Beyond: Two Souls

Quantic Dream snagged actress Ellen Page for its new PS3 game, Beyond: Two Souls, and premiered a trailer during Sony's E3 press conference to show off her high-profile, performance-captured video game debut. Naturally, the video Quantic chose featured Page's character sitting absolutely still, not talking and looking like Sinead O'Connor's reaction gif to Two Girls One Cup.

The demo Quantic Dream mastermind David Cage showed the press the following day went a long way to demonstrate Page's proficiency in a video game world, though it still didn't highlight any deep dialogue or empathetic scenes.

Executive Producer Guillaume de Fondaumière played a half-hour action sequence filled with train-top rain battles, stealing motorcycles from cops and exploding helicopters -- but Beyond is much more than a single demo can contain.

"There is also emotion," Cage said. "We just showed you one walkthrough. But you could have played it in many different ways. In the entire scene, there are scenes inside the scenes that we didn't show you."

Sceneception.

Beyond: Two Souls tells the tale of Jodie Holmes, a young woman who has been haunted by an invisible, powerful presence her entire life. She calls it "Aiden" and it can interact with the physical world, follow orders and communicate with Jodie, and it's also the second playable character in Beyond.

The demo opened at night, with Jodie curled up in a ratty hoodie riding a train. Cage informed us that she was a fugitive, though he wouldn't specify why; we assume it has something to do with the monstrously destructive entity tethered to her body.

Fondaumière played the whole demo while Cage commentated as he saw fit, usually to point out just how directly Fondaumière was controlling the characters. Quantic is widely recognized for its interactive narrative titles, most notably with its previous PS3 release, Heavy Rain, and Cage was eager to mention the rich action sequences and the amount of control players will have over Jodie and Aiden's every move, even when it appeared they were being controlled via cutscene or pre-determined paths.

Fondaumière used the Sixaxis functionality to first take control of Aiden, who was distinguishable on-screen through the thread that linked him back to Jodie. Otherwise, from a first-invisible-person perspective, Aiden ran amok in the train cabin, disturbing other passengers by knocking over their water bottles and generally making the air around them frigid.

Along with the Sixaxis control, Cage said he is "in the process of thinking about" Move integration as well.
Beyond: Two Souls (E3 2012)


Aiden was bored, Cage said. When he bumped into Jodie she woke from a light sleep to grumble in frustration at him, as if he were an annoying little brother. She hadn't slept in three days, she whined, pulling the hood back over her head (which, it should be noted, had chin-length hair on it).

The train made an unexpected stop at a woodland security checkpoint, where a police troop was on the hunt for "a girl." The officers had an air of lazy indifference about them, but as they boarded the train in the search for Jodie, they soon proved to be the most tenacious group of law enforcers, ever. Just, ever.

Aiden helped Jodie escape the train through the ceiling's bathroom hatch, and the officers, having recognized and chased her through a few cabins, followed her to the roof of the train, which was traveling at full speed through a torrent of rain. Fondaumière had, by this point, taken control of Jodie, who punched, kicked and slid her way out of the clutches of every police officer she encountered on top of the speeding train in the rain.

Eventually Aiden created a force field around Jodie so she could leap safely into the surrounding forest, leaving the cops stranded, wet and probably confused on top of a moving train.

Cage wasn't kidding when he said "the story required more action."

Beyond used a familiar control scheme, with on-screen prompts to push left, tap x and shake the controller appearing in the familiar, modern, white Heavy Rain style.

Jodie herself looks -- spoilers -- like Ellen Page. Quantic Dream used performance capture technology to place Page in the game as a direct image of Jodie. Performance capture differs from the standard motion capture system in that it removes the split-take: With motion capture, the face and voice is filmed and recorded first, and the actions are filmed second to sync up with the audio. Performance capture gets all this in one go, recording full-body and -head movements as actors speak their lines in real-time.

As a result, Jodie moves in limp, life-like motions and her face, in close-up shots, has enough fleshy detail to show every single pore dotting her cheeks and nose. Her mouth looked stiff still, but again, this demo didn't exactly focus on grand speech-making. Jodie did say "fuck" quite a few times, though.


The cops in the demo continued their persistence through a damp, dark forest where Jodie fought off a pack of police dogs and scaled a slippery, sheer rock face. The animals reacted to Aiden's presence with a wary growl and the on-screen cues fit themselves to the environment in a few instances, including during Jodie's risky climb.

Aiden has more talents than simply knocking beverages from arm rests -- he can possess people who have orange auras, causing their eyes to turn milky white and placing them in the direct control of the player. Fondaumière used this ability to have one cop create a handy distraction. Then he used it to murder an entire SWAT team in horrifying and gruesome ways.

The demo ended where the public trailer did, on a burning, destroyed street with Jodie standing over a SWAT commander and warning him that next time, she'd kill everyone. Thing is, we got to see what happened right before she made that threat, and honestly, it looked like she did kill everyone.

Cage explained that there are multiple paths to follow in each scenario and that the game is not linear: "This is a sandbox," he said, just before he used Aiden to possess a sniper and shoot down three SWAT officers as they stood in position around Jodie, who was injured and crouched behind a car.

Aiden then proceeded to possess more SWAT officers, flip over cars and make a gas station burst into flames, coating a handful of people in liquid fire and sending them writhing on the ground in pain. Aiden destroyed an entire watchtower in two clicks and he and Jodie were eventually able to escape.

Buried within the scenes of mass murder is a deep coming-of-age story, Cage promised, but his focus on proving Quantic Dream can do action led him to choose this particular scenario as a demo and in the E3 announcement trailer.

Page plays Jodie through 15 years of her life, from an angsty teenager to a vibrant young woman, all with an invisible violent killer attached to her very being. Beyond addresses mourning, loss and the "other side" as Cage perceives it, created because he was dissatisfied with the explanations most religions had to offer.

"The game is really about growing, it's about evolving, about accepting who you are, even when you're different," Cage said. "It's also about death. You're going to get very torn apart when you're tied to something living between our world and the other side.

"It's about death, it's about separation, it's about mourning. All the things that you usually don't find in video games," Cage said.

Tomb Raider 2013 drawing fire for 'attempted rape' scene

Crystal Dynamics head Darrell Gallagher and game producer Ron Rosenberg expressed their views on reactions to the violent Tomb Raider trailer shown at E3.

In one part of the video, Lara appears to be fending off a would-be raper, kneeing him in the groin and struggling to shoot him when he pins her to the ground.





“To actually see what she goes through, to become hardened, to become this tomb raider than we know and love, or at least a new version of it," Gallagher told the Penny Arcade Report. "A big part of that journey is seeing some of the hits she’s taken along the way and why she had to get that inner strength and the inner core to become the woman that we all know. There is that sense of seeing it and being explicit about that. It’s part of the narrative.”

Rosenberg explained that the emphasis on Lara's suffering was intentional — and that their research into survivors of extreme situations revealed a common mantra: keep moving.

“You see that in the beginning of the game, where we begin to build her up and give her confidence to cross the ledge, cross the plane, she forages for food and she’s feeling really successful," Rosenberg said. "Then towards the end we start to really hit her, and to break her down. Her best friend is kidnapped, she’s taken hostage, she’s almost raped, we put her in this position where we turned her into a cornered animal.”

Tomb Raider, scheduled for release on March 5 of next year, is better considered as a reboot than a prequel. The Lara Croft that we've seen before is not necessarily the one we'll know by the end of the new game.

“They share many traits so you can recognize the iconography, it’s the same character, but it’s a more modern version," said Gallagher. "It doesn’t necessarily lead directly into Tomb Raider 1, with hot pants and a braid.”

"The ability to see her as a human is even more enticing to me than the more sexualized version of yesteryear," he said. "She literally goes from zero to hero... we're sort of building her up and just when she gets confident, we break her down again."

It's some dark material, the type of content you might not expect from an action-adventure game like Tomb Raider. But Rosenberg isn't worried about alarming people too much. He says players will see right away that this is a darker, "more mature" version of Lara's story. He compared it to the origin story of a comic book like Spider-Man or Batman, saying he thinks it "has that feel to it."

"We're not trying to be over the top, shock people for shock's sake," he said. "We're trying to tell a great origin story."

GamePro Magazine came under fire last November for a cryptic tweet that read:
What does rape have to do with the #TombRaider reboot? Buy the 1st GamePro Quarterly & solve the mystery on page 49.

Resident Evil 6

production standpoint, this atmospheric third-person shooter (this is no survival horror game, certainly) hits a number of high notes, weaving multiple stories into a single narrative that you untangle from different perspectives. It's unfortunate that actually interacting with Resident Evil 6 is an excruciating chore. This is a wannabe action film that resents your interference, and punishes you by forcing one horrible quick-time event after another upon you.


Ace Combat, Resident Evil edition.
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That Resident Evil 6 wants to be a movie is evident in almost every facet of its gameplay. Plenty of games dramatize their events through extended cutscenes, Metal Gear Solid being an oft-cited example of a series known for long-winded cinematics. Having many cutscenes isn't a problem in and of itself; constantly interrupting the flow of gameplay, on the other hand, is Resident Evil 6's disappointing calling card.

In a typical five-minute stretch, you might watch a cutscene, walk for five seconds, trigger another cutscene, open a door, perform a quick-time event, view another cutscene, shoot some mutated freaks, and then do nothing while you wait for your co-op partner to finish some task or another before you can continue on. All through that stretch, the camera changes position countless times, you're forced to walk really slowly for a while, and an almost-unavoidable scripted "gotcha" moment gifts you with a game-over screen ("You Are Dead"), forcing you to replay the sequence while wondering what you could have done to prevent it.

These problems infiltrate all four of Resident Evil 6's campaigns, though each campaign shifts its focus and tone--and all but Ada Wong's puzzle-driven campaign (unlocked when you have finished the other three) feature cooperative play. In Leon Kennedy's campaign, you play as either Leon or newcomer Helena Harper, while your cohort is left to the care of another player, or of the AI. Leon's campaign is the most traditional, recalling the fourth and fifth chapters of the series by way of mysterious locations like an eerie graveyard and creep-strewn city streets. In a campaign that looks to military shooters for inspiration, Chris Redfield joins fellow BSAA operative Piers Nivens in war-torn streets to shoot up infected foes and larger-than-life bosses. Jake Muller and Sherry Birkin's campaign is focused more on scripted events than the others and lacks the thematic cohesion of the other three (unless you count an overload of contextual button prompts as a theme). A short prelude introduces you to the basic mechanics, which are mostly identical across the campaigns. It also functions as a warning of what's to come.

Jiggle the stick as fast as you can if you wish to avoid a kiss from Aunt Mabel.
Right off the bat, you notice what is to be a common theme in Resident Evil 6: quick-time events are prominent to the point of distraction. Keep your thumbs limber and your trigger fingers ready, for you will be hammering buttons and jiggling thumbsticks ad nauseam. Wiggle that stick to get the monster off you! Furiously tap that button to crawl faster! Making matters worse is that the quick-time events aren't even that well implemented. Some of them require superhuman wiggling speeds; others, like those that require alternating trigger presses, don't have a clear rhythm. And succeeding means triggering a sonic zing and a bright circular eruption that distract you from the dramatic animations.

Even ignoring quick-time events, button prompts are the rule rather than the exception. Capcom drops in so many set piece moments that they lose their luster. Good set pieces--that is, large scale events with major visual punch and limited interactivity--punctuate gameplay, rather than replace it. Here, they constantly disrupt the gameplay, and a few types of set pieces emerge as clear developer favorites. One such type is the "run toward the camera" bit, in which you hold a button to sprint toward the camera, and press buttons to leap over obstacles or slide under them. It takes a special talent to make such sequences work, but no such talent is demonstrated here; the camera constantly changes position, which destroys the flow of both the controls and the visuals.

That big boss doesn't look so imposing from a distance.
Resident Evil 6 is constantly (and annoyingly) playing with camera angles, even outside of the running sections. The worst moments are those that yank control from you and force you to stare at a growling behemoth's dramatic entrance, or a helicopter's flyover, even when you're in the middle of a quick-time event, or engaged in a shoot-out. Smart games either have you hold a button if you want to witness a major incident, or simply allow the incident to happen. Resident Evil 6 is not a smart game. It doesn't care what you're doing: that monster is big, and the game forces the bigness upon you. (And when the sequence is done, the camera may not be in the position in which it started.) Such occurrences are, every time, detrimental to gameplay, and it's shocking how many of them there are.

Not that your co-op partner is usually harmful to the experience. If you play on your own, the AI does a great job of knowing what to do and where to go. The game does have a few good co-op ideas up its sleeve, such as a sequence in which one player swims from the snapping jaws of a finned fiend, and the other must shoot it. But the good ideas are too often let down by troublesome execution: in that same sequence, your mission objective might contradict what the game actually needs you to do. Other times, one player waits around with nothing to do, while the other slashes up bio-organic weapons (that is, B.O.W.s) and finally opens a door or lowers a ladder. Most cooperative actions simply involve opening a door together. And boy is there a lot of door opening in Resident Evil 6.

In between the frequent set pieces, the quick-time events, and the cooperative door kickings, there is some mutant killing. The core mechanics are similar to those in other third-person shooters, but with the idiosyncrasies that defined Resident Evils 4 and 5. The camera stays close behind your back, movements like leaping and crouching are contextual rather than freely available, and the pace is deliberate. Shooting grotesqueries often results in new mutations: bulbous growths sprout from the necks of advancing fiends, and disgusting diminutive creatures spawn from their hosts and skitter along the floor. You can also kick and pummel your foes, though whether you prefer to keep your distance or get right in there, the lumbering lunatics react properly, knocking over other infected as they lurch from the power of your shotgun blasts. If you find the deliberate action appealing, you can devote some time to the returning Mercenaries mode, in which you and a buddy (or you alone) off as many enemies as you can before the clock ticks down to zero.


It's quiet--too quiet. Oh wait; no it's not.
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It's unfortunate that Resident Evil 6's campaigns want so desperately to take you out of the action. A single bullet from a sniper can knock you to the ground; you can either get to your feet and reposition yourself, or just shoot while you're down until the right time to rise presents itself. In Jake's campaign, getting knocked down on a particularly icy slope means sliding all the way to the bottom, and having to make the climb again. As is typical for Capcom action games, long animations need to finish before you regain control--and that kind of approach could have worked fine in a game that sticks closely to the Resident Evil 4 template.

But Resident Evil 6 is focused less on building tension than any previous game in the main series, and the over-deliberate mechanics don't always mesh well with the action-game sensibilities and highly linear levels. The claustrophobic behind-the-back camera in cramped hallways, the knockback loops, the cumbersome method of combining herbs and healing yourself--these facets once worked well to help instill a sense of terror and make you consider every action and every step. In Resident Evil 6, a game that mostly leaves its survival horror roots behind, the same attributes hinder your enjoyment.

 
Another set piece event? You don't say!
That isn't to say that Resident Evil 6 is hard. On medium difficulty, you can often run right past the baddies, or just spam a trigger and punch them to death. You needn't worry about ammo all that often; the only time you're likely to run out is when you face a bullet-sponge boss and there's no more ammo to be had in the battle arena. But while you won't often die due to the level of challenge (unless you crank up the difficulty, of course), you might not be able to escape a few of the game's "gotcha" deaths. With little warning, a vehicle might crash through a barricade, and if you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, you're dead. When an avalanche occurs, if you don't know to expect it, you might not have enough room to veer your snowmobile away. (This is one of several mediocre vehicular segments.) That's not challenging: that's cheap, and it's bad game design.

While Resident Evil 6 is no survival horror game, it does have a few memorably tense moments. In Leon's campaign, flashes of lightning in a dark cemetery might have you jumping once or twice, and the appearance of Resident Evil's famous zombie dogs will have you reliving the franchise's good old days. The visit to an old cathedral that follows is similarly evocative, considering its roots in the series' past. Where the game most impresses is in its production values, particularly in sound and narrative. Each campaign tells a different story--but those four stories overlap in interesting ways before they diverge again. You need to play the unlockable campaign to make sense of every mystery, but this is a great way to learn tall tales of the latest global threat.


Leon recovers from a particularly exhausting struggle with the left analog stick.
Grand voice acting gives the melodramatic story plenty of weight. The talented cast makes every sullen regret, every cry for help, and every enthusiastic encouragement ring true, even in the midst of the most fantastical of events. The gross, squishy sound effects are so potent that you might try to wipe imaginary goo from your clothes. The cutscenes deserve special mention. A slow-motion shot of a bus's interior, a character's shocking fall from a great height, and a tense standoff between allies are but a few examples of the excellent cinematics that drive the story onward.

But how far can cinematics get you when the gameplay sandwiched between them is so poorly paced, so utterly misconceived, so reliant on stick wriggles and button tapping? There's a place for contextual prompts and cinematic storytelling in video games, but Resident Evil 6 is a mishmash of elements put together without any sense of care or direction. Series faithful might stumble through for the sake of story, and perhaps to appreciate those few moments that recall when Resident Evil was at its peak glory. But this long, poor sequel is the ultimate test of patience for even the most dedicated.

Injustice: Gods Among Us

NetherRealm Studios is releasing their DC-based fighter in the spring, and we expect a steady stream of character reveals as the months roll on. As we've been doing with Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale, we'll be updating this story as NetherRealm and WB pull the curtain back. Keep an eye on this story to keep up to date on the latest reveals in the Mortal Kombat developer's upcoming title.



NEW - DeathStroke: A trailer showing off DeathStroke's gunplay and sword fighting skills has shown up online.

Green Lantern: No details yet. Creator Ed Boon confirmed via Twitter that Green Lantern is in the game after the box art appeared online.

Joker: No details yet. Creator Ed Boon confirmed via Twitter that Joker is in the game after the box art appeared online.

Green Arrow: Oliver Queen brings his bow skills to the fight. He comes packed with a number of different arrow types to annoy your opponents from afar.

Batman: It wouldn't be a DC fighter without the Caped Crusader, and he's here in full force. He features the typical assortment of gadget-based projectiles and attacks, and his Batcave stage features plenty of environmental hazards.

Harley Quinn: Joker's main squeeze has some gadgets of her own, including a pistol, a massive hammer, booby-trapped gift packages, and a deadly birthday cake.

Superman: The Man of Steel can attack with his iconic assortment of powers, but he can also knock an enemy into orbit (and back) with his ridiculously over-the-top super move.



Wonder Woman: Most fighters in Injustice fight from only one stance, but Wonder Woman can switch between her lasso and her sword/shield combo. Her moveset will change significantly depending on which stance you're currently in.

Catwoman: Batman's on-again, off-again love interest can attack with her whip and bladed claws, and looks to be one of the quickest characters in the game based on her debut trailer

Flash: This superhero features one of the more useful abilities in the game, as he can essentially slow down time. With his enemies moving in slow motion, it's far easier to get in a flurry of attacks. Oh yeah, and he can sprint around the world to build up a massive punch to the face.

Solomon Grundy: This unfortunate Gotham resident has a particularly brutal super move. He pulls cleavers out of his back, slices his opponent with them, and then pulls a tombstone out of his own chest. Of course, he proceeds to crack it over his victim's skull.



Nightwing: Robin's alter-ego is one of the more agile fighters in the game, and can combine his dual sticks into a large staff. He also comes equipped with bladed projectiles that can be tossed from the ground or air.

Cyborg: This half-robotic fighter is deadly from any range with his laser-guided missile attack, and can pull out a massive cannon that emits a devastating laser blast.