Dragon Age – Origins – PC Game

When was the last time you felt totally lost in a fantasy gameworld? When was the last time you played a game with such a well-crafted and enjoyable story that you knew you’d remember it for a long, long time? Dragon Age: Origins is that kind of game, so rich and involving that you are powerless to resist its wiles and whims, so touching and triumphant that your mind and heart will be moved. In the fictional land of Ferelden, you meet memorable characters and fight for a cause you believe in, and it’s this backdrop that makes developer BioWare’s newest role-playing game so extraordinary. Dragon Age is more than a well-crafted story, however: It’s a lengthy, intricate, and thoroughly entertaining adventure that’s easy to fall in love with.

Dragon Age’s plot, which deals with the impending invasion of a horde of demonic creatures called the darkspawn, isn’t where the story’s biggest surprises lie. The shocks, the joys, and the disappointments spring from the repartee among a number of remarkable characters; they lurk within books of lore and stories of martyrs; and they burst forth during spine-tingling moments when you must choose from a selection of difficult choices that affect the tale’s direction–and the way your associates interact with you. Ferelden is a colorful and fascinating kingdom that takes enough cues from well-known fantasy tropes to be familiar, but bends enough conventions to feel original. Dragon Age features dwarves, but their caste-based society and the social paragons that rise above it twist the norms enough to keep you intrigued. Mages remain under the constant watch of templars, a restriction that doesn’t sit well with those who view such policing as virtual slavery. The role of religion in human circles is of particular note. Chantries provide refuge to those worshiping the all-powerful Maker, and chanters recite the holy word near their houses of prayer. But lest this world sound too serious, don’t despair: One such disciple slides food references into her chant, and a few dwarves warn you not to fall into the sky. Small, humorous touches like this are plentiful. Even if you aren’t the literary sort, Dragon Age may inspire you to read every note, every character bio, and every creature description, thanks to the richness of the world and the consistency with which it’s presented.

You’ll learn even more from the companions who join you, and you’ll grow to care about them on your quest for glory. There’s Morrigan, the cynical apostate mage bound to your cause for reasons that become clear only late in the journey; Sten, the strong, silent type who isn’t so quick to reveal his innermost thoughts; and Zevran, a darkly mischievous would-be assassin with a wild streak and a playful disregard for the law. There are others too, including Alistair, a wisecracking, vaguely insecure member of the Grey Wardens, an elite group of champions that recruits you early on. Great dialogue and fantastic voice acting make these characters leap off the screen as if they were real friends, and the way they interact with one another feels authentic. Morrigan and Alistair banter about the role of templars in the lives of mages, and the sweetly devout Leliana tries to communicate with your trusty canine cohort in some amusing exchanges. You may even develop a romance (or two) before all is said and done. The course of love isn’t always a smooth one, though it can be a bit steamy, in a PG-13 sort of way.

Relationships must be nurtured; in the world of Dragon Age, love doesn’t develop at first sight. Rather, you must improve your standings with available party members by giving them gifts and fulfilling quests in ways that please them. Doing so opens more dialogue options and may even reward you with unexpected gifts beyond the private pleasures of your tent. Your personal relationships aren’t all you need to worry about when facing a difficult decision, however. On significant quests, you’ll encounter complex choices that force you to weigh the risks against the rewards, even as you try to stay true to your own vision of your character. Are werewolves heartless killers, or is there a method to their madness? Should you wholeheartedly embrace a political candidate, or will some unexpected information have you playing double agent–or just killing the opposition? Such open-ended quests have become staples in many similar RPGs, but few make these decisions feel so momentous. The anxiety that results when you encounter important choices is a result of superb writing and character development: When you care about your destiny, decisions have more weight.

Even Dragon Age’s initial moments present important decisions that affect how your adventure plays out. You’ll customize your own avatar’s look from a variety of presets, but more importantly, you’ll choose a race and class. The choices may seem initially limited, but your options eventually expand. Later, you can choose up to two subclasses once you reach the necessary level requirements, and there are a few different means of unlocking additional skill trees. Your initial race and class choices don’t just determine the kinds of skills and spells you will have access to, however; they influence how the first few hours of the game progress. You will experience one of six different “origin stories” that follow the events that lead you to the elite Grey Wardens. Every origin story leads to the same place, but that doesn’t mean you leave these events behind for good. Characters you met early on will cross your path again, and crucial moments of your origin story will continue to haunt you. The varied origin stories not only provide plenty of replay value, but allow you to see familiar characters from a different angle. A prisoner you meet within a dank dungeon may not have much impact on you if you are playing as a Dalish elf, but if you play as a human mage, this encounter is a bittersweet reunion.

You aren’t a lone adventurer, however. You can take up to three companions along with you, and eventually you will meet more willing (or unwilling, as the case may be) darkspawn slayers. You can switch out party members back at your camp or in other friendly areas. Party members you don’t use will remain at camp, though they thankfully level up even when you don’t take them along. Your comrades aren’t just AI-controlled henchmen; you can take full control of any party member at any time, though how you do so depends on the platform. PC owners get the most versatile and rewarding experience in this regard. You can zoom the camera in to a close third-person view when exploring and conversing with non-player characters, or pull the camera back to a tactical view, which makes it a breeze to quickly and easily micromanage every spell and attack, in true Baldur’s Gate tradition. On consoles, you always view the action from behind a single character, and you use a shoulder button to switch among them. It’s a great way of experiencing the buzz of battle, though occasional pathfinding quirks are more apparent in the console versions, simply because you experience the action from a single perspective at a time, rather than while managing four characters simultaneously.

If you’ve played a BioWare fantasy RPG in the past, you’ll feel right at home with the combat system. By clicking on your target or pressing the attack button, you don’t just swing a sword, but you approach your target and queue up your attack. Once your party has gained access to a good number of spells, stances, and skills, battlefields explode with bright colors and raucous sound effects, and it’s a lot of fun to switch back and forth between party members, managing your abilities and taking advantage of various spell combos to wreak havoc. There are dozens of different types of enemies to slice up, from giant spiders and darkspawn, to ghosts and walking trees, to demons and, of course, dragons. Allies will join you in the biggest battles, and the best of these, particularly those toward the end of the game, are thrilling. On the PC, they’re particularly challenging, and many battles benefit from frequent pausing and tactical thinking, so that you can queue up attacks across your entire party. The same battles on consoles are noticeably easier.

source: gamespot.com

Call of Duty – Modern Warfare 2

As one of the most critically acclaimed shooters of all time, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is a prime example of a tough act to follow. Yet, amidst a raging storm of anticipation and expectation, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has done it. The new campaign is chock-full of intense action and dramatic moments, and though it is more muddled than its predecessor (in more ways than one), it’s still an absolute blast. The new Special Ops mode allows you to experience some campaign-inspired thrills with a friend and it’s an engaging challenge to coordinate your maneuvers and tackle the varied objectives. Last but not least, the competitive multiplayer that took the online shooter community by storm two years ago is back and better than ever. Though the addictive action remains the same at its core, there are a host of new elements that make it more accessible, more strategic, and more rewarding. This all adds up to a thoroughly excellent package that is sure to thrill shooter fans and deprive them of sleep for months to come.

The campaign picks up where its predecessor left off, and there’s a new violent ultranationalist terrorist on the scene. Once again, you play as a few different soldiers who are part of the effort to make the world a safer place. Your missions take you around the world to a number of exotic locations and engage you in a variety of different conflicts, ranging from stealthy and silenced to crowded and cacophonous. The action is smooth and exhilarating, thanks to sharp shooting and movement mechanics that allow you to be as quick and deadly as your skills permit. Environments are well-designed and detailed, though many textures don’t look particularly good upon close inspection. Modern Warfare 2 isn’t a beautiful game, but it looks great in action. The diverse levels not only provide varied sights, but they are cleverly designed to allow the action to flow at an exciting pace. Opportunities for cover and flanking present themselves naturally, allowing you to move through the battlefield in a variety of fluid ways. The aggressive enemy AI will keep you on your toes, and success is hard-earned and satisfying.

Modern Warfare 2′s campaign, like that of its predecessor, is quite short, and you’ll likely finish it in about five hours. Though it is disappointing that there isn’t more of it, what you do get is a relentless barrage of tight combat and thrilling set pieces. In one early level, you man the turret of a Humvee patrolling the claustrophobic streets of a Middle Eastern city. Enemies seem to be behind every corner, but you are ordered not to fire until fired upon. The tension builds, and once you are engaged by the enemy, all hell breaks loose. After a hectic (and unsuccessful) flight from danger, you end up fighting door-to-door in the streets and ruined buildings. This frantic combat ratchets up when you head to the slums of Rio de Janeiro, and reaches a whole new level when you find yourself engaged in similarly intense firefights on the grassy lawns and paved driveways of suburban America. The fight on the homefront has some very cool moments, but it doesn’t mean you’re done adventuring abroad. A dramatic prison rescue, a marine infiltration, and a snowmobile chase are just some of the other exhilarating moments that make this campaign so enjoyable.

Though completing the campaign is an intensely satisfying and exciting endeavor, you may not feel very triumphant when all is said and done. Modern Warfare 2 features some dark plot turns, and your missions sometimes have drastic unintended consequences. In one mission in particular, you infiltrate a terrorist cell and are called upon to do the kind of things that terrorists do. What follows is a neutered attempt at portraying the grim reality of terrorism, and concessions are put in place here and elsewhere to keep the plot from getting too dark. Despite these limits, the scene in question is undeniably disturbing and it undermines your sense of having the moral high ground. The game gives you the option to skip this particular level entirely, but the shocking consequences of this grim mission ripple throughout the game, making it difficult to feel like a hero. Subsequent developments further muddle your overall objective, and it doesn’t help that many of the subtleties and connecting threads are mumbled during voice-overs between missions. The plot ends up being a bit disorienting, and you may get the feeling that, rather than being the tip of the spear, you are just along for the ride.

If you’re looking for some campaign-style action unburdened by any sort of plot, then Special Ops is the place to go. The timed missions are campaign excerpts from Modern Warfare 2 and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare that you can play solo or with a friend, either split-screen or online. The missions cover a variety of objectives, which include surviving waves of enemies, moving from point A to point B stealthily (or not), eliminating a certain number of enemies, and racing snowmobiles. You earn a rating based on your completion time or difficulty level and unlock new missions as you progress. Though the missions will adjust to allow you to play solo, Special Ops missions are made to be played cooperatively. Two guns are better than one when clearing out a crowded slum full of enemy combatants, and coordinating a simultaneous sniper attack is much more fun when you are counting down with a buddy. There are also a few missions in which one player uses an airborne vehicle-mounted gun to clear the path for the other player on the ground, and these are frantic and explosively awesome. There is no matchmaking, however, so if you don’t have any friends online and need a teammate, you’ll have to go fishing in the multiplayer lobbies. As is the nature of cooperative play, missions can fall flat if teammates don’t communicate or go off on their own. It can be tough to find a communicative teammate who is willing to let one player take point, but it is certainly worth the effort. When you have a strong team assembled, cooperative play is uniquely fun, and Special Ops provides a great variety of engaging missions.

source: gamespot.com

GTA IV Ballad of Gay Tony

Set in the same instantly recognizable Liberty City as GTAIV (minus one island), Chinatown Wars tells the story of a power struggle within the Triad gangs from the perspective of Huang Lee, whose crime-boss father has recently been murdered. Huang flies to Liberty from Hong Kong to avenge his father, and predictably becomes embroiled in the war between those hoping to step into the dead man’s shoes. As Huang, you advance the story–which should take you about nine hours to play through–by undertaking missions for a number of different characters within the Triad organization, as well as for one or two people outside of it. Many of these missions involve the usual mix of driving fast, killing people, and not getting caught by the cops, but there are plenty of varied and memorable missions as well.

For the most part, Chinatown Wars plays just like any other GTA game, which is an achievement in itself. Basic controls for movement and car-jacking are mapped to the same button positions that they are on other platforms. The uncomplicated on-foot and vehicle controls are largely the same (sprint becomes accelerate, shoot is still shoot), so even those of you with no prior GTA experience should have no trouble picking them up quickly. There are some great options to make the game even more user-friendly as well, such as autotargeting for drive-by shootings and a subtle steering assist that automatically straightens up your vehicle so that it’s parallel with the road that you’re on. There’s even an option to superimpose GPS directions directly onto the street, which works a lot better than having to look down at the map on the bottom screen.

One downside to Chinatown Wars being so uncompromising in its attempt to replicate the GTA experience is that, because the PSP has fewer buttons than other systems, you’re occasionally required to use them in ways that aren’t entirely comfortable. The select button gets a lot of use, and you have to hit up on either the D pad or the analog nub to reposition the camera behind yourself while running around on foot using the other to control your movement, for example. It’s not a big problem, and in some respects the PSP version’s controls are a significant improvement over those of the DS original. Switching between weapons is much easier now that you don’t have to use a touch screen for it, and thrown weapons (grenades, flashbangs, Molotov cocktails) that were unwieldy on the DS are now so easy to use that even being at the controls of a fast-moving vehicle doesn’t rule them out. Elsewhere, the fact that Chinatown Wars was originally designed for the DS hurts the PSP version: Many of the minigames that were fun to complete using the stylus and touch screen don’t work as well now that they’ve been adapted for play with the analog nub and shoulder buttons. Hot-wiring parked cars and searching dumpsters for weapons or discarded food still work well enough, but previously great minigames, such as tattooing gang recruits and making your own Molotov cocktails at the gas station, aren’t much fun at all now. Regardless of how well they’ve been adapted for the PSP, what all of these minigames have in common is that they’re quick, rarely challenging enough to halt your progress, and mandatory only once.

Story missions are also mandatory only once, but Chinatown Wars is the first game in the series to let you replay any mission that you’ve beaten previously in an attempt to achieve a higher score or a faster time. Another great addition for missions is the “trip skip” option that, if you choose to retry an eligible mission immediately after failing it, lets you bypass the road trip at the start of the mission and get right back into the action that killed you on your last attempt. None of the missions are so difficult that you should fail them more than once or twice, but this is a welcome feature nonetheless, and one that will hopefully be implemented in other GTA games down the road.

When you’re not carrying out missions handed to you by central characters and by random pedestrians that you encounter, there are an impressive number of other things to do in Liberty City, some old, some new. For example, stealing a cop car, an ambulance, a cab, a fire truck, or a noodle delivery van will give you the option to make some money impersonating those vehicles’ rightful owners. And if you successfully steal a delivery van that’s being used to transport drugs or weapons and get it back to one of your secluded safe houses, you get to keep its contents. Weapons can be tricky to obtain this way because the Ammu-Nation drivers are invariably well armed. But stealing drugs is far less challenging, and if you get them for free then making a profit is inevitable when you meet with any of the 80 dealers who, once you find them, can be traded with to make relatively easy money. That’s provided that there are no police in the immediate vicinity, because they’ll either spook the dealer before you can make the deal or wait for you to close it and then move in to make arrests. Interacting with a dealer in any way adds him to your GPS system’s database for future reference, so anytime you see a telltale blue dot on your map, it’s well worth a quick detour to check it out.

Other things to look out for in Liberty City include parked vehicles that initiate checkpoint races and delivery missions when you climb into them, unique stunt jumps that are set up so that you can crash through billboards, a go-kart race track, and 100 security cameras that can be destroyed using grenades or Molotovs. Chinatown Wars also sees the welcome return of Rampage missions, which are against-the-clock killing sprees that challenge you to kill a certain number of enemies using a specific weapon, sometimes with an AI-controlled henchman or two at your side.

Incidentally, weapons are in plentiful supply and can be ordered from Ammu-Nation’s Web site using your occasionally sluggish in-game PDA. There are more than 20 different weapons to play with in Chinatown Wars, including everything from fists, flashbangs, and flamethrowers to swords, shotguns, and sniper rifles. Most weapons fall into either the ranged, melee, or thrown classes as far as controls go, and all perform their jobs admirably. The sniper rifle is unique in that it comes into play only in specific missions, must be assembled via a simple minigame before use, and turns the entire screen into a crosshair. Proximity mines that you drop at your feet are also a fun addition to the GTA arsenal, though they remain armed for only a few seconds before they explode without provocation. The most powerful weapons become readily available only toward the end of the game, which is just as well because as soon as you get your hands on a flamethrower or an armful of flashbangs, they make subsequent missions much easier.

Source: gamespot.com

Madden NFL 10: Updated Top Ten Position Players

Last month, we had a chance to head to NYC to check out the unveiling of Madden NFL 10. At a special EA Sports reception that week, we got also got our first glimpses of the top ten player ratings at each position in the game. Today, ESPN released an updated list of the top ten players at each position and it seems like there have been some notable, if not mind-blowing, changes to the list.

Some of the most notable changes: Read more

inFAMOUS

I know this may sound weird, but I have been waiting for that big budget, “holy-cow” barn burner of a title for the PS3 for a while. Oh sure, fans may clamor that Metal Gear Solid came out not too long ago, or that GTA 4 was a biggie, but in my opinion, GTA doesn’t count cause it came out for the 360 and Metal Gear was somewhat of a disappointment for me. Yes, I know Killzone 2 was a pretty good game as was Little Big Planet (don’t be sending me any hate mail) but I’m talking a big time action title that blows the doors off. My point is, that game is here.

So inFAMOUS is here and you get to play as a man named Cole. Cole was delivering a package (as he is a courier) and, well darn it all, a massive explosion rips from that very package, creating widespread fear, killing thousands and creating a sort of no-man’s land. You see, the explosion was of the weird variety and in the days following, lawlessness and chaos began to rule. The police were either killed or went into hiding and the Government has decided that Empire City needs to be sealed off in order to contain any possible ramifications that are undoubtedly going to occur. Read more

City of Heroes Architect Edition

One of the biggest challenges that developers face when going live with a massively multiplayer online game is keeping the game fresh enough to keep players involved. What that generally means is content expansions and upgrades.

With NCsoft’s City of Heroes franchise, part of that equation has been solved. After all, the CoX (referring to the City of Heroes and City of Villains co-joined product lines) games are not exactly strangers to charting a new course and giving players something that no one else has. When the game launched, the character creation was the most ambitious seen in an MMO. Well, NCsoft has done it again and in the process, has raised the bar in the MMO genre.

While the dev team will continue to work on expansions for new zones, storylines and content, the team has – with the release of the City of Heroes Architect Edition – put a huge chunk of the creation of new missions and storylines into the hands of the players.

Simply put, the Architect Edition allows players to create their own storylines, create their own enemies for the mission, and design the mission parameters from goals, side rewards up to the placement of the enemy units. It is ambitious, yes, but the dev team has pulled it off. Read more

Batman – The Mystery of BatWoman – online games

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Super Fly Game- online games

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Alien Attack – online games

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F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin

Horror in video games is nothing new yet it’s something some of us still can’t get enough of. The suspense of not knowing is usually more freighting than the actual experience. We want to be afraid and challenged at the same time. We want to yell at the screen in terror and with excitement once we clear a challenge. The developers at Monolith have been doing a tremendous job of satisfying those needs with F.E.A.R. but also the underrated series Condemned. F.E.A.R. 2 takes us back into the world of the little girl Alma and all of the twisted, bloody and unsettling experiences to go along with her.

F.E.A.R. 2 takes place just before the ending of the first game; this time with you playing the role of Sgt. Michael Becket. You start the game in the same office building that you played through near the end of the first game. This gave me a sense of deja vu because I had been playing through the first game again recently. The locations and layout were almost exactly the game just the graphics were much nicer with better textures and more details. The same tight and intense first-person shooter gameplay from the first game was still present. I started to get worried that F.E.A.R. 2 was going to be more of an expansion than a true sequel. Read more

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