GamesAuthor: Reviews&Previews

Dragon Age II Origins

2012-01-30T14:34:00.002+02:00

The Age of Dragons; but where are they?

Developer: Bioware

Publisher: Electronic Arts
Platforms: Xbox360, PS3, Microsoft Windows, Mac
Release date: March 8, 2011
Genre: RPG
Players: One
System Requirements: CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4 GHz Processor or equivalent/AMD Phenom II X3 Triple core 2.8 GHz or equivalent, RAM: 2GB (4 GB Vista and Windows 7), Video: ATI 3850 512 MB or greater/NVIDIA 8800GTS 512 MB or greater,DirectX 11 Video: ATI 5850 or greater,DirectX 11 Video: NVIDIA 460 or greater

All controlled characters

Dragon Age II Origins is one of the very best RPGs that came out at the 1^st semester of 2011. Applying the DirectX 11 this game tries to take the top in the RPG sector. The sequel of Dragon Age I, this game continues the story from were we leaved it, but from someone elses actions. Yet, the trailer of DA II was something that caused chills on our spines, unfortunately, the let down was quite heavy.

Plot

Here, as the title clearly states, the story is about how the Dragon Age tale begun. Firstly, after choosing your character (along with the customization) and your class you will see Varric, one of your companions, been ordered to tell your story. The first intro Varric says is fake and used as a tutorial to the game. After you complete it, he decides to truly begin the story. You will find yourself and your family being haunted by orc-goblin like creatures. Later on a couple of warriors is added to your ranks (one is injured and doesn’t fight;) and then you face a giant ogre. That ogre depending on the gender of your character and class kills one of your characters siblings. For example, a male wizard will have his mage sister taken out, while a male rogue will have his brother killed. It is in the game engine that your group will definitely posses at least one mage. Then the group is saved by a dragon, later transforming into an old witch. She gives them a “lift” to the nearest port asking only for a small favor. After arriving to the town of Kirkwall. Our hero will have to make himself useful to be accepted into the city. After getting admitted, the protagonist will have to do various missions and quests to make himself useful, rich and maybe even magistrate of that town. The options are quite various, but still the plot is centered only in the city of Kirkwall. This town was sheltering a band of Qunari warriors and its leader, who tried to destroy the town until you show up and bring them down. The Qunari leader was very easy and unentertaining. Also, the trailer was also quite deceiving; all of us thought and hoped that we would defeat him as in the trailer. That was only a promotion stunt. At the final chapter a dispute between Mages and Templars was promising a huge battle, but it quite let us down. You will roam through the same caves, roads, people over and over again something which is really tiring.

Gameplay

There are three classes to choose from : Warrior, Rogue and Mage. The warrior can yield a great-sword or fight with a shield and a one handed sword, the rogue can use either dual blades or a bow and the wizard uses his/her stuff to unleash deadly spells. A typical RPG in any other way, but you can, unlike most RPGs, you can control each action of your companions in battle and adjust your gameplay according to any situation! That is the characteristic that distinguishes it from any other RPG.

Killing enemies earns you experience, which after gathering enough you level up your character. In each level up you earn 1 ability point and sometimes a Specialization point (allowing your character to achieve more specializations, meaning more moves and combos) and 5 stat upgrades. Those upgrades can greatly affect each characters effectiveness in battle. Unless you don’t want to bother yourself with that, there is an auto-level up button. This is especially good for your companions unless you know what are you doing. Another aspect you should take into account is the behavior of your characters towards you. There are situations in which you will relay on your companions to get yourself out unharmed or allow you to get additional information. Furthermore, accomplishing a very good standing with a companion of the opposite gender may result to…to interesting “evenings” in your characters bedroom and even marriage!

Ohhh yeah, time for daddy to get the spoils of war.

Still, the fights are quite monotonous. It’s not that you don’t have many moves/combos to do; it’s just that you can’t do them all! Learning all specializations will allow you to do variable moves, but they aren’t going to be effective enough as the game continues. Harder enemies will appear, enemies which can easily outclass you and your group, unless you do a good strategy. Boss fights is the backbone of the game. If it wasn’t for the immense boss battles, the game would be just another game. Still, bosses could have a better AI; you can easily out-maneuver them, and have your companions shooting at them, while the boss hunts you. All in all the game is easy even in the very hard difficulty level.

Graphics
The game engine supports DirectX 11. The graphical results are astonishing. Every video cut scene, visual effects and character designs are of extreme detail and beauty. Magic spells are very good even at DirectX 9. They are just state of the art, what else can we say?

Sound

As far as the sound is concerned, well, we can’t say anything good or anything bad. The voice-overs are very good, almost like they were making a movie, but the soundtracks and ambient really pass as if they were not there. The battle sound effects aren’t good, hearing a sword bashing on a shield doesn’t apply here. Only the magic effects are good, which however, could have been way better.

A dragon!

Summarizing, the game is good and decent. Yet, it could have been more impressive and worthwhile if it corresponded to what the trailer depicted.

Plot 7,5

Gameplay 8

Graphics 10

Sound 7

Constitution 8

You should think carefully before buying. Do you wish spending a few hours (total gameplay is a few hours, the cut-scenes make it last ages), playing a game with little fighting? I can’t really form a suggestion here, but I think you should buy it, cause the effort was good.

Qunari says: "BUY ME"

Penumbra Series

2011-09-17T16:44:00.001+03:00

Digging your own grave…

Develper: Frictional Games
Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Genre: Adventure, Survival Horror
Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Linux, Mac
Mode: Singleplayer
Release Date: 25th of March 2007/ 12th of February 2008/ 27 of August 2008 in sequence
System Requirements: OS: Windows 2000/XP, Processor: Pentium 3 @ 1 GHz or Equivalent
Memory: 256 Mb, Video Memory: 64 Mb, Video Card: nVidia GeForce 3 / ATI Radeon 8500
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible, DirectX: 9.0c

An oasis to the horror adventure games. It has been quite a while since any decent game could actually be called a horror one. Achieving the title of “Horror” isn’t easy, but Frictional Studios did manage.

Plot

In Penumbra Overture, Philip, the protagonist of the series, received a letter from his father who left before his son was born, shortly after Philip’s mother died. In the letter, after some words asking for forgiveness, there were instructions and a key for a safety deposit box in a bank. Philip visited the bank and found out that his father was declared dead thirty years ago and that he was the executioner of the account. In the box was a book and some notes that Philip was instructed, by his father’s letter, to destroy. But his curiosity couldn’t let him do that. The book contained scientific stuff which he couldn’t understand, while in the notes was described an inhabited location in Northern Greenland. Philip booked a flight and then boarded on a ship to get there. Then you take control of your character. When you get off the ship and pass through a blizzard you will find a frozen hatch which is the entrance to an abandoned mine. Once you get in there is no way back, so your only option is through a sealed door hidden into the mine leading deeper in the ground to the unknown.

As for the Penumbra Black Plague, you take again control of Philip. He is fainted and locked in a room. Screams are heard from a room nearby and Philip desperately will try to dinf a way out. As he moves on he will slowly realise what was going on in here and what happenned to the mine's staff and scientists.During Black Plague you will explore a (not totally abandoned) scientific facility called The Shelter. Philip will try to find a way to escape this facility, an effort which leads to failure. His only chance for leaving this mine is sending a message outside calling for help.

Unlike the first two games, Penumbra Requiem’s doesn’t follow the plot. You control a strange man( Frictional Studios doesn’t give any clue if he is Philip or not). Only in the last in-game video, he seems to be Philip but it never gets clear. You also don’t get any clues about your exact location.

Gameplay

Penumbra episodes are first-person adventure horror games. They are mainly based on puzzle solving. Your mouse works like a hand. Left click is for grabbing an object. If it’s not too heavy you can move it by moving your mouse. You can also throw it by grabbing it and then pressing right click. Drawers or doors can be opened if you «push» or «pull» to the according direction with your mouse. There is a notebook, where Philip keeps the notes that are scattered all over the game, which may give you some useful hints to solve the puzzles.

Your allies against the underground darkness are a glowstick, a flashlight and some flares. Except from these items, in your inventory, you can collect more things like painkillers (for maintaining a good health), batteries (keeping the flashlight on), keys and other stuff.

The thing that distinguished Penumbra from other horror games is the absence of weapons. You are literally not going to get any actual weapons. Penumbra Overture and Penumbra Black Plague belong to the rare games that you have to think twice before running around without reason or making all kinds of noise. Frictional Studios make it clear from the first moment; Philip is just an ordinary man who can’t go on a rampage killing everything in sight. Also, one or two will be enough to kill you. Of course, you will find a hammer and a pickaxe that can be used as weapons, but (assuming you play in hard mode) they will not do any significant damage.

In Penumbra Overture, Philip faces spiders and undead patrolling dogs and in Penumbra Black Plague there are creepy zombie-like creatures (which some carry a rusty axe). Stealth is your best defense against them. Just hide in a dark corner and switch off any light source. In a few seconds, Phlip’s eyes will «adjust» to the dark environment and you will be able to see the enemies, mostly at close range, but they will not be able to see you. You can also use items to cover yourself, i.e you can move a barrel in-front of you. So, you let them pass and then you go on, or else you probably going to end up dead. However, if an enemy approaches very close and you stare at them Philip can panic and blow his cover.

On the contrary, Requiem is an entirely puzzle-solving game with no sense of danger, since there are no strange creatures willing to kill you. You solve the puzzles in order to collect a certain number of «keys» and the next level’s door will be unlocked. Requiem is not even as dark as its predecessors. The way the environments are designed and its ending video are the only things that make this last episode part of the Penumbra series.

Sound

Frictional Studios should be proud of their first game series’ soundtrack. In all episodes, during the whole game, you hear pieces of exquisite ambient music. You may consider it as soft and creepy. But, I’d better describe it as depressing. This feeling enhances the first impression you get from the game; that the story will not have a happy end. It’s like watching Philip digging his own grave deeper and deeper. The in-game sounds like undead dog’s growl, door’s creaking and a man’s whispering words you can’t understand add points to the scary side of Penumbra. Despite the fact that you don’t hear Philip speak, voice-acting is really amazing. In Overture, Red, a mad miner, talks to you through a radio. In Black Plague, you can hear your sarcastic other-self, Clarence, talking to you. You are never going to meet these characters in the game but their voices are an imposing element for the game.

Graphics

Penumbra series, as you have already figured, is mostly based on its story and scary atmosphere to succeed. This doesn’t make it necessary, that its graphics are bad; they are just acceptable and more. Indeed, Frictional Studios didn’t care much about the graphic quality, but the game itself doesn’t need it. Most items have a nice detail and that’s it. You are always underground (except from some minutes in Black Plague) where the sunlight can’t reach you or your environment. Obviously, your flashlight is not enough to see everything in detail. Furthermore, Frictional Studios emphasized where it was truly needed. Blood is all over the place, lying on walls or on the floor. There are human or animal corpses picturing what is going to happen to Philip if he doesn’t get out of the underground «world» soon enough. Enemies are low in details too, but this is also part of the «illusion». Everything is so dark, so the graphical quality doesn’t need to be at its best. Despite the minor graphical simplicity, Penumbra has once of the best physics engines. Nearly all items can be moved, carrier or thrown way. According to the strength of your throw/swing, accordingly the item you throw/hit will move. A harried opening of a drawer will move all of its componets to the front, just like real life. Graphics are good but physics are simply magnificent.

Summarizing, Penumbra series are well made horror games, which aren't about killing everything in sight, but for surviving in an unhospitable enviroment. Nice puzzles of average defficulty, notes and acting. This series will leave you with a feeling of satisfaction.

Plot 7

Gameplay 8

Graphics 7

Sound 9

Constitution 9

General 7,5

Pros: Creepey atmosphere, good pieces of ambient music, plot, puzzles, voice acting, physics

Cons: Despite the dark environment graphics could be a little better, Requiem’s lack of enemies and its predecessors’ atmosphere, Requiem seems to be out of the blue from the two previous episodes

Once you get in....there is no way out

A masterpiece of horror…and anxiety. A good series that shouldn’t be missing from your collection.

HomeFront

2011-09-17T11:40:00.000+03:00

For Liberty

Developers: Kaos Studios

Publisher: THQ

Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Xbox360, PS3
Release date: March 18, 2011
Genre: FPS
Modes: Single & Multi – player
System requirements: OS: Windows Vista/7, Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad @ 2.0 GHz / AMD Phenom II X4 @ 2.2 GHz, Memory: 3 Gb, Hard Drive: 10 Gb free, Video Memory: 512 Mb, Video Card: nVidia GeForce GTX 260 / ATI Radeon HD 4850, Sound Card: DirectX Compatible, DirectX: 10

This game is a quite a copy of the Call of Duty series. Still it has some minor differences but the whole concept is more-o-less the same. US is the good guys as always and all else are the bad guys. This COD stereotype still haunts any new FPS title that is being produced.

Plot

The whole story is about a marine, Jacobs, former pilot of the US army. The Korea has invaded USA and wiped their forces out and the whole state is under occupation by the Korean Forces. The Koreans take Jacobs to a retraining facility but before he gets there the resistance rescues him. The resistance will need your skills in order to provide with fuel the American army. The whole plot is a mess. Not something stable and the characters have some weird lines. The whole thing will end after 3 hours in the most rediculous way. The first time US fights for Liberty but of her own!

Gameplay

Not much to look here. It’s a FPS. The game only offers a few good times flying a chopper, using the Goliath and the turret of a humvee. Sprinting, shootin, snipping and stabbing will be your chores for the rest of the game. Your allies, unlike other titles, are pretty useful. They truly aid you rather than do nothing as in the COD series. There are also some very nice in game cut-scenes with slow motion or taking out opponents one by one on with your sniper stealthily. The battle against an enemy Goliath will truly leave you breathless. The guns aren’t many, but the game isn’t long so you don’t really need a variety. The chopper is very easy to handle, almost surreal. The enemies easily die, but even on easy difficulty, a few bullets are enough to kill you, so play tactically.

Graphics

Graphics are quite good. Unreal Engine 3 really offers quite a spectacle. Fire effects yet fail us, but all in all everything is quite good. Animation and character design are kept to a standard decent level. The sceneries and background events are of great design, something which really enhances the short gaming experience.

Sounds

Here the game doesn’t offer anything cool. Most guns sound exactly the same, there isn’t any decent background music and the character named Connor sounds too macho. Background ambient on the other hand is decent and the chopper and engine sounds are quite realistic. Ballistic missiles however have an awkward firing sound.

Multiplayer

If you have played Call of Duty, who will see that this works exactly the same. Killing, or taking positions (flags ect) will earn you points. Points are used to get equipment, guns and vehicles. Multiplayer, is a decent way to pass the time, since single-player is too short. Yet, it isn’t something extraordinary or new.

Summarizing, this game is a good attempt to “shake” the prestige of the Call of Duty series. If more effort was to be thrown at this title it would have been a great hit, worthy to remember.

Pros: AI, in game cut-scenes, vehicles

Cons: Length, not a fresh idea, plot

Plot 5

Gameplay 7

Graphics 8

Sound 6

Constitution 7

General 6

I wouldn’t suggest it, true it has its moments, but it is way too short. Buying something for only the multi-player part really doesn’t worth it. You will get bored of it soon enough.

Magicka

2011-09-10T23:04:00.000+03:00

A world of Magic in 2,5D

Developer: Arrowhead Game Studios

Publisher: Paradox Interactive

Platform: Microsoft Windows

Genre: Fantasy, Action-Adventure RPG

Mode: Single or 4 player coop mode

System Requirements: * Operating system: Windows XP/Vista/Windows 7, Processor: Intel® Pentium® IV 2.4 GHz or AMD 3500+, Memory: 2 GB RAM, Hard disk space: 2 GB Available HDD Space, Video: NVIDIA® GeForce 8800 or ATI Radeon® X1900 Please Note: integrated Intel graphic card/chips not supported, Direct X-compatible sound card, DirectX® 9, 3-button mouse, keyboard and speakers, Internet connection for multiplayer

A game that looks like Diablo, only in which here there isn’t any hellish abomination attacking innocent people, is what the gameplay looks like with the first glimpse. But this isn’t something as easy as Diablo or any other RPG of that kind. It has special features that distinguish this game from the other RPGs of this genre. Yet it could have been better if some serious mistakes were corrected.

Plot

The plot is about a young mage (it can be 4 mages if played in Co-op Mode) who is summoned by the king to help his forces fend off an enemy invasion of Orcs and Goblins. On his way there his teacher Vlad, who tries every time to convince us that he isn’t a vampire, will give you information on what lies ahead or what you should do next. On his way to the king’s castle, our hero will face goblins, trolls and a huge snake to later find out that the city is being besieged by the orc army. After a huge battle he enters the palace and saves the king. The king after that reassigns you to lead his forces against the enemy fort, but with only 50 men your king sends in only you. The plot isn’t anything special, but it stands for the simplicity of the game. The game is linear so even if you don’t bother reading anything you can continue killing all enemies until you finish the game.

Gameplay

The characteristic of this game is that you have 8 elements to Combine. Each combination creates different attack patterns which you have to adjust not only depending on your opponents but also on the environment.

The elements are: Fire, Water, Ice, Earth, Life, Electricity, Arcane and Barrier. A combination of those can create powerful spells: like the Meteor Swarm, which can wipe the entire map out of all enemies. Yet, the weather can make your spells either useless of it can enhance them. For example, if you are wet, you may have crossed a river or it rained, and you try to do a spell containing an Electricity element then your wizard will get damaged and may even die. If you catch fire you can cast a water spell on you and put the fire out. Generally, the whole concept is simple, but quite difficult to get familiar with. Some element combinations can be casted either on yourself or in an area around our hero or straight to an enemy. Beware that you can heal your enemies as well as damage your allies. In each situation you must consider your strategy and your position in the battlefield, you wouldn’t like to be caught in the way of an Arcanely enchanted spell.

Besides you magic you also carry a weapon like an axe, sword, spear and even a machinegun. Yes, even magicians realized the power of 500rounds per minute. To cast your magic spells you need a stove. This stove even if it is the simplest one, it won’t prevent you from doing all spells, but some stoves grand you special abilities like teleportation or summoning creatures to aid in your cause. Spells can either be found by luck, after you try several combinations or you can discover them by books you find along your journey. Some spells can be told to you in a conversation and you will have to find a way to create them. Also keep in mind that some elements can’t be combined. You can’t possibly combine the ice and fire elements or the water and electricity ones.

A serious gameplay drawback is the absence of a savegame. Although there are checkpoints along the way, an exit of the game will erase all date of your progress in the level, meaning you will have to restart the next time you load the game. Although it is an RPG, you don’t level up your character. The hero already knows everything he needs and all he has to do is survive and save the day. That means that you will have the save hitpoints along the whole game. This will make it hard for the last levels since the enemies get harder and harder and require a team to overcome them.

Graphics

The graphics aren’t anything more than decent and extremely satisfactory. The dackground is quite detailed and the characters and quite nice. For a 2,5D such graphics are more than we could ask for. Yet some work on the hero could have been done since his model is very simple. Other characters like the human soldiers and enemy orcs and trolls and also great,, with both decent design and animation. Magic effects however are the only thing that will leave you with your mouth open. Such effects aren’t anywhere to be seen with a DirectX 10.

Sound

Well, the sound part isn’t anything to get thrilled about. Simple sound effects and SIM like voice conversations. The conversations are simply funny that even if they say nothing to laugh about, you will simply laugh by their voices. The evil laughter of the boss in the King’s palace battle will be carved as the most hilarious laughter in the world.

Summarizing, the game is a decent title which offers much exploration and many worthy gameplay hours. Your Magicka experience will be something to remember.

Plot:                 6

Gameplay:     8

Graphics:         8

Sound: 7

Constitution: 7

General: 7

Pros: 4-player cooperative mode, graphics, funny, very cheap

Cons: Heavy for a 2,5D, hard to finish solo, lack of savegame

A decent game, which will prove a nice company for many hours and one great 4 player cooperative RPG.

Metro 2033

2011-08-03T15:54:00.003+03:00

Fear the Metro...

Developer: 4A Games
Publisher: THQ
Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360
Release Date: 18 March,2010
Genre: Survival horror FPS
Mode: Single-player
System Requirements: Windows XP, Vista, 7, CPU: any quad core or 3.0+ GHz Dual Core, RAM: 2GB, HDD: 12 GB, Graphics: DirectX 10 copliant graphic card (GeForce GTX 260 and above), Sound Card: DirectX 9 Compatible, DirectX version 10

Plot

The story is about a young survivor, named Artyom, of the meta-apocalyptic events that took part in the world. Radiation has made living on the surface impossible; only underground someone can survive. The new home for the survivors is now the metro stations of Moscow. However, there aren’t only humans that dwell in the subway tunnels and on the surface. Mutants are all over the place. They are the main enemy of the human race. Artyom’s home station however, is under the threat of a mutant race called “The Dark Ones”. A ranger, called Hunter, the one that made clear of the threat, gives Artyom a mission: To go to Polis station and ask for assistance to save his home. Our hero will cross many stations till he gets to Polis. He will also find out that mutants aren’t his only enemy. Even in such harsh times, humanity still fights herself. The plot is very interesting, although there are some minor gaps, but they may pass. There are some twists on the story, which at the end will provide you with two alternative endings. You are to find out!!

Gameplay

Metro 2033 is a typical FPS, nothing differs it from the other games of the same genre. Artyom can carry lots of stuff: 1 pistol, 1 rifle, 1 shotgun or 1 pneumatic weapon, 7 granades, 5 med-kits, night-vision goggles, a charger and some knifes. However, having that much guns means only one thing: ammo are scarce and some enemies require many bullets to bring down. So, lets start with each weapon type: The pistol is a magnum with 6 bullets. As long as you proceed in the game you will come up with different variations of this type, f.e: a magnum with a suppressor and a scope. There are no other types of pistols unfortunately. The rifles here have quite some variety. High rate of fire and decent damage those guns will be your primary. Those too, come up with modifications. There are two shotguns: a double barreled and an automatic. Mostly for close range. Pneumatic weapons are weapons which use air pressure to haul arrows or bullets on the enemies. Don’t forget that you should pump those guns or else they don’t have any effect. Silent and quite powerful, yet their ammo are rare and expensive to buy. Med-kits can heal you instantly, grenades pucks a punch on any enemy and the universal charger charges everything that need power like your flashlight and night-vision goggles. Finally, Artyom can buy a body armor, something vital for his survival. Knifes are the weapons of last resort, throwing knifes can be of use to stealth kills if you don’t have a weapon with a suppressor.

The game is pretty dark, well being underground means that most of it will be dark, so your flashlight will be your best friend. However, darkness also means stealth. Coming against a bandit camp you can either pass by unseen, something very hard, or you can kill some of them stealthily. Any noise you may make will probably reveal your position so take care into looking where you press on to. Furthermore, there are traps that you have to avoid. Trip wires or bell traps will accordingly kill you and reveal your position, and you don’t want that.

As we have stated, the surface is filled with radiation. In order to walk there you need a gas mask and some oxygen filters. Those don’t last for long and your gas mask doesn’t take too much pounding so take a good care of her. If the gas mask cracks you will suffocate.

When Artyom visits a new station, supposedly this is a friendly one, some people sell weapons, ammo and equipment. In order to buy them you need “premium” ammo. Ammo is the new currency. Premium ammo can be used in battle which are more effective than common ammunition. Finding them is a little tough, so salvage every dead body that you find. You will need the ammunition.

Graphics

Graphics are superb. Everything has great detail, from the background and the characters to the weapon designs. The metro tunnels will awe you with their realistically wicked atmosphere. What may seem a little buggy is the animation during the battles. The mutants sometimes will be inside your body, not allowing you to shoot them and some characters have a very peculiar way of entering through doors which really looks fake. Everything else makes this game a graphically great horror jewel of the 2010.

Sound

Graphics are not enough in a horror game. There has to be a decent sound. The background sounds will really spook you. Walking in the subway tunnels and hearing mutant howls isn’t something pleasant. Low ammunition and visibility, dark corridors and mutants poundings are the musts for a horror game. Yet, nothing is perfect. Nearly all characters have the same voice and repeat the same words all over and over. The stationary/turret machineguns have a horrible sound that it doesn’t resemble to that of a machinegun. And Artyom now and then does some sounds which are quite weird, f.e when he uses the bayonet.

Summarizing this is the best horror game of 2010-11. It greatly combines the elements of FPS and horror. Great plot and graphical display, this game is truly a magnificent.

Pros: Heavy atmosphere, sceneries, graphics

Cons: All have the same voice with a minor exception, machinegun sounds, absence of multiplayer

Plot 8

Gameplay 8

Graphics 9

Sound 8

Constitution 8

General 8,5

My suggestion is a big YES. You will not regret it.

Crysis 2

2011-07-14T22:54:00.006+03:00

Faster, Harder, Stronger, Better

Pulsisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: Crytek
Gendre: FPS
Mode: Single & Multi - player
Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Xbox360, PS3
Release Date: 24 March 2011
System Requirements: Operating System: Windows 7 / Vista (SP1) / XP (SP3)(Any version of Vista and Windows 7 will work, 32 or 64-bit) Processor: Windows XP: 2.66 GHz Intel Core2Duo OR 2.66 GHz AMD Athlon64 X2 OR better RAM: 3 GB, Video/Graphics: nVidia GTX280 1 GB or ATI HD 4870 1 GB OR better, Video card special: DirectX 9.0c compatible AND Shader model 3.0 / 4.0, Sound: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card, Hard Drive: 9 GB free space, DVD-rom: 8x or faster.

Crysis 2 is the sequel of the breakthrough game of 2007 Crysis and its expansion Crysis Warhead. This 3^rd installment of the Crysis series, will take us away from the jungles and throw us in the alien infested New York (needless to say that most evil things happen in NY).

Plot

The game starts with a video that puts you right away into the driver’s seat. It’s the year 2023. An alien race has already attacked earth and a deadly virus which causes external cellular damage has been spread over Manhattan. A Marine Force Recon unit is deployed into New York City by the submarine USS Nautilous, to extract former Crynet employee Doctor Nathan Gould, who may have vital information on combating the alien race. However, the mission fails; the Ceph destroy the sub, and the Force Recon Marine, named Alcatraz, is the only survivor. Delta Force Major Laurence "Prophet" Barnes saves Alcatraz, who is mortally wounded, and then commits suicide due to his infection by the Manhattan virus. Alcatraz then switches places with Darnes by taking his suit. Assuming that Alcatraz is Prophet, Gould gets in contact with him and asks him to meet up with him to escort him out of the city. However, CELL forces led by Commander Dominic Lockhart target Alcatraz, in part of Prophet having previously been infected with the Manhattan virus, and also in part due to ethical disagreements regarding the side effects of wearing the Nanosuits (simply enough he wants the suit).

The fact is that once more everybody wants to kill your character. The aliens attack you because your task is to prevent their invasion and Cryteks paramilitary forces attack you because they want to take control of the Nanosuit. It is an interesting plot, but all know how the whole story is going to end.

Gameplay

Crysis 2 is a first-person shooter. You will be called to take control of Alcatraz and save the world. Similar to its predecessor, Crysis 2 provides the freedom to customize your weapons and Nanosuit abilities, according to your gameplay style. Crysis 2 offers enormous and varied environments all over the destroyed New York City. You make your way through office buildings, across crumbling bridges, and through city squares, places infected with either robotic aliens. Except aliens, you also deal with soldiers who defend their bases against your character. But once more you possess the Nanosuit, a unique uniform that protects you against gunfire, makes you faster and stronger and generally better.

The new Nanosuit supports new and upgraded features. The suit you now have is upgraded; more modes can be simultaneously activated. This is decidedly different than the first game, in which the suit was generally limited to a single mode at a time and multiple modes cannot be used simultaneously for more than a second. The first suit's Strength and Speed Modes have been combined into the new Power Mode, the suit binoculars function has been upgraded with an advanced Tactical mode, the Cloaking Device has been modified to allow increased sensory input and silent melee stealth kills and has been renamed to Stealth Mode, while the Armor Mode has been left more or less as it was, with the exception of slightly restricted agility and an non-depleting energy levels. The Armor Mode will give you the sensation of being a two-legged tank and enemies will have to spend more than one clip to take you down. So, this mode allows players to take their time aiming without getting to cover.

In-game, enemies AI is quite realistic. Sure you can set them up for ambushes but a careless shot most of the time is enough to reveal your position and get you surrounded in seconds. That’s why you have to use a tactical approach rather than brute force to attack an enemy base. When you fight human enemies the ability to kill them one by one from above with a sniper rifle or use stealth kills is impressive and predatory; but facing aliens is harder because they use guns with higher fire power and more hitpoints.

Sadly, the game suffers from AI glitches which cause moments of bizarre behavior. Enemies walk in circles or remain completely oblivious to the gunshots and explosions inches away from them. Sometimes you are able, turning on cloak mode and crouching, to avoid lots of enemies as far as you don’t get too close to them. Moreover, Crysis 2 checkpoint system is annoying to unforgiving with no chance of quick –saving.

Multiplayer

Crysis 2 multiplayer mode is a fascinating and chaotic experience. Set in the future, each player is given the Nanosuit which enhances their abilities out in the battlefield. You can perform insanely fast sprint speeds, crazy sky high jumps or even go invisible.

Crysis 2 is all about speed, adaptability and precision. There is no camping in a corner until an enemy runs beside you, because camping is the easier way to be killed (every player’s suit is glowing blue or orange, so it’s easy to be spotted). Crysis 2 also relies on the usual health system found in most of all current shooters. You are never going to die by a single shot in the foot like Call of Duty, but half of a clip can take you down.

As for the games types Crysis 2 multiplayer includes; they are six available with a ton of different variations. Team Death match named as Team Instant Action, Capture the Relay which is essentially Capture the Flag, Extraction which has one team defending an object, while another attempts to capture bring it back to helicopter for extraction. Although, the most played game mode is Crash Site which is similar to Call of Duty’s headquarters.

And finally the Assault mode. One team equipped with assault rifles and other guns but without Nanosuit abilities, are called to defend up to five Intel terminals from being uploaded. While the other team with Nanosuit abilities but equipped only with a pistol must go near an uploading terminal and upload the data in order to win the round.

On the other hand, Crysis 2 multiplayer mode has many online connection problems that can be very annoying. But, Crytek promised that a patch is going to come out to fix any online problem so the gamers can enjoy every part of the game.

GRAPHICS

Unlike its predecessor Crysis 2 is easier for the PC to handle. It still gives a magnificent spectacle, but more than a few graphical elements seem to have gone. The greatest change is that the game is no longer set in a jungle but in a destroyed city. This surely makes plants and trees less of a concern. Crysis 2 has similar foliage to Crysis but it does not behave the same way. Only a few shrubs move when you brush against them but most let you pass through as if they were not there.

Crysis also offered enormous draw distances which took their toll on performance. By contrast, Crysis 2 has a limited scope. Cities with tall buildings make for very good graphical cutoffs while distant elements seem to be backdrops, thus, this change helps it to maintain as much as possible low frame rate. Light, on the other hand, is not directed as in Crysis or Far Cry, it cascades, through trees or glass, over buildings reflecting around levels in a way you have not met in a game before. Considering that both Crysis and Far Cry took place on an island, surrounded by water, it would be a bad element to ignore water reflection and underwater refraction. The cityscapes of Crysis 2 remove the need for a heavy emphasis on incredibly detailed water.

Furthermore, you still have the ability to destroy in-game objects, like benches, cars and more without reason, just for the fun of it. Although it is still a demanding game, your system will be able to “run” more efficiently than the first Crysis. Also, the upcoming DirectX11 patch will probably modify the game to a whole new level!

SOUND

The sound effects in the game are a mixed bag. While player movement and object interaction is realistic and convincing, the gunshots and weapons are not.

Footsteps, crashes, radio chatter and dialogue are all top quality and one can notice the effort that the developers put into it and it does a lot to immerse the player. Yet all of that goes out the window when the player fires a gun.

The SCAR and the SCARAB weapons almost seem muted and the shotgun also lacks that distinctive "bang" that satisfies players as they fire the weapon. Even the sniper rifle lacks the echoing bang that comes with one-shot kills.

The in-game background music on the other hand is acceptable. The score amplifies the atmosphere of confusion and desperation very well as there are moments in the game where one could just stand and stare and the New York skyline with the music playing, though it is not recommended as the player will most probably end up shot to pieces.

Summarizing, the game is a must for your collection. Although, it doesn't offer a thrilling plot, yet it is the best of all other FPS of that time. Graphics, somewhat more light that its predessesors, are kept at a level so that more PCs could actually support them, still they give a remarkable experience you wouldn't like to forget! You will definitely enjoy this title.

Pros: Graphics, nanosuit, stealth mode, background sceneries, final mission

Cons: Somewhat poor AI, weapon sounds and variety.

Plot:                 8
Gameplay:     9
Graphics:       9
Sound:             7
Constitution: 7
General:         8,5

Bionic Commando

2011-07-13T16:50:00.002+03:00

Another remake of a tale of old.

Publisher: Capcom

Developer: GRIN

Gendre: 3rd Person Shooter

Release Date: 1st semester of 2009

Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Xbox360, PS3

System Requirements: OS: WindowsXP SP2 / Windows Vista (service pack is optional, the game can run with no SP), CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4 Ghz or AMD Phenom 9500 Quad Core and higher
RAM: 2.0 GB RAM or more, Video: DirectX10/Shader4.0 compatible, VRAM 512+ MB (NVIDIA® GeForce® 9800 GTX+ series or ATI RadeonTM HD 3800 series or higher), Sound: DirectX9.0c compatible sound cards, HDD: 8.0 GB free space, DVD: DVD9 compatible drive (DVD DL)
Multiplayer: Internet connection required for online play

Capcom, seems to be in a disarray since it has been a long time since we get to see a new original game. Now, here we are, with a remake of a legendary game of the 1987, Bionic Commando.

Plot

The story is about Nathan Spenser, a former bionic, now a prisoner on a death penalty. The situation however thinks otherwise. A terrorist group, Bioreign, consisted of human and bionic troops, has destroyed Ascertium city, killing all civilians. Their target; a small devise, hidden in the city, which yields enormous powers. The government has no choice but to send the best they have, and that is Spenser. Spenser will receive orders from his old friend Joe, who is overseeing this mission. Upon his mission objectives, Spenser will meet former allies, with whom however you don’t get the change to exchange blows and only get to see once or two throughout the whole game. The plot later on gets a little more complicated with a small twist that will surely catch you by surprise, yet, the whole thing does remind of Japanese anime, which is of some sorrow.

Where is my wife?

Gameplay

The game is a 3^rd person shooter. Our hero has a bionic arm which can do some really cool stuff like ripping some big items of their location, tossing items on your enemies, grabbing opponents and it can also be used as a whip. Falling from heights will not result to death; unless you jump of the map. Also, falling in a special manner will result to a shockwave which either kills or stuns your enemies. The main usage of the arm however is to save you from falling to your death and by allowing you to move from building to building. Pretty much you can go as high as you can, until of course the radiation kills you. The arm can grab to any surface and your character doesn’t die, thankfully, no matter how oddly you will throw him. Crossing maps like “Tarzan” is surely some fun! But the arm itself is not useful against other robots and groups of enemy troops. Thus, you have a small arsenal of weaponry: a pistol (pretty useful), a shotgun, a grenade launcher (ooooh yeah), a rocket launcher ( good only for robots), a machinegun (neat no matter what), a sniper rifle and grenades (totally awesome). Although Spenser is a bionic, this doesn’t mean that he can carry all of them. Three weapons max from which the pistol and the grenades are not exchangeable. Finally, at some point, you will unlock the andenaline combo, which will allow you to do some pretty strong moves, like the whip attack.

Multiplayer

The game offers a multiplayer both online and locally, for up to 10 players. The gaming modes are Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag. The bionic arm is present of course and all in all in can do almost all the moves that can be done in the single player.

Graphics

Graphics are awesome. The sceneries are beautiful and the destroyed city, although weirdly flooded) is marvelous. The DirectX 11 really does a heck of a job! The characters, have great design and animation, really you can spot any major flaws. The levels too are nicely made, yet, there aren’t anything to be awed about. The, city’s park however is kinda weird for a park. This park is so big that it couldn’t be classified as a park, but as a forest instead!!! The robots have some kind crappy design, but typical for Japanese standards.

Soundtrack

Voice acting, effects and soundtracks are also maintained at a good level. Somewhat the gunshots sound a little bit weird. There is really not much to bother you at this title!

Conclusion, the game is good, and I does deserve a place in your collection. Although it is a remake and there isn’t any insanely awesome plot, yet it does worth the money.

Better make a staue of me too, or else...

Pros: Graphics, Bionic arm, sceneries

Cons: Small (it can be finished in 6 hours), kind of repetitive, long walking parts, few enemies and bosses

Plot: 6

Graphics: 9

Sound: 7

Constitution: 8

General: 7,5

Let's hope that this will keep on flying...

House of the Dead Overkill

2011-07-13T14:09:00.003+03:00

Daddy can i be a mutant?

Developer: Headstrong Games
Publisher: Sega
Platform: Wii
Release date(s): NA February 10, 2009
                          EU February 13, 2009
                          AUS February 19, 2009
                         JP October 31, 2009
Genre: Rail shooter
Mode(s): Single-player, multiplayer
Rating(s): 18+

for no apparent reason we just show you this image

SEGA's franchise reboot of The House of the Dead series is finally here, and as it seems its the first console House of the Dead title that isn't tied to an arcade release, and the only version not created by the original team: WoW Entertainment (AM1). Headstrong Games as it seems did a great job though and as we believe in GA it managed to move HOTD to a whole new level. The fifth game of the The House of the Dead series is actually a prequel to the original House of the Dead series. The interface is full of poster art, character cut-outs, and old film scratches, giving the game an atmosphere of an old time horror movie. There are plenty of movie references throughout the game too. The lines are definately well-written, giving us a lesson of the creativity needed to use the f- word so astoundingly good as Washington does. Vulgarity in the game is creative but sometimes just gets over the top. Anyway we do love profanity and sarcasm and when those two are blended with a good taste of humor then we can't do anything else but admire. The games's set up contains seven levels, each one having the look and theme of a movie. Usually before each level starts you will see a small intro containing Agend G and Isaac Washington, well zombies and sometimes lollipops (dont ask!!!). The levels themselves are fun, the bad thing is that they are too easy, YES this is the easiest House of the Dead ever released, but thank god it is violent and it has some real style of its own. Movind to the violence subject, we clearly see one of the strongest points of the game alongside with its good taste, humor and style. There are plenty of weapons that you can choose from, from pistols to shotguns, smgs and rifles all created for just the sheer fun of blasting some seriously detailed zombie models in pieces. You can quickly finish them off with a headshot, or just have fun shooting their arms and legs off just to see them crawling on the ground. So you have zombies randomly flying in the air, bloodsplatered walls and an endless amount of ammo at your disposal; what else can a man ask. Unfortunately, all this mindless violence doesn't come without a price. The biggest setback in the game is unfortunately the frame issue, as it becomes sketchy and can sometimes downrate the experience of the gameplay. The on-board memory fills up extremely fast and so the game is constantly doing little frame freezes in order to keep up. The price for such an immpresive graphical engine is sadly too high, as in some stages depending on the gun you will notice a frame freeze each time you press the trigger, making it very hard to aim effisiently. Still the game is a must for every wii owner, a truly hardcore game that gave us what it promissed, gruesome fun, sarcasm, busty strippers and ice trucks!!! Heastrong worked hard to make a game that can last five times more than a typical HOTD game till now, wraping it up with an excellent game engine and great action. There are lots of hints in the game (involving one for a sequel) and references to its source materials. You just need to be carefull enough to notice many mentions to films, like the Birds or Pulp fiction, 48 hours and the Texas chainsaw massacre. Even though the game needs about four or five hours to end, the team has made it sure that you will never manage to finish it completely by adding extra content: including the director's cut edition that adds in a few new areas in each stage and extra zombies, special challanges that include shooting some golden brains scaterred all over the place (for gods sake there are three brains in the pool of the 4rth level, not two trust me, it took me many hours to see them all) and many other preety hard achievements that, except from raising your score, can unlock consept art, model viewers, movies and album mixes. Furthermore it insanely hard to gather money in order to upgrade or even buy all weapons, it gets so hard to the point that we came to the conclusion that it isn't even supposed to happen. And if you manage to overcome all this and do every challange expecting to see the game completion at 100%, well guess again, the team has made sure this won't happen, by addin a small bug that just won't unlock the last track even though you did the challange needed.

Gameplay
Like all previous HOTD games, Overkill is a rail shooter, with pre-determined movements, the player can point the reticle near the edge of the screen to move the camera angle slightly in that direction, allowing a further field of view (the well known "Danger Cam"). You can play the story mode solo or co-op, with one weapon or dual-wielding controls (this is extremely fun). You can build up a combo meter by killing mutants in a row without missing (reaching a GOREGASM state after killing 24 zombies in a row) and with further points gained by performing head-shots, shooting bonus pickup (including health packs, grenades and the "Slow Mo-Fo"), or saving civilians. If you die, you can use points from your score to continue playing. At the end of each level, you are awarded a grade that depends on your score and other factors such as not dying, accuracy (we have to warn you though you might not allways agree with that score). The money earned from each stage can be used to buy new guns and gun upgrades at the Gun Shop.

Story
In 1991, AMS Special Agent G is given his first assignment and sent to a small town to investigate a series of disappearances. Uppon his arrival he discovers endless hordes of zombies and is forced to team up with Detective Isaac Washington who is trying to get revenge on Papa Caesar, the so seemed mastermind beyond this invasion, for apparently killing his father. In their way the will meet Valrla Guns, a busty stripper, who's also seeking revenge on Papa Ceasar for killing her brother (sort of, its actually you who kills him, anyway lets just say that there is a bunch of people who want Papa Ceasar dead). The storiline is interupted by many interesting twists that will keep you entertained till the very end.
The game was initialy going to follow the rest of its predesesors in its style and theme. Finaly though the developers desided to exploit some classical films after watching Planet Terror.

Sound
House of the dead offers the best soundtracks seen in a game of the 2009. Those soundtracks totally fit to the atmosphere, making you move to their groove while shooting zombies! The voice overs are those you will never forget. Agend G and Issac Washington have the most insanely wicked dialogues to be found in any videogame ever. The F-word will be the most common word in the game; there won't be any setence without it. Yet, noone could feel offended, the way those two speak, is so ... geez i don't have words to discribe... maginificent; that you will burst in laughters rather than feel offended.

Conclusion
It was recently confirmed by Dread Central the game is set to receive a Guinness World Record for being the most profane video game in history, it definately deserves it. We recomand this game as a must have, but only if you are an adoult ofcurse. And as a critic said its m****** good. What else can we say.

8.5 Presentation
funny, entertaining storyline, hardcore.
8.5 Graphics
The models are amazing, body parts blown to pieces, blood sprays, environments. The frame issues keep it down.
8.0 Sound
The music is well produced, slow motion transitions are awessome.
8.0 Gameplay
well balanced, one-shot kills tends to get boring. Bosses could be harder.
8.0 Lasting Appeal
Old fashioned arcade fun. Added modes and three mini-games included, level dont get boring and can be played all over again many times

World of Tanks

2011-07-11T15:40:00.004+03:00

Load, Aim and Fire!

Developer: Wargaming.net
Engine: Bigworld
Platform: Windows
Release Date: 12 April 2011
Version: 0.6.5
System Requirements: Operating system: Windows XP/Vista/7
Processor (CPU): 2.2 GHz, Memory(RAM): 1.5 GB for Windows XP, 2 GB for Windows Vista / 7
Videocard: GeForce 6800GT with 256 MB of RAM / ATI X800 with 256 MB RAM, DirectX 9.0c
Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c compatible, Free hard disk space: 3.5 GB, Internet connection speed: 128 Kbps

WW2, whether we like it or not, is a trend for video games. The hardest and most violent battle took place then and they are the most modern on which we actually have plenty public information about (still many things are hidden but anyways). Here we are now taking up the seat of a tank’s commander and gunner, shooting and blasting our way through the enemy tanks. This is a free online game, which however has some items available only via a premium account or by buying gold coins in order to acquire them. Such items can really make your life easy if you have them, or make your life “miserable” if you face someone who has them.

Gameplay

In WoT you take the role of a tank crew. All you got to do is, as simple as it may sound, blow up all enemy tanks or capture their base. There isn’t much thinking to be had there.

There are 5 tank types which can be used:

Light tanks: Fast, small and agile those tanks can cross maps within a few seconds, run through enemy lines and blow up their cover and kill the artilleries. Other than that light tanks are useless. They don’t really puck a punch in any other tank rather than other light tanks and artilleries. Their armor too won’t allow you to take more than a few hits.

Medium tanks: Going up the scale means less speed but more damage and armor. Mediums on their own don’t do any serious damage to enemy heavy tanks, but a group of them can take down 1 or 2. Mediums are to provide some additional fire to enemies, either for providing cover to the light tanks or to assist taking enemies down. Speed, armor and damage are kept to an average.

Heavy tanks: If you see a heavy while being in a medium or light tank pointing at you, well, don’t expect to stay alive for much longer. Heavy tanks means: "ok I can’t move fast but I feel nothing and my punch will simply enough blow you up!"

Tank destroyers: Such tanks can take down a heavy tank much more efficiently than other heavies. Small in size, and quite fast their cannons offer the proper penetration to crack a heavy’s armor. Their main disadvantage is that those tanks don’t have a rotating cannon, living you exposed to enemies attacking from flanks or rear.

Artillery (SPG) : Not much to say here, artilleries can blow up heavies as if they are light tanks. They fire from extreme range and with decent aiming they can take out even opponents who are yet not spotted. Their disadvantage is that they don’t turn fast enough to face any enemy in close range from flanks or rear. Also, targeting fast tanks in distance requires some skill since bomb shells take some time to land.

After choosing your tank type all you got to do is enter a battle. In the battle you can either play in a Third person shooter (viewing your tank from the outside) or in a FPS like mode (sniper mode) in which you see through the “eyes” of the gunner, extremely effective for long range targeting. There is nearly no difference in this game from any other FPS or 3-rd person shooter; WASD keys maneuver your tank, with the mouse you do the rest. Simple as that!

When buying a new tank you are automatically supplied with the necessary equipment. After gaining experience from battles you will be able to research new modules to mount them on your tank, making it more effective in battle.

Such modules are

Engine: It affects the maximum speed

Suspension: It affects the maneuverability of your tank, and the max equipment that can be mounted

Turret: It unlocks better cannons, affects view range and how fast the cannon can turn

Cannon: Damage, damage and eeer, oh yes, damage (bear in mind that different cannons have different reload times and targeting times)

The cannon takes up to 3 different shell types. A standard shell with average damage and penetration, a premium shell with High penetration (oh yes…this ammo totally rocks) and another shell will low penetration but high explosion damage output)

Radio: extremely useful for artillery, allows communication with allied tanks providing information on the enemy positions

Having the appropriate equipment doesn’t mean that you are ready to rock; you also need experienced crew!

Gunner, Loader, Commander, Radioman and Driver (you don’t need any degree in science to realize what they do). Each crew begins with 50% experience. There are no levels, but getting them to 100% is a tough task, especially when not premium. After getting a new tank you can use the previous tank crew on it, but they will not work effectively. They require retraining, which means some experience loss. When in 100% your crew will be able to receive some bonus skills: firefighting, camouflage and repairing. Useful nonetheless.

Furthermore there are items that will help you thrive in battles. There are consumables that increase the overall tank and crew abilities. They may be extremely expensive thus they should be used more often in Clan battles.

The most exciting part of the game is clan battles. Clans fight for provinces, which provide with gold those clans, gold useful for buying some premium items. The provinces are the Global map, making the game look a little bit more realistic!! Who wouldn’t like to conquer his own country!

One thing you will like is that the game automatically stores all your statistics! You will find this quite nice since you will see how well you have been doing through your “tank commanding career”. Sometimes useful for entering a clan, which asks for some “serious” gamers…yes pretty annoying.

Graphics

Not much to say here, except from the fact that they are pretty awesome for a FREE MMO! Sometimes your shells will destroy houses, not in a fancy Battlefield 3 way, but still pretty cool manner. Sometimes the enemy will try to blow up your cover and take you down! Bear in mind where you hide! The tanks move realistically, crashing on trees and other stuff will result to the crumbling of trees ect. However there are nearly not any good water effect, but there are good water reflections. The maps are also beautifully made, providing some tactical advantages for both teams, if properly exploited, taking us to the “real” frontlines of that time.

Oh crap...

Sound

There is no such thing as a soundtrack, but the general sounds are quite impressive! When shooting an enemy and hitting them you will hear some messages like: Penetration, depending of course on the hit you inflicted on them.

Artillery gameplay

Summarizing there are some stuff you will get you angry, premium accounts have the upper hand, let’s face it, they pay for the game. They will see you and you will not in some occasions, making angry since you can’t see where the shells come from! Apart from that, the game is co-operative mostly. You can’t hope to take them all down by yourself. Some players just don’t seem to play cooperatively, really frustrating. And, as always there are cheaters. Some players use cheats making your life miserable, like shooting you from a hell of a distance while running at full speed, not once, but twice and more! Finally, whether you like it or not you can’t play with your friends. You can only play with 2 of them only after you and they pay for a premium account (this is the first time someone gets to see it).

Prons: Free, nice graphics, something new, global map for clan battles

Cons: Premiums are stronger, can’t play with friends, lack of cooperative gameplay (some players are just so noobs)

Gameplay 8

Graphics 7

Sound 6

Constitution 6

General 7

Well yes play it, but consider buying a premium account as a quite expensive transaction.

Aliens Vs Predator

2011-06-26T13:28:00.002+03:00

The human race caught up in the worst battle of their lives.

Developers: Rebellion Developments

Publisher: Sega

Engine: Asura
Platforms: Microsoft Windows, PS3, Xbox360
Release date: February 19, 2010
Genre: FPS, Action, Survival Horror
Modes: Single/Multi-player
System requirements: CPU- 3.4 GHz Intel Pentium 4/Athlon 64 3000+ or equivalent
'Graphics Card- Nvidia Geforce 6600/ATI Radeon X1600 or better RAM 1GB(XP) or 2GB(Vista/7)

It didn’t take long to combine the two deadliest enemies human kind has ever faced. The “Predator”, a technologically advanced alien race, hunting to gain honor and trophies, and the “Aliens”, bug-like life forms, gifted with strength, speed, skill and hunger for blood (yes we do consider hunger for blood a sort of gift, in video games of course). Those two combined were meant to create one of the best titles in the gaming industry. With the latest effort in 2010, after the magnificent AvP 2 in 2001, Rebellion tries to give new breath in this “ancient” and magnificent series.

Plot

There are 3 types of characters that can be used: the Colonial marine, the Predator and the Alien. Each one of them has a different story to narrate, which sometimes they “meet” each other, in the same way as in the previous title. So you can actually see your actions as an alien while you are playing as a Predator.

Luckily we don't go up that building!

The Colonial marine’s plot begins with a spaceship launching drop ships full with marines to the surface of a planet which has several colonies there (were many human colonies are located), which have been attacked and annihilated by the xenomorphs and the predators. Our character, unfortunately; doesn’t have a name thus he is referred as Rookie. However, soon after the lunch of the shuttles, a Predator battleship emerges from cloaking and destroys the human battleship and then starts attacking all drop ships. Our character’s ship crushes on the ground, leaving barely anyone alive with the exception of a few soldiers. What our marine is going to do is all but try to find other marines, who just before you find them, they all die. After all marines being killed, Rookie will try to meet with Tekila, a fellow marine (the 2^nd and last survivor) and save her from the xenomorphs who have captured and harvested her. Upon her rescue he finds out that Weyland (the CEO of Wayland&Yutani Corporation, the mastermind behind the whole operation) wants to use the xenomorphs and study them, in order to find their home-world for reasons we don’t know yet.

Dejavu?

The alien's plot is about a captive alien drone, which is being tested by human scientists. It will manage to escape due to a power failure and cause havoc in the human facilities. The xenomorph will try to save the Alien queen, as it is her orders, killing marines and predators alike, but it will fail, since the queen dies before it gets there. Without a leader it goes to hibernation, until it wakes up in an orbital ship where it kills the crew and establishes a hive, and later it becomes a queen itself.

The predator’s plot is about a young elite predator who is being sent to investigate what happened to the predators that were sent and died in that planet and destroy any evidence of their existence. He then is ordered to take vengeance on behalf of their ancestors upon the humans because of their breach to their holy pyramids. After finding a special mask (capable of detecting the aliens) and a spear like weapon, he fights a hybrid of a predator and an alien. After killing this abomination, he sets a countdown sequence to destroy the Pyramid.

Gameplay

AvP is a typical FPS and it is not hard to imagine how the gameplay will be. Each character you will control can block some attacks when prompted to do so; an indicator will inform you when to block, thus allowing you not to lose any health. However, predators and aliens can do heavy attacks which can’t be block by any character. The colonial marine can carry two weapons besides the pistol, or the smartgun only with the pistol. The marine’s weapon variation consists: a pistol, a pulse rifle, a shotgun, a sniper rifle, a flamethrower and a smartgun. All weapons have alternate firing modes which are respectively: a burst of bullets, a grenade (which does low damage to the alien swarms), double shell firing and an acidic firing mode. The smartgun automatically tracks enemy movements and as long as you keep the enemy inside the smartgun’s sensors your bullets will automatically find their targets. The sniper rifle when in scope mode will have all enemies shown; even if they are behind objects. Furthermore, the marine heavily depends on the motion tracer, in order to find where the enemies are lurking. The marine can block light attacks from the aliens and predators and then can counter attack by bashing his weapon on them. This bash will knock them on the ground or temporarily stun them leaving you time enough to reload or give the killing blow.

The predator can go in stealth mode, leaving him undetected to the eye, yet not from the motion trackers or the alien’s vision. The weapons used by the predator are the wrist blades, a flying disc, plasma cannon, bombs and a combat stick. The plasma cannon when fired disables the cloaking from the predator but if fired correctly, the marines will never now what hit them. With the flying disc you can dispatch many opponents with a single throw, since you can control its trajectory. The combat stick is a big spear which the predator throws at his enemies instead of thrusting it or using it in close range combat, unfortunately. It is capable of killing each enemy with a single hit, but it is very slow to fire, leaving you defenseless for quite some time. The wrist blades will be your main weapon, since they do not need ammo or energy to use. Sneaking behind enemies results to stealth attacks and stunned opponents can lead to finishing attacks which are of extreme violence since they cause decapitations, spine removals, stabbing and eye removals. The predator has also 3 different visions: normal vision, heat vision (useful against humans but totally ineffective against aliens), and alien vision which shows the aliens but not the humans. Stealth mode and the plasma cannon consume energy, energy that is useful for the predator’s gadgets operation, but it can be replenished by hacking powernodes. Both predators and marines use health stims/shards to replenish their health, also, when not counterattacking a heavy attack, will be grabbed by their opponents (aliens/predators), thus, receiving great damage or even instant death.

The alien on the contrary uses its natural weapons: its claws, jaws and tail to kill its enemies. It locates its enemies by their pheromones (red pheremones depict armed humans, blue pheremones indicate unarmed humans and green pheremones represent the Predators), making it easy to see their locations even in areas of complete darkness. That is why darkness is its greatest ally. By breaking any source of light the marines will be unable to see you, making it easy to approach them for a stealth kill. However, darkness will not hide your moments from the motion tracker or the predator’s mask. The alien has the great advantage of walking on any surface. Most marines don’t expect an attack from the ceiling. Frontal assault is not advisable to more than 2 marines; being a drone means that the exoskeleton is not capable of accepting a great deal of damage, thus a few pulse rifle bullets or a shotgun shell or two will definitely kill you (at hardcore mode). If discovered it is better to use the great speed advantage of yours and sprint to safety. After that, patiently take out your enemies one by one. The alien heals only by biting the heads of fallen enemies, with the exception of the androids, because they don’t have any blood. The alien can also grab its opponents and perform some violent finishing moves too.

A survival mode has been implanted to the title, where you control a marine and try to survive as long as possible. The longer you survive the more aliens come and stronger they become. It won’t be long until you become their dinner.

Graphics

All we can say is that graphics are of pure pleasure to the eyes. By using DirectX 11, the sceneries, the character details, the weapons and the various visual effects are totally great. Everything in the environment is highly detailed, with the exception of the Pyramid mission where somehow, there is a feeling of displeasure. Definitely, in this level, not much attention was given. The human facilities, however, are something of a Hollywood horror film: dark corridors, with few dim lights, cables torn apart, pieces of metal all over the place, bullet holes and dead marines. The atmosphere along with the motion tracker beat is of pure horror.

The character design and animation is also extremely nice. Finishing and stealth moves are also a gift to the eyes cause there hasn’t been such “live” gore in any videogame. The character movements are carefully designed, making them very realistic. It is also one of the few games in which you can actually see your legs when walking.

Oh crap, they don't have "balls"!!!!

Sounds

They only part where the game totally sucked. There is a horrible ambient all the time which technically it is considered as different for each mission, but if carefully heard there is nearly no much difference. The alien’s sounds are quite decent, not a match however for its predecessor, so as for the predator. The most annoying part is when fighting marines. Your head literally will want to mute the sound. All the time you will be hearing something like: “Don’t let your guard down” or “This isn’t over yet, marines” and such, and even where there is only one marine left!!!! Totally annoying. Furthermore, in AvP 2 we could hear long conversations between the enemies and get an idea of their actions, plans and strategies, sometimes such conversations could last for more than 10 minutes!! Now, a 15 second conversation is the max you can find. Finally, all marines have exactly the same voice, one for the male and one for the female. That is pretty disturbing too. The music soundtracks are not of anything significant, turning them mute there would also be wise.

Multiplayer

The multiplayer part is the best part of the game, if played like a horror movie, and not rushing for kills. There, making a movie with such graphics can really become a Youtube hit. The single-player laws are in effect here too, with the exception of the predator’s healing, which consumes energy instead of health shards. About 16 people can join in a multiplayer match. For the PC this may cause some CPU lag if the game is at maximum graphics or burn a few cables.

There is also a cooperative survival mode, where with 3 of your friends can stand your ground against the alien hordes.

Summarizing, this is a decent game, with major flaws to the acoustic part. This title is meant to be a survival horror game; but it gets repetitive after the 2^nd mission. The marine is of inhuman strength; what human can parry an alien or predator attack and then knock them back!!! Predators although in cloak can be easily seen or heard when silently closing in from behind or flanks. Aliens will tire you with the constant stealth killing.

They never check the ceiling!

Prons: Graphics, atmosphere, multiplayer, (co-op) survival

Cons: AI, sounds, some backgrounds are gloomy, repetitive

Plot                 7
Gameplay      6
Graphics        8
Sound             4
General         6

In my opinion buy it; it is a decent title for your collection. It doesn’t have something new to offer in terms of plot and game-play but it would make a decent multiplayer game. But buy it when it gets lots of cheaper, its today price is not worthy of what it offers.

And i command you to buy my game!!!

Street Fighter IV

2011-05-03T09:42:00.003+03:00

The legend is back in 3D.

Developer: Dimps/Capcom

Publisher: Capcom

Platforms: Arcade, PS3, Xbox360, Microsoft Windows, iOS

Release date: February – July 2009

Genre: Fighting

Players: 2

Pegi: 12

System requirements:OS: Windows XP, CPU: Intel Pentium 4 2.0GHz or higher, RAM: 1GB or higher, HDD: 10GB of free space or more,Video Card: DirectX 9.0c/Shader3.0 or higher compatible: NVIDIA GeForce 6600 series or higher; ATI Radeon X1600 with 256MB or higher VRAM, Sound: DirectSound compatible, DirectX 9.0c (or higher) compatible, Input Devices: Mouse, Keyboard (a gamepad cn be used instead)

It’s been more than 20 years since the first Street Fighter title was introduced. Since then this series has been a must to our collection. Now in 2010 the legend comes back with the basic characters and some new ones.

The plot in Street Fighter IV is rather a typical one; a secret laboratory, mad scientists and an evil mastermind behind the operation. The tournament is being held in order the best fighters of the world are gathered and have their skills implanted to the evil boss, who wishes to take over the world. Well, we couldn’t expect not to find the good hearted fighters fight him and destroy his plans for world domination. Each character has a special background story, featuring the reasons for joining the fighting tournament in the first place. In the end each has a special ending featuring his/her actions and story after the defeat of the bad guys.

The characters that appear are:

Ryu, Ken, Dhalsim, Blanka, Chun-li, Gen, Akuma, Gouken, Vega, Balrog, Sagat, Seth: the evil mastermind behind the tournament, former puppet of M.Bison, now rebelled to claim M.Bison’s empire as his, Dan, Sakura, Guile, M.Bison, Rufus: a USA martial artist who is of extreme weight(and luck of muscles) and does some weird moves that a guy at his weight could never have done, C.Viper: A business woman and a secret agent, working to gain the secrets of Shadoloo and the power of the Dark Hado.

Abel: A French martial artist, who seems to have lost his memory, bears some secrets on the case of Guile’s friend, Charlie, El Fuerte: A Mexican cook, also a wrestler, joins the tournament to travel around the world and gain recipes in order to become the ultimate cook!, E.Honda, Zangief, Cammy, Fei Long, Rose.

Gameplay

Nothing has changed to the main gameplay of this title, yet there are some improvements and some flaws which could have been avoided. There are 3 types of punches: a low punch: fast but of low damage output, a medium punch: of medium speed and damage, and the high punch: strong but slow. So is the same for the 3 types of kicks, low, medium and high kick. With the combination of the arrow keys or the analog stick and the punch and kick buttons, our character can perform combos which vary on strength according to the combo hits. Furthermore, it should be taken account the fact that positioning matters a lot. For example, if our character is in a crouch position and the enemy attacks from the air (jumping at us) and does a kick, even if we defend the block will not count and take the hit! Same happens if we are standing and the enemy kicks at on our feet! An addition to our moves, which for all the former characters we are all familiar, there is the new Focus Attack. Holding down the medium kick and punch buttons simultaneously, our character changes stance and prepares for the focus attack. This kind of attack takes time, leaving us defenseless for a small period of time, plenty to be exact for the enemy to retaliate. However, most attacks hit while focus attacking will be absorbed, damage will be taken, but in a second or two the life lost will be replenished! But not all attacks can be absorbed, like Sagat’s Tiger Crusher or M.Bison’s Phycho Crusher, nor Ultra or Super Combos. A successful focus attack (if held for quite some time) will be devastating: firstly because the enemy will take a big hit, and secondly because the rival will fall crumbling to his/her feet, giving you time to perform any combo you like!

There is also the Ultra gauge bar and the EX Combo bar. The first gauge allows our character after taking some hits to perform a super combo, devastating in damage and capable of changing the outcome of any battle. Some characters can perform ultra combos up two or even three times. The super combo bar when full allows us to do a combo move similar to the ultra combo, but less devastating. Each combo bar allows the character of ours to perform a strongest move, which is faster and more damaging.

The negative in the whole story is that in previous Street Fighter titles each character had more-o-less 4 super combos, with Akuma having 6, while in SF IV we got only ONE!!!! What happened to the other combo moves?! Did the fighters forget how they were performed?! Furthermore the Ultra combo bar is unfair; a skilled fighter could lose to a less better, simply because the 2^nd one will have the ability to perform each round 2-3 times an ultra combo!! The ultra combo bar is reset at the end of each round.

Additional to the Arcade part of the game there has been added a Challenge mode.

In the challenge mode you can choose between 3 challenges: Time attack: in which you are supposed to defeat some opponents in a limited amount of time, Survival: defeat as many opponents as you can before you lose (after each round a % of your life bar will replenish and Trials: in which you are given some combos to perform (especially useful to learn some very nice combos of your character). Each of these challenges have difficulty levels, the higher the harder it gets, for example: the less time you got in the time attack, lesser % replenished in survival mode and harder combos to perform in the trials mode.

Finally there is a Training option in which you can practice every move you like with any opponent you like. There are options in which you can see the damage output of your character and how many hits you have to give before you stun the enemy. You can also have the opponent not only stand still and receive hits; but you can allow him to be control by CPU, or by your friend, and have some endless sparing matches.

Multiplayer

There wouldn’t be any SF title if there wasn’t any multiplayer. The game unfortunately supports only 1 on 1 battles (we really hoped for a tag system/ or 2 vs 2). Fights can be done either locally, on the same computer or console, or via the internet such as Windows Live and the respectively on X-Box360 and PS3. There are also some costumes to customize the character’s appearance (which in my opinion are kinda lame) There are also Global ratings, will you be able to become the top?

Graphics

Graphics could have been great but Capcom didn’t want to make a SF with the latest graphic engine because SF would have lost its spirit. Yet, any complaints should be made for the lack of any decent new character than for the graphics. Each character is highly detailed, with nearly no flaws, except for Rufus, who is horrible in every way. The animation of the characters is very nice, walking, hitting, defending and being hit seems to be quite realistic! If punched in the face, the head will go back, if hit on legs, the character will crumble or have his/her legs bent in pain. The backgrounds, however, with the exception of one or two, are a complete disaster (fighting in a swamp with a crazy monkey somersaulting and a leopard lying and yawning on a tree bench). They don’t fit to the general street fighter idea as the backgrounds did in previous titles. The effects are also great, “projectile” attacks like the “Hadoken” is visually beautiful. Also any other effect is a good as we could expect.

Sound

Each character has a unique soundtrack, which are remakes of old themes, influenced by our modern music preferences, and can be heard at each rival match. Each stage has also a unique soundtrack, making each battle exciting and pumping! The intro and ending videos are nicely voiced, yet not a very professional work, with the exception of the English voice actors, who all seem to be taken from a B-movie.

Summarizing, this is Street Fighter, a valuable game to your collection. Yet this title doesn’t offer anything new, with many previous moves missing and horrible new characters. With a high price like this, I would definitely vote for waiting a couple of years, just until the price decreases. The game is somewhat quite heavy, and recording on the pc could be troublesome. From what it offers it would be difficult for ST IV to stand out from other fighting games such as Mortal Combat 9.

Missed me!!

Prons: Graphics, new title after a while, Music

Cons: Lack of former super combos, lame new characters and backgrounds, average voice acting

Plot 3

Gameplay 7

Sound 8

Graphics 8

Constitution 6

General 7

Gothic III

2011-04-05T22:29:00.002+03:00

From the island of Khorinis, to the mainland.

System requirements: Windows 2000 SP4, Windows XP SP1,Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP 64 minimum 512 MB System RAM, 2.0 GHz Intel Pentium 4, Athlon XP or equivalent processor
128MB DirectX compatible video card, DirectX 9.0c, 8x DVD-ROM drive, 4.6 GB free hard disk space,DirectX 8.1 compatible sound card

Developers: Piranha Bytes

Publishers: JoWood Productions, Deep Silver and Aspyr Media

Platform: Microsoft Windows

Release date: 13 October -20 November 2006 (latest version 1.74, June 11, 2010, with many bugs fixed but not all of them)

Genre: open-ended action-RPG

MSRP: GBP £29.99

PEGI: 12+

After the events of Gothic 2, in which the main hero defeats the undead dragon and leaves the island of Khorinis in the Paladin frigate Esmeralda, and arrive at the mainland which is consisted of 3 main locations: Myrtana, a fertile land, formerly occupied by paladins and now ruled by orcs. Varant, with its hot and vast deserts that lurk many dangers, and Nordmar, freezing cold, savage beasts and undead that hide in the snow makes this place a deadly trap for all passengers. The dark magician Xardas using ancient magic has stolen the rune magic of the Paladins and the Fire Mages. The last without their rune magic were no match for the numerically superior armies of orcs. The capital of Myrtana, Vengard is now surrounded by a barrier, formed by King Rhobar (just like in Gothic 1) leaving no escape for the besieging orcs. Our hero unaware of these events arrives in a town called Ardea and there he sees orcs enslaving the city’s population. It doesn’t take long before he engages the orc’s without any hesitation. Later you find out that all Myrtana has been taken over by the orcs and their human mercenaries, while slave traders capture any free citizen they find, while rebels try to restore the King’s authority by trying to recapture all their lost cities. Under all these events you start your journey in Khorinis.

There are two paths that our hero can follow,

The path of the rebel: becoming one of them the hero will try to restore order by eliminating the orc garrisons.

The path of the orc: by becoming an orc mercenary you will assist the orcs in the assassination of King Rhobar and the demise of all the human rebels.

Gameplay

Unfortunately the gameplay hasn’t remained the way it was in Gothic 2. Now you can virtually do anything just by using the mouse. You can take any item you find on the floor, on tables, bookshelves or in chests, talk attack and cast spells just by using the mouse totally substituting the action key.

There is an FPS like part in the game which is the targeting mode with either the crossbow or the bow. A small triangle appears on the center of the screen showing where the arrow or quarrel is going to land. There you will face some challenges because even though you supposedly know where you are going to hit, you will actually hit quite far from where the target shows. It will require you lots of practicing before you are able to shoot down opponents before they get at a closer range.

The swordsmanship is quite horrible. It is monotonous and there are only two moves that you can do, a slow strong swing, which drains lots of stamina and a faster but less powerful move which gives no chance for the opponent for a counter strike. Unlike Gothic 2 the hero can’t do any combos and soon you will find that the fights are quite boring, in fact u can obliterate a whole city just by clicking the left mouse button, well at least until your stamina is drained. To make things even better opponents can run through walls, not every wall though just the ones you don’t want them to, and they do it surprisingly regularity. To those of you ready to judge the game please don’t be in a hurry they also get stuck at seemingly random places allot. For instance, just piss off a group of foes and then run to the other side of a bridge to see them all get glued together. The hero gets stuck as well just by stepping up on a small rock he moves his feet just a little, trying to climb the rock,instead of jumping over.

We all love shields and Gothic 3 has totally failed giving us that nice sensation. Parrying with the shield is horrible and the way the character holds it looks very fake and “unrealistic”. Even without the shield, when parrying the hero just stands still and holds his sword in a vertical position and the enemies’ attacks seems to be blocked more easily than it should be.

In Gothic 2 by pressing the parry button we could see the hero doing some moves and not just holding the sword still.

Furthermore the Level up has been under some changes. Each time you level up you earn some learning points which later you can spend on skills or attributes. Those attributes now are Strength, Hunting, Ancient Knowledge, Life Force, Endurance and Magic Power (mana). For each weapon type (one/two handed, bow/crossbow, staff) there are 3 skills (except the dual wielding sword technique) which allow our hero to cause more damage with each swing or each arrow (quarrel) fired.

What is not as realistic as it was in Gothic 2 is that everyone who can train you can actually train you for as long as you have learning points. For example: a Fire mage novice can teach you nearly all the ancient knowledge you need!!!

Experience, necessary for leveling up, is earned by killing beasts and enemies and by doing quests. Each quest when finished gives you an award of experience and sometimes gold. Additional experience and gold rewards can be earned (but now always) when talking back to the one that gave you the quest to inform about its completion.

The only thing that will really make your life hell is the liberation of towns or the extermination of rebel camps. Most towns have more than 30 orcs and they can easily surround you and kill you at will, despite the fact that there are slave who have picked arms and fight by your side, but they have no skill against the orcs and their mercenaries. The rebels at the camps just sit at their caves and wait the towns to get liberated by them-selves. Finally there are quests that can’t be completed because either the one who is supposed to give you a quest is dead or he just don’t wants to talk to you for an unknown reason of his own.

Each town has an arena in which our hero can gain not only experience but also fame amongst the orc occupants, allowing him enough standing to enter the upper quarters of the city, in which the orc leader of the city is located. To your information, after having liberated more than 3 cities from the orc rule, any contact with their leader in the upper quarter should be avoided, unless you want the whole garrison running against you. Undertake one of these larger scale missions, such as aiding the rebels and free a town, the rebels will afterwards take up residence here. This gives you the sense that your actions have actually an impact in the world.

Sneaking is difficult to master but can be very effort saving. You can either silently kill or knock down and opponent and acquire a valuable item from his inventory or stealthily avoid your enemies and steal some items from their chests or bookshelves without waking them up. Stealth can’t be used at all times. Most times you will have to fight your way in or out (mostly out). There is also a bug that you activate when sneaking. Pressing the sneak button and then the forward movement button when facing an opponent or friend, will have the camera removed from the hero and focused on the enemy or friend you were looking before!! Any reset camera button will not work; simply save the game when you come up with this bug and load it. The camera will reset during the load.

Graphics

Graphics are nonetheless magnificent. The land of Myrtana will be your favorite for sure. Forests, mountains and plains are a paradise to the eyes. For sure none can complain about the background but the character design is another story. The armors are not as well designed as in the previous title. Some armor look weird on when you wear them and they lack the beauty they had before Gothic 3. Finally, if you equip a shield and a crossbow you will see the crossbow coming through the shield and armor giving a bad impression.

Sound

The ambient is quite relaxing and very nice when walking peacefully to your destination. This is ruined by the countless beasts and enemies you encounter on your way there. Each time someone or something attacks you the ambient stops and another soundtrack is being played which is not suitable for any battle situation.

At boss fights however and at important locations you can enjoy some great soundtracks that reminds (simply reminds) Lord of the Rings.

Each NPC that you can interact with has a voice. The bad thing is that nearly all of those NPCs have the same voices. There must be about 10 people who did all those voices for different characters which gets a bit annoying.

Generally

You can buy this if you just want to complete your collection, but we don't really recommend it, in a period with serious competition, Piranha Bites should have worked more on the gameplay part and offer the variety and “epicness” of Gothic 2. Finally, there are some (and by some we mean zillions) bugs at the game that will make your Gothic experience a living hell. A quick save key will save the game quickly without the annoying ESC button and save game sequence. However at some time this quick save button will betray you and take you to the beginning of the game without any skill at all and without any quest done so far.

Pros: We get to know what happened next to the "nameless" hero after G2, graphics, background

Cons: Poor AI, battling again hordes of enemies alone, sometimes you stuck at a simple rock, bad map navigation

Plot 7

Gameplay 5

Graphics 8

Sound: 5

Constitution: 6

General 4,5

Shall i buy it?

To be honest with you i can't take really any position here. Well G3 is the 3rd title of one of the best RPG series. Yet, unlike its predecessors, it complete failed to keep up with the Gothic motive and its characteristics which made it famous. I think you should buy it only if you really want to learn what happened next. For any other reason i wouldn't advice it.

Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason

2011-03-28T21:27:00.010+03:00

Fear in the nuclear ice breaking ship.

Developer: Action Forms

Publishers: 1C Company, 505 Games

Platform: Microsoft Windows

Release date: 27 February 2009

Genre: FPS, Survival Horror

Players: 1

System Requirements: OS: Microsoft Windows XP/Vista/7, Intel Core 2 Duo/AMD Athlon 64 X2, 2GB RAM, 6GB hard disk space, Nvidia Ge-force 8800/Ati Radeon HD 2900, 16-bit sound card

The plot is about a meteorologist, Alexander Nesterov who finds the wreck of a nuclear icebreaker called the North Wind in the North Pole in 1981. Alexander finds himself aboard the ship and starts, what we would expect any average meteorologist would do, investigating what happened to the ship and its crew. Along with the search for clues the “hero” will find drawings which are depicting a story of old times similar with the events taken place on the ship. The scientist will find himself fighting the crew members and the prisoners that were transported, who have undergone a strange metamorphosis both physical and psychological. He furthermore has the ability of changing the actions of fallen crew members, thus, changing the past, and in the long run, the future, don’t worry though cause this is normal, every meteorologist can read the memories of frozen dead sailors.

So anyway your main source of information is this so called Mental Echo power. In the official description it said that mental echo is - the ability to penetrate another character's memory and change the actions taken by that character in the past. This can involve saving people's lives by taking over their bodies in their memories and changing the course of history. Sounds cool, but errr I just think that’s it’s the best way that Action Forms found to tell you whats going on. Storytelling in this game totally sucks, all clues are given through this Echo power, which fails to keep you interested, cause lets face it: mutated Russians, the north pole, and nuclear stuff sound cool but won't keep you thrilled for much time, leaving you a gap, that the developers didn't manage to fill in time before you eventually quit the game. Like any good old Russian story involving nuclear crisis, ice and Russians that respects itself, so is this one, involving a captain choosing a perilous route through the Arctic, ignoring the, as we can already expect by the cliché of the story, warnings of the first officer. From this point on the story goes as every else : Captain fails to spot ICEBERG, ship meets iceberg, ship collides with iceberg, captain tries to correct his mistake doing the most stupid thing from all possible choices, ice gets mad and then BANG radiation and mutants all over the place. Some of the mutants are easily qualified as the weirdest you've ever met, you will actually have to fight with a guy resembling a tower.

Gameplay

The game is set in a nuclear ship wreck, which is out of power, deep in the North Pole as we already stated above, ice and darkness are everywhere in the ship making a perfect scene for a survival horror. Our scientist wields some melee weapons, i.e an axe, and firearms like the Mosin-Garand. Although it is considered a FPS, there is no targeting cycle, aiming must be careful, since you can’t take many hits and ammunition are quite scarce.

The plot takes part in extreme cold conditions. Instead of a health bar there is a body thermometer and an external thermometer. The max health that can be acquired is no more that the external heat. The internal temperature is the current health and it is decreased by every blow on our character. Health can be replenished at heat projectors, such as lamps, stoves and torches, so basically a guy hits you in the head with an axe but its ok cause you have your radiator with you.

The “hero” can run for a limited amount of time and do some minor jumps. This is logical, due to the heavy equipment and clothing the scientist wears and to the extreme cold conditions. His stamina is replaced overtime at a slow rate and at a faster rate while close to heat projectors.

The environments tents to get a bit repetitious, witch you will say its normal being on a ship and all that, but when it occurs to the degree that you can't say the difference between rooms anymore, well that’s something players rarely appreciate.

Graphics

Graphics are superb in this game. The ship’s compartments are highly detailed, which covered in ice and with the dim lighting make an excellent atmosphere. The games supports the Nvidia PhysX water graphics, the first time to be employed. This results in outstanding graphic effects when the ice melts from the walls of the ship when the heating is turned on.

The animation of the characters is not of any breakthrough, yet it is realistic with no exaggerations. The movements of the enemies are kind of numb, but it is due to the metamorphosis and the low temperature. All in all graphics are not to let you down!

Sound

The ambient totally feats with the cold and dark atmosphere. Every sound is realistic, from the heavy breath of the hero, the wind blowing through broken parts of the ship to the ice being crushed over the character's weight. Literally the producers did a good job on putting you inside the ship. The game doesn’t have any soundtrack, thankfully, or else the game wouldn't be as spooky as it is without any.

Summarizing, the game had the potential of becoming a great hit, but somewhere between storytelling and gameplay it lost its way. It gets really monotonous over time as the repetition of the fights and more-o-less the same compounds will tire you.

My proposal is to lust turn of the lights, maximize the volume and be alone. That is how you will get the max out of the game.

So the weatherman eventually saved the day but his story let us a bit chilly.

Prons: Nice graphics, chilling atmosphere, decent gameplay

Cons: Gets somewhat monotonous, not so scary for a survival horror

Plot 7

Graphics 9

Gameplay 6

Sound 8

Constitution 8

General 6,5

Zzz...i got a little bored

The game is worth buying in my opinion. But, it would have been better if you could buy it with some of your friends to share the cost, since there is no multiplayer, because it is quite expensive for the average of what that offers.

Wii Sports Resort

2011-03-28T18:59:00.008+03:00

The Miis playing... at high precision

It may not have great variety, deep scenario or next-gen graphics as we are used by other titles, but unlike them, this is fun. His predecessor, Wii Sports promised much more than it could deliver, and unfortunately it turned out to be a meaningless game which after you've spent some time playing, it became as interesting as a goldfish in its fishbowl.
Wii Sports Resort takes the basic idea of Wii Sports. That means that it includes a range of different sports and turns them into their happy WuHu island version, more suited to the joyous world of the Miis, with an emphasis on pure fun. At the same time, goes further by making small changes to graphics, the variety of game modes, and handling. Apart from bowling and golf inherited from its predecessor, we are talking essentially about a new game much more interesting and beautiful, something that is perceived by the huge number of sales of the title (over 14 million copies worldwide) that sent it in the fourth place of Wii's best selling games, behind Wii Play, Wii Fit and Mario Kart.

What is more than Wii Sports had to offer
Apart from a major facelift in the game menu, Wii Sports Resort increases the number of the original sports titles from 5 to 12. Amongst the new sports included are: fencing (Kendo) and archery. The legendary Bowling and Golf still remain, thankfully. At a glance, the Resort appears to have avoided the mistakes of his predecessor, creating essentially a new game genre with great appeal to the public, which all other companies are now rushing to adopt.

Gameplay / Controls
The game game controls are very simple, with your movements restricted depending on the game you have selected. On Wii Sports, Nintendo tried to focus more on good and precise handling with quick and careful response from the Wiimote. So for example if you are playing Table Tennis, you have to hold the controller like the handle of an alleged racket and do simple movements in the air trying to get the ball. Simple but functional.
All sports include several game modes for every taste. Resort adopts an old time arcade logic that makes it insanely addictive, with such a simple way that surprises us. Sometimes it is a more narrow time frame, a stronger wind or just some obstacles that will give new depth to the game and will keep you in front of your screen for hours just to see your name at the top of the players list. The game never actually promised good graphics or a great scenario. Fun and its innovative gameplay are what make the game stand out in todays market.
In every sport, although its not necessary, you will be asked to complete a number of achievements. The so-called stamps that usually can be obtained out of sheer luck, or because you don't have anything else to do and you are playing Wii Sports Resort 10 hours a day. Some of them really require superhuman abilities. Anyway, getting them or not, you will surely have fun, especially if you play along with a friend. Unfortunately, apart from personal satisfaction getting all the stamps will not reward you in any way except from a notification to the message board, to let others now about your record.
Regarding the behavior of the Wiimote you will be impressed by its accurate response, this does not mean that there aren't any problems. Flying your plane over the city will give you an almost childlike joy, feeling it responding to movements with almost 1:1 precision, with the slightest movement of your hand. The same great response you get in other sports such as frisbee, swordplay and the old ones golf and bowling, which thanks to the use of the Motion plus, gets new and fresh breath with realistic movements of great precision.
On the other hand, games like cycling and basketball will often trouble you with their tricky controls and some crashes that spoil the naturalness of movement, resulting in broken nerves, in the good way (if there is any), and if you're careless and a little tall, broken fixtures. In any case, you will experience what you were used to see in the first title of the series, particularly in boxing, where no matter what moves you did, the chance that the same move would be reflected in the game was the same with just any other move.
The new peripheral does its job perfectly, offering greater flexibility for developers to create games with real motion sensing. Behind every game of Resort, Nintendo has added depth and strategy. Take fencing for example. Try random movements without thinking and you will quickly end up swimming in the water. Instead play carefully and strategically and you will quickly see that a seemingly simple fencing match between a small Mii, in a cute and colorful island named WuHu Island, has more depth than we have ever seen in Lucas Art's Star Wars .
It provides that one thing we all wanted from games when we were children. What if I could move the sword as i really want! It is obvious that here, as in all other sports have been applied the same principles that apply to they are corresponding in real life. So if you just play recklessly and hurry through each stage you just make it more likely to lose. We must wait for the right moment when the opponent's defense will be open, or find a chance to hit through a quick counter attack. Neither defense is a simple matter, as the logic of blind blocking attacks will not take you somewhere. Even a defense horizontally can be overridden by a well-calculated blow horizontally, making the game even harder.
Similar principles apply to other sports. With the game engine to demonstrate its exceptional skills in physics, providing a beautiful gameplay experience. So you will see a wave drastically affecting your landing with the board or the wind affecting the stability of your airplane.
It's nice how Nintendo got games like Frisbee and mixed them with golf adding the Frisbee golf mode stressing thus the strengths of both sports. Be sure that in every game you will find the mod you like, either because it is fun or because you've stuck with one of the stamps.
While playing Wii Sports Resort for the first time you will quickly notice that not all games are of the same level. Some are easier while others are quite difficult and require great skill. Best example once again is fencing. The more practiced of you will enjoy a Speed slice game where speed and accuracy are everything, while others will prefer to enjoy a more relaxed and easy Duel game, waving their hands back and forth trying to throw the opponent Mii into the water.

Tell me about problems.
Wii Sports Resort is certainly a great title with the right balance between gameplay and controls. It was really difficult to locate errors in programming (some little bugs and possibly some other problems that can be observed). All along, of course not able to spoil even in the least the gaming experienced, but to be fair should mentioned.
Some are more obvious than others. Like the handling of the bike, which is very bad, and as a result you can not concentrate on the game (or anything else). It doesn't actually add anything to the game but only continues the bad tradition of boxing from the previous title. Your goal is to end as quickly as possible by riding on stages across the island. Which you will "try" to do moving the wiimote and nunchuk to assimilate the pedal of a bicycle and turning your whole body in the desired direction. The whole system works very badly and does not leave any good impressions.
Weaknesses in the controls are to be seen in Swordplay as well, especially in its most challenging mod, Showdown. Very often (at least more than it should) you will be forced to recalibrate wiimote because even with the smallest interference from the environment it confuses your position. Continuing we should mention one small problem with the camera in Dogfight, which, although behaves perfectly during the game, when you want to do complex maneuvers involving bypassing objects close to you there is a good chance the camera to stick behind it. Of course it is not something that happens frequently and will not be a problem.
Something else perhaps more frustrating from anything mentioned above is the lack of depth in the Three on Three game of basketball. In contrast to what we are used by other sports this is the most predictable, without any nice gameplay elements to intrigue us. Unfortunately, basketball is one of the weaknesses of Wii Sports Resort and particularly this mod from which is missing the freshness and innovation in gameplay features that other games of the title have.

Sooo it is a party game or a single player mini game collection with a few doses of multiplayer.
The truth is that nobody can exactly classify a category for this game, it is somewhere between ... and this is the magic of the title. It's something new and fresh with nothing to do with its modest predecessor. As we said the aim of the game and the idea on which it is designed is to provide clean fun and entertainment, and it has done it quite well.
The Resort is not trying to pretend something it is not. It knows its place and has made a good attempt to justify its reason for being on the shelves, but also in our collection. The game includes multiplayer in its most basic form. With split screen, and support up to four people. It does not sound impressive compared to those offered by other titles, but it's really fun and enhances the lifetime of the game. Things we had forgotten, like the gentle art of laughing in the face of your opponent, or to see him sweat to erase your name on the top of the list returned more fun than ever. Unfortunately, the addition of an online score board similar to that of Call of Duty 5 was not added although it would be welcomed.

Graphics.
In the visual field we will not see any big changes as the title remains in the same context with Wii Sports without major differences in either the graphics nor the whole presentation. This does not mean that the Resort is as poor as its predecessor. On the contrary, there are several nice effects such as trees waving in the wind, birds flying all over the island and even whales making their appearance near the coast. You will also see a lot of vehicles, ships and airplanes following their default tracks. These and many other give life to the small world of Resort.
You'll especially like the feeling you get when you manage to avoid crushing after a difficult maneuver with your plane near the ground. You will see the sand or the waves breaking on your way very beautifuly. The textures have improved a little compared to the previous title and are more detailed, also objects and characters consist of more polygons giving a slightly new look to the game.
«WuHu island» apparently is a name we will hear frequently in the future.
The Wii Sports Resort was blooming as an idea in the mind of Nintendo for a long time. Even before the advent of motion plus. Some of you may even remember it from E3 2008, when it was introduced by Nintendo. The resort on which Resort is build is comes from the well known Wii Fit, and reappears again in the updated edition, (Wii Fit plus) while retaining all the changes made to the Resort. It will also be included in the Mario Kart by the name 3DSme Pilotwings Resort.

Epilogue
The Resort is addressed more or less in the same audience that played the first title, but is trying to go further by making more serious steps as to be able to stand in the competitive market today. The numbers show that it did, so the title continuum of the series which raised incredibly the sales of Nintendo, made the company proud. This does not mean that the company should rest on this success. The reaction of other companies are quick, and something tells me that in the near future we will witness a battle between the giants of gaming, about motion controlled games. From which we, as consumers, can only win.

Prons
-Perfect controls
-Many mods & Sports
-Incredibly fun with friends

Cons
-Lack of an online section
-Some games do not seem to blend well with the whole idea
-Minor problems with the sensor bar

Front Mission Evolved

2011-03-23T09:34:00.002+02:00

Robot battles...who doesn't love them...but don't let us "so" down!

Developer: Double Helix Games

Publisher: Square Enix Co, Ltd

Platform: Microsoft Windows, X-Box360, PS3

Release dates: October 8, 2010

Players: 1, online multiplayer

System Requirements: OS:Windows XP/Vista/7, Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz or AMD Athlon 64 x2 2.4 GHz, 2GB RAM (XP), 3GB RAM (Vista/7), 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800 series graphics card or better, DirectX: 9.0c, 11 GB Free Space, DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card

This is year 2171. The world has been divided in 4 major corporations, who fight for total domination. With technology allowing the usage of more sophisticated surveillance methods and satellites, those corporations have build space elevators, large structures which connect Earth and space stations. Cold War has broken between those corporations, monitoring and waiting for an excuse to start a war.

The story begins with a USN engineer Dylan Ramsey. He is testing a new type of robot combat suit (aka “Wanzer”). In the middle of the test the USN space elevator is being attacked by an unknown force. The defenders were taken by surprise; nearly none had enough time to mount a Wanzer and defend the base. Dylan worried about his father, rushes with the prototype to rescue his father who is in a building near the elevator. On his way he aids a few USN soldiers and faces the Apollo chariots leader (a mercenary group). Generally, Dylan tries to find his dad, find out what is going on; save the world and get the girl (typical Japanese plot, there will be some crying too).

Gameplay

Wanzer customization is the heart and fun, if you like, of the game. There are many types of Wanzer parts to choose from and weapons. Each type has its own unique parts, for example: Zaphyr A torso, Zaphyr A Legs, Zaphyr A, Right/Left arm. Each torso produces a certain amount of power, which is necessary for mounting heavy armored parts and more powerful weapons. It also effect the turning speed of the torso. Some types for example have a very slow turning rate making it hard for them to track and shoot down a very fast opponent. When the torso’s armor is worn out the Wanzer gets destroyed. Legs affect the speed of the Wanzer. Being fast enough to get to cover until the torsos nanites repair it, or get to a lying health pack, is vital for your survival. Bear in mind that slower parts are the most armored. Arms affect targeting at excessive firing. A destroyed arm offers poor targeting even in controlled bursts.

There are many weapons types to choose from: both arm and shoulder weapons.

Arm weapons are: Light/Medium Submachine Guns, Assault Rifles, Burst Rifles, Shotguns, Melee, Shield, Bazookas and Sniper rifles, the last two types can’t be dual wielded.

Shoulder weapons are: Miniguns, Rockets, tracking Missiles and Grenade launchers.

There are also backpack parts which give the Wanzer some extra abilities or ammo.

For example the Agility back pack allows the Wanzer to fly and skate its way out of danger.

Finally each weapon can use some special abilities, which will shorten the fights and help win any boss fight much quicker.

You can also change the Wanzer’s look; simply you change the color of every part as you like, use badges and camouflage tattoos, which unfortunately are 4-5 to choose from.

That was the good part. Dylan Ramsey is an engineer in a prototype combat suit and totally pawns enemy trained personnel and experienced soldiers. Skipping this, all your allies actually do ZERO damage to the enemies, they get no aggression and they do not provide any sort of assistance even when you are about to explode. This can be explained by the fact that each enemy destroyed offers you a sum of money, money that are to be used in the customization panel (a Fixed amount of money earned at the end of the mission would have allowed a much better AI, hopefully). If the A.I of your allies was better the whole gaming experience would have been a lot better.

This will get you frustrated at the beginning but after you get the hang of it you won’t really have any problem. Enemy A.I however is a lot better, when you missile lock them, the fast medium assault Wanzers will most probably dodge them by covering behind a structure, other heavier Wanzers will either stand still and take the hit or walk towards them. Generally, however, such poor AI could have been avoided.

Furthermore, the game can be finished, even in the hard difficulty, within only 4-6 hours (neglecting the customization panel).

Multiplayer

The multiplayer, on the contrary, can offer an extreme gaming experience. Tactical gameplay among the players can result to great battles and lots of fun. Weapons and parts are unlocked as you progress in levels. Unfortunately, there aren’t many players online and to join a game it will take plenty of waiting, for a game with less than 8 players.

Graphics

The graphics are very nice, although it should have supported DirectX 11. The sceneries are not of the highest quality, poor would have been most appropriate. Emphasis has been given on the Wanzer designs and animation, and easily we can say that in this part the developers have been successful. The rest of the world is rather disappointing.

Sound

There aren’t many to be said about the sound. The sound effects are truly magnificent and that is all to say (the sound the Wanzer makes when it walks is very nice). Music is supposed to be accompanying you in the battles to save the world, but it should be better to turn it off due to the fact that the soundtracks are horrible. The voiceovers are those too of poor quality, say, if the dialogues are poor so should the voice be.

Summarizing

This title would have been a great hit if it had a decent plot (how can the Wanzer be synchronized with the human nerve system, when the user sits in a chair uses sticks to move around has no cables wired at his body and another one person can control his mind!!!???), better A.I, better sceneries and a decent soundtrack background.

For its price I think it shouldn’t be part of any collection.

Prons: Robot customization, boss battles
Cons: Poor A.I, not long enough, naive plot, no custom battles

Plot 3

Gameplay 6

Graphics 6

Sound 2

Constitution 7

General 5

The older the better?

2011-03-23T09:21:00.003+02:00

An article on our point of view to the current gaming industry.

That is the question I am asking myself the last 2 years. Lots and lots of video games are being published to cover the needs of the gaming community, but are they worthy of our attention or even good enough to justify their position on the market shelves? Well, I would say not. All this mass production has depleted the heart of gaming itself, transforming games from a form of art to mindless titles with only one purpose, money. This mass production serves only one purpose: the temporary satisfaction of all gamers, and it mostly targets the younger ages that are easily dazzled by their. This satisfaction is soon lost and a need for a new video game arises. And who is the one to fulfill this “lust”? Who else but the game studios of big companies. That’s why we see more and more new games every year, well not literally “new” games, just a replica of what was played before with only a few minor changes. Take as an example the Call of Duty series. In only a few years, this series has introduced many titles which are almost identical. Great optical effects and some in-game cut-scenes manage to impress the gamer and “hide” the fact that the titles haven’t anything to offer anymore.

The gaming industry once was trying not only to impress the gamer, but to offer him a few hours of relaxation, lots of fun and excitement. Graphics back then were not as they are today, but this didn’t matter. The plot was so great that for as long as you were playing, you thought you were actually a part of the game’s world, away from the routine of your live. Today, none actually manages to pass this filling to me, with only a few exceptions.

Continuing with my thoughts, I get angry with the fact that new games are actually copies of older games and they are being introduced as something special. For example, there are some features in a game which by the average gaming community (which is the higher percentage) is considered as a new feature, but in fact it is copied from a much older game. Take for example Bioshock. In Bioshock you could hold a weapon with the one hand and do some “magic” with the other hand. This feature was introduced firstly in Undying (2001), but I am sure that nearly none of those who played Bioshock knew that, and now the same thing is passed onto Skyrim, elder Scroll’s new sequel, and people are saying this is great, well yeah we know we have seen it a decade before. .

Furthermore, I have stated at the beginning that the heart of the games is now almost gone, and by that I mean that one thing transformed the games from a useless activity to a serious hobby. The gaming industry has sacrificed this feature for graphics and let’s face it, for money. They are giving the crowd what they want, and as a reward they are getting lots and lots of money. This makes me wonder if it is entirely their fault or is it more ours, or even if it is a greater problem concerning our whole society and the path we have chosen. Money is to be made and quick. Time is something vital for a game to “mature”, as water is vital to plants, so is time to games. Time, to think of a plot, a way this will progress, a climax and an ending. Most times the ending is carved in our mind and hearts and makes us remember it for an eternity. Instead we just get simply minded plots, which are highly predictable and have no actual meaning. Take for example the Halo series. Halo Combat Evolved was not something new ( Humans vs Aliens), but the plot had such features, its climax and ending were so epic, if you may, that Halo CE was carved in our hearts. However, Bungie studios and Microsoft saw that this was a hit and rushed to continue it. The result was a disaster. The successors of Halo CE, in my opinion at least, are games worthy only for the garbage can. And to take this to a general issue recent popular games have a more-or-less identical plot: USA is the good guy and wants to save the world from the evil Russians or Middle Easter. Games now are also used for propaganda which unfortunately young gamers are unable to see so they digest the ideas of others without even realizing it, and we actually pay them for this.

Another thing I don’t like is the unrealism I see in games. I don’t really mean things should be as they are in real life, but I can possible see a farmer fighting his way through enemy lines and monsters, or one person slaying armadas of enemies, or half naked chicks with big boobs and no muscles at all carrying swords 4 times their weight, swinging them with ease and slaying armadas of enemy monsters and humanoids. Finally, now games are ridiculously expensive for what they actually offer. I can’t possibly bear with the fact that Call of Duty 6 is more expensive to Orange Box, for example. Games which offer no fun at all are considered as top games, when their actual worth is no less than 5$.

I don’t want to be treated by the game companies as a sheep. I don’t want them to serve me games that are worth only for the trash. Yes, I don’t buy them, but others do. Summarizing I want to emphasize once more that the continuous straggle for better graphics has caused more harm than any good. In the future I do hope that examples like Microsoft X-box 360 will cease to exist, cause I think it is ridiculous to pay 40-60 $ for a game and then paying even more for playing online via X-box live. Coming to think of it I also consider us, the gamers, as blamable, cause we accepted such treatment. Now quality games are scarce as biological tomatoes, and those few are “slaughtered” by strict deadlines forcing the producers in creating half-made games full of bugs. What’s so ever, the publishing companies force for more titles, which are also poorly made, to fill in the blanks and keep feeding the mass with junk, with a purpose, what else, money. Maybe it is time that we should show them that we won’t appreciate such actions any more, and if they want our money they should earn them by giving us something much better

Axis & Allies 2004

2010-11-28T16:12:00.006+02:00

Another WW II game, this time in RTS.

Developer: TimeGate Studios

Publisher: Atari

Platform: Microsoft Windows

Release date: 2 November 2004

Genre: RTS

Mode: Singleplayer and Multiplayer up to 8 players

System requirements: Windows 98/SE/Me/2000/XP operating system, Pentium III 1.5 GHz processor, 256 MB RAM, 1.4 GB free hard disk space, 64 MB video card, DirectX version 9.0c or higher

There is a huge variety in WW2 games. From the Call of Duty 1, 2, 3 to Medal of Honor and Blitzkrieg, yet here is another one in the Real Time Strategy gender. At first sight it may look like a typical RTS just like all others. However it has some unique aspects which make it worth you while. Needless to say the game takes part in WW II amongst the Allied and the Axis Forces. Under your disposal there will be troops, tanks, halftracks, airplanes and naval forces that you must lead to victory. It is time to remake or repeat history.

Gameplay

The most important of all is gameplay. Whether the graphics are bad or not gameplay comes to save the day. This title offers something knew to keep you interested. There are three different single player modes:

The Campaign Mode, in which you have the opportunity to do the Allies Campaign or the Axis Campaign. Its task is mainly to familiarize you with each nation’s fighting techniques and strategies. Here you begin like any RTS game: a small intro with in game graphics describing the mission objectives and within a few seconds you join the fight. All you have to do it build some buildings and train troops and win the battle. Simply as that.

The Custom Scenario, in which, as you may have guessed already, you choose everything. Choose the map, the enemies, form teams, define the map or load scenarios.

World War II Mode. It is quite simple here: Pick a nation amongst US, Britain, USSR, Germany and Japan choose a general and fight for global domination. Each General grants 4 special abilities. Therese abilities are able to turn the tide of the battle and give you important information for the enemy. To use them, the cool-down timer must end and the required experience must be accumulated. When you start you can purchase troops or research a technology. Troops (as well as mechanized and tank divisions) appear in the capital of your faction. You can move them to nearby areas and conquer them. If an enemy is at the area you invade or you are under attack, an option will appear on whether you want to fight in and RTS style or Auto Resolve the Battle (the victory percentage increases if you have researched more technologies in the WW II global map). It is also very important to know that owning a tank division (when invading or defending) the mechanized divisions and infantry divisions are available. When you own a mechanized division, tanks are unavailable. Furthermore purchasing the airlift division will allow your armies to deploy troops behind enemy lines (a good way to avoid fighting bunkers and artillery). Battleships make their presence here (as well as in some campaigns). When invading an area via sea, you will begin the battle with a battleship or/and with a Carrier. Battleships are extremely strong since they can bombard the enemies and enemy fortified positions from afar and cause tremendous amounts of damage. By it self it can protect your base from many opponents. The carrier is useful for recon and for bombarding the enemies.

Well, that’s quite enough, but let see more about it in-game. It is a fact here that you don’t have any citizens/workers for building and gathering recourses. Resources here are money. Money is accumulated by some buildings and by capturing cities. When you begin the battle if it is a custom or a campaign battle (most of them) you have a Corps HQ building and some defenses. With this you build everything. Clicking the Infantry division icon the Corps HQ is recruiting it and soon you will se a track. Pick the truck and click where you want it to be built, as any other RTS. Same goes for all other buildings.

In some WW II battles when invading you have to deploy a Corps HQ in order to gain an income, until you do so there is a money decrease, which if it gets to Zero your forces defeated.

After making the needed buildings, troops are being available. Each troop has weaknesses and advantages against other troops. For example, the Anti-tank (bazooka) squadron will have a serious problem against a squadron with machineguns and rifles. Also, location takes an important role. In forests and jungles troops have an upper hand against all vehicles.

There are three formations to use, according to the situation: Assault (attack bonus), Aggressive (speed reduction) and Column (Speed bonus, defense reduction).

In some buildings you can research some technologies improving the combat abilities of your units.

After some time you may find that an airfield is available. However due to its cost it is available quite late in the game. Fighters and bombers are ready to scout or bombard enemy positions. Fighters are nearly useless, and mostly needed for scouting or for being decoys to A-A Guns so that the bombers will reach their target. Bombers are slow moving but devastating when used against troops. Its bombs are enough to wipe out entire armadas and cause panic to the enemy.

Quite soon you can unlock the engineer squadron. This squadron can build bunkers, A-A guns and Artillery bunkers (which are good for holding the enemy or for protecting important locations), while they can repair any damaged building, either yours or an ally’s. However, this sq is ineffective against any enemy.

Finally, when a squadron defeats many enemies and survives plenty of battles it gains experience. This experience grants better fighting ability and chances to win a harder opponent. But since these troops are experienced they will not flee from battle, so keeping an eye on them will be quite important. Look out for bombers since experienced troops are usually one of their favorite targets. Do not forget, though, that routing troops must be returned to the base for resupplying in troops and ammo.

You can check a gameplay trailer here.

Graphics/Sound

Graphics are quite good with explosions and jungles and animation. Trees fall because of the tanks coming through, vehicles explode very realistically and troops fly because of a huge explosion. But we can’t say the same for the sound. It is quite good but not being able to hear loudly the battleship firing its shells is not something nice. Each nation has its own units, while every nation’s unit speaks the according language when pointed or issued an order. Battleships are of unrealistic size and their movement will literally annoy you.

Multiplayer

Players online either play in custom team battles or on official/player-created maps. A maximum of 12 players is allowed to join a single game, but only a maximum of 8 players is allowed to actually play. A fast computer with a fast Internet connection is greatly recommended for a smooth gameplay experience online. Additionally, players online can observe games, save multiplayer films, host rooms and games, and make friends and add them to their buddy lists.

There is a simple ranking system for Axis & Allies multiplayer gameplay, based on the number of games played:

0 games - No rank

1-49 games - Rank of Lieutenant

50-249 games - Rank of Captain

250-499 games - Rank of Major

500-999 games - Rank of Colonel

1000+ games - Rank of General

Player statistics are recorded and shown in their profiles.

Summarizing, this game is worth your time, good gameplay and graphics will make so much fun in Multiplayer Mode.

Map editor

The Axis & Allies map editor lets players create their own maps to play in both singleplayer and multiplayer mode. Players are able to create their own military maps, including choice of scenery, choice of gameplay, cutscenes, storylines, and military objectives.

Well i think it is a game worthy having...however this is 2010 and such a game may look bad. Yet, you just can't judge a book by its cover. I would give a positive answer for anyone wondering about bying it.

Prons: Nice to play, with intense battles, good graphics, Map Editor

Cons: Horrible Fighter planes, battleship movement and some artillery sounds should have been louder (we barely hear them). No battleships in custom battles.

Gameplay: 8

Graphics: 7

Sound: 6

Constitution: 7

General: 7

Navyfield

2010-11-16T11:27:00.002+02:00

Load the cannons, fire the torpedoes, launch the airplanes…We have a war to win captain!

Gendre: MMO
Publisher: Game&Game
Development: SDEnternet,Efusion
Release: February 8, 2006
Players: 2-128 in one game room
Site(s): www.navyfield.com / www.navyfield.eu

The game is downloaded from the site

Many of us like playing MMOs, however not many of us have the ability to invest money on them. So I here now present you a MMO that it is absolutely free and worth playing

To begin with Navyfield takes place in the years of WW II and is about the naval warfare of that time. You will be the captain of a ship doing all the necessary actions to survive the carnage of naval warfare.

After creating a new account and you download of course the client, all you have to do is log in an enter the game. You begin the game as a Neutral faction. This faction is introductory mainly, to get you familiarized with the concept.

There are five factions to choose from at the level 12.

Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN)

Kriegsmarine (KM)

Royal Navy (RN)

United States Navy (USN)

Marine Nationale (MN)

Each nation has its bonuses and its weaknesses to give balance amongst them.

Also each nation has its own unique ships. What I mean is that if you choose the IJN fleet you will find yourself driving the Yamato or Akagi and all other ships.There are more nations planned to be added.

Ship Types

There are seven ship types to fight with.

FF is the codename for the Frigate class ships: Small and agile it is ideal for decoys and submarine hunting.
DD is the codename for the Destroyer class ships: Small yet bigger than the FF, ideal for submarine hunting and fight some Light cruisers.
CL is the codename for Light Cruiser class ships: Average size good against DDs and FFs, not a real threat though against all other type of ships.
CA is the codename for Heavy Cruisers class ships: Here the size gets bigger, good against previous types, yet it may be of disadvantage at close range. They can even pack a punch in some Battleships.
BB is the codename for Battleships: Those ships are sheer brute force, they can easily destroy any ship with one salvo. Firing from distance will leave little chance for any other ship to get in range.
CV is the codename for Aircraft Carriers: The rulers of the oceans. Can launch planes to attack battleships from above and yet be out of their range.
SS is the codename for the Submarines: These ships fire off torpedoes that cause huge amounts of damage, capable even to destroy a battleship. Being unable to get hit when submerged, they pose a real threat to any enemy. Their only weakness is FFs and DDs and the short periods of time being submerged.

Sailors

Sailors are the ones that keep the ship firing and running. There different types of sailors.

They are devided in classes:

Bridge Operator (BO): each ship can have only one BO. This unit is your captain that gives the order onboard.

Below you will see the Armament sailor divisions:

Gunners: The operators of your main cannons. Their job is to fire at the enemy. According to their level, the higher it is the better the aiming will be.

AA Gunners: Are gunners used to provide AntiAircraft cover to all ships. The better their level the better they reload.

Torpedo Gunners: These gunners fire torpedoes. A single torpedo is capable of destroying or crippling FFs, DDs and CLs. Many torpedoes can even sink a battleship. They are the main gunners for firing torpedoes in the Submarines. All submarines use far better torpedoes than that of the other ships.

Support sailor divisions.

Engineer: He is in charge of the engine room. He allows the ship to overheat for some time (speed boost).

Repairer: This sailor starts to repair the ship after it gets damage.

Restorer: This sailor increases the amount of damage that can be repaired.

Planesman: Important to SS ships to provide Oxygen.

Sonarman: Important in submarines to detect other SS and to increase their line of sight when submerged. Can be used in CLs and some CVs.

Special Forces divisions. Those are your pilots.

Fighter pilot: Pilots that shoot at enemy planes. They are used to shoot down scouts, bombers, torpedo bombers, fighter planes and for reconnaissance.

Dive Bomber Pilot: They throw bombs at enemy ships. They are a little slow but can easily sink any ship with ease.

Torpedo Bomber pilot: Torpedo bombers are good against small ships and submarines. But they are hard to master.

Paratroopers: These sailors are to be used only in Harbor Assaults. They dive from airplanes and fight to capture the enemy Harbor.

Landing forces: These sailors are to be used in Harbor Assaults. By boats they land and fight to capture the enemy harbor.

You can also recruit Seamen. Their job is nothing in particular except from the fact that they assist other sailors.

There is also a sailor called Radioman. As he advances in level you will be able to create a fleet of your own and fight with others for power and fun.

Lastly, there is a Medic sailor who prevents, or al least tries to, your sailors from dying.

Gameplay

Navyfield’s gameplay offers a decent variety. You will be able to attack with cannons torpedoes and bombers (either dive bombers or torpedo bombers). Fighter planes are used for reconnaissance and (or) to counter enemy aircraft squadrons.

Each sailor increases level, something like an RPG style. Also each sailor has specific attributes. You can classify each sailor according to his attributes. For example if the sailor has a +12 attribute to Engine, then he is going to become a Support sailor and then an Engineer. To continue, the higher the level the better the sailor is. The faster he will repair, the more accurately he will fire ect. Also the BO’s level determines which ship you will be able to use. The higher the lever, the better ship you will unlock. However, a BO can use his previous ships and the one that of the path (CV, BB, SS path) you chose.

Furthermore, you can recruit sailors and start a new crew at a different nation or a different ship line. This allows the game to keep the interesting running. In each harbor you will be able to have 6 different ships.

After each battle you will get a screen that informs you on how much credits and points you earned and the experience your sailor got.

Points are used for recruiting sailors and renaming ships and sailors while credits are used for buying ships, ammo, planes, weapons and for buying sailors from other players.

Navyfield offers several types of games

Blitzkrieg: Ships that allowed here are of level below 60 to prevent overpowering battleships to wipe out all the small ones.

Great Battle: All join no restrictions, with max 20 BBs and 8 CVs the fight for supremacy begins.

Great Battle 2: Same as GB but with the difference that each team has a flagship. This ship is of great importance. The first team to lose its flagship has 5 minutes to sink the enemy flagship or else the will get no bonus experience points.

Night Battle: This map is a little darker than the other rooms. Same as GB.

Select Mode: Here you have the opportunity to select battles among FFs&DDs (no level limits just as long as you join with a DD or a FF),CA&CA, CAs&BBs, and CV. The restriction is the ship type you join not the level.

Normal Room: No restrictions, no limits…Ideal for total carnage.

Harbor Assault: This mode is available to fleets only. Getting a harbor will allow the occupying fleet free ship repairs and access to better unique ships, such as the Tirpitz.

Graphics

We have to admit that graphics are not good. We are in 2010, a year in which lots of games come out with extremely nice graphics and at least lots of us would expect that MMOs should keep up with the current updates. You will see lots and lots of pixels, but you can neglect this fact since the game is so addicting.

However there is under development Navyfield 2 with better graphics and physics (weather conditions), but not much are published yet.

Generally, this is a nice game to spend your time on. To keep the interesting going, there are several items and ships you can purchase (with real money this time) for example some ships or sailors or even pay for a subscription (i have to remind you that this is not necessary) and get experience bonuses.

Pros: Deep and addicting, many things to keep the interest going

Cons: Bad graphics, at higher levels it will be hard to play without a subscription

Overall Grade: 7/10