G.A.M.E.Z

Unreal Tournament 3 (PS3)

2007-12-13T06:31:00.000-08:00

Ratings Summary | Difficulty | Time Spent

The year 2007 is a huge one for shooters, featuring big-name games like Halo 3, Crysis, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and Half-Life 2: The Orange Box. However, one shooter that's been flying under the radar a bit is Unreal Tournament 3, the latest edition in Epic's multiplayer combat franchise. That's partly because Epic has been relatively mum about the game, working quietly in its North Carolina offices over the past year. Imagine a game that's even more graphically advanced than Gears of War, but with a much larger scale, allowing up to 32 players to battle it out together on the PC. Thankfully, we got our first serious hands-on with the game recently at Epic, and this gave us a chance to check out various multiplayer modes and explore what's new, improved, and cool about the latest Unreal Tournament.

Unreal Tournament 3 represents a departure of sorts from its predecessors. While the early UTs were billed as sort of the blood sport of the future, Unreal Tournament 3 will usher in a single-player campaign about an intergalactic war and featuring characters that look like they were from the casting call for Gears of War, another Epic game. But while Gears of War is a very tactical game about using cover, Unreal Tournament 3, just like its predecessors, is about lightning-fast run-and-gun gameplay where you'll do a lot of killing and dying, but you're always able to respawn within seconds to continue the fight.

Unreal Tournament 3 will introduce a single-player story while ratcheting up the multiplayer action.

Though Unreal Tournament 3 will have a single-player story, the game is still built around the idea of intense multiplayer battles, either against computer-controlled bots or other players online. (While the PC supports up to 32 players, the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions will support up to 16.) There will be a number of modes in the game, ranging from simple deathmatch to team-based games such as capture the flag, vehicle capture the flag, and warfare. Deathmatch is pretty self-explanatory--it's every player for him or herself in the race to rack up kills--so we'll dive into CTF, VCTF, and warfare. Capture the flag is a familiar mode in most games. Each team has a flag that it has to defend while at the same time trying to capture the opposing team's flag. Unreal Tournament's twist on this is to toss in the translocator, a device that lets you teleport over short distances, which makes it possible to dash into a heavily defended room, grab the flag, and then disappear in the blink of an eye. While the translocator isn't a new development in Unreal Tournament 3, it still plays a huge role.

Unreal Tournament 3's multiplayer really starts to differentiate itself when you get to vehicle capture the flag, which is just what it sounds like. VCTF is capture the flag on larger maps that support a wide array of vehicles, and that allows for a much more epic struggle. There are some caveats regarding VCTF that are particularly helpful. For instance, if you grab the flag you can't get in and drive or ride in a vehicle. Instead, you've got to carry it on foot or use the hoverboard, the new piece of equipment in Unreal Tournament 3. The hoverboard replaces the translocator in VCTF and warfare games and it is basically a hovering skateboard. The idea behind the hoverboard is to get you back into the action quickly, because there's nothing worse than finding yourself on foot in the wrong corner of the map, away from all the action. In UT 2004, that meant hoofing it for a minute or two, but in Unreal Tournament 3 you can hop on the board and zip around in style.

You die fast in this game. Thankfully, you respawn just as quickly.

The hoverboard is a welcome addition to Unreal Tournament. However, it is easy to get carried away with it, and you have to consider two key things. First, while racing around on the hoverboard you cannot use your weapons. Second, if you're hit by even the slightest weapons fire you'll be knocked off of the board, which is pretty much a death sentence because it takes several seconds to get off the ground, leaving plenty of time for your attacker to finish you off. Using the board is very much a risk/reward proposition, but there are some additional benefits to riding it. For instance, you can "grapple" onto passing vehicles, letting them tow you around the map at higher speeds. Thus, while a flag carrier can't ride in a vehicle, he could jump on his board, grapple a teammate's ride, and zip back to safety. This even works for flying vehicles, and there are maps in the game that are designed so that it's faster for the flag carrier if he can be airlifted across a divide.

We experienced VCTF on a map called Suspense, which is set in and around a high-tech suspension bridge. The goal is for each team to capture the opposing team's flag three times in order to win, but doing so can be awfully difficult. The primary approach to either side's base is the bridge itself, which is a fairly open and narrow kill zone where your vehicles and infantry can get chewed up quickly. It's possible for infantry to run or hoverboard up the cables to reach the upper support structure of the bridge, where sniper weapons and amped-damage power-ups await. Yet perhaps the most potent weapon up there is the Longbow AVRIL, an antivehicle rocket launcher that can lock onto and track vehicles. The high perch makes it easy to knock out tanks below on the bridge, as well as various air units that are flying about. The only limitation is that the AVRIL comes with a small amount of ammunition, and there's no way to replenish your supply of rockets.

Trauma Center: New Blood

2007-12-07T07:43:00.000-08:00

Trauma Center: New Blood

Publisher: Atlus Co.
Developer: Atlus Co.
Genre: Action
Release Date: Nov 20, 2007
ESRB: TEEN
ESRB Descriptors: Blood, Drug Reference, Mild Language, Mild Violence

Game Information

Technical Support
Visit Atlus Co. web site at: www.atlus.com

Official Site
Visit the official web site at: www.atlus.com/tcnb

The Good

Awesome control scheme
Gruesome injuries will tickle your fancy without grossing you out
Challenging, priority-based puzzles
Bring a friend to the operating table.
Great Sequel and Sharp Control

The Bad

Instructions not as clear as they could be
The dialogue will put you under
No amount of surgery can save the overall plot.
Punishing Difficulty.

A trauma center is a major league hospital, equipped with around-the-clock surgical staff, state-of-the-art equipment,

and as much pain and carnage as a Texas Chain Saw family reunion. Normally you'd want to spend as much time in one

as you'd want to spend covered in rats, so you wouldn't think the concept would make for a nice, leisurely video game.

Yet Atlus has already turned it into thr ee, and its latest, Trauma Center: New Blood, is the best of the bunch.

Just like the other operations in the series, New Blood is a surgery simulation that has you slicing into patients,

excising their tumors, removing bullets, draining blood, and sowing them back up again, all with healthy doses of

antibiotics and, most importantly, fun. But despite its presence on the family-friendly Wii, this is not an easy game.

But before we get to the shattered arms, impaled hearts, and shot dogs, you should know that the game is about the

surgical exploits of Valerie Blaylock and Markus Vaughn. The curtains rise in "Alaska--the frigid northern extremity of

America." That is literally the first line in the entire game. Makes you wonder what they would've said if it began in

Florida ("the long, hot leg of America"?) or Texas ("the giant bottom"?). After that, there are only a few plot points

worth paying attention to.

In one, a rich patient complains that his appendectomy isn't costing enough, while across the hospital, a poor child

without insurance needs the same operation but can't pay for it. So you bill the rich kid for two appendectomies,

because, as Markus says, "Rich or poor, we're all the same under the knife." And you thought your HMO was crazy. At

least Markus can back up his god complex with supernatural powers--he and Valerie wield the medical equivalent of

bullet time, known as the "Healing Touch." It's all part of a wacky spiritual hoodoo both doctors buy into that has them

saying things like, "As the stars have taught me...I am one with life...I am one with now..."

The rest of the dialogue and plot details that unfold between surgeries are as dull as local anesthetic. Sure, there's a

game show that's a cross between Iron Chef and, well, surgery, plus a talking surgery dog, but these are things you can

enjoy all while quickly tapping the A button on the remote to skip ahead. In fact, seeing the dog chime in between

conversations is actually more entertaining if you don't stop to read what's actually being said.

Besides, the gameplay is so good you'll want to skip straight to it. While the Wii is chock-full of minigame collections

trying to cash in on the system's expiring novelty, the Trauma Center series has developed an elegant, complex control

scheme that believably and thoroughly adapts the system's capabilities to surgery. After hours and hours of play,

you'll excise tumors with deft speed and precision. You'll quickly pluck bullets, drain the blood, use forceps to pinch

the wound shut, and suture it like it's second nature before moving on to the next life-threatening injury.

The only downside to all of this is that some of the surgeries are extremely long and sensitive. If you make a mistake

five minutes in, for instance, your patient dies and you are told that, unable to overcome the shame, Markus and

Valerie leave the surgery world forever. Quitters. This is exacerbated by two factors: (1) The game doesn't always tell

you things you need to know, and (2) Mistakes that shouldn't remotely affect the health of the patient will make them

die, such as trying to pick up a pacemaker with a blood drainer.

Those issues aside, it's fun and rewarding to figure out things for yourself. For instance, an operation on a burn victim

is horribly frustrating at first, but becomes rewarding once you figure out how to grow skin grafts, place them in the

right spots, drain the blood, and boost the patient's vitals in the right order.

Aside from fixing normal injuries and ailments, you'll also do battle with the Stigma virus--an evolving and malignant

malady that really lets the game designers get creative with their procedures. For instance, the first Stigma you

encounter is like a razor strapped to a micromachine that races around and lacerates your patient's organs. Later

versions hide in the flesh, float around and fart tumors, or grow tentacles that must be pinched and severed.

About seven hours in, even on the easiest difficulty level, the game becomes obscenely difficult. You'll battle multiple,

consecutive stigmas, treat a shotgun-blasted dog, and face more blood and carnage than you can shake a scalpel at.

With the right priorities, you can pass these challenges, or you can pull in a friend for some cooperative slicing and

dicing. That's right, two players can operate on the same patient, each with a full suite of tools at their disposal. The

early missions provide good opportunities to acquaint novice partners with the controls and concepts, and the later

missions are difficult even for two skilled surgeons, especially when facing two different kinds of stigma at the same

time. New Blood's cooperative play is fun, easy on beginners, and definitely extends its life span.

When rendering wounds and body parts, New Blood doesn't go for brutal realism, but rather clarity and simplicity. For

instance, the vessels you need to work on during the appendectomy are color-coded for your convenience, not your

sense of anatomical correctness. Such an approach might've sterilized the game's injuries, if New Blood didn't go so

over the top with some of them. In one operation, your patient's rib cage has shattered, and all the shards have

embedded themselves in a major internal organ, which now looks like a frightened puffer fish, or a fully loaded voodoo

doll. It's super nasty, even without realistic flesh textures or blood shooting across the screen and sticking to the

camera. Besides, they have to leave something for the sequel.

New Blood sounds fine, though the solid voice acting is wasted on the boring dialogue. The music is entirely forgettable

and the surgery sound effects are passable, though the only one that will really stick in your memory occurs when you

"accidentally" push one of the aforementioned bone shards deeper into the organ, rather than pulling it free.

Trauma Center: New Blood is a successful operation. Even though the dialogue is insipid and some of the procedures

are frustrating, this game combines signature surgical gameplay with a double dose of challenge and great cooperative

play for a trip to the hospital you won't require painkillers to enjoy.

By Joe Dodson, GameSpot

GTA: Liberty City Stories Game Guide

2007-12-04T11:08:00.000-08:00

GTA: Liberty City Stories Game Guide- Cheats

TRIANGLE, R1, L1, DOWN, DOWN, R1, R1, TRIANGLE All Vehicles Chrome Plated
CIRCLE, RIGHT, X, UP, RIGHT, X, L1, SQUARE Change Bike Tire Size
DOWN, DOWN, DOWN, X, X, SQUARE, R1, L1 Upside Down Gameplay
DOWN, DOWN, DOWN, TRIANGLE, TRIANGLE,
CIRCLE, L1, R1 Have People Follow You
L1, R1, L1, R1, UP, DOWN, L1, R1 Display Game Credits
DOWN, DOWN, DOWN, CIRCLE, CIRCLE, X, L1, R1 Bobble Head World
SQUARE, SQUARE, R1, X, X, L1, CIRCLE, CIRCLE Aggressive Drivers
TRIANGLE, TRIANGLE, R1, SQUARE, SQUARE,
L1, X, X All Green Lights
L1, DOWN, LEFT, R1, X, CIRCLE, UP, TRIANGLE Commit Suicide
L1, UP, LEFT, R1, TRIANGLE, CIRCLE, DOWN, X Perfect Traction
R1, TRIANGLE, X, R1, SQUARE, CIRCLE,
LEFT, RIGHT Slower Gameplay
R1, R1, L1, R1, R1, L1, RIGHT, CIRCLE Peds Have Weapons
R1, R1, L1, R1, R1, L1, DOWN, X Faster Gameplay
L1, L1, CIRCLE, R1, R1, SQUARE, TRIANGLE, X Sunny Weather
UP, DOWN, CIRCLE, UP, DOWN, SQUARE, L1, R1 Clear Weather
L1, L1, R1, L1, L1, R1, UP, TRIANGLE Peds Attack You
L1, L1, R1, L1, L1, R1, LEFT, SQUARE Peds Riot
L1, L1, LEFT, L1, L1, RIGHT, X, SQUARE Destroy All Cars
L1, L1, LEFT, L1, L1, RIGHT, CIRCLE, X Faster Clock
L1, L1, LEFT, L1, L1, RIGHT, TRIANGLE, CIRCLE Spawn Rhino
UP, DOWN, SQUARE, UP, DOWN, CIRCLE, L1, R1 Rainy Weather
UP, DOWN, TRIANGLE, UP, DOWN, X, L1, R1 Foggy Weather
UP, DOWN, X, UP, DOWN, TRIANGLE, L1, R1 Overcast Weather
L1, R1, TRIANGLE, L1, R1, CIRCLE, L1, R1 Money Cheat ($250,000)
L1, R1, CIRCLE, L1, R1, X, L1, R1 Full Armor (Blue Bar)
L1, R1, X, L1, R1, SQUARE, L1, R1 Full Health (Red Bar)
X, X, X, DOWN, DOWN, RIGHT, L1, R1 Upside Down Gameplay2
UP, UP, UP, CIRCLE, CIRCLE, X, L1, R1 4 Gangs+28 Characters (Multiplayer)
UP, UP, UP, X, X, SQUARE, R1, L1 7 Gangs+43 Characters (Multiplayrer)
UP, UP, UP, SQUARE, SQUARE, TRIANGLE, R1, L1 2 Gangs+14 Characters (Multiplayer)
UP, CIRCLE, CIRCLE, DOWN, LEFT, CIRCLE,
CIRCLE, RIGHT Weapon set 2
UP, X, X, DOWN, LEFT, X, X, RIGHT Weapon set 3
UP, SQUARE, SQUARE, DOWN, LEFT, SQUARE,
SQUARE, RIGHT Weapon set 1
L1, R1, SQUARE, L1, R1, TRIANGLE, L1, R1 Raise Wanted Level
L1, L1, TRIANGLE, R1, R1, X, SQUARE, CIRCLE Never Wanted
CIRCLE, X, DOWN, CIRCLE, X, UP, L1, L1 Cars Drive On Water
X, X, R1, CIRCLE, CIRCLE, L1, TRIANGLE, TRIANGLE White Cars
CIRCLE, CIRCLE, R1, TRIANGLE, TRIANGLE, L1,
SQUARE, SQUARE Black Cars
L1, UP, RIGHT, R1, TRIANGLE, SQUARE, DOWN, X Raise Media Attention
TRIANGLE, CIRCLE, DOWN, TRIANGLE, CIRCLE,
UP, L1, L1 Spawn Trashmaster
L1, L1, LEFT, L1, L1, RIGHT, SQUARE, TRIANGLE Random Ped Outfit
Triangle, Triangle, Triangle, Up, Up, Right, L, R Upside Up
UP, UP, UP, TRIANGLE, TRIANGLE, CIRCLE, L1, R1 Unlock multiplayer skins
X, Square, Down, X, Square, Up, R1, R1 Calls closest Ped to come hop on/in
your vehicle.

The Golden Compass

2007-12-03T08:16:00.000-08:00

Publisher: Sega
Platform: Xbox 360
Release Date: Dec 4, 2007
Release Region: North America
Distribution: Retail

Take one beloved children's novel, add a movie inspired by the book and starring Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, and Ian McShane, and what do you get? If you answered "a tie-in game inspired by the film and/or the book," you're on the right track with Sega's upcoming adventure game The Golden Compass. We had a chance to get an early look at the game, which is due for release in conjunction with the film this December.

The story of The Golden Compass game centers around the main character from the book and film, Lyra Belacqua, her shape-shifting demon friend Pan, and a heavily armored talking polar bear known as Iorek. In the demo version of the game, we got to see Lyra riding Iorek as he trekked through a snowy wasteland, battling packs of wolves as they traveled. As you might expect from a polar bear, Iorek's abilities are all about brute strength, and he tosses off attacking wolves with ease in order to protect his rider.

That isn't to say that Lyra is helpless. Thanks to her demon friend Pan's ability to shape-shift, Lyra can access areas of the map that would otherwise be unreachable. Though Pan can shift into many different forms in the books, the developers at Shiny have settled on four different forms for Pan in the game: ermine (essentially a weasel), sloth, hawk, and wildcat. Pan and his shape-shifting will be most useful in the platforming sections of the game, where Lyra has to use Pan's various abilities to get from one point of the level to the next.

While you might not think a sloth or an ermine would be useful, each form Pan can take offers its own unique abilities. For example, when transformed to sloth form, Lyra can use Pan as an extension of her own reach to grab ledges and poles. In hawk form, Lyra can glide using a double-jump move, and descend huge cliffs via Pan's hawk-form wings to glide to safety. As a wildcat with Lyra on his back, Pan can climb obstacles that would otherwise be insurmountable. Interestingly, you can switch between any of these forms on the fly; indeed, some of the more difficult puzzles in the game will require you to move from one form to the next quickly in order to move from spot to spot.

The titular golden compass isn't used for navigation in the game, but rather to divine the truth about the people and situations Lyra meets over the course of the game. Along with collecting clues about the many symbols on the compass as she navigates the game's levels, she'll use the compass to help answer questions that will periodically creep up throughout the course of the game. Though we weren't entirely clear on the mechanics of how the compass works, it sounds as if it might be add another level of depth to the game's adventure genre roots. We'll be bringing you more on The Golden Compass as we get closer to its release, so stay tuned.

Gamespot