The New Avengers #31 Review

As the clock ticks down on his time writing the Avengers franchise, Bendis has been all over the place in terms of quality. It has been a most impressive run, but lately he’s been delivering less hits than misses. Luckily, this issue of New Avengers hits strongly by adding a sense of closure to the series while also delving into the mystery of a powerful villain.

Artist Michael Gaydos has a style not unlike Mike Deodato with lots of thick lines and heavy shadows. Most of the issue looks quite good, but a few panels were not given enough attention, resulting in awkward looking faces. Still, the scenes where the unknown mystic villain strikes are chilling. Without using blood and gore, Gaydos makes you feel just how violent the magical attacks are. The best part about the villain is that I don’t know who s/he is, which helps drive the story forward with a “whodunnit” vibe.

Unrest fills Avengers Mansion as news of Luke Cage quitting the team to spend more time with his family reaches the rest of the crew. Iron Fist takes the news the hardest, which leads to a thoughtful conversation with Doctor Strange that Bendis sneaks a moment of humor into. It was also fun to hear Carol talk to Jessica about her new Captain Marvel persona. Bendis hits his stride here with an excellently paced issue balanced by the right amount of humor and tension. Hopefully he carries this quality on to the end.

Joshua writes for IGN. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaYehl, or on IGN at his poorly chosen screen name. He hopes that one day he will reveal himself to the Jedi; that one day he will have revenge.

Source : ign[dot]com

Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition Review

Praise the sun! A Souls game has arrived on PC. It is surely weary. We'll let it rest, and get to the new edition's bonus content and the quality of the port in a moment. On the off chance you've been off collecting beetles for the last three years and missed Dark Souls entirely, here's a recap of why to be excited.

On consoles, this began with 2009's Demon's Souls, a sleeper hit that offered a quest so hard, so hefty, so immaculately crafted that developer From Software might have hewn it from rock. It and sequel Dark Souls summoned staggering review scores, gifting a generation of jaded gamers with a cocktail of fear and self-respect.

You're best off not taking your cues from Dark Souls' charming marketing slogan of “YOU WILL DIE.” While it's best known for being nipple-rippingly difficult, ultimately, it's all about the weight I was talking about earlier. That dark heft. First and foremost, this is the physical weight of your character, and the foreboding atmosphere of From Software's stunning world.

Dark Souls tells the story of your hero trying to save an intriguing world which, by every possible metric, fell long ago. Abominations make their homes in the forgotten nooks of a lost civilisation. A handful of enigmatic survivors are all that's left, but you're as free to talk to them as kill them, and they're as liable to help you as to lie. Best of all, the game literally kills you off somewhere between character creation and the first cut-scene. Above all, Dark Souls seems to thrill at escaping expectations.

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Dark Souls can happily scare the crap out of you in broad daylight, with something as simple as a giant insect dive-bombing your head as you cross a narrow walkway.

An example is how your character controls. Just to swing a sword sees your avatar putting their back, shoulder and wrist into the blow, leaving you to wince at the weapon's weight. Hit attack again, and you'll roll the weapon around down, up and around, maintaining its momentum to strike once more, quicker this time. But every single attack, every block with your shield, every panicked evasive roll, takes a fat bite out of your endurance meter. Never mind whatever action games you've played before, you have to learn to fight all over again because, simply put, you're only human.

That might not sound so bad when you're gleefully taking apart a zombie with a mace. How are you going to deal with a pack of feral dogs? Or a rat as big as a Land Rover? These are the questions Dark Souls asks you, before leaning back in its high-backed leather chair to light a cigarette. It never rushes you. It never needs to. It simply tells you, to your face, that certain death lies this way. And then it tells you to walk.

Which brings us to the radioactive feather in Dark Souls' cap. Death is something you fear. If you die, you don't just get cast back to the nearest waypoint. You run the risk of losing any unspent XP or precious humanity points. Never mind fleeing from ghosts in brooding catacombs. Dark Souls can happily scare the crap out of you in broad daylight, with something as simple as a giant insect dive-bombing your head as you cross a narrow walkway.

All of which is why Dark Souls has a reputation of being a colossal beast, but also so addictive. If a game's capable of making you grin with each new item you furtively recover, imagine how it feels to stand over a slain boss. On a minute to minute level, though, what makes Dark Souls moreish is its suffocating consistency. That down-to-earth, tactile combat is a reason to play Dark Souls in and of itself, but it also functions to immerse you in the game's similarly plausible world.

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What defines Dark Souls is the moment you decide you're literally out of your depth, and turn the hell around, with all your precious XP intact, to go explore somewhere else. But for the most part, you won't do that. You Will Die.

You're not completing levels, or even doubling back in the Metroidvania style. You're just exploring, taking step after nervous step through a foul wonderland that oscillates between great cruelty, and moments of sweet relief. Its great achievement is in not feeling like a game world at all, much as Minecraft didn't, and it's a similar joy to explore. This simply feels like a place where you really, really shouldn't be, where every step is heavy with dread.

Let's put it this way - it's not the petrifying Capra Demon boss that defines Dark Souls. It's not the key he drops, that leads you to a room where you fight a disgusting, cannibalistic chef. It's not the labyrinthine sewer that the chef guards, or the village you find beneath the sewer, or the putrid moat the village is built above. It's not the nauseating creatures that live in the moat, nor is it the terrible beast that lays its eggs in them. It's not the staircase you find behind her, leading you down still further. What defines Dark Souls is the moment you decide you're literally out of your depth, and turn the hell around, with all your precious XP intact, to go explore somewhere else. But for the most part, you won't do that. You Will Die.

Saving Dark Souls from the loneliness that haunted the open worlds of say, Metroid, is its online functionality, which was designed with the same blend of accuracy and fearless creativity that defines the rest of the game. Players can scratch messages into the ground, which are pulled at random into your own world. Watch Out For Wizard, you'll find, lying ominously before a closed door. Or more dubious stuff still - Step Off, written over a chasm into blackest darkness.

More traditional multiplayer is limited to blue and black phantoms - other players invading your world, to help or assassinate you, for their own selfish aims. Offering some of those moments of relief are the game's bloodstains. Touch one, and you'll see the final seconds of a real-life player, which is a bit like opening a present. Perhaps you'll get a poignant warning, as they flee from something you didn't spot, or you'll just laugh as they go cartwheeling lackadaisically off a ledge.

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The mouse and keyboard controls in the Prepare to Die edition are a war crime. Losing the gentle acceleration of analog movement would have been bad enough, but the mouse doesn't control the camera so much as wrestle it around on a rubber leash.

All of this survives, totally intact, in the PC port, with a single caveat - you must own a Xbox 360 pad, or suitable equivalent.

The mouse and keyboard controls in the Prepare to Die edition are a war crime. Losing the gentle acceleration of analog movement would have been bad enough, but the mouse doesn't control the camera so much as wrestle it around on a rubber leash. Meanwhile, the GUI's adaption to the keyboard is just awkward. All told, you could be playing on an emulator. If you don't own a pad but somehow end up with Dark Souls running on your PC, remove the power cable from the back with a barge pole.

But if you do own a pad, and quickly grab this 80Kb fan hotpix, which unlocks the game's resolution from 1024x720, you'll be able to enjoy the definitive edition of Dark Souls until the Artorias of the Abyss DLC arrives for consoles this winter. That content's packed in the PC version for free, and we're pleased to announce that it's... fine. It's just fine.

The best thing we can say is that it's not ungenerous. It's three whole new areas for you to plunge through like a nervous knife, each packed with the epic bosses, new items, new spells and unsettling NPCs that you've come to expect during the rest of the game (Artorias of the Abyss is, sadly, squirreled away towards very end of Dark Souls).

You'll cut off the tail of a chimera to use as a whip. You'll descend deeper than you've ever been before. But throughout, there's the niggling sense that this wasn't the work of the entire From Software team.

This being DLC that's basically a given, but it shouldn't feel that way. The first new area, Royal Woods, repurposes a ton of art assets from Dark Souls' other trembling forest of Darkroot Garden. The next area, Oolacile Township, is a definite high point – a cluster of slumped towers you have to pick your way down – but it fails to surprise in the way that Dark Souls' best areas do. Finally, the Chasm of the Abyss itself is as barren, rather than as bleak, as the name implies. All of that said, of the four new bosses, the duel with the disturbingly fast Knight Artorias is my new favourite of any Souls game. Good luck with that.

Source : ign[dot]com

The Invincible Iron Man #523 Review

It can be draining to review Invincible Iron Man on an issue-by-issue basis, both because the series never varies tremendously in quality and because it's the sort of book that requires the reader to take the long view when making an analysis. Some chapters are just slower and less eventful than others, and issue #523 happens to be one of the slower ones.

The same running threads continue in this chapter, with most of the focus directed at Tony's attempts to undermine Mandarin's empire and Pepper's efforts to deduce the identity of the new Iron Man. At the moment the former is proving more interesting than the latter. There's too little indication as to what exactly Rhodey is up to with his antics. Is the whole thing an elaborate ruse to get Pepper looped in on Tony's plans? Surely there has to be a more direct way of accomplishing that.

In Mandarin Land, Fraction delivers some fun interaction between Tony and his rogues as he works to enlist them in his plans. The balance of power is slowly shifting as Tony and Zeke become more proactive and Mandarin shows the strain of his lofty position. There are even hints that Mandarin himself isn't the end-all, be-all villain of this storyline. It's interesting to see how many new seeds are blossoming even this late into Fraction's run.

Little has changed regarding the art, which has been the case for years at this point. Unfortunately, Salvador Larroca doesn't have the opportunity to break out his altered flashback style as he did in issue #522. Still, the issue offers a nice mix of simple character interaction, high-octane, armored action, and sci-fi imagery. Oddly, the one visual element of the book that has changed is the cover design. It's a positive change, but it seems weird to suddenly make the change in the middle of an arc and the tail end of a four-year saga.

Jesse is a writer for IGN Comics and IGN Movies. He can't wait until he's old enough to feel ways about stuff. Follow Jesse on Twitter, or find him on IGN.

Source : ign[dot]com

Wield Godlike Power in Harold, a Playable Saturday Morning Cartoon

“My goal is to create a downloadable game with the quality of a triple-A game.”

Sure, like I haven’t heard a game developer tell me that a thousand times before. But for Moonspider Studios CEO Loris Malek, he’s taking aim at his goal by somewhat nontraditional gaming means: he’s hired a team of the most talented 2D animators he can find and is creating a Don Bluth cartoon that happens to be playable with a controller.

Yes, animation has been given top priority in Harold, a sidescrolling platformer where you control a veritable doofus. See, you’re a guardian angel’s apprentice, and in order get your people-protecting Master’s degree, as it were, you must complete the final exam in which you steer the clumsy Harold through timed obstacle runs where pratfalls and dangers constantly befall him.

The obstacle course also happens to be a race against other sad-sack mortals, however, so you’re competing with your fellow guardian angel apprentices for the top finish times. As such, you’ll need to egg Harold on with divine bolts of lightning, sabotage other racers, and use your godlike powers to look ahead in the race and clear a path for Harold as he ignorantly runs toward certain death.

And prepping the course for a smooth run is all you need to worry about, big job though it may be, as you don’t actually control Harold’s movements outside of jumping. Like the 2009 LucasArts platformer Lucidity, the stage is constantly advancing and you can’t stop it. Your job is to make sure Harold doesn’t kill himself, thereby causing you to flunk your guardian angel SAT.

Things start simply enough, but before long you’ll be constantly juggling hazards and looking for any shortcut you can in order to shave precious seconds off of Harold’s time. Gators ahead in a river you need to traverse? Give ‘em a holy whack on the noggin with your divine hammer. Is Harold nervously tiptoeing across a teetering plank bridge? Give him a nudge forward by pulling the bridge tight at each end and then release it to rubber-band snap the young man into gear. A total of four worlds – desert, jungle, beach, and snow – house multiple stages each, adding up to a pre-replayability total of about 6-8 hours of gameplay.

And as for those animations? You truly have not seen a video game look like this since…well, ever. “I wanted to make the first game that would look like a Walt Disney movie,” Malek says enthusiastically.

It shows. Film-quality cartoon cutscenes form the introductory sequence, finale, map introductions, and even mid-race moments. Harold is one game where you’re not likely to want to skip any of the cutscenes. Now that would be a divine miracle.

Ryan McCaffrey is the Executive Editor at IGN Xbox. He used to own a DeLorean, which is weird. Follow him on Twitter, on IGN, catch him on Podcast Unlocked, and drop-ship him Taylor Ham sandwiches from New Jersey whenever possible.

Source : ign[dot]com

Nintendo Addresses Criticism Directed at Mario Sequels

Nintendo President Satoru Iwata has responded to recent criticism that the company is diluting the quality of its Mario titles by iterating too frequently on its most famous mascot.

It will ration the number of side-scrolling 2D Mario titles.

"We only create a New Super Mario Bros. title one [sic] per platform," said Iwata in an interview with Kotaku. "I think we'll probably go ahead and continue at that pace.

"That being said, that's probably Miyamoto's choice, so I can't give you a 100 per cent guarantee that that's the pace we'll continue at."

Super Mario 3D Land came out towards the end of last year and was the first Mario title to be released on 3DS, receiving great reviews. New Super Mario Bros. 2 came out last week to a more mixed response. And it isn't long before Nintendo releases New Super Mario Bros. U alongside its new console, Wii U (sometime later this year).

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I believe the two titles are unique enough that I wouldn't say that I'm super-worried that people are going to be confused.

Responding to concerns that the two games (New Super Mario Bros. 2 and U) might be too similar, and could suffer from being released just months apart, Iwata stated: "I believe the two titles are unique enough that I wouldn't say that I'm super-worried that people are going to be confused.

Iwata also spoke about the company's approach to DLC. New Super Mario Bros. 2 is the first Mario title to feature downloadable content. Iwata allayed any fears that it might be selling content stripped out of the game, saying: "Our goal is to create DLC in such a way that consumers do not feel that they have been cheated or deceived. Now I believe there are people out there, readers, who have are worried about that, and we just want to ensure them that we have that in mind and want them to know that that's not what we are planning on doing," he concluded.

Daniel is IGN's UK Staff Writer. You can be part of the world's worst cult by following him on IGN and Twitter.

Source : ign[dot]com

Wii U Version of Black Ops 2 Appears on Resume

A Wii U version of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 appears on the resume of an Activision quality assurance tester. According to the LinkedIn page of a tester named Randall, QA testing for Black Ops II has been in the works since May, and his responsibilities included “QA testing on PS3 and Wii U, multiplayer testing while collaborating with team, ad hoc testing, and regression. Bug writing, research, and documentation are performed with each issue that is found.”

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard rumors about a Wii U version of Black Ops II, but marks the closest thing so far to official confirmation. Back in June, magazine scans suggested that Wii U would receive Black Ops II before Christmas 2012, and video game analyst Michael Pachter recently theorized that Nintendo developed its Wii U Pro controller specifically to convince Activision to make a Wii U version of Call of Duty.

The last few Call of Duty games have come to Wii, including Modern Warfare 3 and the original Black Ops. Treyarch’s previous game, Call of Duty: World at War, also received a Wii version.

For now, Call of Duty: Black Ops II has only been announced for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 & PC and is set to launch on November 13th. We’ve reached out to Activision for clarification about a Wii U version, but until they comment, be sure to read about all the changes to Black Ops II’s multiplayer as well as its eSports functionality.

Andrew Goldfarb is IGN’s associate news editor. Keep up with pictures of the latest food he’s been eating by following him on Twitter or IGN.

Source : ign[dot]com

Canon Introduces Mirrorless EOS M, Coming in October for $800

Point-and-shoot cameras offer pocket-friendly convenience, but the image quality rarely holds a candle to digital SLRs. Today, Canon is introducing a digital camera that could offer the best of both worlds without breaking the bank.

Canon U.S.A. Inc. announced on Monday the new EOS M Digital Camera, available this October for $799.99 SRP when bundled with the new EF-M 22mm f/2 STM kit lens. While a black model will be available everywhere cameras are sold, Canon will also be offering a white version exclusively on its online store.

The Canon EOS M isn't a full-fledged digital SLR, but the mirrorless 18-megapixel shooter offers an APS-C-sized CMOS image sensor inspired by the company's more expensive EOS technology, targeting both photographers and videographers alike.

"The EOS M includes a unique feature set making it an ideal movie-making tool, while also offering incredible still image quality on its APS-C-sized CMOS sensor," said Yuichi Ishizuka, executive vice president and general manager, Imaging Technologies & Communications Group, Canon U.S.A. "The camera's size, image quality, advanced video capabilities and the versatility of Canon's full lineup of lenses make the EOS M another great option to help our customers record and capture their creative vision."

Canon is also debuting a pair of M-series lenses with the EOS M. The EF-M 22mm f/2 STM kit lens is aimed at general shooting of video or still images with a fixed focal length lens with an aperture of f/2, while the EF-M 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM ($299.99 SRP) offers variable zoom range for both video or still imagery. A $149.99 SRP Speedlite 90EX flash unit will also debut in October.

EOS M owners won't be limited strictly to M-series lenses, however. An optional Mount Adapter EF-EOS M ($199.99 SRP) allows the use of any Canon EF or EF-S lens, making it quite a versatile little addition to the Canon lineup.

Source : ign[dot]com