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The Crossing: Fingers Crossed?

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

As we reported back in May 2009, Arkane Studios’ unique-sounding Source engine game The Crossing had unfortunately been put on hold thanks to unforeseen financial complications. In July of the same year, however, we also learned that Arkane had been secretly aiding 2K Marin with the development of BioShock 2.

Yesterday, Zenimax Media announced, during the opening segment of QuakeCon 2010, their acquiring of Arkane Studios:

This is an exciting moment for Arkane. After 11 years of independent development, we couldn’t think of a better publishing partner,” said Colantonio. “We share so many creative values. Joining the ZeniMax family will allow us to grow stronger while staying true to the games we love.

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What Was Icarus? BioShock Infinite

Martyn Zachary 1 Comment

The over-speculated and hotly anticipated Irrational Games project that was to be revealed today?

BioShock Infinite.

The announcement of the latest game in the BioShock franchise, slated to launch on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC in 2012, seems to belong to the category of “expect the expected:” As we all turned to the unexpected (Freedom Force, SWAT, X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter, Kingdom Hearts or Yar’s Revenge), I don’t think many of us really did see the new BioShock game coming – not one by Irrational, at the very least. How unpredictably predictable!

First and foremost, let’s concentrate on the much-hyped teaser trailer, now housed at www.bioshockinfinite.com instead of whatisicarus.com. After the jump, we’ve used screen captures from the video to illustrate the post, and you can also find the trailer embedded below.

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Alien Swarm

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

More often than not, letting go is unfortunately the name of the game in the modding community. Most of us probably did just that in 2007, albeit begrudgingly, after Black Cat Games’ blog completely ceased to receive news updates on their forthcoming commercial game, Alien Swarm: Infested.

Though their previous project, the original Unreal Tournament 2004 mod version of the game (that you can still try out and play, by the way; its unrelenting difficulty level and gritty gameplay is something to behold), illustrated in the screenshots below, had laid down a steel-solid foundation for future games to build on, their PR unfortunately started mirroring Black Widow Games’ They Hunger: Lost Souls on the other side of the fence.

This is why I am all the more happy to report that more than three years later and completely out of the blue, Valve have just released Alien Swarm, a Source-based top-down co-op corridor shooter, completely free of charge.

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E3 2010: Microsoft Press Conference

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

Microsoft had the unenviable task of beginning E3’s series of press conferences, especially since the major trend for many spectators this year seemed to be the hope and the wish to be, simply put, surprised: Here at the Slowdown, we were above all looking forward to non-sequels and all-new IP.

Unfortunately, the one major announcement from Microsoft – the seemingly abrupt re-branding of “Project Natal,” a move that G4TV speculate was an extremely recent decision – had been spoiled only days before much in the same vein as Sony’s PSP Go last year. Nonentheless, the Microsoft hype train steamed forth as planned, with Senior Vice President Don Mattrick (on the left) opening up the show.

Despite first airing footage from the decidedly nondescript Call of Duty: BLOPS, the behemoth got off to a great start once Kojima Productions founder Hideo Kojima and producer Shigenobu Matsuyama (on the right) waltzed on stage to show off Metal Gear Solid: Rising in what ultimately turned out to be the most notable announcement of the whole conference.

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Transformers: War for Cybertron Rolls Out June

Nabeel Burney Leave a comment

It’s been a while since we last had a look at Transformers: War for Cybertron, and since then there has been some good media released that gives us a good look at the gameplay. G4TV has a developer walkthrough narrated by Matt Tieger from High Moon Studios, demonstrating the game with Optimus not-yet-Prime.

As the earlier previews suggested, the game really does take a lot from the Gears of War series, and plays like a tight third person shooter. There is more to the basic formula with the addition of abilities unique to each Transformer as well as, of course, the option to transform into a vehicle at any time. Tieger explains that the vehicle form has two modes, a hover mode in which the vehicle controls exactly like the Transformer on foot, with strafing and jumping, and a regular mode in which you can travel forward much faster to “roll out” in style.

Some more details about the multiplayer are known now too. Players will have the choice of playing as the existing Autobots and Decepticons in the myriad multiplayer modes, as well as the ability to create whole new Transformers with a character editor, based on pre-built classes each with their unique capabilities 1)http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/transformerswarforcybertron/news.html?sid=6261295&mode=previews.

As I mentioned in the previous post, I don’t have extremely high expectations of the game, but I’m still looking forward to it. It seems to hit the right notes in terms of fan service and the hands-on impressions out there indicate that it will probably provide some decent value through sheer content 2)http://www.tfw2005.com/transformers-news/video-games-17/war-for-cybertron—tfw2005-visits-high-moon-studios–gameplay-impressions-169615/. The multitude of Transformers to choose from and the drop-in co-op will no doubt ensure a decent amount of replayability.

After the jump, the videos. War for Cybertron is hitting stores on June 22, 2010 for every platform imaginable 3)http://investor.activision.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=430620.
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