Brain Hood

Skeptical though you may be as to whether a mere gaming news blog is qualified to comment in this regard, but we’re certain the marketing and PR machinery for Medal of Honor: Warfighter’ seems to have actually hit pay dirt. The latest iteration in the award-winning series of warfare based first person shooters is easily the most eagerly anticipated game of the second half of 2012. It is official now that the release date for Warfighter is October 23, 2012. Let us take a look at the existing information we have regarding how Danger Close is working to build on the surprising success of 2010’s Medal of Honor.

Introducing Medal of Honor: Warfighter

A screenshot from the single player demo for Medal of Honor: Warfighter gives fans a taste of things to come

After the series reboot in 2010 with Medal of Honor, the series continues to honor the Tier 1 Operator by delivering an aggressive, personal and authentic look into the Special Operations community. Once again, the gamers will find themselves in the boots of the deadliest warriors of the modern world. That’s right, MoH is going global with Warfighter, including the deadliest special forces from all over the world including the British SAS, the French GIGN and many others.

In 2010 the series reboot focused on the AFO Teams and the initial push into Afghanistan. The game narrated how America’s most capable warriors conducted target-specific preparations of the battlespace prior to H-Hour and how the Special Mission Units of JSOC quickly adapted during the follow-on military operations to get the job done. In 2010, the story focused on what those men fought for on that mountain in Afghanistan. Medal of Honor Warfighter focuses on what those same men fight for at home.

Warfighter to push the boundaries of in-game realism

The enemy is still global terror, so you’ll be fighting against Taliban militia in one mission and raiding Somalian pirate strongholds in the next. EA claims that the story was developed with major inputs from Tier 1 Operators while deployed overseas.

What’s more, EA claims to have tied up with all the major brands that actually supply equipment to the various Special Forces from all over the world in order to provide extremely authentic weapon models, right down to the minutest details. That also means that the weapons would not be deliberately misnamed due to license problems. Evidently, a lot of effort has been put into showing weapons that look and work like their real life counterparts. If great graphics get you going, then you would be happy to know that Warfighter uses the revolutionary Frostbite 2 engine for the most immersive and engaging first person shooter experience of the series.

A Glimpse into the Storyline

As stated on the official blog, the game begins with a very personal story one of the protagonists of 2010’s Medal of Honor. “Preacher”, a Tier 1 Operator from the U.S. Navy returns home only to find his family torn apart from years of combat deployment. Trying to pick up the pieces to salvage what remains of his marriage, Preacher is reminded of what he’s fighting for: family.

But when a deadly explosive known as PETN penetrates civilian borders and his two worlds collide, Preacher and his fellow teammates from “Task Force Mako” are sent in to do what they do best – solve the problem.

At this video gaming blog, we love this franchise and all that it stands for. We would continue to eagerly track their development notes and the EA blog till we can actually get our greasy paws on the game in October.

Stay tuned for more to come.

If you’re one of the many people who unwrapped a copy of DICE’s wonderful Battlefield 3 this Christmas, you may well be feeling the late-to-the-party pressure right now; especially if you’ve arrived fresh from the haphazard Call of Duty boulevard. Battlefield 3 patently isn’t a lightning paced run-and-gun mash up, and because its matchmaking system isn’t shy about lumping newcomers in with hardened vets, the online learning curve can appear to be quite bewilderingly steep at times. Here are ten very elementary pointers to assist you…

1. Spot your enemies

The most fundamental suggestion, and always the first port of call on lists like this. By hitting the Spot command as soon as you have any enemy infantry or vehicle in your sights, you immediately make their location known to everyone on your team. If you’re playing Battlefield 3 correctly you should be spotting even as you’re about to pull the trigger on an opponent; that way even if they win the gunfight, you’ll highlight their location so that one of your teammates can go and finish them off.

2. Don’t stay in one place for too long

It’s always best to assume that you’ve already been spotted by a member of the opposition. Even if you haven’t, Battlefield 3 is rife with players who are either looking to flank you (in order to score a sly melee kill) or hog mortar stations that obviously thrive on stationary targets. Keep moving.

3. Make sure you’re in a squad

If Battlefield 3′s squad matchmaking tool isn’t working for you – and it can occasionally hang you out to dry in a permanent dead zone for some reason – try to join a squad manually via the pause menu. Your teammates act as mobile spawn points, and they’re utterly invaluable when you need to get back into the heart of the action quickly, however…

4. Don’t spawn on a squad mate when they’re in a gunfight

Unlike in Bad Company 2 – which granted you a brief spell of invincibility whenever you spawned on one of your squad – here you’re vulnerable as soon as you appear back on the field. If your squad mate is getting hammered by enemies next to an objective, it’s smarter to either wait for some downtime or spawn on another member of your team.

5. Experiment with each class

One of the most rewarding things about Battlefield 3 is the way that the entire trajectory of a match can shift after a series of well co-ordinated decisions, and the easiest decision that you can ever make involves changing your class to fit a given situation. If (for example) your squad are comprised of engineers and support troops and they’re getting bombarded by vehicles beside an objective, spawn as Assault infantry in order to drop health packs and revive downed members of your team.

6. Forget about your K/D ratio

Unlike in CoD it doesn’t pay to be obsessed with your kill-to-death ratio in Battlefield 3. There are a great many ways to rack up points here and scoring kills is rarely the most valuable one. So hanging back to score kills as a Recon sniper when you’re supposed to be attacking an objective in Rush, is usually a surefire way to get yourself booted from a proactive squad.

7. If you’ve got the time, reload twice

Standard assault rifles and carbines have thirty rounds in each clip, but if you hit reload again after reloading once, you’ll be given a single extra bullet. It’s inessential but you’ll be surprised by how often that final round delivers the kill shot that you so desperately need.

8. If you manage to place a spawn beacon in a perfect location as a Recon soldier…

…don’t re-spawn as Recon again after perishing or your beacon will explode.

9. Use suppressing fire

When you lay down fire around an enemy’s location – even if they’re in cover – it has a profound effect on their field of vision; if you’re at a safe enough distance it can render them basically immobile. And heavily susceptible to attention from other members of your team, provided (of course) that you’ve spotted the enemy for them first.

10. Don’t be shy about changing your weapon loadouts between spawns

Although it’s cumbersome at first, it should only take a couple of minutes for you to become adept at manoeuvring briskly between Battlefield 3′s loadout menu screens. On maps that switch between indoor and outdoor terrain such as Operation Metro, changing the features of your primary weapon (such as furnishing it with a heat-sensitive scope or adding the torch peripheral) can be helpful in the extreme. Similarly, equipping shotguns on the fly for close quarters skirmishes, and then adding mortars to your loadout when the scope of the battle fluctuates, is a technique that’s capable of giving you the upper hand almost immediately.

Prototype 2 is the sequel to the 2009 platinum hit Prototype. With it’s smash em’ up mentality and bloody fun gameplay, this video gaming news blog recommends that you should definitely check out Prototype 2, which is why we present to you Prototype 2, reviewed and analyzed.

Prototype 2 Reviewed

Presentation/Story

Set 14 months after the first game, Prototype 2 sets you up as James Heller, a distraught widower whose wife and child supposedly died by the hands of Alex Mercer (the protagonist from the first game). Although the opening is powerful and emotional, it takes a turn for the ridiculous for a majority of the rest of the game. Destroying Blackwatch, the enemy organization that developed the “Mercer virus,” becomes Heller’s sole task. Various pieces of information are revealed to you through “consuming” (basically eating) people, which allows you to see their thoughts. While I was intrigued by the way you received information, I was uninterested by the story after the first few missions. Even after the final missions reconnected me with the characters, by that point I honestly didn’t care. Although fun and full of swearing and blood, the story is unfortunately forgettable. The game is technically sound, and aside from aiming at enemies (which can be a pain), I had no issues with gameplay, saving, or movement.

*Also worth a mention is the Radnet pass, which gives you daily and weekly content that is free with a purchase of a new copy. While not necessary, it does add a lot of content to the game and it brings a sense of competition with your friends to beat their multiplayer mission scores.

Core Gameplay

Heller is infected with the Mercer virus, which allows him to turn into a monster of sorts and inflict copious and bloody-disgusting amounts of damage on the city and citizens within. Eating people and thus turning into them; ripping apart enemies with your tendrils; tearing apart other monsters with your claws….these “mutations” become so ridiculous that you often wonder what the developers will throw at you next. Adding to the fun is open-world aspect of the game, which allows you to explore pretty much every area of the map without barriers. Climbing buildings and gliding/flying across the city is simple and got me where I needed fast. While this was initially fun, I became bored quickly by the simplicity and repetitiveness of the game. Prototype 2 is surprisingly easy, and I almost never worried about dying (Because I didn’t). Facing a group of 40 enemies and several monsters was never really a threat since escape was simple and attacks were powerful. The game misfires where InFamous made a direct hit: challenging you in an open-world area to make you remember that not everything can be easily gained, despite its apparent availability.

 Final Thoughts

Despite the uninteresting story and easy gameplay, I had a blast with the game. If you can look past some of the ridiculous Robert Rodriquez-esque story missions and just have fun, then you’ll feel right at home with Prototype 2. That will be all for this once on this video gaming blog. Make sure that once you have been through this game, let us no whether we had reviewed Prototype 2 correctly or not.

Gaming multimedia till date haven’t been used put to some other use apart from entertainment. Different studies undertaken by researchers have consluded that games can be used for many other purposes. While we constantly rant about the violent video games desensitizing the tender minds of teenagers, there is also a brighter to these games. Scientists are now applying video games  in the areas of psychology and self-help, with great success.

Applying Video Games in Psychological Treatment

Academicians and psychologists do find some potential in applying video games for the treatment of common psychological problems like depression. According to Sally Merry, a senior lecturer from University of Auckland, a fantasy computer game called ‘Sparx’ is used in the treatment of depression through cognitive behavioral therapy. The idea underlying the activity of making such games is making the therapy sessions fun-filled however, through a virtual medium. The Sparx game is loaded with a lot of features and activities which help the players to learn some relaxation techniques and ways to combat depression. Converting the ‘Gnats’ into ‘Sparx’ is the main idea or basis of this game. GNAT is actually an acronym for the following terms: gloomy, negative, automatic thoughts. SPARX, on the other hand stands for smart, positive, active, realistic, x-factor thoughts. Computer therapy is also used in the treatment of anxiety-related disorders. The British Medical Journal too has endorsed this game and described it to be fun-filled as well as effective.

Applying Video Games to Other Uses

Applying video games to neurological feedback systems is considered useful in the treatment of kids with attention deficit disorders. The mechanism used in these games is one in which brain activity is monitored through sensors fitted on helmets. The players have to wear such helmets while playing the games. If a player loses concentration while playing the game, signals are sent to a controller, which in turn hinders the acceleration of characters in the game. A study conducted in India by an ophthamologist, Dr. Somen Ghosh concluded that the standard treatment coupled with a regimen of playing video games should help a patient recover from ‘lazy eye’ i.e. amblyopia. Daphne Maurer and his team of researchers from the McMaster University in Canada have come up with a new finding that shooting games assist in improving the vision. The sensory abilities which seem to have completely damaged can be corrected even in adulthood. Thus, playing video games therapeutically is not all that bad for the eyes. Video games offer an advantage of being compulsorily interactive. It means that have to pay full attention to a game when you are playing it. Therefore, using video games as a tool to bring about a positive change in a person holds great scope.

The online games, just like the offline ones (mentioned above) are increasingly being developed for some noble use instead of just entertainment. The online video games associated with the treatment of mental illnesses by applying video games to the treatment plan can be placed in two categories i.e. ‘society games’ and ‘online worlds’. Narrative content is the specialty of online worlds while ease of accesibility is the characteistic trait of society games. Now that scientists are applying video games in the field of psychological treatments, people would take the activity of gaming seriously in the future.

Making you own games has now become much easier with the availability of cloud based gaming software.  The launch of a game creator called ‘Gamefroot’ has marked the beginning of a new era in gaming multimedia where playable video games can be created with ease and in quick time. Such a breakthrough technological development would influence the gaming world beyond our imagination. Here is a short account of what to expect from this gaming revolution.

Features of Cloud based Gaming

The ease with which you can manipulate the process of game creation is the USP of platforms like Gamefroot. Here you can customize the characters of your games, soundtracks being used, backgrounds and almost every feature of the game you wish to create. Since the game creators have access to a variety of tools through these systems, there is great scope for innovation in this field. The costs incurred in the process of creating games are nullified if you make use of cloud based software. There is no need to download or install a software since it is possible to perform all you actions on a remote, cloud based system.

Fast Pace Game Development with Cloud Based Gaming Software

Advances in the area of gamification are observed along with cloud based gaming. In fact, the concept of gamification and creating our own games are interrelated. Gamification is a way of transforming the non-game contexts in order to make them appealing through the use of game thinking, game mechanics and various gaming techniques. There is great scope for gamification to thrive in today’s virtual world. Applications of gamification can be found in different areas like attracting visitors to a website, filling out forms, etc. It is observed that people tend to engage more in gaming than the routine tasks they consider as boring. Thus, gamification is the process of camouflaging the seemingly boring but important tasks in a format that poses resemblance to games.

Reaching out to customers with the help of innovative ideas is possible through gamification. As stated earlier, the process of creating games would become much easier by taking this approach. Therefore, marketers can use the activity of game creation to promote their services to potential customers. Such a marketing campaign would also cost lesser. Seeing that there is tremendous potential in the field of cloud-based game creation, tech-giants like IBM, Siemens, Mattel, Nissan and others have made multi-million dollar investments.

Cloud based gaming systems are considered the future of gaming world. These systems would provide the necessary tools for game creators to make innovative gaming applications. Also the gamers would benefit from the interesting games that are churned out of this whole process of cloud based gaming.

Yes, we’re back to Counter Strike once again. After all, any video gamer can hardly expect any video game blog that takes itself seriously to desist from the game for too long. It is perhaps the one video game that very few from the post-80s generation can claim to not have played.

Those of you who’ve been following the Counter-Strike tips on this video game blog would be pleased to note that we’ve finally come up with the long-promised advanced tips and tricks for Counter-Strike, a video game that very few people belonging to the post-80s generation can claim to not playing. So now that you have mastered the basics, we bring you the real-deal tips that you expect from any respectable video game blog.

Video Game Blog: Compensate for Recoil

One of the major attractions of Counter-Strike has always been the realism of its weapon physics opposed to a video game such as, say Unreal Tournament. Weapon recoil makes your aiming reticule/weapon sight jumps rather quickly. If you’re not compensating for it, your aim will be badly thrown off. Once again, it’s hard to compensate on full auto, so use this with the burst fire technique already described. Any video game blog will tell you this.

Keep Secondary Weapon Ready

Counter-Strike is one video game that gives you a specific control to switch between any two weapons and that makes it much easier to switch to your pistol when you’re under fire than it is to reload your primary weapon. It might not always be a case of ammo either; a handgun is often more suitable for close-quarters combat if your aim is top-notch.

Video Game Blog: Use the Good Old Tap-Double Tap

For those who like to lean on the left-mouse button and just sweep through enemies ala Serious Sam, however, it also has two unfortunate side-effects: the realistic recoil of the weapons would mean that you end up hitting very little that’s worth hitting and secondly, you run out of ammo very quickly, exposing yourself to certain ‘death’. Unless you’re at point-blank range, in which case you may by all means let loose the full-auto, you must fire in short bursts of three-four rounds; this is particularly effective when using the SMG. With an assault rifle like the M-4, you could also use a technique that real-life military operatives call the tap-double tap. As the name suggests, you tap the trigger once, followed by two quick squeezes. Result: three precisely aimed shots.

Use Grenades to Good Effect

Any video game blog would tell you that grenades, in the right hands, are effective for softening up large groups of enemies. There are three types of grenades: frag grenades can injure or kill a number of enemies, depending on how many are in proximity to the blast (and how close) while a flash grenade temporarily blinds and disorients those caught in the blast radius, rendering them open to attack. Flash grenades have to be used with particular care, as one can end up blinding their own team: this happens even if friendly fire is off. Smoke grenades are used to form a smoke screen; this may come in handy to block the vision of enemy snipers so they have to move in closer, as a cover for retreat or even as a distraction.

Have a Weapon Specialty

By that, we mean a particular class of weapon. Once you’ve had a go with all weapons used by either side, you’ll have a better feel for what suits you best. Remember that you fight as part of the team, so it would serve you and the team better if members each have a specialty that serves to add diversity to the firepower. For instance, the point man in a rush would do well to have mastered the shotgun or the AK-47, while other assault rifles (including the AK) also do well over a medium range. A sniper covering team members, and staking out known movement routes of the opponents can swing the odds in the team’s favor heavily.

The machine gun, though it may seem unwieldy, can be great to provide covering fire or a diversion for your team mates. However, in seasoned hands, short bursts from this weapon can work better than most assault rifles for fending off a group attack when outnumbered, given the high ammo capacity.

Also, no matter what your choice of primary weapon, do take time to practice with the secondary weapon too, as quickly switching to your pistol when you’re dry and shooting accurately can see you through most close quarter situations.

So do you have any gaming tips and tricks to share with the readers of our video game blog?

There had been a lot of anticipation in video gaming circles regarding Doom 3, which recently turned into uncertainty regarding whether it’s even going to happen.

After revelations of there being a patent issue with the Doom 3 source code last week, there were concerns that it’s imminent source code release might not be so imminent anymore. However apparently there was a minor workaround for the offending code, which John Carmack himself implemented. According to him it required adding only four lines of code and changing two. And now of course, Doom 3 is finally open source!

This code release has been triggered by the release of their next-generation id Tech 5 engine in Rage, which was released just last month. The id Tech 5 engine too will eventually become open source when id Software creates its replacement and releases it in a commercial game.

The open source nature does not extend to the game data as well of course, and to play Doom 3 you will still need to purchase a license for the game. People can, however, now create their own games based on the engine, or modify the Doom 3 engine itself and use it to play the game.

The open source gaming community has benefited greatly from the source code opened by id Software, and there are now numerous open source games that use the quake3 engine and its derivatives.

The Doom 3 engine, or the id Tech 4 engine first appeared in Doom 3 back in 2004, and was also used in Quake 4 soon after. While the engine might seem rather old now, it is still a huge advancement over the id Tech 3 engine and the Enemy Territory engines that were available till now. Also, the id Tech 4 engine has been used in recent commercial games; Brink, an id Tech 4 based games was released just this year, and Prey 2 an as yet unreleased game coming in 2012 also features the id Tech 4 engine.

The source code for Doom 3 is hosted at the popular GitHub code hosting site and is available under the GPL3 license, which permits anyone to create derivatives of the code and distribute them as long as the modified code is distributed as well. While it has only been a few hours since it was made available, already they are hundreds of people watching the project, dozens of forks, and one commit for XCode 4 support.

Okay, let is start this video gaming review with a little confession, which isn’t so much a confession as a confirmation of a known fact. All us video gaming news bloggers are Valve and id fanboys almost without exception

A Video Gaming Legacy to Live Up To

Valve’s Half-Life, despite its shitty graphics (by today’s standards), was the first video gaming storyline that really hooked us, back in the day when Hollywood scriptwriters weren’t writing for games yet. Half-life drew you in and kept you there. “There’ll never be another video gaming experience like this,” we all said. And felt vindicated when, even until years later, none of the games, with their graphical and gameplay improvements could make up for the void that Half-Life left.

Then they went and released Half-life 2, and we fell in love all over again. Then they frustrated the world with the long waits for Half-life 2: Episode 1 and 2, and we’d all but lost hope for video gaming nirvana when Portal came out.

The video gaming sequel to Valve’s Portal had to be very special indeed, precisely because that first game was a revelation. It was immersive, funny and was an FPS video gaming experience that had no “shooting” to speak of. Oh wait, I forgot that turrets can shoot at you… anyway, Portal was unique, and quirky, and we loved it more than a lot of other games we’ve played, simply for its defiance of norms.

When Portal 2 released, we had mixed emotions: excitement and skepticism. It was, after all the freshness of the concept that made Portal the iconic video gaming experience it was, but now the concept was old… Could they pull off another HL2 with Portal 2?

Video Gaming that Leaves Your Breathless

Perhaps the biggest compliment we can pay this game, one we cannot quantify on a scale of 10, is that it is unputdownable. It just reels you in, takes you breath away and leaves your craving for more after the 8-odd hours that you spent playing it — on the trot. It is the video gaming equivalent of a best-selling page turner.

Comparisons to Portal may prove odious; its not necessarily a better or more iconic, but its a longer and the video gaming is much more fulfilling for some reason we cannot put a finger on.

Portal 2 begins with you waking up somewhere in the testing facility, and meeting Wheatley, a robot that looks like one of GLaDOS’ cores that you destroyed in Portal. Very quickly you realise that Wheatley, is, well, special, and is British, apparently. He’s funny though, and you can’t help but laugh at his dialogues. He’s also irritating enough to make you start thinking that this is just a poor substitute to GLaDOS, and not really as funny as the original. Then BAM! You’re quickly brought back to the fun of Portal, as GLaDOS is resurrected just as you were getting bored.

Very quickly, the video gaming seems to come to an end, and you start thinking, waitaminnit, this is even shorter than the first one, isn’t it? Then several plot twists later you begin to realize that this game has been plotted to perfection. Just when you think you’re about to start missing something from Portal, Portal 2 throws a curve ball at you to make you sit up and pay attention.

What’s Great About Portal 2

The world map is huge compared to the first part, and the puzzles are a little more challenging. There are also quite a few new props added into the puzzles, which bring a lot of freshness into the video gaming. Along the way you also figure out that you’re still playing as Chell herself, and not just a clone or someone who looks like her.

The dialogue is scripted immaculately as expected, but what’s new here is actual conversations between two bots, instead of just one way traffic.

What’s also new is that you actually get a true sense of how huge the facility really is, and the attention to detail – especially when you see some of the facility in disrepair – is pretty impressive.

Physics has always been what Portal is all about, and instead of just stuff that’s going through portals, Valve shows off the eye candy by making things collide and break apart very realistically. Some of the liquid effects are quite silly though, but seem to add some comic value rather than subtract from the immersiveness of the video gaming.

The main video gaming USP of Portal 2, however, is always going to be the puzzle solving, and just as you did in the first one, you will struggle at some points, die a few times, and finally figure out the solution that makes you want to face-palm, because it’s always obvious once you’ve finished it.

A must buy, must play experience that will keep you smiling for up to a week later, and chuckling when you remember a joke from the game. Do yourself a favor, try out this superb video gaming offering from Valve, and recommend it to your friends too.

The gaming multimedia industry is all set to infect everyone with a serious case of ‘sequelitis’ this year. Major gaming franchises make their mandatory yearly appearance, some return after a couple of years, while others, long-forgotten, attempt to make a dramatic return to the world of video games. Then there’s Grand Theft Auto V. Enough said.

Season for Seconds: Video Gaming Fun

Serving its way to the top of this article is EA Canada’s Grand Slam Tennis 2. Hoping to capitalise on everyone’s Australian Open fever

Grand Slam Tennis 2 is one of a long list of sequels that are expected to brighten 2012 u for video gaiming fans

(or hangover, as the case may be), EA’s first foray into the next-gen world of the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 (the previous version was a Wii-only title) promises licensed players in the form of current ATP regulars such as Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Andy Murray as well as legends, including Pete Sampras, Bjorn Borg and Boris Becker. WTA players are included as well, so don’t fret. The game’s features include a career mode that spans ten years, fully licensed Grand Slams, classic matches and Playstation Move support on the PS3. You can enjoy all of this and more on February 10.

Also out in February is the highly anticipated launch title for the Playstation Vita, Uncharted: Golden Abyss, a game that is set before the events of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, where everyone’s favourite bounty hunter Nathan Drake is looking for the truth behind the massacre of a Spanish expedition. Golden Abyss promises great locales, treasure and lots more of the same action that garnered the Uncharted series’ critical acclaim and made it a hit with the gamers, while incorporating the PS Vita’s dual touch controls, accelerometer, hopefully delivering an unparalleled hand-held adventure gaming experience.

In early March, the next chapter of Bioware’s space opera will unfold through Mass Effect 3, a follow-up (which will offer closure, hopefully) to 2010′s critically acclaimed Mass Effect 2. ME3 will be back, bigger than ever before, sporting overhauled combat mechanics, an improved cover system, co-operative multiplayer and for Xbox 360 players, Kinect support with voice recognition which allows for commanding your squad of virtual human and/or turian and other alien squad mates (Garrus, flank left!).

If ordering your Xbox to do some killing on your behalf isn’t enough for you, you can take matters into your own hands in three action sequels that are set to invade your living room: Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V, Max Payne 3 and Square Enix/IO Interactive’s Hitman Absolution. The GTA series returns after a three year hiatus, taking us back to the state of San Andreas, last seen in the Grand Theft Auto game of the same name in 2004. The fifth episode will be set primarily in the city of Los Santos (based on Los Angeles and regions of Southern California), and is sure to feature some of the spectacular writing and open-world gameplay, the series is famous for.

Penning both GTA V and Max Payne 3 for Rockstar Games is Mr. Vice President himself, Dan Houser, arguably one of the best writers in gaming. He showed us he could do gritty (Red Dead Redemption) just as well as the satire and humour that we see in GTA; something a character of incredible depth like Max Payne is sure to benefit from. On the opposite end of the spectrum, stone-cold killer Agent 47 will shoot bullet holes in television sets later this year, going toe to toe with brand new arch-nemesis Blake Dexter in a series of stealth/action gaming missions sure to be set in all corners of the world.

Need for Speed: The Run has a prologue level of sorts that establishes protagonist Jack’s situation – a guy in trouble with the wrong people, looking for a way out. He finds it in a cross-country race with a purse of 25 million dollars. But where The Run really begins is in a warehouse garage off the Embarcadero in San Francisco. You pick a car and roar out onto the street, greeted by the light of an early morning in the city. It’s not exact, by any means, but developer Black Box nails the feel of San Francisco’s streets well. And then crazy shit starts happening all around you, in the best way possible, as more police cars than I think San Francisco actually has are chasing you and dozens of other cars toward the Golden Gate bridge, and…

The Need for Speed: The Run Impact

It makes an impression. Need for Speed: The Run starts out so well that I coasted on that high for about 45 more minutes before I realized the game I was playing just wasn’t very good.

It takes that long to realize it because the fundamentals work pretty well. Cars in Need for Speed: The Run are fun to drive. They handle well, they sound good (some awful audio compression aside), and they feel fast. That last part is good, because The Run wants you to drive fast. Really, really fast. Faster than you probably should.

The Negatives in Need for Speed: The Run

That speed is where the trouble starts. I know that The Run wants fast. I can tell because the competition is always ahead of you, going about 150 miles an hour. If you want to catch up, you’ll need to drive like, well… an asshole. You will need to drive like an asshole. I had to cut corners sharply, pull bootlegger turns, and ricochet off of other cars most races to stand a chance. All of this seems at odds with The Run’s level design.

Unfortunately, the sound underpinnings of Need For Speed: The Run are undermined by an onslaught of strange design decisions that effectively murder most of its fun. The Driver Level aspect is first up. You don’t start with the ability to boost, you need to unlock it. I can almost wrap my head around that, since nitrous oxide is an aftermarket thing. But at Driver Level 7 in Need for Speed: The Run, you unlock the greatest perk any driver could ever ask for: the laws of physics. You are incapable of drafting other cars until level 7. Meanwhile, you’ll be sling-shoting competition around you from the second race forward.

That competition doesn’t even feel like drivers, they feel like slot cars, running what seem to be the exact same path every time you attempt a race. I say attempt here because you will wreck in The Run. Often. And that will introduce you to what is probably the most under-cooked “rewind” feature in a racing game since the feature became the norm.

Rewind in The Run isn’t what you think it is – it’s not a rewind at all. Instead, you’re greeted with a black screen with a big “Rewind” image on it, and after anywhere from five to twenty seconds(!), you’ll be set back anywhere from one to two miles in the race. It’s checkpointing, and bad checkpointing at that.

There’s also a strange, demonstrated paranoia surrounding leaving the road. If you get more than six feet or so away from the track, the screen will go dark and The Run will invoke a rewind. Sometimes it’s even more stringent. The Run demands risky driving to finish races, but is all too ready to punish a player for it. Instead of introducing a new way to succeed and compete, rewinds just get in the way of playing the game.

The races themselves don’t help. The level design in The Run is usually boring, and frequently nonsensical. One scene toward the end of the game has you fleeing a subway train at 140 miles an hour or more, and there is literally no way to outrun it. Police cars are again able to violate the laws of physics at will, pulling in front of you and screeching from 160MPH to a dead stop in just about no seconds flat. Still, the instant-kill setpiece or environmental hazard will become a bigger enemy than any car on the road. And whenThe Run isn’t trying to kill you directly, it’s tugging your pants around your ankles by killing the framerate with an explosion, which trips up the controls.

As for that story, there’s just not much there. I didn’t mind the quicktime events. They function, and they were a good palette cleanser from the frustration of the rest of The Run. But the characters are never developed, and the story exists solely as a way to contrive some truly idiotic racing situations.

Need for Speed: The Run has more to it than The Run itself, with some fairly standard multiplayer and a Challenge mode. Multiplayer is more bumper-cars. It ditches the rewind feature of The Run for Hot Pursuit style respawns. It makes for a faster and less frustrating experience, but the same underwhelming course design doesn’t make things particularly interesting. The challenge races share almost all of the same issues as The Run proper.

And issues are what The Run has more of than anything. Need for Speed: The Run‘s biggest problem is how much it has in common with a real drive from one end of the US to the other. There are a few bright spots here and there, but it’s mostly full of unexpected stops, lots of flat tires, and too many assholes on the road. This isn’t the worst Need for Speed, but it can’t place against other, better racers from the last year.