Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 Hands-On Preview.

We take a brief look into the life and times of Naruto Uzumaki in his latest fighting game.

There’s probably a pretty good chance that you’ve at least heard of Naruto in one of its many forms–TV show or manga. But for the uninitiated, Naruto follows the story of a young ninja who not only struggles to become more skilled in the ways of the stealthy, powerful warrior through training, but also struggles with his own identity. Naturally, some of that also has to do with Naruto becoming more mature and more comfortable with friends who are uneasy when he’s around (at least, initially), but Naruto has something special about him. He’s the vessel for the nine-tailed fox–an evil creature imprisoned inside Naruto–and he’s not too happy about it.

The early portions of Ultimate Ninja Storm 2’s Ultimate Adventure mode focus on Naruto and his return to Hidden-Leaf Village after training with Jiraiya. Wasting no time, Naruto then meets up with some old friends, like Sakura, who then join him on some simple missions issued to him by the Hokage. These missions are used to help familiarize you with some of the basic elements of the Ultimate Adventure mode. You’ll learn about collecting materials that can then be used to make items that have stronger status effects than most standard items. You’ll learn how to properly equip certain items before battle–these items range from offensive weapons to items that give you increased chakra (also known as magic). Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, you’ll learn how to incorporate attacks from your partner when fighting an opponent.

Fights happen pretty regularly in the Ultimate Adventure mode, and it doesn’t take long to get a pretty decent strategy going quickly or to discover an enemy’s weakness. Actually, one of the very first missions has you venturing just outside Hidden-Leaf to the forest where there’s a doppelganger of Naruto, which has similar skills and abilities. Fights take place in a full 3D arena where you’re able to move in just about any direction. All characters have a relatively weak projectile attack, as well as a throw, a default combination attack, a jump, and a variety of chakra attacks. Interestingly, you can actually change the kind of chakra attack you launch, not only by using different face buttons and their corresponding basic attack (like using a chakra-powered projectile), but also by pressing the chakra button multiple times. Of course, if you do this, it means that you won’t have as much magic left over when the attack is finished, but you can always run for safety and attempt to charge it back up.

When they’re indicated, you can also perform special attacks with your in-fight partner that deal out massive amounts of damage, but using your buddy usually involves more strategy than that. Simply pressing the bumper button to have them come in and attack won’t get much done because their attack is usually restricted to a certain area or where your opponent was standing when you pressed the button. If you mistime it, then you basically waste one of your partner attacks. At any rate, you’ll learn how to use support characters more effectively as the game progresses, and you’ll also learn how they differ from each other in their skills.

As you progress through the Ultimate Adventure mode, you’ll encounter more characters and more fights. At one point, Naruto has to engage in the bell drill with Kakashi with the aid of Sakura. The three then form Team 7 and continue performing missions for the Hokage. But you won’t always play as Naruto and his team, even in these early parts of the game. As you’ll quickly find out, Gaara the kazekage (who, like Naruto, also has a powerful evil trapped inside) plays a big role in this mode, and his similarity to Naruto will be a driving force in what our hero does to save him.

Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 has more than an adventure mode to take part in. It also features a versus mode where you can go up against a friend or computer opponent in any one of several battle arenas. This mode is perfect for refining your skills as well as finding out the offensive and defensive capabilities of various characters that you encounter in the adventure mode. It’s worth noting that a good number of the characters in this mode won’t be available to you until you get through Ultimate Adventure, but there are several well-known characters to choose from right off the bat. Also, you can choose to fight with or without partners, but it’s a good idea to fight with them in the early going in case you’re not too sure how they factor into a fight. Additionally, Ninja Storm 2 features an online mode, and while we weren’t able to try it, the single-player mode does drop hints about it–particularly the profile system that lets you edit various ninja info cards that ultimately serve as your online descriptors.

Like most Naruto games, Ninja Storm 2 already looks pretty fantastic. The characters appear nearly identical to their TV show and manga counterparts, and some of the especially dramatic moments (or more specifically, those involving the powerful jutsu skills that incorporate some light quick-time-event button presses) are impressive. That aside, we’re interested to see how the Ultimate Adventure mode expands in the later chapters and just how well the online fights work. Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 is scheduled for release on October 19.

By : 20th CGN.

Info By : Gamespot.

Medal Of Honor : Multiplayer Hands On. [Backseat Action Preview]

EA’s DICE has been tuning Medal of Honor’s multiplayer since the June beta. We sample the four multiplayer modes on offer in the game.

Development duties for the multiplayer component of Medal of Honor have been given to DICE, the studio behind Battlefield: Bad Company 2. With the success of that game’s squad-based multiplayer offering, it’s easy to see why. Making a dent in the military first-person shooter market–a market where the all-conquering Call of Duty franchise looms large–is no mean feat. If anyone is up to the task, it might be Stockholm-based, EA-owned DICE.

Medal of Honor’s multiplayer action has been built with a tweaked version of DICE’s Frostbite engine–the engine that powered Bad Company 2. Much of that tweaking has been done since the multiplayer modes were offered up for testing in beta form back in June and July. The early beta gave more time for feedback and fixes, according to Patrick Liu, the game’s multiplayer producer. “We didn’t really have time to do that in Battlefield: Bad Company 2,” he says. Feedback from the beta has given rise to “thousands of fixes,” says Liu, ranging from a boost to the recoil of weapons to more consistent hit detection. Support actions earned with kill streaks have been balanced, making them harder to achieve than in the beta. Weapon pick-ups have also been changed, so players can now seize weapons from fallen players rather than seek out ammo crates. The front end has received a cosmetic overhaul as well, making the menus and heads-up display “more sober,” according to Liu.

These adjustments are about refining a multiplayer military FPS experience for an audience that, you suspect, already knows what it likes. Seemingly, Medal of Honor aims to refine, not revolutionise, the genre. Bad Company 2’s extensively destructive environments–a key point of difference in its multiplayer action–don’t even feature. Instead, the game checks the major boxes: There are three classes, four modes, and eight maps, with all of the modes playable across most of the maps. There’s persistent progression, with unlock trees for each weapon and your character ranking up toward elite Tier 1 status. There’s also support for up to 12-on-12-player matches, plus team-focused offensive and defensive kill streak bonuses. The classes, as outlined in our earlier multiplayer preview, are rifleman, sniper, and special ops that can be played on either the side of the coalition forces or the insurgents–that is, the Taliban.

Team Assault is Medal of Honor’s classic team deathmatch mode. We sampled it in Garmzir Town: a rural settlement of clay huts beside a river spanned by a couple of bridges. Though much has been tuned since the beta, the basic experience won’t be unrecognisable to beta testers: fragile soldiers (or insurgent fighters) on compact maps make for twitchy multiplayer action where cover is crucial. Spawning is nearly instant, offsetting the frustration of any near-instant deaths, though certain maps and modes encouraged the dominant team to just crowd in on an enemy spawn point. For the sniper class, the multiplayer experience is markedly different from sniping in the single-player campaign, with different controls for scope zoom and steadying the sights. The lack of a prone position will be a complaint for some players, though more will lament the scarce vehicle action and absence of a kill cam.

Sector Control mode adds a tactical layer, creating sectors on the map that teams need to dominate to gather points. We hit the Kunar Base for this mode: a compact, up-close map filled with trenches scattered with crates and camouflage netting. On the horizon were hilltops covered in smoke and struck by occasional lightning. The tight corners and enclosed spaces meant plenty of sudden deaths as we flocked to our target sector; shotguns were especially effective down in the trenches, as well as melee attacks (with an axe, in the case of Taliban fighters). More often than not, raising your head above the parapet meant getting it shot off by a sniper. We also tried the Sector Control mode in the Kabul City Ruins: an urban map featuring rubble and burning car wrecks. Here, defensive and offensive team-centric kill streak bonuses came to our aid, with flak vests and full metal jacket ammo being “handed out” to team members as we progressed.

Objective Raid, on the other hand, is an asymmetric multiplayer mode that involves capturing or defending two objectives on the map. The attacking side can go after the objectives in either order, and with the small maps, the mode makes for very short matches–three minutes on average, according to the multiplayer producer. On the Kandahar Marketplace map, we took turns to defend and attack objectives alpha and bravo. We did so among the market stands and narrow alleys, with a mounted M60 to alternately take cover from and fend off attackers with. Spawn points were outside of the walls of the marketplace at the edges of the map, with multiple entry points. On another map, Diwagal Camp, we fought from a cave network into the adjacent village, taking both objectives in a couple of minutes; the attacking team loses if it is held off for a full five minutes.

Combat Mission, the last of the four modes, is the least familiar and most promising. Like Objective Raid, Combat Mission is asymmetric, but where that mode is about short, fast-paced rounds, this one is slower and more methodical, with a series of story-based objectives. In the snowy Shahihkot Mountains, the side that plays as US rangers must seek out a downed Chinook helicopter, capture the area, and then complete a mission while being harried by the opposition. This mission involves destroying an ammo depot, a mortar station, and an antiaircraft gun so another Chinook can land for extraction. For this, the rifleman class’ smoke grenades were useful for getting safely through open areas. As the US fighters pushed forward, the spawn points moved forward with them, but the team had a finite number of respawns; if these were used up, the insurgent team–which had been fighting the coalition forces at every turn–wins the match.

The Shahikot Mountains map was the biggest we tried, with new areas being opened up as each objective was cleared. The second Combat Mission map, Mazar-i-Sharif Airfield, was littered with the remains of old Russian tanks and planes. It also featured some of the game’s scant vehicle action: a tank to temporarily support the attacking American forces. For the attackers, the mission meant fighting through a roadblock, a hangar, through the hangar yard, and onto a control tower. Of these, the hangar yard was the toughest objective to crack, with grounded planes providing patchy cover.

For those players who don’t find the multiplayer punishing enough, there will also be a Hardcore mode: a suite of settings–fully customisable on the PC, less so on the console–to make things tougher. This includes friendly-fire damage, no health regeneration, no ammo pick-up from enemies, no crosshairs on weapons, and no minimap. According to Liu, Medal of Honor becomes a “completely different game” with this mode. We’ll have to wait until the mid-October release to see if this is the case–and whether Medal of Honor’s multiplayer can make its mark in a crowded genre.

By : 20th CGN.

Info By : Gamespot.