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Gameplay Footage:

Previews for the game, coming on June 14th and 17th in the U.S. and Europe respectively, went live today, and I’ve included the conclusions from the most notable write-ups for your quenching pleasure, just so you could get an overall idea of what to expect when the game lands exclusively on PS3.

IGN:

I survived. Or, rather, Joel and Ellie survived. With a precious few bullets left, and few resources to work with, the quest for… existence continued. It’s a quiet, beautiful, savage world out there. Whatever is ahead… it’s not going to be easy. The Last of Us stunned me. Not in any one aspect, but through its collective polish and crisp attention to the smallest details. And it’s unlike any adventure I’ve embarked upon. It’s not an action game. It’s not survival. It’s not horror. But it is pretty damn special. And it’s less than a month away. Somehow that feels like an exceptionally long time.

TheSixthAxis:

The Last Of Us is intelligent, though. There’s a neat crafting system which encourages a little scavenging and exploration, a near future dystopian setting that evokes a tangible sense of fear and a couple of characters that the player will instantly connect with. Naughty Dog are masters of the hardware – The Last Of Us looks breathtakingly good, if not a little aliased – it’s just down to how the full game will play out over a much broader spectrum of areas and level types.

GameInformer:

My path through Lincoln was just one route among a variety of options. Depending on your playstyle you could aggressively clear out the infected or sneak past them all. Upgrading Joel and his equipment is also influenced by your tastes. Do you want to invest resources into melee combat or firearms? Naughty Dog has packed The Last of Us with tons of options while delivering an engaging yet bleak story of survival.

CVG:

The Last of Us is hard not to be impressed by. Naughty Dog’s mastery of the notoriously idiosyncratic PlayStation 3 hardware is unmatched, and there’s a dizzying amount of detail squeezed into every scene, with a rock solid frame rate. If this is PS3′s last great exclusive, it’s the perfect swansong.

This is a game where violence becomes something you want to avoid, not revel in, starring characters we can see ourselves genuinely caring about. What could have easily been Nathan Drake fights zombies in The Road has revealed itself to be something much more intriguing. We’re looking forward to seeing Joel and Ellie’s relationship developing as they struggle to survive in this deceptively gorgeous, decaying American wasteland.

So are you ready for The Last of Us?

Eurogamer

I try to stay away from story-related questions,” Levine says. “I’ll just say there’s not a lot of accidents.”

At this stage, it feels as though BioShock Infinite is at its best when it distinguishes itself from its predecessors – when you’re bantering with Elizabeth, riding the skylines, opening up tears, nearly gunning down someone only to realise that they mean you no harm, or simply soaking up its dixieland paradise of straw hats and salt water taffy. It holds onto the series’ less flattering traditions like an old pair of underwear, and the new stuff is introduced at a glacial pace, but its story, characters, and especially the setting, are a bold step forward for both Irrational and triple-A shooters on the whole.

If the worst thing I can say about it is that it feels too much like BioShock at times, well, there are worse criticisms one could level at a game.

PlayStation Blog

Compared to 2006’s BioShock, Infinite’s shooting fundamentals feel more confident and satisfying. I played with a variety of weapons — pistol, SMG, carbine, sniper rifle, and RPG — and they all proved to be potent, versatile death dealers. Though the game has shifted to a two-weapon system, you’re still able to upgrade your weapons via vending machines scattered around Columbia, enhancing accuracy, damage, clip size and much more. The revamped control scheme wisely reassigns some key actions, including a dedicated melee attack via the Triangle button and a handy sprint activated via L3. Overall, the DualShock 3 controls feel solid, familiar, and reliable. While the final version of the game will support the PlayStation Move motion controller, we weren’t able to try it out this time — we’ll be looking to do so as soon as possible.

Vigors are Infinite’s answer to Plasmids, and they’ve also received greatly enhanced functionality. Each Vigor can be used in two different ways; tap Devil’s Kiss and you’ll lob an explosive fireball, charge it up and you’ll drop a fiery mine. Murder of Crows proved to be a particularly devastating but energy-intensive Vigor, while Bucking Bronco catapulted enemies out of cover and into the sights of my trusty Repeater. My favorite was probably possession, which enabled me to remotely hack enemy turrets and score extra coin at vending machines. As with BioShock’s Plasmids, you can upgrade Vigors to add additional effects and benefits, though the upgrade path here seemed more varied and flexible.

Finally, it’s worth noting that the PS3 version of the game looks sharp and runs smoothly, even when the scenery soars past in the game’s vertigo-inducing Skyhook segments. Load times were infrequent, too.

Kotaku

The best compliment that I can pay the game right now as that I wanted to play it more slowly. I wanted to explore its world and learn as much of it as I could. But I’m tired right now. My body’s on east coast time and therefore it’s nearly 1AM.

I wasn’t going to lose sleep tonight if BioShock Infinite was a stinker. But I’m nevertheless happy that it showed so well.

It plays more like the old game than I’d expected.

It looks nothing like the old one, as I’d hoped.

Both of those are very good things. Be hopeful. They might nail this one yet.

IGN

While the gameplay uses many ideas from the original game, Irrational does such a great job of infusing a sense of wonder and mystery into the experience so that it feels like a journey well worth continuing beyond the initial sections. Between Booker and Elizabeth’s relationship, the occasional TV static-like flicker of seemingly solid objects in Columbia, the nature of Booker’s bizarre flashbacks, the Songbird, Elizabeth’s reality-bending power, the nationalism-as-religion themes and conflict between Columbia’s factions, Infinite has no lack of big, ambitious ideas. Where it’s all headed and whether or not it’ll wrap up in a sensible, satisfying way is anyone’s guess until the full game is made available.

Videogamer

I feel I’ve said too much by even raising these points. After five hours at Infinite’s controls, though, the overriding memory I have – aside from the game’s gorgeous, yet barmy, steampunk city – is of Ken Levine speaking to me with a twinkle in his eye and the hint of a smile playing on his lips.

“None of this is an attempt to be cute. Nothing is there just as a nod.”

Players may be in for an immersive experience by booking passage to Columbia, but BioShock Infinite – if I’m reading this right – promises to be a head trip of epic proportions.

I have been going through the list of games releasing in June and I came across one of my most anticipated games of the year, Alice: Madness Returns. I have been keeping an eye on this game for a while, and I do not want it to slip under anybody’s radar. It takes the wonderful story of Alice In Wonderland and puts a dark twist on it.

Alice: Madness Returns is the sequel to American McGee’s Alice, which released in 2000 for Windows and Mac. This time around it will be available on Ps3, Xbox 360, and PC, and will release in the United States on June 14, and in EU on June 16.

Alice: Madness Returns is an action/adventure platforming game with an amazing art style and premise.

Here are some videos of this interesting game.

First 10 Minutes:

Platforming Gameplay:

Combat Gameplay:

IGN’s sent live a video preview of L.A. Noire, showing clips of different portions of the action/investigative title. Get it below the break.

There are 40 unassigned cases to undertake, and hidden throughout the city are expensive cars in garages. You can find them all by mastering cases that gives you experience points to gain ranks. There are also news papers spread across different locations, but they’re not for reading, but instead to get important back story details. And that’s just for starters.

Quench it:

The game’s out next Tuesday in the U.S., and next Friday in the UK for PS3 and Xbox 360.

The map pack that Treyarch’s been readying for quite some time for its behemoth shooter, Call of Duty: Black Ops, is now available on Xbox Live, Activision has announced.

It’ll set you back 1200 Microsoft Points (MSP) and will feature five new maps -Berlin, Stadium, Discovery, Kowloon and zombie map Ascension.

As noted in the title, the map pack comes to Xbox 360 first in accordance to a deal Microsoft made with Activision, and after a few weeks, will find its way over to the PS3 and PC.

Below’s the latest video preview for the map pack from Inside Xbox, quench it:

We’ve covered Ninja Theory’s Enslaved: Odyssey To The West incessantly here, and we intend to continue doing exactly that up until the game’s release. Enslaved sparked our curiosity from the first time it was shown, especially when the developer said it was “as beautiful as Uncharted”.

I played the demo on Saturday morning, and although it wasn’t the longest, I must say I had a very good time with it.

My impressions past the break.

The game starts out with the main protagonist named Monkey, trapped in a futuristic looking cell. You can see the anger on his face as he feels helpless, not being able to free himself from. Ninja Theory did a great job with bringing fourth the characters emotions, something that’s very important, even more so when a game is story-driven.

Not to long after, a woman called Trip, who’ll eventually be Monkey’s partner comes out of nowhere, locate a keyboard, dials some codes that triggers multiple explosions enabling Monkey to break loose. It begins.

The game’s a third-person shooter set one hundred and fifty years in the future where a global war has decimated the Earth. In this future, nearly the entire human race has been eradicated, but robots still plague the land. Although they are from a bygone era, they are still following their orders to eradicate the humans. The storyline is loosely based on the ancient Chinese novel Journey to the West.

What Quenched My Thirst

Gameplay

The gameplay style is much like Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. You can climb buildings, make really far jumps, block, duck and do some really awesome moves. Its Uncharted-like form takes more shape when Monkey’s seen climbing up parts of the airship he’s being held a prisoner on after a section blew up, flinging him out into the open sky. That particular scene’s very similar to Uncharted 2′s opening, where Drake is seen trying to climb up and out of a crashed bus, he too was tossed carelessly into the open.

There are many moves and even combos you can do. Monkey’s no joke using his weapons, one’s a stick that folds when not in use, and his fists are armored with metal gloves that are dangerous when in battle — you feel like you’re landing the blow to the mechs yourself when playing Enslaved: Odyssey To The West.

Controls

The game controls very good, could be more responsive, though, especially when you’re being introduced to new moves. For some unknown reason, the controls get stuck and takes a while to get back into gameplay. Let’s hope this is just a demo glitch since the game’s already gone gold.

Other than that, it worked fine — and it should, because there’s a lot of jumping and climbing to do.

Visuals

Enslaved: Odyssey To The West might not be as beautiful as Uncharted, but it sure as heaven gets close. It’s really a treat for the eyes. Ninja Theory was able to blend an almost extinct earth with futuristic mechs and other components that makes for a great scene — a nice treat for the eyes.

The water, the trees, mountains — even the mechs look good in Enslaved.

What Left A Bitter Taste

My entire experience with the Enslaved Demo was almost perfect, almost. The only thing that left me unsatisfied was the game’s enemy AI. I never died in the demo, and I’m sure as the game progresses, the difficulty level will be raised. Still, I found the enemies to be rather easy to take down, with some swapping wildly at nothing. Hopefully that’s not the case for the full game.

Overall, Ninja Theory’s latest effort’s looking like it’ll be scoring in the 90s when the reviews go live, that is if most of what’s in the demo proves true for the full game.

Genre: Action
Publisher: Namco Bandai
Developer: Ninja Theory
Release Date: October 5, 2010 US, October 8th EU
MSRP: $59.99
platform (s) PS3 And Xbox 360
T for Teen: Blood, Language, Suggestive