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Archive for the ‘PC’ Category

The Cursed Crusade – Review

Friday, October 21st, 2011

5179 The Cursed Crusade launches you back to the time of the Fourth Crusade during the early 13th Century.

It all revolves around co-operative combat, putting an Army of Two style focus on you and your partner battling your way through various stages together while using all manner of weapons, from swords and maces, to axes and spears. The combat is bloody, gory and the finishing moves can be extremely gruesome. Beheadings and impalings, anyone!? (more…)

Serious Sam 3: BFE

Friday, October 21st, 2011

serioussam3_1 Serious Sam 3: BFE  -  Beta Preview

When playing a Serious Sam title, players have come to expect more carnage than you can shake a sledgehammer at; the newest installment in the franchise, Serious Sam 3: BFE, is no different. During beta testing I found myself loving every satisfying splatter, blood spray, and explosion.

This game makes most shooters look like a walk in the FPS park, and it’s hard to wipe a grin off your face as you mow down wave after wave of ill-tempered baddies. I was once told that to enjoy life you need to ‘embrace the chaos’; well, to enjoy SS3 you need to not only embrace the chaos, but own it. (more…)

Tribes: Ascend Looks Eye-Poppingly Good!

Wednesday, June 29th, 2011

tribes_ascend_ctf2_crossfire_02 The guys at Hi-Rez studios have just unveiled a new gameplay teaser trailer & a bunch of screenshots for upcoming MMOFPS, Tribes: Ascend.

We reckon it’s looking pretty awesome! What do you think?

Details are pretty scarce at the moment, but we do know that Tribes: Ascend is being developed using the Unreal 3 engine, is being positioned as the multi-player successor to the much lauded Tribes 2, and will act as a re-introduction of the franchise to the gaming world.

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Review – Mythos

Monday, May 16th, 2011

Mythos It’s hard to start any review of Mythos without at least briefly touching on its development story.

Created back in 2006 by Flagship Studios, Mythos was actually little more than a network testing tool for their other project at the time, HellGate: London.

When they saw Mythos had the potential to become a game in its own right, a team was created to make it happen.

However, shortly after the game reached an open-beta stage, Flagship had to close its doors, meaning ownership of the IP was handed over to Hanbitsoft.

Now, after partnering with top online publishers Frogster, the game is finally finished. Having recently come out of beta, its time to give the game a review and find out if Mythos was worth the long-ass wait.

Mythos is free-to-play MMO set in the world of Uld, where a bunch of once peaceful races are now at war. An alliance based on cooperation was held between the Humans, Gremlins, Satyr & Cyclops, but as always, all it takes is one greedy person to destroy it for everyone. A Human mercenary decided to steal an ancient Cyclops artefact, causing the entire world to lose the plot; normally peaceful animals became feral, attacking anything and everything that moves. This is where you enter the world.
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Review – Starpoint Gemini

Monday, May 16th, 2011

starpoint-gemini-log-2 It takes a special game to pull off an immersive, sandbox space sim. X3 is arguably the daddy of the genre – a game full of exciting combat, intricate politics and a realistic economy.

At first glance fans of X3 could believe that Starpoint Gemini will satiate their need for more hardcore space action. Sadly, they would be mistaken. Starpoint Gemini may tease greatness on the back of the box and in the trailer, but in actuality the game is a dilute Freelancer, filled to the brim with horrific voice acting, dodgy controls and poor-looking character models. Starpoint may look pretty, but under the hood it’s not got a lot going for it apart from the story.

Like most space sims, you can go through an optional tutorial at the beginning, which consists of a rigid, pasty figure in the top right corner walking you through the menus in a terrible Russian accent. It’s all easy enough and the menus aren’t as complex as many other sims, but if you dare do something you’re not supposed to, like move a bit, you actually fail the tutorial.

That’s right – the hokey Russian kicks you out of freelancer school just for doing a little control experimentation. Either let us use the controls or don’t! Don’t penalize us for trying to figure out how the game works.
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Preview – Hawken

Friday, May 13th, 2011

hawken-game Ever heard of Adhesive Games? Us neither! Well, that was until they came out of nowhere and slapped us round the chops with a stunning and stylish trailer for their upcoming indie title, Hawken.

The game appears to be a fast paced, multiplayer FPS where giant robots endeavour to tear each other fresh input-holes. Hawken looks epic, with sharp lighting usage, a real grand-to-minute sense of proportion and keen attention to detail. And all this from a tiny team in very little time; it almost seems unbelievable…

Hawken’s first person perspective straps players in their own pneumatic, post-apocalyptic, vertical murder machine. The cockpit display is grainy but detailed with various switches, dials, screens & alarms, which will crap out if your mech takes too much flak.

All these little details are designed to heighten player immersion, making you the pilot of your own anime-style robo-warrior. Adhesive’s control system seems realistic enough to create a sense of hulking heft while still being responsive enough to appeal to the high-octane, FPS mentalists.
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Review – The First Templar

Friday, May 13th, 2011

74264_orig Strategy developer Haemimont Games have made the brave move of switching to an action/adventure/RPG hack-fest with their latest release, The First Templar.

Reversing the role from similar-yet-not-quite-ripped-off franchise Assassin’s Creed, The First Templar has you playing, you guessed it: Garfield. Only kidding, you’re a crusader in the olden times when massacring for religion was a jolly pastime, putting you at the forefront as a Knight’s Templar on a quest for the Holy Grail.

Note now that I’m going to try my damnedest to refrain from Monty Python references for the rest of the review.

So it’s the late 13th century and you’re French; what else are you going to do than swan off to find some ancient doohicky? You play as Celian, a young knight who has undertaken this quest but soon finds he is on the cusp of a full-scale conspiracy within the Order of the Knight’s Templar itself. Celian teams up with foxy heretic Marie to unveil the conspiracy and avoid the Inquisition in the process.
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Review – Section 8: Prejudice

Friday, May 13th, 2011

game-news-image-2011-1f0b65bfbe1a19fd1aa8156e37f29350 You can’t get much for $15 these days. A single ticket to a movie, but no popcorn; perhaps even a couple of pints at the pub (but let’s face it, you really just rent those).

No, $15 doesn’t go very far; that is unless you’ve just bought Section 8: Prejudice, a new FPS from TimeGate that packs a ton of value into a small digital package.

Prejudice is the sequel to TimeGate Studios’ 2009 offering, Section 8. While Section 8 was a full retail release, it’s sequel is a digital-only download, available on Xbox Live (XBLA) for the Xbox 360, on Steam (and other download sites) for the PC, and will be made available on the PlayStation Network later this summer.

The original Section 8 received mixed reviews, but Prejudice is turning heads for its intuitive arcade-style gameplay and creative twists on the FPS genre.
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Review – Battlestar Galactica Online

Thursday, April 21st, 2011

Reviewed by Cody Hargreaves from MMO Traffic

bgo_logo1 “Experience the entire universe of Battlestar Galactica and live out the epic, action-packed war between the Colonial Humans and the ruthless Cylons”

I’ve never cared much for Battlestar Galactica. It felt like more of a Star Trek/Babylon 5 thing to me, and I’ve always considered myself to be more on the Star Wars/Firefly side of the fence with all the other ‘nerd, but not too nerd’ nerds, choosing to spend my weekends on more productive things like smoking behind the bike shed and flirting with that girl in my World of Warcraft guild ‘on vent’.

Of course, that was until they turned it into a game, and said game attracted more than a million players in its first 6 weeks of beta. That’s when it started to pique my interest; that’s when I learned that it was Free-to-Play. I had to give it a shot.
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Review – Serious Sam HD

Friday, April 15th, 2011

sshd_se_05 Too many first-person shooters nowadays are crusted in mud, their protagonists crossing bleak, brown environments to reach another environment that’s a different shade of brown.

Games such as Call of Duty, although good, are sometimes too damned serious. We play games because we want fun, not a skewed history lesson with characters who have a perpetual look of constipation in their faces. It’s a good job the silly has finally returned to serious with Serious Sam HD, a game that I’m sure will trigger fond memories in many an older gamer.

Now, it’s not fair to say that Serious Sam is Duke Nukem-lite, although at first glance the granite-jawed hero certainly looks like he’s ‘all out of gum’. While the white t-shirt wearing Sam draws parallels with everyone’s favourite pig-slaying misogynist, Serious Sam stands on its own merits in this two game boxed set, which contains magic high-definition versions of The First Encounter and the aptly named, Second Encounter.
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