Lara Croft has been struggling for a few years now. Once the darling of the PlayStation 1, the transition to PS2 was a disaster. A new developer soon came in to freshen up the franchise but you were still in familiar territory – a third person platformer packed with shooting. Now we have a genuine new take on the franchise offering a different gameplay style, co-op and a new angle on proceedings. Could this be the shake up that Lara needs?
START. The original Deus Ex is 10 years old today. To celebrate the game is £1.50 from Steam. The offer is available till tomorrow.END.
Having an awful time trying to upload trailers to our video player, so we are going back to YouTube this week for more fun and games from E3! Highlights include Final Fantasy XIV, Mindjack, Silent Hill 8 and Enslaved. We’ll be back with an E3 round-up on Monday and next week should also see from video from Hideo Kojima’s trip to London and a preview of Lara Croft & The Guardian Of Light.
Final Fantasy XIV
Sony had a very long conference at E3 covering PS2, PS3, PSP, PSN and Move with lots of new games on show as well as new services.
Most controversial is PlayStation Plus, a premium service for PSN that allows users to download free games every month, download Blu Ray Disc releases for an hour long demo, access to betas, discounted PSN DLC and the ability to set the PS3 to wake up and download game updates and firmware updates. The service costs £39.99 a year in the UK, and year long subscribers get a free copy of LittleBigPlanet to keep. However any other free games downloaded during the subscription can not be played once you stop paying for the service. Online play is still free for everyone.
Nintendo wowed the crowds at E3 with the debut of the 3DS, bringing 3D gaming to handheld consoles without the need for wearing 3D glasses. The system will be out in Japan this year and should be out int the UK before March 2011. The console comes with three cameras, with two on the back of the console which can be used to take 3D pictures and short 3D videos. There will also be a range of 3D films to watch on the machine. Perhaps more stunning than the actual hardware was the games announced for the system which includes out favourites like Mario,Zelda and the return of Kid Icarus alongside other popular franchises including Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil and Saints Row. The biggest disappointment was lack of price information, there is a lot of impressive hardware inside the machine, let’s hope it is not too pricey.
