King Arthur 2 The Role-Playing Wargame

Hello once again everybody! KupaRizu here and this week I’ve been spending my time on the Action/RPG/RTS mash-up that is King Arthur II: The Role-Playing Game. Developed by Neocore games and published by Paradox Interactive, this sequel to King Arthur: The Roleplaying-War Game has big boots to fill to compare to its big brother, but how did it do? Read on and find out now!

The story of King Arthur 2 follows rather nicely from the original with the land of Britannia in a state of peace and tranquillity from your actions in the past. However darkness soon overcomes the land as an ancient evil tears the kingdom apart, mortally wounding the great King Arthur in the intro sequence, leaving his Son, who has lived in seclusion until now, to lead a group of adventurers and heroes around the nation, recruiting armies, solving quests and murdering demons that now plague the land.

King Arthur II is an RPG and Military Strategy game rolled into one, switching between beautifully stylised text based “Choose your own Adventure” sections, a beautified “Quest Select” screen, disguised as a open-world map of Britannia, and Empire: Total War style epic battles.

The text based sections have a unique charm in their art style and tell a brilliant story, however this is where my first complaint comes in; the voice-acting. The narrator breaths heavily in between every sentence, talks in an overly rough voice and exaggerates the wrong words in sentences, thus ruining the atmosphere for me. While I’m sure I would soon get used to it, I ended up turning off the speakers and reading it all myself, so be warned, the narrator is terrible. But don’t go thinking that the text based sections are terrible in themselves, oh no, they are the best, and least glitchy parts of the game.

 I’m not going to go into too much detail about the overworld screen because there isn’t much to say, it’s just a pretty way of selecting which quest to go on, or which army to fight via a series of right clicks, nothing more.

The main area that you will see in the game is the combat sections, fights have been ramped up from the first game with the engine now capable of rendering 4,000 combatants in a single battle, and directing armies in their 1,000s is a real fun thing to do. King Arthur II uses the good old RTS theory of the Infantry->Archer->Cavalry triangle, while cleverly mixing it up with new additions of flying enemies. While this all sounds awesome the AI is so ridiculously stupid that even on “Nightmare”, the hardest difficulty, where you will be outnumbered, out-magicked and outside of any strategic strong point the combat is still boring and way too easy. I play a lot of RTS games, and I know how good a victory feels when it’s prised from the gaping depths of destruction, when you’re down to just five men and a tank, storming the enemy stronghold, taking it apart slowly while dodging their much superior defences and attacks, until you eventually destroy every last unit and building they own. I never got anything close to that feeling in King Arthur II, the closest I got was losing 120 men to their 1400 in a map so stacked against me a monkey could’ve beaten Sun Tzu on it!

Another rather gaping problem with King Arthur is the glitchyness of it, every two-or-three battles I would get a Crash to Desktop with no warnings or error messages, my only option being to restart the game from the beginning of the battle. Also sometimes the enemy AI would just freeze, standing completely still as I ploughed through their ranks with no resistance, again ruining the RTS side of things for me a bit.

I feel, as I did to a lesser extent with the original, that if the game had just kept to the Text Based “Choose your own Adventure” side of things then it would be a much better game already. The beautiful artwork and rather epic storyline are pushed aside and trodden over by the big muddy boots of the RTS sections, bringing down the enjoyability of both sides of the game. If Neocore fix the buggy AI and ramp up the difficulty, then I could very happily dump hundreds of hours in to this gem of a story, however until then it’s going to sit on my Steam and gather digital dust.

KupaRizu out!

Plantronics GameCom 367 Closed Ear PC Gaming Headset

Luke Wickett here for the review of the plantronics 367 closed ear headphones! Let me start by saying these headphones aren’t new to the market, they came out in 2009 but to be fair I’m pleasantly surprised. These headphones are in the shall we say “Cheaper” sections of the gaming headset, priced at around £20 but let me say these headphones don’t feel that cheap at all! 

When initially putting the headphones on for the first time I felt a certain comfort and belonging that I simply wasn’t expecting, they grip in the right places but seem to just perch on your head like a smooth plush velvety hat, which to be fair is a pretty nice feeling I must say. The padding on the sides of your head whilst wearing this headset have a smooth texture giving a soft and luxurious feel and seems as though they will stand the wear and tear of the average Joe’s head. (*Joe’s heads are known for the average head shape, size, density etc etc*) Along with the padding on the rim which are of equal quality to the side pads. These bad boys are also surprisingly light, which was quite the shock! Going by the pictures i assumed they would be a heavier, Which to me means reliability, much like a gun and if that heavy gun doesn’t work you can always throw it at them... Which you could not do with the 367’s I’m afraid. But then again this isn’t a review of how deadly they would be if they were to be if thrown, But if you’re curious I’m sure they wouldn’t be. So the “Plush hat” feeling comes from the light weight feel along with the overall comfiness of the 367’s. 

The overall quality of these headphones are next to none! They’re as sturdy as they look. I’ve given them a medium nudge and pull with very positive results. The 367’s really do feel pretty tough for me, although they aren’t really to be compared with the so called ...“quality” of average Skull Candy's. They would definitely should stand the wraith of the average gamer even at high rage. The cables are very nice as well, I was expecting thickness of an normal set of earphones but these are much thicker and of a different material, Which is pleasantly robust.

The mic has a secret hiding place for secret hiding times! I really like this feature.. For no reason it’s just.. Well...Cool. It folds back it to the headset eager to be used again. Whilst talking there is next to no background noise although at times the mic seems to fade in and out, which my ready friends is a damn shame! This makes me quite the happy chappy. It can be quite quiet mind!

Now my gentle saplings it’s time for the most important part! The sound! Well to be fair the sound Isn’t bad at all. I find there is a slight lack of bass but it’s not terrible, but really It’s my only beef with the 367’s, because other than that i can’t really fault the sound quality at all. It’s definitely loud enough and the sound you get is very clear, Don’t get me wrong there can be a bit of a buzz when at full volume, which is expected for the price. Despite the lack of bass and the occasional buzz these will make you feel fully immersed. So overall I’m happy with the sound, especially for the price. 

Although this isn’t the kind of headset you’d want to be seen in walking down the street mind. They were not wrong at plantronics labelling them with a “Military-style”. They’re very big and bulky looking, But to  be fair they are meant for gaming, not for the looks. They seem to resemble helicopter headsets from a distance. 

I have added a voice sample of me using them. I quote from the back of 367's box.

Conclusion time. If you’re looking for a decent headset and you’re on a budget then hell yeah i would recommend these. They’re comfortable, tough and high quality at a good price.

Luke Wickett

War Inc Battlezone Interview

Here's are interview with Matt who is one of the developers behind "War Inc Battlezone". Sorry for the poor production however the day before Christmas is not the best time for editing

Play War Inc on Steam.

Jurassic Park Review

Telltale known for making games like the Sam and Max games, have taken on the task of making some of the most beloved movies ever made and making them into video games. First of was Back to the Future, which in fact turned out to be a good however a easy game. Now telltale takes on the task of Jurassic Park. Well is this game any good or should we get a hole ready in nevada?

The story revolves around a canister filled with dinosaur embryos. If you remember in the movie, the character Dennis Nedry takes a bunch of dinosaur embryos in a canister of Shaving Cream for a competing company of INgen (Jurassic Park). Nedry meets a sticky end when he crashes his car and gets eaten by a dinosaur. The game continues this side plot with a bunch of new characters, there a vet and his daughter, a mysterious man and woman looking for the canister, a group of scientists and a group of soldiers and maybe a few more. These characters have average/generic personalities, for example the vet isn't getting on that well with his daughter at parts but are brought closer due to the dinosaurs (and maybe something else). It's average movie stuff. The story all together is OK, however like in the movie it's just away to show how awesome dinosaurs are.

Gameplay is, well, not very good. In short it's a point and click game with no puzzles and little challenge. What makes a point and click game fun? Well for me anyway it's the puzzles, for example if we go back to one of the old Sam and Max games the slap stick humour mixed with the fun and challenging puzzles made them great. The problem with Jurassic Park is that almost everything needed in what you could call puzzles is highlighted with arrows. I blame this with bad design, this sort of thing would of been fine if this was on a easy difficulty, where all the puzzle elements where highlighted. Then if you had a "normal" difficulty option that would remove all the hints when doing the puzzles. Then this would make people like me who like a challenge happy and keep everyone else happy with the easy difficulty.

Movement between areas is better than in past 3D point and click games. No longer do you haft to click and slowly watch your character walk across the map, and clicking every time something new comes into the screen. Now you have this type of multiple camera view showing all the areas you can go. This lowers frustration while adding to the feel that your a director.

Now apart from Puzzles there's a Dragon's lair type set peaces, where pressing keys in the right order or rapidly pressing one. These set peaces are used to show of the dinosaurs, the problem is that these set peaces are fun to watch but not really much fun to play. Not being a fan of the Dragon's Lair games I didn't much like these parts. I wouldn't much mind these parts of the game, but the problem is that you haft to use this mechanic for everything, for example there's parts where you go and open a door by rapidly pressing one of the arrow keys. It's unneeded and not fun.

One big problem is that the game feels rushed. Some textures look good while others look like place holders. Also transitions between areas in cutscenes are clunky as the game stops for a second or two, also some facial expressions aren't the best, sometimes out of sync or just random expressions.

All in all I didn't find this game fun, I found it too easy and I didn't like the hole Dragon's Lair mechanic. However if you find point and clicks too hard and you like Dragon's Lair I would think about it, if you can get over the technical flows.

Liam Hackett

Saints Row: The Third review

Volition has had a pretty bad year so far, with one of their game series (Red Faction) being shelved after a pretty average game. Now Volition are trying to make it up with Saints Row: the Third. Think the old GTA games such as; Vice City, and San Andreas and take all the weapons, characters and vehicles, then make them crazier... that’s this game in a nutshell. However a crazy game doesn’t necessarily make a good game.

The Story revolves around revenge, taking over and destroying everything! You need to take down a group called “Syndicate” because they killed your friend. It’s a pretty weak set up but it’s just a way to give you the crazy levels. In fact the whole story is just a set up to the madness that is the world. This becomes obvious when curtain characters completely vanish after you’ve complete their missions and are never spoken of again. The characters are well written and are very funny think of them of caricatures of every kind of person; it’s just insane and very funny.

Where the game really excels is with the gameplay. In Saints Row anything is possible... well if anything for you is drop kicking an old lady off a tall building, then flying off in a jet and crashing it into a group of people and surviving with a parachute, then yes anything is possible. I don’t mean you can do that ten hours in the game, oh no, almost everything in the game is unlocked from the word go. Being weapons, vehicles and most activities from when you boot up the game, you can do what you what.  

Most levels in the game are fantastic, the designer really wanted to make this larger than life game and they’ve done just that. For example there’s a level where you are attacking zombies... that’s right, zombies. There’s also a mission where you steal a hover plane and go around destroying everything! I would like to tell you more but I don’t want to spoil it, let’s just say that it’s crazy.

There is a levelling  system in Saints Row where completing levels or curtain objectives will give you respect, which is XP, and when you get enough respect you go up a level which give you the ability to upgrade your character (your health, ammo upgrade and so on).These upgrades cost money. The way you make money is by doing missions, which gives you money up front, and/ or buy buildings (Weapon shops and so on), which will give you a chunk of money hourly. The way I made money was by putting most of my money from missions into buildings, then saving up for curtain upgrades. When you get down to it, you’ll only use a certain set of upgrades.    

Activities are side missions, where you can make money, after you’ve played on or two of the same type of activities, you find that they are basically recycled by making them harder or tweaking them slightly, this doesn’t make them bad just a little repetitive, while some of them are fun, especially “Professor Genki’s Super Ethical Reality Climax”, think a third person Smash TV. Other activities you’ll just ignore after playing them once in the main campaign.

Customisation is a big thing in Saints Row: the Third. You can customize almost everything about yourself and most of your car/plane.  However it’s the things that you can’t customize that sticks out, sort of like the uncanny valley.  For example why can’t I customise most planes? Also why can’t I add custom decals to my car? However all these gripes are completely removed, when you can turn your character into Dr Manhattan and walk around the city nude.  

While most weapons are pretty average, there is a few that are insane, The 5 foot dildo bat, the remote controlled missile and many others, there just very fun to use, weirdly. The radio stations are pretty average, I listened to the 80s and 90s radio and there wasn’t really any big hits (maybe one or two by some people’s perspective), they where all what I like to call “forgettable hits” toughs songs that you hear and recognise, but can’t name the tile for the life of you.

All in all, the game is great. In some ways it falls flat, for example the activities. However the game’s all about just playing to just go crazy. Some people might might not like this but for others just turn on cheats and go mad.

Liam Hackett

Swords of the Stars 2 : Lords of Winter

KupaRizu here, bringing you a review for Swords of the Stars II: Lords of Winter, Kerberos’s second venture into the Space 4X genre, the next in the Sword of the Stars series, which for anyone who played it was an absolute classic in the X4 genre, bringing great and fluent controls, a smooth yet demanding learning curve and an overall great game. While similar in some ways, this iteration of the Sword of the Stars system is a terrible mutation of the beautiful formula of the original.

From the beginning this game was shaky, Kerberos admitted that its release was a ‘Release or Die’ situation, if they didn’t release when they did, the game would be scrapped. This led to a very rushed, almost Beta like, release where models, scripts and even entire levels were missing from the game files, however Kerberos managed to fix most of these problems with a series of first week patches. So now that the game is playable, let’s get on with how playable it really is.

Upon launching you are given a splash screen with the Paradox and Kerberos logos side by side, now this is usual launching procedure for most games, right? Not in Sword of the Stars II, this is the loading screen, however you don’t know this until around 12 minutes later when the game roars at you and then 3 minutes later actually kicks itself into the main menu. So, fifteen minutes of loading time, so the main menu, at a minimum, should be loaded right? Nope. You are given the game logo, and the menu options, however none of these do anything for a good minute until the background of the menu is loaded. Okay, my boredom and irritation levels rising I look for a tutorial so I can learn the controls and aspects of the game only to find there isn’t one. For new players of the Swords of the Stars series this is going to pose a big problem, as it’s manual is also not informative enough to be used as a tutorial or in some cases it’s not even good enough to be reference material in the middle of battle, which is a not good.

Okay, so it’s approximately been 15 minutes since I launched the game and I still haven’t even got past the main menu, let’s fix that, shall we. I start a new game, choose a level from its over-complicated map select screen and then get onto the customisation of my team. Then I finally see something good about the game, the graphics. While the graphics in the first Sword of the Stars where brilliant for their time they have aged and aren’t as amazing in today’s world, however Sword of the Stars II brings in updated graphics that look beautiful. I choose my cartoony hand drawn avatar, choose my team colours and Colony ‘NewFoundKupaLand’ is ready to go! …or at least it would be if I knew what the hell was going on.

I move the camera around, exploring the galaxy around me, and boy is it beautiful, stars glimmer and my colonies are easily identifiable against the dark background of space. I click my homeworld, and using my knowledge and experience from the first Sword of the Stars I start researching and building new ships. As the ‘Civilisation’ stage is turn based I take a while to peruse the new features and try to get used to the new and laggy interface.

Before I continue I want to make one point: Sword of the Stars II is stupidly over complicated, the level of micro-management, mission control, lack of good tutorials or guides and abundance of new useless features means that it has lost something its original had from the start: the Fun factor. The original, while it could take a week to learn all the features featured tutorials and tips on how to play the game, and these kept you interested as you knew what you were doing.

4X games are complicated affairs in themselves but usually soften this with ease-of-use and good communication and feedback from the game of things that require your attention, a great example of this the ‘Civilization’ series, where the player has access to numerous systems from micro-management to making choices that affected your entire civilisation, however it does a brilliant job of automating what needs to be automated and alerting the player to what needs to be decided or items of the players attention. Complicated, but easy to play.

Okay, so now I’ve got that off my chest and finally start to do something: design some new ships. In the original all of the ships parts were given ratings and brief descriptions so you knew what you were doing, however for some reason in Sword of the Stars II neither the game nor the manual tell you what ANY of the parts do, so you have to put everything together and hope for the best. However a new feature which I quite like is the fact that ships are built by creating invoices which allows the player to save and re-order the same invoice in the future, making the construction of ships a little bit easier the second time around.

Another annoying feature is the expansions to the government spending options, an area where the original game specifically tried to avoid, these new options allow the player to spend different amounts of different things such as research or construction which the leads to different types of governments. Once again none of this is actually explained so I have no idea what the different government types do or what benefits you gain from actually changing from the default.

So, I’ve managed to somehow build a fleet and sent them out into the cold, heartless void of space to explore when I come across a fleet of enemy ships, sparking a fight. Right, I can do this, real time strategy is my speciality! Or at least it should be, but, as with nearly every other part of the game, the combat system has also been ‘revamped’ into a much less intuitive form. The combat now runs on three vertical planes instead if one, but I haven’t figured out what difference being on a certain plane makes, so I’m throwing that into the ‘new and useless’ pile of features. The whole interface has been changed from the one that made sense in Sword of the Stars into a mash of unlabelled buttons, meaning that while in the original it was easy to select your ships and throw them straight into explosive laser death combat, this new system is a lot more tiresome and confusing. Plus, most of the combat time is spent actually finding your opponent, so most of the time there won’t be any actual combat before the timer is up.

Most of the new features in Sword of the Stars II are neat little ideas on their own, but because they are so difficult to access or understand they make the game more complex and frustrating to play, leading to an overwhelming, over-complex and unenjoyable game. If Kerberos had figured out a more graceful way to introduce the player to the plethora of new features then maybe this game could be good, but as it currently is the game fails to deliver the information the player needs and ends up that most of these features get ignored, misunderstood or abandoned completely during gameplay.

It seems that the ‘Release or Die’ situation would’ve produced better results if Kerberos went with the second option instead of delivering this buggy, over-complex Frankenstein’s monster of a game.

KupaRizu

PAYDAY: The Heist Review

Overkill studios have come out with there "heat" style co-op shooter "PAYDAY". Does this game rise to take the world? Or does it wish to be someone?

PAYDAY is a 4 player co-op game split between 6 individual missions. Now some mechanics may seem very similar to another title concerning the living dead however with a few massive tweaks to gameplay. For one, the enemy has weapons which means moving slowly and diving from cover to cover is essential to your survival. Also there's a levelling up system, which personally i Found a little strange as it stops low level players from getting to later levels as equipment like ammo bags and medi bags become essential with "hard" difficulty.

Now you maybe thinking "why does that stop me playing later levels?" Well the last three heists in the game need to be played on hard or the game won't let you play them, is sort of a silly design decision as some players maybe a little unwilling to do so as they may think they won't finish the mission because... Well, it's too hard . I had this problem with someone online and he almost refused to play it because he thought we would be there for hours because we would be failing the mission over and over again. On hinge sight it wasn't really that hard.

The reason he was like that wasn't because was a wimp well he was sort of was, but apart from that it was because the games already hard. The reason this is, because the everyone has a really good shot poke your head out of cover and you get riddled with bullets. Most levels are designed with cover in mind however some areas do lack cover so you do get cheep killed now and then. Also the lack of the source engines director really shows. Enemies seem to spawn randomly sin some missions, which also contributes to the feeling your being cheep killed.

A mission is one big level with objective you need to complete. Let me give you an example, the bank heist, the first mission in the game. You start off looking for the bank manager to get into a room that holds all the thermite to get into the vault. The doesn't take more than ten minuets. After that you need to watch a drill and protect it as it opens a door. The problem here is that your stuck in one room there's nothing interesting to do but watch a drill and shoot at the police, luckily one person needs to delete security footage from a computer so two people get to do something the other two are rather unlucky as they just stand in a room shooting police and watching a drill.

This is the main problem (gameplay wise) of PAYDAY sometimes you just stand around for long periods of time defending or just watching something. Now this did happen in Left 4 Dead but L4D had very short parts where you just waited just a minute or two, however in PAYDAY these events can the 5 to 10 minutes and can be in quick succession.

Now seeing as I'm talking about death allot you may think it's all over, however you'd be wrong to a point. You see there's this hostage system which is used as a sort of lives system. When you loose all your health you go down like you would in L4D but you have a time limit on how-long you stay down before you die (in game they call it "custody" ). When you do die you go into limbo watching the game for around 2 mins, then if your team mates are still alive they can exchange a hostage that you've taken. At first you can only take to hostages per person but with some unlocks you can take four, plus with some police you can scare them and make them cuff themselves making them your hostage.

Now I did have one big problem, which was lag... However not in the way you would think. I'm not talking about players see what you where doing a minuet ago as your playing normally. It's very strange and I didn't even notice this till I was playing with friends on Skype. I know this problem will only last a week but it's good to let you know before you buy.

All in all PAYDAY is a OK game at best. I had fun playing, however I couldn't see myself playing it over and over again. I would pick it up for all you Left 4 Dead fans, but without any sort of mod support, You'll haft to wait for DLC which is uncertain at this point.

Liam Hackett

Dungeon Defenders Review

Hello readers, KupaRizu here with my first ever review for Feral Entertainment, so please, sit back and enjoy!

Dungeon Defenders is the first ever game developed by Florida based game studio Trendy Entertainment, and boy what a brilliant entrance into the world of Videogames have they made, which is not surprising considering the company was created by veterans of the video game industry made up of some of the best Unreal Engine Developers in the world with over 40 years of collective experience between them.

Now, what makes Dungeon Defenders so unique and simply downright clever is the combination of two unlikely genres; Tower Defence and Action RPG, into a brilliant blend of action-filled excitement.

Dungeon Defenders takes place in a fantasy realm where a great evil has been sealed away for many generations in Eternia Crystals, however recently an evil army was released by accident with the sole purpose of destroying the Eternia Crystals and reawakening the great evil that has been sealed from the world. Due to this event, Heroes must be chosen to defend the Eternia Crystals, and you just happen to be one of the chosen ones.

Dungeon Defenders begins simple, like many RPGs, with a class selection screen, each class is unique and you are given four to start off with, with more classes being available to unlock at a later stage in the game. The classes each have a difficulty rating and are progressively more challenging to learn and use effectively.

The first class most players should start off with is the Apprentice class, due to his mix of barricades and different kinds of towers that can deal ranged damage from behind fortifications, giving him the most balanced toys of all the classes. The second hardest class, and the one I started with, is the Squire class, a Tank class through-and-through, his defences are based around funnelling or blocking off groups of baddies so he can rush in a take them down with his sword for a massively satisfying blood bath massacre.

The next class is different yet again, for one she is the only female class, and two she is a mixture of ranged support and trapping; The Huntress. Playing the Huntress means firing off crossbow bolts and shredding enemies apart with gatling cannons, all while laying traps designed to wear down, slow or stun incoming enemies. While she may sound overpowered, without a good Squire or Apprentice, she can quickly become overwhelmed by the sheer amounts of enemies that pour out of the dark portals. The final class is also a support style class: the Monk. The Monk class lays down area of effect auras to slow, damage or even turn enemies against their own former friends. Monks can also summon healing auras to aid the other players, however, just like the Huntress; Monks are not very good as a solo hero and is more of a support class for co-op.

After choosing your Heroes class you are able to choose his/hers colour scheme and name and then you go on to customise the look and colours of your Eternia Crystal, however at the beginning only one Eternia Crystal will be available, for the rest are unlocked via achievements. Then the game really begins!

Thrown into the tutorial with my Squire on medium difficulty I perform all the tasks set forth, from learning the movement system, how to build towers and how to use the rather sloppy camera controls, to learning all about levelling up and attacking. Then, and only then, am I given my first level, a simple invasion consisting of five waves of enemies, each wave getting progressively harder, standard Tower Defence stuff really. I build two spiky barriers, the only type of defence my Hero knows at level 1, and begin the combat stage. The camera zooms down into the action and I jump into the fray as little imp like demons start to pour out of the demon portals, I slash away until I kill something then move onto my next target, and again, slash, kill, move on, slash, kill, move on. The excitement of running into the action and clicking wildly quickly wore off, unfortunately, while fun, the action was primarily hack-and-slash, click to victory sort of gameplay. Despite this it was enjoyable to kill the imps and I had managed to complete the wave before they reached my defences, sweet. So, I run back to the Eternia Crystal and start the next wave, again killing away before they reached my defences. Ran back to the crystal, started the next wave, killed them all, same again next wave, and then I started the final wave.

This is where I learned my mistake, and learned that Dungeon Defenders is insanely hard, even when attempting to play on medium difficulty, and unless you have friends to play with, even on easy it is going to be a challenge to complete all 13 missions in the campaign. And of course, being the idiot I am, that was exactly what I planned to do. The final wave spawned two huge Orcs, these just smashed straight through my defences and ripped by crystal a new one, and there I was, sat in my chair, shocked as to how in the world I had managed to lose on the first level.

This game was designed for 2-4 player co-op, and it does not go easy on the lone wolves of gaming. However, as a loner, I had to continue regardless.

Upon failing the level I found myself in the games “level-select” area, a place where all great adventures begin: the Tavern. In the tavern was my crystal, which allows me to travel between the missions in Dungeon Defenders, a Defenders Forge, which allowed me to switch between multiple Heroes, and the barkeep, who sells armour, weapons and pets for you character.

What the barkeep sells is shuffled between each delve into a mission, so every time you come back to the Tavern a different set of items will be waiting for you to buy. Luckily for me there was a lightning powered wakizashi within my price range that increased my damage by quite a lot, so I bought it, levelled up my characters stats with the XP I had earned, and headed back into the first level and tried again, this time succeeding to defeat the Orcs and complete the level! (Cue fanfare)

I then continued onto the next level, which had five waves again but this time had a more complex route to defend, and tougher enemies. I set up my defences, started the round and am immediately defeated by three Orcs and a hell of a lot of imps.

This game is hard, so very very hard, with a hugely steep difficulty curve, however it provides a well-balanced death. Every failure is a chance to try again with a slightly stronger and richer character, and with four classes and four difficulties spread over 13 missions, this game provides countless hours of entertainment and challenges. On top of all that the missions can each be played in Survival Mode, in which you do not get any defences and must survive using only you hero and his abilities, or Strategy Mode, where you must protect the crystal using only defences and towers.

Still not satisfied with the amount of content available in the game, Trendy Entertainment made it so that for every campaign level completed, a challenge level is unlocked, these challenges are variations of the standard gameplay where you’ll be attacking instead of defending, protecting a teleporting crystal as it zooms around the map or even crazier stuff such as one player being the chicken and is unable to jump and dies easily. Finally to top it all off there is a PvP mode where you and your friends can battle each other in an arena.

All of this content, combined with unique gameplay, easily outweighs the minor grievance of the sloppy camera controls and barren tutorial, and will keep you coming back for more and more of this masochistically difficult, yet insanely fun Tower Defence/Action-RPG genre-bending masterpiece. Bravo Trendy Entertainment and I certainly can’t wait to see games as brilliant as this in the future from you.

KupaRizu

Nuclear Dawn Review

Ever since I played "Dino D-Day" I've been slightly worried about source mods converting into a indie games, especially the multiplayer ones such as "Orion Prelude" and "Nuclear Dawn". I've been watching ND for some time and was slightly mixed on it, but you know what they say "never judge a book by it's cover" so what is this
game made up of?

The main quirk of Nuclear Dawn is you can switch from a FPS view to a top down RTS view where you can place buildings such as turrets and dispensers. There two big catches to this; one you haft to be a commander to do this and two everything needs a little thing call electricity. This gives a new dynamic to the game. However though you may think it, but this isn't a new idea in fact this hole action RTS idea was nocking around back in the old Half-Life 1 days. "Natural Selection" first had the exact same idea (which in fact a sequel for Natural Selection is planed to come out next year).

The problem I had with "Natural Selection" was that being a commander was hard and extremely confusing to understand. "Nuclear Dawn" fixes this problem with some very easy to understand tutorials, however the problem is that there's no practice mode so the only way to refine your skills is in multiplayer. Also getting picked to be a commander is just blind luck and half the time you'll get kicked. Now I was only able to play about 5 times as commander so needless to say I didn't really master it.

Most maps are well built and has this strange feeling that your always progressing, I haven't really put my finger on it but it maybe due to the fact that the levels are made for you to go anywhere so flanking is key and easy to do. There are some levels I didn't like, for example "Metro" didn't really work however I put that down to the colour pallet, everything just blends together into a ugly look. However Metro is just the exception most of the maps are vibrant and easy to navigate. It's design I truly praise in Level Design because you can see where your going and what your doing and the maps still has this style that makes it stand out and fun to play.

There are four classes to choose from which boil down to assault, spy, heavy and support. Each of these classes has different load-outs to choose from and there own special skill. For example the spy's special skill is that he can tern invisible and backstab players, while assault has a sort of inferred view which can see invisible spies. There very well balanced and are all very distinct. Most classes come with at-least two different load outs for example the assault class has a machine gun load out, a sniper load out and a grenade launcher loud out. Each comes with 2 perk slots which you can pick.

You unlock perks from levelling up the problem is that there's no point to this levelling up system, it would be allot better if you had all the perks unlocked from the beginning as you can only pick one perk at the beginning and levels take so long that it takes forever and your thinking to yourself "was it worth the wait" the answer most of the time is "no doesn't fit my style" also there about 12 perks in total so there's only going to be two or three you'll find useful.

Of things to come from Nuclear Dawn. As it uses Valves Source engine a SDK is on the way and the Devs say that the best community made maps will make it into the updates and become official maps (like in TF2) So modders get ready. Also in the original Nuclear Dawn mod vehicles where going to be included however they haven't made it into the game. However recently in a interview with the devs vehicles where talked about and it seemed like there could be something coming later down the line, but only time will tell if it's true or not.

Interwave have made a fantastic little game which is well made and has a lot of polished. I hope this game gets a big community because I would love to play more of this. Keep your eyes on these people because there's a lot of talent here.

Liam Hackett

Warhammer 40K Space Marine Review

The Warhammer series, while I only once ever got into the actual board game as a kid I've always liked most of the Warhammer games especially the Dawn of War games. Relic has a long history with Warhammer and you can tell they have a lot of love for the series which transcends into the overall quality of their games. Now Relic has released there next Warhammer game "Space Marine" a third person shooter. So does this game keep their high standards of quality Dawn of War has or does it just fall flat on its face?

The first thing you may be thinking is "isn't this just a Gears of War rip of?" and my answer would be "No you fool! Gears of War has a cover system",  at first this can be very strange as you see all these chest high walls and your instinctive is just to dive for then and take cover. However this game isn't designed to be like that, it's designed for you to just run in and smash everything in sight! It's very refreshing, to see a game like this and it's done very well. For example weapons have a lot of weight behind them. The amazing thing is how many weapons there are and how different they turn out to be. There are plasma pistols, Laser cannons, a Team Fortress 2 style sticky grenade launcher and much much more. They all have their own uneek look and feel. However there is a lack of shotguns which is slightly disappointing.

The game lasts  around 7 hours which is pretty short in my view however now a days a game can be 4 hours and still get away with it, so make it as you will. For me the game did become repetitive by the end but thanks to a story twist the game stays fresh for the last few hours. Oh about the story! It's pretty generic but very cheesy. You play as Captain Titus a Ultramarine and all round bad-ass. You are sent to find and defend a weapon ageist army of Orks on a Forge world (a world that's one big factory). Later on there's another super weapon and then plot twist (Think of a Monty Python Sketch about the Spanish) upon plot twist. The story in general as I said earlier is very generic however there are some funny bits (however I feel that it's unintentionally). Sometimes I did get a little confused about what they’re talking about however if you’re a Warhammer fan then you'll know what they’re talking about.

The level design and aesthetic of the game is well made even if I do have a few problems with some areas, it's not that there bad just empty. There are some great areas in the game and with some set pieces so nothing gets to boring. One of my Favourite parts of the game where you’re in a ship shooting down Orks, it's good because it breaks up the action and doesn't out stay its welcome. Another thing I love is the Jet pack; it's probably the best thing in the game! However the annoying part is that there's only 3 times in the game you can use it! I put this under "don't have too much of a good thing", which works to its advantage every time I saw a pod I was hoping for the jet pack.

The multiplayer is average at best; I didn't really enjoy it that much mainly because balance wasn't that good so i was fighting ageist people who had more powerful weapons than me. Also there are only two game types Team Deathmatch and Domination. However one big stand out point is the customization, there's hundreds of thousands of armour you can choose and equip so almost everyone is different. 

Sadly what are probably the game’s best modes; Co-op and Exterminatus Warhammer's take on Horde mode.  These modes will be coming out in October and I'll make a edit in this review to talk about them. From what I've played of the single player Horde mode would be a great mode, not like a Gears of War where your hiding behind walls, no you’re going to be up close and personal bashing Orks, flying into Orks, blowing up Orks it's just going to be awesome.

All in all Space Marine is an above average game right now. However if everything turns out right with the updates then you have a good game but only time will tell if it plans out that well. For now though I would wait till the update. 

Liam Hackett 

Hitman Blood Money Review

Now I know I haven't written a review since April (Dino D-Day) so I missed games like Duke Nukem, Alice the Madness Returns... um Dungeons and Dragons: Daggerdale, none of them I was really panning to review well may Duke however I was still very busy and so I only played it a little bit but what I did play of it... It was pretty awful so much so that I got artistic all off a sudden.

Anyway Hitman. The only Hitman game I had played before Blood Money was the very first one; this was a good few years ago. What I can remember back then was that it was fun but extremely frustrating due to AI that could see though your disguise in a matter of mini seconds, now I play Blood Money and I wonder why I haven't heard of this game as much as i have.

You play as Agent 47 the world’s greatest and most secretive assassin, (Ezio eat your heart out!)well that's what the game tells you fact of the matter if your anything like me well... let’s say secretive and to be honest greatest is not what you would call him if your anything like me, think more along the lines of loud, clumsy and maybe a bit trigger happy. 

The best thing about this is that the game lets you do this, you muck up by being spotted carrying a pistol in your normal suit it's not game over you still have a change just go James Bond and go guns blazing with your pistol picking up other weapons on the way. The bad thing is that the controls don't really support this type of gameplay. Controlling 47 isn't really like controlling a tank but its close. Shooting is very easy to do and getting headshots are a little too easy to get in my opinion.

The main aim of the game is to assassinate certain people with little notoriety and to make it all seem like he just happened to accidently trip and fall over a balcony head first into a pit of spiky rocks. The way you do this is to silently sneak up on people (such as security guards) kill then or sedate them. From there you take their cloths or anything else important like key cards, from there you casual walk around the area looking for opportunities to take out your targets without being noticed. Sometimes you’re completely stumped on how you’re meant to do this but after a good 5 or 6 times of trial and error before getting it and then it just seem easy. 

After every mission you get ranked on how well you did by how noisy you where, how violent you where to people who are not your targets (guards, citizens and so on) your finally given a notoriety rating out of a hundred which will affect you on later missions by how well people can spot you and become alerted to your presents this is easily fixed by bribing police chiefs or threatening witnesses. You’re finally given a name on how well you did (for example "The Ghost" or "Silent Assassin"). Added to this game is the cost that the agency ( where you get the missions from) hast to pay to get back your suit or any custom weapons you may of dropped, which affects how much money you get payed for the mission which then open up upgrades for you weapons.

Talking of Weapons I didn't really use any of the rifles or shotguns in the game, I always carried my pistol but that was it, apart from the weapons I already got by default (fibre wire and syringes) however seeing how you can play this game in a different ways I can say I never used them because I was always the sneaky type of assassin by you may if your choosing to use a sniper rifle or assault rifle to rush in to your missions and quickly take them out.

I only have to gripes with the game, one of them I can't really blame them and the other one is a design destitution. The first grip is the AI, sometimes you put on a disguise but your still not aloud to go to curtain areas, the game sometimes doesn't make this very clear and if you go into a area that you’re not allowed to go too by one millimetre every single guard will come running after you guns blazing! 

My second and final grip is that there's not Level Editor! This game is prime for a Level Editor and it wouldn't be that hard and I could see some very talented people making fantastic maps but unfortunately there isn't one and so when looking online for some sort of community group to get Hitman 1 to work on Windows 7 (if anyone knows how to do this on Steam please email me) there was little to no one still on any message boards however it's slowly growing thanks to another Hitman game coming out soon. (I’m looking forward for it).

All in all Hitman Blood Money is a very enjoyable game very well polished well rounded game, I finished this in around 10 hours which is a good length it never lacks or becomes boring, once you start the game your stuck playing it to the end. I pick the whole collection for around five pounds (it was the Steam summer sale) but if you want to get the collection now it's now £17.97 but you can get Blood Money for five pounds. For any type of stealth pick it up, you won't regret it.

Liam Hackett

Dino D Day Review

Dino D Day originally a Source Mod, has gone the way of "The Ball" and have turned Independent. Dinosaurs’ vs. humans seems a cool idea but can it really work? Well let’s see if it does!

First thing I must say that there are barely any servers and the times I played there were NO objective game mode! This means that this review will only go over Team Death match and King of the Hill. Sadly the objective mode is meant to be the main game, it's the one shown in the trailers with the Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops. I don't know why this mode is not being played, I was playing for three hours and in all that time NO ONE was playing objective, I asked someone about this and they didn't even know that there was an objective game mode! Anyway with that out the way.

There are 3 types of Dinosaur; the "normal" fast running type like the Raptor and the Dilophosaurus.  A tank like dinosaur with a Rocket launcher on its back (Desmatosuchus) and a Teradactal which is a summon for the German sniper. The only problem with this is; there not balanced, two of the Dinosaurs are not fun to play as, and the allies don't get Dinosaurs. OK, OK let me explain why. The Raptor is probably the most unbalanced. The Raptor is the fastest character in the game, this would be OK but they make them tiny and have an ability to kill a person instantly. The developers tried to compensate by giving the sniper a rabbit that will distract the Raptor for 10 seconds, there's no way to avoid being killed by the Raptors by their special attack (even if someone kills them in their animation your already dead) same for when your distracted by a rabbit, there's no way out of it. This is a big annoyance on both sides.

As I said about two of the Dinosaurs we're not fun to play as this is the Dilophosaurus, which is a tall Raptor like Dinosaur which is played in the third person and is controlled in the third person, the bad thing about this is that it controls like a tank which is a problem with another one of the dinosaurs. (Desmatosuchus get to that later) I wouldn't mind if it moved like a tank, however the model is long and the doorways are thing meaning that you'll keep getting stuck in doors. Turning is annoying and is not fluid. The Dilophosaurus can pick up and throw goats that are scattered around the levels, when thrown at the other team and hit anywhere on the body ends up being an instant kill which is very easy to do meaning it's another annoyance for the Allies. Also if you run and attack the enemy he'll get thrown to the floor where you can pick up the enemy and throw them at a wall. This also instantly kills them.

Finally the Desmatosuchus. This is probably the most balanced dinosaur. It's a small, slow dinosaur with a AT gun on their back. There's not much really to say about it really. It's slow and balanced. The Teradactal is a special ability used by the German snipers; the Teradactal is more a suicide bomber than anything. The Bomb has a wide range however you can use it way to often and in a king of the kill game is an easy way to take over the flag and hold it.

The normal soldiers are bland and plane they have no personality to them only a few one liners every so often. One of the big problems is getting people to join the Allies as there so plain that no one wants to play them; they want to play as the Dinosaurs. Which raises the question why didn’t the Allies get Dinosaurs? I know it's part of the storyline (which is only apparent through the trailers) but there no storyline in the game apart for "THE GERMANS HAVE DINOSAURS!” So why don't the Allies get Dinosaurs so there's arguments over the teams?

There are tons and I mean tons of glitches in this game from animations not working, desktop crash, servers not working and hit boxes not responding. This game bores on being a Beta and someone I was playing with did think it was a paid beta. Presentation isn't at all good, basic lighting (which becomes apparent when you can't see where you’re going in a few levels), basic textures and basic models. It lacks polish too; models sometimes levitate off the ground! Also another thing not present is a level editor which is almost compulsory for a Source game. 

It's a shame that the gameplay is so bad, the jokes and art aesthetics (such as a poster, loading screens so on) are really good, and it’s just a shame about everything else. This game is more of a mod than anything else, and a not very good one at that. It's a shame if there was a little bit more polish and fixed the balance issues, a good game is in there... somewhere... I think. Sadly this game has little to no community so chances are that this game will disappear soon.

Liam Hackett