well as a fan of LOST i had to go out and get this game..

the good news is that this isn’t another crappy TV to PC conversion the game is quality and the story is great, the gameplay is a blend of exploration and action and of course some puzzle solving, you run around the island doing what the stars in the show do, you try to recollect your memory while helping the others.

the faces of the game characters are some of the most realistic ever seen, KATE for instance looks incredible at times i thought she’d come out of the screen, so goes for the other characters with the exception of Sun and Sawyer perhaps nothing major though.

if you like an entertaining game and you’re a fan of LOST, you’re going to love this one, i certainly do and even if you’re not a fan of Lost you might like this game, this is a half-decent TV 2 PC conversion, i like it a lot.

Unlike alot of other reviewers, I personally enjoy the game play a graphics of FFoW, but that’s about all I enjoy. The combat physics could be a little more challenging and realistic; example, any shot taken with a sniper rifle will be dead on using only the cross hairs with no adjustment for range or moving target. The real downfall of FFoW is that the multiplayer has no stats, which means there is not much to keep people playing. Dice knows how to keep me engaged in their Battlefield series by giving unlocks and ranks, which makes their games successful. I believe a sense of achievement is needed in gaming (such as beating a single player mission, collecting items, or reaching a certain rank) and FFoW offers only a small single player campaign that only took me 5 hours to beat. FFoW is worth playing only if you are burnt out on your current online shooter. See you on the Battlefield or Frontline (probably the Battlefield).

Well let me just start by saying this. I can run Crysis on ultra high at 1074×768. This game, runs more choppily than Crysis on LOW at the same resolution. My first reaction was: “What the flipping’ f*ck?” My next response was a bit better, since even on low, the details in this game are nicely done, for what’s designed to be a multi-player game.

This is definitely a patch-worthy game, and I can see it going to some great places if the developers stick by their product. Think a mix of battlefield, gears of war and CoD in terms of style and play. I’m running dual 3 ghz intel, 8800gt and 2 gigs of ram. Honestly, I think I should be getting better results out of this game, but whenever I crank up the res and quality, this thing hangs like a mother hangs laundry on a windy afternoon.

Aside from all that, the story starts off pretty well. It got me hooked and pretty excited to start gunning red star units down. Kind of a cliche start: *chopper down chopper down, boom crash SURVIVE* Then again, it more than made up for it with premise. The story MAKES SENSE for once. I mean really, nothing is off the wall here, except for maybe the drones.
Which leads me to my next favorite part: The drones. I have yet to play all of them, but man I can see MASSIVE tactical potential for these things. Remember the sentry guns from BF2142? YEah, they have wheels now, and come in new flavors. Hella fun to mess around with the mini gun car and flying C4.

Feel a little(A LITTLE) toyish, but over all pack a nice punch. The game does a decent job of letting you learn and practice with them before you do anything dangerous. Vehicles: They are..simply cool. No more need for engineers and most vehicles have both a minigun AND rockets, so you always have options at hand. The only downside would be it takes awhile for the vehicles to heal, unlike having an engineer whip out his wrench and fixing it in less than a minute.

Overall, this game is fun, albeit in need of a patch pronto. I’d say wait to buy this game, but keep an eye on it, because it will definitely be worth it if the devs decide to patch it and patch it well.

Game is solid when it comes to the graphics and cinematics!! They only down side is the lack of the mouse usage in the menus. Also unless you look for it “Key/Control Bindings” the very first thought is this is a game pad
only game and not mouse & keyboard. However it does play great once you configure your mouse and keyboard.

The Germans though bother me because it is like a shooting gallery they just move back and forth while they are trying to shoot you. Some do take cover, However, I noticed they shoot over things like the AI in MO Airborne.
THe German AI is like the same. The story line so far seems good.

This is a refreshing change for WWII in regards to the battle field. It is not like the other WWII FPS were everything is in EUROPE. This offers a fresh alternative!!!

Last week, Electronic Arts — or more specifically, EALA — teased a big upcoming Command & Conquer announcement to be revealed in two weeks’ time. That would make the official announcement still just less than a week away, but this is the Internet, and nothing ever takes two weeks’ time. PC Gamer confirms, via a scan of its upcoming cover story, that the big reveal is in fact Red Alert 3.

The cover doesn’t provide many details, nor does the short story accompanying it, so there’s really not much news here besides confirmation of its existence. We can at least say that the Soviets will obviously be returning as one of the factions in the game. And judging by the stylized, propaganda-like artwork and facetious headline, it appears Red Alert 3 will likely retain the more lighthearted, goofy approach the past games were known for. We are, after all, talking about a series that has featured aquatic battles between mind-controlled squids and Navy-trained dolphins.

Many questions remain, though — will Red Alert 3 again be powered by the SAGE engine, previously used in Command & Conquer: Generals, the Battle for Middle-Earth games and Command & Conquer 3? Will we once again see the return of Yuri, the powerful psychic who played a major role in Red Alert 2’s storyline? Will Tanya once more be played by Kari Wuhrer? We await these revelations with bated breath.

Just a day after confirmation of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3’s existence, Electronic Arts has revealed a number of new details. Set for release on the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, Red Alert 3 brings back the Allies and the Soviets as well as a third Japanese faction, and introduces a fully co-operative campaign mode. And it seems the game is farther along in development than one would have expected, as invites to a private beta will be included in copies of the Command & Conquer 3 expansion pack, Kane’s Wrath.

(more…)

The thing that strikes me most about this game is the art direction. A lot of research must have gone into 1930s Art Deco, which is the visual style of this game. It’s everywhere, from the buildings and signs to small details like the content of posters, taps in the toilets. Everything has been lovingly and authentically created and comes together as an design experience, and is perfectly complimented by a tasteful selection of soundtracks from 40s and 50s epitomized by Bobby Darin’s “Beyond the Sea (La Mer)” echoing.

The sound is used very cleverly to create atmosphere. The music is in 3D, which means it has a source, and we often hear it emanating, with some distortion, from some distant room which generates an eerie atmosphere that reminds me of how the same technique was used in the movie “The Shining” where we hear the haunting strains of Al Bowly’s “Midnight and the Stars & You”. The sophisticated music constrasts starkly with the dystopian state of the society and half-ruined locations

Sound effects are also well implemented. As we wander through Rapture, we hear footsteps, muffled voices that and other inexplicable sounds close by…

Lighting and shadows are technically spot on, but go one step further in that they are also used to further increase the atmosphere and suspense of the game, such as when we see the shadow of something waiting for us round a corner…

“Water, water, everywhere. And not a drop to drink”. Well, not exactly…the underwater city is leaking and flooding, and you won’t see better water effects in any other game - I promise. It’s quite amazing. I read somewhere that the developers hired a programmer just to work on the water effects. He did an excellent job and set a new standard for these kind of effects in computer games.

If you’ve read other reviews, you will hear a lot about narrative. For me the unfolding story of the game, which you get to know by finding tape recorders strategically place around each level, puts a nice frame around the FPS experience, making it more like an interactive movie. In this sense it reminds me of that most excellent game of a few years ago “Mafia”. However, like Mafia, it is an FPS. And although we have a wide range of weapons and abilities to find, master and use, and a few puzzles to solve, the bones of the gameplay is to shoot your way through each level through waves of enemies. Personally, I get a bit bored with this, and this game had enough going for it to offer something slightly different.

Oddly, like “Mafia” of a few years ago, there is no multiplayer, which is a shame since it has a nice physics engine that allows you to toss objects and bodies around, as in “Half-Life 2″. Mulitplayer would have ensured its longevity, and it would have been great to play with a map editor!!!

Like “Mafia”, when “BioShock” is over, you’ll feel a bit of a come down, like you might feel if you’ve been to see a really good film at the cinema. And then you’ll find yourself wishing you hadn’t played it, so that you could play it all over again for the first time!!

Definitely a significant game in the history of PC games, and deserves a place in the Hall of Fame.

Pump out units you don’t care about, never get attached to, and send them at the enemy as fast and as often as you can. This is pretty much the formula they’ve followed since, well, forever.

The only bug exception I know of was the original Age of Empires. Those were the good old days of RTS gaming–when a ‘defensive’ strategy also worked. You could build walls and be safe behind them. You could plot and plan. There was time to think, and I love thinking.

Wow, was I ever excited about the game Supreme Commander. Those overhead shots of red vs blue units in tactical array really had me. Or should I say, tricked me. For all it’s hype ingenuity, the S in RTS was still the same: Click click click to pump out the units, overwhelm with numbers, zerg. To me, at least, this game was an utter disappointment. It got great ratings though, so obviously it was great for others…but not for me. I wanted more. I wanted…deeper.

If you like strategy games and you’ve never played Galactic Civilizations 2, you’re missing out. Stardock, the publisher of ‘Sins of a Solar Empire’ created a masterpiece with that game, catering to a niche of fans eager to relive the glory days of Master of Orion 2. But Stardock outdid themselves, and GalCiv 2 has surpassed it’s 4X strategy forefathers (including Civilization) and in a few months time, when it’s next expansion arrives, will get even better.

Point is: They make great games, and more importantly, are committed to improving and enhancing those games in light of the desires expressed by the players who buy them.

Sins of a Solar Empire is deep, immersible, customizable. It is made for a gamer who loves to think and plot and plan, who likes their games saturated with lore and steeped in tactical balance. Yeah, games last long. This, to the strategy gamer, is a good thing. It means one mistake won’t cost you anything. It means a struggle that promises rich fulfillment at the end. It means, in a word, ‘Epicness’.

No, that’s not a real word. But you get the idea, I hope.

My favorite game(and I feel far and away the most universally strategic game of all time) is Rome/Medieval 2 Total War. I’m not here to argue the point, but I don’t think anything comes close to the grand scale and immense tactical decision-making present in those games. Time will tell how Sins of a Solar Empire stacks up, but what it is now is close, and what it will likely be in a years time may surpass anything I could hope to imagine.

My review? This game is incredible. You can read about the gameplay mechanics elsewhere. I’m here to tell you that if you like your strategy games long and complex, but exciting and vastly challenging as well, sit on the fence no longer. Hop into the yard and jump in the pool, my friend.

Epic space strategy on a colossal scale is here. And it’s equipped with three banks of laser cannons, front and rear missile bays, roving fighter squadrons and a Gauss cannon.

I’ve wasted enough time trying to convince you. Time to play.Â

 

 

Well I won’t bore you with constant flames about POTBS. The thing that stands out most to me is there seems to be zero end game content. You can reach lvl 50 without ever doing a single quest yet when you hit 50 the question is what do I do now. PvP is not something people do much of yet the game is about 90% pvp based. There is no benefit currently to doing pvp and the changes coming to promote pvp will not do so. This is the main reason I am cancelling my account. I think over time the game will pick up and things will improve but right now there is no justification of paying $15 bucks a month for the content. There are too many alternatives to this game and ones that by far will keep you entertained.

Gameplay:
The combat is unique and fun when you are fighting with ships but hand to hand is something I could compare to a nintendo game from 15 years ago. As for the economy it is totally player driven and only time will tell if this will be a good thing. The quest tracking and overall quest system needs alot of work. The game could also use a better waypoint system, it is about near impossible to set a waypoint and keep it locked on.

You also have to pick 1 of 4 nations. You can then create alts on the server but they all must be from the same nation. The current system doesn’t recommend servers therefore there are 3 servers with adequate populations and the rest are ghost towns. There are too many servers and not enough players. The should combine the servers to create more player interaction. There also should be a reason to play a nation, ie better resources, ships, etc. As it is now the French are so underplayed on most servers you wont see 20 people online at a given time on most servers. This is a very game breaking problem and needs to be addressed quickly.

Story:
The story line is set in the 1700’s of the Carribean. It was a time where sheer brutality was very common and the game would benefit more from showing this. I personally have lived on the coast of North Carolina and the lore of Pirates and their impact on the state is still seen today. And since Blackbeard was a North Carolina Pirate and the stereotype of all pirates are based on his image I think this game hits the mark.

Graphics:
The open sea and ship details are amazing as well as the avatar customization. The hand to hand fighting is very generic.

Final thoughts:
The game shows potential and is a great break from traditional MMORPG’s but for now the game has far too much wrong with it to justify the high monthly fee. Lower the cost to 9.99 or less a month and subscriptions would jump. There is little justification to keep the account with the current content and long term I don’t see this game as a major contender in the ever growing MMO world. Originality can get people to try a game but its the content that keeps them coming back. My advice is to wait a few months to see if they can fix the issues that currently plague the game and to see if end game picks up.

• Birth of Shadows on Out of Eight.
• The Club on bit-tech.net and Strategy Informer.
• Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance on Gas Bandit Gaming.