We previewed Test Drive Unlimited 2 back in April. Want to play it? How about beta testing it?

Well, you can sign up for that right now, so go ahead and do that. No word on which platforms it will be tested on — the game’s set for release on PlayStation3, Xbox 360, and PC — so cross your fingers it’s for your platform of choice. Or be prepared to run out and purchase whatever you’re missing if you get chosen to participate.

Atari also hasn’t specified when the beta would be start, but I’d envision it starts well before September 21, which is when the game is supposed to hit store shelves.

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We’re giving away two Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands fanpacks this week! The packs includes a copy of the latest entry to the Prince of Persia series from Ubisoft, a Prince of Persia beanie and a Prince of Persia iPhone protective skin.

To enter, simply leave a comment describing your first Prince of Persia experience with any of the Prince of Persia games that have been released to date. One entry per person and contest open to US residents only. We’ll be picking two randomly selected winners to giveaway the prizes packs to after the contest closes on Might 28 at 11:59PM CDT. Be sure to state which console you’d like Prince of Persia on when leaving your entry.

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I know what you’re thinking: Ugh, another Call of Duty. I’m not quite with you, but I do get it. Thankfully, what I saw of Treyarch’s latest, Call of Duty: Black Ops, looks absolutely fantastic. More importantly, it looks to be different enough to actually stand out among all the other CoD titles. No, really.

These impressions come from a session that was hands-off, mind you. But know that we did see quite a bit of game play, and our impressions will beat the hell out of watching a short teaser trailer and trying to pause the video to see all the details. We give you a full play-by-play, leaving no detail of Activision’s demo to the imagination.

Read on for our first impressions of Call of Duty: Black Ops.

First, know that Call of Duty: Black Ops takes place during the Vietnam war, and the game is staged in all the areas related to the war. You’ll play as the Elite Special Forces, and will take part in missions that have been kept under wraps, using weapons that have been heavily modified to get the job done. Knowing these things going in, I had a mental picture of what I expected the game to look like. Boy, was I absolutely off base!

A cinematic (real-time!) starts off at Beale Air Force Base in California. Air Force crew is working around the famed SR-71 “Blackbird” stealth craft. A man in a pilot’s helmet, Maj. Thomas, takes seat in the SR-71, and the game switches to a first-person cockpit view. A very loud roar (Activision set up a fantastic sound system for this demo) comes from the engines and then the Blackbird takes off. And you’ll control the flight here — fly with the left stick, pull back to increase altitude — and go up to some beautiful near-space visuals.

A bit further into this opening you’ll find yourself inside the Blackbird, looking at a screen showing some terrain, complete with a target indicator. You’re providing guidance to a squad on the ground with the right stick of the controller, with a nifty first-person view of hands working the plane’s controls all the while. You see troops move toward a residential home. The enemy looks to be pulling up in front of the home in vehicles; just in time, you inform your squad to take cover behind the house.

The screen fades to white and comes back with a first-person view of the grounds, as you’re now looking through the eyes of one of the squad members on the ground. You and several other men are holding on the ground, crouched in some of the most lovely videogame snow I’ve ever seen. One of the enemies comes up a hill on foot as snow falls heavily around him. In the background it looks close to blizzard conditions.

As the enemies pass by you, you set out with a crossbow equipped. The snow seems to have lessened and some beautiful lighting effects are in play here as sunlight shines through leafless trees, casting some very realistic shadows on the ground. You crawl to a guardhouse up the way, and as you do this the game kicks into high action. Suddenly you’re running through the deep snow, and then halting and diving into it for swift cover as you see one enemy that stayed in the guardhouse. You put your crossbow away for a sniper rifle. Looking through the scope, the one remaining enemy passes.

At this point in the game, it’s clear that Treyarch has really worked things out in the visual department. There’s some stunning work in this opening, to be sure. I watched on as snow was lightly picked up by a wind, pulling it off the ground and into a light and shiny fog. As you and your men secure the structure, you’ll look out over a vast valley where you can see miles of snow-capped mountains, lit by soft, cloudy sunlight.

You find that you’ll have to rappel down a hillside to progress. The game switches into a first-person view as you look over your shoulder, down at the ground to where your land point would be. I want to be clear on how scary this looks! The developers did a great job at making this look intimidating. You’ll hold the left trigger to push off the side of the cliff and rappel, and then hold RT to brake. And it’s not that easy to do, apparently, as the demonstrator slid down too fast, hit the ground too hard, and ended up dying. Back to the checkpoint!

After a successful try, you’ll rappel down into a window of an HQ that sits directly below your landing point. You plunge into the window in slow motion with your other men, guns a-blazing. After taking this sub-station you’ll make your way down a steep hillside with some even steeper stairs, all the way down the hill. A wind picks up and suddenly that’s all you hear as you head down toward a radar dish deeper in the valley. Again, some graphical muscle is shown here as sun shines through trees that are capped with snow, giving some glimpses of some nearly photo-realistic settings.

Some Russians are chopping wood at the bottom of the hill, so you snipe them out. Coming closer to the radar dish’s base, you’ll use a crossbow to take out enemies to keep things quiet. The same crossbow makes a large gas tank an easy and quiet target…until it explodes loudly. Because of this, Russians come pouring over a hillside with big gunfire. Blood splatters on the snow as you run for cover, with the booowheep of the radar constantly sounding in the background. You eventually make your way into the radar dish station and clean it out, giving you the opportunity to disable the station and complete your objective.

Just when you start to relax, you hear something very loud approaching from over the hill. The ground rumbles but the camera never looks back to see what it is. You can only run forward, and that brings you to a cliff. You’ve to jump off, and so you do, free falling, with your first-person goggle view freezing around the sides.

A second, shorter segment of the demo takes place in Hue City, Vietnam, in 1968, in a stage that Treyarch calls “Slaughterhouse.” You start in a helicopter, flying through a sky that’s an unsettling red and orange, lit with explosions, bombs, and machine gun fire. Again, the rappelling control comes into play as you jump out of the chopper, working to avoid enemy fire. The chopper gets hit as you try to escape it, and it crashes into a building’s window, dropping you right inside the war that is taking place on the ground.

Inside what looks to be some kind of office overrun with Vietnamese soldiers, you find one of the game’s new weapons, an incendiary gun that uses “Dragon’s Breath” shells. The huge power of these shells makes it pretty easy to make your way through this burning building. As you progress you hear an announcement in Vietnamese. Translated, it states that they’re rounding up civilians for execution.

You make your way into very, very heavy gunfire and explosions, forcing you to fight and defend yourself in tight quarters. Some of the explosions (and your shots) are so huge that they blow holes through walls. Fluorescent office lights sway from the roofs as you shoot over to a heavily overrun second story clearing. Making your way outside, you’ll fight to approach a landing zone. That’s easier said than done, because the gunfire is insanely dense.

You find a soldier in a ditch and take his radio to call in a helicopter strike on the side of the building you’ve just exited. Helicopter machine guns rip the side of this building to shreds in an extraordinary display. Soon you hear the rumble of a tank rolling behind the low-flying copter. The tank shows its spray-painted nickname, “Bottom Feeder,” as it rolls through Hue City, slowly demolishing the city street alongside the helicopter.

Even if you’ve had your fill of Call of Duty games or even first-person war games in general, it’s hard to imagine the gameplay we saw not impressing. Other than the setting, what’s most notable is that the weapons and combat approaches are unconventional when compared to your typical war setting. Being that you’re following the story of the Elite Special Forces in the Vietnam war in this game, the tone seems to lean more towards getting things done in whatever way possible, and this means altered weapons and more stealthy approaches.

We need to see much more of Black Ops to make a solid call, but I have no problem saying that what we did see was very impressive. War has never looked so inviting to me.

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Transformers: War for Cybertron has been met with a healthy dose of skepticism by the perpetually cynical hardcore gamer. After being stung in the past by poor Transformers games, people have been wary of getting too excited over this latest game, despite how promising it looks. We asked High Moon Studios’ Matt Tieger whether it’s been difficult to sway public thought, and he wasn’t shy in expressing the challenges of PR.

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Holy crap, that was fast!

Released just over a week ago, Trauma Team

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Transformers has a hardcore fanbase. A really hardcore fanbase. I consider myself a fan of the franchise, but I’m only a casual appreciator who has his favorite robots and sticks to them. Some of these guys are crazy, and with such a zealous set of fans, I had to ask High Moon Studios how it’s dealing with the pressure as it develops War for Cybertron.

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I’ve what’s a good news/potentially bad news situation on my hands here. Yesterday, SEGA announced another set of Wii and DS Sonic

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The answer is yes.

Sound off in the comments!

Oh, I have to write more? Shoot. Okay, I will elaborate on why this is, but just know that there won’t be some kind of surprise ending at the conclusion of this feature. The “yes” may turn into a “YES!”, but, other than the enlarged typing, my opinion will not be swayed. NOT BE SWAYED, I TELL YOU!

In our perfect 10 review of Super Mario Galaxy 2, fellow editor and object of my man crush Dale North excitedly called the Wii sequel the “Best Mario Game Ever!” Obviously I agree with this. But I think it is even more than that. For me, Super Mario Galaxy 2 is the greatest platformer ever made. The best. The #1 platform game of all time. No question.

I know saying things are the “best thing ever” is a daily occurrence for me — just today I have already eaten the best bowl of cereal ever, heard the best song ever, and even drove down the best street I have ever driven on — but don’t let my hyperbole-fueled views diminish your trust in my positive opinions. Although I tend to get excited about everything (did I mention this keyboard I am typing on right now is INCREDIBLE?!), when I mean business, I mean business. And with Super Mario Galaxy 2, I mean business. Serious business.

So, why is Galaxy 2 the best platformer ever created? And what makes a platformer a platformer? Hit the jump for the reasons I think Super Mario Galaxy 2 is pretty much the perfect package. (Also check the end of the post for a bonus list of my top ten favorite platformers of all time!)

The definition of a platformer

What exactly is a platformer? Originating in the ‘80s, the term simply describes videogames involving jumping on, well, platforms (e.g. the original Super Mario Bros., Adventure Island, etc.). The definition may sound overly basic — and, sure, there are more complex sub-genres such as Mega Man and Castlevania — but that’s pretty much the best way to describe what a platform game is and should be.

In a way, the aforementioned sub-genres are part of the problem, one of the reasons the definition gets a little muddled. A lot of platformers now are becoming more complicated, with a heavy reliance on weapons and back-tracking. Not to say that is a bad thing, but with more and more games combining multiple genres, one can start to miss the pure, unadulterated fun of just grabbing a controller, running towards a set goal, and jumping over multiple obstacles.

That’s why Mario games are so great. Even after all these years they like to stick to the basics. Mario may find a variety of power-ups during his adventures, but the games he stars in don’t veer too far from what a platformer should be all about: mainly jumping from one platform to another.

Mario is the king of the genre!

The original Super Mario Bros. is arguably the most famous platformer ever made. And although Mario has been featured in many, many different games over the years, his best appearances are still in platformers.

While there have been a couple of missteps along the way (despite how much I enjoy it, Super Mario Sunshine is rather sloppy when compared to typical Mario standards), the traditional Mario platformers have all refreshingly stuck to the basic rules of what makes a true platformer so great.

Because of this, Mario will always be the king of the genre. While other games that started as platformers moved on to different things (Jak & Daxter comes to mind), Mario trusts its core gameplay and remains wonderfully retro.

The rules of platforming

For a platformer to be a real platformer, it needs to avoid certain things and, more importantly, follow a set of rules.

1. Jumping has to be the primary gameplay focus
2. Levels needs to be mostly linear (no backtracking and open-worlds allowed!)
3. Level design is of the utmost importance

Knowing these rules, some games considered by some people to be platformers really aren’t: Cave Story, Super Metroid, Castlevania, even Mega Man. As much as I love these games, they fall more into the sub-genre of platformers, as there are many focuses outside of just jumping through levels. Cave Story and Super Metroid are full of backtracking in an open-world structure and Castlevania relies too much on weapon collection and defeating enemies. Heck, the jumping in the original Castlevania is so frustrating and hard to manage, calling it a platformer is almost a knock to the genre! A platformer with bad jumping is like a cupcake with Vegemite frosting. It doesn’t work (and makes me throw up a little just thinking about it).

But why do all these specifics matter? Well, they really don’t — a good game is a good game regardless — but it helps to understand what a platformer really is to understand why Super Mario Galaxy 2 is the best the genre has ever seen.

Why Super Mario Galaxy 2 = the ultimate platformer

So let’s apply these rules to Super Mario Galaxy 2!

1. Jumping has to be the primary gameplay focus
Outside of the analog stick on the nunchuck, the “A” button on the Wiimote (a.k.a. the jump button) is easily the most used button in Super Mario Galaxy 2. Why is this? BECAUSE THE GAME IS ALL ABOUT JUMPING, as a platformer should be!

Every single level in Galaxy 2 involves some form of precise jumping from one platform to another. Whether it is a literal floating platform like in the old Mario games, a massive flying spaceship, or an orbiting planet, jumping from one thing to another is the game’s primary action.

2. Levels needs to be mostly linear (no backtracking and open-worlds allowed!)
The best platformers (and maybe all true platformers) separate their games into completely individual levels. Even when platformers moved into the 3D realm and simple left to right movement evolved into a free-roaming paradise — such as the revolutionary Super Mario 64 or Banjo-Kazooie — their main levels still remained separate entities (e.g. Tick Tock Clock in Mario 64; Treasure Trove Cove in Banjo).

With Super Mario Galaxy 2, this rule most definitely applies. There may be a few stars you can collect on the same level or instances when replaying the same stage will yield further rewards, but the entire game is separated into dozens and dozens of completely separate, completely varied levels.

3. Level design is of the utmost importance.
Most importantly, what separates a good platformer from a genius one is the level design. And this is where Super Mario Galaxy 2 shines. I would comfortably go so far as saying Super Mario Galaxy 2 has the best, most creative level design in the history of videogames. It really is that good.

Each level in the game is a true master class in design. Just when a sequence would blow my mind with its creativity (Spin-Dig Galaxy), another level would come along and impress even more (Flip-Swap Galaxy) … and then impress even more (Beat Box Galaxy) … and even more (Chompworks Galaxy) … and then even more (Melty Monster Galaxy).

By the time the game was over I was exhausted by how much fun I had. It truly left me wondering how Nintendo is even going to think about topping this game with future titles.

Let’s imagine all of Nintendo’s brilliantly creative ideas are kept in a jar. In my mind, this jar was not only emptied into Super Mario Galaxy 2, the game’s designers actually took their fingers and soaked up every last ounce of creativity along the edges, like hungry people do when trying to get that last bit of peanut butter.

Nintendo always manages to surprise me, so I am sure their next Mario game will be stunning, but, man, it is hard to wrap my head around how Galaxy 2 could ever be topped.

_{Random editor’s note: I LOVE THIS LEVEL!}

The great comparison!

To prove my point even more about Super Mario Galaxy 2 being the best platformer ever created, let’s look at a (semi-random) list of other excellent, timeless platformers … and how Galaxy 2 manages to school them all.

Banjo-Kazooie
The original Banjo-Kazooie is an incredible, expansive platformer with some of the best music on the Nintendo 64.
Why SMG2 is better: As charming as the levels are in Banjo, Galaxy 2 takes things up a hundred notches. And I would never, ever criticize the addictive music of Banjo-Kazooie … but the gorgeous full orchestrations that score Super Mario Galaxy 2 are beyond incredible.

N+
One of the most challenging and skilled-based platformers ever made, N+ flourishes in its remarkable simplicity and daunting design.
Why SMG2 is better: N+ is definitely more challenging than Super Mario Galaxy 2, but Galaxy 2 rewards its player with more organic level design and a much fairer learning curve. Also, variety!

Drill Dozer
Drill Dozer may have not been played by many people (for shame!), but the Game Boy Advance game is an incredibly solid platformer. It is so old-school that it feels like it could have been released on the Super Nintendo — which is most definitely a good thing.
Why SMG2 is better: Again, Drill Dozer is great, but Super Mario Galaxy 2 does everything better. EVEN STUFF WITH A DRILL!

All the other Mario games
Super Mario Galaxy 2’s biggest competition, funny enough, comes from all the other platform games in the Mario series. They are all fantastic in their own ways, but …
Why SMG2 is better: … Super Mario Galaxy 2 seems to combine the best of each of them. I can’t fault Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, or even the original Super Mario Galaxy on any level — they are all absolutely perfect games — but everything they do great Galaxy 2 just does a little better. Every wonderfully creative stage from all of the old Mario games is topped during one of the many varied, instant classic stages in Galaxy 2.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 really is the new standard for what all platformers should be.

The gauntlet is thrown down!

Okay, now it’s your chance to tell me what you think. I welcome the inevitable disagreements about my bold declaration, but, before you hit the comments, think about the giant smile on your face I know you had when playing a large majority of Super Mario Galaxy 2. Think about how many times your jaw dropped at some of the game’s staggering level design.

It’s pretty hard to argue the game isn’t the perfect (and best!) platformer.

Let’s discuss! If you do disagree, what other platformer do you think is better and why? What do you think of Super Mario Galaxy 2 in general? Do you think it deserves its current place as the highest rated videogame of all time? And where would you rank it on a list of your favorite platformers?

BRING IT ON!

———-

BONUS LIST!

For the curious (and as promised before the jump), here is a list of My Top Ten Favorite Platformers of All Time! (Keep in mind I took out all sub-genre titles, including Mega Man 2, amongst others.)

1. Super Mario Galaxy 2
2. Super Mario Galaxy
3. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island
4. Super Mario Bros. 3
5. Super Mario World
6. New Super Mario Bros. Wii
7. Banjo Kazooie
8. Super Mario 64
9. Drill Dozer
10. N+

What do you think?

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Earlier this month, Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. 2 was announced. Besides carrying the same ridiculous name as its predecessor, tiny about the flight game was mentioned. Jump forward to the present, where we now have a boatload of information.

As someone who didn’t play much of H.A.W.X., here’s what seems most interesting to me as far as the sequel is concerned: mid-air refueling, which sounds both frustrating and somehow cool; controllable UAVs; and there’s now taking off and landing as well.

Part of me hopes that last part will be designed like Top Gun for the NES — it should be impossible for the majority of players and leave everyone feeling miserable. On such a cheerful note, look for more on H.A.W.X. 2 as we inch closer to its fall release for Xbox 360, Computer, Wii, and PlayStation 3.

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