Speculation online has been also rife about whether that means an Orange Box 2, the original Orange Box came with Half Life 2 Episode 2, Team Fortress2 and Portal. Even on it’s own Portal 2 will do well but if it was bundled with Half life 2 Episode 3 then potentially Valve is looking at a enormous hit.

Portal 2 is set to include a CO-OP mode and is rumoured to return the player to Aperture Science Labs. New surprising characters are also expected to appear in the game with new areas to explore at Aperture.

Just imagine how complex the puzzles will be with a CO-OP mode using two player it promises much, including another cake maybe. The cake is a lie…is a lie but GLaDOS is back

19 year old Wellington student, Tony Autridge, has been eliminated along with nine others from the GT Academy in Silverstone, UK.

Despite his early elimination, Tony describes his time at the GT Academy as a once in a lifetime opportunity that he will never forget.

“Who would have thought that playing a PS3 and entering the GT Academy competition would lead me all the way to Silverstone? I have learnt invaluable skills – it was like starting at the very highest level of motorsport, constantly learning about driving techniques on and off the track,” says Tony.

During the five days that Tony was at the Academy, he was involved in a rigorous racing boot-camp with nineteen other competitors from around the world. Finalists were tested and measured on driving skills through a series of challenges which included handling Nissan cars in both the virtual and real world.

Honing competitors’ driving skills was not the only focus of the demanding boot-camp: mental and physical tests were also undertaken to equip competitors with the right mindset and attitude to succeed in the racing world.

Tony was able to experience this race-winning attitude first-hand, as he worked alongside former F1 boss Eddie Jordan, two-time Nürburgring 24-Hour winner Sabine Schmitz and Formula One and Le Mans 24 Hour winner Johnny Herbert.

Whilst Tony says that leaving the Academy was difficult and a touch disappointing, he is looking forward to seeing his family and planning the rest of the year after his plane touches down on Friday.

“I know quite a lot of people would have given anything to be in my shoes – I got to train with the best the world has to offer, I learnt a lot and I got to drive some pretty amazing cars – it’s been a bit like a dream really,” says Tony.

David Hine, Director of Sales and Marketing for Sony Computer Entertainment New Zealand is thrilled with Tony’s involvement at GT Academy.

“With over 1.1 million people having tried out for the GT Academy globally, Tony has achieved something that only a handful can lay claim to. This is an outstanding achievement for New Zealand’s first representative at the GT Academy, and we once again congratulate Tony on representing New Zealand from the living room to the racing track”, says David Hine.

Essentially Heavy Rain is a rather fancy point and click game like the Broken Sword series on the PSX but with much more immersive control features and very impressive emotional content that really pulls at the old heart strings. Heavy Rain is also a strong Mature game  because of violence and strong language but also because of the very realistic nudity and interactive love scene. It’s all artsy fartsy done and according to the developers its critical to the story…I dunno I just felt a tad voyeuristic.

Luckily the story is strong enough, for the most part, for the game to be more than a series of titillating set scenes with quick time events. Moreover the plot is wonderfully inticate with multiple layers as you play four different characters all intertwined around the Origami serial killer. It is a mature game and would probably not be a best fit for the avid Halo or Modern Warfare gamer because its not a quick instant game with’ instant coffee’ kills.

Heavy Rain is compelling and eminently playable because of two aspects of the gameplay. One; that the story is incredibly emotional. It is a sincere and tender but tragic story with characters you actually like and care about and fret over. It is also a cruel game because you can if you are not quick enough or make an error with the QTE’s do severe harm to any of your playable characters and/or the characters around you. Some errors can be fatal which inextricably changes the story.

Secondly the QTE’s are expertly designed and crafted, the best I’ve ever seen in the video game. Sure changing a nappy using a quick time event sounds tedious and it is but its also intricate. But other QTE’s especially the hand to hand combat scenes are brilliant. The rely on quick reflexes and the flow of required button pressing actions is wonderfully organic and feels natural if you keep the default button map of course.

But if you mess the QTE’s up there can be sometimes no replay option and this really really effects the story and to be frank I found it was never in a good way for the plot, gameplay or enjoyment of the game. It’s a serious issue, not flaw, that can shorten the game. I found that once I completed a scene I had the option of going back to try and get the result I wanted but the fact I had to do that was a tad disappointing. I understand the designers made it to be used as a differing plot device and for replayability’s sake but the consequences for stuffing up just seemed to immense.

The playable characters a private detective, a desolute father, a female reporter and a FBI agent are all fun to play and are all reasonably believeable and have their own unique traits, skills and stories. My favourite and the one that seemed so well acted was the private detective. A classic noir Humphrey Bogart type character. The least favourite was probably the FBI agent he had some gadgets that were very high tech and felt a little out of place in the story setting and he was also a bit wimpy. The father is played tragically and pasionately well while the reporter is a wee bit mysterious.

And in reference to the mysterious, I come to the end of the game itself. It is an amazingly tight production that for 3/4’s of the game is an absolute winner. But as the game comes to it’s twisty conclusion the results of your choices good or bad, QTE’s successful or not really impact the game and that is where plot holes start to emerge and critical nuances and twists in the story just mysteriously and suddenly appear. It feels frightfully disjointed and unless you play through the chapters again to get the result you want it ultimately leaves a sour taste in your mouth.

Heavy Rain is an attempt to do something different and for huge portions of the game it succeeds way beyond its scope but somewhere along the way the game loses it’s way and it’s focus and unless you replay through the chapters the endings can be very morose and very unsatisfactory. Not that everything has to have a happy ending but in this instance the endings good or bad are a symptom of the issues of gameplay in the last third of the game. I still say it’s worth a play through if just for the original concept and the bravery it took to make an upmarket point and click game.

And if you think I am being overly critical of the game, you have a point I admit, but the critique is a result of how I feel about the characters and how much of a connection they made with me. I have never felt such a deep affinity to any game character as much as I do with these guys so I desperately wanted this game to succeed and I suppose if you look at it from that perspective the did amazingly well. Let me end by saying this Heavy Rain is flawed but genius.

Jason West and Vince Zampella, who co-founded Activision’s Infinity Ward studio, sued the company in Los Angeles Superior Court yesterday, claiming breach of contract and wrongful termination. They seek at least US$36 million (NZ$52 million) and control over Modern Warfare, a subset of the Call of Duty combat games, according to a copy of the complaint.

Activision, the world’s largest video-game publisher, conducted a “pretextual” investigation to fire the Infinity Ward co-heads and avoid making a royalty payment due on March 31, according to the complaint.

“Activision terminated their employment weeks before they were to be paid substantial royalty payments as part of their existing contracts for Modern Warfare 2,” West and Zampella’s lawyers at O’Melveny & Myers LLP wrote in a statement.

Maryanne Lataif, a spokeswoman for Santa Monica, California-based Activision Blizzard, called the complaint “meritless.” She said Activision owns the Call of Duty franchise and will continue making new versions.

“Activision shareholders provided these executives with the capital they needed to start Infinity Ward, as well as the financial support, resources and creative independence that helped them flourish and achieve enormous professional success and personal wealth,” Lataif said in an emailed statement.

source smh

“We thought that the Orange Box didn’t put our best foot forward with the PS3 community. We don’t want to do something like that again on the PS3. We want to give PS3 owners the best possible experience.

“Some of that will come from us learning and getting better. Before we can go onto the PS3 again, we want to make sure we’re better at developing for it.”

The PS3 version of The Orange Box – a huge commercial and critical success on Xbox 360 – was criticised by some quarters after Valve outsourced its development to EA.

The game was marked down by reviewers – with frame rate issues becoming a common bugbear.

If you claim to be a gamer and have not played BioShock then my question would be “Why not!!?” BioShock is a well deserved and well acclaimed Game of the Year in 2008 across many publications. It was an unbelievably well crafted game that bought a delicious sense of foreboding and menace in the style of a 1950’s theme farce. Set in the underwater Utopian turned Dystopian city of Rapture, BioShock was a triumph.

Not surprisingly we have returned to Rapture but some eight years after the first game and this time you play as a Big Daddy. A Big Daddy is the giant protectors of the Little Sisters in the original that can only exist in an atmospheric diving suit and the beginning plot line in BioShock 2  is that you are frantically searching for the Little Sister that you were programmed to protect.

A Big Sister

Along the way you discover a twisting complex plot by Rapture’s leader Sofia Lamb to use your Little Sister to rule Rapture and beyond forever. At her command are the Big Sisters, really really agile and fast killers in a lithe diving suit like the Big Daddys, and a collection of malcontents, splicers and scientists. Combat is again divided into the use of either genetic powers known as Plasmids or conventional weaponry like shotguns, pistols and a machine gun all of which are extensively upgradeable. Gene tonics which enhance your performance are also still in the game.

This upgradeable ability is still a huge part of BioShock 2 and is very much the prize for the effort in achieving a level complete or winning a battle. As with the original the options are exhaustive and some are not particularly useful, warranted or interesting but they are there to add to the “whole” of the game. A new feature is the ability to duel wield and battle with both plasmids and guns at the same time.  This is highly effective against some of the big Brute Splicers, other Big Daddys and the Big Sisters. My recommendation? freeze ‘em then shoot ‘em.

Now BioShock 2 in it’s own right is a very good game but in comparing it to the original highlights some issues that you could not necessarily criticize the game for but it does force you to consider “Is this as good as the original?” Now my old dad use to say to me “No form of comparison will give a positive result” and he was right because my expectations of the opening act of the game was set impossibly high because of the original and in the concluding scenes of the intro to BioShock 2 I felt a tad deflated.

That sense of “gulp” and “Uh Oh whats coming around the corner” was not there. The Splicers for instance don’t seem to be so predatory this time, flying at you from all angles is somewhat  lessened. This is all due to the fact that I’ve been to Rapture before . Familiarity breeds contempt I s’pose and Rapture just doesn’t seem to be as foreboding as it once was.

At least not initially but then it kicks up a gear as you begin to unravel the complexity of the story. The combat that had felt a bit homogenized, that is all blended to be the same begins to gather i’ts own identity. You stop wandering through endless halls and corridors only for the sake of ADAM or EVE collection and the reason for what you are doing starts to get fleshed out. The choices you make over rescuing or harvesting Little Sisters and being merciful or not over some other key characters begins to impact the game.

The enemy AI becomes more discerning and I begin to realise that after an iffy start BioShock 2 is still better than almost anything out there. You have a menacing foe and a story that never seems to be quite what you think it is. The choices you make to progress the game are leading you inextricably to your destruction if you are to save your Little Sister. What are you gonna do then sacrifice yourself or save yourself? In the end the choice is yours or is it?

Now one thing I need to warn about is the Drill Specialist Plasmid that becomes available at one point. As a Big Daddy you have access to use the Drill as a weapon and Drill Specialist plasmid allows you to become very proficient at it but if you do equip this be prepared to lose almost all other conventional weapons. Your plasmids remain but it took me some googling time to discover why I had lost my weaponry.

My favourite plasmid was the Swarm because you just send them into rooms in advance and they take out waiting enemies. My shotgun or machine gun were my firepower of choice and I used the trap plasmids and trap rivets extensively too especially when harvesting ADAM from corpses with Little Sisters that I had rescued.

The multiplayer option in the game is a new addition. It’s set during Rapture’s civil war and although still growing is a lot of fun. The civil war takes place ten years before the original BioShock and you can get out and kill your gamer friends through the Utopian device called Rapture.

BioShock 2 still looks great but I had to adjust the screen settings to make it a bit darker and the shadows a bit scarier. The cut scenes look fantastic and are critical to understanding the story. The endings, of which there are four, run in a similar vein to the original and also look excellent. I do suggest a multiple play through to all the alternate endings. From a controls point of view I played this on the PS3 and the original on the 360. I think I prefer the 360 button map for some reason although the difference is not that much.

So if you are into the Art Deco and the Big Brother is watching you thing BioShock 2 is an excellent game. It has it’s faults but for all that you will play a game that has better design and more well developed characters than many a block buster movie. As a FPS purely and simply it’s standard fare but that should not be what you play it for because BioShock 2 is more than a sum of its parts its an exercise in moralistic design coupled with the ability to effectively kill everyone and everything that cares for you or you care about. The choice over whether that happens is not entirely upto you but you play a big part.

10. Killzone 2: $45 million

One of the most anticipated PS3 titles, and one which has been in development for over four years, Killzone 2’s budget was originally $20 million. Then it was upped to $30 million. As development was extended by another full year, the budget went north of $40 million, and most estimates put it at $45 million. Higher estimates put it at over 41 million Euro, which translates to $56 million USD — but this number has never been confirmed by anyone at developer Guerrilla.

9. Final Fantasy XII: $48 million

The Final Fantasy games have been known for their outstanding quality, length and sheer production value. They’ve also been known as some of the most expensive games to have ever come out from Japan, and Final Fantasy XII had a budget of a whopping $48 million, excluding any marketing costs. The sequel, Final Fantasy XIII is rumored to have had at least a 50% higher budget, however, this hasn’t been made official (yet).

8. LA Noire: $50 million

La Noire was recently cited as “one of the most expensive games in development today”, by Tom Crago, the president of Game Developers’ Association of Australia. While this might have been exaggerated in order to shine some spotlight on Australia’s game developers (LA Noire is developed in Australia), it’s no secret that Rockstar has given LA Noire a massive budget, upwards of $50 million, to create a truly cinematic video game, where most of 1940s Los Angeles has been recreated and is fully explorable.

7. APB, $50 million

APB has been in development close to 5 years now, and Realtime Worlds have often stated that it’s the most expensive game they’ve ever worked on — Realtime Worlds founder Dave Jones had to raise Venture Capital, $50 million of it, to make sure that APB has enough money to sustain further development. The official budget is exactly $50 million, but Realtime Worlds is set to spend millions each year supporting and expanding the MMO.

6. Halo 3, $55 million

The Halo franchise has been so successful for Bungie and Microsoft that they virtually had an unlimited budget on Halo 3, as it had to be the best and most impressive game in almost all aspects when it was released. It pretty much was, at a price of $55 million, which excludes over $200 million Microsoft spent promoting the game.

5. Metal Gear Solid 4, $60 million

The biggest, pretties and most complex Metal Gear Solid game, one with hours and hours of cut scenes, amazing production values and one of the best visuals at its time, Metal Gear Solid 4 took 4 full years to make, at a price tag of $60 million, shared between Kojima Producitons and Sony .

4. Too Human, $60+ million

Sometimes, game budgets, just like movie budgets, tend to go over board and the final product ends up costing a lot more than originally planned. Too Human faced many issues during its development time, chief of which was the long and expensive struggle between Epic games and the Unreal Engine 3, where developer Silicon Knights abandoned the engine and started making their own — at a time when the game was almost complete. This added at least another $10 million to the budget, according to some sources.

3. Shenmue, $70 million

A game which held the record as most expensive game for nearly 10 years, Shenmue’s budget was unheard of at the time of it’s development — a $70 million budget for a SEGA dreamcast game. Shenmue offered a vast and explorable area, a complete weather system, and so many fine details and features that games even today don’t have. However, many failed to notice everything the game had to offer, and the game ultimately disappointed in sales.

2. Gran Turismo 5: $80 million

What’s set to become the biggest and greatest racing game in history, Gran Turismo has been in development for over 5 years now, and features over 1,000 cars, each painstakingly recreated for with extreme realism (and perfection) in mind. Its official budget as of mid 2008 was $60 million, and two years later when the game hits the stores, it will reach a staggering $80 million, making it the second most expensive game in history.

1. Grand Theft Auto 4: $100 million

When it comes to sheer production values, sheer amount of features, the details, no game beats Grand Theft Auto 4. The scope of the production dwarfs any other game: over 1,000 people worked on the game for over 3 and a half years, doing everything from studying New York city with cameras that recorded city traffic for months, to contacting over 2,000 people just to obtain the rights to the hundreds of music tracks that can be listened to in the game. Price to record a master for each track ran at around $10,000 and that excludes the license and royalty fees. There’s enough content in the game to keep the average gamer immersed for at least 100 hours. There should be, with a budget of $100 million, GTA 4 is the most expensive video game ever made.

source http://www.digitalbattle.com

Or we can just kill things!

The real Dante’s Inferno is part of a poem called The Divine Comedy and written by Dante between 1308 and 1320. It deals with Dante descending into Hell guided by the poet Virgil at first and then a woman called Beatrice who he loved but only from a far. And that is pretty much where any resemblance the game has to the poem ends.

In the game there is Dante, a medieval crusader, who descends into hell meets the poet Virgil who comments every now and then describing the levels you are about to face and plays the odd critical role deeper into the game. Beatrice appears as his wife and lover, she’s quite often semi naked, who’s soul is been taken by Lucifer after she is brutally murdered. The game is centered around the fact that Dante descends into Hell to rescue Beatrice. So with that tenuous grip on the original story the game begins.

Now there is no way around the next statement about Dante’s Inferno so I might as well get it out at the beginning of this. Dante’s Inferno is a God of War clone. There I said and wrote it and I’m not sorry. Let me say that this comparison is not a bad thing for the most part. The combat is similar, read almost the same, a third person view of hack ‘n slash combined with a bit of magic. The leveling up is similar too in structure and style…substance, to be honest I didn’t put the God of War disc in the appropriate console to compare but let me say this Dante’s Inferno reminds me at every turn of God of War.

If the game does suffer in the comparison to God of War at all it’s in the story to be frank and the elements that make up the story, this maybe because Dante’s  story is not as widely known as Greek mythology. Where as the aforementioned other title is a vicious visceral game, Dante’s Inferno is well a bit weirdly macabre and uncomfortable and sometimes bordering on the ridiculous.

Case in point is the Lust level of Hell where you are confronted with a giant moaning, gyrating and bare breasted Cleopatra who sends mutant toddlers out of her nipples, armed with sickles where their forearms should be. And yes I said nipples. And I haven’t even mentioned the nude demon women with phallic styled tentacles growing out of their groins which they wield as a weapon – to defeat this attack you naturally have to grab hold of said tentacle and spin around to hurl it to its demise, I’m not kidding I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

Enough of the comparisons though, except to say Dante is a much more appealing anti hero than Kratos from God of War, he has a bit more grace about him and is an eminently more likable albeit a similarly flawed character.  The strength of this game then is in the set pieces chock full of QTEs – quick time events – which are truly epic and occur in multiple series that also include analog stick movement. The death scenes concluding the QTEs are bloody and involve vulgar parting of limbs or splitting of bodies longitudely that’s vertically from head to groin.

The QTEs also come into play with controlling some rather large monstrosities by a well scripted use of the Death’s Scythe, your main weapon, into the skull of the beasts. They are rather large and breathe fire some of them and stomp and punch. Your other main weapon is your range holy cross weapon that fires multiple white crosses at anything you aim at…it’s pretty cool.

This then nicely segues into the ‘punish’ and ‘absolve’ part, which is really the currency of the game. When you dispatch many of the demons and damned souls you can choose to ‘punish’ or ‘absolve’ them, whatever your choice you build up points either holy or unholy which allows you to purchase upgrades and gain experience. The absolve choice takes you to a mini game of collecting souls depending how quick you are in pushing buttons, the punish choice just leads to evisceration.

You will need all the upgrades and powers your combat victories will provide you to battle through the levels or circles of hell. Some enemies need to be dealt with by holy weapons others by the unholy ones. The combat does lose a little momentum as you progress through the game but it is frantic and frenzied at times and brutal did I impress upon everyone previously of it’s brutality? My favourite circles of hell to play through were probably Greed and Limbo, the death scene of the King Minos boss in Limbo is well designed and memorable. While Greed has some excellent platforming aspects to it as Dante battles his father.

The AI, especially the enemy AI, later in the game is quite clever in that it regularly has little fiery imps sneak up from behind whilst being attacked by the clumsy but large creatures in the front. Although the boss levels after an encouraging start fall away in difficulty until closer to the end of the game where they make a comeback.

Environmental puzzles abound and some of the more physical ones that involve multiple switches and moving parts are quite challenging although why there are switches in and complex machines in a medieval version of hell is beyond me. The art of the game goes from the lush and the grand to body waste in the Gluttony circle of hell. And what I mean by that is golden pools or lakes with damned souls drowning in…well…effluent.

So it’s a strangely weird and ghoulish game with some moments of breath taking set scenes and well designed QTEs. It is an odd mixture of the divine and the grotesque and in some respects defies the action adventure genre because it’s so arty and surreal. With combat that goes from excellent to the monotonous from the dynamic to the button mashing in the end it’s a game that will enthrall and appall in pretty much equal parts.

I am in San Francisco today where we are hosting our X10 media event. This invite only event gives our media friends the chance to hear some news, get updates on some of the upcoming games and (more importantly) get hands on time with some of the titles.

Here, in no specific order, are 10 things you need to know coming out of X10 today:

• The Halo Reach multiplayer beta will kick off on May 3. You will be able to access the beta via the Halo 3: ODST game disc.

• Dead Rising 2 will release in North America on Aug. 31, Japan on Sept. 2 and Europe on Sept. 3.
• Dead Rising: CASE ZERO an exclusive download only on Xbox LIVE, will launch prior to the full game and provide a playable prologue that bridges the story between the two titles.
• Alan Wake will launch May 18 in North America and May 21 in Europe. Players can pre-order the title to receive the Bright Falls Bonus Pack, which includes exclusive content like Avatar gear, an Xbox LIVE theme, and a “making of” video.
• The Xbox 360 Final Fantasy XIII Special Edition Bundle will release starting March 9 for $399, and include a 250GB Hard Drive, two Wireless Controllers, exclusive downloadable content and a Standard Edition copy of the game.
• Toy Soldiers will kick off the Xbox LIVE Arcade Block Party on March 3
• Perfect Dark, Scrap Metal and Game Room will launch this March as a part of the Xbox LIVE Arcade Block Party.
• Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction will release at retailers starting April 13 in North America, April 16 in the United Kingdom, and April 28 in Japan.
• Lost Planet 2 will launch in North America and Europe on May 18.
• Fable III will be available this holiday.

“At the venue for our X10 event. A LOT of cool stuff to talk about starting tomorrow. Hint: SCDR2F3HRLP2 and more #X10Xbox”

Ok..a couple of more new clues: GRPDAWTS. That’s all for now. #X10Xbox

So lets have a guess at the code?

SCDR2F3HRLP2 is

Splinter Cell
Dead Rising 2
Fable 3
Halo Reach
Lost Planet 2

and

GRPDAWTS

Ghost Recon
Perfect Dark
Alan Wake
TS????