If you start shooting terrorists and one goes down holding their ankle, you’ll know that the tech was taken right out of the latest FIFA.

Shadows Of The Damned, the new title from Shinji Mikami and Suda 51, is coming on June 7th (the opening day of E3), with Alice coming exactly a week later. Horror games in June, that just might work!

Look for previews of these two soon!

Source: CVG

If you’re not a fan of killing things in a fantasy setting, you can jump into the world of LEGO Star Wars and have a crack at the latest game in the Lucas’ line of LEGO…something else beginning with ‘L’.

Source: JoyStiq

Commander Shepard has proved his worth to the galaxy by saving it from utter destruction by a race of sentient machines called Reapers, who want to annihilate all life in the galaxy. It’s up to Commander Shepard to stop these Reapers and bring the fight to them, but he can’t do it alone. You, as Commander Shepard, must recruit the best and brightest in the galaxy and convince them to go on this suicide mission to save the galaxy.

It’s actually the characters that wound up being the main interest for me, as they are complex, and very “real”. Once you recruit them you get the opportunity to talk to them and get to know them better, and eventually help them to gain their loyalty. Turns out a suicide mission is daunting for people, and being focused on the mission would be a great thing. Every member of your crew has unfinished business that could distract them from saving the galaxy, and it’s up to you to make sure they’re completely focused on destroying the Reapers.

All of these missions are very enriching for the experience. It reveals who your squad mates really are at the heart of their being, and really makes you care about the characters and want them to survive. Granted not everyone is going to love every single character, but that’s the beauty of Mass Effect 2: It’s a completely personal gameplay experience.

On the Xbox, you could import your save game, and all your decisions would be transferred over, effecting your Mass Effect 2 gameplay experience. The first game sadly isn’t available on the PS3, but, you do get an awesome looking interactive in-game comic book that lets you choose exactly what you want to do on each major decision. The book looks awesome, and only takes about 10 minutes to get through.

Another great thing about the game is combat. The gunplay has been honed down and polished to a sparkling sheen, pulling elements from Gears of War into the original Mass Effect combat system. Say you want to have a squad mate lift an enemy in the air with a biotic power (like force powers in Star Wars), and then have you other squad mate hit them with a concussive shot from their sniper rifle while you provide covering fire. You can do that without pausing the game at all, which is a huge improvement and ends up making the combat much more fluid and accessible, but still deep enough for hardcore players.

This game isn’t straight up action though. Outside of missions you can use resources you find from scanning planets to research upgrades that give your squad more health, more damage, or maybe a portable nuke-launcher if you’re a badass. This actually proves to be pretty fun, even though it’s a pretty simplistic upgrade system.

The main story in ME2is completely awesome. All of the plot-centric missions are so amazing it isn’t even funny, and are loads of fun to replay to see what different outcomes you can get. In addition, there are side missions that you can do if you want to earn a little cash on the side. This is a nice addition to the game, but I can’t help but feel like they weren’t really worth the time I put into them. They’re only about 10 minutes long each, and usually aren’t much more than “show up to X, kill people, do X unique event, and then leave”. They all take place in drastically different environments and have different purposes, but they still feel cookie-cutter in some ways, and don’t serve a purpose beyond getting experience and bonus minerals to boost up your squad.

The classes in ME2 are also very unique. Each one has a specific power that the other one doesn’t, and can play different roles during combat. For instance, the Vanguard is a master of close combat and can use her biotic abilities to hurl herself at light speed towards and enemy and knock them off their feet before finishing them off with a shotgun blast at close range. The infiltrator is a vastly different role, relying on the tactical cloak, which makes you invisible to enemies for a short while, and sniper rifles to kill enemies from afar. No matter what class you choose you’ll eventually be able to walk into a room and just wreck people, which never gets old. This is a testament to how good the combat is, as it hasn’t gotten old for me yet, and I’ve been killing baddies for roughly 60 hours now.

If you liked the first Mass Effect then you’ll love this game. If you love action games you’ll love this game. If you love RPGs you’ll love this game. No matter what type of gamer you are there is something here for you. This game is a masterpiece, and you should play it.

10/10

This strange piece of marketing is sure to get the game attention, but could it be of the wrong kind?

*waits for Fox News to announce a state of emmergency*

Check out the video below, but be sure your mother isn’t there. Wouldn’t want to go frightening her now, would you?

Come the end of the month, you too can see what People Can Fly’s throwback shooter has to offer. The demo will be released on PSN and Xbox Live January 25th, so if you’re sick of trawling the universe rounding up the intergalactic A-Team or playing, creating and sharing for a second time, you might just want to check this one out.

Something else that sounds good is a demo for the second game. PS3 owners will be able to play a small slice of Mass Effect 2 next week, as announced by EA earlier today. There’s no word on what to expect, but this seems like a try before you must buy kind of situation.

Source(s): EA // TheSixthAxis

Without ‘Pro Mode’ Rock Band 3 is yet another rhythm action title based on pushing the right buttons at the right time. That doesn’t mean it’s not fun. In fact, it’s far from it. What Harmonix have done is make it so you’ll never need another music game again. All of your previous downloaded and disc based tracks work here (except The Beatles), the visuals are great and the new career modes and goals make it even easier to get into.

The gameplay is relatively unchanged from past iterations. It’s all about those coloured buttons. However, there’s been a few tweaks as to what your button presses will get you. Rock Band 3 introduces ‘aces’; an additional way of unlocking new content. Before each set you’re told that doing a specific action will increase your ability to collect these, which adds another, albeit shallow, dimension to the, already shallow, gameplay. The game is still fun to play, but it’s not like you haven’t seen it before. Pro mode, however, turns everything on it’s head. All the tracks on the disc have an option to use ‘Pro Guitar’ or ‘Pro Drums’ and some have a ‘Pro Keys’ option. This would be all fine and well if Harmonix shipped a new controller with the game. However, they don’t. Meaning this reviewer hasn’t had chance to play it. Nor do I have a keyboard so…sorry. All tracks, included downloaded ones, have the option to play ‘Pro Drums’ and this is awesome. I’m not a drummer and barely have good enough coordination to play regular Rock Band drums, but playing along in Pro Mode was really cool.

The one new addition that really appealed to me was the fact your scores count across modes. In previous games I only wanted to play tracks during the career mode, because my scores would count towards something. In Rock Band 3 you earn money and fans throughout the modes, which makes life a little easier when it comes to party play. The ability to drop in and drop out mid song helps too, but isn’t the most important part.

Like all games of this ilk, the setlist is key. Thankfully, Harmonix provided another great bunch of songs for people of all tastes to play along with: Amy Winehouse, Elton John, Ozzy Osbourne and even, my beloved, Smiths have been included on the disc. It’s great to see a good variety of tracks. Whilst it will have it’s haters, this is undoubtedly the best of any on-disc setlist in a music game.

My hat goes off to Harmonix for this. The genre might be struggling, but they haven’t half-arsed it. They’ve really gone for it with this one, and even though not all of their features are accessible to anyone, it’s the best music game around by far.

8.5/10

Jesse Hudson, producer at BioWare, explained exactly what will be there for PS3 owners come January: “Of course Mass Effect 2 will be included. On top of that, Lair of the Shadow Broker, Project Overlord, Kasumi: Stolen Memory and the Blood Dragon Armour. Also included is, as on Xbox 360 and PC, an access code to the Cerberus Network. This will give you instant access to the same great lineup of Downloadable Content such as Zaeed and Firewalker.”

He also confirmed that the interactive comic that was also rumored is what will help newcomers embrace the Mass Effect lore, saying: “BioWare Edmonton (the group that made Mass Effect 2) teamed up with the fine folks at Dark Horse Comics to create an interactive backstory. While I can’t release all the details about this yet, what I can tell you is that we want to create a stunning visual experience that not only tells the core story elements of Mass Effect 1, but also is fully interactive allowing you to be faced with some of the major choices which will have consequences your Mass Effect universe. This interactive comic’s initial release will be exclusive to PS3 owners who would be otherwise unable to realize the full effect of choice in the Mass Effect universe and will be included on the Cerberus Network.”

Finally, Hudson dropped a few hints at what’s to come for Mass Effect 2 fans. Even stating that PS3 owners might have some exclusive content to look forward to: “There will also be some DLC Bundles, such as the Aegis Pack as well as exclusive both Free and Paid DLC for all PlayStation 3 owners such as the Recon Operations Pack.” Ambiguous as that may be, this package seems like a steal at £40/$60. Roll on January!

Source: Joystiq

The one thing EA’s games have always got over their competitors is fantastic visuals, and MMA is no different. Each of the game’s combatants have been wonderfully recreated and, as far as I can tell, play like their real life counterparts. As good as these guys look, does anyone know who they actually are? One of the big things working against EA’s fledgling franchise is the lack of the UFC license. Fighters from Strikeforce are the most notable inclusions. Guys like Bobby Lashley, Fedor Emelianenko, Ken Shamrock and Randy Coture are the standout names on the roster, none of whom mean anything to be. For fans of the UFC, this could be a problem. Aside from the character models, the visuals are decent enough. The various combat areas look good, as do the arenas, but they lack a certain level of polish that leaves them looking less than realistic. Combine that with a few ropey animations during intros and sub-par announcing.

That being said, I didn’t hear much announcing. Once I got the controls down I was finishing fights in under thirty seconds. Now that’s cool every once in a while, but nine times out of ten I’d have knocked my opponent out before he could even touch me. Towards the end of my, forty fight career, I was dispatching foes with ease after a number of punches, spending most of my time working through menus and being forced to simulate training mini games. Speaking of the career, it’s done well for the most part. A lot of the tedious elements that tend to feature in EA Sports’ career modes have been scrapped or adapted. The training mini games only have to be completed once if you get top marks. After that, you can just simulate and get your desired results. There’s a lot of these training exercises to go through in a variety of real life gyms. This is a cool feature and I even found some exercises fun to complete. The masses of menus became tedious after a while and I decided to do the majority of my training in my original gym.

This didn’t seem to be a problem either. Whilst some of the techniques and special moves I picked up in the other gyms helped me out occasionally, but my fighter was a straight up boxer and the original combos were enough to polish off most foes, no matter what their stats were. I found this to my advantage too. My created fighter was not a great submission fighter, but the amount of fights I won against later opponents by submission makes me think something went wrong here. I shouldn’t be complaining but, if my stats say I’m no good at something, that’s how it should be.

On a gameplay front the game is pretty good. The controls are intuitive, and anyone who has played Fight Night will soon get into the swing of things as far as strikes go. Grapples are a little more complicated and can be a little hit or miss. The way these work is all down to your rhythm and timing, which isn’t the easiest thing to control when you’re stuck in an armbar. Nevertheless, it’s a good system. It’ll just take a while to get used to. However, those who want to pick up and play against a friend should have no problem. Considering this is meant to be a sport with tactics, it usually comes down to who throws the most punches and/or kicks in the end.

That becomes even clearer when watching replays and live matches online. One of the coolest features of this game is Live Broadcast. Fighters are chosen to compete against oneanother in set events and EA have invited the world to come and watch. Live announcers commentate each game and they really go for a TV-esque presentation style. Due to the aforementioned gameplay issues, a lot of fights tended to be very similar, but it’s a cool feature nonetheless.

I think EA Sports MMA is a good first effort. Tiburon’s experience with Fight Night has definitely helped shape this game into a good fighting experience, but it definitely needs work. The career mode is short and it’s lacking a lot of balance. There wasn’t enough times where I felt challenged by the AI and when it came down to multiplayer, simple maths won out in the end.

7.5/10