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.

Quake 4

The next-gen chapter of id's infamous shooter series (built on the DOOM 3 engine) for consoles and PC systems. In the game, you are Matthew Kane, an elite member of Rhino Squad and Earth's valiant invasion force. Fight alone, with your squad, and in hover tanks and mechanized walkers as you engage in a heroic mission into the heart of the Strogg war machine. But, in this epic war between worlds, the only way to defeat the Strogg is to become one of them. Battle through early missions as a deadly marine, then after your capture as a marine-turned-Strogg with enhanced abilities and the power to turn the tide of the war.


Quake 4 is the fourth title in the series of Quake first-person shooter computer games. The game was developed by Raven Software and published by Activision. Raven Software collaborated with id Software, the creators and historical developers of preceding Quake games. In this case, id Software supervised the development of the game as well as providing the Doom 3 engine, now referred to as "id Tech 4" and released under the GNU General Public License on 22 November 2011, upon which it was built. Quake 4 went gold in early October 2005 and was released on 18 October 2005 for Microsoft Windows and later for Linux, Xbox 360 and Mac OS X. A special DVD Collectors Edition also exists, including promotional material and the game Quake II with its expansions, The Reckoning and Ground Zero. The Xbox 360 version of Quake 4 is based on the Special Collectors Edition, and therefore also includes Quake II. On 4 August 2011 the game was made available through Steam.


Plotwise, the game is a sequel to Quake II and takes place during the same war as Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. Quake II, Quake 4, or Enemy Territory: Quake Wars do not share story lines with Quake or Quake III Arena; their only relation is their names and logos. Compared to other titles in the Quake series, Quake 4 has an increased emphasis on the single-player portion of the game. A multiplayer mode is available, but it does not involve playable bots like Quake III Arena, without 3rd party modifications.


Multiplayer modes are Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Tourney, Capture the Flag, Arena CTF and DeadZone. Players at QuakeCon reported the multiplayer gameplay to include elements similar to those in previous Quake games such as Strafe-jumping or Rocket jumping. Notable new additions to play are the ability to send shots through the teleporters and the advancement of the game physics provided by the new technology including the ability to bounce grenades and napalm fire off of jump-pads.


Like the previous Quake games the multiplayer has a client-server architecture. The network code has been altered from Doom 3, allowing for larger numbers of players on each server (Doom 3 has a four player restriction, whereas Quake 4has a standard 16 player limit).


One of the changes to the network code is a move from the per-polygon hit detection system used in Doom 3 back to using a hitbox system like most other online first-person shooters such as other Quake games and Half-Life. In the 1.4.x point release, these "axis aligned bounding boxes" were replaced with axis aligned octagonal "cylinder", to make the hit-boxes more representative of the model shape.

Titanfall

Titanfall is an upcoming first-person shooter video game developed by Respawn Entertainment and published by Electronic Arts as an exclusive for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360, and Xbox One. The game was officially announced as Respawn's debut game at Microsoft's E3 2013 press conference, and is scheduled for release on March 11, 2014.

In Titanfall, players fight in online multiplayer-only matches set on a war-torn planet as mech-style Titans and their pilots. Its action is fast-paced, including abilities to run on walls and hijack mechs, and extended periods between player deaths. Respawn describes the game as bringing "scale, verticality, and story" to first-person shooter multiplayer gaming, incorporating elements traditionally used in single-player campaigns. The game uses Microsoft's cloud computing services to offload non-player activity to servers and optimize the home computer for graphical performance.

The game won over 60 awards at its E3 2013 reveal, including a record-breaking six E3 Critics Awards, and Best of Show from several media outlets. It also won official awards at Gamescom and the Tokyo Game Show. Many reviewers predicted Titanfall to be the next step for the first-person shooter genre, and IGN's Ryan McCaffrey declared the game "Microsoft's killer app".

Players fight either on foot as free-running "pilots" or inside agile mech-style walkers called "Titans" to complete team-based objectives on a derelict and war-torn planet as either the Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation (IMC) or the Militia. The game is online multiplayer-only, but injects single-player elements such as plot, character chatter, and non-player characters into its matches. Respawn founder Vince Zampella described the game as bringing "scale, verticality, and story" to first-person shooter multiplayer gaming.

Players choose their pilot types and are dropped on the map, beginning the game. A timer displays the time until a Titan can be deployed, which is reduced by killing other players. Once deployed, Titans are protected by a forcefield for about 30 seconds, which protects the player-pilot as well. Pilots are agile and accumulate momentum while running (similar to Tribes), which lets players run on walls and chain together double jumps. There are multiple types of Titans, each with unique abilities and animations. Pilot and Titan controls are identical except where the pilot's double jump becomes the Titan's dash, as Titans cannot jump, crouch, or cover. The mechs are not slow, but their movement is slower than the nimble pilots. Titan game-balancing abilities include the vortex blocker, which stops and returns enemy ammunition in midair, and electrified smoke, which hurts and repels pilots climbing the Titan's back. Player-pilots can eject from Titans that take too much damage, and the Titan replacement timer is reset upon the Titan's death. Games end with a race to the losing team's evacuation dropship.

Respawn has unveiled three Titan classes: the agile Atlas, the ponderous Ogre, and the nimble Stryder.

Turtle Beach Ear Force Z22

Starting from the outside before moving in, the Ear Force Z22 is dressed in a predominantly black design that’s edged with red in the stitching and on the product logo. The headband has a cloth interior and faux-leather exterior, while the rest of the headset is constructed from a plastic that feels a little cheaper than that of the Ear Force Z Seven, but sturdy nonetheless. The microphone is mounted on the left ear cup and the drinking straw style of the boom makes it nice and malleable for adjusting to the right distance from your mouth.

Gamers who insist upon having a surround-sound experience for the purposes of being able to determine exactly where that shotgun fire is coming from might be turned off by the fact that the Ear Force Z22 is stereo sound only, but for a stereo headset it’s at the top of its game with 50mm drivers lending a real kick to the bass and, by extension, to any explosions in the immediate area. We tuned into some music using the Ear Force Z22 as well and found that the experience wasn’t nearly as satisfying as that offered in the nuance and detail that the higher-end headset was capable of, but for casual listening it definitely beats the average set of earphones.

While the sound performance might not be quite as powerful as some of the more high-end headsets, the price compromise doesn’t affect the microphone, which delivers communications in clear quality even during hectic battle, and is perfectly serviceable for recording a basic Let’s Play or for chatting with friends over Skype. The Ear Force Z22 also boasts Turtle Beach’s Dynamic Chat Boost, which raises the volume of chat during intense gameplay (with explosions or gunfire) so that it can be heard more clearly, but we didn’t find this was powerful enough to make communication noticeably more effective.

One area where the Ear Force Z22 really does shine is comfort. The design is lightweight enough that it can be worn for long periods of time without any discomfort, and the fabric ear cups are nicely breathable without noticeably compromising the headset’s noise-cancelling capabilities. Unlike the Ear Force Z Seven the microphone can’t actually be removed from the headset, but it folds up easily and is unobtrusive enough that it won’t make you think twice about using it purely as a headphone set.


The customization options offered by the inline amplifier are limited to a bass and treble boost, volume controls for both chat and game sound and controls to switch the microphone either on or off and to optimize it for recording or for phone call. It’s easy to disconnect from the amp and simply plug the Ear Force Z22′s jack directly into a computer or mobile device, but whereas the Ear Force Z Seven’s ACU occasionally caused driver issues and had trouble connecting, the Ear Force Z22 amp never ran into any kind of technical speedbumps. The three cables involved with connecting the headset to the device via the amp still feel a bit unwieldy, but since by combining two of them into one for much of the length Turtle Beach has made it fairly easy to keep everything in order.

For those who don’t need the extensive customization available in headsets like the Ear Force Z Seven and are just looking for a solid, good quality headset with optimum comfort, we’d definitely recommend the Ear Force Z22. It’s versatile, comfortable, affordable, facilitates some truly immersive audio and feels like a build that will withstand both time and frequent usage.

The Turtle Beach Ear Force Z22 is available now for $80.99