Another Demo Post

 

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Nullam vestibulum mattis libero non interdum. Suspendisse venenatis ultricies varius. Ut gravida, velit imperdiet laoreet mollis, justo justo convallis turpis, ut vehicula diam mauris quis diam. Phasellus et urna libero, in vulputate neque. Nulla pellentesque massa id mauris pretium nec varius eros tempus. Vivamus lacinia scelerisque diam in ornare. Aenean neque quam, aliquet nec sollicitudin vitae, cursus quis arcu. Nullam metus tellus, gravida nec convallis eget, malesuada nec diam. Integer vitae augue erat, sit amet semper odio. Vestibulum sagittis, augue et vehicula vehicula, leo lectus dapibus justo, ut mattis tellus tellus vitae urna. Duis at dolor dolor, vel lobortis odio. Nunc consequat lorem vitae tortor bibendum at lobortis est viverra. Maecenas justo eros, vehicula ac sodales ut, ultricies in erat. Sed suscipit tortor sed mi facilisis dignissim. Donec euismod iaculis lacus non porttitor. Nam consectetur nisi porttitor mi cursus sit amet feugiat velit placerat.

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Marvel's new Photo

Marvel has released this new photo of Chris Hemsworth's Thor and Anthony Hopkins' Odin in Thor: The Dark World. Check it out:

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New Photo From Thor: The Dark World

Marvel has released this new photo of Chris Hemsworth's Thor and Anthony Hopkins' Odin in Thor: The Dark World. Check it out:

Via Marvel's Twitter.

Thor: The Dark World opens .November 8.

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GOD MODE

“Welcome to Hades,” intones God Mode’s narrator. “That’s Hell in a toga!” Classicists might debate this definition, likely by bellowing the word "WRONG!" until their vocal cords dry out and snap, but it’s unlikely anyone involved with God Mode's creation would care. If there’s one thing this isn’t, it’s a thinking man’s shooter – unless of course his thought is “I wonder how many monsters I can gun down today,” in which case the answer is "all of them." All of the monsters.
God Mode is a four-player horde shooter that can be played alone, but only in the sense that Strip Solitaire exists and can be called a game. Each of the five levels, all simple but beautiful in design, is made up of a series of linked arenas. Monsters pour in, and it’s your team’s job to make them regret having bothered. The basic action is exactly that, with weapons that feel a touch weak (unless you’re using a controller that adds a shot of rumble to every action,) but otherwise landing between "solid" and "decent" from the moment you blast your first skeleton into bones. The main annoyance is that character movements can be sluggish, which isn't too bad when getting around, but can be a matter of life and death when a big monster decides to try swinging something heavy at your face

Unsurprisingly for a budget game, God Mode has a limited amount of content – though it uses what it has well, and pulls .

The real life-stretcher, though, is that the maps play differently every game due to the addition of Tests of Faith – random mutators at the start of each arena that might do something as basic as messing with the sound, as fundamental as switching on friendly fire, as helpful as giving everyone unlimited ammo, or as random as making bombs rain from the sky until all the monsters are dealt with. Every time, the action is at least a little different. Sometimes, "a little" is all a mutator tries for, and that’s fine. The best ones, however, encourage different playstyles. Chest and Sanctuary encourage everybody to stay close to an altar in exchange for goodies and help against enemies that get too close, or the more chaotic Dice, in which everyone’s weapon changes every few seconds.

When fate smiles, you get these Tests of Faith. Other times, it’s bombs from above.

The range is impressive, and fun to uncover. Unless desperately unlucky though, a full team should have little trouble blasting through anything God Mode throws at them on at least default difficulty. At this point there are two more settings to crank it up to, and also special masochism modes to help better players progress faster, and perhaps prevent anyone accusing publisher Atlus of having gone soft. These Oaths come at the start of every game, scaling up from taking more damage and dealing less, to every hit inflicting poison damage, each for an appropriate boost to earned gold and XP. Swearing them all and running screaming at the first Cyclops in sight is not a good way to make or keep online friends, even with a good team trying to run interference.

For longer-term play, there are of course weapons to unlock, starting with an SMG and shotgun and ending up with the likes of a plasma pistol, railgun, and buzzsaw, all of which are purchasable and can be upgraded using collected gold after hitting specific ranks. Every player also gets a special ability tied to a rage meter, starting with Shield and stepping up through powers like having enemies struck down from on high or being turned into friendlies on demand.

It’s in browsing the catalogue though that God Mode’s limitations really become clear. There’s not much to aspire to, and while these weapons may be effective, they’re not particularly interesting given the underworld setting. A few ripped-from-mythology toys wouldn’t have gone amiss, even if they did end up alongside the more immediately familiar conventional weapons and future technology. Cosmetic upgrades are even more restricted, limited to just a few variations on just a couple of basic outfits, and with no female character options at all. In any event, once you’ve run the gorgeous maps, be it with friends or pick up groups, the basic combat and co-op action are unlikely to offer enough temptation to keep returning in search of God Mode mastery

THE VERDICT

Even with its various random mutators, God Mode is likely to be a short-term co-op shooter. Being cheap but not free-to-play is also unlikely to help it in the long run. Still, these didn’t get in my way while playing, and if you keep in mind that this is a budget release when setting expectations of how many maps, guns, and customization options it should contain, there’s plenty of fast-paced action to be had gunning all the way through Hades – one weeping classicist at a time.

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Assassin's Creed III -- The Tyranny of King Washington

What The Infamy promised, The Betrayal fails to deliver due to a glacial pace, repetitive missions, and an inconsistent new power.

The GOOD part of game is Lots of side missions and collectibles.

The BAD part of 

Inconsistent targeting for eagle powers   

Plodding storyline   

Dull characters and dialogue.

There's that classic problem with trilogies: after the intrigue and excitement of the first instalment, the follow-up must wrestle with moving the plot forward in a meaningful way, while avoiding those grand revelations so often saved up for the third and final entry. It's unfortunate that The Tyranny of King Washington - The Betrayal (Ep. 2) is the very epitome of a plodding second act. It makes no effort to expand on the mysteries raised by its alternate-universe setting, nor does it offer up much in the way of action from its dull assortment of characters. And worst of all, there's little to be seen of the enigmatic and evil George Washington, the very villain who brought The Infamy (Ep. 1) to life.

Instead, you're introduced to a few familiar faces from the Assassin's Creed universe, most notably Benjamin Franklin. He's not his old self initially, but he soon reverts to the same slightly odd character who never really sparked much interest in Assassin's Creed III. Indeed, many of the cast members of The Betrayal fail to capitalise on the alternate-reality setting and instead spend most of their time standing around conjuring up plans and sending Connor out on errand missions around misty Boston. There's a hope that it's all for the greater good of Episode Three, but when you're faced with waves of repetitive missions and seriously dull dialogue, it's hard to see the bigger picture.

The missions take the form of fetch quests, mixed up with the odd assassination. There's nothing here you won't have seen before, and because the mission types are repeated so often within the episode, they get very old, very fast. Like in the first episode, Connor is given a new power to spice things up, this time in the form of short-range flight. Rather than having to leap and climb across the rooftops of Boston, he can zip between them in short bursts, or even chain his flights together for some long-distance travel. It's quite a liberating feeling at first and brings to mind Batman's fluid glides around Arkham City, but the power's shortcomings soon become apparent.

Accuracy is not one of the power's strong points. While you can flap around almost endlessly if you don't mind where you're going, trying to direct Connor along the rooftops is massively frustrating. The icons that let you know where you can fly to are often clumped together too closely, making them difficult to pick out when you're in the middle of fast-paced motion. There's an endless battle between you and the camera as you try to highlight the place you want to go to, only to miss it and end up somewhere else, or on the ground. More useful is the ability to home in on targets from afar and land a sneaky kill, though Boston wasn't designed for such actions, so your attack is often blocked by an errant chimney.

The power itself is based on the abilities of a eagle. Like in The Infamy, Connor drinks a hallucinogenic tea and embarks on a strange, otherworldly drug-trip-cum-tutorial that's as clumsy as it is weird. The Eagle power is the only real nod to Connor's Native American heritage that featured so strongly in the first episode, which is something of a disappointment--particularly if you're interested in learning more about Connor--but not unexpected given the city setting. What is unexpected is Boston itself, which remains seemingly unaffected by Washington's dictatorship, and so looks and feels just like it did in ACIII: it's that lack of detail that makes Episode Two feel far less convincing than its predecessor.

That's a shame, because if The Infamy did anything, it sparked curiosity in the evil George Washington storyline. It's not until the very end of The Betrayal that things begin to get interesting again, and having to trudge through the rest of the episode to reach that point is a lot to ask, even if you're already heavily invested in the story. Lots of side missions and collectible memory artefacts help to ease the disappointment, but they're not enough to make The Tyranny of King Washington - The Betrayal the exciting follow-up the first entry hinted at. Here's hoping Episode Three picks up the pace.

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Former Witcher Producer Making Next-Gen RPG

The executive producer of the first two Witcher games is developing a new RPG for PC and next-gen consoles that he claims is a mix of Dark Souls and Borderlands.

In an interview with Eurogamer, Tomasz Gop explained that Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2 developer City Interactive will publish the game, but most of the development is being done by German studio Deck 13, which has been working on the game for two years already.

It's a challenging game, action RPG, which means a lot of advanced combat," Gop explained. "When you walk through a location, and you have to fight 10 enemies, that takes around an hour.

"When you fight in Mortal Kombat, when you fight in Tekken, that's why it takes so long - Dark Souls is probably a strong reference as well. But we've done a lot of things differently. For example, we have a skill tree. I would call Borderlands here, because we're gonna have something like action skills in the game, so classes, stuff like this.

"I would say Dark Souls, I would say Borderlands in terms of the experience of developing your character."

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