[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 Outdated, but it's better than Dwarf Fortress'  ASCII art.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.