About the game

Written by TurkeySaladBoy

Order a cocktail – shaken, not stirred – toss your morality out of the window and prepare to be induced into the mindset of a secret agent through Big Daddy’s Chick’s espionage-themed role-playing game on Facebook, Coldwar: Clambake. Tuxedo hire not included.

It is somewhat apt that your foray into the clandestine world of spies begins with a game of Daddy-or-Chips, in that you are asked to look into your heart and choose your alliance. The options are as polarised as right or wrong. In one corner are the Spymasters, Martin and Dick, bound to the network of F.R.O.S.T. (David Jason does not feature) where the ringleader, Ms Butterpat, calls the shots. In the other corner, a heinous motley-crew of Masterminds hell bent on disrupting the natural world order. Once you have decided on how you want your bread buttered, its time to create a character using the customization tool. You can have some eye-watering fun mixing the abstract pre-formatted heads and bodies; imagine playing around with Mr Potato head after a bottle of Absinthe. Facial hair is optional, but every spy needs a moustache to conceal their identity. Oh, and you also need to set up an alias, or codename, which is how you will be referred to throughout the game.

Coldwar: Clambake is a role-playing game where the traditional gameplay mechanic of engaging in missions to level up and earn experience points apply. The statistics are displayed in the top right of the game menu. At first glance you would be forgiven for being daunted by the menu, with its unfamiliar options and the complexity of the statistics. Thankfully there is a helpful tutorial, which slips onto your arm like a soliciting double-agent and leads you gently through those tentative first steps.
The tutorial box, while being prominent in the top left, can prove a nuisance since it covers up incoming messages and status updates as per the new Facebook layout. However, this is an ergonomic point that the design team can easily correct.


Read More in Issue 24

About the game

Written by Drunken Gamer

There are many challengers to the RTS throne, but one thing that every fan of the genre will agree on is that the original StarCraft is up there with the very best of them. If you don’t agree, then, well..you are wrong.
With its evenly matched multiplayer gameplay, engrossing single-player storyline and well designed races, StarCraft was instantly loved by gamers the world over when it was released. So much so, in fact, that it is still being played regularly to this day, 12 years after it’s 1998 release.
Thankfully, after years of delays and excuses, StarCraft’s much anticipated sequel, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, has finally gone into the closed beta stage. To say i’ve been eagerly awaiting this would a gross understatement.
Whether me getting a beta key was luck, or just the Blizzard PR guys attempts to stop my constant questioning as to when it would arrive, we will never know.
Nor do I want to know – I got my access to the beta either way!!
Somewhere during my first match, between having my base overrun by Zergling’s and watching the attack force I had sent to my first opponent being torn apart, I realised I should probably share my opinions on the game with you guys.

The very first thing to talk about is the new look BattleNet system. When you log into the game you seamlessly log into BattleNet at the same time. The interface looks great, everything is simple to understand and it’s all easily accessible. One of the most important things you can access from this view is your player profile. Anything you could want to know about your account is here, from achievements (which were disabled at this stage of beta) to match history and even your win/loss statistics.
Selecting a previous match from the history will present you with the final overview of that match, showing you a bunch of interesting details, such as your average resource collection rate, unit production and even an overview of your build order.
This is all very useful information for the future, allowing you to determine exactly how, and why, you lost or won a match. Hopefully, using this information, you can then refine your tactics for a more successful battle next time. You can even see what your opponent did during the game, helping you figure out what worked so well for them, and why your troops were cut to ribbons while theirs just stood there..laughing.


Read More in Issue 24

About the game

Written by Scott Malthouse

From the minds that brought you Shaiya and Dragonsky comes something familiar yet refreshingly new. New Era Odyssey Online, or N.E.O, is a free anime-style MMO that does away with class boundaries, allowing you to seize the torch of freedom and break free from the shackles of the usual warrior, theif, archer and wizard characters. Korean developer Sonov had different plans for N.E.O, giving the player more control over how their character develops. This is the key aspect of this well done, if slightly muddy-looking game, and one that sets N.E.O apart from the mountain of MMOs out there in the cyber ether.

N.E.O looks set to become the driving force behind a new concept of MMO, one where character freedom is highly valued. But that’s not to say that it leaves behind the tried and tested tropes that have been with online anime fantasy games since the dawn of time. You have your well endowed battle wenches, weapons the size of aircraft carriers, interesting but impractical clothing, and cutesy characters to make the girls squee.

Like the beginning of every good fantasy story, this one starts with character creation. You can only choose from human characters, which is a slight let down considering humans are boring when it comes to a game genre that’s full of fantastic creatures. Still, the freedom to dabble in a bunch of classes more than makes up for this drawback, allowing players to have unique characters even without the multitude of races. You can choose your hair style, eye colour, clothing, hair dye etc, which are all standard features in most MMORPGs now.
Once you get out into the wide world you will see that graphics aren’t N.E.O’s strong point. Looking like they have come straight out of Neverwinter Nights, the jagged characters and cardboard environments aren’t really enough to put you off playing, but the graphics are definitely something that needs working on. That said, those with lower spec PCs will be able to run the game, which can only be a plus.

As mentioned before, the glowing highlight of N.E.O is the class freedom. You choose skills of different classes from the training instructor NPC, who will sell you skill books. You read the book by double-clicking and then you can plop it into one of your skill slots. You are allowed to learn multiple skill books from different classes, so you could pick a Gunner and then a Priest skill, making your character into a badass gun-toting healer. You may want to get tanked up with Warrior skills for a few levels and then get some Mage and Archer skills to get the best of all three classes. The system works remarkably well and it allows for some great combos. Never before have characters felt so free.


Read More in Issue 24

About the game

Written by Drunken Gamer

If there is a genre of gaming that could already be considered complex, RTS tops the bill. Making sure you have an effective strike force while also keeping your base defended and ensuring you have the resources to keep the fight going are but some of it’s generic demands.
Clearly this wasn’t complex enough for the guys at Hazardous Software. They decided to go beyond real-time and into meta-time with Achron. What this means, in simple terms, is that they added time-travel to the battlefield, so now as well as wondering where the attack is coming from, you also have to consider the ‘when’.
What I’m going to try and do is explain exactly how they have managed to include such a mind-bending concept into both the single and multiplayer game.
Wish me luck.

Firstly I have to explain a little about the basics of Achron’s user interface. All your usual RTS staples are there – unit and production controls, overview map, etc. – but what is unique to the game is the timeline controls. It is here that you see how things are playing out in the game, how the actions in the past and future are impacting things, and when you can expect those actions to be propagated into the present.
How it does this is difficult to explain, yet once seen in action you will almost instantly understand it. There are three marker lines on the timeline at any point: yourself, the enemy & the present. They exist to show you where the other is in the overall timeline.
So, if you suddenly see your enemy’s marker jump into the past, you know to be watching that area of the timeline for its second use – activity notification. Whenever something is done, such as damage taken or dished out by your units and structures, it’s plotted on the timeline in a simple to understand bar-graph style.

Lost yet? OK, let give you a step-by-step of what it would look like.


Read More in Issue 24