Pc Game News

Last night at the lavish Plaza Hotel just off central park in Manhattan, Irrational Games announced its next project. It’s been almost three years since we’ve heard a word from the Boston-based developer on how it would follow up the critically acclaimed hit BioShock. Now we finally know. Prepare to enter the floating city of Columbia in BioShock Infinite.

Studio head Ken Levine was on hand at the event to introduce his latest project through both a trailer and an extended demo. The trailer is something of a tease. It begins by showing what looks like the ocean’s floor and a city suspended under water. But the image turns out to be an illusion, as viewers are simply seeing a piece of memorabilia from the World’s Fair in Chicago through the eyes of the protagonist as he is being drowned in a fish tank.

The camera follows his gaze as he is thrown to the ground and then out of a window by a hulking, mechanized creature that looks like a precursor to the Big Daddy. As the character falls we’re shown a beautiful panorama of a floating city held aloft by massive hot air pouches. The character crashes atop a zeppelin and struggles to cling to its canvas sides before losing his grip and plummeting downward.

His fall is stopped by a floating bed of roses being controlled by a beautiful, dark-haired woman on the balcony of a passing building. She reels him in through force of will before being grabbed from behind by another one of the mechs, leaving the character in the trailer to fall to his death. Like the original BioShock trailer that showed viewers a grizzly version of their own death in that game, this world isn’t looking to treat you any nicer. You can see all of this unfold for yourself by clicking below to watch the trailer.

The setting for BioShock Infinite may seem even more fantastic and technologically advanced than rapture, but it’s set in 1912, years before the events of the first game. In this adventure you play as Booker DeWitt, a disgraced former private detective who’s picked up a new case.

Your goal is to find a young woman who’s gone missing and return her unharmed. The only problem is that she’s being kept on the flying city of Columbia.In 1900, Columbia is unveiled as a symbol of America’s success as a nation. It floats around the world as a traveling World’s Fair, a marvel of human innovation.

But an international incident involves the city and it turns out that the airborne metropolis is also heavily armed. A confrontation occurs, and Columbia disappears into the clouds. DeWitt’s lead in the case knows how to find Columbia, and how to find Elizabeth. The problem is that the city’s inhabitants aren’t that willing to let her, and her very strange abilities, just walk away.

The demo that followed the trailer was so packed with action, so dense with hints and nods to what we might experience in this game, that it was difficult to process it all. The first thing that is readily apparent is how visually impressive the title is. The same shiny water effects, sharp textures, and impressive art design as in BioShock, but there are improvements everywhere. The most significant of these improvements is the sense of scale. No longer are you trapped in small claustrophobic settings. Columbia is massive, and the separate floating city blocks drift through the air all around you. It’s just one of the things made possible by the completely new engine developed for the game.

As the demo begins, DeWitt walks through the cobblestone streets of Columbia. Sun plays off of the buildings, leaves float through the air, and the view smacks of an early Americana. But like Rapture, something awful has happened here and death is just around the corner. A despondent man drives by in a half broken down carriage and a horse lies dead in the street as crows pick at its flesh. A separate section of the city floats just above, then shrugs and collapses in front of DeWitt, nearly crushing him. Another man sits on a park bench surrounded by the same black birds.

DeWitt follows the sound of a political speech to a town covered in picket signs. The messaging is clear, the citizens must take up arms to protect their rights from the anarchists. Wooden barrels filled with guns line the gazebo that a politician named stall is stumping from. As DeWitt approaches Stall, the man’s eyes flare red, the air around him vibrates and he calls upon the citizens of Columbia to attack.

DeWitt goes for one of the weapons and comes up with a sniper rifle just as the man from the park bench unleashes a flock of attacking crows at him. DeWitt fights back and sends him careening over a railing as Stall latches onto a floating rail system and heads for another section of floating city off in the distance. DeWitt peers over the edge to find the crow man dead on a platform below, but he psychically pulls a tonic called Murder of Crows to his hand, takes a gulp, and gains the ability to control the birds. A blood covered raven perches on his hand with pieces of meat still hanging from its beak.

The previous sequence goes by in a flash, but it highlights some important features of BioShock Infinite. DeWitt can seemingly psychically push and pull almost everything around him. There are gas containers, pots and pans, and most importantly weapons, all of which he can manipulate at will. In one scene, he yanks a shotgun from a man’s hands from a distance then turns it around and pulls the trigger. Also, when Stall turns tail, DeWitt tracks him for a moment with the sniper rifle, showing off just how large the city is. Mere specks in the distance are targetable and can fire back.

The aforementioned rail system is called the skyline and it connects all of Columbia’s floating islands. It was constructed as a way to transport cargo but now the citizens of Columbia and DeWitt use a grappling device to slide along the rails at a break-neck speed. And this isn’t just “grinding” ala Ratchet and Clank. Players can change rails and direction on the fly, engaging in combat as they ride the roller coaster-like tracks.

Stall has escaped to a part of the city equipped with gigantic canons, and he takes aim at DeWitt. The city explodes around DeWitt and forces him to hop onto the rails, riding first upward then accelerating down and around a bend. A deranged citizen comes at him on the opposite rail and DeWitt readies a hammer, pummeling the man through the air and into the side of a building, leaving a bloody splotch as he bounces off and downward.

As grandiose as the first BioShock.DeWitt lands back on solid ground and enters a tavern to an audience that becomes almost immediately violent. What follows is a flood of combat that shows DeWitt psychically disarming characters, blasting them with gunfire, and releasing swarms of crows on a crowd of enemies. The sequence ends with a familiar lightning power used to fry enemies in their boots. When DeWitt confronts Stall a second time he stops one of the mortars fired at him with a wave of his hand, then turns it back on the gun and blows it to hell.

It’s at this point that the attacking city folk start looking like a mob. The new engine can currently throw about 15 enemies at players at the same time. It’s a good thing players will have some help. At this point in the demo DeWitt is joined by Elizabeth, the woman he’s been sent to liberate from Columbia and she has some powers of her own.

Not only does Elizabeth react to the combat, she helps by using her own powers to add elements to the environments. In one sequence, she sends a rain cloud over a mob of enemies giving DeWitt’s lightning an extra kick if he decides to use it. And he does have a choice. Elizabeth’s actions will never directly kill people off, so she won’t do all of the work for you. And according to the developers she won’t get in the way either as players can choose to ignore her actions and handle threats themselves.

As DeWitt and Elizabeth head toward a bridge, they get pinned down by gunfire behind stacks of what look like kitchen supplies. Elizabeth somehow turns the metallic cookware into a cyclone and then fuses it into a molten ball of metal, instructing DeWitt to launch it at their enemies using the game’s version of a Force Push. The plan works, but it’s at this point that the two are introduced to BioShock Infinite’s version of a Big Daddy.

These creatures have a human head set atop a large mechanized body. Their visible heart is encased in glass and their oversized bodies have something of a steampunk aesthetic, only slightly less advanced. Bullets don’t seem to do much to the behemoths so Elizabeth and DeWitt try to bring down the bridge around the threat. She shoots a beam of light at the top of the structure (perhaps the same heat ray she used on the pots and pans) and DeWitt sends an explosive towards it to bring the whole thing down. As the hulking enemy tries to claw its way off the collapsing bridge a few more shotgun blasts send it into the abyss.

Elizabeth collapses in exhaustion after the encounter and a trickle of blood runs out of her nose. Her actions are extraordinary, but they also drain her physically. She needs DeWitt’s help if they’re going to take on the entire city.

You’ll use these rails to zip around the city.DeWitt exclaims that the “thing” is what had been chasing Elizabeth. She corrects him and points towards the sky, at a much larger, much more ominous threat. A giant mechanical bird-like creature swoops down from a building, crushing DeWitt, leaving the screen black and ending the demo.

The demo showed off quite a lot for a game’s debut. It gave us a look at a completely new setting among the clouds and a BioShock game with two compelling characters. Levine promises that by introducing two well-defined main characters, BioShock Infinite will make a huge leap in storytelling when compared to its predecessors. Though there was nothing revealed about the economic elements of Infinite or any hacking puzzles, this was just a first look. There’s a lot more still to be revealed.

BioShock Infinite is scheduled to be released in 2012 for Xbox 360, PS3, and PC so it may be a while before all of the wondrous secrets of the flying city of Columbia are known.

Southpeak Interactive brought a new build of Nail’d to the IGN office last week to show us how it’s come along since our original preview of the game all the way back in April. While there’s still a bit of time yet before Nail’d’s scheduled release in October.

it’s certainly a title that fans of balls-out arcade racing should be paying attention to this fall.

While IGN Editor Ryan Clements wasn’t able to get his mitts on Nail’d for himself last time it made an appearance, I’ve been able to spend a couple of hours now with a near final build. At this point, certain things are definitely working, while others are a cause for concern.

What’s Working

There’s a pretty pronounced sense of height and speed at play in Nail’d. It’s a regular occurence to careen off a ramp over a ravine hundred of feet in the air and fall for multiple seconds; there are even rewards for maxing out your hangtime. However, you move more slowly in the air than on the ground, and you can let people chew up your lead if you stay up there too long — and really, this happens.

The game tracks how far you drive, and those stats include the distance you travel while airborne; for me, it was in the neighborhood of almost a quarter of my mileage. The speed, meanwhile, continues to impress, if not intimidate.

Scenery races by as you try to keep up with the pack and overtake them. Meanwhile, the time trial mode now includes some particularly aggressive ghosts courtesy of developer playthroughs to race against. I’d like to tell you how much fun they are to beat, but thus far, they’ve universally kicked my ass all over the place. I appreciate the challenge.

Deep Silver has also implemented a tuning system for both ATVs and MX bikes in Nail’d, and the developers are clearly thinking about multiplayer balance — each part has a commensurate downside to its upside. If it increases standard acceleration and speed, then it probably hurts boosting in some way, and vice versa. It allows players to tailor their vehicles to a playing style without giving unfair advantages, and it’s something I’d like to see more often.

Causes for Concern

Unfortunately, there are still some issues I’m hoping to see worked out by the time the game ships. First off, there’s some pretty wonky collision in Nail’d right now, both literally and figuratively.

Too often, there are parts of the map that seem like completely reasonable track options that are, in point of fact, “The World’s Most Dangerous Invisible Wall.” Trying to navigate my motorcycle between a pair of giant cacti instead resulted in a shattered bike and a brief time penalty as I respawned and tried a different tactic. This happened a lot, whether on the ground or during any one of several gigantic jumps.

This ties into the other issue I encountered during my time with the preview build: a lack of enough direction. Sure, there are signs everywhere in Nail’d, and usually, it’s easy enough to figure out what direction you should be pointing your ATV, but there are definitely points that could use more indication of danger.

If I see a flat patch in Nail’d, I’ve been conditioned to think I can land there. If Deep Silver can fix some of these issues, they just might have a sleeper hit on their hands.

We’ll all find out for sure when Nail’d ships on PS3, Xbox 360, and PC this October.

There are several panels devoted to different aspects of Star Wars: The Clone Wars at Star Wars Celebration this weekend _ and that being the case, when the show’s spervising director Dave Filoni noted at one of the first such panels on Thursday that they were holding back with the debut of most of their new footage until Saturday, it was somewhat expected.

All of which is why it was an especially nice surprise when we were shown a new clip from the new season at the end of the panel – even as Filoni stressed it was mainly to display all the hard work that went into the animation of rain on the planet Kamino (first seen in Attack of the Clones) and that there was not much else of consequence in the clip.

Nicely undersold, Mr. Filoni. Because what we were shown was a ship landing on Kamino, and when it opened up, a group of Republic Commandos stepped out! The crowd went crazy at this unexpected reveal, as we saw the elite Clone Trooper group — first introduced in the Star Wars: Republic Commando videogame in 2005 — walk down the landing platform with a floating casket.

They stopped to speak to a group of Jedi, including Obi-Wan, about the murder victim they had with them – who we quickly learned was only one of many.

The group discuss who could had done this, with the Commandos ominously stating there no survivors. Notably, the Commandos even suggest, to the faces of their Jedi generals, that a Jedi may have been behind the grim scenario.

Jedi Adi Gallia brings up the possibility of it being one of Count Dooku’s assassins, to which Plo Koon replies, “There may be a new threat. Something or something has eluded us. Perhaps a newly appointed Sith Lord.”

Says Obi-Wan, “This is not the work of the Sith or a Jedi.” He adds that whoever was behind the attack is, “A reckless, impulsive animal.”

After the clip was shown (ultimately three times, thanks to demand – with the Commandos appearance receiving loud cheers each time), Filoni explained that they had only gotten back the first completed scene with the Commandos a couple of weeks ago, but after he saw it, he said, “We have to show this at Celebration.” He noted that one of the most frequently asked questions he’d gotten from fans since the series began was, “When will you bring in the Republic Commandos?”

The decision to add the Republic Commandos to the specific episode we watched a clip from was made somewhat late in the process. Filoni credited his collaborators for stepping up to the plate and so quickly creating the new animation models, as he noted that the Commandos had very different armor and equipment than the standard Clone Troopers.

The Clone Wars: Season 3 premieres September 17th on Cartoon Network. Look for more of our coverage from Star Wars Celebration V — including our reaction to more new Clone Wars footage still to be revealed — through the weekend.

Word from John Carmack’s keynote at QuakeCon declares that id’s long-awaited game isn’t quite ready for prime time.

It couldn’t be put any simpler. Doom 4 isn’t ready, so it won’t be shown at this year’s QuakeCon. Last year, it was announced that the game would be showing up at the following year’s show, but it appears that id is changing its tune, and the gaming world will have to wait a while longer to check out the fourth installment of one of gaming’s oldest action franchises.

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