Games Cheats and Reviews

After dominating the field for years, Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer has arguably fallen behind the competition. The dev team appears to be aware of this, promising fundamental changes for the upcoming Pro Evolution Socer 2011.

“It was time for PES to transform, and PES 2011 represents the most ambitious redesign in the series’ history,? said team leader Jon Murphy. “We’ve continued to work closely with the fans to pinpoint what it is about football that PES didn’t do.”

He continued, “Total freedom was the priority and all-new animation a must. PES 2011 does both – indeed, they are directly linked to each other – and while the new game is recognisably PES at its heart, it is also the most radically improved version ever.”

Recently Bungie told Industry Gamers that, "for Reach we definitely we went back and overhauled all of our tech to make something that could hold up this holiday compared to other titles that we really did feel like would raise the bar on the visual side and certainly, to be more specific, for animation," this according to Bungie’s community manager Brian Jarrard.

Not to be outdone, Crytek has said it’s game that was once exclusive to PC, and deemed the best looking title on any platform will not disappoint on consoles either.

Risk fans rejoice! EA is bringing the classic board game, Risk, to Xbox Live Arcade this year and we are excited. That’s why we’re bringing you this early look at the game, via screenshots.

“For the past half-century, millions of RISK fans have been consumed with ruling the world, underscoring the board game’s enduring appeal,” said Chip Lange, Senior Vice President and General Manager of EA’s Hasbro Division.  “We’re now going to bring that masterpiece experience to life and add other amazing layers of XBLA-style gameplay that will take conquests to a new level, including the ability to battle players from around the globe for the first time, truly giving new meaning to the phrase ‘world domination’.”

Risk:Factions is being developed by the same studio that worked on Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers, Stainless Games. Animations are being handled by Power House Animation. Let’s hope that while they bring “new and innovative gameplay” to the table, they include a classic Risk option for us purists!

Sharing: It’s Win/Win

As you can see through the link, Turn 10 has released today a new update for Forza Motorsport 3 that include, in addition to some bugfixes, the shift animation in the cockpit visual.

Log on Xbox Live while you are playing the game to receive the update notification.

GrE writes, "The original Assassin’s Creed was in many ways a massive success. It forced a considerable collective jump forward in animation across the industry, it had the foundation of a great multi-enemy combat system with its deliberate, timing-based street scuffles, and the engine presented the player with a massive playground in which to feel superhuman in a world convincingly populated by mere humans. Lets not forget the advertising campaign which seemed to pervade every orifice of its TV demographic (in the UK at least), making it the most successful new series of all time. However, that is really where its merits ended. After a couple of hours spent learning the combat animations and repeating the same three core mission types (interrogation, pick-pocketing and assassinations), completing the original AC began to feel less like reveling in the future of gaming, and more like going through the same old motions with a fancy new layer of polish…"

To be completely blunt, Champions Online is, for all intents and purposes, “City of Heroes 2.” It’s far easier to mention those occasions where it departs from its predecessor than to enumerate the ways in which it’s similar. And that’s just fine with me, really — I love that game. In fact, I’m still subscribed. (Note to self: Need to cancel City of Heroes subscription. At least for a while.)

With a half-decade advantage in graphics technology, Champions is obviously a lot prettier than its predecessor, and makes some really classy use of cel shading. It’s been a while since I’ve seen that employed for anything beyond covering up half-assed low-poly models, but here it’s both appropriate and really attractive. Champions also implements a whole slew of things that were impossible in CoH, from power color and animation customization, to the ability to choose superpowers from any pool without being strictly confined a class or archetype.

From VGarabia.com " There are a lot of games that had been pushed back to 2010 (Splinter Cell: Conviction and God of War 3 just to name a few), which in my opinion made the competition much easier for Uncharted 2 to take the crown of 2010.

Now let us talk about how good the visuals looks in Uncharted 2, Naughty Dog has upped the bar higher regarding visual fidelity this time, with higher polygons count in the character models, more crisper looking textures and better physics and explosions. Drake’s animation looks more natural and more lifelike this time. Sometimes, it’s better to show than tell, so watch this footage from PAX 09 to get what I mean."

GameHeros wrote: "Fans of the Batman: Animated Series from the 90’s will be happy to hear that most of the voice actors have returned. Much like that cartoon, the video game’s voice acting is top-notch. There is a notable exception though, for some reason Killer Croc sounds like Adam Sandler in Little Nicky. Also, The Riddler can be slightly annoying. Other than those two, everyone gives a great performance, in The Joker’s case his facial modeling and animation doesn’t really keep up with Mark Hamill’s voice acting, it does a good enough job, but not a great one."…

Microsoft Game Studios (MGS) in Europe has licensed the Havok Spectrum software bundle, which will give the MGS developers access to Havok’s technology "across projects moving forward." The development teams at MGS will now be able to leverage Havok tools and technology like Havok Physics, Havok Animation and Havok Behavior. Havok is already featured in more than 200 games and is especially noteworthy for its real-world physics.

Ratchet and Clank A Crack in Time finally brings the graphical quality of pre-rendered CGI to video game consoles.

Insomniac’s hard work has finally produced CGI quality graphics rendered in real-time on the PlayStation 3. Sure, it might not quite be at Wall-E level yet, but Toy Story 2 quality pre-rendered graphics have definately been reached.

Insomniac Games, who have produced more games for the PS3 than any other developer (Resistance 1, Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction, Resistance 2) brings their fourth game, Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time (or what they like to call Clock Blockers) with an even more polished engine.

The pre-defined animation and limited scope of the cutscenes mean that Insomniac can pull more out of the PS3 for their real-time rendered cutscenes in A Crack in Time, though the gameplay graphics are just as spectacular.

Have a look at the comparison picture below, featuring a new screenshot released by Insomniac and Sony, to see how far video game graphics have come, from a rumoured Sony comment that the PlayStation 2 could produced Toy Story quality graphics, to the reality of Insomniac’s work on the PS3.