In keeping with the Holiday spirit and with the nearing of Hallow’s End, here are ten games, some new and some old, to play in the dark and give yourself a scare. While some of the graphics on these games may be a little out-dated they are still pretty decent and are suspenseful enough to keep you wondering what is around the next corner and make you jump when you least expect it. So, dust off that old console, turn out the lights, and get ready for some heart pounding, scream inducing video games. Continue Reading
I’ve been playing F1 2011 for the past week and it’s taken a little getting used to all the different changes including the tyres, controls and new menus. However, here are my thoughts in the video below which was taken in the 2011 Lotus F1 car and based at the Kuala Lampur F1 track, Malaysia:
AJ
Dead Island is the survival-horror game of 2011 about four people on a glorious holiday to the fictional island of Banoi, a bright and vibrant place where almost everyone has been turned into zombies, and you help the other survivors by fetching items and doing various quests for them.
The game received good reception when the original trailer was shown off, which involved a lovely family whose little girl gets turned into a zombie, and it was played backwards with the girl flying up and back through the broken window, and then being thrown around the room by [assumedly] her own parents. Though this has no bearing on the actual game, save for the zombies, and the expensive resort – the family are nowhere to be seen. Continue Reading
After months of teasing, City of Heroes has gone free2play for everyone, with the ability to pay for extras, and if you have paid for it in the past, then you get “Premium Status!”
The Cryptic Studios game now runs under a “Paragon Rewards” scheme, meaning you get reward tokens for purchasing a subscription, which means you will earn reward point when you pay for things.
With the new rewards scheme, you will earn 1 point for every month of subscription, plus another one every 12 months, and another one for every 1,200 Paragon Points you buy (which is approximately $15), these points are spent on account-wide benefits, like XP boosters, temporary powers, and enhancement unslotters and boosters.
It has been designed this way so that it is everyone can see how much of a veteran everyone else is, so you can see who are the real veteran players around as they will have lots of bells and whistles on their cape. Though it’s a little odd, to unlock things like powers, and it seems even classes, by paying for them, this is an interesting method not many people have adopted.
City of Heroes is yet another game to fall to the free2play model, along with DC Universe which was announced last week, but City of Heroes has been going a long time, since 2004, and it has held out quite well until now.
This is one of the few games that has had good content constantly dished out, in the form of “issues” – like a comic book – there has been over 20, with this one being the 21st, changing the game name to City of Heroes: Freedom.
You can play the game for free as of today, and if you have paid for the game in the past, then you should be upgraded to Premium Status straight away, so a warm welcome to returning players.
Blizzard Entertainment have announced Foo Fighters as the musical guests at BlizzCon 2011.
The press release was released yesterday, announcing the headliners for the closing concert of this year’s BlizzCon on the 21-22 Oct.
Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl said: “We’re pretty sure that in the future, music historians will look back at BlizzCon 2011 as the unquestionable pinnacle of Foo Fighters’ long and illustrious career,” which you can’t argue with, they had Ozzy himself only two years ago.
BlizzCon first started in 2005 with only about 8000 people attending, this year’s Con is looking more like 30,000+ people, and the guests for the closing concert included Level 60 Elite Tauren Chieftain, a comedian, and The Offspring. Since then, it has just got bigger and bigger, with Ozzy Osbourne, and the D (Tenacious D) rocking the halls of Anaheim – just as Foo Fighters will do next month.
As of BlizzCon 2009, it was available live via internet stream and covered both days as well as exclusive interviews and discussion, this was available for a much more reasonable price of around £25, and the system is much improved as you now have choice over four halls on what to watch and when, plus it counts as a front row seat to see the closing ceremony.
This year, expect to see some Starcraft 2 updates tournaments from literally the best players around, plenty of World of Warcraft coverage, and probably most significant this year, Blizzard’s third franchise which has just gone into closed beta, the much anticipated: Diablo 3.
BlizzCon will run over two days on the 21 and 22 of October, and there are still an unallocated number of virtual tickets available from the website, which will give you great views for developer panels, competitions, tournaments, and the closing ceremony, not to mention the World of Warcraft in-game pet, Murkablo!
Eidos Montreal recently released their newest game Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the prequel to Deus Ex, which was released in 2000. To sum the game up in a few brief words, its Thief meets Dragon Age with a futuristic twist. DX:HR brings to light a new style of Action Roleplaying Games.
Set in the year 2027, DX:HR puts you behind the controls of Adam Jensen, an ex SWAT commander and the head of security for Sarif Industries. The game’s tutorial mission brings you right into the thick of the plot as Jensen is told to brief his security plans for the upcoming trip to Washington D.C. to unveil Dr. Reed’s newest development in the human augmentation industry. Of course, as anyone could predict, things don’t quite as expected and you soon find yourself learning to quickly maneuver through the office space, while trying in vain to save scientists from gunman. A few dead henchmen later, you find yourself being thrown through a thick plate glass high-tech monitor as you cling to consciousness, you watch them take Dr. Reed just before you take a bullet to the brain. Que the opening credits (which is an awesome little cut scene).
While this doesn’t really explain anything about the game, the opening mission/scene gives you a storyline that is just informative enough to make you wonder what the hell is going on. When you wake up, you are now an augmented human, complete with a retinal display. Continue Reading
I’m away from home at the moment Dog/House sitting so anything I was writing about is more or less on hold. John Walker’s article for Rock, Paper, Shotgun on Blizzard’s insistence* on turning single player games into MMO’s needed reposting however, if only to get as many people aware of this nonsense as possible.
You can’t pause. In fact, in most ways, the game acts like an MMO. For instance, quit it, and you’re given the optional cooldown to have your player clear the server properly. But it’s not an MMO. It’s not even close to an MMO. So when I’m playing the single-player game, and I’m in the middle of a frenzied mob, and there’s a knock at the front door, there’s nothing I can do. As happened to me yesterday. Twice. On another occasion I was surprised by a phone call that led to my having to do some other things. I’d safely left my character in a cleared area, but long between checkpoints. When I came back to the PC, I’d been idle for too long and the game had logged me out. – John Walker
Anyway, here is the link to the full article, if you are considering buying Diablo III you really should read it before placing that order…
How Diablo III’s DRM Will Affect You.
Diablo III has been delayed until the early part of next year, so there is a while for Blizzard to go back on this ridiculous decision, and a while for you to decide if it is enough to stop you buying the game.
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* In my opinion because it gives them more control and money rather for any of the reasons they claim about making the game better.
Carrier Command: Gaea Mission is a game scheduled for release in Q1 next year. There seems to be something of a trend in reviving old Strategy game IPs for modern games, first with X-COM and then Syndicate. Carrier Command is slightly different though as with those first two I mentioned they are keeping the name and theme only, deciding that first person action will sell better presumably. Carrier Command has me interested because it seems they dare to release something that hasn’t been on the market for quite some time, it looks to be keeping the strategy of the original and only updating the graphics and interface (though the trailer does not seem to suggest this, but then trailers always have extra explosions).
Have a watch of the teaser trailer and keep an eye out for more news. I certainly will be and will keep you updated when I hear more.
Read more about the game here.
Trion Worlds released their widely popular MMO-RPG earlier this year. On its release many players in the gaming community said that this would be the “WoW-Killer”, and in part, they were correct. While World of Warcraft will always hold Blizzard‘s fanbase close to it, the game itself leaves much to be desired for those who came from other MMO-RPGs such as EverQuest. Where World of Warcraft is lacking in these aspects, however, RIFT takes up the slack.
RIFT uses an interface that is extremely similiar to WoW’s and nearly all other MMOs, but, hey, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it, right? RIFT however takes leaps and bounds over World of Warcraft and similar MMOs with its graphics. While the characters have a certain Dragon-Age feel to them, they are highly customizable. And let’s not forget the details and graphics present in this game. Visually, RIFT makes up for everything that WoW lacks. RIFT uses a more realistic color scheme instead of the bright and vibrant, almost cartoony, color scheme that is present in World of Warcraft, which is much easier on the eyes. Continue Reading
In Solar 2, you start out as a small asteroid and get bigger by bumping into other asteroids and absorbing them, and keep growing until you inevitably destroy all of existence, forcing the Big Bang 2. It’s like that game ‘Fish’, if when you got big enough in Fish you blew up and killed all the other fish.
When you absorb enough, you grow into a small planet which can only absorb things by pulling them into your orbit and then you absorb them. This changes how you play, as you can easily be destroyed and can’t afford to be reckless.
The next level is a life planet, where evolution starts. After some time passes, life grows on your planet and they develop technologies to protect you, but if you get too damaged then you will shrink and all your lifeforms will be destroyed. Continue Reading
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