A staple of gaming over the years, war, whether past, present or future, has provided countless hours of gleeful entertainment for hordes of improbable soldiers. It has also provided Tom Clancy with a decent living, and he again lends his name to the long-dormant Ghost Recon franchise, although it’s doubtful that his involvement extends to little more than banking the cheque.

If you can cast your graphics-frazzled mind back five years, you may recall that the previous proper Ghost Recon outing was a tactical affair that put you in charge of a group of four operatives in a series of highly dangerous scenarios. It’s a similar sketch here, featuring muscle-bound hulks with names like Pepper and 30K trading witless macho banter that mocks the proximity of brutal pointless death. The key difference is that they can think for themselves, instantly adopting positions of cover and showing a proportionate level of self-preservation.

This will irk the purists who took great delight in the meticulous tactical approach of the series, and there will be inevitable accusations of dumbing down, with the game dismissed as little more than a third-person Call Of Duty. As is often the case, the purists are wrong. Whereas previous instalments bristled with authenticity and endeavour, all but the most committed would quite rapidly lose the will to live. Conversely, Future Soldier is a taut affair that sucks you into its lengthy campaign and provides some genuinely thrilling moments. As for the CoD comparisons, the settings are near-identical but the cover-based gameplay owes a lot more to Gears of War.

Future Tense

The "future" tag frees up the need for ultra-authenticity and results in a number of neat gadgets that almost makes killing people for a living seem an appealing prospect.

Amid the obligatory augmented reality and an underused lumbering mechanical dog, the pick of the bunch is the drone, which is essentially a military version of one of those ridiculous iPhone-controlled hover toys for adult babies with too much money. In this instance the camera can be used to tag hidden enemies, whom your team-mates will then terminate with extreme prejudice. It’s quite literally a lifesaver, and often enables you to hang back from the action, giving orders almost in a quarterback role.

It can also be used to set up the game’s showpiece, the synchronised shot, whereby up to all four soldiers get a bead on an enemy each and simultaneously and silently pop their heads open: an immeasurably satisfying experience.

The story is of course the obligatory convoluted Neo-Con nonsense, but it does at least take you to some varied locations, from the jungles of Nigeria to the streets of Russia. There’s a reasonable balance between skulking in the shadows and all-out attack: the stealth sections are genuinely wet-the-bed tense, and when that excrement hits the rotating thing it’s a desperate life-or-death business.

Ubisoft may have opted for a more dynamic cinematic experience, but it can’t be accused of making it too easy. The enemy can be a devious beast, flanking you intelligently and utilising their own gadgets such as the invisibility cloak. You really do have to get it right, combining solid approach play with the ability to think on your feet in the midst of a fire-fight, with even the occasional "on-rails" section requiring a swift trigger finger.

Worse With Kinect

Weirdly, on the graphical front it looks like an even older game than its predecessor, hampered by some spartan textures and myopic draw distances. We’re not sure what happened there, but ultimately ye olde gameplay wins out over visuals.

There’s also a fairly desperate attempt to shoehorn in Kinect compatibility, as you’re theoretically able to customise a weapon by standing in the middle of your living room and grabbing at thin air. There are allegedly thousands of combinations, but the good news is that Kinect is entirely optional, and as in almost all aspects of life you can get by with everything set to default.

Despite the lengthy campaign mode, a lot of people will be buying it for the multiplayer. It would be harsh to damn it at this nascent stage, but our cursory run-out with Americans revealed some inevitable teething problems. Given time it should bed in, however, and features the usual thinly-veiled staples including a poor man’s Counterstrike with no respawning. Elsewhere, for Guerilla (read Horde) mode , with wave after wave of enemies coming at you, either alone or with some pretend online friends.

Verdict:

Despite several years in development hell, Ubisoft has surprisingly turned round a taut, often thrilling addition to the modern warfare genre. It looks a bit ropey, the story is twaddle, but the action is edge of the seat stuff, and it’s rare to find such a compelling and extensive single player campaign.

It may no longer be the tactical powerhouse of yore, but if you want tactics go and play chess.

Tags: Gaming games Ghost Recon Future Soldier Ubisoft

Tom Clancy?s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 24 May 2012 19:27:00 +0100

Top-down racers are a thing of beauty and today’s App of the Day on Pocket-lint is another great in a long line of classics. So, if you’re a fan of Supersprint, Badlands, Micro Machines, Reckless Racing and the like, then it’s time to get your wallet out and get downloading.

Mini Motor

Platform

Android/iPhone/iPad

Price

?1.25/?1.49/?2.49

Where

Play/iTunes/iTunes

Mini Motor is a familiar kind of game. It’s a top-down, non-realistic, lap racer with all the usual power-ups, car upgrades and track, cup and vehicle unlocks. A quick glance at all the padlocks on the menus is a good sign that there’s plenty of gameplay to get through; certainly enough for your ?1.50 outlay or thereabouts, anyway. What’s also interesting to note is that, even though there is an iPad-friendly HD version, it plays just as well on a smartphone.

Generally the game is pretty standard fare. You choose your car, you choose your track, you get behind the wheel and you get racing. The only real choice is your method of control and, if you can manage the default steering wheel option, then you’re a better (wo)man than we are.

What really sets Mini Motor apart - and, ultimately, makes it worth downloading - is the stunning graphics and smooth way that the game is put together. It’s a treat to watch each menu roll seamlessly into the next and, once you get driving, it’s as much a pleasure to enjoy the sights and sounds of the environments as it is to screech, skid, boost and bump your way around the bends.

Perhaps the only real shames, so far, that we’ve discovered are that, first, it’s possible to unlock everything by the means of in-app payments, and that’s just a bit nasty. Of course, that’s totally understandable. Developers want to get paid and fair enough, but it does leave a nasty taste in your mouth and might just make a difference when it comes to the multiplay mode - and that, incidentally, is the second pity.

Multiplay is a great idea. You enter you handle and then wait to join a game or, indeed, select options like cars, tracks and laps and host one all of your own. The trouble is that we couldn’t actually find enough players online to get a multiplay game going. Hopefully that’s something that will improve once the app gains traction, so to speak.

In all, if you like this kind of title, then Mini Motor is a must. Sure, it’s derivative but it’s derived so well that it would be a real shame not to.

Tags: Apps App of the day Mini Motor Android apps iPhone apps Gaming Racing games Driving games iPad apps

APP OF THE DAY: Mini Motor review (Android, iPhone and iPad) originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Wed, 23 May 2012 18:00:00 +0100

Those of you who aren't particularly into football should look away now. For everybody else, the winners of the Football Manager Awards 2011/12 have now been announced. Pocket-lint was one of partners of this year's jamboree, and we can now reveal that ex-Huddersfield manager Lee Clark is the proud recipient of the By Mutual Consent Award.

Beating Simon Grayson, Gary Megson,?Antoine Kombouare and?Sean O'Driscoll, Clark garnered a staggering 42 per cent of the public vote, naming his sacking by Huddersfield,?just weeks after setting a Football League record of 43 matches unbeaten, as the most baffling of managerial dismissals.

Manager of the Year is Newcastle's Alan Pardew, who also walked away with the Most Successful Transfer gong for his capture of?Papiss Cisse. And the other recipient of two awards is Jose Mourihno, scooping both?Great Motivator and?Technical Area Theatrics.

Young Manager of the Year is Swansea manager and Liverpool on/off target Brendan Rodgers. Youth Team Manager of the Year goes to Oscar Garcia Junyent for his role in shaping the Barcelona team's future.

Sir Alex Ferguson gets?Managerial Masterstroke for coaxing Paul Scholes out of retirement, while his Manchester rival Roberto Mancini wins?War of the Words along with the Premier League itself.

Outgoing Barcelona boss Pep Guardiola takes the Fashion Icon honours, and Champions League and FA Cup winner Roberto Di Matteo walks away with the?Triumph over Adversity Award if not the Chelsea job full-time.

You can check out a full round down of the award winners and the voting breakdown at www.sigames.com.

Roll on next season.

Tags: Sports Fitness Gaming Football Manager Football Manager Awards Sports Interactive

Football Manager Awards 2012 winners announced, in association with Pocket-lint originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Wed, 23 May 2012 16:38:00 +0100

GREE, the largest social network in Japan, is coming to Europe and has just launched in Open Beta mode for developers to get a taste of what it can offer. The service, when fully live, will allow iOS and Android gamers to interact online, and be a worldwide community for mobile gamers.

It's a bit like Apple's Game Center, but cross-platform and run by an independent company. It promises a greater variety of social interaction features too.

Game application developers are now urged to download the new?platform SDK (3.0.0?) and build into their software the social tools required to work on the network. It also takes into account the OpenFeint infrastructure the company acquired in the past year.

When launched for the consumer, GREE will have more than 60 compatible games available to download and play. It will be accessible in English and Japanese, with 14 other languages to follow. It currently has a user base of 230 million gamers, but that is expected to rise rapidly.

There's no indication as to when the final version will be available to iPhone and Android smartphone users, but the second wave of languages is scheduled for September, so the initial launch will be before then.

Tags: Gaming Apps iPhone apps iPad apps Android apps GREE

GREE, the social mobile gaming platform for iOS and Android, to launch in UK - goes open beta originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Wed, 23 May 2012 15:50:00 +0100

Recent times have seen some gamers forget about why they started playing games in the first place. Cutting-edge graphics and over-the-top set pieces, as well as a tendency toward the quicktime event, have meant gameplay itself has suffered.

Some might argue that in order for a game to be fun, it needs to look great. We think differently. Titles like Super Smash Bros Melee spring to mind: easily one of the most fun games to play with friends this console generation, but about a generation behind in terms of looks. Then there is Dragon's Dogma, Capcom's first attempt at a Western-style role-playing game. Glitchy as anything with a drab colour scheme, it is also one of the most enjoyable RPGs we have played since Skyrim.

Gameplay

Dragon's Dogma has clearly taken a big chunk of its gameplay style from other Capcom games. This is most definitely not a bad thing. Forget the clunky hack and slash approach of Skyrim or the clicking obsessed Diablo III, this is a game all about top-quality animations and fluid combat.

Choosing from one of three different character classes - "mage", "strider" or "fighter" - you are given entirely different combat styles to play with. Take the strider, for example: he can hang back and do all sorts of damage with a multitude of bow attacks. Over time he will, of course, get better at using his bow, but rather than just a simple damage multiplier you can unlock tons of different attack styles, ranging from dropping a hail of arrows from above to firing three in a shotgun-style spread from one bow.

The mage is particularly enjoyable towards the latter end of his game as his attacks become increasingly over-the-top and outlandish. Firing screen-filling blobs of ice or causing full-blown earthquakes is definitely impressive to watch and helps add to the sense of accomplishment once you have played enough to gain your character the necessary skills.

The crux of the Dragon's Dogma combat comes from the "pawn" system. As in most RPGs, they form your in-game party. You start with one pawn who will stay with you throughout the game and can be customised to the same degree as your own player. On top of that there is a sort of pawn Facebook, accessible from in-game rune stones. Once inside other players' pawns - or randomly generated ones, depending on whether you are connected to the internet or not - will appear for you to recruit. You can even share pawn creations through Facebook and Twitter.

The pawn system would fall flat on its face, if ?Dragon's Dogma wasn't so damn hard. Having a balanced party is absolutely vital, otherwise you will find yourself being culled by even the puniest of enemies. Pawns aren't stupid either - they will fill their role as either a fighting frontman or ranged strider.

The story

We haven't mentioned Dragon's Dogma's story yet for a good reason. With such a great gameplay setup we didn't want to distract from the game. Sadly though Dragon's Dogma doesn't fare anywhere near as well when it comes to story.

A sort of amalgamation of Western RPG cliches, the story in Dragon's Dogma is fairly forgettable from the outset. After a battle with a dragon, the game's lead character Arisen has his heart yanked out. The dragon then challenges you, essentially, to get it back. What follows is a romp across countryside and castle peppered with characters boasting slightly cringeworthy accents and spurting hammy dialogue.

Apart from sounding fairly stupid and repeating themselves frequently, the game's pawns are the story highlight. They constantly natter about things in the world around them - things like, "I have been here before" or "tackle this enemy with fire". Useful stuff that adds life and flavour to setting.

Some facial animations do a particularly good job of making the story sound slightly stupid. Characters have the usual video game eye issues and lip synching could be better but it's mostly forgivable.

The looks

We've already mentioned that Dragon's Dogma has a few issues with the way it looks. First, you are going to want this game on PS3 because the Xbox version is laggy with fairly nasty frame-rate drops at random moments. Second, we found ourselves turning the brightness up high because at "night" you can see virtually nothing.

This is an intended gameplay effect, clearly, and does add to a lot to the atmosphere of the game. This is also when the game is at its best in terms of looks, with a clever lighting engine that casts all sorts of shadows and colours.

Animations are truly stellar and some of the best we have seen in a RPG, as are a lot of the enemy models. It's possible to scale some of the larger enemies in Dragon's Dogma, resulting in a Shadow of the Colossus style battle. These baddies look great with detailed and inventive designs. Armour choices later in the game and the more powerful attacks are also incredible when you first pull them off.

?

Verdict:

Dragon's Dogma is so much fun that we can forgive the majority of its shortcomings. We sighed when we fired the game up and some bad Japanese rock began playing. Our fears that it might be yet another game full of silly character names and androgynous looking leads were soon put to rest. Lag can cause issues with a near-flawless combat system, but not enough to be a genuine irritation.

This is a title with a refreshing sense of adventure. Setting off into the night not knowing whether your band of pawns will make it back to the safety of the castle is just as rewarding as taking on the likes of Dark Souls. In fact, we would consider putting Dragon's Dogma on the same level if it were just that bit more polished. A step in the right direction, and a game with so much potential, it makes us excited about a sequel.?

Tags: Gaming games Dragon's Dogma Xbox 360 PS3

Dragon's Dogma originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Wed, 23 May 2012 13:39:00 +0100

Halo developer Bungie's next game, a MMO first-person shooter called Destiny, will be released in Autumn 2013 for Xbox 360 and, dum dum dum, the Xbox 720.

The contract between the studio and publisher Activision has been made public as part of?Activision Blizzard's lawsuit against former Call of Duty developers Jason West and Vincent Zampella, and it covers a launch version for the "next Xbox".

In addition, it refers to Microsoft's next generation console as the Xbox 720 - not Durango. However, as the contract was drawn up two years ago, the Durango name wasn't used at that time. What is more interesting, however, is that Activision had clearly been under the impression that the new machine would be out in 2013. It is unlikely that it would commission a version of a game that it couldn't release.

The contract also reveals that Bungie is to make four "sci-fantasy,?action?shooter games", covering three sequels. And that although the first Destiny game will be an Xbox 360 and Xbox 720 exclusive for 2013, a PS3 version is to be developed and released a year later in "Fall 2014".

Finally, the Bungie Activision agreement also covers the PlayStation 4, but not until Destiny 2. The first sequel is to be available for Xbox 360, Xbox 720 and PS4.

So, does this all mean that we're about to get a major unveiling at E3, specifically by Microsoft? Pocket-lint's sources continually say not. E3 2013 is a far better bet for a Xbox 720 launch, perhaps with a quick turnaround to get it into shops by Autumn 2013. After all, there have already been reports that the console has entered the early stages of production.

Read

Tags: Xbox 720 Gaming Microsoft Xbox 360 Activision Bungie Destiny Durango E32012

Bungie Destiny contract reveals Xbox 720 will arrive in 2013 - E3 announcement? originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 22 May 2012 10:23:00 +0100

An image has appeared on a developer's Twitter feed that reveals the final Wii U controller, to be publicly unveiled during Nintendo's press conference at E3 on 5 June. It has several changes to the one Pocket-lint played with at last year's event.

The picture, leaked by a quality assurance tester at Lego videogames developer TT Games, shows that the thumbsticks of what is believed to be the consumer version of the controller are different - they're convex rather than concave.

In addition, the button array at the bottom of the screen is altered and the whole device is more rounded than before, giving a softer, more welcoming, family appeal. There's also a Wii U logo that's appeared on the bottom left of the controller.

The original tweet has now been removed by the user, which is understandable considering that third-party developers are under strict non-disclosure agreements. Needless to say, we now fully expect a Lego game to come to the new console after its launch.

Along with the final version of the console itself, we expect several games to be announced at E3, including a Mario title - something creator?Shigeru Miyamoto has previously revealed.

Pocket-lint will be at E3, the enormous videogames conference in Los Angeles, from 2 June to bring you all the biggest news as it happens, with the Sony press conference on 4 June being the first major event.

Read

Tags: Nintendo Gaming Nintendo Wii U E32012

Wii U controller redesigned - thumbsticks changed and more originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 22 May 2012 09:38:00 +0100

The mouse has to be without doubt one of the most boring pieces of technology available. It might be as useful an invention as the car or the railways, but rarely will we be doing backflips over a new piece of mouse-related hardware. Thanks to Diablo III, this has all just changed.

Diablo transforms the mouse into a potent instrument of death. With a simple left or right click you can unleash a vast flurry of attacks and dish out huge amounts of damage to hordes of on-screen enemies. The mouse is the driving force behind all of Diablo III’s genius; delightful simple and easy to grasp, yet infinite in its possibilities.

What is Diablo?

So here’s something a bit naughty. Diablo III is the first title in the series we have ever played. The lack of a decent computer, combined with the fact we were simply too young to play the earlier games, means it isn’t until now that Diablo has been on our radar. This is one of the reasons our Diablo III review is coming slightly late, simply because there has just been so much game for us to get stuck in to.

At its core Diablo is about clicking. Click to move, click to attack and hit a few keys in between to switch attacks. This might seem far too simple to be an enjoyable experience, but the near-infinite level of customisation coupled with a super-addictive gameplay style makes Diablo III watertight.

Starting out with Diablo III, you are given the choice of a few very simple character classes. Players pick between a witch doctor, monk, barbarian, wizard and demon hunter. All are fairly different in the way they play, which we will be looking at later. The initial decision between characters is very easy and streamlined compared to other games of this type. It is seriously refreshing to just pick a character and get going, free from the worry that a decision made now could have a detrimental affect to the game 20 hours in.

Once you have a character picked, Diablo III sets you out on a straightforward quest. Forget vastly complex and branching story arcs, this is about using a story to drive the gameplay on and keep the fun coming. Set 20 years after Diablo II, your character is given the task of investigating a fallen star at the village of Tristram, which is causing all sorts of beasties and creatures to come out of the woodwork.

Without giving away too much, Diablo III’s story will see you adventuring through all sorts of environments, including towns, inns, graveyards, cities and of course dungeons and crypts. The latter, like any click-orientated dungeon crawler, form the backbone of Diablo III’s combat sections.

How does it play?

Depending on which character class you have picked, Diablo III will play fundamentally in one of two ways. It is a very quick game in terms of combat, which makes some characters rely on lots of small less-powerful attacks, with others being about few attacks that are very powerful. Every character class is fundamentally aggressive, although some will have more emphasis on healing or defence moves.

We chose the monk to play through the game. A character that is all about rapid-fire attacks and secondary powerful attacks. These require spirit, which is regenerated by attacking. The result is a clever balance between going mad with the left click or using the right to inflict maximum damage. Other character classes such as the witch doctor do things slightly differently. This character uses mana, which regenerates very slowly, entirely changing the way in which you tackle enemies.

The end result of this, particularly when playing with friends, is that some characters do best rushing in, others better holding back and doing damage from a far. As always ?with Blizzard titles, it is perfectly balanced.

How does it look?

It has been a long time since Diablo last graced our PCs. Graphics have changed a lot since then and most demand impressive looks from any title. Skyrim springs to mind as does the likes of Battlefield 3, both looking swish in different ways.

Maxed out, Diablo III certainly is a nice looking title. It isn’t going to blow any minds but the rich colours and decent lighting engine make it an enjoyable experience for the eyes. Change the settings down though, and the game rather predictably starts looking a lot worse. Crucial to all this is that Diablo III will run on absolutely everything. Even a rather retro PC will be a able to run the game on lower settings at a decent clip.

This is important because Diablo III is all about accessibility. Running on any machine means that just about everyone can enjoy playing it ?- and, quite frankly, the graphical jump between lowest settings and max is small enough. The game is still hugely enjoyable anyway, as its core experience is all about gameplay.

Loooooongevity

Don’t expect to tackle Diablo III overnight. This is a game that is going to suck away your life more than any other RPG you might have played before. We found ourselves permanently thinking “just another 20 minutes”. This 20 ?minutes then turns into an hour and before you know it, it’s dark outside.

Diablo III is almost mockingly aware of its own addictive nature, even adding a permanent in-game clock to the top right corner, so you can see just how long you have been playing. Loot being absolutely everywhere and in everything also means that it is easy to build up a bit of a collecting obsession. We found ourselves constantly warping from dungeon to merchant after picking up what is practically worthless weaponry, just because they were lying out in front of our character temptingly.

Online, Diablo III becomes an even more addictive beast. Playing non-ranked PVP matches, despite having no sort of Call of Duty-style points system, is just addictive because it is incredibly fun. As with a lot of Blizzard games, expect to get quite a hiding from other players.

Verdict:

We could go on writing about all that makes Diablo III so much fun, but we want to get back to playing it. This is a standout PC-only title and a game that any PC player should own. It is absurdly addictive, to the point where you will need genuine giving up smoking levels of self control to draw yourself away from the computer screen.

Polished, playable and easy for anyone to get into, Diablo III has been more than worth the wait.

Tags: Gaming PC gaming Diablo III

Diablo III originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 21 May 2012 17:01:00 +0100

What does it take to be a man? Bob Dylan would argue that it involves a lot of walking, Westlife never really managed to answer the question and the Vikings seemed to think it involved drinking mead from horns, getting tattoos and battering each other over the head with lumps of steel.

To celebrate the launch of Dragon’s Dogma, Pocket-lint was invited to try things the medieval way. So, armed with a sword and buckler and accompanied by a team of Hollywood stunt men, we headed off to the deep dark woods to learn more about our masculinity.

Dumped in a muddy field somewhere, we were left to search for a group of beardy muscle-bound men hulked around a fire. Stumbling across what looked something like the barbarian horde from Gladiator, we were immediately taken aback by the size of our tattooed friends.??

Out from the treeline wondered a friendly gentleman looking like the real-life incarnation of Thor. He was carrying a tree trunk practically one handed and dumping it on to a fire. Ee asked him why they needed it, given it was a sunny afternoon.?“You always need fire,” was the reply.

We got the impression these guys have campfires in their own living rooms rather than central heating. Either way, it was time to get clobbered up.

We were to play the role of a pawn, a sort of ever-subservient accessory to the Dragon's Dogma lead character. The pawn is a multi-purpose muscle machine for smashing up anything that gets in its way. Naturally we were thrilled that this character had been chosen for us. This was to change rapidly once our training started.?

Being a pawn meant that every single person who attacked us would be doing so with the full force of their strength, or at least it felt that way. Our trainer was to be the rather unexcitingly named Phil. Or to reveal his full title, Phil the Jarl of the International Brotherhood of Jomsvikings.?

Phil got us suited and booted, selecting a rather nice lightweight single-handed sword, which we draped over our shoulder, and a fetching belt that completed the outfit. For a moment it all felt surprisingly light and flexible. That was until a huge chainmail helmet got dumped on our head. Imagine trying to run the 100 metres with a breeze block Sellotaped to your face. That is what it felt like.?

At this point we were introduced to the rest of the Jomsvikings, most of whom couldn’t stop laughing at the jaunty angle of our helmet. Described us as a pretty boy, our trainer then proceeded to try and knock out whatever prettiness there was left by battering us with a sword. Doing what was called "fives", we learnt how to strike and then defend in such a way that it wasn’t dangerous - or at least that was what the medieval warriors told us. We imagine a full swing of one of those axes to our head wouldn’t exactly be safe.

Learning fives was vital, as you move in such a way that it is clear to your opponent how you are going to attack him and vice versa. This stops any nasty accidents when getting a good scrap on. A buckler was then handed to us and we learnt how to defend with both sword and shield. It’s actually a lot easier than you would think, although we were doing very basic moves.?

Next it was time to choreograph our fight sequence. This was when Pocket-lint’s rather hopeless coordination came into play. In order for a movie sequence to flow, the stunt needs to be rehearsed in sections and then put into one single shot. It meant remembering every single strike and parry with three separate opponents. Despite the scene lasting only a minute or so, we were, quite frankly, hopeless.?

Then to filming. The fight itself saw us get attacked by a fairly big but short opponent in heavy armour. This was both good and bad. Good because we knew we could really give him a proper whack but bad because he would do the same to us. A few swings, a parry and then a punch to the face with a buckler left our opponent startled. We managed to slash open his back and the give him a hefty boot to the backside.

Next up we had to tackle an axe-wielding maniac with a shield. The choreography was particularly tough here because of a kick and head chop move we had to pull off, the end result leaving me lined up perfectly to slit his throat and then gut a man running at us with a two-handed sword.

So how did this audition for a stunt man in the next fantasy adventure go? Quite frankly, rubbish. Our puny structure and less than adept sword skills left us wondering how the final cut would turn out. God knows how they did it, but clearly the cinema screen is quite forgiving.

Dragon's Dogma launches on 25 May.

Tags: Gaming Xbox Xbox 360 PlayStation 3 Features

Dragon?s Dogma for real: Pocket-lint becomes a medieval warrior for the day originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 21 May 2012 15:07:00 +0100

Diablo III marks the return of one of the all-time great PC game series. Ten years in development, the game is now live and ticking along nicely on PCs the world over.

It's available in several different versions, but for the true fan there can be only one choice; the collector's edition. Pocket-lint has got one of the epic boxes and has put together a hands-on for you, so you can decide whether the ?170 set is worth it.

So what’s in the box? First, there's a full version of the game for either PC or Mac. We have been getting our teeth stuck into it for a while now and will have a review once we get closer to tackling the vast gameplay load it contains.

The collector's edition also throws in some exclusive in game items in the form of angel wings, an exclusive banner and special dye with which to colour your armour sets. For World of Warcraft fans, you get a special Diablo III style pet called a fetish shaman. If you play Starcraft II, then there are unique battle.net portraits based around Diablo characters.

Just as the collector's version of Starcraft II came with a rather awesome USB key, Diablo III takes it one step further. A rather hefty Diablo skull, with a 4GB USB soulstone rammed inside it, is included. This is cool enough by itself, but it goes one better, as the soulstone USB comes preloaded with Diablo II and Diablo II: Lord of Destruction.

Satisfying your Diablo lust even further is a two-disc behind-the-scenes DVD and Blu-ray set which features more than an hour of interviews with the folks at Blizzard who put the game together. We've watched it, and for the hardcore fan there's nothing better. Adding to the Diablo III media is a CD with the entire game’s soundtrack, should you want to listen to its sounds while away from your PC.

The real highlight, apart from the actual game, is the game artwork book. At 208 pages it is a fairly meaty read. It goes all the way from pre-development concept art to 3D renderings of characters that appear in the game. The majority of it is seriously impressive and would take pride of place on any Diablo fan’s mantlepiece

That’s it, plenty to play with in the collector's edition as well as it being one of the best PC games released in a long time. For the true Diablo obsessive the collector's edition seems more than worth it and will retain a lot of its value should you plan on selling it later. Otherwise, just go and grab the game: we can see the allure of a huge Diablo skull USB key in terms of looks, but for practicality, there is no chance it’ll fit in your pocket.

Tags: Gaming PC gaming Diablo III

Diablo III collector's edition pictures and hands-on originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Fri, 18 May 2012 11:23:00 +0100

Toyota has launched a piece of software that turns the humble Nintendo DS games console into a remote control for its Smart Navi satnav system.

Called?Kuruma de DS ("DS in the car") the game card contains Bluetooth connectivity that hooks up to the company's proprietary in-car kit, allowing the DS to set and store destinations, view maps and get tourist information along the journey.

Designed for a passenger, in front or back, Kuruma de DS talks aloud through an on-screen Mii and even has quizzes about the immediate surroundings to keep kids and adults alike entertained during the journey. Its sound can be piped through the car's own speakers too.

As with standard DS games and software, the interface is cute and cuddly,?so, as Toyota Marketing Japan told 4Gamer.net, it's really been designed for families who want to keep their kids away from just staring at an in-car TV screen when travelling.

Currently planned just for Japan, Toyota's Kuruma de DS will cost?7,329 Yen (?57) on its release on 1 June. It will work only with the company's own system,?Smart Navi NSZT-W62G, which will be launched at the same time.

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Tags: Toyota Car And GPS Gaming Nintendo Nintendo DS

Toyota releases car navigation remote system for Nintendo DS originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 17 May 2012 09:24:00 +0100

An early PlayStation 3 classic, Warhawk introduced many console gamers to the idea of proper online multiplayer. It has been a good few years since the game was released and the entire multiplayer landscape has changed drastically, thanks to the likes of Modern Warfare and Battlefield 3.

Now comes Starhawk, the spiritual successor to Warhawk. Different characters, a different game world and a drastically updated graphics engine ensure it feels modern. But can the gameplay style still hold its own or are there other multiplayer delights to be had elsewhere?

Story time

Starhawk is based around a sort of amalgamation of modern video game cliches. Take a bit of Borderlands, a touch of Rage and then add a trickle of Red Faction and you have most of Starhawk's style.

The entire game is driven by something called rift energy. It forms the backbone of the storyline and acts as an in-game currency with which to purchase items. You play as rift miner Emmet Graves whose rift mine has been attacked by a group called the Outcasts. These chaps have been infected by rift energy and become mutated, they act as the main bad guys throughout the game and the opposing force when playing online.

Charged with rift energy himself, Emmet and his brother end up entangled in a battle against the Outcasts. That’s about it really, the single-player story is fairly forgettable and more just a training ground for the title’s much beefier online content.

It’s a looker

Starhawk may look like a lot of other games, but that doesn’t mean it's not easy on the eye. Rich colours, varied environments and some awesome character design on the Outcast side of things ensure it is one of the best-looking titles on the PS3 in recent memory.

Particularly special mention has to be given to the Starhawks themselves, which put even Optimus Prime to shame when they transform. In fact a lot of the game would make Michael Bay jealous, its explosions in particular, which tend to be frequent and rather on the large side.

Gameplay

Gameplay in Starhawk is split up into three different formats: vehicle-based combat on the ground, in the air and combat on foot. The flying element alone is a game in itself - add in the rest and you have a very substantial package.

Starhawk’s magic lies in its skill at balancing battles between the three. Never does it feel like an unfair fight, even when you are on foot and up against a huge flying metal transformer. Things like the rocket launcher, which easily locks on to any Starhawk up above, keep you protected on the ground. Doing so however could leave you susceptible to attack from a Sidewinder, a sort of low flying hoverbike.

This kind of gameplay triangle is consistent throughout and keeps you wanting to come back for more. Mastering only one vehicle will leave you weak when you can’t get hold of one, so it requires practice in other fields in order to succeed.

On top of this all this the game has a sort of tower defence element to it, which sees you constructing bases and vehicle spawn points in order to further your team’s efforts. Every building requires a set amount of rift energy, which you can grab either by destroying enemies or hanging around your base.

Online gameplay combines every element in Starhawk’s arsenal to make one of the most enjoyable multiplayer experiences of recent times. It’s refreshing to see a game as unique as this played out online when the likes of Call of Duty have become so ubiquitous. The single player might be a bit throwaway, but with a multiplayer element this strong, it is easily forgivable.

One thing we particularly like is the ability to pause the game and jump around its various menus without exiting gameplay. You can’t access character customisation but the server browser and quick-match options are available, should you not like the game you are playing.

On the character customisation side, skills can be unlocked which act as small perks when playing online. It is also possible to change character skins and alter the look of various body parts. Very little has an effect on the core gameplay experience, which is a good thing as the balance is nigh on perfect.

This is also maintained with the weapons available, none of which is particularly overpowered. They're also all in keeping with the razor-sharp art style of the game and as such look, and sound, great.?

Verdict:

Playing Starhawk online is extremely fun, rewarding and different. It has had us coming back for more since the moment our review copy arrived and will likely do so for a long time still.

Warhawk clearly laid out a strong set of foundations on which Starhawk could build, but the game has taken the concept so much further and added such a degree of polish that it has become a must-have title for the PlayStation. This is the multiplayer exclusive that the console needed.

Tags: Gaming PS3 Sony PlayStation 3 SCEE

Starhawk originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 14 May 2012 16:01:00 +0100

It's the end of the English football season (bar the Football League play-off finals) and as such, footy managers up and down the country are looking at their respective trophy cabinets, either in pride over a glistening new pot or with feather duster in hand to wipe away the cobwebs.

However, there's still one more chance to win something this season, a prize bigger and better than the piddly Champions League trophy. Yep, it's time for the Football Manager Awards 2011/12 - a series of rewards for a hard fought season for those who deserve them the most.

And Pocket-lint is one of the chosen partners to Football Manager developer Sports Interactive's annual awards jamboree this year. Alongside such journalistic luminaries Talksport, Mirror Football and Teamtalk,com, PL is the partner for one of the 2011/12 categories and we hope you'll all head over to the dedicated webpage to vote.

Our category is the "By Mutual Consent award", celebrating the most baffling of managerial dismissals for the last year. The nominees are Simon Garyson (ex-manager of Leeds United), Lee Clark (ex-Huddersfield boss), Gary Megson (sacked by Sheffield Wednesday even though they were third in the league), Sean O'Driscoll (ex-manager of Doncaster), and Antoine Kombouar??(fired when Paris Saint-Germain were top of the French first division).

There are other categories too, including Manager of the Season, Young Manager of the Season, and Most Successful Transfer.

So head over to SI Games' voting page now and click on your favourites. Your votes have to be in by this Friday, 18 May. The winners will be announced on 19 May.

And don't forget, you can still better all of the nominated managers on Football Manager 2012 or Football Manager Handheld yourself, which is now out on Android as well as iOS.

Tags: SI Games Gaming Football Football Manager Sports Interactive Football Manager Awards

Pocket-lint and Sports Interactive team up for Football Manager Awards originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 14 May 2012 15:42:00 +0100

After Pocket-lint's estimation that Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition has been the biggest launch ever on Xbox Live, Microsoft has confirmed such by releasing a statement that it has, indeed, eclipsed Trials Evolution (the previous record holder) on day one sales. It hasn't actually released any figures, however.

There is more than one way to skin a cat though, as Mojang big cheese and Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson has revealed that - based on the game's dedicated leader board - it looks like the Xbox 360 version has sold more than 400,000 copies in its first day alone.

Posting on Twitter, Persson said: "The number of sales I got is based on leader board participation, so might be off.. But it seems it sold over 400k copies in 24h."

He also revealed that the game was "profitable in an hour".

Microsoft'a own Major Nelson also hinted at similar figures. "It’s official. Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition has broken all previous Xbox Live Arcade digital sales records,?selling more than any other title in the first 24 hours on Xbox Live Arcade," he posted on his blog.

"I just looked at the leader boards and there are over 400,000 people playing… so that will give you an idea at how well it is doing."

One developer who's not happy with Microsoft?is Polytron, the studio behind the equally excellent Xbox Live game?Fez. It believes that Mojang has been given preferential treatment over free updates.

"You're also getting free updates, which is something every other developer on the platform is told is simply not an option," it posted on Twitter to Notch.

However, it is not complaining about the release of figures, contrary to reports elsewhere. "Minecraft did not get preferencial treatment regarding sale stats. just for the free updates," it wrote. "Attention journalists: THIS IS NOT A SCANDAL."

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Tags: Minecraft Gaming Xbox 360 Xbox Live Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition Mojang Microsoft

Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition sells over 400,000 copies on day one originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Fri, 11 May 2012 11:03:00 +0100

A preview video of the next instalment of Assassin’s Creed has been released ?- and boy, does it look good.

Set in Boston, during the American Revolutionary War, there’s plenty of bloodthirsty violence, some cigar smoking and even a hungry bear to whet our gaming appetite.

The game itself introduces a new assassin who goes by the name of Connor, while the enemy appears to be those darn Brits, with the real-life Battle of Bunker Hill being the backdrop.

The trailer was unveiled on the official Assassin’s Creed III website after 1,776,000 fans “united to unlock” the video by tweeting and posting on Facebook about the game.

So great is the anticipation of the game that it only took three days for the magic number to be reached.

The only dampener is that Assassin’s Creed III won’t be arriving until 31 October 2012 though Xbox 360, PC and PlayStation 3 gamers can pre-order the game now by visiting the game’s website.

You can read our preview of the game by clicking here.

Tags: games Assassins Creed III Xbox 360 PC PlayStation 3 Gaming

Assassin's Creed III trailer unveiled after fans social networking campaign originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 10 May 2012 17:24:00 +0100

The Xbox Live Arcade version of Minecraft was released for download today, and Pocket-lint suspects that it could well have been the biggest launch on Xbox Live so far. Although we don't yet know many copies have been downloaded on day one, just checking out the amount of ratings it's had (which score it as four-and-a-half stars), we've got a fair idea that it's been extremely popular.

At our last count, it had more than 127,000 user ratings, which is staggering as it's only been out a few hours. Obviously, not all of those may have downloaded the game, and fewer of them might have bought it outright - opting to take the free trial version for a spin first - but we've still never seen anything like it.

The game's arrival on Xbox Live is part of a good few weeks for Microsoft, with Trials Evolution?and indie hit?Fez also proving to be extremely popular since their arrivals in April. However, even they would be hard pushed to match the fanatical adoration Markus "Notch" Persson's?Minecraft garners.

Professional reviews are also pouring critical acclaim on the Xbox version, with Eurogamer calling it "arguably a purer version of the game, and certainly a great point at which to start playing".

And with the impact it's had so far, who's to argue with that?

Pocket-lint will be reviewing Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition soon, where we'll let you know exactly what we think.

Tags: Gaming Xbox 360 Microsoft Xbox Live Minecraft Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition

Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition hits today - more than 127,000 4+ ratings already originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Wed, 09 May 2012 17:08:00 +0100

High-definition footage of every game of the regular Major League Baseball season is now available to be streamed either live or on catch-up through Xbox Live in the UK, as MLB.TV Premium launches today. The service, which has been available on the Xbox 360 in the US and Canada since 27 March, can now be downloaded and accessed by Brits and offers everything a baseball fan could ever want.

MLB.TV Premium is a subscription service that costs $114.99 for an entire year, $24.99 per month. It allows access to around 100 live games a week, plus recaps and archived game footage. You can also set the application to remember the team you support, so that specific content will be listed front and centre whenever you enter the portal.

Other features include a mini-guide, which gives a?quick preview of the latest day's games at the bottom of the screen; a split screen mode so that you can either watch the game and see stats, such as the league, or two games at once; and gesture and voice control through Kinect.

As well as the UK, the MLB.TV Premium application is now available in Australia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Russian Federation, South Africa, Spain and Sweden from today. Along with the US and Canada, it has been available in Mexico since 27 March.

Xbox 360 owners who want to subscribe will also need Xbox Live Gold membership.

Tags: Xbox 360 Microsoft MLB-TV Xbox Live Home Cinema Television Gaming Baseball

Major League Baseball games now available through Xbox Live in UK originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Wed, 09 May 2012 12:19:00 +0100

TV, mobile and broadband service provider Virgin Media, in association with Eurogamer and The University of Abertay Dundee,?has launched an?initiative for young games developers, inviting them to create a new mobile game in 100 days.

Called the "100 Day Game Project", it asks entrants to submit game designs and concepts to the company via a dedicated web page and the best one will be made into a real title, with the launch of the beta version to be at the Eurogamer Expo on 27 September.

The judges who will be voting on the games designs are Douglas Hare from Outplay Entertainment, David Hamilton from Digital Goldfish, Craig Lawson from Ubisoft Reflections and Tom Champion from Eurogamer, and the winner(s) will travel to Dundee to work with mentors to make the game a reality.

In addition, during the development,?progress on the game will be documented on the internet, along with a running blog.? The public can also take part by commenting on aspects of the game, suggesting character names and plot lines along the way.

And, if you haven't guessed already, the entire development cycle is planned to take no more than 100 days - a blink of an eye in conventional terms.

Entries can be submitted from today (8 May) up to the cut off point on 27 May. Get designing.

Some of Pocket-lint's ideas:

Angry Bards: Lute-playing minstrels from the Middle Ages get the hump when the local lord raises taxes.

Cut the Soap: You get to step into the shoes of an EastEnders editor and must decide exactly when to place the "dum, dum, dum, dums".

Gnaw Something: You have to shape sticks into familiar objects using only your teeth.

Where's My Waiter?: Busy restaurant... You get the picture.

Fruit Ginger: Chris Evans takes a sword to a bowl of strawberries.

Tiny Wangs: Well... (CUT, Ed).

Tags: Virgin Media Gaming Eurogamer Expo 2012

Virgin Media looking for developers to build game in 100 days originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 08 May 2012 12:21:00 +0100

Back in March we got the first look and an in-depth preview at what Assassin’s Creed III was made of.

It's more than five whole months before the final game hits the shelves – it’s due for release on 30 October ?– but Ubisoft is readying a gameplay preview ahead of this year’s E3 expo in Los Angeles.

The catch? The 43-second teaser trailer that appeared on the official YouTube site today is a prelude to a longer gameplay preview. This longer version will be shown only when 1,776,000 views, tweets and Facebook shares accumulate. If that sounds like an unusual figure then think again: we knew the game was set in the 18th century, so 1776 looks to be the exact date that events take place.?

Marketing stunt or not, we know one thing: we want to see more of this game. The trailer’s snow-laden hunt through Colonial American hills looks super cool.

If you, too, want to know more then spread the word. Go visit the YouTube teaser trailer and rack up those views.

Tags: Gaming Assassins Creed III Ubisoft

Assassin?s Creed III gameplay preview originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 07 May 2012 21:40:00 +0100

First came the game, then the crisps, the street artists and now… the bling?

Yup, that classic game Space Invaders has inspired a maker to produce sterling silver rings in the form of those classic aliens that so many of us spent many hours blasting.

Invaders “Aiko”, “Hoshi” and “Yuki” are the three designs available. Fun though they are, each design doesn’t quite match up to any of the Invaders in our memories. Though the classic shapes do mimic the blocky, 8-bit graphics of the 1978 Taito original.

With jewelled owls all the rage at the moment, perhaps this slice of retro fun is the perfect geek alternative to wear on your fingers.

Priced at €198, the site estimates an approximate ?135 cost to the UK. But, by our calculations and in today’s poor economy, it’s closer to ?160 a piece.

Pricey they might be, but it’s a snip compared to Firebox’s ?5,500 Space Invaders sofa…

Read

Tags: Gaming Space Invaders Retro Bling

Space Invaders bling rings originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 07 May 2012 12:30:00 +0100

The Xbox 720, codenamed Durango, is reported to have entered the manufacturing stages, although it remains unlikely that the console will be released this year.

Sources familiar with the matter have told gaming site IGN that assembly of the successor to the Xbox 360 has started at the?Austin, Texas, branch of Flextronics, a company that has manufactured parts of both former Microsoft games consoles.

The sources say the company created a new testing group separate from the rest of the business, tasked with reviewing software and hardware developments for the Durango. And, now that process has finished, the manufacturing leg has begun, they say.

IGN speculates that, instead of full consumer units, Flextronics is actually producing development kits. Microsoft has already said that it wouldn't be launching a new console at E3, and there's no evidence to suggest that it was telling porkies.

The software giant also released the following statement to the site when asked about the possible start of the manufacturing phase.

"Xbox 360 has found new ways to extend its lifecycle, like introducing the world to controller-free experiences with Kinect and re-inventing the console with a new dashboard and new entertainment content partnerships.

"We are always thinking about what is next for our platform and how to continue to defy the lifecycle convention. Beyond that we do not comment on rumors or speculation."

Pocket-lint will be at E3 from the beginning of June, when we'll bring you more news about Durango (if there is any) and other Microsoft developments from the show floor.

Read

Tags: Xbox 720 Microsoft Gaming Durango

Xbox 720 Durango manufacturing starts - possibly originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Fri, 04 May 2012 14:45:00 +0100

Angry Birds is everywhere, including... dum, dum, sum... Pocket-lint.

That's right, following a new trick from Angry Birds creator Rovio, Facebook users can now embed and play any level in their site, allowing them to challenge friends to see if they can beat their high scores.?

It means that soon you'll be able to play even the hardest of levels without having to unlock every level - just look for a certain level on a blog or website.?

Here, for example is the first level of the game:

To be able to play the game, you will have to be logged in to Facebook.

So, how well can you do? Can you beat 28,000 points? Er, probably.

Tags: Gaming Angry Birds Facebook Rovio

Angry Birds now playable on any website originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Fri, 04 May 2012 14:41:00 +0100

There have been no shortage of zombie games in the past couple of years. Whether poppin’ heads in House Of The Dead: Overkill or chainsaw-slashing the undead in Left For Dead 2, the premise is much the same: slash, hack, shoot, kill, repeat.

So for The Walking Dead: The Game to take on a point-and-click-inspired, dialogue-laden, story-led approach to the zombie genre is, if nothing else, refreshing. To others it’ll be the idea of a "stop reading and switch off" boreathon.

A brief history

From Robert Kirkman’s eerie comics to the popular TV show devised by Frank Darabont, The Walking Dead has become quite the potent franchise; it’s spawned outside of its original story and character remit to appeal to a mass audience. And it’s worked with gusto.

While Telltale Games’s approach has stuck more closely to The Walking Dead’s original comic book storyline - and indeed story really is the key to this game - we suspect the TV series’ impact will have many brand new fans sniffing around this game as a result. And hey, what’s the harm in that?

Character-driven

At the core of The Walking Dead: The Game are its characters. You play Lee Everett, an “is he, isn’t he?” killer, caught up in the middle of an inexplicable zombie apocalypse. He doesn’t know what’s going on; but then nobody does.

The opening several minutes of the game are spent in the back of a cop car. The dialogue is convincing – bar for the odd bit of shoehorned-in profanity - and the straightforward gameplay is based on two main principles: selecting responses to questions and the odd bit of looking around.

It may not sound like oodles of fun, or at least yet, but there’s a reason to consider those responses – other characters will judge your demeanour, remember what you say, decide whether they believe you and, therefore, shape the ongoing character interactions and story. This makes it feel, at least a bit, like crafting out your own path through the story.

But there are some characters where it doesn’t matter what’s said: let’s face it, the cop driving the car never stood a chance, did he? One big car crash later and it’s not long before the tale takes a turn towards the darker side. Shotgun at the ready…

Point-and-click

Without giving away the full story, the gameplay continues in the same vein, albeit with the added focus of walking around given scenes. There are other sections that require rapid button-bashing to avoid getting chowed down by your zombie foe, while other parts flip into a first-person point of view which changes up the dynamic of the game. Otherwise camera angles are fixed in a Resident Evil style arrangement.

It’s difficult to describe The Walking Dead: The Game as either a puzzle or platform game, as it’s not either. It feels a lot like Heavy Rain (minus the occassionally cheesy acting) meets the undead.

Which, essentially, is a glorified point-and-click adventure. Something that’s having a resurgence of late. Tim Shafer’s Kickstarter-funded Double Fine Adventure project acquired more than $3.3 million dollars inside a month – and that was before anyone, including the makers, had a clue what the game would be.

Telltale Games’s own titles, including Back To The Future and Jurassic Park, have also seen a success. The style of these previous titles sets the precedent for The Walking Dead: The Game. So if either of those impressed, then Telltale’s latest five-chapter story should whet your appetite

Blood ‘n’ guts

But it’s not all fluffy chit chat - there’s plenty of gore too. Telltale hasn’t shied away from the realities of any given zombie-led game, film or comic worth your time: smatterings of the red stuff and more than a handful of head-related injuries.

Whether it’s slipping over in a crimson puddle, kicking an angry zombie in the face, or de-braining one of the unfortunate undead with a claw hammer. Add to that about as much profanity as an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm – just without the, y’know, comedy element – and this isn’t one for the kids. There’s none of the charm of Monkey Island to be found here.

However the gore doesn’t feel without warrant. It’s all part of driving the story forward rather than a Mortal Kombat style “finish him” just for the fun of it.

The voice acting is also pretty spot on; as good as it gets in any game. The face animation isn’t lip-synched, but the generally convincing dialogue sets the tone. That’s important - without it this game would have been a flop. Instead it builds the tension and draws you further in.

The only problem is, drawn in as you may or may not be, the first chapter’s just too easy. It’s not nearly challenging enough. We can only hope that the forthcoming parts two through to five will up the ante. Available on multiple platforms - PC, Mac, PS3 store, Xbox 360 online - it’s easy to get hold of the game. Prices vary depending on platform, early promotional deals and which country you live in. Roughly speaking ?15.99 for the full season pass works out as about the same as a pint of beer for each episode. So it’s good value. But it needs to be, as there’s no longevity here.

Verdict:

Fans of the original comic and recent TV show are prime candidates for this game. But hardened gamers will want to proceed with caution: it’s not going to be for everyone. If Heavy Rain on the PS3 sounds like your idea of fun, then The Walking Dead: The Game should be right up your street. It’s got great voice acting, doesn’t shy away from the gore and is an entertaining ride. But if you’re more the button-bashing, first person-shooter type then, in all likelihood, you’ll loathe this game’s dialogue-laden, slow pace.

This first episode of five – the others are released monthly from May onwards – lacks a true challenge, but we’re putting trust in Telltale Games that the difficulty level will continue to rise and that the plot will further deepen. And that’s what this game is really about: the story.

?

Tags: Gaming The Walking Dead PS3 Xbox 360 PC games Mac games games

The Walking Dead: The Game originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Fri, 04 May 2012 13:30:00 +0100

The best iPhone apps are often the games. It's probably the largest category in the App Store and they're the one's that seem to come and go on our handsets more frequently than any others as in turn each is downloaded, mastered and discarded. The bottom line is that you're going to need a lot of them, which is why we at Pocket-lint have compiled a list of what we think are the very best iPhone games.

Naturally, that list is absolutely enormous so today is the turn of the best iPhone driving games. If it's got wheels and goes on your phone, then you'll find it here.

Mini Motor

Mini Motor is a familiar kind of game. It’s a top-down, non-realistic, lap racer with all the usual power-ups, car upgrades and track, cup and vehicle unlocks. A quick glance at all the padlocks on the menus is a good sign that there’s plenty of gameplay to get through; certainly enough for your ?1.50 outlay or thereabouts, anyway. What’s also interesting to note is that, even though there is an iPad-friendly HD version, it actually plays just as well on a smartphone.

Generally the game is pretty standard fare. You choose your car, you choose your track, you get behind the wheel and you get racing but, what really sets Mini Motor apart - and, ultimately, makes it worth downloading - is the stunning graphics and smooth way that the game is put together. It’s a treat to watch each menu roll seamlessly into the next and, once you get driving, it’s as much a pleasure to enjoy the sights and sounds of the environments as it is to screech, skid, boost and bump your way around the bends. Read more

iTunes:?Link

Price:??1.49

Rating: 4/5

?

Zombie Highway

Developed by Renderpaz, this game consists of driving down said zombie highway while dodging, and using, various upturned cars and lorries to knock zombies (who leap from the side of the road) off your car.?Fortunately, there is a decent array of weapons as well, so you can mete out justice the good ol' fashioned way - with a shotgun.?

There are three levels - Clasic, No Weapons and Hard - to keep you busy and a good variety of zombies on offer with varying degrees of toughness. Get as far down the highway as possible to earn weapons and be awarded with either the gold, silver or bronze award. A great game. Read More

iTunes: Link

Price: 69p

Rating: 4/5

?

Shine Runner

“Yeeeeehaaaw!!!” is the common parlance one might use to describe the fun you get out of playing Shine Runner. The shine referred to in the game's title is moonshine, essentially, and the running it is where you and your thumbs come in. You play some nameless, faceless hero of a sort in the Deep South. Your job is to drive one of those swamp, fan-powered, hovercraft things - as made world famous by the series Gentle Ben - from A to B around a basic map delivering and picking up cargo at each stop.

The other side of the experience is the buying and selling of the commodities, which fluctuate in price, at each stop and doing your best to make as much cash as possible. In a way, it’s rather like a very rudimentary, redneck version of Elite. However you want to think of Shine Runner though, what’s very clear is that it’s an absolute treat for anyone to play. We’re not convinced that the lasting appeal will hold any longer than a few weeks but it’s well worth it all the same.

iTunes: Link

Price: 69p

Rating:?4/5

?

Cars & Guns 3D

Cars and Guns 3D does pretty much exactly what it says on the tin, minus the 3D. It's a cardboard cut-out, PaRappa the Rapper-look, road rage racer where you can buy and sell vehicles as you complete different types of missions and buy tune-ups along the way. Get a little bit further into the adventure and one of those optional extras you can pick up turns out to be guns.

The cars obviously handle very differently from one another, with a more expensive model not necessarily guaranteed to bring you better results, but it's probably the on-screen touch controls that unintentionally add a little extra. The?lack of polish doesn't take anything away from this title though and it's possibly not the easiest app to use on the back of the bus but certainly well worth your 69p. Read more

iTunes: Link

Price: 69p

Rating: 4/5

?

Real Racing 2

Real Racing has long been the smartphone's answer to Gran Turismo. It has pushed the graphical prowess of whatever platform it has appeared on. Now it's the iPhone 4S's turn to get some Real Racing action, in the form of Real Racing 2 which underwent quite a?significant update?for the handset's launch. This game is graphically a stunner and?the racing feels quite simply well ... real. The iPhone 4S version benefits from an enhanced lighting engine and improved textures as well as the ability to run the game at 720p on a television via AirPlay. You can also go split screen against another three different players.?

You race against a different array of cars, initially small hot hatches but later on full-blown supercars and racers.?As the game goes on you get the ability to upgrade various aspects of your car, including things like suspension and the engine itself.?The online multiplayer function takes place seamlessly within the app and consists of up to 16 players racing at once. Nothing like that exists on iOS and it is quite a thing to manage on just a smartphone.?Real Racing 2 is the gaming app you want to download if you own an iPhone 4S, it plays great, looks great and the best bit about it, costs just ?2.99. Read More

iTunes: Link

Price: ?2.99

Rating: 5/5

?

Bike Baron

Put together, effectively, by a super group of developers, Bike Baron has been much anticipated and is a?side-scrolling, platform style trial bike racer game.?There's only four buttons you need to press - lean left, lean right, go and stop - and we're very pleased that the developers have resisted the urge to add gyroscopic controls into the mix. Waggling your arms around when on the Tube is not a way of a) remaining inconspicuous, or b) making friends. Old-fashioned controls for old fashioned gamers, and we're happy with that (although you can set whether you're right or left-handed).

Even the game progression is simple, relying on the tried and trusted "earn up to three stars" level method. Stars can be earned through finishing the course in a set time, collecting coins, and even the amount of back or front flips you manage along the way. But added to this format is the way you unlock the next level. Each unlock costs a certain amount of stars, so, unless you do particularly well, you may find yourself running out, and thus having to go back to a stage you hadn't completed in full.?Say goodbye to your free time. Read More

iTunes: Link

Price: 69p

Rating: 4/5

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Stickman BMX

This sequel to the popular Stickman Skater brings plenty of elements from the original and repackages them with the BMX. Launched in July, the game gets a re-engineered physics engine and just enough of a variety of obstacles and locations to be worth the download.?Controls are simple in the extreme, with two responsive buttons on either side of the screen controlling pedalling and jumping. And it's basically a case of pressing these controls at the right time in order to progress through the levels.

Graphics are okay, but not fantastic and the soundtrack and SFX can become a little annoying. However the true joy with this game is its old-fashioned take on level design. By this we mean that everything is blissfully predictable. You'll come across the same car moving towards you at precisely the same point and aerial threats will dive at you in a similarly consistent way.?Once completed there's extra in-app content to be had in the form of Race the Ace, which brings another 30 levels, and Skateboard which gives you the option to skate around all the new levels.?Read More

iTunes: Link

Price: 69p

Rating: 3.5/5

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Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing

The premise of the game is simple - you control Sonic or one of his pals (or foes) around a series of tracks, drifting boosting and weapon-using along the way. It's a bit like that other franchise karting came that you're probably already familiar with - you know, Shrek Kart.?You kick off proceedings by creating your Sega Driving Licence and choosing a game face, then you're off straight into the tutorial. It's all fairly

straightforward if you've played ?this kind of?racing sim before - although the graphics are above and beyond what we've seen from its small screen rivals in the past.

After the tutorial you have a plethora of single player and multi-player options. In single player there are three GP stages to compete in (with three difficulty levels), speed trials, single races or missions, of which there are 25. These include coin chases, accuracy tests and the like - all the while you're collecting Sega Miles to unlock further characters and courses.?This game is far superior to the racing game that Sonic first appeared in, back in 1991, and probably around the price of three or four goes on that?arcade classic. Read more

iTunes: Link

Price: ?1.49

Rating: 5/5

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F-SIM Space Shuttle

F-SIM Space Shuttle gives you the chance to take command of Atlantis and pilot it safely to the runway at?John F. Kennedy Space Center or Edwards Air Force Base. Once landed, you can even watch a replay of your?flight from various perspectives such as the runway and the control tower, as well as from the orbiter itself.?Flying the shuttle from a 3D virtual cockpit, you can choose to use accelerometer controls, using tilt control?and or make use of the touchscreen and opt for the analogue stick control. Either works well, although the?tilt control possibly gives you a better idea of the real thing.

If you're not used to flight simulators, it's quite tricky to get the hang of, but that just makes it all the more?addictive. The excellent graphics really add to the realism (well, it's as realistic as landing a space shuttle?using your mobile phone can be) and if you get really good at it then you'll be awarded a "perfect landing" score and tested further with additional turbulence and simulated system failures. Read More

iTunes: Link

Price: ?2.49

Rating: 3/5

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Rubik's Race

Rubik's Race is just like the Rubik's Cube game that you're more than likely familiar with - albeit on a flat surface where the coloured squares slide into empty spaces in order to complete the objective. A real life example can be bought from Play.com for around ?15.

There are three versions of the game. First up is the Arcade mode where you do battle with a series of puzzles collecting bonus items (swap tiles, delete tiles and so on) as you progress. Beware of the pitfalls though - these are your anti-bonus items such as turning off the colour or freezing the tiles. You're battling against the clock as well, so the latter is particularly annoying.

Time attack is a flat out assault against the clock, and the amount of moves that you make, in a series of 9 tile challenges, and there is also a two player pass and play mode as well, which runs along the same lines. Read More

iTunes: Link

Price: ?1.49

Rating: 3/5

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Burnout Crash

If you've ever played any of the Burnout games, Burnout Crash will make some sense. Its premise is based on the Crash element in the console games, and here it is the main focus. Crash into a car, and then spend the next 90 seconds, or whatever the goal is, trying to continue that crash going to rack up the points.

Each level has three game types; Rush Hour, Pile Up, and Road Block, all with different goals.?Each area also has three difficult levels to it and there are six different locations.?At ?2.99 it's a bit rich, however it is published by EA so it is bound to go on sale at some point in the near future, and when it does it will probably be worth a go. Yes it has Origin and Game Center support too. Read More

iTunes:?Link

Price:??2.99

Rating:?3/5

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Asphalt 6: Adrenalin

Asphalt 6: Adrenaline has been completely rebuilt from the ground up (no pun intended). It has a brand new graphics engine, and there are several modes and styles of play that haven't appeared in any of its prequels.

For starters, the garage, which can contain up to 42 cars from the likes of Ferrari, Lamborghini, Aston Martin and more, can be wandered through as a?3D environment. Then there's new crash physics and graphics that make you wince everytime you hit oncoming traffic.

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However, the most satisfying change implemented for Adrenaline, is in its speed. The game zips along a fair old pace and, considering that Asphalt 5 was already super speedy, you can only imagine the effect that ramping it up has on the action. Certainly, when you eliminate rivals in Burnout style (by?ramming?them off the road), there's a sense of white knuckled aggression about it that only comes with pure acceleration. Read More

iTunes:?Link

Price:??2.99

Rating:?3/5

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Reckless Racing 2

The original Reckless Racing was a straightforward piece of smartphone?gaming addictiveness. Based loosely on Radical Racing, a retro classic, it is a top down racer with an emphasis on drifting and crashing.?

Reckless Racing 2 sees the series return to form in a much improved guise. In depth car customisation, loads of new tracks, improved graphics and an even better drifting setup, reckless racing 2 is one of our favourite gaming apps on the iPhone.

Graphically RR2 is a bit of a stunner. It boasts big, bold, bright colours and car models which look nearly as good as that of Real Racing's. The top-down view also lets you get a good view of all the on screen action as you bash around the track.?

The?game?is a very simple one at its core. Just go forwards and back, drifting around corners as quickly as you can. You will find you pick up gold in most of the early races doing just the above. Later on however and you are going to need to go into all sorts of customisation in order to build a car quick enough to take the win. Read More

iTunes:?Link

Price:??2.99

Rating: 4/5

Tags: Apps Gaming Driving games Features iPhone iPhone 4S iPhone apps

Best iPhone games: driving originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 03 May 2012 10:03:00 +0100

What you doing on 13 November? If the answer isn't playing Call of Duty Black Ops II then you probably won't be interested in the following.

"What happens when the enemy steals the keys?" That's the question asked in the new trailer that has been released ahead of what is expected to be yet another hit in the Call of Duty franchise.

This time around it looks to all have a "Terminator"-style approach to the proceedings with drones - plenty of them - taking over where you left to fight back to save the world.

Judging by the two-minute trailer there will be plenty of aerial fighting, plenty of tight city action in places like Los Angeles and even some horse trail action in the desert.

The trailer also suggests there will be plenty of time to fly, crash, drive, and ride your way through the numerous levels that Treyarch, the game's developers, has in store for us come November.

Are you excited by the trailer? Let us know in the comments below.

Tags: Gaming Xbox 360 PS3 Activision Treyarch Call of duty Black Ops II Call of Duty

Call of Duty Black Ops II trailer reveals new fight coming 13 November (video) originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Wed, 02 May 2012 11:23:00 +0100

The best iPhone apps are often the games. It's probably the largest category in the App Store and they're the one's that seem to come and go on our handsets more frequently than any others as each in turn is downloaded, mastered and discarded. The bottom line is that you're going to need a lot of them, which is why we at Pocket-lint have compiled a list of what we think are the very best iPhone games.

Naturally, that list is absolutely enormous so today is the turn of the best iPhone shooting games. Whether you're first person, top down or otherwise, if it belongs in a holster then this is where you'll find it.

Dead Space

At its core, Dead Space is a survival horror game, featuring cunning use of ambient darkness and enough cinematic jumps and bumps to make it possibly the scariest experience you could have with an iPhone or iPad. At times, it's so tense that it's hard to play it for a long period, and while EA Mobile advises that you wear headphones for the best experience, that may be just a step too far for some. As it is, those of a nervous disposition would be well advised to keep a spare pair of underwear to hand.

Graphically, Dead Space for all iOS devices is brilliant, with finely crafted tones and aesthetics, and is as close to a console experience as you can get. However, it's even better on the iPad 2, as the game is one of those that has been optimised for the new generation of Apple's tablet.?The extra power of its new graphics processor is used to great effect on, er, great effects.?If you're the proud owner of an iPad 2, this has to be on your essentials list. Read More

iTunes: Link

Price: ?2.99

Rating: 5/5

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Gun Bros

When Pocket-lint first saw this we were reminded of one of the all-time classic top-down shooters, Chaos Engine. Gun Bros is similar in that you control one of two beefy dudes packing large weapons with the sole purpose of killing as many alien meanies as possible - in this case T.O.O.L.?But there's another side to Gun Bros: as you progress you'll collect Xplodium which you can then use in exchange for cold-hard cash - there's also refinery upgrades which take longer to process the ore but hold greater return - this, along with XP, means you can level up and get hold of meatier weapons.

However, because of he free nature of the game, the maker, Glu, offers a way to get hold of the latest guns through in-app purchases. The system seems fair, offering up a balance between in-game achievement and buying your way to the top, as some equipment is locked and you still need to do the hard work. Read More

iTunes: Link

Price: Free

Rating: 4/5

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Rage HD

Playing a contestant in a bizarre splatter-gameshow, you are guided through some of the most gorgeous graphics we've seen on any handheld console or device. The stroll through each level's decaying landscape will frequently be?interrupted?by mutants and other deformed denizens, which you must dispatch with great?prejudice.?Essentially, that's it. Blast everything that moves, and some things that don't. Your feet will plod along to the next encounter as soon as you complete the last, and you need only worry about the shooting itself and moving your head about to target.

Certainly, Rage HD will win no prizes for depth of gameplay or, even, originality (think rail shooters such as House of the Dead, all the way back to Operation Wolf in the arcades), but it will be, and should be, lauded for its sense of fun and simply amazing graphics. Read More

iTunes: Link

Price: ?1.49

Rating: 4/5

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Zombie Highway

Developed by Renderpaz, this game consists of driving down said zombie highway while dodging, and using, various upturned cars and lorries to knock zombies (who leap from the side of the road) off your car.?Fortunately, there is a decent array of weapons as well, so you can mete out justice the good ol' fashioned way - with a shotgun.?

There are three levels - Clasic, No Weapons and Hard - to keep you busy and a good variety of zombies on offer with varying degrees of toughness. Get as far down the highway as possible to earn weapons and be awarded with either the gold, silver or bronze award. A great game. Read More

iTunes: Link

Price: 69p

Rating: 4/5

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Modern Combat 2: Black Pegasus

On its launch, MC2 was, without doubt, the finest FPS that we'd seen on the iPhone 4, beating other Gameloft titles such as NOVA and Zombie Infection to that honour.?The gameplay is simply terrific. It's just so smooth. In fact, it's so good that you often forget that you're playing on a small screen - it really does draw you in. We particularly love the kill streak features (and slick animation) and the super-slow effect you get when you kick down a door - which allows you to blow a few heads off before you're enemies have a chance to think.

Yeah sure, these are Modern Warfare 2 rip-offs, but they are so brilliantly done on the small screen that it doesn't seem to matter.?The graphics and visuals are also stunning, especially on the iPhone 4's retina display.?This really is a fantastic game, and an absolute steal at less than ?4. Read More

iTunes: Link

Price: ?4.99

Rating: 5/5?

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Asteroids Gunner

Computer games come and go, but some, it would appear, were meant to stick around. Atari's Asteroids is a game that fits the "classic" moniker very well indeed.?And now Atari's 1979 bestseller has been reinvented for the iPhone with the new name of Asteroids Gunner. Developed by Atari itself, the game brings a whole new set of powerups and abilities as well as multiple ships to use in your attempt to destroy all that come into your vicinity.?A classy title if ever there was one, Asteroids Gunner sees you take control of a ship in order to blast your way through multiple levels filled with the eponymous objects.

Using the two virtual joysticks, which are accurate and responsive, you can manoeuvre your craft while controlling the direction of your fire.?There are three galaxies in total with numerous levels in each. You have a choice of three ships to take on the hoards, though two are initially locked. Other upgrades are also available to buy between levels through the collection of crystals during gameplay. There's now also the ever-present in-app purchases which enable you to buy better upgrades than with just the crystals.?An excellent addition to the Asteroid franchise. Read More

iTunes: Link

Price: Free

Rating: 3/5

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Max Payne Mobile

The full Max Payne download costs ?1.99, fairly cheap for what is such a large amount of content. Graphically the game hasn't fared quite so well over the years, but it still plays just as brilliantly and the story is as fresh and as exciting as when we first played it many years ago.

Max Payne plays like a very speedy version of Gears of War. Lots of enemies on screen, a lot of bullets and the ability to dive in different directions while fighting. On top of this, you can slow down time by either standing still or diving. This makes it easier to hit enemies and is a must when using something like, say, the sniper rifle. Read More

iTunes:?Link

Price: ?1.99

Rating: 4/5

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Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombies

Based on Treyarch's console version and adapted by the folks at Ideaworks Game Studio, the FPS will see you blasting your way through hordes of the undead in single or multiplayer modes.

And it's multiplayer where the action is, which is fortunate as the game supports up to 4 players battling it out at any one time along with voice-chat to boot. There's only one map available at the moment, Kino der Toten, but more should follow as there will be free content updates coming.

Another nice addition is 50 levels of Dead-Ops Arcade, a top-down mini game found within the original?console?title.

iTunes:?Link

Price: ?4.99

Rating: 4/5

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Nova 2

N.O.V.A. 2 is the second?instalment?of what is, possibly, the best first person shooter Apple devices have seen to date.

The original N.O.V.A. (Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance) owed plenty to the?Halo franchise, with a similar colour pallet and Spartan-like forces, but was a fine FPS in its own right. However, as good as it is, many felt that its linear and constrictive level lay-outs made it a touch claustrophobic.Not so with the sequel. Some of the levels feature wide, expansive play areas, with much of the action outside, allowing for a more free roaming style feel, and a heck of a lot more running about during big boss battles.?

iTunes:?Link

Price: ?4.99

Rating: 4/5

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Doom Classic

What could be better than the original first person shooter on your iPhone. A gaming classic, translated well for touch controls, Doom on the iPhone is a must have download. Everything is there, including the still awesome sounding music.?

The app has also been done up for Retina Display packing iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S, meaning it looks particularly slick. At ?2.99 it is a bit of a no brainer and has been an App Store classic for a good few years now.?

iTunes:?Link

Price: ?2.99

Rating: 4/5

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Mass Effect Infiltrator

Format

iOS

Price

?4.99

Where

iTunes

So where to begin with Infiltrator? The opening cinematic is fairly spectacular in typical Mass Effect style. This then leads on to a simple yet highly addictive iOS shooter along the lines of the console game itself. Things have, of course, been massively simplified because of a lack of physical controls but there is still quite a lot to get stuck into.

Your character, Ezno, as well as being able to blast his way through all sorts of conventional Mass Effect enemies, can also have parts of his skill tree upgraded. You can boost stuff like punch to make enemies fly into the air when you hit them, for example.

There is a basic cover mechanic which will automatically hug you to the environment, an up swipe causing you to jump over whatever is in your way. Aim is done by tapping on an enemy and the the reticule fine tuned using your right hand on the screen. It actually works really well and is one of the best ways we have seen shooting mechanics handled on a smartphone app.?Read More

iTunes:?Link

Price: ?4.99

Rating: 4/5

Tags: Apps iPhone apps Shooting games Gaming Features

Best iPhone games: shooters originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Wed, 02 May 2012 10:50:43 +0100

Amazon has leaked a limited-edition Xbox 360 with the Union Jack emblazoned across the console, Kinect and controllers.

Amazon has since removed the listing, presumably on the say so of Microsoft, but not before Videogamer was able to grab a snap of the console.

It’s reported that the "Xbox 360 Celebration Pack" will go on sale on May 25 and will cost ?249.99 from the online retailer.

This will get you the 4GB Xbox 360, a wireless controller, Kinect sensor, copies of Kinect Sports and Kinect Adventures as well as a three-month Xbox Live Gold subscription.

It’s the same package that was announced as the Kinect Family Bundle back in February, only that was a more traditional white.

The Xbox 360 Celebration Pack on the other hand is covered with a Union Jack skin and is sure to hit the right note with the patriotic gamer.

Microsoft has so far refused to comment on the existence of the package. We assume they too busy chastising Amazon.

UPDATE: Microsoft has confirmed that it will be launching a "Great British" version of the Xbox 360 console.?

Available from Friday 25 May, the Celebration Pack features a special edition white Xbox 360 4GB console, Kinect?Sensor and wireless controller. It will cost ?249.99.

The Celebration Pack includes free commemorative Union Jack skins to decorate your console, sensor and controller.

Also available with the bundle is two Kinect games (Kinect Adventures and Kinect Sports) and three months Xbox LIVE Gold subscription.

Tags: Gaming Microsoft Xbox 360 Consoles Consoles Xbox 360

Union Jack Xbox 360 hitting Amazon on 25 May originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 01 May 2012 12:18:00 +0100

The Motion Simulation TL1 is no ordinary simulator. It is a racing simulator that costs up to ?41,000 and promises to let you hone your driving or flying skills as long as you've got a lounge and a bank balance big enough to afford it.

Designed, developed and manufactured in the UK in co-operation with the Ariel Motor Company - creator of one of the world’s fastest cars, the Ariel Atom - the TL1 houses a 180-degree, spherical projector screen and variable driving position cockpit.

Measuring more than two metres wide, total realism is guaranteed, according to the makers and can be used for driving or flying if that's your thing.

The unique seating system can be rotated to go from Touring and GT car positions to Eurofighter, up to the extreme seating angles of a Starfighter or Formula 1 car, says the company. The racing simulator accurate to within 2mm thanks to its going to different tracks with a "laser".

If you are more of a Forza 4 man you can opt for a cheaper version that costs around ?20,000 and will let you just plug in your PC or console.

If you are happy to provide some of the equipment yourself - such as a projector, you could trim the price for TL1 Full Simulator down to ?11,500.

The company also plans to release an even cheaper cockpit-only version called the TL1c. Its pricing is yet to be confirmed.?

Read

Tags: Gaming Car And GPS

£41,000 Motion Simulation TL1 simulator lets you practise being a fighter jet pilot in your home originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 01 May 2012 11:18:00 +0100

The key part of any video game is in the gameplay; nothing more, nothing less. If you don’t get that right, then it doesn’t matter how clever the rest of the work that you’ve done is. It simply won’t be a hit, and therein lies the problem of Fable Heroes.

Those looking for a stop gap until Fable: The Journey hits the shelves later this year will have been pleased to see a spin off game from Lionhead turn up in the big push on the Xbox Live Arcade platform known as Arcade Next. The idea of the initiate is to show a step up in the games that you can digitally download in exchange for your digital Microsoft Points and, yes, of this Fable Heroes is an excellent example.

Not aimed at the hardcore gamer

A party game spin off from the hit Peter Molyneux series, Fable Heroes is a Gauntlet-inspired, 4-player, cartoon-style hack and slash through the well-known and well loved world of Albion in which the main game is set.

Rather than realistic interpretations of the characters and the environment, Fable Heroes has an entirely stylised look both to underline the more “surface fun” experience that it’s supposed to bring, as well as to differentiate it from the big budget part of the franchise. To that effect, it looks more like a Mario Party version of Fable, with each of the heroes that you get to play as depicted as little wooden puppets. Complete with oversized heads and little stumpy limbs, there’s Reaver with his pistol, Garth with fireballs, the Hero of the series with his sword and Hammer with her, er, hammer. The balance of how they play is very similar to that of Gauntlet, with them probably best representing Questor, Merlin, Thyra and Thor in that order.

Choose whichever you’d like to play as - with more puppets to unlock as the game goes on - and either hook up with your buddies online to make up the foursome, get some random matchmaking or just play on your own with computer AI controlling the other three heroes.

It’s then all about whacking your way through some lovely representations of the different parts of Albion including - Mistpeak, Bowerstone, Aurora and even the end credits sequence - while hoards of Hobbes and Hollowmen do their best to stop you, and every time you “off” one of them, you get coins to collect of varying and seemingly random different sizes and therefore values. Ultimately, it’s important to collect as many of them personally as you can because not only does the player with the highest win the level, but also because you then get to spend the money levelling-up your character through a board game system in what is probably the most enjoyable part of the game.

There’s end of level bosses, some very amusing mini-games - largely involving chickens - an alternative dark version of the entire game to unlock, good and evil chests to open and more Fable jokes and references than you can shake a joystick at. The whole thing is both rendered and handled beautifully, it has superb music and production values and it’s an experience guaranteed to tickle. In fact, it’s nigh on perfectly made.

There’s a but...

Are you ready for the but? It’s quite simply that the gameplay itself is just not that compelling. The only compulsion is to level up one’s puppets and unlock more of their abilities, but once you clue into that fact, you do rather wonder why you’re spending the 10 minutes per level of semi-druggery for the 30 seconds of pay-off at the end. Add in the realisation that it won’t take too long to max each puppet out and it rather takes the shine off the whole experience. And that’s a terrible shame because the rest of the game is so well put together.

What it seems that the gamepaly of Fable Heroes is supposed to rely on is the fun factor and it very nearly comes through. There is a lot of fun involved, but it just falls short of that critical amount required to make the game addictive in the way that it needs to be to make you want to play it above everything else in your collection. We admit that the majority of our review experience has been one-player, which was never enough on even with Gauntlet to make it a classic, but with the Fable Heroes not on official release at the time of writing, there just weren’t that many others available online.

All the same we did taste enough of the multiplay experience to sense that it wasn’t quite going to do the job. Yes, there’s a good scrabble for coins and, yes, there’s a decent balance of team and competition at the same time but there’s little sense of excitement that generates, and the only thing we can put it down to is the absence of Death.

Death was a character in Gauntlet that you could only kills with magic potions. If you didn’t have any, he’d simply chase you around the screen until he’d corned one of you and sapped a huge bulk of your energy, while at the same time making a very loud and alarming noise. He caused panic and, at the same time, hilarity. Now, it’s not that you need to have Death, per se, in Fable Heroes to make it work, but you do need a third emotion at play as well as togetherness and competition.

You also need panic, or something like it. And every now and then, you need something in the game to be the cat amongst your pigeons, and that never happens. The result of that is that it’s all a bit flat.

Verdict:

Fable Heroes is a beautiful and inventive game dashed on the rocks of disappointment by a single but sadly most important shortcoming that any game come have. It’s just not quite as fun to play as it should be. It seems harsh just to give it a low score, because the the look and feel, the quirks, the design, the music, the graphics, the thought, the extra detail and everything else about it are all a four-star experience at the very least. But, if you’re not going to want to play it for very long, then it makes it very hard to recommend it as a paid download. All the same, it’s only 800 Microsoft Points and you’ll get a least a fiver’s worth of fun out of it.

Other than that, the only reason we can tell you to play Fable Heroes is because you’ll be able to transfer across some of your gold to Fable: The Journey when it comes out later in the year.

Tags: games Gaming Xbox 360 Xbox Live Fable Heroes

Fable Heroes originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 30 Apr 2012 18:19:00 +0100

Before we get into the meat of a review that may, we might as well warn you, be more negative than you’d expect, we have to say that we fully applaud EA for releasing its bi-annual licensed international tournament game as an add-on for the superb?FIFA 12, rather than a stand-alone game.

Too often the FIFA World Cup and UEFA Euro games are simply slightly modified versions of the same game engine with new fancy graphics and fewer features. Not so here, this downloadable content is a reward for die-hard FIFA 12 fans. Of sorts.

Great engine, good looks

Superficially, it ticks the right boxes. For starters, as DLC, it uses the best football game engine out there, one that we proclaimed as, “the closest that a bunch of pixels, polygons and, in effect, spreadsheets can get to emulating a real, bone fide football match than we've ever been treated to before”, in our review in September last year.

It also adds some nice new flourishes to graphical presentation, in its rendered stadiums, camera angles and user interface. There are some interesting new modes too, including a career-like expedition mode and challenges that allow you to replay some key moments from tournaments past.

However, it also carries a big bag-for-life full to the brim with caveats, some of which are merely annoying, others inexcusable.

Glitchy and sometimes unlicensed

Minor problems, such as the occasional glitch, the inability to choose your own squad from a larger roster of players - you’re stuck with whatever squad is current, downloaded as and when necessary - and the omission of qualification rounds can be overlooked. But, the fact that 24 of the 53 playable teams remain unlicensed - including one of the actual hosts, Ukraine - is shocking.

For those countries that aren’t covered by EA’s existing FIFPro licence, or signed up individually, made-up player names and approximated kits replace the real-world versions. It makes for a very odd “officially licensed” UEFA Euro 2012 experience when just under half of the content is gobbledygook. If it wasn’t for the feeling that your game isn’t complete without the DLC, you may as well create a roughly similar tournament in FIFA 12 and save yourself some dosh.

Online mode is simple, but more realistic

That said, there are some other aspects that bring things back up a notch or two. Its online mode, for example, allows you to compete in the tournament as you would normally, but with real-life opponents. It’s basic, allowing you to play only against random foes and not your chums through party or the like, but adds a variety in game play styles that you’d never get through AI.

Expedition mode too is an interesting addition – a bit like the latest FIFA Street in a way. You start out with a created team full of unknowns and grow it into a squad of international superstars by nicking players from vanquished nations. It’s odd (and difficult) playing as what is essentially a pub team and taking on Spain, Germany and Italy, but at least it allows you to start with your Virtual Pro (from FIFA 12) as the captain.

The challenges too, while not exactly unique, are interesting enough for you to come back for more, and you’ll definitely want to play through the single-player tournament with different teams to give yourself a test. So there’s definitely replay value in UEFA Euro 2012, if not a fully fleshed-out game in its own right.

Verdict:

And thar’s the rub. What we most like about UEFA Euro 2012 - the fact that its DLC and not a ?50 game you’ll only play for the duration of the tournament itself - is also one of its biggest failings. Electronic Arts hasn’t put enough effort into putting meat on its bones. It feels distinctly undernourished.

In gameplay terms, it’s superb. It is, after all, FIFA 12 with a lick of paint, and that will probably be enough for most. We can’t hide our dismay about the lack of licensed teams, but as any PES player knows, you soon learn to look beyond it. And the stadiums and overall presentation levels are excellent.

You’d expect more for your ?16 - especially if you consider that there are those who may feel compelled to buy FIFA 12 itself first, which is still roughly ?30 in many places – but ask a Tiger Woods fan about DLC charges and you’d realise that this particular add-on is relatively cheap.

We’re also willing to bet that it’s a darn sight cheaper than a ticket to the tournament itself.

Tags: games Gaming FIFA FIFA 12 FIFA 12: UEFA Euro 2012

FIFA 12: UEFA Euro 2012 originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Fri, 27 Apr 2012 15:49:00 +0100

Dishonored is a first-person shooter from Bethesda - the people behind Skyrim - set in a futuristic, steampunk Victorian inspired era.

Pocket-lint was treated to a couple of levels demo of the developers, Arkane Studio, ahead of the official release later this year.

Harvey Smith, known for his past work on the Deus Ex franchise, and Raf Colantonio, who worked on Arx Fatalis and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, are the lead designers on the game.

The storyline is simple. You play Corvo Attano, a once-legendary guard for the Empress, seeking vengeance against the Lord Regent who has framed him for the assassination of said Empress.

Luckily for you Corvo is, of course, at the top of his game with melee skills like no other, and the knowledge to wield supernatural powers if that's the route you choose.

Set in and around the imaginary city of Dunwall, players can choose to approach each level differently, opting either for the gung-ho FPS approach or a more cunning stealthy attitude.

The more you play one approach the more strength, knowledge and skill you will acquire as you hone your style - but you can still mix up the styles, we've been told.

It is not just about becoming the master stealth agent. How you tackle the levels will depend on how the game reacts to you with the AI learning your style of gaming an adapting accordingly.

The inhabitants of Dunwall and the surrounding area all live and breath regardless of whether you are there or not, it seems. Stop someone being mugged in one level and the muggers won't be around to cause you trouble later.

The same knock-on effect goes for the way you play Dishonored. Choose the gung-ho route and the living, breathing city starts to get a lot more on edge. The city dwellers, say the developers, starts to feel uncomfortable, guards become more aware of hostiles opting to patrol in groups rather than on their own, while the residents also start to pay less respect for the city they live in.

Take the stealth route, however, and the city starts to respond positively as the inhabitants feel the wrongs of the past are starting to be behind them.

That "good feeling" might have something to do with one of the levels we were shown called the Golden Cat Bathhouse.

Here the objective is to dispatch two characters in the story called the Pendleton Twins who are corrupt members of parliament and supporters of the Lord Regent. Opting to show us the stealth mode first, our demo had Corvo infiltrating the building and slowly sneaking up on the guards one by one.

The best way, we are told, to disguise a death by assassination is to make it look like an accident. Here, using magic powers earned through the game, you can possess any living creature - and, in this case, the target.

According to developers Arkane, when people are possessed they complain of feeling a bit under the weather, while those around them will ask if "they are okay?", but ignoring those concerns, and now having possessed one of the twins, our demo sees the target walk out on the balcony.

Two seconds later Corvo pulls back out of the body, halting the possession - your body isn't left somewhere else, if you're wondering - and before the enemy has time to react he is pushed over the edge. He "jumped" will be the verdict.

This, says Arkane, will be seen in the city as a good thing.

This possession element seems to be a recurring action and tactic in what we've seen. You can possess fish to get into buildings through the water system or, as we saw Corvo doing, use supernatural powers, and a power called Devouring Swarm,t o have enemies devoured by a mischief of rats before you possess one of the rats to escape.

Other uses of the posses skill is to allow you to jump from heights greater than you would be able to survive, possessing someone on the ground where you land to save yourself. It looks like it could come in handy.

For those who prefer the gung-ho approach, there are plenty of weapons to appeal and appease. The Blink weapon, for example, allows you to slow down time drastically so you can take care of a barrage of baddies quickly, while those who like close combat fighting will enjoy the ability to gut their foe with a series of dagger moves.

Then there is the array of crossbow arrows, including some s that set your enemies on fire.

And all this is set in an environment that looks like an alternative Mayfair. Taking heavy influence from London, the man behind the look and the feel of the city is Viktor Antonov, art director for Half-Life 2. The graphics look gritty, the city expansive enough to make you feel you aren't on a linear path to the end of the mission with no alternatives. The city feels real and breaths Victorian London. It probably could pass for it, too, if it were not for the futuristic elements dotted here and there.

We only saw two levels played out in Dishonored from two different areas of the city and they both looked impressive, gameplay wise we were treated to all the tricks in store in one go, and have been told that you'll have to grow into the role and the weapons available as you play.

The possession stuff should give you an interesting take on the first-person shooter gameplay, while the steampunk feel gives it a different look from games like Rage or Bioshock, for example. Let's hope the storyline and the urge to complete it stacks up when the game eventually comes out later this year for PS3, Xbox 360 and PS3.

Tags: Gaming Xbox 360 Bethesda Dishonored

Dishonored screens and preview originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:00:00 +0100

It seems even Nintendo isn’t immune from the economic crisis as the gaming giant publishes annual losses for the first time in its history.

Nintendo has reported a loss of ?284 million for the financial year ending 31 March 2012, which equates to a 36.2 per cent fall on sales from the previous year.

It’s the first time Nintendo has had to report losses, though the Japanese company has insisted it will continue “to pursue its basic strategy of ‘Gaming Population Expansion’ by offering compelling products that anyone can enjoy, regardless of age, gender or gaming experience”.

It’s not all bad news for Nintendo, mind. Sales of the 3DS are set to grow, with Nintendo confident it will report sales of 18.5 million units by the next financial year.

Nintendo has also confirmed that we’ll be seeing the Nintendo Wii U before the end of the year, with the console set to debut in Europe, America and Japan.

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Tags: Nintendo Gaming Nintendo 3DS Nintendo Wii U Console sales Consoles

Nintendo issues financial loss for first time ever originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 26 Apr 2012 10:13:00 +0100

Any thought that developer Cyanide has jumped on the bandwagon with the Game of Thrones video game should be left at the full stop of this sentence. It’s been in production for over three years - long before HBO ever got the rights to make the now hit TV show.

With that comes something both good and bad. The good is the hope that this role-playing game for console and PC might not be total dross, as are many quick buck, franchise-hopping titles. The bad is that, because it makes little reference to Sky Atlantic’s big hit, it doesn’t quite feel like the Game of Thrones you know and love if you’ve never read the books. In fact, aside from the title music and the odd familiar face rendered to varying degrees of success, it was easy to forget that it was related at all during our first look at the characters, combat and gameplay.

But it is to the books that this title is very much wedded, so much so, that Cyanide kept very close contact with A Song of Ice and Fire series author George R. R. Martin throughout the processes with feedback for purposes of accuracy at every step of the way. In fact, much of the time was spent checking that the plot of the game would sit true with books as yet to be penned.

As a player you get to control two main characters, both of whom appear in the same chapters of the game at different times coming together as a team only towards the end of the telling. It’s very much a linear adventure. No running around in your sandbox, and what sidequests there are are fully fleshed out branches of the main story in their own right.

"We really wanted to get away from 'bring me three bat wings or this mushrooom'," said lead designer Sylvain Sechi at the Central London event.

"It's not an open game. There's no running in forest and getting into random encounters.?We think of it like?Mass Effect without the planets exploration."

Your first playable character is Mors Westford, a man of the Night’s Watch who goes nowhere without his bulldog, which Mors can inhabit much in the same way as Bran appears to be discovering in the HBO show. As the dog, you can scout the dungeons in their various forms, sniff out the scent of NPCs you’re trying to find, assassinate heavily armoured knights and get a good hoof in the underbelly when you get it wrong. Your dog will also help you out in combat with abilities all of its own which you can unlock as you level, not least of which is to occupy one of the mobs while you deal with another.

Combat itself, of course, is going to be key to the whole affair. What it resembles most closely is a non-button thrashing version of the Witcher 2 and its redesign for Xbox. Talents, abilities and menus are presented in a very similar circular style that pop up during the action in the middle of the screen when you hold down the relevant button. Again, like the Witcher, calling them up doesn’t quite pause the action altogether but just puts it in a very slow motion. Take too long over your decisions and you will start to receive some hefty blows.

It’s at this point in the combat, though, where the similarities with CD Projekt Red's?top title end. Game of Thrones takes a much more “pen and paper approach”, according to Sechi, and its command-based (as opposed to button thrashing) style is more akin to the kind of strategic manner you’d find in games such as Baldurs Gate. Choose and stack the abilities and actions which you would like your characters to invoke - and which targets you would like to invoke them upon - unpause the action and hope it works out okay.

While the theory is simple enough, the sight of it all was fairly confusing in our first-look experience. So close in on the action - the entire game is shot from a third-person view behind the back of your protagonists - there’s quite a lot going on on-screen in the thick of the fight. Pop up the menus and it’s easy to see how you could lose a battle in all the confusion of trying to plan it. In fairness though, we’ll give Cyanide the benefit of the doubt on this one. These things are usually built up slowly throughout a game and we’ll trust that, by the time you reach the levels we witnessed, it will all make much more sense.

What we did absolutely love is that armour is very important and the type that each of your enemies is wearing is displayed as an icon next to their health info above their heads. It’s then your job to use that knowledge to work out how best to attack them; piercing weapons are not much cop against leather but the slashing of swords will find its weakness, with the opposite true for chain mail. You get the picture, and it makes the whole thing much more a puzzle than hammering away and hoping to bash and dodge a path to glory.

Of course, it’s not all about swords and daggers. This is a fantasy game after all and magic does feature, although, like Game of Thrones, it’s handled with a light touch. While Mors is the fighter, it’s the second playable character, Alester Sarwyck, that gets to dabble in the darker arts. Alester is a Red Priest returning to his home of Riverspring 15 years after turning his back on becoming the lord of house and only news of his father dying has brought him back. Through veteran ranger of Castle Black, Mors, you get little opportunity to play through any of the political intrigue for which Game of Thrones is so well known - the Wall is a very long way from King’s Landing - but Alester’s journey, we’re told, is the one where you get to scratch that itch.

Taking up the calling of the Lord of the Light, Alester is more your rogue-come-mage. There are three paths to choose from when making his character choices - an Archer, a Sellsword (all-round fighter with one-hand weapons) or a Water Dancer (a kind of ambidextrous small-sword fighter). Along with these styles, Alester can use oils and magics to create Wildfire, poisons and a host of area of effect attacks. Word to the wise: Wildfire is a kind of napalm-type blaze and it will propagate even to your character if you get too close to one of your burning victims.

The good news is that, if you like the sound of more than one of the character paths, you do get a chance to dual-class later in the game if you fancy yourself as an Archer/Water Dancer - but do beware that doing so will most likely leave the very top abilities of each tree out of your reach. With a maximum of just 15 levels possible throughout the game, the only way to access those is by specialising.

On Mors’s side, you have to select which kind of fighter you’d like to be as well. This time the decision is between Landed Knight, Hedge Knight or Magnar which roughly translated equate to defensive sword and shield specialist, two-handed weapon wielder or dual weapons with maximum damage but light armour. Magnar all the way, right?

There are only five character attributes to play with but one very intriguing idea is that you can pick innate strengths from quite a long list - such as Natural Leader, Brute Strength, Gifted and Leach - but the trade off is that, for every one of these you pick, you also have to choose a weakness. Of course, you don’t have to pick any at all but where’s the fun in that?

The whole adventure should last somewhere between 25-40 hours of gameplay and if you’re wondering whether there’s any sex to go along with violence and politics for which Game of Thrones is so popular, then the answer is, well, some, yes. While there’s no actual romance or - how should we put it - full-frontal shagging, there are two chapters set in bordellos, each featuring some tremendous side-boob. It’s a 15 certificate, not an 18 but we should imagine it just about does the trick.

First Impressions

It’s a horrible thing to say, especially given that this was a first-look preview with no hands-on time, but gut instincts are gut instincts and we’re just not excited about this game. The developers are obviously incredibly passionate about what they’ve done and you just can’t fault their approach, their research or their enthusiasm but there’s little either graphically or in the gameplay that get us hot in the way that great RPGs should.

What might change our mind is the plot. The Cyanide team has made a seemingly good job of the conversation trees and decision making. There are multiple paths through each chat and you cannot go back to explore more than one of them. Better still, your choices may mean little at the time but will go on to have very profound effects many chapters later. Teamed with the rich universe of the Song of Ice and Fire universe, it’s this that might just see the game through.

Game of Thrones will be out on Xbox, PS3 and PC in June 2012.

Tags: Gaming games RPG Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones RPG screens and in-depth preview originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Wed, 25 Apr 2012 11:34:00 +0100

Skype has announced that it will launch a version of its Skype client for Sony's handheld gaming console, the PS Vita.

The new app will be available in the US now and in Europe and Japan for free from Wednesday. It will let gamers talk to other Skype users around the world in the same way mobile phone users who already have the app do at the moment.?

PS Vita system, which launched in early 2012, will offer video calling capabilities and voice calling on both the Wi-Fi and 3G models, says the company now owned by Microsoft. PS Vita system users can download the application free from the "Media & Apps" category of the PlayStation Store.

"With the launch of Skype for PS Vita, we are taking another step towards our ultimate goal of making Skype video calling available on every platform, all over the world, and meeting the demands of existing PlayStation users to offer video on a gaming console," said Manrique Brenes, senior director of emerging opportunities at Skype. ??

Unlike the newly announced Skype for Windows Phone 7, Skype on PS Vita runs in "background mode" for users while gaming or using other applications and users have the capability to "pause" a game, conduct a call and then return to their previous activity.?

Additionally, because the PS Vita features both front and rear-facing cameras, users will be able to switch back and forth between the two during a Skype call.?

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Tags: Gaming PS Vita Sony Skype Microsoft

Skype for PS Vita confirmed, launches in UK on Wednesday originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:00:00 +0100

The original Crysis was a game that broke technical boundaries and set the graphical standard for PC. But it lacked a properly coherent gameplay experience. Crysis 2 fixed all this as well as upping the graphical stakes even further. So with Crysis 3 the hype machine is truly flowing.

No one was really expecting Crysis 3, it turned up out of the blue in the form of a leaked screenshot. An image showing the game's protagonist brandishing a crossbow flooded Twitter. Things then went silent -that was until a recent EA event, where we were shown a gameplay demo of the new triple-A title. So how does it look?

Rather unsurprisingly, the game looks incredible. We have no idea how so much power is being squeezed out of consoles but CryEngine 3 appears to be working some sort of black magic.

The game is set in New York, but it's a rather different version of the city in the second game. Twenty years after the battle with the Seth and the C.E.L.L, vast nano domes have been built up around major cities in the world. These domes are designed to keep the general public out and whatever remains of the Seth in. A knock-on effect of the domes is the rapidly speeded up growth of vegetation, which in turn has transformed New York into an urban jungle.

Screens we saw showed massively varied environments, from savannahs populated with town houses to Chinatown set in an overgrown swamp. Helped along by CryEngine 3, it looks incredible.

Prophet returns for Crysis 3 in a souped-up form. Rather than running from the Seth, he has changed tack this time round and gone on the hunt. This is a seriously angry Prophet who is ready to dish out a lot of damage to his enemies. This is done with the same abilities in Crysis 2, albeit more powerful, as well as a new hacking skill which allows you to control enemy technologies.

Prophet has absorbed so much alien DNA by this point that he is now able to use their weapons. This means new guns and lots of them. From the demo we saw, they look incredibly powerful. A mortar-type gun which inflicts huge amounts of damage was particularly impressive, as was the standard Seth rifle which could switch between shotgun and rapid fire modes. A C.E.L.L. sub-machinegun capable of firing 500 rounds a minute was also thrown into the demo, and dished out huge devastation.

From the gameplay we were shown, the usual mix of sneaking, survey and shooting was there. Once the action did kick off, however, Prophet appeared a much more capable fighter than Alcatraz in the second game. This doesn’t mean that it forces you into a more aggressive strategy, that composite bow that appeared in the leaked screen is to add an entirely new gameplay mechanic. With different warhead types and the ability to fire while cloaked, it is a stealthy fan's favourite. It looked particularly cool sneaking around a swampy Chinatown as a cloaked Prophet brandishing a bow and arrow.

Our gameplay demo ended with Prophet making a mad dash up a communications tower after hacking a Ceph turret. Overloaded with enemies, including the giant walker type from the second and some new flamethrower-brandishing bad guys, he makes the aim of the game pretty clear: “One by one you’re next.”

This is about a clean-up, putting an end to the Ceph and wrapping up the Prophet storyline that existed in the first and second games. Not a lot else can be said about Crysis 3 other than it's set for Spring 2013. The look of the overgrown New York alone has us very impressed.

Tags: Gaming Xbox Xbox 360 PlayStation 3 Crysis Crysis 3

Crysis 3 screens and preview originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:00:00 +0100

How good is that idea you've got knocking about in the back of your mind? That's what Cisco wants to know, with the creation of the Cisco British Innovation Gateway Awards looking for the best ideas the UK has to offer.

The BIG Awards aims to recognise and support up-and-coming innovators, entrepreneurs and early-stage startup businesses.

Cisco is seeking submissions from small businesses and early stage startups, which have technology-based prototypes and proof of concepts in development.

If you win you'll get access to the full array of Cisco capabilities from technology to business development, plus potential investment and partnering opportunities in the future.

Wow.

To participate, all you have to do is simply?register?on the BIG Awards site and submit your BIG idea - it really is that easy.

There are?five categories?in which to submit your idea:?Big Data, Collaboration, Future Cities, Internet of Things,? Mobility. Ideas must be ?in by the end of the month (closing date is 1 May).

Once all the entries are received, Cisco will then start picking the best ones with the top 20 ideas will be picked for the Semi-finals, before the final six ideas will proceed to the finals.

Three ideas will receive grand prizes?valuing over $250,000.

Open to UK-registered organisations, companies and UK residents aged 18 years or older.

The winner will receive a range of support aimed at accelerating the potential of their idea, product or initiative. This will be in the form of financial assistance, expertise and mentoring.? The team will also win the following:

- $100,000 US in cash

- 12 months of technology and business mentoring from leading Cisco engineers and managers

- $30,000 US in 12 month Digital Marketing support from dnx which includes things like social media training.

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Tags: Phones Cameras Tablets Gaming Laptops Apps Cars iPad

Win $100,000 with Cisco British Innovation Gateway Awards originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 24 Apr 2012 13:03:00 +0100

Konami has revealed more details for PES 2013, looking to put some silver back in its trophy cabinet after years of battling with the FIFA franchise.

PES 2013, endorsed by Cristiano Ronaldo in case you didn't know, will bring control and individuality to the forefront in this latest installation of the football game, with Konami claiming that the game is "returning to its roots".

“Football is all about making magic happen with skill and precision, and PES 2013 truly encapsulates this," said Jon Murphy, European PES team leader.

"Fresh faces within the development team and some very exciting ideas will breathe new life into the PES series, and we look forward to showing what we can do in the coming months."?

You'll now get full control over players and shots, in a way that the company says hasn't been seen before, through PES FullControl. This will give you full control of players, manual control over passing and shooting, enhanced first touch control and a new dribbling system.

Adding to the authenticity of PES 2013 the top players will be recognisable from the way they move and celebrate and this also extends to the reaction of goalkeepers.?

The AI is said to have been improved to make things more logical and realistic, not only with the goalkeepers, but in tactical awareness and better organisation within teams. Konami says goalkeeping improvement was high on the wish list for PES players.

The developments and enhancements for PES 2013 are said to have come from consultation with football and PES fans alike.?

PES 2013 will be available on PS3 and Xbox 360, as well as other formats, and is slated to land in Autumn 2012. You can keep up with the action on konami-pes2013.com.

Tags: Gaming Konami PES 2013 Video

PES 2013 coming Autumn 2012, offers enhanced individual control (video) originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 24 Apr 2012 11:00:00 +0100

The gaming series Uncharted has been turned into three feature-length movies?by a fan of the series,?pieced together using actual footage from the games.?That’s right, this guy did it all off his own back.

The movies are made from the first three Uncharted games, so you’ve got Drake’s Fortune (The Movie), Among Thieves (The Movie) and Drake’s Deception (The Movie).

We’ve seen snippets from all three - they’re on average two and half hours long and we had work to do - and the tying together of footage is seamless, using animation from within the game and actual game play.

If you do decide to kick back and watch them all, you can do so right here.?However, beware - you’ll encounter numerous plot spoilers but, if you’re prepared to do so, you’ve more than likely completed the games anyway.

As for the man behind this creation, we don’t know whether to be amazed or concerned.

Uncharted 1: Drake's Fortune (The Movie)

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (The Movie)

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception (The Movie)

?

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Tags: Gaming Uncharted Films Animation Uncharted 2 Among Thieves Uncharted 3

Uncharted the movie trilogy: Fan-made from game footage originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 23 Apr 2012 17:03:00 +0100

Fresh off the back of Samsung’s "big" Galaxy S III online reveal, Call of Duty’s website is promising a big announcement on 1 May.

All will be revealed during the basketball play-offs shown on American cable channel TNT.?

With not much else to go on, speculation is rife.?

The smart money would appear to be on a Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 with rumour-mongers and conspiracy theorists suggesting that the barely recognisable figure in the background of the site’s homepage resembles the same figurine that appeared on the front of the first game.

Of course, after the reveal will come the wait for the game to actually arrive, which is looking likely to be November – just in time for Christmas.

That would be two years since the first Call of Duty: Black Ops game hit games consoles across the land.

Which means we’re well overdue a sequel, right??

Be sure to tune in on 1 May to find out.

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Tags: Gaming Call of Duty Call of Duty Black Ops games Consoles

Call of Duty set for world reveal on 1 May originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:48:00 +0100

Many dream of a day when a game is so realistic, that you can no longer tell the difference between reality and computer. Well friends, this day has come thanks to those behind the launch of the Witcher 2 enhanced edition for Xbox 360. Welcome to larping, what has to be the most uncool yet enjoyable experience Pocket-lint has had for a long time.

Larping, or live action role-playing games, is when a group of people dress up in costumes and act out their favourite series, game or whatever else they fancy. It usually takes place in woods, or in areas well away from the piercing gaze of non-larpers. This is largely because you look ridiculous. It is also a space thing, as larping can get pretty action packed. Brandishing plastic swords and axes, large groups of larpers will frequently re-enact entire battles, bashing each other over the head with foam swords in a sort of geek-filled version of 1066.

Our first larping experience was a little different. We were in Hackney. Don’t let the East London setting fool you though, it makes walking around one of the trendiest parts of London with a group of men dressed as elves even more hilarious.

That’s a nice outfit

The larping in question was very much based upon the same kind of story as the intro to the Witcher 2 itself. First, however, we had to park our bike. This was where the hilarity began:

In a rainy East London street, a soaking wet Pocket-linter is confronted by a group of men dressed as monks.

“Hi guys, so this is the event. Where can I put my bike?”

“What is this bizarre metal contraption, young sir?,” the monks ask us.

“A bike. I need to lock it up.”

“A 'bike'? We have not heard of such a thing.”

“Okay. Well, it’s very expensive. Where can I put it?”

Metallic steed secured, we push open the door to the transformed pub and are instantly transported to the Witcher 2 universe. The detail these guys have gone to is spectacular. The floor is strewn with hay. Groups of men dressed as all sorts of creatures are gambling in the background - one even challenges us to an arm wrestle in exchange for a gold coin. We decline.

Medieval music and a broad selection of what can only be best described as wenches complete the scene as they wonder around cleaning, serving and and taking part in other wench-associated activities.

A man dressed as a monk (these guys seemed to be running the show), grabs us and tells us that we're to go and dine with the king. Joined a group of fellow larpers, we're led upstairs. We know we're supposed to be taking this seriously but it's impossible not to be in a state of permanent giggle.

Sitting at the king's table and immediate banter ensues as the characters reminisce a recent battle involving a man called Foltest which turns out to be the king's name, a king fresh with a major victory. There's a lot of celebrating, some invisible win drunk invisible wine, some pretend food torn from imaginary legs of lamb, and then we kill the king.

We're not really sure how this happened but fingers were pointed and the word "poison" shouted out. With little time to piece it together, we're led downstairs quickly by a cloaked man who thrusts a bag of herbs into the hands of one of our team mates. It might look like a bag of basil - largely because it is a bag of basil - but it's actually some magic herbs, of course, and prove vital in our quest later.

So, king offed - for which, it turns out later, we were framed - we head over to meet some elves. Naturally, these aren't just any elves. These are elves who, bizarrely, have chosen to inhabit a small park near Old Street station.

We tell the East London elves that the king is dead and they don't take it too well. In fact, they decide to take one of our gang hostage and only decide to let him go after some heavy pleading and persuasion. Convinced and appeased, the elves point us to a nearby pub to meet a women who turns out to be the wife of the dead king.

“Please join me for a wash in my bath,” she says as we find her semi-naked in the tub in her room. Licking her lips and beckoning us over, she does not appear to be grieving.

“No it’s okay, we just had a shower this morning.”

She does not take the rejection well and is only stopped from slapping the whole lot of us when a witcher from some other part of the kingdom turns up. He explains that this lady has been put under some sort of spell and is in need of a selection of herbs from us to cure her, herbs that look a lot like basil -?largely because they are basil - but are actually some magic herbs.?No. We forgot them.

Nonetheless we're informed of the location of the king’s assassin by the witcher. He tells us he must be stabbed in the back using a silver sword while two of us attack him from the front.

“Two in the front, one in the behind,” we repeat.

“Precisely,” he replies with not so much as a smirk.

Off we jog, with our elven guide in tow, through the streets of Shoreditch. Heading to the finale of the whole thing, we're apprehensive as to how it might pan out. Lined up on the floor outside the imaginary medieval pub is a set of silver foam swords. Yes, that's right - silver and yet foam, apparently.

Up on the roof terrace of a trendy Hoxton pub, complete with cigarette bin in the background, is an elaborately dressed witcher brandishing a pair of swords looking fairly anxious. A monologue and some brief masculine posing and we're at it. The rest of the gang start bashing the bloke fairly hard and you can tell, despite the acting, that it's hurting him a fair bit. He gets in one decent hit that causes one of our number to whimper in pain but it's not long until we end him as advised, with a quick stab to the back. We follow with a shoeing as he rolls around on the floor just to make certain.

Walking down the stairs post kill, one of our gang shout back, "thanks", to the dead witcher. He doesn't move. Never breaking character, this is what these guys are all about - even when giving us a gold coin to spend behind the bar for an ale afterwards. Now that's class.

A fun afternoon indeed and enough to inspire us to try to tackle the Witcher 2 again, which has returned in an extended edition form for the Xbox 360. Maybe we'll stick to video games for the time being. Larping is amusing but perhaps best left to the hardcore fans. After all, those foam swords hurt. We have the bruises to prove it.

Tags: Gaming Xbox Xbox 360 The Witcher 2 Features

Pocket-lint goes live role-playing with the Witcher 2 originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 23 Apr 2012 13:17:00 +0100

An app for the iPhone and iPad is letting you relive the sound of the ZX Spectrum, 30 years after it went on sale - so you can re-imagine the noise on your tablet.

ZX Plectrum as it's called (see what they did there) has gone free to celebrate the 30th Birthday of the classic British computer and is available to download now.?

iPad and iPhone users brave enough to download the app will get the chance to tap anywhere on the screen to make a noise akin to how the ZX Spectrum sounded when it loaded up a game or application - they weren't called apps then.

Pressing on the screen in different places changes the noise and the image on the screen and, yes, it is just as annoying as you'll remember it.

Still, we bet with a bit of practice you'll have the theme tune to Manic Miner or Jet Set Willy playing from your Apple device in no time.

One word of advice, just don't give it to the kids. Within three minutes they will drive you insane.

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Tags: Gaming Apps Phones Tablets ZX Spectrum iPhone apps iPad apps

ZX Plectrum lets you make music Spectrum style on your iPhone originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 23 Apr 2012 12:33:00 +0100

Prototype 2 comes out on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on 24 April and to celebrate, publisher Activision is staging what it claims to be the world's first over-18 live advert in London this Sunday.

The event, which is planned to happen after the 9pm watershed, will feature actors playing the parts of the game's?new protagonist Sergeant James Heller and his nemesis Alex Mercer. There will also be Blackwatch military figures milling about and the disease-ridden Infected.

Certain scenes from the game will be acted out, with a gruesome and bloody battle between Heller and Mercer making up the centrepiece, and it is this that has prompted Activision to agree to perform it at a ?time when it won't melt the minds of children.

"Due to the nature of Prototype 2’s content, the game has been rated by the BBFC and PEGI as certificate 18," said David Tyler, Activision’s Minneapolis Business Unit EU general manager.

"This live action advertisement reflects the game in its hard-hitting, fantasy nature and while we’re excited to bring this new game to our legions of fans, it would be inappropriate for under 18s to view it."

Those who are unable to attend the performance itself will be able to watch the event live on Facebook, as it will be streamed on a dedicated page: www.facebook.com/prototype. However, the same page also states that the advert will be happening in London's Covent Garden, so if you're in the area at 9pm, go and check it out. Pocket-lint has been promised that it will be spectacular.

The game will also be coming for PC on 24 July.

UPDATE: We've now got the the advert in full, complete with making of video. You can watch both below.

UPDATE: The event happened, here are pictures from the night:

Tags: Activision Gaming Prototype 2

Activision runs world's first 18-rated live action advert for Prototype 2 originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 23 Apr 2012 11:44:00 +0100

It's been almost a year since Microsoft bought Skype for $8.5 billion, and while there have been improvements to the existing desktop clients and mobile applications, we still haven't had a sniff of the service on the Xbox 360.

Until now, that is.

Although there's no official confirmation that Skype will be coming for the console and, presumably, Kinect, a recent job application posted by Microsoft is full of plenty of unsubtle clues.

"Skype is seeking a motivated Software Engineer with an unrelenting drive for working on and solving customer-based issues. As a member of the Skype Xbox Engineering Team in London, you will have a strong technical background developing client and/or embedded software," says the advert for a?Software Development Engineer, Xbox - Skype.

It continues with a hint that the forthcoming client would comply with Microsoft's metro-style user interface. Under "Qualifications and Experience" it suggests that "as Microsoft platforms move towards Metro style, Windows 8 metro development experience would also be a benefit".

Naturally, there's no time scale for an Xbox 360 version of Skype mentioned, but considering the company is only just hiring staff to, presumably, build it, we don't advise holding your breadth.

Read

Tags: Microsoft Gaming Software Skype VoIP Xbox 360 Kinect

Microsoft job ad hints that Xbox 360 Skype is finally its on way originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Fri, 20 Apr 2012 14:06:00 +0100

It has been a long time since SimCity last made an appearance on PC. For most it is a game that has been sitting on the shelf collecting dust, or hidden away behind other newer and shinier games.

SimCity comes from a time when graphics didn’t matter and PCs didn’t have enough computing power to drive a small starship. It was and always will remain a classic. We haven’t forgotten how it felt to destroy a city with a UFO, or smash buildings up with earthquakes. So when we were told the series was returning but with a new and improved formula, we were naturally excited.

Scheduled for launch in 2013, SimCity takes everything that was great about the original title and rebuilds it for the ground up for the modern gamer. Don’t confuse this just for a cheap series reboot however, it is much more than that. Maxis have fairly ambitious plans for the game and have incorporated a unique online gameplay style that we are yet to see from a strategy game.

SimCity is always online, players worlds back on to each other and are able to interact in all sorts of ways. Say a building is on fire - a player next to you can send fire engines from his world to yours. In other instances, you might be able to help those struggling with power by diverting juice from your massive thermonuclear reactor. It is all about co-operation.

The demo we were shown was of what we presume was a very early build, despite this it looked great. The game uses a sort of semi cell-shaded graphical style that is not unlike the Sims, yet feels true to the look of the originals. The amount of detail visible is also staggering, as each and every single sim within the city can go about his business. They drive around, go to work, move house, put out fires, each sim can be unique. Little details like workers arriving to build up new areas, or even suspicious-looking vehicles driving about dodgy neighbourhoods all add to the experience. For a game that you will be playing mostly from a bird's-eye view, it is very impressive.

Using what is called the Glassbox simulation engine, the 3D graphics you see are more just a way of visually representing all the clever goings on behind the scenes within the game. The economies, power, people and everything is all run by Glassbox. This means that, in theory, you can build a city however you want. You don’t need to strive just for the likes of New York - as long as it sustains itself, you could build a mega slum or some sort of crazed high-tech wonderland.

So how do you build a city? Well we weren’t shown much, but everything appears to be driven by roads and zoning. Like the old games you lay out roads for your sims to get around. You then drag zones along them, a bit like a fence, these will then be populated by sims. Say you pop up a residential zone, then as long as it’s accessible, sims will populate it.?

Once you have the right area built up, you are going to need power, water and all the other utilities a city needs to exist. Visual clues as well as a detailed overlay, which you can switch on or off, will show any problems an area is having. Particularly cool is what happens when there is too much crime, as houses will get decorated with graffiti and police cars chase felons.

Unique buildings like city hall or police stations and power plants can have upgrades added to them. These will improve things like response time and effectiveness as well as change the way they look.

At the moment, SimCity is still in the very early stages. There is a lot we want to see added, like the ability to build collaboratively with friends, as well as to destroy their creations. Who knows what Maxis has in store. It is a long wait until 2013, but for now, we are very excited indeed.

Tags: Gaming PC PC games SimCity

SimCity screens and preview originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Fri, 20 Apr 2012 09:00:00 +0100

The Medal of Honour series once led the way in the first-person shooter market. Now overtaken by Call of Duty, recent years have seen it scrambling for sales space against Activision’s gargantuan franchise.

This time round, helped along by its masterful Frostbite 2 engine, DICE hopes to take a slice from COD’s pie with Medal of Honour Warfighter. But is its Battlefield 3 heritage enough to win in one of the most competitive gaming markets? From what we have seen, it could just be.

First up, Medal of Honour looks incredible. Remember the first time you saw that Battlefield 3 gameplay video? Well it’s that all over again. The dynamic lighting, rain splashing on the screen, particle effects . . . everything is incredibly polished. This is definitely a good thing, as the last Medal of Honour was a fairly unwieldy beast to look at.

Warfighter follows the story of elite groups of fighters around the globe. It comes from a storyline penned by real-world special forces groups. Twelve different elite fighting units across 10 different nations are all involved, ensuring that the game has hugely varied environments to play across. Each unit gets its own battle based around real-world situations. For example, the level we were shown was about a hostage rescue in the Philippines. Developers said you would also be taking on the likes of Somalian pirates and other terrorist organisations.

A short but sweet gameplay video of Warfighter already exists, showing snippets of the Phillipines level that we saw in action - but believe us, it is nothing on the actual experience. Unlike Battlefield, this is a much more on-rails game, hence the similarities with Call of Duty. Battles are also a lot more close quarters based and gunplay a much quicker experience. The gunsight snaps to your eye quickly and enemies drop easily, all giving the sense that you are part of an elite fighting unit.

The sheer amount of explosions and debris flying about while we witnessed a squad being guided around on the mission set in the Philippines was particularly impressive, as was the later on-rails escape scene set on a rubber dinghy. Firing immense numbers of rounds from a front-mounted gun at RPG brandishing bad guys, the game had all the trimmings of a high-quality FPS rollercoaster ride.

Our gameplay demo was short but oh so very sweet. We were also given a few details about multiplayer plans, which is set to appear at E3 later in the year. Essentially you will be able to exercise a bit of national pride by representing your country using its own special forces unit. Teams will then battle it out in “blue on blue” multiplayer, where the likes of the German GSG9 takes on the British SAS.

We will have more on Medal of Honour Warfighter when it appears at E3 and in the build up to its launch on 23 October.

Tags: Gaming Xbox Xbox 360 PS3 Medal of Honor

Medal of Honour Warfighter screens and preview originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Fri, 20 Apr 2012 09:00:00 +0100

Xbox live arcade games are getting so good now that many people are choosing to play them over full-price titles. Last week it was Fez, this time round it's Trials Evolution. The sequel to one of the most enjoyable and addictive titles on the Xbox 360, it's safe to say there is a lot of pressure on this one to perform.

Trials Evo promises a tonne more content than its predecessor, improved graphics and a fully featured multiplayer. On paper it all sounds great, but has it been worth the wait? Or is Trials not even worth the paltry 1200 Microsoft points it costs to download?

New and improved

Boot the game up and you will immediately notice an added level of shine that has been put on everything from in-game menus to music. Graphically everything has been given an overhaul, especially the tracks which now have a lot more life in them than the washed out races of the last game.

Trials HD was more an Xbox Live experiment than a hyped title. This time round developers Redlynx?have a lot more fans to deal with, and issues to address. They have clearly deconstructed the whole Trials experience in an effort to improve every aspect of the game.

Looking at the overall structure first, the significant number of single player tracks have been broken down into various sections. There are the core races and licences which increase in difficulty, special events which see you doing things like tearing down ski jumps or trying to get through a track on a single tank of petrol and then tournaments.

On top of this, there is now a proper competitive multiplayer both online and offline, which you can play with up to four other players. Then, finally, there is the track builder and downloader, where you can get yourself user-created content to further bolster the already meaty Trials Evo experience.

Bikes and riders can now be customised to a much higher level, with new parts and outfits being available to buy, and that ability to change the colour of just about anything on your bike. Lots to play with then.

Let's race

If you aren't yet familiar with what exactly Trials is, a brief word on the core gameplay experience. Essentially Trials Evo is a physics-based racer where you shift the weight of your bike rider back and forward in order to negotiate him through increasingly difficult tracks.

For such a simple concept, it requires an incredible amount of skill, particularly toward the later levels. Your bike is incredibly bouncy and will quite easily flip over if you aren't careful. The result of this gameplay style is a pick up and play formula like no other, you can spend hours gaming or just minutes and still get the same satisfaction.

Trials Evo doesn't change the core experience too much, instead it improves on it. The inability to shift 2D plane you might think would be restrictive, but instead the developers have used it to their advantage. Levels now have multiple platforms at different heights, objects with varied weight, water and all sorts of other obstacles to overcome.

Some stages really bolster the look and feel of the game engine, which is clearly formidable. There are continuous nods to other hit Xbox 360 games, like Limbo, which gets its own motorcross based black and white level.

The single player shouldn't take you more than five hours to get through, which is long enough for a downloadable title. But that is only the beginning, there is multiplayer and track creation still to go.

Once you have skills polished then it's time to take on other players online. Using a four track racecourse, you can either go up against friends locally or use Xbox Live. Matchmaking can be a tad slow, but the game itself has no lag issues whatsoever. It is also incredibly fun and one of the best local multiplayer experiences to be had on the Xbox.

Track creation

Once you have sunk your teeth into all the online and offline content, it's time to get started either building or downloading tracks. The toolset provided is in either simple or pro form, the latter being more formidable but more complex. Either way we didn't find them hard to use. It's no Little Big Planet but you shouldn't struggle using the track creator.

Downloading others' creations is also very easily and definitely worth exploring. The engine is so incredibly well thought-out that already all sorts of mad levels are appearing. Some don't even involve bikes at all, there are even first person shooters and jet sims.

Verdict:

For a downloadable game, the sheer amount of content alone makes Trials Evo worth a look. The fact that it's so brilliantly fun and simple makes it a "must download".

This is a game that has quickly become a household favourite for local multiplayer. Sessions have been had the remind us of the glory days of Goldeneye. So spend some Microsoft points, invite a few friends over and have a blast.

Tags: Gaming Xbox Xbox 360 Xbox Live Ubisoft Trails Evolution

Trials Evolution originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Wed, 18 Apr 2012 17:12:00 +0100

Activision has announced that it will let Bond fans play British agent James Bond once again on their console, with a new game out later this autumn.

Called 007 Legends, the new game will feature an original, overarching storyline tying together six classic Bond movies - yet to be named - concluding with Bond 23: Skyfall.?

"As with the feature films, 007 Legends equips players with state-of-the-art spy gadgets, an arsenal of weapons, including Bond’s signature Walther PPK, and sleek vehicles as they jet off to exotic locations and utilise Bond’s quick wits, class and style to take down notorious villains and their brutal henchmen, perform impressive stunts, and of course…mingle with gorgeous Bond women," Activision tells Pocket-lint.

“Creating a video game storyline that ties together six popular, yet very different, Bond movie narratives can be challenging, but together with EON Productions, our developer Eurocom, has pulled it off to create a homage that we think will be a unique and highly entertaining Bond video game," explains David Oxford, executive vice-president at Activision, bigging up the new game due out before Christmas.?

In addition to the 007 Legends’ main story, the game will feature the return of fan-favourite single-player Mi6 Ops Missions, which debuted in GoldenEye 007: Reloaded.

Fans will also be able to play as one of Bond’s cohorts or villainous foes, reliving the missions through their eyes, as well as 007, of course.?

The game will be available on Xbox 360 and PS3.?

Tags: Gaming Xbox 360 PS3 Acitvision James Bond Skyfall

007 Legends: Play Bond once again in time for Skyfall originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Wed, 18 Apr 2012 16:00:00 +0100

Half spoof, half a look into a possible future for the Google Project Glass Project, ThereIsaCanal has released a video on what it believes Battlefield 5 would look like on Google Glasses.

The duo behind ThereIsaCanal - who like making Battlefield 3 videos in real life - have imagined what they want to be playing a couple of years from now and uploaded it on YouTube for us to enjoy. ?

The idea is that you wear the new Google Project Glass augmented reality glasses to bring video gaming to life and let you get into the action rather than just sitting on your sofa eating crisps and drinking beer.

In the video after saying hello to his mate, the lead character goes into a disused warehouse, loads up the game, puts on some tunes, and gets into the action as if it were real. Towards the end he takes a call, shows what he is seeing two his mate - who is instantly very jealous.

While the reality of the video is a long way off, it is interesting to see that people are already starting to think of possible scenarios for the new glasses that have yet to ?be launched.

We could easy see a variation of the Battlefield 5 game demo for other geo-location based games in the near future, with the glasses replacing key elements in the environment around you to give you a feeling that you are in another realm, based on where you are standing and what you are looking at.?

Tags: Gaming Google Project Glass Google battlefield 3 EA

Battlefield 5 Google Project Glass concept shows us future of AR gaming (video) originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:41:00 +0100

Having practically been airbrushed out of his own game last year – which nevertheless went on to achieve record sales – the disgraced/redeemed/washed-up Tiger returns to front and centre this time round, sharing the cover with fellow Masters flop Rory McIlroy. In the US that timely honour falls to winner Bubba Watson, a man whose ardour for Jesus is matched only by his enthusiasm for The Dukes of Hazard, being the proud owner of the original General Lee (although presumably there was more than one).

Car Trouble

Tiger’s own car collection is understandably glossed over here, although for once he is an integral part of the game, as opposed to merely turning up to flash his impossibly white teeth on the box. This integration comes about via the so-called Tiger Legacy Challenge, whereby you play out key moments of his golfing life, or as it says in-game, "Relive the storied career of Tiger Woods", which we initially read as "sordid career".

Unsurprisingly his antics with a waitress in a church car park are not part of this story, although it is a comprehensive affair, beginning with his TV debut as a precocious two-year-old. Progressing through the early years to the amateur years to the glory years, and even to a hypothetical future where he overhauls hero Jack Nicklaus’s 18 majors, it’s more than a token add-on, spanning four decades and providing an intriguing and frequently challenging insight into the eye of the Tiger.

Elsewhere it’s the same old stuff, with 22 PGA Tour Golfers and a slew of accurately rendered courses. The kick in the teeth is that most of these courses have to be bought separately for extra cash on top of the fifty quid you’ve already shelled out for the game. It’s this kind of practice that recently led to EA being voted the worst company in America - an outpouring of nerd-rage that arguably overlooked the bigger picture.

Eye Of The Tiger

Whether you opt to buy the extra courses or not, the meat of the game is the career mode where you create your own golfer and set out on the rocky road to brightly trousered success. Using the PlayStation Eye you can even scan your own face in, and a full 20 minutes later a terrifying zombified apparition of yourself appears.

The career is a gruelling affair, and you’re forever being rewarded with arbitrary XP, which you can then of course use to buy yourself a new pair of pink gloves. The online aspect has been rebranded as an exclusive country club, with tier points granting you access to various privileges, perhaps in a nod to the elitist boys' club that is professional golf. Although in a step towards progress - unlike Augusta - being of the female gender presents no automatic barrier.

Ultimately, for all the periphery, authenticity and stripy kecks, it all comes down to the swing mechanics, which have allegedly taken their "most significant leap forward in over a decade". Apparently revolutionised, to the untrained thumb it appears to be a time-honoured case of smoothly pulling back and then pushing forward the analogue stick. Or, for the more energetic pretend golfers, there are of course motion control options. We played a few rounds using the PlayStation’s Move controller, and while driving felt fairly natural, the putting was an extremely twitchy affair, showing scarcely any progress from Wii Golf. Whereas there is some satisfaction at hitting a good shot, it’s tempered by the suspicion that it was more down to luck than judgment.

As for the Xbox’s controller-free Kinect, it seemed slightly more accurate, despite the humiliation of swinging with nothing in your hands. Although if you have the room there’s nothing to stop you utilising an actual golf club – just don’t send us your double glazing bill.

Complete Control

For all the futuristic motion-control twattery, the best method of control was perfected years ago, and beyond the odd ill-judged social gathering, the serious player will inevitably return to the joypad, and crucially, the sofa. This is not a game to be played on your feet, and like televised golf the whole thing is geared towards relaxation, with the occasional intrusion of momentary excitement.

For further proof, note that one of the in-game music tracks is called Chillax Time - worryingly, there is also one called Skinny Dipper. A world away from the bombs and the guns and the shouting, this is laidback gaming - dare we say old man gaming - and should be appreciated thus.

Verdict:

The trouble with slinging out essentially the same game every year is whether there’s enough new stuff to make it an essential annual purchase. Obviously FIFA seems to manage it, but the world of golf moves at a glacial pace, with players eking out 50-year careers and courses remaining unaltered for centuries.

The Tiger Legacy stuff is a welcome addition, but in all honesty, unless you’re a massive motion control fan, you’d have as much or as little fun with any of the previous five incarnations.

Tags: games Gaming Xbox 360 PS3 Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13 Tiger Woods

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13 originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 17 Apr 2012 18:18:00 +0100

Microsoft has confirmed that gamers will be able to play the role of Master Chief once again when Halo 4?gets its official release around the world on 6 November.?

Set four years after the events in Halo 3, Master Chief returns to confront his destiny and face an ancient evil that threatens the fate of the entire universe.?

“We are beginning a new saga with Halo 4 and embarking on a journey that will encompass the next decade of Halo games and experiences,” said Phil Spencer, corporate vice-president of Microsoft Studios, teasing that this won't be perhaps the last Halo we will see.

Aside from the date on which the game will be available, Microsoft is still keeping fairly quiet about the gameplay and what we can expect.

Expect more news at the annual gaming convention, E3, in the summer.

Tags: Gaming Xbox 360 Halo 4 Microsoft

Official Halo 4 release: 6 November launch, Master Chief is back originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 17 Apr 2012 16:04:00 +0100

Mario looks to be heading to the Nintendo Wii U when the company's new console launches later this year.

Spanish newspaper El Mundo is reporting that Shigeru Miyamoto?has told it we can expect an announcement at the E3 gaming convention in Los Angeles in June.

"The creator anticipates that at E3, the largest exhibition of video games, held in June in Los Angeles, Nintendo will launch a new Super Mario for this platform [the Nintendo Wii U], which will combine the TV screen with the remote," reports the newspaper (translated via Google Translate).

That news will be very much welcomed by Mario fans no doubt keen to enjoy the next Mario instalment. The article also reports that Miyamoto feels Nintendo is not about traditional gaming anymore, following the success of both iOS and Android platforms.

When asked whether the Wii U would be the last console Nintendo created, the smiling Miyamoto said:?"At Nintendo we usually do things against what is expected, things that surprised. So I can not agree with that vision of the future.

"The truth is that traditional games are now also available for iPhone and Android, so we are thinking of creating new types of games."

?You can read the full interview here.

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Tags: Gaming Nintendo Nintendo Wii U Shigeru Miyamoto E32012

Mario Wii U game confirmed originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 17 Apr 2012 10:22:00 +0100

A scarlet red version of the Sony PlayStation 3 is going on sale on 4 May.?Amazon is already taking pre-orders for the 320GB model, which will cost ?249.99 including free delivery. Play.com also has it on pre-order for ?10 off the RRP.

It means the scarlet version will cost an additional ?40 - ?50 to the original black version, but you do get two similarly scarlet DualShock 3 controllers in the box, and it’ll be sure to stand out from the crowd.

As with the original, the scarlet variant of the Sony PlayStation 3 houses a built-in Blu-ray and DVD player.

However, if you’ve become bored of your own movie collection, once you’ve subscribed to Netflix you’ll be able to stream the latest blockbusters and TV series through the console to your TV.

Whether for a cheeky upgrade or just because the colour complements the tone of your wallpaper better, Pocket-lint expects the scarlet red Sony PlayStation 3 to do very well indeed. Especially in Liverpool supporters' households.

Tags: Sony Playstation PS3 Gaming Consoles

Sony PlayStation 3 in scarlet red available from 4 May originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 16 Apr 2012 10:22:00 +0100

Downloadable titles are stealing a lot of the limelight at the moment on both PS3 and Xbox. Journey was a standout game for the PlayStation and remains a highlight of the PS Store.

The Xbox has the likes of Trials Evolution inbound and now Fez, an innovative 8-bit style adventure that has had us hooked from the outset.

Design

The first thing that grabs you about Fez is how it looks. It makes us think most of apps like Tiny Tower or Sword and Sworcery, but quite frankly outdoes the pair of them in looks almost instantly.

Fez is a bright and colourful world inhabited by characters capable of making all sorts of bizarre blips and beeps. Everything is either square or consists of a few single coloured polygons. But don’t let this simple approach to design trick you into thinking Fez looks samey. Throughout each one of the game's levels is a hugely varied art style that, gameplay aside, makes you want to play on just to see what the game will throw at you.

We don’t want to spoil too much, but the end of the game's opening sequence in particular is just brilliant. Your character, Gomez, gets a Fez placed on his head that allows you to shift the perspective of the world in different directions. Once you start doing it, the whole screen corrupts and creates an effect not unlike wobbling an old N64 cartridge. The game then appears to glitch and reboot, in a ZX Spectrum kind of way.

It's retro style at its absolute best, with Fez setting the bar so astronomically high that we can’t see it being beaten.

Story

So what's the story behind Fez? In classic platformer style, it sets out a rough storyline and then lets you get on with the meat of the game: jumping around. Gomez is a small, white, blobby man who inhabits an entirely flat world. Beckoned to the top of your village by a character called Geezer, you are told it's adventure time. The sky promptly turns dark and a big, gold square floats in. This then plants a fez on your head and grants you the ability to shift perspective in your flat world.

The square explodes, scattering 32 blocks around the world. Your job is to collect them and bring them back together to prevent impending doom. The adventure starts and you are given free reign of the game's world map. All you need to do is collect.

It's quite a beefy game, with plenty to get stuck in to in terms of actual play time. Gomez is cute enough for you to care about his fate, and the thought of any harm coming to such a beautiful 8-bit world spurs you on.

Gameplay

Fez was put together by a skeleton team. It is a hugely ambitious game that deserves every single award piled upon it. Being able to shift through in three directions means every object is rendered in 3D. This can, at times, result in a tiny bit of slowdown, but the detail on every element of the game and its watertight gameplay makes it totally forgivable.

You would expect that the three viewpoints would create a complex puzzle solver. It could very easily, but designer Phil Fish appears more interested in creating something that doesn’t frustrate. The result is a game that is a joy to play every minute.

You use the left and right triggers of the Xbox controller to govern from which angle you are looking at the world. This shift in perspective will transform the distance between jumps and height of different objects. It is all done seamlessly and allows you quickly to work out any tough jump related puzzles. This single gaming mechanic binds the whole experience together.

Not once is the idea of perspective change used cheaply, never does it feel unfair or overly complicated. Instead you get more and more used to it, so the game can keep throwing up increasingly complex situations. This results in a rewarding feeling whenever a puzzle is solved, but never a high enough difficulty to frustrate.

?

Verdict:

We really don’t want to say much more about Fez other than you should play it. It has been a long time coming, but the wait has been worth it. As a standard fully fledged Xbox title, it would be impressive enough, but for a project put together by just a few people to be this good earns this game extra praise.?

Special mention goes to the music in Fez, which nails the 8-bit blips and bleeps so absolutely perfectly. Many games have tried to do what Fez does, but none has come close to this level of polish. We were convinced it couldn’t get better than Journey when it came to downloadable titles. It just did.?

Tags: Gaming games Xbox Xbox Live

Fez originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Fri, 13 Apr 2012 18:42:14 +0100

Just before the GAME Group went into administration, and perhaps partly because of, major videogames publishers pulled out of trading with the troubled UK retailer. Famously, Electronic Arts withdrew Mass Effect 3, so that the store chain missed out on the biggest launch of the year so far, and others acted similarly - some may say wisely too, considering that creditors have since been paid back a fraction of what they were owed.

However, one of the biggest names to cease trading with GAME was Nintendo, which released a string of titles that would pass it by. Mario Party 9, The Last Story and Kid Icarus 3D were big games to have missed out on, and we're sure that Amazon and HMV benefitted greatly.

Now GAME is in new hands, with OpCapita buying the UK arm of the operation and although it was too late to save the 2000 plus jobs lost and 277 shops closed before the deal, there's a renewed sense of optimism in high street videogames retail.

So Nintendo, like Microsoft with Kinect Star Wars before it, has returned, with new Wii RPG Pandora's Tower to be stocked in GAME and Gamestation stores and online. And while we are still sorry for those that lost their employment in troubled times, Pocket-lint is happy that things for the group are looking up again.

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Tags: GAME Gaming Nintendo OpCapita Wii Pandoras Tower

GAME woes all but over as Nintendo returns to store originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Fri, 13 Apr 2012 13:59:00 +0100

Gaming favourite Skyrim will soon be able to support Kinect on the Xbox 360.?

The update will introduce more than 200 voice commands bringing a new element to the fifth instalment in The Elder Scrolls gaming series.?

Gamers will be able to issue commands, draw weapons, trade, and navigate among many other options.

You can designate more specific actions by assigning hotkeys such as weapons, while all your menus can be summoned by the simplest of commands.

Kinect integration is the latest update Skyrim has received, with developers Bethesda Game Studios teasing us about future additions.?

According to the developer, Xbox 360 users can expect new quests, locations and other features in the near future.

The voice commands update for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim will be released before the end of April.

Expect an outcry from PlayStation gamers when it does. Perhaps it will be the incentive Sony needs to push forward with plans for a Kinect rival.

Tags: Gaming Skyrim Kinect Xbox 360

Skyrim for Xbox 360 adds Kinect and Voice commands originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 12 Apr 2012 16:11:00 +0100

Halo fans, we’ve got some good news; Microsoft has confirmed that Halo 4, the next installment in the Halo franchise on the Xbox 360, will be in the shops this Christmas.?

Microsoft?made the rather vague launch date announcement in a press release detailing how the company has teamed up with Neil Davidge of Massive Attack fame to compose the score for Halo 4.

Burried at the bottom of the press release was this:?“Launching worldwide exclusively on Xbox 360 this Christmas, Halo 4 is the next blockbuster instalment of the iconic franchise that has shaped entertainment history and defined a generation of gamers.”

First teased at E3 in June 2011, Halo 4 is expected to be one of Microsoft’s biggest games this year and no doubt a big focus for the company at the 2012 E3 gaming conference in LA.?

Developed by 343 Industries, Halo 4 continues the story of the Master Chief as he returns to confront his destiny and face an ancient evil that threatens the fate of the entire universe.?

“Halo 4 takes the series in a bold new direction by delivering its most epic and explorative campaign yet, alongside an emotionally resonant story and a groundbreaking multiplayer offering unlike anything before it – setting the stage for an epic new sci-fi saga,” reckon Microsoft, trying to get us more excited than someone first in line at an Apple event.?

As for the soundtrack, there appears to be no holding back.?Davidge and his production team have enlisted a 16-strong male tenor / bass choir plus 10 female vocalists, a full 50-piece orchestra and a host of other performers.?

“As a passionate Halo fan, I’m incredibly honoured and thrilled to have the opportunity to compose the score for Halo 4,” said Davidge.? “Music has always been at the heart of what makes Halo so captivating and iconic.

"With Halo 4 we want to build upon the franchise’s amazing legacy and create a score that captures the awe and wonder of the Halo universe, and reinforces the deeper and more emotionally impactful journey Master Chief will embark on.”

Davidge’s previous work includes the score for Clash of the Titans.?

He replaces Martin O’Donnell from Bungie who composed the previous game soundtracks.

Tags: Gaming Xbox 360 Microsoft Halo 4

Microsoft: Halo 4 in shops for Christmas originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 12 Apr 2012 10:43:00 +0100

Before Avatar, 3D never really mattered. It was the moment when people started backing the technology for its merits, not just its gimmicks. Now 3D is everywhere, in virtually every TV and built into games on both the PS3 and Xbox 360.

Kinect still feels like it's stuck in the before time: it hasn’t had its Avatar moment. While there have been incredible sales numbers, there has yet to be a title truly worthy of critical acclaim.

Kudo Tsunoda,?Microsoft’s creative director of Kinect, begs to differ. Kinect: Star Wars, he says, is going to be the hardware’s breakthrough moment.

"So many people love star wars." says Tsunoda. "There are things that happen in the Star Wars movies that people have always wanted to do."

“It’s super hard to?fulfil?that Jedi fantasy when you're using the force by pushing a button or moving a lightsaber using an analogue stick. I think that’s why Kinect: Star Wars resonates with so many people and why it's such an exciting title for Kinect as well.

“There really are things that people have wanted to do inside the Star Wars universe that they have never been able to do before because of the technology limitations.”

The problem is, from the reception it’s been getting, Kinect: Star Wars just doesn’t seem to be fulfilling that fantasy. We can’t imagine many fans of the films wanting to dance as Han Solo in the carbonite chamber.

So if Star Wars isn’t going to do it for Kinect, what is? Perhaps that killer app could come from the community? The deluge of hacked devices and cool tweaks applied to the hardware has given it a sort of viral credibility.

A lot of developers look to the community for ways to improve software. Take Epic’s Cliff Bleszinsky. Speaking to him a few months back, he told us that part of the lighting effects in Gears of War 3 had been something he spotted online, created by a small team of code-tinkerers.

“People see stuff on the web but really getting the chance to go and experience it for themselves is what makes it enjoyable and real and really spurs peoples' imaginations on for how they can use it in another context,” says Tsunoda.

“I think that kind of experiential interaction is what really will get people adopting it in other mediums.”

So the more people play with Kinect, the more Microsoft takes notice. It's amazing really that Microsoft doesn’t take issue with so much fiddling with its hardware. The Kinect SDK in particular has opened up the hardware to everyone with a bit of coding knowledge.

“Xbox really has the widest variety of tools behind it in order to have your IP come to life as close as possible to how you envision it in your head,” says Tsunoda.

“It’s one of the reasons that both developers and publishers, and really some of the more mainstream entertainment brands, want to have their IPs come to life on our platform.”

One issue that still plagues the platform however is the size of the space you need to play with Kinect properly. Designed more for the jumbo-size American household, it doesn’t fare so well in a semi-detached Victorian house. We Europeans frequently have to move coffee tables and sofas in order to get the best from Kinect.

“There is just such a wide variety of different things that you can do with Kinect that makes it compelling and working in all different types of scenarios,”?says Tsunoda.

“There are games like Kinect sports, where you’re moving around a lot or games like Kinect: Star Wars where you are standing in one place, using your lightsaber and using the force.

“But then you also see things like Mass Effect 3 where you really use voice in a super compelling way.”

This doesn’t fix the fundamental issue of space and the Kinect sensor. There are third-party solutions like that of Nyko, but it’s most likely a flaw we hope to see fixed in the next version of the hardware.

What is interesting is how the hardware is being put to different use by different developers. Even the likes of BioWare has now boarded the Kinect train, using it in Mass Effect 3.

“As with any new technology that comes out, the longer developers have access to it, the more different kinds of experiences they are going to be able to create using it.?Mass Effect 3 is a great example, in that maybe it doesn’t make as much sense to have people moving and jumping around.”

Kinect doesn’t just need to be about running around your living room. Its voice control and ability to recognise more subtle body movements, mean games are now turning up which you can play entirely while sitting down. Fable: The Journey springs to mind.

Kinect does away with the controller altogether. In doing so, it removes any sense of touch you could get from a game. In a very basic way, the controller allowed for rumble or force feedback with steering wheels.

“Even in existing game controllers today the sensation of touch that you get through rumble you can use creatively, but I dont think it's the end all, be all of physical interaction.

“I think with Kinect we have done a lot with both visuals and audio to create physical reactions from people when they interact with content. A lot of times you will see people react when they get hit with something in game and their body will react to it in real life like they are actually being hit.”

So how could Kinect change in the future? How could it incorporate different software concepts into a controller-free environment?

“I think that as far as how games are played in the future, there are probably two different areas that we are excited about creatively," says Tsunoda. "One is just starting to build kind of gaming experiences that help teach you real world skills.?It’s amazing to me how much you’re actually able to start teaching people something by having them play a game.”

And the second things? Mass Effect 3 showed another innovative way Kinect can be used. Being able to reply to character's questions just by talking is a fairly amazing feature. Kudo agrees.

“I am really excited about the potential for redefining how interactive narrative works through the Kinect technology. I think Mass Effect 3 is awesome and I think we can do a lot more with how people interact with digital characters.

“Communication is not only what you are saying but also your tone of voice or your physical expressions and your body language. I really believe that with Kinect we have a way of doing interactive narrative that makes you more like an actor inside the story. Having a story unfold that is very personal to you makes something unique.”

Tags: Gaming Xbox Microsoft Xbox 360 Kinect Interviews Star Wars Kinect Star Wars

Creative director says Kinect: Star Wars is good enough for true fans originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Wed, 11 Apr 2012 10:43:00 +0100

Pocket-lint is offering a lucky reader the chance to win a stunning blue HP Pavillion g6 1326sa,?one of the latest notebooks powered by VISION technology from AMD to hit the shelves this spring.

VISION technology has AMD AllDay power, enabling extended battery life for longer entertainment on the go.?Alongside its powerful performance that helps make slow video streaming a thing of the past and lets users to switch between applications rapidly, the HP Pavillion g6 1326sa features cinema-quality graphics that will allow you to enjoy the most amazing possible entertainment experience.?

All you have to do to be in with a chance of winning an AMD Vision-powered laptop is follow us (@Pocketlint) and AMD (@amd_uk)?on Twitter?and?retweet any story on Pocket-lint including the hashtag?#plAMD.

The competition will close at midnight on Sunday, 15 April 2012, after which time we will draw the winners and inform them on this page and by direct message.

Please ensure that you read?Pocket-lint's?terms and conditions, and we must point out that this competition in open only to entries from the UK and Ireland.

Good luck.

Tags: Laptops HP Competitions Apps Phones Gaming Tablets

Win one of the latest AMD VISION powered laptops! originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 10 Apr 2012 15:50:00 +0100

More details have emerged regarding the Orbis, Sony’s follow-up to the PS3 or possible Kinect rival.

Website IGN, which favours the PS3 successor school of thought, claims to have been told that Orbis will use custom chips similar to AMD’s A8-3850 APU and Radeon HD 7670 GPU.?

That’s all well and good, but what exactly will it mean? Basically, better graphics, while with its quad-core 2.9GHz processor the A8-3850 promises a powerful punch, to boot.

What is worth noting is that the HD 7670 card boasts the same specs as the chip that is rumoured to be being used in Microsoft’s new Xbox 720.

So the Sony Orbis is to go head-to-head against the Xbox 720? Possibly, though contrary rumours suggest the Orbis might in fact be more of a Kinect rival after conceptual illustrations were leaked.

With a launch date not expected until Christmas 2013, expect the rumour mill to be churning out far more ifs and maybes before then.

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Tags: Gaming Orbis Sony PlayStation

Sony PlayStation Orbis - more details emerge originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Fri, 06 Apr 2012 16:48:00 +0100

Good news, Where's My Water? fans, Disney has released an update to the popular iOS game that not only brings 20 new levels to complete, but also adds iCloud support to "synchronise your hard-earned progress across mulitple iOS 5 devices".

The update, version 1.5.0, released on Thursday, adds a ninth chapter of Swampy's Story and gives you an excuse to play the game once again - yep, you've got another 60 ducks to collect.?

Dubbed "Rising Tide", it is a free update featuring 20 new levels, new collectibles and a new way to play, according to Disney in the blurb for the game in the App Store.

"Control where the water flows through the intricate network of pipes! Use valves to divert water to Swampy's bathtub while working with fans, switches, and triggers! Timing is everything-will you accept the challenge of the Rising Tide?"

Those who've been keen to sign up to the app, and the in-app purchase Cranky's story, will also be able to enjoy 60 levels - that's a further 20 if you are counting - ?with the latest chapter Cranky chapter "Bulking Up".

Gamers who like to dart between their iPad and their iPhone will also be pleased to hear that the game now comes with iCloud support to synchronise your "hard-earned progress across multiple iOS 5 devices". That means "one game, multiple devices", according to developers.

It's a move that Apple has yet to confirm that is possible with Game Center or iOS 5, but a trait we've noticed multiple developers now adding to their feature lists.

For new iPad users, the disappointing news is that the app doesn't add Retina Display support.?

Tags: Gaming Apps Disney iPad apps iPhone apps

Where's My Water? update brings new levels, iCloud level game support originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Fri, 06 Apr 2012 00:53:00 +0100

According to the great man himself, Burnout CRASH! is “hofftastic”.

David “the Hoff” Hasselhoff has endorsed the soon to be launched mobile driving game via a promotional video and it’s hoff the scale.

Available on the Apple App Store this April, the game is a spin-hoff of the popular PlayStation and Xbox series and sees you try and avoid pile-ups, tornados, asteroid showers and even UFOs.

There’s plenty of gaming to be had, with three game modes, 54 different events and six themed locations to master.

It’s hofften said celebrities will put their face to any piece of merchandise, so long as the price is right. That’s not the case here.

The Hoff - no stranger to driving fast cars himself of course, having handled Knight Rider’s KIT for much of the 1980’s - was clearly a fan as he demonstrated his driving prowess in front of an eclectic audience.

Developed by Criterion Games, Burnout CRASH! is published by EA and will be available on the Apple iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

No word on pricing just yet, but we’d bet our bottom dollar the Hoff got his for free.

Tags: Gaming iOS iPad games Burnout Crash Mobile apps

The Hoff demos his driving skills on Burnout CRASH! (video) originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 05 Apr 2012 17:38:00 +0100

Football Manager Handheld for Android will be released on 11 April, marking the debut of the extremely popular coaching simulation game for devices outside of iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

It also comes as somewhat of a shock, as Sports Interactive's studio director, Miles Jacobson,?exclusively told Pocket-lint?in October last year that the developer had no plans to release an Android version because of the fragmentation of the market.

"With everyone making their own version of Android it makes it really really hard [to guarantee that it works universally]," he said. "We want to do it as a studio. We have a bunch of guys at the studio who have Android phones. We'd love to do it. But, at the moment, we're not there. So, we're sticking to iOS for now."

However, it now seems that any fragmentation hurdles have been overcome - with the application hitting Google Play next week for ?6.99.

"Since the first release of Football Manager Handheld for mobiles a couple of years ago, the most-asked question on social networks has been ‘When is it coming to Android?’,” said Jacobson. “Now, we can reveal the answer."

The Android version will be nigh-on identical to its iPhone counterpart. There will be 12 countries with playable leagues;?Australia, Belgium, Brazil, England, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Portugal, Scotland, Spain and Wales. And four languages will be supported; English, Spanish, French and Italian.

Challenge mode will also be present, offering short-term scenarios, specific to Football Manager Handheld. And the career mode is, naturally, as exhaustive as ever. The application will have the latest player and staff database too.

Football Manager for Android will work on Android 2.2 or higher, and Google Play will list all of the compatible devices on its release.

It's also got us thinking here at the Lint: now that SI Games has managed to make an Android version when we were told it wouldn't happen, maybe Jacobson poo-poohing our Siri-controlled Football Manager idea is just a smoke screen too?

Or perhaps not.

Tags: Football Manager Gaming Apps Android apps Football Manager Handheld 2012 Miles Jacobson SI Games Sega

Football Manager Handheld for Android coming on 11 April originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 05 Apr 2012 13:55:00 +0100

Get your DeLorean out of the garage, we’re going back in time, and we’re taking the Angry Birds with us.

A Swedish artist has taken the hugely popular mobile game and merged it with Nintendo’s Game & Watch device of the 1980’s. Remember those?

In reality the dual screen would mean you’d lose sight of our feathered friends for a split second, but the concept is rather cute and certainly tugs at the nostalgic heartstrings.

If you’re too young to remember the Nintendo Game & Watch, the handheld device was where the likes of Mario and Donkey Kong made the leap from arcade machine to personal gaming device and paved the way for the home console revolution.

The Swedish artist responsible for this trip down memory lane is Giorgio Cantu.

Recently Cantu was commissioned by Samsung to draft over some imagery for the Samsung Galaxy Tab and is also the man responsible for the artwork for Sega video game Renegade Ops.

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Tags: Gaming Angry Birds Nintendo

If Angry Birds had debuted on the Nintendo Game & Watch originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 05 Apr 2012 11:41:00 +0100

If you’re someone who likes to throw a bit of bling into your gaming experience then you may want to start saving the pennies for one of these bad boys. They will be available for a cool $54.99 and come in metallic blue, red and silver while all three will feature Microsoft’s transforming D-pad.

The Chrome series won’t be to everyone’s taste and already critics have begun speculating what a haven for grubby fingerprints the design will prove to be. Yet there’s no denying they each possess a certain standout quality that will most likely count as job done for Microsoft.

There’s no news on a UK launch just yet, so before you start choosing your favourite it’s worth considering that there’s no guarantee all that any will reach these shores. However, stateside and the blue variant will be available exclusively from GameStop, while Walmart will be selling the red version and both Best Buy and Microsoft stores will be stocking the silver version. An on-sale date of mid-May has been mooted.

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Tags: Gaming Xbox 360 Microsoft Controllers

Chrome Xbox 360 controllers unveiled originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 03 Apr 2012 18:22:00 +0100

If you thought you saw Darth Vader or one of his stormtroopers on your way into work today don’t fret, you’re not cracking up. Vader and his cronies were joined by R2D2 in London this morning to help celebrate the launch of Kinect Star Wars for the Xbox 360, our review of which can be read here.

There have been no reports of Vader having to use his death grip in this mornings rush hour, though judging by these commuters' (lack of) reaction to the Star Wars characters presence, it’s unlikely anyone would notice. London eh?

Rumours of various Jedi mind tricks being played on unsuspecting ticket inspectors are also currently unfounded - "This is not the Oyster card you are looking for."

Kinect Star Wars is available now for the Xbox 360 for ?39.99.

Tags: Gaming Star Wars Kinect Xbox 360 London Darth Vader

Darth Vader and Co hit the streets of London for Kinect Star Wars launch originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 03 Apr 2012 16:43:00 +0100

Microsoft has questioned the validity of claims that credit card details can be retrieved even after an Xbox 360 has been reset to factory settings. A group of researchers has claimed that had managed to do just that with little more than basic modifying tools. Microsoft, which manufactures the Xbox 360, has come out guns blazing, strenuously denying that this is possible.

Microsoft has told Pocket-lint that it has asked the research team, based in Philadelphia, ?to provide information that will enable it to carry out its own research. So far the research team has failed to come respond.

“Xbox is not designed to store credit card data locally on the console, and as such it seems unlikely credit card data was recovered by the method described,” says Jim Alkove, General Manager, Security, Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft.

Microsoft is keen to reassure gamers that personal information, including credit card details, remains secure even after a console has been refurbished or reset.

To its credit Microsoft isn’t shying away from this latest controversy and the ball is now very much back in the court of the researchers. We’ll be sure to keep you posted on any developments.

Tags: Gaming Microsoft Xbox 360 Security

Microsoft denies claims Xbox 360 has security issues originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 03 Apr 2012 12:20:00 +0100

Star Wars is everywhere. The Lucas empire extends far beyond the reach of any traditional franchise, with our friends C3PO and R2D2 being as ubiquitous as the kitchen sink. Some of the ancillary elements to the Star Wars world are great - Knights of the Old Republic, we're looking at you. Others, however, can be depressingly abysmal, ruining what is one of the greatest fantasy universes ever created.

Eyes turn to the likes of Super Bombad Racing and the Star Wars Holiday Special, both of which form their own unique blend of awfulness. Now in the build-up to Star Wars Kinect’s release, there has been a bit of controversy - particular among hardcore fans - that the game just isn’t going to deliver. Then videos of the Galactic Dance Off mode appeared on the internet. It made people very angry.

We have been playing Star Wars without our fanboy hats on. Our love of Yoda and his chums would make reviewing a game where Han Solo has a dance-off before being frozen in carbonite just too upsetting. This has meant that we have been able to deduce a few things - first, that on no account should anyone who likes Star Wars go near Galactic Dance Off and second, that it’s actually a rather good Kinect game.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

...Someone invented Kinect Adventures. It was a fun game which showed off what Microsoft’s new motion-sensing technology was capable of. Suddenly every family the world over wanted a Kinect. Now the device is at the forefront of nearly everything Microsoft does, with even hardcore titles like Mass Effect 3 getting support for it.

We liked Kinect Adventures. It was great fun. Thankfully then Star Wars Kinect is very much an extension of this title, just with much more loveable characters. The magic is all there, the iconic music, C3PO and R2D2 guiding you through the Jedi archives. Heck, the pair will even quiz each other on master Luke’s (you play as him in menus) whereabouts, should you step out of range of the sensor.

Above all though, it's fun. Playing with a light sabre is fun, beating Sebulba in a pod race feels cool and attacking Mos Eisley as an escaped Rancor is great. A lot of the gameplay concepts at their core are flawed, but then we can’t see how else they could be handled, given the limitations Kinect creates. Take light sabre battles for example, there is just no way you could be back flipping around your living room swinging your arms all over the place. So the alternative they have created is actually rather clever.

The greatest story in the galaxy?

How does Kinect Star Wars actually work? Well, rather than just randomly hopping into Star Wars-related events, there is in fact a story mode, as well as other quasi mini-games. Starting out as a Padawan on Kashyyk, Yoda and some other Jedi masters send you off on a quest to stop an invasion by a race of reptile people called the Trandoshans. Cue light sabres, speeder bikes, Force powers and some epic music as well as the odd cameo from some series favourites.

For the most part the story experience works, although don’t expect the tale told to be anywhere near the level of the movies of KOTR. Still, it gives you more than just a set of mini-games to get your teeth stuck into.

On top of the story mode are other selectable gameplay types - Podracing, Jedi Duels, Galactic Dance Off (don’t even look at it) and Rancor Rampage. Most are pretty fully featured and offer enough different gameplay options to provide a good few hours' entertainment on top of the normal story itself. They are also perfect for those who want to pick at the game rather than engage in a longer play session.

We particularly like the podracing. Although you are practically guided around the track, it just feels great controlling different racers. You are fairly limited in your track choice, which is just six, but there are other drivers and their pods to unlock.

Rancor Rampage is also quite a laugh. It is basically a game in which you use your various limbs to smash up famous sets from the Star Wars universe. A choice of four different rancors, each with unique abilities, stops the mode from getting stale too quickly. We also really enjoyed being able to trash Jabba’s Palace, just because he is such a bad guy.

Do you really feel like a Jedi?

This is the question that every fan wants answering. Galactic dance off aside, if Kinect Star Wars can even get close to what it might feel like to wield a light sabre, then most will be sold on it already.

First up is the question of movement. This is a difficult one to handle with Kinect because your living room can only be so long. No one can run more than a few steps forward or back, so moving your character on screen is either done by jogging on the spot or lunging. They have gone for the latter with Star Wars Kinect. It works, most certainly, but you are entirely on rails throughout because of it.

The Force is handled with either your left hand, should you want to push things about, or with both if you are lifting them. Kinect found this side of things particularly dodgy, making the Force feel a bit flimsy in reality.

But what about the light sabre? It essentially comes in two modes: either when you are duelling or deflecting bullets. When enemies are blasting away at you, swinging forward into blaster bullets will deflect them back at them. You can also do things like kick, run or jump. It works well enough and the movements we were making were translated nicely on to our character. This does mean then, that for a while, you feel like you are holding a light sabre.

Duelling is not so great. It would simply be too hard a game if you re-enacted taking on someone like Darth Maul exactly. Kinect just wouldn’t cope. Instead what you do is either deflect swings, or attack by swinging, though not at the same time. In order to attack you need to wear down an enemy's meter by blocking their attempts at hitting you. The result is a sort of back and forth battle which is exciting enough.

Graphically Star Wars Kinect isn’t great. It has gone for a rather clean look that clearly draws on the Clone Wars cartoons. Textures are fairly bland and character models lack detail, apart from C3PO and Yoda who look great. There is also noticeable slowdown when lots is going on on screen. Voice acting matches nicely with a character’s facial animations, which while not quite Mass Effect good, are certainly convincing.

Verdict:

A lot of us really don’t want to like Star Wars Kinect at all. The films have been so bashed and bruised by blatant cash-ins that 99 per cent of the time we would avoid games like this. At its core, however, it is a fun game and we suppose that is what really matters.

We may have given it a 3.5 stars, but for an 8-year-old this game would easily be a 5. Why? Because you can swing a light sabre , or be in a pod race. These are cool things which every 8-year-old dreams about after watching the movies. They might not be executed as nicely as they could have been, but this is a game clearly aimed at the younger crowd. It is super-easy for starters and you will have got through the story mode in just a few hours.

A game to sit and watch your kids play then - just make sure you leave when they play galactic dance off.?

Tags: Gaming Xbox Xbox 360 Star Wars Star Wars Kinect Kinect Kinect: Star Wars

Kinect: Star Wars originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 03 Apr 2012 08:01:00 +0100

The Xbox 720, codenamed Durango, will purportedly be the first Microsoft console to come with Blu-ray drive. It will also require an always-on internet connection for anti-piracy measures and sport two graphics processing units.

Gaming site VG24/7 reports that its sources have also claimed that Microsoft is aiming for a Christmas 2013 release date for the new console, which is also rumoured to be the window Sony is looking at for the PlayStation 4/Orbis.

It is believed that details on the new machine are currently being released to third-parties, including major developers, and VG24/7 states that the specifications include either four (quad) or six core processors. Microsoft is definitely looking to make the successor to the Xbox 360 a true powerhouse.

The rumour that it will now come with a Blu-ray drive is the second time we've heard such a thing. Back in January, we ran a story that the new console would come with both Blu-ray and Kinect 2, but were sceptical of the former as Pocket-lint itself had heard from Microsoft a while back that it was more likely the company would look to move its content delivery to digital download only. We even heard the same at the beginning of last month.

If true, however, it will mark an amazing u-turn by Microsoft, which previously shunned the Blu-ray format in favour of the now defunct high definition disc rival HD-DVD.

Perhaps the most alarming rumour for many though, is that of the Durango needing an always-on internet connection. It was suspected that something like this would be required to authenticate discs and lock them to user accounts, thereby restricting the resale of games, but this is the first time a "source" has confirmed such.

Read

Tags: Xbox 720 Gaming Durango Microsoft

Xbox 720 Durango will have Blu-ray, need always on internet connection originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 02 Apr 2012 13:50:00 +0100

Super Meat Boy, the?phenomenally?difficult but incredibly addictive platform game for PC, Xbox 360 and Mac, is coming to iOS and other touchscreen platforms (believed to be Android, at least). However, rather than simply port the existing game, developer Team Meat is building a completely new version to better fit mobile devices.

"We have been playing with the idea of porting SMB to the iPhone for some time," says Team Meat in a posting on its official blog.

"Sadly, there was no way of doing this without the game becoming a pile of garbage. Super Meat Boy is a twitch platformer with precision controls, there was no way in hell this would work on a touchscreen with buttons all over it.?Super Meat Boy isn't a game we want to make a sub-par version of just to cash in...?So, we decided to totally remake the whole game instead, from the ground up!"

The developer goes on to say that the new version, Super Meat Boy: The Game, is being specifically designed to work with touch controls. What it isn't creating is "a shitty port of an existing game with non-tactile buttons spread all over the screen blocking the players view and making for frustrating controls".

Die-hard fans are also warned that the final iOS/other platforms platform game (ahem) will be missing some aspects of the original, but it will feature entirely new art.

There's no date on the game's release as of yet, but we can't wait.

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Tags: Gaming Apps iOS Android iPhone apps iPad apps Android apps Super Meat Boy The Game

Super Meat Boy coming to iOS and Android - not just another 'sh***y' port originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 02 Apr 2012 10:16:00 +0100

As was expected, GAME has now exited administration as OpCapita has bought the UK assets of the GAME Group PLC for what is expected to have been ?50 million - consisting mostly of debt repayments.

The deal is not good news for suppliers or employees who lost their jobs in the store closures before the deal. The former will have to write off around ?40 million and the new owner is not responsible for the latter or any related?redundancy?claims.

However, OpCapita, which also owns electronics retailer Comet, has assured the remaining staff, believed to number around 3,200, that there will be no more GAME or Gamestation store closures in the UK. It will also be re-employing some of the more senior head office workers axed last week.

"We are pleased to have reached agreement with the administrator," said OpCapita managing partner Henry Jackson. "We strongly believe there is a place on the high street for a video gaming specialist and GAME is the leading brand in a ?2.8 billion market in the UK.

"We have assembled a strong team of experienced industry operators to implement the programme of operational change that is needed. There is a huge amount to do but we look forward to the challenge of restoring GAME’s fortunes in partnership with its employees and suppliers."

A fresh management team will be installed by the new owner, and is believed to include ex-Halfords’ chief executive David Hamid.

Administrator PwC is still looking to sell the remaining?1,270 overseas stores.

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Tags: GAME Gaming OpCapita Biz Gamestation

GAME exits administration as OpCapita promises no more job losses originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 02 Apr 2012 09:40:00 +0100

GAME, the troubled UK high street video game retailer, looks to have been saved by a deal that is expected to be confirmed on Sunday morning.

According to The Telegraph and the BBC, OpCapita, a consortium previously linked to buying GAME in the past, has stepped in paying ?1 for the company, but taking on its ?85m in debt. Ouch.

"Half a dozen banks, led by Royal Bank of Scotland, who are owed ?85m, have approved the takeover," says BBC business editor Robert Peston, while the Telegraph is reporting that: "A deal, which will safeguard the future of the bulk of its remaining 333-shops, is likely to be announced as early as Sunday morning."

The deal means that the group's remaining 333 stores should be saved, however the future of the remaining staff is still unsure.

GAME was officially placed into administration on Monday, after the high street retailer was unable to pay its ?21m rent bill.

PwC, which was brought in as administrator, immediately closed 277 stores and told 2,000 of the company's employees they no longer had a job.

The OpCapita deal comes after news on Friday that RBS, the group's main creditor, would be leading a consortium to buy the GAME Group but that now doesn't appear to be the case.

The news is likely to be welcomed by staff and the high street worried that failure to do anything could have meant more jobs loses and store closures.

OpCapita famously bought failing electrical chain Comet in 2011 for ?2.

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Tags: Gaming GAME Biz OpCapita RBS

GAME rescued by OpCapita deal originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Sat, 31 Mar 2012 22:48:00 +0100

More concerns have arisen over the security of Xbox 360 after it emerged that restoring the console to factory settings won’t necessarily remove your personal information. A team of university researchers successfully retrieved credit card data from an Xbox that had been recently refurbished. What’s even more alarming is that it was done with basic modifying tools.

The findings could set alarm bells ringing for consumers who have sold their Xbox 360 thinking they had successfully wiped the console of any personal data. Head of the Drexel University research team, Ashley Podhradsky, said the only way of being truly sure that all personal data had been deleted was by using a third-party data erasing program such as Darik’s Boot & Nuke.

The research was focused solely on the Xbox 360, so it will be interesting to see if the Drexel University team comes back with future findings on any other consoles.

Concerns about how secure the Xbox 360 is comes on the back of research conducted by Ofcom that claims adults are becoming less concerned about online security despite spending more time on the net.

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Tags: Gaming Xbox 360 Security Consoles

New concerns over Xbox 360 security as credit card details retrieved originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Fri, 30 Mar 2012 17:36:00 +0100

"Every human is a gamer. It is inherent in our DNA."

So says?Chris Early, VP of Digital Publishing at Ubisoft, in a one-to-one briefing with Pocket-lint in London's Covent Garden Hotel.

"I don't mean that from a standpoint of playing a console game, but that chemical feeling of when you have a win."

We've been sitting in the interview for around 15 minutes chatting games, and impressing Early with our over-sized digital voice recorder, but the conversation has moved on to whether mobile games will replace console games in the future.

With the closure of more than 200 GAME stores in the UK, video game sales in decline and app purchases on the rise, it is a consumer shift that has massive implications on what companies like Ubisoft do to react in the coming years.

"If we only made PC games - like we did 20 years ago - we would have failed a long time ago. Our focus is less about the business environment and more about what you as the player are doing. If we are doing what you like, we will do well," Early tells us before getting back to the question at hand: mobile vs console.

"Is the buzz around mobile and social justified? Absolutely," he sparks, with quite some enthusiasm. "Is it the death of other forms of gaming? Absolutely not."

According to Early it all comes down to what type of gaming experience you want and at what particular time you want it. Citing how the introduction of the television didn't kill the cinema but just gave us another medium on which to watch movies, Early believes that console games aren't going to be disappearing any time soon.

Why? Well for one, console games give us something that mobile games still can't deliver - a "high-definition experience", explains the man from Ubisoft.

"As we start to open up other platforms, we are going to see that time shift, and the overall demographics of the game player change from that small group of people, that we used to say are hardcore gamers, and the person on the street that if, you asked, would say they aren't a gamer, and they will begin to merge."

That merging and popularising of "the gamer" has created, according to Early, a group of people that, while they don't seem themselves as gamers, are just that.

"There is a large percentage of the population who will never play console games who are now gaming. Even though they won't say they're a gamer, if you looked at their iPhone, the majority of applications would be games. Every human is a gamer."

Previously head of Windows Gaming, Early likes games a lot; no matter who makes them. He's flown to the UK for a couple of days to give a speech in London. It seems he can multitask rather well.?

"I'm playing a lot of games. I am currently playing Mass Effect 3. I was a gamer when it cost $10 an hour playing online. My favourite game on Facebook is our new Ghost Recon Commander. I am playing the new builds as they are released internally," says Early, not that you would believe him when looking at him.

He doesn't look like your average hardcore gamer who is likely to blast every which way but Sunday. He's mid fifties, grey haired, wearing a tweed jacket and someone, dare we say it, you would expect to see on the golf course with your dad rather than taking heavy fire in a hot zone.?

Early is typical of many gamers today. They want both the high-def experience and the casual gaming hit on the go, the common nature of which he is very aware.

"I believe there is share shift that takes place where people have a limited amount of time and I think gamers enjoy a good game mechanic. So, when they find a good game mechanic, regardless of the platform, they are going to play that game.

"As there are more platforms on which to experience those good game mechanics, people are going to shift their share around to those different platforms. The advantage some of those platforms have over the traditional core console game is one of time commitment.

"It is unlikely that I am going to sit down at lunch with my sandwich and go to play a Ghost Recon or Assassin's Creed 3, but I'd probably play a mobile game instead."

Taking the belief that we don't care for the platform, Ubisoft has started creating games to complement its console titles and build up an entire eco-system around each gaming franchise.

"The concept of companion gaming is, 'How do I let you, the player, experience the franchise', whatever that franchise is, 'in a way that's comfortable to you wherever you might be', and for that play to be meaningful and relevant."

The concept of companion gaming will be seen in action with the company's latest Ghost Recon title - Ghost Recon Future Soldier. First debuted at E3 in 2011, the game is due out in the UK on 25 May and comes with a Facebook tie-in game called Ghost Recon Commander.

Gamers who play both will get extra rewards with the Facebook game helping to unlock currency, weapons, and extra features.

That's a very different approach to what many games companies have done previously. This isn't the same game for multiple platforms, but different approaches and gameplay for different platform experiences.

"As a fan of that franchise you will be able to get deeper into the lore without seeing the same cookie-cutter experience across all the different platforms we now support. Regardless of which device you have, you can experience that franchise in the best way that the platform you have at the time can deliver it."

It's not all gaming, gaming, gaming either. In Ghost Recon Future Soldier, Ubisoft has allowed gamers to manage their armoury away from the console, in a separate mobile app called Gunsmith. The information is then saved and uploaded to the game via a central server.

"This type of a helper application is absolutely the way of extending the brand as well," Early says.

The train journey home will never have to be wasted ever again.?Once you do get home your mobile phone or tablet experience is unlikely to stop once you pick up a games controller.

Early, who hasn't stopped smiling all interview, believes with systems like the Nintendo Wii U, due out later this year, there is plenty in store for companion gaming. It's clear from talking to him that he isn't just passionate about this area of gaming, but also really excited - and now it's becoming infectious.?

"I see the Wii U as an incredible creation opportunity," he sparkles. "With the Wii U, you know that every unit that ships is going to have a companion tablet. Sony has been doing it for a while with the PSP that connects as a secondary screen with the PS3. That's fine if you wanted to make the assumption that your PS3 also happens to have a PSP and has gone through the steps to make the link."

"With the Wii U, you know that it is shipping with it. So then the question is - how do we take advantage of that? How do we create a strategic map when you are playing a first-person shooter? How do we create a hidden board when you are playing a strategy game with other players? There are lots of opportunities and that's very exciting from a game creation standpoint and the abilities we will have."

We ask Early whether he sees the tablet interactivity coming to the other consoles; the Xbox 360 combined with a Windows 8 tablet or Windows Phone device. He does.

"It's not just about the TV not being one screen, it's about all of your devices connecting. In terms of the Wii U and the consoles you mention, how do we design for that multiple screen that is taking place there and does it even have to be an exact support of it?"

"What if I have my iPhone? Is there a reason why my iPhone - even though it might not be tied to the PS3 - couldn't, through a back end service we provide, still be as involved? Maybe not as real-time as something on the Wii U on the screen, but a support of the same game system?"

Early is clearly getting excited and, keen to add fuel to his fire, we mention the iPad becoming an inventory system or a dedicated chat channel.

"I think those are awesome design challenges that are partly driven by the Wii U tablet and screen capability, as we look at other consoles we have to see what they bring out from a hardware standpoint, what they support cross platform-wise and what the penetration might be across all the different devices."

But, just as we're really starting to bounce back and forth the kind of ideas that we all hope happens in game developer offices everywhere, our 30 minutes are up. Buzzing with ideas on a new way of gaming to come, we reluctantly turn off the voice recorder, grab our coat, and look forward to a spot of mobile gaming on the train back to the office. Now, what to play...

Tags: Gaming Ubisoft Interviews Features

Ubisoft: Even non-gamers are gamers now originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Fri, 30 Mar 2012 17:21:00 +0100

Orbis may sound like a brand of chewing gum to some, but it's being touted as the codename of the next console from Sony - in effect, the PlayStation 4.

But Pocket-lint is starting to wonder if that really is the case. Is the next-generation machine really going to be called PS Orbis? Or could that actually be the working title for an entirely different product - a rival to Microsoft's Kinect, perhaps?

New evidence uncovered by gaming website Kotaku?leads us to favour the latter, even though many sites are claiming it's further proof of the former.

A tipster spotted a couple of illustrations on the website of design company Coque Design and saw fit to release them to the world. And before they were promptly taken down by the firm, they were titled, "Illustrations & Sketches for new PlayStation Orbis features", which at least confirms that Sony is working with that specific name in some form.

But what makes us believe that Orbis could, in fact, be a Kinect-alike (or a next generation of Sony's own PlayStation Eye) is right there in the content of the images. If the PlayStation Orbis is the next console from the manufacturer, where is it? What we can see is a wall-mounted camera device/motion controller and a linked smartphone; what we don't see is a chunky box-like object with a curved exterior.

It would make sense for Sony to want a similar proposition to the Kinect. Its PlayStation Move controllers have never set the world alight - no matter how much they make you feel like an air traffic controller. In comparison, Microsoft's Kinect has been?phenomenally?successful, having sold an estimated 18 million units in just over a year.

There's a further clue that leads us to believe that the object in question is a motion controller as well as a camera. In one of the illustrations, a girl is playing a dance game (the other is clearly a SingStar style affair with a playlist controlled by a mobile device), of the sort that works well with the Kinect. On top of that, it seems that video of the players can be streamed to other devices, making the affair a more social network-style experience.

We've previously mentioned that, in Latin, Orbis means circle or ring, but it can also mean world, so we don't think it's a massive leap of faith to think that Sony is looking for a device that makes global social gaming more accessible - even to those who aren't particularly gamers to begin with.

Kinect anyone?

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Tags: Sony Gaming PlayStation 4 PS4 Orbis SCE

Sony definitely working on PlayStation Orbis - more evidence uncovered originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Fri, 30 Mar 2012 15:17:00 +0100

Both of the GAME Group websites have re-opened today, as news for the UK retailer improves. Although it may have come too late to save the 277 stores closed by the administrators and the subsequent 2,104 job losses, it is believed that the troubled company is set to exit administration any day now - a buyer has been found.

The buyer in question is understood to be a consortium led by RBS (the Royal Bank of Scotland), the group's main creditor. And, although that throws up several new questions - such as "Wasn't it RBS that turned down Comet-owner OpCapita's bid just over a week ago?" and "If RBS had accepted OpCapita's bid, wouldn't the rest of the staff still have their jobs?" - a prospective end to the saga is in sight, with the restoration of GAME.co.uk and Gamestation.co.uk being the first step.

At present, not all of the features of the websites are completely up and running again. Customers still can't earn or spend Reward Card credit. Nor can they use their outstanding Gift Cards.

However, it is now being reported that, with a new buyer in place, GAME Gift Cards may well be accepted in stores once more.

It is unclear at present how this will affect the redundancy payments to the thousand of ex-GAME and Gamestation employees, including the Irish?protesters.

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Tags: GAME Gaming RBS Gamestation

GAME websites re-open as RBS buy-out imminent originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Fri, 30 Mar 2012 14:10:00 +0100

We've all been there at that moment when you need to pull off a handbrake turn. You put your foot down for a little speed, drop the clutch and yank the handbrake while steering hard to the right. The tyres scream as the back of the car spins 180 degrees, you dab the foot brake and lift the clutch again, back on the throttle to speed off in the opposite direction.

Pocket-lint spent the day at the Santa Pod Raceway under the tutelage of Terry Grant, professional stunt driver and holder of various crazy records, at his Stunt Academy. We were there with a team from Namco, celebrating today's launch of Ridge Racer Unbounded, in line to learn some of the tricks we take from granted in video games.

"This is a Peugeot 206 GTI 16v, so it's pretty nippy," explains John Moore, Terry's co-instructor at the Academy during our session, and it's to be the car we start sliding around the place in.

Surprisingly, the cars we're using at the academy are road cars. They bear the scars of being driven hard, by amateurs like ourselves, but the only real modification is internally, changing the handbrake to a hydraulic system.

"You can do it with a normal handbrake," John tells us, "but once you've done it a couple of times the cable will stretch, so we've fitted hydraulics instead." It seems like a wise move, given that these cars are sliding around the tarmac all day.

The other vehicle of choice is the BMW M3 E36. "It's amazing what you can do with 300 horsepower and a limited slip differential," John grins, as he explains with some precision how to pull off the perfect doughnut.

The BWM M3 is the car of choice for Terry and John's opening thrill ride. Like a chase seen from any action movie, the pair - with us in the passenger seat - danced the cars around the playground with frightening precision.

The roaring of the engine, the squealing of the tyres and heady smell of burning rubber and brakepads distract you from the fact that you're not actually moving all that fast. But glance out of the side window and you'll seen the bonnet of the other car, less than a metre away. The precision with which they can drive is astonishing, as is the frequency with which they need to change the tyres - hence the mis-matched wheels.

Back in the Peugeot 206 GTI, it's time for us to prove our worth and see if we can perform the classic handbrake-parking manoeuvre. It seems unnatural to be heading at speed towards a parking space, but again, dropping the clutch and yanking that hydraulic handbrake, sees us sliding into the box.

A slight nudge of the cone in front would have been the end of our no claims bonus in the real world, but we'll never struggle to park again. John agrees, declaring Pocket-lint the winner in this fiercely fought parking competition. It's joint-first admittedly, but we'll still lap up the glory.

Stunt driving, rather than being about risk-taking, is obviously all about control. As we're talked through the process of performing those doughnuts that plague supermarket car parks across the country, we're impressed with the precision. It's given to us like a formula with exacting measures.

And lo and behold, once you follow those precise instructions, the car performs for you. It's incredibly easy, almost as easy, dare we say it, as it is to drift in Ridge Racer. So we pop the question - are we going to learn to drift??

"We like people to have been here for a few sessions before we get into drifting,",John tells us, but we're not disheartened, because we're about to try driving on two wheels.

A modified Peugeot 206 is the car for two wheeling and once in the driving seat, it's obvious that this car has taken more abuse than we'd like. It doesn't sound healthy, but John reassures us that it's just the bent exhaust vibrating against the chassis. Such is the life of a stunt car in training.?

We slowly head towards the ramp, John calmly telling us that the car will try and steer away. "Left a bit, left a bit, left a bit" and boom! We hit the deck off the end of the ramp because we didn't manage to get the car to run on the two wheels.

The second attempt is more successful, running a good 30 metres before we steer out and back down on to four wheels with a jolt. It's a good job that there's a giant stabiliser on the side of the car, or we'd have been eating pavement through the window.

With the day drawing in, it's time for Terry to show us what he gets paid for. Having driven through stacked boxes, that classic Seventies film stunt, it's time for a bigger target: the caravan.

Terry has a special car for the job: an old Nissan that he has saved from a dreary existence as an unlicensed mini cab, purchased solely for this stunt finale. With that, Terry launches this miserable old Japanese car through the aging caravan, hits a ramp and rolls on to the roof, sliding to a halt trailing caravan parts and broken glass.

It's the stuff of greatness, the real deal. As Terry Grant emerges unscathed to stand jubilant before his trashed Nissan, we can't help feeling that normal driving is going to seem a little flat.

So we head inside and play a little more Ridge Racer Unbounded, secretly dreaming of being stuntmen when we grow up.?

Tags: Cars Gaming Ridge Racer Unbounded Namco

Stunt driving the Ridge Racer way originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 29 Mar 2012 14:30:00 +0100

Ubisoft has told Pocket-lint that all its mobile games in the future will come with a save-game service that means you can carry on playing where you left off, even if you swap devices.

"I think that is a huge issue and I personally can't stand it where I have to do something over again," Chris Early, head of digital at Ubisoft, told us in a one-to-one briefing when he visited the UK. "We have a cloud-based storage system for that data for you."

He confirmed to Pocket-lint that the company's soon to be released Ghost Recon Commander will have centralised storage for your character, whether you are playing on Facebook or your mobile device. It will allow you to play on one and then continue on another. Most likely through the publisher's own UPlay central service.

"As a player, I absolutely hope that game saves across multiple devices will be like this in the future. From an Ubisoft perspective, yes they will," Early added.

The news is likely to be welcomed by gamers who play on multiple devices, such as an iPhone and iPad. At the moment, in most cases, game players have to complete the same level on each device. You have only to ask Angry Birds or Where's My Water? fans how they feel about non-syncing devices to get an idea of how much of a pain it currently is.

It's a problem Apple understands, too. As, the Cupertino giant told Pocket-lint previously, it is something it would like to fix. We are hoping that the company will introduce cloud save-game storage for all games, via Game Center, in the next iOS 6 and Mountain Lion updates.

Tags: Gaming Apps Ubisoft iPhone apps iPad apps Android apps

Ubisoft mobile games will have cloud save system to let you swap devices originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 29 Mar 2012 10:18:00 +0100

Sony's next games console - previously been dubbed "PlayStation 4", for obvious reasons - is going to be called "Orbis" - according to sources familiar with the matter. The name, which may be its internal codename and could change before release, is a Latin word, which means circle or ring.

The same sources have also told games website Kotaku that the next-generation console will launch in Q4 2013, just in time for Christmas that year.

Of course, sources can often be wide of the mark. You need only read the rumours from the?preceding?two weeks or so before the launch of any Apple device to know that. However, there's a further clue to back up the name claim. The URL for Sony's portal for developers generally begins with the hardware name in question; vita.scedev.net or ps3.scedev.net, for example. Type orbis.scedev.net, and you get to the same page. Type ps4.scedev.net and you don't, you get a 404 instead.

That proves that Sony is considering that name for one of its products or platforms.

Kotaku also reports that its main source has revealed a little about the prospective specifications of the Orbis (which will surely be called PS Orbis, much like the PS Vita). At present the processor will be an AMD x64 CPU, while the graphics will be handled by the?AMD?Southern Islands GPU. The latter will be capable of managing video resolutions of up to?4096 x 2160 (4K2K) in order to cater for the next generation of high-definition TVs, such as the Toshiba 55ZL2, currently on sale at John Lewis.

The main source also states that select developers have been receiving Orbis devkits since the beginning of the year, and that, sadly, there will be no backwards compatibility with the PS3. It will not spin PlayStation 3 discs, although Pocket-lint would expect you'll be able to purchase digital copies of PS3 titles through the PlayStation Store.

Finally, Kotaku claims that the new machine will also come with anti-used games measures, like the Xbox 720/Durango. Its source states that the Blu-ray or digital download version of the full game will be locked to the purchaser's PSN account. A game will always have to be authenticated online when first loaded, so a broadband connection will be a must.

We've no idea what that means for trade-in games, but, to be honest, with the painful and sad demise of GAME and Gamestation, that side of the market is diminishing in the UK anyway. At least, unlike some reports of the Durango, it seems Sony is keen to keep a disc drive on the new console.

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Tags: PlayStation 4 Gaming Sony SCE PlayStation PS4 Orbis

PlayStation 4 to be called Orbis originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 29 Mar 2012 09:17:00 +0100