My Game Center

Rockstar’s Dan Houser reckons that games like GTA IV and Red Dead Redemption are only scratching the surface of what open world games can do.

Houser also revealed his hopes for the future saying that he hopes that regardless of the name on the box they’ll have made “a bunch of interesting games” in ten years time.

He said: “I think there’s something really interesting in the open world experience. obviously we’ve made like ten of them now and they still don’t feel boring to me. it still feels that we’re only scratching the surface of that potential. But who knows what we’ll be doing?”

“We’ll hopefully have done a bunch of interesting games in the next ten years,” Houser added. “That’s always the goal. I’ve never been that good at the futureology side of game-making. We never really care what the name is on the box, either. the name Grand Theft Auto, the name Max Payne, the name’s Red Dead, the name’s Table Tennis, it doesn’t really matter as long as the game’s cool. I would never have believed you would have been talking about this in ten years time. We were still talking about Space Invaders [ten years ago], and that was already 20, 30 years old then. Hopefully we’ll continue to do interesting stuff, that’s you know, that’s kind of all you can hope for.”

There is still no official sign of the next Grand Theft Auto title but Rockstar has confirmed that Max Payne 3 will be arriving in March of 2012.

I am not a fan of motion gaming, waggle, touch screens, or other so-called “casual controls.” It’s not that I write them off the moment I see them. I just have yet to see a game that uses those control options to make the experience better to gamers like me, who are well accustomed to a standard controller.

Just recently though, I saw a game that’s finally change my mind, and its name is Modnation Racers: Road Trip. Using the touch screen and back touch pad of the PlayStation Vita, the team at SCE San Diego have created a game that streamlines the creation tools that we know and love while maintaining all of the depth that we expect. 

Modnation Racers: Road Trip (PlayStation Vita)Developer: SCE Studios San DiegoPublisher: SCEARelease: February 22, 2012

For those unfamiliar, Modnation Racers is a the Sony exclusive kart racer with a heavy emphasis on creation and customization. Since the series’ launch last year, there have been over 2,000,000 creations available and shared, with approximately 500,000 of those being tracks. Fans of the series will be pleased to know then that Road Trip will be able to access all of those creations, day one. you can’t upload Road Trip creations for use on the PlayStation 3 or PlayStation Portable, though.

The experience of playing a handheld game versus a console game is distinguished most notably by the fact that handheld experiences must be quick bursts of fun that are as immediately satisfying as they are deep. For a game like Modnation, this can prove a challenge as you can conceivably spend hours building and perfecting a custom track. For Road Trip, SCE San Diego is making smart use of the PS Vita touch screen functionality to lessen the amount of time spent building from hours to mere minutes.

It starts with you choosing from a preset list of environments: jungles, island resorts, deserts and the like. after that, you simply draw the shape of the track from an overhead view of the environment. just touch down on the screen to draw and you have a track designing in literally seconds. It’s that simple.  from here, you can select the placement of finish lines, weapon drops, and boost pads just by selecting the option from the menu and touching the spot you want to place them at. or you can use the auto-populate feature if you don’t care to go too deep. There is also an option to use the Vita camera to make tracks out of what you’ve photographed. This was not demoed though, so I’m not sure how it works.

Once you have a track laid out, you can manipulate the surrounding environment with touch fairly simply. so when I wanted to lay out a lake, I simply selected the option from the menu, traced onscreen the area that I wanted to place my lake in, and watched the terrain form in an effect reminiscent of from Dust.

Road Trip also makes use of the back touch pad during track customization. when creating mountains for my track, I place my fingers on the back touch pad and rose the terrain with corresponding spots onscreen. when you have all the touch features working together, what you get is the ability to make complex and creative tracks in minutes. creating tracks in Road Trip is streamlined, amazingly intuitive and easy to use all while retaining the richness and depth that the series has built its name upon. 

While the touch controls shine the most in the track editor, they are also featured in the avatar and kart editor. Relegated mostly to Minority Report-style drag and drop, touch in the kart editor allows you to zoom in close and swap out kart components such as tires, suspension, spoilers, etc. in the avatar editor you use the touch controls in a similar manner, swapping out clothes and accessories. one cool feature though is Modnations’ use of the the Vita’s gyroscope. At anytime when customization a kart or avatar, you can shake the Vita to randomize your creation. It’s not the most fascinating feature ever, but it’s there and it works.

Our demo of Modnation Racers: Road Trip also showed off the game’s career mode, complete with over thirty tracks and events. If you like the series’ take on kart racing already then you will feel at home here. Drifting and drafting are back and intelligent use of them is as important as managing your boost, shortcuts, and weapons.

As I’ve said, I have never been interested in the whole motion/waggle/touch control craze of late. If every Kinect and move controller suddenly vanished tomorrow, the evil leprechaun on my shoulder would probably break into a river dance. Road Trip, though, uses touch to great effect that further elevates the core gameplay of the series. Handhelds are about quick fun, and Modnation is about creating cool stuff. Road Trip’s use of touch control supports both these design mantras and comes out the better for it.

Kinect Sports Season 2 for the Xbox 360 is exactly what you’d expect: more sports, voice commands, some neat multiplayer options, and that’s pretty much it. Older gamers or people looking for a deep experience are going to be let down; this is aimed at younger gamers, casual gamers, and people looking for a fun activity at parties using their Kinect. the game is able to provide these things with few problems.

The games offer differing amounts of control, and while playing Tennis or Baseball it’s mostly a matter of timing. in Skiing, you simply lean left and right, and jump to get air off the ramps. Darts requires a steady hand as you aim, pull back, and throw. Each game is easy to pick up and play, but precision and control are the trade-offs; once you learn the movements for each game, that’s pretty much it. the fun comes in comparing your scores with the other players in the room, setting up competitive matches both online or off, or even sending challenges to those on your friends list so they can compete with your best scores asynchronously. It’s an addictive touch that goes a long way towards keeping your interest in the game.

I played online with another reviewer, and we had a wonderful time with the trash talking, and the game throws a huge amount of goofy music at you while you play. It’s like a celebration of one-hit wonders, which goes a long way to maintain the game’s fun and goofy feel. It goes out of its way to be inviting and friendly, and the voice commands used to scoot around the menus work well and are a fun parlor trick to show people who’ve never seen the Kinect.

The $50 asking price seems steep for a game with so many familiar concepts, even with the high level of polish given to the experience. if you have kids or frequent family gatherings, you’re going to enjoy this. if not, think of it as a weekend rental. this isn’t a bad game by any stretch, but we need to move past the Wii Sports model for these games if motion control is hoping to stay around for the long haul.

A lot of people are questioning when we’re going to see the next home consoles from Microsoft and Sony, but along with Bioshock creator, Ken Levine, Gears of War lead designer Cliff Bleszinski believes that there’s still plenty more to come from this generation, and all it takes is a bit of coding,  magic and time.

“with creative programming you can squeeze anything out of any given platform,” Bleszinski told Edge Magazine. “Go back to the demo scene where these guys would take a 286 PC and in 38k make a demo that rivalled the most triple-A game of the time. ”

“It’s just a matter of code magic, time and effort. I don’t know how much longer the 360 will be around, but I’m sure that if we have a product coming out before the end of [its] lifecycle we’ll continue to try and squeeze more water from that stone.”

Still, the designer admits that he had to tinker with the current Xbox 360 hardware to finish his latest game, Gears of War 3.

“We’re now at the point where it’s not learning how to use the hardware, it’s learning to trick the hardware into doing what you want it to do,” he explained. “the first thing I was ecstatic about was the new lighting…we’re at the point where an artist can just let the lighting breathe, a nice brick wall can just be a nice brick wall; it doesn’t need 8000 pipes layered on it.”

The Colorado Avalanche got a sniff of a comeback in the third period of Friday night’s game versus the Edmonton Oilers, but that fire was quickly extinguished. With the Oilers up 2-0, Avs center Ryan O’ Reilly brought Colorado to within a goal, after he netted his first score of the season on a power play at 5:42. but just 17 seconds later, Edmonton center Shawn Horcoff put the puck past Avs goalie Semyon Varlamov to extend their lead back to two goals, and they wouldn’t look back from there.

With the win, Edmonton unchains themselves from a tie with the Avalanche for first place in the Northwest Division, which they’ll sit atop at 14 points. the Avalanche remains winless at home, but they’ll have two more chances to wipe that away— on Sunday versus Los Angeles and Wednesday versus Phoenix— before they head back out on the road. but before they look ahead to their next few match ups, they’ll certainly be kicking themselves over losing a game where they put 22 more shots on net than their opponents.

For more coverage, visit our Avalanche blog Mile High Hockey or our Oilers Blog Copper And Blue.

It’s been three years. Long for the satisfying crunch of another man’s skull under your boot? Addicted to hearing your enemies scream as you burn them alive? In desperate need to use your chainsaw for something besides carpentry? you know what you need? NO, not another trip to the Catholic Church you need Gears of War 3 all up in your Xbox Gears is back and offers the same ball busting, gut spewing pleasure we all know and love. With a few additions like Beast Mode and four player co-op, this is a package bleeding at the sides with content. Gears of War 3 includes the longest campaign Epic has ever created, and the most refined multiplayer experience in the series. Get on your athletic cup. This installment is so good, you’ll feel like you got kicked in the nuts.

The campaign starts about 2 years after you sunk Jacinto at the end of the last game. The COG military has collapsed and everyone is doing their part to gather whatever supplies necessary to survive. you play Marcus Fenix once again and assemble a team to kick some locust ass all over the planet Sera. The story kicks off with a data disk Fenix receives from the former COG chairman. The disk holds a video message from his father saying he knows how to stop the locusts, and it has something to do with Imulsion (Sera’s version of oil and the cause of 80 years of world conflict before the locusts showed up). The most curious detail in the video comes from daddy Fenix looking older than when they thought he died. Marcus sets out to find his father and unravel the secret behind what he was talking about.

For the first time in the series, you can grab three friends and hop right into the campaign (Previous installments only allowed two player co-op). The feature is nice but I can’t help but think it was a bit of a wasted opportunity. The first Gears ushered in a new era of co-op, allowing players to work together in ways besides just splitting up enemies to shoot. one player could hold a spotlight on the other so he wouldn’t get devoured by the game’s night loving critters. Some levels had you taking separate paths to open doors for each other in order to progress. It was a type of co-op I hadn’t seen in shooters and couldn’t wait for more. I expected Gears of War 3 to carry exciting new sequences like this with four players, but the amount of split paths and separate jobs are dramatically less than before. you still split up sometimes, but it’s always 2 and 2. Where’s my cool X-Men moments that can only happen with four people helping each other out? The feature definitely feels like just a way to get four players into the campaign instead of an exciting new opportunity for fresh gameplay.

The single player still packs a punch (did I just say that?) and delivers quality set pieces and theaters of war that rival the best shooters out there. Every act is full of something memorable and screams for multiple play throughs. As if this wasn’t enough, Epic also crafted us the best Gears multiplayer experience to date. As soon as you’re done ripping through the story, you can duke it out in competitive multiplayer, crush some A.I. in Horde Mode, or crush even more A.I. in the brand new Beast Mode.

Competitive multiplayer is addicting and has definitely come a long way from the glitch heavy Gears of War 1. Everything seems smoother in general. any online game is susceptible to connection problems and exploits, but Gears of War 3 has finally reached the industry standard in multiplayer lag. you can fight online across ten maps in 5 vs. 5 matches. The game doesn’t boast a huge number of multiplayer modes and none of them are overly unique. A few variations of death match, king of the hill, and capture the flag. each one has a Gears spin on it, but none of them offer a set of rules that can’t be found anywhere else. The series has always fallen short on modes, but the matches play so well, it doesn’t hurt the online experience a great deal.

If player vs. player bores you, hop in to Horde where fifty waves of A.I. locusts are just dying to get their head blown off by you. The Horde Mode, first introduced in Gears of War 2, allows you and four friends to fight as soldiers against the A.I. locusts in waves. At wave fifty, the game ends and the victory chants ensue. In Gears of War 2, the explanation could pretty much stop there. In Gears of War 3, there’s a lot more at your disposal. There is now an entire economy to get lost in as you fight the good fight. Every enemy you kill in horde gives you money. Money buys defenses (turrets, spikes, ammo). Buying defenses unlocks more powerful ordinance over time. This adds a whole new level to Horde and keeps you coming back. Your unlocks carry over from match to match, so you’ll want to hop back in numerous times just to see every piece of equipment you can acquire. A new unlock is a new cool way to rip a locust apart.

A brand new mode called Beast allows you to do the same thing from a different perspective. you are a part of the locust horde, charging towards a group of defending soldiers with your grotesque brethren at your side. Kill every last human you see. unfortunately, Beast mode isn’t nearly as robust as Horde and doesn’t really seem needed. There are only 12 waves and it doesn’t offer anywhere near the depth of any other feature in the game. Killing some humans with a few friends is all in good fun, but you won’t be coming back to this one often.

Gears of War 3 is a fantastic shooter. It boasts a quality campaign everyone should play, with an online component that will keep you engaged for months. With the promise of DLC, it’s likely you’ll keep this disc in your Xbox for a long time. It isn’t without its flaws. The co-op could have been better, online modes could have been more plentiful, and Beast mode felt like an afterthought. however, each one of these is instantly forgettable when you’re screaming at your friends and blasting away grunts until 4am. Buy Gears of War 3. love Gears of War 3. Ignore all of life’s responsibilities. Instant bliss is guaranteed.

At this point, saying an Uncharted game is akin to playing a top-tier Hollywood blockbuster — albeit a blockbuster that would have cost upwards of $500 million had it been made into an actual, live-action feature film – is almost something of a cliché. I’m on record for thinking that videogames have of late been beating big time movie studios at their own game, and 2007’s Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and especially 2009’s Uncharted 2: Among Thieves have been at the tip of that particular spear.

And yet I was still unprepared for just how gobsmackingly great Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception would be. (Be warned: MILD SPOILERS follow for this Playstation 3 title, but I promise an emphasis on “mild.”) I expected the massive action set pieces to get even more sweeping and outrageous, and hoo boy, are they ever. But I can scarcely think of another game — other than last year’s masterpiece Red Dead Redemption, perhaps – that has spent so much time dissecting its hero’s inner life, building its story from who the character is and has been, and still feel so light and fun and, yes, even human-scaled amid all the epic derring-do.

This isn’t to say Uncharted 3 has, ahem, charted brand new territory in action-adventure storytelling. It liberally references Indiana Jones and the last Crusade, Lawrence of Arabia, The Bourne Ultimatum, The Poseidon Adventure, even The Mummy (and not in the way you’re likely thinking, promise). It just does so with a healthy dose of reverence and a plucky drive to mix those familiar elements together into a wildly imaginative, finger-twitching cocktail.

Nathan Drake’s quest this time out is to find Ubar, a.k.a. Iram of the Pillars, a lost city in the Arabian peninsula that his namesake Sir Francis Drake was tasked by Queen Elizabeth I with locating. That family connection isn’t perfunctory, either. after an opening brawl in a London pub, the game flashes back to Nathan Drake as a roughly 14-year-old street urchin, casing a Columbian museum for artifacts the 16th century Drake left behind that point to Ubar’s location. That also happens to be when Nathan first met Sully, his mentor and father figure, as well as Uncharted 3’s main villain, an iron-fisted British woman named Marlowe, who’s like Helen Mirren gone deliciously evil.

NEXT PAGE: Nathan fixes up his facility at fisticuffs

Assassins Creed is one of the most famous games. There are many users who complained that it starts lagging in middle of the game. The surprising thing is that their computers were conforming to the minimum system requirements of the game. we will discuss the solutions for this problem.

Here are the ways to fix Assassins Creed lags:

1. Update your drivers
2. Obsolete Registry Entries
3. Modify the Game Configurations
4. Modify the Network Related Configurations
5. Increase the Virtual Memory
6. Close Unnecessary Programs

Update your Drivers

Sometimes the game lags because of outdated graphics drivers. make sure that you are using the latest version of your graphics driver. Download it from the graphics card manufacturer’s website.
Obsolete Registry Entries

Obsolete registry entries mainly cause Assassins Creed lags. you have to perform a registry repair as shown below:

1. Download, install and run a Registry Cleaner and PC Optimizer.
2. Click Registry Cleaner | start Scan.
3. Follow the simple wizard.

Modify the Game Configurations

Game lagging can be due to incorrect or unsupported configurations made by the user. you need to change the game configurations as mentioned below:

1. Open Assassins Creed game.
2. Click Gear icon. [At the right hand side on the top of the Launcher window.]
3. Click Yes when prompted to disable saving your configurations online.
4. Exit both the launcher and the game.
5. Open my Computer.
6. Browse the following directory:
C:Program FilesUbisoftUbisoft Game Launcher
7. Double click Settings.ini file.
8. Search the string SaveOnline
9. Replace its value from True to False. for example, SaveOnline=False
10. Press Ctrl + S.
11. Delete the folder named Stroage from the same directory which is currently opened.

Modify the Network Related Configurations

Problem connecting the Proxy server may cause Assassins Creed lags. you need to modify the network related configurations of the game to fix this problem. The instructions are as follows:

1. Open Internet Explorer.
2. Click Tools | Internet Options.
3. Click Connections tab.
4. Click LAN Settings button under Local Area Network (LAN) Settings frame.
5. Note down the information found in the new dialog. for example, your Proxy Address/ Proxy Host Name and Port. This information will require in future steps.
6. Click OK | OK.
7. Open my Computer.
8. Browse the following directory:
C:Program FilesUbisoftUbisoft Game Launcher
9. Open the file named Settings.ini
10. Add the following instructions at the bottom of the file contents:
[ProxySettings]
ProxyHost=proxyhostname:proxyport
OverrideProxySettings=1
11. Press Ctrl + S.

Increase the Virtual Memory

Virtual Memory is the space used on your hard disk as long as the Random Access Memory gets insufficient to run a game or a program. To fix the Assassins Creed lags, you shall increase the amount of virtual memory.

1. Right click my Computer.
2. Select Properties.
3. Click Advanced System Settings.
4. Click Advanced tab.
5. Click Settings button under Performance frame.
6. Click Advanced tab.
7. Click Change button under Virtual Memory frame.
8. Uncheck the box Automatically manage paging file size for all drives.
9. Increase the amount of virtual memory more than the existing.
10. Click OK | OK | OK.
11. Restart the computer.

Close Unnecessary Programs

Running too many programs usually causes in Assassins Creed lags. you shall close all other programs before running the game. be sure to close them completely from their System Tray icons.

Highly Recommended

EA Sports has revealed the roster of 23 tennis greats that will be featured in the upcoming Grand Slam Tennis 2 – slated to be out in early 2012 for the Xbox 360 and PS3. The roster is headlined by names from the past including John McEnroe, Bjorn Borg, and Pete Sampras which are mixed with those currently playing and relevant such as Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Andy Murray.

Grand Slam Tennis 2 is the only game to feature all four Grand Slam Tournaments and will include “Grand Slam Classics” matches to re-play famous moments, right stick analog shot controls, and PlayStation Move support (no Kinect for Xbox 360).

Bjorn BorgBoris BeckerPat CashLindsay DavenportNovak DjokovicStefan EdbergChris EvertRoger FedererJustine HeninLleyton HewittAna IvanovicRafael NadalMartina NavratilovaKei NishikoriJohn McEnroeAndy MurrayAndy RoddickPete SamprasMaria SharapovaMichael StichJo-Wilfried TsongaSerena WilliamsVenus Williams

If you are looking for a truthful review of Mass Effect 2, you’ve come to the right place. I recently borrowed the game from a friend and figured I would write up a little review of the game. Let me start by saying the graphics are extremely detailed. The way the game artists put the details in to the game is amazing.

Personally I thought the story line was pretty good and was long. The equipment on this game had everything I would have expected out of a first person shooter. Hilarious thing is, my fiance actually told me to get off the game because I was on it forever. For me, I didn’t notice how long I was playing because I was pulled in to the game.

It felt like I was only playing for 1 hour but it was more like 6 hours. throughout most of the storyline I found my self liking the game more and more. After about 8 hours, the game had me hooked. The great thing about this game, unlike others, it has a detailed, long, and action packed story line. if you get a chance to play this game, you will see exactly what I am talking about. So let’s discuss about the final Mass Effect 2 review. I say try the game.

When you add a sweet story line, amazing graphics, killer sound effects, and sweet guns, it usually turns out very pleasing. And that’s precisely what Mass Effect 2 is. The final Mass Effect 2 Review – 4 Stars.