Hasta La Gadget!

The creators of the incredibly popular Halo franchise have announced a new project they are working on called Destiny. The video game will introduce players to an epic science fiction universe, including a persistent online world filled with sweeping adventures.

Destiny promises to combine a first-person action game with persistent, dynamic world – offering console players a connected living world they can explore combined with social spaces where they can congregate and celebrate achievements. The game will allow players to adventure as a group or alone.

The game will be set in the distant future with players acting as guardians of the last city on Earth. Players will explore the ruins of our solar system from Mars to Venus and battle enemies of humankind to reclaim what was lost during the collapse of mankind’s Golden Age.

Destiny is being published by Activision and is tentatively planned for a December 31 release on the Xbox 360 and PS3. It is rumored to be a launch title for the Xbox 720 and/or the PS4 as well. Sadly, there is no mention of a PC version at this point.

As much as I love playing FPSes on my Xbox 360 and PS3, they’re still not as immersive as they could be on my “puny” 64-inch plasma display. But thanks to simulator technology developed by UniVisual Technologies, you could soon be playing FPSes in an incredibly visceral gameplay arena.

Combining their projection and image warping technologies with a custom 360-degree screen and a 360-degree treadmill from MSE AB, the simulator is able to surround game players with an immersive image that covers their entire field of vision, while at the same time allowing them to actually walk and run through the environment.

The 360-degree setup uses an array of six HD video projectors with short-throw lenses, which have had their images seamlessly blended together and warped using UniVisual’s sophisticated Warpalizer software to match the large curved screen, and to eliminate any areas of overlap, color or brightness distortion. (Check out a cool demo of Warpalizer in action here.)

Under foot is a 3-meter circular treadmill system which determines which way to move based on the player’s foot movements and the game moves its viewport based on the direction of the wireless motion sensors in the gun. Incredibly, the entire system is powered by a single computer running a sub-$500 ATi Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 card.

While similar simulators have been shown off before, UniVisual claims their system is the most complete, cost-effective and ready for market, having already installed one in Mumbai, India for Smaaash Entertainment Center, who expects to launch more centers around India, and possibly abroad down the road. Check out the Mumbai installation in action in the video clip below:

Very cool. Though I wish that they could figure out a way to hide the giant gun reticle in Battlefield 3 to make the environment even more realistic. UniVisual is also developing a smaller version of the system with a 180-degree screen, which uses a set of just three long-life LED projectors. Hopefully, we’ll start to see these sort of immersive simulators show up at entertaiment venues around the world in the not-too-distant future.

Word on the street (in particular, online portfolios and CVs) do point towards the possibility of LucasArts coming up with an unannounced title – where hopefully, it will not remain that way for too long. Timothy Longo would be the project’s Creative Director, and this is a role that he stepped into after he left Crystal Dynamics as the Tomb Raider Franchise Director. Since then, he has been hard at work on an “unannounced project” since April a couple of years ago, or so that is what his Linkedin page indicated.

So far, there have been a fair number of speculations on what could be and what isn’t, and Star Wars: First Assault is not likely, and Star Wars 1313 is also not quite it, too. Chances are, it could be a First Person Shooter (FPS) since the Linkedin profile of Edward Kay, someone who has been working at LucasArts since September 2011, did mention “an unannounced first person shooter project for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.” This leaves us with a Star Wars FPS, which isn’t a new idea, but previous iterations have been thoroughly enjoyable.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Dueling Coming To Diablo 3 In Patch 1.0.7, Possible Final Fantasy V And VI Announcements Teased For 17th January,

It’s time to jump in on one of the most impressive mech-based first person shooters to have come along for quite a while – Hawken – released for Beta gameplay for the masses this week. This game is developed by Adhesive Games and published by Meteor Entertainment, designed by Khang Le, Christopher Lalli, and John Park, and based in the Unreal Engine 3 universe. In a nutshell it’s a battle game where you’re in a giant one-person machine that blows up other machines for fun – simple concept, fabulous execution.

The set of multiplayer modes you’re working with here in [free beta mode] is currently set at 4 – two basic modes, a Missle Assult mode and a Siege mode. The first two modes are Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch with experience given based on accomplishments through your battle against either your opponent’s team or every single other player in the game. Missle Assult mode has you capturing a set of three missle silos and defending them until they destroy the enemy team’s base.

But it’s really all about the Siege mode when it comes down to it. This undeniably fantastic bit of gameplay is still in Alpha Mode – that being an alpha mode in a beta game, certainly not guaranteed to have a perfect gameplay experience by any means – but, spoiler, it really is rather top-notch even here in its early public stages. In Seige mode your goal is to collect enemy energy units that will launch a battleship for you that’ll move ever-so-gradually toward your enemy’s base.

When your ship is launched, you control the anti-air to attack your enemy’s ships and protect your own ship until your ship has reached its goal – and the enemy is massacred. This and the rest of the modes all exist in a fantastic set of environments the likes of which we’ve only otherwise seen in the highest quality first-person-shooters for high-powered PCs in the past. That and Total Recall or Blade Runner – and the detail is surprisingly deep.

NOTE: It should be made clear here that we’re using an Intel Core i7 Ivy Bridge NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M packing Alienware M17x R4 gaming notebook to play this game – we’ve not yet tested the game with much lesser machines than that.

Gameplay controls are rather standard and extremely responsive – WASD and Shift-hold to dart one way or the other, holding down the space bar makes you take off and fly, and holding down the letter C sits your mech down so your back-up helper bot can fly around and repair your broken bits. Communication between players online seems to be up to par as far as both microphone chat and on-screen type, and we’ve experienced no noticeable (or otherwise bothersome) lag in any respect and load-times have been, again, surprisingly quick.

If this game as excellent or better than we’ve seen here in Beta, we’re more than pumped up for the final release. Have a peek at the last time we spoke about the producers of this game and see why we’re pumped up about their hard-hitting future as well. Get ready to be smashed!

Presenting Hawken: free multiplayer mech combat in beta mode is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Back in September, we got our first glimpse at Gameloft’s latest mobile FPS title, Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour, in the form of a trailer. Needless to say, we were pretty excited about it, and finally, Gameloft has announced that the new game will be releasing this Thursday, December 6, on iOS, while Android devices will get it “shortly after.”

Gameloft confirmed the news on Twitter, and we’re not really sure why the Android version is getting delayed, nor do we know when it will eventually be released. We’re guessing only a couple days after the iOS release, but it’s all a guessing game so far. Either way, after months of waiting, we finally know when the new title will be out.

Gameloft’s Modern Combat series has always been the closest alternative to games like Call of Duty, but on Android and iOS. The first three installments of Modern Combat have been some of the best first-person shooter games to reach mobile devices, and the fourth sequel promises to be even greater, with “exceptional graphics, a AAA campaign and a greatly-improved multiplayer mode.”

Of course, the release of Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour will see some heavy competition starting right on release day, since that will be the same day that Grand Theft Auto: Vice City releases. Coincidence? Maybe, but the biggest problem is which game to play first once Thursday rolls around. It’ll be a tough choice.

Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour arriving December 6 on iOS, Android “shortly after” is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.