Heads explode in our first look at Fist of the North Star

Exploding heads and punching go together like Peabo Bryson and Celine Dion. Fist of the North Star looks to take this classic combination (the former, not the latter) into the realm of video games. This video game adaptation of the comic book focuses on the ridiculous bloodshed and unending swath of enemies that fans might expect, but it's going to see quite a few changes from its original Japanese release to its North American debut. It's too early to know how this will turn out, but fans of wanton violence should pencil this into their appointment calendar.

There are two separate stories in Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage. The first, called Legend, retells the original story from the comic. Dream is the other mode, letting you rush through a unique story made just for this game, and it's the only way you can play with a friend by your side. We saw a level from the Legend mode, though the story was cut out entirely so we could get a good look at the punching, kicking, and other life-ending melee maneuvers.

The bulk of the game plays out like a 3D version of Double Dragon. Your mindless foes are little more than fleshy bags of blood, and you do them the service of ending what are most assuredly miserable lives. There are super moves in addition to the standard punches and kicks. At one point, the hero Kenshiro picked up a dude by his neck, punched him a few times in the face, and then punted him 10 feet away. At another time, he conjured flaming pillars from the ground. Clearly, this guy doesn't take guff from anyone. He can even make his enemies' heads explode after performing a thousand-hand punch. Violence is his mother's maiden name.

Kicking grown men in the chest and head can get exhausting after a while. Fortunately, there are vehicles to ferry you around when your legs are tired. We saw Kenshiro ride on top of a horse and motorcycle, knocking down foes on his way to his next location.

The version we saw today was still the Japanese build of the game, but the developer promised us that the mindless enemies would be given more thoughtful AI, and the violence would be made even more extreme. Fist of the North Star is due out this fall for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Tune it to GameSpot to see if claims of even more bloodshed came to fruition, and if the game is fun to play.


~ Tecmo
~ Koei
~ Beat - Em-Up
~ Realease : Nov 2, 2010
~ ESRB : Mature

We tear through the Sports and Performance series events in the first Need for Speed from Burnout studio Criterion.

Need for Speed publisher EA is frank about the position of its premier racing series, that is, in the doldrums, after some recent lacklustre offerings. "We were beating up the franchise," says Patrick Soderlund, EA senior vice president. "We wanted to come back from [Need for Speed] Undercover." The decline was attributed to an unworkable one-year development cycle--"You can't make quality that way," he says--and so development duties for this latest instalment went to Criterion, the British studio behind the Burnout series.

With its racing game pedigree and a longer development period in hand, Criterion settled down to making Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, which Soderlund describes as the 1998 PlayStation game (Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit) built for a new generation.

Accordingly, cops-versus-racers action is the hook, and Criterion is well suited to deliver it. The multiplayer modes centre on aggressive, top-speed, eight-driver chases, with players cast either as illegal racers or as the Seacrest County police, who are dispatched to shut them down by any means necessary--with those means ranging from barging them off the road, to spike strips, to electromagnetic pulse weapons. The career mode, on the other hand, is split between that of the racer and the police. You can independently make progress on either side, unlocking events and vehicles for each and earning the bounty you need to reach wanted level 20 (as a racer) or rank 20 (as a cop).

The racer's career is mapped out as time trials, races, duels, and hot pursuits pinpointed across West Coast USA Seacrest County--a state that conveniently spans timber forest, desert, canyon, valley, snowy mountainside, and sandy seafront. Career challenges for the police differ, adding the likes of the chase-and-takedown interceptor event. The developer has declined to go open world; locations are discrete and routes straightforward, with the occasional side route that may or may not be a shortcut.

The game is keen to remind you it is "powered by Autolog"--an overarching social network that links your experience to that of friends, tracking your accomplishments against theirs, sharing photos, and recommending events to try. And though Autolog is the chief innovation in Hot Pursuit, it will still be the core action--that is, the actual driving--that carries the day, or not. It has been up to the task so far, with great drifty arcade handling set off by handsome environments and, as you'd hope, even better-looking cars.

As a racer in career mode, your first vehicles include the sports series' Porsche Boxster Spyder, the BMW Z4 sDrive 35is, the Mazda RX-8, and the Nissan 370Z, and then, as you progress into the performance cars of the second series, you gain access to motors such as the Maserati Gran Cabrio, the Jaguar XKR, and the Alfa Romeo 8C. As a cop, you start out with the classic Ford Crown Victoria and then graduate to a highway patrol Subaru Impreza WRX ST1 and beyond.

Before you reach the rarest and fastest cars in the uppermost series, you get a taste of what's to come in preview events. These time trials temporarily loan you one of the most exotic models: a Pagani Zonda Cinque, for starters, followed by a Porsche 911 GT3 R5, and then a McLaren F1. Hooning down a highway through a snowfield at 200-plus miles per hour in the latter makes the earliest drives feel practically leisurely. Some events in the performance series are designed specifically to showcase car types, pitting American muscle cars against each other along a desert highway, plus Italian convertibles alongside a beach, and German all-wheel drives on a stormy night on wet roads.

The familiar, Burnout-like handling is accompanied by Burnout's trademark spectacular crashes and bodywork-crumpling slow-mo instant replays. These come thick and fast in the most aggressive career events, between the feisty AI and the constant incentive to drive into oncoming traffic; your nitrous boost is refilled by slipstreaming other cars and driving in the wrong lane. Play feels agreeably accessible; the crashes, if they don't wreck you, are spectacular hiccups rather than race-losing, controller-clenching disasters.

Accessibility extends into the game's steady tick of unlocks and levelling. Though finishing a race in the top three will land you bonus experience points (bounty), these can be picked up all over the place, with encouraging onscreen pop-ups for dodging police roadblocks or nearby crashes, for reaching top speed, for wrecking a cop, and so on. That accessibility, combined with Criterion's eye for quality and detail (the eclectic soundtrack mixes Pendulum, M.I.A., Plan B, and Bad Religion), should serve it well upon launch in November. EA will be praying the studio has turned out what Soderlund calls the "first real comeback for Need for Speed."

EA's latest shooter takes the best bits of Bad Company 2 and brings them to a free-to-play audience.

Looking at the feature list for Battlefield Play4Free, you'd be forgiven for thinking it had been ripped straight from Bad Company 2. You can choose from classes such as soldier, medic, and engineer; use vehicles such as tanks and planes; and battle with up to 32 players online. Many of the maps also come from Bad Company 2, along with weapons and visual design. However, the RPG-like levelling system from Heroes is still present, albeit with different career paths. Instead of gaining power-ups for your character, you now work your way through ranks, all the way from infantry to special ops. Each time you level up, new weapons and abilities are unlocked, which you can use to upgrade your character.

In our brief hands-on, we played a capture-the-flag mode. It took place on a dusty map filled with sand, war-torn houses, and wide roads, which were perfect for driving tanks on. Playing as American soldiers, we battled our way to flagpoles and secured them from the enemy. While capturing a flag, we had to fend off tanks and enemy soldiers, who were raining down bullets and shells on our location. The game felt instantly familiar, and players with any experience with Bad Company 2 will feel right at home. The same precise shooting and character movement were present, and there was no indication other than the visuals that we were playing a free game.

Though the visuals were impressive for a free-to-play title, with plenty of detail in the environments, weapons, and explosions, they lacked the crispness of the game's retail predecessors. EA explained that this allowed it to run on low-spec hardware, so even gamers with old PCs could get in on the action without upgrading. Like Heroes, Battlefield: Play4Free will use purchasable battle points, allowing flush players to buy vanity items such as character costumes, as well as more practical items such as boosts, which let you temporarily gain more experience points. Fortunately, powerful items won't be purchasable, so players won't be able to buy their way to the top of the leaderboards. Battlefield: Play4Free is due for release in 2011, with a closed beta launching later this year. Interested gamers can sign up over on the official site.