Garrett - Thief: Deadly Shadows

Garrett was highly unfortunate not to make the final 50 in our Heroes poll, but alas he simply didn’t get enough votes. What makes him a stand out character though is his contribution to stealth gameplay. This is perhaps both a blessing and a curse. While the gripping set pieces are terrifying to play in Thief’s first-person view, it has contributed to a number of stealth sections in contemporary FPS titles.

We don’t hold it against him though as much like in the game he never asked for trouble, it just came looking. There’s something infinitely appealing about characters such as Garrett who don’t want to get involved, but get dragged into the storm anyway. While clearly cold and ruthless he avoids killing as best he can and takes great pride in his work. That’s something that anyone can respect, regardless of how bloodthirsty you usually are in such games.

While Deadly Shadows seemed to close off the series rather nicely there has been talk that Garrett or perhaps just the Thief series with a new protagonist will return. We would certainly welcome him back with open arms (and one eye on his hands - sneaky pick-pocket).

Here you go:

I went to Battle Of Destiny last Saturday (www.battleofdestiny.com) to enter the Street Fighter III competition, which thankfully turned out to be on the Sunday. Thankfully because I got absolutely kicked by everyone I played against. I won a round once, but everyone there was way, way better than me or using Ken.

Ken’s crouching medium punch seems to beat out nearly everything Alex can do. Obviously a head stomp will beat it, but these guys have perfectly honed reactions and kept parrying the move. It was all a bit depressing really.

What wasn’t depressing was playing Street Fighter IV, it’s awesome. And you can read about that, once I’ve written it, in issue 40 which goes on sale 4 September.

So it is:

Just got some new shots of Street Fighter IV for E3. Why is Blanka wearing a safari suit?

As I’ve said before we were inundated with votes for our 360 Heroes poll and I’d like to thank you all for your support. The final results took a long time to work out and as began to see certain characters rise to the surface others had to fall by the wayside. In the run up to the final 50 characters you voted for (which will be revealed in Issue 39 out August 7) I will be posting up some of the also rans who didn’t quite make the cut, but deserved a mention.

Richard B. Riddick - The Chronicles Of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay

To include a character who essentially belongs to another medium seems like cheating a little, but this prequel to Riddicks movie appearances is actually an incredibly strong example of good charaterisation and development. Starbreeze has since gone on to prove that this was no flash in the pan with its work on The Darkness, but Riddick was the beginning of those achievements. It was perhaps his association with the Riddick franchise that ultimately hurt this character’s chances of making the final cut, but some recognition seems only fair.

So we finally held the prize draw for the 360 Heroes competition. The winner will walk away with an Xbox 360 console and five of the top games associated with the winning characters. (more…)

Only a week to go before E3 kicks off and I have to say that the levels of excitemet and anticipation surrounding this year’s show have taken me back a little. After the relative disappointment of last year’s E3 I didn’t think anyone would be getting too worked up about it, but clearly I was wrong. The big difference this year seems to be some strongly supported rumours of big announcement. Hit the jump for more… (more…)

Just been watching this latest vid of Mercenaries 2: World In Flames. If you haven’t quite got the idea of what this game is all about then I sincerely recommend you check this out. This is a pretty typical mission from what I’ve seen so far. Some good gunplay, followed by and little bit of ‘puzzle solving’ and then a big explosion. I say puzzle solving, but what that really amounts to is what direction you shoot someone in the head from or what type of missile launcher you want to use. In other words the good kind of puzzle ^_^

So, enjoy the vid. Hopefully we’ll have much more on Mercs 2 in 360 soon. Only a few more months before its out anyway. Yay!

There’s a new animated trailer up on Capcom’s Japanese site featuring Ryu, Akuma, Ken and Gouken. Which is odd because he’s supposed to be dead. Akuma killed him ages ago and stole his beaded necklace. But towards the end of the trailer He appears from a waterfall and seems to be in good shape and powerful enough to disrupt the flow of the water with an unseen move. Since this is on Capcom’s site we’re going to have to take it as official and cannon and really quite exciting. Will he be in the finished version of Street Fighter IV? Hope so.

Here’s some screens I grabbed form the trailer, and here’s the link to the trailer itself:

www.capcom.co.jp/sf4/trailer/trailer6.html