GTA V: might be out by october

Grand Theft Auto V (commonly shortened to GTA V) is an upcoming open world action-adventure video game being developed by games developer Rockstar North in the United Kingdom and published by Rockstar Games. The game will be the first major title in the Grand Theft Auto series since Grand Theft Auto IV (2008), which started the fourth "era" in the series. The fifteenth game in the series overall, GTA V is to be set in fictional Los Santos in the state of San Andreas and its surrounding areas, based on modern-day Los Angeles and Southern California. A rendition of Los Santos was previously featured as one of three cities in 2004's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, from the series's third era.

Grand Theft Auto V was officially announced on 25 October 2011. The debut trailer for the game was unveiled on 2 November 2011.

Multiplayer

According to IGN, Grand Theft Auto V will feature "Crews" similar to Max Payne 3. The new Social Club functionality connect play across multiple titles, starting with Max Payne 3 and GTA V. By playing both games multiplayer, "crews" that the player set up in one will be carried over to the other. "Crews" will let players form private crews with friends, or join public crews. Players can be a member of up to five at the same time, and completing tasks as a crew will gain XP points for the player.

In September 2009 during an earnings call, Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick answered a listener's question about the next Grand Theft Auto. He replied, "We're not going to announce it, we're not going to announce when we are going to announce it, and we are not going to announce a strategy about announcing it or about when we are going to announce it either, or about the announcement strategy surrounding the announcement of the strategy."

In a November 2009 interview with The Times, Grand Theft Auto producer Dan Houser discussed his work, including the future of the series. Houser stated that he planned to co-write a script that reached about one thousand pages in length. In the same interview, Houser explained the company's basic workflow of creating new games in the series, which involves coming up with the city first, and then the lead character later.

In July 2010, Rockstar North posted seven job ads related to a new title. The firm looked to fill positions including Environment Artists, Physics Programmers and Character Animators. The job ad for the latter asking for those with "professional experience developing a third person action game". It was unknown if Rockstar was hiring for GTA V, or the firm was bulking up its Agent team

Pre-announcement

In December 2010, Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick said that the company "won't annualise" its biggest franchises like Grand Theft Auto, Max Payne and Red Dead. He toldReuters that doing so would threaten their quality and risk burning out consumers.

In February and March 2011, there were several possible minor leaks of supposed GTA production, including domain name registrations, and casting calls featuring previousGTA characters. The first signs of the game went online in February 2011, via an actor's CV, which was followed by the discovery of Rockstar-registered GTA style URLs. In March a number of casting calls for voice acting in a project codenamed Rush were leaked onto the internet. Considering one role included James Pedeaston, a radio personality in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, the project was presumed to concern Rockstar.

In June 2011, sources allegedly close to the developer told GameSpot that the title is "well under way", with final touches like mini-games already being applied, and a 2012 release "pretty likely". "It's the big one," they also said of the game, noting that GTA V's scale is vast.

In a July 2011 interview with PSM3, Team Bondi co-founder Brendan McNamara was asked if Rockstar (who published Bondi's 2011 L.A. Noire) was considering the proprietaryMotionScan face-scanning technology for the next GTA game. McNamara replied, "Yeah, I think they're looking at it for every game. As much as L.A. Noire is a huge game,Grand Theft Auto is incredibly huge, so you've got all the problems of how big the cast would be and how many lines would you have to record and all that kind of stuff. Obviously we'd like them to, and they're more than welcome to use MotionScan, but if they decide it's not right for that and want to use it for another game, then that's fine too.

Post-announcement

The Vinewood sign, as seen in theGrand Theft Auto V trailer.

On 25 October 2011, Rockstar Games announced Grand Theft Auto V via their Twitter account, which included the #GTAV hashtag and a link to their homepage, which displayed the game's logo. The 'V' in the logo is styled like a bank note. A message was printed below the logo stating that a trailer would be released on 2 November 2011. The following day Rockstar put a Grand Theft Auto V trailer countdown on their homepage. Shares of Take-Two Interactive, the parent company of Rockstar Games, jumped seven percent following the revelation that Grand Theft Auto V is in development. Around the same time, video game website Kotaku claimed that it had been told that rumours about Rockstar being set to make a switch to reality by recreating real-world Los Angeles for GTA V "are true" by "a source familiar with the game". Kotaku said that GTA V will be set in "some version of L.A."

On 2 November 2011, Rockstar released the debut trailer for Grand Theft Auto V. Giving fans a first look at the upcoming title, the trailer revealed the setting to be Los Santos, the fictional version of Los Angeles and its California surroundings, including Hollywood ("Vinewood") and rural hills and valleys. Additional features revealed in the trailer included golf, planes, jetskis, and a working gym. The song used in the trailer is "Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake" by the British band The Small Faces.

On 3 November 2011, Rockstar Games announced that Grand Theft Auto V was in full development and that it would take place within Los Santos and its "surrounding hills, countryside and beaches", and that it would be "the largest and the most ambitious game Rockstar has yet created", with Sam Houserdescribing it as a "radical reinvention of the Grand Theft Auto universe". A version of Los Santos was previously featured in 2004's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, along with two other cities that were part of that rendition of the state of San Andreas (Las Venturas and San Fierro, based on Las Vegasand San Francisco, respectively). Rockstar parent Take-Two called GTA V "a bold new direction in open-world freedom, storytelling, mission-based gameplay and online multiplayer," while confirming that its story will focus on "the pursuit of the almighty dollar in a re-imagined, present-day Southern California." No release date or platforms were provided in the announcement.

On 8 November 2011, Take-Two's second quarter financial earnings report included an update on future product launch dates, with the newest game to be added to the list was GTA V, which carried a "TBA" release. On 2 February 2012, during Take-Two's third quarter financial report, CEO Strauss Zelnick said developer Rockstar is making "incredible progress". On 13 February 2012, in a Question and Answer section on their blog, a nameless Rockstar representative said that the developer is toiling away diligently and hopes to reveal more in a few months time.

On 29 May 2012, supposed "trusted sources" told Computer and Video Games that Rockstar "has no plans for E3", meaning that hands-on demonstrations of Rockstar games such as GTA V and Agent will not take place at any of the platform holders' E3 press conferences.

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier Review

The next installment in Ubisoft's squad-based shooter series. Ubisoft promises "cutting-edge technology, prototype high-tech weaponry, and state-of-the-art single-player and multiplayer modes." A multiplayer beta will be available exclusively for Xbox 360.

Ghost Recon: Future Soldier starts out with a bit of misdirection. You're following a squad of gun-toting grunts as they drive along in an armored humvee as part of a larger convoy. Your immediate assumption is that you're riding with friendlies; no one is speaking, in English or any other language, and the non-descript nature of the uniforms and gear suggests Vanilla Military Force. The fact that the camera is along for the ride is all the proof we really need to assume that we're looking at some of the Good Guys.

Of course, misdirection is the calling card for Ghost Recon's future soldiers. The camera eventually cuts away from the convoy, off to a nearby ridge where a squad of four teched out soldiers in stealth camo lie prone with their weapons and intel devices pointed in the direction of the convoy. It's a slick introduction to what ultimately amounts to a rather generic story, but it nonetheless captures the essence of what being a Ghost Recon soldier is all about.

The story is all very generic and forgettable in the end, though it's not the crime that it could be given the many strengths that Future Soldier does have. It's a game that certainly lives up to its title, serving up a vast range of technological doodads and gizmos that you can use and abuse to tilt the rules of engagement in your favor. Ghost Recon: Future Soldier might not introduce much in the way of new ideas, but its fresh treatment of familiar ones offer a good time regardless.

Let's start with the most low-tech tool in your toolbox: sync shots. Up to four enemy soldiers can be marked with the press of a button, with your team then following your lead and taking out anyone you've marked once you open fire on one of the targets. Stealth is a huge part of the game and the friendly AI is shockingly competent, so you end up relying on this feature frequently.

You can also mark as many as three targets and leave them for your team to deal with (by pressing and holding the same button you use to mark enemies). This is most useful when paired with the game's UAV drone, a remote-operated quadrotor-powered camera that can be deployed during most missions.

Between tools like the drone and the sync shot feature, it's entirely possible to play through most of Future Soldier without firing your weapon. This is really where the game stands out most, giving you all of the tools you need to tackle near-future battlefields in a way that suits your particular play style. The responsive controls fully support this too, whether you go in guns blazing or you rely on your squadmates to handle the bulk of the heavy lifting.

It's really the pacing that makes all of this work, however. Future Soldier never simply drops you into a mission with dozens of futuristic battle tools to choose from and no indication of what each one does. You're learning new tricks and picking up new toys throughout the game, though it's presented in such a way that it never feels like an endless tutorials. You're simply supplementing what you already know.

Sometimes these are one-off gameplay features that amount to a palette cleanser. In one particular case, you spend most of a mission guiding a combat mech around the battlefield. You certainly have the option of relying on your equipped firearms for most of the challenges you face, but it's far more fun to use the mech to rain a constant stream of devestation down on your enemies. There are also occasional on-rails sequences that give you all the ammo you could ask for and a bunch of enemies to shoot with it 

Then there's the weapon customization, which is by far the most detailed you've ever seen in a AAA release. You can tweak everything from underbarrel and side rail attachments to the gas system, barrel length, and trigger pull of your chosen firearm. Kinect voice and motion controls can be used in this Gunsmith mode, though they feel tacked on and unnecessary. The level of customization is the real win here, no question.

Future Soldier's gameplay overall is as fun as the story is generic. Sure, you'll balk at some of the things you see and hear in cutscenes as nods to (or ripoffs from) other games. But you'll also likely be too excited about what new toy you'll get to play with next to care. Only the on-the-ground version of the UAV drone misses the mark, due to exceedingly clunky driving controls.

Co-op forms a huge part of the experience in Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. Some of the game's challenges, such as the solo mission mentioned above, simply don't work well without multiple human players in the mix. Guerilla Mode, a Horde-style 50-wave survival challenge, is basically impossible to play through without at least one other player at your side.

As enjoyable as it is to rely on your UAV drone and sync shots in the campaign, the best bet is always to bring along other human players. You can fill out your entire squad of four with online friends (or randoms), and apply the same sort of teamwork-oriented thinking in a group setting. The amount of enjoyment you take away from this depends largely on how well your crew can work together, but switching from managing an AI squad through each mission to using your futuretech tools in the context of a group is seamless.

Group play is even necessary in certain cases. There are challenges that are unique to each mission in the game; completing them unlocks all manner of new weapons and Gunsmith attachments. Some of these challenges are easier to complete on your own, but most of them favor group efforts.

The challenges offer a cool twist to the campaign and a reason to replay each mission on tougher difficulties, but the way that they're executed speaks to one of the larger problems inFuture Soldier. A lot of the out-of-game menu juggling feels half-baked and poorly executed. For example, there's no way to measure your past performance. You receive a 1-100 rating based on your performance in each mission, and there are challenges tied to these ratings. Unfortunately, there's no way to look back at how you've scored previously inside the game

There's also the fact that the different pieces of game feel disconnected from one another. You're constantly unlocking all sorts of weapons and attachments in the campaign, but none of this carries over to the Guerilla or competitive multiplayer modes. In Guerilla, you're actually stuck with whatever the game chooses to offer you for each wave. There's also no real sense of progression in this mode, beyond unlockable Achievements/Trophies. You can play through the 50 waves and have fun doing it -- every 10 rounds you have to take over and then defend a new HQ for the next 10 -- but there's no carrot to keep you coming back.

Finally, there's the multiplayer. It's mostly great. You don't have any of the typical bog-standard modes like Deathmatch or Team Deathmatch. Instead, there are four entirely objective-based modes to choose from. They're all a lot of fun to play and they all feel decidedly unique, even if they play on established multiplayer ideas.

Decoy, for example, has one team rushing to interact with their "key" objective. There are also two other "decoy" objectives. The opposing team can see all three locations, but it isn't ever made clear which one is the primary. Or Conflict, a mode with a rotating set of objectives that could involve anything from kill/defend an HVT to take a control point and hold it. There's nothing in the multiplayer modes that's particularly new, but it's nonetheless a lot of clever riffing on familiar ideas.

Resident Evil; Operation Racoon city

PC owners deserve better. Resident Evil: Raccoon City was hardly a quality game on consoles, but you'd hope that developer Slant Six Games might have given the PC platform at least a little respect. Alas, all the signs of a sloppy port are apparent from the moment you boot up the game. Ridiculous menus that only half-support the mouse and quick-time events that indicate to wiggle the C key like it's an analog stick are just a couple of these indicators. Capcom, the game's publisher, earned a reputation for careless PC ports years ago with games like Onimusha 3 and Resident Evil 4. It now carries on that dubious tradition with Raccoon City--only this time, the game it's debasing is one that was never worth your time in the first place.
 These problems are a shame, considering the possibilities. The game puts an intriguing spin on events you might have already witnessed in previous Resident Evil games. You're a member of Umbrella Security Services' special Wolfpack team in the infamous Raccoon City, where the T-virus has turned the population into voracious zombies, and mutant dogs lurk in shadows, ready to ravage the defenseless. From this new perspective, you face a glowering Nicholai Zinoviev and watch Ada Wong wilt in Leon Kennedy's arms. You infiltrate storied locations like the Raccoon City police department, and fight off zombies in front of the Kendo Gun Shop. Some of these regions are legitimately atmospheric: city streets are awash in a neon red glow, and ominous-looking equipment hints at the atrocities that occurred within Umbrella's underground laboratory.

You might miss some of the more subtle touches, however, given how dark Raccoon City is. This is a Resident Evil game, so you expect to push through pervasive gloom. But environments are poorly lit, everything cloaked in a dim cloud that obscures your vision without ramping up tension. (Compare this visual design to the infinitely superior Left 4 Dead 2, which provided proper visual contrast and still elicited your innate survival instincts.) The problems don't end here, though: Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City drowns in its own faults, many of them so basic it's a wonder they appeared in a final product.

These faults infest the gameplay from the very beginning, and remain to the very end. Consider a battle versus the infected William Birkin, which takes place in the very first mission. At first, you can't turn and run; all you can do is slowly back away and shoot. If you brought a shotgun to this unexpected battle, sorry: you really should have brought an assault rifle if you wanted to be effective here, assuming you have enough ammo in the first place. Eventually, you're allowed to flee, but the game doesn't tell you that, and so you back into the streams of flame bursting from the corridor's walls. Want to run past the beast? There's an invisible barrier on either side. You'd suppose that AI-controlled teammates might help, but they're not even in view, apparently filing their nails in the corner while you get caught in an inescapable series of knockdown attacks.

That entire scene is absurdly bad, as if the game is actively working to make you hate it. But the problems aren't just specific to individual encounters; some invade the entire game. One such problem is the cover system, a core component of third-person shooters like Raccoon City. Here, you don't need to press a key to take refuge behind a wall or curb. Instead, you lumber up to it and automatically stick--a fine idea in a world where games are able to read your mind. Raccoon City, sadly, does not exist in such a world, and so you slip into cover when you rub against a shelf, or fail to stick to a wall that, for some unknown reason, won't let you take cover at all. You may seek to pop out and take potshots, but instead slide around the corner, as if volunteering to become a targeting practice dummy.The shooting model is functional, at least, each weapon handling more or less as you expect it to. There's little joy to the shooting, however, because the weapons don't feel particularly powerful. Normal zombies twitch and lurch based on the impact of your bullets, but enemy forces and larger monsters like hunters don't always react to your shots, so you don't get that sense of power you expect from a shooter. It doesn't help that enemies are bullet sponges. It takes seemingly forever for certain foes to die, so you and your teammates pump out clip after clip, hoping that it's enough to take down that nasty T-103. Well, you might expect a tyrant to take such a beating, but when it's a bunch of lickers absorbing all this damage, the action stops being fun and becomes a slog. How perplexing, then, that the game would be so stingy with ammunition, considering how much you have to waste on these foes. You find yourself without ammo frequently, and scavenging environments for bullets so you can shoot your guns is far less entertaining than actually shooting them.
Raccoon City isn't just a co-op game; it also includes competitive modes, where human players join the undead in their relentless quest to murder you. There are four modes on offer, two of which had real promise. The most enjoyable of them is Biohazard, in which G-virus samples appear on the map, and teams race to collect them and return them to their home base. That aforementioned mine might come in handy again here, should you plant it near the enemy's home area. (Like zombies, other players blow up real good.) The other promising mode is Survivor, in which two teams mow each other down while waiting for a rescue helicopter to arrive. The helicopter has limited seats, and some heated action can occur in that mad dash to safety.
Team deathmatch variants called Team Attack and Heroes round out the selection. No matter which mode you prefer, however, you run into some of the same problems as in the campaign: flaky cover mechanics, long animations leading to damage loops, and so forth. Weapon imbalances are also a problem. Raccoon City has a persistent leveling system in which you earn points that can be spent on new weapons and abilities. You can earn more powerful weapons in other shooters, of course, but pistols rarely make you an unstoppable killing machine. In Raccoon City, that Lightning Hawk pistol, combined with the game's quick draw aiming system, gives you an edge over players with dinky weapons like heavy machine guns and bolt-action rifles.
Yet all these guns and abilities are wasted in a game that never makes good on its potential, and what potential you glimpse is overshadowed by a careless porting job that makes you wonder why the teams responsible even bothered in the first place. Perhaps you crave a creepy and thoughtful journey through the darkest regions of the human psyche. Perhaps you crave tense, exciting action, either online or on your own. Either way, Raccoon City not only fails to satisfy--it leaves you feeling even emptier than when you started.
There's a reason that co-op shooters like Syndicate and Left 4 Dead have comprehensible rules regarding the placement of ammo stashes; the resulting ebb and flow allows you to focus on the shooting and gives teams a moment to refresh and regroup. Raccoon City has no such rules in place; you are never sure whether there is ammo nearby, or where it might be found. Of course, we should want our games to rethink traditional mechanics in interesting ways, but developer Slant Six's deviations come at the cost of fun. One such example: you can't tumble out of the way of a charging hunter, but you can sprint forward and belly flop--always a treat when you wanted to run toward a health-giving herb, but then leap on top of it rather than consume it. Another example: for some reason, you have to shoot the locks off of special weapon containers before you can collect the gun within. Perhaps this was meant to deliver some tension, but it just feels like a waste of time and ammo.

Max Payne 3

Like it or not, times change. When Max Payne last appeared in a game in 2003, he blasted his way through countless enemies with reckless abandon, aided by his signature ability to slow time and deal graceful death. Today, reflecting modern sensibilities and perhaps his own age, Max takes things slower and makes judicious use of a new cover mechanic. Yet the addition of this contemporary element doesn't mean that Max Payne 3 plays like every other third-person shooter. Far from it. With its gripping narrative, brutal violence, and fantastic implementation of Max Payne's bullet-time ability, this is a distinctive and outstanding game through and through, and it's easily a worthy successor to the Max Payne games that preceded it.

Wherever you go, there you are. It's a truth Max Payne knows better than anyone. Fleeing his New York life to take a job working security for a wealthy family in Sao Paulo, the hard-drinkin', pill-poppin' Max finds that his demons come along for the ride. Though the details of the plot add up to your typical story of conspiracy and corruption, of the rich and powerful preying on the poor and helpless to become even more rich and powerful, the writing, acting, and presentation elevate this tale well above a boilerplate video game crime story.

It's hard to stay ambivalent once you see the horrors being suffered by the innocent here, and you'll likely want to see Max's quest for vengeance through to its conclusion just as badly as he does. Max reveals a complexity here not seen in earlier games, as he hits rock bottom and must either stay there or face his demons head-on and make himself anew. Other characters, too, reveal a surprising humanity. You might be tempted to write off Marcelo, the youngest brother in the wealthy Branco dynasty Max is hired to protect, as the shallow playboy he often appears to be. But in moments of disarming honesty, he reveals to Max a depth that lies beneath the facade he presents to the world.

Cutscenes use multiple moving panels to pay homage to the graphic-novel-style storytelling of previous games without feeling beholden to it, and the considered use of blurring and other visual effects echo Max's state of mind, perhaps making you feel as if you're the one who has been hitting the bottle a little too hard. James McCaffrey does an excellent job reprising his role as Max, bringing a wider range of emotions to a character who has previously often been one-note. The writing is terrific; Max's world-weary wit is as bone-dry as ever, and as he ruminates on things like loyalty and loss, much of what he says has the sound of hard-earned wisdom. Subtle touches throughout the game make Max seem convincingly alive, such as the complex look that crosses over his face at the start of one stage when bloodshed seems inevitable; it's as if he dreads what's coming, but does his best to mentally prepare himself for it.

Bullet time slows your enemies down significantly, letting you aim and fire faster than they can respond. But despite the significant edge this gives you over your foes, they are no pushovers. They make smart use of flanking tactics, so you need to stay aware of what's happening on all sides, and, yes, you need to make effective use of cover. There are still situations aplenty where an old-fashioned head-on approach can get the job done, but by and large, you need to approach combat in Max Payne 3 a bit more defensively than in past games.

Max's vulnerability, and the feeling of danger that accompanies it, makes combat much more nerve-racking than it was in earlier Max Payne games, but it does come with a downside: Max's signature shootdodge has suffered. You can still leap through the air in slow motion like a John Woo action hero, attempting to blow your foes away before you land, but because your enemies also make good use of cover, there's a good chance some of them won't be vulnerable to your airborne assault, and as you get up from the ground after a shootdodge, you're something of a sitting duck. The result is that you may end up using shootdodge from time to time not because it's a particularly effective tactic but because, risks be damned, it just looks so cool.