The masters of the PC role playing game are back. Developed by Bioware (of Baldurs Gate fame) and published by EA and Microsoft studios, Mass Effect is an epic, visually spectacular Sci-Fi game set in the late 22nd Century. The player takes on the role of Commander Shepard and soon takes command of the starship Normandy.

Classic Sci-Fi

Mass Effect is a classic Space Opera with themes involving exploration, combat, intrigue and over the top heroic figures. The game play takes place mostly on the Normandy and on a giant space station that acts as a kind of central seat of government. The player gets to visit many other planets and moons along the way.

There’s a plot!

The game’s plot is huge and is as complex and interwoven as Bioware’s previous offerings with a great storyline and memorable characters. The player can assume either a male of female role and professional voice acting is provided for both. In addition, there are several other notable characters all voiced by actors familiar to fans of both TV and gaming.

Game Play

The game features free flowing and real time combat but the action can be paused at any time. As with most computer RPGs, the player will be able to enter into dialog with many characters from and the player’s responses, choices and general approach will have an affect on how the story runs later on.

System requirements

The game runs on a modified Unreal 3 engine so to fully appreciate the stunning visuals, a decent modern gaming PC is needed. Settings can be tweaked to allow gameplay on a fairly wide range of specs so don’t go and upgrade the PC yet!

Popularity: 53% [?]

Even though the Aliens movie is over twenty years old, it still looks brilliant and the idea of playing one of those Pulse Rifle toting marines in a first person shooter is as irresistible as ever.

Team or solo play

As is the trend with some of the latest releases, the game will feature a full co-op multi player mode where players can all take part in the campaign. Players will control a squad of four marines who are part of a unit sent to investigate the loss of the USS Sulaco (from the Aliens movie). Gameplay will revolve around tactical squad based combat with an intelligent AI able to flank and encircle the players.

Your gun’s bigger than mine

The squad will consist of four distinct types of marine each with special weapons and skills. The weapons we all love from the film are there - the Pulse Rifle, the flamer and the awesome Smart Gun and players will be able to switch between these characters as the game progresses.

Personally, I always wanted to be Sergeant Apone but he doesn’t seem to be here. Nevertheless, this is going to be great as we all yell our favourite Aliens quotes at each other over the Team Speak channel in an attempt to out do each other!

We’re looking forward to this one and will post more later.

The game runs on the Unreal Engine, will be publsihed by Sega and is due sometime in 2008.

Popularity: 53% [?]

More grandstanding from the follicly challenged super villain!

With the “back to basics” approach of C&C 3 and its classic (bordering on outdated) look and feel, it was always going to be interesting to see what could be done to add to this madcap RTS classic.

Sadly they couldn’t get the sexy chicks from Battlesar Galactica back for this one (Boomer and Six) so they got some random other guy from the show to do cut scenes instead. Its kinda fun that in this day of fully rendered cut scene animation, we get good old full motion video with mainstream actors desperately trying to act against blue screen cgi sets. Having said that, some big names have appeared in the C&C series including Michael Bien and James Earl Jones so it shouldn’t be too bad.

What do you get?

Well it’s more of the same really. The baldy one in full on camp “Dr Evil” mode and the usual turn / mission based mayhem. There are a few new and interesting sub-factions here with a sprinkling of new vehicles and some of the battles are huge with tank rushes and infantry zerging to keep the action going. We also see some uber units for each side and the new equipment provides extra variety and balancing.

All in all it’s not bad but we didn’t see anything revolutionary here. Perhaps that’s a good thing in some ways as C&C is popular for “being what it is”.

This will likely be the last expansion for C&C for the time being as we have Red Alert 3 to look forward to with is interesting alternate future time-line.

Verdict

Definitely for C&C fans, less so for the casual player

Popularity: 49% [?]

What can we say about the Fallout series? Adult themed, full of satire and subtle humour teamed with excessive violence, sexual innuendo and booze. Oh, and radiation. These classics are now quite elderly but are still wonderful to play and never fail to raise a chuckle at the fun poked at American paranoia and prejudice. Sadly, the series died with the original developer and the franchise rights seemed to get kicked around a bit. Then Bethesda stepped into the breach announced Fallout 3 to run on their Oblivion engine and we all sat up and took notice.

Oblivion Engine

Personally, we couldn’t stand Oblivion and found it tedious and dull (flames incoming) but its visuals were awesome and put a most satisfying strain on our graphics cards. It’s quite difficult to see how Fallout would translate from an isometric top-down tactical game to a free flowing first person experience but the results are looking promising. Teaser trailers and full motion videos have been released and hint at great things to come. The visuals seem just right and it is instantly recognisable as Fallout.

Don’t Ruin It!

There have been accusations of Bethesda “dumbing down” the game but they deny it and would do it at their peril. Fallout fans are a hardcore and vocal lot and it wouldn’t take much to burn the game in its own radioactive waste.

Verdict

It’s due out “sometime” in 2008 so we will keep an eye out for it and report more when it is available.

Popularity: 49% [?]

Here’s a PC game that we’ve been looking forward to for ages. Left 4 Dead is a multi player co-op first person shooter that sets you and three friends in a fight for survival against the zombie hordes!

The Setting

There are four (hence the 4 in the name - get it?) human survivors in a nasty zombie infested town that have to band together and fight for survival with precious little ammo and a lot of terrifying moments. There are several zombie types from basic cannon fodder to terrifyingly agile hunters and the players must work together to survive.

Fun Factor

It’s made by Valve. It’s going to be great.

The idea of making a game out of those fun zombie attack movies from the 80’s is brilliant and being able to play with your mates at your side is even better. If you don’t happen to have 3 friends, then the computer AI will pretend to be a friend and play along with you.

Graphics are looking good and up to Valve’s usual standard and the world allows players to use almost anything as a weapon. This is likely to create some moments of desperate hilarity as you try to beat the monster to death with some mundane item from your inventory instead of your “Turbo Nutter Bastard Shooter ™”.

Verdict

Buy it as soon as you can!

Popularity: 49% [?]

Well here it (almost) is, a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (or MMORPG to you and me) based in the world and myth of Conan the Barbarian.

Is it original?

Hmm. A fantasy online game featuring men of legend fighting creatures of legend. Haven’t seen any of those before (Everquest, Everquest 2, Dark Age of Camelot, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings online, Dungeons and Dragons online). Ok, so fantasy roleplay isn’t new so what can this game offer that hasn’t been done before?

Well for one thing, an actual plot and story line to follow in a setting that prepares you for the rigors of life among other players (we call it grouping) while moving you along to level 20. Of course at this stage, we don’t know how significant level 20 is but based on other games one might call this a “milestone” level where the character really starts to take shape.

New innovations

A very interesting development is the idea of player owned CITIES. Where previous games have sometimes had player owned houses and the odd guildhall, this concept is massive and lends itself further to realm versus realm player versus player (PVP) combat. Many MMORPG players value PVP higher than player versus environment (PVE) and to them the pinnacle of online gaming is defeating other human opponents rather than the computer AI so this could offer them a great deal.

We feel that it is just as important to reward the PVE player as the PVP player and we hope that Conan Online (as it is bound to be known) will do this. Our experience of other online games shows us that the PVE player is often given a raw deal compared to the PVP-er so time will tell.

Mounted combat

It appears that Age of Conan will be taking the concept of player mounts further too. In games such as Everquest and World of Warcraft, it is most frustrating when playing a heroic knight who charges into combat only to have to get off his horse to fight. Rather silly really. Age of Conan will allow players to charge mounted into fights and battle from horseback very effectively. This is quite novel and will make knights and cavalry actually feel like knights and cavalry (we hope).

Verdict

Promising future addition to the crowded MMORPG (just rolls off the tongue doesn’t it?) market.

Popularity: 49% [?]

Relic’s masterpiece back for another episode!

Nuns in battle armour! Elves in spiky leather! It can only be Warhammer 40,000: Soulstorm!

But wait, this episode was co-developed by Iron Lore Entertainment rather than Relic alone. We assume Relic was busy developing Dawn of War 2 (more on that to come). Can ILE match the quality and depth of previous episodes? Well kinda, sorta. The game is still great fun and is pretty much a must have for fans of the genre but on release, it had several annoying flaws which might put off a casual player or one new to the series.

New Races

Many fans of the series had been hoping for the terrifying swarm race, the Tyranids to be added this time but instead Relic opted for the Sisters of Battle and the Dark Eldar. The Sisters of Battle are a devout group of women from the Imperium of Man who are utterly devoted to their God-Emperor and are fond of incinerating heretics and non believers with their “Righteous Fire” (flamethrowers to you and me). The Dark Eldar are essentially bad elves with guns who delight in doing bad stuff and wearing lots of spiky leather.

Gameplay

The single player campaign revolves around several planets each with multiple territories and the player controls one of the games races or factions in an effort to capture all the territories and destroy all rivals. Generally speaking, this is pretty good fun but one serious flaw is the player frequently has to fight in the same territory (i.e., map) several times in a row as the computer player immediately attacks a captured territory. This is very annoying and somewhat tedious as few players would want to fight essentially an identical battle over and over. Having said that, the game is very stable and we didn’t have any crashes to desktop or hang-ups so a patch to fix the annoying AI behaviour is all that was really needed upon release. Units remain balanced and the races and factions are fairly well matched and cater for a variety of playing styles.

This episode also added flying vehicles although these are not really true flyers, they add an interesting and fun dimension to the game with the option for rapid strikes on your opponent and massed air, land and hover attacks. Multi player remains as good as ever and the graphics are still excellent even if the game engine is aging.

Installation woes

It is very important to remember that although this is a standalone single player game, only the Sisters of Battle and the Dark Eldar are available in multiplayer unless the player has the pervious episodes of the game. Players who do not play multi player or who only want to play the new races needn’t get the previous episodes. It is also worth noting that the routine for the game to identify your CD keys from previous episodes isn’t flawless and somewhat fiddly. We recommend having the previous games installed already and the CD keys handy when installing Soulstorm.

Verdict

A must have for fans of the genre and owners of the previous episodes

Popularity: 48% [?]

Xbox and PS3 take a right hook.

Do you have a Wii? If not, why not? I have to admit that it’s a seriously addictive console. True, I wasn’t overly impressed with the Wii fit but the pulling power of head to head games such as Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2007 is indisputable. Looking at the sales figure it would appear that many people agree with me. US figures released on Friday show that the Wii outsold Xbox 360 and PS3 figures combined. Full figures are at the end of this article, if you’re interested (I know you are really).

It would be fair to say that much of sales performance has come on the back of the recent Super Smash Bros. Brawl release. So, testosterone fuelled death matches are still all the rage in the gaming world.

The figures are a slap in the face for Microsoft and Sony. The Wii popularity could be behind the post I edited recently: Console wars goes nuclear. It makes sense to me. Enough rambling, sales figures below:

March 2008

Wii 721,000 consoles sold

Xbox 360 262,000 consoles sold

PS3 257,000 consoles sold

Click here to go to the home page.

Popularity: 49% [?]

Pump those pixels, feel the burn.

Do you remember this article? Based on the controller, I questioned the ability of the wii to push deeper into the general gaming market. Well, it looks like Nintendo have other ideas. The Wii Fit is a new approach to keeping fit. Take the concept of Wii Sports and cram it into four new categories: Aerobic, Balance, Muscle and Yoga. Plug in the Balance Board and you’re off.

Can I rip up my gym membership?

Not just yet. Admittedly, putting in the effort will pay dividends but is no substitute for the real thing. Yes, you can definitely work up a sweat through activities such as push ups, boxing, running around the park or simply attempting to maintain some crazy yoga positions. Ski jumping and step aerobics certainly did remind me that I’d been neglecting some of the muscles in my legs (did I really admit to doing step aerobics?). In addition the device tracks your ‘Wii Fitness Age’ - I ranked as ‘knackered old bloke’! This gives you the added incentive of trying to improve your score over time and, consequently, your overall fitness.

 The greenhouse effect.

Sit in the greenhouse on a hot summers day and it starts to pretty hot and sweaty after a while. Think about this: If you’re going to try and improve your fitness using the Wii, where are you going to put the box? In the living room? Well, unless you want towels on the floor and the smell of sweat hanging in the air, it’s not a great idea? It’s a point to think about. On the plus side, it’s great entertainment for the family and will certain bring out the competitive streak in you.

Popularity: 49% [?]

Microsoft, we love you…sometimes.

XBOX 360 to PC port that works surprisingly well. Stunning graphics and well designed levels. Encourages co-operative gameplay in all modes and forces players to make good use of cover. Running about like Rambo results in a reload. The game is quite demanding of hardware and is a very large install (10GB) but this shouldn’t be a problem for a modern PC.

Single Player

Pits the player against an invading army of insect like creatures known as the Locust. The player can be joined by a friend online and they can team up co-operatively to fight the enemy. The PC version includes a few extras that the XBOX 360 version lacks and the graphics look even better.

Multiplayer

Up to 8 players can team off in a very enjoyable multiplayer mode which features the standard deathmatch type play but also a somewhat quirky “Execution” mode which forces players to run up and chainsaw down players to finish them off. Other modes include annex and king of the hill.

Onward to glory.

What can I say? I love this game. It’s that simple.

Popularity: 48% [?]