Syndicate’s future world is about divisions; the divisions in the economic and political landscapes, between consumer and outcast where people are interfaced with the Datascape through neural chips that feed them a constant stream of data. That world is run by the mega corporations who plot, steal, manipulate and sabotage for the sake of patents, personnel and profit and each employs its own military and special agents to safeguard its bottom line. The original Syndicate from the mid-nineties offered a bleak, violent cyberpunk world- one perfectly suited to the brutal and creative skills of Starbreeze Studio’s.
Category: Action
R&D – Prototype 2
Radical Entertainment’s 2009 release of Prototype was welcomed with open arms, even though it dropped a month after the fundamentally similar Infamous. Over 400 thousand people were happy enough to aid in its journey to reaching Platinum status (which it did fairly quickly) for obvious reasons. Being an open world game centered on a biologically enhanced anti-hero capable of scaling buildings and slaughtering entire military units in a fashion that brought to mind John Carpenter’s The Thing, none of this came as much of a surprise.
The Darkness 2
After he viciously slaughtered his way through the mafia family run by his Uncle Paulie, Jackie Estacado had vowed to never again use The Darkness. The demon had given him great strength, but had manipulated and twisted the young man. When we meet him again as he walks into a family run restaurant at the beginning of the Darkness 2, we see that he has prospered, the family is strong, its members loyal- and then they are attacked by an unknown group who want The Darkness for themselves. The scene acts as a well-designed introduction to the world and mechanics- Jackie’s leg is destroyed and he’s pulled to safety, nothing but a pistol to fend off his attackers. Where once he was an invincible god, he’s broken and dying, now just a man. It’s been two years since he’s given in to the Darkness.
The Darkness II Demo Impressions
When The Darkness came out in 2007 it was an enigma of a game. While it was received extremely well and was successful enough commercially, it was almost immediately evident that it would quickly exit stage left and fall into the realm of the occult.
Bad Omens Manifest From The Hydrophobia: Prophecy
Hydrophobia: Prophecy is the third downloadable version of the original subtitle-free ‘Hydrophobia’ by Dark Energy Digital. Incorporating a water physics mechanic as a pillar of its design, the game finds Security Engineer Kate Olsen on The Queen of the World, a humanity saving cruise-ship colony as it’s besieged by the Malthusian’s, a terrorist group set on saving the Earth from overpopulation through the mass genocide of its citizens. With gameplay heavily inspired by Naughty Dog’s Uncharted franchise, Kate climbs, swims and shoots her way to save the ship and humanity.
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R&D- Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
UPDATE: Included the full Spike VGA trailer that had been edited for time, now with Japanese-language subtitles.
At E3 2009, Hideo Kojima stepped on stage at the Microsoft press conference to announce the latest installment in his legendary Metal Gear Solid series.
The Streets of Arkham City Are Prowled By Lunatics
Batman: Arkham City is an incredible sequel to a game with some of the most robust mechanics you’ll find anywhere in the medium.
Picking up six months after the events of Batman: Arkham Asylum, the inmates of that institution and the violent prisoners of Blackgate Penitentiary have been rounded up after events that transpired in a comic series leading up to this game into a prison known as Arkham City at the behest of Dr. Hugo Strange. Strange, who came into possession of Batman’s true identity by unknown means, has thrown Bruce Wayne within the confines of the fences controlled by his TYGER guards to incite deployment of his shadowy ‘Protocol 10’. By its end, Batman will run up against many of his legendary enemies including The Joker, who is suffering from fatal side effects to his exposure to his Titan experiments from his previous takeover of Arkham Asylum.
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Hard Reset
Hard Reset has leap-frogged over the decades worth of design that has evolved the modern FPS. Its about relentless, single-minded gunplay not about varied mixture of combat styles. Flying Wild Hog’s first game is a passion project from a developer made up of former employees of People Can Fly and CDProjekt Red.
The story is a Cyberpunk adventure where the human streets of New Bezoar are built with cold steel and product advertisements assault consumers from the walls and shine down from the sky. The world is beautiful; its vibrant with signs of the life that existed days before. There are fully realized plaza’s and run down apartments. Look out any window and you’ll see an impressive skybox filled with dead buildings. Routinely will you look out and be stricken by how well the entire thing was rendered.
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