Thirteen1

The South African fun is over, and unless you’re lucky enough to be Spanish (or don’t care about football), you’ll undoubtedly be nursing some kind of World Cup hurt..

Luckily, as always, gaming is here to act as a shining light in the darkest of times, and the 100% free-to-read July issue of Thirteen1 magazine is now available, covering all of the month’s top gaming releases.
There really is little reason to be down with all of this finger-bashing fun to be had.

The much anticipated Crackdown 2 has finally jumped onto the scene, and right onto the front cover of Thirteen1, probably leaping over a massive skyscraper while firing a rocket launcher in mid-air to get there. Does it live up to expectations? Check out T1’s extensive review of all things super-powered to find out.

EA have fittingly released FIFA Online just in time for everyone to right their personal international wrongs, so T1 has jumped straight in there to cover it with a beta hands-on. Will it prove as popular as it’s console counterpart?

The DrunkenGamer has had a great time flying around Cataclysm, the latest mind-blowing expansion for Blizzard’s World of WarCraft, and wishes you was there so much that he’s put together a brand new feature, Wish You Were Here, showing you all of the best areas before it’s released.

The must-have, quintessential rock music collection keeps getting better as Activision announces two exclusive re-records and a host of new shredable tracks for Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock.

Singers, songwriters and rock legends Alice Cooper and The Runaways went back into the studio to re-record “No More Mr. Nice Guy” and “Cherry Bomb,” respectively, for fans to rock out to when the game releases this September.

“I AM a Warrior of Rock! Younger fans getting exposed to true classic rock songs is one of my personal crusades,” said Alice Cooper. “The new audience listening to the classic songs of today, like “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” will hopefully be inspired to write the classic songs of tomorrow.”

Youdagames have been awarded for their creativity, ingenuity and quality games at the 2010 Gamehouse Great Game Awards. In receiving acclaim for “Up-and-Coming Developer” (Youda Farmer, Youda Marina and Youda Sushi Chef), Youdagames is now acknowledged professionally for its game development success.

Games developer and publisher, Youdagames, was awarded as Up-and-Coming Developer for three titles released in 2009, Youda Farmer, Youda Marina and Youda Sushi Chef.
GameHouse, a division of RealNetworks Inc., announced the winners for the second annual GameHouse Great Game Awards (GG’s) during an exclusive event held last night at Experience Music Project in Seattle. The judging panel included representatives from leading independent developers across the casual games industry. GameHouse introduced the GG’s in 2009 as a way to showcase the most talented and creative casual games developers in the industry.

Get swept up in a romantic game setting like no other, thanks to Ngames anticipated upcoming MMORPG, Fairy Story Online.

Winner of 9 industry awards, including PC Editor Choice award (2009) and Gamespot China’s world’s most anticipated online games (2009), Fairy Story Online is exciting beta players with it’s unique mixture of romantic nostalgia and real-time combat.

Fairy Story Online, Ngames’ latest MMORPG, is set in a beautiful, warm, romantic world that instantly evokes memories of classic childhood fairytales. The game is filled with distinctive characters, hundreds of pets and dozens of fun mounts – it’s the type of wonderland Alice wishes she’d fallen into.

Voice acting can make or break a game, this becomes even more true in the case of games based on known licences. This is amplified even further when you’re doing a game based on a licence as well-defined as the DC comics.

Yesterday Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) officially announced some of the people who will be voicing some of the best know characters in comic history for their upcoming DC Universe Online.

After seeing the list I have only one thing to say to the guys as SOE….Guy’s, I think you have just given all the comic-book geek’s (myself included) around the world a simultaneous nerdgasm.

Headlining the list of voices are the legendary Mark Hamill & Kevin Conroy, who will both be reprising their roles as the voices of The Joker & Batman . Both of these actors have helped define the voice of those character so well in the past, in both animation and gaming, particularly in Batman: Arkham Asylum.

But the Geeky Greatness does not end there. Be sure to read the rest of the list after the jump.

When it was officially announced last year that Dungeons & Dragons Online was going Free-to-Play, I was very intrigued.

It had always one of those MMO’s that I wanted to give a proper play but couldn’t justify another subscription fee. So I was a little disappointed when it turned out to only be the American servers.

However there is good news on the horizon.

For the last four years the European service has been managed by the guys at CodeMasters. However their licence to run this service will shortly run out and they have decided to pass control back over to Turbine.

The current European service will complete its last full day in action on the 19th of August. After it shuts down at midnight players new & old will be welcomed onto the DDO Global service with open arms.

Thankfully for those currently playing the game, you need not fear a loss of all of your hard work.

As part of the transfer over too Turbine’s control existing European players will be offered the opportunity to transfer all their characters to the global servers. They will also reward them with 5,000 Turbine Points (approx €50 worth) to be used in the DDO Store.

If you want to find out more details about how exactly the transition is going to be handled, you can check out this post on the official DDO EU forums.

Activision’s latest fps hit, Singularity, has been a highly anticipated release since its announcement. It’s instantly very clear that they’ve taken a large step, rather, a leap away from the realism of the Call of Duty titles in this time-travelling, Ruski-shooter.

The convoluted and, at times, disturbing plot is far from simple; in brief, you play as Nathan Renko, a captain in the US Army, sent to a secret Russian Island, where the Soviets have been experimenting, for what of a better word, in time-travel. Of course, when you arrive at the island, the game immediately begins to seep with predictability; you get split up from your partner, you get ambushed several times by admittedly creepy mutants, you find your partner, he gets killed by an angry Russian, and you get saved by a female rebel, who believes that you are the saviour of mankind. Drawing any parallels yet?

When an indie company proudly calling themselves The Bearded Ladies (and the award for “Best Company Name Ever” goes to…) bursts onto the gaming scene, you’d be right to expect something a little different. Landit Bandit, their first release, is something of a revelation for the PSN Store. Not only is it a cracking title worthy of your time, it’s almost an entirely unique concept in the age of copycat companies and endless bedroom indies duplicating each other’s designs.

To put it simply; Landit Bandit plays out like every other retro-advanced-casual-physics-based-chopper-game you’ve ever played. That’ll be none, then…

If you want to get anywhere in the MMO business the major thing you need is innovation. But the trouble is that there are so many ideas floating around out there that it’s damned difficult to come up with a truly unique approach to gaming.

Most browser games suffer from ‘copycat syndrome’, a condition where game designers flat out lift ideas from other, more successful games. Crime RPG ‘Biker Battles’ is one of the few games that actually seems to be innovating, at least at the moment anyway.

Inspired by his love for the TV show Sons of Anarchy, Biker Battles is the brainchild of one Stefan Gaasbeek and is currently in open alpha, meaning anyone can register a character and get playing – just remeber that because game is still developing you currently only have the bare bones to play with. However, Gaasbeek had a spark of ingenuity when creating the game, deciding that the players themselves should play a big role in forging the gameplay of the new MMO.