Call of Duty: Black Ops Out 11.13.12.

Dive into history and take the battle under the Atlantic as you command a submarine and influence the tide of marine warfare. Play the loner or team up with your friends and build your own Woflpack to jointly protect caravans or launch strategies attacked against your enemies.

“This is the most innovative Silent Hunter experience ever created and we can’t wait to let our fans dive into the game,” said Christopher Schmitz, Head of Production at Ubisoft Blue Byte.

Players can get early access to the game by visiting www.silenthunteronline.com and applying to be part of the closed beta.

More images:

Disney Interactive’s Playdom recently launched of Armies of Magic on Facebook. A new side scrolling fantasy game where your chosen character, after centuries of peace, must lead your people in a new war against the rising Goblin menace.

Build your city, and manage the necessary resources to equip and train warriors and advance your armies technology.

ABOUT THE GAME

• Players will choose to lead the Humans, Elves, or Dwarves by building a powerful city and training an army
• Armies of Magic will launch with a unique narrative storyline for each race
• Players can directly challenge their friends to battle and compete for rewards

Armies of Magic also features a fully customizable fantasy-themed city building, exclusive story content, limited edition buildings, as well as a cooperative game play experience.

On the night of May 14, retail locations around the globe will be opening their doors to gamers eager to get their hands on, Blizzard’s mega series, Diablo III. Lucky gamers in; the USA, UK, France, Germany, Sweden, Poland, South Korea, Thailand, Singapore, and Taiwan will be among the first to lock horns with the Lord of Terror. I noticed Canada is missing from the list so no official events here

If you are lucky enough to be nearby on of these launch parties keep your eyes peeled as members of the development teams are scheduled to be on site for autograph and photo opportunities. Also be aware of all the giveaways that are scheduled to happen including; a selection of Diablo-related video footage and exclusive Diablo III-themed prizes, such as laser-etched desktop PCs from Intel (prizes may vary by location).

Find a location near you, Send us Photos and feedback if you get to one of these official events!

For those WOW players that are looking for a change of pace by playing Diablo III, for FREE, are encouraged to join the World of Warcraft Annual Pass.* Did you see the part where I said FOR FREE!!! Through this promotion, with a 1-year commitment to World of Warcraft, players will receive a free digital copy of Diablo III — which they’ll be able to start playing immediately on May 15 — as well as an exclusive World of Warcraft in-game mount and access to the World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria beta test. This offer will no longer be available as of 12:01 a.m. PDT on May 1. Learn more at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/annualpass

* Some restrictions may apply

Ubisoft just released the tracks Black and Jeremy for RockSmith. This is a must have for Pearl Jam Fans.

I’ll soon be checking “Learn Pearl Jam Songs on Guitar” off the bucket list.

Well look no further we have organized them all for you, so you don’t need to waste anymore time looking for them. Enjoy!

Mass Effect 3:

The Last of Us:

Rainbow Six: Patriots:

Hitman: Absolution:

Alan Wake – American Nightmare:

Command & Conquer: Generals 2:

Tekken Tag Tournament 2:

Tony Hawk Pro Skater HD:

The Amazing Spider-Man:

Fortnite:

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron:

Diablo III:

BioShock Infinite:

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance:

UPDATE 1.2 (all platforms unless specified):

• Improved occasional performance issues resulting from long term play (PlayStation 3)
• Fixed issue where textures would not properly upgrade when installed to drive (Xbox 360)
• Fixed crash on startup when audio is set to sample rate other than 44100Hz (PC)
• Fixed issue where projectiles did not properly fade away
• Fixed occasional issue where a guest would arrive to the player’s wedding dead
• Dragon corpses now clean up properly
• Fixed rare issue where dragons would not attack
• Fixed rare NPC sleeping animation bug
• Fixed rare issue with dead corpses being cleared up prematurely
• Skeleton Key will now work properly if player has no lockpicks in their inventory
• Fixed rare issue with renaming enchanted weapons and armor
• Fixed rare issue with dragons not properly giving souls after death
• ESC button can now be used to exit menus (PC)
• Fixed occasional mouse sensitivity issues (PC)
• General functionality fixes related to remapping buttons and controls (PC)

*** Potential Spoiler Alert! This review may contain some minor spoilers to game play, new skills and plot lines for Assassins Creed: Revelations ***

The story starts off retelling the main points of the previous games and mentions the mysterious Apple of Eden that was left behind by “the others”. Desmond is still in a coma and stuck in the animus. He wakes up in the animus on a beach surrounded by strange stone pillars. It’s explained to him by a previous animus user, who is also on “Animus Island”, that his mind is broken and that they’re in the guts of the animus. We learn that Desmond was placed there by someone, thus saving his life because his mind was fracturing blurring the distinction between his memories and reality.

From there we’re reintroduced to a much older Ezio who seems to be recounting his travels to his and the story opens up just as we saw him in the first major trailer for AC:Revelations, in the midst of a battle, surrounded he sees a vision of Altair and allows himself to be captured. His captors are preparing to execute Ezio high above the mountains with a noose wrapped around his neck – it’s here that Ezio performs his escape. Even in his much older state, Ezio still moves with cat-like reflexes as he shadows Altair’s shadow movements during the following tutorial.

Revelations takes Ezio to Constantinople which features 4 districts and Masayaf, the original game’s Assassin stronghold, as he attempts to retraces Altair’s footsteps in the search of a powerful artifact that was sealed away by Altair.  In between each major DNA memory segment, the game takes us back to Desmond in his comatose state on “Animus Island”. At times, dialogue is overheard from the real world explaining what is happening in the real world and through conversations with the other inhabitant.

Animus Island is also home to a series of gateways to Desmond’s mind. Each doorway is accessed only after acquiring a predetermined set of Data fragments found throughout the game. Once acquired, Desmond is thrust into a bizarre first person sequence which has him recounting moments long forgotten as he jumps over minor obstacles and builds paths to bridge the gaps in his memory.

Graphically the game hasn’t changed much aside from a few minor tweaks, some sharper models and smoother animations. The controls are exactly the same with only a few new minor additions, which, isn’t a bad thing because I always felt that the controls were fine the way they were. Much of the audio is recycled from previous titles so expect to hear a lot of the same dialogue from the townsfolk you’ve heard over the last few years.

Some changes to look to include a few new tricks which include crafting bombs, aerial kills with the use of a parachute and the new “Hook Blade”. Using ingredients like Lambs blood, Indian gun powder, sulphur and casings Ezio has a pretty wide array of bombs to build. For example, Cherry bombs create a loud noise and draw guards to the location of the sound while blood bombs give the enemy a sense that he’s been injured thus taking away his will to fight and running away. Crafting bombs require 3 parts – a shell, gunpowder and an effect. The crafting is performed at specific crafting locations peppered throughout the world.

Another notable change in Ezio’s arsenal is called the “Hook Blade”. The Hook Blade essentially makes it easier for Ezio to hit longer jumps or get to those slightly out of reach points by tapping the B button to hook onto the edge allowing him to pull himself up. The Hook blade can also be used to make the slip on your enemies allowing Ezio to hook their clothing and jump over them or create new combat combos.

Series favourites such as recruiting Assassins and purchasing shops are back. Recruiting new assassins to aid in the cause to overthrow the Templar’s control in other cities is both fun and rewarding.  Once these recruits have gained enough experience, Ezio can assign them as a ‘district leader’. These district leaders will also provide new quests to Ezio when he visits their areas. But beware! There are also rival assassins to be on the lookout for, on more than a few occasions, I’ve been attacked by other assassins and had to chase them down, which leads to the next logical question – Who hired them?

The multiplayer experience has also received some attention adding: new locations, characters and modes like Capture the Flag and a story oriented set of quests that reveal more background to the world of Assassins Creed.

Assassins Creed: Revelations is a lot of the same you’ve come to expect from the series. It has to be with the frequency of releases the series is getting, there’s just no time to flesh out anything new and groundbreaking to the franchise. That’s not necessarily a bad thing considering the big driving factor for me with the Assassins Creed series is the compelling story. The voice cast, townsfolk not withstanding, is still every bit as good as we’ve come accustomed to from the series. I will admit that I’ve grown tired of Ezio and would have preferred to do more with Desmond and/or Altair – I just don’t feel that Altair has been given enough respect.

Feed Your Console gives Assassins Creed: Revelations an 8.5 out of 10

Pros:

• The Story – The narrative is compelling and interesting
• Gameplay – More of the same in a critically acclaimed series can’t be all that bad
• Desmond’s Memory Sequences – Adds some interesting background to Desmond and gives a slower paced break to the game
• Altair – We haven’t seen/heard much of him since the original title. It’s good to go back to the beginning

Cons:

• Audio – I’ve grown weary of hearing the exact same audio from the towns folk for 3 years
• Online Death Matches  – I like the story mode multiplayer, but , I’m just not buying into the multiplayer experience.

Just a quick note to say that I have not yet finished the game and have only managed to get in about 30hrs of gameplay. I know I’ll get a lot of haters on this but seriously, the game really is that freaking big.

Oblivion burst onto consoles in the Spring of 2006. I remember being so amazed by the images I saw online and the intense hunger for a good long RPG, that I rushed out to pick up Oblivion the day it hit shelves. I was both impressed and unhappy at the same time. The Environments looked incredible but the characters all looked spectacularly brutal. I swear each character was only 2 generations removed from Apes walking upright. The gameplay itself was an RPG using a First Person Shooter Perspective which I found to be a little cumbersome, I was always getting lost and every single town I entered wanted me dead or to toss me in jail due to my own ignorance. The sheer size of the game also soured me on the whole experience because it was new and I had never before seen anything so big in a game….but after playing through Fallout 3 and New Vegas, I’m a new man and an old pro at exploring vast worlds…

***Possible Spoiler Alert – Scroll down to avoid***

The game starts off with a cart full of prisoners as they’re being taken to a fort to be executed. Once in the town, the player gets off the cart and begins their character customization. Right off the bat I noticed a remarkable improvement on the character models. From there we get to witness the execution of a prisoner when he’s laid down and beheaded with his head dropping into a basket and his lifeless body being kicked to the side. It’s now your turn to face the hold steel of the executioners blade when out of nowhere, a Dragon lands on a house and begins attacking and destroying the town thus leaving you to your own devices to escape and learn some of the fundamentals of the game which pretty well plays very similarly to it’s predecessor and the true beginning of your quest.

The story is not a direct sequel to Oblivion so much as it takes place a few hundred years later after the Empire began relinquishing territories to the Elven nations because there was no heir to the throne following the Emperors death. The player eventually learns that Skyrim’s civil war is last prophetic event foretold by the Elder Scrolls, which also speak of the return the Nordic god of destruction, Alduin.

Taking the form of a dragon, Alduin is prophesied to consume the world with his servants, the Jills (a race of black dragons). The player character is the last Doväkiin (Dragonborn), a dragon hunter anointed by the gods to help fend off the threat Alduin poses to Skyrim and Tamriel.

***End of Possible Spoiler***

***EDIT***Here’s an extra special follow-up post for all the people whose comments both made me laugh and shake my head. But let’s soldier on good reader. You’ve asked for more detail so here we go.

I will admit , that there is an aspect of the game that I found to be enjoyable though I’m not sure if it was a feature in previous games and I forgot to report back on it – Sue me I’m only human and do this for fun purely based on my love of all things videogames. That aspect of the game I speak of is called “Smithing”. Very early on in the game (right after the escape from the Dragon that’s destroying the town from the beginning***Ooops Spolier Alert!***) the player is introduced to Smithing of weapons and armor. Smithing requires a proficiency in working with various metals such as Iron and using animal hides to make leather in order to make repair, augment and improve weapons and armor. All it really requires are the right ingredients using the forge, the grinding stone, then applying augments to it(where applicable) on the workbench. A minor gripe I have with the Smithing is that it’s unfortunate that it’s not more like a mini-game or had some form of user creation tool to give each weapon/armor a personal touch. Off to the Gallows with me!

Next up is the control scheme – The controls are pretty well just like Fallout 3. Analogue sticks should be self explanatory – Push up and you move forward – Back and you move backward, Left and right strafe. The right stick turns the character. Press down on LS and you crouch, press down on RS and it changes the camera to a 3rd person perspective. B button opens the tree menu with skills, items, map and magic. The Skill tree is laid out as though looking at constellations – beneath each skill, the user can see the features of each skill and the path they take. IE: The first level of  Smithing starts off with proficiency in crafting with Iron as you progress and hone your skills, you’ll eventually be able to create Dragon Armor.  X button draws your weapon and puts it away. A button interacts with people or takes items and Y button jumps. Right trigger swings your weapon where the Left trigger guards unless you have magic equipped in which case, you can hold the left trigger to charge up your spell and release it to cast. LB sprints and only last as long as your Stamina will allow and RB shouts/power moves. Pretty standard fare.

As I said before, and was lambasted for, the map is huge. It very easily dwarfs Fallout. I haven’t yet even seen all of it and it appears to be considerably larger with more destinations to visit and it can take what seems like forever to go from point A to B. Thankfully there is a fast travel option as well as a stable you can go to and pay for a ride or…you can be a total bastard and steal a horse risking life, limb, gold and freedom in the process.

The graphics for Skyrim are a vast improvement over Oblivion and Fallout but still not on the same level as something like Rage’s iD Tech 5(which I find to be one of the sexiest new engines out there right now). The new “Creation Engine” is a variant of the same engine used for Oblivion and Fallout but it’s no slouch.  The environments are lush and lively as expected in this type of game, the animations are smooth and the characters look awesome, however, I didn’t care for how the horses looked while riding them to different locales. When walking over a rock, for example, the horse will just jump up over the rock and fall back down on the other side – I found it to look very unnatural. Surprisingly Skyrim all fits onto one disc and the load times are reasonably short (I can’t speak for the load times when running off disc)I love the way the weather systems look in this game. The weather effects in the game look awesome, in particular in the snowy regions though I did notice that no tracks were left behind. Aside from those minor complaints, everything in the world just feels to be more alive.

I actually encountered a bug when I encountered 2 different NPCs – When trying to interact with them, they don’t actually say anything and the subtitles I have turned on whip by without giving me the opportunity to read what’s going on. My immediate thought was my controller was acting up but, this has happened with 4 different controllers – it appears that this is not a controller issue. Time will tell if this is a common issue Keep an eye out and let us know if you encounter the same thing. Sad Bear face!

The audio is awesome – when I have the luxury of having it turned up loud (the man cave is below my daughter’s room), the bustling sounds of a city, the serenity nature and the ferocity of violent battles really adds to atmosphere. The soundtrack is fantastic, well timed and placed throughout.  As expected from Bethesda, there’s an  insane amount of spoken dialogue, some spoken by celebrities like Max Von Sydow, and Christopher Plummer.

The game is quite challenging especially at the beginning. I’m one of those guys that loves to run in guns-a-blazing (swords-a-swinging in this case) and as I quickly learned that’s just not how to play this game. This is an adventure game that takes it’s time to tell a story and build and I am taking my sweet time plodding through avoiding the main quest for the most part for the time being. I’ve put a great deal of emphasis on Lock picking for all the obvious reasons,  Smithing to have the best weapons and armor, Heavy weapons to deal the most damage and speech to help with persuading people and save some precious gold when buying items – Anything to try and help me get the leg up on this game.

This title is sure to eat up countless hours well into the new year.

In my previous post I stated that the amount of time I had with the game was extremely limited in the grand scheme of things and that I wasn’t a fan of Oblivion assuming you could read between the lines (I didn’t finish it even after repeated attempts – I disliked it that much) but it seems that’s not the case. Also, the hate I get for rating something a 9 out of 10 is staggering (I just might be Public Enemy #1).

Yes! Online is important to me and I would love to see co-op in a game f this magnitude- No it’s not a deal breaker. Yes those are my views and opinions – No it doesn’t make my opinion right. Yes I see your side – No it doesn’t make your opinion right. No I won’t be changing my original score.

It’s a 9 out of 10 game.

Pros

• Length of the Game – I’m 30hrs in and don’t see an end in sight.
• Replay Value – There’s just so much to do and see the game will no doubt warrant a 2nd or even 3rd play through.
• Sandbox games – I’m a sucker for sandbox style games. This one is huge.
• Graphics – the characters look cleaner and the environments have much more depth resulting in a prettier appearance.
• Sound design

Cons:

• No Co-op – I always get shit for this but I’m a huge fan of coop experiences. This game screams for it.
• Some glitchy animations
• Only encountered 1 bug on 2 different occasions and it did prevent me from understanding what was going on because it was tied to the main quest.

Another year and another instalment of the ever popular Call of Duty franchise – Modern Warfare 3, which aptly takes place during World War III. In customary fashion to our policies here at Feed Your Console, we will do our best to NOT divulge any major spoilers as we want you to experience it the way the game was meant to be enjoyed.

in Spring of 2010, reports came out of issues between Infinity Ward’s founding members and Activision and subsequently a mass exodus by members of the team leaving many to speculate what would become of the series. I can say with 100% certainty, that the series’ integrity is fully intact complete with some awesome new ideas.

The game starts off exactly where the previous one left off – with Captain Price and Russian informant Nokolai caring for an injured “Soap” Mactavish while on the run after killing off a rogue US Army Lieutenant General Shepherd and the bombs falling across the globe. It’s here that the gamer is immediately thrust back into the action and the action is fierce, intense and incredible over a campaign that spans about 3.5-4hrs total.

During the course of the game, players will take control of a variety of people fighting in different parts of the world from New York City, London England, Paris and the Middle East (some new and some old) while telling a story that both excited and frightened me to various degrees. The levels are absolutely beautiful. Some of them left me speechless and slack-jawed while others had me wide-eyed with excitement. I haven’t yet had much time with the new multiplayer modes as of the writing of this but I can say that everyone who loves the CoD: MW multiplayer experience will be more than happy here, my personal favourite, being the “Kill Confirmed” mode which requires the player to collect a set of dogtags from their kill before it’s counted — Something tells me that the low-life campers won’t be playing this mode too much and for that I’m truly Thankful. Spec Ops is back and it’s just as fun as always(WOW!!! My buddy and I are awful at Spec Ops)

In the end, this appears to be the final instalment in this iteration of “Modern Warfare” series and it’s all wrapped up into a nice neat little package that’s sure to make most happy though there’s always that contingent that’s never happy with anything…

Vince Zampella and Jason West who?!? Keep up the good work IW.

Feed Your Console gives Modern Warfare 3 a 9 out of 10

Pros:

• Great story
• Incredible Environments
• Locales Look Great
• Confirmed Kill Mode
• The Return of Spec Ops

Cons:

• Short Campaign (3-5-4hrs total)