ACR’s First DLC Emerges

Ubisoft have finally released The Ancestors Character Pack, featuring all-new downloadable content for Assassin’s Creed Revelations on Xbox 360 and PC. This pack will also be available PS3 from tomorrow, December 14.

The Ancestors Character pack extends the Assassin’s Creed Revelations experience with features including:

• New multiplayer characters: the swashbuckling Privateer, the devious siren Corsair, the battle-tested Brigand and the bloodthirsty Gladiator;

• Personalized taunts, weapons and stylized assassination moves;

• Multiplayer customization items;

• New achievements and trophies to earn.

The Ancestors Character Pack is available for the price of 320 Microsoft Points on Xbox LIVE and £3.19 on the PlayStation Network and on PC.

Uncharted 3 East Egg Official As Sony Officially Confirm The Last of Us, due in 2012

The VGA’s have kicked of to an amazing show and have already revealed the new trailer and  announced The Last of Us. As we revealed a few days a go an easter egg was found in Uncharted 3 refering to “The Last Of Us” We can now confirm the reference was actually made for a reason that Naughty Dog will be the studio behind the game. The game will be set in an American ravaged by a horrifying fungal infection that has left a few survivors in a desperate struggle for survival.

The trailer looks very I Am Legend don’t you think?

Skyrim Gets Special Xmas Sale For Consoles

Christimas is only a few weeks away, and what a better way to get excited for Xmas with a cheap copy of Skyrim for your consoles?
Game and Gamestation are currently offering the brand new and exceptional title SKYRIM for the microscopic price of £22.49! If your still unsure about this amazing offer check out our review.

For GAME – this is ONLY a daily deal and will be running only today (07/12/2011)

For GAMESTATION – this is a longer running deal and will be available from today until Wednesday 14th December!

Game.co.uk: Playstation 3 Xbox 360 Gamestation: Playstation 3 Xbox 360:

Catherine European Release Date Confirmed For Valentines Day

Deep Silver today announced that Catherine will finally be getting her European release date.

Both the limited “Stray Sheep Edition” (containing the Rave-T-Shirt that Vincent wears in the game, two Stray Sheep bar-themed coasters, a Catherine poster that is exclusively available in this edition, all served in a pizza delivery box from the Stray Sheep Bar as packaging) and the standard edition will be released in Europe on this date. The “Stray Sheep Edition” of Catherine will have a price of £54.99, the standard edition will be available for £49.99.

Catherine will be released in PAL territories for the PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system, and the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft. Catherine will feature localised text in French, Italian, German and Spanish.

Catherine will be launching on February 10, 2012

Winter is Coming (to PC, Xbox 360 And PS3 in Europe)

While George R R Martin’s Seminal “A Song of Ice and Fire” continues to captivate readers and watchers, but so far, excluding a decidedly average political RTS, gamers have been left out in the quickly approaching cold. Focus Home Interactive seeks to remedy this by bringing a Westeros set RPG to the PC, Xbox 360, and PS3 in early 2012.

Players will find themselves in control of two characters, “Mors”, a brother of the night’s watch, and “Alester”, an exiled red priest returned to seek redemption. Through a touted 30 hours of gameplay players will travel through numerous well known locations, from the kingdoms to the wall, though whether well get to piss of the end of the world is a question left unanswered so far. Familar faces will also show themselves to the player with the likes of Queen Cersei, Varys the Spider and Jeor Mormont.

Set characters does not mean set gameplay however, as players will be free to choose their classes, fight how they wish and upgrade the skills they use, or learn new abilities such as the power to slow down time. And what would a Song of Ice and Fire game be without political intrigue and lots of dialogue, being able to talk the talk will be just as useful as being able to fight your way out.

Game of Thrones will be the most ambitious of Focus Home Interactives titles so far, using CryEngine3 and being written under the supervision of Martin himself. The storyline will run concurrent to that of the books/series, although which it should follow if and when the two diverge as has been rumoured is still unknown. Cedric Lagarrigue, CEO of Focus has stated that the “game is faithful to the unique ambiance found in George R.R. Martin’s novels. The narration, the artistic direction, the pace of the game and its realization make it one of the most exciting role-playing games to come in 2012″.

The art direction appears to borrow heavily from the HBO series, but considering how well they captured the feel of the books this is no problem. Lands appear as they did and likenesses have been licensed to help keep the overall tone consistent throughout the franchise.

I find myself agreeing heavily with Lagarrigue, this really is shaping up to be one of the most exciting role-playing games of 2012, a year that also has Mass Effect 3 so take that as you will.

Online Gaming Etiquette

Since the release of a certain Elder Scrolls game I have not recently ventured out into the world of online gaming, however, I am well versed in the way of the multiplayer. As gamers, we are biologically programmed to be competitive but is there really any need for screaming profanities and making homophobic, racist or sexist remarks towards our fellows? If you’re struggling, the answer is no. I’d like to start off by showing you a website, the inspiration for this article. Before you click the following link , please be aware that you will be greeted with dialogue that may be offensive to some, you have been warned. Click here to be directed to the website.

If you did decide to take a gander at the website then you will have noticed that it is based around messages received by ‘girl gamers’, on a side note; why do we subcategorize gamers by gender? We’re all gamers when it comes down to it and we all love video games, but I digress. The purpose of this website is to highlight the abuse that gamers have received whilst playing online. They post pictures or quote message as a means of ‘naming and shaming’ these foul mouthed, for lack of a better word, douche bags. I think this site is a step in the right direction with regards to combating online bullies.

Now, if you were brave enough to follow the link then you’ll already have a pretty good idea of the ugly side of the online gaming community. In hindsight, ‘community’ is not really the right word. To me, the word ‘community’ means a group of people who support one another. As you may have experienced firsthand, this is very rarely the case. For example, back in the days when I was able to tolerate the Call of Duty franchise I would always play online mode. As a team based game you can imagine that communication would be the key to winning right? Wrong! When I used to play Modern Warfare 2 I’d sometimes be in game chat. When in game chat I’d either be greeted with the stereotypical high pitched American teen, who by rights shouldn’t even be playing the game in the first place, or a general whirlwind of racial or homophobic slurs. Now I’ll admit to my fair share of trash talking but I do not go as far as to shout obscenities down the microphone when somebody is beating me, it ruins the whole experience.

These days, my interactions with players outside of my friends list are limited.  I tend to stick to Xbox Live’s party chat and just talk with friends whilst playing games. Because of how the online community currently is, my current social preferences are much more enjoyable. Banter with friends is much preferred to strangers becoming irate and abusive when beaten in a game. You can’t escape it all however. From time to time I’ll still receive a message or two, calling me names or just being overly obscene. Fortunately, I find it easy to ignore such comments. Blocking communications is probably the best way to go about things. That, or head straight back into the game show them that you’re better than them.

You may be thinking “what could I do to help?” Well a good start is to report any player who is being a bully to the services enforcers. Be it PlayStation Network or Xbox Live, these online services will have enforcers to which you can report people and attempt to get them banned. If you do follow this advice however please make sure that the perpetrator truly deserves the ban.

Also, it’s not just messages and voice chat that brings down the online community. In my experience, I have known people to get away with some really offensive GamerTags, usually the enforcers are pretty good at picking up on these types of things but every now and again a ‘leet speak’ name will slip through the net. So, when creating an online handle or username do try not to be offensive or even too personal as the last thing you’d want to do was to bait a bully.

I hope that this article has opened your eyes, even in the slightest. We all know that the internet can sometimes be a truly awful place.

Review: Assassin’s Creed Revelations

So, another year brings another Assassin’s Creed to our homes. Revelations is the final chapter in the Ezio Auditore trilogy of the series and brings the fiery Italian back to us as an old man. Once you’ve sat through the customary Desmond-related tedious introduction, you’ll realise that Revelations provides much of what you’d expect if you’ve been playing since Assassin’s Creed 2. You would think then that logically, the premise should go like this:

Premise 1: Assassin’s Creed 2 was a good game.

Premise 2: Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood was a good game.

Premise 3: Assassin’s Creed: Revelations is like the previous two.

Conclusion: Assassin’s Creed: Revelations is a good game.

Well, not really. In fact, Revelations suffers badly from two common gaming syndromes caused by its excellent predecessors.

Firstly, ‘sequel syndrome’ is very much in effect here. Reviewers before me have credited Ubisoft for improving the franchise consistently since the original Assassin’s Creed. The series has got better and better but there was always a feeling that the series had reached a peak with Brotherhood and that appears to be the case. Revelations has kept much of what made Brotherhood such a great game, but it all feels a bit dumbed down. The puzzles for example are far less challenging. Platforming puzzles are much more direct then in the previous game and require a great deal less thought about what path you’re taking. Anything else normally boils down to activating your sixth sense ‘Eagle Vision’ and targeting shiny things until one of them turns out to be the right one.

Part of the reason Assassin’s Creed 2 and Brotherhood were so interesting was because Ezio was interesting. Altair, though an indisputable badass, was not a particularly compelling character. Desmond, despite having four games worth of character development, still might as well be a tub of paint or better yet, non-existant. Alternate segments about Altair or Desmond too often break up the main story surrounding Ezio. These bits are perfectly entertaining but they’re incongruous and they can drag you away from what you were doing. It’s like being a baby again, and having your mum come over and pick you up out of your sandbox. She puts you on the swings and you’re thinking, ‘don’t get me wrong mum, I like swings. But I was having fun in my sandbox. I’ll come and play on the swings when I’m ready.’ If you felt like I did that Assassin’s Creed 2 and Brotherhood provided you with a huge amount of freedom, get ready to feel like that’s been taken away a little bit.

For some reason these days, big releases have to come in threes. I suppose initially it seemed like a good duration to develop a story arc. But I’m sure Ubisoft had no intention of making an Ezio trilogy until Assassin’s Creed 2 was so well received. There would have been nothing wrong with adding another chapter and then continuing with the emotional story of Desmond ‘Vanilla’ Miles but apparently that just wasn’t enough. The result is a game feels like its desperately trying to find something other than Ezio to justify itself. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to syndrome number two – ‘trilogy syndrome’.

Lets take bombs as an example. Bombs are fun – that’s one of the video game Ten Commandments right there. And I’m more than happy for this game to have bombs in it. But when none of the gameplay mechanics have changed, you realise that actually, you don’t need any bombs. If there were no bombs in this game, I would still be running around stabbing people and throwing guards off roofs. I wouldn’t be thinking, ‘this game would be great if it had bombs…’.

The same is true for other additions. Tower defence, slow motion executions… its all fine and at times it adds to the experience. But none of it justifies the making of a third outing for Ezio.

I am not necessarily saying this is a bad game, because it isn’t. It is still as fun as it ever was to cause mayhem and all the visceral qualities of Assassin’s Creed are still present. Once again you can build your very own brotherhood of Assassin’s. Although not as customisable as I was hoping you can train your recruits all the way up to becoming masters of your Assassin Dens and even send them overseas to look after other cities for you. For those RPG fans among you, it provides enough to satisfy your levelling up addiction.

If anything could justify this game, it is the multiplayer. I played A LOT of Brotherhood multiplayer and though it was buggy and infuriating at times, I thought it was a whole load of fun. Revelations’ multiplayer has made huge strides on that in Brotherhood and the whole experience feels cleaner and well thought out. Much like the improvement between Assassin’s Creed and Assassin’s Creed 2, Ubisoft have done a great job recognising the problems of the original multiplayer and improving upon them. You now get much better rewards for being sneaky and taking your target by surprise. Old game modes like Wanted and Manhunt are still around, along with a slew of new ones. Quite honestly, if you enjoyed the multiplayer in Brotherhood, you’ll love Revelations.

Believe it or not, I still like this game and I still like Assassin’s Creed. But Ubisoft are in serious danger of flogging a dead horse and one senses that they are close to undoing a lot of the great work they have done since Assassin’s Creed 2. Like Ezio Auditore, Assassin’s Creed: Revelations is an old dog without any meaningful new tricks and Ubisoft should plan their next move very carefully if they want to retain the franchise’s immense popularity.

Spike VGA 2011: Transformers Fall Of Cybertron Teaser

Spike have just released their latest teaser in the lead up to the Video Game Awards Show airing this coming Saturday the 12th 2011.

While we do get a little more to go on than the Alan Wake: Night Springs, Metal Gear Solid Rising and BioWare’s next teaser trailers, it does of course still leave you wanting more!

Tune in this saturday for the full show, likely to showcase a number of high profile games hitting next year.

The Citadel becomes a major part of Mass Effect 3

Mass Effect 3 lead writer, Marc Walters, have revealed that players in the next installment will get to experience a Citadel plot line that was cut from Mass Effect 2.

If you felt like something was lacking in Mass Effect 2, chances are it had something to do with The Citadel, as compared to the first installment of the series, players spent little time in the the giant space city.

”There was a Mass Effect 2 plot that was a kind of callback to the first Mass Effect that was going to be on the Citadel, and we cut it. But now it’s made a resurrection in Mass Effect 3, so I’m happy, but I can’t say what it is,” Walters said in the latest issue of Official Xbox Magazine. ”That’s the nice thing about trilogies, sometimes you get a second chance.”

Square Enix and Ubisoft Costume Collaboration

A recent partnership between Square Enix and Ubisoft has sparked off a little surprise as Ubisoft has allowed the release of a special costume for Final Fantasy XIII-2 male protagonist, Noel Kreiss, which will be available to download soon after the games’ release. The young Noel will now have the privilege to wear the clothing of Assassin’s Creed Revelations’ master assassin, Ezio Auditore which should prove to be quite interesting.

Along with this fantastic and somewhat sudden news, Square have also nicely released a few more FFXIII-2 screens to sate our appetites for now.