Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, Just Causes on sale this weekend on Steam

This weekend's Steam deals include two very different experiences, one about sneaking around and another about being very loud and explosive. Ghost Recon: Future Soldier is 33% off until August 27, bringing the price down on Ubisoft's latest to $33.49. If you want the deluxe edition – which includes two exclusive maps and tons of in-game weapons and skins – it'll cost $36.84.

More into hijacking helicopters, skydiving and blowing up stuff in a tropical paradise? Avalanche Studios' Just Cause series is 75% off on Steam until August 27: the original Just Cause is $2.49; the sequel, Just Cause 2, is $3.74.

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier Review

Lively multiplayer modes and a considerable campaign are hampered by bothersome network issues in Ghost Recon: Future Soldier.

The Good

Pleasing sync shot mechanic Lengthy campaign is great in both solo play and co-op Enjoyable competitive multiplayer modes.

The Bad

Online play is fraught with technical problems Numerous AI oddities Unremarkable firefights.

Today's battlefields, it seems, are teeming with the kind of wizardry that video games have enabled players to use for years. Invisibility, X-ray vision, and miniature floating cameras are modern marvels that have long since become familiar, but Future Soldier's appeal doesn't rely on novelty. Stealthy action and streamlined teamwork blend to create an enjoyable and lengthy campaign, and lively competitive multiplayer modes provide extra enticement. Unfortunately, the online elements of Future Soldier are riddled with network problems that make connecting to and staying in a game difficult. Ghost Recon: Future Soldier is a robust package with plenty of satisfying ways to exercise your itchy trigger finger, but it requires a lot of patience if you want to do anything other than play by yourself.

In the campaign, you play as the ghosts, a four-man team of elite soldiers. Cutscenes and mid-mission dialogue combine to create a nice sense of camaraderie among the crew, and hackneyed archetypes are downplayed in favor of more understated characterization. Personalities are colored in during small moments, like a song streaming out of earbuds, a fleeting facial expression, and a conversation about used trucks. Interactions with other military personnel reveal how isolated the ghosts are from the soldiers they break bread with and how oblivious those soldiers are to this fact. This segregation creates a connection among the ghosts that is a refreshing change from the familiar "bonds forged on the crucible of combat" trope.

On the field of battle, the ghosts try to emulate their namesakes, moving silently with the aid of slick optical camouflage that dissolves if you jog, sprint, or fire your weapon. Staying stealthy is often a mission requirement, and even when it isn't, avoiding detection gives you a distinct advantage. It's easy to maneuver unseen, and you spend a lot of time silently eliminating foes. Stealth melee kills and suppressed weapons are your basic tools, but the key mechanic is the sync shot. Spotting enemies through your scope or tagging them from aloft with your aerial drone, you can designate up to four targets for you and your squad to eliminate in one fell swoop. To execute, simply open fire on your own target, or issue the command with a press of the Q key (or right bumper if you are using a compatible gamepad).

It's a neat trick, and the seconds of slo-mo that follow are a welcome flourish that allow you to silently mop up more than the few targeted foes. Using sync shots to eliminate enemies is pleasing and relatively easy, thanks to the array of detection methods at your disposal. Drones, sensor grenades, and a few flavors of optical gadgetry give you plenty of ways to detect nearby foes. As long as no one sees the dead bodies, no one gets suspicious, and many situations lay out foes in discrete, easily sync-shot-able groups.

Only in later levels do you encounter larger groups that put your coordination skills to the test. You must now take into account multiple lines of sight and interlocking movement patterns, as well as calibrate the exact speed at which you can tag and take down a new set of targets. Methodically carving your way through these scenarios is very satisfying, and you might even find yourself choosing to reload checkpoints when you are discovered, even if you aren't forced to. Though an alert doesn't always bring your mission to a close, challenging yourself to maintain stealth is usually more engaging and fun than blasting your way through.

Aside from sync shot orders, your AI allies are mostly autonomous. They follow your lead but move, take cover, and engage alerted targets on their own. They are very reliable, but they are prone to a number of unrealistic behaviors that can hamper your immersion. Shooting effectively through multiple thick walls, sprinting past enemies while maintaining camouflage, or failing to acquire a marked target in line of sight are all intermittent AI oddities.

Fortunately, these AI issues rarely have an adverse effect on your progress. Yet regardless of how careful you are, things are going to get loud. Open firefights provide good opportunities to use non-suppressed weapons like light machine guns and shotguns, as well as deadly ordnance like frag and incendiary grenades. The AI is aggressive, but not reckless (to borrow a phrase from the ghost leader), and they throw grenades, flank, and suppress your position with vigor. The latter action can trigger a disorienting camera movement that temporarily prevents you from returning fire, a nice change from the clouded field of view seen in other shooters.

As long as you stay behind cover, dodge grenades, and shoot sharply, you can progress through these encounters without too much hassle. The suggested weapon loadout is always up to the task, though Future Soldier does offer an extensive weapon customization mode before each campaign mission. Almost every part of the gun can be analyzed and swapped out for another that favors different attributes, though it takes some time to unlock the more intriguing hardware. Each component is rendered in loving detail, and it's fun to watch the gun spring apart into fragments and then reassemble.

Out in the field, your guns fire with realistic reports and bullets impact targets with a squishy thud. Yet while the gunplay is competently put together, the cover-to-cover firefights rarely coalesce into something truly exciting. There's a workmanlike quality to the action that makes you yearn for the thrill of a sync shot, though some set-piece moments help liven things up. Slow-motion breaching maneuvers and on-rails hostage extractions add some dramatic flair, and the mission with a donkey-sized robot (the Warhound) provides some explosive kicks.

Each campaign mission presents four challenges to overcome in order to unlock extra weaponry, and striving to achieve them is a good way to keep things more interesting. You have to tweak your arsenal to pull some of them off, or just bring a few friends along to help your cause. In fact, some seem to all but require additional human players, and you can have up to three online teammates. Coordinating sync shots and advancing on enemies is more enjoyable with a human crew, and there's also a horde mode in which you (and up to three friends) must defend an outpost from waves of enemies. Escalating weapon loadouts, wave perks, and a variety of gear help you make your stand as things get tougher, and the higher waves pose a stiff challenge to even the sharpest ghosts.

There's also a lively challenge to be found in competitive multiplayer, in which two teams can compete in a variety of modes. As in the campaign, you can die quickly if caught out, so cover is a powerful ally. But with the exception of the one-life-per-round Siege mode, respawns happen frequently enough that the penalty for death is not very severe, which allows for more brazen tactics. This gives things a more hectic feel, especially in Conflict mode when the objectives regularly shift the focal point of the battle.

Your firearm skills serve you well, but so does reconnaissance. Stunning an enemy instead of killing him and then hacking his data feed may be risky and time-consuming, but the resulting reveal of enemy positions is a very potent reward, especially in the bomb-transporting Saboteur mode. Using your tech to gain an advantage is gratifying, and success in multiplayer earns you levels and new gear for whichever of the three classes you are playing as at the time.

Alas, Future Soldier is beset by connectivity issues, and the competitive multiplayer bears the brunt of these flaws. Matches may take long minutes to start with no indication of how long you must wait, and randomly disconnecting from the server mid-match is not uncommon. It can be tough to find populated lobbies in modes other than Conflict, and once you are in a game, you may encounter graphical issues or slight lag. Though we were able to play a number of solid matches, it involved a lot of time spent wrangling with these frustrating problems.

Cooperative play is also hampered by errors, including a common one that causes the game to crash. Ubisoft has issued numerous patches since the game's release, but those hoping to play with or against other humans have a bumpy road ahead. Once you get it going, Future Solider's campaign and competitive play offer a good amount of content. Though the standard gunplay isn't very exciting, stealthy skill shots and diverse combat scenarios provide a lot of entertaining and satisfying moments. The action rarely transcends present-day standards, but Ghost Recon: Future Soldier proves that there is still a lot of fun to be found on the battlefields of the future.

GAMEPLAY :

Played it ! not really bad . The problem is online play ! "Camo" is awesome !

Ubisoft Has a Change of Heart, Releasing Console Game on PC After All

Let's recap. In November 2011, Ubisoft creative director Stanislas Mettra said the following about I Am Alive, a game for the Xbox 360 and PS3:


We've heard loud and clear that PC gamers are bitching about there being no version for them.

But are these people just making noise just because there's no version or because it's a game they actually want to play? Would they buy it if we made it?

It's hard because there's so much piracy and so few people are paying for PC games that we have to precisely weigh it up against the cost of making it. Perhaps it will only take 12 guys three months to port the game to PC, it's not a massive cost but it's still a cost. If only 50,000 people buy the game then it's not worth it.



Mettra later softened his stance, but it still didn't sound like a PC version was on the way.

Now, in August 2012, Ubisoft has announced a PC version of the game. It'll be out on September 13, on Ubi's own service as well as Steam. If you're a PC gamer who hasn't played it, and want to show Ubisoft that a) you're not the bitching type and b) their PC piracy stats are full of shit, you should check it out. It's rough, but there's a bleak brutality there that a lot of people really appreciate.

The PC version will feature a few additions, like a replay mode to go back and retry levels, along with a new "easy" difficulty, which was needed because the console original could get pretty tough in places.

The planes, trucks, and helicopters of Grand Theft Auto 5

For the third time this week, Rockstar Games lifted the lid on a small handful of Grand Theft Auto 5 screenshots. Like previous releases, these screens depict just some of the things you'll be doing in Rockstar's next big GTA entry. For instance, jumping onto a moving truck while police trail behind. Or flying a propellor plane. Naturally!

Angry Birds Space fills Red Planet with volcanoes, exploding asteroids

Much like progress, nothing can stop the march of Angry Birds. Not even a hostile, alien planet covered in volcanoes, crawling with evil pigs and surrounded by exploding asteroids can stop them, apparently.

Here’s How Activision Justifies Charging More For Angry Birds On Console

Pretend (?) you run a gaming company. If you could bring the biggest mobile game there is purchasable in stores, would you do it? If you're the largest game publisher in the world, then it's not such a tough question. Surprise surprise, Activision is publishing Rovio's Angry Birds for the Playstation 3, Xbox 360, and Nintendo 3DS, even though it's free on Android and available for way less on iOS.

What's way less? Angry Birds Trilogy, which includes Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, and Angry Birds Rio, sells for a buck each for the iPhone. To match with DLC, that's $6 total, or $10 for the HD versions on the iPad. Again, free on Android. This new version? $30 for the 3DS and $40 for home consoles.

Before you freak out, keep in mind a few things. First, Trilogy is a digitally-remastered, fully-remade game with 19 original levels (albeit from a huge total of 700+ levels), 1080p graphics and artwork, new cinematics never before seen that replace the pretty simple animations, surround sound, Move/Kinect support, 3D support, achievements, and plenty of unlockables like never before seen artwork.

Plus, instead of having three separate apps only playable on a smartphone or tablet, Trilogy offers it all in one convenient package as physical media. Angry Birds Trilogy sells in stores, on a disc or cartridge. So you can do whatever you want with it when you're done.

At a gaming trade show In Germany last week, I played a few levels with the various control schemes for home consoles. I found the gamepad decent but certainly not better than a touchscreen. Kinect, which uses two hands (left hand to pull back the slingshot and aim, right to trigger firing) is more fun, though the it's at the mercy of Kinect's cameras, which can be shaky. Move is certainly the more accurate and the easiest of the motion-controlled console options, thanks to a more precise aiming stick and buttons built right on the controller—you know, to restart instantly when you make a mistake.

The downside of this whole thing is that Trilogy isn't the full Angry Birds experience. Sure, you can play on a TV in gorgeous 1080p, but the 700+ levels doesn't meet the 855 levels I counted across those three Angry Birds titles. Trilogy doesn't include any of the updates released over the past year, nor does it include Angry Birds Space. Then again, even with that missing Trilogy still has at least 150 hours of gameplay in it, not including scoring three stars on every level and achievement-hunting.

What does it mean? For $30 you can get an alternate mobile version of Angry Birds for the 3DS, which plays in 3D and works with a stylus. Or, for $40, you can play Angry Birds on the big screen with motion controls. It's a steep price to pay, especially for a game with less content. Activision representatives did tell me that there are two planned DLC packs, but they don't know what content will be added.

Angry Birds Trilogy has gone gold and will release on September 25.

Battlefield 3 quadruples the official DICE server count on consoles

Looking for some more variety in game modes? DICE has upped the number of official servers for Battlefield 3 on consoles – four-fold. Quick matches will still drop you into the first available ranked server, rented or not, but if you input "DICE" when searching, it should list all the available DICE servers.

You'll find these newly-added DICE servers available on Xbox 360 and PS3 as of right now, the Battlefield Blog says. There's no word on whether DICE will be instituting a similar measure on the PC.

The Official Guild Wars 2 Mouse and Headset are Freaking Adorable

Guild Wars 2 launches in the wee hours of the morning tomorrow, and I am almost completely prepared. I've got my collector's edition. I've got my caffeine. I've got SteelSeries' gorgeous mouse and headset combo. Let me tell you about those last two before performing an emergency formatting of my hard drive and then attempt to reinstall everything and download the client before servers open.

But Fahey, you have the collector's edition! It has DVDs, and requires only a minimal download! That would be comforting indeed, only I removed my DVD drive earlier this year to make room for the empty space my DVD drive once occupied. As an added plus, I want to remove all the cluttered crap on my hard disk and the ill-advised preview copy of Windows 8, to ensure I have the smoothest experience possible.

So much doom. But hey, mouse and headset!

As you can see in the photo above, ArenaNet made choosing the color scheme for the official Guild Wars 2 peripherals incredibly easy on SteelSeries. White, red and black, the colors of Captain America that one time he went rogue and they replaced him with the Super Patriot who then went crazy. The Captain, he called himself. He had nothing to do with Guild Wars 2.

These do. Let's start with the ears.

The Guild Wars 2 Gaming Headset -$99.99







It's tiny, plastic-y, and rather fetching. In a world where black is the new black as far as gaming peripherals are concerned, the matte white of these ear dealios is incredibly striking.

The Guild Wars 2 Gaming Headset is actually a branded version of the SteelSeries Flux, a sexy new product that in its normal state is a highly customizable piece of high quality audio equipment. You can swap out colored ear cushions and side plates. It's got a removable audio cable that fits into either ear cup, which allows others to plug their own headset into yours to hear what you hear. You can even purchase an optional mobile cable to turn it into a Mac or phone headset.

The Guild Wars 2 version does all of this as well, so what you're really purchasing is a Flux with red ear cushions and branded side panels. There is nothing wrong with this.

The sound is quite lovely, much more powerful than I would have expected from a smaller-sized device. The cloth SNDblock ear cushions help muffle the outside world while you game, though not so much that you'll not hear your children fighting over bottles in the next room over. STOP IT, KIDS.

I fell in love with the Flux design the first time I saw it. To have one sporting Guild Wars 2 colors is just goodness on top of greatness. I'm not a big fan of the in-line mic, but then I'm not a big fan of talking to people I play MMO-type games with either.

Now for that pointy thing.

The Guild Wars 2 Gaming Mouse - $69.99

I've pretty much reviewed this mouse before, only back then it was for Diablo III. You should read that.

Like its more demonic cousin, the Guild Wars 2 Gaming Mouse is a riff on one of SteelSeries' most popular mice, the Sensei — specifically the Sensei Raw, if I am not mistaken. It's a fine piece of pointing machinery from a company that realizes that you don't need 86 million CPI to play a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. 5,760 is more than enough to click anything's ass Guild Wars 2 sends at you.

It's got those seven programmable buttons, which can be configured to work together with your keyboard for maximum impressive complexity. You don't need a lot of buttons for Guild Wars 2, so this sleek (and hey, ambidextrous) and sexy beast is plenty.

I'm also a big fan of the red rubber cable. I don't know why. It just pleases me.

So yes, I am almost fully prepared. I've just got to create a bootable USB installation of Windows, delete everything I own, reinstall it all, and then download Guild Wars 2. I'm sure I'll find plenty of time to curl up in a ball and cry while all of that's going on.

See you in-game (eventually)!

Prototype 2 review

There comes a point while playing Prototype 2 when you realize the marketing campaign was a lie. The Homecoming trailer weaves this heart wrenching story of a soldier who told his family to trust the government and how it cost them their lives. With that pain, Sgt. James Heller becomes a relatable character and we want to see him use his superpowers to exact revenge on those responsible. But that motivation is lost when the game starts and Heller begins shoehorning curse words into every other sentence. The emotional connection to our protagonist is severed. Heller becomes an angry caricature, and Prototype 2 becomes an enjoyable but predictable action title.

If you skipped the original Prototype, you won't have an issue jumping into the sequel. About 14 months after the events of the first game, New York City is once again in the grips of a viral outbreak -- supposedly at the hands of Alex Mercer, the antihero of the original title. Heller blames Mercer for the death of his family, and through a 14 or so-hour game (if you do all the side quests), it's our job to rain vengeance.

The story doesn't get much deeper than that. You'll partner up with shady characters throughout the journey, and they'll feed you missions that usually end with Heller beating the hell out of a bunch of soldiers or mutants. The setup is repetitive, but the action is entertaining.

Prototype 2 gives you five weapons to morph Heller's hands into, and you assign two of them to the face buttons. See, Heller's powers -- given to him in a WTF moment by Mercer -- allow him to create these tools of destruction, leap tall buildings in a single bound, and ingest people so he can steal their memories and shapeshift into their forms. He's also packing the ability to turn people into bio-bombs. So, know that.

It's a delicious recipe. Leaping into the air, targeting a foe and swooping in for a claw attack that beheads the bad guy is fun. Sneaking around a base disguised as a solider and absorbing unaware enemies is cool. Prototype 2 excels at making you feel like a badass. Completing tasks levels you up so you can move faster, fly farther and become invulnerable to gunfire. Absorbing specially marked characters upgrades your abilities so you can pounce on victims from farther away and increase the range of your Whipfist.

With each mission, you feel Heller getting stronger and stronger. Brutes that used to be the bane of your existence eventually become your pets and the first helicopter you KO with an uppercut will leave you feeling like the apex predator of New York City.

On top of that, developer Radical Entertainment nails what work works in open world games -- collectables. New York City is broken into three zones, and each section has a slew of side tasks to knock out. There are infected lairs to clear, teams to kill and blackboxes to find. Although you'll need to find these locales, the general areas are marked on your map. This is awesome and led to me spending an hour knocking out side missions as soon as I stepped foot on each island.

And while that's rad, it kind of points out one the problem with Prototype 2. I was playing to complete it -- to get the 14 blackboxes in the green zone and to get Heller's tendrils to level four. The grinding is fun, but I couldn't have cared less about why this priest had me attacking the 400th Blackwatch soldier that looked just like the 40th.

Even though becoming this ultimate killer is cool, it doesn't hide the fact that nearly every mission is running into a base, forcefully assuming an identity, and exiting the alert. It doesn't hide the fact that the animations for many of Heller's moves look like those of the nearly 3-year-old Prototype, which look like those of the nearly 7-year-old The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction.

Outside of the animations, Prototype 2 still doesn't look like a 2012 blockbuster game. Blackwatch badges are muddy on characters, and Heller's absorbing animations are clearly going through his body and not into it. The best example of all this comes as a stabbing scene at the very beginning. The knife goes into the body, but it's just gliding in like it's stabbing air -- the moves have no impact.

Closing Comments

Having no impact is kind of the M.O. of Prototype 2. I enjoyed leveling up Heller and completing side quests, but none of it really meant anything to me. Outside of the Achievements I have for my efforts, I doubt I'll remember much of Prototype 2's sterile side missions and curse word-laden dialogue. Prototype 2 is fun, but it sure is forgettable.


IGN RATINGS

• 6.5 -Presentation

The chance for a touching story is ruined by a generic, angry caricature. The black and white cutscenes are a cool motif. Menu maps make it easy to find everything.

• 6.0 -Graphics

The city looks good, but the drawn distance isn't great, animations look old, and the kills don't seem high-def.

• 6.5 -Sound

Heller's a character who is always angry and spouting off curse words. The rest of the cast is fine.

• 8.0 -Gameplay

It's fun to run around the city, tear things apart and level up Heller.

• 7.5 -Lasting Appeal

My first playthrough took about 14 hours or so, and that was doing nearly everything. I happily jumped back in for a second playthrough and more Achievements.

7.0
OVERALL Good
(out of 10)

GAMEPLAY:

Splinter Cell: Blacklist or Assassin's Creed: Modern Edition ?

Splinter Cell: Blacklist has been getting a lot of bad rap from the fans of the franchise of late. Even though it hasn't even been released yet, Sam Fisher voice actor Michael Ironsides has been replaced and more importantly the gameplay in this iteration of Splinter Cell looks completely different.

Ubisoft has put out a ten-minute gameplay video narrated by Creative Director Maxime Beland and it shows off a lot of the elements with which the fans seem to have a problem. The mission sees Sam fudging around on the Iran/Iraq border (always a great idea) with his support team, called Fourth Echelon. He's taking out a bunch of baddies using new moves such as Killing in Motion, which lets you kill a bunch of guys in a smooth, premeditated fashion.

The video also shows off the projected panels feature of the game, which only seems to ratchet up the Assassin's Creed-iness of the game. It still looks fun though!Check out the gameplay vid and let us know what you think about Splinter Cell: Blacklist so far. It's out next Spring.

Mario is Actually a Jerk

Cover Story: We explore the secret antisocial behavior of Nintendo's squeaky-clean hero.

We all think we know Mario: He's a goofy, smiling, mustachioed cherub with a twinkle in his eye and ungodly spring in his legs. He waddles around like a neotenous manchild with his enormous head and stubby limbs as he rescues cute things from other cute things. Sure, he's an outrageously exaggerated Italian-American stereotype, but if anything that early 20th-century throwback is a relief after three years of Jersey Shore. It's a squeaky-clean portrayal that stands out in stark contrast against a single, undeniable fact:

Mario is a dick.

His image has been whitewashed in recent years, but Mario's career in dickery started early. Earlier than his very first appearance, in fact, when he was busy whipping the hell out of an imprisoned ape until it finally snapped and kidnapped his girlfriend. A little later he would recapture that ape, put it back in its cage, and whip the hell out of a bunch of weird animals in order to motivate them to try to kill the ape's kid.

It's also worth noting that at this point he was sporting a Snidely Whiplash mustache and going bald. Some time after this he gained some weight, trimmed his soup strainer, and started wearing a hairpiece. Hairpieces, of course, being an accessory completely exclusive to dicks.

When Donkey Kong came stateside, Mario was only known as "Jumpman." At least, until Nintendo's landlord, Mario Segale, came around to hastle them about back rent and they named him after the guy. Given that Segale is understandably reluctant to talk about the other Mario, it's hard to make any judgment about his character, but it's pretty clear that the guys at Nintendo didn't like him very much. So yeah, they named Mario after some guy they thought was kind of a dick.

Following Donkey Kong's release, Mario and Pauline (his girlfriend at the time until he threw her over for a younger, prettier girl with more money) appeared weekly on the Saturday Supercade. The cartoon tracked Donkey Kong Jr.'s endless quest to find his father while Mario and his temporary girlfriend -- also his niece -- chased the poor, persecuted ape all over the world. The only thing this ever accomplished was to deny Kong anything more than a momentary reunion with his homeless, fatherless son.

Also, at some point he took Princess Toadstool to a Milli Vanilli concert.

A short time later he rescued the Mushroom Kingdom from civil war. If the Super Mario Bros. instruction manual is to be believed, at some point in the conflict the Mushroom loyalists were transformed into the bricks and coins and whatnot that populate the landscape. Mario's method of "rescuing" the populace was to punch them until they exploded.

Oh, did you know that guy? Sorry, he's worth 50 points.

Meanwhile, any defectors were dubbed "Goombas," which is at least only mildly derogatory. Who knows what compelled them to join the other side. At least a few of them must have believed in the cause, but one would expect a more motivated attitude from revolutionary zealots. From the listless way they shuffle back and forth it's easy to believe they were pressured into it. Perhaps they had family being held hostage in those recently-exploded bricks. Regardless, they were all to be squashed on sight. Mario's tubby ass gives no quarter.

Even his friends have it bad. Never mind all those times he's kicked poor Yoshi out from underneath him to fall into a bottomless pit just so Mario's gargantuan ass can get a little more air time. Before that, he was punching the poor bugger in the back of the head to make him stick his tongue out. Yes, this is a man who will repeatedly donkey-punch a dinosaur to make it eat his enemies.

Mario, Bowser, and Peach repeat this same song and dance over and over again for decades. Which, given what we know about Mario, has prompted anyone who has given it any thought to come to the obvious conclusion: Peach wants to be kidnapped. It's the only conceivable explanation for why she spends more time over at Bowser's place than she does at home. Especially when games that put her in a starring role reveal that she's more than capable of busting out of there her own damn self.

Note that Peach is also kind of a dick.

Worse than all this, however, is Mario's complete and utter lack of shame. He doesn't even care enough to deny that any of this happened as he prances on his merry way, leaving the ruins of lives and kingdoms in his wake. Far from showing anything resembling regret, instead his ego has swelled to massive proportions. Hell, by the modern day the little asshole is flying around in a giant spaceship shaped like his own head.

Cover Story: The Super Mario Bros. Legacy

Super Mario Bros. celebrated its 25th anniversary almost two years ago, and this coming weekend will see the launch of the latest chapter of the Mario saga, New Super Mario Bros. 2. Depending on how you want to numerate the series, it's either the 11th, 32nd, or 200-something Mario game since Super Mario Bros. defined the workings of the 2D platform back in 1985. Any way you look at it, that's a lot of Mario.

Super Mario Bros. had a profound impact on video games. Any popular game sees its share of imitators; a truly great game creates its own genre. Super Mario Bros. didn't so much invent a genre as it defined how every action game to follow would play. It wasn't the first platform, but everything it did hit just the right notes in ways that nothing that had come before it had ever accomplished. From the perfect physics of Mario's jump, to the incredible syncopation of its music and sound effects, to the gut-level satisfaction of simply snagging coins, everything about Super Mario Bros. was basically perfect. It's not even that Mario himself was intrinsically great; his previous outings Donkey Kong and Mario Bros. had been fun games, but the depth and precision of Super Mario Bros. utterly eclipsed them on every possible level. In retrospect, they resemble rough sketches next to the fully realized masterpiece that is Super Mario Bros.

Maybe that's why Mario's 11th (or 32nd, or 200-something) outing doesn't stray too terribly far from the 1985 original. New Super Mario Bros. 2 may cling a little too closely to Mario games that that have come before, it's true, but the fact that it can iterate on a 27-year-old game and still be incredibly fun speaks volumes about the excellence of that vintage creation.

This week, 1UP will be looking back at Super Mario Bros.: What made it great, what makes it memorable, and how games got from there to where they are now. We'll also be looking at Mario's sequels to a lesser degree, but by and large the focus of our Super Mario Bros. Legacy cover story is the original game itself. So snuggle up in your Tanooki Suit and dig in for an in-depth exploration of one of the most important games of all time: Super Mario Bros. -- Jeremy Parish

Full Counter-Strike: Global Offensive trailer uses more ammo

In case you missed the Source Filmmaker-based teaser trailer for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, we have the extended version right here. The game is heading to PC, Xbox 360, and PS3 this coming Tuesday, August. 

Top 5 horror games of all time.

The horror video games tend to be the most polarising of them all. The majority either swear by this genre or hate it; however, it's nigh impossible to ignore it altogether. It's not difficult to understand where the appeal lies. The video game medium has evolved into a pantomime mainly due to its humble beginnings. Powerful modern hardware makes it possible to deliver subtle nuances with sophisticated facial animation techniques employed in games such a L.A. Noire. However, back when such a thing was not possible, we interacted with faces in a simplistic yet even more satisfying manner such as, say, with a cat-silenced shotgun in Postal 2. You see, it is human nature to revel in violence, sex, and sometimes a morbid combination of the two. However, it is fear that fires up the neurons with an even greater frenzy.

If you resolve human behaviour to its most basic components, you'll find that it all boils down to survival and the binary choice between fight and flight. Fear, after all, is the ultimate driving force behind our most primordial instincts. The purest form of instant gratification, therefore, can only be derived by tapping into the deepest recesses of your psyche and yanking out fear till the point your brain directs your endocrine system to deliver a heady mix of adrenaline, serotonin, dopamine, and other neurotransmitters causing that inexplicable rush — the one that puts you in an uncanny state of feeling good to be alive.

What follows is an eclectic selection of the five horror games, cherry-picked from varying genres such as old-school Point-and-Click, FPS, Third-Person, and Adventure. Each game in this list takes a different approach to horror. Some use the age-old boo technique distilled to perfection, whereas others mess with your head in a deeper psychological manner. Irrespective of their means, all these video games provide a compelling gameplay experience that doesn't just make them excellent horror titles, but great games. Period.

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream

Genre: Point-and-Click Adventure
Year: 1995
Honourable Mentions: System Shock 2, Sanitarium

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (IHNM) has been adapted from a short story of the same name by the controversial Sci-Fi author Harlan Ellison. This point-and-click adventure game is set in a post-apocalyptic world, where an evil AI known as Allied Master Computer (AM) built by the superpowers (USA, Russia, and China) to fight the war for them has all but wiped out the human race. Sounds familiar? Well, the game happens to be the most seminal of the lot. It's hard not to notice how varying elements and subplots from the horror short eventually went on to inspire Terminator (something that Ellison has already accused James Cameron of).

Most importantly, its mark can be seen in the infamous Saw series of movies. Before Jigsaw from the Saw movies preceded his carnival of pain with the words, "I want to play a game", the diabolical supercomputer AM did that decades prior in this game. You play as any one of the five remaining humans that the digital tyrant has been torturing for the past 109 years. Each character has its own twisted back-story and a completely different campaign. One of the character's story arc, for example, is inspired by the Nazi war criminal Dr Mengele from the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp. Needless to say, his campaign involves gruesome depictions of torture and unsettling gore.

Unlike Saw's brand of torture porn, much of the horror is psychological and delivered in the subtext. Each of the prisoners has been mentally and physically altered to play on their deepest weaknesses and fears. The core of the game involves directing each of these damned souls through a personalised version of hell conjured by the evil AM itself. No amount of words can convey the horror of living through their personal nightmares, as you unravel the increasingly sadistic puzzles in the quest to disable the supercomputer. The best part is that since IHNM is abandonware, it's free to download and play.

Dead Space 1 & 2

Genre: Survival Horror, Third-Person Shooter
Year: 2008/2011
Honourable Mention: Cold Fear

Dead Space (DS) single-handedly revived the dying Survival Horror genre pioneered by the Resident Evil (RE) series, with clever modifications to the gameplay mechanics. Unlike the RE games, the Sci-Fi horror title allowed players to run and shoot at the same time. Did that take away from the horror, you ask? Well, the fact that the franchise DS invariably makes everyone traverse its dark corridors with guns drawn at all times — that would be a resounding no.

The original game is set against the backdrop of an alien infestation that mutates the dead crew of a gargantuan ship into twisted undead beings eager to disembowel every living thing in sight, whereas the sequel continues the madness on a large facility on the remnants of Titan (Saturn's largest moon). While it's hard to imagine the scare quotient of what can effectively be described as a cross between Sci-Fi horror classics Alien and The Thing, it helps if you visualise the film Event Horizon and multiply the dead by a factor of ten.



 

Ex-girlfriends can prove problematic, even when they are dead

The guys behind this franchise really know how to get into your head with a brilliant use of dynamic shadows and some remarkable audio design and foley work. Both DS1 and DS2 have their fair share of frightening moments, and use some of the most dastardly tricks in the horror book to keep you on your toes. When you think you have figured the plot out, you are thrown a googly that changes everything. The franchise creates one of the most comprehensive mythos woven around two games, books, and feature films, along with an excellent satire of the cult of Scientology that forms the pillar of its narrative.

What you have here, then, is a blindingly-competent horror game with great gameplay, interesting physics and temporal puzzles garnished with one of the best storylines found in gaming.


Silent Hill 2

Genre: Survival Horror
Year: 2001
Honourable Mention: Penumbra Series, Resident Evil 2


There are horror games, and then there's Silent Hill 2. Considered by many as the best of the series, it is arguably the best thinking man's horror game of them all. Unlike its contemporaries, the Silent Hill franchise doesn't stress too much on zombies, space creature, ghosts or combat, but it delivers the most impressive psychological horror experience ever seen in a video game. Silent Hill 2 puts you in the shoes of Harry Mason, who visits the town of Silent Hill after receiving a letter from his deceased wife Mary. Soon enough, you find that something isn't right with the town. It somehow seems to be physically cut off from the rest of the world, while nightmarish creatures prowl the thick fog permeating the streets.

In reality, Silent Hill happens to be a personal nightmare of the protagonist. Each creature you encounter reflects Harry's deepest repressed fears, insecurities, and dysfunctions. Think of it as stumbling into a Rorschach test — one that will eventually consume your sanity or body, whichever breaks first. It also happens to be one the few games that extensively use Jungian archetypes to craft various NPCs and recurring monsters, and genuinely warrants having some knowledge about the concept for a truly enriching experience. Video games rarely get as cerebral as this.

F.E.A.R.

Genre: FPS
Year: 2005Honourable Mention: Condemned: Criminal Origins

F.E.A.R. is one of the few games that can claim the bragging rights of making grown men cower in, well, fear. It's hard to explain how a game involving a kid with supernatural powers and a runaway Special Forces team can be nigh impossible to play alone in a dark room without experiencing a mild heart attack or two. Partly inspired by Japanese horror flicks, this FPS puts you in the shoes of the Point Man — a military operative with superhuman reflexes bought in to contain a cannibal telepathically controlling a battalion of cloned supersoldiers. If that wasn't bad enough, you also have to deal with Alma, a spooky girl with frighteningly potent supernatural powers. What makes this combination of Jap horror and American action potent is an exemplary implementation of eerie sound effects and dark, foreboding environs held together with clever a scripting engine.

The game masterfully builds tension around unnaturally silent sequences, interspersed with some of the most unsettling boo moments when you least expect it. Interestingly, the suspenseful segments when juxtaposed with loud and frenetic encounters with supersoldiers, their brutally efficient AI puts you in an unexpected dilemma. It's hard to decide what you'd rather have — the snot scared out of you by Alma, or being turned into Swiss cheese by a well-coordinated team of clone soldiers. The answer is rather difficult, because when you think the game has dialled its scope of terror to the max, along comes an even more frightening encounter. F.E.A.R.'s well-perfected combat, supreme AI, and some genuinely scary moments make it a title with the best combination of twitch and horror.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent

Genre: Adventure, Survival Horror
Year: 2010
Honourable Mention: Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, Slender

The best way to describe Amnesia: The Dark Descent is by calling it a First-Person Adventure title with a strong Survival Horror theme. You play the role of a man named Daniel, who awakens in an eerie castle with absolutely no memory of how he got there. What follows is fare that will satisfy both old-school Point-and-Click Adventure fans as well as the proponents of Survival Horror games. Like the former, you explore the castle to dig up clues about yourself as well as the ancient evil that resides there. The exploration mechanics are combined well with the Survival Horror elements.

Throughout your adventure, you will be chased around by hideous monstrosities. Witnessing them drains your sanity and so does being in the darkness for extended times, but your grip on your psyche can be regained by staying in the light and away from the fiends chasing you. The best, or worst, part is that you don't have any weapons, which makes the proceedings even more terrifying. Clever gameplay implementations such as limited light sources and physics puzzles forcing you to use the monsters themselves adds a great deal of depth to the game.

Staying in the light is crucial for survival. Too bad it attracts the ghosts as well

Much like Call of Cthulhu, Amnesia uses the same HUD-less setup that makes the sanity and fear mechanics all the more interesting. However, the main pull of the game lies in the foreboding atmosphere it creates with well-thought out lighting and competent art direction. It's suspenseful plot and the constant dread of being chased by monsters that you can't fight back elevates this horror adventure to an experience that begs to be savoured first-hand.