[PC] Endless Space In-Depth Review.

    (Please note that I couldn't take screenshots of this game myself so I needed to use different sources)

Endless Space is a Sci-Fi 4x Turn-Based Strategy game for the PC developed and created by Amplitude studios. For those not familiar with 4x games, 4x means explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate. If you are fimiliar with the Civilization and Master of Orion series, then Endless Space will make you feel right at home with like-mechanics.
    Endless Space comes with many things, like Multiplayer, the ability to use Mods with a Mod option, customizable Factions, randomly generated maps, and replayability for, well, a very long time.

        NEW GAME
    You can jump right in the game when you click New Game. I'll describe how this screen acts. On the left side, it shows Galaxy. You can pick what kind of map you want under Shape and you can change how many Stars are in the galaxy by changing the Size option. Empires is how many people you want to play against. Age is how old or young you want the Stars in the galaxy to be.
   
    In the middle, it shows Empire. This is your faction. You can change your faction by clicking on your factions picture. There are 9 pre-loaded factions to first play as and against, including a random option. On the right you can see the option "Add". This allows you to create your own Faction, with a number of added traits! I will get into the Faction creator later though.
   

   
    Back to the New Game screen, next to your Faction is a number of Traits that you get in-game. If you hover of them you can see what each trait does whether beneficial or detrimental .You can also choose what color you want to be represented as.
   
    On the right, it shows Settings. You can select the difficulty of the AI and change how fast or slow you want the game to be.There are also Advanced Settings which can turn the various Victories on or off, as well as if you want generate a Seed. A Seed is a unique variation of numbers and letters that define a certain map. Say you want to play on the Seed "A1". If you want to play that map another time all you have to do is put A1 in the Seed name.
   

   
    Now before we being, I'll tell of the mechanics. There are 4 things that you need to have a productive Galaxy. The game tells it as FIDS. This means Food, Industry, Dust, and Science. Food. Food makes population, Industry makes things get done faster, Dust increases your income per turn, higher Science means it will take less to research things.   
         
GAMEPLAY
    When you first start the game you will start with a lovely introduction of your faction. Next you might be hit by the Tutorial screen. This can help you understand a lot on what is happening. I found that the Tutorial didn't really help that much, it just tells what everything does. It's not really going to help you when you first start. You'll most likely get more of a hang of the game by your 3rd or 4th gameplay.
   
    You can see a ship next to your System. When you first start you get a Colony ship and a Scouting ship. A Colony ship can provide you a new Colony on a different System granted you have the Technology researched to colonize there (we'll talk about that later in). The Scouting ship can travel farther than a Colony ship and can scout out other Systems and players.
   
Now, let's talk about the HUD of the Galaxy screen. On the top left corner, you'll see various buttons:
   
    The first one, probably grayed out, lets you return to the Galaxy screen if you're on a different button. If you hover over it, it shows all of the Player's scores.    
   
    The second one, is your Empire. You can see how much Dust (the currency used in Endless Space) you get per turn, the taxes you are being payed, your Empire Factors; which are based on the planets and Systems, Strategic and Luxary resources, and how star Systems. If you find you have a lot of Systems to manage you can set an AI to automatically build stuff for you depending on what you prefer for that System to do. You'll see the drop-down menu under AI next to Hanger on the Star Systems menu.
   
    The third one, is your Technology. On the first turn, you get to pick a Technology to research and advance to. Let's look at the Tech Tree. Okay, that's a pretty huge Tech Tree. I'll break down the various paths that you can take:
The upper tree is towards Galactic Warfare. Researching these can give you many weapons and defense options to use in the Military screen (we'll get there too).
The left tree is towards Diplomacy and Trading. If you get this you can open options with the other players. You want an Alliance with a player? Well, let's just say you might be waiting a lot of turns to research that.

  

    The bottom tree is towards Exploration and Expansion. Most of these are key for getting a wealthy empire. You can't just colonize on lava planets or on asteroids, you have to research it first! These also help in keeping your colonies satisfied.
The right tree is towards Applied Sciences, which can help find more Strategic resources and help towards your ships stats, even adding more options in battle.
Well that's all of the Tech Tree. The Tech Tree is run on by Science. The more Science you have on colonies then the more faster things can be researched.
   
    Back to the HUD now. The next button is the Military button. Here you can see your active fleets of ships and where they are traveling to. On the right side you can three ships there now and also an Add option. This will allow you to customize how you want your future ships to be like. You want them to be attackers? Put more kenetics under the Weapons Module. Want to defend a planet? Put deflecters on a ship! It's really simple until you get to late game, where your enemy can use lasers and you can't defend that well until you shields. Don't forget to name your ship or you can't actually make it!
   

  

    The next button is the Diplomacy screen. When you first start it will only have yourself in it until you meet other players. When you meet other players you can go back and trade with them. Until you get the certain Diplomacy and Trade techs researched you can pretty much only Declare War and that's not what you really want to do at this point unless you want an early defeat.
   
    The button after the Diplomacy button is the Academy menu. You can hire Heroes which can command Systems or Fleets. You start with 3 Heroes and you gain more over the course of 50 turns, however you can only keep a maximum or 3. Heroes have an upkeep as well and it increases as they level up. Heroes can also get injured in battle and when they do you need to heal them for a cost of Dust.
   
    The last button is just the Options button. You can save or load a game, change options or exit the game or exit to desktop.
  
    On the bottom right of the screen is the End Turn button which ends your turn and lets the other players move. As you progress in turns and upgrades, notifications on what is completed appear above the End Turn button.

    Soon you will meet a Pirate Fleet or an Enemy Fleet. They will want to battle you. This is the cool thing about this game. You can select Auto for a dice roll based on the percentage shown on both Fleets or you can go to Manual.
    The manual option brings you to a cool game of pretty much Rocks, Paper, Scissors, although most of the time for me it isn't like that. You select 3 turns, Long Range, Short Range, and Melee. Click on one of the "?" on the left side and you'll see cards. These can be used to for countering or just straight out attacking. However, depending on the number of ships compared to the other team, you might die or win on the first turn! I played a game the night before writing this and I countered all of the other player's cards and still lost and didn't even damage one ship! The animations are pretty sick too. Definitely a plus compared to the Civilization series.

        Faction Creator
    You can edit your Faction name, change your Affinity, set your Author name, and edit a description. The next things you'll be able to do is edit your traits. You can add as many traits as you want but they have to add up to 65. You can make it all positive if you want, but if you want more positive stuff than you'd have to have negative traits as well to balance it all out. If you feel comfortable with playing and know some of these traits then you might want to try it. Want to be heavily on early game attacking? Head to Space Battle. Want a stable early planet advantage? Head to Anomaly or Economy!


    FAQ
Now, you might have some questions on some things. I did too when I first started.
    "I can't go to this certain System. Is this a bug??" If you notice, there might be a wavy line to and from that System. This means that there is a Wormhole there. In order to go into it, you need to research the tech. The tech is found under the Exploration and Expansion tech, titled Applied Casimir Effect.
    "My Fleet/Ship on my System isn't moving!" It should be in the Hanger still. Go to the Hanger on your System and and select the ship you want and select Create. You can then select the Fleet and move it somewhere.
    "My population isn't growing!" They are probably unhappy there and refuse to populate. I haven't found a guaranteed way of fixing this but the less happy your colony is, the less productive they will be and the more turns it will take to get anything done. Try adding more Food production to the colony.
    "How do I increase my Fleet size??" I'm pretty sure it's the C3, C4, and C5 techs in the Diplomacy and Trading tree. 

    Okay, now that I spent a damn well time writing this, now I'll give the scores on what I thought this game deserves!

Graphics: Amazing graphics, amazing cutscene at the beginning of the game and amazing Battle animations and animations in general. 10/10
Sounds: The music is pretty alright. The sound is good too. Not too high. 6/10
Gameplay: As the title says, Endless Space, meaning it's pretty well Endless. With customizable Factions and a Seed generator, you're going to be playing this game for a while. Most 4-Player matches can last at least 6 hours and you can spend most of your day playing this.
However, there is one thing and I'm not sure if it's my computer or not, but as the turns accumulate my game starts lagging like crazy. I try not to base my score on my computer based on lag but that was just a problem I had. 9/10

Overall: 9/10
As stated as above, you'll be playing this game for a long time. If you want a game like Civilzation but in space, buy this. It is only $30 on Steam too!

[PC] Towns review.

 
  Towns is an Indie game created by SMP. As quoted on their website, Townsgame.com, "Towns brings a fresh new take on the citybuilding/management genre by introducing many RPG features. Drawing inspiration from games such as Diablo, Dungeon Keeper and Dwarf Fortress, the game has you managing a settlement on top of an active dungeon. Instead of playing the hero who delves deep into the dungeon, how about playing the town that houses and caters to the hero's needs?" If you are familiar with Rougelike games, such as Dwarf Fortress, then you will find many similiarities to Town.
  
     There are eight tutorials to play with to let you get acquainted within the game. You pretty much control a small population of citizens and you make your own city based on the resources around you. You have to start small, such as cut trees for wood and farm/harvast food around you. There are enemies in which you can kill if you ever progress with a military.
  
     When you first start, you should cut down some trees and set up a Carpentry zone and then build a Carpenter's Bench This will allow you to make a ladder. When that is done, go find some stone and have your citizens dig down. Place a ladder down and you are now in the underground. You can mine it out and collect stone or mud or even some rarer minerals. Eventually, you will get some settlers who will join your citizens and your city!
  

     There are many things to make like a tavern, animal farms, a hospital, arena's and even forges for your weapons and armour! There is a high skill level to this game and like Dwarf Fortress. requires a lot of trial and error, but remember, have FUN! (I hope I don't get sued for that, Dwarf Fortress reference) Speaking of Dwarf Fortress references, I believe there is one. There is a monster called Froggy. The Dwarf Fortress programmer is known as Toady.
  
       If you go into the programs file you can see that there are configuration settings which can allow you to mod the way the game looks by changing the graphics of the game.

Final scores:

Graphics: 6/10 It reminds me of a classic game you'd find on Puzzle Pirates or something. Outdated, but it's better than Dwarf Fortress'  ASCII art. It's a 6 because you can also mod the way they look.

Music: 1/10. It's the same midi stuck on repeat. Kind of gets annoying after a while.

Gameplay: 6/10 Gameplay can be deep if you can get into it, not as many features as in Dwarf Fortress, but this game is still in Alpha.

Overall: 5/10

    Even though there are better games like Dwarf Fortress, I like what these guys are doing. And that is to make this genre feel bigger and making their own program and to spread word that these type of games exist, it's like minecraft, but with more people and more possibilities.

[PC] Guild Wars 2 Beta Review: Written by Onesimus

 This was sent to me by a member of the Gameface101 forum named Onesimus. I enjoyed it very much.

Guild Wars BETA Review 

With the first official Guild Wars 2 BETA weekend over, I believe it would be a great time to sum up what the game makes of itself, met expectations (or not) and some of the outstanding aspects of this game. When playing through this BETA I personally felt extremely engaged, doing an extensive range of quests and task for the NPC’s of the varying races that I was able to play during the event. The most promising thing about this MMO is that it is FREE TO PLAY, and requires no monthly fee, and for a game of this calibre that is truly amazing. 

Character Creation 

ArenaNet certainly did a great job of the character creation. The amount of detail you can go into is outstanding. I found a variety of ‘feature sliders’ that all seemed to make you character unique and visibly appealing, even though you will be staring at the back of his/her helmet for the majority of the game. The part of character creation that stood out the most is the personal story attributes that you are able to pick, for the Charr this included what legion do you want to be a part of, and who is you sparring partner as well as other options. Most interesting is the option available for a human character: What was your biggest regret? One of the options being ‘not joining the circus.’ 

After you have picked you character’s name, attributes and personality the game will show you a fabulous semi-animated cut scene with concept art featuring your character and a voice over describing the choices you made earlier in a narrative like fashion, that traditionally end with a ‘this is my story.’ 

 Gameplay 

The gameplay in GW2 is very nice to say the least… it certainly gives a wow factor. When playing the game you feel like you’re in control, you are able to jump and evade giving a whole new level to the combat system, about that later. Apart from that, there are plenty of quest were you are required to collect certain items for NPC’s, or fend off an enemy from their ranch. What is outstanding from other MMO’s is that if the NPC says that the bears are attacking their bee hives, you see the bears assault the poor farmer’s source of profit and then run away, loot in paw. 

 

Dynamic Events are something new that has been introduced into Guild Wars 2. Dynamic events are a questing system in which events take place in real time and are not triggered be the player specifically. Also with this comes a chain of events: say you walked into a town and a dynamic event happened, you would be prompted to defend the town, if you succeeded you would then be prompted to drive back the intruders, however if you failed you would then attempt to re-claim the town. In these sorts of events each player is rewarded according to their participation, bronze, silver and gold, each rewarding you with various amounts of coin and experience. 

PS. During the BETA I was unable to try out the crafting mechanic of the game however I am sure there are plenty of other reviews that will cover that aspect in detail. 

Combat 

The combat system in Guild Wars 2 is truly unique; it is no longer a matter of rocking up to the fight with the bigger sword and better equipment. In this game you HAVE to dodge effectively use you heal, switch between weapon sets. Starters and finishers are another interesting mechanic in this game; in short there are certain AoE attacks that can be combined with the attacks of other players to form new attacks. The most evident example to this is the firewall the elementalist can put down, when a projectile is shot through it, the projectile then deals the fire damage on top of its own. Personally I found the combat extremely engaging. 

 Graphics 

I apologise for enlarging the tittle of this segment however the GRAPHICS in this game are absolutely amazing for an open world game. When set to the highest possible graphics (not too hard to run) Guild Wars 2 looks like a movie, in the best possible way. There are features like ‘depth of field’ that makes everything in the distance look a bit like it’s in book, sort of. I guess words cannot describe the shier amazingness of the graphics in the game. 

Overview 

In a nutshell Guild Wars 2 is an outstanding MMO with a new look on how the genre should be played, and many strongly agree to that outlook. The game focuses on storytelling and has definitely succeeded in that, however in doing so not forgetting about gameplay and the many things that gamers find frustrating in MMO,s have all been fixed. I think that my expectations have defiantly been made from, the gameplay to the voice acting and storytelling this game is defiantly in my opinion going over through World of War craft as the number one game when it comes to MMO’s. I know personally that this game will be my MMO of choice for the next several years and I strongly recommend that you try it out.

Diablo III Open Beta Weekend Review.[PC]

    With the starting of the Diablo III weekend beta, I had to follow in just to see what all the hype is about. I used to play a bit of Diablo II with my friends getting around level 50 and owning the hell out of Baal.
  

  If you aren't fimiliar with the series, Diablo III is a fantasy-action RPG in which you obtain quests, adventure through massive lands, and then slay the demons of hell. Diablo III is made by Blizzard, who also created World of Warcraft and the entire Warcraft series, along with Starcraft and Starcraft II.
   

 In order to play, you require a Battle.net account and it requires a Battle Tag, which is your own name within the game. When you first load the game you are asked to log in with your Battle.net account. This is one thing I dislike, the fact that you HAVE to be connected to the internet in order to play, even in Single-Player mode. This can cause many problems, such as if there is downtime for a patch or there is a problem with the server itself then it can hinder playing the game itself. Diablo III is entirely online but you can choose to close your game so others can't join or you can open it entirely for others to join.
    

There are 5 classes to choose as a character. Barbarian, Demon Hunter, Monk, Witch Doctor, and Wizard. The Barbarian is the standard warrior/tank. Demon Hunter is a ranger. A Monk can heal and support and is a well-rounded fighter. The Witch Doctor can summon and use poison darts for range. The Wizard is a standard mage-like character. When you reach level 10 on one character, you are allowed to make Hardcore characters. Hardcore means that when you die, it's a permanent death and your character is then deleted. It adds to the difficulty of this game.
   

 When you first start out, you have your beginning-class weapons and you have to travel to New Tristam and try to find Deckard Cain, only to find out that he isn't there. You will meet many undead on the way. The HUD, as shown above is very simple. I will describe it as so:
1. Your character. I first started as a Barbarian since he's an original character from Diablo II.
2. Objectives. These are your current quests or tasks that you can complete
3. Mini-Map. This is the mini-map of the surrounding area.
4. Current Area/ Current time: This tells where you currently area and it tells what your current time is depending on your time zone. You can turn off the time in the options.
5. Health/Mana/Skill bar. The Left orb is your Health. The Right orb is your secondary stuff such as Fury (Barbarian) or mana (Wixard/Witch Doctor). In between it tells you what your current skills are set to. The lockpad next to my health potions is the town portal, which when unlocked, lets you teleport back to the most recent town whenever you want. The four buttons to the right of the lockpad is the Skill tab, Inventory tab, Achievements/Journal tab, and the System tab.
6. This is the dialouge box. You can see what NPC's say aloud or if you're in a party it lets you see what your party members are saying.
7. This is your in-game Friends List. You can add people on to here to make game-joining easy.
   

Diablo III HUD

One thing I do not like about Diablo III is that there is no customization except your inventory. There are no skill trees like in Diablo II and there are no points that you can put into your character's strength, endurance, or intelligence. You have preset skills chosen for you based on class and your strength, endurance, and intelligence is automatically leveled up for you.
    

I won't spoil the ending of the Beta quests that they give you, but near the end if you are playing solo then you will die a lot. BUT you can revive at the nearest checkpoint that you have reached unless you are a hardcore character. As I said, I won't spoil the quests, however many monsters that you encounter at early levels have low HP, such as 10-30 or even around 70. The final boss in the Beta quests has around 2,200 and even has many cheap tricks.
    

I was hyped for this game when I first heard about it being made. But as I started playing it, it felt different and it felt dumbed down and just not the same approach. First there is a mandatory online feature. This can cause problems and even not allow some people to play if there is a patch, that you required to download anyways, or if there is downtime on the server (Think the daily downtimes for World of Warcraft on Tuesdays). If you have a bad connection or even a high ping (having programs in the background, like Skype or music like Spotify open) then it can affect the gameplay. I had some monters just teleport right up to me, causing me to die. Second, there is no customizability like that in Diablo II, with what kind of character you wanted to be, such as a Whirlwind Barbarian or just a heavy-damaging  Barbarian. The only real way that PVP on servers will determine the factors is the armor and weapon skills placed on them (such as +5 strength on a belt or gloves). They do have a Auction House, in which you use real money to buy items founded by other players.

How I rate it:
Gameplay: 5/10. It's slow and clunky. You move fairly slow at lower levels (there is no run option, you run automatically),  it can be affected by your internet if you have a high ping or a bad ISP making a lot of things lag up and jump up at you. There is no customization, forced skills.
Graphics: 8/10. The graphics are probably the best part of the game. They pop out and come to life, although dark. Even on the lowest settings, they're better than a lot of other games' graphics on low. You can enter places now, although you can sometimes think you clicked on the place but it doesn't accept it. There are NO load screens, just a 2-3 second black screen.
Sound: 7/10. I loved how your own character speaks and the voice overs of the NPC's and how they even talk and the text appears in the Chat screen as well.
Overall: 6/10
    

This game comes out May 15th and it's only April 22nd where I am. I'd honestly tell you to try it first before you buy it. Hopefully they have another Open Beta Weekend for you guys to try out before the May 15th date although that is a short time.
    

If you have played Diablo II then I have to tell you: This is nothing like Diablo II, it's just dumbed down because of no customization. You have a free Town Teleport after a certain point in the game. You are forced to take skills and some aren't even that great. You have cooldowns on your potions as well. It's like a 15 second cooldown in order to use your potion, which can make cluttered combat extremely hard to macro against.

Tribes: Ascend Open Beta

Tribes: Ascend is a new free-to-play multiplayer-only first-person shooter that is a part of the Tribes series. Tribes: Ascend is being developed by Hi-Rez Studios. You can register and download the open beta straight on their website (https://account.hirezstudios.com/tribesascend/)

You can play with me any time. My In game Name is MotionM.

Partnership with Gameface101

I would like to announce that I am now in Partnership (advertising for them :P) with Gameface101.playogame.com

Gameface101 is an underground gaming forum that specializes in RPG Maker programs with Scripts and Resources.

Gameface101 has about 700+ members but currently  only about 10 active members.
There are being events and tournaments held, such as League Of Legend tournaments and RPG Maker XP Game In A Week

Gameface101 (Site owner) is currently working on a few games using his XPLAT feature which can make an RPG Maker game turn into a side-scroller Platformer. He is also working on the Forum Battle-system called the Thunderdome which can be used for battling on the forums to keep us occupied. I have been apart of the Gameface forums for just about two years now.


This is a userbar that I made for the site in Photoshop.

[PC] Angry Birds: Space review

Whether you like gaming on your phone or gaming on your computer, the new expansion of Angry Birds: Space is a must have for any Angry Birds fan. Angry Birds is one of the biggest casual-arcade games to come out as an application for a phone, like the iPhone or Android. Angry Birds is a physic-based game where you have to shoot the “birds” out of a slingshot in order to kill the pigs that inhabit the land.

Angry Birds: Space takes you into the new levels which are based around space. This brings a whole new challenging aspect of the genre. The new space expansion brings you six new birds to use: The Original, The Three-Shot, the Boomerang, the Bomb, The Freezer, and the Big Crush (these are my original names for them). What makes this all difficult is the gravitational pull which can alter how your bird moves.

The gravitation pull

The circular bubble around the planet is the gravitational pull, which can make the birds go around the planet. This can make some things very interesting or very difficult.

The many birds as listed above can do many things and can help on many tasks. The Original bird is the same old red bird that we know from the original series. The Three-Shot bird, when clicked on while after launch, can split into 3 smaller birds. The Boomerang can be homed at place you click after launch. The Bomb can blow stuff up when you click on him. The Freezer can freeze an area and make it very easy to break through objects. The Big Crush can move through a lot of objects easily.

The Birds. From Right to Left; Three-Shot, Bomb, Original, Boomerang, Big Crush, The Freezer.

There are four areas (one is also labeled: Coming Soon), each with about 30 levels and one boss fight at the end. The fourth area is actually a minigame area, with two minigames. One is Asteroids, where you send The Bomb to blow up the ship with Asteroids blocking your path.

The other is kind of like Mario, I want to say. You have two birds, The Original and The Three-Shot. You have to find the pig in one of the blocks and then send The Three-Shot to kill the pig as it moves across the board.

Asteroids!

The Mario-like game!

With about 90 levels, this game is a great way to waste time and to have fun. Angry Birds: Space is a great game put out by Ravio. There is also a Satellite in the sky in between Area 1 and Area 2 which asks you if you want to learn more about Space and NASA which is really neat.

---------- ---------------------------

The Scores:

Sound/Audio: 3/10. I can barely hear the audio and sounds. It’s nothing great anyways.

Gameplay/Story: 6/10. The Gameplay is casual, but fun. It comes with a story as well, when you beat the bosses at the end of an Area a comic will appear.

Graphics/Scenery: 5/10. Nothing fancy for graphics. Some of the levels are great and are hard though.

Overall: 7/10. I don’t really fancy games like these, but it was fun to play.

What's been going on.

Sorry i haven't done the Mass Effect 3 review, it's been two weeks since I posted about it. Just a bunch of personal stuff; feeling a bit unmotivated. I'll try my best to keep motivated though.

On Gameface101.playogame.com I was entered in a 4-man Starcraft 2 tournament for the prize of $10 Riot Points for use for League of Legends. The tournament was last weekend but I never got to play because my opponent never showed up so we're going to reschedule our match for this weekend hopefully. The other two people went though and I've been honored with the chance to do commentary on the replays. So look out for those.

As I said, just personal stuff in my life has kept me from wanting to write anything lately. I'm slowly wanting this blog to be big and mean something to me in my future, whether a future internship or major partnership. I graduate in two months from High School and moving in with my grandparents in New York and I'll have a lot of free time then until I can find a job and stuff so hopefully I'll have more time.

Thanks guys.

[PC: Flash] Gemcraft: Lost Chapter Labyrinth

     Gemcraft Lost Chapter: Labyrinth is a Tower Defense Flash game created by Gameinabottle.com and published by Armor Games. You are a wizard who took up studies in a town only to find that monsters are attacking the town and you must follow a labyrinth and use Gems to defeat them. You start on a 13x13 map, each with different levels.
  
  

Gemcraft Map select

      When you start the first map, it acts like a tutorial. You are given a certain number of certain gems, each with different abilities. You have to make gems and insert them into the towers. The gems attack the monster waves. You must stop the waves from attacking your Orb. After a certain number of attacks on the pearl then you lose and have to start the level all over.

Gemcraft HUD

     Here is the HUD. I'll explain everything here to you.
1. Mana. The amount of mana you have is what you use to build towers, use abilities, create gems and 'banish' monsters.
2. Created Gems. These are the gems you have created. You can make certain level of gems depending on how much mana you have. You need 2 of the same or 2 different level of gem to combine them into a higher level gem.
3. Gems you can create: These are the gems that are allowed on the level.
4. Abilities. These cost mana. You can create walls to add to strategy, create shrines, gem bombs (cost no mana), build more towers, combine gems, create traps, create amplifiers, which power other towers, or expand your mana regeneration.
5. Tower: This is where you can put the gems.
6. Entrance: This is where the monsters come from.
7. Wave Count: Tells how many more waves are left.
8. Speed counter: Lets you pause, resume or speed up the current map.
9. Battle Amulets/Stats: Shows your stats on the current map. Battle Amulets are like achievements that you can get overall.
10. The Orb: This is what you are trying to stop the monsters from getting.
After the tutorial, you get XP to level up as. When you choose a map, you can choose the wave options and skill points to use when you level up.

Battle Settings

Skills when you level up.

    There are 8 Gems you can use or make and are as followed:
Chain Hit: Allows a chance for hits to chain on to another monster.
Create Poisonous Gas: Allows the gem to poison a monster over a period of time.
Create Shocking Gem: Has a chance to shock an enemy. They have a stacking shocking immunity per time hit.
Create Multiple Damage Gem: Has a chance to hit multiple targets.
Slowing Gem: Each hit slows the target for a short period of time.
Mana Gathering Gem: Each hit extracts mana from a monster.
Bloodhound Gem: Every kill this gem gets increases its power.
Armor Tearing Gem: Each hit reduces the armor of the monster.

     You can build traps and insert a gem too. Traps have reduced damage but increased effects.

The Score:
This game is good and addicting, as are all Flash games.

Sound/Audio: 5/10. It's generic for a grim-dark setting.
Graphics/Scenery: 8/10. The maps are good. The menus and everything else are great.
Gameplay/Story: 9/10. It's addicting and lets you do more stuff as you level up, like go back to older maps and increase the number of waves, their health, and even the enemies that appear on the map. It's full of replayability.
Overall: 8/10.
Find a way to download the .swf and get Adobe Flash Projector so you can play it whenever you want. It's a great way to pass time.

The Godfather II review for PC.

The Godfather II for PC.

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The Godfather II is an M-rated (Because of pixelated boobies and drug references pretty much, with added violence and language of course) sandbox action adventure game with online multi-player directed and published by EA studios. The Godfather II first takes place in Cuba where Don Corleone and the Capo's of the Corleone family having a meeting with Hyman Roth on how to divide up Hyman Roth’s empire. After the meeting, the Cuban Revolution tells everyone to flee the country as rebels are attacking the island. You take control of Dominic, a soldier of Aldo Trapani from the first The Godfather game.

            You first start off with the character design. It’s actually pretty good. You can add hats, glasses, wear classic outfits, even Polo’s with a custom color scheme. After you design your character you come to an un-skippable cutscene of the Corleone family discussing how to divide up Hyman Roth’s empire. You then get to move around a bit and feel the controls. You can change your look whenever you want, just press Tab and go to your Family Tree tab and click on your guy and it’ll show your records and the weapons you own too.

Your Family of soldiers and how they look.

Now, whenever I play a PC game, I check to see if it allows controllers. This game can run with an Xbox 360 controller, needless to say though, it feels clunky. The rotation speed of the camera feels slow and movement feels sticky. You can access the Main Menu using select, but you can’t use the analog sticks to move around, it forces you to use the D-pad to navigate. There is also no option in the menu to turn the rumble feature off. I personally hate rumble as it distracts me. On the first day I got this game I knew that the 360 controller sucked. On the second day, I used my keyboard. Everything is easier with the keyboard and mouse, even aiming compared to the slow X and Y axis of the camera with the controller.

            Your main mission at the beginning is to take control of the businesses around the small area. You are given the chance to hire a soldier. A soldier can be of many professions, such as an Arsonist, Lock pick, Demolitionist, or even a Healer. As you progress you can hire many more soldiers increasing your Family size. After a few business extortions, you find out that you need to take care of the Don from another family. His men will attack your businesses to take for their own. You can hire bodyguards to protect your businesses but it’ll come out of your total income that you receive once a week. 

The combat goes around as you can punch someone to death, gun them down or just kill them with your crazy driving skills. You pick up weapons through out the game like shotguns, Tommy guns, snub pistols and even explosives like dynamite and Molotov's. On the mouse the right button controls your right arm and the left button controls your left arm. Press both of them and you can grab a hold on someone. Grabbing a hold on someone is a great way to kill someone. You can strangle them by holding space, pummel them with the F key, execute them, instantly killing them, with F also. On top of a big building? Throw him off by grabbing him while next to a ledge and bring your mouse up and it'll throw him to his impending doom. Your soldiers will also help too. They're actually pretty well good at combat and killing for themselves. 


The travel system is pretty basic as it's like any other sandbox game. You go hijack a car, get your soldiers in, listen to your favorite radio station and run hookers over (although you might actually kill one of your own if you own a prostitution ring). When you unlock the ability to travel to a new state or place, just drive off to the local airport, book your ticket and you're off.
 

This game will take you all the way from New York, Florida and then back to Cuba all trying to create the biggest mob business in the world. The story is deep. The voice acting is wonderful as it re-creates the classic mob scene.

I could not connect to the multi-player servers for some reason. Then again, it’s EA. I always have problems when connecting to an EA server. I tried playing Battlefield: Bad Company probably two years ago and it kept saying the servers are down, try again. But with this, it just stays on the “connecting to EA servers”.

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The Score

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Audio/Music: 8. Great Soundtrack, great voice acting.
           

Scenery/Graphics: 5. The graphics are exactly the same as the original The Godfather, the one that I own for the original Xbox. The scenery is bland and is scaled down so much compared to even the The Godfather. The HUD is nice though, the minimap has this cool 3D Isometric thingy to it, which I found amazing.
           

Gameplay/Story: 8. The story is great as it’s personally one of my favorite times in history. The Gameplay is actually good, with a cover system and customizable characters for your Family. The shooting/fighting scenes are actually on the dot, although a bit easy. The driving is clunky though on PC. I did dislike the fact the 360 controller would not work as well as it would compared to keyboard/mouse.

Overall, this game deserves a 6. Buy this is if you like the classic mob scene and/or if Grand Theft Auto is just boring the hell out of you. The Godfather II probably has about 20-30 hours of gameplay to interact with.

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[PC] Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. A detailed review.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is a single-player action RPG that is currently released on PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. It was developed by 38 Studios and Big Huge Games. It was published by Electronic Arts. R.A. Salvatore, a New York Times best seller, created the Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning universe and lore. Todd McFarlane created all of the artwork, while Ken Rolston was the game’s executive designer. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning was created on the Big Huge Engine.

            

          Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is huge and you feel it as soon as you step out of the tutorial.

The game starts at a cutscene as a narrator telling us how the world of Fae was once peaceful until the bad guy with a sharp blade kills wandering soldiers. In the next cutscene stands a warrior and a Tuatha fighting. The warrior wins the battle but is then ambushed by a small army being killed. This is you.  

The cutscene after shows you on a gurney dead being escorted by two gnomes with  great English voice acting. This cues the “Make your character” screen. You can choose between four races. The Almain, who are warrior-like; the Varani, who are rogue-like; the Ljosalfar, light elves who are mage-like; and the Dokkalfar, dark elves who also like to use magic. They all contain racial benefits. After you choose your race, you then get to choose which God you want to follow. The God you choose gives you different benefits, like more mana or health, or better damage. Feeling pretty agnostic or atheist? You can even choose not to have a God for an extra 1% EXP boost! The next thing is the “How pretty do you feel?” screen. Very much like Bioware or Bethesda game’s, you get to pick how you character’s face looks. They even have the option of tattoo’s on your face and body jewelry. I personally liked the “Rawr! I’m a minotaur!” nose-like ring.

 When you’re done feeling pretty, the two gnomes then chuck your body into what looks like a very deep hole. You wake up on rotting corpses and bones and everything else. What a nice way to ruin happiness. You were dead though, so I guess you couldn’t have been THAT happy.  This starts the tutorial level.

When I played I synced my Xbox 360 controller to my PC and the game found it right away and changed the controls and buttons instantly. When you first move around and do whatever you want, you’re probably thinking to yourself, “Why does this feel like Fable!?” Well, your thoughts are right, especially when you pick up your first sword and swing it. This game itself is that of Fable. It even has a dodging roll option!

When I first played I thought to myself, and anytime I explain this game to a friend I keep quoted, “It’s like Lionhead Studio’s had a baby. And that baby murdered Peter Molyneux, taking over and making Big Huge Games. When Lionhead wanted to make Fable 4, Big Huge Games stepped in made Fable better with a greater story, lore and everything else!” I hope you take that all as a metaphor. I do not endorse murder for great games. Back onto the gameplay.

After you pick up your sword and travel a bit, you reach your first combat zone. You must save one of the gnomes that threw you done that deep, stinking hole! Kill the Tuatha and the gnome will talk to you saying to look for Hughes who created the Well of Souls and explaining why you are alive right now. The dialogue screen is deep. Featuring an easy way to accept quests and giving you more information the more you talk. After talking to Mr. Gnome you should see a glowing around the Tuatha’s body. This means that there is a looting system. Go ahead and loot him, you deserve it! The looting screen is much like Dragon Age and Mass Effect. Just the way it looks, really. You should see some crates too somewhere. Attack those crates. They break! AND give you money!

There are many things you can do in Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Things like persuading others to like you, blacksmithing, alchemy, dispelling, lockpicking and sagecrafting. Blacksmithing requires you to disassemble your weapons to make new ones or find stuff throughout the land. Alchemy uses reagents found in plants in which you use an alchemy lab to make and mix different potions. Sagecrafting is the use of gems to insert in your armor or weapons. You can combine different gems for different effects. Dispelling is weird and hard. It’s used for breaking spells on a chest so you can loot it. I still haven’t gotten a hang of it. Lockpicking is like Fallout, Skyrim style. You have to force the lockpick a certain way and then break into the chest. There are magical lockpicks that opens stuff automatically too, somewhere.

The boss battles are great, hard, and intimidating. The bosses use a huge health bar and are no push over, unless you have a full Fate meter. Fate is where you get to change the fate of how the battle should have gone. It’s like an overkill button. It is generic though in most games. Fate gives you increased speed and attack damage. And when you almost kill an enemy or boss? Press the Activate button and a cool cutscene will happen and a Quick Time Event will pop up, generating massive overkill and giving you 25-100% bonus EXP!

When the tutorial is finally over with you get to see the great beautiful land! The environment is coloured to such a great extent. You can hear birds chirping, waterfalls and rivers, bridges, and ruins. Around the world of the Faelands are shrines that can give bonuses that will most likely save your life. Think of the Shrines in Diablo. As an added bonus, there are lorestones spread out. Collect all the lorestones in a selected area and you receive a permanent stat bonus. They also tell a great story.

Right after you get done with the tutorial and kill the boss, you get to meet a Fateweaver. He can see everyone’s fate and destiny. However he cannot see yours. Therefore, you get to choose your own Destiny! This is pretty much how you want to let your character be. Want to be a warrior? Rogue? Mage? As you level up your skill trees, your Destiny powers up too. Don’t like your Destiny? You can change it any time!

There are towns and cities within the Faelands. Towns are great because you don’t have to go through a loading screen. But the first city you go to, think of a smaller Darnassus from World of Warcraft. You can fast travel between dungeons and towns and cities too! There are vast amount of side quests to be done, including faction side quests, which when completed give you a permanent stat boost. You can even get a few houses, buy stuff like Alchemy Labs, plant regeants, and weapon racks.

The weapons are great also. They also special moves that you can use with them. The weapons consist of: Longswords, Greatswords, Daggers, Faeblades, Chakrams, Staffs, Hammers, Sceptres, and Bows. When you level up you get 1 talent skill (Blacksmithing, persuasion, lockpicking, stealth, etc), and 3 Tree skills. You can use the tree skills on any specialty you want, like Sorcery, Finesse, or Might. There are weapon masteries you can upgrade to for Tree skill points. These let you do new abilities, like for the mage, instead of rolling, you get “teleport blink”, which is pretty much the same thing, it just looks cooler.

Overall I give this game a 7/10.

Music, sound: 6/10 (The BGM isn’t that quite interesting but voice-acting is amazing)

Graphics: 7/10 (It’s not Skyrim or Battlefield graphics but it’s great)

Gameplay: 7/10 (The combat is great, but it’s kind of like “Push X to win”, but with added “Dodge or die”. The boss fights are fun though)

I’d say buy it but only if you have beaten everything else. It is a RPG, but it’s a single-player RPG that isn’t gameplay deep. It’s a lot better than Fable though. Don’t let my bias about the Fable series get you down; if you enjoyed the Fable series then you will love this game for sure.

 This review was written by MotionM™. Did you like this review? Comment below and tell me!