First Impressions: Alien Isolation

As a very young child I have grown up watching the Alien movies, so being an avid fan of the alien series I have been expecting great things from the gaming industry. There are some titles worthy of the alien franchise such as Alien Trilogy and Alien Resurrection for the Sony PlayStation; unfortunately these classic 3D titles are the closest things to the movies you will get. There are a few spin-offs that looked quite promising, but ultimately failed to meet standards that the hardcore alien fans expected.

Martian Manhunter delivers justice in Injustice

J'onn J'onzz AKA The Martian Manhunter has been announced during the Evo 2013 tournament in Las Vegas as NetherRealm's fifth DLC character for Injustice: Gods Among Us.

Manhunter is one of the most requested characters by the fans to date, and from the trailer (found below) he seems to be voiced by none other then Carl Lumbly, the voice actor for J'onn in the Justice League TV series. Also in the trailer reveals a new skin for the Green Lantern, that of John Stewart, who featured along side J'onn in the TV series. John seems to be voiced by Phil LaMarr his series voice actor, who also voices Aquaman in Injustice.

If NeverRealm are doing a Justice League run of DLC, Doctor Fate? Maybe? Please?

Release dates, prices and if this DLC will be included in the season pass are unknown at this point, however here is the trailer below

Square Enix cooks up a storm with Lightning Returns Cloud Strife based DLC

Square Enix announced today that there is a new pre-order bonus for Lightning Returns, the third game in the Final Fantasy XIII series, based on Final Fantasy VII's lead character Cloud Strife.

The package includes the SOLDIER 1st Class Uniform and Soldier Band as equipment, including the iconic Buster Sword as Lightning's weapon. Not only that also included is Cloud's victory pose and for the first time in the XIII series the classic Final Fantasy victory fanfare, Square Enix's official trailer can be found below.

The Rezzed Report 2013

In an industry such as gaming, it’s surprising how often things can change and surprise you. In the past few years we have seen whole segments of the gaming industry rise and fall, with indie gaming most notably emerging as a dominant force. At no other point since the twilight of games development in the 70’s, have we seen such a prominence of “bedroom coders”. Is it any wonder when titles such as Minecraft (which recently hit 11 million sales) and Super Meat Boy (which has sold over a million copies) have captured the gamer’s attention, even managing to outperform some publisher backed blockbusters?

So if indie games are really such a big thing why don’t we see more at expos? Better yet, why don’t they have their own specialised events? This is what RockPaperShotgun and Eurogamer aims to address with the follow up to their indie focused event – Rezzed 2013.

First Impressions: Tekken Revolution

Tekken Revolution is Namco Bandai's free to play fighter now released as a PS3 exclusive. This comes completely out of the blue as it was only announced last week, and confirmed it's launch at E3 a few days ago. However this is not the first venture into free to play Namco have taken as the rock, paper, scissors styled Tekken Card Tournament was released not too long ago.

Revolution unlike Card Tournament is a fully working brawler with a roster of 12 characters, 4 of which need to be unlocked. The game itself is probably one of the best sounding and looking Tekkens to date, with stylized menu backgrounds, flashy character intros (cheesey voice acting can be forgiven), and full HD combat arenas. Even the combat has been tweaked a little with certain moves blurring the character when moving to highlight the speed of the actions. The character selection screen also highlights key moves for each of the characters, giving the little bit of feedback so even new players can understand the basics behind each character's combat style.

New Warhammer 40K MMO announced

The ashes of THQ still burn hot for many gamers, none as much as the Warhammer 40k fanbase; who lost their hope at a series of 40k based titles from the publisher. One title that got axed with the closure of THQ included the multi-faction MMORPG Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium, created by Darksiders creators, Vigil Games.

Hope returns today as Games Workshop and Behaviour Interactive announce Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade, a third person MMORPG set to be released currently at the end of 2015. Not much is known at the moment, but by heading to the Warhammer 40k: Eternal Crusade website you will see the site is on the first of 9 phases, with the press release found below.

Montreal, 10th June, 2013 – Behaviour Interactive and Games Workshop® proudly announce a new online game in the Warhammer® 40,000® universe: Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade. Behaviour Interactive has obtained the rights to create a wholly new MMORPG persistent war experience for PC, PS4 and Xbox One set in Games Workshop’s universe of the 41st Millennium. In the game, players choose aWarhammer 40,000® race and fight directly as one of their warriors in massive conflicts for territory. It will be up to each faction’s community to determine their own destiny as they vie for control of an entire planet.

The developer Behaviour Interactive is known for creating a host of cartoon/movie tie in titles as well as the games Wet and Naughty Bear.

Blizzard re-spawns Spawning into Starcraft 2

Blizzard has reintroduced a very old friend back into the Starcraft fold, a process known as 'Spawning'. What this was is players were able to boot up a copy of Starcraft 1 on their PCs after their friend had on their PC with the same CD - hence giving a 'free' version of the game to their friend while they play.

Just announced Blizzard has brought back this process to Starcraft 2 in the form of allowing members of the party to freely 'upgrade' to the highest level expansion that a member of the party currently has. For example a player with the Starter Edition (found free on Battle.net itself) can party with a player with the current Zerg expansion Heart of the Swarm, both players then are classed as 'owning' HotS as long as they remained partied.

Doing this will unlock Multiplayer (ranked and unranked), all custom game maps, Vs. AI and the Arcade in the highest level of content the party members have, those with the Starter Edition will only be able to play the race currently playable in that version (at time of writing that is Terrain), and have limited access to social features, for example Clans are locked out to those not currently owning HotS. However the limit of players allowed to do this is the current party cap, thus 14 of your friends can benefit from your purchase.

To celebrate this new feature, Blizzard have added a new Achievement and Portrait to the game for players Spawning in new players or are the ones being Spawned at this current time. The release date of this is right now, however globally it may take until the end of the day to become active in your area.

For the full information watch the following Youtube video below the divide.

Plants vs. Zombies Adventures Beta Impressions

Plants vs. Zombies was my first tower defense game and I loved it. Originally I had purchased it for my ex boyfriend and watched him play it; but it wasn't until a friend  eventually purchased it me for Christmas, (where I managed to finish it in the same day) that I became a fan.

I wanted to play more of it, but it was too short and I was relying on survival mode to still feel like I would benefit from playing it (if you grow your tree of wisdom to one million feet you will unlock zombie mode, but that’s overboard despite mine currently sitting over halfway to that goal) and not go insane via the achievements for vase breaker and I, zombie.

For anyone who has not played Plants vs. Zombies or perhaps haven’t played a tower defense game before, you’re the plants defending your home (and brains!) from a variety of unique hungry zombies.

You start off with sun power which is used to purchase offensive and defensive plants, and sunflowers that can then generate more sun power for you. The action takes place in different environments, with different weather effects. You can be battling in the back garden on a foggy or clear night, outside a swimming pool, or even on the roof of your home.

The Good The Bad The Ugly - Xbox One

Welcome to the inauguration of a new format here at Crash To Desktop. With The Good The Bad and The Ugly we will bring you a weekly review of the latest in gaming and tech, introducing you to the great and the downright rotten.

Firstly let me say I love my Xbox 360, not the PS3 and I will most probably own an Xbox One within a year or two of launch. I will, however, be buying a PS4 on the launch day and will be signing up for a pre-order after E3.

I’ll admit, I have not been playing many games recently and I did not watch the Xbox One announcement live. I have watched the full video and honestly I'm feeling very underwhelmed by the whole announcement.

Thats not to say that I am not interested in the console.

Gaming Under Ceej: Is DLC The Future Of Gaming Or A Shady Scam?

I’m not going to lie. I do like the idea that I can purchase video games without ever having to put my trousers on. But, then, it is rather obscene to sell DLC over the internet, which is why I just show up at GameStop, naked as the day I was born. I’ve gotten a few complaints for that, but a lot of phone numbers. Skyler, I’m not avoiding you. I lost your number. My naked body doesn’t have pockets.

There’s a funny thing about DLC. Its lifespan is limited by the whim of the developers. If I go to the store and buy Batman: Arkham City on disc, I have that game forever. Short of forcing their way into my home and taking it by force, the developers can never stop me from playing it. If I made copies and modded my system, I’m even protected from that. Though, to be fair, if they’re already going as far as I have them doing in this incredibly ridiculous scenario, I don’t see why they wouldn’t take the extra effort to destroy every copy and my system.

However, if I decide to purchase the game from the internet instead, I still get the unlimited play time, but only in theory. I mean, if my system spontaneously bursts into flames, as today’s generation consoles have been known to do (why did you think the colloquialisms for these errors always end in “of death”?), I’d be allowed to download it again at no additional charge...

Season's greetings

Season's greetings from CTD, we hope you have a wonderful festive season this year.

We will be back in the new year, with new content and material from Kremlik, Fatal Impurity and Raksha; as well as some possible new faces.

Happy holidays, happier gaming.

Ratchet and Clank HD Trilogy Delayed

Adding to the stack of HD remakes, Insomniac's Ratchet and Clank is due for it's first trilogy of games to be published on the PS3.

Sadly EU players will be waiting a little longer as over Twitter, Insomniac have just announced that the game will be pushed back till June, no reason or date has officially been given so far, despite the fact the date was accidently leaked back in March.

Ah well I guess it's time to break out the PS2 again...

Interview with Trendy Entertainment's Philip Asher

A few weeks ago I had the glorious opportunity, to interview Trendy Entertainments very own Marketing Director Philip Asher. Trendy Entertainment, as you probably know are the masterminds behind the Tower Defence/Action RPG mash up Dungeon Defenders. During the interview we covered not only Trendy's stance on their DLC marketing, but developing and balancing the ever expanding content.

So for those of you who saunter around with your level 70 mage, destroying wave after wave of orcs, prepare for the inside scoop on this years most exciting Tower Defense title.

Enjoy.

3DS receives free wifi in EU

And soon... THE WORLD! (Maybe, I dunno)

As of the last week, 3DS owners can connect wirelessly through over 25,000 Wi-fi zones all over the EU.

In this unprecedented action, there's no really no excuse not to connect online and kick your friend's butts on games such as Mario Kart 7 or Pokemon Rumble Blast!

Granted, you still need to locate your nearest hotspot in order to do so, which is possible through

the Nintendo Hotspot Finder, Nintendo has endeavoured to place the majority of these hotspots in airports, coffee shops, fast food outlets and various other places of business.

Although there have been complaints online about the latency experienced on these new hotspots, it's early days yet. So hopefully we can expect lower latencies with subsequent firmware updates and growing router support for the 3DS' WiFi.

Ubisoft Announce Anno 2070 Expansion Pack - Deep Ocean

On Monday Ubisoft announced a new expansion pack for their 2011 Real-Time-Strategy game Anno 2070. The expansion is titled "Deep Ocean" which aims to expand the underwater construction features of the main game much deeper (place your Inception memes here).

Some of the more notable features include being able to acquire territory without using military force, underwater globalthermal nuclear power plants and a new "Tsunami" disaster. If you want to read about the rest of the features you can head on over to the German Ubisoft forums.

The release for the Deep Ocean expansion pack is set for Autumn, 2012.

Crysis 3: Gameplay Trailer & DirectX11 Support

EA, publishers of Crytek's futuristic shooter Crysis, yesterday released the first gameplay trailer for the latest instalment to join the Crysis series. The trailer shows the beauty of the game's new engine, Cry Engine 3. Fans of the Crysis series will be happy to know that the super soldier shooter is looking as beautiful as ever.

The game is set to continue with the storyline of the last game taking part in New York City which has considerably changed since the last game with plants and wildlife absorbing the streets of the city. The city itself has been encased inside a "Nano Dome" created by one of the game's antagonists, the Cell Corporation. Not much else is known about the game's mechanics apart from the induction of a new weapon, the composite bow. No doubt that there will be other features to explore with the Nano suit and alien technology taking centre stage in the game's previous iterations.

After the outcry from PC Gamers over the "substandard" graphics that appeared in Crysis 2 the development team wanted to ensure that they didn't upset their primary fan base a second time. In an interview with the website Joystiq, the director of  creative development Rasmus Hojengaard announced that the game would be shipping with support for DirectX11 graphics cards. And admitted that "We’d be pretty stupid not to capitalize on the technology we did for that and utilizing that from the get-go."

Hopefully this will keep fans of the series safe in the knowledge that Crytek are not going to make the same mistake twice.

Crysis 3 is due to be released in 2013.

Server load cripples Diablo 3 beta weekend

So, how many people managed to get into the Diablo 3 beta?

I downloaded the beta client over the course of the weekend and my every attempt to log in were met with the disheartening phrase 'Sorry, the servers are busy.'

This is to be expected, of course. But not once did I manage to get in, to be able to pass an opinion on the game itself. I personally, was left very disappointed. Still, this was but a stress-test for Blizzard to indicate the demand the servers shall have to face come May 15th, so we'll just have to wait and see if things have improved on the day.

This seems to echo how poorly handled other Blizzard beta's have been (such as Starcraft 2), with dismally low server allocations, poor communication from official sources and incredibly bugged matchmaking systems.

GAME acquired then requests de-list from the stock exchange

On Sunday a deal was struck to buy what was left of GAME's 333 UK stores and Gamestation outlets. Out of the three names said to be interested in the buy Baker Acquisitions Limited, an entity advised by private investment company OpCapita, has picked up GAME's UK assets.

The group confirmed that there would be no more closures of stores, but has inherited GAME's 85 million debt owed to GAME Group's syndicate of lenders, led by The Royal Bank of Scotland, after paying what has been reported the sum of £1 for the company

April Fooled

Sunday marked the first of April, which as we all know is April Fools Day, which for gamers and news outlets is normally hell in trying to figure out what is real is what isn't.

Here is just two samples of this years chaos.

Assassin's Creed Kinect almost was convincing enough to be a sales pitch on an idea that could become very real in the future expect showing us the downside of not having a large living room in the first place with some epic fails near the end - plus the 'Creed Wii' girl is definitely part of the bloodline with some very handy customised 'hidden blade' Wii remotes.

GAME officially in Administration, CEO leaves, half UK stores close

Update: The actual number of stores reported closed at this moment is 277 stores with 2,104 members of staff losing their jobs :(, a list of closed stores is over at CVG however Crewe isn't listed still and there are a few others not accounted for, so sadly expect this number to be higher

Original Story: Just a few hours ago GAME entered administration with the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers as its administrator this morning "after careful consideration and ceaseless interrogation of every possible alternative".

Both Game.co.uk and Gamestation.co.uk have been taken offline, as well as reportedly nearly half of the 609 UK stores have been closed or closing, including our local one here in Crewe: Our hearts go out to all the staff effected in this matter, either give these guys a hug, cake or a pint (provided you are over the age limit to drink of course) to show how much these guys have done for us all, despite the higher up issues with the company