First off, let me apologise for my absence from the website last month. I took a break from writing while my hand healed. The bones in my left hand had begun to experience a grinding pain while typing, and I think it was probably the result of nearly four years of intense typing for both Otaku Magazine and Play Tech. …

Cell-shading is a rendering technique used by game developers to give their games a stylized, cartoony look. This interesting visual style has been in use since the dawn of the last generation of consoles, and it’s produced some of the best-looking games on the market in recent years. Unfortunately, it also bears an unjust stigma with a large portion of …

While rattling through my archive of articles for Play Tech Magazine in search of samples to secure some freelance work, I came across our woefully unpublished Alone in the Dark: Inferno review for the PS3. It was meant to go into the February issue, and the highlight of the article was a little in-depth comparison we did between the original …

Gears of War fans, get ready to put a considerably large smile on your dial because we have a huge chunk of information on Gears of War 2 including never before mentioned extra content. If you are one of the many fans that can't get enough of Gears of War 2 and need to know even more about it's features, don't miss out on all the good stuff that we have for you today.... Check this out, the list is taken from the evilavatar forum "Previously, it was thought that Gridlock and Subway would be the only gears 1 maps making a return.... These five maps will be free of charge but the only way to get them is if you receive a voucher, which every NEW copy of the game will have."... While we originally thought that we would only be getting remakes of Gridlock and Subway, we are actually going to be getting three more. A major point of interest here is that is looks like Epic is taking a stab at the used games market because the maps will only be redeemable using a voucher that comes with each new copy.... Thanks to Germany and their wonderful habit of banning any game that drips a drop of blood, our region as well as a couple others are obviously not going to be able download the maps without any extra effort. This is probably a great time to redirect you back to our method of getting around these annoyances, instead, I have posted the link to that wonderful little gem of an article at the bottom of this article. Ok, next point of interest: "In regards to the photo editor, it can be used by anyone who is either dead or in spectator mode.... The real downside of being connected to an online system is that I feel that developers are getting was too used to this idea of "release now and fix or add later" instead of having everything in and working from the get go.... ---------------------------------- Here we go: -Cliffy B says, "There will be no Kryll or Berserkers in the game", claiming that he wants gamers to have a new experience and not just treading on familiar ground.... -Brumaks are plentiful in the game and the article says that at some point late in the game, you will actually get to ride and take control of one.... The upside of this is, is that you can deploy it on the ground and launch attacks from a very long distance away and it is supposedly capable of killing two or three people at a time!... These five maps will be free of charge but the only way to get them is if you receive a voucher, which every NEW copy of the game will have.... Gears of War 2 will be available on November 11, so get your chainsaws ready because it's going to be a bloody one.

Mostly because it has been hyped up for quite some time now and with its long development cycle and legal issues with Epic Games' Unreal 3 Engine, it's mediocre reviews are causing quite a stir. Let's take a deeper look into this phenomenon and try and figure out why, even though Too Human is pulling in mediocre reviews left, right and centre, some people are still trying to defend it and tell themselves that they will still like it no matter what. Most of the buzz started because a lot of online sites and publications actually took pleasure in announcing to the world that the long awaited game is actually just not good and that all the hype was for nothing.... Well, I have checked through the scores on Metacritic and Too Human stands side by side in the 68 score range with the following games: Joust Band of Bugs Space Giraffe Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Viking: Battle for Asgard Juiced 2: Hot import nights 1942: Joint Strike Golden Axe (XBLA) Jewel Quest Now ask yourself the question, have you ever had lots of your fellow gamers say to you "I don't really care what people are saying about Harry Potter, I think it's the type of game I will like so I am going to buy it anyway!"... Now while I don't believe that we should all hang on every score that Metacritic pumps out, I do think that the fact that after 33 separate reviews were released, the average score was only 68, which means that the game is obviously not that great.... That was from my PC days, now I am a console gamer but I still love those types of games so when I heard that something like Too Human was coming to the Xbox 360 I got very excited.... Do I go and buy this game because I am a fan of these types of games, or do I just stay away and wait for something like Diablo 3 to come out on PC and play that instead, saving myself the possible agony of realising that Too Human might actually not be all its cracked up to be and be left with a feeling of disappointment.... So many people have told me I should buy it anyway and I am very tempted, especially with the gaming draught that we are having at the moment but then, something creeps back into my head, the number 68.... I want to sympathise with Silicon Knights for the amount of time that went into this game and I want to feel bad for them because they had so many issues with the Unreal engine. The thing is, that I can't because no matter how much of a back story there is and no matter how much time was put into it and how much hype there has been, the game is still being reported as mediocre and nothing special.... I have nothing against the developers, I don't even know them and if the game is looking like nothing spectacular in a market where games only have limited time and funds, games like this are supposed to just disappear into the ocean of forgotten titles while all of us go back to playing our favorite games again. As you all know, game prices are getting slightly ridiculous and not only that but the fact that we really do only have a limited amount of time to dedicate to playing games.... I also realise that there are also those out there that want to defend the title because, like with Too Human, it is an exclusive title and people don't want to see games on their favorite consoles failing.... We have been promised certain things and when they don't come through then we should feel cheated and make it very clear to the developers that we aren't going to spend our time and money on their products unless they shape up and release a title that's worthy of this great hobby that we all love so much.... Leave a comment below and let us know what you think about situations like this and whether or not we should be supporting games that haven't quite delivered on their promises.