This week GametrailersTV brings BioShock 2 back into the spotlight, with some brand new footage of the game. In the latest episode of GTTV (embedded after the break) Geoff Keighley talks to Creative Director Jordan Thomas and scoops some heavy spoilers about the story and some of the key characters. Those who don’t want to know anything in advance about Andrew Ryan’s successor would be wise to skip the video – or at least watch it on mute.
Most of the footage is entirely new, revealing a new splicer, the Tank-like Brute, as well as a new area in Rapture, the city’s red-light district known as Siren Alley. Not only is the singleplayer action shown, there is some multiplayer gameplay too, now more representative of the experience than the debut trailer. Hit the jump to see the GTTV episode.
Quote of the Day: Death Rally
“Multiplayer: Unfortunately one of the best aspects of Death Rally, multiplayer, is not available in this release. It was built for the modem and IPX network era, and would have needed a full rewrite. That was sadly out of the scope on what we could do with this free release.” –Death Rally freeware re-release readme
Shattered Horizon
“Shattered Horizon sees players fight in the aftermath of a catastrophic Moon mining accident that throws billions of tons of rocky debris into near-Earth space.”
The very aptly titled Shattered Horizon is Futuremark’s first proper foray into the gaming space. While the company has dabbled in gaming software before – including having once effectively been a part of Remedy Entertainment, and later with the release of a 2007 Intel-only multicore demonstration, the company is ultimately known to us for their ubiquitous benchmarking software, 3DMark and PCMark (we’ve also seen members of the company as Mature Furk, among other crews, in the demo scene – in this sense the game is a return to form).
This ‘specially spatial shooter, then, is all PhysX’d up, optimized for multi-core machines and comes, in a slight conflict of interests, packaged with the NVIDIA seal. Some more elaboration about the game’s themes and features coupled with the most recent promotional trailer for the game – all this after the jump!
Quote of the Day: Dwarf Fortress
“Grime accumulates on the body and can increase the likelihood of an infection. You can wash the grime away with soap. Elves do not believe in soap (due to the materials used) and will use water, but they won’t fully be able to clean themselves because of this” –Highlights from the Dwarf Fortress Talk #3
Mass Effect 2 Launching in January 2010
It seems Mass Effect 2 isn’t as far off as we thought. With the upcoming release of Dragon Age: Origins early next month, it was almost assumed that the titles would be spaced out a little further apart. But BioWare announced yesterday that ME2 will be following close on the heels of DA:O, dropping on January 26 2010 in the US, and 29 in Europe. The announcement came with details of the preorder options available and their in-game bonuses.
It’s been a relatively quiet month for ME2 as BioWare has been focusing its efforts on spreading the word on DA:O. With the almost ridiculous extent to which gamers have been given choices on preorder bonus DLC, it’s no surprise that the developer will be using some of the same ideas with ME2. There’s already a bit of cross-pollination with the Blood Dragon Armour (usable in both games) awarded in one of the DA:O preorder options, and now there are two more opportunities. Currently it looks like these options are available to US preorderers only, the choices being between getting the game at Gamestop, and everywhere else. The Gamestop bonus is the Terminus Armour and M-90 Blackstorm Heavy Weapon, and the everywhere-else bonus is the Inferno Armour. Both outfits look quite dapper as you can in the screens below.
As I mentioned earlier there has been less attention on ME2 as of late, though there is still media being trickled out from time to time. The latest trailer (embedded after the jump) introduces a new character, Subject Zero (pictured above), whom you can ask to join your ranks. This new video most certainly didn’t drop with any lack of ripples; the general “edgy” direction of the sequel’s promotion seems to have finally strayed a bit too close to the current debacle that is the DA:O marketing campaign. The knee-jerk reactions to this worrying shift were so drastic it prompted a cautionary counter-reaction from Martyn.