Batman Arkham Asylum (CITY) 2.

Release Date: Q3 2011

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Batman: Arkham City builds upon the intense, atmospheric foundation of Batman: Arkham Asylum, sending players soaring into Arkham City, the new maximum security home for all of Gotham City's thugs, gangsters and insane criminal masterminds.

Set inside the heavily fortified walls of a sprawling district in the heart of Gotham City, this highly anticipated sequel introduces a brand-new story that draws together a new all-star cast of classic characters and murderous villains from the Batman universe, as well as a vast range of new and enhanced gameplay features to deliver the ultimate experience as the Dark Knight.

The latest issue of Game Informer magazine has revealed some new details about Batman: Arkham City, the sequel to last year's hit title from UK-based developer Rocksteady. The game is currently set for release next fall for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC. 

The story for Arkham City takes place one year after the events of Arkham Asylum. The warden from the first game, Quincy Sharp, is now mayor of Gotham City, and he purchased a large portion of the city's slums to build a new criminal facility. "Arkham City," as it is called, houses all the insane prisoners previously found on the asylum before Joker left it in ruins. Psychiatrist Hugo Strange is now heading the new facility, and the only rule the prisoners are given is not to escape, leaving them to fend for themselves inside the guarded walls within the city. 

Die-hard fans of the first title will be relieved to know Rocksteady isn't going to mash together a quick sequel with a few new villains while recycling a number of art assets.

Two-Face is confirmed for Arkham City, and is battling Joker and other key villains as they recruit inmates to join their respective gangs. Catwoman, meanwhile, will play Batman's love interest, and will team up with him throughout the game. Is she friend or foe? It's unclear what Catwoman's motives really are.

Most of Batman's weapons and gadgets from the first game will return for the sequel, and he'll actually start the game with them all. Those weapons can receive further upgrades. New gadgets include a Bat Claw that can fetch items too far away and a broadcast analyzer to track transmissions.

"We want to top everything that we did in the last game," director Sefton Hill told the magazine. "We didn't want to do an Arkham Asylum 1.5. We want to make the same jump we made from nothing to Arkham, We want to make that same jump again for Arkham City – the same level of ambition."

The combat will also see several new additions, including simultaneous counters, gadget incorporation (such as spraying explosive gel on enemies), and projectile counters from inmates that throw things at you from afar.

Arkham City will have many side-quests involving key characters, harder, more advanced Riddler trophies that involve puzzle solving, and more varied enemy types. The Batman issue of Game Informer should be hitting newsstands soon. Check it out for more details...

Dead Space 2 ( Jan. 25, 2011 ).

( Hmmm.. Such A Wonderful Horror Shooting Game ).

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Until now, EA has been happy to show Dead Space 2 trailers, host multiplayer events, and give interviews, but it hasn't let IGN get its hands on the controller and give Isaac a whirl. Now, with Chapters 2 and 3 behind me, I've got a taste of what the full game will feel like, and I definitely like it. The Dead Space franchise is all about scaring you and letting you marvel at its terrific twists. That said, I'm going to keep this preview spoiler free in terms of story stuff and focus on mechanics and ideas a bit more. 

Still, we do already know a lot. Dead Space 2 picks up the tale of Isaac Clarke, a guy who was a regular old engineer but had to fight off hundreds of horrible Necromorphs (corpses reanimated by a parasitic infection and only able to be killed if they were dismembered) on the USG Ishimura in the original Dead Space. Three years have passed, and Isaac's on the Sprawl -- a space station full of nice people who are now being attacked by a Necropmorph outbreak. 

My demo picked up with Isaac back in a version of his familiar engineering suit, which gives him some protection from the beasts along with telekinesis and the ability to slow things down. A woman named Daina is leading our hero, but there's also a guy named Nolan Stross trying to get in contact with Isaac. Daina claims he's a psychotic that killed his own family

And that's all the story I'm going to give you because that's really all I saw in my two chapters. Still, there's plenty to talk about on the gameplay side because controlling Isaac feels better than ever. The original Dead Space was a great game, but I doubled back to play it the other night and found it aged -- Isaac didn't feel fast enough, the stomp was all but worthless, and refilling my enemy-slowing Stasis took too many steps.

 That's all different this time around. Dead Space 2's control scheme will instantly be familiar, but Isaac feels lighter on his feet. The stomp and melee moves are also faster and more efficient. That's a good thing because both are now crucial: pounding a beaten foe gives you loot like ammo and health. Whether you're just walking down a creepy corridor or in the middle of a massive fight, health and Stasis can be refilled with the push of a button if you have supplies in your inventory -- Stasis even recharges over time now and you can make that process go faster with upgrades. If you're worried about weapons, the plasma cutter and a bunch of new friends are back, packing alternative firing modes, and ready to have their attributes maxed out. 

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Workbenches are back for improving your equipment with the power nodes you find in the game and so are a bunch of other Dead Space staples. Save stations are still found on walls. You can sell, buy and store items at the store kiosks you run into. Disfigured bad guys (with terrifying arms sticking out of their backs) still pop out of the walls to scare the pants off of you. I saw a lot of familiar Necromorph faces like the Slasher (the most common Necromorph with its slashing arms) and the Leaper (nasty beasts that crawl on the ground and attack with their tails), but I also got to take on the Pack for the first time.

If you've been watching out Dead Space 2 coverage, you've probably seen the Pack even if you don't know them by name. These guys are the bipedal, kid-sized Necromorphs that rush at you in a group and leap on you. They used to be the Sprawl's burgeoning children population, but when they got infected, the kiddies turned into these baddies.

This is one of the coolest thing about Dead Space 2; the Sprawl is -- or at least was -- a living city so the things we're going to see should be very varied. I took Isaac through a residential section and found apartments wrecked and covered in blood -- bodies still in their beds. Next was a polished mall motif and even a Marker-worshiping Unitology recruitment center. Of course, all of these areas are seriously screwed up: lights are hanging from the ceiling, TV screens are smashed, and there are random fires around the place. All hell has broken loose, and it's evident from the people you find wailing in the common areas or the Necromorph conversions you yourself witness.

So what exactly happened here? Well, we don't know for sure, but you can bet it's connected to a Marker. If you're just joining the Dead Space universe, Markers are worshiped by Unitologists and pretty much the worst thing in the world -- they make the Necromorphs. Isaac destroyed one at the end of Dead Space, but a conversation in what I played today says that Tiedemann -- the guy in charge of the Sprawl -- made another one. My money's on this fact being what brought the Sprawl down, but I'm sure the game will tell us all about that in due time.

The other thing I'm interested in seeing from the final game? Isaac's mental state. Our hero is plagued with visions of Nicole, his girlfriend who was killed in the original game's Necromorph outbreak. In Dead Space 2, she's a bloody mess and only pops up in scary ways. Is he OK? Did the events of the first game break him? We'll need to wait until Jan. 25, 2011 to find out.

Silent Hill: Downpour ( TBA 2011 ).

(Remember Don't Ever Miss This Game)

Be Patience This Game Will Release Soon.....

Silent Hill 8, originally announced and trailered at E3 2010, has had a title change. The game, in development at Vatra Games and set to arrive later this year, has been officially titled Silent Hill: Downpour. The latest issue of Game Informer has a new preview on the title.

The demo shown to the magazine took place in the outskirts of Silent Hill. Apparently, the town is so large that the developers implemented a subway system for players to travel between points. The area explored in Downpouris the southeastern part of Silent Hill seen on maps, but never explored, in past games. Locations such as schools and hospitals will not return.

There will be various side-quests for the player to take on.

On combat, players can avoid fights when it’s possible (run, scaredy cat, run). Boss battles, on the other hand, aren’t avoidable and will enforce quick-time events when needed. Weapons used against enemies will weaken and break; there is no weapon inventory.

As the title may have suggested, water plays a huge role in Downpour. It’ll be to the game what ice and snow were to Silent Hill: Shattered Memories..

Here’s an amazing update that fans would certainly want to here about the latest happening for the Silent Hill 8 sequel. As some of you who’s meticulously following the trail of leaks for this installment, it was first revealed last October that Konami and Vatra are working together with the next version of this game and it should be available for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360

As of today, folks from Neogaf managed to see the soon-to-be published mag for gameinformer leaking that the next Silent Hill 8 would actually be called as Silent Hill: Downpour and it was protruded from a blurry text scan image (sorry, there was no picture).

Some of the important features that were revealed: Demo will take place on the outskirts of Silent Hill, subway train station would still be utilized, more side quest, avoiding fights and run would still be incorporated on the gameplay, crazy water effects from upside down river, weapons will have the ability to become weaken and break (something like a durability threshold); sadly, there will be no schools and hospital stages this time but there will be puzzle difficulty options for newbies and hardcore players.

nterestingly, this type of gameplay blends perfectly with the previous storyline of the Silent Hill 8 which includes: mind-bending puzzles, natural response of fight or flight of players, prison transport on some stages.

Expect survivor-horror game to have its hazy release date be revealed on this year...

First Time The Most HORROR game and ADVENTURE Game Ever Made..!!

Stronghold.Crusader.Extreme (Most playable Game Ever)..

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You can't go home again. That's the lesson of Stronghold Crusader Extreme, a revamping of Firefly Studios' classic 2002 real-time strategy game Stronghold Crusader. This minor reimagining of an oldie but goodie is several years late for the party, a real-time relic based on antiquated game mechanics and production values. It doesn't even add much in the way of new old-fashioned game content; it simply goes after hardcore fans of the original game with a new Extreme Trail mode of play that takes you up a ladder of impossibly murderous medieval skirmishes.

This is essentially a straight rehashing of the first Stronghold Crusader. Gameplay shows every bit of its age, so what you've got here is an old-school RTS game in which you build bases, gather resources, and grind out soldiers for endless combat. You take on the role of a medieval lord commanding a settlement in the dusty lands of the Crusades-era Middle East, and must build it up by constructing the usual barracks, farms, armories, and mines. Of course, the ultimate purpose is to use this economic backbone to fund an army of knights, spearmen, bowmen, and the like, and proceed to wipe your enemies off the map.

As with most RTS games from earlier in the decade, the skirmish maps in the 20-mission Extreme Trail campaign are all about speed, not strategy. The winner is always the one who can click the quickest, which makes matches play out more like fast-forwarded street brawls than real military engagements. This is actually one of the zippiest RTS games of all time, and spectacularly tough when compared to the nonextreme trail campaign in the original Stronghold Crusader. The pace has been so amped up and the maps so packed with enemies that the combat is frenzied and chaotic.

Expect to be toast early and often if you don't have some heavy playtime with the first game under your belt. Even with this experience (which you can gain here because you get the complete original game along with the supposedly new one), it's amazingly tough to emerge victorious from even a single one of the scenarios. Multiple enemies target you in all but the very first campaign mission, and this array of foes kicks off every match by immediately hurling columns of troops at your puny little village.

Maps cram all of the factions into such close quarters that it's impossible to get started on a reasonable army before the onslaught begins. Enemy armies are typically coming over the hill within no more than a minute or two from the start of a game. It's hard to figure out what you're supposed to do to stop these assaults, given that you're always stuck battling these massive forces with just the handful of knights and archers that you start with. You have the option of dropping in companies of spearmen and macemen on the fly at timed intervals, and can erect walls to somewhat stem the tide, but this seems to only delay the inevitable as steams of enemy columns constantly rush toward your keep. All you're ever doing is keeping your head above water, not building enough strength to take the fight to the enemy.

It feels like you're being asked to jam a square peg into a round hole, too, because the speedy scenarios don't fit the ponderous underlying game design. The Stronghold series has always been more of an economic simulation than a purely military one, considering its strong city-building flavor. So you can't just whip up barracks and start mass-producing knights and bowmen. Instead, you have to build mines and lumberyards to gather the ore and wood needed for weapons, along with farms to produce the cows needed for leather. Then you have to build armories, fletchers' huts, and tanneries. After that, you have to make swords, bows, leather armor, and the like. Finally, you can order troops into production...if you've got enough manpower by way of your peasant population. If not, you need to take a moment to toss up some hovels. After all of this, you can build an army. Or at least you would have been able to build an army if the bad guys hadn't already burned your keep to the ground.

Other aspects of the game don't fit with 2008. There is an online matching service, but it's hosted through the rather clunky GameSpy Arcade system, and some sort of conflict or bug with our initial install left us without the icon needed to activate this option on the multiplayer screen. The isometric visuals of the six-year-old original haven't been enhanced at all, so you're stuck with pixelated units and a maximum resolution of 1024x768 that stretches the display to the point of blurriness on a widescreen monitor. Not that there's much detail here to blur. Units look like scrambling insects that convulse their way across the bland, blocky landscape. Audio is just as dated. The music is a repetitive martial loop, battles are loaded with tinny metal clashes, and order acknowledgements are repetitive exclamations as bombastic and dumb as something you might hear during the dinner show at Medieval Times.

Only someone who has just stepped out of a time machine will have much patience for Stronghold Crusader Extreme. Aged, formulaic, and spectacularly difficult, the game isn't remotely appealing to a modern RTS audience.

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TuneUp Utilities 2011 v10.0.3000.101

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