• All 5 character classes – Barbarian, Witch Doctor, Wizard, Monk, Demon Hunter
• Tristram Cathedral – Everyone remembers Skeleton King Leoric right? I think he even made an appearance in DotA.
• Followers – Only some of them, but still helpful if you have no friends.
• Randomization – They listed this as a feature, but I suspect it’d be harder NOT to randomize just for the Beta.
• Items – Gems, Charms, and Runestones included.

I’ve been going crazy over every released preview of this game, so if you haven’t looked at gameplay trailers, check them out. In addition, Blizzard shed some light on the new Auction House that would be available in the third iteration:

• Just what it sounds like – Kind of works like the one in World of Warcraft.
• Search functionality – Sorting by multiple columns and the ability to search for multiple characters on the same account. Both of these features sound awesome.
• Pay with or make cold, hard cash – You can also pay or sell for real money. There is a transaction fee involved for the seller, but they can have the proceeds directly deposited into a “third-party payment service”.
• The Old Fashioned Way – You can still do direct character to character transfers. The way me and my friends did it: Drop mountains of stuff into piles and let an unspecified deity sort it out.
• Blizzard is not evil – Blizzard isn’t going to mess with supply and demand. This will be a player-driven economy.
• Sell from your account – That means you can sell from any of your characters on the same account or from the shared stash without having to log out, which is annoying and also affords you an opportunity to stop playing the game.

Personally, I won’t be paying real life money for items, but the Auction House sounds like a much better way to get a Stone of Jordan. And since both the real and fake money Auction Houses are completely optional, I can even forget the Auction House exists and play it like Diablo II, which is still an awesome thing. Now for the hardest decision of all: Which class should I play first?

The gameplay is really simple: Try to get a certain number or combination of food items on a square-based board without running into the monsters or letting the monsters eat too many of the food items. The game is turn based, and for every step you take, the monsters move in the exact opposite direction. That’s all the mechanics of the game, aside from the special items you can get that throw some twists into the mix. For example, there are chili peppers that can eliminate a monster, or a watch that lets you take an extra turn. Though these seem beneficial at first, the special items actually add difficulty to the puzzle as a move in the wrong direction, even if it’s a free move, can mean you end up in an unsolvable state.

Leggo my apples!

Add the fact that there is a perfect score you can obtain in each stage – and there are 100 stages – and puzzle perfectionists should be occupied for hours. Admittedly, the game was too easy at first. I had a perfect score in 100% of the earlier levels, but as special items are introduced, it became much harder to keep track of everything on the board and I had to give up on getting the perfect score for every level. Luckily, the game lends itself to trial and error if you do get stuck, and Turbo mode is a convenient feature to help the play move along a little faster.

What’s even better about Munchies is that “the story of Munchies’ Lunch was inspired by a real family’s journey from their home caught up in civil war. Even though the game is about collecting fruit for the Munchie kids and avoiding monsters, ultimately it’s about love.”  Whose real life story is this? None other than Footloose Games’ President, Vlado Jokic. His family escaped the civil war in Yugoslavia and eventually inspired this game. The short vignettes in between the levels illustrate a journey in which the father always somehow manages to get captured or separated, leaving the brave mother to face monsters in order to obtain food for her children. Though the art style and animation are done in a cartoony fashion, something about the expressions and art direction added a hint of darkness and seriousness to the whole thing. It wasn’t exactly what kept me playing, but I certainly did want to see more of the story and wished it had even more cutscenes.

The sound and musical score in the game is well done and fairly catchy, as expected from games in this genre. The art and animation, though good, doesn’t quite live up to games like Critter Crunch, but you certainly won’t be complaining either. If monsters are threatening you from two squares away, they will be menacing, and when the monsters eat a jalapeno pepper, they will get burnt in an amusing fashion.

The journey takes the family through a variety of environments.

Perhaps the most (and only) disappointing thing about Munchies is that it’s not on a mobile platform. The game seems to be primed for it with its turn based style and the ease and speed with which a player can hop in and finish a few puzzles at any time. Footloose tells us they are in the midst of porting it for Mac and iPad, so hopefully portable ports won’t be far behind!

Munchies’ Lunch may not be a Triple A blockbuster hit, but it certainly shows that good game design can come in small packages.

Video games based on movies often times get a bad rap.  They tend to be nothing more than a cash grab that release alongside its movie counterpart and are marked at full price, making them very difficult to swallow.  There have been exceptions of course, such as Toy Story 3: the Game and Peter Jackson’s King Kong.  But what about games based on movies that are more than a decade old?  TellTale Games, creators of the Sam and Max series, challenges the negative stigma attached to movie based games with Back to the Future: the Game.

If you’ve ever played a TellTale title before, you know that they are big fans of episodic content.  What this means is that instead of buying the game and playing through it all in one go, they break it down into smaller pieces.  For example, I paid $25 for Back to the Future: the Game on Steam, and I am given access to all of the episodes as they are released.  Episode 3 is the latest instalment that you can play through, and it’s imperative that you start right from the beginning with Episode 1 to get the full enjoyment out of the game.  This review is for Episode 2: Get Tannen! specifically.

Since Back to the Future: the Game is an adventure story-based game (much like the adventure games of yesteryear, such as King’s Quest and Space Quest), it’s difficult to go into specifics without spoiling much of the story.  You take control of Marty in the year 1986 and solve puzzles to progress.  You frequently interact with other characters like Einstein the dog and Emett Brown, who aid you along the way.  If there’s one thing that I absolutely love in an adventure game, it’s a skull cracking puzzle that stumps me for days.  I love the satisfying feeling of solving something difficult, and unfortunately Back to the Future: the Game never provided me with this experience.  Not once.  In fact, I rarely ever had to consult the hint menu in Episode 2.  None of the episodes are very long in length and will take you anywhere from two to four hours to complete them.  Episode 1 took me exactly 3 hours from start to finish, which may leave some players miffed.

All of the voice acting is top notch and nothing feels out of place.  Doc Brown is voiced by Christopher Lloyd and  while they couldn’t get  Michael J. Fox to return as Marty McFly, A.J. Locascio does an amazing job.  Many familiar characters from the movies pop in throughout the story, including the obnoxious Biff Tannen who once again makes trouble for Marty.  All of the environments and characters have a bit of a cartoony feel to them, but it never feels juvenile.  On the contrary, you’re put in some life threatening situations along the way that involve explosives, guns and other nasty business.  Sadly, you can’t actually die in the game, unlike the King’s Quest series from the early 80s.  I think this is a detriment because it removes some of the challenge from the game, but I can understand the reasons behind this decision.  The game is very forgiving if you need a while to figure something out and doesn’t rush you along.

In any case, the challenge just isn’t here.  It’s a very entertaining story with nice visuals and a superb voice cast, but if you want an adventure game that you can really sink your teeth into, try Kaptain Brawe: a Brawe New World.  However, Back to the Future: the Game is definitely worth your money and time, especially if you are a fan of the movies.  TellTale Games does a terrific job of pushing the “all movie games suck” to the side and lets players just enjoy living in the past (literally) for a little while.  I eagerly anticipate the arrival of Episode 4: Double Visions and TellTale Game’s next trip down memory lane with Jurassic Park: the Game this fall.

There are actually significant improvements to the gameplay, depending on what kind of games you like to play. The combat is much more of an action style game, especially for console, where you have to button mash normal attacks. Characters never just walk up to their targets to attack. They will jump, charge, roll, or do something else equally dramatic and the end result is that the combat feels very cool and dynamic. However, it still plays like MMOs such as World of Warcraft, RIFT, or DC Universe Online, except that you can pause the combat and take control of different characters in order to get more strategic control. On PC, you can move your character using the WSAD keys, or by pointing and clicking, or by holding both mouse buttons down, which is the way I’m used to navigating in WoW. Removed from this game is the bird’s eye camera that would truly give you a strategic sense of the battlefield, but I didn’t miss it too much.

Questing was made much simpler with quest markers. People with quests will have an exclamation mark above their heads while people or things relevant to a quest in your Journal will have some arrows pointing to it. This new “feature”, so prominent in other games, is actually an unwelcome change. Sure, it’s great that the game is easier to play, and I’ve always been a big believer in making things easier to play, but I found myself just mindlessly following the markers instead of taking the time to know my environments and talk to every NPC in the city. Instead of picking the quests I felt were urgent, I would just go to the areas with the most quests to complete. It’s not that exploration isn’t rewarded, but it is to a lesser extent than the first game. The first game was more immersive simply because it forced you to figure out things on your own, and I prefer immersion in my single player RPGs.

The Tactics system, borrowed from Final Fantasy XII, remains intact. This is usually a boon and for most of the game you just let your NPCs do their thing, but there are occasionally hard battles where you must turn these off and control things on your own. There’s no easy way to disable all the Tactics, but that’s a minor complaint. I enjoy the Tactics system and how it just keeps the game flowing when you don’t need to micromanage things.

Dragon Age II keeps the Enchantment system from the last game, where you place runes that you find into weapons and armour in order to increase their effectiveness. It also introduces a crafting system, where you can find different sources of materials throughout the world and then craft potions, bombs, poisons, or runes from them. You’ll have to discover the recipes for them, too. Unlike the last game, you can’t recover the runes from your equipment, and you have to destroy them by slotting a new rune. Even though that improves the enchantment system, the crafting system feels unfinished. The crafting table just becomes another store. Discovering the materials are a way to reward you for exploring, but it’s too shallow and straightforward to be enjoyable, and not quite involved enough to be annoying. So in the end, the items are useful, but the system is like that wallflower at the high school dance: It’s just kind of there.

The skill trees are a bit more interesting this time around, with each tree being a graph of different dependencies. Once again you’ll get two specialization points to spend in two of the three specializations you can get for each class. Each of the Warrior, Rogue, and Mage classes had 6 skill trees plus 3 specializations, so you can actually get fairly diverse characters even within the same class. The spells and skills look really cool, too. Every spell is a joy to use because of the magnificent effects that happen, such as encasing someone in rock with Petrify, or spraying an arc of ice with Cone of Cold.

The Stamina and Mode systems are kept from the last game, so if you choose to turn on helpful Modes, it will reserve a portion of your Stamina or Mana that you would otherwise use on skills or spells. This is an interesting trade off and definitely affects your gear decisions and decisions about which skills to pick up.

The equipment management interface underwent an upgrade as you have the option not to show your helmet, and now things are sorted into five helpful categories: Weapons and Shields, Armour, Trinkets/Belts, Consumables, and Junk. Looting everything from a container or corpse is now bound to a hotkey, making looting a smooth experience. However, you can no longer choose what armour your party members wear. Though you have full control over your own gear, you can only choose weapons, shields, necklace, belt, and two rings for your other characters. In place of choosing what armour they wear, you are forced to find up to five upgrade slots for their armours, usually by going through their individual story quests. I don’t really understand why BioWare chose to do it this way, but it means that most of the torso armour, helmets, boots, and gloves you find are garbage to be sold as they will not be for your class. Upgrading the equipment of my party is one of the joys of playing RPGs, so in this particular aspect Dragon Age II is only a quarter of what nearly every other RPG delivers.

Perhaps the most important system of all to any BioWare game is the Friendship system. This is equivalent to the Paragon system in the Mass Effect franchise, and appeared in some form in Neverwinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic, and everything significant BioWare has made dating back to Baldur’s Gate. After all, what is awesome about BioWare games are the choices you have to make and how other people will like or dislike you for them. If you become friends or rivals with different party members in Dragon Age II, they will gain an extra skill. For example, if you are friends with Aveline, the protective warrior, she will start taking a portion of your damage in your stead. Being friends or rivals will also have massive implications at certain points in the game, but I can’t discuss it too much without spoiling the story.

The game centers primarily around space-pirate Grayson Hunt and his brother-in-arms Ishi, as they attempt to escape from the ruined paradise resort world of Stygia. After warping out of deep space and coming upon the flagship of the General that betrayed them, The Ulysses, Grayson makes a drunken kamikaze attack on the ship, essentially punching the most advanced Warbird in the galaxy in the face. While his ship is nearly destroyed and goes plummeting onto the surface of a strange alien world, the Ulysses is also wrecked, and both ships crash a few miles apart. Grayson then attempts to not only exact his revenge on the general, but get himself and Ishi off the world as well.

The gameplay consists of lots of standard shooter fare with a ton of added kicks in the form of “skillshots”. These skillshots range from something as simple as a headshot (25 points) to something zanier, like kicking someone into electric cables (50 points) or shooting them in the groin, then blowing their head off as they writhe in pain (gleefully named “Mercy” and rewarding 100 points). There are a litany of over 100 skillshots, and every new weapon added into your arsenal further increases the number of creative ways you can destroy and maim those around you. A “leash”, which you discover fairly quickly in the game, is a module that attaches to your hand and displays both skillshot information and your ammo. It ties in with the various dead-drops you discover in the game. These dead-drops are where you cash in the points you make with your kills to unlock new weapons and ammo. In the context of the story, these were left here by a previous military campaign, and (in a delightfully Darwinian twist) were designed specifically so only the good soldiers would receive more ammo or better weapons.

There are a large number of set encounters: Big, crazy scripted battles where you are up against an unusual enemy or have a super powered weapon for a short amount of time. The game plays out nicely, moving at a breakneck pace from caves to trains to cliffs to villages to cities, propelling you through an amazing number of creative, vibrant, and stunning levels. This is one of the things I enjoyed the most as this is a departure from other shooters. Each level looks beautifully detailed, from the massive vistas near a gigantic dam, to the beautiful sci-fi skyscrapers, and crazy, The Fifth Element-headbutts-Bioshock design, to many of the more civilized parts of the city. The natural flora and fauna of Stygia are just as wide ranging and vivid, from electro-flies to huge man-eating Venus fly traps, and hilarious pods called Noms that, when kicked at an enemy, latch onto their heads and start chewing headcrab-style. That’s only a taste of the enemies you encounter on this murder paradise.

The game controls are tight and easy to pick up, and they at least use the matching buttons when giving you quick time events, such as shoot when you need to shoot in the sequence. One button activates the leash, and holding it down fires a “thumper” that launches all enemies caught in the area into the air, making them easy pickings. The artificial intelligence (AI) of your allies is competent enough, and invincible to the point where you usually don’t have to worry about them. The enemy AI is akin to Left 4 Dead, in which melee enemies swarm you, and regular shooter fare by using cover to advance into a confetti of bullets raining down on them.

The game is accompanied by a suitable soundtrack of loud, action movie fanfare, and squishy, gooey, gorey sounds whenever you land a good kill. The weapons have a great, loud kick to them and the charge shots that come with each weapon sound devastating and brutal. The dialogue is ridiculous and offensive, and delightfully colourful. The visuals mix perfectly with the audio, providing graphically sound and satisfying character models, level design, and effects. Explosions in particular look bright and powerful, streaming off like fireworks from their origin.

The multiplayer and “echo” segments, both of which involves replaying single player levels or edited maps, have some enjoyable times to be had, and it’ll keep your interest for a while as you attempt to get three stars on various challenges. But aside from that, it’s a straightforward multiplayer component, with the cooperative “Horde” mode (like swarm or wave cooperative modes in other shooters) adding a more diverse element.

Bulletstorm is raw and distilled fun for a mature audience. If you love cheesy sci-fi pulp and over-the-top machismo, mixed in with a vibrant, straightforward shooter, this is a game to add to your collection.

I hope you didn’t hang your hat on this one, though, because it would be on the floor, dirty, and trampled by visitors or eaten by a dog. In some ways, M:tGT is everything you’d expect. It’s a turn-based tactics game where you move your avatar and other creatures around the square-based board. The goal is to destroy the other Planeswalker (in other words, a wizard) and their army before they destroy you. This is accomplished through building a spellbook made of various creatures that can be summoned or spells that can be cast. Spells vary from direct attack spells, such as Lightning Bolt, to things that may boost your creatures. The mechanics of the gameplay are quite simple: Each round your maximum mana goes up by one, and the colour of the mana is determined by the composition of your deck. So for example, if your deck has 80% red cards, then you have an 80% chance of getting one extra red mana each round. Your mana fills up to the maximum in each colour every round, so at least that is a clever way around the “mana screw” problem that frustrates all Magic players. Then, in a turn order determined by the initiative of the creatures, you get to use their abilities and move or move and attack. Moving, whether it ends in an attack or not, will always end the current piece’s turn. When it’s a Planeswalker’s turn, they can cast a spell that they have available (you start with five and you get one new one from your spellbook every round) and have mana for, and then move/attack. As with many tactics type games, flanking will deal bonus damage and there are random critical hits. If a creature hasn’t died from being attacked, it will perform a full counter attack.

I believe I ordered the large djinn.

That is it. Everything else is covered by the statistics of the creatures, such as movement or attack strength, or the abilities on the cards. There is a decent variety of abilities, but it still ends up feeling like there is not a lot of choice in the colours you’re playing. You’re given a very basic two colour deck to start with, and you can go through the tutorial section and the first campaign, which consists of five missions, for free. After that, each of the four extra five mission campaigns costs $5 USD, which is actually not terrible value in terms of length even if the gameplay never gets more interesting. The plot of the campaigns is very bland. The narrator does an okay job but the plot might as well not be there. What is interesting though is that you get experience for each mission and eventually when you get enough levels, you get some talent points to spend on talent trees. For example, a talent that made my creatures stronger when the enemy Planeswalker was below 50% health influenced how aggressive I would be with my creatures and who they would target. Completing a campaign will also unlock the Daily missions for that campaign, each of which reward you 2 gold and some paltry experience.

You can use gold to buy into tournaments, so it seems like you can play this game for free and forever. Technically, you don’t have to spend a single penny. You can just do the Daily mission from the free campaign every day, and then every fifteen days or so you can enter a single tournament. You’ll probably be bored to tears way before you can get into your first tournament at that rate though, so you’ll likely have to plop down at least the $20 USD for the campaigns and then a bucket load of time every day in order to earn enough gold to free ride your way through. If you place in the prize positions in the tournament then you may luck out and get a card worth selling on the Auction House for some more gold to fuel more tournaments. There are Open Tournaments that players can enter that are always happening. You play all the games you can during the period, and if you meet the requirements when the tournament period ends, then you get a small prize. When I looked at the prizes, everything awarded to people finishing belwow second place was dismal, so it seems like a whole lot of work for not a lot of reward if you can’t play enough to win. There are Constructed Tournaments where you bring the spellbook you put together to compete, and there’s also the very popular “Draft” format, where you have to purchase booster packs for $4 USD each and then each person takes turns picking cards from the packs until all the cards are gone.

And of course you can always play single matches against opponents for the heck of it, which would be cool if the gameplay was deep. However, there really isn’t all that much to do other than position for flanks and attack, and the interactions between creatures and spells are simplistic and direct for the most part. The fight for positioning is straightforward. The spellbook building side of things is also surprisingly restrictive. In addition to the usual Magic limit of 4 copies of each spell, you are limited to a maximum of 12 different creatures and 12 different spells. Why this is the case is beyond me, but if you wanted to play only one of every creature in your colour, too bad! I found that sometimes I had to make the inconvenient decision not to play a better creature just because I had 4 copies of a weaker creature, I needed 40 spells to fill out the spellbook, and I had to maintain the balance between spells and creatures.

You'll find iconic cards such as Reya Dawnbringer in Tactics

Even if the game had deeper gameplay, though, it would still be mired in a variety of technical issues that seem to plague every Wizards of the Coast electronic product. In my time playing it I suffered glitches that ranged from infuriating to hilarious, such as a frame rate plummet (to 1 frame per second) after multitasking away from the game window or the game chat doubling in the multiplayer room. One of my friends said it crashed on him after every mission. One particularly frustrating glitch was that in the midst of a long mission, the computer AI actually could not decide what to do and ended up being stuck there, forcing a restart. In tournaments, if you crash or you disconnect due to some Internet problem, reconnecting will not put you back into the game – you simply forfeit. In a tournament I played, I ended up forfeiting two games this way, and in the third game my opponent was away from the keyboard, thus defaulting a win to me.

The tournament design is a bit of a tragedy in itself, as you have to stay until the end to wait for the prizes, even if you’re done your games and you know where you will place. It doesn’t even boot you out of the tournament after the end, and I only found out it ended because people received their prizes. The tournament chat lobby is also not segregated among tournaments or even tournament types as far as I could tell and it became a confusing mess of conversations.

Even the Auction House has an pitiful interface, which seems unacceptable after having so many examples of good ones around. For example, there is no search feature. You can only filter by Rarity, Colour, and Type, and you can’t sort the list by any of the columns. And the default sorting is a complete mystery. Interface issues aren’t restricted to the Auction House though, as various other baffling choices litter the game. For example, you can’t look at your talents without leaving the tournament you’re in. During the actual match, if you have more than 7 spells that you can cast that turn, the spell bar doesn’t expand and you need to click these tiny up and down arrows to look at all your spells.

The graphics in the game are kind of bland but acceptable. Some of the animations are fun to watch but an option to speed them up or skip them all together would be nice as I only need to see them so many times. But it’s a nice touch to see my Thieving Magpie get pounded to the floor when it takes a hit. The sounds and music are just kind of there and forgettable.

Much like Duels of the Planeswalkers, this game could have been so much more. It combined one of my favourite genres with one of my favourite brands, and yet it came up so short that it only aggravated my need for a good tactics game. Being a game that you can play for as long and as often as you would like to, Tactics could actually offer a lot of value if you enjoy it. Personally, I’ll just keep playing Duels and the actual card game with my friends.

The wizards of Magicka weave their spells by combining the following eight elements: Water, Life, Shield, Ice, Lighting, Arcane, Earth, and Fire. Each of these elements are assigned a key on the keyboard, but some additional elements can be created by combining multiple base elements. Pressing an element key will store the respective element in your wizard’s spell queue, which can hold up to five elements simultaneously. Mixing elements together and then releasing them will create a spell, and hopefully, the desired result. Things start to get a little tricky when wizards realize that they can release their spells in one of four different ways: Projectile, Area of Effect, Self, and Weapon. Each type of spell will result in a different effect, even if they used the same elements. For instance, mixing the Fire and Shield elements and then releasing the spell as a projectile will create a wall of fire between you and your enemies, while releasing it on yourself will make you resistant to fire for a short period of time.

The beauty and horror of this system is that the game leaves it up to you to use common sense when mixing and casting spells. Mixing Earth and Fire and then releasing it on yourself will weave the arcane magicks of the universe in a manner that would result in a flaming boulder being summoned into existence above your head, and the rest is up to gravity. However, creative self-termination is an essential part of the experimentation process, and death is part of the game, remember?

Once you develop an understanding of how it all works, casting spells becomes very simple and intuitive, but doing it in combat is another story entirely. Navigating your character around the playing field involves pressing and holding the left mouse button on your desired destination, while the elements are mapped to the familiar WASD region of the keyboard, and the different spell types are executed with the remaining mouse buttons and the Shift key. Trying to cast Haste on yourself while you flee from a pair of cave trolls and dodge arrows fired by a distant group of goblins can often be disastrous. Take your eyes off the screen to correctly input your elements and you’ll likely end up on the wrong end of a giant club. Input the elements too quickly and carelessly and you could light yourself on fire, much to the amusement of the cave trolls. Accidents like this would frustrate me in most games, leading to criticisms of convoluted or complicated controls, but Magicka is different. The button layout is great, and I don’t think I could find one that works better, but more importantly, these accidents are part of what makes Magicka so fun to play. The action is very chaotic and overwhelming, often requiring you to deal with large swarms of enemies, and knowing that you’re one mistake away from a horrible fiery death can be exhilarating. Keeping a cool head and successfully casting your favourite spells in combat is very rewarding.

The action gets even more hectic when you add more players. Magicka features a host of spell combinations that result in greater damage. Shooting lighting at someone is more effective if you’ve sprayed them with water first, and launching a boulder at an enemy can be more devastating if they’re encased in ice. Using these combos can be the most efficient way of dealing with a powerful enemy, but coordinating them with other players can often lead to hilarious mishaps. Blue Wizard announces that he’s going to soak an oncoming troll with water, so Green Wizard prepares to summon a bolt of lighting from the sky. Blue Wizard accidentally casts the water spell as an area of effect, soaking Green Wizard as the lighting bolt strikes from the Heavens. Green Wizard needs food badly.

The action in Magicka unfolds across two game modes, Adventure and Challenge, both of which can be played cooperatively over the Internet or via a local network. The Adventure mode is a light-hearted, story-driven campaign that sees players travel across twelve expansive levels on their way to saving the world. Throughout the campaign, players can collect new wands and weapons that grant them new active and passive abilities, find spell books that contain new and powerful spells, and assist the lowly folk with side quests and other diversions. The adventure mode lasts anywhere from eight to ten hours, but may warrant additional playthroughs in order to collect and accomplish everything. For the more experienced wizards, Challenge mode presents players with a series of arena challenges in which they are forced to overcome waves of enemies in an enclosed space. Challenge mode can be very difficult, and should offer most players plenty of reason to come back.

As wonderful as the gameplay is, the graphical presentation is somewhat lacking by today’s standards. Some of the monsters look nice, if not a little generic, but there is very little variety in the types of monsters that you’ll face throughout the game. The environments suffer from a similar fate by offering a few interesting and colourful set pieces, but generally falling victim to an abundance of reused assets. It’s the spell effects that disappoint me the most, though. They’re not bad by any means, but they’re far from being fantastic, which is what they deserve to be. A few more particle effects and some more dynamic lighting would have gone a long way toward making each spell look truly remarkable. In the end, however, the graphics certainly get the job done, and you probably won’t have much time to sit around and admire the effects of your spells anyway. Unless one of them causes your friends a great deal of misery, because that can be fun to watch.

The sound design is also pretty generic, but is often used to humorous effect. Characters speak with a dialect that sounds like a cross between Simlish from The Sims and the Swedish Chef, with a few specific words sounding just familiar enough to get a laugh. The music is standard fantasy game fare, filled with lyres, lutes, and classical guitars, and while it doesn’t distract from the gameplay at all, it’s also hardly memorable. The grunts, groans, roars, and explosions are all suitable and believable, but like the music, don’t particularly stand out. It’s clear that most of the focus went into developing the fun and challenging gameplay, and it’s hard to fault Paradox Interactive for that.

Magicka is a charming game that takes classic action-adventure gameplay and gives it a unique twist. The spell-casting mechanic is very deep, yet remains intuitive, and gives players a chance to discover their own favourite spells and the strategies in which to employ them. The action is both intense and exciting, and being able to share the experience with friends is fantastic. You will die a lot in Magicka at the hands of enemies, comrades, and sometimes even yourself, but each death will be a story to laugh about later, and in the end: It’s just part of the game.

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Listed below are the games that will be affected by the shutdown (* denotes a game with online achievements):

• FIFA 07
• FIFA 08 *
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• Fight Night Round 3
• Madden NFL 09
• NBA LIVE 08
• NBA LIVE 09 *
• NCAA March Madness 08 *
• NCAA Basketball 09 *
• NCAA Football 07
• NCAA Football 08 *
• NCAA Football 09 *
• NFL Head Coach 09 *
• NHL 08 *
• NHL 09 *
• Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 09 *
• UEFA EURO 2008 *

For those of you who are gamer score enthusiasts, this is essentially a last call for these games and their online achievements.

Another cool thing is that you can customize your character to look any way you want despite the equipment that you’re actually wearing. “The biggest goal is that we want you to look and feel like the hero or villain that you want to be,” said Michael Daubert, Studio Art Director [Star Wars: Galaxies]. “The cool thing about that is that you can change how you look every time you log in.” How it works is that there is a Style menu, and you can customize all the different things that affect the look of your character on that screen. I rocked the military beret when I picked it up, but now I’m back to the old school spandex hood. You can pick up items that unlock different styles, so that you have more freedom as you progress.

I think this guy chose Fire.

Something I didn’t realize until Daubert brought it up was that the day/night cycles that is common in MMOs was omitted in this game, and it was a design choice: “Gotham is always at night time, [and] Metropolis is during the day. We did that on purpose because we wanted to capture the feel of what Gotham always is. And Gotham during the day just isn’t fun. You want to have it at night time. A lot of times in the comics, when they portray Metropolis, it’s always the bright golden daylight… the City of Tomorrow feel.” He added, “seeing Batman during the day – it just didn’t feel right.”

Weather effects are still intact though, and in fact there are some nice little touches. For example, Mr. Freeze’s area will start to snow instead of rain and Scarecrow’s area has a pervasive mist from the fear toxins. The Unreal Engine shines in this respect, and helps the game look great overall. Metropolis feels like Freedom Force and Gotham feels entirely different.

The character creation in the game allows you to select a movement type (Flying/Acrobatic/Super Speed), a main power type such as fire and ice (this is basically your class), and a mentor (gadgetry/super powers/magic) that determines the faction you start with and the gear you buy from the vendors, as well as your starting city. The customization of your appearance is not as in depth as some other offerings, but you can choose your body size as well as your starting costume.

As with any new MMO, getting oriented can be quite difficult. In order to help players explore and to give background on the many areas of the game, DCUO provides a chain of quests, narrated by the silly Booster Gold, that basically ask you to tour the cities, and even the headquarters. In addition, there are these neat little timed races that help you get oriented with your movement mode, and eventually master it. They are different depending on your movement type and are meant as something to do while you wait for an Alert (dungeon) or Player versus Player (PvP) battle to pop, but I enjoyed them so much that I’ve just been racing through them (pun optional) to get the Platinum rating on each one.

The variety of costumes is one of the best things about DCUO

The game is tailored to the console players, and SOE confirms that the PS3 is their primary target. Since the game only has one build that works both on the PS3 and PC, there are several design choices that are clearly influenced by the players who will be using controllers as opposed to keyboards. “We want to get the console players who are jumping in here who may be a little gun shy when they hear about an MMO… it’s almost like training. It’s teaching them what the best parts of an MMO are but still keeping that fast paced action,” explains Daubert. To that end, you won’t find any tradeskills or crafting in the game. In addition, you can only have 6 active powers on your action bar at once. This is probably due to the controller having limited buttons and is something I disliked about Guild Wars, but you can try to build your skills around it a little bit in order to avoid having too many active skills that aren’t being used.

Not all the console influence is bad, however. There are these information hotspots littered throughout the cities and if you collect all the ones in an area, you get a reward. The whole thing feels a lot more like something you’d see from Batman: Arkham Asylum than World of Warcraft.

On the PvP side, there are two different options: Play as your own character, or play as one of the Legends, such as Batman or Harley Quinn. The one map I played on was a Team Fortress 2 style mode, where each team tries to control different points on the map in order to score points. More maps are unlocked as you level. The co-operative Player versus Environment (PvE) involves Alerts and end game Raids, which involve such iconic locations as the Batcave. I am not high enough level to access the Raids, but the Alerts that I’ve done seem a bit chaotic. Whereas World of Warcraft groups are fairly co-ordinated affairs, DCUO allows your team to split up and still do okay.

The game has been fun enough so far that I can definitely recommend a trial – especially for those curious about MMOs but are afraid that they will become highly addictive. DC Universe is very friendly to casual play and doesn’t involve farming for materials of any kind. Plus, the gameplay resembles your average action game more than World of Warcraft. PSN Plus members can download this Beta for free right now from the PSN Store, and PC players can pre-order a copy in order to get into the Beta. Have you tried DCUO? Show us your character in the comments or let us know what you think of it! Also, keep an eye out for our interview with Michael Daubert later this week.

The videos are broken down into two parts: part one is for the Worgen starting zone, levels 1-6, and part 2 is for the Goblin starting zone, also levels 1-6.  So sit back, get comfortable and watch me play a game!  Or don’t.  It’s really up to you.

If you liked what you saw, leave some feedback.  If you hated it, keep it to yourself.  I’m just kidding, of course!  If there is a game in the future that you would be curious to see more of, let me know in the comments!  Also if you have any questions about the videos, you may also leave me comments and I’ll do my best to answer them.

Click here to watch the video

Click here to watch the video

Special thanks to our own Richard Mitchell for the awesome video opening! Also thanks to Square Enix for the part of the song taken from Final Fantasy XIII for the Goblin video.

The Force Unleashed 2 is a sequel to the acclaimed The Force Unleashed, which featured some of the first tastes of Euphoria physics and Digital Molecular Matter object simulations in a game. This lent to shockingly realistic glass, wood and steel, while also providing physics-based, reactionary movement in the bodies of the enemies you would fling about the level. The original plot focused on the life of Darth Vader’s secret apprentice. He was trained to hunt down the Jedi who survived Order 66. He turns to the Light side and fights against him. Eventually, due to his intervention, the Rebel Alliance is born.

This game expands on the story, taking place during the fledgling days of Rebellion, and Vader’s apparent attempts to recreate his apprentice in a Kamino cloning lab, even though no clone could be imbued with the Force thus far. The plot takes you from Kamino to hanging cities on Cato Nemoidia and even Dagobah, home of the now-exiled Yoda. The level design is apt, each area featuring a wide variety of objects and enemies to play with.

Colour keys range from the sterile bluish-grey of Kamino to the warm, royal reds and golds in Cato Nemoidia. The Apprentice also looks better than ever, with an updated and refined character model. His acting has a wider range, with him showing more rage and frustration than before. He’s become more of an animal within the cloning facility. The gameplay is succinct, with the Force powers having an even more explosive effect on Stormtroopers and the various specialty troopers and droids you face. The animations are still solid, and the combat is slightly expanded upon but feels basically like the first game, except with a second lightsaber. There’s nothing really wrong with this, aside from the frustrations I felt with the dodging mechanic and the time it took Starkiller to right himself after being knocked down.  The new Force Fury ability – a staple of most over the top third-person action/adventure games – lets you become invincible and overpowered for a brief period of time. It is actually exhilarating to perform, as each attack is a flurry of light (he begins to just throw the sabers everywhere, instead of the usual acrobatic combo) and his Force powers become a never-ending tsunami.

So that’s what’s good about The Force Unleashed 2: The acting, gameplay, and level design. The bad resides in the length. Alongside some costumes to unlock, saber crystals to collect, which have different effects, and trials to complete, there are some rather amusing and well written data files about all the characters, enemies and locations. However, a friend and I picked this game up, excited to devote a few evenings to the ensuing insanity, and we were surprised and disappointed when we reached the final, climactic boss battle a mere six hours into the game. The game sets itself up for a sequel, which is a little redeeming, but at the same time, I felt let down because as thrilling as the ride was, it was pitifully short.

Certain amazing set encounters and the gameplay make this a game worth checking out, but much like a snack, it feels like a stepping stone to a bigger meal later on.

“We’re delighted the Online Co-op is ready and going live – as a thank you to the patient Xbox gamers, and for a limited time only we will be giving away our first DLC pack for free. Download it, have a go and while you’re there try the online co-op mode, it’s great fun,” encourages Darrell Gallagher, General Manager of Crystal Dynamics.

The DLC and title update will be coming soon for the PS3 and PC, but no word about whether the DLC will be free for those platforms also.

This mouse has just enough buttons... or does it?

When the expansion hits on December 7th, World of Warcraft-ians can pick up some new non-virtual gear to help in their quest to kill the new virtual dragon. If you’re finding the Xai gaming mouse to be lacking some buttons for the keybind-heavy MMO, then the new Cataclysm MMO Gaming Mouse might be worth checking out. More than just a technical upgrade, the SteelSeries R&D team actually took the feedback of the customers of the original MMO mouse and sat down with Blizzard in order to redesign the ergonomics of the mouse. This brought the number of buttons down to 14 as opposed to 15, but all the buttons are easier to reach. As for the technical aspects, the mouse is very similar to the Xai, with 12,000 FPS (Frames Per Second) and up to 5001 CPI (Counts Per Inch). If you don’t understand what these metrics mean, just trust me when I say that these numbers mean that the mouse is incredibly accurate, precise, and responsive. The Inches Per Second has also been brought on par with the Xai at 150 Inches Per Second, up from the 65 of the old World of Warcraft MMO mouse. This translates to about 400 Haste rating.

For gamers on the go, bringing the mouse also lets you bring a profile that’s saved into the hardware. This feature is also one that’s borrowed from the Xai and really handy if you play at LANs, tournaments, or at a friend’s house. There are up to ten software profiles that you can save as well, of course, so that you can have one for each class.

The entire keyboard is your sandbox

In addition to the new mouse, SteelSeries is also branding a keyboard for Cataclysm. Based on their Shift keyboard layouts, which uses their Z Engine software, the Cataclysm Shift will provide 8 extra hotkeys along the top as well as a predefined keyset for players to maximize their play. But really, the entire keyboard is nothing but hotkeys as every single key is customizable. And if you’re a player like me, you’ll often want to be holding Q or E while pressing ctrl+shift+C (yeah, I use a LOT of keybinds), so the Shift’s anti-ghosting feature that allows you to press 7 buttons at once without clashing is really handy. You can even record macros on the fly with delays between keys so that you can time your Moonfire spam with your GCDs built in. Right on! Another really cool feature about the keyboard is that it has a statistics engine so that you can calculate your actions per minute. No more relying on that harsh APM calculator in StarCraft II. The standard features, such as media keys and gold-plated headphone and microphone connectors, are also included. In fact, the only thing missing seems to be a LCD screen to tell you who’s talking on Ventrilo and when you’re receiving whispers!

If those two products are still not enough to fill every inch of your desk with Deathwing’s mighty jaw, SteelSeries is also releasing some of its high end Qck mousepads with various Cataclysm art designs. I use one of these unbranded mousepads and let me tell you: Not every mousepad was made equal. I didn’t believe a mousepad could make a difference, but it does! The crappy ones that the Collector’s Editions of World of Warcraft and its expansions come with are so unresponsive compared to the SteelSeries one and I highly recommend you try one out to see if it’s worth the money for you.

Here are some official links to the mouse, keyboard, and mousepad, and check out the gallery below for more pictures.

The inventory screen is clean and simple

The best parts of Puzzle Quest 2 are the RPG elements. You get to pick from four classes and they each have different play styles. For example, if you’re a Templar you might end up focusing more on matching Action gauntlets rather than colours. If you’re an Assassin, you’ll want to build up to get your shield activated and then just constantly deal damage without relinquishing your turn. As you level up, you gain new spells, but you can only ever bring five of them into battle simultaneously. What ends up happening is that you’ll never use most of the spells given to you because you’ll have a favourite setup and that’ll work for you through large sections of the game. Leveling up also gives you a skill  point to spend among five attributes, with each of them benefiting a colour as well as having secondary effects. For example, an agility point will grant you several bonuses for yellow, but will also raise your defense and give you extra Action points when matching gauntlets on the board.

In addition to leveling, you get to hoard gold and buy stuff. Unlike most RPGs, most of the best items I found were purchased from stores. Money also allows you to enchant your gear, upgrading their quality from common white items to legendary orange items. There are class specific items that helps to differentiate the classes, and these items are significant. The Assassin’s poison felt more than a little overpowered, but the Barbarian’s two handed weapons also seem devastating. The inclusion of a respec mechanism so that you can reallocate your attribute points was also a nice touch, even if it is pretty much mandatory these days. It was appreciated because I didn’t know how many points it would take to get the next level of benefit of a particular colour, so it helped me maximize my points later on in the game. Also you will want to redo your attribute points as your spells and gear change.

Though skull damage is not as vital, it can still be useful if you have high strength

The main puzzling gameplay is where the game fails to meet my expectations, but there are many positives. The mechanics are simple as they are in the first Puzzle Quest, except that skulls are much less important. In addition to damaging with your spells and skulls, Puzzle Quest 2 lets you beat on your opponent the old fashioned way: With weapons. Different weapons will cost different amounts of Action points, but equipping the right weapon for your strategy is a key to success. For example, you might want the most efficient damage per Action point cost weapon if you don’t get a lot of Action points, but otherwise you may want a weapon that deals a lot of damage at once. Other considerations are that using a weapon can trigger a critical hit that does double damage, and that using the items in your hand does not affect the board. The items you hold in your hands will be used often, even if they don’t have the astounding impact of some of your spells. As an Assassin, it felt very satisfying to build up the colours for a few rounds in battle, and then use a series of spells and matches on the board to keep my opponent from having another turn. There are some mini games to break up the action, which forces you to match a number of certain types or get certain pieces into specific slots located on the board. These mini games are played to find traps, unlock doors, or to find treasure. Finding treasure was always a delight for me, even if it was a little frustrating at times because it often felt like luck was the deciding factor as to how many items you received.

Despite these cool mechanics, the game just falls short of achieving the kind of greatness that causes months of addiction. Perhaps sadly, Puzzle Quest Anonymous will never come to be. The balance of the game seems broken, which causes the game to be very repetitive as you just have your way with one opponent after another. The game stops scaling its awards for chains longer than five and the chains are more dependent on luck than anything else. This is because you’re dependent on what falls onto the board from the screen to chain matches, unlike puzzle games like Super Puzzle Fighter II, which lets you set up your chains through organization. The awards from battle stop being significant fairly early on and I kept very few sets of gear through long periods of the game, and winning eventually just becomes unsatisfying. The story and sidequests are barely worth a mention and do not provide an incentive to keep playing. All this combines to form an unexpected result of a fun puzzle game that doesn’t remain fun in the long run. I still had a great time for about 15 to 20 hours of the game, though.

The graphics are nothing to write home about. They’re pleasant enough that everything works and the colours are brilliant, but they were disappointing overall. Even the special story cut scenes amounted to no more than scrolling around a static art piece, and not great ones at that. The feedback for getting long chains does not look epic enough, and there is not a whole lot of variety of icons for the items. Overall, the graphics are not much worse than Culdcept, but lacks the variety of animation and art that Culdcept provides.

One of the many locales you'll visit in Story mode

The sound and music are similarly well done but also lacks variety. The sound is really what makes me feel good about long chains and the music is on par with what you’d expect. I would have liked more monster noises and things like that. The narration was not remarkable, but also not terrible, which is a plus in my book. Puzzle Quest 2 ends up with a pretty mediocre effort in the sound department.

There is a surprising number of modes packed into this title. Aside from the regular story mode, you can also take your hero into single battles against the AI or into an Endurance mode, which is like the survival modes found in fighting games. Each round pits you against a tougher opponent, and your health carries over. In addition, you can play any of the mini games or take your character online and play multiplayer. You can also play multiplayer with new characters entirely and choose the level of the characters for the battle. The coolest mode of all though is the Tournament mode, where you pick a team of monsters and pit it against an computer team of monsters in an team elimination showdown.

Puzzle Quest 2 is a good game if you want to kill some time and generally have some clean fun. If you were a fan of the first Puzzle Quest and are you not tired of the formula yet, then Puzzle Quest 2 will satisfy your RPG puzzling needs. However, if you’re looking for a deep and addictive puzzle game, then it may disappoint you.

One of those spin-off franchises is Cooking Dash, which is very similar to Diner Dash but different enough to warrant a download.  In Cooking Dash 3: Thrills and Spills, you take control of the female protagonist and entrepreneur, Flo, when she was a teenager.  Those familiar with Diner Dash will already be familiar with Flo, but for those who are new to the series, here’s her deal:  Flo used to work in an office, but quit in order to pursue her dream of opening up her own restaurant.  She’s extremely business savvy and is constantly getting called in as a ringer to save restaurants from going belly-up (kind of like Gordon Ramsey on the Food Network, but much nicer and without the accent).

Your job this time around  is given to you by a fellow named Mr. Big, whose theme park, Dinerland, isn’t doing so hot.  His father lent him a large wad of cash and will be visiting soon to check up on things, so he’s in a bit of a panic.  The uniquely themed restaurants span across several different levels in the park that you need to spruce up.  Such as with previous games in the franchise you can purchase upgrades for the restaurant, both aesthetic and functional.  Some appliances will need upgrading in order to make your life as a waitress easier, such as upgrading an oven with two burners to three or buying a coffee pot in order to make impatient customers happier.

The game is extremely fast-paced and therefore if you hate playing a game based entirely on pressure, you may wish to skip this one.  You’re constantly running from one end of the restaurant to the other and if you take too long, you run the risk of angering your customers or losing them entirely and there’s nothing worse than having a customer run out at the end of the meal without paying their check.  In Diner Dash, Flo would merely wait on the tables, take food orders and then bus the tables.  In Cooking Dash 3, she also prepares the food which makes things just a tad more complicated.  Sometimes you’ll be asked to throw a steak on the grill for a sandwich or throw some pasta into a pot, and unlike the first Cooking Dash, you’ll actually have to stir things in order to cook them perfectly.  If you stir or flip and don’t let  the dish burn, then you’ve cooked a dish perfectly and your customer’s mood will rise. Ultimately your performance is reflected in your tip when they leave.

On each level you’re given a goal that you have to meet, such as $5,000.  If you meet your goal, you’re free to move on to the next level.  If you screw up, you’ll have to repeat it.  Once you’ve met your goal but find you still have more customers to serve, then you’re given an expert goal.  You don’t have to make it to the expert score in order to move on, they’re just there to add an extra challenge.  The gameplay is almost identical to previous Cooking Dash games, except I found Cooking Dash 3 to be a vast improvement over the last two.  The graphics have improved quite a bit, and so has the music.  While the music isn’t anything special, a couple of the melodies got stuck in my head for a few hours.

There are trophies that you can collect and an expert mode to play once you’ve completed the casual mode.  They’ve also added mini games to Cooking Dash 3.  In between each level you’re given the option of playing a different mini game and you can skip them if you can’t be fussed.  The mini games are all pretty basic and include scenarios where you’ll need to find hidden objects, catch plates of falling food while avoiding bombs, and click furiously to match up different sandwich components all before the timer runs out.  At first I found them endearing, especially because you can collect pre-made dishes that will help you out in the next level.  If you do well in a mini game and collect eight steak sandwiches they’ll appear in the next level so you won’t have to cook them and waste time, which is a huge life saver.

After my tenth mini game though, I was sick of them.  They aren’t mandatory and you’re given the option to skip them, but at the same time you don’t want to because the bonuses of completing these mini games are so helpful.  Fortunately they don’t take too long to do, and aren’t cloying enough to become detrimental to the game in general.  I noticed that in the beginning of the campaign, there was some pleasant voice acting, which seemed to drop off after the introduction.  That’s really too bad because it was very well done and I would have loved to hear more of it.

Cooking Dash 3: Thrills and Spills is a pretty big step forward for the franchise and is everything you would want to see in a sequel.  It’s not something you would want to play for long periods of time, but then again it wasn’t meant to be played that way anyway.  The difficulty curve is absolutely perfect with its steady and slow incline.  At times it’s infuriating and I have to step away to compose myself, but overall it’s a very enjoyable experience and if you haven’t had the pleasure of playing any of the games in this series before, I would recommend that you start here.

Other features were added in the Open Beta as well, including:

• Guilds: An integral part of every MMO.
• A store that sells stuff for Nexon points: An integral part to micro-transaction based MMOs. Stuff includes special haircuts, different inner armour, and special items that can help you in combat.
• A new town, Ainle, has opened up with all new quests: Nothing more to say.
• A dye shop: Be the 1000th person to run around with pink hair!
• Fishing mini-game: A staple since…
• A raised level cap: Now you can grind your way to 38

Get more info and have a look at the hat on the website. All characters from the Early Access were carried over to the Open Beta, so you can just pick up where you left off. If anyone is playing on the East Server, you can add Natanael and Airistin and we’ll beat stuff up together!

Either way, if you purchased Borderlands on Steam, check your downloadable content in order for a chance to get an early look at the long-awaited, Bruce Campbell quoting over-the-top macho man in his upcoming foray.

Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition for the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 released today, October 12th, 2010 and Duke Nukem Forever releases for the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 sometime in 2011.

Wanted is a mode where you are given a target, which is another player in the game. Before each spawn, you can choose your loadout of two tricks. An example combination that we saw was the Morph ability and Smoke Bombs, both evasive skills that let you blend in with the crowd and create a smoke cloud ninja-style respectively. The goal of each five minute round is to gather as many points as you can by killing your target and evading the person trying to kill you. These contracts have a limited time, and if you can get your pursuer to kill the wrong target by blending in with the other pedestrians or if you can lose them in an all out chase, then you will be awarded points for evasive action.

A circular radar on the bottom of your screen helps you track your target, and the circle will fill up depending on your proximity to your target. But even when you get to your target, unless they’re alone, you need to be sure they’re which person is the one you’re looking for before making the killing blow as there can be clones walking around at the same pace.

In the round I played it, it was intense. You want to hurry up and catch your target, but you don’t want to give away that you’re a player by running. The rooftop and alleys provide nice shortcuts but you’re a sitting duck if you get caught out there, so there are very different risk and reward dynamics than your average multiplayer game. Unlike most games, you spent most of your time walking and being patient. There were a few times when my pursuer would kill me just as I finished off my target, and that was a little frustrating, but I think next time I will just use an evasive skill right after I kill someone.

See how the mode plays for yourself below. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood releases for the PS3 and Xbox 360 on November 16th, 2010, and on PC in 2011.

Click here to watch the video

What does that mean? Fast paced action, customization, throwing and grappling enemies, and kicking them while they’re down. It means dyeing your armour, and crafting items and selling them on the marketplace. It means crafting hooks that you can use to immobilize enemies while your teammates beat on them. Sounds glorious right? Well, we are going to give you a chance to try it yourself. Below are four keys that you can use at the Vindictus registration page. The only catch is that we ask you to leave a comment telling our readers which key you’ve taken, and then leave at least one of the two keys that they email to you in the comment. That’s it.

Now, the early access beta is not without it’s limitations. Right now you can only pick between two classes and they implement this channel system that essentially changes your instance of the town, but it does this randomly as you’re playing. Even when you’re partied with someone, you won’t be stuck in the same channel for long, so you will not be able to see each other around town. However, as soon as your group is ready to journey to an instance (called Battles), you will all be brought together.

Anyway, enough talk! I encourage everyone to try it. Here are the four keys:

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The interactions with Elizabeth are exciting, along with the terrifying “HIM” that occupies the tail end of the trailer. All in all it looks like a promising title. I find the idea of the tracks that you use as zip lines from platform to platform exciting and tense. Furthermore, he has a voice! I love hearing him strain as he nearly loses his arm from dropping from one platform to the next, and the conversations with Elizabeth seem natural and fluid.

Also, “FALL…… FALL!!!” is just excellent.

Apparently the buildings in the distance are actually floating in real time and can collapse or sway due to exterior factors.

What do you guys think? Was that enough for you to gush over?

Click here to watch the video

When you log in, you’ll notice you will have mail waiting for you from either Vanira or High Tinker Mekkatorque.  The mail includes instructions on where to go to begin these quest chains.  For the Horde, you’ll want to seek out the troll Vanira down in Sen’jin Village in Durotar.  If you’re Alliance, you’ll want to head to Tinker Town in Ironforge and speak to High Tinker Mekkatorque.  Both quest chains involve a few side quests and then an event that is very similar to the Battle for the Undercity quest chain, which most level 80 players should be familiar with.

At the end of both events, players will be given a purely cosmetic cloak to wear as a reward.  There have been a couple bugs reported, at least during the Gnomeregan event, and hopefully Blizzard will take care of those soon.  The events understandably raise plenty of eyebrows and questions from those wondering if this is a sign that Cataclysm will soon be upon us.  It’s September and we’re already seeing some lead ups to Cataclysm, so I would say that a release date is probably not too far behind, especially with Blizzcon only being a month away.

Shattered Dimensions is four different games rolled into one. When you’re playing at the film noir stealth-action suit Spiderman, the game feels like Batman: Arkham Asylum. When you play as the Venom suit Spiderman, the game feels more like Devil May Cry. Although there is nothing else innovative in the game, everything from those different genres of games seem to be implemented. The Spidey Sense works like thermal vision from Splinter Cell. There are different emblems to collect, abilities to upgrade, storylines to follow, and it felt fun without being too shallow, even if you get the impression that you’ve seen it all before. This game looks like it is a must try for Spiderman fans.

Spiderman: Shattered Dimensions releases for the PS3, Wii, X360, and DS on September 7th, 2010, with a PC release date still to be announced.

Excuse me, that looks infected

One of the first things I noticed upon sitting down with the game was the visuals. While beautiful in their own right, the graphics found in the original Dead Space were somewhat monotonous and repetitive; a series of dark and dreary corridors, barely illuminated by the fluorescent glow from nearby computer terminals and flickering lights. With Dead Space 2, Visceral Games has opted for a much more varied visual presentation, which is made possible thanks to the diversity of the game’s setting: a massive, densely populated space station known as the Sprawl. As players navigate the station, they will find themselves exploring industrial, residential, and commercial zones, each with their own decor and design, and will even get the opportunity to visit the infamous Church of Unitology. On a whole, the Dead Space 2 experience that I had was much more colourful and visually appealing than its predecessor.

The demo featured many noticeable gameplay enhancements as well. Those that hated having to access their inventory screen whenever they needed to replenish their stasis reserve will be pleased to know that Isaac’s stasis supply will now slowly regenerate on its own. Furthermore, players will no longer have to search for save points in order to save their progress, as Dead Space 2 now employs an auto-saving checkpoint system. Saving happens seamlessly while you play, so the gaming experience isn’t interrupted, and the checkpoints are placed intelligently. For those that are concerned that the implementation of such a system would make the game easier, don’t worry, I still managed to die several times while playing, and while the setbacks weren’t substantial, they were definitely noticeable.

Adventures in babysitting

Most of my deaths came while I was adjusting to the increased number of enemies Isaac encountered. While it was common in the original Dead Space to get ambushed by one or two Necromophs at a time, that number has significantly increased in the sequel. While exploring the Sprawl, I was frequently attacked by groups of five or six Necromorphs at once, surrounding me from all sides. It made for an intense and often painful experience, but being the butt-kicking engineer that he is, Isaac came prepared, and packing some new tools. My favourite new weapon was the Javelin Launcher, which hurls massive spikes toward Isaac’s enemies at terrifying velocity. A direct hit with one of these bad boys will propel its unfortunate victim across the room, impaling them on the wall. However, due to the nature of the Necromorph psychology, while such an attack may incapacitate them, it’s not guaranteed to kill them. Thankfully, the Javelin Launcher comes equipped with a secondary attack that will send a powerful electrical current through impaled javelins. Necromorph shish kabob!

Isaac has also learned to use a Necromorph’s own body against it, thanks to the kinesis field emitted from his suit. Using the deadly precision of his weapons, Isaac can shoot one of the javelin-like arms off of a Slasher Necromorph, lift it with the kinesis field, and shoot it right back at them. It’s not as powerful as the Javelin Launcher itself, but it’ll help Isaac save more ammo to deal with the swarms of Necromorphs that he’ll inevitably face, and let’s face it, it’s devilishly fun. This strategy isn’t just limited to using the arms of a Slasher, either. Remember those Necromorphs that had a giant, exploding tumor for a hand? Rather than shooting the tumor itself, Isaac can now shoot the entire arm off and use it as an explosive projectile.

I can see my house from here!

Another welcome change is the new and improved low gravity gameplay. Instead of jumping from wall to wall, or floor to ceiling during low gravity segments, Isaac can float and fly around freely, thanks to a series of small propulsion boosters built into his new suit. These segments not only feel more natural as a result, but also allowed Visceral Games to be more creative with their low gravity environments. During one segment of the demo, I had to fly up through a series of rotating fans and automated doors, both of which required use of the stasis module in order to survive. It was a fun diversion from the combat gameplay, and it sure beat fiddling with the camera to figure out where your next low gravity leap should take you.

My experience with Dead Space 2 didn’t disappoint, and I’m looking forward to the title now more than ever. It looks like Visceral Games took the already stellar foundation of their first offering, gave it some polish, ramped up the horror, and made the act of surviving all the more fun. Admittedly, my sample size was small, but it certainly left me wanting more. If Visceral’s vision remains consistent throughout the whole experience, then we’re in for a beautiful, terrifying treat.

Dead Space 2 is planned for release in January, 2011.

The single player campaign is magnificent. There’s nothing ground breaking here, but Blizzard did manage to make it interesting enough that it doesn’t feel like you’re just playing a bunch of multiplayer maps, which is something the older Blizzard strategies always had trouble with. Despite strong plots in both StarCraft and Warcraft III, the single player campaigns were lacking to me. This time around, Blizzard gives you an entirely different experience in single player as you can command completely different units than in multiplayer, get special upgrades for your buildings and units that don’t exist outside the single player campaign, and you can talk to people on your ship in order to get a better feel of the story and characters. The story is told in a much better way this time around and the single player experience simply feels way more cohesive than it did back in the day, even if we only get the perspective of the Terrans (humans) in this one. The plot was even quite surprising and takes a turn I did not expect. It’s not Odyssey or anything like that, but it certainly ain’t bad.

Nuclear launch detected

The cinematics are a treat as expected from Blizzard, but the in-game engine looks so good that it’s not a jarring switch. Moreover, as if to ensure you that it is in fact a Blizzard product, all the good looks doesn’t come with hefty requirements for your system. If you have a good system then the game will look better, but even on my four-ish year old PC it is gorgeous. Blizzard wants you to play their games, and they’re not going to let an old machine stop you! Since the engine is 3D this time around, zooming in will give you nice and up close visuals of the units or landscape, but if you zoom out to the regular camera, everything still looks… pleasant. I’ve heard some higher level players say that they like to turn the graphics down in order to not have so much visual input to distract them – that’s how much detail there is in the animation. My favourite little addition is that when units die to a fire attack, they are incinerated and fried up in a neat animation.

The voice acting is very good. The dialogue itself is very heavy and a bit on the serious side, aside from the newscasts and commercials on television, but the actors did a good job of making everything believable. One hilarious commercial in particular is the space marine iPod parody with a silhouetted marine touting an “iGun”. The game does not have the best voice acting out there. It didn’t quite impress me the way Dragon Age: Origins did, but it was solid. The music in the single player campaign is fantastic, with the likes of covers of Sweet Home Alabama and Suspicious Minds while the jukebox is on. During a mission, there are great musical scores to go along with building up armies and crushing the souls of your enemies under your metallic boots. The unit sounds are standard Blizzard fare and thankfully none of them are annoying, though some of them are still humourous.

You villain, you!

The mission variety itself is great, and better than in previous games. Even though achievements are old news in this industry, and I normally don’t worry about them, the addition of them still added a great deal to the experience for me. Every map has an award for achieving all the objectives, which is something I’d do normally anyway, but it’s nice to receive some recognition for my OCD dedication. You can go back to clear a previous level at any time through the mission archives, even after you’ve completed the game, so that is a great addition to the longevity of the game, even just considering the single player alone. On top of the various difficulties you can play through, there are also 3 missions where you have to choose branching paths, and one secret mission. Thankfully, the alternate paths can be explored through the aforementioned archives, but unfortunately the secret mission can’t be unlocked after you clear the campaign, so it looks like I’ll have to play through it again at some point. In addition to the campaign, the single player experience also includes tutorials for people that are new to the franchise or real-time strategies, and it also includes a series of challenges that are intended to get the player ready for multiplayer. These challenges include multitasking, micromanagement (topics covered in our StarCraft II Guide) and other skills you’ll need to not feel completely helpless.

It's true. This game has lasers.

As great as the twenty-hourish single player campaign is, StarCraft II is really about the multiplayer. There has been a lot of debate about Battle.net 2.0 and its lack of various features, but since Blizzard has agreed to fix most of the issues, I won’t evaluate them here. What has been added to Battle.net is pleasant. Players can view their profiles, see their match history, look up their opponents’ profiles, and it includes the ever important replay system, which itself is vastly improved over the Warcraft III replay system. The look of it is much much nicer and there is a cross-game IM type service embedded that will allow you to chat with your friends that are playing World of Warcraft while playing SC2. The cross-game functionality unfortunately comes at the cost of sharing your real email address, so it might not be for every one of your guildmates, but it’s a pretty cool idea nonetheless. The matchmaking and ladder system has also been improved over Warcraft III and StarCraft, as now players will play 5 placement matches to determine their skill. Thereafter, they get placed in a league where they can be promoted or demoted from, but otherwise will play people of around the same skill level. No matchmaking system will be perfect, but I like the idea of placement matches so that people don’t get too frustrated when they first start playing against other people. The feature that was surprisingly lacking was clan support, which games like Heroes of Newerth has done a great job of implementing.

Blizzard has gone great lengths in order to make the game more accessible. Even casual players won’t be too overwhelmed with trying to control many units as they can put them into one control group now, and the algorithm to determine the path that your units take (called pathing) has been greatly improved so that your units don’t run around stupidly and get stuck behind everything in the universe. Doing the advanced things and clicking faster is still a benefit to you, but you can still play without incredible skill.

There's too many of them!

As a watchable eSport, StarCraft II is much more entertaining than the original. There are a variety of strategies, and though maybe 12 years of refinement will stamp out most of them, the improved spectator UI and graphics alone make it more of a delight to watch. There are already massive tournaments (as well as smaller ones) being organized, paying winners over $80,000 USD, so there is no doubt in my mind that it will succeed as an eSport as players will flock to where the money is. Even though there is so much infrastructure dedicated to Brood War, it will all be replaced in time.

Blizzard had to make a great game with StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, not because they had to sell a lot of units, but because it might be twelve years before we see StarCraft III. As a big fan of the original, I can honestly say I am not disappointed with the sequel. They have made the game more accessible, more fun to watch, more fun to play, and it still has the depth of strategy as its predecessor. It doesn’t add anything innovative to the genre like Company of Heroes did, but it had an extremely delicate balance to uphold. It couldn’t shed all the history and fans before it and yet it had to be new. I wouldn’t call it refreshing, but gaming is certainly a better place now that StarCraft II has arrived.