Want your Deus Ex a little more action-packed? Our latest look at Eidos Montreal's Deus Ex: Human Revolution fits the bill. It's an opportunity to see protagonist Adam Jensen get his ass kicked and to bask in a whole lotta cybernetic gun fights.
There's plenty here that we haven't seen in hands-on previews of the Deus Ex prequel, including delicious cybernetic implants that give evil-looking, sharp-dressed bad guys guns for arms. Perhaps not so keen on having cybernetic implants is Jensen himself, who acquires them only after a near death beating.
The game's looking great, but I'm not sold on Human Revolution's voice acting, a potentially petty complaint.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution comes to the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 this August. Are you excited?
Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Revenge Trailer [YouTube]
Need a reason to learn how to play the electric guitar? YouTube musician FamilyJules7X demonstrates how well mad guitar skills and gaming go together in his triumphant electric cover of Jonathan Coulton's "Want You Gone."
GLaDOS wants you gone so badly she sings a song about it at the end of Portal 2. Most test subjects get the hint right away. If they didn't, I can easily imagine the maniacal artificial intelligence turning to something a bit less subtle, possibly involving multiple electric guitars. Something like this, for instance.
For more guitar-driven excellence from FamilyJules7X, be sure to check out his rendition of "Still Alive". These two tunes are going to live a long and happy life on my MP3 player, far from the prying eyes of electronic megalomaniacs.
Want You Gone Portal 2 Guitar Cover [YouTube - Thanks Dustin!]
Prediction! There will be a lot of shooters (first-person and third-person) at E3 next week.
Yes, indeed. As crazy as it sounds, games that involve the rapid transferral of bullets (or lasers) from gun barrel to bad guy's head will be as ubiquitous at next week's E3 showcase of upcoming video games as shirtless people in a boxed set of Cops episodes.
What will these big shooters be? All of these, for starters...
Battlefield 3 (PC, PS3, Xbox 360): This year's Pepsi to Call of Duty's Coke. Made by DICE, the people who made the original Battlefield 1942 which was a beloved PC multiplayer-centric game that made war a sandbox for foot-soldiers who could jump into tanks and planes to help their team win. Only single-player has been shown so far; maybe multiplayer gets a blow-out at E3?
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (PC, PS3, Xbox 360, Wii (?)): The end of a trilogy! The next game to beat up New York City! The game that needs little introduction because millions of people bought the last four! (And the game with a lot to prove since it is led by a re-organized group of developers who didn't all work on the last Modern Warfare blockbusters.)
Ghost Recon Online (PC) A third-person, cover-based tactical shooter that you can play online—for free. Read our preview.
Spec Ops: The Line (PC, PS3, Xbox 360): This was a shooter set in Dubai that made heavy use of simulated, shifting sand. But the game just got delayed to... mid-2012? So they could have changed this one to anything.
Aliens: Colonial Marines (??) From the makers of Borderlands and the revivers of Duke Nukem Forever. You know, if ever there was a shooter that could benefit from the screen that is expected to be in the controller of the Wii 2, this is it. You know, for the detecting of approaching xenomorphs. Of course, Wii 2 isn't expected to be out for a year and this game has been long enough in the making...
Gears of War 3 (Xbox 360): Marcus Fenix needs to find his dad the way Marcus Fenix needs to find cover in this third-person shooter that supports four players in its co-op campaign. Where is that old man? This game gets its second E3, on the heels of a popular multiplayer beta and just a few months before a big-time September 20 release.
Resistance 3 (PS3): Earth's in trouble. We need to fight back. But didn't the hero of this series die in the last game? And don't the amazing technology-pushing folks at Insomniac still need to prove that their PlayStation 3-exclusive first-person shooter series can be great instead of merely good or very good? (We played it in March.)
Serious Sam 3 Croteam brings their over-the-top series to a near-future Egypt that's full of crazy monsters. Supports 16-player co-op.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine (PC, PS3, Xbox 360): One of our guys just played this brute of a third-person shooter and came away talking about how ominous and imposing it feels to play it. If you want your shooter heroes to feel bulkier, your battles to be more grisly... read our preview.
The Darkness 2 (PC, PS3, Xbox 360) This one's gory and grisly. It gives you snakes for extra arms and a sidekick who urinates on your victims. It also includes quad-wielding... that is, four trigger buttons.
F.E.A.R. 3 (PC, PS3, Xbox 360) Long-delayed, presumably unnerving and designed for co-op, this is the kind of game that has you crashing a jet into a big-box container story, then shooting your way through it. It also includes a mode called Fucking Run.
Metro: Last Light (PC, PS3, Xbox 360) It may not be as scary as the previous Metro games, but a new sequel brings us back to a wrecked Russia for more grimy shooting in a scavengers' wasteland. Read our preview.
Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D (3DS) The Mercenaries third-person score-based shooter from RE4 and RE5, with an upgrade system and support for two-player co-op. Read our preview.
Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City
(PC, PS3, Xbox 360): You're the bad guys. You're playing a team-based shooter against Resident Evil heroes. You need to kill Leon Kennedy. But there are zombies around, getting in the way and/or mauling the enemies who your bullets made bleed. A vicious and unusual Resident Evil, for sure. Read our preview.
BioShock Infinite (PC, PS3, Xbox 360) First BioShock: in a city underwater. Next BioShock: in a city floating amid the clouds. The new one is the one that includes a gameplay mechanic that makes it feel like—in the words of its lead creator—"you're on a rollercoaster, but you're hanging in mid-air and you've got a fucking gun." Read our preview.
Ghost Recon: Future Soldier (PC, PS3, Xbox 360) Remember when Ghost Recon was a pioneering series based on tactical military combat? That was some time before Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, now a more aggressive contender to the Modern Warfare throne kept getting delayed, to 2011, then to 2012. It looked cool a year ago. Will it next week?
Prey 2 (PC, PS3, Xbox 360): They done turned Prey into an open-world shooter that we dared call Red Dead Redemption in space.
XCOM (PC, Xbox 360): So different from its predecessor, an isometric strategy game in that, well, this one is a first-person shooter.
Bodycount (Xbox 360, PS3) Little-seen first-person shooter from the creative director of the pyrotechnic PlayStation 2-era shooter Black. This one's supposed to have guns that would feel satisfying to shoot in an empty (virtual) room. It's also supposed to feel a little like a rave.
Inversion (PS3, Xbox 360) Think cover-based shooter with a gravity gun that can yank enemies into the air. Also think: sometimes the enemies will be standing on the ceiling, or the wall. Read our preview.
Gotham City Impostors (PC, PS3, Xbox 360 - download only) What if people dressed up like Batman and the Joker and then shot each other? Very upsetting. What if that was just the premise for a competitive, downloadable team-based shooter? (I swear that we are not making this one up. It's real.)
The Gunstringer (Xbox 360 Kinect) The only shooter we know of for the hands-free motion controller Kinect. Also the only shooter we know of that has you controlling a puppet and that's pretty much a comedy.
Rage (PC, PS3, Xbox 360) A post-apocalyptic first-person shooter from the creators of Doom may not seem that odd to you. But a) they've mixed in a lot of driving and car combat, b) its coolest weapon might be a variation of a boomerang and, well, c) who knows if id Software's still got it or how their approach to shooters is going to feel in this modern era?
Halo Remake (Xbox 360) Could the rumors be true? Could we be getting a Halo remake this fall to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the release of Advance Wars Halo?
We'll be previewing more expected E3 games throughout the week...
UPDATE: Dear concerned readers, we decided to save our Uncharted 3 blurb for our Action Game preview. You call it a shooter. We call it an action game with guns. You ask what the line is between shooter and not-shooter. We try to change the subject.
It's not every day that you see a bottle of booze stamped with "licensed by Sega". But this isn't everyday. It's Tuesday, May 31.
Yakuza, Sega's games about... yakuza, is once again collaborating with a Japanese liquor maker for its latest game, Yakuza: of the End. The last couple of Yakuza games got their own alcohol, and the upcoming title is no exception.
A Yakuza: of the End label is being slapped on a bottle of awamori, a type of strong, distilled Japanese alcohol that differs from brewed sake.
It's priced at ¥1,890 (US$23) and from Okinawa's Seifuku Distillery. Not a fan of awamori, though I do love sake—just not in beer. Do not put sake in beer. Seriously, it's a waste of sake.
According to our own Stephen Totilo, we might be in for a pretty good Captain America experience when the movie tie-in game drops on July 19, but you won't get the ultimate Captain America experience unless you preorder from GameStop.
That's because players that preorder the game from GameStop will score the Ultimates downloadable content pack for Captain America: Super Soldier on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, featuring the gritty 1942 version of the all-American hero as he appeared in Marvel Comics Ultimates series. Along with the sexy outfit, the DLC pack also contains the Ballroom Blitz challenge map, and early access to Cap's Weaponize ability, which grants the super soldier the ability to turn his foes' weapons against them.
If you prefer not to patronize GameStop, I'm sure the DLC will be available to the masses for a modest fee at some point, surely less than the cost of say, freedom.
Pre-Order Captain America: Super Soldier at GameStop! [Sega]



The first two Uncharted games for the PlayStation 3 established Naughty Dog as one of the premiere single-player developers on the console. That's just not good enough for these people.
The Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception developer is really serious about multiplayer this time around. They aren't content with just having an okay multiplayer system that a hardcore group of devoted fans play. They want everyone playing this. They want Call of Duty players slipping away from their teams to get a little Uncharted 3 in.
Judging by McWhertor's hands-on with Uncharted 3 multiplayer last month, they're definitely heading in the right direction.
Me? I don't care as long as the single-player experience remains as stellar as it has been. It could be the most amazing multiplayer experience ever committed to disc, but I don't play Uncharted games to socialize.
What about you folks?
UNCHARTED 3: Naughty Dog Talks Multiplayer [PlayStation Blog]
According to UK windscreen replacement company Autoglass, this video represents a future where augmented reality windshield displays can usher in a new era of driver safety. At least until gamers get a hold of them.
In theory, this is an excellent idea. Pedestrian and cyclist warnings, arrows pointing to important landmarks, messages warning us of speed traps; this is an ambitious vision of the future of driving that would likely never work. Why? Here's one of the video's YouTube comments:
Cool, although the cyclist warning should be a target so you can take them out.
Why not? No one would in their right mind would actually take out cyclists with their cars. It would just be a quick modification for shits and grins.
And while we're at it, let's create an augmented reality game where we earn points for passing certain real world objects. Oh, and let me play Tetris during red lights. Let's mount a button on the steering wheel so we can shoot imaginary aliens with our headlights! Oh screw it, just take out the cyclists, there's an achievement for them now.
Perhaps we should stick to dashboards? They've worked pretty well so far.
Stunning Autoglass video presents futuristic vision of windscreens [Joe.IE]
The Indie Stone's calamitous path has finally brought it to a place where Project Zomboid is available to play as a cut-down alpha.
Those who have pre-ordered the game (and more recently, those who have bought their other games to get a PZ pre-order) will by now have received an email with the link and password. Those who haven't can pick up one of the older games and get access immediately. Is it something you should be interested in? I've had a play of it, and tell you below.
In the zombie apocalypse, I died of cooking soup. My wife was hurt, upstairs in bed. I'd bandaged her leg as well as I could, but we both knew what an injury meant. Having found wood, hammer and nails in the garden shed I'd put up defences on all the downstairs doors and windows, and then we slept.
Incredibly hungry, I set out to find food for both of us, the bleeding in my wife's leg just as bad. The next door house looked empty, so heading in I made my way to the kitchen and encountered my first zombie. Fortunately the hammer I'd put the wooden boards up with was still in my hand (it pays to sleep with such a thing), so I bopped it on the head and emptied the cupboards. An apple, carrots, and a few tins of soup.
Getting back to our own new home, and after in paranoia hammering up new planks over the door I went through cupboards and draws looking for a pot and tin opener. Combined, and into the oven. Time passed. Very quickly, as it happens. It seems to fly by. I wasn't sure if it was done. Pootling around in the kitchen I thought I'd check on my wife while I waited. It was with my foot on the first stair that I saw the oven explode in the kitchen. Running in, in my panic I thought to take the pot of soup out and then ran upstairs to my wife. By this point I was on fire, as was most of the house, and my attempt to carry her out of the building was already looking futile. And then I died, about a foot from the front door.
Project Zomboid is not quite the game I was expecting. I knew it was intended to be a survival zombie game, in which your character would have to improvise with what he could salvage, in order to live as long as possible amongst the undead hordes. I didn't know it was going to have occasional story, a sense of being a real person with a real relationship. I also-–I think because of the Amiga-esque graphics seen in the screenshots before release-–didn't realise how dark it was going to feel.
It's a clever technique, the appearance of a wife. It goes from "man who hits zombies to survive" to "man who needs to stay alive to help wife". (It would certainly be no bad thing to see the introduction of a choice of sexes at the start to get away from any needless tropes here, of course.) There's a motivation from the first opening moments, and it's not bravado. She even warns you not to try to prove anything as you venture out for the first time. It's the sort of evocative you just won't believe from looking at the pictures. It's also important to note if the thought of narrative getting in the way sounds horrendous, this isn't obligatory. In fact, this opening part of the game is the anomaly, the rest more freeform. There are also plans for alternative narrative openings, motivations, and so on. And a tutorial skip will be added soon.
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This version of the game is a very early Alpha. After a run of misfortune of such extraordinary proportions, developers The Indie Stone next found their test code had been leaked on 4Chan, and so have rushed to get this code out to everyone who pre-ordered. Which means that to say it's incomplete is not only to wildly underestimate, but also to widely miss the point. This is a project at its early stages, intended to grow enormously, with the guidance of those who are playing it. By the time you're reading this a new update will have addressed my most immediate gripes (adding items to your inventory should get there with a double-click, and dying won't leave you needing to refresh, I believe). If you're reading this in three months I imagine the game will be unrecognisable.
Right now you have an inventory that slides out of the left side of the screen, including a button for bringing up the crafting window. Into this you can drop up to five items to combine them, like the soup, can opener and pot for a recipe to last a student at least one academic year. It would be good to see that crafting option a more permanent presence on the screen – in fact it would be great if all the key elements were available to be fixed in place, rather than a second click away. Oh, and I want to skip dialogue please. And…
I love the potential here. And I'm excited by how much has already been achieved. The atmosphere is immediately superb, a big part thanks to the bleak presentation of what is usually associated with such bright, cheerful games. Isometric, chunky pixels feel as out of place in such a world as a smiling doll in a post-holocaust playground. It's a smart decision. Combine that with some really quite astonishingly good music (I'm leaving it playing as I write this, and fancy writing everything else ever to it just now), intelligently gentle weather sound effects, and a sense of foreboding from one of the best opening lines I've ever seen, and they're onto something. That opening line, white text on a black background before you start: "This is how you died."
Of course, while I'm excited about potential here, I am more tempered with what's already on offer. Currently it's very fiddly, and juggling menus is awkward. I'm also not sure how well suited WASD is to isometric, meaning running perpendicular to the world's edges requires holding down two buttons at a time. Clearly there's need for a mute button, and the option to save your progress seems essential. As it is, the narrative of the game's tutorial opening moments doesn't come to an end, leaving you with soup in hand. This will be updated soon, with a bigger update due in a couple of weeks that should add unscripted NPCs to the mix.
If you want to play it at this stage you need to pre-order the game. A demo is planned, but has been delayed due to a combination of TIS's litany of disasters. Pre-ordering now is of course investing in the project, and means you'll have access to the game immediately, and can follow its development with the frequent updates. To buy it, thanks to those aforementioned issues, you'll need to buy one of TIS's older games, which all come with a lifetime purchase of Project Zomboid at the same time. It's looking like it's worth the confusion. And when one of those games is Droids, for only £5, it's a sweet deal. It's worth noting that PZ plays in Java in your web browser. But it occupies the entire screen area.
So the next time I turned the oven off. My wife was listening to the radio, and I figured I'd hunt around for a bowl or something to serve it in, rather than have her eat directly out of the pot. Turning to go back downstairs I saw the front door was open. I'd definitely shut it. But I hadn't boarded it back up. I'd boarded it when I was next door, because she was there on her own. But I hadn't bothered when I came back in. I was running out of wood, and I just figured I should save it for when I'm not there. And now the door was open. And there was a man with a shotgun. He shouted at me. I pulled out my hammer. He shot me dead. And he went upstairs.
Republished with permission.
Notch's excellent decision to make MineCraft built out of boxes creates marketing ideas he never imagined, unless he's prone to sinus infections.
Reader Frank tells us the story behind these lovely little snot boxes. "My sister started making cute covers for those cube tissue boxes and when a friend of mine said she should make them MineCraft cubes she gave it a try. They turned out so perfect!"
Well I don't know about perfect, Frank. My idea of the perfect tissue box cover may be different from yours. Everyone has their tissue box cover vision, after all. Still, I'd spend $15 for a tissue box Creeper if I ever had the desire to decorate the container holding pieces of paper I plan on coating with nose goo.
MineCraft Tissue Box Covers [Snotty Bots]





Kicking off a two week exclusive launch at Amazon.com, Android owners can score Popcap's award-winning flower defense game Plants Vs. Zombies for free today only. Grab it before the price rises to $2.99 at midnight!