Condemned: Criminal Origins review video

Condemned: Criminal Origins for Xbox 360Condemned: Criminal Origins allows players to experience a heightened level of psychological tension as they use their instincts, forensic tools, and melee combat to hunt serial killers and bring them to justice. Agent Thomas, an FBI investigator in the Serial Crimes Unit (SCU), pursues relentless serial killer through detailed urban environments filled with deadly sociopaths lurking on the periphery of humanity.

Gruesome weapons can be fashioned by clever players from the environment: paper-cutter handles, wooden planks and lead pipes ripped from walls can all be used to attack opponents. But watch your step, as enemies don’t merely run at you; they find an appropriately powerful weapon to attack with and then hide in the shadows, waiting for an open opportunity to strike.

Presented in a first-person view for maximum visceral effect, Condemned: Criminal Origins is best played with the surround-sound up and the lights off. Given the power of next-generation hardware, this atmospheric thriller features photo-realistic backdrops, life-like physics, and highly sophisticated artificial intelligence.

One of the most psychologically ruthless games ever made! Find out all about it if you dare in this Condemned: Criminal Origins video review.

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Speaking with Shadow of the Colossus producer

You can’t fail to have heard of a game called ICO on PS2. The wonderful, critically acclaimed SCEI title bombed at retail, but hopes are high for a smash hit with its spiritual successor Shadow of the Colossus. Here’s the interview with the game’s producer Kenji Kaido.

Question (by Kikizo): Can you remind us of the story and setting for Shadow of the Colossus?
Kaido: There’s a young man on a horse, with a girl. You can see that she’s unconscious, and this is because she has lost her soul. He takes her to a temple-like area that exists at World’s End. He is trying to revive her and recover her soul. In order to do that, he has to defeat the Colossi.

Question: What is Wanda’s relationship with the female – is it similar to the relationship in ICO, and what is the relationship between Wanda and the horse?
Kaido: For the relationship with the female character, as with ICO, I want to leave it to the user’s imagination. But the players will know that they are tied together somehow. As for the horse, it is just a partner. It’s not something to be protected or saved like Yorda in ICO.

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A retrospective & next-gen interview with Eric Chahi

Edge talked to Eric Chahi. After joining Delphine as a graphic designer on Future Wars, he went on to create, program, and design (down to the cover artwork) the seminal adventure Another World. Following its successes, he took on his most epic project, Heart of Darkness, which led to years of troubled production, and a hiatus from games making when it was finally released. Now, years later, Chahi is working at a measured pace to make a return to games, and in the meantime, Another World is enjoying a resurgence in popularity with official ports landing on a number of handheld devices from GBA to mobile phone. Here are the most interesting answers from that interview:

What was the first game you ever played?
It was Space Wars, a vector game with two ships dueling around a gravity star. I enjoy that game so much.

What was the first computer/videogame machine you owned?
Videopac was the first console. My first computer was an ORIC 1.

What was the first thing you ever created for a computer or console?
A game named Frog, where the player ate insects as a frog, launching his huge tongue to catch them. There were two kinds of prey, flies and bees. It had an energy bar that was slowly decreasing, so the player had to eat fast but not grab bees, which would make the poor frog explode. I wrote the game in Basic in two weeks – my very first game.

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Atari’s Founder Speaks At Japan’s Digital Interactive Entertainment Conference

From Ritsumeikan University (Kinugasa Campus) Kyoto, Japan. At DIEC the founder of Atari spoke: “That slide’s not right. It shouldn’t read 100 megabytes,” Nolan Bushnell says. “We didn’t have 100 megabytes back then.” Hailed as “The Father of Video Games,” Bushnell is responsible for taking Pong to the masses. And unlike today, he didn’t have …

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PSP Firmware Update v2.6 Now Available

For those people out there with PSP’s, another firmware update, version 2.6, is now available. It can be downloaded from Sony’s official web-site onto a memory stick and installed, or run from an updated UMD disc. The update adds audio support for RSS feeds (Really Simple Syndication v2.0) that can be streamed from the internet, …

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Half-Life 2 Goes Arcade! . . . In Japan

I thought this was interesting and totally unexpected. In a private exhibition in Tokyo today, Taito announced that it is making an arcade version of Half-Life 2 called Half-Life 2: Survivor. It runs on an arcade cabinet that looks like a typical racing game cabinet. You control the action using two joysticks on the side …

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