Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard Hands-On

We take on 2D Nazis and androgynous JRPG bosses in our hands-on look at this satirical action game from Vicious Cycle.

Hazard Returns

Brian Ekberg takes a brief look forward to Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard.

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At any given point in Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard, the titular star of this tongue-in-cheek action game from developers Vicious Cycle might find himself squaring off against any of the following enemies: Mobsters, zombies, cowboys, space marines, 2D Nazis, and even Japanese role-playing game bosses. One part action game and several parts game-industry lampoon vehicle, Eat Lead is nothing if not unique. We had a chance to spend some hands-on time with an updated build of the game recently to see how far it's come since our previous look in October of last year.

The setup for Eat Lead revolves around Hazard, a fictional action-game star who racked up a string of hits across multiple platforms in the '80s and '90s. After a few disappointing bombs, Matt Hazard retired, only to take up his career as a two-fisted badass at the beginning of Eat Lead after getting an offer to star in a brand-new action game from megapublisher Marathon Megasoft. Traversing the eight levels that make up Eat Lead, Hazard soon discovers that the game is rigged and that the levels he's making his way through are trying to delete him…permanently.

If Matt Hazard isn't blasting 2D Nazis…

From that premise, Eat Lead takes the idea of poking fun at video games and runs with it, with levels that change in appearance and makeup on a dime, enemies that start out as soldiers only to transform into zombies, and boss battles that are memorable to say the least. It's tough to know what to expect from one area to the next in Eat Lead, and there are more than a few chuckle-worthy moments as a result.

Consider the sixth level of the game, which we got to play during the demo. After a brief intro movie that featured some back-and-forth between Hazard and his companion QA (who can hack into the game's levels and help him along the way), Hazard begins the level outside of a warehouse, surrounded by crates, forklifts, and trucks. These objects serve as perfect cover for Hazard, and you can use the cover system by pressing the A button on the Xbox 360 controller. Pressing the B button will cross Hazard over to a nearby cover point, if available, and you can aim your cursor and press the Y button to sprint to a specific point of cover.

Safely behind cover, we first took out the bad guys that were in the level using a pistol. It wasn't long before we picked up a machine gun and, once the level was cleared, we moved into the warehouse. We found more bad guys inside, only these looked completely different from the enemies we fought outside, considering their garish armor and their use of what appeared to be water guns. As it turned out, these guys were holdover enemies from an ill-fated, kid-friendly water-gun shooter from Hazard's 64-bit days. As silly as it sounds to be taking up arms with a water gun, it got the job done against these clowns, so we went with it.

Now, naturally, you don't spend an entire level fighting bad guys with squirt guns. Any game called "Eat Lead" better have an assortment of weaponry to choose from and, indeed, we played with submachine guns, sniper rifles, even laser blasters. Blasting enemies doesn't technically kill them; these are virtual bad guys, after all. Instead, Hazard can absorb a defeated enemy's code. If he builds up enough code, you can add a temporary ice or fire damage modifier to whichever weapon you're carrying.

Like the neon bad guys who were susceptible to water blasts, many of the enemies have unique traits that you'll discover as you go. In the level that we played, we also ran into space marines reminiscent of a certain visor-wearing, heavily armored, combat-evolved hero. Conventional weaponry didn't really do much to them but, if you managed to snag a laser pistol, you could take them down with relative ease. Our favorite garden-variety enemies were the 2D Nazis, patterned after something out of the original Castle Wolfenstein. Blasting these flat-planed bad guys was easy…until they turned sideways, at which point they effectively disappeared from view until they decided to face you again.

…he's facing off against Japanese RPG bosses.

By far the highlight of the level that we played was the final boss battle, in which Hazard takes on a final boss, known as Altos Tratus, who had the creepily androgynous look of, well, practically every Japanese role-playing game enemy ever made. Better than the boss's look, though, was his speech, or rather the lack of it. To get through Tratus' long-winded prefight speech, the frustrated Hazard has to page through multiple screens of text, and the occasional puzzling ellipses. Though the boss battle was in real time, Tratus plays like a turn-based boss in true RPG style--and defeating him was a matter of figuring out which attack he would do next, blasting him for as much damage as possible, and preventing him from healing himself.

Though the concept in Eat Lead is solid--with loving nods to everything from JRPGs to Super Mario Bros.--there were a few rough areas that we hope get attention before the game is released. Melee attacks, which you pull off in close quarters by pressing the X button, didn't have much oomph to them and seemed pretty ineffective as well. In addition, though Hazard's movements into and out of cover seemed smooth, he feels fairly stiff to us when running and shooting; a bit more responsiveness in the controls would be a welcome addition. If the gameplay manages to live up to Eat Lead's satirical metaplot, it has a good chance at finding success. The game is due on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in early March.

Afro Samurai Review

This gory, gorgeous action game has plenty of flaws, but it will still satisfy your thirst for blood.

The Video Review

Kevin VanOrd slices and dices his way through this review for Afro Samurai. (Video Contains Mature Content)

Watch It Watch HD 520p

The Good

• Brutal, satisfying combat
• Great art design
• Awesome music
• Some really fun setpiece battles.

The Bad

• Bad platforming sections
• Inconsistent pace leads to occasional monotony
• Inferior camera can't be customized.

Nariko in Heavenly Sword. Cloud Strife in Final Fantasy VII. And now Afro Samurai. These are the characters that you remember for their remarkable hairstyles, though Namco Bandai's newest hack-and-slash action game offers more than just a curly coif that reaches for the heavens. It is an entertaining and thoroughly gory offering that contrasts sumptuous environments and crisp cel-shaded characters with shocking sights of slow-motion dismemberment. In Afro Samurai, you'll chop ninjas in half and watch their disembodied torsos drag themselves along by the arms until they collapse in a pool of blood. Sights like these make for some wickedly satisfying combat, though in other areas, the game falls noticeably short of the standards set by genre predecessors such as Ninja Gaiden and Devil May Cry. Clumsy platforming and pacing inconsistencies keep Afro Samurai from reaching its potential, but the entertaining combat and dedication to its subject matter keep it from being just another forgettable button masher.

Afro's enemies don't just shed blood--they positively gush it.

If you're familiar with the Afro Samurai anime, you'll undoubtedly enjoy experiencing the events depicted in the series, as well as several that aren't. If you're new to the franchise, the most important thing to know is this: You are a big-haired, cigarette-chomping dude who knows a thing or two about blades. This is a revenge tale, and as Afro, the wearer of the Number Two headband, you're out to defeat your father's killer--the current Number One. Even if you're not familiar with every character (the neurotic, potty-mouthed Ninja Ninja; the demure Okiku), the game's vibe has a way of pulling you in. Split-screen sequences in and out of combat embrace the game's anime theme; a fantastic hip-hop soundtrack tinged with Far Eastern harmonies enhances every slice and dice; and energetic voice acting from Samuel L. Jackson and other recognizable talents lends humor and gravitas in turn. Afro neophytes may not be drawn in by the plot, but they'll find it hard to escape the lush but violent atmosphere.

At the forefront of this vibe is Afro Samurai's combat, which cribs from most games of its type. You can issue weak and strong attacks, kick your enemies around, and string these three basic moves into a variety of combos. You'll spill a lot of blood using these simple actions, but if you really want to punish your acrobatic foes, it's better to enter focus mode and watch the guts fly. With a pull of the trigger, you can slow down time, adjust your blade's trajectory a bit, and lop heads, digits, or entire limbs off of your smack-talking enemies. You have to charge up focus mode by landing combos, but you will never go without the ability for long, and the resulting mix of old-fashioned button mashing and focus-powered slaughter is satisfying and fun. A few other moves help mix things up, such as sprint attacks, parrying, and bullet deflection (tricky to time properly but well worth the trouble). As long as you're facing a typical crowd of ninjas and a miniboss or two, it's all a drippy delight.

Once you're outside of combat (an all too frequent occurrence), Afro Samurai trips over its own feet, thanks largely to unpleasant platforming mechanics. The inelegant jumping sections are easy to stomach in small doses, but they're strung into long and frustrating sequences late in the game--one of which you have to repeat if you die at the hands of the boss that appears afterward. You can wall-run here and there, and leap up and grab certain ledges, but as a rule, you can perform these moves only when the game wants you to, and they're purely for getting from one spot to the next. You can't string them into combat moves a la Ninja Gaiden, and rough animations make these acrobatics look as awkward as they feel.

Swordplay, a sunset, and a warm splatter of blood--what more could a samurai ask for?

This leaves the burden of entertainment purely on the combat, and it's usually up to the task. At its best, Afro Samurai keeps pushing you forward, throwing a few different types of foes at you and tossing in various objectives, such as throwing foes into an electrical apparatus or flipping a switch here and there. A few set-piece battles are also a total blast, particularly an exhilarating freefall sequence that might leave you breathless. A couple of boss battles are good fun as well, such as one versus an endlessly self-cloning rival, and the easy but moody final boss battle. Some levels, such as a protracted fight versus Kuma, are lighter on combat but succeed thanks to pensive ambience, entertaining scriptwriting, and pure artistic splendor.

But as brutally beautiful as the combat is, it can't support the weight of some inconsistent pacing and the less appealing boss fights. In some levels, you'll wander around without encountering enemies for far too long; in a few others, nonstop waves of enemies will make you scream for variety that never comes. These issues come to a head in the penultimate level: The combat, normally a head rush, gets a bit tedious, the platforming takes center stage, and a few broken checkpoints might force you to replay sequences that you've already plowed through. The boss fights afterward aren't much of an improvement, spamming some cheap moves rather than providing a true challenge. The camera certainly doesn't help matters; it isn't completely broken, but it has a tendency to get hung up behind objects in the smaller combat areas or jitter around if you move it into certain positions. A related oddity is the lack of camera customization. You can adjust the Y-axis settings but not the X axis, which means that you are forced to deal with inverted camera settings when moving it from side to side. If you prefer standard settings, this frustration will simply exacerbate the other camera issues.

Nevertheless, Afro Samurai is an appealing game, and its visual style and pulsing soundtrack drives this success. The art style doesn't rely on simple cel-shading, but rather infuses this familiar technique with soft colors, muted lighting, and crosshatched textures. It's a unique look, and the gushers of rust-hued blood contrast nicely with the gently lit environments. When you enter focus mode, most of the environmental color washes away, making the gruesome cleaving of a bare-breasted ninja a bloody sight to behold. Jittery animations and other technical flaws can get in the way--particularly in the PlayStation 3 version, which suffers from minor but noticeable frame-rate drops, especially during split-screen incidents--but these rarely detract from the appealing visual design. Likewise, the occasionally lackluster sound effects can't detract from a superb hip-hop soundtrack (inspired by, as opposed to composed by, rapper RZA) and fantastic, lively voice-overs.

These manufactured monstrosities lead to violet violence.

Its flaws are noticeable, but Afro Samurai is ultimately a lot of fun. It isn't the next action classic, but it embraces its subject matter with vigor and delivers equally dynamic combat in spades. You can squeeze a good seven hours of enjoyment out of the experience the first time around, and hidden items and ensuing unlockables may drive you to return, if the fun and ferocious combat isn't reason enough. In other words, it's a problematic but ultimately worthwhile reason to don the Number Two headband and see that justice is done--and that Justice is done in.

The Maw Review

Average gameplay and an unforgettable main character merge in this short but endearing adventure.

The Good

• Bursting with charm
• Great visual and sound design
• Lighthearted humor and puzzles are good for all ages.

The Bad

• Gameplay isn't very engaging
• Short, with little replay value.

How long can a game's wily charms carry an experience before its cracks begin to show? In the case of The Maw, the answer is for the entirety of the few hours that the game lasts. However, that doesn't mean that you should dismiss this amusing extraterrestrial adventure as overly saccharine fluff. It will keep you giggling for the few hours that it lasts, but like most sweet morsels, the pleasant feeling dissipates when the sugar leaves your system, and you’ll find your palette struggling to remembering the taste.

The only thing Maw fears is fear itself. Also, birds.

The titular Maw is a voracious, globular alien, and you are Frank, his antlike companion. As captives on a giant spacecraft, you make an instant friendly connection, only to get stranded when the ship crashes on an unfamiliar planet. Nevertheless, your relationship with Maw isn't really a friendship; he's more of a bulbous pit bull, and you lead him around on a leash to help him scarf up his next meal. He starts at a nicely manageable size, but eventually Maw will tower over you, though he remains a loyal companion throughout. That's a good thing, too, because his razor-sharp teeth slice through any number of bizarre beasts, and he'll chomp them with glee, emitting eager grunts while scanning the environment with his giant, bulging eye. Though you can summon Maw to your side by calling out his name (and Frank's vocal pleas are one of many delightful sonic touches), there is no spoken dialogue. But Maw is so physically expressive, with his lively green tongue and keen enthusiasm, that he'll immediately win you over.

Thus Maw is your trusty pet, and the game is essentially an alien-care simulator. Your companion is a hungry devil, and he'll chomp down various creatures on his endless quest to grow larger and larger. But though you can lead a Maw to a gloober, you can't make him eat, so you'll need to attach your electric leash to him and direct him to the local grub, or pick up the edible creatures and throw them directly into his impatient mouth. Some of these extraterrestrials are more than just exotic eats, though, and will transfer some of their attributes to Maw when digested. Downing a temperamental alien peacock turns Maw into a laser-spewing monstrosity; gnawing on a floating puff-tor lets you grab on to Maw and leap wide distances.

Your goal is always to reach the end of the level by fattening up Maw and using his stolen skills to solve a few light environmental puzzles. This may mean using the puff-tor power to float upward on wind streams, fooling a giant horned beetle into charging toward a pulsing force field, or breathing fire into clumps of flora to reveal the hidden fauna within. As Frank, you also have a few skills of your own. For example, you can use the leash to grab and fling some creatures and rocks, and you can dodge turret fire with a well-timed button press. These disparate abilities are brimming with possibilities, yet though some of the puzzles are clever, most are incredibly simple, and you'll deal with just a single Maw transformation on every level.

The ensuing gameplay is mildly amusing but rarely compelling, showcasing plenty of hilarious Maw behavior at the expense of rewarding interaction. In one level, you hop onto Maw and shoot down turrets and space invaders with his laser-spouting eyes, but you can't die and you can't aim with any precision, so you simply wander around and blast away, scarfing up the alien cadavers that you leave behind. In another, you hold on to Maw as he stampedes toward barriers, but imprecise controls and too many moments without player interaction let the wind out of the game's sails. A few blah levels could be easier to overlook if The Maw were a longer experience, but it will take most players around three hours or so to complete. Some rewards and hidden areas may tempt you to return to the levels, and online leaderboards might inspire you to gun for faster completion times and such, but when you complete the game, chances are that you'll be done for good.

Maw signals that he's ready to move on.

The gameplay may be forgettable, but Maw certainly isn't, and developer Twisted Pixel deserves kudos for its colorful and hysterical character designs. Frank looks like a refugee from Pixar's A Bug's Life, but his faithful purple friend is hysterically distinctive. In one uproarious scene, Maw flees in terror from a deceptively beautiful loofer, and the fear on his toothy face is absolutely priceless. He's simultaneously adorable and menacing, a charismatic companion who just happens to eat adorable creatures for sustenance. Kids in particular will get a kick out of him, and the simple puzzles and straightforward controls ensure younger players an adventure free of frustration.

It sounds like a lot to ask 800 points ($10) for a game that won't take up much of your time, but here is a case in which a journey is worth taking purely on the basis of its burgeoning wit and personality. The gameplay doesn't have much bite, but the strong-jawed Maw is a great new character who deserves his starring role.

Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned Hands-On

We get our motor running and head out on the highways of Liberty City in this hands-on with the upcoming Xbox 360-exclusive expansion for Grand Theft Auto IV.

The Lost and Damned has been somewhat of a mystery thus far, with few concrete details known about the upcoming expansion to Grand Theft Auto IV other than that it would focus on a brand-new protagonist (biker Johnny Klebbitz) and that it would add plenty of content in the form of new music, rides, weapons, and characters. So as you can imagine, we have been keen to find out more and jumped at the chance to roam the streets of Liberty City again when Rockstar opened up its offices to us this week for an early look.

Is he lost, or damned? Answers on a postcard...

From what we saw at our hands-on session, The Lost and Damned expansion is certainly much more than horse armor or a few extra added missions. Rockstar claims this Xbox 360-exclusive addition features the same attention to detail and production values as the original Grand Theft Auto IV. While we couldn't pin down our local Rockstar rep on exactly how many extra hours of playtime goodness 360 owners can expect, it seems that there will be plenty to do as you explore this new story set in a familiar place. The biggest GTAIV fans will, unsurprisingly, get the most out of The Lost and Damned, with seemingly plenty of nods to Niko Bellic and a difficulty level that presumes from the get-go that you know your way around Liberty City.

Unlike the mostly solitary fish-out-of-water tale that was Niko Bellic's narrative in GTAIV, Johnny's journey in The Lost and Damned is more about brotherhood. So while Niko--a new arrival in Liberty--had to work at getting safe houses and contacts for guns, backup, and cars, Johnny (as a longtime resident of the city) will have all these at his disposal right from the start of the story. Safe houses are where you can interact with your other brothers in the Lost, with new minigames such as arm wrestling and card games joining old favorites like pool. There will be plenty of missions where you'll ride out as part of a pack of Lost, with your brothers helping you out in the tougher firefights. You'll be encouraged to keep your bros alive, and surviving members of your gang will receive a stats boost to their health, accuracy, and damage dealing after each mission. If a Lost member does die, he'll be replaced with a new brother with set-to-zero stats. Simply put, the longer they stay breathing, the more help they'll be. And the attempts to make you feel like a member of a real biker gang don't stop there. When you're riding with your gang, a Lost logo will appear on the road to indicate where you need to be in order to stay in formation. If you stick to the logo, you'll be rewarded with dialogue with your brothers, as well as a small health boost.

Here's Johnny... Expect fireworks.

Main character Johnny is the second-in-command of the Alderney-based biker gang The Lost, while gang president Billy is serving a stint in rehab. The Lost and Damned begins with the violent and unstable Billy finally making it out of rehab, taking the reins of the gang back from the more profit-oriented Johnny. Billy's first order of business is to shoot a member of rival gang The Angels of Death directly outside the Lost clubhouse, ending the truce Johnny brokered and sparking off a new gang war. The Rockstar rep had control of the demo at this stage, taking Johnny as he and the rest of the Lost got on their hogs to chase down the remaining Angels as they sped away from the clubhouse. It was here that we saw a new weapon--the sawed-off shotgun--which Johnny used one-handed to bring down the Angels. We also saw the first of the new vehicles promised: the Hexer, Johnny's custom-built bike, which is unique in the game. And when we say unique, we mean it--apparently there is no way to recover the bike should it get destroyed during a mission.

We grabbed the controls at this stage and set about walking Johnny around to see how different a character he was to Niko. He certainly acted differently onscreen, exhibiting a unique set of mannerisms from what we were used to with Niko. The first mission we took on was called Action/Reaction, in which Billy ordered the Lost to attack the Angels' clubhouse in retaliation for the supposed murder of a young Lost member (fans of GTAIV, however, will remember that it was actually Niko who capped that biker in the No Love Lost mission). Johnny starts the mission off with a grenade launcher, pegging an explosive through the Angels' clubhouse window to start the pain. Plenty of Angels then stream out of the building, starting a large firefight with the five or so members of the Lost who are acting as backup. After the opposition is cleaned up outside, Billy and Johnny make their way into the clubhouse to finish off the remaining Angels. In the basement, Billy orders another Lost to take the Angels' stash of heroin, prompting Johnny to suspect that revenge was never Billy's motive for the attack.

The next mission we took on once again intertwined with a storyline from GTAIV. If you played the full game, you'll probably recall one mission called Blow Your Cover, where drug queen Elizabeta sent Niko and Playboy X to broker a heroine deal in some abandoned apartments. It seems that the heroine was actually the gear the Lost stole from the Angels, and Johnny hooked up with Niko and Playboy X to try to sell the smack. In The Lost and Damned, you'll play this mission, now called Buyer's Market, from Johnny's point of view. Of course, the deal ends up being a police sting, and while Niko escapes by heading to the rooftops and sneaking away, Johnny decides to go the direct route downstairs and take on the cops. This is, of course, a pretty tough option, because there are plenty of police with heavy armor standing in between Johnny and the Hexer. We're not ashamed to say we found this fight quite tough, but it's going to be a good challenge for experienced GTA veterans..

The Lost and Damned starts off pretty tough--but Liberty City veterans probably won't mind.

The final mission we played harked back to the old on-rails shooting challenges of previous GTA games. In the Shifting Weight mission, yet another drug deal goes wrong, and Johnny and Uptown Riders gang members Malcolm and DeSaun have to flee the police. You control Johnny as he rides on the back of Malcolm's motorbike. The Lost gang member is armed with a cool automatic shotgun with unlimited ammo, which is handy given that dozens of police cars are in pursuit. This section was pure fun, with a palpable adrenaline rush as you pound police car after police car (and even two low-swooping police helicopters) with shotgun pellets as you zoom through the city.

From our brief hands-on with The Lost and Damned, it's clear the expansion will feature the same mature narrative, great voice work, and action-packed mayhem of GTAIV. It's especially rewarding to see the intertwining stories of Johnny and Niko play out. We'll have more on The Lost and Damned in the weeks leading up to its release in mid-February, so keep it locked to GameSpot for more information.

Skate 2 Developer Q&A - Online Multiplayer and Content Sharing

Producer Brian Lindley tells us all about Skate 2's online side, including the game that inspired them and how to best share your wipeout videos.

Skateboarding may not be a team sport, but it's certainly not all about keeping to yourself. To get the most out of Skate 2, you'll want to head online and check out all of the various multiplayer and community features that the EA Black Box development team has been working on. Producer Brian Lindley has been kind enough to answer some of our questions on that exact subject.

Let's start with Skate 2's online multiplayer. The big focus in that area seems to be the idea of freeskate activities, or spontaneous challenges that a group of players can pull up anywhere they want while freeskating online. We've talked to a few members of Black Box about Burnout Paradise being an inspiration for this feature. What sort of process is it, going from "Hey, that's a cool idea" to actually working it into the game? What are the big similarities and differences players should expect to see between the two implementations?

Brian Lindley: To this day, free-skate remains one of our most popular online modes from the original Skate, so with Skate 2 we really wanted to expand on it and give the player more to do in this mode. We were very impressed with what Criterion was doing with Burnout Paradise online, so we took some inspiration from their Freeburn Challenges and came up with our own take on the idea, Freeskate Activities. It can be a pretty involved process getting a new mode built into the game, so before anything went in, we spent a lot of time brainstorming and playing freeskate ourselves to test out various ideas for different types of activities. From there, we picked our favorite types, wrote more detailed designs, [and] iterated on those designs with feedback from the team. With the paper design out of the way, our designers and engineers began working on building the mode into the game. Once the mode itself was functional, our designers got to work building activities throughout the world.

I think a big similarity between Freeskate Activities and Freeburn Challenges is their social nature and reliance on player cooperation. To complete all of the activities, every player will need to contribute, which really can come from players at any skill level. A key difference I would say is that in Skate 2, Freeskate Activities are completely optional and not host-managed, so any player in the session can propose an activity and only needs one other person to join in for the activity to start. If a player doesn't feel like joining an activity, they can simply decline or ignore the activity proposal and continue skating. Once the other skaters finish their activity, everyone in the freeskate session will be back skating together again.

Click image to enlarge.

GS: Most of the focus on Skate had to do with its innovative control scheme, but the game was also fairly revolutionary for a console title in the way it let players record media and upload it to the official Web site to share with others. Moving on to the sequel, you've obviously had some time to decide what you liked and didn't like about this system. Can you describe for us what the general process has been like, deciding how to go about improving the content-sharing process?

BL: The process was fairly straightforward. Before we went into development on Skate 2, we spent a lot of time reviewing our wish lists for fixes/improvements and melding that together with the feedback from the Skate community. A lot of customers were frustrated with trying to get skate.reel and our Web site to function properly for them, so it was clear we needed to make improving that user experience a top priority in Skate 2.

To achieve that goal, we went back to the drawing board and rebuilt our server back end and the skate.reel Web site itself. With this new foundation, we've been able to build out numerous improvements to the system, including a simplified registration process, streamlined navigation of the skate.reel gallery, and expanded player Web profiles. Beyond that, we've also added some needed convenience features like a direct download link for videos/photos, the ability to embed clips into external Web pages, and a URL field for quick copy/pasting of skate.reel links.

On the game side, we've abandoned our "slot-based" upload system from the original Skate, so players are no longer restricted to a maximum of three clips for uploading, but can instead upload a total of 90 seconds of footage using as many clips as they like. Given the above, we believe the process and experience of sharing content has been vastly improved with Skate 2.

Click image to enlarge.

GS: Let's talk about the two main hubs for users to share their creations, which are the skate.reel Web site and the game itself. What type of work have you done in the way videos are rated, featured, and shared to make it so that the cream rises to the top and the best stuff is easiest to find?

BL: One of the coolest additions to skate.reel is the ability to add tags the content you are uploading. Whenever a player uploads a video or photo, they are prompted to add some tags to their content. The tags range from things like "Hall of Meat," "Realistic Line," "Funny" or "Grind," et cetera. For players that want to see the realistic skating vids, crazy wipeouts or whatever, they can search against these tags on our Web site to see the best and brightest in those categories.

On the skate.reel gallery, players can quickly view and sort content that is highest-rated, most popular, most recent to get quick access to "cream at the top" so to speak. We also make a point to keep the highest-rated videos and photos at the forefront of the in-game skate.reel screens, so you can get quick access to the best and most creative skate.reel content at the press of a button. Lastly, we've added a "featured" section to the skate.reel Web site where our dev and community teams handpick videos and photos that will appear on the skate.reel homepage gallery. Chances are pretty good [that] if a piece of content is worthy of attention, it will be front and center in all of the various access points of skate.reel.

GS: It seems like the most popular user videos to come from the first game were nasty wipeouts. Obviously those are entertaining, but we imagine in the back of your minds, after all the work you put into creating such a convincing skateboard simulation, that the more "serious" stuff caught on a little more. As you looked to improve the video editor, was there any sort of focus on giving users the tools to make successfully pulling off a trick more entertaining?

BL: As long as players are having fun playing the game and making videos, we're happy to see crazy wipeouts as well as more "serious" skate videos being made. The wipeout videos are fun and entertaining, but we still are very impressed by the more "realistic" vids our community has put together. Seeing the effort and the skill they've put into crafting their videos or remaking their favorite parts from other skate videos has been fun to watch, and definitely justifies the effort we've put into the simulation side of the gameplay.

As for the original question, we've always wanted to provide a replay editor that could rival the creative freedom the player has with their skating. In Skate 2, we certainly were focused on surpassing the replay editor from the original Skate, and put more control in the hands of the filmers to make great videos. To that end, we essentially scrapped the editor from the first Skate.

In rebuilding the replay editor, we based much of the new functionality on what the tools we had in our own studio. The end result is that the Skate 2 replay editor allows players to manipulate the camera and make the most realistic and creative videos possible. We have three camera options available in the Skate 2 replay editor: follow camera, tripod camera, and game camera. The follow camera is attached to the player, but the player can rotate that camera anywhere around their skater. The tripod camera is a static camera that tracks the skater but can be placed anywhere in the scene. The game camera is simply the replay from the perspective of the gameplay camera. On top of these new cameras, the player can layout their camera and speed changes throughout the clip using the replay editor timeline. With enough time, I'm confident that a player can make even the most basic tricks and lines look really good.

Click image to enlarge.

GS: One of the big new features in Skate 2 is the ability to hop off your board and grab objects such as benches and picnic tables and drag them around to make your own little skate spot. Now we know that it's not just for single-player; you can save the arrangements of these objects in the Create a Spot mode and share them online. How does that process work? Do you share your creations in a similar way to user videos?

BL: The Create a Spot process is somewhat similar to video sharing, but there are a few more steps involved. As you know, players can move objects around while in career mode, and if they find a cool setup that they like, they can choose to create a spot out of it. At any time in the career mode, the player can access the Create a Spot editor from the online menu ("back" button on 360, "select" button on PS3). While in the editor, the player can move, scale, and rotate a box that identifies the scored area for their spot. The movable objects placed within and around the scored area are saved with the spot itself and put in place any time the player or someone else plays that created spot. Once the player has defined where the spot will be scored, they have to then set a spawn point and score on the spot before it can be shared online.

From the Create a Spot Browser (in the online menu), the player can access their own spots and download spots from their friends and skate community. Like skate.reel, we have numerous categories for created spots like top rated, friends' spots, most recent, spots you've owned, spots you've made that people owned, and so on. For those with a competitive streak, you can literally spend hours just downloading and trying to own (set the high score) and re-own spots from your friends and the community. We also save a "ghost" line of the highest-scoring line with each spot, so players can see exactly how the owner set the high score and try to beat it. On top of the competitive aspects of Create a Spot, it is a convenient way for players to share their best configuration of movable objects.

Click image to enlarge.

GS: One interesting little bonus feature that was recently unveiled is the Skate 2 graphics creator, a Web site where you can make your own custom designs and import them into the game. How did this idea come about? What types of challenges are there in implementing a system that gives players so much freedom to create their own designs?

BL: Skate as a game has always been centered on self-expression, and we really wanted to extend that ideal even further by letting the player add custom-designed graphics to their skater in Skate 2. NBA Live had been running a promotion using a Web-based jersey-creator tool, and we realized that we could utilize a similar application on the Skate Web site but extend it to allow those graphics to be imported directly into the game. Fortunately, we have some extremely smart and talented people on our game and Web teams that figured out how to make the system work, and the Skate 2 Graphics Creator was born!

Aside from making the technology of the feature work, we have the additional challenge of trying to moderate the content coming from such a creative and dedicated community. Thankfully, we have our customer-support team working quickly to take down any graphics that violate our terms of use, and our community has the tools to flag potentially inappropriate graphics for review by our support team. Honestly, it has been amazing to see what our community has been doing so far with the graphics creator.

GS: Finally, are there any plans to support the game's various online features postrelease?

BL: Absolutely. Our community and postlaunch team will be keeping a close eye on things to make sure servers stay up and everything runs smoothly in the hectic days following launch. Also, expect to hear more news on our plans for downloadable content sometime after the game hits stores next week.

Fuel Hands-On

We headed over to Bordeaux to see how Asobo's open-world off-road racer is shaping up in both single and multiplayer.

Asobo has been quietly working away on its open-world climate-changed racer for some time now, and we were invited along to its studios in Bordeaux to see how the game is shaping up. Due out in the first part of this year, Fuel mixes up on- and off-road racing with 75 vehicles, including road bikes, dirt bikes, quads, pickup trucks, SUVs, muscle cars, monster trucks, and even big rigs, in what feels like an enjoyably frantic experience.

Fuel is the result of mixing extreme weather and off-road racing.

Fuel is set in the aftermath of major climate change, in a landscape that's virtually devoid of human life. It seems society has moved away to safer climates, leaving Mad Max-like survivors (sans the wanton destruction) competing in a series of unofficial races in a quest to win more fuel. Expect to see a wide variety of landscapes across the huge open terrain, including sand, desert, mountains, alpine, urban cities, ice, and both sealed and dirt roads. There's also a range of weather effects, including rain and fog, as well as a full day/night cycle. You'll encounter thunderstorms, sandstorms, blizzards, tornadoes, and even flooded areas left behind from costal tsunamis.

Asobo claims that no loading screens or invisible walls will halt your progress, meaning that your experience with the environment should feel seamless. You'll be able to race standard point-A-to-point-B-style races, either with or without checkpoints, as well as lap-based ones. One of the most interesting components looks to be extensive road network, and Asobo says there will be more than 100,000km of drivable road throughout the game. There are also some ambitious landmarks, including Washington State's Mount Rainier, Oregon's Crater Lake, and a bridge that looks inspired by the Golden Gate Bridge--all of which are apparently to the same scale as their real-world counterparts. In fact, the total size of the world is huge--reportedly 120km by 120km (14,400 square kilometres in total), which apparently would take two and a half hours to traverse diagonally corner to corner.

Playing the game itself, we found Fuel's arcade-style action to be instantly accessible and, more importantly, fun to play. In both online and offline modes, you can explore the world at leisure, much like in other open-world racers, and searchlights indicate the beginning of a nearby race. You'll also be able to "heliport" to helipads scattered throughout the game, and while you can't be dropped on, say, the top of a mountain, you'll be able to warp to a safe place nearby. If you're not happy with the races on offer, one of the designers at Asobo showed us how you will be able to design your own race with the game's track editor in as little as 30 seconds, and you can create races with up to 30 checkpoints in them.

We also took a ride in a Mustang-style sedan in a 15-checkpoint race through a stretch of road in a desert. The muscle car felt both powerful and responsive to control, while a huge tornado was brewing in the distance, evidenced by a loud whistling wind, blowing debris, and, most surprisingly, a flying truck that almost wiped us off the road. While the extreme weather effects aren't in every race, it felt like quite a novel experience to have to battle against not just other racers but Mother Nature herself. During our playtime with Fuel, we also encountered woodlands, coastal and lakeside areas, grassy plains, and a race that took place around the Yellowstone National Park visitors' centre and nearby area.

Your chosen race will determine which vehicle you'll need. Dirt bikes are nimble, helping you climb hills and weave through forests with ease, whereas muscle cars are much faster but better suited to asphalt or dirt tracks. One important note is that though Fuel is mostly about racing, tricks are triggered automatically when you hit jumps on a bike or quad. We weren't able to manually control which trick our rider would perform, and with no boost bonuses, the gameplay focuses purely on raw speed and exploring the world. Fuel feels like a mixture of Pure's gravity-defying racing and Burnout's insane breakneck speeds with a postapocalyptic dash of flavouring. It's certainly not Capital Wasteland from Fallout 3, but the extreme weather and the feeling of isolation give it an interesting vibe nonetheless.

Despite the wide-open world, there will still be plenty of asphalt to traverse, with around 100,000km of drivable roads.

Completing races scores you medals and kudos-like style points, allowing you to unlock new events. You can earn bronze, silver, and gold medals for each race, and by exploring the environments during or after races you'll uncover better routes to shave seconds off your time. There's an in-game GPS to help guide you to the next checkpoint, but to get the quickest times you have to find your own path to victory. When you win races you'll score fuel bonuses--the in-game currency. We're not entirely sure what accumulating fuel will allow, but this valuable resource is a scarce commodity in Fuel's future setting and may play an important part in your career progress. While we got hands-on with a few local eight-player multiplayer matches, Fuel will also support 16-player online racing. In addition to being able to play all of the Career mode tracks with friends, you'll be able to free-roam and share the tracks you've created.

With some solid arcade racing, a huge open world, user-generated races, and an interesting scenario, Fuel looks set to strike a chord with extreme racing fans when it comes out later next quarter. Stay tuned to GameSpot as we unearth more about the game in the coming months.

Final Fantasy XIII exclusive to Japan in 2009

Square Enix's highly anticipated JRPG won't be released outside of island nation until sometime after April 2010 on PS3 and Xbox 360.

At this year's Tokyo Game Show, Square Enix debuted a new trailer for Final Fantasy XIII, its highly anticipated role-playing game slated to arrive for both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Aside from the eye candy, Square Enix's trailer also offered the tantalizing promise of a 2009 launch date.

Unfortunately, that promise of a 2009 release apparently applies only to Japan, given that the game isn't going to make it to the US or Europe until the second quarter of 2010 at the very earliest. The news emerged as Square Enix, the game's developer, delivered projections for the remainder of its current fiscal year, which ends March 31.

Square Enix president Yoichi Wada told Reuters that the game was on track for a 2009 PS3-exclusive launch in Japan, with international launches for the Xbox 360 and PS3 coming "in the business year from April 2010 or later."

Final Fantasy has been one of the most successful franchises ever to hit the console market. Since its first incarnation on the NES, the series has sold upward of 85 million units worldwide, with numerous spin-offs and even a feature-length movie adding to its success.

Despite the delay in the launch of Final Fantasy, Square Enix has remained optimistic about its financial outlook for 2009 with a small dip in operating profit of 2.4 percent to 21 billion yen ($236 million) forecast for the year. The company also reported healthy sales for the tail end of 2008 and said "demand has been generally brisk," with key titles such as Chrono Trigger, Dragon Quest IV and Final Fantasy VII prequel Crisis Core all hitting shelves throughout the year.

Q&A: Final Fantasy bard Nobuo Uematsu

Uematsu shares his experience with Blue Dragon Plus and hints at something "big" for the Black Mages.

Source: gamespot

A self-taught musician, Nobuo Uematsu joined Square back in 1985, and in 1987 Hironobu Sakaguchi asked if he would like to compose music for a role-playing game called Final Fantasy. The subsequent success of the series launched his career as a video game music composer, eventually making Uematsu one of the most well-known video game music composers among Western audiences, often referred to as the John Williams of video games.

Nobuo Uematsu

Uematsu stayed with Square Enix until 2004, when he left to form his own production company, Smile Please. He continues to compose for video games, working alongside Sakaguchi, who left Square Enix in 2004 to start his own studio, Mistwalker. Uematsu's recent works can be heard in Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon for the Xbox 360. He also composed the main theme for Super Smash Bros. Brawl last year.

In addition to composing game music, Uematsu formed the Black Mages in 2003, an instrumental rock band that takes his original Final Fantasy compositions and arranges them into rock music. The group has released three albums: The Black Mages, The Black Mages II: The Skies Above, and their most recent album, The Black Mages III: Darkness and Starlight," which was released last year.

In 2004, Uematsu made an appearance at Dear Friends--Music From Final Fantasy, the first-ever video game music concert in the United States, which was held in Los Angeles at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Due to its success, another follow-up concert was held the year after in LA, titled More Friends--Music From Final Fantasy. This was also the first time that the Black Mages performed live in the US.

Since then, Uematsu's work can be heard live in various concert series, such as Video Games Live and Play: A Video Game Symphony. To commemorate the 20th anniversary of Final Fantasy, AWR Music Productions is currently presenting a concert world tour titled Distant Worlds: Music From Final Fantasy, with performances scheduled across multiple cities in the US as well as Singapore.

Amid all the excitement with the concerts, album releases, and video games, Uematsu shared his thoughts with GameSpot through an e-mail interview about composing for the upcoming Blue Dragon Plus on the Nintendo DS and talked about his band, the Black Mages.

GameSpot: What is it like to work with Sakaguchi again at Mistwalker?

Nobuo Uematsu: Business as usual, but his ability to get things done never ceases to amaze me. Achieving goals is just second nature to him.

GS: What will the music be like in Blue Dragon Plus? Is it similar to the previous Blue Dragon?

NU: There are slight variations in the arrangements, but it's more or less the same; plus, there's one new track.

GS: What challenges did you face when composing for the Nintendo DS versus a current-gen console?

NU: It was just that it had been quite a while since I last worked with internal sound hardware.

GS: What kind of process do you go through when composing a track for a specific area in the game?

NU: After I draw inspiration from the scenario and artwork, I just let my imagination take me along for the ride.

Midi tunes aren't Uematsu's only forte.

GS: After composing hundreds if not thousands of different tunes, how do you manage to continue to stay original?

NU: Actually, all of my music sounds the same to me, to the point I get fed up with myself sometimes.

GS: What is your band working on now? Are you working on another album?

NU: There's the DVD of the live concert we did in August; it's coming out next year. I'm thinking of doing "something big" for the end of 2009, but I can't really say anything at this stage. You'll just have to keep your ears peeled.

GS: How do you select which pieces to use for your album? What are some of your favorites to perform?

NU: I draw up a list of things, and then we all get together and decide which ones we're going to do. I have fond memories of all of my music, so picking out favorites is difficult. But the live concert we did this year featuring "Maria and Draco" was fully accompanied by a drama ensemble; this was a first for us, so it was really exciting.

GS: When will we see the Black Mages again in North America?

NU: We don't have any plans as of yet, but we're definitely looking forward to another performance overseas; the sooner the better.

GS: You've been able to travel across the United States for the Dear Friends concerts as well as Distant Worlds. What has the experience been like? What has been the most memorable moment for you?

NU: It was really gratifying to receive such a thunderous ovation from all the people who came out to our concerts overseas. I truly felt thankful that I was born. The fact that people from different countries all over the world can experience the same universal joy from the same music...Doesn't that inspire you to believe there's hope for a world of peace, free from war and conflict?

GS: We can agree on that. Thank you for your time.

The Lord of the Rings: Conquest

The Good

• Fight epic battles in iconic locations
• Evil campaign is morbidly delightful
• Cutscenes and music create dramatic atmosphere
• Playing as trolls, ents, and heroes is exciting.

The Bad

• Battles often boil down to button mashing
• Many cheap ways to die
• Playing campaign solo can be aggravatingly hard.

The Lord of the Rings universe is full of memorable battles. No matter whether they are staged in a cramped burial chamber or on a vast, open plain, each clash of arms teeters between exultant triumph and agonizing defeat. In The Lord of the Rings: Conquest, you'll experience your fair share of both. There are abundant thrills in both the good and evil campaigns, from attacking oliphaunts with catapults on the Pelennor Fields to burning the ringed ramparts of Minas Tirith. However, the frantic combat can often devolve into a button-mashing frenzy as you try to avoid the many varieties of death (some unpleasantly cheap) that await you on the battlefield. These frustrations may prove to be too high a cost of entry for many, but if you're willing to brave the pitfalls (or are a big Lord of the Rings fan), then Conquest has many hours of satisfying and immersive action for you to enjoy.

Trolls? Oliphaunts? Just another day at the office for Legolas.

The best hours you'll spend in Conquest will be in the campaigns. The War of the Ring campaign puts you on the ground in the most memorable battles from the books, taking a few detours from canon along the way. The well-crafted, immersive environments mirror those of the movies, from the filthy industrial pits of Isengard to the crumbling walls of Osgiliath, and the score draws on themes from the movies to make battles feel more dramatic. As fun as the War of the Ring campaign is, there's an exciting novelty to playing as the forces of Mordor in the Rise of Sauron campaign. In this alternate storyline, the ring bearer fails in his mission and the once-ebbing tide of evil flows forth across Middle-earth, scouring all in its path. Cutscenes between levels use footage from the movies to craft a believable narrative around your dark exploits, and it's morbidly thrilling to destroy beloved locations and heroes. The last level in particular is so delightfully sinister that you'll likely find yourself cackling with malicious glee.

During most of the battles, you'll be fighting as one of the rank-and-file soldier classes. The warrior, the archer, the mage, and the scout all have their own unique strengths, weaknesses, and special attacks. From the mage's firewall to the warrior's whirlwind sweep, each class can perform a number of pleasingly powerful special attacks by drawing on energy gained from fighting and surviving. As deadly as each class can be, they are also vulnerable. An archer can easily mow down a warrior from a distance, but if the warrior manages to close the gap, there isn't much that the archer can do to survive. Close combat is brutal and chaotic, and once you get knocked down, it can be very hard to get up. Because fights favor the soldier who lands the first strike, they often become frantic button mash-offs. This can be tense and exciting, but it also makes defeat bitterer than it ought to be.

Working with other players is a great way to shore up your defenses, and The Lord of the Rings: Conquest features a cooperative campaign mode for two players, both locally and online. However, when you're going it alone, you'll find that not only is friendly AI unhelpful, but the enemy AI also sees you as public enemy number one. You'll have to destroy the lion's share of the enemy forces and be vigilant for attacks that can kill you instantly (such as fire arrows, backstabs, and anything a troll or ent does). You have a limited number of lives, and with so many ways to die, they can go quickly. Restarting the level is mildly tedious, but it can be a blessing in disguise when a mismatch between friendly and enemy spawn rates has you facing an insurmountable tide of foes.

A poison arrow to the face will take the wind out of that Gondorian's sails.

It can be frustrating to be a grunt, so it's fortunate that The Lord of the Rings: Conquest offers many ways to make your battlefield presence more formidable. The simplest of these involve mounted weapons such as catapults and ballistas: powerful yet destructible machines of war that can be a blast while they last. You can also mount horses or wargs and ride through enemy ranks, sword a-swinging. Taking control of an ent or a troll lets you grab, smash, and throw enemies to your heart's content, and rampaging around on a massive, lumbering oliphaunt is unwieldy fun. Occasionally throughout the campaign you will also get the chance to play as heroes, such as Gandalf, Aragorn, Sauron, and the balrog. These units are powerful versions of the normal classes with their own unique special attacks that let you wreak all sorts of havoc. There is a pleasing variety of heroes featured throughout the campaigns, enough that there is an entire online mode dedicated to hero play.

Hero Deathmatch is just one of the 16-player online modes available in Conquest. There is also normal Team Deathmatch, as well as Lord of the Rings versions of Capture the Flag and Territories. Everyone chooses a soldier class to begin with, but the many maps feature the aforementioned machines and mounts to spice things up. When a team reaches a certain percentage of points needed for victory, the top-scoring player will be offered the opportunity to spawn as a hero. It can be tough to break a team's momentum at that point, but success really depends on the players' willingness to work together. Playing against human opponents is both more exciting and more frustrating. It's more satisfying to work with human teammates to kill characters with human minds behind them, but those same human minds are more capable of getting the best of you with aggravating combat techniques. This makes online battles legitimately challenging, so you'll want to polish your skills in the campaigns first.

War is messy, and The Lord of the Rings: Conquest isn't a clean gaming experience. Combat can be as exasperating as it is exhilarating, and playing solo can be a trying endeavor. Nevertheless, these pitfalls are somewhat compensated for by two epic campaigns that draw you into a rich world in new and exciting ways. Fans of this world will get the most out of The Lord of the Rings: Conquest, but gamers who are looking to battle in an epic setting and willing to weather some frustrating elements will find plenty of excitement on this journey through Middle-earth.

Game Lag: 5 steps to reducing lag in online games

Tired of pulling a trigger in Call of Duty: World at War, then watching your gun fire five seconds later? Sick of adrenaline-fueled Halo 3 matches playing out like slide-shows? Well, the GamePro editors have five secret tips to help you reduce or eliminate lag, and make online gaming more stable and enjoyable.

Without further ado, here are five proven ways to fix a laggy game experience!

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1. Shut down all PC downloads and sharing apps.

File-sharing programs such as BitTorrent are infamous for eating up bandwidth, and will guarantee you a choppy online gaming experience on your game system. Big downloads, such as Apple Store TV shows or movies, will also slow down your online game. If you're playing online, try to limit any PC internet use beyond simple web browsing or e-mail.

2. Cable internet beats DSL every single time.

There's a reason a DSL connection costs less than cable internet: it's slower and less stable. In fact, some industry groups have recommended stripping DSL of its "broadband" label because it can only handle a fraction of the speed of a cable connection. DSL is fine for speedy web browsing, but cable reigns supreme for online gaming. Cable internet is also relatively inexpensive if you're already a cable TV subscriber - ask your provider for package deals.

3. With Wi-Fi, placement is everything.

Your wireless Wi-Fi router has a limited range, and consoles can be pretty picky about that signal (especially if the Wi-Fi has to go through a wall). Try to place your console close to your router to get the best results. If you're still seeing a strong signal, yet experiencing lag, try changing your game system's location in the room, or flipping it horizontally or vertically.

4. Hardwire it!

Though wireless Wi-Fi is more convenient, a hardwired Ethernet connection is unbeatable for online gaming - it's faster and more reliable. The downside: an ugly cable that leads from your internet router to your game system. If your cable or DSL jack is located close to your entertainment system, you'll definitely want to use an Ethernet cable for maximum performance. Even if the internet jack is located far away, you may consider running the Ethernet cable under the carpet, along a wall, or under floorboards to conceal it.

5. Choose top-quality internet hardware.

Don't expect top-level gaming performance from that cheap $20 internet router you bought at CostCo. Instead, spend a little more and get a quality router from a trusted manufacturer such as Linksys or DLink. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo also have preferred hardware that is guaranteed to function perfectly on their systems - that information is available on their websites.

New York City from January 17th and 18th from 11am - 7pm

Are you in New York City from January 17th and 18th from 11am - 7pm? Then you have a chance to play F.E.A.R 2: Project Origin before the demo comes out later this month. Here's the info about the event:

This Saturday and Sunday, January 17th and 18th from 11am - 7pm, our mobile F.E.A.R Lab will be parked outside of the GameStop at 1282 Broadway on the corner of Broadway and 33rd (near Herald Square) to give a sneak preview of the upcoming first person shooter game F.E.A.R. 2 Project Origin.

Live stream tomorrow from the location via this link: http://www.armacham.com/fearlab/

X-Men Origins: Wolverine Impressions

We see the damage razor-sharp adamantium claws can do to a human body in this bloody first look at the upcoming movie tie-in.

Marvel character Wolverine's previous appearances in games have been mainly kid-friendly and gore-lite, which is somewhat odd considering that the mutant's indestructible claws should result in plenty of decapitations, severed limbs, and exposed intestines with every attack. Raven Software's latest take on the feral superhero--the movie tie-in X-Men Origins: Wolverine--looks like it's taking those claws pretty seriously. Our first look at this game proved to be a blood-splattered affair with plenty of brutal attacks on display.

Wolverine isn't playing nice in this game.

And when we say brutal, we mean it. Our hands-off look at some of the levels in Wolverine showed the character dishing out some gruesome and visceral punishment. The game looks like it might reach levels of blood-spewing mayhem not seen in a comic-book-based game since 2005's The Punisher. The third-person action game will use the storyline from the upcoming big-screen film (as well as adding its own levels), with stars Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber lending their voices for the characters of Wolverine and Sabertooth, respectively. Our demo began with the title character free-falling through the skies over Africa (apparently his helicopter had just been blown up), with his high-impact landing making a small crater in the ground. A 1,000-foot drop means nothing to the regenerative mutant, however. In a matter of seconds, Wolverine had bounded out of the crater, ready to take on the small band of enemy soldiers that had surrounded him.

Wolverine will sport both quick and power attacks, which can be threaded together to perform increasingly powerful combos. Landing one of these combos will result in a quick cinematic view of one of Wolvie's various finishing moves, which is where the ultra-violence comes in. One of the finishers we saw included Wolverine holding back a soldier's head and stabbing him through the neck. Another had Wolverine impaling an enemy, lifting him up in the air, and repeatedly stabbing him in the chest with his other set of claws. One of our favorites (in a sick way) was the finisher that saw Wolverine slash an enemy across the stomach, pulling out his intestines along the way. Wolverine will also have a lunge maneuver, which will allow him to leap large distances to target enemies, as well as a feral sense ability, which will allow him to spot special paths across levels and see enemy weak points.

As well as upping the gore quotient, Raven seems to be going for a cinematic feel, with several set-piece action sequences planned. As an example, we were shown a level set in the Weapon X facility underneath Alkali Lake, where Wolverine had to escape a wall of water rapidly rushing down a tunnel. Wolvie used his lunge ability to quickly leap onto an enemy's truck, which was also trying to escape, and proceeded to jump from vehicle to vehicle, attacking soldiers as he went. In another sequence, Wolverine was being pursued by an attack helicopter and had to quickly run across a bridge while the chopper was destroying it behind him. The final sequence we were shown should please longtime X-Men fans: Wolverine taking on a 100-foot-tall sentinel. Wolverine's feral senses kicked in, highlighting fuel cables running along the sentinel's feet that had to be attacked to hobble the giant robot.

Guess who's about to get some claw-in-face action?.

If the violence we saw in our quick demo is any indication, X-Men Origins: Wolverine looks to be a decidedly more adult take on the popular superhero. Check back with GameSpot soon for a full hands-on preview of the game.

Kojima addicted to Left 4 Dead

Kojima The creator of Gamezine's Game of 2008 is obsessed with one of our faves.

Kojima, the brainchild behind Metal Gear Solid, hones in on the virtues of the Western video games market and how its a better place to develop games than in Japan. Along the way he also comments that he's currently addicted to Left 4 Dead, which we gave a huge 9/10.

In a Famitsu Magazine interview, Kojima argues;

"The US and European marketplace are far better balanced. There are games everyone can play -- maybe calling 'kids' games' would be inappropriate -- but there's also a deep base of core titles made with movie-industry people that explore the depths of hi-def. I'm addicted to Left 4 Dead right now, but people say to me that that game would never work in Japan."

Kojima's a little pessimistic about the Japanese video games market, laughing as he says;

"Maybe I should quit being Japanese. And speaking of which, there were hardly any Japanese games nominated in Spike TV's Video Game Awards this year. It's sad to see that Japan's games failed to even register in America last year."

When asked why Japanese developers struggle to keep up with the overseas competition, Kojima is just as damning;

"Because they're Japanese. Japan makes all their own books and movies and music. You can't export entertainment made by Japanese people in the Japanese language, so it's all made with the sort of budgets that guarantee profit within the Japanese marketplace only.

"Meanwhile, the English-speaking world is a global one. The scariest scenario I see is people overseas taking the ideas from Japanese games, running the Hollywood business merchandising machine on them, and taking all the revenue. If that happens, then there won't be any new Japanese creators."

Furthermore, the man who has continuinly changed the rules of gaming, comments that the hi-defination era of consoles hasn't really been taken advantage of in Japan;

"Game design up to now has been about making rules," he notes. "It was like a card game; there were lots of things that weren't possible and had to be cut. With hi-def, the more real it gets, the less instruction you need to give, so preoccupying yourself with making rules seems silly. Western developers have realized this, but Japanese ones are still preoccupied with making these rules."

The good news is that Kojima is working on a bunch of new projects that'll whip both the East and West into shape;

"There is a title I'm designing that I think we'll be able to announce relatively soon, and there's also a rather challenging project I'm working on to compete against the overseas industry. So as far as unannounced projects, I've started work on one and three others are in progress."

We can't wait.