Pick 5: Surprisingly fun multiplayer games more known for single player

In most game releases, whether It's considered a triple A title or not, adding multiplayer into the package makes the product more appealing.Even of it doesn't seem possible or makes no sense at all, they still push it in hopes to get a few more sales. Many games have went through this route and failed miserably, but some actually pulled off unique multiplayer that not only is fun, but stays true to the game's concept.

Uncharted 2 and 3

Its safe to say we got Uncharted 2 and 3 for the single player campaign, to witness Drake's adventure and his many "OH SHIT" moments. After seeing the end credits roll, we have multiplayer to play around with. To our surprise, Naughty Dog created a relatively decent competitive multiplayer that's worth investing a lot of hours in. Everything we love about Uncharted was embedded, making it stand out from other third person shooters -  The simple, but smooth climbing mechanic, the solid cover shooting, and the ability to kick people off ledges. Yes, that last one is really satisfying.

There were tons to unlock and was well supported for months. It even had other modes like a coop mode which pins 3 players against waves of enemies, or an adventure mode that requires you to perform certain tasks to succeed. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, and Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception(now free to play until level 15) is literally the perfect package.

Mass Effect 3

This was shocker. When Bioware announced the last Mass Effect game would include a multiplayer mode, I expected the worst. A horrible multiplayer with the single player being affected since they used resources on the online component. Well I was proven wrong, and not only was the single player the best int he series, the multiplayer proved to be a great addition. It has the right addiction that makes you want to go "Just one more game..: after a round ends.

You and three other players team up to go through 10 waves of enemies and do objectives until extraction. It's a simple mode and there's nothing else, but multiplayer shows how fluid and effective Mass Effect 3's combat can be. There was also a sense of grinding as well since you need to earn credits to buy packages that have random items such as medi-gel, heavy weapons ammo, or new classes and race, weapon attachments, and of course new weapons. To top that all off, the multplayer had great support from Bioware with a good amount of DLC's coming out for free to add more content like maps. Yes, MP maps for free, hard to believe.

Red Dead Redemption

In my eyes, Rockstar Games can do no wrong, and apparently can do the unthinkable. I thought it was impossible to create an open-world multiplayer, but they did it. Instead of HUD lobbies for certain game modes in the multiplayer, you have the game's map as your lobby to do whatever you want, and I mean anything. Its just like the single player campaign minus the main story. You can raid bandit camps, play poker, or claim forts as your own. If you really want that competitive edge or more coop, certain parts on the map have stations were you can search for a quick match.

When players start joining your map, you can either team up or simple shoot each other for the heck of it. If there's enough people, you can go full on posse vs posse which can be pretty crazy,especially if the enemy possie tries to invade your little fort you call home. Another great thing is that this game, even though played in Asia, had no problems with internet connection or lag, which makes everything way more satisfying. It's a great multiplayer that wasn't necessary since they developed an amazing open-world western but they did it anyway and succeeded in making it worth checking out.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

Yet another title that's great on its own, but because this generation is the age of online gaming, even Assassin's Creed got the multiplayer treatment. When announced, I couldn't wrap my head on how it could work. what, find the right player to stab with your hidden knife? Apparently I had the right idea back then because that's pretty much what multiplayer is. Every player is in disguise as one of the regular NPC's out there and can really be hard to spot. You have to find those inconsistencies that would make a player stand out. For example - running around on the roof(Bad idea), sticking out like a sore thumb.

Brotherhood was the first to introduce multiplayer and since then, every new release of Assassin's Creed had their version of the multiplayer with new game modes and maps, but the concept is still the same. It can get tedious at times, but it surprisingly works.

Dark Souls/Demon Souls

I had to include this. A painfully challenging RPG that merged multiplayer and single player together. It's online component was unheard of. For Single Player, with it being very hard, some players can assist others by leaving messages on the ground for other players to see to either warn them of upcoming dangers or inform them of an item/equipment that would be hard to spot. Or hint at a boss or enemy's weakness. You can also lie to kill someone. You can tell someone died by following false information when you see blood stain(interacting with it shows how the player died) and a message beside each other saying "jump here". I've tried it, people do jump.

But the multiplayer aspect doesn't stop there. You can also drop your sign on the ground for people to find so they can summon you into their world to assist them in a certain part in the game.  You can also do the same and summon other players to your game if you need help. If you want to be competitive in either Demon Souls or Dark Souls, you can drop your sign to ask for a battle with another player. believe it or not, there's a community for PVP with a certain spot in the game where you can find players looking for a fight. The game is quite deep in character development that there are a good amount of builds to play around with making the game appealing to competitive players. If you don't want to wait for someone to accept your challenge, you can use a specific item to invade another players game and attempt to kill him before he reaches an enemy boss. To this day, people still play the game to create new characters for PVP. I'm sure From Software didn't see that coming.

Were in a generation where having some form of multiplayer is almost mandatory. Even though it's not necessary, they are pushed into adding it somehow to make it sell better. I don't believe multiplayer will help the game sell more copies, but a lot believe so, that's why we have dumb multiplayers in games like Dead Space or BioShock 2. Even the recently released Tomb Raider reboot has a multiplayer component which isn't very good. But this whole Idea of adding multiplayer isn't a complete waste as you can see above, I just hope we have more hits than misses in the future.

Splinter Cell: Blacklist 'Stalk, Strike, Silence' Trailer

Out of the shadows, Ubisoft shows new footage for Splinter Cell: Blacklist. The trailer shows the three things Sam Fisher does best. have a look at the trailer below. 

Fans of the series, get ready to be dissapointed - Blacklist will be the first Splinter Cell game to have a different voice actor for Sam Fisher. That's right, no more Michael Ironside rocking the goggles. Why the sudden change? Well, they needed someone more physical for the motion captured planned for the game, and since Ironside is not well over 60, he won't be able to provide the physical aspect of the iconic Sam Fisher. So now we have Eric Johnson to do the motion capture and voice.

Changing the voice of Sam Fisher is pretty ridiculous. It would have been better off if they just didn't use Sam Fisher anymore. It's like removing David Hayter from Solid Snake..oh wait, that already happened. But the point is - Michael Ironside is Same Fisher, nothing more.

Splinter Cell: Blacklist comes out on August 20 for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii U, and PC.

I just saw something amazing - Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon trailer!

When I first heard about this, I thought it was part of the April fools prank lineup from Ubisoft, but to our surprise it's no joke. This is no DLC, no expansion, just a standalone open world game filled with awesome. You play as Sgt. Rex Power Colt, a cyborg commando played by The Terminator and Aliens star Michael Biehn and....argh! screw the introductions! Have a look at the trailer below!

An 80's themed cyborg game? Why the hell not! From what we know so far, this game doesn't require the original Far Cry 3 game, and will be available through PSN, XBLA, and PC. With regards to the connection to Far Cry 3? From the looks of it, it's only the game's open world nature. Price is rumored to hit the $15 and if it has the right amount of content in it, by god this is a great buy.

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon will be available on PSN, XBLA, and PC on May 1

Monday Impressions: StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm(Zerg campaign)

Two weeks ago, way before the long weekend thanks to holy week and way before BioShock Infinite blew my mind, I was playing a game on my PC. A game that just went live with it's expansion. Thanks to it updating your game client to the most recent version of the game, all I needed was an account that had already activated that expansion. Thankfully a friend graciously offered me to try it out when he's not online, so I took the chance and started playing Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm's Zerg campaign.

I'm pretty grateful a friend of mine Moe, gave me this opportunity since with the crazy 1st quarter line up of games coming out, I wanted the expansion but it wasn't my priority. Heart of the Swarm expands the Starcraft 2 game with a continuation of the game's story and added units for both campaign and the crazy famous multiplayer that is all over E-Sports right now. My focus is the campaign mode. I enjoyed what Blizzard did in the Terran campaign, so I was quite curious how the Zerg would play out.

The gameplay is nothing new. Everything is quite familiar and that's a good thing. Minor visual aids are added into the game such as showing the number of harvesters you have in a given hatchery, but aside from that, same game, just different skin.

If you haven't finished the Terran campaign, then playing the Zerg campaign will be an instant spoiler for you right off the bat. Heck, the new menu screen is spoiler enough. So if you have no idea about the story, skip the paragraph below, or simple read at your own risk.

With Kerrigan no longer the Queen of Blades, she regains her memories and actually has no recollection of her ever being the  Zerg queen. It's as if that part of her was ripped out of her when you activated the Protoss device. Apparently her ability to control Zerg is still there, but nowhere near as her old self. Through the course of the game, you slowly see Kerrigan regain her control as the Zerg queen, placing all her focus in getting revenge from Mengsk, the Dominion leader.

From what I'm told, I am halfway through the story and its pretty much straightforward really. A bit of Kerrigan romance with Jim Raynor here and there, and her getting a grip of the Zerg swarm once again. The story has nothing fancy or anything that would make your head hurt. It's a personal vendetta for Kerrigan to kill Mengsk, and that's mostly the main angle. The real overall threat introduced in the Terran campaign still lingers in the story's background, which made me to believe that part in the story will conclude during the Protoss campaign, or Blizzard says otherwise and adds more expansions to extend the game's lifespan.

The missions in the game play out very similar to the Terran campaign. you are usually given two planets with different variety of missions, each having a new unit introduced and unlocked for the player to use. A bit of player choice was given there but its more of what you prefer doing first than anything else. One planet and mission introduces the Mutalisk unit, while the other unlocks the banelings.

Just like the Terran's upgrade feature, which allows you to add a certain upgrade to improve or add an added effect to the unit, the Zerg has evolution and strains that change certain zerg units to your liking. each unit in the game has three abilities you can pick from which can be changed at any time outside of a mission, like giving zerglings increased movement speed, or more health regeneration to roaches. But since you have to pick one out of the three available, it boils down to how you want to play that unit.

Customization becomes a bit deeper with evolution. As you progress through the campaign, you are given two choices to evolve that given unit permanently. The choice you make on this one disregards the other evolution. Some are pretty hard decisions since both come out strong, while some are just a no brainer. It's a good addition and encourages an additional playthrough to try different evolutions.

Hero leveling is something new in this campaign. With Kerrigan slowly getting her powers back, doing side objectives or moving forward into the campaign gives kerrigan levels which improve her damage and health. Reaching a certain threshold like level 10 for example, allows you to pick a new ability . There's always two choices when you reach a certain point, and you can only pick one at a time. But there's room to experiment since you can change her abilities anytime outside a mission.

Missions in the game is quite similar to most RTS. Some are full on base against base, while some are limited unit missions with Kerrigan, or survival missions that require you to hold off for a given amount of time, the usual seen in RTS games. I'm playing on brutal difficulty because I like giving myself a hard time, and I'm definitely  getting the challenge. It felt like a refresher course for me since I'm originally a Zerg player and playing on that level kept me at the edge or my seat. The computer is relentless.

The added evolutions and the mix of old and new units make the campaign worth playing. As you upgrade and evolve your units, you might feel a bit overpowered, but it's really just another angle on how you play that certain unit. I still think the drop pods of the Terran in the first campaign is one of the strongest upgrades, and I'm still on the lookout for something as strong.

I don't plan on touching the multplayer exclusively anytime soon though, sad to say. I was completely addicted to the MP when Starcraft 2 first went live and I just don't have time to get used to the meta all over again. Starcraft 2 can be complex, and believe it or not, it involves a lot of practice and skill to rise up. I've done it, and again, I just don't have time. Maybe ill do a few rounds just for fun, to try out the new units on each side, but my reaching the top division days are over.

The campaign is fun but nothing groundbreaking is seen here. But one thing is for sure though - As much as Starcraft 2 is the same game way back when the first game came out, the game is still so much fun for any RTS fan. It's formula is so simple that a casual or new player can pick it up and have fun, but at the same time complex and deep that it can also satisfy the professional and hardcore. Blizzard really struck gold with Stacraft, and they maintained it so well that the sequel and its expansions will have the same, or even longer lifespan as the original. be it campaign or multiplayer, Starcraft 2 is still the king of the RTS genre. It's that simple

Remember Me trailer wants you to remember the enemies in the game

A new trailer was released by Capcom for their latest IP coming this June. The trailer introduces the enemies that the player will go against as Nilin, a memory hunter who ironically lost her memory. Check out the trailer below.

The combat in Remember Me has nothing special from what's shown so far. it's the typical beat em up games, and I'm just hoping it has some crazy combinations to break any repetitive feeling. But combat is not what caught my interest. It's more about the game's futuristic setting, with memory now compromised, easily manipulated, stored, or stolen by people like memory hunters.  It's a cool concept and hopefully Capcom does a good at executing a concept like this in Remember Me.

Oh, and another thing - I hate dubstep.....that is all.

Remember Me will be out June 4, 2013 on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC.