Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City

Plot

See also: List of Resident Evil characters

Umbrella Security Service (USS) Delta team enters the Raccoon City Underground Laboratory, where they meet up with Alpha team leader HUNK. Their mission is to assist Alpha team in stopping Dr. Birkin from handing over his T-Virus research to the U.S. military and retrieve the G-virus. On their way to Birkin's lab, they find Birkin has paid numerous Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasure Service (UBCS) mercenaries to work for him while the deal goes forward. When they reach Birkin's lab, the doctor is shot, and HUNK and another Alpha leave with the samples. They soon find that Birkin survived the attack and infected himself with the virus. The Birkin creature proceeds to kill off most of Alpha team before disappearing; HUNK offers to go back in search of the sample.

Not long after the battle, it becomes evident that the T-virus has leaked city-wide, and people are beginning to transform into flesh-hungry zombies. In what they see as a punishment by USS command, Delta team is ordered to remove evidence of Umbrella's role in the outbreak. Heading into Raccoon City Hall, Delta team meets with a UBCS mercenary and they monitor Nicholai Ginovaef; he is soon revealed as a traitor and attempts to kill Delta team.

Later, the team is sent out around Raccoon Park to find the Nemesis-T Type, which has gone rogue. A second parasite is injected into its body in order to bring it back under control. Shortly after this mission is completed, the team is then sent out to the Raccoon City Police Department, ordered to kill any surviving police officers and destroy evidence linking the company to the outbreak. When this is done, the team exits the station, and soon after encounter Leon S. Kennedy, whom they begin to hunt down along with Sherry Birkin. After they find and corner Leon, Claire Redfield and Sherry, the game can end in two ways: in one ending, the team resigns from Umbrella over their abandonment during the mission and betrays them by letting the three live; in the other, Leon and Claire are executed and Sherry is sent to an Umbrella facility.

Gameplay

There are twelve playable characters in the game, with six characters for each side. On the Umbrella Security Service team there is: Vector, the team's recon expert and is equipped with a cloaking ability; Beltway, who is proficient in the use of explosives; Bertha, the medic; Spectre, the marksman; Four Eyes, the scientist, with the ability to program the bio-organic weapons (BOWs); and Lupo, who is the team leader. On the United States Special Ops team there is: Willow is the recon expert; Dee-Ay is the team leader; Tweed is the demolitions expert; Harley is the medic; Shona is the field scientist; and Party Girl is the sniper.

Alongside the single player mode, the game also offers four-player co-operative Raccoon Mode, which pits the USS against the U.S. Special Ops teams.

The zombies in the game are able to attack the player in a multitude of ways. A zombie that gets too close to the player will usually attempt to grapple the player, prompting the player to rapidly shake his/her analogue stick to avoid getting bitten. Players who are unsuccessful in doing this will be infected for a limited amount of time. Whilst they are infected they gain small bonuses at the expense of a slowly depleting health bar. If a player is successfully bitten and later runs out of time after becoming infected, the player will lose control of their character and begin attacking their former teammates until killed, allowing the player to respawn. There are additional enemy types in the game besides zombies, such as Lickers, Hunters, and Cerberuses. Furthermore, the players are able to control them under certain circumstances.

Heroes Mode is an online multiplayer feature allowing to play characters such as Leon S. Kennedy, Claire Redfield, Jill Valentine andCarlos Oliveira, plus Ada Wong, HUNK, Nicholai Ginovaef and a new character, called Lone Wolf.

Xbox 360-exclusive Nemesis Mode allows one player to control Nemesis and use him to kill the other team.

Free DLC pack containing playable missions for Spec Ops arrives on April 10 for the Xbox 360 and the PS3.

Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City
Developer(s)	Slant Six Games[1] Capcom[1]
Publisher(s)	Capcom
Director(s)	Adam Bullied[1]
Producer(s)	Masachika Kawata[1]
Composer(s)	Shusaku Uchiyama
Series	Resident Evil
Engine	Hexane engine
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows PlayStation 3 Xbox 360
Release date(s)	PlayStation 3 & Xbox 360 NA March 20, 2012 AU March 22, 2012 EU March 23, 2012 JP April 26, 2012 Microsoft Windows NA May 18, 2012 EU May 18, 2012 AU May 24, 2012
Genre(s)	Third-person shooter
Mode(s)	Single-player, multiplayer
Rating(s)	ACB: MA BBFC: 15 CERO: D ESRB: M PEGI: 18
System requirements Microsoft Windows Minimum Requirements: Microsoft Windows XP Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz or AMD Athlon X2 2.8 GHz 2 GB of RAM NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 512 MB or ATi Radeon HD 3850 512 MB 8 GB of free disk space Microsoft Windows Recommended Requirements: Microsoft Windows XP Intel Core 2 Quad 2.7 GHz or AMD Phenom II X4 3 GHz 4 GB of RAM NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 1 GB 8 GB of free disk space

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Diablo III

Plot

The game takes place in Sanctuary, the dark fantasy world of the Diablo series twenty years after the events of Diablo II. Deckard Cain and his niece Leah are in the Tristram Cathedral investigating ancient texts regarding an ominous prophecy. Suddenly, a mysterious star falling from the sky strikes the Cathedral, creating a deep crater into which Deckard Cain disappears.

The player character, known as the Nephalem, arrives in New Tristram to investigate the fallen star. The Nephalem rescues Cain on Leah's request and discovers that the fallen object is a person. The stranger has no memories except that he lost his sword, which was shattered into three pieces. The Nephalem retrieves the pieces, but the witch Maghda captures them along with Cain, attempting to force him to repair the sword for herself. However, the Nephalem forces Maghda to flee and she kidnaps the stranger instead. Cain, dying from Maghda's torture, uses the last of his strength to repair the sword and instructs the Nephalem to return it to the stranger. The Nephalem rescues the stranger and returns his sword, causing him to regain his memories. The stranger reveals himself as the fallen angel Tyrael who was disgusted with his fellow angels' unwillingness to protect humanity from the forces of Hell and cast aside his divinity to become a mortal, coming to warn Sanctuary about the arrival of the demon lords Belial and Azmodan.

To avenge Cain's death, the Nephalem tracks Maghda to the city of Caldeum, which is controlled by her master, Belial. The Nephalem kills Maghda, and rescues Leah's mother, Adria. Adria tells Tyrael and the Nephalem that the key to stopping the demons is the Black Soulstone, which can trap the souls of the seven Lords of Hell and destroy them forever. In order to obtain the Black Soulstone, the Nephalem resurrects the mad Horadrim, Zoltun Kulle. Kulle reveals its hiding place and completes the unfinished Soulstone, but is killed by the Nephalem after he attempts to steal it for himself. The Nephalem kills Belial and traps his soul within the Black Soulstone, freeing Caldeum. As Leah studies in Caldeum's library to find more answers about the Black Soulstone and Azmodan, she receives a vision from Azmodan, who tells her that he is sending an army from the ruins of Mount Arreat to take the Black Soulstone for himself.

Tyrael, Adria, Leah and the Nephalem journey to Bastion's Keep, the only line of defense between Azmodan's forces and the rest of Sanctuary. With the others staying behind to protect the Black Soulstone, the Nephalem pushes out from the keep into Mount Arreat. The Nephalem kills Azmodan and traps his soul in the Black Soulstone. However, Adria betrays the Nephalem and takes the Black Soulstone with the seven Demon Lords' souls inside. She reveals that she has been Diablo's agent from the beginning, and that Leah's father is the Dark Wanderer, who conceived her while being possessed by Diablo, making her the perfect vessel for his physical form. Using Leah as a sacrifice, Adria resurrects Diablo. Having the souls of all the Lords of Hell within him, Diablo becomes the "Prime Evil", the most powerful demon in existence, and begins his assault on the High Heavens, the defending angels being no match for him.

Tyrael and the Nephalem follow Diablo to the High Heavens, where the city is under attack. The defending Angels warn the Nephalem that Diablo is attempting to reach the Crystal Arch, which is the source of all of the angels' power. To prevent Diablo from corrupting the Crystal Arch and completing his victory over the High Heavens, The Nephalem confronts and eventually defeats him, destroying him and the souls of the other demon lords permanently. After the battle, Tyrael decides to rejoin the High Heavens but remaining as a mortal, dedicated to build a permanent alliance between angels and humans.

Gameplay

Gameplay is substantially similar to that of previous titles in the Diablo franchise. The game is classified as an action role-playing game that is played primarily using the mouse to direct the character with supplementary commands provided through the keyboard.

Diablo III's inventory and HUD retain a feel similar to that found in earlier games in the series, including a viewpoint reminiscent of the isometric view of Diablo III's predecessors. The inventory has sixty slots for items. Armor and weaponry each occupy two slots and all other items each occupy one slot. It can also be expanded to include details about the character's attributes.

The proprietary engine incorporates Blizzard's custom in-house physics, a change from the original usage of Havok's physics engine, and features destructible environments with an in-game damage effect. The developers were aiming to make the game run on a wide range of systems, and have said that DirectX 10 will not be required. Diablo III uses a custom 3D game engine in order to present an overhead view to the player, in a somewhat similar way to the isometric view used in previous games in the series. Enemies utilize the 3D environment as well, in ways such as crawling up the side of a wall from the depths into the combat area.

Diablo III's skills window depicting the abilities of the wizard class.

As in Diablo II, multiplayer games are possible using Blizzard's Battle.net service,with many of the new features developed for StarCraft II also available in Diablo III. Players will be able to drop in and out of sessions of co-operative play with others. Unlike its predecessor, Diablo IIIrequires players to be connected to the internet constantly due to their DRM policy, including single-player games.

An enhanced quest system, a random level generator, and a random encounter generator are used in order to ensure the game provides different experiences when replayed. Overall, the game will include both static and randomly generated levels. Additionally, there are class-specific quests to go along with the main storyline quests. Blizzard originally planned to have in-game cutscenes, but they felt these would divert from the gameplay and ultimately decided against them.

Unlike previous iterations, gold can be picked up merely by touching it, rather than having to manually pick it up. One of the new features intended to speed gameplay is that health orbs drop from enemies, replacing the need to have a potion bar, which itself is replaced by a skill bar that allows a player to assign quick bar buttons to skills and spells; previously, players could only assign two skills (one for each mouse button) and had to swap skills with the keyboard or mousewheel. Players can still assign specific attacks to mouse buttons.

Skill runes, another new feature, are skill modifiers that are unlocked as the player levels up. Unlike the socketable runes in Diablo II, skill runes are not items but options for enhancing skills, often completely changing the gameplay of each skill. For example, one skill rune for the Wizard's meteor ability reduces its arcane power cost, while another turns the meteor to ice, causing cold damage rather than fire.

[edit]Hardcore mode

Diablo III gives players the choice to make hardcore characters, similar to Diablo II. Players are required to first level up a regular character to level 10 before they have the option to create new Hardcore characters. Hardcore characters cannot be resurrected; instead they become permanently unplayable if they are killed. They also do not have access to the real-world money auction house.^]Hardcore mode is intended for experienced players who enjoy the additional thrill of having only a single virtual life. Hardcore characters are separately ranked, their names are highlighted with a different color (red) and they can only form teams with other hardcore characters. After dying, the ghost of a hardcore character can still chat, the name still shows up in rankings, but the character cannot return to the game. 

System requirements

Minimum Recommended Windows[49] Operating system Windows XP/Vista/7 CPU Intel Pentium D 2.8 GHz or AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz or AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ Memory 1 GB (1.5 GB for Vista and 7) 4 GB Hard drive space 12 GB of free space Graphics hardware NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT 256 MB or ATi Radeon X1950 Pro 256 MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 896 MB or ATi Radeon HD 4870 512 MB Sound hardware 100% DirectX 9.0c compliant card Network Internet connection required for activation, single player, and multiplayer Mac OS X[50] Operating system Mac OS X 10.6.8/10.7.x or newer Mac OS X 10.7.x or newer CPU Intel Core 2 Duo Memory 2 GB Hard drive space 12 GB of free space Graphics hardware NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT or ATI Radeon HD 2600 or better NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M or ATI Radeon HD 4670 or better Network Internet connection required for activation, single player, and multiplayer

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