World of Warcraft: patch 4.2

Blizzard revealed that the 4.2 update World of Warcraft, expected within the year, will include a new raid, the so-called "encounter journal", a new series of these legendary and a new weapon.

The main event of the patch in the Firelands raid, in which players must enter the Kingdom by an old acquaintance, the powerful Fire Elemental Lord Ragnaros, where seven bosses await you with which to test their skill.

"Many players have already met Ragnaros in Molten Core, but it was inside a mountain of Azeroth", explains the system designer Greg Street, lead.

"The Firelands are his home, located in another plane of existence. a large island that floats in a sea of lava, with a supernatural ecosystem. Then you will find us flaming creatures like spiders and birds we fire, besides the legions of Ragnaros ".

Those not interested in getting a raid can still ride in this area, since it is also the site of a new series of quests, you will be asked to establish a beachhead for the Druids of Hyjal.

"The way that players will help the Druids of Mount Hyjal to create a base in the Firelands, the scenario will change," says Street. "Since the base has the shape of a giant tree, it all begins with a small tree, which grows as the player progresses through the mission, to become the largest operational base of Druids".

Street estimates that the new quests will be around 60, most of which will be repeated pi and pi times. As regards the new legendary weapon, still doesn't have a name, we know only that you take a branch of Nordrassil, the legendary Tree of the world, and strengthen it with the power of a Blue Dragon.

"The relating to weapon are really beautiful" continues Street. Eventually, players will find themselves within a dungeon old-fashioned, aided by a companion, with the goal of arriving at its center to complete the creation of staffa ".

After the announcement at the last Blizz Con, the encounter journal sar another ready to debut with this patch, with the objective of providing players a little bit of background on encounters that make along their path.

"Basically, we've done a pretty poor job in providing players with some detail on their meetings," admits Street. "Often have to enter a dungeon or a raid, and die a few times before understanding what's going on during the clash".

"So, there we wanted was to introduce the boss so that players could control their various skills, which are the most harmful, such as lockable, and so forth".

"Security of strategic directions, but only some background information on the boss that you're going to meet".

In addition, the patch 4.2 introduces a new interesting series of this dedicated to Thrall and his attempt to remedy the damage caused by the return of Deathwing to Azeroth.

"With these missions we are really trying to tell a story," explains Street. "Usually the exploits of the main heroes are recounted in the books or other resources outside the main game. Here we are trying to give players a chance to fight for a short period of time, side by side with Thrall ".

"In terms of difficulty, this should be quite similar, for example, the Twilight Highlands and other areas that players have already experienced. However requires a slightly better equipment than usual, since the rewards are ".

With the patch 4.2 Blizzard inaugurates a new strategy that will see release small patches and pi pi. Street confident that players will leave without problems behind the update subscriptions, but most lenses, which follow the launch of Wrath of the Lich King.

"I think when they see that the release of 4.1, which will take place very soon, followed by the wheel, will understand that 4.2 henceforth will receive new content with regularity".

Street didn't want to clearly define a timetable for future updates but has only made it clear that Blizzard hopes to reduce waiting times, ranging from four to six months.

"We are trying to make most quickly as possible," promises, "and make sure that the release of the expansion takes place in a more regular than before".

CoD: Modern Warfare 3

The Russia has invaded the United States. A first group of Soviet soldiers landed on the eastern shores of the country and slowly gained more ground, until you get to keep off the Immaculate lawn of the White House.

If what you have just read there seems hard to believe, what about a Modern Warfare 3 ready to break the world (in all senses) even after the controversial departure of West and Zampella, the boss of the team Infinity Ward?

Despite the well known vicissitudes and the abandonment of many of its members, the team does not seem to have lost its Polish and strong, the help of Sledgehammer Games, decided to create the new chapter of the saga.

Modern Warfare 3 seems to point to the very top, even more this time, even up to something that looks like the third world war, as she leaves to guess the animation of the logo at the end of the trailer.

Part of the story set in New York, London, Paris and Berlin a courageous choice, which will certainly not raise controversy. What the game looks really spectacular and although the standard of the genre will rise considerably from Battlefield 3, MW3 seems ready to give him a hard time thread.

What the Activision game seems to have extra compared to its predecessors in greater thickness and have moved the conflict across the planet require a script to expectations. There then to assess how these scenarios can change expectations new-Spec Ops and multiplayer in General.

The remnants of Infinity Ward chose the most extreme way to pulverize record with Call of Duty. Millions of people to play at war scenes in the streets of Manhattan something that maybe we would have hardly imagined before the announcement of the game, because we all know how what that context is still a nerve for the American public.

But beyond the location, it is clear that the development team should review something in the general concept of the game. The standard FPS war changed and move like the usual "one man army" could not be more equally satisfactory. We expect then a gameplay that rewards better team spirit, can count on teammates and ensure that they count on us.

It has shown so far Activision, Infinity Ward has put really all to give viewers (which will become the primary actors) a strong feeling of tension.

Move among the wreckage on Wall Street or under Tower Bridge of London in ruins with a sense of anguish, something that goes beyond simple identification in a game. The idea of being now on the brink of destruction, chaos pi complete a conflict on a planetary scale, seems to be a stunt not well-developed, once effective, although widely abused.

Although the game I will give you a sophisticated mechanical gi and rhythms by now well known to fans, the feeling that this will be your settings to give that little bit extra.

Also in recent games such as Crysis 2, we came across war scenes inside a New York devastated, but here things look different because you don't have to do with aliens and futuristic weapons. Although the possibility that a Russian army invades the United States rather remote, move between the skyscrapers of the Big Apple suffocated from the smoke and ash explosions while trying to stay alive and to find a refuge from bursts of bullets, gives feelings much more "realistic".

GoldenEye 007: Reloaded

Last year, despite the lack of a 007 movie in theaters, we had two games inspired by the exploits of James Bond, one created by the late Bizarre Creations and the other by Eurocom.

In 2011 we will see the latest feature film of the saga, which should have as the immortal co-star Christopher Lambert, and this time a single game, again developed by Eurocom.

The title in question is not exactly new, but for many players will be a pleasant discovery. Despite the enormous popularity of the Wii in our country, have not been in many the last year they played GoldenEye 007 and a real shame because this was one of the best FPS of recent times, perfectly balanced and perfect controls.

Fortunately those but missed this first appointment will be remedied with the new HD version for PS3 and Xbox 360, which in addition to the obvious burning in high definition, porter with s quite a few unpublished content. The development team are not limited to operate a simple porting from the original, but it rolled up his sleeves to old fans and new fans something to which he would pay their own money.

First, the game engine was rewritten from scratch, which allowed for Eurocom to revise the levels of geometry, replace all textures, adding new particle effects and rebuild from scratch the entire artificial intelligence.

Obviously the basic structure remained that of the original levels, so linear, but rather see them in this new capacity will be like having faced something different. Also the same protagonist, Daniel Craig, seems to have benefited from this care revitalizing.

The aesthetics will be one of the aspects on which the work done by Eurocom will reflect more, as well as the looseness with which all girer (hopefully) calmly at 60 fps. Also the animations have been rebuilt from the foundations and the occasion was again signed Ben Cook, Craig's stunt double in movies and professional stuntman. Cook It lent to more Motion Capture sessions to give the protagonist of the game movements even more credible.

What we hope to positively verify also the artificial intelligence, for which developers promise great things.

Review - the Hunter Solatorobo: Red

While some of the advertisements you are sure to point out that with the DS can also play, the portable Nintendo DS asylum to a number of titles dedicated gamers "pure and hard".

I refer to Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, Children of Mana, Chrono Trigger, Disgaea, and many other games that can provide hours of fun, without ask you to compute the et of your brain or draw a picture of your cat is sleeping.

Behind these "heavyweights" there are many titles that are difficult to capture the limelight of the front pages or advertisements on television, small pearls for lack of market, marketing bizarre choices, or for poor reputation on European soil, remain closed in their oyster, titles that probably no giochereste never if someone does not know they were, such as Solatorobo.

This action RPG, later spiritual Tail Concerto, mixes all the traditional elements of Japanese productions: a fantasy world, creatures half between the human and the animal, large conspiracies, Mechs and absurd names. Vestiremo in fact as an anthropomorphic dog, Red Savarin, who lives on the floating island of Sheperd Republic, ch has a sister called Chocolat and guiding a robot named Dahak, which looks like a big bird mechanic. More typical of cos you die!

Red Lands ends meet doing tasks more or less legitimate of all kinds and the game begins when we are engaged in one of the many missions of routine (if we can define routine infiltrate a flying ship to retrieve documents), when everything is sent to the air by the arrival of a huge creature that begins to treat the vessel as it was a toy airplane.

From this point onwards the story starts to unravel without haste, leaving all the time to do quests to accumulate the necessary experience and money to strengthen you and Dahak.

While not without major impulses d innovation, plot Solatorobo extremely nice to follow, and a fundamental characteristic for any self-respecting history, you'll always want to know what succeed later. This also because the characters are extremely well characterized, especially Red, cute and Hustler, and her sister Chocolate, her serious counterpart, always committed to avoid figs in trouble. The only downside of the narrative that there are really many, many dialogues to break up the action, which is definitely not will frighten jRPG experts but that may stress the less patients.

Despite being classifiable as a role-playing game, Solatorobo doesn't follow the classics of the genre, especially the combat system in particular, that might not please the purists.

Rather than lengthy and epic battles turn-based battles in Solatorobo in fact do not last more than a few seconds. The idea that you need to do everything to bring you closer to your opponent and furiously to raise it to press, so that you can then throw away like a ball of rags and cause damage. With more advanced enemies will not be so simple, of course: you will need to find time and right place to do it, or throw him back the missiles that you lambast.

Personally I really enjoyed this hybridization with scrolling fighting game. Not bored ever, varying the pace compared to the exploratory stages, and avoids hang too long in certain battles. There does not mean that it is a better solution of the combat system that we have come to appreciate during these years, but in a traditionalist as the RPG genre with a touch of newness always well accepted.

The future of Anti-aliasing

With the maturation of the current generation of consoles, developers are constantly looking for new ways to improve the performance of their video games. Obviously a platform capabilities be measured primarily in terms of potential graphic: being able to return an image of high quality is now a prerequisite for success in today's market the video game. To get this result, a management technique of three-dimensional objects look came to the aid of the developers for a long time, namely the antialiasing.

You present the odious serrated edges of the objects when they are represented in diagonal? Those are the so-called artifacts, genuine enemies of the quality of the image to be deleted at all costs: to do so, over the years have developed various techniques that have solved more or less successfully.

The most known and used surely that of multi-sample Anti-Aliasing (MSAA). If implemented properly can give excellent results but at a very high price of system memory and bandwidth of the graphics processor. In addition to this, the techniques of shading and rendering most recent titles are sometimes incompatible with the traditional MSAA managed by DirectX 9 or priced at very high consumption of RAM on a PC with DirectX 10 and 11.

The point on the Board of several developers and designers to precisely this: how to get from upcoming games results similar to those of expensive hardware antialiasing without penalising performance?

Many games in the recent past they used to obtain this result different techniques; what recently met for the audience of developers was the Morphological Anti-Aliasing (MLAA), developed by SCEE Advantaged Technology Group and used in titles of considerable importance. Among the many, God of War 3, Little Big Planet 2, Shift 2: Unleashed, Portal 2, Alice: Madness Returns and the next Battlefield 3. The MLAA an algorithm that tries to detect edges similar in conformation by applying a blur effect in relation to the agreement. It is a system based on search predefined edges that can do a good job when it finds one that matches perfectly to the schema set.

When the filter applies only to the edge question yields a result simply outstanding: sometimes however are filtered edges are not perfectly matching such a surface with a little texture. The end result then loses in quality.

Although smaller than the multisampling, demands in terms of computing power the MLAA are still high: why so far only been used on the PlayStation 3. However, the same algorithm is going to be brought on PC and Xbox360 with a variant called Jimenez MLAA, named after its creator Jorge Jimenez.

Ninja Gaiden III

To think well all a matter of logic. If we think in fact that for decades we were asked to save the American President, either indirectly by stopping one of countless invasions on American soil, which directly and broke a kidnapping as for example in Bad Dudes vs. DragonNinja, normal to this round the Team Ninja has wanted to mix the cards on the table.

Moreover, in one way or another, we saved the President more times than we have ever done with Princess Peach and therefore the decision to turn on the Prime Minister as the designated victim to assume the role of hostage to save at least understandable: the variety of the taste of life, even for a cold emotionless as ninja Ryu Hayabusa.

However, removed this compelling premise, the new political verve of Ninja Gaiden III you lose a little in practice: David Cameron as seen from reaching the levels of endurance () that only a maiden in distress can touch. For instance imagine left shoulders while descend the stairs of Big Ben and he hit the eyes with a role of big brother. From chills.

As if that weren't enough then the Prime Minister has always your sleeves risvoltate just to show the nation that always ready for action, but we just see him struggling with an enemy any: maybe some injury as it should be a bit in the hospital.

Or at least convince him to trust an Englishman to save him, invoking as Lara Croft in the relationship and making them abandon those tombs: these ninjas are stealing the work of British heroes!

But if possibly satire for the first episode of series creator orphan might not be exactly on top of the list of priority, to fall into the fair of the stereotype seems to be a widespread practice. The 20-minute demo for E3 preparations from Team Ninja show an enviable number of cliches, from London to the typical accent Dick Van Dyke (http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Van_Dyke) of the kidnappers of the Minister to come to a thick fog that envelops the scenarios in which you will have to move.

But going to look at the cliches aldil, Ninja Gaiden III is still in the womb, many of those features that have made it, at least before the arrival of Bayonetta, a symbol of the hack and slash made in Japan: two primary attacks with the sword, a pi light, the other most powerful and hence the possibility of getting any kind of attack that is based on a combination of these two elements.

The combo can be strung then moving the cursor over the various attacks and occasionally, by pressing the button that appears on the screen in the middle of a string of attacks, you can create spectacular final moves. Also, after a sufficient number of consecutive shots you'll see the handful of Hayabuysa become red, a signal to launch a special attack of our that, taken from a murderous rampage, massacrer all enemies near tagliuzzandoli with the same effectiveness of Miracle Blade.

Saints Row: The Third

Imagine a modern computer game from the perspective of someone who has never played one, and that at most he read in the newspapers. Indeed, stop imagining as well, because Saints Row: The Third undoubtedly awesome game: an orgy of violence that would further drool of a representative of indignant anger MOIGE, if only to understand what the heck is happening on the screen.

Just to make the idea on the tone of the game, I show you a small example: could happen to shoot for a crowded street, unsuspecting passersby with slapping a vibrator pink, then get on a jet from war and incinerate people at random, or maybe to Rob a Bank while in the sky explode pi helicopters in a Michael Bay film ... and to conclude with a kick in the balls all'ennesimo underdog who has the misfortune of crossing your path.

Finesse clearly not between words of fashion in this third installment of GTA version zarra, who is preparing to complete this unlikely trilogy, trying meanwhile to emerge in the landscape of the games free-roaming based on ultra violent crime.

Because, while the GTA series has become a cultural phenomenon of global significance, nato by prudent marketing operations and an indisputable quality, Saints Row, while offering basically the same experience, little more than a game of the second floor of a success. Developers how they think, therefore, differentiate it from the competition?

The writer Drew Homes quite clear in explaining the concept behind their strategy: "our objective is quite simple: make the most of The Third, bizarre, ridiculous, exaggerated and, I repeat, ridiculous, free roaming experience you've ever seen".

Ridiculous and, in a sense, just the right word to describe the experience in the light of efforts by developers to improve things like character animations when committed to pummel the passersby in the balls ... an action that is also one of the distinctive marks of the series.

For charity, I don't have anyone to call into question the comicit of punch but, in terms purely narrative, who are we? And because this irresistible urge to attack the alien scroti? Well according to the conclusion of the second chapter, we are always the Saints, who managed to ride the wave of profit and success have become an international brand, with lots of drinks that bear their name and a movie in the works.

"Now everybody knows who are the Saints-explains Holmes-famous, are all love them despite their methods criminals and murderers, because what works in their universe, in which all parody and extreme".

And this certainly could be an interesting new feature: instead of the usual rise in power of small fish, it starts at the top of the pyramid, with all the tools you need to do what you want. However, not everyone is happy with the current situation, as your team The Syndicate, who want to get their hands on 60% of earnings of Saints and inglobarli within their organization.

Obviously our superstar won't be totally agree with this view of things, and therefore will foreseeable scatener an all-out confrontation that bloody all over the city, esalter sandbox game features.