This mash-up of genres wears its influences on its sleeve, but it's a very pretty sleeve nonetheless.

PAX may not quite be on par with E3 when it comes to major game announcements, but it’s still hard to get through the weekend without seeing a few new titles in the headlines. One of the more interesting reveals from the show thus far has been Ubisoft’s unveiling of Outland, an artistic platformer from the developer behind Super Stardust HD. Outland combines retro 2D platforming with a number of elements from shoot-em-ups--most noticeably a light-dark dynamic similar to Ikaruga. After hearing about the game yesterday, we took a walk over to the Ubisoft booth, hung a left at HAWX 2, and took a look at the demo being shown for this upcoming downloadable title.

If what they say about first impressions is true, Outland is certainly in good shape. Its slick art design combines stark black platforms with vivid, colorful background scenery. The level we saw had a definite jungle theme to it, with roots curling from the bottom of floating platforms and giant spider creatures skittering along on the ground.

The story diving the game is a simple one: one day you awaken from a strange dream, notice things around you aren’t quite right, and set out on a quest to speak with a shaman who can heal your ills. This sets the stage for a jungle world overrun by mysterious creatures and monsters. Along with the aforementioned spiders, we also saw an imposing boss figure named the Golem. This one-eyed creature towered over the protagonist, wielding a giant club and looking not entirely unlike one of the bosses from Shadow of the Colossus.

What seems like it will ultimately set Outland apart from other pretty 2D platformers is the light-dark dynamic that’s been heavily inspired (to put it politely) by the classic arcade shooter Ikaruga. Essentially, there are enemies, platforms, and hazards in the world that can either be neutral, light, or dark. As the player, you quickly unlock the ability to fully align yourself with either your light side (a pale blue) or dark side (a deep red). In terms of combat, you can only attack enemies of the opposite color (attacking same-colored enemies will wind up hurting you) while absorbing flying projectiles of the same color will heal instead of harm you. The game encourages clever exploration beyond the required path, often making certain moving platforms usable only when you’re aligned with that color.

The shoot-em-up comparisons don’t end at Ikaruga’s light-dark system, either. A lot of areas in the game will unleash what feels very much like a top-down shooter’s idea of ’bullet hell.’ You’ll see waves of flying blips that are actually harmful projectiles. These often come out of the ceiling in semicircles of alternating color, forcing you to both quickly take cover under platforms and rapidly switch sides to keep from getting hurt. Having not played the game, we can’t say how difficult this wind up being in practice, but developer Housemarque assures us that they’re keeping the difficulty accessible for casual players. These bullet hell areas, then, are more an optional challenge for the hardcore players to defeat in order to earn bonus items and collectibles.

All in all, Outland certainly looks like an interesting platformer. It may wear its influences on its sleeve, but the combination of different genres is at least creative in its own right. We’re hoping to get a chance to play it soon to see just how these different elements come together. Keep an eye out for more coverage.

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We dive into this futuristic survival-adventure game and use the environment in clever ways to stay alive.

A sinking ship would definitely rank up there as one of the worst places to be left in and have to fight for survival. Usually if you're fighting aliens, zombies or ghosts, you have some sort of weapon or at least an open area to keep your back against. However in Hydrophobia, we started out with having to scramble to another level just to ensure we have enough air, and when we were faced with terrorists, all we were given was a tiny stun gun. Thankfully, you're not limited to the stun gun for the rest of the game, but with limited weaponry, you are forced to use the environment to your advantage, which is the purpose of Hydrophobia.

Looks like there is no chance of getting into some dry clothes.

Who's Making It: The game is being developed by Dark Energy, located in Manchester and Microsoft is publishing the title.

What It Looks Like: Hydrophobia is set 30 years into the future aboard a giant vessel called Queen of the World. Like the Titanic of the future (after it hit the iceberg), you are walking around metal corridors and winding staircases, swimming up elevator shafts that are usually flooded with water. What's interesting is that you can control how much water you want in your area by keeping certain doors closed or to make things more interesting, open up the floodgates.

What You Do: As the reluctant heroine Kate, you are a system's engineer who is onboard when the terrorists attack. Your goal is to survive and take out the enemy but you're not exactly a fighter. The game is designed to highlight more exploration than combat. The ship is massive, and you'll encounter obstacles that you'll need to find a way to get past, as your world is crumbling down around you. When you are eventually armed with a weapon, it's like a third-person shooter with a cover system. We were told that there would be semi-automatic weapons later, but with the stun gun, it was difficult to keep enemies down unless we used the environment to properly dispose of them.

How It Plays: When in combat, you use the right bumper to draw your weapon and the right trigger to fire. A white dot on screen is used to aim, and a red target reticle will appear when there is something that can be shot at, whether it be another person or a box or explosive barrel. What's convenient is that while you're maneuvering through water that is almost waist high, there are plenty of barrels to aim your stun gun at to cause an explosion to finish off the terrorists, as well as create a mini tidal wave in a cramped corridor. There is never really a swarm of enemies coming at you from what we've seen, but carefully placed oil barrels can easily dispose of a group after they explode.

The cover system allows you to press A to hug one of the nearby walls. It's not the kind of game that you'd want to run out with guns blazing, so you need to sit back and carefully think about how you want to proceed. To knock out an enemy we had to charge our gun first before firing, otherwise you're only sending mini shockwaves with the stun gun, which didn't seem to do much except annoy the enemy. Once you do get them on their back (we were hoping that they'd drown), they'd get right back up again after a few moments, so we had to either fire at some oil barrels or send sparks flying by shooting the electrical switches on the wall.

In our demo we were given mission objectives, such as tracking down a key in order to progress to the next area. It seemed simple enough, but we had to swim through flooded chambers to get to it. You are given a map to help you navigate the enormous ship, and as you're exploring, you're playing with the constant flow of water that is spilling in from just about everywhere. You can fire at windows to let more water in, or leave it the way it is and try to handle the situation with the current water level. There are situations where you'll be swimming through completely flooded halls, so you'll need to look for patches of light and head up for some air.

What They Say: Hydrophobia is the first game developed using Dark Energy's revolutionary HydroEngine, the world's only full computation fluid dynamics engine for games. This incredible technology allows water and other liquids to flow and behave completely realistically, resulting in the most dynamic and dramatic gameplay you've ever seen.

Take cover when you need to.

What We Say: Mingled with our own fear of drowning, Hydrophobia was an intense experience (and yes, we know it's called aquaphobia). Between looking for pockets of air to make sure we could make it to the next door, Kate also had to keep an eye out for terrorists, who are armed with much better weapons than we were. The constant flow of water and changing environment was impressive. It forces you to rethink your strategy because you may have fired at an oil barrel and caused it to explode, but now the burning oil is heading toward you. It's good to see some variety when it comes to survival games so look for Hydrophobia when it is released on September 29.

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We grapple, leap, and uppercut our way through this retro sequel.

Bionic Commando Rearmed played like a love letter to a bygone era of 8-bit platformers, adding a stylish coat of paint to a game whose overall structure felt firmly rooted in the 1980s. Of course, there was a perfectly good reason for that: Bionic Commando Rearmed was a remake of an NES classic. Rearmed 2, being a sequel to a remake, doesn’t have that same immediate connection to a decades-old predecessor. This has given Capcom and developer Fatshark the creative leeway to make some changes and additions to the original formula, several of which we’ve just had the chance to experience in the game’s latest hands-on demo.

The most noticeable one is your character’s ability to jump. Bionic Commando was a game that revolved around a grapple mechanic, having players run along and swing across gaps rather than leap over them. Grappling is still at the heart of the experience in Rearmed 2, but now you can move around in a way that feels, to put it simply, more natural. Levels are still designed in such a way that you’ll need to thoroughly master that grapple mechanic to get by, as well as seek out new weapons to unlock special sequestered goodies a la Metroid, so the addition of jump feels like less of a game changer and more of a slight breath of fresh air.

A number of new attack abilities are in store for players, as well. You can now do a sort of death from above attack when leaping from high platforms down to enemies below, which is also a mechanic that plays a role in progressing through puzzles whenever you’re trapped behind a stone wall. You can unlock a powerful uppercut ability that can instantly take care of weak enemies or let you quickly launch an explosive barrel at the tougher ones.

Like the original Rearmed, the sequel will also have a co-operative multiplayer mode that allows two players to play simultaneously. You share lives and unlockables, and there’s no friendly fire, so there’s not much of a chance to grief your teammate. While the level design doesn’t change to require team-focused progression through puzzles, there are a number of enemy types that require you to work as a tight pair rather than let one person do all the work. You’ll have the chance to play it alone or with a friend when Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 is released in early 2011.

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We try out the final DLC chapter of Dragon Age: Origins. Warning: this story includes spoilers.

Dragon Age: Origins swept thousands of would-be adventurers away with an epic storyline that told the tale of a land torn apart by war, and the role of your character, a member of the powerful Grey Wardens legion, to bring peace. Over the course of that adventure, your character met the likes of knights, thieves, traitors, and faithful hounds. Your character also met Morrigan, a mysterious witch whose powerful sorcery made her a valuable ally but whose actions’well, let's just say she didn't always share your goals throughout your journey. Over the course of the original game and its ensuing downloadable content updates, Morrigan vanished from the world on her own uknown quest, and in Witch Hunt, the final DLC update for Dragon Age, you'll eventually track her down and be able to get some answers out of her. Please note that this story contains spoilers, both about the original game, and about the DLC itself.

Witch Hunt is described as being somewhere between 90 minutes to two hours long, and once again lets you either create a new Grey Warden character, or to import your existing character to play as. Since the DLC focuses on Morrigan, if you chose to involve your character in a romantic relationship with her, your dialogue options when you finally track her down will change, and if you decided to have a child with her, your speech choices will also be different.

True warriors can win any battle with a faithful hound at their side.

In any case, Witch Hunt will let you revisit several locales from the original game, such as Flemeth's old home in the swamp and the Circle of Mages (from the original game's mage origin story), while meeting up to three new companions who can join your party. We began the adventure outside of Flemeth's home, searching for clues as to Morrigan's whereabouts and were greeted by the first companion, a Mabari hound (who, if you've imported a character who played through the original game, will be your original dog character, or will be an all-new companion if you're using a new character to play the DLC). After being joined by the faithful hound, we entered the hovel to find the female elf warrior Ariane who also hunted Morrigan, since the sorceress had apparently stolen away an ancient elven tome from her tribe. After striking a quick truce with the elf (who became our second companion), we then made our way to the mage's circle--both to research "eluvian," the topic of the mysterious elven book and also to meet the DLC's third companion, the mageling Finn.

Since our time with the DLC was limited, we skipped ahead to a few key points in the game, including a new boss battle with a new monster, the "varterral" (otherwise known as "the strider")--a powerful critter that will appear in Dragon Age 2 (just like how the previous DLC update, Golems of Amgarrak, also contained a monster that will appear in the sequel). The strider is an enormous, creepy-crawly critter that resembles a giant, spindly-legged spider made of driftwood. This giant creature has numerous abilities that can incapacitate your party members and also has a challenging habit of leaping into the air if it's getting too beaten up to escape your frontline fighters. Thankfully, we were playing a pre-loaded save game with characters that BioWare helpfully advanced to extremely high levels, so while the battle was a close one, it wasn't impossible.

We then skipped ahead to our final saved games--saved games for characters, some of whom had romanced Morrigan, others of whom hadn't. These last saved games were set just before the DLC's conclusion--at the moment where the party catches up with Morrigan and the main character can interrogate her. It seems that Morrigan has discovered a fully-functional eluvian--the magic mirrors from the original game that can potentially act as portals to another world, though to the enchantress's touch, the surface of the mirror rippled like water.

Goodbye, Morrigan.

Despite the fact that we're basically spoiling the ending of the DLC in this story (and with it, the saga of the original Dragon Age), you can take comfort in the fact that Morrigan was her usual cryptic self, and generally avoided giving a straight answer to nearly all of our questions. When asked about her intentions, she simply replied that she had much to do that required her to acquire power over time, and that her adopted mother Flemeth was the real threat (and depending on whether you elected to kill Flemeth, you can take a slightly different dialogue choice here). When asked about the child, Morrigan says only that the child is somewhere safe, and being prepared for "what is to come." After barely giving you any kind of answers to your questions, you must then bid the witch farewell, though how you choose to end your meeting with her is up to you.

Witch Hunt will be released this Tuesday, September 7.

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We fend off the Brad-obsessed Japanese school girls in Twisted Pixel's upcoming Xbox Live Arcade game.

After The Maw and Splosion Man, indie developer Twisted Pixel has been hard at work on their next action-platformer, Comic Jumper: The Adventures of Captain Smiley for Xbox Live Arcade. It looks to follow in Splosion Man's footsteps in terms of over-the-top ridiculousness (in a good way), and at the 2010 Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle, they not only announced a release date, but they also were showing off the new manga level that they had been talking about since E3. For our last demo of Comic Jumper, go here.

Who's Making It: Twisted Pixel are the developers behind Comic Jumper and Microsoft will be publishing it.

What It Looks Like: That depends on what level you're playing in. The black and white manga level that was being shown is a tongue in cheek take on shoujo manga, which directly translates into "little girls." The hand-drawn art style is very much what you would expect in this type of manga, full of girls with ponytails, short skirts and plenty of hearts and bubbles. It's an interesting change of pace to say the least.

What You Do: Captain Smiley also undergoes a bit of a transformation from level to level. In this particular one, he's rockin' the spikey anime hairdo and wielding a sword that is much to large for anyone his size to wield. That doesn't matter though, because when he's not swinging his massive weapon, he's firing a never-ending stream of hearts and bubbles into girls who are completely boy crazy. In this demo, two girls NaNa and CoCo have kidnapped a guy named Brad because he is oh-so-cute so Captain Smiley is off to rescue him.

How It Plays: This particular level changes up the gameplay as you progress from right to left (just like manga!) There are some side-scrolling portions of the game where you can do your melee attacks and use your weapon of love. As you progress through the Japanese high school, you'll move into areas where the game takes over and it becames a rail shooter, and you use the analog stick to move the reticle and fire with the right trigger. You still have the freedom to shuffle around the screen though, and use the left trigger to jump.

The boss at the end is a giant squishy squirrel teddy bear hybrid with big dark eyes and six limbs. Its form of attack is to cry, so you're running around dodging huge tear drops. Do we really need to say more?

What They Say: If you liked Splosion Man, you're going to love this one.

Better do something quick before you're kissed to death.

What We Say: It definitely looks like Comic Jumper is going the quirky and silly route because even the premise of the game is just plain goofy. You're playing as a super hero who isn't doing so well in his own comic, so he asks his creators (Twisted Pixel) to help him out a bit. Cameos from the development staff make an appearance when you do special attacks. It probably doesn't get much weirder than that, but then again, we haven't played through the entire game yet.

Look for our review of Comic Jumper: The Adventures of Captain Smiley when it is released on October 6.

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You read that right. The video game equivalent of the walking dead is playable here at PAX 2010.

We'll spare you any history lessons on Duke Nukem Forever. If you follow video games at all, you likely know the long, rocky, infamous--and did we say long?--history behind this first-person shooter. All you need to know is that it's actually playable here at PAX 2010. Granted, as you'd expect, there's quite a line to see it. But if there was ever a game where a lengthy queue was appropriate, it's this one. CEO of Gearbox Randy Pitchford certainly knows. "I heard the line outside was 13 years long," Pitchford joked while giving a presentation on how new developer Gearbox picked up the project after 3D Realms collapsed last year.

To give a quick summary, Pitchford described his personal attachment to the franchise (Duke Nukem 3D was the first game he worked on before forming his own studio) as well as the reason publisher 2K Games trusted Gearbox to salvage the project ("we brought them a megahit with Borderlands"). But it was a quick introduction, followed by a new trailer and the opportunity for everyone there to get some hands-on time with a couple of different levels.

The trailer was Duke at his ridiculous best, punching giant aliens below the belt, spouting one-liners, and taking more than a few self-referential jabs at himself. After that, it was time to play the game. The demo started off simply enough: You're standing in front of a urinal in a men's room with the screen politely directing you to pull the right trigger to begin urinating. This opening scene sets the table rather appropriately for a brief but utterly absurd demo. A few seconds later, you walk up to some EDF forces in a locker room drawing plans to deal with the current alien invasion on a whiteboard. One soldier--the only one left standing amid a number of mangled survivors--invites you to offer your advice, and after a little first-person whiteboard scribbling by the player, that soldier remarks something to the effect of, "That's a great plan! If we had done that, that guy over there would still have his arm!’"Pause. "And at least one of his balls."

Duke, being a man of action, quickly runs through the tunnels of this football stadium--it turns out that's where the demo starts--and out onto the field. Standing on the 50-yard line is a giant one-eyed alien monster called the Cycloid. Fortunately, Duke has just picked up a rocket launcher called the Devastator. Using this handy little weapon, you run all over the rain-soaked field dodging the boss's attacks while occasionally firing rockets at his single, solitary eye. After a couple of minutes, the beast is felled, and Duke celebrates by ripping out his eye and kicking a field goal with it.

After this, the game's first level, we were quickly transported to the 15th level. This one begins in some arid canyons with Duke cruising along in his signature monster truck. The controls are simple: just pull the right trigger to accelerate and hit the B button to handbrake around a corner. This sequence seemed like a bit of a palate cleanser, as there wasn't a whole lot of challenge--just cruise along, look cool, and splatter the occasional pig alien too stupid to get out of your way. But you run out of gas before arriving at a small canyon village and have to do on-foot battle against a bunch of ugly aliens.

To help even the odds, the game scatters a few useful guns around the little town. There's the railgun, which comes in handy for remote sniping; the shrink ray, which turns your enemies into tiny things that are almost too adorable to kill; and a turret gun for dealing with a landing enemy spaceship. Unfortunately, we weren't able to progress past said spaceship before the allotted demo time was over. But we'll go ahead and assume there were aliens, guns, and one-liners to be found after a successful completion. Call it a hunch.

If there's one thing that surprised us about the demo, it's this: Duke Nukem Forever is pretty darn fun for a game with such a tumultuous development. The comic timing was impressive, the guns felt satisfying, and the graphics were quite pleasing to look at. Of course, this is a Duke Nukem game through and through, so there are some inherent elements to it that will instantly turn some people off. But pick up a controller, spend a few minutes with it, and you'll be surprised at how well it has turned out. Whether the rest of the game can follow suit is something we're eager to see. Stay tuned for more.

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A pair of cute robots star in Valve's team-focused twist on the Portal formula.

According to GLaDOS, Portal 2's dry-witted antagonist, scientific achievement is all about cooperation. That's why one of history's greatest scientific teams is the duo of "Albert Einstein and his cousin Terry." Of course, it's pretty obvious she's lying through her robot teeth on that one. But what would Portal be without a villain spouting out hilarious bits of grossly inaccurate misinformation at every turn? That's just Portal. But all this cooperation business? Well, that's certainly new.

Fortunately Valve is here at PAX 2010 to explain what co-op is all about, as this new feature was the focus of the developer's latest Portal 2 demo. To put it in context, this mode is one of the many new ways Portal 2 is expanding on its predecessor. In addition to a single-player story that Valve claims will last about twice as long as the first Portal, the co-op mode will clock in at roughly the same length--making for an overall package that's supposedly four times as large as the original Portal.

Co-op tells a parallel story to the single-player mode, with a pair of new robotic protagonists simply named Blue and Orange. They're an oddly cute pair, one squat and one oblong, looking almost like a robotic Bert and Ernie. The two players can interact with each other in a variety of ways that range from critical to solving puzzles all the way to almost entirely nonsensical. The latter includes the ability to wave at one another, or just simply start dancing in celebratory glee.

But as hard as it may be to hear, dancing alone won't solve puzzles. To solve puzzles, you'll need to master the new co-op mechanics. We were shown a few examples of ways the two players will have to interact with each other to progress through GLaDOS' increasingly devious death traps. One very basic option is a paint tool that lets one player tag a surface in order to indicate to his or her teammate that this is the place where you need to drop a portal. According to Valve, this is to alleviate the vague gesturing and eventual frustrated shouting that tends to creep up whenever two players are trying to tell each other where to go in an online game.

Beyond simply tagging walls and surfaces, you can now work together by combining your portals to send one player to areas he wouldn't normally be able to reach on his own. As one example, Valve showed us how infinite falling can work in a co-op scenario: Player B sets up two portals above each other and lets Player A fall infinitely between the two. Then, Player B carefully aims and shoots a portal onto a distant wall to launch Player A--with all that built-up momentum--across a pit of deadly goo and onto a safe ledge. There were times in the first game when you could do something like this, but infinite falling was almost always too disorienting to use strategically. But with a friend at your side, it's suddenly a mechanic that can be used quite a bit more often.

Adding more complexity are some of the new objects you can interact with in the world. One we were shown was a reflector cube designed to reflect the path of deadly lasers. These come in handy whenever the door leading to your goal is powered down, making it necessary to guide laser beams to laser receptacles to power the door back up. One player drops the cube in a certain location, while another drops portals around to carefully guide the laser beam along. The trick, of course, is making sure you don't accidentally zap your buddy with a deadly laser beam along the way.

Everything we were shown suggested a very promising follow-up to the original Portal. This new co-op mode is looking a bit more complex and heavy on mechanics, so it could very well provide a much steeper learning curve. But between GLaDOS' reliably laugh-worthy dialogue--and there was plenty of it--and the sense of accomplishment that goes along with solving those puzzles, we'll go ahead and assume that the steeper climb will be worth it. You can expect to see Portal 2 arrive on February 9.

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We get our hands on this soon-to-be-released downloadable content for Mass Effect 2.

BioWare's space opera sequel Mass Effect 2 has already offered players hours of hybrid shooter and role-playing adventure, but the developer isn't done yet. The next downloadable content for the game, Lair of the Shadow Broker, is described by BioWare as the "most premium DLC" for the game yet and will be the "richest in scope," since it not only will include five new levels (of which one is open-ended), but will also introduce content that will actually start bridging the gap between Mass Effect 2 and the next game in the series. The DLC will be released next week and will let you reconnect with an old friend, Dr. Liara T'soni, the blue-skinned asari researcher from the first game with whom you, as Commander Shepard, could have a romantic relationship. This time around, the good doctor ends up in a whole heap of trouble with the crime lord known as the Shadow Broker--the mysterious figure who has been referenced in both Mass Effect games--and it's up to you to rescue her. Please be advised that this story may contain minor spoilers.

Lair of the Shadow Broker opens with an ugly police scene.

Lair of the Shadow Broker takes place during the main Mass Effect 2 game on the planet Illium and begins with Shepard receiving a note from Liara to meet her at her home. Obviously, if you decided to have that special relationship with Liara in the first game and have imported your saved character to Mass Effect 2 to play the DLC, your interactions with Liara will be different. In any case, after reading the message, you can transport yourself immediately to her lodgings, which have been ransacked and covered by far-flung-future police tape (digital light displays with a scrolling ticker that reads "Police Line: Do Not Cross"), with Liara herself nowhere in sight. The local authorities were already prowling through the wreckage and demanded we leave the area, though a high-ranking asari agent, a Spectre (the special operatives of the Citadel Council, like Shepard) named Tela Vasir, pulled rank and cleared us to enter the apartment.

In a brief conversation with Vasir, we learned that Liara had apparently fled the scene moments ago, but we deduced that she must have left a note, or at least some clues, behind. After briefly searching her apartment, we found a picture, keyed to Shepard's identity, which changed to a landscape of an alien planet whose relics were part of the doctor's collection. We then scanned each relic until we found a hidden data disc with a recorded transmission of Liara conversing with an underground contact about the Shadow Broker's next move at the Dracon Travel Center, a huge downtown high-rise. The transmission ended with both Liara and her contact spooked by the sound of a break-in and both characters fleeing downtown.

We immediately transitioned over to the building--by way of a loading screen--with our team, while Vasir hopped into her hovercar to cover the building from the roof down. Our party entered the building to find not only that it had been blown up by explosives, but also that dozens of its employees had been gunned down by professional mercenaries whom we eventually encountered in the bombed-out office space, ducking down beneath the partial-cover flaming desks and torn-up computer terminals.

We finally made our way to the top and were just too late to save the informant from being shot, though Vasir was on the scene, claiming that she, too, had been too late and that the Shadow Broker's henchmen had already fled. Because we hadn't seen the shot ourselves, we found the agent's story to be highly suspicious, and moments later, our suspicions were confirmed when Liara herself emerged from the shadows with a gun trained on the Spectre, accusing her of murdering the contact and raiding her apartment. At this point, Vasir attempted to make a dramatic escape, finally leaping into her hovercar to escape into the Illium night.

High-speed car chases await you in this new DLC.

Our party leaped into the nearest vehicle, a hovering taxi, and gave chase as part of Mass Effect 2's new car chases, which act a bit like a futuristic arcade racer with a Z-axis. Vasir's vehicle appeared onscreen with a bright-red marker and left a bright-red contrail, so she was easy to track, although the underhanded agent also had explosive mines that she left floating behind her that threw our own vehicle off track. Since our own vehicle didn't have any weapons (it was a taxi, after all), we couldn't do much other than try to follow Vasir around every tight turn and not slam into oncoming traffic. Fortunately, the game autosaved several times over the course of the chase, so it wasn't frustrating. Finally, the chase ended when Vasir had a head-on collision and went spinning out of control. We pursued the agent and leaped out of our vehicle to pursue on foot, at which point our play session ended.

Lair of the Shadow Broker will be available this Tuesday, September 7.

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We spend some more time in the troubled world of Albion in Lionhead's upcoming role-playing sequel.

While we just saw Fable III a few weeks ago, logging in a chunk of time from the start of the game, Microsoft offered us another opportunity to spend more time with the game at its Washington offices. As we've noted previously, the latest entry in the role-playing series leans into the theme of choices--great and small--and how they affect the world. Our time with the game let us cover some of the territory we just saw, albeit tightened up some, and also take a more exploratory route through the game.

The early stretch of our time with Fable III played out as before with players being given the choice to pick their gender and familiarize themselves with the current state of Albion, where things start to go poorly pretty quickly. Once the setup is complete, the game still keeps its training wheels on for a bit as you're guided to some set locations and directed through the start of some of the main story quests. However, once you've cleared those required to set up the story and introduce you to the concept of followers and the Road to Rule leveling system, you're free to move along at your own pace.

Your trusty canine buddy is back and always eager to direct you to loot--both obvious and hidden--so you can go exploring for a while if you like. If you're the more devoted sort, you can invest a good amount of time mingling with the various locals you'll meet in towns and other places to build relationships with them that yield guild seals. These are Fable III's nearest equivalent to experience points. Not only does this help with moving through the various gates along the Road to Rule that require a certain number of followers and seals, but it also makes new quests available to you that are specific to building your relationship with a particular character.

If you're feeling more entrepreneurial, you can take on various jobs and make some cash you can use to get a house, set up a shop, or get yourself some nice clothes. But, if you're a no-nonsense linear-gameplay-loving type, you can choose to bypass the side stuff and work your way through the story, which appears to give you just enough followers and guild seals to keep you moving along through the Road to Rule.

However, if you opt to stick to the central story religiously and don't let yourself get sidetracked, you may regret it. Your guild seal count will force you to make some choices about how to upgrade your character, as many upgrades will require more seals than you'll have if you try to tear through the game. We learned fairly quickly that it's probably in your best interest to pick up every upgrade you can on the Road to Rule to ensure you're buffed up enough to deal with the mobs of enemies you'll encounter. Speaking of enemies, the revamped combat system works amazingly well, even in the work-in-progress version of the game we tried. Combos are key to battle and the three-button system keeps them attainable. Juggling straight melee combat with magic and firearms is a very satisfying experience, thanks to the charge moves you can work into the mix. As before, the tactics you favor will help your character evolve in a specific direction, which lets you buff up in the areas that are central to how you play.

The visuals in the work-in-progress version of the game we played were coming together well. Albion is a picturesque place teeming with variety. The different environments we've seen strike a nice balance between new and familiar. The world has a more ’lived in’ look to it this time out, which we expect is due to all the oppression going on, though we did come across some places that still had some natural beauty to them. The residents and your chosen character are an expressive bunch that come alive as you try out whatever interaction options you have on them. Animation on your character and the various non-player characters you'll come across tend to be where you'll find the game's broadest stabs at humor so far.

In terms of effects, there's quite a bit going on during combat, thanks to the different options open to you. Magic is obviously where you'll find the flashiest effects; the fire and shock spells we saw were impressive and tossed around a good amount of particles and lighting. Melee and gunplay, while not quite as showy as magic, featured more cinematic flourishes tied to camera angles and more subtle lighting to reflect your charged attacks. The unfinished version of the game ran fairly smoothly, although there were the occasional hitches that are to be expected when dealing with an unfinished game.

Based on these recent sessions with the game, we're anxious to spend more time with Fable III. The various refinements and overhauls Lionhead's done give the game a decidedly different feel from its predecessors. While this has changed the game's pacing and balance to a more action-oriented direction, it doesn't appear to have diminished the fun to be had in single-player. We're also very anxious to see how the experience we had is affected by the multiplayer elements. We'll be curious to see how the whole promising package fares when the game ships next month for the Xbox 360.

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Gambling on matches and a suite of expanded customization options are some of the highlights from our time playing Black Ops online.

With Call of Duty: Black Ops, developer Treyarch is taking the venerable first-person shooter franchise into the secretive world of Cold War-era special operations. Thus far, we’ve seen single-player demos ranging from an intercontinental flight by SR-71 Blackbird aircraft to subterranean tunnel combat in the throes of a Vietnam war zone. Tonight, however, Treyarch and Activision gave the press its first look at the game’s online multiplayer side--that leveling-up system of persistent unlockables that’s long been a hallmark of the series. With additions ranging from training tools to ease in new players to a points gambling system for the hardcore bunch, it’s clear that Treyarch is casting a wide net with the new features it has conjured up for Black Ops multiplayer.

The most daring change to the leveling and experience points formula that Modern Warfare first introduced to the series is a new currency system. In addition to earning XP the good old-fashioned way, you’ll now be able to earn an in-game currency called CP, or CoD points. Depending on the game mode you’re playing, you’ll be rewarded in XP, CP, or both. On a basic level, CP lets you manually unlock new weapons, attachments, and perks a la carte, rather than follow the preset upgrade tree we’ve seen in previous Call of Duty titles. But in addition to paying CP for a new red dot sight five levels before you would normally unlock it, you can elect to gamble your CP in a new collection of game modes called Wager Matches.

These new modes--four in total--require players to risk some of their CP at the beginning of the match with the potential to win it all back and then some at the end of the match. The thing is that only the top three players in the match win money--the rest go away empty handed. In addition to this gambling mechanic, the four Wager Match modes offer an interesting twist on standard Call of Duty multiplayer modes. In One in the Chamber, each player starts the match with three lives and a handgun loaded with a single bullet. Killing players lets you pick up their guns, but if you waste your bullet, you’ll have to run around with only melee attacks. The action is very tense, and conserving ammo in such a way couldn’t feel like more of a departure from the usual run-and-gun style for which has the series has become known.

We also played a Wager Match mode called Gun Game. This one starts each player off with a single handgun as well, but the difference becomes apparent very quickly. With each kill in Gun Game, you suddenly pull out a new, more effective gun--essentially moving up a tier. There are 20 tiers in total, and the first to get a kill with each gun is the winner. However, when you get knifed, you’ll actually drop back a tier, so it’s possible to lose progress (especially if one of your enemies is hell-bent on griefing everyone). In our experience, the endgame strategy in a Gun Game match can differ wildly from its early moments, as the sniper rifles you get when you reach about tier 15 require a more patient shot than the shotguns and automatic weaponry you wield earlier. When you add this to the fact that you’ve got money on the line, it’s easy to see how some of these Wager Match modes could feel very intense.

If this new currency and gambling system is more suited for the hardcore Call of Duty player, the new Combat Training mode seems geared to lure in those who would normally be intimidated by such complex mechanics. For the first time ever in the series, players will be able to set up a match against AI-controlled opponents to learn the ropes of a competitive multiplayer match. These can be played either solo or with friends. Combat Training lets you learn the ins and outs of each map, as well as get a feel for the game’s various weaponry--all without the fear of being killed constantly by high-level human opponents.

Another new feature that offers similarly educational potential is the Theater. Like the Halo 3 mode of the same name, Theater automatically saves your replays and gives you the chance to go back and watch them from any perspective in the match. You can even record certain segments within the replay, customize the transitions, and turn them into a highlight reel of gleeful kills. All of these replays can be shared online, giving you the chance to either learn from the masters or simply boast your triumphs to friends.

Neutral to any ’hardcore’ or ’casual’ designations is the expanded suite of customization tools in Black Ops. It doesn’t matter how good you are or how well you know a map’s check points--all you need is an artistic streak to appreciate these additions. The big one is the emblem editor. Modern Warfare 2 introduced the idea of player emblems--those little graphics that players could choose to appear next to their names on the onscreen menus and ’killed by’ notifications. In Black Ops, you can design your own emblem from scratch with a system similar to Forza Motorsport’s multilayered vinyl editor. After you’ve made your own custom graphic--we elected to go with a bunny rabbit with an imposing skull for a face--you can then choose to slap that emblem onto your gun for all to see in battle. The same goes for your clan tag, as well. Other options include expanded camo patterns and even customizable reticles. If you’ve ever wanted to grief opponents by killing them and making sure the kill cam they see of your actions shows a smiley face aiming reticle taking their lives, well, now you can do that.

Of course, Call of Duty online multiplayer is still, at its heart, about visiting exotic locales and finding new and exciting ways to shoot people in the face. So naturally, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention some of the gear and maps we experienced during our hands-on time. One of the fun new bits of weaponry is an honest-to-goodness flamethrower gun attachment, and we had a fun time roasting enemies with it. There’s also a Valkyrie missile that lets you fire your weapon and manually guide the ordinance directly to your target, whether that’s through windows or around corners. In terms of map offerings, we played in three different locations: a snowy Russian mountaintop called Summit, a Vietnamese urban war zone called Cracked, and a fairly standard warehouse map called Radiation.

There’s certainly a lot to the multiplayer in Black Ops. We could go on about various and sundry observations we spied, like the equipment you can drop to wreak havoc on your enemy's radar or the minature RC car rigged with explosives you can unlock as a kill streak, but we might be here all day. So suffice it to say, there’s quite a bit going on here--but fortunately, it's not all added complexity purely for the most diehard of players. Still, exactly how all these new features wind up coming together is something that only time will tell, but we’re optimistic about a lot of these features. When you throw in the training tools to help ease the transition, a lot of these things look even more appealing. You can expect to see more Black Ops coverage leading up to the game’s November 9 release date.

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We check out the new features, tables, and incentives to keep those pinball paddles going.

Pinball lovers will have more ways of showing off their high scores with Pinball FX 2, a new platform that has been developed by Zen Studios. We call it a platform because the first thing we should point out is that Pinball FX 2 is not a game on its own but is free to download, and you can purchase tables after you've downloaded the game. This allows you to play your original Pinball FX tables that you bought for free, with upgraded graphics and physics, as well as score some new achievements. If you've never played Pinball FX before, you can always purchase and download the original tables, as well as the new ones designed for this platform. The reason Zen Studios went with a platform instead of a new game is that each Xbox Live Arcade game is limited to a set number of achievements and gamer points. By creating this platform, Zen Studios allows you to give each table you download its own set of achievements and gamer points; thus, you can continue racking up those achievements with each new table.

There will be four new tables available at launch, with the option to download the nine tables from the previous game. Trial versions are available for each table, so you can test them out before committing. Some new features that have been added include a superscore, as well as a wizard score. Your superscore represents your overall performance across the entire game. This includes tournament performances, as well as scores from all the tables, new and old. Tournaments are held for a fixed amount of time where you can play a specific table as many times as you want for the highest score. By performing well, you'll get a bonus toward your superscore. A wizard score combines the superscores of all of your friends, which is meant to encourage people to build up a network of friends so that they can play with others. Gamer pics and avatar customization will also unlock as you build up your score. To keep an eye on the competition, you can now select other players on the leaderboard and see what kind of scores they have accumulated. As you play, you can have game challenges appear to let you know how close you are to increasing your superscore or see who has passed your score so you're constantly being updated.

Hot seat multiplayer mode was featured before, but now you can play it across all tables. There is also split-screen multiplayer, so you and a friend can sit on a couch and play simultaneously to see who can reach the target point first. You have unlimited balls, but penalties can be set so each time you lose a ball, your score shrinks by a percentage. It's harsh, but it also ensures that you're not being sloppy. You can still play with up to four players online.

There's a rule sheet for each table where you can check out the different game modes, missions, and targets. There are still secrets to discover, but the bulk of the goals are included. You can customize the controls to whatever scheme you're comfortable with, as well as go into the operator menu to adjust the pitch of the machine. You can also customize the table's rules and difficulty settings, similar to a real table. Other small changes include new camera angles, so you can zoom out, and the ball trails that were featured in Zen Pinball have been added, but it's optional. After listening to player feedback, you can now enter your initials when you achieve a high score on a specific machine.

More tables, more points!

Pinball FX 2 looks to be an ideal way for pinball aficionados to get the tables they want and score some additional achievements. Look for it when it is released on the Xbox Live Marketplace on October 13.

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We log time with the very beginning of Platinum Games' frenetic shooter.

We've gotten peeks here and there at Sega's upcoming action title Vanquish over the past few months, but not an opportunity for a proper sit-down with the game. That recently changed, as we got the opportunity to spend some quality time with Platinum Games' latest project to see how all the bits we've seen in the past come together as a whole. Playing through a work-in-progress PlayStation 3 version of the game, we were able to try out the first eight sections of the introductory chapter. Long story short, the whole thing painted an interesting picture of what to expect from this frenetic action game.

Vanquish opens up by introducing you to the main character, Sam, as he tests his battle suit. It sets up the story with a lengthy cinematic that shows a violent assault against the city of San Francisco that makes use of an orbiting space station and some devastating technology. It seems Russian forces have taken over a satellite that's harvesting solar energy, and they've taken some key scientists hostage and have issued threats to the world. Your role--as government agent Sam, who has been outfitted with a state-of-the-art battle suit prototype--is to go in to the satellite, stop the Russians, and rescue the scientists. The premise isn't quite Die Hard, since you'll be joined by military forces on your quest, but because you're wearing a one-of-a-kind battle suit, you still have to deal with the brunt of the problem.

The opening level follows Sam as the military lets itself into the space station with a good old-fashioned space assault. The run to the space station interior mixes up dramatic set-piece cinematics, such as bulkheads exploding and some of your compatriots being sucked out into space, with segments where you control Sam and head toward the station interior. Once you get inside, your main concern will be dealing with a variety of mechanical enemies. The main enemies you'll be going up against initially are humanoid robots that vary in size and armament. The early part of the demo is focused on getting you used to the suit's different abilities. Besides the three weapons and the two grenade types Sam can toss, the suit's boost and dodge abilities are central to differentiating Vanquish in the third-person shooter genre. Your ability to boost for short distances and to perform tactical dodges that reward you with a brief time slowdown to let you blast at enemies are key to success in a firefight. By mixing up these unique moves with your weapons, melee combat, and using cover, Vanquish's gameplay mechanics have a unique flow. This was most clearly illustrated in the first major boss fight against a massive mech that's armed to the teeth. You'll have to rely on the suit's abilities to take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves during the mech's attacks in order to target its weak spots.

Any sense of accomplishment you'll get from taking down the mech is short-lived as you're directed deeper into the space station. The journey is challenging, because new enemy types block your way. Thankfully you're able to tweak your weapon loadout by picking up weapons as you find them. You'll be able to gain ammo for existing weapons if you pick up the same type as well as slowly upgrade their ammo capacity and damage. As you defeat certain enemies, you'll also be able to collect pickups that upgrade your equipped weapon or grenade an entire level.

That's gotta hurt.

While the early parts of the missions we played were straightforward and had us directing Sam to set points in the station, eventually new tasks were mixed in, such as rescuing trapped soldiers, setting explosives to open the way for your group to progress, and escorting an armored vehicle through a darkened corridor while facing off with non-robotic creatures. The final mission we tried had us facing off against a Russian soldier wielding a battle suit that seems to shame Sam's from a feature standpoint. All in all, the action was fun, satisfying, challenging, and rewarding thanks to a tally system at the end of each section that rates you on your performance. That said, get ready for a respectable amount of challenge even on the normal difficulty.

With the madness and challenge that you'll be dealing with, it's pretty key for the game to handle well. Vanquish's controls are smartly laid out in one of two control options that you can select. The mapping of actions works well, allowing you to shoot, melee, lock on, boost, dodge, take cover, and throw grenades with relative ease. You'll also have the option to invert your controls. Overall, it all works well, although we should note that target and camera movement and control aren't as tight as we'd like them to be at the moment, but they get the job done.

The visuals are sharp, with a high amount of detail. The space station environment, which is the center of all the action, includes wide-open spaces that are perfect set pieces for story cinematics and boss fights, and tighter, more claustrophobic locales, which gives the game a nice amount of variety even in the early portions we played. The enemies are a mix of humanoid-sized foes that come in a wide variety of types and massive screen-filling bosses. The action is fast and hectic, at times to the point of making it tough to keep track of everything going on, but it doesn't appear to slow down unless it's supposed to.

The audio frames the action well and definitely stays true to Platinum's style. You'll hear high-energy tunes that suit the crazy visuals. The voice acting comes across as somewhere between over the top and the old-school melodrama that used to be the norm in import games. We haven't decided if we're sold on Sam's voice, which sounds a lot like the military leader he's working with, but it does all seem to work.

Sam's got quite a handy suit.

So far Vanquish is looking like it plays to a lot of the strengths Platinum demonstrated with Bayonetta. In short, the action is insane and looks cool. The controls take some getting used to and aren't as tight as we'd like, but we're hoping it's all tightened up before the game ships. The visuals feature sharp detail and handle the spectacle capably, even in the incomplete version we played. The action was smooth, and the high level of detail was impressive. More importantly, we didn't notice any significant hitches to the game's performance on the PlayStation 3, which is a good thing to see following the disparities between the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of Bayonetta. Vanquish is currently slated to ship this fall for the PS3 and Xbox 360. Look for more on the game in the coming months.

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The follow-up to Ron Gilbert's DeathSpank has everything, from pirates and robots, to aliens and ninjas.

Even though DeathSpank hasn't been out that long and summer is about to wind down, Hothead Games recently announced a follow-up game, DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue, which picks up right where our hero left off in the first game. According to Hamish Millar, the producer of Thongs of Virtue, the game was being developed in parallel with the first DeathSpank and is a much larger game in terms of content. Millar came by our office today to show us some new areas, as well as DeathSpank's arsenal of fancy modern-day weapons.

A new array of modern weaponry should help you take care of those pesky aliens.

Without revealing too much from the previous game, let's just say that DeathSpank begins this game as a captive, locked in a POW camp. You'll be filled in on what the Thongs of Virtue mean, and it turns out that DeathSpank is the only thong bearer (out of six) who hasn't been corrupted by these magical undies. His goal is now to save the world from evil thong-wearing tyrants, each with a unique set of quirks. Our demo picks up right after he breaks free and is running around a battlefield, helping soldiers take down orque communication towers. We were told that there will be more variety to the quests now, including ones that require you to be quick on your feet. For example, in order to take down the tower, we were handed a pre-lit stick of dynamite, so we had to run toward the tower before it blew up in our face.

What stood out is that instead of wielding an assortment of swords and axes, you now have access to a ton of weapons, ranging from bazookas to ray guns. These new weapons don't come with unlimited ammo, though, and the ray gun overheats, but they're incredibly fun to use. For those who have been playing the Xbox Live Arcade title Shank, the chainsaw that the main character uses is also featured in this game, because Hothead Games is friends with the developers at Klei Entertainment. We were told that this time around there is more of a balance between ranged and melee weapons, which is a nice touch, given how hectic things can get onscreen.

The next area we checked out was a town that looked like the Wild West. Apparently the bacon rush didn't go as well as people had hoped, and now the residents are going a little crazy. We ran into Tina the taco vendor, as well as several new crazy characters that may or may not be very helpful during our quest. Lurking outside town were some ghosts donning cowboy hats. Here is where the new nature grenade--which can destroy multiple ghosts with one explosive--came in handy. There are TNT boxes littered throughout the areas, so use them wisely and carefully to your advantage. Another new weapon that we were shown was the monocle, which allowed DeathSpank to control the minds of the neighboring ghosts and force them to follow along dutifully. Cooperative play is once again included, even though that was not shown in our demo. However, we were told of a new playable character named Steve, a ninja who rides a unicorn while unleashing shurikens and rainbows. He also dual-wields katana blades and sings his own name--a huge step up from Sparkles the wizard, we must say.

For our last stop, we checked out Le Beaux Kuckelle, a town by the sea that gave us access to a pirate ship. This vessel allows you to sail the open seas (and shoot fireworks) and explore new islands to discover the world's secrets. Our demo ended with a cutscene to illustrate the vicious attack on the North Pole. We partnered with General Snugglewugglepants to storm the snowy land crawling with evil elves and to eventually confront Santa, the bearer of the Thong of Generosity.

Santa's little helpers aren't so helpful here.

DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue looks to be a continuation of DeathSpank's adventure with plenty of new weapons and tons of quests. We were told that the story is longer this time around as well, and the campaign could take upward of 17 hours to complete. The game still looks great, with the same colorful art style that really pops out and plenty of loot to find and hoard. Gameplay-wise, everything is still the same, so those who have played through the original game can easily continue their adventure here.

Join DeathSpank on his quest for mythical undergarments when the game is released on the PlayStation Network on September 21 and on the Xbox Live Arcade on September 22.

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We try out 2K Marin's upcoming downloadable add-on for BioShock 2 that gives fans a final single-player adventure in Rapture.

2K Marin is putting the finishing touches on the last piece of downloadable content for BioShock 2--a single-player-focused piece set in Minerva's Den, an as-yet-unseen part of Rapture that takes place in parallel to the game's main story. We recently got some hands-on time with the early portion of the DLC, as well as a demo of some other aspects that showcased the mix of old and new packed into the studio's farewell to Rapture.

There will be a good mix of old and new in Minerva's Den.

Minerva's Den is a technological wonderland that has been cut off from the rest of Rapture. Once upon a time, the den served as a house for Rapture's computers. You'll play as a Big Daddy named Subject Sigma, another Alpha-series behemoth that gets his free will back via circumstances that will be made clear over the course of the adventure. The story kicks off in familiar fashion, with Sigma gaining consciousness and being contacted by Charles Milton Porter, a computer savant who created the intricate systems that keep all of Rapture running. While fans of the series will be familiar with most of Porter's creations, one will be quite new: a supercomputer called the Thinker that serves as Rapture's brain.

Thanks to some ADAM-enhanced improvements, the machine processes data at the speed of thought. But, much like all the cool stuff within Rapture, things have gone a little askew. Details on just what had gone wrong weren't clear when we played, but like any good supercomputer, the Thinker has gone a little bonkers: new security bots roam the halls of Minerva’s Den, Big Daddies are lumbering around with new weapons, and Porter is asking for help. The specifics of what has happened and the trouble Porter needs a hand with are mysteries that you'll have to uncover.

The story of Minerva's Den will span three areas in the new district and introduce you to new characters, enemies, and a new aspect of Rapture’s history. From what we’ve seen, it appears that part of the mystery is tied to a disagreement Porter had with his business partner, Reed Wahl, over how the technology was being used. The narrative will play out via the now standard mix of cutscenes, radio messages, and voice recorders. It also appears that besides the new faces, you’ll be hearing and seeing some familiar ones as well. During our hands-on session with the game, we found a recorder that commemorated Porter being brought on by Andrew Ryan, and 2K Marin reps told us that Minerva’s Den will offer some insight into what Dr. Tenenbaum got up to after she took off near the start of BioShock 2's main narrative.

In terms of gameplay, Minerva's Den strays a little from what we’ve seen in BioShock 2 thanks to a new weapon and plasmid. The former is an ion laser--a good, old-fashioned death ray that rips into enemies and does a stream of damage as long as it connects. As with other weapons in the game, you'll find alternate ammo, including thermal firepower that sets your target on fire. The new gravity-well plasmid plays with physics via a vortex that pulls things toward its center while doling out high levels of damage. Collecting new plasmids, weapons, tools, and even ADAM are key parts of the journey. From what we played, it definitely looks like the DLC will be offering a condensed leveling experience that will have you powering up Subject Sigma, and you'll even get to save or harvest six Little Sisters.

You’ll need all the powering up you can get to deal with the new threats in Minerva's Den, which include a new Big Daddy known as a Lancer, new security robots, and splicers. In addition, although we didn't see anything blatantly menacing, we have to assume that if the Thinker turns out to be a threat, it's not going to be too warm and fuzzy either.

The Thinker goes all HAL in this DLC.

Based on what we played, Minerva's Den looks to be a meaty piece of DLC that will round out the last tour of Rapture nicely. The gameplay is solid, and the story is interesting. The additions to your plasmid and weapon arsenal are cool, the new enemies will keep you on your toes, and the new achievements are always good to see. Fans of BioShock 2 will want to keep an eye out for Minerva’s Den when it's released on August 31.

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Trick-or-treating with transforming Halloween costumes should be the only way to tackle the scariest night of the year.

From the minds of the developers over at Double Fine comes the role-playing game Costume Quest, one of several downloadable titles that the studio is working on. President and CEO Tim Schafer and project lead Tasha Harris stopped by the GameSpot office to show off their first game about a brother and sister who must rid the city of candy-stealing monsters. The charming art style and hilarious interaction between the siblings make this game ideal for just about anyone. Regardless of whether or not Halloween is your favorite holiday of the year, nothing beats transforming into a giant robot when all you had on was a cardboard box accented with tinfoil.

The demo began with mom and dad (mostly mom) lecturing the identical twins Wren and Reynold about making friends on Halloween and trick-or-treating together--what loving siblings should do. These twins don't have that kind of relationship, however. So after much fuss and girly slapping, you then point (with mom's finger) and choose which character you want to play as. The story will unfold the same way no matter whom you pick, so in this case, we chose Reynold. As the main character, you'll get the cool robot costume, whereas Wren had to sport the candy corn outfit that was probably crafted out of a trash bag. Her bitterness shows, as she tags along and finds ways to annoy Reynold as much as possible while they're out trick-or-treating.

The core mechanic of the game involves going house to house, snagging candy from friendly homes that still have their light on, and fighting monsters in the not-so friendly ones. Some candy-loving creatures have infiltrated the neighborhood and want to clear out all the houses of sweets. However, before we make it past the second house, Wren is snatched by a hideous goblin that mistakes her for a tasty bonbon and tosses her over a locked gate. Reynold decides to go after her, primarily because he's worried about getting grounded. He runs into an evil witch named Dorsilla and gets his robot costume taken away. But with the help of a black cat, he finds a pattern shortly after and is able to piece together a new costume after rummaging up some supplies. You'll collect multiple costumes throughout the game, and with the right pattern and materials, you'll magically have a new costume to put on and use to fend off foul beasts.

When you're not running around town knocking on doors, you'll likely be fighting in one of your various high-performance costumes. In battle, you automatically transform into a much cooler version of whatever it is that you're wearing. So in this case, Reynold transformed into a towering Gundam-like robot armed with heavy artillery. The battles are turn-based, and you use the X and B buttons to attack, and once you've charged up your special attack, you can unleash it with the Y button. A bar appears when you attack, which is like a minigame. If you can hit the A button as the cursor moves over the indicated spot, you'll be able to do a critical attack. The same applies when you're on the defensive, so you can take less damage.

Your costume also comes with benefits when you're out trick-or-treating. For example, the robot costume comes with wheelie skates, so you can zip along the streets much faster than you normally would, as well as launch yourself off ramps to explore new areas. Whenever an icon appears, you can use your candy pail to bash things like dumpsters and trash cans, and you can smash pumpkins and basically rummage through anything that would yield candy, the game's currency. Treasure coffins are strewn about and contain helpful items like the quest pieces needed to complete a new costume. Every quest that you undertake is logged in your notebook, and it keeps track of what's active, what's new, and what you may have missed.

This is when a dragon costume would come in handy.

Before our demo ended, Reynold approached a bully who was trying to steal candy from a small boy named Everett. By outrunning the bully Travis with his wheelie skates, Reynold was able to save Everett from having to return home without any treats. You'll run into plenty of interesting characters in the streets, including adults who never offer anything useful. It would be in your best interest to explore and talk to everyone, because with Schafer penning the script, it's hard not to laugh. The look and feel of the game also change as you play, because one minute you'll be exploring the cartoon-like suburban neighborhood and interacting with other cute wide-eyed children, but the next minute you'll be brought into a battle that's like an intense comic-book fight scene. Your enemies are more ferocious looking, and you're obviously much more intimidating--so it works out.

We're looking forward to seeing more of Costume Quest, as it is scheduled to be released in the fall time frame on the Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network. Stay tuned for more updates.

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We get our first peek at the Michael Jordan-specific content in Visual Concepts' latest basketball game.

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We take an exclusive flight deeper into HAWX 2's single-player campaign and try out UAV scouting and a little air-to-ground combat.

The high-flying sequel Tom Clancy's HAWX 2 will let you return to the skies as an ace fighter pilot, but the sequel will have plenty of new toys to play with, including a wide array of different aircraft to fly from modern American, British, and Russian forces. In addition, the game will have all-new military tech that won't necessarily involve flying, such as unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) drones, and it will also have a larger variety in its missions, including some that will challenge you to switch from midair dogfighting to bombing runs in a matter of minutes. We've tried out some of this new stuff and have new details to report. Please be advised that this story contains minor plot spoilers.

The first new mission we played, "Thieves in the Night," took place about a third of the way through the game’and it didn't even involve getting into a cockpit. We'll explain: The game's story involves quelling an uprising by angry insurgents who are being supplied by a mysterious arms dealer, and part of your job as a member of the HAWX team is to use a UAV to tag key locations on a satellite-image map. In this mission, our Russian contact, "Wolfhound," was on the ground and had identified the mysterious arms dealer who is apparently supplying the insurgents with anything from heavy-duty bombardment missiles to crates of assault rifles with the help of a mysterious and highly placed source in the Russian military. The UAV view is a zoomed-out map colored completely in green. The view vaguely resembles HAWX 2's zoomed-in bombing view (which lets you switch the view from your bomber cockpit to a zoomed-in image of the ground below, from which you can acquire bombing targets). In the case of the UAV, your job isn't to drop any bombs, but rather it's to paint key targets with infrared (IR) markers so that they can later be bombed by your allies.

In this mission, you must first paint a few key bombing targets by putting them in your sights and pressing the fire button to mark them. However, the arms dealer himself suddenly makes an appearance, being driven in his own car to meet with his local customers. At this point, we were required to focus our sights on the dealer's moving car (which appeared as a tiny white blip on the radar) to maintain a surveillance audio link that let us eavesdrop on his conversations so long as we kept him in sight. (Fortunately, HAWX 2 frequently autosaves checkpoints after each individual task within missions, so while the few times we let our quarry slip away meant that the mission was over, we were able to restart more or less exactly where we had left off.)

The eavesdropping clued us in on more intel--namely, the site of other weapon drops in the city and on nearby docked freighters, which we also painted for airstrikes. Eventually, the arms dealer made a transaction with his local partners, after which the cars of all involved parties scattered in different directions while we carefully followed our original target. However, it was just then that our Russian contact was spotted by a few of the arms dealer's henchmen--then quickly dispatched both men and dragged their bodies into the shadows. Since our contact's cover was blown, our last order of business in this mission was to help him escape by using IR tagging on enemy roadblocks so that he could be clued in on which side streets not to take on his way out of town.

Tagging with IR scans sets up priority targets so the bombers can knock 'em down.

We then skipped ahead to a different mission later in the game--about halfway through--called "Behind Enemy Lines." The mission takes place just after the Russian army has recovered a pair of stolen nuclear warheads from the enemy and is flying each one back to Mother Russia in transport planes. Our job, as a Russian pilot, was to jump into a Su-27 Flanker and escort the carriers through enemy territory on their way home. Unfortunately, the enemy was already on the alert and had a substantial force already airborne and headed our way, which meant that we had to do double duty both defending the transports and defending ourselves from enemy fighter planes.

After beating back a few waves of enemies, we finally approached an area dug in by allied Russian forces that had antiair guns stationed on the ground. These areas were marked on the map by obvious glowing green outlines, and we did our best to lure enemy fighters into the kill zones to get them off our backs.

We'd finally gotten rid of most of our enemies and had nearly reached friendly space, so the transports set a course to take the long away around the last stretch of hostile territory, which was equipped with antiair guns of its own. However, our high-ranking commanding officer in the Russian military made the puzzling demand that we cut straight through, since the route through enemy lines was much faster. (Why he gave that order is anyone's guess.) Unfortunately, one of the transports, piloted by none other than Wolfhound, was hit by enemy fire and had to make a crash landing right into enemy territory--a small encampment on the lee side of a dam.

Though Wolfhound was able to expertly land the damaged craft safely (without any of that unsightly nuclear holocaust), the frustrated agent immediately demanded an evac, which our commanding officer assured us was inbound. While Wolfhound established a perimeter, enemy vehicles and emplaced cannons on the ground had begun to open fire, and we were tasked with using our Flanker, an excellent dogfighting ship, to go toe-to-toe with earthbound tanks and gun emplacements in a narrow mountain valley. This is a lot tougher than it sounds, since the Flanker is a heavy-duty fighter jet that, while equipped with powerful armament, doesn't exactly turn on a dime.

Ever fly a dogfighting jet on a bombing run? You will in HAWX 2.

We did the best we could, carefully swooping down into the bowl of the valley and dumping as many missiles as possible onto our foes before pulling up like mad to avoid crashing right into the mountain. While we scored several kills, our grounded comrades were unable to hold out against the assault, and rather than risk having the nuke be recaptured, our high-ranking commanding officer ordered us to aim and fire at the dam, which would surely kill Wolfhound and the transport survivors but would also eliminate all opposition on the ground and at least let the Russian forces come back later to pick up the pieces. We had no choice but to blow the dam, dooming our comrades to a watery death while our high-ranking Russian commanding officer assured us of how shameful it was that such brave men should die for the cowardice of politicians.

HAWX 2's single-player campaign will offer plenty of variety and the ability to use some interesting new toys beyond just more fighter jets. The game will be released on September 7 on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

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We go Titan-climbing with Gabriel Belmont in Castlevania's first 3D outing on current-generation consoles.

When Hideo Kojima unveiled Lords of Shadow last year, he described shifting Castlevania development away from Japan as a means to make the series "more appealing [to an international audience] in the years to come." Development duties, he revealed, had been given to Madrid-based MercurySteam, making Lords of Shadow doubly notable; this is also Castlevania's first foray into 3D for the current console generation. How the prolific franchise has been "reborn" for Western markets won't be fully clear until the October launch, but playing through the first two chapters offers strong hints.

Go for the glowing bits.

This is a 3D action game in the same vein as the PlayStation 2's Castlevania: Lament of Innocence, with familiar Castlevania elements remixed into a third-person hack-and-slasher. But between the PS2 game and this one are seven years of progress, years that notably included the whole God of War series and its various imitators. Lords of Shadow borrows from these and more, drawing on diverse sources, though none more plainly than 2005's Shadow of the Colossus. That game's Colossi have been drafted in as Titans, enormous stone guardian bosses with glowing magical weak spots, of which more later.

The game's hero, the Robert Carlyle-voiced Gabriel Belmont, is a knight of an ancient brotherhood. He rides out in an 11th-century, medieval fantasy Europe that suggests Van Helsing meets Lord of the Rings. It's the End of Days, or so say the pitchfork-waving peasants, with the world plagued by monsters and divine intervention nowhere to be seen. "A storm is coming," concurs narrator Patrick Stewart, who could do gravitas while reading the phone book. Belmont has specific worries, though; his wife has been murdered, her soul caught up in the supernatural conflict and trapped in limbo.

From the first level of the first chapter, a combat tutorial, the Castlevania staples are reassuringly present. Belmont fights with the combat cross, an ornate cross relic with a retractable iron chain--the traditional whip, in effect, for lashing enemies and, later, swinging and climbing. His first foes are equally traditional: werewolves and giant werewolves (lycans and wargs, if you please). Though neither castles nor vampires figured in our extended demo, we're promised they are in the game--somewhere around chapters six and seven of an ample 12-chapter, 20-hour experience.

The environments of the first two chapters, each split into many smaller levels, have a good deal of variety. We proceeded from the tutorial's rain-lashed village besieged by werewolves, through spooky woods, poisonous swamps, graveyards, and underground caverns, on to a lush, near-exotic forest, with hanging vines and waterfalls, a huge frozen lake, and the labyrinthine ruins of a long-dead civilisation. In contrast to the rich, elaborately drawn environments, the paths through them are mostly straightforward and linear, with the odd detour to access a health font or a chest holding an upgrade.

When a problem comes along, you must whip it.

Beyond the snarling werewolves, we did battle with grenade-tossing goblins, giant spiders, gremlins, and trolls--a decent, if conventional, mix of enemies. We're counting on more outlandish nasties later in the game, further along the difficulty curve, and preview screenshots seem to bear this out. The by-the-numbers fantasy monsters, at least, throw the striking Titan bosses into sharp relief. These are the Shadow of the Colossus-like colossi: rocky, ancient, golem-like giants, invulnerable to Belmont's combat cross but felled with a good stabbing in their mystical glowing weak spots. We met the first of them towards the end of the first chapter on an enormous frozen lake--the Titan wading waist-high while we were on the icy surface, dodging blows from his huge stone fists. The Titans must be traversed as much as fought; we rappelled up the Titan's arm while his fist was stuck in the ice, climbed the carved ledges on his arm, and then used the combat cross's chain to swing and clamber to each of its weak points in sequence. We had to hold a button to grip when it tried to shake us off, and dodge out of the way when it tried to grab us, but there's no limited stamina for gripping as in Shadow of the Colossus; you can hang on indefinitely, which takes some of the urgency out of the fight, but also some of the frustration. Similarly, the generous checkpointing doesn't ask you to redo the weak spots you've already destroyed.

Outside of the Titan fights, combat is the stuff of classic action games: a mix of direct and area-of-effect attacks with the cross's chain, mixed with the jump for flashier combos, which are picked up and upgraded over time. The aerial moves are the most fun, letting you whisk enemies aloft as you jump and lash them in the air around you. Dead enemies drop daggers, which are required for Belmont's secondary, ranged attacks. Button bashing, as ever, will get you so far, but blocking and dodging are key at any difficulty beyond the easiest setting, Esquire. (Warrior and Knight are available on your first play-through, with Paladin locked at first.)

Action game tropes are plentiful: there are fonts to top up Belmont's health and magic reserves and medallions which, when filled with collectable gems, permanently increase health and magic capacity. Weapon upgrades collected at regular intervals add to the combat cross, in one case adding a hook to the chain, turning it into a grappling hook gun for swinging and rappelling, and in another case adding spikes to the chain, letting us saw through obstacles. Killing enemies, meanwhile, gives experience points to be sunk into combat move upgrades.

Team Jacob takes a beating.

The magical power-up system was introduced halfway through our demo; Belmont gets a light meter and a shadow magic meter, which must each be filled with neutral magical orbs. These are collected by filling up, in turn, the combat focus meter, which rewards you for fighting with varied attacks and dodging those of enemies; this adds another strategic layer to the combat system, dissuading button mashing further still. Once a magic meter is full, the light or shadow mode can be activated; these are, respectively, a purple, electrical-looking aura that heals Belmont as he fights, and a red, fiery aura that increases his attack power.

The first hours of Lords of Shadow suggest a game with plenty up its sleeve. If it's prepared to follow through on its gradual learning curve and increasingly creative enemies and environments, we'll have an action game to stand alongside the best of them--not to mention a Castlevania game to do the series proud, "reboot" or no. Time will tell, on that count, but Kojima's stamp of approval, as the game's executive producer, should calm the nerves of Castlevania devotees. They, like us, will be waiting until October to lay eyes on Lords of Shadow's eventual castles and vampires.

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We bust out of prison and swing our sword with a look at the divergent story in this upcoming fantasy RPG.

When The Witcher was released in 2007, critics and fans alike applauded its use of rich storytelling; intelligent, mature choice and consequence systems; and the creation of a detailed, living world. Three years on, Polish developer CD Projekt Red is back for another tour, bringing with it a sequel that builds on each of its precursor's core strengths.

Since giving it a fresh lick of paint wouldn't fly with the game's dedicated audience, the dev team has completely overhauled the project, and the proof is in the numbers. The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings will feature three different game openings, 16 endings, more than 150 minutes of cutscene video, and a total rework of the streaming technology. The latter means that where the previous title included 700 load screens, the follow-up features just four. Our demo included an extensive look at the branching narrative and choices available to players and their ability to make the experience a personalised one by either relishing in it or avoiding conflict.

Skipping straight into the action we were reintroduced to monster-hunting mercenary Geralt, who had found himself in a bit of a predicament in a mission called Escape from Valette Castle. Suspended in the air by his wrists and covered in fresh-looking lash marks on his back and chest, we scrolled around the environment to take in our setting. Cobblestone walls met our gaze everywhere we looked, while not too far away, on the other side of some thick, steel bars, two guards sat chatting. Unbeknownst to them, we already had the key for our escape in our possession, but as they were clearly not ones to shy away from a fight, we opted to play the social card first. Goading the pair into the cell, we dropped down violently, unleashing fist swings to knock one of the men unconscious. Guard number two fell with little resistance, and once the room had been cleared, we took the opportunity to reacquaint ourselves with our sword rather than take on all comers with bare knuckles.

The development team was quick to point out that it is still in the process of tuning difficulty and that for the purpose of skipping through the combat quickly, most enemies required only one or two swipes with the sword to be dispatched. Itemisation has been a key area of focus for the studio, with the character menu screen being divided into all the archetypal inventory slots, such as belts, pants, and gloves. The Witcher 2 will include a significantly raised number of items available to players, while a new crafting system will allow you to add runes to weapons, in our case giving it a faint blue glow and some juicy new stats. Cat potions are just one of the items that have been given a rethink in Witcher 2 and now allow the imbiber to not only see in the dark, but spot targets through walls, not unlike Detective mode in Batman: Arkham Asylum.

It was time for our demo to showcase some of the choices available to players. Rather than simply being provided a set story and being asked to follow the bouncing ball, we were given a firsthand look at how the game will branch as a result of your choices. A two-PC setup had one guide take the combat route to escape the prison, while the other snuck around in the shadows, blowing out fire torches illuminating the corridors and stealthily knocking guards unconscious. The first path led us to a woman being tortured, and after springing to her defense to confront her attackers, we opened up additional dialogue with her, offering optional help from her associates. Path two had us locate the woman's missing son and escape the prison before burning it to the ground. Different choices will determine whether you walk the worn path to the front door, scamper around underground in hidden passages, or accept non-player character assistance to use secret exits.

The final part of our demo showcased a boss fight in an open space with a huge elemental field commander named Draug. The three-phase fight included dodging the flaming arrows of his archer minions, running to safety as tornados destroyed objects on the battlefield, and a meteor shower that charred the earth.

CD Projekt Red isn't mincing its words with this game, telling audience members that they are happy to be put side-by-side with any RPG shipping next year with the belief that The Witcher 2 will be the "best looking RPG of 2011." Easily one of the most visually impressive titles at Gamescom 2010, character models were lifelike and moved naturally, indoor environments were suitably dingy, and the outdoor vistas were beautiful and bathed in warm, natural light. The development team confirmed it is actively exploring options for bringing the game to current-generation consoles, but will not be doing so if the hardware can't give the game the graphical fidelity the studio believes it deserves.

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings already looks gorgeous, and the studio still has six months of time up their sleeves to tweak and tune. Keep an eye out for it when it hits the PC in the early part of next year.

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We get all nostalgic with a look at Wizarbox Games' point-and-click adventure.

While the humble point-and-click adventure generally no longer enjoys the same level of success it did back in the early '90s, in Germany, the genre is thriving. Here at Gamescom, the booths are filled with adventure game delights. One such example is Gray Matter, a dark thriller developed by Wizarbox Games.

Gray Matter is written by renowned author and game designer Jane Jensen. It tells the story of Samantha Everett, a student and part-time street performer. After her motorbike breaks down on a rainy night, she takes shelter at a mansion, owned by the mysterious neurobiologist Dr. David Styles. She inadvertently becomes his assistant and is sent on an errand to retrieve subjects for one of his experiments.

However, she soon finds out that the locals are extremely wary of Styles, who has become a recluse after losing his wife in a car accident. Undeterred, she uses her street performance skills to entice subjects to the mansion, only for the experiment to set off a chain reaction of inexplicable events. It’s your job to take control of Sam, and Dr. Styles, to discover the truth about the strange goings-on.

The game is played like a typical point-and-click. You move your character using the mouse, interacting with objects in the environment. All the usual commands are present; you can look at objects, pick them up, and use them to solve puzzles. In the Xbox version of the game, you control your character directly, using the analogue pad to move him or her around the prerendered 2D backgrounds.

Sadly, we weren’t shown any puzzles from the game, but we were told that they would use Sam’s street performance abilities, as well as Dr. Styles’ scientific ones. We did, however, get a look at some of the game in motion. It’s similar to how the old Resident Evil games used to look, with 3D characters overlaid on prerendered 2D backgrounds. Of course, this being a much newer game, the character models and backgrounds were more detailed, with a dark and sinister-looking art style. The story also sounds interesting, and we were told that the plot gets even stranger later on when Styles starts to see visions of his deceased wife.

Gray Matter is due for release on the PC and Xbox 360 in Q3 of this year, which gives you just enough time to brush up on your point-and-click skills.

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