Featured Stories

• Warhammer 40k Screens Released

  Warhammer 40k Screens Released

  Looking at this, just this image below, I’m all of a sudden rather interested in what this MMO might have to offer. With the lack of success of the recent Warhammer MMO, I’m skeptical, but it may bring some nice new feature to the industry. Enjoy the shinies….

  

• Most Impressive: Dead Space Extraction for Wii

  Most Impressive: Dead Space Extraction for Wii

  
  Never before have I played a Wii game where I simply *forgot* that I was playing it on the Wii. Dead Space Extraction, the prequel to the hit 360 game, Dead Space, did just that. From beginning to end, Extraction takes the look and feel of the original and makes the amazing transition to the underpowered Nintendo console in such a way that it loses nothing and gains so much more.
  Upon entering the game proper you are reintroduced to the surface of Aegis VII, the planet from the original game where the so-called “Marker” was discovered. This reintroduction is more than how it sounds, however, as the location you find yourself is the same spot where the ending events of the 360 title take place. I was taken back by the amazing eye for detail the developers had. Everything looked like it did in the original game. Some of the models may not as been as crisp or the textures not as high resolution, but the overall appearance was so very much accurate to Dead Space that, only minutes into the game, any thoughts of this being on a different system vanished from my mind.

  Extraction’s gameplay is set apart from the original in a number of respects. Dead Space was a third person shooter where the main character, Isaac Clarke, was nearly always in view and rarely talked except to say “ouch” if you were playing badly. Extraction is a First-Person “On-Rails” shooter where you play the role of a number of different characters through the course of the storyline. On-Rails shooters, much like House of the Dead Overkill, seem to be right at home on the Wii. With the advent of HDTVs and the mass exodus from CRT televisions, light-gun games have nearly become of thing of the past due to technological limitations. The Wii, however, facilitates this genre of game perfectly due to the combination of the Wiimote’s built in IR-camera and the Sensor bar.

  The best parts of Dead Space make their return. Each weapon has an alternate fire mode, activated by tilting the Wiimote 90 degrees, aka “Gangsta Style”. Some of these alternate modes have been changed to better serve the new interface, such as the Pulse Rifles Alt-Fire, and new weapons have been added as well, such as the Arc Welder and Rivet Gun. Equipment Upgrades also made the transition as pick-up items and not requiring the use of the Bench like in the original.

  Going into the game, I knew that I would revisit locations from Dead Space, such as the “Planet Cracker” ship the Ishimura, though I did not realize that I would actually be setting the scene for when you return to the ship as Isaac. From deactivating the filtration systems, blocking off access to sectors of the ship all the way to the shut down of the ADS (Automatic Defense Systems), forcing Isaac to play thru the worst part of Dead Space, in my opinion.

  One of the nice additions to Extraction is the “Hacking” mini-game. Rather than take a cue from Bioshock’s Pipe-Dreams style of hacking, we are instead presented with an altered version of the Metroid Prime “Welding” mechanic, that being Connect-The-Dots (la la la la). Early hacks are quite easy. Further into the game, however, hacks become much more difficult, requiring both steady and timed connections as to not touch or get caught between “bad segments” of the circuit that glow red and losing health. To increase the difficulty more, some hacks take place in the middle of gun fights, with the shooting happening to the left and the hacking on the right. During these specific hacks, the actual gunfight does not end until the hack is complete, so there will be an endless spawning of monsters until you finish the job. In a single player game, this can prove to be quite the challenge from a multitasking perspective. In a Co-Op game, however, this becomes very much like an “Aliens” moment, where one player fights off the baddies while his partner works on the hack.

  The character development was very well handled. You play the game through the eyes of four different characters throughout the course of the game, yet there is enough down-time to flesh out each one. The first character you play as was perhaps the least developed overall since you only get to experience his story for the first chapter before SPOILERS happen, however, the way SPOILERS happen was a very nice plot point that brought a smile to my face and set the mood for the game as a whole.  For the remaining three characters, two of them are with you from Chapter 2 until the final chapter, and the third character adds that much needed amount of “Survival Horror” and “playing as a non-soldier/badass” feel that was lacking in even the original game.  Also, much like the first characters story, HER story and eventual SPOILERS was quite poetic, if not complete BS.   The fun BS, not the “I hate this game” BS.

  Overall I was highly impressed with Dead Space Extraction.   “For a Wii Game”, the graphics were far beyond what I was expecting and then some.  There were some frame-rate drops, but these were expected, brief, few and far between and never ruin my experience.  This game simply raises the bar for any future Wii games in this style, even those made by Nintendo and it’s First-Party developers.  In this reviewers opinion, Dead Space Extraction is the best thing the Wii has ever had.

• World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

  World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

  
  
  Well this looks interesting!