Ah yes, the movie games. For every G-Force there is a Thor. For every Rango you have a Megamind: Ultimate Showdown, and for every Captain America a James Cameron's Avatar: The Game.


Like that last one, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn is another Ubisoft licensed game based, for the most part, on the new Spielberg movie. But does it manage to offer a better time for players this time around?




At its heart, Tintin is not so much a children's game as it is somewhat of a throwback to the old 2D Prince of Persia and Another World games. The vast majority of the game sees you controlling the boy reporter with his questionable fashion sense as he side-scrolls his way from room to room.

The basic trappings of platforming are all here. Jump, climb up ledges and ladders, wall jump off conveniently placed walls, or even hit a baddy with a few punches. The platforming itself is a joy to play, with just the right mix of cartoon and realistic physics to make it feel like you're really in the world of Tintin. Combat often offers you the choice to go in as a brawler, or to sneak around enemies and instantly take them down from behind.

Occasionally you'll come across enemies who shield themselves with an armor suit or an umbrella, requiring you to use throwable objects like beach balls and explosives or luring the enemy to a slippery section on the ground, making him go "wee-wee-wee-wee-boing!" If you just want to pummel enemies head on, then in most cases you can, but there's always the option to take a more elegant approach by using your surroundings and this adds a lot more fun for the more experienced players.



The 2D sections use some clever 3D to give you access to hidden paths for collectible Golden Crabs and make it feel like the world has some more volume than it appears to have. Whether you're a kid or an adult, these sections are a blast and thankfully they'll have you occupied for most of the game.


At other times you'll move out of a 2D section to follow a corridor in 3D, and this is where you notice that the game is much better off with its 2D gameplay. It's meant to switch the perspective around a bit and keep things varied, but none of these sections ever add anything other than the obligatory "run from danger towards the camera" bit. While the swap to playing Snowy can be fun to play here and there, it feels more like he just had to be put into the game in some fashion -- sniffing paths and exploring sections Tintin doesn't fit in -- than that he's an integral character.

Likewise, there are some plane flying levels where you'll evade obstacles and occasionally shoot at rocks or enemies. These levels sadly never offer anything that is solid in gameplay, expands upon the story or the world of Tintin, and quite frankly the flying was done a lot better in the Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole game. A few simple swashbuckling sections can take a little bit to figure out how to work the controls, as the analog stick suddenly moves your sword while your character is on rails. Slightly more entertaining are the various driving missions where you'll alternate between driving your bike and shooting at vicious Arabs/Berbers from the bike's sidecar.

None of it is terrible to play, but neither will it blow you or your child's mind. It's just there to spice things up from the platforming and break the inevitable repetition, and at least it does that well enough. Still, the entire journey through the game's "Tintin" mode, in which you play through the movie's events, is an enjoyable and very family-friendly one. There's no drinking, no blood, and defeating enemies with retarded AI will just make them lie on the ground with their butt up in the air.



Beyond the "Tintin" story mode, there's a challenge mode where you can play some more of the plane, swashbuckling, and sidecar sections. This mode also lets you use Kinect if you have the Xbox 360 version of the game, which offers some good family fun. Swashbuckling lets your inner child get its due, with on-screen prompts for where to hold your arm to block an incoming blow and flapping your arms around to slash at pirates in different directions.


The sidecar and plane challenges are controlled by holding your arms out as if you're holding the handle bars or a steering wheel, respectively. The plane's shooting challenge is brilliant, though, since you can shoot down enemy planes by moving both your hands back and forth. The Kinect functionality doesn't offer enough to buy it for this alone, but if you're wondering which version to pick and you have Kinect, the Xbox 360 version is definitely the one to get.

Tintin also has a very expansive co-op mode where Ubisoft Montpellier seems to have gone all out with the craziness. After the conclusion of the movie's story, Thompson and Thomson accidentally hit Captain Haddock in the head and this cues a wonderfully bizarre dream state for the drunken captain. Here you'll unlock level by level by playing through weird alternate versions of the game's locations, in which enemies make reflective remarks on being inside a dream.

These co-op levels are of the 2D platforming kind and you'll have access to some new attacks like Tintin's hookshot that never appears in the story mode. You can choose to play it solo if you want, but to get all the collectibles you'll sometimes need a different character or a co-op partner, plus it's more fun to play it cooperatively. You'll also get a chance to play some of the side characters who each have their own special ability.



Although you can probably breeze through Tintin's main story mode and spend an hour or two completing all the challenges, the co-op mode will offer at least a bunch of hours worth of extra content whether you play it by yourself or not. Moreover, the game does a great job at giving you that Tintin vibe and atmosphere of boyish adventure, despite the graphics reflecting that somewhat creepy look the characters have in 3D.


It should be noted that Tintin can also be a bit of a dick in this game, though. He'll just barge into places without permission and steal other people's property without so much as a blink of an eye. If a servant is just there to protect his master's property he'll only get a black eye for his trouble. Or worse, be set on fire. I also don't really understand this obsession with having Tintin and enemies end up with their butt in the air when they are knocked out -- in various positions -- but c'est la vie.

Putting that aside, there's a lot to enjoy in this game. The Adventures of Tintin may not be a fantastic game, but as licensed games go it's far more than decent. The different modes and variety in gameplay do not always reach the same level of quality, but the majority of it is a lot of fun to play for kids and adults alike.









 Video// Youtube




Article,photographs and video taken entirely from the web http://www.destructoid.com/

When it was released back in 2007, The Darkness was something of an oddity. In a genre of games that was becoming increasingly filled with testosterone-soaked run and gun action, The Darkness (along with BioShock) stood out from the pack by offering players an FPS experience augmented by superpowers.


It told the story of Jackie Estacado, a mob hitman, who had the good fortune to become possessed by a demonic spirit called The Darkness on the same day he had the bad fortune to be blown out of a window by his Mafioso uncle.
The single-player campaign was excellent, mixing atmospheric horror with gore-splattered action and all of it was shaded in a palette of moody greys, browns and blacks. It had a multiplayer, but it seemed tacked on as an afterthought, offering only four match-types and supporting eight players.

We only mention all this because it seems a little odd to be previewing The Darkness II with the game's multiplayer mode. To be honest, its predecessor didn't need one and, let's face it, it's not remembered as one of the gold standards among online shooters.

Besides, unless a shooter's online mode allows it to eat into the multiplayer audiences of the genre's current big boys – Gears, CoD, BF3, Halo – it seems a wasted effort to include one. Perhaps knowing this, Digital Extremes has decided against a competitive multiplayer for The Darkness II and has instead created an online co-op mode called Vendettas.

Vendettas is split into two modes, Campaign and Hit List. Campaign is a story-based mode that runs parallel to the main single-player campaign in The Darkness II. It involves a team of super-powered killers seeking out artefacts for Estacado, which apparently contain the essence of The Darkness.

There are four characters to choose from – a street samurai (Inugami), an ex-Mossad operative (Shoshanna), a voodoo priest (JP DuMond) and a brawler from Scotland (Jimmy Wilson). Each of them carries a weapon that is powered by The Darkness; Inugami has a sword, Shoshanna a sawn-off, DuMond has a staff and Wilson carries an axe.

Each of them also possesses a power – such as unlimited ammunition or the ability to summon imp-like creatures called Darklings – that the player can activate for brief periods of time.



The levels we played through essentially amounted to fetch-questing. At the start, the team are told that Estacado needs them to rescue a mobster or find an artefact and then the player heads into a level, which involves running through an environment and shooting at anything that moves (the levels we played through involved a junkyard, a printing press and what looked like a run-down housing project).

Players can carry two firearms along with their Darkness weapon. They also have the option of dual-wielding by hitting down on the D-Pad, but this means they can't aim down the sights of the two guns they're holding. It's rare they'll need to use iron-sights all that much (although it does happen) because most of the action takes place in close quarters and at quite a frenetic pace. It's also graphically violent.

Due to the fact that the Darkness team are all superpowered beings, they're able to soak up quite a bit of damage before they go down. They can also keep their health levels topped up by using their Darkness weapon to extract the hearts of any of the enemies they've killed.

The Darkness weapons do feel a tad overpowered; one blast from Shoshanna's shotgun can send an opponent flying with a massive hole in their chest, while Inugami's katana cuts through enemies like they're made out of paper.

Wilson's axe is a thrown weapon, which returns to his hand like the hammer of Thor. DuMond's staff is the odd bird in this flock as attacks with it aren't lethal. Instead, the staff allows the player to levitate foes briefly, and then they can riddle their target with bullets while they're suspended helplessly in the air.

Each team member also has an execution attack. Players arm this by firing one or two shots into a victim and then moving in for the kill when a prompt to hit the left bumper appears.

At this point Inugami and Wilson will use their weapons to chop a foe in half, DuMond levitates them into the air and twists them apart, and Shoshanna puts her shotgun in the victim's mouth and literally blows their head off.

It's all quite visceral, although the in-game dialogue and comic-book cel-shaded graphics combine to make it seem more cartoon-like than shocking.

The AI doesn't seem too challenging, although it doesn't let the mode down. Players need to take stock of their surroundings because the AI will try to box them in and flank them should the opportunity present itself.


They also need to take out any electric lights in the environment as direct exposure to light weakens their abilities and will ultimately kill them. It's also worth keeping an eye-out for shimmering Darkness portals; players earn XP for kills, headshots, Darkness weapon usage, hearts they collect and executions, and can spend these points at a portal to level up their special abilities.

The other mode in Vendettas, Hit List, is a drop-in/drop-out mode where players can replay missions from the co-op Campaign mode. It also contains a set of unlockable missions that are exclusive to the mode and some levels that require two players.

Unfortunately, at the preview event we attended, we couldn't play any of the Hit List content, nor could we play the levels offered us in Campaign any other way except solo, due to Wi-Fi issues. So we can't report on Hit List or how Campaign stacks up when tackled with a few mates. We can say, however, that Campaign seems perfectly serviceable as a solo experience.

Still, the meat of the matter in The Darkness II is the main campaign, and so far no details have been forthcoming. In a world where the dominant trend in shooters is to package a short campaign with an extensive multiplayer, that's more than a little worrying.

Make no mistake, Vendettas looks fine and plays very well, but really, we're hoping it's a tantalising extra and not the main event.








 Video// Youtube 




Article,photographs and video taken entirely from the web The Guardian.co.uk

Tale of Tales' The Graveyard begins life on a new platform, Android

Some games are so different, deep and beautiful that they just won't die -- Tale of Tales' The Graveyard is one of those games, as it has just been ported to Android, available for download right now through the Android Market. It's nigh impossible to think about the finite nature of human existence too much -- it's been pondered for millions of years and no one's yet come up with a better answer than "42" -- and now you can guide an old European woman through such questions in a gorgeous graveyard whenever you'd like.


The Graveyard comes in two flavors, the free trial version, or the full game for $1.99. There's only one difference between the two types: You can't die in the trial, while every time you play the full game, there's a distinct possibility you will die. Much like life, which makes the trial more like the great-great grandmother to Limbo. Literally
 
 
                                                                           Tale of Tales'
 
 
 
 
 Video// You tube
Article,photographs and video taken entirely from the web http://www.joystiq.com

Amazon revoluciona las tabletas con su Kindle Fire de 199 dólares