Tomb Raider

 We’ve seen Lara Croft in many forms over the years, from busty action-heroine to Atlantean explorer to wise-cracking aristocrat. But we’ve never seen her like this before. Crystal Dynamics' new Tomb Raider sees a young Lara on her first expedition, shipwrecked and stranded on an island bristling with danger, pushed to the limits of her ingenuity and will to survive. Over the course of the game we see this intelligent, resourceful young woman become something closer to the Lara Croft we know, fearless in the face of danger. It is a greatly successful origin story, a series reboot that feels both authentic and hugely exciting.


Tomb Raider is a little self-indulgent at the beginning – the first hour is a sequence of carefully scripted set-pieces and, yes, a cavalcade of button-mashing QTEs. But it's all for the sake of character development, and Tomb Raider is so good at this that you'll forgive the strict direction – especially after the game opens out past the 60-minute mark and lets you loose on the island. Camilla Luddington's performance as Croft is impressively convincing, and throughout this adventure you'll really feel for Lara – she is just not having a good time out there. It is a compelling reading of the character; we see Lara's vulnerability, but she is never disempowered, and never less than totally capable in extreme danger.



The supporting cast is less developed, though. Lara herself is so well-realised that her friends and enemies feel two-dimensional by comparison. Lara is shipwrecked alongside a crew of friends, and her guilt over bringing them along on this expedition provides much of the plot’s emotional thrust, but it’s difficult to feel as much for them as you do for Lara. Thankfully, this doesn't rob the plot of impact. There are a few jaw-dropping moments in this story, which develops quickly from survival-struggle into action epic.




that moment, though, the game quickly moves on thematically; the transition from terrified survivor forced to take a life to headshot-happy killer is jarringly instant, and this is the narrative’s only significant weakness. One minute she's retching over a corpse, the next she's skewering five guys through the neck with arrows, which leads to a period of narrative dissonance as you adjust. Lara has to get used to killing quickly, and so does the player.






Combat has never been the strength of Crystal Dynamics' Tomb Raider games, but the developer has finally nailed it here. Whether with a bow, a shotgun or a pistol, fighting is fun, and crucially there's not too much of it (though the body-count is certainly high). Lara periodically discovers new weapons, injecting the combat with fresh novelty every few hours. I gravitated towards the bow – there’s something vastly more satisfying about being a hidden assassin than leaping into the fray with a shotgun or hiding behind a wall with an assault rifle, though the game necessitates all these approaches and more in different situations.


Building Lara’s skills and upgrading her weapons with salvage proves unexpectedly gratifying. By the later stages of Tomb Raider’s story her arsenal rivals that of a small guerrilla army, and she’s equally deadly in hand-to-hand combat. But for most of the game, Lara has to work with what she’s got. Though survivalism is one of the plot’s dominant themes, if anything it’s under-used in the gameplay; hunting and foraging are introduced in the first twenty minutes, but then quickly abandoned.




Climbing, meanwhile, is masterful. Lara moves naturally and confidently in her environment, but it still feels excitingly dangerous. Leaping across cliffsides with a climbing axe never quite loses that heart-in-throat feeling. Croft has been to some really impressive places in her day, and happily this island is among them. It is stunningly beautiful, and the game gives you plenty of opportunities to admire it from cliff-sides, misty mountain outlooks and precarious climbing ropes. It’s also rich with detail and tightly designed, and as Lara masters the skills of survival and picks up new tools along the way, you can venture further into its hidden crevices. It makes you feel like an explorer.


Croft’s Survival Instincts vision – which, at the touch of a button, helpfully highlights things like climbing walls, flammable objects and rope surfaces you can attach to – makes navigating the island and its puzzles easier, and thankfully is completely optional after it’s first introduced. It’s most useful when you’re hunting for collectibles, but otherwise I played the rest of the game without using it. The game is well-designed enough that you can read the environments perfectly well without it.


Tomb Raider has definitely taken inspiration from the other great action games of this generation. There's an escaping-from-a-burning-building scenario, and more than one sequence where you're skidding at speed down a waterfall. But even when Tomb Raider falls back on action-game cliché, it does so with such confidence and aplomb that you don't mind – in fact, that burning-building sequence is one of the game's most breathlessly exciting moments. Once it gets going, Tomb Raider is high-octane and squeezes your adrenaline gland dry, but it's also got great variety and pacing. There are quiet, tense moments inbetween the combat-heavy setpieces, and you're never in the same place doing the same thing twice.


The Tomb Raider heritage shows itself in the game's secret tombs, which are secreted around the island for you to discover. These are self-contained one-off puzzles that lead the way to treasure, and they are frequently ingenious, challenging enough to make you feel properly clever when you find the solution. This traditional Tomb Raider exploration takes a back seat to the storyline in the main campaign, so it's great to see it shine in the secret tombs. Lara's love for archaeology and geeky fascination with ancient civilisations shows through when she's poring over relics and ancient structures, despite the hardship she has to endure.Tomb Raider

Diablo 3 DLC

Diablo III: Reaper of Souls is the first major expansion pack for Blizzard's blockbuster dungeon crawling RPG. The Prime Evil rages within the Black Soulstone, its essence screaming for vengeance and release. Before the artifact can be sealed away forever, Malthael -- Angel of Death -- manifests in the mortal realms with a deadly new purpose: to steal the Black Soulstone and bend its infernal power to his will. So begins the end of all things...

The first expansion for Blizzard’s Diablo III is now officially scheduled for release on March 25, 2014. On its own, the expansion will run $39.99, but there will be two special editions as well: the Digital Deluxe Edition for $59.99, and the retail-exclusive Collector’s Edition, according to Blizzard.


The expansion introduces a new Act V that puts players up against Malthael, the former Archangel of Wisdom who accepted a new job as the Angel of Death. Malthael is a go-getter in his new career, and he obtains a magical artifact containing the essence of the Prime Evil.


The expansion also introduces a new character class known as The Crusader, that is reminiscent of a tank class with a handful of support options. Reaper of Souls also introduces new item-crafting abilities, a new artisan known as the Mystic, a new level cap of 70, and more.


The standard expansion will run $40, while the next step up, the Digital Deluxe Edition, will run you $60. For the extra money, you’ll receive exclusive helms and weapon transmogrification recipes, a spectral hound, three additional character slots, an in-game Treasure Goblin companion pet forWorld of Warcraft, and a slew of decals and Battle.net portraits.


For $80, you can pick up the retail-only Collector’s Edition that offers everything the Digital Deluxe Edition offers, as well as a Malthael mouse pad, a hardback Collector’s Edition art book, and a behind-the-scenes Blu-Ray/DVD. If you want to buy the standard expansion and then upgrade to the Deluxe version you can do that at any time for $20, but if you want the Collector’s Edition, there are a limited number hitting retailers.

Battlefield 4

From the beaches of Kharg Island to the hills of Damavand Peak, Battlefield 3's multiplayer maps provide an immediate sense of scale. Everything about their design screams size, personalization, and the need to take creative initiative to succeed. Choose to pop headshots from the prone position, spin barrel rolls in a jet outfitted with personal unlocks, or see how many dog tags you can knife from your opponents; Battlefield 3's multiplayer is about the freedom of choice. The online fight feels like a geography lesson (in a good way). Depending on the game mode, each map utilizes a different area or shifts wider and wider as gameplay progresses. You might not see half of a map like Caspian Border or Seine Crossing during your first few Rush matches. To accommodate Xbox 360's 24-player cap, each map has been modified slightly -- mainly by drawing spawn points closer to the action and limiting Conquest-match points to three (as opposed to PC's five). Where many online shooters teach you the nooks and crannies of every map, Battlefield 3 is a wide sandbox that encourages variety and exploration. 

GTA 4

 Criminals are an ugly, cowardly lot more worthy of pity and disdain than admiration. This is what you'll learn playing through the single-player campaign in Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto IV. The series cheered (and criticized) for glorifying violence has taken an unexpected turn: it's gone legit. Oh sure, you'll still blow up cop cars, run down innocent civilians, bang hookers, assist drug dealers and lowlifes and do many, many other bad deeds, but at a cost to main character Niko Bellic's very soul. GTA IV gives us characters and a world with a level of depth previously unseen in gaming and elevates its story from a mere shoot-em-up to an Oscar-caliber drama. Every facet of Rockstar's new masterpiece is worthy of applause. Without question, Grand Theft Auto IV is the best game since Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. You play as Niko Bellic, an Eastern European attempting to escape his past and the horrors of the Bosnian war. He arrives in Liberty City to experience the American dream, only to discover his cousin, Roman, may have fibbed a bit in his tales of success. Starting from nothing, Niko makes a living as a killer and enforcer, a amazing foreigner who appears to have no morals. The longer we stay with Niko, the more we see that there is a broken human being inside, one who would give anything to escape the person he once was. 

Call of Duty: Ghosts

Call of Duty: Ghosts delivers a riveting all-new gameplay experience built on an entirely new story, setting and cast of characters, all powered by a new, next generation Call of Duty engine that redefines the series for the next generation. For the first time in Call of Duty, gamers play as the underdog, fighting as part of a single squad against an enemy that has superior numbers and firepower. Call of Duty: Ghosts’ genre-defining multiplayer delivers gameplay innovations throughout, including dynamic map events and character customization. Call of Duty: Ghosts is the next game in the Call of Duty series set to release in 2013. The new Infinity Ward team has been working on an entirely new storyline and engine, which is said to bring Call of Duty to the next generation. Ghosts will be available on both current gen systems and next gen, though the next gen consoles will most likely not release by Ghosts' Release Date. For that reason, Infinity Ward has allowed players to Transfer Data to Next Gen.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Call of Duty game without elaborate setpieces, fierce shootouts, and tense stealth missions, and Ghosts delivers some of the most memorable experiences in the series. I felt genuine dread as the ground and buildings collapsed around me during orbital weapons strikes, the zero-gravity spectacle of the Federation’s space station ambush is awe-inspiring, and bursting through a highrise window as the entire building crumbles during the Federation Day mission is exhilarating.


But like previous CoDs, the story of Ghosts struggles to remain in focus amidst the fray of explosive cinematic moments and relentless firefights. Narrated loading sequences with stylized story animations push the campaign forward, but only last for one or two minutes before launching back into the action. It’s there, on the front lines, that much of the plot progression is presented and oftentimes lost.

It's by no means an achievement in dramatic storytelling — it's more about dumb fun — and it lacks the player-choice element introduced with Call of Duty: Black Ops II, but when given time to breathe Ghosts actually offers some interesting human drama. The story centers around two brothers, Logan and Hesh, their father Elias, and yes, their dog Reilly as they fight the Federation as part of the battered remnants of the U.S. military, and later as the elite Ghosts squad. The family ties, specifically the relationship between Logan and Hesh, made me care about the protagonists in a series that's habitually made its characters a dispensable commodity. The voice acting is decent overall, though there are periodic moments of cringe-worthy dialog, like one superfluous moment when Elias reveals he’s a member of the Ghosts. And then there’s Riley. Though the subject of many a meme at this point, Riley not only acts as a useful tool for recon and silently dispatching enemies, but is integral to several dramatic sequences, saving your character on more than one occasion.

The story stumbles in the second act when it strays away from the more evocative character focus in favor of a long stretch of back-to-back missions driven almost exclusively by guns-blazing combat. While not poorly done, this visually arresting, action-packed, but ultimately hollow middle stands in stark contrast to the effective first and final acts. On the bright side, that padded out my play time to roughly 10 hours, making this campaign one of the longest CoD single-player experiences.

Killer is Dead

Killer is Dead is a new 2 console game. Made by Grasshopper Digital, and Suda51. The Maker of No More Heroes and Killer7. I have seen the videos of Sumor 51 talking to IGN & YouTube. He said that Killer is Dead is not related to No More Heroes & Killer7, they have similarities for all being assassins. Mondo the main character is a playboy & a killer. Mondo has an amazing wepon that Suda51`s other game characters dont have, a gun. But not any ordinary gun. The way it runs if you have enough blood mist from the demons. The cool thing about his gun is its his hand. This game is not yet out in USA (August 28, 2013), but in Japan already. Only out for PS3 & XBOX 360. This game may act like DMC5 with assassins, but no it isn't. This game looks better than DMC5 and has a better dialog speech also, but most importation is the fighting.I have been a big fan of Suda51 ever since first playing No More Heroes several years ago on my previous gamertag. While his games are never quite perfect, they always have that aspect of style which draws me (and hopefully others!) into them, Killer Is Dead is one big exception for the fact that, not only does it look beautiful visually and sound amazing (Akira Yamaoka... no more needs to be said!), the controls and fluidity are balanced really well so the overall experience becomes even more than the sum of the parts.

Minecraft

Minecraft, as if you’ve never heard of it, as if we haven’t been telling you to play it for years, as if we didn’t already give it Game of the Year in 2010, is a game about building things out of blocks with your friends.

The game world is rendered in cubes, every one of which can be destroyed, stored in your inventory, and placed back down anywhere you like. The map generates more terrain as you explore in a new direction, almost infinitely (you will run out of hard disk space at some point). That terrain is a quilt of discrete environmental regions, or biomes: as you travel, the thick forest you spawned in will give way to veldt or cliffs, or a desert peppered with cacti. You might reach the ocean, or a marsh clogged with exploding monsters and lily pads, or an ice floe leading to a wintry island.

Such random features as rivers, caves, waterfalls and ravines thread this world. Herds of friendly, blocky animals graze happily here and there: pigs, sheep, cows and chickens all provide useful products when slaughtered, and they can even be kept and bred.When the square sun sets, however, you need to worry. Whenever a given tile is dark, a monster can spawn on it, and at night, there are hundreds of them. They’re a varied bunch. Spiders are low and wide, can climb vertical surfaces, and tend to jump right in your face while hissing. Zombies are slow melee oppressors, walking in a straight line towards you and able to hop over short, one-block-high obstacles. Skeletons prefer to circle you and fire arrows. Endermen are tall, teleporting nasties who only get angry when you look at them. They’re scattered infrequently throughout the night, and each requires careful attention to dispatch when you’re unarmed.

Creepers are the iconic, green, cactus-like Minecraft enemies that populate fan art all over the internet. They have four stubby legs at the base of their long, phallic bodies. They like to scuttle deftly towards you, hiss, inflate alarmingly, then explode. The explosion deals significant damage, tearing a great chunk out of the ground and any surrounding masonry. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, the impulse to rebuild – or perhaps improve – is invigorating.


Crafting caters to that impulse. Crafting enables you to make new and upgraded equipment. Once you’ve fashioned yourself a sword and some armour, stabbing skeletons is a great way to while away the moonlight. With a punchy iron sword, if you slice while falling through the air to score a critical hit, there aren’t many foes that won’t drop in a few swings. Until then, you can keep a few zombies at bay for a while, but all the teleporting and climbing and shooting and exploding will get you one way or another. Better to keep moving.Better still, you could scrape together a mud hut with your bare hands and avoid running into anymonsters. Then again, it’ll be dark in there and you won’t be able to tell when it’s morning and, just, what the hell is wrong with you? Cut down trees! Make a log cabin! Sing hearty songs! Grow a beard! Then go outside anyway and punch skeletons until dawn! Endermen, skeletons, and zombies all catch fire and die in the morning light, while spiders who aren’t already chasing you become docile. Creepers still try to explode at you, but for the most part, the danger is over at sunrise. Only where it’s still dark, deep in caves and under rocky overhangs, are monsters alive and deadly during the day.


But I can’t stay mad at it. Minecraft is a phenomenally important game for the PC. The appeal is vaster than the objects I’ve built in it. You can build anything you can imagine, and it’s vastly more functional than you first realise. Waterfalls are just the beginning. You can craft pistons that shift blocks back and forth. You can harvest a curious red dust that functions like electrical wire – and you can lay it out in the shape of functioning circuits. That means logic gates. That means computation. There are computer science students who have built functioning CPUs in Minecraft, and some have even developed rudimentary computer games to run on these computers of dust and dirt.


Even you and I can easily wire a series of traps and security doors and secret panels. Crucially, you’re learning real electronics when you do this – it’s not some abstract skill that won’t help you in real life. I know what an RSNOR latch is.