I'm perched atop a crashed airplane, weapon at the ready. My eyes dart across the map, searching for a target. No, no. Not just a target. My prey.

They are not my equals, you see. They are CELL operatives with nothing more than laughable guns. Me, I'm a hunter. A predator. I use a bow. It's a sophisticated weapon, difficult to wield. It requires absolute precision and the patience necessary to line up a shot.

Admittedly, my shots miss more than they should—but, no matter. Seeing the operatives freak out and shoot at shadows out of fear—seeing them scramble frantically, thinking that they can hide safely behind corners: this is just as rewarding as destroying them. And even if I miss, even if I fail this time, I know I'm coming back.

The operatives, meanwhile? One arrow: that's all it takes and they go down. Then they become one of us, then the hunt grows stronger. At that point even the converted compete fiercely for the last remaining operatives. None shall be spared.

If it wasn't obvious, I've been playing Crysis 3 lately, which features its own twist on 'zombies' mode—only here, it's called Hunter Mode.

It feels different from other similar takes on the concept. In order to understand why, we have to look at the hunter's suit. The rest of Crysis spends a lot of time fetishizing the suit and what it allows you to do.

You can, for instance:

• Punch cars at people
• Become invisible
• Activate extra armor
• Launch yourself into the air
• ...which also means that you can climb up high
• Navigate the map at top speeds

• To name a few things. It's intoxicating, how powerful that feels—but all of that is gone when you're a CELL operative. Let me tell you, it the tension is crazy playing the mode as an operative. You feel weak. You feel paranoid.

  
  

  Contrast with, say, Halo when playing on the Flood gametype—you're an effin' Spartan! I'd go up against the Flood like it was nothing, almost treating it like a challenge to go out and seek the Flood out. I basically thought, "I'm gonna show them why they should be afraid of ME, damnit."

  
  

  I'm an utter coward in Crysis 3 though, spending as much time as possible hiding. And if you watched a replay, you'd probably laugh at all the people crowding up in the corners, shooting at absolutely nothing because they're scared. It's amazing.

  
  

  The thing is, if you survive, it feels super gratifying.

  
  

  I'm looking forward to unlocking my bow for the normal multiplayer modes after spending so much time in hunter mode. The compound bow feels natural to the franchise. I think this has to do with the suit, which, though technically the farthest thing from natural, you feel an innate power—as if you're relying on the potential of your own body to play.

  
  

  With the bow, you're harking back to something more primal, the time of hunter-gatherer. It fits. Guns feel antithetical to all of that; there's something detached about pulling the digital trigger.

  
  

  So, as much as I suck at the bow now, I'm gonna spend the beta trying to hone my skills there—that way, I'll be ready when Crysis 3 drops later this month.

  
  

  You can try the Crysis 3 beta here.

  
  

Isaac Clark, as you might imagine, wants nothing to do with necromorphs—the horrific reanimated corpses of the dead and much of what you shoot in the Dead Space franchise. So why does he find himself fighting them yet again in Dead Space 3? In a word, Ellie—but let this new story trailer for the game show you what I mean.

Here you also catch a glimpse of the charming, silver-tongued villain that I mentioned in our last preview. He sounds off the rails, right? Like an eco-terrorist or something, actually.

A damsel in distress, an unwelcoming ice planet and a terrorist on top of the necromorphs? Dang, Isaac. I don't envy your situation!

No doubt about it: we all love video game world-maps. That moment when you first set foot into a game's wide blue yonder and see just how far the horizon goes… it's magic.

While video game world-maps are often plenty beautiful-looking, it's also important how beautiful they sound. We'll often spend hours and hours exploring a good game's world map, and so it's important that the map music gives us just the right mixture of excitement and space. World-map music needs to be exciting enough to accompany the very first moment we hear it, but memorable enough that we won't be sick of it after our hundredth time hearing it.

I've been playing gorging on Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch for the past couple of days, and among that game's many wonderful musical themes, the world music stands out. The soundtrack, composed by Studio Ghibli maestro Joe Hisaishi, is joyful and decidedly old-fashioned, more old-world Hollywood than the modern, often jazz-influenced soundtracks common to JRPGs.

Never is the music grander than in the game's world map. But it's not all pomp and circumstance; there's sadness to it as well, a wistfulness in the pennywhistles and flutes that perfectly fits the story of a boy coping with his mother's death by visiting a wondrous fantasy land that may or may not be entirely imaginary. While this isn't my All-Time Favorite World-Map Music or anything (the game's been out for a week!), I'll go ahead and throw it in here as a recent example. My favorite part is actually at the very end, right past the 3:07 mark, when the music slowly slides into a mysterious reprise, before, in the game anyway, looping back to the opening theme. Side note: Man, you sure can't beat a live orchestra, huh? This time, it's the Tokyo Philharmonic. We've come a long way in how we sample and simulate orchestral performance, but when a real room full of trumpets, horns, flutes and violins plays these melodies, you can hear it.

And hey, since I can't keep it to just one, I'll add that the map music from the Mass Effect series gets me every time. This version includes the beeps and blips from the in-game interface, which actually adds to the atmosphere of the piece.

Okay, that's enough from me, I want to hear from you. What's your favorite world-map music, and why? Toss a YouTube link into the "add video" tab and write a bit about why it's your favorite. Let's go exploring.

There are songs that work in video game trailers because they're great. There are others that work because they're ironic. This is neither. It's a hilarious disaster.

Today, both Casey Hudson and Michael Gamble—producers on the Mass Effect Team—tweeted pictures. Mass Effect pictures, of course—presumably, of DLC. But beyond that? Your guess is as good as mine as to what these pictures depict.

Above is a city, obviously. The Citadel, maybe? Probably not, but who knows?

And below, a Krogan that you apparently don't want to mess with... but that could be any Krogan, really. So who is this one, specifically, then?

What could the new DLC be? Now taking bets.

There's no shortage of quality Commander Shepard cosplay in the world, but this outfit by MissCordie has instantly become one of the best we've seen.

Why? It's the extra mile. A lot of Shepard cosplayers replicate the design of the uniform and leave it at that. MissCordie's here is beat up. It's missing paint in parts, it's covered in scratches and just generally looks like it's been through 100 combat missions in deep space, not a suitcase on the way to the local convention centre.

You can see more of her work at her DeviantArt page. Also, check out this cool "360-degree" view of the costume. It's like E! are live from the red carpet on... the Citadel.

MissCordie [DeviantArt, via CrackTheTrunk]

Many Dead Space fans were disappointed this week after hearing that Dead Space 3 would feature microtransactions—or, the ability to buy in-game goods for real money. Today in an interview with CVG, Dead Space 3 producer John Calhoun stated that microtransactions exist because they intend to court mobile gamers.

There's a lot of players out there, especially players coming from mobile games, who are accustomed to micro-transactions. They're like "I need this now, I want this now". They need instant gratification. So we included that option in order to attract those players, so that if they're 5000 Tungsten short of this upgrade, they can have it.

We need to make sure we're expanding our audience as well. There are action game fans, and survival horror game fans, who are 19 and 20, and they've only played games on their smartphones, and micro-transactions are to them a standard part of gaming. It's a different generation. So if we're going to bring those people into our world, let's speak their language, but let's not alienate our fans at the same time.

Would a typical mobile gamer be playing Dead Space 3? I don't think so, but maybe some. I think it's more likely that the people taking advantage of microtransactions in Dead Space 3 will just be impatient Dead Space players.

Patience is not platform-exclusive, after all. Mobile just happened to capitalize on it early; it hasn't weaned players to suddenly expect to be able to pay for things in a game. Having that luxury is just plain attractive (to some.) No conditioning necessary.

Regardless, everyone is free to abstain from purchasing anything if they want, instead opting to earn things the good ol' fashioned way.

Dead Space 3 producer on micro-transactions and keeping the horror alive [CVG]

On February 7 at the Dernier Bar Avant la Fin du Monde in Paris, France, EA and Geek-Art will be putting on a show to promote Dead Space 3. Because when I think co-op space shooting in the dark, I think of Paris, and paintings.

For those of us nowhere near the city of love, you'll be able to buy prints from Geek-Art's online store. One of the pieces up for viewing (and sale) is Caroline, by Aussie artist Benjamin Guy, who you may recognise from his other large paintings featuring small children wearing giant pop culture helmets.

It's hard to get good at a video game. It can require a ton of practice and effort. You'll have to hone your skills over time, training your eyes and fingers to react with split-second precision and speed.

Or you could just use your credit card.

Dead Space 3, an upcoming sci-fi horror game from Electronic Arts that will be out for 360 and PS3 on February 5, will allow you to pay money for weapons, according to a new Eurogamer report. Real money for fake weapons.

"You can buy resources with real money, but scavenger bots can also give you the currency that you can use on the marketplace," associate producer Yara Khoury told Eurogamer. "So you don't have to spend [real world] dollars."

So, yes. It's hard to get too mad at the idea of optional micro-transactions—in many ways this is just like the cheat-enabling Game Genie that you could buy for many Nintendo systems back in the day—but it's also hard not to envision a future where some unscrupulous publishers force their developers to make unbalanced games in which you pretty much have to buy optional weapons to proceed.

And you thought Dead Space 3 wouldn't be scary.

Dead Space 3 includes micro-transactions for buying better weapons [Eurogamer]

The answering machine goes off. It's Ellie, trying to get a hold of Isaac Clarke. He doesn't answer. He's standing in a disheveled apartment located on a lunar colony, but it's not your typical bachelor pad type mess. It's dark, it's grimy, it's gross—it looks as if this is a cave, a personal hell which he has retreated to perhaps. As you muse over this, sergeant John Carver—the character your co-op buddies will play—bursts into your apartment, demanding to know if in fact you are the famous Isaac Clarke.

Carver and his acquaintance Robert Norton need your help in Dead Space 3. Guess what, the predicament involves a damsel in distress (Ellie, from the previous games) and it involves Markers—which is to say, it probably involves the horrific, reanimated corpses of the dead (otherwise known as necromorphs.) Great!

Isaac wants nothing to do with Markers after the events of the first two games, but this involves Ellie, so he begrudgingly agrees to help. Naturally things have to get even crazier at this point, so this is where the overzealous Unitologists—the people who have formed a religion around the Markers—come in.

Guns blazing, the Unitologists set out to look for you. The Unitologists are out to kill you, wouldn't you know it.

This is how the game sets up one of the initial levels in Dead Space 3, which I experienced earlier this month. It's also where I discovered rolling and taking cover. Like most well-implemented rolling mechanics, it's a joy to move across levels entirely through rolling, but I can't say I ever used cover again outside this initial chapter in the ~3 hours that I played Dead Space 3.

My first time going through, I didn't feel there was much that was notable Chapter 1 beyond the lunar colony having a similar look and feel to that of Mass Effect's cities. You'll also come face to face with the man that I assume is the leader of the Unitologists, a silver-tongued charismatic fellow that tells you all about his sinister plot with the Markers. He intends this information to be the last thing you experience before death.

He doesn't manage to actually kill you, of course; you narrowly get away.

But this continues the larger narrative in Dead Space, which addresses the role of the Markers and necromorphs in society—and, admittedly, was much of the reason that I kept going forward in the preview. Ellie? Eh, I didn't really care. But she's there, if that interests you!

I was new to Dead Space, you see—there wasn't much about the previous games that captured my interest. I'd initially avoided Dead Space because I'm not much for scary or tense games. When it was clear that I was going to preview Dead Space 3 I tried looking up the science of the jump scare—which I heard Dead Space was full of—to try to soften the blow. If fear stems from the unknown, then knowledge helps, right?

Haha, yeah okay, like Wikipedia pages were about to lessen the terror of WELL TIMED LOUD SOUNDS and NECROMORPH BURSTING INTO THE FRAME UNEXPECTEDLY.

Making things 'worse,' Dead Space 3 likes to put you in tight spaces without too much room to maneuver. Even if you see the necromorphs ahead of time, it's likely you'll often find yourself nervously backpedaling while trying to reload, necromorph viciously trying to swipe at you. Hopefully you don't get backed into a corner! This is where rolling comes in handy.

Personally, I found myself frustrated at the difficulty on normal, especially later in the preview when juggling one of the game's 'puzzles' (if you would even call them that) with necromorph waves. I died more than I felt I should have.

But with a buddy? Things felt much smoother, much more fun—though admittedly I felt jealous that Carver had the cooler black and red suit. Grr. Ah well, it's probably appropriate. It seems that you and Carver will have a complicated relationship thanks to how harsh Carver is. When you apologize for something, he angrily tells you to try harder next time for instance.

Anyway, there is a bit less tension when you know a friend will have your back with a pesky necromorph, and it wasn't uncommon to double-team enemies. One person suspends the necromorph, and the other rips it apart sort of deal. Co-op presents a wonderful opportunity for more nuanced tactics, and Dead Space 3 isn't any less engaging when you cut some of the anxiety out. The game remains just as chunky and visceral as it has in the past.

It was through co-op that I also learned how much Dead Space 3 rewards exploration. My buddy liked to go off and meticulously search through the levels for artifacts. Sometimes, this will mean taking a closer look at a seemingly empty room that's right along the way. Sometimes, it'll mean going deep into space while navigating outside of a ship. Sometimes, it'll mean shooting down something in the background that doesn't seem as if it holds anything—like maybe a deer head. I was impressed.

Not all the things you'll find are artifacts. Some of it will be materials for crafting. New to Dead Space 3 are moddable weapons, allowing you to have tools with more than one function. You have the ability to modify a weapon's upper tool, lower tool, frame, tip and attachments, allowing for variances in damage, reload, clip size, shooting speed, as well as bullet effect (exploding rounds, for instance.)

Isaac is an engineer, right? He's smart and uses his intellect to solve problems, yes? Crafting is justifiable by the story, then. While I didn't find too much to tinker with, my co-op buddy seemed to find all sorts of materials and his weapon looked intimidating, beastly and effective.

Also included are side-missions and optional objectives. Toward the end of my preview, for instance, I had a choice between two locations depending on which mission I wanted to take up. Unfortunately the demo ended right there, but it's obvious that Dead Space 3 is incorporating modern design elements that all games have to have nowadays like Choice and Customization and Social Play.

I swear that I find it difficult to tell if these things actually improve an experience rather than giving us stuff to cross off a universal games checklist. However, I can concretely say that Dead Space 3 felt much better with a friend than it did playing alone, though I was sad to see little of Carver's supposed compelling storyline. Alas!

Dead Space 3 releases on February 5th in North America, and February 8th in Europe.