But if you’re into Star Wars and tech stuff I guarantee you will at least like this game, and most likely love it. The first 14 levels are a bit dull though. Why only the first 14 levels? At level 14 you get a “Sprint” abillity which increases running speed with 35% when not in combat. It works like a toggle, so you just pop it on and it stays on without you having to worry about it anymore. Combined with my Sith Assassin’s “Force speed” (Movement speed increased by 150% for 2 seconds. abillity it just gives the game that much more speed. I must add also, that the higher level I get the more fast-paced the game becomes. It’s nowhere near as twitchy as WoW yet but it feels good to rush into a fight with a 150% movement speed buff, while being stealthed, and just destroy someone’s face with a double-bladed lightsaber.

The graphics look amazing on a fast computer but they are very plain on a mediocre computer. All the elements are there and there are multiple worlds you can travel to, each one perfectly designed and a very distinctive style as you would expect when visiting a completely different planet. Creature and character design is very cool and well done. Especially when playing on a high-end system the glow from your lightsaber looks awesome on your character and the enviroment around you. It’s too bad that people with a slightly aged system do suffer from poor graphics, I really need to invest in a new PC. Oh well, at least the framerate is good even on a slower system.

A big plus in SWTOR are the “class quests”, each and every class has it’s own diverse and immense “Class quest”. This is a quest line which is made specifically for your class and it really gives your character a meaning. You start feeling more and more like a hero or old war veteran the more you advance your class quest. Because the class quest is so diverse and unique the side quests you can take don’t feel as generic. Sure you have to collect 15 Zabrak heads from time to time but so far the game hasn’t felt like a grind at all.

Another mentionable feature are the Mass Effect style dialogue options and the Dark/Light allingment. Every quest giver you talk to will initiate a cutscene in which you are given 3 answer option, sometimes a conversation option will give you Light or Dark allingment points. For example; an imperial ranger’ arm is stuck underneath a fallen tree. Do you use the force to lift the tree and free your fellow Empire warrior? Or maybe you think that weakness like this deserves to be punished and you lightning shock his ass to death? I think you can figure out which is Light and which is Dark. Both allignments have 5 tiers and every tier makes you look more Evil or more Good. I’m at Dark tier 1 and I must say the visual feedback isn’t that strong… I want to look like a Dark Sith Emperor!

On to my favorite part, the PvP! I am only level 17 as I type this and haven’t PvP’ed that much yet but it looks promising. You can queue up for a “Scenario” (in WoW language: Battleground) from anywhere in the world and within a few minutes you will be invited in. There are a few different game-modes like capture the flag (huttball) and king of the hill, I’m sure there a more but I haven’t seen any yet. The PvP feels good if you know your character a little, it’s not very fast-paced meaning people don’t die very fast. At least you don’t have to pick your fights and you can try to run to your team mates if you see that you are getting owned! I’m playing a Sith Assassin which I think is the class with the most Stuns ever, including a tanking talent tree and as an added bonus: stealth. So basically I’m playing a stun-horny, hard hitting, stealthed tank! When you enter a PvP Scenario you get a “Bolster” buff which increases your stats to that of a level 49 character (max level is 50) but your skills & talents remain your own level, just with a hefty damage boost.

I won’t go into the PvE part now, more about that later when I reach level 50 and have actually done some group stuff. All I can say now is that everyone has a Companion, which is kinda cool but it’s too bad that literally everyone has one. Which also means you will see a lot of döppelgangers walking around. Luckily there are some customization options for your companion so it isn’t all that bad.

All-in-all after having played through only 17 levels on 1 character my first impressions are quite positive. A bit of patience is required at first and you really need to give the a game a chance but when you do it will amaze you. There are still some minor issues but the upcoming 1.2 patch looks very promising and it shows that Bioware really knows their stuff! Thats it for now, if you want to meet up in-game you can add me! I’m playing as a Sith Assassin on the Legions of Lettow (PvP) server and my character name is Seabeast!

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•  Two Worlds 2 – Review •  Torchlight Review •  Minecraft Review! •  Ranting Review – Mass Effect 3: A Fond Farewell •  Ranting Review: Alpha Protocol

Mass Effect 3 is the last game in a space opera series by Bioware. In each game you take the role of Commander Shepard, a customizable hero (or heroine) trying to save the galaxy from the Reapers, a race of gigantic robots who harvest organic civilizations every 50.000 years. What’s special about this series is that you import your savegame, meaning your choices in one game will have an effect on the sequels. This allows you to really make the journey your own. If you haven’t, I recommend playing the first two first before starting up ME3, it really makes a difference.

I’m explaining this because basically if you’ve played the first two and enjoyed them, you’re gonna get this one regardless of anything I’m saying. And Bioware is on record saying that you can enjoy part three without having played the first two. I imagine you could, it’s an enjoyable game if you’re into third person rpg shooters, but to get the full experience you should play the entire trilogy.

Now onto the actual review. Let’s start with graphics. The game looks great, even better then part two, which was already a great looking game. Apparently there are some framerate issues on the PS3 version, but having only played the PC version I can’t really comment on that. There are some small journeys into uncanny valley, especially present when Shepard tries to smile (the horror!) and in the case of Miranda, who was supposedly modeled after Yvonne Strahovski, but didn’t quite make it.

The soundtrack is, in my opinion, the best in the series. The slow sad music hits all the right notes, while the faster music accentuated the action rather well. The combat sounds are the standard bullets flying stuff, and it sounds suitably authentic. Having said this, I admit to never having cared for the direction part two went with the soundtrack.

As for actual gameplay, I’d say it’s largely an improvement. Gone are the two-three weapons you could find in ME2 without buying DLC. Without extra content, there are at least 6 weapons per type (Assault Rifle, Sniper Rifle, Shotgun, Submachine Gun and Handgun) and all can be customized with different kinds of mods. A notable missing element are the heavy weapons which made their debut in the preceding title. As I really enjoyed the heavy weapons I was sad that they took it out. I suppose with the new weight system it might have been the only weapon you could carry around. Like I said  they’ve added a weight system which governs how much weapons you can bring with you without gaining some kind of penalty to power cooldown speed.

Speaking of powers, they too have gotten an upgrade. There are more levels to each power, and you can customize them more. For every upgrade after the third one there are two directions a power can develop in, for example you might enlarge the radius of a power, or you might want to increase the damage.

While there are more armours in the game, I feel as though the customization there has stalled a bit, not exactly offering less, but when put against all of the other improvements it feels exactly the same.

What also feels the same is the combat. They’ve added melee attacks which changes (though not that much) depending on your class which you can charge to deal massive damage. While on the whole it feels streamlined, you can sometimes get stuck in cover when you didn’t want to be, and getting out can be an annoyance. Headshots now feel as though they deal a lot more damage, and there were even some beheadings after a successful hit.
What I do think is a bit misleading is in the naming of the missions. Story missions are marked as priority, while side quests are not. This despite the fact that the side missions can disappear and become uncompletable after certain events, the priority missions don’t go anywhere. If you’re going for a completionist walkthrough, do the sidequests first, before they disappear.

The game employs a Galactic Readiness meter which determines how well prepared you are for the final confrontation with the Reapers. You can increase this by doing missions, or getting a multiplier for it(which degrades over time) from doing multiplayer. Bioware has stated it’s possible to get the best ending without doing the multiplayer, but after doing all of the side-quests and a lot of planet scanning I still didn’t fill the meter and had to resort to multiplayer. It probably is possible, but the planet scanning gets so tedious are a while that I can’t imagine anyone actually doing that.
The planet scanning has changed as well from ME2. Gone is the scrounging for resources. Now the scanning is for War Assets and items for the side quests. Expect a lot of fetch quests, I guess they got a taste for it after making a MMO. First you scan your current solar system for planets with stuff on them. This scanning alerts the reapers and fills their awareness bar. When that bar is full, the reapers come and you have to hightail it out of that system. If you get caught it’s an instant game over. Also, for an indeterminate amount of time that meter stays filled for that system, meaning it’s now virtually off limits.

Storywise it’s damn near perfect. It feels like a proper send off for your Shepard. Everyone that lived makes an appearance and has their one last moment to shine. Some get redemption, some get revenge, all get closure. I’ve even shed some tears at certain points. While the characters may dip into cliché’s at certain points (I’ve heard people say “This is it” about a hundred times) the dialogue is good and the story told in the various story missions is good enough that you won’t want to stop playing.

New characters are also introduced with various amounts of success. Vega may seem like a runaway from MTV’s Jersey Shore, he’s an actual character with depth. Cerberus assassin Kai Leng might have benefitted from some extra exposure, but is handled pretty well. Diana Allers on the other hand is a blight upon the game. Based upon a journalist who got famous for licking a PSP, she’s in the game as some sort of blatant sex appeal thing. Also certain characters seem to have gotten plastic surgery.

Below are some things I rather disliked about the story. While I’m still keeping it rather vague, they still might be considered spoilers. So read at your own risk.

Spoilers
While the first 98% of the story is great, it all goes to hell in the last five minutes. The reapers are given a ridiculous back-story and reasoning, and every choice in both this game and the previous ones are made meaningless. There is a theory going around in the forums that everything after a certain point is a hallucination caused by indoctrination by the Reapers. Never have I been so hopeful that the writers might decide to take the whole “it was just a dream” cop-out.

My advice is simple, don’t let the shit ending ruin what is otherwise a fantastic game. Just don’t go there. After a certain conversation with an old friend you activate the plot device in a cutscene. After that, the floor turns into an elevator and takes you up. At that point, either alt-F4 or turn off your console. Trust me on this one. The game autosaves at that point, so if Bioware decides to fix things with ending DLC you can still do this and play that. Just turn off the game and imagine some great final battle in your head after which everyone lives happily ever after. Or not, depending on your tastes.

End Spoilers

As for the multiplayer, it’s basically horde mode with Mass Effect power schemes. It’s fun, but I doubt people will still be playing it after a year, or be willing to pay 15 dollars/euro’s for a map pack.

All in all, it was a great experience. The game looks good, feels good and gives you a great story to bookend the trilogy. Aside from the fetch quests each quest really adds something to the story and overarching plot. Every sidequest feels essential, which is a big feat considering the Reapers just lit the galaxy on fire. Throughout the story you revisit old familiar places like the citadel and Tuchanka, but you also see homeworlds of the other species. Throughout the game you see how your choices in previous games play out, and it’s satisfying every time.

It’s a great game, it still has faults but can (aside from what I said in the spoilers section) be mostly forgiven for them. I’d recommend getting it, even if only to finish Shepard’s story. It’s been one hell of a ride.

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•  Ranting Review: Alpha Protocol •  Torchlight Review •  Two Worlds 2 – Review •  Dragon Age 2 Demo •  Minecraft Review!

Oh my god man, I love Torchlight. In fact, I love it a little bit too much! This is one of the few games that grabbed me and kind of forced my mind to think of it 24/7 untill I finished it. My girlfriend and I got into a fight over this game. I was brainwashed by this game after I just played it for the first time, I had to stop the session because my girlfriend arrived at my house. We we’re watching a movie and she noticed I was a little bit distracted and not really watching at all. So she asked “What’s the thing you would want to do the most right now?”, my answer: “Playing my new game…” (I invited her over in the first place). Brotip: DO NOT say stuff like that to your girlfriend haha. Understandably, shit hit the fan. It was all good later though, after I explained how awesome this game is.

So how awesome is it?

Awesome.

Why? Pets.

‘Cause you get a cat and stuff! Or a dog… if you like those. I only like these dogs! But seriously, the game is a lot like the famous dungeon crawler Diablo 2. In fact, Runic pretty much “stole” everything of the ever popular Diablo games. Identyfing scroll to “unlock” magic items and Town-portal scrolls are 2 good examples of ideas stolen 1 on 1 from Diablo 2. Still the hack-and-slash style of gameplay and the 1 versus 100 feeling of the game is a success formula. Why change that? Somehow it’s just so fun and addicting of creating a hero, leveling him up and getting better and better gear for him.

A very cool feature, as I mentioned before, it that you get a pet cat. Or dog (not like this one). You can give your cat a name and he will actively fight alongside you. The pets are not over- or underpowered, just a good balance and addition to your own character. The best parts about your cat is that it can cast spells and you get to define what spells! So if you give it a healing spell you have a pocket healer, but give it a AoE damage spell and you have a awesome companion to clear weak little monsters in one blow. Also, and this is insanely handy, you can send your pet to town to sell stuff. It will be gone for about 1 minute but the important part is that you can remain in the dungeon. Infinite dungeon crawling for the win! One last thing. Your pet can eat fishes (which you can fish up). Feeding it a fish transforms it into a monster for a small period of time. It’s awesome!

Let’s talk heroes.

There are 3 classes available in Torchlight. A big burly strong man, a small sneaky magical man and a chick with a shotgun. A.k.a: Destroyer, Alchemist & Vanquisher respectively.

The big burly strong man can wield massive weapons and summon ancestral spirits (which work as passive armor effects) to aid him in battle, there are also mods available (on the interwebs) which allow you to dual-wield 2-handed weapons. Funny, awesome-looking and unfair for the monsters. The Destroyer has a good AoE talent tree (titan) which makes it a very fun class to play.

The sneaky magical man uses lightning magics to kill stuff. He can also summon mechinical golem-like robots and little blue smurf-imps. On my first playthrough I was playing as a Alchemist and I put all my talents into creating insanely strong imps (these talents also benfited my pet cat). Me and my imps sliced through dungeons like a warm knife trough a buttery skull. Fun fact: The summoned imps look like blue galago’s! This class is very fun to play but sometimes feels a little like “The noob class” because it’s so darn powerfull. Summon minions and support them with massive lightening blasts, winning!

Chicks with dicks! Erm.. I mean, chicks with guns! And bows. A women of many skills and talents, with knowledge of (vital) organs. So she can pleasure or kill you quickly! The Vanquisher uses long ranged attacks with her ranged weapons. Unless you decide to play as a rogue, than the gameplay shifts towards killing people things with daggers. A cool feature of the Vanquisher is that she can place traps on the ground. Some with devastating effects like the “Shock Trap”, when stepped upon this creates a massive thunderbolt which jolts through all the enemies near it. Combine this with “Lightening Bomb” (’cause she can throw bombs too) for massive damage. Both of these skills benefit from, and increase, electric damage.

The Plot!

The story is not Torchlight’s strong suit. Ember (which is the essence of magic and can enchant or corrupt anything it comes in contact with) can be mined and sold for lot’s of dough. Or it can be used to attain greatly powerfull magics and if you have enough you might even be able to rule the world with it. “Torchlight” is a small mining town/outpost which sits upon the biggest quantity of Ember ever found. It’s also the name of the game (it really is). Problem with the ember is that it also lures evil beings. So the mine is littered with monsters and such. It also transforms people into twisted and vile creatures, so you encounter some nublets who wen’t into the mines before and failed. Good thing is that you can kill them! So, mining town, lot’s of Ember, corruption and evilness. Of course there is a big boss who is causing it all. He is at the bottom of the mine, shocker! “U has to destroys the evils at it roots!” “Will do.” That’s pretty much all there is to it. Of course you meet alot of people on the way down and it is an enjoyable & simple story to say the least.

Lookie! Lookie! I even took me a polaroid, see?

In other words: Graphics! To be honest, and this opinion has been said by hundreds of people before me, it looks like World of Warcraft. A bit cartoony but not totally childish. At least there is blood and gore! It’s not a mind-blowingly beautifull game but it does look very decent and polished. Maybe they did it on purpose, in order to stand back a little from the Diablo clone calling contest. Anyway, in a game like this gameplay is way more important and the gameplay is rock solid.

It’s good… IT’S GOOD!

Anyone get the Bruce Almighty refence going on here? No? Crap. Anyhow, this is the conclusion. What makes this game so darn good? The variety in levels and dungeons. Everytime you enter a dungeon or anything it will be completely randomized. The intuitive design of the game, the interface is simple so everyone can play it and more seasoned gamers will feel right at home too. The pet companion is also extremely awesome. The fact that there is LOADS of loot in the game (with endless variations), you can make your character stronger and stronger. The talent builds are very diverse and challenge you to experiment with them. So are the classes.

A very cool feature called “Retirement”, once you are done with a character you can choose to retire him/her. Your next character will then have a “heirloom” item of you old character on it and it will get some bonusses to his/her stats aswell. Very nifty and original. You can also fish, there are alot of different fish to catch and to feed to your pets. This will transform it into different monsters too! And there is way more to type here, it’s just a great game (especially for it’s price!) filled with alot of cool gameplay-experiences! You should buy it.

Ratings:
Gameplay Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Controls Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Graphics Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Sounds Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Overall Rating: 4.13 out of 5 stars

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•  Two Worlds 2 – Review •  Ranting Review – Mass Effect 3: A Fond Farewell •  Minecraft Review! •  Dragon Age 2 Demo •  Darkspore – Preview & Gameplay Videos

I've got a funny hat! Woo!

Also mounting an dismounting a horse is a pain sometime ‘cause the mount button is the same as the jump button. My horse gives me weird look when I’m jumping up and down next to it. So I ran the cocky beast of a cliff (I actually did. Not on purpose though… Let’s just say it “slipped”). Another thing which had me puzzled and googling a while is how to use certain skills. For example let’s take the “Shield Bash” skill and how to assign it to a hotkey. ‘Cause that what you do with skills, right? Assign them to a hotkey? Wrong. Some skill (like Shield Bash) don’t have to be / can’t be mapped to a hotkey. It automatically becomes active when you block with your shield. Handy, yet at the same time sometimes frustrating and un-needed. Overall it plays very nice and after a bit of practice you’ll be flying around the game-world like a maniac.

FALCON KICK!

Roar!

Sounds
In all honesty, 9 out of 10, speech dialogues suck. It’s like everyone had their emotions ripped out and can only talk like they are uninterested + the main character is stoned the whole game. Ok that might be a bit exaggerative but still, it could be a lot more lively and dynamic! Two Worlds III needs better voice actors; sign the petition here at Galagogame! The combat and ambient sounds are all there and there all good. The swords go clink-shing! The maces go bof-brack! Fire crackles and wind howls. It’s all good.

Buy it?
If you like the genre; yes you should buy it! You don’t want to miss out on this one. If you do not like the genre I think you will be better off with a game like Dragon Age or Oblivion. Since it’s new and still going for the full price you might want to wait a bit till a price drop for this one. But it’s a very good game, It will amuse you for a lot of hours (straight). As they say in the gaming world: “Amuse me or lose me”, this game does the job.

Ratings:
Graphics Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Controls Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Gameplay Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Sounds Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Visit the official site: Two Worlds II
Here are some more screenshots! Hope you enjoyed reading!

Warrior Skill Tree

Nice depth perception!

Ding! Level up!

More Mummies.

I'm blind!

Inventory

You can swim too.

We've go you surrounded! Come out with your hand up! ---- Fuck you!

Oh hai! I'm a mummy!

We end the review with the starting screen of the game!

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•  Two Worlds II – Enter the Arena •  Two Worlds II – Gameplay Video •  Call of Duty: Black Ops – Crossbow Compilation •  Two Worlds II – Intro •  Torchlight Review

This article is about the latter. I recorded the better fights of the arena (the ones before these are humans vs humans), check out how I square off against a huge spider, a were beast, a champion mage and a big fatty Cyclops. My character is build / specced like a tank, lots of points in vitality and strength. Remember to watch all the video’s in 1080p HD, for your viewing pleasure and so that I don’t spend hours rendering in full HD.

Spider:
This is the first video, in this I kill a huge spider. An easy fight because my sword is too fast for it to recuperate most of the time. Be sure to also watch the dialogue at the end, the arena master and the main character say some funny things.

Werebeast:
Second video! I wasn’t expecting this one because they didn’t say what I was up against before entering the arena. It’s a fast and annoying Were Beast. If it would’ve fought me man to were-man the fight would have taken half of the time!

Champion Mage:
The third video, another easy fight! Me versus a Champion Mage, don’t know why he was the champion because I kicked his ass with ease. Most of the opponents in-game can’t beat the speed of my sword. When he got to around half his HP he started spewing some fire around, crazy old pyromaniac! Still I doused this fire.

Cyclops:
Last but not least the fourth video. This fight was actually very hard, and in all honesty this video was the third take. The first two tries this thing annihilated me! I had to block every one of his blows with my shield or else he would be able to stun me and kill me in one combo. Luckily my character is a tank and can block without taking too much damage (hardly any at all). So this fat ugly Cyclops also fell to my blade and with that I became the Champion of the arena.

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•  Two Worlds 2 – Review •  Two Worlds II – Gameplay Video •  Call of Duty: Black Ops – Crossbow Compilation •  Two Worlds II – Intro •  Minecraft – Check out my Crib!

To be honest I wasn’t expecting a lot from this game. The first part wasn’t all that, and there is not a lot of positive attention. And I can see why. I mean, the game is good! Thumbs up to the creators! It’s just not as good as say… Dragon Age or a lot of other games in the same genre. It starts off quite slow and tedious and you really need to give the game a chance at first. The graphics are stunning and the fighting animations rock! And on the other hands the speech dialogues suck! The main-character talks like he’s high as a kite, very monotonous and he tends to repeat himself a lot.

Overall it’s a very enjoyable game if you don’t expect too much. As I said earlier the graphics a very good and I can’t wait to fight some more impressive, bigger monsters! In the video I am doing a quest to deliver a severed head from one grave keeper to another. It turns out the one whom I needed to deliver it too has a basement full of zombies. So I killed them all! I am playing as a “tank” character, sword and board!

Please view it in 1080p HD!

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•  Two Worlds II – Enter the Arena •  Two Worlds 2 – Review •  Numen: Contest of Heroes: Gameplay Video •  Two Worlds II – Intro •  Worms Reloaded: Gameplay Video

Being an avid Call of Duty player and having 125+ hours on both of the Modern Warfare games, solely played on multiplayer, I think I am eligible to write an comparisment of Black Ops and Modern Warfare 2.
So here we go:

First things first
The first thing I want to note is that Black Ops is no Modern Warfare 3! There are some big differences which change the gameplay dynamics intensively. The biggest difference (which is also the thing you will notice first) is that it takes a lot more bullets to kill someone. Where as in Modern Warfare 2 you could frag someone with one 3-shot burst from an assault rifle (taking in account you have stopping power and are not 4 miles away) there is no way you can do something like that in Black Ops. It takes at least 2 bursts, if not 3. Big difference!

Controls & mechanics
The gameplay mechanics (controls) are pretty much unchanged. You can still sprint, throw frag grenades, throw flash-bangs, crouch, prone, jump all of that. A new feature however is that you can now jump, or more like leap, to the ground. When you hit your “prone” button while sprinting you will jump forward onto your belly. This a very funny new feature! You can use to jump over small fences and obstacles, experiment with it! Too bad that you cannot shoot while you leap!

Yay equipment!
Another new feature is a thing called “Equipment”. This is an extra slot in your character load-out and is also controlled with an extra key (Default is “X”). Claymore, which used to (in Modern Warfare 2) be a replacement for grenades is now filed under Equipment. So you can have a claymore AND grenades! Cool huh? The camera spike, Motion detector, Radar Jammer etc. are also equipment’s you can use.

Where are the bragging rights?
In Modern Warfare 2 you could earn titles and emblems, this is gone in Black Ops. Instead of that there is an option to buy a background for your player tag and you can create your own emblems in-game now. You buy layers, shapes and stencils for your emblem which you can then color, rotate, enlarge/make smaller etc. I am currently rocking a smiley face with bright red eyes on a tiger stripe background player tag. The bragging rights are bit gone now, so that’s a pity. You can still complete challenges just like in Modern Warfare 2 though, you just don’t get titles and emblems for them anymore (only XP).

Weaponry!
Let’s talk guns! In Modern Warfare you got new weapons when you reached a certain level, you instantly had that weapon and to unlock extra attachments like the red-dot sight or mounted grenade launcher you had to make kills with that weapon. In Black Ops it’s entirely different. In Black Ops you have to reach a certain level to “unlock” a gun. You don’t get that gun immediately. The only thing that happens is that you unlock the weapon for purchase with you COD points (you earn COD points by playing online matches, more on that later in the article). The same goes for the attachments, you buy them! This of course has it’s ups and downs. You can buy all the attachments you want and don’t have to spent a lot of time unlocking them first. The downside is that everyone can do the same and that it’s not really much of a challenge anymore to get all of a weapons attachments. I liked to complete weapons one-by-one in Modern Warfare, that feature is now gone!

Click on the image to enlarge!

Killstreaks & Perks
Oh my word! The killstreaks in Black Ops are way more fun than in Modern Warfare! Of course nothing can beat nuking down your enemy’s but calling in attack dogs or chasing them with an RC-XD does come close! You still have your general, Spy Plane, Airstrikes and Care Package but the majority of the killstreaks are new and original! That can’t be said for the Perks though. All of the perks are re-used from either Modern Warfare 1 or 2, pity and a missed chance I say! Still the perks are there and they work so why chance too much, eh?

Fun fact: In Black Ops you can change your reticle shape and color! As well as buy camouflages for your guns without farming hundreds of headshots!

Call Of Duty Points
COD Points, new in Black Ops! This is an in-game currency used to buy weapons, face paint, weapons attachments, new grenade type’s, equipment and many more! You get COD points by playing Ranked Matches, making kills and completing contracts. You do not earn COD points for completing challenges! This feature is very cool because it also sprung life to a new game-mode; Wager Matches. In a Wager Match you bet some of you COD points against other players. Usually it’s a 500 point buy-in to get into a game. There are different game-modes inside of Wager Match. The coolest one in my opinion is where everyone starts off with a revolver and each time you get a kill you advance a weapon tier. 20 tiers, first one to 20 wins. You get to play with all kinds of weapons, from tiny guns to rocket launches to sniper rifles! The winner takes it all, the losers get nothing. Ok, 2nd and 3rd also get some points. It just sounds cool! “The winner takes it all!”

Beware of the small print
Contracts are a new form of challenge in Black Ops compared to Modern Warfare 2. They are basically just like challenges in Modern Warfare 2 only you choose them yourself. You select the contract you want, for example “get 25 kills with the Python in under 40 minutes of alive game-time.” When you select it you have to pay a sort of down-payment which you will lose if you don’t complete the contract on time. If you complete the contract in time you get you down-payment back + a hefty bonus! Some of the more harder contract also reward in XP!

Yep, you are dead.

Sniper maps? Please? Hello?
Map sizes in Black Ops are about the same size as they were in Modern Warfare 2. Although they feel a little bit smaller sometimes. A real sniper map like “Wasteland” of Modern Warfare 2 is no longer present. I hope someday Treyarch will release a map-pack with BIGGER maps so we can SNIPE! Oh yeah by the way, the rumor that you can no longer quick-scope is Black Ops is bullshit. You can still quick-scope just as good.

The graphics
Graphics wise there are a lot of people complaining that Black Ops looks less good than Modern Warfare 2. Those people play FPS games on a PS3 and should shut up. Just kidding, but the majority who say this do play on the PS3. Now I couldn’t tell you if this is true or not ‘cause I’m a gameplay over graphics kind off guy. So I don’t give a crap about the graphics being a little less impressive. I can kill people. It looks good. It looks the same as Modern Warfare 2. I can kill people. Period.

Buy it. Now.
All in all we can say that Black Ops is a bit different to what we we’re used to but it’s still a kickass new game. Is it better than Modern Warfare 2? It’s to early to say that now, speak to me when I pump 100 more hours into the game. I think you should buy it if you are into online FPS games. Click here to view 4 reasons why you should.

Check out this stuff too!

•  Black Ops – Multiplayer Gameplay PC •  Call of Duty: Black Ops – Crossbow Compilation •  Modern Warfare 2: Spoof Video •  CoD: Black Ops! Unboxing video! •  CoD: Black Ops – Multi kill!

Very enjoyable. Especially if you are bored and looking for some quick casual fun.  Swarm Arena has 3 different game-modes; “Score Challenge”, “Battle Game” and “Sandbox”. But Sandbox isn’t really a game-mode, just a field where you can test out the different power ups and see how many drones your computer can handle.

Score Challenge is a game-mode that starts out very (very) slow-paced and also has an easy difficulty at first. It takes some time to pick up speed and gets more and more interesting over time. When you are about 5 minutes in the difficulty increases a lot. You get more opponents simultaneously and they have more drones (drones are the green/orange/purple/etc. little flares. In the later stage’s of Score Challenge the enemies get shields and other power-ups! Score Challenge also features an Online Leaderboard.

Battle Game is where you can face-off against A.I. or other players in 1-on-1 combat. This is very fun and fast-paced, though I even played against the A.I.’s it was still pretty awesome! Battling other players would be very cool. An interesting thing to note is that one of the A.I.’s, called Pandora, can be trained by fighting her. She will learn from her mistakes and keep getting better.

Overall it’s a very nice game. I would recommend setting the controls to “Mouse” instead of keyboard to heighten the pace of the game a bit! Drawbacks are that it gets repetitive very quick because there are only 3-4 types of opponents and only 2 different power-ups. Still, very pretty and polished game!

• Gameplay Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
• Controls Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
• Graphics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
• Overall Rating: 3.33 out of 5 stars

Check out this stuff too!

•  Plants vs Zombies: Review and Videos •  Two Worlds II – Enter the Arena •  Two Worlds 2 – Review •  Alien Swarm – Kickass Gameplay Video •  Review: Plain Sight

What is it?
Let’s start by quoting the creator of the game (a dude called “Notch”) about what Minecraft is about: “Minecraft is a game about putting blocks in place while running away from skeletons,  or something like that”. So as you may guess its hard to describe what Minecraft really is about if even the creator can’t give a distinct description. I am going to try my best to do it though!

What does it look like (Graphics):
If “Dig Dug” and “Runescape” had a baby, put it up for adoption and if “Half Life 2″ together with “Garry’s Mod” adopted and raised the child you would get Minecraft! Check out the screenshots underneath to see for yourself but the graphics are very much like enlarged pixel blocks (cubes, really). Its a very old-skool style (think; NES), I like it a lot but I guess there are people who will absolutely hate it. Its a matter of taste really. Some people compare playing Minecraft with playing with Lego because the cubes and building system is a tat like it. A big plus of having simple looking graphics is that the game file is very small and you will be able to play it on practically any computer! Another cool feature is you can play Minecraft inside your browser! You will have to login and play inside your browser once to unlock the game for offline use though. Darn pirates!

The World:
When you start a new game a world is randomly generated in one of the following styles; Artic, Plain/Grass or Sahara. More styles will probably be added in the future but it is unclear for now as the game is still in Alpha mode. The generated world’s are always very lush! Complete with lakes, tree’s, animals, monsters, mountains, snow, sand, stone hills, cliffs, recourses, caverns etcetera etcetera. Minecraft also features a very dynamic and easy on the eye lighting system (including a very impressive day and night cycle). For example; if you start digging a mine and you go deep you will have to find some coal underground and combine that with a stick, you can get a stick by cutting down a tree and processing the wood, in order to make a torch. Because you won’t see jack shit if you mine too deep, especially at night!

Anyways, let’s talk about the graphics some more. As I said before the whole game is made up from big pixel-like blocks. And in those blocks the pixels are very prominent again. So it’s like you are playing a NES game but then with better controls and way (way) more possibilities. The game is strictly first-person and you only see your tool/weapon. Funny feature is that you do actually get to see the tools and weapons you create in your hand when you play (like a weapon in most FPS games). So you do get to see that Diamond Pickaxe in action! The only way to see your character and equipment is to press the inventory button (I) or to board a boat or mine-cart you made.

Purpose of the game: The Quest:
Its a sandbox game. There is no quest! I lied! Only if you coun’t surviving the first night as a quest. Or to building a diamond castle. Or creating a interactive dungeon with 4091 trap doors. But seriously, there are no real game-modes at the moment so there is no real objective or quest aswell. Minecraft Classic did have some game modes like surival where you’d get points for killing monsters and of course there are plans to include game-modes in the Alpha version (infdev) of Minecraft but as of now the only “quest” there will be is made up by your own creativity. More modes will be added later which add some more meaning to the game like: Zombie Castle Wars, Survival, Cave Adventure and such (these names are not official and could differ a bit from what really get added though, its in Alpha mode after all).

Crafting:
As the name of game itself implies (mineCRAFT) its a crafting game. And thats what you do in Minecraft, craft. How do you craft things you ask? Well it’s easy! Let’s say you want to craft a…. wooden door! First you will have to break down (or chop, if you have an axe) a tree! Every cube of the tree that you break down will give you a few tree logs in your inventory. The inventory is, just like the rest of the game, made up of cubes (a grid with spaces you put stuff in). You can store 64 tree logs in 1 inventory cube. The inventory has 27 cubes, and you can hold 9 things in you hand/arsenal with that. So in total you could carry 2304 tree logs, good luck with getting that many though, will take a while!

Click on the image to view tutorial!

Anyways back to creating that wooden door!  So you have some wooden logs, now its time to process them, this is done by placing them into the standard 2×2 crafting grid you have in your inventory. Wooden logs are made into wood blocks by just placing 1 wooden log into any place of the 2×2 crafting grid, then you get to see the outcome of your crafting in the cube left of the crafting grid. Easiest way to get a lot of wooden blocks (or of anything you craft for that matter) is to place a big stack of wooden logs in the crafting grid and then keep on clicking the right-mouse button on the outcome cube. 1 wooden log gives you 4 wood blocks. We will need 6 wood blocks to make door!

And another very important thing we will need is a bigger crafting grid! Probably the most essential object in the game is the 3×3 crafting grid box! You make it by placing 1 wood block in all of the 2×2 crafting grid cubes. Then equip the item (the “Workbench” cube) you get in your hand and place it into the world by clicking the right-mouse button! The right-click it again to access the 3×3 crafting grid! Easy right? We are not done yet. It sounds harder then it is, trust me. Even I can do it! Yoink!

Now that we have our 3×3 crafting grid its time to place some more wood blocks in there. To get a wooden door you need to place wood blocks in the left-top, left-mid, left-bottom and mid-top, mid-mid, mid-bottom cubes of the 3×3 crafting grid. You will see that the outcome will be a wooden door! Pfew! Look at all those images and text I had to type to explain how to make simple wooden door. This is how elaborate the crafting system of Minecraft is, there are ALOT of different things to make. Check out the Minecraft wiki page to view all the recipes and get crafting! Its awesome.

Multiplayer:
Minecraft has multiplayer! And it is awesome! We at Galagogame are having a blast creating castles, mines and underground tree parks together. Its in a very early stage of beta at the moment though, but all will get better with newer versions of the game! Some things do not word at the moment, like monsters which are invurnable at the moment. And player damage which doesn’t work sometimes, and just a few more general bugs. This will all be fixed in the future though and then this game will be extremely awesome online! I predict it will be what Garry’s Mod never really was, the ultimate sandbox game! Minecraft is easier to learn and operate than Garry’s Mod and its way easier to build cool structure’s like rollercoasters (yes, you can build rollercoasters in Minecraft) and theme parks.

Controls:
The controls are very easy. Its basically an Half Life 2 mod so its just the standard W A S D to move, and the rest of the functions are mostly done with just the left- and right mouse-button. It feels very nice to play and you are able to move through the world very smoothly! Sometimes you can get a bit lost though on how to use a certain item or tool, it took me 15 minutes to figure out how to eat. Turns out I was trying to force feed my character a wooden bowl (it looked like it had food in it!). But after that I grilled some pork meat and found out that you just have to equip it in your hand and press right-mouse to eat!

Overall conclusion:
I really, really like this game! And I predict good things for its future. At the moment its only 10 dollars and on release it will be 20 dollars. Its definitely worth it’s price. You will spend hours on hours in this game building houses and stuff!

Gameplay Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Controls Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Graphics Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars < this is a bit personal though!
Overall Rating: 4.67 out of 5 stars

Check out this stuff too!

•  Minecraft – Check out my Crib! •  Minecraft – ON CRACK! •  Minecraft – World Sneak Peak •  Torchlight Review •  Two Worlds II – Enter the Arena

Originality:

Another one is that only waterplants can be planted in the pool (duh) but you can plant waterlily’s on the pool which enables you to plant normal plants on top of them. Its pretty fun! There is also a weird guy called “Crazy Dave”, I won’t go in detail on this you’ll have to check it out for yourself! No spoilers here!

Controls:

The controls are as simple as can be. You only need to use your mouse to click on seeds and plant them. Along with various other things like picking up sunlight and coins. I think the game could have been better if they had included a hotkey function thus allowing you to plant faster and allowing the game to spawn zombies faster. Getting a bit more action in there.

Graphics:

Not much to say here, it looks good and polished. The zombies are sometimes hilarious and the plants look like they have real personality. Interesting concept really. Plants are cool and have character and personality (a red pepper looks real angry for example) and zombies are dumb and all look pretty much the same, they only become cool if they wear weird outfits or something. But back to the point! Its 2D, not that hard to get it too look good.

Sound:

Nothing really too special here. Although the background music has been stuck in my head for 3 days now. I can’t stop whistling it, its so jolly. The zombies say “brains” a lot in a few different funny squeaky voices. There is a correct sound for everything that happens in the game, its just all there. Some zombies make a distinct sound before they even enter your vision of your yard so you can react to that with a counter plant. A “jack-in-the-box” zombie makes a tingling sound with his box before you even see him, but you know he is coming so you can pop a squash in his way or something.

Well? What are you going to do?

Buy it?
To be honest despite all the different plants and zombies its still a bit repetitive, especially when you start a new level. It takes some time to build up speed each level. Because you need to plant sun giving plants in order to grow offensive plants. And seeing you start with only 50 sunlight (which is enough for only 1 sunflower) it takes some time to build a nice plant-base every level.

But overall I would say… yes definitely get it! It costs like 10 euro’s, and this is a very good game for that price. You get a long and intense “story” mode and when you are finished with that you can dive into the mini-games section. Combined with the humour this game offers (Micheal Jackson zombies ftw) its very reasonable priced and not a waste of your time! Buy it!

Ratings:

• Gameplay Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
• Controls Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
• Graphics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
• Sound Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
• Overall Rating: 4.13 out of 5 stars

Check out this stuff too!

•  Minecraft Review! •  Darkspore – Preview & Gameplay Videos •  Review: Plain Sight •  Torchlight Review •  Minecraft – ON CRACK!