I’ll admit right now that I’ve never played a Tomb Raider game before. I grew up in an age of Nintendo, so I don’t know much about protagonist Lara (Lare-uh? Lahr-uh? Laura?) Croft’s past romps through strange jungles and crypts. In fact, all I can remember growing up was gawking at the ridiculousness of her character model. So, when I heard that Crystal Dynamics decided to fully reboot the action-adventure franchise, I had no reaction at all.

I didn’t watch a single trailer, so picking up the game was an impulse buy that started with me gawking at the Xbox 360 Tomb Raider-themed controller on the shelf at the store. Regarding the release itself, the clerk told me, “It’s like Arkham Asylum, Uncharted, and Assassin’s Creed had a baby, and then that baby grew up and then had a fling with Far Cry 3, and that’s basically Tomb Raider.” With a pitch like that, I bought in.

I absolutely had no expectations at all. I booted up the title and switched on my Tomb Raider controller. I’ve seen like half of the original movie adaptation with Angelina Jolie and some gameplay of the old entries in the series to know who Lara is, but from the first few opening scenes, this latest release floored me.

The game mechanics are just as highly polished as the graphics. Rain cascades onto the camera as lightning flashes high above the jungle tops. The dynamic camera cleverly adds tension and pacing to stressful moments in the adventure. And boy, does Lara take a beating. As masochistic as this sounds, the death scenes are just as cringe-worthy and gruesome as the ones in the horror-focused Dead Space. But, that was the kicker for me: the pure grit of Tomb Raider’s island setting. When Crystal Dynamics could’ve taken the easy route, the studio created a story that tries to characterize Lara with more than just a nice set of … weapons.

Speaking of weapons, Tomb Raider has a pretty healthy variety to dispatch enemies with. The bow is the staple option in the game. It’s quiet, and it makes you feel like a complete badass. Other weapons include shotguns, assault rifles, a pistol, and Lara’s signature pickaxe. Crystal Dynamics’ decision to make each weapon upgradable was a great addition to an already addictive title. It keeps you wanting to play and salvage as much as you can from every inch of the map. These role-playing elements aren’t just limited to instruments of harm, however. You can spend skill points — that you earn through experience from kills, scavenging, or overall progression –  on upgrades. Each upgrade enhances Lara’s abilities, which can drastically change the way you play. If you focus more on the brawler side of things, your shoves can turn into deadly swings with the pickaxe, for example. This further represents Lara’s toughening in the narrative and gameplay sense.

But no game is without its faults. Call me nitpicky, but the “animal instinct” feature — basically a button that highlights objective waypoints, slight hints, and scavenge-worthy items in an area — seems like the game’s “easy” button. Granted, I don’t have to push the button, but it’s always empowering to figure out what to do next on my own. Animal instinct streamlines the experience for a more casual audience, but I prefer to play my titles on the hardest difficulties with little-to-no handholding.

Considering that this is my only actual gripe with the release, Tomb Raider is fantastic. Kudos to the game-store clerk for recommending it, and I’d hate to say it, but he was absolutely right. Tomb Raider has that pure, unadulterated fun factor that I can’t just quite put my finger on. Lara Croft has evolved from an over-sexualized video game vixen to, well, an ass-kicking game vixen. Sure, we all used to poke fun at her, but the Tomb Raider reboot shatters the stereotypes of female protagonists. This experience made me appreciate impulse, no-expectation purchases.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Warning: I talk about some of the events from Dead Space 3′s ending. 

Isaac Clarke continues to have the worst luck of anyone else in the universe. Visceral Game’s Dead Space 3 brought him to hell and back as he tried to get rid of the deadly Necromorph creatures for good. But as you can see with this new piece of downloadable content (DLC), it’s clear he failed.

Dead Space 3 Awakened (out on March 12 for Xbox Live, PlayStation Network, and Origin.com) extends the third-person action-horror experience with new chapters that occur immediately after Dead Space 3′s ending. You can find out what happened to Isaac and his partner John Carver either by yourself or with a friend in cooperative multiplayer. Your guns and items will carry over from any Dead Space 3 save files you may have.

The small sliver of Awakened I played felt like a standalone horror story, complete with unstable characters, a supernatural threat, and all the gruesome gore you can take. It’s as if Visceral took the horror elements of what initially made the franchise so great (and which was noticeably absent from the latest game) and packed it in all at once into Awakened.

But first, I’ll give you the bad news.

Recycling old areas

I’m concerned with how much Awakened recycles levels from Dead Space 3. I didn’t expect this DLC to suddenly explode with entirely new content, but I also didn’t expect to see the Terra Nova. That ship served as the primary setting for the first act of Dead Space 3, and after exploring every part of it, I wasn’t happy to find myself back there again.

Though Awakened will also feature brand new areas for Isaac and Carver to yell at each other over, the portion I played (a little over 20 minutes worth) was all about their return to the Terra Nova. But it isn’t in the same shape you left it. The remnants of Jacob Danik’s men — religious extremists from the cult of Unitology who were chasing you in the main game — have taken it over and turned the broken vessel into a sort of church … a church where they cut off body parts to serve a being they call the Voice.

As I walked around the familiar layout of the ship, I noticed that the new church appeared to have hired a rather eclectic interior designer with a love for the macabre — I found dozens of lit candles and severed hands at nearly every dark corner. I saw ominous messages scrawled in blood on the walls. And dead Necromorph corpses (pictured below) were strung up in a Christ-like fashion, as if to serve as a make-shift altar.

Was it creepy? Sure. But I couldn’t get over the fact that I was still blasting Necromorphs in the Terra Nova.

A return to form?

One of the highlights of Dead Space 3 was John Carver’s story, which you can only see if you play co-op with someone else. Carver’s mind slowly unraveled during the campaign as he experienced hallucinations about his dead family. Eventually, this led him to see objects in a level — toys, family portraits, birthday gifts — that Isaac (and the other player) couldn’t.

In terms of the fiction, Carver was suffering from dementia because of mysterious alien-made obelisks known as Markers. Isaac also suffered from this dementia in the first two games, but he became immune to it at the end of Dead Space 2.

The ending of Dead Space 3 changes that. The events there have somehow reset Isaac’s mental stability, and now both he and Carver suffer from dementia (and thus see different things). In the chapter I played, Isaac kept having visions of someone chasing him — a mutilated figure brandishing a cleaver (pictured up top). This mysterious person couldn’t take any damage, but he could hurt you and bring along a few Necromorph friends to attack you as well.

At certain points during the mission, he’d show up some distance away from me, just at the corner of my eye, and quickly disappeared when I tried to focus on him. It was also easy to mistake him for his followers, who wore bags over their heads and had sharp, metal contraptions in places where their forearms and hands should have been. Visceral Games wasn’t kidding when it said Awakened will have “the most disturbing content” it has ever put in a Dead Space title.

Sometimes, these poor saps — you’ll hear their rhythmic chants about sacrificing their eyes, ears, and minds — are just an innocuous part of your visions; but in a few areas, they actually fight you. It was difficult to tell whether the battle was really happening, or if Isaac was having another mental breakdown.

Either way, the demo was enough for me to see that the Necromorph situation had only become worse, and not better, after Dead Space 3. After what the characters went through in that game, this narrative twist might seem like a cop-out. But if this means Awakened can successfully bring back the scares again, I don’t mind it one bit.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Without music, many modern video games would not resonate with us on such an emotional level. It’s possible we would not feel a pang of dread as we rounded a blind corner in Dead Space 3, and we likely wouldn’t feel such urgency to hack our way through baddies in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. The sometimes abrasive yet compelling quality to even dissonant tones can change how we perceive virtual worlds.

This month we take a look at Fire Emblem: Awakening, Aliens: Colonial Marines, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, and Dead Space 3, and we discuss creating music out of non-musical items and the Tomb Raider soundtrack with composer Jason Graves.

Fire Emblem: Awakening
Composer: Yuka Tsujiyoko

Yuka Tsujiyoko’s music is the backbone of the Fire Emblem franchise. She’s the main composer for the series, which explains how organically music flows from one Fire Emblem to the next. Awakening’s score follows its predecessors with sometimes dreamy, often powerful orchestral melodies poised to elevate victorious highs and make us cry every time we lose a solider in battle.

Aliens: Colonial Marines
Composer: Kevin Riepl
Unlike the poorly received game housing it, Kevin Riepl’s score for Aliens: Colonial Marines is a true love letter to the film series. It plays with tonal similarities to both James Horner’s (Aliens) and Jerry Goldsmith’s (Alien) work on the film series while striking out on its own with gritty industrial sounds. You can feel the passion and dedication in every unsettling note and anvil strike Riepl uses. If you close your eyes and listen to the tracks linked to the picture above, you can imagine the much more frightening and generally more enjoyable game that Colonial Marines should have been.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
Composer: Jamie Christopherson
In fine Platinum Games tradition, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance’s soundtrack is very unconventional. When Platinum hired Jamie Christopherson to compose, they already had a pumping, heavy-metal sound in mind. The result is a very energetic album full of well-crafted guitar rifts and a successful hybridization of metal and electronic tones. It’s hard to imagine that Christopherson hadn’t written heavy metal on this scale before this project, but as he says in a supplemental interview to this article, it was all new to him.

Dead Space 3
Composer: Jason Graves, James Hannigan
Echoing, overwhelming percussion and spine-tingling dissonance is a hallmark of all three Dead Space scores, but Dead Space 3 combines those signature tones with more enjoyable orchestral movements. The result is a creepy soundtrack that is actually pleasant to listen to when removed from its game. The music is definitely much less claustrophobic, much like its inspiration.

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Dead Space 3 did exactly what everyone expected it to do.

The series slowly outgrew it roots as developer Visceral Games transplanted it from the land of survival-horror to the more financially fertile soil of the third-person action shooter. Today, the franchise has completely abandoned that which helped it garner its popularity in the first place, only referentially acknowledging these traits in the item-dense lulls between polished action set pieces. Both literally and figuratively, we find ourselves an awfully long way from the Ishimura.

I don’t know that anyone held out hope for another outcome, but they would have faced a mountain of evidence to the contrary if they had. No survival horror franchise since the genre’s inception has been able to hold on to more than “survival” past the initial outing.

The original Dead Space came along at a time when survival-horror had become as lifeless as the creatures that haunted its murky corridors. The genre had long since become a victim of its own success and forced to cater to a bigger audience that required a more “broadly appealing” experience. As with the latest Dead Space, Visceral thickened some aspects of its gameplay, watered down others, and added and removed even more elements; the flavor changed. For the worse? Not necessarily. Different? Certainly.

Source: Capcom

Extrapolate, and this image not only explains Resident Evil’s progression as a franchise but why Chris started taking ‘roids.

At the outset of creating something “new,” an artist’s financial backers perceive him as a risk. And there will be financial backers. All ambitious creative pursuits require a budget, and the price of that budget is high expectations. Visceral had never truly released a proper “hit” when it began development of Dead Space. The studio was hungry — eager to prove itself. But it was still entering uncharted territory, and Dead Space certainly had some rough edges that, as brilliantly pointed out in the Ars Technica review of Dead Space 3, lent themselves to the game’s atmosphere and much of its appeal as a horror title.

This very appeal gave Dead Space the popularity that ultimately damned its inevitable sequels. It’s a phenomenon seen across the artistic spectrum. Self-titled debut vs. reunion tour. Episode IV vs. Episode I. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas vs. Hey Rube. Artists and even their concepts are like a tuning fork. When first struck, the tune is loud and steady, then it slowly fades to silence, a tone with all the inescapable allure of the siren’s call.

Falling in love with a new game idea is a dangerous affair. Someone is going to get hurt. Public relations catchphrases like “bigger and better,” “exciting new direction,” and “highly polished,” start to wither the corners of common sense, manifesting with the thinly veiled condescension of  “let’s just be friends” from the scowl of a jilted lover. These phrases are ugly when laid bare. They represent the death of that which we fell in love with in the first place — that which established the relationship. This odd paradox is present in nearly all creative pursuits.

That does much to explain the fecund ire presently infecting nearly every game reviewer with a keyboard and a copy of Dead Space 3. While Dead Space 3 hasn’t fallen victim to many ratings below “good,” it doesn’t fare well when compared to its predecessors. The principle complaint is the aforementioned: Dead Space 3 lost touch with its roots. And truly, it is a fundamentally different experience. But when taken moment-to-moment, all the gameplay and environmental elements that fans of the franchise point to as evidence of Dead Spaces’s greatness are present and accounted for in the third one.

About halfway through the game, those elements are left behind for an admittedly less frightening environment, but why should Dead Space 3 endeavor to be Dead Space? Another ship? More narrow black corridors? Another game in which one could get by with nothing more than a plasma cutter? Visceral would be reviled for shoveling out a sequel that didn’t do anything to advance the franchise.

The first time a necromorph burst from a vent in Dead Space and snacked on Isaac’s jugular was unexpected and terrifying. The four thousandth necromorph an hour into Dead Space 4 can’t possibly have the same impact. The first blood covered room filled with supplies no longer needed by its deceased denizens created a palpable sense of dread. That same room four years and two-and-half games later delivers a far more cushioned blow.

Source: Visceral Games

In spite of Foreigner’s insistence, it will never “feel like the first time.”

Those moments are gone, and I can no more possess them than a sieve possesses liquid. First viewing, first listen, first kiss, first shot of heroin; the first time is always the best, and we can never get it back. We crave more from our love, demand more, and beg for more like a junkie on a dirty mattress. We want something that can’t be given, and god help the object of our affection should they attempt to deliver.

As a fan of Dead Space, I know that it will never scare me again. I know this, but I still enjoy the game. Perhaps the designers understood this concept, perhaps not. But anything less than a game that was fundamentally not Dead Space stood no chance of delivering the magic of the first.

Those slamming Dead Space 3 for stepping away from what the franchise was should avail themselves of the phrase “familiarity breeds contempt.” They’re mad because it changed, but they’d have been equally mad if it had stayed the same. They aren’t angry at Dead Space 3 or the game industry they claim is stale and devoid of original concepts. They’re mad at time, reality, and the insurmountable peak of their own expectations. They wanted to own that moment from the Dead Space, and god didn’t help the franchise when it attempted to deliver. Dead Space 3 could have done anything, everything, or nothing — it wouldn’t have mattered.

At least this proves that games are art: No object or performance or collection of words is truly a work of art until it triggers an emotion. With their unique means of conveyance (projection of the player on to his avatar), it seems that video games trigger an equally unique and specific emotion: frenzied, possessive, crushing, childish love. True love.

And no one has truly loved anything until they’ve absolutely fucking hated it.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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LAS VEGAS — Sledgehammer Games general manager Glen Schofield looks everywhere for inspiration for video games he has made (such as Dead Space or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3). Schofield, whose studio is owned by Activision, says that you have to keep an open mind and do a wide volume of research to come up with the ideas that will help developers tell a fantastic story in games.

Getting inspiration isn’t an easy thing to do in any medium, but it’s especially important in video games, where production teams of 100 people work for years on projects that can cost tens of millions of dollars. If the game creator isn’t properly inspired, its consumers will be bored or think that the game isn’t realistic or aware of what has come before it.

“For me, inspiration is a process,” he said in a talk at the DICE Summit, an elite game industry conference in Las Vegas. “Go deep. Keep your mind open. You will be really surprised what you let in when you do.”

Schofield said keeping an open mind is critical at the beginning of any project. So is doing research, going deep into a topic that might seem like a tangent but is critical to putting ideas in your head.

Schofield travels a lot, and he is always taking photos with his smartphone. With thousands of photos, he opens a file in which he dumps everything that he wants to use to create a game and explain it to a big team. Schofield took about 500 photos and handed the booklet out to the staff. His team created a game wiki for documents.

While at EA, Schofield’s team made the space horror game Dead Space. For that, he looked at all sorts of blogs and torture sites. And he talked to horror film director Wes Craven for four or five hours. He happened to hear the sound of a Bay Area Rapid Transit train one day and decided to put that into the game. The sound of the train became the sound of a whirring mechanism inside a part of the space station.

Schofield also suggested that people read widely and see lots of movies. For a helicopter sequence in Modern Warfare 3, he watched the chopper scenes frpm Apocalypse Now and Black Hawk Down over and over.

He also sends teams around to experience combat situations, as much as possible. When he pulled open the door of a Humvee troop carrier, he was astounded that the door was so heavy — maybe 150 pounds. In the opening scene of Modern Warfare 3, a soldier struggles to push open the door of an overturned Humvee, only to see a bunch of debris falling down from the sky around him.

His teams went to a U.S. Marine Corps air base to ride in helicopters and hear the sounds of jets as they flew overhead.

“It let us frame the scene,” Schofield said. “You get all those details in your game that are correct.”

Another team (pictured right) went to check out the feeling of weightlessness. They used that experience to create a weightless combat scene (pictured above) in an airliner that was about to crash in Modern Warfare 3.

He noted that the opening scene of Star Wars, where a giant Imperial Star Destroyer chases a tiny Rebel corvette, inspired a ship’s movement in one of his games. Gamers may never have noticed the similarity.

He said, “I’m not saying you rip stuff off. You mine for stuff and look for things others have done really well.”

Schofield heard his 3-year-old daughter singing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” one day. So he got one of his team members to sing the song, and they used it in a scene of the planet and space station (where horror would soon ensue). It was a creepy experience. In the film Prometheus, the film trailer starts out with the sound of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” That was a case of a movie borrowing from a film that took an inspiration from real life, Schofield said.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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You just can’t take your eyes off some things — emphasis on “things.”

The latest in Titan Books’ series of behind-the-scenes video game art books goes back to the ruins of the necromorph-infested Ishimura and forward to the frozen wastes of Tau Volantis for The Art of Dead Space. Martin Robinson, who also worked on Titan’s Halo: The Art of Building Worlds, has pulled together over 300 images focusing mainly on Dead Space 3 (available today for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC), but it has a few detours back to the first two games in the series.The tech of the Dead Space universe also gets a rare spotlight, including a two-page spread covering the various designs of the signature Plasma Cutter.

Titan handed us a few exclusive (and surprisingly gore-less) images from the book, which is also available now. Launch the gallery below and enjoy!

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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After playing through the first two Dead Space games, I thought I had the series figured out. Watch the vents, aim your weapon around dark corners, and have one finger ready to temporarily slow down enemies with the stasis ability.

I was wrong. The beginning chapters of Dead Space 3 plays with your expectations, setting you up in familiar scenarios only to throw you in an unexpected direction.

In developer Visceral Games’ Dead Space 3 (out Feb. 5 for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC), the disgusting necromorphs and the mysterious “Marker” monuments from whence they came are back, bringing with them new monstrosities that can kill protagonist Isaac Clarke and his (optional) cooperative partner John Carver in brutal and horrific ways. Much like how sci-fi heroine Ellen Ripley couldn’t escape from the xenomorph threat across four different Alien films, Clarke is inextricably tied to the undead mutants that have plagued his life since the first Dead Space came out in 2008. Here’s what I learned after running through the first three hours of the campaign at a recent event in San Francisco.

Coming out of retirement

Isaac Clarke is not the same man he was in Dead Space 2. He managed to finally free himself from the dementia (and the eerie hallucinations that served as quick gameplay thrills) that the alien markers caused, though he can still interact with the artifacts if he needs to.

“He is very much an expert in Dead Space 3 on the effects of Markers,” explained David Woldman, the senior producer at Visceral Games, to GamesBeat. “And throughout the plot of Dead Space 3, Isaac [uses] that knowledge to directly help the party that he’s a part of [and] to help people understand what’s going on. He tries to impart some of that experience to the crew of the mission this time around.”

After an unspecified amount of time following the end of Dead Space 2, government soldiers literally pull Isaac from his apartment into a conflict he clearly doesn’t want any part of. Religious extremists known as Unitologists have been attacking all the Earth’s colonies because of the government’s experiments on the Markers, and they want to unleash its mysterious power to bring about a (probably disastrous) event called “Convergence.”

The first 20 minutes or so has Isaac running from these Unitologists. You shoot at them like in any other third-person shooter: by crouching down and taking cover. Historically, Dead Space is not a typical cover-based shooter, and I didn’t I didn’t really care for these moments — it didn’t have any of the fun experimentation you have when devising ways to take out the necromorphs.

From there, it quickly transitions to a setting all Dead Space fans will recognize: a derelict and abandoned spaceship. Wide corridors, anti-gravity rooms, and, yes, plenty of vents from which the creatures to attack you are there for you to explore. This is also where the new weapon crafting system appears (it’s only in designated areas), in which you use different pieces and materials you pick up to make your own, customized guns. Even if you aren’t satisfied with your creations, you can dismantle them and make a new one without losing any of the parts.

“We really wanted to reinforce Isaac as an engineer,” said Woldman. “We thought that sure, you could walk through a world and pick up a gun that’s on the ground and keep going. But we kind of wanted the player to be able to sort of MacGyver their way through it and really favor and cater to player choice. So if you wanted to have a shotgun, and I wanted to have a line gun, or an energy-based weapon or a flame thrower, there’s really nothing in our fiction that’s prohibiting that.”

The snow-covered planet of Tau Volantis from previous Dead Space 3 trailers wasn’t a part of the preview, but from the dialogue cues, it sounds like it’s the next place you’ll travel to.

Killing necromorphs in half the time

At the same event, I replayed through the first four chapters again with the drop-in/drop-out online-only cooperative multiplayer mode. Whether it was because my partner (taking over the role of grizzled soldier John Carver) and I already knew what was coming, or because of the extra help and firepower a second player brings, we blew through the demo much faster, finishing it in a little over an hour.

If you don’t play with someone on co-op, Carver just sounds like an asshole. He stands by in the background with other members of your group during cutscenes, shouting one or two snide comments to Isaac whenever they meet. He’s less of a dick when killing necromorphs alongside you in co-op, where the two characters actually have conversations that sometimes reveal small details about the plot or the situation they’re in. Woldman promised that by the end of the game, you’ll “really understand where [Carver] is coming from” and why he turned out the way he did.

One nice thing I noticed is that each player has their own inventory — while you can give items and weapons to one another, you don’t need to fight over for the loot dropped by necromorphs or found in various containers. When you see your partner pick something up, the item will still be there for you to grab as well.

The other major change in coop is puzzles. During my first run through, I had to turn on a power source by using Isaac’s telekinesis tool to pull down three large machines and then repeatedly twist their respective switches to turn them on. In coop, the couplings don’t lock down by themselves, so you must have one person hold it down while the other rotates the switches. But this leaves you vulnerable to a large group of necromorphs scurrying to your position, so you need to act fast and defend one another while completing the puzzle.

Stay tuned for GamesBeat’s full Dead Space 3 upcoming review.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Mass Effect 3, the bombastic conclusion to Electronic Arts’ role-playing-game-meets-shooter trilogy, promised us closure. It promised us the chance to finish the galactic fight and say goodbye to protagonist Commander Shepard and his alien allies.

But developer BioWare doesn’t want us to move on just yet. Controversial ending and Internet flame wars aside, Mass Effect 3 maintained relevancy throughout the last few months with a surprisingly robust multiplatform downloadable-content strategy, which includes the recently released Omega single-player experience.

So is a trip back to one of Mass Effect’s beloved locales worth putting aside those sexy year-end releases for a few hours?

It depends on how much you love the space-faring saga.

What you’ll like

Welcome back to the madness that is Omega
Mass Effect 2 introduced players to the criminal-friendly wonderland known as Omega and its iron-fisted ruler, Aria T’Loak. You’ll return to the shady, asteroid-based space station for some spirited firefights during BioWare’s latest downloadable ME3 side quest.

You also team up with the aforementioned Aria and a new, extremely capable associate, which I’ll refrain from describing so players can enjoy her reveal.

Throughout the relatively meaty mission, you revisit familiar places that you encountered in ME2 along with some never-before-seen areas. And for those who enjoyed the Aria character, you get to catch up with the cold-blooded asari assassin slash crime lord while getting some juicy insights into her complicated past.

If you like the combat, you’ll like this DLC
Omega is all about the gunplay, so keep that assault rifle loaded because you’re going to need it to mow down platoon after platoon of Cerberus bad guys. Thankfully, BioWare keeps the combat varied with some new enemy types, including the survival-horror-inspired, experiment-gone-bad adjutants. The first time you meet these Cerberus-bred killers is pretty memorable and reminiscent of a creepy shooter like Dead Space.

All the action equates to some fun, trigger-happy gameplay that will satisfy those who enjoy ME3′s refined fighting mechanics.

What you won’t like

The whole thing is a little pointless
Omega’s premise is shaky at best. You, playing as mega-hero Shepard, agree to help out the dubious Aria regain her station from the antagonist Cerberus general Oleg Petrovsky … in the middle of an everything’s-at-stake, galaxy-wide war.

Why?

Commander Shepard has more important things to do — primarily saving every organic being from extinction. Why would he concern himself with helping a seedy individual like Aria retake a notorious yet pretty insignificant blip on the star map?

Even worse, Aria, who has no leverage, gives out all the orders throughout the entire mission. She sets all the ground rules and forbids you from bringing anyone from your crew. Again, why would Shepard let this happen? Aria’s promise of ships, troops, and resources seems hollow at best, especially since her meager fleet could barely penetrate the Cerberus blockade surrounding her station — after getting kicked out in the first place.

The ridiculousness of the situation annoyed me a few times as I played through the DLC. On many occasions, I wish I could throw some of Aria’s signature F-bombs right back in her face.

After all, who does she think she is?

If you don’t like the combat, you won’t like this DLC
Like I said, you fight a lot in Omega. Unlike previous DLC releases, which involved investigation-type palette cleaners, you won’t find any of that here. After a couple of hours, the “clear this area of hostiles and move on to the next area” approach became stale.

While the new enemy types help keep things interesting, they’re not particularly challenging foes. The adjutants came with a lot of horrific hype, but they were pretty easy to dispatch. And the final battle’s setup and payoff are ham-fisted and anticlimactic.

Plus, not having your crew around detaches the events from the overarching plot. Yes, it’s fun to have some new, impressively powerful squad mates, but it would be nice to get some additional scenes with a few of your trusted comrades as well.

Conclusion

Mass Effect 3 is a spectacular game — one that deserves a lot of credit, especially during this time of the year. Unfortunately, the controversy centered on its hotly debated ending has overshadowed the impressive downloadable content that BioWare introduced.

I’ve already challenged EA to make people care about Mass Effect again. While Omega has its good parts, it doesn’t bring enough of that signature storytelling to the forefront. I love pulling the right trigger to shoot dudes, but I enjoy using the same button to interrupt a cutscene even more. This DLC doesn’t understand that.

On the positive side, the fans who play through Omega are probably the ones who still love the franchise and are always willing, able, and happy to take on another mission. Those loyal Shepards will find a flawed yet enjoyable escapade.

Score: 70/100

Mass Effect 3: Omega released on Nov. 27, 2012 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. The publisher provided GamesBeat with an Xbox 360 download code for the purpose of this review.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Video game publisher Electronic Arts is opening new online stores and changing its approach to e-commerce.

Back in August, EA worked with Treehouse Brand Stores to launch a new store for its subsidiary PopCap Games and one of the casual-game developer’s hottest properties, the tower-defense title Plants vs. Zombies. Now, that partnership continues as the two companies establish an official EA website that carries products from its individual stores. These include Mass Effect creator BioWare, American McGee’s dark twist on Alice in Wonderland, PopCap, and Dead Space studio Visceral Games. Treehouse also made stores for Microsoft’s popular first-person shooter Halo and Skyrim developer Bethesda (coming later this year).

Together, these companies are doing video game e-commerce right and putting the attention where it needs to be: on the brands and the people who love them.

A different kind of consumer

“Basically, the idea was there were lots of really cool brands — particularly in the video game space — that were not getting any love at retail,” Jed Seigle, the chief executive of Treehouse, told GamesBeat in a phone interview. “And if they were getting into Target or Hot Topic, it would just be a logo slapped on a shirt, and it was shitty quality. So we essentially went to these video game publishers and said, ‘We’d like to build your official store, and we’ll design products that are going to be targeted not at the lowest common denominator but more the fans who really play the game.’”

Brennan Townley, the director of brand licensing at PopCap, spoke to GamesBeat previously about the Plants vs. Zombies store. He more recently told us, “With the Treehouse model, we can react quickly to new trends, fan feedback, and developments within our game,” said  “Ultimately, it allows us to put out great product and reach our broad fan base in a meaningful way.”

Seigle explained that when game companies try to run their own online stores, they often don’t have the time to do them right. Treehouse relegates these efforts in a way that pays off and better serves the fans. These stores then become home to not only the publisher or developer’s products but also other licensees, allowing customers can find everything in one spot.

Selling brands in retail — at brick-and-mortar stores like Wal-Mart — works differently than e-commerce. “Those stores have very limited floor space, so if you’re willing to create an item, it’s gotta be really, really explicit about what that’s about,” he said. “Which is why you get Call of Duty or Mass Effect or Halo — basically a marketing logo and image or box art slapped on a T-shirt. There aren’t hoodies. There aren’t hats. There aren’t sort of cool, custom pieces.”

E-commerce stores weren’t always immune to this problem. “When you started getting some of these online stores up and running maybe six, seven years ago, it was basically logo-slapping,” said Andi Riordan, the president of Creative Minx Marketing, who is representing Treehouse on the Halo Waypoint Store. “A lot of them were unauthorized. There were a lot of cease-and-desist letters that went out. And so what happened is, what we liked [about] Treehouse — it wasn’t just T-shirts going up on a store. They really took their unique approach to come in and to make sure to work with the games teams and to become part of the community and address those consumers. Not to cannibalize the product that was going to go out on a retail level, but instead come up with different product that was addressing an additional consumer that was buying these games.”

“These fans invest so much time in these games,” said Seigle. “But they’re also fairly savvy. I would never wear a T-shirt that said Mass Effect across the chest, but I’d definitely wear my N7 hoodie with the N7 emblem and the stripe. And that type of stuff doesn’t work in traditional retail. Because we’re smaller, because we’re online, I don’t have to do 10,000 of a design. I can do 200 or 500 to see if it works. So we really cater to the most passionate fans, and I think that’s the reason why our stores have been successful and why it’s harder to do it in more traditional retail channels, particularly the apparel section.”

Getting the most out of online stores and communities

The benefits to e-commerce, besides putting more fan-oriented products (novels, statues, replicas, apparel, and so on) in one place, is to make sure the quality is high and that it’s priced correctly, said Seigle. It also allows companies like Treehouse to offer a greater range of products and act as a significant retail channel for other license partners. “And that allows them to take more risks and do more products,” he said.

“We’re always cognizant of having new and interesting product,” he said. “As it relates to the types of products and the designs that go in, we have a design team here, and almost everybody at the company plays games. … A lot of the ideas we come up with [are because] we spend a lot of time playing the game. Because if we’re going to folks who are really committed and themselves spending a lot of time, we have to do that, too. There’s no way to sort of get yourself immersed in the universe and in the lore around the game unless you spend a lot of time playing it.”

Ideas come from within the games — for example, items like a watch that Isaac Clarke wears in Dead Space — or from the communities. Siegle said they’ll engage with forum members and other gamers online to find out their favorite quotes, moments, iconography, and what they’d most like to see out of a product.

“The purchasers of online store products tend to buy higher price points,” said Riordan. “They’ll spend 40 or 50 bucks on a T-shirt, but they want it quality, they want it cooler, and they don’t want something that then 80,000 units are being shipped out to a midtier or big-box retailer.

“What the [development] teams tend to love — you have to also make sure to do that additional research and take those extra steps to know that that is in conjunction with what the consumers will actually buy and actually wear. There might be a team who thinks, ‘God, this is the greatest design ever.’ And this is their baby. But it might not sell at retail — ie., a brick and mortar shop — because they might not get it. It might be a more casual gamer.”

Appealing to a core consumer, who would shop online, means listening to what people are most highly anticipating and marrying that to what the team has in mind, said Riordan. It’s a balance between accessories, apparel, and cool, detailed products. “So it’s a very thoughtful and strategic process that you want to go to.”

Riordan believes this is a huge, untapped revenue stream, but it’s not something that replaces brick-and-mortar retail. “It complements it because it’s two difference audiences that you’re focusing on,” she said. Younger gamers might not want to spend $40 on a T-shirt online, but they’ll spend $14 on one at Wal-Mart and then spend the extra money on something else.

“Your online consumers and your PC gamers with certain games tend to have a little bit more money, and they’ll spend more money,” said Riordan. “You need both audiences.”

What the target audience thinks

One gamer we spoke to sees the situation somewhat differently. “As far as official brand stores go, I enjoy the products, but prices are so often far too high — as well as shipping costs — to justify anything but the best products being purchased,” said 32-year-old Jeff Yenzer, who we contacted via Twitter and email.

But his concerns did reflect the changes Treehouse is trying to make. “Merchandise sold by publishers is so often well designed but not always well executed, leaving the purchaser with a garment or product that erodes quickly or breaks easily,” said Yenzer. “If there was anything I could change, it would be merging the design ingenuity, product knowledge, and creativity of publishers with the efficient production and shipping methods that larger retailers can bring to the table.”

Yenzer has bought from online stores such as BioWare, Bungie, Jinx, and ThinkGeek, among others, but also likes to shop at brick-and-mortar retailers “if for only the ease of purchase that comes with finding products at a local store,” he said. “Trying clothes on before buying is always a plus, as well.” But the designs, he admits, do leave a lot to be desired.

One thing you can’t always find in video game stores, though, is equality in male and female apparel. Riordan said it’s critical — especially around launch — for companies to overindex the male design because a female can still wear it. But a male won’t wear a female’s design because of the difference in body style. We asked a couple female gamers via Twitter for their opinions.

Laura Klotz, a 36-year-old who’s been gaming since she was young, told us, “In general, I don’t mind buying unisex sizes of clothing mostly because it enables me to share my T-shirt collection with my husband. However, it would be nice if a greater range of options were presented if only because it would mean that the industry was recognizing that they have more of a female fan base than they have previously tended to acknowledge. The way things are now, it seems like they still think the majority of players are guys or dress like guys.”

Wendy Vermeers, 33, chooses to buy her gaming apparel at online stores “because they make me feel more comfortable being a female gamer” whereas local stores are more male-targeted.

“I usually buy my gamer-related clothing from places like Threadless, Shirt.Woot, [and] ThinkGeek,” she said. “Or if I do find something out and about, I can occasionally find stuff at Hot Topic. These companies seem to be a little more all-inclusive, and I feel comfortable and wanted as a female gamer and customer.”

So it seems that in both e-commerce and retail, a little more attention to the female consumers who are playing these games is needed as well. The new EA Gear store currently features 12 items in its apparel section that are made to fit females, like this ladies’ FemShep illustrated tee. Comparatively, it sells 37 apparel items for men. The Halo Waypoint store contains 10 articles of clothing in men’s sizes and none for women though it does display a gender category. The Plants vs. Zombies store is much more balanced, with eight for women and 12 for men.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Dead Space fans can look forward to more limb-cutting and space-themed scares. Electronic Arts has confirmed that they will release a new title in the popular survival horror series during the 2013 fiscal year, which ends March 2013.

EA revealed the information to investors yesterday during a conference call when it included Dead Space among a list of brands (most of which were games that saw yearly installments, like Madden NFL, FIFA, and Need for Speed) that will see new releases in the 2013 fiscal year.

Seeking more information and clarification on if the new game is Dead Space 3 or another spinoff like the on-rails, first-person Dead Space: Extraction, GameInformer contacted EA. A representative from the publisher responded, “”There’s no further information today, but watch for several big product announcements from EA at E3 in June.”

EA Chief Executive John Riccitiello told investors yesterday that developing strong brands is one of the company’s strategic pillars, which is a nice way of saying that they will release a lot of sequels. Considering Dead Space’s popularity, the announcement of another title in the series was always a question of when rather than if.

GamesBeat 2012 is VentureBeat’s fourth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. This year we’re calling on speakers from the hottest mobile, social, PC, and console companies to debate new ways to stay on pace with changing consumer tastes and platforms. Join 500+ execs, investors, analysts, entrepreneurs, and press as we explore the gaming industry’s latest trends and newest monetization opportunities. The event takes place July 10-11 in San Francisco, and you can get your early-bird tickets here.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Great games immerse players in fantastical worlds and adventures so extravagant, you actually wish they were real. But what if video game characters crossed over to our reality instead?

I located a magic warp zone behind a toilet…the same interdimensional gate that led me to really good Sonic the Hedgehog games. This time I saw a bizarro reality where historic events did not take place quite as you remember them. Dare to take a look?

Bald Bull defeats Sonny Liston.

In 1964, Turkish boxing sensation Bald Bull (formerly known as Gaseous Calf) defeated Sonny Liston in the seventh round to become the new heavyweight champion. They squared off again a year later, where the hairless beast knocked out Liston with his trademark “Bull Charge” in the very first round.

Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth prevents the assassination of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.

During a function of the play Our Ace Attorney Cousin, a shadowy figure with a gun (Philadelphia Derringer to be precise) snuck behind President Lincoln’s seat. Miles Edgeworth’s eagle-like vision spotted the would-be assassin and immediately shouted, “Hold it!” …deviating the bullet’s course.

A student blocks the path of General Morden during a protest in Tiananmen Square.

As part of his plan for world domination, General Donald Morden implemented stupid economic reforms in China, creating a massive protest in Tiananmen Square. One ballsy student halted a column of SV-001 tanks (also known as Metal Slugs), sending the generalissimo into a hilarious hissy fit.

Ash brings down Team Rocket’s “Hindenburg” dirigible.

For years, Team Rocket has harassed Ash Ketchum. The Pokémon trainer intercepted Jessie and James’ airship, the “Hindenburg,” in Manchester Township, New Jersey. Ash unleashed fire-type pocket monsters on the hydrogen-filled blimp, setting it ablaze faster than you can say, “Oh, the humanity!”

The Apollo 11 crew encounters a “Marker” on Earth’s moon.

On July 20, 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, Jr. became the first humans to set foot on the moon. Besides a pile of rocks and space dust, the rocketeers discovered a huge alien artifact. After a few hours of studying the “Marker,” some members of the team turned into hideous monsters. Armstrong and Aldrin managed to escape and return home. To this day, NASA denies any existence of the Marker, the church of Unitology, and Tony Danza.

Note: This story originally appeared on Bitmob.com. At Bitmob, community members can post stories, and if the staff editors like any, they will edit and promote them to the front page. We will be merging the two sites within a month or two, but until then, we’ll post an occasional Bitmob story here on GamesBeat.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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