Also given the tie in with Games for Windows LIVE account, Microsoft Flight is clearly trying to make aviation more accessible and popular. According to Joshua Howard, executive producer of Microsoft Flight

Aviation can be incredibly technical, but we’ve taken great care to build an experience that makes taking to the skies thrilling and accessible for everyone.

Recently I’ve used Flight Simulator X with SE England satellite terrain add-on to practice for my Private Pilots Licence (JAR PPL) exams. I needed that high level of authenticity that Flight Simulator series has always provided.

I just hope the Microsoft Flight team haven’t forgotten those of us who don’t care about aero-caches or missions and just want to fly aircraft in the most realistic way possible outside a real cockpit.

You can still sign up to the closed Microsoft Flight beta if you can’t wait until the spring for the full release.

Microsoft Flight is currently in closed beta and will be available later on in 2012.

World of Warplanes follows the same formula that has made World of Tanks so successful. It’s a free to play MMO with the focus on combat rather than simulating the nitty gritty of operating the machinery in question, in this case aircraft. Making something that is traditionally perceived as too complex and therefore off-putting much more accessible. For example, everything to do with startup, taxing and pre-take off checks have all been banished. Instead starting a new game puts you straight in a plane flying at a few thousand feet right at the heart of action.

Flight sim fans will also be a little disappointed to hear that there will be no in-cockpit views for any of the aircraft, with the nose and behind the tail cameras in its place. However, details like fully working ailerons and rudder along with vortices from the wing tips were all in the build of the game I saw.

Aircraft were all controlled primarily by using the mouse with keyboard and joystick support in the pipeline. Wargaming.net are aiming to make all the aircraft as simple to control as possible, which on the basis of this demo they are well on the way to achieving. The aircraft, in this case a Messerschmidt Bf 109, was quite happy to maintain a set altitude without content inputs from the mouse giving me the time to see what other aircraft were kicking around. The head-up display (HUD) included the airspeed and altitude along with ammo levels and enemy aircraft were highlighted when they came into view. The ground is still lethal though. Fly into it and you crash and burn.

If you try to fly off the map the auto-pilot takes over, turns the plane around and flies you back onto the map. However, to stop players simply flying out of bounds to escape getting killed in dog fight the autopilot retains control of a period of time making you vulnerable to attack for a period of time.

Weather and damage effects will play a large part in influencing the outcome of each air battle too. The multiple damage zones on each aircraft allow you to just take out someone’s engine resulting in a quick quick kill for example. When enemy aircraft are locked onto a target camera appears in the bottom left of the screen showing a close-up view of your potential victim. Aircraft also have a limited amount of ammo, so once you’ve run out that’s it. Your only hope then is to fly around and survive till the end of the game.

At this point in the game’s development the terrain model is fairly basic. I saw clouds, sunshine, rivers and lush grasslands. Pretty but nothing to spectacular. I don’t remember seeing any towns or cities either, but I’m sure they will be making an appearance in later builds.

Sixty warplanes from USSR, USA and Germany will be available at launch with further warplanes from Britain and Japan appearing in future free content updates. All the aircraft in the game fall into 3 different classes – light, heavy and strafing. Light aircraft are the main class for engaging in dog fights, heavy aircraft will feature powerful weapons making them deadly in head on attacks with strafing aircraft tailored to attacking ground targets.

Experience and gold can also be shared from World of Tanks. In fact, you will also be able to share all your experience and gold in Wargaming.net’s other game in development, World of Battleships. So all the time you’re spending in World of Tanks right now can be used to quickly advance your career and your vehicles in these two new games.

A closed beta is planned for later on in the year, so it won’t be too long before you can take to the skies in World of Warplanes. Even from this early demo the potential for another blockbuster MMO is there. With World of Battleships also on the horizon coordinated virtual land, sea and air battles could soon become reality.

Starting today, like right now, you can download and play the PC version of Black Ops for free until 9pm Sunday 5th June 2011. That’s 3 full days of gaming and achievement gathering. Seems that Activision think weekends start on a Thursday. Well, I’m not arguing.

Head over to Steam now for some free gaming :-)

Call Of Duty: Black Ops is out now on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Set in the 1975-1985 period, Wargame: European Escalation pits Warsaw Pact (Soviet and European countries) against NATO (USA and Western Europe) forces. You can expect large, armoured offensives to be the order of the day.

The game will feature real-time battles and the IRISZOOM system which allows players to go from viewing a high level view of a map right down to where the action is. Oooh, this actually sounds pretty cool. Just have a look at IRISZOOM in action in R.U.S.E:

The developers are set to reveal more about the game at E3 2011 next month. So look out for more Wargame: European Escalation news straight from E3 right here on The Average Gamer.

Also if want more information about tank and armoured battle games then check out our World Of Tanks: First impressions and Q & A with Alexander Shilyaev (WoT project Manager) as World of Tanks is a free to play tank MMO.

Screenshots:

Wargame: European Escalation will be released during Q1 2012 on PC.

Valve also announced the inclusion of cloud-based storage for game saves on the PS3 version of the game. This will please a lot of PS3 owners, especially those who have suffered the loss of their ‘locked’ saves when trying to move data to a new console.

Finally, they revealed that Steam and PSN accounts will be linked, with purchasers of the PS3 version of Portal 2 also receiving a free Steam copy of the game. Sounds nice, although I’m not sure that my ageing and sadly underpowered PC will be quite so keen on the idea.

Whilst PC gamers might take the joys of Steam for granted, it does seem like a breath of fresh air when compared to the generally more restricted Playstation Network. It will certainly be interesting to see whether any other innovations appear when Steam makes its way on to the PS3. Personally speaking, I would just be happy if I finally got to play some Left4Dead.

From the press release:

“We made a promise to gamers at E3 that Portal 2 for the PlayStation 3 would be the best console version of the product,” said Gabe Newell, co-founder and president of Valve. “Working together with Sony we have identified a set of features we believe are very compelling to gamers. We hope to expand upon the foundation being laid in Portal 2 with more Steam features and functionality in DLC and future content releases.”

“We designed the Portal 2 PS3 experience to be very straightforward for gamers,” said Josh Weier, project lead on Portal 2 at Valve. “PS3 gamers will be able to simply drop the Blu-Ray disc in the PS3, link to their Steam account from inside the game, and all their Steam friends (on PC and Mac) will be visible and accessible for chat and game invites.”

Portal 2 is due for release on the PlayStation 3, PC, Mac and Xbox 360 this April.

For more information, please visit www.thinkingwithportals.com

I also remember watching the awesome intro to Alien Breed: Tower Assault at the consumer electronics show Live ’95 in London. Wow, that intro was really amazing for its time. I also played Alien Breed 3D on the Amiga A1200, which I enjoyed more than Doom. So, yeah, I’ve had a long, long history with Alien Breed. Getting back up to date, I wrote a post last week announcing the release of Alien Breed 2: Assault last week. So now I’ve had a chance to spend some time playing it, here’s what I think.

Starting off, slowly….

Everything starts off well, with a nice cartoon summary of all the events in the previous game (Alien Breed: Evolution), but for some reason I couldn’t start the game. It just kept looping through the intro again and again. So after 30 mins of trawling through the Steam forums I found the answer. I had to recheck the game cache, which then identified 2 missing/corrupt files. New files were downloaded (automatically) and installed and a few mouse clicks later I was finally playing Alien Breed 2: Assault. Mmm, not the greatest start I think you’ll agree.

Anyway, the game itself is an isometric third person shooter/handyman/FedEx delivery person game, set on an Alien space ship, filled with nasty aliens (surprisingly!) and darkness. There are 5 levels to play in the single player campaign all of which involve you getting from point A to point B (following all the waypoints) whilst killing and repairing almost everything that you come across. With a lot of backtracking. There’s so much backtracking that it is almost pointless exploring some of the corridors and rooms that make up the levels as you will cover every inch several times. This got very irritating on the 2nd level, when I had to backtrack to practically the very beginning of the level from pretty much half way through as I had to retrieve a personnel database for a security door that had just broken. Annoying, and a little bit dull. Fortunately each level only takes about an hour to complete, which was just about the limit of my interest.

Dad, it’s broken!

In space, every thing’s broken or will break, at least that’s what I learned form playing Alien Breed 2: Assault. If you touch things there’s a strong chance it will break. Doors, windows, computers, pumps and generators to name but a few of the things that suffer from your killer touch. So you either have to either divert around the broken bit or (more commonly) locate a part to fix (which usually involves backtracking). You also have to be very careful of all the explosions (nice, pretty explosions), as everything explodes when you get close to it. Must be that killer touch again! Oh, and the ship shakes. Like, shakes all the fricking time. For virtually the whole of the first level the screen constantly shook. Wobble, wobble, wobble, explosion, door fuse blow, wobble, explosion wobble! I get the fact that the ship you are on is a bit broken (having just crashed our own ship into the side of it), but seriously, enough with the screen shaking. I get it. After about of hour of playing I needed a break, as I found it too tiring to deal with for any longer. The shaking got better (i.e. less) after this, but it is still something to be aware of. It can be quite off-putting.

Save when you can

The graphics are pretty good throughout with some nicely detailed spaceship interiors. There are lovely smoke effects and lighting effects in the game which really show off the power of the Unreal 3 engine as you wander around with your little torch. The aliens are varied in design and size with some of them are right little nippy buggers and quite a challenge to kill, especially when about 20 of them gang up on you and attack from all angles. Clever.

Weapons are equally varied, with flamethrowers, rocket launchers, shotguns and the trusty pulse rifle all ready for action. Ammo and items like health packs or frag grenades can be found throughout the levels either out in the open or by searching dead bodies. You’ll also find supply terminals dotted throughout each level from which you can also buy ammo, weapons and items. As there are only a few of these terminals on each level you have to be very careful not to die before you reached one. They are the only places where you can save your progress. This does lead to some fairly tense moments as you battle through waves of aliens to get to the save point. I did quite enjoy the sense of urgency and mild panic that these fixed saved points added to the overall gameplay. Tension is further heightened by the in-game music which bears more than a passing resemblance to the music from the Alien films. A very welcome addition to the game ;-)

You will get about 6 hours of gameplay out of the single player campaign which isn’t really that long to be honest. Obviously there is a lot more fun to be had with the 2 player co-op and the survivor modes both of which are great additions the the game. The survivor mode is really good as you are pitted against endless alien attacks and you have to last as long as possible. This is total alien carnage on a grand scale.

Summary

Alien Breed 2: Assault is a simple, well constructed shooter with a few problems (screen constantly shaking and incessant backtracking). It is the kind of game that you can play for an hour or so to kill some time. However, it is not a game you will come back to again and again as the gameplay just isn’t that complex or fulfilling. For the price, I’d recommend it as a great casual purchase and it’s a decent enough addition to the Alien Breed game series.

Alien Breed 2: Assault is out now on Xbox 360 (800 Microsoft Points – Xbox Live Arcade) and PC (£6.99 on Steam).

Update 9th Oct 2010: It just played Alien Breed 2: Assault with an Xbox 360 controller hooked up to my PC (using the Wireless Gaming Receiver For Windows (Xbox 360)). Unsurprisingly, given that the game is also on Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA), the keyboard controls map perfectly to the Xbox controller. In fact, I prefer playing this game using a joypad than the keyboard. I can just sit back, put my feet up and blast away at the aliens ;-)

Check out the videos below to see some of the Necromancer’s spells in action. Personally, I love a good minion spell. It’s great seeing them go off to beat the crap out of an enemy whilst you chill out ;-) Are there any other classes people would like to see added to Guild Wars 2?

Doom:

Bone Minions and Putrid Explosion:

Grasping Dead:

Locust Swarm:

Life Siphon:

The barber shop will look something like this:

Anyone who visits the barber shop can get:

• Free professional hair cut (courtesy of America Crew)
• Free professional shave
• Hand-on time with Mafia II

In addition everyone that has a shave and/or haircut will also be given a special leaflet from glamour model Lucie Self (shown right) that you can exchange for a free Mafia II t-shirt at any GAME store when you buy Mafia II.

Pop-up barber shops tour locations:

• 27th August – Basingstoke – Festival Place
• 28th August – Birmingham – Bullring Rotunda Square
• 29th August – Westfield – Southern Terrace
• 30th August – Reading – Oracle Centre
• 1st September – Newcastle – Northumberland Street
• 2nd September – Manchester – Trafford Centre

So that’s not bad, a free shave and haircut and a bit of Mafia II game time. If anyone visits any of the barber shops on this tour can you let us know what it was like?

DC Universe Online is due for release on the 5th November 2010 PlayStation 3 and PC.