Helicopter combat is coming to Steam on Wednesday, May 15 with the release of Thunder Wolves, developer Most Wanted Entertainment’s new action game. Published by bitComposer Games, the sim puts you (and a friend in co-op mode) in control of nine choppers and a full arsenal of weapons in 13 missions set in four global hot spots. The game is priced at $14.99, but those who pre-order will receive a 20-percent discount.

Reliable information about the next generation of consoles has been coming at a trickle as we approach E3 2013. Recently, Epic Games vice president Mark Rein told attendees at the UK Game Horizon conference that both Microsoft and Sony are “going heavily” into free-to-play models for games being released on their respective new machines. Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony Worldwide Studios, made a similar statement to Game Informer, saying that “We are developing a free-to-play type of game, but we haven’t announced it yet.” No word on FTP offerings for the new Xbox, which will make its first official appearance at a Microsoft press conference on May 21.

Source: Joystiq

Publisher: Snowbird Game Studios
Developer: Snowbird Game Studios
System requirements: Windows XP SP2/Vista/Win 7, 2 GHz Pentium/AMD 2000+ or better CPU, 512 MB RAM, GeForce 7300/Radeon 9200 or better graphics card, DirectX-compatible sound device, DirectX 9.0c, 2 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Strategy
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: Available now

Back in 2010, Eador: Genesis was quietly released to Russian-language audiences. Developed almost exclusively by one man, Alexander Bokulev, it was a mashup of various strategy games into one pot of dreams. It took the best of games such as Civilization and Heroes of Might and Magic and became something that would punch you in the face but leave you begging for more. It didn’t get much attention for many years because of its odd interface and the lack of an English translation. But now, Bokulev is back with a team and a budget. Eador: Masters of the Broken World isn’t just a prettier face, it’s an all-around better game.

( read more… )

Petroglyph’s latest game has escaped from beta testing and has been released into the world. Battle for Graxia takes the MOBA formula and evolves a lot of features. Match replays don’t just sit on a server; they’re downloadable. You can queue up as a White Knight and fill in for players who drop, and cut your teeth in PvE before taking it online in the PvP. Free heroes rotate out every week, and players can customize their heroes using artifacts and skill trees. Interested players can go ahead and sign up here. Plus, it has a hero named Murderhoof, which is awesome.

Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Developer: Paradox Development Studio
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7, 2.4 GHz Pentium IV/AMD 3500+ or better CPU, 2 GB RAM, GeForce 8800/Radeon X1900 or better graphics card, 2 GB hard-drive space, DirectX-compatible sound device, DirectX 9, Victoria II (base game) and A House Divided expansion pack
Genre: RTS
ESRB rating: Teen
Release date: Available now

Victoria has always been a franchise I’ve loved, and it’s one that has always been built on complexity. When your game is built around an economy that tracks the purchases of every single person, business and government in the world, you’re not catering to those with poor attention spans. The catch, though, is that no matter how complex Victoria II gets, there’s always something more I want from the game. It’s been a year since the last Victoria II expansion was released, and Paradox has decided that there are enough people like me who want even more from Victoria II to justify another expansion. Heart of Darkness focuses on four main areas of gameplay: colonies, navies, armies and diplomacy. Any fan of the franchise, while happy with improvements to warfare, will no doubt be intrigued more by the possibilities offered by diplomacy and colonization. And I’m happy to report that, aside from a few warts, HoD delivers the goods.

( read more… )

Publisher: Phoenix Online Studios
Developer: Phoenix Online Studios
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7/iOS 10.6 (Snow Leopard), 2.0 GHz CPU, 2 GB RAM, 512 MB DirectX 9-compatible graphics card, 2.5 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Adventure
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: Available now

I think we can stop using the “adventure games are dead, but…” line. Along with platformers, adventure games are low-cost laboratories where creative indies can play around within well-established genre conventions. If the subtitle didn’t tip you off, Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller is an adventure game in the vein of the airport thrillers of Clive Cussler and James Patterson. Think Castle without the snark, or the Alex Cross movies without the suck. It’s a world where murder happens like an elemental force, and killers leave puzzles and traps behind like rats leave droppings. With remarkably high production values and Adventure Goddess Jane Jensen attached as a story consultant, Cognition seems to have everything going for it.

( read more… )

Publisher: 2K Games
Developer: Irrational Games
System requirements: Windows Vista SP2/Win 7 SP1, 2.4 GHz Core2Duo/2.7 GHz Athlon X2 or better CPU, 2 GB RAM, 512 MB DirectX10-compatible graphics card (GeForce 8800 GT/Radeon HD 3870/Intel HD 3000 integrated graphics or better), DirectX-compatible sound device, 20 GB hard-drive space
Genre: RPG/Shooter
ESRB rating: Mature
Release date: Available now

You find yourself in a rowboat headed towards a lighthouse in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Maine. You have a cigar box that contains a picture of a pretty, nicely dressed young woman, and a pistol. A chattering couple sporting British accents argues about who’s rowing and who isn’t. Once the boat reaches its destination, you pause in your seat to take in the scene. “He’s not moving,” one of your boatmen says. “He will…eventually,” is the reply. Substitute the boat ride and the pithy banter with a fiery plane crash and the scene becomes all too familiar for those who played developer Irrational’s 2007 masterpiece, BioShock. The parallels between the games don’t end here, as you will discover during your journey through Irrational’s new magnum opus, Bioshock Infinite.

( read more… )

Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Capcom
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7/Win 8, 2.4 GHz Core2Duo/2.8 GHz Athlon X2 or better CPU, 2 GB RAM, GeForce 8800 GTS or better graphics card, DirectX 9.0c, 16 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Shooter
ESRB rating: Mature
Release date: Available now

Resident Evil is one of the industry’s most financially rewarding franchises. Say what you want about Call of Duty, but Capcom has managed to sell books, movie rights and spin-offs of its popular series of zombie shooters for years. While the word “multimedia” gets tossed around a lot these days, basically the only form Resident Evil doesn’t come packaged in is a vacation cruise (although I’m betting the idea for a Resident Evil getaway has been discussed). With the release of Resident Evil 6 on consoles late last year, critical opinion was divided, but consoles and PC are not the same kind of platform. How does the latest iteration of this venerable franchise stack up on PC? The short answer is this: it ain’t survival horror anymore. The long answer is a bit more complicated.

( read more… )

Recently Adrenaline Vault writer Jason Pitruzzello had the chance to fire off a few questions to David “Darkrenown” Ballantyne (pictured left), scripter and designer at Paradox Development Studio, about Heart of Darkness, the developer’s new expansion pack for their historical strategy game Victoria II. The expansion will be available April 16, 2013.

( read more… )

Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: Crystal Dynamics
System requirements: Windows XP SP 3/Vista/Win 7/Win 8, 1.8 GHz Core2Duo E6300/2.1 GHz Athlon 64 X2 4050+ or better CPU, 2 GB RAM, 512 MB GeForce 8600/Radeon HD 2600 XT or better graphics card, DirectX 9.0c,10 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Action-Adventure
ESRB rating: Mature
Release date: Available now

Let’s face it: Lara Croft isn’t an interesting character. Impossibly athletic, remarkably good-looking. There’s no problem she couldn’t overcome by climbing on walls and shooting endangered animals. She didn’t have a personality, she had breasts. She was part sex symbol, part wish fulfillment, and entirely plastic. Now that the franchise has creatively bankrupted itself for a second time, developer Crystal Dynamics has decided to go back and rework Lara from the ground up. Just as film director Christopher Nolan saved Batman from decades of one-dimensional edginess, Crystal Dynamics has breathed new life and humanity into a previously synthetic (and sexist) character. But to make this new Lara, first they had to put her through hell.

( read more… )

Publisher: OGPlanet
Developer: FIX Korea
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7, 2.0 GHz dual-core CPU, 1 GB RAM (2 GB for Vista/Win 7), Radeon X800/GeForce 7600 or better graphics card, DirectX 9.0c, 6 GB hard-drive space
Genre: FPS
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: April 2013

Back in the ancient days of 1999, when Pentiums still roamed the Earth, a guy named Minh Le, along with some other talented guys, created a small mod for Half-Life called Counter Strike. The little mod caught on, and it and Minh were soon snapped up by Valve. Soon, he was hard at work on Counter Strike 2. The project eventually faded, and Minh left to develop his next game on his own. After slow-boiling for more than a decade, that game is ready to be served. Recently, an open beta launched, sundering the seals and letting the masses in (and testing server loads). With the official launch right around the corner, Tactical Intervention should be about finished. So, how does it look?

( read more… )

So, I decided to give the free-to-play Star Trek Online a try. I figured with no money to pay upfront, the worst that could happen is that I waste a day of my life and decide I don’t like it. As I’ve played for the past two months, though, I’ve been surprised by something I never thought I’d consider: the online store. See, for most of the time I’ve played MMOs, I’ve always been a paying subscriber right around the time they went free-to-play (LOTRO, SWTOR), so I had no real incentive to care much about the goodies in the store. I did a blog about how Turbine basically set their game up so that it could steal revenue back from the gold spammers, but as for using the service myself, I never really felt that excited about it. As for Star Wars, other people in the industry have already commented on how badly the game was monetized; I mean, honestly, who thought giving free players a bad interface, then charging for more quick bars, was a good idea? Needless to say, very little about SWTOR inspired me to make purchases from the store.

( read more… )

Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Developer: Ratloop Asia
Genre: Side-scrolling shooter
ESRB rating: Mature
Release date: Available now

Despite the high-minded aims that Sony has for the Playstation Vita, the truth is that one of the things for which it’s best suited is the old-school platformer. Developer Ratloop Asia has delivered just such an item with their Vita port of the PC/PS3 hit Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken, which takes the original game and juices it up a little bit to take advantage of the new handheld’s unique attributes.

( read more… )

Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: Crytek
System requirements: Windows Vista/Win 7/Win 8, 2.4 GHz Core2Duo/2.7 GHz Athlon 64 X2 or better CPU, 2 GB RAM (3 GB for Vista), 1 GB Nvidia GTS 450/Radeon HD5770 or better graphics card, DirectX 11, 16 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Shooter
ESRB rating: Mature
Release date: Available now

I’m a gamer of habit, but while I enjoy a certain type of beverage or music selection while I’m playing on a console, it’s a completely (and far less simple) story with my beloved, albeit aging, gaming PC. See, I want the “maximum performance” out of my game, and if I know there’s something I can do to make my experience better, I do it. For example, I’d format my PC every time I got a new video card or dropped in a significant amount of RAM because I needed to see what the cleanest install and most updated drivers could do. Of course, back in the day I always had a test game — the height of what my PC could handle at the time. Whether it was how big I could make my Doom II window, or how high I could bump my resolution in Black & White 2, there was always that one contemporary that defined the level of my rig. Then along came Crysis…

( read more… )

Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Developer: Paradox Development Studio
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7, Pentium IV 2.4 GHz/AMD 3500+ or better CPU, 2 GB RAM, 512 MB GeForce 8800/Radeon X1900 or better graphics card, Direct X-compatible sound device, DirectX 9, 2 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Strategy
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: Available now

It’s been two weeks since March of the Eagles was officially released, and I keep coming back to play despite the deadline for this review. I’ve found myself carving up the Ottoman Empire as Austria, conquering North Africa for Spain, dividing Prussia in half with France as Russia, and even trying (and failing miserably) to return Sweden to greatness. Paradox Interactive labels March of the Eagles as a game that brings the Napoleonic Wars “to life in this war-focused strategy game.” I admit I was skeptical at first that a company known for its epic grand strategy games could create a tightly focused product covering only a small historical period. But after playing the preview and the full version, I can say that Paradox has hit the mark with this strategy game.

( read more… )