Company of Heroes: Gold Edition Review

Company of Heroes: Gold Edition features the original Company of Heroes and the expansion: Opposing Fronts. Company of Heroes is a World War 2 strategy game developed by Relic Entertainment, who are currently working on the upcoming Dawn of War 2 game. Company of Heroes is not your traditional strategy game due to it having a major emphasis on strategy. In other RTS (Real Time Strategy) games, if your force is larger then another force you will generally win. And in a tank battle, in other strategy games, whoever shoots first would win. However that mentality merely cannot be adopted when playing Company of Heroes.

The Gold Edition features 4 teams to play as (2 from the original and 2 from the expansion). You can take the role of a general for the Americans, British, Panzer Elite and the Wehrmacht. There are 3 campaigns (2 of which come with the expansion). In the first you play as the American forces in the invasion of Normandy. There are around 20 scenarios for you to play in just this one campaign. The second is from the Panzer Elite perspective of Highway 69 or better known as Hell's Highway, and lastly you play a campaign as the British forces in the liberation of Caen. The last two are somewhat shorter then the first but just as fun. All of the campaigns are of course based on true events and a large number of the characters involved are in fact real people who lived and died in these events in our worlds history. This really adds a sense of realism to the game and gives you an emotional connection to the characters represented in the game, which is something rarely seen in an RTS.

In Company of Heroes there is not a major emphasis on base building. Each of the teams only really has 4-6 main buildings with a number of support buildings which are either for defence or offense. This means that there is less time spent building your base and more time spent on moving your forces about the battlefield and aiming to the win the match decisively, meaning it is difficult to turtle in this (just stay on the defence and do nothing else). Of course with any RTS game there are resources that must be collected in order to build and upgrade your units. There are three types of resources: manpower, munitions and fuel. To collect these however you must take and hold points which have a designated resources applied to them with a certain level of output per minute. Each point can be captured by infantry and takes a certain amount of time to gain control of. With certain forces you can build a structure or place a unit in the vicinity of the resource to increase its output but your main method of getting more of any of the resources is to vie for control of the different points dotted around the map. This is a great system and one that has been done very well in other RTS games as well, but it works perfectly for this style of game.

One of the big aspects of this game is the multiplayer. You can play as any of the 4 forces, however the Americans cannot fight the British and the Panzer Elite cannot fight the Wehrmacht. You play on either the Allies or the Axis side meaning if there are 4 people in a match it will always be 2v2, there is no free for all. However this was a very wise decision on the developers part due to the games resource system, as mentioned above, in that on either team if your team mate captures a point you will get the benefit of the resource node as well. You can do a match whereby the objective is to just destroy and defeat your enemies (called Annihilation) but the best mode is called Victory Point Control. This is where there are 3-6 "victory points" on the map which are captured in the same way as a normal resource point. Whichever team (Axis or Allies) has the greater number of victory points under their control will have the advantage and the other teams "points" will start to decrease. Before a match you can set the point limit to 250, 500 or 1000 and this is what both teams start with, and once the other teams points reach zero you win. It makes for a very active game with specific points of action, it also focuses on defensive gameplay but with enough emphasis on offense to play very well. The online system for the game is also very robust with an in-built friends list and chat available for use. Also you can select a large button at the top of the screen once you log in which says 'Play' and you will usually get into a game in at most 3 minutes. Despite the game being about a year old now there is still a large community of gamers playing Company of Heroes.

Now when I said earlier that there is a heavy emphasis on strategy i meant it. The game has a intuitive cover system whereby units can take cover behind walls, hedges and just about anything else. This will reduce the amount of damage that they take from fire coming from that direction. However it will not help reduce damage from behind or the side, making flanking a much more important strategy to adopt. This means that whatever strategy you adopt there is generally a method to counteract it. If you garrison a building they can just roll up a fire tank and scorch the building killing your units inside very quickly. Tanks are also not a godly weapon against infantry and the second one of your soldier squads run into one it doesn't mean instant death. A tank of course does do a lot more damage to a group of soldier then another squad however if you have armed your troops with a bazooka (either with a purchasable upgrade or by picking it up off other fallen infantry) or sticky grenades then they do stand somewhat of a chance. Also flanking is important when fighting tanks, if you attack the tank from the rear then you will deal a lot more damage then if you took it head on.

The game has a great variety of units to play with and amongst the 4 teams there is no standard unit meaning that you have to learn and develop a unique strategy for each team you play as. There are standard squads of units which generally have 4-6 soldiers in them. There is a number of different tank types all suited to a different task. There is also a large number of stationary emplacements ranging from MG42 nests to, my personal favourite, the British Howitzer Artillery.

The game also has an in depth leveling up system which is independent to each match. For each team there are three different choices of speciality, there is generally a defensive one and an offensive one and then one which is very specific to the team. Such as the British have an artillery speciality. You earn XP for just about anything: building a structure, building a unit, killing a unit, losing a unit, etc. Through these with each level you get, you earn a point which can be spent on one of two trees within the speciality. There are only 3 skills within each tree, meaning that by the end of the match you will usually have all 6 skills. These give you access to abilities with certain units, the ability to call in air strikes and artillery or some certain units.

The graphics for the game are very good in my opinion for a strategy game and the look and feel of it suits the setting. Although the cinematics look shockingly awful they are not very long and are merely there to emphasis the story. The animation for the soldiers is also very good and the tanks move very realistically and have to turn instead of just popping into a new direction like over RTS games. Relic also has to be commended for great voice acting and general sound, despite the cut scenes looking terrible they sound great and the the gun fire and explosions also sound very close to real.

The only criticism i can possibly have for this game is that the majority of the maps look very similar. There is not massive variety when it comes to choosing a map. Generally it will be a small village surrounded by grass field, or a wrecked city. So you won't be seeing desert maps or maps filled with snow when in multiplayer. But this is a very minor complaint and one that really shouldn't discourage you from picking this game up.

So i cannot recommend Company of Heroes enough to RTS fans or gamers who are looking to get into the genre. There is so much depth involved with this game that is presents a new and very interesting approach to strategy games. It has recently been rumored that another expansion is on the way for Company of Heroes so there may be even more content on the way for this awesome game. It is available on Steam fairly cheaply and if you are looking for a game to fill some time you really can't go wrong with Company of Heroes.

Score:

9.5 / 10

More TF2 Fun!!!!!

The heavy patch for TF2 (team fortress 2) is offical you can check out patch notes as they are released at http://steamgames.com/tf2/heavy/

American McGee's Grimm: Little Red Riding Hood :review

Little Red Riding hood is the second installment of American McGee's Grimm Series it follow the same structure as it predecessor so take a look at first episode review to get an idea how the game works. Even though i was hoping they would maybe mix thing up a bit they sadly haven't, its the same game with a different fairy tale, which is little red riding hood this time round, just in case you didn't guess from the name.

Before you say "well duh its an episodic game", I would like to jump in and say that I understand what an episodic game is and that it should be the same game with regular new smaller cheaper releases. So far they have been releasing the games frequently and it looks like they will continue to do so, they are doing better job at episodic gaming then say Valve as they take several years with each of the expansions for half-life 2. The game is also on the mark with being cheap as you cant get cheaper then free and with all other games you get with gold membership its a good deal. But unlike Sam And Max and half-life 2 the big difference is that Sam And Max and Half-life 2 are good games, so we want more. While at the moment this game suffers from not being good enough to warrent sequals.

Yes Grimm is peeing on a bird sliced up by its cage

Now onto the game its jokes are still dark (well sort of, it's more childish then dark an example is when you convert a deer it poofs into a deer split in two on the floor and spasming) but i still feel they could have taken it further (although the teenage boy market i think they aiming for limits how far they can take it) and make it funnier as i didn't laugh once during this game. This one took me a bit longer to complete because it has a few more jumps you can mess up but have dumbed down finding the secrets for i found a lot more of them then in first game even though I didn't go looking for them. It is a blessing that this game is short for it got boring really quickly.

I would like to correct something from my earlier review of the first episode, which is actually free while the subsequent episodes will be free on the day of release then on the following day it will becoming a premiere game on gametap (meaning you need gold account to play it). So if your interested (don't know why you would be) just play the first episode (A Boy learns what fear is) to see if it worth paying the subscription to catch the missed episode and you will be able to play third installment on 14th of August which is called: The FisherMan and his Wife.

Graphics: 6/10 - same as before

Gameplay: 3/10 - no changes

Entertainment : 4/10 - better story but still missing the mark

Total score: 4/10 - same as first episode, there is still hope

Geometry Wars Evolved 2 Review

Geometry Wars Evolved 2 was released on Xbox Live Arcade on the 30th of July for 800 Microsoft Points. It is the sequel to the previously released Geometry War game on XBLA also made by Bizarre Creations. Geometry Wars is basically just a dual stick shooter, however this version is surprisingly fun due to the number of interesting and fun modes that come with the game.

There are six modes: Deadline, King, Evolved, Pacifism, Waves and Sequence. Deadline is your classic timed mode where you have to kill as many enemies as you can in 3 minutes with infinite lives. King is where you can only shoot when you are in a small circle which the enemies can't enter, the twist is that the circle shrinks once activated, so you have to move to another ring pretty quickly to avoid being killed. Evolved is where you start with 3 lives and 3 bombs (bombs are just an attack which kills just about everything on the screen) and you have to attempt to stay alive and get as many points as possible. Once you reach 100,000 you get another life and bomb and every 10 times this value will also give you a life and another bomb. Pacifism is where you cannot shoot at all and have enemies chasing you, to destroy them you pass through these exploding gates. Waves is a series of different formations of a particular type of enemy (orange) which moves in a straight line, back and forth and you have to attempt to shoot as many as possible. While sequence is 20 levels of different arenas with a sent formation of enemies that you have to attempt to get through, and it follows the same rules as Evolved in its life and bomb distribution.

A great feature of the game is that you don't start off with all of the modes available to play. Initially only Deadline is open to play and you have to score a certain amount to unlock the next mode (king). Then you have to play King to unlock the next and so on. It will only take you about 20-30 mins to unlock all of the modes but it makes the game a lot more fun for that duration of time and introduces the game at a nice pace.

All of the modes are a lot of fun and the majority of them are very challenging, the hardest i would say is sequence. Also the variety of enemy is very good for this game in that there isn't to many that you can't learn the behaviour of them all, but not to little that you won't ever be taken by surprise by the game. Also the graphics suit the game very well, it is very bright and colourful and sometimes shocking in the amount of flashes that are taking place on screen.

The game also has great leaderboard support and for a game that could become very competitive in scores it is done perfectly. For each mode where you select it there is a list of all your friends and their top score in that mode. This means that when you look at the game types you see who is beating you in what and they will see when you take them over as well. There is also other leaderboard in the opening menu where you can view them full screen and see where you rank with your friends or amongst all of the Geometry Wars Evolved 2 players. Of course all of this requires an Xbox Live silver or gold account to make use of.

There are also co-operative and competitive modes that you can play with up to 4 players locally. I won't talk about these much because i haven't had a chance to use it due to all of my mates being out of the country Warp not being here at the moment either. But i hear they are good. The achievements for Geometry Wars Evolved 2 are also very good and you can get 100/200 fairly easily while the rest may take some doing.

There are very few flaws with Geometry Wars Evolved 2, only that it is a fairly short. But for around £7 it really is not an issue and you will feel that you got what you pay for by the time you put down the game after the first hour of having it. So for an XBLA game it is very good and the next XBLA title I am looking forward to would have to be Castle Crashers which comes out at the end of August.

Score

8/10

Dr Horriable

For info about this look at earlier post but its back for free again with adverts breaks between the acts (to fund it of course) so i guess it wasnt selling on itunes as well as they hoped so check it out at http://www.drhorrible.com/mushortio.html

American McGee's Grimm: A Boy Learns What Fear is: Review

If you hurry you can play the first installment of American McGee's Grimm:A Boy Learns What Fear is for free today (31 July) on Gametap. If this day has passed you will need a Gametap gold account to play this game as it is currently a Gametap exclusive.

The game takes about 30 mins to play through (watching all cut scenes) and it took me 23.46 minutes (gameplay) to complete, the game is designed to be like a TV show. With episodes coming out pretty frequently and they will be free on the day of release. After that day you will require a gold account to play the game. The idea being that you will get into the game and hopefully miss so you will have to get a subscription (or want to play through again which is unlikely).

Now onto the actual game, firstly you will watch the fairy tale which in this case is about a boy leaving home in search of find out about fear and he ends up riding into a castle of ghosts and getting a girl. Grimm who doesn't like happy stories then has to go in and darken it up a bit so you then play through the story by controlling Grimm with 'wasd+spacebar' key or mouse and darken the place up a bit by wait for it, walking around as he has a dark aura which changes the landscape around you from happy to dark.

So goal is to fill a bar which is located at the top of screen to correct level of darkness and butt stomp things to progress. It also has a few jumps to get through the game. Its a not a particularly deep game and its lucky that the game is so short for it would get boring pretty quickly. Its also not a very difficult game for there are very few obstacles which can kill you and even then they only set you back to where you missed the jump and there are cleaners who are supposed to prevent you darkening the place but they really don't pose a threat. There is also no puzzles without a guiding arrow, always there to tell you what to do.

Your properly thinking then what the point of this game? Well i would say its a game of cheap laughs for example you darken a swing set in children playground and it then has children hanging from it, these provide a quick laugh but nothing more. Also when you leave your character standing still he will pee which can be used to aim jumps this is about as deep as the game gets. Once you complete the game you get to watch a darken version of fairy tale which was mildly entertaining but i think they could have taken the dark theme of this game a lot further.

I would say its hard to give the game a fair review for as it is episodic they may add new functionality and make the game more exciting to keep you coming back for more installments but judging the first episode on its own it not that impressive and i hope they take theme further. The next installment so if you missed this one i wouldn't run out to get gold account but wait to try next one on 7th or August 08

Graphics: 6/10 - its cartoony looks don't try to be impressive (and they are not) but it looks good and goes with the theme of game quite well

Gameplay: 3/10 - needs more functionality

Entertainment : 4/10 - cheap laughs

Total score: 4/10 - for the first episode only, the series still has hope

Back-log: Kameo Elements of Power

First an introduction to the section. Back-log is just a fancy way of saying: old games that I feel like reviewing just to fill the time between big releases. Due to no games that i am really interested in coming out till mid to late August I thought I would review a few old titles that I am either playing through again or for the first time. This time it will be Kameo.

Kameo Elements of Power was an Xbox 360 launch title developed by Rare and was the first game I bought, separate from the Xbox 360 bundle that we got at launch. It is a slow paced action game with an emphasis on being fun instead of challenging. You play as Kameo who can take on the form of 10 elemental warriors who range from an ice gorilla to a dragon and are the core feature of the game. Kameo herself is a bit annoying and you never particularly like her or understand why she feels it appropriate to adventure in a mini-skirt (not that I would complain if I was adventuring with a woman in a mini-skirt).

The story is not one to be remembered or to be cared about during the game. The basis of the story is that Kameo was given the elemental warriors but her sister feels that she deserved them, so she decides to free the troll king and torture her family. How that makes sense I may never know, or care. The story is not important in Kameo Elements of Power, it is just there to move you from place to place and pit you against some fun bosses. Also there are a number of side quests within each zone and some hidden arenas that will give you rewards if you choose to complete them.

However you do not start out with access to all of the elemental warriors, in fact after the first level you will lose access to any of them and will have to reclaim them as you go through the story. This I felt adds to the game, in that you do not have all of your abilities available to you from the start and will have a slow and steady trickle of new talents to play with as you progress. And the good thing is that all of the warriors play very uniquely. However you will find yourself sticking to one or two of the warriors the majority of the time just because for most enemies there isn't a need to use any of them in particular.

The game's control scheme is quite unique and one that is very effective for the gameplay style. To change form you use the A, B, X and Y buttons depending on what warriors you have assigned to which buttons (A is always Kameo's normal form). And to attack you use the two triggers. The left and right will do two individual moves, while pressing them together will do another move or they can put you in a different mode/stance to access other moves. This allows you to access attacks quickly and use a lot of variety when using a particular warrior, but also switch between your assigned warriors quickly.

Another aspect of the elemental warriors is that you do not have access to all of their abilities or the full strength of their abilities when you get them. Throughout the game you collect 'elemental fruit' which is basically a currency to buy new abilities and upgrade existing ones. There are 100 elemental fruit in total, some you get through buying them from shops with the gold you collect while others you get by completing side quests or just finding them. Only a true completionist (with likely access to Gamefaqs) will go looking for all of them and get them all. There are also a number of other secret items spread throughout the game that are more difficult to find.

The graphics and appearance of Kameo is still one that is very nice but it doesn't contest with other more high end Xbox 360 titles such as Call of Duty 4. Still the game won't be ruined by shoddy visuals even when bought today.

However Kameo does not have a very long game life. In total the story may take you 5-6 hours and there is about 2-3 hours of side quests. There is also a score attack mode where you play through a level and attempt to get as high a score as possible. There is also co-op but it isn't anything amazing. So if you spend some time looking for some of the more hidden parts of Kameo Elements of Power you may get a total of 10-12 hours of gameplay out of this game.

So Kameo Elements of Power is a good game, just not an amazing one. It is enjoyable and you can probably find it for a much lower price then your average retail game, and you may need it to get you through the summer. The achievements for this game are also quite good, you can get around 600 points by just playing through the game which is quite nice if you are looking for some quick gamerscore. But if you are looking for a good and more recent Rare game you may be better off waiting for Banjo-Kazooie Nuts and Bolts which is to be released in November 2008.

Score

6/10

Rainbow Six Vegas 2 Review

Rainbow Six Vegas 2 is a first person shooter with a heavy emphasis on cover and covert ops. You play as Bishop and the story takes place in conjunction with the first and sums up the story.

Team Rainbow is an elite team of S.W.A.T. who are sent into high risk situations and have existed since their first game 'Rainbow Six' in 1998. As hinted by the title, this one is based in Vegas but sadly the Ubisoft Montreal people chose to put most of the locations in the most boring parts of Vegas possible. A fitness centre and a housing district are not the most compelling locations.

The Campaign of Rainbow Six Vegas 2 is not a particularly memorable one and is fairly short. You play as Bishop in a series of acts to stop acts of terrorism and unravel a web of conspiracy. It lasts about 8-10 hours and has 3 different difficulties to play on so there is some replay value there (especially if you are a achievement whore like me). There is also Terrorist Hunt and Multi player to keep you interested in this game as well. Terrorist Hunt is either a single player or co-op mode where you have to kill a certain number of terrorist on the multi player maps. Multi player also has the classic modes (e.g. Team Death match) but the one which I most enjoyed was Conquest where you have to take and hold 3 points for 30 seconds to win the match.

The game controls very well, when moving you are in first person but by pressing the left trigger (on the 360) you will take cover and switch to a third person perspective. You can sprint by holding the left bumper and through grenades with the B button. However there is no melee attack which is a disappointment, personally i would think taking a guy out with a knife is still quieter then a silenced shot.

One very nice system is the ability to fully customise your characters appearance and armor. There isn't much option with faces but you can if you have a vision camera scan in your own face which is a nice feature. You can also change your clothing which doesn't affect your ability but just makes your character look cool. While armor affect your mobility and protection, so you can either be very fast or be a tank which takes a few more shots to kill, i like being the tank.

However the best part of this game is the persistent character system. This is similar to the Call of Duty 4 multi player rank system but i carries over to the campaign, terrorist hunt and multi player. Basically you get experience points for every kill which allows you to rank up and unlock more armor options and clothing options. There is also a system known as ACES (Advanced Combat Enhancement and Specialization). There are three categories: Marksmen where you get points for killing enemies at long range or head shots, CQB where you get points for killing enemies in close quarters and Assault where killing enemies with grenades or ones with shields will reward you there points. As you achieve higher ranks in these categories you will unlock more guns to use in all of the different game modes. This is one of the big hooks for the game and makes dieing in a terrorist hunt or campaign not feel to bad because as long as you killed 1 enemy you will have advanced in some way.

Another big hook for this game is that it is very tactical. You have a number of gadgets, such as thermal vision, night vision and the snake cam to help you take out the terrorists faster and in some cases silently. You can also rappel down the side of a buildings and breach in through a window, or flip yourself upside down and shoot through the window before breaching. Also due to when playing single player you have the control of two AI team mates who you can tell to stack up on a door and either flash and clear, breach with charges or just simply open and kill the foes inside depending on the situation.

Where the game does fall down however is the AI of your opponents and your team mates. Quite commonly the enemy will run in a straight line towards you, making them very easy targets. While in other cases your team mates won't do anything and when an enemy is about to shoot you in the back they will wait for them to shoot and then fire. The game would have been much better if the AI was improved but it is not so bad as to make the game un-playable.

Also the graphics of Rainbow Six Vegas 2 are somewhat disappointing and when compared to other games which are built on the Unreal Engine such as Unreal Tournament 3 it is somewhat lacking. And because you are in the somewhat more boring parts of Vegas there is nothing really there which wows you, which is a shame.

So should you buy this game? Yes if you like a strong shooter with a much heavier emphasis on tactics and stealth rather then a run and gun experience. The multi player side of the game is still quite heavily populated on Xbox live but i don't know for how much longer with the likes of Gears of War 2 on the horizon.

Score

6.5/10

Dr horriable review

Hey all i know this is not game but i thought i would talk about it. Its a series of 3 short acts of blog style musical which tell the story of the Anti-hero Dr. Horrible, rise or fall depending on your view if you haven't watched it go here http://www.drhorrible.com/. On day of this post its free to watch all 3 but after midnight on 20th July it will not longer be freely available and should be download able for small fee.


Each of the 3 acts are about 13 minutes long and was written by Joss Whendon (WARNING!! SPOILER ARE TO FOLLOW) i thought it was well thought out story even though it has point in story that don't make much sense for example how Dr horrible put body of Penny onto stretcher after being accused for killing her. Another example of this is the fact police do nothing through out the story. Even though i am not generally interested in Musicals I thought the songs were well done and told the story very well. My favourite song was one at end of act when he singing about killing Mr Hammer because of slightly darker tones and show begin of transformation of Dr Horrible.

Then end also show that even though he achieved what he wanted to he lost himself to it as at end he says he wont feel a thing which shows he wasn't happy with end result the music used throughout the acts were good to portray the atmosphere and use of dark horses cowboys and various jokes through out were good for comic relief though this is hard thing to say with most of the story being a joke anyway.

The actor played there part well and were good for there roles i am interested to see where Joss will take this from here and look forward to anything else he might do.

Too Human Demo Impressions

This just came out on Xbox Live and i have had a chance to play through it once. Too Human is an action RPG / dungeon crawler. It is set in the future with a Norse twist. You play as the god Baldur and can be 5 different classes, however in the demo only the Champion class is available to try out.

You get about 45 minutes in the demo, including skill allocation and gear swapping. As the champion you mainly use a combination of two handed swords and pistols, but the game really shines in the melee combat. You fight robots, which means all the classic variants of the grunts and the rocket types and then the slightly larger robots. As you kill opponents you increase your combo meter which can be used to activate certain abilities that will become available later or your Ruiner ability, which is basically an area of effect bomb for those tight situations. There are a number of small bosses that you fight and personally i enjoyed them. The story seems like it could get very interesting and Too Human has been announced to be a trilogy so it appears it will be a fairly long story as well.

But where I thought this game would fall down is its control scheme. To move you use the left stick and to attack you use the right stick and point it in the direction of your enemy to either hit it if it is near or slide towards. Or hold down the left and/or right triggers to fire your guns and select your targets with the right stick. Now what I thought would go wrong is that there would be serious camera issues however this didn't seem to happen, the game played smoothly and despite there being a slight learning curve i enjoyed how it play and that it differed from the X is quick attack and Y is heavy attack standard.

So I would strongly suggest trying this out if you have a 360 and have access to Live and i will likely be picking this up when it comes out August 19th.

Diablo 3 Officially Announced

Diablo 3 has just been announced at the Worldwide Invitational in Paris. Check out a few videos and screens at http://pc.ign.com/articles/884/884836p1.html . It looks awesome, number 2 was great and i cannot wait for this, didn't see a release date anywhere but i would expect mid 2009.

Ninja Gaiden 2: Review

Ninja Gaiden 2 was released about 3 weeks ago now for the Xbox 360 so you have probably seen quite a few reviews of it by now, but here's my take on it. Ninja Gaiden 2 is an action hack and slash game where you string together combos to kill and mutilate your foes. You play as Ryu Hayabusa, who is shockingly a Ninja, in a fight against the fiends.

First of all for the story. There isn't one. The story is weak, bad and in some cases strange, you will be consistently wondering how you got somewhere, better yet, why you went somewhere. I don't want to give any spoilers but all you need to know is that the emphasis is on gameplay not story.

And luckily the gameplay is great. You have an arsenal of weapons, ranging from a massive scythe which will literally take your enemies legs off to a staff which will cause your foes heads to explode. And also a number of ranged weapons including my favourite; the gattling spear gun. The animation of the fights is great and one of the best features is the ability to dismember most of your enemies. You can take off a leg or both legs, or an arm or both arms, or if you are lucky you will instantly take their head off. Now when an arm goes flying off into the distance it doesn't mean they are dead, in some cases it actually makes them stronger. Certain foes will sacrifice themselves to try and take you will with them, while others will just throw whatever they have at you and keep their distance. It makes the gameplay more intuitive and keeps you guessing. However when a leg or arm is taken off it makes them vulnerable to obliteration techniques. These are maneuvers which will kill the enemy quickly and generally in a very gory way. Although these look very cool and to get rid of some enemies it is a necessity, it does become a bit of an annoyance in that you will almost always have to use it. Sadly though the game does in a lot of cases become a button masher and you will catch yourself using the same set of combos over and over again.

However the design of enemies is brilliant, there are a large variety of normal enemies with great AI. There is a number of different types of demons and ninja type foes and you never fight the same enemy for too long which keeps the combat feeling fresh. But where this game attempts to shine is the bosses which in my opinion are a mixed bag. When you first fight the bosses they are fun and something new, but Team Ninja (the developers) thought it would be a brilliant idea to make you fight them again and maybe even again. Fighting the same boss again with 1 or 2 normal enemies with them isn't fun or inventive. Also the difficulty of the bosses throughout the game isn't progressive, the greater fiends who you would expect to be difficult are actually the easier of the bosses in comparison to the random, none story related based bosses.

The worst part of this game is the camera, it is possibly one of the worst cameras in a game. Although for a game that is this fast paced it must be very difficult to make a good camera. But still the majority of your deaths will be as a result of the camera facing in the wrong direction and just switching to a random and pointless view point. You will likely get the hang of it and learn moves that move you towards enemies anyway. But there is a definite learning curve to this.

The original Ninja Gaiden is remembered for being ridiculously hard, and this is not lost in Ninja Gaiden 2. This game will run your morale down and make you cry, it is one of the most frustrating games i have played in a long time. It is extremely hard and i am sure a number of 360 controller will be thrown and hit during this game (just don't throw it at your TV).

So to sum up, buy this game if you want a challenge and to go back to the old school style of gaming where you will actually get stuck on a boss. But if you want to have fun throughout the game that you purchase avoid Ninja Gaiden 2, or play it on Acolyte mode. But for those hardcore it has a lot to offer with the score system for every level and a number of different leader boards to try and be the best at.

Score:

6.8 / 10

wow public test realm patch notes ???

If you haven't looked at patching coming out for world of warcraft have a look here http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html. This has to be Blizzard most interesting patch they have released to date with some truly great changes i am just gonna briefly talk about the one that make this truly odd patch the first thing that jumped and at me was

• Mounts at 30?! Yes, it's true: Apprentice Riding and mounts are now available at level 30. Training costs 35 gold.

This is great news and for all those altaholic out there this will mean less time walking around mountless and for people joining the game this should significantly increase speed at which you will level from 30-40 but it beckons the question why did it take so long.

• Blood Elf flightmasters outside of Silvermoon City and Tranquillien have traded in their bats for glorious fire-breathing dragonhawks.

Great for a lore sense, this is great news and shows that blizzard is still polishing the game.

• Alcohol cooldowns have been rolled into Drinks: All 10-second cooldowns have been removed and replaced with the 1-second Drink cooldown.

for all you RP out there you can now get your character wasted ten times faster and consume ten times as much in same time (is this blizzard brilliant strategy to get the economy back under control) :P

• Haris Pilton has launched a new line of bags and jewelry. Check her out in the World's End Tavern!

Why is all i can say

There lots of other weird stuff so be sure to check it out

Spore creature creator

Warp:

Today i downloaded and played with creature creator (look at time) well actual that was yesterday anyway if you go to http://www.spore.com/ you can download for free spore creature creator where the possibilities are endless expect for very limited amount of part you can use in the trial. But even with few parts you are given there is a huge amount of customizability and you can let you imagination run wild i would highly recommend trying it out i have contemplated buying the full edition but have decided to hold off until the game comes out.

I thought it would be fun to just show you guys what me and blaze have create with some comment on designs:

This was my first creation using spore and i had great deal of fun making it. I tried to push the genetic complexity meter to full, which is bar telling you when you've added to much stuff to your creature though i think i could have pushed it abit further i called this one Spitnort because it has tail which spit green stuff. Its a pretty basic design but i was just messing with features.








This one here is one of my favourites Grubber which was the result of wanting to create a biped with a sort of water theme hence the colouring and weed hair and fins and a younger version is also in the picture.









Blaze:

Yeah now for my (Blaze) exploits on Spore Creature Creator. But before here are my impressions of the creature creator. It is amazing fun, i only got the trial version and have considered paying for it. It is very innovative and something we frankly have never seen before to this extent. You owe it to yourself as a gamer to play this, at least the trial. But it will also appeal to none gamers just due to it being extremely simplistic to use but it can get very complicated and complex. I myself wasn't hugely excited for Spore before hand because it could have easily failed due to it being so complex on a game mechanic level but from this i am very confident it will be an excellent game and one that i will remember as one of the most innovative games. But still we have yet to see how the rest of the game will play out.

So here are 2 of my favourite creations:


This one is called Bleppin, i have no idea why i called it that but i did. I thought can the face be at the back and can it walk forwards. And yes it can which is cool. However you cannot have two sets of legs facing opposite directions. Which makes a lot of sense.






This one is named Hormiculas and it was my first creation. Pretty standard dinosaur thing and had some fun with the colours.


But yeah this is just a sample of what you can make and it has a awesome test drive system whereby you can move your creature, make them do different emotes (including dancing) and even view what the children will look like. And you can take photos such as these and even record video and upload it directly to Youtube from the game. So check it out.

Thanks for reading

Summer Gaming

Now summer has started and my exams are over its time to game. My current game list consists of ever present World of Warcraft (WoW), Team Fortress 2 (TF2) and Games from Game taps free game catalogue.

As you are probably aware Game Tap (http://www.gametap.com/) is a Digital distribution network which you can join for free to gain access to a catalogue of 121 free games (though they are not all available outside the US) and these arn't just indie games it includes some good title such as Tomb Raider: Legend and Psychonauts your not gonna find new titles on here for free but it has a nice back catalogue of games.

Your probably thinking to your self this cant be true they wouldn't give games away for free, well your right as you do have give up few second of your time to watch an advertisement when you load up the game. Its also quite forgiving, i had few errors when loading up one of the games and it allowed me to try loading it up again without showing the advertisement again though i am not sure how this grace period works or for how long.

The only problem I have with it so far is that it insists on giving me the same two advertisements whenever i load up the game. I would think since they must tracking what advertisement are being shown they would try mix up advertisement abit.

Anyway so far i have been playing BloodRayne and Psychonauts. I'd like to take few minutes to talk about these two games BloodRayne's cover art attracted my attention with its cunning scantly clad half-vampire. I thought what the hell and it turned out to be quite a decent adventure game with a cool combat system and a weak but dark story line to boot, but as Game Tap points out to you if your looking for depth look else where and it not possible to fight this argument.

It is showing its age as it came out in 2002 the graphics were good for its day but is heavily out dated now but its still decent game sadly i have run into bug which is preventing me from progressing any further. I am not sure if this is the games problem or vista being retarded so i will be looking into it.

This was obliviously an extremely popular game which I missed out on it was available on PC, PS2, Gamecube, xbox, Mac (why) and they also made film (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0383222/) and second game though since i haven't seen or played ether of these two i cant comment on its quality. OK back to the first game i have to admit that the controls are quite clunky and i can imagine it would play much nicer with game pad sadly the game would not recognise my 360 controller which it felt was uncalibrated. The combat is a gory affair with decapitations and finishing moves that slice the enemies into chunks, it's not particularly difficult to do but still satisfying. While fighting you charge up a bar which results in killing frenzy which is pretty cool and must use for bosses. The boss fights i had played were varied and interesting even if it was button mashing affair. I overall enjoyed this game and would highly suggest you to trying it if your 17+ of course.

The second game i played is Psychonauts (trying to spell this is pain) which is a truly unique game which was released back in 2005 on PC, Xbox, PS2 even though its 3 years old its cartoonish graphics save it from aging to badly and the unique art style makes it a good looking game to this day the basic story is that psychic boy named Raz escapes from circus and join psychic summer camp where the plot unfolds.

The game is witty enough to make you smile but personally not enough to make me burst out laughing and the game play is fun and varied with the a large range of bosses and puzzles asking you to use different psychic power to solve each one. The game will vomit out hints as soon as you get stuck so if your looking for difficult game look else where.

The controls on PC version feel like they were made for game pad as sometimes Raz wont go exactly where you want him to and when your doing some of aerobatic your lack of control can be a problem especially the second part of the last boss fight. It might be good idea to play this with game pad though i enjoyed it myself playing with keyboard and mouse (360 controller failed to be recognised again).

The game also has options for the completest with emotion baggage, mind cobwebs, psy cards and figments to collect in all of the level. If your like me you'll just grab what you see and move on with the story though but it does give the game some extra re-playability.

The Plot is extreme rich and vibrant and little too childish at time but on whole was extremely enjoyable. The game will allow you to access different character mind throughout the game mostly the insane so you get taken into lots of different weird world. In which you get to do cool thing like smash up a city as a giant, running simple war games against napoleon and fight wrestlers. This is a must try and since you can play for free (with adverts) whats stopping you.

So now with these to out of the way i have started playing tomb raider legend check back here for comment on that later.

Gears of War 2 Gameplay Trailer

The first footage of gameplay of one of the best games that will come out this year has been released, Gears of War 2. It is amazing and is a real improvement over their announcement trailer.

You also get to see some new moves and guns. One of the new moves is that instead of just being able to footstomp a downed locust you can also pick them up and use them as a meatshield when using your pistol. There is also now a special move for when you chainsaw someone from behind which is awesome. And of course you get to see the new chainsaw duals which look really good.

As for new weapons you get to see 2. One is a new assault rifle that fires a single shot every half second sort of thing. So not a constant flow of bullets but more of an accurate gun. The second gun is the new pistol. It is similar to an uzi sort of gun in that it is rapid fire but of course it looks nothing like an uzi from what i could see.

But check it out even if you don't have an Xbox 360 cause it looks amazing and i have decided not to talk about the actual scene because it is immense.

check it out here:

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/community/news/2008/0509-gowfootage.htm

It is also available for download on the Xbox Live Marketplace

TF2's update impressions

The patch for TF2 (team fortress 2 for the unedumicated) has been out awhile now and i think Valve are finally done fixing all problems it caused with mini patches now. Even though the patch did cause the unsurprising over population of medic and people achievement whoring myself included :P (just abit) the game hasn't been affected and it still plays really well. The new equipment are not game changing and are balanced with the older equipment so having done the achievement you only gain another way to play not an advantage (meaning people wanting to pick this game up now you wont get your ass kicked). Also the servers are starting to go back to normal in terms of the class except now you generaly have 2 medic in team of 8 instead of 1 which isn't really a bad thing. Though this patch does bring about some more question such as what they will give to other classes and what will new achievement be. So the wait for next patch begins as we wait for the next patch. Also EA being EA has not shown the xbox and ps3 any love as they don't seem to be getting the patch anytime soon. The only reasons i can think for ea doing this (other then fact they hate you) trying it ont pc first and wait for all classes to come out first or the other reason is that unlike on pc xbox achievement point system would proberly not like have 36 achievement added to a game within a game and they couldnt just do if for pc3 as microsoft would kill them. Anyway if you have any opinion on matter feel free to post in comment

Team Fortress 2 Upate and FREE (for 3 days)

With the release of the new map Goldrush and the new medic weapons which includes The Blutsauger, The Kritzkrieg and the Ubersaw.

Goldrush is a completely new game type and will likely play very differently from any of the other current maps. Your objective as the blue team is to stand near a cart which has a bomb in it and when you do this the cart will begin to move down the tracks. Once the cart reachs the red teams base then the blue teams wins. And the red teams objective is just to defend. It is fairly similar to Dustbowl in this way.

The Blutsauger is like the current syringe gun however instead of critting it nows draws health from the opponent and gives it to you. The Kritzkreig is the new type of medigun that instead of making your target invulnearble it will make them have 100% crit chance. And the Ubersaw is still a melee weapon but it will also drain the enemies life and give it to you.

Now you won't just get these weapons you will have to unlock them by getting achievements and then equip them using the new equip system put in place by Valve.

Another bit of cool information for all of you out there who don't have TF2 for the PC but have Steam you will be able to get a free trial this weekend (friday 2nd may - 4th may). For anyone out there who doesn't have it you should definatly give it a go. I bought it for 360 so i will be downloading it for PC this weekend also and i will probably buy it for PC at a later date.

For more information visit this website http://www.steampowered.com/goldrush/

Bad Company SAVED

EA has officially announced that all guns will be included in the game just some will need to unlocked similar to COD4. But this is great news and i can now happily buy the game. Also this is a step in the right direction.
If you hadn't heard Sarcastic Gamer had a boycott going againest Battlefield Bad Company. From there, the boycott was put up on larger more mainstream sites and the boycott was a success thankfully. And hopefully nothing like this will happen again cause as i said before i think it is just wrong and shouldn't be allowed. Everything that the developer makes should come with the game if it is to be sold at normal retail price.

Dawn of War 2 Announced

For all you Dawn of War fans the sequal has finally been announced, although it doesn't really comes a surprise. So far to the first game there has been 3 expansions all of which were top game titles and deserve a play through. But Dawn of War 2 looks as brutal and great as the last so keep an eye out for this one.

Battlefield Bad Company: RUINED?

Bad Company looked great i was really looking forward to it but you know what i may not be getting it. What they have announced is that for multiplayer not all the guns will be available in the retail version.

Basically there will be ten weapons that won't come with the retail version of the game. 5 will be on the gold edition, okay that doesn't bug me that much. Now what does, is that the other 5 will be available either through promotions or through purchase online.

Now i don't know if the guns are actually on the disc and you are just buying an activation key to put your hard drive, but what this does mean is that they have already designed these, gone through the whole process of tweaking them and getting them right. And they won't be available unless you pay that extra price which is just rediculous if you ask me.

Army of Two Review

Alright i have finally got around to writing this review, so enjoy:

Army of Two is a surprising game, when you play it at first it seems somewhat lacking in something but as you continue it just begins to feel more and more fun and there are a number of reasons for this.

The story isn't a stunner, it is half decent and would work very well for a movie but less for a game. And each mission doesn't have a direct link with one another which retracts from the overall experience. And after playing through COD4 it is clear that it is perfectly possible to make a story driven modern shooter. Also the storyline is very short, and on the medium difficulty (contractor) it can probably be completed in 6 hours. But i wasn't really disappointed with it because of this, the game didn't need to be longer then 6 hours.

The characters are great, Salem is a bit of an arse but still they are both comical and by no means serious. Also their armor and masks are cool and have a very unique look to them which is a nice change from other modern shooters. Also the enemies graphics are quite good, not the best but as good as they need to be because frankly one terrorist / soldier looks the same as any other.

The take cover and shoot mechanic of Army of Two turned out to be great. Unlike Gears of War you don't have to press a button to get into cover but just by walking towards it and putting yourself near it automatically in cover. This doesn't mean you put your back to the wall or anything, instead you continue to face the wall but you will now raise or move your gun to shoot while in cover. And this system is very smooth and runs great and makes for a very believable shooter. Also not only walls can be used for cover but almost everything.

Army of Two's acclaimed aggro system works seamlessly and your opponents react to it very quickly and effectively but not to the point that it is unbelievable. If your partner has the aggro and you run at an enemy right in front of him he will just shoot you instead. So it really does make Army of Two a more tactical shooter rather then a spray and pray game.

The environments of the game change with each mission which makes each mission a new experience. For example in one mission you are in Iraq and in another you are in China. And these environments are all very uniquely designed. However the main issue i have is that all the enemies speak perfect English and all seem to have a similar accent if not exactly the same.

Army of Two has great character customization. As you complete objectives in a mission you earn cash and you can buy new mask designs, new guns and mods for your guns. There are a tonne of guns from a mini guns to a stinger missile launcher and of course the smaller and less fun guns like the M16. And the mods for a lot of these guns is great. Some you can attach shields to and others you can even attach a shotgun / grenade launcher onto the front of it. But one of the best gun options is the ability to 'pimp' your gun. This

makes it gold and has cool designs on the side on it. Some look crap and lame while others just look awesome, who doesn't want a golden AK47.

Where Army of Two shines is in the co-op. Both me and Warp have gotten to do the campaign together in split screen. And it is excellent and makes for one of the best co-op games to date. All the different features available to do in co-op like co-op snipe and the overkill mode makes it great. Overkill is a mode where one character has full aggro you can activate it and the one with full aggro will go slow and have everyone attack him but he will deal a lot damage. While the over goes to stealth mode and moves very quickly and does very strong melee attacks. Army of Two was just built for co-op and to be truely experienced it needs to be played split-screen in my opinion.

However Army of Two does have short comings that need to be mentioned. The multiplayer is only just decent. All you do is there are two teams of two and you run around competeting to complete different missions for cash. But it seems laggy and quite boring after your first few matchs. This really reduces the games life. Also the games AI isn't great. When i played through it with the AI partner he seemed like a complete fool and would need to be told everything which gets old. The back to back moments although quite fun at times can be a chore at times because they are just too easy and them being scripted doesn't help it.

Also if there are any readers out there in the EU you may have seen this EU tag on Army of Two. This basically means that you can't play with anyone outside the EU which is just pathetic. I don't understand it, i mean Halo 3 could run 4 player co-op perfectly with everyone around the world but Army of Two can't for some reason manage 2 player co-op. This is probably just an attempt to save money someway, but if anything it will just piss off gamers.

So to conclude Army of Two is a very decent game but not a must buy, but still fun for a few weeks especially if you can play split screen with a mate.



Score - 7 / 10 A decent buy if you have some spare cash and have someone to play co-op with.

Rainbow Six Vegas 2: Is it a buy?

I have been going back and forth on this descision because it looks good but i never got the first one so should i buy it or not? If anyone out there has it or has played leave a comment saying whether it is a must or not because if i get this i will not be getting Dark Sector on release, so have to be sure

So just leave a comment by making an account with blogger, it doesn't take long at all and then you can comment on every post with your views and opinions.

Army of Two review on the way, but not yet

Hey i will be getting an Army of Two review out soon just i caught a cold and i also need to work so it will be out soon but not quite yet

Army of Two First Impressions

I picked up Army of Two when i saw it for Xbox 360 and have played it for about 4 hours now. I have mainly been playing through the campaign on single player which is very fun at the moment. The cover mechanic in Army of Two works so smoothly and makes the single player fun to play. However the storyline seems somewhat limited and lacks substance, especially after playing through COD4. I also gave the multiplayer a go and it really did feel last minute and the controls when on multiplayer just feels strange and makes shooting really difficult.
I will be following this up with a review so if you want to wait for that to buy it, that may not be a bad idea. But if you are not interested in multiplayer Army of Two seems pretty good.

Army of Two Preview

Army of Two is a title that has a lot of potential to be great, and hopefully it will be. It would have been released already however EA decided to continue development on it for a longer period of time. This in my opinion was a great decision. A polished Game is a good game.

Army of Two firstly is a third person shooter, which means instead of seeing through the eyes of the character you will see from a shoulder view. This is probably my preferred point of view and allows for some very cool and interesting game mechanics. It is possible to make the game appear cinematic and more fluid because you can see more of the actions of your character, their appearance, etc. Army of Two is also very heavy on co-operative play; even in the single player campaign you will always have a partner helping you out. This aspect is similar to your squad in Gears of War. And what they have done with this mechanic is beyond anything that has been done before, which I will discuss later.

However in Army of Two you are not your average soldier fighting the good war, you are mercenaries hired by the government to take out key targets and complete missions, which you get paid for. This is a great basis for a game I think. It allows for the gamer to feel they are fighting a war that has meaning and you are not just going out and killing for no good reason. But also it gives the opportunity for more fun and out of the ordinary methods that would not be seen when playing as a soldier in the army.

The characters of Army of Two are also just brilliant. They are different, interesting and out of the ordinary which is what you want for classic mercenary characters. One is called Tyson Rios and the other is called Elliot Salem. They also have a very unique look, something that is different from any other game. They both wear very customized armor and always seem to be wearing bulletproof masks which just look badass. You can see them in the screenshots. So playing as these characters should be an experience in itself.

The game play of Army of Two also looks to be very promising. It is your classic third person shooter where both cover and accuracy must be utilised in order to succeed. You can focus on taking out enemies through stealth or by full on assault. You can also carry out some cool different moves, such as breaking an enemy’s neck, kick them in the stomach and even head butt the opponent. Another unique action is that you can drag your wounded partner along the ground, while he keeps shooting. This sounds very different in that you can no longer just walk up to a ally and get them back up with a tap of a button, but you have to get them to a safer position beforehand. There is also something called Back to Back mode which is where you will both, shockingly, stand back to back and attempt to make an impenetrable turret like formation to fight off foes which are currently surrounding you. This sounds really cool and fun but it is automatically activated and cannot be used whenever you want. This I have a problem with, because it takes away from the freedom of the game and the sense that you are in control of how you fight.

What really set Army of Two apart from other shooters however is the aggro system. The aggro system is basically that the more attention you create for yourself the more bullets will be flying at you. Now because there are two of you, you have a small semicircle at the top of the screen which will indicate which partner has the greater aggro in the fight. This will likely make for a fun game play mechanic because it allows the player to maybe force the attention of the enemy onto to them by blind firing at the enemy and consistently building aggro. This will allow for your team mate to move around undetected and kill the enemies through stealth.

The Aggro system also takes advantage of a player going to either extreme of the aggro bar. If you have complete aggro you will go into something that is called ‘Overkill’ mode. This is that you will do more damage and have access to special melee attacks. However if you have near to no aggro your character will go transparent, now you aren’t actually transparent it is just indicating that you can now easily carry out stealth manoeuvres.

One of the things I like most about certain games is being able to customize my characters, their weapons and everything else about them, and Army of Two delivers well in this factor. In the campaign you can change the armor of your character, from the look to its actual functionality e.g. light – heavy. You can also customize your guns with a whole range of attachments and improvements. Most guns also have a option to ‘pimp’ them. This will make the gun gold basically and it looks awesome. Now you can’t just apply these customisations straight away. You are mercenaries so obviously you get paid to do your work and this is what you use to do all these cool changes to your character. This will be a great feature of Army of Two I suspect because it will just add another level of control over the game you play

Now in my opinion a game is only as good as its lasting appeal. You either have a very long single player mode like Mass Effect and a lot of replay ability. Or, like most shooters, you have multiplayer. In Army of Two there are 4 different modes: Warzone, Extraction, Bounty and cooperative mode. Now the cooperative mode I assume you will just be playing the campaign with a friend over the internet or split-screen on the same console. Which is will make for a great game, because Army of Two is designed to be cooperative so it should play very well in this sense. Warzone is that targets spawn that you either need to defend and keep alive or aim to kill. Extraction is where you need to extract key allies to a certain location. Bounty is where you will aim to kill enemy targets and leaders. Now I haven’t had a hands-on on Army of Two or anything so I don’t actually know how the multiplayer modes will play out and whether they will be fun or not. But from reading it I doubt it will beat the likes of Call of Duty 4 and Halo 3. But an upside to Army of Two is that I suspect a full character customization system will be in place in the multiplayer as well, which will make it more fun to play.

A really big plus point to Army of Two is that it looks very nice. The graphics are great and suit the style of the game heavily. I don’t think they are best graphics out there but they are defiantly good which is great for gameplay and the overall experience.

Army of Two should be out any day now on PS3 and the Xbox 360 and will most likely be a game I will buy, for the Xbox 360, which means a follow up review once I have played through it. It looks like it could be a great game and a lot of fun. The only issues I have with it are the back to back modes being scripted and that the multiplayer seems somewhat last minute, so the lasting appeal could be minimal. But other then that it looks to be a promising title.

hello to our zero reader

I thought i would just make a quick post since i was supposed to write an anticipated game post as well but uni has been crazy lately with test and reports and eating up my time i was struggling to get any gaming time in so blog kind of fell out of the picture. So here it is in short form a bit late :P So the most anticipated for me is Spore since i have been dieing to play it for past few years and maxis has not been helping by not really releasing much in form of solid information so to full fill my hungry i have had to dig around on the Internet.

The second most anticipated game is of course Wrath of the Litch king as what self respecting world of warcraft player wouldn't be drooling at the mouth to get there hands on the expansion. Then it would Dawn of War: soulstorm which is not that long away with the release date set on 7 which is same day as next LAN with my uni society, Handy that.

On the gaming front i have been enjoying campaign of supreme command: Forged alliance which on my laptop is barley manging to run which is causing me to think maybe its time to get myself a new computer for gaming but since finances are tight i am gonna have to wait awhile. Anyway supreme commander is a solid game which is entertaining to play even though it does take up a lot of time which I don't have at the moment. A testament to this is the fact my pally has only managed to get to level 24 since my last post. So until my next post, game on people.

Gears of War 2 Announced

Gears of War 2 has finally been announced at GDC on February 20th by lead designer Cliff Bleszinski, better known as Cliffy B, from Epic Games. This is a title that I couldn’t be more excited about. The first Gears of War was one of the best shooters I have played to this day and even now, a year and a quarter after its release, I still play it every once and a while.
Gears of War for those that don’t know is a third person horror shooter with immense emphasis on cover. In the storyline you play as Marcus Fenix, a betrayed soldier convicted for a crime he didn’t commit. You fight the locust horde, a vast enemy force that live beneath the ground that are deadly and smart. They make for one of the best enemies to fight.
But Gears of War 1 wasn’t just well renowned for single player but also its multiplayer. Sadly it was only 4v4 but it still made for a fast paced, fun multiplayer experience namely due to the revolutionary cover system.
Gears of War 2 promises to continue the Gears storyline and make it bigger, better and in the words of Cliffy B ‘More Badass’. Unreal Engine 3 has been refined so that it can now host up to 100 enemies in a map at a time. Now I still sincerely doubt we will be seeing 50 v 50 matches but it is easily probable that we may get 8v8.
Gears of War 2 will be released exclusive to Xbox 360 first but I suspect it will move to PC afterwards similar to Gears of War 1.
Check out the trailer to Gears of War 2 at this website http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/splash/g/gearsofwar2/default.htm

Blaze: Most Anticipated Games of 2008

In 2007 we saw a series of great game releases like Mass Effect, Halo 3, The Orange Box, The Burning Crusade, Call of Duty 4, PGR 4 and Guitar Hero 3. All of which were excellent games and made 2007 possibly one of the best years yet for gaming. However in my opinion the years can only get better as the gaming market only seems to be increasing in size which can only mean bigger and better games for 2008.

This is just a quick run down of my top 5 most anticipated games for the coming year.

5) Far Cry 2

Despite the Crytek not being involved in the production of one of their best games sequel, it still appears to be a very promising title. It is now in the hands of Ubisoft who have made big titles such as Assassin’s Creed, Brothers in Arms and the Rainbow Six series.
Far Cry 2 will be an open ended first person shooter. It will be similar to games such as S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl. It will be set in the plains of Africa which is a setting that will work perfectly for this type of game due to Africa having lots of wide open spaces and small villages. There will be around 50 square kilometres with which the player can explore. This is an immense amount of land to be explored in a single game and will contribute to the feeling of freedom that it should give.
However I am not looking forward to this game for its nice landscapes. I am looking forward to it for its intense combat which should feature you taking down entire villages, fighting out in the desert and fighting in the jungle. However from the current screenshots it looks like it will have some of the best graphics to date; Ubisoft is using a new engine called Dunia which appears very promising.

4) Ninja Gaiden 2

Ryu Hayabusa is back in Ninja Gaiden 2 with new weapons and an array of new enemies to fight and inevitably dismember. It will be exclusive to Xbox 360 and will be released in early 2008. Although I didn’t play the first Ninja Gaiden on Xbox is famous for being one of the most hardcore games and one that was nearly impossible to complete on the hardest difficulty. And this is an element of the game that I hope doesn’t get thrown away in the hope of making all the difficulties accessible to every gamer, that’s what easy is for.
The fighting style in Ninja Gaiden 2 appears to be one that will be iconic to the genre. It will be fast paced and full of a wide variety of attacks that will be capable of dismembering opponents. But there will be heavy weight put on having a strong defence, in that if you go into a fight without concern for your own protection you will most likely die.
Also the variety of weapons is an aspect of this game that will make it stand out. You will be able to use the classic swords, a scythe, three–bladed claws and bladed boots and possible even more then this. And don’t forget each one of these will have a different play style completely and will require you to know them inside out if you are to be successful on the harder difficulties.
Ninja Gaiden has a lot of prestige about it and for good reason, it is indefinitely a game that should be watched for this year if you are, like me, an Xbox 360 owner.

3) Battlefield Bad Company

And so the Battlefield series continues. And why shouldn’t it, Battlefield 2 was a great shooter and so was Battlefield 1942. And Battlefield Bad Company looks like it will be even better then either of them.
And this actually looks like it will have a really good campaign, while all the other Battlefields have only been known for their multiplayer gameplay. The single player campaign actually sounds very off-beat and fun which I think is the image they are going for. You are a soldier who decides that the army doesn’t pay enough and that having a nations pride isn’t worth it. This causes you to become a renegade soldier in search of money. This will provide a very different single player experience then what we have seen before. With games like Call of Duty 4 which is a very different experience to what Battlefield Bad Company promises to be, only in single player the multiplayer may end up quite similar.
Another feature that I think will define this game is the amount of destructibility in the game. 90% of the environment is supposed to be destructible. This means you can blow holes in walls, destroy whole rooms, make holes in the ground and probably much more. All of which will add a whole new level to the game experience, and make it feel a lot less linear.
It will be released for PS3 and Xbox 360, so look out for this game.

2) Dark Sector

At first I didn’t think much of Dark Sector but after looking at more screenshots and videos it has become a very promising title. I myself am a huge Gears of War fan and this will incorporate elements of that into it such as a need for cover and the extreme fast paced action. But it will also bring new elements to it, namely the Glaive.
The main aspect of this game appears as if it will be mostly single player, and I think it has yet to be officially announced that there will even be multiplayer. You will play as the character Hayden Tenno who is sent on a secret mission to eliminate a mad scientist. However he becomes infected by a strange disease that results in his arm being drastically changed. But this has a major upside. You can now make a three bladed glaive from nowhere. Now how this works I am not sure, that will most likely be explained in the game. But this sounds like a great game mechanic, it will allow you to throw the blade, slit enemies’ throats, set enemies on fire and even electrocute them. What is also great is that this won’t be the only useable weapon. Dark Sector will be host to an array of guns to use and take down the large variety of foes.
And when I say large variety I mean it, from the screenshots I have seen more types of enemies then appear in most game. From zombies to robots, from soldiers to other infected people like Hayden (but a lot worse).
This game will be released for both Xbox 360 and PS3 and is expected to be on shelves by late march.

1) World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

With the announced subscription figures to World of Warcraft being 10 million it is easy to say it is one of the most played games out at the moment. I am a WoW player myself and the appeal of more content is one that makes this my most anticipated game this year. World of Warcraft is an MMORPG for those that don’t know and it is one probably the biggest MMO out at the moment.
Wrath of the Lich King will be host to a huge array of new content. With the level cap raised to level 80 (from level 70), a whole new continent, Northrend, the first hero class, Death Knight, more instances, more battlegrounds and plenty of other additions to the already huge amount of content available. It will also continue the story of the Lich King that was put in place in Warcraft 3. This is an exciting aspect of the upcoming expansion because the story of Prince Arthas and the Lich King is one that is very memorable in my mind and made Warcraft 3 one of the best strategy games.
So this is indefinitely my most anticipated game of 2008 and it is thought to be on shelves by November, but this isn’t a confirmed released date.

Other Games to look for: Metal Gear Solid 4, Starcraft 2, Resident Evil 5, Fallout 3, Army of Two, Condemned 2, Fable 2

Hey

Hey, Blaze here

i am the brother of the guy who started up the blog and we will both be working on game reviews for the blog. We are both gamers who between us have a liking for all genres so you should be getting reviews on a large majority of games (except ones that we don't bother buying). I play on both PC and Xbox 360 so i will mainly be talking about games for those platforms.

At the moment i am playing Halo 3, Team Fortress 2 and Guitar Hero 3. I am like Warp, a WoW player, but i am currently not online but should be back in about 3 weeks. But this is not a WoW blog it is a gaming one.

Hope you enjoy what we aim to do here, thxs for reading

Blaze

change of format

hey all instead of writing randomly about my gaming. My brother and I will be posting game review here so come back often to read some game reviews.

Gaming!!!!

I am feeling abit rubbish and ill at the moment so i thought 'hey why not trying writing a blog'. so here I go. So as you may have guess from my blog title i am a gamer and warp is my gamertag so it works well.

I recently got back into WOW, Which I started playing all those years ago when it came out. I was on Alliance side as a 70 druid Nighma and if your bored you can check him out on wow community website armoury (US) on dunemaul and yes the gear was nothing special and yes i was boomkin which was the main reason for my gear being so bad. As my guild was not boomkin friendly. But when i moved to jolly old England for university i stopped playing but on meeting some more wow addicts here (well they are everywhere all 10million of them) and i decided to give it another go on European servers but this time on horde side to try it mix things up abit and because i have never done it before and maybe just maybe I can be on wining side of bg (battleground) for once.

An old sig for my wow char pre BC (yes i am resto there)

So far i am only level 11 and am finding the horde cities abit confusing and not as appealing as the cities on the alliance side. I also found out something quite interesting but i am sure the rest of you knew this but silvermoon and all blood elf areas are not accessable by anyway other then through the translation stone in Undercity as i stupidly swam up and around the top of eastern kingdom and could only find mountains and could swim through the part where Silvermoon was supposed to be.

Anyway apart from wow i have also been playing alot of COD4 (call of duty 4) and TF2 (Team fortress 2) and of course DOW(dawn of war): Dark crusade.

Which I would like to make quick comment on. Necrons are overpowered!!!!! Me and my friend have regular multiplayer matches against each other which are general 3 people which is worst number of player i think for any RTS (real time strategy game) and in Dow there is only one official 3 player map so if anyone know any good one please leave comment on where to find it. So we normally play on 4 player maps with a computer. The problem is whenever we have necron in the game that player always wins. So we have had to ban necrons in are matches as they don't need reqeution they don't really scale with maps so if you fighting them on smaller map you end up swarmed by necron before you can really get enough to counter the slow moving behemoths and then when you think it cant get any worse the necron lord shows up and so does the flayed ones and i have not yet been able to prevent a rush from them and the only time i beat necrons with is with imperial guard and i picked of HQ with Basilisk when is wasn't looking (abit underhanded i know but what else can guard do without a relic).

I am looking forward to the release of soulstorm and i hope the new races this time arn't a hundred times better then old ones and some necron balancing would be good to.

Anyway so this is a first for my writing a blog entry and if you have read this i hope you found it interesting and not waste of your time :)