellcasting. The extreme challenge is a natural fit for a revamped classic, but that doesn't make the occasional bitter pill of a battle easier to swallow. When actually playing the game, I was too busy cursing out the nagas or spiders gooning me from all sides to appreciate the retro character of the battle difficulty.</p><p style="">How dated M&amp;MXL is in other areas is harder to appreciate. The story isn't particularly well developed. The opening preamble is about as exciting as listening to someone recite a tax return, and there isn't much of a tale told during the game itself. Your party consists of a bunch of heroes, oddly called "raiders," who are out to do good things for the human empire in a time of unrest. There isn't much role-playing to be had here; the game is a dry tactical affair where combat is the first order of the day, followed up by the odd puzzle.</p><p style="">Monster stock is limited. Areas and dungeons are populated by just a few specific types of creatures or human thugs, and the pace can drag because fighting the same fight over and over again. Loot isn't varied or particularly imaginative, either when it's dropped or when you check out what's available in shops. It gets better as you go, but there isn't a lot of memorable "gotta have it" gear. As a result, you can go for hours with few serious upgrades of weapons and armor. How items are doled out is also strange. Monsters don't tend to drop much when they're slain, but chests loaded with goodies and gold are strewn all over the wilderness like some kind of medieval take on geocaching.</p><figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423612-0004.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423612" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423612-0004.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2423612"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/416/4161502/2423612-0004.jpg"></a><figcaption>Minotaurs aren't too hellish in a labyrinth, but you don't want to be surrounded by three or four of them in a forest.</figcaption></figure><p style="">The throwback production values are as traditional as the adventure itself, though these elements have not aged all that tastefully. Animations can be choppy, especially in forests, and slowdown is a common occurrence in the wilderness and when there are multiple lighting effects on the screen at the same time. Sound is also sparse, with what seems like a handful of weapon and monster effects. Hero battle boasts like the orc warrior's "I kill you!" are repeated constantly. Even worse, your heroes shout their cries of sadness about being knocked out or killed a few seconds before the blow is actually delivered, so you get advance warning when somebody is about to be taken down. This makes battles a teensy bit anticlimactic.</p><p style="">Might &amp; Magic X: Legacy is a somewhat successful trip back in time to an era when RPGs were both simpler and more complicated than they are today, and a lot more demanding of players when it came to combat. If nostalgia drives you to visit this particular kingdom, you'll not likely regret the time spend there. If your good old days weren't brimming with games of this nature, it's more difficult to appreciate the take-no-prisoners challenge and overlook the limitations.</p> Fri, 24 Jan 2014 12:01:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/might-magic-x-legacy/1900-6415645/

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Might & Magic X: Legacy

You need to have the nostalgia gene to fully appreciate Might & Magic X: Legacy. I do, especially when it comes to role-playing games, so I did. But this is one of those "genre within a genre" retro affairs that self-consciously turns its back on modern conventions and embraces what us old folks were stuck with back in that antediluvian era known as the 1990s. Limbic Entertainment has created an old-fashioned RPG epic that might well have landed on some "best of" lists at the end of 1996. If you're the sort of person who fondly remembers a time before the Might & Magic name meant nothing but turn-based fantasy strategy, this game is for you.

Noting that M&MXL is not for everyone isn't necessarily an insult, either. On the contrary, it's clear from the very first moments of the game that the developers are trying to be as unfashionable as a pair of acid-washed jeans. Everything about this game can be traced back to first-person party-based RPGs from the 1990s, like the original M&M games, the Wizardry series, and even the Eye of the Beholder D&D line. The campaign setting of Ashan is all new for this franchise, however, having been ported over from Might & Magic Heroes right down to the goofy winged helmets. Oddly enough, this approach actually makes M&MXL more of a traditional fantasy game than its forebears, as the original M&M role-players blended spaceships in with their swords and sorcery. Still, the general objective seems to have been to create a new game that picks up right where this style of RPG left off about 15 years ago.

The M&MXL bestiary includes the usual roster of fantasy monsters and mythological creatures, like this manticore, which almost looks like a cute puppy dog about to tear your throat out at this angle.

And that mission has been accomplished. Well, mostly. Several core components of the game are well done. There is a fair amount of choice when it comes to character creation, with four races and 12 classes (three per race) spread along the might and magic spectrums. Don't expect anything more revolutionary than the likes of dwarven defenders, human freemages, elven bladedancers, and orc barbarians in the beginning, but you have a lot of freedom to specialize once your party starts leveling up and you begin doling out points between attribute stats and skills. You can specialize in everything from maces and bows to a whopping seven schools of magic, allowing for the custom-crafting of almost any sort of heroic adventurer that you can dream up. The sheer amount of liberty even allows for some evolution during gameplay. I started off with an elven ranger who I thought would be good in ranged combat, but I eventually realized that she worked better as a second spellcaster who specialized in healing. A few levels later, and I had an impressive cleric wannabe curing poison and dishing out restoration incantations when she wasn't offing foes with her bow and arrow.

It's clear from the very first moments of the game that the developers are trying to be as unfashionable as a pair of acid-washed jeans.

Managing your party is more involved than in most RPGs, so you can't just storm off looking for adventure. First, you need to take care of business by buying food. Without it, you're not allowed to rest, which soon causes your party to grow tired and drop ability scores. You also need to rest to regain health and mana, because neither regenerates on its own over time. Not much of this is spelled out, and the tooltips offered up at the start of the game don't do much to explain the basics. All becomes clear if you're patient, though, or if you remember doing this stuff many years ago. Nevertheless, the game could use more hand-holding in the beginning.

Battles in M&MXL are spectacularly hard and unforgiving. It took three hours to beat these guys. Well, not really, but it felt that long.

Like most RPGs released when grunge was still a thing, M&MXL features a first-person camera and grid-based movement where you move one step at a time. This system works relatively smoothly. Yes, you're stuck with an odd perspective that forces you to view the world as if the party were crammed into a car and looking out through the windshield, and the entire four-person party has to trudge as one through dungeons and forests, like a tank bristling with battle-axes and magic wands. But you soon get used to navigating in such a restricted fashion.

Movement has even been improved from the days of yore. M&MXL features turn-based combat, so you can't gimmick the system. Back in the day, it was common to cheat through real-time battles with tricks like the Eye of the Beholder Two Step, where you would zip forward to hit a monster and then immediately retreat before it could hit you back. Here, you're locked into battle once an enemy closes and the fight begins. So instead of dipsy-doodling back and forth, you're stuck going toe-to-toe with the bad guys. This results in some grueling combat, since you have virtually no range of motion once melee combat has started and no ability at all to choose the better part of valor and run away.

Managing your party is more involved than in most RPGs, so you can't just storm off looking for adventure.

In some ways, the game goes too far. Not only does it take away the exploits common to first-person RPGs in the '90s, but it hammers away at you relentlessly (even at the lower "adventurer" setting). Combat is unforgiving right from the opening tutorial quest to clean spiders out of an underground lair. Monsters flank and surround you in almost every other fight, frequently spawning in out of nowhere to your rear. Just when you've got your hands full with that minotaur in your face, along come two more to hassle you from behind. Most monsters also have devastating special abilities. Almost every enemy has the ability to stun you, poison you, enfeeble you, petrify you, hit you with extra attacks, and more. Wolves and goblins can insta-kill party members if they get lucky. I don't recall an easy battle in the entire campaign. That sounds sort of fun and intense, but really, I could have done without titanic half-hour struggles to best the likes of two goblins, a couple of cavemen, and a pack of panthers.

Balance can be an issue in spots. You can easily run into enemies that will slice you to ribbons for not being at a high-enough level, like these nasty spectres.

M&MXL isn't impossibly hard, but the punishing difficulty can lead to tedium. You can (eventually) beat any monster, group of monsters, or even the game's collection of brutally tough bosses by thinking about what you're doing when it comes to strategizing and spellcasting. The extreme challenge is a natural fit for a revamped classic, but that doesn't make the occasional bitter pill of a battle easier to swallow. When actually playing the game, I was too busy cursing out the nagas or spiders gooning me from all sides to appreciate the retro character of the battle difficulty.

How dated M&MXL is in other areas is harder to appreciate. The story isn't particularly well developed. The opening preamble is about as exciting as listening to someone recite a tax return, and there isn't much of a tale told during the game itself. Your party consists of a bunch of heroes, oddly called "raiders," who are out to do good things for the human empire in a time of unrest. There isn't much role-playing to be had here; the game is a dry tactical affair where combat is the first order of the day, followed up by the odd puzzle.

Monster stock is limited. Areas and dungeons are populated by just a few specific types of creatures or human thugs, and the pace can drag because fighting the same fight over and over again. Loot isn't varied or particularly imaginative, either when it's dropped or when you check out what's available in shops. It gets better as you go, but there isn't a lot of memorable "gotta have it" gear. As a result, you can go for hours with few serious upgrades of weapons and armor. How items are doled out is also strange. Monsters don't tend to drop much when they're slain, but chests loaded with goodies and gold are strewn all over the wilderness like some kind of medieval take on geocaching.

Minotaurs aren't too hellish in a labyrinth, but you don't want to be surrounded by three or four of them in a forest.

The throwback production values are as traditional as the adventure itself, though these elements have not aged all that tastefully. Animations can be choppy, especially in forests, and slowdown is a common occurrence in the wilderness and when there are multiple lighting effects on the screen at the same time. Sound is also sparse, with what seems like a handful of weapon and monster effects. Hero battle boasts like the orc warrior's "I kill you!" are repeated constantly. Even worse, your heroes shout their cries of sadness about being knocked out or killed a few seconds before the blow is actually delivered, so you get advance warning when somebody is about to be taken down. This makes battles a teensy bit anticlimactic.

Might & Magic X: Legacy is a somewhat successful trip back in time to an era when RPGs were both simpler and more complicated than they are today, and a lot more demanding of players when it came to combat. If nostalgia drives you to visit this particular kingdom, you'll not likely regret the time spend there. If your good old days weren't brimming with games of this nature, it's more difficult to appreciate the take-no-prisoners challenge and overlook the limitations.

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Top 5 Skyrim Mods of the Week - Top Immersion Mods

Top 5 Skyrim Mods trawls the enormous mod catalogue so you don't have to, bringing the very best world-changing mods to your screen. From high detailed armour mods to exploding chickens, there's nothing our bold adventurers won't try.

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Winning bid on super rare NES game is $99,902

$99,902 is the winning bid on the extremely rare NES game Nintendo World Championships that was auctioned off on eBay today.

Historically, that is an extremely high price for this item. For comparison, In 2011 another copy of the Nintendo World Championships fetched $11,000 on eBay, and that version was in much better condition.

This could very well be a fake bid, which are common on eBay. However, while the winning bidder's identity is kept confidential, a limited view of his eBay history shows that he has made 16 bids within the last 30 days on a total of nine items. The bidder also has a 100 percent positive feedback score of 775. Interestingly, the buyer was the first and last to bid on the item.

Finally, there is always the possibility that the entire auction is fake to begin with.

If this is a legitimate sale, the media attention around the auction significantly raised the value of the item. The auction was covered on all the games and technology websites you'd expect, as well as mainstream publications like the BBC.

As we reported when we first noticed the auction, only 116 copies of Nintendo World Championships were manufactured and were distributed in 1990 only to winners of a special competition. The game is considered one of the rarest and most valuable NES games in existence.

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Gamespot's Site Mashup

http://auth.gamespot.com/ Gamespot's Everything Feed! News, Reviews, Videos. Exploding with content? You bet. en-us Fri, 24 Jan 2014 03:56:17 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/ds-and-wii-devices-that-enable-piracy-may-actually-be-legal-says-eu-court/1100-6417311/ <figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1493/14930800/2361261-1128092434-maxre.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2361261" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1493/14930800/2361261-1128092434-maxre.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2361261"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/1493/14930800/2361261-1128092434-maxre.jpg"></a><figcaption>Luigi delivers the news to Iwata.</figcaption></figure><p style="">A European court <a style="line-height:1.625;" href="http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2014-01/cp140009en.pdf" rel="nofollow">has ruled</a> that devices made to enable piracy on consoles, such as the DS and Wii, may actually be legal.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">The dispute has arisen after a case between Nintendo and PC Box, with the latter making devices that allows unlicensed software--and subsequently enabled pirated games--to run on the former's devices.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Nintendo believes that PC Box's tinkering is mainly to enable people to circumvent the copy protection of its games, whereas PC Box claims that users should be allowed to play their own movies and MP3 files on devices they own.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">"The Court of Justice next states that the legal protection covers only the technological measures intended to prevent or eliminate unauthorised acts of reproduction, communication, public offer or distribution, for which authorisation from the copyrightholder is required," the court rules.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">"That legal protection must respect the principle of proportionality without prohibiting devices or activities which have a commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent the technical protection for unlawful purposes."</p><p dir="ltr" style="">The court has now ruled that the Milan District Court must now look at ways people actually these devices, and to consider whether Nintendo could implement any other measures that would disable piracy while also enabling more consumer choice for unlicensed--although not illegal--software.</p><div data-embed-type="video" data-ref-id="2300-6415173" data-width="100%" data-height="100%"><iframe src="/videos/embed/6415173/" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe></div><p dir="ltr" style=""> </p><p style=""> </p> Fri, 24 Jan 2014 03:46:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/ds-and-wii-devices-that-enable-piracy-may-actually-be-legal-says-eu-court/1100-6417311/ http://www.gamespot.com/videos/assassin-s-creed-liberation-hd-video-review/2300-6416897/ Though this HD port of Liberation looks spectacular next to its Vita-based predecessor, there are still quite a few elements holding it back from greatness. Thu, 23 Jan 2014 17:06:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/assassin-s-creed-liberation-hd-video-review/2300-6416897/ http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/assassin-s-creed-iii-liberation-hd-review/1900-6415643/ <p style="">As a former exclusive on the PlayStation Vita, Assassin's Creed III: Liberation arrived in time for the 2012 holidays as a promising system seller for Sony's fledgling handheld. While it fell short of its lofty goal, Liberation was nonetheless an impressive showcase of possibilities for open-world play on the portable platform. Now that it has been released on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, Assassin's Creed fans uninterested in the Vita can now experience all of the franchise's 18th-century storylines. Assassin's Creed: Liberation HD delivers what you would expect in upgraded visuals. And if you're hoping for the exact same gameplay that Vita owners experienced, you get that as well, even though it includes Liberation's original bugs.</p><p style="">Unlike other portable Assassin's Creed titles, Liberation continues the main narrative thrust of the major entries in the series. Aveline de Grandpre, the franchise's first playable female assassin, has intriguing ties to the protagonist of <a href="/assassins-creed-iii/" data-ref-id="false">Assassin's Creed III</a>, Connor Kenway, though it's a shame that Liberation doesn't feature more collaborative interplay between the two assassins. Liberation's framing premise also works as a prelude to the modern-day story portions of <a href="/assassins-creed-iv-black-flag/" data-ref-id="false">Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag</a>, since these adventures are the first two "games" by Abstergo Industries' entertainment division.</p><figure data-ref-id="1300-2422415" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/725/7253563/2422415-0003.png" data-size="large" data-align="center" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/725/7253563/2422415-0003.png" data-ref-id="1300-2422415"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/725/7253563/2422415-0003.png"></a><figcaption>"Aveline, why are you not facing me? And why are your feet underground?" -Agate</figcaption></figure><p style="">Like Assassin's Creed III, Liberation is set in a time of upheaval, a common occurrence in the New World in the 1700s. The Spanish have taken control of New Orleans from the French, there's a defection among the Assassin ranks, and the governor of New Orleans is in cahoots with the Templars. And that's just the first couple of chapters in a story arc that spans 12 years. The supporting cast features some of the more colorful characters you'll find in an Assassin's Creed game, including a pair of enterprising smugglers and an unlikely mentor in the Louisiana bayou. Then there's Gerald Blanc, who supports Aveline in various capacities and represents the behind-the-scenes administrative side of the Assassin's Order (someone has to keep their books balanced). Think of him as Alfred to Aveline's Batman, except that Gerald also has a crush on Aveline. Gerald's bland personality puts the "mild" in mild-mannered, and his inability to organize his thoughts in front of Aveline makes him more of a frustrating character than an endearing one.</p><blockquote data-size="medium" data-align="left"><p style="">The supporting cast features some of the more colorful characters you'll find in an Assassin's Creed game.</p></blockquote><p style="">The majority of Aveline's missions are fundamentally recognizable, right down to the tailing and escort missions. As an assassin's playground, New Orleans isn't particularly noteworthy; it's easy to get around, and you don't even need to rely on hopping fences or rushing down side alleys to evade pursers. The bayou is a fitting wilderness of surprises like alligator ambushes. With spotty pockets of settlements, the bayou can feel larger than it really is, even in spite of objective markers you can still get lost very easily. Aveline's objectives in the bayou mirror Connor's missions in the woods of Assassin's Creed III. She speedily navigates large tree branches while stalking hostiles on the ground.</p><figure data-align="right" data-size="medium" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423650-0002.png" data-ref-id="1300-2423650" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423650-0002.png" data-ref-id="1300-2423650"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_medium/416/4161502/2423650-0002.png"></a><figcaption>It would have been nice to see these two hang out more.</figcaption></figure><p style="">When you have a game series that places such a huge emphasis on stealth, it's surprising that it wasn't until Liberation that a disguise system was introduced. The ability to don the persona of a socialite, a slave, and an assassin is reflective of Aveline's complicated background as the daughter of a French merchant and a slave, and the game forces you to use all three personas in equal measure, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. If you dress as a slave, you don't have to worry about sneaking around in a plantation, though you won't have your best killing tools available. Unsurprisingly, Aveline is most useful in her assassin garb, but she sticks out from the crowd. She is attractive no matter the outfit, though her socialite ensemble makes her the most welcome guest at parties. Not only does she come off as charming in conversation, but she even has a charm prompt whenever she's near guards and powerful men. It's an asset that other assassins lacked, though to be fair to the equally charming Ezio Auditore, he didn't have enough targets of the opposite sex to impress in his Assassin's Creed trilogy.</p><p style="">Liberation on consoles is best appreciated during combat. It's simply more comfortable to play on a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 controller versus the denser button layout of the Vita. This HD version made me feel more confident about using the series' defensive moves, not that I could have protected myself from every attack. The exploitable Assassin's Creed smoke bomb returns once again , allowing you to breeze through combat by killing up to four enemies without interruption. Luckily, the combat remains compelling; Aveline is both adept and brutal in her use of weapons, like the cleaver-shaped sugarcane machete.</p><p style="">Liberation's cinematics have been overhauled to the point that you don't need to hold up the Vita version to tell the differences in textures. In fact, the changes in skin tone, eyes, and other facial features are so significant that, depending on the lighting and camera angles, some characters don't even look like their Vita counterparts. Roaming New Orleans in higher resolution is impressive, even though it doesn't achieve the level of detail of Black Flag. By going from the 5-inch screen of the Vita to a 50-inch television, I had an easier time noticing lighting effects like the orange hue of candles illuminating windows at night or torches lit in the villages of the bayou.</p><figure data-ref-id="1300-2422417" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/725/7253563/2422417-0001.png" data-size="large" data-align="center" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/725/7253563/2422417-0001.png" data-ref-id="1300-2422417"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/725/7253563/2422417-0001.png"></a><figcaption>It's easy to travel in the bayou.</figcaption></figure><p style="">If you're the type who expects HD remasters to be an opportunity for developers to fix the original version's bugs, expect some minor disappointments with Liberation HD. Don't be surprised if characters are positioned oddly during conversations, and don't expect rope swing functionality to work consistently. There are even issues that work to your benefit, such as when the game skips an entire combat sequence altogether. And while this game retains the series' notoriety system, it's easy to avoid confrontation. Guards are so slow to react to Aveline's presence that I didn't need to waste time tearing down wanted posters to decrease her notoriety.</p><blockquote data-align="left" data-size="large"><p style="">Gerald's bland personality puts the "mild" in mild-mannered.</p></blockquote><p style="">This ease of play speaks not only to Liberation HD's low difficulty level, but also to the lack of incentives to deviate from the storyline. The game isn't short on side missions, which include a foot race, the theft of a ship, and the freeing of slaves. Liberation HD does a poor job of letting you know that these missions exist, especially when the game doesn't raise financial hurdles that force you to raise funds and take a break from the story. Many missions in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag required money and resources, which was a minor problem that could be overcome by hijacking ships or taking on optional assassination assignments. Liberation rarely encourages you to pursue side tasks, even though it has an economy system where you can kill business rivals and take over their shops, thereby making goods cheaper for yourself. The problem is that you don't need to buy a lot of things, and the game's most useful items, like the poison and berserk darts, often auto-replenish as you progress through the story.</p><p style="">Attaching "HD" to a previously released game often means you're getting a high-definition remaster rather than a remake with visuals reconstructed from the ground up. Judging by the quality of the cutscenes, developer Ubisoft Sofia aspired to the latter but ended up with the former. The time and care it put into those cinematics is obvious, so it's disappointing that the gameplay and its bugs--issues that existed in the Vita version--didn't receive the same level of attention. I still recommend Assassin's Creed: Liberation for fans of the series, but it's hardly worth revisiting if you've completed the Vita version.</p> Thu, 23 Jan 2014 17:05:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/assassin-s-creed-iii-liberation-hd-review/1900-6415643/

http://auth.gamespot.com/ Gamespot's Everything Feed! News, Reviews, Videos. Exploding with content? You bet. en-us Fri, 24 Jan 2014 03:56:17 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/ds-and-wii-devices-that-enable-piracy-may-actually-be-legal-says-eu-court/1100-6417311/ <figure data-align="center" data-size="large" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1493/14930800/2361261-1128092434-maxre.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2361261" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1493/14930800/2361261-1128092434-maxre.jpg" data-ref-id="1300-2361261"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/1493/14930800/2361261-1128092434-maxre.jpg"></a><figcaption>Luigi delivers the news to Iwata.</figcaption></figure><p style="">A European court <a style="line-height:1.625;" href="http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2014-01/cp140009en.pdf" rel="nofollow">has ruled</a> that devices made to enable piracy on consoles, such as the DS and Wii, may actually be legal.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">The dispute has arisen after a case between Nintendo and PC Box, with the latter making devices that allows unlicensed software--and subsequently enabled pirated games--to run on the former's devices.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">Nintendo believes that PC Box's tinkering is mainly to enable people to circumvent the copy protection of its games, whereas PC Box claims that users should be allowed to play their own movies and MP3 files on devices they own.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">"The Court of Justice next states that the legal protection covers only the technological measures intended to prevent or eliminate unauthorised acts of reproduction, communication, public offer or distribution, for which authorisation from the copyrightholder is required," the court rules.</p><p dir="ltr" style="">"That legal protection must respect the principle of proportionality without prohibiting devices or activities which have a commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent the technical protection for unlawful purposes."</p><p dir="ltr" style="">The court has now ruled that the Milan District Court must now look at ways people actually these devices, and to consider whether Nintendo could implement any other measures that would disable piracy while also enabling more consumer choice for unlicensed--although not illegal--software.</p><div data-embed-type="video" data-ref-id="2300-6415173" data-width="100%" data-height="100%"><iframe src="/videos/embed/6415173/" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe></div><p dir="ltr" style=""> </p><p style=""> </p> Fri, 24 Jan 2014 03:46:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/ds-and-wii-devices-that-enable-piracy-may-actually-be-legal-says-eu-court/1100-6417311/ http://www.gamespot.com/videos/assassin-s-creed-liberation-hd-video-review/2300-6416897/ Though this HD port of Liberation looks spectacular next to its Vita-based predecessor, there are still quite a few elements holding it back from greatness. Thu, 23 Jan 2014 17:06:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/videos/assassin-s-creed-liberation-hd-video-review/2300-6416897/ http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/assassin-s-creed-iii-liberation-hd-review/1900-6415643/ <p style="">As a former exclusive on the PlayStation Vita, Assassin's Creed III: Liberation arrived in time for the 2012 holidays as a promising system seller for Sony's fledgling handheld. While it fell short of its lofty goal, Liberation was nonetheless an impressive showcase of possibilities for open-world play on the portable platform. Now that it has been released on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, Assassin's Creed fans uninterested in the Vita can now experience all of the franchise's 18th-century storylines. Assassin's Creed: Liberation HD delivers what you would expect in upgraded visuals. And if you're hoping for the exact same gameplay that Vita owners experienced, you get that as well, even though it includes Liberation's original bugs.</p><p style="">Unlike other portable Assassin's Creed titles, Liberation continues the main narrative thrust of the major entries in the series. Aveline de Grandpre, the franchise's first playable female assassin, has intriguing ties to the protagonist of <a href="/assassins-creed-iii/" data-ref-id="false">Assassin's Creed III</a>, Connor Kenway, though it's a shame that Liberation doesn't feature more collaborative interplay between the two assassins. Liberation's framing premise also works as a prelude to the modern-day story portions of <a href="/assassins-creed-iv-black-flag/" data-ref-id="false">Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag</a>, since these adventures are the first two "games" by Abstergo Industries' entertainment division.</p><figure data-ref-id="1300-2422415" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/725/7253563/2422415-0003.png" data-size="large" data-align="center" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/725/7253563/2422415-0003.png" data-ref-id="1300-2422415"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/725/7253563/2422415-0003.png"></a><figcaption>"Aveline, why are you not facing me? And why are your feet underground?" -Agate</figcaption></figure><p style="">Like Assassin's Creed III, Liberation is set in a time of upheaval, a common occurrence in the New World in the 1700s. The Spanish have taken control of New Orleans from the French, there's a defection among the Assassin ranks, and the governor of New Orleans is in cahoots with the Templars. And that's just the first couple of chapters in a story arc that spans 12 years. The supporting cast features some of the more colorful characters you'll find in an Assassin's Creed game, including a pair of enterprising smugglers and an unlikely mentor in the Louisiana bayou. Then there's Gerald Blanc, who supports Aveline in various capacities and represents the behind-the-scenes administrative side of the Assassin's Order (someone has to keep their books balanced). Think of him as Alfred to Aveline's Batman, except that Gerald also has a crush on Aveline. Gerald's bland personality puts the "mild" in mild-mannered, and his inability to organize his thoughts in front of Aveline makes him more of a frustrating character than an endearing one.</p><blockquote data-size="medium" data-align="left"><p style="">The supporting cast features some of the more colorful characters you'll find in an Assassin's Creed game.</p></blockquote><p style="">The majority of Aveline's missions are fundamentally recognizable, right down to the tailing and escort missions. As an assassin's playground, New Orleans isn't particularly noteworthy; it's easy to get around, and you don't even need to rely on hopping fences or rushing down side alleys to evade pursers. The bayou is a fitting wilderness of surprises like alligator ambushes. With spotty pockets of settlements, the bayou can feel larger than it really is, even in spite of objective markers you can still get lost very easily. Aveline's objectives in the bayou mirror Connor's missions in the woods of Assassin's Creed III. She speedily navigates large tree branches while stalking hostiles on the ground.</p><figure data-align="right" data-size="medium" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423650-0002.png" data-ref-id="1300-2423650" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/416/4161502/2423650-0002.png" data-ref-id="1300-2423650"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_medium/416/4161502/2423650-0002.png"></a><figcaption>It would have been nice to see these two hang out more.</figcaption></figure><p style="">When you have a game series that places such a huge emphasis on stealth, it's surprising that it wasn't until Liberation that a disguise system was introduced. The ability to don the persona of a socialite, a slave, and an assassin is reflective of Aveline's complicated background as the daughter of a French merchant and a slave, and the game forces you to use all three personas in equal measure, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. If you dress as a slave, you don't have to worry about sneaking around in a plantation, though you won't have your best killing tools available. Unsurprisingly, Aveline is most useful in her assassin garb, but she sticks out from the crowd. She is attractive no matter the outfit, though her socialite ensemble makes her the most welcome guest at parties. Not only does she come off as charming in conversation, but she even has a charm prompt whenever she's near guards and powerful men. It's an asset that other assassins lacked, though to be fair to the equally charming Ezio Auditore, he didn't have enough targets of the opposite sex to impress in his Assassin's Creed trilogy.</p><p style="">Liberation on consoles is best appreciated during combat. It's simply more comfortable to play on a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 controller versus the denser button layout of the Vita. This HD version made me feel more confident about using the series' defensive moves, not that I could have protected myself from every attack. The exploitable Assassin's Creed smoke bomb returns once again , allowing you to breeze through combat by killing up to four enemies without interruption. Luckily, the combat remains compelling; Aveline is both adept and brutal in her use of weapons, like the cleaver-shaped sugarcane machete.</p><p style="">Liberation's cinematics have been overhauled to the point that you don't need to hold up the Vita version to tell the differences in textures. In fact, the changes in skin tone, eyes, and other facial features are so significant that, depending on the lighting and camera angles, some characters don't even look like their Vita counterparts. Roaming New Orleans in higher resolution is impressive, even though it doesn't achieve the level of detail of Black Flag. By going from the 5-inch screen of the Vita to a 50-inch television, I had an easier time noticing lighting effects like the orange hue of candles illuminating windows at night or torches lit in the villages of the bayou.</p><figure data-ref-id="1300-2422417" data-img-src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/725/7253563/2422417-0001.png" data-size="large" data-align="center" data-resize-url="" data-resized="" data-embed-type="image"><a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/725/7253563/2422417-0001.png" data-ref-id="1300-2422417"><img src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/725/7253563/2422417-0001.png"></a><figcaption>It's easy to travel in the bayou.</figcaption></figure><p style="">If you're the type who expects HD remasters to be an opportunity for developers to fix the original version's bugs, expect some minor disappointments with Liberation HD. Don't be surprised if characters are positioned oddly during conversations, and don't expect rope swing functionality to work consistently. There are even issues that work to your benefit, such as when the game skips an entire combat sequence altogether. And while this game retains the series' notoriety system, it's easy to avoid confrontation. Guards are so slow to react to Aveline's presence that I didn't need to waste time tearing down wanted posters to decrease her notoriety.</p><blockquote data-align="left" data-size="large"><p style="">Gerald's bland personality puts the "mild" in mild-mannered.</p></blockquote><p style="">This ease of play speaks not only to Liberation HD's low difficulty level, but also to the lack of incentives to deviate from the storyline. The game isn't short on side missions, which include a foot race, the theft of a ship, and the freeing of slaves. Liberation HD does a poor job of letting you know that these missions exist, especially when the game doesn't raise financial hurdles that force you to raise funds and take a break from the story. Many missions in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag required money and resources, which was a minor problem that could be overcome by hijacking ships or taking on optional assassination assignments. Liberation rarely encourages you to pursue side tasks, even though it has an economy system where you can kill business rivals and take over their shops, thereby making goods cheaper for yourself. The problem is that you don't need to buy a lot of things, and the game's most useful items, like the poison and berserk darts, often auto-replenish as you progress through the story.</p><p style="">Attaching "HD" to a previously released game often means you're getting a high-definition remaster rather than a remake with visuals reconstructed from the ground up. Judging by the quality of the cutscenes, developer Ubisoft Sofia aspired to the latter but ended up with the former. The time and care it put into those cinematics is obvious, so it's disappointing that the gameplay and its bugs--issues that existed in the Vita version--didn't receive the same level of attention. I still recommend Assassin's Creed: Liberation for fans of the series, but it's hardly worth revisiting if you've completed the Vita version.</p> Thu, 23 Jan 2014 17:05:00 -0800 http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/assassin-s-creed-iii-liberation-hd-review/1900-6415643/

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The Cat Lady Review

Suicide is final. Unless, that is, you are Susan Ashworth, the Cat Lady. A bouquet of flowers is a symbol of love, unless you are Susan Ashworth, for whom they are a reminder of loss. If you're Susan Ashworth, life isn't fair--even after you've exorcised the most harmful demons from your soul.

The Cat Lady is Susan's story--a story of painful tragedy and cautious redemption, disguised as a horror adventure game. And it is at Susan's end that the story begins.

The surreal field you traverse in the opening minutes is at turns beautiful and horrific, just as you might term The Cat Lady's overall visual language. Susan looks as though she's been cut from a magazine and superimposed onto old Polaroid photos. She and other characters move gracelessly, and simple facial animations simulate only the vaguest of lip motions. It's a weird and striking look, and one that allows certain sequences to land with a weighty thud, leaving you feeling anxious, shocked, or melancholy. The surreality of The Cat Lady's characters is most evident in two women that provide Susan plenty of grief--one of which you meet after Susan has already decided that death is preferable to the grief of living.

If you're Susan Ashworth, life isn't fair--even after you've exorcised the most harmful demons from your soul.

One person's art is another's tragedy.

But even in death, Susan cannot find comfort. The old woman Susan encounters in this odd afterlife wants to strike a bargain, and Susan finds herself powerless to resist. There are monsters lurking in the world of the living, and if she hopes to find peace, Susan must vanquish them on behalf of this hag, this obstacle between her and her final rest. Just a few drops of blood should seal the deal.

The drops of blood you shed, however, are more than a few. And in return for her services, Susan receives the "gift" of temporary immortality--a gift that, for the suicidal, is a horrific curse. That first gruesome glimpse of bloodshed is an emotional bludgeon, and The Cat Lady smartly balances moments of quiet sadness with similar scenes of rage and misery throughout the game. It's important to note, however, that as shocking as some of these scenes are, they are not gratuitous, though at first they may seem so. Rather, The Cat Lady draws important parallels between Susan's suffering and the monsters she's been sent to annihilate. These monsters are incredibly, terrifyingly real, but they represent the depressed individual's enemies. And as anyone with depression might tell you, internal demons cannot be painlessly subdued.

The Cat Lady draws important parallels between Susan's suffering and the monsters she's been sent to annihilate.

The first of seven chapters effectively simulates Susan's confusion as she awakes in the hospital to find a sweet nurse at her side. But Susan is not inclined to share much about herself, and so early events, such as her reaction to a bouquet of flowers, are subtle mysteries that later become enlightened. Progressing is a matter of wandering from left to right with the arrow keys, accumulating objects, speaking with others, and solving puzzles by using those objects in particular ways. I was never stumped, but nor was The Cat Lady a complete cakewalk, though it isn't the challenge that the puzzles present so much as the atmosphere they create that makes them so interesting. To solve one early puzzle, for example, you must allow a psychiatric nurse to inject you with God knows what. You then find yourself in a foggy mental purgatory you must explore to move the story forward.

It's hard to recognize beauty when you view it through a blackened lens.

I know this haze. I've survived a suicide attempt, and I spent years in and out of hospitals as I traveled the road to recovery. The Cat Lady deftly depicts events and emotions I've experienced--the defiance toward doctors, the feelings of worthlessness, the mistrust of anyone attempting to get too close. More importantly, however, it also depicts the long road to recovery, and does so without sugarcoating the painful realities of life. For Susan, true hope first arrives in the form of a young woman named Mitzi. Mitzi's life is no less troubled than Susan's, but her manner of dealing with her hardships is far different, though not necessarily any less violent.

The two bond over one of The Cat Lady's more interesting mysteries, and the one that leads to the game's final catharsis. The puzzles throughout the later chapters become both more macabre and more playful. My favorite among them involves frightening Susan's upstairs neighbor, a sequence that's told in flash-forward as you describe to Mitzi the urban legend that inspired your prank. You can mold the outcome of certain story events in this chapter and others, though sometimes, the dialogue choices are more about building up your own image of Susan than they are actually steering the plot.

The puzzles throughout the later chapters become both more macabre and more playful.

Cats love piano music., it seems. Or at least, Susan's playing.

Perhaps you come to The Cat Lady for the creep factor rather than for the remarkably human, empathetic story. There are a good number of eccentric and disruptive scenes, including one featuring a malformed, convulsive figure that shouts "misery!" when you approach. These scenes are carefully constructed for maximum effect so that even if you see the consequence coming (as I did in a puzzle involving some intricate machinery), you're still startled (as I was when I finished the puzzle). The horror is all the more effective for the quiet scenes that precede them, such as a flashback sequence that uses superimposed text to terrific, dramatic effect--and reveals the events that led to Susan's bottomward spiral.

Both Susan and Mitzi are ably voiced, as is much of the supporting cast. As Susan grows more confident, so too does the actress's performance crescendo from passionless victim to assertive companion. There are a few weak performances, a fast-talking Scottish mother among them, but it's the audio's recording quality that most detracts from the story. The voice-over often changes volume or tone abruptly, as if that particular line were recorded on a different day, in a different room, with a different microphone. Certain events, such as a ghastly one involving a bottle of bleach, are noticeably quiet, as if the intended voice-over and sound effects were never inserted. These aren't major issues, but given how important the sound and performances are in encouraging you to invest in Susan's struggles, they still stand out.

For Susan Ashworth, suicide is meant to be a way out, but it instead becomes a way forward. If you seek horror, The Cat Lady may sometimes freak you out, though probably not outright scare you. But that horror is in service of a touching character portrait--a portrait that's authentically, poignantly askew.

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