After having a fit of errors loading for the first time that required me to dick around with display settings and update various DirectX things I managed to get into the game without it loading as a plain black screen.

To start I have to quote Affian…this game is essentially Half-life 2 + F.E.A.R. + Fallout 3.

It is like Half-Life 2 in that it has various puzzle elements which aren’t necessary but can prove useful like finding all the lighting systems in a tunnel and powering them all down to force the enemy to come closer to you than they usually would. Also like Half-Life you can choose whether or not you want to strategically take down enemies by blasting barrels/pushing them off platforms or just throwing more bullets at them…typically the latter option appeals to me more.

It is like F.E.A.R. in that there are various psychic creatures that try to stuff with your head…most humans go insane at their psychic touch but you (playing as Artyom) are somewhat immune and thus you are sought after to help people out. Occasionally you are assaulted with a bright white screen which seemingly blasts you into an alternate reality that the enemy controls…in much the same way F.E.A.R. does.

It is like Fallout 3 in that everything is shit coloured and apocalyptic. There are mutant beasts roaming the tunnels and the surface and you will have many skirmishes with them which drives you mental as they come in large packs and you will use all your ammo on all your guns trying to stop them…leaving you no bullets and no time to reload and thus you end up slashing like a madman with a knife. You also have various bits of equipment like Fallout 3 that helps you to survive the deadly forces against you. One of the more fun ones is the gas mask…you have filters on your mask that constantly need replacing else toxic fumes start getting you. Not only that, it can be broken and cracked in combat so you have to be very careful when and where you choose to use it.

As far as the story goes its a strange blend of sci-fi and post-apocalyptic action, you live in Moscow Russia after the world has been devastated by nuclear war and humanity has only been able to survive there due to the metro tunnel systems underground. Much of humanity has been simply obliterated or mutated, in the cases I have seen so far we have giant clawed hunchbacked zombie things, the same thing again but with wings and some long limbed super psychic creatures designed to play with your mind.

You play as Artyom who is also the narrator and you are tasked (well initially at least) to get to Polis station to seek help from the Rangers who are elite guards of the tunnels. Along the way you will fight the creatures of the surface and tunnels, Nazi loyalists, Russian Communists and various forms of bandits. On top of that, when you least expect it you can be hit from psychic attacks which make your life difficult and throughout the game you are forced to constantly stop and assess your current situation. Should you choose not to check your approaches and your rear occasionally, you will end up making a move that will kill you or you will be flanked and eaten/shot.

Much of the metro system is dominated by old technology and various pieces of human ingenuity as the war devastated all manner of useful objects. You are forced to move around using trams powered by hand and you will have to navigate through ramshackle towns using only a compass and without a world map.

Most of the guns I have used for combat so far look pretty worn down but operational…you cant expect to find a pretty new M4A1 lying about and thus you are forced to use various inaccurate assault rifles and strange weapons like a BB rifle that is powered with a hand pump…fail to pump at the right times and you’ll be firing weak bullets.

The visuals of the game are rather stunning and impressive. When I managed to surface walk for the first time I found myself looking around in circles at all the destroyed scenery and the ruins of Moscow and the tunnels hold their own in their gritty reality. I only had one qualm with the graphics and that is there is only a possible 3 colours in the game: Bright green (signifying nuclear radiation), Light blue (signifying psychic/strange presence) and Brown (signifying EVERYTHING else). While Affian was not terribly pleased with my take on the graphics, you only have to look at the above two screenshots to see that clothes, walls, creatures, vehicles, guns and ground is all painted a horrible brown colour.

Sure it could be worse and its only a small issue but it just annoys me when all you see is one colour walking about in what could be some truly amazing scenery.

Also I need to make a note on the Physics and Gameplay aspects:

The physics: Usually they perform admirably but there are a few annoying issues. Any wall that is not dead flat can be strafed straight up giving you a massive field of view of the area in front of you as well as allowing you to dodge any passing objects. Explosives have an amazing ability to damage you through walls and sandbags…I threw a grenade over a low sandbag wall and dodged behind a concrete wall and the resulting explosion killed me even though the wall and sandbags were completely intact. There is also the occasional clipping on an object and getting stuck for a few seconds but its rare so isn’t really worth worrying about.

The gameplay: A few things that will frustrate the living shit out of you are that bullets are money in this world. If you have military grade ammo (big shiny powerful rounds) then you can trade them in for various goods as a form of currency. However you can also set your gun to fire these rounds which is costly but they are more powerful than standard ammo. What is REALLY annoying is when you don’t realise you have switched ammo and you start firing your money away into some weak enemies skulls only to have a cry later. Another thing that annoys me is that there is 4 slots for weapons: 1 for melee, 1 for pistol/sidearm, 1 for automatic weapon, 1 for pneumatic weapon. What would be nice is if there were simply 1 for melee and 3 for everything else. When you find an AK47 you are forced to either ditch your wonderful silenced “bastard” gun for it while you hold on to your pathetic pistol and shotgun. Then you get an awesome automatic shotgun with a bayonet attached but you have to ditch it should you want a sniper or specialist pump action gun like the BB gun…its just plain annoying…its like the game is forcing you to get good at all areas of combat which prevents you from specialising in any one.

Anyway so far I am liking the game even if it is prone to crashing randomly when I kill an enemy or am killed myself…I would honestly love this game a lot more if they had a quick save function (or even a save function at all) because more often than not you are forced to travel and fight for 10 minutes only to die and restart it…annoying as hell. I’ll likely be playing this game slowly as I really should be doing more tech work than gaming but I will give a full review of the game should I actually complete it.

Also as for Just Cause 2, I really cant be arsed playing it…it seemed like a good game but its too much of a straight buggy console port for me to care. Metro 2033 is almost a console port in that I have to play with all the mouse sensitivity settings in game set to 0 for me to be able to turn without doing full circles.

I was advised to get Mount and Blade by Budda simply cause “It is awesome”…so I got it.

I don’t know why I’m giving this review though seeing as my brother Mega plays it far more than I…but whatever here goes nothing.

I went into this game expecting nothing, I had never heard of this game nor seen screenshots or gameplay videos…so when I got in there I was in for a surprise.

The game itself is based in a fictional world where you travel around on horseback recruiting warriors into your army…the problem is, travelling is tedious and boring as hell. You spend half your life running round the map like a douche and towards the end, the game is almost completely unplayable without cheats.

The controls to operate the world map are stupid…you know when people like to try be different with their software rather than just stick to tried and true efforts? Yea that’s pretty much it…Whenever you click on a location on the map the camera pans to it and wobbles around a bit making it difficult to keep fast paced gaming going. You have to move around with the keyboard instead of the mouse (like what?) which isn’t so much of an issue but it just becomes frustrating after a time seeing as you have far more control with a mouse.

Clicking on locations is nigh impossible if there is cramped up enemies…for example, if you are camping outside a castle and you have a team mate besieging the castle, you will have 3 clickable objects right next to each other…and god forbid you want to hit the right one.

So yea, don’t go into this game expecting well thought out control systems.

Don’t go in expecting good graphics either, even the newer version Warband lacks good graphics, everything is pretty much bland.

See what I mean?

Don’t go into this game expecting good AI, you wont find any there either. I sat and watched 20 horsemen chase down one enemy horseman for about 5 straight minutes till my foot soldier crossbowman sniped him out of his saddle, I thought about joining in but I wanted to see exactly how the AI would react to the fast guy outmanoeuvring them…apparently they don’t react at all.

This is a good idea, make all of your heroes (non-common fighters) wear the same armour and helmets so you can easily distinguish where they are. It helped me immensely.

So then: The graphics aren’t good, the world map and its controls leaves a lot to be desired, the AI is terrible and to top it off you have no gameplay tutorials…you just have to figure shit out as you go along or leave the game to do the tutorials…both of which suck.

So what do you play it for then?

Well…the answer is simple. The battles.

When you are being assaulted by a force thrice your numbers and you manage to hold them off with your superior army which you trained to top level you feel a sense of excitement. You can assault a village solo and slaughter hundreds of innocent villagers and then plunder and burn their precious little town afterwards or you could smash through hordes of bandits making life unbearable for the villagers.

You can assault a King and his warband and take the bastards prisoner or you could valiantly defend your own Kings castle to your last breath.

You’d think the gameplay would become horribly repetitive after a while (which it does) but it never loses its fun factor. Charging head first into an enemy Lord with a couched Pike and taking him clean off his horse and knocking him out cold in one hit is truly exhilarating. Hacking through mercenary bands recruited to your enemies forces just to free some prisoners that could be useful to you is hilarious.

Honestly I can’t stress how ridiculously fun this game is even for all its flaws. I can’t recommend it when comparing it to other current gen games built by large companies…but I can compare it to games of old that prove fun no matter how many times you play them: RA2, Diablo 2, GTA 2 etc.

Anyway there is a lot to say about how this game is played with ranks, heroes, upgrades, supplies and levels of warriors but I simply can’t be bothered writing it all because its all boring crap.

Game gets a 7/10, Fun as hell but needs some elbow grease.

A tip though: Attack raiders that have “Peasant Woman” prisoner, level them up to Sword Sisters…those bitches just don’t die, regardless of how much abuse you throw at them. Also once you have cash handy, get lots of Hired Blades, they take a lot of punishment while dealing just as much both on foot and on a mount.

As most of you know by now, I love me a good RPG and I hate me a bad console to PC port. The original Mass Effect had me raging due to its console-ish feel and its supreme bugginess that basically made the game completely unplayable unfortunately.

But dammit, I’m a sucker for torture…so I got Bioware’s Mass Effect 2 for the PC

Two words: Fucking Love.

At 11gbs unpacked, I had high hopes for this game content-wise and it didnt disappoint. Lets do this in an orderly fashion:

Story:

When it comes to RPG’s, you expect a solid story with unique gameplay to back it up. If it fails at achieving this then its simply not worth playing (obviously).

Mass Effect 2′s story can be a wee bit dodgy and thin at times but mostly it holds strong. A quick summary is as follows (spoilers inside):

You are the Legendary Human “Commander Shepard” who led the assault against the now infamous Geth in Mass Effect 1. Some time after the first story you are floating through space in your ship the “Normandy” when suddenly some half asteroid/half ship appears belonging to what are known as the “Collectors” which are a forcefully evolved ancient Prothean race. The collecters blast you clear out of the sky but most of your crew escapes through escape pods, Shephard however is not so lucky.

You are killed.

A company who’s sole focus is the dominance of humanity in the galaxy appears and spends a fortune reviving you back to health by basically turning you into some sort of super-human android. The company is led by an individual known as the “Illusive Man” who is fucking awesomely acted. Seriously, out of all the conversations I had in this game, the ones with the Illusive man were the best. The Illusive man needs Shephard to gain a team to take back the Galaxy from the threat of the “Collectors” who are harvesting human colonies.

And away the fights go.

Combat:

At first the combat sucks, its tedious, boring and does not add anything to the game. Enemies have a combination of Health, Armour and Shields. It is up to you to tactically decide in battle which ammo types, powers and guns you and your team should be using to try combat the diversity of the enemies. Its frustrating as you run out of ammo on the guns you like and are forced to use guns you dislike just to get through a mission.

Oddly enough, the game gives you the option of focusing on “tech” (engineer powers), “biotic” (Force powers) or “Combat”…but the combat is almost useless, you increase the damage on your guns…FOR WHAT?! The assholes have shields, your super powered heavy pistol is USELESS until you remove it…its hugely frustrating as you have about 25 shots only on your pistol before you run out of ammo if you are unlucky and dont get any ammo drops.

I have not tried “tech” gameplay simply because I never used tech teammates and I was a Biotic specialist myself so I really cant speak for the gameplay there. The powers I granted myself was some teleport leap at the enemy to get me nice and close and powered up guns (I was a class known as a “Vanguard”). Here lies the biggest flaw in the game I played. I could teleport at the enemy, presumably so I could nail the pricks with heavy pistols and shotguns…but NOOOOO! Shields stop pistol and armour stops shotgun, you have to change guns in melee range against 3-4 enemies with more spawning to kill them efficiently…so Bioware…Why oh why did you make such a useless skill.

I look to Halo (God forbid) for a good example here, if you cant kill an enemy with the guns you have, you simply go and get bigger guns. Sure you could be more stealthy and go snipe him for a bit, but its preferable to shot him with rockets and then get nice and close and blast the shit out of him with shotgun. Its tried and tested combat…if people want to be a brute, let them be a brute…let them have dickloads of ammo and big guns but no powers…its their choice.

The biotic powers are kinda fun to start with but turn out to be game winners by the end. In the end I maxed out loyalty on Miranda to get her “Slam” biotic attack. Couple that at heavy level 4 with heavy level 4 shockwave and I didnt use ammo at all in the final mission…Husks die one hit and the end-game collectors died one hit or were knocked of the edges…it was too easy. So max out dem biotics…especially Slam and Shockwave…Slam for many enemies scattered as its spammable and shockwave to hit those spawns coming in.

The Ship:

The “Normandy” (rebuilt by Cerberus to keep players happy) is deceptively large as once you get in it, its rather small. But its still large enough to keep you entertained without making travel between crew mates tedious. It looks amazing and has some cool features like when you walk from the main floors terminals around the side, it will change the image in the centre from a galaxy map to a ship map…its neat and really adds to the atmosphere.

Dont get fish either, you need to feed them or they die apparently…

Anyway, you use the Normandy as your home and its your battlestation, your upgrade centre, your personnel carrier, your miner and your mission centre. Lets talk about mining:

What you can do in this game is fly to planets all over the show in various systems throughout the Milky Way galaxy and essentially scan them for 4 minerals that you require to upgrade your ship, guns and equipment. Element Zero, Iridium, Platinum and Palladium. Palladium is by far the easiest to obtain, and Element Zero is an absolute asshole to find. Heed this advice, when you come to upgrade, don’t upgrade things you dont need like ship fuel, its a waste of Element Zero and you will regret it when you suddenly can add 40% Biotic damage instead. The mining itself is made thousands of times easier on a PC with a mouse that has a sensitivity button, I was able to scan through planets at very fast speeds due to the speed I could move my mouse. Oh yea, on that point…in typical console port style, even on the lowest sensitivity, you still zap around so damned quick you cant see what you’re doing…I had to go down to 400dpi on my G9 to be able to play which is just annoying.

The upgrade centre is straight forward, spend resources, get cool shit…Nuff said.

What I loved about being on the Normandy though was that it was a social hub. Every person you help on missions will mail you to your inbox which you can read on ship and you can chat with your team members while on board about various events in life and whatnot and gain a real feel for whos who…Eventually you will come to love 2-3 people and just take them everywhere. Mine (and Budda’s) was Miranda and Grunt/Garrus. Miranda’s full level Cerberus Operative skill offers a 15% bonus to squad damage and Grunt fully upgraded wont die (I managed to kill him in the last mission, he solo’d 2 Collector Scions in the open…goddamn it was funny).

The team:

Major spoiler alert here as I will be listing all the available characters. You start with two humans Jacob and Miranda, two Cerberus operatives. Miranda is a vat born super Biotic human and Jacob is a biotic in his own right specialising in combat. Jacob loves doing things the military way and following orders, Miranda has a tortured past as she was not born, but created to fulfil a legacy for her power hungry father. From there you gain Garrus and Mordin.

Garrus is a Turian Guerilla specialist. He uses snipers and assault rifles to basically be a heavy firing pain in the ass. He’s also as tough as nails and is the man in every right, if you dont like him from the moment you meet him, then you’re a pussy. You also pick up Mordin, a Salarian Tech doctor. He’s a massively intelligent genius doctor who has an odd way of talking and struggles to get what he is thinking into words, I loved talking to him because of it. Then theres Jack and Grunt.

Jack is another Biotic test subject. She is known as Subject Zero and was part of a rogue Cerberus operation to create a super-Biotic, basically they tortured kids with biotic experiments and the ones that proved useful would be pumped into Jack. Unfortunately they hit a point where they had too many powerful Biotic kids and they broke free, Jack included. Grunt on the other hand is an instant favourite. He was a vat-born pure Krogan warrior and he IS the man. He will kill anything and will not die as well as be purely loyal. He is a must have on the team and he will make even the hardest mission seem survivable. Next is Tali’Zorah, Legion and Thane.

Thane is a Drell Assassin/Monk thing. He’s awesome in every way and you will only understand this once you get him. Tali’Zorah is a whiney little teenage Quariann bitch who will make your life a living hell but use her for the tech mission at the end and she will survive, as it happens, Mordin will not. Also its worth noting at this point that “Legion” is Geth…Thats right, Geth. As it happens, the Geth you fought in the first game (and throughout the second) are a rogue sect of the original Geth and Legion (a hiveminded Geth Tech warrior) informs you that Geth also wish to stop the plight of the rogue Geth on the galaxy. Legion gets his name from the quote: “We are Legion for we are many” (I think it was) as he represents all Geth, not an individual…He’s also very cool.

The graphics:

Pretty, beyond belief. Seriously I played on high graphics and am fortunate enough to be able to get a tolerable frame rate out of it. Each planet landing gave me a new spectacle to marvel at, and each new city boarding would stun me with its visuals. Its the sort of thing you would just drool and stroke if you had it in your own house. Unfortunately this game cant escape bugs…from graphical glitches like my green haze getting stuck on permanently even when I went back to the Normandy to the bonus mission where you have to do a lazer puzzle…ALSO NOTE: If you come across this mission, move the mirrors first, then activate the lazer…Then LOOK AWAY. This way the game will not crash to desktop…its basically the only solution at this stage. Also at many points you will randomly get stuck walking, its annoying as fuck, moreso when you cant escape. So save often.

Anyway, I’m not going to write too much more. This game was awesome, the combat might suck in the start but its such a small part thats its barely worth mentioning as you will master it and conquer all. The end mission is fucking amazing (nothing else describes it) and is based on how you did throughout the game. If you upgrade your weapons and hull it will make sure to have cutscenes showing this…you will also have to lead several teams at the end which is awesome as pretty much all of your team will come in handy.

This game easily gets a 9/10. If they had a handle on combat and simple PC controls like mouse movement, it would be a 10/10. It was an amazing high quality experience that makes me want to go back and play again. RPG games in 2010 have a huge marker to step up too if they want to overcome this machine of a game.

The former marks one of the best RPG’s ever made that even spawned an anime, the latter you all know about so I wont talk about it.

The game itself features in much the same as every other old school RPG you can think of…you gain a party of mixed individuals and skills, you pick the group you like the best and you go off to kill everything and save the world from impending doom.

The doom in this case is a meteor-thing which contains and powerful and sinister power. It smashed into the planet and is causing chaos and turning people/creatures into demonic beings and naturally it’s your goal to save them all!

You can start the story as either Rena (pictured above on the very left) or Claude (again but on the very right). I’ve played this game twice through as each character but this time around I started as Claude again which means I am a space traveller under my fathers stern rule travelling about the galaxy surveying planets under rule of the Earth Federation. He ends up on Milocinia studying an alien ruin which he, in his retardation, thinks is a playground. So he jumps on it even though his commander and father says no.

So he gets teleported to the aforementioned planet named Expel who apparently speak the same language as he. He finds Rena being attacked by a demonic creature and rushes to her aide using his Blaster pistol which spurts out huge rays of light as it shoots. Unfortunately for our poor lost hero, the townfolk believe in a prophecy where a “hero with the sword of light” will appear which means he’s now going to be raked into helping these poor sods look after themselves.

(The above picture is part of the anime not the game…but w/e…ACTUALLY! I just found out its from the PSP version of the game! I NEEDS THAT VERSION!)

Anyway as it turns out Rena isn’t from Expel either and that she was found and adopted by her “Mother”…which explains why she has mystical healing powers…powers which make her a highly useful companion. So the town tells Claude and Rena to go fix the world…you can probably fill in the blanks from there…GAMEPLAY TIME!

The outdoor areas are about as indepth as you’d expect a game this old to be, they’re mostly empty with simple paths and forests and you control your main character as you run between cities performing various quests. As with most JRPG games, random encounters feature heavily in this game…everywhere you move outside and in dungeons, you can expect to encounter various groups of enemies who can either be pathetically weak or could severely out number you and on top of that they can enter battle from behind, front or even above you in some sort of fucked up air assault or something. Naturally these surprise entries can force you to move your characters out of certain danger lest your weaker spell casters and healers get eaten alive making combat highly difficult.

The map itself is very simplistic and chances are if you are like me you simply wont use it other than to get your bearings (ie…head north)…I just remember where towns are and map it out in my head as it seems a hell of a lot easier.

Inside towns you will meet NPC’s and be able to traverse through buildings by walking straight into doors that give way when you faceplant them. NPC’s show emotion by using speech bubbles which you can see with the whistling kid above. Moving around is pretty easy but occasionally you get stuck on objects/cant find a way to a particular place you need to go which can prove highly frustrating as you cant move the camera.

By now anyone that has played the game will realise that these Screenshots that I have are from fairly early on in the game…Anyway the combat is very JRPGish, click a button to choose your attack (you can set up to 2 special attacks to be used on L1 and R1 buttons) and then choose your target. The major problem you will come across in this game when it comes to combat is the AI.

You can program your teammates to follow certain routines when it comes to attacking, the problem lies in that the commands lack diversity…I like Celine (my spellcaster) to blast the living shit out of mobs while I go through and mop up…what I dont like however is when she waits till I kill off most of the mob and approach the last living creature where she casts a full screen aoe attack…when I can easily kill it without trouble. Note: This scene is pictured above.

Oh yea…at the end of every combat your heros will say something based on how the combat went…ie: “That was TOO easy”…It seems so trivial…but really when I picked up this game and heard Claude and Rena claim their victory I was taken aback at the onslaught of nostalgia…the voices and the music stuck in my head for years between play and I could still remember the names of most of the characters which made for an awesome nostalgia conversation on xfire with Fireryda who also played the game.

To sum the game up I cant really go much further than to say its very typical of a JRPG that is to say the gameplay is familiar and the game focuses highly on the characters, music and dialogue over the actual story line. But to an extent I like that, in fact I would say that I enjoyed this game far better than the Final Fantasy series (albeit I’m not a huge FF fan really but I still enjoy it).

Anyway, that is my gaming experiences as of late thrown into a quick summary of the game. Time to go find some cash to get Global Agenda…somehow

Hi-Rez have announced the release date for Global Agenda!

It is to be released on the 1st Feb 2010 and is up for pre-order now in Steam and Amazon.com.

Pre-Order benifits include:

• Beta Access
• Exclusive head gear
• Reserve your Player and Agency names
• Pre-Download the game

You also get the option to sign up for one month free access to the Global Agenda: Conquest subscription content.

Global Agenda is an upcoming “spy-fi” MMO by Hi-Rez Studios that is currently in the early stages of closed beta. Global agenda is built on the Unreal 3 engine and set on Earth in the 22nd century where after a global disaster open warfare became a thing of the past forcing conflict into covert operations.

To quote Hi-Rez:

In the wake of severe global disaster, the political face of 22nd century earth has changed and player-created factions scheme against each other for power. Traditional full-scale wars a thing of the past, factions must rely on covert agencies, teams of elite special operatives able to seize and defend key facilities. The future of humanity is their battleground, where knowledge is power, technology is a race, and everyone has an agenda.

The players control the world of Global Agenda, forging alliances with their peers and executing lightning strikes against their enemies. They determine which factions to aid and which to oppose, while the only thing that stands in their way is other agencies.

So we have our setting, a world of extreme technologies and covert faction based warfare.

Gameplay

Ok, we know that Global Agenda is an online MMO that involves Factions and Fighting, but what makes this one stand out from the rest?

I think the main difference that this game offers is the style of combat, covert, so rather than trying to emulate large scale warfare like some other MMOs have tried (and in my mind failed) to do you have a world where you get the feeling of this huge conflict going on and that you are intricately tied up in it without needing those giant epic battles. Instead you get small intense skirmishes with opposing agencies over territory and technologies.

The other thing that it has to over (and from what you read its main selling point) other MMOs is it’s alliance based territorial PvP system. This is the system that drives the game, it powers a player run world where various Alliances and Agencies are fighting for control of territory, resources and technology all to aid themselves in defending against other agencies who want your resources.

Player Classes

Global Agenda offers 4 classes for your perusal: Assault, Recon, Medic and Robotics. Each class have a variety of styles and roles that they can play in a team.

Assault offers you power, ranging from a frontline tank with think armour and a kickass chain gun to a more supporting role lobbing grenades and explosives at your enemies.

Recon is your scout, he can offer styles like cloaking and melee assassination to the sniper picking off foes at long range.

Medic, guess what he can be a medic, yup your classic healer class. Problem with healer classes is that they tend to lack offensive power making them annoying to play on your own and they also tend to get abused by idiots who think having a healer in your team makes them immortal (it’s your fault when they die of course). BUT here we have an offensive healer specialising in strong poisons and wielding a Bio Rifle, should be interesting

Then we come to the Robotic class, one I can’t find too much info on but he’s your engineer building turrets to support a defensive line or combat drones to help push back the enemy.

From what I can gather you can change your loadout between missions and by the sounds of it this mean re-speccing which is always an awesome feature that allows you to change your play style as you need to and as you feel like it.

Costs

Now then, this is an MMO. Most high quality MMOs want your money and this one is no different and its pricing model stands thus:

You buy the game either through somewhere like Steam or I’m guessing in brick and mortar stores. Once you have it you can play to your heart’s content but it’s limited, Hi-Rez released a statement detailing how the pricing works and what you get for it. When you buy the game you get most of the content but to get access to things like Access to “Alliance vs. Alliance (AvA) World Domination gameplay” and “Ongoing Co-Op content at max character level”. Basically PvE you get with the game, for ongoing content and epic PvP you have to pay. Seems fair enough you pay for the game once and you then sub to get the ongoing stuff.

They have listed the game as costing US$49.99MSRP and the Sub is listed at $12.99 per month, $11.49/mo for 3 months or $9.99/mo for 6 months.

And So…

…This is looking to be quite the epic game with massive covert battles, fighting for conquest over an entire world, and as EVE Online has shown us, a well created territory system ends up with endless gameplay without the dominance of one group (not for long anyway) because when you’re the biggest, everyone is against you.

I’ll leave you with a video that shows more than I could ever explain in words.

To clear this up, This is NOT a new game. It’s just POKEMON with a NEW COAT OF PAINT (Caps for emphasis). The pokemon in question happens to be Fire-Red so everything you remember in that game is faithfully reconstructured with a layer of Touhou. (To be honest it’s just applying a mod patch to the Fire-Red ROM file). All your favourite characters return in this mod such as Team Rocket, more Team Rocket and even more Team Rocket. You start off in Pallet Town and well.. I’m pretty sure you all know how it goes from there.

So what’s different about this game and how does the coat of paint taste? For Touhou fans, it tastes pretty good. To everybody else, It’s more of the same. There isn’t much that seperates this from normal pokemon as each touhou is generally just a re-skin of a pokemon albeit with different stats. The english and japanese versions of the mod are quite different though as while the japanese version is more faithful to the original, spawning weak pokemon in the early areas, the english version happens to be more generous as Alice has a high encounter rate right outside of Pallet Town. So with an adequately leveled Alice, you can plow through the early gym battles quite comfortably.

The touhou themselves do have quite alot of effort put into them as each touhou has their own seperate skin and icon and have stats tailored to their character (although thats debatable). But that still doesn’t change the core gameplay which pretty much just revolves around level grinding and spamming a STAB attack to kill anything and as long as you can find a strong enough Touhou, that strategy generally works out pretty damn well.

So to put it simply, this is just the more of the same. It’s good for occupying about a couple of day’s worth of boredom to train your touhou to and beat the Elite 4. But after that, there really isn’t much to do apart from the extra stuff that came with Fire-Red. More dungeons etc etc. Oh and capturing and evolving all your touhous to fill your touhoudex (or ayanote). Apparently you can also battle other players online but I haven’t gotten around to working it out.

In the end, This is still pokemon. So if you have a hankering for some pokemon but can’t handle the crazy designs (Seriously what the hell is a Bidoof?) then give this a try.

I’m going to blog about DA:O first, simply because after 30 hours of it, I know it best

So what is Dragon Age?

Well, its listed as the “Spiritual Successor” to the extremely popular D&D based Baldurs Gate which is rather ancient as far as performance standards are involved…however as far as gaming is concerned, its Immortal…just like Diablo 2 and whatnot.

Now, to simply say: “Yea man, this game is like Baldurs Gate but newer” is a MASSIVE claim…to me it was an almost cocky and outlandish statement but nevertheless I bought the game through steam.

So…seeing as most people hate my tl;dr reviews, I’ll write the short version of it here: “You want this game…”

Seeing as its Single Player only (so far…man even if there was just LAN coop support this game would be one of the best ever played) its bound to be pirated left, right and centre…which is a shame really because this game was well worth the money I paid for it…sure it doesn’t quite have the playability of online RPG’s, its still addictive. I honestly would be happy to keep paying slightly larger amounts for games if they keep at the calibre that DA:O shows.

Ok so, quick run down on the game as usual:

Firstly, its an immersive Role playing game, that is to say: Dont play it unless you have spare time.

Secondly, its a team based RPG. You command 4 different characters at any given point, first is your protagonist with 3 supporting characters that you can choose for your party. You find more and more allies as you go along and they all have their own angsty personalities so you have to be careful when mixing violent types with hippies…I shit you not all hell breaks loose and they turn emo and leg it back to where they came from. I’ve had 2 rogues to date, one ran off crying and the other tried to kill me….stupid prick got taken out before he even drew his swords.

Each character has “tactic” slots, as they level up they gain more or you can upgrade them to have more. Initially you dont really need them, but later on in the game they are absolutely essential. You basically “program” your allies to attack how you want, so for example…I have a warhound that I occasionally use as mage support…I program him so that if someone makes it into melee with my spellcaster, I send him charging in to maul him and pin him to the ground while my spell caster makes her speedy retreat. Its a wonderful addition to the game over the usual: “be an attacking person” which typically makes bots entirely retarded.

Story time:

I honestly wont be able to write the entire story as it changes for every character, so I’ll give you a brief overview:

Whatever race you choose determines where you start and what issues you will have with your life that you will need to overcome in the future. You eventually will be recruited into a secretive yet highly powerful society of specialised knights known as “Grey Wardens”. The sole purpose of Grey Wardens is to defend the land against “blights” which are essentially organised armies of undead and demons that arise from underground to assault the surfacers. The Wardens themselves are more or less cultists as they have to meld their blood with demon blood so that they can feel their enemies.

“So wait” I hear you say, “you’re saying that the Wardens alone stop the blight?”. Well, no, the wardens simply are the experts in demonic issues. They support the other races around the place in dealing with blights and issues beyond common knowledge. “Hang on then” I can still hear you saying, “Why the hell dont the rest of the races simply gang up and nail the demon homos?”. Heh, well lets keep this short: Dwarves are about the most dramatic creatures known to man, they have SO MANY GODDAMN political problems that need fixing before they unite. The elves have been split between city-born and woodland races but both of them have been enslaved and had their cultures destroyed by humans…so god forbid they’ll help out. They mages around the places are pussies who always need supervising by templars lest they lose the plot and summon demons. Humans themselves are all trying to do the usual greed thing and take over the world and shit…so they’re about as useful as tits on a bull.

So guess who’s job it is to sling all the turds out of the way and unite the country against the coming blight?!

Yes, its your job…for some odd reason…You can do it the nice person way or just kill everything.

Personally, more things dead = less problems …in my mind at least.

More towards technical aspects however, this game has been getting a lot of flak over its bugs…and yes they are many. There are graphic glitches everywhere, mission glitches (like infinite loops), infinite xp missions (hehehe), speech glitches, texture mapping issues etc. Its by no means unplayable…but get used to the quick save key,…for some reason it doesnt like working occasionally and just says “Nah bro” and turns itself off.

On the flipside, theres no “movie” graphics as such…all cinematics in game are made purely from game renders. All speech is lip synced to look somewhat realistic if not over-exaggerated, and all the voice acting is to a high standard which is pleasing.

Anyway I wont ramble on too much longer. Basically if you want an RPG thats highly immersive, well thought out and has content from here to buggery then Dragon Age: Origins is for you. If you simply want a hack and slash game, then look elsewhere.

If you have played Baldurs Gate before and enjoyed it, then get this game…you will not be disappointed.

Screenshots!

My preferred party consisting of Assassin (left), Golem Warrior (booyah tank), Me as Dual Wield Warrior and a Shapeshifter.

Ready to enter hell and meet a deity.

Dropped my golem for a dwarf warrior to mash my way through the dwarven underground tunnels.

She’s still warm so its all good right?

Alistair is back in my party and dancing for joy.

Oh…this is fair…needless to say in about 20 seconds they’ll all be dead.

Black armour, an axe and a long sword…bring the pain!

It’s a rather simple game based on the world of Dungeons and Dragons. Meaning its not your usual spam-all-hotkeys game, you have to plan out what skills you wanna take in advance (well if you’re a healer/mage) for every other class, you will hardly use skills…just run out there swinging.

Firstly a major issue with the game is that there are no Oceanic servers, making us NZ/AUS guys rage rather hard at the often chokey servers…life goes on however.

Anyway, the game is all based on bonuses…typical DnD stuff really. You add to Dex to get bonuses on your dex rolls. IE. evade might be a 1d6+dex (1 roll of six sided dice plus dex bonus)…You might need say a “5″ or more on your roll to successfully evade an attack, and the more you slam into your dex the higher chance you have of evading (obviously). Also you actively see the dice rolls happening on your HUD as you attack and take damage which is kinda neat.

OH MY GOD…One thing I LOVE about this game. In games like WAR and presumably WOW as well, you can move like crazy and spam your attacks…meaning if you have 60 ping to the server and your opponent has 250, you will be able to hit and move away from him before he can register you nearby. HOWEVER in DDO there is a rather large penalty of between 2-4 on rolls to hit when you move as you strike, meaning the more you flail about trying to hit something the less damage you will do…

Effectively it makes for awesome sewer hold-the-line fights

Anyway, its free (to an extent) you can create 2 characters with basic DnD classes and races (dont expect to be a monk or drow or anything cool on basic free account) and paying per month is a truly outrageous price. It costs as much as Warhammer online does and WAR is a far more refined game with more classes and diverse skills, it seems like the creators of DDO are simply trying to milk out money from the DnD fanboys by locking all the “cool” classes from previous DnD games like Neverwinter Nights and charging stupid prices just to let them be happy.

If I’m paying $40US a month I damn well want more stuff than just being able to play Warforged/Drow and being able to be more than just a Monk or Favoured one (or w/e they are).

However if it was $20US I would likely look at paying…not sure how sub works with characters though, could I pay for one month just so I can have unlimited new chars and play new races then what? What do they do after the month? meh…who knows.

Anyway gameplay is simple yet challenging to master, its actually a lot of fun and its got a lot of the cliche DnD stuff which really keeps it different among other games. While the customization on characters lacks a fair amount and the voices/emotes are completely generic from one class to the next, its still fun…especially for a 4gb free game.

Also having a “Dungeon Master” constantly voicing over the game is priceless, I love that they incorporated it into the game.

Anyway, keeping in mind that its a free game I would give this game around 6.5-7/10 …while its fun to play with other people, theres little staying power but its still very entertaining.

Here’s a Screenshot of our party of 6 dungeon crawling on a Saturday night/Sunday morning:

In this party:

• Dante (Tempest Ranger)
• Plank (Combat Cleric)
• Budda (Dwarven Barbarian)
• Aiya (Dedicated Cleric)
• Fairy (Spellcaster/Ice Casting Whore )
• Bunny (Dual sword fighter)

The latter 4 being from xeta clan

All valve games through steam are on sale this weekend for wondrous prices!

Check out steam store on the right hand side for all the deals…if you dont have any of the Halflife series or TF2, nows a good time to buy up

Exerpt from Steam: “This weekend only! Save 66% on everything Half-Life. Or get the Valve Complete Pack for 10% off.”

Complete pack ($90):

• CS (Counter-Strike)
• CS:CZ (Counter-Strike: Condition Zero)
• CSS (Counter-Strike: Source)
• DOD (Day of Defeat)
• DODS (Day of Defeat: Source)
• DM Classic (Deathmatch Classic)
• HL (Half-Life)
• HL2 (Half-Life 2)
• HL2:DM (Half-Life 2: Deathmatch)
• HL2:EP1 (Half-Life 2: Episode 1)
• HL2:EP2 (Half-Life 2: Episode 2)
• HL2:LC (Half-Life 2: Lost Coast)
• HLDMS (Half-Life Deathmatch: Source
• HL:BS (Half-Life Bullshit…err I mean Half-Life: Blue Shift)
• HL:OF (Half-Life: Opposing Force)
• HLS (Half-Life: Source)
• L4D (Left4Dead)
• Portal (Portal…wait wut?)
• Ricochet (Jokes already been done)
• TF2 (Team Fortress 2)
• TFC (Team Fortress Classic)

Thats a hell of a lot of Halflife