Maximum Games, in partnership with GameMill Entertainment, and Glu Mobile, has released Deer Hunter: Reloaded, a new first-person hunting game featuring the world’s top hunting franchise.

Deer Hunter: Reloaded throws players into the wild on epic guided hunts to become a master hunter. Venture through some of the most untamed hunting regions in North America – from the rolling plains of West Texas to the rugged hills of Alaska – in pursuit of authentic big game trophy animals with reactive AI, including white-tailed, mule and Sitka deer, bighorn and Dall sheep, caribou, elk, and more. You can also compete in side hunts for game birds like ducks and geese.

Track your prey through realistic environments and lifelike hunting scenarios while guarding against the threat of dangerous predators like bears, wolves and mountain lions. Completing daily and weekly challenges will earn you extra money for top gear and upgrades like firearms, scopes, and other equipment and accessories, which you’ll need to survive this heart-pounding action experience.

Deer Hunter: reloaded is available today on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC via Steam.

The post Deer Hunter: Reloaded Comes to Console appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

PlayStation 4 (PS4) has been named as the fastest selling video games console release of the decade in New Zealand.

This achievement comes in advance of PlayStation celebrating its 20th anniversary in the New Zealand market in 2015, and proves the PlayStation brand continues to be the favourite place to play for New Zealand gamers.

In addition to being the fastest selling console released during the past decade in New Zealand, PS4 has consistently remained the number one next-gen console since its release in November 2013, according to data from NPD Group Australia.

Further to the reception it has received from New Zealand gamers since its release, PlayStation 4 has been a significant driver in category growth since its release.

According to data from NPD Group Australia, the Console Hardware category in New Zealand has increased by 92% in value since release of 8^th Generation Hardware in 2013, with PlayStation 4 accounting for a substantial 46% of the total category value since its launch.

“As PlayStation powers into its twentieth year in New Zealand, we couldn’t be happier with our position with PS4 at the top spot of the interactive entertainment industry,” said Michael Ephraim, Managing Director, Sony Computer Entertainment Australia and New Zealand. “I’ve watched this business grow over the 20 years and have had the pleasure of being part of the monumental change in innovation and category growth. Demonstrating that New Zealand truly is a PlayStation nation, PlayStation 4 is now the fastest selling home console of the decade, and reflects the passion of our players, our partners and the quality of the PlayStation offer.”

Critical to the PlayStation experience is the best-in-class technology that underpins it.

With social connectivity at the heart of PS4, the evolution of its system software is ground breaking and brings together new ways to interact with the global community.  The recent release of System Software 2.0 reinforces these specifications of the device and, with a focus on innovative gaming experiences including Share Play which allows a PlayStation Plus member to invite any friend, anywhere, to take turns playing a favourite game whether they own a copy or not.

In addition to facilitate continued personalisation with the introduction of a USB Music Player, themes, home screen colours and voice control, PS4 expands on ways to connect and share gameplay videos with the world via a dedicated YouTube app.

Showing a clear commitment to The Players, PlayStation 4 offers an unparalleled software line-up for the festive season which includes SingStar: Ultimate Party, DRIVECLUB, Minecraft PlayStation 4 Edition, Far Cry 4, Shadow of Mordor, Grand Theft Auto 5 and LittleBigPlanet 3, offering something for everyone in the family.

In 2015 highly anticipated and exclusive titles continue with The Order: 1886, Bloodborne, Until Dawn, Tearaway Unfolded and Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End.

PlayStation New Zealand also continues to expand its innovative PlayStation ecosystem and hardware base with the recent introduction of PlayStation TV (PS TV) now available in stores nationwide.

The post And the Fastest Selling Console Is… – News appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

The 20th Anniversary Edition will be limited to 12,300 units worldwide, a number that reflects the launch date of the original PlayStation. The limited edition PS4 and included accessories come in “Original Gray” color, all packaged in a special commemorative box.

The original PlayStation system was praised for its cutting-edge technology, including its ability to process high resolution real-time 3D computer graphics that was never before seen on home consoles, as well as its rich and exciting games portfolio.

PlayStation revolutionized the industry and became the first home console in video game history to reach a milestone of over 100 million units in cumulative worldwide shipments.

As a state-of-the-art computer entertainment system, the original PS delivered breakthrough gaming experiences to users around the world, and that concept has been inherited by every PlayStation platform ever since.

“The ‘PlayStation 4 20th Anniversary Edition’ is a very special model that is reminiscent of the original PlayStation, which has inspired every other PlayStation platform launched in the past two decades.  This limited edition PS4 offers a great sense of nostalgia to long-time PlayStation fans, while also providing a fresh experience to those who never picked up the original console,” said Andrew House, president and Group CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc.

“The ‘PlayStation®4 20^th Anniversary Edition’ embodies our appreciation and gratitude to all our fans, publishers, and business partners that have provided us with tremendous support for the past 20 years, and we look forward to their support as we continue to imagine and build the future of PlayStation together for years to come.  We remain steadfast in our commitment to deliver the best gaming experiences and to offer the best place to play for gamers around the world.”

Tune in to PlayStation NZ on Facebook and follow @PlayStationNZ on Twitter to find our how you can enter to win.

Join the conversation on Twitter and share your PlayStation memories with #20YearsOfPlay!

* shanethegamer.com gives one huge salute to PlayStation and our local PSNZ  & PSAU Teams – 20 years of gaming, one hell of an achievement!

The post Sony Announce 20th Anniversay Limited Edition PS4 Console – News appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Thanks to our good mates at PlayStation NZ we have one copy of LittleBigPlanet 3 and a plushy Bundle to Give Away.

In LittleBigPlanet 3, Sackboy is transported to a new planet called Bunkum, a creative paradise where abundant ideas drift through the sky. Unwittingly, Sackboy helps release three mythical creatures called the Titans who aim to ruin Bunkum and transform the world’s most unskilled Creator, Newton, into a terrible monster.

To restore balance to the land, Sackboy is going to need your help  to bring down the Titans for good.

In addition to a lengthy Single Player campaign, there is four-player online/offline multiplayer: Play both the Adventure mode – designed using solely Create tools – or download any of the user-generated levels to play with up to four friends via offline co-op or online via random matchmaking.

To Enter this Competition you need to Answer this Question correctly – What is the third new playable character?

LittleBigPlanet 3 introduces us to three new characters; Toggle (both Little and Big), Swoop and ???.

A: Oddsock

B: Fluffyjumper

C: Underpants

You can do this by placing a Comment below, hitting us up on Facebook, Tweet to us, or Email Us.

To help you out you might find the answer to this Question in our LittleBigPlanet 3 review HERE.

*****

Winner(s) will be randomly selected from those that Comment below / Facebook Comment / Email the correct answer to the above question. Winner will receive a Full Copy of  LittleBigPlanet 3 game for PlayStation 4 and a LittleBigPlanet 3 plushy. Competition ends the 14th of December 2014. LittleBigPlanet 3 is Rated G in New Zealand.

The post Enter to Win LittleBigPlanet 3 on PS4 – Competition appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Yup, get your vocal cords ready and lubricated for the Ultimate Party, at your place with SingStar: Ultimate Party! Wahoo!

The game disc features 30 extremely diverse tracks, from country to blues, RnB to Pop of yesteryear and today. Even New Zealand’s very own Lorde has a spot with… yup, Royals.

Swedish House Mafia Feat. John Martin to Pet Shop Boys, Lady Gaga to Avicii and more.

You will be belting out your best performances to bewildered friends, family and pets with songs; ‘I Love it’ through to ‘No Scrubs’. ‘Call Me Maybe’ and ‘Happy’. The list does indeed go on.

However it does not stop there. Jump into the Store and there you will find everything and anything that has ever been on a SingStar disc in the past decade, and then some.

From singles through to song packs. Artists to genres. Decades to one hit wonders. YOU will indeed have the Party Started…

In what is becoming a trend in console gaming, you do not need the specific peripherals anymore.

In the past there was a Blue and a Red microphone. These plugged into your console and you held onto them with white knuckles, nervous twitches and baited breath waiting for the lyrics to be ready to shriek and shrill at.

Now you can use a virtual mic via your smartphone. An app is available from both the Apple App Store and Google Play for Android.

This gives you a fully responsive microphone on your, er phone. Smart.

What’s more, there is no need for an audience, everyone can connect their phones to the game via WIFI with their apps and join you in harmony to duets, sing-a-longs or song battles.

The scoring hasn’t changed much though.

You still have the lyric bars which correlate to the track that you are singing to and you must hit the right note to get them to light up. The gold bars are there too for bonus points.

Scoring is tallied up at the end of each track / game session and you get a title from that, more often than not ‘Newcomer’ or ‘Hopeful’, to the more expert monikers.

If you have a PlayStation Camera it will also record video or snaps from your stellar living room performances for you to share or hide, depending on how you rate your own musical ability.

SingStar has always been the party winner. I’ve lost count as to how many drink fueled sessions with friends I’ve partaken in (alot of the time reluctantly).

With SingStar: Ultimate Party on PS4 and PS3 it’s more intuitive, easier than ever to navigate around the tiled menus and get straight into a song.

Celebrating it’s 10th Anniversary (yup, I couldn’t believe it’s been 10 years either) SingStar has re-cemented itself as the Ultimate Party.

Must have. Need to own.

The post SingStar: Ultimate Party – Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

The star of this game is Wei Shen, an undercover Chinese-American cop who has recently come back home to Hong Kong.

It’s his mission to infiltrate and bring down the Sun On Ye Triads. As he slowly builds trust and friendship on both sides, lines begin to blur and things get very intense.

The story is rather interesting and keeps you intrigued and invested, that said I did sometimes miss things and later on it somehow came back round leaving me sitting a bit clueless as to what was going on.

You roam around in a reinvented version of Hong Kong, with a few different scenes to offer, from temples to bustling markets. Missions will take you all over the city.

Traveling between places will usually have you driving to get there. Unfortunately I went from a car simulator to this game so driving around was something I had to readjust to. The driving aspect of Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition  isn’t the best thing out there but it works for this style of game, being arcade like in nature. Vehicles can be both purchased and unlocked with certain missions.

Completing tasks can earn you both Cop Points and Triad Points, specifically. Leveling up in either will allow you to unlock a new attack or special ability from the specific skill trees associated with each. There is a third skill tree; melee training, which is unlocked by finding old jade statues and bringing them back to your old martial arts teacher.

There are a few other abilities that can be unlocked through building reputation or earning “Face”. Leveling up in Face also allows you to purchase better cars and clothes. Health is increased by finding hidden and not so hidden Shrines across the city and praying at them.

Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition offers plenty of side gigs and other little things to find on your exploration of this altered and remodeled Hong Kong.

Blue cases are littered throughout the game and finding these can earn you extra money or unlock bonus outfits for our hero/anti-hero to wear. Clothing while also being aesthetic can grant small bonuses like extra XP gained or increased hand to hand combat damage.

Hand to hand combat can be rather frustrating. Taking down an enemy feels like it just takes forever, never mind a large group of them.

If you fail a particular combat section, having to do it all again is cause for trepidation. It is all mainly comprised of slight variations of smashing one button with a few dodge and counter opportunities. Thankfully these sections are paced to some degree but can still become frustrating.

The shooter side of things is also a bit clunky but does have some aspects that make it more meaty. For example you can vault over cover in slow motion giving you time to aim at your foes and mow down your enemies mid jump. Similar to moments in Max Payne 3 or even older; Stronghold‘s ‘Bullet Time’.

Obviously missions will have you doing all kinds of things. Both legal and illegal (well, mostly illegal).

There are some more repeated ideas, like trailing someone in a car or losing the police but it’s engaging enough. Other more bizarre sections have you participating in Karaoke or racing the riffraff down town. Missions vary enough to not get on the tedious side of things.

Graphically this ‘Definitive’ Edition doesn’t seem to stand out as ground-breaking, but it’s beautiful in its own right. I couldn’t really complain.

The city is busy and filled with all manner of people and things. If it at some point it was possibly lacking in detail I was too busy playing the game to notice.

While the game may sound serious it has a distinct sense of humour to it.

From plainly stupid reasons for certain side missions to the odd karaoke section of a bigger mission, it maintains an entertaining sense of humour throughout.

Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition is an open world third person action adventure game that is almost a combination of GTA and Driver set in Hong Kong.It is a next gen remake with added content from the original Sleeping Dogs title of 2012.

It manages its own unique personality to differentiate it from similar titles and offers up a bit of odd humour, general violence, an intriguing story and a character you can somewhat relate to.

It may not be every one’s cup of tea and combat is a bit on the sloppy side, but it’s a game you could find many hours of gameplay in.

The post Sleeping Dogs Definitive Edition – Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Beacon Mental Hospital has become the site of a brutal slaughter of staff and patience with only a couple of surivors.

Local police tend to the call and Detective Sebastian Castellanos arrives there shortly after, only to find empty patrol cars and an eerily quiet foyer of the Institution.

It’s not long before blood trails which lead to bodies are found and viewing the security footage unveils something darker, evil and supernatural.

Then, quite literally the world as you know it begins to change.

After a short adrenalin fuelled but futile escape, Castellanos finds himself tied upside down in a dark room of hanging bodies.

A hulking mutant proceeds with his butchery of the carcases as you plan your escape.

As always, escape is futile as you are chased and cut by this chainsaw weilding brute into a giant mincer room… It’s full on and your very life hangs with every step or slide. You can hide, you can run, but you can’t escape The Evil Within.

And this is only the Intro into the game.

After the somewhat flawed escape attempt from the hospital in an ambulance, you release yourself from the wrecked vehicle finding yourself in a wooded area which leads to an old run down township..

As you saunter around collecting items an killing off the undead whilst looking for the survivors, a patient, a doctor and your rookie Police partner Julie’Kid’ Kidman you discover that the land is riddled with various traps.

From Dynamite linked trip wires to bear traps and more, both can be disarmed if you are careful enough not to set them off. That said the bear traps are the worst, as your environment is dark and at times (especially when sprinting away from a horde of undead that are pursuing you) you will easily step onto one and it takes time to free yourself.

I found myself questioning why there were survivors. Were they apart of the plot? Are they somehow tied in to what was going on? When you reach the doctor he is in dire need of his patient; Leslie… But getting to Leslie sees you need keys, which are sewn into a corpse.

Levels and environments are not what they seem. Is one place another? Are you delusional and have you not moved at all. Is this al the beginning or the end?

This is one title that will not only give you a good scare, but will also have you totally at the edge of your seat.

There is a small RPG element in the sense that you can carry a small inventory.

This is your primary weapon (police pistol) and syringes that you might pick up (these are the much needed and rarely found health), med kits, journals, grenades and scrap parts so you can cobble together your own weapons.

You will also acquire other weapons such as a cross bow with vairious darts and a shotgun. It’s within this inventory menu where you swap out weapons. None of which are dual wielding though.

You may also use objects found within the environment. Bottles can be thrown to distract the enemy so that you can sneak up behind them and enact a stealth kill or just sneak away and axes or other melee weapons.

Collecting matches enables you to burn the bodies of those that you slaughter, this permanently finishes them off. These are limited however.

You also have a torch or lantern and if you are out of bullets, which is a common occurrence, try and find a flaming torch, as this is very effective in melee.

Green Gel or bottles of pills are used as a form of currency in the Upgrade Menu where you can upgrade your abilities, such as stamina or health bar, through to leveling up your weapons. Even your Inventory can be upgraded to enable to carry more loot. There is no jump, but there is a sprint which is reliant on your stamina and a large focus on stealth and trying to remain undetected throughout the entire game.

Game saves are enacted through mirrors.

The first time you encounter this is very early on in the game and whilst it’s more of a cinematic, the first time you are required to do this you are thinking WTF???

You are transported through a mirror back into the Beacon Mental Hospital.

A nurse is there waiting for you and leads you to an Electric chair.

Strapped in and unable to move with the electro head piece firmly in place, each upgrade you do gives you a good healthy zap.

It makes you wonder whether the game you are playing is all a delusion and you are actually still within the confines of the hospital itself.

So, how did this mayhem start?

It’s all the work of one dark and evil entity called Ruvik. You first see him on the security cameras before all hell breaks loose, literally.

From the city to the dilapidated village through to blood stained factory like buildings, your path eventually leads back to the Hospital to face off with Ruvik.

The undead that you face, for the most part are well constructed but do clone with the special Boss here and there, including the Boxhead – which you may have seen on the gameplay trailer already.

Graphically there is so much detail. Bethesda didn’t skimp on anything here. However on the Xbox One, I did notice that while the environments had an insane amount of detail to them, some character animation looked a little choppy here and there.

There is a hazy film grain overlapping the game screen and this retains an eerie and foreboding feeling.

After many, many hours of playing through The Evil Within I am pretty sure that I died more times than ever due to the frustrating ingame camera.

When you can, try and avoid melee combat, unless you are holding a meaty weapon (like an axe or similar). Having a bout of fisticuffs against one of the tortured undead will most likely leave you worse for wear. There’s no shame in running for your life.

It seemed that the camera was unable to keep up with melee combat and alot of the time objects within the environment kept getting in the way of the view so I was unable to see what, if anything I was hitting.

Then there’s the enemies you can’t see…

Frustrating yes, but a small, oh so small issue in a game that is as amazing as this one.

A good lengthy play and one that certainly has replayable value to it. The Hardest game setting is not available until you have conquered the game first time around.

If Silent Hill and Resident Evil were to ever have an illegitimate offspring, that grew up to be a rebellious teenager – that perfectly describes The Evil Within. A masterful game by the legendary horror video game master; Shinji Mikami

You need this game. Just have a spare pair of undies handy.

The post The Evil Within – Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.