Developer Trailer for Two Worlds II trailer to Whet your Whistle before release

We are getting closer to release of the uber large RPG, Two Worlds II, next week to be precise. While you wait, SouthPeak Games has provides it's fans with a developer diary showcasing how the game overshadows the first in graphics, gameplay, and customization in astounding ways. As a fan of the first Two Worlds and just about all of the developer's RPGs so far, I am counting down the days and playing Little Big Planet up until the games release.

SBK X | Review

Synopsis: Moto enthusiasts prepare to rejoice for the two wheel super bike racing sim, SBK X. Southpeak games has provided me with a review copy of their new racer boasting a number of new features and changes from their previous entry to make it the go to game for street bike racing fans. With multiple game modes like simulation, arcade, and online multiplayer, there is multiple ways to play through this fast paced racer depending on your liking. Players are able to make their own personal racer and choose their racing team to work their way up the ranks against 90 current racers and legends. Here is my review of the time spent with all the licensed bikes, riders, and tracks, enjoy.

Praise: How often is it that you hear unforgiving as a good thing? Being that you are on two wheels with a motor between your legs capable of sending a rider faster than they can ever dream, it is the closest you will come without the road rash. Simulator felt as technical as other racing sims out there, making sure that you can’t rely on bumping into other racers to move up to 1st place. The feeling of speed is well portrayed in SBK and starting by selecting your team and tuning your bike kept me coming back to try and make more money while having the fastest bike out there. Arcade gameplay is a LOT more forgiving if you are looking for a “sim lite” feel, putting you in the middle of races having to achieve specific goals mid race. Multiple races classes from Superbike to Superstock to Supersport give each class a unique feel and sense of accomplishment. Crashes and bike damage is beautiful and realistic, until you find yourself fighting to get back into position.

Gripes: The graphics of the tracks and environments are mediocre at best, while the bikes and racers look good, it just seems like there wasn’t the same polish put into the tracks. Being a huge fan of both the Forza and Gran Turismo series’ I was expecting more from the simulation mode, but found it to take a while to get the hang of how the bikes control before being able to place in the higher ranks and not crashing multiple times a race, by the way, the brakes are your friend in this one. Tuning, if you choose to tune your bike manually is a love hate relationship, while I am familiar with tuning of cars, I felt extremely out of my element trying to manually tune bikes, luckily I was able to trust my mechanic and his suggestions pre-race.

Overall, SBK X is a motorcycle racing enthusiast’s dream, as it puts you in the shoes of a new racer and shows the player what it is like to start as a rookie and work their way up the ranks without dumbing it down to make it easy. Patience is necessary with this title like numerous other racing sims, to get used to the bike and tracks, before trying to place first in every race. I enjoyed playing SBK X, both arcade and simulation, unfortunately I was unable to locate any matches online, but this will definitely not be put aside after having purchased Gran Turismo 5.

Mashbuttons.com gives SBK X a 8 out of 10.

SBK X is available now for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Get Nail'd and get free DLC token

That is right, this just in from those wild and crazy peeps over at SouthPeak,if you purchase a new copy of Nail'd in the states, you will also receive a token for a free content pack. What is in the content pack you say? Well, you can expect to find four new tracks, vehicle paint jobs, parts for both mikes and ATV's, and rider suits. Also, you will see a new tournament called the Bomb Cup that will have five new campaign events.

Nail'd trailer is available to fulfill your off road fetishes

SouthPeak Games has released a new trailer for their extreme off road title to be expected at the end of November. Nail'd is more of an arcade racing experience, think along the lines of San Francisco Rush meets MX vs Atv. Enjoy the trailer and mark your calendars for November 30th.

New SBK X trailer puts adrenaline junkies in a straight jacket

It must be race season for games, as F1 2010 just released, Gran Turismo is coming and for you two wheel enthusiasts, well we get SBK X. For those needing their trailer fix before hopping on fast moto, I have a trailer for you highlighting in game footage, wrecks, and straight jackets. Enjoy.

SouthPeak Games clears up rumors regarding Two World II release

Bad news for those anxiously awaiting the October release of Two Worlds II, that includes me and MANY others. SouthPeak games has announced that this title will no longer be released in October as expected, but will hopefully see store shelves in January. The good news is that they are making sure that the game is not rushed and will be a truly AAA title.

Sordahon just can't get a break

Sortahung, I mean Sordahon has been appearing over the interwebs lately, showing of the struggles of what it is like to be an epic medieval baddy. From the looks of it, he needs Johnny Cochran to get his balls out of SouthPeak's vice. I mean come on, who loses their woman to a human with a little knife? Check out this humorous video of the Two Worlds II negotiations between SouthPeak Games and Sordahon.

Two wheel enthusiasts, get a load of these SBK X screens

As you may recall, a couple months back we reviewed the most recent Moto GP title, well SBK X is releasing shortly and those that did not like Moto GP or ready for something new have something to look forward to. So enjoy these screenshots and keep an eye out for more to come.

Last and certainly not least from E3 is Southpeak Games

Texas based Southpeak Games allowed us over to see them at E3 to show off a little of what they have to bring to the table in the new future and it was fun! Three words, I got nail’d! I will explain shortly, but what they did give us was time with their upcoming off road racer, Nail’d and their upcoming sequel to the massively huge RPG, Two Worlds II. Aside from their patience of having to deal with me after three NOS energy drinks and being in awe from just entering E3 for the first time in ten years, they handed me the controller and let me loose.

As stated above, the first game I got to play was Nail’d, and from having a past with years of ATV riding and my love of racers, I was ready and didn’t need much of an explanation. This title is not your realistic racer with lots of stunts, but more of an extreme over the top racer, focusing on landing huge jumps and avoiding environmental obstacles to gain boost to work your way to the front of the pack. Yes, the developer gave me an ample looking racer which I blame most of my crashes on, but the real fun was hitting massive jumps and the new feature to me, which was the ability to steer in mid air. Along with the fast gameplay, large tracks, and larger jumps, I was ready for more, but they took away my controller and sat me in front of Two Worlds II.

Now I never played the original Two Worlds title, so I had one of the developer’s actually play it for me switching between classes, skills, and environments while explaining changes made between the original and the sequel. We starting in a dungeon to show off how detailed the environments can be and the improvement of collision detection from walking through puddles, rattling hanging chains, and attacking encountered enemies, and it was pretty damn smooth. After the environments and graphics, comes the character development and here is where I am happy I didn’t get to try my hand at this because the number of options are limitless between the three classes as you have the option to customize your abilities, weapons, and armor at any point during gameplay. Here is where I fell in love, with the game of course, you can reassign you ability points towards different attributes at any time to change your character’s strong suits to help take down the harder to defeat fiends.

Prison Break: The Conspiracy | Review

Synopsis: You like prison, TV, and sneaking? I thought so; well I have a review for you then! Deep Silver provided me with a review copy of their latest title, Prison Break: The Conspiracy, and for fans of the TV series that are on the fence, which I am sure most of you are, we got a review for you specifically. In this title, you take on the role of Tom Paxton and “The Company” sends you undercover to Fox River Penitentiary to see how Michael Scofield was sent to the same prison as his brother, Lincoln Burrows. The story and game design was developed by the same writers of the TV series with the original voices to provide the same feeling and intensity of the show. A little disclaimer for fans of the show before starting the review, I have not seen the TV series, so my review may not address the continuity and possible inaccuracies between the show and the game.

Praise: I found this title to be rather entertaining, it had fun gameplay, tense moments and actually made me want to check out the TV series. The gameplay focuses on stealth elements, and a number of quick time events. The visuals look rather good at most times and make the characters easily recognizable. Like the title says, the game focuses on a conspiracy which unravels with each chapter, keeping the player engrossed in the story to see what happens next, while providing development to your characters skills and relationships with the number of groups within the prison. I was more than a little apprehensive regarding the heavy stealth elements, but it works really well for this title, unfortunately there are parts to it that could have been done better in execution, but where the gameplay lacks, the story and environment make up for it. Achievements are handed out left and right, which I like, just playing through the entire game will get you around nine hundred achievement points.

Gripes: You know how I said the achievement points were a good thing? It also has a downside, as it takes away from the replay value of this title as you will have most of the achievement points in your first playthrough and will not have much reason to go back and play it again as you know how the story will end. When fighting, I felt that the controls were too simple as you press one button for a regular attack, another for a heavy attack, then one last button to finish off your opponent once their health is depleted. Lastly, knowing when you have to use stealth and hide from guards is hard to determine in the prison, so I would have to retry not knowing what areas I was allowed to be out in the open and seen by the guards.

Overall, Prison Break was fun and entertaining, even though I had never seen an episode of the show. I think this would be something fans of the should would really like as it feels like watching the show while having control and seeing the story through your character’s eyes along with being able to complete missions a number of different ways. I must admit, that every time I see a shower in the game I do get a little scared.

Mashbuttons.com gives Prison Break: The Conspiracy a 7 out of 10.

Prison Break: The Conspiracy is available now for the PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360.

Release date announced for Dementium II

SouthPeak Games has announced that the sequel to the 2007 horror title for the Nintendo DS, Dementium II, will hit store shelves in the states on February 16th, 2010. The unlucky fans of the series that are in Europe will not see this title in stores until March 5th, 2010.Dementium II will push the horror experience further by melding puzzles and FPS action with a story and ambiance to give the player nightmares. New features to this sequel consist of all new weapons, dual wielding items, interface, save system, and environments never thought possible.

Raven Squad: Hidden Dagger | Review

Synopsis: Raven Squad is a unique title that blends both real-time strategy (RTS) and first person shooting (FPS) into one game. The characters and scripting were inspired by such movies as Predator, Commando, and Delta Force; incorporating the over the top dialogue and one liners. The story takes place in the Amazon jungles and the player is able to take command of the characters and switch between them at any time from the two available squads, each soldier having a different weapon specialty. Multiplayer co-op is available and the ability to switch between RTS and FPS at any given time allows for multiple solutions to completing each mission.

Praise: Raven Squad definitely goes outside of the box in regards to bringing something new and innovative to the table with the option to switch from FPS to RTS on the fly. A short detailed walkthrough takes you through the basics and gets you in the middle of the action without a long overly drawn out tutorial. Lastly, the multiplayer does not take long to find a partner and playing through the title cooperatively is enjoyable, especially with a headset on.

Gripes: Where this game exceeds, it does have its downfalls. Though the ability to switch from RTS to FPS is a new feature to the shooter genre, but there is a lack of polish in the graphics and gameplay. The graphics appear to be equivalent to if not slightly prettier than the original Xbox, and the gameplay tends to slow down and get choppy in certain parts of playing through. The scripting and the voice acting is the other downfall with this title, as it tries to stick to the same type of dialogue found in the movies that inspired it, while sticking to the restrictions of a “T for Teen” rated game.

Overall, this title tries to be a big hitter right out of the gate when a little more time could have helped a lot on the final product. However, in a saturated genre, it works hard to differentiate itself from the rest and bring something new to the table that does work very well. Raven Squad is an entertaining game at some points playing through the title but did release at the right time before the big holiday releases to prevent being overlooked.

Mashbuttons.com gives Raven Squad: Hidden Dagger a 6 out of 10.
Raven Squad: Hidden Dagger is available now for the Xbox 360 and PC.