Donkey Kong Country Returns Hands-On Preview.

Flying bananas, hidden rooms, mine carts, tropical sunsets, and a giant octopus await you in Donkey Kong’s newest adventure.

Let’s get this out of the way: Donkey Kong Country Returns is not a remake of Donkey Kong Country on the SNES, nor is it a remake of Donkey Kong Country 64, the existence of which seems all but disavowed at this point. No, a more accurate description would be that Donkey Kong Country Returns is a game that draws upon the foundation of the original series. After all, they’re both side-scrolling platformers; Donkey and Diddy have some of the same moves; animal buddies can be found to help get you through a level; and even some of the music pays direct homage to tunes found in the very first Donkey Kong Country. But the two separate themselves in some pretty distinct ways.

First and probably the most obvious is the visual style. While the original Donkey Kong Country and its sequels presented everything in a (new-back-in-the-1990s) prerendered style, this new Donkey Kong is all polygonal, but it retains the distinctive style and detail of its predecessors–if anything, presenting everything in real time has given even greater flexibility and personality to the game’s characters and its environments. In fact, one of the most memorable aspects of Donkey Kong Country Returns–in our brief play-through, at least–is how much the levels themselves factor into the game, serving as much more than just a platter for the main Donkey Kong meal.

We saw and played through a few of these levels, including one that drew a few gasps from the audience that saw it in the E3 trailer. It’s called Sunset Shore, and in this level Donkey Kong and Diddy are viewed in silhouette–with only the red of their clothing visible–as the massive sun sets in the background. Naturally, you may think this is just a cosmetic difference from other levels, but we found that we had to take things a bit slower and approach the level more methodically because enemies are in silhouette as well and so is the foreground itself, making enemies difficult to see. Plus, it’s just easy to get distracted by how stylized the entire level is.

There are other moments in Donkey Kong Country that are similar to the hijinks in Sunset Shore in terms of adding a bit of extra zest to the experience–one such level is called Stormy Shore. In this particular stage, Donkey and Diddy have to navigate their way across coastal waterways under siege by a terrible storm, all the while jumping across wooden platforms and planks from ships rolling up and down on massive waves. And if that’s not enough pandemonium for you, there’s also a particularly cranky octopus to deal with. At first, he just pops up in the background to let you know he’s there, but it’s not too long before his spiky tentacles start slapping away, creating even more obstacles for the duo to deal with.

Of course, there are also plenty of levels reminiscent of those in the original Donkey Kong Country games. Crazy Cart has Donkey and Diddy racing through a stage in–you guessed it–mine carts. Just like in the old mine cart levels from the original Donkey Kong Country games, you have to navigate a series of tracks with numerous gaps that you need to jump over with precise timing. In Button Bash, our heroes traverse an underground temple via sections filled with barrels–to be more specific, barrels that require you to time a button press, which in turn shoots you to safety (or peril). Then there are the barrels that automatically shoot you out. This is all old hat to longtime Donkey Kong Country fans, but much like everything else in this game, there are variations on the original formula–in this case, statues at the end of the temple where you have to time your barrel blast to make Donkey Kong land in the mouth of the statue.

This latest Donkey Kong Country wouldn’t feel quite right if it didn’t have some kind of animal helper friends, but thankfully, it has those as well. In fact, we played through an entire level with Rambi the rhinoceros. Like in the previous games, Rambi can run and barrel through just about anything, but in the stage we played, you have to be careful–columns collapse under your weight, forcing you to make quick decisions and equally quick movements while riding atop the powerful rhino. At certain points, you also have to manually make Rambi go into a sprint (by shaking the Wii Remote) in order to safely make jumps across large chasms in the underground temple area.

And speaking of the controls, they’re probably the second most significantly different aspect that separates this new Donkey Kong Country from the old. Yes, the simple fact that you have to use a remote and nunchuk makes it different by default, but there’s a bit more to the whole control process and what the monkey duo can do. For starters, when playing in single-player, you only really have control over Donkey Kong (it’s never Diddy by himself, since he’s always the first to go when you lose two health hearts, and he generally clings to Donkey Kong), but you can use Diddy’s coconut rocket pack for some gliding action by holding down the jump button. In the two-player cooperative mode, either player can completely control a character separately, but you can also make Diddy jump back onto Donkey Kong’s back if you’re playing in a difficult part with an unskilled partner. To make either character do their version of the ground pound (useful for flipping armored enemies or opening entrances to hidden areas that might contain puzzle pieces, timed banana grab sections, the infamous K-O-N-G letters, or a combination of the three), you simply hold still and shake the remote, but if you move and then shake the remote, that performs either character’s roll. Donkey Kong and Diddy have a move that allows them to blow air–another useful skill for finding hidden objects as well as attacking enemies engulfed in flame.

At any rate, the controls feel pretty sharp at this point, and the game looks absolutely great, packing all sorts of detail that you would probably expect from the developer behind the Metroid Prime series of games. We’re eager to see just how more creative the levels get as well as find more hidden areas and discover more animal buddies. Donkey Kong Country Returns is scheduled for release on November 21.

By : 20th CGN.

Extra Info By : Gamespot.

R.U.S.E. Review. [PC]

• Ubisoft
• Eugen Systems
• Historic Real-Time Strategy
• Release: September 7, 2010.
• ESRB: Teen

This intriguing real-time strategy game overcomes its feeble campaign by encouraging a different approach to battlefield tactics.

The Good

• Ruses provide a nifty and original strategic element
• Slick tabletop interface makes it easy to stay organized
• Recon, ambushes, and other elements make for lots of flexibility
• Online and skirmish matches are really fun.

The Bad

• Bland story characterized by poor cutscenes and inferior voice acting
• Campaign is boring and badly paced
• Problems finding online opponents.

R.U.S.E. is a fun and fascinating real-time strategy game, as long as you know which parts of it to invest in and which to skip entirely. In spite of some difficulties finding an online opponent, it prospers in the competitive arena, putting an intriguing use of bluffs and reconnaissance to good use on expansive maps that will test your ability to control the battlefield. Offline, you get some mileage out of its single-player skirmishes, but where R.U.S.E. falters is in its plodding, poorly paced campaign. Bizarre character models and bad writing prove distracting, while too-frequent story intrusions interrupt the flow of missions just as they start to get interesting. But the clumsy campaign aside, R.U.S.E.’s unique mechanics lead to tense and enjoyable standoffs in which, literally, things are not always what they seem.

[Check Out The Following Official Trailer.]

One of R.U.S.E.’s finer aspects is its ease of use, which makes it approachable for both newcomers and experts alike. When you zoom all the way out, you see the entire battlefield as if it’s mapped on a general’s strategy table, where units are depicted as stacks of chips. If you zoom in, you can watch and give orders to a single infantry squad or individual tank; if you zoom out, nearby units are grouped together into single stacks, which isn’t just a neat effect because it enables you to command large groups of units with a single click. It’s a smart and friendly way of keeping track of the entire map at once, while giving you precise control when you need it. There’s a certain simplicity to it all that may at first turn veterans off; there are limitations to where certain structures can be built, tech upgrades are very elementary, and you can’t set up patrols or assign units to guard others. But once you get wrapped up in the game’s more unique attributes, you discover that R.U.S.E. isn’t as simple as it first appears; rather, it plays by a different set of rules than you might be used to seeing in strategy games.

The most obvious way R.U.S.E. mixes up the standard real-time strategy model is by employing ruses, which are special skills that allow you to fool your opponent or reveal his or her secrets in a variety of interesting ways. Maps are divided into segments in which you can activate these ruses, and there are limitations to how often you can use them and how many can be active in a particular sector at a given time. Games are won and lost with these ruses. Perhaps you will send in a squad of decoy ground units so that you can distract your opponent’s front lines while you attack from the rear. Or maybe you would rather send bombers to attack an oncoming prototype tank from the skies after activating the terror ruse, which causes enemy units to rout much more quickly than normal. There’s a tremendous amount of satisfaction in seeing your plans come together or in foiling your adversary. Hide your buildings from view and spoil the opposition’s attempt to destroy your airfield. Use radio silence to sneak antitank defenses and artillery into firing position and then use your spies to unveil their units. Ruses open up possibilities you’ve never seen in a strategy game before, and it’s a blast to create new ways of playing on the fly just to see where they lead.

[Faking a tank assault is a good way to distract your enemy while you levy an attack on a different front.]

R.U.S.E. is at its best online, where you choose one of six nations and battle it out on maps that support up to eight players. Each nation is similar enough to make it comfortable to switch from one to the next but different enough to open up fun new ways of playing. Perhaps light tanks may be available to you even if you’ve just built a barracks, or perhaps you will have access to a flexible defensive emplacement that fires both antitank and antiair salvos. Regardless of which country you choose, reconnaissance is key to success: Your units will only automatically fire if the enemy’s units are actively spotted by recon vehicles (or perhaps, revealed with the spy ruse). Environmental cover is another important factor. Certain units, such as elite infantry, can be placed in woods or in cities, where they are usually hidden from the enemy’s view and will ambush units that happen upon them unexpectedly. Things often get intense because there are so many ways of playing but only so many resources flowing in at any given time. If you play smartly, you can capture enemy resource nodes with your infantry. But if you get careless, you might lose an entire battalion of tanks to a few infantry units hidden in a forest near a strategic road juncture.

[Check Out This E3 Tunisia Gameplay Demo Trailer from The Game.]

That said, there are some problems with online play. R.U.S.E. uses Steam to connect you with others, which is in some ways a convenience because it allows you to easily hook up with friends without using Ubisoft’s own oft-problematic online service. However, there are apparently some restrictions that limit how many other players you might find via matchmaking, both for ranked and unranked games. You may spend countless minutes waiting for the game to match you with a similarly ranked player only to come up empty-handed or perhaps be matched with a player of a much higher level. Or you may have no success being assigned to an unranked game and find no games at all to join in the server browser. The community isn’t barren, so patience will pay off, but a better online arrangement could have made for a more painless experience.

[Story interruptions like these aren’t exciting–just annoying.]

You can play offline if you have trouble finding an opponent, of course, and one-off skirmishes and challenges do a fine job of keeping you entertained. It’s too bad that R.U.S.E.’s mediocre campaign fails to employ the strengths of its core gameplay. Certainly, you shouldn’t play it for its story: second-rate voice acting and weird-looking character models with crude facial creases make the poorly lit cutscenes almost uncomfortable to watch. Some of the dialogue is truly awful; a truth you come to hysterical grips with in a serious scene gone inadvertently campy that prominently features the word “nuts.” The plot follows the rise of Major Joe Sheridan as he rises up the ranks of the US Army in World War II while struggling with the onslaught of German troops that always seem to be one step ahead of him. This isn’t a gripping tale, yet it has a tendency to frequently and annoyingly intrude on your missions. Every few minutes, the game will yank control from you just as you are getting into the swing of things, swoop the camera around the battlefield while you hear another mission update, and reset the camera in a position other than the one in which it started. Other times, new units and story updates will be introduced in slide-in panels as you play, which also limits your view of the battlefield and slides the interface out of position. Not only do these constant amateur narrative invasions mess with the tempo, but they also temporarily mess with your view of the battlefield. Most every aspect of the storytelling is poorly conceived and inexpertly delivered.

The missions hold your hand well into the lengthy campaign, and at that point, you’ll be longing for the game to trust in your ability to play it and let you take command of a full-fledged battle. A new ruse is introduced every few chapters and new units are fed to you at a slow pace. The upside is that you have time to come to grips with each new ruse and unit and can fully understand their best uses for deployment. The downside is that if you’ve played a strategy game before, you’ll be itching for something more interesting than battles featuring a limited army and limited resource management. R.U.S.E.’s campaign is fairly easy and strategically simple until you reach the end, at least on standard difficulty. The final missions will test your strategic prowess, though a few of them don’t test your flexibility and know-how as much as they test your ability to understand exactly what the game expects of you. In some cases, you are placed in tightly scripted scenarios with very specific counters. These missions play out more like puzzles than strategic tests of skill and aren’t a whole lot of fun. All the flaws with the campaign undermine a clever and fun foundation that deserved a chance to excel, but it suffers from too many limits for too long a stretch.

[Unarmed recon aircraft are incredibly vulnerable. Take care with their deployment.]

The game performs well, letting you zoom in and out with ease without any noticeable slowdown, though it would seem that some compromises have been made to accommodate the overall scope. Neither the terrain nor the units are all that detailed when viewed at relatively close distances. The art design also doesn’t make any statement beyond “generic World War II.” Yet, it’s still a fine-looking game that displays a lot of units doing a lot of things at once without a struggle, though you will notice some geometric pop-in. In the same way, the boilerplate wartime soundtrack sets the right tone, if not exactly excelling. But it isn’t the presentation’s strengths and weaknesses that will strike you as much as R.U.S.E.’s fascinating twist on a standard genre. It’s unfortunate that the spiritless campaign and online peculiarities fail to elevate R.U.S.E. to the head of its class. And yet, when it’s allowed to breathe–both online and in one-off skirmishes–it’s a flexible strategy game that requires you to think differently. Every game follows a unique path, requiring lots of smart recon and using ruses to fool your enemy. If you can look past the foibles, you’ll find R.U.S.E. to be a fun and occasionally intense real-time strategy game that’s just unusual enough to catch your imagination.

By : 20th CGN.

Plants vs. Zombies Review. [X-Box 360]

• PopCap.
• Strategy.
• Release: September 8, 2010.
• ESRB: Everyone 10+

The Good

• Accessible, satisfying tower defense gameplay
• Controls are smartly adapted for X360 controller
• Loads of things to do beyond just beating the campaign
• New competitive multiplayer option is a blast
• Cute and colorful presentation.

The Bad

• Multiplayer modes are local only
• Early campaign levels offer practically no challenge.

You’re trapped inside the house; brain-craving zombies are closing in from all sides; and there are no firearms or weaponized power tools in sight. What do you do? In Plants vs. Zombies, now available for the Xbox 360 a little over a year after it debuted on the PC, you have only one option: to strategically surround your home with a selection of combat-ready plants. Both the plants at your disposal and the zombies you’re disposing of in this tower defense game come in a wonderful variety of shapes and sizes, and are introduced gradually as you play through the occasionally challenging campaign. The Xbox 360 version of Plants vs. Zombies boasts the same campaign, minigames, and bonus features found in the PC original and also adds some great new two-player options to the mix, making this the most feature-packed version of the game yet.

[The new co-op modes demand that you work closely with your partner.]

Most of your time in Plants vs. Zombies is spent either on your front lawn or out back, where there’s a slightly larger garden with a pond running down the middle of it. Both are divided into grids, and each square can accommodate any one plant of your choosing. Zombies shamble, sprint, and swim from right to left toward your house, while you establish defenses that can include any of almost 50 different plants (though no more than 10 different species in any one level). Sunflowers are used to collect the sun that serves as currency, wall-nuts obstruct zombies for as long as it takes for them to be chewed through, potato mines explode when zombies step on them, peashooters do exactly what you think they do, and so on. As your arsenal increases in size, you have to choose which types of plants you’re going to take into each level. You’ll inevitably have favorites, but these decisions are also based on a sneak peek that you get of the zombies that are going to attack. If you see that some of the zombies are going to be attacking by floating over your garden suspended from balloons, for example, you need to make sure that you have a plant that can either puncture or blow away those balloons. Though most levels have you doing much the same thing, the ever-changing zombie horde and the different plants that you use to combat them–as well as levels set at night and in fog–prevent the action from getting repetitive.

Also keeping the action fresh are levels that take the form of different minigames. For example, there are levels in which you use wall-nuts as bowling balls, and other levels in which the plants in your arsenal are dealt to you randomly like playing cards. All of the minigames that pop up during the campaign can also be played outside of it, via a menu that lists no fewer than 20 different minigame types. You can do battle against invisible zombies, you can play a Bejeweled variant with the plants in your garden as zombies attack, and you can even raise your own undead in a zombiquarium. Even if you’re only playing solo, Plants vs. Zombies is a game that just keeps on giving long after you’ve beaten the campaign. Add a second player, and this great game gets even better.

[Rooftop gardens have rarely seemed like such a good idea.]

It’s unfortunate that Plants vs. Zombies’ multiplayer options aren’t playable online, but both the cooperative and competitive games are fun to check out with a friend. Cooperative play is available in all of the dozens of campaign levels as well as in similar levels accessible via a co-op menu. In co-op, you and a friend must work together to defend the house from zombies in exactly the same way that you do in solo play. The twist is that you have completely different selections of plants at your disposal, so, for example, you might be the only one who can plant the sunflowers needed at the start of any level. There’s no shared pool for the sun resource in co-op, which means you need to work closely with your friend to make sure that you both have the sun that you need to build plants and defend against the unrelenting zombie horde. Oddly, you have the ability to manually apply large lumps of movement-hindering butter to zombies’ heads in co-op, which adds little to the game other than something for you to do when you’re all out of sun. Competitive play is far more exciting than co-op because, for the first time in a Plants vs. Zombies game, one of you gets to play as the zombies in a meaningful way.

If you’re playing as the plants, the only real difference between competitive and solo play is that you have to concern yourself with attacking stationary zombies on the far right of the screen while defending the house. If you’re the zombie player, you have to defend those stationary zombies while deciding which of your undead minions to send on the offensive. You use tombstones in place of sunflowers, your resource is brains rather than sun, you have only three columns of the garden to play with, and your minions are mobile rather than rooted, but these obvious differences aside, playing as the zombies isn’t wholly unlike playing as the plants. There are 18 different zombie types to choose from, though you go into each match with an arsenal of only five. If you choose the quick-play versus option, both players have access to only basic minion types, but if you randomize the loadouts or opt for a custom game that lets you pick which types you want, you have the option to include some really formidable frontal-lobe munchers. Digger zombies mine their way under the garden and then attack plants from the rear, catapult zombies drive vehicles equipped with long-range weaponry, and trash-can zombies are slow moving but heavily armored, to name but a few.

[Versus mode is a great addition to the game that you’ll keep coming back to.]

In addition to the all-new multiplayer options, one of the big differences between the Xbox 360 version of Plants vs. Zombies and those that have come before it is that you play it with a controller rather than with a mouse or a touch screen. If you’ve played previous versions, you’re probably wondering how the controls translate, and the answer is very well. As the undead encroach from the right-hand side of the screen, you move your cursor around the garden with the analog stick and use the A button to place whichever plant you’ve used the left and right bumpers to select from your horticultural arsenal. The shovel you use to dig up plants when you want to replace them with better ones is mapped to the B button, which makes the act of replacing one plant with another even quicker and easier to perform than in other versions. Some of the minigames require different controls, but those aside, you already know everything that you need to. Furthermore, collecting the all-important sun resource is made effortless by the fact that it gravitates toward your cursor anytime you get close to it, which is a great addition given the relative lack of precision afforded you by an analog stick.

Plants vs. Zombies impresses across the board with ingenious game design, uncomplicated controls, colorful visuals, upbeat audio, a decent difficulty curve, and frequent player rewards. If you’ve never played Plants vs. Zombies before, it’s time for you to spend 1200 Microsoft points ($15) and find out what you’ve been missing out on. And even if you’ve already devoted numerous hours to garden defense on other platforms, you should seriously consider doing it all again just to get your hands on the new Versus mode.

By : 20th CGN.

Mass Effect 2 – Official PS3 Announcement Trailer [HD] [Exclsuive]

Title: Mass Effect 2
Release Date: January 2011
Platforms: PS3
Label: EA Games
Genre: RPG
Age Rating: RP (Rating Pending)

Nice Trailer and will be a Nice Game. Not much comment am not a huge fan in this genre But I appreciate that it’s a nice game. Leave your comments about what you think of it.

By : 20th Century Games & News.

Need For Speed : Hot Pursuit – Official Limited Edition Trailer [HD][Exclusive]

Title: Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit
Release Date: November 16, 2010
Platforms: PC | PS3 | 360 | Wii
Label: Electronic Arts
Genre: Racing
Age Rating: RP (Rating Pending)

What more is needed to tell about NFS or Need For Speed Franchise. I still remember the old days when I used to play Need For Speed Hot Pursuit in PS1. Well NFS has come a long way. New Graphics, faster cars, better AI, realistic damage and driving moves. I truly appreciate the NFS games. The favorite was NFS Underground 2 and than later on it was NFS : Carbon and also how can I forget NFS : Hot Pursuit. In fact I love all of them. 😀

Many racing games came this time in E3 but still NFS is unbeatable , A true winner in it’s own way and NFS fans certainly know why. Except for the NFS World which was truly a money making scheme rather than an actual nice game. Anyways looking forward to this. But What about you, do tell me and leave your comments. 🙂

By : 20th Century Games & News.

The Sims Medieval – Official Debut Trailer [HD] [Exclusive]

Title: Sims Medieval
Release Date: TBA
Platforms: PC
Genre: Life Simulation
Label: EA Games
Age Rating: E

Ummmm….to be honest with you my loved readers. Has the EA people gone mad or something. Well I do believe people should be exploring and finding out new things in life and should experience them. But in the gaming world, it’s not always easy or right to do the same thing. So I don’t know what EA is up to. But I don’t know, I would be up for it. I will try this game. It’s quite unlike from the previous Sims Life Stories, Sims Pets Stories and Castaway Stories and some others I forgot if there are any more. So my dear readers, if you’re viewing this post….I would really appreciate your comments, because I love to know what readers think about the game, as I need to pass this feedback back to some of my friends in the gaming industry. I would appreciate it. 😀

By : 20th Century Games & News.

Red Faction: Battlegrounds – Official Trailer [HD] [Exclusive]

Title: Red Faction: Battlegrounds
Release Date: TBA 2011
Platforms: XBLA, PSN
Label: THQ
Genre: Action
Age Rating: T

This game is freaking awesome readers. I bet you will love this trailer plus The real gameplay is way way more awesome than The actual trailer. Well it’s my choice though 😀 You tell me what you think of it. I appreciate your comments and feedbacks.

By : 20th Century Games & News.

BRINK – The Dawn of S.M.A.R.T. [HD] [Exclusive]

Title: BRINK
Release Date: Spring 2011
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Label: Bethesda
Genre: Action
Age Rating: T

In depth game review will be updates soon, stay tuned to my blog for more news on hot games and exclusive trailers from the Gaming World all in here.

By : 20th Century Games and News.