PC PC GAMES

Are you a FPS fan? Do you enjoy multi-players FPS? You still don’t have BF3?

If you answer YES to the above questions, DO NOT READ THIS REVIEW NOW! Because you need to buy the game now. Seriously go buy it then come back to read the IGN review while you wait for the excitement.

IGN basically sums up everything in 1 simple paragraph.

“While DICE may not deliver a memorable story here, it doesn’t need to when Battlefield 3′s online warfare raises every bar imaginable, delivering one of the best multiplayer experiences of the year. I doubt Battlefield purists will complain much about the campaign, honestly; I know you’re enlisting in this battle to bring down entire armies online. ”

See you in the battlefield! Add my battlelog ID: TheWanster

Yet both of these are small qualms when compared to the ridiculous number of stability problems. Tom Senior’s game crashes to desktop every five minutes. Rich gets disconnected from every server after a round-and-a-half of play, without fail. Tim can’t connect to servers at all, most of the time. In over a week of playing and trying to play Battlefield 3 online, I’ve had all of these problems. There is a slight glitchiness to the singleplayer, including character models that occasionally fail to load, weapon models that vanish, and soldiers who run through walls, but the multiplayer simply does not work at all for some of the people, some of the time.

Given that this is the eleventh game in a series that started in 2002, a guaranteed huge seller, and a tentpole game for EA, why is it acceptable that it has had a clumsy, broken launch?

It’s not. For all its similarities to the previous games in the series, Battlefield 3’s multiplayer is still fresh and exciting. There’s no other game out there that can provide the same chaotic spectacle, or the feeling of lying in the grass with friends, watching a battle roll towards you from the horizon. Even as the singleplayer is everything I hate about games, the multiplayer is many of the things I love about them.

I broke down and bought it. So far I’ve played for an hour or two.

I am very impressed with the quality of this game. And considering the quality, I’m even more impressed that they decided to sell it for only $19.99. It’s amazing how these days, big-name software companies often release a buggy mess of a game, and yet a small indie developer can release something nearly flawless. I’ve yet to encounter any noticeable bugs. Even in the menus, before actually getting into a heist, it gives the impression of a Valve-quality title.

Yes, I’m comparing this to a Valve game. And not just because it’s “very similar to L4D” (which is a pretty big misconception from gamers who haven’t actually tried it), but rather, because it feels like all of the right design decisions were made.

The graphics, while nothing groundbreaking, are very pretty and clean. It looks good while running like butter at the same time. Think Portal 2-level of visuals. The audio sounds equally as great. The soundtrack does an awesome job of carrying the intensity of the game, while the radio chatter and bantering between your teammates really complete the effect.

Yelling at civilians, pushing them to the ground, and screaming “GET THE ♥♥♥♥ DOWN” is more satisfying than it should ever be. The gunplay, while not spectacular, is still decent. It’s no Killing Floor or Red Orchestra, but more of a standard CoD type of feel. Like L4D, the pistols feel like pea-shooters. This makes sense though considering the fact that you’re firing at very heavily-armored law enforcement units not far into the heist.

This game is challenging. Even on normal difficulty, if you mindlessly run ‘n’ gun into a group of cops, you’ll get busted pretty fast. It’s no Rainbow 6 either; Payday is still very much a shooter at it’s core, but there’s also a lot of strategy to consider.

Unlike L4D where you’re slaughtering hordes of zombies, the enemies in this game are much more intelligent. Seeing the AI move from cover to cover, dive through windows, grapple through skylights, and snipe from rooftops is legitimately intimidating. Also unlike L4D it’s fairly less linear.

Situations and objectives are different from game to game, which adds to the replay-ability. Even little things like shooting out the security cameras will have an actual effect on how difficult and/or successful your heist will be. In one game, after walking into the bank, one of my partners accidentally revealed himself way too early, which resulted in the alarms setting off. Consequently it seemed like we had a harder time tracking down the bank manager so we could kill him and steal his keycard.

I know some people are unsure about the replay-ability of this game. After playing it today, I can confidently say there are at least dozens of hours worth of entertainment here. Although I’ve only been playing the game for one day, I’ve just been playing the same map (The First World Bank) over and over, multiple times, which definitely says something about the replay-ability. I haven’t even touched the other heists yet. I’m excited to see what the other campaigns have in store.

Amazing value for this game.

Do not get dead island in steam as of yet. There have been many conflicted reports of dead island on steam being the wrong version. The people that have gotten the game have experienced no clipping, frequent crashes, bad optimization, obvious 360 controls, losing quests resulting in losing saves 5-7 hours in and losing all drive to play the game for a while, etc. Now as we mourn lost hours, let us enjoy the trailer that made us want to play it.

BlackThunders input

The Good:

The Island (or the part I explored) is completely open world. Most building can be explored and plenty of loot can be found. This is a neat departure from something like L4D that is a very controlled ”corridor” experience.
I had fun venturing out and “finding” stuff. There is plenty to find and weapons get better all the time. I do miss getting my hand on some firearms, 5 hours in I have yet to see one.

I even found a bunker, think WW2 left over with a high tech door. No way in yet, but I will… I hope.

The feel of the world and the screams in the background are satisfyingly eerie. I keep thinking, was that a bird or a person screaming for help? Just as you’d wish a Zombie movie should make you feel.

Puzzles can be fun or a great source of frustration. Luckily the balance here seems to be just right, at least for me. I am never (or hardly ever) look for an item too long or can’t figure out where to look for it.

You find fast travel between major hubs fairly quick and while looting the same bag on the way from point a to point b again and again sounds like a great source of income the travel could get annoying without that.

The trowing mechanic is satisfying, if stabbing a zombie in the head can be called that. The hand to hand battles with 2-4 bad guys at the same time has the feel of danger but can be managed. Messing up gets you either a close up fight with a zombie or thrown to the ground which has a scary feeling.

Experience points and work benches… I love it. You get points and get to spend them. Deux Ex had them and so did Borderlands. As a matter of fact if you spent points in Borderlands you know they layout almost perfectly.

The Weird:

As you venture along you get the occasional “BillyBob20″ is close, would you like to join? So, lets get this straight. This is a unique twist on joining someones game in progress on the fly. And if I get the idea right it means they are similar far in progression as I am. Cool, but why wouldn’t you give me the choice of restricting that view to people on my steam list?

Jumps and sprints are cool and I made some that saved me time (from one beach house to another). But I can’t jump a simple guard rail?

Inventory space. OK, I get it. I can’t carry 20 lead pipes and 15 paddles, but having to discard some sweet upgraded weapons from early on is a little sad.

Respawning Zombies. Yes, we need them in a game like this. But as example, walking between some cottages on a footpath intersection they spawn in the same pose in the SAME exact location every time. The woman sits on the left under the sign, across from her on the path is the dude and opposite of him is the guy next to the bush. Same goes for the streets you travel. They will be back… the way you first saw them, again and again…

The Bad:

PC player purchased this game to Beta test this week.

I just lost 5 hours of progress and have to start from the beginning. I am kind scared playing again. You do this once to me it already feels VERY VERY bad. But I sure don’t want to do it again and again.

The UI is in serious need of help. My mouse is not just on the screen twice (One windows cursor one in game cursor) off set by half a screen. But it also feels like molasses without the ability to speed it up for the UI. In game the speed slider works.

I had a bug that would not let me finish the first major quest and I had to reload the game for it to work.

I got a NVIDIA card in the system I play with right now so my issues seem limited. Ati seems to be the big loser here. (XBOX had a NVIDIA at its core and I think that explains it.

This version screams bad console port.

Looking at the STEAM Forums for the game is scary!
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=3f0d99e87328ac2d13a0fc2ceeb0163e&f=1171

It is very obvious that they released the game WAY to early and a real BETA might have done wonders. Whatever the pressure on the publisher or developer was, this is how you can break not just your game but also the good will of want to be fans.

I want to like it, there is much to like it here! Lets hope they get it fixed!

We have played them all! Farcry, Crysis, and now Crysis 2. If you were relying on Crytek to stress your new AMD or NVIDIA GPUs, well, you will likely have to wait another 4 years, or never probably. Crysis 2 graphics suck. Yes the graphics suck and you all know why. Crytek sold us out for a bunch of pussy 360 gamers. Gameplay is about as exciting and motivating as pulling a scab off your dog’s scrotum. Open gameplay? Yeah right. Challenging? Not in the least. Crysis 2 goes into the “Never Finished” game bin with Daikatana. Come to think of it, Daikatana had better multi-player.

I don’t often gripe about game devs selling out, but Crytek sure did. Crytek is not about innovative gameplay and astounding graphics any more. Crytek is about ripping me off for $60. I think Crytek would have gotten better press if it had not of even released its water-downed and anemic PC version of this “game.” I hope Cevat Yerli chokes on this giant flaccid floppy penis of a game, while he is pulling out his overstuffed-wallet. Yeah, I just said that, and I meant it.

At least my 10 year old son thinks it is awesome. Wish he would give me the $60 back. Crysis 2 will be a great buy….when it hits the $2.99 price point on Steam.

Introduction

After Biowares brilliant games, Dragon Age Origins and its expansion Dragon Age Awakenings, they decided to carry on the Dragon age game and to make a second one, which is simply named Dragon Age 2. Now from the start we heard that the game was new in many ways including the combat, which worried some, but regardless of the changes we all went out to buy it anyways. This is the story of that purchase.

About

Dragon Age 2 is by Bioware whom are also the owners of the very famous Mass Effect franchise, they are also currently working on a star wars MMOPRG. Dragon Age 2 was released march 8th in the US and march 11th in the EU to a standard full retail price.

Gameplay

The gameplay has not changed much from the first Dragon Age however a lot of distinct changes can be felt, a major difference, fx, on the consoles is the fact that auto attack had been removed so that the game was a button masher, however we on the PC were lucky to avoid that so it is still a standard auto attack for us. For everyone whom does not know what the first Dragon Age’s combat system was like you can go play any RPG out there and then come back to this review as it is exactly the same, click to auto attack and then deal out spells from your toolbar, and that’s fine, don’t fix what isn’t broke. However my gripes with the game begin to emerge around this part as it is quickly evident how over powered some classes are.

The game holds three main classes, warrior, rogue and mage. Warrior is your typical tank that can also specialize as a DPS ( Damage per second, a term for a class that is there for giving damage ), rogue is DPS or ranged DPS and mage just makes wooshy noises and then things die/explode. However the warrior is greatly underpowered in this game as it is almost useless as a DPS and can only really be used for crowd control simply because the rogue and the mage are able to dish out some much damage from almost the very start of the game that a DPS warrior becomes completely useless, that really hurts for players, like me, whom prefer to play warriors for awesome killing via sword.

However combat quickly becomes even more repetitive than in the first one, there is a very normal rhythm to every fight and it goes – Take your mage, cast cone of cold on massive mob of people, cast other area of effect spells on stunned enemies till they die, rinse and repeat –, the game quickly becomes less of having exciting battles and more of just trying to slog your way through boring fights to get to the next part of the story.

Another huge part of Dragon Age has always been the interaction with your companions whom would give you bonuses and help you in the story if you became friends with them. This is still true in Dragon Age 2 and Bioware once again provides some of the best voice acting aswell as some of the most awesome/witty dialogue in gaming. You truly attach yourself to these characters and you soon begin to actually give a damn what happens to them, a hallmark that the game really knows how to pull you in.

The quests in DA2 are also very nicely done and often gives you the feeling that you cannot just leave a quest behind or not do it, however another weak point of the game is that the locations are very limited, several times in the game you will see dungeons be reused over and over even though you are supposed to be a completely different place than you were last time, this really drags on the quest effects because you never really feel you go anywhere new after having been in the same cave 25 times.

Another change is that the wide arrays of answers to a questions from Dragon age 1 has now been turned into the chat wheel from Mass Effect. Instead of having a lot of different answers you know choose between a good responds, a neutral ( often time just straight out ***hole responds ) or a bad/aggressive responds. The game feels a lot weaker with this implemented as everything just seems generic when all you can answer is “ Ofcourse I will help you! “ or “ Help you? Don’t you have someone else to help you or am I just your main guy for jobs now? “ or “ I AM NOT GOING TO HELP YOU I HATE EVERYTHING “, this just causes Hawke to become too stereotypical for the games own good.

Story

The story starts our hero, Hawke, on a flight from his hometown in Ferelden ( The area the first game was centered around ) as he feels to Kirkwall, a city in the Free Marches. The game then follows Hawke as he rises to become the Champion of Kirkwall. The game does this very well actually, following his ascent into riches and glory, it does this mainly through skipping some years where he is off doing something and then the story resumes to see how far he had gotten. This works rather well as it skips years of boring combat and “ go kill so and so “ quests, which is actually rather innovative as the game just pushes away from the parts it know would be boring and just draw out the game.

However as the story progressed I quickly found myself hoping for the game to be over as the game pulls out more and more storylines that just seem to drag out the game. While I won’t spoil anything I found the ending to be very disappointing and indeed the very last chapter of the game very disappointing, it left a very bad taste in my mouth.
As previously mentioned though the game successfully attaches you to your companions and I can only commend it for that.

Multiplayer

None, and that’s perfectly alright with me.

Summary

To sum it up, the game certainly scores points by having an engaging story, good characters and a exciting local, but it suffers in the department of combat, dungeons and the last chapter of the story.

I therefore cannot recommend Dragon Age 2 to anyone whom was not a hardcore fan of Dragon Age one and I have to say this is the first time I have been so disappointed with a Bioware game. I am afraid that for this game I have to give it the abyssal score of 7/10.

This may cause a lot of rage from the fans and the haters but I just can’t give it any higher, it simply doesn’t rank as high as Dragon Age 1 or the Mass Effect series.

This game is ONLY recommended for hardcore fans

Summary information:

Publisher: EA

Developer: Bioware

Website: http://dragonage.bioware.com/

Forum: http://social.bioware.com/home.php?

Demo is on Steam

Price: 49,99€ ( Prices may vary on American Steam )

Talk about a nice (and unexpected) surprise!

Tune in to the podcast for more

The Wanginator

Take a 3rd Person Shooter, Add in a Tower Defense Strategy and mix of DotA then Shake it all up (not stirred) and add some Steam flair and you’ll get Monday Night Combat. Sometimes it takes not being serious about yourself, a satirical look at the future of entertainment and you may have a low budget success on your hands.

The premise is simple. Cloning technology allows the entertainment of sports and television to get down right nasty and exciting. You play on a team of players bent on beating down and opening up the other teams money ball. No plot in multiplayer. Work your way through the map, the towers, the spawning bots and other “Pros” (the game term for other players) to get at the other teams Money ball, take down it’s shields and voila! you win the game. In this most simplistic of thought processes, MNC has taken great little features from many different game types to provide a fairly unique game play to a 3rd person shoot.

The Breakdown:

Also sprinkled through out the map are little jump pads, area attacks and the Annhilator that all cost money to activate.  Everyone once in a while, the MNC mascot will appear and unloading into it will produce money and power ups.  How does it blend all together?  In a most humorous of ways.  The game play can be fast, the announcer will keep you up todate on what is happening in the game and with you.  Find yourself with loads of cash, the announcer will not so kindly mention you may want to upgrade something.

Get stabbed in the ass?  Announcer gonna make a playcall and OHhh… it will make you laugh.  This is a console port, and a pretty smooth one in my opinion.  I usually shy away from ports, but in this case I was interested and it paid off.  They take advantage of steamworks, so lots of achievements to unlock.  However, for a twitch game, there is some strategy (especially if the game goes long) on how to win a match.  Matches can be decided very quickly and I still question some of the class balances.

Though my frustration could be due to the fact I’m no good.  I’ve seen some players wipe the floor with the other team and the match is over in 5 minutes, I’ve beena  couple that have gone into over time, with high killing and it was the strategic placement of turret types that made a significant difference in the game.  In one particular game where the toher team imo was a better twitch player base (they had significant more Pro Kills), they were unable ot push the map due to 4 stratetigically placed fully upgraded long range turrets I spent a lot of cash on.

The 4 turrets did an amazing job of keeping the other teams bots in pieces.  And with out larger bots to help push, their players had a near impossible time advancing.  In the end, our bots broke through on sheer numbers and we won.

For the simple price of $15 dollars, you can easily get 10 hours of multiplayer game play just trying each class, unlocking your first customer class and laughing at the over the top, cheese factor, redneck humor that game has to offer.

“The free-to-play online action strategy game based upon the highest-rated real-time strategy title of all time.”

The Basics

• RTS
• Squad-based units
• WWII
• Victory Point Control/Annihilation game types
• Relic style resource gathering *points to Dawn of War, Dawn of War II, Company of Heroes, etc.*
• Terrain defense bonus
• Infantry morale
• F2P (Free-to-Play)
• Item store
• Guilds *not viable yet (joining a guild does nothing and guild creators have all options disabled)
• Strategic gameplay (each unit is weak by itself, this game do not allow any single unit to dominate the field)
• Hero units *note above, same applies

The Doctrines

Allied:

• Infantry (Rangers, Howitzers, Camo)
• Armor (Calliope, Pershing, AP rounds)
• Airborne (Paradroped troops/tanks/AT, bombing run)

Axis:

• Terror (King tiger, V1)
• Blitzkrieg (Stormtroopers, Tiger tank, Rocket Barrage)
• Defensive (Flak-88, Recoup Losses, in-territory defenses)

Run-through of everything the average gamer goes through from beginning:

First, you sign up at http://www.companyofheroes.com. Once you done that you can download and run the game install.

There is a total of six combat doctrines to choose from, three on each side. (Note: the names hint at potential future doctrines similar to the original CoH nations) Each of these doctrines changes the units available to the player slightly. Enough to make a difference (ie. only the Allied Armor can field the Sherman Calliope). Along with slight unit differences, each commander gets an Ability Tree. This tree, similar to the original Company of Hero’s, allows the play to select his or her commander abilities. However, instead of selecting at the beginning of each game. The commander AND doctrine type are both selected at the character creation. After character creation, the player is immediately asked whether or not he or she has experience playing Company of Heroes and if so in what format, Campaign/Single-Player or Multi-player.

It is assumed that if you played multi-player and believe yourself to be reasonably well at it to select that option instead of Campaign even if you prefer the Campaign. After selecting your background in Company of Heroes, a tutorial begins in which it starts explaining the Lobby interface. Here you have the option of continuing and finishing the tutorial or skipping it. To skip it you go to the top right and click on the menu where you are given the option of ending the tutorial. Either way, after the tutorial, check out the main screen. Its got some great tips for veteran and new players alike.

Once you have done that, I suggest a game or two with an easy or normal cpu in the custom game mode. See what the units are, the small changes to the original game, and get a feel for the new commander system. After that, get going, dive into the Reward Games. You select the game size (1v1,2v2, 3v3, 4v4) and it’ll say searching for game while showing you how many players on each side are also searching for a game. Soon(hopefull) it’ll find one and show “connection to players…” Once connected, you’ll hit the loading screen. This screen is important, it’ll show you the map, your allies, and your enemies. Check out what commander type they are and what items they have. Plan accordingly. Say you’ve got two enemy Tank commanders, you might want to rush out that early AT (anti-tank) and hold off on anti-infantry. Say hi, let them know you’re new to CoH:O (and if you’ve played any CoH before) the players there will generally be supportive and helpful as many are veteran players who love the community. If not, you can always ignore them.

Overall, if you like any of the Company of Heroes this is a must play. If you liked any of Relic’s Dawn of War series, this is a must try. For anyone else, its FREE. What more can I say? You won’t have lost anything by trying. (OK, well there’s the time you’re going to spend addicted to this, but that’s about it)

Character Creation:

You MUST chose your allegiance and doctrine type here. There is NO changing it, except by deleting and recreating your character. You have a couple of options to chose from in terms of your character’s physical appearance, but your character is rarely seen. He does not show up in gameplay and is only really seen when viewing another player’s profile in the leader-boards.

Tutorial:

Not bad, not for returning players though. Its slightly glitchy at times (doesn’t register mission accomplished or start the mission leaving you an empty map and 1 squad with nothing to do) But, all small glitches aside, its a great way to jump into multi-player. Go through the tutorial and then read some tips on the front page and you’re good to go. It shows you how to move units around, use cover, use tanks, the destruct-able environment, the resource system, and the hero system. Most RTS players can safely skip this, but be warned. You’ll be losing out on approx. the first 5/6 levels worth of xp.

Reward Game:

This is the heart and soul of Company of Heroes Online. With double xp and supply, bonuses for the underdog, special item drops, and leader-boards the incentive to play this is great. However, you are limited to the 500pt Victory Control game-type only. If you’re OK with the 500VP control game-type then play this. Sometimes searching is slow as it seems the community is still small (but increasing), however 1v1 is always a sure way to get a quick game in. In the games I’ve played, they’ve either been each to their own or teamwork, teamwork, teamwork. Each to their own works when you all know what you’re doing, but when it gets tough teamwork will always win. Sometimes you get paired up with a hacker/glitcher/etc but Relic has an ace up their sleeve… if the match does not run smoothly as in people dropping, strange lag, etc they will watch a recording of the battle themselves and arbitrate the match. Then comes the “Trust” System. It will, like any reasonable person, begin to not automatically award wins, points, etc to people who keep getting weird wins where they win in 5 mins, disconnect and win, or win by enemy disconnects. After so many of those the system will give out automatic losses when those things happen. Its kinda like a 3 strikes and your out deal. You can do it once or twice to get that extra level when you’re just starting, but then the benefit gets removed as you progress.

Custom Game:

Know you can totally dominate your friend and want to make him suffer? Play the annihilation game-type then. Here you get to play the game, but win only by killing all enemy units and main buildings. Like artillery? this is for you. Bring the rain.

Other options are the VP game-type where you can chose 250, 500, 1000pts with settings for starting resources, Fog of War, starting locations, and more. Also, if you play custom game, there are two (maybe more) maps that aren’t int he Reward Game playlist. These are the bridge maps where (as I’ve said) you attack each other with “What’s that?” “INCOMING!!!” artillery.

Campaign:

Guess what? Relic didn’t just throw out a mmo version of Company of Heroes in a micro-transaction format. They give you the whole game for FREE*. Now, its not completely for free because you have to invest some time if you want the full campaign. I’ve played some, about an hour or two’s worth and I still haven’t reached the point where I have to pay, but they say eventually you’ll have to buy the campaign levels. Thankfully, you can pay with in game money called “Supply” (or so they say, I can’t confirm this as I’m not far enough yet). So, play the single player, play some multi-player, then use the points from multi-player and unlock some more FREE single player. How cool is that? No dlc, no expansions, no cash needed. Just play their game and you get more of their game.

Now it is getting silly. PC gamers seem to agree that Black Ops is … well… meh… OK, but just that. But some reviews seem to be desperate not to drop it to deep. That is the only reason I can explain this:

Multiplayer:
…There are a plethora of new and interesting modes for the basic game, such as One in the Chamber, which gives everyone one shot and if you miss, you are forced to knife people until you get a kill and take their bullet. Redundancy brings the game down overall, but the new modes and Zombies keep it afloat.
Note that the PC version is now running dedicated servers as opposed to Modern Warfare 2’s iw.net system, but there are still a plethora of bugs and issues. Buyer beware, issues like the stuttering frame rate can be quite frustrating until Black Ops is patched up.

What would you think you expect the reviewers rating after what was said? C… maybe B- would that be stretching? Nope. you guessed wrong… it got an A for OUTSTANDING… say what?

Aside from the fact that Zombie Mode seems horrible broken, lame and uninspiring. Any of you tried it? How often will you come back? Oh and if you look for it, don’t look in the Multiplayer section, because you have to start this Multiplayer game from the single player campaign…. oh brother! There is so much wrong with that alone, but not even touched on.

the beauty of the web and blogs are that we are not like print dependent or limited by page sizes and word counts. Why rush the review, why not touch on things in detail? Oh… because you have not really invested that much time in it…

Introduction:

It is rare that I spend more than 20 hours on a game but at writing time I have spent more than 49 hours on Mount and Blade Warband, something rather odd for me as I am not one to spend long amount of times on one game. The only thing near it is Mass Effect 2 and Knights of The Old Republic which come in at 28 and 34 hours.

But what makes a game worth playing for what amounts to more than 2 full days, is it story? Gameplay? Multiplayer? Or simply the lack of other games to play? Well, let’s venture forth into this review, together, and find out!

About the Game:

The game is developed by a company named Taleworlds a small Turkish company. Their only products are Mount and Blade and Mount and Blade Warband both of which have been published by Paradox Interactive, a Swedish based company with a reputation for publishing smaller indie games and spin offs of their Hearts of Iron franchise.

Mount and Blade Warband itself is actually a standalone expansion pack to Mount and Blade with all the same features ( Ofcourse it adds alot to the mix aswell, but for this review we will be looking at the game as a whole )

Gameplay:

The game itself is a action RPG, centered around the character that you create in the start of the game, that can either be a female or a male. Other than this the game also features a system which that gives your character a back-story which then reflects in your skills, rather like the GOAT exam in Fallout 3.

The game starts you out with a smaller quest to eliminate a band of robbers but after that the game is entirely sandbox based, you can choose to do anything you want, becoming a mercenary captain or perhaps a lord of a castle for one of the many Kings of Caladria ( The continent on which this game is set ) or if you are ambitious enough you can even become one of the many kings that inhabit the realm, though it must be said that this requires alot of time and skill, as the game doesn’t start you out with a mega army, only yourself and a lousy set of armor and weapons.

From here you can recruit soldiers to your cause which then gain experience through combat and training, from here they can go from common peasant to feared knights or soldiers. It is through here that the player is introduced to the different classes within the game. Although you yourself are not limited to one class, the game limits your soldiers to classes in a kind of tech tree that defines whether your Nord Peasants will become Nord Elite Archers or Nord Huscarls.

This is for the Nord faction

Your character itself however can train up to become anything you want and you are never set to a specific course. You can learn anything from engineering ( To lessen the time making siege weapons at sieges ), training ( which gives your troops more experience over time ) or any third thing.

This is perhaps what makes the gameplay part so engaging as it never feels like you are limited to being a bowman or a swords man as you could easily train yourself up to being both things and you feel a genuine progress in your character and it feels nice to go from a wimp to a great warrior.

As mentioned before the game is set on the continent of Caladria where there are multiple kingdoms each with their own distinct culture and units. This also introduces the player to the courtship mechanics and the lordship mechanics.

If you build up relations with a king you can swear allegiance to him and in return ( if you serve him well ) he will grant you castles and villages that you can upgrade. In villages, for an example, you can build a manor so that you can rest in the village with your army or a school house so that their relationship with you increases ( Which means cheaper goods at the marketplace and more recruits when you ask for them ). Beyond this villages also earn you gold in relation to their own prosperity which can depend on buildings and you fending off raiders.

Fill her inventory with your thing(s)

Another option you have is that you can also get a wife through courtship, which requires you to duel other rivals as well as visiting her often. In return she will keep watch at your castle, arrange feasts so that lords like you more and open the option of a separate inventory other than your own.

You also have the option of recruiting companions whom have different skills to supplement you and your party. However you cannot recruit every companion in the game as their personalities will collide as some of them are raiders and looters while others are warriors with good intentions or perhaps on a quest of redemption.

The action part of the game can be found on the battlefield when to armies collide. The game turns into a first person/third person battle where armies smash together in head on battles with archers, cavalry and soldiers facing off and charging at each other.

It is here that you also learn of the commands in the game which makes the battles more than just mindless charges. Simple commands for certain sections of your troops mean that you have supreme control over your men in the heat of battle, with commands like stand closer or spread out, both which are 3 commands away ( 2 – select archers F2 – position commands 3 – spread out ).

Within the battle you also learn of the complex fighting system where you can block with your sword ( In different directions, there is never a universal block unless you use shields ) and can even do SPARTA kicks at your enemy to stop him from blocking too much.
THIS IS SPARTA and TEXT SPAM

From all this aspects of the battlefield combat the game also has a very distinct strategy feel to it, as simply rushing your enemy discarding hills, valleys and other parts of the area will mean that your cavalry will be alone and your soldiers will be running to catch-up while your archers are being bombarded by the enemy archers whom have taken up positions on a hill.

There for the game appeals to both the person whom want to a champion and simply cut his way through the enemy ranks with his two handed axe as well as the general whom stays behind his troops and directs their movements.

It must however be said that the AI tends to bug out if let to itself. One can choose to stay behind in battles and be auto resolved, however it seems that casualties from auto resolves are completely different from the results you get when direct yourself meaning that you will largely be directing your troops at all times.

Multiplayer:

The multiplayer of this game is also worth mentioning. It features several modes which includes battles and sieges aswell as duel servers. The multiplayer plays out in the battle mode of the game with players being set up against players. However the game does not automatically hand you the best weapons in the game ( Unless ofcourse the server is set to it ) you start as in single player with pitiful armor and weapons and have to kill other players to earn the money to buy better equipment and horses. However the equipment is limited from what class you choose, something exclusive to the multiplayer where, for an example, you can choose between a horse archer or a pikeman, where these selections limit your options to what you can buy.

So as for example a Nord Warrior will get a great selection of double handed axes, swords and shields while the Saranid Horse Archer will get great bows and fast horses.

The money aspect of the multiplayer is a driving force that makes you want to get additional equipment within game, however it does not carry over to other games so the money you earn decapitating 4 different enemies only gives you money in that match, which is rather disappointing.

Story:

The game is completely sandbox based and although it offers you smaller quests that the rulers will give you ( Like tracking down a criminal and dueling him ) the game does not offer you a specific goal and it is completely up to the player to decide what he wants to do within the game.

It is however story wise ( and RPG wise ) that the game sometimes shows its lack of depth. Conversations with NPCs seem stale and uninteresting with only rare variations. There are no voice overs and it can become annoying to talk with your wife in the game and have it be the coldest sterile conversation in RPG history. Beyond this the most coherent voices you will hear will be the raiders running at you yelling “ Arrgghhh “

The game also includes a day and night system that is reflected on the battlefield, and it looks quite awesome.

This can attributed to the very sandbox elements of the game that then pours over in the story/rpg section. It doesn’t at any point feel like someone is your friend or enemy as all the computer can muster is empty threats and insults or vague praise and compliments out of a hallmark card.

Graphics:

The game is by no way beautiful but the graphics can be described as functional. There are some glitches in the game engine wise, such as if you jump onto of people you float around till you fall down, aswell as waters in rivers flowing up stream and waves going sideways in the ocean.

However I myself did not have an issue with the graphics, people whom are easily discouraged by the lack of good graphics will find themselves at a loss in this game.

Summary:

As was stated in the start of the review, this game has already nommed a huge part of my time and I can therefor not give it anything other than my full recommendation ofcourse with certain precautions.

First person shooter people will feel limited by the fact, that the best ranged weapon is a longbow and that you can’t just rush your enemy, God of War style, without being knocked off your horse and severed into nice pieces. And the hardcore RPG people will be disappointed by the lack of depth in the conversation system aswell as the lack of character interaction.

This game is a recommended purchase

Summary Information:

Publisher: Paradox Interactive

Developer: TaleWorlds

Website: http://www.taleworlds.com/

Forum: http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php

Price: 30€ ( Prices may differ in American Steam ) Steam / 25£ Direct2Drive / 29.96€ GamersGate

Feedback is very appreciated.

As soon as I fired up the game I got a lot of chat requests asking how it is. It’s funny really… it shows that people are very interested in the newest member of the Metal of Honor series, but are not sure about it after reading some online reviews. For they are a very mixed bag and now I know why! 

I pre-purchased a couple month ago because I had the money in paypal and I always enjoyed the MoH series. If you ask me, now that I beat MoH, if I recommend buying it… I am torn. I want to love this game and I will most likely come back and play it for a while… but $59.99 for a not quite 4 hour single player game experience is just not enough! I just did the math and that comes out to an entertainment value of 26 cents a minute. That reminds me of the old times when they ripped you off on long distance calls. So do I feel riped off about buying the game…. again… very mixed emotions. Because the 4 hours of single player have been so enjoyable, heartpounding, “can’t wait to play more to see how the story continues”. It has been by FAR one of the most enjoyable game stories I played in a long while! I guess it does hail back to the Metal of Honor roots in that respect. It sucked me in completely and when a friend messaged me after I played for 30 minutes and asked how the game is I said “Amazing”.

You start caring for the people you play and the end rips your heart out, similar to how the movie “Black Hawk Down” makes you feel. You know the ugly truth, you know what is going to come but you start caring for these people and want them to walk away (most of them do). So the story sucked me completely in… but 4 hours… come on?! I feel similar to how I felt right at the end of “The Lord of the Rings” episode one. I so want to keep going, see how the story continues, but at least in LOTR I knew that it is only 1/3 of the story and there is more to come. I want more of MoH, I want to keep going. I want to feel more of the recoil of the excellent weapons models and hear the M60 roar with the best weapon sound in a long time.

Yes, there is Multiplayer and boy does it look pretty! And yes the great weapons models are found here too. But there is something about it I can’t quite put my finger on it. For one you die a lot… and I mean A LOT. Very often you won’t know why, from where or what you could have done different. It seems a bit like Lemming Central, you spawn, push forward and crack… you gone before you saw anyone. Pretty effects a good Muliplayer experience not makes! It is noticeable that two different teams worked on Multiplayer and Single Player. Why you wouldn’t include such things as lean that works in Single player but not Multi is a mystery to me, maybe you would have even less of a chance in Multiplayer… who knows. What I do know that if you give me a choice between MoH Multiplayer and  Battlefield Bad Company 2 it is NOT a contest and Battlefield wins hands down. So if you have Battlefield and buy MoH for the Multiplayer aspect I’d say save your money for something else this fall!

Maybe I will update this more as I keep playing different aspects of the game, but I wanted to make sure you all knew my feelings about MoH. I like it BUT it is  WAYYYYY to short! Shame on you DICE and shame on you EA, you had something great but made it feel cheap (or way too expensive)! I wonder how long they will get away with it, because even console kiddies have to feel a little riped off!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:12:45 — 53.6MB)

So there we are recording and chatting about games and the Dead Rising 2 description hits us… Co-Op and Multi-player… before we made it to the end 3 people purchased the game. Now… as far as the review goes, you will have to wait one more week. And we also talked about:

• Games on our wish list
• What is the Killer Game this Christmas season
• The new improved MOH… now without Taliban
• Starcraft2 vs Friends
• Watch game replays… watching can be fun!
• Sword of the Stars and what 4x games means
• Some Minecraft talk
• FIFA Soccer 2010 and EA Digital Distribution
• BestBuy continues to rip customers off
• 3DS… is 3D worth $300?
• L4D2 New Episode this Tuesday
• Why you should backup your Game Saves!
• Blizzard Real ID now optional
• Bobby Kotick is making waves… yet again
• Team Fortress 2 gets a HUGE update… now you can buy stuff
• Tim has new hardware… New Headset
• Some new Duke questions
• Curlen made us buy a console game (Dead Rising 2)
• Gunnar Optic Glasses
• STEAM top 10
• Blizzard unpacks the BAN Hammer
• World of Darkness

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:20:17 — 47.4MB)

I hit a raw nerve last week when I wrote about an experience with a game demo. The game might have been pretty and great, but the DEMO got more in the way of the presentation or made things overly difficult, than showing me the cool things. So we took some time this week and talked about the purpose of a game or software demo, what it should accomplish and what good or bad experience we had in the past with them.

The other talking points are:

• RIP All points Bulletin (Dirty Laundry Included)
• Why you shouldn’t get a Tattoo for a game
• New Flight Sim from Microsoft?!
• Pirates of the Buring Sea more content
• Activision CEO in the news again
• Intel now sells unlock codes?!
• STEAM now updates your AMD (ATI) drivers
• SC2 cheaters, watch out!
• STEAM Wallet
• Battlefield Vietnam DLC
• Let’s talk about a Date… errr… DEMO
• Mafia 2 and another DLC
• Hardware Talk (AMD, Intel and Video Cards)
• Corsair Obsidian 800D Computer Case
• And a heck of and “Outtro”

Introduction:

My childhood was dominated by a few select games that I have always regarded as the greatest of all time. These games include GTA: Vice City, B-17 Bomber Command and Crimson Skies and of course my two very favorites, Dungeon Keeper 2 and Lego Rock Raiders.

These sandbox building/digging games always struck a chord with me as the game left me with the tools to build anything I want but not without facing enemies and obstacles that made me improve my style and strategies to get through the game. And this is why Minecraft caught my eye and my mouse pointer.

To start this off it is worth mentioning that Minecraft by created by Markus Persson also known as Notch, a former programmer whom has worked for a unknown company by the name Jalbum and also has worked for King.com, one of the more famous flash game sites.

Norch is also a founder of a little known MMOPRG Wurm Online, which the author of this review didn’t even know existed till he did some research.
It is worth taking note that as I write this review the game is still in Alpha mode but feels like a complete game and therefor warrants a review from my side, both to perhaps attract more players to the game or perhaps just educate the fine people of this website on another game out there in the deep expansive intertubes.

Gameplay:

As the title of the game might suggest the game evolves largely around mining and crafting.
It is a very simple crafting system where certain materials will produce certain items if placed correctly

The game however does feature several modes to suit different needs.

There is the survival mode which includes a health bar and evil zombies, spiders and blobs of goo that pursue you when day turns to night.

A creative mode which enables you to build as many blocks as you want without having to collect them and generally just lol around and do whatever you want to do ( This mode is free to play on the Minecraft website in their in game browser, look for a link at the end of the review )

And a adventure mode whereas you cannot build and focus on roaming the cool dungeons of the world that are filled with respawning zombies and the like ( Just as in survival mode )
While Creative mode can be accessed through the servers in Minecrafts multiplayer part ( More on that later ) it is in Survival Mode that the single player is centered around.

In Survival Mode you start off on a random generated island with no tools, no food no nothing and must from there build adequate shelter and gather materials to build armor, weapons and other new more durable tools.

-My adequate shelter is a tower with a swimming pool ontop of the entrance to my mine! Brilliant!-

As I mentioned it is here that both the crafting system comes into play, it is ingenious in its simplicity and indeed it feels very well worked out, almost as a small easy puzzle in itself.

-Hurray for building stuff!-

The crafting section centers around placing the adequate resources in the correct position so as to achieve the item that you want, however when I said puzzle, I do mean puzzle, as the game in no way shape or forms will help you with guessing how, for an example, a pickaxe is to be built.

(continue reading…)

I think the title says it all.  As I must confess before I right this review, I am a major fan of the Civilizations series having played every version except colonization.  For those who want to know from the beginning, is this game worth the $49.99 price tag? Yes.  And here is why.  Civ 5 has taken a lot of information, a lot of original game play and what it’s learned over the 4 previous versions, compiled it, mixed it, cleaned and created an extremely beautiful, smooth and intelligent game.

This is not a twitch RTS by any sense of the imagination.  This is a thinking man’s game where you want to start seeing the whole picture 10 or 20 moves in advance.  It is about taking gambles on decisions of which technologies to choose, how to move your units, which ones to sacrifice and which to hold back.  And as effectively, who to become friends with and who to back stab. (continue reading…)

We said it before and I like to say it again. If your game wants to sell, give us a DEMO. Konami seemed to be on the right track with the release of Pro Evolution Soccer (PES) 2011 and the PC demo even hit a day before the console versions.

PES has been trying to take a bite out of EA’s FIFA franchise for a long time and with the release of the 2011 version of the series is trying it’s hardest to fight against the king of licened sport. One of the hurdles PES has to overcome is that for someone that likes soccer you like to play with people you know and watch play. EA of course knows this and owns just about any franchise license name there is, be it Football, Baseball, Hockey or Soccer. It seems Konami made some headway into the license deal showing a complete Barcelona or Bayern Munich team roster in the demo, complete with players such as Messi, Mueller or Lahm.

But it needs more than franchised player names to make a good sports game! That is why this demo is so important, especially on the PC PES has a great chance to be real competition to FIFA. EA has not focused on the PC and made many mistakes with the past releases of it’s soccer game on the PC.

So as a PC loving soccer fan I downloaded the 1GB demo with much anticipation. Install was quick and painless and starting the game was no issue. But once the game runs… that is where things go horribly wrong at least what this demo is concerned.
Nothing, but absolutely nothing was learned by the mistakes of the past and the mistakes that FIFA made on the PC. It’s not worth making many sentences about it, so let’s just go down the list shall we:

1. Only one game mode and 4 teams in two different divisions in total (for a demo almost expected)
2. No access to the options menu
3. No ability to change screen resolution
4. No ability to change details settings
5. No ability to look at the controller configuration
6. No ability to change controller settings or button mapping
7. No training option (kick the ball around with your own team)
8. Default button placement for pass, shoot and such very different from the norm (at least for me, which is a issue, see point 5,6 &7)
9. Default settings are on Pro Mode (I found out you have access to a game menu once you setup a game) which, while showing you other options only lets you change the difficult settings
10. No commentator of the game

(*Since this review has been written I learned that you can change settings if you track down a settings.exe in the game directory. So you can change certain things, such as resolution and controller configuration. But come on… you couldn’t run this on first start up? Maybe make a note of it somewhere or link it from within the game?)

Nothing here says that Konami takes the PC serious as a platform. This smells of unpolished console port and does not look promising. To make my mouth water let me set my resolution, let me see the players, the stadium and the crowd in high detail. Why are you afraid to show me the game in high resolution?

Once in game things got a little better. Aside from the fact that the default difficulty was set to max, I struggled to learn what the buttons do and I was a goal down mere seconds into game-play even if I lost the ball deep in the opposing half. You can see how Bayern Munich (the team I choose since I am German) got hammered and outplayed at the video as a part of this review. I considered re-recording a game once I found the match options menu (which only gives you access to the difficult settings of the current match) and was more in tune with the controls. But you should see how one struggles to get a handle on things when the developers don’t want you to know anything, configure anything and generally don’t seem to care how a demo is experienced by their potential customers. Here I was thinking that a demo should do the best to show the cool and good about your product… silly me!

On the positive side of things is the fact that while I was not able to choose resolution (which according to my capture is 640×360) it still locked surprisingly good. Although you can’t really make out player faces and barley their names. Game-play was smooth and once you get a hang of the controls it feels like sprints, quick turns and passes are great and give you good control of your players.

I wished I could say more but since the training option was not present and the teams to play with where limited I did not have the chance to get really deep into it. Especially because (and forgive me for slipping one more time into the negative) some person at Konami thought it a good idea that when the game you played is over they show you a video of all the extra features the full version will include. A whole 5 minutes and 40 seconds worth of features, such as carrier mode, player transfers, be a pro and such… but here is the kicker, you can’t skip it! No pressing of any keyboard buttons short of CTRL+ALT+DEL or the controller will let you bypass FIVE MINUTES FORTY SECONDS. Are you kidding me Konami?! I figured it must be a one time thing… but no, after the second match here we where again. At least it gave me a chance to time it and yes try again every possible button to see if I am not missing something.
At least I learned in that video that I can create my own team and even a club emblem. I can make my players wear funny heads or hats, kick a keg (yes a small beer keg), a trash ball or a super sized candy around the field. Last but not least even design a stadium that you can make look like Mario lost his Princess yet again. Ohhhh brother!?!

The last part of the video has this tag-line “Engineered for freedom”. The demo didn’t show it, the video you are forced to watch makes it more look like they tried to throw everything anyone ever mentioned in a brainstorming session into the game, regardless of how silly the idea was.
So I am coming away from this demo of PES 2011 very sceptical if the team behind this game is serious about soccer and the PC as a valid platform. I guess we will have to wait for the full version and let other people do a review on that, because I will not “risk” my money on what I saw or experienced in this demo.

…. a keg of beer… are you serious….

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:48:29 — 31.0MB)

Markus (Markee Dragon) gave us a in-dept report of what it is like traveling around the world for cool interviews with game dev’s sake. While he sounded a tad tired, and who can fault him for that it was great to hear about GameCom in Germany and then even more about PAX in Seattle. I wanna go to PAX now…

• GamesCom Germany
• PAX West
• Terra (MMORPG)
• Firefall
• Tron Evolution
• Red Orchestra 2
• The EVE Party is the party you want to be at
• How big can PAX get?
• World of Tanks
• Duke Nukem is alive!!! (Pigs do fly)
• RUSE and why it won’t do well (no, it’s not the DRM)
• StarCraft 2 talk
• Company of Heroes Online now live for everybody
• RealTime World troubles continue
• Elemental saga continues
• A little XBOX love…. NOT

Thanks to a community member on pcpcgames.com I got “Plain Sight” as a gift (Thanks Kill_Screen) . So after playing through the first tutorial, the practice games and a little bit of online play here’s my review. First off, like I mentioned I got it for free so I can’t be too critical and I’d give it easily a 10/10. Now, for anyone who bought it while it was on sale, $2.00 I believe its still a 9.75/10(just because you don’t get at bonus feeling from knowing that you’re sharing) but if you got it through the four pack which was a total of $6.00 at $1.50 each thats a definite 10/10

The Game Basics:

• Plain Sight is (for those of you who don’t know) an Arcade type game with what are essentially suicidal robots hacking away at each other, then blowing themselves up
• You have a glowy ninja sword that is held at your side
• You left click to charge (hold to increase power)
• When you charge you swing your sword
• There is an auto lock-on feature. (Required to play so you can’t disable this)
• You grow stronger/bigger the more you kill
• However, that is temporary points. It goes away once you die.
• Permanent points are attained by self-destructing (ingenious way to balance a game, force you to die) The more people you kill in the explosion the more points

Thus: Kill to gain slight bonuses and bigger explosion. Explode to get permanent points and bigger bonuses. Explosion kills = points.

Review: 10/10

Plain Sight has simple gameplay that can be played by almost anyone, but it also has some more complex aspects of it. Mainly the locking on feature and the bonus powerups that a person can attain. Most people will stick to more damage, fast running, alert when targeted, etc. but there’s a shield in the game that is extremely powerful. It seems the game designers noticed because they put that as a tip. “Dying a lot? Why not buy a shield?” is what pops up about 50% of the time after you die. This shield is reminiscent of the bubble shields in Super Smash Brothers. Its a bubble around you, that decreases in power over time then recharges and activated by the right click.

With clean, solid colors (with shadows, etc) this arcade-type game will possibly last for quite a while as its graphics won’t really get old. The bright colors are picked quite nicely as it doesn’t hurt to stare at them. Then there’s the balanced gameplay (and unbalance-able depending on server settings for random fun). Its balanced by not allowing anyone to simply stash up on power like some other games (quake, etc) where the longer someone is alive, the more advantage they have. In this, you MUST die to gain points for winning.

Then, once you get bored of FFA and TDM there’s other custom game modes such as the classic CTF, Lighten Up!, and Ninja! Ninja! Ninja! Robozilla!

Another plus is that there are no repetitive comments every time you slash at someone. In MW2 they do a pretty good job of having lots of tracks, but its still repetitive and once you’ve played enough, quite annoying. Along the same lines there’s nice background music that doesn’t get in the way