My Take Radio

THQ brings a real gem to E3 with this blood­bath of a game. It looks like what “WET” was sup­posed to be. Pro­duced by Tomonobu Ita­gaki and uti­liz­ing some real inno­v­a­tive weapon use. This title looks like a must buy for me.

Last year, UFC Undis­puted 2009 erased the mem­o­ries of many a sub­par MMA game with fluid motion and inno­v­a­tive game­play. This year, THQ takes it one step fur­ther with UFC Undis­puted 2010 by adding an improved career mode, improved con­trols and new sub­mis­sions (inverted ones too), as well as over 100 UFC fight­ers. THQ is ready to step in the cage against the EA Sports MMA offer­ing. In the end, it all boils down to one sim­ple phrase — “So you wanna be a fighter”. Here, let BJ Penn show you how.

UFC Undis­puted will be avail­able May 25, 2010 on PS3 & XBOX 360, as well  as on the PSP for the first time.

A few months ago, I had the plea­sure of play­ing Dark­siders at the New York Comic Con. The game got my atten­tion due to the Joe Madureira art. When I apprached the booth, I was sur­prised that not too many peo­ple were play­ing. My first response was “ahh– it prob­a­bly isn’t that good”. When I finally played it, I was proven wrong imme­di­ately and was hooked. I par­tic­u­larly enjoyed the design and the huge bat­tles with mul­ti­ple attack­ers. After meet­ing Joe Madureira at the booth, I asked who could I con­tact to dis­cuss this game on the show. I was imme­di­ately referred to THQ which gladly let me inter­view Haydn Dal­ton & Han Rand­hawa to pro­mote this game.

I have included the inter­view below for those that missed it. Click play to check it out:

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After play­ing and com­plet­ing the game, I will say that to me it was a fun and engaing thrill ride. I am not going to do a typ­i­cal  review where I focus on indi­vid­ual aspects because it really doesn’t do this game jus­tice and I per­son­ally pre­fer a review on the over­all prod­uct. The syn­op­sis is pretty straight­for­ward. The main char­ac­ter War , the sec­ond of the Four Horse­men Of The Apoc­a­lypse, is falsely accused of start­ing the Apoc­olypse and is sen­tenced to death by the Charred Coun­cil, a third group that over­sees the bat­tle between Heaven & Hell. War sug­gests going forth to clear his name and if he dies, the sen­tenced can get car­ried out. The Charred Coun­cil agrees and they send him back to a post-apocalyptic Earth with a Watcher (voiced by the great Mark Hamill), who accom­pa­nies War with the intent of keep­ing him on a short leash. I don’t want to spoil the story for any­one that hasn’t played, so I’ll leave it at that. But I will share some game­play footage:

War begins his quest with the Chaoseater Sword and tho­rugh­out the game receives new weapons and upgrades as he fights the tower guardians. By the mid­dle of the game, War is no longer alone, as he is later accom­pa­nied by his trusty steed Ruin who proves quite use­ful in the com­ing battles.

Many review­ers com­pared this game to God Of War imme­di­ately, but while that is true, I think the puzzle-solving aspects og the game as well as the over­all pre­sen­ta­tion dif­fer­en­ti­ate it quite a bit and move it more towards a grown-up Leg­end Of Zelda. Dark­siders thrives on HD dis­plays with it’s vibrant col­ors and fan­tas­tic sound and should be played as such to fully enjoy it.

If you are a fan of hack & slash adven­ture games I rec­om­mend that you pick this game up and give it a shot. I am sure you’ll enjoy it. After sell­ing over one mil­lion copies, which out­sold it’s release com­peti­tor Bayonetta(which I am now play­ing ), and based on the end­ing, I can guar­an­tee you will be see­ing a lot more of War in the near future.

Great job Vigil & THQ

Rec­om­men­da­tion : Buy

This week I had the oppor­tu­nity to inter­view Haydn Dal­ton (Lead Designer) & Han Rand­hawa (Art Director) who worked on the upcom­ing Dark­siders game. I had the chance to play Dark­siders at Comic-Con a few months ago and from the 1st few min­utes of game­play I was hooked. Between the great art from Joe Madureira and the great game­play I knew this game was going to be special.

Haydn & Han gave lis­ten­ers a  look into the inner work­ings of game devel­op­ment as well as insight into mak­ing Darksiders.

Dark­siders will be released on 1/5/2010. Make sure you pick it up!!

If you would like to keep up to date with Dark­siders news and info head over to the fol­low­ing sites

Haydn Dal­ton–Haydn’s per­sonal site which has great Dark­siders art­work and news

Darksiders.com-The Offi­cial Game Website

Han Rand­hawa–Cur­rently under con­struc­tion but once com­pleted stop on by and show your support.

My Take Radio proudly sup­ports THQ & Darksiders.

Have a look at some of the great art and gameplay:

Comic Con Photos-Gameplay Footage