Mass Effect 2: Lair of the Shadow Broker Hands-On – New Story and High-Speed Car Chases
We get our hands on this soon-to-be-released downloadable content for Mass Effect 2.
BioWare's space opera sequel Mass Effect 2 has already offered players hours of hybrid shooter and role-playing adventure, but the developer isn't done yet. The next downloadable content for the game, Lair of the Shadow Broker, is described by BioWare as the "most premium DLC" for the game yet and will be the "richest in scope," since it not only will include five new levels (of which one is open-ended), but will also introduce content that will actually start bridging the gap between Mass Effect 2 and the next game in the series. The DLC will be released next week and will let you reconnect with an old friend, Dr. Liara T'soni, the blue-skinned asari researcher from the first game with whom you, as Commander Shepard, could have a romantic relationship. This time around, the good doctor ends up in a whole heap of trouble with the crime lord known as the Shadow Broker--the mysterious figure who has been referenced in both Mass Effect games--and it's up to you to rescue her. Please be advised that this story may contain minor spoilers.
Lair of the Shadow Broker takes place during the main Mass Effect 2 game on the planet Illium and begins with Shepard receiving a note from Liara to meet her at her home. Obviously, if you decided to have that special relationship with Liara in the first game and have imported your saved character to Mass Effect 2 to play the DLC, your interactions with Liara will be different. In any case, after reading the message, you can transport yourself immediately to her lodgings, which have been ransacked and covered by far-flung-future police tape (digital light displays with a scrolling ticker that reads "Police Line: Do Not Cross"), with Liara herself nowhere in sight. The local authorities were already prowling through the wreckage and demanded we leave the area, though a high-ranking asari agent, a Spectre (the special operatives of the Citadel Council, like Shepard) named Tela Vasir, pulled rank and cleared us to enter the apartment.
In a brief conversation with Vasir, we learned that Liara had apparently fled the scene moments ago, but we deduced that she must have left a note, or at least some clues, behind. After briefly searching her apartment, we found a picture, keyed to Shepard's identity, which changed to a landscape of an alien planet whose relics were part of the doctor's collection. We then scanned each relic until we found a hidden data disc with a recorded transmission of Liara conversing with an underground contact about the Shadow Broker's next move at the Dracon Travel Center, a huge downtown high-rise. The transmission ended with both Liara and her contact spooked by the sound of a break-in and both characters fleeing downtown.
We immediately transitioned over to the building--by way of a loading screen--with our team, while Vasir hopped into her hovercar to cover the building from the roof down. Our party entered the building to find not only that it had been blown up by explosives, but also that dozens of its employees had been gunned down by professional mercenaries whom we eventually encountered in the bombed-out office space, ducking down beneath the partial-cover flaming desks and torn-up computer terminals.
We finally made our way to the top and were just too late to save the informant from being shot, though Vasir was on the scene, claiming that she, too, had been too late and that the Shadow Broker's henchmen had already fled. Because we hadn't seen the shot ourselves, we found the agent's story to be highly suspicious, and moments later, our suspicions were confirmed when Liara herself emerged from the shadows with a gun trained on the Spectre, accusing her of murdering the contact and raiding her apartment. At this point, Vasir attempted to make a dramatic escape, finally leaping into her hovercar to escape into the Illium night.
Our party leaped into the nearest vehicle, a hovering taxi, and gave chase as part of Mass Effect 2's new car chases, which act a bit like a futuristic arcade racer with a Z-axis. Vasir's vehicle appeared onscreen with a bright-red marker and left a bright-red contrail, so she was easy to track, although the underhanded agent also had explosive mines that she left floating behind her that threw our own vehicle off track. Since our own vehicle didn't have any weapons (it was a taxi, after all), we couldn't do much other than try to follow Vasir around every tight turn and not slam into oncoming traffic. Fortunately, the game autosaved several times over the course of the chase, so it wasn't frustrating. Finally, the chase ended when Vasir had a head-on collision and went spinning out of control. We pursued the agent and leaped out of our vehicle to pursue on foot, at which point our play session ended.
Lair of the Shadow Broker will be available this Tuesday, September 7.
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Mass Effect 2: Lair of the Shadow Broker Hands-On - New Story and High-Speed Car Chases
Tron: Evolution Official Trailer 1
Check out this trailer featuring gameplay footage for Tron: Evolution.
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Tokyo Game Show: Hot Titles to Expect Video Feature
We interview the GameSpot staff to see what hot upcoming titles might appear at TGS.
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Arma II: Operation Arrowhead v1.54 Patch
This patch includes a sample of the British Armed Forces, game tweaks, and more. Read the readme for details.
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Arma II: Operation Arrowhead v1.54 Patch
Duke Nukem Forever shipping in 2011 on 360, PS3, PC
PAX Prime 2010: Gearbox president Randy Pitchford confirms that his studio has taken over the long, long, long-awaited shooter, which will be playable on the PAX Prime floor.
Yesterday as part of his prolific Twitter stream, 3D Realms president
George Broussard posted a cryptic picture of pigs flying. Today, the reason became clear. At PAX Prime in Seattle,
Gearbox president Randy Pitchford took the stage to announce that his studio has taken over Duke Nukem Forever, which had been in development at the now-all-but-defunct 3D Realms since 1997.
Speaking to a shocked and enthusiastic crowd, Pitchford said, "We can't let the Duke die, right? The guys at 3D Realms who put their hearts and souls into this, so we wanted to make sure it hits all the platforms. It's coming to PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC in 2011."
Pitchford also told the
Wall Street Journal that Gearbox took over the game in late 2009, following the quasi-closure of 3D Realms and tit-for-tat lawsuits between 3D Realms and Duken Nukem Forever publisher Take-Two Interactive. (He also told the paper the game was coming out in 2010, but he said 2011 at PAX today.)
"Clearly the game hadn't been finished at 3D Realms but a lot of content had been created," Pitchford told the Journal. "The approach and investment and process at 3D Realms didn’t quite make it and it cracked at the end. With Gearbox Software we brought all those pieces together. It's the game it was meant to be."
Scott Miller, owner and CEO of 3D Realms, also reflected to the Journal why his studio failed to complete the game. "We were probably too much of a perfectionist about the game. When some other game had some great feature come out, we wanted to match it’We'd been distracted on other games like Prey. It was a combination of those things. We were trying to build a game that was too great."
Duke Nukem Forever isn't the first Duke Nukem game that Gearbox has worked on.
In June, court filings in the Take-Two Interactive lawsuit against Duke Nukem Forever developer 3D Realms (incorporated as Apogee Software) revealed that another game featuring the first-person shooter icon was in the works at a "well-known game developer" as early as 2007. That mystery developer was, in fact, Gearbox.
The Duke Nukem-Gearbox connections don't stop there. Before forming Gearbox, Pitchford worked at 3D Realms on an expansion for Duke Nukem 3D for the PC. (The game was rereleased in 2008 as an Xbox Live Arcade title.) "People like George Broussard and the 3D Realms team are the reason I got into gaming," said Pitchford during today's speech.
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Duke Nukem Forever shipping in 2011 on 360, PS3, PC
Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath targeted at PS3
Just Add Water remake of original studio's 2005 Xbox-exclusive swan song to feature Move support, high-definition graphics.
Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath launched on the original Xbox in January of 2005, and while the game received plenty of critical praise, it garnered little attention from consumers. A planned PlayStation 2 port of the game never materialized, but Sony loyalists will finally get a chance to check out the last original Oddworld Inhabitants title. Just Add Water today announced it will launch a downloadable remake of the game for the PlayStation 3 next Easter.
The biggest change for the remake will be the addition of 720p high-definition graphics. The PS3 edition of Stranger's Wrath will also incorporate PlayStation Move support, visual bells and whistles like normal mapping and self-shadowing, and "re-mastered dialogue." The technical quality of the voice samples in the original game was a point of criticism in GameSpot's original review for the title.
Strangers Wrath is the first Oddworld project from the UK-based developer, but it won't be the last. In July, the studio announced that it would be working on multiple Oddworld projects for multiple platforms.
The Oddworld series was first launched in 1997 and is best known for its juvenile sense of humor, socially conscious themes, and platforming gameplay. Two games were released on the PlayStation, and in 2000, the studio signed a deal with Microsoft to publish titles exclusively for the Xbox. Oddworld produced the 3D platformer Munch's Oddysee as a launch title, but the partnership with the console maker dissolved before Stranger's Wrath was finished. Electronic Arts picked the game up in 2004 as part of its EA Partners program and launched it the next year, but Oddworld Inhabitants confirmed its withdrawal from game development soon thereafter.
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Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath targeted at PS3
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