So I stopped by Data Blitz this evening and bought THE most anticipated game of the decade, Diablo 3. I had to grab ome today as Datablitz and probably other game retailers are selling it for only PhP2,750.

I had to endure the long line to the cashier where I eventually paid and claimed the game, which I literally waited since 2002. I hurried back to my car, smelled the sealed box and unboxed it like a ninja.

The box contains the following:

Diablo 3 Game DVD (runs on Windows or Mac)

3 Guest Passes (which I can give to my friends and let them experience the gameplay – online or offline – until the Skeleton Key)

Quick Game Guide

1 Free Paper Pad

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1. Dead Island 6-minutes Gameplay Preview

The video below is my first attempt to record a gameplay using Fraps. I’m playing Dead Island here with my brother.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Couple of noteworthy things about this game (spoiler free):

1. It has RPG (Role-playing game) elements so expect your character to level up and yourself to select the skills you wish to upgrade.

2. Weapons are high customizable, however it is imperative that get Modification Packs from quests.

3. The initial launch of the game is quite buggy. So if you’re getting this and install it on your PC, be sure to download the latest patch to fix certain bugs.

4. The game looks great! The developers of this game used a system, which they call Multi Layer Damage System where you can actually see real time damage and scars to the tissue of the zombies. What’s even more amazing is how far the project has advanced since this 2007 zombies damage concept trailer below:

Click here to view the embedded video.

5. You will never find a child-zombie as opposed to the emotional trailer that was released this year:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Grab your copy of this game at your favorite video game store here in the Philippines! It’s available for the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. No announcements were made for the official port of the game to Mac. For now, you may port it yourself using CXEX.

If you wish to listen to the beautiful theme of the official trailer of Dead Island, you may listen to it again by clicking this link. It’s composed by Giles Lamb; Sound design by Khal Henderson and Tom Griffiths.

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DISCLAIMER

This review is for the PC version of Dead Rising 2 and for single player mode only.

STORYLINE

In a world where zombies are real, Chuck Greene (the story’s protagonist) a veteran motorcross superstar was caught in a zombie outbreak while in a Terror Is Reality competition, TIR is a game show where all contestants competes against each other using motorcycles armed with chainsaws and rides against hordes of zombies with the winner being the one who has the most kills. It began right after Fortune City succumbed to the zombie multitudes, we find our hero in a bunker along with other survivors, and after watching the news, they all found out out that Chuck is the reason for the outbreak. Now that the whole city overwelmed with zombies, Chuck needs to find his daughter Katey, rescue other survivors, uncover the conspiracies that led to the outbreak and whack countless zombies along the way. With limited amount time, Chuck can easily cry out at the top of his lungs, “SURE! NO PRESSURE!!!”

Click here to view the embedded video.

GAMEPLAY

Dead Rising 2 is a 3rd person action adventure RPG, it can be in single player or coop mode, released by CAPCOM for Microsoft Windows, Playstation 3 & XBox.

You’ll be playing Chuck Greene. After being framed for the zombie outbreak, you must go out and face the zombie infested city in order to gather the necessary proof of your innocence, before the military strike team arrives to rescue all survivors.

[THE GOOD]

NEAT GRAPHICS

- Before continuing, let me ask you this first. If you’re a dedicated gamer, what will be the determining factor that will definitely catch your attention? Altogether now… This game offers a high-definition quality graphics to your eyes content. This means that it is not just goric zombies and splattered blood, but GOOOORRRRICC ZOMBIES and SPLATTERED BLOOD!!! Take note that this game is rated M by the ESRB for matured gamers, so it’s OK for me to say those things.

NICE VOICE OVER

- Along with the neat graphics and animations, it is also backed up with nice dubbing and voice overs. This timely vocalizations brings you inside the game like you’re really a part of the conversation.

UNLIMITED SIDE MISSIONS

- Picture this, when a populated city is overrun by zombies, do you think people suddenly dies? or flee? or for some unknown reason, magically disappears? A BIG NO!!! As you explore the city, you’ll come accross stragglers that you need to convince to come to the safe house, ofcourse, some are easy to win over, some needs certain items (like money or unusual beverages), while the rest are in the custody of resident psychopaths. If you’re a frustrated superhero you’ll find yourself searching every nook and crannies for hard-to-find survivors. However, I will stop you right here and say, “YOU CAN’T PLAY GOD!”. Between the amount of time that you have before the military arrives and your to do list, you only have sufficient time to to save a handful of survivors. You really can’t save everybody… Trust me… I tried… TWICE!

ASSORTMENTS OF WEAPONS

- Now this is a cool feature to discuss. I would like you to stop reading for a while and take a look around your room for potential weapons… All done? That’s the same way how you can find weapons in DR2. Everything you see along the way from the ever popular chainsaws and shotguns, to the average fire axes & sledgehammers, to the extremely weird poker chips, playing cards & dildos (Seriously?!). You can even use trash cans and flower pots and throw it to zombies if you have no weapons at hand or you can combine two weapons to create a more sturdy and a more powerful weapon, take for instance, if you combine a fire axe & a sledgehammer will produce a new weapon called “Defiler”, I assure you that one whack from this nasty piece of armament will send those zombie vermins to kingdom come.

Click here to view the embedded video.

ZOMBIE AI

- What I like most about this game are the zombies. Wait… I know this is a zombie game and it, by default, contains zombies. But throughout the course of the game you’ll notice that each zombie differs from one another, others are more aggressive, others are active only when you approach them while other upon seeing their fellow zombies attack you will follow to create a herd of zombies (these are the scary ones). At the beginning of the game you’ll start with just a few zombies, but as the game progress their numbers increase, as well as, their aggressiveness. So, if you would go out in the open and you’re not careful, you’ll find yourself trapped in the middle of a zombie crowd hungry for a piece of flesh!

[THE BAD]

MORE TIME!!!

- As I’ve mentioned earlier, you are only given ample amount of time per event to do all your household chores before the military arrives. This really sucks, given for instance that you’re a block away from a potential survivor and your daughters guardian texted you that she need her medication or you need to go to the safe house because a reporter wants to talk to you (WTH! can that wait?! A man’s life is just around the corner!). My advise to all you hero wannabes, save as much as you can but don’t expect you can save them all.

SLOW CHARACTER

- We all know that Chuck Greene is a motorcross superstar and a hardass individual who goes out a city full of zombies, right? But that doesn’t hide the fact that he runs like a girl! Most of the time you’ll be screaming and begging Chuck to run faster. With no sprints, and riding carts won’t help… It’s also slow. There are shortcuts but it only gets you half way. The only thing you can rely on are motorcycles, and other display vehicles, the thing is, you have to trek halfway across the city through zombie infested streets to find one, not to mention you have to purchase the keys from the hoodlum pawnshop. So, if you only have a couple of hours left before the military arrives and someone calls for help two blocks away, take my advise and sit this one out.

# OF ZOMBIES VS. SPEED

- In the PC version, as the number of zombies increases, processing speed decreases. As you approach the conclusion where the amount of zombie grows, you’ll experience system lags. It would be best if you stay away from open streets where zombies are thick.

ITEMS REFURBISHES ITSELF

- This is not a major issue, I just find it a little awkward that after you wrecked a location (i.e. took an item, smashed the cash register, break the windows, etc.), by going to the next building and returning back you’ll notice that everything magically returns to its proper place.

[OVERALL]

- Dead Rising 2 is a highly addictive game that you’ll never get tired of playing over and over. It will take you 8 to 10 hours of playtime to finish the game depending on your choices and with the games multi-ending, you’ll be curious as to what will happen if you made the right/wrong decisions. You’ll never be bored, because if you are, you can just fill your inventory with shotguns, granades & defilers (or you can add a chainsaw to your list of weapons for better results ), look for a place where there’s a huge density of zombies (i.e. Open streets, corridors and the arena), and annihilate those zombie cretins to your hearts content while shouting, “DIE! DIE! DIE!”.     For total enjoyment experience combined with stress releasing concept I’ll give Dead Rising 2 a 9 out of 10.

Fin

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Treyarch is back with the first multiplayer actual gameplay trailer of Call of Duty: Black Ops and its packed with lots of super cool things! Here’s my full commentary of the said trailer.

The new game in the Call of Duty franchise indeed packs a lot of noteworthy improvements especially in the Multiplayer side. One of the numerous improvements is the gameplay environment. The latter looks more realistic, shows more minute details and almost lets you experience reality in the game.

The interface and HUD were made over – but do not totally deviate from the over-all design of Modern Warfare 2. Furthermore, character rendering and game physics in this game are still topnotch. Care packages dropped by a Chinook in the trailer looked even more dramatic compared to the former Call of Duty franchise.

Your favorite M16 and FAMAS are back along with the other primary and secondary weapons you liked in MW2. Spanking new weapons and kill streaks will also be available like the explosive tip crossbow and RC bomber below.

New game features will also be available on Black Ops like Kill Cam recorder/controller as shown in the trailer. It looks like this feature will enable gamers to record their kill cams, set preferred transitions and share among their Xbox Live friends. Now, isn’t that cool – a dream come true for braggers and I-did-something-new-today-ers.

Call of Duty: Black Ops will hit the stores in the Philippines on November 2010. Are you getting one? Hit the comments!

Here’s the trailer:

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Hey there Starcraft fans. Starcraft 2 will be officially launched tomorrow, July 27, 2010. Before you buy it, you might want to check out if your computer can run it first!

I checked out if my Asus laptop can run the much awaited installment, and here’s what I got:

You might also want to check it out yourself by going to System Requirements Lab.

Meanwhile, here’s the complete system requirements of Starcraft 2 for your reference:

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Comics and Video Games enthusiasts rejoiced when Capcom and Namco announced Street Fighter X Tekken for PS3 and Xbox 360 platforms. Check out the video teaser below:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Namco will be heading this project and Capcom will tag along with them in surprising both Tekken and Streeth Fighter fans. I really didn’t expect that this will happen, so I was really really surprised and oozed with so much anticipation when my brother tipped me about this.

What kind of gameplay will it embrace then? Except it to be a confluence of both Tekken and Street Fighter. So expect that we’re going to have some fun playing this game with ingredients of Tekken Tag, Marvel vs Capcom 3 and Streeth Fighter 4. Take a look at the gameplay video below:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The 3D elements are truly outstanding! Megaman characters and some Tekken police guys are goofing off and cheering in the background. Character rendering is really top-notch on this first gameplay especially how they rendered Chun Li and Nina Williams.

Expect for some more changes soon thought since the gameplay that was shown in SDCC is the very first one. You know, sometimes the real one is either better or worse than the first one. Still, I believe that this game will truly own other versus-button-smashing games out there.

Now, I reaaaaallly want to see who would win on Chun Li and Ling Xiaoyu match up? What about you? Are you excited for this game? Hit the comments below.

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Friends, countrymen and gamers, lend me your eyes! The World GameMaster Tournament 2010 Finals will be held tomorrow at SM City Cyberzone, and I have hunch that our Filipino representatives will win it… BIG TIME.

Winners of the event will take home cash and computer gaming hardware. Asus is the major sponsor of the event.

The tournamet features 2 games – Street Fighter 4 and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

World GameMaster Tournament Official Games

So, what’s your take on this? Are you coming to attend the event tomorrow? Game on!

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The title says it all – the international trailer of the latest Final Fantasy XIII has been released! Watch it here now!

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Here’s how you can generate your Xbox Live Gamertag Widget. Simply go to Glop.org and simply generate your gamertag widget by filling out required details.

Get your own Gamercard Sig.

Hey, add me up! I know, I’ve got loser points at the moment.

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2010 is LIVE and I bet some of you are waiting for the great games lined up for release this year! Vote for the Most Anticipated Games of 2010 (or even vote for your choice) & grab a free Google Wave invitation now!

Do not forget to type in your name and Google email address after voting so we can send you your GW invitation. Hurry We’ve got 13 more invitations. Click this, if you haven’t voted on the Best Games XBOX 360 Games of 2009.

Take Our Poll

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