How to connect your Google account with your Window’s account


1. Open your window’s account.
2. Click on your account picture and select edit profile in drop down menu.
3. On the left side of the screen click on Google.
4. Then it will ask for your email ID and password.
5. Then you have to click on many pop outs which will ask for your permissions.

And with these process you can even connect to Facebook

How to change your profile picture of Facebook

 

1. Go to your facebook page.

2. Click on your picture and select edit profile picture.

3. Then you will have five options,you can choose anyone of those to edit your picture

Top 10 Video Games 2012-2013

10.Dishonored


Type:Action, Stealth.

Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Developer: Arkane Studios

This game had to make it to the top 10 list because of the story and the stealth and awesome moves.
There has been a dearth of games when it comes to the stealth genre in this generation. No, I’m not talking about open-world games such as Fallout or The Elder Scrolls that give barebones stealth mechanics. Sure, there have been a few games here and there, but even those were plagued by very un-stealth-like mechanics, such as the action-heavy sequences in Metal Gear Solid 4 and the boss fights in the otherwise stellar Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Other games that started out with stealth mechanics completely dropped all pretence and went for all out action with minor stealth gameplay as the series went on (here’s looking at you, Assassin’s Creed and Splinter Cell). This year, on the other hand, seems to have an interesting line-up of games, with a few stealth titles thrown in for good measure. Here's a look at one of this year’s stealth offerings, and surprisingly enough, a new IP – Dishonored.
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These guys won't know what hit 'em


The storyline of the game is pretty basic, and there are some issues with the general storytelling. The main protagonist of the game is Corvo Attano – loyal bodyguard of Empress Jessamine Kaldwin – who is wrongfully framed for her murder. You eventually break out of prison and join La Resistance (not the real name of the group) in taking down the Lord Regent and his corrupt supporters. The main story is more-or-less summed up by the game’s tagline: Revenge Solves Everything. Corvo is the silent protagonist, which brings up some unintentionally hilarious dilemmas in the story. Despite this, the game has a conversation system at certain points where Corvo has (unvoiced) dialogues. While it is understandable that the developers chose to forego a voice for Corvo so that the player can project themselves in the character, the major problem lies in the fact that Corvo could have easily defended himself against accusations of killing the Empress.

When it comes down to it, Dishonored can be best described as Thief with magical powers. While it does give you the option to very graphically murder anything in your path, be it a guard, an innocent bystander, or a rat, the game rewards you much more for being patient and causing as few casualties as you can. The game punishes wanton killings in subtle ways, ranging from letting you eavesdrop on conversations that the guards have with each other – thus letting you know that they have a life beyond walking around some nobleman’s house in circles, complete with wives and children – to upping the difficulty if you cause too many deaths in the previous levels. The game also counts the number of kills you’ve made and gives it a Chaos rating. Higher Chaos increases the number of rat swarms and weepers (this game’s zombies), and has the guards in later levels be more alert; it also affects the ending you will get.
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The Tall Boys are some of the toughest enemies in the game


The game puts you in the shoes of Corvo through a first-person perspective, much like the Deus Ex and previously mentioned Thief games. Corvo is constantly wielding two weapons. While the weapon in your right hand is fixed to be a retractable sword, you get to switch between weapons, gadgets and spells on your left hand. The major difference from the gameplay of Thief would be that Dishonored doesn’t focus on light as a way of hiding, though it does play its own part. The more crucial part of hiding is line-of-sight. The level design of the game promotes finding your own way through the intricate areas in the game. You could walk up to the front door as you leave a bloody trail behind you, or you could opt for a scenic route that doesn’t kill nearly as many people. This is where the game gets most of its value. In terms of length, the game is short, having only nine missions. The meat of the game comes from retrying previous levels to get the perfect ratings—after playing through the story once. Those with OCD will have a lot to do here too, with the game even counting how many coins you left behind.

One of the main gameplay mechanics in the game are the spells that are granted to you through an acid-trip sequence by a Lovecraft-inspired entity known only as The Outsider. You are given two spells to start out with, along with a beating heart that helps you find runes. From this point, you are free to branch into whatever spells you may be interested in. The spells are varied, with spells as simple as Blink – a short distance teleport – along with spells that open up whole new avenues of gameplay, like Bend Time and Possession. Blink could let you access areas that you normally can’t climb to, like that open balcony that would give you the perfect opportunity to sneak into the mansion of the Baroness and corner her in her living quarters, while Possession could let you plant a Spring Razor on a rat, possess its body and just make it run into some guards, allowing you to laugh like a maniac the whole time you are pulling off your sadistic ritual.
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You can make things go boom, if you so desire


The world is an interesting mix of a steampunk Victorian setting, a 1984-eqsue Orwellian setting and an existentially-horrifying Lovecraftian setting (read: Cosmic Horror Story). Influences of the ex-Half-Life developer working in Arkane feel felt, thanks to the Orwellian presence of the city guards and the shape of some of the guard posts. The world feels lovingly crafted, with a lot of background story and world-building stuff to be read in books that you can find in the game. One major point in the world of Dishonored is that everything is trying to actively kill humans. Be it something as simple as rats to something as big as the leviathan-esque ‘whales’, whose magical fat is used as a prime source of the Magitek energy that powers the world.

The visual design of the game looks great with the Unreal Engine used to great effect. While the game does follow what I have noticed to be a common trend in Unreal Engine games – namely super-buffed up men and slender women – it still manages to look striking and leaves you with a sense of place in the world. Thanks to the art-direction, the steampunk Victorian setting comes alive with bustling streets and gruesome execution moves.
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Short gameplay time and questionable story elements aside, this is easily one of the best games to have come out this year. It can be described as a puzzle game where you have to take your time and think up the best possible route to your targets. It is also one of the few games that lets you pull off a complete pacifism zero-kill runs, including giving you options to “neutralise” your assassination targets, instead of straight up assassinating them. It’s not very often that a game as intelligent as this comes along, and from everything you can see, it looks like a labour of love. The success of Dishonored could very easily mark the return of stealth-based games into the spotlight.

Dishonored system requirements;

Minimum System Requirement
 OS: Windows XP, WINDOWS VISTA , Windows 7 and Windows 8.
 Processor: 3.0 GHz dual core or better
 Memory: 4 GB system RAM
 Hard Disk Space: 9 GB
 Video Card: DirectX 9 compatible with 512 MB video RAM or better (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 /
 ATI Radeon HD 5850)
 Sound: Windows compatible sound card

 Recommended Spec:
 OS: Windows XP, WINDOWS VISTA , Windows 7 and Windows 8.
 Processor: 2.4 GHz quad core or better
 Video Card: DirectX 9 compatible with 768 MB video RAM or better (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 /
 ATI Radeon HD 5850)
 The Bethesda Blog also points out that the game is "enhanced" for 64-bit multi-core processors.
 The PC version of Dishonored also includes incredibly customizable UI options. 9.

9. Fifa 13

FIFA 13 Global Cover.jpeg


Developer:EA Canada
Publisher:Electronic Arts

GENRE : SPORT


The problem with reviewing a game like FIFA 13 is that you end up writing notes like ‘the physicality is less predictable’ which, when you take a step away from the context of an iterative virtual sports title, make a kind of negative sense that could potentially be weaponised and deployed as part of a disruptive first strike invasion scenario.
Understanding the headline changes made to FIFA 13 requires a specialised vocabulary and a knowledge of the promises and weaknesses of last year’s game, and the game before that – and amongst it all the key question of ‘am I playing a game of football that is good?’ can be surprisingly elusive.
So let’s make it easy – the answer is yes you are, although you’re also probably less convinced than ever that the changes made in the 12 months since you last bought a copy qualify FIFA 13 as a standalone game with a standalone pricetag. This is a situation not helped by the game’s own increasingly animated attempts to justify its yearly cycle of self-destruction and rebirth.
Fifa 13 review
Last year EA looked at us all with a straight face and expected us to not only understand but also to care about ‘Precision Dribbling’, ‘Tactical Defending’ and the ‘Player Impact Engine’ – labelled, categorised evidence of progress, giving a name to the things you’re paying for.
The sloganeering continues this year, with inevitable tweaks made and others features added for good measure. ‘First Touch Control’ refers to the introduction of an error-rate when receiving the ball, with bobbles and imperfections effecting even elite players. It’s a contrived spontaneity, but welcome despite occasional moments of what feel like random injustice.
‘Match Day’ is less a feature and more a self-trumpeting noise, an overlay of stats, form guides and real-world fixtures that tie FIFA 13 into the outside ongoings of actual football. And as its name would suggest, ‘Complete Dribbling’ – a way to square up to defenders taken from the recent FIFA Street reboot – goes beyond last year’s Precision Dribbling and into a whole new realm of footwork hyperbole, presumably building to next year’s ability to sashay around individual blades of grass.
Fifa 13 review
More instructive are the changes made to the existing feature set. FIFA 12’s change of defending system was divisive, removing the option to home in like a studded missile in favour of a sterner risk-reward timed challenge mechanic. The risk-reward remains, but has been predictably and not entirely successfully watered down. Tackles are now guided directionally by the game, and it’s easier to recover lost ground if you mistime one. The net result is that the game is noticeably faster and less considered than last year, with matches dominated by wave after wave of attack and counter-attack, and very little of the probing and thoughtfulness that characterised FIFA 12.
Elsewhere there are minor victories and defeats. The new skill training exercises that pop up while matches load do a better job than any catchphrase of demonstrating the depth and complexity of FIFA’s shooting, running and passing systems. On the other hand, the already-sluggish menus now teem with the accumulated burden of additional features and options.
All of which leaves us more or less where we were last year – with the finest football game currently available, unmatched in terms of its mechanics, but which is also crying out for some serious redevelopment. In its current form FIFA has reached a plateau, and either the game – or the way we pay for it – are due for a major overhaul.
Fifa 13 system requirements:
Minimum System Requirements

OS: Windows Vista SP1 / Windows 7
CPU: 1.8 GHz Core 2 Duo
RAM: 2GB RAM for Windows Vista & Windows 7
Disc Drive: DVD-ROM at 8x Speed
Hard Drive: 8.0 GB, with additional space required for saved games and DirectX 9.0c installation
Video: 3D accelerated 256 MB video card with support for Pixel Shader 3.0
Minimum Supported Video Cards: ATI Radeon HD 3600, NVIDIA GeForce 6800GT
Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c Compatible
DirectX: 9.0c
Input: Keyboard, Mouse, Dual Analogue gamepad, VOIP Headset
Online Multiplayer: 2-22 players, 512 kbits/sec or faster
Single System Multiplayer: 2-5 players on 1 PC

Recommended System Requirements

OS: Windows Vista SP1 / Windows 7
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4g / AMD Athlon II X4 600e 2.2g
RAM: 2GB RAM for Windows Vista & Windows 7
Disc Drive: DVD-ROM at 8x Speed
Hard Drive: 8.0 GB, with additional space required for saved games and DirectX 9.0c installation
Video: Nvidia 8800 GT / ATI Radeon HD 4650
Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c Compatible
DirectX: 9.0c
Input: Keyboard, Mouse, Dual Analogue gamepad, VOIP Headset
Online Multiplayer: 2-22 players, 512 kbits/sec or faster
Single System Multiplayer: 2-5 players on 1 PC
8.Halo 4
Halo 4 box artwork.png
Developer:343 Industries
Publisher:Microsoft Studios
Composer:Neil Davidge
Genre:First-person shooter

Halo is to Microsoft what Mario is to Nintendo. The original Halo was, in simplest of terms, a game worthy enough to sell an entire console platform on its own merit. It may not have shown the ingenuity of French or Japanese games, nor was it revolutionary in any aspect—it was, however, a veritable distillation of FPS mechanics to the casual confines of the couch. It had a no-nonsense plot that drew from Heinlein's power armour-equipped space marine trope from Starship Troopers, and buffed it with excellent gameplay tweaks that overcame its gamepad limitation.
Halo games have never looked this pretty
Halo games have never looked this pretty


Its fast, frenetic action, excellent weapon and enemy design, and a stellar multiplayer mode made it a benchmark in the console FPS genre. Much of its success can be attributed to the irreverent geniuses at Bungie. However, since its split with Microsoft, the Halo mantle was eventually taken over by 343 Industries after Halo: Reach. The developer had already shown competence with the 10th Anniversary remake of the original game. Halo 4, however, marks the first instalment of the series continuation that's been dubbed as the Reclaimer Trilogy.

The game takes place right after the events of the last proper series outing, that is Halo 3. The Flood menace has been routed from the planet and the Covenant armada has fled. However, Master Chief and his AI sidekick Cortana have been taken for dead and have been adrift in space for the past four years. Cortana awakens him after the ship is caught in the gravity well of a Forerunner planet called Requiem, and under siege from Covenant warships.

The Covenants and Master Chief aren’t the only ones on the planet. This conveniently sets the pace for yet another threat to humanity in the form of the energy-themed Promethean race, replete with unique fighting tactics and cool Tron-esque weapons. Interestingly, the series gets its first recognisable villain with Halo 4. You will find more conventional Hollywood themes in the form of a decidedly more sexed up Cortana and a healthy dose of pathos.
The game kicks off right after Halo 3
The game kicks off right after Halo 3


The shapely AI sidekick is nearing the end of her life span, which brings upon a behavioural phenomenon called rampancy. In simple terms, that’s the AI equivalent of post-menopausal mood swings. This also means Cortana will perish, unless she’s taken back to Earth. While John (AKA Master Chief) may play the stereotypical faceless marine hidden behind a flak helmet, Cortana and the rest of the cast are painstakingly animated. Don’t expect a Heavy Rain or an LA Noire, but the tragic chemistry between the main leads is done well, without being too cringe-inducing and mawkish (That’s you, Gears of War 3).

At any rate, one doesn’t exactly prefer Halo games for their narrative. What really draws in gamers is its finely tuned gameplay. The franchise’s gamepad-friendliness may prevent enemies from being quick on the draw and agile, but challenge is provided through a solid AI. Enemies charge, retreat and duck in and out of cover to keep you on your toes. Different classes of enemies team up and work to balance each other’s strengths and weaknesses.
The shapely AI sidekick is nearing the end of her life span
The shapely AI sidekick is nearing the end of her life span


The new Promethean enemies, for example, come in cannon fodder (Crawlers), support (Watchers) and heavy (Knights) flavours. The weaker Crawlers draw your fire while the fearsome Knights teleport in and out of cover to harass you with heavy ordnance. The watchers, who clearly seem to be inspired from Quake 2’s Daedalus/Icarus, maintain tension by shielding or reviving fallen foes. These enemy tactics keep the action from deteriorating into a mindless run-and-gun affair.

Countering this manner of guerrilla warfare isn’t exactly a daunting task thanks to a multifaceted offensive capability that gives players a choice between an assortment of guns, grenades, melee and armour abilities. You have the standard human array of short and long range, fast/weak and slow/strong, and explosive weapons that deliver splash damage. The Covenant as well as Promethean arms are essentially the same weapon classes with cooler Tron-esque animations and shiny energy projectiles though. Armour abilities range from Hard Light Shield to ones packing cloaking capability and sentry bots.
Gets a bit repetitive at times
Gets a bit repetitive at times


Although there are a wide variety of weapons at your disposal, this diversity tends to cause balance issues. Certain rapid-fire submachine gun class weapons prove too weak, whereas some of the Promethean sniper rifles are rendered useless due to better alternatives from the opposing camp. The fact that quite a few weapons make no case for themselves points towards either poor balancing or shoving in extra firepower just for the heck of it.

Weapons balance issues generally stem from a lack of play testing, but one look at the game and you’ll know why that may be the case. This is easily one of the best looking games to have launched on the Xbox platform. Halo 4 regales you with sprawling levels and some painstakingly detailed architecture. Be it massive floating Forerunner citadels or imposing canyons, the sheer scale of the spectacle beggars belief. Levels vary sharply from giant floating platforms lit up by psychedelic light imbued structures to more down-to-earth jungle clearings. Every step of the way though, Halo impresses with consistently good art and texturing. All this is brought to life with beautiful volumetric lighting and particle effects.
The Prometheans make their first appearance
The Prometheans make their first appearance


The multiplayer component compares favourably to the competition, but fans of the original Halo may have a few complaints. The overall pace of the multiplayer gameplay is faster, which does remind one of Call of Duty’s brand of multiplayer. Hardcore Halo players have been complaining of excessive bloom (inaccuracy due to automatic fire) on certain weapons, to some weapons such as the DMR being preponderant upon favourites such as the Battle Rifle.

The newly introduced aspect of Loadouts can be perceived as modernisation of the multiplayer component or a nod to Call of Duty’s Perk system. This Loadout business grants players with a pre-set number of slots to equip primary/secondary weapons, grenades and armour abilities, in addition to a pair of extra skill-buffing bonuses. Just like perks, players who do well level up and get more of these slots. Old schoolers have already started making noises about how this COD-esque system doesn’t encourage a level playing field.
Capture the flag makes a comeback
Capture the flag makes a comeback


If you can embrace the changes with a more open mind, you’ll realise that they aren’t as bad for weekend gamers as the hardcore ones make it out to be. Yes, the new multiplayer component drops a few popular modes, but it replaces them with interesting new ones as well. The Firefight mode from the previous games is replaced with Spartan Ops, which are episodic missions padded with painstakingly crafted FMV sequences. Like the main campaign this mode can be played in either splitscreen or online co-op with up to three other friends. However, unlike the campaign mode, the first episodic content that I tried out wasn’t nearly as satisfying and felt disjointed.

Invasion mode too has been replaced by Dominion, which is a team-based push to control bases. Successful teams are rewarded with cool vehicles and weapon drops. Flood is the new moniker for the infected mode of the previous games, where you face off with superfast Flood-infected humans eager to impale you with their mutated arms. The competitive multiplayer mode dubbed as Wargames is a lot faster and a bit like COD as mentioned earlier thanks to Loadouts and abilities dynamically changing the course of battle.
You get to pilot a cool mech
You get to pilot a cool mech


To sum it up, Halo 4 sports a modernised multiplayer component that’s faster and incorporates some cues from contemporary games. It may not please hardcore competitive gamers, but on the other hand that just might get it more mainstream fans. The single player campaign is beautiful to behold, but it’s too short and can get a bit scripted and repetitive at times. The segment with the huge Mammoth truck is a prime example of unimaginative fetch quests and wasted potential.

As a consolation, the vehicle segments incorporating the Scorpion tank, a really cool Mech; the iconic Warthog, Scarab; and Banshee assault vehicles keep things interesting, especially in the co-op mode friends can pitch in and handle turrets. The game’s inherent weapons balance flaws too are tempered by great enemy AI and combat tactics. Make no mistake, Halo 4 is a very good game by itself, but its lack of innovation, linear gameplay, short SP campaign, a standard multiplayer mode and its propensity to force the unwieldy Waypoint system to get the complete Halo experience prevents it from replicating the greatness of Halo 3.



Halo 4 system requirements

Runs on only Xbox 360

7.Call Of Duty:Black Ops 2

Call of Duty Black Ops II box artwork.png



Developer:Treyarch
Publisher:WW Activision
JP Square Enix
Writer:David S. Goyer
Composer:Jack Wall
Trent Reznor (theme music)

Type:First Person Shooter

PRIMARY OBJECTIVE


A brief survey of colleagues, family and friends revealed a distinct lack of interest in the Single Player campaign; in fact, most people we spoke to said they probably wouldn’t even play that section of the game. It was instead the competitive multiplayer they were most keen to get stuck into. Black Ops 2 makes three, largely-successful changes to the well-worn formula which should make it feel refreshingly different to series veterans.
The first is yet another shake-up of the signature support options, previously known as kill streaks. Now known as score streaks, rewards such as recon drones and airstrikes can be earned by performing pretty much any action in a multiplayer game - killing opponents, assisting kills, capturing flags and the like. These points have moved away from the simplicity of past efforts - where one point equals one kill or capture – putting more emphasis on actions that will benefit your teammates.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2
Tech toys and some decent level design keep the multiplayer juggernaut rolling
You now get 200 points for capturing an enemy position in the Domination game type, but only 100 points for a normal kill. You get 25 bonus points for killing those attacking or defending flags, but a whopping 200 points for a kill while actually capturing a flag. The resulting bonuses quickly stack up and reward team players with cool toys.

GOING STREAKING


The near-futuristic setting has allowed the developers to go to town with support options, with notable additions including the Guardian, a portable microwave emitter that locks off areas by slowing, stunning and eventually frying anyone determined enough to run through its beam. There’s also a rather nimble quadrotor airborne drone fitted with a mounted machine gun. Familiar options have been beefed up too, such as the sentry gun, which is far tougher than before.
To retaliate, players can carry EMP grenades and hacking tools that let them remotely control support devices and switch their allegiance. This is all part of the huge array of equipment that forms Black Ops 2’s arsenal, which you have to choose from using the new Pick Ten point system.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2
This sight allows you to spot enemies behind cover
Each character class has ten points to spend on guns, attachments, grenades and perks. You can spend them as you wish, choosing to forego grenades or a secondary weapon and instead have two attachments on your primary gun. There are rules, such as only having one perk per category, but these can be bent using Wild Cards.
The Pick Ten system is hugely flexible, letting us equip one character class with a basic pistol but multiple perks, so we can sprint across maps and earn support points more quickly. Another is concentrated purely on shooting down, hacking and EMPing enemy support options, and a third eschews a secondary weapon and grenades to concentrate on the best possible SMG setup.
Before Treyarch rebalanced weapons in the first patch, SMGs had the edge over other weapon types – partly due to their excellent rate of file and low recoil, but mostly because the multiplayer maps favour close-quarters combat over long-distance sniping. These design decisions help further concentrate players’ minds on hectic objective gameplay, particularly the new Hardpoint game type. In it, teams contest a regularly-moving King-of-the-Hill style objective with unlimited respawns, resulting in intense firefights.
It’s still the same classic Call of Duty multiplayer underneath, and anyone bored of twitch shooters is unlikely to be taken with it. However, anyone still happy to shoot others online will find this new incarnation has plenty going for it, and it feels different enough to previous entries in the series to be well worth a shot.

Call of DutyBlack Ops 2 System Requirements


CPU: Intel Core2 Duo E8200 2.66 GHz or AMD Phenom X3 8750 2.4 GHz
RAM: 2GB for 32-bit OS or 4GB for 64-bit OS
VGA: Nvidia GeForce 8800GT 512 MB or ATI Radeon HD 3870 512 MB
DX: DX10
OS: Windows Vista SP2 or Higher
Note: Windows XP is no longer supported. It requires Windows Vista or later.

6.Battlefield 3

Battlefield 3


Developer:EA Digital Illusions CE
Publisher:Electronic Arts Sega (Japan)


When it comes to virtual battlefields, nobody does it quite like the Battlefield series. It has a long history of creating sprawling conflict zones where players have an exhilarating range of ways to make powerful contributions to the war effort. Yet it wasn't until the Bad Company games were released that Battlefield really made a splash on consoles. As you might expect, the PC version of Battlefield 3 still boasts better visuals and larger matches than its console counterparts, but competitive multiplayer on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 is incredibly addictive, immersive, and exciting. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the single-player campaign, which fails to capitalize on the series' strengths and ends up feeling like an off-brand imitation. The six cooperative missions fare better and offer a tougher challenge, but only the competitive multiplayer provides a compelling reason to buy Battlefield 3. With online battles this excellent, though, that reason is all you need.
There are many factors that combine to make these battlefields as good as they are, most of which will be familiar to series veterans. Nine great maps set the stage for up to 24 players to fight it out in a variety of urban, industrial, and military locations. These places all look great, though the grassy hills and blue skies of the Caspian Border are naturally more appealing than the drab urban corridors of the Grand Bazaar. The maps vary widely in size and offer diverse environmental elements, including claustrophobic tunnels, coastal roads, desert plains, and a variety of multistory buildings. Many man-made structures can be damaged or destroyed by the explosive tools at your disposal, creating new infiltration routes or removing cover positions. The maps are designed to create opportunities for combat at all ranges, and the element of destruction lets you manipulate the environment to create even more.
Combat is not just about where you are, but also about how you get there, and the variety of vehicles is one of the things that makes Battlefield so uniquely engaging. Small maps might only have a Humvee or a light armored vehicle, while larger ones boast buggies, tanks, amphibious transports, helicopters, and jets. There are a few variations within each class of vehicle that make them better suited for troop transport, anti-infantry, antiair, or anti-vehicle combat, and learning how to get the most out of each one is a blast, even if you're sometimes the one getting blown up. Whether you're piloting, gunning, or just going along for the ride, vehicles offer a key tactical element that can change the tide of battle when used by a savvy squad. Using a vehicle well can earn you powerful upgrades and bonus weapons, but it can be tough to get the hang of the flight mechanics for helicopters and jets. It's a shame there's no way to practice flying them outside of active multiplayer matches (with one exception), though you can take comfort in knowing that you are at least entertaining your fellow players when your jet nose-dives into a mountain.
The suppression effect won't keep you from drilling an enemy at this range.
The maps and vehicles allow for a great degree of strategic freedom, but choosing your class and loadout is the first and most important decision you make before spawning into combat. Abilities and weapons have shuffled around a bit since Battlefield: Bad Company 2, so now the assault class slings health packs and totes defibrillators, while the support class carries light machine guns and ammunition boxes. Engineers still thrive on vehicle support/destruction, and recon delivers long-range death. New gadgets like robots that can arm charges (engineer) and mark targets (recon) give players more to look out for on the battlefield, and claymores and mortars (support) ensure that the engineer class isn't the only one packing an explosive punch. Unlockables include class-specific weapons and gadgets, gun-specific sights and attachments, and specializations that can make you tougher and deadlier. Focusing on one class to unlock higher level gear has its advantages, but so does spreading around your progress in an effort to be more adaptable to the ebb and flow of combat.

Minimum requirements for Battlefield 3

  • OS: Windows Vista or Windows 7
  • Processor: Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz or Althon X2 2.7 GHz
  • RAM: 2GB
  • Graphic card: DirectX 10 or 11 compatible Nvidia or AMD ATI card, ATI Radeon 3870 or higher, Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT or higher.
  • Graphics card memory: 512 MB
  • Sound card: DirectX compatibl sound card
  • Hard drive: 15 GB for disc version or 10 GB for digital version

Recommended system requirements for Battlefield 3

  • OS: Windows 7 64-bit
  • Processor: Quad-core Intel or AMD CPU
  • RAM: 4GB
  • Graphics card: DirectX 11 Nvidia or AMD ATI card, Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 or ATI Radeon 6950.
  • Graphics card memory: 1 GB
  • Sound card: DirectX compatibl sound card
  • Hard drive: 15 GB for disc version or 10 GB for digital version

5. Crysis 3

Crysis 3 cover.jpg

Developer:Crytek Frankfurt Crytek UK
Publisher:Electronic Arts
Director:Cevat Yerli Writer:Steven Hall
Composer:Borislav Slavov Peter Antovszki

I liked Crysis 2. It took a lot of the cool enemy tagging and freeform tactical combat fromCrytek's previous games and presented it in a more coherent way. It was an intelligently streamlined experience that, as a person that couldn't get into the first game's wide-open antics, split the difference between the first game and the more guided, rollercoaster-style take on shooter campaign design that was, at one point anyway, all the rage. Crysis 3, on the other hand, feels like a developer attempting to push its luck a little too far. It picks up where the previous game left off and doesn't make dramatic changes. For the most part, it's well-made, and on thePC it's still quite a graphical showpiece, but that doesn't make up for the prosaic nature of the rest of Crysis 3.
Crysis 3 reunites Prophet, the nanosuit-wearing super soldier of record, with Psycho, the playable character in the old side-story, Crysis Warhead. In the years since that game, Psycho has been painfully yanked out of his nanosuit, and Prophet--whatever the heck he is at this point--has just been broken loose by Psycho and a ragtag group of rebels who are up against CELL, which is your typically evil corporation-slash-private-military-slash-toying-with-power-it-doesn't-understand. While the rebels are obsessed with CELL, Prophet's worried about the greater threat of the Ceph, the alien race he crippled in Crysis 2. With Prophet being, well, a prophet, it shouldn't surprise you that you'll spend more time in Crysis 3 fighting off the alien menace. The story hinges on your ability to care about Psycho and Prophet as characters, something that the previous games haven't exactly made a priority. As a result, the reasoning behind the action is straight-up bland, skirting dangerously close to the same "only One Man can save us from this Ancient Alien Threat" story that seems to drive so many different sci-fi trilogies these days.
The action end of Crysis 3 is totally competent, with the same suit powers you saw in the previous game. The cloak lets you move slowly and quietly to get behind enemies for stealth kills, while the armor mode lets you get out of a jam when you get caught. This time around, Prophet can wield a bow, giving you another way to kill enemies while staying fully cloaked. If you're the patient type, the bow is overpowered, letting you trivialize many of the game's encounters as long as you're willing to back off and let your cloak energy recharge. If you're the gung-ho type, it's useless. The game also has collectable upgrade points that unlock perks across four different categories. The game takes the Call of Duty comparison a step further by offering upgraded versions of those perks that unlock when you complete in-game challenges. So you may have to get 25 stealth kills to make your cloak last even longer than it would normally, or perhaps your ability to tag enemies extends even further when you tag 25 enemies with your spotting scope with the basic version of the upgrade equipped. There are a lot of different options to unlock and use, but I found that the vast majority of them didn't fit at all with my style, so I had already selected and upgraded the optimal perks well before the game was over.




Though the game opens up into large areas near its conclusion, much of the game is paced in a way that helps make combat feel more monotonous. You'll encounter an enemy here and there, but for the most part you stumble upon groups of nine or so foes who aren't aware of your presence yet. This gives you time to tag all the enemies and figure out how to take them on. Typically, the bow is a fine solution, since it kills most basic enemies in one hit and doesn't break stealth. If another enemy sees a body go down, a couple of reinforcements come in and the remaining enemies are alerted, making them skitter around a bit more frantically. This just makes them slightly harder--though certainly not impossible--to hit with the bow. Eventually you'll run out of arrows or just get bored of picking them off this way and switch to guns to just get on with it. Even the larger alien enemies you face later on don't feel particularly deadly on what the game makes out to be its equivalent of "medium" difficulty, but I also never felt like i had enough exciting options at hand to make these encounters fun in the sandboxy way that these games have been in the past. At some point I just found myself stealthing past entire waves of enemies, when possible.
Why, then, is Crysis 3 not a bad game? Well, if we're talking about the PC version on a reasonably powerful machine, we're talking about the franchise's standout feature. It's a great-looking game. The opening, where Psycho rescues Prophet in the middle of a rain storm, is a striking moment, with everything from the rain to Psycho's scarred-up face worth taking a closer look at. Eventually, the visual quality starts to fade into the background as you go from one military-looking installation to the next, but the spots where you get outside and see the game's take on a completely overgrown, almost jungle-like New York City can be absolutely stunning. I stopped dead in my tracks on a few occasions just to look around and take it all in. The Xbox 360 version is grungy, by comparison, with lower texture quality and a lower framerate. That's unsurprising, but when taken against the other games on the platform, the 360 version still looks OK. It's certainly playable, anyway, though a weird audio bug made one of the early open-area segments practically unplayable, since it's hard to know when to take cover and hide from incoming rockets if the audio isn't playing back at all. For what it's worth, the Crysis 3 Twitter account claims that a patch is in the works, but said patch isn't available as of this writing, so if you've got a home theater set up, keep an ear out for that.



Guns!

Crysis 3 also contains competitive multiplayer with the same sort of loadout-based progression and killstreak bonuses. It's a formula for a reason, but it's not getting any fresher, that's for sure. I really liked seeing an updated version of the Skyline map, which was my favorite spot to play in Crysis 2. At the same time, if the coolest part of the multiplayer is that it has my favorite map from the previous game, well, that's probably not a great thing, right? The multiplayer is absolutely functional and ships with a handful of game types, including a modifier that takes players out of the suits, eliminating the power angle completely, in case you weren't interested in using the one thing that makes Crysis stand apart from the competition. It's not bad, but you could do better with another game.
That's my feeling about all of Crysis 3, really. It's serviceable and, again, it looks great on the PC, but was this trip really necessary? It's an average experience, overall, and in a genre that continues to be packed full of competition, you'd probably be better off finding a discounted copy of Crysis 2 or, if the large combat areas of the original Crysis really float your boat, spend some time with Far Cry 3, instead.
Crysis 3



Minimum System Operating Requirements for PC

• Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8
• DirectX 11 graphics card with 1Gb Video RAM
• Dual core CPU
• 2GB Memory (3GB on Vista)

Example 1 (Nvidia/Intel):
• Nvidia GTS 450
• Intel Core2 Duo 2.4 Ghz (E6600)

Example 2 (AMD):
• AMD Radeon HD5770
• AMD Athlon64 X2 2.7 Ghz (5200+)

Recommended System Operating Requirements for PC

• Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8
• DirectX 11 graphics card with 1GB Video RAM
• Quad core CPU
• 4GB Memory

Example 1 (Nvidia/Intel):
• Nvidia GTX 560
• Intel Core i3-530

Example 2 (AMD):
• AMD Radeon HD5870
• AMD Phenom II X2 565

Hi-Performance PC Specifications

• Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8
• Latest DirectX 11 graphics card
• Latest quad core CPU
• 8GB Memory

Example 1 (Nvidia/Intel):
• NVidia GTX 680
• Intel Core i7-2600k

Example 2 (AMD):
• AMD Radeon HD7970
• AMD Bulldozer FX4150

4.FarCry 3

Far Cry 3 PAL box art.jpg

Developer:Ubisoft Montreal
Additional work by:
Ubisoft Massive
Ubisoft Reflections
Ubisoft Shanghai
Ubisoft Red Storm
Publisher:Ubisoft
Producer:Dan Hay
Designer:Jamie Keen
Writer:Jeffrey Yohalem
Composer:Brian Tyler

The Far Cry series is an odd beast. The first title was as much a graphical showcase as a game thanks to its stunning island scenery, cheesy voice acting and horrible AI. The developers, Crytek, then went on to make the futuristic Crysis series, while the Far Cry name passed to Ubisoft.
Far Cry 3
It's an island paradise... apart from the pirates. And the snakes
Far Cry 2 followed: a malaria-induced descent into madness in an African nation on the brink of civil war. It was unrivalled for atmosphere, but the repetitive gameplay was a bit of a turn-off.
Far Cry 3 is a bit of a hybrid of the first and second games, with some Assassin's Creed thrown in (which seems to be the inspiration of choice for big titles at the moment, as shown by Bethesda's steampunk stab-em-up Dishonored).
It's an open-world shooter set on an island somewhere between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The game starts off with quite a jolt. After a montage of you and your friends drinking, partying and skydiving, having the time of your lives, you wake up chained to a bamboo cage with a Mohican-toting madman standing over you.
You've been captured by pirates, and it's up to you, Jason Brody, to rescue your friends and get the hell off the island. As action heroes go, Brody is an unlikely one. While Far Cry and Far Cry 2's protagonists had military or mercenary backgrounds, which at least explained their ability to reload an assault rifle in three seconds, you're just an over-privileged Californian bro in his early twenties stuck in a nightmare situation.
Far Cry 3
Dennis. He's pretty cool
The disconnect between the pampered Americans and the unadulterated barbarity of pirates operating on the fringes of civilization lends itself well to much of the game's tension, as well as Jason's character development. Under the guidance of the island's native Rakyat warriors, he morphs from a terrified innocent into a tattooed assassin, bristling with weapons and high on home-made drugs - in the process becoming increasingly distant from his friends.
The open-world model means Far Cry 3 has more in common with RPGs such as Skyrim than Modern Warfare 3. You're free to roam around the island (which is absolutely huge) picking up missions and side-quests to earn money and experience. The side missions aren’t a patch on Skyrim's immersive extra quests, and mainly involve boilerplate assassinations, vehicle racing or hunting a specific animal, so it's easy enough to ignore them and get on with the main mission if you so wish. However, gaining experience is useful, as this unlocks skill points to spend on special moves such as stealthy takedowns, faster movement and increased damage resistance.
The story missions, of which there are an enormous 38, are generally remarkably varied, and become gradually more bizarre as the game goes on; you progress from blowing up pirate ammo dumps to Indiana Jones-style quests in trap-filled ancient ruins, with some drug-induced hallucinations along the way. At first we found the game difficult to get into. When you start, you're only capable of carrying one weapon and a couple of magazines, which means you constantly run out of ammo in a firefight, and have to fall back on stealth and your trusty machete.
Far Cry 3
Dr. Earnhardt. He's definitely not stoned
To even the odds, it's vital to learn the art of crafting. Everything you need in Far Cry 3 can be fashioned in the jungle from the skins of various animals. By hunting and skinning everything from dogs to wild boar to komodo dragons and tigers, you can increase your ability to carry weapons, ammunition and explosives. You can also take advantage of the planet's native fauna to make medicines and performance-enhancing drugs, which help you with everything from holding your breath for longer to spotting animals from a distance.

3.KillZone 3

European cover art of Killzone 3

Developer:Guerrilla Games
Publisher:Sony Computer Entertainment
Director:Mathijs de Jonge
Designer:Hermen Hulst
Composer:Joris de Man
Engine:Modified in-house engine, Havok (game physics)
Platform:PlayStation 3

A lot of games can place you in first person and put a gun in your virtual fingers, but few of them manage to make you feel like you're in the shoes of a person, that you're more than just a moving camera.
It's this idea that separates a run of the mill first-person shooter from what I like to think of as a first-person experience. And Killzone 3, Sony's latest PlayStation 3 exclusive, is definitely the latter. Every action you do in Killzone is immersive; the combat more intense and savage than other shooters. It's this design that makes Killzone 3 so engrossing and fun despite its weak story. With the fantastic pacing and set pieces in the campaign, along with the improved, fun multiplayer, Guerilla's crafted a must own for PS3 shooting enthusiasts.
Killzone 3 is all about a war between two factions of humans. On one side, we have the ISA, the good guys with human faces; on the other side are the Helghast, the red-goggled, mask-wearing enemies who are hell bent on subduing the rest of the universe. Killzone 3 picks up right where two left off, with a small group of ISA soldiers struggling to survive after being effectively cut off and left on the hostile Helghan homeworld. Throughout it all, you play as Sev, the returning hero from the second game, who is out to do as much damage to the enemy as he can before he's caught, killed or rescued.
 
I won't spoil the story, but I was disappointed with where it went and how uninteresting it was. Killzone 3 jumps around in time regularly, constructing a narrative that gives a good reason to explore different parts of the Helghast homeworld, but it's not engaging. In general, the story feels like an afterthought, like it was figured out after the team planned out a series of cool levels and were forced to figure out a way to tie them altogether. It would have been nice to see Guerilla explore the themes of hopelessness as the ISA struggle to survive in hiding on a hostile planet, but instead Killzone 3 basically glosses over this with a quick fade out and a cut scene. This liberal use of fading between scenes, along with the occasional hiccup when loading, broke me out of the experience repeatedly, exacerbating the generally boring story.
The characters of Killzone are one-dimensional. From our hero, Sev, to the evil Helghast leaders, you pretty much have their personalities pinned from the first moment they swagger onto the screen. The interplay between characters is totally predictable, and we're never given a view of the complex dynamics we might expect out of soldiers at war or a moment of pause or regret about how things play out. Unlike Captain Templar from the original Killzone, there are no likeable characters in Killzone 3. Sure, they're charming in a brutish fashion, but Sev and the rest of the ISA feel more like unthinking meatheads than soldiers dealing with a life or death situation and a feeling of abandonment. They just aren't people you can identify with in any significant way.

Yes, it looks this good.
Story and characters aside, Killzone 3 succeeds as a superb first-person shooter. Guerilla has once again proven that they know how to make the most visceral feeling first-person combat on the market. The controls are considerably tighter than they were in two, but I love how everything you do in Killzone 3 still feels like there's momentum behind it. From climbing ladders to running to slamming into cover, Killzone 3 makes you feel like your character is grounded in the world around him. Even shooting feels more real thanks to the weight and swing of the weapon – but not at the cost of overly floaty controls.
Killzone 3 also does a nice job at breaking up the levels between sections where you're on foot, and where you're kicking ass in a super powered vehicle. While the entire game is very linear, Guerilla's done a great job at varying what you're doing just enough from moment to moment to keep you from seeing behind the curtain too much. Each skirmish is so intense, and so visually satisfying, that I'm often too engrossed to think about the story or how I'm being funneled in a very specific direction.
2.Hitman Absolution
HitmanAbsolutionPackArt.jpg
Developer:IO Interactive
Publisher:Square Enix
Director:Tore Blystad
Artist:Visual Works (CGI)
Engine:Glacier 2
Hitman A 1
No one can complain about the stunning visuals in Hitman Absolution, but the ludicrous plot and linear gameplay are huge minuses against this title.
The Hitman series has always been aimed at the resolutely hardcore. And it's not just that the game's starring Agent 47, the most stylishly dressed killer in gaming, boasted finicky controls and punishing difficulty levels.
These titles demanded players give themselves over to its open-ended gaming structure where a combination of stoical patience and creative puzzle-solving were rewarded. Sure, you could blast your way through levels with twin-ballers if you played the games on the easiest difficulty settings. But unless you surrendered to the series' signature stealth gameplay, the Hitman games would prove an ultimately hollow experience.
This rule of thumb has been almost completely done away with in Absolution, IO's first Hitman game since 2006. Hints of it remain in the design of a couple of levels and the eye-watering challenge that's presented by the highest difficulty setting. But IO have made a number of design choices aimed at broadening Absolution's appeal beyond the core Hitman fanbase, and while there's still plenty to admire here, unfortunately not all of the changes work in the game's favour.
Absolution starts off with Agent 47 being sent to kill his former handler Diane Burnwood, who has betrayed the pair's shadowy employers, The Agency. After a mission that serves as the game's tutorial, Diane lies in a pool of blood and shower-door glass, begging 47 to protect a child named Victoria she has in her charge. He agrees, stashes Victoria in an orphanage in Chicago, and then sets out to find out why The Agency has put such a premium on acquiring her. Naturally, this investigation presents 47 with a ton of targets upon which to apply his death-dealing talents.
This rather decent plot setup unfortunately descends into a farcical mess rather quickly. Granted, the stories running through all the Hitman games are uniformly rubbish, but Absolution is silly by even their low standards. The main problem is that the game's outlandish plot developments jar horribly with the way it's presented as a darkly atmospheric thriller. It can't decide whether it wants to be Grindhouse or Noir and its attempts at straddling both camps fail miserably.
This is a story about a contract killer caring for a defenceless girl at the behest of the only person he ever formed a human connection with. It's also a story in which the protagonist fights a man the size of a brick outhouse while wearing spandex and a Lucha Libre mask in a barn that just happens to be a short walk from a top-secret subterranean science lab. As Agent 47 marches towards his final quarry, the player encounters a stream of increasingly outlandish characters, each one more depraved than the next.
Hitman A 4
In the past, the main belief players needed to suspend was that no one could see the barcode tattoo on 47's head when he wandered into their midst in disguise. Now, one of their lesser hurdles is to accept that 47 would rely on information given to him by an ornithological fetishist covered in feathers and bird poo.
Still, as awful as the plot is, it would be acceptable if it could be ignored completely, but unfortunately, the game's campaign contains several levels that are designed around pushing the narrative forward. This is probably Absolution's greatest misstep because these levels also strip out the series' traditional open-ended gameplay.
In these missions, players do have the freedom to subdue victims, swap clothes and engineer entertaining ways to dispatch NPCs. But the levels themselves are wide, linear corridors and to secure the highest rating here, the player's goal is to make their way to an exit point without being detected. At first, these levels are rather uninteresting, but as Absolution's checkpoint saves become more erratic, some of them become downright frustrating. At the highest difficulty, where no mid-mission checkpoints exist at all, they can transform into tedious wars of attrition.
This isn't the rule throughout, however, as Absolution contains a few missions in the traditional vein of the series. You know, where you're plonked down into a map filled with lethal items, accidents waiting to happen and a target (or some targets) that require Agent 47's lethal expertise.
A mission early on in the game set in a bustling market in Chinatown is probably the campaign's high point. Here, players are presented with an odious crime lord and a ton of ways to take him out; the range of options extends from poisoning the target's food at his favourite noodle bar, to something as simple as pushing him down a manhole.
Hitman A 3
It's in missions such as this, where tailing a target, learning their routes and then pulling off an intricately plotted execution is as satisfying as a kill initiated by spur-of-the-moment creativity.
In the instances in the campaign where players are encouraged to observe, plan and execute, Absolution shines brightest. They're also the most heartbreaking aspects of the game, because they provide hints of what Absolution could have been if IO had just stuck to what made their series great in the first place.
The chocolate box of lethal delights that the open-ended missions present is enticing enough on its own, but coupled to the game's swoon-worthy score and gorgeous visuals, it provides glimpses of a game that would have been utterly mind-blowing.
Now, before I stand accused of denigrating Absolution for not being Blood Money 2.0, allow me to point out that I think several of its new features improve on 2006's game significantly. I do not, for example, find Instinct – the much-touted mechanic that allows 47 to see enemies through walls and NPC route paths – to be the bone of contention a lot of purists do.
Indeed, it's a fantastic new feature offering newcomers the best gateway into the series to date – the mark and kill mechanic even offers newbies an ace in the hole if their best efforts aren't realised mid-mission. Similarly, the scoring system and unlockables are strokes of sheer genius; with leaderboard bragging rights, new abilities and new weapons up for grabs, each mission positively cries out to be replayed every which way is possible.
Hitman A 2
Furthermore, Contracts Mode is a great addition to the Hitman package. In it, players are able to create hits based on the campaign levels and then challenge the online community with their creations. It's true that this is something the Hitman community was doing via internet forums already and it's slightly tarred with the less-than-brilliant design of some of the levels, but it provide players with opportunities to both create and enjoy levels where puzzle solving and a sense of fun work arm-in-arm with 47's business of killing. In short, it feels like Hitman in its purest sense.
And that's ultimately what's missing from most of Absolution. The game may look better and play better than any Hitman game before it, but one can only marvel at how IO managed to lose sight of their IP's most appealing aspects so often.
The best thing one can say about Absolution is that it's impossible to feel ambivalent about it; players will love and loathe aspects of this game in equal measure. In Absolution, terrible ideas rub up against great ones almost on a moment-to-moment basis, and the end result is a title which is impossible to consider with the same clinical detachment that it's protagonist is known for.

Hitman Absolution system requirements (minimum)

  • CPU: 2.4 GHz dual core Intel or AMD processor
  • RAM: 1GB of system memory
  • Graphics: DirectX 10 compatible card with 512 MB RAM. Nvidia 8-series or AMD Radeon 3000 series graphics cards.
  • Operating system: Windows Vista
  • DirectX compatible sound card
  • 10 GB of hard drive space

Hitman Absolution system requirements (recommended)

  • CPU: 2.6 GHz quad core Intel or AMD processor, Core i5 or Phenom X2
  • RAM: 2GB
  • Graphics: DirectX 10 compatible card with 1GB of video memory, Nvidia 400-series or AMD 5000-series.
  • Operating system: Windows 7
  • DirectX compatible sound card
  • 10 GB of hard drive space


1.Call Of Duty : Modern Warfare 3

 Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 box art.png


Developer:Infinity Ward Sledgehammer Games

Publisher:Activision Square Enix (Japan)

Distributor:Activision (retail) Steam (online)

Designer:Glen Schofield Michael Condrey

Writer:Paul Haggis Will Staples

Composer:Brian Tyler

People love to hate it, but the Call of Duty franchise is successful for a reason. No other first-person shooter has the same flair for visual spectacle in its singleplayer campaign, and few can match its utterly addictive multiplayer. While Call of Duty games have become formulaic at this point, as evidenced by Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3's muddled narrative and at times frustrating design, Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games have refined and polished the Modern Warfare experience to produce the best of the series with the third installment.
Modern Warfare 3 comes to us by way of an older engine, but still looks great. Sure, it's not among the very best out there nowadays, but it performs well. At any given time the screen appears ready to burst with effects and visual madness. Entire battles are waged before you; buildings burn and crumble while a steady flow of explosions batter your senses. This is Call of Duty, and Modern Warfare 3 collects these moments of boom in abundance, presenting them in all their 60 frames-per-second glory.
Modern Warfare 3's singleplayer campaign hits many of the same highs and lows as its predecessors. Amazing setpieces serve as backdrops for giant firefights yet again. This is no understatement. Few games retain the crazy roller coaster pace that this does level after level, with brief moments to breathe set between the next eruption of gunplay. The shooting feels extremely responsive and well-tuned, and the battlegrounds challenge your awareness at all times. You're always given different situations that mix-up the gameplay just enough to keep things interesting. The game presents a formidable challenge, as always, on the Hardened and Veteran settings – something that the more hardcore players will want to delve into.
Still, Modern Warfare 3's campaign suffers from a run of the mill story and the patented Call of Duty monster closet syndrome, a common shooter ailment that occurs when infinitely spawning enemies pour from around corners, doors and stairs without end. At several points enemies even appear to completely disregard their own safety if it means they can run past your allies and just shoot you in the face. The story is difficult to follow as usual, and while it does wrap up the arc begun by the previous Modern Warfare games, it isn't ultimately all that interesting or satisfying. Moments of emotional weight fell flat as I found it difficult to muster up feelings of sadness about the death of one named soldier after witnessing the countless deaths of hundreds of other Americans.
If singleplayer is good, then Modern Warfare 3's multiplayer is fantastic. Like the other Call of Duty games before it, this entry pulls you in with its persistent leveling system and frantic combat. All of the sixteen new maps are fun to play and, with a whole new slew of challenges to complete, rewards constantly pop up and keep you hooked with the next little endorphin rush. No matter whether I play for five minutes or five hours, multiplayer in Modern Warfare 3 always makes me feel like I'm accomplishing something.
Some of the rewards you're constantly unlocking are killstreaks and perks—series stand-bys—which are a few great examples of how Modern Warfare 3 refines the series. You still unlock weapons by leveling up, but weapons also have levels as well. Leveling up a gun adds Weapon Proficiencies, which are essentially perks for your weapon. These proficiencies take things like the hip fire accuracy perk from the previous games and add it to your weapon unlocks, giving you the ability to focus on other perks when customizing your class.

Killstreaks have also been reworked into Strike Packages to bring a better sense of balance and reward to all types of players. You still unlock abilities in Strike Packages by getting kills, but now you can specialize your killstreak rewards so they suit your playstyle. If you're not the type who goes on huge streaks and you're not always watching your kill/death ratio, you can take a Support Strike Package. This package doesn't have rewards that are as offensively-focused as the Assault package, but all kills carry over between spawns. This gives less-skilled players a way to contribute to the fight, and will hopefully give clans and groups ways to better specialize their players into a cohesive team unit. It's a great new feature, and showcases how Call of Duty offers one of the most varied multiplayer shooter experiences around.
The controls feel as good as ever, and that same sense of exhilaration and speed that comes from a great round of multiplayer still exists. Like past Call of Duty games, occasional moments where one team totally dominates the other due to Assault Strike Package rewards still happen, but overall this remains a slight annoyance when weighed against the rest of the multiplayer package.
Minimum System Requirements
 • Operating System: Windows® XP / Windows Vista® / Windows® 7
 • Processor: Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E6600 or AMD Phenom™ X38750 processor or better
 • Memory: 16 GB free hard drive space / 2GB RAM
 • Video Card: Shader 3.0 or better 256 MB NVIDIA®GeForce™ 8600GT / ATI® Radeon™ X1950 or better
 • Sound Card: DirectX® 9.0C or later