Events

Digital Extremes has fallen into mild disrepute as of late. Homefront didn't quite set the world on fire and Bioshock's success was mostly down to the folks at Irrational. So as a huge fan of the 2007's The Darkness, I was skeptical that Starbreeeze Studios (those Scandinavian psychopaths) weren't at the helm. I still have a modest mountain to climb in terms of being truly satisfied that Digital Extremes can carry the torch on this one, but the brief showing I was privy to at this year's E3 shows a fine return to form for the gory shooter.

To recap for those of you who missed the flawed yet progressive original, Jackie Estacado is a mob hitman who, on his 21st birthday, during an attempt by his 'uncle' Paulie on his life, is bestowed a great power and a harrowing burden; he is granted the 'gift' of the Darkness, a demonic life form (voiced astonishingly well by Mike Patton of Faith No More, who reprises his role here in the sequel) which uses him as a host, a symbiotic creature hell-bent on controlling him. The Darkness forces Jackie to watch Paulie execute the love of his life, beckoning him to embrace his desire for revenge. Ending with a tentative power balance struck between Jackie and the Darkness, he ascends to his rightful place within the family.

Ok, let's get this out of the way early. If the Australian Classification Board didn't let Left 4 Dead 2 through unscathed, the odds of Dead Island making it through untouched are pretty slim. Keeping this in mind, I went ahead and played it anyway.

The demo at E3 was roughly the first 20 minutes of the game - minus the first five. At least, this was the impression that I got - the game opened and I was standing in a bamboo hut surrounded by a dozen or so other survivors.

Almost immediately some lady started screaming at me, telling me to go help 'him'. E3 does funny things to your attention span - the show floor is pretty loud and you've always got some rude jerk breathing on your neck, trying to use his coffee and cigarette breath to get you to give him the controller.

The team at Gearbox is riding high off the success of their latest release Borderlands, and have been hard at work for years now on their next labour of love: Aliens: Colonial Marines. Randy Pitchford, president of Gearbox, takes the podium at E3 for our first ever look at the game, and “couldn't be more excited” about “contributing to the canon” of the Aliens universe. “I've been ripping off Aliensmy entire career” Pitchford quips. “Now I finally get to actually make an Aliens game.” These sentiments are echoed by fellow Gearbox employees E3-wide.

After all, who wouldn't love to be able to sit down and pen a new generation of one-liners for Hudson-esque characters to spout during the least appropriate moments of an alien horde overrunning your team? Or craft a tense moment where your only weapons are uber-powerful cannons which will kill your entire team if fired? Other films have come and gone, vying for that marine corps feel, but where even other Aliens films have fallen somewhat flat, Colonial Marines hopes to shine.

To begin with, the source material for this first-person shooter is not just the Aliens universe, but Aliens specifically. At this point in the Sigourney saga, Ripley is floating through space in a life support pod en-route to a prison colony soon to be greeted by a dog-based Alien hybrid. Oh, good times.


'I don't know what we're yelling about!'

You remember Spec-Ops mode in Modern Warfare 2, right? You and a buddy knocking out brief coop missions - all with stacks of replayability thanks to a rating system upon completion. I know you remember Zombie mode - nobody forgets shooting zombies (especially the Nazi variety).

Imagine if you combined those two things together - and then added a few more ingredients to spice things up.

What you've created using your imagination is Modern Warfare 3 Spec Ops - Survival mode. Where the normal Spec Ops missions take place on single player maps (or portions of it), Survival mode in Modern Warfare 3 uses the multiplayer maps - and then it throws wave after wave of enemies at you.

It's partly designed to give you the opportunity to learn the maps a bit better without spending most of your time looking at a Killcam because the other people playing are Prestige 15.

Suppressive fire doesn't really work in video games. Wait, scratch that - it hasn't really worked in multiplayer video games. The excellent Full Spectrum Warrior demonstrated how effective suppression could be in allowing combat maneuvering against AI - but such a system couldn't work against humans for one reason.

Human players don't care about their lives. The punishment for dying or being maimed on the battlefield is the greatest punishment of all. The punishment for dying on the Battlefield is on average a 15 second wait and a chance at grabbing a chopper or a tank.

So what happens in real life is very different to in video games. In real life a person with a tripod mounted M249 machine gun firing down range at a person behind cover can pin that person down, because an M249 fires roughly 13 bullets a second in a very small (relatively speaking) area - and when you're gambling with your life those are odds you just don't take.

The PlayStation Vita - or PSV - should actually arrive at the right time in this generation. While the PSP arrived a little too late to wow people with the fidelity of the machine compared to the PS2 - by the time it dropped it was being compared to the PS3, and it didn't do so well - the PSV should have a year or two to flourish as a near-identical handheld version of the PS3.

Let's knock out the tech talk to start, shall we? At its heart (or perhaps its brain) is the ARM A9 quad core processor and a quad core PowerVR Quad Core gfx processor - similar to the tech found in Apple's Ipad 2, except... double.

Yes, it's the worst name for a video game console since... well, since Nintendo announced the Wii. Does it really matter though? At the very least, it's better than the Wii - it will be less embarassing when a news presenter leaps from a story about a gas explosion to making **** jokes about a video game console.

With the Wii U the most juvenile joke I've heard is the "WiionU", and the best is the reference to Kung Fu Hustle I myself made in my E3 Video Diary. Still, golden shower gags and references to decent movies is far beside the point of a hands-on - what you're really interested in the actual unit.

Here's a fun fact, today is a public holiday. Which is why you will have to watch Andy's 3rd wrapup on YouTube until tomorrow, when our production team come back to work. When your work revolves around writing, things like public holidays escape your notice and you sit around all day waiting for videos to go up when they won't do any such thing.

I apologise however, with this - the Andy Wells at E3 Wrapup Video Bonanza!

As you know, due to incompatibility with some browsers, we can only embed one video, for that reason I have decided to go with Day 1. After Andy went to a bunch of events on Day 0, Day 1 saw him checking out the Nintendo briefing, followed by a visit to a variety of different developers to check out the games on show. You can watch it embedded here, or in our videos library.

Let's get this out of the way first folks, Nintendo have confirmed that the Wii U touchscreen controller will not be sold separately. It's bundled with the console or not sold at all. This will no doubt impact negatively on Nintendo's share price, which has already taken two hits since the Wii U announcement the other day.

What happens when you break your controller pretending to fling it in some sort of Captain America style game then? You send it in under warranty and buy better games.

Speaking of games, Nintendo and Ubisoft held a conference yesterday announcing several new titles coming to Nintendo's new console.

Killer Freaks from Outer Space is Ubisoft's new IP being developed specifically for the Wii U, and it's a horror themed FPS. Developed by Ubisoft Montpelier, although by a different team to those working on Rayman Origins. Players target enemies by pointing the WiiPad at them and then firing, which sounds awkward.

A multiplayer mode was also displayed in which the player with the WiiPad had a top down view of the map and used the stylus to direct the enemies towards the other players. The other player used standard controller based FPS controls to fend off the incoming hordes.

Killer Freaks from Outer Space is due out close to the Wii U's launch, some time in 2012. You can watch the trailer embedded here or in our videos library. Note: It does feature some language and images not suitable for children or the easily offended.

In the third sensational round up of videos from E3, E3 Video Round up has his biggest challenge yet as a rough gang starts making trouble on his beat and the captain partners him with a rookie! Despite the odds, they take down the bad guys with that E3 Video Round up panache - and E3 Video Round up learns a little something about friendship along the way.

This is the smallest round up yet as E3 begins to wind down, so I'm going to give you a heads up on what to expect in all of the videos we have.

I've chosen the Need For Speed The Run - Online Gameplay Trailer to embed, because you need to stop what you are doing and watch this mother in HD right now. Need For Speed The Run might feature annoying QTEs, but as Joaby mentioned, who cares, it looks awesome. The game uses the new Frostbite 2 engine, and while I sincerely doubt that means ramming your car into a building is going to bring it down if you do it enough, it still looks brilliant. I hope it has Fortress Europe in the soundtrack.

Remember, you can watch most movies in HD by going Fullscreen.