A tumultuous development period for the next game in the long-running Spec Ops series has meant a number of delays and at least one reboot for the title, but developer Yager and publisher 2K Games are now finally ready to release Spec Ops: The Line in late June 2012 across Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.

Well ahead of the game’s release, El33tonline was given the opportunity to take an extended look at this third-person action shooter and to see for ourselves how Yager has managed to present its version of Dubai - a city ravaged by vicious sandstorms and currently entrenched in a bloody, politically-charged warzone.

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Dragon’s Dogma is nothing if not intriguing. A Japanese action RPG inspired by western RPG’s, it holds a lot of promise for me because I enjoy the combat mechanics of Japanese games and love a well implemented Western-style fantasy world. Because of this combination I have been following Dragon’s Dogma more closely than I do most games. I was recently able to get my hands on a review build for a few days, and after sinking perhaps six hours into the game my appetite has merely been whet, 25 May can’t come soon enough!

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Megarom, one of South Africa’s leading games distributors, recently invited press to attend a preview of a game ahead of its release in early August. Upon arrival at their offices, we were herded into a dark corner to have a first-hand look at the upcoming title by Square Enix aptly named Sleeping Dogs - will it be a sleeper hit or a break-out success?

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Resident Evil: Chronicles HD Collection gives players the chance to relive their early Resident Evil adventures or experience the horror for the first time. The collection includes Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles and Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles, and will be available exclusively for the PlayStation 3 as a digital download from the PlayStation Store this June. You’ll also be able to purchase the two titles individually at a later stage, both have been remastered for the PS3 with HD graphics and PlayStation Move compatibility.

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Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor was one of the games on display at last week’s Capcom Captivate event held in Rome. It definitely had the cool factor going for it because of the military dressed demonstrator, that and no one can deny that tanks are just plain awesome! Watching from the sidelines at first, it sure looked liked everyone was having fun so I was eager to step in and learn the finer points of driving a tank.

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Street Fighter X Tekken Vita was one of the titles that journalists gathered from all over the world were scheduled to see during last week’s Captivate event in Rome. What we didn’t know was that it would turn out to be the rowdiest and one of the most fun presentations of the entire event, due largely to the presence of Street Fighter X Tekken Producer, Yoshinori Ono.

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Set in the war torn world called Aarklash, your mission in Confrontation is to use the various factions of Akkylannians to confront the threat currently offered by the evil Alchemists of Dirz. The PC game is an adaptation of Confrontation the board game, and as such the story is very rich and the characters are well developed.

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This past weekend, March 23rd to March 25th, I had the pleasure of ‘attending’ the Guild Wars 2 Beta event and let me tell you, it was awesome. The game is every bit as good as I anticipated but… let me not get ahead of myself. Let’s start at the very beginning (it’s a very good place to start).

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It’s Diablo III. Not Diablo 3. Not D3. Not anything else. Diablo III.

It is not often that a game has such a strong following and so many people get the name wrong. It is also not often that a single game can have such a massive level of expectation and criticism aimed at it at the same time. But then, Blizzard is not just any developer, and Diablo III is not just any game and I recently had the chance to play through the early levels of the game as part of its on-going beta.

The town of Tristram in the land of Sanctuary has been cleansed of the demon hordes by the heroes of Diablo II more than twenty years before. In the process they have gone mad from their ordeal and it is now up to new heroes to take their place and, if you hadn’t guess by now, the foul demon undead creatures are back!

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In my mind previewing a game demo must be very similar to what it would be like to go on a blind date. In either situation you’ve been privy to some pertinent information to pique your interest enough to agree to give it a go without really knowing what to expect. You will either have a great time and want to do it again or you’ll run away at first sight. Of course, there’s also a possibility you end up somewhere in between those two extremes and you tentatively decide to go on a second date to dig a bit deeper.

The latter situation (somewhere in between) is more or less how my first encounter with Binary Domain panned out. The singleplayer demo isn’t the prettiest third-person shooter to hit the streets recently but it’s got a lot of character and I’d really like to get to know it better before I make up my mind whether or not to go steady.

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Street Fighter X Tekken isn’t out until March but I was lucky enough to get my hands on a preview build this past weekend. The game represents the first half of the collaboration between Street Fighter creators Capcom and Tekken creators Namco, with Capcom first out of the gate with Street Fighter X Tekken while Namco ramps up production on Tekken X Street Fighter.

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Mass Effect 3 is by far one of the most anticipated games for me this year, hosting the conclusion of Shepard’s tale in the Mass Effect universe, and I recently had the chance to play the game’s upcoming demo before its release on February 14th.

I knew the demo would be good. I knew the graphics would look better than before. I knew the action would be stellar. I also kind of assumed that none of the story would be given away. What I didn’t expect, however, was how much I underestimated the level of quality that would be present in the Mass Effect 3 demo - it blew me away and did nothing to help calm my expectations.

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Everybody knows that it’s best to play Resident Evil in the dark with the sound turned up. It’s just one of those things that every gamer intrinsically understands. Kind of like how we understand that ammo crates will be few and far between, you’ll need to watch out for frightening zombie dogs around every corner and that deep down we all still miss the typewriter save option.

And so it was with this knowledge that I set off on my newest adventure into a world of zombies and umbrellas…luckily for me I had a big gun, and the light switch was nearby in case I needed to switch it back on to calm my nerves for a moment.

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The Settlers Online starts out familiarly for anyone who’s played a Settlers PC game. You begin with an untouched, newly found piece of land. The Mayor’s House has already been built, presumably with resources brought across on the boats. The first thing you need is wood, so you build a fir wood cutter to start cutting down trees. Next you build a sawmill to convert the logs into planks that can be used to build with. You’ll also need to build a forester to ensure you don’t completely use up the forest without replanting. Each of these buildings takes a few minutes to build so you can do quite a bit of waiting around as they complete. If you want to you can pay 2 crystal to complete each building instantaneously. Crystal can be bought with real currency, so this is how the free-to-play game is intending to extract revenue from players.

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I didn’t play The Darkness so I was a bit unprepared for what I was about to experience in The Darkness II. Suffice to say I was creeped out pretty much immediately and it’s not often I can say something like that. After playing mostly kids games with my children I wasn’t mentally prepared for the violence and gore that The Darkness II displays. And, of course, one must not forget the evil undertone that the game has either.

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