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Top 15 Upcoming Video Games of 2012 [VIDEOS]


Here’s a list of the top 15 upcoming games of 2012.
Mass Effect 3 –
Scheduled for a March 6 release, Mass Effect 3 is the will witness the final chapter in the Mass Effect Trilogy and complete the story of Commander Shepard. The game is set to continue from where it left the Mass Effect 2 DLC expansion, Arrival, and will follow Shepard in his fight against the Reapers. This time the game’s combat has been refined and changed to give a more realistic look. Expect a new cover system and more options for moving around inside the arena. Be aware that the AI of the game this time has been drastically improved and a four player multiplayer co-op mode will also be available. Prepare to deal with Cerebus as well. Once you finish the game, a New Game+ option will be there so that players might continue playing after the main story ends.
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Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City –
Operation Raccoon City takes place during the events of Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3: Nemesis where the people of Raccoon City have been infected by the outbreak of the T-Virus. The game will allow you to make major "what-if" decisions such as killing Leon Kennedy, who is one of the main characters of Resident Evil 2 and also the protagonist of Resident Evil 4.
There are a total of six playable characters in the game – Vector, Beltway, Spectre, Four Eyes, Bertha and Lupo with each having their own unique abilities. If you get bitten by a zombie, the only way to respawn is by getting shot in the head by one of your team members whom you attack after your transformation. Additional enemies include Lickers, Tyrants and Hunters whom you can also control under certain circumstances.
 Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier –
Future Soldier takes place in Norway, the Middle East and Asia where Russia went into war. You shall be in charge of a 4-man Ghost team that will consist of a sniper expert (Pepper), an engineer (Boss), a commando (Kozak) and a reconnaissance expert (30k), and will fight the ultra-nationalist force that took control of Russia and are now attacking the neighboring countries.
A new feature, Optical Camouflage, has been introduced this time which is a form of an active camouflage which allows the Ghosts to become instantly invisible. The system also works with the Xbox Kinect which allows you to customize your gear. Voice control can also be used to create weapons in addition to movement of hands. According to writer Gabrielle Shrager, it is also possible to control drones.
Assassin's Creed III –
Nothing much is known about the third part of this very popular game. But in the previous interviews with some of Ubisoft Montreal's developers, it was revealed that Assassin's Creed III will release eventually.
The game will have an entirely new setting with a new playable character. According to Cory May, co-founder and President of Sekretagent Productions, a production company based in Los Angeles,California working in the film, video game, and internet industries, the new game will not take place during the World War II which was previously speculated.
Patrice Desilets, former series' creative director said that the new title shall focus on Assassins' quest to prevent the end of the world in 2012 and their race against time to find temples built by "Those Who came Before."
"In Assassin's Creed, we set up a timeline with this whole end of the world plot in December 2012... That's fast approaching, and the story we have to tell, we obviously need to do it before we arrive at that point. It would be stupid of us to be centering a game on a semi-reality and then have that conclusion happen after that date in real life," said Alexandre Amacio, game director of Assassin's Creed: Revelations.
Brothers in Arms: Furious 4 –
The Furious 4, which is set for a 2012 release, was unveiled at the E3 2011. The game will take a very different approach to the subject of World War II and will follow four wacky of an unnamed unit who will go after Hitler himself.
Although the title was previously compared to Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds, it is now clear that the game is an out-of-the-box combination of games like Borderlands and Bulletstorm.
The four protagonists of the game are Chok, a Native American soldier who uses hatchets to kill his enemies; Montana, a large lumberjack turned Nazi slayer who is armored with a chain gun; Crockett, a native of Texas who uses a cattle iron to brand fallen enemies; and Stitch, a mentally disturbed Irishman who shocks enemies with a custom made taser.
Halo 4 –
There is a still a lot to be found about Halo 4 which is the eight installment in the Halo franchise and is intended to be the first title in a brand new trilogy, the Reclaimer Trilogy. The game continues after the end of Halo 3 and witnesses the return of Master Chief and a more active participation of Cortana. Expect the game in the fourth quarter of 2012.
Far Cry 3 –
“Did I ever tell you the meaning of insanity?” This is enough to describe the game in one line. The game will take you back to the tropical island setting somewhere at the intersection of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Your only goal is to escape from the island which is filled with crazy and dangerous inhabitants.
The game will run on the Dunia Engine that previously powered Far Cry 2. You take up the character of Jason Brody, a tourist who has been stranded on an island chain that has been in the middle of a violent local conflict for many years and your enemy, according to the video, is Vaas, who is the insane leader of the group. More details are yet to be found.
Hitman: Absolution –
The fifth installment in the Hitman game series, Hitman: Absolution will run on the Glacier 2 Engine with a brand new gameplay feature. The only confirmed facts about the title state that this Agent 47 will have a close relationship with his handler, Diana Burnwood and the player will be able to set traps. A new instinct mode has been introduced, much like the Batman games’ detective mode and you will not be able to save the game manually anymore. A precise release date is yet to be announced.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive –
Global Offensive is targeted for release in early 2012 and will feature classic content, such as old maps, as well as brand new maps, characters and game modes. Everything remains the same but with a touch of improved graphics that will give it a more realistic look. Expect brand new weapons and improved AI to fight your guts out.
Uncharted: Golden Abyss –
Golden Abyss is set just before the events of uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and will only release for PlayStation Vita. It is said that the game will feature touch and motion based controls for navigation and aiming. More updates about the game are yet to be revealed by the developers. A Feb. 22 release date has been confirmed however.
Prey 2 –
Prey 2 will be presented in an open world format and will follow U.S. Marshal Killian Samuels, who starts the game on a passenger flight which crashes onto the Sphere that was shown in the original Prey. It later shows that Samuels is now a bounty hunter on the alien world Exodus and has practically no memory of what happened earlier. He is also destined to run into Domasi "Tommy" Tawodi (the protagonist of the original Prey).
Metal Gear Solid: Rising –
This time the "Tactical Espionage Action" will be opted out in favor of "Lightning Bolt Action" to describe Riaden’s, the protagonist, abilities in the game. Rising, supposedly, is an interquel set between the events of Sons of Liberty and Guns of the Patriots. The game will feature intensive hack and slash, which is more appropriately cutting down enemies into pieces and rejuvenating from the parts of the dispatched robots and cyborgs. A free slicing mode has been introduced to cut down the enemy in a very cruel manner.
Ninja Gaiden 3 –
The third part will explore Ryu's more human side as he descends into a hellish realm. It will deal with the sword of the Archfiend from Ninja Gaiden II. Ryu's right arm, which was previously cursed in Ninja Gaiden II, will play an integral role in the game's story, and due to this, he no longer wears his right gauntlet. His toes are now covered with metal that are to be used for his new Kunai Climb, that will enable Ryu to climb on to certain walls with the use of kunai and attack enemies from the above.
Prototype 2 –
Prototype 2 will feature a new protagonist, Sergeant James Heller, who is on a quest to destroy the Blacklight Virus. Heller is seeking revenge and wants to kill Mercer after his family was killed in the outbreak of the Blacklight Virus. Heller can do everything Mercer could in the previous game. The concept of BioBomb has been introduced where Heller can inject the virus into unsuspecting human enemies that will blow them up and anything near them. Tendrils now sprout from Heller's arm and can be used to smash objects into other objects, such as a car into a tank or vice-versa.
Diablo III –
Diablo III will take place in a Sanctuary which is a dark fantasy world of the Diablo series. This world was saved twenty years prior by a handful of unnamed heroes in Diablo II who, having survived the onslaught brought by the armies of the Burning Hells, have gone mad from their ordeals since. Now it is up to a new generation of heroes to face the forces of evil threatening the world of Sanctuary. The plot will revolve around two surviving Lesser Evils, Azmodan, Belial, and an artifact known as the Black Soulstone. The five accessible characters include the wizard, the witch doctor, the Barbarian, the monk and the demon hunter, who have their own specialities.

Batman: Arkham City (PC) has a ton of problems


Well! this is rather disappointing. After being delayed numerous times, the PC version of Batman: Arkham City that hit stores all across America yesterday has turned out to be broken. Ok so broken may be a strong word, but after a quick trip to the Steam as well as the Arkham City forums, you’ll see tons of posts illustrating Rocksteady’s failure at creating a solid PC port. This obviously is a huge letdown from Arkham Asylum that performed very well on PCs.
Y U No like PC gamers Rocksteady?
Y U No like PC gamers Rocksteady?


Perhaps the game’s biggest fault is that DirectX 11 support, its much touted feature completely decimates performance even on powerful rigs that can run games like Battlefield 3 with ease. Besides that, there have been tons of framerate, stuttering and lip-synching issues that have disappointed PC gamers, who’ve been waiting for this game since a month.

The problem is so widespread, Rocksteady themselves have acknowledged the issue and are frantically working on a patch to fix stuff, but obviously the damage has been done. We suggest you hold off on your purchase till this game gets fixed. Batman: Arkham City release for the PC in India tomorrow.

Nvidia prepping GTX 560 Ti with 448 CUDA cores


With the holiday season coming up, Nvidia is busy prepping an ‘improved’  version of the GeForce GTX 560 Ti to win back the performance crown from AMD. The new card dubbed, GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores, will feature 448 CUDA cores over the original card which had 384. Another thing that’s changed is the memory bandwidth which is now 320-bit instead of 256-bit and will feature 1.2GB of GDDR5 memory. Nvidia should be announcing this card on the 29th of this month, just in time for the holiday shopping spree.
Looks like a decent improvement
Looks like a decent improvement (Image Source)


Interestingly, it won’t be based on the GF114 core as the only GTX 560 Ti, instead it will use the GF110 silicon, the same used in the GTX 570, GTX 580 and the GTX 590. The new 448 core card is more like a stripped down version of GTX 570. The clock speeds have been reduced to 730MHz whereas the memory runs at 3,800MHz. The TDP is also increased to 210W from the old card but is still under the GTX 570. The card will also support 3-way SLI for those who are mad enough to use three of them in tandem.

With the pricing sitting between the GTX 560 Ti and the GTX 570, Nvidia is going straight after the AMD HD 6950 2GB, which has no doubt giving them sleepless nights. The puzzling part is why release a card that’s almost 90 percent as powerful as the GTX 570? I would have been simpler to just drop the price of the GTX 570 which would no doubt guarantee a victory over the HD 6950. I’m sure all those who just bought a GTX 560 Ti are probably kicking themselves right now.

Sapphire announces HD 6850 with 2GB memory


Sapphire has just announced a 2GB version of the HD 6850 graphics card. This mid-range GPU from AMD gets a boost in the memory department, which will help improve the frame rates at high resolutions. Details on pricing are still unknown, but I wouldn’t expect it to be more than Rs.500 over the standard 1GB version.
More RAM for high-res gaming
More RAM for high-res gaming


In terms of specifications, the new 2GB variant is exactly the same as the standard version. The core is clocked at 775MHz and packs in 960 shader modules or Stream Processors. The memory GDDR5 memory has an effective speed of 4000MHz and runs on a 256-bit memory bus. Connectivity includes a single link DVI-D port, dual-link DVI port, DisplayPort and HDMI v1.4a. Using two of the DVI/HDMI outputs as well as the DisplayPort output enables this card to support three monitors in Eyefinity (SLS) mode, with a suitable DisplayPort monitor or active adapter. Their custom cooler also ensures that there is a good margin for performance tuning (overclocking) by enthusiast users. A new overclocking tool - TriXX - is now available for tweaking the performance of these cards. It also supports DX11, Stereoscopic 3D and 7.1 channel high bit-rate audio support.

XFX Radeon HD 6770 Review


In the last couple of weeks that we’ve been testing graphics cards, there’s one thing that most of us agreed upon, which is - you do get a good amount of performance from graphics cards that are designed to be budget offerings. With many enthusiasts wanting to game at lower resolutions and build systems under the Rs. 30,000 mark, there have to be some compromises that need to be made. We’ve learnt that you can still manage to game at decent quality settings with graphics cards priced under the Rs. 8,000 mark. Here’s one graphics card that caught our eye when we reviewed it recently in our budget graphics card comparison test. 

Features
The XFX Radeon HD 6770, like the rest of the Radeon 6000 series of GPUs is based on the 40nm fabrication process. The GPU runs at 850MHz and has 800 stream processors under the hood. XFX has gone with 1GB of Hynix’s GDDR5 memory. This isn’t an overclocked card, so most of the specifications as exactly the same as the reference card. 
Basic connectivity options - D-Sub, HDMI and DVI
Basic connectivity options - D-Sub, HDMI and DVI


In terms of connectivity, there’s a D-Sub, a DVI and an HDMI port at the rear. In terms of power requirements, the card demands a single 6-pin connector. CrossFire is support and this card can be used in a 3-GPU configuration. Stereoscopic 3D is supported and inherently, so is HDMI 1.4a.  DirectX 11 support is present, like it is on all modern GPUs. 

Design
The XFX Radeon HD 6770 is different from the stock Radeon design. This card, however is smaller than the Radeon 6800 line of cards. XFX has gone with the standard black PCB and a large heatsink on top of the GPU. Although, the design of the heatsink is basic, but it is very effective.
A pretty compact card
A compact card


There’s no fancy designs and graphics on the card, either. The only visible sign of XFX is the logo on the fan. Although the card uses only one external slot, inside the cabinet, it’s likely to block the adjoining slot on the motherboard. 

Performance
We reviewed a whole bunch of graphics cards using the budget graphics card comparison test. The XFX Radeon HD 6770 manages to get very close to the HD 6790 in most game titles. It’s as fast or faster than the Galaxy GTX 550 Ti, too. Across all benchmarks, the XFX HD 6770 trails behind by roughly 5 to 10 percent, which isn’t too shabby. 
Comparison with other GPUs in the price and performance range
Comparison with other GPUs in the price and performance range


In terms of operating temperatures on idle, it settles down to around 40C and under load, that number rises to 56, which is still very commendable. The faster Radeon HD6790, for example will peak out at 77C, which on the other hand is pretty high.

Verdict
The XFX Radeon HD 6790 was the fastest card around followed by the GTX 550 Ti cards from Sparkle and Galaxy in the last comparison test.
A somewhat large and effective heatsink
A relatively large and effective heatsink


What the XFX Radeon HD 6770 does well is offer a good share of the performance at a lower price of just Rs. 6,785. So for those, with tighter budgets and demand most of the performance of the best performer, the XFX HD Radeon HD 6770 hits the sweet spot. 

GPU
NameRadeon HD 6770
Core Speed850 MHz
CUDA cores / Stream processors800
Fab Process40nm
Memory
TypeDDR5
Speed4800 MHz
Amount1GB
Bus Width128-bit
DirectX SupportDirectX 11
Video Outputs
D-subNo Information
DisplayPortYes
DVIYes
HDMIYes
Dimensions
Dimensions (W x D x H)7.88 x 4.4 x 1.5 inches