Warmer weather, cohorts abound, and zero responsibility are the three perfect ingredients to an ideal summer of gaming. Here's a look at five great titles to keep you out of the sun for the next three months.
Portal 2
This Orange Box original combines all the joy of humorous dialogue, brain busting puzzles, and murderous robots all within the safety of the Aperture Science Labs.
Valve's hilarious story of machine versus man warmed gamer's hearts as the slightly misguided GLaDOS had the insatiable urge for testing and a promised pastry at the end of the game.
Portal 2 is leaps and bounds ahead of its predecessor, offering an extended single-player and an additional co-op mode, the game comes packaged with 10+ hours of quantum mechanical mayhem.
Between its mind-bending level design, the laugh-out-loud voice acting by Stephen Merchant, and insanely addicting game play, Portal 2 should be on every gamer's playlist for the summer.
L.A. Noire
The ′40s were a time of global unrest and an American home front rife with sex, drugs, and as the title suggests, crime.
The game's plot follows Cole Phelps, a returning war hero, who's come to aid the LAPD in LA's largest series of crime sprees. Players will have to decipher clues, sort evidence, and grill suspects utilizing Rockstar's innovative MotionScan technology to unravel some of the most morbid mysteries the City of Angels has ever seen.
What sets L.A. Noire apartfrom its competition is that in and of itself, it has managed to create an entirely new genre; half puzzle, half shooter, and wholly and originally unique.
While in some respects the game doesn't topple Rockstar's previous franchise Grand Theft Auto, it does manage to eloquently interface a series of challenges that will put both the player's thumbs and minds to the test.
With the sprawling hub of L.A. never looking so bleak, players thankfully can indulge in the game's monotone, sanguine world in the safety of their basements.
inFAMOUS 2
PlayStation 3 owners will have the chance to flex their relatively ambiguous moral muscles this summer with inFAMOUS 2.
This time around, Cole MacGrath is adding fire and ice to his growing repertoire of elemental mastery. The female protagonists in the game will either help him be the savior of Empire City, or be the one who finally puts the nail in the coffin for the downtrodden metropolis.
Placing a larger emphasis on morality, the developers over at Sucker Punch have poured their heart and soul into what is definitively the must-have game on the PS3 for the warmer months.
Promising new skills, new locations, and a ton of untarnished meat bags for Cole to dispose of, inFAMOUS 2 adds a spark to the summer's electronic nightlife.
Child of Eden
With all of its fast-paced shooting, techno-synth beats, and a healthy dose of LSD-infused visuals, Child of Eden has found a formula for a psychedelic success.
Between all of the trippy, high-Rez graphics (pardon my PS2 pun) the game has somewhat of a coherent story, although in the end becomes nearly irrelevant as the game is just downright fun.
Child of Eden is also one of the first games that actually has a well-done Kinect alternative style of play, as the player's arms will become virtual lethal weapons as they rain digital pain on the funkadelic baddies.
Though it lacks the "personal massager" that made Rez so famous, for $60 Child of Eden is by far, the cheapest way to get your fix using some of that expendable summer dough.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Those old enough to fondly remember playing through the original Sci-Fi shooter, Deus Ex, have been waiting for this next iteration of their favorite series for quite a while. From everything shown on the game so far, they won't be disappointed.
Human Revolution takes place 25 years before the events of the original, but fear not, as the arsenal of all the human augmentations will be at the player's disposal once more. Developing in one primary style of gameplay (i.e. combat or stealth) will grant the player some of the slickest moves this side of America's Best Dance Crew,while their secondary slot will be used for either social or technology skills.
Using both skills in varying combinations allows the player to craft a distinctly new gameplay, different in nearly every way from their peers.
While Deus Ex: Human Revolution won't be out until the end of the summer, now's the perfect chance to catch up on everything that's happened in the dystopian worldbefore this summer's groundbreaking return to the future.
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