In I Am Alive, players will be challenged by both their environment and their enemies. Stamina and resource management are key when being exposed to deadly atmospheres and scaling enormous buildings in search of supplies. The unique combat system requires players to utilize intimidation: cowards are easily swayed with an empty gun, while other enemies will put players to the test.

In the post-apocalyptic action/adventure I Am Alive, players are faced with thought-provoking choices in the role of a survivor on a journey to find his wife and daughter, who were lost during the “Event.” Arriving at his hometown of Haventon one year after it happened, he finds the town in shambles. Buildings are destroyed, toxic ash fills the streets, and society has been torn, causing inhabitants to take all necessary actions to survive.

It appears digital piracy is to blame for I Am Alive’s all-but-confirmed PC snub. Reflecting on the future of Ubisoft Shanghai’s urban disaster game.
Ubisoft’s reluctance to confirm I Am Alive for the non-console crowd has caused legitimate PC gamers to cry foul.
I’ve heard loud and clear that PC gamers are bitching about there being no version for them, but are these people just making noise just because there’s no version or because it’s a game they actually want to play.

Headshots, money, and blink-and-it’s-over rounds. Not much has changed since the last time I regularly played Counter-Strike back in 2004. Sure, Valve and Hidden Path have given the shooter a facelift, but at this early stage in the closed beta, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive plays identically to the now 12-year-old Half-Life mod and its spruced-up Source engine remake. And I can’t decide whether or not that’s a good thing.

Anyone who ever played Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Portal, or Portal 2 knows that Valve can deliver with the best of them when it comes to innovation in gaming. Strange, then, that the studio would work so hard to develop a game featuring the exact same mechanics — mechanics that have evolved dramatically in the FPS genre over the years. Playing Dust in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is like stepping into the DeLorean, setting the dial to 2000, and flooring it to 88 m.p.h. Is it fun? You bet. Could new elements be added to enhance the experience? Absolutely. The question is whether or not they should be added, and it’s a question I have trouble answering.

On the flip side, every Call of Duty game Activision has shipped annually since CoD 4: Modern Warfare has been a huge letdown for me because none of them have brought anything new to the table. As a longtime fan of the franchise that loved Infinity Ward’s ability to add new gameplay features while maintaining the game’s distinct feel, I’ve quickly lost interest in the over-hyped carbon copies of CoD 4.

HQ has been talking about a follow-up to 4A Games’ postapocalyptic shooter Metro 2033 since last June, but only just now is the publisher beginning to
open up about the title. Today, THQ officially announced Metro: Last Light, saying the follow-up to Metro 2033 will arrive for the Xbox 360, PlayStation
3, and PC in 2012. Though initially operating under the working name Metro 2034, the game’s Last Light subtitle was unearthed by Superannuation last month. However, as the
working title suggested, Metro: Last Light will be set during the year 2034. With mutants lurking the subway catacombs following a postapocalyptic
disaster, humanity finds itself waging war against itself to gain control of a doomsday device that could end life forever.
Gamers will once again be afforded a variety of improvised weapons to fend off the mutant hordes and rival Metro factions. However, firearms and
ammunition will be scarce, as the game emphasizes both survival horror and first-person shooter gameplay. Beyond its single-player mode, Metro: Last
Light will also incorporate a competitive multiplayer mode set within the game’s subway catacombs.
What’s notably different about Last Light is the combat. During part of the train sequence, Artyom was using a single-shot rifle, which dropped enemies
with just one shot. The chaingun made short work of the Nazis, as did the handmade grenade launcher he used while on the train. Beynon says that they’ve
tried to “communicate better to you that your weapons are doing what they’re supposed to be doing.” He says it’s similar to the “Ranger Hardcore”
difficulty option from the first game which upped the damage from all the weapons significantly. As a result, “combat feels a lot more visceral and
deadly this time around,” he says.
With a 2012 release date, there’s a lot of time to go before Metro: Last Light’s release, but what we saw assuaged our concerns that what made Metro
2033 special would be replaced with a more generic, but safer, shooter. With an acknowledgement that stealth and combat needed work, the team at 4A is
poised to find an even larger audience than its cult classic ever did.

Expectations are high for the game Rage . After all, anyone who knows FPS (First-Person-Shooter) video games knows the name, id Software. The developer

has produced some of the most groundbreaking and influential titles in the gaming world with the likes of (Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake among them) as

well as some of its best known franchises. This game couldn’t be anything other than spectacular, Or should I say must be.

As it turns out my high expectations were met and then some. Rage may look initially like a mash-up of Fallout 3 and Borderlands, but the great pedigree

of id Software is stamped on every detail of the game. The Rage demo opens with the player being introduced to Crazy Joe, one of the wasteland’s

inhabitants who lives in a tin shack in the middle of nowhere. While babbling to the wall of his abode, Joe gabbled something about watching out for

mutants and then told the player to get out of his home. Within seconds of this warning, the player was set upon by a collection of snarling, sinewy

humanoids with glowing eyes. Rage looks incredibly impressive. It offers up some interesting variations on the FPS template, the augmented gameplay looks great, the story sounds

promising and visually it’s an absolute stunner. Whether it will re-establish id Software as the biggest name in shooters remains to be seen, but it’ll

certainly give any competition a run for its money.

Think you know what to expect from Gears of War 3 just because you played Gears 1 and Gears 2 or Gears 3 Beta? This does sound extremely cliched, but think again. In other words, Gears of War 3 will surprise you. Epic have had nearly 3 years to prepare this latest chapter in the franchise, and since it’s the last chapter in the trilogy, they’ve made sure it’s the best game in the series so far.

Gears of War’s setting has always been decrepitly beautiful, but unlike some of the settings featured in previous Gears games, the Raven’s Nest is teeming with life. Little details make you believe that this is a real place that soldiers have been living on for quite some time.  Without spoiling the story for you, the game is set a year and a half after the events of Gears of War 2. At the end of Gears 2, it was revealed that Marcus Fenix’s father may still be alive, which is right where Gears of War 3 starts off.

There are new enemies to deal with, like lambent stalks that would spawn enemies from pods, also there are drudges, which have tentacle arms and throw emulsion fireballs at you. They have a weak spot in their chests, but you have to keep an eye on their heads, which can still come after you when severed.

More than any of its predecessors, Gears of War 3 is a scramble… for cover, and now for ammo as a resource. You’ll find yourself constantly running from the action with an empty clip, rolling out of the way of fireballs and polyps. The lack of ammo shows the tides are turning from bad to worse. This tension is a great motivator, setting the pace from the get-go.

Gears of War 3 creates one of the best combat experiences in video games. You don’t get to be an invincible hero who mows down enemies by the hundreds. Rather, each kill is hard-earned. You have to duck behind cover, peer around corners, and revive fallen comrades as you dodge heavy fire. Gears is an experience, a feeling. Gears of War 3 is a great shooter just wish they had it on PC also.

Stepping into the world of Skyrim is like stepping into Oblivion, the way you remember it in your imagination,  forgetting the small details that kept it from achieving more.

In Skyrim, a strong swing with a battle axe feels right, jumping in third-person doesn’t defy the natural laws of physics and dialogue sequences flow naturally. All of these are incremental improvements that make exploring Tamriel feel exciting again.

The landscape of this forest area looks far more natural than those of Oblivion. Sections of land aren’t randomly copy-and-pasted, but rather hand-crafted with a focus on creating a convincing world that isn’t always designed in the player’s favor. Steep cliffs tower above you, large creeks must be swam across and dense woods often blocked the view.

The new favoriting system lets you bookmark all items, weapons and spells to a special menu, which pauses the game when open. It’s an elegant solution to Fallout 3’s cumbersome button-mapping. No more dying because you couldn’t access that gun mapped to the upper-right on the gamepad.

My favorite weapon has to be the bow. The revamped physics and controls made me feel responsible for every arrow shot. The trajectory of the arrows is realistic and not randomly determined by stats, but the damage is. A stealth arrow to the head is something I don’t think I will grow tired of during the many hours I plan to spend with Skyrim. If you aren’t a natural Legolas like me, unlockable skills will help you perfect your bow-and-arrow skills by slowing down time or providing a closer zoom.

I’m convinced Bethesda will deliver on Oblivion’s promise while outdoing any previous ambitions. If the dragons and 50 ft. trolls break the game, I’ll forgive Bethesda as long as the combat, environments and exploration are as damn good. I know I’ll be getting this game.

It’s a pretty good time to be an action-RPG fan. There are a number of promising games on the horizon, and one of them is most definitely Runic Games  Torchlight II. This one’s actually not that far off at this point, as I’m told it’s currently on the release schedule for around April or May next year. Considering the original came out as recently as October and the team at Runic is around 30 strong, it’s impressive another game, especially with the feature set of Torchlight II.

Pets will still be running around in the game, of which there’ll be more of this time to let you unload extra inventory or get some help in a fight. I didn’t get to see it running this time since the game is still pre-alpha, but I’d imagine it’s got to look pretty neat with four players running around — with pets — steamrolling through dungeons. The game retains its cartoon-like style, and you can expect new types of monsters and effects. Runic is also trying to get away from the notion that you’re just wading through fields of wandering monsters, and so numerous types will surprise you when you enter an area, whether it’s phantoms drifting up through grates in a subterranean crypt to spiders dropping from the ceiling.

If you’ve been paying attention to what Runic’s been doing you might be curious what happened to that Torchlight MMO that was mentioned a little while back. It’s not gone at all, just put on the back burner while the team works on getting Torchlight II out the door. From what was shown off at Gamescom, Torchlight II looks good and appears to play smoothly, as did the original. There won’t be any microtransactions or subscriptions required to play, and Runic is saying the goal is to offer it for 20 dollars US when it’s ready, though we’ll have to wait and see if that winds up happening.

If you missed the original, it’s a fun single-player loot game with three character classes that shot and sliced their way through essentially one large multilevel dungeon. In the sequel, the world is being expanded quite a bit. You’ll find multiple towns, large overworld sections featuring various weather conditions and a day-night cycle, as well as plenty of dungeons to explore. The enemies and layouts are randomized so you never quite know what’s going to pop up as you move through with four new characters classes, two of which are being talked about right now.

F.E.A.R. 3 has had major improvements from it’s predecessors. The first is it’s cover system. Instead of just crouching behind objects you can now stick behind cover simply with a press of a button. This allows you to peek left and right behind objects or duck over them. The AI has also been tweaked dramatically. Enemies are extremely good at flanking you. They communicate to each other on what their doing to try take you down and it adds a great sense of atmosphere to the fights. It’s fast paced action and exhilarating when swapping from cover to cover as it’s being destroyed. Slo-mo also makes a return and is just as fun as it’s ever been. Whilst it does make things a little to easy at times it does help you when your surrounded by a large amount of enemies. It’s also cool to watch as a bullet slowly moves towards an enemies head or seeing them exploding in pieces of blood.

If you expect F.E.A.R. 3 to be big on scares you might be left disappointed. The scares you encounter are little and far between and most of the games time is filled with shooting than wandering around in a dark building. There are however some creepy moments like this and one scare in particular left my hair standing on the back of my neck.. The sound to the game is fantastic and  makes most of the moments in F.E.A.R. 3 very intense and creepy.

The game is also packed with multiplayer but it’s not the typical deathmatch or capture the flag modes you might be expecting. Day 1 Studios decided to take away these modes and give F.E.A.R 3′s multiplayer a unique experience. There’s four modes on offer and each are very fun to play. One of my favorite modes is called Fu**ing Run. Here you an three other players must fight waves of enemies as your being chased by black smoke called the Wall of Death. As it moves closer and closer you must push forward and not let anyone get hit by it or it’s game over.

F.E.A.R. 3 delivers what it sets out to do. It might be light on scares but the Single-Players great pace and mix between scary and exiting gunfights make the game a delight to play. With two playable characters in singleplayer, CO-op and multiplayer, there’s a lot to do in F.E.A.R. 3  is great and it’s sure worth your time.