According to Kotaku: “This DLC is Mass Effect’s ode to James Bond. It is an undercover slip into a formal-attire-required party at the estate of the shady Donovan Hock, mixed with a bit of schmoozing, a safe that needs cracking and then gunfire. There is a vault in this 90-minute level. It contains statues of familiar characters and two of the most popular statues from Earth: Michelangelo’s David and the Statue of Liberty.”

The Kasumi DLC offers this one Bond-style mission and a number of frills. Players will wind up with a new weapon (submachine gun), a new power (the ability to throw flashbang grenades), one Achievement and a new unlocked area of the player’s spaceship. Kasumi will hang out in that new area of the ship and will also be able to stick with you through the game. Her special ability, a Shade Strike that sends her, cloaked in invisibility, on a dash toward the enemy to perform a powerful attack, could prove handy. She will interact with the other Mass Effect 2 characters, according to Hudson.

Hudson described Kasumi’s Stolen Memory as the first of a series of paid downloadable content offerings for Mass Effect 2. While this new one doesn’t tweak the game’s engine he said that it is already enabling BioWare’s developers to try new art tricks and styles. He said that other DLC Mass Effect 2 projects are underway. They may very in length of quest and type of content, but they’re coming.

Kasumi’s Stolen Memory will be out next month for Xbox 360 and PC. No price announced. Players will be able to access it once they have played enough of Mass Effect 2 to attain their own in-game space-ship and/or after the end of the game’s main quest.

Source

If you’ve played DICE’s other battlefield games, you will feel right at home with Battlefield: Bad Company 2. First off, i gotta give a standing ovation to DICE for the awesome graphics and the outstanding audio. From realistic machine gun fire to the ominous environmental sounds that are employed throughout the game, i don’t remember playing an FPS that kept me on my toes like that. I feel like I’m really on the battlefield with how DICE superbly mixed in all these fantastic sounds. Combined with the lush graphics and destructible set pieces and you got yourself a winner. Modern Warfare, you better watch your back…

This is also the first time i have been impressed with a single player campaign designed by DICE. Sure, they are masters of the multiplayer military FPS but they haven’t really quite managed a superb single player experience…until now. Coming off Modern Warfare 2 and Mass Effect 2, i didn’t think DICE would have enough to keep me occupied with Battlefield: Bad Company 2 but boy, am i pleasantly surprised.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is a fun game and it shows. You will hear witty remarks about the competition (gotta love the guns/rifles with heartbeat monitors bit) and manages to make things fun even while they are copied from other FPS games. It’s like DICE said “Lets take this scene from and make it louder and blow up bigger”. Basic but I’m not complaining.

The only thing missing from all of this is a replay feature, Halo 3 has it, Team Fortress has it. There are a lot of awesome scenes in Bad Company 2 that its sad that you need to resort to a third party program like fraps to capture stuff like bullets going through walls and scoring a hit, teammates covering behind a cement wall only to be blown to bits by artillery fire, huge set pieces crumbling down and awesome firefights.

Verdict: Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is a must buy for FPS fans or anyone who wants to play an excellent FPS game.

Enough of my rambling, check out some awesome Battlefield: Bad Company 2 screenshots:

Can we be expecting a role-play game like the earlier Deus Ex games have been, or simple lineal first person shooter? – tyxor

Jean-Francois Dugas: Deus Ex: Human Revolution uses the first Deus Ex game, which perfectly married the first-person shooter and roleplaying game, as its reference point, so you can expect an experience similar to it. The goal is to deliver the perfect mix of both genres, giving players the option of choosing to play the game depending on their preferred play style. The game is built around a multi-path, multi-solution approach so you often have more than one way to pass an obstacle, and within that you have tonnes of options for character and weapon customization.

If your preferred play style revolves around combat, there are plenty of augmentations and weapon customizations to transform you into a killing machine. If you’re a strategist or a pacifist, there are several options as well to avoid confrontation through augmentations and other means. The choice is yours.

Deus Ex 3 GDC 2010 Teaser Trailer

In the first two games, there was a great freedom in how you could approach each situation. With Deus Ex 3, how do you plan to expand upon that aspect of gameplay? - HeavyMetalChronus

Jean-Francois Dugas: Our initial goal was to identify the core values of Deus Ex and bring them back for a new generation of gamers. The core values were established by Warren Spector and company, so by building on top of it, I think his heritage is quite present. Of course, the first game was released several years ago; we needed to bring fresh ideas to the table but never without respecting the essence of what makes a Deus Ex game what it is. In the end, it’s going to be a mix of old and new.

Staying true to the original and making a real Deus Ex game is vital to this project. Although we are a new team working on the game, we have the benefit of time and perspective to look back at the first two games and really identify the core aspects of a Deus Ex game, as well as what went right and wrong. Of course, Deus Ex 1 and 2 varied a bit in what those core aspects were — ultimately, we decided to emulate the first game more; as mentioned, we no longer have unified ammunition and we are returning to an inventory system reminiscent of the first game. We also wanted to ensure that our levels are larger and more open than in Invisible War (i.e. Hong Kong in Deus Ex 1).

In terms of being a Deus Ex game, we keep the core gameplay essence alive: that being a hybrid of action-RPG in which the core gameplay mechanics revolve around combat, stealth, hacking, and social aspects. The gameplay is largely designed around giving the player choices which have consequences; the core values are centered on letting players play the game the way they want.

If I never played any other deus ex games before, will I be able to get into this game fully and understand what is going on? – CastorTroy89

Jean-Francois Dugas: Yes. Being a prequel to the original game, our story starts about 25 years before the start of the first game. Although Deus Ex: Human Revolution will end and segue nicely into the start of the first game, and you may meet some familiar characters along the way, the story is self-contained so players new to the franchise won’t have any problem getting into the game and understanding it.

My question is why does Deus Ex need a prequel? I know you don’t want to spoil things, but seriously, one of the great things about the original game was the multiple endings. I know game companies are out to make money, but is there any reason why this game tells a story that needs to be told, or are you just doing it because people will buy it? – swift_icarus

Jean-Francois Dugas : Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a prequel for several reasons. You do not need to be an old Deus Ex fan to appreciate the game – we have a new main character and supporting characters that you’ll encounter during the journey. At the same time, we felt Invisible War took the franchise too far into the future and became almost sci-fi, whereas the first game used the typical gritty Cyberpunk archetype we all loved, and we wanted to get back to that.

Second, in the original timeline of Deus Ex, there was an era where mechanically-augmented people started to flourish in society before the event of nano-augmented people. The distinction lies in the fact that nano-augmentations are invisible and the mechanical augmentations are not. We thought it would be an interesting thematic to explore from both a gameplay perspective (seeing how your character evolves) and from an ethical/moral perspective (the benefits & dangers of such a world where some can afford to get augmented while others can’t).

One of the major aspects of our story revolves around the social conflict between augmented and non-augmented people. In our story, there are people opposed to augmenting the body, since they see it as unnatural and don’t think scientists should play God. On the other side, some people think it is the natural evolution of the human race and there’s no reason we shouldn’t be trying things like this, if it can enhance the quality of life or extend it. The game world itself will definitely reflect these opposing views so you will see a contrast depending on where you are in the game.

Will there be multiplayer? – ponkonwon

Jean-Francois Dugas : No, Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a single-player game only. Being the first project out of the new Eidos Montréal studio, and staying true to the Deus Ex legacy, the development team wanted to focus purely on the single-player experience to ensure we delivered on that front.

I remember the first game being completely open ended, If I wanted to try and kill an important character, I could do so, even if the character would probably be too powerful and kill me first. It made me feel like I had choices even when in reality i didn’t. Is the game going to pursue these open ended decision making elements of the first game? If so does this mean it will be a game with multiple paths to follow such as a game like heavy rain? – TheB-Rad-G

Jean-Francois Dugas : I’m currently playing Heavy Rain and I must say this is a fantastic experience. Even though Deus Ex: Human Revolution shares similarities in terms of “choices & consequences”, we offer a totally different game experience. But, yes, we want players to make choices that will affect some outcomes (story-wise and gameplay-wise).

Like the first game, our game world is designed around a multi-path, multi-solution approach so any objective can be approached in different ways. Whether you like action, stealth, hacking, or interacting with characters, you can complete objectives in different ways.

The two primary gameplay styles are combat and stealth. You can basically play the entire game by going “frontal” or by going “sneaky” and/or back and forth as you please. For us, it’s really about letting players express themselves the way they want. You can decide to play the game without killing anyone (minus some critical encounters), for example.

The two supporting gameplay styles are hacking and social interactions. You can expand your possibilities through these means in order to open up new paths, find new solutions to problems, acquire useful goodies or information, etc.

Open-ended gameplay allows the player to take advantage of multipath/multi-solutions to accomplish their objectives and explore the game world for side quests, hidden treasures, etc. Some RPG dialogs will be mandatory but most will be available to players in an optional form. Obviously there are benefits from a story and gameplay standpoint to talk to other characters but it’s not forced. If your play style is more centered on shooting, then so be it.
This method also rewards multiple play-throughs since by choosing one method over another, you may miss some interesting things that are accessible only by attempting specific things!

More from IGN

The European trademark office spilled the beans a bit early, but that doesn’t stop Sony from being excited about the PlayStation Move.

Speaking at Sony’s GDC press conference, Sony’s Peter Dille hyped up the Move, saying that “previous motion devices have used controller simply as pointer of mouse — ours becomes an extension of your body.”

“We’re approaching this like a virtual platform launch,” Dille continued, explaining that the Move will be available by itself, with the PlayStation Eye, which it will work in conjunction with, and as part of a special PlayStation 3 bundle.

No concrete pricing details were given, but the bundle with the PlayStation Eye was said to run under $99.

via Kotaku

IGN writes: “The most obvious change is the move to a hex-based map. While it was initially a bit jarring to jettison the age-old square tiles, the new format makes for maps that look much more natural. Rather than having lots of awkward right angles and confusion about whether water tiles joined only at the corner are passable, the new hexes make movement much clearer and remove the chance for diagonal movement exploits. The move to hexes was prompted by Jon’s love of the old SSI classic, Panzer General. Like that game, the new Civilization will only allow one military unit per hex, which eliminates the stacks of doom that have been such a franchise fixture. And since that means only one unit can garrison a city, combat has moved away from city sieges and instead focuses on movement and position outside of the cities.

Naturally, it’s not all about making war, so diplomacy has been overhauled as well. Diplomacy has a wider focus but has also been streamlined a bit. In terms of focus, the team wanted to create a game where the player’s main interactions weren’t always driven purely by competition. The inclusion of unaligned city states that can be used as leverage against larger powers helps move diplomacy in a new direction. By removing the religion and espionage systems, Firaxis hopes to focus diplomacy more on specific strategic situations and less on the exploitation of more arbitrary game elements.

The game has obviously also been influenced by Civilization Revolution for the consoles, particularly in terms of the overall interface. While the new game still maintains a level of complexity that’s appropriate for the series and the PC platform, the interface elements have been folded back to reveal more of the playing area. Likewise, the game will help players focus on the information they need to see. Small icons will appear along the edge of the screen to give players notifications of important events or opportunities, and you can instantly snap to any of the relevant locations to get your own appraisal of the situation.

It’s all an attempt to make the game more accessible without compromising on the depth or details. It’s also a great way to communicate information to the players without drawing them out of the game world or completely stalling the game’s progress. Additionally, if you haven’t set a research priority or a production order for one of your cities, the end turn button will instead take you to those screens.

Of course, not all of Civilization’s PC fans had a positive view of the broad style or humor of Revolution, so they’ll be happy to know that the designers are moving away from the silliness of the console game to create a more somber PC sequel. The game will still have the trademark Civilization personality, but it won’t be as exaggerated as in previous installments. The advisors are making a comeback, for instance, but won’t be pushing each other aside or shouting over each other.

It’s not surprising given Jon’s background that the new version of Civilization will be even more moddable than Civ IV. All the tools have been taken to a whole new level, so the more you know about XML and programmable DLL, the more you’ll be able to achieve with the game. More importantly, the game itself will contain a browser for full community interaction, so you can search for, discuss, install and rate mods all from within the game shell. Firaxis will maintain a small bit of control over this and will rely on player flags to evaluate objectionable content.”

Watch the Civillization 5 Intro Video