www.fullrezgaming.com

Keeping up with the updates Biowares been emailing out about Star Wars: The Old Republic, They have announced the new class of Troopers.

The Republic Troopers are gonna be one bad ass fighting force. They are equipped to fight any foe in any environment. They’re a versatile, powerful, and elite class, and when pairing one up with a Jedi, watch out, that’s one gnarly fighting force.

The Jedi class still work close with the republic troopers in this time period, but they are not as involved as they used to be. Despite any backstory, the Trooper class is going to be kicking some galactic cheeks, and who can argue with someone holding that gun.

Click here for more info on the Trooper Class

Finally, The second installment to the Assassin’s Creed story line has been revealed. Expected to come out this winter, Assassin’s Creed 2 promises to go above and beyond expectations.

We have all grown attached to Altair in some way, shape or form. But I’m sad to say that he will not be the focus of the next game. Assassins Creed 2 will take place about 300 years later in Italy during the 1400′s. The game will focus on another ancestor of Desmond’s, also being a Assassin, of course. The game is going to improve on several elements, such as making the missions not so repetitive and enhancing the enemy AI so that each type of soldier has different ways of attacking and pursuing you.

One big update that the developers announced is the battle system is going to be improved. They’re working on making the transition from evading to attacking virtually seamless. There’s also going to be a very diverse collection of weapons to use, though Ubisoft said that with the way the game is being engineered, you can win any battle with no weapons and the right amount of skill.

As some of you may be aware, some cities in Italy have a plethura of canals through the cities. This game grabs hold of that fact and runs with it. Instead of the occasional haystack to hide in, theres going to be a diverse collection of hiding places, including water. You’re gonna be able to dive in the canals to escape from enemies. Adding water as an element in this game is definitely going to up the game and bring a more interesting experience to us gamers. Now you just need to hold your breath until winter 2009. Enjoy.

Godfather 2 is yet another sequel coming out this year, but as it’s turning out thats not a bad thing. There has been quiet a good collection of sequels in the last two years, and also some crappy ones.

If you have played the original Godfather game your gonna know what I’m taking about. If you haven’t, then listen up. Most movie games suck so much it makes me want to throw the game in the toilet and pee on it. That being said, Godfather was not one of those games. It was very interactive and well developed. Godfather was like GTA with a purpose, and I’m hoping that Godfather 2 follows the same blueprint.

The game is a contiuation of where the last one left off, which finally feeds that hungering desire to whip out a tommy gun and extort a flower shop, all over again.

Unfortunately the game isn’t going to have fantastic graphics, but the development team claims they focused more on a compelling game play, which is what its all about when you get down to it.

This installment includes a multiplayer game play as well that is promised to be awesome. I would love to give you a hands on preview of the multiplayer, but frankly that’s not gonna happen at this point, seeing how the view meter on this website is still less then the members of Hayden Christensen’s fan club, but we’re catching up. Time will tell.

Release Date: April 7, 2009

Platform: PC, Xbox 360, PS3

Here’s a cool little banner I made and a teaser trailer for the sequel to the underwater game that made The Hunt For Red October look like the Little Mermaid. I would love to share more with you but to be honest, no one has a damn clue on what it’s about. Enjoy.

Platform: Xbox 360, PS3, PC

The future must really suck since everyone always ends up lost in space (pun very much intended) fighting aliens, zombies, mutants, etc. Dead Space follows this blissful thought and runs with it. At first glance I had assumed it was yet another generic addition to the Sci fi-Horror genre, running around shooting alien-zombies with significant amounts of blood and gore. However, what I found is what can be considered a sophisticated scifi-horror. The game contained a compelling plot with many surprises. Be that as it may, the story begins in a fairly generic way, some emergency on board a huge ship orbiting a baron world in a debris field….hmmm…

From the get-go the game throws you into the action. After a violent crash you are shortly put into a heart racing sprint through an alien infested corridor, unarmed. This has to have been the most freaky event in a video game I have experienced ever. (by the way, this is not a game to be played at 1 AM in a dimly lit room, it will guaranteed scare the pee out of you). However the edge is slightly taken off once you find a weapon to defend yourself, until you find out that this is no ordinary alien-zombie infestation. The creators of Dead Space obviously took some time to think outside of the box on this one. The common perception of zombies is that you want a shotgun and aim for the head. But for Dead Space, these ones simply wont die until they are broken into several hundred pieces and then some. Otherwise they tend to jump back up and try to bite your head off again, and again, and again.

The plot of Dead Space is definitely something to applaud (minus the fact that it shares an uncanny familiarity to a little known movie called Event Horizon). They masterfully are able to put in strategic horror scenes that always keep you on your toes. Nothing is ever what it seems. Another interesting fact somewhat reminds me of Bioshock is the introduction of Vid-Logs and Audio logs scattered through the game. The difference in the case of Dead Space is how well these are integrated into the plot. As you explore the crippled USG Ishimura it is hard not to run into several hundred of these logs scattered about, however they contribute to the plot significantly. They all tell back-stories of the crew and what happened on the colony on the planet below. Unlike some games, these never actually get in the way of combat. If an enemy pops up, shoulder your weapon and the Vid-logs kindly get out of the way and play the dialog in the background as you quickly defend yourself.

The combat and menu system is quite intuitive and interesting as there is no HUD per say. All of the in game menus are projections off of panels on consoles or off of your character’s suit, the application is amazing. Some games in the past have tried to include menus within the environment but only Dead Space has so far accomplished this task successfully. As to your more explosive arsenal, all of the weapons in the game are fairly original and have some seriously intense functions. For example you have the Pulse Rifle. This weapon gives you the choice between rapid fire like a simple machine gun, or hit the alt fire button and unleash a ridiculous hail fire of bullets in all directions. Or our favorite here at Full Rez, the Line Gun, which shoots a massive wide pulse that nearly shreds everything to bits or plants timed mines. The majority of the weapons are specifically designed to deal with the new concept of these alien-zombies and they all fulfill this purpose splendidly.

Something that is becoming more common in modern games is the ability to upgrade equipment and weapons in game. In the case of Dead Space they decided to take the concept of a large grid that you fill with ‘Power Nodes’ to upgrade everything (which if you are familiar with the Final Fantasy X ‘Sphere Grid’ then you’ll feel very at home). Along your travels you will also encounter new schematics for your suit, which not only makes it look more menacing, you will slowly look like a window shutter.

In summary:

Pros:

• Graphics and visual effects are well done.
• Isaac’s Suite looks awesome as you receive more upgrades.
• Control Interface is intuitive and has a relatively shallow learning curve.
• Weapons are fun and imaginative.
• Plot develops in a surprising way leading up to a climatic finale on an absolutely epic scale.
• It is quite good at scaring the pants off of you.

Cons:

• The half dead aliens jumping back to life gets fairly repetitive.
• The inventory limitations become quite a hassle.
• Support characters can have the tendency to beg the question “If you’re already there, why don’t you go do it?”.
• The plot does suspiciously follow a similar plot to the scifi movie Event Horizon, but minus Laurence Fishburne.

In all, Dead Space is a good 7 hours of some serious fun (14 for myself and ready for another round). If you have a chance pick up a copy and see for yourself, you won’t be disappointed.

–David “snake8head” James

P.S. don’t forget Peng!

Alright so here’s the deal. If your into blood, gore, and violence, try this game out. If your into serious gaming with thriving plot lines and stunning graphics, keep walking, this game is not for you. Overall this game was fun, and really thats what it’s about. The fun didn’t last for long though. The single player is entertaining and it strokes your creative gene, allowing you many possibilities of turning your foe into a two piece bathing suit, but after a few levels the game becomes a bit repetitive.

Sadly the multiplayer didn’t have a lot to offer. The only thing that you could do on the game in multiplayer were challenges, which weren’t the best part of the game to begin with. Personally I would have like to see a free mode or something in this game that just allowed me to turn everything with legs into wall ornaments for an endless amount of time.

As for the storyline, your basically competing in a contest called Death Watch. The story doesn’t get all too complicated otherwise. The control’s are a bit temperamental and the game has the occasion to have poor depth perception. Another burden of the game is it’s black and white comic book styling. Although it gives the game a unique characteristic, it’s pretty distracting from whats going on. As for camera controls, you press the C button to center up, otherwise good luck looking around.

This game is basically the new age Twisted Metal, without the cars, or the color. If you have a Wii sitting at your house and it’s only use is holding up your Friday the 13th collection because your not a huge fan of bright colors and a little Italian guy in overalls, dust that Wii off and pick up this game. Otherwise don’t buy it. maybe rent it.

Platform: Wii

Spring cleaning applies to computers as well, so I been going through my Steam library, the largest component of my C drive. I want to delete Counterstrike, but I can’t, it’s the cornerstone of Valve and Steam. Plus, you never know when you really-fuckin’-wanna-play-Counterstrike.

Announced at Game Developers Conference 2009, OnLive is new independent cloud server for games like Steam or Xbox Live, but they claim you never actually download any content to the console, a small machine about the size of an external hard drive. A whole game from affiliate companies like EA and Ubisoft that will no doubt be very large and graphically detailed will be streamed to your machine for play, even online multiplayers where minimizing latency is key. The OnLive console will support Bluetooth and wireless controllers and accessories like microphones, possibly from all consoles and third parties assuming the console does not require its own specific controllers. Obviously that would mean creating a whole new console that would most likely meet the same fate as the Atari Jaguar and the Sega Saturn in a world of Xbox’s and PS3′s. Still, OnLive is boasting compatibility with a great number of games and hardware.

Here’s the kicker: By hardware, not only do they mean controllers and accessories, they claim the ability to use the OnLive with any TV, PC, and/or Mac. The games accessed by the OnLive, rather than on the OnLive, are from there fully playable on the screen of your choice. With the OnLive, RTS Halo Wars can be played on a PC with an appropriate keyboard and mouse, rather than weep at its exclusive and miserable existence on the Xbox. Hell, you could play Halo on a Mac. Wouldn’t that piss Microsoft off.

More about OnLive

No longer will this poor soul have to suffer the lag of conventional online gaming.

I’m not sure if a JRPG is a junior or Japanese role player, but as Tetsuya Nomura has given birth to another snarky and spiky haired adolescent, The World Ends With You certainly is a JRPG. It follows Neku a recently deceased headphone wearing 14 year old as he roams the streets of modern Shibuya presumably as a ghost fighting against the Reapers of Shibuya for the chance to be reincarnated, probably to continue his moody snarky introverted hipster lifestyle. He fights with pins which enable psychic attacks activated by tapping or slashing the lower DS screen with the stylus. There’s pyrokinesis, telekinesis, electric bolts, and many others. However, Neku is not the only dead kid in Shibuya. Many other wish to have their lives back so Neku must partner up with other dead kids. For partners you have the self conscious fashion obsessive girl, the androgynous rich kid, and a muscle-head even Neku thinks is stupid. These partners melee battle on the top DS screen controlled by the D-pad by the same player. That’s right: one player simultaneously controlling two characters with totally separate and unique real time combat systems. As TWEWY is the product of Square Enix and Nomura, the brains behind Kingdom Hearts, I expected a real-time button smackers which will control the spiky haired doofus de jour. To my pleasure, this game offers plenty of mindless button smacking and sporadic stylus scratching. I’m curious to see if this combat system will appear in Squares’ Kingdom Hearts DS release.

The game play is compelling, the story is immersive and delivered with a comic book aesthetic, and worth a replay or two if you want to understand for sure how Neku died. Just as you spent hours and hours leveling up your Pokémon on Game Boy Color, you’ll spend just as much time finding every single pin, determining your favorite fighting style and most powerful pin combination and then grinding and maxing out the levels on each. This is one of the few games I actually sought out for the DS because, just like Pokémon, there is no age limit. The DS tends to cater to the family audience, meaning children and their parents who allow violent free video games to keep them entertained and quiet on long car rides. TWEWY is rated for teens for its use of language and moderate violence, a bit different from Nintendogs and the like. But really, since TWEWY, I’ve not been motivated to buy a DS game. Not that Nintendo cares, I’m a bit out of the DS audience.

As story makes up half my impression of a game, its unavoidable to mention thematic elements, the main one being that the world does in fact end with you. You are only as cultured and socially open as you allow yourself to be. Enter TWEWY’s multiplayer which involves no aspect of the single player mode. Using the DS Wi-Fi, you and a friend can go head to head in a pog style mini game using six pins from your own collection “slamming” against six of your opponents. Also using the DS Wi-Fi, you can enter mingle mode, where you can close the DS lid and pocket it as it searches for other DS’s on Wi-Fi, even the ones not playing TWEWY. Doing so earns you mingle points which also contribute to raising the level of your pins. In addition to Battle and Mingle points, your pins level up with Shutdown point, earn for time you spend NOT playing TWEWY. That’s right, a game which rewards you for not playing it. A video game that discourages playing video games and encourages people to socialize with real people and expand their world. So, like Neku, I encourage you to don your trendy purple headphones and experience the magic of the world around you as only a video game can deliver.

-Mark “The World Began With Me” Randall