After playing through the demo three times for your benefit I can safely say FFXIII-2 appears to fix the few issues that XIII had. Combat is faster and more involved, cutscenes shorter and the corridor issue I talked about in my XIII post-mortem? All but gone. Sadly it seems to throw in a few new issues that upon initial playthroughs left me slightly stunned.

The demo throws you straight into the deep end, fighting the floating hand of an invisible giant. Combat seems much smoother and is still based on the paradigm feature of XIII yet one of the new features is quickly apparent in the form of Quick-Time Events. YAY! See I love QTEs as much as anybody, when they directly involve your character [You mean not at all? - Ed.] but when you have to time a QTE to make sure a helicopter lands a strike on an enemy? Urgh. Perhaps I’m being picky but I don’t need events like that scattered here, there and everywhere to keep my attention during short cutscenes in battle.

Once the intro battle is out the way, Noel and Serah set off with a moogle in tow to explore the town they have found themselves in. That’s right folk, a town! With people and treasure and shops and everything! If you’ve played FFXIII you will know that lack of freedom is something in XIII that really started to grind. Towns give life to worlds – the movements of people, the ability to explore and talk to folk really adds energy to a game and stops it from just being a linear romp through a series of backdrops with artificial life.

Upon beating your first standard enemies, you are introduced to the Paradigm Pack feature. The Paradigm Pack is like a Pokemon game crammed into a full-scale RPG. Defeating certain enemies grants you with crystals representing that enemy, which can be upgraded and then mixed into your paradigms to fight alongside you.

In theory this works well but micromanaging an ever-growing list of animal comrades could become a tricky and rather dreary task. The pack works as a third member of your team would; different animals naturally have different roles such as Ravager or Medic. Three animals can be added to your pack at once with the creatures swapping round depending on how you set them. All good, if a little cheesy and odd for an RPG.

Other than an odd minigame set that involves solving puzzles inside the Paradox by working out the best route around a level without crossing your own path, everything seems standard fare. The soundtrack has been thrown forwards a little and doesn’t follow the classical roots of the series. Instead it opts for a faster-paced electro style. FFXIII-2 does feel like a true FF game and despite a few odd choices designed to add variety, it is well worth a look-in.

Of course we can’t base our opinions solely on the demo alone but it’s free so go give it a try on XBL or PSN and see if Square can’t re grab your attention. Keep an eye out for our review of Final Fantasy XIII-2 when it goes live.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 will be out in the UK from 3rd Feb on Xbox 360 and PS3

Asura’s Wrath: The demo for this game went out on Xbox Live and PSN yesterday. Looks phenomenal and seems to have a great revenge story but the gameplay itself seems to be all about combat QTEs. The demo is worth a look anyway, if only for the absolutely mental battle scenes.

TERA: Closed beta signups are now, uh… open for those interested in this upcoming action MMO. With fast-paced battles and the requirement to aim, combat is much more intense than your typical online RPG. Take a look at our TERA previews from last year. If you’re interested, you can sign up for the beta at the official TERA site.

Max Payne 3: New screenshots can be found on our Facebook page. Still a sausage-fest.

Win Headsets with Just Dance 3: Ubisoft are giving away 20 pairs of Bose headsets on Facebook. Enter the competition. Give away all your personal details for the sake of some schweet ‘phones. Warning: it does have sneaky Just Dance 3-specific questions like “What hair accessories are the dancers wearing in the track Dynamite”.

All Zombies Must Die – Get your own zombie into a game with this competition from DoubleSix. Draw a zombie and suggest skills, habits, behaviour and so on. The winning entry will be included in future DLC for this Dead Nation-like downloadable game. More info on the AZMD blog.

Lollipop Chainsaw – And a new trailer for that reveals one of the villains. What a shock, weird emo kid turns into high-school mass murderer.

Without a rubbish steering wheel in sight and sporting some natty 3D visuals, Mario Kart 7 really looks the part. The 3D adds a lot of depth to the tracks which I felt pretty comfortable staring at for the whole time I was playing. The demo build consisted of 3 tracks along with a nice selection of karts and different tyres. However, I was restricted to only one attachment, the hand glider. Not bad. I’ll take that, thanks very much.

Now that's a mighty strong hand glider!

The karts have new updates available in order to handle the new tracks, most notably the hand glider and underwater attachments. The hand glider attachment only worked after I’d jumped off a ramp.

In fact whilst gliding around a bit of jungle track I felt like I was playing Rare’s brilliant Diddy Kong racing game. Not that this is a bad thing, just unexpected. I also developed a habit of crashing into the start/finish banner. Note to self – must glide better. The brief underwater sections found on the second track were quite fun. After jumping into the water and diving down to the sea bed my kart produced a little propeller to power it. Very effective it was too. The only real difference to driving on land was that my kart felt a bit less responsive and “floaty” light.

This was clearly a development build of the game as many of the usual Mario Kart power-ups like the dreaded lightning bolt and the blue shell (first-place seeker) were notably absent. Collecting coins in return for a temporary speed increase was back, although I was restricted to a maximum of 10 per lap and the coins regenerated on the track. I did like the tracks on offer. There was a nice variety of driving challengesavailable. You just can’t beat karting around on a beach firing shells through the waves as they gently meander onto the shore.

This is all rather picturesque

Unusually, I was able to access the full range of pickups available whilst in first place. Previous games would penalise you by restricting pick-ups to the useless ones like banana skins. This is a welcome change as I never really understood why you should be penalised for doing well.

Summary

I was hugely encouraged by this version of Mario Kart. It felt like a return to form for the franchise. I only hope that the some of the gameplay tweaks, like having access to all the weapons when you’re in first place and the coin collecting stay intact when the game is finally released. Welcome back Mario Kart, it has been far too long.

Nintendo 3DS:

Nintendo has signed a deal with The Cloud which provides free access to its 5,000 WiFi hotspots throughout the UK for 3DS owners with immediate effect. This means you can access the SpotPass service, eShop or just browse the internet for free right now. You can find The Cloud’s WiFi hotspots in shops, restaurants (e.g. Eat, Pret A Manger) and pubs. (via GamesIndustry.biz [registration required])

Gamestop are now selling the Cosmic Black Nintendo 3DS console for a super cheap £134.97 (including shipping) ahead of the official price cut on the 12th Aug 2011 which we reported on last month.

Lucent Heart:

The zodiac inspired free2play MMO Lucent Heart opens up its ‘Head Start’ Early Access at 10:00 BST on Thursday 11th August 2011. According to the press release head start players will be able to enjoy:

a myriad of competitions, exciting events and freebies galore in the build up to the commercial release, where players will be able to purchase the equipment, outfits, mounts and potions to enhance their play experience and assist them in facing the fearsome forces of goddess Cadena.

Now that's what I call a Hammer!

Driver: San Francisco:

The single-player demo is available now on Xbox LIVE for all gold subscribers and from the PlayStation store. It also features a total of 3 missions. The multiplayer demo is due for release on the 16th Aug 2011 so look out for it.

Inversion:

Here’s some a gravity defying FPS co-op action for you courtesy of Namco Bandai’s new shooter, Inversion which is due for release on the 12th Feb 2012.

(Hat tip to VG24/7 for the Gamestop 3DS price)

DOTA 2:

Valve Software will be revealing their new game Defense of the Ancients 2 (DotA 2) at Gamescom which takes place in Cologne, Germany on the 17th-21st Aug 2011. At the same time as the public unveiling of the game Valve will also be running an International DotA 2 competition to win $1 million. Wow! Unfortunately, the 16 DotA 2 teams that will be taking part have already been chosen. No late entries allowed. Sorry.

The original DotA game started off its life as a custom scenario for the real-time strategy game Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. Then it became ridiculously popular so Valve Software hired the team that created it and set them to work creating DotA 2. It should be interesting to see what they’ve come up with as there’s been no screenshots or videos of the game available at all. Valve have been so super secret over it.

Rugby World Cup 2011:

The Rugby World Cup 2011 demo is now available to download from Xbox LIVE. It’s a paltry 540mb in size. PlayStation 3 owners will be able to grab the demo from tomorrow. The demo features the first half of a match between England and South Africa in Auckland. Eagle-eyed players will notice that England’s new black change strip isn’t available in the demo as it was only unveiled to the public yesterday by the RFU. However, it will be included in the full game which is released on the 26th Aug 2011.

Gears of War 3:

Unsurprisingly for a Gears of War 3 trailer this one features lots of guns, chainsaw deaths, explosions, violence, gore, swearing and lots of bad guys. This trailer shows off the new and improved horde mode which has the tag line – Fortify, fight and survive. When you watch the video you’ll understand why getting some decent fortifications in place first might be a good idea for your health!

After a long break, the PlayStation Store is finally back. It doesn’t include the welcome back gifts yet. Games that should have been released over the past month will be now be available like Under Siege, which we previewed a while back.

Lots of details about Sony’s NGP console (successor to the PSP) have been finding their way onto the internet today. See what Dutch site Tweakers.net had to say after getting hold of an actual NGP console. [Note: This article is in Dutch, so I've included a link via Google Translate so you can read it in English]

NeoGAF has tons of screenshots from many of the upcoming NGP games including Uncharted: Golden Abyss and WipEout 2048. Oh, yes, a new WipEout game is on the way. Yay.

Konami kicks off this year’s E3 with its pre-E3 show in a few hours. You can watch the whole event online on the special E3 section of Konami’s website from 1am BST (or 5pm PST) tonight.

Square Enix have released a barn-storming E3 trailer for Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Duke Nukem Forever First Access Club members get their mitts on the Duken Nukem Forever demo from tomorrow (3rd June 2011). It’s also been announced that they will also get the first multiplayer add-on pack for the game free of charge when it’s released. There’s also a stonking launch trailer to feast your eyes upon.

Amazon are selling the totally brilliant Portal 2 for £25 on consoles, with the PC/Mac version a measly £15.

Ubisoft is opening up a Child of Eden experience in London from the 4th – 17th June 2011 where you can try out the game and enjoy Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s very own artwork.

Sony is celebrating the first birthday of its PlayStation Plus service on the 29th June 2011 by dishing out lots of treats to its lovely customers. No details on what these treats might be but free games are always welcome.

To finish off today’s news we have the nimble little minx herself, namely Catwoman, from Rocksteady Studio’s Batman: Arkham City game. Interestingly, you will be able to take control of Catwoman and explore Arkham City. On this evidence she is going to kick some serious butt.

The Mass Effect 3 demo is finished and ready for E3 2011, according to Casey Hudson (Exec Producer of Mass Effect Series).

BAFTA Games awards head to the US in order to grow it’s presence/membership across the other side of the pond.

There’s more PlayStation Network maintenance today, so it will be offline until 7am tomorrow morning (2nd June 2011)

Tower Studios have made Speedball 2: Evolution on iPhone/iPad FREE for a short time. Quick, grab it now.

Amazing BioShock costume up for sale on Etsy ~£380 + postage.

What’s Top Gear’s The Stig doing backstage at E3 2011?

Sega and Gearbox Software have announced that Aliens: Colonial Marines will be released during spring 2012 on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360. It will also be on display at E3 2011 at Sega’s stand. Check out the pre-E3 trailer that was released today.

[Thanks go to @WillGuyatt]

This month saw the release of the sequel to space-based amputate-‘em-up Dead Space, appropriately named Dead Space 2. So what’s changed since we last met Isaac?

Firstly – and most importantly – this is still mechanically the same game as Dead Space, and the developers make no secret of that. There’s no tutorial to explain the game’s complex controls or powers; instead, the developers assume you’ve already learned how to play.

There are text-based tutorial menus, which you can access after a fashion, but I can’t say that I was encouraged to use them. I was too scared.

Let me explain. Dead Space 2, even more so than its predecessor, understands how to freak players out. It’s not a matter of creepy-looking bad guys (although the swarms of zombie toddlers will keep some people up at nights I’m sure), or going “Boo!” when you round a corner, or even the unsettling visions that Isaac seems to suffer from.

Rather, it’s perseverance. Dead Space 2 never lets up. The clues as to when an enemy is about to appear are messed with and stretched around. Sometimes there are too many, and sometimes too few. Sometimes they make lots of noise, and sometimes they don’t. You can’t ever feel safe.

You start moving everywhere with your gun aimed – it’s slower, sure, but it means there’s no time between seeing some tangled mass of sharpened flesh burst out of a wall and commencing some impromptu emergency surgery. You check all your routes. You back up during fights into areas that you hope against hope are safe. You spend elevator trips frantically panning back and forth between the exits in case something bursts through either one.

I didn’t do the tutorials because I was scared I’d be distracted, and get my face eaten off. The developers have learned since Isaac’s first outing – this is scarier, far more measured stuff.

What else is good?

There’s a new weapon, in the form of the Javelin launcher which seems to be a Win Button, of sorts. It launches a sharpened bolt the size of Isaac’s forearm which pins enemies to walls and tends to kill them straight out, which seems like cheating to me.

In defiance, I stuck with the good old-fashioned pistol because it’s a bit rubbish and I like the underdog appeal. The amputation mechanic is still very much a part of the game, and it’s nice to have to relearn how to kill the Necromorphs as they shamble towards you – shoot off their arms and legs (of which there are many, thankfully) rather than the now-instinctive gamer reaction of shooting them in the head.

The movement has been loosened up, too. One of the complaints about the last game was Isaac’s slow, awkward gait, presumably caused by his big ol’ heavy grav boots and too many space kebabs. That’s all gone now, and our hero is much nimbler on his feet, both in terms of speed and animation. Combat feels more frantic now, and less measured. As you’re given too much to handle, you resort to furious punching and foot stomping and our hero really gets into it, rather than plodding about stoically like a robot in his previous outing.

It’s the same in zero-g. When the gravity controls are disengaged, Isaac has a full range of movement and no longer has to bounce between walls. It’s very liberating and it makes you wonder why they didn’t try it before. I’m looking forward to having to fight something in mid-air, because it’s difficult enough on the ground.

It looks better, and not just graphically. The S.S. Ishimura of the prequel was a generic spaceship, gribbly undead monsters aside, so it’s nice to see some environments with character. The demo takes us through a church-like structure devoted to the Marker artefact from the last game, looking like a cross between a catholic cathedral and an ancient Egyptian tomb. It’s beautiful and subtly weird. You have to take the time to look at the carvings and realise they’re not people, they’re necromorphs, and what’s on that mural over there I think it’s oh wait no hang on something’s eating the back of my head off.

It’s all very impressive, but can they keep up the level of fear and confusion throughout the entire game, and have it be enjoyable too? Here’s hoping. I’m ready several pairs of clean trousers in preparation.

I have personally been unable to connect to the Killzone servers on three of the five occassions that I have tried, since the Beta went live. When firing it up, I will get the ‘connecting’ message, which eventually times out and shows ‘Error 20002′.

It seems that Guerilla Games are aware of this issue, but have not yet been able to resolve it completely. Official posts on the Killzone 3 forum (http://community.killzone.com/) have shed some light on what has been happening.

There are quite a few people who are reporting 20002 errors and we are looking into this. We might require a bit of downtime to remedy these issues but please continue to play and report any issues you encounter in the appropriate thread.  – 04/02/11

A new patch for the Beta was rolled out yesterday, but this seems to have made matters worse:

So it looks like that last patch may have caused some issues, sorry about that. For those experiencing connection difficulties and network errors, we are aware of the problems, and are actively working to resolve them. Sadly I can’t give an exact ETA for a fix right now but we will update you as soon as we have more detailed information.

In the meantime botzone should give you plenty of practice for when everything is back online. – 07/02/11

I really hope that Guerilla Games and/or Sony sort this problem out well before the end of the ‘Beta’ period (it is due to run until Feb 15th). As it stands, I can only see this Beta putting some people off buying the full game, as the servers are giving the impression of being unstable at best.

I really do question Sony’s logic in releasing a ‘Beta’ so close to release day, particularly with such a high profile game.  They may well be using this opportunity to fine tune their servers and fix any connection issues, but surely two weeks before release is not the time to be doing that. Most people playing the KZ3 Beta will be expecting to get a feel for the game, and deciding whether or not to lay down their hard earned cash for it. Being able to connect to the flippin’ thing is the very least they will expect.

• Team Instant Action (aka team deathmatch)
• Crash Site – Battle for control of alien drop pods (aka control point)

Here is a tactical overview of the Skyline map so you can start familiarising yourselves with the battle field:

It is unknown at the moment how long the multiplayer demo will last, so play it while you can. In the full Crysis 2 multiplayer there will be six gameplay modes set across 12 New York based maps. You will be able to earn up to 50 different multiplayer ranks and unlock weapons and upgrades to your nanosuit.

Personally, I’m bad enough at online multiplayer games when I can see my opponents, so the bit in the trailer when a whole group of soldiers “appear” behind a poor solider before blasting the crap out of them fills me with dread! On the flip side, killing a player by pushing a car on their head from the building above looks like great fun.

Crysis 2 is due for release on the 25th March 2011 on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC.