Games Cheats and Reviews

Unreal Tournament 2004 fans will likely remember Alien Swarm, the award-winning mod that turned Epic’s multiplayer FPS into a top-down, co-operative shooter. The mod was so popular, in fact, that the developers at Black Cat Games revealed plans to release an updated version using Valve’s Source Engine. Now, five years after that original announcement, Valve and Black Cat are finally ready to make good on those promises.

In just one hour from the time of this writing, Alien Swarm and its complete Source code base will be available for download on Steam. Best of all, it won’t cost you a dime — Valve’s putting out the whole shebang out free of charge.

So what took so long? It turns out Valve hired Black Cat roughly two years ago, and the mod-makers have been toiling away at the Left 4 Dead franchise and Portal 2 ever since. Between high-profile projects like those, it’s a wonder Black Cat found the time to work on Alien Swarm at all.

What was the biggest problem with Dead Space? Isaac Clarke. The silent star of the sci-fi survival horror FPS did what needed to be done, but while he had a deep backstory and his own agenda, none of that personality came through in the game.

But Dead Space 2 hopes to change all that, according to executive director, Steve Papoutsis. He brought an early build of the game by the office, and while the bulk of the demo focused on a couple of the weapons and enemies new to the sequel (which you’ll no doubt be able to read about in great detail on the game’s official website), I was a lot more interested in Isaac and the changes that he’ll be going through. “He just went through this nasty situation on the Ishimura, you’d expect him to have something to say about it,” says Papoutsis. “In Dead Space 2, you’ll get to hear a little bit more of his thoughts on what’s going on [...] When we sat down to do this game, that’s one of the first things we decided we were going to do: give Isaac a voice, to see his face a bit more.”

MCV: Though upcoming triple-A titles such as Fable III have pledged their support for Microsoft’s motion camera Natal, Bungie has ruled out any possible support for the peripheral in its upcoming FPS Halo Reach.

"Practically speaking, Natal didn’t exist until Reach was already two years into development," Bungie’s community director Brian Jarrard told The Seattle Times.

"That alone creates issues. Secondly, it’s not the type of control experience that we think lends itself to this type of game. We’re comfortable with it; Microsoft is, too.

VGArabia: Bungie has released a new video documentary which shows the devs of the game talking about the upcoming open beta for the hotly anticipated FPS Halo: Reach.

Blacklight: Tango Down launches for the PlayStation Network, Xbox Live and PC this Summer, and developer Zombie Studios are expecting the game to push the boundaries of digital delivered titles, offering "best-in-action" action.

Bungie’s FPS Halo 3 is now available for download on Xbox Live.

It’s a pretty common standard in the gaming industry that when announcing a new title, you must remind everyone else that your game will be the absolute best. Better then the competition at least, because why else would a developer bother making a game? While most developers generally highlight gameplay or level design, Crysis 2 is taking a bit of a different turn. It’s a little unusual for FPS title to boast about anything other then multiplayer these days but Richard Morgan, popular sci-fi author and current writer for Crysis 2, has taken to launching a full assault against bad storytelling.

Xbox360 has received another leap in graphics thanks to this new technology called " Sparse Virtual Texturing " from the creators of BRINK. BRINK’s in-game graphics are so close to the cinematic trailer that even Crytek will have to take notice and be ready to show off how Crysis 2 can run on the 360 in comparison.

This game is seriously looking like a hit and Creative Director Richard Ham sheds alot more light on what we can expect from this ground breaking FPS.

DETAILED VIDICLE BELOW

NowGamer: Crytek has claimed that it’s NewYork-based FPS sequel Crysis 2 will bring an unbeatable new visual quality to the PS3

The console has been spolit in recent months with Killzone 2, Uncharted 2 and God of War III each setting new graphical standards. However, lead Playstation 3 programmer Michael Glück is confident that Crysis 2 will exceed anything that has gone before. "With each generation of game titles on PS3, usually every 2 years, the games improve significantly in its quality, mostly showing off in graphics. I think with Crysis 2 you will see the quality bar being set at a very high level that games will struggle to excel. We’re aiming to set a whole new benchmark with that game for all PS3 games…"

See brief gameplay videos of iPad games in action, including Geometry Wars Touch, Real Racing HD (cockpit and outside view), Azkend HD, N.O.V.A. (a FPS very much like Halo), Zen Bound 2 and the classic PAC-MAN.