One of the potentially hottest titles at this year’s E3 was Bethesda and id Software’s Rage.  There were no playable demos at Bethesda’s dinosaur-laden booth, but savvy appointment-makers had a chance to see a few levels of the game behind closed doors, and what we were shown left more than a few jaws dropped and eyes a-glitter.

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XCOM has in many ways been one of the most controversial games announced this year.  2K Marin, the team responsible for the excellent BioShock 2 experience we were gifted with in January, is taking a classic strategy franchise and giving it a first-person perspective.  This has caused outrage among the more vocal XCOM devotees, but probably more interest among the rest of the gaming community — particularly after a few screenshots showed the general aesthetic of the game.  At E3 last week, we were shown a behind-closed-doors demo of XCOM and while I have no knowledge of the games of yore from which it was derived, I can now say that XCOM is on my radar, and shooting blobs of black goo with a shotgun has never looked so… pretty.

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When it comes to multiplayer modes in the world of shooters there are the games that follow the same formula and then there are the games that offer something different. The multiplayer featured in Kane & Lynch 2 isn’t your standard Deathmatch/Team Deathmatch modes, and there isn’t even a capture the flag mode. What it does have is some very unique modes that force you to think and work as a team. Over the next few weeks we’ll be highlighting each of the different modes that will be in Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days. This week we’re taking a look at the Fragile Alliance mode and the single player version of that mode called Arcade Mode.

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Kane & Lynch: Dead Men was released in 2007 and was met with poor reviews. Everyone did agree on a couple of things though: the controls were clunky and the characters Kane and Lynch were bad asses. Parts of the game were enjoyable while others were simply frustrating.  The characters, on the other hand, were always entertaining. Think of them as The Odd Couple with guns, only more profane and violent. In Dead Men, players were introduced to Kane’s history. In Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days, set to release this summer, players will be introduced to Lynch’s world, a grittier, more violent place where plans quickly turn south. I recently got a chance to play a couple of chapters of the single player campaign, and I think gamers will like the improvements made by Io Interactive.

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This week Capcom released a demo for their upcoming sci-fi shooter Dark Void, and for anyone either too lazy to download it or just uninterested but still curious, I thought I would give my own opinion on this slice of the pie.  Dark Void has an odd history in regards to exposure.  At one point, Capcom really pushed on the advertising, even going so far as to give away a Tesla Roadster in their efforts to promote it (I didn’t win it, which will forever leave a bad taste in my mouth).  But since then, the publisher has been fairly quiet about the title.  With its imminent release on the 19th of this month, we’ve seen a slight resurgence in its promotion, but still not a ton.  The game’s biggest selling point seems to be its jetpack, multi-level combat, and thankfully that’s just what the demo gives us. 

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