In 2060, the Sun began emitting incredible volumes of energy from the coronal layer, pummeling Earth with solar flares and inundating the planet with radiation – Earth’s magnetic field was a miserly defense against such an onslaught.

Arable land quickly diminished; wastelands became more common and vast; major cities were either evacuated or received an unsustainable influx of refugees; quickly it became apparent that the only chance for human survival is the wholehearted concentration into space technologies, and an eventual colonization of extra-terrestrial lands.

So did we band together gallantly to save our common species?

Did we put aside our differences in search of a common resolve for this immediate threat of extinction?

No. We’re human beings and we did what comes naturally: we fought for resources and scrapped over the husks, and when we managed to create sustainable ecosystems in space, we began fighting for resources all over again…

 

The Mining Wars happened.

 

Miner Wars is in development by Keen Software House using the gorgeous VRage Engine. The game takes place in space around the year 2081 and is a 6DoF (six degrees of freedom) space shooter with destructible environments, a single player and co-op mode and a Miner Wars MMO in development. You can build bases, fully customize your ship, battle other players and loot their equipment, set up ambushes, undergo missions, explore asteroids for rare materials that can be sold or turned into ship upgrades; the universe is yours to do as you please.
The game boasts to having many different elements including:

 
• Unique mining ships: (from smallest to largest, fast and slow, large cargo, huge shields…)
• Weapons: 20 (volcano cannon, guided missiles, mines, gravity bombs, tunnel buster…)
• Ammo: 20 (armor piercing, explosive, high velocity…)
• Drilling devices: 5 (pressure drilling, thermal drilling, saw, nuclear drilling device…)
• Equipment types: 50 (various radars, jammer, X-ray, engines, enhancing drugs, armor, med kit, auto targeting…)
• Factions: About 10 main factions with 25+ playable factions in the MMO.
• Ore types: 50 (iron, uraninite , helium 3, gold, diamonds, …)
• Asteroids: Who has the time to count them?
• World size: Unlimited in every direction.

 

With the destructible environments, nothing stands in your way. It’s quite possible to blast a tunnel in an asteroid, using it as a hiding spot for your loot, or lay in wait for some unsuspecting poor bastard. Whilst playing this game, one thing came to mind; EVE Online without the skill structure, more fast paced, fully controlled and first person view. In this game there are no levels to grind out, no skills or talent trees to plan out; just you, your ships weapons, and your own luck.

Mining seems like it will play a heavy role in this game, I don’t know why it’s just a hunch.

With over 50 different types of ore, each with a value whether it’s economic based or valued as an important ship upgrade, mining will be essential and probably the blood flowing through the veins of this game. You can mine in the alpha now but it appears it’s just there for show and to get a feel of how it’ll work.

I am not raping this asteroid.. okay I am raping it ..of it's natural resources. BOOSH!

There’s a lot of focus on the customization aspect; heavy customization. You can open the menu to check out the different ship classes (Miner Ship 1-10, Talon, and RIGJ), weapons, tools, ammo, even engine. Now since this isn’t full release, none of this serves any use whatsoever as it isn’t available but it is a nice tickle to your sack at things to come.

Roll the die and choose one, it doesn't matter anyway.

 

As I’ve stated, this game is currently in pre-alpha so as far as the story mode goes; it doesn’t. Upon starting the story mode you’re left inside a rather large asteroid and maneuvering around will lead you into ambushes from drone NPCs. You can either navigate your way through or just blow the piss out of the whole damn thing and fly out.

Reminds me of prom night, which hole should I enter?

Either way, the choice is yours and its unscripted things like this which make the game very promising. There is an ally bot you can pick up and I recommend in doing so because the enemies are rather relentless, if you can find them. Some of them are so holed up into an asteroid it took me tens of rockets and at least an hour of weaving in and out of the spider-holes before one would appear on my dick randomly like a herpes outbreak. Luckily my ointment..err..ally bot was there to help me out.

FRIEND BOT 2 COMIN' TO SAVE THE DAY! ROCK YOUR WORLD! KILL SOME BITCHES!

Maybe I’m just a moron and missing something important but I have yet to find the purpose in story mode. I’ve killed all the enemies in game, flown around until I’ve shoved my mouse up my ass just out of sheer boredom, even reset the solar-wind a few times just because; nothing. The real fun to be had in this alpha is the Sandbox mode.

Sandbox basically puts you into the middle of space with a horde of enemies in front of you. They don’t engage you until you fly closer to them so this will give you some time to plan out your slaughter. You do have some friendly bots to fly alongside and will help with the destruction but they’re not really needed, the enemies are pretty easy.

This mode is great to get a feel of the combat and hone your skills until the game comes out in late 2011 on the PC and XBOXLive Arcade. You can currently pre-order the game for PC now over at the Miner Wars website

Vorpal is a manga-styled “bullet hell” game by indie developer Red Wolf and has a logo very similar to Naughty Dog. Basically, you’re faced with an insane barrage of attacks from your enemy at once and you’re left to maneuver in and out of the attack whilst trying to stay alive and kill the boss.

The game has six playable characters, each with their own short little unexplained introduction to each boss. Each character and boss has their own attack and attack pattern, with eight shields to blast through to beat the boss, this game can be very difficult; difficult being a fucking understatement.

Good luck.

This game seems to draw heavy inspiration from the Touhou series; if you haven’t played one of that series, don’t; you’ll shit blood for a week from the ulcers it’ll give you. While Vorpal is definitely not as insane as Touhou, it is still quite difficult and not for the casual gamer at all.

Of course you won’t be heading into this crazy shitstorm of ship combat completely empty. While you start off with a basic attack, shuriken looking icons will appear on the screen and shooting them often drops items such as upgrades to your weapon, a boost in health or stress gauge. The stress gauge is your special attack which is measured by the red bar near your health. Whilst you can activate the gauge any time it’s in the red, often it’s best to wait until it has completely filled to knock out a full tier of shield. Other wise use this shit often when enemy health is low and firing a clusterfuck of a special attack against you.

The controls are quite simple, use the A button to shoot and for the love of your god do not let this button go. The B button activates your stress gauge and holding Left and Right Trigger simultaneously will slow your ship down making for an easier time moving through the enemy’s attack.

What I did like about this game was the black and white art style with some shades of red, it’s quite gorgeous honestly and I love when developers experiment with different shades of color for their game leaving for more of an art work than just an arcade game. Also, each of the six characters has their own beautiful sountrack. The songs are spectacular and all can be heard inside the games gallery which is where you can also get a more detailed background on each character and a closer view of the ship they use.

At only a mere 80 Microsoft points, there’s no reason to not own this game, unless of course you bought a 360 just for the fucking Kinect. The music is spectacular, the art work is gorgeous and the difficulty tickles my balls with enough intensity to keep coming back for more.

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The game is set in the mid 21st century when the world has fallen into the chaos of the “Great Population Flood”, and takes place aboard the Queen of the World, a city-sized luxury ocean vessel, built by a group of corporate giants known as the Five Founding Fathers; the group who, due to the Queen, have prospered while the rest of the world suffered. At the beginning of the game, the craft is bombed by a group of fanatical terrorists known as the Malthusians—named after political economist Thomas Malthus who predicted that population growth would one day outpace agricultural production, returning society to a subsistent level of existence (credit wikipedia for that tid bit of knowledge). The Malthusians have a plan to murder the vast majority of humans on the planet, so that the survivors wouldn’t suffer from the effects of the population explosion. Their slogans, including “Save the World – Kill Yourself”, are written on the walls and displayed on computer screens all over the ship.

In Hydrophobia you play as Kate Wilson, a systems engineer who becomes and unlikely hero following the attack on the Queen. Helping Katey navigate the different decks of the ship is Scoot, who is constantly saying obvious things over your headset with quite possible the worst Scottish accent in the history of not only gaming but any form of entertainment. What happened to Sean Connery? He isn’t doing much these days.

At its core, Hydrophobia is an action-platformer/puzzle game. To me it kind of felt like a mash up of Tomb Raider and Shadow Complex with the lead character being played by Joanna Dark with a new name. The platforming and puzzle solving can be rather tedious. Most of the time you are just trying to decode a cipher by following arrows on a wall until you locate said cipher using your MAVI. The MAVI is basically your all purpose hacking/decoding tool. Using the MAVI to find these ciphers is kind of like searching a hotel room with a black light only in the game you find a cipher to open doors instead of the love stains in the hotel.

The following has to be said for this to be a complete review, so if you don’t like spoilers stop reading now. The ending of this game is so absolutely terrible. To call it an ending is actually an insult to game endings, because there isn’t one. Just as the story is picking up and you are readying  yourself for an amazing finish as you escape the ship, you are treated to a “TO BE CONTINUED” screen just as you are reunited with the person you have been searching for in the past two acts. I actually felt dirty after completing this game. If this is the road games are headed down, where I actually need to pay to see an ending to a game, I don’t want to be a part of it. No way in hell am I paying for content add on to this game, nor will I invest one single msp for a sequel. I haven’t felt this led on, teased, or let down by any form of entertainment since Back to the Future 2.

At the end of the day is Hydrophobia worth your 1200 msp??? Probably not. If I were you I would wait for some type of game deals week where the price drops to 800, or you can always check out the trial for free and go from there. If you are like me and can look past sketchy gameplay because you feel so engrossed by the mind blowing water physics and the realistic sound, than you may want to pick up this game. But be forewarned…when you have completed the game you will be angry with that atrocity of an ending.

So far during the second annual Summer of Arcade we have been treated with three solid XBLA titles. This week the fourth game has been released. Monday Night Combat is a class based third-person based shooter with tower defense elements mixed in, that was developed by Uber Entertainment using the Unreal Engine.

Monday Night Combat is a very basic concept and is split into two different modes, each involving protecting and/or destroying a moneyball. In Blitz, which can be played solo or with up to three friends/strangers online, as well as local split screen, is a type of horde mode where you are required to defend your moneyball from progressively difficult enemies. You and your three friends won’t really be alone though as there are plenty of turrets you can build and upgrade to aid in your defense.

Moving up the lines!!!

The other game mode is a competitive multiplayer mode called crossfire. In crossfire each team has a moneyball and whoever destroys the other teams ball first wins. The way you destroy the enemy ball is by ushering bots up the left and right sides of the map so that they get to the enemy ball and bring down the shields so your team can begin rinsing the moneyball with every bullet, grenade, or swipe of the sword your team can throw at it. In each match you are given 15 minutes to take down the ball otherwise the game goes into two minute overtime where everyone’s skills get increased and both moneyballs drop and no longer require bots to bring them down.

When playing either mode, the most important strategic decision you will be forced to make is selecting which of the six diverse classes you will choose to be. First off we have the assault class. Basic run and gun class, features a jet pack, machine gun and grenade launcher. The assassin is a class that allows you to take the fight up close and personal with melee attacks and sneaky invincibility. Then there are the two heavy classes, the tank and gunner. Gunner acts like a mobile turret, while the tank shoots a focused type of laser beam. Rounding out the classes are the sniper and the support classes. Support class can build, hack, and repair turrets as well as heal teammates.

Six Classes to Choose From

The graphics in MNC are terrific. Animation and art style, which is undeniably inspired by Team Fortress, are fresh and vibrant. The textures all look really polished, and apart from a few rare frame rate issues, the game engine holds up really well even during intense online battles with tons of bots on the screen at the same time. The sound in the game is extremely entertaining. Fun cartoon sound effects fill the atmosphere and the over the top commentator at times is side splittingly funny.

Monday Night Combat has 12 achievements which add up to the typical arcade game total of 200 potential gamerscore. Most of the achievements are pretty simple. The skill ones might be a little hard for some if you aren’t a top of the leader board type player, but luckily if you are desperate you can boost any achievement in a private match with a friend or by yourself with a second controller. Two avatar awards are also here which include an MNC t-shirt and a mask like the games mascot wears.

JUUUUUUUUUUICE!!!

While being compared to a legendary game like Team Fortress might have put MNC in a position with some big shoes to fill, but Uber Entertainment delivers. The Horde mode is engaging and a lot of fun with friends. The multiplayer is extremely fun and rewarding. With a leveling up system and unlockable pro tags, similar to Modern Warfare 2’s titles, this game will keep you coming back for more beyond just picking up an easy 200 gamerscore. The only area this game falls short is in the lack of variety. Not having a few different types of multiplayer modes is the only thing holding back Monday Night Combat from being a perfect game. That aside Monday Night Combat is a lot of fun and should be enjoyed by everybody. If you don’t believe me, just go check out the trial which even lets you jump in to a game with your friends who may already own the game. And don’t forget, Bacon FTW!!! Just play it, you will see what I mean.

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