Pop culture, and video games in particular seem to have a fascination with giant robots. Coming along to scratch that itch is Titanfall from EA and Respawn Studios. The multiplayer version of the game is currently in Beta for both XBOX One and PC, allowing you to run, jump, shoot and punch giant mechs to your hearts contents.

My time with the game has been interesting so far. But before I get to that, a brief layout of Titanfall’s Beta. There are currently three match types available: Attrition, Hardpoint Domination, and Last Titan Standing. Attrition is a standard Deathmatch with teams competing for the most score. Hardpoint Domination is a Titan-centric take on the traditional “capture objectives and hold them for points” mode, while Last Titan Standing sees every player spawn in a Titan. There are no respawns, and the last team standing wins.

One thing that will immediately stand out to FPS veterans is the freedom of movement you have as a pilot in Titanfall. Your Titan is not immediately available, instead being on a two minute countdown before you can call it in. You can decrease this timer by killing enemy players and AI controlled grunts. During this time, you are merely a pilot on foot with a primary weapon (like a rifle), some form of pistol and an Anti-Titan weapon. Pilots are outfitted with gear that allows them to sprint, double jump and even wall run. It is entirely possible in Titanfall to come into an alley and spy a nice rooftop vantage point that you can access simply by wall running up one side of the alley, leaping to the other wall to continue your run and gain height, then leap off and grab the edge of the rooftop and heave yourself up.

This mobility is a key part of playing a pilot particularly when a Titan enters the field. These hulking machines are surprisingly mobile and are almost instant death to an unwary pilot. Being blown away in one shot from a chaingun three times your size, stepped on or just punched out of existence are all standard ways a pilot will die if he takes a Titan head on. Fortunately for the squishy pilot, he has an arsenal of tools to help deal with these behemoths. Anti-Titan weapons such as sidewinder missiles will put a dent in the offending mech. Also available is the ability – if timed right – to leap onto the Titan, rip off a panel covering some of it’s vital electronics and blast them to bits. Satisfying in the extreme, its a neat twist on the gameplay that keeps Titans from feeling all powerful.

While on foot, the game plays smoothly. Controls are snappy and responsive, shooting feels good and each kill is satisfying. Then there are the Titans themselves….

Call down a Titan and you are rewarded with a massive ball of fire raining down from the sky. Pressing the embark key will see your Titan pick you up in it’s giant metal paw and shove you into the cockpit. From here, everything changes. The sense of power that comes with a Titan is immensely satisfying. Armed with formidable primary weapons, offhand rapid fire rockets and the Vortex shields, these mechs are walking weapons of mass destruction. Firing down on offending pilots and grunts is satisfying as you exact revenge on the same people who moments ago were sniping you from third story windows. The real challenge is taking down another Titan. Combat is fast and fluid, particularly when you employ the shield mechanic of the Titan. Engaging it allows you to throw up shield that will catch incoming projectiles. Upon release, they can be fired back at your target. This ability has a short cooldown, so don’t expect to spam it. Even when a Titan is doomed, as the game calls it, not all is lost. You can eject, catapulting up and out of your Titan as it explodes. Landing safely will allow you to jump right back into the fight.

If I sound like I’m enthusiastic about the game, I am. It plays wonderfully and has enough balance to keep titans from becoming unstoppable juggernauts. The only times I have felt completely overpowered was in a handful of matches where my team was playing poorly and the entire enemy team ended up in Titans. Among my only complaints with the game is that the on foot shooting does feel a lot like Call of Duty. This is to be expected, considering that the developer of titanfall, Respawn, is comprised of many former Infinity Ward employees – the studio responsible for many Call of Duty games.

In the end, the one thing that has me impressed with Titanfall is the fun factor. Despite feeling frustrated after a bad match, I was never directing that frustration at the game.Instead, I was berating myself for poor play or bad decisions. All in all, I can’t wait to jump back into the game, call down my Titan and go unleash some hell.

Here’s some gameplay footage to hold you over till the game releases on March 11.

If you’re a massive fan of the Bioshock games, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you. The developing company of the game, Irrational Games is being closed.

On their site at irrationalgames.com every page was taken up with a long message from Ken Levine, one of the founders of the company and the current Creative Director saying that after seventeen years and some enormous success in the recent years he had taken the decision to concentrate on other types of projects and so “I am winding down Irrational Games as you know it” and moving to a smaller group within Take-Two with only fifteen of the people currently working at Irrational Games coming with him.

He does stress however that they are committed to helping those who are being let go survive the transition and find new work.

Besides financial support, the staff will have access to the studio for a period of time to say their goodbyes and put together their portfolios. Other Take-Two studios will be on hand to discuss opportunities within the company, and we’ll be hosting a recruiting day where we’ll be giving 3^rdparty studios and publishers a chance to hold interviews with departing Irrational staff.

He says that the next thing for him and his new smaller group of game developers will be to work on new narrative-driven games for the core gamer community, with hopefully a closer working link to those players and digitally delivered content exclusively. As for the Bioshock Universe? There’s no need to worry about it vanishing for good as Levine states that the reins for the games and its world are being handed over to the people at 2K who have worked with Irrational on the games in the past.

The message on the site will be updated with an FAQ later as questions come in, so more information will slowly be made available for those with questions that need answering.

Full message is at irrationalgames.com

Today sees the release of a game featuring a character who might be familiar to long time Capcom fans, but who hasn’t actually been front and centre of a game for a long time. That’s right, Strider is back in a new game!

Strider is, for those who don’t know, a Capcom character who first appeared back in the late 80s in his first game on arcade systems. It was celebrated back then for its play-style, definitive music and was notable for its use of multi-lingual voice acting during the cut-scenes (Japanese, English, Mandarin, Russian and Spanish) and was one of Capcom’s hits before Street Fighter II brought the company’s name to everyone’s attention. The main character was a young member of a group called the ‘Striders’, a ninja-like group within the world and you as the player were tasked with travelling through the side-scrolling world to eventually kill the ‘Grandmaster’, the rule of the dystopian future world Strider was set in. The game also saw home releases for many platforms such as the Mega Drive and Commodore 64, some which omitted the ending or replaced it entirely.

The game went on to have two sequels, Strider 2 and Strider Returns, which was a Western-only release that had no involvement from Capcom. The sequel Strider 2 introduced new mechanics into the game and had releases on arcade machines as well as the Playstation 1 in 2000.

Other than these games, the character of Strider has made many cameos in other Capcom games down the years.

The new game aims to combine the best aspects of the original game and the sequel as well as improving upon them using the technology of today. Hopefully gamers who fondly remember Strider will not be disappointed by this new adventure.

Strider releases for the Playstation 3 and 4 today and for Xbox 360, Xbox One and many PC digital distributors (including Steam and Green Man Gaming – pre-order for the free 20 track soundtrack and concept art!) tomorrow, February 19^th.

In the classic time-travel film Back To The Future II, Marty McFly wears a very distinctive pair of sneakers. In 2011, Nike introduced the Nike Air Mag sneakers as a limited edition product – and wowed the film's fans by revealing they were an exact replica of Marty's iconic shoes; and that the proceeds from each pair sold would go directly to the Michael J. Fox Foundation, dedicated to finding a cure for Parkinson’s Disease. But there was something missing.

Marty's shoes in Back To The Future II had a cool and unique technology called "Power Laces", which were self-tying laces that meant your shoes would effectively tie themselves the moment your feet settled into them. Many fans loudly decried their absence from the otherwise accurate homage of the Nike Air Mags – but surely such technology was pure fiction, right? According to Nike designer Tinker Hatfield, not any more!

Starting 2015, Nike intends to bring to market shoes with the iconic self-tying Power Laces as designed by Nike's own shoe designers. That timing couldn't be more perfect, as canonically the power-lace-equipped shoes of the classic film were actually said to be introduced in 2015, making a perfect example of art imitating life – one can't help but wonder if Nike have chosen to deliberately delay the launch to fit the events of the film. It's unclear whether the laces will appear on an updated version of the Nike Air Mag or on a new product entirely – which also means we don't yet know what the Power Laces will cost. So, what would YOU pay for shoes that tied themselves?

Last week in gaming saw the release of new user-added tagging to games on Steam. The idea was to allow players to apply tags to games to further refine categories and maybe allow people to find games similar to ones they might already own and be enjoying, a way to give the players more control on how they sorted games available and allow them to choose what tags they followed. What followed was some of what was intended but as is the way of humanity, the new tagging system quickly became a free-for-all. The exploiting of the system ranged from people using the tags to spoil endings of story-driven games, to people using the tags to insult the game or developers to even offensive and abusive tagging on games such as Gone Home from players who opposed themes presented within the game.

Now in a bid to attempt to combat abuse of the new system and prevent strict moderation internally Valve has added a way for other users to flag tags they don’t find helpful, bringing them to the attention of Valve who will remove the tag if it meets one of four criteria: spoilery, offensive/abusive, not appropriate for the game or simply unhelpful. Tags will also now need to be applied by a greater number of people before they will show up as popular tags to the wider Steam audience.

The Steam Dev team says that they are working to improve the feature and to keep feedback coming as to how the new safeguards are working, but also Valve has shown no interest in removing tags that might keep someone from purchasing a game if enough players find it a bad game; which can only be a good thing.

What do you think? Will this new set of safeguards be enough to make Steam user-tags useful and reliable at last?