Brain Hood

It seems that the Russians are doomed to forever be the villains in American videogames. The Soviet Union collapsed nearly 20 years ago and the Cold War is over, but Singularity still manages to make those dastardly commies the enemy. How you might ask? Time travel, of course!

Singularity asks the question, ‘What if the Soviet Union discovered a source of Element-99… and what if it had special powers that could warp time itself and create monsters?’ It’s a question we’ve all stayed up pondering and now you can live that nightmare through the shoes of American soldier Nate Renko, the unfortunate soul tasked with correcting history. There’s a five minute introduction explaining this backstory in great detail at the opening of Singularity. From there, things continue to be just as corny right through to the end.

Singularity is a first-person shooter that draws inspiration from games like BioShock or System Shock 2. There are lots of meat-monsters and Russian soldiers to blast, plenty of weapons to do so with, and along the way you’ll upgrade Renko with new powers and tools to make him even more super. Interspersed with the shooting are some simple puzzles, heavy doses of storytelling and plenty of blatant clues to let you know that things are perhaps not the way they appear. The production levels are pretty high here for the most part, so most enemies and creatures move pretty well and look decent enough.

The selling point for Singularity is a special gizmo Renko is quickly bestowed called the TMD, or Time Manipulation Device. With it, he has near limitless power that is, in fact, only limited by the developer’s rather mundane imagination. This device can alter time with incredible precision enabling its user to age or revert single objects. Decayed crates filled with ammo can be made new again. Boxes can be aged to pieces for easy transport. Locks can be aged to dust to open safes or lockers

The idea sounds pretty neat, but it isn’t much more than a gimmick. Only an extremely limited set of objects can be manipulated with the TMD, and even then the results aren’t anything to write home about. Through the course of Singularity, you’ll use the TMD to solve age-old “puzzles” and in less involved single-use situations to fix or break things like voice recordings and switches.

I use the word “puzzles” lightly because even with the addition of time manipulation you’ll still be going through the same basic routines that games have been using as a crutch for years. All of the explosives and time-manipulation in the world is no match for a small ledge or chain link fence. For that, you’ll need a crate and that means you’ll have to age one to splinters, slide it through gaps in 5 foot fences, and then revert it back to normal size to use as a step. Raven didn’t go outside of the level design playbook in the slightest, nor do they allow the player to use any imagination. Once you’ve aged or reverted a couple of things, the wonder is gone and the limitations on when and how you can use the TMD ensure it never comes back.

As far as we’re concerned, the 3DS is the perfect extension of the DS series. It takes all the elements that made the DS systems unique and chucks even more on top: glasses-free 3D on the top screen – BAM!, gyro and motion sensors and built-in infra-red – THWACK!, decent 3D processing power and nice hardware shaders – ZING!

In short, the 3DS has a stack of potential for interesting game designs that will leverage just how different the hardware is. Right now, however, Nintendo needs to ensure that the system will get off to a flying start on launch, and we’re really impressed with how it’s going about it.

Rather than trying to appeal to the broadest audience possible with the new system – the audience it already has with the existing DS systems, Nintendo is very much wooing the core gamers.

The company understands that it needs to get the most passionate players on board first – the evangelists, to make its system a success. These are the guys that want the latest tech and the freshest experiences. These are the guys yearning to see a return of classic Nintendo franchises. And these are the guys that won’t mind shelling out for yet another iteration of the DS.

The line-up is studded with games for the core: Kid Icarus, Ocarina of Time, Paper Mario, PilotWings Resort and Star Fox 64 3D. They’re all much-loved franchises from Nintendo’s past, and all designed to get the core audience on-board first. Sure, the wider audience will love them too, but Nintendo knows that it doesn’t make sense to go after the little sisters and the grandpas first – they’ll come, but only as part of the steady expansion out from the early adopters.

Hell, a lot of the more casual DS owners haven’t owned their systems that long. To them it’s still fresh, whereas for us – we’re ready to move on.

That said, the approach is probably best described as inclusive – Nintendo has always had an ability to make games that are loved by core gamers but also by a much broader market: think Mario Kart and Animal Crossing. With that in mind, almost everyone will find something to like in the range of games coming up for the 3DS – and there are titles like Nintendogs + Cats that really cater to the wider audience, but the point is that the emphasis from Nintendo is definitely on pleasing the Nintendo faithful first.

The titles that have been announced from Nintendo’s publishing partners are also weighted more towards the core audience. Think about it: Metal Gear Solid Snake Eater 3D, Resident Evil: Revelations, Super Street Fighter IV 3D, Kingdom Hearts 3D, Ridge Racer 3DS, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Lead the Ghosts, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Dead or Alive 3DS. Throw in a new Professor Layton and you’ve got yourself a par-tay.

Oh sure, there are the usual movie tie-ins, franchise spin-offs, music games and why-won’t-you-just-die titles (such as The Last Airbender, Chocobo Racing, DJ Hero 3D and Samurai Warriors 3D respectively), but in all, the line-up is very very solid indeed.

Compare this to Microsoft’s approach for Kinect. The company already has a loyal core following, but rather than trying to appeal to them with Kinect – the guys who already own 360s – and expand out from there, the vast majority of games are for families and non-gamers. That’s an awful lot of cash to expect those people to lay out to use Kinect, especially when they could be using the core gamers to lay the groundwork for the casual assault to come. That’s a strategy that Nintendo seems to understand with 3DS, and a strategy that works out nicely for us.

Development company Vicarious Visions has a history of Transformers games — the Autobots and Decepticons battling it out in separate titles for Nintendo’s handheld. Now, it’s got a new combo, this time influenced by the upcoming High Moon Studios-helmed Transformers: War for Cybertron. We recently had the chance to see the portable efforts from a private hotel suite in Las Vegas, and although our first look was brief, it was also revealing.

Here’s what we know. There will, of course, be both Autobots and Decepticons campaigns again. Vicarious took a look at the storyline powering the Xbox 360 / PlayStation 3 and ran with it while staying true to the integral plot points. Between the two versions, there are 30 playable Transformers — 15 Autobots and another 15 Decepticons. You’ll find all your favorites in the roster, including stapes like Optimus Prime, but also the likes of everybody from Bumblebee to Jetfire. Many of the characters become unlocked as you play through the title, and find secrets in stages and during the multiplayer mode.

There are two major additions to this year’s games. First is the character swap. At any point during all of the missions, you take two characters through a quest. The developer showed us one example as both Optimus Prime and Bumblebee explored together. At the tap of a button, you swap the Transformer you play, taking on his energy levels, firepower, and more, and this is used in strategy. So, if Prime has taken a beaten from Megatron and he’s on the verge of death, you can quickly cycle in Bumblebee, whose energy levels and resources will be unaffected. Meanwhile, Prime can recharge in the background.

All of the Transformers are equipped with primary and secondary attacks. Optimus carries a plasma rifle and a solid axe. Bumblebee wields a laser pistol and a solid sword. All the enemies in both games have certain weaknesses. For instance, some might be prone to attacks by lasers while others will take damage with plasma-based weapons. However, if you continue to “game up” enemies, repeatedly taking advantage of their weaknesses, they will eventually adapt and develop defenses and new weaknesses.

The other big improvement is the inclusion of melee attacks. Bumblebee has a sword and shield so that if he takes damage it’ll drain his energy bar, not his health bar. There are fix or six different melee types and an additional five or six different range attacks.

All of the Transformers fall into different bot categories. The lights, heavies and flyers. The former are great for mid-range attacks, the heavies sport high endurances and the flyers are the tanks, able to inflict the most damage, but lack any sort of defenses. There’s skill in pairing the right combo together so that you can maximize their strengths. For instance, when Jetfire soars through the air you’ll be able to transform mid-flight and then land on an otherwise unattainable platform as Bumblebee, at which point you can slide through a crevice in the wall.

There’s plenty of action to be found in Vicarious Visions’ new titles, but fans can also look forward to some straightforward puzzling. In one stage, the goal was to unlock a door by tapping a button on the opposite side of the room, but you had only a limited amount of time before the exit closed shut again. So, you could either zip through the stage as one of the light Transformers or simply avoid the navigation altogether as a flyer.

The demo shown to us ended on a high note — a huge battle against Omega Supreme. The boss encounter is not nearly as large as the one in the PS3 and Xbox 360 iterations of the game, but it’s still pretty huge. Omega takes up most of the real estate on the top screen as he flings missiles in every direction. The framerate holds up, too.

Vicarious was keeping quiet on the multiplayer mode in the game, but it will be robust, allowing versus and team play and support for up to four gamers.

Look out for more on the game in the coming weeks, but while you wait don’t forget to look over some brand new screenshots of the DS title in motion.

I’ve never been as consistently interrupted while playing a game at the office as I was while playing through High Moon’s Transformers: War for Cybertron. I would put on headphones and play for ten or fifteen minutes, and I would suddenly feel a tingle in that weird lizard-brain proximity sense we’ve all got that says “someone is in my personal space bubble.” I’d turn around and see another IGN editor standing behind my shoulder, staring at me with pleading eyes, and I always knew what they were going to ask before they asked it: “is it good?” It’s the look of someone afraid of getting their hopes up.

Which is why I was happy to report to those asking that Transformers: War for Cybertron is actually very good. Fantastic, even. High Moon has taken a fun, fast, third person shooter foundation, crafted a well thought out transformation mechanic on top of it, and designed combat situations around that. The end result is a shooter that has an identity all its own, and leverages its license to make something very cool for fans and newcomers alike.

Set millenia before the original cartoon series that fans have taken to calling G1, Transformers: War for Cybertron tells the story of the final days of the Autobot’s and Decepticon’s civil war on the surface of their homeworld, Cybertron. Officially sanctioned as canon by Hasbro, War for Cybertron fills in some gaps in fans’ understanding of Transformers lore, explaining things like Starscream’s defection from the Autobots, Optimus’s succession to the position of Prime, and more. High Moon’s storytelling is generally good, and feels well situated in the Transformers fiction — it’s a good modernization of the original cartoon while remaining true to the characters and stories that fans have placed on a pedestal for decades — but there are points where the narrative jumps sloppily from one event to the next. It feels at times as though we’re watching a show with episodes missing, and though there’s a pre-level text crawl that does a decent job of filling in some of the details, it’s still jarring cutting so quickly from triumph to despair and back again without in-game exposition.

However, while the story occasionally stumbles, High Moon’s love and attention to detail with regards to G1 Transformers remains vitally palpable throughout. High Moon covers all of their bases and more in establishing their Transformers cred, as it were, even while making minor changes here and there in the interest of gameplay and plausibility. While some fans might rankle at the prospect of Soundwave transforming into a sort of Cybertronian truck, there’s a point a couple of hours into the Autobot campaign that should provide ample compensation. Their redesigns of well-known Transformer archetypes like Bumblebee and Soundwave feel current and cool while remaining instantly recognizable. With the many small details (like constantly moving pistons and gears on each Transformer in humanoid mode, as well as some great transformations), High Moon does a great job of straddling a line between fan service and respect that other games referencing revered properties often trip over. While I could have lived with a little less “BLAM!” from Warpath, it’s hard to argue with Peter Cullen’s contributions as Optimus.

It’s sometimes tempting to imagine violence isn’t just a creative part of game design but the defining quality through which a game’s truer meaning can be understood. It can be hard to really know what a game is about based on a ten minute demo on the showfloor at E3, but violence remains a constant among almost all of the show’s biggest games. What follows is a list of the games that saw the most creative, inspiring, or original instances of violence at this year’s show.

I had to apologize to an EA representative after watching the Dead Space 2 demo. I thought the first game was a disjointed misfire that connected deafening gunplay with ambient exploration without anything to really discover. I had promised to deliver some skeptical criticism and, going in, I was ready to deliver it. After the demo, it’s hard to think of many criticisms that stick. Dead Space 2 is a vulgar amplification of everything I disliked in the first game. Ironically, it’s all the better for it.

The demo opens with Isaac making his way towards the church of Unitology, via a series of intestinal metal corridors. Along the way Isaac is assaulted by a new enemy type called a Puker. Though it shouldn’t require explanation, this beast attacks by grasping Isaac’s shoulders and vomiting on his face. If you hit him with a stasis shot you’ll see the Puker’s spew hanging in the air like a cloud of fecal spatter. Which is a perfect segue to the main church area where Isaac is attacked by a giant spider-scorpion creature with a baby-like thing wiggling on a giant spike. The church is a lustrously decorated room with torn blue curtains, dark crimsons, robed zombies on the attack, and one especially satisfying moment where Isaac is surrounded by a group of Necromorphed babies.

The whole sequence plays like a slapstick version of a Dario Argento movie in outer space. It’s utterly ridiculous, a gothic horror scene (robed zealots on the attack) combined with violence built on a teenage obsession with bodily fluid and physiology. Opposed to the austerity of the first game, these wrenched decorations provide a much more sensible backdrop for a game where sputum, innards, vomit, and other mucosal spurts reward players for successful action. Dead Space 2 is a buffet of rot, served in a church. I couldn’t praise it enough afterwards.

Nickelodeon Fit
Flail till you fall.
You probably haven’t seen anything about Nickelodeon Fit. It’s a compilation of thirty mini-games designed for children 3 to 8 years-old using Nickelodeon franchises like Dora the Explorer and Ni Hao Kai-Lan. While the visuals and the design aim are as wispy as cotton candy the design beneath is an exercise in violent gestures, surprisingly tiring and confusingly unclear. The first game I played was one where my child character sat on the back of a bird. With the Wii remote in one hand, I had to flap my arms like wings to keep the bird afloat. There were periodic updrafts that required a side-to-side hip-twisting motion to perform a spin trick.

There is no real connection between your motion and the bird’s animations. I was left on my own to judge how successful my inputs were. In less than ten seconds I was instinctively flailing away with my arms, trying to make the bird go as fast as possible, a sore strain building in my shoulder muscles. When there’s a disconnect between motion control and in-game response the best thing to do is to make subtler movements and reorient yourself. Yet there’s something counter-intuitive to every animal instinct I had in that moment. If it doesn’t seem to be responding, the remote must be shaken harder and faster, an enervating rush of adrenalin mixing with the aggravation and fear of losing.

In this respect it’s a perfectly suitable game for kids. It plays on that innate instinct that’s with us from the start, the tendency to respond to confusion with increasing intensity and violence. If you’ve ever seen a child break something just to see it break, or hit someone just because they didn’t know what else to do, you’ll know what’s at the heart of Nickelodeon Fit. The genius of the game is that it traps this irresistible human tendency in an environment where it can be used for good: to put all that flailing, flapping, and squatting towards building stronger bodies and burning off the sugary excesses bound to flow through a youngster’s arteries. My arms are still sore.

Kinectimals
Good kitty, bad player.
When Kinectimals was revealed with a demo of a young girl playing with a tiger called Skittles, I immediately wondered what would happen if Skittles became angry. Moreover, I wondered what might be possible for me to do to make her angry. One of the most memorable moments I had with Nintendogs was in discovering that my curious little Chihuahua could be made to yelp in discomfort with a well-placed stylus poke in its backflap. Like Nintendogs, Kinectimals is not supposed to be violent, but it’s an instinctual reaction to the idea of petting a tiger, even a cute one that’s clearly trapped in a television screen.

Part of what makes this a charming experience is precisely that knowledge that, under any other circumstance, the act of tugging on the cheek fur of a wild cat could result in a terrible delimbing. In demos on the showfloor it didn’t appear that Skittles was programmed to respond to violent gestures. A slap across the face or an attempted tail tug didn’t produce the yelp that similarly aggressive behavior did in Nintendogs. But it triggered that response inside me, and the absence of a response to that input played a big part in demystifying the charm of playing with a carnivorous hulk in fur.

Knowing that, even in the vaguest way, my Nintendog could experience negative effects from my treatment of him gave every caring action a layer of meaning beyond simple cuteness. The sparkling grin and contentment on his face after a bath suggested that he might suffer in some small way if I didn’t make time for cleaning. The scratching behind the ears and the Frisbee tossing fun were tinged with a knowledge that I could also just poke at him to produce discomfort and retard bonding. Without any negative consequences to balance out the larding of cuddly fun, I found my superficial attraction to Kinectimals waning as the show wore on. It’s wonderful to see a new game based on the simple idea of sharing affection with another creature, but absent any recognition that creatures often have other instincts as well, the act of kindness feels a little hollow.

It’s hard to imagine a game I’d had a less open mind towards coming into E3. The idea of learning more about Gears of War 3, a series that turned the phrase “mind-numbing” from a put-down into a world view, seemed more boring than a weekend at a lumberjack festival. The reveal of Beast Mode for Gears 3′s multiplayer side seemed to be a continuation of the series past but seeing actual footage made me reconsider every assumption I’d made about the series. The objective in Beast Mode is the same as in any other shooter, you’re asked to kill some life-form that happens to have a different appearance than yours, either physiological or sartorial. The difference is the range of physical limitations players must deal with on the way to their murder’s rendezvous.

You can choose from a wide range of enemy species, from small exploding cockroach-rats to the lurching monkeyman scramble of Wretches (a name that dates back to the series’ mind-numbing days). I was especially affected by the Wretches because of their small stature and hobbled movement. Killing them down in a numb spray of bullets in the first two games, they seemed like time-killers between the real set pieces. The idea of controlling one for myself, feeling its imbalanced mix of vulnerability and narrowly focused strength makes it possible to think about the entire game through new eyes. It reminded me of Quasimodo, a wretch in reality and not just for heavy metal coolness.

Beast Mode is an example of one of the strongest ways to build empathy in games: making players vulnerable. In playing the part of a weakened pawn against a group of armored human tanks, there’s a feeling of hopelessness that frees the violence from any of the more disturbing overtones it might otherwise have. The underdog story is the one we can all cheer on. Violence is a terrible thing except when it’s the little guy no one expected to win who’s suddenly taken out the heavily armored favorites. Mixed with animations that look like a mix between Gollum and Tiny Tim, the heroic vigor of playing a Wretch hunting Marcus Fenix is beguiling. I’ve got no issue with killing in games, it’s the who and the how of it that matter. Beast Mode is a limping step towards a vulgar meritocracy of murder among all creatures. Littler, weaker, and more hobbled, indeed.

F.E.A.R. 3
She’s having a baby.

The F.E.A.R. 3 booth had a photo station where those interested could pose for a picture with a model dressed like Alma. The model wore an ankle-length red dress, covered in pale zombie make-up with blood streaming over her face. She also had an unavoidably large stomach to signal Alma’s pregnancy, one of the game’s main story concepts. Sex and horror have a long and well-detailed history, and pregnancy is a figurehead for the most vulgar conflation of the two. Fear of what happens to the vagina during childbirth is a kind of ultimate horror for many Western men, bred by ESPN, Hooters, and Playboy to think about their libidos, and the objects with which they sate it, in a very narrow way.

The implications of this kind of sexuality in F.E.A.R. 3 are among the darkest I’ve ever encountered in a game. Alma begins as a child held against her will by an intrusive father, experimented on, and grown supernaturally powerful as a result of this heinous abuse. At the end of the second game it was implied that she was now the abuser, who was shown raping Becket in horrific glimpses, and now, in a turn darker than most fans seem to appreciate, the offspring from this rape is an omen for the end of the world, which only two well-armed men can suppress. The brief snatches of childbirth in the game’s trailer show the nightmarish worst-case scenario of a hand clawing its way out of Alma’s uterus, through her stomach, and punching into the world, apparently with a mind for trouble.

It’s hard to escape the ugliness in the story, the urge to suppress the victim for fear of what’s happened as a consequence of the original crime. Embedding it into Alma’s body in the form of a child is the ultimate violation of something most cultures tend to treat as sacrosanct and one of the central differentiators between men and women. F.E.A.R. 3 so far seems a dense mix of every deeply rooted male fear, from the lurking suspicion that violence is addictive to phantasmagorical recoil at the potentials of the female anatomy. Setting these themes in a game built around the lurid rubber-necking made possible by its slow-motion effects is a bracing combination and one of the most disturbing games of the show for me.

XCOM
One lives, one dies, you choose.

It’s hard to think about strategy games as anything more than iconic abstractions, but 2K Marin’s revival of the XCOM franchise gives a surprising depth to the series’ iconic moments of choice. The game got a mostly skeptical reception from journalists at the show, but I thought it had one of the most interesting mechanical implementations of choice and morality into a game world where you shoot alien tar. Before you get to the shooter sequences, the game pays homage to the original with some minutes spent in a base doing research, arranging materials, managing team members, and making strategic choices on a map.

If you played the original X-Com you’ll be familiar with the moment of staring at a map and choosing which mission to accept, but the ability of actually moving through missions in first person adds a sense of emotional viscera to the tough decisions. It forces players to consider the consequences of choosing to save neighborhood A over neighborhood B in terms of front lawns, toys, and screaming women flailing in a slimy alien clutch.

In the demo shown, players were presented with two calls of help described by a dispatcher working in your base. You can consider missions on humanitarian terms but they come with practical considerations. As the demo guide choose one mission to help a family in a residential area who’d reported an attack the dispatcher reminded players that there weren’t many research points to be had by taking the mission. It’s an old moral trap, do you abandon a cause to save an individual, or are you willing to sacrifice the individual for the good of the larger cause? As familiar as it might be, it’s a terrific moment because there has never been, nor will ever be, a right answer. It’s a sort of Kobiyashi Maru test for players who want to do the right thing at all times. Being able to follow that eternal question from the strategic view of the map all the way down to the first person view of individual people overcome by the amorphous menace is one of the most exciting game structures I saw at E3.

Bulletstorm
Polish for gore.

One of the unspoken pleasures of experiencing violence in the media, be it games, movies, or books, is the underlying knowledge that the viewer will always be spared no matter how bad things get. Bulletstorm is a game built to celebrate the freedom that this essential fact gives to both players and developers. The game is a combo-based shooter where players are awarded points for kills, which are eligible for multiplier bonuses depending on the creativity a player might apply to their killing. You get 10 points for killing an enemy, but if you shoot them in the throat so that they asphyxiate as they bleed out you’ll win 50 points for having performed a “Gag Reflex” move.

Another award called “Gang Bang,” has players pinning a remote explosive dart into an enemy and waiting to detonate it until they’re around a group of their allies for maximum damage. These simple tactical choices are not new to shooters. Area-specific damage and using weapons in unorthodox ways to maximize killing has been a part of shooter design for more than a decade, but rarely has their been such a glib encyclopedia of all the different ways in which players instinctually think when manning their guns. The combination of combative destruction with puns pulled from pornography vernacular is likewise something that usually passes during in-game chat or on messageboards, but hasn’t ever been openly acknowledged in a game.

Bulletstorm is a cacophony of things that make men feel better about themselves. It’s got allusions to sexual prowess, a wide array of high-powered machinery, and encourages aggression in hyperbolic extremes. There’s something especially unique about the fact that the game’s made by Polish developer People Can Fly. These cultural tropes of pornography and tawdry action are American exports readily absorbed in other parts of the world and now regurgitated back into American culture with an extra helping of irreverence and adolescent glee. I find it endearing, like hearing a French person quote the Terminator or namedrop Jenna Jameson. It’s crass, immature, and bizarrely wonderful.

Was there anything missing from Rockstar’s ambitious open world Western, Red Dead Redemption? The game’s makers seem to think so, which is why they’ve decided to create a series of downloadable add-ons. The first, due out June 22, is called Outlaws to the End — and it is completely free. Outlaws to the end adds six new missions designed to be played with up to four players cooperatively.

The missions in Outlaws to the End are set across a variety of settings that will be familiar to anybody that has played either the main campaign or online Free Roam. In other words, new areas are not added with this pack. Instead, Rockstar offers new ways to experience those locales with some light storytelling and a few new gameplay features.

The missions range from things like raiding a mining camp in a gold robbery or blitzing a fort to protecting a herd of cattle from rustlers. I played through five of the six missions — each lasting roughly 10 or 15 minutes when played successfully. The lone mission I didn’t get to see is called the River, which sounds like a recreation of the border crossing story mission from the main game — only with everything ratcheted up about five notches.

My favorite mission was called Ammunition. It takes place at night in a raging storm and finds you in Tesero Azul with near impossible odds. Cannon fire is raining down from the hills, Mexican soldiers are storming the fort, and a few mounted Gatling guns are laying down fire that is more than enough to wipe out anybody dumb enough to run out into the open. Even playing with a few guys from Rockstar, we weren’t able to emerge victorious on the first few tries.

Make no mistake — things are a bit tougher here to keep things interesting. Along with a few friends, a few other new features have been added to give you a fighting chance. Once you get killed — unless it is by a massive explosion — you’ll begin to bleed out. If your co-op partners are fast enough, they’ll be able to revive you to get you back into the fight. If not, any downed players will respawn if anybody on the team can reach the next checkpoint. If everybody dies, it’s game over and you’ll have to start over from the beginning.

For this reason, it pays to stick together and work as a team. If you needed more encouragement, how’s this sound: in a mission called The Escape you can actually get in a stagecoach carrying a Gatling gun. One person steers and the other lays down a hail of bullets.

Even if you find these co-op missions a walk in the park, Outlaws to the End might have something to test your skills, yet. Once you’ve made it through the six missions successfully, you’ll unlock the Advanced Missions playlist. It’s the same group of challenges, only the difficulty is sent through the roof.

One of the more interesting parts of Outlaws to the End is that it introduces character classes of sorts. Before you begin each mission, you’ll have to pick which class you want to play as. Four are available — each starting with a set of weapons selected for specific styles of play . The Miner is built for close quarters combat with weapons like dynamite and shotguns. The Gunslinger has a rifle and fire bottles. The Marksman starts with a sniper rifle and the no-frills Soldier is the character class that Rockstar calls the “jack of all trades.” Putting together a quartet of complementary classes is the key to swift victory.

Getting a high score will, of course, reward you with XP bonuses that add in to whatever you’ve already earned in other multiplayer modes. If you’re looking for an easy way to grind a few levels (or earn a few new Trophies or Achievements), this pack is a great option.

Outlaws to the End is free, so you really shouldn’t need my seal of approval before you give it a try. Just go grab it and have some fun with a few friends. It’s a great little addition to the Red Dead world and you simply can’t beat the price.

The wait is over. Infamous 2 is here. If those words mean anything to you, I probably don’t need to recap Sucker Punch’s 2009 hit, Infamous, but I will. Players took on the role of Cole McGrath, a bike messenger who gained electricity-based superpowers after a bomb went off in his hands. Spread out over three islands, Infamous had you grinding along power lines, leaping from rooftops, and hurling lightning bolts at baddies from across the screen.

All of that is back, but there’s so much more. Cole runs around with this two-pronged cattle prod that he charges with electricity and slams into bad guys. With a tap of Triangle, Cole can set off “ultra moves” where he shoves the prod around someone’s neck and spins around the foe or pulls off a leg sweep before hauling off on the enemy with a massive cattle prod swing. He can glide further and faster, he can slide a long walls while tethering himself to pipes with electricity, and he can pull off insane vortexes (electricity tornadoes) that suck up enemies and parts of the environment.

Infamous 2 starts with Cole still living in Empire City, but soon The Beast – the civilization-destroying monster prophesized by Kessler in the first game – shows up and hands our hero his ass. Realizing that the fate of the world relies on him being a stronger superhero, Cole heads to New Marais. A city that’s pretty much New Orleans, New Marais is the place where the First Sons constructed the Ray Sphere, which is the device that gave Cole his powers.

The goal here is to learn new abilities, get stronger, and save the world.

That’s easier said than done, of course. Now that we’ve busted out of Empire City, it’s clear that Cole isn’t the only super-being in the world. Long before Cole saunters into town, New Marais is plagued by “monsters,” these beings that resemble the Necromorphs from Dead Space with their talon-like arms, ash-gray skin and split-open mouths. This leads to the creation of the Militia and the rise of a leader known as Bertrand. See, the people of New Marais get sick of getting attacked, so they throw their support behind these vigilantes who have a strict “no supers” policy. There’s no exception for Cole.

The demo I got to play, started with Cole meeting up with Zeke, his best friend from the first game, at a Bertrand rally. Bertrand was spewing his hate against “the Electric Man” when those creatures I mentioned before crashed the party and all hell broke loose. Cole wailed on them with his new melee moves, and then gave chase to Bertrand.

Now, New Marais looks a lot different when compared to Empire City – there are those double-decker porches you can picture from Bourbon Street, massive swamp trees on the border of the skyline, and lots of neon light. However, the two biggest changes are the new level of detail and destruction. The roofs you’re running across are covered in picnic tables, the streets have phone booths, and the people running around the streets are terrified. What makes all those little touches cool is the fact that you can completely eff them up. When Cole throws out that vortex, it sucks up cars and the inanimate objects lining the streets. When he fires off one of his electricity missiles and it hits a car that tumbles into those porches I mentioned, the three-story structure collapses to the ground. Smoke gets kicked up and fires break out – the world is alive in a way Empire City never was.

Eventually – after some improved parkour and gliding – Cole caught up to Bertrand, the two had a conversation, and a helicopter popped on to the scene by knocking Cole off of the villain’s car and onto the pavement. This started a sequence where Cole – controlled by the player – ran from the chopper. Machine gun fire rained down, and when a rocket hit too close, Cole was knocked down. This proximity knockdown happened earlier in the demo when a RPG hit next to our hero, and the animation for Cole getting leveled was impressive. He’d land and react in a similar fashion to how Nathan Drake did in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.

Speaking of Uncharted 2, it’s time to address the change in Cole. At this point in development – Sucker Punch was quick to point out there’s still at least a year to go on this game – Cole looks completely different. Beyond the superficial stuff – his clothes are different, he’s got tattoos, and he’s wearing necklaces – his face is pretty much completely different. Cole packed a buzzcut and a gaunt face last time around, but the Cole in Infamous 2, he currently has brown hair, freckles and facial hair. Perhaps an even bigger change, however, is that Cole has a brand new voice in this game. In the original, Cole had a gravelly voice, and now he has a much lighter, sarcastic at times voice. It actually sounds a bit like Nathan Drake – especially in the way humorous lines are delivered. Personally, I’m not sold on the new look and sound at the moment, but I can wait for Sucker Punch to prove this guy’s more than Nathan Drake with superpowers.

Sucker Punch is also picking up Naughty Dog’s – the developer of Uncharted – take on cutscenes. The comic book ones from the first game are still there for major moments in Infamous 2, but in-game cutscenes will make up the more day-to-day conversations (like Cole and Zeke at the Bertrand rally) and they look good.

After running from the helicopter, Cole had a quick face-to-face with Bertand before the villain receded into the shadows and a massive monster roared and stood up on the smoky horizon. Then, the demo ended.

Infamous 2 feels good and plays like you’d expect – just bigger and better. Still, in the grand scheme of things, Sucker Punch really didn’t get to show all that much of Infamous 2. We know that the morality system (make good or bad decisions and live with the consequences) returns, but we don’t know how it works or how it’ll tie into your saves from the last game — Sucker Punch hinted that they wouldn’t want to disappoint fans who had poured hours into being good or bad in the first title. Sucker Punch made it seem like there would be something like blast shards to find but didn’t say much about it. And we know Cole’s going to have a slew of new powers, but other than the ice in the trailer, we don’t know what they are.

The Firefight multiplayer mode Bungie introduced in Halo 3: ODST is back in Halo: Reach, and it’s looking to be even crazier (and more flexible) than its predecessor. At a special preview event at E3 2010, Microsoft and Bungie gave us a look at the new and improved Firefight. Here’s what’s new.

First off, you’ll get the full matchmaking experience here, unlike in ODST. You’ll be able to customize your matches to your heart’s content – weapons, maps, game durations and enemy behavior will all be tweakable.

There are multiple game types this time around, too. Default is the most general of the lot. It’s a one-set match that’s designed to be shorter and more casual. Pop in, pop out, go eat a steak. Classic mode is just what you played in ODST. You know, because it’s already classic. Generator Defense is also a mode in Firefight now (you remember this gametype from the Reach beta that ran last month), and a newcomer called Rocket Fight sounds like it could become a new favorite. This mode is just you, your buddies, armor abilities, and an infinite supply of rockets. Yeah, that just happened.

You’ll also have some new weapons to play with. The Target Locator may not have a sexy name, but it makes up for that by destroying the hell out of things. Use it to paint targets, and you’ll be rewarded by a bombardment by an orbiting fleet. Think Hammer of Dawn from Gears of War mixed with the world’s scariest airstrike. And remember the Concussion Rifle from the latest campaign demo? It fires explosive plasma rounds, and it’s in Firefight, too. Deadly combination. And you can stop wondering – the Fuel Rod gun is back in Halo: Reach (and in Firefight).

Our look at Firefight unveiled a brand-new armor ability called Drop Shield. This one’s sort of a mix between the bubble shield and regenerator from Halo 3. Power it up, and it’ll give you and your friends some space to chill and heal for a bit.

Just like the overall Reach multiplayer, Firefight will come with game-specific rewards and challenges, available on a weekly and daily basis. Meeting challenges will net you special armor permutations. And the only way to get them is by playing Firefight.

From what we’re being told, Firefight in Reach will be far more customizable than ever before. For example, you’ll be able to create your own skulls that can totally change the pace and feel of your Firefight matches. You can make up to three, altering the traits of your Spartans, armor abilities and waves. Want to bump your health up to 200% and boost weapon damage? Feel free (wimp). This is basically Firefight any way you want it.

Bungie was also showing off two new maps, Waterfront and Beachhead, neither of which were in the Reach beta. This is all just the tip of the Firefight spear. We’ll have full-fledged hands-on impressions of the mode later tonight, along with brand-new direct feed video of Bungie’s latest title in action. So keep watching IGN for more.

Though EALA is doing the single-player for Medal of Honor, it’s DICE (makers of Battlefield: Bad Company 2) handling the multiplayer component. While the expectation may be for DICE to offer up Battlefield’s multiplayer with a different coat of paint, that’s not the case at all. Medal of Honor’s multiplayer certainly has elements of DICE’s design heritage, but it’s more about ground infantry combat. The battles, 12-on-12 online matches featuring special forces versus insurgents, are intense and brutal. You die quickly thanks to “faster bullets” as DICE describes it, and a lack of health packs. This is war. Good luck surviving.

You begin your online career as a U.S. Army Ranger, but progress up levels, unlocking new items on your way to becoming a Tier 1 Operator. And you definitely want to become Tier 1 — that’s when you unlock a beard. The beard doesn’t kill, it just looks bad ass. On the way to unlocking a beard, you’ll be opening up new modifications for your weapons. Weapons can support three mods, which can be switched out between rounds. DICE promises hundreds of combinations. Weapons will become one of the biggest variables in Medal of Honor, far more so than in more first-person shooters.

Experience is earned for completing mission objectives and for kills. There are bonuses for certain types of kills, as well as score chains. It’s not just about getting a bunch of kills in a match, but in getting quick batches of kills.

Score chains unlock Tactical Support Actions. These are similar to Killstreak Rewards in Modern Warfare 2, but have some notable differences. The biggest difference is that you always have the choice between offensive or defensive support actions. Do you want to give your teammates armor or buffed health? Or would you rather call in a mortar strike? The decision could be tactical or selfish, depending on your point of view and the choice that’s made. But it can certainly turn the tide of battle. And it’s great to have a way to better your team rather than earn a couple of extra quick kills.

There are four modes available in Medal of Honor multiplayer, two in the beta, spread out over eight maps. Combat Mission takes you to the Helmand Valley, an actual location in Afghanistan. This is a series of objective-based missions. The one I was shown had us playing as U.S. soldiers attempting to destroy a large weapons cache. Our opponents played as Taliban insurgents hell-bent on stopping us.

The mission has five objectives. Your ultimate goal is to call in your F-15s to blow up the weapons cache. But you need to first take out some anti-aircraft guns. To get to these, you’ll need to guide a Bradley tank past some obstructions. This includes a few roadblocks along the way. As with Bad Company 2, you can hop into the Bradley and have some fun destroying enemies. But Medal of Honor isn’t really about large-scale vehicle combat. Don’t expect to be flying helicopters everywhere or driving an army of tanks. This mission has a single tank, which your ground troops must protect.

The insurgents will have the upper hand in many areas. There are some places where they have the high ground and can dig in to protect their territory. Death will come quickly, but respawns are plentiful. Currently, there’s no kill cam or way to see who killed you, which needs to be addressed before Medal of Honor ships in October. There is minor environmental destruction, so you can bomb out a house where a sniper is camping, but you might have to die three times in a row to figure out which house he’s in.

In true DICE fashion, Combat Mission requires teamwork if you hope to beat down the insurgents and take out the weapons cache. Everyone can run around like independent jerks, which is exactly what happens when you get a dozen journalists in a room, but once this game is out, working as a team can only help.

The other mode in the beta is Team Assault, which takes place in the ruins of Kabul (at least for the E3 demo map). This is Team Deathmatch in the city slums, where players push to win a certain set of points on the map. The emphasis is on knowing the map and keeping on the move. There’s a lot of vertical gameplay in this one, with two- and three-story buildings. As I said earlier, combat can be pretty unforgiving. But the reward for sticking with it is readily apparent. The better you get, the more easily you can unlock the Tactical Support Actions. These are a lot of fun and since you aren’t tied to a specific set, feel more versatile than Modern Warfare 2.

Leveling up wasn’t part of the E3 experience, but my sense is that unlocking weapon parts is going to become addictive. If there really are as many possibilities as DICE promises, we should see hundreds of different weapons on the field of battle.

Medal of Honor seems to be the perfect combination of Call of Duty and Battlefield: Bad Company 2. You no longer have to fight over which game is better, because Medal of Honor offers the best of both. If the full game is as good as the E3 demo, then this may just be the multiplayer game of the year.

Last year at the Tokyo Game Show, I was led into a darkened theater, shown a game that I couldn’t understand a word of, and watched people get their bones broken on the streets of Japan. It was Yakuza 4. I was in love – and I wasn’t alone. The group of IGN editors there voted the title the best PlayStation 3 game at TGS, and I famously declared that if SEGA didn’t bring this game to the United States and Europe, it was “the dumbest company on the face of the planet.”

Thankfully for the West, SEGA isn’t stupid. Yakuza 4 is headed to our shores in 2011, and I got to play it.

If you’ve missed the previous games – shame on you as Yakuza 3 just came out in North America a few months ago and was great – the Yakuza series is a third-person brawler that’s part JRPG and part sandbox world. You’ll wander the streets of Tokyo, random people will fight you, and you’ll level up your character. Oh, and then there’s a movie-quality story, dozens of side quests, bars to drink in, arcade games to play, women to seduce, and so on.

It’s deep.

Yakuza 4 flips the script a bit. In the past, players have been rocking the white suit of former Yakuza member Kazuma. You’ll still play as Kaz in Yakuza 4, but there are an additional three characters (a loan shark, an escaped convict and a cop) whose shoes you’re going to step into via your controller. Each of these characters is going to have his own fighting style, so even though you’ll be seeing the same random battles, the action should feel fresher than it has in the past.

I picked up the DualShock 3 and stepped into the world of the loan shark – the man in the purple jacket you see in screenshots. My mission was to run around the streets of the fictional red light district and collect from those who owed, but Yakuza isn’t about missions. I stepped onto the street with the intent to explore the neon world of Tokyo.

If you’ve played one of these games before, Yakuza 4 is going to instantly feel familiar. You run around the streets, head to the pink markers for story missions, and wail on anyone dumb enough to run up and attack you. As I got my Yakuza 4 legs, I was instantly engaged by some punk who needed to be reminded of how things go in this world. The game was still entirely in Japanese at this point – the final version will pack Japanese voices with English subtitles – so I don’t know what this guy was saying, but after what I assume were his insults, I began bashing his face in with the game’s face button attacks and shoulder button dashes.

When you’re pounding on the bad guys, you’re filling a Heat gauge. When that’s full, you can perform sick finishing moves. In my first fight, this meant the loan shark hoisted the opponent into the air (a vertical suplex if you know pro wrestling), and then dumped the dude onto a bike rack so that his spine bent the entirely wrong way. As always, the bested and bloodied foe apologized for insulting the loan shark, gave him some money, and ran off.

When Yakuza 3 came out in North America and Europe, there was a bit of an outcry from the fans over here who had been waiting for the game. See, SEGA removed a Japanese history game and hostess clubs. Folks really didn’t care about the game, but the loss of women you could date and romance made some freak out. Yakuza 4 won’t have to deal with the same outrage; the Japanese history game is still out, but the hostess clubs are going to be in the game.

Being a red-blooded male, I ran to one of these clubs after beating that last guy’s ass and picked the first woman I saw. This leads into a conversation where you have to answer questions and say the right things to get the girl to give off little hearts and be impressed with you. I gave my girl a dress, ordered chicken, and drank champagne, but not being able to understand what she was saying put a damper on my romantic game. Still, I did get to see another player succeed in getting his lady, and the duo played a game of ping pong. Both the player and the lady were in robes with what looked to be nothing on underneath – your guess is as good as mine as to what led to this one – and when she served, the camera zoomed in on her breasts as a indication of the main character’s focus and made returning the serve all the more difficult.