BitSnark

Before an alcohol-fuelled night out in most cases, if a game is to be played it generally tends to be something that is as brain-dead as it’s players will be by the end of the night. Gears Of War, Halo, Call Of Duty… the list goes on and on.

However, may I suggest to you my dear reader a slight change of pace. Rather than sticking your chainsaw in the orifice of the closest rock-skinned beastie, how about we try a bit of stealth for a bit? Y’know, work the angles, be one with the shadows… all that stuff.

Doesn’t sound like it would grab you, right? Well, it didn’t grab me either until I realised that the whole idea of *trying* to formulate the perfect stealth strategy is in fact a completely unachievable goal if the alcahol is casually flowing, which given the fact we’re talking about a pre-night out session here, it bloody well should be.

The fact that this noble goal is so far beyond the grasp of me when i’m sober, does little to discourage me or my friend in it’s futile pursuit. We go over the angles, the strategies, the chance of success, the optimum load out… everything.

Somehow, in our gradually pissed state of mind, we manage to convince each other that we know what we’re talking about, when in actual fact, the sober on-looker will see us for the intoxicated plebeians that we are.

I digress though; the experience is a great one, since there really is nothing like going split-screen with a mate, casually drinking your poison as the night wears on, only to see our meticulously crafted stealth strategies degrade (along with our awareness and reflexes) into loud, brash shotgun and assault rifle retard fests.

Indeed, I always imagine that the game must be pissing itself at our collective expense, as time after time, our sluggish reaction times and drunken impatience betray our floundering to the nearest security camera or guard with his back to us, as we fumble about like morphine addicted amputee burglars trying to break into a house.

At the end of the day, it’s all about trying to recreate that perfect stealth strategy and whilst it can never really be done, coming in sight of this goal by only alerting half of the guards in a given level and not ALL of them, nevertheless still manages to satisfy and entertain in equal measure.

So leave with this thought; not only does a good multiplayer sesh on Splinter Cell: Conviction provide a ready supply of laughs from game-faced piss-heads trying desperately to work their way around the levels without being seen, it also doubles up as an effective benchmark for just how shitfaced you really are.

Classic stuff.

Eurogamer has today confirmed that developer sessions from IO Interactive, the developers of the Hitman franchise, will take place on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday during their EG Expo, set to take place in the mammoth sized Earl’s Court One.

I for one will be quite interested to see how this new entry in Agent 47’s story turns out, but I won’t keep my hopes up especially since the devs pretty much dumped in my mouth with the Kane & Lynch games.

Y’know, cautious optimism and all that.

If you’ve been following Battlefield 3 for any length of time, you’ll know that the monster military FPS is launching with a number of different retailer exclusive purchase incentives.

While some retailers give you largely useless vain cack such as customisable dog tags, there are some that actually give you something useful – extra weaponary to kill shit with.

Specifically, GAME, Gamestation and Gameplay.co.uk offer the Physical Warfare Pack as an extra to the existing limited edition SKU which packs include the following goodies:

Type 88 LMG with bipod
Flechette Ammo for DAO-12 shotgun
Flash suppressor for SKS sniper rifle
Day One Access to the DAO-12 shotgun

Cool beans eh? Well, if you’re one of those who have pre-ordered the Physical Warfare Pack, look at the video below to see what you’ll be getting day one. If you didn’t, well, at least you can pre-emptively make your excuses for sucking now, rather than later.

As promised, Nintendo has made ten NES games free to download to 3DS ambassadors (folks, who bought the console before the price drop).

The ten free games that are available for download are:

Super Mario Bros.
Donkey Kong Jr.
Balloon Fight
Ice Climber
The Legend of Zelda
Wrecking Crew
Mario Open Golf
Mario & Yoshi
Metroid
Zelda: Adventures of Link

How do you get these lovely, free retro-treats you ask? It’s quite simple really just follow the instructions below:

1) Go into the eShop and scroll all the way to the left. Click on ‘Settings / Other’. Scroll down on that list and click on ‘Items You’ve Downloaded’ to see your download history.

2) Scroll past all the downloads you’ve made since you got your 3DS and you will come across the ten free NES games as listed above.

3) Click the ‘Re-download’ button on each one and repeat times ten.

And voila! Ten free NES games that you’ve probably played and completed countless times before are now yours.

Once you’ve grabbed all ten of these games, you will also find a little something called ‘Ambassador Certificate’. You’re going to want to download this, because whilst on first inspection it looks like a pointless as piss video, it actually has Notification functionality that will keep you updated on when the other ten games, those delicious GBA titles, will be available for the grabbing.

It really does.

Take a look disbeliever!

Ever since the gaming fraternity has gotten a hold of zombies, it’s seemingly only been able to do something equally brain-dead with them; stick them in a FPS setting in which player thought need only extend as far as to which weapon to switch to.

Enter Project Zomboid.

An isometric, open-world zombie survival take on the popular horror cult icon the game is in many ways a breath of fresh fetid air from it’s dumber FPS counterparts. In Project Zomboid more pedestrian concerns such as making sure that you don’t go hungry, or have enough rest go pleasingly hand in hand with ensuring a healthy supply of ammo for your firearm of choice.

Indeed, there are other more pragmatic concerns to worry about too. Creating noise can attract the undead horde as it currently does in existing games, but the source of that distraction can range from setting off a house alarm, to actually burning down a house because you left the microwave on for too long.

Visually, the title looks retro-functional but simple and is still in the extremely early stages of alpha development. If however, you fancy a zombie game that forces you to think a little further than your gun barrel, than you certainly couldn’t go very wrong with Project Zomboid.

I’ve attached the link to the main website below, as well as YouTube links of a particularly articulate chap playing through it if you fancy taking a look first before you download.

Enjoy:

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/

In news that is sure to whip up Persona and JRPG fans into a frenzy, Catherine developer Atlus has today confirmed that a remake of Persona 4 will launch not on the PSP as previous titles in the series have, but instead, on Sony’s forthcoming PSVita handheld.

Officially titled Persona 4: The Golden, the title supports 3G and WiFi, allowing other players to pop into your game and help you out with a particular dungeon if you’re a being a bit shit.

Rounding out the package, is the promise of brand new event scenes, new Personas, a smattering of extra character outfits and a reworked animated intro and additional anime style sequences.

Persona 4: The Golden is slated to drop in Japan in Early 2012, with a Euro release date being pie in the sky at the moment. If I had to guess however, i’d say Q3/Q4 2012.

Persona 5 was also confirmed to be in development on formats to be determined (read: PS3) and will apparently be utilisting a brand new engine for ‘smoother’ development. No release date has been given regarding the title, but if I was a betting man I would estimate that the game would get a Japanese release in early/mid 2013 with a Euro release possibly following at the end of that year or the start of the following one.

On PS3.

After deciding that their 3DS handheld wasn’t quite summoning the huge pots of golds that they had foreseen, Nintendo recently announced their intention to brutally slash the price of their less than six-month old machine.

The end result; new 3DS buyers could take advantage of the greedy supermarkets trying to 1-UP each other (yeah, I went there) and snag one of Ninty’s handheld eye-bleeders for around £115 or less, representing a saving in the ballpark of roughly half the original March launch RRP.

What about the early adopters though? Those loyal Nintendo zealots who, prior to the spectacular E3 2010 unveiling of the handheld, went down to Primark and snagged as many cheap pairs of spare underwear as they could in hopes of staving off the inevitable pant-apocalypse of excitable urine destruction at the unveiling of some new Ninty hardware; what about them?

Well, they got some recompense in the form of twenty free games.

That’s right, TWENTY FREE games.

Of that number, ten would be NES titles with the remaining ten being GBA titles.

A noble gesture I reckon, yet, a most needed one otherwise those folks who bought the machine at £170-£190 odd quid, would be spitting more fire than Mario after doing a line of Phall-infused fire-flower powder.

This morning though, we actually have the names of the NES games that will become available on September 1st and it isn’t too shabby at all:

Super Mario Bros.
Donkey Kong Jr.
Balloon Fight
Ice Climber
The Legend of Zelda
Wrecking Crew
Mario Open Golf
Mario & Yoshi
Metroid
Zelda: Adventures of Link

The GBA games will become available towards ‘the end of the year’, and to be eligible to access all this free retro downloadable goodness, you must register your 3DS on the Nintendo eShop by simply accessing it before September 1st. If you haven’t done this, then you need to go onto Ninty’s official site and physically send them your proof of purchase so that they can verify you were one of the poor mugs who paid close to full price for the machine.

Finally, if you can’t be arsed to do any of the above and you were an early adopter; you are a chump and I have no sympathy for you.

Capcom’s community blog Unity has gone live with over thirty minutes of in-game footage and commentary from their forthcoming CyberConnect2 developed crazy fighter, Asura’s Wrath.

The video linked below, quite literally defines the very idea of O.T.T:

It also seemingly provides an indication of the results that you would expect from liberal use of LSD in the creative minds of Japanese games developers too.

In case you didn’t know or in case your completely forgot, tomorrow is the day whereupon you can sign up for some beta action of Funcom’s forthcoming supernatural Illuminati themed PC MMO, The Secret World.

Ideally, if you’re interested in some beta fun with Funcom’s latest (that just sounds dirty), click the link below tomorrow to stick your name in the virtual hat:

http://www.thesecretworld.com/