Larry is a Level Designer at Sledgehammer, the Activision owned developer who worked on MW3.  Previously he was a level designer at Spark Unlimited, and was involved in Lost Planet 3 (soon to be released).

Post your questions below, or email them to steven.gurevitz@gioteck.com. We can’t promise all we be used, but we will send a good selection, even though it’ll be upto Larry which he answers. COD related questions about future products we suspect might get the silent treatment

Ask about what the job involves, views on games (FPS titles perhaps!), future consoles. Just post them below, or email them.

The BEAST

The replacement for the 360 is now public. After many rumours, we have at last seen the new console, it’s controller and updated Kinect. As expected Microsoft spent a lot of time talking about anything OTHER than games. The Xbox One is an all encompassing entertainment device which is meant to dominate your TV and living room.

The signal from your TV or Cable box will go into the Xbox, which will then be able to switch channels and supplement shows with new functionality all via voice, controller or hand gestures. The console is powerful enough for you to be able to watch a film and then split the screen with a game playing on the other side of your TV (you’ll want a 50 inch or larger set for this methinks!). IGN is reporting that the TV side of things will be US only at launch and then will go global later. Of course it might never go global, see Nintendo’s WiiTV service outside the USA? Nope, neither do we. Still Microsoft has more chance than Nintendo as they have many more resources to throw at the problem.

It has Skype, available all the time, without having to pause or suspend any activity. Skype will include multi-video chat.

It’s been confirmed that the console WILL play games too. Below are some bullet points covering all we know:

• Achievements and Gamerscores will carry over to the new console.
• It’s NOT backwards compatible. So you’ll be keeping that 360.
• Games are digital releases, with some also on discs.
• Games will be tied to the user account in some way.
• There will be a second hand trade, but no one knows how it will work.
• There is a BlueRay Drive.
• It’s REALLY big. Like, HUGE. Microsoft clearly have already decided they won’t sell any in Japan.
• Kinect can now pick up your voice really clearly, and can pick up subtle body motions such as wrist and arm rotations.
• Kinect supports more gestures. These look quite strange…
• The system has Skype, can Multi-Task, and does all of it whilst looking really BIG.
• Did I mention it’s REALLY BIG?!
• Xbox is keeping it’s timed exclusives on COD game DLC.
• Xbox One is getting exclusive FiFa14 Ultimate Team content. What that means in reality we don’t know.
• The controller is pretty much the same. Couple of menu related buttons added to the front. D-Pad more Nintendo like. They tell us there are over 40 changes. One obvious one is there is now Rumble in the actual control sticks as well as in the main body.
• It’s called the Xbox One. It has a 500 Gig hard drive (that might change) and you cannot swap it out. You can add additional storage via USB 3.0.

That’s it for now folks. Expect more details at E3. Microsoft have said it’ll be out this year, globally. However that’s quite vague. So maybe we will get that and pricing options (and maybe packages) at E3.

Xbox, (the) one and only…..

Let’s break down what FUSE is, in terms of genre, background and expectations. It’s a third person, cover based shooter, with group dynamics. It’s produced by Insomniac, known for the Resistance franchise AND Ratchet and Clank (not a bad pedigree for a developer). It’s for PC, Xbox and PS3, and will be out very shortly. In this ‘dry patch’ of releases, you might be tempted to buy this game. We will be delivering a review, but we have played the demo and wanted to share our initial thoughts.

So the best way to reference the gameplay in FUSE is Vanquish+Left for Dead+Uncharted Co-Op+Gears of Wars+RPG. The game looks nice, but is nothing special. Coming this late into a console’s life cycle you would hope that it would stand out a little, and whilst it doesn’t look bad, it doesn’t look amazing. One of the early scenes involves a tiny bit of climbing up a rock face, jumping between ledges. It’s clumsy, and if we take Uncharted as the benchmark of this type of gameplay, then FUSE is well off the mark. This was a tiny scene, and one hopes there is little vertical climbing in the final game.

The enemies are very repetitive in their looks, except for the two end of level big bosses we encounter in the demo. Whilst the average enemy is pretty dumb, the end of level bosses chased intelligently, and have some super cool tricks up their sleeves (such as the ability to vanish and reappear elsewhere on the map).

In the demo we are allowed to experience 3 areas of play. Each is in effect a small ‘map’. The game feels boxy as a result, rather than an open flowing environment (even if that environment is broken up into segments as in Uncharted or Gears of War). However, the environments Insomniac place us in have lots of blind spots and LOTS of Gears of War style cover. Whilst the average enemy soldier lacks the AI of the big bosses, they make up for it in numbers, and by covering lots of angles and multiple vertical levels it creates a challenge purely from the number of positions from which they can pick you off.

Moving between cover is easy, and this is where the group play starts to make sense. There are four characters, each with a very distinct choice of weapons. We have your typical close quarter specialists, snipers (and healers) and general purpose soldiers, and ‘tank’ type character able to soak the damage. Some of the special weapons are pretty cool, with deployable shields, guns that turn enemies into statues for a short period of time, or weapons that create black holes around enemies and suck them to oblivion. In addition, as is the fashion these days, it’s possible to level up your character and abilities.

Combine the cover system, the multi-angled maps, and the distinct roles of the four soldiers and you have a nice strategic challenge. The game can be played single player, allowing you to switch between the different soldiers, but this felt pretty lifeless and the game AI, whilst not ‘stupid’, didn’t seem very human. The demo came to life when we entered a quickmatch with three team mates via Xbox Live. This is where the title felt like Uncharted, with players supporting each other, reviving each player as a real team would.

There is a narrative, but in the short space of the demo it felt flat. I think the game is going to go for a Battlefield Bad Company vibe with the characters all being a wee bit dodgy, but with circumstance bringing them together to take on the bad guys. So expect lots of gags and one liners throughout. However we will have to wait for the full game to see if Insomniac have achieved  the type of narrative depth witnessed in Gears of War and Uncharted.

So to summarise, FUSE is shaping up to be a credible, team based shooter. It doesn’t look like it’s going to one of those end of generation games which showcase what old hardware can do (that’ll be ‘The Last of Us’), but it does look like it’s going to be a lot of fun, if played online. Watch out for the review to see if it can sustain that fun for more than 20 minutes….

Game Director, David Goldfab says, ” We have a bit of a problem here at Overkill – there are just too many great ideas and none that we were really happy to throw out – so PAYDAY 2 has become just too big to reserve release on Xbox Live® and PlayStation®Network alone.”

Clearly they think the game is good enough to reach a wider audience. Whilst many of us now follow the PSN and Xbox weekly digital updates,  many consumers still buy physical product, and only use online for game connectivity. We saw a preview of the game, and whilst we will reserve judgement till it’s out, it’s clear that the game deserves to be seen by a wide audience, and that many will like it’s ‘cop and robbers’ gameplay.

The game is still due out in August, via Steam for PCs and online and through stores for PS3 and Xbox. No news on whether there will be a Vita version (that would be a great idea if anyone from 505 games are reading this….), or any for other soon to be released platforms…

Keep your eyes peeled to see more information about Payday2 here on the Gioteck blog.

The store update was small this week, but small is sometimes beautiful. There was a nice selection of quality content posted by Sony. Let’s pick out the highlights.

Firstly do you remember the cult hit Velocity, a PSP/PS3 mini? Not many people do, as not enough played it. It was a superb space shooter, vertical scrolling game with a cool gameplay dynamic. The game area was divided into many segments by barriers and as well as shooting, dodging and collecting you had to use the square button to target an area of the screen to ‘teleport’ to as you went along to avoid the barriers. It looks good, had amazing music, played well and the core game mechanic was very refreshing. Carrying out speed runs was a superb challenge. Now we have a Vita only version. Upgraded, graphics are the main draw point here along with twin stick controls, so shooting now goes in all directions. The music is AMAZING. NOTE: PS Plus owners get this 100% free.

The long awaited (and long been in BETA) multi-player only FPS DUST was launched. This has been in Beta for ages, and brings a traditional, space based FPS game into the world of the MMO. DUST is linked to Eve, with the gameplay having an affect on the many fleets above you in space, or visa versa. Wasn’t blown away with the beta, as it seemed clunky and over complicated. However, that was a beta and this is for real. One suspects that the game might do better on the PS4 and was pushing the PS3 to it’s online limits. Still, it’s free to play, powered by microtransations. So you have no excuse really.

Metro, a chilling, post end of the world FPS game was released. This was an ex THQ published title, and most reviews seem to think it’s pretty decent. Expect to see a full review on our site soon enough. It looks lovely, is full of atmosphere and is well worth a look.

In addition check out Terraria. This we have already reviewed. It’s an awesome 2D version of Minecraft, but with it’s own unique character. PS3 owners can’t get Minecraft anyhow, so this is a great way of having a similar experience if you feel left out. In addition for those who like the idea of Minecraft but want something easier to process (as it’s not 3D), this is for you. It’s an open world, build em up, with unicorns, zombies and all sorts of wee beasties to overcome and protect yourself from.

For those that missed it and don’t have a PS2 in the house, Manhunt is released as a PS2 digital download. Controversial at the time of it’s original release due to it’s high levels of violence. It’s creepy, malicious and fascinating.

Whilst DLC is never that excited, every so often something comes along which is amazing. The Knifes of Dunwall for example for Dishonored. This week COD, Black Ops 2 players get Uprising a Zombie infested update. It looks pretty meaty!

That’s it for now folks!

Gioteck have sponsored our first gamer. Her name is Stephanie Fouche, she’s 25 and is from Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa! She is the first female gamer in SA to be sponsored by Gioteck and Apex Interactive. She has been kitted out with Gioteck controllers, headsets, cables, chargers etc, and we are looking to her to provide feedback on the gear from a female point of view. We are definitely looking for other ladies in light of creating the first female sponsored team.

Let’s learn a little bit about Stephanie from Stephanie herself…

“I prefer console gaming (Play Station) and my psn id is: steph1401.

I come from a family where I was by far the youngest. My older siblings always played Gameboy and then PS1, so of course I played too. A few years past till a friend of mine got completely addicted to ps2, so I started playing with him. Two weeks later I had convinced my dad to buy me the ps2 slim-line and my favourite game of all time Mortal Kombat Deception.

Years later my boyfriend decided to sell his Xbox and get a PS3… lets just say I ended up buying him all the games I wanted to play.

I played on his account till BF3 came out, and I became an online gaming addict. I created my own profile and took over his ps3 completely, till eventually it was clear I had to get my own, so I did.

I joined one of South Africa’s most amazing clans the “NiNE iNCH NiNJAS” where I met some great people! Some of these guys became like family. We had good times and built great friendships.

After about a year with NiN I decided to make some changes and made a move to another top South African clan called LegionSAClan. It was a big change for me and it wasn’t easy, but Legion has a bunch of really awesome guys, and I love playing side by side with them! Legion is a competitive RSA clan that absolutely kicks ass! We have a lot of laughs, we know when to have fun and when to be serious.

As for me, there is no uncompetitive bone in my body, I have a need to compete and I hate losing.  I have set myself certain goals in BF3 and achieved most of them already. I am currently ranked the nr 1 player in RSA for Assault, AEK-971, G18 SUPP. as well as nr 3 for ACB-90. Overall score I am also ranked nr 3 in RSA, and I have my Assault service star 100 dog tags.

The funniest moments are those where you join a server and all you hear is “OMG is that a girl I hear” or  “See I told you Steph’s a girl” its like its so unbelievable…  Well guess what guys, girls do play video games, and we kick ass too.

I play BF3 most of the time, as the game has completely gripped me and taken over all my spare time lol. I do play Call of Duty, Resident Evil, Far Cry, Crysis, Mortal Kombat, Need for Speed, Uncharted, Tomb Raider to name a few.

You can get to know a bit more about me on

battlelog: http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/user/steph1401/

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYFWA3ierWbfeJrXdBhlsOg“

Help us name it. Please send ideas to @GioteckArmy and we will have a facebook competition to pick the final name from a filtered list.

You can listen and download it from HERE

Apex, our partners in South Africa have teamed up with us to offer a competition to all our South African fans. We are giving away a copy of Dead Island Riptide (format of the winner’s choice, but if on PC itll be a Steam code) and an EX-05 wireless headset.

This is open only to residents of South Africa. You must be 18 years old or older to enter.

To win you need to follow both @ApexIntSA AND @GioteckArmy.  Then TWEET ” @ApexIntSA & @gioteckarmy R giving away a Gioteck EX-05 Wireless Headset with a copy of Dead Island Riptide! Retweet & Follow both 2 enter!”

We shall pick a winner on Monday the 17th 2013 1900 UK time.

So for PS Plus owners it was a good month, albeit a slightly creepy one. Sony decided to bestow on it’s subscribers Hitman Absolution, a cracking title where you get to kill people in all sorts of creative ways. One of Square Enix’s under performing titles of recent times, but quite a cream cracker. A must download and play.

Alongside being able to kill people in many questionable ways, Sony continued to offer ways to corrupt a gamer’s morals by offering Catherine. It’s a strange adventure game about relationships and where all the screenshots seem to involve cleavage. Not one to be playing whilst your kids are sitting next to you perhaps.

The last title to be 100% free to PS Plus owners is Malicious. It’s a game set in a mystical, and medieval, steam punk land. Quite a genre mash up in that sentence! Imagine Dynasty Warriors, meets PS Vita’s ‘Gravity Rush’, meets Vanquish but with swords along with the art imagination of that guy who wrote Alice in Wonderland…. Clear enough? Try it, it’s free! Incidentally it’s only £6.49 if you are not a PS Plus subscriber and want to work out what on earth I’m on about…

As for the main store update, here are our highlights:

Did you grow up in the 1980s and early 90s and miss bad films such as Tango and Cash, Universal Soldier and other notable titles? Well then you need to play Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon. Built using the Far Cry 3 engine, this is a stand alone title, which is a homage to all things cheesy and 1980s including; Battlestar Galactica Cylon style voice acting for the baddies, VHS tapes AND bad colour schemes. You don’t need Far Cry 3 to run the game, but the PSN store has a deal if you want to buy both together.

Zombie Tycoon 2 is out, for both the PS3 and Vita, which offers a funny RTS game where for once you get to control the Zombies as they take on the humans. The first title was largely overlooked, but hopefully the sequel will get some love.

In addition if you like going round in circles, if you like going round in circles, if you like… hold on a minute! Yes on the PS store is ‘Nascar Inside Line’. A game for people who like going around in circles….. I don’t know much about Nascar, but a quick use of google confirms my slightly biased view on the sport, see here…

Machinarium: The PS Vita gets Machinarium. If you haven’t played this then you probably don’t own a tablet, PC, Mac, calculator or abacus. It’s been on almost all major platforms for ages now. However, it’s been improved (so say the developers) for Vita, is only £4.79 and will probably look lovely on that large OLED screen. So if you haven’t played it, take a peek. It’s a traditional adventure title with beautiful hand drawn art. Check out the details here.

Lastly, continuing this decent PSVita blow out we have the quirky, and rather Japanese Soul Sacrifice. Think Gravity Rush, meets Monster Hunter, meets typical Japanese third person adventure game/brawler. It’s a major release for the Vita so it shouldn’t be overlooked on the basis that there are very few major releases on the Vita at present. It’s had decent reviews across the board so why not take a look? Go on.

Of course you probably didn’t buy your PSVita to play games like Soul Sacrifice or even Fifa. Nope you bought it to play Farming Simulator out now for £6.49! Here is a screenshot! Enough said…

Other than that we have a range of DLC and other content to download. Them are our highlights for the week that was. Enjoy!

Defiance has been out for a little while now which has allowed us to play the game since various patches have been applied. It’s safe to say that now the experience is pretty robust and consistent. So let’s discuss and break down the experience we have enjoyed thus far!

Firstly, we have been playing the PS3 version and we can’t vouch for how the Xbox or PC version performs. In addition whichever edition you boot up, be prepared as you should expect multiple updates and patches when you first put the game into the machine. It’s an MMO and these patches are ongoing, so be prepared. This isn’t a problem with the game, but the genre, and as this game is designed to reach out to those who have never played an MMO it’s something be aware of. We are not discussing small updates, as with Battlefield or Black Ops, but large downloads. Those of you with fast broadband or fibre will be fine of course.

The game itself is set in a universe, which is also currently being explored in a new SyFy tv series. It’s set on Earth after a a devastating war between Humans and Invading/immigrating aliens. There is now a basic truce between the alien and human survivors. The two story arches overlap to some degree and events in the game can affect the outcome of the tv series. For example there will be missions in the game featuring characters from the TV show, and sometimes there will be events in the game which can effect the show’s story line. Your character could even end up featuring in the show based upon your actions in the game. However as the game is in the San Francisco bay area and the tv show in St Louis, there is only so much one can affect the other.

So now to the actual game itself. Lets break it down in parts. The game plays as a third person shooter. So is it a GOOD third person shooter? Well, firstly there is no cover system, as in Gears of War or Uncharted. What there is though, is a nice crouch dynamic and a landscape is full of cover, hills, rocks and buildings. Hiding behind them or under the crest of a hill really will allow you to avoid taking damage. The shooting itself is satisfying, and there is a huge range of weapons to utilise.

There are vehicles too, which you’ll need as the gameworld is pretty huge. You can call them at will, and they appear out of nowhere, like a mount in World of Warcraft. The vehicle’s controls are little wonky as far as I’m concerned. They are not broken though, and they will probably be improved with patches as time goes on. Movement on foot is fine, and you can sprint at a fair pace (faster if using some of the ‘EGO’ enhancements), however it is strange that you can fall from any hight and not take any damage. This breaks the ‘real world’ feel a little and takes you out of the game.

Missions vary, but generally involve going from point A to point B, securing a location by killing anything in site, and then holding down the square button over an object to fix it, open it, close it, switch it on etc. However, the missions in Defiance are there to allow you to level up, explore the world and more importantly expose more of the story. Remember this is a game with a strong narrative, alongside it’s TV relative, and the missions are there to allow you to progress through the story arc, timelines and character relationships.

You can customise your character by choosing from a range of classes. In addition you can choose certain ‘powers’, such as speed and cloaking amongst others. As you progress you can enhance and unlock more powers by utilising the skill tree. As you progress through the game you’ll get loot, and weapons. Shields, guns (lots of guns – it’s a bit like Borderlands in that respect) all of which encourage you to play that little bit more, and carry out one more mission.

There is a PVP mode. It’s like a discrete competitive multi-player mode. There is a domination mode alongside a team deathmatch type experience. Both are worth checking out, and as the computer AI is generally quite weak (with the game utilising swarming as a way of upping the challenge) it makes a nice change of pace fighting other people.

The main game features many co-op levels, and co-op in this game works very organically. For sure you can join a guild/clan, and plan and help each other. However, you can also just tag along to events happening around you, the most thrilling being when an ‘arkfall’ event takes place. This is when a kind of power source falls from the heavens triggering an intense battle between the players and mutant alien creatures. Should you stumble across one of these you’ll be sure to find many other players at the same point, working together.

Visually the game is nothing special. In many respects one feels that this is a game which would really benefit from the ‘next gen’ consoles. The graphics though are serviceable, and the cut scenes good enough to convey the story, alongside some decent voice acting. The weak link with the voice acting is your ‘AI companion’ EGO who is a pain in the butt, and ranks alongside Jar Jar Binks as the most annoying fictional character ever.

For those who have always wanted to play a MMO, but just couldn’t hack how MMOs played, this is a great, vast story driven game which is a blast to play. It’s not particularly excellent in any area, gameplay, graphics, sound etc but it manages to draw you in. Watch the tv show, either weekly, or the opening two parter (which was free on PSN at the time of writing) and it’ll help create a nice backstory and add atmosphere to the events in the game. DCUO promised a degree of third person action, set in a MMO framwork on consoles (well on the PS3), but it still largely had traditional MMO fighting and controls. Defiance makes you feel that you are winning and losing due to your shooting skills with the powers and enhancements being just that – enhancements. They don’t swing the game too much in the favour of someone with 100 hours in the game. Even a newbie can join in and make a difference, or compete in PVP without feeling that they have to do another 30 hours of grinding before they can join in.

All in all I’ve enjoyed Defiance, and will stick with the game. I’ll want to level out the character and see how the story develops. It’s not game of the year, but it’s something I can sink my teeth into and feel I’m being rewarded for the time I put in. We recommend Defiance if you like sci-fi, shooting and have always fancied playing an MMO but just couldn’t put up with the controls and grinding.