Getting tired of all the World War games out there? I’m sure you’re not the only one, myself including. *cough*World at War*cough*. But, have you ever wonder what it would feel like being a part of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War? How about the battle of Antietam? I am sure you want to kill you want to kill a Spartan with your machine gun. Well you now can with 8 Monkey Labs newest release, Darkest of Days. At E3, I was one of the lucky few to find out about this new IP. Read More...

Wow, the dark brooding hero has put on a few pounds since last we saw him! Max Payne, who is now bald and sporting a pretty fierce beard, is back and in full force and gracing the cover of Game Informer.  Not only that, the guy is addicted to pain killers. Who didn't see that one coming? Max Payne 3 takes place in Sao Paolo, Brazil, with "fully destructible environments". Which means more stuff to shoot at and blow up.  Players will also experience "day and night cycles". Read More...

There are the Madden purists out there, there always will be. I cannot consider myself one of them because for all of the "innovations" EA throw into the Madden games - it will always be the same experience for me. Since EA secured the NFL license, there's been false start after false start for competitors to the gridiron throne. I give all the credit in the world to Blitz: The League and the 2k series for creating some compelling gameplay, but because of either: dated gameplay and graphics, or leaning too much on novelty gameplay, they were never able to achieve the same numbers of units sold. Here's hoping BackBreaker becomes a serious contender. Read More...

Sure, Jack Tretton was all fun and games (pun totally intended) at this year's SCEA E3 Press Conference, but being pissed in front of several hundred journalists wouldn't serve any good purpose. In a recent interview with CNBC, Tretton, the CEO and president of SCEA, expressed major disappointment in the fact that many of Sony's big E3 announcements got leaked beforehand. The PSP Go!, the PS3 Motion Controller, Metal Gear Solid: Peacewalker (the newest MGS for the PSP) and Gran Turismo (also for the PSP, and it should be noted that it had already been announced at the 2004 E3) were all leaked before the conference. Read More...

Activision has unleashed Map Pack 2 for download on both the PlayStation Store and Xbox Live Marketplace. The pack features 4 new maps entitled Banzai, Corrosion, Sub Pens, and Shi No Numa. Banzai takes place in a jungle deep in Japanese territory. Corrosion makes use of a rundown Russian train yard as a battleground. A bombed out Japanese submarine base is the site for Sub Pens. Shi No Numa which is Japanese for ‘Zombie Swamp’ adds a third map to face down the unstoppable zombie hordes. Read More...

From An Actual Bond Villain Henchman Being in the job of henching for someone who will be taking over the globe soon via our orbital space stations (No I'm not kidding), I felt it only right to check out The Agency. Partly to see how this new MMO for the PS3 and PC will handle. Partly to see what SOE is going to be training people to do so we can be prepared for it. Also partly because I just had to turn around after getting hands on with DC Universe Online. I'm a gamer and we're lazy. Read More...

Squirreled away in the back of the Los Angeles Convention Center’s West Hall during E3, Perfect World Entertainment showed off Runic Games’ Torchlight along with their other Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games.  Only minutes after putting my hands on this little dungeon crawler had I decided this game had no business being in the back any longer.  Torchlight by Runic Games is set as a Diablo-esque dungeon-crawling Action RPG, which is actually a good thing since the people behind it are some of the same people behind Diablo and Fate.  The story is that near the small mining town of Torchlight, a rich vein of ore has been found called Ember. Read More...

Brütal Legend While Activision tries to file a lawsuit against EA over this property, we who got to go to E3 where also bombarded with this game at the major booths much like Batman Arkham Asylum. Only there was no booth all to itself for this one. Also there was no Jack Black on site pimping the game like he did at the Brütal Legend infomercial pretending to be the Video Game Awards. That all aside, I waded through the line to get my dirty and sinful little hands on this title to give it a good go before the Demo comes out. Granted, it was only my hands and eyes that got to sample any of this game. Read More...

Batman: Arkham Asylum One game that seemed to be at every one of the big companies booths, sans Nintendo, was Batman Arkham Asylum. It even had it's own booth show casing it as well as an area in the Warner Brothers booth, with leather restraint chair for those who got to bonkers while checking out this game. You might be laughing, but we had to restrain Church at one point. Well he kind of just hopped into it for some reason, but this is not the point of this article. Read More...

A new Mario game was anticipated by the crowd as we all filed into the Nintendo E3 Media Briefing last Tuesday.  Many, including myself, were looking for a new Super Mario Galaxy, which we did receive.  That was not until much later in the show.  Well before that announcement was the announcement of the New Super Mario Bros. Wii.  More of a party game than a solo adventure, though it could be played that way, New Super Mario Bros. Read More...

You clutch the weapon, your breath short as your lungs are barely functioning. You try and remember every point of entry the enemy will come from. You can hear the echoes of their battle cries fill every precipice and crack in the walls – but you hold still and ready. To engage them fully would be suicide you think, and the only death you are willing to give allowance to is theirs. So you sit, and you wait. Each moment becoming more visceral then the last, and then you see them, and your body empties a war cry from every sinew, bone, and cell. Read More...

Let's be honest, while it may be a little early to be talking sequel, all of us that played Left 4 Dead could bet the house that a second incarnation was certain. On November 17th, just 364 days after the first, Valve will release Left 4 Dead 2 for the Xbox 360 and PC. Left 4 Dead 2 takes place during the same zombie outbreak as the first game, but features a new pair of 4 survivors, Rochelle, Coach, Ellis, and Nick. While it wasn't quite clear what the new campaigns were apart from the fact that it will take place in the South US (the game starts in Savannah and ends in New Orleans), Scott Dalton, a level designer on the game, said that more of the story will be explored, including the reason for the outbreak. Valve made sure to fix many complaints of the original game, and tweaks are apparent during the demo. Read More...

The boys from Bad Company are back and are in even more trouble as they face off in the cold Russian winter. While the focus of the Battlefield Bad Company series is certainly on the singleplayer campaign mode, the E3 demonstration was of a gold rush-style multiplayer map.Gold rush is essentially the same as it is from the first game, a team of attackers vs a team of defenders fighting over crates gold. While it is no longer called "gold rush" (the crates no longer contain gold) the objective is the same, secure and plant explosives on 8 crates (4 series of 2) or vice versa for the defenders.The multiplayer classes have been trimmed from 5 classes to 4 (support is no longer in the game), and while I prefer more classes (my favorite game in the series, Battlefield 2, has 7 playable classes with the option to play as the commander), I understand that it makes the game more accessible to gamers new to the series. Read More...

With all the huge news coming from Square-Enix, Activision, EA, etc, Konami decided to join in on the fun and make a huge announcement also. How? With a trailer of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. Also announced was the shocker of Kojima Productions working with MercurySteam on this title based on the classic game. As I stood in the middle of the Konami show floor looking up on their titan-tron waiting for the trailer to come up, one thing came to mind while I was waiting. "Will this game be another disappointment? Read More...

One of my surprises of the show was the game Section 8, coming from SouthPeak Games this fall. I was able to get a demo of this with the lead producer of the game. Section 8 is a futuristic sci-fi shooter with similar gameplay to that of Tribes and Battlefield 2. You have large map areas with 32 total players, two teams of 16 each. Each map has various objectives and areas your team must capture or complete to gain points for your side.As you spawn or respawn, you locate an area on the map that is a safe drop zone. Read More...