Sunday, 17 July 2011

L.A Noire on sale at Amazon For only $37 - QUICK!



L.A Noire, the 1940's film-noire style detective thriller has been spotted on Amazon.com (and.ca, for those who are wondering) for only $37. That's an amazing deal. I'd jump on this as soon as possible. The amazon listing can be found here (L.A. Noire) for all three consoles. For Canadian residents, the game comes to around $47 after shipping and taxes, still a good $15 off of retail price.


Developer - Team Bondi - Rockstar Games
Publisher - Rockstar Games
Platform - Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Genre - Open world, third-person shooter, action-adventure
Modes - Single-player
Metacritic Score - 89
User Score - 77


L.A Noire takes place in 1947 Los Angeles, a city of glamour, fame, and wealth, but also where crime, vice, and corruption are rife. The player assumes the role of LAPD Police Officer and later Detective Cole Phelps. The game starts with Phelps as a uniformed patrolman, and follows his career as he advances through the police department bureaus of Traffic, Homicide, Vice, and finally Arson. Each new desk gives the player a new partner who will help Phelps in his investigations.

The game blends investigative elements such as mystery and crime solving, with fast-paced action sequences, including on-foot and car chases, hand-to-hand combat, and gunfights. In addition to the storyline missions, the player can work on optional side-investigations following a call from dispatch, known as Street Crimes. The player can travel on foot, as well as in various cars that are unlocked as Phelps progresses through the police departments. The player also has a total of ten detective suits available; an initial six, plus another four downloadable ones. The suits are equipped with special abilities, such as increased damage protection and increased aim when firing a gun.

If the player is having trouble completing the action sequences, after three failed attempts, they will have the option to skip past and continue through the narrative.

Unlike Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto series, the player cannot freely create chaos and kill civilians with weapons and cars, as the character is a police detective. Weapons are only allowed in appropriate circumstances and only when a player is working on a case where a weapon is warranted.

Wednesday, 13 July 2011

Xbox Live - Deals of the Week

Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare
1600MP - 1000MP (40% off)


Developer - Rockstar San Diego
Publisher - Rockstar Games
Platform - PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Genre - Open world, third-person shooter, action-adventure, Western, Survival horror
Modes - Single-player, multiplayer 
MetaCritic Score -  87
User Score - 81


Seemingly overnight, an Undead plague ravages the once bountiful frontier, decimating the landscape and reawakening the dead. In towns, settlements, and outposts throughout the world, the uninfected citizens are left to fight for survival against waves of the undead. John Marston must ride out into the vast and terrifying world and survive long enough to find a cure for his wife and son. Along the way; through frontier towns, deserts, prairies, and mountain passes, Marston will help survivors, cleanse towns and put an end to the ever-growing undead hordes.


Dead Rising 2: Case West
800MP - 400MP (50% off)

Developer - Capcom, Blue Castle
Publisher - Capcom
Platform - Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Genre - Action adventure
Mode - Single-player, online co-op, multiplayer
MetaCritic Score -  74
User Score - 77



Case West features the return of Frank West, the hero of the previous Dead Rising, in a new story that occurs after the events of Dead Rising 2. Frank must team up with Chuck Greene, the protagonist of Dead Rising 2, in order to investigate the connection between Phenotrans, the pharmaceutical company responsible for manufacturing Zombrex, and the Fortune City outbreak, and clear Chuck's name of any involvement.

The episode includes a co-op feature allowing two players to complete the game as each character. Case West features new challenges, enemies, items, and the ability to create a number of new combo weapons. The photography element from the first Dead Rising also returns; both Frank and Chuck are able to take photographs in order to provide indisputable proof of Phenotrans' part in the zombie outbreaks.




Left 4 Dead 2 - The Passing
560MP - 280MP

Developer - Valve Corporation
Publisher - Valve Corporation
Distributor - Electronic Arts (retail)
Platform - Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Xbox 360
Genre - First-person shooter, survival horror
Mode - 4-player Cooperative multiplayer, 4-vs-4 multiplayer, Single-player
MetaCritic Score -  75
User Score - 80



The Passing is the first DLC campaign in Left 4 Dead 2, which includes a new campaign and "new co-operative challenge modes of play" and introduces a new firearm, the M60; the Golf Club, and a new Uncommon Infected called the Fallen Survivor. It was released April 22, 2010.
The Passing takes place between Dead Center and Dark Carnival and is set in the suburban town of Rayford, Georgia.

One of the most highly advertised features of this campaign is a meet-up between the Left 4 Dead 2 Survivors and three of the Survivors from Left 4 Dead. However, the original Survivors are not playable and have only very minor cameo roles at the beginning and end of the campaign.

The campaign is playable in all of the current game modes, as well as the newly featured ones. It is free for PC, and costs 560MSP on the Xbox 360. On Xbox 360, the download size is 284.04 MB.

The campaign is called "The Passing," which could be interpreted in several ways. It may simply be referring to a brief, chance meeting as each party of Survivors pursues its own survival strategy, in which sense it may a play on the old sayings "two ships passing in the night" and "two strangers on a bridge". It could also be idiomatic in the sense of denoting a "passing of the torch" from one set of Survivors to the other (i.e. the depleted and worn-down Left 4 Dead Survivors pass from the player's sight and control, leaving the Left 4 Dead 2 group to continue the struggle), a hypothesis which is reinforced by an Achievement unlocked upon completing the campaign. Finally, it may also refer to the "passing" of Bill who gave up his life to save the others. Bill's death and the appearance of the Fallen Survivors could also explain why the campaign's tagline is "Nobody survives forever."

By way of explanation, Valve released a DLC for Left 4 Dead called The Sacrifice in which the players work through a new campaign featuring a bridge-with-failed-generator scenario that demands one player give up their life to let the other three Survivors escape.

A digital comic book released by Valve at the start of the fourth quarter of 2010 shows what happened to the original Survivors before and after the events of Left 4 Dead.


Stubbs The Zombie: Rebel Without A Pulse
1200MP - 800MP


Developer - Wideload
Publisher - Aspyr
Platform - Xbox, Mac OS X, Windows, Xbox 360
Genre - Action
Modes - Single-player, co-op multiplayer (Xbox version only)
MetaCritic Score -  75
User Score - 80



In 1933, Eddie Stubbs is a poor traveling salesman during the Great Depression trying to make a living. He temporarily finds happiness with a girl named Maggie Monday, but he meets his unfortunate end when Otis, Maggie's father comes home, chases him outside, and shoots him, leaving him to die in the wilderness.

years later in the fictional city of Punchbowl, Pennsylvania at its opening ceremony in 1959. It happens that the city, founded by Andrew Monday, Maggie's son, has been built directly on top of Stubbs' not-so-final resting place. Stubbs rises from his grave as a zombie and decides to get his revenge by eating the brains of the inhabitants of Punchbowl, quickly creating his own army of the undead, causing increasing amounts of havoc as the zombies clash with the various militant factions of the area. During the chaos, Stubbs kills Otis Monday by blowing up his house after a brief reunion. Shortly before this, in a spoof of the war film Patton, Stubbs stands in front of an American flag hanging from a barn wall and gives a speech to his zombies. Though the speech consists only of the word "Brains" said in many tones with limited gestures his zombies apparently understand him well enough to let loose a cheer of "BRAINS!" before shuffling away.

Stubbs eventually reunites with Maggie and the two lovingly embrace - with Stubbs promptly eating her brain. Before her brain was eaten, Maggie revealed Stubbs was in fact Andrew's father. Andrew tries to avenge his half-destroyed, zombie-infested city, and his mother, by killing Stubbs from behind a force field. Stubbs, however, destroys the force field and looms toward Andrew, but Maggie, now a zombie, convinces him to spare their son. The game ends with Stubbs and Maggie sailing off on a small rowboat, kissing as Andrew and all of Punchbowl are destroyed by a nuclear bomb to cleanse the undead infestation, and they both "live" happily ever after.





Twin Blades
400MP - 200MP

TwinBlades is a frantic shooter game set in a medieval era with unique manga-like graphics. Help the nun defeat evil with some heavy zombie-killing action across multiple environments, venture through the city market, the cemetary, a chapel in ruins and the city's outskirts to purge the town of all its living-dead inhabitants!