The basic premise for Heroes of Newerth is good vs evil, or in this case the Legion vs the Hellbourne. Each team has 5 players a side, all who pick one out of many heroes at the beginning of a game. Heroes each have 4 skills, one of which is their “Ultimate” skill gained at level six which can do some pretty nifty things. After heroes have been chosen the two teams are pited against each other in a battle, each team has 3 lanes, all which have 2 towers the heroes must defend. The objective is simple: Destroy the enemy teams base.
Sounds easy right? wrong. Heroes of Newerth is a skill based game, heroes must work together if they wish to win, simply picking the wrong hero for your team can end in a loss, as will not listening or cooperating with your teammates in a match.

Hero choice is a crucial for most games you play, after the game lobby is full and the host starts, you are thrust forward into a screen with a large array of heroes, each classed as either Agility Intelligence or Strength. Here is where picking comes into play, each team must pick 5 heroes, a good balance is generally prefered but trying to reach an understanding with some teammates can be frustrating. The majority of agility heroes are termed by the community as “carry” heroes, simply put they aren’t very useful at the beginning of the game but by the end of it they are the ones carrying your team to victory, generally because they scale so well with items and become powerhouses of buttraping fury.
Most strength heroes are classes as tanks barring a few, they intitate fights and usually walk out still alive, whereas intelligence heroes are there primarily to dish out the damage on the opposing team but are squishy (this can change with items.)

Once ingame you have access to a shop which has a mindblowingly large amount of items for sale, ranging from the simple to the absolutely WTF, this is usually the biggest problem for new players getting into HoN, not knowing what items are good for your hero or what to aim for first will attract alot of unwanted attention by migrant DoTA veterans and can make your beginner experience very unpleasant.

Games are played on one map, there are others available but 99% of the community play on one map, the clone of DoTA, a well balanced map with lots of hiding places and good ganking spots, it will always reign supreme over any custom maps that S2 will be adding in or currently have in the game.

Games of HoN usually last from the very short 15 minutes to a long 1 hour, some lasting even longer. The game has serveral “phases” once the game begins heroes are assigned to their lanes by their own choice or by that of an extremely angry danish 12 year old with a mic. lanes are top, middle and bottom, the top lane with 2 heroes, the middle with one hero (usually an intelligence hero, but some strength or agility heroes can lane here too) and the bottom with another 2. As soon as you hear the horn blow to signal the start of the game, waves of “creeps” or monsters start spewing forth from your base, they are mindless zombies who will head straight into the opposing enemies creeps. Your job? kill them. Killing creeps is whatgives your hero experience and gold, and you generally stay in your lane to level 6+ but as with most things, it isn’t that easy. You have two opposing heroes to contend with, and even laning has a few tactics required, like smacking creeps at the right time. This is titled last hitting, and is a tactic used mostly by people playing the game for a while, or old DoTA players. What this is, is hitting a creep just before it dies so you gain full experience and full gold for it, you can do this to your own creeps in a similar fashion, screwing your enemy out of exp and gold making it very useful for both yourself and keeping your enemy down.

U FREAKIN PEICE OF SHIT I FUKIN OWN U ONLINE U AND UR FAMILY I POWN U ALL FOCKIN DAY

While laning you may have angry heroes smacking on your cute little heroic arsehole, aggressive players tend to constantly keep pressure on you and your lane buddy so you cant kill creeps and farm gold, causing you to slow down your leveling and thus gimping you later on. You can counter this by doing the same, or luring them to your tower (towers do alot of damage to heroes early game, usually giving you extra support to kill them, generally people are stupid enough to try and take you at a tower.) creeps will continue to spawn throughout the game, doing battle with the enemy creeps and running into the enemy towers like lemmings until they destroy them.

As soon as people start roaming about looking to “gank” this is what they call midgame, generally during this time you and your team aim to smash the teeth of enemy heroes down their throat until they shit gold and exp for you (250 gold given for a hero kill, this adds up very quickly), that or they do it to you. Dying in HoN causes you to lose alot of gold, so dying alot is not beneficial as it holds you back from obtaining items needed to help you later in the game, and at the same time it “feeds” enemy heroes with gold, causing them to become very strong very fast, and in turn giving them the ability to gank you and your teammates with ease.

Lategame occurs when one of your agility heroes becomes some pimped out with items that he can asbolutely decimate the enemy team by himself, nevermind with support, this is usually followed by a “push” on the final enemy towers, and lastly their base, then bam, end of game.

Recently added, where post-game stats, this is a very nifty idea implemented by S2 to show alot of misc. information from the games you have played, everyone in the game is documented and this can be very useful to see what heroes purchased and how well they farmed/ganked. Another addition has been PSR, or pub skill rating. This system fluctuates depending on your wins and loses, winning games giving you x points and losing subtracting x points (this is dependant on the PSR of other players in your game, and how the teams are balanced), this has caused alot of debate on the official forums as many believe it does not accurately reflect player skill (bad teammates causing loses for example.) Alongside that is K/D/A, that is your kills/deaths/assists. Prepare to be judged harshly on this, for many new players the KDA stat is a curse, people will judge you on your death amount wether or not you are new to the game, and kick you from lobbies. The upside to these stats is that they give the player something to work toward, a better PSR, better KD ratio and so forth.

All in all HoN is a very fun game, and definitely one worth the hassle of learning, it has a very competitive community and clan ladders/tournaments are frequent. The only gripe that i personally have with HoN is that the DoTA community has taken over, people are extremely ignorant to newer players, and team chat is usually filled with “Noooooooooooooooooooooooooob ffs” “stop feeeeeeed noooooooooooob fuker i fuk ur mom”. This really kills the experience for new players as they will never learn if their team consists of utter arseholes 99% of the time. Usually this is only a small segement of the community but with HoN and as with DoTA it is the majority, the only advice i have for newcomers to HoN is ignore it, and keep learning.

1. Both games have had launches that would not exactly be described as a massive fanfare releases. Champions had a whole furor before it was even released because of the Retail Box + Subscription + Item mall which left a lot of people angry. Fallen Earth just seems to have taken a background seat in general, although this is not exactly a bad thing. Now before anyone takes it personally, I am not entirely against either of these 2 games although Champions Online with is pseudo-win-buy mode doesn’t exactly fit in with my impression of a well rounded MMO.

Fallen Earth: Trialing it up

2. Both games have decided that in order to compete effectively in the market they need to keep their efforts up. Us MMO players have had our hands burnt several times in the past by games which promised the universe, yet delivered a single planet, and even then managed to screw shit up so bad that 3/4 of the population ended up dead becuase they didn’t think to add ample water. In this case Champions and Fallen Earth may have been able to grow enough balls to say “Here is our product, judge us and see if we are worthy.” If this does indeed turn out to be the case then thats going to give a good old +reputation from me to both games. It also gives me a far better impression of the game because if the developers are not scared to let a mass of people in to pass judgement, then it means they take pride in their product and feel like it genuinely can compete. In this instance, a game like vanguard, which burnt a lot of fingers took over a year to release a trial, at which point I beleive the developers felt the game was in a good enough place to be showcased.

Either way the trials are there for the taking and its a good idea to give them a try. Fallen Earth trial keys can be obtained from various MMO sites like mmorpg.com or just google for the trial keys. The event itself is called “Days of the Dead.”

The Champions Online free trial information can be located here: http://www.champions-online.com/bloodmoon_weekend?source=newsletter1 seems to just be a case of signup and wait. Id say downloading the game in preperation is a good idea as well or something.

Downloadable content or DLC as it has been abbreviated to is basically any kind of game or addition to a game that can be downloaded to either a console or PC. Things like bought expansion packs don’t always appear to count towards this for some reason. Not sure how they like to work it but for example Fallout3 can be bought as an expansion for the PC version, but is classed as DLC for the Xbox360 version. Fuck knows but then, who cares either. DLC is nothing new to the market, infact its been out since the days of the Sega Megadrive but its potential has only really been tapped into recently. Microsoft for one appear to be massive advocates of this and its for the simple reason that everything involving microsoft boils down to, Money…

The milking of DLC by microsoft and developers of Xbox games has reached a proportion that can only be described as monumentally disgusting, it is actually sickening to see just how far some greedy fuckers are willing to push things. We can start by tearing microsoft a new one, a new one that will open a gap so wide the aerodynamics of the situation itself is going to improve by several thousand percent. Microsoft likes to make money, then again so do most companies and its not something you can really fault anyone on. But the problem is when they get their greed on, and you may think im talking about the situation where they bend you over a chair and you pray to your god/idol that its not going to hurt. The greed situation in this case is the one where they bend you, and several other people over a chair, and explain simply that it is going to hurt, your going to tear, and bleed, and there is nothing you can do about it. We shall take a case in point to illustrate this.

Geometry Wars: Retro Wars its a fun little game on Xbox live, some nice people made it and they wanted to release it over Xbox live and they said they would be happy to do so for free. Im not sure how this made them money but im sure there was some plan behind it, or they just did it for some good fun and happiness for all involved. Microsoft decided that this would not do, and that the writhing mass that already pays a subscription fee for XboxLIVE has been freeloading for too long and taking the piss by effectively stealing money from Microsoft becuase the subscription is only 5% of what they would actually like to charge. Arguements went backwards and fowards between microsoft and the developer Bizarre Creations. The story ends on a happy note with the game eventually being released for free 400 microsoft points which is the minimum microsoft will charge. $5 or about £3.50 which I take as the score being 1-0 to excessive greed. The customer loses out, and the developer was probably unhappy.

Other rumours along the same lines concern Gears of War developed by Epic again they wanted to release free downloadable content for their games again Microsoft was against this once again (apparently) and there was a big blowout from this was well. Unfortunately this did all occur around 2007 and I did not have an XBox at this point so I just kinda lost intrest after a while because I didn’t have to give two fucks about it.

I have always classed myself as part of the PC gaming master race. I like my FPS games to have a mouse and WASD and I like my menu’s to be point and click. PC gaming as always been fair when it comes to pricing. Hell, most games that are out for Xbox and PC have a difference of about £10 and its ALWAYS the PC version thats cheaper. Call of Duty 4 charged for maps in their multiplayer for XBox, as a PC user I got every single one for free, and it was the same for COD5 as well, with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 though they finally saw past the game and the fans and got their greed on, with all content being chargeable for both PC and Xbox.

DLC is basically a new way of taking a £40 game which is already fairly expensive, and turning it into a £50 or £60 game. Ill take the artcle full circle now back to the beginning when I reference Borderlands. The game was still in development and they already had the DLC shit in the planning and programming stages. I think its pretty disgusting nowadays that they are pushing this shit for rediculous prices and they have the money machine ready to roll as soon as the game is out the door. I’ve been spoiled by the MMORPG genre, a genre with a set of companies that thrive on keeping a community happy because long term success is far more important than fast cash. As much as I hate to sound like one of the usual morons from an MMORPG site the subscription cost of an MMO per month really is worth it when compared to console crap. We can use simple maths to work some shit out, and im going to do this with reference to hardcore gamers, and infact im going to use Ballsmasher as an example because he is hardcore in the sense he will play games for half his day lol.

World of warcraft can offer challenges for several hours a day, infact doing some dungeons, raids and PvP can easily keep him happy for lets say 8 hours at a time. Multiply that by say 30 days in the average month and you have 240 hours of gameplay easily, now im going to be a bad writer and take the side of the console advocates. World of warcraft involves 3 games. The orginal and two expansion packs, im going to pretend for this situation that all 3 were bought at the same time, and also pretend that Blizzard/Activision are greedy fucks (the latter actually is at times) and that you don’t get a free month: The net cost is £38.89 (£27.97 for the games and £8.99 for the months fee). The final sum £38.89 divided by 240 hours of gaming works at at £o.16 per hour, and this is with an inflated price overall for your first months entertainment. By month 2 the cost is down to £0.09 an hour and by the end of a year we are left with the following: £155.76 total spent on Warcraft (barring a new expansion)  for 2920 if you play hardcore at 8 hours a day. Total of £0.05 an hour for your enjoyment, if you played an averge of just one hour a day it would work out at about £0.42 an hour max.

Unfortunately im going to be lazy with the console ones and pretend (in favour of consoles) that Azose can manage a single game in a month before finishing it and getting bored, and to be fair some stuff like Guitar Hero will probably not rack up 240 hours of entertainment in a month, and probably not even in its lifetime, even with DLC. Most other games are not going to offer 240 hours of gameplay, so we can go with something like call of duty 4 which can be bought new for £29.99 or £39.99 for game of the year edition for Xbox360 and your month of Xbox live which averages at about £5 making it a total of £35 for the lot and if you can truly accumulate 240 hours of the game  online then you have beaten World of Warcraft in terms of cost per month at first, going on you can technically stay in the lead but I doubt the game could genuinely hold you up as long as an MMORPG.

Technically I could concede defeat, so if you have managed to play Call of Duty 4 for 8 hours a day every day for a year without buying any other game then you have beaten me, the problem there is you missed the point of gaming in general and its pointless for you to own a console. I think its about time the greedy console market started looking at the PC market and seeing what they can do to compete. If games started releasing for cheaper, with a steady stream from reasonably priced DLC which adds a fair amount of content, as well as fixes and patches and functionality to boot, then they can start milking their cows properly, providing a nice stream of income and keeping many people happy, you know instead of just cutting off the udders for a quick fix of milk for a handful of people. Ill leave with a nice closing statement.

10 million people play world of warcraft and they bring in a lot of money. Lets say with all things factored it could be around £5 per person per month. Thats £650,000,000 (Six hundred and fity million) per year, and thats before you factor in things like renaming characters, transfers and all other manner of things they charge for. The great part of most of their additional content based on Microtransactions is that you don’t need it to enjoy the game. If some console company wants to take a potshot at this kind of money, they need to hit about 16million copies sold, and not too many console games surpass that kind of sales, although Nintendo has a good trackrecord with the Wii fitness games and Super Mario. Even with all that on board I bet £650,000,000 a year in subscriptions alone is the kind of thing they all dream about, I mean you can also pretend only 10million people ever tried it and that would fact to another £290million in box sales alone.

So, developers how about you start playing the long game than focusing on greed and immediate gratification?

Possibly one of the biggest releases this year is Bungies continuation of their flagship series “Halo 3: ODST”. The first thing that came to mind whilst waiting for this game to be delivered are the obvious ties with its predecessor “Halo 3”. I decided that I would play through Halo 2, 3 and finally ODST to make sure that my mind was in Halo mode. Two words can be used to describe this game. Predictably different.

The game is set in New Mombasa where the covenant have landed and want to launch an assault on Earth – humanities last stronghold. The timeline of the game is set alongside Halo 3 however no mention is made of Master Chief’s crusades. The beginning of the game opens with your player – a lowly Orbital Drop Shock Trooper rookie being thrust straight into battle against the covenant forces. Or so one would imagine. The drop doesn’t exactly go to plan and you are left stranded from your teammates.

Killin' bitches. Halo Style.

The style of gameplay revolves basically around the player finding various clues to his squad’s whereabouts. Upon finding these you are flashed to where the object came from and then complete a mission based on how it got there, and once the mission is complete, we retake control of present time to advance towards more clues – inching closer to your fellow ODST’s. This would be good if it didn’t take up two thirds of the game, making me feel like I really haven’t progressed at all!

On a positive note however the missions are quite colourful and give us everything we want from a Halo instalment. The controls, however similar to its predecessor, have one small tweak. The X button (which controlled the equipment in Halo 3) has been removed and replaced with VISR mode. This basically alters the HUD and makes all enemies appear outlined in red, allies in green, and objects etc. in yellow. Perfect for low light situations, but intentionally not so useful in daylight.

***WARNING: SPOLILER ALERT IN THIS PARAGRAPH***

The ending of the game in my opinion leaves much to be desired. After finding a handful of your squad you have an escape, a drive, and a standoff. This leaves the total timeline of the game at about 2 hours after the beginning of the game. As mentioned before, the previous missions are all flashbacks so upon completing these I was thrilled. They were good, don’t get me wrong, but I’m looking for some progression. After all, it’s set alongside Halo Friggin’ 3! I thought I was finishing the fight. I guess I was only delaying it in the end up.

I’m not even going to mention the romance. I find nothing interesting in two 2D characters making amends while me – the protagonist – can’t even utter a single word. Theres more things I want to see in the Halo universe.

***END OF SPOILERS***

Tinted helmets? Surely that makes aiming harder!

My first impressions of Halo 3: ODST are mixed. On one hand I have the familiarity and excitement of a new game in the series, however the fact remains that it’s not Master Chief. The game doesn’t bring anything new to the table that Halo 3 hasn’t already brought. I have yet to play the multiplayer however if anyone wants to join me for a game I’ll be online this week. After that though, I’m returning to Halo 3 for my fix because after all the hype, all this game made me want to do was play Halo 3 again. That, in my opinion, was not the impression Bungie was hoping to leave.

Rating: *** (3/5)

Aion’s launch is probably going to be the highest profile MMO launch this year, because that other game that came out erm, Moneymaking superheroes online. Sometimes refered to as Champions online, is just a shop with a game attached, and also, its shit.

Aion is a game I whave been waiting for a long time in principle a game thats challenging with a bit if grinding and am lot of questing. The problem for games like WoW is then when you DO have to grind it is a massive chore, and just does not feel right in the game at all, especially if you were grinding for experience, because it just felt wrong. As much as some people dislike hearing this, NCsoft are a company that was built up with the grind, with games like Lineage and Lineage2 but WoW has shifted the focus and instead of being like the usual clone patrols, they have shifted the focus comfortably, the game reminds me enough of lineage to feel nostalgic, but has moved enough towards WoW and western gaming to make me feel comfortable with the way it plays.

Moving forward, at (apparently) 8pm tonight UK time the game servers open, and people like me will promptly flood in, and crash the servers. We can then follow the trail of LOL on twitter as developers explain whats going on, while people get more and more impatient and wait for the first person to declare “I quit cuz AIon are making me wait too long and is lame fucking dev dickS” so that we can berate and make them the “Axis of Evil ™” In reality the servers are likely to have some issues, beta went quite well for the parts I played but im not naive enough to think that it means the launch will go well. Beta was staggered and people got into the game in stages which limited the rush into the game, tonight thousands are going to assault the servers relentlessly, the assault will begin probably before the servers even go live because some people are fucking insane.

Anyway, time to pull this one to a close. Anyone wishing to roll with us can hop onto ENG Spatalos and post that your are playing there on the forums and we can add you to the guild, friendslists or whatever you want. One thing is for certain this, this game really is a very high profile launch, and depending on how it goes, it could impact the industry in a bigger way then most expect, so make sure you follow the game!

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the world of superheroes. Champions online finally launched a few weeks with the usual fanfare and crap that surrounds the launch of a new MMO and it was especially prevalent and important to people like me because of the run up to this point. Some of you may have read my dislike of the game due to the fact they charge a subscription fee, and have an item mall where you can buy items that make a difference, as well as the usual fluff crap. I was wondering exactly how bumpy the game would release, would there be sudden bugs, would the servers cope or would it steam ahead like the smooth action of a Japanese train flying across the country side.

Strangely enough and almost against my wishes, the final option was infact the one that held true, the game launched as smoothly as our friendly train, carefully monitored by the developers who had worked to tweak the tracks and train before launch using the good old beta to get everything crisp and clean like a new £20 note from a Halifax bank machine. In the whole time there was only one small hiccup, which was the fact Cryptic basically build the tracks straight into the side of a mountain and had built the train without brakes or reverse.

Everything going well, someone internally decided that this shit was not going to fly, they already alienated some people with their greed tactics and several revenue streams (anyone that throws the fact server transfers etc are offered on other games can piss off, cos you cant buy any kind of win on WoW or Lineage 2 etc). Unhappy that only a small proportion of people, whom most claim would never have played anyway were unhappy, cryptic quickly moved to recruit terrorists to take their game down quickly and efficiently, with a badass series of nerfs to players and buffs to mobs to render the game fucked up. The superhero game where players had previously and admittedly been overpowered, was quickly shot into oblivion with the majority now extremely pissed that they were no longer super heroes, but fodder for the piss weak mobs in the game.

Now to be fair, some of the issues were down to player error when they made bad choices in terms of gear, powers and so on. Thankfully you can roll back changes like a talent reset, and thankfully for me and others who were enjoying the warming flames of the burning train, cryptic still had a tank of petrol up their sleeves for the survivors…delicious. The talent changes they had in were insanely expensive, because they had limited the amount of gold (resources LOL) available to limit possible dupe issues and such. This meant nobody could reset their characters at all, and finally result in some people whinging that it will be available for a cost in the item mall soon. Probably just angry outburst but god I loved reading them. Cryptic finally provided a full free reset for people a week later, which is awesome cos im pretty sure a fair amount of people will have rage quit, and in between then and the time it takes them to sort this bullshit out, Aion will launch, and from my own experience it IS balanced, it IS running like a dream, and as long as this carries over to launch its going to be one of the most flawless releases since WoW.

Looking at the bigger picture overall, you have to wonder what sort of dickweed is in charge of Cryptic Studio’s because they cornered the market with City of Heroes, and took it one step further with City of Villains and worked it from there. A market that they basically controlled and they have decided to go out and compete against themselves, the game isn’t even a real successor and it seems they are a bit fucking moronic overall, but im sure theres a legion of diehard followers out there that will buy anything.

Ill finish by clarifying the title of this entry, by allowing you to choose the ending with whichever you see fit:

1. Champions Online: Superheroes required…to clean up the developers self made trainwreck launch
2. Champions Online: Superheroes required…cos seriously the game needs to get them back in or its in the wrong genre
3. Champions Online: Superheroes required…BRING MONEY COS WE ALL KNOW SUPERMAN BUYS HIS POWERS FOR IRL CASH

Where's your head at?

68 Hours, 20 levels, 1000 achievements and a main storyline later I sank. Waiting for the release of the subsequent DLC which would revive the game and keep me engrossed, if only for a few more desperate hours. The ultimate announcement of 5 new DLC’s was a phenomenal boost. Questions and comparisons were raised, mainly between Fallouts content and Oblivions content due to the awesome scale of Shivering Isles and Knights of the Nine which graced Oblivion fans some time ago. Would these DLC’s raise this bar set by Bethesda many moons ago, or would this content overload be too little, too late?

Operation: Anchorage. The first content released was shaky at best. The storyline told of a hidden vault of weaponry unlockable upon completion of a virtual simulation of the historic battle of Anchorage. The gameplay is tweaked in the sense that due to the nature of the simulation, there are only a limited number of weapons and no enemies can be pillaged upon expiration. Instead all ammunition and health are reimbursed through canisters spread throughout the area. In total the experience was a slow one. I felt like I was being guided through the storyline and didn’t really have that sense of achievement that an open plan game such as this should have provided. The Chinese stealth armour gained upon completion was a nice compensation though!

The Pitt was the sophomore release and offered some well needed brutality along the same gameplay lines as the main story. In contrast to Operation: Anchorage we can now steal, pillage, and maim much as we could before in the main story. The main plot of The Pitt is an uprising between slaves and masters, set in post nuclear Pittsburgh and the slaves enlist the help of yours truly to get the job done. The content played wonderfully as you are captured and have to regain former glory and coerce the trust of the officials in the Pitts arena before sealing the deal against the very oppressors that put you there in the first place. The 4 hours spent decimating The Pitt was well worth the trip to the marketplace.

My only rewards for besting "Operation: Anchorage"

Broken Steel was possibly the most anticipated release and brought to a close the main story, adding the much needed ability to play beyond the games ending and raising the level cap to 30. The Plot picks up directly after the completion of the final quest and deals the remnants of the Enclave forces. The Enclave, now nothing more than a scattered, leaderless tribe must be wiped out. Even though the content focuses on the main map of the game, some new locations are added, the most prominent of which is Adam’s Air Force Base which has become the new de facto headquarters of the Enclave following the destruction of Raven Rock and the maniacal President John Henry Eden. The raising of the level cap is a noticeable one, with the introduction of a new breed of super mutants and Enclave soldiers. The previous strategy of “raining down hell” becomes obsolete, forcing the player to adopt a more calculated approach. This content adds a lot more to the already vast main story of the Capital Wasteland and the raising of the level cap with the addition of new enemies should be enough to warrant a purchase.

After the release of these three downloads the scene fell quiet. That is until the announcement and subsequent release of Point Lookout. Point Lookout takes the player to an abandoned theme park surrounded by swampland in Maryland. The story revolves around the squabbles of two men: Desmond Lockheart and Professor Calvert, both locked in a heated rivalry which focuses on the destruction of the other. During the quest the player is required to infiltrate a group of local fanatics and involves a long hallucinogenic sequence in which the player encounters many (less than friendly) bobbleheads, some saws and needles attempting to maim the landscape and the players own mother – or whats left of her. While this DLC offers a lot of open areas and an odd cast of characters, the story somewhat lacks. Bethesda’s description was a place where “the bombs didn’t actually fall, but the world has left it behind”. Perhaps we should too.

Those alien bastards are gonna pay for shooting up my riiide!!!

The final release was the intriguing Mothership Zeta. The player is abducted and captured onboard an alien spacecraft upon exploration of the crashed Alien Ship. Upon escaping the player has to take over the ship and escape with a Motley Crew of characters. The new energy weapons are something to behold where a player can disintegrate an enemy in a flash of blue light. From the cells to the bridge of the alien ship via a spacewalk, the content offers a different sort of storyline as previously offered back on earth. I felt that out of all the content offered, this one brings the most unique view of how life in the capital wasteland has heightened the basic human instinct of survival.

All in all the Content offered for Fallout 3 has been a staggered experience. Each one has its own unique storyline and gives us something more to work for. I was somewhat disappointed however with the fact that none of these contents even came close to the grand expansion of shivering isles on Bethesda’s previous offering. However with each content offering an extra 4-5 hours of gameplay and a few new items and challenges along the way, they are a success in their own right. With no more DLC on the way and Fallout 3’s package now neatly wrapped, my experience of the capital wastelands can now come to a close.

The Final Scores have been handed out to each game in turn rather than all being scored as one big bundle:

• Operation: Anchorage – 2/5
• The Pitt – 4/5
• Broken Steel – 5/5
• Point Lookout – 3/5
• Mothership Zeta – 4/5

Review and Overview Written by DarKKendO

Aion has been developed by NCsoft, the people behind Lineage and Lineage2 and a driving force behind titles like guild wars. NCsoft was also a driving force behind Tabula Rasa, or as it was formally known, Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa. Truth be told, Im one of those people who think the game should be known as the latter and not the former. Richard Garriott should be allowed to attribute his name to his product, a product that was going to be WoW killer, a product that failed, then failed harder, then died. I hope he knows this, I hope he regrets putting his name in the title, I hope these facts make him cry. But this isn’t about Richard Garriott or Tabula Rasa… but I mean, he called himself Lord Britsh, seriously, what the fuck is that about, Im British as well, and im not Lord anything, except maybe Lord of the Flies, or Lord of Rage, seriously fuck Richard Garriott and his shit fest, and fuck anyone that liked it.

You know who else is a cunt? Anyone so wrapped up in the next big thing they call it a “WoW killer.” It’s a phrase im sick to fuck off, and even more so, I bet the poor bastards that make these games sit in fear of the first asshole that labels their game as such. Its a complete win-win situation for our good friends a Blizzard, and these poor idiots that spout this crap cannot even see it. If you think im wrong lets go through the following reasons as to why im right, and why you are Richard Garriotts friend.

• When you label a game as a “WoW Killer” you set high expectations of the game for yourself. When it doesn’t beat WoW in 2 months you quit
• By doing the above you raise others expectations, they also quit after 2 months.
  

  World of Worgencraft, Welcome to Azeroth 2.0

• When someone says “this will kill WoW” they are effectively saying “WoW is the top game to beat” yet 3 days earlier they proclaimed WoW is a shitfest
• WoW is an 11.5 million strong army, to beat World of Warcraft you have to convert that army, and you only have a small start-up to do so, its not likely is it?

Seeing as people keep looking for the messiah to lead them away from Stormwind and Orgrimmar and into the hands of some city in a new game Im going to give you a Hero who can do just that, and its not Richard Garriott, but Dr. Who! Dr. Who will undoubtedly be able to kill WoW because he can just jump forward in time to the point where WoW has leaked members to many different games and is basically a run of the mill game like Lineage 2 and Everquest used to be, still big, still powerful but a behemoth anymore. These people can wait for the birth of the new Universe with new mechanics and new graphics, and I will Christen this game “World of Warcraft 2″ or whatever they call it, because lets be honest, they now have more money, followers and developers than your new favourite game in the future, they will take its mechanics, they will refine them, make it better, faster, stronger. In short they will improve on all future games, and any game that is better than them at something, will be taken, improved and implemented.

Blizzard in general can never be defeated, and do you know what, it doesn’t even fucking matter, it just matters to assholes that need to be popular, they need to be in the majority so they can be validated and approved. Hell, if Game X beat WoW then everyone would hate it and WoW would be a popular “niche” game. I don’t get why people cannot play a game and

Final Fantasy 14, It won't kill WoW, but it may kill your graphics card!

enjoy it without having to shove it down everyone else’s throat. Likewise, I don’t get why people who should enjoy a game won’t play it because its too popular. Plent of games are going to come out in future, games which deserve time, effort and aknowledgement. There are going to be people playing these games (Aion, Final Fantasy 14 to name 2 big ones) and even if they are not more popular that WoW after 2 months, it doesn’t make them any less of a game, and any idiot that labels them WoW killers is just detracting from the fact these games will try to be different, and setting them and future games up to fail and be despised before the concept art is even leaked onto the internet.

I guess the final message from this article is the following:

If your game needs to kill WoW to get your approval, then you’re not a fan of the game, you are not supporting the game, and you may as well forget the game already. Every game does something good and should be appreciated for being different even if its not the most popular, (except seriously shit ones like Archlord). Stop worrying about popularity and enjoy your game of choice. (Or play WoW)

The issue with popular games is the absolutely terrible community they breed. Inbred, impolite and downright fucking retarded gamers who unbeknownst to them are making absolute twats of themselves publically, which is well..fantastic to read.

Let my journey begin with a battleground, specifically Arathi Basin. I’m just dropping in to get my marks so that I can grab a battlecat to make my adventures all that more primal and exciting, and what better way to do this than with my fellow Alliance comrades, there was one small issue, that being that my team was FUCKING RETARDED.

dont u knw abt duel talent FUCKIN RETARD

So out of thin air, a rather delightful argument has broken out, I tried butting in letting everyone know I had taken a shit this morning but nothing would deter my Alliance friends from this outbreak of sheer angst, Casii feels that Kiiko has made a few bad choices regarding his talent spec and as you can see Kiiko feels that this statement was rather unnecessary and retaliated.

Tetris is the only game fat fucks can play irl.

All out war has broken out and Kiiko is having none of  Casii’s shit, Jayshwah also made an appearance but sadly I didn’t screenshot any of his dumbfuckery in time due to fighting off legions of horde at my bastion, the goldmine, my apologies folks.

and last but not least, this nice little dwarf:

u best arnser assHOLE

My response? well obviously NO YOU FUCKING CANNOT.

I’d like to say that this is my first and last post on this subject, but sadly it won’t be, ever. Retards are common, and as such, so will my posts documenting them.