Speaking to Gamasutra, Hayashi said it’s time to move on from the franchise’s seedy past.

“In the series up to now we focused on some kind of… Sports Illustrated [aesthetic]. Like a magazine for high school kids, with women portrayed in that sense,” he said.

“We’ve always had the sex factor in the game; in the past, the female characters had to have big breasts, they had to have scanty dress.”

Now, Team Ninja wants to feature real women – the kinds of women they know and like.

“We’re trying to focus on the real women that surround us; the voice of a female, the mannerisms. We are being realistic about it,” he said.

“We want to show something that’s more high class, that adult males of our generation could look at a woman [character] and be impressed with her as a woman, not just as a pin-up.”

Team Ninja seems to want to move past its reputation altogether, bringing a grown-up tone to Ninja Gaiden, previously known for its gratuitously violent gore.

“The old team was known for making games that just had two primary elements: Sex and violence. It was very obvious,” Hayashi said.

“The new team, we want to take it to a new level – to a direction that contains emotional experiences that can move players. Rather than just having violence for the sake of violence and cheap thrill, we wanted to give meaning to violence: Why does this happen? We want to link emotion to violence.

“We wanted to make a game that is for mature audiences, that can make adults think.”

Team Ninja has been quiet on the Dead or Alive 5 front in the build up to Ninja Gaiden 3′s release in March, releasing scant images and gameplay footage, so we’ll probably have to wait a few months to see how the fighter’s approach to female character design plays out ahead of its release this year.

Thanks, Siliconera.

“We want the venues to be more than just window dressing. If we’re gonna create all these venues we wanted them to offer something, an actual element of the gameplay itself,” line producer Sid Misra said.

“We have different physics of the walls themselves, so if you’re playing in a gym and you have like a standard brick wall on one side, and maybe more of a fence wall on the other side, the physics of the fence versus brick play quite differently. The surface also play slightly differently.”

See the full rundown in a developer diary below. FIFA Street launches on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on May 13 in the US and May 16 in Europe.

Bonus section: Because it’s apparently against the law for any publisher to ignore Valentine’s Day, here’s another, suitably cuddly trailer called Love Skills.

Speaking to CBS Sports, Schilling said Everquest II didn’t live up to his hopes, and that certain elements made him ask “what were they thinking?”

Talking to Sony Online Entertainment staff about his frustrations, he discussed the possibility of founding his own company, and received several expressions of interest which he later countered with job offers.

Schilling mostly funded 38 Studios privately, joined by “high net-worth individuals” and a state grant from Rhode Island, and now has 400 employees.

The former athlete said he expectes 38 Studios to become a “multibillion dollar entertainment company”, expanding to different kinds of media, but admits some aspects of development are harder than he expected – most notably, cross-platform programming.

“The only thing I’ve seen that could be harder is missile defense systems,” he said.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is 38 Studios’ first game, and is out now on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It will be followed by an MMO set in the same world, currently codenamed Copernicus.

The 52 second video embedded below is a good 30% logos, but fear not – it presages a longer cinematic trailer due to premiere during the February 19 episode of The Walking Dead.

Mass Effect 3 launches on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in March, and ends the story of Commander Shepard’s fight against the Reapers. The demo is out now.

Thanks, EvilAvatar.

The game see players performing aerial stunts and racing on over 45 tracks from all over the world.

“To gain the edge on the competition, players will need to use their boost skill wisely and take advantage of shortcuts hidden in the tracks,” the press release said.

It will also have an online component. “Competitive features” and leaderboards are promised, as is a drop-in system. Three different multiplayer modes for up to 12 players will be included.

Techland has tried off-road racing before with Nail’d, which received mediocre scores.

US pre-order incentives are as follows:

The Death Rides Pack will be yours if you pre-buy from Gamestop. It features multiple exclusive side-quests in the Maker’s Realm and Dead Plains, which adds an additional two-hours to the game. In it, players will also earn additional experience and loot through aiding an ancient Construct, battling The Bloodless and retrieving Karn’s lost treasure.

The Angel of Death Pack comes from BestBuy. It includes a “unique set of enhanced armor” with an angel-inspired design, as well as a pair of upgraded, matching scythes and a exclusive visual trail for your companion crow, Dust.

Pre-ordering from Amazon will get you the Deadly Despair Pack: this means you’re gifted a faster horse.

The European deals are:

Players who pre-order the game from GameStop locations in Ireland and all GAME and GameStation outlets on the mainland will receive the Death Rides Pack.

Those who who pre-order the game from Amazon UK will get the Deadly Despair pack.

The game will be available on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

There’s also quite a bit of information pertaining to the menu system, how the freedom element from previous entries in the series hasn’t been neglected, and how you will apparently also be able to throw a knife into a guard’s skull.

The protagonist in the game, James Brody, has been on the island for years trying to find his kidnapped girlfriend. During his stay, he starts having a mental breakdown, and his actions are accompanied by hallucinations based on an “unreliable perspective.” No word if this is caused by post tramtic stress disorder or not due to his stay on this mad isaland, but surely there is a reason for this strange, mental behavior in the game someplace.

Antagonists on the island are apparently a bit insane as well, as are the allies. Lots of “crazy” permeating the place, then.

Edge was shown two different mission demos, one of which showed a stealth assault and another, described by the magazine as scripted, showed the character escaping from a sinking ship and its volatile enemies.

Players will be able to either kill enemies from afar using a sniper rifle, or run in like Rambo without a jockstrap guns-a-blazing. You can apparently get a bit MacGyver-like with more makeshift techniques such as strapping C4 onto a Jeep and pushing it down a hill into an enemy base. Unlike MacGyver though, you will be killing people.

According to the Edge piece, put in bulletform by GamingEverything, the demos showed quite a bit of both scripted and linear moments, and Edge noted some platforming and exploration.

Far Cry 3 is slated for release on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 sometime this year with some pegging it for late March.

Thanks, PikiGeek.

“With hair flying, long legs kicking and the ear-piercing shrill of deadly vixens, Girl Fight is a unique all-female, fast-paced spin on arcade-style fighting games,” so says the press release.

Apparently, the game allows players to choose from “an array of sexy fighters to battle their way out of The Foundation,” which is a “shadowy, scientific organization” which is looking to weaponize the “psionic fighting abilities of the cast of gorgeous, all-female fighters.”

And here’s more from the press release: “With unlimited funding and no moral or ethical compass, The Foundation collects its test subjects from all around the world, often abducting and plugging women into their virtual construct known as The Mainframe. To make it back to reality, the women must utilize their fighting and psionic abilities in an all-out battle for survival.”

In other words, abducted, attractive females fighting in a ring for their freedom using their bodies as well as telepathy, telekinesis, and other workings of the psyche. Right.

Here are the game’s features:

• Fighting Styles and Character Options: Players can select from a wide range of distinct fighters, each with their own fighting style. Players can even create their own experience by customizing their fighter’s appearance and abilities.
• Unlockables and Customization: Players will find a robust set of unlockables to further customize their characters by proving themselves as the ultimate femme fatale in the ring. Points can unlock new character skins, more varied abilities and codex entries.
• Arenas: Girl Fight takes the players all across a virtual globe in many different arenas, filled in by augmented reality constructs. From war-ravaged San Francisco to the rubble of demolished Foundry buildings, reality and fiction blur in the virtual arenas.

Get ready to “lick the competition” this spring.

The release comes after early access to the single-player content over the weekend.

The demo features two single-play sections, as well as a taste of the series’s introduction to multiplayer. I took a look at the single-play stuff here yesterday.

Queue it up here. It comes in at a sizeable 1.76Gb for all Live members, including Gold and Silver.

The demo will go live for PC and PSN at some point throughout the day. The full game’s out on March 6 in the US and March 9 in Europe for 360, PS3 and PC.

Watch the video below.

Unbounded steps outside the arcade racer’s typical route, into realms inspired by Burnout and Split/Second. It’ll arrive on PS3, 360 and PC.

“You know how people make their top ten lists of emotional moments or good stories in games? The Darkness I is almost always on it. People are fanatical about it because the story was so compelling, so it’s really hard to do a follow-up to that. It’s like, ‘Wow, people worship this game – let’s not fuck it up.’”

“You know how people make their top ten lists of emotional moments or good stories in games? The Darkness I is almost always on it. The story was phenomenal. People are fanatical about it because the story was so compelling, so it’s really hard to do a follow-up to that. It’s like, ‘Wow, people worship this game – let’s not fuck it up,’” The Darkness II producer Seth Olshfski told VG247.

“That’s a lot of the way we looked at it – being really respectful of how awesome the first game was. So pre-production took a while. We were like, ‘What story do we tell now?’ In order to stay respectful to the quality of the story – Paul Jenkins wrote a bunch of the comics; he wrote the first game – we brought him in to write the second game. He’s up to his same sorts of tricks.”

One of these tricks occurs early in the game, and is included in the demo – if you want to remain spoiler free, skip the next two paragraphs.

“You played the beginning of the consumer demo and you saw walking in behind Vinny along the restaurant, and you’re sitting there with twins and then…” Olshfski gestured to indicate the startling death. “He wrote into it exactly where in her sentence she would get shot to make it the most jarring.”

“Tricks” like this occur throughout the game’s story and put The Darkness II in a different realm to many run-and-gun shooters.

“If you haven’t seen it before you totally don’t expect it and [from then on] you’re always on your toes. It’s so easy to write for the lowest common denominator, where it’s a really bland save-the-princess story, and those are not interesting. We tried to really push it to really risky decisions,” the producer remembered.

Despite Jenkins’ guiding hand, some of the sequences in The Darkness II don’t play like they were written by a comics writer; they play as if they were crafted by a game designer. A good example is the short tutorial following the events discussed above – the player is introduced to the controls individually, beginning with one hand before introducing dual wield; movement; and finally, quad wield – all within a story which lends sense to these arbitrary restrictions.

“That was totally collaborative. He’s a very good game writer. His brain works well for understanding how you tell a story in games,” Olshfski said.

“It was a core pillar of our development that everything we did was in the service of story. And at the same time he knows that we make video games. In a movie you tell story by showing things and by having people talk. When you do that in a game you’re not playing the game any more you’re watching a movie. That’s just not the same thing. You have to tell the story in games by doing.

“Here with the twins, you’re walking behind the guy and you get what’s going on. You’re not taken out of the environment. And then you’re part of the hit – someone shot her right in front of you and you’re like, ‘Fuck you, dude! They seemed fine! What’s wrong with this?’ You really start feeling inspired for revenge because you, as a player, since you embody the person who’s in that world, you’re doing it. And that’s when you start to actually have a reaction to what’s happening there, because he’s an extension of you. That’s part of why we’re so strict about first-person. A lot of people would have shown a video of you – of Jackie – and then twins, sitting at a table. We never take you out of Jackie’s eyes.”

The game does do that, in fact, but only in later stages thanks to the Darkling character, giving Digital Extremes a chance to show off Jackie’s rarely-glimpsed but awesome character model.

“So [Jackie's character model] is there, it’s done, and it’s cool – but it’s just not how we wanted to tell the story. We wanted to tell the story of: you are Jackie, and you are experiencing these things as Jackie. So it had to be first-person all the way through,” Olshfski said.

“It was really hard to figure out how to do that. How do you show that you are Jackie, and you just got blown up? Normally you’d just show the explosion, and the person in the explosion, and you’re done. But when you’re in the explosion, how do you tell that story?

“It was really difficult, but I think it really paid off because you really become connected to the story. A lot of that is Paul.”

Returning to the introductory sequence as an example of supporting player connection to a narrative. Olshfski said 2K, Digital extremes and Jenkins all agreed on the need for a plot-driven tutorial.

“You can always be like, ‘Let’s warp to this other world and view a tutorial’ – but that felt lame. So we wanted to ease you into every bit of quad-wielding because having four weapons at your disposal is really complicated, and we didn’t want to make it feel complicated,” he explained.

“Hopefully by the time you reach the streets, which is not very far into the game, you get what the four quad-wielding buttons do – guns on the triggers, demon arms on the shoulders. We wanted to make it feel like you were awesomely powerful but that it wasn’t hard to get it.”

It really isn’t hard to get at all. The quad-wield controls are physically analogous to Jackie’s limbs, an observation Olshfski was happy to pounce on.

“We put [them] there because that maps to the brain really easily; where it is on the screen is where it is on the controller.”

Making Jackie feel like a comfortable avatar was a major focus for Digital Extremes, and one reason he’s so human.

“If you do the narrative right, then when you’re playing you’re always going, ‘What if I did this?’ and then that’s what happens. We’ve set things up so that you’re always trying to guess one step ahead and you’re almost always right,” Olshfski said.

“[Jackie] as a character is a great vessel to put every player into. It’s hard to figure out narrative stuff at the same time you’re figuring out gameplay stuff. We try to meter it out over the game so that you’re never confused about what’s going on, but you’re also never being preached to. Having Jackie be just smart enough was a good way to make that work. And in the comics, he’s also just smart enough; he’s not the superhero, super-brain guy.”

In some ways, Jackie’s character is the polar opposite of a superhero’s. Batman, for example, doesn’t have any special powers, but the way he conducts his life is beyond belief despite that. Jackie’s reactions to extraordinary events feel ordinary, the kind of reactions you or I might have upon having our lives invaded by supernatural forces.

“The Batman thing, or the awesomely intelligent thing, leads to places where you as the player go, ‘Shit, I don’t know how I would get out of this’. And then the character in the video game, who’s supposed to be an extension of you, comes up with something on their own, and suddenly they’re not you any more. Because you didn’t think of that,” the producer said.

“With Jackie, as you think of it he thinks of it too. You have to figure out the puzzles on your own. I think you’re more invested in the narrative when there aren’t like, ‘Oh, there’s a horrible plot point, I don’t know how to get past it! Oh, did we forget, in this world in my back pocket I have a thing that lets me fly.’ Things that there’s no way that you as a player would know. [By contrast] we lay it all out there for you.”

The Darkness II is out now on all HD platforms.

[image]

Via Siliconera.

We had another batch of screens last week, if there are not enough.

The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of May Payne 3 arrive on May 15 in the US, and May 18 everywhere else, but the PC release is expected two weeks later.

Thanks, EvilAvatar.

SSX releases on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on February 28 in the US, and March 2 in Europe.

Thanks, EvilAvatar.

The demo will allow players to explore two of the early missions, both of which take place in Tokyo. Taking command as Dan Marshal, you’ll be fighting against robotic opponents alongside your squad.

The demo will also give players a taste of the game’s consequence systems, which allow you to interact with and influence teammates in various manners.

The game releases on February 24 in the UK and February 28 in the US for PS3, and Xbox 360.

Thanks, Shopto.

The developer’s said the upcoming tweaks will solve problems releating to “balance and gameplay, performance, stability and the overall feature set”.

DICE community manager Daniel Matros said more details will be announced “in the coming weeks” regarding the update.

Battlefield 3 is also due to get a number of PC bug fixes tomorrow via a update through EA Origin. Get the list below.

• Support for Intel’s new Ivy Bridge product line (as yet unreleased)
• Fixes for two reproducible client crashes:
• Oilfields- Conquest Large – Fixed a client crash when users spawn in certain vehicles.
• Canals – Rush – Fixed a client crash at the 2nd set of mcoms if the player drives a vehicle into the vicinity of the exploding rocket battery.
• AMD Radeon 7xxx series performance improvements

Thanks, Eurogamer.

Dragon Age II stripped a mighty chunk of patience from BioWare fans following the amazing Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age: Origins, showing signs the studio might be losing some of its magic. Does Mass Effect 3 continue the trend? No. In the space of 45-50 minutes, any doubts you had should be dispelled.

BioWare must be under terrible pressue with Mass Effect 3. We’re now three weeks away from what is undoubtably the most anticipated release of the year so far, but for all the hype and anticipation, the sense of skepticism is impossible to ignore.

First, can BioWare come back from the bashing it got from fans over Dragon Age II? And can ME3 match or even surpass Mass Effect 2′s superb spectacle? EA and BioWare are hoping the release of a single-player and multiplayer demo can answer the questions.

Shepard vs the Reapers

The demo that will launch on PSN, Xbox Live and PC tomorrow for those who hadn’t gained early access to it over the weekend, and has two parts that will set up Shepard’s fights throughout the game. I did say fights, but we’ll get to that in a bit.

Before getting into it, you’re given the choice of setting up a male of female Shepard. For me, there’s only one person for the job: FemShep.

After choosing the type of experience you want (Action, Role-Playing or Story) and set up your Shepard with class and past experiences, you’re shown the game’s introduction.

The Reapers are about to kick off their invasion of earth, but the galaxy’s leaders still don’t believe what to expect until it’s too late.

Shepard has been detained by the Defense Committee on earth following the events of the final story DLC for Mass Effect 2, Arrival, but is called back into action by the DC: the Reapers have already arrived and are wreaking havoc.

This part is more of a tutorial to introduce new players, but you might be forgiven for forgetting this is the case considering the massive set-pieces you get throughout.

The first section of the demo, where you’re accompanied by Anderson as you fight through Reaper Husks to get to the Normandy, provides an excellent introduction to the game’s plot, such as a touching moment between Shepard and a distressed 10-year old hiding from the invading Reapers.

It’s affecting. The amazing soundtrack, made in part by Clint Mansell of Black Swan fame, goes a long way to making it so.

Shepard vs Cerberus

There are two stories here. The main one is Shepard’s attempts to stop the Reapers from wiping out earth, but he/she will have another enemy in the form of an old ally: Cerberus. For reasons unknown until you play the full game, the organisation and the commander are against each other, despite the fact they stood side-by-side in Mass Effect 2.

One example of this comes in the second part of the demo. If the first part was all about the story, the second part introduces Mass Effect 3′s combat gameplay.

In this part, you’re off to Ser’Kesh, the Salarian home planet, where Shepard, Liara and Garrus head in to rescue the Krogan matriarch and Mordin, while Wrex – initially agressive in order to save his species following an already tense history between Krogans and Salarians – circles about in their ship.

The matriarch must be escorted with Mordin, while you and your team must fend off Cerberus squads.

This is actually the same taster I tried at Eurogamer Expo last September. The combat’s excellent, with support from your team coming when needed. But as I said, there’s two sides to this demo: story and gameplay, the latter of which is very much present here.

I haven’t had a chance to try it out with Kinect yet, and the servers for multiplayer aren’t live until tomorrow when the demo fully launches for all. But everything seems to be in check.

Shepard vs Skepticism

Which brings me back to skepticism. Dragon Age II stripped a mighty chunk of patience from BioWare fans following the amazing Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age: Origins, showing signs the studio might be losing some of its magic.

Does Mass Effect 3 continue the trend? No. In the space of 45-50 minutes, any doubts you had should be dispelled.

Whether it’ll be better than Mass Effect 2 is another different matter, one that will have to wait until the full game.

Of course, one issue remains: multiplayer. Does it feel like it fits in the Mass Effect universe? Is it tacked on?

We’ll just have to wait. One thing I do know is this: based off the single-player portion, the first week of March can’t come quick enough.

Mass Effect 3 launches on March 6 in the US and March 9 in the UK for 360, PC and PS3. The demo goes live for all on PSN, XBL and PC tomorrow.

The story (albeit, a short one), a ton of gameplay improvements, the inclusion of a New Game+ mode and Vendettas co-op make The Darkness II the first game released this year that I actually like.

Truthfully speaking? I didn’t go too far into the original Darkness. I kept telling myself I should play it before its sequel arrived, but I never allowed myself to get dragged into Jackie Estacado’s first waltz with games. I’m kicking myself for not doing so: the sequel is all kinds of awesome.

For those that didn’t complete the Starbreeze original, there’s a handy video at the start of the Digital Extremes sequel that brings you up to speed on the story. From then, it’s action all the way. Jackie is up against a force known as the Brotherhood, as well as his own personal demons – literally. Since the events of the first game, he’s kept The Darkness bottled up, until a hit on him at a restaurant allows a comeback for his otherworldly malevolence.

It’s non-stop violence as you head through parts of New York attempting to identity your would-be assassin. For the first quarter of the game, you’ll come back to your apartment and talk to various key characters who set you up for story missions. In addition, you can talk to any number of NPCs whenever you like.

Starbreeze’s original take on The Darkness was a serious, realistic-looking shooter. Digital Extremes has gone back to comic roots, given the sequel a cel-shaded look that has a lot of similarities to Ubisoft comic shooter XIII. It brings out a unique side to the world of The Darkness missing from the first game. Credit should go out to the DE team for art design; it’s certainly impactful.

Quad damage

The core play concept has remained largely the same, but the introduction of an XP system brings with it a a skill tree. Jackie can buy skills within a specific group to increase the strength of his Darkness powers, such as, for example, new executions. Jackie has demonic tentacles over his shoulders, allowing him to “quad wield”. As well as using guns, he can kill enemies with gruesome slashes, lopping people in half, removing limbs and all the rest of it. You also get to control your British-voiced Darkling pet in certain parts, which breaks the pace. I would have enjoyed a few more of these.

When the game wraps – the ending leaves it wide open for a third stab – a New Game+ option opens, allowing you to run through again with all the skills you collected the first time.

DE has chucked out the competitive multiplayer from the first game and put in four-player co-op, playable either online or offline by yourself. Vendettas mode lets you pick one of four characters separate from the main story and go on missions – again, outside the main plot – with their own Darkness powers linked to unique weaponry. I haven’t gone too far with Vendettas, but first impressions are decent.

I saw The Darkness II twice before launch, and while I was impressed with what I’d seen, I still underestimated it. Digital Extremes has managed to add its own stamp while staying true to the Starbreeze original. The story (albeit, a short one), a ton of gameplay improvements, the inclusion of a New Game+ mode and Vendettas co-op make The Darkness II the first game released this year that I actually like.

Should probably finish the first one now.

The Darkness II is out now for PC, PS3 and 360.

The EA Partners-published, 38 Studios/Big Huge Games RPG is the first new RPG series to debut at number one in nearly 12 years since Pokemon Red, and is the first new IP altogether to debut up top since Dead Island last September.

Other new entry The Darkness II came in behind Final Fantasy XIII-2 in third. We’ve a piece on the Digital Extremes shooter going up soon.

The top five is rounded off by Metal Gear Solid HD Collection and FIFA 12.

Atlus romantic thriller Catherine, published here by Deep Silver, came just inside the top 20, while EA Sports Grand Slam Tennis 2 debuted at 26.

Here’s the top ten for the week ending February 11. Last week’s data is here.

1. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning
2. Final Fantasy XIII-2.
3. The Darkness 2
4. Metal Gear Solid HD Collection
5. FIFA 12
6. Battlefield 3
7. Modern Warfare 3
8. Assassin’s Creed: Revelations
9. Skyrim
10. Mario & Sonic: London 2012 Olympics

Hey, did you see this? This came out in Japan and the US last year, right? It looks pretty cool – like adult Manga! Might pick it up.

Yeah, I’ve just finished playing it through, actually. It’s very special. The animation is excellent but it’s the themes that run through it and the actual gameplay elements that are most impressive.

Sure, sure. Also: hot women! Well, there’s a hot blonde chick, the one with glasses looks a bit boring. Do you get to sleep with them? Looks like you do!

That’s not really the point. In terms of the relationship stuff there’s Vincent, Katherine and the blonde Catherine. You choose how Vincent responds to both women; for example, sometimes his girlfriend, Katherine, will text him when he’s at the bar with his friends and he has to decide whether to be dismissive or thoughtful in his replies. He can also encourage Catherine to send him messages – some of which are picture messages.

This trailer probably does a better job of framing it in the appropriate context:

Er, so it’s a relationship sim, then? The picture messaging sounds good, though. Does the hot blonde send you sexy pics? I bet she does, she looks like a right little goer.

The concept of relationships is one of the themes, yes – as is freedom, responsibility, anxiety, guilt, and happiness, amongst others.

Then there’s the actual gameplay. Vincent can interact with people at the local bar, which in turn shapes the story and explores the themes more deeply. However, most of his time is spent trying to solve some very tricky 3D block puzzles. Like this:

WTF?!

Why’s he running around in his boxer shorts holding a pillow? Why does he have ram horns on his head? Is that a baby chasing him? And what the hell is with all the sheep? This doesn’t look like the sexyfuntime from the trailer that I saw. AT ALL!

Ha! I told you there was more to it than just good looks. The puzzle-tower elements take place in Vincent’s nightmares – hence the weird things that occasionally chase him – and the story revolves around men dying mysteriously in their sleep.

Vincent can never quite remember his nightmares when he wakes up; he just knows he’s had a rough night and that all is not right.

As a result, he’s always pretty tired and occasionally gets lost in his own thoughts.

Okaaaay. And the sheep?!

Ah, yes. The sheep.

Well, a number of the men Vincent knows or meets at the bar are having variations of the same nightmare and somehow they’re all connected. The sheep in Vincent’s nightmares share characteristics with the men he meets in his waking hours, all of whom are carrying their own emotional baggage and issues. What’s more, in the nightmare each sheep sees himself as a normal man and all the other men as sheep.

Vincent starts having the nightmares just before meeting Catherine, whom he then gets…mixed up with.

So, it’s a morality thing, then? Cheating’s bad, men are all weak-willed sheep blah blah etc? Jeez, isn’t that a bit sexist?

Seriously?!

From the person that’s interested in the game because it looks like you might get to have sex with a “hot blonde chick” who “looks like a right little goer” and has dismissed another woman because she “looks a bit boring”?

Yeah, OK. Don’t give me that moral high-ground bullshit. I was kidding: it’s just banter. You know what I mean.

Just banter between mates, huh?

Yeah, a bit of fun.

Mates just going with the flow?

Yeah, s’pose so.

Just flocking together?

Fuck off

Haha!

OK, look: yes, there are elements of this game that are deliberately provocative and titillating and, yeah, some of the stuff is sexy. And I completely agree that sometimes people are all too quick to jump on their high-horse about sex, especially about sex in games.

Right, plus, even if I am supposedly being sexist, that doesn’t mean it’s OK for someone or *something* else to be sexist too. Two wrongs… etc

No, you’re right: it absolutely doesn’t mean it’s OK.

The point, really, is that the sheep analogy in this scenario isn’t sexist; it’s a visual representation of a concept that you can interpret in different ways. Most importantly, it’s one that provokes discussion.

Although, a brief anecdote: I was out for a drink one night during the time I was playing Catherine and, I shit you not, while standing at the bar I heard one bloke say to his mate: “You know me bruv, if you want to do it, I’ll follow suit”. That tickled me.

But, irrespective of that, the sheep thing doesn’t necessarily represent what it seems to.

How come? What is it supposed to mean other than: men are all the same, they’re weak and can’t help cheating?

Well, perhaps some of the men in the game that appear as sheep haven’t cheated; maybe they have their own issues.

Look, I don’t want to say too much about it because I really think you should experience it for yourself. One way of thinking about it is like an Escher sketch

How the hell is this like an Etch-A-Sketch?

Not an Etch-A-Sketch, numbnuts – an ESCHER sketch: Maurits Cornelis Escher.

Something that, at first glance, appears to be one thing and that both validates and contradicts itself from different perspectives – something that doesn’t make sense, but does; like these:

That’s…weird. Makes my brain hurt a bit

Exactly! Another comparison that occurred to me while playing Catherine is to that Robert Rodriguez film that Tarantino wrote the screenplay for: From Dusk Till Dawn. Y’know, how it starts as one thing, goes a little batshit crazy in the middle but still really works?

OK, I think I’m getting your point now. I like the sound of it!

But if I play it, will I actually have any say it what happens? Or will I just be watching pretty cut-scenes in between solving pain-in-the-arse block-puzzles?

You’ll have loads of input into how Vincent handles situations. There are different things that can happen throughout the story depending on the choices you have Vincent make. It’s really very cool. Some of the writing is genuinely funny and the metagames are clever and interesting. The social commentary on gender roles, friendships, even alcohol, is fascinating.

Also, on normal or hard difficulty the puzzles are really tough but that means you’re pumped once Vincent gets through them and escapes from another of his nightmares. Or you can play on easy and concentrate more on the story. Plus there are eight endings – in my play through, Vincent came out the other side of his ordeal a very different man. It was the True Freedom ending.

OK, sounds good, I’m in!

Thing is, whilst what I did and what I experienced made me realise what’s important to me, I know that I treated them both badly and I was selfish. Instead of telling her from the outset that I had a girlfriend, I lapped up the adoration; returned it, even. I guess I enjoyed that little buzz that comes from feeling wanted.

I know that I should have sat down with the one who loved me, and whom I loved, and talked it through. It’s not even like I only saw it in hindsight, I could see what was happening at the time and did nothing to stop it.

I was selfish and I was weak, and I have to live with that and move forward. Life goes on and all that jazz.

Uhm, Stace, you OK? That’s all pretty deep. You’re still talking about the game, right? About Vincent?

You want to meet for a beer later, have a proper catch-up?

I…oh. Ha! Yeah, I ‘m fine. A slip of the metaphorical tongue!

That’s genuinely all the stuff that happened to Vincent during my play-through of Catherine. I’m looking forward to starting over, to see if things turn out differently for him. I’d also like to hear about your experience of it, too.

Anyway, yeah, beer later sounds good – usual place. Not too heavy a session though, I’m really tired.

I’ve not been sleeping properly, lately.

The completion means the game can now be printed for retail and review for journalists.

Here’s Hudson’s full tweet: “After an awesome effort by our team, I’m proud to announce #MassEffect3 is officially GOLD! Many surprises await you – this week and beyond.”

The Gold confirmation comes ahead of the launch of the RPG’s demo tomorrow on PSN, Xbox Live and PC after early access to the taster kicked off over the weekend.

Mass Effect 3 launches on March 6 in the US and March 9 in the UK for PS3, 360 and PC.

Speaking in Las Vega last week, Hirshberg discussed some of the headaches the company experienced in launching Call of Duty: Elite, the first being shaky tech.

“We had some technological stumbles at launch and that frustrated some of our fans. We’re still making that right,” he said, as reported by GamesIndustry.

A second problem arose as Activision considered how to market a premium service to an established community of players used to shelling out for a disc alone – quite a hard sell, especially as Activision couldn’t show off premium features at launch.

“We chose to tell people right out of the gate that while the vast majority of features would be free, there would be a premium membership. A lot people thought we should have waited and show people what they get for the premium membership before talking about its existence. But we knew this question about whether it would be free would immediately be asked,” Hirshberg remembered.

“The words ‘Call of Duty’ plus the word ‘subscription’ equals ‘unleash blogger hell,’” he added, describing the months following the announcement as “the most painful summer of Google Alerts I’ve ever lived through”.

Even the question of whether to launch a beta or not proved knotty.

“We wanted to do a beta. None of the features were going to demonstrable in the beta because they were all tied into the code of Modern Warfare 3 and the beta was going to be Black Ops multiplayer,” Hirshberg explained.

“With the launching of Elite we had a marketing Sophie’s Choice. Do we do the beta, which is the right thing to do from a development standpoint, or do we make the best possible first impression, which was probably the right thing to do from the marketing standpoint.”

Although Call of Duty Elite now had 1.5 million premium subscribers among its 7 million members, Hirshberg says Activision won’t rest on its laurels yet.

“Even though we’ve had some early success with the numbers, it’s far from time for us to be doing any victory laps on Elite,” he said.

Hirshberg’s candid admission of launch-day flutters comes coincidentally close to a similar confession from the other half of the holding company.

Thanks, StrategyInformer.

In the multiplayer trailer below, you’ll see resistance and government squads facing off against each other; the single-player campaign is largely a robot-shooting affair.

Binary Domain releases in Australia on February 23, in Europe on February 24, and arrives in the US on February 28, for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It has some unusual features including voice control and a relationship system affected both by conversations and in-battle performance, which can result in your teammates disgustedly ignoring you when receiving orders.

“When I was on FIFA we wanted to do something similar to the dribble system we have in Street, the one where you’re always facing the goal,” creative director Gary Paterson told Eurogamer. “But it was always a challenge for us to do it, because there are so many animations involved in that system.

“Things like that they’re evaluating now, whether there are parts of it they can take. Standing ball control, is there something there? “It’s a very intuitive and elegant mechanic but it’s not something you see too often in real football. But maybe there are elements of it that can be shared and taken. It’s something they’re evaluating right now. I don’t think any decisions have been made.”

Paterson worked on FIFA for several years during the 2000′s, as the franchise’s popularity soared. On FIFA Street, he worked “very closely” with FIFA 12′s lead gameplay designer, Aaron McHardy.

“We took a lot of FIFA 12 functionality. The engineers and designers were in close contact. Now, part of what Aaron and his team are doing now is analysing some of the stuff we’ve taken,” Paterson noted.

If EA Sports is considering taking elements from FIFA Street back into the core FIFA franchise, then it must already be quite confident in the reboot’s charms – but Paterson said the newly-resurrected property hasn’t been locked into annualisation yet.

“There have been no conversations I’m aware of around that as of yet. Obviously we’re going to have to wait and see how gamers respond to the product we put out,” he said.

“If it’s a success it’s going to be evaluated. It wouldn’t be a decision I make, but if the game’s successful I’m sure there will be conversations around how that would work.”

FIFA Street is due on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on March 13 in the US and March 16 in Europe.

Thanks, StrategyInformer.

As some of you have already noticed, you can get early access to the demo on Xbox 360 by using a Facebook app.

If you don’t solve the puzzle on your first try, you can try again in two hours. Otherwise, stick it out until the demo’s official release on console networks this Tuesday. Can’t be bothered with that? Watch someone else play it.

This app appears to be separate from Mission Command, which rewards dedicated US fans with Avatar items and merchandise.

Mass Effect 3 is due on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in March.

EA Sports had a bit of luck promoting Grand Slam Tennis 2, managing to secure an appearance by legendary Wimbledon champion, Pat Cash, at a launch party in Sydney last week. Cash is a household name in Australia, where televised tennis, along with swimming, is practically required viewing if you expect to have any water-cooler conversations. My mum had one of those troll dolls with a tennis racquet named Pat, and would often stare dreamily at as if its puggish features would resolve into the champion’s more chiselled visage; I grew up considering him a hero. I was quite excited to meet the man, and kept inconspicuously checking my dictaphone, ready for a global headline quote about the magnificence of the PS Move motion control or something.

In fact, I gathered quite a few pithy comments about the Move controls while warming up for the tournament. Unlike Wii Sports tennis and ping pong, most gamers’ touchstones for motion control racquet sports, Grand Slam Tennis 2 aims to give you one-to-one precision control over all aspects of the racquet’s positioning, ideally granting you the ability to do slice and top spin and other manoeuvres I don’t even know the name of because I stay indoors all the time.

In practice, in a small, cramped room full of people who rarely pick up anything handier than another beer bottle and are practising that motion quite a lot, this inevitably derails into flailing, and when everyone’s a bit tired, dispirited waggling. Counter-intuitively, Grand Slam Tennis wants you to wave your Move controller well before the ball reaches your player, making the full racquet sweep and twist noticeable moments ahead of the ball actually colliding with the strings. This disconnect takes some time to process, and if my own and fellow journos performances are anything to go by, even longer to master.

I haven’t mastered it. I arrived with the intention of taking photographs and eating cake, and was promptly press-ganged into a tournament, with the grand prize of a match against Cash himself. “Oh no, I won’t play,” I demurred, edging for the food, as I was pretty sure nobody was keen to watch me go through the hours of included tutorials or explain the rules of tennis to me. EA Australia’s charming but ferocious PR reps had other ideas and after a brief warm up against a friend, which I played to a tiebreaker, I took the court against my first rival.

“I haven’t even played the demo,” he confided in me, morosely predicting a short match with me as victor. I refrained from mentioning that my last tennis game was on the Master System, and that I had quit tennis lessons after three miserable years when my coach firmly told my mother not to bring me back for fear I’d infect the other children with my incompetence.

I served first. I aced once, lost a couple of brief rallies, and then double faulted – that was it for VG247′s chance at glory, but I roped in a couple of loose freelancers to take up our cause. One made it all the way to the third round before being smashed to smithereens by a man who explained that you had to twist your wrist just so and knew the names of all the players – real names, not “that lady who grunts” and “that guy who sounds like a hat” – which I consider an unfair advantage.

Arms race

Shamed and sent to the sidelines, I started madly Googling Pat Cash in the hopes of recognising him. He looks, it turns out, rather a lot like his in-game avatar – kudos to EA Canada’s facial scanning – and none of the increasingly sweaty men in my vicinity looked right. He’ll probably turn up in a limo, we decided, with all girls and champagne and such.

Nothing so dramatic. The man wandered in, barely noticed by anyone else, handed over a backpack to a PR rep, and was promptly whisked off to a “quieter” room – that’s a euphemism for a space less crowded with increasingly intoxicated gamers and inadequate ventilation, I’d say, having taken shelter near the only source of fresh air myself. Before he left, I got in a good old stare.

“Did you see his arms!” I exclaimed.

“I don’t make a habit of looking at men’s arms,” someone replied, which is a shame, because it’s not every day a world champion athlete is walking around in short sleeves for you to have a peek at. Pat Cash has biceps like armadillos cuddling to conserve body warmth. The veins on his wrists could serve as shelves for storing small items securely. I had already been hit in the face with a flailing Move controller three times, and had made a mental note to step back once the pro had one in his grasp lest I be left bloody on the floor. There is a world of difference between a fit gym bunny and a man who smashes projectiles across a net for a living, I decided.

And that is the appeal of Grand Slam Tennis 2 in a nutshell; that it grants us access to a world we’d never otherwise see. Only a handful of people have ever achieved a Grand Slam – wins across all four major tennis tournaments – and for most of us even a friendly match is a major effort. EA Sports has been throwing the word “aspirational” around a lot lately because it’s a very neat summary of the appeal of sports games; I’m beyond bad at sports, but I can press buttons, and that means I can diligently work my way through a decade career and take a Grand Slam. (If I had a Kinect, I could even do it with my own face, which is rather neat.)

There’s something special about that – call it the crack-like appeal of RPG elements if you like, but back at the console stations, a couple of writers had started getting seriously competitive with their matches despite the lack of any progress to take home. There were roars of triumph and shouts of horror, fists pumping in the air, and at one stage what looked like it might escalate into a fistfight, but was disappointingly diffused.

My little group of eliminated hopefuls was glumly stuck on the outskirts while the tournament ran its course, and when PR returned to hand us our consolation prizes – copies of the game – there was a general exodus. I didn’t get to talk to Pat Cash about the increasing realism of games. I didn’t get a photo to show my mum. I didn’t get past the first round of the tourney. I had to put up with being gender-balanced into dozens of photos. I didn’t get any cake and I professionally eschewed the champagne. But I got a copy of Grand Slam Tennis 2, and despite my long-standing disdain for sports games, I sincerely doubt I’m the only attendee skiving off home to fire it up and live the dream.

Grand Slam Tennis 2 launched on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, with move and Kinect support, on February 9 in Australia and February 10 in Europe, and is expected on February 14 in the US.