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Cheap Playstation 3 (PS3 PSP) - GAMER NEWS
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Hydrophobia and its fluid dynamics could have been a tech demo, but Dark Energy Digital made a whole game around it. The game takes place in the near future, and focuses on a floating city called The Queen, an ocean-borne paradise where the rich go to live in decadence and avoid having to look at the poor and hungry on the main land. If that’s not an environment ripe for terrorist target, what is, right?
Sure enough, on the tenth anniversary of The Queen setting sail, terrorists hit the ship, taking over the primary systems and attempting to kill everyone on board. That’s where you take over, in the guise of system analyst Kate Wilson. Kate isn’t a warrior or an acrobat--she’s a computer programmer--and the DED team went into the game with the intention of making her more of a Sigourney Weaver from the original Alien than Milla Jovovich in…well…everything. She’s the reluctant hero, starting out just trying to save her own life before she realizes she’s the only one who can save everyone else.
The meat and potatoes of the game is the a fore mentioned fluid dynamics of the rapidly flooding super-ship. Water flows in and out of corridors, creating currents and undertows in the environment. Burning oil slicks on the surface will flow into enemies and water levels can rise to exposed power lines to electrify the water. Large objects otherwise unmovable will become buoyant and maneuverable, and blood streaks and clouds naturally underwater.
Kate may not be a super soldier, but she is fit and able to climb and jump to navigate corridors that are rapidly getting the Poseidon treatment. Her combat skills are untrained, but a variety of ammo types allows her to keep up with the bad guys. The primary ammo, a stun round, is also a tool, as it can maneuver objects both on and beneath the surface to set Kate up with more defensible positions or put her enemies in the way of danger.
Overall, the gameplay is both ambitious and intuitive, and the Dark Energy team told me that collectibles and unlockable bonus rounds will keep the game replayable. Mention was even made that the game is intended to be a trilogy that will see Kate evolve past a mere systems analyst and into a mighty hero with the ability to manipulate water as she sees fit, causing me to look furthur forward to all three installments.
Overall Demo Hawtness:  7/10 - A high concept action/adventure that will push the big guys to keep up with innovation
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While most franchises would prefer not to be called a comeback, the newest incarnation of Mortal Kombat would like nothing better. Years of series dilution--trying to be bigger, add more finishing moves, more modes of play--has reduced the pedigree of the series. Dragging the series by its hair, leaving heel marks in the dirt, the WB Interactive team is hoping to bring it back to the cherished reputation the first two editions enjoyed.
As far as that goes, it accomplishes its job beautifully. The big story has been the aping of Street Fighter IV’s pushing a return to the 2D environment. What no one seems to be talking about, and what really impressed me, was the graphical styling. I found Mortal Kombat’s graphics far superior to the commonly compared SF4; damage modeling opens seeping wounds and leaves gorgeous scorch marks on the combatants during the heat of battle (and yes, I’m spelling “combatants” with a “C”). The backgrounds are impressively detailed, with gore streaks and trails spilling onto the ground throughout the match. The color pallets are smart, keeping your attention focused on the main action and away from potential background distractions.
The gameplay grabs the feel of Mortal Kombat 2, and feels deliberate without feeling slow (like our mind tends to block out of or memories of MK2). Combos exist, but are short and sweet, avoiding Capcom’s recent trope of insane combos to memorize, and a well timed special move or uppercut can stop an opponent’s momentum on a dime, leaving a satisfying back-and-forth battle.
All in all, I was highly satisfied with the combat, and if the locked out slots on the character select screen are any indication, there promises to be a slew of fighters to choose from (not to mention I noticed a happy little “DLC” slot on the selection screen). But in today’s game space, I worry that the standard combat won’t be enough to justify a full retail price point. Though a 60-dollar price point has not yet been confirmed, in today’s market it seems likely, and without some play mode outside standard story mode and online versus play, I can’t say that the game would justify it. Ironic, considering it was all the other bells and whistles that lowered MK's status among players to begin with. Now don’t count Mortal Kombat out, because a lot of details are still under wraps, so judgment is best reserved until we get to the full release, thus my final score.
Overall Demo Hawtness: 8/10 - Great fighting reminiscient of the classic days with an up-to-date finish
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I was a fan of the first Pinball FX--heck, I’m a fan of pinball in general--if for nothing else other than the fact that they continued to release new boards even four years after the original release. Sure, it panned out to about a board a year, but they were there.
So I was glad to hear that Pinball FX was going to get some love of the sequel kind. As an added bonus, Pinball FX 2 is going to follow in the ideals of Game Room and Destination Arcade and be itself free, with the pinball boards being individual DLC items. The “free-to-join-pay-to-play” concept is quickly becoming Microsoft’s digital distribution delivery darling.
But I was unfortunately not sold. The sample board I played fell prey to the cardinal sin of a video pinball game--it felt more like a video game than a pinball game. The ball was floaty, and often would defy logistical gravity as to which slot it would land in while running the gauntlet flipper-ward. The progressive mechanisms of the board, lighted gates and switches and such, attempted to act like the clockwork devices of a true pinball board, but never felt more substantial than your average generic polygons and bitmaps.
Mid-play mini games pop-up with attempts to feel like a pinball board that could exist but wouldn’t ever really--fantasy gimmicks that are just on the other side of plausibility. I played one that mimicked a carnival shooting gallery, replacing Ali Baba’s forty thieves for wooden ducks, and another that traded your flippers for electro-magnets as you tried to spin the pinball in a orbit by playing with the magnetic fields. Both are innovative ideals on what pinball could be, but neither felt genuine to a pinball experience.
Further pulling the game out of the world of pinball, at least on the sample level I got time with, was the color palette of the game. A lot of purples and yellows took the feel of the game screaming out of the pinball realm, passing cleanly through even the world of console video game, and depositing it into the “dollar-a-play-touch-screen-bar-gaming-machine”. I half expected to be able to play a Tetris-clone that would reveal pictures of topless women when I was done.
Your boards from the first Pinball FX are importable into FX 2, but if they end up falling into the same physics engine the new boards seem to be, you may not want to. To really sell me on this one, the physics are going to have to be tweaked in a way that feels more natural, and, ideally, they take their “pay for boards” system all the way on par with their Game Room brethren, and license classic Midway, Williams, and Gottlieb boards for you to add to your collection.
Overall Demo Hawtness
5/10 - Video pinball better suited for Happy Hour than a home console.
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Fan of Italian mobster-infused video games? Didn't attend E3? No worries, the game you've probably marked in your calendar long before you read this, Mafia II, will be getting a demo release next month.
A few weeks before the game drops in late August, you'll get to try out the "BuzzSaw" demo E3 attendees got to try last month. You'll take the role of Vito going after The Fat Man running across Empire State, the game's location influenced by '50s-era New York, San Francisco, Detroit, and Chicago.
You can get the drop on the demo August 10 and the retail release of Mafia II will be August 24. 
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