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★ FamousTeens
DARK GAMES OF MARCH
NAZIS IN NEW YORK, BIO-MUTANTS AND ANCIENT MAYHEM ✩ By Scott Gardner
TURNING POINT:
FALL OF LIBERTY
PC, PS3, XBOX 360
In America, the 1950s are fondly
recalled as a time of peace and
prosperity, when life was happy
and predictable. In Turning Point:
Fall of Liberty, however, things
happen a little differently.
Set in 1953, this first-person
shooter imagines an alternate
history where the U.S. never
enters the Second World War...
DARK SECTOR
PC, PS3, XBOX 360
While infiltrating a secret lab in a crumbling
Eastern Bloc country, ruthless agent Hayden Tenno
is infected by a bio-weapon that turns parts of his
body into metal and allows him to morph into
different combat forms. Even worse, the
bio-weapon has mutated everyone else into
until the war enters the States.
As construction worker
Dan Carson watches from a halfbuilt
skyscraper, a fleet ofNazi
warships takes New York
harbour, and waves of giant
Zeppelins darken the sky. With
German paratroopers assaulting
the city block by block, Carson
barely escapes, but the
Big Apple isn’t so lucky — it falls
quickly as the invasion grows.
And videogame or not, it’s
chilling to see a huge scarlet
swastika banner hanging from
the Statue of Liberty.
Playing as the street-smart,
but otherwise regular guy,
Carson, your first task is just to
survive the chaos, but you soon
join the American Resistance,
using guerilla tactics against the
occupying Nazis. Of course,
the Third Reich was no pushover,
and after handily defeating
Europe it has spent the last
huge, violently insane metallo-creatures.
Now the military thinks Tenno is a monster, and
the monsters think he’s human — a pretty
convenient set-up for a kill-’em-all action and
shooting game. And what kills they are, since our
hero’s main weapon is his glaive — a pizza-sized
throwing star now growing out of his right hand.
But there’s another variable, along with these
superpowers our hero is growing something even
less welcome: a conscience.
GOD OF WAR:
CHAINS OF OLYMPUS PSP
This prequel tracks the trials of the brutal (but
oddly lovable) warrior Kratos during his decade of
servitude to the gods. He’ll have new magic and
weapons, but it’s still all about hacking and
slashing the nastiest creatures of Greek mythology
all across — and below — the ancient world.
famous 28 | march 2008
decade developing powerful
new weapons — not spaceships
and lasers but the technologies
that were on its drawing boards
at the end of the real WWII, like
jet engines and rocket launchers.
So you’re outgunned and
outmanned, but you make up
for it with your knowledge of
the local “terrain” — subway
tunnels, rooftops, bodegas —
and desperation. For example,
short of weapons and ammo,
you’ll engage in a lot more handto-hand
combat than the usual
shooters, including nifty
grappling features and using
enemies as human shields.
In most heroic, invasionthemed
games the ultimate goal
is to single-handedly win the
war, but in Turning Point your
sights are set a little lower.
Carson and his comrades just
want to stay alive and maybe,
just maybe, strike a few larger
symbolic blows to inspire their
besieged nation. Can they
do it? Well, if there’s one tribe of
humans you shouldn’t mess
with it’s a bunch of pissed-off
New Yorkers.
Gamers have good reason to be suspicious of
epic console games reappearing on handhelds, but
the God of War series exists in a different reality.
The PS2 versions are that system’s smoothest and
best-looking games, yet Chains of Olympus
recreates the same dramatic camera angles and
epic set pieces despite the PSP’s four-inch screen.
So to update The Bard: Cry havoc and let slip the
gods of war!
Unt
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